‘Well,’ Julia said. ‘You’ve probably heard that I’ve been away. I wanted to think about life and the future. I went a bit mad. All the past and regret and sorrow and grief – everybody’s – what we’ve lost …’
Nadine inclined her head. She didn’t want to talk about what was lost. She had, after all, managed to regain. She was all future, now. Art school. Riley working so hard with Hinchcliffe and the pamphlets.
‘I’ve done the most awful things,’ Julia said. ‘I just make awful decisions and everybody suffers, and then I feel – no, I am – the most awful fool. I want to be a better person but I can’t seem to see how … I seem to have muddied everything so much I couldn’t see my way – and when I tried I just made it worse – and part of me knows that Peter is trapped in exactly the same thing. Exactly the same. And we didn’t talk. We – well …’
She glanced at Nadine, who looked steadily back at her. A waterfall seemed to have opened up. Well, let it come. This waterfall of me me me.
‘Sorry, I’m going on—’ Julia said. ‘I don’t want to be stuck in my own stupid feelings. I don’t. I want – and then I feel, I feel, oh damn it all, I shall drink all the whisky in the house. Why not? If he can, why can’t I? He’s killed people, all right then! I have given birth! Blood! Violence! It’s human, isn’t it? Isn’t it? And ruining my stupid face – and Nadine, don’t think I don’t think about Riley’s face. I do – and I am so ashamed, and ashamed of my shame, and how it paralyses me – anyway, no more! Nadine, this is what I want to know. How can I love Peter?’
Nadine was extremely surprised. Julia looked at her anxiously, as if to check, and went on: ‘It seems so much easier for you and Riley. When Riley had his awful wound, and yet you manage to deal with it and yet I can’t. What must I do?’
Nadine moved her head an inch. Julia stared at her, her wide blue eyes holding what – concern?
‘While I was away,’ Julia said, ‘I realised that I can have no future anywhere except here. Look! I have my new child coming. I have Tom. But I don’t want to talk about me, really I don’t! I want to talk about Peter – Nadine – you and Riley—’
‘What about us?’ asked Nadine, quite kindly. Resigned.
‘How is Riley?’
Nadine gave a smile, a quiet smile of such glowing intensity that Julia actually blinked. ‘He is – marvellous,’ said Nadine. Then she felt embarrassed.
‘Gosh,’ said Julia, and Nadine dropped her head a moment, and they both quickly moved on, because that, for sure, was not what they were going to talk about. It was Julia who picked up the thread. ‘So when he came back,’ she said. ‘When he was still, you know, full of the battlefield – when he was at the Queen’s, and he sent you away, and it was all so difficult—’
‘When you invited me to stay here,’ said Nadine, remembering suddenly Julia’s awkward sweetness to her at that time.
‘Yes,’ said Julia. She turned her head to look out of the cloudy glasshouse window, and Nadine followed her gaze.
‘I suppose,’ Julia said, and then started again: ‘Please don’t mind my asking. How did you manage not to just get stuck there? Because Peter and I are stuck there. And on the face of it you and Riley had— Oh, Nadine, I am sorry – what a thing to say!’
But Nadine just looked up at her and grinned and said, ‘Julia, don’t worry a bit – I’ve used the same expression myself and kicked myself for it. On the face of it we what?’
‘You seem to be capable,’ Julia said. ‘Happy. Getting on with it.’ She glanced up as she spoke, to check the effect of her words.
‘Yes, I suppose we are,’ Nadine said.
‘How do you actually do it? Each day? When you wake in the morning, what do you say? How do you not annoy him? How do you not hate him?’
Ah.
How do we not hate each other? The sex thing, of course … but before that. Loyalty? Faith? What … right at the beginning … And something came back to her.
‘The night he turned up here, when I was just back from France,’ she said, ‘we sat outside in the garden. It was terribly cold. And one of us said – I’m pretty sure it was him, but he thinks it was me – well, one of us said, “Tell me one thing.” So we did.’
‘What did you tell each other?’
‘That doesn’t matter. What matters is … that they find it very difficult to talk about things – we all do, but the men who’ve been at the Front specially do – and they sort of need to. So you just need to give it a form. Tell each other something each day. Something factual and true about yourself and your life and what you’ve done, or learnt. We did that. And then gradually you come to understand each other.’
‘That doesn’t sound too difficult,’ Julia said.
‘It needs patience,’ Nadine said. ‘And – Riley doesn’t drink much. So Peter will always be harder to get to.’
‘Nadine,’ Julia said, ‘the other night, he got awfully upset when we went out to dinner, and I really didn’t know what to do, he was talking Greek and shouting at the vicar, and everyone was hideously embarrassed – and I thought, well, I’m either on their side or on his side, and I didn’t know what to say, so instead I just sort of did it. I went and stood beside him. Just that! Do you think that was right?’
‘Yes,’ said Nadine. ‘I’m sure it was.’
‘And – later – he told me the names of men of his who had died. Burdock and Atkins and … Lovell … and …’
Nadine’s eyes filled suddenly, full, overflowing. Dead men, dead boys, dying men you couldn’t help, who would never come back …The terrible ache of the deepest bruises … There was nothing she could do about it. Tears rolling down her face, a flood, and she felt suddenly, rackingly sick.
‘My dear!’ Julia cried, but Nadine was sobbing, at how these men of theirs had been chained to death, how death had held them in its cloud for years on end, throwing itself at them from every side, and at their companions, drenching them, beating them up, threatening them, battering them, torturing them, taking their friends, taking them – but only so far, then throwing them back, or just taking part of them – their sanity, or their capacity to breathe, their leg, their arm, their face, their speech – laughing at them …
‘Oh my dear,’ Julia said. ‘Oh my dear.’
‘We are so lucky,’ Nadine said with a kind of gasp, and went on, in a sobbing gulping rush, ‘Julia, we are so lucky to have them. We must love them and hold them and feed them and be with them and – Julia, we must do anything and everything for them. We must use all our kindness, our intelligence, our strength, our patience – everything God gave us. It will be a life’s work, I swear it, to make things possible for them, I daren’t say easier for them, but possible – Julia do you ever think how – they spent those years believing – knowing – that at any moment they might very well be killed, and be dead. All day, all night … and they kept on fighting, and they kept on joking, and they kept on doing their best … Julia, we are so lucky to have them … and death hasn’t left them yet – I don’t know how long it takes to leave – but it’s still here – isn’t it?’
‘Jones,’ said Julia, frowning. ‘And Bloom, and Bruce, and … Merritt … There were more.’ She went to Nadine, sitting sobbing on the stool, and put her arm round her shoulder. After a while she gave her a handkerchief. ‘It’s clean,’ she said, and sighed, hugely. ‘We can’t any of us do this on our own, can we?’
At this, Nadine felt a new rush of tears. At the miracle of Julia realising.
*
Later, faces washed and tea served under the same tree where Tom had thrown stones at himself, Julia said, shyly, ‘So, I do want to ask you two favours.’
Nadine, her eyes red, smiled a little sideways.
‘It seems to me that Riley is good for Peter. Bring him down? He’s saved Peter’s life twice. Perhaps he can do it again. Third time lucky!’ She laughed the small laugh of nervousness and relief.
‘What do you mean he saved Peter’s life?’ Nadine said.
‘He did,’ Julia said. ‘When he brought him back here before Christmas. He was just drowning, I think, in London. I mean, I don’t know, of course, but – he hadn’t come home! And Riley brought him home.’
‘And?’
‘And the other—’ Julia paused. ‘Has Riley not said anything about it?’
‘About what?’ Nadine asked. ‘I don’t know what you’re referring to.’
‘Well,’ said Julia, ‘I don’t even know if it’s true, but I think it is …’ And she told Nadine what she had told Rose, that when Peter was wounded on the Somme, Riley had carried him in. That Peter talked in his sleep. Her speech, previously a river of her own feelings, became a rivulet as she spoke of Peter, constrained and rocky. ‘And – he sort of relives things. Carrying men in. And being carried.’
Nadine looked at Julia carefully. She saw something in her that she knew from herself: wanting to confide, but not wanting to betray his privacy. The time has come, I think, to betray all the privacy there is. We can’t battle on in this silence, this sort of continuing silent war with what happened …
‘But Riley was wounded on the Somme,’ Nadine said. ‘His arm. How could he have carried Peter in? He was in the Casino hospital at Le Touquet.’
‘So was Peter,’ Julia said.
‘That’s when Riley was promoted to captain,’ Nadine said.
Julia said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Nor do I,’ said Nadine.
‘Do we have to go back over everything?’ Julia said. ‘To be all right now?’
‘Half left,’ said Nadine.
‘What?’
‘Joke of Riley’s,’ Nadine said. ‘When people say is he All Right, he says Half Left.’
‘Oh goodness,’ said Julia. Then, ‘But he never mentioned carrying Peter back?’
‘No,’ said Nadine.
They were both thinking, That was three years ago and we still don’t know.
Julia said, ‘Do you know, I’d never seen Peter’s scar. Three years. I was pregnant when he was wounded. I saw it for the first time the other day.’
In a rush Nadine said: ‘Riley and I didn’t kiss until last month.’
Julia’s eyes opened wide. She said, with a blink, putting her hand to the base of her throat, ‘Peter and I – only twice. Since 1915. Tom, and …’ and here she made an open-handed gesture down towards her pregnant self.
They stared at each other for a moment, and then retreated, alarmed by the sudden scale and pace of intimacy.
‘So what’s the other favour?’ Nadine asked.
Julia sat up, a little formal and polite, in preparation.
‘Would you,’ she said, ‘could you, be here when the baby comes? I hope you don’t mind my asking you – but I would like it – if you could?’
‘But don’t you want Rose?’ Nadine asked. ‘Or your mother?’
Julia gave her a very straight look. ‘My mother is a monster,’ she said. ‘And Rose – Rose was in love with Peter. I don’t think she is any more, but it’s good that she is building a life away from here. Isn’t it? Are you pleased for her? I really am.’
‘Good Lord, Julia,’ Nadine said. ‘You’re rather taking to this telling people things business, aren’t you?’
Julia stared at her quite steadily.
‘I don’t like who I was,’ Julia said. ‘I don’t want to be how I was. I want to be different. Do you know about Arcadia and Utopia?’
‘Ah – no,’ said Nadine. ‘Not in particular.’
‘Arcadia is the lost heaven of the past,’ Julia said. ‘Utopia is the possible heaven of the future. Peter talks about it. Anyway, I’m more for Utopia than for Arcadia. That’s all. And I know I can’t just stamp my foot and demand it. I have to work towards it step by step. So I’m going to. Anyway,’ she said, ‘come round the garden with me and talk to me about your mother. If you want – I mean – I know we’re not really friends – we couldn’t be really, could we? Before? Things can’t grow, sometimes … but if you like. I mean, talking, and being friends. If you like. But I didn’t even say anything to you about your mother. I’m so sorry, Nadine. I know you haven’t always been marvellous friends with her, but that makes it even harder to lose her, I should think. I’m sure I’ll be completely miserable when my monster mother dies. But I’m not saying your mother was a monster! Oh dear – I mean we could talk about loving our mothers. Because I do understand about not liking a mother very much, so if you wanted, I am somebody you can admit that to … and if you don’t want to talk about your mother, might we talk about Tom’s birthday? We should have a party for him with cake and so forth …’
They stood, and walked down towards the walled garden.
Nadine was quietly amazed.
Chapter Seventeen
Locke Hill, December 1919
As the nights grew longer and the baby grew due, Peter stopped sleeping at all. Julia might need him.
He took to walking: round the garden in the icy night air, so dark, skies heavy and clouded, or bright and star-spattered; or the upstairs corridor at night, slowly and repetitively, to and fro. He checked and double-checked the locking of the doors: front, back, garden and French windows. He moved from one bed to another and lay down, briefly. The sofa in the study where he had been sleeping, he ignored. From time to time he lay down beside his wife and stared at her, in wonder. Then he would spend the main part of the night sitting on the velvet chair in her bedroom, watching her. If anything bad happened to his wife now, then the whole war, everyone’s death, would have been in vain. She is to be protected.
He hardly drank; he didn’t snarl, he didn’t go off anywhere.
Sometimes he brought Tom in to sit with him during the days. He whispered to him, ‘This is Ithaca. This.’
Tom, with a child’s faithfulness, curled gratefully on his father’s lap, very still so as not to disrupt the miraculous moment.
Riley and Nadine came for a weekend. Under instruction from Nadine, though without much hope himself, Riley was looking for Peter to see if he would come for a walk. He tracked him down and found him sitting with Tom. ‘He looks so innocent,’ Riley said, and Peter replied: ‘Oh, Riley, children know nothing of innocence. They don’t even know it exists!’
And Riley said, laughing, ‘Lord, you’re right. The moment they realise it exists is the moment they lose it.’
‘That’s the point,’ Peter said.
He saw that this tiny scrap of conversation, for all its inherent sadness, gave Riley pleasure. ‘Can I show you something?’ he said.
‘Of course.’ Peter shuffled and Tom climbed down from his lap. ‘You’re getting big,’ Riley said. ‘Can you drive a car yet?’
Tom looked up at him and said, ‘No!’ in a tone of considerable delight.
Peter was fishing in the inside pocket of his jacket. He produced a small flat box, and proffered it: a string of pale golden pearls, on blue velvet.
‘Will she like them?’ he said. ‘Her birthday.’
‘I have no idea,’ said Riley. ‘Yes?’
They did go for a walk, hoping perhaps for the comfort of effort, the feeling of strength you get from striding through nature when she is being slightly uncomfortable. Riley felt it, and determined to find a way to walk more in London. Peter was just uncomfortable himself. He wanted to talk. He couldn’t. Riley, so capable, seemed to be drifting away from him.
*
Peter was there in the chair, wide awake in the dark, when Julia’s contractions started, long before dawn, two weeks early. She was turning under her blankets, giving the odd low moan in her restless sleep. He watched her fretful waking, and when she suddenly sat up with a cry, her satin eiderdown falling to the floor, he lit the lamp, took her hand, and gave her water from the nightstand. She was warm. He took the eiderdown and folded it on her chaise longue.
Soon after the late midwinter sunrise, in cool grey light, a dark figure in a dressing gown looked in, hair muddled. Nadine.
‘It’s
started,’ Peter said to her, briefly.
She gasped softly, and whispered, ‘Have you rung for Dr Tayle?’
Peter looked at her impatiently and said, ‘Of course not. No need for a medic. No one’s hurt.’
Julia’s face glowed in the dim light.
‘How are you?’ Nadine said to Julia.
‘All right,’ said Julia. The women’s voices were quiet like ghosts, as if pretending they were still asleep, that it had not, actually, after all, started. ‘Probably do need the doctor though.’ She was a little out of breath.
‘Peter,’ said Nadine. ‘Would you call him? I can make Julia comfortable …’
Peter stared at her. For a moment he saw in her eyes the look – what was it? The woman who – ah – yes – when he’d been shot in the leg, and Riley had brought him in, shot: there’d been Riley, then the stretcher bearer with the eyebrows, then the nurse at the hospital at Étaples.
‘Peter,’ Nadine said. ‘Go on.’
He went. He rang the doctor at home and summoned him as if giving orders. He could see the light, such as it was, was coming up outside the drawing-room windows, and through the glass panel above the front door. Night patrol; dawn patrol. When he’d hung up the telephone he opened the front door and went outside into the cold cold air. There was a little frost; it crunched under his feet. He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke coil for a moment. Then he set off: down the drive, through the shrubs down to the spinney, across and round the back of the walled garden, into the paddock, up round the lawn and the outhouses, and back the other side of the house. All quiet. Only a rook or two yelled at him in their moaning way.
He re-entered the house and went to take off his hat – but he wasn’t wearing a hat. In the distance, over the low hill to the east, he could see an orange glow, the odd flare. There was no sound – odd. But he could see it. It was all going on.
He wasn’t sure where he was. Behind the lines, anyway – somewhere safe, for now. Nice billet. He’d better go and take a look around inside.
Just about then a medic turned up – out of uniform, sloppy – been off duty, presumably, but someone was yelling blue murder upstairs. The MO was taking his coat off and so forth, so Locke ran up ahead of him. If they’d set up some kind of hospital here someone should have given that poor blighter his morphine or something by now.
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