Chapter 24: Rupert - The Golden Hours

The journey down through France was delightful. God, he’d craved solitude. Driving off the clanking ferry onto the misty plain of the Pas de Calais, the weight rolled off his shoulders: of course he loved his family, but solitude! And, he realised, France itself: spotting the first blue-and-white street-name signs, smelling the first Gauloises. He stopped at a tabac to buy some – well, Gitanes actually, he’d always preferred them. And a café au lait. And a flaky buttery French croissant. And oh, why not a calvados? My God, it was like time travel.

It felt almost surreal to wake in the morning alone on a hard bed with a bolster, in a little white room, with no responsibility beyond getting some petrol, and a baguette and some jambon persillé wrapped in greaseproof paper for lunch. He was hundreds of miles east of where he had been during the war. But he was in France. Glancing out the right-hand window of the car, heading south, noting the sun edging down, he thought, Over there lies my wartime past. And out to his left lay the war before, the Western Front, scene of his brothers’ histories.

He put these thoughts from him, as he had put from him the ructions of the night before he left Mortlake. He was not here to garland himself with the past. He was here to be alone.

Oh, he could have sung a song of joy for it. Window wound down, shirtsleeves rolled up, sunglasses against headaches, tooling along. A glass of beer at Valenciennes; a baguette just past Reims; the little hotel at Troyes. A good lunch at Dijon on the second day; the market full of tempting flowers and fresh cheeses and ripe tomatoes, things which would fade and spoil in the car. He bought some anyway, and ate gazing up at the cathedral. Then he went in and lit candles for everybody he could think of. It seemed a shame to lose out on these rituals, just because religion had died in the wars.

He made good time, and decided to give himself a picturesque wander off the main road rather than head straight down via Lyon on day three. The oaks and cow-filled pastures of the north became vineyards; the land was drier. The first sting of sunburn touched his forearms; the scent of jasmine reached him like a miracle. He stopped to put his head into a hillside stream. The chat of French radio was tickling his knowledge of the language, waking it up. He began joining in the conversations: bien sûr, nous pouvons tous être d’accord sur ce point. Il était l’un des grands hommes d’État de son époque, mais ce n’est plus son époque . . .

He had been to Archie’s house before, en famille, and knew its plain square form, its white walls, the open staircase up the side to the green door, the shutters, the simple balcony above the veranda of the cafe which occupied the ground floor, the fig tree spreading its fragrance and shade in the square beyond. But going somewhere alone is going to a different place. A word with the woman in the cafe: the same family, but a cousin. Delighted to see Archie’s beau-père. Yes, the water tank was full; he must let her know if there was any problem, the gas canister was almost full, will he be wanting dinner? He lugged his things upstairs. The whitewashed rooms were clean, the bed made up for his arrival, the shutters closed against the heat. He threw them open, disturbing a spider and a little golden lizard, and stared out the window. For a moment he saw with Archie’s eyes. He knew this landscape well from Archie’s paintings. But he no longer really knew Archie’s way of seeing.

Rupert longed for something of his own. New eyes. Fresh eyes. God, could he get fresh eyes at this age? Well, Archie was not that much younger than him, and he –

He must not compare himself to Archie. It was a bad hole to fall into. Much though he loved the man, they both needed a bit of a break. It doesn’t do to be so conscious all the time of another fellow’s work. And here he was in the other fellow’s world! In his room, looking out his window, at his view!

Ah, but the other fellow isn’t here, and that makes all the difference. The other fellow hasn’t painted here for ages. Plus, the other fellow’s work has changed so much – ever since they went to the exhibition of American modern art at the Tate in 1956. Archie had responded to it as if he’d been hit over the head. For about a year he hadn’t painted anything at all. And then when he started again, it was as if he’d never painted before: gone were his thickly layered, realistic landscapes and tender portraits; in their place he became obsessed with colour and with circles; with movement. He wouldn’t even talk about it with Rupert, which was a shame, because they’d had so many amiable chats over the years – but then, Rupert mused, he had made quite clear his opinion of the work they’d seen in that exhibition, and in the later one, in 1959. He’d gone with an open mind, he swore. But he thought it was – not rubbish, but dull. It meant nothing to him, and that made him feel sad, old, and possibly stupid. He was missing out on a joy that other people were having: in the looking, and in the working. People were getting something, and he, Rupert, was not getting it.

Archie had always been more modern than him, fascinated by artists he’d met when he studied at the Académie André Lhote in Paris in the thirties, and following their careers. André Lhote had introduced Archie to Cubism, and Archie had done his best to introduce Cubism to Rupert, but even at the time Rupert had refused it like a horse at a jump, as in later years he refused Picasso, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, along with their UK cousins Victor Pasmore and Michael Kidner. ‘Good luck to them, old boy,’ was Rupert’s line. ‘A chap has to do what a chap has to do. I’m sure it’s all lovely for what’s his name, Rothko, with his lines, but I just want to paint what I see.’ He remembered Archie saying, ‘I think they do paint what they see.’ And him saying, ‘I’m sure they do. I just see things more . . . simply.’ Archie had started to say something about Rothko, simplicity and complexity, and looked at Rupert’s sceptical expression, and given up. It had been around the time young Buttercup was born.

Should he open his mind and try again?

The very idea made him want a glass of wine.

A wash, a nap, and he would set up his things, and have dinner. If he remembered correctly, there was a river where he could swim in the morning. Adieu, road dust. Adieu, abstract expressionism. All he wanted was to paint a window to another place. This was the magic of painting for him: if you get the light right, a person can look at a painting and be somewhere else.

Rupert did have a lovely time, alone, painting under the bright Provençal sky. The golden light gave him joy; the landscape flowed before him, the smell of pines and mastic and the hot fig leaves, the iodine in the air when he went to the coast; the rattle of the river over its pebbles, the burning stone walls in the village. There was a dented sweaty ring in his hair from wearing his sunhat all day. The dusty wine made him sleep well; the fresh sardines, pain de campagne and fat olives filled him up. He painted like a demon: crooked pines and pink sunsets, thin white roads leading into the distance, aubergines shining like silk, the last scarlet poppies frilling the edge of a distant field, white roses drooping over the edge of a pewter pot. The last of the late cherries from the Lubéron, heart-shaped and sweet. Peaches. A loaf of crusty, peasant-looking bread; a sausage. After painting them, he ate them. In the afternoons he slept. In the evenings he ate in the cafe, and exchanged small talk with the locals.

He grew lonely.

He grew despondent.

The process of painting was a right and pleasing way to spend his time, but the results – of course they were good, but so what? Who was shouting at him, begging for another painting of a shady bend in the road, or a tomato on a plate? Nobody. And he couldn’t paint all day. It wasn’t just the changes in the light, it was his shoulders growing tight, and his arms tired. Even the prettiest willow is sad when there is nobody beneath it holding out a glass of cold yellow wine for you. And being lonely in France was setting something off in him, something from a long time ago.

He decided to leave early. Always good to move when your feelings start, well, when they start up.

The off-the-main-road experience had pleased him on the way down, so he decided to do it again heading back. Or, why not go via Carcassone? Then up via Albi, or Limoges – so many lovely places. He could drive through the turning of summer, through the vendange, ripe grapes purple and bloomy crammed tight on their stalks and stacked in crates, nut trees heavy, fields shorn, straw scraps blowing. Paint some architecture as he went. Cathedrals and museums; marble staircases, city walls, cheap little hotels. Why not? He had time.

He had half forgotten, like so many English people in cars, just how huge France is; just how long it takes to get anywhere. Especially when feeling scenic. He took a wrong turn at Poitiers: he was heading for Angers, not Tours, and hadn’t noticed, but then the sun was in his eyes and signs to the east gave longer distances to Caen and Rouen – and a memory came to him like a brick through the windscreen: them in bed on the rough old linen sheets, twenty years ago; him explaining why The Road to Rouen was funny. The Road to Ruin, la Route vers la Ruine. They had laughed about that. He remembered her laugh. How much he had loved to make her laugh.

Pointing west, the sign was to Nantes.

He pulled over, and lit a cigarette. Drove on.

An hour or two later, he must have made another wrong turn: he was in Nantes, and beyond Nantes, fifty miles north, was Concarneau, and La Fôret. Her village.

He honestly thought he hadn’t done it on purpose. But here he was.

He drove on up the coast. Of course he drove to the village. Along the inlet; past high barns and grey stone walls; pleasure boats and fishing boats, the wide sands of low tide. Down as far as the road went, onto the headland where the lobster men were. Back and past the little petrol station, and the cafe. He stopped, then before he could change his mind he jumped out of the car. He closed his eyes for a second before going in.

The person behind the counter was young: good. Rupert ordered and drank a café au lait, and a calvados. There was nobody he recognised; nobody recognised him.

He walked down, through the square, past the butcher’s, the yard where the terrible noisy dog used to be, down to the little house. Late pink roses still draped dustily over the stone wall of the potager. The apple trees were heavy with fruit, resting their elbows on forked supports. One of them he had made, from the trunk of a tree he had felled. Still strong. The mulberry was growing well.

It looked loved and tended. He raised his eyes, and looked at the house.

Still there. A window was open.

He turned, hurried back, jumped back in the car. He shouldn’t be here. Seeking the main road, he passed the beautiful church, Our Lady of the Low Tides, on its island of stone. He’d hardly seen it when he’d been here. He didn’t stop.

The road led him across into Fouesnant, and past its cemetery. He drew to a halt, and walked in, among its stone blocks and worn grass. It was larger than it had been. So many dead. And here were four uniform white slabs, tidily arranged: four British airmen, lined up. Charles, Ivor, William and Raymond. He paused.

This is what he had escaped – what he had been saved from. What she had saved him from, day by day, month by month. Here was where he would have lain dead, these eighteen years. This corner of this foreign field, that is for ever England.

Or would he even have been given a military grave? Wasn’t he a deserter?

He tried to swallow.

It was unbearable. The urge to run was strong – but he stood, transfixed, gazing at the four white stones.

He could have got away, got back to England and rejoined if not his unit then some other unit. He hadn’t even tried: he’d just sat about thinking about it and never making up his mind . . . God knows they’d been pissed off enough with him when he finally returned, long after the war was over. And rightly so. He should have been fighting those years – like his brothers did in the first war, like everybody else did. He’d been a coward, and he’d let everybody down, one by one: his comrades, his wife, his children, his country, his French woman.

Jack Greenfeldt suddenly crossed his mind: Zoë’s wartime lover, who she’d taken only because she thought Rupert was dead. Who had been with the Allies when they got to Auschwitz. Who had seen – all that. Jack Greenfeldt, who had killed himself.

A more honourable man than me, Rupert thought, and the shame scalded him. A better man. Jack Greenfeldt should have lived, and made Zoë happy.

I should have died.

But Michèle saved me. Michèle Michèle Michèle. What she did for me. What she risked, saving me.

He had to struggle with the box to get a cigarette out, struggle with shaking hands to light it. He should not have come here. He should be dead.

He had to tear himself from the hypnotic white slabs – and almost against his will his body turned suddenly, back to the main part of the cemetery. A crowd of memorials clamoured: stone sarcophagi, tall urns, angels saluting the heavens with stone arms raised high. Black and rusty wrought-iron hearts and crucifixes. Little clusters of ceramic flowers, pink and blue and palest yellow. A blackbird singing.

And there she was. Her name, cut into stone.

Her dates. 1910–1956.

Fading roses, the heavy pink ones from the garden, in a jam jar. The scent of them warm and sweet as they had always been. The jam jar on the bedside table. Her body, as sweet, as warm. Her trust in him.

Oh Miche! Not like this!

He fell to his knees on the dry turf and he cried like a baby; cried and cried, for what she had done for him, and what he had not done for her. ‘Not like this,’ he said over and again. He might have passed out. He didn’t know. His heart thumping, thumping, against the ground where her heart lay silent.

He didn’t hear at first when a door creaked, and a man in black vestments swayed across the graveyard towards him, hands clasped, head curious.

Rupert jumped up, a mad person. He felt his hair must be standing on end, his eyes tangled on stalks. He wiped his face, shouted, ‘Bonjour!’, nodded in some kind of polite desperation, and strode off, swiftly, crazily, deaf to the calls that followed him. It was his imagination, surely, that told him the man was calling Monsieur Cazalet? Monsieur Rupert?

He drove insanely, slept roughly in the car, and caught the earliest ferry from St Malo. On the metal deck he smoked, sheltering the flame from the wind under the grey dawning sky, remembering, remembering. The cold rain; the thick white mug holding his first cup of tea in five years; the sense of being ripped in half. Crying. To have this grief, again, after all these years!

Driving up from Portsmouth the next day, half-slept, past English pubs and rows of English houses, he tried to think. All he knew was that he could never tell anyone about this, about what happened, about his multiple and complex shame and guilt. The shame of others knowing; the guilt that was only his. He felt as if he’d been lying in her arms only yesterday, loving her, grateful to her, living that life. The fear, the rows, the reconciliations. The fucking Nazis; the collaborators. The shelter, the apples, the roses. The evening sun and the morning light. Her. Her.

And the child. Conceived, carried, born, held. And abandoned.

The A3 unspooled beneath his wheels, leading home when the very word suddenly meant nothing.

This, he thought, is for me to carry alone.