Nuns and Soldiers Page 5

  And Gertrude did not too often cry. Later, in that other time, she felt that she would cry forever. Now when she shed tears in private she washed her face and powdered it well. It’s like a concentration camp, she thought. You cannot show your suffering for fear that worse befall. It did indeed seem like a concentration camp to her, a condition of horror which could not have been anticipated and which the imagination could not conceive of enduring, and which yet was endured, there being no alternative. She saw the beloved head change, and already she was ceasing to compare the past with the present. She watched without screaming while his beauty was destroyed and the kind, just, witty radiance of his mind was quenched. Surely there was no logic left in the world any more if Guy could ramble and forget.

  Perhaps he hates me, she thought, perhaps that’s what it is, resentment, revenge. Sometimes he was so curt, so irritable, so impatient. How can the dying not hate the living, the survivors? There was no way now to find out what he felt, no question she could frame or ask which would not set something terrible quivering in the room. She could not ask him about the upper side of the cube or the white swan. She could not ask him about the pain. Sometimes the nurse gave him pain-killing injections during the night. She tried not to think about the pain, but it was there, huge, in the room, as death also was in the room, and the two moved above the figure in the bed like two black clouds, sometimes separate, sometimes merging.

  Well, thought Gertrude, if he hates the universe, if he hates God, as well he may, let him hate God in me if it will ease his anguish. Her love spoke thus, but it too was rambling and lost in the dark.

  Manfred put his head round the drawing-room door. ‘Hello, Count, all alone?’

  ‘Hello, Manfred,’ said the Count jumping up, ‘Gertrude is in with Guy.’

  ‘I could do with a drink,’ said Manfred, ‘I’ve had an awful day, and my God it’s cold outside.’ He helped himself from the tray on the marquetry table. Manfred North (his parents had been devotees of Byron) worked in the family bank. He was a second cousin of Guy.

  The Openshaws’ drawing-room (where the Count felt so safe) was a long room with three tall windows giving onto Ebury Street. It was elegant and snug, with a variety of handsome but fairly comfortable chairs placed at certain distances from the fireplace and facing towards it. Upon the plain carpet, the colour of Gertrude’s hair, there were two good rugs, one the silky-gold one with the minute mathematical pattern which the Count had been scuffing with his feet, the other a long beautiful thing covered with graceful animals and trees, which ran along below the windows making a sort of privileged promenade. The wide marble mantelshelf was an altar upon which stood, at each end, Bohemian glass vases, red and amber, and in the centre a most ingenious orchestra of china monkeys, playing different instruments, ranged in a semi-circle. These, and other bibelots elsewhere in the room, were religiously dusted with a feather duster by Gertrude’s char, Mrs Parfitt, but never moved. The Count once experienced holy fear and indignation when he saw a guest idly pick up the china drummer and actually hold him in his hand while making a point. Oil paintings, some of ancestors, adorned the walls. Over the fireplace in an oval frame was a pretty picture of Guy’s paternal grandmother, a small dark woman, her eager attractive smiling face peering from under her dark hair, and charmingly shadowed by a white parasol. Her family were orthodox Jews and opposed her marriage to Guy’s grandfather. They gave in at last since he was Jewish and though ‘officially’ Christian had fervently declared himself an atheist. She in turn had disapproved of Guy’s father’s marriage to a gentile, even though the bride had money and played the violin. However when the adored grandson arrived she relented. Other pictures represented powerful gentlemen, houses, possessions, dogs. Unfortunately few of these pictures displayed much aesthetic merit. (The charming little Sargent was an exception.) The Openshaws were a musical family who had produced (though not in Guy) quite a lot of performing talent. Uncle Rudi, who played the ’cello, had also been an amateur composer of some note. Where painters were concerned however they had unerringly preferred the second-rate.

  ‘How’s the office?’ said Manfred. He was a tall man, taller even than the Count (the Count was six foot one, Manfred six foot three) and sturdily built, a big animal. His large bland face, which always seemed to express some superior secret merriment, looked down upon the world. Manfred’s parents had returned, not unaggressively, to orthodox Judaism, but Manfred cared for none of these things. In his late thirties and still unmarried, he was rated a successful man. The Count liked him, but was intensely irritated by the way in which he made himself at home in the Openshaws’ flat. The Count would have liked a drink too, but was certainly not going to take one until it was offered to him by Gertrude.

  ‘The office - oh all right.’ What could he say? The office was nothing. He missed Guy there, missed him intensely, but he was not going to say that to Manfred. Nothing personal had ever passed between them. But Manfred liked the Count, he was not an enemy.

  ‘Won’t you have a drink?’ said Manfred. This was mischief on Manfred’s part.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Stanley Openshaw came in. (Gertrude always left the doors open at Visiting Hour so that no one had to ring.) Stanley was Guy’s first cousin. He had also married a gentile, but was deemed to have gone too far in positively embracing Anglican Christianity, the faith of his wife. (Gertrude, like Guy, held no religious belief, unless hatred of religion could count as one.) He was a Member of Parliament, of the right-wing Labour persuasion. He was a diligent kindly man, loved by his constituents (he had a London seat) but never likely to reach Cabinet rank. His wife Janet, an economist, was thought to be cleverer. She sometimes visited at Ebury Street, but did not get on very well with Gertrude. (Janet was such a good cook that Gertrude had early decided not to compete. Fortunately Guy scarcely noticed what he ate.) In spite of having one eye rather larger than the other, Stanley was handsome, with Guy’s leonine head. There were three handsome children all doing well in their studies.

  ‘Hello, Stanley. Not at the House this evening?’

  ‘No, but I can’t stay long, I’ve got a surgery.’ On ‘surgery’ nights Stanley would sit on till the small hours hearing the woes of his constituents.

  ‘You love trouble,’ said Manfred.

  ‘Any sort of trouble interests me,’ said Stanley. ‘It presents problems. I cannot claim any moral merit.’

  ‘I should hope not!’

  ‘I only hope my car will start again.’

  ‘Ed Roper has put chains on his.’

  ‘He would.’ (Ed Roper, an ‘honorary’ cousin, was in the art business.) ‘Any Guy news, Count?’

  ‘Nothing new,’ said the Count. ‘Gertrude’s with him now.’

  ‘I wonder if Gertrude will sell the French house?’ said Stanley, helping himself to a drink. ‘I wouldn’t mind buying it.’

  The Count resented the perfunctory inquiries, the detachment, the casual almost ‘party’ atmosphere. And yet how could they behave? They paraded for Gertrude, they brought her a whiff of continuing ordinariness which perhaps helped her more than the Count’s sombre gravity. Stanley at least lowered his voice. Manfred’s loud tones were harder to muffle.

  ‘Hello, Veronica.’

  ‘It’s snowing like anything.’

  ‘Oddly enough, we noticed.’

  ‘Well, you two came in your motor cars. I walked.’

  ‘I’ll give you a lift back.’

  ‘Thanks, Manfred. I left my boots in the hall, I brought these slippers in my bag, like we used to at children’s parties. Hello, Count, I suppose Gertrude is with Guy. Oh a drink, thank you, Stanley dear.’

  Veronica Mount (née Ginzburg), a widow, belonged to the older generation. She was Jewish, connected with Guy’s family by marriage, and had early set herself up as an ‘Openshaw expert’. She knew the family tree for ever so far back, as to its remoter origins in Germany, Poland and Russia, and exactly how everyone was related to everyone e
lse. Her husband, Joseph Mount, long dead, was something to do with violins. Mrs Mount was a cultivated woman who lived in modest gentility, some said in poverty, in nearby Pimlico.

  The Count said good evening. He always felt that Mrs Mount was mocking him a little, but perhaps that was an illusion.

  ‘And here’s Tim.’

  ‘Hello, Tim.’

  Tim Reede, a weedy young man, had come into the family picture, no one could quite remember how, as a protégé of Uncle Rudi. He was said to be a painter or something. He helped himself to a drink.

  ‘I suppose there’ll be a spring election? You needn’t worry, Stanley, your seat is forever.’

  ‘Anything can happen these days. One has a deep fear of rejection. ’

  ‘Haven’t we all,’ said Mrs Mount.

  ‘Talking of elections, I’ve got a spare ticket for Turandot, anyone like it, Veronica?’

  ‘Manfred is so kind, as always.’

  ‘I know the Count doesn’t want it, he hates music.’

  ‘I don’t -’

  ‘Did you see Gertrude?’ said Mrs Mount to the Count. She always spoke softly and had no need to lower her voice. ‘How is she standing the strain?’

  ‘Yes, how is Gertrude?’

  ‘Oh she’s - wonderful,’ said the Count.

  ‘Yes, she is wonderful, isn’t she.’

  ‘She needs her friends, she will need her friends, such a tragic business.’

  ‘She needs us as an audience to keep her up.’

  ‘Why, Sylvia.’

  Sylvia Wicks (née Oppenheim) was a remote cousin, only Mrs Mount knew how remote. Yet Sylvia, once very pretty, bore a strange resemblance to the dark-haired grandmother with the parasol. Sylvia in middle age looked dishevelled, her dark locks, through which she peered out at the world, hanging in untidy strings round her face. However she still dressed well.

  ‘Long time no see, Sylvia,’ said Manfred.

  ‘Tim, give Sylvia a drink.’

  ‘What a pretty dress. Are your feet soaked, dear?’

  ‘What an awful night.’

  A tempest was raging inside the head of Sylvia Wicks. She had always been unlucky, only now it was more like being doomed. Her parents died when she was a small child and she was brought up by a resentful aunt who gave her no education but did at least leave her a little money. With this Sylvia bought some good clothes and a house. She took a lodger. He was Oliver Wicks. They got married. They sold the house and bought another one in Oliver’s name. Sylvia ended up with no money and no house and no husband, and a two-year-old child. She also had the clothes and had been wearing them ever since (she was a clever needlewoman). She was never quite sure how it all happened. She was so glad to get rid of Oliver that she never went into the matter, and she was too ashamed to tell the family of Oliver’s crimes. Moses Greenberg, the family solicitor (he had married one of her cousins), found out however and was very angry with her. (He wanted to pursue the delinquent Wicks.) Sylvia, then living on National Assistance in cheap lodgings with her son Paul, was angry back. It was too much to be chided when she was so unfortunate. Moses told Guy, who summoned her. He did not lecture her about the past (which was by now an inextricable muddle best left alone) but urged her to learn a skill. Sylvia took a typing and shorthand course at Guy’s expense. Guy also took a financial interest in Paul’s education. Sylvia, who was in some respects no fool, found herself a series of quite well-paid secretarial jobs. She was saving up to buy a flat. Paul was now seventeen and she yearned for him to have a decent room where he could keep books. Guy, who kept in touch with Sylvia intermittently, lent her the money which she still needed. This had happened quite recently. However (it was almost incredible) before Sylvia had got round to buying the flat someone had swindled her out of all this money too, a woman ‘friend’ who persuaded her to invest it in a boutique. The money was gone, the woman was gone, and again Sylvia could not make out how it had happened. Again she told no one. She dreaded an inquiry from Guy or from Gertrude about the purchase of the flat. And now Guy was dying. Did that mean she kept the money? Only there was no money. Her head was spinning. But as if all that were not enough she had just, three days ago, learnt that Paul had made a girl of sixteen pregnant. The girl’s father, angry, frenzied, had been to see her. When she had spoken of an abortion the father, who was a Roman Catholic, had shouted did she want two young people to start their lives with a murder on their conscience? However the father did not know what to do any more than she did. He would not let her see the girl. She would not let him see Paul. Maddened by his shouts she hinted that the girl was a little minx who had seduced her son. The father became almost violent and threatened to have Paul put in prison. ‘I’ll ruin you, I’ll ruin you!’ he screamed distraught while Paul was listening in the next room. Paul had stopped going to school. She had stopped going to the office. Paul would miss his exams. She had lost her job. She decided the only thing to do was to tell everything to Guy, including the episode of the boutique which now seemed a minor matter. Guy would know what to do, Guy would know the law, he would know what people usually did in such cases, he would get her and Paul out of it somehow. She knew that Guy was very ill, but she thought that even a short talk with him would give her some key to the situation. She hoped too that Guy would tell her she need not repay the money. She could not repay it anyway. All her savings had gone together with his loan. Did Gertrude know about the loan? (In fact she did not, Guy had told no one.) What should she say to Gertrude? She was a bit afraid of Gertrude, some people were. Meanwhile Paul was sitting at home crying. She smiled, holding her glass, as she stood with Stanley and Manfred and Mrs Mount. What one can hide inside one’s head and smile.

  ‘Balintoy is skiing in Colorado,’ said Mrs Mount, ‘or shall we say après skiing.’

  ‘While we toil,’ said Manfred.

  ‘I bet he’s staying at the Brown Palace Hotel,’ said Stanley.

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Where does he get the money?’

  ‘Balintoy gives ski-ing bursaries to poor boys.’

  ‘How kind of him.’

  ‘Sylvia says how kind of him!’

  ‘We’ll be skiing here soon if this goes on.’

  Balintoy was a Lord, a real one, not like the Count. ‘Just a mouldy Irish peerage,’ as Manfred put it. His mother, a relation of Janet Openshaw, still lived in a crumbling castle in County Mayo. Stanley and Guy had taken up young (now not so young) Balintoy. Guy and Gertrude had stayed at the castle once.

  ‘He wrote to Gerald Pavitt.’

  ‘I’m jealous.’

  ‘How is Gerald these days?’

  ‘Manic.’

  The Count, leaning against the mantelpiece, was watching the door for Gertrude. He badly wanted a drink. And he wanted to see her return from Guy’s room with a calm countenance.

  ‘Tim, dear boy, could you get me another drink?’

  ‘Certainly, Stanley, what’s your poison?’

  Gertrude came in. The Count saw across the room her mask of tired pain, the screwed-up eyes, the terrible concentration. Then came the calmness he needed to see. She was smiling at Sylvia and Mrs Mount. Everyone fell silent and moved towards her.

  ‘Victor has just gone in,’ she said.

  Victor Schultz, bald and handsome, was Guy’s doctor, also his cousin, a pleasant unambitious general practitioner with a passion for golf. He had married a famous beauty of preeminent silliness, and was now divorced.

  ‘How is Guy?’ said Manfred, his big face looking down, solemn and gentle. Someone had to ask this question. Manfred usually took it on.

  ‘Oh - you know - the same - Count, you haven’t got a drink, do take one.’

  The Count hoped that his politeness did not go unnoticed.

  Tim Reede, having brought Stanley his drink, said to Gertrude, ‘I wonder if there are any of those cheese biscuits in the kitchen? I was painting all through lunch and I could do with a snack.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Tim, do go and hel
p yourself to anything.’

  ‘I suppose Guy doesn’t want to see me, no,’ Manfred said wistfully half to himself.

  Mrs Mount began to question Gertrude about the efficiency of the nurses and how much they cost.

  Stanley asked Sylvia politely how Paul was getting on at school.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘fine, he’s expected to do well in his exams.’

  ‘That’s splendid. You know William has just gone up to Balliol? And Ned is turning out to be quite a mathematical genius, he gets it from Janet of course.’

  ‘And how is Rosalind? Still mad about ponies?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, but her music is gaining ground. Do you know, I think that little girl is the cleverest of the lot!’

  ‘Of course you used to play the flute, usen’t you, Stanley?’

  ‘I gave it up. What would Uncle Rudi say?’

  Victor Schultz came in with a bright grave face. He patted Gertrude on the shoulder, using his professional manner. He accepted a drink. He had a cheerful temperament and, once rid of the famous beauty, had resumed his youthful insouciance. He was fond of Guy, but when he became a doctor had made a pact with himself to survive by rejoicing with others but grieving with them moderately. He was soon smiling.

  Mrs Mount said, ‘Victor, I’ve just been talking to Gertrude about the nurses. I wonder if you could advise me. A friend of mine has this aged parent -’

  Stanley was saying that he really must get to his surgery.

  Sylvia had managed to sidle up to Gertrude. ‘Gertrude, I wonder if -’