Уильям Николсон - Motherland

‘You see what a beast he is,’ Kitty says to Geraldine. ‘He makes fun of all good news.’

‘I’m so impressed he understands French,’ says Geraldine.

‘Oh, he practically lives in France these days.’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ says Larry. ‘Why don’t we beasts clear off for the day?’

‘Clear off where?’

‘I thought Dieppe.’

Ed looks up from his newspaper.

‘Why on earth do you want to go there?’

‘I don’t know. Lay the odd ghost.’

‘I think you should, Ed,’ says Kitty.

‘All right,’ says Ed abruptly. ‘We’ll go.’

They park in front of one of the hotels, and walk down the concrete pathway between strips of grass where boys are playing soccer, to the broader strip of concrete that is the promenade. They stand here gazing over pebbles to the sea. It’s a sunny August afternoon, and the long flat beach is dotted with families stretched out on towels, and children flying kites.

‘Do you dream about it?’ says Larry.

‘Sometimes.’

‘Once I woke from a dream of it, and I’d wet myself.’

Ed shakes his head.

‘What a fuck-up that was,’ he says. ‘What an utter God-awful fuck-up.’

They reach the shiny strip of pebbles, washed by the waves as they roll in and roll out. Here they turn round. Now they’re looking up the beach to the promenade and the town, just as they looked when they came off the landing craft eight years ago.

‘Am I supposed to be feeling something?’ says Ed. ‘Because I’m not.’

‘Remembering,’ says Larry.

‘I’d rather forget.’

‘This is where you won your VC, Ed. Right here.’

Ed scans the beach, with its scampering children and its barefoot bathers picking their way over the pebbles.

‘I should have died here,’ he says.

‘Maybe you did,’ says Larry. ‘Maybe I did.’

He walks up the beach a little way, fancying that he follows the path he took eight years ago.

‘There was a wrecked tank round about here,’ he says. ‘I sat down against it and prayed it would protect me.’

‘You prayed?’

‘No, you’re right. I don’t remember praying. I just remember the dead feeling of terror. You never felt that, Ed. I saw you. You weren’t afraid.’

‘I’ve always been afraid,’ says Ed. ‘I’ve been running away all my life. I’m still running.’

‘But why? Why are we so afraid? What is it we’re afraid of?’

No need to tell Ed he’s not talking about sniper bullets and mortar shells.

‘God knows,’ says Ed. Then he laughs. ‘Afraid of God, I expect. The God we’ve constructed so that we’re bound to fail in the end.’

‘Who says it has to be in the end?’ says Larry. ‘Some of us are failing right now.’

Ed turns on him, almost angry.

‘Don’t you talk like that! You’re the one who’s got it right. I need to know at least someone’s come through.’

‘You’ve got eyes, Ed.’

‘Geraldine?’

‘Yes.’

They walk on up to the promenade and sit down on the concrete wall. Below them bewildered farm boys from Alberta and Ontario died in their hundreds, on that day that happened somewhere else, long ago and far away.

‘Geraldine isn’t great on the physical side of things,’ says Larry.

‘Maybe she just needs time.’

‘Ed, it’s nearly three years.’

‘How bad is it?’

‘There is no physical side of things.’

‘Bloody hell,’ says Ed softly.

‘She tries, but she can’t.’

‘Bloody hell,’ says Ed again.

‘It’s not going to change. I know that now.’

‘So what do you do?’ says Ed.

‘What do you think? I don’t have a whole lot of choice.’

‘Are we talking tarts or wanking?’

‘Good old Ed. The latter.’

Ed gazes out over the sea to the horizon.

‘Remember the smoke?’ he says. ‘Bloody smoke over everything, so you didn’t know you were coming off the boats into the end of the world.’

‘I remember the smoke,’ says Larry.

‘You’re going to have to get out of this, my friend. Time to beat a retreat. Back to the boats and sail away.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not? Oh yes, your dumb religion.’

‘And yours.’

‘It’s a fairy story, chum. Don’t let them bully you.’

‘It still means something to me,’ says Larry. ‘It’s just too deep in me.’

‘Do you still go to confession?’

‘From time to time. I like it.’

‘Do you tell the priest about the wanking?’

Larry laughs.

‘No, not any more. It got too boring. And I knew I wasn’t going to stop.’

‘There’s faith for you. You know it’s nonsense but you let it ruin your life. Sometimes I swear to you I think the human race has a built-in need to suffer. When there aren’t enough plagues or earthquakes we have wars. When we run out of wars we turn our daily lives into misery.’

‘So what do you advise me to do?’ says Larry.

‘How would I know?’ says Ed. ‘I drink. But I don’t recommend it.’

Larry sighs.

‘Remember sitting in the library at school, with our feet up on the table, and you reading out the dirty bits from your illicit copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover ?’

‘Sex in the gamekeeper’s hut. As far as I can remember she had no underclothes, and slept through the whole thing.’

‘It was still exciting.’

‘That’s the trouble with sex. It’s never as good as when you’re sixteen years old and haven’t had it yet.’

‘So what do we do, Ed?’

‘We stumble on, chum. Stumble on in the smoke until that one merciful bullet finds us at last.’

Louisa is back home and a lot better, but one look at her and Kitty knows she’s not yet her old self. Little Billy hangs about her, clinging to her skirts, but she makes no objection when his nurse comes and carries him off for his tea.

‘I’m all right really,’ she tells Kitty, ‘but everything’s so tiring. I want to have Billy all the time, but I can’t manage it. Aren’t I hopeless?’

She gives Kitty one of her old mischievous smiles, but ends with a grimace.

‘Oh, Kitty. Were your babies such hard work?’

‘Of course,’ says Kitty loyally. ‘Having babies is hell.’

‘It’s like being disembowelled, isn’t it? But I should be over it by now.’

‘What do your doctors say?’

‘They can’t find anything wrong with me, which should be cheering but somehow isn’t. If only I could cough blood or something. At least then I’d know it wasn’t my own fault.’

‘Of course it’s not your own fault.’

Louisa is sitting on a sofa in the big drawing room with cushions all round her and a little table by her side. Mrs Lott brings through a pot of tea and some home-made scones. Kitty offers to pour the tea.

‘Still, it’s good to be home,’ says Louisa.

Then she shakes her head and bites her lip and says, ‘No, it isn’t.’

Suddenly she sounds like a frightened child.

‘I’ve become so useless.’ She’s on the point of tears. ‘In the nursing home I sit about all day, doing nothing, and it’s restful. Here I sit about all day, not doing things I should be doing, and I feel terrible. What’s gone wrong with me, Kitty?’

‘It’ll pass,’ says Kitty. ‘You’ll get better.’

‘Darling Kitty. Do you mind if I tell you a secret?’

‘You say anything you want,’ says Kitty.

‘I’m so afraid I might never get better.’

‘Oh, rubbish!’ exclaims Kitty.

‘There is a good side to it, though. I’ve become much nicer to George. He turns out to be such a lovely man. And of course, he adores little Billy.’