Girl Reading (29 page)

No.

You would have to say that, even if you were.

I’m not.

You would have to say that too, wouldn’t you? Is it hot in Punjab? Hotter than it is here at the moment?

Very.

And can you tell me vaguely what you do there, without endangering anyone’s life?

I make promises I can’t keep.

Gosh. How unhappy.

It is, for everyone concerned. But that is there and we are here.

Alec, you’re in favor of women’s suffrage, aren’t you?

Alec feigns ambivalence but does a poor job.

I knew it. So am I!

How can you tell?

Because you just
would.
I say, Alec, what do you think about conchies?

We’re talking about Laurence again?

Not necessarily.

You don’t approve of conscientious objection?

Don’t know. It does seem unfair that some people risk their lives while others benefit from it but sit on their hands. It seems a bit cowardly.

Many pacifists undertake difficult or dangerous work; they farm the land, or they serve as noncombatants.

Laurence doesn’t. If I was allowed to, I would fight.

That’s very brave of you. But you should know there are different kinds of bravery in the world. Tell me, Gwen, have you ever held a minority view?

She rolls her eyes. Every day of my life.

I mean, an opinion where you were truly in the minority? One that the rest of your peers mocked you and hated you for? One that could create problems for your family and could potentially put you in prison?

That rather depends on whether someone considered my opinion powerful or important. Would anyone ever take a view
I
held that seriously?

It’s a fair point. But if it were just a matter of cowardice and courage, don’t you think the army has enough ways to scare men into service?

You’re probably right but I don’t know enough about it, Alec. There is no debate I can possibly have with you that I could win.

He pauses before he responds. I did not realize one of us had to win and one of us had to lose; I thought we were just having a conversation. I don’t know precisely why Laurence has chosen to do what he has, but I can assure you it must have been extremely difficult for him. If you are so curious about it, maybe you should just ask?

Maybe I will. But you didn’t answer my question before: What do you think about conscientious objectors?

I think the world is imperfect. I think wars have many victims, not just the obvious ones. I think pacifism has the ring of sanity about it. And we need them. We need the minority view, if only to remind the rest of us why we believe in what we believe in, and because sometimes the minority view is the right view but its time hasn’t come yet.

Like women’s suffrage.

Indeed.

Gosh. You are surprising. And when you say something clever you turn all grave and handsome.

He flusters at this. Miss Watts, is that entirely appropriate?

But it’s all right to say it to you, isn’t it? Are you going to be prime minister one day?

Goodness no, I can think of several professions I would have to fail in first. What about going back now? Assuming that you are ready to face the displeasure of Miss Everard.

I am ready. Thanks awfully for being a brick.

* * *

Candle stubs sit in glass jars and melt onto saucers, along the wall, and on tables in the garden. It is a mild enough evening to cover bare arms with thin sleeves—the dancing and the whiskey provide extra warmth, when needed. Gwen has some, her first taste, and finds after the revulsion has subsided that it is quite as nice as vinegar, which she has always liked though never considered drinking on its own. The men savor it, so do the women; therefore Gwen will if only in small sips. So this is what getting tight feels like.

She wants to crank the handle and change the records on the gramophone, realizes too late that this is a liability that impedes her chances to speak or dance with Laurence, who is partnered with Sinclair (typical). Alec is dancing with Cynthia and seems disinclined to switch. Nevertheless, it is fun.

The recordings and the insects click and hiss.

Perhaps it is the drink or the stars appearing or the strains of songs, which have to be replayed or replaced when they come to an end. Perhaps it is the war, and that the night is precious because the world beyond Arnault is fluxing. Perhaps it is because they have spent hours talking through the people they know fighting or contributing to the effort. Gwen loses count of how many, their names and their backgrounds and their ages, who has already bought it and who is still alive. It makes Gwen feel vulnerable. Her body, still in so many ways a mystery of itself, seems to shrink at the mention of death—so it ceases to be Gwen Watts and becomes instead just organs and meat, the way Daddy’s leg must have looked in a bucket. It is the presence of Alec that has reintroduced discussion of the war to the house, for he seems to know a great deal about it, is subtle in his observations and careful in his reports. Cynthia agrees with Alec on many points; Sinclair disputes a few hotly. When Alec uses phrases such as “the moral imperative” and “collective responsibility”
Gwen becomes anxious on Laurence’s behalf, despite Alec’s remarks this afternoon.

Gwen knows she is ignorant. For example, she has to ask Alec which side the Indians are on.

Alec Worsham’s expression turns somber before he confirms that many thousands of Indian soldiers are fighting alongside our troops.

How super, she answers.

Not exactly—Alec explains that they want independence in return, and she finds the melancholy in his manner unsettling.

Gwen thinks hard about it, willing her useless mind to trundle to its conclusion. It does seem a fair and straightforward exchange to me.

Yes, Alec replies. Yes, it is more than fair, but I am afraid it is not remotely straightforward.

Then three words materialize in Gwen’s consciousness, the definitions of which huddle close together in her head and play tricks on her. Enormity. It is the enormity of the war that she cannot fathom, that there are corpses and destruction and family grief in unknowable numbers, and travesties of justice. Enormousness. It is the enormousness of the war that overwhelms her, the way it spans the globe, and she cannot visualize the edges of it because they have disappeared into countries she has barely heard of. Intricacy. It is the intricacy of the war that is baffling, the invisible threads of purpose and consequence crisscrossing in multiplicity over oceans and continents, so that a quiver on one alters life and death at the end of another. Because of the enormity, the enormousness, and the intricacy, Gwen will never understand it, never. If she lives to be a hundred, the war will still be there as a blemish of uncertainty on whatever fabric of knowledge and experience she acquires in life.

I will jolly well enjoy this whiskey, despite the way it burns my throat. I will jolly well enjoy playing records, despite my not having a dance partner.

After a random approach to the music collection, Gwen becomes more selective, picking out the best titles, repeating her favorites. “Dreaming”; “Somewhere a Voice Is Calling”; “I Don’t Suppose”; “I Lost My Heart in Honolulu”; “In the Glory of the Moonlight”; and then “Dreaming” because she liked it so much the first time around; and then “I Lost My Heart in Honolulu” again.

Laurence holds Sinclair close, sways with her in and out of shadows. Her teeth are straight, white; she shows them when she shows her amusement at being spun or dipped or at some remark he whispers into her ear that pleases her. They pause to replenish their glasses and make a private toast, then resume.

Alec dances more formally with Cynthia, and they giggle less. They have an ease, they match like a saucepan and its lid. Alec wants to know about Cynthia, puts a question to her on this or that; she answers, using more description than normal.

Gwen tries not to stare at the two couples, and at Sinclair least of all. Tries not to think of Sinclair as graceful, as stylish, as refined. Sinclair leans into Laurence, rests her head on him, would purr if she were a cat.

Gwen pretends to study a label on a shellac disc. If Sinclair had not come, Laurence would be dancing with
her
right now. If Sinclair picked up the scent of a richer man, she would drop Laurence in a beat. If Sinclair suddenly left, Laurence would be devastated . . .

And if he was devastated, he would need to be comforted . . .

By the woman whom he has been aware of as a gentle and stable presence, the woman a part of him has silently worshipped from a distance since they first met. Emotions that he has suppressed out of respect might suddenly burst forth. Maybe he is simply waiting to be a free man again, and for the right occasion to present itself—

Sinclair breaks away from Laurence. I rather want a go of the gramophone myself. I’m sure I can find some music that isn’t so soppy. (She flicks through some records, then notices Gwen.) We’ve
had rather a lot of the same, don’t you think? I say, Laurence, why don’t you dance with Gwen for a bit? It’s hardly fair that Cynthia and I have been hogging the men. Is there any ragtime?

Gwen can hardly control the sensation of plummeting, from the moment when Laurence extends his invitation to her until the moment she is on her feet in front of him. She wobbles, has managed more of the whiskey than she thought. This is it, she thinks. This is actually it.

Laurence has never been closer to her than he is now, apart from the day when he lit her cigarette.

He smiles. Have you danced before, Gwen?

Plenty of times, but usually I’m the boy because I’m taller than the other girls.

Would you like to lead? (He is teasing her, and she finds it attractive.)

Oh, no. You can lead.

The music starts again. Gwen realizes that Laurence has put his hand around her waist, his finger hitching some of the flimsy material of her dress; that he is holding her hand and she is touching,
squeezing,
one of his shoulders. It is a strapping shoulder that wants to be squeezed. He is breathing on her and gazing into her eyes. She can smell his sweat, see the freckles on his face. There is no gap between them; their noses almost meet. They dance.

Gwen fights to stay upright, tries not to avert her eyes or allow her cheeks to flame. She hears the music as though it is far away; is aware of Cynthia, Alec, and even Sinclair as shapes behind frosted glass. They are harmless, they cannot interfere, they do not matter. The war does not matter. What Mummy would say matters least of the things that do not matter. Only this matters.

You and I have discovered what lovers through the ages already know, that in times of chaos and decay, truth is a constant and truth is beauty. What is truer than two halves making one whole? What
is more beautiful than fulfillment? Being in love
definitely
feels like this.

She remembers to chat and to laugh along with Laurence in a natural way—the words come easily. It is all easy. Gwen belongs here. She wishes they could live inside this song and dance up to the sky, beyond it, be lights among the spheres. The candles are like stars.

The short hours of darkness will soon dissolve into dawn, and Cynthia takes one of her walks. She does not know where it will lead; perhaps to the end of the road, perhaps to the end of her life. For if, one day, she gives in to the temptation, she will not have planned it nor written a good-bye letter nor settled her affairs. She will do it when it seems to her a good idea and the opportunity presents itself. Were the opportunity to present itself within the next mile, she may be inclined, for it is night and she is alone and she is only a quarter deep into her research after all, and the drinking has given her courage. And this will have been a pleasing last evening. She follows a lane, a path, the fingernail moon. She follows her thoughts, which sink and rise in waves, which ascend and dart like birds; some of them settle on Alec.

She has got lost on her walks, found the way back several hours later or stayed out all night until daybreak, when people appeared she could ask directions of and signposts became visible. She has taken a train to the seaside wearing the clothes she left the house in, and had just enough money left over to buy a cup of tea. She has been molested. She has awoken in the doorway of a shop. She has been stalked by the disembodied phantom of the future, pale and iridescent, in the guise of a naked girl. She has been asked whether she was in need of assistance by a lady of color, as it happens, smartly dressed, warm, human, in contrast to Cynthia’s presentiment before—she
scrutinized Cynthia’s face, touched her forehead with the back of her hand, pressed money into Cynthia’s palm, and dashed away as if late for an appointment.

More often than not she simply takes a stroll, goes back home, sleeps in her own bed. These walks are the inkblot patterns where random and unconnected ideas merge into solid concepts, into theories worthy of being written, into structures that can withstand force.

Alec is in her net, and what ought she to do with him? The trouble is, he thinks he is a liberal, is attracted to the bohemian life, but in reality he would not cope. He would grow to resent Cynthia because she would hold him to his promises. He has been artful in his approach, she has to give him that. Stating and offering nothing specific, is handling her the way he handles his diplomatic work. All hints implications possibilities. All of it can be denied or reinterpreted, if the outcome is against him. Dear Alec, you think you are being modern.

Cynthia comes to a bridge and stops halfway across to look over the side.

Dear Alec . . . it would destroy you.

A fling, then? He alluded to it. Cynthia is not averse to the idea, but she senses danger comes with it. Alec is the sort of man who could not take a mistress without trying to save her, and she would quickly tire of his good intentions. He kept mentioning a year, but he did not call it that. He called it “twelve months.” Twelve months is “short,” twelve months “soon goes by.” Oh yes, I see it now, you would have us make a commitment for this length of time and no hurt feelings at the end . . . ? I know you, Alec, and I know myself, and in one year you think you could change my mind for me, and in one year we would be farther apart than we already are.