Life Class (22 page)

Twenty-three

Elinor stood in the stern of the ferry, looking out over bile-green water streaked with foam. It was growing dark. Soon she’d have to give in and go below deck like everybody else, but meanwhile she was enjoying the mixture of spray and drizzle blowing into her face.

The forbidden zone.

It was by no means certain they’d let her in, though she’d done everything in her power to make her story credible. Under her coat she wore a nurse’s uniform, borrowed from Ruthie, who worked in a hospital now. Ruthie, who disapproved of this trip, who’d called it selfish and trivial and irresponsible. Ruthie, who’d given up painting and thought everybody else should do the same, but loved her too much to deny her anything. She’d used Ruthie – and not for the first time. She ought to stop doing it, and of course she would; but not yet. In her handbag, she had letters typed on hospital paper taken from her father’s desk, recommending her to the chief surgeon at Paul’s hospital. Oh, she’d worked hard to get everything right. Appearance, too. This old-maidish felt hat, a scrubbed and shining face, short-clipped fingernails, long skirt, sensible lace-up shoes. They ought to let her in.
She
believed her story.

A sailor walked past and stared at her. A young woman travelling alone, unchaperoned, would always attract attention and she couldn’t afford to do that. She ought to go down below deck and find herself a group of nurses to tag along with. Cautiously, she went down the narrow stairs into the passage with its wet footprints and puddles of water, and then, bracing herself against the rolling of the ship, edged along the wall till she reached the ladies’ cabin.

A fug of warm bodies greeted her, that female smell of talcum powder and blood. It always reminded her of the time when, as a
little girl, nine or ten years old perhaps, she’d opened the drawer of Rachel’s dressing table and found a pile of blood-stained rags waiting to go into the wash. Mother had been furious with Rachel for leaving them where Elinor could find them. ‘It might have been Toby!’ she’d shouted, her voice edging up into hysteria. Elinor had looked from one to the other and tried to work out what the fuss was about.

Stepping inside the cabin, she closed the door quietly behind her. Most of the ladies had already become lumps under blankets, but a few were still undressing, placing hats carefully into hatboxes, covering them with tissue paper, lining shoes up neatly side by side. In the centre of the room a girl with straggly dark hair was feeding her baby, a wizened little creature whose hand clawed at her breast.

The nurses in the far corner were still wide awake and chattering. All very young and fresh and pink-looking. Volunteers, she thought, not professionals. Professional nurses didn’t look like that. She found herself a couch close to them and sat down. No point undressing properly – they were due to dock before dawn, but she took off her hat, coat and boots and wrapped herself in the blanket provided. Pulling it tight up to her chin, she peered over it at her fellow passengers and knew at once that she wouldn’t be able to sleep. The lumpy figures in the sepia light; a woman’s face sagging with exhaustion as she twisted and turned on her folded-up coat; the chattering, innocent, ruthless girls screeching like jays; and the woman at the centre of the cabin who seemed to melt into her child, as if she were the wax that fed its guttering flame. There was just enough light to see. She propped the sketchpad against her knee and worked steadily for an hour, screening the page so that anybody glancing casually across at her would think she was writing a letter. Only when she felt she’d exhausted the possibilities did she put the pad away.

Still sleep wouldn’t come. She thought about Paul and what might be going to happen. In London she’d come close to sleeping with him, but in the end she’d drawn back. It seemed such a ridiculous way to take such a decision, because the night was warm and dry and wherever you looked there were couples twined round each
other, some of them actually making love on the grass. So easy to let herself be swept along, but it would have felt as if the war had taken the decision for her. So in the end, no, she’d pulled back and they’d gone to their single beds alone.

But her imagination had been busy ever since.

Her only worry was that she hadn’t told Kit she was coming and he was stationed at a hospital just five kilometres outside the town. But Paul hadn’t seen Kit in all the weeks he’d been there, so it wasn’t very likely she’d bump into him. She couldn’t consult Paul about it because Paul didn’t know she was still writing to Kit. Neither of them knew how close she was to the other. If only she could bring herself to tell the truth, it was always better in the end, but short-term, the lies were so convenient. Toby said she’d begun by lying to Mother, because that was the only way she could have a life of her own, but now she lied reflexly pointlessly to absolutely everybody. Including herself.

She closed her eyes. The smell of tar and talcum power in the hot dark was making her queasy. The ship shifted and rose beneath her.
Oh God, don’t let me be sick
was her last conscious thought before she slept.

Next morning she woke with a crick in her neck. She forced herself to sit up on the edge of the shiny leather couch; her mouth tasted foul, her eyelids seemed to be glued together. It was like a hangover, though she’d had nothing the night before except a small cup of black coffee. She grabbed her washbag and joined the queue for the bathroom, standing in line behind two middle-aged women who were complaining loudly about the behaviour of the nurses last night. When she finally got a place at the basins her face looked small and white and sick. She washed in cold water, brushed her teeth, combed her hair, straightened her clothes as best she could and was ready to go ashore.

Back in the ladies’ cabin, they were all completing their packing, stuffing articles of clothing into bulging bags and checking under the benches for lost possessions. That curious, dislocated atmosphere you get in travelling when a small fragile community
fragments. Elinor got away as fast as she could and stood looking out over the harbour, where a light breeze pimpled the surface of the water.

Once on shore she began to feel better, though even on the short crossing her feet seemed to have forgotten where the ground was. She discovered that the nurses too were bound for the railway station and, since there was a spare seat in the second cab, she was invited to join them. A small, ginger-haired girl with red-rimmed eyes asked which hospital she was going to and she gave the name of Paul’s hospital. It seemed to mean no more to them than it did to her, but they accepted it without comment and that encouraged her. Several of them had brothers who’d joined up, one or two of them sweethearts, and so of course they had to do their bit too. It was all represented as duty and patriotism, but even after an almost sleepless night, their eyes were still shining with excitement. Elinor produced a neatly matching story. Yes, she had a brother who’d joined up, and yes, a sweetheart too. Oddly enough it was Kit’s face that flashed into her mind at this point, though he hadn’t joined up exactly and he certainly wasn’t a sweetheart. Before all this, she’d been an art student, she said, but of course
now …

Everybody agreed. Yes, of course,
now.

Elinor was left wondering why, when her story was accurate in almost every respect, it should be so far from the truth. The difference, she decided, was that these girls needed the war and she didn’t. The freedom they were experiencing on this trip to Belgium she experienced every morning as she walked into the Slade. Though some people might say – and Ruthie was one of them – that she was simply too selfish to set aside her personal concerns and make some contribution to the common cause. Well, yes. She was selfish. She needed to be. She intended to summon up as much selfishness as she possibly could.

At the station they all went for a coffee together. The café was a long narrow room with dingy lino on the floor. A phlegmatic-looking woman stood behind a counter flanked by glass shelves lined with curly sandwiches. One of the nurses tried out her French; the woman replied in English with a look of dull contempt. Elinor
got her coffee and croissants and was walking carefully back to their table when the door burst open and the room filled with soldiers.

Instantly they took possession of the place, laughing and joking and punching each other playfully in the chest. They were ushered to the tables, where they caught the eye of the little waitress and flirted with her, winking, nudging, egging each other on. So much prime male beef, so much muscle under their uniforms, thighs like tree trunks lolling apart, so much fresh sweat, so many open red-lipped mouths. The whole world belonged to them because they were on their way to die.

Elinor kept her nose in her coffee cup as much as possible, looking, she knew, old-maidish in her felt hat and shapeless coat. She hated the way the women in the queue deferred, accepting that now they must wait longer to be served. She forced a croissant down with gulps of hot coffee and was glad to get on the train.

For the last part of the journey she had a lump of fear in her throat, though the worst that could happen was that she would be refused entry. Nobody was likely to think she was a spy and bang her up in gaol, and even if they did, a call to the British Consulate would surely put things right. Only, she dreaded having to face her father, whose comments on this reckless and – as he would see it – self-indulgent excursion she could easily imagine.

As if to spite her, the train crawled along, sometimes stopping altogether. Rain-drenched fields. Reflections of grey-white cloud drifting slowly across flooded furrows. She tried to imagine this land churned up by wheels and horses’ hooves and marching feet, but she couldn’t. And why should I? she thought, hardening again, when
this
was the reality. Grass, trees, pools full of reflected sky, somewhere in the distance a curlew calling. This is what will be left when all the armies have fought and bled and marched away.

The nurses had gone quiet. Even their high spirits couldn’t be sustained indefinitely, and perhaps, like Elinor, they’d started to feel nervous. Finally, the train crawled into the station, burped apologetically, once or twice, like a drunken husband arriving home late,
and fell silent. There was a moment when nobody said or did anything, then the red-haired girl jumped to her feet and got her bag from the overhead rack.

On the platform the soldiers, no longer laughing, shouldered their kitbags and marched off. The civilians left behind looked fragmented and shabby after the uniforms and the disciplined vigorous movement. A porter told them to go into the waiting room, where an officer sat behind a table checking papers.

Elinor positioned herself towards the rear of the line of nurses, making sure, though, that she wasn’t the last. Her mouth was dry, but she could see that the officer was bored doing this routine, unglamorous job and perhaps a little soporific too after a good lunch. A coil of expensive blue smoke rose into the air above his head. His colour was high. He looked as if he liked wine and cigars and women. Boredom and resentment might make him aggressive, but not when there were young women to be flirted with and impressed. She saw him pull his stomach in as soon as he noticed them, and had to stifle a giggle, though it was more from fear than amusement. He kept the first girl – a bank manager’s daughter from Bradford – chatting. Her blushing face and schoolgirl French did make her entrancing. The second girl got much the same treatment, but then a third, a fourth … He looked at the row behind, asked the first girl if they were all together, and when she nodded he stood up and waved them through. Looking back, Elinor saw him settling down again, disconsolately, to face an old man, a married couple and two middle-aged sisters laden with suitcases.

Paul was waiting just inside the arch that led out of the station on to the open muddy street. Whenever she’d tried to imagine this scene he’d always been wearing the long black coat he’d worn last winter at the Slade, but of course he was in uniform, breeches, puttees, tunic, peaked cap, with a Red Cross armband on his right arm. He was looking away from her so that she saw his face in profile, and felt, for a moment, quite detached. A response to his own stillness, his own detachment.

He looked Egyptian, she thought, and not just because of his olive skin. Something about the nose and the heavy-lidded, slanting,
dark eyes. It was a face made to be seen in profile, and the straight shoulders and narrow waist reinforced the impression. Perhaps that was why, when, lying in bed at night, she tried to think of him, he was always looking away. Surely you ought to be able to remember a close friend smiling, looking straight into your eyes? But she never could, and she didn’t know whether this detachment came from him or from her.

‘Paul?’

He turned, then, and his face flashed open in a smile that made him immediately look ordinary. She started towards him, but he shook his head, holding up a card he carried with her name on it. In the story they’d concocted, he was merely somebody from the hospital sent to meet a young woman he didn’t know. She drew back, scanned the crowd, eventually allowed herself to notice him standing there, walk forward, greet him and shake him warmly by the hand.

‘There you are.’ He took her bag. ‘This way. I’ve got a cab waiting.’

He took her arm as they crossed the road, but no more than a light pressure on her elbow.

‘We could walk, but I thought with the bag … And you must be tired?’

A quick sideways glance. He seemed shy with her, but then she’d hardly looked at him, except at his profile in the station. Her mind was full of what was to come. Or not. Somehow the theoretical possibility she’d been entertaining that they would spend a few days together as friends had vanished. They’d met as lovers, though awkward, insecure, self-doubting lovers.

Since she couldn’t look at him, she felt she ought to at least raise her eyes and take in the town, but that too seemed to be beyond her. All she could see was muddy boots and swishing skirts and shopping baskets dangling from meaty arms.