Now, God be Thanked

by John Masters

  He must think what to do next week. It was tempting to have a go at Swanwick’s pheasants … but Swanwick’s men had shot Prince, and put him, Probyn Gorse, in gaol. His score with Swanwick required more than a brace of pheasant to settle: it required a massacre like they had with the grouse up north, or like the new King went to in Norfolk, with the pheasants. His revenge required forethought and planning. It would be nice to give Swanwick his present at Christmas … but not this Christmas; it was too close. It would take time, and work, to make the keepers think he was going to do one thing, so that he would be free of them when he actually did something else, on the Day. And he would need outside help … old Henry Simmons perhaps? No, he needed people who weren’t poachers – people Skagg and his turds would not suspect. That would take time, a little trickery, maybe – and patience. Patience is a virtue, possess it if you can. He remembered Willum coming back from school, repeating that over and over again: said teacher had taught him, when urging him to keep on trying to learn to read. Patience, and then …

  He stopped. A blueish grey lurcher was coming down the footpath towards him. It limped badly, hardly letting its right front paw touch the ground. It had not seen him, or smelled him. The wind was blowing from it to him. He waited. It had no collar, looked to be about eight months old, wet, coat not brushed for a long time, hungry – you could see its ribs through the coat. He said softly, ‘Hullo, there … here.’ He held out his hand, half-crouching.

  The dog – it was a male – stopped dead, yelped with fear, and darted sideways off the path, trying to burst through the hedge: but the hedge was too thick and it struggled back on to the path. Probyn said sharply, ‘Stay!’ The lurcher stopped in its tracks … been trained, or started, at least, Probyn thought. ‘Heel!’ he snapped.

  The dog crouched lower to the ground, frightened. He thought, it’s been mistreated. It crawled towards him. ‘Good dog,’ he said. When it came within reach he patted its head gently, then pulled its ears. Looked like a Pointer-Springer-Labrador cross. Apart from that yelp, it had made no sound. It rolled over on its back, tail wagging … been taught not to make a noise – a poacher’s dog – not Budden’s or Simmons’s, he knew theirs … He took the foot and felt it, the dog whining very low. The shin bone had been fractured into the wrist joint. Perhaps it had been thrown out of a train – it had some bruises and cuts, and several patches of dried blood on its coat. But why? Some people couldn’t manage dogs, that was why.

  He opened the mouth of his sack and let the dog sniff inside. It leaped up and down whining louder now, saliva dripping from its jaws. ‘Starving,’ he muttered, ‘can’t catch anything with that bad leg … You come with me,’ he said, standing up, ‘and you’ll get something to eat – maybe a bit of that rabbit, eh? What’s your name? You don’t know? Well, you’re Duke, see, the Duke of Clarence. He was a bleeder, same as you’ve been bleeding … Heel!’

  The Duke of Clarence obediently fell in at his left heel and, limping along without a sound, followed Probyn home.

  Daily Telegraph, Saturday, November 14, 1914

  TURKEY’S WAR WITH THE TRIPLE ENTENTE

  Formal Declaration

  Amsterdam, Friday. A telegram from Constantinople received here from Berlin states that the Porte has published an Iradé containing Turkey’s declaration of war against the Allied Powers. The Iradé gives the history of the events before the war, and declares that part of the Russian fleet tried to lay mines outside the Bosphorus and committed other hostile acts against Turkey. Without replying to Turkey’s proposal that an enquiry should be held into these incidents, Russia, it is asserted, recalled her ambassador and opened hostilities. Great Britain and France also recalled their ambassadors. These Powers declared a state of war with the Ottoman Government and the Sultan consequently ordered a declaration of war, confident in the help of the Almighty. The Iradé is signed by all the Ministers. REUTERS.)

  Cate found it difficult to worry about the Sublime Porte and his actions when everyone was talking about the defeat the navy had suffered off the coast of Chile: and he himself worrying about the fate of his brother-in-law Tom Rowland. Tom had been in HMS Monmouth, reported to have been sunk with all hands … so he must be dead. He did not know Tom well – no one did – but he liked him; and would not give up hope.

  But the Turkish news was connected with Coronel, in a way; for they were both failures of the Royal Navy. When he had a moment he’d read the report on Coronel more carefully, and also try to find out the truth behind the Turkish declaration of war; for old Commander Quigley had told him just yesterday that if the Turks declared war it would be because the German cruisers Goeben and Breslau had been allowed to escape the whole length of the Mediterranean and find refuge at Constantinople, where their guns would be a powerful argument in persuading the Sultan, who had been sitting on the fence – like the Italians – to come down on the German side.

  The Commander had prophesied that admirals’ heads would roll for the escape of those two ships; and at Coronel one admiral had already gone, apparently … but where did the blame really lie?

  The house felt empty again, with Margaret gone – this time she’d said for good; or until Ireland was free. That would not happen until after the war, perhaps not at once then. Stella was working at Lady Blackwell’s Hospital in Hedlington, Laurence at school … waiting, growing … like the war. It was lonely here, and winter a slow time for farmers and landowners, except for the hunting. He might go to Godalming next weekend, watch a Charterhouse 2nd XI game, and go to chapel on Sunday, take Laurence out to lunch and try to console each other over the loss of their wife and mother. He might take Stella with him … but no, she was going to Wellington with her Grandfather Rowland, and young Johnny Merritt, to watch Guy play rugby.

  17 Wellington College, Berkshire: Saturday, November 21, 1914

  Guy Rowland stood in front of the mirror on the green painted partition in his room, brushing his hair. Five minutes to breakfast and he was feeling hungry. He always felt hungry for breakfast on the day of a match, whether it was cricket or rugby; and he ate as much as he could get. He was always hungry again by lunch, but ate little. The mirror was cracked and slightly discoloured and he stooped closer to make sure his parting was straight. To the right of the mirror, over his table, hung a reproduction of an oil painting showing a mass of white clouds, blue sky, a small gnat-like flying machine and, dim below, white cliffs: Bleriot crossing the English Channel – July 25th, 1909. Across the top of the picture was folded a silk square, blue and black striped; the square was folded so that the stripes ran vertically, to show that Guy had got his dormitory colours for cricket, first; though for two years now he had also had them for rugger. His blue-tasselled dormitory rugby cap hung from the top right corner of the picture frame, his brand-new school cap, black and gold, with a gold-thread tassel, hung from the top left corner. On the shallow peak of the cap was embroidered the figure ‘1914’; and above, a gold embroidered horseshoe, the crest of Guy’s dormitory, the Beresford. Beyond the table, a big window occupied most of the outer wall over the window bench, giving a wide view on to the Combermere quadrangle. The time fag chanted ‘Twenty-six past’ and booted feet scurried down the dormitory: that was the last call, the fag himself now hurrying downstairs on his way to the school dining-hall.

  More scurrying feet, these coming into the dormitory, stopping, coming on – a knock on his own door. ‘Come in,’ he said, and turned, ready to go.

  Dick Yeoman came in, pale and wide eyed. ‘Hullo, Dick,’ Guy said, ‘I’m off to breakfast. What’s up?’

  He noticed that Dick’s hands were trembling. Visits between dormitories were not allowed: and Dick was in the Lynedoch. He himself, being a dormitory prefect, should have ordered him out, perhaps reported him: but he was obviously in trouble, and that mattered more than the rule.

  ‘What’s up?’ he repeated, smiling.

  ‘I’m going to be sacked,’ Dick said, his voice cracking.

  ‘
What for?’

  Dick stared at him, looked down, and said, ‘You know.’

  Guy thought, I don’t know, but I can guess. He said, ‘Tell me, though.’

  ‘I was … tossing off in my room. With three others. Last night, after lights out. Fairway came in. He must have heard … or someone told him. He took us straight to tutor’s who said we’d go to the Master this morning.’

  Guy sat down on his narrow bed, indicating the chair with a wave of his hand. He gave up any hope of breakfast. ‘Go on.’

  ‘We’ve been. The Master sacked us … we’re not to leave till tomorrow morning, because they’ve got to find our shirts and socks and handkerchiefs in the Ma Hags’, but we’re supposed to stay in our rooms.’

  ‘Were the other boys your age?’

  ‘Two were. One was a squealer Dickinson brought in. Second term. I never touched him.’

  Guy said, ‘Do you like girls?’

  ‘I do, but I’m sort of afraid of them, Guy. They make me stutter …’ His face was deep red now, and his eyes firmly fixed on the strip of carpet … ‘I have always liked this … I mean, with other chaps … a boy at my prep school taught me. Have you – had a woman?’

  Guy shook his head, smiling. ‘No, but I’ve been in love – helplessly, hopelessly, with a village poacher’s granddaughter – when I was eight and she was ten. I took her behind a hedge and kissed her. She showed me how!’ He laughed. The breakfast bell was ringing, and he’d be absent. Oh, well…

  Dick said, ‘It’s my people … I think Mummy won’t mind too much, somehow. But Daddy! I can’t face him!’

  Guy thought a moment, then said, ‘Look, I’ll telephone him. I’m going out with my grandfather tonight, after the match, and I’ll call him from the hotel. You have a telephone at home?’

  Dick nodded … ‘Lyme Regis 43. What are you going to say?’

  Guy said, ‘What I’m saying now … I don’t think tossing off, even with other fellows, is so terrible. It’s only a question of who gets caught. I love Wellington, but I can’t pretend it’s a natural life here, or at any public school. I miss Virginia, my sister … touching her, hearing her voice … my mother’s even … the cook, the maid … You may find that you stop being afraid of women once you feel that you really are a man, not a boy.’

  ‘I’ll join up,’ Dick muttered. ‘Perhaps that will make my father feel better about me.’

  Guy said, ‘You’re only seventeen, Dick. It’s not the end of the world … What are you doing about food?’

  ‘They’re sending us food from Hall. We’re not to go down to meals.’

  ‘I’ll come and see you, as soon as I can … after chapel, probably.’

  ‘You’re a brick!’ Dick said, jumping up and wringing Guy’s hand. ‘And I haven’t congratulated you on your cap. Last Monday, wasn’t it?’

  Guy pointed at the oblong white card, with the embossed crest and the brief handwritten legend below: G. Rowland has been elected a member of the Wellington XV. 16th of November ’14, and signed by the captain of the school rugby team.

  ‘Now go along,’ Guy said. ‘I’ll come downstairs with you in case some officious Orange prefect tries to arrest you.’

  ‘You’ve missed breakfast!’

  ‘Not yet,’ Guy said. ‘I think I’m going to have had a severe bout of diarrhoea, and will beg to be fed … for the sake of the school, part of whose honour will be entrusted to me on Big Side this afternoon.’

  They started running together down the steel-edged steps, swinging fast, one-armed, round the steel stanchions at each half-landing, under the boards bearing the names of all previous Beresford school prefects, rugby caps, and cricket colours since the school’s foundation, as the nation’s memorial to the Iron Duke, fifty-five years before – the present disaster in no way able to affect their animal energy.

  School prefects who were not members of the XV gave up their places at the High Table when a match was being played at home, so that all the members of both teams could lunch there, sitting alternately, Wellington boys and visitors. Today the opponents were from Wokingham School, a public school rather smaller than Wellington, and a century or two older. Their team could have walked over without any undue exertion, for Wokingham’s Georgian buildings were barely four miles away across the Caesar’s Camp heath.

  Guy found himself seated between Grant-Meikle, the Wokingham fly-half, his own opposite number, and a squarebuilt boy of eighteen who must have weighed fourteen and a half stone, in spite of being no more than five-foot-nine; and whose build and determined but perhaps not over-intelligent look bespoke his place in the team – second row forward. They talked desultorily of their past games. Guy explained how he had regularly been tricked out of position by the fly-half of the 60th Rifles, whom they had played a few weeks ago … but the man had been a Cambridge blue, just joined the regiment. He ate sparingly, for he had succeeded, after some wheedling, in getting Gunn the dormitory man to serve him two helpings of eggs and bacon at breakfast. Now he ate a mouthful or two of the roast mutton and offered the rest to the Wokingham forward, who devoured it with thanks; and took a little pudding, and a glass of water, and that was all.

  Then, after sitting some time at the High Table when the rest of the school had left, they went to the changing rooms, each visitor accompanying his lunch companion to the latter’s dormitory changing room, for there were no separate facilities for the XV, or visiting teams. Guy chatted politely with Grant-Meikle while the latter stripped and put on the white shorts, green stockings, and green and white striped jersey of his school; and he himself the navy blue shorts, orange and black jersey, and – today for the first time – the orange and black stockings and the gold and black cap. Grant-Meikle donned his school’s tasselled cap, which they wore more on the top of the head than at Wellington, where it was customary to wear ordinary dormitory caps or football caps so far back that they could not be seen by anyone standing in front of the wearer. Lastly, they both put on white woollen sweaters, Guy’s with a huge Beresford horseshoe embroidered on the front; and, carrying their studded boots slung by the laces round their necks, joined other members of the two teams striding through the school cloisters, walked out of the Path of Duty gate, and past Turf and the great copper beeches, now leafless, on their way to Big Side.

  A large, burly man of about forty hurried by, wearing a clerical dog collar and pince-nez … ‘Good Luck, Rowland,’ he said as he passed, ‘and don’t give Grant-Meikle there a chance to kick. He’s a very good drop kicker.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Grant-Meikle said, taking off his cap as Guy negligently raised two fingers of his right hand a few inches.

  The clerical strode on, smiling. Grant-Meikle said, ‘Is he a Master? Is that all you do to them – raise a finger?’

  Guy said, ‘To assistant masters – we call them ushers – yes. To the Master, the headmaster, we take off our caps. That was the Reverend A. J. Fenn, who’s also the assistant rugby master. His nickname’s Sheddy.’

  The school was going down in a steady stream, boys in pairs and threes and sixes, all wearing the caps of their respective dormitories, here and there the swinging tassels of a rugby cap, mostly wearing overcoats against the raw cold of the November afternoon. The bare elms creaked to a slow west wind, and there had been a touch of frost, long gone, in the morning. The buildings of Wellington rose like a smaller Versailles out of the birch and pine of Bagshot Heath behind them. Guy began to experience a well-remembered tingling and tightening: half an hour to game time … punt about, practise drop kicking and passing co-ordination with the scrum-half and the three-quarters, then – battle! He remembered Rhodes’s words to him in the pavilion after the Yorkshire match … ‘Tha’s got to get on top, lad, right off … and not let go. Tha’s got to want to kill.’ He must try harder to live up to that advice … but it was difficult. Rugger was a game, after all, not a war.

  A diffident voice called him from the side of the path – ‘Rowland! … Guy!’


  He turned and recognized a familiar gangling form – ‘Ginger’ Keble Palmer, walking with another, burlier figure in an army officer’s uniform, single embroidered stars on his cuffs. ‘Ginger!’ he cried, then recognized the other as David Toledano, a rugby hero of his first year at Wellington, since capped for Oxford and tried for England. He remembered his guest and said, ‘This is Keble Palmer – he used to be here, and now designs aeroplanes for Mr Handley Page. I hope to go there, too, when the war’s over. And David Toledano … 2nd Lieutenant, isn’t it, sir?’

  ‘Good heavens, don’t call me “sir,” Guy … Yes, 2nd Lieutenant, Royal Field Artillery … not bright enough up here – ’ he tapped his head – ‘for the RFC.’

  Guy introduced Grant-Meikle, then they all walked on together.

  Toledano said, ‘I try to keep in touch with what Ginger’s doing, but it’s not so easy from Larkhill … but I’m still hoping that one day the three of us will found a firm that will make England the leader in the air as she is on the sea.’

  ‘Was,’ Grant-Meikle said. ‘Coronel was a bit of a shock.’

  ‘Someone told me you’d lost an uncle there, Guy,’ Toledano said. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘My family thought so for a time, but when we didn’t see his name in the casualty list, I got permission to telephone the Admiralty during class-room hours, and spoke to an officer I knew would know – Commander Arbuthnot. He said Uncle Tom had been transferred to HMS Penrith weeks before the battle. We’d had no letter from Uncle Tom, so we didn’t know. Penrith was at Coronel, but had no officer casualties, Commander Arbuthnot said.’

  ‘Good! We’d better cut along, Guy. Mind you beat those Wokingham rotters!’ Smiling, he held out his hand to Grant-Meikle and finished – ‘Have a good match!’