Nuns and Soldiers

  ‘You just check your stuff. I’ll write a note to Gertrude.’

  On a large piece of writing paper Anne wrote in capital letters, DARLING, I’M SO GLAD! WE HAVE GONE. WE THOUGHT IT BEST. MUCH LOVE. ANNE. PS Our luggage is packed up in our rooms. We’ll leave the bikes at the hotel.

  ‘Now come along, come along!’ She pulled the Count out of his bedroom. She left the note in a conspicuous position in the hall, and taking the Count’s sleeve firmly in her hand, led him out of the archway and down the drive to the garage. There were two bicycles, one male, one female. Anne felt the tyres. They were hard. She stowed the bags in the two baskets and gave the Count his machine. She even had to put his two hands on the handlebars. ‘Come on, Peter, you’re mine now,’ she said, but he did not hear her, he was too upset and unhappy.

  In the sitting-room Tim and Gertrude, deep in talk, vaguely heard a strange distant sound. It was Anne Cavidge laughing.

  ‘But you’re hurt,’ said Gertrude. ‘You’ve been fighting -’

  ‘Have I got a black eye? It feels like it.’

  ‘Yes -’

  ‘I have been fighting, sort of, I’ll tell you about it. I’ll tell you everything.’

  ‘Oh darling sweet precious Tim, darling heart. I’m so glad you’ve come back -’

  ‘Are you? Oh good. Gertrude, this is OK isn’t it, I mean I’m back, it’s real, you won’t tell me to go away again?’

  ‘No, no, you’re here forever, I can’t think how I ever let you go.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been such a perfect fool, my darling - but I’ll tell you, I’ll explain -’

  ‘No need to explain, I mean all right, but you don’t have to, you’re so absolutely here and that’s everything.’

  ‘But I must explain, I have to, you must see it all, you didn’t see it before -’

  ‘You didn’t give me much chance to, you just ran off -’

  ‘You told me to go -’

  ‘Yes, but I -’

  ‘I was so stupid and frightened, and I felt awful because I hadn’t told you -’

  ‘About that woman, what about her, I mean what about her now?’

  ‘I’ve left her.’

  ‘You’re bleeding -’

  ‘Oh I expect so. Gertrude, I have left her -’

  ‘Yes, I know, I’m sure. Sit down and let me look. There’s an awful bruise on your forehead -’

  ‘I got banged on the head-I say, how pretty that vine branch is.’

  ‘There’s blood in your hair?’

  ‘I nearly passed out -’

  ‘Let me feel -’

  ‘Is my skull fractured?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. Does that hurt?’

  ‘Yes, but it would, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘But what happened?’

  ‘I was fighting with the canal - or rather-I got swept into the tunnel -’

  ‘But why ever?’

  ‘I know I promised you I wouldn’t, but I didn’t mean to go in, there was this dog -’

  ‘Keep still - your hand’s bleeding -’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve got a cut on my leg, and here on my knee, look -’

  ‘You went into the tunnel, however -’

  ‘I didn’t want to, there was this -’

  ‘But how did you -’

  ‘I went all the way through the tunnel and -’

  ‘I can’t think how you’re still alive -’

  ‘Nor can I -’

  ‘Come to the kitchen, I must put something on those cuts.’

  ‘I feel terrible, actually, and I’m awfully hungry -’

  Gertrude put her arm through Tim’s and led him. He leaned against her shoulder smiling a broad exhausted crazy sleepy smile. Gertrude saw the note in the hall. ‘They’ve gone!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Anne and the Count. Never mind. Now let me wash those cuts and disinfect them. What a state your clothes are in.’

  ‘I told you, I fell in, there was this dog -’

  ‘Better take your clothes off and put on my coat, no, stay there, I’ll get some hot water and -’

  ‘I’m making the towel filthy -’

  ‘Do keep still -’

  ‘Oh, Gertrude, that hurts -’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a deep cut -’

  ‘Perhaps I’ve got concussion?’

  ‘Perhaps you have, but don’t frig about so.’

  ‘I’m so hungry -’

  ‘In a minute -’

  ‘I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday in the aeroplane, I came on this ’plane and -’

  ‘I haven’t any steak for your poor eye, we ate it last night -’

  ‘I wish there was some. What is there to eat?’

  ‘There’s a chicken casserole, I made it. I decided I would -’

  ‘You decided you would! Oh wonderful Gertrude, I do like your dress and those blue beads, I love you so much. Do you love me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you forgive me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ll hold onto me forever, and ever?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’re married, and -’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Look, I’m wearing my ring -’

  ‘Yes, I see. I think I’d better put some plaster -’

  ‘Oh don’t bother. Oh Gertrude, do stop playing at first aid.’

  ‘You thought you’d got a fractured skull and concussion.’

  ‘I don’t now.’

  ‘I wonder if you should see a doctor -’

  ‘No, I’m fine. Gertrude, I must have some of that chicken casserole or I shall go mad.’

  Robed in Gertrude’s coat, Tim sat at the kitchen table confronting the chicken casserole. He ate a little. Then he said, ‘Darling, I’m sorry-I think - what I want now is just - to go to sleep. Do you mind?’

  ‘Dearest heart, of course you must sleep. Come now. Come.’

  He leaned again on Gertrude’s arm as she helped him upstairs and led him to her bed.

  ‘Will you be warm enough, would you like -’

  ‘No, I’m all right -’

  ‘I’ll close the shutters -’

  ‘God, I do want to sleep -’

  ‘Sleep, my darling -’

  ‘You won’t go away while I’m asleep?’

  ‘I won’t go away.’

  ‘Oh Gertrude, I feel so happy - it’s like - going to sleep - when I was a boy - after passing an exam -’

  ‘Don’t worry. You’ve passed your exam.’

  ‘Oh Gertrude, you’re so good to me.’

  ‘Go to sleep, darling.’

  Tim was already asleep. Gertrude closed the shutters. She sat in the darkened room beside the bed watching Tim sleeping, and her heart was full of an incoherent tender joy.

  ‘You’re telling it all topsy-turvy,’ said Gertrude.

  ‘There’s so much to tell.’

  It was evening. The sun, just behind the rocks, was bleaching the pale blue sky with light. The tall folded rocks lifted their majestic cliff faces, streaked with blue and creamy white. The cicadas were busily rapidly finishing their last song in the motionless pines.

  Tim had slept for several hours and woken as into paradise. His body had a limp feeling which might have been either physical exhaustion or pure joy.

  The evening was planned to move slowly. They both had a sense of arrested time. Feeding his hunger now with a happy temperance Tim had eaten a lot of bread and butter and paté and olives. Eating, existing, had become a long musical slow movement. The chicken casserole was still to come.

  They were talking and drinking. Tim was trying to tell the whole story, but there were so many interconnecting parts to the story and so many parts that did not connect at all, so many events which were over-determined, so many that were purely accidental, he kept darting about and breaking off and starting again, to present it all as coherent picture was beyond his talents as a narrator, and they were both so pleased with each other’s company that they could not
concentrate.

  ‘I think I was influenced by Anne,’ said Gertrude.

  ‘She disapproves of me.’

  ‘She’ll come round.’

  ‘Will she?’

  ‘She’ll have to, I’ll make her. Besides she’s rational and good and she’ll see.’

  ‘Oh course she’s right to disapprove, I mean, she isn’t right really, but -’

  ‘She’s a bit jealous.’

  ‘Wasn’t it funny their both clearing off on bikes!’

  ‘Well, thank heavens. We’re not in a hurry to go anywhere.’

  ‘Gertrude, I must be back by Tuesday, I’m teaching.’

  ‘I’m so glad about your job.’

  ‘Oh my dear, to be able to tell you everything, it’s like being in the presence of God.’

  ‘That gives us nearly a week here.’

  ‘What about the car?’

  ‘Someone can fetch it later, Manfred can.’

  ‘Oh - Manfred -’

  ‘You’re not worrying about Manfred now?’

  ‘Gertrude, I’m so frightened. I’m frightened of everybody, I feel that I shook your love for me so much that it must be sort of cracked.’

  ‘It isn’t cracked. It’s entire. One knows.’

  ‘Oh if only I hadn’t seen you and the Count, it was like the end of the world.’

  ‘Tim, I’ve told you -’

  ‘I know, but I’ll keep seeing it in my mind forever, perhaps it’s a sort of punishment.’

  ‘He suddenly thrust out his hand and I took it.’

  ‘But that’s just what I did -’

  ‘Yes, but this was totally different. You know he’s always been a bit soft about me -’

  ‘Did he make some declaration, the scoundrel?’

  ‘No, he said nothing. Then he said, “I’m sorry.” It was all over in a moment.’

  ‘How do you mean all over? You stopped holding hands and -’

  ‘I said something like “all right” and he recovered and we went on talking about something else.’

  ‘Like the situation in Poland or -’

  ‘Something ordinary, I -’

  ‘You shut him up.’

  ‘He shut himself up. Tim, he’s my friend, he was Guy’s friend -’

  ‘Oh - yes - yes -’

  ‘There wasn’t any sentimental conversation, there was just a funny moment -’

  ‘I hate funny moments, they’re dangerous.’

  ‘He’s an admirable man and an exceptional man. You’re not going to go against him?’

  ‘No, one couldn’t. Besides, oh dear - oh dear -’

  ‘But, Tim -’

  ‘You’re going to say who am I to talk.’

  ‘No, I’m going to say I love you and no one else matters tuppence. ’

  ‘That’s good. And you don’t mind him and Anne clearing off?’

  ‘I’m delighted! How ruthless love makes one. I never took them to our places.’

  ‘I’m glad of that. Oh my God, oh my darling - Gertrude, I feel so bossy, do you mind?’

  ‘I feel bossy too, it’s just love.’

  ‘But I must tell you how it was -’

  ‘You’ve told me.’

  ‘Not properly. I must tell you everything. I want to very much. I hardly understand it myself.’

  ‘I’m sorry I was so awful, I made up my mind so quickly, at least it wasn’t like making up my mind, it was as if the whole world had changed and I could do nothing -’

  ‘And then, of course, other people rather took you over.’

  ‘No, they didn’t. Well, perhaps they did a bit. I was so hurt -’

  ‘I know, I know, forgive me.’

  ‘I started on a course and had to keep on just so as to keep sane.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean other people took you over -’

  ‘If it hadn’t all become so public at once one could have had second thoughts -’

  ‘Yes, I know, I’m so bloody terrified of that lot -’

  ‘But it wasn’t just that - it was a kind of hardness, inner pride. As if I had to have a destructive occupation to cure the misery. Do you understand?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘And that terrible mixed-up conversation-I felt I had to rush to a conclusion or die of pain -’

  ‘Oh my dear heart - I’ve gone over and over and over that conversation trying to see what it meant.’

  ‘So have I.’

  ‘It all happened so fast.’

  ‘We both became entirely irrational so quickly, like falling down a steep slope -’

  ‘But the point is, listen Gertrude, how it happened, and I felt so guilty that made me instantly stupid -’

  ‘I should have waited and let you talk -’

  ‘No, do listen, you see there were a lot of different things, separate things really, well not quite separate but - oh hell, do you think I’ve got concussion?’

  ‘Would you like to lie down?’

  ‘No, I’m all right. I’m not sure what concussion is, actually. Anyway, there were those things. I suppose the main thing, the awful thing, was that I didn’t tell you about Daisy at the start.’

  ‘You should have done, you should have done it instantly, at moment one.’

  ‘I was so dazed at moment one. Just remember what it was like.’

  ‘At moment two then.’

  ‘That’s just it-I kept putting it off.’

  ‘It would have been right, and it would have been easy.’

  ‘You say that now, you mean you would have swallowed anything? ’

  ‘What a way to put it!’

  ‘I was so bloody frightened, I thought I’d lose you if I told. I felt I just couldn’t explain Daisy without our thing collapsing, you’d think it was fatal.’

  ‘It was wrong not to tell, and you should have trusted me, trusted our love, surely you could see how much I loved you.’

  ‘Yes. I believed and yet I didn’t believe. I kept thinking how can she love me. Oh God. These things are separate, aren’t they? I want to keep everything separate, there are so many sort of items. Anyway, I didn’t tell, I wanted to and meant to but I kept putting it off, and as I did thatI-I rethought it -’

  ‘Rethought what?’

  ‘About Daisy and me. I changed it in thought. I made it not important. I wanted it to shrivel up and go away into the past. I did-n’t want to tell you about it until it was tiny and meaningless.’

  ‘Is it tiny and meaningless now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, that was one thing, and another thing was that when you chucked me out on the first occasion -’

  ‘I didn’t -’

  ‘When you chucked me out on the first occasion I ran straight back to Daisy.’

  ‘And made love?’

  ‘Well - maybe - yes -’

  ‘I don’t like that.’

  ‘OK, but listen to it. I was so smashed up, just imagine, I suppose I needed comfort. I couldn’t think where else to go -’

  ‘I might start feeling sorry for her, only I don’t want to think about her. I don’t want to touch her with my thought at all.’

  ‘Later on, of course, I saw how awful this was -’

  ‘Yes, you just ran away.’

  ‘I couldn’t be with you as less than I had been. But perhaps I should have waited and argued and - hoped and -’

  ‘Yes -’

  ‘Well, later I felt I’d failed, given up, betrayed that, our love, that fact -’

  ‘Yes, I failed too.’

  ‘If only I’d stayed by myself, if only I hadn’t gone to Daisy then, but I did, I fell right back into the - the old - routine -’

  ‘Routine -’

  ‘Well - anyway then I found you again, and that was so wonderful -’

  ‘You could have told me then.’

  ‘Then I thought I’d wait till we were married.’

  ‘When would you have told me?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thou
ght that if I waited it would get easier to tell you, but then I realized it was getting harder not easier.’

  ‘Then it’s just as well you were unmasked.’

  ‘Yes. You see - my God, I do want to understand what happened. You see, I only went back to Daisy when I thought I’d lost you, so I wasn’t in that sense deceiving you, but then I was in the other sense and the things got mixed in my mind and I felt hopelessly guilty -’

  ‘I understand -’

  ‘And then when you suddenly went for me about that stuff you got from Jimmy Roland -’

  ‘I’d just heard it, I was so confused, so shocked -’

  ‘You see, Daisy and I did discuss how we’d marry rich people and support each other but of course it was just a silly joke. And I suppose Jimmy Roland overheard this drivel -’

  ‘In that pub.’

  ‘Yes. I can’t understand how he can have been so beastly though - anyway -’

  ‘That was another thing. I think I see what you mean about separating out the items.’

  ‘Yes, and I felt suddenly so guilty, so much more guilty, when you accused me -’

  ‘You added it all up in a muddled way -’

  ‘Yes, and I couldn’t help acting as if I might have done anything, and the fact I’d never mentioned Daisy’s existence was so terribly important -’

  ‘Yes - And Daisy’s existence was important, something you so absolutely couldn’t deny.’

  ‘Yes. I couldn’t have invented any lie then, I couldn’t then have denied her. Oh God in heaven -’

  ‘The truth got hold of you at last.’

  ‘Yes, it got hold of me, but I wouldn’t explain it to you. And not having had the faith and the courage to keep away from Daisy was like a kind of infidelity -’

  ‘Was perhaps a kind of infidelity. But I understand -’

  ‘And then of course when I ran back to Daisy for the second time, that really seemed to finish everything. I felt as if I were being compelled to act as if any awful thing that you imagined of me was true. And, oh God, I took that money out of the bank -’

  ‘It doesn’t matter -’

  ‘I was going to repay it, I am going to repay it -’

  ‘Oh Tim -’

  ‘I think I did it to sort of ruin myself, to make return impossible, it was too painful to hope for.’

  ‘I never believed you’d planned to live with Daisy on my money.’

  ‘I think you believed it for a second.’

  ‘It was such a terrible shock, the sense of being deceived by someone loved and trusted absolutely -’