Spare Brides (14 page)

He marched on and on. He glanced back at the huge, creamy brick house, which now looked like something in a fairy tale, decorated with lace and icing sugar. The snow had stopped falling for the moment. Daylight had conquered the black night but the blinds were still down on all but one or two of the windows; the other guests were still asleep. He couldn’t help but feel superior. Edgar didn’t admire those who slept soundly. He knew that the only people who could do so were those who hadn’t lived. Some men had died asleep in the trenches. He didn’t blame them; he pitied them. Theirs had not been peaceful or even slothful sleep; wounds or exhaustion had brought about a lack of consciousness, yet shrapnel still fell and limbs could still be torn off. It didn’t seem fair. Sleep wasn’t the sanctuary people believed it to be. He was never peaceful now, but he found some sort of relief when he was alert. Then, at least, he could see what was coming. Whatever it was. He could be ready.

Lydia was coming.

He could see her tramping through the garden towards him; she was following his footsteps. He recognised her even at a distance, although she was little more than a dark silhouette against the whiteness. As she moved closer, he noted that she was dressed in tight trousers and a bulky, expensive-looking fur hat and coat; it was a modern look. She gripped the coat tightly to her skinny body. She wasn’t wearing gloves, which he thought was odd. He waited for her to catch up. There was no question that he’d do otherwise.

‘Good morning, Lady Chatfield.’ She looked startled and a smidgen disheartened; he was glad his formality had unnerved her. She’d disappointed him last night. He felt her flight like a blot on the familiarity they were forging. He felt the need to spit back.

‘I saw you from my bedroom window. Out here all alone. I thought you might want some company.’

She must have hurried to catch him up; her cheeks were pink and attractive. Her eyes were still smudged with last night’s make-up. He realised that she wasn’t wearing gloves because she had dashed out of the house in an effort to reach him. It was risky and impetuous. He began to like her again.

‘It’s too beautiful a morning to waste,’ he commented and, to underline the point, he set off again, trudging in the direction of the trees. Lydia had to dash to match his long strides; after a hundred yards he noticed as much and slowed down his pace. He peeled off his gloves and wordlessly handed them to her.

‘But what about you?’

‘I’ll keep my hands in my pockets; if you do that, your coat gapes open.’ It was true her fur coat had no clasp. ‘Why are women’s clothes so impractical?’

‘So we look gorgeous.’

Lydia slipped her hands into his gloves. They were far too big, but she didn’t care. Wearing them was about more than whether she was snug or they were friendly; she felt his gesture was bigger than that. It was a question of tenure and possession. The issue was not who owned the gloves but who owned whom. By handing them to her, he was taking ownership somehow; ownership of the situation. Of her. By silently, obediently, slipping them on, she was acquiescing. She did not turn and glance behind her to consider whether anyone was marking their progress from a window in the house, she did not worry about what the servants must have thought as she’d demanded they hurry to open the main doors, and she did not dwell on Ava’s shocked but amused face as she fled the bedroom and chased after him. She did not care about any of it. Last night she had run away from him. This morning when she’d spotted him trudging through the draped landscape she’d known she had no choice: she had to run towards him. The truth was, he’d detonated a flurry of conflicting sentiments. She was utterly and irretrievably drawn to him, yet she ought not to be. Shrapnel sliced into her conscience, shame flooded her veins, yet sparkling slivers of rich, colourful possibility exploded in her heart.

‘Why did you vanish last night?’ He looked irritated. Frustrated. She couldn’t bear to have upset him.

‘I had a headache.’

‘Really?’ he snarled. The lie seemed to hurt him. Insulted, he looked at her and his gaze teetered on the verge of being a glare. It levelled her, sliced her, made love to her. Lydia was appalled and anxious and yet unable to turn away. Did he feel it too? He must. She did not demean them with the pretence of masking chatter. She wanted him like a hungry animal; small talk might smother them. She caved in.

‘No, not really. You know I am married.’

‘Yes.’ His face didn’t move a fraction. He gave nothing away, but she was glad that at least he didn’t feel the need to add anything tiresome like, ‘He’s a lucky chap,’ just to make it clear that he was interested in her.

‘I thought perhaps, last night, we were stepping over a line. The champagne cocktails, I suppose.’

‘Do you really think it was the champagne?’ He stopped walking.

‘No,’ she admitted, with a sigh.

‘Nor do I.’ He set off again. They were almost at the thicket of trees. Lydia wanted to be in the woods with him. She told herself she wasn’t hiding, but she knew already that they were, and always would be. She dashed after him.

‘I
had
to leave.’ Did he understand her position? Her duty?

‘Yet today you sought me out.’

‘Yes.’

‘What am I to deduce from that?’

‘That I am weak.’

‘Or maybe brave.’ He stopped, now under the trees, and turned to her again. She shrugged. She didn’t feel brave; she felt dazed and helpless, yet exhilarated and alive. His face was just inches from hers. She leaned a fraction closer but he moved away and dug into his pocket.

‘I’ve a flask here. Do you fancy some whisky? You look blue with the cold.’ He took a swig and then handed it to her. He ought to have offered it to her first, yet she already sensed he probably didn’t give too much value to what ought to be done. She put her lips where his had been a moment before and let the hot, golden liquid pour through her. He dug out a packet of cigarettes and offered her one in exchange for the flask. The air was still, yet he cupped his hands around hers as he lit her up.

They stood together in the profound silence that the snow brought. A silence thickened and complicated by desire.

‘I like the snow,’ she commented at last.

‘Tobogganing, snowmen and all that,’ he guessed dismissively.

‘No, not just the frivolities. It seems magical. For a time it seems that the world is wiped clean and we’re being offered a fresh start.’

‘It isn’t that at all, though, is it? It’s a case of everything being covered up. Underneath these frail inches of snow there still lies the solid earth, the reality. The dank, crawling soil or the hard, inert concrete. Nothing is new; the old is simply hidden from view for a while.’

‘It is at least a respite, then. If not renewal.’

He shrugged. She wasn’t sure if he didn’t agree or didn’t care. He was complicated. Everyone was nowadays. The snow couldn’t have been much fun in the trenches. The war had robbed the world’s youth of their simplicity as well as their sanguineness.

‘You were in uniform the day we met.’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re still in the army?’

‘Correct.’

‘Are you waiting for a decommission?’

‘Not especially.’ He shrugged.

‘What did you do before the war?’

‘This and that.’

Lydia accepted the answer without a second thought. Few of the young men she knew were actively employed doing anything especially organised, beyond having fun. And Edgar Trent would have been very young before the fighting started; he might not have established a career. She suspected he was younger than she was, but she was determined not to ask.

‘Someone said you were frightfully brave.’

He flicked his eyes at her and let them linger. He smiled, amused. ‘So, you’ve been talking to someone about me.’

She blushed. Caught. ‘Well, in passing. To everyone, to no one in particular,’ she said evasively and untruthfully. She had grilled Ava for every detail but not dared breathe a word of him to anyone else. She feared she’d be too transparent.

‘So you’ve been talking to someone, everyone and no one in particular about me?’

‘Quite so.’ Lydia smiled, then pushed on. ‘I heard you were swiftly promoted.’ Ava had referred to him as a professional survivor, fighting through countless shows, wounded twice. Down but not out. Picking up out of each battle another ‘pip’ and a new decoration, time after time.

‘Yes. I joined as a private. I’m a sergeant major now.’

‘Incredible. How must you have felt?’

‘Tired.’

‘Such bravery,’ she murmured.

She felt dazzled by his magnificence. They were all brave, absolutely, but so many had failed to return, or had come back ruined. There were those that had never even … She blocked the thought. It wouldn’t do to start to draw comparisons between Edgar and Lawrence. Lawrence would be trounced, and no woman wanted to think that about the man she’d married.

‘That’s what they said. It’s not how it felt. You start to live with such intense fear that you forget to recognise it. People think it’s bravery. It’s numbness. I was not brave so much as desperate. Desperate to stay alive. I did what I had to do. They made me a hero.’

‘How marvellous.’ She regretted the fact that she sounded gushing, but she was enthralled by the strength he exuded.

‘They made me a hero and left me fit for nothing.’ He threw away his cigarette; the red tip glowed against the snow, and then died. ‘If I accept a decommission, I’d struggle to make a living. I can’t go back to where I came from but I don’t fit in around here.’ He glanced about.

Lydia tried not to show her surprise. Men found work through their friends and their fathers, didn’t they? The very idea that a man might struggle to find a position was alien to her. Briefly she wondered, what was this man worth? What family did he hail from? The two questions had always been intrinsically linked in her mind; one equalled another. Now she wasn’t so sure. He looked majestic and priceless, but the clues he was giving suggested he was a working man, from no family at all.

‘I shall remain a soldier until they tell me they no longer want me. In the meantime, I’m accepting all the training and education they offer me. Haven’t you noticed how it works? The labourers’ kids leave some dump of a school at fourteen, to start the same manual jobs their mams and dads did. The middle-class kids go to grammar schools and then find some clerical position, and the posh schools make professionals of all their boys. No one sees education as a way of changing things, getting out of the lane you were born into, but it should be. Then the war came along, and men like me. Education hasn’t changed things much yet, but experience has. I’ve got a chance now. So it’s not so bad, the army. At least now that the war is over.’

‘And there will never be another one,’ Lydia stated emphatically. He glanced at her through the blue light and the snow that fell from the tree branches, then threw his head back and let out a sarcastic bark that was supposed to approximate a laugh. ‘That’s what they promised us, didn’t they? The war to end all wars?’ she added defensively.

‘Yes, they did.’

‘Are you cynical?’

‘I’m thoughtful.’

She heard the criticism. ‘
I
think.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘When exactly did you think last? Of course this war is not the war to end all wars; how could that be? How could war stop a war? Don’t be ridiculous. Think about it, Lid.’

Lydia felt stupid and infantile. She hated the fact he could make her feel like a child when she knew already that everything depended on her being a woman to him.

‘Yet you haven’t applied for a decommission. Surely if you expect more wars, then you ought to get the hell out of the army.’ Suddenly she was afraid. Her core froze at the illogical thought that he’d be taken from her. He wasn’t hers to lose. They weren’t at war and, even if they were, he was a good soldier; he’d survived the last one. Yet she was ambushed by fear. Nothing made sense. She didn’t understand him today. Last night he’d been relaxed, charismatic and bubbling with
joie de vivre
. Today he was harsh and elusive. She was surprised to find both versions of him equally compelling.

‘As I said, what else would I do? I hacked my way to this officer rank. Cut, slashed, shot and stole.’ He stared at her with the intensity she had come to expect from him, challenging her to be shocked or sick; she stared back at him, unflinching. He seemed relieved, let out a sigh. His breath clouded the air between them. She wanted to gulp it down, the air that had been inside him; she wanted it inside her. ‘In a way, I had a successful war. Not as successful as your friend Ava, whose daddy made the boots for the troops, but still, if you stand very close, you can smell my success.’ He leaned towards her as though he really thought she might breathe in his scent. She closed her eyes for a moment and sucked him up. ‘It lingers, doesn’t it? Obviously it does or else I wouldn’t be invited to a place like this.’ He casually gestured behind him, towards the enormous manor house; his gesture swept up the gardens, forests and hunting grounds. ‘I wouldn’t get the chance to meet a woman like you.’ He abruptly drew away from her, her body tilted towards the gap he left. She almost slipped.

‘I imagine you’re very highly decorated.’

‘Oh yes, I have medals. Lots of them. I don’t know if I deserve them, but I do know that I deserve the champagne parties, the dancing and the pretty, loose girls.’

Lydia blushed; she wasn’t sure if it was because he might have counted her among the pretty, loose girls, and therefore she ought to be offended, or simply because those girls existed and she was indignant and envious: what if he did
not
count her among them?

‘I’m not saying another war is imminent, I’m just saying that I doubt we’re done with atrocity. Anyway, I have no intention of fighting again. I’m looking for a cushy desk job. I think I deserve it.’

Lydia blanched at the phrase, one that she ran through her head with terrible regularity. He seemed to understand the one thing she was trying to hold away from him.