Small Wars (28 page)
The next morning there was a row with the landlady about Clara, whom she had seen leaving the bathroom. Clara hid under the bedspread while Hal assured the woman, at the narrowly open door, that they were married, and apologised for using a single room for double occupancy. He hadn’t been trying to pull the wool over her eyes, he said. It had been an honest mistake. He closed the door. ‘Completely ridiculous woman,’ he said.
‘Come back with me today,’ said Clara, so he did, keeping the room for the appointments he would have to travel up for.
They closed and locked the loose door on the pink bedspread and Hal’s interview suit, hanging motionless in the cupboard, and went down the stairs, out onto the damp pavement, washed clean from the night before, to catch their train.
At Marylebone, Hal bought the paper. Clara looked out of the window of the train while he read it, and the extra section that went with it, devoted entirely to what was happening in the Canal Zone. He studied the blurry photographs closely. The other passengers were reading about it too, and passing remarks, but Clara, taking hold of Hal’s hand, kept her face resolutely turned to the landscape going by.
‘It doesn’t help you to look,’ she said.
There were two men, one in a hat and suit, holding an empty pipe, the other in plus fours, who kept up a conversation about Eden, bringing in everything from Communism to nuclear war. Hal focused on the luggage rack above their heads, paying close attention. It was an odd sensation, listening to them, a little like spying; he had always heard about this mysterious thing, public opinion, but had never really been a member of the public.
‘Eden is stuck in the 1930s, dragging this country into another colonial war,’ said the man with the hat, stuffing soft tobacco into the bowl of his pipe.
‘I suppose you’d have the reds in charge?’ said the plus-fours man, happily.
They were very talkative, scattering opinions lazily. They had that luxury, Hal thought, out of habit, and then – briefly – so do I, now, too.
In the Buckinghamshire village, the taxi left them at the door. Hal took longer about paying the driver than he might have done, putting off the moment. Moira, with George behind her, opened the door to their daughter and their errant son-in-law. The girls, next to her, bounced up and down.
‘Mummy!’
Hal squared up to greet them.
‘Here, Hal, what a miserable day,’ said Moira, coming down the path towards them. ‘Come inside.’ She took his arm. ‘How was London?’
‘Busy.’
‘Good journey?’ asked George.
‘Yes, thank you, sir.’
Inside the house, Clara went up to rest, Moira took the girls into the kitchen with her, to see about the lunch, and George, on his way into the drawing room, turned to Hal. ‘There’s no need to call me “sir”, Hal. You ought to know this family by now,’ he said, and left him, shutting the door behind him.
Hal, alone, stood looking at the closed door for a moment. Then, as one who does a thing because he must, because he doesn’t often turn away, he opened it.
George turned, surprised at being followed. He was at the fireplace facing his son-in-law – the patriarch despite himself.
‘All right,’ said Hal, coming into the room and closing the door firmly again. ‘I thought you might want to know my plans.’
George, tight-lipped: ‘If you like. Go on.’
‘I’m sorry about everything that’s happened, and I’m – I’ll – do my best to –’
‘You’ll
do your best
?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jolly good.’
‘Sir?’ It came naturally, he couldn’t help it.
‘I said
jolly good
, you’ll do your best, while my daughter nearly died, and my son is out in Egypt somewhere, and you’ve…whatever they call
deserted
these days – you’ll
do your best
? I see.’
Hal persisted: ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry?
You’re
–’ He turned away quickly, shaking his head, as if arguing with himself, said, ‘No, no,
I’m
–’ and stopped talking.
There was silence, Hal resolutely facing George but George having walked off a few paces towards the window. Half turning back, but not enough to meet Hal’s eye, he said, ‘I’m sure you know, Hal, I got in at the end of the First War, 1918. I got the end of it. It got the beginning of me.’ He paused. ‘In my opinion there are very few wars that are really worth the fighting, and none that I know of at this present time. Nevertheless when one didn’t…’ he felt for the words ‘…
decide not to take part
oneself, however tempting it may have been, it’s extremely difficult to see another man do it and not resent him. Do you understand that?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘And I’m sorry for that. I truly am. I should thank you. I wanted my daughter home, and now she is – home. I wish it were you who was still out there, and not James.’
He hadn’t said it viciously: it was a confession.
‘Yes.’
There didn’t seem any more to be said, or any further degradation to be faced. Hal nodded to his father-in-law, and started to leave the room.
‘Hal, you know I’ll help you, if I can.’
‘Thank you.’
And then, almost as an afterthought, George said, ‘It would be easier if you had taken some sort of a stand.’
At the door Hal turned. ‘Easier?’ He narrowed his eyes in close scrutiny of the idea, and then smiled slightly. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it would have been.’
Clara hadn’t closed the curtains, and grey light came in at the window onto the faded flowers of her bed. Hal closed the door behind him. He didn’t know if she was asleep or not.
He went to the window and looked out, his hands in his pockets.
Below, in the garden, Meg and Lottie were walking up the grass with Moira. He couldn’t hear what was being said, but there was some earnest burbled chatter going on, and he could see from Moira’s bowed head that she was listening intently. They were going to get vegetables for lunch. Meg was carrying a basket. The children walked very slowly, but Moira was patient.
She stopped to point something out to them in the grass, and all three bent over to look.
He heard Clara move behind him, and get up.
She came over to him, stood by him and they both looked down into the garden. She was warm from the bed, wearing her slip over her underwear, but no stockings, her dressing gown in her hands, held loosely.
He nodded towards the children in the garden, trying to smile, or say something about it, but with nothing to say.
‘Our lovely girls,’ said Clara.
Still, he could not speak. Clara reached up and pulled the curtain across the window. The heavy lined material tugged its wooden rings along the pole. It was dark now. She dropped her dressing gown, put her arms around his waist and her head against him. ‘Here,’ she said.
The silk was soft against him, against his clothes, her warm body underneath, giving; her cheek was by his heart. He put his head down to her; he didn’t put his arms around her – he couldn’t – but his fingers touched the material of her slip, and held it. He closed his fingers tightly on the thin silk.
‘Ssh,’ she said.
So close to him, she lifted her face.
She put her arms up, her fingers on the back of his neck, then above his ear, stroking his brow. His lips were against her skin.
‘I love you,’ he said, twisting the silk between his fingers, and he started to cry.
It was Sunday, 11 November. The Wards, who did not attend church every Sunday, nevertheless went often, and always at Christmas, Easter, the Harvest Festival and this day, Remembrance Sunday. Whatever their opinion of specific conflicts, they showed their respect to the war dead.
‘You needn’t come,’ said Clara, to Hal, but she was wrong.
The twins were dressed in matching black coats, with velvet collars, that Moira had made a special trip up to town for, without Clara, the week before. They had red ribbons in their hair, at the side, attached to their hairclips, and patent leather shoes with woollen tights. All of them had poppies on their lapels, bought from one of the churchwardens at the door the day before. They walked through the village, joining others as they went.
In the centre of the village, opposite the church, was the war memorial, like any war memorial, in any village, passed unthinkingly most of the time, but now laid with wreaths, some still being carried, still being placed. It took some time for everybody to come from their houses. The sky was grey and thick above them, and they were all in black, with poppies, and just the sudden colour of a skirt as it showed beneath a coat or the bright gloves of a child to break the blackness. People talked as they approached the memorial, but fell quiet – except for children’s voices – once they stood grouped around it. The rain was very fine and made no noise on the umbrellas men held over their wives.
The church was behind him. Hal looked over his shoulder at it.
The door was open and he could see the flowers inside; their colours glowed under the electric lights that had been put on because the day was so dark and wet. He thought of the little church in Cyprus that hot day, and the heat and glare outside. He had not been inside a church since.
The Wards stood towards the back of the crowd, though not apart. Clara was in front of Hal next to Moira and George. At the front, near the vicar, stood the old men, with their chests thrown out, and medals pinned to their civilian overcoats. The Scout troop was beside them, and cadets nearby. It was a crowd of perhaps three hundred, joined in silent communication; those who normally passed one another without greeting now nodded and smiled.
The vicar looked around the people, who settled themselves, and began.
‘Let us remember with gratitude
Those who, in the cause of peace
And the service of their fellow men,
Died for their country, in time of war.’
He unfolded a piece of paper.
‘I will now read a list: the names of the fallen of this parish,’ he said. ‘Abbot, Tom. Antony, Wilbur. Brown, Edward. Bryant, Daniel. Bryant, John. Bryant, Michael…’
There was absolute quiet as he read. Even the children and babies who had been fidgeting grew still.
‘Diller, Andrew…’
Hal stood rigidly, eyes front. He could see, over the shoulders and heads of the others, the corner of the fluttering page that the vicar was holding and behind that the stone edge of the memorial. In his heart, as he always had, he bowed down to the names of the dead, and honoured them. He tried to feel pride in them cleanly but, after a moment, he could not, and looked down at the ground. The list went on, the dead were still the dead, with or without his feeling their companionship.
Clara leaned closer and he felt her warmth come into the air around him. She took off her glove and her hand wrapped around his cold fingers but he did not look up.
‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.’
‘We will remember them,’ answered the voices of the people.
After a moment the church bells pealed the hour. As the last bell faded the silence began.
The winter air of England was silent all around and between the villages, stretching high up into the grey sky and over the hills, linking them, joining.
A nervous boy of perhaps fourteen stepped forward. He held the bugle in pink cold fingers. He raised it, drew a breath, and Hal saw again the white road with the young boy on it, and his own hand holding the gun to his head.
The Last Post sounded. The first two notes were like a blade through the air, and breaths were taken around him. The reaching sound went on to its last thin note, then died.
The gathered people stirred themselves to walk to the church. They parted for the vicar and then began to follow him. Clara looked up at Hal. He nodded to her, reassuring her – about what, he didn’t know – but then let go of her hand and walked quickly away from the others, back, along the road towards the house, leaving the black crowd behind him. He heard Lottie say, ‘Mummy!’ once, imperiously, and knew, gratefully, that Clara could not follow him.
His quick steps sounded hard on the gritty pavement. The white gate swung wide when he pushed it and banged back against its metal catch behind him. The front door was unlocked.
He went into the hall, fast, on into the drawing room, the fire was burning brightly behind the guard, paintings, photographs surrounded him, the gleaming battered piano, vases of flowers, silver and the smell of lunch that filled the empty warm house. He went back into the hall – feet on the worn rug – back, through the dining room, table set with empty places, into the stone-flagged passage past the kitchen door, past the boots and the place where the shotgun was kept in the high locked cupboard, amongst the tins and garden poisons, out of the back door, onto the terrace.
He went quickly up the garden, past the borders with the cut ends of rose bushes and tangled wet shrubs, over the sinking grass to the gate. There was the pasture beyond it and the path cut through the grass, but he turned away from it, because he could not leave again, because there was nowhere to go to.
He was blinded. It was as if the universe turned round him blackly and he, within it, earthbound and empty too.
He closed his eyes.
‘God,’ he said.
Quiet. Silence. Darkness.
‘God,’ he said again.
Then, with his eyes shut, he heard a small whispering sound. It was a still, complicated sound. His mind was alert to it, and only it, immediately. He opened his eyes.
Ahead of him was a small tree. It was perhaps twenty feet high. It was a very young oak. The trunk was soft grey-brown like the hide of a young deer or rabbit.
And, just then, the breeze moved around him. He thought it must be a breeze – at least – he had been touched. He saw that the dry leaves that still hung from tiny twigs were moving together and making the whispering sound he had heard. The leaves trembled, each one, as their outlines grew sharper. He looked at the shivering leaves and at the clarity of their edges. The oak leaf, embroidered in gold, dreamed of, promised to, betrayed and deserted. Here was not one, but many, not just the leaf but the whole tree, and it seemed to brighten as he looked. He thought the sun must have come out but the fine wetness still moved in the air.
He saw that there were, amongst the twigs and clinging leaves, the tiny, almost invisible beginnings of new leaves – not leaves exactly, but the suggestion of them – and next to those, acorns, very small and fresh looking.
He looked at the lines and shapes of the bark where the branches grew, at the leaves and the clean trunk. He stood in the damp winter garden with the small oak tree and it might have been Eden.
He was glad that they were singing and wouldn’t notice him coming in. The flagstones of the path were wet beneath his feet. The door was slightly open and as he pushed it wider and stepped into the church he saw his family immediately. Clara lifted her chin and turned towards him. Her relief and anxiety made him impatient to get to her. He wanted to explain to her; he didn’t think he could. The church was full and loud. He had to go to the aisle, past some flowers on a stand, and then push by a row of people, apologising, not noticing them, until he was beside her, or nearly – the twins were between them. Too young for singing, they were facing one another and pressing their hands together in pleasurable boredom at some vague version of pat-a-cake. They glanced up at him and then continued. Hal had stepped into the half-space made by the people next to them, and stood a little sideways looking at Clara. The heavy organ and uneven voices insulated them. He could not hold her hand; there was a row behind, people were less than a foot away, standing, singing in the narrow pews. He remembered he had been shamed by the presence of these people – remembered it but let it fall away from him. The damp coats and dark wood, gleaming, the cool rising arches of the vaulted ceiling, the music and strong, restrained communion, all were known to him, and loved: he was at home.
Clara put her hymn book across the gap between them awkwardly and he, grateful for the convention, shared the holding of it. Meg, bored with standing, leaned back against his knee, thoughtlessly confident of him, and Hal looked into Clara’s face.
They examined one another and there was no barrier, no sea, no act committed, not so much as a pane of glass between them; not even air, it felt to him. He travelled her face slowly and, returning to her eyes, saw that she was smiling at him.