Authors: William Nicholson
‘Gustave is an angel,’ she says. ‘I simply don’t know how I managed before he came.’
They’re sitting down and her big brown eyes are fixed on Alice once more.
‘So you’re my granddaughter,’ she says. ‘How cruel and wicked of Guy to hide you away from me.’
‘He hid me away from himself,’ says Alice. ‘He never wanted me. I was an accident.’
‘He never wanted you.’ Her gaze is penetrating ever deeper into Alice, past all her defences. ‘Oh, my dear. I know all about that.’
‘I’m not blaming him. My mother says it was all her own choice.’
‘No, there’s nothing to be gained by blaming people. But that doesn’t stop us doing it.’
Gustave comes back into the room carrying a tray of drinks. He sets it down on the low table between them. There’s a bottle of Noilly Prat, two glasses, a plate of biscuits.
‘Chilled vermouth,’ says Pamela, pouring golden liquid into the glasses. ‘Just right for a hot day.’
She thanks Gustave with a quick smile, and he departs again. Alice takes her glass.
‘To accidents,’ says Pamela.
She’s wearing no make-up, Alice thinks. Her hair isn’t dyed. How can she be almost seventy, and so beautiful?
‘I don’t understand why Guy hasn’t told me about you before,’ Alice says. ‘He should be so proud of you.’
‘Ah, well. These things go back a long way. But I don’t want to talk about me. I want to know all about you.’
Under her grandmother’s intoxicating gaze, Alice tells her life so far. How sometimes a love affair ends for no reason except it’s your first and you’re too young and there’s so much more you need to find out about yourself. How you drift apart and only know it’s happened when the space between you has grown too wide, and you reach across and find you’re no longer touching. How the old questions which you thought had gone away turn out to have been waiting all along, as unanswerable as ever. What do I really want? Who am I when it’s just me? When I love again, will I love with all my heart?
She hears herself say, ‘If I love only him, I’ll be a smaller person than I know I can be.’
‘How wise you are, my darling,’ says Pamela. ‘I wish I’d known that when I was your age. How old are you? Twenty-one?’
‘Twenty-three.’
‘When I was twenty-three I had a husband and a baby.’
The husband was Alice’s grandfather. His name was Hugo Caulder. This much Alice knows. The baby was Guy. The baby is Guy.
‘Guy said something about you marrying the wrong man.’
‘Yes, I did. As a matter of fact, I’ve done it three times. You’d think I’d learn.’
‘I want to learn,’ says Alice.
‘Not from me.’ Pamela laughs. ‘Unless you study everything I’ve ever done and do the opposite.’
‘I want to learn about who I am. Some of me comes from Guy. And some of him comes from you.’
‘Well, yes,’ says Pamela. ‘It’s all rather devastating, isn’t it? You see the patterns more clearly as you grow older.’
‘Guy says I come from a long line of mistakes.’
‘Does he, now? What a little beast he is. I bet he didn’t tell you our one true love story.’
Our one true love story. Like the unicorn: beautiful, impossible, long sought but never found.
‘Is it yours?’
‘Mine? No, it’s certainly not mine.’ She refills their glasses with vermouth. ‘It’s my mother’s story. Your great-grandmother’s.’
She raises her glass, as she did before.
‘To mothers,’ she says.
‘And grandmothers,’ says Alice.
They both drink. Alice feels the vermouth warming her inside.
‘I adored my mother,’ says Pamela. ‘You can’t imagine how much I adored her. Then later, I envied her. I wanted to be loved as she was loved. Don’t you find the trouble with love stories is that they make you sad? You want to have a love story like it for your very own. You go on looking for it and looking for it. And you don’t find it.’
‘But your mother did.’
‘Yes, she did.’
She gets up and takes a framed photograph off the wall. The frame is far too grand for the photograph, which is an old snapshot of three young people: a woman between two men. The woman is young and pretty, in the slightly artificial manner of the 1940s. The men gaze at the camera with that bold self-confidence that is somehow so heartbreaking to see today: boys who believe themselves to be men. One of them, the good-looking one, doesn’t smile. The other smiles.
‘That’s my mother,’ says Pamela. ‘She was called Kitty. That’s my father, Ed Avenell. And that’s my father’s best friend, Larry Cornford.’
‘Your mother was very pretty,’ says Alice.
‘Your great-grandmother. And wasn’t my father handsome?’
‘Very.’
‘He won the Victoria Cross.’
‘How?’
‘I’ll tell you. And what do you think of Larry?’
Alice studies the friendly smiling face in the photograph.
‘He looks nice,’ she says.
‘Nice. Poor dear Larry. How he’d hate that.’
1942–45
The staff cars are pulled up by the coastguard cottages, close to the cliff edge. A steady drizzle is falling and visibility is poor. A cluster of officers stand in glistening greatcoats, binoculars raised, tracking the movements on the beach below.
‘Bloody mess as usual,’ says the brigadier.
‘Better than last time,’ says Parrish. ‘At least they found the beach.’
Seven assault landing craft are rolling in the grey water of the bay, as men of the Canadian Eighth Infantry Brigade flounder ashore. Each man wears an inflated Mae West and carries a rifle and a full battle pack. They move slowly through the water, blurred by rain, like dreamers who stride ever onward but never advance.
The watchers on the clifftop command a view that is almost parodic in its Englishness: a river winds through green meadows to a shingle beach, framed by a line of receding hump-backed white cliffs. They are known as the Seven Sisters. Today barely two of the Seven Sisters are visible. The beach is defended by concrete anti-tank blocks, scaffolding tubes and long rolls of
barbed wire. Small thunderflashes explode among the pebbles at random, and to no obvious purpose. The popping sounds rise up to the officers with the binoculars.
One of the landing craft has cut its engine out in deep water. The tiny figures of the men on board can be seen jumping one by one from the ramp. Parrish reads the craft’s identifying number through his binoculars.
‘ALC85. Why’s it stopped?’
‘It’s sunk,’ says Colonel Jevons, who devised the exercise. ‘Further out than I intended. Still, they should all float.’
‘A couple of six-inch howitzers up here,’ says the brigadier, ‘and not a man would make it ashore alive.’
‘Ah, but the advance raiding party has cut your throats,’ says Jevons.
‘Let’s hope,’ says the brigadier.
Behind the staff officers the two ATS drivers are seeking shelter at the back of the Signals truck. The Signals sergeant, Bill Carrier, finds himself in the unfamiliar situation of being outnumbered by women. If a few other lads from his unit were with him he’d know how to banter with these English girls, but on his own like this, unsure of his ground, he’s feeling shy.
‘Look at it,’ says the pretty one. ‘June! You’ve got to admit it’s a joke.’
She laughs and wriggles her whole body, as if the absurdity of the world has taken possession of her. She has curly brown hair, almost touching her collar, and brown eyes with strong eyebrows, and a wide smiling mouth.
‘Don’t mind Kitty,’ says the other one, who is blonde and what is called handsome, meaning her features are a little too
prominent, her frame a little too large. She speaks through barely parted lips, in the amused tones of the upper classes. ‘Kitty’s perfectly mad.’
‘Mad as a currant bun,’ says Kitty.
The rain intensifies. The two drivers in their brown uniforms huddle under the shelter of the truck’s raised back.
‘Christ, I could murder a cup of tea,’ says the blonde one. ‘How much longer, O Lord?’
‘Louisa was going to be a nun,’ says Kitty. ‘She’s tremendously holy.’
‘Like hell,’ says Louisa.
‘Sorry,’ says the sergeant. ‘We’re still on action stations.’
‘Only an exercise,’ says Kitty.
‘My whole life is only an exercise,’ says Louisa. ‘When do we get to the real thing?’
‘I’m with you there,’ says the sergeant. ‘Me and the lads are going nuts.’
He answers Louisa but his eyes are on Kitty.
‘All you Canucks want to do is fight,’ says Kitty, smiling for him.
‘That’s what we come over for,’ says the sergeant. ‘Two bloody years ago now.’
‘Ah, but you see,’ says Kitty, pretending seriousness, trying not to laugh, ‘that’s not what Louisa’s talking about at all. She’s talking about getting married.’
‘Kitty!’ Louisa pummels her friend, making her crouch over, laughing. ‘You are such a tell-tale.’
‘Nothing wrong with wanting to get married,’ says the sergeant. ‘I want to get married myself.’
‘There!’ says Kitty to Louisa. ‘You can marry the sergeant and
go and live in Canada and have strings of healthy bouncing Canadian babies.’
‘I’ve got a girl in Winnipeg,’ says the sergeant. He thinks how he’d ditch her in a flash for Kitty, but not for Louisa.
‘Anyway,’ says Kitty, ‘Louisa’s tremendously posh and only allowed to marry people who went to Eton and have grouse moors. Did you go to Eton, Sergeant?’
‘No,’ says the sergeant.
‘Do you have a grouse moor?’
‘No.’
‘Then your girl in Winnipeg is safe.’
‘You really are quite mad,’ says Louisa. ‘Don’t believe a single word she says, Sergeant. I’d be proud and honoured to marry a Canadian. I expect you have moose moors.’
‘Sure,’ says Bill Carrier, tolerantly playing along. ‘We hunt moose all the time.’
‘Isn’t it meese?’ says Kitty.
‘They’re not fussy what you call them,’ says the sergeant.
‘How sweet of them,’ says Kitty. ‘Dear meese.’
She gives the sergeant such an adorable smile, her eyes crinkling at the corners, that he wants to take her in his arms there and then.
‘Stop it,’ says Louisa, smacking Kitty on the arm. ‘Put him down.’
A ship’s horn sounds from the bay, a long mournful blare. This is the signal to the men on the beach to re-embark.
‘There she blows,’ says the sergeant.
The two ATS girls get up. The officers on the clifftop are on the move, talking as they go, huddled together in the rain.
‘So what’s your names anyway?’ the sergeant says.
‘I’m Lance-Corporal Teale,’ says Kitty. ‘And she’s Lance-Corporal Cavendish.’
‘I’m Bill,’ says the sergeant. ‘See you again, maybe.’
They part to their various vehicles. Kitty stands to attention by the passenger door of the brigadier’s staff car.
‘Ride with me, Johnny,’ the brigadier says to Captain Parrish.
The officers get in. Kitty takes her place behind the wheel.
‘Back to HQ,’ says the brigadier.
Kitty Teale loves driving. Secretly she regards the big khaki Humber Super Snipe as her own property. She has learned how to nurse its grumbly engine to a smooth throb on cold early mornings, and takes pleasure in slipping into just the right gear for each section of road, so that the vehicle never has to strain. She carries out the simpler operations of car maintenance herself, watching over oil levels and tyre pressures with an almost maternal care. She also cleans the car, in the long hours waiting at HQ for the next duty call.
Today, driving home through the little towns of Seaford and Newhaven, she resents the drizzle because she knows it will leave a film of grime over every surface. At least she’s not in convoy behind an army lorry, enduring the spatter of mud from high back wheels. Louisa, who is following behind her in the Ford, will be getting some of the spray from her wheels. But Louisa has no sense of loyalty to the car she drives. ‘It’s not a pet,’ she says to Kitty. ‘It’s got no feelings.’
To Kitty, everything has feelings. People and animals, of course. But also machines, and even furniture. She’s grateful to the chair on which she sits for bearing her weight, and to the knife in her hand for cutting her bread. It seems to her that they’ve done her a kindness out of a desire to make her happy. Her gratitude
is the tribute she pays, as a pretty child grown accustomed to the kindness of strangers, afraid that she does too little to deserve it. She’s been brought up to believe it’s wrong to think herself attractive, and so is caught in a spiral of charm, in which those who seek to please her must be pleased by her in return. This gives rise to frequent misunderstandings. Unable to offend, she is forever encouraging false hopes. There’s a young man in the navy who supposes her to be his girlfriend, after two meetings and a dance. It’s true they kissed, but she’s kissed other boys. Now he’s written her a passionate letter asking her to meet him in London this Friday, when he has twenty-four hours’ leave.
The officers in the back are talking about the coming big show.
‘All I pray is the flyers do their job,’ says the brigadier. ‘I want those beaches bombed to buggery.’
‘Do we have a forecast?’ says Captain Parrish. ‘This is no good to anyone.’
He indicates the rain blurring the car windows.
‘Supposed to clear by tomorrow,’ says the brigadier. ‘Then we have to wait for the moon. We’ve got a few days. Not that anyone ever tells me anything. Bloody liaison officer knows more than I do.’
The Humber turns off the road up the long drive to Edenfield Place, where the battalion is based. The great Victorian Gothic mansion looms out of the drizzle. Kitty pulls the car to a gentle stop before the ornate porch, and the officers clamber out. Behind her, Louisa brings the Ford to a noisier halt on the gravel.
‘Thank you, Corporal,’ says the brigadier to Kitty. ‘That’s all for today.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’
He signs her work docket.
‘If you have a moment, be nice to our friend George. The boys have made a bit of a mess of his wine cellar and he’s rather cut up.’
The rightful owner of Edenfield Place, George Holland, second Lord Edenfield, has opted to go on living in the house through this period of wartime requisition. In the sacrificial spirit of the times he has retained for himself a modest suite of three rooms that were formerly occupied by his father’s butler. George is barely thirty years old; soft-spoken, shy, in poor health.