The Wars

  Robert Ross came back quite late and missed all this. He came inside from the terrace and mother said: ‘Why where have you been Mister Ross? You look exhausted.’ Robert Ross said he had been for a walk and had seen three foxes in the field. He seemed to be quite excited by this but mother said to him: ‘Please don’t mention it to Michael or he’ll have the whole house roused at five in the morning and all those horns going off and the dogs out baying in the yard.’ I considered for a while that I might write a little note and leave it under Michael’s plate at supper but then I thought of all the soldiers lying in and I persuaded myself it was one mean thing I should avoid.

  This afternoon I picked some daffodils because I wanted to take them down to Captain Taffler. This was after tea and about an hour before it was time to go and dress for dinner. The light in Parson’s was golden—partly because of the sun going down and partly because of the Morris glass in the windows. The stones on the floor were warm for the first time this year. I had on canvas shoes and I didn’t make a sound. I felt like Lady Sorrel but it wasn’t just because I was wafting over the tiles. I had on my pale blue dress and my navy jumper and everything was blue and gold and yellow. That’s what she’s like in the night—except she carries her tapers and I was carrying daffodils…

  (Let me just interrupt to say that Lady Sorrel d’Orsey was the daughter of the Marquis in Carolian times. Her lover, the Earl of Bath, was dreadfully wounded in the Civil Wars and was hidden in the room I have described where Robert slept at St Aubyn’s. Her portrait shows she was immensely beautiful. The dress she wears in her appearances is indigo. The golden light is from her hair and the yellow from the candle forms that were painted in a later age to depict the legend. She was damaged in the Second World War when the buzz-bomb fell on Parson’s wing. Still—there she is! Bruised—but salvaged for all to see. The Earl of Bath ultimately perished of his wounds. By all accounts it was a lingering death. We were Royalists, of course, and the lands around St Aubyn’s were taken by the Roundheads which meant that all through his dying he was also in hiding: hounded by Richard Cromwell of whom he had made a personal enemy. The legend of the candles had to do with the long and desperate nights Lady Sorrel sat with her lover and nursed him and, the story goes, even after his death she continued to light the candles and keep her vigil. She died at the age of sixty-five and was found in the chair by his bed with her candles burning all around the room. Needless to say—the candles have burned there ever since.)

  …I could smell the prussic acid and whatever that other thing is they use in the dressings for the wounds. Something herbal but I don’t know what. There was a nurse voice off in one of the rooms with the doors closed. Babbington or Colt or one of the others was talking to a man. I was standing on the third step from the bottom and I think I must already have come to a stop because what happened next is sort of like a photograph in my mind and I see myself in the picture. Robert Ross came out of Captain Taffler’s room and the door, as it opened, gave a kind of click like a shutter of a camera. I suppose I must have been startled because I took a quick intake of breath and got a terrific whiff of the flowers in my hands. Then Barbara came around the corner—also from Captain Taffler’s room. Neither Robert Ross nor Barbara saw me. They stood together in the hall and Captain Taffler’s door was still partly open. Neither one spoke. They were very tense. Then Barbara turned and took Robert’s hand. She leaned against his side. At first, he didn’t seem to know what to do—but finally he put both his arms around her shoulders and held her for a very long time with his chin on top of her head. At last they stood apart and Barbara put her fingers on his face and then he walked away. Her hand remained in the air and she put it against her lips when he was gone and then she closed her eyes. Her head bowed down a moment and the dimple pulled at her smile and I was certain any second she was going to look at me. But she didn’t. All she did was stare at Captain Taffler’s open door. Then she closed the door and went away outside. Everything they’d done was like a dance between two birds. Barbara never cries.

  I sat on the steps exhausted from having tried to hold my breath so long. I didn’t know what to do. I still had the flowers and I wanted to give them to Captain Taffler but I didn’t think I dared go down just yet. I waited almost half-an-hour. When the clock struck, I got up and went the last two steps and knocked at his door. There wasn’t any answer so I knocked again and just went in. I wish I hadn’t and I’m glad I did. I guess it saved his life but I don’t think I’ll be forgiven for that. Captain Taffler didn’t want to live—and, in my bungling way, I made him. Why do I always end up being mean no matter what I do…? He was kneeling on the floor in a pool of unravelled bandage with his forehead touching the stones. The end of the bandage was in his teeth. One of the walls was covered with great wide swipes of red at shoulder height where he must have been rubbing his wounds to make them bleed. The stumps where his arms had been were raw and one of them was pumping blood in spurts across the floor. I dropped the flowers. I think I must have cried for help because I was standing there still when Babbington came on the run. After that I don’t really know what happened. Mother was suddenly there and two of the doctors and Clive. I was taken away and given what they call a sedative and left in the nursery with Wilson. Next thing I knew I was waking up with Temple staring at me. Mother was saying: ‘Michael will carry you into your room if you want him to.’ But I said no. I asked where Barbara was and Robert Ross—I don’t know why—and Michael said that they were walking in the park and I said: ‘How can they walk in the dark?’ and Clive said: ‘Not in the dark. The park. It’s morning time’ and they pulled the curtains and a flood of light came in. Captain Taffler’s had an operation and will live—but I’m not allowed to go to the wards any more so I sent him flowers by Robert Ross. Tonight I prayed and prayed. I want to be a nun.

  —

  AFTER THAT, the affair between my sister and Robert Ross developed very quickly. I was shocked, of course. Dismayed. It seemed inhuman. Barbara never went again to Taffler. But Robert did. Thank God. It was now, in this period, that I heard the story of Robert’s meeting with Taffler on the prairie and how he had thrown the stones at the bottles. Also the story of Harris—Harris’s death and what took place at Greenwich. This is when I fell in love with Robert Ross myself—if I may put it that way. After all, we mustn’t forget that I was only twelve years old. Still, it was love nonetheless and it hurt me greatly to see him so much with Barbara. Barbara was totally possessive of Robert just as she was of everyone she claimed. He found this difficult no doubt. Robert I discovered was a very private man. His temper, you know, was terrible. Once when he thought he was alone and unobserved I saw him firing his gun in the woods at a young tree. It was a sight I’d rather not have seen. He destroyed it absolutely. Other times he would throw things down and break them on the ground. He broke his watch that way. I don’t know why. But he had a great deal of violence inside and sometimes it emerged this way with a gesture and other times it showed in his expression when you found him sitting alone on the terrace or staring out of a window. Still he was not at all times angry when alone and it says here: Robert went running today. I watched and so did Barbara. He was running in the paddock. We’d gone down with Clive and Honor to see the new foal in the barns. Coming out, we saw that Robert was running with the horses. He’d borrowed a pair of rugger shorts from Michael and that was all he had on. He was even in his bare feet. The horses seemed to love the race. They won—but Robert didn’t mind. The running was what he wanted. You could tell that by the way he smiled. This was between his trips to London to see the specialist and I think what he was really doing was finding out what condition his legs were in. Not good, according to this: Robert went to London today to see Doctor Giles. Once he gets back there are going to be two weeks’ convalescence. That was when he had the operation. In the interim, Michael went away to his training camp near Liverpool. Mother was in bad shape and she wrote to father begging him to come. This was around th
e time that everyone was going away. Clive would soon be gone and Lady Holman’s son—a neighbour—went and was killed the first day he got to France. Father refused to visit us and it says here: his excuse is a dinner party Mrs Dolby—(his mistress)—wants to give for Kitchener. Father is partial to Kitchener. He says that he owes it to the old man to see him rightly entertained in a time when Kitchener is on the outs with everyone else. Mother wept all afternoon. She told Lady Holman she thought Mrs Dolby must be mad to encourage father not to come and say goodbye to his sons but to stay in town instead to entertain their murderer. Mother, you see, was blind enough to blame Mrs Dolby. She was never—even when she was dying herself and father refused to see her—reconciled to the character of the man she had married. She could not believe that people didn’t love one another in their hearts. When my father failed to appear at the time of her dying she said to me: ‘He would come, if she would let him.’ Clive made a point of going to Wilton Place—coming here, in other words, to say goodbye to father but Michael didn’t imagine he was going to die so he went off blithely without farewell and he and father never saw one another again. I suppose there is some poetic justice in the fact that shortly after Mrs Dolby’s dinner party given in his honour, Lord Kitchener was embarked on his voyage to Archangel and the first week in June he was drowned. My father, at least, had got to say goodbye to someone.

  YOU MUST WANT TO KNOW if Robert’s affair with my sister had a physical aspect. Yes it did—there being an instance of it that I knew at first hand. But I will only tell you this because it seems to me to have some bearing on the mood in which Robert left us and went back to France. Otherwise, I should not forgive myself for having told it to you. Many times, I have wanted to destroy this portion of my diaries but I always remind myself it is a part of someone’s life: someone I loved and respected. I will tell you this and then one other thing and that is all. The rest you will get from other sources.

  (LADY JULIET PAUSED A GREAT LONG WHILE BEFORE SHE READ THE LAST TWO ENTRIES. SHE READ THEM BACK TO BACK—TAKING TIME BETWEEN THEM ONLY TO FIND HER PLACE. THE FIRST ENTRY FOLLOWS ROBERT’S RETURN FOR CONVALESCENCE FOLLOWING THE OPERATION ON HIS KNEES AND THE SECOND ENTRY—SOMETIME, ONE GATHERS, IN JUNE OF 1916—MUST HAVE BEEN WRITTEN THE DAY CLIVE LEFT FOR FRANCE.)

  —

  I DOUBT THAT Wilson’s wise—but she is Yorkshire honest. She’d rather ‘hurt thy feelings than find thee at the bottom of a well.’ She’s never minced her words. She told me once that children of our class ‘lack of graces something disgraceful!’ Isn’t that a lovely pun? But Wilson wouldn’t know it. She says it’s because we’ve all these rights we take for granted, whereas other children (‘other’ means ‘proper’ in Wilson’s terms) know their rights are limited and ‘keep their little places to themselves.’ She says I am a blunderer. She’s right. I’ve blundered into everything I know. I’ve blundered into rooms and I’ve blundered into danger and I’ve blundered into other people’s lives. I’ve blundered into all my favourite books—like Turn of the Screw and The Picture of Dorian Gray. There isn’t a single piece of even half-decent information I’d have if it wasn’t for blundering. Mrs Dolby’s children may be my half-brothers—but no one would have told me that if I hadn’t been hiding in the sideboard. Blundering on Michael taught me all I need to know about boys—and no one would have told me that. Blundering saved Mrs Grimshanks. Otherwise she might have died of debt. And it was blundering that put a stop to Captain Taffler’s suicide, though I know he didn’t want to be blundered on. And now I’ve done it again. This time I doubt that I shall ever be forgiven. By myself.

  Last night I was sitting on the stairs in the black hole of Calcutta. Everything’s gone wrong. Michael’s gone and Clive is leaving. I’m in love with Robert Ross but he hardly ever wants to sit and talk the way he did before he went away to have his operation. Now all he wants to do is sulk at the end of the terrace rubbing his knees. Father has been fierce to Mother. Jamie Villiers died of his burns. Clive is in a funk. The pacifists came and made an awful fuss. Lady Holman and Caroline Tedworth spent the entire morning in mother’s office weeping and wailing. Major Larrabee-Hunt, who at least has a sense of humour, said it sounded like the chorus from the Trojan Women. Temple has a spot (just one) but Wilson started boiling herbs and moaning over the fire, ‘Father, son and holy ghost! Please don’t let it be the German measles come to disgrace us just when the Kaiser’s winning the war!’ And my breasts feel funny. Sometimes they tickle way inside and other times they ache. Now I have to eat spinach twice a day and take a tonic full of rust and I hate it. Soon I will be a woman but they go on dressing me up as a child. So—I was sitting there on the stairs, after dark, with all this on my mind when Barbara came along the hall and went into Robert’s room. She didn’t even knock. Slowly, it dawned on me that here was my chance for every kind of revenge I was dying for. Barbara has never believed in Lady Sorrel. Robert has been sulking and neither one of them will talk to me or spend any time being decent to me so I thought I could kill a lot of birds with one stone. I went downstairs and raided the dining room for candles. Then I went to Barbara’s room and stole her silver dress. I put it on and a pair of her evening slippers with heels and I got my wide straw hat and put that on and tied it with the blue scarf that Wilson gave me for Christmas—lighted my candles and looked in the mirror. This was not exactly what Lady Sorrel looks like—(by a long shot!)—but what did it matter, since Barbara had said she’d never seen her? Maybe Robert had—but he didn’t know her well enough to know she never changes costume. So I wafted down the hall—or sort of—and got to Robert’s door. For a moment, I was nervous. I don’t know what I expected them to do—but I thought they’d accept that I was her and not myself. All I meant to do was open the door and go to the mantel and light Lady Sorrel’s candles with the candles in my hand and leave. Outside of that, I’m afraid I didn’t really have a plan. Maybe growing up makes you muddled and you do most things unthinking.

  What I did was worse than blundering. I’ll never understand. This was not like Captain Taffler where at least I could see what he’d done. It wasn’t like Michael where his being naked explained itself. This was a picture that didn’t make sense. Two people hurting one another. That’s what I thought. I knew in a cool, clear way at the back of my mind that this was ‘making love’—but the shape of it confused me. The shape and the violence. Barbara was lying on the bed, so her head hung down and I thought that Robert must be trying to kill her. They were both quite naked. He was lying on top of her and shaking her with his whole body. That was really all I saw. Except, it was so vivid that I went on seeing it—even after I’d run away. Robert’s neck was full of blood and his veins stood out. He hated her. And Barbara’s hand was in her mouth. All last night I didn’t sleep. I hid the candles under my mattress. Barbara’s shoes and her dress I hid in the toy box and I’ll have to pray that Temple doesn’t want to play today. Maybe the spots will spread and she’ll have to stay in bed. Neither Robert nor Barbara looked this morning as if they knew that it was me, and Robert even said to Honor, who is here, that Lady Sorrel must have been about last night since his door was opened and the draught was filled with the smell of snuffed-out candles. Barbara was pale, as if like me, she hadn’t slept—but nothing was said. I feel a dreadful loss. I know things now I didn’t want to know.

  Later: Just about noon, I started to cry, I don’t know why. It made no sense. I was sitting in the ballroom all alone and the doors were open to the garden and Barbara had ordered pots and pots of freesia from the greenhouse for tomorrow (she must have been giving a party), and they were sitting on the floor in the sunshine. I was sitting on one of the little gilt chairs with Amanda (my doll) and the tears just started and wouldn’t stop. The things inside my head were the shape of Robert’s shoulders and the whiteness of Barbara’s skin…Amanda’s face and the stitches coming open where her hands were undone—me in the mirror looking at my breasts…and Temple’s stare. I don’t know why. I don’t kn
ow why. And the golden hairs on Michael’s legs. I don’t know why. And Barbara’s head thrown back. And the dark surrounding everything. I don’t know why. And I sat and sat and cried. Just cried. I didn’t make a sound. Amanda seemed to be the only friend I had and I held her very tight. I’d been so mean. I’d left her on the window sill for weeks. Her loneliness was just unbearable. Me. She was lonely for me and I’d deserted her. I don’t know why. Her hands were coming apart because I hadn’t cared enough to sew her up. But now she was warm and safe and all I had. Just me and she and that was all. I don’t know why. I don’t know why.

  Honor came and stood in the door. Clive came after that and Honor went away. Then Clive said: do you want to go outside or shall we sit in here? And I said: here. It’s safe.