Уильям Николсон - Motherland

She gives him such an odd look then, as if that secret part of herself is revealing itself to him for the first time, the fearful, vulnerable part of herself. Her look says to him: promise me you won’t hurt me.

‘You see,’ she says, ‘it’s different for girls.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ve got your painting, and being important in the world, and doing the things men do. But for us it’s just the husband and the children. There isn’t anything else. So we have to get it right.’

She sits back down on the step, and he sits down beside her and takes her hand in his.

‘So let’s get it right together,’ he says.

‘We don’t have to decide anything today, do we?’

‘Not if you don’t want to,’ he says.

‘I don’t really know what I want,’ she says.

Larry is nonplussed.

‘But I thought …’

He doesn’t complete the thought. Suddenly it seems foolish.

‘You thought all girls want to be married, and it’s the men who have to be pushed.’

‘You said you want to be married.’

‘I do,’ says Nell. ‘But only in the right way.’

‘What’s the right way?’

‘My parents are married,’ she says. ‘But they’re not happy. Sometimes I think they hate each other. I don’t want to end up like that.’

‘But if two people love each other,’ Larry says.

‘I suppose they thought they loved each other. In the beginning. You never really know, it seems to me. Not for absolute sure.’

She’s looking at him earnestly now, stroking his hand as she speaks. He feels as if the world is spinning round him. Her words and her touch contradict each other. Does she love him or not?

‘But Nell,’ he says helplessly. ‘What about the baby?’

‘You mean we should get married because of the baby?’

‘Well, it’s part of it, isn’t it?’

‘And if there hadn’t been a baby, you wouldn’t have wanted to?’

Larry is caught. He wants to answer her, ‘I might not have asked you so soon, but I would have proposed later.’ Is that true? He feels the blazing force of her honesty, and is ashamed.

‘Darling Lawrence,’ she says, squeezing his hand. ‘I love you so much. Let’s not build ourselves any cages. I couldn’t bear it if I thought you were trapped where you didn’t want to be. Let’s just love each other the way we do now, and let the days go by, and not ever have to lie to each other.’

In that moment he loves her more than he’s ever done. This sweet child of truth, he thinks. Where does she come by such instinctive purity? An odd word to apply to a girl who gives her body freely to him, but he feels it deep in her, an innocence that is not a lack of experience, nor a childlikeness. Sometimes when she’s looking at him with her solemn eyes he feels she’s far older, certainly more mature, than he can ever be, for all his eight years longer in the world. Somehow Nell has been born true.

‘If that’s what you want,’ he says.

‘And if it’s what you want,’ she says softly.

Pamela makes her way slowly, deliberately, from rock pool to rock pool, in her ruched bathing costume and little wellington boots, carrying a plastic cup from a thermos flask. Her chubby three-year-old body moves gracefully. Reaching a miniature chasm between the rocks, she crouches and springs across to the other side, and in the same movement bends down to peer into the new pool. The tide is out, and the great expanse of shining rock and seaweed reaches almost to the horizon. She’s exploring, seeking tiny crabs and transparent fishes, moving ever further from the narrow pebble beach beneath the cliffs. What if she were to fall?

‘Don’t go too far, darling,’ Kitty calls, sitting at the bottom of the concrete steps.

Pamela pays her no attention as always. Silly to call out, really. This is a child who asserts her independent will so fiercely that she’ll do the opposite of what she’s told to do, just to make a point.

Hugo, who has gone hunting along the beach for treasure, now returns to the steps. He’s a sweet-faced youth, a boy really, though as he likes to tell her, there’s only five years between them. He was called up, but it was near the end of the war, and he never saw active service.

‘No chance of a VC for me,’ he says.

He’s pink-faced, bright-eyed, eager to learn. He admires Ed above all men, and without realising it, has picked up many of Ed’s ways of thinking and talking.

‘Look what I found,’ he says. ‘Jewels.’

He shows Kitty a handful of shiny translucent pebbles, dark green, milky white, amber, ruby red. Fragments of glass that were once bottles or jars, ground smooth by the action of the waves.

‘Pammy’ll love those,’ says Kitty. And looking out at the distant figure of her daughter, ‘Do you think she’s gone too far?’

‘She is quite a long way out.’

‘She takes no notice of me when I call.’

‘I’ll go and get her, shall I?’

He lopes off over the rocks, eager to be of service. Kitty is well aware that Hugo likes her company more than he should, but she sees no harm in it. Somehow the division of labour in his partnership with Ed calls for Ed to be away, touring the humbler vineyards of France, while Hugo stays home and manages the delivery of the orders as they come in. The business is not yet established enough to have its own premises, so the barn beside their farmhouse is used for storage, stacked high with cases of wine. Hugo is forever building up or depleting the stacks as the shipments come and go. His Bedford van has become a familiar sight in the yard, and he himself almost another member of the family.

She watches him now, silhouetted against the bright horizon, as he reaches Pamela. He stands between the rock pools reasoning with her. Kitty sees how the little girl turns her back on him and hops further away from the shore; and how he circles round to block her venturing any further. Then come sharp cries of frustration, and she’s hitting his legs. Finally he’s bent down and picked her up by the waist, and he’s carrying her back.

She kicks her feet and beats with her fists and screams at him, but he holds on tight. By the time he deposits her before Kitty, the little girl is scarlet in the face and seriously insulted.

‘I hate you!’ she says. ‘I hate you!’

‘You went too far,’ says Kitty. ‘What if you’d hurt yourself?’

Pamela kicks Hugo’s shin hard with her little boots. He lets out an exclamation of pain.

‘Pammy!’ says Kitty. ‘Stop that!’

‘I hate you!’ says the child.

With a mother’s instinct, Kitty understands the source of her daughter’s rage. It’s the being picked up, the being rendered powerless. Nevertheless she can’t be allowed to kick people.

‘Pammy,’ she says. ‘You hurt Hugo. Look, he’s crying.’

Hugo takes the hint, and starts to whimper.

‘Poor Hugo,’ says Kitty.

Pamela looks at Hugo suspiciously. Hugo is kneeling on the pebbles, rubbing his shin, crying.

‘Kiss it better for him,’ says Kitty.

Pamela crouches down and gives Hugo’s knee a quick rough kiss.

‘Thank you,’ says Hugo in a small voice.

‘There,’ says Kitty, trusting the balance of power has been restored. ‘Now say sorry.’

‘Sorry,’ says Pamela, scowling at the cliffs.

Kitty then shows her the jewels Hugo has found for her, and she becomes silent, absorbed in wonder. Kitty looks up to find Hugo gazing at her.

‘You’re amazing,’ he says.

Kitty pretends she hasn’t heard him. He’s becoming more and more open in his manner with her, no longer even pretending to hide his admiration. Kitty treats it as a game, which allows him, in playing along, to say more than he should. One day soon, she thinks, she must have a quiet but firm word with him, before he does something he regrets. But in the meantime, with Ed away so much, she sees no harm in letting herself enjoy his company.