There was something about George’s grave manner that stopped Mrs Burbidge saying, ‘Miss Violet is not at home to visitors today,’ as she’d planned. He seemed somehow familiar, but it was hard to tell with that eerie-looking mask. Instead, she found herself saying, ‘You’d better follow me and wait in the library.’
She led him into the entrance hall, where a bright fire burned in a generous grate and a massive carved crest stood on the mantel. The room was high, with wide cornices and plaster mouldings. A huge display of daffodils and foliage stood on a polished oblong table. She stood waiting beside him, and George was unsure what to do until she held out her hands and he realised that she wanted to take his hat and coat. She hung them on a large oak stand and led him through the hall. George had a glimpse of the access to the servants’ quarters as they passed a green baize door that was half open: a whitewashed corridor with a row of bells. Mrs Burbidge hurried past and showed him into the library, telling him to wait.
As he hadn’t been invited to sit, George stood looking about him. The room was heavily wallpapered and carpeted, giving the impression of being muffled from the outside world. A desk with a green leather top stood in the centre and two thickly padded red leather chairs stood either side of a wide fireplace where a good fire was lit. Apart from the chimneybreast, which housed a dark oil portrait of some worthy ancestor, the walls were lined with books. George marvelled at the number of them, each one a treasure in its own right, bound in calfskin and tooled with gold. There were so many that they had been divided into categories. Gilt lettering adorned each shelf with words that George thought must be a foreign language: ‘Metaphysicks’, ‘Poesie Parabolical’.
A huge marble bust of a Greek god stood on a high shelf; with a furrowed brow and open mouth, it looked down on him with a sorrowful expression as if wondering what a person such as George could possibly be doing in his sight.
The door opened and George turned as Violet entered. She looked thinner. The leg-o’-mutton sleeves of her dress with their tight-drawn cuffs accentuated the boniness of her protruding wrists. Her hair, caught back in its usual chignon, had lost its shine and dark half-moons beneath her eyes told of restless nights. George found it painful to think that he had been the cause of the worry that had made her ill.
‘George?’ Violet took a step towards him holding out her hands; then she stopped, her face full of concern. ‘Your poor face – what have they done to you?’
In a reflex action, George turned his face to hide his mask.
Violet dropped her hands helplessly. ‘Where did you go? Why didn’t you write? I found out that you’d joined up but I couldn’t get any further. Didn’t you join the Post Office Rifles? I wrote but they seemed to have no record of you. I kept thinking you’d be sure to write soon …’
George took a deep breath and said, ‘Edmund …’
Violet’s expression changed. She looked at him as though she feared him. She slowly shook her head as if to tell him she wouldn’t listen.
‘Why don’t we sit down?’ George took her hands gently and led her to sit in one of the chairs beside the fire. He pulled up the other chair so that he could be closer to her. ‘I’m so sorry—’ he started.
Violet broke in. ‘It’s very good of you to come to tell me; I heard from Elizabeth that he was missing but I’m hopeful – we’re all hopeful … Or maybe … Did you meet Edmund? Have you seen him?’ She leant forward.
‘He was my C.O.’
Violet’s hands tightened on the arms of the chair.
George hesitated. ‘I’m terribly sorry. I’m afraid he was killed.’
‘How can you know that?’ Violet whispered. ‘He’s missing; that’s what the Red Cross said.’
George rubbed his forehead. ‘I was with him when he died.’
Violet sat very straight and very still; her face a ghostly grey above the lilac dress. ‘I see.’
Rain blew against the glass in sharp squally bursts and George was aware of the clock on the mantel ticking and the crackle and spit of the fire.
‘He was a wonderful officer,’ George said. ‘He was defending our position against an attack. He died trying to protect …’ He couldn’t bring himself to say ‘me’. ‘He was protecting his men,’ he said instead.
‘How? How was he killed?’
George paused, looking for a way to say the unspeakable: Edmund’s body deep in soil, his spine broken in two.
Her eyes met his. ‘I have to know.’
‘It was a shell. A direct hit. He wouldn’t have known anything.’
She turned away from him, stared into the fire. All this time, she thought, all this time I was hoping, and he was already gone, even before Elizabeth’s letter, maybe even before his last letter reached me. How could that be? Tiny tongues of flame from the white-hot embers licked the edges of new wood and hovered and flickered above it. Consuming. Her clumsy shelter a funeral pyre.
George watched her miserably, not knowing what to do. The moment had passed and he hadn’t said what was in his heart: that it was all his fault, that Edmund had saved him; he hadn’t given her an opportunity to blame him and be angry. Once more, he knew himself a coward. ‘Can I do anything? Can I fetch anyone for you?’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry; I can’t tell you how sorry. I would have come before but I was in hospital and I couldn’t do it in a letter; I had to see you.’
Violet heard George talking but she couldn’t take in what he was saying. There was a sensation, a physical tightness somewhere between her stomach and her heart; she wanted to double up with the pain of it. ‘George,’ she said, folding her arms in front of her, holding it in, ‘could you leave me? I’d like to be alone.’
George stood but remained uncertainly before her. ‘I’m truly sorry. I’ll call again, shall I?’ When she made no response, he said, ‘I’ll come again.’ She sat so stiffly that he dared not even put out his hand to touch her. He went to the door, looked back at her bent head and the tense hunch of her shoulders and then went out, pulling the door softly closed behind him. Silence. He stood with the doorknob still in his hand. A sound came from the room, a long, low moan that built to a heart-breaking wail.
In the corridor, the green baize door flew open and Mrs Burbidge came out, her face red and anxious.
‘I’m sorry to have brought bad news,’ George stammered. ‘She wouldn’t let me help.’
‘See yourself out,’ Mrs Burbidge said, hurrying past him. The sound of Violet’s sobbing filled his ears. Mrs Burbidge shut the door firmly in his face.
When George arrived home, the house was empty. He dragged himself upstairs, his bad leg as stiff as a poker after too much walking. He levered his shoes off without undoing the laces and lay on the bed.
His kitbag hung on the footboard, a corner of Edmund’s tin making an angular poke in the fabric. That morning, he had decided not to take the tin to Violet. He had wanted to break the news to her gently and feared that the finality of being handed Edmund’s possessions would be too big a shock. Now he thought bitterly that he had failed entirely: he hadn’t known what to say, the effect of his clumsy words had been brutal and he had been unable to give any comfort.
There was nothing he could do to make this right. He felt ashamed that he hadn’t told Violet that Edmund had saved his life. ‘Honesty is the best policy’ was the creed on which he’d been raised and it troubled him to deceive her. But confessing would make no difference, he told himself. It couldn’t bring Edmund back. Carrying the burden of knowledge himself would be part of his punishment.
He shivered and rolled himself up in the quilt as the lantern show of memories began to turn again, a sequence of horrors at the back of his mind, always ready to begin the moment he let his guard down. With an effort of will, he forced himself to look forward rather than back. He would visit and offer his company and a listening ear: a chance for Violet to talk about her lost sweetheart to someone who had known him, even if his knowledge of the circumstances of Edmund’s death would mea
n that her grief heaped coals upon his head. In a few days, he would visit again and hope that Mrs Burbidge wouldn’t refuse to let him in.
George closed his eyes and thought of the way that Violet had said his name when she first entered the room, before he’d said the words that had taken away all her hope. For a moment she had been pleased to see him, as she used to be when they walked together and she was glad of his company. Now those innocent days were gone and he would have to accept that it could never be like that again. All he could do now was to be a loyal friend and try to look after Violet as well as he could. He looked the truth hard in the face: it was all his fault that she had lost the man she loved and nothing he could do would ever be enough.
George woke hours later to the sound of his mother building up the fire in the parlour: the crunch of logs pushed together and the rattle of slack tipped from the coal scuttle. He should have banked it up before he came upstairs, he thought; he could at least have done that.
He went down and found his mother on her knees sweeping the hearth. She let him take the pan and brush from her and stood up, dusting herself down. George asked where Lillie was; he had been trying to keep out of her way as much as he could, only coming down in the evenings after she had gone to bed.
‘I had to carry her from the guesthouse; she was dead on her feet, poor lamb. She’s fast asleep beside the range, all balled up in my coat.’ She looked at George’s rumpled clothes. ‘It looks as though you’ve had a nap too. It would’ve been a good idea to take that jacket off,’ she said mildly. She went over to her shopping basket, which she’d left on a chair by the table and took out a newspaper. ‘Here you are. You said you wanted to get another position as soon as you could so I got you today’s Reminder.’
George tipped the gritty coal dust into the fire, where it hissed and crackled. He thanked his mother and then found his father’s fountain pen in the drawer, sat at the table and opened the paper. He scanned over the stories of local men who had gone to war: news of a field card received by a father telling him that his son was a P.O.W., of a family who had five sons in service, of a soldier who had received a Military Medal for good work done in the advance on Polygon Wood – men who had served, or were serving, honourably in the field – not uselessly stuck at home. With a bitter feeling he turned to the page headed ‘Situations Vacant’. He looked down the list of advertisements: ‘Barman’, ‘Draper’s Assistant’, ‘Tobacconist’, ‘Waiter’, ‘Street Sweeper’; the list ran on. Many of the jobs he discounted as requiring the employee to be constantly on their feet or to be dealing with customers. His leg wasn’t ready for the first trial and his courage wasn’t ready for the second. He circled ‘Railway Apprentice’ and a position as a travelling salesman for the pencil factory in the town. The advertisement for the railway apprentice went on to say that it was track work. Walking miles, he supposed, and he had no experience of sales, which would probably involve pounding the pavements too. He put a question mark by both.
Lillie appeared at the kitchen door with her thumb in her mouth. George pretended not to have seen her, thinking that if he turned round she would probably cry. He bent his head over the paper. Mother picked her up and he heard Lillie say indistinctly, ‘Make the man go ’way,’ and Mother saying, ‘Don’t be silly. You come by the fire with me and keep warm.’
She sat down with Lillie on her lap, who pulled up her feet as if to make herself into the smallest possible ball and turned her head in towards Mother’s bosom.
George looked over and said, ‘Shall I take this upstairs?’ but Mother put her finger to her lips as if to say, ‘Let’s see what happens next.’
He ran his finger down the columns again: ‘Lady’s Maid’, ‘Navvy’, ‘Porter’ … He put a circle around ‘Projectionist’s Assistant’. He wondered what that would involve. He didn’t like the thought of being indoors all the time but the idea of privacy, away from the public gaze, was appealing and the Alhambra Cinema was just a few streets away. Without thinking, he began to doodle in the margins of the paper: a tree with bare branches, a series of little fluttering birds based on Mrs Laramie’s canaries, over the way. Ever since Edmund’s death he hadn’t painted or even picked up a pencil to sketch; he’d had no desire to record anything in the world he’d inhabited, where everything had turned to ugliness and death. Becoming engrossed, he drew a bird pecking at the ground and added dots as crumbs around its feet. Glancing up he saw that Lillie was watching him and he looked quickly down again. He wondered whether to hold up the paper to show her his drawings but didn’t dare. Better just to rejoice in the fact that they were in the same room and she was tolerating his presence. He would leave the paper on the hearthrug when Mother took her into the kitchen for her tea, and maybe Lillie would see it when she played by the fire later. Drawing a scruffy-looking dog with one ear turned inside out, he became so involved that he jumped when Mother tried to lift Lillie down and Lillie let out a cry and clung to her.
‘All right, all right,’ Mother said, scooping her up on to her hip and rolling her eyes at George. ‘It’s only your brother, Lillie. He’s as soft as a brush.’
George went back to his sketching and drew a jack-in-the-box on a long curly spring. He added a picture of a mouse peeping out of a hole in a big wedge of cheese and then placed the paper on the rug, next to Lillie’s doll.
18
THE ALHAMBRA
George came out of the office at the pencil factory and closed the glass-paned door behind him, sensing the buzz of conversation starting up among the office girls. It had taken only moments for the officious assistant manager to turn him down. They were looking for someone who would be happy with train travel and overnight stays, he’d said. George had been agreeable to both. They were looking for someone used to dealing with customers. George had said that he’d done his stint on the counter at the post office. The man had stared at him in an obvious fashion and said that they were looking for someone ‘presentable’. George had no answer to that which he could articulate in a lady’s hearing, so he had said good day.
He walked back through the town with his cap pulled well down over his ears. Passing the post office, he wondered if Kitty was inside sorting or out on a round. He considered going in to find out but quailed at the thought of Mr Ashwell’s expression, which would surely say that he was making a nuisance of himself. He would just have to wait until Sunday when they had arranged to go for a walk together, when Kitty was free after church. No backsliding, he said to himself, go and see if the cinema job is still going; at least have a try. Get it over with, more like, he answered himself.
In the market place, posters were pasted on the walls of the buildings urging ‘Britons, Join Your Country’s Army!’ and ‘Remember Belgium!’ Notices beneath them gave details of halls and schools pressed into service as recruitment offices. Everywhere he looked there was evidence of the war: some shop windows were decked with flags, others proclaimed proudly ‘Suppliers to the Army’. George paused before a poster on the side of the Moot Hall that depicted a man and woman dressed in homespun working clothes, the woman holding up a rifle and gesturing behind her at a horizon where buildings were burning. The caption read: ‘Will You Go or Must I?’ He turned from it, feeling unmanned, and slipped away down an alley.
A group of boys were hanging around at the back of the baker’s shop; three had climbed up on the high wall and were sitting with their legs dangling, sharing out a grubby looking half-loaf. Two others were lounging against the wall, passing around the nub end of a cigarette. As George went by, they fell silent, and he could feel their eyes on his back as he made his way past the back entrances and dustbins of the shops and pubs. There was a sudden burst of laughter and he turned to see that one of the older lads was following him, staggering along in an exaggerated version of his limping walk. The boy stopped as he met George’s eye, freezing as if it were a game of statues, adopting a position with one leg dragging stiffly behind him and screwing his face up into a grimace. George
turned away. They’re only lads with nothing better to do; ignore them, he said to himself, but as he rounded the corner out of the alley there was a further shout of laughter as another boy joined in the mimicry. ‘Hey, Peg leg!’ he shouted out to George as he walked on.
The Alhambra was opposite the gospel hall; the name was carved in stone above its glossy red-painted glass doors, its frontage seen as brazen showiness by most of the congregation, who favoured sobriety and decorum in architecture, as in all things. To George, even the name was exotic and mysterious: conjuring palaces and Moorish kings, dark-skinned sheikhs and dancing girls. When he had held his position at the post office, he had occasionally been able to treat Ted to a Saturday matinée, where they had hooted with laughter at the antics of the Keystone Kops. Once he had come with Kitty to see Arizona and they had thrilled to the fighting of cowboys and Indians, Stetsons and feathers raised perilously over rocky cover as the two sides slugged it out.
George went in and approached the box office, where Millicent, a bleached blonde whom his mother considered to be ‘forward’, was polishing the cash register while sucking a boiled sweet. She looked at him with open curiosity as he introduced himself and explained why he had come.
‘Aren’t you the chap who used to deliver our post?’ She winked at him. ‘I never forget a young man.’ She slipped from her stool and went to fetch Mr Mounsey, who was both owner and manager.
Mr Mounsey was a small, dapper man in his fifties who affected a theatrical look by sporting a coloured bow tie, a different shade for each day of the week, and a matching silk handkerchief, which he folded and tucked into his top pocket in such a way that two immaculate corners peeped out.
‘You’ve come about the job, I gather,’ he said to George. ‘We’ve had a few enquiries. Have you any experience in this line of work?’
‘I’m afraid not, sir, but I’m very willing to learn,’ George said. ‘I’m reliable and a hard worker.’
The Moon Field Page 27