A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie

Author:Kamila Shamsie [Shamsie, Kamila]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

The letter from her mother was addressed in black ink. Someone had died, again.

Viv sat down in the garden chair, reaching overhead to pull down on a branch of the willow, brushing its leaves against her face. The squawks and metallic chirps of birds, the booted feet of a regiment marching towards the barracks, her finger picking at the interwoven rattan strips of the chair as though it were a stringed instrument – all this was familiar now. The letters from England came from another world.

My dear Vivian

Mary’s brother, Richard, has ‘died of wounds’ in Mesopotamia. She is being very Mary-like about it, speaking of her great pride in his noble sacrifice, but you know as well as I that he only signed up because she shamed him into it and I can’t believe this doesn’t weigh on her soul. She spoke wistfully of your absence at the funeral service – a woman needs her friends in times such as these. She is speaking of volunteering with the mobile nursing units on the Western Front. Your father is very low as well. All the boys he delivered into the world leaving it too early. It has changed him, quite suddenly.

You mustn’t think it is all gloom here. Newspaper advertisements for ‘Wartime Furs at Wartime Prices’ lift the spirits and the competition among one’s intimates for Most Patriotic Zeal continues to provide a fantastic spectacle even as those most determined to win the Cup complain bitterly of the war’s effect on household staff. (The problems of the one-armed footman continue at home.)

I met Miss Murray a few days ago who said there is no place of work in England which isn’t opening doors to women to make up for all the men who’ve rushed off to war – museums and universities included. Perhaps it’s time to book your return passage? Your father was so disappointed to hear you won’t be back for Christmas as you’d promised – I don’t see him trying to send you away to the Front to nurse. Even if he tried, it’s clear from your letters that running your own household and deciding how to spend your days has made you a woman, no longer a girl blindly following the lead of others.

Your loving mother

Oh, Mary. She rested the letter on her lap, remembered Richard, the boy with the scabbed knees who she and Mary had chased up trees in his childhood, teased when the puppy-fat fell away and he started to attract the eye of girls, relied on as an escort to parties during their university years. Richard, who disapproved of Mary’s suffragette activities but still drove her to WPSU meetings and bailed her out of prison. That sweet, gentle boy. Died of wounds. She knew the sound, the smell, the agony of it. Knew the grown men whimpering for their mothers. And Richard would have called out for Mary, his older sister, the solidity to his shadow.

What am I doing here? How can I go

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