The Great Lover Page 17

  Mrs Gotobed says it’s been twelve hours already and no crowning, barely even a peek of the baby’s head. Lily’s hips are not childbearing hips, and she is foolish and weak and malnourished and more besides. She won’t take the brandy-soaked rag that Mrs Gotobed holds out to her, panting between her waves of pain that she hasn’t forgotten Temperance, and why should we?

  We carry on like that all through the hot afternoon and the sultry evening, while the littlies trickle in one by one and sit on the other side of the curtain, playing Whist and pausing in their soft chatter every time one of Lily’s screams pierces the curtain.

  In the evening I hear Sam go down to the river to take the boat out and set the eel-traps. He returns, poking his head under the curtain, and gets shooed away, and we hear Olive crying and saying she is hungry and I leave Lily for a moment to skin the rabbits and set up a stew on the stove that they can have with bread before they go to bed. So then the house is filled with the strange smells of onions and cooking meat, and blood and salty water, and my stomach groans with hunger but I could no more eat than fly. I offer Mrs Gotobed some and she comes outside the curtain to take a bowl, and the clock ticks and Mrs G sits with a half-finished rug that Lily had been making across her knees, and Lily sleeps for a while.

  Then suddenly an owl hoots and Lily stirs and gives her own, animal-sounding howl. I leap to the curtain to see her sitting up, her face contorted like the screwed-up shapes of a walnut shell. ‘Lily, Lily dear–push now, push!’ I say, feeling, without knowing how, that the baby is really coming at last, that maybe my prayers have been answered.

  She kneels up with her nightdress raised and uttering one long howl like the sound of the sky wrenching in two. The house waits in silence. And then the dark wet plop of the child finally slithers on to the bed with such a dull, damp thud that I know at once my prayers may have been answered, but at a terrible price. Only Lily is saved. The blue-green rope of bloodied cord is wrapped right round the baby’s neck–something Mrs Gotobed suspected and had her arm nearly up to Lily’s neck trying to put right, but couldn’t. The mess plops all over the bed just exactly like the dead lost flesh of the skinned rabbits, and Mrs Gotobed is beside me at once, cutting Lily’s cord with a practised slice, and encouraging her to deliver the afterbirth with one last great push.

  We wrap the tiny wet red thing in a torn sheet and take her outside before Lily can see her. I can’t think where to lay this bundle, and it’s dark, so I give her to Sam with one angry thrust and decide that he must do as he sees fit. He is smoking his pipe and accepts the damp bundle, and he gives only a muffled cry, like the yelp of a dog when its tail is nipped.

  You might wonder how I behaved so badly but I’m blind with rage by now and thinking only of my sister, and what she has been through. All that labouring, all that labouring, a lifetime tied to Sam, and all for nothing, I think.

  As I come back into the sitting room Lily sits up, thrusts back the curtain and staring directly at me, asks, ‘Did I pull the child through? Did the Lord help me manage it?’

  I tell her He did not.

  We eat by candlelight, and the children sigh and make up their beds once again in that loamy green room, soaked with the smell of death and babies and the feeling of some barrier passed through and not yet travelled home from. Olive’s tearful face shines up at me from her pillow. ‘Lily won’t die, will she, like Mother?’ she asks. I assure her that she won’t.

  ‘We should have called for a doctor!’ I say just once, and bitterly, as Mrs Gotobed is pulling her shawl from a nail near the door and turning wearily to leave. She makes no reply, instead merely returns to the bed to stroke Lily’s head and whisper to her. I hear the muttered name ‘Emily’, which must have been Lily’s chosen name for the girl. It was cruel of me to mention the doctor, I know, because it was Sam had forbidden him, saying the man was a drunkard anyway, and Sam didn’t have money to ‘throw around’. In any case, what was good enough for our own departed mother should be good enough for Lily.

  Mrs Gotobed leaves with a great huff, her enormous bulk immediately emptying the room. Sam finally comes inside. I hear him breathing, I hear the thud of heavy leather on the rug as he takes off each boot, then another breath as he blows out the candle, and a creak, and then a long, slow, rolling fart, as he climbs into bed on the other side of the curtain from his now dry-eyed, wide-awake wife.

  Yet, you had fancied, God could never

  Have bidden a child turn from the spring and the sunlight,

  And shut him in that lonely shell, to drop for ever

  Into the emptiness and silence, into the night…

  I found those few lines in Rupert’s study. A poem in his black inky scrawl called ‘The Vision of the Archangels’. I don’t know if it is a good poem or a frightful one. All is stuff and nonsense with him, all jokes and games and silliness. But then suddenly the words, phrases, lines I’d found so surprising at the time come to find me:

  God’s little pitiful Body lying, worn and thin,

  And curled up like some crumpled, lonely, flower-petal…

  Yes, that was exactly how she had seemed, Emily, when I thrust her at Sam. A scrunched-up, unfurled flower-bud. How could Rupert know of such things? Of the sorrows of women? Then I remember that he had a sister, who died as a baby of one year old, a year before he was born. He told me of her once, as if she was of no consequence. But, then, he speaks of everything that way. His poetry puts another slant on things.

  Such a foolish blond boy with nothing to concern him but learning his lines for some play with his friends. And yet, try as I might to be angry with Rupert, it is his lines that come to me, lying in the cot amidst my snoring family, Rupert’s words that comfort me. He is angry with God, and so am I. Rupert’s true heart beats only on paper.

  Three

  January 1911

  ‘My subconscious is angry with every dreary young woman I meet if she doesn’t fall in love with me: & my consciousness is furious with her if she does.’

  Rupert Brooke

  I asked Noel Olivier to marry me. It wasn’t a success.

  I declared myself. I don’t remember my exact words, only the shy expression on her face and the fact that the solid Noel suddenly cracked open and–admitted she loved me too! I wanted to rush back at once to the others (we were at Summer Camp at Buckler’s Hard) and bellow the news from the treetops, but she put a hand on my arm and stopped me. And there, frozen, we have remained ever since.

  I can only assume that she regretted immediately her frankness, but I can’t believe there is no truth in the declaration itself. Why did she say it if she did not feel it? Did her witch of a sister Margery persuade her to recant? She writes mysteriously that ‘what happened at Camp will not affect her’ (whatever that might mean!) and her photo sits again on the new mantel in the Old Vicarage, her face brown and inscrutable. She agreed to play Envy (oh, wicked tease) in Faustus, along with the lovely Bryn, who played, of course, Helen of Troy. She did permit me the odd occasion where my feet tickled hers under the Old Vicarage table a day or two ago when she stayed here–and she smiled at me above her grey pinafore–but that was all.

  Two and a half years I have laboured like this. If it weren’t for Margery’s absurd position about intellectual women and marriage, and Noel’s hopelessness at defying her…but that’s not the only reason. Noel does not trust me. She thinks I am–what was her word? She thinks I am in love with being in love rather than with her.

  Am I capable of loving one person for more than one day? Is everyone capable of this, or is it denied to some of us?

  Gwen and Jacques announced their wedding plans yesterday, which doesn’t help. I kept having a strange flash of the square-headed woman who cuts wood (Gwen) with the beaky botanist (Jacques) doing something disgusting in a train carriage. Of course they would probably never do any such thing but that did not stop the mental picture plaguing me.

  Now that Noel has returned to Bedales I write her ridiculous letters fu
ll of hot feeling and beastliness. (It does show one up, this business of being in love.)

  I have grown closer to Ka, who offers some solace. Ka is squashy and has a good listening ear. With her I do not feel quite so ashamed and out of control–especially in the regions of (a) jealousy and (b) mistrust. (I want so much to be splendid.)

  The thing is. Nell.

  That moment in the boat-shed.

  How exquisite it was to roughly towel her dark hair, to see it damp and curling down her neck like fronds of seaweed. To help her slip her arms into her coat, smelling the water-mint that clung to her skin. The memory of her, the way her hot wrist shivered in mine, her burning, bending head as she bent to button up her boots; my throat was dry, like a man starving. I practically had to push her out of the door. I leaned back against the cold wood of the shed and wanted to weep. What is it that so inhibits my career as a lover? What on earth prevented me catching hold of her once more, pulling her back and making the kiss longer, and harder?

  I might wish to name it Honour and Goodness. Or is it Pride, and Caring What Others Think? Or, more likely, simple Fear of Mother? Or All-round Hopelessness? Well. I closed the door behind her and, ha!, later I wrote a poem about it. I thought myself fine and clever to have resisted. Oh, my cleverness! My poor, grubby cleverness. Because the truth is, I worship her. I do not want her defiled. These days I can’t even allow myself to imagine her pale silky limbs when I’m pumping ship for even that would sully her. That holy far-off serene splendour would all be spoiled if she returned my desire.

  My conqueror’s blood was suddenly cool as a deep river.

  So, with that miserable realisation, the Obelisk–as James and I call Henry Lamb’s active member (or, rather, in my case, the Sad Little Cock)–withered despairingly and a sonnet was written. I called it ‘Success’.

  I longed afresh for a clean, rushing splash in the river.

  My plan, my escape route, is to travel. Away from the Ranee and Eddie and the confusions of Noel Olivier and her rejections of me, the temptations of the bursting cream-puff of a maid or young boys who are in love with me, to a place that is manly and swimming in beer, where I can finish my essay undisturbed. I’ve decided on Munich.

  Betty saw me talking to Rupert. That day in the garden when his betrothed was there. We are lying in our bed in our little room, the blue counterpane pulled up to our chins.

  ‘What were you talking about?’ she asks.

  ‘Nothing–his laundry, if you must know. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Was it only that? You seemed–you looked—I thought you looked upset.’

  ‘Upset? Of course not! Why should I be upset?’

  ‘I know you have been sad,’ she says, after a pause, ‘and not just about Lily and the baby. I—Nell. Why do you never confide in me?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  She begins sniffing then, and calls me a ‘hard-hearted Hannah’, and says I’m ‘not much of a sister at all’.

  I lie in the darkness beside her, a desire to confess welling and subsiding in me in waves. ‘Oh, Betty, please don’t press me. It will only make it worse!’

  ‘So there is something? Something else, I mean. I knew it! You are in love with him. Or has he–you know—Is it that he has tried it on with you?’

  ‘Oh, he’s kissed me, yes…’

  ‘He kissed you?’

  Betty’s excitement crackles beside me. In a minute, she will be asking for details and chattering with girlish fever–I must tell her at once before she makes matters worse. ‘But, Betty…Don’t go on so. It’s not that simple. I don’t know how to tell you–I don’t know if you will understand.’

  I take a breath before saying it.

  ‘Rupert is–he—He doesn’t like girls.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He is—Oh, Betty! You must have heard of such a thing.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You must have heard of men who–of some men who–of, you know, men like Mr Eddie Marsh…’

  ‘Eddie Marsh? Government secretaries, you mean?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Betty. You know! Boys who like other boys. Ah–don’t make me say any more, please.’

  Such a long pause then in the beating darkness. I can hear Betty breathing. I can feel her shock somehow, so great that it is like a vibration, through the satin coverlet between us. I feel her body stiffen, and her long silence. I can almost hear her thoughts violently leaping.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asks eventually, in a tiny child’s voice, aghast.

  I say yes. I do not want to explain about Denham and the sheets, so I just say to rest assured that her big sister knows what she’s talking about. After a pause I remind her to tell no one. Especially not Lottie. Men can go in prison for it, and women never do it, but for the men who go in for it, it is probably a sight more common than we could guess, especially among men who get sent away to school, who spend so much time in each other’s pockets, and where doing such things with ladies from their own set is so restricted.

  ‘That’s true, but it’s easy for them to take liberties with us!’ Betty answers, after a moment, recovering her voice.

  So then I say again, wearily, that I don’t know, and I don’t want to say any more, because look at what has just happened to our poor dear Lily, and isn’t it best not to go on with talk of love for a man you can never have, a man who doesn’t love women in any case? The only thing you could have from such a man is trouble.

  ‘What a filthy thing.’ That’s all she says for a long while.

  I lie there listening to the call of the tawny owl, soft and familiar, and thinking of Lily.

  My words seem to have satisfied Betty, and believing that the end of it, I allow sleep to press its fingers into me. Then there pipes a small voice, still bright awake: ‘But how can you be so sure, Nellie? Is it something to do with that strange Eddie Marsh, or the other one with the pince-nez and way of creeping up on you like a black cat? What is his name–Mr Strachey? Mr James Strachey? Is it because of those two? You can’t imagine Rupert is in love with either of them…pansies?’

  She has heard the word ‘pansy’, then, and now understands it. ‘No, of course not!’

  ‘Well, then. If he doesn’t–if he isn’t drawn to girls, I don’t understand! Why is he getting married? And why did he kiss you? It makes no sense…and I have even seen Rupert look at that plain Miss Ka Cox in a sweet way, if you want my honest opinion…’

  ‘Oh, go to sleep, Betty, for God’s sake, and keep your honest opinion to yourself.’

  I feel little better for my unburdening. In fact, telling Betty has only made it more real, and seem more hopeless. But I mean to keep my vow to God. I promised to give up Rupert, or mooning after him, and didn’t I say that when I made up my mind to something I’m stuck to it, like honey cappings?

  I’m here at last in Germany, where I intend to stay, probably for ever. Or at least for three days. From there I shall wander south and east and no one will hear of me more, save the mariners who ply among the Cyclades, who will bring back strange tales of a bald, red-bearded man sitting on the rocks in the sun, naked, chanting wicked little Latin poems. Actually, it will more likely be three months. Here is a good place to (a) write my Webster essay, (b) improve my German, and (c) be free of Mother and all the conflicting feelings about Noel and Ka and Nell.

  I have put Nell out of my head. It was difficult, involving a knife, a chisel and a clamp. Ka Cox and I had a small spat in a bookshop before I left London for Munich, and I hurt her, and for that I feel bloody. She wanted to buy me a book and I acted as if I couldn’t care less, and Ka felt slighted and snubbed and sniffy and a million other things beginning with s, and the truth is, I did feel bad. I suddenly waved my arm in the bookshop at thirty books, but by then it was too late. Ka’s sweetness, her reliability–I saw in a flash that even they might one day be snatched from me. My cushion, my sofa, my safe place to park my weary backside! I considered fleetingly pressing my mouth to
hers, knowing that such behaviour would seal her in my thrall for ever, but even I hadn’t the heart to do it. And in any case, I am, of course, deluding myself. If my kisses are so powerful, why hasn’t the lovely Nellie Golightly succumbed?

  Of course, I didn’t venture a full and thorough test. I cut the experiment short–and now I am wailing and gnashing my teeth and wondering why the devil did I? Why do I lack the necessary detachment with that girl, the little voice that simply says: ‘An adventure!’

  Thank Heaven, then, that Nellie has the marvellous talent of forgetting, a few moments afterwards, and never mentioning the indiscretion again. She took the same attitude towards my glorious steaming erection that time when she saw it in the garden. (I’ve tried waving it at her timidly a few times since.) She acts always as if I–it–were nothing at all, so I must assume that this is indeed true. Difficult, then, that I remember the experience of kissing Nellie rather differently. Difficult that even here in this ridiculous pension (like something out of a Forster novel, with ladies ludicrous and serious, dropping words of wisdom at breakfast like pats of butter…thank God for Frau Ewald, the portrait painter), I remember most vividly the warm, living shape of Nell, how it felt to hold her (it felt hot and good and ordinary, the way it feels when Laddie, the Old Vicarage dog, sleeps at the bottom of the bed), and her startled expression when I pulled away from her. Difficult, too, that it is Nellie I wish to confide in now about the young Dutch sculptress I met yesterday in the alley, during the Carnival, the Bacchus-Fest.

  Right now I’m lying in my room in the Pension Bellevue in Munich where the blanket is emaciated and grey and the smell of smoke rising up through the floorboards makes me lonely and excited at once, and am wondering whether to seek her out again. The Dutch sculptress. Elisabeth, I mean. Elisabeth van Rysselberghe.