In Pale Battalions - Retail

by Robert Goddard

  Dawn came steathily, trailing my awakening with its grey, silent tendrils. The room was still and quiet, the birdsong beyond reassuring me that I was yet safe, for another space of hours, from the kind of day to which I had too often woken.

  I rose and pulled on a dressing gown. Then my sense of refuge was shattered. A livid scream from the room next door, three thumps in succession on the wall and some other choking sound. I hurried out into the passage and listened at the door: it was Cheriton’s room. Silence reigned again, throughout the house. I tapped on the panelling.

  ‘Cheriton – are you all right?’

  No answer.

  ‘Cheriton?’

  Again, no answer. For a less obviously nervous man I would not have been so concerned; I did not imagine myself to be alone in suffering bad dreams. But dreams might not be all. I knocked again and went in.

  Cheriton was sitting up in bed, holding his head in his hands. He looked up as I entered and in his face I saw the expression of a broken man.

  ‘Franklin!’ He visibly recovered himself. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I was going to ask you that. I heard a scream. You didn’t answer when I knocked.’

  ‘Sorry. Must have been a nightmare. You know how it is.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose we all get them from time to time.’

  ‘Do we?’ The thought seemed to give him some small comfort. ‘Do you ever … dream you’re back in France?’

  ‘Often. Except when I’m there. Then I dream of England.’

  He shuddered. ‘I’m to go before a medical board at the end of the month to see if I’m fit to return.’

  ‘And are you?’

  He looked straight at me. ‘I don’t know, Franklin. All I know is that I can’t go back. It’s unthinkable.’ He reached for a cigarette and lit one. The match trembled in his hand.

  ‘We all feel that. It won’t be so bad once you get out there.’ He said nothing, just drew grimly on the cigarette. ‘You should try to enjoy life here while you can.’

  He frowned. ‘Enjoy? God, sometimes I think this place is no better than the Front.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He seemed to have second thoughts. ‘Never mind. Sorry. Talking out of turn. As you say, it was just a nightmare. I’m sorry to have disturbed you. I think I’d better take a bath: clear the head, what?’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’ I turned to the door.

  ‘Franklin.’ I looked back. ‘I’d be awfully grateful if you … didn’t tell anyone else about this. The Powerstocks, I mean. Wouldn’t want them to think they’d got a loony on their hands.’

  ‘They wouldn’t think that.’

  ‘Even so …’

  ‘I’ll say nothing. You have my word.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I closed the door behind me, wondering just what Cheriton’s nightmare had been. The war, with its commonplace horror? Or something closer to home, but no less horrible?

  Leonora customarily took tea in the conservatory on fine afternoons, alone save for her cat, her books and her thoughts. It was the best chance I had of speaking to her privately, so it was the chance I took.

  I walked in, almost apologetically, by the garden door. ‘May I join you for a moment?’

  She put her book down. ‘Of course. Would you like some tea?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ I sat down opposite her.

  ‘Then to what do I owe this pleasure?’

  ‘We didn’t seem to see much of each other over the weekend.’

  ‘I was here all the time.’

  I feigned a smile. ‘Well, I think I was overshadowed by our American visitor.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘Riding. Croquet. Bridge. He certainly took you out of yourself.’

  She frowned. ‘Do I take it from your tone that you do not approve of Mr Mompesson?’

  ‘Not exactly. But let me ask you this. Did John approve of Mr Mompesson?’

  There was the hint of a flush in her countenance. ‘I do not think John would disapprove of my being entertained socially.’

  ‘Of course not. But, to judge by certain things he said to me, Mompesson worried him. He made a point of it after he came back from leave last Christmas.’

  Her brow furrowed, though whether from irritation or surprise I couldn’t tell. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Though I think now it may have been Mompesson’s friendship with Lady Powerstock that really worried him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I can’t believe you don’t know what’s going on. That’s why I …’

  ‘Enough!’ The command was incisive. ‘I didn’t expect to hear this kind of thing from you, Mr Franklin, and I don’t expect to hear any more of it.’

  ‘You yourself said …’

  ‘I have said all I intend to say on this matter.’

  I couldn’t fathom her sudden loyalty to Olivia but I couldn’t outface it either. ‘Forgive me. I didn’t mean to distress you. I think I’ve got off on the wrong foot on this. All I really meant to say was that … if you are in any kind of difficulty at the moment … under any kind of pressure … and need my assistance … then I’d like to help.’

  ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘John would have expected it of me.’

  ‘Then, for his sake, let’s pretend we’ve not had this conversation. Have some tea. Talk about something else – anything as long as it isn’t about the war or Mr Mompesson.’

  I surprised myself by accepting the tea rather than storming out. After all, what right did I have to choose her company for her? With Hallows gone, she was a free woman. My friendship with her husband conferred no rights upon me. I settled for the best I seemed likely to get: innocent conversation with a beautiful woman. We talked about our respective families and forgot the troubles of Meongate – imaginary or otherwise.

  It didn’t ring true, of course. I felt that Leonora liked me, even trusted me. She had been the first person to alert me to the strangeness of life at Meongate and had not bothered to hide her dislike of Olivia. So why the mock outrage on her behalf? And, if she really did know as much as I did, or more, about Olivia’s relationship with Mompesson, why was she prepared to be cultivated by such a man? It made no sense. Or, if it did, a sense of which I had no inkling. And Leonora was clearly determined to offer me no enlightenment. Mompesson would return at the end of the week and offer her a marriage which she should, in all logic and feeling, reject outright. Yet, for some reason, that, I knew, was not how it would be.

  Even I could tell that I needed a break from Meongate, a breath of air fresher than its atmosphere of over-ripe foreboding. The seaside seemed an obvious prescription. So, next day, I caught the first train from Droxford down the line and went, by ferry, across the harbour to Portsmouth.

  Not that Portsmouth took me far from the war that was waiting to reclaim me: the great, grey battleships anchored in the Dockyard and the bustling sailors on every wharf were there to remind me. But I turned south, away from the docks, and headed for the seafront at Southsea, where I’d spent the only holiday I could remember with my father and where, now, I shied pebbles on the deserted shore to test my shoulder and gazed out across the Solent. I forgot, for a while, the troubles of Meongate. What, after all, did they mean to me?

  More than I pretended, as I was soon to find out. In the early afternoon, I retraced my steps to the harbour and made my way along the Hard towards the ferry. I expected to see nobody I knew but there, studying a tram timetable outside the entrance to the Harbour station, while a crowd milled past her from the ferry, was Leonora, slim and elegant in grey.

  I crossed the road and touched her shoulder. She swung round abruptly and looked at me with a startled expression. ‘Why Tom! What are you doing here?’ Her smile was stiff and uncertain.

  ‘I’m on my way back to Meongate. I’ve been to Southsea – to take the sea air.’

  ‘And how was it?’

  ‘Very … ref
reshing. What brings you …?’

  ‘Shopping, of course. I have a weakness for the big stores in Southsea.’ But the smile was stiff enough to hint that this was not the truth. ‘One can feel terribly cut off at Meongate.’

  ‘Well, I’m in no hurry to get back. Perhaps I could escort you round them.’

  It was not what she’d planned: I could see it in her face. Yet how could she refuse? She accepted my offer with all the good grace she could muster.

  I passed the afternoon in a state dangerously close to ecstasy. The reason lay not in what we did or where we went, but in the growing pleasure I derived from closeness to Leonora. I was no young innocent – indeed, the war had made me cynical beyond my years – so the symptoms I detected in myself could not be mistaken for a passing dalliance. Nor could they be written off as concern for a dead comrade’s widow. The truth was clear and irresistible: I was falling in love.

  What Leonora felt was, as ever, obscure to me. However different the afternoon was from what she had planned, she certainly did not appear to begrudge me her company. Indeed, as we sat over chicory coffee and flimsy muffins in a quiet tea shop, she seemed more relaxed and forthcoming than I’d ever known her, as if remoteness from Meongate and all its attendant anxieties could free her from the burden she carried – for a while at least.

  What that burden was I still had no clue. I kept my bargain and made no mention of Mompesson as we returned, in early evening, to Droxford. Yet he was in my mind all the time, for as my affection for Leonora grew, so did my fear of my absent, confident, swaggering rival. We might talk as much as we liked – and I might dream as much as I dared – but none of it could erase the horrible conviction I felt that my love would count for nothing against the power he exerted. He was due back at the end of the week and I was still failing to find a way to forestall him.

  On Thursday, I wrote a reply to Warren’s letter and walked down to the post office in the village to despatch it. As I was paying for the stamp, I glanced into the alcove housing the public telephone, only to see Thorley replace the receiver and turn towards me.

  ‘Good Lord!’ he exclaimed with a splutter. ‘Franklin!’

  ‘Hello, Major.’ I might have looked at him quizzically, for there was a telephone at Meongate we were all welcome to use.

  Thorley coloured. ‘Don’t like to use old Powerstock’s blower too much, don’t you know? Run him up a dreadful bill.’

  ‘That’s good of you.’ I was suspicious; Thorley was not one to spare his hosts.

  ‘Walk back with you to the house?’

  I agreed: there was nothing else for it. I posted the letter outside and we set off back by the path past the church. Thorley seemed to have recovered from his momentary embarrassment.

  ‘Not seen much of you lately, Franklin.’

  ‘I’ve been about. Of course, our American visitor has had the house by its ears.’

  ‘Bit of a card, what?’

  ‘He plays a good hand at bridge, certainly.’

  Thorley laughed rather too generously. ‘Very good, that. Very good. Gather you don’t like the fellow.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘Can’t stand him myself.’

  ‘Really? You seemed to get on all right.’

  ‘Ah well, it pays to butter these chaps up, you know.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  He fell silent as we filed along a footbridge across a rivulet of the Meon, then resumed. ‘On a different track, Franklin, wonder if I could ask you a favour: man to man, as it were.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Well, fact is, I’m a bit strapped for cash … just at the moment. Until the Pay Corps send through the next cheque, that is. I was wondering …’

  It amused me: the worldly-wise major sponging off a second lieutenant. So I responded as he would have hoped. ‘How much?’

  ‘Could you spare … thirty pounds?’

  I looked at him in amazement. ‘I’m sorry, Major. I’d like to help if I could. But thirty pounds? I can’t lay my hands on such a sum.’

  He smiled ruefully. ‘Sorry. Shouldn’t have asked.’

  ‘But … something towards it?’

  ‘No. Not worth it, old man. Has to be all or nothing. Decent of you to offer. But let’s forget it.’ He threw back his shoulders and walked on ahead, reasserting his dignity.

  It was Friday, September 22nd. An equinoctial gale had rocked the house all night and showed no sign of abating by day. The stately elms swayed and sighed in the park whilst dark, white-topped clouds billowed across the sky and early falls of leaves rushed and whirled on the lawns. I looked out at the scene from my window and thought how Warren and the others – bivouacked in steely Flemish rain – would envy me the private, cosy turbulence of Meongate. Then I tightened the window stay against the draught and went down to breakfast.

  In the dining room, there was only old Charter to receive me, consuming a generous plateful of kedgeree with gusto and glowering out at the brief fury of a passing shower. I served myself from the sideboard and joined him at the table.

  ‘Good morning, Franklin,’ he spluttered.

  ‘Good morning. Spiteful day, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’ll pass.’ Then he looked at me. ‘If it’s the weather you mean.’

  ‘Of course. What else?’

  ‘Couldn’t say. But there’s enough spite in this house to ply your meaning, I reckon.’

  ‘I gather Mr Mompesson is to rejoin us this evening.’

  The old man snorted. ‘Much good we will have of that.’

  ‘Won’t you have to accustom yourself to his company on a permanent basis? He’s made no secret of his aspirations to become … one of the family, as it were.’

  He looked at me darkly. ‘What aspirations?’

  It was interesting to test how much he knew, though I fancied, by his reactions, that he was playing the same game with me. ‘I have it from his own lips that he hopes to marry Leonora.’

  His laugh took me by surprise: a deep, growling guffaw as he leant back in his chair. But, for all its seeming humour, it left no smile on his face. ‘You must hand it to Mompesson. The man has nerve. Very little else, perhaps. But nerve, yes. He wants for nothing in that direction. Reminds me … No. Let that pass.’

  ‘You don’t seem unduly surprised.’

  ‘I’m too old to be surprised by anything. But I fancy I know somebody who will be surprised.’

  ‘As far as I know, he’s not actually proposed … or even consulted Lord Powerstock.’

  ‘He’s not the man to do things the right way.’

  ‘What I meant was that we mustn’t jump to conclusions.’

  ‘I’ll not do that, young man.’ He winked. ‘Reckon I’ll just take myself off to resume that game of chess with old Jepson. Then at least I won’t have to tolerate Mompesson’s smirk.’ He rose from the table. ‘Excuse me, will you? I must be out and about. It’s stopped raining.’ He glanced back at the garden. ‘That could almost be a rainbow … No. It’s faded.’ He smiled to himself and lumbered out.

  I sat there, while the wind before another shower rattled the window, sipping coffee and wondering, with vague foreboding, why I’d told Charter, why I still couldn’t detach myself from a dead friend’s household and forget their troubles. Only it wasn’t for Hallows’ sake that I clung to his family. It was for my own. There was something wrong – in them or me – and I had to know what it was.

  What drew me to the library I can’t say: forgotten, book-lined vault, whose place had it been? Not Lord Powerstock’s – he’d said as much. Then, his son’s? Somehow, it seemed not. I thumbed along the dusty rows and found no clues. Until … less dusty than the rest, a slim volume in sombre board covers: its staid and formal title Deliberations of the Diocesan Committee for the Relief of the Poor of Portsea – a series of monographs, some religious, some medical, some social. Amongst the latter ‘Squalor Amidst Plenty’ by Miriam Hallows, Lady Powerstock. Printed, declared an introductor
y note, ‘in memory of a fine lady who died as she lived, giving no quarter to complacency.’

  ‘Do my husband’s books interest you?’ The voice came, softly, from behind me and for one second I could almost have believed … But it was Olivia. I replaced the book on the shelf and turned to face her.

  ‘Just browsing.’

  She smiled at me. ‘Of course.’ There was just the quiver of one eyebrow to suggest she knew what I’d been about. ‘Although Edward tells me it’s more likely to be the art in this room that attracts you.’

  I stepped across to the picture on the wall. ‘It’s very fine, certainly. By your first husband, you said.’

  ‘Indeed.’ She walked across to join me, her dress rustling in the sudden silence. ‘He would be better known, I think – had he lived.’

  ‘Did you say this was his last work?’

  ‘Not quite. There’s a companion piece – unfinished, I fear.’

  ‘A companion piece?’

  ‘Yes: a sequel, if you like. The two pictures together tell a story. There was to have been a third.’

  ‘A pity they weren’t completed.’

  ‘The second nearly was. You may see it, if you wish.’

  I looked at her, so prim and restrained in her high-necked dress and drawn-up hair, and asked myself – as before – whether what I’d seen was real. But it was. The naked figure on the bed in the painting told me, by her smile, that I was not mistaken. ‘I’d like to – if it’s convenient.’

  ‘Why yes. Of course.’ She paused. ‘I keep it … in my bedroom.’

  It couldn’t be. Not so simple a device. We were discussing a venue to view a picture. Nothing else. Yet I knew it was not so. The sun came out and splashed across the wall beside us. Suddenly, the body on the bed was floodlit, but Lady Powerstock paid it no heed, merely smiled, seraphically, serenely, in the slow, secret satisfaction of a calculated moment.

  ‘Shall we say … after tea – this afternoon?’

  What could I do but agree? A refusal would have signalled my suspicion that more than a picture was being offered. Besides, something else I didn’t care to admit to drove me to accept.