He should understand, she said, that she had money; if he’d suspected that, he was right; if he thought that Grace would inherit he was right again; and there would be more, much more to come in the future, when she, Bea Givens, was pushing up daisies, but he should understand nevertheless that she was going to make sure every last farthing was tied up good and proper, tight as a drum, for Grace and Grace only, so he needn’t get any ideas; that she knew what she was talking about when it come to finance, and that never mind the money, if he didn’t treat her Gracie right then she, Bea Givens, would skin him alive and fry his balls for breakfast –
– had she really said that? She had!
– but the main thing, she said, nodding pleasantly at Mr Godolphin as he passed, was that she would pay his premium. No, she wouldn’t hear another word (and I haven’t said one yet, thought Joe, to himself), she was going to set him up in business, make sure he could buy out Frank Lavery when the time came, he could look on it as a loan, if he chose, though she wasn’t going to need it back; he could think of it as a reward, if he wanted to, for fighting for his country; as blood money.
Arse money, she added, after a short pause, and at last fell silent; when he had looked into her face he saw that the wicked old thing was actually grinning.
‘So – ten bob a week – she really don’t know who sent it?’ he asked Grace.
‘She’s got one or two ideas,’ said Grace. ‘Only, I think she’s wrong.’
‘Oh?’
He saw her hesitate. Should he say it first? But he felt too new to this game, the mysterious game of Violet and Beatrice, his darling always caught in the middle. Why on earth should Bea Givens send her sister money anonymously, and for years? How could Violet not have noticed so many fairly evident things about Beatrice – had she actually believed that the sewing machine Bea had just given Grace as an engagement present had really been going cheap, as faulty?
She does not want to see that her sister has money, he thought. And so she does not.
‘Oh, let’s go to the pictures,’ said Grace suddenly. ‘I’m paying. Go on, Joe, just this once – I’ve always wanted to try those posh seats at the back.’
‘Look at us, Joe, what d’you see?’
Grace had made the two rooms over the sweetshop very cosy, with matching curtains and bedspread. They were sitting now at the table beside the window at the front, looking out over the market square. It was late afternoon, a Wednesday, so the stalls outside were just beginning to pack up, and some of them were lit with oil lamps so that the wet cobbles glistened.
They were having tea. Joe took the photograph from her hand. Their last full day at Porthkerris.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said, and looked up at her across the table, ‘but then you always do.’
Sometimes at night when the nightmare glacier of darkness has awoken him, when he has understood with what seems to be finality that he really is, always will be, lying in the shell-hole with the wet earth gritting beneath his fingers, he keeps his eyes on her sleeping face beside him, concentrates on her, until he is able to convince himself, hearing her breath, smelling her particular warm faintly gingery smell, that this is after all reality, the shell-hole part of the past.
Most of the time the shell-hole still feels more likely. How can he explain his luck? Here he is, in secure possession of all the foot soldier’s best dearest wishes: alive, back home, fed, dry and warm. On top of these longed-for luxuries, fate has mysteriously piled on the unimaginable, the fabulous treasures, the pots of gold: he loves and is loved, even cosseted; and for the first time in his life he is regularly employed, financially secure, and snugly housed.
All of this is down to her, he thinks, down to Grace. Had he not forgotten his wound for the first time the moment he first saw her face?
‘We’re complete opposites,’ she said once, on their honeymoon week, as they lay in the big double feather bed, the sea turning softly against the harbour outside.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Just look at us,’ she said, using her caressing hands to point out the differences, ‘tall and short; thin and plump; straight and curved; straight and curly, well, frizzy, really; blue and brown; white and black; man and woman. Whatever you are, I’m the opposite.’
This struck Joe as the most erotic speech he had ever heard. He did not have the words to express this idea, though his body immediately expressed it for him. ‘You missed one out,’ he said.
‘Did I? What’s that then?’
Her glistening blackberry eyes, as she laughed at him.
‘You show me?’ she said.
The wound had tormented him at first, not physically, for it was fully healed by then, but in his knowledge of it. He could run his fingertips over the horrible unnatural tucks and folds in the thin red new skin, touch twisted crevices, rope-like protuberances. Holding his shaving mirror to it, the night before the wedding, he had wondered whether it would not be best all round if he just did the sort of runner he had done so often as a homeless near-child, the boy who had left home and mother behind him. You could always just disappear in those days, hop on to the nearest tram and off again before the conductor came along, jump a goods train, hitch a lift, even keep going on Shanks’s pony until whatever mess that was worrying you was far behind, gone, forgettable.
But Grace would never be forgettable, he had the sense to see that. At the thought of really leaving her his whole stomach seemed to fall away inside him, with blankness and terror.
She knew of his wound, of course she did. He would try to make sure she caught full sight of it as seldom as possible. But she would be frightened and disgusted when she first saw it though, any normal girl would; and no matter how well she hid it he would know. That was a nasty thought. To see that in her eyes! To see horror!
By the time they had gone through the wedding rigmarole, very quiet, had a wedding breakfast with Violet and Bea (both of them looking, Joe thought bleakly, just as he felt, which was on the lines of someone waiting to be taken out and shot) and one or two other similarly doleful droopy old females whose names he was unsure of, by the time they had caught the late afternoon train and arrived in Porthkerris just as the chill autumnal dusk was falling, he was in such a state of remorseful misery that he could hardly speak, he could hardly so much as look at his wife. Now that the deed was done he felt all the deep shame of the disfigured. He had committed a vile crime: he had chained Grace to the crippled monster that was himself.
She had opened the door of the place, then stopped, looking up at him, but he could no longer read her expression.
‘Can’t yer do it?’ she said.
Blank. ‘Do what?’
‘Lift me over!’
‘Oh. Sorry –’ Blushing, sweaty, he put down the bag he was carrying, and set his stick against the doorjamb. Nothing wrong with his arms now, or his back, after months of crutches, and lately of hauling sacks of flour about, and sliding loaded trays in and out of the oven. It was just a question of balance; he could do almost anything if he thought about it first. Carefully he picked Grace up and carried her over the threshold. For months the merest thought of her had been enough to transfix him with desire, he had been unable to eat or sleep properly for weeks at the idea of finally being alone with her. Now, her whole plump sweet-smelling liveliness in his arms, he felt only a chill and desperate embarrassment.
He set her gently down beside the low bow window overlooking the harbour, and she said something odd: ‘I could still knock you over. Couldn’t I!’
He tried to smile. ‘D’you want to?’
She seemed to give the question some thought.
‘Not at the moment. Look, the fire’s lit all ready. Want a cup of tea?’
He looked about him, at the darkening sea beyond the harbour wall, at the clean flags of the floor, the plain whitewashed walls, the hot range, the steep flight of stone stairs turning in one corner up to the single bedroom above. He could hear the sea outside, otherwise n
othing. It was all peace here, he thought; all war inside him.
‘Shall I – take the bags upstairs?’
‘Later. Joe?’
‘What?’
‘Give me a kiss.’
Suddenly he was trembling as if they had never touched before.
‘I’m so glad you’re you,’ she said, and put up a hand to stroke his cheek.
‘Oh, Gracie!’ he whispered against her lips.
‘What?’ she whispered back.
Speech seemed difficult. ‘It’s just that – I haven’t done it – since. Since then. And I’ve never done it – with you. See?’
‘Well, I’ve never done it with anyone,’ she said. ‘Good job no one’s watching.’
No, he must spell it out: ‘Grace – the … Huns made a right mess of me.’
‘You were a soldier. You fought for your country. How could I ever think the worse of you for that?’
‘I mean – the way I look.’
‘The way your bum looks.’
He could not smile. ‘It’s not a pretty sight.’
Grace held up her right hand. ‘Is this?’
‘That’s –’
‘What?’
‘That’s nothing.’ He took the ruined hand, and kissed the palm.
‘Yes,’ said Grace. ‘It’s nothing now. I used to think there was no escape from the physical – that you were always what you were lumbered with, what was wrong with you or different, your face, your colour, all that. But there is – escape, I mean. There can be. At home, in private. You and me. D’you see what I mean?’
‘I don’t know – I think so.’
‘Well. Look. Let’s take the tea upstairs. Where it’s dark. And get into bed. You be scared of me. I’ll be scared of you.’
There was a pause. He put his hand on the back of her neck, so slender, and stroked the soft hair at her nape. He put his forehead to hers, and closed his eyes.
‘Maybe just the one candle?’ she added.
But it turned out they did not need one; the moon soon rose, and lit the room with silver.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said now, across the table set for tea, ‘but then you always do.’
She smiled. ‘Yes, yes,’ she said, ‘but keep looking. What d’you see?’
‘The two of us,’ he said warily. What was she after?
The Porthkerris photographer had posed them against a plain white background, with just a bouquet of artificial flowers beside them to add (he said) a further focus. There they stood, side by side in their Sunday best, her arm through his, her gloved hand –
And then he understood. He himself was standing upright in the photograph; he had left his stick in a corner, near enough to hand, but not needed, not when he was just going to stand up straight for a minute or two. He was unwounded, in the picture. And she was wearing a pair of her special gloves, cunningly tricked out, as he knew, on the inside. They looked whole, this young couple. What had she said? Accidental lies?
‘I don’t mind the odd lie,’ he said at last. ‘But I want the real thing most of all. I want what I can trust.’
‘The truth.’
‘Yes, that’s it.’ He looked out over the square. It was a fine sight, he thought, still busy enough despite the shortages, and full of decent human activity.
The war, so suddenly over, had been a nonsense, he had decided. And if you could let yourself think that, if you could give yourself permission to think like that, like Frank Owen in The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, you could see how shaky everything else looked: everything, the way the world was running, the things most folk believed in and took for granted, the things that were considered obviously true or obviously wrong – nearly all of it was just talk. Just people scrabbling about for their own, and trying to make sense out of senselessness, and telling themselves something had to be right if it had been as it was for a long enough time.
It’s all of it bollocks, thought Joe. It’s all of it lies. Some accidental, some that are meant.
The cushion beneath him was real, made for him, to measure, by his wife, so that he could sit at a table like anyone else, without aching too much. The china on the table, the bread and butter. The bread. His wife was real, and lovely, all the love there was in the world.
‘You alright, Joe? Joey?’
He passed her back the photograph. ‘We’ll get it framed, shall we? I’m grand,’ he said.
Every morning, when she had swept and tidied the two rooms, she sat down at the table before the window and wrote. She had filled the leather-bound book long since; scribbled now in the cheapest of cheap exercise books from the stationer, mainly about her childhood. The more recent past, she felt, was still too close for scrutiny.
‘I was sitting there trying to remember how to cast on,’ she told Joe, in bed one night. ‘I mean, I do know, I can remember. I just wanted to knit a shawl; but soon as I started all I could think of was Ma telling me I wasn’t hers. We were knitting, she was teaching me, and the whole thing sort of jumped into my head. So in the end I just sat down and wrote it all down.’
‘I read it?’
‘Maybe one day.’
She turns away from him and lies on her back, stretching out, full of happiness. For once in her life, she thinks, she is at least partly doing what everyone else does. Every wife who can afford to do so stays at home, industriously housekeeping. It is glorious, this almost unprecedented feeling of doing as others do; playing houses with a real house is a genuinely satisfying game.
At the same time there is her secret pleasure, the pinning down of more and more complicated memories. Last week she threw out poor Clifford Petty, stopped hiding behind that great boot of his, and rewrote ‘The Giant’ as someone like herself, the brown girl going to the fair. It seemed simple now, plain, from the child’s point of view. There seemed nothing left to add to it, nor to take away. She had copied out this finished version on to foolscap, in her best clearest handwriting, signed and dated it, and put it in the lowest drawer of the chest, under the winter blankets, where no one but she would ever see it.
Sometimes she thought about sending a finished story to a magazine. Selling something. But merely picturing herself going to the Post Office and buying the right-sized envelope was enough to make her heart thrill with anxiety. No. She did not dare. Maybe one day, when she had written lots more, when time had passed, and she was more able to judge whether what she had written was any good or not. If you thought something was good you would be able to bear the exposure of yourself that publication must mean. Perhaps.
‘It’s called “The Lesson”,’ she says, but Joe is already asleep.
23
Dr Summers, on the very edge of retirement, had taken on a partner, a big ex-army doctor named Heyward, fresh from field hospitals all over France. He was a forward-looking young man, keen to put the war behind him and practise modern medicine, and it was his particular belief that antenatal care was of paramount importance.
It had long been Dr Summers’ habit, on confirming a pregnancy, to end the consultation by rising, shaking his patient’s hand, congratulating her if there was the slightest chance that her condition pleased her, and requesting that she be sure to get in touch again once the pains had started. That was if she were a lady, of course, or at any rate in a position to pay his fees; the rest were to call the midwife.
But young Dr Heyward despised such laissez-faire. The fact remained, he said one evening, as they sat with a small brandy each after dinner – for he was lodging with his senior partner while the house he had taken was properly decorated – the fact remained that maternal mortality, despite the recent improvements in antisepsis and surgical technique, remained at distressingly high levels. Indeed there was a case for regarding the whole business of parturition as pathological; as requiring close medical supervision at every stage. A woman today, he told Dr Summers, was no less likely to die in childbirth than her grandmother. Than her great-grandmother. Where was the progress in that?
The solution, said Dr Heyward quickly, in case Dr Summers thought to answer, was in regular antenatal clinics, where trained staff would observe the patient throughout the entire period of gestation, beginning with a thorough examination of the whole person, with notes made of weight, height, general health, obstetrical history, and any physical disorder inimical to normal delivery; later visits would chart the progress of the pregnancy, measuring weight gain, fundal height, blood pressure, testing urine for the albumin traces heralding toxaemia, and for diabetes. He need hardly add, said Dr Heyward, that of course the demobilizing troops would be bringing a host of venereal disorders home with them; the sort of clinic he proposed would certainly play its part in responding to what might well amount to a new national emergency. Had Dr Summers any objection to his setting up such a clinic locally, should the Council approve and at least consider part-funding? He himself would work tirelessly to raise the necessary resources; and of course he would oversee the project himself, and for no added remuneration.
Dr Summers, who had felt quite worn out before his partner began, could only nod in acquiescence. He had had a curious memory, while Dr Heyward was speaking, of going to visit the parish’s last handywoman, the untrained midwife Violet Dimond, to tell her what his new partner had more or less just told him: that the good old ways were good enough no longer.
And yet Mrs Dimond had been a clean kindly creature, he thought, who had done much good and little harm, and only charged her patients what they could afford. But of course, he thought, it was already beginning to seem downright wrong, even peculiar, to let an untrained local deliver the children of her neighbours. As wrong and odd as, say, sending little boys up chimneys to sweep them. And yet I remember the sweep arriving to do just that, he thought. Oh, but Mother’s face! The sweep grinning as he turned up at the back gate with the two thin little children each carrying a filthy black sack, boys my age, said Mother, and she sent the sweep off with a flea in his ear, and then Father was so …
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