Sampler produced for Cityread London 2014

Moving between London, Paris and the trenches of Ypres, My Dear I Wanted to Tell You is a deeply moving and brilliant novel of love and war, and how they affect those left behind as well as those who fight.

Sampler containing extracts from

Louisa Young said: I am so pleased that My Dear I Wanted to Tell You a very London book has been selected as Londons Cityread for 2014. I hope it will help to remind Londoners of the effect of the war on the city and on Londoners themselves. A hundred years after the First World War, lets remember the ghters, the victims, the services and the families, with gratitude and love and, in their memory, with a commitment to PEACE.

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Welcome to Cityread London 2014

By picking up this book youre already part of a London-wide celebration of reading. Every April, Cityread unites thousands of lives through literature placing a book at the heart of the greatest city on earth. We warmly invite you to be part of Cityread London 2014 by reading My Dear I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young, by joining us at a Cityread event in your local library, and by sharing your thoughts online with Londoners from across the capital. There are opportunities to meet the author at the British Library on 14 April and at Swiss Cottage Library on 29 April. Or you can explore Londons First World War heritage at the Cityread Family Day at the Museum of London Docklands on 5 April.

From film screenings to writing workshops, there are hundreds of Cityread events taking place throughout April. Find one near you at www.cityreadlondon.org.uk/events, and tell us what you think on facebook/cityreadlondon and Twitter @cityreadlondon Cityread London 2014 was created by Stellar Libraries CIC and is delivered in partnership with all 33 London library services and HarperCollins Publishers. It is supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England.

My Dear I Wanted to Tell You

Every once in a while comes a novel that generates its own success, simply by being loved. Louisa Youngs My Dear I Wanted to Tell You inspires the kind of devotion among its readers not seen since David Nicholls One Day The Times Birdsong for the new millennium Tatler

Praise for

Full of drama, betrayal and addictive real-life detail Red Beautifully realised Daily Express This is a moving and powerful novel, one youre not likely to forget Choice

Also by Louisa Young

Ficton Baby Love Desiring Cairo Tree of Pearls Non-Fiction The Book of the Heart A Great Task of Happiness: The Life of Kathleen Scott coming soon The Heroes Welcome

read history at Cambridge University. She is the author of ten previous books. She lives in London with her daughter, with whom she co-wrote the bestselling Lionboy trilogy. www.louisayoung.co.uk

Author photo Rick Pushinsky

The Borough Press An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 7785 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2011 This edition 2014 1 Copyright Louisa Young 2011 Louisa Young asserts the moral right to be identied as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of ction. Some characters (or names) and incidents portrayed in it, while based on real historical gures, are the work of the authors imagination.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Find out more about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

LOU I S A YOU N G ISA I YOU NG My LOU Dear Wanted Excerpts from TellI You My to Dear Wanted to Tell You

Flanders, August 1917. Purefoy was walking to the clearing station for injured soldiers. Captain Fry saw him where the planks made a crossroads, by the ooded battleeld graveyard. Three wooden crosses rose grimly, like King Arthurs sword, from the strangely smooth water. One was crowned with a bleak skull. The rest of everything was mud and death and had been for weeks. Can you walk? Fry called. Fry was a dental surgeon in reality. Good man. Keep your head forward! Purefoy didnt hear him but it didnt matter. He knew he had to keep his head forward. The mud clung to his boots, weighing down every step, but his legs were strong and the way was obvious. Follow the duckboard planks west to the giant burnt tooth stump which was all that remained of the city of Ypres. Purefoy swung his arms. Inside his head was very hot, and he was thirsty. The disorder around him was no worse than the horror of yesterday or the day before; it was the
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same chaos. Flat slimy going. Mud of blood. Blood of mud. Oh yes. We are all poets here, he thought. He closed his eyes for a moment but inside his head was noisier even than outside, red and black, shooting. No-one spoke to him. He spoke to no-one. He didnt know which noises were real. Trudge on. He wanted to undo his tunic jacket but there was something on it, wet. Undo his tunic? Dear God, Captain, what are you thinking? Standards! In his tunic pocket were seventeen beautiful letters and Ainsworths prayer. There were ies all around. Im not for you yet, boyo. He wanted to shake them off but his head wouldnt shake. He wanted to wipe his face but his hand wouldnt go there. He wanted to swallow. He wasnt sure who had bandaged him but oh the beautiful sky. Courage for the big things, patience for the small. Trudge on. Through struggle to the stars Per ardua ad astra. His mind raced Struggle to the casualty
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station. The station. Victoria Station. Paddington Station, for Pewsey, for the Downs. Wild orchids tiny as bees. Tiny purple leopardskin bees. Lying among the eggs and bacon. No, theyre not called eggs and bacon really. The brain-clearingly clean air up there. And sheep-cropped grass, mossy and soft. Rabbit pellets. Tiny when youre lying down. Bit damp still, isnt it? Never mind, you can lie on my coat. Tiny little plants. Vetch. Her beautiful esh. And the glory of sliding in. Steady on, sir You need a hand there, sir? Trudge on. Something very dreadful happened today. What, more dreadful than every day? Hed heard somewhere that, as long as a man can mock himself, he knows he is sane. Ah well. Im still not mad then. Something to be grateful for. But I am walking through the valley of the Shadow of Death. Dont frighten the horses. Horses wallowing in sinkholes of mud. Half a horse up a tree, head shredded, legs as if it were rearing in empty air. A grisly fairground ride.
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And how does a rod and staff comfort me? Isnt a rod a staff? Or will Gods butler comfort me? Gods Barnes. The Barnes of God. Gods Mrs Barnes, come and take my coat. Will his housemaids give me tea and say, Never mind, Purefoy, sit down. Its not so bad. And the others. Sweet Jesus, the others. Sweet Jesus - the men, the boys, the lads. Yea, though I trudge. What had happened? Purefoy didnt know. He hadnt died. He might die yet. The great city of Ypres stood before him. It was craggy, empty, a vast, dark cavern. On its once-protective walls, sharp pieces of remnant masonry pointed upwards to God, like accusing ngers. One or two looked like they were shouting at the sky. * He stood for a while propped up against the make-shift wall by the canal, waiting his turn. There was a surprising little burst of clover,
12

just by his nose. It was growing from between some hulks of grey material. Concrete, waterlogged sandbag, baked mud? He didnt know which. The metal doors to the dugouts open and slam shut again. Open and slam shut again. A little further along, the gas gong goes. The noise seeps into Purefoys mind and lls in any gaps. The doors slam. He cant turn his head but he can tip it a little. He can see the graveyard, and the ambulance. Graveyard or ambulance? Ambulance or graveyard? He hears men shouting. He leans back and looks at the little burst of clover. Leans forward again. The doors clang open for him. He is propelled in, glanced at, labelled, sent out. Ambulance not graveyard. I was a soldier. Now I am the walking wounded. I am hardly in pain. Youd think I would be. You never know, do you? He was glad Nadine was in London. He wouldnt want her nursing him. *
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The bouncing and jolting of the ambulance made some of the men cry out in pain. Purefoy held on, trying to keep everything still. The driver was a girl. He stared at her. Her face was big and tight, with pink cheeks and pale eyebrows. There was pale down on her cheeks, and her mouth was small. She was smoking and talking to herself rmly under her breath, concentrating. He liked her. One of the men was saying: So he told me, he saw a hat, at on the mud. An Australian one, cavalry. And he didnt have an Australian one, so he reached out to get it, and he could reach it but he couldnt get it. So his mate pulled at it too and they realised, blimey, its still attached. Someones wearing it. So they got a rm grip and they pulled and got the fellas face out. And they wipe his face and hes alive. And they say, Hold on there mate, well get you out. And he says, Its not just me, boys, Im still on my horse. A young lad was crying. A dark tattooed man, with pus and gangrene seeping through the mermaid on his forearm, said:
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I heard that before. The rst man told the story again, exactly the same, word for word. Purefoy was unloaded from the ambulance and left to stare at the new scene. There were women in big white hats like windmills. There was mud still but it was dried out and it was not winning. It was being ignored. He waited. He was propelled into a tent. What a lovely great big canvas. He waited. * Somebody unwrapped the bit of eld bandage from around Purefoys face. He was still young. He still had his shorn black curls, handsome crooked nose, wide at cheeks, the eyes that girls like. Below these features, his tongue opped out, huge, straight down, unrestricted, unhindered by chin or jaw, to his collarbones. His mouth gaped. It was as empty as a house with its front wall bombed off, the interior smashed and open for all to see. At the
15

back of his mouth, his epiglottis dangled like a left-behind light-tting in the suddenly revealed back room. Someone photographed Purefoy. Above his lips, he looked mad and shocked like a erce barge convict ghting over a dispute at a lock, a fairground man, a boxer, a foreigner. Below, there is this ragged blossoming crater, gushing obscenely. They washed the void, and dressed it, and tied up what there was to tie. Someone made a hole in his tongue and threaded a wire through, with a block of wood hanging on the end. A cardboard label was taken from a drawer and pinned to his uniform: date of wound, destination, and instructions that he must be kept sitting up. They injected him with morphine and salt solution, marked an X on his forehead, and gave him a small card. He lled in the gaps with a short pencil. To: Nadine. Date: (He stared at that one. How could he possibly know? The nurse wrote it in for him.) August 21. Injury: He crossed out serious.
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He left the next one blank. Youre meant to put the truth, said the nurse, gently. He glanced up at her from under his hooded eyelids. I dare say, he didnt say. He signed: Riley Purefoy.

Bayswater, London, September 1917. Rileys eld card to Nadine arrived at Bayswater Road on a very warm morning. The butler, Barnes, brought it in to Jacqueline with breakfast. She read it, of course, and then put it down on her tray with annoyance. Why has he sent this to Nadine? Why not to his mother? Whats that, darling? Robert said from behind his Daily Chronicle. He said he read it for the reports from Russia but Jacqueline thought he was developing political sympathies. So far his interest in the war had been limited to irritation that people didnt want to listen to Schubert, because he was German. He thought it was obvious to anyone with ears that his music was
17

perfect for cheering everyone up. Lately, however, Robert had been growing excited. Perhaps communism might be a good thing? he had said. Well it might! Riley Purefoys been wounded, she said. Is he all right? Robert said. Well I shouldnt think so, darling, if hes been wounded, would you? Robert said nothing. Well, it doesnt say. Only that its slight. So I suppose it is. Hope he is all right, Robert said. It didnt occur to him to ask why or how the information had reached his wife, and for that she was glad. She would prefer him to have no opinions on the matter, because she had quite enough of her own. So many young girls and women old enough to know better were going quite mad, sex-mad. Not Nadine, of course. But. Well actually, Nadine might be sex-mad for all I know. She hasnt told me anything for months. But she is not going to be marrying Riley Purefoy. She needs help from her mother now to do the
18

right thing. If and when, dear Lord, this war ends, she must be emotionally safe. A womans safety depends on who she marries havent I and my mother proved that? Nadine is not going to become a war bride. She is not going to marry in haste and repent at leisure because of her wedding to a wounded, dashing nobody. Even if the wounded dashing nobody is Riley. She ate some toast, not even bothering to be sad about the ridiculous smallness of the piece of butter Mrs Briggs had given her, and looked at the paper. All bad. Dreadful. She turned the page. Damn! If his card has come here, does that mean Im going to have to write to Mrs Purefoy? Jacqueline decided to ignore the whole thing. It wasnt a bad wound. It wasnt her business. Of course darling, we all hope hes all right, she said. Subject closed. *
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A week later, a letter arrived from Mrs Purefoy. Dear Mrs Waveney, I do not know if you would have heard but Riley has been injured and is at the Queens Hospital in Sidcup, Kent. I am so grateful he is out of the way of further harm but, having not seen him yet, we dont know how bad it is. I wanted to let you know as you have meant so much to him in earlier years. Yours faithfully, Bethan Purefoy Jacqueline felt guilty a bit of a heel. But she still wasnt going to tell Nadine. She hadnt sent on the card, and she wouldnt send on the further news. It was her duty to protect her daughter from a very attractive boy in very dangerous times. The most unlikely girls were getting into trouble. Not everyone could be a free spirit. However, the butler, Barnes, noticed the arrival of the card. He noticed too that it was still there on Mrs Waveneys bed-side table ten days later.
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He had read it, feeling the usual icker of envy and resentment that Riley provoked in him. He noticed Mrs Purefoys letter too. His eyesight had not been good enough for the army but there was nothing wrong with it that day. Barnes had felt the changing of the times around his dull and steady life. He and Mrs Barnes had had some little conversations about it, discussed some possibilities, some of his dreams for later on, should circumstances allow, involving savings, the south coast, and a small bed and breakfast. And he felt quite strongly that these people shouldnt be allowed to get away with thinking they could run other peoples lives. On the eleventh day he slipped the card and the letter into his pocket, readdressed them over tea in the kitchen, and slipped them into the letterbox on the corner of Queensway.

The Queens Hospital, Sidcup, September 1917 Captain Purefoy was one of several arrivals that day, all of them underfed, exhausted,
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stinking and pus-faced. He was unravelled from his bandages and stripped and cleaned; the wholesale cleansing of both the man and the wound. Rinsing, sluicing and drainage, carbolic soap and clean pyjamas. The starting of the process of putting to rights. Packing, repacking. Tying and binding, temporary splint supports. Holding him together until impressions could be made for a more accurateand permanent repair. Discussions, plans, surgeons, doctors, nurses, orderlies, volunteers. The young man who had been part of the system of destruction now became the object of reconstruction. He who must destroy had become he who must be mended. * He wanted to swallow. He tried to move his swollen tongue. Theyd taken the bloody weight off it, thank Christ. But there was new stuff in his mouth. New alien stuff. It took a little effort to control the line of
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thought. He made the effort, and failed. He could hear that he gurgled when he breathed. He started coughing. Kind of coughing. There was always liquid, not saliva exactly, but a combination of whatever it was, and dried out by the antiseptic taste. It seemed best to go back to sleep. * He wanted to swallow. Coughed and gurgled. Pain, actually not much. But the wrongness. A lot of the sense of wrongness. He knew his head was wrong. What about the rest of him? Itch by his eye he scratched. Opened his eyes. Light, white, alarming. Closed again. Hospital, of course. Did I let them down? Scratched again. Hands were all right. He opened and closed his ngers, valuing them. Well. He ran an inventory. Hands, legs, arms, feet. Torso. Dick? He tightened the muscles that
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could make it bounce. Was it there? Have I not thought about this before? Is my brain shaken up? Yes, it was there. And would it still work? Ha ha. Self mockery. So he was sane. Ive had that thought before. What happened? I dont remember. What did I do? I dont remember. Did I let them down? * I didnt die. I suppose I should open my eyes. He didnt. * His mind and his thoughts were like a dangerous, sucking bog. The words emerged and sank again, stretching and pulling away. They meant
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nothing to him. He closed his eyes: the black and the scarlet, the shooting stars, the sunowers. Opened them: the blank white calm, the polite living people, the words mufed in glass. Closed them again. Plenty of rest, said the doctor. Keep him well fed. No visitors. This is where I am. He dreamed of shells lighting up the sky with reworks of stars, still looking beautiful, high and silent. Starry starry night. The starshells became the painting, and he was with Sir Alfred at the Grafton Galleries, and everyone was saying Oh no, oh no, oh no * A nurse woke him intelligent-looking, with a dry look and bony hands. Lunch, she said. Lovely egg ip. Sit up for me, would you? He sat up. She held his head, found the gap in his bandages,
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and washed out his mouth Do I have a mouth? with a big rubber syringe. She tipped the waste into a kidney basin, white enamel, white gauze I am fucking helpless here and wiped his what there was of a mouth. What is there? She cleaned him up. Tipped his head back I have a neck so he stared up at the ceiling, and poured the slop slowly, delicately, as best could be done from the spout of the drinking cup into the throat. Why am I being fed like a fucking baby? He coughed. Kind of. * Scraps came back to him. Not the battle, or the getting of the wound, but him on a train, smelling his own infection; tasting his own wound. The taste of his own dying esh in his own mouth. Throwing up, at a casualty clearing station, in ambulances, on trains, on a boat? Delirium separated by bouts of vomiting. How kindly everyone had tended to him. His head wrapped in bandages. The bloody weight hanging from
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his tongue to stop him swallowing it. Now he tasted of something drying, alcoholic. Dont you worry, old fellow, someone had said. Surgeon? Australian voice, or New Zealand. Well x you up. Youre in the right place, and youll be all right by the time weve done with you. He was all right. He had walked. He had, hadnt he? He had got through the mud a giant cowpat studded with corpses. He had stayed on the duckboards, past the trees gaunt, dead, black, burnt, wet stalagmites ... beyond a tank up-ended like a shipwreck, great stern up in the air, like a tufty duck on the Round Pond. Tufted duck, Mum said. Tufty duck, he insisted. Tufty duck, tufty duck. Lovely little tufty ducks, with their bright yellow eyes like the rings you stick on round the holes in a piece of le paper. All that he remembered. He remembered his name, and three wooden crosses upright in a pool of dirty water. There was something else. Oh, there was plenty else. He couldnt remember what had happened.
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He didnt know how he had been wounded. He didnt seem to be able to talk. Not dumb like shell shock. (Ofcers dont get hysterical. Theyre too dignied who had said that? Oh, Ainsworth.) It wasnt psychological all in his mind. He just didnt seem to have the equipment. * He dreamed he was making mayonnaise with Jacqueline Waveney. She didnt believe any Englishwoman could add the olive oil correctly. Drip, drip, drip, so as not to curdle the egg yolks. The yellowness turned into Sir Alfreds yellow oil paint. The swirl, the oil. And the sunowers of Van Gogh. In the old days they used egg yolks for a type of paint. Country egg-yolks for robust complexions; city egg-yolks for pale ladies and saints. Shed let Riley do the olive oil dripping. Found it funny that he was interested. What are you going to do when you grow up, Riley?
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Painter like Sir Alfred, hed said, and shed laughed. Or a cook? hed said. She laughed at that too. * Riley stared at the nurse to make her look at him. She looked. Handsome eyes, she thought. He lifted his arm and moved his hand in a writing motion, like an ofcer asking for the bill in a Parisian cafe. Pen and paper? she asked. He blinked. She was pleased. He wanted to talk to her. He wrote: I assume Im in hospital. I must be. I tasted the egg. It was real. And shes still here. You are, she said. The Queens Hospital in Sidcup. England!
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He wrote: Will I die? Of course, in the end, she said. But not of this. He liked her for that. He wrote: Thanks. Youre welcome, said Rose. He wrote: How long? Since you arrived? A week, she said, and she smiled, and said: Ill get the doctor. He can explain.

Chelsea, September 1917 The card, when it came. The news it brought. Those words that were not his. His words lling in the gaps. The card that he had touched. The
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fact of him on the same land as her. That he couldnt be hurt any more now, that he was here. And she could go to him It lled Nadine with a ooding energy, a magnetic, panicky feeling. And a sense of being hurled towards him: a physical propulsion. Reason left her mind. No thought at all, other than be with him. Sister recognised it, and granted her leave. One day, in a months time. Nadine had physically to restrain herself. Take it easy, said Jean. Hes in the best place. Hell be getting better all the time. Cant, said Nadine. Her breath was quick and tight all the time, and her knee ickered when she sat. So many still coming in from the battleelds of Belgium. She only had two hours off now on a Sunday. Kent and back in two hours? She was lled with mad uttering joy. He was safe and everything was possible again.

Sidcup, September 1917 A tall handsome man arrived, clean, healthy,

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tired. There was something of one who burned the midnight oil about him. And a medical coolness off which womens attempts at thanks slip and slide, and against which mens attempts to match up look ridiculous. Major Gillies, he said, introducing himself. Im your surgeon. I am here. Hospital. This is the reality. Hold it. Gillies. Gillies. Gillies. Remember that. How are you feeling, Captain? Riley thought about it. Not the slightest idea. He icked his eyes up. Do you know whats happened to you? Riley felt a tiny little snort in his nose. Youve lost quite a lot of your jaw to a gunshot wound, Captain, Gillies said. And were going to put you back together. Oh. Gunshot wound. Youd think youd remember that, wouldnt you? He wanted to ask more What happened? Did I ? But he didnt want to ask, as well. And no one can help being shot. The tall man was watching for a response.
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Riley had no response or no idea how to give it. Gillies continued: This is Tonks, and this is Marcus. The rst thing we need to do, is get a good look at you, see what were dealing with here. Marcus here is going to take some photographs, and later Tonks is going to draw you. Dont worry, hes quite talented. That way, we dont have to disturb you more than we need, so you can heal better. So were going to take a look at you now Riley had seen Tonks before. Sir Alfred knew him. Unmistakable man: like an eagle. He was often at exhibitions. He didnt like the Impressionist painters. With unutterable tenderness, the Major unpinned and unwrapped Rileys face, handing the bandages like streamers to the bony-handed nurse. Im so sorry but its not convenient, thought Riley. I have an appointment at two thirty in Buenos Aires. He lay there, while they uncovered his face. Medical words washed around him: mandible, messeter, ramus, coronoid process. They probed
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him gently: lifting, turning. Someone set up the great caravan of the camera with its hood, and its lights. Because you have had an infection, we have to let it heal up completely, Gillies was saying, before we can get to work remodelling you. I am no longer a man who does things, Riley thought. I am a man who things are done to. Major Gillies explained: Youre going to be here quite a while, but remember, youre not ill, youre wounded. When you feel up to it, take a stroll. Theres a library up at the house. The gardens are nice. Plenty of chaps about. Riley saw the gardens when the volunteer worker took him to Tonkss studio to be drawn. Plodding the wooden walkways, he saw the deep green wetness of the approaching English autumn. The shrubs dripping in the rain. The moss under the hedge. The collapsed browning stems of the summer owers. The deserted lawns. Tonks didnt show Riley the picture when it was done.
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