Ed smiles when he hears this, and draws deeply on the American cigarette he’s been given, and fixes his gaze on the far distance.
‘We’re not going anywhere in a hurry, boys,’ he says.
On the first day of May snow falls over the camp. A rumour spreads that Hitler is dead. The men are too tired and hungry to care. All they want now is to go home.
On May 3rd they’re transported in six-wheeler trucks to Landshut. The houses they pass on the way have white flags in their windows. At Landshut the former prisoners of war are billeted in empty flats, six to a room, and supplied with American K rations. Here the waiting begins again.
The snow turns to rain, and the winds are too strong for planes to take off. The American POWs who arrived earlier take precedence; also a batch of seven hundred Indians. Two hundred planes are promised, flying back from Prague, but only seventy arrive.
On the morning of May 7th, which is being celebrated at home as VE Day, Ed takes his turn at the aerodrome, and by mid-afternoon he is boarding. The Dakota lands at St Omer in northern France, where he is cleaned up and deloused. Next day RAF Lancasters fly the British contingent to Duxford air base near Cambridge. It is now twenty-five days since they were marched out of the camp; and two years, eight months and twenty days since Ed left England.
He sends two telegrams, one to his parents and one to his wife. A repatriation orderly recognises his name on the manifest and tells the base commander, a young-looking squadron leader.
‘I’m told you’re a VC,’ says the squadron leader.
‘Yes,’ says Ed. ‘I’ve been told that too.’
‘Honour to have you here. Anything I can do for you?’
‘No, thank you, sir. I’m on my way first thing in the morning.’
‘Good job,’ says the squadron leader, shaking his hand. ‘Damn good job.’
*
Kitty arrives early at King’s Cross station, holding very tight to Pamela’s hand. Pamela is just over two years old, and a sturdy walker, but the giant railway station overawes her. Kitty is wearing her prettiest pre-war frock beneath a dark grey wool coat. It’s a chilly spring day.
‘Daddy,’ says Pamela, pointing to a man striding across the concourse.
‘No, that’s not Daddy,’ says Kitty. ‘I’ll tell you when it’s him.’
She’s been training Pamela ever since the telegram came. She wants her to say, ‘Hello, Daddy,’ and give him a kiss.
There are other women waiting, staring anxiously down the long platforms. One holds a bunch of flowers. Kitty thinks Ed wouldn’t want flowers, though the truth is she doesn’t know. In her letters to him she’s told him all her news, mostly about Pamela, and how pretty she is, and how forward. She’s told Ed how they’ve left her parents’ house and are now living in Edenfield Place, thanks to her friend Louisa. It’s somewhere to be until he comes home, and they can set up house on their own.
Ed’s letters from Germany have been strange. He writes about the absurdity of the life he leads, and the folly of human nature, but never about his own state of mind. Nor does he ask after his daughter. The letters always end, ‘I love you.’ But they have not brought him closer.
‘You have to expect it,’ Louisa says in their late-night talks. ‘You had three weeks together, almost three years ago. It’ll be like starting all over again.’
‘I know you’re right,’ Kitty says. ‘But he’s the most important person in my life, apart from Pamela. The thought of him takes up almost all the space I have.’
‘My advice is, don’t get your hopes up.’
Kitty hardly knows what she feels as she waits at King’s Cross. All she wants is for it to be over. She has longed for this moment for so long that now it’s close, it frightens her.
‘Hello, Daddy,’ Pamela says to a young airman on the platform.
‘No!’ says Kitty a little too sharply. ‘I’ll tell you when it’s Daddy.’
Pamela feels the rebuke. Her sweet face sets in a look Kitty knows well, eyes unfocused, lips pouting.
‘Daddy,’ she says, pointing to an elderly man sitting on a bench.
She calls out to a porter wheeling a trolley, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’
A soldier appears, running, breathless.
‘Hello, Daddy!’ cries Pamela.
‘Stop it!’ says Kitty. ‘Stop it!’
She controls an overwhelming urge to smack the child.
‘Daddy,’ says Pamela, very quietly now. ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.’
Only the arrival of the train silences her. The immense engine sighs slowly to a stop, thrilling her with its living breathing power. The carriage doors open and the passengers come streaming down the platform. Kitty looks without seeing, afraid he isn’t on the train after all, afraid he isn’t coming home, afraid he is coming home.
She remembers standing on the quay at Newhaven after the first aborted operation against Dieppe, and all the men filing off the boats in the night, and how she looked for him and couldn’t see him. Then all at once he was there before her. Remembering that moment, her love for him bursts within her, and she wants so much, so much, to hold him in her arms again.
Pamela senses that she’s lost her mother’s attention. She tugs at the hand that holds hers, saying, ‘Go home. Go home.’
The people from the train stream by, mostly men, mostly in uniform. There are too many, their faces hazy in the steamy air, the sound of boots tramping the platform dulling the nervous hugger-mugger of reunions.
Pamela starts to cry. She feels ignored and sorry for herself. At the same time she’s intensely excited. As she maintains a steady low-level snivelling she holds tight to her mother’s hand, knowing that she’ll feel it in her mother’s body when it happens, the mysterious and wonderful moment for which they’ve come.
Kitty catches her breath. He’s there, she knows it, though she hasn’t yet seen him. She searches the faces bobbing towards her, and finds him. He hasn’t seen her yet. He looks so thin, so sad. He’s bareheaded, wearing worn battledress, a kitbag over one shoulder. He looks like his photograph, except older, more real, wiser. There’s a nobility about him she never knew he possessed.
Oh my darling, she says to herself. You’ve come back to me.
He sees her now, and a brightness lights up his face. He hurries faster towards her, one arm half raised, half waving. She lifts a timid hand in answer.
He comes to her and at once takes her in his arms. She holds him close, letting go of Pamela’s hand to give all of herself to him. His body is so thin, she can feel all his bones. Then he kisses her, only lightly, as if he’s afraid she’s fragile, and she kisses him, nuzzling her face against his. Then he drops down onto his haunches to greet his unknown daughter.
‘Hello,’ he says.
Pamela gazes back at him in silence. Kitty strokes the top of her head.
‘Say hello to Daddy, darling.’
Pamela still says nothing.
‘Don’t you say a word,’ says Ed. ‘Why should you?’
He reaches out one hand and lightly touches her cheek. Then he stands up.
‘Let’s go,’ he says.
‘I have it all planned,’ says Kitty. ‘We’re going to take a taxi to Victoria.’
‘A taxi! We must be rich.’
‘Special occasion.’
Pamela trots along obediently by her mother’s side, from time to time peeping up at the stranger. She has no notion of him being her father, and doesn’t even know what that means. But from the very first moment she saw him take her mother in his arms, and felt her mother let go of her hand to embrace him, she surrendered to him. He has become in an instant the most powerful being in her universe. When he knelt before her, and fixed her with his grave blue eyes, she knew that all she desired in life from now on was the love and admiration of this magnificent stranger.
In the taxi Kitty stops trembling and becomes more talkative.
‘You’re so thin, my darling,’ she says. ‘I’m going to feed you and fee
d you.’
‘I’m all for that.’
‘I don’t know what to ask you first. There’s so much.’
‘Let’s not talk about it,’ he says. ‘Tell me what you want.
Tell me what I should do.’ ‘Nothing at all,’ he says.
‘Just be my beautiful wife.’
Pamela leans across her mother and says to him in her clear high voice, ‘Hello, Daddy.’
*
Louisa has scraped together a celebration dinner of some magnificence. There’s an actual roast chicken and George contributes a bottle of Meursault, one of the few not consumed by the Canadians.
‘We have to welcome home our hero,’ Louisa says.
Ed retires to the rooms where Kitty and Pamela live, a bedroom, dressing room and bathroom above the dining room. He soaks in a deep warm bath, and then dresses in clothes lent him by his host. There is nothing here that belongs to him.
‘I didn’t know what else to do,’ says Kitty.
‘This is perfect,’ says Ed. ‘I shall be a new man.’
A bed is made up for Pamela in the dressing room. Kitty is surprised she accepts her expulsion from her mother’s bedroom without protest. Ed comes and kisses her good night at her bedtime. He seems to expect nothing from her, which Pamela finds thrilling. After he’s given her a kiss he touches her cheek with one forefinger, as he did when they met for the first time. As he does so, his gaze lingers on her, and he’s almost smiling.
At dinner his homecoming is toasted with the mellow burgundy.
‘There’s some newspaperman wants to talk to you,’ Kitty says. ‘He wants the story of your VC.’
‘Well, he won’t get it,’ says Ed mildly.
‘But we’re all so proud of you!’ says Louisa.
‘I’m afraid it’s a lot of nonsense,’ says Ed. ‘Let’s leave it at that, shall we?’
They eat by candlelight, in the dining room. The effects of the military occupation are everywhere in the house, but in the warm glow of the candles it’s almost as if the war has never been. Ed, bathed and wearing a freshly laundered shirt that hangs loose on his spare frame, draws all their eyes. His face, hollowed out by his years in prison, has the austere beauty of a medieval saint. He seems to the others to be present only partly in their world. A part of him has gone on, to a place where they can’t follow him.
That night he lies in Kitty’s arms, but they don’t make love.
‘I need time,’ he says.
‘Of course you do, my darling. We have all the time in the world.’
In the night while Kitty is sleeping he gets out of their bed and lies down to sleep on the floor. In the morning, finding him there, Kitty asks him if he’d like a room of his own.
‘Just for a night or two,’ he says. ‘It’s been so long since I’ve been able to be alone.’
Kitty doesn’t look at him as she answers, and she forces her voice to remain light.
‘Of course,’ she says.
*
After that Ed spends his nights in a bedroom across the passage. By day he goes for long solitary walks over the Downs.
Kitty has made plans for his return, for them to have a house of their own. The idea comes from Louisa, that they should rent one of the farmhouses on the estate. Since Arthur Funnell’s death the land attached to River Farm has been worked by the tenant at the Home Farm, and the house is no longer occupied. The rent would be nominal. But for now she says nothing of this to Ed. It’s as if he hasn’t yet fully returned from the war.
When they’re alone together, she tries to get him to talk about his time in the camps.
‘What did they do to you over there, Ed?’
‘Nothing much,’ he says. ‘Some of the other fellows had it far worse than me.’
Little by little she builds a picture of his time in captivity. He tells her about the hunger, and the cold, but not as if he was much troubled by either. He seems to have suffered most from restrictions on his movement.
‘Do you mean being locked in a cell?’
‘No, we weren’t locked up. We were in blockhouses most of the time. But the handcuffs got me down rather.’
‘Handcuffs?’
He shows her, holding out his wrists a foot or so apart.
‘It’s not like I was chained to a wall. But you’d be surprised how many things you can’t do when you’re cuffed. Makes it hard to sleep at night, too.’
‘How long were you in handcuffs?’
‘A little over a year.’
‘A year!’
‘Four hundred and eleven days.’
He delivers the number with a wry smile, as if ashamed to admit that he kept count.
‘But handcuffs don’t kill you,’ he says.
One night Kitty is woken by a sudden cry. She knows it comes from Ed’s room. She goes to him and finds him standing in the middle of the room, eyes staring, still half asleep. Her appearance wakes him fully.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘God, I’m sorry.’
She sits him down on the bed and takes him in her arms. He huddles against her, trembling.
‘Just a bad dream,’ he says.
‘Darling.’ She kisses his damp cheek. ‘Darling. You’re safe home now.’
The more she learns of how much he’s been hurt, the more she loves him. That cry in the night binds him to her more tightly than any words of love.
She watches him when he can’t see her watching, wanting to be part of what’s happening to him. There are so many stories these days about men coming home from war, and how difficult it is for them to adjust. Always the advice is the same: give them time. Kitty is willing to give him all the time in the world, so long as she can be sure he still loves her. Often when his faraway gaze falls upon her she sees his face light up with happiness. And once, kissing her before retiring to his solitary bed, he says, ‘If it wasn’t for you, I’d have let them kill me over there.’
One great consolation is that he loves Pamela, and she loves him. Often she’ll sit on his lap for an hour at a time, clinging to him tightly, her face pressed to his chest. They never talk. They just sit like that, his arms round the child’s little body, in one or other of the empty echoing rooms of the great house, and let the world go by.
PART TWO
ART
1945–47
14
In early November of 1945 the painter William Coldstream, finally released from the army, accepts an invitation to teach at the Camberwell College of Art. His friends Victor Pasmore, Claude Rogers and Lawrence Gowing are already on the staff; and altogether it’s as if the pre-war Euston Road school has been reborn and moved south of the river.
Coldstream takes his first evening class wearing his dark blue demob suit, looking more like a bank clerk than an artist. His class of twenty students covers a range of ages, from the very young, fresh from the Downs School or a foundation course in a provincial town, to ex-service men and women in their late twenties. Among them is Larry Cornford. The class takes place in one of the Life Rooms in the shabby Victorian building on the Peckham Road, where the roar of passing lorries outside competes with the shriek of tram wheels. A life model waits, fully dressed, sitting on an upright chair to one side.
The teacher begins by reading from Ruskin’s Elements of Drawing.
‘I believe that the excellence of an artist depends wholly upon refinement of perception, and that it is this which a master or a school can teach.’
Larry watches his teacher intently as he speaks. He’s seen some of his paintings and he admires them. The man himself is a surprise: his voice unassertive, his face almost expressionless as he speaks. He tells the class that they must learn to judge the distance of objects from the eye. He calls the life model to stand in front of the class. He faces her, one arm outreached, holding a pencil vertically in his hand.
‘The eye notes the length of the head, crown to chin, on the pencil. The hand transfers the same distance to the pad, making marks accordingly. Now looking again,
note the distance from eyebrows to mouth. Make the marks. You see how, little by little, you build up a precise set of relationships between the elements of the face.’
Larry does as he is told. The model is young and has a thick fringe. Her straight brown hair falls to her shoulders, framing a pale face with sleepy eyes. She seems not to mind being looked at.
Coldstream moves among the students as they work, peering at their sketch pads, saying nothing. Larry finds the process of measuring and making marks an awkward business, far removed from the rapid freehand sketching with which he has always begun before. The student beside him, a very young man, almost a boy, evidently feels this too, judging by the way he scowls and mutters as he works. When the teacher is by him he vents his frustration.
‘It’s like painting by numbers, isn’t it?’ he says.
‘What would you rather do?’ says Coldstream, unoffended.
‘I’d rather paint what I feel.’
‘That comes later,’ says Coldstream. ‘First you must see.’
As the students work, the girl model’s gaze roams the room and comes to rest on Larry. Her eyes linger on him with disarming directness, as if she supposes he doesn’t see her. Larry realises with a shock that this face he’s been so obediently mapping is, if not exactly beautiful, certainly very striking. Her nose is too strong, her mouth too full, her eyes too startling; but the overall effect is undeniably attractive. She looks both very young and very sure of herself, almost imperious.
When the class ends some of the students gather round Coldstream, who is pulling on a beige officer’s topcoat against the night chill. The others pack up their sketch pads and drift out down the bare-board corridor to the street.
‘Poor old Bill,’ says a voice behind Larry.
It’s the young model. Larry is vaguely aware that Coldstream’s first name is Bill.
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