That They Might Lovely Be

by David Matthews

  As Geoffrey left the dock, it seemed to Ada that nothing had changed. Geoffrey was walking free. He had been roundly upbraided but he was still unfettered. And now, a number of women had come down from the gallery and were clustering around him as if it were he who had secured a victory.

  Ada felt cheated. Justice, in her eyes, had not been seen to be done. Robert was keen that she leave the gallery with him, presumably to avoid getting caught up in the next hearing. She was vaguely aware, in the crush to leave the chamber, of Robert signalling to the clerk.

  Everything then happened very quickly. Two sallow-skinned men, in drab overcoats and Homburg hats, were in the lobby accompanied by half a dozen soldiers. Robert took Ada’s arm and held her back.

  ‘Commendable punctuality,’ he murmured.

  The reaction of the other women, the ebullient gypsy-creature with the toque and the others fussing around Geoffrey’s retinue, was ridiculous. They created an embarrassing scene. They tried to link arms—it could only have been a futile gesture—to shield Geoffrey from the soldiers. They were pulled apart and pushed roughly to one side but continued to try to impede the soldiers’ business. Geoffrey, Ada was glad to see, looked mortified. It was as if he had thought himself playing the part of one of Mr. Shaw’s heroes, only to discover the piece was a farce; he knew neither the script nor his moves.

  There was nothing dignified about Geoffrey’s arrest. He suddenly appeared much younger than he was, reminding Ada of the callow youth he had once been: long-limbed and gauche with too much wrist protruding from his cuffs. Some form of words was delivered but she only caught the words ‘deserter’ and ‘His Majesty’ before the woman in the toque started to shout and ask why Geoffrey Cordingley had not had extended to him some decent interval between sentence and arrest; other men of conscience, she said, had been free for months before the army claimed them.

  No one, apart from her companions and a few of the men who had their own tribunals, took any notice of what she had to say. They spilled out into the street where a little crowd had gathered. As Geoffrey was frog-marched down the street, a younger woman whom Ada believed she had seen before, ran after him, calling out to him but her words did not carry. She turned and walked back to join her fellow protesters. She paused a moment to stare accusingly at Robert Kingsnorth and Ada but said nothing.

  Once again, Ada felt the pressure of Cousin Robert’s arm as he escorted her rapidly away. They had walked several hundred yards at a brisk pace before Robert spoke.

  ‘Distressing business. Most distressing. But Lady Margery was adamant that it had to be so. Shame is harder to bear when protracted.’

  ‘But Robert, I don’t understand. What had Aunt Margery to do with … with… ?’

  ‘Strings can be pulled, Ada. Strings can be pulled. Of course, nothing done today was outside the law. No. But judicial proceedings can be expedited with a little oil applied to the right part of the machine. She could not tolerate Geoffrey at large once he had declared his — shall we say— “heretical” beliefs. It would not do. There would be scandal and embarrassment. He has an uncle who could, if he chose, sit in the Upper House. Lady Margery was adamant that, if Geoffrey persisted in this absolutist stance, the consequences had to be felt immediately.’

  Ada was forced to regard her Cousin Robert in a new light. She had always thought of him as her father’s lackey in the family firm of solicitors but here he appeared to be the conductor of Lady Margery’s latest orchestration. He alone had the score. He misread her muted admiration as disquiet.

  ‘Geoffrey will understand. I am sure he expected nothing less. He knows his mother always holds the trump card.’

  Wednesday, 13 September 1916

  The sheer scale of the British casualties that July, during the Battle of Albert, meant that information about Hubert did not reach his family until two weeks after he had been wounded. The details were never clear and Hubert himself only retained the vaguest memory of what happened to him and how long he was left, lying injured in No-Man’s Land before one of the occasional ceasefires between the two opposing armies allowed the dead and wounded to be scraped up and taken behind lines.

  He had been delirious when the stretcher-bearers found him with a broken femur, trapped beneath a heavy corpse which he had been unable to shift. The operation to re-set his leg had been successful but for a period a fever had followed leaving him too weak to be moved when the majority of the ‘walking wounded’ were shipped back to convalesce in Britain.

  Hubert was content to remain in France. Once his temperature was under control and he was lucid, he realised that he would make a complete recovery. Broken bones mend and it was inevitable that he would be back on the front line in a couple of months. He did not begrudge, therefore, the distant vibration which told him that the fighting along the Somme continued. It stopped him from deluding himself into thinking he had been released from the war. Even a dream of peace would have been too painful on waking. To be shipped home for the duration of his recovery would, he felt, be an agony.

  He had written to Anstace when he knew that the doctors would be likely to declare him fit. It had been a brief letter, simply stating the situation but letting the implications of a full recovery lie between the lines. He had never imagined that it would bring her over to Picardy. Nor was he prepared for her resolute resourcefulness which allowed her to get him discharged from hospital, with a week’s leave, before he had to report again for duty.

  Anstace had learned to drive. She had also played her connections with Philip Baker and others still in the Friends Ambulance Unit who, she correctly guessed, would have contacts with local mechanics and might be able to find her a motor for the week. They had exceeded all expectations by finding a 1910 Delage for her, a huge rumbling beast of a vehicle which had not been claimed by its wealthy French owner since depositing it for servicing with a garage near Amiens. For the past nine months, the garage’s owner had earned a handsome sum, hiring it out to British officers who wanted to cut a dash when on leave. Philip Baker’s patrician air had been sufficient to secure it. He had said that it would be chauffeured by a woman, with the implication that she would be driving at least a General. Joking, he had asked Anstace if she had a uniform she could wear to seal the subterfuge.

  In fact, she swung around the arc of gravel in front of the hospital with style and stepped out of the motor wearing a neatly tailored lavender jacket and box-pleated skirt. She fancied, however, that the Delage rather than she drew more admiration from the convalescents, strolling on the lawn.

  She found Hubert self-conscious and tongue-tied. He recognized the generosity which had carried her across the Channel during this time of war and the sense of purpose which had succeeded in whisking him away for his final week of recuperation. Her motives were bounteous but that did not stop him feeling he had been taken hostage. The disciplined hopelessness with which he had protected himself was threatened if spending this time with Anstace seduced him with any sense of salvation. How could he tell her? It was impossible. Even if he found the words and hardness of heart to turn her away, he would not have been able to withstand the whole force of medical and military interference for, in half a day, her unassuming directness and lack of guile, had won her allies. He had not seen this side of her back in Kent, aeons ago before the world went mad. Was it the war which had transformed her? Or was this change something self-determined, which she herself had conjured in the same way that he had sought to redefine his own self?

  He found pondering the issue too tiring. Being a soldier had pushed him into a passivity at odds with the active self-armouring he had continuously to effect. He understood the paradox but could not divert any energy from the latter into challenging what Anstace was doing or interrogating her motives. Instead, he allowed himself to be driven away from the hospital, from the echoes of bombardment, from the behind-the-lines bustle of the war machine, even from Picardy itself and be transported west to the farthest reaches of Brittany.

/>   She drove for the whole day and by the end of it, the journey had acted like a balm. The smells of petrol and hot metal, emitted from the car’s engine, were not unlike the smells of weaponry in action but he was not in battle or even enduring those interminable periods of waiting behind the front line. And so, gradually, as he dozed, folded into the deep leather seat of the Delage, the scents were associated not with war but with flight from it, not with the cruel parody of life that he had been enduring but with a dreamlike escape as they raced toward the glowing skies and the sun, setting beyond the Atlantic.

  He was aware of little when they arrived at the low farmhouse, sunk into a fold in the land, which Anstace had found for them. Night had descended and there was an end to the driving; it was simply that.

  Anstace was ready to weep with exhaustion. She felt like cursing herself for the folly in bringing him all this way when surely a few days in Deauville would have done. But she had wanted to take him to Brittany where she had once holidayed as a child, brought by her father on one of his last painting sprees. It was just a primitive clawing at distant memories of happiness, she told herself angrily. However, she summoned the strength to wield her best French to apologise to Madame Guezennec for their late arrival and sift through the strong Breton accent to learn where milk and bread could be found in the morning.

  At least Hubert seemed calmer. Drugged by the monotony of the drive, all he wanted to do was stretch his cramped limbs and fall into bed. He was oblivious to Anstace and Madame Guezennec’s ministrations as they steered him onto the bed in his room and tugged his boots off. He was vaguely aware of the luxury of feather mattress and eiderdown before a deep, deep sleep enveloped him.

  ‘Il crois que nous sommes ses infirmières,’ said Anstace and indeed it did seem as if Hubert had slipped back into the mode of a patient. She hoped he had not relapsed in some way. Madame Guezennec had smiled and shaken her head sadly.

  ‘La Guerre,’ she said, and it was enough.

  They woke late to a beautiful day bathed in the sharp, coastal light. A basket containing bread, eggs, and a pat of pale butter wrapped in damp cheesecloth had been left under a hawthorn tree at the end of the track to the house. Everything seemed scented with the freshness of the day. A diminutive churn contained a rich milk, fresh from that morning’s milking. They breakfasted hurriedly, both keen to walk out and find the Atlantic.

  Anstace remembered why she had wanted to come back to this place. She wanted to view again the expansiveness of the ocean and rekindle a forgotten childhood fascination for sea-drawn horizons.

  They only had to walk a little over a mile before the path turned and they found themselves on a narrow headland jutting out into the Atlantic. As they clambered along its length, they became denizens of the wind rather than inhabitants of the earth. The currents, which had travelled unimpeded across hundreds of miles of sea, skidded into the headland. Gusts hit the rocky outcrops, sucking in and out of the rocky crevices before ducking back to whistle and swirl through the wizened trees’ scrub. The two figures were buffeted by the wind. It plucked at their garments, teasing skirt and shirt-tails, seducing them with thoughts of airy weightlessness. All words were lost, tossed up and away, leaving them mouthing soundlessness.

  Hubert pulled at Anstace’s sleeve, pointing into the west before running off. He had seen a statue, set at the tip of the headland. When Anstace caught up with him, they saw it was dedicated to Notre-Dame-des-Naufragés. Beyond the headland was a rocky islet, which seemed to have crumbled away from the land. On it, perched precariously, was an old lighthouse, the dilapidated Phare de la Vieille. They climbed down a little further and found somewhere to perch where they could watch the spray explode off the rocks before subsiding into the circling eddies of spume. Here, at the tip of the promontory, they could feel the throbbing energy transmitted through the rocks as wave upon wave broke against them.

  Anstace felt blissfully enervated. She lay back among the tussocks of thrift and watched the clouds scudding overhead, forming and re-forming. She lost all sense of perspective. The blue enveloped her and the drifting clouds were within her grasp.

  Hubert climbed down to the statue and sat beneath it, staring out to the lighthouse and the sea beyond it. As he did so, the wind began to drop and the air to still. The world uncurled for him, or else he was elevated until his eyes were on the same level as those of the Lady, for now he could see, in the farthest reaches of the distance, another lighthouse. A trick of the morning sun gilded this remote beacon so that it radiated its own light.

  Without warning, he began to cry. He could not help it. He was not sad. There was no grief but his frame, his mortality, was overburdened and weeping was the only release. At the same time, he cried for the beauty of the place and his tears and the spray, blown from the breaking waves, combined to film his vision as Anstace rose from her rest and joined him.

  ‘Anstace. Anastasia. Resurrection,’ he said.

  Anstace reached out and took Hubert’s hands in her own.

  ‘Come,’ she said. ‘We must go back. We’ve come too far and you must rest.’

  He let her lead him back along the headland until the fold of the land afforded them some protection from the wind. Now, as they re-traced their route back to the farmhouse, walking away from the coast, they could be anywhere in northern Europe on a rich September afternoon. The hedgerows, in the lea of the higher ground, were not stunted or misshapen; the fruits—sloe and hawthorn and spindle—were abundant and the grasses lush. She knew the memory of this day would run into every other experience of high summer and gild them all.

  Later, after they had lunched late on cheese and apples and wine, Anstace dozed, still tired after the previous day’s driving. Hubert went walking again but, this time, took a different path which led him to that great expanse of sand, north of the headland, the Baie des Trepasses.

  The whole place was deserted. Utterly solitary, he was no more than an insect crawling across a vast expanse of virgin parchment. His footsteps scuffed an incoherent message but he moved, resolutely, toward the shoreline. Here, the waves broke much more gently. They rippled across the sands; all their force had already been expended, crashing against the far side of the promontory. The afternoon sun shone into Hubert’s eyes and, peer as he might, he could no longer see the distant lighthouse. Nevertheless, the call of the west remained strong. He undressed and discarded his uniform in a pile, beyond the throw of the waves. The caress of sun and wind on his body was glorious. He walked into the waves, relishing the swirl of the water around his thighs, taking the shock as it slopped over his genitals and then enjoying the way his penis was lifted and nursed. Hubert walked out until the swell of the incoming waves was up to his shoulders. He kicked out with his legs and lay back, floating on the surface, his arms outspread, cruciform, sculling lightly. He closed his eyes. The buoyancy of the sea was beneath him and the warmth of the sun above. He imagined staying, suspended in this way, forever.

  The warmth of the day began to fade and, feeling the chill, he turned and swam toward the shore. He was a strong swimmer and, although he had drifted across the bay, carried by the currents, he had no difficulty making his way back to where he had left his clothes. He was glad to be able to use his arms to pull against the water. He swam hard and emerged from the sea pleasantly out of breath.

  He sat and let the wind and sun dry his skin before dressing, cursing the fact that he had to cover his body in the stiff khaki cloth. The loss of that sense of release, from the freedom of swimming naked, was a frustration.

  The few days they had before Hubert was due to report back for duty in Picardy were beautifully uneventful. Madame Guezennec left them undisturbed, just bringing provisions—a couple of poussins, two baked potatoes, a crock of steaming ratatouille, and always loaves of bread or crêpes carrying the scent of fresh baking—and leaving them for Anstace and Hubert to discover. They left her, in return, appropriate sums of money placed in an earthenware pot like an offering. S
omehow it seemed to increase rather than diminish their feeling of receiving unlimited, gracious bounty.

  Knowing that the long drive east awaited them the next morning, they retired early on their last night. Anstace was sitting on the edge of her bed when Hubert knocked on her bedroom door and stepped into her room. He was in his socks. He had taken off his jacket and stood there in his shirt, his braces hanging limply at his sides like the bones of vestigial wings.

  ‘Anstace,’ he said.

  She turned but could not read his expression.

  ‘I want to spend this last night with you.’

  She had known from the start, from the moment she planned this escape that it might come to this, without knowing precisely what it was she had to be prepared for.

  ‘Do you?’ she said, and smiled at him.

  Hubert rushed forward and threw himself down on his knees, burying his face in her lap. She let her hand rest lightly on the back of his head and, laughing, said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Agony. This is agony.’ He did not lift his head and his voice was muffled by her dress.

  ‘You don’t mean going back, do you?’

  He looked up, ‘God no,’ he said. He took her face in his hands and held her gaze.

  ‘That is nothing compared to this other turmoil. These days with you have been glorious. I did not expect them to be. I did not want this rescue but it has been glorious and lovely and we are more to each other than we ever were before. But I cannot … I cannot subdue this … this urgency. I want it to be love. I want to say to you, “I love you” because I cannot imagine love being more than what I feel for you, purely simply.’

  ‘I know that. I share that.’

  ‘But there is this other thing. I might call it desire but it’s not that, not honestly. It’s cruder, more animal and if I were another man I’d have burst in here and just taken you.’