‘He’s passionate. Creative. Devoted.’ She leaned her chin on her hand as she considered. ‘But I think what I admire most about him is his hope. Such brittle hope. People say he was a poet of disillusionment, but I’m not so sure. I’ve always found something positive in his poems. The way he found possibility amid the horrors he experienced.’ She shook her head, empathy narrowed her eyes. ‘It must have been unspeakably difficult. A sensitive young man thrust into such a devastating conflict. It’s a wonder any of them were ever able to resume their lives, pick up where they left off. Love again.’
‘I was once loved by a young man like that,’ I said. ‘He went to war and we exchanged letters. It was through those letters I realised how I felt about him. And he about me.’
‘Was he changed when he came back?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said softly. ‘There were none that came back unchanged.’
Her voice was gentle. ‘When did you lose him? Your husband?’
It took me a moment to realise what she meant. ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘He wasn’t my husband. Alfred and I were never married.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I thought…’ She motioned toward the wedding picture on my dressing table.
I shook my head. ‘That’s not Alfred, that’s John: Ruth’s father. He and I were married sure enough. Lord knows we shouldn’t have been.’
She raised her eyebrows in query.
‘John was a terrific waltzer and a terrific lover, but not much of a husband. I dare say I wasn’t much of a wife either. I’d never intended to marry, you see. I wasn’t at all prepared.’
Ursula stood, picked up the photograph. Traced her thumb absently along the top. ‘He was handsome.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That was the attraction, I expect.’
‘Was he an archaeologist too?’
‘Heavens, no. John was a public servant.’
‘Oh,’ she set the photograph down. Turned to me. ‘I thought you might have met through work. Or at university.’
I shook my head. In 1938, when John and I met, I’d have called a doctor for anyone who suggested I might some day attend university. Become an archaeologist. I was working in a restaurant-the Lyons’ Corner House in the Strand-serving unending fried fish to the unending dining public. Mrs Havers, who ran the place, liked the idea of someone who’d been in service. She was fond of telling anyone who’d listen there was none knew how to polish cutlery quite like the girls from service.
‘John and I met quite by accident,’ I said. ‘At a dance club.’
I had agreed, grudgingly, to meet a girl from work. Another waitress. Nancy Everidge: a name I’ve never forgotten. Strange. She was nothing to me. Someone I worked with, avoided where I could, though that was easier said than done. She was one of those women who couldn’t let well enough alone. A busybody, I suppose. Had to know everyone else’s business. Was only too ready to interfere. Nancy must’ve taken it into her head I didn’t socialise enough, didn’t join in with the other girls on Monday mornings when they cackled about the weekend, for she started on at me about coming dancing, wouldn’t let up until I’d agreed to meet her at Marshall’s Club on Friday night.
I sighed. ‘The girl I was supposed to meet didn’t show up.’
‘But John did?’ Ursula said.
‘Yes,’ I said, remembering the smoky air, the stool in the corner where I perched uncomfortably, scanning the crowd for Nancy. Oh, she was full of excuses and apologies when I saw her next, but it was too late then. What was done was done. ‘I met John instead.’
‘And you fell in love?’
‘I fell pregnant.’
Ursula’s mouth formed an ‘o’ of realisation.
‘I realised four months after we met. We were married a month later. That’s the way things were done back then.’ I shifted so that my lower back was resting on a pillow. ‘Lucky for us war intervened and we were spared the charade.’
‘He went to war?’
‘We both did. John enlisted and I went to work in a field hospital in France.’
She looked confused. ‘What about Ruth?’
‘She was evacuated to an elderly Anglican minister and his wife. Spent the war years there.’
‘All of them?’ Ursula said, shocked. ‘How did you bear it?’
‘Oh, I visited on leave, and I received regular letters: gossip from the village and bosh from the pulpit; rather grim descriptions of the local children.’
She was shaking her head, brows drawn together in dismay. ‘I can’t imagine… Four years away from your child.’
I was unsure how to answer, how to explain. How does one begin to confess that mothering didn’t come naturally? That from the first Ruth had seemed a stranger? That the fond feeling of inevitable connectedness, of which books are written and myths are fashioned, was never mine?
My empathy had been used up, I suppose. On Hannah, and the others at Riverton. Oh, I was fine with strangers, was able to tend them, reassure them, even ease them into death. I just found it difficult to let myself get close again. I preferred casual acquaintances. Was hopelessly underprepared for the emotional demands of parenthood.
Ursula saved me from having to answer. ‘I suppose there was a war on,’ she said sadly. ‘Sacrifices had to be made.’ She reached out to squeeze my hand.
I smiled, tried not to feel false. Wondered what she would think if she knew that far from regretting my decision to send Ruth away, I’d relished the escape. That after a decade of drifting, through tedious jobs and hollow relationships, unable to put the events of Riverton behind me, in war I found my thread of purpose.
‘So it was after the war you decided to become an archaeologist.’
‘Yes,’ I said, my voice hoarse. ‘After the war.’
‘Why archaeology?’
The answer to that question is so complicated I could only say simply: ‘I had an epiphany.’
She was delighted. ‘Really? During the war?’
‘There was so much death. So much destruction. Things became clearer somehow.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I can imagine that.’
‘I found myself wondering at the impermanence of things. One day, I thought, people will have forgotten any of this happened. This war, these deaths, this demolition. Oh not for some time, hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, but eventually it will fade. Take its place amongst the layers of the past. Its savagery and horrors replaced in popular imagination by others still to come.’
Ursula shook her head. ‘Hard to imagine.’
‘But certain to happen. The Punic Wars at Carthage, the Peloponnesian War, the Battle of Artemisium. All reduced to chapters in history books.’ I paused. Vehemence had tired me, robbed me of breath. I am not used to speaking so many words in quick succession. My voice when I spoke was reedy. ‘I became obsessed with discovering the past. Facing the past.’
Ursula smiled, her dark eyes shining. ‘I know exactly what you mean. That’s why I make historical films. You uncover the past, and I try to recreate it.’
‘Yes,’ I said. I hadn’t thought of it like that.
Ursula shook her head. ‘I admire you, Grace. You’ve done so much with
