The Heroes' Welcome (28 page)

‘I think it’s grief and shame, and the deluded notion that drink can help you through.’

‘But,’ and here Nadine rocked back on her heels, her paintbrush pointing skyward like a
flambeau
. ‘Is there
anything
we can do for him? Now, I mean?’

Rose laughed. ‘Look after his children,’ she said. ‘For goodness sake, look at what you’re doing!’

‘That’s for them. I mean for him. Medically, or psychologically, or – you know. Him thinking he had killed her. The way … he didn’t know. It seemed almost as if he wanted to have done it.’

‘That’s a black thought, Nadine.’

‘And one that you’ve had too?’

‘No,’ Rose said after a moment. ‘Though I have wondered why he is so intent on punishing himself, when he has been punished so much already. I assume it’s just the usual thing. Like so many of them, he was put in some impossible position, and blames himself for not having been able to put it right.’

‘Is it really that simple?’

‘Oh no!’ said Rose. ‘It’s far more complicated!’ – and they almost laughed.

Nadine covered the moment by looking down at her palette. The lovely dark crimson, for tiny roses.
Dear Rose. Loyal friend, clever, ambitious, funny, flawed.

‘Rose!’ she cried suddenly, as an idea struck her.

‘What?’

‘Is that why you’re studying medicine? To heal Peter?’

‘Peter will be ancient by the time I qualify. Specially if I were to be an alienist. No – it’s – no. I’ll just be a GP. I think.’

‘You might get terribly interested in something and want to delve into it and discover cures. I could see you doing that.’

‘But curing the human mind? How would we do that? When over and over again it starts more wars? How can we cure it of that?’

Nadine dipped her brush into the jar of turps. Carefully, she cleaned it.

‘Oh, Lord, Rose,’ she said. ‘You’re right, of course – but thinking like that just makes us all mad.’ (Neither woman used the term lightly. They knew what it was.) ‘I was just thinking of individual minds, like Peter’s. It seems so unfair.’ Her own mind was racing around. She wanted to paint a picture for her friend: maybe those dark roses at the corner of the glasshouse, against the red brick wall – come the summer, she’d go down and paint them, thorns and all.
Maybe Peter would be
– she stopped her thoughts.
No good looking ahead. It’s almost as pointless as looking back –
with which thought, of course, she found herself looking back, helpless not to.

‘What was he like before the war, Rose?’ she asked.

And at that Rose blinked, before being able to say, ‘Oh, Nadine – Nadine, what was anything like before the war? You tell me. Was everything better?
Was
it a heaven of long sunlit afternoons and dappled meadows and honey still for tea? Or was it just that we were young?
You
were – you and Riley, you’re young
now
, look at you – and at what you’ve done … What was Peter like? He was clever, thoughtful, gentle. He was everything he still is, but he was not bitter, and he didn’t lash out. He’s brought the war home with him, I think. Sometimes, the look on his face, you’d think
you
were the Hun. I don’t know how long it will take him to realise that it’s over, it’s done, he
needn’t
be haunted by it any more. His mind has fallen into a pattern. He reacts as if he were still at war …’

‘Have you told him that?’

‘I think he knows,’ Rose said. ‘And can’t do anything about it. But now – I don’t know. We must stick together.’ Then she said: ‘I’m rather proud of you, Nadine. I suppose it’s rather ridiculous how we all sort of thought that after the war was over people would stop dying, and we could – tidy ourselves up again. And now look.’

‘Yes,’ said Nadine. Another little red rose appeared under her paintbrush, followed by a crimson tip on a bud. Then she said, ‘Poor, poor Julia! Things will get better, the children will grow and be all right, more or less, and she will never know the joys they will bring—’ And Nadine burst into tears, her head falling forward suddenly like a heavy flower, the paintbrush laid down on the newspaper.

‘Oh, Nadine,’ Rose said, and so for a few minutes they sat there.

‘But Peter seems to be holding together, doesn’t he?’ Nadine said, hopefully. ‘For the moment?’

‘In a rather bleak way,’ said Rose. ‘He’s still just reading all the time. He’s not talking to anyone. Has he talked to Riley? Or you? And he’s not eating again. I can be there for the holidays but in January I must go back to London – and – Nadine – we do need to talk about Christmas …’

‘Can we do it in London?’ Nadine said. ‘You and Peter come, of course – oh you know. We could have it small and quiet. I know Mrs Joyce would like to go to her sister.’

‘Yes,’ said Rose. ‘I don’t know if Peter will want to come, but I’ll do my best.’

‘Rose,’ said Nadine, in a changed tone of voice that made Rose wary.

‘What?’

‘You wouldn’t – after a decent interval – but – oh dear …’
She’s not even buried yet …

‘I’m not going to marry Peter,’ Rose said.

‘But you were attached to him, before, weren’t you? You don’t mind my saying? Julia thought you were—’

‘Did she! Well, perhaps I was, back in the days of innocence, before any of us knew the first thing about anything.
Before-the-war!
But I’m not now.’

‘Well, I don’t blame you. You see those marriages of – a kind of combination of pity and affection and convenience – they may be practical and so forth, but I don’t think it would do, really.’

Rose smiled at her. ‘It wouldn’t for me,’ she said. ‘For one thing, I’d have to give up medicine, and that I will not ever do. Certainly not for a man. And you and Riley,’ she said. ‘Are you happy? I mean in general …’

‘We are,’ Nadine said, feeling again the amazement that such a thing could be true. ‘But – I know it looks as if Peter is the suffering one and Riley is fine – but it’s not like that.’

‘His face is all right?’ Rose asked.

Nadine wondered whether to tell her, and in the wondering found herself already saying it.

‘It’s not his face. It’s inside his head. Like Peter. The darkness is still there. This summer he – well, I suppose you’d say he got himself attacked. He wouldn’t tell me what it was for weeks. I was very frightened.’

‘You!’ said Rose, but Nadine gave her a look, and they both silently acknowledged the idiocy of the view that because somebody gets on with stuff it means they aren’t troubled by it.

‘He’d gone up north to see Mrs Ainsworth, and he got caught up in a demonstration – a strike. He said he did it on purpose – one of those other senses of purpose one gets, you know – not the sensible, reasonable sense of purpose, but the compulsion. He said it was all the men. Being a man in a mob of men, and it being like battle. All the emotions. Whatever it is that gets into their blood.’

‘Was he all right?’

‘Black eye, big cut on his cheek. But when you think about the surgery, Rose, and the delicacy, and the risk – but I can’t tell him not to be a man, not to do man things, and not to suffer what he suffers, just because I’m afraid for him. Of course I was furious. I am furious! I don’t in the least understand – but I know those things exist …’

‘Will he do it again?’

‘I don’t think of it in terms of him doing it. It’s more that it happened. He was overwhelmed. It’s not as if he has no self-control – but you know, I rely on him so much. It’s so frightening and infuriating when the strong one shows a weakness.’

‘We all just have to take it in turns,’ said Rose drily. ‘Is he happy to have the children?’

‘Oh yes. Though we’ll want a couple of our own as well, in due course. He’s—’

‘He’s a man!’ cried Rose. ‘Of course you will.’

Nadine smiled, and for a moment she had to bite her own lip because she loved him so so much.

‘I hope everything goes tremendously well for you now,’ Rose said.

Nadine blinked, touched. ‘You too,’ she said. ‘It’s about time.’ And each felt the friendship ratchet one little cog higher.

*

After Rose left, Nadine reconsidered the question of happiness. How wonderful it had been to be around birth instead of death. How lucky that they were there to help with the children.

She shook her head, slightly aware that nobody had thought it through at all.

Be grateful. Be grateful, every day, that love is strong, and nothing worse is happening.

London, December 1919

Riley sat alone in the Leinster Arms. He was angry, and he was ashamed of his anger.
How can you possibly be angry about this? What is wrong with you? And at such a time?

He had got his wife, for this miserable, poisoned Christmas, a book of photographs of the sculptures of the Vatican museums. A good present; thoughtful, very much appreciated. Then Sir Alfred took him aside, and confided that he was intending to give her the money to pay for art school, and all the resentment loomed up again. How could he mind? Only a pig would mind. And it was so delicate of Sir Alfred to think to ask …

But he minded.
Of course
building a life and a business takes time;
of course
he had not, so far, been able to provide his wife with much. That he accepted. But here, everything was already provided – and by those who had everything.
It’s easy to take when you’re a boy, you don’t think of it. A dry shirt, an opportunity, a little job, an education, a new life as a different kind of boy … And then as a soldier, everything is provided. And then as a wounded man, they do their best to heal you and mend you. And then, after the war, what do you need? A release! A change – here, have the honeymoon, the marvellous trip. A house? Sir Robert not only has one, but he actively
needs
you to come and live in it. Money? Well, there’s nothing so urgent about that, we have enough, and a man in your condition, Riley, well, you take your time …

And of course I can’t afford to pay her fees …

Oh, it’s not about Christmas and the bloody art-school fees. It’s about the children.

Of course,
of course,
there was no question but that Tom and Kitty would come and live with them, for as long as it takes, whatever ‘it’ was.
For as long as poor bloody Julia remains dead? For as long as Peter remains in his own world? For as long as Nadine has a heart in her body and arms to hold these poor infants?

But I want to give her children. And we’d agreed, not yet …

His father-in-law provided the home and investment in his company. His mentor was to pay his wife’s fees. And now, in a final indignity, his former CO had provided the children.

What kind of a man lives like that?

But what kind of a man could refuse any of these things, individually? No one.

Ha. Look at me! Angry Englishman sitting alone in a pub, staring at his beer.

He had in front of him some Christmas cards, bought by Nadine, signed by both of them. He stood, stuffed them in his pocket, wrapped his scarf round his face and headed up towards the station.

His dad opened the door, and stood aside to let him in, a warm smile. ‘They’re still at church,’ he said, and Riley knew that John knew that that was why Riley had chosen this time to visit.

‘I’ll just leave the cards, then,’ Riley said, but his father shot him a look and held out his hand for Riley’s coat. Then he sat him down, a hand on each shoulder, and put the kettle on.

Riley put the envelopes on the table and shrugged. ‘Christmas cards,’ he said. ‘And, Nadine invites everyone to tea. New Year’s Day.’

‘Good,’ said John. ‘We’ll all come. Mum told me they’d run into each other. You staying for lunch?’

Riley shook his head. The meat smelt delicious. Roast beef, roast potatoes.
Well.

John handed him three biscuits with his tea. ‘So?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘You must be able to think of something to say to me,’ John said.

Riley glanced at him, and got his straw out. ‘My CO’s wife died in childbirth,’ he said. ‘The funeral is on the twenty-ninth. His children are living with us.’

John stirred his tea.

‘And how’s that?’

‘It’s wonderful,’ said Riley. ‘Tom, the boy, is – he’s very pale and quiet. We knew him before when we were living there. He’s had a tough time, and we’re going to warm him up. The baby is just a baby. Very sweet.
Very
sweet, actually.’

‘Nadine’s dad like ’em?’

‘I think he does. He chucks Kitty under the chin and calls her “little chap”.’

‘And will you have your own?’ John said.

‘I think we will, yes,’ Riley said. ‘Nadine’s modern—’ he blurted. ‘She has a little rubber thing and you have your children when you want them.’

‘Very sensible,’ said John, and smiled. ‘And how’s business?’

‘We’re proud producers of eleven little pamphlets so far.’

John said, ‘So you’ve a wife, and a father-in-law to look after, and children, and a business. And plans.’

‘Yes,’ said Riley.

‘Good lad,’ said John. ‘Not bad for twenty-three years old.’

Riley dipped his head, and grinned.
You don’t grow out of wanting to please your parents
.

‘I’ve had a lot of help,’ he said. As he said it he could feel his face harden.

John said, mildly, ‘And you think you don’t like that.’

Riley looked up and burst out: ‘No, I bloody don’t! It’s pity!’

‘Is it,’ said John.

‘Yes.’

‘Or is it wanting to make up to you for what you did? Thanking you? Not wanting to stand around like a bunch of lemons leaving you to it when you lost four years, half your face, and you can’t talk proper?’

Riley said nothing.

‘Don’t be a berk, Riley. Only a right bastard wouldn’t want to help you. And your Nadine and her family ain’t right bastards. Surprise surprise.’

Riley said nothing.

‘You’re doing well,’ John said. ‘Don’t cock it up. Don’t you read the papers? You won the war, now you got to win the peace!’

*

As he walked back up Praed Street, Riley found himself remembering Ainsworth’s prayer:
Courage for the big troubles in life, patience for the small. And when you have laboriously finished your day’s efforts, go to sleep in peace. (Be of good cheer. God is awake.)