A stranger to herself, p.28
A Stranger to Herself, page 28
‘I have a table across the square, at Mère Laclos’,’ he told her. ‘Be quick, or someone will get it.’ He took her arm and steered her out of the cafe and across the dark, cobbled square to a house where the ground floor was converted into a restaurant. As they went, he said, ‘I realised, too late, that the Café des Anges was not for you.’
‘I’ve been there before,’ Violet said. ‘And I grew up in a humble home. My father was a policeman.’ This was not something she ever said and she wondered why she was admitting it now.
‘I doubt if your father would like to think of you in the Cafe des Anges,’ he told her as they went into a low room, where there were tables, and sat down. ‘You must be tired.’
‘It’s been a dreadful day. There’s been a big push near Arras …’
He nodded, said, ‘Sh … I may not be able to see you tomorrow.’
She realised he was telling her his regiment was moving off next day. She realised, too, that the look of panic she gave him must have shouted how horrified she was at the thought of his departure. The woman who ran the restaurant brought them soup.
‘So there were many wounded?’ he asked.
She could not tell him what the afternoon had been like because she could not describe, to a man going into battle for the first time, what happened to the soldiers.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But you never know whether there have been a lot of casualties, or your hospital’s been sent them all, while in another military hospital the nurses are playing cards with the patients.’
‘The countryside around here is so beautiful,’ he murmured. ‘And so old. You think the fields have been here for ever. Twenty, thirty generations have ploughed those fields, cut back those hedges, repaired those walls.’
‘It’s newer where you come from,’ Violet said. ‘Where is it?’
‘New England – New York.’
‘What about the Red Indians?’ asked Violet.
‘Some generations back,’ he said, smiling. ‘I suppose you must have thought I could tell you thrilling tales of the old West – about robbing trains and scalpings. I’m sorry I built up your hopes. The family’s very quiet and respectable now.’
‘Why did you volunteer?’
‘I felt bad, reading about the casualties. And if the Germans win the war, it will be no good to the USA.’
Violet didn’t understand.
‘Trade,’ he explained.
‘Oh,’ said Violet. He gazed at her. The woman took away their soup plates and brought plates of roasted rabbit. She smiled at him.
‘Shall we go for a walk afterwards?’ he asked.
Violet, knowing she was prepared, like any of the other girls, to lie naked on Landry Thomas’s greatcoat down by the sand dunes at the edge of the forest south of St Luc, nodded.
She and Landry made love on the beach, in the dunes, to the sound of the sea coming in and out. Neither before, nor after, did they talk about the war or, for that matter, the question of Violet’s husband. She lay in his arms, fairly astonished that she had felt pleasure unmixed by other thoughts. But she was still planning – she would go away with Landry whenever, if ever, she was free to leave the army. She’d leave Frederick, the Levines, even her child if she had to. She knew Landry Thomas could make her happy. No man she had ever known so far had persuaded her he could. Even at the very beginning Tom had seemed a mistake, Frederick Levine another, though lesser one. And always, with them, she’d felt restricted, required to play a part. Here, with Landry, she thought, was freedom. Shivering now, they watched the sun’s tip come up over the sea, then, arm in arm, went back to Landry’s purloined army van. He dropped her at the hospital, where she crept back through the hole in the hedge, got quietly into her bed, while her hut-mate still slept, and fell asleep.
Next day the rumours that the army had broken the Hindenburg Line were confirmed. ‘Let’s hope it’s the beginning of the end,’ said Mabel, but Violet’s eyes were on the couple of hundred yards of mud and craters separating the two lines of trenches, the rusting barbed wire between them where a man might die screaming because no one could go out through the bombardment to rescue him until nightfall, where the bodies of the dead were sometimes not reclaimed but lay buried in mud until the next explosion brought them, or what was left of them, to the surface. She thought of that khaki and mud world, overhung with a heavy sky, which she had seen when she went to visit Frederick, that place where men arrived in their full strength and left, if they left at all, wounded in body or spirit, or both. The man she had lain with last night on the beach was due to go there that day, or the next. A few days later he might be nothing but a stiffening body on the bare soil of No Man’s Land. She had seen the place, and nursed the men who came back from it. She had seen the wounds and looked into their shocked eyes. Between infatuation and a wild and uncertain hope for a future with Landry and the dreadful fear of his never returning she had no room for other thoughts. He could get a message to her today, he had promised, but all she could see was a column of men marching down from the American camp, past the hospital, and Landry with them. The fact that Frederick had refused to stay safely behind the lines on the General Staff, was now fighting in Italy, with nearly as good a chance of death or injury, troubled Violet not at all.
More wounded came in that day, but the nurses, including the nursing nuns, were sufficient to staff the operating theatres and although the work among post-operative men in the medical ward was hard, the worst part of the previous day’s crisis was over. Violet went through her duties mechanically, waiting for Landry’s message. Finally, after her third visit to the station at the main gate, there was a scribbled note for her.
Plans cancelled again. On duty tonight, but can we meet tomorrow?
All my love,
Landry
She met him at St Luc the following evening, this time respectably in uniform. She had told no one about leaving the hospital to meet Landry. Now, when she saw Mabel on her way out, she said she was going into St Luc to talk to the dressmaker who was making her two new cotton dresses for the summer.
‘You might have put it off until tomorrow,’ complained Mabel. ‘Then we could have gone in the afternoon when we’re both off duty. We could have had tea there …’
‘We can still go,’ lied Violet, who planned to sleep through her off-duty time next day.
She and Landry lay on the beach later that night, staring up at the moon. He said awkwardly, ‘Violet, do you really love your husband?’
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘If I did I suppose I wouldn’t be here.’
‘I thought, perhaps – you haven’t seen a lot of him … I thought I might be a kind of temporary solution.’
‘No, Landry,’ she replied and asked, fearing the reply, ‘Have you got a girl at home?’
‘Two or three,’ he said. ‘But you’re the real thing.’
‘Am I?’ she said, delighted, raising herself on an arm and looking down at him.
He pulled her down. ‘What did you think?’ He closed his eyes. ‘But, my God, I wish this was over.’
‘Wish you hadn’t come?’ she asked.
‘I wish it’d get started,’ he told her.
‘Oh, Landry …’ she began. She wanted to suggest they both left, now, before he went to the front. They could run away somewhere – Spain, Portugal, anywhere at all, and be happy until the war was over. But she knew it was not a suggestion he could accept. ‘When you’ve done your bit,’ she said, ‘couldn’t we go away together? I’d like it so much.’
‘Let’s make the most of what we’ve got,’ he said, holding her tightly, ‘while we’ve got the time.’
For the rest of that night, until dawn, Violet forgot herself enough not to think, or plan. But as she lay on her narrow bed in her hut, agitated, sleepless, nearly delirious with happiness and the piercing fear of that happiness ending, as it would, when Landry’s regiment moved off, remembering the smell of the sea, the stars, the feel of Landry’s warm body on hers, she could not prevent herself from planning, wistfully, an escape with him, a new life, in a new country.
The dream-life – snatched meetings late at night, a picnic in the forest by the sea one afternoon – went on for another five days. When it ended it came in the form of an envelope pushed under the door of her hut during the night or early morning. She noticed it as she got out of bed, pounced on it, ripped it open and read it, sitting on her bed.
My dearest Violet,
We have orders to leave today. I love you. I love you dearly, and for ever. When we meet again, we must talk about the future. Until then, I’ll be thinking of you constantly. I’ll write as soon as I can. I love you. I love you,
Landry
‘What’s that?’ said the red-headed girl she shared with, waking and looking blearily across at Violet.
‘Nothing,’ said Violet. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘I’ve seen you, Vi,’ the girl said, yawning. ‘Coming in at all hours …’ and she fell asleep again.
What difference did it make now if she’d been seen, thought Violet, getting up wearily, picking up her clothes and heading for the showers. As the tepid water flowed over her she thought it might be all right. Not everybody dies. She got out, dried herself, got into her uniform and began the long, dreary day.
Kate Higgins, June 1st, 1991
I’d been in Brighton for four days and there was still no news of Sam. After days of confusion and sporadic fighting by the British army, and agitated diplomacy by Britain, America and the United Nations, there was now an official UN resolution stating that Britain had no right or duty to employ its army in an internal conflict in Belize. Troops were to be withdrawn immediately while the United Nations met to consider its position.
The embarrassment of the British government was over, although immediate withdrawal of the troops was not possible in reality. The airport and harbour at Belize were still being fought over, air force planes couldn’t get in, British troop-carriers were cruising a mile off the coast waiting for a chance to land. Official statements said that British troops had withdrawn, or were withdrawing to their bases in Belize where they would remain until it was possible to leave. This sounded all right, unless you hadn’t had news of Captain Samuel Rogers since the outbreak of the conflict.
At Brighton, mostly because of Ray, we lived the way people do when they’re waiting for news – trying to be natural, sometimes even believing for hours that things were really normal, sometimes overcome with anxiety, not talking about the situation, so as not to upset each other. For my part, I felt all I needed was for Sam to die, leaving Ray fatherless, while I conducted an insecure relationship with a glamorous and heroic journalist and tried to make a dubious living in London. Selfishly, I cursed Sam, and the army, for turning me into a soldier’s girl, dockside weeper, the woman whose whole life has to pay homage to heroes. I hadn’t asked Sam to be a soldier. The newspaper talk of our Brave Boys in Belize didn’t help. If poor Sam died a dirty death in some pathetic little war that need never have happened, I’d be the one to pick up the pieces.
I suppose this was the point where I might well have thought of Andy’s proposal – but I didn’t. From Brighton, it looked like a fantasy. I hadn’t heard from Andy since I’d left London. When I rang the paper they said he was on leave; the answering machine at his flat gave out the usual neutral message, that he’d ring callers back as soon as he could. Even now I can’t understand why I didn’t include Andy in my thoughts about the future. I can’t claim to have been guided by any deep, womanly instinct, running below conscious thought. I was perfectly rational, in the way women have to be rational – weighing other people’s thoughts, feelings and general trajectory, and their own, and all the practical considerations, short- and long-term, and all possibilities and probabilities attendant on all the aspects. Somehow the possibility of life with Andy didn’t weigh very heavily in the scale-pan.
I just did what I could in Brighton: stayed with Ray, helped about the house, worked as much as I could on the life of Violet Levine. I borrowed the car, and by spending two afternoons searching the bookshops of the south coast, I actually found one of Violet’s two thirties novels, Carriage Paid. It felt like luck, then, and in retrospect seems even more so.
My parents were out that evening and Ray had gone to bed. I turned the news on, low, so that he wouldn’t hear it, and there, mercifully, was a picture of a troopship leaving the harbour at Belize City, full of British soldiers. The government, in control, whether temporarily or permanently, of the harbour, was assisting the troops to leave. I went up and told Ray. I said, ‘It doesn’t mean for certain Dad’s safe, but it might. I’ll ring in the morning – see if I can get more news.’
‘I’ll be at school,’ he said.
‘If I hear anything definite, I’ll come and tell you,’ I told him.
Then the phone rang, and I went to answer it. It was Andy. He said, ‘It’s been days. I’m sorry. There’s been an enquiry on that Sweetwater Village affair. I’ve been at the Foreign Office for two days – top level stuff at The Witness – an epic carry-on.’
He sounded tense. ‘What’s it all about?’ I asked.
‘They’re trying to get full information about which side did it.’
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ I said. ‘In a way it doesn’t matter who did it. There’s a war on – all sorts of horrors must be happening.’
‘In the propaganda war, it’s who did the atrocities that counts,’ he said.
‘So, who did it?’ I asked.
‘Obviously, the government side.’
The pictures had been horrible. A heap of bodies in the middle of the village, the body of a girl of about ten crumpled against the wooden wall of a small house, a dead woman on the body of a small child.
‘The village was said to be anti-government – at any rate, the owner of the sawmill, an Englishman called Arthurs, was against the Marxist government. He thought they might nationalise the forests. And, after all, I saw the government troops leaving. Pity old Joe, the photographer, died – AIDS, would you believe it? – so I’m the only witness. Anyway, that’s what’s going on here. I’d like to come down. Would that be possible? Any news of Ray’s father? Troopships seem to be picking up some of the army.’
‘Where are you?’ I asked him, I don’t know why.
He paused. ‘Well, a friend’s flat,’ he said. ‘Charlie’s.’
‘Oh,’ I said, realising that the pause and the slight change in his tone meant I couldn’t believe him. I shouldn’t have asked.
‘Are you still there?’ he said.
I said, ‘Yes. Course I am. Well, when would you like to come?’ And all the time I was opening the drawer of the hall table, on which the telephone stood and pulling out my address book. As soon as I’d found Charlie Garner’s number I rang off, leaving Andy in mid-sentence, and rang him. I asked if I could speak to Andy.
‘He’s not here,’ Charlie told me. ‘I haven’t seen him since he got back.’
‘Oh dear,’ I replied insincerely. ‘He said he was at your place. We got cut off.’
Charlie rallied, though without enthusiasm, ‘Well, he was coming over …’
‘Perhaps he could give me a ring when he arrives,’ I said.
I stood in the hall, not surprised, just jaded and fed up. Having to think that Sam might be killed had altered priorities more than I realised. At the first sign of trouble I’d instinctively gone to Brighton. I’d decided, reluctantly, but without too much difficulty, to stay there with Ray if Sam was dead. That I’d agreed to make it permanent, one way or another, with Andy didn’t seem to mean anything to me. Now I’d checked up on him, found out he was lying and I didn’t care.
The phone rang. It was Andy again. ‘Kate, we were cut off.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I rang Charlie, but you weren’t there.’
‘I wasn’t supposed to say where I was,’ he told me, using the Top Secret gambit. ‘I’m going back to the flat now. I could get down tomorrow and stay a few days. I’ll book in at a hotel.’
‘You could stay …’
‘No – a hotel’s better,’ he said. ‘I’ll ring when I get in. It’ll be a wonderful change from all this conferring and reports and statements.’
‘Good,’ I said.
For all I knew he’d been at Downing Street when he rang. But I doubted it.
Then my parents came in and I told them the navy had been able to start the evacuation of the troops from Belize. Feeling easier in my mind, even though there still wasn’t any news of Sam, I went off to bed and propped myself up with Carriage Paid, written by Violet in 1934, not, frankly, expecting to be very much excited by it. In fact I thought it might be soporific – Violet’s fiction was not, it had to be said, the stuff which changes people’s lives. Her biography had made a difference to many readers, mostly women, being the record of an eventful, energetic, courageous life. She’d played an active part in two world wars, started a promising career in parliament fairly late in life and even when that career came to an abrupt end she still continued to campaign for what she thought right. And although I was beginning to see by that stage that her account of herself was doubtful, to say the least, it wasn’t taking away part of the essential truth of her life. Of course, at that point I didn’t know the rest. The novels, though, were a different matter. The ones she’d admitted to had been reasonably well thought of in their time but they hadn’t worn well, perhaps because they weren’t original, too much clever imitations of what was then fashionable. So my interest in Carriage Paid, as I started reading, was that Violet had written it during the years she’d barely accounted for in I Affirm, from her divorce in 1933 to when, in 1936, she’d flung herself into the Labour movement, marched all the way from Jarrow with the hunger marchers, been arrested in violent anti-Fascist fighting, spoken against the government on every platform she could, sat on committees and written pamphlets.
