The Grass Memorial

by Sarah Harrison

  But it was the horses which drew Spencer. There was something magical about their beauty – though it was a word he’d have been embarrassed to use, even in his head – and their fierce, expectant fear. They seemed to know in their bellies that humans, the creatures they were there to fight and discard, were the same people who’d get them in the end, and with whom they’d form an alliance based on the cleverness of one and the speed and strength of the other. He recalled the words of the writer: ‘She wanted to be caught . . . Don’t wish for freedom, you might get it . . .’ For the purposes of the rodeo these horses were kept in a state of suspended development, unbroken but always in the company of the old enemy. Even Spencer, who posed no threat whatever, was greeted by a spreading ripple of consternation, as if he’d thrown a pebble into a pond. Some of the younger horses were corralled together in groups, but the champions, the guys to beat, were kept separate. Spencer walked slowly along the pens, inspecting these awesome creatures. He felt for their lack of dignity, cooped up here waiting to entertain the crowds, and kept his distance out of respect. At the last pen however his curiosity was piqued and he went closer.

  This, he suspected, must be one of the veterans who had won so many encounters he was wheeled out as a kind of mascot at the end of the show, his bucking bronco days long over, left high and dry in an involuntary truce.

  He was small, and dun-coloured, and seemed to be dozing, with his head held low. His coat was rough, and his darker mane and tail grew thick and tufty like scrub. On his hocks were the faint greyish stripes that marked him out as a wild horse. Mack had shown Spencer wild horses over on the lower slopes of the Prior Mountains, and now he wondered if this guy had ever had mares and foals of his own. These plain, mule-headed stallions turned into something different if they got wind of any danger to their family, and the fights that broke out between leaders and contenders left scars on winner and loser alike.

  Spencer leaned on the side of the pen to look more closely, and then it all happened at once. There was a sudden explosion of noise and movement so violent that the wooden bars banged against his ribs. The sound was a feral scream more like the cry of a big raptor than a horse, and the stallion seemed to double in size and to launch itself vertically into the air, landing with its legs straddled like a cat coming down off a roof. As it stood there vibrating with its own furious energy its head was towards him and he saw its eye glaring, a pale eye barred with black, edged with a yellowish white, and lit by an uncompromising hatred.

  This, reflected Spencer, as he beat a hasty and shaken retreat, was one horse who had never wished to be caught.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘Warm tears ran down from their eyes as they mourned for the loss of their charioteer: and their thick manes were dirtied where they spilled down from the yoke-pad’

  —Homer, The Iliad

  Harry 1853–4

  In a properly ordered world it would all have been otherwise, Harry thought. Certainly the patterns of everyday life in this sparkling early spring of 1853 seemed regular enough, but the deeper currents were beyond the control of even the Latimer family with its solid, yeoman traditions.

  There had been no black sheep among the Latimers. Their boast, had they been given to boasting, would have been that an unbroken line of industrious and benign landowners stretched back for nearly a hundred and fifty years, two-thirds of that time at Bells. Large, strong sons had served their country in war and peace, and pleasant, open-faced daughters had married well, borne children of their own and raised them in the same way. But Harry never knew, as he returned with interest the steady gaze of the portraits on the stairs and around the walls of drawing and dining rooms, what private price had been paid by those who had been different. There must surely have been young men who defied tradition and expectation, and girls who kicked against the traces. What of them?

  Did the rebels, if rebels there were, flee the nest as quickly as possible, never to be heard of again? Did they pale and pine as they did they duty? Or did they, like his elder brother Hugo, reach an accommodation with their natures and their lot, and make the best of it?

  Harry thought about these things as he rode home in the trap alongside Colin Bartlemas. He rode as an equal, on the driving board, but the short journey from the station was not without its tensions, where once there had been none. Not all that long ago it would have been ‘Harry’ and ‘Colin’, at least in private, but now it was ‘Captain Latimer’, and though he could not bring himself to say ‘Bartlemas’, for him to use the more familiar form of address would have sounded insulting, so he managed, somewhat awkwardly, with neither.

  The afternoon was clear and cold. The breath came out of their mouths in a fine vapour, and the briskly trotting horse traded a pulsing cloud of it, like the smoke of the London train – the outward and visible sign of an inner, harnessed strength.

  ‘So is life in the cavalry everything they say then?’ Colin ended the question with a little slap of the reins, to show he was aware of his position.

  ‘I’m not sure . . . I don’t know what’s being said.’ Harry did know, but he wished to hear it at first hand from an old and trusted friend who wouldn’t mince his words.

  ‘They say the officers know nothing about fighting, and the men spend all their time on spit and polish and parading.’

  ‘That’s partly true,’ conceded Harry, ‘but the people who say that should remember that we have no war at present to cut our fighting teeth on. And it would hardly be Christian to wish for one.’

  ‘An army’s for fighting,’ declared Colin incontrovertibly.

  ‘And we’re ready if the need arises.’

  ‘Soldiers get bored.’

  ‘That’s why we keep them busy. Being smart on parade brings discipline in battle.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Colin sounded sceptical, with some justification Harry allowed, since he himself was only spouting what had been dinned into him and which he took on trust. ‘How’s Clemmie?’

  The question referred to Harry’s mare, born at Bells, saddlebroken by Colin and presented to Harry six years ago on his sixteenth birthday.

  ‘She’s flourishing. Army life suits her.’

  Colin’s just-civil grunt indicated his incredulity. But Bells was now in sight, its red brick rosy in the afternoon sun, a perfect exemplar, Harry considered, of everything English that was good, gracious and immutable.

  Except that here was he, who would have liked nothing more than to stay as its custodian, returning from the army only briefly this Christmas. And there was Hugo, with enough flash, dash and fire for an entire company, preparing for the life of a country squire. That was the inconsistency in the pattern.

  ‘If there were to be a war,’ he asked, ‘would you want to be in it?’

  Colin jerked his head. ‘I would. Because if a war’s won you’d want to have helped with the winning, and if it’s lost you don’t want to have been the cause of it. Not that one man can make the difference, but you understand me Captain Latimer.’ As they came within the aura of the house the habits of man and master reasserted themselves.

  ‘I do. It’s how I feel myself. Would you mind stopping? I’ll walk from here.’

  Colin reined in the horse, from whom the steam now rose slow and vertical like an engine in a siding, and Harry jumped down.

  ‘Thank you—’ he wanted to add something, some suggestion or pleasantry, but there was no longer anything that was appropriate. ‘Thanks.’

  The trap rattled away and he set off towards the house. Probably someone would have seen it in the distance and would come out to meet them and wonder where he’d got to. He liked to approach the house quietly like this, not as a visitor down the long formal curve of the drive, but as a boy again, between the trees and over the grass. Though Bells in its present form had been built by the Latimers just over a hundred years ago, there had been other houses and other settlements on this hill, right back to the time of the White Horse. He liked to think that in spite of the war-li
ke nature of the fort, the horse and its makers had protected the people of this lesser hill, so that they had gone about their peaceful business not in its shadow, but in its keeping.

  The trap was outside the front door now and Colin was unloading his bags. He saw Jeavons and Little emerge, and the exchange between the three men, Colin explaining where he was before the cases were taken in. As the trap drew away again in the direction of the stables he saw Maria appear on the step with her arms lifted high, her shawl hanging from them like dark wings.

  Harry raised his own arm, waved, and began to run.

  Fully as tall as her son, she held his face between both her hands, gazed at him, kissed him fiercely on either cheek, turned his head from side to side for a closer inspection. Said in her rich, throaty voice that could never be entirely English: ‘What shall I do with you, Harry . . . scampering over the grass like a great puppy?’

  ‘It’s so wonderful to be home.’

  Maria stroked his face with her thumbs. ‘Are you well?’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘And happy?’

  ‘Content.’

  She pinched his cheeks. ‘And you won’t tell me any more, I know. No!’ She raised an imperious finger before his face. ‘Not another word. Come and see your father.’

  Maria had greeted him with arms wide and lifted. In the drawing room Percy waited for his son with his hands behind his back. And yet it was Percy with whom Harry felt a deep, unexpressed bond of kinship – not of greater love but of greater likeness.

  ‘Harry, welcome.’

  ‘Father.’

  They shook hands, Maria still with her arm about Harry’s waist.

  ‘Where is Hugo?’ She made the enquiry sound like a demand.

  Percy said drily: ‘About his business.’

  ‘He should be here when his brother returns!’

  ‘All in good time.’

  Maria gave a shrug which employed shoulders, hands, eyebrows, head – everything. ‘Ah, listen, Harry – the motto of the Latimers!’

  It was after sunset when Hugo returned. He came into the house like a manifestation of the April night, dark and brilliant, shining with cold, still in his stockinged feet having left his boots in the kitchen. Percy looked discreetly away as his sons greeted one another. Maria beamed and applauded with hands held high.

  ‘Hal, you dog!’

  Hugo was like his mother, given to extravagant displays of affection. His arms went round Harry like a vice, and his fist beat on his back. Harry could never have initiated such an embrace, but to be subjected to it was to be ignited by happiness.

  ‘Hugo . . . Good to see you.’

  His brother pushed him away, still gripping him by the shoulders. ‘Captain Latimer . . . extraordinary! Not too smart for us then?’

  ‘Scarcely.’

  ‘You never know. I live in expectation of being spurned as the provincial clod I undoubtedly am.’

  Now they all laughed because the mere idea of Hugo’s being any kind of clod, or of anyone being themselves so cloddish as to spurn him, was unthinkable.

  Now he backed towards the door, holding up his hands to warm Harry not to go.

  ‘Little’s drawing me a bath,but I shan’t linger.’ He paused.‘Unless you want to come and talk to me, that is?’

  Had his father not been in the room, Harry would have gone. As it was he shook his head. ‘I’ll wait.’

  ‘Don’t blame you. But don’t go to war before I get back,’ said Hugo.

  For as long as Harry could remember his brother had been an inspiring figure, part heroic part demonic, wholly delightful. Hugo was a mere two years older, but even when they had been three and five respectively Hugo embodied a ferocious appetite for life that propelled him down banisters, up trees, across streams and into proscribed places and situations, while Harry followed trepidatiously or hung back but was never mocked for either. Because he took Hugo for granted he did not, until they were both at public school, realise there was anything unusual about him. Older brothers, he assumed, came like this.

  But at Eton it was clear that this was not the case. In fact in a great many instances it was plain to see that most older brothers were at least as fallible, inept and unprepossessing as the smaller fry. They might be bigger and therefore able to row or play cricket more competently, but they lacked the quality which Hugo possessed in abundance: charm. Charm in its easy ‘outward form which, allied to the hot, dark good looks inherited from Maria, could bring buds from trees, have haughty prefects eating out of his hand, and hoodwink apoplectic schoolmasters into magnanimity. And charm too in its more mystical sense of a spell. Harry had witnessed it all his life, but only now been able to observe its effects and see that it was a rare and powerful thing. Everyone, from the most timid fag to the most bumptious member of Pop and feared Latin master, was slightly less themselves in Hugo’s presence: he cast a strong, warm light on those around him so that they seemed better than they were, but were also hopelessly outshone. It was not a weapon that he wielded for his own ends but a gift from the gods.

  Harry’s own less expansive nature was caught between hero-worship and envy, though as the years went by both were tempered by the realisation that his brother’s charm did not always work to his advantage. Hugo was no cleverer in the classroom nor talented on the playing field than his contemporaries, and Harry at the same age was a more promising scholar. Hugo was simply more audacious and likeable, and there were those who found something untrustworthy in these characteristics. Where there was so much popularity, jealousy and suspicion could be fellow travellers.

  Now, when their respective paths seemed set, each in a quite different direction from that which had once seemed likely, their relationship had settled into something a shade more guarded on both sides. With adulthood had grown a respect for each other’s strengths and a careful regard for each other’s weaknesses. The perfect fit of inspirational leader and awestruck follower was gone, to be replaced by something more complex and watchful.

  There were times when Harry mourned its passing, and others when, as now, it seemed scarcely to have gone at all. For a while he was subject again, willy-nilly, to the extraordinary and irresistible force of his brother’s personality. But when Hugo had spoken jokingly of being taken for a clod, Harry had thought he detected a wistfulness which moved him.

  Just the same, over dinner Hugo kept them entertained.

  ‘. . . I came on the boy redhanded rigging up some sort of make-do trap, and do you know what he said? “But I wasn’t setting it, I found it and I was taking it down for you.” Can you believe it?’

  ‘Sadly,’ said Percy, ‘I can.’

  ‘Well, naturally I let it pass, one has to reward inventiveness wherever one finds it.’

  Maria gave a hoot of laughter, tipping her head back and clasping her hands. ‘Splendid! Quite right!’

  Percy’s reaction was less enchanted.‘You mustn’t encourage these scamps to imagine there’s something clever in thieving.’

  ‘No, no, he’d never have caught anything in the contraption except his own fingers, it was a positive farrago of wire and string.’

  Percy smiled a small, dry smile. ‘That’s scarcely the point. It was the boy’s intention to take what didn’t belong to him.’

  ‘He was no hardened criminal, believe me.’ Hugo looked across at Harry. ‘Any more than we were, and we scrumped apples, didn’t we, Hal?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘And great sport it was. That old fellow . . .’ He narrowed his eyes, trying to remember the name.

  ‘Seth Prothero,’ supplied Harry.

  ‘Prothero, that’s it – he used to come haring after us brandishing whatever he could lay his hands on, a ladle once as I recall’ (here Maria burst out laughing once more), ‘and calling down a murrain on all boys and us in particular.’

  ‘Quite right too,’ said Percy. ‘Since you were robbing him hand over fist.’

  ‘We didn’t want his apples,
though, did we, Hal?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ admitted Harry. ‘We simply enjoyed provoking his rage.’

  ‘We did! It was sublimely comical, you never saw anything like it.’

  ‘You were very naughty boys,’ declared Maria indulgently.

  Percy laid his knife and fork together precisely. ‘If I had ever got to hear about it, I’d have tanned your breeches for you.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Hugo disarmingly, ‘and we’d have borne it manfully, but as it was old Prothero lost very few of his wretched wormy apples, we had great larks, and your conscience, Father, remained untroubled. So everyone was happy.’

  Hugo liked everyone to be happy. He shared the running of Bells now, but his modus operandi could not have been more different from their father’s. Percy Latimer had been a tough but fair innovator who had kept the farms safe and habitable, improved the quality of the herd, applied sensible modern techniques to the land, looked after the woodland and the hunt, and maintained good relations with his tenants and employees by gaining their respect. He was a reserved, ascetic man whose choice of wife was the only thing that saved him from the accusation of being cold.

  Maria, though she had been brought up in London, embodied the ice and fire of her Spanish mother – a proud and splendid bearing imperfectly concealing a stormily passionate nature. She had been an exotic beauty as a young bride, and was still, at fifty, a striking woman – tall, square-shouldered and statuesque. With black hair untouched by grey, dark eyes beneath winged brows, and a broad mouth of uncompromising sensuality beneath a short; deeply grooved upper lip. It was a mouth so perfectly suited to the pleasures of the flesh that usually self-possessed and intelligent men quite lost their train of thought when sitting near her at social occasions.