The press gather in the Mughal Gardens outside Mountbatten’s study, where the meeting takes place. While they wait the Times man tells Larry, ‘This little old fellow’s the only one that can stop the violence. They listen to him.’
When at last the French windows open, and Gandhi comes out with Mountbatten to face the photographers, Larry is unexpectedly moved by the sight. Gandhi is so small and frail, with his bare legs and bald brown head and white khaddar robe and little round glasses. It seems inconceivable that such a tiny figure can have held the mighty British Empire to ransom, without the backing of an army, without the threat of violence, solely through the moral force of his character.
It’s plain that he doesn’t enjoy being photographed, but he puts up with it with smiling good grace. Lady Mountbatten joins them, and more photographs are taken. Then as they turn to go back into the house, Gandhi rests one hand on Lady Mountbatten’s shoulder for support. Max Desfor, the AP man, still has his camera out, and at once he takes a shot.
‘That’s the one,’ he says.
After Gandhi has departed, Mountbatten calls Alan and Larry into the staff meeting to discuss the communiqué that is to be issued to the press. This turns out to be far from straightforward. Gandhi has proposed a radical solution to avoid partition, with all of the bloodshed that it’s feared will follow.
‘He proposes,’ says Mountbatten, reading from the notes he dictated after the meeting, ‘that the Congress cabinet be dismissed, and Jinnah invited to form an all-Muslim administration.’
This causes consternation in the room.
‘Out of the question,’ says Miéville. ‘Nehru won’t stand for it.’
‘His reasoning is,’ says Mountbatten, ‘that with a Muslim leadership of a united India, the Muslims need not fear Hindu persecution. The alternative, he believes, that is to say, partition, will lead to a bloodbath.’
‘He’s senile,’ says George Abell.
‘It’s a trick,’ says Syed Tarkhan. ‘It’s a trap to catch Jinnah out.’
‘Oh, I think he’s sincere,’ says Mountbatten. ‘But I’m not sure he’s realistic.’
‘He tried this on Wavell before,’ says Miéville. ‘He tried it on Willingdon. It’s the only shot he’s got in his locker. Claim the moral high ground through self-sacrifice. That sort of stunt works on us British because we know we don’t belong here. But just you try it on the Hindus.’
A communiqué of sorts is fudged for the press that leaves all options open. Mountbatten sighs and rubs his forehead.
‘I’m beginning to think this is one of those cock-ups where there just isn’t a way out,’ he says.
After dinner Larry finds himself beside Lady Mountbatten. She has been friendly to him ever since the episode of the dog mess.
‘What do you make of Gandhi?’ Larry asks her.
‘I worship at his feet,’ says Lady Mountbatten. ‘The man is a saint. But the one who’s going to save India is Nehru.’
Larry writes a letter to Kitty and Ed, wanting the chance to get his unruly crowd of new experiences into some sort of order.
I feel as if I’ve tumbled into a different world, where all the rules no longer function. Nothing is simple. Whatever we do leaving India we will be blamed and hated. There is no great act of statesmanship that will resolve the crisis. Poor Mountbatten just looks done in. We’ve already said we’re quitting India. The only thing left seems to be to go, but then there will be civil war. Gandhi says we must go anyway and ‘accept the bloodbath’. So in the midst of all this you can imagine how unimportant my personal cares appear. I didn’t tell you before I left that Nell and I have parted. Also that I’m no longer thinking that my future lies in art. Today there has been a story in the paper of riots in Calcutta and Bombay. Stabbings, bombings, throwing of acid. A car ambushed and set alight, four passengers burned alive, screaming for mercy. How can I even consider my own troubles worth one second’s attention in the face of such suffering? Ed will read this and say, Where is your loving God now? But you, Kitty, will back me up when I say that there is good in us as well as evil, and we must believe in its power, and work for its victory. Otherwise what are our lives for?
27
The letter is addressed to Edenfield Place, but by the time it arrives Kitty and Pamela are back at River Farm. Louisa walks over to bring Kitty the letter and they read it together, sitting in the April sunshine on the seat in the yard.
‘Heavens!’ says Louisa. ‘What dramas!’
Kitty realises with a shock that the news of Larry’s parting from Nell pleases her more than it should.
‘I wasn’t ever sure that girl was right for him,’ she says.
‘Of course she wasn’t,’ says Louisa. ‘Larry’s far too good for her.’
‘Doesn’t it seem odd to think of him all the way over there and us still here?’
Still here. Kitty doesn’t say so, but nothing has got any easier. The long hard winter is over, and her life is back in its usual pattern. Her days pass making modest meals, tidying up the old house so that Mrs Willis can clean it, repairing Pamela’s torn clothing, helping out at the village church, driving into the shops in Lewes, listening to the wireless, reading to Pamela, reading to herself. There always seems to be just a little more to do than there’s time to do it, and yet she has the feeling that she does nothing at all. She envies Larry his Indian adventure.
Louisa has her own reasons for being dissatisfied with her life. She’s been trying for a long time now to get pregnant.
‘Did I tell you,’ she says, ‘I’m going to see a quack? Mummy’s persuaded me to go. George has to see him too.’
‘Well, I suppose there’s no harm,’ says Kitty.
‘I expect he’ll tell me to eat raw eggs and lay off the booze or something. Just so long as he doesn’t tell me to rest. Nothing gets me quite so worked up as being told to rest.’
‘Maybe you should go up to town for a few weeks,’ says Kitty.
‘I don’t see how that would get me a baby,’ says Louisa. ‘Unless, of course …’ She gives Kitty a wicked look, like the old Louisa. ‘Remember the girls who used to stand outside the barracks at night shouting “Para Eleven”?’
‘Oh, God!’ says Kitty, giggling. ‘I do miss the war.’
‘All we wanted at the time was for it to be over.’
Kitty sighs as she remembers.
‘All I wanted was my own house, and my own husband, and my own little baby. I used to daydream about making curtains, and baking bread, and waking up in a sunny bedroom in my very own little home.’
‘I don’t see why it all had to be so little,’ says Louisa.
‘I think I was playing at dolls’ houses,’ says Kitty. ‘Now it’s real, and I’m turning into my mother.’
She doesn’t tell Louisa the worst of it, which is that sometimes she sits in a chair for an hour or more, seized by a strange heavy torpor, doing nothing. She feels tired all the time these days. Her mind goes blank, and she can’t think what she’s meant to be doing. Then Pamela will appear, demanding to be fed or entertained, and so she’ll stir herself; but even as she boils an egg, and toasts a slice of bread, she has this numb feeling that it’s all pointless and going nowhere.
She can’t share this with Louisa because Louisa believes having a baby will solve all her problems. She can’t tell her that there are times when Pamela makes her want to scream. Of course she adores her daughter and would die for her if need be, but what’s proving harder is the enterprise of living for her. It turns out a child is not enough. But not enough for what?
She wishes Larry were here. She could talk to Larry about all this. That’s what’s so good about people with faith, even if you don’t share their faith. They know what you mean when you talk about meaning. They understand that there has to be some sort of greater purpose. She’s never forgotten how he said to her, the very first time they met, ‘Don’t you want to do something noble and fine with your life?’
Sometimes, sittin
g doing nothing in the kitchen chair, Kitty thinks ahead to the time when Pamela will be grown-up, and will no longer need her. She asks herself, What will I do then?
I’ll have Ed, of course.
Then her mind slides away from these thoughts, not liking where they lead her, and her head fills with grey vapour like a cloud.
Hugo comes, more than is justified by the demands of the business. He sits with her, and plays with Pammy, and acts the part of the dear old family friend, except for the looks he gives her. She reprimands him, always in light, easy terms, as if he’s an over-eager child.
‘That’s enough, Hugo. Stop it.’
Then when she’s expecting him one day and he doesn’t come, she finds she misses his attentions. That frightens her.
She has a dream. In her dream she’s wearing a bathing costume and all the boys are looking at her. She feels youthful and desirable. She’s on a beach, and the waves that come rolling in are frothing and churning on the shore. The ocean beyond is infinitely big. She starts to run, and runs over the sand and the pebbles towards the sea. She runs faster and faster, filled with gladness, because she knows she’s going to hurl herself into those great crashing waves. The waves are going to embrace her and sweep her away.
She wakes before she reaches the water, but her heart is thundering, and her whole body is glowing. It’s not a death dream at all, this isn’t a desire to drown. It’s a longing to use all of herself, to hold nothing back, to experience an overwhelming desire. And instead of the explosive urgency of her dream, all she feels in her waking life is fatigue.
‘You know what I think we should do for Easter?’ she tells Pamela. ‘I think we should go and visit Grandma and Grandpa.’
Pamela thinks about this.
‘I am affronted,’ she says.
Kitty’s parents always make a great fuss of Pamela, and there’s nothing the little girl appreciates as much as attention. As for Kitty herself, she’s aware that she doesn’t visit her parents nearly as much as they’d like. Her mother has a way of getting on the wrong side of her, and so Kitty always ends up behaving badly, and being what her mother calls ‘moody’. Still, they didn’t visit at Christmas time, and tired and restless as she is, Kitty would rather go than stay.
*
‘Hello, little stranger,’ says Mrs Teale to Pamela. ‘I expect you’ve entirely forgotten who I am.’
‘You’re Grandma,’ says Pamela.
‘Guess what I’ve got for the most beautiful little girl in the world?’
‘A present,’ says Pamela.
‘I wonder whether you want it now, or whether you’d rather keep it for Easter Day?’
‘Now,’ says Pamela.
Kitty follows this exchange with helpless irritation. It’s been a long slow journey and all she wants is a comfortable chair and a cup of tea. Why must her mother go in for this ludicrous arch teasing tone of voice, as if she and Pamela are engaged in some conspiracy?
The present is a small chocolate egg, wrapped in silver paper. Pamela unwraps it at once and puts it whole into her mouth.
‘Who’s a hungry girl?’ says Mrs Teale.
‘Say thank you, Pammy,’ says Kitty.
‘Thank you,’ says the child, her mouth full.
Mrs Teale turns to her daughter.
‘No handsome young husband, then?’
Kitty wants to scream. She’s been in the house five minutes and already her mother has managed to enrage her.
‘I told you, Mummy. Ed’s in France.’
‘Well, I don’t know, darling. No one ever tells me anything. It would just be nice if he visited us once in a while. Michael was saying only the other day that he’s never heard the story of how he got his Victoria Cross.’
‘You know Ed doesn’t like to talk about that.’
‘I can’t think why not. You’d think he’d be proud. Did I tell you Robert Reynolds has been made a canon of Wells? He still asks after you, you know?’
‘I thought he was married.’
‘Is he?’ says Mrs Teale vaguely. ‘Maybe he is. I can’t keep up these days. We all thought Harold would marry the Stanley girl, but he says it’s off, and there was never anything in it in the first place. I don’t understand young people. It seems you can go about together and it all means nothing at all. Pamela is looking a bit peaky, isn’t she? We’ll do our best to feed her up and give her lots of good country air.’
‘We live in the country too, Mummy.’
‘Somehow I never think of Sussex as being the real country. I suppose because it’s on the way to France.’
Kitty’s father’s return puts a stop to the stream of barbed prattle that issues from her mother’s mouth. In his presence she becomes timid, clumsy, awkward. Michael Teale, by contrast, is all smiles and hugs.
‘My two best girls!’ he cries. ‘My word, Pamela! You smell chocolatey enough to eat.’ And turning to Kitty, ‘Guess who’s been filling my ear with your praises? Jonathan Saxon!’
‘Dear Mr Saxon,’ says Kitty. ‘Is he still bossing the poor little choirboys about?’
‘He asked me to ask you if you’d sing in the abbey on Sunday. You know he always says you were the best soprano he ever had.’
Kitty hasn’t sung in public for years, and she was never properly trained. But this request pleases her more than she would have expected.
‘Oh, I couldn’t,’ she says. ‘I’m far too rusty.’
‘Well, you tell Jonathan yourself. All I can say is, he seems dead set on it.’
When Mrs Teale hears of the proposal she manages to turn it around and make it a source of disappointment.
‘Oh, do sing, darling. It’s such a waste, the way you do nothing with your beautiful voice.’
‘I’ve no intention of making a fool of myself in front of a full congregation,’ says Kitty sharply.
‘You could sing “Little Brown Jug”,’ says Pamela.
Mr Saxon calls round to make his request in person. Charmed by the sweet old gentleman’s pink smiling face and flattered by his praise, Kitty agrees to sing, on condition that they can go through the piece at least once beforehand. He wants her to sing César Franck’s Panis Angelicus.
Pamela’s greatest pleasure on these visits is playing with the dolls her own mother played with when she was little. This notion, that her mother was a little girl once, both puzzles and fascinates her. She wants to know the names of every doll, and which ones were her mother’s special favourites, and what they all did together. Then once told she repeats the pattern as faithfully as she can.
‘Rosie, you’re the birthday girl today. You can sit on the birthday chair. And Ethel, you’re Rosie’s best friend. Droopy, you can be by Rosie’s feet. Oh, Rosie, I forgot your flower hat. You have to wear the flower hat on your birthday.’
Kitty watches her child’s grave re-creation of her past with a smile. But along with the fond memories comes another more shadowed picture. She sees her daughter growing up and having a daughter of her own, and that little child playing the same game. And is this all? whispers a voice in her head. Are we never to leave the nursery?
Her father brings out the sherry before dinner, in Kitty’s honour, and her mother drinks her entire glassful. It’s clear from Michael Teale’s frown that this is not what he wants, though having poured his wife the sherry it seems odd that she should not be supposed to drink it. However, he says nothing.
His smiles are all for his daughter.
‘So have you had any trouble with these terrible floods?’ he says.
‘The river burst its banks,’ says Kitty, ‘but our house has never been in danger. I’m just so happy not to be freezing any more.’
‘What a winter it’s been! Here’s Easter at last, the feast of the Resurrection, and I’m telling everyone the worst is over.’
‘But Michael,’ says Mrs Teale, ‘winter will come round again.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he says, his eyes still on Kitty. ‘So how’s that famous husband of yours getti
ng along?’
‘He’s in France,’ says Kitty. ‘He works so hard.’
‘Jesus rises from the dead on Easter Day,’ says Mrs Teale, her cheeks now a little flushed. ‘And the year goes round, and then he’s crucified all over again.’
‘Be quiet!’ says Mr Teale. ‘You’re a fool.’
Silence falls over the table. This is the first time Kitty has known her father reprimand her mother in the presence of others. It frightens her. She looks down at her plate. But her father resumes the conversation as if nothing has happened.
‘I respect a man who works hard,’ he says.
‘It does mean he’s away from home a great deal,’ says Kitty, avoiding looking at her mother.
‘We all have to make sacrifices,’ says her father. ‘When I was a young man I had a great dream. I was going to go round the world, working my passage on cargo ships. Then the war came along, of course, and that was that.’
Kitty has never heard of this dream before.
‘Maybe you could go now,’ she says.
‘Impossible.’ He beams at her, as if this impossibility somehow suits him. ‘Here I am, nearly sixty years old. And there’s your mother. No, I shall stick by the old abbey now, and be buried beside it. The abbey and I will crumble away together.’
She sees then, for the merest instant, a flicker of horror in his eyes, not at the coming of death but at the losing of life; at the life he might have lived, and knows he never will.
Lying awake that night in the bed she slept in as a child, Kitty tells herself her life will be different, that it is already different. She will not grow old in a loveless angry marriage. And yet her mother could never have anticipated such a fate. How is it to be avoided? The years go by, and the shadows lengthen. For a while you live for your children, and then the children leave home, and what do you do then? Turn slowly sour, like undrunk milk.
*
On Easter Day, at the big mid-morning service, Kitty sings Panis Angelicus. The abbey is full. Her father stands robed and beaming at the altar behind her. Her mother sits with Pamela in the front pew before her. Old Mr Saxon plays the gently falling chords of the introduction on the big organ. And the melody rises up from within her like the sweet breath of life itself.
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