Motherland

by William Nicholson

  ‘I expect my turn will come,’ he says.

  *

  That night the winds grow stronger, and rattle the casement in the nursery window. Kitty sleeps fitfully, tormented by half-dreams in which Ed is reaching for her from a distance she can’t cross.

  In the morning word spreads round the camp that the fleet is still standing offshore, and has not yet sailed. The forecast is that the weather will worsen. In the way of such things, half-understood terms are passed from mouth to mouth. ‘They’ll miss the tide.’ ‘The RAF won’t fly in this.’ ‘You need air cover for a big op.’

  The day passes slowly. In the late afternoon rain begins to fall again. Larry rides over to Divisional HQ and takes part in a meeting with the Acting CO. When he comes out he goes looking for Kitty and finds her cleaning the Humber in the garage.

  ‘You could eat your dinner off that,’ he says.

  ‘What’s the news?’

  ‘The show’s off. Don’t say I told you.’

  ‘It’s off?’

  ‘All troops to be disembarked.’

  ‘He’ll come back?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kitty feels a surge of relief beyond her power to control. There in front of Larry’s kind concerned gaze she bursts into tears.

  ‘Honestly,’ she says, dabbing at her eyes, ‘what have I got to cry about now?’

  Larry smiles and offers her a handkerchief.

  ‘He’s a lucky sod,’ he says. ‘I hope he knows it.’

  ‘You won’t tell him, will you?’

  ‘Not if you don’t want.’

  ‘It’s too silly, crying like that.’

  ‘If I was Ed,’ says Larry, ‘I’d be proud to know you cried for me.’

  *

  Just after six in the evening the order comes through for all drivers to muster at Newhaven harbour. Kitty makes the short journey with a light heart. No one has been wounded. No one has died. But as she sees the men file off the ships, all their former swagger gone, she realises that for them this is a kind of failure. Standing by her car, she scans the hundreds of moving figures for the group that will contain Ed, but she doesn’t find him. The trucks fill with men and grind past on the way back to the camp. Brigadier Wills comes stamping out to find her.

  ‘Good girl. I’ll be with you when I’ve seen to the navy chaps.’

  So she waits on. She’s used to it. A staff driver spends more time waiting than driving. This is usually when she reads, but recent events have unsettled her. So she stays beside the car, watching the slow dispersal of an army.

  Soldiers go by laughing, grumbling.

  ‘That was a fucking waste of time. I’d like to meet the genius dreamed that one up.’

  One Canadian soldier mimics a British officer: ‘I say, you chaps! The colonials are getting restless. Let’s shut them in the hold for twenty-four hours and spray them with vomit, eh, what?’

  Their laughter recedes into the distance.

  ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a dump like this?’

  ‘Ed!’

  She spins round, eyes glowing, and there he is. He’s wearing rumpled battledress and carrying all sorts of bundles and his face is smeared with black. But underneath he’s just the same. The same cool gaze in those blue eyes.

  ‘Oh, Eddy!’

  She throws her arms round him and kisses him. He holds her for a moment, and then gently eases her away.

  ‘There’s a welcome,’ he says.

  ‘I thought you’d never come back.’

  ‘No chance of that,’ he says. ‘We never even went away.’

  ‘Oh, Ed. I’m so happy.’

  She can’t disguise how she feels, and makes no attempt to. He smiles to see her happiness.

  ‘Seeing you almost makes it worth it,’ he says.

  ‘Was it horrible?’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ he says, ‘I’d rather parachute naked behind enemy lines than do that again.’

  Kitty sees the brigadier heading across the yard towards the cars, accompanied by two of his staff.

  ‘When can I see you, Ed?’

  ‘Soon,’ he says. ‘I can’t give you a day. Very soon.’

  His eyes rest on her, suddenly gentle in that wild black-smeared face.

  ‘My lovely angel,’ he says.

  Then he’s gone.

  The brigadier reaches the car.

  ‘Well, that was Operation Rutter,’ he says. ‘Now you see it, now you don’t.’

  6

  William Cornford is not an old man, but his bald head, together with a slight stoop in his posture, makes him appear more than his fifty or so years. He stands now in the doorway of the company offices at 95 Aldwych, feeling for his hat, watching as his son climbs off his motorbike. He hasn’t seen him for many weeks. He looks on as he removes his helmet and gloves, noting every remembered detail of the boy who is all his family, his only child, the one he loves more than himself.

  Then his son is before him, reaching out one hand, and the old formality returns.

  ‘Spot on time,’ Larry says. ‘That’s what the army’s done to me.’

  ‘Good to see you.’ The father shakes the son’s hand. ‘Good to see you.’

  ‘So what’s the plan?’

  ‘Lunch at Rules, I thought. Give us a chance to catch up.’

  They walk round Aldwych and up Catherine Street, talking as they go. Larry asks about the company, knowing that this is what occupies his father’s waking hours.

  ‘Difficult times,’ says William Cornford. ‘Very difficult. But we’ve managed to keep all our people on so far.’

  This is a major achievement in itself, as Larry knows. Since November 1940 bananas have been a prohibited food.

  ‘No signs of a change of heart at the Ministry?’

  ‘No,’ says William Cornford. ‘Woolton has told me himself the ban is for the duration. At least I’ve managed to convince him to do something for the growers in Jamaica.’

  ‘The war can’t go on for ever.’

  ‘That’s what I tell our people. In the meantime, we’ve become the vegetable distribution arm of the Ministry of Food. When the war’s over, we’ll just have to start again from scratch.’

  ‘And how’s Cookie?’

  Miss Cookson is his father’s housekeeper, at the family home in Kensington.

  ‘Same as ever. Asks after you. Do look her up some day.’

  Larry realises they’ve walked on past their turning.

  ‘We should go down Tavistock Street, surely?’

  ‘I thought we might take a turn past the old building,’ says his father.

  ‘Isn’t that rather depressing?’ says Larry.

  ‘I find it has some value. Lacrimae rerum, you know.’

  They walk up Bow Street to the place where the company headquarters building once stood. A direct hit in January last year destroyed the entire six-storey structure, leaving the tall side of the adjoining building standing, fireplaces exposed, doors agape. The site is still filled with rubble.

  ‘Fifty years,’ says William Cornford. ‘Almost my entire life. This is where my father built the company up from nothing.’

  Larry too remembers it well. The dark panelled room where his father worked. Where they had their one and only terrible quarrel.

  ‘Why are we here?’

  ‘Thirteen of our people died that night.’

  ‘Yes, Dad. I know.’

  ‘Eight company ships sunk since the start of hostilities. Over six hundred members of staff on active service. All still on the payroll.’

  ‘Yes, Dad. I know.’

  ‘This is the front line too, Larry. We’re fighting this war too.’

  Larry says nothing to this. He understands what his father would like to say, but will never say. How does his son serve his country any better by wearing a uniform and riding a motorbike?

  William Cornford was and remains deeply hurt that his son has not chosen to enter the family firm. The company built by his father, t
he first Lawrence Cornford, and made great by himself in the second generation, should be passed on, its culture and traditions intact, to the third. But Larry dreams a different dream.

  Father and son walk on to Rules. They take their usual table under the stairs.

  ‘Not what it was, of course,’ says William Cornford, glancing over the menu. ‘But they’ve still got shepherd’s pie.’

  ‘So how’s Bennett?’ says Larry.

  ‘At his desk every morning. You know he’ll be seventy this year?’

  ‘I don’t believe he ever actually goes home.’

  ‘He asks after you from time to time. Maybe you could stop by after lunch and give him five minutes.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  The long-serving employees of the company are Larry’s greater family. Most of them still believe he’ll take his proper place in the hierarchy in time.

  William Cornford studies the wine list.

  ‘Care to share a bottle of Côte Rôtie?’

  Larry asks his father to tell him more about the trading conditions of the company, framing his questions to show he understands the current difficulties; aware there’s no one else his father can speak to of his worries.

  ‘The branch depots are actually all running at full capacity, believe it or not. But the truth is I’ve been turned into a sort of a civil servant. I have to take my orders from the Ministry, which goes against the grain a little. I’ve never been a man for committees.’

  ‘My God! You must hate it.’

  ‘I’m not as patient as perhaps I should be.’

  He gives his son a quick shy smile.

  ‘But I expect you have your frustrations too.’

  ‘Soldiering is ninety-nine per cent frustration,’ says Larry.

  ‘And the other one per cent?’

  ‘They say it’s terror.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ says William Cornford. ‘Battle.’

  He himself has never been a soldier. In the Great War he remained in the company, which was then the nation’s sole importer of fruit. Larry fully understands his father’s complex feelings about his son’s war service. He represents the family on the sacrificial altar of war, even as he deserts the company in its hour of need.

  ‘So is Mountbatten looking after you?’ his father asks him.

  ‘Oh, I’m just a glorified messenger boy.’

  ‘Still, I don’t want you to come to any harm.’

  This is the war his father has arranged for him: if not safe in Fyffes, then safe in a headquarters building in London.

  ‘As it happens,’ Larry says, ‘the division I’m attached to looks like it’s going into action soon.’

  He sees his father’s face, and at once regrets his words. He feels ashamed of pretending to a coming military action that will give his father sleepless nights.

  ‘Though I doubt if they’ll be taking me along. I’m afraid I’m doomed to be a paper-pusher.’

  The wine comes. His father thanks the waiter with his usual courtesy.

  ‘An excellent Rhône,’ he says. ‘We shall drink to the liberation of France.’

  ‘Do you have any news of the house?’

  The family has a house in Normandy, in the Forêt d’Eawy.

  ‘I believe it’s been requisitioned by German officers,’ says his father.

  He meets his son’s eyes over their raised glasses. They share a love of France. For William Cornford it’s the land of the great cathedrals: Amiens, Chartres, Albi, Beauvais. For Larry it’s the land of Courbet and Cézanne.

  ‘To France,’ says Larry.

  *

  With the cancellation of Operation Rutter an uneasy calm settles over the Sussex countryside. The thousands of troops encamped on the Downs resume the training exercises designed more to occupy them than to raise their fighting form. More beer is drunk in the long evenings, and more brawls break out in the warm nights. The storms of early July pass, leaving overcast skies and a heavy sunless heat by day. No one believes the operation will be off for good. Everyone is waiting.

  On a rare bright day Larry gathers up his paints and his portable easel and goes down to the water meadows by Glynde Reach. He sets up his easel on the hay-strewn ground and starts work preparing the board he’s using as a canvas. He has in mind to paint a view of Mount Caburn.

  As he works away, a figure appears from the direction of the farm. It turns out to be Ed.

  ‘Thank God someone’s around,’ he says. ‘I come all the way from the other side of the country to see Kitty and she’s not bloody there.’

  ‘Did you tell her you were coming?’

  ‘How could I? I didn’t know myself.’

  He stands behind Larry, looking at the sketch forming on the board.

  ‘I really admire you for this,’ he says.

  ‘Good Lord! Why?’

  ‘Because it’s something you love to do.’ He kicks moodily at the hay on the ground. ‘There’s nothing I really want to do. I feel like a spectator.’

  ‘You want to see Kitty.’

  ‘That’s different. Anyway, she won’t be back till this evening. What do I do till then?’

  ‘You could always help Arthur get his hay in.’

  This is not a serious suggestion, but rather to Larry’s surprise his friend seizes on it eagerly. He goes back to the farmhouse and reappears a little later pulling a light hay cart.

  ‘Arthur says I’ll make a mess of it,’ he says, ‘but it doesn’t matter as it’s ruined already.’

  ‘Rather you than me,’ says Larry.

  Ed strips to the waist, takes a long-handled rake out of the cart, and proceeds to gather the lying hay into mounds. Larry looks round from his painting from time to time, expecting to see his friend leaning on his rake, but Ed never stops. His lean, tight-muscled body gleams with sweat as he works, keeping up a pace no overseer would ever demand. As he forms the hay into knee-high piles he drags the cart alongside and hoists the hay into it. With each lift he emits a short low grunt of effort.

  Larry’s attention is on the line of trees before him, and the rise of land that culminates in the round prominence that is Mount Caburn. His brush, moving rapidly, is reducing the scene to its essential elements, in which land and sky are masses of equal weight, the one cupped into the other. The flanks of the hill meet the dull sunlight at different angles, forming elongated triangles of different tones. He works with browns and reds and yellows, applying paint in rough dabs, hurrying to capture the ever-changing light.

  When he next pays attention to his friend, he finds the hay cart is piled high.

  ‘My God!’ he exclaims. ‘You must be exhausted. Give yourself a break, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘Just getting into my stride,’ says Ed, tossing another forkful of hay over the high hurdle side of the cart.

  Larry watches him for a few moments, awed by his relentless self-discipline. For a man who wants to do nothing he has a remarkable capacity for work.

  ‘You know what it’s called, doing what you’re doing?’

  ‘What?’ says Ed, never ceasing in his work.

  ‘It’s called doing penance. You’re paying for your sins.’

  ‘Not me,’ says Ed. ‘That’s for you believers. I don’t have to pay for my sins. They come free.’

  Larry laughs at that and goes back to his painting.

  At midday Rex Dickinson appears, carrying a basket.

  ‘The good Mary has taken pity on you,’ he says.

  The three of them settle down in the shadow of the hay cart and eat bread and cheese and drink cider. Larry looks at Ed sitting sprawled on the hay-strewn earth, breathing slow deep breaths, chewing the thick home-made bread, sweat drying on his face and shoulders.

  ‘You look like a handsome healthy animal,’ he says.

  ‘That’s all I want to be,’ says Ed.

  Rex goes over to look at Larry’s painting.

  ‘Very Cézanne,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t know why I bother,’ says Larry
. ‘It’s all been done before, and better.’

  Rex looks round the silent landscape.

  ‘You’d hardly know there’s a war on.’

  ‘I love war,’ says Ed.

  ‘That’s because you’re a romantic,’ says Larry. ‘Half in love with easeful death.’

  ‘That’s rather good.’

  ‘Not me. Keats.’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned,’ says Ed, ‘I’ll be dead by Christmas. And that’s just fine. Once you make up your mind to it, everything tastes and smells so much better.’

  Larry frowns, unsure whether or not to believe him.

  ‘But what about Kitty?’ he says.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘I thought you loved her.’

  ‘Oh, Lord, I don’t know.’ Ed stretches himself out full length on the ground. ‘What kind of future can I offer a girl?’

  ‘Have you told her you’re planning on being dead by Christmas?’

  ‘She doesn’t believe me. She says that if she loves me enough I won’t be killed.’

  ‘She’s right,’ says Larry. ‘When you love someone, you can’t believe they’ll ever die.’

  ‘I believe we’re all going to die,’ says Ed. ‘I suppose that means I don’t love anyone.’

  ‘Kitty thinks you love her.’

  ‘Well, I do.’

  ‘You just say the first thing that comes into your head, don’t you?’

  Ed rolls over and shades his eyes with one hand so he can gaze at Larry.

  ‘We’ve known each other a long time,’ he says. ‘We don’t have to piss about saying polite nothings, do we? We can be pretty straight with each other, I’d say.’

  ‘I go along with that.’

  ‘The thing is, Larry, I think you genuinely are a good chap. One of the very few I know. But I’m not a good chap. I live in what you might call the outer darkness. I really do. I’m not proud of it. What I see when I look ahead is darkness. I know you think I’m just being selfish. But I do love Kitty, and I ask myself if it’s fair to drag her into that dark place.’

  Larry realises now what it is his friend wants from him. He loves him for it, even as he feels the sad weight of it fall upon him.

  ‘What is this, Ed? You want some kind of blessing from me?’

  ‘Maybe I do.’

  ‘All you owe her is your love,’ he says.