When it was finally over Spencer told Mo he’d see him later, and slipped out of the pew and down the aisle, keeping his head down and a purposeful expression on his face as though he had some important objective in mind. At the back of the church there was a milling throng, and he was worried sick that even if she were here he might not recognise her. It had been a long time, she had only been a girl, she was bound to have changed. Then he realised that the north door was blocked off by a massive red, white and blue flower arrangement on a pedestal, so that the whole congregation had to leave, when it did, by the south porch. He edged and excuse-me’d his way there, and went out into the churchyard. Apart from a few kids released from boredom and larking around among the gravestones he seemed to be first out. If he waited here, everyone who had been at the service would have to pass him sooner or later, and if she was here he’d see her.
Not that escape was easy. He hadn’t been there two minutes before one of the tea ladies busted out with a cup and saucer, and a colonel and his wife came to join him, saying what a pity it was to waste the fine weather when in England . . . He had to talk to them, but as people began to filter out his attention wandered and he became tense and agitated. When the colonel and his lady left his side he had the distinct impression that his distracted manner might have given offence, but what the hell? The war was over.
He hung around for another half an hour. The Legion chairman introduced him to the couple with whom he was supposed to be having lunch, and he made some feeble excuse about not feeling well, and coming on in a while. He knew they didn’t believe him and thought he was rude, but he couldn’t help himself.
Mo appeared, dabbing his brow.
‘I swear . . . I take it all back about the English weather. You going to lunch?’
‘Probably. I’m just looking out for someone I know.’
‘Is that so? Mighta known it – not a peep out of you at the hop, but an hour in church and you’re eying up the girls. There’s my charming hostess, gotta go.’
As Mo trundled off it half occurred to Spencer that he might never see his friend again, and was letting him go without so much as a fare thee well. But the thought was only the merest tap, well short of his conscience.
The church was pretty well empty now, and still he hadn’t seen her. The vicar and the padre from the neighbouring barracks emerged, in conversation and carrying their surpluses. The vicar raised a cheery hand.
‘Everything all right? You look a bit lost!’
‘No, no, I’m doing fine. Just waiting for someone.’
‘No one much left, I’m afraid, only the cooks and bottle-washers!’
‘I’ll go take a look.’
‘If you’re sure . . .’
They went on their way. He hardly wanted to look in the church in case she wasn’t there, but it would be stupid to have waited this long and not to check. He strolled back into the porch and hung around there for a moment. He could see a couple of ladies packing crockery into boxes and another removing her plastic apron and folding it up, a scene that was definitely the Anglican Church’s equivalent of putting chairs on tables. Surely there couldn’t be anyone else there. He hesitated but one of the women spotted him.
‘Anything we can do?’
‘I think I may have left something . . .’
‘Come on, come on in and take a look, we’ll be a few minutes yet. What was it anyway? We may already have found it.’
‘Er – a small book. My diary.’
Even to him it sounded supremely unlikely but they clucked and conferred and said they hadn’t come across it. He entered and walked up the aisle to where he’d been sitting, glancing to right and left, checking the corners with his peripheral vision. No one there. Bathed in disappointment he sat down in the pew and made a show of looking under the seat, and under the shelf, along one way, then the other. It went quiet, the women were carrying stuff down the path to their car.
‘Afternoon, lootenant.’
He still couldn’t see her, or tell where her voice was coming from.
‘Spencer? Over here.’
She was sitting in the box-seat at the end of the choir stalls, masked by the carved wooden wing, though now she was leaning forward, smiling at him, and as soon as he’d spotted her she rose and came down the steps.
‘I wasn’t playing hide and seek, honest, I just couldn’t resist getting a view from my old seat. Hallo.’ She held out her hand.
‘Rosemary . . . This is extraordinary – I never expected—’
‘Didn’t you? I did. Or at least I hoped. That was why I came.’
Her directness had always made him feel that his brain was all thumbs. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
‘I’m flattered.’
The women came back in, and the one he’d spoken to first bustled up.
‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Oh, splendid!’ She told the others: ‘This gentleman found it – his diary.’
He felt Rosemary’s bright, quizzical look among the exclamations of delight.
The woman turned back to him. ‘Now there’s absolutely no rush, but we have to lock up in due course—’
‘That’s all right,’ said Spencer, ‘we’re going.’
They walked down the church path to the road. He was tongue-tied. At the lychgate he said: ‘Do you have a car?’
‘Yes. Do you?’ She was teasing him.
‘I meant—’
‘I know. I got a cab here.’ Still that bright, perspicacious gaze, looking right into his head, laying him bare. ‘So would you allow me to buy you a drink, lootenant?’
He was losing not just his presence of mind but his manners. ‘Certainly not. But I’d like to buy you one – or perhaps some lunch, if you have time?’
‘I do. If you’re quite sure you don’t have to be anywhere else?’
She was testing his conscience rather than his arrangements. He knew at once that his contingency excuse was going to have to do.
‘No.’
‘Then lovely, thank you.’
At her suggestion they drove to where she was staying, a coaching inn in the nearby market town. In the car they confined themselves to comments on the service, the route, changes in the neighbourhood . . . Neither of them elicited nor proffered the smallest personal detail, though he did notice that she wore a wedding ring. It was as if their meeting were taking place in a kind of bubble which neither of them wanted to burst.
At the hotel he glanced around involuntarily and she said, reading his mind: ‘Don’t worry, your lot aren’t staying here.’
‘Was it so obvious? They’re great guys but I’ve had about as much reminiscing as I can stand over the past couple of days.’
‘I can imagine.’
The hotel was busy on a Sunday lunchtime but because Rosemary was a guest there was no problem with a table in the restaurant. They went into the bar and while she studied the menu, Spencer studied her.
She was pretty and sassy as ever, but elegant these days in a tan skirt and high heels with a cream silk blouse and a light three-quarter coat that swung from the shoulders like a cape. When she removed the coat her figure was still great, but she was slimmer than he remembered, and he caught a provocative glimpse of white lace between the reveres of the blouse as she leaned forward. Her hair was paler, more of a strawberry blonde, and she had it cut in a face-framing urchin style like Kim Novak’s. There were the cat’s eyes and the humorous mouth that he remembered so well, and even now, delightfully, a few freckles.
‘You look terrific,’ he said.
‘Thank you.’ She glanced down at herself, tweaked a button, smiled. ‘I won’t pretend I didn’t make an effort.’
His heart turned over. She was not being bold, nor even flirtatious. It was more that she seemed to take certain things as read between them.
‘You’re married.’ The moment he’d said it he hoped it didn’t sound pri
m or accusing, but here again she seemed to understand perfectly the weight of his remark.
‘Yes, a couple of years. Very happily, more than I ever hoped for or deserve. You?’
‘The same. But for longer.’
‘Do you have a family?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t either, but we hope to. My husband’s a schoolmaster at a prep school – a private boarding school for quite young boys – so much of the time we have a tribe of surrogate sons.’
He thought, then said: ‘Lucky guys.’
Over lunch he told her, at her instigation, about the work he did, the writing and the broadcasting.
She said: ‘You really love it, don’t you? It’s in your face and in your voice.’
‘I’m very lucky,’ he conceded. ‘It wasn’t the kind of thing I’d ever considered, it just kind of came out of left field and ambushed me.’
‘Have you done any flying since the war?’
He shook his head. ‘Only as a passenger.’
‘But what a thing to have done . . .’ Her eyes rested on him with a reflective smile. ‘Do you have any idea how much we all idolised you boys?’
It was his turn now to tease. ‘I’m afraid we did. And we weren’t slow to make the most of it either.’
‘Would you like to capitalise on it now?’
He wasn’t sure at first if he’d heard her correctly, or if he had whether he’d interpreted her right.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Shall we go upstairs? If you’ve had enough, that is.’
‘Why not?’
Even as they went up the stairs he still didn’t allow himself to believe what her invitation meant. Even when she hung the sign on the door before closing it, and dropped her key on the dressing table and her coat on the chair. Even when she slipped out of her shoes and pulled her silk blouse from her waistband . . .
Only when she held out her arms and said his name did he dare to believe it. And realised, as they folded round one another, how often he had imagined this embrace.
It was not only love they made, but a pact. With their passion that afternoon they set the seal on what might have been, and now never would be. Though they had spoken so little they communicated through their lips and hands and skins. On her part there was none of the deep reserve which had characterised Janet’s lovemaking: she made herself known to Spencer completely, her openness was a gift and a revelation. And for him there was a sense of coming home, of finding at last the magnetic north which had eluded him. This, they both knew, was something that had to happen, if only once.
And afterwards, peace.
As usual, she was the first to articulate it.
‘We had to do this, didn’t we?’
‘Yes.’
‘I loved you so much I almost hated you, did you know that?’
‘I thought I annoyed the hell out of you.’
She shook with laughter against his shoulder. ‘That too . . . I was fifteen when you came on the scene with your pilot’s wings and your tin of ham. Fifteen!’
‘You were jail-bait.’
‘But I didn’t know that. I didn’t know what I was. Only that I was eaten up with jealousy. Did you love my mother?’
‘I was attracted to her, she was a beautiful woman, but—’ Suddenly he realised what she’d said. ‘Rosemary – you know?’
She nodded. ‘I guessed. It was the jealousy that did it. I think my blood must have been green. After I got married, and she married for the second time, I asked her, and she told me. It wasn’t a big dramatic scene, we’d already done all the acting and pretending, it was very calm and easy. And a huge relief.’
Moved, he kissed her temple. ‘You didn’t feel cheated?’
‘No. Or at least, only of you. But we didn’t discuss that.’
‘Is she happy now?’
She thought for a second. ‘She’s content. He’s a nice man.’
‘What about Davey? And Ellen?’
‘Davey’s drifting. Ellen’s at university. I ought to tell you that I don’t see any of them these days.’
‘Why is that? You had a fight?’
‘No. I just wanted to start all over again. To make a clean break, leave all the mess behind.’
‘But they are your family.’
‘They were. Now I want my own family.’ She tilted her head back and looked up at him. ‘That’s given you something to disapprove of.’
‘Why should I want to do that?’
‘To make saying goodbye easier.’
It wasn’t easy, but it was peaceful. Once he was ready to go they stood with their arms round one another for a full minute, and then she came down and saw him to his car. Her composure never faltered and he loved her for that. She looked great, a woman with a mind and a life of her own.
She waved him off, but when he glanced in his mirror, expecting to see her still there, she had gone.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage:
Neither helieveth he that it is the sound of the trumpet.
He saith among the trumpets, “Ha, ha!”
And he smelleth the battle afar off.
The thunder of the captains and the shouting’
—The Book of Job
Harry 1854
For a warlike scene, it was peaceful.
Not true peace, but the focused calm of order and purpose: of the coming together of training, expectation and opportunity after so long. After the freezing night, the broad gentle valley with its garlands of vines spread invitingly before them like a prospect of hope in the mid-morning sunshine. It drew the eye of every officer and man towards the horizon, and their unseen objective. All were united in that objective; each was wrapped in his own private concentration. Memories, hopes and thoughts of home were set aside, the future was circumscribed by this sunlit trough of fertile land.
Even the shabby horses, thin and knocked up in their patchy autumn coats, had regained their spirit. They tossed their ragged manes and snorted, their ears flicked back and forth expectantly. Harry could feel how Clemmie was bunched beneath him, nervous and eager as she hadn’t been in months.
Beyond the valley’s natural amphitheatre and the watchers, friend and foe, on the heights behind and on either side of them, was the squalid hinterland of war of which, for this magnificent moment, they were no longer a part: the tattered and depleted camps, the scarred fields and vineyards, and the human detritus of this day’s earlier encounters – the heroes, the storytellers, the scapegoats, the wounded and the dead.
Here, all was disciplined symmetry as the cavalry drew up in three hues, six hundred and seventy-five of the finest horsemen and swordsmen in Britain. Between the first and second line was a distance of some four hundred yards; between second and third rather less; the Heavies were assembled far behind that; no infantry were in support, there was nothing to draw the eye from the parade-ground splendour of the Lights. The spectators on the Sapoune Heights to the north – the TGs and officers’ ladies accompanying Raglan and his staff – were breathless with patriotic anticipation. The Russians would not be permitted to take the guns from the redoubts beneath the Causeway Ridge – honour would be saved by the swift and strong.
From their vantage point these same spectators, saving their wine and luncheon hampers for a timely celebration, could not see the condition of the horses or the torn jackets and patched and threadbare overalls of the men, the missing epaulettes and shoulder-scales, the few and draggled plumes. They could not see, as Harry could, the scattering of motley late arrivals – the butcher still in his bloodstained white smock, with his canvas trousers tucked in his boots, or the escapee from the guard tent preparing to charge unarmed, his weapons having been taken for smoking a pipe against orders; cooks, shirkers, invalids and drunks had scurried to join the ranks, many without equipment or headgear and with jackets unbuttoned. Young Philip Gough had borrowed Harry’s handkerchief to wrap round his wrist and sword-h
ilt to strengthen his grip, brushing aside Harry’s misplaced apology that it was not very clean ...
The spectators saw only the distant splendour of the concourse on the plain. And the Lights in their turn fixed their eyes on Cardigan who sat his horse before them like a statue, his stature rigidly upright, his pelisse fastened over his rheumy chest to display a splash of gold.
On their right flank, the rough-coated terrier Jemmy, mascot of the 8th, dug furiously for some buried prize, her tail wagging with excitement.
Not for long had Balaklava remained the welcoming, tranquil haven of their first impressions. Within hours the British Army had placed their unmistakable stamp upon it. Gardens were laid waste as they were stripped, roads and alleyways were choked with human and equine traffic and their litter, the cobbled docks were thick with carts, packs, arms and ammunition, and the waters of the harbour bobbed with every kind of rubbish. The little town itself was soon dwarfed by the sprawl of the huge encampment which barnacled the surrounding slopes to the north and east.
The spurious sense of achievement, of having gained an important objective, kept the troops tolerably cheerful. But then Harry was continually humbled by their stoicism. In undergoing far worse privations than their superiors, and with even less expectation of a possible reward, they maintained a dogged courage and a gallows humour that drew the sting of a situation by painting it even worse than it was.
These characteristics found their apotheosis in Betts. Almost since landing at Calamita Bay Harry had expected daily to find that his groom had succumbed to infection, injury, sickness or simple exhaustion, and every night he found this hobbling wisp of a man not merely alive but apparently unaffected by whatever horrors had gone before.
This was at least in part because Betts at his very best was hardly a picture of health. Runtish and limping, with his sallow complexion and silted lungs (his approach was always heralded by a hacking cough and tremendous hawking and spitting), there was quite simply less margin for change in him than in most other men. But aside from and more important than this was his devotion to the horses. His commitment to their welfare was selfless and unwavering. Though he and Harry had as good a relationship as could be between master and man, Harry did not flatter himself that Betts’s loyalty and perseverance were for him. The horses were Betts’s raison d’être. Even had he been given to the luxury of introspection he would not have indulged in it, for his every waking moment was taken up with doing what he could to improve the animals’ lot.
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