The Heroes' Welcome (31 page)

‘Mabel,’ Peter said. ‘Yes.’

Riley waited for him to say something more on the subject.

Nothing. A little birdsong from the garden, a rustling of the breeze in the poplars.

Then Peter shifted in his chair and said, ‘And my peace of mind. I lost that. July the first, Purefoy. July the first, and the twenty-fifth of September.’

The Somme, and Loos. The image of Mabel dissolved, and Riley’s carefully peaceable mind turned, and gazed back. To all that. To that –
Atmosphere? No, it was more … an ocean. A vast tank? … of some corrosive liquid, in which things look different, and move differently; sounds echo differently, your limbs are the wrong weight, what should be solid has dissolved, what should be straight and strong is bending and moving – towards you? Away from you? Out from under your feet? And you have no dimension in which to consider whether it is the concrete world which is shifting, or your perception. And everything exists within this corrosive liquid: landscapes, legs, friendships, orders, appetites, sight, memory, judgement. Moving through it, your strength and the energy you are expending do not relate to the movement of your body and your limbs – not in the usual way. The focus of your mind is warped. That which you know to be true shifts and melts. In truth, you have nothing beneath your feet. But there is no truth you can rely on, and nothing to rely with.

Constant, lethal danger of death, at all times. They had breathed it, swam in it, drunk it, eaten it, been it – ferocious, insidious, perpetual danger; drowning in the constant threat – an extraordinary way to live! Immersed in danger, soaked through, inseparable.
How can a man ever rinse that out of his psyche? Were we not leached and warped by that toxic bath? Our chemistry changed, our joints rusted and corroded, our hearts scorched? Like things left out in the storm then crushed forgotten in a corner, stinking, damp, stained, black with fungus, stiff with mould
…
oh it wasn’t far away at all, all that …

By act of will he drew his mind carefully round to the present again, and staked it to the solid ground of today.

‘Someone said – who was it?’ Riley said, ‘—that only men with imagination turned neurasthenic, and that he was jolly glad he had no imagination.’

‘And December,’ said Peter. ‘Whatever bloody day it was in December.’

‘You didn’t kill her,’ Riley said.

‘Oh I know, I know,’ Peter said. ‘But then I sort of did, in other ways. Over and over.’

‘Please come out,’ said Riley. ‘Please.’

‘I don’t know how you do it,’ Peter said. ‘I can’t do it. I can’t get away from it.’

‘Your children help me,’ Riley said.

‘We both know,’ said Peter, ‘that you are a better father to my children than I ever could be.’

This pinned Riley too tight between opposites. In doing right by Kitty and Tom, he couldn’t but do wrong by Peter.

‘You
could
be something,’ he said.

Peter gave him a quizzical glance, which Riley acknowledged. ‘We just say you’re ill,’ he said. His jaw was aching, and the tea made him cough. He wiped his mouth. They were both aware of the quasi-irony. Though ill wasn’t the word. Damaged is not ill, as he and Nadine hadn’t needed to say to each other for years now.

‘The thing is, Riley,’ Peter said, ‘that I wouldn’t want someone like me near my children.’

There’s very little you can say to that.
Riley dropped his head for a moment or two. Then he said, and found it useless even as he said it: ‘Well, if you change your mind.’ It was hard on all of them, keeping that door open.

Peter looked suddenly a little lost. ‘Interesting phrase,’ he said. ‘Change your mind. I’d love to change my mind. I’d change it to – a chrysanthemum, I think.’ Then: ‘Have you read Homer yet, Riley? It’s so interesting, about soldiers. When Patroclus died, and Achilles went mad in his tent, fighting ghosts and so on – well, never mind. I don’t suppose Achilles had shell shock.’

‘I can’t think about it,’ Riley said. ‘Each man has his own way, I know …’

‘He felt betrayed by Agamemnon, when Agamemnon took away Briseis for himself. The slave girl. Achilles’ war prize? You remember. Soldiers go mad when their leaders betray them. And when their friends are killed. Don’t you think?’

Riley said nothing about that.

‘Who betrayed us?’ Peter asked.

No helmets for the first nine months. Those home-made grenades. The great shell shortage of 1915. The utter fuck-up of the Somme – walking into gunfire. Eleven years ago. Not long. A boy’s lifetime ago.

‘Who did we betray?’

The same names rolled through their minds.

‘We didn’t kill them, Peter,’ Riley said. ‘The war killed them. Let’s not let it kill us too, after all these years.’
A blink of an eye.

Peter laughed. ‘Still,’ he said. ‘Reading Homer obsessively must be better than drinking, don’t you think?’

‘The present exists too. You could come out and have a look at it.’

‘I don’t really know about the present. Odysseus’ ten years, you know – the long voyage home from war. I’ve been thinking about all that. All the places he had to stop along the way. When Circe entranced them, drugged them, and that was a long delay, with the drugs and the seductress – it makes me feel a bit better about when I was drunk all that time, and going to the brothels. I mean, if even Odysseus went through an immoral stage … and he spent seven years with Calypso … I’m just taking my time, I think. I’m probably somewhere between Scylla and Charybdis. Not much use in the real world, I know.’

‘Well,’ said Riley.

‘Do you remember the Sirens?’ Peter said.

‘They sang,’ said Riley. His education had not been as detailed as Peter’s.

‘Do you know what they sang about?’

‘Love?’ Riley guessed.

‘No,’ said Peter. ‘You’d think it would be that, wouldn’t you? Or of some idyllic home they had all come from, and were travelling to. Each to their own Ithaca. But no – the Sirens were in a meadow of beautiful flowers, and corpses, and they sang songs of the heroic past. Of heroes of war. They sang the truth about the past. That’s what it was not safe for the returning soldiers to listen to. Succumb to
that
and your ship wrecks, and your companions die. You have to sail on, sail on, into the future. Odysseus was tied to the mast, so he could hear the song and yet survive it. He is tied to the vehicle which carries him into the future, and yelling to be released, to be allowed back into the past. Arcadia – the past – is death. Do you see?’

‘Not really,’ said Riley. ‘Are you tied to the mast?’

‘My ship has stalled,’ Peter said. ‘It’s all gone wrong. Penelope was not meant to die. She waited twenty years for him, lying and cheating to protect her son and to hold off the men who wanted to marry her. Though – you know they only spend one night together. In the whole poem. One night. Then he has to go off and placate Poseidon. Tiresias promised everything would be all right in the end, that after all that, Odysseus would have blessed peace, and his people around him. The gods wanted an amnesty – Greek is a marvellous language, Riley – do you know what “amnesty” means? Forgetting.’

‘We’re all here,’ said Riley, rather helplessly, and Peter said, with a sudden burst of bonhomie: ‘Well, of course you are!’ And then, very quietly, ‘But I’m safer inside, you know. On my own.’

*

Walking back up to the house, Riley thought, suddenly,
What will happen when I go bald? Will my chin go bald?
He remembered his father’s hairline, and had a lurch of affection, for his father, his home, his childhood, the distance …
My God, it was so long ago, the little house.
The war was a long roll of cloud on the horizon behind him in time, cutting him off, and there were the long years since, which had, after all, been years of recovery.
Back when I was a common little boy. Before I got all arty and above myself, with Sir Alfred, and my notions.
He heard again his mother’s scorn, and his father saying, ‘There’s better, Riley.’
And so there was, Dad. Thank you.

He was glad he had talked to Peter, but he shouldn’t have said ‘if you change your mind’. He hadn’t the right, really, to invite Peter in that way. Of course he hadn’t the right to deny him, either; the children were Peter’s.
But they live with us; we feed them and clothe them and tend to them and listen to them – they have been ours, in effect, for seven years – and Nadine—

Tom, lurking in a patch of wild cherry trees, jumped out, quietly, loomed up behind Riley and spat cherry stones at the back of his head. Riley turned and tousled him, and wrestled him down a bit.

‘I’m going to whittle a snake,’ Tom said. ‘I was going to say you can help me find a stick, but you can’t now.’

Riley just walked on. After a moment or two Tom circled back, and said: ‘I don’t know why you take the trouble,’ before hurtling off again.

Riley saw it all: in the recesses of Tom’s memory, drunk Peter was still shouting, smelling, lurking, unsafe, and frightening Julia and Rose. The quiet, self-emptied ghost who had retreated to the cottage had never even tried to counter that festering splinter.
Part of Tom is waiting for that Peter to lurch out again
, Riley thought
.
What does he make of the emptiness in his father’s eyes?

But there is so much of Peter still there! So much thought and feeling locked away …

‘Tom!’ he called, and because it was unheard of in the family not to respond immediately to Riley’s soft voice, out of respect, Tom turned back, circling, until he arrived at Riley’s side.

‘Your father,’ Riley said, and Tom looked mutinous, but Riley went on, quite quietly and firmly. ‘Take your hands out of your pockets, Tom. Your father was a hero in the war. As you know, I served under him; he was a magnificent officer, and performed acts of bravery and loyalty which I hope you never have to emulate. He’s not an … easy … man now, precisely because of the man he was in the war.’

‘But you’re easy,’ said Tom.

‘I’m glad you think so,’ said Riley, with a small smile.

‘And you were – you know. Wounded.’

‘Not all wounds are visible, Tom. You’re old enough to understand this. And if you don’t understand it, you’re old enough to be civil about it. I don’t want to hear you being disrespectful of him. And certainly not to your sister.’

‘She loves him,’ Tom said, in as near to a sneer as he felt he could get away with.

‘Of course she does,’ said Riley. ‘He’s her father. And yours. And he’s a good man. I wish you’d known him before—’

‘I don’t,’ said Tom.

*

Tom circled off again, disbelieving still, stretching his head this way and that.
It’s disloyal to Riley to go sucking up to Peter
,
Tom thought,
whatever Riley says. Peter may be my father, but I shall NOT grow up to be like him. I’ll work hard at my rugby this year, and get properly strong. I shall never, ever drink whisky or brandy. I shan’t ever get married and have children. If I ever have to be in a war I shan’t be in the Army at all, I’ll be in the Navy or the RAF …

After a while his arms of their own accord floated up, and he was an aeroplane, soaring and wheeling across the meadows, feet stumbling over wildflowers, wind in his ears.

Locke Hill, August 1927

Riley was fairly sure that Kitty didn’t see the emptiness in her father’s eyes. Perhaps it wasn’t there for her. She was born after the worst of that time – though the price she paid for that was never having her mother.
The child of peace, though
,
he thought, with a little smile. And she was peaceable! Riley often read to her at bedtime, and lately their book had been
A Little Princess
.

‘Do you suppose,’ he asked Nadine in bed one evening, lights out, sheet and blankets tugged round them, nestled and entangled, ‘that Kitty thinks of creeping in at night like Ram Dass with a cheerful rug, for Peter?’

‘What, to plump the pillows?’ Nadine said. ‘To make things right? Like Julia, all those years?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Like that. Does she dream of a special bond of understanding? Does she want to make him happy? To be special to him?’

‘
I
hope not,’ Nadine said, and they were quiet for a moment. Each feared that she did, and that she would pour her dear self into her father, not seeing the dark hole at the bottom.

Riley shivered suddenly.

‘What is it?’ she said.

‘I miss him,’ he murmured.

‘I know,’ she said, but she was half asleep, and didn’t notice his second shiver, one of pure loneliness, of missing his friend – or rather, and he had to admit this now, the friendship they might have had. To his drowsy mind came that piece by Edward Thomas about walking all day with Robert Frost, ‘The Stile’, from
Light and Twilight
. Peter had given a copy to Nadine, and Nadine had given it to him: dog roses, and musing oaks clustered round farmhouses, and how when your friend and you know each other well enough, thoughts come from either mind and you’re not sure which. And these – friendship, and the earth – unite you with infinity and eternity – you’re part of it. We’re all part of it.

He and Peter should have had the kind of friendship those two poets had.

And then, the faithful and unbearable memories of other friendships lost came looming up.

*

He slept badly, and the following morning set out with sandwiches to walk, to clear his mind – a long walk, out into the fields, along the lanes, wherever it took him. Somewhere empty. It was going to be a hot day. The striding was good: the rhythm of feet striking earth, the walking into solitude.

The ghosts were still bothering him. August, ten years ago.

He tried to remember walking in from Zonnebeke with his face hanging off: pulling his clagged boots out of mud, duckboards, slipping, the noise and furore of battle behind him, the chaos of its margins all around him. Not knowing why he couldn’t shake the flies off his face. Half a horse up a tree. Was that then? Or was it that he had remembered it on that day?

The blue sky, and Ypres two black fingers on the horizon. He tried, carefully, to walk himself through what he could remember.