The Absolutist (17 page)

“Just a boy,” she repeated finally, shaking her head. “But tell me, Tristan,” she continued, leaning forward. “Tell me the truth. Are you a cad?”

“I don’t know what I am,” I said quietly. “If you want the truth, I’ve spent most of the last few years trying to work that out for myself.”

She sat back then and narrowed her eyes. “Have you ever been to the National Gallery?” she asked me.

“A few times,” I said, a little surprised by this abrupt change of topic.

“I go whenever I’m in London,” she said. “I’m interested in art, you see. Which proves that I’m not a philistine, after all. Oh, I’m no painter, don’t get me wrong. But I love paintings. And what I do is I visit the gallery and find a canvas that intrigues me and I just sit down in front of it and stare at it for an hour or so, sometimes for a whole afternoon. I let the painting come together before my eyes. I start to recognize the brushstrokes and the intention of the artist. Most people just take a quick glance and walk on, ticking off this, this and this along the way and thinking that they’ve actually seen the work, but how can you appreciate anything that way? I say this, Mr. Sadler, because you remind me of a painting. That last remark of yours, I don’t quite know what it means but I feel that you do.”

“It didn’t mean anything,” I said. “I was just talking, that’s all.”

“No, that’s a lie,” she said equably. “But I feel if I keep looking at you for some time, then I might begin to understand you. I’m trying to see your brushstrokes. Does that make sense?”

“No,” I said firmly.

“And that’s another lie. But anyway …” She shrugged and looked away. “It’s getting a little cold in here, isn’t it?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“I believe I’m a little distracted,” she said. “I keep thinking about that business with Eleanor Martin. Such an odd thing for Will to have said. She still lives around here, you know.”

“Really?” I said, surprised.

“Oh yes. Well, she’s a Norwich girl born and bred. Actually, she got married last year to a chap who really should have known better, but he was from Ipswich and I suppose you take what you can find there. She’s always about the town. We might run into her later if we’re terribly unlucky.”

“I hope we don’t,” I said.

“Why do you say that?”

“No reason. I’m just … not that interested, that’s all.”

“But why wouldn’t you be?” she asked, intrigued. “My brother, your best friend, tells you that he is engaged to be married. I tell you that there was never any such engagement that I knew of. Why wouldn’t you be interested in seeing this Helen of Troy who had so captured his heart?”

“Miss Bancroft,” I said with a sigh, leaning back now and rubbing my eyes. She had referred to Will as my best friend and I wondered whether the corollary held true. I also questioned why her previous good humour was now tinged with a certain amount of barbarity. “What is it that you want me to say?”

“Oh, I’m Miss Bancroft again now, am I?” she asked.

“You called me Mr. Sadler a moment ago. I thought perhaps we were returning to formalities.”

“Well, we’re not,” she replied abruptly. “And let’s not argue, all right? I couldn’t stand it. You seem like such a pleasant young man, Tristan. You mustn’t mind if I appear out of sorts. I’ll attack you one minute and call you a dish the next. It’s a strange day, that’s all. I am glad you made the journey, though.”

“Thank you,” I said. I noticed her glancing at my hand, my left one, though, not the twitching right, and I caught her eye.

“I just wondered, that’s all,” she said. “So many men your age seem to have got married since coming back from the war. You haven’t been tempted?”

“Not even a little bit,” I said.

“You didn’t have a sweetheart waiting for you, then, back home?”

I shook my head.

“Well, so much the better for you,” she said quickly. “In my experience, sweethearts are a lot more trouble than they’re worth. If you ask me, love is a fool’s game.”

“But it’s all that matters,” I said suddenly, surprised to hear myself say such a thing. “Where would we be without love?”

“You’re a romantic, then?”

“I’m not sure that I even understand what that means,” I told her. “A romantic? I know that I have emotions. I know that I feel things deeply—too deeply, in fact. Does that make me a romantic? I don’t know. Perhaps.”

“But you men all feel things so deeply now,” she insisted. “Friends of mine, boys who fought over there. You have an intensity now, a potent sadness, even a sense of fear. It’s not at all like before. Why is that, do you think?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” I asked.

“Yes. To an extent. But I’d like to hear you explain it to me.”

I glanced down at the table and thought about it. I wanted to be honest with her, or as honest as I dared to be. I wanted my words to have meaning.

“Before I went over there,” I said, not looking at her now but staring at the used cutlery laid out before me, “I thought I knew something about myself. I felt things then, of course. I knew someone, I … forgive me, Marian, but I fell in love, I suppose. In a childish way. And I got very hurt by it. No one’s fault but my own, of course. I hadn’t thought things through. I thought I had. I thought I knew what I was doing and that the other party had similar feelings for me. I was wrong, of course, quite wrong. I allowed things to get completely out of hand. Then when I went over there and fell in with the regiment, fell in with your brother, too, of course, well, I realized how silly I had been back then. Because suddenly everything, life itself, became an intensely heightened experience. It was as if I was living on a different plane from the one before. At Aldershot, they weren’t teaching us how to fight, they were training us how to extend our lives for as long as possible. As if we were already dead, but if we learned to shoot straight and to use a bayonet with care and precision
then we might at least have a few more days or weeks in us. The barracks were filled with ghosts, Marian. Does that make sense? It was as if we died before we left England. And when I wasn’t killed, when I was one of the lucky ones … well, there were twenty of us in my barracks, you see. Twenty boys. And only two came back. One who went mad, and myself. But that doesn’t mean we survived it. I don’t think I did survive it. I may not be buried in a French field but I linger there. My spirit does, anyway. I think I’m just breathing, that’s all. And there’s a difference between breathing and being alive. And so, to your question, am I a romantic? Do I think in terms of weddings and falling in love any more? No, I don’t. It seems so pointless to me, so completely and utterly trivial. I don’t know what that says about me. Whether it means that there is something wrong in my head. But the thing is, there’s always been something wrong in my head, you see. From ever since I can remember. And I never knew what to do about it. I never understood it. And now, after everything that has happened, after what I did—”

“Tristan, stop,” she said, reaching forward suddenly and taking my hand, which was shaking noticeably, embarrassing me once again. I realized that I was crying a little, too, not heavily, just a few tears working their way down my cheeks, and I felt ashamed about that as well, and wiped them away with the back of my left hand. “I shouldn’t have asked you about this,” she said. “I was being flippant, that’s all. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. Good Lord, you came all this way to meet me, to give me this great gift of your stories about my brother, and this is how I repay you. Can you forgive me?”

I smiled and shrugged my shoulders. “There’s nothing to forgive,” I said. “It’s just … Well, you don’t want to get any of us started on these things. You say you have some friends, some former servicemen, who came back?”

“Yes.”

“Well, do they like to talk about it?”

She considered this for a moment and looked uncertain. “It’s a difficult question to answer,” she said. “I feel at times that they do, because they talk about it almost incessantly. But it always leaves them distraught. Just as it did with you a moment ago. But at the same time, I feel that they cannot stop themselves reliving every moment over and over. How long will it take, do you think?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “A long time.”

“But it is over,” she insisted. “It’s over! And you’re a young man, Tristan. You’re only twenty-one years old, after all. My God, you were just a child when you were over there. Seventeen! You can’t let it drag you down. Look at Will.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, he’s dead, isn’t he?” she said, a look of genuine empathy on her face. “He doesn’t even get to be distraught. He doesn’t get to live with his bad memories.”

“Yes,” I said, that familiar stabbing pain resurfacing inside my body. I exhaled loudly and rubbed the heels of my hands against my eyes for a moment, and when I took them away I blinked several times and focused on her face carefully. “Can we get out of here?” I asked. “I feel I need some fresh air.”

“Of course,” she said, tapping the table in immediate recognition that we had stayed too long. “You don’t have to go back to London yet, though, do you? I’m enjoying our talk.”

“No, not yet,” I said. “Not for a few hours, anyway.”

“Good. It’s such a beautiful day, I thought we might go for a walk. I could show you some of the places where Will and I grew up. You really have to see some of Norwich—it’s a beautiful city. Then we can have a late lunch somewhere. And there’s just one thing I’d like you to do for me, but I’ll tell you that in a while, if you don’t mind. If I ask you now, I think you’ll refuse me. And I don’t want you to refuse me.”

I said nothing for second or two but then nodded. “All right,” I agreed, getting up and taking my overcoat from the stand as she put her own coat on. “Let me just pay for the teas,” I said. “I’ll meet you outside in a moment.”

I watched her as she made her way towards the door and out on to the street, buttoning her coat as she stood glancing around for anyone she might recognize. She didn’t resemble Will physically, of course. They were very different types. But there was something in the way that she carried herself, a certain confidence mixed with a sense that although her beauty would be noticed by others, she rather wished it wouldn’t be. I found myself smiling as I looked at her and then turned back to pay for the teas.

“I’m sorry about before,” I said to our waitress as she took my money and counted out change from the till. “I hope we weren’t becoming a bit of a trial for you.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” she said. “You were a friend of Will’s, then?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, we served together.”

“It was a disgrace,” she hissed, leaning forward, fire in her eyes. “What happened to him, I mean. It was an absolute disgrace. Made me ashamed to be English. You won’t get many around here that will agree with me on that, but I knew him and I knew the kind of man he was.” I swallowed and nodded, taking the coins from her and putting them silently in my pocket. “There’s not many people I respect as much as I do Marian Bancroft,” she continued. “She’s one in a million, she is. Despite everything that happened, she offers such help to the ex-servicemen around her. You’d think, all things considered, that she would hate them. But she doesn’t. I never know quite what to make of her, actually. She’s a mystery.”

I frowned, realizing that I hadn’t even asked Marian what she did in Norwich, how she spent her days, how she filled her
time. It was typical of boys like me; we were so wrapped up in ourselves that we didn’t think the world held a place for anyone else. I heard a quick ringing sound, the chiming of the bell over the door as someone left, thanked Jane and said goodbye.

Before leaving the café, I patted my pockets, checking for my wallet and the packet of letters, which was still in my overcoat, and satisfied that all was in place I opened the door and went outside. Marian was right: it was a beautiful day. Bright and warm with no breeze but no overbearing sunshine either. It was a perfect day to go for a stroll and I had a sudden vision of Will walking along these cobbled streets next to some unfortunate lovesick girl who would be doing all she could to keep up with him, sneaking sly glances at his handsome face, dreaming that perhaps at the next turning, where no one could see them, he would do the most unexpected but natural thing in the world and turn to her, take her in his arms and pull her to him.

I shook my head, dismissed the idea, and looked around for Marian. She was standing no more than ten or twelve feet away from me, but not alone. The man from the café had followed her out and was standing before her, gesticulating wildly. I didn’t know what to make of it and simply stared at them before registering that there was something aggressive about his behaviour. I walked quickly towards them.

“Hello,” I said. “Everything all right here?”

“And you,” said the man, raising his voice and jabbing a finger in my face as he glared at me with thunder in his eyes, “you can just take a step back, friend, because none of this concerns you and I swear I won’t be responsible for my actions if you come any closer. Do you understand me?”

“Leonard,” said Marian, stepping forward and placing herself between him and me. “This has nothing to do with him. You’ll leave it alone if you know what’s good for you.”

“You don’t tell me what to do, Marian,” he said, which at least made me understand that these two knew each other and he wasn’t just some stranger assaulting her in the street. “You won’t answer my letters, you won’t speak to me when I call at the house, and then you take up with someone else and flaunt it in front of my eyes. Who do you think you are, anyway?” he asked, this last question addressed to me, and I looked at him in astonishment, not knowing what I could possibly say in response. He was in a pure rage, his cheeks scarlet with anger, and I could see that it was all he could do to stop himself from pushing Marian out of the way and knocking me to the ground; instinctively, I took a pace back. “That’s right, you’d better back away,” he added, so pleased by this move that he began to advance further towards me, probably thinking that he could intimidate me. The truth was that I wasn’t in the least frightened of him; I simply had no desire to involve myself in some sort of street brawl.