My Dear I Wanted to Tell You

by Louisa Young

  And. Well. Best not to think about embraces.

  Her mother always said it went against nature to embrace the ugly.

  ‘Is she pretty?’ she asked.

  ‘Miss Waveney? Yes – in an odd way. She has yellow eyes, and skin like – sort of like a church candle when it’s alight.’

  ‘Sounds like a witch,’ said Julia.

  ‘No, she’s very healthy, attractive. Mysterious, though. I like her.’ For a sweeping moment, she remembered holding Nadine in her arms: the strength of the girl’s passion, her narrow body, her bones. ‘And I like him. I can’t— Why does it have to be like this?’ she cried suddenly, piercingly, a curling cry that she controlled almost before she had uttered it. She opened her eyes wide, and put her hands down by her sides.

  Julia stared at her. ‘I thought you weren’t meant to get involved with your patients,’ she said.

  Rose smiled and shook her head.

  *

  On the way back to the hospital, cycling by the Green, she heard a voice call her name. ‘Miss Locke!’

  Miss Waveney.

  Well. Rose stopped, and waited for her to come over across the damp grass.

  ‘Hello, Miss Locke.’

  ‘Hello, Miss Waveney.’

  ‘How is he, Miss Locke?’

  ‘There’s no change, Miss Waveney. It was only yesterday that you came to the hospital.’

  ‘I wanted to apologise,’ she said. ‘I was a little hysterical. You understand the situation. Even so, I am sorry to have behaved so … passionately.’

  ‘I quite understand, Miss Waveney. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. She tried to smile. ‘Did he – did he send any message for me?’

  There’s no getting out of this. It’s not my decision. It’s nothing to do with me!

  Rose smiled as best she could. ‘He did,’ she said brightly. ‘A letter! Here you are.’ She took it from her satchel and held it straight out in front of her, like something on fire. Damn damn damn. She blinked quickly. She understood now why Riley had wanted her to give it, rather than put it in the post. He didn’t want Nadine to be alone when she read it. A kind man.

  Oh, Lord, the girl looked so happy.

  She couldn’t let her …

  There was a bench. A blue one, as it happened. Well, that’s only appropriate.

  ‘Why not sit here and read it, my dear?’ Rose said, stepping irrevocably off her bicycle.

  Nadine took the envelope, held it. She was visibly torn between wanting to read it right now, and wanting to take it away to a secret place to treasure it. Rose’s face made her sit down.

  Rose sat beside her, and gave a very quiet sigh.

  After a long moment, Nadine began to moan softly. ‘No. No. No. No. No. No …’ Rose turned to her. She was white, bloodless. Shaking. ‘No.’ Expressions like wind chasing on water, hands fluttering.

  Rose pulled her defences into place around her heart, put her arm around Nadine, and held her as she began to weep. She didn’t stop.

  They sat there for a while on the wounded men’s bench. Rose looked up and down the street, at the two women with their prams, at the old man carrying a basket, at the four small children across the way doing something with sticks. How shameless normality is, the way it just carries on.

  ‘Come on, my dear,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and get some tea. Put your bag in my bicycle basket. Take my arm – I can push one-handed.’

  Nadine was docile, weeping, shaking quietly.

  The nearest tea was back at Locke Hill.

  ‘Come on, my dear,’ Rose murmured softly, over and over, as they trudged.

  Julia was in the hall. She took one look and exclaimed: ‘Dear God, what’s happened to her? Who is she? Was she knocked down?’ She called Mrs Joyce to make hot tea with brandy, and sat Nadine down on the sofa, bustling round her. ‘My dear,’ she said. ‘Just sit.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do with her,’ Rose said quietly in the hall. ‘She’s Captain Purefoy’s friend. I had to give her the letter … She’s in shock, so … but I have to get back …’

  Julia said: ‘Really, don’t worry. Leave her with me. Poor girl, it’s too dreadful.’

  She put her in the blue room, told her to bathe if she wanted, and sent Harker into town for her bags. Bag, as it turned out.

  Later, she sent up some broth, and went to check on her.

  Nadine sat on the bed, dry-eyed and staring, arms wrapped round, hugging herself.

  ‘Do you have what you need?’ Julia asked, standing in the doorway.

  Nadine seemed unable to talk.

  Julia went over to her and put her hand on Nadine’s shoulder. ‘You can get into bed,’ she said. ‘You can stay here till you feel a bit better. I’d like you to.’

  No response.

  ‘My husband is Captain Purefoy’s CO,’ Julia said timidly.

  At that, Nadine looked up at her: an unreadable look. She moved her hand a little, to touch Julia’s where it lay.

  Julia sat down on the bed beside her. After a while, she gave Nadine’s shoulder a sort of pat, and sighed, and stood, and left the room.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Amiens

  A tiny round yellow moon, a wretched, shrunken, bitter moon, shone down on Peter Locke, leaning against the wall in an alleyway behind the cathedral. It was a cold, cold night, but he burnt with the artificial heat of brandy. He felt the chill of the stones against his shoulders and buttocks even through his greatcoat. He leant forward. He didn’t want to be sick, because he wanted to stay as drunk as he could for as long as possible.

  Corporal Burgess stood in front of him. ‘Come on, sir, I’ll get you back,’ he was saying.

  ‘Do you think, Burgess,’ said Locke, ignoring that, ‘that we took enough ground, in all, since July, to bury all the men that died taking it? Do you think that those few yards we added, round Menin Road, Pilckem Ridge, do you think they would even fit those of us who are now … horizontal?’

  ‘Don’t know, sir,’ said Burgess.

  ‘And don’t you think it’s interesting that actually it almost isn’t ground, anyway? As it’s below sea-level, it’s a few yards of sea-bed. Sea-bed with delusions of grandeur, delusions that it is land … Purefoy said, you know, “Flanders, flounders.” It’s made flounders out of us all, floundering around, and it’s made a turbot out of Purefoy … and it can’t even hold a corpse down anyway, it makes a lousy graveyard, and anyway, some arses had shot it to pieces before we even got there, just a big sinkhole …’

  ‘Come on, sir.’

  ‘Oh, yes, that was us …’

  ‘Come on, sir …’

  ‘Thank you very much, Corporal,’ Locke said. ‘Thank you very much for your helpful concern, but I have other plans.’

  ‘Be as well to wake up in the billet, sir,’ said Burgess.

  ‘Be as well,’ said Locke, ‘not to wake up at all.’

  ‘Come come, sir,’ said Burgess. Jesus God, sir, shut up. Burgess was tired. Locke was tired.

  ‘I am going,’ said Locke, ‘to pay money to sleep in a woman’s arms.’ He stared at Burgess sadly.

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Burgess.

  ‘Would you like to pay money to sleep in a woman’s arms, Burgess?’ Locke asked.

  ‘No, sir,’ said Burgess.

  ‘I would like to pay money for every man out there to sleep in a woman’s arms, Burgess,’ he said. ‘And not in a sinkhole.’ His head fell to one side. ‘Would you like to pay money to sleep in a man’s arms, Burgess?’ he said.

  Burgess gave the tiniest of smiles. ‘No, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Would you like to sleep in my arms, Burgess?’ Locke said. ‘Because I tell you tonight I would sleep in a pig’s arms, in a great fat muddy pig’s arms, for a touch of human warmth. No hanky-panky. Of course. No chance of hanky-panky. No hanky-panky.’

  Burgess had not had an erection since the Somme, since he had felt the power of strength and doing good prickle in
his veins like caustic when he had carried Purefoy in; his last moment of any sense of his own power. Since then his impotence had been as complete as Locke’s was erratic.

  ‘Come on, sir,’ he said.

  Locke started to hum, very quietly, through his teeth. Ta-tumtytumty-tum-ti-tum … He pushed himself upright, on to Burgess, and for a moment they were locked into the drunkard’s dance, the two sets of feet far apart and glued into the ground, tall Locke, short Burgess, the head and shoulders close, embracing so as not to fall. Locke pushed himself away and up, hands on Burgess’s shoulders, with a little smile. ‘It’s the words of love, Burgess,’ he said. ‘The memory of shining stars, sweet-smelling earth, of a garden gate, a woman arriving. I die in despair, and never have I loved life so much, non ho amato mai tanto la vita.’

  ‘Come on, sir, you pissed twat,’ said Burgess.

  ‘Good point,’ said Locke. They stumbled on together down the alleyway, in the shadow of the cathedral, the great Gothic temple to all that didn’t seem to exist any more.

  Burgess, fearing for his CO’s balance, walked Locke as far as the brothel and went on alone, singing softly:

  ‘O death where is thy stingalingaling, O grave thy victoree …

  The bells of hell go tingalingaling, for you but not for me …’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Sidcup and France, winter 1917–July 1918

  Nadine appeared again at the hospital the next day, her shirt ironed, her eyes puffy, her demeanour unnaturally calm. Sister was called. Rose stood by, watchful.

  ‘May I see him?’ Nadine asked, courteously, very controlled.

  ‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ said Sister.

  Nadine swallowed. Every movement was an effort. It looked to Rose as if she were having to remind herself to breathe.

  ‘I am a nursing VAD of two years’ experience in surgical as well as medical wards. May I make an appointment with Matron to ask permission to apply for a transfer here?’ she said formally, but her voice was shaking.

  ‘No, my dear, no,’ said Sister. ‘Under the circumstances.’

  Nadine nodded as if she had expected it.

  ‘Then may I beg you to do everything you can and …’ She nearly lost her self-control then. Turning to Rose, she said: ‘May I ask you, please, to write to me? To let me know?’

  Rose glanced at Sister. Sister raised her eyebrows, gave a tiny sigh and nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rose. ‘If you send your address.’

  ‘I’m going to France,’ said Nadine, delicately. ‘As soon as I can get a place. I’ll send … yes. Thank you,’ she said. ‘Tell him – oh. No. Thank you. Goodbye.’

  As she turned away her movements were as stiff as a doll’s.

  *

  ‘Well, it worked,’ said Rose. ‘She believed you. She’s going to France.’

  His eyes flashed up.

  ‘Of course she is,’ Rose said cruelly. ‘She’s not some namby-pamby creature who can’t face up to things. Anyway, she has nothing to live for now. She wants to die. Like you.’

  Riley stared.

  *

  A woman came, very blue-eyed, to make a plaster cast of the new gaping face: the gaping face mark two. It was healing well. Everything was going well. Gillies would use the cast to consider and practise the size and shape and position of the flaps of flesh, which he would wrap around the new chin.

  They did the cast in Tonks’s studio. She and Tonks knew each other from London. He had been her teacher at the Slade, years before. They chatted about art and who was doing what and people they knew. The names trickled before Riley like reflected shadows of sunlight and water on a ceiling, or the underside of a bridge, iridescent glimpses of long ago. Ricketts and Shannon, John Tweed, Gladys, Jimmie, Isadora. The woman, he gathered, had known Rodin – had studied with him in Paris before … before. He would have liked to ask about him. He wondered who else she had known. Who she knew. She clearly was not, like him, in the past tense.

  Riley stood before them with shirt off and all his wound on display. The bottom of his face hung open, unimpeded, scraps of healed skin hanging loose like pastry waiting to be arranged across the top of a pie. His saliva was in a state of chaos, and he could not always feel when he needed mopping. What should be wet was dry; what should be dry was wet. He had not spoken in five months.

  She was very gentle with him.

  ‘You look like a broken statue,’ she said. ‘Some young god lying around at the Acropolis. Touch my arm if anything is uncomfortable.’

  She painted his face with something. Put a little card tube up each nostril, carefully. His splints had been removed for the occasion and he couldn’t lie back, so the tubes kept falling out.

  She smiled. It was a bit ridiculous. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘Francis Derwent Wood, the painter, is making the most marvellous masks out of tin. They’re terribly realistic. It’s another option.’

  Riley stood, utterly passive. He wondered if she’d met Van Gogh. He wondered if she understood what was going to be done to him. Every thought was a fucking blade through his heart.

  He loved her. She was so kind to help him.

  She poured the cold stuff over his face in dollops: wet and cold and heavy over his eyes and his cheeks and his nose and the rest of what he had, presumably, but he couldn’t really tell because his nerve endings were mashed to bits and his feelings were confused.

  The plaster sucked at his face like mud. He felt buried alive.

  *

  There had been no problem about putting Nursing Member Waveney on the list to go to France. Though a great many of the wounded just drowned in the mudholes of Passchendaele, plenty were still coming through.

  She had been sent in midwinter to Le Touquet, to the casino by the sea where Riley had lain with his shoulder wound. No one knew her. She knew no one. She did everything she knew how to do. It was surreal but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Not uncomfortable enough. She wanted worse. She was thin but she was tough. Given the choice, she took the night-shifts. Daylight upset her. Not that there was much of it. It was a wet, cold, dingy winter.

  *

  To start with, Rose did not write to her very often. A card: ‘Your friend is well; no date has been set yet for his next go of surgery.’

  It was difficult for Rose. She had been so thrown by Nadine’s plea when she’d agreed to write that she hadn’t thought it through. Was she writing to tell the truth? Or to support Riley’s lie, that the wound was slight and he was going back to the front?

  Nadine wrote back: ‘Thank you. We keep horribly busy here. You can imagine.’

  *

  When she was transferred to the massive metropolis that was Étaples, Nadine hid her face during the journey. She didn’t want to see the great tents, the blue sky, the sandhills, the spiky grass and the restless sea beyond, to the north, which was wrong, because sea should be to the south, like Brighton and Lyme Regis and the Riviera. She didn’t want to see the Chinese labourers putting up huts, the floods of nurses and wounded, the trains, the horses, the sick and frantic life. There were some trees. She didn’t want to see the trees. She didn’t want to see the Boulogne to Paris railway running by, a constant reminder that they were in the wrong place. The long huts were ugly, the green and red chintz curtains ridiculous. The ground vibrated constantly with the quiver of drumfire from the front. People all around collapsed with Étaplesitis, puking and crapping. Women were dismissed for running around with men who were not dismissed. Everything was as wrong as she felt. She was glad.

  She took all the dirtiest jobs. She didn’t complain. She didn’t join in. She didn’t raise her head all winter. The girls with whom she shared the draughty tent and canvas bunks were half in the same mood as her, the other half respectful of it. They’d seen it before. They liked her, for the simple reason that her headlong misery made her take on all the worst jobs so they didn’t have to. They were grateful that she never held back when the gas cases came in, burnt and blistered and sticky, co
ughing up bits of grey lung. They were grateful, too, that she didn’t, like the rest of them, subvert her constant terror into constant nerve-jangling moans about chilblains or tiredness or the weather. They were grateful to her for not throwing hysterics about someone finishing the Bovril or the paltry soup before she had a cup.

  She liked only one thing: the patients. The worse their condition, the more she liked them. She liked to sit by them late at night, helping them to move when they couldn’t breathe well, adjusting their limbs, scratching where they couldn’t reach, talking softly with them. Long, long nights, low lamplight, smells of petrol and Lysol, the roaring guns, far away, the golden glow in the distance. Night and work were her blankets. Best was when convoys came in at night: nights of the full moon or clear weather, when the hits would have been many and direct, and many, many boys would have been saved from the worst fate, survival. She liked meeting the ambulances as they roared and rattled in, careering out of the darkness, their lights off to be invisible to enemy planes, their girl drivers mad-eyed, stiff as wire, crazed with sleeplessness. She liked piling the boys out, the stretcher cases and the walkers, the screamers and the shakers, the blobs, the bleeding, the armless, the legless, Xs on their foreheads where they’d had their shot of morphine, all the characters of the grim tableau.

  She knew now exactly what Riley had been talking about when he had said he didn’t exist. She knew now the hollow manic energy induced by living at crisis pitch all the time. It left you – well, it never left you: it rendered you brutalised, incapable, unthinking, unfeeling, scar tissue all over. No feeling at all. Wild. Everything was terribly remote and she was utterly impenetrable.

  Such marvellous high spirits, as someone – who? Some bloody woman in a hat, in a coat, in a mud-encrusted limousine – had said. Some representative of something. Lady this. Princess that.

  *

  Another card: ‘His spirits are not the best but he has started reading, which must be good news. He got through A Tale of Two Cities in three days.’