Уильям Николсон - Motherland

So that second gunshot missed its target. How could they miss, at point-blank range? Reliving its sound now in memory, it seems to Larry that the second shot was fired into the air. Why?

He drives the Buick back to Government House alone, careless of any further danger. The warm night air streams through the smashed windscreen, bathing his face. A strange lightness of spirit has taken possession of him. He feels as if he has died and risen again and is now immortal.

Entering Government House through the north door, he makes his way down the corridor, past the startled looks of servants, to the small office where Geraldine keeps her charts. He finds her there alone. She stares at him, mute with shock.

‘It’s all right,’ he says. ‘It’s not my blood.’

He opens his arms. Responding instinctively to his gesture, she comes into his embrace.

He holds her tight, feels her trembling in his arms. He bends his head towards her, and understanding, she turns her face to his. He kisses her, clumsily at first. Then he feels her lips respond, and her body soften in his arms.

When they part, there are bloodstains on her dress, and she is looking at him wonderingly.

‘Larry,’ she says.

Suddenly it’s all so clear. He could have died back there on the overbridge, but he didn’t die. That second gunshot was a command that said: live. Time is so short, death comes so soon. While we have this precious gift of life we must cherish it. We must love each other.

‘I have so much love to give you,’ he says.

‘Do you, Larry?’

‘Will you let me love you?’

He doesn’t ask for her love. That’s for her to give. This isn’t about his own needs or fears. This is about the life force within him, that’s pouring from him in a ceaseless stream.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes.’

Larry goes back to the Victoria Zenana Hospital the next day to find Syed Tarkhan sitting up in bed and drinking tea.

‘Larry,’ he says. ‘My brother.’

‘So you’re going to pull through, are you?’

‘I’m leaving, my brother. This afternoon I leave for Karachi.’ He holds out his hand. His eyes have never left Larry from the moment he entered the ward. ‘I will never forget you.’

His limpid gaze speaks to Larry, saying, There are no words.

‘So you’re off to build a brand-new country,’ says Larry.

‘If God wills.’

‘I’ll miss you.’

Tarkhan holds his hand tight, and nods and shakes his head at the same time, all the while looking into his eyes with his tender loving gaze.

‘It truly was a noble gesture, Larry,’ he says.

‘Married?’ says William Cornford.

‘Well, we’re not married yet,’ says Larry. ‘But we’re going to get married.’

‘Well, well, well,’ says his father, nodding his head. ‘This is very good news. Very good news. Cookie will be so excited. As am I. So who is she?’

‘Her name is Geraldine Blundell. Her brother was at Downside a year above me. So she’s a good Catholic, you’ll be pleased to hear.’

‘All I need to please me is to know that you’re happy.’

‘I’m very happy, Dad. You wait till you meet her. She’s very lovely, and very special. She’s been in India with her brother.’

‘So we have poor India to thank, do we? I don’t expect when you took yourself off there you thought you’d come back with a wife.’

‘It was the last thing on my mind.’

‘Well, my boy, I think this calls for a drink.’

William Cornford fusses about in his library, searching through his bottles for something suitably celebratory. He settles on a single-malt whisky.

‘Now I know it’s none of my business,’ he says, his attention on the glasses, ‘but have you given any thought to what you’re going to live on?’

‘Yes, Dad,’ says Larry. ‘I do realise I need a job.’

‘I rather think you do.’

‘I was wondering if you had anything going?’

William Cornford continues pouring whisky, but now his hands are trembling. He hands Larry his glass. Not trusting himself to speak, he raises his glass in a silent toast.

They drink.

‘Welcome to the company,’ he says at last, his voice throaty with emotion.

The Blundells live in Arundel. The marriage is to take place in the church of St Philip. Mrs Blundell has hopes that the Duke of Norfolk will attend, in his capacity as Earl of Arundel and head of the premier Catholic family in the land.

‘You know he’s also the first peer of the realm,’ she tells Larry. ‘As hereditary earl marshal he organised the coronation of the king. Not that Hartley and I care for titles as such. Really it’s the sheer weight of history that we find so moving.’

Geraldine has warned Larry about her mother.

‘She’s one of those people who doesn’t really believe in failure. She sees it as a lack of moral fibre, I think. I can hear her now, saying to us children, “Do it properly or don’t do it at all.”’

‘She sounds terrifying,’ says Larry.

But Barbara Blundell takes to Larry from the beginning.

‘If you don’t mind my saying so,’ she tells him, ‘you come as something of a relief after the last one. Geraldine is my special pet. You’ll forgive my partiality, but I think you’d have to look far and wide to find her combination of beauty without and beauty within. She deserves a husband of true faith and ample fortune. And since Bernard Howard has sired only daughters …’

She gives a shrill high laugh, to show that this is a joke. Bernard Howard is the Duke of Norfolk. Larry is a little alarmed by the ‘ample fortune’ part, which seems not to be a joke. Geraldine tells him not to worry.

‘Mummy knows you’re only starting out. But she’s tremendously reassured to know it’s the family firm. Also I told her you have a best friend who’s a lord.’

‘Do you mean George?’ Larry is surprised to find George in the role of asset. ‘His grandfather sold patent medicine.’

‘A lord is a lord,’ says Geraldine placidly.

England has enjoyed a blazing summer, which extends into a warm dry autumn. The outlook is good for the wedding, now fixed for Saturday, October 25th.

‘After all, we don’t want to compete with the royal wedding, do we?’ says Barbara Blundell with her high laugh. Princess Elizabeth is to be married on November 20th. This turns out to be the reason why the Duke of Norfolk can’t come to Geraldine’s big day. ‘I am a little disappointed, but I suppose someone has to organise the wedding of our future queen.’

The honeymoon is to be in the Cornford house in Normandy, which has been fully refurbished after its wartime occupation. Louisa offers their house as a staging post for the Channel crossing.

‘They’re to stay the night of the wedding with the Edenfields at Edenfield Place,’ Barbara Blundell tells her friends. ‘Then they go on to the family estate of La Grande Heuze.’ She lingers on the words place, estate, grande , with a light but pointed emphasis.

Larry bears all this with a good spirit. He sees Geraldine now in her element, quietly countermanding her mother’s extravagances, making sure that the correct information passes down the chain of family, priests, guests and tradespeople who each have their part to play in the wedding. Her grasp of details astonishes him, as does her confidence in her own judgement in all matters of taste. She will wear her mother’s wedding dress, the seamstress will adjust it to fit her. Larry will wear morning dress. There will be four bridesmaids, of descending size, and two very small pageboys. She suggests that George would make a suitable best man, but here Larry holds out. He makes it clear that he wants Ed Avenell.