Motherland (26 page)

Nell has taken the pad back and is writing on it.

‘Where next?’ says Larry. ‘Albert Bridge?’

‘No more bridges.’

She puts her message into its bottle without showing it to Larry, pushing it deep inside.

‘I have to go now, darling,’ she says.

‘Go? Where?’

‘Just go.’

She gives him the little bottle.

‘The last one’s for you.’

She gives him a kiss, climbs onto her bike, and pedals away up Chelsea Bridge Road.

Larry unscrews the bottle cap and tries to get the roll of paper out, but the neck is too narrow. Baffled, mildly irritated, he gazes at the bottle, wondering what to do. The paper inside has partially unrolled itself, so even if he were able to grip it through the neck it would tear as he pulled it out. The only solution is to break the bottle.

He holds it by its neck and taps it against the kerb. Then he taps it more briskly. Finally he hits it a sharp blow, and it shatters. He picks the paper out from among the glittering fragments of glass, and unrolls it, and reads.

If you find this message please believe that I expect nothing from you and only want you to go on being happy. I am going to have a baby. I love you.

Larry stands up, blood draining from his face. His first instinct is to ride after Nell at once. But he realises he has no idea where she’s gone, and will never find her. So instead he wheels his bike slowly off the bridge, fighting a confusion of emotions.

Most of all, he feels frightened. It’s not a specific fear, it’s a kind of panic. Events are exploding beyond his control, unknown forces are bearing down upon him. Then through the panic, like a mist burned off by the sun, he feels a hot shining pride.

I’m going to be a father.

The thought is so immense it overwhelms him. It exhilarates him and fills him with dread at the same time. The responsibility is too great. It changes everything.

I’m to have a wife and child.

A wife! It’s almost impossible to see Nell in this role. And yet of course they must marry.

So is this it? Is this my life already laid out before me?

He knows even as he forms the thought that this is not the life he meant to lead. But if not this, then what? What is this dream of a future that even now he sees being lost to him for ever?

Dazed, he mounts his bike and sets off pedalling up Chelsea Bridge Road, in the direction Nell took. He realises then that she must have planned it all to happen this way. She must have dreamed up her game with the messages in bottles as a way to give him time alone to form his response. He feels a sudden flood of love. What an extraordinary girl she is! Old beyond her years, she understands all he is now going through. She knows he’ll have doubts about committing himself to a future with her. So she bicycles away. This touches him deeply. Adrift in the great world, she cares enough for him not to lay on him a greater burden than he can carry.

In this moment, pedalling behind a bus as it lumbers up Sloane Street, he feels only love for her, and gratitude. But as he swings left onto Knightsbridge and rides along the south side of the park, other concerns begin to present themselves. How is he to support a wife and child? Where are they to live? What will happen to his painting?

At this point he realises where he’s going. This is the way
home. Guided by instincts deeper than conscious thought, in this time of crisis he is returning to the house where he grew up. There’s no purpose to this, he can’t expect his father to resolve his dilemma for him. He is going home as to a refuge.

So he turns into Kensington Church Street and climbs the rise to Campden Grove. His father will be in his office now, of course, on the other side of town; but Larry has a key. He lets himself in, heaving the old bike after him, and stands it in the front hall. Miss Cookham, the housekeeper, comes up from the basement to see who it can be.

‘Hello, Cookie,’ says Larry. ‘I thought I’d look in.’

‘Mr Lawrence!’ She actually goes pink with delight. ‘There’s a sight for sore eyes! Look at you! I hear you’re a famous artist now.’

‘Not so famous,’ says Larry.

He’s shocked at how much it pleases him to be welcomed in this way; and at how comforted he is by the gloomy house.

‘Shall I get you a pot of tea, and maybe a slice of cake?’

‘That would be wonderful. How are you, Cookie?’

‘Quiet, as you might say. Your father won’t be long now.’

Larry settles himself down in the third-floor back room that was once the nursery, and then became his study room. Here, home from school in the holidays, he would retreat to read or sketch or just gaze into the fire. Here he hid himself on the day his father told him his mother had gone to heaven. He was five years old.

Cookie knocks on the door, and comes in with a tray.

‘It’s only seed cake,’ she says, ‘and plainer than I’d like it, but you know how it is. You’d never guess we won the war.’

‘Thank you, Cookie. You’re an angel.’

She stands there, looking at him in his old armchair by the bookcase.

‘It’s a pleasure to have you home again, Mr Lawrence.’

Left alone, Larry drinks his tea and eats his cake and finds he can’t persuade himself to address his situation. Each time he sets out to discover what he should do, his thoughts veer away to one side, and he finds himself remembering his schooldays. Ed Avenell, whose family lived in the north, would always stay with him here at the beginning and end of the holidays, as he travelled back and forth to school. He can see him now, hunched up on the floor in front of the fire, poking things into the coals, watching them burn. Ed was a great one for burning things, pencils, toy soldiers, matchboxes. He burned himself too, in an experimental sort of way, passing his hand through the flames until it was coated with soot.

He hears the shudder of the front door closing, and hears his father’s voice in the hall. He hears Cookie’s excited twitter. His father will be tired. He’ll want to wash and change after his day in the office; and then to enjoy a whisky in the library while he glances over the evening paper.

Larry comes downstairs to greet him. He hasn’t seen his father since his return from Jamaica.

‘Larry! This is a happy surprise!’

His eyes show his real pleasure. As always on coming home, Larry is struck by how much he’s still part of this world, which in his own mind he has left behind.

‘Will you stay and eat with me?’

‘I’d like a drink,’ says Larry. ‘And a chat. But then I’d better be back on my bike.’

‘Ah, the artist’s life!’ says his father, smiling. ‘Give me ten minutes.’

Larry goes into the library and picks up the evening paper his father has brought in. He reads a little about the Paris peace conference, then puts the paper down. This room is so filled
with his father’s presence that he feels like a child again. Here, every evening in the long school holidays, he sat in what was always his special chair, a low tub chair upholstered in deep red velvet, and his father read to him. They read
King Solomon’s Mines
, and
The Lost World
, and
Treasure Island
, which his father was fond of saying was the best tale ever spun.

And am I to be a father too?

William Cornford joins him and pours them both a shot of Scotch. They talk for a little about Jamaica, and the difficulties caused by the requisition of the fleet during the war.

‘We’ve got the
Ariguani
and the
Bayano
back, but for now only the
Ariguani
is operating a regular schedule. We’re badly short of capacity. I’m in negotiations to buy four ships from the Ministry. This government is doing all it can to increase nondollar food imports. It’s just going to take time. The great thing is we’ve managed to hold onto almost all our staff.’

‘As far as I can see,’ says Larry, ‘no one ever leaves.’

‘Not if I can help it,’ says his father. ‘People grow into jobs. They start off as little slips and they turn into oak trees.’

Larry knows he too should have been a little slip, should now be an oak tree in the family firm. His father, realising his words may be construed as a criticism, turns the conversation.

‘So tell me,’ he says, ‘how is your art exhibition going?’

‘Only two more days to go,’ says Larry. ‘Then I can have the dubious pleasure of reclaiming my works.’

‘And what then?’

‘That’s something of a question.’

‘Oh?’ The single syllable spoken quietly, neutrally.

‘There’s been a new development. I’m not quite sure what to do.’

Until this moment Larry hasn’t realised he wants his father’s advice. He believes he knows what his father will say: his strong religious convictions give him very little choice. So why raise the matter?

Because whatever I do, Dad must approve.

This too is a surprise. Apparently, in order to feel that he has done the right thing he must obtain his father’s blessing. This weary man sitting drinking Scotch, with his lined tanned face gazing so thoughtfully back at him, represents all that is just and right and good. This is what it is to be a father.

How can I ever live up to that?

‘I’ve had a girlfriend for quite some time now,’ he says. ‘Her name’s Nell. She works for an art dealer. She’s a very unconventional sort of girl, very free-thinking, very independent.’

He pauses, and wonders whether his father can tell where this is going. As he speaks, he loses confidence. It seems to him that what he is about to say shows him to have been ridiculously irresponsible.

Why did I take no precautions to prevent this happening? Because Nell told me she had dealt with it. But I never asked more. I have no idea what method she used. I was too embarrassed, and too selfish, to pursue the question. Look at it rationally, as my father must look at it: my behaviour has been a kind of insanity.

‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘I’ve run into a spot of difficulty with her. I expect you can guess.’

He finds he can’t speak the actual words. He’s too ashamed. And yet here he is, by his own choice, telling his father enough for him to draw his own conclusions.

‘I see,’ says his father.

‘I know what I’ve done is wrong,’ Larry says. ‘I mean, I know you’ll tell me the Church will say I’ve sinned. And I have.’

‘Do you love her?’ his father says.

This is not what Larry has been braced for. He takes a moment before he answers.

‘Yes,’ he says.

‘Do you want to marry her?’

‘I think so,’ says Larry. ‘It’s all so new. I’m confused about it all.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Twenty. Nearly twenty-one.’

‘What have you told her?’

‘Nothing. She gave me the news and then ran off. I think she wants me to have time to think about it before I make any decision. She’s not the kind of girl who’d want me to marry her just for the sake of appearances.’

‘She’d want to know you loved her?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re not sure.’

He throws his father a quick glance. Is it so obvious?

‘I don’t know. I might be. I’m not sure I’m not sure, if you see what I mean.’

William Cornford nods. Yes, he sees what Larry means. He’s watching his son closely.

‘You’re right about the Church,’ he says. ‘The Church’s position is perfectly clear. What you’ve done is wrong. But it’s done. And your duty now, as far as the Church is concerned, is also perfectly clear.’

‘Yes,’ says Larry. ‘I realise that.’

‘But marriage is for ever. It’s till death.’

‘Yes,’ says Larry.

His father was married till death. Nine years, and then death. Those nine years have crystallised into a sacred monument. The perfect marriage.

‘Can you do that, Larry?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Larry. ‘How do you know? Did you know?’

His father gives a slow emphatic nod. No words. He has never spoken about his dead wife. Never mentioned her name since her death, except in their prayers.
God bless Mummy and watch over us from heaven and keep us safe till we meet again
.

Watch over me now, Larry thinks, wanting to cry.

‘I’m not your priest,’ says his father. ‘I’m your father. I want to say something the Church can’t say to you. If you don’t really love this girl, you would be doing a wicked thing if you married her. You would be condemning both of you, and your children, to a life of unhappiness. From what you tell me, she understands this very well. She doesn’t want a husband who is merely doing his duty. Of course, whatever happens, you must support her. But if you marry, marry of your own free will. Marry for love.’

Larry is unable to speak. In every word his father utters, he feels the powerful force of his love for him. He may use the language of moral imperatives, but his underlying concern is for his son’s happiness. This is what it is to be a father. He’s willing to set aside even his most deeply cherished beliefs for the sake of his child.

‘Don’t ruin your life, Larry.’

‘No,’ says Larry. ‘That is, if I haven’t already.’

‘But if you think you really can love her – well then.’

Larry meets his father’s eyes. He wants so much to hug him,
and feel his father’s arms holding tight. But it’s years since they hugged.

‘There’s the practical side of things,’ he says. ‘You say I must support her, and of course I must. But it’s not so simple.’

‘I take it,’ says his father, ‘that art has not proved to be remunerative so far.’

‘Not so far.’

Now his father will tell him that this is just as he predicted in their one great row before the war. That he’s wasted his youth on a foolish dream. That now he must face up to his responsibilities.

‘But you love it?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Your painting. Your art. You love it.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘You sound very certain about that.’

‘You’re asking me if I love to paint, Dad. I am certain of that. It’s all I want to do. But I’m not certain about anything else. I’m not certain that I’m good enough. I’m not certain I’ll ever be able to make my living at it.’

‘But you love it.’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s a rare thing, Larry. That’s a gift from God.’