The Beautiful Visit (34 page)

I posted the letter in the morning, on my way to the large dreary house where the parcels were packed. All day I packed with a feverish exhilaration which provoked the official gratitude of the
Organizer; a weary little man, whose private feelings appeared to be worn away by responsibility and lack of supplies (or what he called suitable matter) for parcels, and who seemed to consider
himself solely as an institution. He did not remember who I was, or what precisely I had been doing; but he thanked me, employing the faded rhetoric he used on these rare occasions; this last
implying that the parcels provided our boys with more than material inspiration in their task of ending all wars, but that they could not be inspired, materially or otherwise, unless a steady flow
were maintained. ‘A steady flow,’ he repeated, glaring at me from watery eyes and backing away as he spoke, conscious of having achieved the personal touch so important in an
institution.

This incident was of the kind recounted by my family at meals. I was not usually possessed of such a crumb, and I resolved as I walked home that I would make the most of it. It was the kind of
thing that made my mother laugh: my sister never laughed. Afterwards I would escape to my room and read Ian’s letter again, and perhaps I would write part of another letter to him. I stopped
on my way to buy writing paper. If this new and tremendous private life was to be restricted to letters, they should at least be written with extravagant care; they must at least attempt
perfection. I bought a quantity of pale green paper, a box of new nibs, and a roll of purple blotting paper. I almost ran home with them.

At dinner I told them about my day and the remark of the Organizer. My mother did laugh. My sister allowed us to treat the matter lightly for a moment, then remarked that he was perfectly right,
and, to change the subject, began to speculate on the possibility of Hubert obtaining Christmas leave. With a rush of excitement that brought tears to my eyes, I thought of Ian coming back; but
reflected that this was really too much to hope for, when he had so recently had leave. On the other hand, Hubert, my mother confirmed, would very likely be coming. Still, I had had a letter.

The conversation staggered on to the shortage of butter; my mother remarking that there was a very good letter in the paper about it. My sister agreed that the shortage was unfortunate, but
pointed out that it was better we suffer than our men, adding rather unexpectedly, that we must remember what Napoleon said. My mother looked up inquiringly, went faintly pink and said of course,
but surely things were rather different nowadays, with trenches and modern warfare. ‘We must march to Berlin!’ cried my sister inspired; and that seemed to settle the butter shortage. I
asked, as was then my custom, whether I might borrow the paper. ‘Of course, darling,’ said my mother, ‘you can read the letter yourself.’

‘There is nothing
happening
,’ complained my sister, collecting the table mats. ‘I thought you might help me with the studio curtains.’

I promised that I would do so the following night. Thus ended the meal; like so many hundred meals I had eaten in this dreary despairing house, whose inhabitants all seemed so utterly cut off
from each other and from anything that life seemed to me to offer on the few occasions when I had succeeded in escaping from it and them. Now that I was presented with a means of escape, I was
filled with remorse: that I had not been kinder, or made more attempt to impart some energy and interest to the house; had not encouraged the people who came, to do so again; which would at least
have given my mother pleasure, if no one else. I resolved to do all these things, as I shut my bedroom door and my secret life with Ian consumed me.

My room possessed a small table, on which I had hitherto kept a pile of books, a framed photograph of my father, and, while they had lasted, Ian’s roses. I decided that I would write my
letters on it in future, and rearranged it accordingly. I then settled down to the long delicious evening of reading and writing. I began by reading his letter again, but now that I almost knew it
by heart I found myself lamenting its brevity and thirsting for more of his handwriting. Perhaps he would reply to my letter. Whether he replied or no, the desire to write to him again was
overwhelming; even if I refrained from sending the letter immediately, I must write. So I wrote four pages on my beautiful green paper, addressing the envelope with joy at writing his name.
Afterwards, disinclined either to sleep or to read anything which absorbed my attention to the exclusion of my love, I began casually to search in the paper for the letter my mother had enjoined me
to read. It was then that my eyes fell upon the list of fallen officers, and I as casually discovered that Ian had been killed three days before.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

At least I was spared any uncertainty about Ian’s death. There was enough in the paper to leave me in no doubt. He must have died even before I received his letter. I
supposed he must always have thought that he would be killed, and that was what he had meant when he had said that he was in no position to love anybody and did not want to cause me suffering. He
had never mentioned the possibility, however, and oddly enough, it had never been in the forefront of my mind. I had lived so much cut off from the war as to be almost unaware of its perils and
tragedies. I simply picked up the paper, and that is what I read. I think it was the unobtrusive and incidental manner of his death which most horrified me. He had gone out there, loving me, hating
the life he felt bound to live; and then, quite suddenly, he was dead; wiped out; all his heart and life were stopped, and of no account to anyone. A little notice in the paper finished him off and
the war turned to the next man.

After that, I suffered agonies from those long, tightly packed lists of unknown names. I came to imagine that no one of the people who went returned. The tragedy of somebody dying is that they
only die for themselves; never for the people who love them. To those who love them they remain, poised on the last moments before the last farewell. They leave a room or a house, shut a door or a
gate, and disappear; but they do not die.

That was the end of it. I never told anyone about him. The last remaining comfort was that no one should know. He had said that communicating love to anyone but the beloved diminished the
feeling. I clung to this; enduring the weeks that followed, until the gradual paralysis of my sensibility (which was only sharpened by an unreasoning fear that I should forget something about him),
slowly crept round my aching heart; and I was left in the nerveless insensible state which is called normal.

I worked very much harder during the next months. I worked blindly through Christmas, and the dreadful spring when our armies retreated, a time when the gallantry of our soldiers was insisted on
in a way which meant, I knew by now, that thousands more of them were being killed. I threw myself into the dull and probably useless work upon which I was engaged, because I had nothing else.
Sometimes when I was very tired (the food available to people like my family was patently insufficient), I would read the letter from Ian, and for a short while abandon myself to the rush of
feeling it invariably induced. Once, I remember weeping helplessly because I had torn the letter a little. It seemed the last unbearable bitterness that even the paper should perish.

My family went away in the summer to stay with relatives of my mother, who, since my father’s death, had relented towards her for what they considered her initial folly. I refused to go
with them, and remained during the hot dusty months alone in the house, except for the servant who consented to ‘live in’ while the family were away. I worked all day, slept heavily at
night; and weeks passed when I spoke to no one outside the house where I worked and the house where I slept.

Then the tide turned, and the almost forgotten end was in sight.

On the evening after the Armistice, my sister distinguished herself by making an unprecedented scene. I never knew the real reason for her behaviour, but remember that it started quite quietly
over some minor disagreement with my mother, when I took the latter’s side. She was in the habit of treating our mother as a tiresome child, and on this occasion, not her remark, but her
implication, was more than I could bear. It ended, however, by her declaring passionately that no one understood her, no one; that she should like anyone to tell her what on earth she was supposed
to do now; and that she wished she had never been born. She then left the room, slamming the door, and in tears; leaving my mother and me alone, staring disconsolately at one another across the
dining-room table.

‘Oh dear,’ said my mother at last. ‘I wonder if I should go after her.’

‘I should leave her alone.’

‘If only your father were alive.’ She always said this when she meant ‘if only that hadn’t happened’.

‘I wonder what is the matter with her?’

‘Of course, her work will come to an end. I think she is rather upset about that,’ my mother said. ‘I suppose you will have to stop too.’

‘I suppose so.’ I had not considered this aspect of the Armistice.

‘Anyway when your brothers return, I expect they will take you both out a bit,’ she continued, as though reassuring herself.

‘I shall get some other job.’

‘Yes, but you never have any fun, darling. I often feel that is my fault. You ought to be out enjoying yourself tonight, like everyone else.’

‘And what about you?’

‘I should enjoy you enjoying yourself. I used to have awfully jolly times before I met your father.’ Then, a little defensively, she added: ‘And afterwards, of course. But we
see so few people now that I often feel you don’t have a chance.’

‘A chance?’

‘To be light-hearted,’ she said quietly, ‘and perhaps to love someone.’

‘Oh . . .’ I began to be afraid of being hurt. ‘I suppose you mean marriage.’ I said aggressively.

‘I suppose I do. After all, it does give one someone to live for – I mean, it does fill one’s life.’

‘Do you think women need someone to live for?’

She looked up, a little startled. ‘Of course. They cannot
really live
by themselves.’

‘Well wouldn’t anyone do? Or anything, for that matter.’

‘I should not like you to live for me, and a pile of parcels.’

She said this so bitterly that I was astonished. It had never entered my mind that she could regard my wartime occupation so objectively; and I asked immediately: ‘You think my packing
parcels for soldiers was foolish?’

‘Not exactly foolish. But often when I see people, many people that I do not even know, doing things, I find myself thinking “surely they were not born and reared merely to do
that”. I think one cannot help expecting the people one knows and loves to do something much more significant.’

I could not help interrupting. ‘Most people seem to have been born and brought up merely to get killed.’

She eyed me thoughtfully and then said: ‘Yes. And one person is usually the death of another. But when they are dead one cannot go on expecting them to do anything significant. One has to
put them back where they belong, with all the other people.’

With a great effort because I was terribly afraid that she knew something about Ian, I said, ‘I am not dead.’

But she answered: ‘Oh no. I was thinking of your father.’

I stared at the broad expanse of table between us, and realized how very little we knew about one another. She was still speaking.

‘Your father believed in music, and I believed in your father. By the time he died, I don’t think he believed in anything, and now I find it very difficult to believe in him.’
She screwed up her eyes as though she were trying very hard to imagine something. ‘What I really mean to say is, that if something should happen, and you are presented with any kind of
opportunity – I cannot think at the moment what it might be – you should take it. You should not worry about me. I do not know really what makes me think of such a thing,’ she
continued hurriedly, ‘except that, soon after your father’s death, your sister told me that she would never leave me, even to marry: and although I should feel grateful I know, and she
meant nothing but good, it made me feel more useless and bereaved than anything else. Sometimes things do happen by the merest chance.’

‘Bad things happen too.’

‘Oh yes. But you know, I have come to feel that they do not happen by chance.’ She looked at me almost timidly. ‘Do you know, since your father died I have come to feel
increasingly that they are organized.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘That is almost like your sister, isn’t it? Only she would say that I pretended to understand the things, and
presumed to call them bad. I cannot believe in something I do not understand. And now, I am sometimes afraid that I never understood your father.’

‘I suppose, however, that my sister would say she understood God.’

She rose to her feet. A rare smile flitted across her worn face. She looked suddenly endearing and rather wicked as she said: ‘Oh undoubtedly. It is very clear that they have mutual
interests.’

She had walked round the table, and now she laid her hand lightly on my head.

‘Good night, darling,’ she said. ‘I do hope that you will soon be happier.’

She left the room, and it was almost as though she were saying good-bye to me, as she never again talked to me in this manner, although on several later occasions I tried to induce her to do
so.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

A month later I let myself into the hall, having returned from an unsatisfactory interview with a Society to whom I had applied for work of some kind, to hear the steady rise
and fall of a man’s voice in the studio. I immediately assumed that one of my brothers had returned without warning, and slipped upstairs to my room, resolving at least to wash my hands
before encountering him. I had almost nothing in common with either of my brothers and had been dreading their return for weeks, as I knew it distressed my mother if she thought that we were not
perfectly in sympathy; and with Hubert, at least, once he had settled in the house, it seemed utterly impossible to conceal from her that we were not. I had barely, however, taken off my coat, and
was fetching a jug of tepid water from the bathroom geyser, when my sister sped along the passage, looking flushed and important.