Daniel spent a quiet and melancholy week with his mother. She knew that something terrible had happened the moment he took off his flying helmet and goggles, and reached out his arms to her, saying ‘Chère maman’. She had been weeding amongst the roses in the beds at the front of the house, and was wearing her tattiest old gardening clothes, including a hat that had been magnificently glamorous back in 1912, but now had its lid flapping and was tied beneath her chin with a strip of tulle. Over her shoes she wore the rubber galoshes that made her feet look comically large. She was an old woman beyond the reach of vanity, or rather, to whom vanity has become an amusing and very occasional distraction.
She had heard the sound of the motorcycle as it came through the village, and had lifted her head like a deer that senses one’s presence in a forest. The engine had the sound of her son about it and her heart leapt a little at the thought. She put down her trug basket and reached for her walking stick, which she had propped against a standard rose. She stepped gingerly over the little wall, only two courses high, that Daniel had once built for her to retain the soil, and was at the gate, ready to open it, when he turned in.
Daniel embraced her tenderly, and said ‘Come inside, maman. I’ve something to tell you.’
Mme Pitt was already trembling by the time that she sat down in her armchair. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked, looking up at her son. ‘Is it Archie?’
Daniel knelt down before her and put his hands on her knees. ‘No, maman,’ he said. ‘It’s Esther. She’s been lost at sea. Torpedoed. On the way to the Med.’
She raised a shaking hand to stroke his cheek, and said, ‘Oh, my poor son. She’s been too cruel for you, this life. Tu ne sauras jamais comment je suis désolée.’
‘I’ve just come back from Beachy Head,’ said Daniel, ‘but then I was reminded of you.’
The old woman looked at him with a puzzled expression, until his meaning suddenly dawned on her. ‘I am too old to live for, mon fils,’ she said, ‘c’est pas la peine.’
‘Non, maman, you’re not too old to live for.’
That week, Mme Pitt spent long hours sitting silently in her rocking chair, with tears coursing down her cheeks, repeating, ‘C’est trop dur, c’est trop dur,’ whilst Daniel wrote long letters to Sophie and Fairhead, Christabel and Gaskell, Ottilie and Frederick, to Archie, and, finally, to Rosie. In his letter to Rosie he said:
Our daughter embodied all that I most love to remember, all that I most cherished, and all that for which I most loved to hope. Now that she has gone, for me the world has emptied out almost completely. You still have Bertie, for that you can be thankful, although God knows if he’ll get through once he’s finished with OCTU. It seems most likely to me that he’ll be going to Italy, because that’s where the Royal Armoured Corps is likeliest to be busy for the time being.
Incidentally, it was remiss of both you and him not to tell me about his passing-out parade at Sandhurst. The manner in which you have succeeded in excluding him from my life is cruel both to him and to me. Perhaps I cannot speak for other men. I know there are many who apparently don’t give a damn, but in my case, paternity has been the most precious thing of my life, and your attempts to sabotage it are and always will be unacceptable and unforgivable. I heard about the parade from Esther, and wrote to the Commandant, explaining that I was estranged to you both, and he very generously allowed me to watch from a window in Old College. I was extremely proud when he received the Sam Browne, but I left forlorn because of being unable to speak either to him or to you. I shall always do my bit for him, despite his long-standing and deeply hurtful indifference, amounting to hostility.
I thought you looked very fine in that blue dress, and more than once thought how preposterous it is to have to observe one’s own wife and son through binoculars.
If I get through this war intact, there may perhaps come a time when all I feel is gratitude for Esther’s life amongst us. For the time being I am in utter darkness. Perhaps you are there too, although your faith no doubt bears you up. I embrace you for old times’ sake, remembering when we were happy and hopeful enough together to create such a lovely girl and bring her into the world.
In the last war I was ready to die because it seemed an absolute certainty that I would do so. In the Flying Corps there was almost no chance of making it through. It gave us a kind of mad gaiety that I still remember with pleasure. To tell the truth, we had more fun than our minds and bodies could take. In this war I am sorry that the prospect of death is a little more remote. I go up in my battered old Hurricane, but I have a parachute this time, the Battle of Britain is over, and the skies are very much safer than they ever were on the Western Front. Even so, I no longer care whether I live or die. If there is the slightest chance that our little daughter will be waiting for me on the other side, then I’ll be glad enough to go.
When Daniel’s leave was over he returned to Tangmere, having decided not to go and see Archie in Brighton. His brother lived in such appalling squalor that it seemed unkind to arrive without notice. At least Archie should be given the chance to line up the whisky bottles against the wall, empty the ashtrays, and sweep the mouse droppings from the floor.
Archie was still a roadsweeper, but these days he was also on the Fire Watch, and perhaps that would have the effect of pulling his life back together. There is nothing more soul-destroying for a valiant old soldier than to live inside a crippling sense of uselessness.