Grace Hardie (25 page)

Outside the ward, the two women clung to each other in a dismay that they had done their best to conceal in front of Philip. Then Grace sat down to wait while Mrs Hardie went to speak to the doctor in charge.

The hospital was a converted country house, and on this raw December day those patients who were convalescent were taking exercise by walking round and round the great
hall or up and down the double staircase. Some, their empty trouser legs pinned up, needed the support of crutches, whilst others, to judge by their ungainly movements, were attempting to come to terms with newly-fitted artificial limbs. One-armed men led blind men up and down; men with bandaged heads pushed other men in wheelchairs. A few, wearing hospital blue like the rest, but revealing no visible wounds, were talking to each other with a curious whistling sound. Grace followed these with her eyes, wondering whether this would be Philip's fate for the rest of his life.

Her mother, pale-faced, came to sit beside her.

‘What did the doctor say?' Grace asked.

‘The throat wound may heal. He won't die of it, in any case, after surviving as long as this. But –' her voice broke and she looked down at her lap, crumpling her gloves between her fingers.

‘But?'

Mrs Hardie sighed before speaking with a briskness perhaps copied from the doctor.

‘His lungs have been almost destroyed by gas. Burnt in some way. There's nothing that can be done about that. For the rest of his life he must be careful never to move too fast or work too hard or become too anxious. Just force himself to go on taking regular shallow breaths. Think of it, Grace! He's twenty-five, only twenty-five. He's lost three years of his youth already, and now he's never going to be able to live as a young man again. Never run or play games or – oh!' She was forced to pause, gripping Grace's hand to restore her courage.

‘And there's another thing,' she continued, almost in a whisper. ‘A kind of mental collapse. No one understands it or knows what to do about it, the doctor said, but it affects men who've been under shellfire for a long time. A kind of withdrawal from life. Sometimes they're frightened of any sudden noise; sometimes they don't appear to
hear it at all because they cut themselves off from whatever's happening all round them. No one will be able to tell whether Philip is suffering in this way until he can talk again, if he wants to. But they seem to be afraid –'

‘That won't last, surely,' said Grace. ‘When he's home again at Greystones, safe, with nothing to be frightened of, whatever it is will cure itself.'

‘Let's hope so.' Mrs Hardie stood up and did her best to smile. ‘Yes, we must hope so. We must talk to him about home. Remind him of all the things he loves. Grace, when we were in there with him, why didn't you tell him about Christopher?'

‘There's nothing to tell.' But Grace's pale face flushed, for she knew this was not true. As they were driven in a cab from the hospital to the railway station, she used thoughts of Christopher to banish from her mind the tragedy of Philip's wounds.

In the three years since her first meeting with Christopher Bailey their friendship had developed by correspondence. At first he had written about the war, describing his life in the trenches or in rest billets behind the lines. The battle of the Somme altered all that. Perhaps it was one of Grace's own letters which forced a change of subject, for her description of Frank's death and its aftermath could have left him in no doubt how deeply she was upset. More probably, though, he was silenced by the terrible nature of his own experiences.

So he began to write instead about England; describing his childhood, his home, his family, until Grace felt as though she knew them well. In return, he asked her to describe the minutiae of her own life. Her duties and customers in The House of Hardie were one source of material for her letters, but mostly she liked to describe the changing face of the woods and meadows and gardens as the seasons passed. The need to paint an accurate
picture in words sharpened her observation. She carried a small note pad on her walks and the care with which she noted every detail for her next letter intensified the possessive love she felt for her family home.

The pleasure she took in putting most of her experiences into words made it all the more strange that she should never have mentioned to Christopher the memorial she had made to Frank, nor any of the carving or clay modelling with which she now filled her free time. Was it because she expected him to disapprove? Certainly this was not one of the accepted occupations for a young lady. Water colouring and embroidery and playing the piano were all approved pastimes, but it was a different matter to embark on an undertaking which dirtied clothes and roughened hands.

From time to time, indeed, when she first began to carve, Grace had cut herself with some tool which slipped out of control. Her fingers were no longer those of a gentlewoman, soft and smooth, for no amount of soaking in lemon juice and glycerine could soothe away all the blisters and splinters and scars.

Well, it was wartime, when many unusual activities could be excused. Only a few years earlier it would have been unthinkable for someone like Grace to work in a shop, even if it did belong to her own family. It was not shame which led her to conceal her new hobby, but a fierce determination to preserve it as something private to herself. In a household such as Greystones, of course, it was impossible to conceal what she was doing, and she made no attempt to do so. Whether she worked at one end of her mother's studio or out in the open, it could be no secret from the servants and family. What they did not know was the depth of feeling which she brought to the task. That was too private to share even with Christopher.

So Grace kept the greatest pleasure of her life to herself
with as much care as Christopher censored all the details of war. The word pictures which she sent him instead had a curious effect – for Christopher began to write poems. Even someone who had acquired little literary taste during her years in the schoolroom recognized that the verses were not great poetry, but she was flattered to find herself always the central character.

At first he wrote of her as he remembered her, and as he pictured her daily life. Later he tried to imagine her childhood. By the end of the year his viewpoint had changed again. No longer did he picture her wandering through the grounds of Greystones on her own; he provided her with a companion and a new home. The change of style was so gradual that it was some time before Grace realized that his poems were love letters.

The discovery should have made her proud and happy, but instead it disturbed her. Did he love her as she really was, or had he created a different girl in his imagination and fallen in love with her? He wrote of her as beautiful, but Grace knew that she was nothing of the sort. It was not that she was ugly: but a portrait of her own mother as a young woman had convinced her that beauty was to be found in softly-waving corn-coloured hair, a rosebud complexion and a slender, graceful body. Grace had inherited none of these.

It was for this reason that she brushed aside every attempt on her mother's part to suggest that Christopher saw her as a future wife. She was not prepared to discuss the subject now. In any case, she was too deeply affected by the sight of her brother to tear her thoughts away from him for long. As the train rattled towards Oxford, her heart swelled with the desire to express Philip's fate in some visible form. She could create something like the memorial to Frank – although in this case, thank goodness, the subject would still be alive.

How should it look? She felt herself withdrawing from all awareness of her surroundings, grateful that her mother was in no mood to talk. There was in her mind a sense of swirling which must be allowed to move until it settled its own form. Perhaps it was the swirling of the gas which had so nearly killed her brother; or perhaps it represented the invisible barrier which he had created to cut himself off from the world.

Could such a feeling be expressed in a hard material? She envisaged a central figure which would stand for Philip's endurance, surrounded by circles or spirals. But the technical difficulties would be very great. She had not yet thought how they might be solved when they arrived at Greystones.

Letters which had arrived in the course of the day were laid out in the hall. There was one from Christopher. Grace smiled as she opened it, putting Philip for a moment out of her mind. Then her smile faded as she read its contents.

Christopher's letter began by acknowledging the receipt of two parcels. He thanked Grace for the contents of one of them and promised that the other would, as she had commanded, be kept for opening on Christmas Day.

Suddenly, in the middle of a page, his tone – and even his handwriting – changed. Words sprawled over the paper to express a frenzy of emotion.

‘But shall I still be alive on Christmas Day to receive your gifts?' he asked rhetorically. ‘I have to answer that yes, of course I shall, because often and often I've noticed in recent months that death comes to those who half expect it, that it's the fierceness of a man's determination to survive which ensures survival. Yet how is it possible to maintain such determination when one is permanently tired and tense, battered by noise and rain and constantly under fire?

‘There's only one answer, dearest Grace – at least, only one as far as I'm concerned. I must have something – a way of life, a special person – on whom I can centre my hopes and dreams of the future. I need to know that there's someone who is praying for me and whose happiness is bound up in thoughts of my return one day, just as my own hopes of happiness rest on a life shared with her.

‘Dearest girl, tell me that you'll marry me. On my next leave or after the war is over – I don't mind which as long as you promise me that the time will come, certain sure, when you'll be mine for ever. Write to me now, my darling.
Tell me what I want to hear. Nothing in the parcel you've sent me can give me half as much Christmas joy as a letter from you to say that you'll be my wife.'

Grace read the letter three times: first of all standing in the hall; then walking round the house; and at last in her bedroom. Not until later that evening, as she sat at dinner, did she reveal its contents to her mother.

‘Darling!' Some of the distress which had aged Lucy Hardie's face during the hospital visit was smoothed away by her smile. ‘I'm so happy for you! Dear Christopher! I was beginning to think that nothing good was ever going to happen again, but at last …'

‘You think I should accept his proposal then?'

‘Surely that's what you want to do? He's made it clear enough how much he loves you, and you love him too, don't you?'

‘I don't know,' said Grace honestly. ‘I hadn't thought that way. I feel – I hardly know him.'

‘Don't be ridiculous, Grace. You've known him for three years. Far longer than the acquaintance of most girls with their future husbands.'

‘But in that time we've only spent a few days together.'

‘I knew your father even less when I ran away from home to marry him, yet no one could have been happier than ourselves until … until …' Mrs Hardie finished the sentence bravely. ‘Until he left on his travels again. For a marriage to succeed, Grace, there must be an initial attraction – and you both felt that, didn't you?'

‘I suppose so. Yes, I did.'

‘Well, from then on, the process of learning to like everything about each other may continue for the rest of your lives. You've made a good start, by exchanging so many letters: all you need now is goodwill on both sides. The only thing required for a happy marriage between two people is a mutual wish to love, and the love will come.
In Christopher's case it's there already. I thought it was with you as well.'

‘The man I write letters to – yes, I think I am in love with him.'

Had it not been for Andy, she would have spoken more positively. But she could still recall the feelings which overwhelmed her when the gardener's son kissed her for the first time. Never with Christopher had she experienced the same passionate need to be close. Was it just that anyone's first kiss, simply by being the first, aroused emotions which could never be repeated?

Or perhaps it was Christopher's own restraint which made her answer in turn restrained. He had always behaved as Mrs Hardie had promised that a gentleman would, never pulling her into his arms. But once they were engaged, there would be no need for him to hold back. Would she then experience the same joy in his embrace that she had once felt in Andy's? She must believe so.

‘But is the man I write to really Christopher Bailey?' she asked.

The question no doubt sounded foolish. But it seemed to her that she had reason to feel uncertain. Her most vivid memory was still of the light-hearted young man who had arrived at The House of Hardie to plead for her sympathy. That boyishness had been killed by the hardships of war. His letters and poems suggested that he had become serious, and she was glad of this; but when the war came to an end he might change again. She knew little enough about Christopher as he was now and nothing at all about Christopher as he might be for the rest of his life. That didn't necessarily mean that she would dislike what she found, but it did give her cause to hesitate.

Her mother had no patience with such doubts. ‘You can't say No, Grace. Just think what the effect of a refusal
would be. He's spelled it out to you in this letter. If he loses hope … You can accept his suggestion of waiting until the war is over before you marry. That would be perfectly reasonable. But he's asked for something to look forward to, and you can't let a fighting man down.'

‘No. No, of course not.' How odd it was that she should need a reason for doing the expected thing. Grace was twenty years old. Most girls of her age were already wives and some were already widows. David and Jay regularly teased her with the prospect of becoming an old maid. She had nothing against marriage. It was what was expected of her, and it would be unwise to turn down a good offer. None of the young men she knew, apart from Christopher, had shown the kind of interest which might lead to marriage. Except, of course, Andy, and he had married someone else.