‘Oh, well, I wouldn’t have been much good at political life. And I don’t think he minded. He’d much rather have his destroyer.’
‘But that’s rather what I meant. I mean, he’ll be away for such a long time. Just when you must have thought you’d got him home for good.’
‘It’s the same for you, isn’t it?’
‘Not really. Johnny’s regular so, of course, I’m used to it. It’s you Wavy Navy wives I feel sorry for.’ Her rather protuberant faded blue eyes rested on Louise’s face with a look of kindly speculation. She leaned forward. ‘If you don’t think me impertinent, I could give you a little tip.’
Louise waited wondering what on earth it could be.
‘If I were you, I’d do my damnedest to start another baby. You’ll be amazed how the time will fly if you do. And you can get through all the unattractive part while your husband is away.’
‘Is that what you’re going to do?’
‘Oh, my dear, would that we were! But we’ve got four, and I don’t honestly think we could afford another. I should simply love to because, after all, I think that that is what marriage is for. Some of it,’ her pale face became mildly suffused, ‘is rather overrated, if you know what I mean.’
There was a short silence during which Louise wondered why she seemed to be the only person in the world who didn’t want her to have another child. Nannie kept mentioning it: ‘Sebastian keeps wondering when he is going to have a little sister, Mummy,’ was one of the ghastly ways she would put it. To change the subject, she said, ‘You don’t think this bomb will stop the war?’
‘Oh, my dear, I wish I did. But you know the Japanese!’
‘I suppose not, then.’ She had never met a single Japanese person and knew nothing about them. One of the things she had discovered about her marriage was that she didn’t know anything about a whole lot of things that she didn’t want to know anything about.
But two days later another bomb was dropped, and within a week of that the Japanese surrendered. Michael, after all, did not get his destroyer, and was to come out of the Navy and go back to portrait painting.
When she knew this, the decision about what on earth she was to do about her life loomed again and she was overcome with the apathy of terror. The film work was over – there had only been a week of it – and she was back to not being a good wife or mother. She had to talk to someone, and the only possible person was Stella, and she realized then, with guilty dismay, that she did not even know where Stella was or what she was doing. Michael had never taken to Stella, and although Stella had always maintained an enigmatic neutrality about Michael, Louise had felt uncomfortably that she did not like him much either. She rang Stella’s parents and Mrs Rose answered.
‘Ah! Louise! It is long since we met! Your son is well? And your husband? That is good. Stella? She is away. She is working on some little newspaper out of town – writing nonsense about what the bride is wearing at local weddings. Her father is not pleased with her – considers it a great waste of her education. Of course I have her number. Wait one minute – I’ll find it. Please, if you see her, try to advise her to find a more sensible thing to do.’
They met for lunch in a pub in Bromley the following day.
‘It won’t be a good lunch,’ Stella had said on the telephone, ‘but it will be quiet if you want to talk.’
The place was empty. ‘How did you know I wanted to talk?’
‘Well, I didn’t think you’d bother to come all this way simply to look at me.’
‘It is good to see you, though. I’m sorry I seem to have lost touch.’
‘We’ve not seen each other, but I don’t think we’ve lost touch.’ She picked up the menu. ‘Let’s get the food ordering over first. Now. You can have soup – tomato – or grapefruit. Both will be out of a tin. Different tins, you will be glad to hear. Then you have the choice between cottage pie or fillets of plaice. I advise the plaice. It will come with chips, which they have to make with real potatoes, whereas the pie will have that dreadful Pomme on top of it.’
‘You choose, I don’t honestly mind.’
For some reason that she could not understand, her eyes filled with tears. She blinked and saw her friend smiling with that familiar blend of cynicism and affection that Louise recognized as a family trait: her father’s smile.
Stella ordered their meal and then pushed a packet of cigarettes across the table.
‘I didn’t know you’d taken to smoking.’
‘I haven’t. They’re for you. Have one. The food will be ages. Tell me what you came to tell me.’
‘I don’t know where to begin.’
‘Is it Michael?’
She nodded. ‘It’s no good. I’m no good at it. I should never have married him.’
‘Are you in love with someone else, then?’
‘No. At least, I was.’
‘What happened?’
‘He died. Got killed.’
‘So now you’re sort of stuck with him.’
‘Michael?’
‘The lover. It is very difficult to fall out of love with someone when they die. I’m really sorry,’ she added. ‘I knew you didn’t love Michael, though.’
‘I thought I loved him.’
‘I know you did. How much longer will he be in the Navy?’
Louise explained about all that.
The soup arrived while she was doing it and a plate with two pieces of rather grey bread.
‘So you see, I thought I had two years to think about everything – to decide, I mean.’
‘You could still have that, couldn’t you?’
The idea startled her, and she rejected it.
‘It wouldn’t be at all the same. I mean he’s there nearly all the time. And we have to have dinner with his family at least once a week now that they’re back in London. His mother hates me. He told her about the other person and so, of course, she hates me more than ever.’
‘And what about the little boy?’
‘He’s fine. We’ve got a very good nannie. Zee adores him. He looks exactly like Michael did at that age – she says.’ She felt Stella watching her – tried, and failed, to meet her eye.
The waitress brought their fish.
‘Everything all right?’ she said, as she cleared the plates full of soup.
‘Yes, thanks. We were talking and it got cold.’
When she had gone, Stella said, ‘If you did leave, what do you want to do?’
‘I don’t know. Try to get a job, I suppose. I haven’t got any money, so I’d have to. And somewhere to live,’ she added, after a pause.
‘You don’t sound exactly thrilled at the prospect.’
‘I’m not. Why do you expect me to be thrilled at anything? My whole life’s a mess.’
‘Eat some lunch, Louise. One has to eat.’
She separated a piece of the fish from its black skin and put it in her mouth. ‘They taste awful, don’t they? Like thick, congealed water.’
‘Plaice?’
‘Nannie makes Sebastian have them for lunch. He hates it.’ She picked up a chip and ate it in her fingers. ‘Anyway. If you thought I shouldn’t have married Michael, why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Oh, Louise! What good do you think that would have done? People don’t take that sort of advice from anyone.’
‘But here I am – asking you what you think I should do!’
‘Are you?’
‘Yes! Yes, I am.’
‘Well. Since you did marry Michael, and you have a child, I think you should do everything you can before you are sure that you can’t make a go of it. You couldn’t do that if he was off in the Pacific, but you can if he’s around.’
‘He’s sleeping with someone else. Or possibly several someones.’
Stella seemed unmoved. ‘Have you been faithful to him?’
Louise felt her face getting hot. ‘No. Well, I did have an affair – after Hugo died. But it didn’t mean anything.’
‘Th
at’s not really the point, is it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that what you feel about something you’ve done doesn’t alter the fact that you’ve done it.’
‘No. I shouldn’t have, of course.’
‘I’m not blaming you—’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘No. Just wanting to get the facts clear. I think you need to talk to someone.’
‘I’m talking to you.’
‘No, I mean a professional. I think there must be many things you haven’t told me. And some things you haven’t even told yourself.’
‘You think I’m dotty or something? You mean I should talk to a psychiatrist?’ She had never even heard of anyone who had had to do that. ‘Do you honestly think I’m mad?’
‘Don’t be silly. Of course I don’t think you’re mad, but it’s very plain that you are unhappy, and it seems to me that you keep doing things that make you more so. Perhaps you should find out why.’
‘You mean that if I was told that it was all because I’m in love with my father – all that Freudian stuff – everything would be all right? All those people think that anything wrong with people is to do with sex or their parents, don’t they?’ She wanted a cigarette, but her hands were shaking and she didn’t want Stella – she seemed to have turned into some sort of enemy – to see.
Stella reached across the table, took a cigarette out of the packet, stuck it in Louise’s mouth and lit it for her. ‘Whatever we are has something to do with our parents,’ she said, ‘and probably something to do with sex as well. I wouldn’t know about that. But I do know something about unhappiness because of my aunt, Pappy’s sister, the one who lives with us.’
‘Why is she unhappy?’
‘Uncle Louis was sent to Auschwitz. It took weeks to find out. All we really know is that he was sent there in June 1944. Uncle Louis, and his very old parents and his sister. A friend saw them being taken away.’
Louise stared at her aghast, but Stella’s grey-green eyes were quite tearless and steady as she said, ‘I shouldn’t think his parents survived the journey. Two days in a cattle truck without food or water or even enough air. I hope they didn’t. Anyway, Aunt Anna knows about all that now. She has found out everything about it that she could, in spite of Pappy trying to shield her.’
There was a silence while Stella drank some water and she tried to imagine how one lot of people could do such awful things to other people and failed. ‘She had a daughter, didn’t she? You said that she had a grandchild that she’d never seen.’
‘They were sent to another camp. Apparently that happened earlier. They did not live in the same place.’
‘Oh – poor Aunt Anna! It’s too much for one person!’
‘Yes. She can think of nothing but herself and her losses.’
‘How can you blame her for that?’
‘I don’t. I am trying to explain something to you about unhappiness. I’m not saying what people should or shouldn’t do about it – just trying to tell you what happens.’
‘I don’t see how my sort of unhappiness can remotely compare with your aunt’s.’
‘That’s not the point, Louise. The point is that when – I think this is true – when anyone becomes more than a certain amount unhappy they get cut off. They don’t feel any comfort or concern or affection that comes from other people – all of that simply disappears inside some bottomless pit and when people realize that, they stop trying to be affectionate or comforting. Would you like some grey coffee, or some pink-brown tea?’
She chose coffee, and while Stella was ordering it she went to the lavatory. While there, she thought of Mrs Rose telling her to try to advise Stella to find a more sensible job. The idea seemed even more absurd than it had when suggested: Stella seemed in no need of any advice. Then she realized that she knew nothing about Stella’s work or life, that the whole of the lunch had been spent on her problems, and that Stella’s advice – that she should make sure that there was nothing she could do to mend her marriage – had not been hostile, was in fact, nothing more than difficult good sense.
But when she returned to their table, which now contained only the three purple asters in a green glass vase and their cups of coffee, it was Stella who said, ‘Sorry, Louise. I have been a bully. I’m afraid it runs in the family. Everybody at home is always telling everybody else what they ought to do. It’s fatal to ask advice of a Rose – you get it with interest.’
‘No, I asked you because I knew you’d be sensible. It just seemed rather frightening.’ Then she added, ‘I don’t want to get like poor Aunt Anna.’
Stella shot her a sharp look. ‘I know you don’t, so you won’t.’
‘Tell me about you. I know nothing about your job or anything.’
‘I’m learning to be a journalist.’
‘Why here?’
‘You have to start somewhere. The approved method is to get yourself on to some provincial paper where you report on absolutely any local activity that’s going. I do weddings, amateur dramatics, sports, accidents, prize-givings, fêtes, bazaars, charity events – everything. Pappy is furious. He wouldn’t mind if I was on the Times Educational Supplement, or even the plain Times, but he can’t stand the idea of me scribbling on about the colour of bridesmaids’ dresses or how much money a bring-and-buy stall made. He says I’m wasting all the money he spent on my education. I should be training to be a doctor or a lawyer, he says. And Mutti continues to dream of some splendid marriage for me to a very rich, very English man. I had to leave home because whenever they stopped getting at me, they started arguing with each other. And Aunt Anna thinks I should be working with the children who have been sent here from camps.’
‘I didn’t know there were children here.’
‘There are several places in the country. Pappy offered to be a medical adviser, but he fell out with them because they were so strict about the food being kosher. He said in view of the state of the children and rationing it was idiotic to make it even harder to rehabilitate them. I had a row with him about that.’
‘Why? You’re not religious, and you’re certainly practical. Surely you’re on his side about that, at least?’
‘It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with him personally, I just thought he should have been able to see the other point of view.’
‘Well, what is it? I should have thought that the only thing that mattered was to get them well.’
‘Their Jewishness mattered. They lost everything from being Jewish – their families, their country, their homes, their livelihood. All they have left is what they are. The older Jews did not want the children to forget or discount that, and religion is a core. But Pappy cannot get past his own disbelief. He always thinks people should think as he does. And, naturally, do what he says.’ She smiled her cynical, affectionate smile. ‘It’s easier not to do what Pappy wants away from him.’
‘So you have a flat here, or something?’
‘Digs. I live as you did at Stratford. One day I shall graduate to a better newspaper – in London, or Manchester, or Glasgow. At least I’m ambitious. Pappy approves of that.’
She was silent for a moment, then she said abruptly, ‘I did think of offering to go and help those children. Then, when it came to writing the letter, I couldn’t face it.’
It was some confidence, confession, she was not sure what.
‘It was such a chance, you see. Such a small, little chance. In the thirties, Pappy was a consultant at a big hospital in Vienna. He had evolved a new way to treat stomach ulcers and one morning he arrived at the hospital to discover that another doctor had cancelled his treatment. He had a violent row with the doctor, who called him a damn arrogant little Jew, so he walked out of the hospital and decided to come to England. He knew he would have to qualify all over again to practise here, but he was prepared to do that. We left Vienna the following week. I was thirteen then, and I minded leaving my friends and school and all my things. But if that man had no
t insulted Pappy that morning, he might not have come here.’
Louise stared at her, beginning to see what she meant.
‘So. Sometimes the knowledge that one has escaped a certain fate makes one even more frightened of it.’
Three
THE WIVES
October–December 1945
‘How long did you say you’ve known this chap?’
‘I didn’t – but ages. He was a sort of friend of Angus’s.’
‘But he’s married, you told me.’
‘Yes, John, I did. But he wants to marry me.’
‘That’s no good if he’s married already, though, is it? I mean, it’s not quite the thing.’
She watched a thought strike him.
‘Unless he’s thinking of getting a divorce.’
She had forgotten, with all these years that he had been away, how slowly the penny dropped with her dear brother.
‘Well, yes, he is thinking of that.’
She watched his face, once so florid and full of creases that denoted how much so many things puzzled him, now clear to the seamless vacuity that any small resolution afforded, but now his skin was the colour of yellowing paper, the ginger moustache was gone, his hair, once so thick and coppery, was dry and dull and receding – his whole body seemed to have shrunk inside his uniform.
‘Can’t help worrying about your happiness, Diana, old girl. You’ve had such a rotten time – Angus dying and all that.’
He had eaten all of the small bowl of potato crips she had put out for him, but his whisky and soda was barely touched. He was younger than she by three years, but now he looked like a frail, middle-aged man. He had been in the Army before the war, had disappeared with the fall of Singapore and nothing had been heard of him for nearly two years after that. She had thought him dead, and then information had trickled back that he was in a prisoner-of-war camp. He had been repatriated a month ago after some weeks in a hospital in New York where, as he put it, they had fattened him up. God knows what he must have looked like before they had done that, she thought now. She was very fond of the old boy even when, as nearly always, he proved slow on the uptake.
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 154