A Winter's Child

by Brenda Jagger

  ‘Yes, Miriam would be.’

  Raising her head to take a swallow of brandy she saw him smile.

  ‘Of course. The man was clearly a gentleman, just as a brush salesman is clearly not. A year ago, when he was still in command of whatever it was he commanded, she would have entertained him in the drawing room. But a brush salesman, even with a Military Cross and a university degree, is hardly entitled to that. Nor could she even feel comfortable about buying too many brushes, since salesmen of this type abound, and what one does for one, etcetera, etcetera, one might feel obliged to do for the rest. She worried a great deal about it. I don’t expect you to have any sympathy with her dilemma. I may not have too much myself. But – nevertheless – these attitudes of hers should not obscure the fact that – she was sincerely attached to Jeremy. She did mourn him. If she now wishes to unveil a plaque in his memory then I wonder why you should grudge her what amounts to an afternoon of your time.’

  ‘I have told you why. Because he died for nothing.’

  He took the empty glass from her hand and, as she made the gesture of a woman looking for her handbag, gave her a cigarette, still keeping her there in the curtained recess, not captive in the sense of any actual restraint yet held there, just the same, until he – she was well aware of it – chose to release her.

  ‘I might agree with that, Claire.’

  ‘Would you really?’

  ‘I might. I might take the view that this war has been so rashly conducted on all sides, the peace so harsh and so nearsighted that far from being the war to end all wars, as they told us, it will simply go down in history as a stepping-stone to the next. I might take that view. You would obviously share it. Miriam and perhaps eighty per cent of the women you are to meet at the ceremony prefer to think otherwise. A delusion, perhaps. But it would certainly be unkind and perhaps somewhat pointless to shatter it. Don’t you think?’

  And when she did not answer he said crisply, ‘The men are dead. It hardly seems fair to blame them for the inadequacy of the reasons.’

  ‘I don’t. Very far from that.’

  ‘And the women are alive and have to make the best of it. We are saluting the dead, after all, not the generals and politicians you spoke of – and the profiteers –, since we are all still very much alive.’

  She sat for a moment, her head bowed, very still, and then, frowning with the intensity of her concentration, she looked up at him abruptly and said ‘Benedict, you are absolutely right.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘And I still can’t do it.’

  She had been taken by Miriam only the day before to see the plaque with the frieze above it, a line of chalk-white soldiers in single file, handsome, anonymous, dead men in dead marble, whose pallor had caused her to drop her eyes before she saw the carnage waiting for them around the corner.

  ‘Beautiful,’ she had said hurriedly. She said now, just as quickly, ‘It has nothing to do with principles or ideals. I agree with you that the men should be honoured. We could never honour them enough. But-whatever the rights or wrongs of it – I also know that I can’t stand in that enclosed space with all those grieving women – I just can’t. I couldn’t breathe.’

  She ducked her head, awaiting punishment, dismissal, finding his silence so unendurable that she rushed headlong against it and broke it herself.

  ‘I know Miriam will be upset. I know it will look odd and people will talk. Edward Lyall will never forgive me and he’ll make sure my mother never does. I don’t expect any of them to understand. And if you want to stop my allowance then please do-I wouldn’t mind. In fact it might be a good thing if you did, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about it – to feel that because I take your money I ought to do – well – as I’m told.’

  Let the punishment come now, she thought. Let him threaten her, offer some tangible intimidation with which she could grapple and have done.

  ‘I didn’t realize,’ he said quietly, ‘that you had retained so much feeling for my brother.’

  She got up then, almost without realizing her own movement, and walked away from him, not far, but no longer shut in between the window and his shadowy yet so powerful presence. And, with her back still towards him, she said ‘I can’t even remember what Jeremy looked like – nor anything else about him.’

  And, the words delivered, the confession made into blank space, empty silence, she turned round – feeling a physical compunction to do so – and faced him again.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘How can you?’

  ‘Because you didn’t know Jeremy and consequently what could you remember.’

  ‘So I tell myself. It makes no difference to the way I feel about it.’

  ‘Your troublesome conscience again? You should really take it in hand you know.’

  ‘I do know. I feel guilty already about not attending the ceremony.’

  ‘Then attend it.’

  ‘I can’t,’

  ‘Very well.’

  He took a step towards her, looking – what was it? – not angry, not impatient, not pleased – Heavens, what csuld she possibly have said to please him? – but rather as if something had given him a measure of satisfaction, as if he had in some way been proved right.

  ‘What do you mean by “very well”?’

  ‘Oh – simply this. If you can’t – if you are not up to it – then I suppose you can’t.’

  ‘That’s right. I’m a coward. I agree.’

  ‘And you are shirking your duty. You do accept that it is your duty to make yourself agreeable, for a moment or two, to a handful of our employees?’

  ‘Yes. I accept that.’

  ‘And that your refusal to do so would give them serious offence.’

  ‘Yes. That worries me most of all.’

  ‘How kind. Then may I suggest that you become a diplomatic coward and fall ill, tomorrow at the very latest. Influenza is always believable and, in view of last year’s epidemic, I doubt that either Miriam or Polly would come near you to check. Should you then change your mind and attend, everybody will think you very brave and won’t expect too much of you in the way of conversation. If not, then there should be no hurt feelings.’

  ‘I won’t change my mind.’

  ‘We’ll wait – shall we – and see.’

  She returned to Mannheim Crescent, her resolution firm, the weight of unease which had been burdening her for days already lighter. Right or wrong – she had at least made up her mind and, the decision taken, all that remained was to brace herself for its consequences.

  Miriam would not believe in her influenza but would pretend to do so. Polly and Nola would not care. Eunice would simply be alarmed in case she had infected Toby. Dorothy, for her own sake, would do her best to convince Edward. What would Jeremy have wanted her to do? She had tried hard to avoid the question yet now, to her discomfort, it kept leaping out at her from a corner of her mind, taking her by surprise so that she was forced to admit that Jeremy, who had not lived long enough to lose his faith in gallantry and glory, might feel entitled to the sad little measure of immortality conveyed by his name in gold letters on polished stone, and a woman of his own to weep for him. Surely he had a right to that? Surely the young girl who had married him would not have had a moment’s hesitation? Where were they both now?

  ‘I am about to have influenza,’ she told Euan Ash the next morning.

  ‘Ah – strategic influenza, I take it?’

  ‘Yes. I’m not going to the service.’

  ‘Aren’t you? Then come to Faxby market with me instead. I’m selling antiques – more or less – for a friend of mine, and doing sketches on the side.’

  ‘How can I do that with influenza?’

  ‘Perhaps not. They’d stop your allowance then all right.’

  ‘Oh well,’ she said, speaking, she realized, mainly to herself.

  ‘I’m not going in any case.’

  But, a little before noon, a smartly turned out messenger boy from Swanfie
ld Mills appeared at the Crown and put an envelope in her hands, marked ‘Private and Confidential’, looking official, feeling through the high, smooth quality of its paper, a decided threat.

  ‘Ah well,’ she said to Euan who had come over to beg a drink. ‘I rather think half my income has gone.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be a bit surprised. It’s not a bad life, behind a market stall.’

  ‘Dear Claire,’ wrote Benedict in an elegant, legible, neutral hand, ‘It occurs to me that the matter of your allowance preys somewhat unnecessarily on your mind. In order to alleviate this pressure and to make you fully aware that no course of action need be dictated to you by these financial considerations, I have today cancelled your monthly payments and arranged for the full amount to be paid to you annually. Money to cover the period from November, 1919 to November, 1920 has, therefore, been paid into your bank. I trust you will find this convenient.’

  He had handed her the only tangible weapon he had ever had against her. He had given her – what? – complete freedom of choice and, with it, the responsibility of freedom. He had challenged her. ‘If you’re not up to it,’ he’d said. And now he had taken away the one excuse she might have made to herself, her only chance to say, ‘He forced me’. Now she could languish at home, making weak excuses, playing wily, feminine games like Miriam and Nola, or she could rise to the challenge and show him what a free woman was made of. He had planned it, of course. He had discovered the right way, perhaps the only way, to force her hand. By the time she had folded his letter and put it back into its envelope, she knew, with a little resentment, some amusement, and a certain grudging admiration, that he had won.

  Chapter Nine

  She wore a black wool coat with a velvet hem and a high mandarin collar, a cloche hat pulled low over her ears, her pale oval face looking tranquil if faintly untenanted, as it often did in her moments of stress. The day was drizzly and overcast, a mean-spirited November wind tossing sudden handfuls of rain at the brass band, not entirely protected by an open-fronted marquee in the mill yard. The reception hall was full of chrysanthemums, wide-spreading banks of dark red, rusty brown, deep mustard yellow, and of sober, sensible women in their Sunday clothes, some of them dyed black for the occasion, standing in quiet rows before the claret velvet curtains which concealed the roll of honour; the Swanfields first, then their bankers and solicitors, and behind them, in strict order of precedence, the families of shed managers, weaving overlookers, skilled operatives, unskilled labourers, an awkward line of girls who had been ‘walking out’or otherwise associated with one or other of the soldiers and, finally, a rearguard of the firm’s military survivors, wearing their wound stripes and campaign medals.

  Miriam, in floor-length black furs, looked quiet and sad and, somewhat to Claire’s surprise, immensely dignified. Eunice, her musquash coat – had it once been Miriam’s? – looking rather too big for her, wept and would continue to weep throughout the day in an unusually quiet, oddly resigned fashion, not only for her brother Jeremy but for her son, Justin, who had been taking money from her purse lately for purposes she had not dared to investigate, and for her son Simon who had persuaded Toby to buy him a motor cycle. Nola looked peevish and out of sorts, Polly, leaning heavily on Toby’s arm, so beautiful, her skin so white above her black fur collar, her hair such a halo of fine spun gold, her face so perfectly endowed with the sorrowing gentleness of a Botticelli angel, that ever. Claire – who did not believe Polly capable of any deep feeling – was touched by it. Toby Hartwell, who had not been a soldier, stood smartly to attention, an officer and a gentleman to the life. Benedict Swanfield, who had not been a soldier either, looked exactly as he looked in his study, his boardroom, his bank, the Wool Exchange, competent, controlled, fully in charge yet only barely, if at all, involved.

  A few clerical words were spoken. A hymn was sung, a prayer said. Miriam walked forward slowly, her furs eddying about her, Claire playing the lady-in-waiting to a bereaved and sorrowing queen, and together they drew back the curtain to reveal the gilded names, the chalk-white, ice-cold frieze. There was a low gasp of distress, the sound of a woman hushing a child, a man clearing a dry throat embarrassed by its own emotion, a staccato, quickly suppressed bout of coughing, a shuffling of feet. Both Eunice and Polly burst into tears, Eunice angrily now and hurtfully – more like her usual self-Polly quite fearfully as if it had only just occurred to her that bodies as young and healthy as her own could really die, her burst of panic turning her hastily towards her brother-in-law Toby, against whose obliging shoulder she cowered like a child in terror of the dark, Eunice on his other side, standing her own, uncertain ground.

  Miriam returned to her place to observe, with an expression of careful, gentle sadness, the two-minute silence inaugurated by the King. Claire followed her, her own face as carefully blank, her mind empty. But, as she stood patiently, quietly, between Miriam and Benedict, her nostrils were suddenly aware, faintly and incredulously at first, of an odour reaching her through the scent of the chrysanthemums, a whiff – just a whiff, but enough to turn her stomach – of gas, and obscenely entangled with it, the sweetish, sickening odour of human decay. From where, in this clean, marble hall, did it come? She did not – of course she did not – really believe it. Yet, nevertheless, something touched her, a chill breath, a dead hand, a fear too primitive, too deep-rooted to contain. A moment more and the smell was crawling along the surface of her skin, entering her pores, filling her lungs with a terror as filthy and fatal as a drowning in mud. And lifting her eyes to the frieze she saw that the first chalk-white soldier, then the second, then the one after, had started to turn a sickly, stinking yellow and then to swell to enormous proportions, a line of putrefying giants coming down from the wall and shuffling, shambling in single file, each man with his hand on the shoulder of the man in front of him, blind eyes staring at her from the two dozen ochre-tinted faces which became – each one in passing – the face of Paul.

  She knew quite well that she was hallucinating. She also knew that it was neither uncommon nor particularly serious and that it would pass. On the last afternoon she had spent with Paul he had seen, very clearly, walking down a street in Boulogne, a man he knew to have been two years in his grave. Almost every soldier she had nursed with more than six months’service at the front had suffered delusions equally alarming and bizarre. Resurrected comrades had abounded in France. Ghosts had walked everywhere. Shell-shocked minds – and every man or woman, who had been exposed to months of constant fear remained in some degree of shock – had seen corpses piled up at suburban English street corners where none existed, had thrown themselves flat on the ground, when on leave in English gardens, at the sound of a popping cork, had turned sick at the faint hiss of domestic gas.

  Her case was no different. She knew these yellowing phantoms existed only in her mind. Yet that did not prevent her mind from recoiling, cringing from them in horror, her senses dissolving in a panic far beyond her control so that the whole room began first to sway and then to heave, hurtling her with brutal precision towards the plaque and its empty frieze and then back again down some tunnel of the mind where, for a moment of pure terror, she saw herself shrinking into rapid oblivion.

  She knew she was about to faint. Slipping her hands inside her sleeves she dug savage fingers with their pointed nails into her arms. It made no difference. She was falling, face down she thought, into that odour of gas and corruption and chrysanthemums until Benedict Swanfield put out an arm to bar her way and she sank instead into the shadow she had always sensed around him, where she remained, captive but safe, adapting her frantic breathing, her racing pulse to the steady rate of his, her still precariously balanced mind taking refuge in his logic, his cold realism, his power.

  More clerical words were spoken. Another prayer. Another hymn. The heavy hothouse fragrance of chrysanthemums became, not pleasant, but innocent again. Her vision cleared. The festering giants shambled away, not far perhaps, but out of her sight. Sanity returned
so gradually, so easily, that, once the hallucination had gone, it seemed of little importance, a matter to be shrugged off as she remembered Paul – and others – had always done.

  ‘Christ – I see corpses walking sometimes. Doesn’t everybody?’

  Benedict released her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. And, as if in answer to her unspoken plea that nothing more should be made of it, he nodded and turned his attention to the congregation, now dispersing.

  ‘Are you all right?’ hissed Dorothy from behind her, moved by her daughter’s collapse yet not quite certain what the Swanfields would make of it.

  ‘Come dear,’ murmured Miriam, intending to make nothing of it at all, rather more concerned with Polly who having started to cry did not seem able to stop. ‘You and I must do our duty.’ And while Polly, her face white and drowning, was led away to the boardroom by Toby, Miriam moved forward to greet her fellow mourners, enquiring from every young woman the names and ages of her children, from every older woman the exact state of her health, even asking the occupations of the obviously single girls at the back; information to which, no matter how warmly maternal her manner, she barely listened and promptly forgot.

  Claire followed her.

  ‘I’m so pleased you could come,’ she murmured almost inaudibly, speaking the words in order to say something, meeting decency, curiosity, one or two faces that had remained stunned by sorrow, one or two pairs of resentful eyes, a pair-of sharp ones which took in, at a glance, the value of Miriam’s furs and Nola’s rings.

  ‘You were a nurse in France then, Mrs Swanfield, were you?’ But it was no more than politeness, a safe topic rehearsed beforehand, and she knew they did not listen to her reply.

  ‘Dreadful about young Mr Jeremy,’ somebody mentioned.

  ‘We have all of us suffered the same loss,’ said Miriam gently and – at that moment – sincerely.