Motherland (50 page)

‘I should have died here,’ he says.

‘Maybe you did,’ says Larry. ‘Maybe I did.’

He walks up the beach a little way, fancying that he follows the path he took eight years ago.

‘There was a wrecked tank round about here,’ he says. ‘I sat down against it and prayed it would protect me.’

‘You prayed?’

‘No, you’re right. I don’t remember praying. I just remember the dead feeling of terror. You never felt that, Ed. I saw you. You weren’t afraid.’

‘I’ve always been afraid,’ says Ed. ‘I’ve been running away all my life. I’m still running.’

‘But why? Why are we so afraid? What is it we’re afraid of?’

No need to tell Ed he’s not talking about sniper bullets and mortar shells.

‘God knows,’ says Ed. Then he laughs. ‘Afraid of God, I expect. The God we’ve constructed so that we’re bound to fail in the end.’

‘Who says it has to be in the end?’ says Larry. ‘Some of us are failing right now.’

Ed turns on him, almost angry.

‘Don’t you talk like that! You’re the one who’s got it right. I need to know at least someone’s come through.’

‘You’ve got eyes, Ed.’

‘Geraldine?’

‘Yes.’

They walk on up to the promenade and sit down on the concrete wall. Below them bewildered farm boys from Alberta and Ontario died in their hundreds, on that day that happened somewhere else, long ago and far away.

‘Geraldine isn’t great on the physical side of things,’ says Larry.

‘Maybe she just needs time.’

‘Ed, it’s nearly three years.’

‘How bad is it?’

‘There is no physical side of things.’

‘Bloody hell,’ says Ed softly.

‘She tries, but she can’t.’

‘Bloody hell,’ says Ed again.

‘It’s not going to change. I know that now.’

‘So what do you do?’ says Ed.

‘What do you think? I don’t have a whole lot of choice.’

‘Are we talking tarts or wanking?’

‘Good old Ed. The latter.’

Ed gazes out over the sea to the horizon.

‘Remember the smoke?’ he says. ‘Bloody smoke over everything, so you didn’t know you were coming off the boats into the end of the world.’

‘I remember the smoke,’ says Larry.

‘You’re going to have to get out of this, my friend. Time to beat a retreat. Back to the boats and sail away.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not? Oh yes, your dumb religion.’

‘And yours.’

‘It’s a fairy story, chum. Don’t let them bully you.’

‘It still means something to me,’ says Larry. ‘It’s just too deep in me.’

‘Do you still go to confession?’

‘From time to time. I like it.’

‘Do you tell the priest about the wanking?’

Larry laughs.

‘No, not any more. It got too boring. And I knew I wasn’t going to stop.’

‘There’s faith for you. You know it’s nonsense but you let it ruin your life. Sometimes I swear to you I think the human race has a built-in need to suffer. When there aren’t enough plagues or earthquakes we have wars. When we run out of wars we turn our daily lives into misery.’

‘So what do you advise me to do?’ says Larry.

‘How would I know?’ says Ed. ‘I drink. But I don’t recommend it.’

Larry sighs.

‘Remember sitting in the library at school, with our feet up on the table, and you reading out the dirty bits from your illicit copy of
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
?’

‘Sex in the gamekeeper’s hut. As far as I can remember she had no underclothes, and slept through the whole thing.’

‘It was still exciting.’

‘That’s the trouble with sex. It’s never as good as when you’re sixteen years old and haven’t had it yet.’

‘So what do we do, Ed?’

‘We stumble on, chum. Stumble on in the smoke until that one merciful bullet finds us at last.’

Louisa is back home and a lot better, but one look at her and Kitty knows she’s not yet her old self. Little Billy hangs about her, clinging to her skirts, but she makes no objection when his nurse comes and carries him off for his tea.

‘I’m all right really,’ she tells Kitty, ‘but everything’s so tiring. I want to have Billy all the time, but I can’t manage it. Aren’t I hopeless?’

She gives Kitty one of her old mischievous smiles, but ends with a grimace.

‘Oh, Kitty. Were your babies such hard work?’

‘Of course,’ says Kitty loyally. ‘Having babies is hell.’

‘It’s like being disembowelled, isn’t it? But I should be over it by now.’

‘What do your doctors say?’

‘They can’t find anything wrong with me, which should be cheering but somehow isn’t. If only I could cough blood or something. At least then I’d know it wasn’t my own fault.’

‘Of course it’s not your own fault.’

Louisa is sitting on a sofa in the big drawing room with cushions
all round her and a little table by her side. Mrs Lott brings through a pot of tea and some home-made scones. Kitty offers to pour the tea.

‘Still, it’s good to be home,’ says Louisa.

Then she shakes her head and bites her lip and says, ‘No, it isn’t.’

Suddenly she sounds like a frightened child.

‘I’ve become so useless.’ She’s on the point of tears. ‘In the nursing home I sit about all day, doing nothing, and it’s restful. Here I sit about all day, not doing things I should be doing, and I feel terrible. What’s gone wrong with me, Kitty?’

‘It’ll pass,’ says Kitty. ‘You’ll get better.’

‘Darling Kitty. Do you mind if I tell you a secret?’

‘You say anything you want,’ says Kitty.

‘I’m so afraid I might never get better.’

‘Oh, rubbish!’ exclaims Kitty.

‘There is a good side to it, though. I’ve become much nicer to George. He turns out to be such a lovely man. And of course, he adores little Billy.’

‘You’re just feeling tired,’ says Kitty firmly. ‘People don’t just not get better for no reason.’

‘Well, I’ve thought about that,’ says Louisa. ‘Really, most things happen for no reason. We die for no reason. It’s not a punishment or anything. It’s like in the war. It’s all just chance. Remember Ed saying how he believed in luck?’

‘Yes,’ says Kitty.

‘We’ve had good times along the way, though, haven’t we?’

‘Yes,’ says Kitty.

George comes in to join them, and it’s marvellous to Kitty to see how his presence cheers Louisa. He sits by her side on the sofa and fusses over her.

‘Have another scone. You’re to be stuffed like a goose, doctor’s orders. She’s so much better, isn’t she, Kitty? Getting her colour back.’

‘She’s going to be just fine,’ says Kitty.

‘In the spring we’re going to go to the South of France,’ he tells Louisa. ‘To Menton. You and me and Billy. We’ll sit in the sunshine and watch the boats in the harbour and get lazy and fat, all three of us.’

‘Will we, George? I shall like that.’

*

Kitty collects Elizabeth from the kitchen, where she always goes when they visit the big house, and they walk back home across the park. Kitty is filled with troubled thoughts. Louisa has always been the one who laughs away such moments, the living proof that even as life lets you down there are good times to be had. Now the good times seem to be receding into the past.

I’m thirty years old, Kitty thinks. Don’t tell me it’s over.

They stop at the kissing gate out of the park and Elizabeth puts up her face to be kissed.

‘I do love you so much, darling,’ says Kitty.

When they get back to the farmhouse, there’s Hugo’s van in the yard, and Hugo himself in the kitchen. His presence is not welcome. Kitty is feeling too fragile to deal with his boyish flirtations.

‘What are you doing here, Hugo? You know Ed’s away.’

‘That’s why I’m here,’ he says. ‘To talk about Ed.’

‘I don’t want to talk about Ed.’

‘I want tea,’ says Elizabeth.

Kitty looks round a little distractedly, glancing at the clock, trying to calculate how long it will be before Pamela gets home
from school. She likes to have her tea ready on the table.

‘Soon, darling.’

Elizabeth runs off. Kitty puts the kettle on to boil.

‘You know it and I know it,’ says Hugo. ‘We’ve just never said it aloud.’

‘Know what?’

‘Ed’s drinking too much.’

‘Oh, God.’

Kitty knows she should sound surprised, even angry, but she can no longer summon up the energy to defend Ed.

‘He’s not really capable of doing the job any more,’ says Hugo.

She turns to look at Hugo, so serious, so earnest; the boy become a man.

‘I didn’t know it had got that bad,’ she says.

‘I’m getting calls from producers saying he’s showed up hours late, or not at all. The orders he places have to be rechecked by someone else, we’ve had so many errors. Last week we received a shipment of a hundred cases of rosé we’ve never stocked before. Ed couldn’t even remember placing the order.’

Kitty stares at him hopelessly.

‘Why are you telling me this, Hugo?’

‘As chairman of the firm,’ he says. ‘I’m going to have to ask him to take a leave of absence.’

Chairman of the firm. Leave of absence. And he’s still in his twenties.

‘Is that a nice way of saying you want him to go?’

‘That depends on whether he can sort himself out,’ says Hugo.

Kitty says nothing. The kettle boils. She takes it off the stove, but she stays standing there, one hand resting on its handle, as the steam dissipates into the air.

‘Look, Kitty, I like Ed. And I’m grateful to him. He’s worked like a Trojan building up the business. We probably have more contacts in provincial French vineyards than any other importer. But his heart just isn’t in it any more. I can’t let him damage the reputation of the firm.’ He pauses, looks down, gives a quick shake of his head. ‘And I hate seeing him hurt you.’

‘Hurt me?’

‘Come on. I’m not blind. He’s killing you, Kitty.’

‘Killing me?’

She repeats his words like a fool to play for time. Nothing Hugo says comes as a surprise, except for the fact that it’s Hugo who says it. If anything it’s a relief to hear it spoken aloud.

‘He’s stealing your life away from you. You’re so lovely and so kind-hearted and so … so full of light. And now, it’s as if he’s dimmed you. He’s letting your light fade. He gives you nothing, Kitty. You must see that. He’s stealing your spirit, because he has none of his own left.’

Kitty bites her lower lip to hold back the tears. This is so exactly what she feels that it frightens her.

‘But I love him,’ she whispers.

‘But he’s no good for you. You must see that.’

Tears brim in her eyes. Hugo jumps up and takes her in his arms.

‘You know how I feel about you,’ he says. ‘You’ve known from the beginning.’

‘No, Hugo— ’

‘Why not? Aren’t you at least allowed to live?’

It’s too much for Kitty. The tears flow, and as she weeps he kisses her: at first as if to brush away the tears, and then on the mouth. She doesn’t push him away. She has no resistance left.
And it’s good to be wanted, and held in a man’s arms, if only for a moment.

A clatter at the door. She looks round. There’s Pamela, frozen on the threshold, staring at her.

She backs away from Hugo and wipes her eyes.

‘And I haven’t even got the children’s tea on the table,’ she says.

‘Hello, Pammy,’ says Hugo.

Pamela says nothing. Elizabeth comes pushing into the kitchen from behind her.

‘I’m so hungry,’ she says, ‘I’m going to die.’

‘You shut up, Monkey,’ says Pamela, her eyes still on her mother.

‘I won’t shut up!’ says Elizabeth. ‘And don’t call me Monkey!’

Kitty is now in motion, putting out bread and butter and honey, milk and biscuits.

‘Monkey, Monkey, Monkey,’ says Pamela.

‘Now, Pamela,’ says Hugo.

‘You’re not my father,’ says Pamela.

‘Tell her not to call me Monkey,’ Elizabeth cries, tugging at her mother’s skirt.

‘You know she doesn’t like it, Pammy,’ says Kitty.

‘Why do you side with her always?’ Pamela is suddenly furious. ‘Why is it always me who’s wrong? Why do you hate me?’

‘I don’t hate you, darling.’

Kitty is overwhelmed. It’s all too much. She wants to sit down and cry until she can cry no more.

‘You know I don’t like Rich Tea biscuits, so why do you get them?’ Pamela senses her mother’s weakness, and attacks with all the cruelty of a self-righteous seven-year-old. ‘I don’t
know why I even come home. The food’s always dull or horrid. We never have cakes with icing, like Jean has, or chocolate milk. I wish I lived in Jean’s house and Jean’s mummy was my mummy.’

‘Pamela!’ says Hugo sharply. ‘That’s enough.’

Pamela turns her burning eyes on him.

‘Oh, yes,’ she says. ‘It’s enough.’

She goes back out into the hall and can be heard running up the stairs.

Kitty proceeds with the automatic tasks of slicing and buttering bread, and pouring milk into glasses.

‘You’d better go, Hugo,’ she says. ‘I’ll talk to Ed.’

‘Are you sure?’ says Hugo. ‘You don’t want me to go to Pamela?’

‘No. It’ll only make things worse.’

She puts out the tea for Elizabeth.

‘Here you are, darling. Do you want me to spread the honey for you?’

‘I’ll do it,’ says Elizabeth happily. Then as she spoons out unwarranted amounts of honey, ‘I don’t want to live in Jean’s house. I want to live here.’

*

Kitty meets Larry off the train at Lewes. Driving back, she asks after Geraldine, who is spending a week in Arundel with her parents.

‘Geraldine’s fine,’ says Larry.

Pamela and Elizabeth greet Larry with cries of joy, and fight over who’s to sit on his lap. Kitty looks on with a smile.

‘Sometimes I think they see more of you than they do of Ed.’

‘Pure cupboard love,’ says Larry, searching his weekend bag. ‘Now what have I got here?’

He takes out two small packets of sweet buttery biscuits from Normandy.

‘And the bananas!’ cries Elizabeth.

‘Bananas?’ says Larry. ‘What bananas?’

His gifts are always much anticipated, always the same. He takes a bunch of ripe bananas from his bag and hands them over. The girls retire to gorge.