Motherland (9 page)

‘Not what it was, of course,’ says William Cornford, glancing over the menu. ‘But they’ve still got shepherd’s pie.’

‘So how’s Bennett?’ says Larry.

‘At his desk every morning. You know he’ll be seventy this year?’

‘I don’t believe he ever actually goes home.’

‘He asks after you from time to time. Maybe you could stop by after lunch and give him five minutes.’

‘Yes, of course.’

The long-serving employees of the company are Larry’s greater family. Most of them still believe he’ll take his proper place in the hierarchy in time.

William Cornford studies the wine list.

‘Care to share a bottle of Côte Rôtie?’

Larry asks his father to tell him more about the trading conditions of the company, framing his questions to show he understands the current difficulties; aware there’s no one else his father can speak to of his worries.

‘The branch depots are actually all running at full capacity, believe it or not. But the truth is I’ve been turned into a sort of a civil servant. I have to take my orders from the Ministry, which goes against the grain a little. I’ve never been a man for committees.’

‘My God! You must hate it.’

‘I’m not as patient as perhaps I should be.’

He gives his son a quick shy smile.

‘But I expect you have your frustrations too.’

‘Soldiering is ninety-nine per cent frustration,’ says Larry.

‘And the other one per cent?’

‘They say it’s terror.’

‘Ah, yes,’ says William Cornford. ‘Battle.’

He himself has never been a soldier. In the Great War he remained in the company, which was then the nation’s sole importer of fruit. Larry fully understands his father’s complex feelings about his son’s war service. He represents the family on the sacrificial altar of war, even as he deserts the company in its hour of need.

‘So is Mountbatten looking after you?’ his father asks him.

‘Oh, I’m just a glorified messenger boy.’

‘Still, I don’t want you to come to any harm.’

This is the war his father has arranged for him: if not safe in Fyffes, then safe in a headquarters building in London.

‘As it happens,’ Larry says, ‘the division I’m attached to looks like it’s going into action soon.’

He sees his father’s face, and at once regrets his words. He feels ashamed of pretending to a coming military action that will give his father sleepless nights.

‘Though I doubt if they’ll be taking me along. I’m afraid I’m doomed to be a paper-pusher.’

The wine comes. His father thanks the waiter with his usual courtesy.

‘An excellent Rhône,’ he says. ‘We shall drink to the liberation of France.’

‘Do you have any news of the house?’

The family has a house in Normandy, in the Forêt d’Eawy.

‘I believe it’s been requisitioned by German officers,’ says his father.

He meets his son’s eyes over their raised glasses. They share a love of France. For William Cornford it’s the land of the great cathedrals: Amiens, Chartres, Albi, Beauvais. For Larry it’s the land of Courbet and Cézanne.

‘To France,’ says Larry.

*

With the cancellation of Operation Rutter an uneasy calm settles over the Sussex countryside. The thousands of troops encamped on the Downs resume the training exercises designed more to occupy them than to raise their fighting form. More beer is drunk in the long evenings, and more brawls break out in the warm nights. The storms of early July pass, leaving overcast skies
and a heavy sunless heat by day. No one believes the operation will be off for good. Everyone is waiting.

On a rare bright day Larry gathers up his paints and his portable easel and goes down to the water meadows by Glynde Reach. He sets up his easel on the hay-strewn ground and starts work preparing the board he’s using as a canvas. He has in mind to paint a view of Mount Caburn.

As he works away, a figure appears from the direction of the farm. It turns out to be Ed.

‘Thank God someone’s around,’ he says. ‘I come all the way from the other side of the country to see Kitty and she’s not bloody there.’

‘Did you tell her you were coming?’

‘How could I? I didn’t know myself.’

He stands behind Larry, looking at the sketch forming on the board.

‘I really admire you for this,’ he says.

‘Good Lord! Why?’

‘Because it’s something you love to do.’ He kicks moodily at the hay on the ground. ‘There’s nothing I really want to do. I feel like a spectator.’

‘You want to see Kitty.’

‘That’s different. Anyway, she won’t be back till this evening. What do I do till then?’

‘You could always help Arthur get his hay in.’

This is not a serious suggestion, but rather to Larry’s surprise his friend seizes on it eagerly. He goes back to the farmhouse and reappears a little later pulling a light hay cart.

‘Arthur says I’ll make a mess of it,’ he says, ‘but it doesn’t matter as it’s ruined already.’

‘Rather you than me,’ says Larry.

Ed strips to the waist, takes a long-handled rake out of the cart, and proceeds to gather the lying hay into mounds. Larry looks round from his painting from time to time, expecting to see his friend leaning on his rake, but Ed never stops. His lean, tight-muscled body gleams with sweat as he works, keeping up a pace no overseer would ever demand. As he forms the hay into knee-high piles he drags the cart alongside and hoists the hay into it. With each lift he emits a short low grunt of effort.

Larry’s attention is on the line of trees before him, and the rise of land that culminates in the round prominence that is Mount Caburn. His brush, moving rapidly, is reducing the scene to its essential elements, in which land and sky are masses of equal weight, the one cupped into the other. The flanks of the hill meet the dull sunlight at different angles, forming elongated triangles of different tones. He works with browns and reds and yellows, applying paint in rough dabs, hurrying to capture the ever-changing light.

When he next pays attention to his friend, he finds the hay cart is piled high.

‘My God!’ he exclaims. ‘You must be exhausted. Give yourself a break, for heaven’s sake.’

‘Just getting into my stride,’ says Ed, tossing another forkful of hay over the high hurdle side of the cart.

Larry watches him for a few moments, awed by his relentless self-discipline. For a man who wants to do nothing he has a remarkable capacity for work.

‘You know what it’s called, doing what you’re doing?’

‘What?’ says Ed, never ceasing in his work.

‘It’s called doing penance. You’re paying for your sins.’

‘Not me,’ says Ed. ‘That’s for you believers. I don’t have to pay for my sins. They come free.’

Larry laughs at that and goes back to his painting.

At midday Rex Dickinson appears, carrying a basket.

‘The good Mary has taken pity on you,’ he says.

The three of them settle down in the shadow of the hay cart and eat bread and cheese and drink cider. Larry looks at Ed sitting sprawled on the hay-strewn earth, breathing slow deep breaths, chewing the thick home-made bread, sweat drying on his face and shoulders.

‘You look like a handsome healthy animal,’ he says.

‘That’s all I want to be,’ says Ed.

Rex goes over to look at Larry’s painting.

‘Very Cézanne,’ he says.

‘I don’t know why I bother,’ says Larry. ‘It’s all been done before, and better.’

Rex looks round the silent landscape.

‘You’d hardly know there’s a war on.’

‘I love war,’ says Ed.

‘That’s because you’re a romantic,’ says Larry. ‘Half in love with easeful death.’

‘That’s rather good.’

‘Not me. Keats.’

‘As far as I’m concerned,’ says Ed, ‘I’ll be dead by Christmas. And that’s just fine. Once you make up your mind to it, everything tastes and smells so much better.’

Larry frowns, unsure whether or not to believe him.

‘But what about Kitty?’ he says.

‘What about her?’

‘I thought you loved her.’

‘Oh, Lord, I don’t know.’ Ed stretches himself out full length on the ground. ‘What kind of future can I offer a girl?’

‘Have you told her you’re planning on being dead by Christmas?’

‘She doesn’t believe me. She says that if she loves me enough I won’t be killed.’

‘She’s right,’ says Larry. ‘When you love someone, you can’t believe they’ll ever die.’

‘I believe we’re all going to die,’ says Ed. ‘I suppose that means I don’t love anyone.’

‘Kitty thinks you love her.’

‘Well, I do.’

‘You just say the first thing that comes into your head, don’t you?’

Ed rolls over and shades his eyes with one hand so he can gaze at Larry.

‘We’ve known each other a long time,’ he says. ‘We don’t have to piss about saying polite nothings, do we? We can be pretty straight with each other, I’d say.’

‘I go along with that.’

‘The thing is, Larry, I think you genuinely are a good chap. One of the very few I know. But I’m not a good chap. I live in what you might call the outer darkness. I really do. I’m not proud of it. What I see when I look ahead is darkness. I know you think I’m just being selfish. But I do love Kitty, and I ask myself if it’s fair to drag her into that dark place.’

Larry realises now what it is his friend wants from him. He loves him for it, even as he feels the sad weight of it fall upon him.

‘What is this, Ed? You want some kind of blessing from me?’

‘Maybe I do.’

‘All you owe her is your love,’ he says.

‘What about the darkness?’

‘It’s not your private darkness.’

He speaks so softly that Ed doesn’t hear him.

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s not your private darkness,’ he says again, louder.

Ed stares at him.

‘We all have to face it,’ says Larry. ‘Kitty too. She’s not a child.’

Ed goes on staring at him.

‘The war won’t go on for ever,’ says Rex.

Larry returns to his painting. His brush moves more quickly now, applying paint in bolder strokes. Above the hill the sun is burning through the layer of cloud, and in his painting the sky becomes charged with amber and gold.

Ed has had enough of haymaking. He puts one hand on Larry’s shoulder, squeezing it.

‘Thanks.’

‘What for?’

‘You know.’

Rex stays on after Ed has left them, mooching about the stream bank looking for butterflies.

‘You should study butterflies, Larry. Their colouring is just like a work of modern art. See there, that’s a Meadow Brown. A really common species. But on each brown wing there’s a patch of yellow, and in each patch of yellow there’s a black spot, like an eye.’

Larry goes on painting, but he’s grateful for Rex’s presence. He wants to talk.

‘What do you think about Ed and Kitty?’ he says.

‘Nothing, really,’ says Rex.

‘Do you think he’s right for her?’

‘I wouldn’t know. That’s rather up to her, isn’t it?’

Larry changes brushes, and mixes up a blob of blue with a touch of black. He wants the sky to be more dangerous.

‘Don’t you think he sounds odd about it all?’

‘He’s an odd fellow,’ says Rex.

He’s found another butterfly worthy of remark.

‘That’s a Chalkhill Blue. Isn’t he a beauty?’

Larry continues to pursue his line of thought.

‘You say it’s up to Kitty,’ he says, ‘which it is, of course. But she can only go on what’s on offer. And right now, that’s Ed.’

‘Oh, I get it,’ says Rex. ‘You want to make a bid.’

‘Do you think that’s wrong?’

‘It’s not morally wrong,’ says Rex. ‘I suppose it might be considered bad form.’

‘Well, that’s just it,’ says Larry. ‘If one chap announces he’s interested in a girl, does that mean he has some kind of rights over her? Does it mean everyone else has to keep off?’

Rex thinks about that.

‘I think the general idea is you back off while the first fellow takes his shot. Then if he misses, you take a pot.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ says Larry. ‘But listening to Ed today I started thinking maybe I’m being a bit feeble. As you say, it’s all up to Kitty.’

‘Look, Larry,’ says Rex. ‘If you want to drop a hint to Kitty, I should just do it. I don’t see what harm it can do.’

‘Really?’

Larry works away on his thunderous sky.

‘What about you, Rex? Don’t you ever wish you had a girl?’

‘Oh,’ says Rex, ‘I’m not very good at that sort of thing.’

*

Louisa Cavendish receives orders assigning her to new duties in central London, effective from the start of September. This has the effect of concentrating her mind.

‘I’m taking the afternoon off,’ she announces.

She touches up her lipstick, brushes out her corn-coloured hair, tightens her belt, and heads for the private quarters of the big house.

‘George,’ she says, finding the lord of the manor in the kitchen as usual, ‘it’s a warm day, and you should be outside. It’s no good to be indoors all the time.’

George Holland looks at her in surprise.

‘You sound like my mother,’ he says.

‘Did you like your mother?’

‘I adored her.’

‘Come on, then. Out for a walk.’

Not knowing how to refuse, George rises and follows.

‘I know we’ve met,’ he says politely, as they make their way through the outer courtyard, ‘but I seem to have forgotten your name.’

‘I expect I never told you. I’m Louisa Cavendish. Same family as the Devonshires. I’m a friend of Kitty’s.’

‘Oh, very well, then.’

‘Why don’t you take your glasses off?’

‘I shouldn’t be able to see very much if I did,’ he says.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you don’t bump into things. Here, take my hand.’

She removes his glasses and he takes her hand. They walk out
past the chapel. Louisa does not want to be seen by the camp.

‘I expect you could do this walk with your eyes shut,’ she says. ‘We’ll go up onto Edenfield Hill.’

She turns him towards the cart track that runs up the flank of the Downs.

‘It’s strange without my glasses,’ he says. ‘The world feels very different.’

‘Different good or different bad?’