Motherland (8 page)

He crosses to the high window and stands looking out at the park and the distant rows of Nissen huts. Kitty understands that he’s leading up to something.

‘The world has changed so much, hasn’t it?’ he says.

‘War does that,’ says Kitty.

‘People come and go. They live and die. You can’t stand on ceremony any more. My father has left me a relatively wealthy man. That must be worth something, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, yes,’ says Kitty.

‘But this eyesight business isn’t so good. Rather clips my wings. Cramps my style. No point in complaining. There are pros and cons to every venture you undertake. Are you a reader?’

‘Yes,’ says Kitty. ‘I love reading.’

‘I’m not so much of a reader myself. I find it tires me. Anyway, the thing is this. What do you say about it? Is it something you could contemplate? Or do you recoil in horror?’

Kitty’s about to say he’s not made himself clear, when she stops herself. Of course he’s made himself clear. She’s known from the moment he finished his porridge in the kitchen. He doesn’t deserve to be forced into the humiliation of speaking the plain words.

‘Earlier this morning,’ she says, ‘I was at Newhaven watching the men go into the boats. Wherever they’re going, they’re going into danger. And you see, among them is the man I love.’

Strange to be saying these words to someone she barely knows; words she has not yet said to Ed.

‘The man you love,’ says George. ‘Yes. Of course.’

‘I shall be there on the quayside when he returns.’

‘Quite right. Quite right.’

He moves away down the long empty room. His arms hang loosely by his sides, as if he’s lost the use of them.

‘I should report back to my section leader,’ says Kitty.

‘Yes, of course.’

He’s standing before the carved stone mantelpiece, gazing at the framed photographs arrayed there.

‘My mother,’ he says, indicating one of the photographs. ‘If you go into the chapel, there’s a plaque on the south wall. It says, “In memory of a faithful wife and a loving mother.” I could have said much more, but in the end that seemed to cover it. A faithful wife. A loving mother. What more can a man ask?’

Kitty leaves him with his photographs and his memories. She wants to be out of this house. It’s too full of sadness.

She finds Louisa in the Motor Transport Office in A Block.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ says Kitty. ‘No one’ll miss us.’

They ride their bikes down the Eastbourne road as the clouds gather and the sky darkens. They’ve just reached the Cricketers in Berwick when the rain starts to fall. There, wet and panting and pink-cheeked, they beg the bar girl for something – anything – to eat, and she brings them cold boiled potatoes. Two farm workers come in to escape the rain and stare at them.

‘Don’t know why we bother,’ they grumble to each other. ‘Could have done with this back in April.’

By silent agreement Kitty and Louisa don’t talk about the great military operation now under way. Kitty tells Louisa about George Holland.

‘I knew it,’ says Louisa. ‘I could tell from the way he watched you like a dog waiting for his dinner.’

‘Poor George. He always looks so lost.’

‘Not all that poor. He’s a millionaire, and a lord. There’s a limit to how sorry you can feel for him.’

‘Anyway, I told him my heart was pledged to another.’

‘Even though that’s a whopping lie.’

‘Actually it isn’t,’ says Kitty. ‘It turns out I’m in love with Ed.’

‘Kitty! When did this happen?’

‘I don’t quite know. I only realised it this morning, when I was watching the boys going away. I just want him to come home safe.’

‘Oh, Kitty.’ Louisa is touched by Kitty’s trembling voice. ‘Have you really fallen in love at last?’

‘I think so. I’m not sure.’

The rain passes, blown away by strong south-westerly winds. They bicycle home down the empty road, side by side, with the wind on their backs.

‘So what’s going to happen to poor George?’ says Louisa.

‘He’ll be fine,’ says Kitty. ‘Some strong-minded female will gobble him up.’

‘You make him sound like a canapé.’

‘He’s rich and titled. Someone’ll have him.’

‘What about poor Stephen?’

‘I’ll write to him. Oh, God. Isn’t it all difficult?’

‘You know what,’ says Louisa, ‘now that you’re out of the running with George, I might have a go myself.’

Kitty wobbles wildly on her bike and regains control.

‘Are you serious? You know he’s practically blind?’

‘I haven’t had a single proposal, Kitty. My people have no money to speak of. God has billeted me in the house of a young unmarried man with a title and a fortune. It would be ungrateful to the Almighty not to give it a shot.’

Kitty pedals on without further comment.

‘I expect you despise me for seeing things this way,’ Louisa says.

‘No, not at all,’ says Kitty. ‘I just want you to be happy.’

‘Don’t you think I’d be happy with George?’

‘If you loved him you would.’

‘If he marries me,’ says Louisa simply, ‘I shall love him.’

They bicycle down the back lane into the camp. A small crowd has gathered round the front of the NAAFI to share such news as there is. Everyone is asking if this is the start of the second front.

Kitty sees Larry Cornford come out of the big house onto the west terrace. He gives her a wave, and they meet up in the lime avenue. They too talk about the big show.

‘I saw them go,’ says Kitty.

‘I don’t like this wind,’ says Larry. ‘They need calm seas for the crossing.’

‘Do you know where they’re going?’

‘I know,’ says Larry, ‘but I can’t say.’

‘Has to be somewhere in France.’

‘Nothing we can do now till they come back.’

Kitty says, ‘I think Ed’s with them.’

‘It’s quite likely.’

‘Will you promise to come and tell me if you hear anything?’

‘Yes, of course.’

They walk on in silence to the lake. The lake house stands empty before them.

‘How are you getting along with
Middlemarch
?’ says Larry.

‘I can’t read,’ says Kitty. ‘I can’t do anything.’

‘He’ll come back,’ says Larry.

‘You don’t know that. He may not.’

Larry says nothing to that.

‘At least you’ve not gone,’ she says. ‘You, and George.’

Larry looks away over the wind-ruffled lake.

‘I expect my turn will come,’ he says.

*

That night the winds grow stronger, and rattle the casement in the nursery window. Kitty sleeps fitfully, tormented by half-dreams in which Ed is reaching for her from a distance she can’t cross.

In the morning word spreads round the camp that the fleet is still standing offshore, and has not yet sailed. The forecast is that the weather will worsen. In the way of such things, half-understood terms are passed from mouth to mouth. ‘They’ll miss the tide.’ ‘The RAF won’t fly in this.’ ‘You need air cover for a big op.’

The day passes slowly. In the late afternoon rain begins to fall again. Larry rides over to Divisional HQ and takes part in a meeting with the Acting CO. When he comes out he goes looking for Kitty and finds her cleaning the Humber in the garage.

‘You could eat your dinner off that,’ he says.

‘What’s the news?’

‘The show’s off. Don’t say I told you.’

‘It’s off?’

‘All troops to be disembarked.’

‘He’ll come back?’

‘Yes.’

Kitty feels a surge of relief beyond her power to control. There in front of Larry’s kind concerned gaze she bursts into tears.

‘Honestly,’ she says, dabbing at her eyes, ‘what have I got to cry about now?’

Larry smiles and offers her a handkerchief.

‘He’s a lucky sod,’ he says. ‘I hope he knows it.’

‘You won’t tell him, will you?’

‘Not if you don’t want.’

‘It’s too silly, crying like that.’

‘If I was Ed,’ says Larry, ‘I’d be proud to know you cried for me.’

*

Just after six in the evening the order comes through for all drivers to muster at Newhaven harbour. Kitty makes the short journey with a light heart. No one has been wounded. No one has died. But as she sees the men file off the ships, all their former swagger gone, she realises that for them this is a kind of failure. Standing by her car, she scans the hundreds of moving figures for the group that will contain Ed, but she doesn’t find him. The trucks fill with men and grind past on the way back to the camp. Brigadier Wills comes stamping out to find her.

‘Good girl. I’ll be with you when I’ve seen to the navy chaps.’

So she waits on. She’s used to it. A staff driver spends more time waiting than driving. This is usually when she reads, but recent events have unsettled her. So she stays beside the car, watching the slow dispersal of an army.

Soldiers go by laughing, grumbling.

‘That was a fucking waste of time. I’d like to meet the genius dreamed that one up.’

One Canadian soldier mimics a British officer: ‘I say, you chaps! The colonials are getting restless. Let’s shut them in the
hold for twenty-four hours and spray them with vomit, eh, what?’

Their laughter recedes into the distance.

‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a dump like this?’

‘Ed!’

She spins round, eyes glowing, and there he is. He’s wearing rumpled battledress and carrying all sorts of bundles and his face is smeared with black. But underneath he’s just the same. The same cool gaze in those blue eyes.

‘Oh, Eddy!’

She throws her arms round him and kisses him. He holds her for a moment, and then gently eases her away.

‘There’s a welcome,’ he says.

‘I thought you’d never come back.’

‘No chance of that,’ he says. ‘We never even went away.’

‘Oh, Ed. I’m so happy.’

She can’t disguise how she feels, and makes no attempt to. He smiles to see her happiness.

‘Seeing you almost makes it worth it,’ he says.

‘Was it horrible?’

‘I’ll tell you,’ he says, ‘I’d rather parachute naked behind enemy lines than do that again.’

Kitty sees the brigadier heading across the yard towards the cars, accompanied by two of his staff.

‘When can I see you, Ed?’

‘Soon,’ he says. ‘I can’t give you a day. Very soon.’

His eyes rest on her, suddenly gentle in that wild black-smeared face.

‘My lovely angel,’ he says.

Then he’s gone.

The brigadier reaches the car.

‘Well, that was Operation Rutter,’ he says. ‘Now you see it, now you don’t.’

William Cornford is not an old man, but his bald head, together with a slight stoop in his posture, makes him appear more than his fifty or so years. He stands now in the doorway of the company offices at 95 Aldwych, feeling for his hat, watching as his son climbs off his motorbike. He hasn’t seen him for many weeks. He looks on as he removes his helmet and gloves, noting every remembered detail of the boy who is all his family, his only child, the one he loves more than himself.

Then his son is before him, reaching out one hand, and the old formality returns.

‘Spot on time,’ Larry says. ‘That’s what the army’s done to me.’

‘Good to see you.’ The father shakes the son’s hand. ‘Good to see you.’

‘So what’s the plan?’

‘Lunch at Rules, I thought. Give us a chance to catch up.’

They walk round Aldwych and up Catherine Street, talking as they go. Larry asks about the company, knowing that this is what occupies his father’s waking hours.

‘Difficult times,’ says William Cornford. ‘Very difficult. But we’ve managed to keep all our people on so far.’

This is a major achievement in itself, as Larry knows. Since November 1940 bananas have been a prohibited food.

‘No signs of a change of heart at the Ministry?’

‘No,’ says William Cornford. ‘Woolton has told me himself the ban is for the duration. At least I’ve managed to convince him to do something for the growers in Jamaica.’

‘The war can’t go on for ever.’

‘That’s what I tell our people. In the meantime, we’ve become the vegetable distribution arm of the Ministry of Food. When the war’s over, we’ll just have to start again from scratch.’

‘And how’s Cookie?’

Miss Cookson is his father’s housekeeper, at the family home in Kensington.

‘Same as ever. Asks after you. Do look her up some day.’

Larry realises they’ve walked on past their turning.

‘We should go down Tavistock Street, surely?’

‘I thought we might take a turn past the old building,’ says his father.

‘Isn’t that rather depressing?’ says Larry.

‘I find it has some value.
Lacrimae rerum
, you know.’

They walk up Bow Street to the place where the company headquarters building once stood. A direct hit in January last year destroyed the entire six-storey structure, leaving the tall side of the adjoining building standing, fireplaces exposed, doors agape. The site is still filled with rubble.

‘Fifty years,’ says William Cornford. ‘Almost my entire life. This is where my father built the company up from nothing.’

Larry too remembers it well. The dark panelled room where
his father worked. Where they had their one and only terrible quarrel.

‘Why are we here?’

‘Thirteen of our people died that night.’

‘Yes, Dad. I know.’

‘Eight company ships sunk since the start of hostilities. Over six hundred members of staff on active service. All still on the payroll.’

‘Yes, Dad. I know.’

‘This is the front line too, Larry. We’re fighting this war too.’

Larry says nothing to this. He understands what his father would like to say, but will never say. How does his son serve his country any better by wearing a uniform and riding a motorbike?

William Cornford was and remains deeply hurt that his son has not chosen to enter the family firm. The company built by his father, the first Lawrence Cornford, and made great by himself in the second generation, should be passed on, its culture and traditions intact, to the third. But Larry dreams a different dream.

Father and son walk on to Rules. They take their usual table under the stairs.