Motherland

by William Nicholson

  He moves down the bays, peering at the labels.

  ‘St Émilion ’38,’ he says. ‘That should be good.’

  He pulls out two bottles and gives them to Larry.

  ‘You must join us, George,’ says Larry.

  ‘No, no. It’s for the two of them.’

  On an impulse he pulls out two more bottles.

  ‘There. Tell Kitty congratulations from me.’

  Larry carries the bottles in the pannier of his motorbike, wrapped in his pullover so they don’t bang against each other. He transfers them to the kitchen table in the farmhouse and wipes them down. They’re standing on the table, glowing deep purple in the evening sunlight, when the outer door opens, and Ed enters.

  ‘Can’t keep away, can I?’ he says.

  He sees the wine.

  ‘Grand Cru Bordeaux! Where in God’s name did you get this?’

  ‘It’s for you,’ says Larry. ‘For you and Kitty, from the lord of the manor. He says congratulations. And so do I.’

  ‘Word travels fast. I came here to tell you myself.’

  ‘I saw Kitty at the corps briefing.’

  ‘She still happy about it?’

  ‘She’s crazy about you, Eddy. You know that.’

  ‘And I’m crazy about her.’ He picks up one of the bottles. ‘Why such generosity from the lord of the manor?’

  ‘He has a soft spot for Kitty. Or had, I should say.’

  Ed goes out into the yard to empty his bladder. Rex shows up, in a subdued mood.

  ‘I just heard,’ he says, ‘they’re fitting out warehouses by the docks as field hospitals.’

  ‘Won’t be long now,’ says Larry.

  Rex touches the bottles of wine, one by one, clearly unaware that he’s doing so.

  ‘You want to hear a funny story?’ he says. ‘There’s this fellow in the RAMC who faints at the sight of blood.’

  ‘He’s in the wrong job, I’d say.’

  ‘I don’t faint,’ says Rex. ‘I’m fine with blood. But sometimes I think, what if I don’t know what to do? What if I do the wrong thing?’

  ‘Has to happen sometimes,’ says Larry.

  ‘If I do the wrong thing, someone dies.’

  He takes off his glasses and looks at Larry, blinking.

  ‘Rex,’ Larry says, ‘you can’t think that way. You’ll go nuts. You’re a medic, you do your job. That’s all.’

  Ed comes back in and tells Rex his news. Rex offers his congratulations, glancing at Larry as he does so. Ed proposes they open one of George’s bottles of wine.

  ‘So we can drink to Kitty,’ he says.

  ‘Not for me,’ says Rex. ‘I’m not a wine drinker.’

  ‘I know you’re teetotal,’ says Ed. ‘But this is Grand Cru Bordeaux!’

  ‘I just don’t like the taste,’ says Rex.

  ‘You’ll have some, Larry.’

  ‘You bet.’

  The wine is good.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re missing, Rex,’ says Ed. ‘See the smile on my face? That should give you some idea.’

  He refills Larry’s glass, then his own.

  ‘Two smiles are better than one.’

  Ed decides to stay for dinner. They finish the bottle between them. Rex excuses himself.

  ‘Early night for me.’

  Left on their own, Ed fixes Larry with his cool blue eyes.

  ‘Now comes the big question,’ he says. ‘Do we open bottle number two?’

  ‘It may not be as good as number one,’ says Larry.

  ‘That is true. That is very true.’

  ‘We could be gravely disappointed,’ says Larry.

  ‘We could,’ says Ed.

  ‘But we bear up under disappointment, don’t we?’

  ‘Always,’ says Ed. ‘The show must go on.’

  ‘So let’s risk it.’

  Ed opens the second bottle, and fills Larry’s glass.

  ‘Still good,’ Larry says, drinking.

  ‘So far,’ says Ed.

  ‘We live in hope,’ says Larry.

  ‘The other reason I came over this evening,’ says Ed, ‘was to ask you to be my best man.’

  ‘Honoured,’ says Larry.

  ‘Kitty wants a church wedding. Not a grand do or anything. But she wants the full vows.’

  ‘Then she shall have them.’

  ‘All right for you. But I don’t go in for all that stuff.’

  ‘So what? You can go through the motions, can’t you?’

  Ed sits back in the deep old chair in the corner and stares at the ceiling.

  ‘Yes. I can go through the motions. But I’m marrying the girl I love. I want it to be real. I want to mean every word I say. I don’t want to tell lies.’

  ‘You’re not lying. You’re just saying words that have no meaning for you.’

  ‘Would you do that at your wedding?’

  Larry says nothing to that. Ed follows his own thoughts.

  ‘Kitty believes in God. I asked her why, and she said she didn’t know.’

  ‘You can’t ask why someone believes in God,’ says Larry. ‘It’s not rational. It’s just something you know.’

  ‘So how come I don’t know it?’

  ‘I don’t know. You must have believed once.’

  ‘I can see a thousand reasons for saying there’s no God, and no reasons for saying there is a God. But just about everyone in the world believes there is a God.’

  ‘So who’s out of step here?’

  Ed jumps up, suddenly restless. He fills up their glasses once more, and starts to pace the room.

  ‘I want to be wrong, Larry. Believe me, I want to be wrong. I want to be on Kitty’s side. I want to be on your side. But I don’t know how to get there. I only have to look out of the window and I see what a shit-filled world we live in.’

  ‘Why call it a shit-filled world? What about all the beauty?’

  ‘And all the misery, and all the cruelty. The human race has a lot to answer for. Just look at this bloody war.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Larry. ‘There are bad men out there. But there are good men too. For every Hitler there’s a Francis of Assisi.’

  ‘I notice your good man is long dead and your bad man is very much with us.’

  ‘Gandhi, then.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about Gandhi. I don’t trust vegetarians.’

  ‘He lives the life he preaches. Simplicity. Non-violence. Self-sacrifice.’

  ‘So why doesn’t God make us all like Gandhi?’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ says Larry. ‘You know the drill as well as I do. God made us free. If he made us so we couldn’t go against his will, we’d be slaves, or machines. You know all this.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why he couldn’t at least make us so we’re more good than bad.’

  ‘He does. I believe we are more good than bad. I do. I believe people’s deepest instinct is to love each other, not to hurt each other.’

  ‘Do you?’ Ed stops pacing to stare at Larry, as if unsure he can really mean what he says. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes. I do.’

  ‘Any day now,’ says Ed, ‘I’m going to be sent into some godforsaken corner of France to kill people who’ll be doing their damnedest to kill me. Where’s the love in that?’

  ‘I’m coming too.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘I’m on loan to the RHLI. At my request.’

  Ed seizes Larry by the shoulders and turns him so he can’t avoid his gaze.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I’m a soldier,’ says Larry. ‘Soldiers fight.’

  Ed holds his gaze, his blue eyes searching for the truth Larry is withholding.

  ‘Soldiers kill. Are you going to kill?’

  ‘If I have to.’

  ‘For your King and country?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ed lets him go with a laugh.

  ‘Well, there you are. Even you. What hope for humanity now?’

  ‘If it’s wrong for
me to kill, it’s wrong for you too.’

  ‘Of course it’s wrong! Everything’s wrong!’

  Larry is shaken by Ed’s challenge. Will he kill? He can’t imagine it. He’s not going into action to kill, he’s going into action to come under fire. It’s all about self-respect. Or pride. Or Kitty.

  ‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘war isn’t the common human condition. Most of the time we’re not trying to kill each other.’

  ‘Fine!’ says Ed. ‘Forget war. Forget killing. How about plain old common-or-garden unhappiness? You can’t deny that most people are unhappy most of the time. What’s the point of that?’

  Larry wants to say, Kitty loves you. You at least can be happy. He wants to say, What more do you want to be happy? But even as the thought forms in his mind he knows this talk of happiness is all beside the point.

  ‘The fact is,’ he says, ‘you can’t make sense of any of it if you believe this world is all there is. You have to see it in the light of eternity.’

  ‘Ah, the light of eternity!’

  ‘You think it all ends with death, as far as I can tell.’

  ‘Yes. Lights out and that’s it.’

  ‘I see us as on a journey towards becoming gods.’

  ‘Gods!’ Ed laughs. ‘We’re to be gods!’

  ‘That’s the simplest way to put it.’

  ‘All sitting on thrones together, up in the sky.’

  ‘I’m doing my best here. You could at least try to take me seriously.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course. You’re right, my dear comrade-in-arms! What do you say to the third bottle?’

  ‘That wine’s for you and Kitty.’

  ‘Mine is the greater need right now.’

  He opens the third bottle.

  ‘What we’re going to do,’ announces Ed as he extracts the cork, ‘what we’re going to do is we’re going to go out in the cool night air, bringing this excellent bottle with us, and that way we’ll stay sober, and you’ll tell me why you and Kitty are right, and I’ll take you seriously.’

  They go out through the farmyard into the hay meadow beyond. They hand the bottle back and forth as they go, drinking from its neck. The night sky is clear, with a quarter moon low over the Downs.

  ‘You know what, Ed,’ says Larry. ‘Neither of us knows the truth about this. All we’ve got is beliefs, and all our beliefs come from is our feelings. I can’t imagine this life being all there is. I can’t imagine death being extinction. There has to be more. And as it happens, Jesus says there is more. He says he came to give eternal life. He says he’s the son of God. I don’t understand what that means, but he says it, and he says that all that matters is love, and he says his kingdom is not of this earth. And all that just feels likely to me. I mean, what sort of a world would it be if I knew it all? It would be tiny. Existence has to be bigger than me. So the fact that I don’t understand it doesn’t make it unlikely, it makes it far more likely. I just know there has to be more than I know. More than you know, too. That’s all you have to concede. Just accept that you don’t know everything. Leave a bit of room in your philosophy for surprises. Leave a bit of room for hope.’

  Larry becomes more and more expansive as he speaks, liberated by the wine and the darkness round him and the majesty of the star-filled sky.

  ‘You know what,’ says Ed laughing. ‘I think I’d rather be you than me. All this love. All this hope. That’s good stuff.’

  He passes Larry the bottle. Reaching his arms out on either side he begins to make pirouettes over the grass. Larry puts the bottle to his lips and tips it back. The last of the wine runs down his throat and spills out over his chin. He tosses the bottle away with a fine disregard and it lands in the stream.

  Ed comes spinning up to Larry and takes him by the hand.

  ‘Come on, best man!’ he says. ‘If we’re going to die, let’s die together!’

  They swoop about together, laughing out loud, until they lose their balance and tumble to the ground. There they lie, panting, smiling at the stars, still clasping hands.

  *

  On Saturday August 15th Ed and Kitty are married in the chapel of Edenfield Place. The wedding is small. Both bride and groom wear uniform. Kitty’s parents, the Reverend Michael Teale and his wife Molly, come from Malmesbury. Ed’s parents, Harry and Gillian Avenell, come from Hatton in Derbyshire. Larry Cornford is best man. Others present are Louisa Cavendish, George Holland, Brigadier Wills, and Ed’s commanding officer, Colonel Joe Picton-Phillips. After the ceremony there’s a wedding breakfast in the mess, hosted by George Holland and Brigadier Wills.

  Everyone is smiling and cheerful, most of all Kitty’s parents, but it’s not an easy occasion. The two families are meeting for the first time. Harry Avenell is a tall distinguished man, a director of a brewing company, but Kitty’s pink-cheeked father has far more of the look of a brewer about him. Ed’s mother teasingly reprimands Ed for not marrying in a Catholic church.

  ‘Why would I do that, Mummy?’ Ed says. ‘You know I’m through with all of that.’

  ‘Oh, so you say,’ says Gillian Avenell.

  Kitty likes the way he calls his mother ‘Mummy’ so unselfconsciously, but wonders a little at the way he behaves with both his parents. There are no embraces, no kisses. Harry Avenell takes part in the ceremony with an oddly detached manner, as if standing in for the father of the groom before the real man arrives.

  Kitty’s mother talks in a ceaseless stream.

  ‘If only Harold could be here, but even if he could get leave it would be no good. He’s in North Africa, you know, with the Eleventh Hussars, they call them the Cherry Pickers, they were in the Charge of the Light Brigade, but they drive armoured cars now. I remember when my mother got the news about Timmy, he was behind the lines at Passchendaele, but there was a shell and that was that. Of course it was happening to everybody, but even so. And now here’s Harold out in the desert when he should be here with us, and I can’t help thinking it’s just all wrong.’

  ‘Now then, Molly,’ says her husband. ‘This is Kitty’s day.’

  *

  The newly-weds have booked a week’s leave for their honeymoon, which they take in Brighton.

  The Old Ship Hotel is one of the few on the seafront that hasn’t been requisitioned for war personnel. The hotel is very rundown, its paintwork cracking and its wallpaper peeling. The only porter is old and sick. A girl called Milly offers to carry their bags up to their room, but Ed says he can manage. The stairs creak as they climb.

  The room has a double bed, and a window that looks out over the promenade. Outside they can see the beach with its concrete anti-tank blocks and its undulations of rolled barbed wire.

  ‘The beach will be mined,’ Ed says. ‘We won’t be going swimming.’

  The Palace Pier is deserted, its walkway broken in the middle so that it can’t be used as a landing stage. The seafront is under curfew by the time they arrive. The sea gleams in the light of a golden summer evening, but there’s nobody about.

  ‘Maybe we should have gone to a B&B in the countryside,’ says Ed.

  ‘I don’t care where we are,’ says Kitty.

  Ed is quiet, looking round the shabby room. He seems to be almost at a loss.

  ‘What is it, Ed?’

  ‘I wanted everything to be perfect for you,’ he says.

  ‘And for you too.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind. So long as I’ve got you.’

  ‘Well, you have got me. You’d better think of something to do with me.’

  He takes her in his arms. She leans her body against his.

  ‘I love you so much, Kitty.’

  ‘Just as well.’

  ‘I love you so much I can’t think or move or hardly even breathe.’

  ‘That’s too much,’ Kitty says. ‘You’d better love me less and breathe more.’

  He kisses her.

  Later they lie in bed together, and every time they move the bed makes a pinging noise. They try to stay still but it isn�
�t easy. They start moving again and the pinging returns. They try lying in different places on the bed, and find one position, right on the edge, that almost silences the noisy bed-spring, but it’s hard not to fall off.

  Ed stops moving, holding Kitty close in his arms.

  ‘We have a choice,’ he says. ‘We lie doggo, or we jangle.’

  ‘Let’s jangle,’ she says.

  *

  On Sunday morning they walk along the seafront as far as the big Bofors gun outside the Grand Hotel. A crowd of Canadian soldiers are playing football on the promenade, using kitbags for goalposts. Kitty holds Ed’s arm and leans a little against him as they walk, and loves him so much it hurts. The sun shines on the sea, and on the patches of black tar on the pebbles under the barbed wire, and on the dull metal of the big gun. Ahead the West Pier has been severed like its sister. Across the water lies France.

  I’m married, thinks Kitty. He belongs to me now. His body belongs to me.

  She loves his body. She loves the feel of it pressed against hers all the way down. She wants to tell him so but there seem to be no words and she’s shy. So instead she squeezes his arm and strokes the small of his back. They come to a stop by the Bofors gun and kiss. The soldiers playing soccer pause in their game to clap.

  *

  Later that Sunday afternoon all leave is cancelled and all personnel are recalled to their units. On Tuesday August 18th Admiral Lord Mountbatten, Commander-in-Chief Combined Operations, gives the order for Operation Jubilee, the largest military assault on mainland Europe since the disaster of Dunkirk.

  10

  It’s a clear night, and the sea is calm. Larry is up on deck with Johnny Parrish to escape the thick fog of tobacco smoke below. He looks through a gap in the tarpaulin at the dark coast of England as it recedes. On either side of the troopship other craft reach as far as the eye can see, their low rumble filling the night. Bulbous transport ships carrying invasion barges; tank landing craft lying low in the water; the sleek forms of destroyers.

  ‘Bloody big show,’ says Johnny.

  Over the lapping of the waves against the hull they hear the sound of a motorboat drawing alongside.

  ‘That’ll be the CO,’ says Johnny. ‘Better get below.’

  The troop deck is packed and buzzing with excitement. Larry joins the crowd of officers by the companionway. Shortly after, the brigadier enters, with General Ham Roberts. Roberts wastes no time in preliminaries.