Alice I Have Been: A Novel

by Melanie Benjamin

  “No.” I heard myself say it, in a voice loud and terrible. I shook my head, over and over, as the rest of my body froze in place; froze in time. I refused to take the envelope. If I did not take it, if I did not open it, then I would never have to know what it said.

  Dimly, I heard Ina start to call for Regi as she jumped up from the settee and ran, much faster than I would have imagined, into the drawing room.

  “Please, Mrs. Hargreaves,” Mary Ann pleaded. “Please, ma’am.” She thrust the telegram at me—she actually grasped my hand and shoved the envelope into it—and stumbled indoors, sobbing.

  I was cold. The spring warmth was gone, replaced by an icy wind that rattled my bones, shook my hand as it tried to tear open the envelope. Somehow I managed it—my fingers were too numb to feel the paper—and I had to read it, then; had to read the bold typeface, short and impersonal: Regret to inform you your son Captain Alan Knyveton Hargreaves killed in action.

  “No,” I repeated, much more quietly, resignedly.

  Regi was before me; he was kneeling, grasping my hand, trying to pry the telegram from my fingers, but I could not let go. “Which one? Which one is it?” Tears were already rolling down his ruddy cheeks; he was shaking my hand, grasping my shoulder so hard that it hurt. For once, he understood immediately what had happened; there was no chance for him to prepare himself. But then I realized—he was already prepared. He had been, for months.

  So had I—but that did not prevent the sudden wave of realization from washing over me, so hard and fast I could not catch my breath. Something was hitting my chest, a hard, angry fist hitting at me, pounding at my lungs so that they might remember their function—and that something was my own hand, the telegram still in it.

  Papa cried for the boys. Mamma cried for Edith—the words, senseless to me, nevertheless repeated themselves, over and over, in my suddenly throbbing head.

  But no—I remembered holding Alan for the last time, only I didn’t know it was the last time, and my arms ached at the memory, and my tears began to fall, and even through my pain I rejoiced to know that I was not like Mamma. I could cry for my son, my son, my child—

  Someone was crying; Regi was crying. Regi had my face in his hands, his great dry paws; he was calling for me, saying my name—“Alice, Alice, help me, I cannot bear it.”

  Somehow I saw, through my tears, this man, this husband—this father. And I knew he was speaking the truth; this was a burden he could not bear. His face, his simple, guileless face, etched with a thousand lines of grief, turned to me, needing me—

  Telling me that I had to be the strong one. Just as Mamma had been.

  Somehow, I knew to look up, even as Regi sagged at my feet. There, in the French windows, stood the servants; one of the Mary Anns was crying, another shaking her head, but they were all staring. Staring at us; at Regi, who was crumbling, like an ancient statue, before their very eyes; at our grief, which no one should be allowed to see.

  “Go away!” I shouted, rage tearing my throat apart. I leaped to my feet and took a step toward them, waving the telegram in my hand like a weapon. “Leave us alone!” Somehow I maneuvered Regi so that I was standing between him and the house; I put my arms about him, shielding him from their prying eyes, for I could not allow them to see him like this. “Leave us be,” I whispered, as Regi wrapped his arms about my waist and sobbed.

  I stood there, holding him close, patting his head as my own tears dried before they could fall. I whispered soothing sounds—not even words, only murmurs and sighs, for that was all I could give him, and I knew it would be enough. A primitive emotion surged through me, from the top of my head down to the bottom of my feet; they felt like tree roots, holding me upright and tall. I was a mighty oak, sheltering my husband from the world, giving him room to grieve. I would not fail Regi; I would protect him, I would be strong for him, I would give my son up, just as Mamma had done, just as all the mothers of England were doing. It had happened to me, just as I knew it would—hadn’t I known that the odds of his surviving two wars were impossible? But I would be strong, I must be strong, because Regi needed me to. And because I had failed him in so many ways, I would not allow myself to fail him now.

  I continued to hold my husband, who continued to sob without shame, and my back remained strong and sure. The shadows now were long and deep; an owl called mournfully in the distance, and I smiled to hear it, even as its moan pierced my heart. Ina had left, Miss Kimball was gone, the servants, I prayed to God, were hiding somewhere deep within the bowels of the house.

  And Regi and I were, finally, alone; together.

  Chapter 16

  • • •

  AFTER ALAN’S DEATH, REGI AND I TREATED EACH OTHER differently. At times more formally, overly polite and careful; other times we were too indulgent, allowing each other to say or do things that were almost hurtful, yet we pretended not to mind.

  I still thought of Leo, I still wondered at what I had missed with him, although I also found myself trying to define just what it was I had found with Regi, as well. It was a way of life, I supposed; a kind, warm, safe way of life, with a gentle man who had shrunk suddenly overnight.

  A life that was all about our boys, as it always had been; they were our common prayer. Alan was like a phantom limb—we could not quite reconcile ourselves to his absence, as it had always been the three boys; three little soldiers, all in a row. We thought of them rather as a matched set; the absence of one made the others look lost, not quite right, and I had to wonder if Mamma and Papa felt that way when Edith died.

  Not that we saw Rex or Caryl, of course, except for one brief leave each; the war raged on through the rest of 1915, and as 1916 drew to a close there was no sign of the horrific battles abating. Conscription had been introduced, there was talk of coal shortages, and the German submarines had taken over the oceans so that we could not import food. Our household staff shrank to skeletal proportions as men went to war and women joined the Land Army or worked in munitions factories. We closed off many rooms, and Regi faithfully tended a small vegetable patch where the cutting garden had been, proudly showing me his bounty, bothering Cook about the proper way to put it all up.

  Yet still we lived for our remaining sons; we wrote regularly, we prayed, we rejoiced in their precious leaves—Caryl in the summer of 1915, Rex in the early winter of 1916. Just as Alan had been, they were changed, although Caryl appeared the least affected. He persisted in telling us stories of pranks and larks—of football matches in the mud of the battlefields, where they had to be careful of undetected land mines; he did clench his jaw as he told of one fellow who simply disintegrated after kicking what he thought was the makeshift football—and he slept peacefully enough at night. No nightmares for my youngest, at least.

  Rex, my Rex, my charming, frustrating, lovable boy, did not tell stories. He scarcely talked at all, he who used to speak his mind regardless of the consequences. There was a haunted look in those eyes that used to gleam so mischievously, and he could not seem to bear the quiet of the house; it wore so obviously upon his nerves. He would sit in the drawing room after dinner, jiggling his legs, playing the gramophone as loud as it could go—anything, it seemed, to stave off the quiet, and the questions. Naturally, Regi and I wanted to know about the war, how he felt it was going, but as it was obvious it grieved him to tell us, we learned not to ask.

  Once I came upon him sitting in the library; he was staring out the window toward the cricket pitch, which was now brown and covered with weeds. I started toward him—his back was to me—but then stopped. He had a knife in his hand, a small penknife. As he sat, he pressed the point of that knife into the palm of one hand; small trickles of blood snaked down his wrist and dripped upon the carpet, and for once in my life I could not care. I could not move, could not speak—my entire body was frozen in fear for my son, who was sitting not three feet from me but in reality was so far away, so already lost, that I knew I could never reach him again.

  He did not ap
pear to notice the blood. Or the pain.

  Shaking, I walked backward out of the library; once in the hall, I stood sentry outside the closed door, watching for Regi and the servants. I would not allow them in; I would not allow anyone to see. After Rex went to bed that night—walking past me where I stood, unsurprised to see me there, pausing only to kiss me absently on the cheek—I took a basin of water, tore my petticoat, for I had no idea where the Mary Anns kept the old rags, found some bleach in the scullery, and tried to get the blood out of the carpet myself. I did not quite succeed, so I rearranged the furniture over it.

  A week later, Rex was gone back to the front; I never once spoke to him about the scars on his hand, although he never tried to hide them from me.

  Cuffnells was no longer a grand country house; it was a fading relic with rooms echoing with the laughter, the parties, and the gaiety of the past. Just like Regi and me, I could imagine the servants whispering; sometimes I saw us through their eyes, two companionable old people living on memories, for to talk of the present brought far too much pain and worry.

  I often found him sitting in Caryl’s room, staring out the window toward the forest, the paths where the boys had played; he often found me in Rex’s room, one of his boyhood books in my hand—Treasure Island or Black Beauty.

  Neither of us spoke on these occasions. It was enough to know that each was watching out for the other.

  One chilly October morning the doorbell chimed; Regi himself answered it, as he was expecting a delivery of onion bulbs and wanted to make sure the lorry took them round to the gardener’s house. What summoned me was the unnatural silence; I was upstairs in the hall, seeing to the hanging of a new portrait of Papa, when I became aware of an eerie stillness. I had heard the door chime but nothing after that; no voices, no footsteps. It was as if all the air had been driven from the house.

  And in that moment, I knew.

  Dropping the hammer I was holding as one of our few remaining footmen penciled in the nail hole, I walked slowly to the head of the stairs. “Regi?” I asked softly.

  He was standing in the open door, a small white envelope in his hand; as I watched, he slowly took a step backward and leaned against the wall, the envelope fluttering to the ground. He said not a word. Then he looked up at me, with eyes that were just black holes of grief.

  I flew down the stairs, already knowing what the telegram said—for had I not memorized the other?—the only question in my heart being, Which son was taken from us now? I had a momentary, ridiculous thought that it was up to me to choose; if a name appeared in my head, then that was the son that was lost. And to my everlasting shame, my everlasting agony, a name did appear, did whisper itself, but it was not the name on the telegram that I snatched from the ground: Regret to inform you your son Leopold Reginald Hargreaves killed in action.

  I stared at it, not comprehending; no, I thought, this cannot be. Leopold is already dead; haven’t I mourned him enough?

  Then realization dawned: Rex. They had taken Rex. My second son—the son of my heart, I knew it now, for certain; the son I had named for my first love. I had killed him; I had doomed him by naming him this. I knew it, I knew it even as I bent over in anguish, feeling as if someone had ripped my chest open and pulled my heart out with angry hands; there was no greater pain, no greater emptiness. Holding on to Regi, as he held on to me—without the other, we each would have fallen—I gasped and swallowed and blinked my eyes, remembering that I had to be strong; I was always the one who was strong.

  But this time, I could not stop the images flooding my mind: Rex lying on the battlefield, Rex in a torn uniform—hadn’t I always scolded him for tearing his clothes? But not like this; not a uniform shredded, ripped apart by bullets. Rex with blood pouring out from his heart, his great, compassionate, seeking heart, Rex crying out for me, wondering why I could not come—You don’t chase after us—you never! You’re much too old. Although if you did, I’d most likely let you catch me, just to be nice—

  Rex lying cold and still, his eyes open but not seeing, his mouth no longer moving. No longer able to call my name.

  “Alice,” Regi cried out, needing me; his arms flailed about, his hands sought my comfort. But this time I could not help him; even with the footman hanging over the banister watching, I had to run from Regi, run from his grief; I felt it chasing after me as I flew down the hall, flinging myself into the library and closing the doors behind me.

  Once inside, I fell to my knees, a great sob ripping my heart apart, my tears flowing freely for him. My boy, my little boy; I remembered him creeping onto my lap that day so long ago, his sturdy, warm form snug against my chest, against my heart, and I had scarcely allowed it; I had pushed him off my lap, had refused to read him that book—that wretched book! Always coming between me and those I loved! And now it was too late, oh, it was too late! I would never hold him again—how could I live one minute more with the knowledge that I could never hold him, scold him, read to him, again?

  Stifling a cry, I pushed myself up onto a footstool—was it the one I had positioned over his blood?—and fixed my gaze fiercely on the mantel clock. Through my tears I watched the second hand go around and I began to count out loud—one, three, two, four—wasn’t that how Mr. Dodgson used to count? Finally I reached sixty, and I held my breath—but the pain was worse, jagged edges of glass ripping my heart apart, as the second hand continued to go around again and again; it would never stop, they would never stop coming, all the hours and days and years I would have to live without my dear boy, knowing he was in his grave, alone. Somewhere I could not be.

  Suddenly there were arms about me; Regi’s arms. “My dear girl,” he whispered, gathering me into his lap, more tenderly than anyone had held me when I was a child. “My dear, dear girl, shhhh. I’m here.”

  His embrace, so dear, so complete—so unexpected, but it need not have been; sobbing harder, I understood, finally, after thirty-seven years. “Oh!” I gasped, when I could at last draw a breath, fighting my way through a fresh onslaught of tears. “Oh, forgive me, forgive me! I’m so sorry!” All the times I had looked at Regi, wanting Leo instead; all the times I had imagined Leo as the father of my children, wondered what those phantom sons would have been like.

  And all the time, Regi was here. Regi loved his sons. Regi loved me, as I was—there was nothing to fear, nothing to hide from him. I knew it, I knew it always—but what I did not know until this moment, this instant—

  What I did not know was that I loved him, too. That was what I had found, what had been there all the time; how stupid, how selfish I had been, not to see it.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said again—to Regi, to Rex, to Alan. To Caryl. “I’m so very sorry.” The tears would not stop, although they came more peacefully now; as if from a deep spring within me that had simply been waiting for this moment to overflow.

  Still Regi held me, and I let him, and I wondered why I had not let him be strong for me before; as our tears mingled together, finally I felt a calmness come over me, and I was able to whisper “Thank you” to Rex.

  For he had given me the gift I had been unable to give him when he had asked, curled up in my lap as I was now curled up in Regi’s, so long ago.

  IT WAS CRUEL, TOO CRUEL, to lose two sons; everyone said so, yet no one could make it stop. For all over England, mothers and fathers were mourning sons, as the Battle of the Somme was raging. And there was still one more son left at the front who needed our prayers, our thoughts.

  The son whose name had flashed in my mind before I opened the telegram; I could never betray this, but I knew, then, that I was no better mother than my own had been. I had always vowed I would not love any of my children less than the others, as Mamma had so obviously done. Yet when the moment came—the moment when, wildly, irrationally, I felt it was within my power to choose which son I could keep with me forever—I had discovered that I was no better than she. There is always so much talk about the sins of the fathers, but it is the sins of
the mothers that are the most difficult to avoid repeating.

  “Surely they’ll send Caryl back now, won’t they?” I asked Regi, who always assured me they would, no matter how many times I asked. I found myself voicing my concern for my youngest far more than I ever had for his brothers, as if to reassure myself that I wasn’t a monster, after all. Perhaps I said it often enough that someone heard it; by the end of 1916 we were able to rejoice in the knowledge that Caryl had been reassigned to England. Even if he was not under our roof, at least he was no longer in France. We could not be entirely easy of mind, though, until Armistice Day.

  Peace at last—but what did it mean? There was no peace for us; on that strangely hushed, melancholy day, we went to church and prayed along with the nation. Only we sat in our pew at Lyndhurst Parish Church, beneath a memorial plaque to our two dead sons.

  Alan was buried in Fleurbaix, Rex in Guillemont, each one just another grave among thousands. I never visited either but received two photographs of white crosses, presumably marking their resting places, although no one could ever know with certainty if that was where they truly lay. I took my comfort instead in visiting the plaque, and the memorial in the baptistry of the church that listed all of Lyndhurst’s fallen sons.

  Although I was careful to visit it only at odd hours, when I could be alone with my thoughts; I was not just another grieving mother, and my boys were not just common fallen soldiers. I was Alice in Wonderland, and they were the lords of Cuffnells. It did not seem right that their names were listed among the sons of those who had been in service to us.

  AND SO THE WAR WAS OVER. I had hoped that there would be some return to normalcy, to the life we had lived, but I was disappointed. No matter who I invited to dinner, there would always be two empty places. Three, actually; Caryl moved back to his flat in London, reluctantly coming home to Cuffnells only on odd weekends. I managed to scrape together a more sufficient staff, but barely; the housemaids were rude, bickered over their wages, and the sole footman actually smoked in the kitchen.