XXXIV
And then, on Armistice Day, something seemed to snap inside my head. I was out with the children at eleven o’clock, when the guns were fired and the bells began to ring. And it was then, at that moment, that it snapped, and it seemed as though I was mad for a time, and I did not understand what I was doing.
I thought:
‘It is too late . . . it is a month too late! . . . I do not want it now. . . .’
I thought:
‘If Hugo is killed, why should not all be killed? . . . it is silly to stop the fighting now . . .’
I took the children home and put them to rest. Then I took John, who was tiny, with me, and went out into the street. I walked to the Tube station, and got into a train. I got out at Charing Cross and walked across St. James’s Park, towards Victoria. It seemed to me that the world had gone mad. People were shouting, and yelling, and waving their hats; the bells were ringing still, there was a hubbub of noise; lorries crowded with munition workers whirled past me, one after the other, with shouting and singing and the raucous whirr of rattles. The king had been addressing the crowd at Buckingham Palace, and I found myself caught in the rush of people coming away. Taxi-cabs dashed past me, crammed to overflowing; officers hung out of the windows or sprawled across the roofs, blowing whistles and cheering. The crowd seethed and pressed along Victoria Street; people on the tops of omnibuses stood up and waved their arms.
And I thought:
‘Why do they do it? What do they understand?’
I thought:
‘They did not mind the war . . . they could have stopped it, these hundreds and hundreds of people, waving their arms. . . .’
I thought:
‘They did not mind it or they would not shout like this . . . they would make war again, these people that shout. . . .’
And I felt that I could not bear it, that I must get away.
I wondered why I had come, and where I was going. I did not know. I had no plan. I think I had come to Victoria because of Hugo, because I last saw him there. But now, I did not go into the station. I turned aside, and went along outside it, by the high, blind wall in Buckingham Palace Road, and then I turned over a bridge, the railway bridge that is there. I walked on and on, and I got away from the crowd, but the noise was everywhere.
John seemed very heavy, much heavier than I had thought. He began to cry and I rocked him, and still we went on through the grey, drizzling streets. We came to the Embankment, not far from Chelsea Bridge, and there was a seat. I sat down on the seat. I fed John there, and rocked him to sleep. I felt suddenly, now, quite weak and exhausted, as though I could not go on, and it seemed to me that I understood now, for the first time, that Hugo was dead.
I do not know how long I sat there. I know I was very cold, and so was John. He woke, and cried again, and I walked on. I came to Albert Bridge, and passed it, towards the chimneys. When I reached Mollie’s flat, I looked up, and the windows were open. I was not surprised at all.
I went up the stairs, with John, and knocked on Mollie’s door, and the knocking sounded loud, in a pause of the noise outside.
Mollie opened the door.
She cried out, as though she were startled, and stood back.
I walked past her into the room, and dropped down on the sofa. It was a low sofa, and I felt as though I were falling a long way, down and down and down.
Mollie was kneeling on the floor beside me. She took John from me, and laid him on a cushion. She made up the fire and put the kettle on to boil. Then she rubbed my hands, and asked me questions, in her low, quiet voice, that I had not heard for so long. And I lay back and watched her, as she moved about the room, and I felt in a strange dream, as though the past had come back.
I said:
‘Hugo is dead.’
She said:
‘I know. I heard from his mother.’ Her clear eyes darkened: ‘And you?’
I said:
‘Oh, that is all . . .’
Mollie was looking at me, and I looked at the fire.
‘I see,’ she said at last. ‘Poor Helen!’
I said:
‘Yes, that is all . . . I can’t bear it any longer. . . .’
Mollie asked:
‘Did you know you would find me here?’
I said:
‘No. How should I know? I just came away.’
Outside, along the Embankment, the shouting lorries passed, and the crowds, and the rattles, and the noise rose and fell, in irregular, intermittent waves. Bursts of singing floated in at the window, drunken, vulgar singing, of loud voices, cat calls, and shrill, unnatural laughter.
And I shivered, and buried my face, and Mollie comforted me.
She gave me tea to drink, and I felt better, and I realized then, for the first time, that it was strange to find her here.
I said:
‘So you are back!’
She said:
‘I came yesterday.’
And then I looked at Mollie, and I saw that she too was unhappy, and then I thought of George, and I put out my hand to her:
‘Mollie,’ I said, ‘George too. . . . I had not forgotten George . . . ’
She said:
‘You should not forget him. He cared for you most of all.’
I said:
‘He never told me . . .’
She said:
‘What was the use?’
I said:
‘Guy is going to be married. You know that too, I expect??’
Mollie bent her head.
‘Yes, I know that too,’ she said.
I said:
‘Mollie, how can you bear it? What have you left at all?’
Mollie looked away. She was kneeling still on the floor, and the firelight danced on her cheek, turned so, away from me, and up the lines of her hair. And I saw that she too looked older, and I saw grey streaks in her hair; and I thought of Guy and Diana, and I felt that I hated Guy.
She said:
‘I don’t know yet. I shall find something soon. Life will go on again. I know in my mind that it must.’
She said:
‘Is Guy very happy? What is Diana like?’
I said:
‘She is very young, lovely, and hard as steel.’
She said:
‘We can’t choose for Guy. Perhaps that is right for him.’
I said:
‘It is not right! I think Guy’s soul has died!’
Mollie smiled at me:
‘You are not changed so much, really,’ she said, and touched my hand. And then John stirred and cried, and I picked him up again, and laid my cheek against his, and I felt that I had John, and that he was life for me.
Mollie said:
‘You are lucky, Helen, to have that baby!’
I said:
‘Yes, and I have two others . . . but they are not like this.’
And then I talked to Mollie, about everything that had happened; about Walter, and Maud, and his mother, and how I was beaten by it all, and how little use I had been.
And then about Hugo’s coming, and all that we did together.
I said:
‘We saw pictures, and heard music, and then we walked about and talked. We went to the station, and there was no train, but there was one in the morning, and I saw him off in a fog . . . it was all foggy’ . . . and I seemed to see it again, as I talked about it, the station filled with smoke, and the lights, and the thin, sharp fog . . . and Hugo’s train going out, away, round the bend of the line . . .
And she said:
‘Is that all, Helen?’
I said:
‘What more could there be? Only everything was different for me after he came and went. You see, we had made a promise, both to go on to the end. It seemed to me, at first, that he had broken his promise; but he hadn’t really, of course; I see that clearly now. It was the end for him, for the war was really ended; but I must go on longer. . . . We had to do different things. . . .’
She said:
‘Is that Hugo’s baby?’
And I said:
‘How I wish it were! But not all my wishing can make it . . . and he had no child of his own!’
She said:
‘Forgive me, Helen!’
I said:
‘It’s no case of forgiving. These things don’t happen really . . . not with people like us.’
‘No, not with you and Hugo. . . . I should have known,’ she said.
We sat and talked together till very late that night. The lamps were lit outside, those cheerless, darkened lamps, and the noise in the streets went on.
We bathed John by the fire, in George’s big blue basin and we put him to sleep on the sofa, and then we made our supper.
And Mollie talked of Salonika and what she had done there, and we talked of little things, little everyday things, and I stayed there that night, and in the morning, it was better.
The next day I went home. I told Walter where I had been. I told him that I got caught in the crowd, and that Mollie had come back, and he did not ask me questions.
I wondered sometimes, with Walter, how much he understood.
And that was the first day after the Armistice. The beginning of the time that has been, since the War.