by Louisa Young
‘And I don’t think Aldo and Riley would get on,’ she said.
Rose raised an eyebrow.
‘Politically,’ Nadine said.
‘But Riley wouldn’t be going,’ Rose said. ‘So why not go anyway, as usual, with the children?’
Because I am on the verge of lying to Riley about Aldo, Nadine thought. I am withholding the truth, already. Am I? I think I may be. I am not open with him.
‘It’s a little more subtle than that,’ she said. ‘I suppose.’ She didn’t want to say it to Rose either. All the more reason why you should then. Go on! Spit it out!
She took a breath and blurted. ‘Aldo’s keen on Mussolini,’ she said. ‘I don’t say this to Riley, because he wouldn’t like it.’
‘Ah,’ said Rose. She thought for a moment. ‘Ah yes. Do you fear that Riley would say that you can’t be friends with him, and the children must not be under that kind of influence?’
‘I just—’ Nadine said, and stopped.
After what she and Riley had been through already as a result of not being open with each other, during the war when he had lied about his face, wanting to protect her by breaking with her, and almost breaking both their hearts by it, it was inconceivable to her not to be open with him. So, clearly – well, fairly clearly – the thing to do was to retreat from the cousins. She could write to Aldo still; they could be fond relatives at a distance. She didn’t have to upset anybody; not the children, Nenna, Susanna, nor the men. They’d only visited for four summers! It wasn’t as if she were breaking a lifelong joy for the children. She was being responsible.
I don’t have to make a big thing of it, she told herself. The Duce probably is rather awful but people out there do seem to really love him and one doesn’t want to be judgemental.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It feels like a kind of lying, to Riley, and I don’t want to go on with it.’
Well, Rose understood that all right. She had been right at the heart of their first great misunderstanding, when she had been Riley’s nurse. She had had to read Nadine’s letters, and some of his.
‘Is it not dishonest not to tell him why?’ Rose asked.
‘I don’t want to upset anyone …’ Nadine said. ‘And I’m not exactly telling Tom the real reason why either!’
‘Well, that’s different,’ Rose said. ‘One shouldn’t tell children everything. They’re not equipped.’
Nadine was annoyed. She liked the cousins so much! But of course she could do without Aldo for Riley’s sake. It would be for the best. Let it fade, and then you will never have to lie to Riley.
Lie to Riley! She laughed. Never never never again.
*
Riley was in bed, reading something by George Orwell. She was glad to have talked with Rose, because she would have felt somehow naked, having these thoughts in mind, in front of him – he who could almost read her mind. He looked up as she came in.
‘Rose all right?’ he said.
‘Mm,’ she said.
‘You all right?’
‘Love you,’ she said, taking off her robe, and sitting. Sometimes she adopted, without noticing it, the brevity of speech patterns that he had developed, thanks to his damaged mouth.
‘What, still?’ he said, in pretended amazement.
‘Still,’ she said.
*
The next afternoon Tom announced to Nadine that he had written to Nenna and invited her to come and stay. He was very bland about it.
‘She can come to Locke Hill with us,’ he said. ‘And she’ll love London. We can carry on practising our languages. It would be a shame to let them slide.’
Where on earth did he come up with a phrase like that? Nadine thought. Probably heard a teacher use it, and imagined it would go down well. She stared at him for a full twenty seconds.
His eyes were wide and frank as he said, ‘I’ve posted the letter. It would be awfully rude to try to cancel an invitation.’
She tapped her finger on her desk. ‘You are a very cheeky little blighter.’
She could see him wondering which way it was going to go.
‘It’s a good idea,’ she said. ‘But you should have asked.’
‘You’re not going to say no, are you?’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Are you planning to carry on being manipulative and presumptuous?’
‘I wasn’t!’ he cried. ‘I was being generous and welcoming!’
‘To her, yes. But not otherwise. To me, you were – those other things.’ She didn’t want to say them again. They were such strong words.
‘Well I didn’t mean to be,’ he said.
‘If you’d been acting in good faith, you would have asked. There’s no need to be manipulative in this family.’
He was a little crestfallen. She went up to him, and took his face in her hands, and raised it up. He was just her height – five foot six, and so skinny. Any minute now he would overtake her. Blue blue eyes – Julia’s eyes, Peter’s build. She had to support the strength in him that neither of his parents had been able to maintain. Heaven forbid that he will ever have to go through what they went through – heaven protect him, even under the best of circumstances, from his father’s weaknesses and his mother’s vanities.
‘I’m going to think about it,’ she said, ‘and I’m going to talk to Riley about it, and to Peter – we can’t just foist guests on them. And while I’m doing that you are going to draft a letter rescinding the invitation, in case it is needed.’
Lord! How tough I am being. Is it the right thing?
Yes. Though part of her wished she’d just said, ‘Oh you monkey, of course she can come’, and ruffled his white-blond hair.
‘You wouldn’t,’ he said, aghast. ‘You couldn’t.’
‘I’m going to take everything into consideration,’ she said. She gave him a look as she left which she hoped conveyed to him the clear message that this is what he should have done in the first place.
Though actually, what a good idea! she was thinking. A wonderful let-out. And it might rather cheer Kitty up too.
Nadine was pregnant. She hadn’t told anybody, not even Riley, not even Rose. It had come out of the blue, and she only just dared to believe it. She held it close.
*
Kitty’s school was killing her, but nobody noticed. Within weeks of arrival all that she had valued in herself – her cheerfulness, her wit, her affection and intelligence – had been mocked and distorted by big girls with hockey skirts, lacquered hair and private languages. Very quickly it became apparent that in this world, where she was now to live, she was nothing. She accepted this judgement with a weak compliance which made her feel it was her own fault. On her way home each afternoon she bought apple pastries and ate them in the park, standing under wide-spreading plane trees, the sugar a comfort on her lips. She longed for the tender life she had had at her little prep school with only eight other girls in her class and dear Miss Jenkinson, whose favourite she was, a life of Stories from Dickens and museum visits and shared jokes, tea and cinnamon toast in the little sitting room, and everything happening at the pace they worked out between them, which was not very fast. School, now, was hard and quick, from the shiny floors to the talk to the expectations. Though plump, Kitty was bendy: she could do the splits and a back bend, but the gym teacher didn’t notice. She had no puff. She once caught the ball during lacrosse, and was so delighted that she forgot to pass it. ‘Cradle, girl, cradle!’ yelled Miss Calthorpe, and Kitty wanted to die. Not for her the coloured canvas girdles of sporting success and social acceptance. Not for her the kudos granted to a slim waist and an easy manner. She was relegated to brainbox, in a world where that was an insult. She was short, and so was her neck. Sidney Carton, Jane Eyre and pastry were her friends. She no longer liked the outside world. The holidays were going to be a magnificent period of respite, and the news that Nenna was coming was a shaft of sun in a dark sky.
When they all went to meet her, Kitty said to her the sort of thing the girls at scho
ol said: ‘You’ve arrived on the warmest day of the year, isn’t that wonderful!’ But she knew it was still wrong.
And anyway Nenna was wearing a jumper. ‘My special jumper,’ she said to Tom, rolling her eyes and shivering. ‘Estate! Your most hot day! Dio mio … ’
Tom said, po-faced, ‘Don’t worry, I arranged with Pluvius the rain god to give you a truly English experience,’ at which Nenna pulled the jumper’s collar closed round her neck and made a face and said, ‘Please bring me one big English umbrella for my formal attentions to Pluvio.’
Kitty looked on, and didn’t know what they were talking about. And that was just the start of it.
It was Tom who took Nenna out and about. Kitty was too young. They’ll put it on my gravestone, she thought, even if I’m a hundred when I die I’ll still be younger than Tom and I’ll still be a girl.
‘Did you have fun today?’ Nadine asked over supper at home, and Tom and Nenna would giggle – giggle!
‘Today,’ Nenna said, ‘I have identified all of London landmarks with Roman landmarks: St Paul’s is St Peter’s. Trafalgar Square is Piazza Navona. Your Thames is my Tiber of course, but you have no island, it’s sad. Marble Arch is the Arco di Tito, Buckingham Palace is the Vittoriano …’
‘The Typewriter,’ said Tom with a droll look, and Nenna gave him the look of the person who likes the naughtiness while pretending to disapprove.
‘Tower of London is Castel Sant’Angelo, only the angel is flown away to Piccadilly Circus …’
Kitty was starting to hate them. It was a clever funny way to understand a new city. But she was sure they were having more fun than that. She hungered for what she thought they had.
And it was Tom who introduced Nenna to Riley. Kitty had thought that perhaps as that was something which didn’t involve going out perhaps she might be allowed to – but no. She couldn’t push herself forward for things. She knew the answer already – No, you’re too young you’re a girl you’re too fat – so rather than risk hearing the words or seeing the look in anybody’s eye she answered the questions for herself before even asking them, and made that process part of herself, and fell behind.
When the much-anticipated meeting finally happened, anyway, it was a let-down. Riley had been away for a few days, for work, and the timing was off: he came in tired, and Tom sort of pushed Nenna at him, and then suddenly it turned out to be rather formal. Riley said ‘How do you do?’ and Nenna couldn’t remember what you were meant to say to that – only that you shouldn’t say, ‘I am well, thank you.’ She seemed shy of him, and startled by his face, even though she had been forewarned. Kitty, observing from a distance, was surprised. She had begun to think of Nenna as super-capable.
And then there was an embarrassment as Riley, though courteous and attentive for a moment, needed to get by with his bag, and Nenna was in the wrong place. As Riley went upstairs Tom was already saying to Nenna, ‘What do you think of him? What do you think of him?’ but of course Nenna could have no answer.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I hardly met him.’
Kitty could see Tom was frustrated, that he needed them to love each other. Or admire each other. Or admire him, for being favoured by the other. Kitty wanted it too, in so far as she could admit to wanting anything. Why could it not be immediate, like electricity? Turn it on and up it lights? She wanted Tom to have what he wanted.
Tom took Nenna to meet Rose, and she thought it strange and frightening that a woman could be a doctor, but somehow marvellous as well. She came away quiet from that encounter, very thoughtful. It was Tom who took her to the park, showed her the statue of Peter Pan (‘He doesn’t talk’) and the ducks on the Round Pond, which were more various and smart than the farmyard ducks at the lake. And he showed her the Italian paintings in the National Gallery, reporting back that she had said, ‘Well, we conquered you, so perhaps is fair.’
Kitty, while all these outings were going on, was doing extra French and maths, to make sure she didn’t have to stay down a year.
Nadine went to Soho for special Italian food that Nenna would like. In the evenings they sat together. Kitty watched them, and thought: Nenna looks like Nadine. She studied them: Nadine was more slender and pointy, Nenna stronger-looking and fairer. But their wide cheekbones matched, and the yellow-brown of their eyes, and their sallow skin. She realised with a little jolt that their eyebrows were the same. A few days later, in the park, a woman – a friend or something – spoke to Nadine, and she said, ‘Oh is this your daughter?’ Kitty looked up, happy, because that was her favourite thing – but the woman was looking at Nenna, and they were all smiling and laughing. Kitty looked again at Nenna and Nadine together, and a thin film of ice moved across her heart. I do not look like them. I have stupid pink cheeks. I look like a stupid bowl of milk with red bits. I look like a cream bun. They look like cypress trees and olives and skinny cats.
When they went down to Locke Hill, it was easier for Kitty to hang around with them, and she couldn’t bring herself not to, although her position was humiliating. Even so, it was Tom who introduced Nenna to Daddy, even though he doesn’t even like Daddy! Peter was charming to Nenna, and Kitty could see from Nenna’s surprised little glance to Tom that they had talked about Peter before, and Tom had complained about him, and Nenna was going to say to Tom now, ‘but he’s charming, your Peter’, and then the two of them would talk quietly and confidentially about her father, and she would be told to go away.
And then Tom showed Nenna his aeroplane, the German ghost from the War, whose metal bones still lay there silently falling apart in the woods. They clambered into the rusting holes, and he said Nenna made a most satisfactory rear gunner, and he let her sit in the pilot’s seat. At that, Kitty went running back through the woods, her humiliation compounded by the understanding that running away through the woods was a stupid immature reaction.
Later that afternoon Nenna, being kind, took Kitty into conversation, drew her to the sofa, and asked about school, and friends. She said many sweet things, but she also said, ‘Being fat makes you go about less, I think, also maybe in your head.’ Kitty knew that she didn’t mean it to sound harsh. She knew Nenna would not say something so unkind on purpose; that it was a trick of the language, a misjudged translation. But – who would pay attention to a girl who reads all the time, and runs off like a baby, and is dull? But even if I was amusing nobody would notice … And when nobody is interested in a girl what can she do except read? What Nenna said felt true, and that was the harshest thing.
Nenna was not fat. She went about, in her body and in her mind. She beat Tom at tennis and ran faster than him. She was quite Amazonian, with her strong hair and long legs in shorts. She looked like those flat female figures Nadine liked, sculpted by Eric Gill. Heroic and maidenly, on equal terms in the world. They swam in the river and Nenna’s hair was like weed underwater. She and Riley got over their first hiccup, and she made him laugh. She was beautiful and clever and in every way preferable to Kitty. Of course they would rather have her as a daughter, a sister.
*
Kitty was in her den under the piano at Locke Hill, with an Agatha Christie and a pocketful of nuts and raisins stolen from the kitchen cupboard, though probably Mrs Joyce would have given them to her if she’d asked. She didn’t want to ask.
Nadine had not got out of bed that day. Not like her, Kitty thought. She could hear Riley striding about; he came in to the drawing room every now and again to say something to Peter. Apparently the doctor was coming. She glanced up from her hidey-hole: his expression was tight and unfamiliar. She slowed her breathing. She didn’t mean to be sneaky.
‘Do you still think about her?’ Riley said, suddenly, in the swing of a turn round the room. The French windows were open on to the mild morning, but he did not seem to want to leave the house, or even to step over the threshold into the garden.
Peter, from the sofa, was staring at the corner where the walls met the ceiling.
‘Julia?’ he said,
and Kitty froze. She had never to her knowledge heard her mother’s name on her father’s lips.
‘Yes,’ said Riley.
‘No,’ Peter said, after a pause. ‘Or – very seldom. It’s all gone to sleep. They’re all dead, that’s all there is. They are in another land, and I must leave them be.’
‘Good,’ said Riley. ‘And this doesn’t—’ He sort of waved his hand, as if hoping it would express something.
‘No,’ said Peter mildly. ‘It turns out that it doesn’t.’
Kitty closed her eyes tight. She didn’t know what they were talking about. Julia, in her father’s voice.
‘And – how’s Mabel?’
‘She’s well,’ said Peter, but Kitty wasn’t listening. It’s all gone to sleep. They’re all dead, and that’s all there is. She repeated the words, to remember them. They’re all dead, and that’s all there is. Julia. Very seldom.
I’m not dead, she thought.
She peeked up, and saw Riley clasp Peter by the hand. Two daddies. Two daddies. She had never really minded before. It was just normal. It was what she had. She wondered for a moment what Vera and Jennifer at school would have to say about two daddies – then blocked the thought. She had agreed with herself not to think about school during the holidays. But you sort of don’t have any daddy, if you have two daddies … And you can’t block all your thoughts. And whichever way you look at it it’s not much good, is it? Two daddies that don’t add up to a proper one, a dead mother and another who’d rather have Nenna than me …