bride and groom were to spend the wedding night at Peter’s mother’s house in Chester Square, where the tall handsome rooms were still draped with dustsheets and the chandeliers swathed in pale holland, because the old lady still didn’t dare come down from Scotland.
They had not kissed. How could they? Through the long quiet winter of 1918–19 at Locke Hill, Nadine (so jumpy and tender, crop-headed) and he (damaged) had taken long walks with their arms around each other, spent long days curled up together on the chintz sofa, and failed over and over to go to bed at all, because they could not go to bed together, and did not want to part. They had paused, like bulbs underground in winter, immobilised, and reverted to a kind of reinvented virginity, as if their tumultuous romance had never been consummated during the unfettered years of war.
That the war was over, and things were to be different, was the largest truth in the house. The next was that nobody – apart from Rose – had much idea of what happened now. But for Riley and Nadine, one immediate shift was that the sexual liberties allowed by the possibility of imminent death had disappeared like a midsummer night’s dream. Their reborn chastity happened passively and without comment between them. This had seemed to each of them at the time a form of safety, but by their wedding night Riley had become hideously aware of it, and also of the fact that he did not know what his new wife was thinking on the subject. He recalled the letter she had sent him in 1915: ‘Riley, don’t you ever ever ever again not tell me what is going on with you …’ But saintly woman though she was – in fact because of her saintliness – he could not – and he was aware of the irony here – find the words.
Riley brought with him to Chester Square various accoutre-ments: his etched brass drinking straw made from a shell casing, a gift from Jarvis at the Queen’s Hospital Facial Injuries Unit; a rubber thing with a bulb, for squirting and rinsing; small sponges on sticks, for cleaning; mouthwashes of alcohol and peppermint. His pellets of morphine, carried with him in a little yellow tin which used to hold record-player needles, everywhere, always, just in case. In case of what? he thought. In case someone shoots my jaw off again?
Riley’s mouth had for so long been the territory first of bloody destruction, then of its complex rebuilding by surgery and medical men, that he had trouble seeing it as his at all. Eating was still difficult, and took a long time. Trying to chew was difficult, trying to swallow, trying not to choke, trying not to dribble, even though he couldn’t always tell that he was dribbling because his nerve endings could not be relied on to know where they were. Trying to cough, or stop coughing. Learning to live with somewhat undisciplined saliva and phlegm – though that had improved a lot, thank Christ – and to accept that even when he had learnt to live with it, other people would always find it disgusting. Learning to accept when Nadine passed him a handkerchief. Learning to accept endless generosity and inventiveness with soups and coddled eggs and milk puddings, fools and mousses and shape from Mrs Joyce, the cook: baby food, he’d thought, then get over it, and he was getting over it. He still did not care to eat with others. The embarrassment of some strangers, the inappropriate concern of others, Nadine’s careful developed calmness, all exhausted him, but worse in its way was his own requirement of himself that he calmly ignore the food that started bit by bit to reappear as the privations of rationing faded away – fragrant Sunday joints, the clean crunchy salads, the chokable pies, the sweet smells of potatoes frying in butter, chicken roasting, bread baking. At times he was afraid of his own breath, of stagnant saliva, of deadened unresponsive lips, of his medicalised mouth in the normal world. He would clean it fanatically; and he would lapse into silence, sometimes, for several days, knowing that speaking was exercising, and he should do it, as he should eat. At times, during the winter, after their reunion and before their wedding, he had not known what he had to offer her.
The rooms at Chester Square were graceful and quiet. Rose, tall kind Rose who had nursed him at the Queen’s, had set up a decanter of whisky and some cold supper in the drawing room.
‘Have a sandwich,’ he said to Nadine. Egg and cress, he thought. Rose made them specially because they’re soft. He knew it was courtesy and affection, but in his longing for normality he couldn’t help feeling it as controlling, as singling him out … Oh it’s not the kindness of Rose’s response that singles you out, Riley. It’s the damage itself. He was so grateful. He was getting tired of being grateful. But he was grateful.
Nadine, perched on the corner of a sofa half unfurled from its covering, took a little white triangle. He knew she didn’t like eating in front of him either, though he pretended he didn’t, hoping that she would get over it. It was another thing he had to be gracious about. They each drank a little whisky, and were silent. He was terribly happy. Look at her! With her yellow eyes and her sideways smile. But—
It is our wedding night. But—
He couldn’t – didn’t want to – put it into words. Oh the irony! If he could speak clearly, there would be no need to say anything! If my mouth was normal, I wouldn’t have to speak, I could just … act … He looked at her, and in his mind his look became a caress, a touch, an invitation, a demand … how could he follow up such a look? How could she respond to it? He looked away.
Nadine, as nervous as him, stood suddenly, and said, ‘Well!’ cheerfully, smiled at him, and started for the door. He stood too, wondering whether he would follow, or wait. He didn’t know. He went out into the hall and as she reached the landing she looked back at him, and said, briskly, ‘It doesn’t matter, you know.’
He, who knew her so well, did not know what she meant by it. It doesn’t matter? Of course it bloody matters.
She was off, almost scurrying, into the bedroom. So he went up, and stood in the doorway. She was further round, out of view, putting on a nightgown – a new one.
Then he was in the bathroom, trying to clean his mouth without disgusting illustrative noise, and his thoughts flooded in: We should have talked of it. I should have kissed her before this. I should have prepared – myself – her . . . But how could he kiss her? He had tried it out, on his own arm, like a youth. His lips had lain there, incompetent. He could not kiss her – not her mouth, her breast, nor any part of her. He could remember kissing her. It tormented him.
When he came back she was in bed, so he undressed. The previous times – before, during the war – they had blushed and fumbled and laughed and burned up and torn each other’s clothes off: the first time, in the field; the miraculous interlude in Victoria. He had never seen her in a nightgown before, in bed. His wife. Safe and sweet. Her hair had grown back a little over the winter, the wild dark curls starting to coil again. She’d brushed it.
She was smiling up at him – nervously? He didn’t want to make her nervous.
It was pretty clear to him that she couldn’t want him that way. Damaged as he was. How could she?
She was thinking: Why did I say that, on the landing? ‘It doesn’t matter?’ What doesn’t matter?
She’d felt foolish even before the words came out. She thought: I’m sure he would want me, if he was physically, um … She was thinking: I must not pressurise him … but he hasn’t – since – and he’s had so much morphine, over the past years … She didn’t know, actually, if he was still taking it. There were areas of his life where his independence and his privacy were so important to him, which was quite right. Quite right. She had been watching him, cautiously. He did not seem to see himself as a patient, or a cripple, and she was not going to tell him that he was. She didn’t know if he was or not. Even if she had an opinion, it was not her decision.
She had been thinking about this moment for weeks. Something would change, now they were married. The most important thing (which she had borne in mind all winter, and was, she felt, doing well at integrating) was that, specially as she had been a nurse, she absolutely must not become his nurse. But this vital consideration made it difficult for her to, for example, enquire about whether the morphine had affected