He turned to her. ‘Can’t…go…home?’
‘No.’
‘S-sorry.’
‘Oh’—she turned him from the window—‘I’m not, not really; there’ll be much more going on here than there would be at home, I can tell you that. Hospitals are the most cheerful places in the world at Christmas. I’ve always marvelled at that.’
After lowering him down into the chair again she straightened up and, looking into the fire, said, ‘It is amazing, isn’t it, the feeling of goodwill that people rattle up for Christmas. Huh!’ She shook her head. ‘There must be something in it after all. Well, I’m off now.’ She turned and looked down at him and her hand went slowly forward and touched his cheek. ‘Be a good lad. See you this afternoon.’
His head moved as if on a swivel and he watched her disappear behind the screen for a moment then reappear swinging a short navy blue cloth cloak over her shoulders. And now she nodded towards him, saying on a laugh, ‘The first thing you must do after the war is to line all these corridors and landings with hot-water pipes, not to mention all the rooms in the kitchen quarters.’
She stared at him for a moment, then pulled a face at him and went out.
Ben turned his head slowly towards the fire, and like his speech his thinking came slowly and disjointedly: Be a good lad—first thing he must do after the war—she expected him to take up this house after the war. Put hot-water pipes in the corridors. There was a blind faith in her; she was a stubborn kind of young woman. He had first come up against it in that other world. Her stubbornness had been like a hand thrust out groping for him in the darkness; he had known it was there but wouldn’t touch it. And her voice had come out of the great vast open dirty blood-stained space of No Man’s Land, coaxing, wheedling, not strident like the other voices, the voice he put to the big one and the voice he put to the pretty one. She was neither big nor pretty, but she had a nice voice, and she called him lad; always when they were alone she called him lad.
In a way she was not unlike Ruthie. Ruthie had come to see him last week. Or was it the week before? But then she came to see him often. His father brought her. But she disturbed him. They both disturbed him; Ruthie because she always became so choked she couldn’t speak. She no longer came out with quips of earthy wisdom, and his father’s face looked so set in despair that he had wanted for a long time, even during the time he had lived in the small windowless room of his mind, to bawl at him, ‘Don’t look like that, don’t keep telling me I’m an imbecile.’
At such times Murphy would say, ‘Hold it, laddie.’ Murphy always kept making excuses for everybody. About his father he would say, ‘He doesn’t think like that, he’s just worried.’
But Murphy had gone mad, when they had locked him in that cage he had damned and blasted the souls of doctors, nurses and orderlies, particularly orderlies. But since they had come here, Murphy had said, ‘Rest easy, laddie, you’ll be all right. Rest easy.’
Murphy called him laddie, like she called him lad; Murphy too had liked her from the beginning. Best one in the bunch he had said. Nothing much to look at except for her eyes, but there’s one thing sure, laddie, she’ll never bore you that one. Now Conway, you get tired of her face; and Byng, oh boy! Byng. Somebody mixed up the sexes when they fashioned Byng. Light heavyweight champion of the world, Byng. Muscles on her like four pounders: ‘No,’ Murphy had said, ‘your bet is Pettit, laddie.’
But he had resisted even Pettit. He wanted to be beholden to no-one…And then the boy had come; the boy who was of the same blood. The boy hadn’t remembered him, for it was years since he had seen him; but he had remembered the boy. He had recognised him instantly; this was his cousin, and he understood, without knowing he understood; moreover, he recognised in the boy someone exactly like himself, someone locked up in a cell; the only difference was that the cell wherein the boy lived had bright windows in it.
A log of wood burned through, snapped, and one end slipped slowly onto the hearth. It wasn’t burning but he knew he should bend forward and pick up the tongs and put it back. But there was no effort in him.
That was the thing he had to manufacture now, effort, because he had used up the effort of his whole life in one great leap, in one love-propelled leap to save Murphy, as Murphy had saved him twice before, and for a second of a second he had held death in his hand. Then, their arms locked about each other like lovers searching for sublimity, they had rolled down the slope into the shell hole; for a matter of about sixty seconds they lay until the ground settled back and there came a lull in the air above them as if a great ethereal hand had clamped down on the antics of a maniac. And when the epoch-long seconds had passed he had spat the dirt from his mouth and growled, ‘Now!’ and they had scrambled up the other side of the crater, there to be met by a poisoned wind.
They were flat on their stomachs and some yards apart when the earth exploded again, and this time it took with it all the other planets in the universe; everything disintegrated as Murphy was disembowelled.
When he came to himself he was standing up and quite some distance from what was left of Murphy, and all about him there was nothing but sky, no earth except the narrow ledge to which his feet were fixed, the rest was one great empty void. He had reached the end of the earth and although he wanted to step over and join Murphy he had found it impossible to move.
When they whipped his feet from beneath him and brought him flat onto his face and dragged him into a trench infinity was blotted out and he went into the small dark cell; and from then on whenever anyone tried to open the door he fought them.
He had loved Murphy. He could use the word love now in relation to him because it was akin to the feeling he’d had for Jonathan and Harry, only more so, because Murphy had known what it was to feel deprived.
He had first met Murphy when he joined up; they had done their training together, such as it was. He soon learned that Murphy was a highly intelligent man and his own worst enemy, for he was a rebel. He hated the working class from which he had sprung, and he despised the upper class; he had read more than any other person he knew.
After four months together they were separated, then, when he joined his unit as an officer, an officer who had just lost two brothers and had been finally rejected by his mother, it was some comfort to find that his sergeant was Murphy.
He had previously become imbued with many of Murphy’s ideas and antagonisms, officers and men being one of them; the fact that they could fight together but weren’t allowed to drink a glass of beer together now became theory forced into practice. Murphy, he considered, had more knowledge in his little finger than all his brother officers put together.
They had decided that after the war—they were both going to come through, of that they were positive—they would start a magazine, a magazine that dealt with new thought, new values, that in short asked the question, Why officers and men? Apparently everybody knew the arguments for…but their job would be to put the reasons against.
Murphy could write, he could use words.
I swam in the womb like a tadpole in a jar held by a string in the hand of God.
That was the end of the piece he had written when they were resting after the previous bloody massacre they had come through.
So fast flows time,
So slow flows pain
Pressing upwards against the current
Like the salmon to its end.
When I dissolve
Will I remember the nest
Of water in which I swam
Like a tadpole in a jar,
Held by a string
In the hands of God?
The salmon,
The tadpole,
and me,
All spermed,
What are we?
Murphy’s parents left him with a courtesy aunt, when he was five years old. They went off to dig holes in Greece; then they forgot to come back, so great was the attraction of holes. Of course they sent money regularly for his support, which
means went a long way towards supporting the aunt’s weakness for the bottle. He never saw them again until he was eighteen, by which time he hated the sight of them.
It was strange that Murphy had to die crawling out of a hole. He was always writing about holes or wombs.
And she said that he would have to put pipes all round the house after the war…What would she do after the war? Go back and live on the farm? He knew who she was. His mind wasn’t so slow that the connection between her and the farm over the hills had escaped it. She was Michael Radlet’s daughter, the man who had robbed his father of his wife’s love. But he hadn’t really robbed him; you couldn’t take away what wasn’t there.
His father came at half past one and Nurse Pettit came back on duty at two o’clock. When his father said to her, ‘We had a Christmas like this in ’76; we were home from school. I remember it well, it’s just like yesterday,’ he looked out of the window and said, ‘Nur…Nurse—won’t—be—able to get home over…over the holidays.’
Dan looked from Ben to Hannah as he said ‘No? But they’ve cleared most of the road to the station.’
‘Sh…she…’
‘I don’t…’
Both Ben and she had started to speak together, and when Ben remained silent but looked intently at her she went on, ‘I don’t live that way, I live over the hills.’
‘Oh’—Dan fixed his attention on her—‘You do? Which part?’
‘In the first habitation where the valley opens out, Wolfbur Farm.’
‘Wolfbur Farm?’ Dan repeated the words slowly, it was as if he were copying Ben’s way of speaking. His eyes had narrowed, but now they widened and his mouth dropped open before he said, ‘I…I know Wolfbur Farm. Has…has it changed hands?’
‘No.’ Hannah’s face was straight and her voice stiff as she looked back at him. ‘No, it hasn’t changed hands. My name was Radlet before I married.’
It was on an intake of breath that Dan said, ‘Oh!’
Dan’s eyelids blinked rapidly in confusion. Then his face stiff and his voice harsh, he said, ‘You should have made us aware of this.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? I don’t think that needs an explanation.’
‘I think it does; I’m a nurse. I am, in a sort of way, on national service, I go where I’m sent. I was sent here and…and part of my duties was to attend to your son.’ She moved her head in Ben’s direction but did not look at him.
‘You could have explained.’
‘Explain what? That I objected to carrying out this part of my duties when the whole world was disintegrating because I had been caught up in a stupid feud between two families? You would expect me to complain that my sensitivity was being shocked by the intrigue between my father and your wife? Well, Mr Bensham, it may surprise you to know that it has never shocked me. Distressed me, yes, that two people could be so selfish as to create such havoc. Yes, that distressed me, because one of them I idolised. But times change, and if one’s lucky one grows up and is enabled to look at such things objectively. And don’t think the news will distress your son.’ Now she did look at Ben as she added, ‘The Captain has been well aware of my identity for some time. Will you excuse me?’ With the strongest show of temper Hannah had allowed herself for some time she left the room; yet she had closed the door quietly after her, and Dan stood looking at it for a moment before turning to Ben. And now he asked quietly, ‘Is that so?’
‘Yes—yes, that’s—so.’
Dan sat down and, leaning forward, he asked gently, ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Was…Was—there any need? And she said…a victim of a feud…And she’s not alone…is she? We’re…we’re all victims.’
Dan rose to his feet again and went and stood by the side table and stared at the wall. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said, ‘’Tisn’t right somehow.’
‘That…that…isn’t you. I…I always thought your second name…your second name…was tolerance.’
‘This has nothing to do with tolerance, Ben, and you know it.’
‘I wouldn’t say—say that, I wouldn’t say it has…You’ve…you’ve tolerated the sit-tuation half your life…Now…now because her son and…his daughter meet in a hospital it strikes…strikes you as improper. I can’t see that, and if you’re worrying that…that anything should come of it, a repeat of the present situation in…in reverse, then set…set your mind at rest. If…if I would ever be fit for a woman again she…she wouldn’t be my type.’
Dan turned his head and met Ben’s eyes and he smiled wryly as he said, ‘No, as you say, I don’t think she’d be your type.’ He sighed, then said, ‘I’ll slip upstairs now. I’ll see you in a short while.’
‘Dad.’
Dan turned from the door.
‘What…what is that Mrs Rennie like?’
‘Capable; a very good woman I’d say.’
‘Why doesn’t she—she like Lawrence?’
‘For a number of reasons if you ask me. She wasn’t engaged to look after a fellow like Lawrence, nor to change a wet bed, if only occasionally.’
‘Oh. Oh, I see.’
‘It…it isn’t often though, I must admit, only when he gets overexcited or worried.’
‘Well, I should say it’s—it’s her that worries him, so—so she brings the bed business on herself.’
‘Yes, yes, I suppose she does. But she’s got her hands full up there as it is. Brigie’s body might be frail but her mind is anything but; Brigie demands things done her way or else.’
‘There…there could be a sol—solution. I…I was thinking about…about the cottage.’
‘The cottage? What about the cottage?’
‘Well, what’s…what’s going to happen to him when Brigie goes—and that could be any—any hour of any day? If…if the cottage was made hab-itable and you could get some young fellow who…who was no use for…for the war, you could in—install them there; there’s many would…would be glad of the job.’
‘That’s a thought. That’s a good thought.’ Dan nodded, half smiling now.
‘He could still come along here and see Brigie, and—and the stable and—and barn could be made into a sort of workshop for him, because the house wouldn’t be big enough to hold his clippings.’
Dan’s smile widened and he nodded as he said, ‘Yes, indeed, you have something there. It never struck me. I’ll put it to Brigie.’
But once he was outside the room his mood changed. There was something he was going to put to Brigie at this moment and it didn’t concern Lawrence.
When he reached the nursery floor his face was set and having greeted her and asked how she was, he told her in tense terms about the identification of the nurse whom they both considered had been of great help to Ben.
Brigie’s reaction remained characteristic of her. She stared at him, remained silent for a full minute, then said, ‘Well, well, you surprise me, Dan. And yet more than once I’ve had the idea that she and I had met before but I was unable to recollect where. Now I know. And yet she bears no resemblance to either Sarah or him. Sarah was pretty, and he, well, we know what he looks like. But there was something familiar about her. Yes, yes’—she nodded her head—‘that could be it. Neither in looks nor character does she resemble her parents, but her grandmother. Constance. There I have it.’ She nodded again. ‘Constance always had a way of holding herself, a sort of proud, slightly defiant way. But then’—her withered lips pouted slightly—‘Constance was beautiful and one couldn’t say that that young woman takes after her in that way. She has a strange face in that it is neither beautiful, pretty, nor yet plain. I suppose today they would describe her features as interesting.’
She lay back in her chair and now she nodded towards Dan as she said, ‘I wonder how she feels living in the kitchen quarters in the one-time home of her grandmother, not forgetting the fact that I, her grandmother’s one-time governess, now own the place? It’s a strange situation, don’t you think?’
‘It’s an un
pleasant one, and I’m not referring to who owns what.’
‘Then why so?’
‘Now need you ask, Brigie?’
‘Yes, yes, I do, Dan. If, as you say, Ben has been aware of this for some time and it hasn’t affected him adversely, and she has been aware of the situation all the time, and looks at it…how did you say she looked at it?’
‘Objectively.’
‘Objectively. Dear, dear, the way they use language today; one word and they convey to you the reactions of a lifetime…But I shouldn’t let this trouble you, Dan, unless you are afraid of further developments, I mean complications that might arise between them. Are you?’
‘Oh no! No!’ He laughed now. ‘Not from what Ben said. He made it pretty clear, and, to use his own phrase, she’s not his type.’
‘Well, I’m glad to hear it. Yet I would question that phrase. One can never judge what a man sees in a woman, nor yet what a woman sees in a man from their outward appearances…and tastes. For example, take Mrs Norton-Byers. She has extremely prominent teeth and an over-large nose; she’s over-tall for a woman, being almost five foot ten I should say, and he is undersized for a man, a man of quality that is, being nothing more than five foot four, yet look at them and their brood of nine children. I think they’re the happiest couple I know, so happy that I would like to have seen more of them over the years, and wish they had not lived so far away in Hexham.’
‘There are always exceptions.’
At this point Mrs Rennie entered the room with the tea tray, and Dan turned to her and said cheerfully, ‘Hello there, Mrs Rennie. How are you?’
‘Oh middling, thank you, sir, and busy.’ With a slightly offended air Mrs Rennie set about pouring out the tea, and Dan said, ‘Well, you could say that of us all.’
The Mallen Litter Page 27
