The Love of a Lifetime

by Mary Fitzgerald

  I must accept his opinion, I suppose, because he is an educated man but it is hard to bear. “People don’t sleep as much when they get older,” he added staring through the window at the garden which is dull and sodden from the early autumn rain. “After all, you get no exercise.”

  I was suddenly annoyed with him. Why was he treating me like an idiot? Did he disregard my intelligence? Or was it that he was bored with my living so long and causing him to drive out here every week?

  “I know that,” I said and drummed my hand angrily on my table, “but that wouldn’t explain the feeling of fright.”

  He still wouldn’t take me seriously. “No, I don’t suppose it would,” he shrugged, “and I don’t know what to suggest. I’m just a humble GP.”

  I couldn’t conceal a snort. He has nothing humble about him. I thought he was vexed because Sharon wasn’t there. She was the first person he asked for when he came in and showed surprise when the nurse explained that she was away on holiday. It was cruel, but I enjoyed telling him that she had gone with Andrew Jones. Perhaps I shouldn’t have, because he got back at me when he was leaving.

  “Guilty conscience,” he said, picking up his bag and covering his nastiness with a laugh, “perhaps that’s what it is. Why you wake up in a fright.”

  I sat for some time after he left, outwardly composed, but quite unable to swallow my elevenses despite the nurse’s pleading. Internally, my heart was jumping and my stomach lurched like a drunken sailor. Guilty conscience, he’d said and those words swirled worryingly in my brain. How could he have known? And worse, did everyone know? Was my secret, so carefully kept for so many years, common currency?

  It took a couple of hours before I calmed down and realised that I’d been taking him too seriously. He’d made a joke, that’s all. It was me, reading too much into his flippant words. But it didn’t help my sleeplessness.

  “You look tired,” said Sharon as we had a drink together on the night of her return.

  “I’m not sleeping well,” I grunted, “but it doesn’t matter. Old men don’t sleep much.”

  “Well I’m home now. You’ll be better.”

  I knew I would be and smiled gratefully at her. “Tell me about you and Andrew Jones,” I said, my smile turning into a grin. “Is it serious?”

  She held up her glass to the light so that the crystal winked and the red wine glowed. This was one of the old glasses that Mother had brought from her father’s vicarage and I had recently suggested that we must use. Too many things in the house had stayed in their boxes, cold and unappreciated.

  “He is,” she said.

  “And you?”

  “I not sure. I’m inclined to be wary.”

  Funny words, but correct, I thought. Andrew Jones knows too much to be entirely detached. But he would be a catch for her.

  “Thomas likes him,” she said after a while. “But then he likes most people.”

  Thomas has a sweet nature and sees the best in everyone. I was like him when I was a boy. Later on I became cynical and careful in my dealings, particularly with people I didn’t know. It paid off, for on many occasions my lack of trust saved not only my life but those of my companions, officers as well as men. I remember some chieftains in the Afghan mountains who swore that they were on our side, but who would happily sell out to a Russian with a bigger purse. I’ve seen a collection of heads in a sack, some poor souls who had most likely been probably promised safe conduct. Is it a wonder that I never trusted them?

  That was when I was on the Northwest Frontier and dealing with the tribesmen who were engaged in a series of blood feuds and we were in the middle, trying to protect our British interests. What our interests were, I didn’t really know. I simply obeyed orders even though sometimes those orders were difficult to understand. But the work was exciting and what I’d joined up for.

  Those tribesmen were a queer lot and could be frightening because they didn’t think like us. They included some fanatics whose only desire was to kill Christians and they would go about it with such serious intent that nothing would satisfy them until the deed was done. One day, a rebel jumped off the wall surrounding our camp and stabbed one of our sentries. The soldier was alerted by his colleague so that he managed to duck aside and the dagger only fetched him a slighting blow on the shoulder. I’m happy to report that the sentry survived, having nothing more than a scratch, and we managed to capture the rebel. Truth was, he didn’t put up much of a fight and was quite peaceable once we had him in chains, but he was sentenced to death immediately.

  But what I’m saying is this. When we captured him, his eyes were like those of an animal, wild, terrifying and so full hatred that you could barely look him in the face without shivering. But on the scaffold, before the rope was looped round his neck, he was as docile as a baby and accepted his fate with something akin to joy. It was his religion. He thought he was going to his heaven and had no fear.

  I thought about that, after I’d cut him down and laid his still quivering body in the dust, and mentioned it to the camp doctor who had come to formally pronounce him dead.

  “Fanaticism, laddie,” said the doctor, “it’s like an illness. A mental illness. The blood lust turns on and off like a tap. It happens in Christians too.”

  I wanted to know more, but our conversation was halted by the Colonel who had walked round to where we were kneeling beneath the scaffold. “Wilde,” he said, “you’re new here, so you might not have heard. We bury a dead dog with the corpse. They think it will stop their soul going to heaven. Might put some of the other buggers off.”

  The doctor raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “They’ve been trying that for years,” he said when the Colonel had gone. “Doesn’t seem to make any difference.”

  I carried out my orders, though, getting a Sepoy to shoot one of the diseased dogs that scavenged in packs around the camp, and threw it in the grave on top of the hanged rebel. Several locals watched as we did it and it caused much muttering and obvious dismay. They didn’t like it.

  It was in those days that I began to earn a new respect from my colleagues. It was ‘Sarge, this’ and ‘Sarge that,’ from the men, as we trekked cautiously through the high passes in pursuit of the rebels. I was in my element out there in the mountains, confident and as surefooted as a goat on the craggy rocks and my spirits soared in the thin air. It was easy for me, I think, because I’d done so much climbing in my youth, but it wasn’t only that. I loved having the rank and the ability to think for myself. The men took their lead from me, generally without dispute and we were a cheerful bunch who looked after each other. I didn’t lose one of them in that first engagement with the Mamhoods although one young private was badly injured and had to be invalided out. He was shot in his belly and suffered greatly. That was the first time I’d seen anyone shot and it was a facer, I can tell you.

  The officers were less formal out there. We were led by a Colonel Barnes, an old India hand whose family had been soldiering in the sub-continent for two hundred years. I say old, but that was purely in experience. He can’t have been more than fifty at the time, a strong, dark-haired man with a thick moustache and whip-tight muscles. We soon found out that he had no taste for shirkers.

  “Keep them to it, Sergeant,” he would say when I led the men on training exercises through the hills. “It’ll save their lives, one day.” I wonder if it did. Most of these men fought on through the Second World War, not in those high mountains of Northern India but in the jungle, thousands of miles further east where the problem of disease was almost as difficult to overcome as were the Japs. I got to know the jungle too and suffered with malaria and other infections that could bring you so low that death seemed like a blessing. But I think the training did stand us in good stead, we learnt to be more self-sufficient and we were all extremely fit.

  Barnes could speak some of the languages of the hill tribes. We all picked up a word or two, but not like Barnes. He had long conversations with some of them and was very
respectful of their elders, touching his head and heart in the way that they did and eating with his hands from the dishes of food he was offered. Once when we were trying to stop a particular scrap that had been going on for years, I was chosen to go with him to negotiate with the elders of a warlike tribe.

  We were to meet the men in a small high village, which entailed us riding through the mountains for a day and a half. A couple of bearers rode with us, but no other soldiers and I thought it extremely risky, but not so the colonel. “They won’t hurt a guest,” he promised as we rode up the crumbling soil of the hillside and I had no choice but to take him at his word. He seemed to feel no concern.

  “Listen to what they say, Wilde,” he instructed.

  “But I can’t understand their language,” I protested.

  He sighed. “That’s not what I mean. Listen. Give them respect as you would any stranger, particularly when you are a visitor in their home. I’ll interpret, but you make as though you know what’s going on. It will be more impressive.”

  The village was a poor place, only a group of square baked-mud houses with flat roofs, built higgledy-piggledy on low rocky slopes and each abode surrounded by nothing but a bare patch of dusty ground. But beyond those simple dwellings, the river bottom opened into a lush and fertile valley. I could see fields of maize and barley waving in the cool breeze and when I looked further, I noticed sheep and goats roaming on the hillsides. Whatever else, these people weren’t short of food.

  That opinion was borne out when we rode into the village. The place was noisy with people and animals who watched us closely as we passed by towards the warlord’s house. We had to duck under banners, some black and some striped in colours, which flew from improvised flag poles while, at the same time, avoiding the brightly coloured clothes that lay drying in the sun on the ground. Thin dogs barked at us and fat babies sitting in the dust gazed on nonchalantly, sucking at their fists. The children and the few women we saw had fairish skin with round cheeks that were rough and red from the wind, although the women would hold their veils modestly over their faces, if we glanced in their direction. But the men were tall, taller than the Indians who lived in the country around Meerut and under their turbans their faces were lean and fierce looking. Each man carried a rifle and had a variety of weapons, daggers and handguns and such, stuffed into the bandanas they wore round their waists. I thought of my single rifle and the Colonel’s pistol being our only defence and could feel my stomach curdling, but the Colonel rode forward, not a whit afraid.

  As it turned out, my fears were groundless. These people could be horribly cruel, but they had decided that we were the best bet in their fight with their neighbours, so for the time being we were safe. The Colonel spoke to the elders for a long time and much laughter was exchanged, which I joined in when I deemed it right. I was keeping to the Colonel’s instruction and trying to listen. It wasn’t so hard really. You could tell from how they gestured, towards the mountains and then over their shoulders towards the valley, what their fears were about. The opposing tribesmen were stealing their stock and wrecking the crops. They wanted protection and it seemed that in return for them staying faithful to British and not the Russians, the Colonel was prepared to give it to them.

  “Go and look the crops,” the Colonel said to me, at one point. “They’ll appreciate us showing some interest.” So, bowing to the warlord, I left the room and went back into the dusty street.

  I was accompanied on my ride down the valley by a group of young men and thank God, I’d been brought up on a farm. I knew how to strip down the leaves of maize and examine the ears and how to rub the barley between my fingers to judge its readiness for harvest. I made a great hit of catching a sheep and looking at its feet. I guessed at that, for we had barely any sheep at home. The young men waved their rifles in the air on the ride back and chattered animatedly to the others left at home.

  “Well done, Sergeant,” said the Colonel, when I returned. The news of my prowess as a farmer had preceded me back to the village. A feast was prepared and we sat on the floor to eat sheep’s head and rice, and very nice it was too. I was never squeamish about what was put in front of me.

  A funny thing happened as we ate our meal. A very old man spoke to the Colonel and nodded towards me. He had obviously been someone of importance and as he wore a British Army medal in his turban, I could tell that he’d seen some service. The younger men fell silent when his wavering hand pointed at me and a few gravelly words grunted out. To my astonishment, I thought I caught the word ‘Cleeton’ and I looked up quickly to the Colonel for an explanation.

  “Are you related to an officer called Cleeton?” he asked quietly and just as I was about to shake my head he added, “Might be a good idea if you agree. They would like that.” So I nodded vigorously and the old man opened his mouth and cackled a toothless laugh.

  “He says that a Major Cleeton was up here at the turn of the century. A brave officer, apparently.” The Colonel listened some more and then joined in the general laughter. “It seems that your red hair is the same as his was and he was tall too.”

  I thought back to those days when I had met the Major in the lanes as a child. He had looked big, but then to a child, all adults are big and I couldn’t remember the colour of his hair. The last time I saw him was that day just before he died when Mother went to care for him and then he had appeared sadly shrunken and pathetic.

  On our ride back to the base at Peshawar, the Colonel and I chatted in a friendly way. He spoke of his wife. “She’s an old India hand too,” he said, with a fond smile. “Her family have been out here nearly as long as mine. Of course we were both educated back home and Caroline stayed on for a few years, but apart from that, well…I don’t know what we’d do, if we had to leave.”

  “Do you have children, sir?” I asked.

  “We do. Three boys, all at school in England.” He gripped his reins tightly as we negotiated the stony track that was our way through the mountains. “Caroline longs to see them, but we aren’t due for home leave for another year.” He turned round in his saddle, “What about you, Wilde? Family man, are you?”

  I shook my head. “No sir. No wife. No children.” I paused to grin and dared another comment, for we were both men of the world and had no ladies present. “That is, none that I know of.”

  He laughed and we rode on in relaxed companionship. It was later that day when we had made camp and were drinking tea, after a meal, that he brought up the subject of Major Cleeton again. In truth, it had been on my mind during the ride and I was pleased to be able to talk about it.

  “The name Cleeton is not entirely unknown to me,” he said, cradling his tin cup between his palms. It was cold in the mountains now that the sun had disappeared behind the peaks and I was glad of the sheepskin over-jacket that I’d bought in the market at Peshawar. The bearers had made us a fire out of the wood and kindling that we had brought with us, which made us more comfortable.

  “Nor to me, sir,” I said. “We had a Major Cleeton in our village. He was in the same regiment as you, sir, but I know nothing about his service record. My brother bought his land and cottage, when he died.”

  The Colonel was interested. “Your brother is a landowner, then?” he asked.

  Landowner. That sounded too important for what we were, but I suppose it was true. Our Billy did own more than 500 hundred acres of land and with the house and the cottages he must be worth a bit. “We have a farm,” I said.

  “I gathered that, Wilde. You looked as if you knew what you were doing back there.

  I tried to be dismissive. “My brother’s the farmer, not I. I left home before my eighteenth birthday.”

  He answered nothing to that, recognising, I think, my difficulty on the subject, but he brought the conversation back to the Major. “Cleeton had some adventures in these hills,” he said, “I remember my father telling me about him. Fought bravely and cleverly. He cut quite a dashing figure, too, so I believe.”

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sp; I laughed. “I wouldn’t know about that, sir. The Major Cleeton I knew was something of a drunkard and his antics became a scandal in the village. My father and brother had little time for him.”

  “And you?”

  I was quiet for a moment, considering my answer. “He left my mother his library of books,” I said, thinking about the legacy. “He knew she and I were keen readers.” I leant back against my saddle and remembered that day he had taken me into his parlour and given me his own copy of David Copperfield. Then I thought about that winter day, when he was dying. “Mother cared for him on the day he died,” I continued, “she made me run into the village for the doctor and bring him back to the Major’s cottage. He was very poorly. She stayed with him until he died.”

  “No wife?”

  I shook my head.

  We fell to talking about other things then, the village, the tribesmen and the recent fighting and the subject of the Major wasn’t mentioned between us again. But when I thought about it later, it struck me that neither of us had thought the coincidence strange and the whole episode became something that I couldn’t forget.

  Back at camp, I went straight to the washrooms and looked at my face in the glass. I tried to picture the Major and looked closely for any recognisable similarities, but I could see none. I was glad. If the unspoken implication were true, then that would make my mother something that I didn’t want to think about. The only thing was I could picture my father and our Billy quite clearly and I was nothing like them. They were dark stocky men, with bull-like shoulders and square faces, whereas I, now grown into adulthood, was tall and thin with a straight nose and that blasted red hair.

  I went back to my quarters and took out my writing case. I felt that I must pen some words to Mother and get this thing sorted out, the doubting was becoming too much to bear. But hardly before my pencil had touched the paper, I knew that it would be a senseless thing to do. What could I write? What could I say? How could I accuse her of infidelity? Of sleeping with another man. I baulked at the prospect. It was plain I couldn’t and put my pen and paper away in their leather case.