The Repercussions

by Catherine Hall

  By the time they left, it was night. They had walked back to Hari’s house unsure of what was real and what was not, picking their way over the lines of men who slept at the sides of the streets, seeing things in the shadows that flitted between the houses.

  “I never went there again,” Hari said. “At first Aditya tried to persuade me, but then he gave up and went alone. By the time I left for England he was there every day. He was there the day I left from the station. At the beginning I wrote to him from Oxford, but the replies I got were more and more confused, so I stopped writing.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  He shook his head, as if to banish the memory. “So you see,” he said. “Never think about taking morphine. When I see the look on some of the patients’ faces I can guess what is in their minds. The pain may be taken away for a while, but the drug will bring out the things they saw on the battlefield, and those are not things that one should remember.” There was a pause. “I would not want that to happen to you.”

  I felt humbled by his story. Suddenly I knew that I had to tell him how I felt.

  “Hari,” I said. “Mr Mitra.”

  I don’t know why I had said Mr Mitra, as if a declaration of love required some degree of formality. I stumbled on, having no real idea of what to say.

  “Hari,” I began again. “Working at the Pavilion has meant a lot to me. In fact, I could say that it has changed everything about my life. And a great deal of that is due to you.”

  I paused, wondering if I should continue, my heart thudding in my chest so hard that I almost felt sick from it. “I really feel as if I must tell you…”

  And then I stopped. I could not bring myself to say it – not yet.

  Forty-Three

  So there you have it, Susie, now you know. It’s not a pretty story, is it? I’m not proud of myself for having sex with the guy, but that’s not the point – it’s what happened to Rashida, I can’t get it out of my head.

  I can’t sleep – or when I do, the nightmares start. I go to bed wondering which instalment it’s going to be, where I’m going to go: Eastern Europe or Africa, desert, jungle or some godforsaken mountain pass. Is it going to be dismemberment or a hanging? Will the soundtrack be screams or shouts, machine-gun fire or, worse, the silence after the final bullet?

  The other night I thought of that dinner party we went to after I’d just come back from Liberia – at Charlie and Mo’s – when their children came to say goodnight after their bath, dressed in their pyjamas, all excited because they had visitors, and I blurted out, “Those are the first kids I’ve seen for months who aren’t dead or carrying a gun.”

  I knew I mustn’t get like that again. I went back to see Florence the doctor. Her first question was pretty direct.

  “Are you still considering a termination?” she said. “If you are, you should make your mind up soon. It’s much more straightforward if you do it early.”

  I remembered that museum we once went to, the only visitors in a Victorian gentleman’s house. The drawing room was silent apart from the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner. On a shelf, next to the stuffed birds and badger skulls, stood a row of jars filled with clear liquid, each holding a single, floating foetus. Tiny almost-humans stared out, pale and unformed ghosts. We’d argued again the night before about having kids – you desperate, me feeling guilty but unmoved. I stared at the strange, otherworldly little shapes for a long time, trying to think of what to say. When I turned around, your face was streaked with tears.

  Now I sat opposite Florence, trying to imagine something like that inside me. She was looking at me with those clever grey eyes of hers. It was making me nervous.

  “How are you otherwise?” she asked.

  “How do you mean?”

  “The last time you were here, you were having some problems. Nightmares, panic attacks.”

  “And you asked me about PTSD.” I remembered how angry I’d been.

  She nodded. “So how are you now?”

  There was no point in hiding it. “No more panic attacks. I’m still having the nightmares, but there’s a lot on my mind. This is the first time I haven’t worked for years. I’m remembering stuff, and a lot of it’s pretty bad. But that’s my job.”

  “There are ways of coping with this kind of thing. I could put you in touch with people who could help.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, knowing that I wouldn’t, that it would seem self-indulgent. I’m the one who’s here and safe. I’m the one who’s still alive.

  I decided it was time to get out of Brighton, that a change of scenery might help. I’ve been working my way through Edith’s bookshelves, rediscovering Virginia Woolf – inspired, I thought I’d go to Sissinghurst, to Vita Sackville-West’s garden.

  Do you remember going to see the film of Orlando together on the South Bank on a freezing Sunday afternoon, holding hands throughout the whole thing, loving the whole crazy, gender-bending glory of it, both of us fancying Tilda Swinton like mad? Later, in the summer, we went on a pilgrimage to Vita’s gardens, with that amazing tower that made us dizzy when we looked up at it from below and saw the clouds scudding by. The gardens were busy, tourists buzzing around the herbaceous borders like bees. There was that woman, remember, with her husband, going on and on about how terrible the sandwiches were in the café. We followed her up the tower and, as she went up the stairs to look at the view, we pressed our faces against the wrought-iron barrier, peeping through to Vita’s writing room and her little library, just a glimpse behind. You slipped your hand into mine and nodded towards the chaise longue covered in yellow velvet corduroy and we giggled, thinking of the coy line in the exhibition we’d seen on our way in: “Their friendship lasted until Virginia’s suicide in 1941, but she never spent a night at Sissinghurst.”

  “Afternoon delight,” you whispered, and pinched my bum, just as the woman came back down the stairs, still talking, her husband trailing behind.

  This time I was on my own, and it was November, not July. I hired a car, made sandwiches and even filled Edith’s Thermos up with coffee. It was a gusty, vicious sort of day, the wind crashing off the sea and up over the Downs, but I felt safe in my little car, tootling along the country lanes, rocking a bit from the gales but happy just to drive with the knowledge that there would be no mines or blockades in the road. I put on some music and hummed along, thinking of Virginia Woolf driving over from her house in Rodmell, hunched over the wheel. For some reason that’s how I picture her: squinting at the road, concentrating hard, although I’m sure she would have had a driver.

  Virginia didn’t have children. Leonard was too scared of what it might do to her health, mental or otherwise. I wonder how many books she’d have managed to write if she had. Vita had two sons and wrote more than fifty, but I bet she had a nanny. In the end, kids or no kids, Virginia killed herself anyway – oh God, Susie, I don’t know. I’m no Virginia Woolf or Vita Sackville-West. I’m just Jo Sinclair, forty and pregnant, and I make a living from taking pictures of the terrible things that people do to one other. I can’t even call myself an artist.

  It was quite the journey from Sussex to Kent, along twisting roads, through tunnels of trees, bleak without their leaves. Twigs and branches clogged up ditches, felled by gales. As I turned off the road to the little lane that led up to the house, I saw a neatly painted sign:

  HOUSE AND GARDENS CLOSED.

  ESTATE AND FARM-SHOP OPEN.

  I carried on to the car park anyway, cursing myself for not thinking, for not realizing the gardens might be closed. Switching off the engine I sat there, wondering what to do. There didn’t seem much point in going back to Brighton, so I rummaged on the back seat for my Thermos and the sandwiches, put them into my rucksack and set off for the house.

  The place was deserted – which suited me fine. No tourists in sunglasses and baseball caps, no Bloomsbury aficionados in flowery dresses and wide-brimmed hats. Just me and a nice woman in the ticket office who
said I didn’t need a ticket to go around the estate or to the exhibition, and that I was free to wander wherever I liked.

  I pottered around, admiring the weathered bricks of the castle wall and the sturdy oast houses with their white fins. The exhibition was in one of them. Virginia’s old printing press was there too, maybe even the one she used for Orlando.

  A couple of bookshelves held thrillers and romances on sale for fifty pence, but there was nothing I wanted, so I left the oast house and went over to an archway that looked out onto more fields and vast woodlands. Perching on a bale of straw, I took out the thermos and sandwich, and sat, warming my hands on the cup of steaming coffee, staring at the view. I felt a strange nostalgia for England – an England I’ve never known and always slightly despised: a National Trustish sort of England, an Edwardian England of afternoon tea and well-clipped lawns, faded rugs and chintz-covered sofas, antique globes in stands. I thought of Mrs Dalloway and young men like Elizabeth’s Robert going off “to save an England which consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare’s plays and Miss Isabel Pole in a green dress walking in a square”.

  It was a swooping, sad sort of feeling, for something lost for ever. Then I realized. It wasn’t for those things, Suze, those things I never knew and never cared about. It was for us.

  It was on the way home that I became aware that something was wrong. Driving along, I felt a wetness between my thighs. Looking down I saw a dark stain on my trousers. I swerved off the road onto a verge, fumbled for my phone and dialled Florence’s number. It rang four, five, six times.

  “Please be there,” I muttered. “Please, please be there.”

  On the seventh ring, she answered.

  “Jo!”

  “I need your help.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I’m bleeding.”

  Her voice turned professional. “When did it start?”

  “Just now.”

  “And is it heavy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What colour?”

  “Colour?”

  “Bright-red or brown?”

  “Sort of… brown. Florence, am I having a miscarriage?”

  My heart pounded in my chest as I waited for her to answer. I was sweating, my breath coming in little pants. Despite all my doubts about the baby, I realized I was terrified of losing it.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s possible. You need to have a scan to see if there’s still a heartbeat.”

  “Where?”

  “The Royal Sussex, it’s on Eastern Road, near your flat. Go to the Early Pregnancy Unit, Thomas Kemp Tower.”

  “Will you… I mean… could you come with me?”

  There was a pause.

  “I’ll come,” she said. “But not as your doctor. As a friend.”

  Florence was waiting for me outside the hospital. For a moment we were awkward, then she hugged me close.

  “Don’t panic,” she said. “Plenty of women bleed when they’re pregnant.”

  We went through a series of corridors and stairs, past a chapel smelling of incense and polish, though some swing doors, finally arriving at a crowded waiting room. We signed in and moved towards the rows of chairs.

  The afternoon ticked on. The queue moved slowly. As I waited, I thought of the future. And the funny thing was, Suze, the only one I could imagine was with the baby: holding it in my arms, taking it for walks along the seafront, rocking it to sleep. The other future, back on the front line, sweating in forty-degree heat, lugging my cameras through airports, had vanished.

  At last, my name was called. Inside the consulting room, the doctor began to ask questions. The first ones were easy, confirming my name, my date of birth, address. Then they got harder.

  “Is this your first pregnancy?” the doctor asked.

  “Yes.”

  “When was your last period?”

  I hesitated.

  “Mid-August,” said Florence.

  The doctor looked from me to her and gave a little smile.

  “And why are you here today?”

  “I’m bleeding,” I said. “I think I might be losing it.”

  “Not necessarily,” the doctor said. “Bleeding in the first trimester is quite common. Hop up on the bed and we’ll take a look.”

  I couldn’t decide whether her calmness made me feel angry or reassured.

  “Usually we’d do a vaginal scan, but you’re around twelve weeks, so I’m going to try your abdomen.”

  She pushed my jeans down far enough to make me blush. A dollop of cold gel slapped onto my stomach, then came the ultrasound probe. As she moved it around, pressing harder than I’d expected, a sound filled the room, like horses galloping.

  “That’s your baby,” she said. “Good, strong heartbeat.”

  My eyes were suddenly wet with tears. Florence squeezed my hand.

  “Let’s see,” said the doctor, turning the computer screen towards me.

  And there it was, like all those pictures of baby scans that people send around on email or post on Facebook: a cone of light shining down on this tiny, curled-up thing, with a head and eyes and even tiny fingers. The difference was that this one was mine. I felt a flash of crazy, stupid love and I knew that I would keep it.

  Florence filled out forms and made appointments and arrangements for me to see the midwife. The next six months were planned out, plotted on a calendar – blood tests, measurements, the next scan at twenty weeks. It was the most organized my life had been for years.

  I rushed home, filled with sudden purpose. When I got there, I pulled my bags out of the corner and unpacked properly, opening all the pockets, taking off luggage tags, putting everything on the bed. Taking out my cameras, I brushed them off, then held my bags out of the window, shaking them, watching the last of the Kabul dust fly away on the wind.

  I threw all my leftover Marlboros in the bin, all except for one. I wanted to smoke it, to say goodbye to my life as it had been. I sat in the Lloyd Loom chair taking long drags, watching the smoke as I exhaled, thinking of all those cigarettes in all those places, another part of the danger, the danger that I secretly loved. I smoked it right down to the stub, then ground it out in the ashtray and sat holding my belly, looking out to sea. All my angst had vanished, replaced by a feeling that everything would be all right.

  “It’s you and me, kiddo,” I said to my little Afghan bug.

  So there we are, Suze. The thing that finally broke us up, that one big difference that we couldn’t overcome, the problem we couldn’t solve, is happening, despite my best intentions, to me. I couldn’t understand your need for it, wouldn’t empathize. It was only when it was almost snatched away that I understood. I’m doing this all by myself. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the irony.

  Forty-Four

  ELIZABETH WILLOUGHBY’S DIARY

  25th May 1915

  I find myself shaking as I write this: my pen skitters and slides across the page. I do not want to write it at all, but write it I will, because when I began this diary I said it would be my true and faithful record of the war, and that is what it shall be.

  Yesterday, at the end of my shift, I was in the vestibule gathering my coat and hat, when I heard a familiar voice calling my name. I stiffened: it was Hari.

  I knew that I had shadows under my eyes from too many nights spent lying awake. He looked even worse: his skin was grey, his eyes bloodshot and swollen. Usually so neat and well-pressed, his clothes were crumpled, as if he had slept in them. I wondered what was wrong.

  He asked if he might talk to me, and I said that I was about to go home.

  “May I walk with you some of the way?” he said.

  There was nothing I could reply to that without being rude, so I nodded, and together we left the Pavilion.

  We wandered in silence down to the seafront, awash with afternoon sunlight. It was warm, and people were taking dips in the sea. Usually Hari and I would have walked happily together, our conversation easy and qui
ck, but today we were caught in the sticky mud of embarrassment and floundered there. We were not helped by the curious glances thrown at us by passers-by, who had probably read about the assault on the girl by the sub-assistant surgeon and were making assumptions. If only they knew, I thought to myself, would they feel pity or would they think I was a fool?

  We had almost reached Kemptown when he broke the silence.

  “Elizabeth. I’ve been thinking about our conversation in the garden. I believe you were trying to tell me something important.”

  I felt a flicker of hope. “I was.”

  “Elizabeth,” he said again, then gestured to a bench. “Will you sit?”

  We sat, looking out onto a flat sea.

  “I have felt things…” he began, and then stopped.

  How could he stop? I wanted to take him and shake him and know for myself if it was anything like what I had felt for him.

  “The sea is very blue today,” he said, instead. “In India we call it the Kala Pani. Black Water. Crossing the Kala Pani to sail to England is a taboo for Hindus. It scares us, because it’s supposed to mean the end of reincarnation. After one has crossed it, one’s next death will be the last.”

  “Does that worry you?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t believe in any of that. Even if I did, I wouldn’t care: I’ve always wanted to get away from Calcutta, from my family, from the people who know me. I’ve always wanted to start again, somewhere new.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you remember the song the Pathans sung in the garden – the one they found so amusing?”

  I nodded, remembering how I had dreamt of lying under a tree with him, listening to Indian ragas.

  “The patient I was with, Atash Khan, gave me a translation. It’s a famous Pathan song called ‘Zakhmi Dil’, which means ‘Wounded Heart’. It starts like this: ‘There’s a boy across the river with a bottom like a peach. But alas I cannot swim.’”