That They Might Lovely Be

by David Matthews

  When that happens, whose side will you be on, Delia, you and the other nascent school ma’ams? Will you all be clamouring for the love of John Bull? If so, I ought to warn you that John Bull, when he returns from France, will have done some pretty dark business. Don’t expect an open-faced youth who just needs a good rest to be as right as rain. There’ll be horrors and horrors upon horrors lurking just beneath the surface, erupting with the least provocation. Who knows if the human psyche can recover from exposure to such ghastliness.

  The sooner the whole damned edifice is brought tumbling down the better and I’ll be damned if I continue to do anything to shore it up.

  Geoffrey Cordingley

  Wednesday, 12 January 1916

  Mount Benjamin, Dunchurch

  Dear Delia,

  I am sorry that our paths have not crossed with you returning to Cheltenham just before I came back to Dunchurch. You have been very gracious, professing disappointment in not being able to meet me. The truth is, I’d have been very poor company if I had had to endure Mount Benjamin over Christmas. As it is, I doubt that I’ll stay here for more than a few days.

  I am writing this at my old desk, staring out over the gardens. January is never a good time for an English garden and a neglected garden in January is particularly dispiriting. We only have old Atkinson still with us, with some young boys from the village helping with some of the heavier labour on a casual basis. The other gardeners were all encouraged to join up with Mother providing the added incentive of a retainer paid to their families to supplement their army pay. The motive for this apparent generosity is, as you can guess, complicated. Essentially, however, she wants to shame me.

  I quoted Burgundy’s lines from ‘Henry the Fifth’ to my mother this morning. Do you know them? She does. Because it is with Henry the Fifth’s mother that she can graft her own illustrious family into the Royal Line, she has appropriated this particular play as an heirloom. So she knows the implications of Burgundy’s horticultural lament.

  ‘Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart

  Unpruned dies; her hedges even-pleach’d

  Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,

  Put forth disorder’d twigs; her fallow leas

  The darnel, hemlock and rank fumitory

  Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts

  That should deracinate such savagery;

  The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth

  The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,

  Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,

  Conceives by idleness…’

  She cut me off before I had got that far so I was unable to make explicit the point that, like our gardens, we ‘grow like savages—as soldiers will that nothing do but meditate on blood.’

  She subjected me to the litany of the village dead and who was serving where, the chronicle of bravery and who had been mentioned in despatches and so on until she was sufficiently impassioned to blast me with the charge of gross dishonour. I would bring dishonour to myself, our family, her family, betraying the people of the village and the whole nation of England if I had the temerity to withdraw completely from the war effort. She had been able to accommodate—though never comprehend—my decision to serve by driving ambulances in France. If I slithered away from that (that was the way she described it), she would never forgive me. At least, on the fringes of the field of combat, there was some chance I should be killed, as a restitution of sorts for all the harm I had done.

  It was the most gruelling barrage she has ever subjected me to. Whatever defence one’s intellect puts up, it cannot withstand the force of a mother’s repudiation of her only child. She was able to twist, to an excruciating degree, every emotional bond. However well dug-in I might have been, she’d have had me uprooted.

  I shall not stay here for longer than I need. The place is more her home than it ever was mine and, until I am thirty-five, she has pretty well unlimited control of the estate and its income. Until I can come into my inheritance or the consequences of this new Compulsory Service Act which they’re debating catches up with me, I shall tour the country staying wheresoever I can.

  I shall go to Saffron Walden first. Mrs. Lean has been kind enough to write regularly throughout my time in France. I may see Anstace whilst I am there.

  I shall not be alone in resigning from the unit. Although it changed its name to the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, the Quakers’ Yearly Meeting has, apparently, come out against all forms of service which, in effect, help in prosecuting the war. It is only a matter of time before the Society of Friends disowns the Friends’ Ambulance Unit completely. If that happens, the Quakers will be leaving en masse to separate themselves from the conscientious objectors who are merely doing ambulance work as an alternative to conscription. Any protest against the war which they might have hoped to make by serving in the F.A.U. is rendered futile by the fact that they are helping to return soldiers to full health on the front-line to fight another day. In addition, there is now clear evidence that the Medical Corps is often closed to applicants because of the volunteers, like me, in the F.A.U. displacing them in our service to the wounded. Men are actually being drafted from the R.A.M.C. into the firing line, and their bitter complaints are justly levied at us.

  I am not a pacifist and I have sufficient integrity to want to disassociate myself from those fervent idealists. If I am challenged, my defence will be that I am too civilized for warfare. I have no doubt it will come to some sort of tribunal sooner or later when ‘a defence’ will be required.

  My understanding is that men will only have a certificate of absolute exemption from military service if they agree to undertake some alternative non-combatant service of national importance. That will not apply to me now that I have resigned from the F.A.U. so I expect to be called up for drafting into the armed services. I am disinclined to obey. I do not know what the consequences will be.

  Do you too think me wrong-headed?

  Write to me at Joachim Place, if you’ve a mind to.

  I remain your sincere friend,

  Geoffrey Cordingley

  Talk

  ‘You’ll not need to raid your old pillows for white feathers now, Mrs. Baxter. After March 2, there’ll be nowhere for the shirkers to hide. It’s in the papers that all single men between the ages of eighteen and forty-one will either have to be in uniform or doing other work of national importance.’

  ‘Or clergymen, would you believe.’

  ‘And widowers with young children are to be exempted but they’ll have to go up before a tribunal.’

  ‘Someone ought to tell that woman who’s moved into Latimer’s Cottage. She’s got a vicious tongue in her head when the mood takes her. I heard her laying into her man the other day, shouting at the top of her voice for all the world to hear. Unless she eases up he’ll be tempted to break her neck and get an exemption thrown in. No tribunal’s going to argue with five kiddies under twelve.’

  ‘You think there’ll be other men, up and down the country, hankering for a peaceful widowhood and exemption from military service?’

  ‘They’ll be tempted!’

  ‘An unexpected consequence of Conscription could be a reduction in scolding wives.’

  ‘Only if their hubbies were prepared to commit murder.’

  ‘They might reckon one quiet murder at home, to their advantage, was better than committing heaven knows how many on the field of battle.’

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘This conscription’ll hit some families hard. Them with sons all of an age.’

  ‘Some families have already been hit hard.’

  ‘I’m not saying anything about your Eric’s sacrifice. No one can. He was one of the first to volunteer and he’s paid a dear price. But there are some where I know three of the sons are in France and they’ve kept one behind to keep the home running. There are two farms over the hill only just managing with all the men gone. What’ll happen to them when the last are consc
ripted?’

  ‘Unless we win this war, there’ll be no farms at all. We’ll all be over-run by ravaging Huns. And we won’t win unless we send all our men over there. It’s the sheer numbers that will do it.’

  ‘I’m grateful I’ve just got girls.’

  ‘Miss Clare, Mrs. Kingsnorth as she is now, she’s got girls — older than yours though. They’ll be marrying likely as not. ‘If there’s anyone left to marry.’

  ‘The men that are spared, returning heroes, will have the pick of the best.’

  ‘And what’ll the other poor girls do? I fear for my three. They’re good girls but they’re not stunners. They’ve got their father’s looks. How are they going to find husbands? And if they don’t what’ll their lives be? Forty years in domestic service? Is that it? I know your Eric’s lost his legs and that’s a terrible thing but at least he got two nippers first. You’ve got your grandchildren but I may never see mine. Oh, the waste, the waste!’

  ‘All the more reason to win this war without delay. We’ve all got to get behind the war effort. Like Lady Margery. She’s been generosity itself. Half wages still being paid to all the families of her menservants and their place guaranteed when they come home.’

  ‘But all the time there’s Mr. Geoffrey skulking around failing to do his duty.’

  ‘He’s over in France though, isn’t he?’

  ‘Not any longer. He was up at the Big House and out of uniform last week. They say he’s resigned from his ambulance work! My God, the luxury of it! Resigned! Well this conscription will put paid to that palaver. He’ll not be resigning from any conscription.’

  Chapter Seven

  Thursday, 20 April 1916

  Since Archbishop Randall Davidson’s controversial pronouncement that ‘the religion of peace cannot hold its ground unless it is prepared, when occasion arises, to transform itself into the religion of strife’, the authorities had decided to make every effort, when dealing with men of conscience who resisted their call-up, to demonstrate a zealous agreement with the Church’s foremost theologian. A suitably august chamber in City Hall had been appropriated for the purpose. It had the daïs and the panelling. It had the high ceilings and elaborate cornicing. It had a suitable echo, so that even a casual aside could reverberate with solemn significance.

  The decision to open the hearings to the public may have been misguided. There was little room to accommodate more than a score or so and, while few of the men called to appear before the tribunal were accompanied by numerous family members or supporters, the speed with which the hearings were conducted meant that there was often a flurry of shuffling and settling in the gallery as members of the public came and went. However, as the officers conducting the hearings forced themselves to remember, the new legislation embodied a noble Britishness. It gave every Englishman the right to challenge his conscription and recognized a range of civilized reasons why one might not fight for one’s country. Getting querulous about the practicalities of administering the law would, therefore, be mean-spirited.

  Waiting for his hearing, Geoffrey imagined himself as a piece of furniture (a Louis Quinze commode perhaps or, better still, a George III cardtable sporting some exquisite veneer in-lay) waiting to be auctioned off in a public sale. Within the hour, the gavel would come down hard and his fate would have been determined. Would he be valued highly? Or would he be deemed insufficiently serviceable for these hard times. Perhaps he would only command the value of so much firewood.

  The anteroom where he was waiting quivered with tension. He had expected to be surrounded by men of his own age but, in fact, the full spectrum of those of conscript age, from eighteen to forty-one were represented. Some were holding forth, rehearsing—so it seemed to Geoffrey—their ‘case’ in varying degrees of defiance.

  ‘Stands to reason, doesn’t it?’

  ‘How could a man in my position be expected to?’

  ‘We’ll see if conscience means anything, won’t we? Don’t hold your breath.’

  The refrains were different but the tone was the same: resentful and anxious. Geoffrey was one of those who kept his own counsel. He opened the paper, refusing to be drawn to the notices on the front page, and tried to engross himself in domestic news. He read slowly, sounding each word out in his head, but their sense eluded him. This was the world as it really was, with its private preoccupations, its political machinations, its social outrages; the sordid rubbed shoulders with the self-righteous; the moral crusader shared a column with the cynical exposer. None of it registered with him. His own circumstances, the fact that what would be decided today would be pivotal, blocked all other considerations. And then, looking up, he saw his cousin Ada.

  There was a man, much his own age, whom he vaguely recognized, in her wake. He raised his hat when he saw that Geoffrey had noticed him but made no attempt to engage in conversation. Ada was not so reticent.

  ‘Why, Ada,’ said Geoffrey. ‘How nice to have family supporting me.’

  ‘It’s nothing of the kind. It’s shameful, quite shameful what you’re doing. I’m only here because Aunt Margery wants to know how you conduct yourself.’

  ‘She could have come herself.’

  ‘She would not stoop.’ Ada lifted her chin as if to appropriate to herself something of the regal aloofness she admired in her aunt.

  ‘But you would. How gracious of you! Or are you motivated by something a little less elevated?’

  ‘I have come with Robert Kingsnorth.’

  So that’s who he is, thought Geoffrey. Ada’s cousin on her father’s side but, more significantly, a scion of the firm of solicitors which had represented the Cordingleys since his Aunt Clare’s marriage.

  ‘Is he here on a matter of conscience too?’ Geoffrey could not resist the gibe.

  ‘How dare you! Cousin Robert has weak eyes. His health renders him unfit for service. But I’ll have you know he volunteered within weeks of the call to arms going out.’

  ‘Heroic.’

  ‘In stark contrast to—’

  ‘In stark contrast to driving ambulances under enemy fire and tending the wounded as they lay in their own putrid mess.’

  Geoffrey stood up and turned away from Ada and Kingsnorth. He was angry with himself. He did not want to use his record over the past year to puff himself up before people whom he despised. He needed to isolate himself and collect his thoughts so that when he faced the tribunal he would be sound.

  Ada watched him go. There was a looseness about the way he walked which chimed with the soft-collar to his shirts which he now favoured. Both were indicative of this freedom he had appropriated, wholly reprehensibly, devoid of any sense of duty. She eased her fingers within her gloves. Her hands were sweating and the constriction of the kid-leather was irksome. She experienced a wave of general resentment which found its focus on all those conventions of dress which so often irritated her: gloves, hat, stays. Everything was tightened or pulled in when what she really wanted, what she now burned to do was break out and beat or batter Geoffrey and these other men who refused to conform to their constraints. Now here was Cousin Robert, at her side, just touching her elbow to steer her (as if she were incapable of finding her own direction) into the chamber.

  Ada followed the hearing while seething with hostility. She was not particularly concerned with the preliminaries. The magistrate, or chairman or whoever he was, made it clear that Geoffrey had not only refused to be conscripted into the armed forces, he had also refused, absolutely (and great emphasis seemed to be placed on this word), to take up some approved work as an alternative to military service. He made a point of telling Geoffrey that past service in the ambulance unit, however commendable—and there were some testimonies to his zeal—did not earn him the right to exemption from contributing further to the war effort.

  Geoffrey replied by saying that he had only ever been driven by personal motives, he had never thought of himself as serving his country, and that he could no longer ally himself to a cause which deman
ded the destruction of human beings on so massive a scale. The nation’s squabbles, he said, were no concern of his. He claimed not be motivated by any ideology. He lived according to his own conscience.

  At this point the magistrate interrupted him, reminding him that his uncle was an earl, and gave him a lecture about privilege and noblesse oblige, and asked him if had anything to say about that. Ada heard Robert chuckle to himself and she realised that this information had been deliberately passed to the magistrate in advance of the hearing. She guessed Geoffrey had had the same thought. She saw his jaw tighten.

  ‘You seem to have said it all for me, sir,’ Geoffrey replied and a woman to Ada’s left, seated farther along in the gallery actually guffawed and then continued to nod vigorously at every point Geoffrey made. The feather on her toque quivered annoyingly, infuriating Ada.

  There was further debate about where Geoffrey’s conscience had come from. The magistrate wanted to assert that it had been fashioned in Geoffrey by dint of his upbringing and class, that he could not, surely, argue that anything other than a fervent patriotism and an Englishman’s duty to defend the weak and vulnerable had been instilled in him from the earliest age. When Geoffrey refused to give any ground and refused to tack his stand onto any religious or political creed, simply reiterating his personal conscientious objection, the magistrate and the two other men of the tribunal became increasingly irritated.

  And then it was all over. The magistrate simply refused to listen to any more. Raising his voice, he told Geoffrey that he should consider himself a soldier from that moment onward and, if he refused to serve, he would be deemed a deserter, liable to arrest as such at any time. The court was dismissed.