David also accepted the chairmanship of the Sixth Form ‘Owl’ Society, a group that specialised in debates on current topics, and played an important part in the social and cultural functions of the school, but all this was only his outward, visible life. Beneath it was a pulsating glow centred on Beth Marwood, and stimulated by her letters, helter-skelter outpourings of hospital gossip, preparations for their August wedding, and quaintly expressed endearments. Sometimes, musing over her letters for the fourth or fifth time, he would see her again as a lively, lovable child, living in constant anticipation of a stupendous treat.
In her actual presence he had never been conscious of his relative maturity, of the small gap in years, only the great gulf of experience brought about by his experiences in Flanders. But when he read her letters, or studied her photograph in nurse’s uniform that stood on his bedside table, he began to see her in the context of boys about two-thirds of the way up the school, colts bursting with animal high spirits almost ready for the responsibilities thrust upon them by Algy Herries (a great advocate of the prefectorial system) the moment they reached the Sixth.
He wondered about her a great deal. What she would make of life in this remote but surging community; how his dour old mother would view her; whether she would make allowances for the terrible ageing process, forced upon every member of his generation who had survived the trenches but, above all, how they would adjust to one another as lovers. For here, he suspected, she would be far more knowledgeable than he was.
He became so apprehensive about this that he ultimately confided in Willoughby, the ex-R.A.M.C. doctor in his mid-fifties, who lived at Stoke Steps, the nearest village to Bamfylde, and was regarded as the school doctor.
Willoughby was a brusque, hardworking man, with a severely practical approach to his patients, and a sharp eye for malingerers. David would have thought of him as a typical ex-army doctor had not Howarth, whose standards were impossibly high, spoken of him as a man thoroughly up to his job. He made an appointment with Willoughby on the excuse of a general check-up demanded by an insurance company but when the doctor pronounced him one hundred per cent fit, he raised the subject uppermost in his mind. To his relief Willoughby shed his brusqueness and became almost sympathetic.
‘Don’t think your misgivings are singular,’ he said. ‘Quite the contrary. “Veldt-starvation”, we used to call it in South Africa – any number of men came to me after we had rounded up the last of De Wet’s commandos over there. Same thing cropped up in P.O.W. camps this time. Fellows seemed to think they’d lost all interest, and capability into the bargain!’ He smiled, as though recalling something out of his own youth. ‘I’ve known men ask for aphrodisiacs, along with their demobilisation kit, but it’s all poppycock. The fact is, most males adjust to deprivation after a time. Damned good job they do, or every single one of you chaps would have come home with a roaring dose, and passed it on to the first decent woman he met. But why should you worry, seeing you’ve found yourself a filly you fancy? That speaks for itself, doesn’t it? I hear you didn’t take long to make up your mind about the girl.’
‘No, I didn’t,’ David told him, ‘and Beth being a trained nurse ought to help, but… well, the fact is, before running into her I never had the slightest inclination to go out and find myself a woman. Isn’t that unusual, a virgin at twenty-three?’
‘Not in your case, old chap. Nonconformist upbringing, for one thing, and I’ve met plenty of Nonconformists who regard sex as the ultimate sin. Sensitive nature too, I daresay, but above all, pitchforked into that bloody holocaust, before your eighteenth birthday. The wonder is you can bring yourself to discuss it with a stranger. Oh, I could use a lot of long words, and sound off like a medical dictionary, but it isn’t in the least necessary in your case. You’re fit now. You’ve got the moor and that place up there to thank for that, and you’ve had the luck to meet a girl who revived your natural instincts. My advice to you, old man, is to let well alone and give those instincts free rein. And for God’s sake, don’t go into a solemn conclave with the poor girl when you’re supposed to be enjoying your honeymoon. Don’t plough through any of these well-meaning tracts my fellow witch-doctors are always bringing out, either. The world’s been going a long time, and the population is still rising, despite our attempts to kill one another off for the sheer hell of it! Do you want children?’
‘I don’t think I’ve thought about it.’
‘Well, don’t. If they come, they come. When they like rather than when you like. At all events, that’s my experience. Family planning, my good right foot!’ His face clouded for a moment. ‘Had two myself. Boy and a girl. The boy was killed at Vimy. Fine young chap. Made up his mind to go for surgery, like his grandfather, but a Jerry hand-grenade put paid to that. Daughter’s married to a chap about your age. He came out of it with a bad whiff of gas and they’re living in Scotland. He had to take a forestry job, although he was trained as an accountant. Six months in an office would kill him. Told him so and he took my tip. Got a photograph of your fiancée?’
David showed him a snap of Elizabeth, taken with her Brownie camera on the walls of Caernarvon Castle and Willoughby studied it, objectively. ‘Looks a bonnie lass,’ he said. ‘Should be very good for you.’ And then, incuriously, ‘How are you liking it up there?’
‘I like it fine, mostly because Herries knows what he’s about.’
‘Aye, he does. But he’s had his troubles, converting the traditionalists to his peculiar style of government. Well, proof of the pudding, they say. He’s getting results, and it was a Dotheboys Hall when I remember it, in Wesker’s time. Couldn’t stand the man, neither could the boys. Here, what the devil am I doing gossiping to you? I’ve got a baby due over at Barrowhead Farm,’ and he grabbed his bag and hat and hurried out to a high-slung gig that his man had brought round from the stable. ‘I’ll trade this in for a car as soon as they improve the roads about here,’ he called from the driving seat, and cracking his whip went off at a spanking trot, leaving David with the impression that Howarth was an excellent judge of character.
And suddenly it was here, the end of term with no time for any more private misgivings. Shouted good wishes from departing boys – ‘Have a good hols, sir!’ ‘Make the most of it, sir!’ and a daring parting shot from the irrepressible Boyer, who had got to hear of the approaching wedding, ‘Don’t be good, be careful, sir!’
Watching Carter’s spick and span Corps march off behind his band, to entrain for its annual camp at Tidworth, he thought, ‘Hanged if I don’t belong here, almost as much as Herries and the old fogies. And me what Bull Bickford would dismiss as “only a fourth-termer”.’ Suddenly he made up his mind to ask Howarth to be his best man and Howarth surprised him by being the slightest bit flattered. ‘You really want an old shellback like me? I haven’t worn striped pants in twenty years, man.’
‘It’s not going to be a dressy occasion. I persuaded Beth and her father to save money on the ceremony. There’s only one bridesmaid, and about twenty of us at the reception. No one from my side, except my mother and younger sister. Almost everyone else I knew is either dead, or can’t afford a trip to town.’
‘Very well, then, but I hope your wife won’t judge Bamfylde on your best man. She’ll get the impression she’s being sold into bondage. You’re sure an ordinary suit will do?’
‘Of course it will, it’ll be a very simple affair.’
But it wasn’t as simple as all that. Waiting in the front pew of the little church at Elmer’s End, where Beth’s father had a clerical job with the South Eastern and Chatham Railway, David was surprised to see twenty to thirty onlookers file in, sober-looking, blue-suited men, for the most part, with hearty, shapeless wives, who he guessed were railway colleagues of Mr Marwood, but also three youngsters in their teens, whom he recognised as Beth’s younger sisters. The sight of them interested him, for he had forgotten he was acquiring a string of in-laws as well as a wife. But then a duty-conscious Howarth nudged him and
he stopped looking over his shoulder, and sat waiting for the minutes to tick by, more diminished than at any time in his life, including the occasion he had first appeared in the mess on arrival from the commissioning course. His collar was fiendishly tight and his mouth and throat were parched. The organ began to play, and everybody stood up, himself in response to another nudge by Howarth, and suddenly there was Beth on the arm of her dapper little father, a cool, utterly composed vision in billowing white but with a very reassuring half-smile lighting up her brown eyes as he took his place.
Two
* * *
1
WHENEVER HE RECALLED THAT DAY HE COULD NEVER reconstruct it in ordered sequence. It had that much in common with the early days of his spell in hospital, a series of fitful flashes, mostly unrelated, involving not so much himself as those about him. Beth’s clear, almost defiant responses; his own nervous fumble with the ring, causing the rigid expression of Howarth to relax; the eager faces of Beth’s three sisters, Margery, Beulah and Anne, as they left the church; the shower of confetti, a handful of which hit Howarth, inducing such a stare of outrage that David laughed out loud just as the photographer snapped them all in the porch.
And back at the semi-detached of his new father-in-law, with Beth’s stepmother (who embarrassed him because she somehow conveyed the impression that Beth had captured an Oxford professor) piping her eye during the speeches. The latter were brief and banal including his own, but there was one exception. Howarth, charged with proposing the health of the bridesmaid, used the opportunity to deliver a blushmaking account of the groom’s war service, and his arrival in Bamfylde where, Howarth declared, ‘…he is surprising everybody, because he is that rare phenomenon, a schoolteacher more anxious to learn than to teach.’ The company were inclined to accept this as a joke and began to laugh, but Howarth silenced them with one of his bleak stares, that must have killed ten thousand laughs over the past thirty years. ‘I don’t say that in any spirit of levity,’ he went on, rubbing it in, and ignoring David’s agonised look, ‘but on the strength of a close acquaintanceship of eighteen months. On behalf of Bamfylde School I welcome Mrs Powlett-Jones,’ (it seemed odd to hear Howarth refer to Beth as that) ‘because new blood is badly needed in all our institutions nowadays, and none more so than in educational establishments. I should know. I’ve gone a distinguished shade of grey in the service.’
It was permissible to laugh at that and Howarth implied as much by giving one of his rare, wintry smiles. They applauded enthusiastically and David got the impression that all those dour old railwaymen and their wives, and all the in-laws he hardly knew, and even his glum-faced mother toying with a glass of untasted port wine, wished them well – partly no doubt, on Beth’s account for she looked breathtakingly pretty – but also, in some devious way, because of old Howarth, and the way he had spoken up for a groom few of those present had heard of a week or so ago.
He would have been worried about leaving his mother in town for the night but Esther, Beth’s elder sister, the one married to the Colwyn Bay dairyman, promised to look after the old lady. So the couple were given a rousing send off at about three-thirty, and set out for Waterloo in a beribboned taxi, arriving just in time to catch the four-twenty for Portsmouth, en route for Shanklin, Isle of Wight.
The ability to think coherently returned to him when they were sitting facing one another over tea in the restaurant car, but a crippling shyness now seemed to have overtaken her as well as him. Their conversational exchanges had a hollow ring and neither one of them, it seemed, could think of anything worth saying. He continued to fight against it and, so it appeared, did she, but presently she excused herself abruptly on the grounds of disposing of confetti that she declared was still clogging her hair, although he could not see any from where he sat. After a few minutes he paid for the tea and went back to their compartment, expecting to find her there, but it was empty. She had been back, however, for her big attaché case had been opened and closed hurriedly, leaving the shoulder strap of a slip showing. A long time seemed to pass before she emerged looking, he thought, not merely distrait but tense.
He began to panic a little then, casting about for some phrase that might help to put her at ease, for the tight-lipped girl in the opposite corner, in her smart little two-piece, tan gloves, and blue straw hat, was a stranger to him and from the nineteen-year-old in whose company he had explored Welsh castles, and equally so from the confident bride who had smiled a welcome at him at the altar. He told himself, ‘It’s reaction, I suppose. It’s caught up with her and she’s regretting it already! Why the devil was I in such a hurry? We should have waited and got to know one another properly in this hols, and over Christmas, then arranged a wedding in the spring…’ But suddenly he saw, from her hardening expression, that she was on the point of saying something important and anticipated her, saying eagerly, ‘What is it, Beth? Tell me what you’re scared of? It can’t be me because…’
She relaxed somewhat and he smiled as she said, ‘Because you’re scared enough for both of us? No, Davy, It’s not that. Nothing to do with you, really. It’s just…’ and to his dismay her face turned scarlet, and her teeth clamped down on her lip.
‘Tell me.’
‘I… I can’t tell you, Davy.’
‘But you must. You were so sure of yourself at the church, far more so than me.’
She said, desperately, ‘All right, then, If it stops you thinking I’m scared of being married, and that I regret anything…’ He did not recall anyone ever looking so embarrassed but she pressed on; ‘You’ve… you’ve got sisters, thank God. You grew up in a little house just like ours…’
‘What on earth has that got to do with it?’
‘Everything, Davy. You see… well, something awful has happened – oh, no, nothing so out of the ordinary, just – just horribly embarrassing and very annoying, particularly now. That’s why I dashed off. Now… of all times! Maybe it’s the excitement, maybe I miscalculated… I don’t know…’
Suddenly, and with a tremendous surge of relief, he understood what she was trying to say and what had caused her plunge from serenity to near-panic. And then, on the heels of relief, came a sense of the ridiculous, so that without pausing to think whether or not it would add to her embarrassment, he shouted with laughter, dived across the compartment and threw his arms about her.
She looked momentarily bewildered but then, with urgency, ‘Pull the blinds!’
‘The blinds? But won’t it be obvious to anyone passing down the corridor?’
‘I don’t care about that! Pull them.’
He did as she asked and while his back was turned he heard her giggle and then laugh outright. Her laughter was the most welcome sound he had ever heard and it encouraged him to laugh again.
‘I feel such a fool,’ she said, presently. ‘I mean, any girl getting married thinks
of that… if she’s got any sense, that is. I know I did, but there it is, and it’s really nothing to laugh at, is it?’
But it was, because the fact that they could laugh, and that she could blurt it out in that way, seemed to him of the greatest significance. It meant that they were in accord, to a degree that not so many newly-weds could be, and he saw it all as a tremendously encouraging portent for the future. He said, ‘Well, I think it’s damned funny. And so do you really. I suppose, in some circumstances, a bride might be relieved,’ but she said, quickly, ‘Not since Victoria’s reign, and even then the groom would be entitled to feel diddled,’ and they both laughed again, and were still laughing when the ticket-collector looked in to clip their tickets and said, as David pocketed them, ‘Sorry, sir… madam… got to be done. But the best of luck and I’ll lock you in if you like?’ and Beth said, when they had declined his offer and he had pottered off, ‘Now what a considerate man! That’s just the kind of thing you would have said if you had been a railway guard clipping honeymooners’ tickets! There, that’s for being so understanding!’ and she kissed him in that
special way of hers, absentmindedly at first but then, on second thoughts as it were, enlarging the kiss and afterwards dabbing his mouth to remove a smear of lipstick.
It set the tone for the fortnight that followed, a time of laughter, discovery and great tenderness, so that as he lay awake listening to her regular breathing, and sometimes reaching out to touch the dark hair spread on the pillow, he thought, ‘Time was when I had to get by on nothing but comradeship… comradeship of poor devils in the same boat, and it was enough when every minute might be your last… but now… well, she stands for hope, in the way kids like Boyer and Skidmore and Briarley do, and between ‘em I daresay they can teach the left-overs to start out all over again…’
This notion of fusion, between Beth and his boys, enlarged itself in other ways during the honeymoon. It enabled him to see resurrection in others about him, at the little private hotel where they were staying, especially in the ebullience of a middle-aged Cockney with an empty sleeve and the placidity of his fat, amiable wife, and their tribe of children. ‘Two nippers the results o’ two leaves from the front,’ the man told him, after a brief exercise in telepathy that was the language of all who had served time in hell. It was there also in the brassy summer sunshine, when it seemed that all the rain in the world had been absorbed into the Flanders sponge and there was none left in the sky; in the shouts of children, splashing in the shallows down at the beach; in the cheerful, vulgar postcards on the revolving display stand of a stationer’s near their hotel, three of which he sent to Herries, Howarth and Judy Cordwainer, and a fourth (inscribed ‘Giving my instincts full rein… damned good prescription!’) to Willoughby. But, above all, he looked for and found it in Beth, who came to him gaily and gladly, who seemed to understand better than he did what was needed to erase the past, for she said, unexpectedly, ‘I hope I have a child right away, Davy. For both our sakes. For me because I’d like to be young enough to enjoy watching children grow up. For you because I think you’d see a son of your own as some kind of answer to what you and all those others had to put up with all those years. I mean, you’d be even more determined to make certain nothing like it ever happened again.’
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