“Did you find the goddess?” she asked.
“Yes, she was at home. She sends her regards. She was pleased to see me and complimented me on the removal of my moustache.”
“Moustache?” Letty peered at him. “Oh, yes. So you have! Shaved it off, I mean. Yes, an improvement, I agree. Didn’t much care for the Douglas Fairbanks look. Here, put your shirt on, William, or you’ll catch your death! You’re cold to the bones and shivering. You were a long time in the water. What were you doing?”
“Oh, poking about. I found that someone’s been doing a bit of minor engineering. Nothing much…a stone channel has been fitted into the head of the spring—to make it jet out in a more dramatic fashion from the rock face, I suppose. And pushed down the side of the channel, and still dry, was this.”
He dragged a small shining object from his back pocket and held it out to her. As she studied it in stunned silence, he talked on. “Have you ever thrown a coin into a fountain? For good luck? Old Celtic custom. The Celts often placed spells, requests, invocations to their gods in holy places like this, especially where there’s water present in some dramatic form. Carved on stone, bits of slate, even sheets of lead. You know the sort of thing: ‘How about a bit of help with the rheumatism? Don’t let me die in childbirth like my two sisters. May all the ewes produce twins this year.’” He looked at her steadily. “‘This is the image of my chosen one. Let her love me’?”
Letty stared at the photograph in its silver frame.
“I’d say the chap was deadly serious, wouldn’t you, Letty? As though his personal charms and his vast estates were not enough to do the trick, d’Aubec’s calling up a little divine intervention. He means to have you for his nefarious purposes.”
“Don’t be so pompous! It wouldn’t have occurred to you that he might just be a young lad in love?” She took the photograph from him. “This is very touching. A human side of d’Aubec? He was trying out his new camera…he’s got one of those tiny Leicas…He asked me to stand in the courtyard where the light was good—I’d no idea I was about to be offered up to the goddess. What a cheek!” Her wondering smile belied her words.
“Well, it clears one thing up. He put you to stand in front of the stables, dead centre, I’d guess. But if you’ll stop staring at yourself for a moment and look at the extremes of the photo. There—on either side of the building. Do you see the hills?”
She glanced up at the bulk of the mound behind them. “The stables are right there. In line with us.”
“Yes. If you were to demolish them, you’d see the same contour we’re looking at now. More or less. Not quite. From down here, can you see the river that passes between the two hills on the left? No, you can’t. But it’s there on the fresco all right. I think this place is right for direction but wrong for elevation. The place where we were intended to be standing, the viewpoint, is no longer visible. It’s up there, obscured by the stable block.”
“Just what Epona’s been telling us all along.”
“Interesting. But nothing further we can do about it this evening, I think.”
Gunning settled back on the grass at her side, put his arms under his head, and closed his eyes with a sigh of satisfaction. Free from his sceptical and censorious glare, she dared to study his face, relaxed for the first time—in her company at least—his mouth narrowed in a half-smile. She reached over and gently ran a finger over his top lip. With its bristling defence removed, the skin below was smooth and she noticed now, evenly tanned like the rest of his face. He must have shaved it off on their arrival in France.
“I’m sorry I didn’t notice, William. And Domina Luci was right—it does suit you!”
His half-smile became a full one. He turned his head and gently bit her finger.
She snatched back her hand, surprised by her own over-intimate gesture, and wondered whether she should apologise. A contented wuffling sound from deep in his throat suggested that perhaps this was not necessary, and she took up again her covert inspection. Had she missed other obvious changes? Mme. Huleux’s cooking had continued the good work begun in Cambridge, and his skin-and-bone frame, though it would never be robust, was now slender and elegant.
“Keep your hands and your lecherous thoughts off the Goddess’s Chosen One, Talbot,” he advised. “She might fly into a jealous rage and turn you into something small and disgusting. I don’t want to have to take you back to Sir Richard in a cardboard box.”
Letty laughed. “What risks I run! This is a dashed dangerous place!” She picked up his clerical collar and handed it to him. “Here, put this back on. I could never lay wanton hands on a man having this to protect his virtue. It’s just as well you’re a Man of God, William, now you’re getting so handsome.”
He half opened his eyes and looked at her in amusement. “But I’m no such thing, Letty. Hadn’t you realised?”
“What? Not handsome? Oh, come on—you’re too modest—”
“No! I’m not a Man of God.”
CHAPTER 29
For a moment she was silent, trying to gauge his mood. Serious or playful? Flirtatious or menacing?
“Well, I’ve witnessed you blaspheming, drinking, left-hooking a lord, making lewd comments to an innocent young girl—me, of course!—and communing with a pagan goddess, so, yes, I suppose I have to take your declaration seriously. Tell me—how long has this been going on? And did you confide your faithless condition to my father when he interviewed you?”
“No. He never questioned it. So I didn’t raise the matter.”
“Then I add deception to my list. Oh, and gluttony!”
“Add what you like. My charge sheet is already full. And full with much more serious sins than any you can come up with.” His voice had lost its lightness and she heard again the tormented Gunning of their early days.
On impulse, she took hold of his hand and spoke quietly. “What happened to you, William?”
He turned away, unable to speak.
Letty ventured her best guess: “Many men lost their faith on the battlefield. You are not alone.”
Into his continued silence: “Throw off the shroud of the war, William! It blankets your senses. It suffocates you,” she said. Esmé would have condemned the edge of impatience in her voice.
He still could not respond.
She tried again, a more direct challenge: “Did you kill a man, William? The epaulette from a German uniform that you carry around with you—I had wondered. Just the kind of dreadful memento a sensitive man might take away from the battlefield to torment himself with evermore.”
At last a glance towards her. “No. I killed no one. The man who wore it is alive and well. He is my dearest, perhaps my only, friend.”
She did not interrupt this halting beginning. Instinctively, she closed her eyes like a child preparing to hear a story.
“I answered a call for help…” He paused and started again. “A call which I ought to have ignored. It was November. Last of the battles of the Somme. It had been raining for a month and we were attempting to advance over clay soil south of the Ancre River. I went out with a stretcher party. Some of our chaps had gone out in a raid over No-Man’s-Land to the nearest German positions to grab a prisoner or two…we badly needed to wring some information out of them about the timing of the next assault…We had no idea they were mounting the same sort of operation from their side. What a mess. The two groups clashed horribly in No-Man’s-Land. Those who could retreat did, but there were several men, including officers in possession of valuable information, left wounded in the middle. Dangerous to leave them to the opposition. Off we went, two stretcher parties and me in support, an hour or two before dawn to sweep them up. The last clue we’d had about position was the glare of the Very lights the Boche had sent up when it all broke loose. There was a half-moon, but covered by scudding clouds and not much use to us.
“Skirting our way around the water-filled shell holes, I heard a voice calling for help. In German. I started towards it. ‘Leave it
off, Padre!’ I was told. ‘Not one of our lads.’ I went anyway. Letty, do you know what ‘Anzac Soup’ is?”
“Yes, I do. A shell hole filled with water, mud, dead horses…probably worse.”
“The voice was coming from such a stinking pit. A German officer, judging by the peaked field cap, was stuck, up to his armpits and sinking. In a flash of moonlight he identified my outline and called to me in English. ‘I say, old man, would you mind awfully extending a hand? Rather a long one, if you can provide.’
“As I peeled off my greatcoat I continued in the same mad conversational tone. ‘Good Lord, man! How’d you manage to get yourself into such a pickle?’
“‘Attempting to extricate a fellow officer from this quagmire, so, if you’re minded to mount a rescue operation—have a care!’
“‘A fellow officer? Where is he?’
“‘I’m afraid I’m standing on him. He appears, involuntarily, poor sod, to be now preserving my life. For a few more minutes, at least.’
“Holding firmly to the tails of my coat, I threw it out as far as I could over the soup. He made a grab for it and seized it by a flapping epaulette. I pulled, but the epaulette came away in his hand. He waved it at me as he sank another inch and laughed. ‘Bloody awful English tailoring!’
“They were all proud of their own smart feldgrau loden!” He smiled. “I hauled the coat back and tried again. This time he grabbed the collar and, bit by bit, I reeled him in. There was just enough moonlight to get a look at each other close-up, and we stared in disbelief. Like me, he was unarmed; like me, he wore a cross around his neck. The belt of his field tunic carried the words Gott mit Uns. I was looking at my opposite number. The man was a German priest. He hunted about round the edge of the crater for the greatcoat he’d thrown off to facilitate his rescue attempt and put it about his shoulders. He was cold, wet, shocked, and at a low ebb. His attempts at cheeriness were, I thought, the last throw of the dice for him. We sat down, huddled together in the dry overcoat, in barely adequate shelter in the scrape of a shell hole and, in cupped hands, shared the last of my cigarettes and the emergency rum ration I carried. We talked away the rest of the night. He was—is—a scholar, a theologian and linguist. A Berliner, he’d spent some years in England researching his subject. He was rather dismissive of English religious scholarship. ‘If we ever get out of this, my friend,’ he said, ‘I want you to come to Berlin and look me up. I will re-educate you! I will show you wonders!’
“Those moments of sanity and friendship were the only light in that black hell. And it was a human light. It owed nothing to a divine presence. Oh, we could quote chapter and verse of the Scriptures at each other in several languages, we could argue the finer points of theology, we could name our saints in order of merit—but when we looked about us, where was the supposed centre of all this? The Spirit that had moulded our lives? The Being whose name was on our lips and in our minds? Where was God? In that waste-howling wilderness not even Satan was present.
“Satan! I think if we’d caught sight of Milton’s Fallen Angel striding about this Gustave Doré landscape—
“A dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades…
“—we’d have greeted him as a fellow soul in torment. We’d have spoken his language. But neither God nor Lucifer was there. And they hadn’t fled the field—they’d never been there. The awful thought came to me that we were on our own and always had been. It was in that moment my faith began to crack and crumple. With the first streak of dawn we decided to make a run for it—in opposite directions. Before we parted, he took out his knife and cut off the epaulette from his overcoat and handed it to me. I hadn’t noticed that he was still clutching mine in his left hand.”
“But you finished the war still a priest? The military cross was awarded to the Reverend Gunning, wasn’t it?”
“I went through the motions. Like those wretched caterpillars that are paralysed and eaten away by parasites from the inside, nothing can be guessed from the outer shell. No one was aware of the inner void. You have been closer to me than anyone, Letty, over this last bit, and I don’t think you noticed. In any case—no one was looking with much attention. I’m afraid we Anglicans were mostly despised by the troops—too many of us happy to dig in, in safe positions well behind the lines. We were not respected. You’ve probably heard the awful gaffe made by a chaplain addressing men bound for the front? ‘Well, God go with you, chaps! I shall be back here at base if you need me.’ True? I don’t know, but it truly expressed the soldiers’ verdict on the C of E priesthood. Now—the Catholic padres—they were a different kettle of fish. Many of them were—or had been—monks. Benedictine monks. Tough men! They seemed always to track the grief. They were up at the front line, they were back in the dressing stations, riding horses, driving ambulances…esteemed, listened to, sought after…they were there on the spot when they were needed. And they appeared to have more to offer than a slap on the back, a hearty bellow, and a squashed Woodbine.”
“But what tipped you over the edge, William?”
“The final realisation came very easily, after months of mental turmoil. Oh, it wasn’t one of the more dramatic scenes—the ones that have become fossilised into cliché: holding a man’s stomach closed over his spilling entrails, looking into the still-living eye of a youngster whose limbs have been shot off, singing Sunday School hymns all night long with a quivering kid who was about to be shot by a firing squad of his own mates at dawn…No—I was just talking quietly to a dying soldier on the field. One of dozens that day. We both knew there was no point in trying to get him back to the trench. I suggested that in his last moments we called on God for grace. ‘Oh, that won’t be necessary, Padre,’ he said calmly. ‘There’s no kindness to be had in that quarter. But you’re here. I’m with a fellow man at the end. That’s all the comfort I need.’ He took my hand and held it until he died. Days later I put my left foot on something ghastly. Invalided out, and shortly after that the whole bloody business groaned to a halt.”
“A double loss. You must have been bereft when you left the hospital?”
“The physical damage was easy enough to repair. By the end of the war, the surgeons had grown very skilled and resourceful. The spiritual loss? Well, that was like throwing off a burden. Though I had thought it soldered to my soul, I found the strength to jettison the dead grey weight of it. I felt renewed, energetic again, intoxicated. I set off into Europe to test out my new foot and my new freedom.” His voice took on a distance and a chill. “You would not understand or condone my subsequent way of life.”
She was saddened by his revelation, but Letty had no intention of allowing him to drag her down into his self-pity. “Pretty rackety existence, eh? Rattling around Europe free from divine supervision, I expect you got up to all sorts of mischief. I can imagine.”
He gave her a pale smile. “I do hope you can’t.”
As he spoke, his face, lined with bitterness and self-loathing, conveyed all the suffering of all young men thrust, unwilling, into that obscenity. And still, years after the war, he was walking around, an open wound, incapable of healing. And what was a woman to do but offer whatever balm came to hand? It was her mother’s long-forgotten childish endearments, murmured in soft French, that came to her lips as she bent and gathered him into her arms, cheek against his, rocking him gently.
One moment, he was reaching for her, clinging to her, his head drooping heavily onto her shoulder, the next, with a suddenness that alarmed her, he had raised his head and pushed her away, eyes sweeping the thickets on the perimeter of the glade.
“Ssh! There’s something…somebody…moving about over there. Do you hear it?”
“No, William. No, I don’t.”
He remained tense, on the alert.
“It’s al
l right, William,” she said, finally. “You can stand down and stop scanning the horizon in that stagey way. Calm yourself! My impulse towards you was no more than a misplaced maternal gesture intended to comfort and soothe. Nothing more challenging than that.”
He replied, not taking his eyes off the distant trees. “Dash it! And for a moment I thought you were about to make the Ultimate Sacrifice.”
Regretting her sympathetic overture and not much liking Gunning’s swift return to self-parody, she replied crisply: “Time to go home, I think. Here, put this back where you found it, will you?” She handed him the photograph. “Too embarrassing for Edmond if he found out that his touching gesture had been discovered.”
“And, if it comes to being discovered, it may seem a bit melodramatic, but I don’t think we should be seen driving back together. I’ll drop you on the corner by the Haras where I picked you up.”
They were a mile short of the town when, negotiating a bend, Gunning exclaimed and pulled the car over onto the verge of the road to avoid an oncoming cyclist. Pedalling demurely towards them, basket full of vegetables from the garden, came Marie-Louise. She wobbled to a halt and put a foot down, looking from one to the other in surprise. Taking in their dishevelled appearance, her surprise turned to chilly disapproval. “Hello, there. Enjoying the evening air, I see?”
“Wonderful! I’ve been visiting the count’s horse. He’s gone off to Lyon—with his groom—leaving Dido in the low pasture. She’s jolly nearly fully healed, you know, and I said I’d keep an eye on her, take her on a gentle circuit or two of the field each evening to keep her in shape. They keep a field bridle handily on the wall by the gate…” She hesitated as Gunning’s foot crunched down on her toe and finished hurriedly, “But it’s an awful bother getting out there and the Reverend kindly offered to drive me over.”
Bright Hair About the Bone Page 28