and I thought clearly, as a human being. But such luxuries are not for the Front. This is the last evening when my mind and heart are engaged. I have kept them open in order to be able to say this to you. To tell the truth, I don’t want you to know about this kind of thing. But not telling you seems like a form of death, a death of the heart, or the mind, or the spirit. There are more ways than the physical to die, which I never knew before. I have learnt it this year. I do not care to think what else I shall learn as the war continues. As clearly it must.
We return to the Front Line tomorrow. I am going back under and I will not write again. Pray that I come up again, and my darling be there to help haul me out at the end, if I make it –
Oh, dear I shouldn’t have written that.
Well, fuck it. Fuck it. That’s how I feel.
Chapter Six
London, August 1915
The letter, the first since the Christmas card, was sent on by her mother, with a note on the back in swirling, elegant writing: ‘Have you an admirer? Tell all!’
Not likely. Not after the look on your face when you gave me the first letter, the oh-Nat-I’m-just-going-to-war-’bye-then letter. The stupid stupid stupid unkind letter. Not after you said: ‘It’s probably for the best, darling. I know you liked him but you know he’s not the sort of boy . . .’
Oh yes he is the sort of boy, he is EXACTLY the sort of boy. He is THE boy.
Liked. In the past. Thanks for that little extra, Mother.
Followed by the Christmas card which might as well have been from someone’s uncle they hardly knew . . .
Nadine was not able to say, either to her mother or to herself, that her mother was wrong and she was right and Riley was everything, everything he should be. Because he wasn’t. He was – he had somehow turned into – someone to whom she could only write those stupidly cheerful notes. If she could write at all. Was it distance? Was it the fact of words on paper, uncomfortable, unchangeable? Was it whatever had happened that had made him leave so suddenly? Was it whatever was happening out there, which she couldn’t ask about, which he wasn’t writing to her about?
But that moment, in the studio, when he had turned to her, and she had turned, and there was that moment when she had thought, for a second of absolute bewildering thrill, that he was going to kiss her, and he hadn’t but he had put his hand . . . and that moment when they had looked at each other, and then, just then, for that moment . . . wasn’t he everything? Wasn’t it all true, just true, and possible, and true?
Like the Donne . . . eye beams twisting . . .
And Papa had said, There’s nothing you can do about it . . .
And the heart was true, and the heat, in that moment, with his hand on her waist and that big old pinafore, the hyacinth smell, that morning, was a promise. They had made a promise then. They had. They had. That touch, that surge, that look.
The entire autumn, no one mentioned him to her. She had wanted to ask. She had lain in bed wondering who best to ask, going round in circles. And when she had asked, she learnt nothing. Her family had heard nothing from him. Sir Alfred had had only a card when Riley was in training. She had asked Terence, who had rather embarrassedly said, no, he hadn’t heard from the old boy. She had been tempted to visit Mrs Purefoy – she had even got her coat on to go to their house – but having already written for his address she grew embarrassed; overcoming the embarrassment she couldn’t find the street; having found the house she grew embarrassed again at its smallness, so she decided to write after all; and having written she received no reply; and thus ignored she retreated into humiliated confusion and did not know what to do.
During a drawing lesson in the studio she had braved the topic again with Sir Alfred. (Thank God her parents had got over their moment of concern about her studying art, for now at least.) ‘I wonder if there is any news of Riley,’ she said. ‘I suppose he would have written to you. Or his mother.’
‘The Paddingtons are in France, I believe,’ said Sir Alfred. ‘Or perhaps Flanders. If he’d talked to me, I would have put in a word for him with the Artists’ Rifles.’ He turned away, and the broad old back said clearly: Enough. Don’t ask.
So instead she had grown paler and thinner, and began swarming inside, as every possibility, every nightmare, every story in every newspaper, every bad thing that could happen was happening, in her mind, to him. Every single bad thing.
Jacqueline, as Christmas passed and the war was not over, noticed her daughter’s decline. ‘Go to Scotland, darling,’ she said. ‘Stay with Uncle George. Get some fresh air.’
‘I’d much rather go to art school, Mother. To the Slade.’
Jacqueline closed her eyes for a moment, annoyed. ‘We’ve talked about this,’ she said.
‘It’s what I would like to do,’ Nadine said politely. ‘It’s what I am good at.’
‘It’s not suitable,’ said Jacqueline, with a little tightening in her face, annoying Nadine, who knew that her mother had sat for plenty of artists in her youth. Jacqueline glanced at her daughter, saw the retort in her eyes, and cut it off. ‘And you’re not good enough,’ she said.
‘Who says?’ Nadine replied, stung. This was a new tack from her mother. She was good.
‘Sir Alfred,’ lied Jacqueline. A girl needs a good reputation, these days more than ever. Art school is for times of peace and plenty, not for unmarried girls in wartime.
Nadine held her head very high, and blinked. She didn’t believe it. Sir Alfred knew she had enough talent to invest in. He didn’t think a girl could have a career as an artist, but he didn’t deny talent when he saw it . . .
For a moment Jacqueline wavered, looking at her proud daughter, then steeled herself. It’s for her own good.
Nadine looked at her arms, thinner than ever, and her narrow feet. What was the point of a female? Even at the best of times, let alone during war? All she wanted was art and love . . . Like Tosca, she thought, with a little laugh. And love was – well, denied. And art too. Her cousin Noel had said to her, on his most recent visit, that he felt less than a man because his asthma prevented him being Over There. Well, she felt less than a woman. At least a man knew he was meant to be a soldier, and a boy knew he was meant to be a man. But she – she was too young to have found out the point of herself anyway, and now she was shipwrecked, stranded in time. Not a woman, not a girl any more, and not, apparently, an artist.
Scotland?
No.
‘Then I’m going to join the VAD,’ she said blandly. ‘I’m going rather mad here, knowing there is so much to do and not doing anything. I have been reading all about it. I shall take all my frustration out on sheets.’
‘No,’ said Jacqueline, immediately, instinctively.
‘Well, I must do something, Mama. I think that’s a fair choice, the Slade or the VAD.’
But Jacqueline could only see it as men, or more men. Artistic, immoral men, with attractively long hair and no prospects, or broken, heroic, half-naked men in desperate need . . . Getting Riley out of the way was one thing, but there were always more men: wrong ones, new ones, ones outside the systems of safety . . . Lord, she thought, it used to be so much fun playing with fire, back when everything was safe.
The wounded, she decided, would be less attractive to her daughter than the artists.
*
While scrubbing, boiling, lugging, hanging, pouring, twisting and folding made up most of Nadine’s duties at London General Number 2, Chelsea, the reality of blood and flesh was also available to her, and she saw it. It was a shock, and she was by no means sure at the beginning that she would be able to stay in the hospital. To strengthen