by Parks, Adele
Ava looked at Bea in the mirror from under her eyelashes; she was applying a daring scarlet lipstick that Beatrice wasn’t sure would be considered appropriate even at a nightclub. ‘I see, you want to sit with Mr Oaksley again, do you?’ she asked in a teasing tone. ‘I’d love to help, but I wouldn’t dare fiddle, darling. My mother has been perfecting the seating arrangement all day. Lydia and Lawrence’s domestics have twice thrown a spanner in the works this weekend. One moment he’s not coming, the next he’s here. It’s all hellishly inconvenient.’ Bea had been too immersed in her own budding romance to give any thought to the Chatfields. One knew they were a marvellous couple. They’d sort themselves out. ‘I simply daren’t cross my mama,’ added Ava. Both women knew this was not true; Ava often actively worked to infuriate her mother’s plans.
Ava suddenly grabbed another dress and hoisted it on, shooing away her maid, who tried to help. It was a rose-coloured silk with purple velvet straps and pleats. There was a sinuous, serpentine pattern of embroidered beads and gold thread along the hem. All three women looked at her reflection. She was tremendous. Bea felt confused and queasy as she had two simultaneous thoughts. One was what a great, great pity it was that Mr Oaksley would never see such beauty again, and the other was what a relief.
Bea was somewhat mollified when Ava added, ‘I can see that you two have been getting along famously all afternoon. It’s always best to leave them wanting more. A little break from one another’s company will only sharpen things.’
‘You could see we were getting on well?’ Bea asked with an excited, just suppressed smile in her voice.
‘Yes.’
‘You think he likes me?’
‘He definitely doesn’t dislike you, but one doesn’t want to run out of charm,’ added Ava, effectively puncturing the balloon of confidence she had just inflated. Her maid stood offering the choice of two pairs of shoes; Ava pointed to the ones with tortoiseshell buckles. ‘You can use dinner to think of some more amusing anecdotes to fling his way tonight.’
Beatrice followed Ava’s advice, however sardonically it was given; it was advice about men, from Ava, and therefore invaluable. Throughout dinner she concentrated on the conversation and company so that she had something fresh to relay to Mr Oaksley. She was delighted to note that whilst the vast majority of the men went to smoke, he bravely broke convention and followed the women as they filed through to the larger drawing room. Harry Fine led Mr Oaksley to Beatrice’s side; clearly by request. Bea thought she might burst with delight. He sat down next to her and smiled.
‘Where were we?’ he asked.
Emboldened by champagne, like a bud unfurling under the attention, Beatrice chatted animatedly; her usual shyness had now vanished completely. She was able to relay one or two anecdotes from dinner and she asked him about the company he’d sat with.
‘How did you find them?’
‘Dull,’ he replied. Did he mean by comparison to her? He must. Beatrice felt the compliment flip her innards; it was as though he’d just called her beautiful. She wanted to thank him but knew she must not; instead she offered, ‘Still, the food was delicious.’
‘By George, yes. I’m not complaining. We’re all being very well looked after.’ He leaned closer to her and whispered, ‘They seem to have money to burn.’
‘Yes, they are rather lucky, I suppose.’
‘You suppose? How can being so wealthy be anything other than lucky?’
‘Well …’ Bea hesitated; she didn’t like to gossip. Ava had a sharp tongue on her but she was a friend. Arnie seemed to understand without her having to say more.
‘Ah, you mean because of the way they made their money?’
‘Yes.’
‘I heard they’ve amassed an absolute fortune since nineteen fourteen, putting boots on our boys’ feet.’
‘Quite.’
‘The whiff of war profiteers, edging their way into society by paying for the privilege, clings to them, does it?’
Bea winced and then forced herself to nod. Then she remembered gestures were lost on him. ‘You know how people can be about new money,’ she whispered apologetically. In truth, she was one of those people; she preferred old money, but since she had no money at all, either new or old, no one much cared what she thought about anything anyway, except perhaps Arnie.
‘Still, they do throw good parties, and old money doesn’t stretch to that.’
‘No, I suppose there’s hardly any old money left, just old names, and even then not so many of those,’ sighed Bea.
‘I think doing well out of the war seems rather more sensible than doing badly,’ commented Mr Oaksley. Bea didn’t know his tones of voice well enough. Was he bitter or philosophical?
‘It’s not a matter of sense, though, is it? It doesn’t seem right.’
‘Why can’t anyone understand, nothing about it was right!’ Mr Oaksley snapped. Suddenly he looked pale and tired. His breathing was sharp and shallow. Beatrice wanted to mumble an apology, but just as the words were forming, she saw him take a deep breath; as though a switch was being flicked, she watched as he made a conscious effort to shun the gloomy direction their conversation had taken. Brightening, he asked, ‘Have you known Ava Pondson-Callow long?’
‘My mother and Lady Chatfield’s mother were debs together, so we go back yonks. Lydia came out at the same time as Ava, they became tight and Lydia made the introductions.’
‘I think I remember reading about Lady Chatfield’s season.’
‘No doubt. It was very successful. Both she and Ava were gorgeous. Never out of the papers. So much fun. You should have seen them.’ It was just a turn of phrase, but Bea felt self-conscious and rushed to correct things. ‘Well, you say you did. Back then, you could.’ She stumbled. ‘Oh, sorry.’
He didn’t acknowledge her gaffe. ‘Did you get a season?’
Bea was thrilled that he might think she had turned eighteen during the war and therefore had to forfeit a traditional debutante season. Most people assumed she was four or five years older than she was, never younger. They looked at her rather than listened to her.
‘Yes, I did, although I was not the same success as Lydia and Ava or even my sister. Not by a long way.’
‘Really, why was that?’
Beatrice regretted admitting as much. She could hardly say, ‘Because I’m so ugly and the world is so shallow.’ She chose a more tactful route. ‘I was rather a provincial debutante. My clothes were London, but I was not. They wore me rather than the other way round, I think.’
‘You don’t sound as though you enjoyed it.’
‘It’s hard to remember clearly. Everything is viewed with a filter now, isn’t it?’
‘You could say that.’
Again Beatrice became aware of the dark bandage and nothing else in the room. ‘I’m sorry, that’s an awful metaphor to draw.’ She giggled nervously. It must be the champagne. Why was she being so careless? Arnie tapped her leg and smiled. The tap seemed to excuse her. The smile delighted her. Something rigid and compacted deep inside her began to melt; a warm, fluid feeling gushed around her stomach again. ‘You know how it was before. Such an age of richness. It would be wrong to say I didn’t enjoy it. I went to dances, paid calls, we were called upon and I played a good deal of bridge, tennis and golf. I had music lessons.’
‘Such gaiety.’
‘Well, yes, but no. For the men, perhaps, but we girls knew the dances for what they were. It was a race. It was all about who would be snapped up first.’ Bea remembered sitting on hard chairs, her back to the wall, watching other couples spinning, other hands clasping, other skirts whirling. She’d longed to dance with the boisterous young men, the conversationally inept young men. The men who gained dignity through death. What a cost.
‘Were you snapped up?’
No, she had been left over. ‘There was someone. But the Somme …’ She trailed off. No doubt Arnie assumed the situation was too painful to talk about. The Somme was recognised to ha
ve been an orgy of slaughter; fifty-seven and a half thousand British men fell on the first day. But they’d been told that no good came from poring over these things; besides, there was nothing to say that hadn’t been said. Nothing to say that made anything any better.
‘I’m sorry.’
Beatrice felt a flush of guilt squelch through her body, replacing the warm, exotic sensation she’d been enjoying. She often made much of the young man who fell in July 1916, along with almost sixty thousand others, but she knew it for what it was, not so much a grand passion as a brief matter of convenience. He was a chubby and plain chap, the younger brother of a friend of Lydia’s. He had no one, she had no one; they weren’t drawn together so much as shoved together by well-meaning matchmakers. They’d only walked out the once; they shared tea in Lyons on Tottenham Court Road. Bea had been chaperoned by her aunt. Luckily, the aunt was understanding and realistic – there was a war on, and besides, she was aware that Bea would never have an abundance of choice; she certainly didn’t want to put unnecessary barriers in the way of any potential romantic progress. She’d sat at a nearby table and left the young people alone.
Throughout the tea they’d both displayed every symptom of dread and dismay, and it had not been clear which they dreaded most, the embryonic courtship or the imminent dismissal to the Front. He had been wearing his uniform, which made Bea feel proud. People had nodded and murmured their approval; it was before conscription, his bravery couldn’t be doubted. Beatrice had been entirely caught up in the episode, and if he’d proposed over the egg and cress sandwiches, she no doubt would have said yes, although in truth she did not know him. Both horribly shy, they only swapped a handful of sentences in total. He’d asked her if she liked the pastry she’d picked. She’d told him she did, very much, and he offered to buy her another. He said he liked a girl who liked her food. She’d commented he should stock up on treats because they’d be harder to come across where he was going. He’d looked sad and she’d wished she hadn’t said anything. He’d asked her to write. Hadn’t he? She always told people he’d asked her to write but she wasn’t absolutely sure this was the case. Maybe her aunt had recommended they swap addresses.
The letters weren’t great epics as people imagined letters to and from the Front ought to have been. They didn’t discuss life and death and the metaphysical. They did not talk about holding one another, having one another. She told him what she was sewing at home, whether she’d taken the dogs for a walk that day; he often wrote about the weather. He asked for her photo and she happily sent it, but she could not fight the feeling that he wanted her photo more for the fact that all the other men had photos of sweethearts, not so much that he wanted her face to be close to his heart. She sent him cigarettes. He thanked her effusively and asked whether it was too much to hope she might knit him some socks for Christmas. He never saw Christmas. Perhaps if there hadn’t been a war, they could have married and existed in a state of polite plumpness. But he’d been blown to bits and so she would never know.
Bea had grieved for her lost chance. The biggest tragedy was the number of blighted possibilities.
‘Of course the war was the most incomparable tragedy, we all understand that now, but for women like me, it initially seemed simply an irksome disruption to my personal plan.’
‘Which was to marry?’
‘Quite so. I’m ashamed that I didn’t see how big it was. For you, the boys and men, certainly, but also for us. The women.’
Bea and Arnie sat listening to the cheerful strains of the gramophone. She could sense the ghosts of countless young men dancing in the rooms where they had once partied. The smoke from his cigarette make her eyes feel scratchy.
‘You’re staring at me,’ said Arnie.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘People do that.’
‘Do they?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I sense it. I hate it.’
‘You shouldn’t, it’s better than being invisible.’ Bea sighed, giving away more than she’d intended.
‘What do you look like, Beatrice?’
She wondered whether she could lie. If he ever held her (and she hoped, so dearly, that he would), then he would soon know about her curves that flowed into bulges; he must already have detected her unladylike height. However, she could omit to mention her small eyes, which looked like raisins, lost in the puffy dough of her fleshy face. He need not be aware of her heavy lids that always looked unintentionally slothful. But then she remembered the ‘don’t’.
‘I’m quite plain.’
‘Right.’
‘I’ve had compliments on my smile.’ Lydia had complimented her on her smile; no one else. Not really.
‘Can I read you?’ He held his hands up. Self-conscious, but animated, she put her fingers over his and guided him to her face. He pressed firmly from her cheekbones down to her chin; careful but deliberate pats, rather like a doctor examining her to see if her glands were swollen. She wondered how well trained his fingertips were. It was possible that he would notice her too long nose that ended with an off-centre blob, suggesting that there had been extra flesh and the angels had simply screwed it up and slung it on. On a man the nose might indicate character; Beatrice considered it nothing short of a disability. Could he feel the slight slackening of her jowls? Would he notice that the gap between her nose and mouth was about half an inch longer than optimal? The firm patting gave way to more gentle strokes as his fingers spread across her cheeks and nudged up to her lobes. They swept down again, taking in the shape and length of her nose, then up and up around the arch of her eyebrows (which were a little heavy; Ava thought she ought to pluck). His fingers were icy against her flushed cheeks; they probed.
‘I think I have a picture of you now.’ Beatrice hoped not, but she was glad to have had his hands on her. She had never been touched in that way, or any like it.
‘Why aren’t you dancing, Beatrice?’
‘Oh, I don’t enjoy dancing very much,’ she lied. She couldn’t imagine how he’d dance; the floor was crowded, arms were flailing, he might get inadvertently punched.
‘What do you do with your time?’
‘I paint.’
‘Oh.’ The conversation faltered. Beatrice wished she’d said that she played tennis or golf, although would that have been any better? You had to see to do those too, surely.
‘I play the piano too, as you heard.’
‘Very expertly.’
‘It’s my biggest passion.’ This was a lie. Beatrice’s art was her first love, but she was certain she was not the first woman to lie to a man about her skills and hobbies in order to impress or please. ‘Do you play?’
‘Yes, I do. You know, from memory.’ How would he learn new songs? By ear?
‘I enjoy walking.’ This at least was true.
‘Yes, fresh air, the answer to everything.’ There was no conviction behind his words.
Beatrice didn’t know what was happening. Why the conversation about hobbies, which should have been a light and easy one, edging towards a greater familiarity and understanding of one another, seemed to be so difficult and tense. She sighed and grasped the thistle.
‘Can you see anything?’
‘No.’ He sighed at the finality.
‘What’s it like?’
‘It’s not the blackness of closing your eyes. It’s less safe than that. It’s a deep, deep, dark void, a grey that is almost black. I sometimes think I might fall into it, through it. I only know I’m looking at the sun because I feel it on my skin.’
‘Do you have family?’
‘My father. My mother’s dead and I’m glad about that. She died in nineteen twelve and I think that must be quite wonderful to never have known that we did this to each other.’
‘How do you manage?’
‘Slowly. Everything takes longer. I feel hopeless and vulnerable. It’s hell, actually.’
He laughed, but it was a bitter laugh;
how could it be anything other? He also sounded relieved that she was asking, that he could tell her how it was. No one else wanted to know. It astounded her that he’d used the word ‘vulnerable’. She had never heard anyone – man or woman – admit as much. Bea thought she might squeal. Let out a totally inappropriate sound because she was so shocked and moved by his frankness. She bit back her reaction, took a deep breath and then tried to rally.
‘You can still hear, feel and taste the world around you.’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s something.’
‘So I’m told. It wasn’t gas. I took a bullet in the right eye socket, shrapnel ruined the left. The pain, and the noise that came with the pain … unbelievable. It was excruciating. I mean literally unbearable. I didn’t understand those words until that moment. I vomited with the pain. I screamed and screamed and screamed. This howling and puke were coming out together. You know, I still hear and feel that pain.’
‘It must be a very hard thing to forget.’
‘I don’t remember the pain. I feel it. Over and over again.’
‘Oh.’ Bea was floored. She didn’t know what to say. How to comfort.
‘I wanted to die. I knew I was going to die.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘They tell me it was a miracle that I survived.’
‘There must be a reason.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘My brother lost his legs. His left just below the knee and the other just above it. I never can understand why they chose to cut him off that way. I suppose they wanted to keep as much of him as possible, but it doesn’t help his balance. Not that he walks. I’m afraid he’s in a chair.’
‘No crutches?’
‘He lost his left arm too.’ She wasn’t sure if she was trying to tell Arnie that she had experience with horrific injuries, or if she was trying to tell him that there were other, worse injuries. If they were worse. Who could judge? She could not imagine having to live without sight, but then nor could she imagine having to live without the ability to dress oneself, walk, bath unaided. It was a hideous choice. Not that these men had had a choice. None of the women who nursed them had either. She didn’t often talk of Sammy. People found it difficult to know what to say. They stumbled into basic platitudes, at best, or shocked silences, admitting that words couldn’t comfort. Perhaps nothing could. Perhaps that was why she had told Arnie about him, so that he’d be stunned into silence; or maybe she was hoping he’d understand and offer something fresh and meaningful.