My Dear I Wanted to Tell You

by Louisa Young

  With best wishes,

  Julia

  Before leaving town, she gave the letter personally to the porter, and asked that he make sure it went right away.

  Back at Locke Hill, she stared. Time to take stock. It wasn’t the mirror. It wasn’t the light. It wasn’t the colour of her dress. It wasn’t the time of the month. It wasn’t because she hadn’t been regular. It was because she was getting older, and showing the stress, and that was all there was to it, and it had to be dealt with now – now! – because he’s coming back! And she knew what to do. Not surgery – not after the last fiasco – but there were other things a girl could do. The problem was that until she knew when Peter was coming, she couldn’t know if there was time. A week, they said, at least, for it to settle down afterwards. She’d been terribly sensible, asking about how it worked. Madame Louise just said ‘special formula’, but Julia had pushed, and discovered the ingredients – phenol and glycerine and croton oil (croton! A very ugly plant, she’d always thought, but you can’t blame it for that) – and Gladys Deacon had had it done, as had many of the beauties. Mostly it was for older ladies to get rid of wrinkles, but younger women would have it for the clarity and tightness it gave, and the pallor. Julia thought of the Boldoni portrait of Gladys, how she glowed like a lily, like moonlight, like snow. No sign of the scars and droops the nurse had mentioned. I wish I could see her in the flesh, and ask her …

  A week later, there was no news from her mother, and no news from Peter. She realised she had landed herself in a position of desperation without the possibility of action, entirely dependent on the responses – unforthcoming – of others. I could have had it over and done with by now! And when the telegram does come, it might say he’ll be here the next day … A moment of boldness seized her as she read the newspaper. No one ever achieved anything by hesitation! Did the men hesitate when going over the top? Did the generals hesitate in making those difficult decisions? If the Americans had not hesitated for so long after the sinking of the Lusitania, wouldn’t everything have gone quicker and better?

  She fired off another letter to her mother; exactly the same wording. Perhaps it had been lost in the post. She was nervous to have been so straightforward with her mother. She clung to it.

  Then she rang the salon, and arranged to go up the next day. Serve bloody Peter right if I’m not there to greet him. After all, haven’t I been waiting for ever? And holding on to very little? And aren’t I doing it for him anyway?

  Oh, God, he’s coming back, he’s coming back – dear God, I know you’re busy but please please let him love me the way he used to please let him love me let me make him happy …

  *

  The frontage of the little salon was familiar to her now. Welcoming, with its pleasant memories of massages and facials and her pretty eyebrows, pedicures and manicures, loving attentions from Madame Louise and June, the silly young nurse with the very deft hands.

  Lying on her back on the narrow white bed, consciousness fading, the gust of the smell of Lysol and chloroform was somehow promising to her, like a spring breeze. She was sad, as she went under, that she wouldn’t be present to witness, properly to experience, the melting of the crystals, the mixing with the oil, the coating of the solution on to her ready face, the layer of plaster to be painted on top. She was glad, though, that she knew what Madame would be doing while she slept, while the chemicals worked away under the mask, tightening and drying the surface layer of her tired skin into little flakes, which would then rub off and fall with the crumbling flakes of the drying plaster, revealing a naked layer of new young skin. A chemical assault on the ravages of time … She felt again the bravery and sacrifice, the modernity, the joy of it … I am doing this for you, my darling. I will be everything you could want …

  … She came round, staring through the tiny eyeholes of her plaster mask. It hurt, but not much. Phenol was itself an anaesthetic, Madame had told her.

  The next week, the week of salves and balms and staying in, was maddening. At least there was no word from Rose about the telegram. Her face was red and burnt-looking, and as it calmed down, each day, it looked better. At least, it looked better than red and burnt. It did not look better than before the peel. She checked every day, every few hours, in between chapters of Marie Corelli, which made her feel as if she were eating entire boxes of chocolates at a sitting, but she couldn’t stop.

  ‘It’s made no difference,’ she said to Madame, on the telephone, and went round to show her.

  ‘Oh, but it has, madam,’ said Madame. ‘See, here at the brow, around the eyes, and those little freckles you had …’ I had no freckles!

  It’s made no difference.

  ‘I think we’re going to have to do it again,’ Julia said.

  ‘That is not advisable, madam,’ said Madame. ‘Certainly not for some while. The complexion must be allowed to recover.’

  ‘But you can do me before Christmas?’ she said hopefully, thinking, before my birthday. He’ll be back by my birthday. She had decided that a while ago.

  ‘Oh, no, madam. Not till perhaps February at the earliest.’

  Tears started in Julia’s eyes. February was far too late! Could she explain to Madame Louise? Would she understand, if Julia truly opened her heart to her? She looked at her, trying to judge whether there would be any understanding there of the situation in which Julia found herself. She feared not. Madame Louise was a working woman, with a role to play. Julia was beginning to see, intellectually, that her own role – pretty, useless, adorable – had been rendered valueless by the war. She half knew it. She half knew that other women found her pathetic, banal … She had felt the ground she was bred for slipping from beneath her feet during the course of the war, and she had seen other women finding new kinds of women to be – women who had not, before the war, been so totally bred for the altar of adorability and marriage. I could have gone off with Raymond Dell, and been that kind of new woman; I could have driven ambulances, if Rose hadn’t so entirely scorned the idea; I could be a decent mother; I could, I could …

  There was nobody to say to Julia, ‘It’s not your fault. You didn’t invent marriage and the traditional roles of women; you didn’t start the war; you didn’t choose to be valued only for your beauty, and prepared for nothing more useful than displaying it.’

  ‘Please,’ was all she managed to say to Madame Louise. ‘There’s nothing else …’ But Madame Louise was not to be persuaded, and found Julia tiresome, and went into the other room.

  *

  Julia went home in a new dress, looking wonderful, slender, elegant, with unshed tears and a sense of profound personal irrelevance rising within her. Still no sign of Peter or his telegram. Still no letter from her mother. Knowing it was neurotic, she plumped all the cushions in the house, tuned the cello and went back to London.

  She came home in another new dress, ashamed of it, unable to stop despite how ludicrous it had become. I’m a clockwork figure, rattling round and round in circles. I’m absurd. No sign of her husband; no sign of her son.

  She couldn’t believe the war wasn’t over. It must be over. She read in the newspaper that Guatemala had declared war on Germany. Well, if even Guatemala thinks it’s safe to get involved, it really must be finished.

  Everyone was on edge. Perhaps I’ll go to Paris. I could go to Paris and fetch him! We could have a marvellous reunion …

  She went back up to London.

  Mrs Joyce thought she would sour the milk at this rate.

  She came back again. She told Mrs Joyce she was going to bed, and wanted no visitors, ‘but call me if Rose rings up’.

  Mrs Joyce hoped it wasn’t this flu.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Julia.

  She too hoped it wasn’t the flu. The flu was killing people faster than the war. She felt … strange.

  ‘It’s really nearly over now, isn’t it, mum?’ said Mrs Joyce.

  ‘Yes – I …’ Julia realised she didn’t know what to think.
r />   ‘And the major coming home, mum,’ said Mrs Joyce.

  ‘Yes,’ said Julia, almost hysterically. If he’d only deign to tell us when.

  ‘And Mrs Orris called, mum. She said to say she’d be bringing the little one on Saturday week.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Master Tom, mum, she’ll be bringing him on Saturday week.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Julia. Tom. Peter. Christmas. Peace. The appalling potential of the situation made her almost swoon. What was a woman meant to do with so much normality?

  She went upstairs and turned on her bath, and started the ritual, staring at herself in the mirror: from the front, from the side, from the other side. Waist: slender. Bust: elegant yet alluring. Hair: still long. Peter preferred it that way. I should have been a better kind of woman for him. I should have loved him better. I am pathetic – they’re right about me.

  Tom!

  Close-up: on the body, on the face. Left side, right side. Her jaw was all right for now. Her nose was charming with its little imperfection. Eyes vast and blue.

  A thought skittered across the surface of her mind, like a water boatman across a pool, brittle, delicate, alarming: IT DOESN’T BLOODY WELL MATTER!

  For a moment, her beautiful eyes showed absolute fear.

  Gone.

  Of course it matters. Something has to matter. It has always mattered. If it didn’t matter, then what, after all, was the point of her? It’s the only thing I have.

  *

  Rose popped in. She’d had a note from Peter.

  Julia jumped up. ‘Any firmer news on when he’s coming? Or where he is?’

  ‘I don’t know, Julia,’ Rose replied. ‘He didn’t say exactly.’ The phrase lay on the air softly, drifting, unfinished.

  Well, thought Julia. That’s good. It could be good. He’ll turn up when he’s ready. For goodness’ sake, what difference does it make after all this time? It’s not a problem. ‘Well,’ she said smartly, ‘it’s not as if we haven’t got plenty to do without him.’ She hadn’t breathed properly in days. Little brittle panting breaths. No wonder everyone hated her.

  She half didn’t even want to see him. And Tom! She was terrified.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Sidcup and Wigan, November 1918

  The war, after dragging its tail around for weeks like a dying serpent, crawled into the armistice, and was, if you could muster faith in that, over. For those not closely involved, felicity was unconfined. The maroons went off. The lights came on. The bells rang out. The bunting went up. The champagne went down. There was talk of who was coming home, and when. Talk, once again, of being home for Christmas. For the rest, felicity was complicated by disbelief, bereavement, unhealed wounds, location, unspent contracts, logistics of travel, and the vast immobility of the vast body of the machine and bureaucracy of war.

  At Sidcup, the news brought much laughing and cheering and clapping each other on the back, and sudden inclinations to be best friends. Though the patients were all stuck there as long as they were stuck there, they were at least released now from the War Office’s requirement that they stay there all the time between operations.

  Riley thought: But there’s no reason to believe it won’t start up again at any moment. It’s only an armistice. And even if it is real, lovely for some people but so what for us? It’s rather uncouth of us to be such living reminders that, over though the war may be – um, what was the right word? – aspects of the war are not over at all and never will be.

  Someone said, Come, come, lad, it’s over!

  Riley had had more than a year to forget all the things he couldn’t forget, and to get used to the things he was going to have to get used to. But so far the outside world, a world of peace, the new world, whatever it was going to be, had not been part of that. It was not something he cared to ponder. Riley thought: Before, while it was still on, I was Captain Purefoy, wounded soldier. Who am I to be now? Mr Purefoy, disabled ex-serviceman? His age rang through his head like the tolling of a bell. Twenty-two, twenty-two, twenty-two. There was an awfully long time ahead of him.

  On the day the armistice was announced, he was remembering Jack Ainsworth (over). He had taken his Small Book (over) out of his officer’s valise (over) two days before, and Ainsworth’s scrap of paper had fallen out. Riley, who knew off by heart the words on it, nevertheless read it again, where it fell on his white sheet. (Whitesheet, Plugstreet, Zonnebeke and Pop …) (Over.)

  Courage for the big troubles in life, patience for the small. And when you have laboriously finished your day’s efforts, go to sleep in peace.

  (Be of good cheer. God is awake.)

  It wasn’t Jack’s writing. It was Sybil’s. Riley knew because he had censored enough of Jack’s letters (over): long, fond letters, missing her, missing the children, sending love (over) to so many people, by name. Admitting he was bored. No mention of the fear and the horror (over). Longing, longing for home (over). Finding it in him to say, ‘The smell of the apple trees is lovely here.’

  Riley was not of good cheer. He didn’t know what good cheer was. Was finding the smell of the apple trees lovely good cheer?

  He glanced out of the window. There were trees outside. They were not burnt and sharp and black. (Over.)

  Courage. Patience. Efforts. Laboriously. Good cheer. Peace.

  Jack Ainsworth’s voice: You could give it a go, lad.

  Ainsworth, Couch, Ferdinand, Dowland and many more (over). And the smell: over. And the noise. Over.

  For the next few days he watched the other patients. Patience. He was looking for good cheer among them. How did they bear it? How could they bear it? This was not a rhetorical question. He wanted to know how the others bore it, what they actually did to bear it, because he could not bear it. And he could not suddenly start to bear it just because It was over. No one ever wins a war, and wars are never over.

  He had dreamt he’d sent a telegram to Ainsworth saying, ‘Please come back and bring the boys,’ and Ainsworth had replied, ‘All right see you on Saturday.’

  Over.

  That afternoon, in the garden, a young gunner, a Welshman, with no nose, turned to him, and said: ‘Captain, you’ve been staring at us for months. You never come out, and when you do you stare at us. Give it a rest, now, would you? You’re giving me the willies.’

  Riley stared. Another man clapped his shoulder, and said: ‘Never mind him, old man. He’s just a bit upset. He lost his nose, you know.’ And they all started laughing, except the Welshman, who looked as if he were about to hit someone.

  I’m making it worse for them, Riley thought.

  He was so, so bored. Bored of misery, of anger, of why-me, of poor-me, of what’s-the-point, of self-deception and of stoicism and of waiting for a miracle; bored of his mother’s letters saying how brave he is, bored of his cruelty in not replying to her – what could he say? No, mother, bravery implies a choice, a cowardly alternative, and, mother, if there had been an alternative I would have taken it, really I would. He was bored of egg; of his misery in his speechlessness, of debating with himself whether suicide was the brave or the cowardly choice. Bored of being unable to discuss this, or anything else, with anyone. Bored of inflicting his misery on other people.

  But if you don’t die, you have to live.

  You have to live.

  In which case, what?

  Be of good cheer?

  *

  When Rose came, Riley gave her a letter:

  Dear Major Gillies,

  Having been here for over a year, under orders, I would like to apply for leave. Four or five days should do. Could you let me know how to go about it, under the circumstances? I think I will need one of Archie Lane’s masks, which I understand could take a little while to organise.

  Yours sincerely

  Capt. R. Purefoy

  He gestured to Rose that she could read it.

  *

  Gillies called him in. ‘Why d’you want a mask?’ he said. ‘Nasty things. Hot,
uncomfortable, and an admission of my failure. Be patient, Purefoy, and you’ll be presentable in the end. To be honest, though I’m glad you want to go out, I’m not sure you’re ready. Have you been to the village at all? To the pub, walks?’

  Riley shook his head.

  ‘What will you do about communicating?’

  Riley lifted his notebook.

  ‘But it’s not just a physical thing, old man – you’re out of practice. I know you talk to Rose …’

  Riley liked his loose use of the word ‘talk’.

  ‘… but you’re not exactly the chatty type.’ Gillies cocked an eyebrow at him, waiting for a response.

  Riley blinked, and wrote:

  I haven’t had very much to say. I wouldn’t have had anyway. But there is someone I want to talk to. I need to visit them, and don’t want to scare them. Then I’ll come back.

  Gillies read it. ‘What about food?’ he asked. ‘It’s very easy to become malnourished, and that would be very bad news. I’ve worked hard on you, Purefoy, and we have more to do. I would like you to be a success. Are you motivated enough to feed yourself properly?’

  Riley wrote:

  soup

  and Gillies said, ‘How are you going to get it down?’

  Riley wrote:

  by embarrassing slurping in private

  A little shot of joy ran through Gillies. Sign of a sense of humour. The best possible sign.

  Because of Riley’s quiet insistence, Lane and young Mickey Shirlaw, the miner from Motherwell who’d arrived as a patient and was well on the way to being a dental technician, made him a mask. It was as unpleasant to wear as Gillies had said it would be, and in the end Riley didn’t take it with him when he went.

  *

  Jarvis was back, to have his great ham-nose restyled a little. Mrs Jarvis had complained of his snoring, and he even woke himself up. Major Gillies had been happy to oblige.

  ‘Glad you’re going out, Purefoy,’ Jarvis said. ‘Here – have this.’ He was brandishing a slender metal tube about eighteen inches long. ‘I made it for Jamison, in the workshop, from a bit of shell casing. Brass. From Hill 62.’