Lorimers at War (29 page)

‘Not by the model,' said Alexa. ‘No, I didn't see. It was Mr Lorimer himself who startled me. He's a relation of mine, as it happens. But we'd lost touch. I didn't even know he'd been wounded. It was a shock. Is it serious?'

‘I'm afraid so.' The commandant shook his head sadly. In relief that he had not after all caused offence to an influential visitor, he was willing to talk freely. ‘Very considerable injuries to the spine and abdomen. Wheelchair for the rest of his life, I'm afraid, and basic nursing care. No reason, of course, why he shouldn't continue to paint. You might say he's lucky, for an artist. Blindness would have been far worse in his case. But there was no injury to his eyesight at all. Nor to his manual dexterity. Count your blessings, I tell him. But he's as downcast as any of the others. Nothing worth living for, never going to be a great artist now, all that sort of thing. It's only to be expected. He's a good teacher, though, and it's getting through to him that he's helping some of the others. With any luck, that will be a help to him in turn, given time.'

‘After the concert, perhaps I could talk to him privately.' Alexa could barely bring the words to her lips. ‘Is there anywhere we could meet?'

‘Of course, Lady Glanville. I'll see to it.'

She felt a moment of panic at the ease with which the arrangement was made. On the day of their engagement she had promised Piers that she would never see Matthew again. But neither of them then could have envisaged the circumstances of this new encounter. A happily-married woman, mother of a four-year-old son; and a severely disabled man. What harm could a conversation between them do? And it would be unthinkable to turn her back on a member of the family. She had spoken the truth when she claimed a relationship with the instructor. Matthew, after all – in spite of being three years older than herself – was her nephew.

It was not an easy meeting. The commandant put his own office at their disposal and Alexa waited until Matthew had arrived there before she joined him. She had sung all her songs that afternoon for him – and he, meeting her gaze steadily, had known it. So there was no longer any element of shock in the encounter, but the constraints imposed by their past relationship remained. It was impossible, naturally, for Alexa to kiss him; but equally impossible, for quite different reasons, to shake hands as though they were mere acquaintances.

Twelve years had passed since they last saw each other. At the ball which Lord Glanville had given in 1905 for Alexa Reni, the star of the new season at the Royal Opera House, she and Matthew had danced together, their eyes bright with love and excitement. And then Alexa had been forced to tell him what she had only recently learned herself – that her father, the mysterious man who had had a liaison with her mother in the last years of his life, was Matthew's grandfather, John Junius Lorimer.

She had done her best to persuade Matthew then that the discovery was of little importance. It was true that they could no longer contract a valid marriage, as they had hoped, but what did that matter to an artist and a singer? Alexa had been sincere when she said that she cared nothing for convention. That had made all the greater the shock of hearing Matthew declare that she must be free to marry one day, to be respected and to lead a conventionally happy life in the class of society which her beauty and talent entitled her to enter. He had kissed her with a fervour which left no doubt of the passion he was renouncing. Then he had run from the ballroom, never to see her again. Until now.

‘I don't know what to say.' Alexa felt her voice shaking. She leaned back against the door, trying to laugh at her own inadequacy.

‘Well, I do,' said Matthew. ‘I have to say that you're
more beautiful than ever. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but you've grown even lovelier than when you were eighteen. Lucky Lord Glanville. I was glad when you chose him to marry. He seemed a kind man. Why don't you sit down? You've been told, I suppose, what's wrong with me.'

He was talking too much for the same reason that Alexa was talking too little. Neither of them was quite certain what their relationship was or could be. She sat down and did her best to conduct an ordinary conversation.

‘Not in any detail,' she said. ‘How did it happen, Matthew? You weren't in the army, were you?'

‘At my age? Don't be ridiculous! Well, I shouldn't say that. I gather that even old men like me are being swept into the general carnage these days. No. The really ridiculous part of the whole business is that I could have stayed safely at home if I'd wanted to. I actually chose to go up in an aeroplane. I had to beg people to let me. I must have been mad.'

‘An aeroplane!'

‘That's right. I was an official war artist, doing a series of battle paintings. I got it into my head that I'd like to see what the whole thing looked like from above. On the ground, it's all a mess. Dead bodies, live bodies, none of it makes any sense. There must be a pattern somewhere, I thought, and it might be possible to see it from the air. They let me go up on an observation flight, to take photographs of the enemy lines. I knew how to work a camera.'

‘And was there a pattern?'

‘If it counts as a pattern to see rows of ants bustling around. All keeping to their own tracks, trying to achieve some invisible goal, occasionally diverting round some invisible obstacle.' He hesitated and for the first time the note of bitterness left his voice. ‘Well, as a matter of fact, it was beautiful. There was snow on the ground – you
remember how late spring was. Impossible to believe that armies were killing each other down there. Little dots of people. Little puffs of smoke. Peaceful. The aeroplane was noisy, but everything else seemed to be silent. Until at last one of the puffs of smoke pointed in our direction and we fell out of the sky.'

‘You were shot down? Oh, Matthew!' It was impossible to restrain her affection for him any longer. She seized his hand and pressed it against her cheek. Gently, but definitely, he took it away.

‘Don't, Alexa,' he told her. ‘I didn't want this meeting. I knew you were coming to sing, of course, but I hadn't meant to be at the concert.'

‘But we could be friends again,' Alexa said. ‘Twelve years of separation is long enough, surely. And when we're members of the same family, it's absurd. We've got nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing that happened was our fault.'

‘What happened?' asked Matthew wryly. ‘Nothing, alas!'

‘And how much I regretted that, when you left me,' said Alexa. ‘That night in Paris, after Salome – I would have stayed with you, you know, if you'd asked me.'

‘And instead I asked you to marry me and we found ourselves trapped by all the Lorimer conventions of correct behaviour between a gentleman and his fiancée. But now you're married to Lord Glanville, and another set of conventions comes into play!'

‘Piers couldn't possibly object –' began Alexa. But Matthew interrupted before she could move too far away from the truth.

‘In view of my condition?' he suggested, still with the same forced smile on his lips. ‘It's certainly true that he'd have nothing to fear from me. Well, to be honest, I'm not much bothered about what he thinks. I'm speaking out of selfishness.
I
couldn't stand it. I'm having trouble enough in coming to terms with everything I've lost as a
result of the crash. To be reminded of what I lost even before that would be too much of a burden. I'm sorry, Alexa.'

Alexa was silent, recognizing her own selfishness in her reluctance to let him go. She did her best to accept his decision without letting him see what an effort it cost her.

‘But where will you go when you leave here?' she asked.

Again the wry smile twisted Matthew's lips.

‘I have a house – a very small house – in Leicestershire,' he said. ‘Whether any of the doors will be wide enough to admit a wheelchair, I don't know. And inside the house I have a wife. Whether she'll have any use for a cripple is another thing I don't know. I even have a baby son, John. With any luck he'll get on with me for a year or two, until he feels the need of a father who can kick a football around with him.'

‘A wife!' Alexa was dumbfounded. It had never occurred to her that Matthew would marry anyone else.

‘A wife to whom I can never be a husband again.'

‘But you can still paint.' She did not know what else to say. Her beloved Matthew reduced to this! And married.

‘Oh yes,' he agreed. ‘I'm a very lucky chap. I can still paint.'

Alexa realized that whatever comfort she tried to give would increase his bitterness rather than assuage it. She longed to put her arms around him, to feel his arms around her, to give him one last kiss. Instead, she said goodbye quietly and went out of the room before he should see her cry.

As the time of her grandchild's birth approached, late in 1917, Margaret went to Jennifer's family home in Norfolk. She felt entitled to some leave, for this was her first absence from Blaize since she had taken charge of the hospital there. By now her work was almost entirely administrative: there were plenty of doctors on the staff to deal with medical emergencies.

She found her daughter-in-law in good health, but strained and apprehensive. Margaret herself had been forced to approach the birth of her only child without a husband at her side for support, and sympathized with the young woman's fears about the coming ordeal. She did her best to be reassuring and was rewarded by Jennifer's increasing serenity of mood.

The sea was not far away from the Blakeneys' home, Castle Hall, but the flat land between was low and marshy, making it difficult to walk there easily. Its presence made itself felt mainly by the sea mists which spread inland every evening and often, at this time of the year, did not disperse until noon. They made outdoor exercise undesirable for Jennifer, who by now was in any case too big to move easily. The baby's head had dropped, making walking difficult. Mr Blakeney, Margaret's host, was elderly and frail even for his years. He too kept to the house in these cold days. Margaret, more active than either and for too long confined to her office, felt the need to spend some time each day in the open air.

She went out in the afternoons during Jennifer's rest period, using the first day to explore the Blakeneys' own grounds. The grey stone house, shabby but comfortable, had a modest garden of lawns and flower beds at the back, with a spinney at what appeared to be the boundary.
But on the far side of the trees, still within the estate, were the ruins of the old castle which gave the house its name.

Except for a single tower at one corner, little of the structure had survived, but enough of the outer wall remained to show what an extensive area it had once protected – and because the stone foundations were set in a high bank of earth, there was still a feeling of shelter inside. Outside, on the other hand, the wall was steep, an effective defence. At its highest point it was set on an outcrop of rock immediately above the marsh which twice a day filled with tidal water and twice a day drained itself back into the narrower channel of a river running out to the sea.

In the days before the war, when gardeners were easy to come by, the grass inside the walls had probably been kept neat, but now a thick growth of nettles and brambles made it impossible to cross. Round the circumference ran a well-trodden stony path, however, and as Margaret walked along it both on that first day and on later occasions she revelled in the peace of the deserted site. If she paused to look out, either inland or across the marsh to the sea, she could see birds by the hundred, but no people at all. The change from the bustling grounds of Blaize and the constant demands made on her there was so restful that for the first time she was able to appreciate how tired she had been when she arrived.

On other days she explored some of the nearby villages, marvelling at the richness of the huge churches which had been built in the centuries when the wool trade made Norfolk wealthy but which today dominated only shrunken and impoverished communities. She was returning from one of these walks when she saw approaching from the other direction the elderly village postman. He had returned to his old employment when his younger successor went off to the war. He got off his bicycle to open the gate, and recognized Margaret as the guest at the Hall.

‘How's Miss Jennifer, then?' he asked.

‘Very well. It won't be much longer. Can I save you the journey up to the house?'

‘If you'll sign for this. Telegram. Name of Scott.'

‘That must be for me.' Margaret frowned as she signed. Only that morning she had read in the paper that more than two hundred thousand British soldiers had been killed or wounded in the Third Battle of Ypres. Blaize, no doubt, like every other hospital, would be under pressure to increase its number of patients. She hoped that her deputy was not calling her back just at the moment when she could be of use to Jennifer. She opened the telegram.

‘Is there any answer?' asked the postman.

Margaret shook her head, unable to speak. She stood still, leaning against the gatepost, as the old man mounted his bicycle, wobbled, and pedalled slowly away. Then, equally slowly, she walked up the long drive.

She could not face Jennifer yet. Instead of going into the house she continued to walk across the garden and into the ruins of the castle. Only when she was sure that no one could see her did she sit down on the stone wall and take the telegram out again.

It was intended for Jennifer. Margaret had forgotten that Robert's wife had the same surname as Robert's mother. It was Jennifer who had become Robert's next of kin, Jennifer to whom the War Office expressed its regrets.

She read the words again. They were not an announcement of death: not quite. Robert was missing, believed dead. Earlier in the war she would have seized on the uncertainty. It was unbelievable that Robert should have been killed and in 1915 or 1916 she would have refused to believe it. But now any attempt at optimism was crushed by the weight of probability. Too many women had been widowed, too many widows had lost their only sons. It was no longer possible to pretend that such things
could not happen: they happened every day. She tried to cling to the element of hope – that if he were known to be dead, certainly dead, someone would have said so. In this moment of shock, though, she could not make herself believe anything but the worst. ‘Missing, believed dead' meant only that that no one had found the body.