Nuns and Soldiers (36 page)

‘They’re all after you,’ said Anne. ‘We just reserved you for tonight. You’ll be out for every lunch and dinner for the next month, it’s a bombardment! There’s a long list of people you must ring beside the telephone.’

‘I can’t face it,’ said Gertrude. ‘Look, let’s go out now, the three of us. You’re free, aren’t you, Count? I feel I want to get out of the house. Let’s go and have a drink somewhere and then have dinner out.’ She thought, if Tim rings again I shall burst into tears.

Anne and the Count looked at each other in dismay. ‘Oh, I’ve got you such a lovely dinner to have here,’ said Anne, ‘it is something I can cook, I’ve been practising since you went away -’

‘Oh well of course, let’s stay, how lovely, how kind - only do you mind if we don’t answer the telephone? Let’s go and sit in the dining-room straightaway.’

‘I’m sure you’d like a drink?’ said Anne.

The drinks were no longer on the marquetry table. Anne had put them away in the kitchen.

During dinner, through two closed doors, the telephone bell sounded several times. Anne’s masterpiece, a
coq au vin
, was much praised. Everyone asked questions. There was an atmosphere of happy excitement, of celebration.

‘So you were all alone in France?’

‘Not all the time. Manfred and Mrs Mount were there at the start, and for the last bit. Just the last evening Tim Reede turned up and wanted a bed for the night. He was on a painting tour of France.’

‘Tim?’ said the Count. ‘I’m so glad he’s got away on a holiday.’

‘Are his paintings any good?’ said Anne.

The Count laughed. ‘I bought one once, just to help him. It was called
Three Blackbirds in a Treacle Well
! I couldn’t make head or tail of it.’

‘I quite enjoyed the drive back,’ said Gertrude, ‘only Manfred drove slowly for once, and would stop at cathedrals! Now tell me how you two are?’

‘Anne has toothache,’ said the Count.

‘Not now -’ said Anne.

‘You poor thing, have you got a dentist? You must go to ours, Samuel Orpen, he’s very good, he’s a sort of cousin of Guy’s. How did your retreat go? You know Anne’s been in solitary retreat in Cumbria? I can’t remember when Easter was. Were you there for Easter?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you go to that little church?’

‘No.’

Gertrude looked at Anne. Anne was wearing a black dress which Gertrude had not seen before. She looked thin and bird-like, no less beautiful but as if she had been fasting. Perhaps she had been fasting. How mysterious religious people were.

‘I wish I had had a religious upbringing,’ said the Count. ‘Easter is a great time in Poland, people rejoice. The religious life is so necessary. Religious people do something for us.’

Anne said, ‘I think the Count is romantic about religion because he’s Polish!’

‘Yes, I suppose the Poles are really rather like the Irish and the Spaniards,’ said Gertrude.

‘Not at all!’ said the Count. ‘The Irish are deficient in dignity, and the Spaniards lack the patriotic principle.’

‘I think your patriotic principle is a kind of mysticism,’ said Gertrude. ‘I always feel the Poles are other-worldly unrealistic people.’

‘Pilsudski wanted to invade Germany in 1933. Wasn’t that realism?’

‘He didn’t want to do it alone?’ said Anne.

‘No, with Britain and France, only they wouldn’t.’

‘They were too realistic!’ said Anne.

‘The Poles always discuss their history,’ said Gertrude, ‘they are like the Irish. We shall be back in 1241 before we know where we are!’

‘Do you often go there?’ said Anne.

‘No - but I have been -’

‘Are you going to Poland this summer, Count?’ said Gertrude.

‘No - that is-I have no plans yet - for this summer -’

‘One would like to visit a country where Lodz is pronounced Wudge. Anne dear, could you find us another bottle?’

The Count thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful if Gertrude would come with me to Poland! Might she, would she? It would not be impossible to ask her, only I would have to do it light-heartedly sort of, not solemnly as if it would be a great decision. Of course I mustn’t yet say anything about
that
- but I could just ask her to come with me on a short visit. Why ever not? She sounds interested. Oh my God, I’d show her the war memorial and the memorial in the Ghetto and where the Pawiak prison was and those rooms in the old Gestapo building and . . . Then he thought, but these are all sad or awful places, which I think of first. Would they make her sad? The image of Gertrude shone in sad Warsaw like the image of Christ in Limbo. The Count thought, is that somehow
the answer
which I have been waiting for and which has never come? The answer, the event, the blinding light. Suddenly all the terribly terribly sad things will come together with the wonderful things, the happy things. There will be a great act of salvation. Christ will have risen.

He smiled at Gertrude and his pale straw-like hair shone in the lamplight and his pale face was smooth and clear as ivory and his pale pale blue eyes shone with a lucid light of pure love and joy. Anne smiled at Gertrude too, turning to her a full calm face of reassurance and welcome.

Gertrude thought, I expect it’s the wine, but I suddenly feel that everything is going to be all right. She thought of Tim. And she thought of the Count and Anne. And she thought, somehow or other all will be well.

She said, ‘All will be well.’

The Count said, ‘All will be well.’

And Anne said, ‘And all manner of things shall be well,’ and she laughed, and the other two laughed with her.

 

 

Tim and Gertrude stood facing each other in Tim’s studio. A soft rain was pattering or pawing on the skylight, and the light in the room was gentle, pearly-grey. They looked at each other with huge saucer-eyes as if each one were seeing an apparition. Then they moved forward and with the greatest slow care gathered each other into an embrace, clinging now and closing their eyes, not yet kissing.

Tim had telephoned that morning at nine o’clock. He would have telephoned earlier only he could not find a telephone box in working order. Gertrude had been sitting with Anne in Anne’s room, persuading her friend to try on some jewellery. She wanted to have Anne fixed there when the telephone rang. She was just wondering what she would do with her life and her mind if it simply did not ring, when it rang. Gertrude went to the telephone closing both doors behind her, and when she heard Tim’s voice she just said, ‘Where are you, I’ll come at once.’ Tim gave an address and Gertrude rang off. She told Anne she had to see a social worker about an urgent problem, and ran from the house and into a taxi.

Now they were together. A space enclosed them. Walls surrounded them. They could breathe each other’s presence, look and touch and feel the time measured by each other’s heartbeats. There was a sweet luxury in the silence and the slowness of their meeting; and the strange almost cunning way they half-smiled at each other were proofs that they had indeed not been dreaming.

‘So it
did
happen?’ said Tim at last, detaching Gertrude so that he could stare at her again.

‘Yes. It happened. I’ve been worrying so terribly -’

‘So have I!’

‘But it’s all right now.’

‘I thought you might have forgotten me.’

‘I remember you. You’re Tim. Let me look at your arms.’ She undid his cuffs and rolled up his shirt sleeves. There were the bony wrists covered with red down, the thin arms still scarred with bramble scratches. She undid his shirt at the neck and gently stroked the hair within.

Tim now regarded her with a kind of crazy sardonic joy. ‘Yes. And I remember you. Dear girl. Take your mac off. Give it to me. Why, it’s all wet.’ He hung it over a chair.

‘The taximan couldn’t find the place, and then -’

‘I love you.’

‘Yes - yes -’

‘Come, let’s sit here. I want to look at you. I want to worship you quietly.’

He sat her in an upright chair opposite to him, and they sat with their knees touching, overlapping, as they had sat on that first night in the sitting-room at Les Grands Saules. He undid the buttons of her mousy-brown dress, touched her breasts, then pulled the dress together again. They both sighed and leaned forward, holding each other’s arms at the elbows.

Tim said, ‘I want you very much, but this place is hopeless. Brian, that’s the garage man, tends to come up. And I sort of share the place with another chap. He’s not here much, but he could arrive. ’

Tim was thinking of course that Daisy could arrive. It was most unlikely that Daisy would turn up here. She was not in the habit of ‘dropping in’. She was almost certain to remain fuming at her own flat, or else simply expect Tim at the Prince of Denmark. But it was just conceivable that now, out of contrariness, she might take it into her head to come round and bang on the door. And the idea of him in bed with Gertrude, and Daisy at the door made Tim feel sick with terror. In fact he had decided, because of the Daisy risk, not to let Gertrude come to the studio at all, only when on the telephone she had suddenly asked for the address he had in his agitated flurry given it to her, unable to think of anything else to say. They must not stay long in this dangerous place. But where in the world else could they go?

Gertrude said, ‘I’m glad that I love you and that I can’t help it.’

‘I’m glad too. But I don’t quite see what we’re going to do. Just wait, I suppose. What do you think we’ll do, girl, darling, Gertrude queen?’

‘I can’t - predict,’ said Gertrude. As she uttered the helpless word quiet tears came into her eyes.

‘We haven’t thought it out, have we?’ said Tim. ‘We had to part rather suddenly, didn’t we, beside all those broken eggs. We didn’t have time to think it out. Don’t cry, sweet one.’

Gertrude took Tim’s hand and wiped her tears away with the back of it. ‘At any rate,’ she said, with something of her old ‘conference’ manner, ‘the essential things are clear.’

‘Are they?’

‘Aren’t they?’

‘What are they?’

‘Well, we love each other -’

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Tim. ‘We keep saying it, and it’s true. But . . . so . . . ?’ Tim was thinking, we do love each other, there’s no doubt about that thank God, but now she’s back in London she may decide she just wants a love affair. He said, ‘Maybe you’ve decided you just want a love affair, and not the other thing, the long eternal thing. If you just want an affair - do say - tell me now -’

‘Do you just want a love affair?’

‘No.’

‘Neither do I. I want the long eternal thing.’

‘Good. I want it too. You were right about that in France. Either this is nothing or it’s everything. But, Gertrude, darling, I -’

‘What?’

‘I can see the goal but I can’t see the way. I feel now that I can’t bear to be separated from you, even for a moment. I wish we hadn’t started to conceal it. Maybe we should have faced Manfred and Mrs Mount straightaway in France -’

‘We couldn’t -’

‘I’m frightened of this concealment. I’m so terrified of losing you. I’d like to marry you at once. Can’t we get married tomorrow, next week?’

‘Tim, we can’t -’

They moved a little apart, staring at each other, concentrating.

Tim thought, I must
secure
her, but how’s it to be done? She could change her mind, or have it changed for her. Nothing is really safe here. ‘We could get married and keep it a secret.’

‘Tim, no.’

Tim was thinking, Christ, we must get out of this place, I keep thinking I hear Daisy on the stairs. But where the hell else can we even hold hands? I shall go mad. Shall I tell her about Daisy? No, not yet, not just when we’ve met again like this, we’ve got enough problems. Let it recede a bit, then I’ll tell her gradually. I must rethink Daisy, see her more in perspective (Tim meant diminish her a little) before I say anything to Gertrude, I must be able to be casual or she’ll think there’s more than there is. It’s all so precarious, I must get some sort of firm way of life with Gertrude, and maybe she’ll settle for a love affair after all. Oh God! If she leaves me now I’ll die.

Gertrude was thinking, I love him so much, but what can I say? I suppose he understands, but I can’t even think how to ask. I can’t marry so soon after Guy’s death, it’s unthinkable. I can’t even conceive it myself, and what would the others say? I’m in mourning, and I
am
in mourning, there’s a whole me that doesn’t know of anything else. I’ve got to be that person, I’ve got to wear my loyalty to Guy, my unending love for Guy, in the midst of this new reality, and it is a reality and I didn’t choose it or seek it, it happened. God must forgive me, Guy must forgive me. I can’t marry Tim, or let anything be known yet, for a long time, we will just have to wait. Oh, will he understand? I don’t want him to be hurt or have doubts. He might have so many doubts that he ran away. Will he think that I’m just afraid of the ‘mob’? And she thought of Tim’s crude words, ‘How surprised they’d be if they knew you had taken a lover.’ She could not appear to them like that, she, Gertrude. But it wasn’t just idle pride, it was deeper. How could she explain?

Tim was thinking, she minds so much what the others think. Well, what will they think, what will they do, could they separate us, crush me, drive me out? He said, ‘I’m not much of a catch, Gertrude. They’ll say, why did she take up with that rat?’

‘Tim, don’t -’

‘That liar, that scrounger. Did you know that I used to steal food from your fridge? Not very romantic is it, to take up with a chap that used to steal food from your fridge.’

‘You were so hungry? Poor Tim.’

‘Poor Tim. That may be the best light I’ll ever appear in, to them.’

‘Never mind about them. It isn’t them.’

‘I know. It’s Guy.’