The approach was practical. From the initial pamphlets for autodidacts and the lost and confused, the Orme Press planned to move on to pamphlets of policy and ideals, written by intellectuals and those with experience of their field. Robert Waveney was writing them a treatise on the power of music, practical and emotional, to raise the spirits and motivate the low. This had already attracted the attention of the Horrabins, who Riley hoped would agree to write something. They might even get the Coles, even H.G. Wells …
‘How about improving memoirs, for men and women?’ said Hinchcliffe.
‘Yes. Let’s find some. And – crime stories.’ Riley said. ‘The modern ones. Of the rather lurid, tersely written and very profitable type. Bitter old soldier turns detective kind of thing.’
Hinchcliffe expressed his surprise.
‘They will fit in perfectly,’ Riley said. ‘All our publications will tend to peace and social justice, and crime stories are also about righting wrongs and understanding human nature. There’s too many soldiers going to the bad.’ He wondered for a second where Johnno-the-Thief Burgess was. Probably gone back to going to the bad. Perhaps he’d look him out. Perhaps not.
‘But who will write them?’ Hinchcliffe was saying.
‘You,’ said Riley, and Hinchcliffe snorted. But Riley knew he’d like the idea.
No conversation with Riley could be very long. He had come to recognise the little tensions in his cheek muscles and a certain strain on the tongue that told him he was talking too much. When he stopped talking, he just stopped. He didn’t notice that that was how he did it, and that it might be seen as rude. It didn’t matter. He only talked to who he wanted to anyway, and his grey-diamond eyes still spoke clearly to anybody who cared to listen.
Hinchcliffe, tapping his fingers on the dimples of his pint mug, said, ‘By the way, you know Owen has sacked Ermleigh?’
‘No. Why?’
‘I gather because he wants someone who can work harder.’
Riley closed his eyes and bit the insides of his peculiar cheeks. ‘Come on then,’ he said, and stood up.
*
At Owen’s, Riley stood slightly too close to the man and said to him with great clarity, ‘Mr Owen. Now, we’ve been to the pub together, haven’t we? We’re on the same side? So – how’s your German?’
‘Sorry, Purefoy, I don’t …’
‘Without men like Ermleigh, you’d be printing umlauts, Mr Owen. Do you have umlauts in your printstock?’
‘I, er …’
‘You should get some in. I’m planning a series – “My Life as a Hun”, by some ordinary German boys – their side of the story. How being thrown into the pit of hell by a German government differs from being thrown into the pit of hell by a British one. Only war isn’t hell, is it? It’s worse. Because hell is just for sinners, but war gets everybody, no matter how innocent. And then some of us come out of it worse off than others. Probably even harder to feed your family in Hamburg or Berlin at the moment than it is here, I should imagine. Not asking you to sympathise with the Hun, Mr Owen. But you might consider the position of the Tommy.’
‘Well, Captain—’
‘Put Ermleigh back, Mr Owen, or our business goes elsewhere.’
God, this is so easy to do. No skin off my nose. (And he caught himself for a moment. He’d used that phrase to Jarvis once, during the phase when the bridge – or what was to be the bridge – of Jarvis’ new nose had been carrying a delicate little horsehair stitch, crimping it in place so at least the great sausage was narrower at the top than at the bottom … wonder where Jarvis is now. Find him.)
‘But Captain Purefoy—’
‘Mr Owen. With the Empire collapsing, we’re just a clever little country. That’s all. But we are meant to have standards. In theory – in principle, we have principles.’
‘But—’
Riley said, ‘I am never going to do the wrong thing again, Mr Owen. Do you understand?’
He said it quite gently. The red mist of fighting was not far away at all. Just below the surface. But this anger was sleek. He could feel it in his eyes.
Owen understood.
Walking back, Hinchcliffe beside him, Riley shed it. Rolled his shoulders and threw off ripples of anger to let his calm return. Hinchcliffe was silent all the way.
Riley was thinking: It seems to me that once you’ve been damaged, if you don’t become a healer you just get … more damaged. You need to be able to envisage a future. To acknowledge how scared you are, and yet carry on, and help.
After a while, Hinchcliffe said: ‘So, um, Purefoy. Are you going to sack me for not being wounded?’
‘Oh, you’re wounded all right,’ Riley said. One-and-three-quarter million wounded, and that’s just the wounds you can see. ‘You got your heart broken.’
*
Coming back to his fatherin-law’s house that night, Riley fancied a cup of tea. The coat rack in the hall was, as usual, full: Sir Robert’s smart velvet-collared cashmere, his raincoat and his walking coat, Nadine’s new blue cape, her light coat and her tweed, plus several things of Jacqueline’s that had escaped the clear-out to the dress agency. Riley didn’t like to move anything, but when his own coat slipped off the mound of cloth for lack of any kind of purchase, he felt a low fury.
He didn’t know how to live here. At home, as a child, he had his own hook and there was only one coat each anyway, and he’d make his own tea, or his mum would. In the trenches you didn’t take your coat off, and if you did you were asleep under it, and the tea came round in its billy when it wanted. In the hospital you didn’t have a coat, or tea, unless someone thought you should, in which case they’d bring it. But here? No room for your coat, and tea involved ringing a bell, waiting for someone to come and ask what you want, then go away and make it and bring it to you. And no one expected you to want tea when you came in in the evening. You were meant to want sherry. (And then you didn’t have your actual tea till eight, and they called it dinner, and your actual dinner they called lunch. Well, he was used to all that.) Several times he’d found himself going round to Sir Alfred’s instead. Being a straightforward guest and being straightforwardly offered a cup of tea by Mrs Briggs who had loved him since he was a boy was easier than this half-guest half-family position in his fatherin-law’s home. Or his wife’s dead motherin-law’s home. Or the home of the girl his wife used to be.
‘Remember when we were going to live in Chelsea?’ he said to Nadine, later that evening. ‘Our two little rooms, and you were going to study art?’
‘Remember when I was going to get a motorbike and ride around the world with you on the back?’ she replied, with a smile.
Is living in Chelsea that ambitious? he thought. Oh.
‘I’d like to live in Chelsea,’ he said.
‘But we live here,’ she said carefully. ‘Don’t we?’
‘We could move,’ he said.
‘Why?’ she asked. He looked around the pretty room; glanced out the windows towards Kensington Gardens, wide, leafy and dim across the road. Because of my pride, and my lack of ease here, because I want our home to be our own home. Is that selfish? Probably.
He thought of another tack.
‘Shall we get a little place in the country?’
She said, ‘I can’t think we could afford it.’
‘In a few years?’ he said.
‘Thinking ahead!’ she said, and she smiled.
It’s just teething troubles, he thought. Settling.
‘I ran into your mother,’ Nadine said, with a little smile. ‘Almost literally.’ She waited to see what he’d make of that. What do I make of that?
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘How is she?’
‘She’s well. I went back for tea. Elen was there. Don’t look so surprised! We’re family.’
He hadn’t thought of it quite that way. But – he glanced at her suspiciously. She looked happy enough about it. Hm.
‘I told them to pop in any time,’ she went on, ‘but I’m not
sure they will. Perhaps a more formal invitation, just to make things easier … in a month or two. Perhaps around Christmas. Boxing Day lunch or something. They know about my mother …’
Hmm.
She was looking at him.
Family.
*
He went round a few days later, braving the possibility that Elen would be no less withering now than she had been on his first visit. Being withered by Elen he could do without. But as it happened, he was just in time to learn that Elen was getting married. Her man friend was called Gavin, a ticket inspector on the Great Western. He was Welsh (Mum was over the moon about that). No war – asthma. He seemed all right. Jokes were made.
Walking home (home! Which was home?), he thought about it all. There was, of course, another way to make her family house their home – children. At some stage no doubt he would find he had got her with child. That sounds very biblical. Get her pregnant just sounds vulgar. What is the polite term? It didn’t matter that he didn’t know. He wasn’t exactly going to be talking about it to anyone. But yes, fathering a child seemed pretty manly, something to be proud of. Something, more to the point, that nobody else could do for him. But he did not bring up the matter of a baby. He knew nothing about babies. How long it was meant to take, or – anything. And there’s another pamphlet! ‘All About Fatherhood, for the Newly Married Man’.
All this was the kind of thing he would have been able to talk to Ainsworth about. He had a letter from Sybil: ‘We had some grand Walking Days in the summer. Little Annie says she is going to join the Band and the character of the lass is such I believe she will, whether they will have her or not. The Sadness is never far away but there’s too much to be done to think about that. We raise a prayer to him each Sunday, and to you, and Annie says to be remembered to you. And by the way – there was talk of a lad from London being involved in the trouble here when you were visiting last. He answered your description, though I’ve no doubt you’ve too much sense to get involved in anything ridiculous, so it must have been some other facially injured lad up from London heading to the station that dinnertime. Let’s hope he’s the sense to keep his damaged head out of hot water the next time.’
Sybil’s voice seemed like one of comfort, from long ago. There was no reason why it should, but it did. I’ll go and see them again, he thought, one of these days.
*
A few days later, as they were going to bed, Nadine said to him: ‘About the future. I’ve been thinking. I think I will go to art school. You’ve inspired me by commissioning me.’
He was very pleased. This was to do with them, their future, not the past.
‘You don’t mind?’ she asked.
A tricky question, as it tends to lead to ‘why would I mind?’ which immediately sounds defensive. But then, why would I mind?
‘Why would I mind?’ he said.
‘You might want me to stay at home and have babies,’ she said.
‘Well, I do want you to stay at home and have babies,’ he said.
‘When?’ she said, smiling.
‘When they come,’ he said, with a little frown.
‘You do know where they come from, don’t you?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ he said, with very mild faux outrage.
She put her hand over her mouth for a second, laughing or covering embarrassment, he didn’t know. What’s she doing?
‘What is it?’ he said.
‘Darling,’ she said. ‘I’ve been being very modern and I hope you don’t mind.’
‘What?’ he said.
‘I’ve been reading both Marie Stopes and Annie Besant.’
This meant nothing to him.
With the expression of one making a leap, and blushing scarlet, she said: ‘I’ve acquired a diaphragm.’
‘We all have diaphragms,’ he said. ‘You’ve had one all your life.’
‘Oh, Riley!’ she exclaimed, and she went into the bathroom, and came out with a little bag. Inside it was a little box. Inside that was a rubber thing, circular, mysterious, important. He gazed at it, perplexed.
‘It’s a contraceptive,’ she said, almost giggling. ‘You don’t have to worry about it. I do it. But I want you to know about it.’
‘Blimey,’ he said.
‘I haven’t used it yet,’ she said. ‘But it means we can have our babies whenever we want, and I think perhaps not yet. What do you think?’
‘Blimey,’ he said. Then, ‘But you do want some in the end?’
‘Certainly,’ she said. ‘Lovely little curly babies. But I want more of just us first. Not Papa all the time, not sadness, not work. Papa’s been invited to tour America. I’ve told him he must go. And I’m going to redecorate a bit. What colour shall we have the bedroom?’
‘I couldn’t care less,’ he said, with a smile.
‘Marvellous,’ she said. ‘And can we go dancing? I won’t mind if you want to wear your scarf – I could get you a lovely silk one – but I’d love to go dancing. Hear the music and hold you in my arms. All that.’
‘Blimey,’ he said. How many times can you fall in love with the same person?
Chapter Fifteen
Locke Hill, October 1919
As it couldn’t matter less to Peter where he was, he stayed at Locke Hill. The comforts of home did comfort him. His study was there for him; his clothes, clean. He wasn’t sure what everyone was going to say to him, how much of a fuss they were going to kick up, or when, but for the moment they seemed pleased that he was there, and mostly engaged with Julia and the imminent baby. And Julia herself, vast now and oddly passive, smiled at him, was kind to him, left him alone. It was pleasant to have Nadine about when she came, and when Riley came down they took some walks together, quieter than ever. He was aware of these things, but they were not his world.
It took Odysseus ten years. I have not even had one.
His world was in his head, and in Homer. He read the Iliad, again, and then the Odyssey, again. He read the Greek alongside the dictionary alongside the Chapman, against the Dryden, and the Pope alongside the Cowper alongside the Greek, and the more recent translations. He read, all the time comparing what Achilles and Odysseus did, and what happened to them, with what he had been through in France, what he had seen and done, and what had been done to him. He found himself translating bits, here and there. Words which did not seem quite right to him – well, of course they were right, but they were right for something else, somewhen else, for some other translator. For what he was thinking, now, they were not right. So much liberty a poet could take with the original! The chronological series of translations was like a pile of poems built on each other; like sedimentary geology.
Was Chapman a soldier? Had he any idea? Homer – or at least some of the many who contributed, who were parts of Homer – at least one of them was. How else could they know to use the same word for the giving way of a man’s legs with fear, in battle, and with lust, at the sight of Penelope in all her finery? And for Patroclus falling dead in battle and Achilles falling in grief by his body? How else could they understand?
He noticed that the word for truth meant, precisely, not forgotten. A lethea. Not in the Lethe, the river of forgetting. Is that what the truth is? What you don’t forget? What does that mean? Well, for a start it means that everybody has a different truth … He thought about Calypso, the sex maniac who kept Odysseus prisoner in her cave for seven years; he thought about how Odysseus, in disguise, testing his wife, felt so strongly for her grief as she wept over the husband she thought was dead, yet he kept his eyes dry as pieces of horn beneath his lids. He thought about trust, and how when the ships of Odysseus’ fleet moored in the safe-seeming inlet to sleep, every man aboard those ships was killed, and only Odysseus’ own ship survived, because Odysseus had moored outside: he had not trusted. He thought of the firestep, sentries, all night, awake. Of the modern ways he had used to keep awake: nightclubs, cocaine, prostitutes, jazz. And of the Sirens, who sang of the truth of the battlefield.<
br />
Truth itself a drug, he thought, an addiction. A man could lose his life after war to wanting and needing to know the truth of what happened. Harking on the past. Am I doing that? Or am I drowning the truth? It’s not that I don’t know what happened – I don’t understand. I don’t understand.
He would go to sleep and wake in a panic: he should not be sleeping. Bad things happen when officers fall asleep.
On the study sofa one afternoon, sleeping in the comparative safety of daylight, he was woken, just as the silvery autumn sky was turning to lead, by the cold point of a blade in the softest hollow of his throat. It was quite real. Lying, eyes closed, he knew that if he sat up suddenly and swiftly enough, his throat would be pierced, and death would be his. He moved his head gently, very gently, to and fro, to feel the sharpness against his skin. He thought it would be right, and a good way to end it.
In one movement he swung his arm across the blade, and he opened his eyes. It’s nothing. There is nothing there. Here’s the truth: it’s all in your head.
*
Some neighbours, the Baxes, back from Yorkshire now the war was over, invited them to dinner. Of course he didn’t want to go, and actually neither did Julia, but because each felt that the other might like to, and because both knew that on some level it was a good idea, they ended up going.
Mr Bax was too old to have fought; his children too young. The other guests, a vicar and his wife, and an accountant and his sister, were of an age. Peter was next to Mrs Bax, who seemed to know a great deal about the peace terms, and where everybody was going wrong. She knew almost as much, indeed, as the vicar. The accountant was full of good information on stocks and bonds. Peter ate his chop and felt like a savage, and felt that surely he was not meant to be still feeling like a savage.
The vicar’s wife, courteous and intelligent, was keen to talk about the decline of civilisation. What future, she wondered, for religion and art?
‘Madam,’ Peter said, ‘you should know – you of all people are civilised, a civilian …’ He meant it kindly – he thought – but it came out oddly.
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