by Max Hennessy
As the pale summer sky changed to violet and then to deep blue, they all trooped down to the lower meadow, the women and the smallest children in the gig, followed by all the Ackroyds from the Home Farm and the cottages. Tyas Ackroyd and the Field Marshal rode in the big Vauxhall, driven and maintained for the family by one of Tyas’ grandsons.
‘Drinks all ready, Tyas?’ the Field Marshal asked.
‘Ellis ’as ’em under control, sir.’
‘Food?’
‘Hampers already down there. Soup. Pies. Parkin. Toffee for the children. The beer barrel’s been broached.’
Since the summer had been so beautiful and the heat had built up, it was still warm despite the hour. By the time the car arrived, everybody was waiting, the children wide-eyed, eager-faced, and excited at being out of bed. Ellis Ackroyd and his wife and daughter were already passing round the drinks, and the older children were gathered in groups chatting, among them Robert’s elder daughter, May, Jane’s daughters, Philippa and Rachel, and Helen’s daughter, Gabriella von Hartmann.
As the flames began to sweep up the pile of logs and brushwood, there were gasps from the smaller children and while they were still staring, three rockets went up together, and a line of roman candles flared into brilliance.
In their light, Dabney watched the faces of the youngsters around him. Among them was an older boy in a Norfolk suit and breeches, his hand touching that of Dabney’s niece, Philippa Sutton, his sister Jane’s daughter.
‘See Hedley got here then, Tyas,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir. He usually does what he says he’s going to do.’
As they moved among the watching children, the boy in the Norfolk suit moved to where Dabney stood with his father.
‘Pleased to see you so well, sir,’ he smiled to the Field Marshal. ‘I’ve come to report.’
‘Report what?’
‘My progress, sir. It’s thanks to you I’m at university. The least I can do is tell you how I’m getting on.’
The boy had the same look old Tyas had, the same look Ellis had, the same direct manner.
‘No need to feel beholden, my boy,’ the Field Marshal said.
‘Nevertheless I do, sir, and I try to prove I’m worth it. I think I’ve done well in my exams and hope to get a good second. To get a first you have to do a lot of swotting and I’m not sure that’s what university’s about. I’ve preferred to use the time in other ways.’
‘What other ways?’
‘I’ve learned to fly, sir. It’s the coming thing.’
‘Is it, by God?’ The Field Marshal’s eyebrows shot up. ‘That what you’re intending to go in for?’
‘I might.’
As the boy turned away, Dabney noticed he moved back at once to Philippa Sutton and saw once again that surreptitiously their hands touched.
As they stood watching, the Field Marshal spoke quietly.
‘Tell me, Dab,’ he said. ‘Everybody’s occupied now. How are things with the Regiment?’
Dabney shrugged. The Field Marshal was little involved with the army these days. He was ageing fast and he limped badly from old wounds. But he missed the army and he missed the men, and he liked to keep in touch through his son.
‘They’re in good shape, Father,’ Dabney said.
‘I’m glad.’ The old man frowned. ‘We may have need of them before long.’
Dabney nodded. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But not just yet, I think. There’s nothing in the evening paper to alarm anybody. Only some Austrian archduke assassinated in Bosnia, and that won’t affect us.’
Three
Dabney couldn’t have been more wrong.
The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, had set alight a slow-burning fuse. Believing the assassination the work of the Serbian authorities, towards the end of July the Austrian government issued an unacceptable ultimatum to Serbia and five days later, without giving them chance to appeal against it, declared war. Immediately, in support of a promise made to the Balkan Slavs, Russia mobilised and the following day Germany issued an ultimatum to France, informing her that nothing that had happened was any of her business.
The rumours grew. The war everybody had been expecting had come at last. In Germany, reserves were being called up, escorted to the station by weeping wives and children. And as Germany mobilised, France, her ancient enemy, mobilised too. The streets filled as crowds of men began to move towards the barracks, and two days later the British Fleet was at sea.
Fleur’s face was horrified. ‘But we can’t possibly be in the war, Dab,’ she said.
Dabney’s expression was grim. ‘We can now. German troops are massing on the Belgian frontier and we have a treaty to protect Belgium.’
Fleur stared at him with shocked eyes. ‘Then you–?”
‘Not only me,’ Dabney said grimly, ‘but Karl-August, too. I expect Ellis Ackroyd’ll have to go, too. He’s still a reservist. So, for that matter, will father.’
She looked startled.
‘A field marshal’s never too old,’ he explained. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll have to stand up and be shot at but he’ll be busy. Everybody’ll be in it in the end.’ He managed a smile. ‘Such a good summer, too, and Yorkshire doing so well.’
The papers were full of dark and foreboding stories, and breakfast was a silent business.
ENGLAND GIVES UP PEACE NEGOTIATIONS, stated the headline, over the smaller one announcing Germany’s invasion of Belgium. Mobilisation, it continued, was progressing with great enthusiasm, and the two sets of allies were squaring up to each other.
Then came a moving letter from Helen. Even the envelope showed the feelings that had been aroused, because some German postal clerk, seeing the address, had scrawled ‘Gott Strafe England’ across it.
Karl-August was already in uniform, it seemed, uncertain whether to feel despair at the way things had turned out or pride at his country’s readiness, and Helen described the trains full of soldiers chalked with ‘Nach Paris’ and ‘Nach Petersburg,’ the men inside cheering and singing. She had just returned to Berlin from England; her luggage had been lost in the chaos of the crowds rushing home from the summer holidays and she had heard it had gone to Holland. In the Unter Den Linden, mobs were pacing up and down, singing ‘Deutschland Über Alles’ and ‘Die Wacht Am Rhein.’ Here and there a company of infantry or a squadron of horse, wearing their new grey uniforms instead of the old-fashioned Prussian blue, shook hands and accepted food or bottles of wine. She had seen the Kaiser in his car, and the Crown Prince, and the Socialists were all busy saying it wasn’t a people’s war.
‘I wish to God,’ she wrote, ‘that it wasn’t. There seems little else I can say. Now I am a German and must think like a German. But I am still English by instinct and can’t find it in me to hate the land where I was born. This may be the last letter I shall be able to get to you, though I shall continue to try via Holland, where we have friends who might be persuaded to forward them. But just in case we don’t manage it, I must say goodbye for the time being.’
The call came to Dabney at Colchester where the 19th had recently moved from Ireland. With only a small volunteer army, the mustering of reserves was different in England. The men arrived quietly, less than willing but not shirking their duty. Many of them were clearly too old and it was obvious at once they would be useless as fighting soldiers.
The remounts were also beginning to stream in and Dabney moved through the stables between a long row of intelligent heads. Swishing well-kept tails had been squared to a hand’s-breadth above the hock, coats had been brushed and polished, and hooves oiled as if by a manicurist. Burnished saddles lay on the racks and in the armoury swords and lances were being sharpened and rifles checked.
Running a hand down a fetlock, Dabney turned to the sergeant alongside him.
‘Pleased with this one,’ he said. ‘Good batch, that last lot. But we’ll have a different man on the grey mare. His hands are too heavy for her.’
News had arrived that Sir John French had been appointed commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force, and since he was a cavalryman it was expected there would be action.
There was a lot of anxiety that it would be over before they could arrive and that the French would wipe the Germans off the map, but Dabney had listened too often to his father, and the belief that it would be over by Christmas was not his view. His father had said it would be a matter of years, not months, and he had heard that Kitchener, at the War Office, had said the same thing.
He wasn’t sure what to expect. It was still believed that the cavalryman was first and foremost the soldier of the charge and the mêlée and that if he were regarded merely as a mounted rifleman a great deal would be lost. The lance-versus-sword question had always ended in acrimony and most people had tried to steer a middle course between the conflicting ideas on cavalry employment and armament, but the argument had eventually been settled by an army order allowing the Lancers to retain their nine-foot weapon for escort duties, reviews and ceremonial parades, though they were now armed also with a rifle and a sword.
‘See that Number 78 gets a rug on him,’ Dabney said. ‘Mustn’t let him take a chill. And find a heavier horse for Soames. He’s getting fat.’
The sergeant grinned. ‘The war’ll get some weight off him, sir, I reckon.’
‘I think it will. Let’s leave the chestnuts on an extra feed of linseed. Light-coloured horses always seem a trifle less sturdy than the rest.’
Coming to the end of the line, Dabney returned to the squadron office and stood in front of the shelf containing his books. Chief among them was his father’s work, Cavalry Studies. He picked it up and opened it. The Old Man, he decided, had absorbed well the lessons of America and the Franco-Prussian War and had ignored Zululand, where he had made his name, because he: regarded it as a tribal war and of no consequence to European thinking.
‘The answer to the rifle,’ he read, ‘is not the sword or the lance, but another rifle, in the hands of a man who uses his horse to move rapidly from one cover to another.’
Dabney pushed the book back on to the shelf. Unlike most cavalry leaders, his father had not slipped into the facile belief that simple rapidity of movement was the answer to the rifle and the machine gun. He was a believer in the horse, but only for speed. It was worth bearing in mind.
As he turned, there was a knock and Ellis Ackroyd entered. He looked red-faced and uncomfortable in uniform.
‘Colonel’s compliments, sir,’ he said. ‘He’d like to see you for a minute.’
‘Right, Ellis. I’ll go along straight away. How’re you finding being back in the Regiment?’
‘Bit of a wrench, sir.’ Ackroyd smiled. ‘I’d just got used to being back at Braxby. But it’s not too arduous. They don’t expect an old man like me to get into danger. They’re going to give me the orderly room when Sergeant Addison goes to France.’
Dabney smiled back. ‘You’ll be keeping the reinforcement cadres coming, I expect,’ he said. ‘Just try to push into ’em some of that field knowledge you pushed into me as a small boy. Ferreting with you was of great value when I reached South Africa. I found I could get nearer to the Boers than anybody without being seen. How was your father?’
‘Gettin’ old, sir.’
‘Tom?’
‘Wants to join some transport unit.’
‘And Hedley?’
‘Talking of joining the Flying Corps. Says he’ll show us a thing or two.’
The adjutant was just leaving the colonel’s office when Dabney arrived, and instead of Lord Ellesmere he was surprised to find George Johnson standing by the desk, a bundle of papers in his hand.
‘Ah, Dabney,’ he said. ‘There’s been a change. Lord Ellesmere’s been upped to brigadier. Brigadier Lowson in Jamieson’s division of the First Corps has gone sick and they’ve given him the job. He’s very happy because, unlike some, he’s not been pushed off to a yeomanry brigade. They’re given me the regiment in his place.’
Dabney looked at Johnson. He was a tall thin man with a long neck and protuberant adam’s apple. While he had always admired Ellesmere, privately he didn’t consider Johnson a clever soldier and he had suffered more than once from what he felt was a narrow-minded jealous streak. For some reason, Johnson believed the credit for the Battle of Graafberg belonged to him not Dabney, and that Dabney wore the ribbon of a DSO which should have been his.
Johnson was still talking. ‘Lord Ellesmere, of course, was sorry not to be leading the Regiment into action but his loss is my gain. We shall be in France in three weeks, I imagine. As senior captain, I want you to take over my squadron. You’ll find it in good shape, I think. I hope you’ll make sure it stays that way. Your promotion will be in the Gazette in a day or two. Then, since I’m trying to see that everyone gets a visit home before we leave, you’d better try to slip away for the weekend. I suspect we’re going to be busy.’
The Yorkshire countryside looked better than Dabney had ever seen it and, with the news that he had received, had a strangely personal feel about it. It was his, this land, and he suddenly felt he wanted to cling to it.
Fleur was at the station with the children in the car to collect him. Her eyes were moist and there was a bleak look on her face. His hand touched hers as he climbed in beside her.
‘It might not happen,’ he murmured.
Josh pushed his head between them. ‘Are you going to the war, Papa?’ he demanded.
‘Looks like it, Josh.’
‘Bring me back some souvenirs.’
‘What would you like?’
‘A German sausage would do.’ As the boy fell back, hooting with laughter, Chloe piled on top of him and the two of them fought and wriggled on the back seat, Chloe at least uncertain what she was laughing at.
Reaching home, Dabney hurried the children off for their tea and took his wife in his arms. She seemed to scent disaster, trying to hold back her tears.
‘Oh, Dab,’ was all she could say and even so her voice sounded strangled.
He held her against him, trying to give her courage. ‘Steady, old thing,’ he said.
‘Why does there have to be a war?’
‘Because there are stupid, ambitious men in the world.’
‘I’m not sure I can handle this, Dab.’
‘Of course you can. Your mother did. My mother did. You will. You have to, for the sake of Josh and Chloe. You’ve got to put on a brave face. If you look frightened, they’ll be frightened. You can’t allow that.’
‘No. Of course not. I’ll try, Dab. I’ll try.’
That night as Dabney lay along the edge of the bed, Fleur seemed to be asleep. The news of his impending departure had left her wretched and he tried not to wake her but lay straight-limbed, staring at the ceiling.
Inside him there was a terrible anxiety for his family. In South Africa he had had nobody dependent on him, no one who really mattered. Fleur had been safe in the bosom of her family still, cared for, occupied with her home. Now her home was his home and her cares were their children, and things were very different.
The newspapers still insisted the war would be over by Christmas, but intelligent people he’d spoken to had said that not only would it not be over by Christmas but that it would eventually cover the whole of Europe. Already Belgian cities were in flames and people were dying there. The newspapers carried atrocity stories which he didn’t for a moment believe but he guessed Fleur had read them and was terrified for him and her children.
He shifted slightly and she stirred. ‘Are you awake?’ she whispered.
‘Yes. Couldn’t sleep.’
She turned
quickly and moved into his arms, her body close to his so that the warmth of her flesh flowed into him.
‘Will it go on for long, Dab?’
‘Shouldn’t think so,’ he said at once, trying to reassure her. ‘Nobody can afford long wars these days. They cost too much.’
‘Will they let you come home? It’s only France, after all.’
‘Yes, they’ll give leave, I expect.’
‘I have to feel we’re close.’
‘We’ve always been close. All my life as long as I can remember.’
‘I can’t imagine what it will be like with you in France and me here. We’ve only been separated at odd times before.’
There was a long silence and she moved closer, so that he could feel her heart beating and feel her warm breath on his cheeks.
‘Make love to me, Dab,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’
He turned towards her and kissed her, slowly, tenderly. ‘You don’t have to say please for that, Fleur.’
The following day Dabney drove over to Braxby Manor to see his mother. She was on her own and he had a feeling that she had aged a little in the last few days. He told her the news of his promotion but it brought no comment and she showed him the letter from Helen, waiting in silence for his observations.
‘It’s a pretty rotten world, Mother,’ was all he could find to say.
Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Suppose you come face to face with Karl-August.’
‘The chances are pretty slim, Mother. In any case, I suspect it’ll be a long-range war and there won’t be much face-to-face stuff. Where’s father?’
‘At the War Office. He and Lord Roberts and Evelyn Wood have formed a committee with one or two other senior officers. He doesn’t think it’ll do much good but he agreed to serve. He thinks he’d be much better stumping the country encouraging men to join the army. What about you? Will you be going?’
‘I think we shall all be going before long, Mother. I suspect it’s going to be as big as that eventually, and any who slip through the net now will be caught later. Father thought several years and I believe Kitchener thinks the same. There’s talk of raising a hundred thousand volunteers for a period of three years or until the war ends.’