Above All Things (27 page)

Inside, the rotunda is dark and cool, and the arches sweep upwards in a gesture so expansive it makes the space beneath them seem larger than the curved walls could contain. The four columns that hold up the ceiling could hold up the whole world. The carved faces glaring down from the top of the columns are like demons, judging and cold. I find a spot to sit where I don’t have to see them. Where instead I can watch sunlight dapple through the stained glass.

What if Will had kissed me? I might have wanted him to. To abandon myself to him, the way that I have been abandoned. It would be easy to love Will. To love someone who was always there for me, someone I wouldn’t have to wait for. Perhaps, though, beginnings are always easier.

Once upon a time, I think, the world must have been flat. It was our minds that made it round, our desire to circumnavigate it. Our desire to leave home, certainly, but just as strongly, our desire to return. But in making it round we crumpled it up, pulling it apart in places, crushing it together in others, thrusting them up into the atmosphere. Bullying the deserts, the tundra, the plains into George’s beloved mountains, peaks that stretch up from the rest of the world.

I prefer the cracks and crevasses, the gaps and holes, the bottomless depths of oceans and valleys, where you can see below the surface. Or small spaces that hold me secure and safe. I prefer what is hidden away.

Everything is about to change. Is changing. The slow smoulder of desire is reshaping our landscapes. Maybe the oceans continue to plunge and Everest to grow higher, piercing into the heavens. Even if George were to reach the top of it, Everest will keep growing higher. Someone else will reach that height first.
It won’t be you
.

Around me there is the hum of prayers from scattered supplicants, the smell of candles being lit and blown out, wax and
incense. I think about lighting a prayer candle in George’s name, but I don’t want to tempt fate. I’ve lit candles for him before. In hope. In desperation. In good faith. First in Venice, to keep him safe, now that I knew he existed, on the sides of mountains. And then at each of his departures. I think the one I lit recently at St. Mary’s must have been burned down for weeks now. When I attend service tomorrow, I’ll light another one.

In the hollow silence of the church I catalogue George’s departures. So many memories of goodbyes and leave-takings. I name each train station, the names of enough ships to raise a flotilla. It is my own rosary, each name a prayer.

I find comfort in ritual, in controlling what I can, in developing routines. Tea served at the exact same time, with one biscuit, set into the saucer. Saying prayers with the children and then tucking them in, in order, foreheads kissed, one, two, three. Letters scooped from the floor and sorted into stacks – each to be dealt with in its turn. With the arrival of each letter from George, there are steps to go through. First, I sit, carefully, in the window of our bedroom, the door closed firmly so I won’t be disturbed. Then I hold the pages to my face, taking in the smells of where it has been. A deep inhale to steady my nerves and to push the hopes and fears aside so I can read what is there, and not what I want to be there. One sentence at a time. One paragraph. And then back to the start. Then read on to the next one. I draw it out, knowing it will be a long time before another letter arrives.

When I finish reading the letter, I fold it back into its envelope, slip it into my pocket, but I won’t read it again until I go to bed. Try to remember it all day, test myself about what I remember he has written, how he has written it.

Once, I used to keep all his letters in order, neat and tidy in a box, but that’s a pastime of youth. I no longer hold fast to that. There have been so many. There have been letters from George since the very start.

The morning after he arrived in Venice there was a note slipped under my door –
Would you do me the honour of walking out with me to Asolo tomorrow? I hear the hills above Browning’s villa are a thing to see. Just the two of us. Don’t tell your sisters
. The writing was messy and careless. The ink splotched on his name.

It was a beginning. An opening up.

At my feet the stone is cast in jewelled light from the stained glass placed high under the eaves. I wonder if I could catch that dance of colour in paint – the sharpness of it, the sparkle, so that it is the colour of the glass and the dark stone all at once. How it changes as the sun moves across the sky, as clouds move across its face. I could paint it from moment to moment, just this square of floor, just get this right. Just this.

What would George think I had come to, if I were to write,
I’m painting floors – no! Not painting them like a house painter, like a real painter. Like Will or your friend Duncan Grant. Trying to capture the light
. Some things just don’t suit letters.

Like proposals.
I wonder if maybe we should be married
.

The letter came from the Alps, a scant three months after we’d met. We barely knew each other and it was thrilling and disappointing all at once.

Without question I knew I wanted to spend my life with him. There had been other offers before – there could have been any number of other lives I might have lived. But all I could think of was the luxury of reaching for him whenever I wanted, to claim possession of some small part of him for myself. Reaching across a bed that had never seemed empty before and feeling his skin.

Yes
, I started to write back. Immediately.

But this was already a kind of ending. If this was the proposal there’d be no grand romantic gesture. No getting down on one knee. I didn’t know if I was ready to be a wife when I’d barely become a sweetheart.

The letter continued –
forgive me. But I am better on paper. I will ask you in person, if you think you’d agree, but my heart stops just thinking that you might refuse
.

I couldn’t refuse. But I didn’t tell anyone. I wrote back, lightly:
I wonder a great many things too and would love to talk them over in person. I am worse on paper. I cannot spell, which you often point out. And I prattle on about nothing of consequence. Let us save important words for when we can be together
.

George came back from the continent tanned and healthy and had lunch with my father and me. When my father retired after the meal for a nap, we sat in the walled garden. The lilacs were already spoiling, the air was pungent.

“What do you think?” George asked.

“About what?”

“About what I wrote.”

I knew exactly what he was talking about. At lunch he could barely look at me and flushed when he did. His hands fluttered across the table, picking up utensils, putting them down, turning the water glass in his hand to see the blower’s signature.

“You’ll have to refresh my memory.”

“I already spoke with your father.”

“Yes, you did. You had a rather extensive conversation about rope. I was there.”

“You’re going to make me ask properly then?”

“I’m going to make you ask something.”

“Ruth Turner. Will you marry me?”

He offered me a small, plain ring, nothing like Marby’s had been. I touched the hair that still fell over his collar.

“You’ll get a haircut first?”

“If that’s what it will take.”

“Then yes. I will.”

——

Ahead of me, near the altar, is a small memorial to the members of the church who died in the war, a wreath, draped with purple and black. The flowers are wilting, need to be replaced. The number of flowers England goes through for all her lost sons must be staggering. Gardens full of them. There are flowers for Trafford, I’m sure, at Mobberley. I’m glad there is no need of them for George.

“We all have to do our bit.” That’s what he told me before he went to France. But he didn’t have to. He volunteered, begged them to take him, even after he’d been refused three times.
You’re a teacher
, he was told.
Crucial to the war effort
. But he couldn’t abide that.

“I can’t stand by. Everyone’s over there. Geoffrey, Trafford. Robert. Dear God, Ruth, boys I taught are over there fighting. I have to go too.” It was as though he was afraid of missing out on some kind of adventure. “I can’t just stay here. Safe. With you.”

The
with you
sounded like an indictment. When he was finally accepted, George brought home champagne to drink to the future. To victory. I sipped at mine and hoped the whole war would be over before he got to France. Too many times I have drunk champagne at his departures. I hate the taste of champagne.

This time he said, “I can’t imagine coming down defeated.” I tried not to parse that sentence – the ways it could be interpreted.

The quiet of the church is calming. The traffic outside is muffled and far away. I am in a tiny, perfect fortress. A fortress for faith, for comfort. How many people have prayed here in eight hundred years? And so many of them are dead now. Forgotten. I know that George believes if he succeeds he won’t be forgotten. It’s a way to stave off death, grasp some immortality. He believes it’s a way to make things right – with Trafford and
Geoffrey. With his father. A way to establish a new life for all of us. Maybe he’s right, but for what it’s worth, these sacrifices don’t add up to much of a life.

In the alley beside the church there’s a sign: The Occupiers give notice that they will take Proceedings against all Persons committing a Nuisance in these entries.

I laughed the first time I saw it. We’d only just moved to Cambridge and George was showing me the town. The day was damp and cold, we leaned close together. We’d go to the pub, he said, to get warm. But not yet.

“What kind of nuisance should we commit?” I asked.

“We could drink and curse.”

“No. Too simple. University stuff, really.”

I leaned back against the wall, under the sign. I wanted him pressed against me. He was close. Everything else seemed so far away. The calls across the Cam, the
drip, drip, drip
of rain. I pulled down my hat and looked up at him from under it as he leaned against the opposite wall. Our feet crossed each other, and our bodies made a vee.

“We could fall asleep. They’d have to step over us.” He gestured down the carriageway.

“I think we can do better than that.”

“What did you have in mind?”

I pushed off from the wall and fell against him. I kissed him hard.

“That’s not a nuisance,” he said when I finally pulled back.

“To them it might be.”

“Let’s make a nuisance of ourselves all around town then, shall we?”

I nodded, kissed him again. We made a joke of it on the way home, stopped in doorways and alleys, alcoves and narrow passages. We kissed everywhere, getting sillier and sillier.

“Like the Eskimos, this time,” I said. And he rubbed his cold nose against mine.

“Like the French,” I said, and he kissed me long and hard and deep.

When we reached our new doorway, I said, “Like it’s the first and last time you’ll ever get the chance to.”

The Saturday market is a chaos of sound and I plunge headlong into it, drowning myself in the noise, the swell of people all around me: students, wives, kitchen maids, and cooks. They are a tidal pull, brushing against my arms, legs, and back. This anonymous touch is somehow soothing, as if I’ve become a part of something, a churning life that surges on regardless of wars, disasters, and deaths. It won’t be stopped. I am bumped and jostled, I knock into someone and don’t apologize. The bell at King’s tolls two. The children will be home by now and I promised Clare a tea party. I should hurry.

For an instant the crowd parts in front of me and I see the man from this morning in his grey fedora, his grey flannel suit. This time he looks at me, and then the crowd closes in again. Surely he is a reporter. I duck between two stalls, make my way to the northeast corner of the market, where I know there is a flower stand.

The man looked just the same as the reporters who met us when George and I got off the train at St. Pancras Station – the crush of their bodies against us, the smell of sweat and cheap booze had repulsed me. Then the accusations thrown at George. I glance over my shoulder again, but don’t see him. Maybe I’m being foolish again. I’ll buy the flowers and go home.

Of course it’s not just reporters I need to watch for.

“Mrs. Mallory.” The woman had approached me outside of St. Mary’s. I was just leaving the service, the children clustered around me. “I’m Dorothy MacEwan. We haven’t met,” she said,
waving away my response. The long feather on her hat bounced as she talked, a fleeting shadow over her face. She was a large woman, broad, packed into a corseted, high-necked dress. Severe. I felt small in front of her. But I remembered myself and tilted my head up. I wouldn’t judge. I was new to town and could use more acquaintances.

“Pleased to meet you.”

“May we speak?” She looked down at the children around me.

“Clare.” I dug for a coin. “Take your brother and sister. You can share one sticky bun. One.” I held my finger up for emphasis. Clare nodded seriously and led the other two off.

Mrs. MacEwan took me by the arm, began to promenade me in front of the church. I felt as though I was being displayed. “I wonder if you would consider coming to talk to the small women’s salon that I host?” she asked.

I began to protest that I had nothing to say, but she cut me off.

“You see, they, all of them, lost their husbands in the war. There’s about eight of them, and we gather and talk and I try to make them see how they can be strong, move past their grief.” She didn’t wait for a response from me, and I pictured another eight women as severe as Mrs. MacEwan. “I thought you, of all women, must surely be able to provide them some advice. Your husband is so far away, you must sometimes feel as though he’s dead. And yet you carry on, and your strength is a shining example for your children. It could be for these women too.”

“Mrs. MacEwan, my husband is not dead.”

“Oh no, I know. It just must seem that way sometimes. And you’re so brave. You could tell them how to be like that.”