A Spell of Swallows

by Sarah Harrison

  Now he stepped back, and Mariner took his place.

  ‘Let us pray.’

  All heads bowed, except Ashe’s. He continued to observe, more intently now that he could do so without being observed himself. Mariner had a piece of paper inside his open prayer book from which he read the words he had composed. Jarvis still stood to attention, cap in the crook of his arm, but with his eyes on the ground, in the manner of a guard at a ceremonial lying-in-state. Assuming he had been selected from among the residents at Eaden Place, Ashe wondered what his injury had been. He appeared unmarked—no limp, no stick, no sling, no scars. How typical of Jarvis to emerge with his looks intact.

  Ashe’s gaze travelled over the rest of the congregation. The Delamaynes were bang in the middle, her Ladyship armoured in that tight suit of hers and a black hat with a cockerel feather that curled like a billhook, casting its sharp crescent-shaped shadow on her cheek. Next to her Sir Sidney looked hot and bothered, his jowls folding over his collar, his forehead gleaming. On the far side of the gathering were the Clays, solemn and uncomfortable in their Sunday best. For once Susan looked the most at ease in her printed cotton frock with its full skirt, and a straw hat like an inverted pudding basin. Her hands were pressed together childishly beneath her chin as she prayed. The hat shielded her face so he couldn’t see her expression.

  Beside them was Mrs Mariner, whose mind wasn’t on higher things. She stood with an appearance of devoutness but her attention was wandering. Now she removed her glasses, polished and replaced them as if that might help her concentration. She looked up and caught his eye; her face changed, but his didn’t, he returned her stare boldly and she gave way.

  His attention returned to Jarvis. Praying like a trouper, as you might expect.

  After the muted rumble of ‘Amens’, Saxon announced a hymn. ‘O Valiant Hearts’ would be sung unaccompanied with the assistance of members of the choir, who were invited to stand forward for the purpose and face the rest of the congregation. After a tentative start, the voices swelled. There was a palpable sense of relief at this legitimate unleashing of shared emotion. From where he was standing Ashe fancied he could hear Jarvis’s pleasing public-school baritone soaring, confident and clear, above the rest.

  He himself had no hymn sheet, and did not know the words. Anyway, he would not have joined in. Valiant hearts? Glory? It was an insult, and Jarvis’s presence compounded the offence. Only Ashe’s curiosity kept him there.

  The hymn ended. In the ensuing hush a swallow swooped over the heads of the gathering as if in aerial salute. Children pointed, haggard faces smiled to see it. People were so easy, thought Ashe—so easily moved, so easily pleased, so unquestioning, so readily duped. So pleased by the swallow, and by the brave captain.

  Mariner lifted his hand to say the blessing. As the holy trinity was invoked, Ashe moved quietly away. By the time Vivien opened her eyes, he was gone.

  ‘I only hope it didn’t matter that I wasn’t a local man,’ said Jarvis over sherry in the vicarage drawing room. ‘I’d hate anyone to feel I’d been foisted on them.’

  ‘Foisted?’ cried Felicity Delamayne before anyone else could speak. ‘Hardly. You were perfect.’

  ‘You were,’ said Vivien. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘We only just caught him, you know,’ went on Felicity, ‘he’s flying the nest very soon.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Jarvis, pulling a charmingly diffident face, ‘I feel as if I’ve been malingering for the past week.’

  ‘No, no, doctor’s orders!’

  Saxon, who had been looking on attentively during this exchange, asked: ‘When you leave, what are your plans?’

  ‘To return to his charming wife, I sincerely hope!’ said Felicity.

  Jarvis smiled. ‘We’re going to stay with my parents in Norfolk, but we want to buy a house in London.’

  Sir Sidney scowled humorously. ‘Why on earth would anyone from the country want to do that?’

  ‘To seek my fortune,’ said Jarvis in the same vein, and then added: ‘I adore art but I’ve no talent for it myself, so I’d like to encourage talent in others.’

  ‘You’ll be a patron,’ said Felicity.

  ‘Dealer, more like,’ said her husband.

  Saxon stepped in. ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘To open a gallery. I have a little capital, and a good eye—I think.’

  Vivien asked politely: ‘Is your wife interested in paintings, too?’

  ‘Amanda?’ Jarvis considered this. ‘Not especially, but she’s interested in me.’

  This, as intended, provoked general laughter, and Vivien stood up, because she felt she could no longer breathe in there.

  ‘I know, shall we take our glasses into the garden and sit under the tree in the shade?’

  Ashe, returning across the churchyard, heard voices in the garden, including Jarvis’s, animated and boyish. There was laughter; he seemed to be keeping them all amused.

  Continuing on his way, he paused by the memorial, which already seemed always to have been there, like an inn sign or the weathervane on the church tower. Very soon, though, he was prepared to bet people would stop noticing it, or reading the names so neatly and carefully inscribed. The names and the cross that bore them would become part of the furniture. He put his hand to his face, running his fingers over the ugly furrows and ridges. In the garden, Jarvis’s laugh rang out.

  MESOPOTAMIA

  We just have to lie still and pray like hell. Something tells me we’ll attract less attention if we’re face down, so I shuffle alongside Jarvis in the same position and we lie there like a couple of sardines in a tin. I can feel him shuddering and I know it isn’t just the cold. I’m scared too, but he’s a hospital case.

  There are these two different beats, then, that I can feel right through my body. The quaking and shaking that’s coming in waves from Jarvis next to me. And the soft, uneven crunch of the nearest Buddhoo’s footsteps as he gets closer. One thing in our favour, night’s ending and we’re among the furthest back. Soon the bloodthirsty buggers will be clearly visible to our gunners at the back and they aren’t going to hang around for that. I’m pretty sure they’re getting less systematic.

  Funny what you think about when there’s every chance you’ll be murdered in the next few seconds. An old South Africa hand told me the Zulus cut open the dead on the battlefield so their souls can fly to heaven. I’m just praying the Arabs don’t have the same idea, or playing dead could prove a bad idea.

  He’s quite close now. My eyes are sealed shut, but from his footsteps I reckon he’s about five or six yards away and to our left—at about eleven o’clock. He’s near enough for me to hear the rest of what he’s doing—the rustle as he looks in pockets . . . the click of a buckle . . . the clink of metal . . . a little grunt and a few words to himself in Arabic . . .

  Then there’s the bit I’ve not been looking forward to. First of all the material goes, a long, snickering, tearing sound like a snarl. Then the other part. It’s much quieter, and uneven. If I didn’t know what it was, God help me, I don’t think I’d be able to guess. Sawing soft plywood? Pulling apart old velvet? And it’s followed by a sort of sigh, a breathing-out. It’d be nice to think that was the soul flitting off to heaven, but in all the circumstances I reckon it’s a heap of hot, fresh human lights falling out on to the sand. Another one dealt with, and he’ll be looking around. Jarvis’s signet ring with the green stone that was on his right hand—well hidden I hope. Jesus, I hope so.

  Then there’s a shout. A great big, excited shout, not from our bloke, from one of his oppos a little further away. Jarvis gives a whimper of shock and then goes still for the first time, so perhaps he’s passed out. The shout, in Arabic, sounded like ‘Over here!’, and now our man calls back, and gets a reply, same words.

  He goes! I can hardly believe it. Whatever it is his mate’s come across, it’s a lot more interesting or valuable than anything our chap can see over here. I don’t move a muscle, I’m tak
ing nothing for granted. But he’s gone.

  No footsteps. No shuddering. Suddenly I want a piss so badly I seriously consider letting it go, but the proprieties rule, even when you’ve just missed being slit from stem to stern, and I hang on to it.

  Besides, someone might think I’d wet myself not out of relief, but fear. And it’s not me that’s done that.

  Once the sun gets up it’s business as usual. To begin with there’s some sniping from the other side but you only have to look around to see there are as many of them as there are of us lying out here, and after a while some agreement’s reached and the clearing-up operation begins.

  It turns out Jarvis does have something to complain about; he got a shot in the leg, just above the ankle, not much more than a scratch really, but quite painful I should think. Not that he does complain about it, he’s quite the little stoic as we hobble back to the bivouac beneath the ridge. I sense he’s trying to make up lost ground, in every sense. Maybe he’s hoping I’ll forget how he was during the night, the state he was in. If he thinks that he’s not the clever chap I took him for. I’ll never forget. Much too valuable. And now I’ve seen that handy little wound in the leg I’ve got more food for thought.

  When we reach the outskirts of the bivouac it’s so bloody horrible I fully expect him to crack, but no. However he got that injury, we’ve stumbled more than half a mile through the bodies and the heat to get here and it must be giving him gyp. I haven’t got a scratch, but I’m done in. There’s something squalid and depressing to see what’s left of an army all sat about, bedraggled and bleeding with that half-dead look in their eyes.

  They’re loading the injured on to a fleet of native gharries—mule-driven commissariat carts, with iron-tyred wheels, and no springs or any sort of cover. The moans and screams are shocking. I’m not surprised when Jarvis says to let someone worse off than him ride, he’ll walk for as long as he can. That’s not selfless heroism, that’s looking after number one.

  Everyone who can walk is being ordered to march back to a place called Laji, on the river. Most of us haven’t got the remotest where this Laji is, but when we ask one of the cart drivers he shouts something back and points, and then holds up the fingers of one hand, twice. Just as well because we can’t hear a word he’s saying over the racket being made by the passengers. Ten miles! Poor sods. The ‘ATs’—Animal Transports—aren’t meant to be a cushy ride for anyone, let alone the sick and wounded. They’re just for lugging stores and equipment around. You can tell that the drivers have given up on going slowly, and are hell-bent on getting their load delivered as quick as possible.

  Even so carts and walking wounded are going at about the same pace. Or at any rate covering the same ground in the time. This is because every time we reach one of the dried-up irrigation ditches the mules spook at all the noise and confusion. I suppose they’re used to going along in a nice orderly column, but all this screaming and struggling’s another matter. First time it happened the nearest driver got those of us who could walk unaided to pull the mules’ heads, but they just dug their heels in and wouldn’t budge. It was like having a tug of war with a double-decker bus. These mules aren’t like donkeys—they’re the same size as shire horses and not nearly so polite. My hands got skinned raw, and one of them kicked me in the thigh—it was worse than the battle, The whole exercise only made things more difficult because once we gave up and let go they reared up and skittered about more than ever; some of the wounded got pitched off—not a pretty sight, and getting them back on wasn’t nice for us or for them.

  The next time we catch up with the ATs they’ve reached another ditch and it’s chaos. Mules may be stubborn, but they’re not stupid: they remember the last time. One wagon’s already lying in the bottom, one of the mules has broken its leg and the others are thrashing about treading on the injured men. It’s a pity Jarvis hasn’t got his revolver, he could have waded in and done his stuff like the time he did with his own horse. As it is, he’s white as a sheet and has to sit down. Looks as if he might throw up, so I stand back a bit.

  ‘Look at us, Ashe,’ he says. ‘We’re done for.’

  ‘I doubt it, sir,’ I say. ‘Just a temporary setback.’

  He pulls a wan smile. ‘You sound almost like an officer.’

  I pretend I don’t know what he means. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  I go and put my shoulder to the wheel. Literally—me and a sergeant from the West Kents and a few others get under the rear wheels of the collapsed wagon and another lot get between the shafts, and somehow we manhandle it up the far bank. The Indian drivers make one hell of a song and dance about rounding up the three uninjured mules, hooting and yelling and laying about them with their sticks until the wretched beasts are mad-eyed and lathered white by the time they’re in harness again. We lug the wounded men up the bank, not gently but fast, and get them back on board. No point in using our imaginations—it’s muscle that’s needed, not sympathy.

  Then it’s the turn of the next wagon and the driver decides to rush the ditch, not give the animals a chance to think about it. It’s not a bad idea, and it works; he gets over, but the screams are terrible. It’s bad enough for the blokes on board rattling along over the rocky ground, on the level, but to career hell for leather through a ditch, crashing down this side and rocking and jerking up the other must be agony.

  Jarvis can scarcely walk, and he won’t ride. And there’s still seven miles to go. All this to get out of fighting.

  Chapter Ten

  The week following the ceremony remained unbearably hot. In the vicarage garden the soil was bone dry and cracked, the lawn bleached brown, the plants limp and gasping. Even the weeds had given up.

  Vivien had abandoned all hope of the dog. It had been gone too long; how could it survive in this terrible heat? And she scarcely saw Ashe, since there was nothing for him to do but watering, which he did late in the evening when it was almost dark. He came and went like a ghost, and she sometimes felt she was becoming a ghost, too, half-dead with unhappiness and longing.

  The next Sunday only a handful of people appeared at matins; Saxon hoped more might come to evensong, when it would be cooler. They had a simple cold lunch together and afterwards, from custom, went up to the bedroom and lay facing one another, not covered by so much as a sheet. Outside the afternoon shimmered, breathlessly, disturbed only by the occasional small rush and flutter of the swallows under the eaves. They did not, to begin with, touch, for which Vivien was grateful. Each, preoccupied, sensed the other’s preoccupation. After a while, Saxon placed his hand on his wife’s shoulder, smoothing the skin with his thumb.

  ‘I hoped there might be more people,’ he said. ‘After last week. Everyone seemed so affected.’

  She was tired of hearing about it, and didn’t reply, but this was a favourite theme of Saxon’s at the moment, and he went on. ‘I’m not deluding myself am I, Vivien? It did go well.’

  She replied, listlessly, that it had.

  ‘I was worried, as you know.’

  ‘You had no need to be.’ She was worn out, unable to share in his interminable pleasure in the occasion. She thought of Ashe.

  ‘I did my best, of course,’ Saxon was saying, ‘but I think it was Captain Jarvis who made all the difference.’

  ‘He seemed nice enough.’

  ‘More than that—a very dignified and impressive young man, I thought.’

  She was silent, and he withdrew his hand.

  ‘I hope he achieves his ambitions in the art world, I believe that—’

  ‘Saxon.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m so tired. Is it all right if we don’t talk?’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry, Vivien.’

  She felt his eyes move over her face, examining her in a way that made her profoundly uncomfortable.

  ‘I’m so sad about the dog,’ she said. She knew he would believe this small, foolish part of the truth.

  ‘Naturally.’ He stroked her hair. ‘You�
�ll feel better in time . . . Ssh . . .’

  He rolled away from her and was asleep almost at once. She lay with her hands beneath her cheek, letting the tears roll quietly over her face to soak her hair and pillow.

  Ashe helped himself to a slice of the bread, and the hard cheese that was always available beneath the net in Mrs Jeeps’s larder. Then he set off for a walk, cutting through the heat with long, fast strides.

  There was no one about in the High Street, except Susan Clay, who was sitting on the doorstep of her house, playing with her doll’s hair. She heard him coming and looked up, but he said nothing—it was a little test.

  ‘Hallo,’ she said. That was good.

  ‘Hallo, Susan.’

  She stretched her plump legs out in front of her; the doll lay on her lap, staring madly up at the blue sky. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Going for a walk.’

  ‘Can I come?’

  ‘No.’ Her face crumpled with disappointment. ‘It’s too hot,’ he explained, ‘and I’m going too far.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Not sure—I’ll know when I get there.’

  She smiled, diverted by this idea.

  ‘I saw you last week,’ he said. ‘You looked very pretty in your hat.’

  She blushed, and he added: ‘Mr Mariner noticed you.’

  The blush deepened. ‘You ought to go up and see them. Mrs Mariner’s still sad about her dog.’

  ‘Boots is lost!’

  ‘I’m afraid he is. But we don’t want Mr and Mrs Mariner missing you as well. That would make them lonely.’

  Susan picked up the doll and kissed its blank face absent-mindedly. At that moment the girl’s mother appeared in the open doorway behind her. Checking up, no doubt.

  ‘Mr Ashe—it’s you.’

  ‘We were just passing the time of day, weren’t we Susan?’

  ‘Can I go to the vicarage?’

  ‘Not now, girl. They’ve had a busy day,’ she added in the sceptical tone of a woman who really knew what a busy day was. ‘They need a bit of peace and quiet.’