you in the pink as I am . . . It’s all pretty quiet here . . . Please send any kind of tobacco, and socks.’
He went back to his room, went back to bed. Turned his pillow over.
He slept all right, though. Dreams, obviously. Not very nice ones. But nothing compared to some of the lads.
*
Captain Locke had said, in that charming way of his, ‘If you pass through Sidcup on your way to town, pop in and see Mrs Locke, would you? It’s not far from the town. Tell her I’m all right? You won’t have time, of course, but . . .’
Purefoy was reminded of how the posher someone was, the less they seemed to care about class – those educated, wealthy, dreaming men who don’t have a simple clue what is not possible when you are poor. He both loved and hated them for their genuine ignorance. How marvellous, how ridiculous, that it should be possible. He allowed himself to wonder what Mrs Captain Locke would think of him, Purefoy, turning up. The trenches were in some ways a leveller, to those who took it that way. But the advances Purefoy had craved were only cultural and matrimonial, wherein the Flanders mud had offered no progress, other than the odd burst from Captain Locke’s gramophone, and the occasional expression in Captain Locke’s amiable blue eye that showed he, too, knew of the existence of Better.
But Private – whoops – Second Lieutenant Purefoy calling on Mrs Captain Locke of Locke Hill? Dear God, no.
Chapter Five
Sidcup, June 1915
Julia stood in the hall at Locke Hill, little feet firm on the black and white tiles. The doormat was crooked. She straightened it.
It was rather a beautiful morning outside. She could – she should – be out on the lawn, admiring the sun in the lilac and smelling the early roses. A cup of tea, perhaps, in the little Sitzplatz Peter had arranged beyond the hornbeam. She must find another name for it. Or a stroll by the stream. Max would want a walk.
She had heard the phone go, and she heard Rose deal with it. Rose was so good – such a blessing to have such a sister-in-law. Cousin. Peter’s cousin. Cousin-in-law. It was a shame she was away so much with her hospital, and lovely when she came back for a visit.
Julia went into the sitting room, hoping to find some tiny aesthetic job that needed doing. All through the war, since Peter had left – five months now! – she had kept it looking nice, in case he should come, because you can’t rely on communications, and he might, you never know, just turn up unannounced, and a woman has to do something. He never had turned up unannounced, but his leaves had been erratic . . .
She went over to admire their wedding photo, silver-framed on the piano. Pretty her, at twenty-four: heavy satin, family lace, and the wide, deep-bosomed neckline of before the war, which suited her so well. Already it looked dreadfully old-fashioned. Her hair was as pale as her dress. She glowed, truly. Like the inside of a seashell. And handsome him, at twenty-seven, tall and happy, trousers flapping round his long legs, in morning dress among his myrmidons in morning dress. No idea of war on their sweet faces. St George’s Hanover Square had been filled with white lilac and orange-blossom and roses – Madame Alfred Carrière – sent up from Locke Hill in baskets. The people in overcoats and caps who had gathered to observe and admire had not been disappointed by Peter and Julia.
They had had no idea that he would be called upon . . .
Well.
He hadn’t been called upon. They hadn’t had to call him. He had been only too eager to leave.
Yes, well, we’ve been over that, and agreed to disagree.
Don’t go over it again, Julia – what can you hope to achieve?
But even that thought was by now part of her pointless spiral of punishment, herald to the stupid parade.
You said it was necessary, but it was selfish! True, there had been talk of conscription, but only talk! And no one believed they would dare actually bring it in! And certainly not for married men . . . fathers . . . as you might have been by then . . .
And you said it wouldn’t count if you waited to be conscripted. You wanted to give of your own free will.
And I did understand, darling. I understood that when we married we made a bond, and that what you wanted to give was no longer only yours to give – and I had almost expressed it in a perfect, beautiful, wounding sentence, but it had turned ungraceful at the end . . . and so had I, weeping, snivelling, begging.
Why did you want to leave me?
I didn’t want to leave you. This is not about you and me, darling, it’s about the country. If men are going to fight to defend our country, then it is wrong for me to sit here safely, accepting their protection. I should be with them. That is all.
It had sounded terribly manly. She’d liked it, for a moment. But then the waiting started, and with it the fantasising. He left her alone, and gave her nothing to go on, and in her ear the constant gremlin whispered incessantly: How can you possibly be so ungrateful, so selfish, so wicked? That poor man – think what he is suffering and risking for your sake. How dare you mind?
‘Julia? Darling?’ It was Rose, dark, bright, thin, looking round the door. ‘I’m going into Sidcup. Anything you need?’
My husband, thought Julia, but she said nothing because it would be unkind to say such a thing to a woman like Rose.
Rose knew perfectly well that nobody had ever really expected her to be a wife. She’d only been sent to live with Peter’s family in the hope that someone in Kent might marry her, as no one in Wiltshire would, but the hope was only ever mild. She might have been a little in love with Peter when she was young, but everyone – including Rose herself – recognised her now as a woman without marital or romantic needs. Those who bothered to think about her – including, again, herself – thought her lucky to be so, in this depleting landscape where many girls were likely to be left bereft of their expectations.
Rose had scorned the role circumstances offered her: china-mender, correspondence maintainer, ageing wallflower. Instead, back in 1913, she had joined the Kent VAD. At the first training camp in the summer of 1914, when 170 of them had been available to tend a dragoon who had fallen off his bicycle, and the Herne Common local paper had sent a photographer, Rose had identified a different type of woman that she was able to be. She had enjoyed the cricket matches. She liked sleeping in the round tents, learning how to use a biscuit tin as an oven. She liked her grey cotton dress, her army regulation lawn cap, her linen cuffs and collar, county badge and epaulettes, her white gloves for field work. She had looked at Miss Latham, who had served in the Balkans, and the Marchioness Camden, who visited and spoke so encouragingly. She was touched when the Dragoons’ band appeared to play for them, in gratitude for their kindness to the boy on the bicycle. She liked that when the cadets from New College took part in an ‘engagement’, playing the parts of both the invading Hun and the defending Englishmen, she was capable of putting her training into action so efficiently. She liked the slightly bemused looks Julia gave her.
Rose was quite aware that the real thing would be very different. Mrs Blanchard, who had served as matron to an ambulance column in the Franco-Prussian war, had made that perfectly clear. Despite that – no, because of it – I can do this, Rose had thought. By September 1914 she had been attached to a hospital near Folkestone, and had taken up smoking.
Now, in the doorway, she looked at beautiful Julia in the morning light and pitied her. Though beauty was not Julia’s only quality; it could only be the first thing about her. When she entered a room, nobody thought: There is a generous, determined, kind-looking woman. Her kindness, her determination and her flashes of wit were, in everyday life, dazzled out of view by her rich pale hair, her tiny waist, her glowing skin, the surprise of her dark blue eyes, and the slight dip at the bridge of her straight nose, ‘the imperfection which makes you perfect’, as Peter called it. Few people cared