The Storms of War (45 page)

‘I’m well, Papa. I’ve just been busy. There is so much to do.’ She put her hand on a lampshade. It wobbled a little, broken, she supposed.

‘I have not seen you. You were not at dinner last night.’

His face was furrowed, forehead lined with worry. She couldn’t look at him. ‘I was tired. I had much to do.’

‘All the days in the camp when I thought I would be there for ever, I thought of you. My little Celia. I thought of how happy we would be together.’ He put out his hand. ‘How you have changed.’

She blushed, looked down. ‘I grew up. The war came.’ She didn’t take his hand, and it hovered there, in the air. He took it back.

‘I know. It is sad for me. I hoped to see you grow up. Now those years have been taken from me.’

‘I thought of seeing you too, Papa.’ She pushed past him then, and hurried out into the corridor. Tears were blurring her eyes.

Celia was tidying the storeroom behind the study. The door opened behind her. She whirled around. Tom stood there, blocking the light.

‘You are not supposed to be out of bed on your own.’

‘I know. But you’ve been avoiding me.’

‘No I haven’t.’ She stared at his face, his eyes, his mouth, his hair. ‘I haven’t.’ Could she see Rudolf there? She thought that she could, the dark eyes, the thick hair. Older, with a beard, would he look like her father? She supposed so. They had kissed. She had thought of marrying him – and spending her nights with him. She felt sickened.

‘I think you have.’

Celia turned back to the pile of bandages. ‘But what is there to talk about?’

‘I shouldn’t have told you. I’m sorry. I know how much you love your father.’

‘I asked. I asked you and you told me.’ She was squeezing a bandage in her hand.

‘I’m sorry, Celia. Have you spoken to Rudolf?’

‘No. He doesn’t understand why I don’t want to talk to him.’

‘It isn’t so bad, what he did. It happened. He and my mother fell in love. And he has always looked after us. More than most gentlemen would.’

‘It should never have happened. I thought he loved us.’ Clutching the hand of Mrs Cotton, coming close to her, smiling. Emmeline and Michael tiny children, abandoned as he held Mrs Cotton in dark corridors, the way Cooper had done with the soldiers in France. She threw the bandage into the pile. Dozens and dozens of them, being used, thrown away, piling up again. The war must have gobbled up a million bandages, thousands of millions. She wished she could sit down and surround herself with them, so nobody could find her.

‘He still does, Celia.’

‘He betrayed us.’ Her father holding Mrs Cotton, closer than he held her mother. She told herself to stop. Her father betraying them, forgetting them all, laughing with her. Tom’s birth.
I shall look after him for ever.
He had talked of his joy at the birth of Arthur, Emmeline, Michael and Celia. Then he bent over the crib, saw Tom, cried with happiness. Mrs Cotton smiled at him from her bed. ‘He lied to us all.’

‘I think your mother knows. She doesn’t like me. She suspects.’

‘Maybe. It was cruel to her. And us. And you. All of us. I never thought my father was like that.’ She thought of the men in the nightclub with Jonathan. He had told her that they were probably married, there with other women. She had felt ashamed of them. And now she should feel the most ashamed of all. She had kissed someone who was her brother, even if only partly. She leant against the wall, her hands buried in bandages.

‘You’re the proof. He betrayed our family.’

‘It wasn’t anything bad. Why shouldn’t he fall in love with my mother?’

She fought to push down her response.
Because she was a servant.

‘And now you’re back here. Have you said to him “Hello, Father!” when we are not looking?’

‘No, of course not.’

She turned fully to look at him. ‘Why not? That is what he is to you, isn’t it?’

‘We don’t talk about it in that way.’

She picked up another bandage. ‘What do you mean? You don’t refer to it?’

‘No. We’ve never referred to it.’

‘You never call each other father and son? You never speak to him of it?’ She was raising her voice, but she didn’t care.

‘No.’

‘How
do
you speak to each other?’ She wanted to grasp him by the neck.

‘He is kind to me. He asks how I am. You saw. He’s pleased to see me.’

‘But he never calls you “son”? He never refers to it?’

‘He asks after my mother, wants to know how she is.’

‘That means nothing, you know. He’s a kind person. How do you know he’s really your father?’

‘I told you what my mother said the night before I went away. And Rudolf is kind to me. He always has been.’

‘He’s kind to a lot of people. Maybe your mother is lying.’

‘My mother’s not a liar.’

‘I might ask her.’

He seized her hand. ‘You mustn’t! You must never do that.’

‘But I don’t believe it. Why shouldn’t I find out the truth?’

‘Rudolf is too good for me, is that it?’

‘No, no, that is not it.’ She felt painfully ashamed of their positions, he bandaged, injured, while she was free.

His face was dark with anger and pain. ‘I couldn’t possibly have your father, is that what you mean? Not someone like me. I could never be the son of Rudolf.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘So your father was only ever kind to me out of pity?’

She couldn’t bear the expression on his face. There was such a small gap between them, half a foot. She could reach her hand over and touch his, just a tiny space. But she didn’t, held her hand still. Everything was crumbling. She didn’t know what to believe.

‘You’re like your brother. He pretended to be friendly, but really he wanted me to see that I was his servant.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Leave me alone. Just go.’ His voice was cracked, like that of an old man.

‘Tom, please.’

He shook his head. ‘Go away now. I don’t want to speak to you any more. I mean it. I’ll call for a nurse if you don’t go.’

‘Please, Tom.’

He closed his eyes. Tears rimmed his cheeks under his eyelids.

She put out her hand.

‘Go,’ he said. ‘Now.’

Celia ran from the room. Outside the door, she held her head and wept. Then she crept up to her room and flung herself on the bed. Emmeline was already sleeping, as she always was by eight these days, lying on her back, breathing heavily. Celia gazed out of the window into the darkness, the night mist coming down over the dead roses. Tom’s words there, four years ago. If only he hadn’t said them, had never kissed her, then maybe she wouldn’t have imagined things about their future together. She knew that wasn’t true, though; she had always thought of them together,
right from the start. Now all of it was broken, taken away, and there was nothing to put in its place.

Next morning, she was polishing a banister – she had asked Jennie if she could do it, so that she had easy work, no chance of seeing the men or having to talk to them – when she heard footsteps coming towards her. She looked up, scrubbing hastily at her eyes. Mrs Cotton and Mary, escorted by Emmeline. Mrs Cotton was nervously pulling at her coat. Mary was looking straight ahead, dignified.

‘Hello, miss,’ she said.

Celia tried to smile. ‘Hello, Mary. Tom is much improved, you know.’ She glanced at Mrs Cotton, her round, rose-cheeked face, careworn. Twenty years ago, she supposed she had been young, giggling. Could Rudolf have loved her? She shook her head. Impossible.

‘Tom will be very pleased to see his family,’ Emmeline said. ‘He’s been in good spirits, has he not, Celia?’

‘Indeed he has.’ She could hardly look at Mrs Cotton.

‘Come on through.’ Emmeline ushered them onwards. The door closed behind them. Celia leant against the wall. Emmeline swished out again. ‘Still here?’

‘Just catching my breath. I am tired today.’

‘You shouldn’t spend your evenings staring out of our bedroom window then, should you?’ Emmeline shook her head and departed.

Celia pressed her ear against the door. She could hear the low rumble of voices. Mrs Cotton was crying. She waited. After a while, the door opened and the Cottons emerged. Mrs Cotton was red-eyed, holding Mary’s hand. Celia scurried after them. ‘I wanted to ask you something, Mrs Cotton.’ The pair hurried on, out of the front of the house. Celia rushed around them. ‘I wanted to ask you—’

Mrs Cotton stopped. ‘Yes?’ Could she have been beautiful? Celia supposed so, gazing at her face.

She couldn’t say it. Couldn’t ask the question. Tom was in hospital, injured and she couldn’t ask it.

‘Nothing, Mrs Cotton. I’m sorry.’

Mrs Cotton pulled Mary’s hand. ‘Come along. Goodbye, Miss de Witt.’

Celia stood there and watched them hurry away.

That evening in her room, wanting nothing more than to escape Stoneythorpe, she went to her desk and picked up her box of letters. Emmeline was downstairs, waiting for Mr Janus to make his weekend visit. She opened the lid. Hilde’s letters were near the top, and she took them out, smoothed her hands over the pages. The early ones were decorated with pressed flowers that Hilde had found in the forest. The ones from the beginning of the war were plain:
I have not heard from you in some time. Things are different here.
Celia pushed them to the side, feeling guilty. She wanted the very first letters, those written when Hilde was seven.

She scanned through the early letters.
My father,
she wrote.
My father is taking us fishing. Will you come too?
Hilde’s letters were on white paper, blue paper with scalloped edges, unevenly cut pink paper drawn with flowers, the handwriting growing and changing until the neat script of the most recent ones. She thought of the years before the war, playing outside with Hilde and Johann, eating bread at the table.

She picked up her pen.
Dear Hilde
, she began.
It is some time since I wrote. I have wondered how you are.

Before she knew it, she had filled two sides of paper. She told Hilde of her work with the ambulances, of Michael’s death, of the change in the house to a hospital. She tried to describe it. She folded the page in two and pushed it into a drawer.

‘I’ve written a letter to Hilde,’ she said to her father, that night at dinner in his study. They had grown used to each other now, no more silver plates or candles, and Jennie and Mrs Rolls were downstairs. Thompson still served, less nervously now. ‘I have not
written to her since the war started. What news have you had of them?’

‘Not much. Heinrich wrote to Mama to say that Johann was fighting in Belgium. Hilde is still at home, I believe. Remember, Celia, the government sees them as our enemies now. We’re not supposed to correspond with them.’

‘I wish we could see more of them. It has been so long.’

‘When the war is over, you can return to visit them,’ said Rudolf. ‘That might be soon, after all.’

‘After some time has elapsed,’ cut in Verena.

‘Indeed so. We can all be a family once more.’ With three people missing, Celia thought. Arthur unseen for years. Michael lying in his grave in France, a book somewhere marking him out as a coward.
Executed for cowardice,
she supposed, must be written in it, signed off by some clerk. And would Johann be there, or had he been killed as well? But above all Tom, lying in his bed instead of sitting with them at the table.

Celia stood by the door and watched Tom walk slowly around the rose garden. Frost was touching the stems of the roses and the soil. Emmeline had told her he was out here, having refused the escort of a nurse. She picked up her skirts and hurried to him.

‘I know it’s you, Celia,’ he said, without turning around. ‘Don’t come. There’s no point in talking.’

‘I’m sorry, Tom. I really am.’

‘I said I didn’t want to talk.’

‘I’m sure that Rudolf would not do such a thing.’

‘You don’t know for certain, either way. Have you asked Rudolf?’

‘No. I don’t need to. I just know.’

‘And I know too. Mother wouldn’t lie.’

She gazed at him, and then came a bell, ringing clearly somewhere in her mind. He was so certain. What if he was right? She shook the doubt away.

‘I think I might go to Germany after the war is over. Would you come too?’

‘Go to Germany …?’

‘Why not? We’ll be at peace then.’

‘We’ll never be at peace. We can’t go there.’

She looked down. The soil was mulch under her feet. The vases and sculptures were beneath them. After the war, she and Tom could come to the garden and dig them up, return them to the house.

Turning to him, she put her hand out. ‘Are we friends?’

He paused, then took it. ‘I can’t have expected you to be happy about what I told you. I tried to hide it when you came to the hospital to see me.’

‘I see why you did. You were kind to do it.’ The words caught in
her throat. But it was worth having, this moment of forgiveness, slight though it was. She had to keep it, having lost so much. They began to walk back to the house, an uneasy truce settling between them.

As they came closer, Emmeline was waving. ‘Celia!’ she cried. ‘Celia! Come here! Quickly!’

Celia broke into a run. Her heart was in her mouth. The general was here for her. She was to be taken away. ‘What is it?’ She flung herself at her sister. ‘What’s happened?’

Emmeline grasped her hands, crossed them over and swung her around. They were small girls again, twirling in dress-up nurses’ uniforms. Celia’s skirts swung out behind her. Emmeline was laughing. She pulled Celia and the pair of them toppled over on to the cold earth. She was laughing. Celia had not seen her move so quickly for months.

‘What is it? What’s happened?’ Celia punched her shoulder. Surely the general was not here if her sister was laughing.

Emmeline rolled over to lie on her back. ‘You’ll get green on your uniform,’ Celia said.

‘It doesn’t matter! We will be able to afford new ones.’

‘What?’ Celia sat up, shading her eyes. Tom was limping towards them.

‘Can’t you guess? Mama has got the money! We have the money for the hospital. The authorities sent some and the Dowager Lady Redroad found a friend in Scotland who wanted to help. We have all the money we need!’

‘That is happy news.’ Celia tried to smile. The general was still in her mind. They would get the money for the hospital and it would not matter, for she would still be taken away, forced to do his will.

‘Mama wants us to go in. Papa has found some champagne in the cellar. Tom! You must come too.’ She shot him a smile, all shiny teeth and bright eyes, just as beautiful as she was in the old days. ‘It’s too cold out here to walk.’

She linked her arm with Celia and pulled her along, tugging
her towards the back door. Two soldiers in the garden gazed at them, surprised.

‘Come on!’ Emmeline cried, hauling her along the kitchen passage and out into the hall. The three of them burst through the door of the study. Rudolf was there, with Verena, Matron, Mr Janus, Jennie, Mrs Rolls and Thompson. They were all laughing, and Rudolf was pouring champagne into the glasses as Jennie held them. ‘I don’t think I have enough!’ he was saying. ‘We’ll use these, then!’ replied Verena, holding up two cracked teacups.

Rudolf turned. ‘Welcome! Celia, Emmeline – and Tom! You have heard the news? We have the money we desire!’

Celia watched the bright stuff glitter into the glasses. ‘How happy I am with the news, Papa.’ She waved across the room at Mr Janus. Jennie passed her a teacup.

‘Just in the nick of time,’ Emmeline was saying. ‘We were close to the edge, Papa.’

‘So here we are,’ Rudolf said. ‘All together again.’

‘Nearly all,’ said Verena.

‘Yes.’ Celia looked down and saw Tom do the same.

‘But we should toast what we still have,’ said Rudolf. He held up his glass. ‘To Stoneythorpe!’ he said. ‘To our great house and its continuation.’ The wintry sun from the window struck his face.

They all lifted their glasses. ‘To Stoneythorpe!’ Celia smiled at them: her father looking younger than he had since his return, her mother clutching his arm. Emmeline was over by Mr Janus, holding his hand. Jennie was smiling in her uniform, next to Thompson, Mrs Rolls and Matron. Behind her she could hear Tom breathing.

Rudolf clapped his hands. ‘To family!’ he cried. They lifted their glasses again. He was about to repeat the toast when the tinkling of the telephone broke through the air. They all turned to stare at it, the receiver bobbling a little on its support. It was so unexpected, as if a zebra had suddenly appeared in the room. Celia felt sure she had not heard it ring since she had returned. ‘Shall I, sir?’ said Thompson.

‘No, no, I shall take it,’ said Rudolf. He stalked over to the table and picked up the receiver. ‘Stoneythorpe,’ he said into it, stiffly.

They all stood silently as he nodded. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Right. Yes. Are you quite sure? Yes. Well, thank you.’

He put down the telephone and looked around the room, opened his mouth. Celia saw her mother’s face pale. And then he smiled. ‘The war is over,’ he said. ‘It is over. The armistice was signed in a railway carriage in France this morning. The Kaiser has surrendered.’

Verena gave a little scream and dropped to the floor. Her teacup clattered to the side. Matron and Rudolf were immediately beside her. ‘Give her air!’ Matron was commanding.

Emmeline had come across and was clutching Celia’s arm. ‘The war is over,’ she was saying. ‘Sister – the war is over.’

‘What about Berlin?’ said Tom. ‘No great push to Berlin?’

Rudolf stared at the telephone. ‘I suppose not. But that is better, all the same.’

‘Well then, we are giving in. If we don’t go into Berlin, we are surrendering to them. They’ll be back. It will start all over again.’

Matron was still fanning Verena. ‘Mrs de Witt will come round.’

‘But the war is over!’ said Celia. ‘Now we’re free. We should toast that.’

‘Yes, quite so,’ said Rudolf. ‘Let us raise our glasses. To the end of the war!’

‘To the end of the war!’ they all repeated, their voices ringing out, echoing around the walls. Rudolf’s smile was frozen to his face.

Emmeline seized Celia’s hand and pulled her out of the study. ‘The war is over!’ she cried breathlessly at a group of soldiers in the hall, laughing at their surprise. She battered through the door of the dining room. ‘The war is over!’ she shouted into the ward. Celia dropped her hand and ran around to the parlour. ‘The Kaiser has surrendered!’ Emmeline tugged her away, laughing, and they ran towards the ballroom. But word had spread now, and everybody was shouting it, the soldiers cheering and even strict Nurse Black crying out, ‘We’ve won!’

Celia and Emmeline ran back into the hall. One of the men caught Emmeline up and danced her around. Celia hung back. She watched them all cheering and laughing, raising their crutches in the air, and her heart sank. She looked up to see Tom limping out of the study. He gazed at her, his face pale. Her heart switched and she felt like a ship trapped in a bottle, as if everything she could see and hear was kept away from her by a pane of glass. The day they had desired for so long – and it barely seemed any different to the others. Some man had signed papers in a railway carriage with another man and now they would not be fighting. But the men were still injured, Michael was still dead, Rudolf was wrecked, things with Tom were broken and the house was ruined. She watched the men laughing with Emmeline, holding up their hands, others shouting to the patients still lying in the wards. ‘What are we going to do now?’ she asked them. But the glass was in front of her and no one could hear.

‘You are sitting out here alone.’ The frost had covered the roses entirely. ‘It’s very cold.’

Tom looked up. The whites of his eyes glittered. ‘Looking at the stars. Thinking.’

‘May I sit down too?’ Celia didn’t wait for an answer. She folded her legs under herself and sat on the cold grass. She wanted to push the general out of her mind. Now that the war was over, he surely could not come for her. What use could he have for her now?

‘Does it feel strange that it’s over?’

Tom shrugged. ‘I don’t believe it is. I think it will come back.’

‘Surely the Germans have given in?’

‘You know them. They might have tricked us. We aren’t in Berlin, after all.’

‘You’re right.’ That thought was so miserable that she couldn’t even address it. That today they’d been dancing and tomorrow they might be at war again. She looked out over the grass, just lit by the house behind them.

‘You kept your secret about Papa for a long time,’ she said. ‘Must’ve been hard.’

‘I don’t know what to think now. I was so sure, but now I’m back at Stoneythorpe … Maybe Mother just wished it was so.’

She wanted to console him with something. ‘I don’t know him any more, my father, not really. I didn’t expect it to be like this. I thought it would go back to how it was. Sometimes I wonder if he thinks more about the men who were in prison with him than us.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘That’s how it feels.’

He put his arm around her. ‘It’s bound to be hard at first. You’ve grown up. Think what you’ve seen since he left.’

‘Not much good.’

He squeezed her and she blushed with pleasure, grateful that it was dark. ‘Tom, I …’ She wanted to tell him about Jonathan but could not find the words.

‘I think that if the war’s really over, we should try and forget about it. Not think about it. I imagine that after a year or so, people won’t want to hear about it any more.’

‘I can’t imagine not talking about it.’

‘You’ll have to find new things. You could go to Paris now, see Arthur.’

‘I’d be lonely there.’ She hesitated, forced herself to say it. ‘Would you come too?’

‘Maybe I would after all.’ His arm was still around her. It was burning her shoulder.

‘Are you sure there’s no other girl?’ She was smiling as she said it, teasing him. Clearly, she thought, clearly he couldn’t believe she was his sister if they were talking like this. Mrs Cotton must have been lying.

‘Of course not. When would I have time for another girl?’

‘Nurse Rouse was pretty.’

He gave a quick laugh. ‘All the men are in love with nurses. It means nothing.’

‘I said I’d write to her, but I didn’t in the end.’

‘You won’t now the war’s over. You’ll want something else to think about. I do.’

‘Like what?’

He shook his head, coughing. ‘What am I talking about? I’m sorry, Celia.’

His eyes shone in the dark. She thought of Jonathan, her invitation to him, felt a wash of shame.

‘Did you meet girls in the war?’

‘Not many. Let’s talk of something else.’

She looked up, and the stars were hiding behind frosty clouds.

‘What about the girl you talked about?’

‘I told you, I made her up.’

‘There was a girl at the station, Cooper, who kept going out to meet men. I guess that was why she did it. Maybe I should have done that too. She seemed happy.’

‘Maybe she was.’

‘Oh.’ She could think of nothing to say. ‘Can you tell me about it?’

‘No. You’ll find out when you’re married.’

‘I will never get married.’

‘So you say.’

‘It’s true.’

She looked at him. He seemed about to speak. Or even do something. His hand was a white light on her shoulder, hot, sharp. Go on, she willed him.
Say it.
The second trembled, waiting. She could feel it.

He stood up, held out his hand. ‘Come on, Celia. Let’s go inside. They’ll be looking for us.’

The moment was gone. It broke free of her hand, flew into the dark sky. She clambered up and they walked together towards Stoneythorpe. Yellow light fell from the windows, throwing thin shapes onto the unkempt lawn.