by Francis King
‘Bless you, darling! That’s the nicest thing that I’ve had said to me the whole of this weekend. Michael doesn’t exactly go in for saying nice things.’
At this moment Michael jumped up to seize the opportunity of sitting next to Thomas.
‘I don’t think you two boys should be allowed to sit together!’ June cried out.
‘I took this chair merely because it’s the least comfortable in the room.’
‘All the more reason why you should change with me,’ Christine said.
‘Certainly not. I’ll do nothing so unchivalrous. Besides, ‘I have something to discuss with Thomas.’
June turned to Christine. ‘You’re frightfully brainy, aren’t you?’ Before Christine could say anything, she ran on: ‘Don’t even think of denying it, I’ve heard all about your accomplishments from Michael, so it wouldn’t be the teeniest bit of good. And you’re frightfully brainy too, I gather.’ She turned to Margaret, who blushed and peered down the vee of her homemade dress, while her stubby fingers pinched cake-crumbs together on the plate on her lap. ‘Of course you are! What’s your subject?’
‘English.’
‘Oh, how fascinating! Of course I’m an utter, utter nitwit. I left school, believe it or not, when I was barely fifteen. I can only just read and write.’ She omitted to tell them what Christine had already learned from Michael: that she spoke French fluently and had already managed to make a sizeable sum of money out of cannily, if recklessly, buying up abandoned London property during the war and then, the war over, selling or letting it at vastly inflated prices.
During this conversation Christine realised that Michael and Thomas were talking to each other in German. She stared across at them, exasperated both by a feeling of exclusion and by what struck her as bad manners. Having eventually become aware of her scrutiny, Michael leaned across: ‘You must forgive us for talking German. I’m trying to explain a philosophical point to Thomas, and it’s so much easier if I use his own language. German is the language of philosophy after all.’
‘This is the first time that I’ve been at a party where philosophy was discussed!’ June cried out. ‘And in German too!’
Michael’s apology did not appease Christine; and some hint of her displeasure must have conveyed itself to Thomas, since more than once his eyes sought out hers in what seemed to her to be an unspoken plea for forgiveness. At one point he even gave a barely perceptible shrug of the shoulders, accompanied by a fleeting grimace, as if to say: ‘What am I to do? It’s not my fault.’
Soon Christine was only half listening to June, her attention perpetually straying across to the two men in an attempt to discover, from a rudimentary knowledge of German, derived chiefly from her passion for Liede, what they were discussing. Michael was speaking with the unnaturally high-pitched, jerky rapidity that always betrayed his excitement. From time to time, Thomas would nod, frown in deliberation or interject a few words. She was not a naturally jealous or possessive character. Later she was to ask herself, bewildered and uneasy, why she had reacted as she had.
At last their discussion ended, with Michael saying in English: ‘Well, at least on that point we’re in total agreement.’ He smiled at the others. ‘Sorry about all that. It was something Ryle raised at a dinner I attended last night at All Souls. What exactly do we mean when we say to people ‘‘You really must come over to dinner soon’’? I thought it might interest Thomas.’
‘Sounds fascinating. I wish you’d shared it with all of us.’ Once again it was impossible to tell whether June was being ironic or not. She threw a cushion down on the hearth and sprawled across it. From this position, she began to direct the talk, turning now to one and now to another of them.
Then, as though on an impulse, she jumped to her feet and executed a brief pirouette. The dancer’s legs revealed were lean and muscular. She must leave, oh gosh, she was terribly, terribly late. These undergrads, three boys who were mad about ballet, were expecting her to drinks at White’s.
‘But Thomas was going to play for us,’ Christine protested.
‘Oh, lawks! I hate to miss that. Sorry, sorry!’ She turned to Thomas. ‘ Sorry, Thomas. Another time, I hope.’
He nodded, unsmiling. In the event, the promised playing never took place. Christine, to her consternation, forgot about it; and he, with his usual diffidence, never reminded her.
‘Christine, pet – I must make myself respectable if I may Even though those three boys are madly unrespectable.’
‘Let me take you up to my bedroom.’
June placed herself on the stool before Christine’s dressing table, one leg tucked under her, peered into the glass, and then asked: ‘Do I really look a fearful hag – or am I imagining it?’
‘You’re imagining it,’ Christine laughed.
Precisely and quickly, June began to make up her face. ‘ I like your friend,’ she announced, outlining her mouth.
‘Yes, Margaret’s a dear.’
‘Oh, I meant the Jerry. Though of course I like Margaret too. She’s the sort of person that people describe as a brick. Brick-like qualities are not to be despised – though admittedly they can make their owners rather heavy going.’ She pressed her lips together. ‘One can’t help feeling sorry for the poor wretches, can one? But of course when one looks at the horrific mess everywhere around us …’ She sighed, picked up Christine’s hairbrush and, having plucked two hairs out from its bristles, began to brush her hair with strong, sweeping strokes. ‘Michael’s rather a poppet, isn’t he? So kind.’ The black hair glowed under the punishing silver-backed hairbrush. ‘You and he are related in some way, aren’t you? Cousins, is it?’ Christine nodded. ‘ You must know him frightfully well.’
‘Yes, I suppose I do.’
June threw the hairbrush down and swung round on the stool on which she was perched. ‘Tell me about him. Spill the beans. Give me the dope.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Everything! If that isn’t asking too much. I don’t understand him, not one little bit. We’ve known each other for, oh, five years now, he writes to me almost every week, wherever I am. Long, long letters that take hours to read. I so often wish that they were shorter. And yet, yet … I sometimes wonder if he would care, really care if he never saw me again.’
‘Oh, of course, he’d care.’
‘You’re just saying that to be kind – or polite.’ She swivelled back to the glass and once again took up the brush. She frowned as she patted it against the palm of her hand. ‘ I think he likes to have me about – just as he likes to have his rooms crammed with all those valuable pictures. He also likes me to look smart. Before I got known – when I was in the Rambert corps de ballet – he was so terribly generous with his presents that I began to think I was in danger of becoming a kept woman. He’s still very generous to me, even though I now earn quite a whack. He gave me this brooch yesterday.’ She touched it, on the vee of her dress. ‘A gen-u-ine’ – she pronounced the word in deliberate parody of how an American might pronounce it – ‘Roman intalgio. Worth a lot, I’d guess. But, oh, I wish, wish, wish … I’m absolutely besotted with him, you know, head over bum.’ She gazed at her small, triangular face reflected in the mirror. Then she turned to Christine. ‘It’s quite crazy, because I’m sure nothing, nothing really serious, will ever come of it. What do you think?’
Christine was at a loss for an answer. How could this woman, who had spent at least half her life in the world of ballet, have failed to grasp the truth of Michael’s sexuality? In momentary exasperation she almost blurted out: ‘But haven’t you realised? Oh, you must have realised. He’s what the obituaries call a ‘‘confirmed bachelor” – or ‘‘a man’s man’’. He’s queer. Queer as the proverbial coot.’ But all she got out was ‘I do sometimes wonder if he’s ever been really in love.’
‘Exactly! You’ve conked the nail on the head. I don’t think he knows what it means. Being terribly, terribly kind and being terribly, terribly generous are no
t the same thing. You won’t believe this – none of my friends do. He and I have never, never once slept together.’ She crossed to the still unmade bed and flopped down on it. ‘ Now isn’t that the funniest thing you ever heard? And, as I said, our relationship has been going on for five – no six – years. It started when he asked me if I could direct him to the loo at a party given by Bobby Helpmann after a charity performance. It turned out later that he thought I was Bobby’s sister.’
Christine sought for an answer. ‘That doesn’t seem fair on you.’
‘You can say that again. And the weird thing is that he never minds about anything I get up to with other people. There was this Swiss diplomat, quite a handsome old thing, lots of money. I thought it would make him jealous. Not a chance! Sometimes he even seemed to be encouraging me. Oh, I’m a fool, an absolute idiot. I ought to put him right out of my mind. But somehow … Well, I’m hooked.’
‘Then you must get yourself unhooked.’
‘If only! Have you ever been hooked like that?’
Christine shook her head. ‘Thankfully, no.’ Then she thought of Thomas.
June jumped up, slinging her crocodile-skin bag – was that also a present from Michael, Christine wondered? – over her shoulder. ‘Ah, well! I suppose we’d better go back and join them and then I must rush off to my two lads. Thank you for being so patient.’
‘I only wish I could have been of more help.’
After June and Michael had left, Thomas said that he must go too.
‘Must you? We’ve hardly talked at all. Michael monopolised all your attention,’ Christine could not restrain herself from adding. She had forgotten the hour with him at the piano before the others had arrived.
I’ve stayed too long already. You have other things to do.’
‘I’ve nothing to do. A complete blank. Even the wireless has broken down, so that I can’t hear Eileen Joyce play the Grieg concerto, as I was planning. Please stay. Why not?’
‘Okay. Why not?’ Suddenly, he surprised her with the brisk cheerfulness of his response.
By now Margaret had piled a tray with most of the tea things and stooped to hoist it up.
‘Leave those, Margaret. I’ll help you with them later.’
‘I can carry them for you,’ Thomas intervened.
‘Oh, no, I can easily carry them on my own. Please. Why not have a little chat together?’ She picked up the tray with a grunt followed by a sigh.
As soon as she had staggered out, Thomas announced: ‘ Oh, I have something to tell you – tomorrow I must go back to work.’
‘So soon! How do you feel about that?’
‘Oh, good, I think I’ll earn some money. But in this weather …’ He gave an artificial shudder, then laughed. ‘I’m not tough – as a prisoner must be. I hate cold, and I become tired too quickly. I’m no longer used to working eight, nine hours each day. I’ve forgotten how to do so.’
‘What job will you be doing?’
‘Tomorrow we pick Brussels sprouts. Do you like Brussels sprouts?’
Christine pulled a face. ‘ On her last visit here Mrs Roosevelt said that Brussels sprouts were the only thing that she disliked about England. She even had to eat them at dinner with Winston Churchill.’
‘I also hate them. To have to eat them is bad enough. To pick them – even worse! Where we are working, there are some landgirls and I often see them cry with cold. The sprouts are frozen, the ground is frozen, our hands are frozen, everything is frozen. We have no break, no change of what we must do. Only pick, pick pick.’
‘When are you likely to be sent home?’
He shrugged. ‘There is now no home for me. So why think of going home? Perhaps it’s better for me here. For many others – mother, father, wife, children waiting – of course it’s different. But otherwise …?’
‘Things will get better. I’m sure of it. It’s only since Christmas that you’ve been allowed to walk around the town and make visits, isn’t it? There’ll soon be other concessions. Just wait and see.’
‘Yes. You are right. Slowly, slowly things get better.’ But he said it listlessly, without any confidence. No doubt the prisoners constantly gave the same tenuous reassurances to each other.
‘Its utterly wrong that we should keep you here now the war is over.’
‘We must pay.’
Although he said it in a soft, forlorn voice, at first she thought that he was being ironical. The she realised that, no, he was being serious.
‘Perhaps you cannot understand this. Its difficult to explain. But I must try. Sometimes I’m glad, yes glad, that I’m a prisoner. I hate my prisoner’s life – noise, dirt, bad food, hard work, and bored, bored, bored. But – but … I am glad that I pay. Yes, that’s good, that’s right. Perhaps you can’t understand that?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, I think I do.’ She pondered for a moment. ‘Do many of the others feel as you feel?’
‘I don’t know. It’s not a thing that we speak about. Horst cannot understand what I feel. But yes, in their hearts, I think that many prisoners feel like I do. I think so. Yes.’
‘What will you do when all this is over and you’re free again?’
‘I cannot answer that question. I don’t know. But for the others … You will laugh if they tell you. For example, Klaus. He will have a ranch in Argentina, because there a German is as good – or as bad – as any other man. If you ask him, he will tell you all about the ranch – how big, how many cattle, everything. He has a wife too in Argentina – no, not a German fraulein but an Argentine girl he meets when he arrives. Klaus will be rich, very, very rich, and his lung will be good again.’
‘And Horst?’ Something that she should have resisted had impelled her to put the question.
‘Now Horst – Horst does not want so much. He will go back to the country he loves and first, first of all he will find his little girl. Then he will find work, government work, so he will have – what is the word? – Einfluss, yes, influence. He will make true his dream of a new Germany – for himself, yes, but also for all others. He wants nothing for himself. He will work only for his country and for his daughter.’ He broke off and stared at her with an intensity that she found strangely unnerving. ‘It is funny, all this? Comic? But, it is also sad.’
They both gazed into the fire. Then she took up: ‘Don’t you think that Klaus and Horst and all those others are happier because they have their dream of some sort of wonderful future. Whereas you …?’
‘Of course.’ He sighed. ‘I wish that I also … But. Impossible. I try, try. No good. I’m not a dreamer.’
As he sat there, slumped despondently in the chair before the fire in his begrimed and shabby uniform, she felt an overwhelming desire to jump up, hurry over to him, put her arms around him and hold him to her. She wanted to rest her cheek against his and whisper: ‘Dream Dream. Dream.’ But how would that restore the faith of which he was destitute? Of what was she thinking? Angry as much with herself as with the whole situation, she searched in her pockets for her packet of Craven A. ‘Keep them? she said when she had helped herself and he, with reluctance, had also taken one. She held out the packet to him.
‘No, no!’ He shook his head vigorously, almost angrily, as he had done when Michael had offered him the cake.
‘You told me you get only six shillings a week.’ She tossed the packet into his lap with a casual gesture, realising that only this oblique act of devotion had saved her from saying any of the things that had passed through her mind.
He undid his tunic to place the packet in an inside pocket; and afterwards, when he had gone and she, alone now, mused with a vague, ashamed pleasure on the events of that evening, the memory of this trivial event – the hand undoing the tunic, then pushing the crumpled packet into the breast-pocket of his khaki shirt – returned over and over again. She had watched the movement of the muscles under the soiled khaki; had stared at the flesh of his throat; had seen the short, golden hairs where his chest was revealed th
rough a gap caused by a missing button.
With a sudden access of energy, she pulled down books from the shelves and began to dust them with a teacloth left behind by Margaret. Then, wearying of this, she went through the letters that had accumulated, unread, on her desk. But, having read them one by one, she realised afterwards that she could remember maddeningly little of their contents.
She lit another cigarette. Then before it was half-smoked, she threw it, still alight, into the empty gate behind the gas fire. Once again she remembered the undoing of the tunic. Then, at last, she forced herself to acknowledge the sudden, strange truth: she had fallen in love with him.
From the desk a photograph of a young man, little more than a schoolboy, with an eagerly grinning face seemed to be impelling her to look at it. She gave it a glance, shook her head as though to dislodge a memory, and then stared more closely. All at once, she was once again pressing herself against Michael, his arms clumsily holding her to him and her body shuddering with grief. ‘I’ll never get over this! Never, never!’
When in a calm, almost severe voice he had countered; ‘Of course you will. One can get over anything in the end,’ she had stiffened and pushed him away from her at what had seemed a treacherous failure of sympathy from someone on whom she had always relied. How right he had been! What an irony!
Margaret came back into the room while Christine was still staring across at the photograph. Christine’s cry of protest made her switch off the standard lamp as soon as she had switched it on. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. I was – thinking. That’s all.’
‘Oh, Chrissie! It’s no good.’ She held out her arms as though to a child.
There was no need to tell Margaret. She knew already.
