Devotion. Louisa Young

       Chapter Six

       Kent, June 1932

      Peter and Riley were striding about on the Downs. Part of the idea of walking, though this too was unspoken, was that striding along, eyes not meeting, mild distractions constantly to hand – ‘Isn’t that a kestrel—?’ ‘Ah, look, St John’s wort’ – was a convenient forum for the exchange of confidences, should either of them be inclined. One could not escape, but neither could one be forced. But today – a drowsy, bee-heavy day, where even the river ran a little slowly and the sweet-bitter smell of clover blossoms languished across the thick meadows – this was not working. They had left the house a little too late; it was too warm for any actual effort. Their muscles were soon limp and their clothes itchy.

      The lure of the river and the removal of shoes was too strong. They rolled their trousers up, sat on the banks among watercress, slow worms and kingcups, and kicked crystalline spray up into the sunlight to make rainbows.

      After a while Riley said, ‘Oh, well, for God’s sake,’ and took his shirt and trousers off, and folded them (which made Peter smile) and plunged in like a shaggy dog, submerging among weed and minnows and rising again, gasping and shaking his head.

      ‘Beware, beware, his flashing eyes, his floating hair!’ called Peter, humorously, and Riley made a face.

      Peter had a secret.

      Sitting there, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up above the elbows – God I am so white – and his collar open, he wanted to tell it to Riley. But he wasn’t going to. Things were not calm enough. It is always hard to be rescued – to maintain one’s dignity, and accept that one must be grateful – and Riley had rescued him three times now. Looking back on these rescues, Peter saw how it worked: Riley could drag him out of chaos, yes, but that was as far as it went. Riley couldn’t deliver Peter into a safe and happy haven. He could only leave Peter on the outskirts of what used to be his life, and let him work out his own way back – which is what Peter tried to do. Of course there was nothing to be done about Julia. He could continue to rage, or he could accept the cruel joke that just as they had begun to regain each other, she had to die – and of the most ordinary, everyday domestic tragedy: childbirth. The woman’s equivalent of war, he had realised, after talking to Rose about it, about how many women die that way. In every thousand births, fifty women will die. One in twenty. One in twenty! Can that be right? Rose, who worked with Dr Janet Campbell on her project for a national system of antenatal clinics, had told him about Pasteur and Semmelweis and Alexander Gordon, one of the first to realise that doctors themselves might be passing the infection that caused puerperal fever among the women they were caring for, who for his reward was chased back into the Navy by a horrified medical establishment who did not want to believe what he was saying. Rose had taken Julia’s death hard. She felt she should have been able to help. Poor Rose, Peter thought. Always so helpful, and then, when it was really needed, she simply hadn’t been there. Poor Rose. She had told him something else: before the war, one in four babies born in poverty died. Only one in ten fighting men died in the war! Only – of course only is not the word – But one in four babies! It wasn’t that he didn’t feel so sad for the babies. But those mothers! What women suffer – and people go on about men’s sufferings in the war – trauma and shock – and all the time, which I never noticed, women were suffering under our noses. He couldn’t stop thinking about this. It’s a form of mourning, no doubt – he thought. Mourning for Julia.

       But I’m not dead.

      His book had been respectably received, had an excellent review in The Times and two reprints. This having transformed him in his own eyes into a man of perhaps some value after all, he was preparing a second. It was about this battle, the woman’s battle. Starting with Sparta, the leaving of children on the hillsides and so on, and those Incas in Peru. Rose was to help him, and an obstetrician colleague of hers was going to steer him right medically. It would be dedicated to Julia, about whom nothing could be done. And yes, he hoped that it might be somehow good for his own children.

      He had hopes of the children. With them, he thought, he had time. But though Kitty was willing, Tom held out still, and for all Riley’s optimistic declarations, would not love his father. There had been a moment, though, a curious moment, slipping between the leaves of timing and possibility, which had revealed to Peter that he and his son could come together, one day. They had all – Riley, Robert, Nadine, Kitty – gone to a concert of Schumann. After one passage of surpassing beauty, Peter had glanced up and seen his son, two along from him on the velvet seats, looking at him, facing him, from a rank of profiles. For a second Peter was embarrassed to think what entranced expression might have been hanging on his own face, but he quickly realised that Tom’s expression was not of mockery or derision but of recognition. And then, a little later, Peter had forgone the pleasure of being carried away by another intoxicating section in order to observe Tom, and he saw on his son’s face the ecstatic removed look of a human immersed in musical joy, just as he had worn moments before, and he saw it followed by a swift shadow of embarrassment as Tom realised he was observed, and then he saw Tom realise that the look on Peter’s face was, in turn, not mockery or derision but recognition. And their eyes met, and each gave a rueful little smile.

      The moment glowed in Peter’s heart like a rising sun. Time, he thought, and the great victory was that he believed now that he had time, and that he was capable of the patience and dedication he would use it for, to win back his son.

      His new secret, however, was unlikely to be conducive to a reunion with Tom. Peter could see that.

      And telling a secret, Peter thought, is usually a request for help.

       Am I thinking Riley could help me with this, as with so much else?

      He wasn’t sure. He wanted, really, to share joy.

      Peter leaned forward, the sun warming his shoulders, his feet like pale tenuous fish in the water.

      ‘Riley!’ he called. But Riley was underwater. Hooting and sploshing and gasping, ‘Riley!’ Peter yelled, and caught his attention as he surfaced again. ‘Come here. I have something to tell you.’