Blasted Things Read online

  Iris waved her hands to indicate the dusty air. ‘Oh, the bally Hun. We’ll have to start again now.’

  Sister Fitch came back in, frowning. ‘Pack those as they are,’ she said. ‘We’ll sterilise at the other end – just be sure to mark the box. Be ready by three.’ She checked her watch. ‘That’ll be the last transport. You’ll have to squeeze those in the back with the other boxes.’

  Iris flopped down onto her stripped bunk. ‘Oh, my poor feet,’ she groaned. ‘I’ve got to put them up, just for a bit.’ She propped them, in their shiny shoes, up on the wall. Sister Fitch would have a fit if she saw; they both looked at the door and, catching each other in the same thought, grinned.

  Sister Fitch and Gwen were finishing up the linen supplies. Of the Red Cross they were all that remained now; the rest of the activity was soldiers and orderlies dismantling this home, this place of rest, of sustenance and death. Most of the doctors had gone but there was still a small Canadian contingent, Powell amongst them, preparing to leave at any moment.

  Clem opened her case and began folding inside it her belongings: spare collars and cap, letters, a hairbrush. She took down the calendar with its thatched cottage, weeping willow, duck pond, hollyhocks. Funny to think that this enclosed space, this box of air, which had been home for months, would soon be gone, the air just any air, the space just any space. Perhaps they might dig a trench right through it.

  She ached to run to Powell but best not. They’d write. She had his address in Canada where he’d be on furlough for a month. They’d be together soon. No messy goodbyes. Best that way. Just go.

  Vehicles, motor and horse-drawn, had been arriving and departing with their loads of people and equipment all day, and now it was afternoon and only half an hour before their transport. She almost hoped he’d already gone. Best not to see him, though the thought caused a ghastly plummeting sensation in her belly.

  Heart quickening, she turned to the door as a shadow complicated the brightness.

  ‘Hi there.’ He nodded to Iris and widened his eyes at Clem. So? they said.

  Iris removed her feet from the wall, swivelled herself into a sitting position. Clem grimaced at her pleadingly.

  ‘Two minutes.’ Iris stood up. ‘I might even stretch it to three. No wish to play gooseberry.’

  ‘Thank you, nurse,’ Powell said.

  ‘I’m not a proper nurse, as you well know,’ Iris said. She belted her coat, saying before she closed the door, ‘But I don’t object to being called it.’

  ‘Good sport,’ Powell remarked as she left.

  ‘She’s kind,’ Clem said. ‘Isn’t it so important to be kind?’

  Powell opened his coat and drew her into its warm folds. ‘Let’s not waste time,’ he said and they began to kiss, deep and slow, coffee and mint, fire spreading from her mouth and throat right down through her till her legs began to melt and he was holding her up. Together they moved towards Iris’s bunk, gravity drawing them to the horizontal. Clem’s whole self was turning irresistibly, terrifyingly molten and Powell had to stifle her mouth with his hands, and then she lay, damp and amazed, listening to a great rat-a-tat-tat, a thunderous rumble of explosions.

  ‘I love you,’ she said into the skin of his neck. ‘I really love you.’

  ‘Really?’ he said.

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Just as well,’ he said and put his hand on her belly. ‘A kid, huh! We better get hitched then. P.D.Q.’ He stood to pull up his trousers and she watched his elegant fingers buckle his belt. ‘Hey, baby,’ he said, ‘come back home with me? We can get hitched somewhere along the way and I can take you home as my wife.’

  ‘But it’s so fast, I . . .’

  Her mind was spinning. She could, she could, and then she never need face Dennis or his family; she could simply vanish off to Canada and marry and then write to them from there. Cleaner that way, perhaps? Kinder? Easier for everyone?

  ‘I wonder if it’s a little guy, or a little girl?’ Powell was gazing at her belly.

  Clem sat up, pulled down her skirt, reached for her hairbrush. ‘It might not be either,’ she reminded him.

  ‘If it’s a girl, can we call her Aida?’ he said. ‘Always thought that was the cutest name for a girl.’

  ‘Aida?’ she said. ‘As in the opera?’

  ‘It’s a family name,’ he said. ‘My great-great-grandmother was part Arabian. Means “one who returns”.’

  Aida, she thought – strange, but he might as well have said Lemon or Bookend and she would have agreed, agreed to anything.

  ‘Aida then?’ He was kneeling to tie his shoelaces, glancing up at her through a flop of hair that had fallen across his brow. This could be the face she saw every day, the father of her child, of her children: her husband.

  ‘Aida. Yes, I rather like it.’ She put her hand on her belly, and felt a warm and sudden blooming of joy. ‘And if it’s a boy?’

  ‘You pick,’ he said and she began to think

  and then  the world  broke

  ear-warp of noise . . . blood bead trickle like a wheeee  and things rising

  falling

  which way up is upside down?

  maybe nothing for a bit and

  a patter of something      breaking up and coming

  loose

  inside is outside

  squeeze out from under a dead man

  legs lift her

  Powell grey and grainy but for the red, the stove pipe torn and planted in his back

  in his back like a twisted arm

  his spine his ribs

  smoke             choke

  a blinding stink

  gasp stagger

             stagger gasp

  by the hut the remains of it        a crater

  men running now  silent

  silent men running

                  NO

  there is a foot      a foot all alone . . .

  torn stocking and blue bone

  wearing Iris’s shoe

  She reaches down, a long way it seems, a long time for her hand to travel down through the shimmer to wipe the dust from the toe of Iris’ shoe

  Gwen standing across the crater  grey  silent  open mouthed

  Sister Fitch her arms wide turning turning turning like a girl in a dream

  silent men running

  all the holdings fixings guy ropes all the barricades

  all the things that keep it together

  gone

  During

  6

  1920

  THE INFANT’S EYES were as black as if night were trapped behind his lids, and when he opened them she feared she’d be consumed. She focused instead on Dennis, his face infused with love, voice thickened by it, as he gazed at her and the baby in her arms.

  ‘He’s perfect, darling. Sterling job. Well done.’ He kissed her brow, and her lips lifted at the corners as if on strings. Together they regarded the tiny pink face, dark wispy hair, smooth lids shut tight now, pale blinds against the night.

  An innocent newborn.

  But he was the wrong baby.

  She wanted to ask them to take him away and give her the right one. But she could not say it; of course she could not. Instead she pressed a kiss against the queer soft pulsing of his fontanelle.

  The wrong baby.

  After the Clearing Station had been hit, she, Gwen and Sister Fitch had been transported to a hospital in Boulogne to recover. In the bathroom there, a few days later, Powell’s child, small enough to curl into a walnut shell, had slid away from her onto the white floor. On her knees, she’d watched blood ooze into a gaudy chequered grid between the tiles until Gwen had found her and come to her aid, asking no questions, withholding all judgement, and afterwards, recognising that Clem was fit for nothing, had her packed off home.

  And home meant Dennis, innocent of everythin
g, his ring back on her finger, flashing sapphires and diamonds, once his mother’s, once his grandmother’s. Too numb to object, she’d gone along with it, allowed the wedding, allowed this other child to come.

  This black-haired boy.

  The wrong baby.

  From the window of her room in the convalescent home, you could see the empty branches of trees, the colourless sky and the mud-brown flow of the river. Barges sailed across the window during the day. From her pillow she watched the sails, and when the nurses opened the windows to air the room, she could hear clanking and the mew of gulls, and the smell of the river, like a wet animal, padded in to shake its fur.

  Dennis brought roses – extortionate in January – stiff, red, scentless. He brought chocolates, hothouse grapes with tight green shiny skins. He was proud, exuberant, normal. He’d slipped paternal love on as easily as an overcoat, and she envied him.

  Old Dr Everett had tears in his eyes as he held the baby, his full grey beard spread bib-like over his chest. ‘Violet should be here to see him,’ he murmured. ‘Your image, Dennis, your dead spitting image.’

  Harri, red-faced and slapdash, paint in her hair and a twin on each arm, had come and enthused, bestowed wet kisses and a strange green matinee jacket she’d crocheted out of twine.

  Once visiting hour was over and a nurse had removed the infant from her arms and drawn the curtains for her afternoon nap, Clem lay startlingly awake, trying not to think but thinking, thinking.

  This was a mistake, like having got on the wrong bus and arrived at the wrong destination, only, of course, a million times worse.

  She should be in Canada with Powell and the little girl. When she shut her eyes she was there, on a sunlit prairie, watching the child, Aida – marvellous name – toddling, pale-haired, silver eyes so like her father’s. Powell was crouching and holding his hands out to her as she took those first wobbly steps, such a glow of pride on his face!

  But no, here she was in a convalescent home on a dank English January afternoon, the wrong baby sleeping in his crib, the wrong man feeling proud. She should be glad, she should be grateful, yes, she was. How lucky to have landed, as Harri put it, on her feet. After all, her life was perfect now, enviable: married to robust Dennis, not a scar on him – the war seemed barely even to have dented his optimism. He hadn’t volunteered – medicine a reserved occupation, of course – and he had done wonders here, everyone said so, and it was true. He’d supervised the conversion of Middlesham Hall into a military hospital and worked there, while still keeping up the family practice. He was marvellous. She was lucky. And now a healthy son. Lucky. Lucky.

  A seagull glided past in a ray of orange, its shadow on the wall. She turned over in bed, feeling the empty fold of belly flesh where the baby had been, and she thought of Powell about whom no one – except Gwen – even knew. What would have been the point of telling them? She’d wondered if, being a doctor, Dennis might have been able to tell what her body had been through: but no.

  On the prairie the wind blows and the palominos toss their manes, kick up their heels.

  *

  Clem fed the baby when he was presented, gazing down at his stern working face. The chin moved up and down, the cheeks pulsed as he suckled, pulling threads of milk that curled her toes. His eyebrows were rows of invisible stitching, eyelids bruisy, irises gradually resolving from black to smoky damson to chestnut, a little clearer every day. She held her palm beneath his marching feet.

  But most of the time she kept her eyes on the book she made a pretence of reading.

  ‘Mother!’ She jumped. ‘Mother! Whatever do you think you’re doing?’

  This nurse was younger than she; only the uniform lent the authority for such impertinence. ‘We should concentrate on baby as we feed him!’ She plucked the book from Clem’s hand, slapping it shut, losing her place. That scarcely mattered, the page had only been a place to rest her eyes. The nurse’s face was pertly cross, complexion smooth under her starched cap. She would have been a child in the war – the few years that separated her from Clem a filthy great gulf of understanding.

  ‘First baby too!’ she went on, clucking her tongue. ‘Whatever next!’ She lifted the infant from Clem’s arms and held him against her shoulder. ‘Now then, little chap, is your mummy a naughty girl? We’ll have to give her what for!’

  Clem’s face twisted in a kind of smile as anger rose in her and fell again like a wave unbroken. This girl did not know. Why should she? To her generation the war was nothing but a bore. Old hat. And that’s the world Clem wanted for her son after all. His greatest challenges would be in sport, examinations, commerce, romance. So she forgave the nurse, but somehow Dennis she could not forgive.

  Stop it, stop it, that’s not fair.

  Not forgive him for what?

  Not being Powell.

  Not divining what she’d been through.

  Trampling so cheerfully on her grief.

  Ramming his great red thing in where it wasn’t wanted.

  Not having been to the Front.

  Not that he was a coward – was not, was not, was not, was not, was not. He had done wonders.

  But still . . . but still.

  They were at home on a cold February afternoon, darkness eating at the windows. Mrs Hale wheeled in the trolley with its tea and toasted crumpets and her blasted seed cake.

  ‘Shall I?’ she asked, indicating the curtains.

  ‘Please,’ Clem said. The velvet shushed along its rails. The baby, Edgar Leonard Dennis Everett, was nearly three weeks old. On his shawl danced shadows from the flames.

  Mrs Hale seemed to be waiting for something.

  ‘Thank you,’ Clem said. ‘That’ll be all.’

  It had become their routine since Clem came home, that Dinah, the nursemaid, would bring Edgar into the drawing room at teatime while she took her hour off. Dennis would come up from the surgery for his tea, and if it was especially busy, old Dr Everett would take a turn down there although he really wasn’t up to it any more; he was half deaf and ‘not so quick on the uptake’ as Dennis put it (Clem thought doolally was closer to the mark).

  Today Clem’s nerves were raw. She hoped Dennis would not come, that no one would come, that she could simply be quiet and drink her tea and that the baby would not cry. Mrs Hale was still hovering. Why did she not go? Her eyes were on Edgar on the rug before the hearth. The firelight flickered on his face and he seemed entranced.

  ‘Is he safe there, madam?’ ventured Mrs Hale. ‘A stray spark . . .’

  ‘He’s quite all right,’ Clem said though the housekeeper’s words stung like sparks themselves. ‘That’ll be all,’ she said again, when Mrs Hale seemed about to object further. At last, unwillingly, the woman retreated. The noise from the fire was mice scurrying amongst the coals. Dennis came in with a concerned expression, having been bothered by Mrs Hale no doubt.

  ‘He’s all right,’ Clem said, but she dropped to her knees and dragged the shawl and Edgar with it further from the flames.

  ‘Why not hold him, old thing?’ Dennis said.

  ‘I’m about to pour the tea.’

  Dennis sighed, and sat.

  Clem sipped tea, insufficiently brewed, and gazed blankly at a book, perhaps the same book as in the hospital ward, she didn’t know. A book is a defence, a paper fence. She supposed it was cosy; the lamps lit, the flames crackling and flapping, the baby making little effortful grunts as he squirmed on his shawl.

  ‘Darling,’ Dennis said abruptly, ‘buck yourself up, do!’

  He meant no harm. How could he know how far her spirits had dropped when he’d entered the room, spirits that had in any case been hovering only just above the carpet. Her lips lifted to think of them down below the floorboards now, depressing the earwigs and spiders.

  ‘That’s the ticket,’ he said. ‘Such a pretty smile.’

  ‘More tea?’ she said. ‘Cake?’

  He peered at the trolley. ‘Seed cake, scrummy.’

  She pushed
the knife through the pale disc. The seeds were like mouse droppings speckled through the pale sponge. Just looking at it made the insides of her cheeks contract. Mrs Hale’s cakes were like blotting paper though Dennis enjoyed them. The taste of his childhood. She handed him the plate.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ he said.

  ‘The usual.’ The page she was on had one paragraph at the top.

  . . . was stationed at the edge. Mariella crushed the satin between her fingers before she turned to leave.

  And all the rest was blank. It was her favourite page. Of course there were empty end pages, but one could not seem to be reading those. Anagrams from the first phrase: detain, sedge, satin, sewing, snowing. Each day she saw another. Gestation.

  She tore her eyes away. More tea. Positioning the cups, she lifted the snooty spouted pot.

  ‘And how’s our little soldier today?’ said Dennis through his cake.

  The tea kept pouring, running over into the saucer. She put down the teapot. Inside the spout the white china was tarry from years of tea. Her hand shook as she poured the slops from the saucer into the hot-water jug. She dropped two lumps of sugar into his tea and stirred and breathed, watching the minute fizz of dissolving sugar, wincing at the deafening chink of silver against bone china.

  Dennis took the tea. ‘Busy day,’ he said. ‘The world and his wife have got this bally impetigo. Ripping through the Clarks like wildfire, of course.’

  She poured her own tea, sat down, took a sip. ‘Please.’ She strove for equanimity. ‘Please, dear, don’t call him that.’

  ‘Beg pardon?’ There was a crumb of cake caught in his moustache, a caraway seed, lodged like a mouse dropping between the bristles.

  She put down her cup. ‘Little soldier. Please, not that.’