A Winter's Child (26 page)

So – for her present purposes – she could.

‘Roger – pick me up tomorrow at two o'clock and don't forget to collect that hat I left for trimming. There's a picture I want to see at the Palace – a bit above your head, sweetie but you can sleep through it – and then you can take me out to tea. Get me home by five, which leaves me plenty of time to change, and then pick me up again for – well – seven-thirty – no – eight. And Roger – don't wear that spotted tie.'

She was imperious, occasionally indulgent, always decisive. He was dazzled, happy to be led, her dominion over him appearing to suit them both. Perhaps she would marry him and, if so, her wedding would be the most spectacular Faxby had ever seen, a fairy tale of tulle and spangles and white orchids. Or perhaps not, in which case she would live out some other fairy tale, would be swept off her feet by some man far less biddable than Roger, who might even hurt her a little but would, of course, be terribly sorry about it in the end. Perhaps.

Claire began to believe that, so far as the Swanfields were concerned, she was relatively, adequately free. But she had reckoned without Miriam and the war memorial.

Every town, every village, every corner of England was by then in the process of honouring its dead by some public inscription of their names, some piece of sculpture, to provide a focal point of remembrance. And Faxby had not lagged behind. A stone soldier leaning head bowed upon his rifle was to be unveiled that autumn in a memorial garden laid out with evergreens and sad pale lilies just beyond the floral clock in Faxby Park. His companion at arms was to stand on a stone platform in Town Hall Square where hymns would be sung and wreaths of poppies laid for the first time on the 11th November when, at 11 o'clock, a two-minute silence would be observed, as had been done daily in Cape Town throughout the entire war, as a tribute to the slain. Similar monuments, plaques, commemorative works of art were being commissioned everywhere by banks, building societies, regiments, colleges, railways, town councils and parish councils, commercial enterprises. An empty tomb was to stand in clean-lined, straight-hearted significance in Whitehall. At the suggestion of the Dean of Westminster in Whitehall, the bodies of six soldiers were to be dug out of their shallow, nameless graves, one each from Ypres, Cambrai, Arras, The Marne, The Somme, The Aisne, and taken to an army hut near Ypres where a blindfolded officer would select the coffin, containing an unknown man perhaps six years dead, which would be given a state funeral in Westminster Abbey.

And Claire, had her mind not been full of other things, should have known that Swanfield Mills, which had lost its quota of men at the front, including the founder's younger son, would be unlikely to shirk so obvious and so sacred a task.

A plaque, inscribed with those thirty or so names, headed by Jeremy's, would have been adequate in Benedict's opinion, situated in the marbled and extremely splendid reception hall of the mill. Perfectly adequate, agreed Miriam, provided some piece of sculpture could be added, a frieze perhaps, depicting a line of young soldiers looking noble and dedicated and sad.

‘Then the list of names below it,' mused Miriam, ‘and below that one of those wonderful phrases, in gold lettering, “Their country called. They answered”. Or – yes, of course, best of all – “Their lives were not taken but given”.'

‘Try “lambs to the slaughter”,' said Nola.

‘And then,' continued Miriam sweetly, taking no notice, ‘there must be a fitting ceremony for the relatives and some kind of commemorative medal or plate or beaker perhaps for everyone to take home.'

Throughout those autumn Sunday evenings which Claire still spent at High Meadows she heard without listening until, one early November night, the truth burst upon her. Forty-two men of the Swanfield workforce had died in battle including Jeremy Swanfield, a garden boy and a groom. Forty-two bereaved mothers were to be assembled, therefore, at the mill, almost as many fathers, twenty-eight widows, thirty-four children, some of them still babes in arms, a great many sisters and brothers, a few grandparents, rather more fiancees than seemed reasonable although Toby Hartwell, who had organized the proceedings, had thought it ungentlemanly to enquire too closely. The vicar of Faxby Parish Church, a Methodist minister and an ebullient officer of the Salvation Army were all to say a few words, after which the plaque with its frieze of young warriors was to be unveiled by the joint hands of Jeremy Swanfield's wife and mother who would then present suitable mementoes to all those other wives and mothers, speaking a few words to each. There would then be tea, sandwiches and cakes, to the accompaniment of the Associated Textile Workers'Brass Band, playing their strident music in the mill-yard.

Had she agreed to do it? No one had asked her.
Could
she do it? Lying dry-mouthed and sleepless that night in her bed, fearing to close her eyes and succumb to the images which she knew were there, waiting behind her eyelids, the horror which, however firmly she suppressed it, still lurked in the recesses of her memory, she very much doubted it.

‘We should wear black, my dear, with perhaps a shoulder spray of white flowers,' said Miriam. ‘And I wonder whether one should consider mourning veils? What do you think, dear, since we were unable to hold a proper funeral?'

Smiling quickly, palely, she had no comment to make.

‘A sad duty,' sighed Miriam, ‘but I do believe it absolutely necessary to engage the families in conversation for just as long as one is able. It will be greatly appreciated. There is no need to memorize the names you know. Just call everyone “my dear” as I do. And they will be very well satisfied.'

‘I don't think I can bear it,' she told Euan Ash.

‘Then don't.'

‘It's not so simple.'

‘Oh yes it is. All you have to do is say no.'

‘What would you do?'

‘Ah – about the same as always – not much. Get drunk. Lock myself in my room for a week or two to think about it – until it struck me that none of it mattered a damn. Because it doesn't you know. That's freedom, Claire. At least I hope it is. Not caring.
Thats
the state of grace I'm after. You should give it a try.'

She had seen his painting by now, which the dancing teacher had sold, for the cost of the gaudy frame she had stuck around it, to the art dealer and pawnbroker just behind the Crown.

Euan, Claire supposed, must know it was there, propped up in the window, marked down at 12/6d among the brass Bombay elephants, the cracked Victorian china, the trays of old coins and Ashanti and Boer War medals. Had he stopped to look at it? She didn't think so. Yet she had looked herself for as long as she dared at that magical, beautiful, diseased world of Euan's boyhood and Paul's. Recognizing both of them in the face of the pilgrim. Knowing how total had been their faith in all the magical, beautiful falsehoods that world had taught them. Wondering if Paul too – had he seen the lies revealed – would have desired more than a temporary joining of hands, unable – like Euan – to sustain any relationship beyond the level of two companions travelling, for as long as it lasted, for as long as they could, along an open road.

Did she, herself, feel fit for anything heavier or more permanent than that?

Like Euan.

Yes. Very like him, sometimes. So that when her heart bled for him it bled for Paul. For the pilgrim. And for what had become of him. For her own kind.

‘You're not helping me,' she said quickly, dragging her mind back to the war memorial.

‘I am not helpful, which is the same as saying I don't interfere. Do what is right for you. It may not be right for me. I don't know the difference between right and wrong in any case. Once
thought
I did, of course, but that was in prehistoric times when they were still teaching us “Thou shalt not kill”. All that stuff about justice and mercy didn't stand the test of time too well either.'

She endured another sleepless night, another evening at High Meadows where, quite suddenly, the weight and sweetness of Miriam's presence becoming unendurable, she jumped to her feet; found Benedict in his study and informed him ‘I'm sorry, I can‘t go through with it,' her emotion so intense that she saw him recoil, not in alarm, she thought, but in pure distaste, his nostrils curling as if the odour of such hotly expressed feeling seriously offended them.

‘You mean the Memorial Service, I suppose. I think you can hardly avoid it.'

‘Nevertheless – I can't go.'

‘I expect you're going to tell me why.'

And, once again, at a moment when it was essential to be calm, to state her case rationally and precisely if there was to be any hope of him listening to it at all, she found herself overwhelmed by her own reaction to this passionless, haughty man, tumbled by the sheer force of it into incoherence.

‘I can't take a leading part in a ceremony I don't – with which I can't be at ease.'

‘It seems harmless enough to me.'

‘You were a civilian,' she said rashly, mulishly. ‘You wouldn't understand.'

‘Ah – yes. Naturally not. Would you care to enlighten me?'

‘I don't want to be reminded, Benedict, that's all. It's not necessary. I can remember. Surely you can understand that?'

‘Well yes – I
do
think my understanding might extend so far. But you have no monopoly on grief, you know. Every other woman present will have just as much to remember.'

‘I doubt that.'

‘Do you really? Well – yes – I suppose if one takes the view that, as a member of the educated classes, your sensibilities are keener than those of working women, then I suppose it follows that your loss must be the greater. Is that what you mean?'

‘I most certainly do not.' She was furious, her skin bleached by it so that her dark eyes, glittering with suppressed tears, seemed enormous.

‘What I mean is – for God's sake Benedict – I
saw
it and they didn't. They can remember their boys as they were – decked out in their brand-new uniforms with the right number of arms and legs and eyes – and I can't. I saw what happened to them afterwards and I don't want to think about it too often – not just yet. Those women weren't told …'

‘I imagine they have a good idea.'

‘No they don't. They'll have had their telegrams from the War Office and those letters from commanding officers – and hospital nurses – saying he was shot cleanly through the heart and can have felt no pain – when it was no such thing – when for everyone who went like that there were twenty more who died in filthy, mutilated agony that lasted for hours and days – and others who shot themselves in their own trenches because they couldn't stand any more of it. Mothers and wives weren't told about that either.'

‘Do you think they should be?'

‘Why not – why the hell not?'

‘To give them extra pain – like yours?'

‘No – to stop them handing out white feathers the next time we go to war. To stop all this nonsense – like Miriam's – about “Their lives were given, not taken”. Because it is nonsense – dangerous nonsense. It's just politicians making excuses. I've watched hundreds of young men die – boys, that's all – and not one of them was ready – or willing. They weren't making a sacrifice. They were
being sacrificed.
They knew it. It was horrible.'

She was atrociously upset and wanting to take her distress as far away from him as she could, to hide it as animals hide when afflicted by disease, she moved over to the window embrasure and sat down on the padded velvet seat, shivering, sick at heart. It was not in her nature to make such outbursts and this one, as it tore her notions of good taste and self-restraint asunder, hurt her badly. She would not have cared to expose herself in this way to anyone. But particularly not to Benedict, whose own self-control was so absolute that he could only despise her for the loss of her own.

Yet, instead of the scorn she had anticipated and had prepared herself to meet, he simply poured out two glasses of brandy, put one into her unsteady hand and stood, very tall and very quiet, before her, hemming her into the window seat as he had done once before at her garden gate, but without menace this time, prepared, it seemed, to wait.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, not looking at him, her eyes fixed on the heavy crystal goblet, the amber spirit. ‘I don't know why the war started. I've never worked it out and, at the time, it never even crossed my mind to ask. When you're young you can accept that some things are just –
there.
You believe what they tell you and when they say “do or die”, well then, that's what you do, because you're young and idealistic, which is the same as saying you're exploitable and a bloody fool. What mattered most to me in 1914 was getting away from home and the war was my opportunity. I took it. I don't know what I expected. Parade-ground soldiers in scarlet getting hit cleanly through the head or the heart like we said in all those letters and leaving dying messages to mother instead of cursing and screaming – or whimpering – because they didn't want to die at all. And, of course, as I got older they kept on getting younger. And they weren't regulars any more or volunteers, who'd chosen to be there, just eighteen-year-old conscripts who were in the trenches, some of them, for one reason – and one only. We'd have shot them as deserters otherwise.'

‘We?'

‘Yes.' And the bitterness inside her was like venom, poisoning her veins, corroding her. ‘The generals, who kept well back –
well
back. Did you ever hear of a general getting hit by a shell? The politicians who sat safe at home and talked about it. Silly women who persuaded men to enlist and then went back to their own comfortable parlours, instead of going to the front themselves and doing something more useful – less obscene – than handing out white feathers. Old men who played games with young men's lives – nine million lives.'