Motherland (28 page)

When they reach the sheep barn by the road, Pamela has already climbed into the back of Kitty’s ten-year-old Austin. She has the shiny pebbles in her open hands and is studying them intently.

‘Put on a jersey, darling,’ says Kitty. ‘It’ll be blowy driving home.’

Pamela shakes her head. Kitty gets into the driver’s seat, with Hugo beside her.

‘Feels strange being driven by a girl,’ he says.

‘I’m a trained driver,’ says Kitty. ‘And I’m not a girl any more.’

The shiny black open-topped Bantam is her car, and she maintains it in perfect condition. Now that Pamela is getting bigger Kitty is rediscovering the self that existed before motherhood. She recalls her days as an army driver wistfully, almost envying
her past. Of course she’s a wife as well as a mother, but Ed is away so much. The business is proving very slow to get up on its feet. The top end of the market is dominated by the old-established firms, and the bottom end, where Caulder & Avenell aim to carve their niche, is virtually non-existent. They are having to create the demand that they hope to serve.

So Ed works hard, seeking out bargain wines from remote vineyards, building up a stock of such value for money that even the wine-averse English might be tempted to try a bottle.

‘Reliable quality plus a visible name,’ Larry tells him, offering his knowledge of the banana business. ‘What you need is little blue labels.’

‘I’m not sticking little blue labels on our bottles,’ says Ed. ‘You don’t stick little blue labels on your pictures.’

‘I expect I should,’ says Larry. ‘Then maybe I’d sell more.’

Kitty finds Ed’s trips abroad hard. When he’s home, when he’s in her bed, in her arms, her life makes sense to her. But then he goes away again, and the bed is empty once more.

‘You don’t have to go so soon, do you, darling?’

‘It’ll only be like this for a year or so,’ he says. ‘Once we’re properly up and running, I’ll be able to be a gentleman of leisure.’

‘I just miss you so,’ she says.

‘And I miss you, darling. But I’m doing it for you. And for Pammy. You know that.’

Pamela doesn’t know it.

‘Don’t go, Daddy,’ she says, clinging to him.

But he goes.

*

At the end of August Larry Cornford takes a train to Lewes and from there walks down the long and winding road to Edenfield.
He carries a change of clothes and his paints and brushes in an old army kitbag. He keeps to the high grass verge, clear of the lorries rumbling to Newhaven. Once round the flank of the Downs he can see the village in the river valley below, and the church with its square tower, and the red roofs of the farmhouse behind it. He has not announced his coming and is not expected, but he has the sensation that the valley welcomes him back.

The farmyard looks much the same as when he was billeted here, except that the barn doors are open, and within he can make out stacks of wooden crates. A young man appears, carrying a crate out to the open back of a big van. Seeing Larry he gives a friendly nod and loads the crate into the van.

‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Can I help?’

‘I’m a friend of Ed’s,’ says Larry.

‘Ed’s away,’ says the young man. ‘Kitty’s here.’

Larry turns to the house, and there in the doorway stands Kitty, looking towards him. For a moment as their eyes meet neither speaks. Then Pamela appears, pushing past her mother, and stares at Larry.

‘Who’s that?’ she says.

‘That’s Larry,’ says Kitty. ‘He’s Daddy’s best friend. He came to see us when we lived in the big house. You said he was nice.’

‘I don’t remember,’ says the little girl.

‘He is nice,’ says Kitty.

All this time her eyes hold Larry’s, telling him how deeply quietly pleased she is to see him.

‘Hello, Pamela,’ says Larry.

‘Hello,’ says the little girl, looking from him to her mother and back.

‘Did you walk from Lewes?’ says Kitty.

‘Yes,’ says Larry. ‘It’s only an hour or so.’

‘Come on in.’

She looks the same and different. A little older, a little wearier. She’s wearing a cotton summer frock that makes her slight figure seem vulnerable. Her wide mouth unsmiling, her deep brown eyes steady beneath those strongly-defined eyebrows. A pale face framed in dark waves of hair. What is it that makes one face so much more beautiful than all others? Seeing her standing there in the farmhouse kitchen doorway, her little girl tugging at her skirt, Larry abandons what remains of his defences. He knows he will never love anyone as he loves her.

Hugo Caulder joins them over a pot of tea in the kitchen. He talks about the wine trade, and remote French vineyards still recovering from the war years where extraordinary deals are to be done, and his dream of having his own premises in London.

‘In Bury Street, or maybe even in St James’s Street. Then we’d start selling the fine wines as well.’

‘When does Ed get back?’ Larry asks.

‘He’ll be away at least another two weeks,’ Kitty says.

Hugo returns to loading his van.

‘So will you stay?’ says Kitty.

‘If I may,’ says Larry. ‘This is no weather for stewing in town.’

Hugo drives away in his loaded van. Kitty makes a potato omelette for their supper, and gives Larry a bottle of Vin de Pays d’Oc to open.

‘Ed’s best,’ she says. ‘To celebrate your visit.’

She waits until Pamela is asleep to ask the waiting questions.

‘So how’s Nell?’

‘Nell’s thriving. She’s away right now. A buying trip, with her boss.’

‘You can bring her down here any time, you know. She’d be very welcome.’

‘Yes, of course. Thank you.’

He lets a silence fall between them. As always, these silences act as gear changes, moments in neutral before the shift to a slower speed.

‘She’s an unusual girl, Nell.’ He wants very much to tell Kitty about the baby, but something holds him back. ‘She always had a thing about being independent. She has her job at the gallery, she earns far more money than I do. She knows I like to spend a lot of my time alone. So it works out quite well, really.’

‘It sounds like you’re leading separate lives.’

‘No, not separate. We’re very close.’ He realises he sounds as if he’s making excuses for her. ‘It’s hard to explain. She hates to make demands on me.’

He can see Kitty’s lovely face puzzling over what he tells her, unable to make sense of it. He wants so much to touch her. But things are as they are, and he must make the best of it.

‘She sounds a bit like Ed,’ she says.

‘You mustn’t think I’m complaining,’ he says. ‘She’s warm, and loving.’

‘Maybe she’s waiting for you to propose.’

‘I’ve done that.’

‘You’ve proposed!’

‘She says she’s thinking about it.’

‘Well!’ Now Kitty is awestruck. ‘She must be a fool.’

But her tone of voice says otherwise. Her tone of voice shows Nell has risen sharply in her estimation.

‘She’s not a fool,’ says Larry. ‘She just doesn’t want to compromise. Her parents have a bad marriage. She wants to be sure.’

‘And she’s not sure about you.’

‘Apparently not.’

‘How do you feel about that?’

‘A bit odd, to be honest.’

‘You’re a good man, Larry. A rare man. What more does she want?’

‘Who knows? It’s not as if I’m such a terrific catch.’

‘You know that’s not true. But who am I to talk? We all play that game.’

‘What game?’ says Larry.

She gets up and starts clearing the table, speaking lightly as she works, to make out it’s no more than idle chatter.

‘Doing yourself down. Feeling you’re not really worth very much at all. Thinking you haven’t much to offer anybody. And there’s the one person you’re supposed to make happy, and you can’t even do that.’

Larry understands then that she’s telling him about herself.

‘So what are we supposed to do about it?’ he says.

‘Try harder. Be more loving.’ Stacking plates in the sink. ‘Stop minding about our own happiness.’

So she’s unhappy. He feels a sharp pang, both painful and sweet.

‘He’s away too much, isn’t he?’ he says.

‘He works so hard.’ Now she’s standing still, her hands on the draining board, her head bent. ‘He’s doing it for us, so we don’t have to live on George and Louisa’s charity. So we can have a house of our own. He’s thinking of Pammy and schools and all the things that need money. But I’d rather have him than the money.’

‘Of course you would,’ says Larry.

She looks up then, searching his face for clues.

‘Why doesn’t he know that?’

‘That’s how Ed is,’ says Larry. ‘He never does anything halfway. He’s decided this is what he has to do, and he’s doing it as well as he can.’

‘What if it’s because he doesn’t love me any more?’

‘No!’ Larry’s denial is immediate, urgent. Too urgent. ‘Ed adores you. You know that.’

‘Do I? I don’t see why he should.’

‘Kitty! What nonsense is this? Everyone adores you. You’d have to be blind not to see it.’

‘Oh, that.’ She passes one hand across her face, as if waving away a buzzing fly. ‘That’s just how you look. That’s nothing.’

‘But that’s only the start of it! You’re so much more than just a pretty girl.’

‘I don’t see how.’

She seems to mean it. There’s a sadness in her voice that shocks him. How can she not know her own value?

‘Ed loves you because you’re beautiful and loyal and kind-hearted. He loves you because you’re strong and don’t weigh him down. He loves you because you understand things without having to be told them. He loves you because you don’t ask him to be someone he isn’t. Most of all, he loves you because you love him.’

He’s looking at her as he speaks, and he can’t help it, his eyes are giving him away. But what is there to give away? Kitty has known his feelings for her for a long time.

‘Does he talk to you about me?’ she says.

‘Sometimes.’

‘Does he say he loves me?’

‘Many times.’

‘All he says to me is that he doesn’t deserve me.’

‘Yes,’ says Larry. ‘He says that too.’

‘You know what?’ she says. ‘I think it’s because of that damned beach at Dieppe. That’s where it all started.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I think that day did something to Ed. I don’t know what. He won’t talk about it. He hates it when anyone asks him about his VC. Why’s he like that, Larry? So many people saw what he did on that beach. Why won’t he talk about it? What happened to him there?’

‘Something happened to all of us,’ says Larry. ‘It’s hard to explain. You’d have to have been there. It was like the end of the world.’

‘Is that what Ed thought? It was the end of the world?’

‘It was all so stupid and pointless. Just a gigantic mistake, really. We all saw that. But Ed – he just went crazy. He was so angry he didn’t care if he lived or died. He didn’t even try to protect himself. He kept thinking it’d be his turn next, but his turn never came. He says it was just luck. And I think he feels he doesn’t deserve his luck. I think some part of him feels he should have died on that beach.’

Kitty listens in silence. Larry is picking his words carefully, protecting her from the single most devastating cry that burst from Ed that night they talked in the chapel:
I wanted to die
. How can he say this to Kitty? Did he not want to live for her?

‘Thank you,’ Kitty says. ‘That helps me.’

‘But he should talk to you about all this himself.’

‘People don’t always talk about things.’

But you and I talk, Larry wants to say. You and I talk about
everything and anything. There’s nothing I can’t say to you.

‘It was different for me on that beach.’ Suddenly he realises he’s going to tell her what he’s told nobody except Ed. ‘I was a coward on that beach.’

‘Oh, Larry. Everyone must have been terrified.’

‘All I did was take cover. All I could think about was saving myself.’

‘Anyone would’ve been the same.’

‘No. There were a lot of brave men that day. I just wasn’t one of them.’

She smiles at him.

‘That damned beach,’ she says.

Larry feels a weight roll off him, a weight he’s been carrying for four years. He has told Kitty his shameful secret, and she doesn’t mind. It seems to make no difference. He’s flooded with love and gratitude; but this, unlike his shame, must remain unspoken.

There’s something else he isn’t telling Kitty, too. He isn’t telling her about Nell and the baby.

*

Larry spends the next day painting. He sets up a board in the farmyard, using the split-chestnut rails as an easel. For a while Pamela watches him at work, saying nothing.

So long as he’s absorbed in his painting he has no dreams and no regrets. This is the joy of it, the way it allows him to escape his own uncertain self, and live in another space. There, within the frame of his chosen image, the complexities are limitless, the challenges insurmountable, but he himself almost ceases to exist.

Kitty comes out to tell him George and Louisa will join them for supper. She looks at the work in progress.

‘Caburn again,’ she says.

At supper Louisa is eager to hear news of the artist’s model who poses naked.

‘She doesn’t do that any more,’ says Larry.

‘But is she still your girlfriend? Isn’t it time you settled down? How old are you, Larry?’

‘I’m twenty-eight.’

‘Leave the poor man alone, Louisa,’ says Kitty.

‘Well, you know what they say,’ says Louisa. ‘You’re not a man until you’ve planted a tree, had a son, and something else I forget.’

Louisa is desperate to have a baby, and makes no attempt to conceal it.

‘A woman, a dog and a walnut tree,’ says George, ‘the more you beat them the better they be.’

‘What on earth is he talking about?’ says Louisa.

‘Old English proverb,’ says George.

‘How extraordinary! The things he comes up with!’

*

Lying in bed that night, back in the room he occupied in the summer of ’42, Larry thinks to himself of the baby waiting to be born, who might indeed be a son. It seems to him that Louisa is right. He isn’t yet a man.

‘So how were your friends in Sussex?’ says Nell. ‘Did you tell them about me?’