The book is Middlemarch.
‘That’s a wonderful book.’
She looks at him in surprise. He realises that what has felt to him like a slow passage of time, within which he has come to know her well, has in reality been no more than a second or two, and he doesn’t know her at all.
‘Who told you I was here?’ she says.
‘The girls in the office.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I’m just passing on a message. You met a friend of mine in the pub, yesterday evening.’
‘The commando?’
‘He wants to ask you to lunch on Sunday.’
‘Oh.’ She wrinkles her brow. He watches her, but all he can think is how lovely she is. How he wants her to see him properly.
‘Do you like it?’ he says.
‘What?’
‘Middlemarch.’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I didn’t at first.’
‘I suppose you find Dorothea a bit much.’
‘Excuse me,’ she says, ‘but who exactly are you?’
‘Larry Cornford. Liaison officer attached to Eighth Infantry.’
He holds out his hand. She shakes it, half-smiling at the formality. Smiling at the whole strange meeting.
‘What on earth is she doing marrying Mr Casaubon?’ she says. ‘Anyone can see it’s a really stupid idea.’
‘Well, of course it is,’ says Larry. ‘But she’s idealistic. She wants to do something noble and fine with her life.’
‘She’s a nincompoop,’ says Kitty.
‘Don’t you want to do something noble and fine with your life?’
He can’t help himself speaking as if they’re on intimate terms. It just feels that way to him.
‘Not particularly,’ she says.
But her sweet face, those big brown eyes exploring him, puzzling over him, tell him otherwise.
‘I don’t expect you’ll be an army driver for the rest of your life,’ he says.
‘Actually I love driving.’ And then, briskly, aware that this is heading into uncharted waters, ‘So what’s this lunch?’
‘Sunday. About twelve? The farm behind the church. It’s where I’m billeted. Ed says bring your friend too. The blonde one.’
He manages not to say the ‘horsey one’.
‘If it’s a farm, does that mean real food?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Then we accept.’
‘Right. Message delivered.’ He rises. ‘I shall leave you with Dorothea.’
Striding briskly back across the camp to the big house, anxious not to be late for the CO’s morning meeting, Larry is aware of a new sensation. He feels light of body, light of heart. It seems to him that nothing really matters very much at all. Not his senior officers, not the war, not the turning of the whole great world. He tells himself it’s the morning sunshine after weeks of rain. He tells himself it’s no more than natural animal spirits inspired by the smile of a pretty girl. But he can still see that smile before him in his mind’s eye. She’s sharing with him the oddity that two strangers should be crouched on the floor of a lake house in wartime, discussing a nineteenth-century novel. She’s trying to make him out. That wrinkle between her eyebrows asks: what sort of person are you? Her smile so much more than a smile.
As is his habit, his mind reaches for comparisons in art. Renoir’s smudgy pink-cheeked girl reading a book, smiling to herself. But Kitty’s smile wasn’t private; nor was it provocative, like a hundred faux-innocent Venuses. She smiles to lay a courteous veil over an active curiosity. There’s a painting like it by Ingres, of Louise de Broglie, gazing, head a little tilted, one finger to her cheek, daring the viewer to know her.
‘Buck up,’ says Johnny Parrish.
Larry hurries into the library, which is already noisy with the chatter of officers. Brigadier Wills arrives and the meeting begins. Most of it concerns the lessons to be learned from yesterday’s exercise. Larry, perched on a window shelf at the back, allows his mind to drift.
He thinks of the library in his father’s house in Kensington; far smaller than this grand open-roofed hall, but sharing the magic of all libraries, which is that the books on their shelves open onto infinite space. He came every evening in the school holidays to join his father in prayers in the library, which gave it something of the mystery of a church. He has almost no memory of his mother, who is in heaven, and therefore inescapably confused with the Mother of God. It came as a shock to him to discover when he was sent away to school that the Blessed Virgin cared for other children as well.
Our Lady, hear my prayer. St Lawrence, hear my prayer.
St Lawrence is his own saint, the third-century martyr who was roasted to death on a grid-iron, saying apocryphally, ‘Turn me over, I’m cooked on this side.’ There was fun with that at school.
Larry prays often, from long habit, inattentively. It has become the manner in which he expresses his desires. This despite the fact that at Downside the subtle monks taught him a wiser notion of prayer. Its object is not to seek God’s intervention in our favour, but to align ourselves with God’s will for us. Perhaps even – Larry has been especially drawn to this – to relieve us of self-will altogether. Dom Ambrose, the same monk who taught him to love George Eliot, was a devoted follower of Jean-Pierre de Caussade. The eighteenth-century Jesuit preached abandonment to the will of God within the sacrament of the present moment. Père de Caussade’s prayer was ‘Lord have pity on me. With you all things are possible.’
Lord have pity on me, prays Larry. Find me a girl like Kitty.
3
Ed Avenell shows up at River Farm early on Sunday morning, and by the time Larry gets up he finds Mary Funnell is eating out of his hands.
‘Mary, sweet Mary,’ he’s saying to her, ‘do you dance, Mary? Of course you do. I can always tell a girl who has dancing feet.’
He spins her round the kitchen table, bringing her back pink-faced and flustered to the draining board where she’s been washing dishes.
‘You’d dance the night away if you could.’
‘What a terrible man your friend is,’ Mary Funnell says to Larry. ‘The things he says to me.’
‘I’m buying your love, Mary,’ says Ed. ‘I’ll say almost anything for a hard-boiled egg.’
Larry marvels to see Ed’s charm operating at full throttle. The wonder of it is he tells nothing but the unvarnished truth, and yet he so manages it that the lonely and overworked farmer’s wife feels he understands her and respects her.
The results are to be seen in the basket she is assembling for their lunch. Ed has decided it is to be a picnic. He now heads off to recce its location.
‘You sort out the crockery, Larry. And don’t forget glasses.’
By the time Kitty and Louisa come bicycling into the farmyard in their summer frocks, the war seems a thousand miles away. Ed reappears, and treats Kitty with an offhand friendliness, as if they have known each other for years.
‘Larry, you take the basket. I’ll take the box.’
‘What am I to carry?’ says Kitty.
‘You can carry the rug if you like.’
Ed’s plan is that they picnic in the copse above the nearby village of Glynde, on the flank of Mount Caburn. Kitty sits in the front of his jeep, with Larry and Louisa behind.
‘You get your own jeep?’ says Kitty.
‘Not exactly,’ says Ed. ‘But in our outfit the idea is we use our initiative.’
‘He’s stolen it,’ says Larry.
‘What exactly is your outfit?’ says Louisa.
‘40 Royal Marine Commando,’ says Ed.
‘I’ve heard that name.’ Kitty frowns, trying to recall where.
‘Kitty drives the Brig,’ says Louisa. ‘She hears everything.’
‘Is your CO called Phillips?’
‘Joe Phillips, yes. How do you know that?’
‘I must have had him in the back of the car. Does that mean your lot are part of the big show that’s coming up?’
Ed laughs and glances back at Larry.
‘What price security, eh?’
‘Oh, save your breath,’ says Louisa. ‘Even the dumb Canucks know it’s coming.’
Ed drives the jeep off the road up rising land into a wood, and stops on the far side. Here a small clearing in the trees opens out to the east, giving a wide view of the Sussex plain. The fields, not yet harvested, lie brown and gold in the midday sun. Here and there the faded red of tiled roofs reveal a village.
Larry spreads the rug over the ground, and Kitty and Louisa unpack the picnic, exclaiming at the discovery of each new delight.
‘Tomatoes! Hard-boiled eggs! Oh my God, I’m in heaven! Is this home-made bread? Look, Louisa! Real butter!’
Ed opens the flagon of cider and pours them all a glass. He proposes a toast.
‘To luck,’ he says.
Larry keeps looking at Kitty, and each time he looks he sees that her eyes are on Ed. He makes an effort to take control of his own foolishness. This entire picnic has been got up, after all, to give Ed a clear run at Kitty. As Ed’s friend his duty is to pay attention to Louisa.
‘Do you believe in luck?’ he says to her.
‘Not really,’ she says. ‘I’m not sure what I believe in. Does everyone have to believe in something?’
‘You don’t have to,’ says Larry, ‘but I think you do, whether you realise it or not. Even Ed.’
Ed has taken out a scary-looking long-bladed knife and starts cutting slices off the loaf.
‘I believe in luck,’ he says. ‘And I believe in impulse. And I believe in glory.’
‘What does that mean?’ says Kitty.
‘It means you do what you feel like, when you feel it. No fear, no shame, no hesitation. Live your life like an arrow in flight. Strike hard, strike deep.’
He strikes the loaf hard and deep.
‘Good heavens!’ says Kitty. ‘How thrillingly single-minded.’
Her words are teasing, but her eyes shine.
‘That is classic Ed tommyrot,’ says Larry. ‘Who wants to be an arrow?’
Louisa gathers up the chunks of bread as they fall.
‘Do you mind if I start eating?’ she says. ‘I feel like I haven’t eaten for at least a year.’
They all set to, getting their fingers messy with butter and tomato pulp, forming their bread into thick ragged sandwiches. Kitty takes on the job of peeling the hard-boiled eggs. Larry watches her, seeing the care with which she manages to remove the shell in large sections.
‘You look as if you’ve done that before,’ Ed says.
‘I like peeling eggs,’ says Kitty. ‘I hate it when people take the shells off roughly, just smashing them into tiny pieces. How would you like to be undressed like that?’
She looks up and sees Ed’s eyes on her, silently amused. She blushes. Ed takes one of the unpeeled eggs and says, ‘Can anyone make this stand on one end?’
‘Oh, that’s Columbus’s trick,’ says Louisa. ‘You just bash its bottom in.’
‘No,’ says Ed. ‘No bashing.’
He scoops a little hollow in the earth and stands the egg upright in it.
‘That’s cheating,’ says Kitty. ‘You have to make it stand on a flat surface.’
‘Only according to your rules,’ says Ed. ‘There’s nothing about a flat surface in my rules.’
‘Anyone can win if they make up their own rules.’
‘So there’s the moral,’ says Ed. ‘Always play by your own rules.’
Now he’s looking at Kitty in a way that makes her shiver.
‘I think you must be quite a ruthless person,’ she says.
‘Don’t tell him that,’ says Larry. ‘You’re just feeding his fantasy. He’ll go on about impulse and glory again. Ed’s always been rotten with romanticism. I expect that’s why he joined the commandos. The lone warrior who kills without a sound and cares nothing for his own life.’
Ed laughs, not offended.
‘More like a bunch of oddballs who can’t fit in with the rest of the army,’ he says.
‘But don’t you have to be tremendously tough?’ says Louisa.
‘Not really,’ says Ed. ‘Just a little crazy.’
Kitty looks at Ed most of the time because most of the time he seems not to be looking at her. She sees the small impatient movements he makes, the jerk of his head with which he flicks back the dark hair out of his eyes, the opening and closing of his hands as if he’s grasping the air, or perhaps letting it go. He has long, delicate, almost feminine fingers. His complexion too is pale and girlish. And yet there’s nothing soft about him, he feels as if he’s made of taut wire; and every time those blue eyes turn on her his gaze hits her like a splash of cold water.
He says odd things in a straight way, his voice giving no clues. She can’t tell when he’s joking or serious. She feels out of her depth with him. She wants to touch the cool pale skin of his cheek. She wants to feel his arms pulling her towards him. She wants him to want her.
‘That egg story,’ Larry says. ‘Columbus didn’t make it up at all. Years before Columbus, Brunelleschi pulled the same trick, when asked to present a model for his design for the duomo in Florence. According to Vasari, at least.’
This is met by silence.
‘Larry, as you can tell,’ says Ed, ‘was actually listening during class.’
Larry pulls a face to show he’s a good sport, but in truth he’s not having a good time. He’s doing his best not to look at Kitty because every time he does so he’s swept by a wave of longing. He watches Ed, so lean and debonair and at ease with himself, and he knows he has none of his effortless style. He can only look on in awe at the careless charm with which he is all too visibly fascinating Kitty. His own freckled face gives him away at every turn, wrinkling with earnest eagerness when he talks, smoothing out when understood into a grateful smile.
‘I’ve always wanted to see Florence,’ says Kitty.
‘Rather you than me,’ says Louisa. ‘Art gives me a headache.’
‘Don’t say that to Larry,’ says Ed. ‘He wants to be an artist when he grows up.’
‘And what do you want to be?’ says Louisa.
‘Oh, I shan’t ever grow up.’
‘Ed will succeed at whatever he turns his hand to,’ says Larry. ‘He can’t help it. He’s loved by the gods.’
Ed grins and tosses a fragment of bread at him.
‘Those whom the gods love,’ he says, ‘die young.’
After they’ve eaten and drunk, Louisa takes out her box Brownie and makes them pose for a photograph.
‘Kitty, you in the middle.’
‘I hate being photographed,’ says Kitty.
‘That’s because you’re vain,’ says Louisa. ‘Be like Ed. He doesn’t care.’
Ed is sitting by Kitty’s side, his arms round his knees, his blue eyes gazing unseeingly into the distance. His shoulder touches Kitty’s arm, but he seems not to be aware of it. Larry places himself on Kitty’s other side, cross-legged, his hands on the rug behind him.
‘Smile, Larry,’ says Louisa.
Larry smiles. The shutter clicks. Louisa winds the film on.
‘Oh, bother. That’s the last one.’
‘But we have to get you too,’ says Kitty.
‘There’s no film left.’
‘We’ll make a memory instead,’ says Ed.
They all look at him in surprise.
‘What do you mean?’ says Kitty.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ says Ed. ‘Stand on our heads. Howl at the moon.’
‘Kitty could sing for us,’ says Louisa. ‘She’s got an amazing voice. She used to sing solos in her church choir.’
Ed fixes Kitty with a sudden intent gaze.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Kitty can sing for us.’
Kitty blushes.
‘You don’t want to hear me sing.’
Ed raises one hand, as if it’s a vote. He’s still got his eyes fixed on Kitty. Larry raises his hand. So doe
s Louisa.
‘It’s unanimous,’ says Ed. ‘Now you have to.’
‘There’s no accompaniment,’ protests Kitty. ‘I can’t sing unaccompanied.’
‘Yes, you can,’ says Louisa. ‘I’ve heard you.’
‘Well, I can’t sing with you all staring at me.’
‘We’ll close our eyes,’ says Larry.
‘I won’t,’ says Ed.
‘It’s all right,’ says Kitty. ‘I’ll close mine.’
So she gets to her feet and stands there for a moment, collecting herself. The others watch her in silence, suddenly aware that for Kitty this is a serious matter.
Then she closes her eyes and sings.
The water is wide
I cannot cross o’er
And neither have I
The wings to fly.
Build me a boat
That can carry two
And both shall row,
My true love and I.
Her voice is high and pure and true. Larry looks from her to Ed and sees on his friend’s face a look he’s never seen before. So that’s it, he tells himself. Ed’s in love.
A ship there is
And she sails the seas.
She’s laden deep
As deep can be;
But not so deep
As the love I’m in,
And I know not if
I sink or swim.
Then like one waking from a dream Kitty opens her eyes and takes in Ed’s watching gaze. He holds her eyes and says nothing. She lifts her shoulders in a shrug of apology.
‘That’s all I can remember.’
‘I think perhaps you’re an angel,’ says Ed.
‘I’d just as soon not be,’ says Kitty.
Later they lie on their backs on the rug, partly in sun and partly in shade, and gaze up at the summer sky. Isolated clouds go by, like sailing ships scudding slowly in the breeze. A single aircraft, high above, whines towards London.
‘I’m sick of this war,’ says Louisa. ‘The world was so beautiful before. Now everything’s so ugly.’
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