Gifts of War (51 page)

We just stood for a while, without speaking, looking at the field, feeling the breeze, listening to the birds, brushing off the insects that landed on us. Izzy’s ashes had already all but disappeared. It might not be a family grave but she was home.

Though I was sad that day, sadder, I think, than I had ever been, I was also angry, still choked with loathing for the Germans. Handel had made that lovely music but it had been a long time ago, and what had the current crop of Germans done—produce ever more deadly forms of gas, zeppelin sky bombs, and torpedoes. Faye was right— how could Sam have fallen in love with a German? How could she, after all these years, after all that had happened, after her own family, and now mine, had been devastated, how could she still hold fast to Wilhelm? She didn’t mention him much now but he was there, he was there, in our minds, filling our thoughts, like a mine buried but not too deeply, ready to explode and destroy all around it with one false step. My mother’s death, Izzy’s death, the funeral, seeing my own father
weep for the first time … none of that made me depressed the way I had been all those months and years before; instead I was fired up, burning with loathing, bristling with contempt, gorged on a hot rage—and part of me, I could admit it now, was angry with Sam. I never thought I’d feel that. I was angry, livid, that she still felt… whatever she felt for Wilhelm. Whatever she felt, it was too much, it was
wrong
, he was the enemy, he bore some responsibility, some blame, for what we had been through. I had to tell her that, and at the same time she should know what I had done, how I had deceived her … but also how I had
delivered her
from the limbo, the no-man’s-land, the
wilderness
she would have inhabited for the rest of her life, had I not come along. The play had gone on for long enough. It was time she was told. I would sit her down at home, this very afternoon, in Izzy’s room, a room Izzy would never return to, and let Sam know what I had done, how I had tried to steal her love, so she could decide where to go next. I didn’t care anymore.

I took one last look at the field where Izzy’s ashes were now part of the landscape. I wouldn’t be coming back.

I led the way back to the gate and then let Sam go first.

She stepped into the angle but then blocked my way by holding the gate firm.

“Those are beech trees over there, right?”

I nodded.

“Is that where the badgers live, where the bluebells grow in spring?”

I nodded. “And the foxes.”

“Is this the time of year for the Severn Bore?”

“You remember that?” I was surprised. “I don’t know.”

“I remember everything,” she said, reaching out and stroking the lapel of my blazer. She leaned forward and laid her head on my shoulder. “And I remember telling you, back on the platform of the station
in Middle Hill, just after you had been promoted to the war ministry, that I didn’t love you. I said I didn’t love you but that I might learn to love you.”

She kissed my shoulder. “I didn’t believe myself when I said those things and I’ve always felt guilty about saying them. Everyone I’ve ever liked—you know, in that way—I’ve liked right off, right from the start.” She raised my hand to her lips and kissed it. “Well… I was wrong.” She lifted her head from my shoulder and looked up at me. “I have learned to love you, Hal.”

She took a deep breath.

“So much has happened to us. Because of the war I’ve fallen out with all of my sisters, one by one. Two of them have lost their men. You’ve lost a sister.” She took another breath. “I didn’t hate the Germans, not to begin with—and I know you felt the same way.”

She licked her lips with her tongue.

“But now, after all the pain, all the blood, all the turmoil… it’s hard not to let some … bitterness creep into your heart.”

I nodded. She was right. Isobel had never harmed anyone.

“And I’ve been thinking about Will. Does he really have to know who his father is? There’s so much hate now, everywhere… it will always be hard for him, once he knows the truth. He thinks
you’re
his father. He adores you. Why can’t it stay that way?”

She climbed onto one of the iron rungs of the gate, so that her face was level with mine. “I know that when I mention Wilhelm, Hal, it hurts you, so I’m going to mention him one more time—and then never again. He asked me to marry him at a gate just like this. The one by the river at Stratford, where you and I once walked. He loved these kissing gates—they don’t have them in Germany—I think I told you that. He said he had me trapped, just like I have you trapped now. He said he wouldn’t let me go until I gave him an answer. I never hid Wilhelm from you, Hal, but maybe I hid the depths of my feelings, when
we first met. In a way you came into my life too soon after Wilhelm. There were times, early in the war, when… when I hoped our side would collapse, just so I could have Wilhelm back. How terrible is that?”

She brushed wisps of hair from her face. “But he’s been gone years now. You’ve been wonderful to me, and to Will, and to my sisters. We can’t go on living in this halfway world, not being married, holding back at least some of the time, waiting … Waiting’s not living.”

She smiled. “We’ve been here before, you know.”

“We have? I don’t— What do you mean?”

“Remember that day on the platform in Middle Hill station, amid all the steam and clanking signals? I told you that if I was going with you, to London, I had to say so before the school board met, before I found out what their verdict was; I had to
choose
to be with you…”

I remembered but I didn’t say anything.

“It’s the same now. What I’m going to say, I need to say before the war is over, before I find out, one way or the other… whether Wilhelm’s alive, whether … what his feelings are … I need to
choose
, to decide, all by myself.”

She took off her Alice band, threw it away, and let her hair hang loose. “So, here on this gate, this is the best way I can think of to prove to you that I mean what I am about to say.” She kissed my hand again and stroked the lapel of my blazer. “You said, that day in the cricket field when you asked me to come to London with you, that we were both trapped. You meant it in a different way to Wilhelm but you were right and … and that played its part in persuading me to go with you. But I don’t feel trapped anymore.” She raised herself onto her toes, on the iron rung of the gate, and kissed me on the lips. “If you still want to marry me, Hal, dearest Hal, the answer is yes.”

The wind blew her hair across her face. I could smell Will’s smell on her.

All my anger had gone.

“You’re not just feeling sorry for me?” I kissed her hair. “All this grief.”

She didn’t move, other than to shake her head. “You saved Will’s life. That’s when… I think I’ve loved you since then.”

She turned her head to mine and we began kissing. I kissed her lips, her cheeks, her neck. Our tongues interlocked. I whispered, “Look, Sam, I’m flattered and honored by your offer, but the war will be over soon. If you want to wait for six months, in case—”

She put a finger to my lips.
“Shhh
. You haven’t been listening to what I’m saying.” She brushed my cheek with her fingers. “It’s you I love now. Will’s always loved you. It took me a whole war.”

She stepped back, so I could go through the gate. “Now come on, let’s not leave your father by himself anymore.”

One thing I was wrong about. When we returned to Penrith Mansions from the funeral, there was a letter waiting for me—from Izzy.

As it happened, Sam and I didn’t have time to get married just then. Izzy’s death and my mother’s were too close to do anything immediately, and then events—and what events—intervened. Later that week, less than a fortnight after Izzy’s death, the Armistice was signed. No sooner was that done than plans were announced for a peace conference to be held in Paris in early 1919. Before that, however, there was a preconference conference in London, and the brigadier and I were fully involved in that. My
Moral Cost of the War
, as it had been retitled, was released at the same time. It created quite a stir.

On 14 December, the female emancipation bill was published. Things really were going to be different now that the war was over. Izzy would miss all that.

Sam and I did travel down to Edgewater to be with Dad on his first Christmas alone, and this time we had Will and Whisky with us. My father took to the boy immediately. Moreover, Will loved the rambling old house. Physically, Will was quite recovered from his fairground injury but psychologically he had lost a good deal of his curiosity. In fact, that’s where my father’s house was perfect for him. It was so much bigger than the London flat and, over the few days we were there, Will expanded his horizons, but within familiar territory. He and Whisky took to Einstein, and Einstein, still perplexed by my
mother’s sudden disappearance, was grateful for the company. The three of them did everything together. They also took my father for long rambles across the wolds, which Will also loved. Although he had been born in Warwickshire, all his memories were of London, and the beech woods and streams of the Cotswolds were a new world. I think my father needed those rambles as well.

He and Will would come back with birds’ eggs, shards of terracotta—the remains of pots found near a Roman villa in the vicinity— and stories of monks they had seen in the nearby monastery. One day Will came back and announced proudly, “I had beer.”

“What?” gasped Sam.

Dad chortled. “Don’t worry. He had one sip. So did Einstein.”

Over Christmas lunch Dad made an announcement. He said that he had decided to give up the house. Some years previously, he said, he had bought a cottage elsewhere in the village. It had been intended for my mother, assuming that Dad would go first.

He looked at me, at us, really. “Do you want the house? It’s yours, if you do. Otherwise, I’ll sell it. You’ll get the money, of course, in time.”

Neither Sam nor I knew what to say, but Will did.

“You mean we can live here always? With Whisky and Einstein?” His eyes were rounder than ever.

I could see that Sam, although she didn’t say anything, was taken with the idea, but I didn’t push it.

“You’ll need weeks—months—to dispose of all your junk, Dad. We’ll try the idea on for size.”

“I’ve already got rid of most of your mother’s things,” he said sadly. “I’d have done more, but this official history of the war is taking up quite a bit of my time just now. I’m just about to start on Izzy’s belongings—will you help me with the books, at least, while you’re here?”

I nodded, but in the event I didn’t. My leave was cut short by a telegram and, two days after Christmas, I was ordered to Paris, where I was to form part of the team preparing for the peace conference. I couldn’t say no: after my brief stint at the Front and my rescue from the Stratford backwaters by Colonel Pritchard, the peace conference would be the crowning achievement of my wartime career.

FOR SIX MONTHS AT THE BEGINNING OF
1919, Paris was the center of the world. More than eight million soldiers had been killed in the war and now hundreds of politicians, diplomats, bankers, professors, economists, lawyers, and journalists came to Paris to try to fashion a lasting peace.

There were statesmen from many nations—more than thirty countries sent delegations—but the real work was done by what came to be called the Big Four: France, Britain, Italy, and the United States. The British staff alone consisted of four hundred people. It was an extraordinary time: new borders were drawn throughout central Europe and the Middle East, and there was, to begin with, a sense that all was now possible. By the second week of January, all delegations were in Paris.

Paris: beautiful and sad at the same time. There had been a lot of rain and the Seine was in flood. People were mournful for the sons and lovers they had lost; half the people wore black, while the other half, mainly the women, did their best to look elegant,
chic
. There was a gaping crater in the Tuileries rose garden and a captured German cannon on display in the Place de la Concorde. Along the grand boulevards there were gaps in the rows of chestnut trees, where some had been cut down for firewood. Coal, milk, and bread were in short supply.