Part 13 (1/2)

”He'll love it. You look divine in it.”

The waitress came over and Grace ordered two gla.s.ses of white wine. The quartet was playing something familiar and cloying.

”Who wrote this music?” Grace asked.

”It was all anger about the war,” said Nancy. ”George, I mean. Pent-up rage. Boiling blood. Those nightmares...I couldn't wake him out of them. I just had to cling tightly to the bed and wait for them to end. I suppose that was what I was doing more generally. Clinging on and hoping it would all come right again. And then it did.”

The waitress brought the wine over. They clinked gla.s.ses.

”To you. Happy birthday for tomorrow. Is this Vivaldi, do you think?”

”And to you, too.” Nancy clinked again. ”For being such a brick. Really, I think it was you who held us together.”

”Rubbish.” Grace took a mouthful of wine. ”Let's look to the future. Speaking of which, what time are you meeting Mummy?”

”Five o'clock. Grace, there's something I want to tell you.”

”You'd better drink up then. It's almost half past four. Which film are you going to see?”

The lying had been going on for a very long time. One could argue it started that night in the summer of 1915 when George proposed to Nancy at the farewell dance. Or perhaps it wasn't so much lying as keeping silent. George and Grace had kept silent about what had taken place between them on the Heath earlier that day.

The ”keeping silent” continued when he told her about how Steven had really died, and asked her not to speak about it. And then came the letters. He'd asked her to write to him while he was away. How could she have refused him and why should she? They weren't love letters, after all. They were impersonal and newsy-rea.s.suring him that Nancy was well and content, but that she talked about him constantly and missed him. She pa.s.sed on the Hampstead gossip: Philippa Green's pregnancy; Tabitha Ferrier's roving eye; Frederick Perry-Johnson's return home after losing an arm. She bemoaned the state the house was getting into: the blocked drains, the broken door handle, the damp patch in the kitchen, the drafts. She told him that he'd better come home soon or the house would fall down around them. She said little about herself.

It seemed right to keep silent about the letters. It wasn't that she had anything to hide. It was just that she didn't know how to explain why she had suddenly taken to writing frequently to her sister's husband. It seemed such an odd thing to be doing. And the longer it went on, the less easy it was to speak of, particularly as George was keeping quiet, too.

The spring of 1918 arrived, and George continued to write only to Nancy, making no mention of the letters he received from Grace. His letters talked mostly of how he missed them all at home, but also of train journeys through lovely scenery, of long days spent marching, of trench foot, boredom and singing. His were letters unaltered by the censors. He kept off subjects that would frighten his wife. But the Rutherford sisters were reading about the big German offensive in the newspapers and listening to the reports. They knew George must be in the thick of it all, and that he couldn't possibly be telling them the whole story. Nancy showed the letters to Grace, who began to think she could discern secret messages through the trivia-messages intended for her only.

When he talks about the heavy rain, she decided, he is speaking about the experience of being sh.e.l.led. Stories of kicking a football around with the boys back at the billets are really telling a much darker tale. He knows she won't see that. He knows that I will.

Over time, Grace felt increasingly ent.i.tled to read George's letters, and if Nancy didn't show her one, she would go digging about in her sister's bureau on the quiet, searching for it. She had begun to see herself as George's secret confidante. Her own letters became less self-conscious and more personal. The fact that George didn't write back to her directly made it easier for her to unburden herself. His silence was a warm one, a welcoming one. By the end of the summer, with all the news reports declaring the German army to be on its knees and the war all but over, Grace's letters had evolved into a kind of episodic diary from which there was little that she held back.

The much-heralded return was destined to prove difficult for all concerned. George's smiles seemed forced. He was overly polite, awkward and twitchy. He appeared to want to hide as much as possible: in bed, behind newspapers, at his job in the City, at the pub with old friends. Late at night, Grace would hear Nancy crying and railing at him. His replies were curt and quiet.

For herself, Grace was only too glad of George's reclusiveness. It was one thing to tell an absent and silent George all her greatest secrets and desires, and quite another to find herself sharing a home with him again. Just to be in a room with him was squirmingly embarra.s.sing. The things he knew about her...There was no way to take them back. But she was already going out to work by this time, and took to leaving the house early and coming home late. Quietly she began to save money for a deposit on a flat of her own.

As 1919 wore on, it all got worse. George absented himself more often and drank more heavily. His moody silences were interspersed with episodes of anger. Nancy's disastrous twenty-first birthday party was the last straw. But when Grace announced her plan to move out imminently to a little flat in Bayswater, Nancy grabbed both her hands and begged her not to go.

”I can't cope with him alone...He listens listens to you. Yes, he does. He reins himself in when you're here because he doesn't want you to think badly of him. When it's just me, he doesn't care what he says or does.” to you. Yes, he does. He reins himself in when you're here because he doesn't want you to think badly of him. When it's just me, he doesn't care what he says or does.”

”You have Mummy,” Grace reasoned.

”Gracie, please please stay for a bit longer. I need you to help me get him back on track. If you could spend a bit of time with him...Talk to him...” stay for a bit longer. I need you to help me get him back on track. If you could spend a bit of time with him...Talk to him...”

They began taking walks together on the Heath every few days, Grace and George, at her suggestion. They'd talk a little but often they'd just walk silently. It was an easy silence between them. He seemed to relax in her company, her arm linked through his. Sometimes they'd sit for a while on the bench, near the top of Parliament Hill, where he'd once declared his feelings for her. Grace thought about it whenever they sat there, and she knew he was thinking about it, too. On the return to Tofts Walk, he'd begin to tense up. The silence would have turned stony by the time they reached the house.

Nancy seemed grateful out of all proportion.

”We just walk,” Grace would tell her. ”And sometimes we sit. He hasn't told me anything. Nothing about the war. Nothing about you. I can't see that it can be helping very much.”

”But it is is helping.” helping.”

And evidently it was. He was softening, gradually but tangibly. Thawing. He stayed at home more. He eased up on the drinking.

The walks continued. One day, as they sat on their bench, George reached out for her hand, and she let him hold it. There was nothing more-just her hand held in his as they sat there. When they got back to the house, he was positively chipper for the rest of the day. On the next walk he did it again, and this time they sat much longer together. She was aware of his breathing, the sound of it, the subtle movements in his body. The warmth of their joined hands. But she didn't allow herself to turn and look at him. Kept her gaze fixed on the view: London, reduced to the size of a toy town below them.

On the next occasion, when it happened again, she did turn and look at him, at the golden strands running through his coppery hair, at his pale, hollow face-hollowed out by unhappiness and perhaps by memories he couldn't speak about. His hazel eyes were not tranquil as they had been before the war. But they weren't empty anymore either, as they had been when he'd first arrived home.

”Would you let me hold you, Grace?” he said. ”Just hold you?”

She moved closer and his arms came around her. Leaning in to him, she tucked her head under his chin, and listened to the beating of his heart while all around them leaves were falling.

There was comfort in the way they'd sit holding each other-and it happened every time after that, of course. They'd sit longer and longer, even when winter arrived and the Heath was cold and wet and windswept. Where they touched, a sort of current ran between them and gave them both sustenance. Each time it happened she sensed how obvious and natural it would be to simply lift her head and bring her mouth to his, but knew this was the boundary she must not cross. It wasn't exactly innocent, what they were doing together, but there was still an ambiguity to it. They simply had to stay the right side of the boundary.

Then, one snowy January day, as they huddled together on the bench, it all became too much.

The trouble is, she said to herself, I'm dwelling on this more and more, and I think he is, too. The longer we resist it, the more obsessed we both become. Maybe if we give in, we can get past it, leave it behind.

She was going to do it, any moment now. She was going to lift her head and kiss him. It simply had to happen.

The Heath was m.u.f.fled by a layer of snow. Flakes were falling silently, wetly, into their hair, onto their shoulders. Somewhere in the distance, some children were squealing as they hurled s...o...b..a.l.l.s at each other. But it was all very distant. Grace took a steadying breath...And George, still holding her, began to speak.

He talked about a time in October of 1915, the La Ba.s.see offensive in the Loos Battle, when his company was waiting in a trench for the order to go over. They'd thought they'd be waiting a few hours, but almost a week later they were still there in the rain and the mud, drinking copious amounts of whisky to keep their heads together, and failing to sleep when their turn came about. All around them were the corpses of their fellow men, growing more and more awful each day, their stomachs swelling and bloating and collapsing, their skin changing color. They watched rats feeding on the bodies of the dead. The stench, he said, was indescribable.

He talked about a soldier from the East Surrey regiment dying in No-Man's-Land.

”We could hear him-his agony-it went on and on and it was terrible to listen to but we couldn't go to help him. The sh.e.l.ling was too heavy. He kept apologizing for the racket he was making. When the stretcher-bearers finally found him, dead, he'd stuffed his entire fist into his mouth-so as to spare us, you see. And so as to be sure none of us would try some foolhardy rescue attempt.

”We never did go over, not that time. Word came eventually that the show had ended and we were to go back.”

Grace looked up at him, expecting to see tears, but his face was all white anger.

”Do you know something? Hardest of all were my brief spells at home. All that bogus 'home service' that was all about, while life went on as normal. Women like your mother strutting about in their uniforms, absurd poems about the crimson cornfields and the spilled blood of the brave. We had no idea no idea why we were there, Grace. Frankly we had more hatred for our d.a.m.ned colonel than we had for the Germans. You know, he complained, immediately after La Ba.s.see, about the sloppy informality of officers who allowed soldiers to address them by their first names. I don't think any of us who were there could go on believing in G.o.d or England or anything much. But I tell you, Grace, it was easier being out there than it was being here, where everyone was so b.l.o.o.d.y ridiculous about it all. And now, too, with all those empty patriots with their grand words who saw not a moment of the war as it really was, having simply forgotten all about it, resuming the peacetime complacency and ignorance that we went out there to fight for.” why we were there, Grace. Frankly we had more hatred for our d.a.m.ned colonel than we had for the Germans. You know, he complained, immediately after La Ba.s.see, about the sloppy informality of officers who allowed soldiers to address them by their first names. I don't think any of us who were there could go on believing in G.o.d or England or anything much. But I tell you, Grace, it was easier being out there than it was being here, where everyone was so b.l.o.o.d.y ridiculous about it all. And now, too, with all those empty patriots with their grand words who saw not a moment of the war as it really was, having simply forgotten all about it, resuming the peacetime complacency and ignorance that we went out there to fight for.”

Without any discussion, Grace and George stopped their walks. She felt they both knew how close they'd come to crossing that invisible line of theirs. Ironically, his decision to talk to her about his war experiences had prevented anything happening between them. How could the desire for an illicit kiss survive such talk? And yet their shared understanding had deepened as a result of his decision to speak to her. On the walk home he'd held so tightly to her hand that she thought he'd break her fingers.

”I'm going to crack on with my move,” she told Nancy. ”George is so much more himself again. You don't need me around anymore.”

”You're right about George being better,” said Nancy. ”Life is really quite pleasant at home now, isn't it? In which case, why leave?”

A few days later she was up in her room, packing, the case open on her bed. Everyone was out and the house was quiet. She'd told Nancy she couldn't be dissuaded. It was time for her to get out from under their feet. They needed some privacy, and frankly, so did she.

When the front door banged and heavy feet came running up the stairs, she knew it had to be George. A moment later he came cras.h.i.+ng in without knocking. He was red in the face and disheveled.

”You can't go.”

”Why not? Because Nancy said so? Has she been crying on your shoulder in some cafe or other? Asking you to come straight here and try talking me out of it?”