“We’ll do nothing of the sort.” Prim said in a jovial way. “We’ll jolly well do our best and enjoy it, as will our audience. No, we may not win, but taking part is what counts. Being there, being heard. Being alive.”
She smiled, and I found myself smiling, too. And as I looked around me I realized that everyone else had cheered up. Prim was right. It’s not about winning. It’s about finding humanity in the face of this war. It’s about finding hope when everything around us is collapsing.
Including my own precious home.
CHILBURY MANOR,
CHILBURY,
KENT.
Tuesday, 14th May, 1940
My dearest Angela,
I know you told me not to fall in love with him, but I just can’t help myself. It’s been only a few weeks, but we’re virtually inseparable. I’ve taken to popping out after dinner every evening so that Alastair can continue his work on my nude. We talk a lot, but he’s still extremely secretive, never serious, and changing the subject every time it’s about him.
“What inspired you to be an artist?” I asked him the other day.
“It’s a long and dull story, and I don’t want to bore you, sweet Venetia.”
That’s what he calls me. Sweet Venetia. I don’t think anyone has ever called me sweet before. It’s rather charming, don’t you think? Even so, I do worry that he thinks I really am sweet, all young and na?ve. I keep telling him how I’m famed for my raciness, but he simply isn’t surprised by me, not in the way that the others are. He’s heard all my witty lines, and seems to have played this game a thousand times. It’s as if he sees the real Venetia inside. And do you know what, Angie? I don’t want to pretend anymore. I want to be the real Venetia, not just what’s fashionable or daring, but someone complicated and substantial. And he’s the one who’s opening it up for me.
Last night, we talked about poetry, and he made up a poem about his love for me, as beautiful as a summer breeze. I won’t bore you with the details, but honestly, Angie, there’s nothing like hearing the man you love expressing his adoration for you with such eloquence and fervor.
He always has more intellectual matters on his mind, talking about Greek philosophy or medieval politics. The wireless is continually on, sputtering out the latest war news, and once he surprised me by getting quite cross at something they said. The news was about the Nazi invasion of Belgium, which has caught our war chiefs by surprise. They used an indirect route while we were busy guarding the proper way, the one they’d used last time.
“What a military catastrophe!” he muttered under his breath.
“I thought you were a pacifist,” I said nonchalantly.
He picked up his brush again, as if remembering I was there. “Of course I am. But what a dreadful pack of idiots we are to underestimate the Nazis, eh?”
“Why don’t you sign up? See if you can do better?”
“Are you trying to get rid of me, darling?” he replied in a playful singsong way. “Push me out of your life forever?”
He paused and looked at me again, stretched out before him. “Oh, Venetia!” he said with gentle amusement. “Do you know how beautiful you are?”
I must have looked at him in such a way, as then something came over him, and he put his brush down and came around the easel and lay next to me on the great red rug, pulling my naked body toward his fully clothed one.
“I need you, Venetia,” he whispered into my ear, so blunt and direct that I was taken aback. “I need you and you need me. We need to be together.” I shifted back and looked into his dark, cavernous eyes, finding an intensity that was disarming but crushingly compelling.
The whole thing was exhilarating, Angie, and in an odd kind of way a little frightening. As I returned his gaze, something new inside me seemed to explode open, like the cherry blossoms bursting open, and everything else seemed to dissolve into nothing, all the messing and the conniving and the boys, all the little games and affairs. I suddenly knew that this is what it’s for. I’ve finally met my match.
Now all I need to do is get to the bottom of him.
Meanwhile, more village news. Hattie named her baby Rose after her poor mother. She invited the Chilbury Ladies’ Choir around to her house to wet the baby’s head with a few glasses of sherry and one or two songs. We’re frightfully worried about the competition on Saturday, so quiet hopefulness rather than the usual squabbling seemed to be the dominant feeling, although Mrs. B. remains adamant that it’s all an embarrassing mistake. Kitty is being incredibly nice for a change, although that’s probably because she’s still gloating about her soloist victory.
Hattie brought the gorgeous baby out of her crib and sat down beside me on the sofa.