‘It won’t be so bad,’ Simmie told herself as the Staff Nurse led her down an elegant circular staircase to a lower floor. She’d weathered worse than this, they all had. It couldn’t be as bad as it would have been for the old lady that first time. Or when she’d had to tell him about Robbie. And Simmie remembered with shame how callous she’d thought Mrs Ashby then, arranging to see her London accountant so soon after the little boy’s funeral.
At the bottom of the stairs there were full length windows looking out onto a garden with a fountain and a little goldfish pool, and men in wheelchairs enjoying the sun; men without arms and legs. Beyond the garden was a parapet and beyond that the view – the same view. Past and present meeting in this place, where on a summer’s day like this Simmie had first discovered the power of love.
‘Lovely garden isn’t it?’ the Staff Nurse said. ‘Mr Ashby’s out there in all weathers – loves it he does.’
They crossed a long common room with American leather armchairs, and men smoking, and the gramophone which Simmie had heard from the vestibule. It was blaring out ‘Sitting on Top of the World’; such a silly, frivolous little tune.
‘You do realise that he’ll be wearing his prosthetic mask?’ The Staff Nurse gave Simmie a quick sidelong glance. ‘He generally does with someone new, and with anyone from outside; hospital visitors, student doctors, anyone like that.’
‘A mask?’
‘Didn’t Matron tell you? Well don’t you worry, it’s really most awfully good; a regular work of art you might say. There’s this marvellous sculptor at Wandsworth who makes them up from photographs and plaster casts and the like. ‘Tin noses shop’ the patients call it!’ The nurse smiled apologetically. ‘Not that they are tin. They’re actually made of silver-plate I believe, light as a feather. And then of course in cases like Mr Ashby’s there’s room inside for pads, to take up the excess moisture you know. That saves the poor chaps such a lot of embarrassment.’
‘But silver? You can’t mean that he’ll be wearing a silver mask?’ Suddenly Simmie felt a desperate urge to run – not from him, not from poor Ned, but from the things they’d done to him.
‘Oh it doesn’t look like silver,’ the Staff Nurse assured her, ‘hardly at all. It’s all most beautifully painted; really artistic. You’ll see in a minute. Only don’t go overboard and admire it too much now,’ she added with a wink. ‘We’re a bit touchy about it still, if you know what I mean.’
The next moment she flung open a door at the further end of the common room and ushered Simmie through. ‘Here we are then, Mr Ashby!’ she shouted. ‘Here’s your visitor come to see you!’
He was standing in a small, oak-panelled room with the sunlight streaming in; standing with his back to them in flannels and a clean white shirt – with his arms folded, wrapped tightly around him. And surely taller than Simmie remembered him? Taller, not so broad?
He moved at the sound of the Staff Nurse’s raised voice, but didn’t turn, and she was quick to take the hint. ‘Well, I’ll be leaving you two alone then,’ she sang out. ‘Show the lady back up to the desk when she’s ready will you, Mr Ashby? I know Matron wants another little word with her before she goes.’ She shut the door behind her.
The garden side of the room gave onto a long, tiled colonnade, where more patients in more wheelchairs were enjoying the sun. Simmie could hear the sound of their voices, their laughter through the glass door that shut them out.
‘Ned.’ Her throat was parched. She croaked his name, and then had to repeat it. ‘Ned, my dear!’ The blond hair was the same, curling softly into the muscles of his neck. As he turned she smiled, the sweet and loving smile she’d practised in the train.
Two masks confronting one another.
The Staff Nurse was right, it was a work of art, that certainly; a face scrubbed pink like a young boy’s, with red, slightly parted lips and a moustache of real hair, and Ned’s strong nose faithfully rendered. And how beautifully neat the way it hooked back over the ears like spectacles, the way it fitted snugly to the neck and cheek and forehead, and tucked up under the hairline. How clever the way they’d matched the eye. The other eye…
‘Ned – I know it’s you, my dear.’ She willed him to understand her without speech. ‘I know you’re there behind that thing…
‘Look at me Ned, and see I’m smiling. See my smile, Ned. Don’t hear the screaming, the weeping inside me… It’s nothing, my dear. It’s just my weakness. You know what a coward I’ve always been. Just see my smile..’
A museum god, a graven image looked back at her, itself unable to smile ever – classical, perfect, terrifying. All but the desperate living blue eye that blinked.
Meriel was galloping flat out, savagely kicking her pony faster and faster down the long slope to the cliff edge; conscious only of the sky, of the great force of the wind that beat up against her, into her open mouth, down into her lungs, lifting her out of herself free as a swallow, swooping down and out away into space…
‘What the nation!’ Watching her from the ridge above, the shepherd’s bent old figure straightened on his crook, tense against the skyline; only to relax and settle back into its customary stoop as Meriel pulled the pony up on its haunches within a yard or two of the sheer cliff.
‘Damme Lass, if I ain’t gettin’ reg’lar soft,’ Bat Vine remarked to his dog. ‘Been nursemaid ter too many lambs I shouldn’ wonder – but that young ’ooman’ll tarrify this ol’ bugger to death one o’these fine days, an’ I’m not funnin’!’
Meriel up on the cliff sat very still to watch a shoal of whitebait curving, flashing silver underneath the water – thinking of the Catriona, of a young girl in a borrowed cape standing in the bows. The chalk headland was like a ship too in its way, she thought – a great white ship. Ancient. Timeless. Sailing forward with The Bury and the Sellington Valley as its cargo – and old Vine with his precious Southdown ewes, and the dairy shorthorns and the hay in the barns and the barley ready for the harvest…
Continuity, the only kind of permanence there is…
Who said that? Whose voice? Why were the words so familiar? She turned the pony’s head back up the slope and through the grazing sheep, with something fretting, chafing inside her like a piece of rusted machinery grating into movement.
The old man still watched her from above; waiting for her to climb back up the hill towards him. So to be perverse she left the ridgeway just to keep him waiting – to explore the hollows and feel the long dead haulms of grass brushing the pony’s flanks and belly; rising only by degrees to the patient figure on the hill. She wasn’t bound to speak to him. He didn’t own the hills for heaven’s sake! They were hers as much as they belonged to Vine or to his smelly sheep!
In the places where the grass was coarsest; in the lee of gorse banks and in the deeper depressions, there were scores of little butterflies clinging to the stems. Scores of pointed grey winglets patterned like old lace, opening to nut brown or azure blue as they fluttered up from the movements of the horse.
Butterflies – the thud of hooves on chalk – echoes of the guns…
‘Wonderful cunnin’, them blues,’ The old man remarked as she drew level. ‘Tucked up ’afore six every evenin’, reg’lar as clockwork. Like kiddies ye might say – jus’ folds their little wings an’ ’ides theirselves away.’
He shifted his gaze from the valley to the pale face of the woman on the pony. ‘’Eads down in the shadows where the bents is thickest, Missus. That’s ’ow they save theirselves, them little blues.’
Butterflies – butterflies and guns… and something stirring. Something hurtful, painful waking into life…
‘Meriel!’
With a sense of relief she turned her head – her mother’s voice; the Mater calling her in to change… ‘Meriel! Me-ri-el!’
No not the Mater, you-dunderhead – how could it be? It’s Simmie, of course it is! Simmie come back from London – and God in heaven, she’s running up to meet me! Simmie running, what a hoot!
The recovery for which Simmie had hoped and prayed so long, came with a suddenness that left her gasping. Ned’s name had meant so little to Meriel these past years. It was too much to hope that she could understand about him and about the Star and Garter. But she had immediately. It was as if Simmie had tentatively opened the door of a cage to coax out some poor frightened little captive – only to find herself knocked down and trampled, ground underfoot, in Meriel’s stampede for freedom!
‘OF COURSE, OF COURSE HE’S BLOODY ALIVE!’ She’d shouted it across the hills to send Bat’s sheep flock hummocking, panic-stricken, off into the combe. ‘I’ve always said so, haven’t I? I’ve always said he was my world and couldn’t die. But you people don’t listen do you? YOU NEVER, NEVER LISTEN!’
Within minutes of the news, astonishingly, Meriel had made her first concrete decision in years – and poor Simmie, drooping with emotional exhaustion, had been in no fit state to stop her.
‘He’ll be coming back for G.M’s funeral, that’s the first thing, of course.’ Meriel declared before they’d even left the bostal path. ‘Oh come on, Simmie, don’t be so damned feeble! He’s got to, hasn’t he? The whole village will expect it.’
‘But darling that’s so public! And Meriel, you’ll really have to give yourself more time. We all need time to decide what to do for the best…’
It was all too quick for her. She couldn’t seem to take it in. And Meriel was getting it wrong, that much was obvious. ‘But Meriel, darling, you don’t understand. He’s so unsure of himself still. He can’t talk to you, my dear. He can’t eat normally. Ned’s still so terribly damaged…’ She was doing all she could to make her understand. ‘He’s going to need time too, you see – so much time and patience, so much love, before he will be ready to face all those people.’
‘Rot, Simmie! Nog needs pushing, organising, always has. Do you think that I’ve been married to him all these years, for heaven’s sake, without knowing what Ned needs? He’s always been too slow and too damn sensitive to get things done without a push. You know as well as I do that he’d never have married me in the first place if I hadn’t practically forced him into it!’
‘He did go through the war though, didn’t he, my dear?’ And that was very much his own decision.’
‘Yes, and look where it has got him! Just ask yourself what Ned is doing at this moment, Simmie, to help himself or me or Patrick – and for goodness sake stop fussing, woman!’
Half an hour later Meriel was on the telephone to the Star and Garter Home, shouting into the mouthpiece with all her old impatience. And two days later she was ready, she announced, to leave for Richmond – following a lightning dash to Eastbourne for the latest thing in jersey suits, a proper grown up three-piece for Patrick, and a modern shingled haircut for herself which had done nothing for the gaunt planes of her face.
On the morning she was due to leave, Simmie had gone up to help her dress, miserably, dreading what she’d find. ‘There you are then, Simmie. I thought that you were never coming,’ Meriel cried as soon as she caught sight of her. ‘Look, are my seams straight, can you see? They’re such a swine to get just right, and you have to, don’t you, with these skimpy little frocks? The things we women have to go through, honestly, to look our best!’
Simmie could never quite get used to the sight of middle-aged women baring their legs like young girls. Worse, Meriel’s stockings were of shiny pink rayon, and clashed horrendously with the knitted orange chevrons of her costume. But what could she do? What could she say now things had gone this far?
‘Yes they’re fine, quite straight. But surely you’re not planning to wear mascara in the daytime are you, Meriel? I must say, dear, I really don’t think that’s quite the thing…’
But Meriel was already at the mirror, enlarging her coppery-brown eyes with a hand that made up in generosity what it lacked in finesse. ‘Oh you have to with these modern styles, it’s part of the effect,’ she said airily, ‘everybody says so. There’s no sense in spending a fortune on the togs to go out looking like a peg doll!’
The lipstick was too dark as well. It made her mouth look huge. But Meriel didn’t see it. It wasn’t what she wished to see. She blew a kiss instead at her own smiling reflection, and moved her head to catch the light on her gold Tutankhamen earrings, before jamming on an unflattering cloche hat and springing to her feet.
‘And it’s no good looking like that, Simmie Sims,’ she said. ‘Oh yes, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’ve been ill for a long time, aren’t you? That my love for Ned’s not strong enough – that I’m not strong enough to do the things for him he’s going to need, or be as kind to him as you would, Simmie, in my place.’
There was a bright, hard edge on Meriel’s voice. But before Simmie could answer her, she’d clattered off on her high heels, out of the room and across the landing to the stairs. ‘Come on then, you old stick-in-the-mud, and just watch me do it,’ she called back over her shoulder; and with a desperate, sinking feeling Simmie followed her down to the hall.
From the garden of the Star and Garter Ned could see the Staff Nurse hurrying through the common room, peering at the patients in the leather armchairs; looking for him he’d no doubt. In a moment she’d come to the window and see him out here beside the goldfish pool.
‘There you are Mr Ashby! Whatever can you be thinking of? Matron’s been expecting you for ages, surely you remember? Your wife and boy will be here for you after lunch, and there’s still a great deal she needs to say before they come.’
The nurse had spotted him already. She was frowning at the window, rapping on the glass for his attention. There’d be Matron in her upstairs office, ready with another lecture before her goodbye handshake…
Then Meriel, the thing he dreaded – gripping him by the arms. Shaking him and glaring at him fiercely… ‘My kind of hero wouldn’t want a wife who pitied him. Do you hear me, Noggin? He wouldn’t come home maimed or crippled, unable to eat without dribbling or function as a husband and a father.’
Oh Meri…
Dan had offered to drive them to the station, or go with them all the way to Richmond. But Meriel turned him down. ‘Nonsense,’ she said briskly. ‘My son will drive me, won’t you Patrick. His father will expect to see him. But you can come as far as Seaford, Goodworth, to bring the cart back home.’ The look in young Patrick’s face as his mother turned to him for confirmation brought a lump to Simmie’s throat.
To see them off they all crowded out onto the front steps, where they had stood when Ned left for war – Helly holding her new baby with old Nanny Jefferies behind her, Gladys and three-year-old Maggie Goodworth toddling to the fore with her father’s slow deliberation. And others too, less obvious; Zachy Cheal, nibbling at the lawn edges with his long-handled shears, Pyecroft loitering on the path from the brew-house – and the old shepherd on the chalk hills; Simmie knew that he’d have found a place that gave a clear view of the road.
Then at the last minute, Cook came panting from the kitchen, a little lame now and more comfortably upholstered than ever, to hand a covered maund-basket into the cart. ‘A bite for ye to take on the train, Missus Edwin,’ she explained; and on an impulse that cut through a lifetime’s training, reached up to squeeze her hand.
‘Bring ’im ’ome safe to us, darlin’,’ she said, stepping back as Patrick slapped the reins and chirruped to the pony, and the old governess-cart crunched forward on the gravel.
‘Upsy-daisy, Maggie, that’s the girl.’
Simmie hoisted the child, to wave with her and reinforce her artificially bright smile. ‘Let’s wave bye-bye to Daddy, shall we, and to Auntie Meri and to Patrick?’
Dear Patrick. So proud and protective in his new dark suit. Dan facing him, hands on knees, exuding calm. And Meriel, laughing, waving – so courageous, so determined, so vulnerable to all the hurts and dangers she refused to recognise, or even see. Meriel in all her bravest colours – so terrifyingly ill-equipped for the ordeal that lay ahead.
‘Look Sim, look!’ The old governess-cart was gathering speed, bowling down the drive towards the bend, while Maggie tugged insistently at Simmie’s hair to drag it from its pins. She waited for a last glimpse of Meriel’s hat above the rhododendrons, then looked.
On the old mounting block to one side of the steps, a tiny pale blue butterfly was opening its wings to catch the sun. It looked too pretty, too perfect to be real. But as Simmie watched, it fluttered from the block to rise in a series of upward spirals – up past the window of Ned’s old bedroom and thet timbered gable of the house On up until they finally lost sight of it against the wide blue sky.