The Return of Captain John Emmett

by Elizabeth Speller

  'Helo—Uncle Laurie,' said the boy. He had nearly said sir.

  'Helo, Wil.' He was suddenly and simply a man with a family, getting ready for Christmas.

  'It realy is so very good to see you, Milie.'

  Their eyes finaly met. Impulsively, he flung his arms round her again, then puled back slightly and looked down at her. Her eyes were brimming with tears; she fumbled in her bag. He felt in his pocket and gave her his handkerchief, grateful that he had ironed it.

  'I'm sorry,' she said. 'About everything,' she added, in a muffled voice, as she wiped her nose.

  Laurence imagined the scene through her eyes. At twenty-six she had left England, her home, friends, parents and brother, for the furthest shores of the empire.

  He suspected that by then she had begun to think she would become an old maid and was glad to be married even to a man nearly twenty years her senior. However, she could never have guessed how completely her world would crumble behind her. During her long sojourn in India, she had lost not just both parents but a way of life they had al shared. The family home was long gone; friends had gone; the brother she had left as a schoolboy was a widower, not far off middle age.

  'And how old are you now?' said Laurence and before his nephew could tel him fourteen, which he knew perfectly wel, he laughed. 'I'm afraid I'm being a complete ass at this—you must be thinking I'm the most pompous uncle you could imagine.'

  'No,' said the boy, a smile hovering, 'definitely not.'

  'You must remember Henry's brother Norton? Wil's other uncle?' Milie said. 'It's hardly a fair competition.'

  Now she had linked her arm through his, yet stil grasping his hand. Hers, gloveless now, was warm and dry. A porter hovered with a trunk and two cases, leading the way as they began to push a path through the crowds.

  They were level with the station band when Laurence saw a face he recognised. Standing, listening to the carols, was Leonard Byers. Byers hadn't seen Laurence, who paused, just for a second, taking in the hatless young woman with bobbed hair, clinging to Byers' arm. As the porter parted the crowds, Laurence saw her in profile. She was very pregnant. She said something in Byers' ear, he grinned down at her and she laid her head against his arm.

  One minute Laurence, Milie and Wilfred were having to muscle their way through the mass of people and the next, having come through the great arches, they were free, standing on the edge of the shining black street, where streams of cabs and dark cars moved swiftly in both directions. His sister looked from her brother to her bags and back to him again, as if she couldn't bear to raise her eyes and encompass the vastness of the new life around her. The boy looked in every direction: at the entrance to the underground station, the advertisement hoardings, the chestnut-seler, the clerks and shop girls getting off the bus, the passers-by slightly bowed under black umbrelas. His face was alert and excited.

  In a way Laurence was glad that proper conversation was stil impossible; the carols had died away behind them but now there was a constant hiss from the wheels of the traffic and a paper boy stil shouting out the late headlines. They found their cab, loaded the bags, he tipped the porter and they were away, sucked into the city and the winter's night, with the bright shop windows and the slanting rain moving faster and faster behind them.

  Epilogue

  WEDNESDAY, 28 DECEMBER 1920

  They were about twelve miles from Fairford now, approaching Faringdon. He could tell by the sinking sun that the road was heading almost due west. On the left, stunted willows marked what must be the distant course of the Thames or one of its small tributaries. This was countryside he had once known well.

  To the south there was a gentle sweep of open land and a wide view through leafless trees rising to hills on the horizon. The temperature had dropped fifteen degrees in the last twenty-four hours and there was a dusting of snow on ploughed fields tinged faintly pink by the sun. To his right, John could see a small mound, almost artificially neat, with a cluster of dark trees on its summit. Somers looked straight ahead as the road curved in front of them. From the trees rose an extraordinary tower. It seemed to stand alone, its castellated battlements clear against the sky.

  ' What's that?' John asked. 'Is it a castle?'

  He remembered from his Oxford days that there had been skirmishes fought around here in the Civil War, although this looked more like a building from a fairy tale.

  The general turned his head briefly. 'It's a folly. Faringdon Folly. Just a tower. Decorative but useless. Four empty rooms stacked one upon another, Gothic windows and a marvellous view from the top. When I was young you could see into three counties from up there, though it scared us all to pass by it at night. The boys too in their turn. It's all locked up now, I believe.'

  John recalled there having been a folly here long ago when he was a schoolboy. Was this it? It was summer then and everything had looked different.

  'Could we go closer?'

  'I'll drive as near to it as I can.'

  He was grateful that the general asked for no explanation but simply added, 'I think the last stretch is just a bridle path'

  They bumped their way up a rutted lane. It was only a few minutes before the car stopped.

  'I'd like to get out here,' John said. 'I'll walk the rest of the way.'

  The general looked mildly surprised. 'I'll come with you.'

  'No. All the way back to Holmwood, I mean. I'd like a chance to think.'

  'Good God, man, it's ten miles or more to Fairford. It'll be dark in two hours and bitterly cold by the look of it.'

  'Don't worry' John said, evenly. He opened the car door. 'I've walked all my life in all kinds of weathers. Like this'—he indicated his greatcoat and borrowed boots—'I'll be fine. It's a good road. If I reach Lechlade and it's too cold, I'll put up at the New Inn. Might even get Chilvers on the telephone and make his son fetch me.' He almost smiled. 'I'd like to walk, to be honest. After this, I'll have precious little freedom.' He ran a hand through his hair. No solitary excursions for me for a while, I imagine. I'll see the Folly while it's light and then follow the road back. I feel better than I have for an age. Free.'

  The general looked at him. John was very pale, but calm: a man who had finally relieved them both of an intolerable burden.

  'Take this' he said, handing him a hip flask, from under his seat. I keep it in case of the car stranding me somewhere inhospitable. Oh, and this'—he unwrapped the striped woollen scarf from around his neck. 'It was Miles's scarf. House colours. Still serviceable, you'll find. You'll need it.'

  'Thank you.'

  John thrust the flask in the less bulky of his pockets. He opened the door, then paused.

  'You will tell her everything?' he said.

  'You have my word.'

  It was certainly cold and he was glad of the scarf. He had once owned one like it, a long, long time ago. He wrapped it round his neck and ears, stuffed his hands in his pockets and started to walk uphill, unsteady on the frozen, roughly ploughed ground. General Somers waited for some minutes, the engine idling unevenly. Then, when John had climbed over a stile and looked back to wave with his right hand, clutching the cross-bar with his left, he turned the car and drove slowly away, bumping down the frozen track.

  As he drew closer to the copse, John could see that although it contained a few bare sycamores and elms, it was mostly fir trees, which made it dense even in winter. For so long he had avoided thick undergrowth, afraid of what violent surprise might be concealed there. But there was nothing to hurt him here. The war was over. It was all over.

  A slight wind stirred the upper branches. It had been achingly cold in the open and the grass crunched underfoot; once he was in the trees, he had some protection. The ground was softer here and covered in pine needles. By the time he reached the tower, he was slightly breathless; the bitter air, coming on top of the months of virtual confinement, had left him slightly out of breath. All the same it was good to be out of doors.

  The tower loomed above him:
dark brickwork with greenish streaks running upwards from the base. Had he been here before? He walked right round it and found a single door, heavily padlocked and offering neither protection nor imprisonment. He looked up; the empty, mullioned windows reflected the red sun, giving the impression of afire burning at the heart of the building, while orange-streaked clouds moved slowly overhead. With his head tipped back he had a momentary illusion of the tower falling. He looked down and steadied himself with his fingertips on the damp brickwork. He inhaled deeply and the effort made him cough.

  He sat down with his back against the tower. The hefty material of his coat would protect him for a while from the iron cold behind and beneath him.

  So much cold in his life. He turned his collar up. He wondered where he had left his gloves. The sky, which had been so blue, was turning a soft violet; the fields were losing their colour. Rooks were wheeling about the tallest elms. After some time—he had no idea how long he had been there—he saw a single star come out. Venus. The next time he looked there were hundreds; thousands, in a clear night sky. He could still identify the constellations his father had shown him as a child on night walks in Suffolk. It was August—the dog days, his father had said, stroking the panting Sirius on the head. High above him was Pegasus, the winged horse, with Orion the hunter and Canes Venatici, the hounds of the hunt. He felt the close hug the old man had given him as a consolation for his sudden terror of infinity; safety smelled of tobacco and elderly terrier.

  How proud his father had been to see him an officer. He thought again. That was wrong; his father had never known of his choice but he had made it, hoping to please him. To make up for leaving him, just like everybody else, and going so far away. War was something his father would, at first, have understood, had he lived to see it. But what followed would have been incomprehensible.

  A half-moon shone over the monochrome landscape. Miles away, a few lights marked an unknown hamlet. Had he fallen asleep? His breathing was shallow and his chest hurt slightly. He couldn't really feel his feet. He felt in his pocket for paper and a pencil. Hadn't he had a pencil when he set out? It was gone.

  Instead he found the hip flask and, opening it with stiff fingers, he took a drink; it was brandy, which made him shudder but warmed him. He set the flask beside him, felt in his other, heavier, pocket and drew out a package wrapped in cloth, which he set on his lap. The rooks had quietened now. A pale barn owl skimmed across the fields, suddenly swooping to reach its prey. From time to time small creatures scrabbled in the darkness around him. Not rats, he hoped. Then a larger animal passed behind the tower: a badger or a fox, maybe, busy in this other world. He was glad to be here. He knew it was where he should be.

  He thought of Eleanor. Her hair, her smell, her comfort. He remembered walking with her in France. He had been sitting on a bench outside the hospital. She came out, put up a hand to the side of his face.

  'Oh you're so cold,' she said. She rubbed her hands briskly up and down his arms.

  'May we walk?' she said. 'Are you comfortable enough?'

  'Of course.'

  Her head was swathed in a hood and she had a thick man's coat over her uniform, coming down to her boots. She pulled gloves out of a pocket.

  Looking at her made him feel warm.

  'Come on, race you to—wherever it is we're going.'

  She ran ahead clumsily, laughing, and then she was gone. He called her name.

  He opened and closed his fingers a few times to get his circulation going. Both hands. Both perfect hands. He poured some brandy on them and rubbed his palms together. She wasn't here. He looked at his fingers, spread widely and white as bone and opened his coat; he was not so cold. Then he unwrapped Miles Somers' scarf, folded it and set it down carefully a little way from his legs. He felt bad enough about stealing the photograph and package from the Somers house, but he didn't want to keep the scarf from its rightful owner too.

  Then he took the small comb out of his pocket. He could hardly see the initials but he traced the unicorn with his finger. AM: Agathe Meurice. He set it down softly on the scarf.

  He pressed his head back against the stonework and closed his eyes. He thought of other unreal worlds, other decisions, other possibilities: the shadows of faraway lives that had, briefly, crossed with his; of Eleanor, of a mortally wounded soldier trying to speak, and of a small boy startled by the cry of a red kite; but finally of his own hand in the dry comfort of his father's as they gazed up at the summer sky one Suffolk night.

  When the shot came, the rooks rose outward from their roost with coarse cries of alarm, but in a few minutes they returned, settling back into the bare branches until the first light of dawn.

  Afterword

  'Craven fear is the most extravagant prodigal of nervous energy known. Under its stimulus a man squanders nervous energy recklessly in order to suppress his hideous and pent up emotions and mask and camouflage that which if revealed will call down ignominy upon him and disgrace him in the eyes of his fellows. He must preserve his self-respect and self-esteem at all costs.'

  Bily Tyrel, a military doctor and victim of shelshock, in evidence to the Southborough Committee. Report of the War Office Commission of Enquiry into 'Shel-Shock'

  (London, 1922), quoted by Ben Shephard in A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century.

  Only three British officers were executed in the First World War. On the other hand, over 300 British and Commonwealth private soldiers met this fate, although of the 3,080 death sentences handed down, most were commuted.

  My novel is loosely inspired by the executions of Temporary Sub-Lieutenant Edwin Dyett, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, and of Lieutenant Poole of the West Yorkshire Regiment, both shot for desertion. The novelist A.P. Herbert, who had encountered Dyett while himself a junior officer in the same division, wrote a novel based on the case: The Secret Battle (1919). Leonard Selers has produced an account of the Dyett case in Death for Desertion, first published in 1995 as For God's Sake Shoot Straight. Further reading in this area includes Blindfold and Alone: British Military Executions in the Great War by John Hughes-Wilson and Cathryn Corns, and Shot at Dawn: Executions in World War One by Authority of the British Army Act by Julian Putkowski and Julian Sykes. Ernest Thirtle MP

  published a pamphlet in 1929, Shootings at Dawn: The Army Death Penalty at Work. The terrible effect on families of losing husbands and sons in this way is revealed by surviving letters.

  There are, of course, a great number of excelent books on the Great War. I am particularly indebted to the folowing: John Keegan, The First World War; Richard Holmes, Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front; Max Arthur, Last Post: The Final Word from our First World War Soldiers; and Neil Hansen, The Unknown Soldier: The Story of the Missing of the Great War. Gordon Corrigan has assembled a critical look at some of the myths of the war in Mud, Blood and Poppycock. Dominic Hibberd's biography of Wilfred Owen, Jean Moorcroft Wiliams' work on Isaac Rosenberg and Nicholas Moseley's book on Julian Grenfel are among many that I have read, as wel as Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth, a vivid account of her experience as a volunteer nurse on the Western Front.

  A Deep Cry: First World War Soldier-Poets Killed in France and Flanders, edited by Anne Powel, is superb on the lives and deaths of less famous poets. Diaries, novels, plays and poetry of the period, as wel as some comprehensive websites, have helped my understanding of the varied experiences of those who lived in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Above al, for a wonderful survey of the Great War in the popular imagination, there is Paul Fussel's classic: The Great War and Modern Memory.

  For the care and understanding of men with shel-shock, I have used several sources of which the most valuable were the papers of W.H.R. Rivers who treated many of these psychiatric casualties, and the publication in 1917 of Shell-Shock and its Lessons by two doctors, Grafton Eliot Smith and Tom Hatherley Pear. Daniel Hipp's The Poetry of Shell Shock: Wartime Trauma and Healing in Wilfred Owen, Ivor Gur
ney and Siegfried Sassoon was invaluable in providing the connection between poetry and mental fragility. There was a hospital for shel-shocked officers in Fairford, Gloucestershire (now Coln House School), but Dr Chilvers and his son are entirely fictional. Ben Shephard's War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century and Jonathan Shay's Achilles in Vietnam were moving accounts of war and mental ilness.

  Sir Hubert Gough lived until 1963.

  I have taken a liberty in placing the Faringdon Foly within the late nineteenth-century landscape. It was, in fact, built by Lord Berners in 1935, although the atmospheric hil upon which it stands is the site of settlements dating back to antiquity. Other locations al exist, although, as far as I know, Wilmington Priory was never used by a nursing order, and the beautiful 'butterfly' window at the church of St Mary and St Peter was lost in a fire a few years ago.

  The Darling Committee (1919) and the Southborough Committee (1920—1922) both existed and examined questions of military courts martial and shelshock, though I have added to their members and to their proceedings. Philip Morrel MP raised questions on these topics in the House of Commons as early as 1918

  before standing down for the December election. In 1919 an army officer, Colonel Lambert Ward MP (who had, like Sub-Lieutenant Dyett, served in the RNR), requested that there be no differentiation between the graves of those executed and those kiled on active service. Many individuals volunteered to give evidence to the Southborough Committee.

  Acknowledgments

  I am extremely grateful for the perseverance of my agent George Capel and her assistants Abi Felows and Rosie Apponyi in getting the first draft of this book to a state where it could be considered a novel. My thanks too to Lennie Goodings at Virago; her confidence and continued investment in it were hugely encouraging. I also owe a debt of gratitude to her assistant, Victoria Pepe, who read the manuscript first and whose belief in it pushed it forward, and to the sheer stamina of my assiduous copyeditor Celia Levett. George Miler and Katharine Reeve provided technical advice throughout the writing of the book.