Past Caring

by Robert Goddard

  I glanced quizzically at Alec. This was the second time I’d heard of his advance publicity for me. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said, forestalling me. “But do you seriously suppose I would have spoken well of you if I’d thought it would get back to you? Leo’s betrayed my confidence.” He turned to the old man with mock outrage.

  “Let us close with a smile,” said Sellick. “It is late and I must take these tired old bones to bed. Here is the Memoir, Martin,” – he handed me the heavy volume – “for you to peruse at your leisure. Take my advice and leave it till morning – I’d value your opinion on it both as an historical document and as a personal testament. But then, we’d probably agree that they’re the same thing anyway. The room next to the one you always have, Alec, has been prepared for Martin. I trust I can leave you to show him up when you’re ready. Now I must bid you goodnight. Sleep well.”

  With that, Sellick left us. Alec poured himself another drink and we fell to a desultory discussion about the warmth of our reception. I detected in Alec’s manner a slight sourness, though whether this arose from boredom, having heard the story before, or from some resentment that I’d monopolised Sellick’s attention, I couldn’t say. Alec himself denied the former and I dismissed the latter as an unworthy suspicion, but I was relieved when he did not demur at showing me up to my room.

  Once there, I moved to the window and opened it. The shutters had been thrown back in readiness and I sniffed the cool night air wafting in across the garden behind the house. I’d hoped it might refresh me enough to turn to the Memoir that night, but Sellick had been right – it deserved a clear, wakeful head. So I confined myself to a glance at the title page in bed. One short paragraph served as prologue to the Memoir proper.

  “In this volume I, Edwin George Strafford, propose to set forth the peculiar circumstances of my life and career. As a study in hubris, it may serve as a consolation for my soul and a concession to undeserving posterity.”

  There followed, in quotation marks, four lines of poetry:

  Since as a child I used to lie

  Upon the leaze and watch the sky,

  Never, I own, expected I

  That life would all be fair.

  I took this to be some epigrammatic borrowing from a favourite poet of Strafford’s, but he was not named. It put me vaguely in mind of A.E. Housman; certainly it had his fatalistic air. But I was tired and these thoughts were best left for morning. I laid the book aside and turned out the light.

  I woke quite suddenly, stirred by some sound from the garden. I rose and stumbled to the window, squinting out at the glaring light of a perfect Madeiran day. Below, I could see at work the aged gardener who’d woken me. Checking my watch, I was dismayed to see that it was already past nine o’clock. So I bathed and dressed hurriedly and headed downstairs, taking the Memoir with me.

  In the drawing room, the french windows stood open and, on the verandah, I found Sellick sitting by a breakfast table, sipping coffee, with a sheaf of papers on his lap. He smiled a greeting.

  “Good morning, Martin. I trust you slept well?”

  “Thank you, yes. Perhaps too well.”

  “Certainly not. You are, after all, on holiday. Sit down, relax. Tomás can fix you some breakfast in no time.”

  “Nothing for me, thanks. But some of that coffee would go down well.”

  Sellick poured me some from the pot. “You’ve missed Alec, I fear. He’ll be back some time this afternoon. I felt sure that I could keep you occupied until his return – or, rather, that Mr Strafford could.” He leant forward and patted the Memoir where it lay on the table. “Have you made a start?”

  “Not in earnest. I thought you were right about tackling it this morning. I’ve only glanced at the title page, which doesn’t suggest it’s a happy chronicle.”

  “One could not, in all honesty, call Strafford a happy man, as you will see. But I’m glad you haven’t started reading the Memoir yet, Martin, because before you do – bearing in mind what I told you about it last night – I have a proposition to put which might interest you.”

  “You have?”

  “Yes. Now, don’t feel that I’m prying into your affairs, but I understand from Alec that you’re not presently in any form of employment.”

  “That’s true.” Again, here was evidence of Alec making free with his knowledge of my affairs. It was a development I didn’t care for.

  “Taking that into consideration, along with your undoubted abilities as an historian, I may be able to offer you an engagement both financially lucrative and intellectually stimulating.”

  “You’re offering me a job?” I was frankly incredulous.

  “In short, I am. I have told you what I have learnt of the Strafford mystery, that the Memoir does nothing to dispel it, only increase it. There is no more to be discovered here. I feel the answer must lie in England. I am too old and too busy to go in search of it. Besides, I would not know where to begin what is essentially an exercise in historical research. But time and youth are on your side and I can supply the money. How would you like the task of finding out who – or what – betrayed Strafford in 1910?”

  My incredulity was surpassed by my enthusiasm. A voice inside me said “Grab this offer – before it’s taken back.” The research task sounded interesting in its own right and the money that went with it could solve all my problems. But I didn’t want to seem over-eager. Only that, not suspicion, stayed my hand.

  “It sounds fascinating – and very generous.”

  “Not at all. I would finance you to find out what I want to know. If, coincidentally, you want to know it too, so much the better. But don’t give me your answer now – take a look at the Memoir first, then see how you feel.”

  “Okay – you can’t say fairer than that.”

  “Good. I’m glad you agree. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some business to attend to. You would be most welcome to lunch with me later.”

  “Thanks. See you later, then.”

  Sellick made off with his papers, Tomás came and cleared the table and then I was left alone on the verandah with the Memoir. The sloping garden was shimmering in a heat haze as I settled back in my chair and began to read. It was time to let Strafford have his say.

  Memoir

  1876–1900

  I was not born under a benighted star. I need protest no fault or handicap in the circumstances or the manner of my upbringing. I entered this life on 20 April 1876 at Barrowteign, my father’s house in Devon. He was delighted to have a second son to brighten his old age, though I believe my mother had hoped for a daughter.

  Barrowteign was a joy to be a child in – such a large, rambling house so filled with the memorabilia of my father’s military career, such firm yet loving parents and necessarily indulgent servants, such extensive grounds of forest and moor for my boisterous yet protective brother Robert (six years my senior) to instruct me in, that I could not, for all the world, contrive a better place for a boy to learn his first of life.

  My father was born in the same year as Queen Victoria and spent the middle third of his life defending her overseas possessions, notably India, where his conspicuous contribution to putting down the Mutiny won him his colonelcy. As a result, he was oft-times away from his beloved Barrowteign, that grand stone house that his father, old “Brewer” Strafford from Crediton, built as a monument to his own undoubted industry. It was, my father often told me, a disappointment to the founder of our family fortunes – whose start in life was, after all, hard and long work on that cloying red soil by the river Yeo – that his son should disdain the brewery office and take instead the King’s Shilling. But, as his son’s military career prospered in foreign parts, it may have bolstered his reputation in the locality and I like to think that he basked in a certain reflected glory when my father’s distinguished conduct in the Crimea and in India became known.

  My grandfather died in 1867 and it was only this that prompted my father to retire from the army and return
home. When he did so, he at once disposed of an active interest in the brewing business and, with hardly less speed, married the daughter of a local doctor – my mother, who was then only 23 and found herself quite bowled over by the handsome colonel of nearly 50 who, if the truth were told, was much more nervous than she about the whole affair, having imagined during his years abroad that he would remain a bachelor to the end of his days, and being more used to commanding men than courting ladies. The match, however, was a blissfully happy one.

  I passed my carefree childhood at Barrowteign in perfect contentment, my father re-living the battles of his youth in play as surely only an old soldier can, my mother reminding me of the bloodshed which my father had also seen and chosen not to mention, my brother leading forays out onto the adjacent moorland, where we waged our own mock battles amongst the tors and bracken. These were confined to holidays when he went away to school – Marlborough, when he was eleven. I followed him at the same age.

  Childers, that Classics master whom many Marlburians will remember with awe, selected me as a promising pupil and ensured that my promise, such as it may have been, was fulfilled. My father thought it a signal honour and my mother a just reward that I won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1894.

  It was my active participation in the debates and functions of the Union Society that first drew me towards politics as a career. I saw the Union as a flawed but not unworthy recreation of the Greek demos and looked towards Westminster in the same way. My naïvety now astounds me, but, at the time, it ensured that my energies in that direction were undimmed by caution or reservation.

  During my second summer vacation, I intimated my sense of vocation to my family, who supported my endeavours with all the wholeheartedness I had come to expect. My brother Robert was now effectively head of the household by reason of my father’s age and infirmity and was fast establishing a reputation of his own as a breeder of cattle. My father had been for some years an alderman of Okehampton and these factors facilitated my early introduction to Sir William Oliphant, the sitting Member for Mid-Devon. He had been in Parliament at this time for more than forty years and had already indicated that he did not propose to stand for re-election. It was my great good fortune that Sir William’s recommendation, the standing of our family in the county and whatever fame I won as President of the Union in my last year at Cambridge, sufficed to secure my selection as prospective Liberal candidate in the constituency. With the next general election due in 1902, I felt that I had a good chance of so nurturing my prospects that I might then join the august assembly at Westminster as Mid-Devon’s representative.

  I came down from Cambridge in 1897 with a good degree and accompanied my mother on a six-month tour of France and the Mediterranean. It was, I think, a great joy for her to be shown the historical and artistic treasures of Italy and Greece by her favoured son. It was in Rome that we encountered a college friend of mine: Gerald Couchman, who had been rusticated during our last year for pauperizing a fellow-student in a card game. Couch (as we called him) was one of those fine, rumbustious high-livers whose morals bore no close inspection but whose spirit and company were alike irresistible. I paid no heed to his somewhat ruthless style of gambling – his own finances being precarious and his victims generally better endowed with wealth than good sense, it struck me as no great crime – but our tutor, the narrow-minded Threlfall, conceived a great personal dislike for Couch, who obliged him by sailing rather close to the wind. In the incident for which he was punished, Couch had no idea how ill could his opponent afford to lose. I believe that, when this finally became known to him, he waived the debt, too late to appease the wrath of Threlfall. So Couch’s studies stood suspended for a year, during which time we met him whiling away his days in Rome, where he had secured an obscure teaching appointment and where his gambling adventures went unmonitored.

  If like attracts unlike, I suppose my friendship with Couch could be said to exemplify that tendency. In indulging and secretly applauding his scapegrace ways, I perhaps compensated for that probity and respectability which, as a budding politician, I had to be seen to embrace but which occasionally sat ill with my youthful exuberance. Even my mother confessed to enjoying Couch’s company in Rome and tolerated in him greater laxity than she would condone in others.

  Couch went back to Cambridge and I went back to Devon, to be seen at shows and sales with my brother, meeting local residents in the company of my father (who appeared to see my election as his last great military campaign) and speaking at meetings with Sir William. The Liberal Party was then, in all conscience, at sixes and sevens, still striving to adjust to the retirement of Mr Gladstone. Indeed, in three short years we had three different leaders – Rosebery, Harcourt and Campbell-Bannerman – a helter-skelter progression which convinced Sir William that he had left his own retirement too late and which infused me with no very great confidence in the leadership of the party to which I was now committed. Not that there had ever been any question of my joining the Conservatives. On all issues of substance – free trade, Ireland, the Empire, the House of Lords – I was firmly of the Liberal mind, but such volatility at the helm was a trifle disconcerting. It was my brother, ever a good judge of land, who pointed out to me how it lay in this regard. For, as he said, a time of flux was ideal for a young hopeful to win his spurs.

  In the short term, what was needed was patience. And just as, kicking my heels at Barrowteign, I began to exhaust mine, Gerald Couchman came to my rescue. In the summer of 1898, he at last graduated from Cambridge and took up residence in London as a young man about town, living with an indulgent aunt in St John’s Wood. He invited me to stay with him there awhile and, since this would enable me to follow events in Parliament at first hand, I was encouraged to go. In the event, my visits became frequent and lengthy, so delightfully open-handed was Couch’s aunt in the accommodation of guests. Her nephew led me into bad habits with a cheery smile, but I refrained from his worst excesses and kept my ear close to the ground at Westminster, where my time was well-spent.

  But not, alas, reassuringly spent. There was perceptible during the spring and summer of 1899 a drift to war with the Boer republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State that appeared, to me at any rate, to possess an inevitability borne of the most extreme and swaggering nationalism amongst the populace of London (and, I have little doubt, of Pretoria too). The low halls and taverns which Couch sometimes induced me to visit generally rebounded at this time with the most unreasoning war sentiment and caused me to doubt, for the first time, my faith in the demos. It became clear that the Liberal party would be divided should war come. Campbell-Bannerman and Lloyd George opposed hostilities and came to be roundly abused for their pains; Asquith and the former leader, Rosebery, supported them.

  My position was equivocal, which met with Sir William’s approval but which considerably put out my father, who judged that methods employed against the sepoys in 1857 should be followed against the Boers in 1899; in vain did I seek to dissuade him. It was Couch who convinced me that one could carry reason too far, never being one to do so himself. We were seated at Lord’s one day in June – watching Victor Trumper score a century for the Australians – when we fell to discussing what we should do in the event of war. Couch was all for enlisting at once and sampling the excitement of action. The subtleties of the dispute were of no interest to him where an opportunity for overseas adventure was concerned. To a great extent, he won me over. If war did come, I felt sure that an election would be delayed, not hastened, so time was likely to hang heavy if I stayed at home. There seemed, moreover, no substitute for first-hand experience upon which to base my own view of the matter. Accordingly, we pledged, as only young men can, to enlist together.

  Fortuitously, my father was not unacquainted with General Buller, the Commander-in-Chief, whose career had started in India just as my father’s was coming to fruition there and whose family home was near Crediton. Through his good offices, Couch and I were admitt
ed that summer to the volunteer reserve of the Devonshire regiment. When war did break out, in October, we were gazetted second lieutenants.

  So it was that, on October 11, we set sail from Southampton with General Buller and the rest of the regiment, bound for Capetown. Aboard, I encountered amongst our fellow-passengers that youthful veteran of Omdurman, Winston Churchill, like me set upon a political career, but (at this stage) in the Conservative interest. He was going to South Africa as a reporter for the Morning Post and little did I think that I would one day sit in Cabinet with him.

  We reached Capetown at the end of October amidst a scene of some consternation, the Boers having by now invested Kimberley and Mafeking and, shortly thereafter, Ladysmith. Even to a novice such as I then was, there was a lack of conviction in the dispositions made by General Buller to cope with this emergency. He split his force into three and sought to raise all three sieges at once, a division of effort which proved disastrous. Couch and I accompanied Buller as junior adjutants north towards Ladysmith. I confess that I for one was so busily engaged in adapting to the military life in a strange country that I had little time to spare for assessing our strategy, but my instinct that it was miswrought proved sound. Buller convinced himself that the Boer forces around Ladysmith were too strong for him to lift the siege and he was right. But news of Gatacre’s defeat at Stormberg and Methuen’s at Magersfontein stung him into a frontal assault upon the Boer positions at Colenso on the Tugela river on December 15, only three days after reporting that a direct attack would prove too costly. That cost was a comprehensive defeat, a thousand men dead, his own command forfeited and the creation in the public mind at home of the doleful phenomenon of “Black Week”, which stilled, for a moment, the bellicose clamour of the music halls.

  Unhappily, the defeat at Colenso carried a bitter personal lesson for me. A battlefield far from home is no place to learn that one’s trusted friend is a coward, but this conclusion was forced upon me by Gerald Couchmans conduct that day. In an action to save the ten guns that were ultimately lost, Buller took a personal hand and, therefore, we adjutants with him. In this action, the general was himself wounded and the only son of Lord Roberts was killed. I did what little I could with what fortitude I could muster, but Couch held back and, in an incident overlooked by all but me, quitted the scene in a craven act of self-preservation. I did not despise him for it, for any sane man would have felt fear that day, but I was chastened to learn that he could leave my side at such a crucial time. I did not reproach him afterwards, yet he knew that I had seen, and matters were never again the same between us.