A Winter's Child (63 page)

‘I haven't noticed you shaking and having cold sweats, Claire.'

‘No. But I dream. I do irrational things. I can't make up my mind to anything. Once – just once thank God – I hallucinated. I suppose it could happen again.'

He lay back into the pillows, his breathing easier now but his face drawn and spent.

‘I hope not. I saw a corpse at one time, in a bonny old state of decay, grinning at me whenever I looked in the mirror. Perfectly ridiculous. I knew the bloody thing wasn't really there. But it stopped me from shaving for a month or two. I'll bet nothing like that ever happened to Kit.'

‘He's older,' she said, feeling in honour bound to defend him. ‘And he was probably a good bit steadier in the first place than us. I suppose he had to be. And he wasn't gassed either.'

‘No.' He closed his eyes, his breath rasping again for just a moment at the memory. ‘It was the thing I dreaded most. I didn't even like the look of our own gas-men. Peculiar crew they were. Made me downright uneasy. But my first wound was nice and clean. A wholesome piece of shrapnel in the groin. An inch or two to the right, of course, and my voice could well have been several octaves higher. But never fear. Those two inches were the salvation of my race – or would have been if I intended to be the father of children, which I certainly don't.'

‘Don't you really – not ever?' She had remembered, with affectionate, tolerant amusement that one day he would be a baronet, a man with titles and lands to inherit.

‘Christ, no. Have you read the terms of that Peace Treaty they've concocted? Twenty years from now they could go to war again. I don't feel much inclined to breed sons for that.'

She shivered. She would be forty-five by then. Young enough to suffer the same agony all over again.

‘Don't think like that, Euan. We need some kind of faith in the future.'

‘Have you found any?'

‘Not much. I've tried too – pretty hard.'

‘Poor Claire. You need a good man with a firm hand.'

‘Yes. I know.'

And leaning her head beside his on the pillow, their faces turned towards each other, almost touching, she told him about Paul, everything she knew, everything she had hoped for, all the memories she had guarded in silence because no one else but an initiate, a survivor, one of the walking wounded like herself, could have understood them.

‘Oh yes,' he said. ‘I'm very comfortable with Paul. I know him well. What about this other bloke – the one who's been crucifying you lately?'

She told him rapidly, explicitly, easing her burden just a little by an act of confession which she knew would wash over him and be quickly set aside.

He whistled and shook his head.

‘Well, you said it yourself, Claire my love. We've all got shell-shock to some degree. You don't shake, but could you be carrying a death wish do you think? I had one once. Lots of the chaps did. When they sent me home after the shrapnel, I volunteered for service overseas again. Went back to get killed, I suppose, and got myself gassed instead. Don't let that happen to you.'

She shook her head, the movement bringing her face closer to his, his hand coming to rest on the nape of her neck, his eyes half-closed and screened by long pale lashes, their blue insolence dimmed.

‘What a damnable thing to happen,' he said. ‘Just a bloody gas jet blowing out and all of a sudden I'm impotent.'

‘Not for long.'

‘I dare say. I'm sorry, Claire. You've had no real luck, have you, with your men.'

‘Have you – with women?'

He smiled, his eyes still closed, not his usual smile of malicious sweetness, not his look of a depraved angel tb which she was accustomed and against which she knew how to defend herself, but an expression of genuine amusement.

‘Doesn't apply to me, my darling. I've never been in love – with a woman.'

‘Oh –!'

He sat up, still pale, but grinning.

‘Oh – she says. And what she doesn't say, because she's a lady, is whatever can he mean, I wonder? Could it possibly be the worst – the thing they locked Oscar Wilde up for and Mummy would never talk about? Could it be that beastly nonsense – whatever it is?'

‘Could it?' If so then she would take it calmly, might be disappointed but would learn to understand. She could think of many other things she would find harder to forgive than that.

‘No,' he said, bathing her now in that brilliant, beautiful smile which was his self-defence, ‘not exactly.'

‘Do you want to tell me?'

‘Why not? I've heard your confession. You may as well hear mine. I had a friend. Naturally one jumps to the obvious conclusion, the famous homosexuality of our public schools – all those lovely beatings and rolling about together on the rugger field. But it wasn't that. We were at school together, of course. What else did any of us have the time to do before the war but go to school? And then Cambridge. We had our first girls together – so our mating instincts were in the right direction – and we swapped notes afterwards like proper little gentlemen. Quite a lot of girls, in fact. It was just that the best relationship we had was with each other. More than brothers. His father was a judge in India who hadn't seen him since he was eight. My family were only in Sussex but it might have been the moon for all the difference they made to me. Good people, of course. Just didn't believe in molly-coddling their offspring with affection. And I was a pleasant, affectionate sort of a lad in those days. Am I making sense?'

She nodded and brushed the tip of her nose very lightly against his.

‘Yes. You're saying you had a friend who loved you and that you loved him.'

‘That's right. And that we didn't love anybody else. Didn't need to. And there was nobody else we considered fit to love in any case. We were very much admired at school, my friend and I, I can tell you. Particularly him. He was handsome and witty and clever, and rather more than that – something extra about him, an ingredient nobody could ever name but that everybody knew was there. Charm doesn't go halfway to describe it. He was arrogant of course. But so was I. He got away with things – always. I managed it most of the time. Everybody knew that whatever he made up his mind to do in life it would be a splendid success. He'd make his first million as soon as he felt like it. Marry the girl he wanted when he wanted. One could see it written all over him, somehow. He was generous too. He always gave away more than he could afford and it was the only thing he did quietly, so nobody would know. You'd have liked him Claire. He was the face in that picture – you know – the one I gave to the dancing teacher.'

‘Yes.' She had understood.

‘We joined the army together in 1914, as soon as we could. Took our degrees and applied for commissions straightaway. Everybody expected that of us. We couldn't wait to put on those uniforms, believe me we couldn't, and set off looking for that Holy Grail. What a pair of gallant, pure-hearted knights we were. My heart would bleed, if I still had one, when I think of it – dedicating our swords and our souls both together to the cause of Justice and Freedom and Right. “Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour.” Those lines were written for us. We were told by some doddering old pedagogue or other, just after we were commissioned, how lucky we were to be young in the glorious year of 1914, how privileged to be able to take up arms in this glorious crusade: and we believed him. We were going to ride into battle together, chaste and valiant warriors, trumpets sounding and banners flying. We didn't know we were giving ourselves up to be slaughtered by incompetent fools who'd buy a few yards of ground with thousands and tens of thousands of our lives and then give it back again the next morning, when they'd cleared the corpses off it, because it didn't suit. And when it comes to the incompetence of officers, I reckon I can say as much as I like. I was an officer. I was incompetent.
I
knew that. The men knew it. The only person who didn't seem to know it, or didn't care – apart from the fools who gave me my commission in the first place – was the bloody company commander. And what possessed him to think that because I knew Latin and Greek I knew how to lead men into battle I can't imagine. One learns, of course, by one's mistakes. And since one buries one's mistakes – in the trenches – one gets away with it. But I don't have to tell you what kind of a hell it was – what kind of a bloody cock-up they made it –.'

‘No, Euan.'

He had started to sweat again and she wiped the moisture gently from his forehead with a corner of the blanket, removing it drop by drop, taking time and care, giving him her patience and her attention.

‘They murdered us, Claire.'

‘I know.'

‘For fun, it seemed to me. Just playing games.'

‘Yes.'

‘And where was Sir Galahad then –?'

She knew he was going to tell her, needed to tell her. And when she saw that, despite his need, he couldn't quite speak the words, she said quietly, believing she knew the answer, ‘What happened to your friend?'

‘He's in Edinburgh,' he said. And the effort of bringing out that single sentence, of making that one short admission exhausted him, taking what little remained of his energy clean away.

‘I didn't realize –' Nor, in fact, did she know what to make of it.

‘No,' he smiled, very weakly, ‘I suppose not. You thought I had a wife tucked away up there, didn't you?'

‘It crossed my mind.'

‘Naturally enough. A lot of the chaps did get married on leave and then couldn't remember why. But no – marriage wasn't precisely my style even then. There's a hospital up there – a special kind of place. Do you know it? Bad cases. The ones who really aren't fit to be seen. Good Lord – we've got to put them somewhere, haven't we? Can't have the poor blighters running about the streets and frightening the horses. Not that any of them can run.'

‘Euan.'
She put her hand into his, her cheek against his cheek, feeling a moisture on his skin that could have been sweat but which was probably tears. And she was crying anyway.

‘He's paralysed and blind. And burned of course. He's twenty-six. He's been in that hospital bed since he was twenty-three.'

For a while longer they remained close together, hands clasped, cheek against cheek, their breath mingling, two lives barely salvaged, remembering those other lives, younger than theirs, which had been thrown away.

‘Have you seen him?'

‘No.' That, most of all, he needed to say.

‘Will you?'

‘I'm trying. At first it was out of the question, of course, because I was in a bit of a mess myself – what with the gas and the nerves all shot to hell. Shaking and sweating all the livelong day just then. And afterwards – when I got on my feet… Oh – I've got as far as Edinburgh twice. But I came away again. I tried all winter in Whitby to get myself on a train. I had to change at Carlisle. You know the rest.'

‘Does he know –? I mean that you might be coming?'

He gave a short, harsh laugh, masking what could have been a sob. ‘I don't think he knows anything very much – or cares. His father died a couple of years ago and there didn't seem to be any money. I pay for certain things. I have an allowance from home. Not much because they're trying to get me back again. Most of it goes up there, which is why I'm usually short of the readies. What I can't do is go and look at him. He was – rather glorious. I can't somehow manage to go and face up to what's left of him. Feeble of me, don't you think? Though pretty much what you'd expect from a chap who was never keen on cricket or rugger or letting his dogs tear pretty little woodland animals apart.'

‘It's not feeble, Euan. I'm not sure I could go either.'

‘Oh – I think you could. I really think so. I think he could too – in my place – for me.'

‘What good would it do?'

‘None to him, I suppose. It might, just possibly, set me right with myself. On the other hand, it might send me completely round the bend. I shall have to give it a try. Can't say just when of course. But I'm working on it. I've already been two years on my way.'

‘If you have to do it, Euan, then I wouldn't wait much longer –'

‘Why ever not, Claire?' Sitting up again he gave her a dazzling smile. ‘He won't die you know. Mark my words, nothing so pleasant as that is likely to happen to him. He might get worse – in fact, one could even rely on it. But he'll get old. He'll live. Seems a pity the poor bastard hasn't got a friend with the decency to hold a pillow to his face.'

He began to get up and she said quickly, ‘You don't have to leave, Euan.' And taking her hands he pulled her to her feet and held her for a moment, the feel of his body sharp and cool, angular, twenty-six years old.

‘Thank you, Claire. That means a lot to me. Rather more than I'm comfortable with, truth to tell.'

‘What does
that
mean?'

‘I'm not sure. It might mean I shall ask you to come to Edinburgh with me. Would you come?'

‘I'll know when you ask me. If you ever do.'

She walked with him across the hall to his chilly, dusty room, turned down his bed, arranged his pillows, tucked him in.

‘Kiss me goodnight.'

She kissed him, a sister's kiss – or a mother's – and then, his hand in her hair, a lover's kiss.

‘If we make love now,' he said, ‘that's all we'll do, and all we'll think about. Lovers come fairly easy in any case, don't they? I need a friend.'

She smiled and kissed him again.

‘I'm here, Euan,' she said.

Returning from the Crown the next afternoon she found three notes from Miriam in her letterbox, delivered by Parker at intervals throughout the day; and Parker himself at her doorstep bringing a fourth, a gentle almost kittenish bombardment of arch little words and phrases begging her attendence at High Meadows on Wedding Business, ‘Claire, dear, I believe Polly is having a Crisis, as one would expect. And please dear, you cannot have forgotten the great Mystery of the Lace Garters. You must have been among the last to see them, darling. So it follows, therefore, that we cannot start the Great Garter Hunt without you. And on Wednesday next we are having a special little farewell party for Benedict and Nola and the children. You cannot wish to miss that.'