My Dear I Wanted to Tell You (10 page)

‘Cold and lonely,’ she said, with a little laugh.

They walked on.

‘Well,’ said Riley.

Then, ‘How have you been?’ she said.

‘In Hell,’ he replied. Their steps matched, muffled, as they turned towards the Broad Walk. ‘Only we’re not allowed to say.’

They walked.

Warm hands.

‘Who would have thought,’ she said, ‘that this is what we would be?’

He suddenly recalled a postcard he had received as a child, from a friend whose family had gone to Canada: ‘I am six now. Are you any older?’

He smiled, looking down. They walked on.

‘Cup of tea?’ he said. ‘Lyons? Or have you turned into one of those beer-drinking war girls? Do you need a sharp one at the Ram? Or a pink gin at the Kensington Close?’

She laughed a little. ‘Cup of tea,’ she said, and began to cry.

‘So what kind of war girl are you, Nadine?’ he asked her, sitting at a table with a thick white cup each and two buns, the window steaming up behind him, the mirror glittering behind her so he could see how completely gorgeous she was from two angles.

‘Don’t you know?’ she said.

Their eyebeams were twisting.

‘Not a beer-drinking VAD of loose morals . . . not a saucy munitionette with yellow cheeks and a boyfriend heading for management . . . You don’t look the kind to lift morphine and cocaine from the stores and flog it to shell-shocked soldiers in nightclubs . . .’

‘They do that in France too, do they?’ she said.

‘All the time. The streets are running with them. Glorious women in uniform, dripping with stolen omnipom and ration packs, heading for the highlife in Paris . . . There are some clubs, the smartest of all, where you can’t even get in without a red cross on your sleeve and a Poiret evening bag packed with menthol snuff . . .’

‘What do you know about Poiret?’ She laughed. ‘What on earth is going on out there? I thought there was a war on.’

‘Oh, we have our amateur theatricals. Private Johnson is a lady most of the time. Even the colonels kiss his hand. Sorry,
her
hand. I don’t want to talk about there. Talk about you. What war girl are you, if you’re not a drug-runner?’

‘Oh, I’m much more mundane,’ she said. Her hair was fluffing up in the steam.

He raised his eyebrows at her. ‘Tell me,’ he said, and the request was so simple it blind-sided her, and she couldn’t not.

‘I’m the girl who tends every soldier as if he were one soldier in particular, and thinks all the time of French or Belgian girls who at that very moment might be tending
him
,’ she said, and stopped as suddenly as she had started. She found she was holding her face very tight because actually, as she had realised halfway through, did she have any right to say this to him?

She stared at him. Stared at his scar.
His beautiful grey eyes, sparkly half-moons when he grins, really sparkly, like diamonds. He’s not smiling now . . . What has he been through? What has he done?

He was looking at the table, stirring his tea. He tasted it, and put in a little more sugar. Then he put his hand over his mouth for a second, and then he took out a cigarette and tapped it.

Does she mean . . .?

He couldn’t assume. Time had passed. They were not children any more. Had her life raced on – after all, why shouldn’t it?
Are you any older?

One touch, for God’s sake. For two years he’d been faithful to one touch of her waist. Almost faithful. Emotionally faithful. He looked at her hand on the table. He couldn’t assume.

I am capable of bravery.
He smiled to himself. ‘So who’s the lucky fellow?’ he blurted, grinning stupidly, and dropping his teaspoon.

Her mouth fell open. She’d told him, and he hadn’t heard. Or had he heard all too well – was he sparing her? ‘Riley,’ she said.

‘Mmm?’

Her face was stricken.

‘Riley, don’t be a complete idiot,’ she said. ‘We don’t have long.’

‘Of course . . . your mother . . .’

‘I couldn’t care less about my mother,’ she said. ‘Your
leave
is not very long. I am working all hours at the hospital. I want to make your every moment here . . . perfect, so that you know what you’re missing and you don’t forget and you don’t lose faith and you come back. Remember, you asked me to be there to pull you—’

‘I love you,’ he interrupted, and was astonished to find the words on his lips, in the air, on their way to her.

She lifted her chin, gave him a sideways look. What was the look? Surprise? No – wariness? Perhaps. Distrust? No. Ah – no. It was –
aha
!

‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I always have done. I always will. Nothing to offer, not a chance your family would accept me, even if you—’

‘I do,’ she said.

‘Do you?’

‘You know perfectly well.’

They looked at each in silence. Then Riley stood, and moved round the table, and sat down again, next to her. Their sleeves touched, the length of their upper arms. They sat like that for a moment. Then he breathed out, long and slow, and turned his head slightly so that her wild Mesopotamian hair was just there, touching his cheek.

The nippy was coughing. Her face was indulgent, though. Soldier and his gal in a romantic dream! She wished she had a handsome officer to lean her head against. All right for some . . .

Riley started, and ordered more tea and more buns. Nadine blushed very slightly. He wanted to mention that she was blushing, so she would blush more. He wanted – oh, God, what he wanted.

He was incredibly happy to find that he wanted. He had been afraid that he wouldn’t want again.

He stuffed himself with a bun instead. For the moment.

She felt the need to change the subject. More talk of love would lead to the difficulties surrounding . . . Oh, God, he loved her, he did, she did, they did, it was.

It was.

She was smiling like a fool, glowing.

His beautiful face, which she would kiss. Fury that someone, someone they didn’t even know, had damaged his beautiful face, given him that little scar. Proud of his courage.
He’s a man
, she thought, and the very word gave her a frisson, a lurch inside.

‘How did you get that?’ she said quickly.

‘Shrapnel,’ he said.

‘Is that why you were promoted?’ she asked. ‘Were you terribly brave?’

‘It’s what happens,’ he said brusquely.
Damn I’m being just how they are – I’m doing what I don’t want to do. Stiff upper lip, don’t alarm our people at home—

‘So are you a gentleman now?’ It just leapt out. Stupid thing to say! But he laughed.

‘Mmm, yes. Gentleman Second Lieutenant with nothing extra behind him. It occurred to me it might be one of the advantages. Along with the servant and the extra socks and two leaves a year and evening shift at the brothel – oh, God, Nadine, I’m so—’

She was smiling painfully. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘And is that something you terribly need to tell me about?’

‘It – oh, Nadine. Soldier talk. I’m sorry. I’m not fit for decent company – I’ve never used the brothels – oh, God, I shouldn’t even be—’

‘Riley,’ she said, ‘I work in a hospital. I know about these things now.’

He blinked. He didn’t want her knowing about these things. He wanted her . . .
What? Pure and happy and symbolic? Grow up, Purefoy.

‘Girls do now,’ she said.

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘If you’ve never – have you never? Riley, you’re a man, have you . . .? Never?’

It was inconceivable, this conversation. His parents would never have talked of these things, even after twenty years of marriage. He didn’t think hers would have either. And neither would he and Nadine, had it not been for the It, the great It, which had metamorphosed girl and boy into Nurse and Soldier, Nurse and Soldier. What might they have been, if . . .?

No ifs.

And now she was asking him . . .

‘No – I have. I have.’

‘You have.’

‘I . . . have.’

‘What was it, then?’

‘It – what, the circumstances? Or the – doing?’

‘Both,’ she said, and she tried to smile, and her beauty radiated through him, so that for a second his blood fled and he wanted her so much, to fold her in his arms, to love her and do all the unspeakable things to
her
, so much, that he had to close his eyes for a moment.

‘Circumstances,’ he said. ‘Right.’
Dear God, am I really telling her this?
‘Not a brothel. Billet, farm family, little kids, fat old mum, dad at the front. Um . . .’
Dear God, yes, I am. ‘
The eldest daughter. Soldier’s widow, name of Mireille, very sweet . . .’

He looked up at her.
Fuck, I should have lied.
‘. . . came and sat on my bunk one night and asked me.’
I should have lied.
‘Er . . . Physical incident. A thing bodies do, very nice – sweet girl. Affection, I suppose.

Ah – warmth. Not a lot to it. Not a bad thing . . .’
till now
‘. . . not the greatest sin of all time. Can’t see God minding that much, what with everything else He’s letting go on . . . Only regret is . . .’

He couldn’t say it. There are limits.

‘Physical incident,’ Nadine said softly.

‘Mmm,’ he said.

Silence.

‘And you did it without me.’

He was shaking. ‘My one regret,’ he said very quietly, to the sugar bowl.
Did she really say that? Did she . . .? Am I hearing things? Is it starting now . . .?

Silence.

It was real.

‘Well,’ she said. Embarrassed.

The noisy café shifted around them.
Oh, fuck it. We’ve come this far.

‘I couldn’t exactly do it
with
you,’ he said softly, leaning forward.

Her head shot up. She stared at him. ‘I’ll tell you something, Riley,’ she said, very precisely, very softly, very clearly. ‘I’m not losing my virginity to a Hun rapist. And I’m not giving it to anybody,
anybody
,
ever
, if . . . I’m damned if I . . .’

He started to apologise and she stopped him. He paused, and he swallowed. ‘Nadine,’ he said. ‘We’re here, we’re alive, we love each other. Let’s be happy.’

She started crying.

He slammed a handful of change on the table and led her out, through the bustling, nosy stares of the waitress and the ladies and the old men, and walked with his arm held close round her waist back towards the park, and on the dark corner where the horse-chestnut trees overhung the road leading up through the park to Kensington Palace they kissed, mouths and skin and warmth and, oh, sweet Jesus.

It was Riley who pulled away.

‘You don’t know what you’re provoking,’ he said, with a tight little smile, stepping back, taking out a cigarette to do something, anything, to keep his hands from sliding around inside her coat to encase the beautiful curve of her hip and pull her damn skirt up.

‘I do,’ she replied.

‘And how could you?’ he asked. ‘You—’

She shot him a look. ‘Girls
do
talk,’ she said.

‘What kind of girls have you been talking to?’ he asked suddenly, fearfully.

At that she laughed, such a bright and lovely sound, a girl laughing, this girl laughing.
Like music to my ears
, he thought, and it was like music to his ears, but better – like a waterfall washing through his filthy memories, his corrupted eyes; like – like a girl laughing.

‘My mother!’ she said happily, and her voice, her innocence, her everything, just undid him, that she was
here
, with him . . . ‘She said she knew it wasn’t the English way to tell a girl anything at all, but she thought it would make things easier for me. It made sense, anyway.’

‘Made sense of what?’ asked Riley, who was reeling.

She glanced up at him. ‘Are you going to be English about this?’

‘About what!’ he said helplessly.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Feelings.’ She blinked. ‘Sex feelings.’

‘You have sex feelings?’ he asked. He had gone scarlet in the face.

‘Mmm.’

He stared for at least four seconds before throwing himself at her, holding her, wrapping her as he had resisted doing before.

‘Sit down with me,’ he said after a while. ‘There’s a bench. There’s the park. We could go in there,’ he said. ‘For a while.’

‘Riley,’ she said, ‘is that the kind of dishonourable suggestion I’ve been warned about?’

‘No!’ he said. ‘Or yes. God, yes. But no . . .’ His face was disappearing in the dusk and she was glad, because she didn’t know if she could bear it.

‘So what’s it like, Riley?’

‘No!’ he cried.

‘Why not? You must have liked it – you said you did. Don’t all men do it, whenever they can, because they like it so much? Isn’t that the big secret?’

‘Jesus, Nadine, what has your mother been telling you?’

‘That wasn’t my mother, that was Jean. She’s a VAD. She’s twenty-five.’

‘Ah,’ said Riley. ‘Is she.’

There was a moment.

‘So why haven’t you been doing it all the time?’ she said softly.

He sighed, and a flash of light from a window high up caught his eyes as he looked up. ‘Fear,’ he said, ‘diseases . . . and . . . the idea that there was something better . . .’

Silence.

‘Go on,’ she murmured.

‘Not that interested in the physical incident itself,’ he said. ‘I mean, yes, of course I am, but, er . . . more thinking about the love part.’

‘The love part,’ she repeated, and he choked on a low laugh.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It – um—’

She was suppressing a laugh too. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Suddenly it’s all a bit music hall . . .’

‘And I was just saying something so romantic.’

‘Yes.’

‘About love,’ he said. He was terrified. Pit-of-the-belly terrified. Going over the top . . .
Oh, God, leave me alone . . .
This is more than that. Love is strong as death. Where was that from? Set me as a seal on thy heart . . .

‘Is love allowed, in these times?’ she said. ‘Is it recommended?’

I don’t give a damn if it’s recommended: it’s all there is.