by Phillip Rock
It was time, Martin was thinking as he turned the excellent Canary Island cigar between his fingers.
“I saw Charles today.”
“I beg your pardon,” the earl said after a moment of utter silence. “What did you say?”
“That I saw Charles. I went up to Llandinam this morning.”
“This morning?” There was disbelief in his voice. “To north Wales? Surely—”
“I flew up. We keep a company plane at Hendon. I left at seven and was back in London by four. I saw him, and we had a very interesting talk.”
Lord Stanmore lit his cigar. His fingers trembled as he held the match. “That’s not possible.”
“Please, Tony!” Hanna’s words were like a cry.
“I’m sorry, my dear, I know how much it hurts you, but one does not hold interesting talks with Charles.”
“I did,” Martin said. “We found a common ground for discussion.”
The earl drew slowly on his cigar in an effort to calm himself. He fixed his gaze on Martin as though he were the only one present.
“Charles is a badly shell-shocked man. He spends his days seated on a bench watching the woods in the valley. He sits there for hours at a time—staring—waiting for his men to come back, the men of his battalion he ordered over the top in France and who went to their deaths. One can only talk to Charles about—things. The shape of the valley … the contours of the woods … the patterns made by cloud shadows. One could ask till doomsday and Charles would never say what he sees out there. Had there been a radical change in his condition, the doctors at Llandinam would have informed me.”
“I didn’t say there had been a change, radical or otherwise. Let’s just say that I broke through to Charles and we had a normal discussion.”
“About what?” the earl asked, his voice so low that it was difficult to hear.
“Thomas Hardy.”
“God in heaven,” Hanna murmured. “Lieber Gott.”
“There are no miracles,” the earl said. “I’m certainly not calling you a liar, Martin. I’m sure there is an explanation for this—discussion you held with my son. However, doctors have assured me—”
“Doctors can be wrong,” Alexandra said. “There’s a good deal of disagreement about shell shock—causes and cures.”
He eyed her stonily. “I’m aware of Colonel Mackendric’s views. You’ve explained them before.”
“And you’ve listened with a jaundiced ear. Do you find it so impossible to separate the doctor from the man? Robbie may have had his faults, but a lack of dedication to the wounded was not one of them. Their recovery, physical and mental, haunted his every hour and killed him in the end. So when we talk about Colonel Mackendric, let’s do it in that light and no other. Is that too much to ask, Papa?”
“No, dash it all, but Colonel Mackendric never examined Charles. Other men have, men I have faith in, and trust.”
“There are times, Papa, when one must only trust the heart.”
The wind picked up, stirring the boxwood and the elms, blowing out the candles on the table.
“Perhaps we should go inside,” Hanna said. “I feel chilled.”
The earl stood up. “By all means.”
He escorted her into the house, Martin and Alexandra lingering on the terrace.
“Did you really talk with Charles and get a rational response?”
“Yes,” Martin said. “They’re all wrong about him. Oh, he’s a shell-shock casc all right, but he doesn’t sit on that hill waiting for his dead troops to come over the rise. There’s a glimmer of something lying beneath the surface and it’ll never come out if he stays in that place.”
“I know. It’s just a storage bin.”
He bit angrily on his unlit cigar and spat the tip into the garden. “Jesus. Fenton called me a diplomat. Some diplomat! I stomped in with two left feet.”
“Perhaps. But you’ve shaken Papa. I could see the look in his eyes. He wants desperately for Charles to be well again—or at least halfway whole. He just finds it so difficult to believe it’s possible.”
“It is, though,” he said fiercely. “I know it is.”
She sought his hand and squeezed it. “Don’t give up, then.”
The earl was in the drawing room, pacing slowly, brandy in one hand and cigar in the other. He gave Alexandra an accusing look as she entered the room beside Martin.
“Your mother’s come down with an awful headache. You might go up to her and see if she needs an aspirin or something.”
“I don’t think she has the type of headache an aspirin will cure, Papa.”
“I suppose there’s some deep meaning to that remark. She has a headache because she’s upset. Quite frankly, she’s upset because the two of you lurched into a subject that forced me to play the devil’s advocate. Your mother had become reconciled to Charles’s condition. And now … all of this reckless raising hope where there is no bloody hope.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Martin said. “I have to differ.”
“Do you?” he said icily. “Quite frankly, Martin, I feel I’ve been tricked. You could have told me earlier that you’d been up to the hospital. It would have saved your aunt a good deal of mental anguish.”
“My intention was to tell all of you at the same time.”
“The journalist’s dodge of springing a surprise. Was that it?”
“Something on the order, perhaps. But what I said was true.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Then fly up to Llandinam with me tomorrow. Just the two of us. Judge for yourself.”
Lord Stanmore had never so much as touched an airplane. The idea was sobering. He glanced away from his nephew and fixed his gaze on the portrait of Hanna that Auguste Renoir had done for him in the early spring of 1889. How beautiful she was. All misty gold and ivory. He suddenly felt old, and tired. “Fly, you say?”
“Have you ever been up before?”
“No … not exactly.”
“We own a remarkable plane. A de Havilland Eighteen. Has a range of over four hundred miles at nearly one hundred and thirty miles per hour. And it’s strong as a steel bridge. An extremely safe machine.”
“I’m sure it is, but—”
“And our pilot’s first-rate. An ex-squadron leader in the RAF.”
“Where could one possibly land the thing? On the golf links, I suppose.”
“There’s a flying club at Glynn Ceiriog with an excellent field. Ten minutes by car from Llandinam.”
He had been tossed a challenge, the glove flung at his feet.
“Oh, very well. If only to lay all this to rest once and for all.”
“Shall I pick you up in the morning, or would you rather meet me at Hendon aerodrome?”
“I shall meet you. What time?”
“Seven—seven-thirty.”
“Very well. And I would prefer no mention is made of this to your aunt. She’d only fret over the notion of my gadding about in the clouds. You know how women are.”
He showed Martin to the door and then retired immediately to his study. The architect’s plans for a summer pavilion he wanted built at the Pryory were on his desk, but he was in no mood to go over them. He fixed himself a whiskey and sat down in an armchair feeling worn, spent, and not a little angry.
“Blast him,” he murmured. He didn’t enjoy being pushed into things, like flying. And as for that nonsense of having an interesting conversation with Charles—well, dash it all, that was just plain foolishness. He finished his drink in a gulp and fixed himself another.
He assumed that Hanna would be asleep, or at least he hoped she would be, but he could see a fine line of light under her sitting-room door as he walked down the hall toward his own suite. He tapped lightly. There was no answer, but he opened it and looked in. The door leading into her bedroom was ajar and that room was lighted also.
“Hanna?” he called out softly, walking into the bedroom. “Are you awake?”
She was seated at her dress
ing table, still wearing her dinner dress, staring at the mirror as though in a trance. He walked up to her and placed his hands gently on her shoulders.
“What’s the matter, Hanna? You should have been in bed hours ago.”
She turned her head slowly and looked at him. “He’s dead, Tony.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Charles. He’s dead to us, isn’t he? Dead but not buried.”
He gripped her shoulders tightly. “That’s a ridiculous thing to say, Hanna. Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Then why is he in that place? Why isn’t he with us?”
“Why?” He was stunned by the question. “Surely—surely you understand why.”
“I thought I did—once. I’m not sure anymore. And I have no say in the matter. My son. That’s how you always talk of him, Tony—my son. Never our son. But he is our son—yours and mine. I have a right to say what I think is best for him.”
“Of course you do, Hanna, but you’ve heard the doctors, you’ve been to Llandinam and listened to their opinions—”
“And never questioned them. Alex was right when she said one has to trust the heart sometimes. We haven’t done that.”
His knees seemed to buckle and he stepped away from her and sat on the edge of her bed. “I’ve done what I thought was best. That psychiatrist chap two years ago. You were there. You heard what he had to say. Charles so calm, so much at peace with himself. Could all change, the chap said. Some horror of memory might shock him into screaming, and his screaming might never end. I don’t think I could stand that, Hanna—hearing his pain.”
“Oh, Tony,” she whispered, sitting beside him and holding him tightly in her arms. “What of our own pain?”
HE FELT A twinge of apprehension as he watched the airplane being pushed from the hangar. It was a powerful-looking biplane with a windowed compartment for six passengers between the engine and the cockpit. The machine was a vivid orange color with the words INTERNATIONAL NEWS AGENCY painted in black letters along the length of the fuselage.
His sense of unease increased as he climbed into the plane, but the passenger compartment was surprisingly roomy. He sank into a low wicker seat and looked out through one of the windows. Three men in white coveralls were gripping the lower wing and turning the plane into the wind.
“Hold onto the arms of the chair,” Martin told him. “It’s a bit bumpy until we’re airborne.”
“Yes,” he murmured. “Suppose it would be.”
The pilot, seated in an open cockpit behind and above them, shouted, “Switch on! Contact!”
The engine coughed … ticked … then slammed into life. Dark gray smoke streamed past the windows and the sound of the engine hammered at them through the round bulkhead in the front of the compartment. Martin leaned close to the earl and shouted in his ear: “Won’t be as loud in air!”
“Quite so,” he mouthed, the words lost. He stared out of the window as the plane began to roll forward, gathering speed, bumping and rocking—faster and faster—engine thundering. He felt a momentary sensation of being thrust back against the seat and then a sense of weightlessness as the ground dropped away. The engine emitted an ear-throbbing howl, which then diminished slightly in volume. They banked sharply to the right and he could see the field below with toy men standing in front of toy buildings. They leveled out, then soared higher and higher. He looked down in fascination at the rooftops of Golders Green, the tumbled panorama of London beyond, the molten silver twistings of the river Thames.
“Quite a sight,” Martin yelled.
The earl nodded, eyes riveted on the view. He was incapable of speech.
IT WOULD ALWAYS be 1914–18 at Llandinam War Hospital. The grim brick building—built by a coal baron in the previous century to resemble a castle—stood on a hill overlooking a valley dotted with sheep. Beyond the valley rose the wooded slopes and rocky crags of Moel Sych. It would have been a good site for a country hotel, a place for rock climbers or bird watchers to stay, but the men who lived there cared nothing for the grandeur of the Welsh hills.
“It gets more terrible year by year,” the earl said quietly as he and Martin emerged from the wheezing Austin taxi that had brought them up from Glynn Ceiriog. “Although, of course, Charles is oblivious to it all.”
The place had been a hospital for the care and treatment of shell-shock cases only. Financial considerations since the end of the war had altered that. It now contained multiple amputees as well, and men so badly disfigured that any meaningful form of plastic surgery was impossible. It was not a place that encouraged visitors, as much by its inaccessibility in a remote corner of Wales as by the horrors to be found there.
“Well, Rilke, back again I see.” Dr. Knowles, onetime major in the RAMC, met them on the path leading up to the main building. Four of his truncated patients were taking the sun on the lawn, their wheeled wicker baskets pushed there by orderlies. “And Lord Stanmore. Jolly good to see you again, sir.”
“Now see here, Knowles,” the earl said. “I understand from my nephew that there’s been a change in my son’s condition.”
“Has there?” The doctor frowned. “Not that I’m aware of. Although I imagine Gatewood would know more about it than I would. Still, he would have mentioned it in the mess, I’m sure. We’re all frightfully fond of Major Greville.”
“I told Dr. Gatewood of my conversation with Charles yesterday,” Martin said.
“Oh, that. Thomas Hardy and all. He did say something about it at supper last night. But I don’t think he gave it much importance. I say, I hope you didn’t get too worked up. The major’s quite the same today as he was yesterday.” He pointed toward a hill half a mile from the hospital grounds. “Up there as usual.”
Lord Stanmore made a barely audible groaning sound. Martin smiled. “Good. I’d have been worried if he hadn’t been.”
It was a hard climb up the hill, along a narrow path overgrown with nettles. They could see Charles as they topped the rise. He was seated on a sagging wood bench, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees. In old corduroys and open shirt, he looked like a farmer taking a rest. He could hear them coming and turned his head to watch them. He was thirty, but looked younger: a tall, slender, dark-haired man with a high-domed forehead and a long, patrician face. His eyes had a childlike quality, wide and trusting.
“Hello,” he said. “Taking a stroll?”
The earl sucked in his breath, then removed his hat and fanned his face with it.
“Horribly hot for Wales.”
“Oh, yes,” Charles said. “It is. Summer, you see.” He pointed off toward the valley. “The sheep down there are quite immovable today. Their woolly coats. Although, in Australia … Well, one would imagine a sheep could bear extremes.”
“One would think so,” the earl said. “Do you mind if I share your bench?”
“By all means do. Your friend is welcome as well. It’s far studier than it appears.”
“I’ll stand,” Martin said. “It’s a lovely view from here.”
Charles nodded. “Yes. Very lovely indeed.”
“We could see you admiring it as we came up. It made me think of something I read once.”
“Oh? And what was that?”
“A line from a poem—‘And what does he see when he gazes so?’”
Charles rubbed his hands along the top of his trousers and smiled wistfully. “‘They say he sees an instant thing … more clear than today … a sweet soft scene.’” He paused, not aware of his father’s sharp intake of breath. “I remember you now. You were here—before.”
“That’s right,” Martin said quietly. “Before.”
“And we played a game with old Hardy. You were very good at it. I think I could stump you, though. What is a great thing?”
“‘Sweet cyder.’”
“And another?”
Martin looked toward the sky and closed his eyes for a second. “Dancing.”
Charles laughed. “Not exactl
y, but close enough. ‘The dance is a great thing.’ Name one more?”
“I’m sorry,” Martin said after a long pause. “You beat me.”
“Love. ‘Love is, yea, a great thing.’”
“Of course. I forgot that stanza.”
“Most people do.”
The earl blew his nose loudly into a handkerchief. “Dashed if I know what all this means, Martin. Damned if I do,” he said.
Martin placed a hand on Charles’s shoulder. “Do you mind if we continue our walk? My friend has never seen the view from the other side.”
“Really? He should, you know. It’s well worth the extra steps.”
“We’ll be back.”
“I would enjoy that. I’ll give you a clue and you return with the line. How runs the Roman road?”
The earl’s face was the color of brick from the heat and an inner turmoil. He stumbled slightly as they walked away, and Martin took him firmly by the arm.
“Are you all right? Let’s sit under that tree.”
“No, no,” he said impatiently. “I’m perfectly fine. I just want to know what all that palaver was about. He’s never said anything like that before.”
“No one broke through to his thoughts before. But, to be honest, only a few people knew Charles—the inner Charles. I did because he opened up to me once. Roger Wood-Lacy certainly did, but Roger’s dead. He kept a good deal of himself hidden. Poetry was more of a joy to him than riding to hounds.”
“I know that, blast you.” He wiped his florid face with the handkerchief. “Surely Gatewood—”
“Dr. Gatewood is a psychiatrist, not a mind reader. And Charles is only one of fifty neurasthenic patients—and a tranquil, easy one to manage. He doesn’t scream or get violent. He isn’t suicidal, he doesn’t huddle in terror under tables all day. He’s not a challenge to Gatewood in any way. He sits peacefully up here and looks out over the valley. When he was asked why he sat here, he replied that he was waiting for the men to come back. Gatewood assumed Charles was referring to the men of his battalion who had been massacred on the Somme. But he was flat wrong.”
“What in bloody hell is he waiting for then?”