by Phillip Rock
“He’s not waiting for anything. He was alluding to a poem.”
The earl stared at him blankly. “I’m sorry, Martin. I’m totally at sea.”
Martin leaned against a wind-twisted tree and took a crumpled cigar from his jacket pocket. “It came to me yesterday when I walked up here and sat beside him on the bench. There’s always a wind blowing across those mountains and it’s a rare day when there aren’t clouds. As I watched the cloud shadows racing down the slopes and across the valley, it reminded me instantly of the imagery in a poem by Thomas Hardy. I knew that Charles—as I remembered him—would have been struck by the same thing, and so I said, ‘Hardy would have enjoyed this spot.’”
“And how did he react?”
Martin delved into his trouser pocket for a box of matches and lit his cigar. “Nothing extreme. He simply nodded and smiled, but I knew I had touched a chord—a link to the past. Hardy’s poetry was something we had shared in common. We had both discovered poetry on our own and at about the same age. I was in high school in Chicago and he was at Eton. Both of us had read a Hardy novel or two—Tess, Jude the Obscure—but our English teachers had never discussed his poems. We felt very proud of ourselves for having found them. We had a pleasant talk about it once at the Pryory before the war. Anyway, as I said, the cloud shadows reminded me of Hardy’s imagery and I quoted a line from ‘Souls of the Slain.’ Have you read that poem, by the way?”
“No.”
“Well, its an allegory about finality, the unbridgeable gap between life and death. It’s a sad poem but not morbid. In it, a host of shadowy beings—spirits of lost men—swoop down from the sky and alight on the earth of their homeland. There’s an allusion in one stanza to men who have warred under Capricorn—perhaps a reference to the dead of the Boer War. Soldiers certainly, because they are met by another spirit, who is referred to as the General.
“After I had said the line—from the third stanza—Charles smiled at me and quoted the following line. We recited the poem together, each taking a line. Like a game. It’s a long work and I’d forgotten a good deal of it. Charles hadn’t. He knew it by heart, word for word. I believe that when he sits up here he thinks of that poem, actually gets inside it. The men he watches for are those men, Thomas Hardy’s men, not his own. He may have escaped into poetry altogether. Into Arnold, Milton, Swinburne, Keats. The poets he loved the best. A safe world to be in. An ordered, beautiful world of rhyme and meter.”
Lord Stanmore reached out for the tree as though to steady himself. “Perhaps I’ll sit down after all. I feel a bit queer.”
“Maybe we should go back. You don’t look well.”
“Let me sit in the shade for a moment. That’s all I need. A chance to catch my breath.”
He sat under the tree, loosened his collar, and undid his tie. “That’s better. I’ll be myself in a minute.” His sudden smile was bitter. “Not that that’s any great attainment.”
Martin blew a stream of smoke into the wind. “You’re a good man, Anthony.”
“If ‘good’ means intolerant, unbending, and shortsighted, then I am indeed a good man.” He leaned back into the tall grass and looked at the sky. “I broke the bonds of earth today. I soared in the clouds. It’s not possible to experience something like that and still retain one’s narrowness of vision. I see certain events with clarity now. One summer in particular. I’m not sure exactly which summer—nineteen five or six it would have been. Charles was—oh—fourteen or fifteen. Still at Eton. He was a fine rider and loved horses as much as I did. I was looking forward to taking him with me up to Derbyshire for a few weeks of cross-country and point-to-points. The Thurlstone Moors and the Hallam Trials. Had bought him a proper horse as a surprise, a six-year-old chestnut—Hailaway—a beautiful creature, as fine as anything running at Aintree. But when he came home for the holidays he was a different boy. He’d lost all interest in riding. All he cared to do that summer was read. Poetry. My library lacked the books he wanted, and so he was always dashing into Guildford to buy this or that volume and he’d go off by himself to read it. I remember how irritated I was. Went to Derbyshire without him and deuced angry I was, too.” He blew his nose loudly and stuffed the handkerchief back into the pocket of his heat-wrinkled linen blazer. “He’s back there now, isn’t he, Martin? Back in that summer.”
“I don’t know. It’s possible.”
“Oh, yes, he’s back there all right. I’m sure of it. But he’s had some less pleasant summers since, hasn’t he? Gallipoli … Cape Helles … and then the Somme. Two summers in a row of pure hell. What happens if he suddenly remembers them?”
The cigar was dry, the smoke harsh. Martin dropped it on the ground and crushed it carefully with his foot.
“No one can answer that question. Dr. Knowles wasn’t quite correct when he said Gatewood had attached no importance to what I told him. Gatewood thought it interesting, but it hardly changes anything. It really doesn’t matter very much what Charles sees from this hill—or any other hill, for that matter. He could be taken away from this hospital. It’s only your fear that keeps him here.”
“Yes,” the earl said. “But that fear is real, Martin.”
“I’m sure it is. His memory of the war could come back and it might shatter him completely. That’s the risk, isn’t it? A risk you’re afraid to take. It could happen at any time, I suppose, except that if it happened here you wouldn’t have to witness it. But what if it doesn’t happen? What if all you’re doing is permitting Charles to grow old on that bench?”
Charles watched them intently as they walked slowly toward him through the sun-wilted grass.
“Do you have the answer?” he asked as they reached him.
“I wish to God I did.”
“Oh, not you, sir. You’re not in the game. Your friend. Do you? The question being ‘How runs the Roman road?’”
“‘It runs straight and bare,’” Martin intoned softly.
“Jolly good for you.” He squinted at the sun. “Must be nearly noon. They’ll be blowing a bugle soon to summon everyone for lunch. Curious thing. So many chaps without arms and legs here. They have to be fed like babies and they resent it terribly. One can see a sort of hatred in their eyes.”
“Now look here,” the earl said gruffly, trying to disguise the trembling in his voice. “Do you recall the name Abingdon Pryory? Does it mean anything to you?”
Charles sighed. “I’ve been asked that question before.”
“Yes. I’m sure you have. Doesn’t matter, I suppose. I—I want to take you there in a couple of weeks. Would you mind?”
“I don’t know.” He gazed somberly at his father. “What is it exactly?”
“Home,” he said. “It’s home.”
V
WILLIAM LAY IN bed and listened to the rain drumming against the windows, an October rain bearing the first chill of winter. What day was it? he wondered. Friday? Saturday? Saturday, he realized. Not that it mattered much one way or the other; the days blended into each other. He got out of bed with a groan, lit a cigarette, and then padded across the room in his bare feet and placed a recording on the Victrola. The fire the maid had lit before he was awake was just starting to catch, the coals glowing but little heat emerging. He got back into bed, blew smoke rings toward the ceiling, and listened to the music. It was a new King Kornet release with a vocal by Lonnie “Sweet Memphis” Maxwell, who sang with a distinctive, high-pitched and sensual voice, crooning over some phrases and alternately moaning or shouting the rest:
My gal can shimmy, my gal can shake,
Shake, honey honey, shimmy and shine....
The music blared through the tall, curved horn, filling the room with syncopated sound and lascivious lyrics.
Shake it, honey honey, show your stuff,
Shimmy, baby baby, can’t get enough....
Being able to listen to jazz without fear of complaints or outright censure was something he still marveled at even after nearly two months of being alone i
n the house—except for the servants, of course, who enjoyed the music as much as he did. The family were all down at the Pryory—with Charles. His brother’s release had been his own as well.
He popped two perfect rings in succession and watched them float upward and slowly dissolve into haze.
Lord God a’mighty how that gal can shake.
Honey babe, honey babe, that’s the way!
Free. All care and anxiety put to rest, at least for a little while. A miracle of sorts coming when it did. He had been faced all summer with the gnawing awareness that he would have to tell his father that he had been sent down by the university and was no longer welcome there as a law student for the coming term. Booted out for, as one don had put it, “the most wretched collection of examination papers in the history of the college.” Fair enough. He could not argue with the man. His grasp of English common law had been as thin and nebulous as the smoke rings. But telling that to father would have meant having to make another choice instantly.
“But what on earth are you going to do, William?” his father would have asked in vexation, and he had no answer for that question. He knew only what he did not want to do. He had needed time by himself, time to just drift along and, perhaps, find a path he could follow. The return of Charles had given him the opportunity to do just that.
They had all gone down to Abingdon in August—a family again, even if Charles was in a world of his own, living apart in a suite of rooms in the west wing with a man trained to look after people who had mental or emotional problems. A family even if there was still a slight chill remaining in his father’s attitude toward Alexandra and little Colin. But that had been thawing nicely by September. Colin’s happy laughter at seeing horses and dogs had touched the old boy’s heart even if he kept his emotions to himself. The time had been ripe to present him with a bald-faced lie, and he had done so without the slightest twinge of conscience.
“Father, I shall have to live in London during the school term, you know.”
“Of course, lad, of course. You might as well stay at the house with the caretaking staff rather than go into digs. But I’ll be cutting your allowance to the bone. I’ll not tolerate your spending good money on vile musical recordings, and I refuse to aid your deplorable indulgences. Going to jazz clubs and drinking whiskey will not help you become a barrister.”
“I’ll give all that up. I promise.”
“Now that Charles is home, everything will be different.”
“I know that, Father—and I thank God for it.”
Well, he had meant that all right. They had been the only honest words he had spoken. Charles at home, walking the fields of Abingdon. God, he had nearly wept at the sight of it. And that ass of a neurologist, or psychiatrist, or whatever he was, who had come down from London and had asked him if he felt any anger or resentment toward Charles, any deep-rooted animosity for what Charles had done. He had been so startled by the question, all he had been able to do was shake his head in the negative. Charlie had plunked him in the knee with a Colt automatic, and because Charlie had done that, he was now listening to King Kornet and the Kansas City Kings and not lying six feet under the mud at Arras or Passchendaele.
And that was fate for you.
He lit another cigarette as a footman brought in his tea and toast and the newspapers.
“Vile morning, Master William.”
“Yes, Lester, seems rather foul.”
“Cook says this will be a winter for the ruddy record books.”
“Well, I’ve never seen her to fail.”
He lived in easy familiarity with the servants. There were five of them, including a gardener, just enough to keep the house running and to look after his needs. He had known all of them since his boyhood.
“You might turn the record over before you leave.”
“Very good, sir. Sounds like a new one.”
“Yes. Bought it yesterday. Shame Eagles isn’t here to listen to it.”
The elderly footman laughed. “Poor Mr. Eagles. There be none of them jazz clubs down Abingdon, I warrant.”
“No, but there will be, in time.”
He read the sporting sections of the papers carefully while he drank tea and munched toast—an appetizer for the gargantuan breakfast cook would be preparing for him. After he had digested every scrap of toast and all the information the newspapers offered, he swung out of bed and got dressed.
Most of the lower rooms had been closed up, their furnishings covered with white sheets. The only warm and comfortable places left in the house were his bedroom, the kitchen, and the servants’ quarters. He took his breakfast in the servants’ hall, seated alone at the long, plain wood table, his back to the fireplace. The newspapers were folded in front of him, propped against a teapot, and he turned from one to the other for a final scanning as he ate a breakfast of grilled kidneys, tomatoes, gammon rashers, and fried eggs.
“Ah,” he murmured, staring hard at one of the papers. “Ah, yes, indeed.”
Money had been a problem. Alexandra would have given him a hundred pounds, but he had been loath to ask her, to involve her in any way in his subterfuge. His allowance was nothing but a pittance, precluding even the mildest of debaucheries. One could not possibly seek—let alone find—pleasure in London on three pounds a week. He had solved that problem by forming the Biscuit Tin Society with Lester and the gardener, the three of them meeting briefly every morning after his breakfast and pooling their considerable skills for the benefit of all.
The gardener came into the dining room, after first removing his muddy boots, and sat down respectfully at the far end of the table.
“This here rain could figure, Master William. What’er it be.”
“It could indeed.”
The gardener drew a well-thumbed copy of Ladburn’s Sheet from his back pocket and squinted at it. When the footman came in with the biscuit tin, he sat next to the gardener and set the tin on the table in front of him.
“Well, Master William, what’s it to be today?”
“Ainsworth, the fourth race. That’s my vote, anyhow.”
The gardener nodded quickly. “That well might be. You’d be thinkin’ of Jason’s Girl, I’m supposin’, Master William.”
“Not at those odds,” William said. “It’s a false favorite anyway. She’d never win at a mile and a half on sloppy wet grass.”
“There’s Rangers Spurs—or Wolverhampton at Leeds,” the footman suggested. “Not that I’ve anything against Ainsworth. And I’d say you’ve Bonny Bell in mind, sir. What hasn’t raced since Chester.”
William grinned at him. “You’ve got the nose for it, too, don’t you!”
The gardener turned a page of Ladburn’s Sheet & Gentleman’s Racing Guide and ran a thick thumb down one column. “Saw it meself, of course. She could be primed for a killin’ and that’s for sure. Then again …”
“Yes,” the footman said knowingly. “They may have her in a bit too deep.”
“Granted,” William said. “But I don’t think so. She’s got the weights and they’ve put O’Grady on her. Do you remember O’Grady at Gatwick last April? That man’s a demon with the rain in his face and his mount over the fetlocks in mud. I won’t influence you fellows, but I like a tenner of my share on her to win. I know we can get ten—even twelve to one on her.”
Lester and the gardener exchanged glances. Then the gardener nodded curtly, stuck his racing guide back into his pocket, and stood up. “Done. I’d best be off. There’s a drain clogged out back. Punt a tenner for me, too, Les.”
The footman opened the biscuit tin and removed a fat pile of pound notes held together with a twist of string. He also removed an account book and a stubby pencil. “Ten pound each it is then. I’d best be gettin’ over to Tybald’s in Hampstead Road before the odds go down on her.”
“They won’t,” said William. “If it weren’t for the covenant, I’d say we punt the whole pile.”
“Oh, no, Master William,” Lester said sole
mnly. “The ten-pound limit stands.”
“I quite agree, Lester, and a sound covenant it is, too. I’d like to draw five or six quid from my account.”
“Very well, sir.” Lester counted out thirty-six pounds from the stack and made two notations in the ledger book, his lips moving as he wrote out the transactions: “Tenner each—Bonny Bell—fourth—Ainsworth. Six pounds—Master William’s account—debit.” He placed the balance of the money back into the biscuit tin along with the ledger book and closed the lid. “Done is done, sir. And good luck to us all.”
HE COULD NOT drive a motorcar with any degree of safety or comfort. The strain of manipulating the pedal was too much for his knee. It was a minor price to pay. There were taxis and most of his friends had cars. He took a taxi at three o’clock in the afternoon to his club in St. James’s Street. His father had sponsored him into the club—one of seven in which Lord Stanmore claimed life membership—on his seventeenth birthday. Heppleton’s had held a reputation since 1790 for being a “young man’s” club and and been popular for over a century with Etonians and the more affluent subalterns in the Brigade of Guards who sought relief from the subdued atmosphere at the Guards’ Club or the Marlborough. Heppleton’s had been something of a “hellfire club” during the regency years and had scandalized London with lurid stories of beautiful young harlots draped naked across divans for the casual convenience of rakehell members. The tales may or may not have been true, but they were cherished to the present day as part of the Heppleton tradition. It was comforting to the membership to dwell on the distant past, for the immediate one did not bear thinking about. After the first battle of Ypres in 1914, the club secretary had made the solemn gesture of placing empty brandy goblets on the top shelf behind the bar as a memorial to members killed for king and country. By 1916 the shelf could hold no more and the custom was abandoned. The ranks of glasses still stood, and the club was just now emerging from their shadow.