by Phillip Rock
“Tonight.”
“I hope to God Hackway can do the job. I shall miss you, Fenton.”
“Hackway’s quite competent, sir.”
“Perhaps, but he’s not you.” The elderly colonel toyed absently with the revolver resting on the seat between them, his eyes on the armored car, with its revolving turret and Vickers gun menacing the hedgerows on both sides of the road. “They expect you to chuck it in, Fenton, I suppose you know that.”
“Yes, I know it.”
“Sending you to Mespot—”
“Iraq now.”
“Same bloody difference. If the Arabs or Kurds don’t get you, the climate will.”
“It’s not all one-sided.”
“Because they kick you up to lieutenant colonel again and give you a battalion? Don’t be foolish, my boy. They have a mark by your name. Every job you get will be a damn tough bullet to chew. The promotion is just a sop to keep your esteemed father-in-law from writing angry letters to the War Office. They’ll be most happy to accept your resignation and put you in civvy street with your honor and colonelcy intact. You should jump at the opportunity, Fenton.”
He should, by all that was logical, do just that. God knows, it would make Winnie happy. He could become a country gentleman and manage one of the marquess’s estates. Or learn some sort of trade. It was a bit late for the law. Business perhaps—import and export. Twelve years he had been a soldier. It was the only trade he knew. The regiment was drawn up on the square of Limerick barracks, the band turning into it now, playing “The Bonnie English Rose” on drums and fifes. Corporal Harris, the best trumpeter in the band, stood at attention by the flagpole, facing the chaplain. It was fifteen minutes before eleven on the morning of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. A mild day, with great fleecy clouds blowing in from the Shannon. He glanced upward, and there was the flag whipping in the wind, the colors bright and crisp against the sky. Oh, damn, he thought. Right or wrong, it was what he did and it was too late to leave it now.
Take ’old o’ the wings o’ the mornin’,
An’ flop round the earth till you’re dead;
But you won’t get away from the tune that they play
To the bloomin’ old rag over’ead.
“You’re not packing, surely,” Lady Margaret asked as she came into the room. The twins hung on to her hands, dragging their feet and shrieking with the fun of trying to pull their grandmother’s arms out of their sockets. “He hasn’t written you yet. He may give up his commission, you know.”
“He’s your son,” Winifred said as she sorted through a pile of the twins’ dresses. “You should know better than that.”
“Baghdad,” Lady Margaret whispered. “I can’t bear the thought of it.”
“It wouldn’t be Baghdad, Mother—he wouldn’t allow us to live there. No, we shall go to Egypt and rent a beautiful cool house in Gezirah. Jennifer and Victoria will adore it and so will you.”
“Me? You shall never drag me out of Suffolk, my girl.”
Winifred smiled, watching the twins tug and pull. “You’re being dragged already. Anyway, it would only be for a year or two at most and Fenton will get ample leave. We could hire a houseboat and go up the Nile. It will be very . . . pleasant.”
Lady Margaret detached herself from the girls, who raced off like puppies, and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Oh, dear . . . You’re not suited to be an army wife. Why in heaven’s name don’t you tell him so?”
Winifred sighed and touched her mother-in-law lightly on the shoulder. “Because if I told him that, he’d give it up and it has to be his decision, not mine. I’m Fenton’s wife and that’s all I really care about. That he happens to be in the army is just something I’ve learned to live with and will go on living with, I suppose.”
“Well, they say Egypt is delightful in the winter, and we can purchase two tiny donkeys for the children to ride.”
Winifred bent down and kissed her on the cheek. “We, is it? Good, but the twins are a bit young for donkeys.”
“Oh, are they?” Lady Margaret said ruefully. “A couple of Amazons! I always imagined girls would be gentle lambs, but they’re almost Fenton’s equal at that age, although I must say that Roger was—” She stopped abruptly and looked down at her folded hands in her lap. “That day again. Two minutes to remember in silence. I don’t need one day a year to think of him.”
Winifred turned back to the piles of clothes and continued her sorting.
“I feel the same way about Andrew and Timothy. And if the bullet that hit Bramwell had been a tenth of an inch further to the left, I would have another brother to remember as well.”
“Armistice Day is for the same sort of person who only goes to church one Sunday out of fifty-two.”
“I suppose it is,” Winifred said quietly. “And yet when they ring the bells . . .”
They looked at each other and then held hands, very tightly, waiting for the first doleful peal of eleven.
It had been an exhilarating drive back from Biarritz with Prince Michael.
The prince had escaped the bullets which had felled many of his kinsmen—not to mention his cousin, the tsar—by having been an aide to the Russian military attaché in Paris from 1915 until events in Holy Russia had made such a post less than superfluous. He had also been fortunate in having had the foresight to transfer a million rubles in gold from his bank in Petrograd to the Banque de France. This money had not only allowed the thirty-five-year-old prince to indulge himself in his primary passion—the quest for speed—but had given him something that few of his émigré countrymen of noble blood could boast of—independence. He had not been reduced, as had so many dukes, grand dukes, and princes of the Romanov swarm, to selling his name to one of the daughters of the new “war rich” who were beginning to flock to Paris from such places as Birmingham, Bradford, Liverpool, and even Gary, Indiana, USA, in search of titles on the cheap. No. He was Prince Michael and he was beyond being bought. The Isotta-Fraschini that he drove, the Breguet biplane that he flew, had been paid for out of his own pocket. It was for this reason, if for no other, that Lydia Foxe Greville sat beside him. She did not like men with price tags on their family crests.
Yes, it was exhilarating. The trees flashing past, the dust whipping back from the tires in long, flat streamers of the palest yellow. The wind in her face as it whirled over the glass screen in front of her. Paris rising in the dawn, spires and towers glinting above the haze. Montparnasse. The Faubourg. The squeal of rubber as the prince braked in front of the Deux Magots. The sleepy kitchen staff opening up the place to serve them coffee and brioches. When at last he parked in front of her house on the edge of the Bois, she felt totally satisfied. It was fifteen minutes before eleven.
“Shall I come in?”
“Shall?” She laughed. “Or may I come in?”
He shrugged. “How can I tell your mood, Lydia?”
“My mood is vaguely reflective at the moment. And, besides, we have had quite enough of each other in the past week to last us some time. Drive to the aerodrome and fly your little machine someplace exotic.”
He held her hands and kissed them. “Au revoir. I will go to Tangiers. Do not entangle yourself too deeply with someone else before I return or I shall crash-land my machine on your roof.”
“Galant” was the word that described him. But then he was a prince, and the right phrases and gestures came naturally. If she married him, she would become a princess with a five-hundred-year-old name. The idea did not intrigue her. They were equals now. “Money,” David Langham had once said, “is the only important aristocracy.” And then had added with a wink: “But power is the votes of the poor.”
Langham crossed her mind as she walked slowly up the staircase, a maid scurrying ahead of her to open her bedroom door. She thought of him because he was so opposite in every way to the tall, athletic prince. It was Langham who had induced her to buy this house so that he could have a quiet retreat during the int
erminable months of stormy conferences at Versailles. He had solved the complex problem of dividing Hungary after a particularly satyric weekend in this very room, on the very bed that she now stretched out upon as her maid drew the bath. Her closeness to Langham had not gone unnoticed. It had given her an entree into the new society that money alone could never have bought. Money was desirable in this postwar world, but influence was everything.
The bells of St. Jean Baptiste in Neuilly began to ring. It was not Sunday, surely? Thursday morning—it was Thursday, the eleventh of November. The bells had the same soft, melodic sound as the church bells of Abingdon, and memory came in a rush, a flood of images that stunned her with their clarity. She felt that she had but to reach out with her hands and grasp Fenton’s, and they would be up—up—up the scaffolding to the tall brick chimneys, with Charles far, far below calling out, “Lydia . . . Lydia . . . Don’t fall . . . don’t fall!”
The Earl and Countess of Stanmore and their son, the Right Honorable William Greville, were warmly greeted by the Reverend Mr. Toomey, Vicar of Llandinam, as they stepped from their Daimler. The earl remained behind the wheel for a few moments to double-check his parking procedure—gears in reverse, hand brake pulled up, wheels turned at a sharp angle—for he was a meticulous driver of motorcars. The Reverend Mr. Toomey then ushered them into the vicarage for a cup of strong tea to offset the morning’s chill. The tea was served, appropriately enough, in a Georgian silver service donated by the Grevilles. Their generosity over the past three years had been extreme, and their company, as always, was genuinely welcomed by the young clergyman and his wife.
“So tell me, William,” the vicar said, “how is Cambridge treating you this term?”
“A bit better than I’m treating Cambridge,” William said with a laugh. “I don’t think I’m quite suited for Classics.”
“He’s thinking of leaving King’s and studying for the bar,” Hanna said.
“I couldn’t be happier,” the earl remarked, drinking his tea with relish. “We could use a lawyer in the family, what with all these new laws and taxes the government, in its arrogance, sees fit to impose upon us.”
William laughed again. “Now, Father, let’s not get embroiled in politics on Armistice Day.”
“Quite so,” the earl muttered. He finished his tea and held out his cup for more. “Well, John, what sort of service can we expect this morning?”
“Simple, as usual,” the vicar said as his wife poured the tea. “When I was a padre with the South Wales Borderers, the men would become restive if my sermon was too high-flown. Simplicity of language and directness of thought—that’s my firm belief. And the choosing of the more popular hymns, the ones the chaps can sing without looking in their hymnals.”
“I have always been most fond of ‘Oh, for a Thousand Tongues to Sing,’ “ Hanna said.
“Ah, yes,” the vicar agreed. “Very lovely indeed. But ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ is still the one the chaps like best. They always give full lung power to that one.”
William stepped over to one of the windows and looked up at the hill behind the house.
“Is he up there, Vicar?”
“Oh, yes. Every morning, rain or shine.”
“I’ll go fetch him.”
“Shall I come with you?” the earl asked.
“I’d rather go alone this morning, if you don’t mind, sir.”
Hanna watched William leave, could see him through the window as he went up the path. Walking so much better, she reflected, after the surgery in New York in August. A stiffness remained, but there was no marked limp, even going up a hill. The stiffness made it very difficult for him to drive a car, but that was a minor enough restriction on his activities. How tall and strong he was. Powerful shoulders and arms. A young, handsome man and so—very much alive.
William walked slowly up the steep sandy path to the top of the hill. A number of wood benches were placed among oak and chestnut trees, and Charles was seated on one of the benches, leaning forward, hands on his knees, gazing out across a valley at the distant slopes and crags of Moel Sych. William sat down beside his brother and took a silver cigarette case from the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Care for a smoke?”
“I don’t think so,” Charles said, leaning back and folding his arms. “Odd how the shadows race in and out of the ravines and gullies.”
“Cloud shadows. A very peaceful sight.”
“Quite lulling, as a matter of fact. I often find myself falling asleep watching them.”
“It’s peaceful, all right.”
“Quite. I walk up there sometimes, but one can only appreciate the chiaroscuro effect from a distance.”
“I imagine so.”
“The shadows race over you, terribly quickly, sweep on by, you see. One hasn’t time to notice the clean definition of light and shade.”
“I understand.”
“But seated here—or even further along, near the old wall—it’s quite a different matter. Do you come here often?”
William lit his cigarette with a windproof lighter he had bought in New York.
“As often as I can.”
“I rather had the feeling that we had talked before. Perhaps not here exactly . . . but . . . somewhere.”
“Oh, we’ve talked together many times. Last time I was here we talked about Derbyshire.”
“Did we?”
“Buxton . . . the Peak District. It’s a very lovely spot. Masses of hills and crags. We’ve owned a house there for years. A smallish place, but comfortable. There’s a hill beyond the house, and from the terrace one can watch the patterns of light. A great many clouds sweep over and the shadow patches change constantly all during the day. Quite an interesting sight.”
“Ah, yes, I’m sure it must be.”
“Would you care to see it one day? Perhaps even stay there?”
Charles frowned and looked back at the hill, at the shadows of the wind-driven clouds as they dipped in and out of the hollows and raced across the slopes.
“I’m not sure I could. I really don’t know about that. I must watch this hill, you see . . . watch it . . . in case the men come back.”
Observations and Reflections. There were touring buses parked beside the road near Beaumont-Hamel, the occupants—almost all of them with cameras slung over their shoulders—being led by a guide to see the old trenches. Quite a new industry. More touring buses north of the Somme at Arras. Middle-aged people for the most part, tramping gingerly over new duckboards laid down by the tour companies to keep their clients from being too discomfited. Near Cambrai, a few rusted tanks remain partially entombed in mud. Along Vimy Ridge the wire has turned orange with rust. At Messines, great flocks of ravens along the skyline wheeling above the stumps of bombarded trees.
Odd, how peaceful it is. No major stories to be gathered here. The storms have shifted. The Riffs cutting up French and Spanish legionnaires in Morocco. Turks and Greeks fighting to the death at Adrianople. The British pouring troops into Iraq, into Ireland, into northern India. And Russia—at war with the Poles, at war with itself. White Russians, Red Russians, Denikin, Semenov, Trotsky, the Czech legion. No lack of work for me among those whirlwinds. Jacob, too, in those winds, somewhere between here and Siberia. A special observer for an agency of the League of Nations, keeping an eye on political developments in the new nations carved from the old empires. “Watching the new hatreds grow,” as Jacob put it so sardonically when we sat in the Hotel Adlon in Berlin last year. New hatreds breeding to replace the old on this second anniversary of the end of the war-to-end-all-wars. I wonder if Wilson, lying half paralyzed in the White House, sees the joke in that, as he listens to the cheers for Harding and his “normalcy”?
All of us scattered. The beginning of the rootless age? Or is it just a new restlessness, the old horizons no longer as safe and comforting as they once were? Back and forth we go, like so many migrating birds—Petrograd, Berlin, Paris, London, New York. Back and fo
rth. Trains to Milan, Belgrade, Warsaw. Back and forth across the oceans without giving travel a thought anymore.
Strange to think of Alexandra living in Canada and working in a clinic for war wounded with a doctor who may or may not be her husband. She seemed so much a part of the ambience of Abingdon Pryory and Park Lane. The belle of all the balls. An English society girl to her finger tips. All is changed. She wrote to Hanna that even Toronto is not far enough away. She and her doctor plan to keep moving west once the reservoir of the maimed is lowered, to get as far away as possible from where I now sit, Hazebrouck, the edge of the great Salient.
It’s a good, new road from Hazebrouck over the Messines Ridge to Kemmel and Ypres, but the earth is sour on both sides of it. Mustard gas and lyddite permeating the soil. Still, grass is beginning to grow, inching over the lips of the shell holes, sprouting rawly along old parapets and amid sandbagged bunkers. Sandbags to Sandburg. Yes, Carl, the grass does cover all.
There is no one Golgotha for the British Army, but Ypres will do and it is the closest battleground to the coast. It is here—near the waste of stones that had once been a lace-making town—that the six unknown Tommies had lain side by side in a hut, waiting for one of them to be chosen for immortality, to symbolize the apotheosis of all the million dead. Those who remain here are not forgotten. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission has spared no expense to lay out cemeteries. Low walls surround them, and trees and shrubbery soften the lines of stone. At Poperinghe the cemeteries are like English gardens and the caretakers dedicated and efficient men. It takes only minutes for them to locate any grave for visitors among the neat rows of white crosses, each with a name on it. On one of them, the name Ivy Thaxton Rilke. Beneath the name are the initials of the military nursing service and a date: 9 October, 1917.
There are at least a hundred thousand other graves from Passchendaele, not that that’s any comfort. She lies in a special plot beside twenty of her patients who died with her when the shell hit. Alexandra saw to that. An earl’s daughter getting her way.