The Novel in the Viola (32 page)

Considering that he was usually quite content to lounge upon the sofa smoking endless cigarettes and devouring the
Racing Post,
he was an awful patient, always fidgeting and complaining that he was bored. I noticed that he smoked even more, if it were possible, and that he looked older. He had filled out a little, and necessarily confined to lolling in an armchair he lost that restless quick movement which always made him seem so boyish. He was in some considerable pain, and I think the cigarettes and morning whisky were ways of distracting himself. We sat for hours in the warm fug of the drawing room, the fire stoked to a furnace by Mr Wrexham, despite our protestations. I read novels aloud to entertain him, always the latest lurid romance – the more absurd the language of love, the more he liked them. Whenever my voice grew hoarse and I paused he’d wave impatiently, cigarette between his fingers. ‘Well, go on.’

I laughed at him. ‘You’re unbearable. You read it.’

He shook his head and fixed me with a lazy smile. ‘No. I like to hear you. Especially the wicked parts. They make you blush, you know.’

It was fortunate in some ways that Kit’s injury forced a certain distance between us. In his letters, he had confided desires and breathless acts of love. At first they were fervent, schoolboy imaginings, the language one might expect of a love-struck gentleman who had once attended Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, but then, after a month or more onboard his ship, they grew coarser and more thrilling. I knew I ought to be shocked, or angry and repulsed. I was not. I was intrigued and baffled by these new words that my faithful German/English dictionary could not explain. The mysterious words were as exotic as the half-understood acts that they failed to describe. I was forced to imagine the pictures which these guttural, consonant clicking sounds represented. Unconstrained by meaning, my imaginings were frantic. Kit’s descriptions of lovemaking might only have taken place in the pages of his letters, but I had read and re-read them, picturing them in the warm dark every night as I lay in bed, quite unable to sleep. We were both conscious of some shared intimacy, like adolescents the day after a kiss at a school dance, at once shy and eager.

‘Read some more,’ said Kit, stroking my cheek with his fingers.

‘Later. My voice is all hoarse.’

‘Your necklace,’ he said, noticing Anna’s pearls beneath the collar of my shirt.

‘Do you like them? They were my mother’s.’

He reached a hand behind my neck and drew me close, kissing me. As he let go, he unfastened another button on my shirt and traced the pearls with a finger, brushing the bare skin at my throat.

‘They are very pretty.’

I let him kiss me and toy with the pearls. I was pleased that his attention was wholly upon me. The minute he returned to Tyneford, I knew that for the first time I had a rival. One much fiercer than Diana or Juno; a rival I had to accept and learn to live with for the duration of the war. Kit loved me, but his loyalty was torn between the two of us:
The Angelica
and I. He was glad to be home and to sit and chatter beside the fire, but it wasn’t like before. A part of him yearned to be at sea. He hated being here while she was somewhere in the Atlantic, scouring the waters for U-boats and enemy destroyers. His shipmates risked their lives while he lazed on the sofa sipping cocoa and eating ginger biscuits.

‘Tell me what it’s like to be at sea,’ I said.

Kit fell silent. He did not speak about life on the ship. He claimed his reticence was because of secrecy, but I suspected that it was simply easier. When onboard he needed to become another version of himself, Temporary Sublieutenant Rivers, and now at home he wanted to be Kit again. He did not wish to be one man, while speaking of the other. I did not push him, although later I wished I had.

When we were not reading together in the drawing room, or taking meals in the morning room, Kit liked to sit outside. He wheeled himself onto the terrace, discarding the tartan blankets Mrs Ellsworth insisted on tucking about him and, armed instead with a hipflask of brandy, he sat for hours with the old nursery telescope trained on the sea. To the gardener’s dismay, he liked to propel himself across the lawn, the chair’s wheels leaving two neat trenches. He sat at the end of the garden, where the line of bright grass cut into the blue horizon, and scrutinised the sea for ships. Mr Wrexham sometimes joined him, and the two men sat together, one head white as a laundered handkerchief, the other gold as harvest, passing the telescope back and forth between them. The butler carried out a low table and placed the portable wireless set upon it. Kit listened to it almost constantly, craning forward in his chair whenever the naval news came over the airwaves, as though he could get closer to the action. Whenever there was something about a Flower class corvette, his fists would clench, and he’d hold his breath. There was no mention of
The Angelica.

The day Kit’s leg was taken out of plaster, Poppy returned home for a few days’ leave. She came straight to the house and joined us on the terrace where Kit was slowly limping up and down with the aid of a walking stick. It was near the end of April and a damp morning ripened into a warm afternoon, the bright lichen on the roof tiles yellow as sunshine. I paced beside Kit, hovering at his elbow, anxious as a mother house martin as her chick first takes to the skies. He swore in frustration.

‘Fuck.’ He banged his stick against the drainpipe. ‘I’m like an old fucking man.’

I’d never heard him curse like this before, and halted for a second before helping him to sit on the wooden bench. Poppy leant against the wall, closing her eyes in the spring sun. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Swear like a sailor now, Kit? Bit of a cliché.’

He smiled and pulled me onto his good knee, kissing my nose. ‘Sorry, darling. Just not used to being a blasted cripple.’

‘You’re not. You’ll be better before you know it,’ I said, forcing myself to smile, conscious that as soon as his leg healed, he’d depart for
The Angelica.

‘How’s Will?’ asked Kit, changing the subject and looking at Poppy.

‘I don’t know. He sailed for France just before you came home. He was all right, last I heard. Wrote asking me for scraps of French and to check that someone’s looking after his plants and feeding that horrid cat. Don’t think they’re doing much. Training. Waiting for something to happen. Last I heard, only thing he’d shot was a rabbit.’

‘Nazi rabbit, I hope?’ said Kit.

Poppy smiled. ‘No Nazis in sight. Not sure who all this waiting is worse for – us or them. And the post’s been a bit ropey last few weeks.’

Her voice was playful, feigning unconcern, but I didn’t believe it.

‘I say, shall we call for some drinks? I know it’s only teatime but I fancy something stronger,’ she added, slumping into a chair.

I disappeared to ask Mr Wrexham for some wine, and when I returned with a bottle, the two of them were sitting in silence, huddled around the wireless.

‘Denmark’s surrendered,’ said Kit, fixing himself a drink. ‘God knows what’s happening in Norway. Half the navy’s probably up there.’

‘What does it mean for France?’ asked Poppy.

‘I don’t know,’ said Kit, passing her a glass. ‘The Western Front is going to have to open up sometime. Our boys are ready for them.’

This formed the pattern of the ensuing days. We lazed in the garden, warmed by gentle sunshine, listening to the wireless, often drinking rather too much wine, while the cuckoos called from Rookery Wood and the fishing-boats dawdled in the bay. I remember every day as a warm, unbroken blue. It had the feel of the last weeks of the summer holidays, when school looms and yet belongs so completely to another world that one can scarce believe the sun-filled days of freedom could ever end. Lying on a picnic rug, I tried to count the newly ripened freckles on Kit’s nose, and did not think it was possible to love him more than I did at that moment. I helped him with his exercises and his stride grew stronger as we spied our first spotted flycatcher alighting on the flowering plum. He discarded his stick the same day as a pair of holly blue butterflies flitted across a spray of irises. By the time the pale pink London pride bloomed in the rockery, he could walk smoothly with only slight pain. I tried not to wish Poppy away, but these were stolen days and I wanted Kit to myself.

I assisted Mrs Ellsworth with the cooking. She refused to listen to the Home Service with its constant news bulletins, complaining that it was ‘stuffed to the gills gruesome’, preferring the endless tunes playing on the Forces radio. She loved the cheerful wartime songs, and the kitchen echoed to the strains of ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’, ‘I Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen’ and ‘This is the Army, Mr Jones’. She’d hum along as she curried parsnips and bottled elderflower cordial, breaking off to complain, ‘Why can’t they come up with such good tunes in peacetime? I don’t know.’

When I returned to the garden, I found Poppy and Kit sitting in silence, elbows on the table, listening to the Home Service like an oracle. I felt a twist of jealousy and wished for the thousandth time that she would go.

Kit gave me a grim smile. ‘Well, it looks like Will’s going to get a chance to shoot at more than rabbits. The fighting’s begun in France.’

‘He’ll be all right, Poppy, I’m sure he will,’ I said, making use of the platitudes that always irked me, suddenly filled with remorse at having desired her gone.

But my guilty wish was granted a day later. A telegram arrived for Poppy, summoning her immediately back to work – all leave cancelled – and the same afternoon Mr Rivers announced that he was going up to town for a week. We bade goodbye to Kit’s father, and then drifted about the terrace hand in hand, suddenly unsure how best to make the most of this boon. Kit and I felt like children whose parents had gone out, leaving us to delicious freedom. From the wireless in the dining room came headlines about the formation of ‘Local Defence Volunteers’ and the ‘fifth column tricks’ in the Low Countries, but at that moment war seemed far away. The ancient gardener raked withered azalea blossoms from the lawn and a blue tit yanked a worm from among the lavender beds.

‘Let’s not dress for dinner,’ said Kit.

‘That’s all? Your father’s away and your best rebellion is not to change your shirt?’

Kit plucked a daisy and lobbed it at me. ‘And what do you suggest?’

‘We should get dressed up for dinner. In black tie. And drink champagne and cognac and get very drunk.’ Then I remembered and shook my head. ‘No. It’s no good.’

‘Why not? It’s a splendid plan.’

‘I’ve nothing to wear. Diana spoilt my only good dress.’

‘I’ve an idea.’

Kit led me upstairs to one of the spare bedrooms. As a housemaid I had dusted and polished it every day, but since the war started and the staff disappeared from Tyneford, it had been shut up. All the furniture except a great mahogany wardrobe had been pulled into the middle of the room and shrouded in dustsheets. The grey curtains were closed and as Kit drew them back, a family of moths fluttered around his head. Batting them away, he unlocked the wardrobe and seized an armful of dresses.

‘These belonged to my mother. Something here’s sure to fit.’

I stepped back. ‘Kit, no. I couldn’t.’

‘Why not? They’re not doing anyone any good in here. And that would have annoyed her.’

‘You don’t remember what annoyed her.’

Kit shrugged. ‘No woman can bear to think of a Parisian couture gown unworn.’

‘Couture?’

Intrigue won over scruples.

I turned round in front of the mirror. The midnight-blue silk fell away from my left shoulder leaving it bare, and trickled in waves to the ground. A gold belt twisted below my waist and earrings shaped like leaves dangled from each ear. I thought of Kit’s young mother pulling on this dress, checking her appearance, before descending the staircase to greet her guests. I wondered what Anna would say if she could see me. I didn’t feel real.

Even Mr Wrexham colluded. He served us dinner on the best china, pouring us champagne, sliding back into the shadows so as not to overhear as Kit and I whispered and giggled. I did not feel like the future mistress of Tyneford, but a child playing tea parties who, as a treat, has been allowed to fill the toy pot with real tea and set out miniature sandwiches on the tiny plates.

After dinner, Kit and I slipped away onto the terrace. The blackouts were drawn and the only light in the garden was the glow of our cigarettes. I discarded my shoes and tucked my feet onto the bench, wishing I had scarlet polish for my toes. We passed champagne back and forth, sipping straight from the bottle. I tingled, thrilled by our decadence. I slid into his arms and we began to kiss, gently at first and then more eagerly. He stopped and unsure why, I tried to draw him back to me, but then I felt the warmth of his breath on my bare shoulder, and then the damp of his mouth on my skin. His fingers eased under the strap of my dress and as I felt his hand brush my breast, I heard myself wonder, as though from a distance, precisely how many of Anna’s rules of etiquette I was breaking at that moment. He kissed me again and I kissed him back. I was drunk on champagne and on him. He pushed me down against the bench, and his fingers reached for the hem of my dress. I knew I ought to make him stop. It was what girls must do when young men got too fresh, too amorous, too delightful. I didn’t want him to stop. I didn’t want to disappoint Anna. I didn’t want to be one of the fast girls in the chorus who made her sigh. I’d like to say that I considered the consequences, picturing myself as the deflowered heroine – Tosca, or perhaps Tess D’Urberville – but I was struggling to think very much at all. At that moment my body was utterly uninterested in the proper decorum expected from girls like me. Kit nudged my thighs apart with his knee and I heard the beautiful silk dress tear. That brought me back to myself and I tried to wriggle away but he held me firm, making a cage with his arms.

‘Don’t,’ I said, pushing at him but he didn’t seem to hear. Sweat glistened on his upper lip and he was now intent on reaching the waistband of my knickers. ‘Don’t,’ I said again and shoved at him.