by Phillip Rock
“What will you be doing?”
“Keeping tribesmen from blowing up the pipelines. Guard duty for the Anglo-Persian oil company.”
“A man of your talents should be at the staff college.”
Fenton took a drink of his whiskey. “I’m not the sort of chap they want at Camberley—or even in the army, if it comes to that.”
“Why don’t you take the hint and quit?”
“I wish I could answer that, Martin. Stubbornness, I suppose. But it’s what I do. I’m a soldier and that’s all there is to it. I put up with the gaff just as you put up with it in your job. I read a few of those Teletype messages a boy kept dumping on your desk. How can you wade through all that misery day after day and still keep your sanity? Why don’t you pack it in and go off to some quiet village and write books about talking rabbits?”
“Because I’m not a talking-rabbit sort of writer.”
“And I’m not a country-gentleman sort of bloke. I took the king’s shilling and I don’t feel like handing it back.”
“Commendable but dumb.”
He smiled wryly. “Winnie’s sentiments exactly. She once thought I was only marrying her for her money. She wishes now that I had.”
Martin signaled the barman for another round of drinks. He had a grudging respect for Fenton. The pressures on him to leave the army were enormous. Had his career been on the rise, it might have made sense, but it had taken quite a different course. His reasons for staying on could have been construed as a simple case of bull-headed pride, but Martin knew better. Fenton loved the British Army and felt intense pride in being one of its officers. It was as simple as that. To each his own.
“You’re not taking Winifred to Baghdad, are you?”
“Christ, no. Not even to Cairo. She’s with child again. You might pop up to Suffolk when you have a chance and see her while I’m gone. You have my permission to take the boat out for a sail.” He shifted his drink from hand to hand, frowning at it. “I didn’t drop by your office to talk about my problems, Martin. Have you seen the Grevilles lately?”
“No, but I’ve talked to Aunt Hanna on the phone. And Alex sent me a long letter after Mackendric died. Why?”
“Alex would like to have Charles removed from Llandinam. She and the gaffer are at loggerheads about it—hell, about everything, if it comes to that. I agree with Alex. I don’t think Charles should be shut away. I think she could help him.”
“What makes you think that? She was a nurse, not a psychiatrist.”
The mixed grills arrived, sizzling on the plates—fat lamb chops, kidneys, sausage, tomatoes, and crusty brown chips.
“Ah,” Martin murmured as he reached for knife and fork.
“I had a lengthy chat one day with our battalion MO,” Fenton said after a few minutes of silent eating. “In Ireland. Nice chap. Typical regular army sawbones. Never set foot in Harley Street. Chop off a leg … hand out a blue pill … all in the day’s work. Well, I always think of Charles, and I brought up the subject of shell shock one night in the mess. This chap told me that when he had been medical officer with the King’s Own he had refused to diagnose it as a specific ailment—wouldn’t dignify it with a name. If some quivering bloke stumbled into his dugout after a bombardment, he’d give the poor fellow a blue pill, a double tot of rum, and then send him back to his unit. The more severe breakdowns, the truly palsied and incoherent ones, he’d send down to the transport lines with a note pinned to their tunics asking the transport officer to give them a couple of days’ rest and then put them to work unloading lorries or something like that. He figured they were better off doing physical labor than being shut away in a hospital—and of more use to the war effort. A few weeks out of reach of the shells did wonders for them, he said, and eventually most of them came back of their own accord.”
“Kill or cure.”
“Something like that, but it worked. Alex told me that Mackendric had a theory about shell shock, too. He wasn’t a blue-pill-and-rum doctor, of course, but he was dead set against shell-shocked men being stuck away in mental hospitals. He believed that if you tell a man he’s ill, he will be ill; that mental hospitals only serve to impress upon their inmates the fact that they must belong there or they wouldn’t be in one in the first place. He felt that eight out of ten would stand a better chance of recovery if they were sent home to their families.
“Interesting.” Martin chewed thoughtfully on a grilled kidney. “Is that Alexandra’s belief, too?”
“Yes, but, as it comes via Mackendric, His Lordship won’t listen to it. Probably considers the poor chap nothing but a seducer of fair English virgins.”
“They were married, for Christ’s sake!”
“It was a race between the stork and the parson. Hardly the type of wedding a peer of the realm expects for his daughter.”
“Mack was a brave and honorable man, a legend in the Forty-third Division. I heard about him two years before I met him.”
“Quite beside the point. He may have been a legend, but he was thirteen years older than Alex and a married man to boot.” He pushed his plate to one side and lit a cigarette. “Alex said something last night at dinner that touched me deeply. She said that as long as Charles is shut away the war will always be a presence in the house. He casts a longer shadow than that, Martin. If there’s any chance of his becoming even halfway normal again, I believe we’re obligated to help him.”
“I feel the same way, but what can we possibly do?”
“The first, and most important, step is to get his nibs to see eye to eye with Alex. That will take a bit of diplomacy and the finer arts of persuasion. It will also take time, which is something I simply do not have. I sail on the twelfth.”
Martin stared at his friend for a moment and then swallowed hard. “Hold it. Are you hinting I should be the go-between?”
“Why not? You’re capable of it. Family and all that.”
“I may have some sway with Aunt Hanna, but Anthony’s another matter. There’s a slight chill in the air from that quarter.”
“Because of The Killing Ground you mean? Granted he wasn’t thrilled by the book, but he must know in his heart that you wrote the truth. I don’t suppose anyone wants to be reminded that the ‘Great’ War was mere mindless butchery. Still, I suspect he admires your anger—in his own peculiar fashion.”
Martin put down his knife and fork. The chops had a greasy taste and his stomach was rebelling.
“There’s another matter. I might just be sued for libel by General Sparrowfield. Or have you heard that news along the military grapevine?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. There was a slight discussion in the mess yesterday afternoon. Quite a few of us served under Sparrowfield on the Somme. He was affectionately known as ‘Old Bird Drops’ in those days.”
Martin smiled and took out a cigar. “Maybe I can use that in my defense. Anyway, getting back to my point, if I go to court, Sparrowfield’s lawyer is sure to bring up the hearing transcript as an example of my wartime perfidious defeatism—or some crap like that. Raking up those old coals will hardly please His Lordship.”
Fenton blew a smoke ring toward the beamed ceiling. “Let’s take first things first, old boy. You’re not in the dock now, are you? It’s my opinion the letter to The Times and libel suits are just ploys to make you get windy. Birdy Sparrowfield trembles on the brink of senility. He’d start ranting about how he skewered Brother Boer in the Transvaal and make an utter fool of himself on the stand. Deal with one thing at a time.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“And even if he actually does sue, noting the glacial slowness of the judiciary process, it could be months, even years, before it all came to a head. In the meantime, there’s still Charlie up there in Wales. You’re a persuasive fellow. And a born diplomat to boot. If anyone could get Alex and his nibs to agree on anything, it’s you.”
“Well,” Martin said, lighting his cigar, “it’s worth a try.”
“Y
es,” Fenton said with quiet intensity. “It bloody well is.”
GOING HOME IN the evening rush hour, the taxi immovable in the crush around Trafalgar Square. Martin paid the driver, got out, and began walking up Haymarker toward Piccadilly Circus. War-wounded ex-servicemen stood in the gutters selling matches, some with medals pinned to their threadbare coats.
“Lost me bleedin’ arm at Wipers, guv’nor....”
He gave the man a sixpence and hurried on. Most people ignored the pleas, or tossed a copper without looking. The war was over. Studiously forgotten. The age of jazz dancing and pink gins. He was thinking of Charles, whose mind was locked into another time and place. To a crippled soldier begging in the streets, that might have seemed a blessing.
He was thinking of Charles as he drew a slender pamphlet from Jacob’s bookcase. It was well printed and bound in heavy buff paper. The title took up much of the cover.
AFTER THE SOMME
An inquiry into the advisability of court-martial of Major the Rt. Hon. Charles Greville, 2nd Royal Windsor Fusiliers, conducted at Llandinam War Hospital.
With an introduction by
Martin Rilke, Associated Press.
The date of the first and only printing was March 25, 1917.
He poured a glass of champagne and sat on the sofa. Between sips he turned the pages—the transcript of a hearing conducted by three officers from the adjutant general’s office at Llandinam, Wales, in February 1917.
COL. BAKER:
Is there a prisoner’s friend?
MAJ. GREVILLE:
I declined one, sir. I intend to speak for myself.
COL. BAKER:
This panel has no objection.
CAPT. JONES:
I believe it should be placed in the record at this time that the report of Captain Finchaven, RAMC, on the state of Major Greville’s mind on the afternoon of fifteenth January, has been read by all the members of this panel. Do you have a copy of that medical report, Major Greville?
MAJ. GREVILLE:
I do.
COL. BAKER:
May I ask the major if he disagrees with Finchaven’s diagnosis of his mental health?
MAJ. GREVILLE:
I do. I was not insane. It was a calculated act.
COL. BAKER:
That is for us to determine, Major Greville. It is the purpose of this panel.
MAJ. GREVILLE:
I understand.
COL. BAKER:
What sort of doctor is Captain Finchaven? It doesn’t say on the report. Is he a surgeon?
CAPT. JONES:
He is a specialist in neurasthenic disorders, sir. A professor of neurology at London University before the war.
COL. BAKER:
I see. Have you studied medicine, Major Greville? Specifically diseases of nervous origin?
MAJ. GREVILLE:
No, sir.
COL. BAKER:
Then wouldn’t you say it would be fair to assume that his determination of your mental condition on fifteenth January is more accurate than your own?
MAJ. GREVILLE:
Captain Finchaven examined me after the act, sir. I do not recall being examined. I am told that I was raving and incoherent. I do not dispute that, sir, nor do I dispute the doctor’s analysis of my mental condition at that time. What I do dispute is the inference that I was deranged when I arrived at Wimbledon Training Center that morning. I was clearheaded, sir. I had come to Wimbledon Common for a specific purpose, achieved that purpose, and surrendered peacefully to authority. It was the deed of a rational man.
COL. BAKER:
This would appear to be a case of disputed opinion as to the condition of mental stability—yours as a layman versus that of a medical specialist with many years of training and practice. I can see no point in prolonging the proceedings here. I can find no justification for your brigade commander’s insistence that you be court-martialed. Are we all in agreement on that?
CAPT. THORN:
CAPT. JONES:
Agreed.
COL. BAKER:
Then I make the motion that—
MAJ. GREVILLE:
I’m entitled to a plea, sir. Under King’s Regulations I have the right to take the stand in my own defense.
COL. BAKER:
Dash it all, man. I’m about to make a motion to quash the charge brought against you by Brigadier General Fenton Wood-Lacy. Isn’t that clear to you, sir?
MAJ. GREVILLE:
It is, Colonel, but that hardly alters the fact that regulations bestow on me the opportunity, if I so desire, of addressing the panel.
COL. BAKER:
I must say that I find these proceedings to be the most curious in all my twenty years with the judge advocate general’s office. You may speak on your behalf, but try to be brief.
MAJ. GREVILLE:
I thank the panel.
COL. BAKER:
That is not necessary. Kindly proceed.
MAJ. GREVILLE:
I entered this war with the highest of ideals and the firmest of faith in the rightness and justness of my patriotism....
Martin closed the pamphlet and set it aside. Charles’s speech was too painful to read, even now, after all the years that had passed. It was like a cry of pain. All the horrors of the Somme attacks were in his words, the anguish of seeing his generation driven to slaughter. The words as bleak as that long-ago day in Wales during the darkest days of the war.
Nineteen seventeen.
A hopeless deadlock on the western front, the armies like bleeding, savage animals bogged in mud. The Somme offensive over and nothing to show for it but six miles of useless, shell-pitted, stinking ground. Half a million British dead and wounded—all for nothing.
Nineteen seventeen.
The armies massing again for another big push to end the war. The British pouring fresh troops around Arras, the French massing along the river Aisne—General Nivelle’s grandiose plan for one massive blow to end it all in a day. A lunatic dream, but the generals saw victory shining on the horizon. The soldiers saw only barbed wire, machine guns, and graves.
Nineteen seventeen.
Major Charles Greville on leave. Calm, soft-spoken Charles Greville strolling the streets of London with a bomb ticking softly in his head. Going to the Cafe Royal, the Ritz Bar, and the Bond Street shops and seeing only corpses. Seeing only muddy wastelands and the men of his company rotting in the shell holes.
I’ve seen them, I’ve seen them,
Hangin’ on the old barbed wire.
Nineteen seventeen.
Major Charles Greville on Wimbledon Common, walking into the HQ hut of the Public Schools Training Battalion to see his brother, Second Lieutenant William Greville, age eighteen, fresh from Eton, his training completed and ready to go over to France. A brave, eager, strong young man …
The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling
… who would have answered unwaveringly the order to go over the top, blowing his whistle, urging his men onward from the crest of the parapet …
O death where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling?
… and who would have died where he stood from the machine-gun fire traversing the trench.
And seeing it all, the vision of it, Major Charles Greville removed an automatic pistol from the deep pocket of his Burberry and blew a hole in his brother’s knee.
IV
STANDING BY THE window of her dressing room, Hanna could see Alexandra and the nurse enter the park. The nurse was wheeling the pram, and little Colin was seated bolt upright, pointing at a flock of large crows that were stalking imperiously across the grass. A murder of crows, she remembered Anthony telling her once. An exaltation of larks—a murder of crows. The creatures fitted their collective descriptions: larks an exaltation of the spirits as they wheeled against the sky; crows like dark assassins stalking the lawns.
She turned away from the window, depressed by the sight. Her daughter and first grandchild. She had always dreamed of it. Alexandr
a being married—perhaps to an officer in the dragoons so that she would walk with her young husband beneath an arch of sabers between rows of men with plumed helmets and burnished cuirasses. And then, a year later, the child—the elaborate christening ceremony at Abingdon church followed by a glittering party at the Pryory. All those dreams gone. Blown to ashes like her dreams for Charles. The ache in her heart her own personal war wound.
“Would her ladyship prefer the green or brown this morning?”
Her maid held two dresses for her inspection.
“The brown, I think. No—green. But not that one. The eau de Nile crepe from Paris.”
“Very good, m’lady. Most appropriate. It’s ever such a warm day”
While the maid searched the closet for the dress, Hanna parted the window curtains again. Alexandra, nurse, and child could no longer be seen. They were somewhere on the gravel paths in the green tunnels of the trees, just one of many groups of mothers, nursemaids, and prams.
“Oh, it’s lovely!” the maid exclaimed, holding the silk dress up to a shaft of sunlight. “You will look a picture in it.”
She looked beautiful, the pale green suiting her complexion, the new length and simplicity of design complimenting her figure. The earl, taking coffee in the morning room, was quick to remark on it as she walked in. He had just returned from his daily ride in Hyde Park and was in a euphoric mood after an hour’s hard canter along Rotten Row.
“You certainly look radiant this morning, Hanna. New frock?”
“Yes. From Harcourt in Paris. Do you like it?”
“Stunning, I must say. Had your breakfast?”