At first, when he had refused to come to chapel any more, Frederick had said that it was probably a temporary setback and that they should give him time, but it had been weeks now. Even at home he was morose and, frankly, difficult, and often absented himself completely. He set off on solitary walks, who knew where, from which he returned late in the evening, not refreshed and invigorated but pale and drained.
‘Maybe he tried too much, too soon,’ Frederick said. ‘The lad has a mountain to climb.’
It made Maggie think of the barren wasteland of boulders at the top of Scafell Pike where, ten years or so ago, a group of climbers had found the party they’d lunched with, roped together at the foot of the pinnacle: a three-hundred-foot fall. She tried to shrug off the picture of George climbing the arduous slopes. ‘Talk to him, Frederick,’ she said. ‘Take him off somewhere and talk to him, man to man.’
One Sunday afternoon, George and his father left the town behind and walked out to the stone circle at Castlerigg, a place that they had visited many times when George was a boy. They sat with their backs against one of the monoliths, taking in anew the ring of standing stones set on a green plateau surrounded by fells, as if in a bowl of hills. The huge stones, hewn from volcanic rock, leaned at crazy angles, some still upright and taller than a man, some sunk deep into the ground, all lichen-covered with patches of crusty yellow-green.
Heated by their exertions, the men had taken off their caps and rolled up their shirtsleeves. They sat for a while letting the breeze that always funnelled across the plateau find their faces and bare arms.
At length, Frederick said, ‘Do you remember when I used to set you and Ted on to counting the stones?’
‘We could never get the same number twice and you told us that they moved about when we weren’t looking!’
Frederick laughed. ‘I used to start you off from where I was standing next to one stone, and get you to count once, then next time, I’d move along one or two from where you’d set off.’
George gave a small smile. ‘I caught on to that eventually; I don’t think Ted ever did though. I remember feeling proud of myself when I counted thirty-eight of them three times running.’
They sat for a while watching the clouds chase their shadows across the fells, now purpled over with heather.
Frederick said, in a carefully neutral tone, ‘Your mother’s a bit concerned about you – that you’re not getting out, other than walking on your own.’
‘I’m just trying to get the strength back in this leg,’ George lied. ‘That’s why I’m out so much.’
‘Mmm.’ Frederick said. He started again. ‘You know, everyone would welcome you back at chapel; the Elder always asks after you.’ He added, ‘It’s not because we mind – don’t think that; it’s because it would do you good.’
‘I can’t,’ George said shortly. ‘And it wouldn’t.’
Frederick looked at George, wondering how much the war had changed him. Was it the things that he’d seen that had turned him aside from God, or things that he’d done? Soldiering was a stomach-turning business. He said gently, ‘Don’t shut yourself out, that’s all I’d say. God’s saving grace is for every one of us, regardless of whether we go to worship.’
He put his hand on George’s shoulder. ‘Is there anything you regret?’
George’s throat constricted.
‘Are there people you lost?’
George nodded but said nothing.
Frederick sat back and thought for a minute. ‘These stones …’ he said. ‘Strange, isn’t it, when you think of men bringing them here, four, maybe five thousand years ago? Some people believe they’re for predicting the length of the seasons. Think of all the centuries, maybe millennia, they’ve been used to help them to know when to sow and when to reap their crops.’ He paused. ‘What I’m saying is – it’s such a short time that we have; don’t waste it away in grief and regrets.’
George picked a piece of couch grass and wound it round and round his finger.
Frederick said, ‘Think about it – if you’d died instead of being injured, what would you have missed? Not just now, but in your whole life: the things you could have reasonably expected to have if you’d never gone to war.’
‘I don’t know; I suppose a job, advancement, taking some leisure …’
‘Yes, but more than that.’
George hesitated. ‘Maybe a wife, and a home of my own; maybe children.’
Frederick sat back and slapped his hands on his knees. ‘Exactly. The things that make you a man! So … you weren’t killed in that shell hole, goodness knows how, but you survived. Life has all these things to offer and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t pursue them. There’s someone for everyone, you know.’
George thought not. He turned full face to his father. ‘Look at the state of me,’ he said bitterly.
His father held his ground. ‘Believe me, there are things worse than scars. Dead faces don’t make scars, George.’
‘That’s as maybe; I don’t see the girls queuing up for a limping man with half a face.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Kitty’s always been a little sweet on you,’ Frederick said lightly.
‘What do you mean?’ George said defensively.
‘Well, I doubt she goes asking after all the boys from the post office who’ve enlisted the way she used to come round asking after you.’
‘When was this?’
‘Once she knew you’d gone abroad,’ Frederick said slowly as though George was being an idiot. ‘She was round every week on some pretext or another to speak to your mother and ask for news of you.’
George thought about the long spell at the camp before he’d had a letter from Kitty and the terse notes that she’d sent when he’d been in Flanders. He couldn’t fathom it. He’d thought she’d been too angry to care about him all that time, and had only come round when Arthur died and she needed a friend. Well, he thought, as he struggled to his feet, it doesn’t matter any more, the way things are between us now. He felt a flash of anger at the thought of the misunderstandings between them, the hurt, the unfairness of it all.
‘It’s never too late, you know,’ Frederick said gently, as if he had read George’s thoughts.
‘My leg’s stiffening up. I’m going to have to move,’ George said, pulling himself up and hobbling a few steps towards the centre of the circle to get some circulation back.
‘We’ll go back,’ Frederick said. George looked as low and beaten-down as he had done when they’d started out. He wouldn’t have much of a success to report back to Maggie. Nonetheless, he clapped George on the shoulder as he came back over, saying, ‘All downhill on the way back. Always easier when you’re facing homewards.’
When they reached home, Frederick went upstairs to get ready for the Elders’ meeting at the chapel and George, after answering his mother’s enquiry about where they had been on their walk, sat down at the parlour table to write his regular letter to Haycock. Maggie was sitting in the fireside chair, mending socks, while Lillie played tea parties on the rug. She had set Lillie up with an old tin tray, a motley collection of saucers, a chipped gravy boat for a teapot and some eggcups to act as a tea service. Lillie had added some red bean flowers, twigs and leaves from the garden to serve as food. She had her bear and her doll sitting up against the hearthstone, both of whom were rather wet. Every now and then, she would take a plate to Maggie, who would say, ‘Mmm, lovely sausages,’ take a stem or a leaf, pretend to eat it and then put it back solemnly on the plate.
George took little notice and soon became engrossed in his letter, passing on to Haycock the comments in the paper on the progress of the war, telling him of the new fear of Zeppelins that had taken hold of the country, and venting his spleen about the propagandist news reels that folk lapped up at the cinema.
After a while, Maggie needed a smaller darning mushroom so that she could start on Lillie’s socks, and went upstairs to get it. George started a new paragraph enquiring after Turlan
d, the lads with whom they had shared a billet, Chalky and the other regulars they’d fought alongside in support. Black thoughts overcame him as he remembered the wait before an order to advance, the endless bombardment of shells, the awful randomness of it all. Perhaps it was better not to ask about the others; bad news came soon enough. A tiny noise disturbed him and he looked up in irritation.
Lillie was standing in front of him holding a saucer in both hands, clutching it close to her stomach. As she saw his set face, her chin dropped and her mouth turned down at the corners.
‘No! Lillie, it’s all right,’ he blurted out, his voice choked. ‘Are those for me?’ he said quickly, trying to soften his tone. ‘Can I have one?’ He stayed very still.
Without taking a step forward, she reached out both hands, holding the saucer towards him. Very slowly, as if approaching some wild creature, George reached out his hand and, keeping eye contact, picked up a twig and touched it to his lips. He returned it to the saucer saying in his best tea-party voice: ‘Thank you. That was very nice.’
Lillie said nothing but stared at him with huge eyes before returning to the rug and beginning to arrange the tray anew.
Mother came back in, carrying her sewing basket. She eased herself carefully into the chair saying, ‘My back’s not been the same since Thursday. Why the guesthouse has to have all the rugs beaten on the same day, I’ll never understand.’ She looked down at Lillie and then glanced over at George. ‘Everything all right?’
George nodded and bent his head again over his letter, so that Mother shouldn’t see him fighting absurdly with tears.
23
STONES
Violet was walking beside the beck through the fields, following it down to the lake. Feeling desolate, she looked only at the ground ahead of her. Bent by the stiff breeze coming off the water, the grass glistened in the sun; here and there feathers and down were caught in it, trembling, and brown flies settled on sheep droppings to be lifted again by the gusting wind.
She reached the church and hesitated by the slate stile set into the churchyard wall. The thought of the crucifix over the pulpit was too much to bear; she could no longer see the black, lead figure as an emblem of redemption but only as a representation of tortured flesh. Golgotha, the place of skulls. In any case, she thought as she turned away, I’m beyond praying.
She walked on, to the lake’s edge, where the water lapped fast against a thin shoreline of pebbles, eroding the grass line so that it cut in and out in tiny inlets and bays, the earth and turf standing proud of the stones. In places at the margin, spiky rushes grew in clumps and boulders were randomly strewn, erratics dumped by ice in an ancient age, some set deeply in the grass, some free of it, as though placed like giant marbles.
Violet sat down on one of the rocks; it was warm to the touch despite the breeze – the sun was high overhead; it must be nearly midday. She thought of sleep: deep, undisturbed, dreamless sleep. What a boon that would be, not to lie wakeful and lonely thinking of the life she could have had, not to toss and turn, longing for the dawn sound of the birds and the creaks and squeaks as the windows were opened by the maids to air the rooms. Only when she heard Mrs Burbidge’s heavy footstep on the stair did she sometimes slip into an exhausted sleep for an hour or two, as she once used to sleep as a child when she was ill and Burbidge would nurse her. It used to comfort her watching Burbidge moving around the room, folding clothes, straightening cushions and banking up the fire, or simply sitting beside her, reading in her slow, flat style.
Violet looked at the expanse of water, its smoothness marked by the wind like a fingerprint on varnish. She wondered how deep it was, how quickly the bottom shelved away.
She turned away from it and looked back the way she’d come. The church, ringed with its stone wall, was surrounded by acres of green and dwarfed by the huge bulk of the fell behind: the expanse of Dodd Wood a mere frill at its foot, the treeline finishing only a quarter of the way up, and giving way to heather and grey scree, walls of bare rock. The leaded windows of the church and its little bell, suspended from an arch of stone above them, seemed insignificant – a child’s toy.
Between church and fell stood the house, angled to give a view down to the lake. Violet could see her mother’s bedroom window and her own. She had a strange sense of looking back at herself as she prepared to take this walk, this morning: dressing and pinning up her hair, shrugging on her coat and putting Edmund’s letters into the pocket. She could feel them against her thigh, a thick bundle of envelopes.
Where her coat fell open, a tiny blue butterfly the size of her thumbnail landed on the dark-grey material of the skirt of her dress. It opened and closed its wings as if it was new-hatched from the chrysalis and must dry them in the sun. The wind knocked it sideways but it righted itself and fluttered down to the pebbles at her feet. She bent to watch it, studying its antennae, the soft white fringe edging its wings; she felt quite calm. The wind caught it and lifted it once more and she picked up the pebble it had been blown from and turned back towards the lake.
How easy, she thought, to fill my pockets with stones. She imagined the chill of the water through her boots, her skirts darkening from the hems as it travelled up the cloth. She would feel the stones dragging at the waist seam of her dress, splashes and splatters as she walked, then freezing, numbing cold as the material clung to her legs. She knew that at waist height she would pause, unable to move either forwards or back, that there would be a moment of beauty before weariness overcame her, and she would lie back in the water despite the struggle that she knew would come when instinct would fight with will.
She sat holding the stone in her palm. Behind her, she could feel her mother’s window as if it were an eye upon her back. Poor mother, in her sickness and pain; she could be watching now, wondering what took her daughter always down to the church or out to the hills and why she should sit staring out over the lake, weighing something in her open hand. Father is never coming back; I’m all she has, Violet thought, and in an instant, her resolve drained away, leaving only a great tiredness. She stood up and placed the smooth, grey pebble on top of the boulder as if to set a reminder to herself there; then she walked back to the house, as slowly as if she were wading through water.
As she came into the hall and took off her coat, Mrs Burbidge appeared and took it from her. ‘Go on through to the dining room, miss. Lunch is ready for you; there’s a nice bit of brisket and some good early potatoes, with an egg custard to follow.’
‘Thank you, Burbidge, but I’m not hungry.’ Violet walked past her and upstairs to her room. She shut the door behind her and went over to the dressing table. As if in a dream, she took the letters from her pocket and restored them to their place in the top drawer, hidden beneath her handkerchiefs and stockings. A faint pomander smell of cloves and oranges escaped as she closed it.
There was a tap at the door and Mrs Burbidge put her head around it and then came right in. ‘Forgive me, Miss Violet, but you need to eat! It’s all prepared. Would you not just come down and see if you could manage a small portion?’
Violet sat down at the table beside the window. She heard herself say, ‘Thank you, no, I think I’ll have it up here on a tray, if it’s not too much trouble to make up another?’
Mrs Burbidge looked disapproving and opened her mouth to remonstrate.
‘Please, Mrs B.’ Violet recognised the pleading note in her voice. ‘I’m not feeling quite myself these days,’ she said, as she had heard her mother say so many times.
George sat on his bed with the tin box beside him; he had decided to send it back to Violet. He couldn’t be sure any more whether he had originally kept it to protect Violet from grief or to protect himself from witnessing it. He knew that it didn’t belong with him; he had no right to it.
He picked up the tiny ivory dance-card holder. The hinges were delicately worked in silver and when you touched a minute ebony button, it sprang open. It was exquisite. There was not, and never would be, anyt
hing remotely like it owned by the Farrell family, he thought. He returned it to its place.
Taking up the letters, he shuffled them together into a tight pack, took a shoelace from the bottom of the wardrobe and tied them together to show that they had not been read. When all was packed away in the box, he put the lid on and made sure it was tight. The picture of the placid boating scene, with fishing rod and red parasol, seemed to him to come from an innocent world that was utterly lost. He thought of the war rumbling on, like some unstoppable juggernaut, and wondered how innocence could ever be recaptured: perhaps it would only be possible once his generation had passed away. Perhaps it would take a new generation, making a fresh start in a peaceful world. This war must end at last and must surely be the war to end them all.
From his kitbag, he took out the brown paper and string in which the tin had been wrapped when it reached him at the hospital. He turned the paper, so that the Wandsworth address was on the inside, and set the tin down on it. He didn’t want to write a letter; there was nothing he could say that would change her mind, but the thought of Violet opening the parcel without knowing where it came from, and with no kind word to soften the blow, was unbearable. And they had parted without saying goodbye. His father had always told him that to wish someone goodbye meant ‘God be with you’, so to leave without saying it was to withhold your blessing.
He took out his sketchbook and retrieved the watercolour that still lay sandwiched between its sheets of textured cream paper and its board back. He remembered painting the view over Bassenthwaite; he had started with a light wash on which to build lake and sky and the paper had puckered a little where he had made it too wet, then he had broken the scene down into simple shapes, fells and rock faces becoming slabs of colour. How easy it was to trick the eye and create an illusion of solidity, with colour only a few molecules thick. A perception could be constructed from coloured water, or a memory conjured by an image: the division between past and present so paper thin it was virtually imperceptible. As he held the painting in his hands, for a split second he remembered the boy he had been on the warm spring day when he cycled through the park with such hope running through him that he felt he could have taken on the world. Then the connection was gone. He turned the painting over and wrote in the bottom right-hand corner, For Violet, in memory of happier times and in hope of better times to come. His own kind of blessing.
The Moon Field Page 32