Chris Cleave: Everyone Brave is Forgiven

“Very good,” said Palmer, in the neutral tone he used whether one needed him to arrange a taxicab or a resurrection. He produced for her a tea without sugar and withdrew to his own measured bounds.

“Mummy,” said Mary, “I am so sorry for everything.”

“Oh, shh. No one could expect perfection from you, after so much loss. You’ll find your room just as you left it.”

“Thank you — but I’m not moving back.”

“No?” said her mother with the mildest incredulity, as if Mary had declined a macaroon. “But it would be so nice to have you home for Christmas.”

“The thing is, I need to ask you for something.”

“I see. You are yourself again, at least.”

“I haven’t touched morphine in months.”

“I’m glad. It wasn’t you at all. Shall we just forget it? You haven’t done irreparable damage to your father, provided you and I now embark on a comprehensive tour of the salons. When they see you like this again, the rumors will seem far-fetched. You’ll find that I have rather talked up your wound sustained in the line of duty — I hope you don’t mind — since it clothed your more naked indiscretions.”

“I’m sorry for the scene at the Ritz.”

“So am I. The Ritz, with a brace of niggers? If you had to send me a message, it might have hurt less to tie it to a stick and beat me with it.”

“Must you call them ‘niggers’? They’ve done nothing to you.”

“Except to hook my daughter on morphine.”

“The reverse, Mummy. One of them got me off the stuff.”

Her mother blinked. “But then why? Of all the people a girl might consort with.”

“I am not consorting. I’m teaching.”

“Well it kills me that you are doing so on my shilling. At least their parents ought to pay you a wage. Or do they even have parents? One hears that the fathers in particular have no more domestic feeling than do fishes.”

“I don’t feel I give the children any more than they give me, but I will stop drawing the allowance if it pleases you.”

“So what do you want from me if it is neither money, nor sane opinion, nor my simple invitation to make your poor father happy?”

Mary took her mother’s hand. “The man I told you I was keen on. Alistair. I love him.”

Her mother stared for a moment. “I suppose you’ll tell me his people are fascists, or some such thing? You don’t ever make it easy.”

“Oh, he’s from a good family. Before the war he was a conservator at the Tate.”

Mary felt her mother’s hand relax. “When you say a good family…?”

“We don’t know them, if that’s what you mean. But you must imagine there are families, unknown in our circle, that nevertheless orbit the same sun and do so without eclipse or indiscretion.”

“I suppose they are socialists, then.”

“Do you? One day you must teach me how you can tell.”

Her mother took her hand back. “Why do I sense a caveat?”

“Alistair lost an arm in Malta, and—”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, so what? He can always grow a new one.”

Mary smiled. “I do love you, Mother. That’s just what I thought.”

“You are a dear girl. If you weren’t impossible I shouldn’t love you half so much. You’re what I might have been if I’d ever had the courage to tell my mother to mind her own business.”

“And you’re what I might hope to be, if I could put family before myself. I know I’ve been selfish. I shan’t make any more scenes at the Ritz, but neither can I be Mrs. Henry Hunter-Hall, however much it would help.”

Her mother sighed. “I am sure some middle ground can be found. And I know you will give me your indulgent smile when I say this, but you will find that it is different in any case, once you are married. Our own passions become muted — well, perhaps that isn’t the best word. Our passions become lighter, and seem to weigh on us with less urgency. Do you imagine that I was not idealistic at your age? I was for women’s votes, you know. I chained myself to things.”

“Why did you stop?”

“I suppose you will say I chained myself to your father.”

“You are happy though, aren’t you?”

“Happy? Oh goodness, is that is even a word in wartime?”

“But the war hardly touches you.”

“I expect you think nothing does.”

Her mother took a cigarette from Mary’s pack and lit it with hands that shook a little.

“Mother—”

“I am not to be pitied. I still believe it our duty to leave the world improved. Do you suppose you will marry this Alistair of yours?”

“I don’t know. He is far away and we haven’t spoken of it. But yes, I hope so.”

“You must choose a husband carefully, you see, because his ideals must stand in for yours, and his ideals will become ambitions, and ambitions need allies, and allies require soirées and galas and seating plans.”

“You don’t think it will be different between men and women after this war? You don’t feel we are on the cusp of something?”

“We should make a tapestry of the cusps we have been on.”

Mary smiled. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

“You are trying to distract me, I know. What did you come to ask for?”

“It’s Alistair, Mummy. He’s being detained, in Gibraltar.”

“What did he do?”

“I’m not sure. I think there was a problem with paperwork.”

“Then why detain him?”

Mary kept her voice even. “They say he went absent without leave. He is sentenced to twelve months.”

Her mother put her teacup down with a click. “Palmer? Would you bring us a little brandy?”

Back the pewter tray came, with glasses and decanters. Palmer set it down on the occasional table and let a measure of syrup into each of two glasses. He scalped an orange and placed a shaving of peel in each glass. These he compressed with a pestle sufficiently to release their oils but not to macerate them. He added a dash of bitters and a measure of brandy to each glass, finishing with ice.

Mary sipped her drink. Her mother drained her own glass and put it down. “You are quite determined not to make this life agreeable for any of us.”

“I’m sorry. I truly am. However it looks, I hope you know that I do not go out into the world hunting for disgrace to bring home to you.”

“A deserter, though? I might have preferred a nigger after all.”

Mary gathered herself. “Absence is hardly desertion. Father isn’t here from one moon to the next, and yet we keep his books dusted.”

“Don’t.”

“Sorry,’ said Mary.

Her mother was silent for a moment. “So what is the situation?”

“I think France shook him up. It was just before we met. He had saved goodness knows how many of his men’s lives, but he was awfully rattled by it all. I know he did his best in Malta. And I can’t imagine losing an arm, can you?”

Her mother said nothing.

Mary flushed. “But how they can judge a man for the one time he comes up short?”

“What would you have me say? When Abel’s blood cried out to the Lord, one supposes it was to complain of being spilled. Rather than to recall the glad years of fraternity.”

“But Alistair hasn’t murdered anyone. I think perhaps all he did was to leave a little soon.”

“It is a war, not a mixer. One cannot quit if it gets dreary.”

“I know, Mummy, but—”

“Your father did not leave a little soon at Ypres or Pozières. If he had, I should never have married him.”

“But surely he would understand Alistair’s case better than anyone?’

“Your father’s understanding of absence without leave might not extend beyond the range at which the absentee ought to be shot.”

“But we have moved on since those days. Do we still have no mechanism for forgiveness?”