The Heroes' Welcome (18 page)

The waiter, after one ‘are you sure?’ glance, took her order for two glasses of sarsaparilla, and then took no notice of her. She realised that perhaps he saw other women like her, respectable women coming in for disreputable men, wanting to take them back to respectability. He probably thought she was someone’s wife – and for a moment she felt very keenly Julia’s horror –
that your husband would be one of these, that he loved the pub more than you and your child, that everybody would know
.

Peter was in a corner, reading. As she approached him he jumped up, pushing the wooden chair behind him, and greeted her, politely, keenly. He said, ‘Oh my goodness, Rose,’ several times, and tried to steer her out, but she was calm and implacable, and smiled at another fellow who stood and gave her his seat, silenced into obedience by her very presence, by her femininity.

She sat, didn’t take off her hat, settled her bag in her lap.

‘Peter,’ she said. ‘Darling. I have news.’

The waiter brought their drinks.

Peter took a sip. ‘George,’ he said, ‘this is the worst brandy I’ve ever tasted. Bring me the good stuff.’ His smile was wide and charming. ‘This is a terrible place you’ve brought me to, Rose. But how marvellous to see you. Am I in
dreadful
trouble?’

‘Peter,’ she said. ‘I am leaving Locke Hill.’

‘Oh, but—’ he said, and she continued: ‘I am coming to London, and I am to study medicine – yes, I shall be an undergraduate! – and I am to become a doctor. Now, listen,’ – for he was trying to make sense of this baffling and unexpected information, and find a way to respond – ‘don’t worry about anything, I’m very pleased about it, and I wanted to tell you in person, and to thank you for allowing me to stay for so long, and for being so kind. But things move on, don’t they, darling?’

The look in his eyes said to her that he had no idea if they did or not.
He looks so utterly lost
…

‘Still,’ she said, and his eyes fixed on her.
He wants something … what does he want?

‘I will still visit Locke Hill,’ she said. ‘A lot, I hope.’

He looked down. Like an ashamed small boy.

‘And I was thinking, we could go together. What do you think? Weekends? I know Tom would love to—’ but at the sound of his son’s name Peter’s face froze, and she stopped.

‘Darling?’ she said. ‘Shall we?’

He said nothing. He glanced quickly around – looking, she realised, for George and the brandy.

‘You could come down with me tonight,’ she said mildly. ‘Best to bathe and shave,’ she said. ‘And not be too drunk.’

She read his pale eyes quite clearly. The look, familiar from a thousand patients, said, ‘It is less trouble to do what you want than to resist you.’ And alongside that she sensed something else: that he was aware that his child probably needed something from him, and that he might perhaps even be grateful that she could point out things he could do.
He may even
, she thought,
be glad to offer hope that he might oblige
.

They walked back to Chester Square together; she took his arm, and chatted, but not much. He had never been anything but tall and thin, with his intellectual aesthetic hunch, like a kind of clever bird; now he was actually bony. His long neck, above his loose and very slightly grubby collar, was like that of a saint in a painting: asking for trouble. His nails were bitten to the raw.

*

That was on the Thursday. On the Saturday afternoon, Rose was putting a log on the fire in the drawing room when Julia blew back to Locke Hill like a galleon in a storm. A grand kerfuffle of luggage erupted, unannounced, from the cab to the front door and into the hall. The door was banging in the wind; Mrs Joyce was there gasping, and Julia propelled herself into the drawing room, saying, ‘Oh, hello, Rose. Are you still here?’

‘No,’ said Rose. ‘I’m visiting Tom and Peter.’ She turned to rise, to greet – and took in Julia’s form, and cried out an exclamation. She could not think of a thing to say.

‘How marvellous you are,’ Julia said. ‘Looking after my deserted family.’

It seemed, absurdly, that somehow now the subject had been changed and Rose had missed her chance to say something about the pregnancy. No words came to her.

‘Your mother’s here,’ she said instead. Julia, who had been about to ease the galleon into berth on the sofa, snapped upright again.

‘Oh?’ she said.

Rose gave a bemused little smile and a small gesture of the hands.
Just like that
, she thought,
just like that, not a word to anyone, and chaos resumes.
She went to the hall to call Mrs Joyce to make tea.
Dear God
,
she thought
. Does Peter know? Does anyone know?
And even –
Is it Peter’s?
As far as she understood, they weren’t even –
really
that was none of her business. But she couldn’t help racing through the dates in her mind – and felt vulgar. She wasn’t going to join in. She wasn’t even going to call Peter – but he and Tom was already there, coming in from the garden, where they had been looking at a dead bullfinch, in which Rose had hoped they might be interested.

Peter was heading for the library when he saw the luggage, and stopped. For a moment, all was frozen: nobody wanting to approach anybody, none of them wanting to face whatever it was that would happen next. Then Peter sighed, flinched almost, and Julia came to the door of the drawing room, and stood there. Tom stiffened at the sight of her. Hellos passed between the three of them, and fell to the floor like clumps of dust. Tom did not kiss his mother; she didn’t invite him to. After a moment he asked if he might go upstairs. Peter said yes, Julia said no, please stay. He went.

‘I gather my mother is here,’ Julia said, with a bit of a smile.
Of course she had been practising what to say
, Rose thought.
And of course now it will all be irrelevant. Script changed by the presence of an unexpected character.

‘I gather you’re having a child,’ Peter replied.

‘Yours,’ she said, and at that he said, ‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ and went finally into the sitting room, pushing past her, and sat down. His head fell forward into his hands. ‘If you’ll have us,’ she said.

He flung his head up at that, his hair flopping back, his bony face suddenly young. Rose watched warily. There was after all a sweetness in the way Julia spoke. A real sweetness.
Oh
,
Julia …

‘It
is
yours,’ Julia said. ‘That time—’

Rose, in the doorway, ducked out of sight, embarrassed but unable and unwilling to remove herself from earshot.

‘I made a terrible mistake,’ Julia was saying. ‘Leaving. I should never have – but when you left – I thought I wanted a new life – and that you did, too – I’m sorry …’

‘Oh, Julia,’ he said, and Rose could hear the gentleman and the drunk struggling within him.

Then he said, ‘You can stay here. I’m living in town anyway. Do what you want. Perhaps your mother will stay and look after you.’

‘Don’t be foul, Peter,’ Julia said, and then a harsh sound of Peter laughing.

‘When I saw your bags,’ he said, ‘I assumed you’d come back for a divorce. Not for our marriage.’

‘Peter,’ she said again. ‘My dear – I do want our marriage. And I want it to be here for you whether you want it now or not. So that if you change your mind or whatever happens, your wife and children will be here.’

There was a pause. Then: ‘For you,’ Julia said, quite gently.

And then there was a very particular silence. Peter – like Rose, in the hallway – was taken aback. Each the same thing:
When did Julia last say or do anything for someone else?

And then they were all interrupted, first by the appearance of Millie with tea – Rose took the tray – and then by the vast implacable ocean liner of a woman that was Mrs Orris, a sweeping, brown fur-trimmed vessel which made Julia look suddenly vulnerable, an overripe fruit on a delicate stalk. Even the heads on Mrs Orris’ fox tippet looked depressed and borne-down.

At her entrance, Peter and Julia turned to her as one, and smiled, and snapped into propriety. They had long experience of her. Rose, in the doorway, unable to get through with the tea, saw them through a gap in Mrs Orris’ hangings.

‘Hello, Mother,’ said Julia, glittering slightly. The tenderness of the moment before had disappeared from the surface. It did not stretch as far as Mrs Orris, but it had not fled.

Mrs Orris held her dramatic pause, scanned her daughter up and down, and said: ‘Well. Here you are. We were worried. Where on earth have you been?’

‘She’s been taking the waters at Biarritz,’ said Peter. ‘Delicate condition, and all that. Do join us. I think we’re about to have tea, if you could perhaps allow Rose through.’

‘You didn’t tell me,’ Mrs Orris said, to both of them.

‘Well, I’m an adult now, Mother, and I don’t tell you everything,’ said Julia and, before her mother could retort, added for herself: ‘as you can see’, and followed it up with, ‘What are you doing here, Mother? I wasn’t expecting you.’

‘I came to see my grandchild.’

‘Oh, well, I hope you’ve seen him,’ Julia said, ‘and found him well. Do have some tea, won’t you, before you get your train.’

‘I’m here for the weekend,’ Mrs Orris said with an ironclad smile.

‘Only if you really want to,’ Peter said.

Julia smiled sweetly, and started to lurch up to help Rose pour and pass, but Peter stopped her with a gesture. Rose was transfixed by the sudden alliance in the face of a greater enemy. With Peter backing Julia up, Mrs Orris could do nothing but sit and drink her tea and fire off useless little shots: Julia was looking thin, she was surprised at her going to France, the sea air could hardly have been good for her complexion, they really might have told her, and surely it was time they considered boarding school for Tommy – at this last Peter reared up again and repeated that Tom was fine, absolutely fine. Rose, smiling low, uttered the same lie.

*

Dinner displayed everybody as they were. Julia, dragging her chaos with her. Mrs Orris, freezing everyone up like some great Medusa. Peter, flinching and exploding, flinching and exploding as if he were still at the Front. Everything was uncomfortable until Mrs Orris had retired. Then everybody seemed to breathe out, and shared relief at her absence left them for a moment united.

*

Rose went up to bed shaking her head at the immutability of people.

And me? What do I do?

They are not my responsibility. They are not my responsibility.

Then stop thinking about them.

She picked up her reading list and started to put ticks by the titles she would start with. Even with her scholarship money, she could not afford to buy all of these. And some would be vast – volumes and volumes. But she would buy some.
I wonder how soon I will be allowed into the college library. Or the British Library! Oh my …

She fell asleep to visions of domes and books.

Locke Hill, August 1919

Julia had walked into her old home as though through a clingy fog of past habits and old behaviour, which draped itself over her and required of her the brittleness, spikiness and defensive perfectionism she had paraded over the past years. She was wrapped in it almost before she noticed, as if she had learnt nothing. This knocked her.

To start by being rude to Rose!
No.

Of course her mother being there had surprised her – but never mind. It wasn’t anything to do with her mother. It was a long-term matter, and it was about Peter and Tom and this new child.

Peter was sober, clean, properly dressed. The sight of him, so thin and pale and delicate, like a heron, huddled against things, made her feel, what, tender? She still wanted what she had always wanted. And here it all was: him, the house, children. It was her business to make it work.

After the ridiculous stilted dinner, Rose left, tactful as always. Peter was staring down the gleaming dining table.

He looked up at her at last. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Julia. You and the baby must of course live here. Hire a nurse and so forth. I’m sure Tom will be glad you’re back.’ He stopped, as if realising that there was no reason whatsoever to think that. ‘I won’t be here much, won’t get in your way. But this is your home. Please, um, cherish it. I would appreciate your not … offering any further threat to its security.’ He drifted into a small silence.

Julia broke into it. She just said, ‘Thank you.’

Peter said: ‘Probably neither you nor I deserve the …’ – the word evaded him – ‘… but Tom does, and this …’ He gestured towards Julia, suggesting the unborn child. ‘It’s all been very unpleasant,’ he said, and then pushed his chair back rather suddenly. ‘Happy to finance everything and so forth, but you
will
need to pay attention to the children,’ he said. And retreated to his study.

Tomorrow
,
Julia thought.
There will be many tomorrows.

*

The following morning, Julia sat down with a second pot of tea in the sitting room, and wrote to Nadine.

Dear Nadine,

It seems so long since I sat on the edge of the guest bed upstairs, the first time we met, when you were upset about Riley, and

She stopped in the middle of that first sentence. Riley.

When she thought about her own face, about how its damage had changed her and was changing her, had she ever –
ever – for one moment –
thought about Riley?
Not just about Nadine and Riley, but about
him
, as a man and a human being? How it must be for him?

Why have I never talked to him, never even tried to, about a problem we – about, well, this common ground?

Why don’t I know how to talk to men? Do I think they’re not quite human? Do I think they can go off and get shot at and wounded and so horribly scarred, and somehow they’re just meant to bear it all? I couldn’t bear one iota of it.

Riley can’t eat easily, he can’t talk properly, everybody stares at him and pities him.
She remembered again, suddenly and clearly, the man in the woods, in the tin mask.
I couldn’t bear it for one second, and yet I haven’t even tried to understand them and help them.