But of course I am clamouring like a child for things which for dozens of excellent reasons you will probably not be able to give. Understand that I ask only for what it would be a relief or a blessing, or simply a diversion, for you to write if you have any time at all. And only of course when you have written to your mother and father who deserve your letters so much more. Nothing is too inconsequential nor too terrible for you to tell me – I shall not be shocked, I long for it all. One thing that I wish to ask is about Piper. How is he? I am perfectly patient and philosophical as a woman in my ever-enlarging state must be. Please remain as safe as orders and your own bravery will allow.
Your ever-loving sister-in-law,
Rachel
Harry read these letters on the first night of their crossing, but the comfort he derived especially from Rachel’s was shortlived. On the following night he became ill, with vomiting, diarrhoea and a fever. Sanitary arrangements aboard the Simla were minimal and had not been improved or extended to accommodate the numbers on board. It was almost as well that he believed he had the cholera and would die, or his own condition of incontinent filfth would have been too much to bear. He was largely ignored except, surprisingly, by George Roebridge who attended to most of his more shaming needs with a kind of bluff tenderness while fastidious Emmeline kept to the decks with a book and a lace handkerchief. In fact there were probably more dismayingly intimate acts of kindness to be grateful for than he knew, for he was delirious for over twenty-four hours.
When the fever broke and he was able to take in his surroundings he could scarcely believe he was still alive, and George was equally incredulous.
‘If you fail to come through this little skirmish in one piece, there’s no justice. You’re a man of iron, sir!’
‘Not as much as you are,’ said Harry, with feeling. ‘I have to thank you, George.’
‘Glad to be of service. And naturally I believe you’d do the same for me.’
Harry, white and sweating and weak as a kitten, was not so lightheaded that he couldn’t see with relief the twinkle in George’s eye. He might not have felt so relieved had he known how prophetic a remark this would turn out to be.
Two days later, as dawn broke, the Crimean coast appeared, a thin, brown line between sun and sea.
Rachel had at first decided to paint a landscape with the White Horse as its focus and centrepiece, but was obliged, dissatisfied, to abandon it. This was because the quality she found fascinating about the horse – one of mutability and movement – was something that was impossible, or that she did not have the skill, to capture. There were times when the creature seemed only just to have landed on the hillside, or to be gathering itself to leap away the next second. On those days when the weather and light were changeable it seemed to move as she watched, its outline trembling with life. Sometimes it appeared proud and angry, a wild horse in defence of its territory; at others it looked playful as a young colt, and in that mood it reminded her of Piper – and so of Hugo.
Though disappointed at having to give up her first idea, she had too much respect for her subject to persist and fail. Instead she determined to paint a view of the house (she planned it as a present for Hugo’s parents) in which the horse could be glimpsed peripherally, like a flash of white light in the near distance.
Having decided on this she went with her materials each day to the west side of the park, near the edge of the wood, and spent two or three hours there if it was fine. She went in the early morning, breaking her habit of attending to domestic and estate business at that time, because that was when the late-summer sun fell across the house in a way she liked, and also on to her as she worked. Jeavons would follow her across the grass, carrying in one hand the basket chair and in the other two cushions, hovering like a mother hen until he was satisfied that she was comfortable and wouldn’t attempt to move the chair on her own. If she remained there past midday, he would emerge from the house with a high-sided butler’s tray on which would be whatever cook had decreed she must eat ‘for the baby’s sake’.
The whole household was solicitous, and even slightly proprietary, about her condition. She appreciated this, and accepted it as a mark not just of their growing regard for her but also of their affection for Hugo, yet it drove her almost to distraction. For the fact was that she had never felt better. So far from being ill, or delicate, or over-tired she was in vigorous health, with a hearty appetite and boundless energy. Every day she thanked God that against all the odds for a woman her age, she had fallen pregnant so soon, and so had this precious legacy of Hugo inside her. She did not concern herself with whether it was a boy or a girl, she wished only for their child to be healthy and to be like its father. It certainly had his restlessness, bumping about inside her like a kitten with a ball of string, though as it grew larger there was less room for manoeuvre and it seemed to be pushing at the walls of her womb with its arm and legs, bending and stretching, eager to be born. Then there were days when it lay low and heavy, its contented hiccups making her body tick like a clock.
The baby was a reminder of Hugo’s love and its manifestation. She would have endured anything for it, so her exceptional wellbeing was an unlooked for blessing. The physical warmth and mental serenity that she enjoyed were his gift, and the solid, fruitful weight of her belly and breasts were like his embrace, making the big bed less empty at night.
Rachel had not known love before, and it had transformed her. Darius Howard had been a clever, distant, ambitious man, devoted to her but preoccupied with his work. Being herself someone who liked her own company and pursuits and did not crave attention, she had been completely content with him. Their marriage was a serene and mutually accepting partnership, and its physical aspect followed the same pattern of tactful understanding. There was no reason for their not to have children, and she had assumed that in due course they would, but when after several years there were none she accepted that, too, and the lack of a family was never discussed between them. Their life together at Vayle Place was characterised by its calm observance of the proprieties. Rachel liked and respected her husband and was content with him, if a little bored. But when Darius had taken his own life, the aspect of the tragedy that most horrified her was that he must have been tormented, and had kept the torment from her. In that moment the whole fabric of her marriage was torn apart and thrown in her face.
Whatever his private agonies his death was an ordered one. His personal papers were meticulously up to date, his finances secure, his developmental project with the Great Western Railway conscientiously completed. On the day of his death he had gone to London on the train, put in a full day’s work at the company’s head office, went (it was later discovered) to the barber’s for a haircut and shave, caught the same train back and shot himself in the middle of a field not far from the station. He was careful to position himself so that he could be seen from the road, and some kindly fate had ensured that he fell with his head amongst a clump of long buttercups so that the puddle of brains and gore exuded by the bullet hole was not fully visible to the two children who found him.
In the long and reasoned letter that was found in his briefcase, addressed ‘To my dear wife’, he told Rachel how sorry he was to inflict this on her, but that he could not continue to inflict on her the far greater wrong of his dishonesty.
‘. . . nor can I,’ he went on, ‘any longer tolerate the burden of my wickedness. Suffice it to say, my dearest Rachel, that though I have lived another life, far beneath the one we shared, my best and highest feelings have always been for you, and you alone.’
She was quite mad with rage. People thought her wonderfully brave but it was anger, not courage, that kept her eyes clear and her head high. Anger that her husband had kept his secrets close, even in death; anger that he had needed ‘another life’ without ever considering that the two of them might have found such a life together; anger that he should speak of his ‘best and highest feelings’ being reserved for her, as though such feelings co
uld never include passion.
Darius’s death left her high and dry – childless, still young, financially secure, and physically unawakened. For four years after it she had sleepwalked through her life until Hugo had burst through the hedge of thorns, fallen in love with her as she slept, and woken her with a kiss.
With him, the world which had been a muffled, shuffling, half realised place burst over her in a wave of clamorous sensation. Sight, sound, smell and even taste were suddenly intensified. His ardour and openness were a revelation to her, and with her love for him came the healing of forgiveness for her husband. Opening and flowering in Hugo’s warmth, she released the bitter resentment and it simply floated away, like thistledown.And after their marriage, over those sensual weeks in Umbria, she had realised that the act of love was not simply a consummation but an initiation, a beginning – for her, a rebirth.
So when she was widowed for the second time her composure was founded on peace, not fuelled by anger. Even in the depths of her misery, just after the accident, when she had felt cheated and half crazed with pain, she had not experienced the corrosive bitterness that had followed Darius’s death. And now, with Hugo’s child in her womb, the happy memories were coming gently back, like true friends, to comfort her.
She had, too, seemed to see Harry for the first time. Perhaps because Hugo had been such a bright light, his younger brother had been cast in shadow. If she was truthful she had barely noticed him to begin with. There had been a dinner party at which they were introduced, but beyond a pleasant, serious face and a civil manner, more like that of a young doctor or academic than a cavalry officer, he had made little impression. Since then, he had become a friend. Over the arrangements for Hugo’s funeral he had not just agreed with her ideas, but put those ideas into practice in a way that suggested he understood their provenance – indeed, understood her. He never claimed precedence, as he might easily have done, nor questioned even by implication her right to make delicate decisions. She remembered every step of that long, quiet walk to the hilltop church with the men – Harry included – pulling the cart, and Piper prancing and sidestepping alongside. In the churchyard Maria had been heavily veiled, Percy pinched and thin-lipped, over a hundred mourners waiting there in silence, a mass of faces turned towards her like pale flowers, reflecting her sadness.
Harry had read in a clear, boyish voice, a few fines from the Book of Job beginning: ‘Hast thou given the horse strength . . .?’ And she’d noticed as he closed the Bible that his officer’s hands were red raw from the shafts of the cart.
On his final visit, to say farewell before leaving for the Crimea, she had been aware of something, some depth of feeling, that he was too honourable to express. And as he’d led her down the hillside on the horse’s broad back there had been a humility in his manner which moved her. Here, she realised, was a truly good man.
There had been an incident since his departure which had brought him suddenly closer in a way nothing else could have done. Mrs Bartlemas had come to the door, white-faced with shock, to tell Rachel of her son’s death. It was no surprise that she came on her own; her husband Dan Bartlemas was a mild, tongue-tied giant of a man who worked in the yard and cellars of the Flying Horse – all delicate negotiations and family matters were seen by him as female work. The two women sat quietly together in the sunny drawing room. Rachel, keenly aware of their relative positions, she expecting her first child, Mrs Bartlemas robbed of hers, had said little but allowed her guest to talk. She had showed Rachel the letter sent to her by Captain Latimer.
My dear Mr and Mrs Bartlemas,
I write to tell you that your good and brave son, my dear childhood friend Colin, has died of the cholera here in Varna. He showed the greatest courage to the end, and had a digni fied funeral which I witnessed myself. Please accept the deepest sympathy of one who also feels his loss keenly, though so much less than you yourselves must do.
Your servant always,
Harry Latimer
Rachel would have cried herself at this letter had Colin’s mother not been so grimly dignified. Instead she read it through twice in order to memorise it, and then handed it back.
‘You must both be proud of your son, Mrs Bartlemas, though I know that pride can be no consolation.’
‘He never even fought . . .’ Her voice trembled.
‘He fought sickness. Captain Latimer says so. To bear pain courageously is a triumph.’ She heard herself sounding like an embroidered sampler, and reached out to cover the other woman’s hand. ‘I am so sorry. I can’t think of anything more dreadful than to lose a child.’
‘No, mum . . . thank you.’ Mrs Bartlemas sniffed. ‘It’s a nice letter.’ She folded it carefully and put it in her pocket. ‘My Mercy read it to us. Harry was a dear boy, and Captain Latimer would never tell us a lie, would he?’
‘No,’ Rachel had replied. ‘He never would.’
The place where she now sat with her painting was not two hundred yards from where Hugo had died. She could recall it without undue pain, rehearse each detail as if reading a poem. She had been at her desk in the drawing room and seen, in the mirror on the wall to her left, the reflection of Piper careering riderless towards the house with his harness flying, as if he would simply plunge through glass and brick and gallop over her. She’d got up and rushed to the window as he stopped, and Colin had picked up his reins. She saw at once what had happened and had walked steadily from the room, across the hall and out of the main door. At the edge of the wood among the creamy splashes of early narcissus she saw the two brothers, one lying, one kneeling. But on seeing her Harry had got to his feet and backed away respectfully. And had remained there, standing a little way off with his head bowed, like a guard of honour protecting her grief.
The combined fleet sailed up the Crimean coast as if performing a march-past. There was a certain splendour in such hubris, thought Harry, but hubris it surely was, when the Russians clustered on the ramparts of Sevastopol to watch them go by, and at night they were a seaborne city of twinkling lights and lanterns.
They were to disembark on the morning of 14 September. Harry still felt weak and faint, his bowels like water and his stomach resistant to everything but the smallest amount of liquid. Still, officers were to disembark in full dress with sword, and all men with three days’ ration of salt pork and biscuits and full canteens of water, though the general weakness of the troops had led to their being ordered to leave their packs behind and to take with them only what they could manage to wrap in their blankets.
At eight a.m. the weather was perfect, carrying the warning of fierce heat later on. The bay was wide and sandy, one of a series of similar bays that scalloped the coast in either direction. On the way they had passed areas of beach with huts, striped canvas tents, and bathing machines bearing brave little flags. Here too it was pleasant enough: the sand rose into dunes in some places, low cliffs in others, and beyond these were shallow grassy hills reminiscent of Norfolk, where as boys Harry and Hugo had once spent a holiday with their governess, the kind but whiskery Salter. The sea had been so shallow for so great a distance that although Harry had not then been able to swim he could run straight out for over a hundred yards, with the waves still only around his legs, and then splash and lunge about while Hugo swam back and forth a little further out where it was deeper. Salter, who was terrified of the water, would occasionally lurch up from her deck chair, both arms windmilling wildly, her frantic warnings made tiny by distance . . . There was something sombre about today’s inversion of that childhood scene – he standing smartly dressed and armed on the deck of the Simla, waiting to wade through the water to the empty beach and whatever lay beyond it.
It seemed he was not the only one sunk in reflection. After all that had happened in the past weeks, so many men and animals dead or lost, so many still sick, it was chastening at last to be so close to their destination. Waiting for the order to disembark, there was a momentary lull in the shipboard clamour as fears and memories p
assed over them like a shadow.
Hector Fyefield, scanning the land with his spyglass, said beneath his breath: ‘We are not alone.’ He handed the glass to Harry, pointing with his other hand. ‘Take a look and tell me what you see.’
A row of horsemen was drawn up on the crest of one of the little hills. There might or might not have been several hundred more in the valley beyond. These appeared alert. Their leader was busily engaged in making notes in a book, and beneath his arm was a large document, possibly a map. As Harry looked, he raised the binoculars that were hanging round his neck and seemed to be looking straight back. Harry experienced the perverse and childish temptation to wave.
Fyefield held out his hand for the spyglass and Harry returned it.
‘Cossacks . . . They appear to be leaving.’ He snapped the glass shut and gave a supercilious laugh. ‘One can scarcely imagine the effect of all this on the poor fellows.’
Harry refrained from making his own observation, which was that there was something in the Cossacks’ calm scrutiny and their officer’s unruffled note-taking which did not denote abject terror.
When the order came, the quiet at once exploded into seething bustle and noise as the bands struck up and disembarkation began. The sunshine, the activity, the inviting emptiness and accessibility of the Russian beach and, above all, the long-awaited sense of purpose, dispelled anxiety.
The Light Cavalry were to wait until the infantry divisions were on land. Emmeline availed herself of George’s spyglass and gave a running commentary on what all could see anyway – the soldiers swarming down the sides of the ships like ants into the waiting boats, the sailors shouting coarse encouragement (which made her blush, especially where it was directed towards the Scotsmen in their kilts) and the proud sight of the troops eagerly jumping out of the boats and wading thigh-deep to shore.
The Grass Memorial Page 30