Nervous as he’d been beforehand, he found the proceedings deliciously ludicrous. It was an astonishing sight, between the chiliastic and the orgiastic. Never before could so many diplomats, punctiliously clothed men on the whole, have been lined up in the buff. Most looked embarrassed, indeed outraged, unsure whether to conceal their genitals. A few chatted, most stared glassily into the distance.
He stood in a queue, ready to give his details. Nearby stood Hallett, highest of high-flyers, rumoured to style himself on Lord Curzon. Normally he was immaculate in the stiffest of collars, but now he revealed a lily-white skin, spindly legs, a concave, hairless chest and (a glance revealed) almost nothing between his legs. Mark suppressed a smirk, and had to cover his mouth when he glimpsed Weeks, an obnoxious Wykehamist clearly not suffering from wartime privation, whose paunch swelled under strangely feminine breasts. Mark looked quickly downwards at his own body. It looked OK, as New Yorkers said.
Standing in another line was Guthrie from the Eastern Department, a man Mark had always admired: a figure of Grecian beauty, casually graceful, his perfect nose complemented by the manly curls adorning his noble head. He, at least, seemed unembarrassed: could he be aware of the surreptitious glances he attracted from men brought up to idealise classical beauty? Behind him stood Mann from the Northern Department, his hairy body massive but well proportioned. Mark realised he was becoming too appreciative and pushed his papers downwards.
Approaching the head of his queue, he saw Harry. Naked, he looked rather good. It was curious, he’d never thought of Harry as attractive – well, he supposed his outlook had changed. Harry cried, ‘Mark, hello! You look excellent,’ and burst out laughing. Mark laughed too, though nobody else did. ‘Let’s have a drink when this is over,’ Harry suggested.
Probably Harry did not realise that Mark knew he had sent that message to Washington. Mark would pretend they were the best of friends, indeed he always felt rather friendly towards Harry, was flattered that Harry liked him. Harry could feel superior to Mark if he wished to, while Mark could see his old colleague more clearly for the rival he obviously was. And probably Harry had behaved quite correctly – George had not been a suitable friend.
Mark was passed A1. After a moment of terror, he remembered his interview with the Foreign Office panel; probably nothing would come of this. He no longer wanted to die for his country.
That evening, Harry and Mark renewed their friendship in the semidarkness of the Travellers’ Club. The kitchen was closed because it had a glass roof and a Zeppelin raid was feared, and the coffee room was closed because the female staff had been sent home. An aged manservant served them a bottle of champagne and an apology for a sandwich on a starched linen napkin set on a silver tray, and they had a very amusing time in the gloom of the morning room, gossiping madly and assessing one another’s professional prospects but never mentioning their meeting in New York until, deferentially, they were told the building was being locked up.
27
Mark loved his visits to Atholl. He would stay at the big house and call on old Mrs Salt, enjoying her dryness, her travel memories, her understated good manners – it was odd to remember how he’d been brought up to think Americans loud and vulgar. He’d go riding with Margaret, who found him a quiet horse, and showed him how to handle it. ‘I’m sure you’ll be a good rider,’ she said, ‘with more confidence. Anyway, who cares? We worship athletic achievement here, but for me it’s quite uninteresting whether someone can hit a ball.’
Margaret was small and slender, with black hair and blue eyes. She was an independent-minded young woman. Her grandmother told Mark that as a child she’d refused to attend the dancing classes for the daughters of Old Philadelphia. When she reluctantly went to the Assembly Ball, she’d shocked and enthralled her fellow guests by appearing in a scarlet dress that was only marginally decent. Before the war, she’d travelled to Istanbul and Egypt. Now she wanted to do a doctorate in English Literature.
Margaret told Mark how impatient she was with Old Philadelphia’s complacency and obsession with the Social Register. She preferred to talk about literature. ‘You’re still stuck with Shelley, aren’t you?’ she said to him. ‘Have you read Donne and Marvell? No? But you must read them, they’re so subtle, yet direct:
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love’s day. . .
One of the great seduction poems, you know.’
She liked to discuss politics, and how the world might change when the war was over. She would talk about the Socialist Party of America. ‘I see no alternative to socialism. In a generation it will offer the only solution to the problems of a capitalist society,’ she remarked once. Mark smiled in the oblique way he used when she baffled him.
She’d ask Mark about himself, and if he answered elusively or frivolously, would tell him he was afraid of confronting emotion. Then she would change her style of attack – though that was hardly the word, she was too gentle. She said he must be willing to address what she called ‘serious things’ – the spiritual life, which was as important as intellectual life or friendships or careers or that nonsense known as ‘social life’. She’d become frustrated when she asked him about his religious beliefs and he offered flippant replies. ‘Religion is not a matter of ticking off attendances at church. The spiritual life should be the still centre of your existence. There’s no obligation to be a practising Episcopalian, just because you were born one – you should explore. I think of becoming a Quaker, like my forebears.’ He did not answer. ‘The trouble with you is that you have a sweet disposition but you let yourself be ruled by convention. You should keep your ambitions in perspective.’
28
‘These are postcards of Paris, I suppose Sophia must have bought them during the war, funny old sepia photographs. Oh but look, here are the premises of Madame Lanvin. That’s where Sophia bought her famous dresses.’
‘What did you think of Alice, Mum? Did you enjoy talking to her?’
‘I thought she was a clever young woman.’
‘She’s certainly that. What did you think about the exhibition at the Tate?’
‘I haven’t decided. Daddy thinks—’
‘Who cares what Daddy thinks?’
‘Daddy thinks we should not get involved. We should lend, but not comment on Mother’s life.’
‘He’s an old stick.’
‘Don’t speak like that, Pandora.’
‘I don’t believe in that sort of authority.’
‘Nor me.’ She sounds annoyed. ‘Really, you have no understanding of what it was like in Berlin in the 1920s.’
Pandora revives. ‘You’ve never really told me about it. For example, why did your parents come apart, more or less?’
‘I do like gin and tonic, shall we both have one?’
‘You never answer questions, it’s so annoying.’
There is a sharp silence. Dorothea turns and looks her daughter in the eye. ‘Are you wanting to write about Mother, Pandora? Is that why you’re so interested in all this material?’
‘I’ve never said that.’
‘No, you’ve never said that.’ Dorothea stares out of the window. ‘There was a fashion for Victorian sons of famous men to write lives of their fathers. I think in order to succeed, you have to venerate your parent.’
‘Venerate?’
Dorothea looks impatient. ‘Admire, deeply respect, whatever you like. I’m not sure I did feel all that, about Irene.’
Pandora looks at her mother, appraisingly.
‘You don’t need to look at me like that. Yes, I respected her art, and I loved her. But when I was growing up in Berlin, was she a good mother?’ She withdraws from Pandora’s hand the envelope she has taken from the pile. ‘We don’t need to look at that envelope. She cared about her art much more than about us, she’d stay for hours in her studio and visit artists an
d dealers, and leave me to grow up on my own.’
The telephone rings. Pandora offers to answer it, her mother says she will go, leaves the room. Pandora delves into the box, takes out two envelopes, puts them in her bag before her mother returns.
‘So if you are thinking of writing about your grandmother, remember that her art obsessed her, at least as she grew older. And I don’t even know whether her art will survive.’
‘I think she had a wonderful talent.’
‘I was so surprised when your curator friend said they are now planning a major exhibition.’
‘I hope you were pleased. By the way, I’ve had an article accepted by the New Statesman.’
‘Darling, how marvellous. What is it about?’ Pandora hesitates. ‘About Irene, is it?’
‘No, it’s about being the granddaughter of a famous artist. What effect it has on one, if one tries to be creative oneself. It’s about me, not her.’
‘Did you mention me? I suppose not?’
Pandora blushes. She is very fair, the blush shows all over her face. ‘I thought you would prefer to stay private. But I do mention you and Daddy in passing.’
‘Very suitable, Pandora. That’s what’s we are, transient.’
29
When Sophia was persuaded to take some leave in the winter of 1916, she decided not to go home. She did not want to be paraded about as a brave nurse. She wanted to be on her own, as she never was at the hospital.
She went to Paris. She stayed in a little hotel near the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, ate tasty if sometimes slightly suspect meals, walked for hours along the grey banks of the Seine, among the intimate alleys of the Île Saint-Louis and the dark ruined warren of the Marais. As she walked, she told herself not to dwell on the amputated limbs and the gangrene. Here in Paris, a city that even in wartime whispered of a happy future, she could hope that one day, perhaps quite soon, another life might begin. She found a restaurant where they tolerated a woman on her own, particularly when she told them she was a nurse, and always gave her the same table. She was buoyed up by admiring looks from men in the street. But she was quite firm if any man, particularly a soldier, tried to talk to her. She’d seen enough soldiers.
After two or three days she felt lonely, and on impulse, finding herself in the rue de l’Université, rang the doorbell of the old duchess she’d stayed with before the war. To her surprise, the duchess was delighted to see her. She no longer had well-born young women assembled in her narrow bedrooms or round her frugal table. ‘Je suis seule, dans cet grand appartement, seule avec la cuisinière. La vie pourrait devenir bien triste.’ She produced a bottle of port, and pressed a glass, and then another, on Sophia. ‘Je vous inviterais à dîner, mais il y a si peu à manger, ça ne serait pas correcte.’
Sophia told her about the hospital and she listened keenly. She thought Sophia should inject the German patients and kill them. Sophia was astonished at the brutality the war had unleashed in apparently mild people. She recalled that there had never been any German girls staying with the duchess. ‘Je déteste les Boches,’ the old lady went on, and she talked about the Franco-Prussian War when she had been Sophia’s age, and how cruel the Germans had been, and how Parisians had suffered. ‘I never thought we would see all these privations again. Until recently, our life was so comfortable. Anyway, one thing it shows is that being a duchess is not much help when life is difficult.’ This seemed to amuse her. ‘I am also a marchioness, you know, but being a marchioness is not worth a sou these days, any more than being a duchess.’ Getting a little tipsy, she offered her guest yet another glass. It was remarkably cold in her apartment, even in the room she inhabited (there was a lumpy divan in the corner, which was no doubt her bed). Sophia accepted the port.
She gave Sophia some advice: while in Paris, she should buy some clothes. ‘Your clothes are so clearly English, my dear, and therefore naïve, and also a little shabby, which is a pity. I know English people like shabby clothes, but in Paris, as I surely told you when you were my guest, clothes are not a duty but one of life’s essential pleasures. Of course, English tweeds are supportable, but some of the clothes my English girls arrived in were risible. Go to Madame Lanvin, I am told by my friends she is very clever, she has things for young women. They say she believes that in these times to maintain faith in such things as fine clothes is to maintain faith in civilisation. Buy as many clothes there as you can afford – you will not regret it. Mention my name, even these days it may be useful.’
Smiling at the thought of Sister Marsden’s reaction if she returned to the hospital in the latest Paris fashions, Sophia set off to Madame Lanvin. She was nervous at first but the nervousness did not last. The rooms on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré were modest, welcoming, with striped wallpaper and rows of pictures, and huge cheval mirrors. Within five minutes the vendeuse, nodding at the name of the duchesse, had discreetly looked Sophia up and down, ascertained her father was a judge, grasped what she was doing in France. Would she be coming back to Paris? Would she be going soon to London? Would there be friends, and parties? She looked at Sophia’s crude short haircut, and tutted, and said, ‘Such beautiful hair, and they cut it like that – well, I suppose nurses are not supposed to set their patients on fire.’
She disappeared for a moment, and re-emerged with various things in enticing wrappings. They looked at heavenly little hats, severe and yet gay. Sophia had never seen such hats. She eventually lined up six on the counter. She wanted to buy them all, but the vendeuse shook her head and only let her take one, and after a good deal of discussion, two. Sophia tried on a delicious green silk dress with a panniered skirt. A robe de style, the vendeuse said it was called, it was a favourite design of Madame Lanvin’s. The vendeuse pushed Sophia’s hair up on her head, took her gently by the arm, moved her in front of a mirror. Sophia gasped, almost cried. The vendeuse smiled and said, ‘Ça fait du bien, une jolie robe.’ Sophia felt she was thawing into a human being. It was delightful chez Lanvin, the vendeuse was so kind. She said that Madame Lanvin had started by devising clothes for her own daughter, she cherished the spirit of youth.
In the end Sophia selected a day dress and a little suit, a velvet beret and a pair of gloves. She chose a short evening dress made of blue-green silk chiffon with a tulle and lace tunic and a rose-coloured sash, adorned with roses and leaves on the tunic and around the neck. Then she saw another, longer dress, also chiffon; she hummed and hawed, it was so beautiful to look at and to feel, she stroked it longingly. But the vendeuse said, ‘Mademoiselle, you do not need another evening dress, one is quite enough. There will be other occasions. Once people have bought from Madame Lanvin, they return.’
Some of the things would be ready for her in three days as a special favour since she was nursing the poor young men; some would be sent on. When she was ready to leave, she felt much more attractive than Nurse Benson had been. The vendeuse asked for her address, and smiled when Sophia mentioned the hospital.
‘No, no, we will write to your father.’
‘But. . .’
‘No, no, much better to write direct to Papa.’
Then she gave Sophia a large envelope. ‘For you, a present from the house. For your brave work, for France and England.’
‘Oh,’ cried Sophia, ‘may I open it now?’
It was a green silk scarf, like the scarf Mark had given her but infinitely more elegant. She put it round her neck. The vendeuse shook her head, untied the scarf, rearranged it, and nodded.
‘Vous êtes seule à Paris?’ she asked. ‘Ce n’est pas très gai, pour une jeune fille, d’être toute seule.’
‘Ça ne dure qu’une petite semaine,’ said Sophia. ‘Je suis tout à fait contente.’ Kissing the vendeuse on each cheek – she looked surprised but not displeased – Sophia ran out of the shop.
When she was in the restaurant consuming a piece of steak – horsemeat, she was sure – and some red wine, she asked herself whether it was frivolous at such a time to spend money on beautifu
l clothes. Her older colleagues would certainly think so, but then they resisted any deviation from the line of duty. She said to herself, our youth has been stolen, and if we want to snatch some of youth’s pleasures, that is our right.
She ordered another little carafe. It was amusing to think how shocked her mother would be at her drinking wine on her own, it was not what an Evelyn Gardens girl should do. But in France wine was an everyday feature of life. In any case, she doubted the values of Evelyn Gardens.
She was afraid of becoming anaesthetised to grief. A few weeks earlier Laura’s fiancé had been killed. Laura had refused to wear mourning: she’d announced that death was the final statement of the absurd. Two days later she had gone to a party, flirted wildly and got drunk. ‘I meant to get drunk,’ she’d written to Sophia. ‘There’s nothing to value and hope for any more except pleasure, there’s no more sadness left in me. Or rather, to tell you the truth, darling, I’m so depressed I can hardly bear to live, only I must.’
Thinking about Laura made Sophia anxious, so she stayed in the restaurant and drank some more wine. As she left, she was smiled at again. This man looked charming. And not too young, she’d seen too many destroyed young men, she liked the idea of a man who could be relied on. This one looked intently, admiringly, at her, perhaps because her hair was still up as the vendeuse had arranged it, or it might be the scarf. Her waiter had been particularly attentive at lunch, she thought, though he’d seemed anxious when she ordered her third carafe. She let her eyes rest on this stranger for a moment, but a moment only: after all, she was a well-brought-up girl, she was a VAD, she was English, her father was a judge, weren’t these good reasons not to return a Frenchman’s smile? But she couldn’t help thinking how attractive a Frenchman could be – charming, manly and yet sensual. In the hospital she never let herself think about men being attractive, but here. . .
The Iron Necklace Page 18