by Alice Miller
“We’d better go down to lunch, darling.”
FORTY-EIGHT
She walked back towards the station alone, and she was in an alley not far from the hospital when she heard a few people call out from the street. She was still thinking of Willy’s hand on hers through the lunch, of the pale yellow wine. She looked up and there it was: a giant ship, from below, more grey than silver, the curve of it like a pregnant belly.
A zeppelin! It passed by silently, slicing through the cloud, before it vanished back into cloud. She had never seen anything so impressive. So industrial, but also so graceful; a heavy body driven by a human through the sky! It made you think of Zeus, coming down. How could the air stop such a thing from falling? And just like that, the giant, sky-gulping beast had gone. No one around. She wanted to see it again. She stood there, head tipped back, desperate for it to come back.
She was aware that she still hadn’t given Willy the signet ring. She wasn’t sure why, beyond the fact that she hadn’t felt it was the right time. She loosened the scarf around her neck, walked out of the alley and back out onto the street. She tipped her head back to look once more at the sky. But it wouldn’t come again. It was unclear why no bombs were dropped, why it had merely slid by. The afternoon resumed as usual. The light had grown yellowish, a glow, as if the heavens were nauseous.
FORTY-NINE
Georgie and Willy were married in the Harrow Road Registry Office in Paddington on the morning of the twentieth of October, with Nelly and Ezra as the official witnesses, and Dorothy as the wedding party. The ceremony was over in a few minutes.
Later she would hardly remember the day itself. In the morning, because her fingers were shaking—less a tremor than a violent twitching—she couldn’t tie the ribbon she’d planned to put in her hair. She wanted to look casually beautiful, thrown together; the event was unimportant, they’d agreed, compared with what came after. Nelly had insisted on pinning a spray of lavender to her daughter’s breast, which seemed all wrong to Georgie. But she didn’t argue; in fact, she could hardly say a thing. For breakfast, the maid had made her boiled eggs—a special find, given rationing—but she hadn’t boiled them for long enough, and the whites were that pale, almost translucent texture, the centres of the yolks lukewarm. It was a waste, Georgie thought, and she ate them anyway. Afterwards she could remember the taste of cool yolk on the back of her throat.
And then they were married. Their honeymoon plans—France and Italy—were quashed by changes on the Western Front. Stone Cottage had already been booked. So the day after the ceremony, after dropping by Woburn Buildings, they headed out to the old golfing hotel on the edge of Ashdown Forest.
FIFTY
PIKE
The place had been pretty before, you could bet on it. Now it was only mud. He wished that his tin hat had a bigger lip, to keep out the falling dust. It all got in your eyes, and in your mouth, and in your ears. He did want to stay alive, which was interesting. There were two boys with him, young boys who had not known each other before (the War Office had learned it was better for strangers to serve together) but now were inseparable. Barker was more of a soldier, decisive and quick, whereas Hamilton—who was Pike’s aide—was one of those absolute softies, the kind who would have irritated Pike in peacetime but whom he found he pitied in wartime. Hamilton was a thin boy with gigantic watery brown-yellow eyes like a puddle, who had a gentle soul and feared everything. Barker was taller and heavier, and tended to shield Hamilton from danger. They were chatty, sweet boys—not especially intelligent or gifted, but so very much themselves that Pike admired them and envied them their closeness. Most of the men cradled their photographs, told you of their families, their wives and mothers and sweethearts, but Barker and Hamilton were more likely to pour you a drop of the whisky they’d saved, and play gin rummy, and invent gossip about the other boys in the regiment. They didn’t like being soldiers, but they weren’t yearning for elsewhere.
The Württembergers always bombed promptly on schedule, and once the morning raid was done, the unit’s new commander announced he was sending some men over the top. Barker was one of them. Hamilton clutched his arms around his own chest. The men lined up and Hamilton stood close to Pike, who waited a moment before he called the order.
As soon as the men’s bodies appeared above the trench, the shooting started. Shouts were heard as the bodies went down. Hamilton tried to look up to see what was happening.
They didn’t hear the shot, or Barker’s particular yell, but only one man returned, running like hell; it was a miracle he didn’t fall into the trench. The man was not Barker.
Hamilton’s eyes looked like they would burst open. He found his voice. “I have to go, sir, I have to.”
“No, Private—” But the boy already had a foot on the ladder.
“Hang on.” Pike rustled in his pocket for his handkerchief. Like everything, it was muddy, but it still had white patches. “Wave it in the air.”
The boy showed a glimmer of doubt, as if he had only just realised the risk.
“Or stay,” Pike said. Hamilton looked like a boy trying to pluck up the courage to ask a girl to a dance, not deciding whether or not to risk dying on a muddy field. “Right,” Hamilton said. His posture was unnaturally upright. He climbed the rungs quickly, reaching up with his hand and beginning to wave the little flag, like a child trying to get attention.
Pike watched the skinny boy clumsily clamber over the top, raise the grubby handkerchief above his head, and disappear out of sight. There was no shot. The whistle of a shell exploded down the line.
A few minutes later, a muddy outline appeared. Hamilton was back, hugging another body to him. Barker’s body had been torn open by shrapnel, and a long welt down his left side had turned much of him inside out. His face was half gone. Hamilton stood at the top of the ladder holding the body and would not come down. Pike climbed up the ladder and coaxed Hamilton into letting him help to carry Barker’s bloody body down the ladder. He laid the body in the mud. When Hamilton reached the bottom, he embraced the body and said in a warm voice, “Here we are.” He no longer seemed aware of anyone around him. He lay down in the mud and settled Barker’s ruined body on top of his. They were blocking the way through the trench, and over the top, and Pike should be telling Hamilton to clear the way in case anyone needed to get through. But he did nothing. Hamilton placed his hand on what was left of Barker’s bloody cheek, and leaned over and kissed his mouth. Pike turned away.
It was afternoon in the trenches. Evening light spilled down, yellow, the sun’s last argument for the day. The water that pooled up between the mud turned silver. No man’s land was puddled with holes seemingly filled with mercury. Pike scratched his head under his helmet, his hair still wet. He had been waiting for his madness to flick on, like an electric light, or the way someone switched on the wireless, filling the room with voices and static. He would like to slice open a part of his brain and fill it with static.
“Well,” one of the other men said quietly to Pike, glancing back at the dead boy, still seated on Hamilton’s lap. “I suppose they got what was coming to them.”
Pike laughed, and the other man laughed too. To think they’d once believed in wrongdoing and punishments! An eye for an eye! Here, the best men took a bullet no differently from the bastards. Even that was wrong; you didn’t take the bullet. The bullet took you.
No one was surprised that within a few days Hamilton was dead too. You got to know how these things worked. They assigned Pike a new man, but this one was all saluting and yessirs. The man—his name was Everton—was determined to show everyone that he was the most professional soldier of all. He spoke of fighting for the king without irony. Nobody liked him.
“A letter came for you, Lieutenant, sir.” Everton passed it down to Pike. The envelope had already been opened by the censors. Pike pulled out the single page and tried not to read it too quickly, tried to ration out the pleasure of it. Perhaps he could read it one line at a time.
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Dear Second Lieutenant Pike,
Thank you for your letter. I hope you are safe. They claim the end of the war is nigh—don’t they always—but they may even mean it this time.
The handwriting was blue, a round, casual scrawl, not fussy, and although he was trying not to read it all at once, he gulped down the words too quickly. Her initials were in the right-hand corner in blue. GHL.
I write because—and you’ll hate this—I had a dream. You featured alongside a tower (a symbol of profound change). I don’t know if this will mean anything to you but I expected it wouldn’t hurt to pass it on, even if you do not believe a word of it. (Even I have grown more sceptical, would you believe.) Perhaps you have told your fellow officers of your ghost-mad nurse you met while you were in the hospital.
I hope you will come and see us when you are back. I wanted to let you know that I am to marry the mad poet after all. It will be done by next week. Do come and visit us when you are home.
Yours affectionately,
Georgie Hyde-Lees
He folded the letter and handed it back to Everton.
“They’re going over the top now, sir,” Everton said, his face so pockmarked, tiny caverns and gullies, like someone had etched at his skin with a metal tool.
“Coming,” he said.
FIFTY-ONE
From their room in the hotel, she could look out over the forest, sparse with drifts of mist knitting the trees together. Although it was still only afternoon, it was already dark. There was a storm forecast, said to be bad. The proprietor claimed it was meant to be one of the worst England had seen in years. But perhaps it would be exciting, perhaps it would distract him.
“Maybe we should go out before the rain,” she suggested. “A bit of air might help.”
“I couldn’t.” Willy cradled his stomach with both his hands. He had sat by the window ever since they arrived, at the smallish desk with only one chair, and had pulled out some papers in front of him. He had not said a word to the proprietor, not glanced once at the bed, but pointed where the cases should go and sat down at the desk, his large body drooping over its smallness.
“You go, if you want,” he said to her now.
It was his stomach, he said, all twisted around itself; yesterday on the train he’d said it was probably something he ate, it couldn’t last. But it had lasted, it had lasted all day yesterday and all day today, and it was only when he looked down at the loose manuscript he had brought with him, and pieced through the pages, that his fingers did not shake. In fact, a strange smile kept creeping onto his face when he looked at those papers, but the smile was awful. It was a smile for himself and not for anyone else, a fool’s smile. She wanted to yell at him, I know you aren’t happy, I can see you’re not, but she didn’t, just looked back at the smile and waited for the moment it would change into something calmer, when he would invite her to meet it with her own.
There had been a letter waiting for him when he arrived, and he had taken it from the proprietor without a word, removing his hand from his stomach and placing it in the pocket of the black coat which now hung over his chair. He must have read it when she went to the lavatory, but she did not ask who it was from. She decided she would check the next time he left the room.
For the moment, she opened her suitcase and looked down at the clothes she had packed. She wondered if she might change now. She had her green dress, which she was going to save until tomorrow, but perhaps now, given Willy was feeling so poorly, perhaps this might distract him, perhaps it would coax him away from his desk? Perhaps he might forget long enough to have a drink, to come to bed? They had still not actually done what married people did; he claimed he was too unwell. Now as he remained hunched over his pages, Georgie took the green dress into the lavatory and changed into it. She left the door open, in case he might turn around and happen to glimpse her, his new young wife, in a state of undress.
“Perhaps I will get the doctor,” he said, not turning around, oblivious to the fact she had even left the room. “This is unbearable. I haven’t felt anything like it for years.”
“I can call if you like,” she called back.
“We’ll wait,” he said. “See if it settles.”
Georgie pulled the new dress over her head—it was clinched slightly just below her waist. She tugged it down and stared at herself in the mirror. The line at the top of her cheeks was bright crimson, and even her nose glowed red. She thought of her father, whose cheeks also raised red like this, and tried pressing her cool fingers to her cheeks. She thought of Iseult Gonne’s slim arms and fingers, her creamy skin, which did not matter, because it was only skin, and Willy had not married Iseult. She stared at the glass, through which her own eyes were such a lovely yellow green. They deserved to be looked at. They demanded it.
When she returned to the room, Willy still had his back turned to her, and he had begun to write. She stood there for a while in the dress, waiting for him to notice. When he didn’t turn around, she considered going back in and changing again—it seemed silly now, to have made the effort, and what would she wear tomorrow? But instead she made herself sit down, at the table, a newlywed in a new green dress, and waited for the brandy to arrive. When it did, Georgie paid the woman and asked Willy if he would like any. He said, without turning around, “A little, perhaps. Would it settle the stomach, do you think?”
Georgie brought a small glass to him at the desk, and he looked up and said, “Thank you, my dear.” He pointed in front of him, to where she should place the glass. If he noticed her dress, he said nothing.
She returned to the table and poured her own glass, which she drank quickly. She poured another. If she leapt around like a lunatic, would he notice? If she took off all her clothes in the middle of the room, would he even bother to turn around? He said he was sick, but was it possible he was just regretting the whole thing? But no, he was sick, really. And when you felt truly unwell, it was hard to be careful about the feelings of anyone else. She needed to be patient.
She stroked the bodice of her green dress with her palm; the rough raw silk. It was wasted on him. “Are you hungry?” she said.
“Oh, I couldn’t eat,” he announced to the window. “It’s the nature of these things. It will just take a little time. If you wanted to go down, have something—”
“Did you want to go down?”
“Oh, not me, no. I’ll stay here. Darling.”
She went over to her suitcase and, under the dresses, found a book, dragged out a chair, and faced away from him. She tried to concentrate on the text.
After a while, she heard him scrape his own chair back and stand up. He was facing her, holding the letter in one hand: “I must tell you. I have had a letter.” As if she hadn’t been there when it arrived, as if this were a surprise to her. I have had a letter.
“Oh?” she said. As he stood there, looking down at her, for a moment she wanted to reach out and touch him, touch his hand, here, move her face against his hip—wasn’t that what a wife did? But instead she got up from the table and poured herself another glass of brandy.
“Who is it from, then?” She tried to keep her thoughts still. He held the piece of paper by its corner, as if afraid of what would happen if he held it properly in his hand. He unfolded the page and held it up to show her. His hand was steady. Georgie walked over and took the other corner, but he did not let it go. She read what she could:
I burnt your first letter: it made a very ghostly little flame . . .
Georgie looked at him, and he snatched the paper up and laid it face down on the desk. “She’s wishing us well,” he said. “She says a new condition—an abruptly new condition—is bound to have a little of the fearfulness of a birth.”
But the birth of what? So he had been writing to Iseult about this “condition,” and called it fearful. She thought he might reassure her, even embrace her, but instead he shuffled his body towards the lavatory, with an awkward, sickly smile.
A wet rope of
cold was weaving down her back. As soon as he closed the lavatory door, Georgie went over to his desk and looked to what he had scrawled on the page:
I can exchange opinion with any neighbouring mind
I have as healthy flesh and blood as any rhymer’s had,
But O! my Heart could bear no more when the upland caught the wind;
I ran, I ran, from my love’s side because my Heart went mad.
The rope down her back pulled tighter, twisted, and she tried to walk it out of her body, paced down the room, reached her fingers around to touch her spine, but her back felt like a stranger’s.
She had reread Tristan before the wedding. There is a moment after Tristan’s marriage when Iseult of the White Hands is out walking with her brother, and water splashes up her thighs, and she laughs. She says this water has come higher up my thigh than my husband has ever touched me.
The bell rang, and Georgie went to the door. The proprietor stood there, the lines in her face deeply embedded, as if a child had sculpted her face from clay.
“Yes?” Georgie said, with more authority than she felt.
“Just arrived.” The woman handed over a telegram and tried to peer past Georgie for a glimpse of the famous poet. Georgie did not move from the door.
“A pleasant night? You got enough blankets?”
Willy emerged from the lavatory and returned to his seat by the window, without looking at either of them.
Georgie kept her eyes on the woman’s face. “Actually, we might like a little more brandy.”
The woman’s mouth twitched into a smile, and she nodded and turned away.