Moon Tiger (28 page)

Lisa, though, finds his personality excessive and embarrassing; despite (or maybe because of) her own ancestry. When she was young and obliged to consort with him from time to time because still within my orbit, she was as stiff and aloof as she could get away with. After her marriage she distanced herself firmly from him, and saw him only at unavoidable family events: birthdays, weddings and funerals. Laszlo, who would like to love and be loved by her, always leaps at her like a friendly puppy, and withdraws bewildered and hurt; he never learns.

*

‘Many happy returns of the day,’ says Lisa. She lays the parcel on the table and puts her cheek, for a moment, against Claudia’s, drawing back even as she does so.

Claudia opens the parcel. ‘Just what I need. Thank you.’

‘I hope the colour is right.’

‘The colour is perfect. Black goes with everything, after all.’ They both consider the sensible matronly handbag.

Lisa sits down. ‘I thought Laszlo was coming.’

‘He is. He’ll be here any minute. I’ve booked a table at the Greek place.’

Lisa looks around the room, infinitely familiar and in which she has never felt at home. It is Claudia’s room, full of Claudia’s things, thick with Claudia’s presence; as a child, she used to feel as though she might stifle in it.

‘What are all those enormous boxes in the hall?’

‘Wine,’ says Claudia.

‘
Wine
?’

Laszlo’s present. Seventy bottles. One for each year.

Lisa feels outrage well up within her. ‘But you’ll never…’

‘I’ll never get through it? I daresay not.’

Lisa flushes. ‘Typical Laszlo.’

‘Quite. But stylish, you must admit. It’s rather good wine, too. Perhaps you should take a bottle back for Harry.’

‘He has a regular order with the Wine Society.’

‘Ah,’ says Claudia. ‘Then best not to interfere.’

The doorbell rings. Lisa sits tensely listening to the sounds of Laszlo’s arrival, his greeting of Claudia, their laughter. He comes in, cries, ‘Lisa darling it is so long since I saw you, and looking so… so fine in that pretty dress.’ He advances on her to embrace but she has withdrawn behind the fence of a long low coffee table and he is reduced to blowing a kiss across it. Lisa says, ‘Oh, hello, Laszlo. How are you?’

‘I am well. But never mind about me today – it is for the birthday we are here, the celebration of seventy Claudia years! Isn’t she terrific!’ He flings his arms out towards Claudia, like an impresario with a discovery.

‘Yes,’ says Lisa, looking at the floor.

‘So we are this nice cosy party,’ says Laszlo. ‘Just us three. Excellent. And this wonderful article in the Sunday paper, Henry brought it for me – did you see it, Lisa? Your mother writing so wonderfully of the war, of Egypt, all these things of which you talk so little, Claudia. Practically never do you talk of that time. And now this article. And this photograph. Young Claudia, so beautiful, sitting on a lorry in the sand. Wonderful!’

Lisa, who has also read the article with attention, looks at her mother. ‘I’d never seen that photo.’

‘I found it at the back of a drawer,’ says Claudia. ‘Thought they might as well use it.’

Laszlo carefully folds the crumpled sheet of newspaper. ‘I was very proud. I have shown it to everyone. It is so long since you wrote a piece like this.’

‘Why did you?’ asks Lisa.

‘Oh, an editor had been badgering me,’ says Claudia. ‘And I felt like it. All my generation seem to be busy turning their pasts to good account, so why not me?’

‘So now you will tell us more,’ says Laszlo gaily. ‘Over dinner. All the interesting things you did not write for the newspaper. All the officers who were running after you, all the boyfriends. Promise!’

Lisa clears her throat. ‘Oughtn’t we to be getting to the restaurant?’ She rises, gathers up her possessions. ‘Have you had any other nice presents, mother?’

Mother. Thus, in mid-life, has Lisa won a small victory. Claudia prickles with irritation but is amused all the same. Lisa is conferring dowager status, determinedly. Well, if it gives her pleasure…

But no, she thinks, as they walk to the restaurant, I am not going to tell you about my other present, my undreamed of present, not now nor ever, not you or anyone. Nice is certainly not the word, though what the word would be I do not know, because I am still swept up by it, I can’t yet think coherently about it, I am disordered.

And to fend off Laszlo’s teasing, to forestall his questions, she talks loudly of other things, becomes involved with waiters and menus, with who is going to have what and what there is to be had; if I am to be cast as a matriarch, she thinks, I may as well do the thing properly. And somewhere beyond or within, another Claudia looks on with amusement. And regret. And disbelief. Is this true? This strident bossy old woman; these blotched veined hands opening a napkin; and these companions – who are they?

For a moment she is someone else, and then she returns and sees Laszlo looking across the table at her, asking something.

‘So who took the photograph?’ he says. ‘Which of the handsome officers? Who is it you are smiling at so beautifully?’

She is smiling now, she has the look of the girl in the photograph, now in the dim warm light of the restaurant, but as he speaks the smile is switched off and she becomes another Claudia – oh, a Claudia he knows all too well – tart dismissive Claudia, and she says, ‘I forget,’ and turns to Lisa and asks about the grandsons, the dreadful grandsons who thank goodness are away at school so cannot be here, and boring Harry cannot be here either because Claudia probably did not ask him so there is just poor pale Lisa in her safe prim dress, all on edge as she always is with her mother. Better it were just Claudia and me, thinks Laszlo, but never mind. Lisa is after all the daughter, though goodness knows how, never would you think it, so mousy, like a shadow beside Claudia, but of course that is the trouble. And he remembers, kindly, indulgently, spiky fifteen-year-old Lisa and distracted maternal Lisa with her yowling babies. You could not imagine Claudia with a yowling baby, and perhaps that too is the trouble, he thinks wisely, Lisa of course was looked after by the grandmothers, perhaps there is a problem there too.

Always I have been a little in love with Claudia, he thinks. Always Claudia has seemed brighter cleverer more entertaining than other people, always I could talk to Claudia about anything, always when you leave Claudia you go flat a little.
Henry does not like Claudia, he is jealous, also he is afraid of her – lots of people are afraid of Claudia. But not me. I am not clever like Claudia but never has she squashed me like sometimes she squashes people, always she has listened to me, even if she laughed at me too. We have quarrelled, but always we have become friends again at once.

Lisa is speaking now of Jasper, coolly; she has taken the sons to visit him, he gave them money for bicycles. Rich, benevolent Jasper. At the thought of Jasper Laszlo curdles with dislike; never should Claudia have been involved with a man like Jasper, a hollow man, an
entrepreneur
, not worth her time. For an affair, perhaps, a little love affair, but not for so long, off and on, years and years, why do people make such mistakes? But Claudia has not good taste in men for a woman so brilliant, so handsome it is extraordinary. Laszlo reviews, silently, various men, and his disapproval must be reflected in his face, for Claudia asks him what he is looking so ferocious about. ‘Not ferocious,’ he says. ‘Not ferocious at all. Just I was thinking about some people.’

Except the brother, with whom she was so close. Laszlo thinks about Gordon, and his expression changes yet again. There was something strange there – Claudia and Gordon, something not quite like sister and brother, they seemed set apart when they were together, they made you feel you were not there. And I was a little afraid of Gordon, Laszlo tells himself, if I am honest I was always a little afraid, I had to try to please, to be careful.

‘And now you’ve got your hangdog expression on,’ says Claudia. ‘I thought we were celebrating my seventy misspent years. Entertain me, please!’

16

‘Someone brought this,’ says the nurse. ‘You were asleep so he just said to tell you Laszlo left it.’

And when she has gone Claudia unties the string, opens the envelope and takes out an old exercise book, stained, dog-eared. Her movements are slow, her hands fumble. She stares at it for a moment, then reaches out to the bedside table for her glasses, which takes more time, and effort. She puts them on and opens the exercise book.

The first time I saw it – recognised the handwriting – I felt as though I had been struck. I went numb. Then hot. Then cold. I put it down and read the letter, his sister’s letter, brief and to the point: ‘Dear Miss Hampton, Having seen your article on being a war correspondent in the Western Desert I realise that you must be the C. referred to by my brother Tom Southern in his diary. He spoke of you in letters to us, but never gave your name. I think you should have the diary, so here it is. Yours sincerely, Jennifer Southern.’

After that I read the diary, as I do again now.

It is a light green exercise book with CAHIER on the front in black letters. Ruled paper, rough and grainy. He has written in pencil. The entries are undated, and separated from one another by a wavy line.

This written God knows where, on a day in 1942. At an hour’s notice to move off. So time to draw breath, have a brew-up. Fitters cursing over new tanks, two delivered last night, Grants, which we haven’t had, half the equipment missing, guns still swimming in oil. Not my headache though – our troop came through yesterday unscathed. Can’t put down yesterday as it happened, what we did, who we met, who did what to whom – so let me try to record what it was like. For C., perhaps – what I tried to tell her that first time we met, and failed I think.

The blackness of moving out of leaguer before dawn. Sandstorm too, so howling blackness full of sound and smell – rest of the squadron roaring away out there, interminable whistle and crackle of one’s headphones, fuel stink. Then grey light turning to pink, orange. Moment of uplift when you see everyone else, long shapes of the Crusaders riding ridges – going fifteen-twenty miles an hour – sense of the whole place being on the move, more of us than there really are. Last call-up from the CO, then hours of wireless silence during advance. Hours? Or minutes? Time is not time any more, in any proper sense. Becomes simply the hands on one’s watch, the CO’s voice – ‘Report to me in figures five minutes – we move off at figures 0500 hours – fire in figures three minutes.’ You don’t remember further back than half an hour. You don’t anticipate except in your stomach.

Fear. Worst always before battle, not during. The fear of fear. Of being paralysed with it when the time comes, not being able to function, doing something bloody silly. In action it becomes something else. Keys you up. Saw my own hands shaking yesterday, once, looked down and saw them as someone else’s, juddering on the edge of the turret, but my head quite clear, voice coming out normal or thereabouts, telling driver this, operator that, reporting our position, reporting tanks spotted at seven thousand yards, recording assessing predicting all as though some other self takes over. Only the hands a giveaway. Banged them down on the cover to get them under control and burned them on the hot metal. Which maddened me the rest of the day.

Sunset now. So we leaguer here, get some sleep pray God, we had damn all last night, everyone doing repairs till all hours, racket like an assembly line, and explosions every few minutes from enemy ammunition dump going up in the next wadi. Lay looking at stars and thinking. No, not thinking. You don’t think, just fetch out some images and have a look at them. Other times, other places. Other people. C. Always C.

A week on. I think. During which not a moment for this – either going flat out, in the thick of it, or too exhausted to do anything but collapse till the next move. Even if it were expedient I couldn’t say now what came before what, where we were when, how this happened or that, in the mind it’s not a sequence just a single event without beginning or end in any proper sense simply a continuity spiked by moments of intensity that ring in the head still. Looking down to see that my loader is hit, blood pouring from his neck but he doesn’t seem to realise is still loading still shouting something and I have to reach out and touch him to get his attention. Dust in the turret so thick that we can’t see each other’s faces, I can’t see the map unless I hold it inches from my nose. Sick flop in the belly when one of my own troop brews up, that awful belch of orange then thick black smoke, and watching to see if anyone bales out and no one does, not one. Different sick feeling when what I thought was an enemy derelict comes to life and starts firing. Flare of exhilaration when enemy reported retreating, we are to pursue – sitting up on the turret squinting through field-glasses searching for tell-tale dust on the horizon I feel nothing but primitive lust for chase, no fear, that bone-cracking exhaustion gone, just this instinct like a pack of hounds. And, later, am ashamed and amazed.