The Diamond Waterfall (50 page)

For the next week or so we were awkward with each other. And took care, at least I did, never to be alone together. He had to go twice a week now for massage. He said that it did a great deal of good and that soon he would be right.

“Then I can go before the board. And perhaps get back out again.” He said it with little conviction. Although I knew he meant it when he said, “I'd like to get back to my men. What's left of them.” He had bad news that week, in a letter from his company commander. In the same batch of letters I saw one from Alice.

Two days after that I had to go away to spend some time with Cousin
Dorothy. I was glad in a way to be separated from him because I was on fire. I couldn't think of another word for it. As I lay in bed my lips would burn where he'd touched them, and then slowly, slowly, all my body would grow warmer and warmer—till I felt a great glow of longing I
couldn't
understand.

I was away altogether three weeks. When I came back in April, it was just after the Battle of Arras. Gib told me as soon as I saw him that his Cambridge friend Arthur Vesey had been killed. His sadness apart, he seemed much calmer. Even occasionally the Gib I remembered.

The entertainments were especially lively that month. I'd brought back with me the sheet music to Teddie Gerard's “Kirchner Girl” song and Nelson Keys' “Walkin' the Dog,” and gramophone records of both. He and I did a turn together. Gib's “Walkin' the Dog” was cheerful. Dancing, he scarcely limped.

Meanwhile Amy told me that she and the cricket-loving Basil had been seeing something of each other, mostly in secret. He'd stolen a kiss, a cuddle too, while they were visiting the stables, and had been asked to dine twice at the Hall, where he'd been taken, she thought, quite seriously. “Only, he's almost well again and will have to
go
—and then, what shall I do?”

There had been no letter from Alice lately. We supposed it to be the rush of work. Eventually, a hurried note saying she might get leave in early June. “It depends.” She didn't seem to realize he expected to go abroad again.

The first week I was back, neither Gib nor I mentioned what had happened between us. I thought that was how he wanted it.

He was riding the Norton regularly now. I loved the bike, loved to sit on the side, on the flapper bracket, holding on to him, the wind pulling at my hair, undoing the grown-up array of pins and combs. He asked me one afternoon to come over to Settstone with him. Just for the ride. And it was there, on that occasion, that he first spoke of marriage.

He said, “Teddy, you know that time in the library?”

“Yes.” I both desperately wanted and at the same time dreaded to speak of it again. I had made it now into a safe memory. Had learned all over again simply to
love
him.

“That time—I want to say, whatever you might have thought—I
meant
what I said. What I did too—meant it more than I can possibly express. I— you see, I've felt very wrong about all of it. Alice. You see, Alice … I know that I did wrong. But, how can I say this if I don't rush ahead, tell you
now?
The truth is, you and I, Teddy—we should be married one day—don't you think?”

“Is this a proposal?” I said it rather acidly. I thought, too, of saying, “You're not free to make one.” But instead, gently, as calmly as I could, I asked:

“Have you said anything to Alice yet—about not wanting to marry?” I couldn't help thinking of the unbelievable
muddle
of it all.

“No, no. But I mean to—very soon. Very soon.” He paused. “You do love me a little, you could love me a little? I love you so much …”

He seemed suddenly not twelve years older but younger, far, far younger than I. It must have been at that moment, not before, not after, but exactly then that I felt the facade crack—flimsy, makeshift facade I'd built to cover all the feelings I
must
not allow. I let everything go, let myself love him—in that way. I said it then, in a great rush: “I love you, Gib. I
love
you …” just as I had once imagined myself doing. I hadn't imagined though that I would burst into noisy tears. Gulping and hiccuping …

His turn to comfort me now. Our arms about each other, and my sudden, great, great happiness. In spite of all that happened in the world outside. Faraway France, Belgium. Hal. Alice …

“And you'll agree to marry me—one day? When all this is over? After the guns stop. … You will, truly? Teddy, darling, little treasure.”

I said, laughing, “What's all this about Chums?”

“Oh, Chums,” he said. “Chums,” and laughed and kissed me. “A man's best Chum is his wife. And you know that, I'm sure you know that.”

Freckles on his face, and the color back after those gray, pinched days. Spring, and Gib safe in Yorkshire, and in love with me, me, me.

I think now I would have been happy to leave it at that. Happy, warm, content. I would have waited for him. Would have felt no hurry. And besides there was the matter of Alice. He must as soon as possible ask Alice to release him. The rest he could tell her later. (No hurry, surely, since he and I were in no haste.) I tried not to think, as I'm sure he did too, of what it would mean for her.

Two or three weeks later (weeks of such happiness that surely somebody other than Amy, in whom I'd confided, a little, noticed?) he was passed as fit by the board and went to Staffordshire on a course.

In July, the day after my birthday, he came on weekend leave. He hurried over at once, bringing me a present of an Owen Nares record. He had lost color again and seemed tense. Within minutes he said, his manner urgent:

“Teddy, we've got to arrange something
at once.”
He had tight hold of my hands. “Darling Teddy, I want us to get married as soon as ever possible. As
soon
as it can be arranged.”

Taken aback, I said, “I can't. You can't suddenly say, like that—” Everything, the whole idea, the
muddle
even, rushed before my eyes.

“They told me today—it's almost certain I'm going back. Out again. It's a matter of a few weeks at most. I've been thinking all day, it'd be damnable if anything happened, and Teddy and I … That way lies madness. Darling, it was the foolish waiting before that finished Alice and me.”

I wished he hadn't spoken of her, said her name. I hesitated then, but in a moment he was urging me again. He wouldn't listen, did not seem to hear
any of the practical matters I brought up. My parents, Alice, Alice, and again Alice. The difference in our ages. Trying to arrange everything at short notice.

He cut in, “People are marrying at—well, almost no notice at all. Special license. A few days.”

I felt light-headed with the shock, the joy of it. Had thought myself already blessed enough, but now—we might already soon be
married!
A drowning person, but drowning in happiness, I saw not my past but my future flash before me. And loved it.

In any event there were few difficulties. Except the terrible matter of Alice. I let him write the letter himself, did not even want to see it. I don't know what I thought he had written. Nor what I imagined would happen when she got it.

Father, because he had always thought Alice could do better, made few comments, and gave his permission readily. It was for me. It didn't matter. (After all, what did or does he care about me? Knowing I am not his.)

Mother. She surprised me by seeing it as a Great Romance. Everyone seemed infected with fairy-tale notions, born of wartime haste. It was almost an elopement we were to have. A sanctioned, blessed elopement. Unbelievably, everything was ready in time. The eighteenth of August. We would have eight days together before he went back to Stafford to wait for embarkation.

I knew so little. I marvel now how little I knew, and was content to know. Mother said, two days before:

“We were very ignorant in our day, you know. But I, being on the stage —I picked up a lot of information. More than I needed, Teddy. Whereas you —do you think, darling, you know all you should, for next week?”

Since she had never told me anything, except an embarrassed outline just before my periods, I wasn't sure where I was thought to have learned it. Amy and I never talked about things like that. As for Alice—unimaginable.

She told me hurriedly, surprising me by the trembling of her voice, what it was all about. “That is what happens,” she said. “What happens to you. But—how you will feel, I can't say.” She paused and said, still without looking at me, “It is possible to be very, very happy.”

And those were the words that remained with me. Alone with Gib in the oak-beamed room of the hotel at Lincoln, the night of our wedding, I thought of them.

We were on our way south—he knew Lincoln because he'd been stationed there earlier in the war. Knew the inn, was recognized by the landlady, given the best room.

In his arms, nestled up close, I felt no dread at all, but rather that same burning glow in my skin that I'd felt months before. He was talking to me too, telling me yet again of all the great, great love he had for me. That's
oddly enough what I remember most clearly, perhaps want to remember most clearly—those words, whispered hotly into my neck, my shoulders, my breasts—and then, and then: oh, if all that came after, if he—if we—could only have continued, on and on—I know now that I wouldn't have been afraid, how could I have been, with him? The entering, well, it was only as I'd been told, and easier, much easier—but then as his kisses redoubled, and now I kissed him, kissed him—no feathery kisses these, but frantic sucking, nibbling—I didn't know what I wanted except to be closer, closer. I couldn't be still. I didn't know what to do with my body, could use only my lips, my hands, kissing and kissing. …

And then—he broke away, and with shocking suddenness turned on his side, away from me. For a few seconds he lay there, his face buried in the pillow. Then, half turning, he reached out, touched my arm.

“I'm sorry.”

“What's the matter then?” I cried. “We were … It was all right, wasn't it? Weren't we happy, weren't you happy with me?”

He half sat up, leaning toward me now, crooked on one elbow. He was stroking me gently, gently, through the fine batiste of the nightgown.

“I'd thought, darling, I should have said to you, I know—that it seems to me quite wrong I should give you a baby. We never talked about it, I know.”

Indeed we'd never discussed it. To me it had seemed so obvious as not to be worth discussing. I would have a baby after he'd gone away, which would be his, and part of the pride of being married to him, his wife,
Mrs. Gilbert Nicolson.
It had seemed so simple.

And now: “You do see,” he said. “You do see? You're so young and I thought—if anything should happen to me, and you were left with a tiny child—”

“But that's what I want—”

“I oughtn't even to have gone so far. It's difficult to talk of these things. One doesn't—can't, but if I hadn't—left you then, there'd have been the risk of a child. Even as it is …”

I said obstinately, still shaken, “It's for me to decide too—if
I
want a child, isn't it?
Isn't it?”

“You're not much more than a child yourself.” He said it sadly.

“Old enough to be married, though? Aren't I?”

It was an argument that was to continue through so much of our precious honeymoon week together. It made us very unhappy at night. The days weren't so bad because we had our love, we had each other, we were
married,
were we not? And the jokes, the ease from knowing each other so long, helped.

We spent the next day and night in Cambridge. He wanted to show me everything to do with his life there. It was a sad, wartime Cambridge, out of
term, the colleges part hospitals, part garrisons. I fancied too the ghost of Alice and wondered that he should want to come here. But he seemed resolutely to have put her out of his mind.

We traveled on down to Brighton. He had spent a happy childhood holiday there once. Now, when not walking along the stony beach, sending the water-polished pebbles spinning, we sat up on the gorse-covered downs. Wild thyme scented the air and an August sun burned down on us. High above, larks hung. And in the distance, the rumble of guns in France. Looking out to sea, I tried not to think of Hal—in ever-present danger. Tried not to think of Alice, reading her letter of rejection. We were so nearly happy.

One afternoon as we sat there I watched a hovering butterfly, nearly as blue as the hot sky. Lark song and gunfire. I said to Gib:

“How can you go back to—that? After this—”

“I don't have a choice—”

I said urgently, “You
did.
You didn't need to get yourself a board hearing so soon. I don't even think you
are
fit, whatever they say.”

He said a little curtly, “I think, Teddy, you could allow them to know their own business.” It was his schoolmaster's voice. I had forgotten almost that he had been a schoolmaster. In that other world, which we, I, had left.

But it was that night that—what happened, what did I do? I think I fought and clutched, clawed at him as he tried to leave my body. “Gib, Gib the Fib. You shan't, you shan't …” I felt such excitement, such certitude. “You shan't leave me, don't, my darling, you must not leave me.” And by and by, very close together, he shuddered inside me. Then turned his head away and wept.

“Why do you cry, you're always crying? My darling, don't cry.” I lay very still, I was busy comforting him. As I did so, I waited for the blush, the burning ache to die down. I said vigorously, “I
want
a baby. You
know
I want a baby.” I didn't know which excitement was the greater, my need to feel, more and more, as I felt that night, or—to make a baby. And I knew that the shuddering, it was the shuddering would make our child.