The Path Through the Trees

by Christopher Milne

  We had been warned to expect it, and now here it came: men carrying rifles, men dragging Bren guns, half walking, half running, hurrying up the hillside. We could hear them panting, see their grim faces as they came hurrying and stumbling by. Then they dropped to the ground, while another group came up and passed them. Thus they moved up the hillside, taking it in turns, one group hurrying forward while the other group lay on the ground ready to give covering fire. At the top of the hill was a gate on to a road. They had to go through this gateway, and they did it as they had been taught, fanning out, slipping through one at a time, careful not to bunch. And so they passed out of sight . . . but not out of memory. Shortly after they had disappeared the German ‘defensive fire’ came down all around us, and it was very heavy indeed. Later I helped some of the wounded back. Had they achieved their objective? I don’t know. But I do know that every objective that the infantry was ever set had always to be paid for: that of those who set out in the evening not all would have breakfast the following morning. The question was not: ‘Should a price have been paid?’ but: ‘Was the price too high?’ With the Engineers it was never like this. If we paid it was with sweat, not blood. Blood was never part of our bargain, for our objectives could not be achieved – our bridges not be built, our roads not be cleared – if we got ourselves killed. It was our duty to stay alive; theirs, not ours, to die. Loose coins in a pocket, they were, loose change. How much? One Lieutenant, two Corporals and ten men? Fair enough. Quite cheap, considering.

  Let no one ever recall his exciting, his heroic or his funny adventures in the war, without remembering the Infantry. There is nothing exciting, nothing heroic, nothing funny about struggling up a hillside lugging a Bren and then getting yourself killed as you reach the top.

  My other memory is of four Spitfires. They came in a line, flew over our heads, wheeled to the left and then, one at a time, dived and dropped their bomb. Up they came, one at a time, surfacing; and now they were in a circle, flying round, and each, as it came again to the target, dived. They had dropped their only bomb; so now they fired their machine guns. Four identical planes flying round and round, but with one great difference. The leader when he dived, dived steeply, almost vertically, dived so low that he almost vanished behind the trees; the other three made shallow dives. One deep, three shallow. One deep, three shallow. One deep . . . and as I watched the leader go down for the third time, I noticed that he was wearing a red carnation in his cockpit, a carnation that grew and grew. . . . That was all – except for a splash of dark grey smoke coming up from behind the trees to mark the spot where he had landed. . . .

  And I remembered J. F. Roxburgh preaching a sermon at Stowe. It was the first time I had heard him preach and it was on Armistice Sunday, 1934.

  ‘In war,’ he had said, ‘it is always the best who die. . . .’

  Interlude. Hedda

  I stood at the top of the steps and watched her go – a great white moth fluttering away into the darkness – down, down, down, between walls afoam with wistaria. I stood there until the darkness and the town had swallowed her up, then turned to climb the hill, the first stage of a long journey that would take me across Europe, across the Channel, back to England, back to Cotchford, back to civilian life again.

  But I would return. We had agreed to that. I would return in the spring. And meanwhile there would be her letters and the feeling that I was getting things ready – qualifying for a job, finding a job, finding a home – getting things ready for the day when I could invite herb to come and join me. If our ways were to part, if seven hundred miles were to come between us, it was only for a little while.

  Yes, it was not only war that I had found in Italy. It was love – and that too for the first time. Love and war and all the complicated, conflicting, tumultuous emotions that each engenders, both were there waiting for me. The one had claimed a piece of my head; the other, less literally, now claimed a piece of my heart.

  Hedda was one of a group of Italians whom Harry – in ways known only to people like Harry – had managed to organize. There were about eight of them in all, two married couples and four unattached females. Hedda was the youngest, a year younger than I. The others were quite a bit older, somewhere between late twenties and mid forties, I would guess. And to welcome them to our villa on the hill above Trieste were the seven of us, the officers of 221 Field Company. And thither they came on Saturday evenings, to eat, to talk, to dance, perhaps to listen to some music, or swim in our swimming pool.

  I was not present on their first visit. I forget now what particular excuse was given – headache, pressure of work, calls of duty. If Harry wanted to import a gang of popsies, that was O.K. and just the sort of thing Harry would want to do, but count me out. I don’t dance, thank you very much, and I don’t particularly enjoy female company, thank you very much, and I don’t fancy spending my evenings necking with signorinas who don’t speak my language. This was my reaction. And so my heart sank when I was told that the party had been a success and that they would be coming up again next week.

  ‘Oh, and Chris, there was one who would have been just right for you. We told her all about you and she wants to meet you. She’s at Venice University studying English.’

  Then I hope you told her that I don’t dance.

  ‘That’s all right, Chris, she wants someone to help her with her English. You ought to be good at that. She’s quite a smasher, by the way.’

  Oh, shut up, Harry.

  One of the blessings of being an Engineer officer was that dancing didn’t need to be one of our accomplishments. This was because of our domestic arrangements. As I have already explained, each Company lived on its own, and so, if we ever had an Officers’ Mess, it never held more than seven of us, not enough, mercifully, to justify the appointment of an Entertainments Officer eager to keep us all entertained. Only once did one of our Colonels attempt to bring his officers under a single roof, and that was when we were in Palestine. The attempt was resented and was a failure, but before we broke up and went our individual Company ways again, he did manage to organize one dance for us. Attendance was more or less obligatory. 220 Field Company was allotted seven young ladies from Tel Aviv. One of them was to be mine.

  ‘But I don’t dance. I can’t dance. I just don’t know how to.’

  So Jack took me in hand and taught me the two-step, and together we had two-stepped round the Company lines after dark the night before, until I thought I had mastered the quarter and half turns. Thus my armoury when I was presented to my partner consisted of the two step as taught by Jack and the waltz as vaguely remembered from my prep school days. But when the band struck up I lost my nerve and had to confess that the waltz was all I could manage; so we sat side by side, until a recognizable waltz turned up, then took the floor. This was it. We stood opposite one another. I clasped her. I knew what to do with my hands. Now for my feet. I looked down at them, hopefully, encouragingly, and they began to tremble and make little spasmodic movements. Oh I knew how to do it perfectly well really. One two three one two three, it was easy once you had got going and I could whirl her round the floor until we were both giddy. It was just knowing how to begin, which foot and when, and getting her to do it too so that we didn’t collide. The dance was now in full swing, carefree couples were spinning by, but we were still motionless, locked together, paralysed. . . . In the end I said ‘Sorry. We don’t seem to be getting on very well’ and she said ‘No we don’t, do we?’ and we returned to our seats. . . . I was naturally reluctant to repeat that sort of fiasco again.

  Luckily dancing (said Harry) formed only a small part of the evening’s activities; and so on the second occasion I agreed to be present.

  Looking back on it afterwards I had to admit that I had quite enjoyed it. The Italians had been a jolly, friendly lot and some of them had been able to speak a little English. Hedda had been there and she was indeed most attractive, and being in her company had given me a pleasing and quite new sensation. It was all r
ather exciting, and to my surprise I found myself looking forward to the following Saturday when they were due to come again.

  So it all began. My fellow officers were either married or engaged or at the very least had girls waiting for them in England. Only I had never had a girl in my life. Only Hedda was the right age for me. And so it was natural that we should be paired together and not surprising that the others should take a delight in watching and encouraging our progress. So it all began, at our villa on the hill; and Saturday was the day that I lived for.

  Then, with approaching exams making a convenient excuse, another day was added. The place this time was her home in Piazza Garibaldi. And after work (and with a message that I would be out to supper but might like something to eat when I got back) I slipped off and made my way down into the town. Oh well worn track! How much happiness in anticipation did I carry down you, how much happiness in retrospect carry up, and how many hopes and fears did I turn over and over in my head as my feet, left to themselves, followed the familiar route! Today, looking back on those springtime years I can’t help feeling a little sad that most people now do it all so differently. Were we innocent? Were we immature? Were we old-fashioned? Probably all three. But how-fortunate for us that this was so and that we were thus able to share together those incredibly happy months and leave behind no regrets. Our lives came together, ran side by side, then separated; and mine most certainly and hers too I am prepared to swear were vastly the richer for the experience.

  I rang her bell, then climbed her stairs, and usually it was she – though sometimes her grandmother – who opened the door to me. And then we were alone together in a little room furnished with a settee where we could sit together side by side. How did we spend our time? As innocently as anyone could wish, more boringly than anyone would have thought possible, yet as pleasurably as any courting couple ever had since the world began.

  In between visits we wrote each other letters, each in our own language; and thus we learned about each other and about those things that are in any case often easier to express in writing, and especially so if conversation is difficult. And in between visits and letter-writing, and with the help of a Teach Yourself book, I set out to learn Italian.

  Already, as I have said, I had fallen in love with the land of Italy. Now, in Hedda, through Hedda and because of Hedda, I began to love and understand the people of Italy. To the troops who had landed at Salerno they had been Wops: Wops who had run away when the fighting had become too hot, Wops who had surrendered, Wops who had changed sides when it had suited them, Wops who preferred a life of idleness and ease, reclining in the sun while others worked, Wops who in many ways were little better than the cows or pigs or chickens that so often seemed to occupy the ground floors of their houses. Wops and Wogs, Italians and Arabs, there really wasn’t much to choose between them. Who can blame us if this was how we saw them. It was, after all, the picture painted for us by our politicians, and one all too easily acceptable to a victorious army striding across a defeated country.

  Understandably, too, we thought of all Italians as a single people, and, first impressions being strongest, judged them by what we saw down in the south. Now I learned for the first time that Italy, so obviously one country on the map, had been a nation for less than a hundred years; that there were very great differences between the Italians of the north and those of the south; and that in Trieste in particular, though all spoke the same language, there was a mixture of races. Hedda herself was partly Austrian. Others were partly Slav. Others again were Italians from elsewhere who had moved in when the town had been annexed after the First World War. Gradually I began to understand how it was, how it had all happened, how they felt about it, and gradually I began to share their feelings and their aspirations.

  I never learned to talk Italian very fluently because I was still not very fluent even in my own language and found foreign languages a great deal harder to get my tongue around. But I could read. I read about the Risorgimento. Garibaldi became my hero and Abba’s Da Quarto al Volturno one of my best loved books. I learned about the Medici, and years later was able to declaim – with an Italian student on a rowing boat on Lake Orta in front of Lesley – Lorenzo’s famous poem. I followed the adventures of Don Camillo and I Promessi Sposi before either had become known to English readers. And of course I went to opera after opera after opera, enjoying what went on, not only on the stage, but also in the auditorium. There is drama in Verdi but there is drama too in the queue that forms up outside the opera house – as indeed there is drama everywhere in Italy whenever two or more Italians are present, be it in a railway carriage or the wilds of the Abruzzi.

  Thus did my two loves – for Italians in general and for Hedda in particular – grow side by side steadily stronger, until at last the time arrived when the second felt enough self-confidence to make its first public appearance. Hitherto our meetings had been confined to the villa and to her apartment. Now came the next step. Some military purpose – I entirely forget what – took the Company for a week to San Dona di Piave. At the same time a need to call on her University took Hedda to Venice. And there we met. There in Venice, where we were both unknown and so unlikely to bump into friends, we first perambulated the streets arm in arm. There in Venice we shyly but proudly proclaimed to the world around us that she was my girl and I her man.

  What young man does not feel that his love is unique? What middle-aged man does not look back on his first romance with exquisite pleasure but at the same time with the realization that every other middle-aged man can do exactly the same. The only thing that was unique about my love for Hedda was that up to then I had never even remotely experienced such sensations before. The emotions themselves were ordinary enough: I loved being with her, being close to her, feeling that she was a part of me and I a part of her, proud to feel that someone so lovely was mine. And as the bond between us strengthened so the future became more certain. Yes, we would marry – one day, when I had established myself in a job and had a home to which I could invite her. Understandably she needed that, and only when I had provided it would I feel that I had proved myself and earned my reward. Yes, I would labour for her, but not for seven years as Jacob had for Rachel or as I would need to if I were to become an architect. I couldn’t exist that long without her. Two years at most was all I could wait.

  Cambridge wanted me back. It seemed silly – and here I agreed with my father – having got so far not to go on and get my Degree. But a Degree in what? Apparently all I needed, after war service had been taken into account, was a year’s residence followed by a single Part in any Tripos. What Tripos? Mathematics was out, and none of the related subjects interested me in the least. So it had to be something I could tackle from scratch and scrape through after a bare eight months of study (for term started in October and exams were in May). There seemed to be only one possibility: English Literature. I had not specially enjoyed English at school. But then what had it amounted to? Swatting up Cobbett’s Rural Rides and Macbeth for the School Certificate, reading Shakespeare aloud in class (and praying that I would not be given a part) parsing, précis writing, a weekly essay. Surely this was not English Literature. Surely more important was my love of Dickens and Hardy. I hoped so. And since the only purpose of my taking a Degree was to be able to call myself a graduate, I also hoped it wouldn’t matter too much if all I got was a Third. Then, armed with my Degree, I would find myself some sort of job, perhaps one involving a bit of writing, and then – yes, then – she would join me.

  And meanwhile? Should we become officially engaged? I, impulsive, was willing, She, wiser, was not.

  It was in Venice. We had agreed on the time. We had agreed on the place. I forget now what the time was, only that I was there a quarter of an hour earlier in case she should be early too. But I could show you the place, at the far end of the Piazza opposite St Mark’s. There I stood; there I paced up and down with ever-growing anxiety while clock bells chimed out the passage of time. I kne
w where she was staying, for I had delivered her safely back there the evening before. And Laura was with her, so that if anything disastrous had happened between then and now surely Laura would have come to tell me. Yet all the same I was anxious. Perhaps she had been taken suddenly ill. Perhaps she had not told Laura where our meeting was to be. . . . Another chime. She was now an hour late, a whole hour. Fear and anger in fierce competition with each other were boiling up inside me. And then I saw her. . . .

  Oh familiar emotions! The flood of relief so quickly drowned by the flood of anger, and then the lingering resentment that she should have done this deliberately. I was good at being resentful; I was well able to remain silently furious for the rest of that wretched day. Of course in the end I relented. Of course in the end our affections were restored and indeed seemed even greater as a result, as if the bond between us had been tested and the very testing had given it added strength. And yet in the turmoil of my emotions a tiny seed of doubt had been sown.

  Never before in my life had I needed to understand the feelings and emotions that governed the life of another person. If someone behaved in a certain way, they just did, and that was that. If I would have behaved in a different way, it was because I was a different person. That was that and it didn’t greatly matter. But with Hedda it did matter. It did matter that she should have deliberately chosen to cause me pain and ruin our afternoon together. I did need to know why. And so I needed to build a kind of working model of our relationship that I could study and make sense of; and in the end the model I made pictured her as a wild pony and me as its trainer. Gradually I was taming the pony, but with its taming came the loss of its freedom, and every now and then it would rebel, and just as I thought it was mine it would kick up its heels and gallop away. But it would come back and I would try again and one day it would submit and I would have succeeded, and then it would be mine for ever. That was how we were: she the pony, I the trainer; and it raised a question. Was I a pony-trainer by nature?