The Dust That Falls From Dreams

by Louis de Bernières

  ‘You could but you shouldn’t,’ said Myrtle in her best Canadian accent, ‘ ’cause it ain’t good English.’

  That evening they and the musicians dined on the rabbit that Henry Cowburn had bagged himself from the rough on the fifteenth. They agreed that the war would already have been lost but for rabbits, and afterwards the musicians played the famous andante by Vinteuil. It was soothing and sad. Mrs McCosh retired to bed feeling serene, not missing her own family one little bit.

  The following morning the elderly musicians convened in the conservatory, where they played Beethoven amongst the bromeliads and pelargoniums. Major Cowburn went to his office, where he intended to do as much work as possible in the morning so that he might be released to the golf course in the afternoon, and the ladies went for the first of the day’s promenades, firstly in Radnor Park, where they watched some girls playing tennis, and then to the cemetery, where Myrtle took her companion to visit the graves of her departed friends and acquaintances. She wiped her eyes at each, and told Mrs McCosh anecdotes about the occupants, all of which Mrs McCosh had heard many times before. ‘Just think, my dear, one day I shall be in here with them,’ she said, adding, ‘and on a beautiful day like this I don’t think I’d mind a bit. It’s such a nice place to rest in forever, don’t you think?’

  It was indeed a perfect day. Despite the war and its losses, shortages and inconveniences, it was impossible not to feel a little joyful.

  They lunched at the Grand Hotel where, because the sole alternative was whale meat, they had to eat rabbit again, spent the afternoon drifting amongst the shops, and stopped twice for tea and cake, laughing and chattering the whole time, even though the cake had almost no sugar in it, and was hardly up to scratch. Certainly, her own daughters would have been much astonished to see their mother in such a frivolous, light-hearted and girlish mood.

  It was at the second of these tea houses that an acquaintance of Mrs Henry Cowburn informed her in tones of breathless excitement that not only were Gosnold’s of Tontine Street selling fine lace at two shillings and three farthings a yard, but Stoke’s in the same street had a large supply of potatoes. ‘Oh, lace and potatoes,’ exclaimed Myrtle. ‘Goody-goody. How could one live without them?’ She turned to her friend. ‘Why don’t you go for a wander? There’s no point in both of us queuing for hours.’

  ‘There’s a little shop I’d like to visit in Dover Road,’ replied Mrs McCosh, who had never had to queue for vegetables in her life, and had no intention of starting now. ‘I’ll come and find you in half an hour and we can go to Gosnold’s together.’

  ‘I fear you might have to allow more than half an hour,’ said Myrtle. ‘The queues can become frightfully long. Luckily one always runs into friends, and it’s just like a party, but without the drinks and canapés, and with all sorts of delightful common people that one wouldn’t normally come across. It’s quite a leveller, I do declare.’

  The friends separated, and Myrtle almost skipped to Stoke’s grocery shop, where she found a large, patient queue that included children playing football, babes in arms, dogs and even horses. There were very few young men, but plenty of elderly ones, all of them engaged in discussing how lovely the weather was, and saying how well it boded for Whitsun.

  A series of explosions began in the near distance, coming ever nearer, and people reassured themselves that it was the Canadian soldiers getting into practice with their gunnery.

  The twenty gigantic Gothas had set off with the intention of bombing London, but had been foiled by dense cloud. Although crudely built, they were magnificently invulnerable because they could fly higher than any Allied aircraft, and had a gun port in the rear that faced downwards so that it was impossible to attack them safely from below as one did with any other kind of bomber. None of the aircraft sent up against them were able to get within three thousand feet.

  They were flying in diamond formation so as to maximise mutual defence, and intended to break it only to circle as they released their bombs. Their crews were brave and patriotic young men who loved the way that their engines sang, and deceived themselves into thinking that they were achieving military objectives when they had no very clear idea of what was beneath them and no way of accurately aiming their bombs. The Kaiser had in any case decreed that it was legitimate to bomb civilians because this reinvention of total war would demoralise the population and so bring about an earlier peace, which is what any civilised person would want. The thought did not occur to him that this might provoke the British to retaliate in kind. As he greatly valued Kultur, he magnanimously forbade his bombers to attack ancient monuments, and as he valued his family he sentimentally forbade any attacks on the property of the royal family.

  Frustrated by the failure to attack London, the twenty bombers turned for home, and followed the railway line to the Cinque Ports. They killed a sheep at Marden, another one at Mersham, and an eighteen-year-old girl at Ashford. A dud landed in an open grave at Belsingham, and eighteen Canadian soldiers perished at Shorncliffe Camp. They killed a middle-aged man in his garden in Cheriton, Dorothy Bergin, who was sixteen, and Francis Considine, who was five.

  Myrtle thought the bombers looked beautiful as they circled above her. The sun was sparkling off their white wings, and everyone in the potato queue was craning their neck upwards and pointing, confident that the planes were theirs. They still thought that the explosions were from the training camp, even though they were now coming from the West End, and Radnor Park and Bouverie Road.

  Myrtle watched a single bomb fall from one of the Gothas, the tiny black speck growing ever larger. She clutched her bag to her chest and held her breath as she and forty-four others were annihilated instantaneously, and seventeen more began their agonising and indecent journey into death.

  Mrs McCosh had been watching the bombers like everyone else, thinking how pretty they were, and had not tried to take shelter. It was 6.22 when she saw the black speck leaving the Gotha, heard the crash of the explosion, and saw the column of debris and smoke rising up into the air over Tontine Street.

  Carefully she put her bags and her shopping down in a doorway, and for the first time in many years began to sprint, shouting, ‘Myrtle! Myrtle!’ as she rushed round the corner from Dover Street.

  What she beheld stopped her in her flight, and she walked slowly into the killing ground. A great sheet of flame from a gas main rose into the air with a whoosh, like the finishing touch to a portrait of Hell. There was a stink of blood and flame and explosive.

  Mrs McCosh searched amongst the carnage. She pushed aside the rubble and severed limbs with her feet, peered beneath the mangled bodies of horses and into the tangled heaps of the dead. There was a woman, recently in pursuit of lace in Gosnold’s, with blood pouring from wounds in her head as she attempted first aid on those still living. Three of the dead lay in a cart, and there were many to whom humiliation had been added to obliteration because their clothes had been blown from their bodies.

  Mrs McCosh tried to ignore the disassembled corpses of all the little children, because to have done otherwise would have been more than she could have borne. But then her gaze fell on the golden curls of Florence Norris, whose severed head lay gazing up at her from the step of the Brewery Tap in a puddle of blood. She was two years old. Tears came to Mrs McCosh’s eyes, and she bit her lip in rage and pity.

  She found some bits and pieces that she thought might have belonged to Myrtle and gathered them in a heap.

  The Canadian Red Cross ambulance arrived, then the firemen and the police, and she helped them wrap the limbs up in blankets for transportation to the hospital, and then, dishevelled, exhausted, weeping and drenched in blood, she went to fetch her bags, which had remained undisturbed on the doorstep where she had left them.

  On the way back to Tontine Street she encountered Major Cowburn, who had been striding down Dover Street to see if he could be of any assistance. He had been enraged by a bomb that had left a large crater on his beloved golf course,
and was wondering if Myrtle would allow him to re-enlist, if the army would accept a man who was too old, and always running for the lavatory.

  He stopped suddenly in his tracks when he came face-to-face with Mrs McCosh, who was drenched in blood. ‘Oh my dear,’ he said.

  Mrs McCosh put down her bags and silently clutched him, laying her head on his chest. He patted her back in embarrassment. She had about her the familiar smell of war. He murmured something inane that seemed to be all he could come up with.

  Eventually Mrs McCosh managed to calm herself a little, and drew back slightly.

  ‘Oh, Henry, I am so sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry? Sorry?’

  ‘I did my best, I really did. I looked everywhere, but I just couldn’t find it. I tried so hard, I did Henry. She was so pretty, oh, Henry, she was so pretty.’

  ‘I am sure you did,’ said Major Cowburn, realising that he would have to bide his time.

  No one found it, and so it was that in Cheriton Cemetery on 30 May, amongst dozens of others, a coffin was lowered into the ground containing what were probably the torso and limbs of Mrs Henry Cowburn, without her head.

  45

  The Metamorphosis of Mrs McCosh (2)

  Windsor Castle

  15 June

  Dear Mrs McCosh,

  His Majesty graciously requests that I should thank you for your kind letter of 5 June.

  It is indeed true that there are no regiments of women on armed active service, although there are of course many women playing important roles as, for example, the drivers of fire engines and ambulances.

  His Majesty asks me to remind you that he has no direct control over Parliament or over the Ministry of War, and that the issue as to whether or not women may go on active service is a matter for them.

  His Majesty feels that even were there such units of women on active service, you may yourself be of too mature an age to endure the rigours of battle, and he therefore recommends that you consider preparing yourself for any invasion that may occur in the unlikely event of defeat on the Continent.

  If you have friends in the country you might like to consider a visit sufficiently long to learn the use of a hunting rifle and shotgun from one of the gamekeepers or the man of the house.

  In the meantime you may consider the acquisition of an air rifle, which may safely be used in the garden, and which would provide invaluable preparation for the mastery of a more powerful weapon. With an air rifle you will be able to practise on rats and pigeons those arts which would become most useful were the war to come to Eltham, since the elementary skills employed in the accurate use of an air rifle are identical to those required in the use of a Lee–Enfield, just as an air pistol would provide admirable apprenticeship in the use of a revolver. His Majesty advises that shooting with a rifle is at its most accurate when performed from the prone position.

  His Majesty offers his sympathy over the loss of your dear friend in the recent atrocity in Folkestone, and asks me to convey his admiration for your determination to use this loss as further inspiration for patriotic action. As you have not been in touch for several months recently, he asks me to inform you that he is pleased to find you are still vigorous.

  On behalf of His Majesty,

  Lt Col. Sir Frederick Edward Grey Ponsonby, Secretary to His Majesty

  46

  The Metamorphosis of Mrs McCosh (3)

  Mrs McCosh took a morning out to go to Swan & Edgar, reluctantly making the journey by omnibus. As she entered its doors she made it immediately clear that she was not just another tabby by collaring a shop walker. ‘I wish to be taken immediately to whichever department it is where I may be able to acquire an air rifle,’ she said.

  The walker was not unduly surprised by this, since there has always been a certain type of Englishwoman who is prepared to brain a burglar with a poker or take potshots at an invader with an airgun, and in wartime the number of them greatly increases.

  An hour later, having tried out everything they had, and listened to many lengthy technical explanations, she had bought a Brittannia, a strange-looking weapon because it had the compression chamber under the stock. It was, however, powerful and accurate, and you could adjust the compression so that you could use it on half power, for greater safety in confined spaces. She had also bought a supply of fifty targets, one thousand pellets and a metal target holder.

  She wrote out her cheque and dictated her address so that the items might be delivered, and then she went to the toy department and purchased ten painted lead soldiers that together proved to be surprisingly heavy. There were no models of contemporary German soldiers, so she bought Napoleonic infantrymen on the grounds that an old enemy was better than none, Entente Cordiale and present alliance notwithstanding.

  Two days afterwards Mrs McCosh walked boldly into the clubhouse of the Blackheath Golf Club. Her husband, who was supposed to be conducting business in London, was fortunate to spot her as she came to the door, and darted out of the back of the building, concealing himself behind an artisan’s shed.

  She addressed the assembled elderly gentlemen who had until that moment been tapping the dottle out of their pipes, reading the Morning Post or Punch, or idly watching the putting on the green outside.

  ‘Are there any old soldiers here?’ she demanded.

  Thus it was that Major Butterworth, fifty-five years old, veteran of the Sudan and former regimental shooting champion, found himself in the garden of The Grampians supervising Mrs McCosh’s education, with Mrs Pendennis knitting in a deckchair nearby, for the sake of probity.

  Mrs McCosh lay on a tartan rug and learned to shoot in the prone position, then she learned to shoot kneeling, and then from behind a wall, and then standing. She quite undeniably had a knack for it, achieving tight groups at the upper edge of the bullseye almost every time. Major Butterworth regretted never having met her when he was younger, before Hamilton McCosh had snapped her up. He very much enjoyed their lessons, and acquired an air rifle of his own, setting up a shooting range on the upper landing of his house, much to the dismay of his housekeeper. He cut out pictures of the Kaiser and of liberal politicians from newspapers, glued them to pieces of card, pinned them to a large wooden board, and took pleasure in obliterating their heads every day for a quarter of an hour after breakfast. This catharsis greatly increased his personal happiness, and the happiness greatly improved his golf.

  When Rosie next came home she found no one in the house to answer the door, and so she went round into the garden and stood and watched in wonder as her mother, one by one, knocked ten Napoleonic lead soldiers off a packing case from a distance of twenty yards, attended by Millicent, who was bearing the tin of pellets.

  A week later Mrs McCosh was upstairs when she heard the unmistakable clattering of wood pigeons as they mated in the tree outside the landing window, which had been opened on account of the warmth of the day. She had always strongly disapproved of the shameless public promiscuity of pigeons.

  Ten minutes later she appeared in the kitchen below stairs and laid a dead bird on the table, the scarlet blood still purling at its beak. ‘Please remove the breasts from this bird,’ she instructed Cookie, ‘and put the rest in the stockpot. I will have the breasts sliced and fried with onions and bacon for lunch tomorrow, when I shall be dining on my own.’

  ‘Yes, madam,’ replied Cookie. ‘Without it being hung at all?’

  ‘I have never acquired the taste for rotten meat,’ said Mrs McCosh with grandeur.

  After she had gone, Cookie looked at the beautiful bird and said, ‘Poor little sod.’ Then she began to pluck it, still warm in her hands, because a warm bird is easier to pluck by a long mile.

  At about teatime it occurred to Cookie that there may be a further use for Mrs McCosh’s marksmanship, and accordingly she went to her and said, ‘Madam, did you know that since we’ve had chickens, ’cause of the war an’ all, we’ve had rats something chronic down the orchard? They’re nicking the scraps. I thoug
ht you might like to, you know…’

  ‘Deal with them? Certainly, Cookie. I shall imagine they’re the Boche.’

  Mrs McCosh soon learned the art of sitting extremely still, partially concealed behind an apple tree, and then she learned the hard way not to shoot at rats when a chicken was in the same field of fire.

  A few nights later the air-raid maroon went off, and the immense engines of a Zeppelin were heard overhead. The air filled with the strong, aromatic odour of their kerosene. Mrs McCosh hustled the servants from their top-floor rooms down into the kitchen. Her husband announced his intention to die comfortably in his own bed, and refused to leave it.

  Mrs McCosh found her air rifle and her tin of pellets, and went out onto the terrace that had been a conservatory before its conversion by a bomb. She beheld the airship above, caught in searchlights. It was quite inconceivably vast, and seemed to fill the whole sky from one side to the other. She stood still for a minute, awestruck. It was outrageous that this leviathan could come so far and rain bombs on the innocent, but, equally, it was a very beautiful sight, majestic, effulgent in the cross lights. The night fighters were up, their engines buzzing and clattering in harmony with the roar of the Zeppelin. Because the night fighters had arrived, the anti-aircraft batteries fell silent.

  Mrs McCosh loaded her air rifle and shot at the Zeppelin. She knew that the pellets would fall thousands of feet short, and wished she had a real weapon, but she shot at the airship because this was the best she could do for Myrtle Cowburn, the best she could do to assuage her unassuageable hatred and indignation. When the airship had sailed sedately away and the bugle was blown for the all-clear, she went to the kitchen and told the servants to return to their beds.

  In the morning she read that the Zeppelin had been shot down in flames near Enfield, and in the withdrawing room she danced triumphantly to the inaudible music of joy with her bemused husband, before allowing him to go to work.