What hurt more than anything was that she hadn’t hit back. She could have done. Rachel had been piling on weight ever since she got married, she was fat by any standards, but did Elinor say so? No, not a single snide remark, not an unkind word, but, my God, it was open season on her when Rachel got going. Of course, if she did retaliate there’d be a breach. Well, perhaps it was time, perhaps there ought to be a breach. It wouldn’t be easy to live with, though. All their childhood she and Rachel had been friends, allies, co-conspirators in this not particularly happy household. If she quarrelled with Rachel now she’d feel utterly alone. The warmth withdrawn, the chill along one side …
God, this heat. It was actually cooler inside the house, she was baking out here. She found a newspaper on the table and tried to use it as a fan, but it was damp and flaccid with dew and the newsprint came off on her hand. Times like this you need your friends. If only Catherine were here. Instead of that there was Paul, still mooning over Teresa, or so she supposed – she’d hardly had a chance to talk to him yet – and Nev. Who seemed determined not to be a friend at all.
Nobody had been kinder to her or more encouraging. He seemed
to understand, better than most men, the problems a woman encountered in being taken seriously as an artist. And yet, in the next breath, he was holding forth about the need for virility in art. Virility was the essence of great art; effeminacy had to be extirpated at all costs. Where did that leave her? Counting the hairs on her chest? The glorification of war, ‘the beautiful ideas that kill, the contempt for women’, the whole Futurist baggage. She didn’t understand how he could believe all that –
if
he believed it – and still profess faith in her talent as a painter. Perhaps it was a mistake to take him seriously – he wasn’t an intellectual by any means, though he’d have liked to be – but then, wasn’t it patronizing not to take him seriously? And his ideas were rooted in his character. He was a bully. If she knew anything about him at all, she knew that. A bullied boy, a bullying man, it was too commonplace to be worth remarking on. And it wasn’t the whole truth; he could be very kind. And they had a lot in common. If only he could be content with friendship.
Though she couldn’t blame him for trying it on tonight. Somehow, in this ridiculous dress, she’d sent out the wrong signals. She’d thought she was doing something rather clever, turning herself into a parody of a young lady dressed for the marriage market, but it hadn’t turned out like that. She’d slipped into being the person the dress dictated, and now she was going to have to pay, in hours and hours of embarrassment. She
had
wanted him. Briefly. Or she’d wanted
something –
to be different. Rachel would say she’d led him on, but that wasn’t true. She didn’t want to marry him, or anybody. She only had to turn round and look at Rachel, nodding off in the armchair. Rachel, who before her marriage had been a promising pianist, and now sat with the baby on her knee, picking out nursery tunes with one finger. Nev said it wouldn’t be like that, and she believed him – or at least she believed he meant it – but it would, because marriage changed everything. It had its own logic, its own laws, and they were independent of the desires and intentions of those who entered into it. She felt a moment’s pleasure in the cynicism of this perception, though God knows it was depressing enough.
She heard Father’s voice in the room behind her, then Kit talking about the crisis of course, what else? Everybody was getting so excited, it repelled her. Particularly Kit. Look at him now, holding forth, puffed up like a toad in the mating season. He’d telephoned his father, things were worse, far worse, than they’d thought. Germany had declared war on Russia and was advancing on France. If she invaded …
At last the buzz died down. Kit detached himself from the group and came to join her on the terrace.
‘That’s it, then,’ he said.
‘Is it?’
‘Seems to be.’
‘Do you think we’ll fight?’
‘Got to. We’ll lose all credibility if we don’t.’ She turned away. ‘What will you do?’
‘Well, I’ve got to get out there.’
‘Enlist?’
‘Not sure. They mightn’t have me. And anyway I need to be there now, not in six months’ time.’
‘I don’t see why you have to do anything. Let the army do it.’
‘I’ve no choice. Don’t you see? You can’t go around saying, “War’s the only health-giver of mankind” – not that I ever did say that, incidentally – and then when one breaks out say, “Sorry, I’m not going, I don’t feel well enough.”’
‘No, I do see.’ She was laughing.
‘It’s not funny. Father’s going out next week. He asked if I wanted to go with him.’
‘And do you?’
‘How can I refuse? It means I’ll have to leave a bit early, I’m afraid.’
She turned away to hide her relief.
‘I do love you, you know. Can’t we at least talk about it?’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘I could come to your room.’
‘You could not.’
‘Down here then, after they’ve gone to bed.’
‘There’s nothing to say. I won’t marry you, I don’t want an affair. I’m happy as we are.’ She looked straight into his eyes. ‘I’m sorry if you’re not, but there’s nothing I can do about that.’
He took a step back. ‘Perhaps it would be better if we didn’t see each other for a while.’
‘If that’s what you want.’
‘You don’t care.’
‘I do. Just not in the way you want.’
‘This is torture. You’ve no idea.’
‘No, probably not.’
‘It’s like being in love with a mermaid.’
She understood what he meant and it hurt. ‘I think we’d better go in.’
Fifteen
Paul to Elinor
Thank you for your very kind letter. I’m sorry to have been so long replying, but the fact is I’ve been laid low with a feverish cold that brought on a bout of pneumonia. As a result I feel a bit flattened, though I’m downstairs now, sitting in the front room with a blanket over my knees like a little old man. The blanket’s not really necessary. The weather’s still warm, though not as unbearably hot as it was last week when I was ill, but somehow if you’re feeling weak it helps to be covered up. I’ve been watching cabbage white and tortoiseshell butterflies playing around the buddleia bushes in the front garden. I counted eighteen this morning, then I had a nap. Exhausting work, counting butterflies.
But I’m getting stronger every day. Have you heard from Teresa? I still haven’t, and don’t expect to now. I mind a lot less than I thought I would. Somehow the war and this illness between them have clanged down like a great steel shutter between me and my previous life. When I look back on my time at the Slade you’re the only person who seems real. And Neville, oddly enough. Now he
has
written, and at length, which surprises me a bit. He’s volunteered to drive an ambulance for the Belgian Red Cross, but I expect you know that already. He says it’s the fastest way out there. Meanwhile, it all seems very far removed, though my stepmother’s bandaging class meets in the room behind me so I hear all the chatter, and Dad brings the papers home. Half a dozen sometimes. Everybody’s very excited. I suppose because they all feel they’re caught up in history. I just cough and count butterflies. I’m sure you’re much more actively and usefully employed.
Elinor to Paul
Well, it’s active all right – I don’t know about useful. We – Ruthie and me – spent the first few days wandering round from place to place, sitting in cafés, reading newspapers, jabbering till our jaws ached, me increasingly fed up but somehow not able to pull myself out of it. Still can’t. London’s full of heat and dust, the air’s got that burnt smell you get in August even in the parks.
We went to see the regiments mustering in Green Park and the crowds cheering them, thousands, there were three girls in front of me, shop girls or housemaids and they were screaming and waving flags and one of them jumped up and down so much she wet herself and hobbled off with her skirt bunched up between her legs, shrieking and giggling. In the evenings people gather outside Buckingham Palace or one or other of the embassies, or the Café Royal of course for our crowd. You know how glamorous it used to seem? Well I thought so, anyway. Now it’s full of frightened old men who think their day is over (and they’re probably right) and overexcited young men who jabber till the spit flies, though it’s only stuff they’ve read in the papers. The women have gone very quiet. It’s like the
Iliad,
you know, when Achilles insults Agamemnon and Agamemnon says he’s got to have Achilles’ girl and Achilles goes off and sulks by the long ships and the girls they’re quarrelling over say nothing, not a word, it’s a bit like that. I don’t suppose men ever hear that silence.
Nobody’s doing anything. I mean nobody’s doing any work. My teaching’s dried up, the young ladies of Kensington are all learning first aid instead. And I can’t paint. Everything you think of seems so trivial in comparison with the war – but I don’t accept that. I just don’t seem to have the energy to act on what I believe. Only Neville keeps going, but then he’s painting the war, the regiments, the searchlights, the guns on Hampstead Heath – he can hear them from his studio he says. I bump into him from time to time in the Café Royal and he always speaks, though on the personal level we haven’t been seeing much of each other recently. He has to do a first-aid course and some
kind of vehicle-repair course before he goes out, but that only takes up the mornings and he paints like mad the rest of the time.
It’s worse for Catherine than it is for me. Do you remember her? Catherine Stein. Tall and fair with goggly eyes? Before the war nobody ever thought of her as German, though we all knew she was, now suddenly it’s the only thing that matters. And there’s talk of interning German men which makes her worry about her father who’s not in very good health.
I suppose there
is
a sense of being caught up in history, but in Catherine’s case she’s caught up like a mouse in a trap. I wish you were here – God, now I sound like a seaside postcard – it would be lovely to talk to you. Catherine’s got her own problems and Ruthie’s all very well but she knows what she thinks about everything and I never do which makes her exhausting company. Please, please, Paul, come back to London soon.
What an extremely forward letter! Mother and Rachel would certainly not approve.
Paul to Elinor
I’m surprised you find the women in the Café Royal have gone quiet. The women in Beryl’s bandaging class certainly haven’t, I can hear them behind me as I write. Not entirely pleasant either. Women whose sons haven’t enlisted are given quite a hard time by the other ladies. Beryl tucks the rug around me with great assiduity whenever they’re here.
When I’m better I’ll have to enlist. I thought at first I’d be able to stay out of it, but now I don’t think I can, and I don’t want to. I’m not sophisticated like Neville. To me it all seems simple. If your mother’s attacked, you defend her. You don’t waste time weighing up the rights and wrongs of the matter or wondering if a confrontation could have been avoided if only the batty old dear had been a bit more sensible. Only I can’t, honestly can’t, see what untrained volunteers are going to do. The last two wars in Europe have been fought by professional armies and they only lasted a few months. What I don’t want is to spend a wet, cold
winter in a tent on Salisbury Plain while proper, professional soldiers get on and finish the job.
Paul to Elinor
Today I tried to enlist. It wasn’t anything like I expected. No open arms and welcome to the army my boy well done. Quite the contrary in fact.
You spend an awfully long time sitting around with no clothes on waiting to have some part of your anatomy poked, prodded and assessed. We kept glancing along the bench, sizing each other up. Prime-quality male horseflesh; medium-quality ditto; skinny, knock-kneed, wheezy old nag fit only for the knacker’s yard – me. Actually I did all right till they got to my chest, by, I must say, a somewhat circuitous route. (Details not fit for your maiden ears.) I was asked to cough – that wasn’t a problem, I do a lot of that – only I couldn’t stop. The MOs conferred, waited for me to stop coughing, and then asked me to cough again. I kept trying to explain I’d been ill, but by the time I got my breath back they had stethoscopes in their ears and couldn’t hear a word I said. Then the chief MO, who looked rather like a cynical sheep, shook his head. He was quite decent really, though he couldn’t resist his little joke. He said the best thing I could do to serve my country was join the
German
army and cough a lot.
As I was getting dressed I managed to catch a glimpse of what he’d written on the form. A whole paragraph of stuff, and then at the bottom: Query TB.
The thing is I know it’s not true. I’m coughing a lot, I do have night sweats, and yes there is family history, but I also know it’s the aftermath of pneumonia. A few weeks’ fresh air (admittedly in short supply round here), plenty of good food and all this coughing and wheezing will clear away.
I don’t know what to do. I have tried.
I
know I have – but that’s no use, you see. I walk into town and there are newly enlisted men going to the railway station, men I went to school with, some of them, and I can’t help thinking everybody’s looking at me, wondering why I haven’t volunteered. Perhaps I’m
being oversensitive, but I seem to see that question now on every face.
Meanwhile, I’m attending a first-aid class, a six-week course, and frankly a bit of a waste of time because I covered all this ground and more while I worked in the hospital, but at least it makes me feel I’m doing something. Or do I mean, makes me
look
as if I’m doing something? It’s something for Beryl to tell her bandaging class at any rate.
I’ve written to Neville, to ask who he contacted to get into the Belgian Red Cross. It’s not what I wanted to do but it’s better than nothing and I do have experience of working in a hospital. Fingers crossed.
I haven’t asked if you’re getting any painting done? I’d started drawing, in a rather pathetic, tentative way, but being turned down seems to have driven it out of my head.