The Sun Between Their Feet Read online

  Army friends coming from L—where his wife was, spoke of her at parties, enjoying herself. When the war ended, she would not find it so easy to have a good time. And why did he not simply live with her and be done with it? The fact was, he could not. And his long exile to remote bush-stations was because he needed the excuse not to. He could not bear to think of his wife for too long; she was that part of his life he had never been able, so to speak, to bring to heel.

  Yet he spoke of her now to Michele, and of his favourite bush-wife, Nadya. He told Michele the story of his life, until he realized that the shadows from the trees they sat under had stretched right across the parade-ground to the grandstand. He got unsteadily to his feet, and said: ‘There is work to be done. You are being paid to work.’

  ‘I will show you my church when the light goes.’

  The sun dropped, darkness fell, and Michele made the Captain drive his lorry on to the parade-ground a couple of hundred yards away and switch on his lights. Instantly, a white church sprang up from the shapes and shadows of the bits of board.

  ‘Tomorrow, some houses,’ said Michele cheerfully.

  At the end of the week, the space at the end of the parade-ground had crazy gawky constructions of lath and board over it, that looked in the sunlight like nothing on this earth. Privately, it upset the Captain; it was like a nightmare that these skeleton-like shapes should be able to persuade him, with the illusions of light and dark, that they were a village. At night, the Captain drove up his lorry, switched on the lights, and there it was, the village, solid and real against a background of full green trees. Then, in the morning sunlight, there was nothing there, just bits of board stuck in the sand.

  ‘It is finished,’ said Michele.

  ‘You were engaged for three weeks,’ said the Captain. He did not want it to end, this holiday from himself.

  Michele shrugged. ‘The army is rich,’ he said. Now, to avoid curious eyes, they sat inside the shade of the church, with the case of brandy between them. The Captain talked endlessly about his wife, about women. He could not stop talking.

  Michele listened. Once he said: ‘When I go home – when I go home – I shall open my arms …’ He opened them, wide. He closed his eyes. Tears ran down his cheeks. ‘I shall take my wife in my arms, and I shall ask nothing, nothing. I do not care. It is enough, it is enough. I shall ask no questions and I shall be happy.’

  The Captain stared before him, suffering. He thought how he dreaded his wife. She was a scornful creature, gay and hard, who laughed at him. She had been laughing at him ever since they married. Since the war, she had taken to calling him names like Little Hitler, and Storm-trooper. ‘Go ahead, my Little Hitler,’ she had cried last time they met. ‘Go ahead, my Storm-trooper. If you want to waste your money on private detectives, go ahead. But don’t think I don’t know what you do when you’re in the bush. I don’t care what you do, but remember that I know it …’

  The Captain remembered her saying it. And there sat Michele on his packing-case, saying: ‘It’s a pleasure for the rich, my friend, detectives and the law. Even jealousy is a pleasure I don’t want any more. Ah, my friend, to be together with my wife again, and the children, that is all I ask of life. That and wine and food and singing in the evening.’ And the tears wetted his cheeks and splashed on to his shirt.

  That a man should cry, good Lord! thought the Captain. And without shame! He seized the bottle and drank.

  Three days before the great occasion, some high-ranking officers came strolling through the dust, and found Michele and the Captain sitting together on the packing-case, singing. The Captain’s shirt was open down the front, and there were stains on it.

  The Captain stood to attention with the bottle in his hand, and Michele stood to attention too, out of sympathy with his friend. Then the officers drew the Captain aside – they were all cronies of his – and said, what the hell did he think he was doing? And why wasn’t the village finished? Then they went away.

  ‘Tell them it is finished,’ said Michele. ‘Tell them I want to go.’

  ‘No,’ said the Captain, ‘no. Michele, what would you do if your wife …’

  ‘This world is a good place. We should be happy – that is all.’

  ‘Michele …’

  ‘I want to go. There is nothing to do. They paid me yesterday.’

  ‘Sit down, Michele. Three more days and then it’s finished.’

  ‘Then I shall paint the inside of the church as I painted the one in the camp.’

  The Captain laid himself down on some boards and went to sleep. When he woke, Michele was surrounded by the pots of paint he had used on the outside of the village. Just in front of the Captain was a picture of a black girl. She was young and plump. She wore a patterned blue dress and her shoulders came soft and bare out of it. On her back was a baby slung in a band of red stuff. Her face was turned towards the Captain and she was smiling.

  ‘That’s Nadya,’ said the Captain. ‘Nadya …’ He groaned loudly. He looked at the black child and shut his eyes. He opened them, and mother and child were still there. Michele was very carefully drawing thin yellow circles around the heads of the black girl and her child.

  ‘Good God,’ said the Captain, ‘you can’t do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You can’t have a black Madonna.’

  ‘She was a peasant. This is a peasant. Black peasant Madonna for black country.’

  ‘This is a German village,’ said the Captain.

  ‘This is my Madonna,’ said Michele angrily. ‘Your German village and my Madonna. I paint this picture as an offering to the Madonna. She is pleased – I feel it.’

  The Captain lay down again. He was feeling ill. He went back to sleep. When he woke for the second time, it was dark. Michele had brought in a flaring paraffin lamp, and by its light was working on the long wall. A bottle of brandy stood beside him. He painted until long after midnight, and the Captain lay on his side and watched, as passive as a man suffering a dream. Then they both went to sleep on the boards. The whole of the next day Michele stood painting black Madonnas, black saints, black angels. Outside, troops were practising in the sunlight, bands were blaring and motor cyclists roared up and down. But Michele painted on, drunk and oblivious. The Captain lay on his back, drinking and muttering about his wife. Then he would say ‘Nadya, Nadya’, and burst into sobs.

  Towards nightfall the troops went away. The officers came back, and the Captain went off with them to show how the village sprang into being when the great lights at the end of the parade-ground were switched on. They all looked at the village in silence. They switched the lights off, and there were only tall angular boards leaning like gravestones in the moonlight. On went the lights – and there was the village. They were silent, as if suspicious. Like the Captain, they seemed to feel it was not right. Uncanny it certainly was, but that was not it. Unfair – that was the word. It was cheating. And profoundly disturbing.

  ‘Clever chap, that Italian of yours,’ said the General.

  The Captain, who had been woodenly correct until this moment, suddenly came rocking up to the General, and steadied himself by laying his hands on the august shoulder. ‘Bloody Wops,’ he said. ‘Bloody kaffirs. Bloody … Tell you what, though, there’s one Itie that’s some good. Yes, there is. I’m telling you. He’s a friend of mine, actually.’

  The General looked at him. Then he nodded at his underlings. The Captain was taken away for disciplinary purposes. It was decided, however, that he must be ill, nothing else could account for such behaviour. He was put to bed in his own room with a nurse to watch him.

  He woke twenty-four hours later, sober for the first time in weeks. He slowly remembered what had happened. Then he sprang out of bed and rushed into his clothes. The nurse was just in time to see him run down the path and leap into his lorry.

  He drove at top speed to the parade-ground, which was flooded with light in such a way that the village did not exist. Everything was in f
ull swing. The cars were three deep around the square, with people on the running-boards and even the roofs. The grandstand was packed. Women dressed up as gipsies, country girls, Elizabethan court dames, and so on, wandered about with trays of ginger beer and sausage-rolls and programmes at five shillings each in aid of the war effort. On the square, troops deployed, obsolete machine-guns were being dragged up and down, bands played, and motor cyclists roared through flames.

  As the Captain parked the lorry, all this activity ceased, and the lights went out. The Captain began running around the outside of the square to reach the place where the guns were hidden in a mess of net and branches. He was sobbing with the effort. He was a big man, and unused to exercise, and sodden with brandy. He had only one idea in his mind -to stop the guns firing, to stop them at all costs.

  Luckily, there seemed to be a hitch. The lights were still out. The unearthly graveyard at the end of the square glittered white in the moonlight. Then the lights briefly switched on, and the village sprang into existence for just long enough to show large red crosses all over a white building beside the church. Then moonlight flooded everything again, and the crosses vanished. ‘Oh, the bloody fool!’ sobbed the Captain, running, running as if for his life. He was no longer trying to reach the guns. He was cutting across a corner of the square direct to the church. He could hear some officers cursing behind him: ‘Who put those red crosses there? Who? We can’t fire on the Red Cross.’

  The Captain reached the church as the searchlight burst on. Inside, Michele was kneeling on the earth looking at his first Madonna. ‘They are going to kill my Madonna,’ he said miserably.

  ‘Come away, Michele, come away.’

  ‘They’re going to …’

  The Captain grabbed his arm and pulled. Michele wrenched himself free and grabbed a saw. He began hacking at the ceiling board. There was a dead silence outside. They heard a voice booming through the loudspeakers: ‘The village that is about to be shelled is an English village, not as represented on the programme, a German village. Repeat, the village that is about to be shelled is …’

  Michele had cut through two sides of a square around the Madonna.

  ‘Michele,’ sobbed the Captain, ‘get out of here.’

  Michele dropped the saw, took hold of the raw edges of the board and tugged. As he did so, the church began to quiver and lean. An irregular patch of board ripped out and Michele staggered back into the Captain’s arms. There was a roar. The church seemed to dissolve around them into flame. Then they were running away from it, the Captain holding Michele tight by the arm. ‘Get down,’ he shouted suddenly, and threw Michele to the earth. He flung himself down beside him. Looking from under the crook of his arm, he heard the explosion, saw a great pillar of smoke and flame, and the village disintegrated in a mass of debris. Michele was on his knees gazing at his Madonna in the light from the flames. She was unrecognizable, blotted out with dust. He looked horrible, quite white, and a trickle of blood soaked from his hair down one cheek.

  ‘They shelled my Madonna,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, damn it, you can paint another one,’ said the Captain. His own voice seemed to him strange, like a dream voice. He was certainly crazy, as mad as Michele himself … He got up, pulled Michele to his feet, and marched him towards the edge of the field. There they were met by the ambulance people. Michele was taken off to hospital, and the Captain was sent back to bed.

  A week passed. The Captain was in a darkened room. That he was having some kind of a breakdown was clear, and two nurses stood guard over him. Sometimes he lay quiet. Sometimes he muttered to himself. Sometimes he sang in a thick clumsy voice bits out of opera, fragments from Italian songs, and – over and over again – There’s a Long Long Trail. He was not thinking of anything at all. He shied away from the thought of Michele as if it were dangerous. When, therefore, a cheerful female voice announced that a friend had come to cheer him up, and it would do him good to have some company, and he saw a white bandage moving towards him in the gloom, he turned sharp over on to his side, face to the wall.

  ‘Go away,’ he said. ‘Go away, Michele.’

  ‘I have come to see you,’ said Michele. ‘I have brought you a present.’

  The Captain slowly turned over. There was Michele, a cheerful ghost in the dark room. ‘You fool,’ he said. ‘You messed everything up. What did you paint those crosses for?’

  ‘It was a hospital,’ said Michele. ‘In a village there is a hospital, and on the hospital the Red Cross, the beautiful Red Cross – no?’

  ‘I was nearly court-martialled.’

  ‘It was my fault,’ said Michele. ‘I was drunk.’

  ‘I was responsible.’

  ‘How could you be responsible when I did it? But it is all over. Are you better?’

  ‘Well, I suppose these crosses saved your life.’

  ‘I did not think,’ said Michele. ‘I was remembering the kindness of the Red Cross people when we were prisoners.’

  ‘Oh shut up, shut up, shut up.’

  ‘I have brought you a present.’

  The Captain peered through the dark. Michele was holding up a picture. It was of a native woman with a baby on her back, smiling sideways out of the frame.

  Michele said: ‘You did not like the haloes. So this time, no haloes. For the Captain – no Madonna.’ He laughed. ‘You like it? It is for you. I painted it for you.’

  ‘God damn you!’ said the Captain.

  ‘You do not like it?’ said Michele, very hurt.

  The Captain closed his eyes. ‘What are you going to do next?’ he asked tiredly.

  Michele laughed again. ‘Mrs Pannerhurst, the lady of the General, she wants me to paint her picture in her white dress. So I paint it.’

  ‘You should be proud to.’

  ‘Silly bitch. She thinks I am good. They know nothing -savages. Barbarians. Not you, Captain, you are my friend. But these people, they know nothing.’

  The Captain lay quiet. Fury was gathering in him. He thought of the General’s wife. He disliked her, but he had known her well enough.

  ‘These people,’ said Michele. ‘They do not know a good picture from a bad picture. I paint, I paint, this way, that way. There is the picture – I look at it and laugh inside myself.’ Michele laughed out loud. ‘They say, he is a Michelangelo, this one, and try to cheat me out of my price. Michele -Michelangelo – that is a joke, no?’

  The Captain said nothing.

  ‘But for you I painted this picture to remind you of our good times with the village. You are my friend. I will always remember you.’

  The Captain turned his eyes sideways in his head and stared at the black girl. Her smile at him was half innocence, half malice.

  ‘Get out,’ he said suddenly.

  Michele came closer and bent to see the Captain’s face. ‘You wish me to go?’ He sounded unhappy. ‘You saved my life. I was a fool that night. But I was thinking of my offering to the Madonna – I was a fool, I say it myself. I was drunk, we are fools when we are drunk.’

  ‘Get out of here,’ said the Captain again.

  For a moment the white bandage remained motionless. Then it swept downwards in a bow. Michele turned towards the door.

  ‘And take that bloody picture with you.’

  Silence. Then, in the dim light, the Captain saw Michele reach out for the picture, his white head bowed in profound obeisance. He straightened himself and stood to attention, holding the picture with one hand, and keeping the other stiff down his side. Then he saluted the Captain.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, and he turned and went out of the door with the picture.

  The Captain lay still. He felt – what did he feel? There was a pain under his ribs. It hurt to breathe. He realized he was unhappy. Yes, a terrible unhappiness was filling him, slowly, slowly. He was unhappy because Michele had gone. Nothing had ever hurt the Captain in all his life as much as that mocking Yes, sir. Nothing. He turned his face to the wall and wept. But silently. Not a sound
escaped him, for the fear the nurses might hear.

  The Trinket Box

  Yes, but it was only recently, when it became clear that Aunt Maud really could not last much longer, that people began to ask all those questions which should have been asked, it seems now, so long ago.

  Or perhaps it is the other way about: Aunt Maud, suddenly finding that innumerable nieces and nephews and cousins were beginning to take an interest in her, asking her to meet interesting people, was so disturbed to find herself pushed into the centre of the stage where she felt herself to be out of place, that she took to her bed where she could tactfully die?

  Even here, lying on massed pillows, like a small twig that has been washed up against banks of smooth white sand, she is not left in peace. Distant relations who have done no more than send her Christmas cards once a year come in to see her, sit by her bed for hours at a time, send her flowers. But why? It is not merely that they want to know what London in the Nineties was like for a young woman with plenty of money, although they wake her to ask: ‘Do tell us, do you remember the Oscar Wilde affair?’ Her face puckers in a worried look, and she says: ‘Oscar Wilde? What? Oh yes, I read such an interesting book, it is in the library.’

  Perhaps Aunt Maud herself sees that pretty vivacious girl (there is a photograph of her in an album somewhere) as a character in a historical play. But what is that question which it seems everyone comes to ask, but does not ask, leaving at length rather subdued, even a little exasperated – perhaps because it is not like Aunt Maud to suggest unanswerable questions?