Уильям Николсон - Motherland

‘Gandhi, then.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about Gandhi. I don’t trust vegetarians.’

‘He lives the life he preaches. Simplicity. Non-violence. Self-sacrifice.’

‘So why doesn’t God make us all like Gandhi?’

‘Oh, come on,’ says Larry. ‘You know the drill as well as I do. God made us free. If he made us so we couldn’t go against his will, we’d be slaves, or machines. You know all this.’

‘What I don’t understand is why he couldn’t at least make us so we’re more good than bad.’

‘He does. I believe we are more good than bad. I do. I believe people’s deepest instinct is to love each other, not to hurt each other.’

‘Do you?’ Ed stops pacing to stare at Larry, as if unsure he can really mean what he says. ‘Do you?’

‘Yes. I do.’

‘Any day now,’ says Ed, ‘I’m going to be sent into some godforsaken corner of France to kill people who’ll be doing their damnedest to kill me. Where’s the love in that?’

‘I’m coming too.’

‘What!’

‘I’m on loan to the RHLI. At my request.’

Ed seizes Larry by the shoulders and turns him so he can’t avoid his gaze.

‘What’s going on?’

‘I’m a soldier,’ says Larry. ‘Soldiers fight.’

Ed holds his gaze, his blue eyes searching for the truth Larry is withholding.

‘Soldiers kill. Are you going to kill?’

‘If I have to.’

‘For your King and country?’

‘Yes.’

Ed lets him go with a laugh.

‘Well, there you are. Even you. What hope for humanity now?’

‘If it’s wrong for me to kill, it’s wrong for you too.’

‘Of course it’s wrong! Everything’s wrong!’

Larry is shaken by Ed’s challenge. Will he kill? He can’t imagine it. He’s not going into action to kill, he’s going into action to come under fire. It’s all about self-respect. Or pride. Or Kitty.

‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘war isn’t the common human condition. Most of the time we’re not trying to kill each other.’

‘Fine!’ says Ed. ‘Forget war. Forget killing. How about plain old common-or-garden unhappiness? You can’t deny that most people are unhappy most of the time. What’s the point of that?’

Larry wants to say, Kitty loves you. You at least can be happy. He wants to say, What more do you want to be happy? But even as the thought forms in his mind he knows this talk of happiness is all beside the point.

‘The fact is,’ he says, ‘you can’t make sense of any of it if you believe this world is all there is. You have to see it in the light of eternity.’

‘Ah, the light of eternity!’

‘You think it all ends with death, as far as I can tell.’

‘Yes. Lights out and that’s it.’

‘I see us as on a journey towards becoming gods.’

‘Gods!’ Ed laughs. ‘We’re to be gods!’

‘That’s the simplest way to put it.’

‘All sitting on thrones together, up in the sky.’

‘I’m doing my best here. You could at least try to take me seriously.’

‘Yes. Yes, of course. You’re right, my dear comrade-in-arms! What do you say to the third bottle?’

‘That wine’s for you and Kitty.’

‘Mine is the greater need right now.’

He opens the third bottle.

‘What we’re going to do,’ announces Ed as he extracts the cork, ‘what we’re going to do is we’re going to go out in the cool night air, bringing this excellent bottle with us, and that way we’ll stay sober, and you’ll tell me why you and Kitty are right, and I’ll take you seriously.’

They go out through the farmyard into the hay meadow beyond. They hand the bottle back and forth as they go, drinking from its neck. The night sky is clear, with a quarter moon low over the Downs.

‘You know what, Ed,’ says Larry. ‘Neither of us knows the truth about this. All we’ve got is beliefs, and all our beliefs come from is our feelings. I can’t imagine this life being all there is. I can’t imagine death being extinction. There has to be more. And as it happens, Jesus says there is more. He says he came to give eternal life. He says he’s the son of God. I don’t understand what that means, but he says it, and he says that all that matters is love, and he says his kingdom is not of this earth. And all that just feels likely to me. I mean, what sort of a world would it be if I knew it all? It would be tiny. Existence has to be bigger than me. So the fact that I don’t understand it doesn’t make it unlikely, it makes it far more likely. I just know there has to be more than I know. More than you know, too. That’s all you have to concede. Just accept that you don’t know everything . Leave a bit of room in your philosophy for surprises. Leave a bit of room for hope.’

Larry becomes more and more expansive as he speaks, liberated by the wine and the darkness round him and the majesty of the star-filled sky.

‘You know what,’ says Ed laughing. ‘I think I’d rather be you than me. All this love. All this hope. That’s good stuff.’

He passes Larry the bottle. Reaching his arms out on either side he begins to make pirouettes over the grass. Larry puts the bottle to his lips and tips it back. The last of the wine runs down his throat and spills out over his chin. He tosses the bottle away with a fine disregard and it lands in the stream.

Ed comes spinning up to Larry and takes him by the hand.

‘Come on, best man!’ he says. ‘If we’re going to die, let’s die together!’

They swoop about together, laughing out loud, until they lose their balance and tumble to the ground. There they lie, panting, smiling at the stars, still clasping hands.

On Saturday August 15th Ed and Kitty are married in the chapel of Edenfield Place. The wedding is small. Both bride and groom wear uniform. Kitty’s parents, the Reverend Michael Teale and his wife Molly, come from Malmesbury. Ed’s parents, Harry and Gillian Avenell, come from Hatton in Derbyshire. Larry Cornford is best man. Others present are Louisa Cavendish, George Holland, Brigadier Wills, and Ed’s commanding officer, Colonel Joe Picton-Phillips. After the ceremony there’s a wedding breakfast in the mess, hosted by George Holland and Brigadier Wills.

Everyone is smiling and cheerful, most of all Kitty’s parents, but it’s not an easy occasion. The two families are meeting for the first time. Harry Avenell is a tall distinguished man, a director of a brewing company, but Kitty’s pink-cheeked father has far more of the look of a brewer about him. Ed’s mother teasingly reprimands Ed for not marrying in a Catholic church.

‘Why would I do that, Mummy?’ Ed says. ‘You know I’m through with all of that.’

‘Oh, so you say,’ says Gillian Avenell.

Kitty likes the way he calls his mother ‘Mummy’ so unselfconsciously, but wonders a little at the way he behaves with both his parents. There are no embraces, no kisses. Harry Avenell takes part in the ceremony with an oddly detached manner, as if standing in for the father of the groom before the real man arrives.

Kitty’s mother talks in a ceaseless stream.

‘If only Harold could be here, but even if he could get leave it would be no good. He’s in North Africa, you know, with the Eleventh Hussars, they call them the Cherry Pickers, they were in the Charge of the Light Brigade, but they drive armoured cars now. I remember when my mother got the news about Timmy, he was behind the lines at Passchendaele, but there was a shell and that was that. Of course it was happening to everybody, but even so. And now here’s Harold out in the desert when he should be here with us, and I can’t help thinking it’s just all wrong.’

‘Now then, Molly,’ says her husband. ‘This is Kitty’s day.’