Daughter of Riches Page 33

  Paul, on the other hand, was ready for bed and did not relish the thought of one of Viv’s long discourses just now.

  ‘Oh I don’t think you can say we’ve done so badly,’ he said placatingly, but Viv was not to be sidetracked.

  ‘You really think that?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Things were a little dicey for a while twenty years ago, I admit, but that all sorted itself out after Louis died. We have everything we could wish for now.’

  ‘Have we.’

  ‘Yes, Viv, we have, and we should count our blessings. We have a decent home, enough money to live in the style to which you have always been accustomed and I am looked on as an elder statesman in the company. What more could you want?’

  Viv was silent. A family, she wanted to cry. I wanted a family. But she could not bring herself to say it. On most subjects she was outspoken, garrulous even, but this one she hugged to herself, a terrible emptiness within her that sometimes erupted to a pain too sharp almost to bear.

  Once, long ago, when they had first realised there would be no children for them there had been the shared sadness and the recriminations. Blame had been bandied about between them as a weapon whenever they had a row, although they had never dared to seek a final and definitive answer to the question – which of them was actually unable to deliver? Was it Paul who was infertile? Or had Viv been somehow damaged in that long ago abortion? Each shrank from discovering a truth about themselves which they could not face, each pretended, for the most part, indifference. Viv never knew how inferior Paul was made to feel by the knowledge that she had once been pregnant by his brother. Paul never saw Viv in the extremities of grief which sometimes overcame her so that she doubled up against the excruciating pain as the sobs wrenched her guts and she stretched out her arms in an agony of longing for the child she had lost. Those spasms came less often now. Old age had muted them. But somehow, strangely, the past seemed very close these days. The distant past, when they had been young, and the more recent past too, when Viv had watched her nephew Louis grow into a man and thought that if she had had the courage and conviction of Sophia she, too, would have a son or a daughter of similar age. How the bitterness had rankled in her then! Jealousy of Sophia and a hatred of Louis that had grown, unseen, to almost manic proportions.

  When he had been a child she had looked at his beauty and wept silently for her own child, denied the chance of life; when he grew into a thoroughly dislikeable young man the unfairness of it made her evil. Louis was a German’s brat, no wonder he was such a pig. Her child would have been a young Nicky. She always saw him in her mind’s eye as Nicky had been before the war had robbed him of his manhood – young, strong, handsome, with the power to reduce her to a jelly of wanting. No one else had ever done that. Now no one else ever would. But by some monstrous trick of fate the despicable Louis was alive and her own child, Nicky’s child, was dead. Viv had been consumed by rage every time she thought of it, so much so that for a time, when he was destroying their lives with his ruthlessness, she had been obsessed with hatred for him.

  Even now, twenty years later, the echo of that hatred remained and she could feel nothing but triumph when she remembered that he, too, like her child, was dead. Because of her extrovert nature few people realised the depth of emotion Viv was capable of. Only Paul had had an insight from time to time into the recesses of her soul and he, copying the ostrich traits of his father, had chosen not to acknowledge it.

  There was one thing, however, that he could not ignore. The older Viv grew the more, it seemed, she harked back to Nicky. Paul found it hurtful in the extreme but there was little he could do about it. When Viv wanted to talk about Nicky there was no way to stop her – and she wanted to talk about him now.

  ‘Perhaps it hasn’t been so bad for us,’ Viv was saying, plucking at her lips with scarlet painted nails, ‘ but what about Nicky? Life wasn’t very fair to him, was it? Maimed as he was, dead before his twenty-fifth birthday – Christ, Paul, what did he do to deserve that?’

  Paul got up. He really had had enough for one day.

  ‘Come on, Viv, time for bed.’ He took the glass from her hand and eased her to her feet. She let him, too sunk in depression to protest. On the stairs she stumbled and he supported her. At least we’re still together, he thought. In spite of everything, after all these years, still together.

  ‘Can you undress yourself?’ he asked her. She nodded. ‘ I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said. ‘I’m going down to turn off the lights.’

  When he came back Viv was standing in the middle of the room. She had undone her dress and stepped out of it. In her silk underslip she looked curiously vulnerable.

  ‘I killed him,’ she said.

  ‘Killed who, Viv?’

  ‘Nicky, of course.’ She laughed shortly. ‘Who did you think I meant?’

  ‘Come on, Viv. Into bed.’

  ‘Oh Paul, why is it all so bloody?’

  ‘It’s not, Viv. We’ve been over all this. Go to sleep now.’

  ‘I can’t. They are there. All of them …’

  ‘Go to sleep. I tell you. I don’t want to dwell on the past if you do.’

  But as he left her, pulling the door closed behind him and making for his own room, Paul thought that it was not so easy to leave the past behind even if one wanted to. Viv was right. There were some things it was impossible to forget.

  Chapter twenty-one

  Jersey and Surrey, England 1943–1945

  Though he still felt thoroughly ashamed of what had happened between him and Viv, Paul could not wait to see Nicky again and after making his escape to England in his father’s boat, the very first thing he did was to find out the whereabouts of his brother. All he knew was that Nicky had been wounded in France, taken to hospital in Weymouth and then moved again. But apart from the initial correspondence there had been nothing. With the occupation lines of communication had been cut and Paul had no idea where Nicky would be now or how to set about finding him. It was possible, of course, that he had made a full recovery and was back with his unit. In that case he could be anywhere in the world, or he could be right here in England.

  Paul began checking up. The powers-that-be were more concerned with waging war than they were with answering his queries but eventually he learned what he needed to know – Nicky was now being cared for in a nursing home in the depths of the Surrey countryside. Paul was puzzled. It was nearly three years since Dunkirk. What was Nicky doing still in a nursing home after all this time?

  Paul did not write or telephone to let Nicky know he was coming to see him. With boyish glee he decided to surprise him – after all, Nicky would know that the Channel Islands were still occupied and would never guess that his brother had managed to escape.

  ‘I’ll be down on Friday afternoon,’ he told the Matron on the telephone. ‘ But don’t tell Nicky I’m coming, please. I may not make it and I’d hate him to be disappointed.’

  ‘You do know the situation, don’t you?’ the Matron said.

  The seriousness of her tone should have warned Paul but he was too excited at the prospect of seeing Nicky again to even wonder about it.

  ‘I know all I need to know – the address and how to get there.’

  ‘Very well. Come to reception when you arrive and we’ll take it from there.’

  Paul arrived at the nursing home early in the afternoon. It was a huge place which might in peacetime have been a stately home with acres of grounds and manicured lawns, a rose garden and a flight of steps flanked with stone lions leading to an impressive front door. In his haste Paul failed to notice the ramp running alongside the steps. He took them two at a time and found himself in an airy entrance hall. A pretty young nurse approached him.

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘Paul Carteret. I’ve come to visit my brother Nicholas.’

  ‘Oh Nicky, yes. He will be pleased! I thought his family were all in Jersey and unable to make any contact.’

  ‘Well this one isn’t in J
ersey any more,’ Paul said cheerfully.

  The nurse showed Paul into a big cosy room equipped with comfortable chairs, a large table and a wireless set. A fire was blazing in the open grate and an enormous jigsaw puzzle partly completed, was laid out on the table. There were three young men in the lounge; whilst he waited Paul passed the time of day with two of them, who were playing a game of draughts, but he could not bring himself to speak to the third, who sat all alone, his face heavily swathed in bandages. To his shame, Paul realised he simply did not know what to say to him. He picked up a magazine, flicking through it, and as the door opened he looked up eagerly. Nicky? No. The nurse was manoeuvring in a wheelchair. Paul glanced back at his magazine then did a double take. The guy in the wheelchair … it was Nicky!

  For a moment he stared at his brother, totally stunned and bewildered. He hadn’t changed at all, a little older maybe, but … what was he doing in a wheelchair?

  ‘Paul! Is that really you? What the hell are you doing here?’ Nicky was yelling, his voice overjoyed, and Paul ran to him, falling to his knees beside his brother’s wheelchair. ‘ Why are you in that thing?’ he asked when they had finished hugging one another. ‘Have you broken your leg or something?’

  Nicky snorted. ‘ Something like that. Tell me about you. How did you get here? I thought that Jersey …’

  ‘It is. I got out in Papa’s boat.’

  ‘Did Papa come too?’

  ‘No.’ Paul rubbed a hand across his face. He didn’t want anyone to see that he was crying. ‘What is it you’ve done to your legs, Nicky? You will be all right, won’t you? It isn’t serious?’

  And then Nicky told him and after the first few sentences all Paul could hear was a roaring in his ears. It wasn’t just some temporary problem with Nicky’s legs. As a result of being wounded on the beaches he was paralysed from the waist down. There was no hope he would ever recover.

  Afterwards Paul found he could remember very little about the rest of that first visit. The shock of finding Nicky in a wheelchair and learning that he would never walk again was so great it seemed to wipe him clean of all coherent thought. Only later, at the country pub where he had booked in for bed and breakfast, did his mind begin to function again. But he could still scarcely believe it – his brother, his hero, with whom he had shared so many adventures and pranks – a total cripple! It couldn’t be true!

  The next time he visited he pressed Nicky for a glimmer of hope.

  ‘You’ll be all right in the end though won’t you?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Paul.’

  ‘Of course you will! Don’t be so defeatist! You can do anything you want to – remember?’

  ‘Not this time.’

  ‘Why not? Because the doctors say so? Don’t take any notice of them! You’re going to be all right. I know you are!’

  ‘Paul, my spinal cord was damaged – there’s no connection any more between my brain and my legs. It’s like a telephone line that’s been cut. Only it can’t be repaired.’

  Paul was angry then. He was so angry he could not bring himself to stay in the same room with Nicky a moment longer. He stormed out and put as much distance as he could between himself and the nursing home, with its stench of sickness that not even antiseptic could dispel, and the aura of oppression that came with wheelchairs, wounds and scars. He was angry at the injustice of it all, angry with the whole world of sickness and maimed bodies and insoluble human problems, angry because he felt so utterly helpless.

  It was several days before he could bring himself to go back and when he did he was full of dread. But to his surprise, once he had broken the ice, it was not as difficult as he had expected. Nicky had already come to terms to a certain extent with his disability; it was he, Paul, who had to adjust.

  On fine days he would push Nicky’s wheelchair around the grounds of the home looking not for corners where nature was at her most beautiful but short slopes out of view of the windows where the chair could be released to run wildly out of control for a few moments. Nicky was sick of being pushed out for staid outings on the gravelled paths only, and he whooped with delight when the chair gathered speed down a grassy slope even though on more than one occasion he was deposited unceremoniously on to the ground when the wheel hit a concealed tree root and Paul had to manhandle him back into position. Sometimes they sat in Nicky’s room and talked and Paul found this fraught with difficulties.

  He told Nicky the truth about Lola and Charles because he thought it only fair to do so and he saw, in Nicky’s impotent anger, a mirror image of the anger he had felt over his brother’s disability.

  ‘Couldn’t you have stopped them?’ he demanded.

  ‘You don’t understand. The Germans are in complete control over there. You can’t argue with them.’

  ‘No – I mean couldn’t you have stopped Mama and Papa from doing something so dangerous?’

  A dull red flush crept up Paul’s neck. He certainly did not want to tell Nicky that he had been with Viv that night. That was taking honesty too far – and besides the thought of it still made him cringe.

  But there was no avoiding the subject altogether. When Nicky asked about Viv, as it was inevitable he should, Paul answered truthfully that he thought she and her mother were coping fairly well though they had been forced to move out of their house and into the gardener’s cottage, but he did not say he had been there and he did not pass on the information that Viv had had an abortion to get rid of Nicky’s child. Did Nicky suspect he might have left her pregnant? he wondered, looking at his brother and trying to read his mind. But Nicky gave no indication that he might and Paul was relieved he was not going to be forced into divulging what he knew. That was something between the two of them, he thought. He certainly did not want to be dragged into it!

  Sometimes Paul talked to Nicky about what he should do now that he was in England. Although the government had not yet caught up with him to conscript him into the armed services he knew it was only a matter of time before they did and in any case he was anxious to do his bit. As an ex-soldier Nicky favoured the army but somehow it did not appeal to Paul, and though he was used to boats and the son of a sailor he did not think he wanted to join the navy either.

  But he did rather fancy the idea of flying. After discussing it with Nicky at some length Paul decided to take the bull by the horns. He presented himself at an RAF recruiting station and to his delight his high standard of education and physical fitness meant that he was accepted to train as air crew.

  Paul was sorry to have to leave Nicky again, though in some ways it was a relief not to have to continue to push the wheelchair around the grounds trying to find ways of avoiding talking about either Vivienne or the future. After his initial training he was posted to one of the fighter squadrons stationed in the south east and so he was able to visit Nicky more often than he had dared hope. In spite of a few hairy moments Paul spent a fairly uneventful war. On two separate occasions his plane limped home, damaged; once he had to eject and watch it spiral down in a plume of black smoke. But Paul himself seemed charmed. He earned the nickname ‘Lucky’ and the cheerful confidence that was a façade with many of the young men reflected Paul’s true attitude very accurately.

  During his service he met a great many girls, both WAAFS and civilians, and most of them were only too eager to take up with the good-looking young man in the light blue uniform. But though he dated quite a few of them he thought they all compared unfavourably to Viv. Perhaps the night they had spent together had been something less than a spectacular success, perhaps Viv was a sharp-tongued tease – a pretty lethal combination when one considered it reasonably. But somehow where she was concerned reason did not get a look-in. Just what her attraction was Paul was not sure; he only knew she was the most desirable woman he had ever met.

  Paul put Viv out of his mind, concentrating on flying and staying alive, and on having a good time whenever and wherever he could. And when the end of the war came and Jersey was freed it was
Nicky who went home first because, for all his good intentions, he could not bear to stay away any longer.

  When he had first been told he was going to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair Nicky had made up his mind that he would never see Viv again. The decision was not entirely selfless though the fact that he did not think it would be fair to expect Viv to lumber herself with a cripple did come into it. To a greater extent, however, it was a matter of pride. He had had to be the master with Viv in order to interest her; he was very much afraid it would be impossible to keep her respect as things were. Nicky felt illogically ashamed of the fact that his legs now refused to obey him; even worse was the knowledge that he would never again be the lover Viv remembered, a prospect he found unbearable. What he and Viv had shared had been the best; he was no more prepared to settle for less than he imagined she would be.

  Weighed down by the terrible depression that refused to lift for even a moment in those first weeks, Nicky had decided a clean break would be best for both of them. He steadfastly refused to write to Viv, even to let her know that he was safe, and by the time he had begun to have second thoughts it was too late. Jersey was occupied; no mail could get through.

  As time passed Nicky had begun to accept his situation. The bouts of depression came less often and did not last so long and he even began to plan what he might do when the war was over. But he still refused to allow himself to include marriage to Viv, or anyone, in those plans.

  ‘Who would want damaged goods?’ he said lightly to the therapist whose job it was to teach him how to lead as normal a life as possible, and took no notice at all of her when she told him he was talking nonsense. Perhaps there were women who would still fancy him, but he was certainly not prepared to present any of them with the pathetic parody of the physique of which he had once been so proud.