Had she done this to him?
He did not speak to her.
‘Are you blaming me?’ she said, sitting down in her usual place by the burned-out fire.
‘You?’ He looked up, hard-mouthed and stern, although his contempt, as it turned out, was not for her. ‘Of course not. I have been at fault in every respect from the start. You have done nothing against your nature, Claire. I have violated everything I have ever valued in mine.’
She heard him and understood. She knew exactly what he meant. But all she saw, with the shock of knowing she ought to have seen it much sooner, was the greyness in his face, the loss of colour and energy and substance.
‘Benedict, you’re not well are you?’
‘No.’ He seemed surprised that she thought it necessary to ask.
‘What is it?’
‘My disease?’ He shrugged. ‘Of the mind, I suppose. One could call it irresponsibility, indecision, self-disgust – the inability to do what I know to be right. One could call it loss of faith, in myself and my own judgement – or loss of control. A damnable set of symptoms for a man like me. Loss of resolution. Misery. Take your pick. But I rather think …’
He paused. And when he spoke again his voice seemed to be rising from a chasm. ‘I think that it will very likely –. No, Claire, I think you are killing me.’
She heard her own breath catching somewhere in her chest, a startled strangled sound, soon over, and then, folding her hands, she bowed her head a little and sat quietly, back straight, ankles neatly together, with nothing more to say or to do, with nothing to hope for and nothing to offer him now but the strange gift of her absence.
‘Don’t you know what has happened to me?’
He had not said, ‘Don’t you know what you’ve done to me?’ But she understood.
‘I was not unhappy when we met. I was not happy either. Few people are. I had everything I wanted, or everything I allowed myself to want, which amounts to the same. I was – satisfied. I don’t expect to be satisfied again. But what I must do is function. It is essential to me – imperative. Perhaps you will believe me if I tell you that without that ability I am like a child in the dark. And I am not functioning, Claire. Because of you. I am not as I intend – and must – and wish – to be.’
He was speaking through clenched teeth, painfully, the effort beading his forehead with sweat, the veins at his temples swollen and blue, his voice still rising to her from a hollow distance. ‘I can’t resist you, Claire. And I doubt if you can comprehend how much that appals me. Please – resist me. If you force me to go on like this, then I believe you will break me. I know you don’t want to do that.’
The possibility had never occurred to her. The danger – of discovery, of disgrace – had always seemed to be hers. The likelihood of heartache had seemed hers too. But now … ‘I will look after you and cherish you as much as I can.’ He would have kept his word. It was much too late for that. Too late even for the blue room at High Meadows. And it was her nature to heal, not to hurt. She closed her eyes, clasping her hands tight together, bowing her head still further, as she took into her mind the stark knowledge of how much she had hurt him. ‘You have done nothing against your nature,’ he had said to her. But by wounding him, by reducing him to this despair, she too had violated everything within herself she valued. She had believed love, any kind of love, to be a blessing, well worth the price one had to pay. Or the sacrifice. But she had loved him and harmed him.
‘I’ll get my coat,’ she said.
Outside the wind, howling down from the moor, seemed very cold, her lips stiff and heavy, difficult to manage, as she got into the car, trying to smile at him, to make a sign, since she had no voice to tell him that he, and she, and everything, so far as possible; would eventually – possibly – be all right. She would never come here again. She was leaving in sorrow and leaving sorrow behind her. It was another death, another France. She had endured another battle, emerging alive as she always seemed to do, but more than ever defeated.
‘I wanted –’ she faltered, speaking each word as if it were made of glass, ‘I thought – I might make you happy –’
‘It was never really a possibility,’ he said.
She dreamed that night, once again, of blind soldiers, not shuffling in line this time but inflicting destruction on other blind soldiers, two battalions of sightless men killing without knowing whom they killed, as Paul and Jeremy had died, as she – without seeing – had wounded Benedict. She woke, her heart pounding, feeling his ruby around her neck like a talisman to call him back. But she must never do that now. Never again. Lying in the dark, her vision distorted by dreams and shadows, she knew herself to be dangerous to him, felt herself to be cruel and, crying herself back to sleep, dreamed of him again, sitting at the dinner table at High Meadows, stern and rigid until, with the sudden horror of dreams, his skin began to crack and to let out not blood but cold grey water, the brackish, grimy liquid that city snow becomes at the thaw.
‘He is melting,’ said Miriam placidly, employing a napkin to mop up the mess. ‘I told you so.’
‘Can I have my money now?’ said Eunice, her mouth full of sherry trifle.
‘What shall I wear,’ said Polly, ‘for the funeral?’ And they continued to eat their dinner with that terrible grey water spilling all over the table, over their hands and into their laps, making puddles around their feet, a great stream of it, a flood which had been Benedict and would not stop coming.
She woke with a mighty jerk in such a state of terror and confusion that, leaping out of bed, needing air and escape and daylight, she could not find her bedroom door, nor the light switch, stumbling around the room with the winged panic of a bird which has flown in through a window and hurls itself upon the glass in its frenzy to get out again.
She spent the next day going about her normal business at the Crown in painfully suppressed agitation, startled by the sound of the telephone, the appearance of a telegram boy, a footstep at her door, fearing and hoping for a message from him, ashamed of the hope, feeding the fear.
She spent her free evening writing notes to him of desperate apology – the last thing in the world I ever meant to do was hurt you – which she then tore up and threw into the fire. She must not contact him. No matter who she offended in the process she must not see him. She must not set foot in High Meadows until he had left for Italy and, on his return, if any danger still remained of doing him further injury, then she would simply give up her job and move away. It would not be easy. Dorothy would be hurt by it. And Kit. She had never meant to harm them either. Guilt, a familiar companion, began to nudge up to her, its whine filling her ears, its sticky hands clinging to her as Miriam clung, its weight dragging at her heels. Another death. And what had she done with her life, since Paul’s death two years ago, but cause damage to everyone she cared for? Benedict. Dorothy. Kit. None of them had anything to thank her for. And perhaps what hurt her most was the knowledge, acquired from past griefs, that she would recover. She was not only free now to begin again but could begin again, would assuredly do so.
Yet it did not make her sorrow any less because the war had taught her that no sorrow lasts for ever. And whatever else she had to face, there remained the problem of Miriam. There were ten days to be got through before Benedict’s holiday, ten days of letters on lavender-coloured, lavender-scented paper, Miriam’s dainty little summonses to ‘Come and help me choose a hat for the wedding’, ‘Darling, do give me some moral support about the trousseau’, ‘Dear Claire, I am not well enough to go to Leeds with Polly today to match the bridesmaids’ taffeta, and since you are to be her matron of honour –’. Ten dangerous days, including one ‘Family Sunday’which must be avoided at any price. She would have to cancel at the last minute, she decided, so that Miriam would have no time to contact Edward who would be sure to send Dorothy at once to enquire just what she meant by so outrageously neglecting her duty.
What excuses could she make? She would need a g
reat many. She sat down at her kitchen table to ponder, her hands clasped tight together, jaw clenched, eyes clouded over with concentration so that she paid no attention as Euan Ash came into the room and, watching her for a while with wry amusement, sat down beside her.
‘Pardon me, my dear young lady …’
‘Oh –’ He had startled her. ‘Euan! Yes? What did you say?’
‘Nothing desperately vital. I just wondered – would I be right in thinking that you were having a crisis?’
‘Quite right.’
‘And not enjoying it?’
‘Not much.’
‘Broken off with your bloke again, have you?’
She nodded, finding that she did not wish to say it.
‘Oh well – you’ve done that before, haven’t you?’
‘Yes. But now I have to mean it.’
‘So –’ He gave her a radiant smile, ‘if it’s true that practice makes perfect – and you have put in plenty of practice – then there should be no problem.’
‘No.’
‘But of course there is. Shall I solve it for you?’
‘Don’t be stupid, Euan.’
He produced a battered packet of cigarettes, took one and pushed the packet towards her, a gesture not of man to woman but of camaraderie.
‘Help yourself.’ She did, realizing as she leaned towards his match that the sky behind the ill-fitting kitchen window had turned dark. How long had she been sitting here, brooding, regretting?
‘What time is it, Euan?’
He shrugged. ‘Well, you wouldn’t expect me to know exactly, but the pubs closed about an hour ago so I suppose it must be late. Why? Have you anywhere to go?’
‘Just bed.’
‘Well yes – I was rather hoping you’d see that the time has come at last. And don’t give me that “Control yourself, Lieutenant Ash” look either, Claire. It’s all for the best. I’m really rather positive about that.’
‘Euan – please don’t be so –’
‘Absolutely sensible, my darling. You want a reason not to go back to this bloke of yours don’t you? All right – come to bed with me and that’s sure to do the trick. Not, I hasten to add, because I’m such a perfect lover but because you wouldn ‘t feel right about more than one at once – if you see what I mean.’
Shaking her head, she smiled in spite of herself and then, meeting those deceptively candid blue eyes, paused, stared at him, her gaze held for a long steady moment by his.
‘You mean it, don’t you?’
‘Oh yes. I mean it.’
Leaning forward, the table between them, not even their hands touching, he lay his cool closed mouth on hers and then opened her lips gradually with a cool tongue, an exchange not yet of passion but of expertise.
‘Do I pass the test?’ he said.
‘Magnificently. But then – just think of all that practice.’
‘I know. So – do I graduate to my night of ecstasy in your arms? You must admit I’ve been awfully patient.’
She shook her head. ‘How can I, Euan? I’d be using you.’
‘Oh – my dear girl – don’t worry about that. I’ve done the same myself many a time. I’d be the very last to complain. Use me. Feel absolutely free. What are friends for?’
‘Not quite to be used like that.’
‘Nonsense. If this were the night before Passchendaele and something had whispered to me that I wasn’t going to make it over the top tomorrow, can you honestly say that you’d refuse?’
‘No. I wouldn’t. I didn’t. But it’s not Passchendaele tomorrow.’
‘Oh yes it is, Claire. It’s always Passchendaele.’
Not for them, of course. But for him and for her. For us. So it was. Of its own accord her hand found his and clasped it with the pressure of the initiated, of those who, having passed through the same fire, have acquired the same scars.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I do believe I’m starting to convince you. Let’s have a cup of tea while you’re making up your mind.’
He scraped back his chair, easy in his movements, still very thin, she noticed, his fine hair too long and straggly, his bricklayer’s shirt a disgrace, frayed at the collar and cuffs but faintly scented nevertheless with a sharp, mossy cologne, his manner, as he filled the kettle and went to light the gas, almost debonair. He was even whistling under his breath, something vaguely familiar to her, most probably vulgar when, she wasn’t sure what happened, a draught from the ill-fitting window, water spilling from the kettle which he had filled too full, perhaps a combination of both which, as he turned up the burner, put out his match, leaving naked, malodorous gas spluttering, beneath the kettle, from unlit jets.
It was not serious. He had only to turn off the stove or strike another match. She knew, instinctively, that he could do neither.
‘Christ,’ he said, his face chalk-white, his hand trying to go forward towards the stove and then, like the rest of his body, cringing away from it, ‘Oh Christ –.’ And with a movement of total, terrible panic he threw himself back onto his chair and cowered there shaking, his face pressed hard against the table, his arms over his head in the position of a man protecting the more vital parts of his body from shells.
She ran to the stove and turned it off, smelling the gas herself now, and then ran back to him, finding him, as she had expected, still shaking, his shoulders, as she put her arm around them, ice-cold. And although his lungs had sounded clear and unclogged a moment ago he was struggling in hard agony for each breath now.
She got him with some difficulty into her flat since he was violently unwilling to go, wanting to be alone to see it through, to hide somewhere as animals do in their extremity, and either cure himself or not. But she had tackled larger men than Euan in states of far more chronic delirium and eventually, by the simple procedure of tugging and pulling, threatening and cajoling, she got him as far as her living room. And, when he absolutely refused and she failed to compel him to get into her bed, she brought her quilt and blankets and pillows and made a nest for him, as she had done once before, on her hearth rug.
‘Oh – Christ –’ It was all he could say. It was all he had said on that other pleasant summer night when the gas had started to seep up the trench towards him. It was the last thing he remembered, his own voice screaming a blasphemy not a prayer before the poison had ripped the lining from his lungs, torn out his eyes, or so he’d thought, drowning him in a thick, stinking obscenity which had lived in his nostrils ever since. One whiff of domestic gas and he was drowning again. And with it came the great cold, the trembling of limbs, the chattering of teeth and bones, the terrible fear that the bowels and the bladder as well as the rest of him would lose control. She knew that. If it happened she would do her utmost to convince him that she hadn’t noticed. But now all she could do was keep him warm and, the summer night turning chill, she got under the quilt with him and held him, using her body heat to little avail against the bitter inner cold, the freezing sweat, which assailed him, talking and saying nothing, simply keeping up the murmuring of reassurance until the ferocious shaking eased, a little warmth returned, and he was no longer blind with remembered terror but merely exhausted, sickened, angry, horribly ashamed.
‘Oh Christ – why now.’ Lying back on the pillows, his thin face eaten half away by the black smudges which had started to spread beneath his eyes, he became fluent and excessively obscene on the subject of his ill-timed attack of ‘neurasthenia’and of all that had caused it.
‘You should take your clothes off,’ she said calmly. ‘Your shirt is soaking. And sweat can probably give you pneumonia, like rain, if you let it dry on you.’
But when she began to unbutton his shirt he said, ‘No, Claire – don’t nurse me.’
‘All right.’ She bent down, kissed his mouth instead, went off to fetch him a dressing gown and then, while he changed, made him a mug of hot tea.
‘Did you put a tot of whisky in it?’
‘I might have done.’
/> ‘You did – bless you. I’m still cold. Do your small magic with the bedclothes again, Claire – and the pillows.’
Once more she built a nest around him, got in beside him and stayed there, the two of them drinking their tea and huddling together like orphans of the forest beneath a covering of leaves.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘so now you know the ghastly truth about Lieutenant Ash. Not the young Lochinvar exactly – not by a long chalk. Clapped-out lungs. And his own particular brand of St Vitus Dance. About the only thing I haven’t got, or haven’t had, is syphilis.’
‘Well of course not, Lieutenant. Didn’t the officers have a better class of camp follower?’
‘Not so you’d notice. But about the neurasthenia –’
‘Is that what they told you to call it, Euan?’
‘Is there another name?’
‘Shell-shock.’
‘Well yes, love. But that’s what the Tommies have. I was an officer. And at that level it’s neurasthenia.’
‘We all have it, Euan – to some extent. All of us who were over there for more than six months, I mean. That’s what they told us in the hospitals. They told us to watch ourselves because nobody knows how long it’s likely to last or what it might do.’
‘I haven’t noticed you shaking and having cold sweats, Claire.’
‘No. But I dream. I do irrational things. I can’t make up my mind to anything. Once – just once thank God – I hallucinated. I suppose it could happen again.’
He lay back into the pillows, his breathing easier now but his face drawn and spent.
‘I hope not. I saw a corpse at one time, in a bonny old state of decay, grinning at me whenever I looked in the mirror. Perfectly ridiculous. I knew the bloody thing wasn’t really there. But it stopped me from shaving for a month or two. I’ll bet nothing like that ever happened to Kit.’
‘He’s older,’ she said, feeling in honour bound to defend him. ‘And he was probably a good bit steadier in the first place than us. I suppose he had to be. And he wasn’t gassed either.’
A Winter's Child Page 48
