Such clumsy, faltering words. All of them inadequate. All that he would like to say – and these words are not helping him but thwarting him from truth, sincerity.
The unwieldiness of language. Of all of them, perhaps English is the most unwieldy, the stiffest. No little thanks to the Victorians with their fondness for machines, efficiency. His tongue, perhaps his whole education, is the product of a mechanical design: a design for conquering, for Empire-building. Over a century it has been tempered, cauterised of finer sentiment.
Perhaps there exists another tongue in which he might express himself better. Ancient Greek: the Greeks with their subtle, unembarrassed understanding of the ways of the heart. But he must make use of the poor tools at his disposal.
‘I refused because I have not been honest with you, because there is so much that I have not told. I have been a coward. I am not quite sure how to begin.’
Before he can, there is a knock upon the door. Sister Agnes, or Bill, perhaps. For the coward in him it is something of a relief – a little more time in which to think of how to do it.
‘Have you heard the news, old fellow?’ It is Calvert. His relief at the interruption ebbs from him.
‘Just a moment, Lieutenant, if you wouldn’t mind.’
He knows in an instant that it is the wrong thing to have done, pulling rank. Calvert’s face goes very taut. The tell-tale colour appears upon his cheekbones.
‘The thing is, Captain, it’s rather important. I was asked specifically to come and inform you.’
He turns to Nur. With his look, he tries to say, I’m sorry. She gives a small nod.
He turns back to Calvert. ‘What is it?’
Calvert looks scandalised. ‘I cannot say it in front of this woman.’
‘Ah, but I’m sure that you can. I have no concern whatsoever that we are to be betrayed. Either that, you see, or it will have to wait.’ He is almost enjoying himself now, common sense be damned. He cannot understand why he ever tolerated Calvert’s company, even allowing for the fact that at such a time as this beggars cannot be choosers.
‘So be it,’ Calvert says. ‘I suppose it doesn’t signify greatly now, anyway.’ He rocks a little upon his heels. And George feels a sudden trepidation. ‘Well. Our regiment’s got its marching orders – finally, considering some of the chaps went home weeks ago. Time to go home, old chap. Back to our loved ones.’ He leaves a delicate pause, just long enough for George to hear the sound of impending disaster. ‘Back to our wives.’
Of course, it is not the thing he says so much as the way he says it. George sits, stunned, feeling the fact of it pass over him. He looks toward Nur and sees that she knows it too.
Then
He had two weeks’ leave. London was at once miraculously the same and irrevocably changed – the latter, perhaps, because of the change in him. Norton, one of his fellow medical officers, had invited him to a supper in Bloomsbury. It was a revelation. People like this had existed before the war, no doubt, but he had never encountered them then. The women in particular seemed to have come from another planet; the future. They wore clothes that looked foreign – loose, printed fabrics, silk headscarves, gold jewellery that defied any preconceived notions of taste. A couple of the men were conscientious objectors. They gently ribbed Norton, who was their friend, for his ‘damned patriotism’, and spoke of the struggle between classes rather than states. George tried very hard not to appear surprised or offended by any of this. He realised that he had already grown used to the idea of himself as a hero. In the streets he had felt the silent approbation of passersby. Here he felt like a curiosity, rather quaint, even a freak.
He drank more than he ought to have done – it was difficult not to, after the months of relative abstinence – and more than he really wanted to, considering the only drink on offer seemed to be sweet vermouth.
He tried to remind himself that these characters, here, were the exception. He went out onto the small, wrought-iron balcony that looked out over a square of green, diminishing in the dusk to blue.
‘A pipe? How quaint. My father smokes one.’
He turned toward the drawl, and felt something inside him give. ‘Excuse me, madam, but what would you prefer I smoke? An opium pipe might be more to your taste?’
‘Goodness.’ She took a step back. He had seen her inside, holding forth. He saw now that she had a curiously compelling face. The nose a little too long. It lent her a rather aristocratic appearance. Her lips were full, almost bruised-looking. It was the sort of face at which the longer one looks, the longer one needs to look.
‘My apologies,’ she said, silkily. ‘But one has to find an opener, you understand. You looked so stern, scowling out at the world. I had to find a way in.’
Her name was Grace – it didn’t quite fit her. There was something too compliant, too soft. She lived a bohemian life, she told him, proudly, but as she spoke it became clear that her lifestyle, with its freedoms, came from privilege – not the sort of want that one might associate with the word. On closer enquiry a great deal about her seemed similarly counterfeit. Yet where this might have, should have, been a deterrent, he only found her the more intriguing for it.
‘It is so seldom,’ she told him, ‘that one meets a man of good heart,
