The Diamond Waterfall (45 page)

He hadn't wanted to talk like that. But it seemed that once he'd started … They walked back quietly to the hotel, not saying very much on the way.

… and they carried her, without stopping to draw breath, to the gates of the palace. And in three days the wedding was held.

Mr. and Mrs. Henry Reginald Francis Exelby Firth. They lay in each other's arms. “Of course I never,” she said.

“Well, I haven't either,” he said.

She said, as she undressed, “You don't mind if I'm not very modest. It'd be hard to be—”

He didn't expect anything to be very difficult. It was only, after all, like the time out on Settstone moor last summer, or the day at the falls, but better. It was all those memories
and
the sudden ticking of the big tin clock in the hotel room. Horses clopping by. Motor trucks. A group of people walking past singing.

Because it was hot they had just the sheet over them. “Don't stop,” she said. “Don't stop and ask me anything. I think you just—do it.”

“No, no!” said the King, “you must not be in such a hurry …”

He shut his eyes.

“ ‘My father did not let me marry till I had won the golden sword you see me wear …”'

“You know in the story, about the golden sword.
This
is the golden sword. I hope you like it …”

“I do,” she said. “I do.”

“Because I shall be bringing it out often …”

She wanted to take him down to Devon at once so they could have as many days there as possible. He'd worried about their being put in separate rooms, but she said, “You know—I told Auntie Nellie. And my Uncle Ben.”

“You did, did you?”

“Yes,” she said, “and Auntie says I'm a daft thing.” Then she smiled. “No. Fact is, they're pleased.”

He found when he got down there, that was the truth. They were pleased. And they'd moved out, given them the best bedroom, with the view out onto the small orchard and the valley beyond. Her Uncle Ben didn't say
much. Sometimes he'd look at Hal and give a kind smile. Her Auntie Nellie, who talked a lot, looked as if she could be sharp. But it was all bark.

They walked out each day. The air was so mild that he felt sleepy much of the time. They went to Salcombe for the day. The sky was a Mediterranean blue, and when he saw the palm trees he wondered if he was in England at all. And too, the white houses and glistening sea, what had they to do with Flanders?

Inevitably they talked again of how it would be when, if—he came back.

She said, “It'll not be so easy like. I mean, I think to myself sometimes— what'll he want with me, then?”

“Oh,” he said indignantly, “what I want from you now. And
lots
of it.”

“Get away,” she said. Then: “You have to be serious. Mr. Henry Firth, all that—if you go to Cambridge University—”

“What of it? There'll be married undergraduates, won't there?” He paused. “We'd be best to talk about”—he could hardly bring himself to say it —“how it'll be—how you'll manage if I'm—I mean, if I don't …”

“Well, that,” she said, looking straight ahead. “Death. I reckon I'll manage, just like I said.”

He said, “You would tell my family, wouldn't you? So they could look after you. And like we said too—about, if a baby.”

She said, “Your family, Hal Firth,
they'd
be pleased. Someone like me— coming saying I'd wed their son.”

“They're not as bad as they seem,” he said. “They have kind hearts.”

“I don't doubt,” she said, sighing. “But they're just—different, aren't they?” Then she kissed him, nibbling him behind the ears. Arms about his waist. “You'll see,” she said, “I'll manage. And not be beholden to anyone.”

The last evening Auntie Nellie took him aside. She said, “We'll take care of her. Your lass. You'll have no call to worry—not while she's with us.”

When the time came to go, there was as always his dread of how it would be over there. But worse, far worse, was the being torn from her. That last night they clung to each other, sleepless. At the station he couldn't keep his hands off her. He thought, Thank God there's no other family here. I don't have to share, be watched, share the good-bye.

As the train left, started to move, her lips were still on his. Afterward she ran a little way down the platform. He couldn't bear the tears, gathered like diamonds in her eyes.

There was something unreal about those first days back. Disembarking, arriving on French soil. The long journey up to reserve to join his pals. Snowy, made a lance corporal finally, was now in another platoon. He'd have to find ways of seeing him. There was Swanker Russell still, who'd been a pal of theirs more or less—but the two of them together without Snowy and Gus and Bert had little to say to each other.

He had felt so strong those last days with Olive. Now in no time, all his fears returned. Which of them the worst? Bayonet. Sliced by shrapnel. Skin, eyes, innards burned with gas. Suffocating, dying on the wire, dying in no-man's-land. Drowning, drowning in a shell hole, drowning in mud. There was no end to it. And when he woke from the nightmares, there was no Olive.

He wrote to her daily. He went into Pop one afternoon and sat for nearly an hour in the Toc H chapel. Then over in the little shop opposite he bought her a lacy postcard. It pictured a woman looking out of a window, holding a baby in her arms. He hoped she wouldn't think it odd.

A few days later they moved out of reserve. For a while the nightmares stopped.

The telephone lines were down. He had this message to take. He never minded being a runner. It was a fine day, had been all week. The sun was high by the time he set out.

He made his way along the trenches first. Then left them, and through onto the open road—ducking once for a stray shell. It was very hot now. He came, horribly, upon a group of three or four bodies. Flies buzzed noisily about them, clustered blackly.

In the middle distance he could see a village—unshelled, unspoiled. The church spire in the sunlight. Closer, a field of wheat, and on his right a small wood. Such beauty, so near, so far …

It was cool in the wood. As the sunlight came through, it made a pattern. Something, a squirrel perhaps, was scuffling in the trees. He glanced up. And it was then it happened.

At first he could see nothing. Because of the darkness and the pain he stumbled about. Pushing his hands before him, tripping. He seemed now to be lying on his back. His hand, fumbling, touched mossy roots.

Once upon a time the king of the Goldland lost himself in a forest and try as he would he could not find the way out. As he was wandering down one path which had looked at first more hopeful he saw a man coming toward him. “What are you doing here, friend?” asked the stranger; “darkness is falling fast and soon the wild beasts will come from their lairs to seek for food …”

“I have lost myself” answered the king “and am trying to get home.”

He put his hand toward his face. Touched. It met—nothing. There was nothing where he put his hand. Nothing. Chin, cheek. Nothing. Something soft and obscene. Pain. Darkness.
Pain.

It was so dark. Growing darker. Olive.
Olive …

My kingdom. I am King Henry, King
Hal.
I reign over the kitchen
garden, Lily garden, Rose garden. And especially this little wood behind the orchard. Willow and hazel and ash—it was here long before The Towers—it is my very ancient kingdom. Now I walk boldly into it. My voice is full of echoes.

The Queen of Goldland had a tiny waist, she had long fair hair and her voice was like the water falling, falling, she wore diamonds in her hair like a crown and diamonds all over her bosom and to her waist like water falling … falling, falling … black and blacker … down, down, down …

Mummy, help me, help,
Mummy, help me!

She was back now where she had been over two years ago, during the first days of the Somme. At the hospital on the quayside, at Le Havre. She was there in mid-July when she heard the news of Gib: alive, and a prisoner in Germany. It was not the surprise it might have been. Somehow, she thought, I never believed him killed. (For me, he is already dead.)

She had been able to forgive him—perhaps. But Teddy, no. Herself she could not forgive at all. As the war news improved (next winter
must
see it over—1919
will
be the year of victory) she would wonder sometimes, What will become of me?

Molly was gone. Married. Home for leave at Christmas, she had simply not returned. He was a surgeon in Dublin whom she'd known for years. She wrote Alice an ecstatic letter about the joys of being a married woman. She expected a baby this coming November: “How's that for promptness? Darling heart, I wish you could be as happy. I have started a novena to the Sacred Heart for your intentions—that soon a lovely boy …”

Alice missed her. How not? She found it difficult to make a new close friend. She got on well enough with Frances Cummins and Evelyn Parkes— they all three spent their free time together and Evelyn confided in her. She confided in neither of them.

She knew the family worried about her. There'd been a number of air raids recently on the base hospitals. Perhaps in the end that's how I shall go.

The second of August. Hot all day, sunshine. Windows open in the ward looking out to sea. Two years ago the hospital ships had crisscrossed, the trains bringing in their interminable convoys. This evening, the light just going, she stood with Frances and Evelyn on the balcony. A boat would be
leaving soon—patients they'd been nursing. Now after stripping the empty beds for the night nurses, they waved, trying to pick out faces they knew. Blanket-wrapped figures on stretchers, lying out on the deck in the warm evening, raised their arms in farewell.

These were happy good-byes, men traveling toward happiness. But as the boat moved away in the darkness, she felt a return of that familiar gnawing sadness. In her billet in the town she slept heavily. Dreamed—of Mama, whom she had not seen for over twenty years. Wearing the Diamond Waterfall, Mama appeared in the hospital ward. Walked about, telling Alice, “I have been looking for you.” It seemed natural she should be dressed for a dinner. Weighed down by jewelry, by the Diamond Waterfall. Ornaments in her hair. Alice said, “The boys here, show the boys—it will cheer them to see all that finery.” Mama smiled, looked happy. “Is it true they're pleased? Do they like the Waterfall? … I always wanted to do good, to help people,” she told Alice.

When she woke she longed,
longed,
to see Mama again. Walking along the quayside to the hospital, she thought of her all the time.

An unruffled sea stretched blue-green. In the hospital entrance, Frances, her round pink-cheeked face taut with emotion, told her, “They sank the boat. Jerry torpedoed it in the night. More than a hundred gone, Alice—”

The weight of sorrow, unbearable, lay on them. Passing the beds, now with new patients, remembering yesterday's happy faces. No end to death and destruction, Alice thought.

She thought it again when, only three days later, she learned of Hal's death. The news came in a letter from England. It had happened the week before, Belle Maman said. They awaited details still. Alice would realize, she said, that Father was too upset to write.

She wrote back: to Father, to Belle Maman, to Sylvia. To Teddy. (Hal had been her half brother, after all.) Familiar death—what was there new to say? Hadn't it been dreaded, half expected, from the moment he ran off?

How had he died? Quick or slow, painful or unconscious? I don't want to know, she thought. It is better, having seen what I've seen, not to know.

The raw pain of those August days.

Later that month there was a Sunday evening concert in the hospital. A piano in one of the wards. They often had these concerts but she could not always get to them. Today she had promised one very young boy in the end bed, a boy with a femur wound that was healing (for him) all too quickly, that she would be there. And Nurse Parkes, he said. Yes, yes,
and
Nurse Cummins too.

Comic turns. A recitation. A strong voice leading a singsong. Thumping rhythms:

“You called me baby doll a year ago,

You told me I was very nice to know …”

Oh why was she reminded of Teddy and Gib, who had fooled together? (And who now would fool again.)

“… You left behind a broken doll …”

All singing together, some sitting up, heads nodding with the music.

A local woman, occasionally seen about the hospital, stood by the doorway not far from Alice. She had with her a nun: a black-veiled, wimpled figure, laughing and talking now to one of the patients. Waving her hands about. English with a strong accent.

The piano struck up again. Everyone sang:

“Let the great big world keep turning, Never mind if I have you …”

Alice, watching the nun, thought of Molly laughing that first evening. “Why, were you a nun?” Alice had asked. “The very idea!” Molly had exclaimed. And indeed—how could … Molly a
nun.
It was laughable.

“I only know that I love you so, And there's no one else will do …”

Gib, in Germany. In Pomerania. Safe. Nothing to do with me. He is
Teddy's
now.

The nun seemed to be enjoying the singing—she caught the eye of someone and smiled. What sort of a life
is
it? Alice wondered. Possibly not unlike this nursing life. Less worldly distractions. Spiritually, perhaps greater satisfactions.

“You have simply set me yearning, And there is no one else will do …”
The voices rising, seemed to fill her head.

Oh,
why not,
she thought suddenly. Not Molly. No, never Molly.
But why not me?