by Phillip Rock
“By special post, your ladyship,” the footman said.
“Thank you, Crawshay.”
She held the envelope in her hand until the man had gone. War Office stationery. Addressed to her, but then they always addressed the letter to the mothers. She slit the envelope with a knife, her hand calm and sure, only her heart racing, a throbbing pain behind the eyes.
17th July, 1915
Dear Countess Stanmore:
It is with regret that I have received word today that your son, Capt. Charles Greville, 2/RWF, has sustained wounds during the recent fighting at Cape Helles. Accounts of the extent and severity of his injuries are necessarily sketchy at this time, but it is known to us that he has been evacuated from the peninsula and taken aboard a hospital ship.
We wish him well.
Yours sincerely,
T. Pike, Brig. Gen.
There had been a great many men wounded or taken sick during the July battles at Cape Helles and Anzac Cove. Finding the exact particulars about one man was next to impossible. Lord Stanmore haunted the War Office, and Martin sent messages through the press channels to Alexandria and Lemnos. Nothing. Captain Charles Greville was simply one of a multitude evacuated from the Aegean on hospital ships. No one was quite sure which ship had received him, and there was no way on earth of finding out until the ship docked somewhere and disgorged its sick. At that point, hospital orderlies would write down the particulars on each man and forward that information to London. It took two weeks, fourteen days and nights that moved in a timeless vacuum of nightmare for Hanna. Her husband’s assurances that Charles was bound to be all right (“probably no more than a flesh wound”) sounded hollow and forced. She spent the days working on needlepoint to try to keep her mind occupied, but there was nothing she could do at night except lie in bed in a cold sweat and imagine her son lying on an antiseptically white bed, his body shattered and mutilated—limbless, faceless, a hollow-mouthed creature that could no longer even scream. She felt on the verge of madness. And then the afternoon came when William ran whooping into her sewing room, yelling, “Old Charlie’s all right! Fractured hip and pelvis is all. They took him to Toulon on a French ship. . . . That chap from the army just rang up Father and told him!”
She burst into tears and was weeping uncontrollably when her husband came into the room. The sight of his mother’s hysteria embarrassed William and he was moody for the rest of the day.
9th August, ’15
My dearest Mother, Father, William, and Alex:
This short letter is for you all. I was almost literally hit by a Turk shell. The great ugly thing landed right next to where I was lying but failed to explode. Broke my right hip and pelvis in several places, but the bones are mending well. I am quite wasted from dysentery, but that condition is on the mend, so I should be back to passing normal in a few weeks and fit for active duty within three to four months.
I am in the French naval hospital in Toulon, a great stone barn of a place built by Napoleon with a magnificent view of the docks from the windows in my room. Long, cool passageways, very pretty French nurses, first-rate food, and a doctor who believes that half a liter of good red wine a day never hurt any man. Bless the chap in your prayers! I could not ask for better or more sympathetic care and will be evacuated to a hospital in England in about three weeks’ time. It will seem odd coming home. I don’t quite know how to put it, but I am not the same man who left just a few short months ago. So much has changed. So much more will be changed. But we shall talk about that when I arrive.
My warmest regards to Coatsworth, Mrs. Broome, and all the staff. Also, please convey to the vicar that God has been kind to me and I regret filching pears from the vicarage garden when I was eleven. All my love.
Charles
The earl scowled at the broken top of his soft-boiled egg.
“What do you think he means about change? Of course he’s changed. Can’t get hit by a shell and not be affected by it somewhat.”
“I suppose he means . . . many things,” Hanna said quietly. She read the letter through again silently and then placed it on the polished surface of the breakfast table. “I could weep.”
“Oh, Mother, please,” William muttered, then glanced quickly toward his father. The earl did not admonish him. They both shared a horror of emotional outbursts.
“Sounds cheerful enough, my dear, considering the circumstances.”
“I was thinking of poor Roger,” she said. “If only God had showed a little kindness to him as well.”
She was not being entirely honest. She grieved for Roger Wood-Lacy, but what truly distressed her was Charles’s assurance that he would be “fit for active duty within three to four months.” An unexploded shell. Would God grant any man two miracles in a lifetime?
“I would like us to go to France, Tony.”
The earl dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. “That might be quite difficult. Restrictions on civilian travel to the Continent are severe. I might possibly be able to arrange it, but it could easily take a few weeks and Charles could well be on his way here by then. There’s really nothing we can do for the lad by going—in fact, I think it would only distress him, knowing we were crossing the channel on a passenger ship with all those blasted U-boats skulking about. He must, surely, have heard about the Lusitania going down.”
“I suppose you’re right.” She sighed. “Yes, it would worry him, I’m sure.”
Her instinct to protect and cherish her firstborn was being thwarted by the dictates of the war. Civilian travel to France was not encouraged in the least. Visas would be required, skeins of red tape to cut through. Tony was right, it would be an unnecessary gesture at best. Charles would be in England in a matter of weeks to convalesce. She had read that soldiers were often sent as close to their homes as possible, and there were several war hospitals within half an hour’s drive from Abingdon.
“Patience, my dear,” the earl said gently. “You must have patience.”
She reflected on her husband’s attitude, and that of William, as she sat in the music room working on a tapestry. She worked swiftly with the needles and the many strands of colored thread, shading and highlighting the spire of Salisbury cathedral in petit point. William she dismissed with a sad smile. He was at an age that ignored tragedy utterly. His brother had suffered an accident, no worse than that, like a crash in a motorcar or a fall from a horse. Fear, death, and mourning were not words in his vocabulary. As for Tony, she felt a grudging respect. She knew how he had suffered for the past two weeks, had noticed what no other eyes but her own would have seen—the hint of pain in his eyes, the paleness at the corners of his mouth. Once, unable to sleep, she had opened the door to his room and had seen him standing in front of a window in the darkness, his head pressed against the glass. He had been weeping, very quietly—an insular sadness that she had not dared to intrude upon.
Men did not cry, except in their hearts or in the aloneness of midnight rooms, away from prying eyes or the unmanly comfort of a woman’s arms. She understood that well enough even if she questioned the code men lived by. It seemed unnatural to be so restrained, but she supposed it was precisely that code which had permitted Tony to function during a stage of crisis. All during the ordeal of the past two weeks, not knowing whether Charles was alive or dead, mildly injured, or horribly mangled, he had been following his normal routines to the letter—riding in the morning, inspecting the estate, going up to London for debates in the House, visiting his clubs. “Life must go on, Hanna,” he had said. To the casual observer, his attitude might have appeared cold, uncaring, but she understood his inner torment and knew that the only way he had been able to cope with it had been to pretend that it didn’t exist. But it had existed and his repressed suffering must leave some mark on him—alter him in some way. There had been a hint of it after breakfast. He had remarked casually, “Hanna, what’s the name of that book dealer in Guildford whom Charles dealt with all the time?”
“Clipstone . .
. small shop in High Street. Why?”
“Oh, thought he might know the books Charles’d enjoy reading. Poetry, I suppose . . . history . . . stuff like that. Make up a parcel to send the lad.”
The last book he had bought for Charles had been Captain Haxwell’s Tales of Great Hunts, given on Charles’s sixteenth birthday and left unopened to this day.
“Miss Foxe on the line, your ladyship.”
“Thank you, Coatsworth.”
She carefully finished a stitch. Lydia had obviously received a letter as well, and she had a strong feeling that she knew what Charles had written her. Change. Yes, many things would change.
“I didn’t mean to disturb you, Lady Stanmore,” Lydia said, her voice faint over the crackling wires. The telephone service from London to Abingdon was abysmal. “I thought that you’d like to know I received a very long letter from Charles this morning.”
“We received one, too, my dear.”
“Yes, felt certain you would have. Are you and Lord Stanmore planning to visit him in France?”
“We would certainly like to, but I understand that it is much too difficult . . . visas . . . special travel permits from the French military.”
“That’s really why I called. I can arrange it. You could leave this weekend . . . via army transport from Portsmouth and then by train to Marseilles.”
Hanna held the receiver very tightly. “How easily you can manage things, Lydia.”
“It’s really not at all difficult, Lady Stanmore, but it can be terribly frustrating if one tries to go through the regular channels. Shall we say Saturday morning? That way you and his lordship could be in Toulon by Sunday afternoon.”
“I should very much like to discuss it. Could we have luncheon tomorrow? Say at the Savoy? One-thirty?”
There was a moment’s pause. The wires hummed and snapped. And then Lydia’s voice, accepting, at that time and place. It was a calm, self-assured voice, the tone of a chess player who knows the exact number of moves to checkmate.
She had not been up to London for months, not since the winter, and the size of the crowds amazed her, as did the sight of women porters at Charing Cross. An elderly cabbie drove her to the Savoy.
“So many people,” she said, “and so many women working at such odd occupations.”
“It’s the war, ma’am,” the driver replied sourly, half turning his head toward the little glass partition behind him. “All the young lads takin’ the king’s silver, so the girls is fillin’ in like. Can’t say as I likes seein’ it. Why, you can go to any public ’ouse and see the women liftin’ their pints right alongside the men.”
“You don’t say so.”
“God strike me if it ain’t the truth. Seen it with me own eyes any number of times, ma’am.”
“And the streets are so crowded.”
“Why, bless you, ma’am, it’s the war, see . . . the munition works down Woolwich way and all them bullet makers and whatnot out in Ilford and Epping. Everyone’s makin’ good money and ol’ London’s the best place to spend it.”
There were lorry-loads of soldiers all down the Strand, inching toward Charing Cross Station. The men were in full kit, carrying heavily loaded packs, rifles, all of them waving their caps and cheering.
“Goin’ over,” the driver said gloomily. “I was at Mafekin’. It ain’t no bloody picnic, war is, I can tell you.”
The lounge of the Savoy had always been so quiet, so sedate; now it was bedlam, a swirl of officers and young women. Many of the officers were from the Canadian divisions—tall, boisterous, back-slapping men with flat, almost American accents. It was like being back in Chicago. At last she spotted Lydia and moved imperiously through the throng like the countess she was.
“How lovely you look, my dear,” she said by way of greeting. “Your dress is most becoming . . . so chic. Not Ferris, surely.”
“No . . . from Worth. I’m glad you like it.”
“Very much. The shorter skirts suit your figure.” Her compliments were genuine. She had certain reservations about Lydia, but none about her taste in clothes. “How hot it is here. Must be the crowd.”
“I meant to warn you,” Lydia said with a laugh. “The Savoy these days is rather like Victoria Station on Bank Holiday, but I did manage to reserve a table on the terrace. It’s relatively quiet and there’s a lovely breeze off the river.”
They found their table and sat down. Waiters hovered. They ordered aspic and cold lobsters, a dish of fruit, and a bottle of Liebfraumilch—“now labeled,” the sommelier remarked patriotically, “Alsatian White.”
Hanna removed Charles’s letter from her handbag. “I thought you might like to read this. If I remember correctly, you used to help him raid the vicar’s pear trees.”
“I’d almost forgotten. Yes. I stood lookout for Charles and Fenton.” She read the short letter and handed it back. “I brought my letter along. You can read it if you’d like.”
“You want me to, don’t you, Lydia?”
“Yes,” she replied evenly. “I want very much for you to read it. I—I think it might explain a good deal.”
“About you and Charles? I don’t think so. He loves you, and I’m sure his letter expresses that love. Such letters are not meant to be read by a third party. They lose flavor in the transition.”
The aspic and the lobsters came, and the two women ate, talking of generalities—the hot weather, the war. When the coffee arrived, Lydia poured two demitasses from the silver pot.
“Was his lordship pleased at the thought of seeing Charles on Sunday?”
“I didn’t mention our conversation,” Hanna said, sipping her coffee. “He would only resent special treatment. No, we will wait until Charles is sent home, but I am most grateful for the gesture. Could you really have arranged things so effortlessly?”
“Yes.”
“Might I ask how?”
“Through David Langham.”
Hanna looked away and watched the river traffic moving under the span of Waterloo Bridge. One of the boats was a steam yacht with a white funnel. Highly polished brass glinted in the sun and reminded her strongly of regatta days at Henley before the war. Only a year ago, and yet every aspect of life had changed utterly.
“Mr. Langham has become a most powerful man . . . or so I gather from the newspapers.”
“Yes,” Lydia said. “His ministry has become quite vital.”
“What precisely is its function?”
“Military appropriations . . . the coordination of supply with need. The shell shortage at Neuve-Chapelle spurred the importance of the ministry. As my father remarked at the time, no White Manor ever ran out of meat pies at a crucial moment. The ministry sees to it that if the army projects a need for a million rounds of machine-gun ammunition in September, those million rounds will be available. The same holds true for everything from canned stew to bootlaces.”
“Fascinating,” Hanna murmured. “The ministry must employ a great many people.”
“Yes . . . both civilians and military.”
“Might I have some more coffee?” She averted her eyes from the peaceful tableau on the river and studied Lydia, as though seeing her for the first time. Charles’s infatuation with the woman was easy to understand, but she doubted if he had ever looked much beyond the shiny chestnut hair and the faultless skin. Lydia’s beauty was beyond questioning, but it was a surface loveliness, an enchantment of bone structure and ivory flesh. There were depths in the green eyes that were impenetrable, a labyrinthine murkiness that Hanna found disquieting. But then she was a woman. A man gazing into those eyes would feel no qualms whatever. Certainly not Charles. Not even the Honorable David Selkirk Langham.
“Charles is determined to marry you, Lydia . . . come what may. That’s the crux of his letter, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I can understand his feelings. He’s seen so much death. Now he’s determined to embrace living, if—if only for a little while.” She looked down at her cup
and ran a finger around the thin porcelain rim. “It appears to be an almost universal attitude these days. So many marriages. The registry offices are crowded with young men in uniform and their girls. I find it difficult to understand why a man would take a bride today only to leave her a widow tomorrow.”
“No man believes it will happen to him. If there’s a chance at happiness before going to the front—”
“He grasps it. I can sympathize with that, and yet I can’t dispel the distress I feel at the idea of a young man being married one minute and torn apart by a shell the next.”
“I share that concern, Lady Stanmore. When I think how close Charles came . . .” She let the thought dangle and took a sip of her coffee.
“Both Lord Stanmore and I want Charles to be happy. That is uppermost in our thoughts. I understand my husband very well, and I know that he would be willing to make concessions, to soften certain inflexible attitudes that he once had toward you and Charles. To be blunt, I could induce him to give his blessing.”
“And would you?”
“No. Never. Not if it means seeing Charles go back to the front a mere three or four short months after his honeymoon. I’m sure that you find that just as painful to contemplate as I do.”
“Yes.”
“Charles has shed his blood . . . nobly and with honor. He’s done, as they say, ‘his bit.’ “
Lydia set down her cup and glanced around for a waiter. “Would you care for a brandy, Lady Stanmore? Daddy keeps a private stock here of some wonderful fifty-year-old Cognac.”
“He must dine here often.”
“Late suppers mainly . . . with Mr. Langham.”
“I’d enjoy a glass. I find brandy settles the nerves.”
The waiter caught Lydia’s eye and moved to the table like a dancer. She told him to ask the wine steward for a bottle of 1865 Otard and to bring a pot of fresh coffee.