by Pat Barker
Though she couldn’t blame him for trying it on tonight. Somehow, in this ridiculous dress, she’d sent out the wrong signals. She’d thought she was doing something rather clever, turning herself into a parody of a young lady dressed for the marriage market, but it hadn’t turned out like that. She’d slipped into being the person the dress dictated, and now she was going to have to pay, in hours and hours of embarrassment. She had wanted him. Briefly. Or she’d wanted something – to be different. Rachel would say she’d led him on, but that wasn’t true. She didn’t want to marry him, or anybody. She only had to turn round and look at Rachel, nodding off in the armchair. Rachel, who before her marriage had been a promising pianist, and now sat with the baby on her knee, picking out nursery tunes with one finger. Nev said it wouldn’t be like that, and she believed him – or at least she believed he meant it – but it would, because marriage changed everything. It had its own logic, its own laws, and they were independent of the desires and intentions of those who entered into it. She felt a moment’s pleasure in the cynicism of this perception, though God knows it was depressing enough.
She heard Father’s voice in the room behind her, then Kit talking about the crisis of course, what else? Everybody was getting so excited, it repelled her. Particularly Kit. Look at him now, holding forth, puffed up like a toad in the mating season. He’d telephoned his father, things were worse, far worse, than they’d thought. Germany had declared war on Russia and was advancing on France. If she invaded …
At last the buzz died down. Kit detached himself from the group and came to join her on the terrace.
‘That’s it, then,’ he said.
‘Is it?’
‘Seems to be.’
‘Do you think we’ll fight?’
‘Got to. We’ll lose all credibility if we don’t.’ She turned away. ‘What will you do?’
‘Well, I’ve got to get out there.’
‘Enlist?’
‘Not sure. They mightn’t have me. And anyway I need to be there now, not in six months’ time.’
‘I don’t see why you have to do anything. Let the army do it.’
‘I’ve no choice. Don’t you see? You can’t go around saying, “War’s the only health-giver of mankind” – not that I ever did say that, incidentally – and then when one breaks out say, “Sorry, I’m not going, I don’t feel well enough.”’
‘No, I do see.’ She was laughing.
‘It’s not funny. Father’s going out next week. He asked if I wanted to go with him.’
‘And do you?’
‘How can I refuse? It means I’ll have to leave a bit early, I’m afraid.’
She turned away to hide her relief.
‘I do love you, you know. Can’t we at least talk about it?’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘I could come to your room.’
‘You could not.’
‘Down here then, after they’ve gone to bed.’
‘There’s nothing to say. I won’t marry you, I don’t want an affair. I’m happy as we are.’ She looked straight into his eyes. ‘I’m sorry if you’re not, but there’s nothing I can do about that.’
He took a step back. ‘Perhaps it would be better if we didn’t see each other for a while.’
‘If that’s what you want.’
‘You don’t care.’
‘I do. Just not in the way you want.’
‘This is torture. You’ve no idea.’
‘No, probably not.’
‘It’s like being in love with a mermaid.’
She understood what he meant and it hurt. ‘I think we’d better go in.’
Fifteen
Paul to Elinor
Thank you for your very kind letter. I’m sorry to have been so long replying, but the fact is I’ve been laid low with a feverish cold that brought on a bout of pneumonia. As a result I feel a bit flattened, though I’m downstairs now, sitting in the front room with a blanket over my knees like a little old man. The blanket’s not really necessary. The weather’s still warm, though not as unbearably hot as it was last week when I was ill, but somehow if you’re feeling weak it helps to be covered up. I’ve been watching cabbage white and tortoiseshell butterflies playing around the buddleia bushes in the front garden. I counted eighteen this morning, then I had a nap. Exhausting work, counting butterflies.
But I’m getting stronger every day. Have you heard from Teresa? I still haven’t, and don’t expect to now. I mind a lot less than I thought I would. Somehow the war and this illness between them have clanged down like a great steel shutter between me and my previous life. When I look back on my time at the Slade you’re the only person who seems real. And Neville, oddly enough. Now he has written, and at length, which surprises me a bit. He’s volunteered to drive an ambulance for the Belgian Red Cross, but I expect you know that already. He says it’s the fastest way out there. Meanwhile, it all seems very far removed, though my stepmother’s bandaging class meets in the room behind me so I hear all the chatter, and Dad brings the papers home. Half a dozen sometimes. Everybody’s very excited. I suppose because they all feel they’re caught up in history. I just cough and count butterflies. I’m sure you’re much more actively and usefully employed.
Elinor to Paul
Well, it’s active all right – I don’t know about useful. We – Ruthie and me – spent the first few days wandering round from place to place, sitting in cafés, reading newspapers, jabbering till our jaws ached, me increasingly fed up but somehow not able to pull myself out of it. Still can’t. London’s full of heat and dust, the air’s got that burnt smell you get in August even in the parks.
We went to see the regiments mustering in Green Park and the crowds cheering them, thousands, there were three girls in front of me, shop girls or housemaids and they were screaming and waving flags and one of them jumped up and down so much she wet herself and hobbled off with her skirt bunched up between her legs, shrieking and giggling. In the evenings people gather outside Buckingham Palace or one or other of the embassies, or the Café Royal of course for our crowd. You know how glamorous it used to seem? Well I thought so, anyway. Now it’s full of frightened old men who think their day is over (and they’re probably right) and overexcited young men who jabber till the spit flies, though it’s only stuff they’ve read in the papers. The women have gone very quiet. It’s like the Iliad, you know, when Achilles insults Agamemnon and Agamemnon says he’s got to have Achilles’ girl and Achilles goes off and sulks by the long ships and the girls they’re quarrelling over say nothing, not a word, it’s a bit like that. I don’t suppose men ever hear that silence.
Nobody’s doing anything. I mean nobody’s doing any work. My teaching’s dried up, the young ladies of Kensington are all learning first aid instead. And I can’t paint. Everything you think of seems so trivial in comparison with the war – but I don’t accept that. I just don’t seem to have the energy to act on what I believe. Only Neville keeps going, but then he’s painting the war, the regiments, the searchlights, the guns on Hampstead Heath – he can hear them from his studio he says. I bump into him from time to time in the Café Royal and he always speaks, though on the personal level we haven’t been seeing much of each other recently. He has to do a first-aid course and some kind of vehicle-repair course before he goes out, but that only takes up the mornings and he paints like mad the rest of the time.
It’s worse for Catherine than it is for me. Do you remember her? Catherine Stein. Tall and fair with goggly eyes? Before the war nobody ever thought of her as German, though we all knew she was, now suddenly it’s the only thing that matters. And there’s talk of interning German men which makes her worry about her father who’s not in very good health.
I suppose there is a sense of being caught up in history, but in Catherine’s case she’s caught up like a mouse in a trap. I wish you were here – God, now I sound like a seaside postcard – it would be lovely to talk to you. Catherine’s got her own problems and Ru
thie’s all very well but she knows what she thinks about everything and I never do which makes her exhausting company. Please, please, Paul, come back to London soon.
What an extremely forward letter! Mother and Rachel would certainly not approve.
Paul to Elinor
I’m surprised you find the women in the Café Royal have gone quiet. The women in Beryl’s bandaging class certainly haven’t, I can hear them behind me as I write. Not entirely pleasant either. Women whose sons haven’t enlisted are given quite a hard time by the other ladies. Beryl tucks the rug around me with great assiduity whenever they’re here.
When I’m better I’ll have to enlist. I thought at first I’d be able to stay out of it, but now I don’t think I can, and I don’t want to. I’m not sophisticated like Neville. To me it all seems simple. If your mother’s attacked, you defend her. You don’t waste time weighing up the rights and wrongs of the matter or wondering if a confrontation could have been avoided if only the batty old dear had been a bit more sensible. Only I can’t, honestly can’t, see what untrained volunteers are going to do. The last two wars in Europe have been fought by professional armies and they only lasted a few months. What I don’t want is to spend a wet, cold winter in a tent on Salisbury Plain while proper, professional soldiers get on and finish the job.
Paul to Elinor
Today I tried to enlist. It wasn’t anything like I expected. No open arms and welcome to the army my boy well done. Quite the contrary in fact.
You spend an awfully long time sitting around with no clothes on waiting to have some part of your anatomy poked, prodded and assessed. We kept glancing along the bench, sizing each other up. Prime-quality male horseflesh; medium-quality ditto; skinny, knock-kneed, wheezy old nag fit only for the knacker’s yard – me. Actually I did all right till they got to my chest, by, I must say, a somewhat circuitous route. (Details not fit for your maiden ears.) I was asked to cough – that wasn’t a problem, I do a lot of that – only I couldn’t stop. The MOs conferred, waited for me to stop coughing, and then asked me to cough again. I kept trying to explain I’d been ill, but by the time I got my breath back they had stethoscopes in their ears and couldn’t hear a word I said. Then the chief MO, who looked rather like a cynical sheep, shook his head. He was quite decent really, though he couldn’t resist his little joke. He said the best thing I could do to serve my country was join the German army and cough a lot.
As I was getting dressed I managed to catch a glimpse of what he’d written on the form. A whole paragraph of stuff, and then at the bottom: Query TB.
The thing is I know it’s not true. I’m coughing a lot, I do have night sweats, and yes there is family history, but I also know it’s the aftermath of pneumonia. A few weeks’ fresh air (admittedly in short supply round here), plenty of good food and all this coughing and wheezing will clear away.
I don’t know what to do. I have tried. I know I have – but that’s no use, you see. I walk into town and there are newly enlisted men going to the railway station, men I went to school with, some of them, and I can’t help thinking everybody’s looking at me, wondering why I haven’t volunteered. Perhaps I’m being oversensitive, but I seem to see that question now on every face.
Meanwhile, I’m attending a first-aid class, a six-week course, and frankly a bit of a waste of time because I covered all this ground and more while I worked in the hospital, but at least it makes me feel I’m doing something. Or do I mean, makes me look as if I’m doing something? It’s something for Beryl to tell her bandaging class at any rate.
I’ve written to Neville, to ask who he contacted to get into the Belgian Red Cross. It’s not what I wanted to do but it’s better than nothing and I do have experience of working in a hospital. Fingers crossed.
I haven’t asked if you’re getting any painting done? I’d started drawing, in a rather pathetic, tentative way, but being turned down seems to have driven it out of my head.
Elinor to Paul
I’m sorry to hear you were turned down, since it’s what you wanted, though selfishly of course I’m pleased. Father and Toby are rowing all the time about Toby enlisting. I’ve never seen Father so angry. Last night after dinner I heard them shouting. I keep out of it. Father thinks he should go on with his medical training, says he’ll be far more use to his country as a doctor than he ever would be as a half-trained, cack-handed soldier, but of course Toby doesn’t want to miss the fun, he’s got the rest of his life to be a doctor.
We have first-aid classes in the town too. Mother tries to drag me off to them, but so far I’ve managed to resist. I do sympathize with your sense of being stared at and questioned all the time. I feel it too – though in a milder way, there isn’t the same pressure on girls, but it’s still made perfectly clear that painting’s a trivial occupation and ought to be set aside in favour of bandaging Mrs Dalton-Smith’s fat ankles – though what doing that contributes to the war effort God only knows.
I am painting again, though not with much conviction, it’s more a feeling of defiance. I won’t let Mrs Dalton-Smith’s ankles win.
Paul To Elinor
I was sorry to hear of Toby’s battle with your father. Of course, your father’s right. It would be more sensible to stay at medical school, but Toby wants the adventure. So do I, to be honest – or part of me does. Another part knows perfectly well I’d hate every minute of it. I’m not in the least militaristic, I’ve no desire to kill or injure anybody, but if I could wave a magic wand and be out there now, I wouldn’t hesitate.
I’m glad you’re painting again. It’s more than I’ve managed to do. I can’t keep still. Twice a day sometimes I walk into town to buy newspapers or look at the mobilization order on the Town Hall door – in case it says something different from what it said last time. But I see the doctor again tomorrow, and I think he’ll say I’m fit enough to come to London. If not I think I might come anyway. I’ve applied to the Belgian Red Cross and Neville seems to think I stand a good chance. So perhaps I’ll see you again soon.
Elinor to Paul
Ruthie forwarded your letter. I’m staying in this tiny cottage with Catherine. I’m so tired of the war, Paul. Rows at home and then you go to London and there’s no escaping it there either. At least here you can forget it some of the time.
It was quite a last-minute decision. We just packed our bags and walked out on it all and here we are. Free. In a tiny cottage down a long narrow lane which starts off by the church. You can see the spire over the trees. In fact, the Vicar’s our landlord. I don’t know how long we’ll stay but it’s very cheap and quite tucked away. One bedroom, with two little dormer windows. As you look up at the cottage from the front they peer out under the eaves like the eyes of a Shetland pony. Do you agree that houses have expressions? Some houses look quite mad, this one looks interested and friendly and a bit wild.
Downstairs there’s one big room flooded with light because it’s got windows on both sides. Hollyhocks and sunflowers in the garden. As sunflowers die they look more and more like old men, the stalks develop a hunched back and the seeds fold in on themselves the way old people’s mouths do when they haven’t any teeth. Look at one, you’ll see what I mean. I’ve got two on the kitchen table where I’m writing and I draw them all the time.
I want to try to give you a flavour of our lives here because I’m happier than I’ve ever been before. On the other side of the garden fence there’s lovely countryside and everything’s fresh, not like London. Every possible shade of green and blue and gold and in the afternoons when the birds stop singing there’s total silence. Just the hum of bees in the foxgloves, they start at the top and tumble down from flower to flower. Last night we had a picnic, cheese and bread and apples and a big bottle of cider and when it was dark we went out on to the lawn in our nightdresses and danced. I can still turn cartwheels, Paul, so you see I’m not an old woman yet, though sometimes I feel like one. On the other side of the wall there’s a cornfield with cornflowers and poppies. We
walked all the way round the edge in the moonlight and the poppies looked black and the corn was silver. It made me shiver to look at it. We keep the cider cool by putting it in a bucket of water under the sink. I’m full of cider now and my lips are swollen, I think I must look like a fish. I am so happy, but Catherine keeps yawning and saying it’s time for bed, so I must close.
The atmosphere at home is terrible, Toby said father can’t stop him serving his country in any way he damn well chooses, but the fact is he does want and need Father’s approval, and so far Dad simply won’t budge. He says war should be left to professional soldiers and all these half-trained boys running about all over the place are more trouble than they’re worth. I don’t know. I side with Toby because he’s my brother and we’ve always stuck together, but the fact is, I don’t want him to go either. More than anything I resent the way the war takes over all our lives. It’s like a single bullying voice shouting all the other voices down.
I wish you could come here, Paul. It would be lovely to see you, I do miss you, but now I’m just about to start writing real nonsense so it’s high time I went to bed.
Love, Elinor.
Elinor to Paul
Yes, I know, two letters in one day! I expect they’ll arrive in the same post, but I simply have to write again because something really awful has happend. We’ve been thrown out! The Vicar turned up, walking across the fields in his long black hassock (cassock?) – don’t know, doesn’t matter – his black gown, binding with briars my joys and desires. He said the Parish Council had brought it to his attention, etc. Oh, he was squirming, he didn’t know where to look. But the upshot of it is, they want us out. Can’t rent the cottage to a German. Catherine signed the rental agreement. Stein, of course. I nearly suggested she call herself Stone, but I didn’t dare, it seems such an insult to ask somebody to change their name. Apparently I’m welcome to stay to the end of the month, but Catherine must go. Of course I’m going with her! And so here we are, suitcases packed, waiting for the cart to take us to the station.