You smiled at that (as well you might) but you said: ‘It’ll be so lonely.’
‘Lonely?’ I took you by the shoulders and shook you gently. ‘Do you think you will be alone?’ I asked. ‘You have a husband … Only the goodbye is sad, precious – the rest is so strong, and has such hope buried deep inside it, that it can never fail us. Isn’t that true? When I am gone I don’t take everything with me. The best part stays with both of us all the time: it’s the part we’ve built together and live on now, the part we’ll have in the future. And in a little while I shall come back, and we can share it all again.’
‘And you’ll take care of yourself?’
I nodded. ‘I shall take care of myself. For you, for me, for the child you may have there,’ and I touched you lightly, bending over to kiss you at the same time. There was salt on your lips, the last trace of the tears. For a while we held each other closely, while I stroked your breast and played with you. Between us there was a small prickling of sex, which helped to smooth out and resolve the difficult moment but was not strong enough to arouse either of us fully. Presently it died, and you sat up and said: ‘I must have my bath, darling, and pack,’ and then you got up and left me alone.
I watched you as you put on your wrap and straightened your hair before the mirror. The room was very silent all round us: even the clock, the hostile witness, was noiseless.
It was not the worst moment of all, but it was getting on towards it.
You came out of the bathroom and stood by the bed and looked down at me, and asked gently: ‘Shall I get dressed?’
It was sweet of you to ask: I knew that you were tired and quite sexless at that moment, and yet you thought only of me and a possible last moment of hunger in me. But it wouldn’t have been any good.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry … Yes, do.’
You shook your head. ‘You know it would be the same for me, too.’
I wanted to watch you dressing, which you do very gracefully, but it would have had nothing in it but sadness now, so I went off to shave and have my shower. Ordinarily, looking at myself in the mirror, I would have joked about the respective shadows under our eyes – yours had a faint violet stain, which it was very touching to have induced – but now, once again, there was no fun in having sweetly wearied each other: it was only sad, only destroyingly pathetic. I felt somehow that we were not doing well; this was not the sequel which the night deserved, however abrupt its ending; but I didn’t know of any cure which wouldn’t take more spirit than I had left.
Your crying had had something to do with it: you had only expressed, in your own tender way, what both of us were feeling, and it now felt as if the language you had been using was really mine as well.
But when I came back from the bathroom I found that you were now taking hold of the thing yourself – a better hold than mine: for my entrance coincided with that of a waiter bearing two champagne cocktails. If he was startled by the sight of a naked man in fur boots stalking into the bedroom, he didn’t show it and never spilt a drop.
When he had gone: ‘Clever girl’, I said, smiling at you.
‘It was just an idea.’
‘The best today.’
And so it turned out. The drinks cured nothing, of course, but (as had happened at the beginning of our meeting) they carried us past a corner that had a cutting edge to it. They even tided over the most wretched item of all, the packing, which had about it a feeling that something dear and precious was being throttled inch by inch. To see all the things you had looked so lovely in – the nightdress, the blue wrap, the flower-patterned mules – disappearing one by one for the last time was something hardly to be endured.
We were dressed, and it was time to go.
In your street clothes you suddenly looked grown-up – competent, individual, and also very attractive. I looked at you, realized all that I was leaving, and wondered how we were going to manage the next few moments, and the ordeal which was now demandingly upon us.
You put your arms around me. ‘Well, sweet?’ you said.
I nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’
‘You look good in your uniform.’
‘I don’t feel very much like a soldier.’
But holding you close like that, I was strengthened. You’re such a lovely child, and to have you in one’s arms is always a potent reminder of manhood. You felt as you had felt last night – warm, and straight-legged and undeniably mine; and the fact that you felt sad also, and that your under-lip was inclined to droop and your head lay on my shoulder as if it wanted to rest there forever, all these were a summons to action and responsibility. They had to be met, and met they would be.
I put up my hand on your bright hair. ‘Take care of yourself, darling,’ I said.
‘I will.’
‘And have a baby if you can.’
You nodded, and I kissed you.
‘My baby, I mean.’
That made you smile, and you raised your eyes until they held mine. I hoped that I could match the love and tenderness I saw in them.
‘It will be yours … Be careful, won’t you? Don’t forget I love you … Kiss, sweet.’
We kissed, very gently, and afterwards your arms dropped and there was a little space between us. That space was never closed. Once more you let your eyes go up to meet mine: then your glance went round the room, saying its goodbye, and then, mutely valorous, you turned away from me and walked towards the door.
I followed. Presently the door clicked behind us, and our short lease was ended.
The door had a number on it which I have remembered. It was easily memorized – number 365. Number of days in the year. No connexion with us. We hadn’t had a year. In fact we’d hardly had a day.
11
There remained a little time to spare before you need leave for the station, and rather than hang about doing nothing, we walked down the hill to Savoy Gardens.
It was odd to be outside in the cold, fresh air, after the continuous warmth of the hotel: somehow it signalized a lot of things which had already taken place – the goodbye, the transition from yesterday, the brief honeymoon’s ending. Indeed, what we found there had, for us, a ludicrous novelty. There was faint sunshine, and children conferring round a statue, and old men feeding sparrows with bread which they might well have been needing themselves: there was the river through the railings, and a policeman speaking unsmilingly into a telephone, and a man selling peanuts and postcards of Cleopatra’s Needle: in fact there was, in full and sudden measure, the thing we had been forgetting about – the routine unalterable outside world.
It was almost impossible to believe that it had been going on all the time.
We strolled along very slowly, arm in arm (to hell with the regulations on a day like this, I thought): you and I in love. I forget what we talked about, but I don’t expect it had much either of wit or continuity. I know that my mind, at least, was darting about, in a disjointed effort to cover all the ground: the sweetness of last night, the light touch of your hand in mine, the parting just ahead, the intensive and demanding world I would be stepping into, in a couple of hours’ time. I could not help looking forward to that: preoccupied as I was with you, my mind kept stealing glances at the future and the mixture of ordeal and exhilaration which lay there for me. There were still plenty of problems lying in wait. If my company could only stay as good as they were now: if Sergeant Hanson had filled in those returns properly: if those new fuses weren’t all they were cracked up to be … All that had to be dealt with, as well as our farewell: all were worth squaring up properly, once I had settled down again. But what was that settling down going to be like, if the farewell was like this?
The farewell was here, anyway. We walked back up the hill, not speaking any more; inside the hotel lobby I retrieved your suitcase and we waited while a taxi came. The same head porter was standing nearby, but after a glance in our direction he turned away and did not watch us any more. He must have seen many people like us, and
we must have been easily recognizable.
We had said it all already, but we said it again, as if sharing something dear and original with each other.
‘Take care of yourself.’
‘Please be careful.’
‘I love you, sweet.’
You kissed me, and got in, and drove away.
‘Goodbye,’ I said. ‘My love. My love.’ Then I was really alone.
12
The room when I returned to it had the emptiness of a private hell. I leant with my back against the door, and looked around, and thought: ‘It happened here with you, and now you aren’t here any more and I have to leave myself in a few moments.’ Then I sat down on the tumbled bed and ate two portions of marmalade and the piece of toast you hadn’t been able to deal with, and wrote you (as I had promised) a note before leaving for good. There wouldn’t be time for me to get one from you, but that was something which couldn’t be helped.
Up the airshaft which was all the view we had had (or needed) came the strains, from someone’s damned radio, of ‘I’ll Be Seeing You ...’ Of your physical presence in the room, nothing now remained, except a trace of lipstick on the pillow, and an untouched cup of coffee. Of your real presence, nothing was lacking: the loveliness, the fun, the close accord, the sadness, and the adoration – all were there, all round me, as strong as ever.
All the other things we shared were there, too. Remember them, sweet: remember them well, for we still have them waiting for us. I repeat to you now what I said when you cried: only the goodbye is sad – the rest is still ours. I shall not see you again during this war: that means years; but there is between us a flame that is going to burn, sometimes feebly, sometimes with an aching fierceness, until we can join hands again and marvel at its strength. You know that we have it: remember it, remember me, stay close.
We made each other so happy that now we cannot help being sad. But it is still there: and for my part there is no desolation which fighting and work and hope of you cannot cure. I have a tremendous job to do, before I can come back to you: so have countless others, before they can meet again the people they love. We are a strong company, because we believe in that job and because we have people like you to return to, when the thing is finished with.
Finishing it is wholly worthwhile, of itself (you know what I feel about that): but having you in the background takes me past those parts of fighting which are never worthwhile – the induced hatred, the brutal intent, the necessary, humourless treachery, the dabbling in blood for fun. There cannot be effective war without them – and that, by God, is no recommendation.
But when I do come back I shall be all yours: sharing if I can the best that is in me, taking from you the strength and guts and urge that alone can make sense out of my life.
It was the hardest of all to leave the room, darling: I walked round and round it, remembering you, I kissed the pillow, touched the towel you had used, stared at a cigarette with lipstick on it. The images crowded into my mind were bound to be sensual ones, for there, all round me at the last, were you and the joy I had of you, only a little while ago. Remember, sweet? Please remember – but remember much more. Remember how at the end it was not sensual love any more, it was nothing but tenderness, nothing but our two hearts pulling at each other.
That moment of parting … I carry it with me now, like a charm – or like the white flower in your hair. It is not lonely: it has for company that other confused moment in our dreamworld of that night, when we could not leave each other, when you cried as I did, when I said: ‘The time is racing like your heart,’ and touched your breasts with tears.
Book Three: Heavy Rescue
1: SEPTEMBER
Godden joined the end of the short queue leading into a room labelled, ‘Officer-in-Charge’.
He didn’t feel much out of place, in spite of the new surroundings and the way people were walking from room to room in a great hurry; many of the men in the queue looked much the same as he did – middle-aged, grey, dusty – though there were one or two in funny-looking clothes, and a sort of artist chap with a beard, and a couple of kids of twenty or so who should have been along at the recruiting office instead of here. But it was nothing out of the way, and certainly not as exciting as he’d expected when he suddenly made up his mind on the pavement outside. It was like queueing up at the Labour, and God knows he was used to that … ‘Air-Raid Precautions – Volunteers Enrol Here’, the notice had said; and he had straightway known what he wanted to do, and understood why he had been wandering about on that sunny September morning, feeling lost, feeling on the verge of something terrific, something to match the beginning of a war, and Chamberlain’s speech, and that first startling siren. ‘Air-Raid Precautions – Volunteers Enrol Here’ – that might make sense of a lot of things, whatever it turned out to be. Digging trenches, maybe, or filling sandbags. But anything to get started: that was how he felt.
The queue moved on: talking, scraping its feet on the rough stone passage, trying to be normal and unconcerned.
When it was Godden’s turn he found himself standing in front of a table, with a young chap, a clerk by the look of him, seated at it shuffling through a lot of papers. There were other people in the room: a girl talking on the telephone, a Red Cross sergeant, two men at another table writing away without looking up at anything. Whatever was going on, it looked like the real thing; it looked as if a little bit of the war was getting under way here. That was what he had been wanting.
The clerk took his name and address and then looked up, pencil poised over a form. ‘Well, what’s it to be?’ he said.
‘What is there?’ asked Godden after a pause, to see if the clerk made any suggestions.
The man looked up at him, sharply: took in his tough, broad body, his shabby clothes, his oddly gentle face: decided he wasn’t the smart sort after all, and relaxing, said: ‘First Aid Party. Stretcher Bearer. Rescue Party … Can you drive a car?’
‘No,’ said Godden.
‘What’s your job? When were you working last?’
‘February.’ He no longer felt ashamed of that question.
The clerk pursed his lips. ‘What at?’
‘Roadwork – labouring.’
‘All right. What about Heavy Rescue then?’
Godden nodded. He liked the sound of it, though he didn’t know what it meant. ‘That’ll do fine.’
The clerk wrote something on a card, and handed it across. ‘Take this to the Paddington depot – that’s at Praed Street School. They’ll fix you up … Next!’
Clutching the card, Godden walked out into the sun again.
Praed Street School was just what one would have expected from that desolate section of London: a tall, gaunt arid building, dusty and echoing, full now of a throng of people wandering to and fro through the classrooms, or milling round the improvised canteen at one end of the hall. Already there was a painted sign over the entrance, ‘Rescue and Stretcher Party Depot No.1’ and a sentry, self-conscious in a steel helmet and greenish-yellow gasproof overalls, standing on the top step. When he saw Godden he asked: ‘Got your card, mate?’ and when he had turned it over he said, with a jerk of his thumb: ‘First on the left, inside. They’ll tell you what to do.’
Once more Godden joined a queue, and waited. This time, armed with the card, he felt more sure of himself: he already had some sort of status. In one room of the building someone had evidently found a piano and was banging out the ‘Beer Barrel Polka’. Godden found himself humming it cheerfully. This was more like it. He was one of a crowd now. More like the last war. Not on his own any more.
This time the man behind the table was a Borough Council official, precise and briskly spoken. He wanted to know a lot of things: the sort of work Godden had been doing, how long he had been unemployed, whether his cards were in order, whether he had been ill recently. To all the answers he listened with his head cocked on one side, as though to catch some undertone of falsehood; but at the end be seemed satisfied,
without enthusiasm, that Godden could do the work involved, and he entered his name and address on a permanent register, and took his insurance cards.
Then he said: ‘Which is it to be – day or night work?’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Godden.
The man looked up impatiently. ‘You can work from eight till eight daytime, or eight till eight during the night. Two shifts – do you understand? The pay is the same. Which do you want?’
Godden thought. It was one of those decisions he had not had to face for over twenty years. Hitherto, there had been only one cast-iron rule – do exactly as you are told, conform to our routine, or take your cards and get out. To have a choice – any choice, however small – seemed to increase his stature a hundredfold. Day work or night work. It didn’t make much odds really: Edie would grumble and nag about it, anyway, whichever he did. But air raids came at night, didn’t they? And that was what he wanted to help in – the bombing which was going to start straight away, so the papers said; that very night, as likely as not. That was what he had been thinking about all day, since Chamberlain’s speech, and it was what everyone seemed to be certain of: this was it, this was the proper start, tonight they’d be over in clouds, same as Poland, with mustard gas probably, and hundreds of people killed straight off. That was why he was standing here. He wanted to help when it happened.
‘Make it nights,’ he said.
‘Very well.’ The man made another note against his name and sat back. ‘You’ll start tonight. I’ll put you down in one of the heavy squads: you’ll see it on the notice board later. Take a look round now, if you want to, and come back here sharp at eight o’clock.’
HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1947) Page 15