Therefore Choose (19 page)

But perhaps that was only now. Now the habits and thoughts of the wartime years were dying. In the aftermath, a new life could not yet be born.

Bernardette was right, of course. Was it just the being with her, the making love, the warm bedclothes, the idea of her body in bed, the breakfasts of toast and marmalade? George didn't know whether he had real feeling for her.

“Can we be friends?” he said. “I'll try not to fall in love, or be a nuisance. It would be nice to see you. Go out a bit. Go to bed a bit.”

She looked at him and raised her eyebrows.

“I'd like to be able to talk to you too,” he said. “I'm in a muddle.”

“I can see you're in a muddle. I'm a psychiatrist.”

“You know what I'm saying. Can we be friends?”

“If you mean unburden yourself, I don't know. That's my work work. I hear a lot about people's problems. Now's a very egregious time for problems.”

“You don't want me to talk about myself.”

“I didn't say that. I like you, George. You have a nice gentleness about you mixed with a kind of anguish that makes a boy interesting. But if we're going to be friends, what's your contribution?”

“I could listen to your problems.”

“I have an analyst who I pay to listen to me. It's part of my training.”

“What would you like?”

“I'd like some attention, some warmth, some sense that I'm a bit important to you, someone to go for a walk on the Heath, perhaps, someone to talk about books with.”

“Someone to provide a bit of leverage in the case of Pardou?”

“I shan't be wanting any sauce from you, that's for absolute certain.”

“Out of there, landlubber,”
said Bernardette. “Here's a cup of tea.”

George opened his eyes to see her standing beside the bed.

“We're going on a jaunt,” she said.

“At this time in the morning?”

“Have you done any sailing at all?”

“I'm a very fine sailor. I used to crew on a Salcombe Yawl.”

“Ideal. You can crew for me. I've taken a couple of days off, and we can extend that notion through to the weekend. I'm going to take you on my boat.”

“You've got a boat.”

“Twenty-seven feet, a clinker-built Folkboat. My father gave it to me as a coming-away present.”

“I didn't know.”

“My father used to take me every summer. He had a boat in Cork. My mother hated it. We'd jump on the train, just him and me, and away we'd go. The best times.”

“I used to go sailing with my father. Is that something we share, at last?”

“My father bought it from a Swedish fellow, from Gothenburg, who came to London to work, after the war, and sailed it across to Malden. Then he lost heart in sailing, so he sold it. My father saw his advertisement in
The Times
and bought it. So get packed. High water's at noon. We leave in half an hour. ”

“We're going to Malden.”

“Chichester. I sailed it round. But we're going via Worthing. I've got to drop something off for a friend.”

“We'll go by train?”

“I've got a Morris Eight, not swift but reliable.”

“You've got a car as well.”

“In the garage, round the back. I shouldn't say ‘it.' Really it's a he: ‘Private Morris Black.' That's what it says on the tax disk. And he's ready to take us where we want to go.”

In the car, Bernardette drove with a surprising decorum. At ten minutes to ten they were in Worthing. She stopped in front of a large block of flats on the seafront.

“I have to drop this stuff off,” she said. “I won't be more than five minutes. Come in if you want, otherwise you can gaze at the sea.”

“I'll stay here.”

The beach was still littered with defence works. It would take a long time before they were all cleared away. The day was fine, not too cold, with a decent northeasterly. George thought about Anna, thought about Bernardette. Had he been too precipitous to fall so much in love with Anna? It was stupid to think there was only one person you could love. He walked slowly westwards along the promenade, then turned. A hundred yards away, he saw Bernardette coming out of the flats. He walked towards her.

“Come along,” she shouted. “Time and tide,” she said when George reached her. “I've got something to show you.”

They got into the car, drove up to the A27 and turned left, towards Chichester.

“Here,” she said and stopped the car. “See this house?”

George saw a huge building off to the left of the road. Bernardette pulled over and they got out of the car.

“It's called Castle Goring,” said Bernardette. “My friend who I just dropped in on told me about it a few months ago. What do you think?”

“Castle Goring,” said George. “It does look rather castle-like.”

“Built in 1790 for the grandfather of Shelley the poet. Here, follow me. I don't think there's anyone here right now, and if there is I don't think they'll mind.”

They walked to the right of the house and round to the back. Seen from the back, amazingly, the house was utterly different: a classical villa, white ashlar, with an exterior staircase and fine pilasters.

“The front Gothic, the back Palladian,” said Bernardette. “This was the moment when style became self-conscious.”

“And on your expensive holidays, you'll visit grand houses, all around Europe?”

“Not just gawp at them. In Italy and France, there are beautiful hotels converted from beautiful houses. I shall stay at them and be pampered. I'll earn a decent living and do my bit ministering to the poor to assuage my guilt. On my holidays I'll indulge myself.”

“This is your plan?”

“We've got to get going.”

By 12:30 p.m., the ebb had started. They were on the boat, underway, with a following wind. The deckhouse of the Folkboat was varnished to a fine golden sheen, the white sails were pulling. There was a satisfying chuckle of water at the bow. At Chichester Harbour entrance, the tide was already strong, and it caused a turmoil of swirling currents and disturbed water. They swept out southwards, on a broad reach, keeping close to a sandy beach to starboard that was left astern with satisfying speed. The wind was brisk, and on the cold side, blowing the hair on the left of George's neck.

“That's Hayling Island,” said Bernardette. “The next entrance is Langstone, and the one after that is Portsmouth.”

“Brilliant boat,” said George.

“This is the life,” said Bernardette. “Take over. Have you sailed in the Solent before?”

“Never have.”

“Look out there, pretty much due south, the Nab Tower. See it?” Bernardette pointed. “Not much more than a lump on the horizon from here. It's five or six miles away.”

“I've got it.”

“Make for that. I'll get the chart so you can see where we are.”

She backed down the companion steps and gave George a grin. She was in the cabin for three or four minutes and then returned with a chart.

“I'll take the helm for a bit so you can look at the chart. Get your bearings. But first I'm going to alter course a bit, so the wind's astern. When I do that, can you bring the jib over to the port side?”

“Aye aye, sir.”

George did what he was asked.

“Pay out the sheet so we've got a gull wing. I've got a whisker pole — over here, see? Can you go forward and hook it on?”

George went forward to obey the command, worked out how to clip the whisker pole to the clew of the jib, then returned to the cockpit.

“There,” she said. “That's not bad.”

“Not bad at all.”

“Dead ahead, the Isle of Wight,” said Bernardette. “Here's the chart.”

George picked it up. He liked the swell, the sense of the air being almost calm in the cockpit as they ran before the wind, but the sense, too, of slight danger as, on this point of sailing, the boat was at its most unstable, so that inattention could cause a gybe and break something.

“On the mainland side is Portsmouth, headquarters of the King's Navee. The entrance is there.” Bernardette pointed. “See it on the chart?”

“Got it.”

“What do you think? The tide's good. Got to watch out for the tide in the Solent, more important than the wind. We can reach Cowes. Pick up a mooring, row ashore for some fish and chips.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“Well it is perfect. That's what you don't realize. We've all been through a terrible time, but not everything's been destroyed.”

“You've got yourself set up.”

“Not according to you. You think I should be dissatisfied, full of anguish, and longing for marriage.”

“You're saying things will improve?”

“This state you're in, it will pass.”

“I don't know.”

“All through history, there have been the most tremendous disasters, muddles, wars, mistakes,” said Bernardette. “The Nab Tower, for instance.”

“How do you mean?”

“If you sail out to it, you find it's like an immense gasometer. It was built, one of eight, to be planted on the seabed across the Straits of Dover in the first war. They were going to string steel nets between the towers to stop the Germans whizzing up and down the Channel in their submarines. Completely barmy idea. By 1918, they'd only completed one of them. They didn't know what to do with it, so they put it out there.”

“What are you saying?”

“History. The history of mistakes and muddle.”

“But you believe in plans.”

“We humans make mistakes, then we have to make a new plan. You're stuck because you're still in an old one.”

“You think it was a mistake, me and Anna?”

“You found it was a mistake when she went off with your friend.”

“He used to be a good friend,” said George. “Now I find it hard to think about him.”

“You're still in a state.”

“You think I should just get on with things?”

“Over there,” said Bernardette. “See those?”

She pointed off the starboard bow.

“See there's a fort there, that's No Man's Land. A mile or so from the land, at the edge of the main shipping channel. And another one there. See them? There they are on the chart.” Bernardette pointed to them on the chart.

“Take the tiller again. Keep on this heading. When we get out a bit, where the tide's better, we'll alter course to starboard and run down between the forts. Military mistakes, like the Nab Tower, but from fifty years earlier, when the English thought the French might invade.”

“Kind of Martello Towers?”

“Much bigger. They're huge, two hundred feet in diameter. You'll see when we're closer.”

“What were they for?”

“Gun platforms, to guard the entrance to Portsmouth. Incredibly expensive. Obsolete before they were finished.”

They were silent for a while. The smooth water of the estuary was behind them. Out of the shelter of the land, there was a swell, and a good number of whitecaps. There was sun, the wind at force four or more. The boat's stern rose with each wave that overtook them, and then the bow tobogganed down again into the trough.

George picked out a clump of trees on the island to steer for. He pointed up a little, not enough to affect the jib, and kept an eye on the burgee to make sure the wind didn't play a trick on him. Perhaps she's right, he thought. But perhaps she might not need too much persuasion, if I could show I wasn't maundering about Anna. What would it be like with her? Not bad, not bad at all. But what have I got to offer? Maybe she is serious. Maybe she really doesn't want any of that marriage stuff. Is that possible?

“You like all that — Castle Goring, the Nab Tower, the forts?” said George.

“Gives me a broader perspective.”

“You like the idea of the English making all these mistakes.”

“We're out into the deeper water now, and into the west-going current. We're going to gybe.”

“You want to take over?”

“You keep the helm. When I say so, alter course about forty-five degrees to starboard so that we can run down between the forts.”

Bernardette came to the stern of the cockpit, eased herself alongside the tiller, and grabbed hold of all of the strands of the mainsheet that ran from the traveller to the block on the boom.

“I'll pull the main across as we go about,” she said, “so there's not too much of a terrible crash and the boom won't whack into my rigging. Ready about. Gybe-ho.”

Back in London,
George spent several more nights with Bernardette. More and more he realized how eccentric she was. She lived alone because she liked it. She wore clothes that owed little to any kind of taste. She had been brought up in Dublin, in a well-to-do family. Her mother was Jewish and her father Protestant. But despite every excuse to adopt BBC English, she maintained a strong Irish accent.

“Why do you keep your Irish accent?” he asked. “It can't be an advantage in your career.”

“So I don't get mistaken for English.”

“But you prefer to live in London.”

“It's a medical mission,” she said. “From Ireland to this benighted town. You must have noticed all the Irish nurses here, and all the Dr. O'Malleys and Dr. Kennedys.”

“But your mother,” he asked. “Wouldn't she prefer you to be in Dublin?”

“She paints watercolours. My father was a solicitor, quite successful. He left her very comfortable, thank you, and dropped off a bit for me at the same time. The plan is that I'll go over to Dublin at Christmastimes and she'll come over here for a bit each summer.”

“Not too much closeness.”

“Don't be cheeky. My parents were too involved with each other. They had no business conceiving one child, let alone two.”