The man set before us two small bowls and a pitcher of milk. The children got under his feet and he kicked out, scattering them squawking and fluttering, chicken-like, into the corners of the yard.
‘Pig,’ I exclaimed, though I was careful to smile. I thought it was no wonder the smaller dog had a leg missing.
Mrs Yardley was staring down at the jug, at the insects floating atop the milk. ‘You must drink it,’ I told her. ‘If you don’t they’ll only bring us something worse.’
‘At least they’re past biting,’ she said and gamely drank.
The woman slapped the circle of dough on to a flat stone; she pointed at the sun, then patted her stomach, indicating the bread would be good to eat when baked. As she lifted her arm her gown fell back and there was an infant stuck to her breast, scalp springing with hair the colour of tar.
‘Think,’ I urged Mrs Yardley. ‘Think what we can give them.’ I myself had nothing, save a handkerchief at my wrist, mislaid by Georgie; she, a silk scarf at her throat.
All at once a curious giggling sound came from somewhere close to the vineyard wall. The bow-legged man swaggered off, and shortly returned carrying a struggling goat which he dropped on to its feet on the table. The children surged forward.
‘If he’s going to cut its throat in front of us,’ Mrs Yardley promised, ‘I shall scream.’
The goat had an aristocratic head and golden eyes; its front legs quivered. The woman left her baking and ran to stand beside it. Uttering one querulous bleat, the goat gave birth. Mrs Yardley jerked back in shock, a frill of milk edging her open mouth. Raking the amniotic slime from the kid’s head, the woman blew into its nostrils, then gathered it up in her arms. A tiny fist poked from her bodice and waved beside a cloven hoof. Crossing the yard the woman flopped the infant goat down in the sun, alongside the rising bread.
Mrs Yardley offered up her scarf. She said the colonel had bought it for her, but it was worth parting with just to get away. She was no longer trembling and appeared quite recovered from her scare with the dogs. I reckon birth lifts the spirits, however lowly the species, life being so portentous.
We rode for an hour or more, climbing steadily towards the high ridge of trees that spread in a blue fuzz against the pale tent of the sky. According to Mrs Yardley, a huge bird circled above us and she wondered if it was an eagle. I couldn’t help her; city bred, the only bird I knew of for sure was a pigeon. Besides, I was near blind in the dazzle of the sun and regretted not bringing Dr Potter’s hat.
‘Harry is very fond of birds,’ Mrs Yardley said, speaking of her colonel. ‘He shoots them in Norfolk.’
She wanted to talk about him, and did so, at length. She had met him five years before, in the street where her dressmaker lived. He had raised his hat as she passed, and when she turned round to look after him he too had turned to watch her go. ‘Then, a week later,’ she said, ‘I met him again, at tea in the house of a friend. Hardly a word passed between us, but when we looked at one another our hands shook …’ She broke off and shot me a sidelong glance out of blue and vacant eyes – to judge if I was receptive.
‘How romantic,’ I said, obligingly.
‘He escorted me home. We didn’t touch … not then. We just gazed … then he called on me the next morning and simply said, “This was meant to be,” and so it began.’
I remained silent, unable to think of a sufficiently suitable response. I didn’t believe her for one moment – I mean, about their not touching that first afternoon. Women always want such things to sound less hasty than they generally are; I suppose it’s because hesitation makes fornication seem less sinful.
‘I find him middling handsome,’ she went on. ‘I like his chestnut hair and the set of his chin. Of course, you’ve noticed his beard, which is the colour of honey—’
‘Of course—’
‘As for the shine in his hazel eyes … one can’t fail to notice the twinkle.’
‘I fear I’m short-sighted,’ I said.
Beyond his looks, Mrs Yardley appreciated the way he treated her as an equal, except in matters of physical endurance. ‘We are after all,’ she opined, ‘weaker than men and it’s no use pretending otherwise.’
‘Some men,’ I corrected.
‘We talk for hours at a stretch. I am never bored by his conversation. That’s unusual, isn’t it?’
‘Very,’ I said. Dr Potter holds that speech was invented to conceal thought, but I kept that to myself. Georgie’s not one for talking, at least, not to me. Nor would I wish to be his equal, for then I might find him wanting.
Last week the colonel had celebrated his fortieth birthday. They’d dined in the best hotel in Varna. Poor Harry had drunk a little too much wine and his manservant had to help him on to his horse—
Fearing she was referring too much to herself – my expression was possibly not as animated as she would have wished – she asked if I was to have a birthday in the near future.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not even sure how old I am. Nineteen, perhaps … but the date is unknown.’
‘Good heavens,’ she exclaimed. ‘Why ever not?’
‘My past is shrouded in mystery.’
‘Good heavens,’ she said again, and fell silent.
We had brought with us bread and fruit, and, arriving on the summit of the hills and refreshed by the faintest whisper of a breeze, dismounted and sat on the grass. Below lay the curve of Galata Point, the tents of the 3rd division, small as butterfly wings, quivering beneath the angle of the cliffs. A squad of toy soldiers drilled up and down before the glossy sea. William Rimmer is rumoured to be encamped at the Point, though as yet he and Georgie haven’t met. Whenever he visited the house in Blackberry Lane he looked straight through me, and he kept Georgie up all night. Mrs O’Gorman used to whip me to be rid of passion, but it hasn’t worked. I detested William Rimmer and still do.
‘I don’t mean to pry,’ Mrs Yardley said, though indeed she did, ‘but in repose you often look sad. Is it to do with your past … or that business at Constantinople?’
‘Neither,’ I told her. ‘I have a sad face. It’s the way I am on the outside. Inside, I assure you I’m quite happy.’ I was beginning to find her tedious, and pretended to doze off in the sun.
We rode back, giving the house by the vineyard a wide berth. It took longer, but Mrs Yardley vowed she would rather ride through a swamp riddled with snakes than confront again those hounds of hell. ‘That baby,’ she shuddered, ‘with hair like the quills of a porcupine. That new-born goat sleek with scum … that milk tasting of rancid cheese—’
We came at last to the trail that led into the woods above the lake. It was now past midday and we quickened our pace so as to be out of the glare. Ahead, the scarlet jackets blazed amid the leaves. A single beam of sunlight pierced the branches, framing in shimmering silver the outline of a man standing in the middle of the path. As we drew nearer he made no attempt to step out of our way and we were forced to rein in the horses. He stood with arms wrapped about himself, as though he was cold, and stared past us. Following the direction of his petrified gaze, I swivelled in the saddle and looked behind. The country boy still sat with his back to the tree, only now the pink had quite gone from his cheeks and his skin was mottled, like meat lain too long on the slab. He hadn’t eaten all the cherries; flies crawled along his fingers and buzzed at his mouth.
There’s a sameness about death that makes the emotions stiffen – which is for the best, else one would be uselessly crying the day long. It’s why Georgie often seems insensitive to other people’s feelings. Dealing with the dying, one must either blunt the senses or go mad.
The soldier wouldn’t come with us, or speak. He and the dead boy stared at each other. We told him we’d send someone back to help carry the body down to the camp. He didn’t seem to hear, just stood there, hugging himself. Mrs Yardley jerked the jackets from the trees and covered that purple face from view. It made no difference; the birds kept on singing and the men went on s
taring.
Mrs Yardley wept as we continued on our way. I was thinking of a fable I’d read about a monk who every evening heard the song of a nightingale. He asked permission to go and find the bird, but the Abbot said it was not for man to listen so closely to the voice of God. One night the monk crept from his cell, entered the forest and listened for an hour to the glorious outpouring of melody. He returned to find fifty years had passed in his absence and there remained but one member of the order alive to recognise him, the rest lying buried beneath the swaying poplar trees. I considered telling Mrs Yardley the story, to take her out of herself, but suddenly grew confused as to its meaning. Was it joy that had made the years fly, or was the monk being punished for disobedience?
When we came out of the woods I was weeping too, for I had pushed out the monk and fitted myself into the fable, and fifty years had passed since we’d set off that morning. I looked below, at the glitter of the lake and the spread of white tents, and dwelt on how bitter life would be if someone other than Georgie was left to remember me. Then I thought of him old, his hair grown white and me still a girl, and all that love I’d given him rotting like the cherries on the dead soldier’s lap.
Two mornings ago Dr Potter heard that a concert party, made up of men from a rifle brigade quartered in the region of Galata Point, was to visit the camp. It was thought that it would boost morale, the cholera having now seized such a hold and still no date given for departure to the Crimea. Quite what might be offered by way of entertainment wasn’t known, though rumour had spread that two soldiers of the line, previously belonging to a circus troupe in Paris, would be among the performers. Expectations were raised by the hammering into the ground of two stout poles some distance from each other, a length of wire strung taut between the two.
That evening, having received news of the forthcoming diversion, several French officers invaded the camp and caused Dr Potter inconvenience. According to him, he was fast asleep when the fastenings of his tent were wildly shaken. Rising from his mattress, Dr Potter asked what the commotion was about. He received no sensible reply, beyond being told to hurry up and that he shouldn’t take all night. Puzzled, he emerged into the field, at which the intruders rushed inside without so much as a by your leave, and began turfing his belongings out into the darkness. Someone, either by mistake or from mischief, had told the officers that the tent did duty as a brothel. Dr Potter, still in his night-shirt, demanded an apology, and received none. This considerably upset him, as he has always held the French to be more civilised in their manners than the English. To make matters worse, one of the officers attempted to kiss him.
I spent the following morning helping to look after the orphaned children, of which there are now twenty or so, five being hardly more than babies. Of this number, half are genuine orphans, both parents having died, the rest unacknowledged by their fathers and abandoned by their mothers. Arrangements are in hand to have them taken back to England, but as yet transportation is not available. I don’t find it easy to be with them, and would rather be doing different work. It’s hard to love other people’s children, particularly such scrawny and ill-featured ones as these. Fortunately, they are chiefly in the care of a good woman, wife of a sergeant, who has recently lost both her offspring from fever. I marvel at her fortitude. She tells me she feels tenderness through pretending the unfortunates are her own, and that I should do the same. She means well, and I hide from her how my heart leaps with terror at the thought.
In the afternoon one of the little ones crawled too near the fire and burnt its hand. I took it to Georgie, but the moment I entered the hospital tent he waved me away. He was with Dr Hall, principal medical officer of the expeditionary force, who had ridden out from Varna. The sergeant’s wife plastered the child’s hand with mutton fat, and rocked it to sleep.
When Georgie emerged, he looked subdued. He said Dr Hall was a tyrant and didn’t know how to deal with people. He wanted too much done, too quickly. Nine men had died in the night, two only an hour before the medical officer’s arrival, and he hadn’t had time to write up the necessary reports. Dr Hall had called him incompetent in front of the men. He’d also flown into a terrible bate because most of the orderlies were drunk. He’d said it was up to Georgie to disabuse them of the notion that drink would ward off the cholera.
Dr Potter said that Georgie should stand up for himself and not allow the likes of Dr Hall to brow-beat him. ‘You should have protested,’ he argued.
‘I did,’ Georgie said. ‘But he shouted me down.’
‘It’s disgraceful,’ spluttered Dr Potter. ‘You do the work of ten men.’
Then Georgie, being the way he is, abruptly did an about turn and said Hall was doing the work of twenty men and that he wouldn’t have his job for all the tea in China. Later, he respectfully escorted his superior as far as the dirt road beyond the camp.
When he returned, Dr Potter suggested he should rest for an hour. At first Georgie said it was out of the question, though he’d been up all night and could scarce keep his eyes open. When he relented, I made to go into the tent with him, but he pushed me away, muttering he must be left alone. I reckon it was because I had my menstrual flow. He has a sensitive stomach for that sort of thing, in spite of being a doctor and used to blood. Five minutes later Dr Potter joined him, and I could hear the murmur of their voices. I do understand that Georgie prefers the companionship of his own sex, men being so afraid of women, but sometimes I almost wish he’d fall sick, so that I could look after him.
The concert party entered the camp in daylight, marching behind a bullock cart piled high with musical instruments and a quantity of painted scenery. I was at the spring washing clothes when they passed. We have a servant, of sorts, a Greek boy hired by Georgie in Scutari, who is meant to do such tasks, but he is believed to have a woman in another part of the camp and often goes missing. Dr Potter says he ought to be got rid of; Georgie, soft-hearted as always, won’t hear of it. I don’t mind doing the washing; it gives me pleasure to swill the dirt from Georgie’s shirt.
That evening he insisted we took dinner together, which was his way of saying he was sorry for his earlier brusqueness. He doesn’t usually relish eating with me, on account of my failure to disguise appetite. The boarding school I was sent to taught me the right cutlery to use, yet failed to instil what he calls the correct attitude to the table. At home, if I’m invited out with him and Annie he insists I eat before we go, as I haven’t the knack of picking at food, possibly because I went so short of it in earlier days. Here, thankfully, we have only one dish and a spoon, and are required to devour everything very fast, otherwise the flies settle on it.
Mrs Yardley and her colonel ‘dined’ with us, as they were staying on to attend the concert. They were obliged to bring their own food, our cooking pot being on the small side and our rations rather low. The provision men don’t come to the camp as often as they once did, on account of the sickness.
The colonel insisted on sitting beside me, which was annoying as he has a nervous habit of jerking his knee against whoever is placed next to him. He and Georgie discussed what Dr Hall, in the middle of his bullying, had referred to as the infernal muddle of the war. The initial object of the campaign – to prevent the Russians taking Constantinople – having already been accomplished by the unaided efforts of the Turks, he’d heard it was proposed to lay siege to Sebastopol.
‘We have to do something,’ argued the colonel. ‘We can hardly turn tail and go home, not after all the flag waving and drum beating.’
‘But when?’ demanded Georgie. ‘This year, next year … when?’ In Dr Hall’s opinion the delay was a direct result of the ditherings of the government and the conflict raging within the High Command, neither authority having anything other than the vaguest notion as to the possible strength of the Russian forces. The decision on when to make a move had been shifted on to the shoulders of Lord Raglan, now housed in a cockroach-infested villa in Varna, mind rocking under the realisati
on that his supplies were wholly inadequate and his army decimated by disease.
‘He has only one hand in the muddle,’ announced the colonel. ‘He lost the other at Waterloo, along with his arm.’
‘Cockroaches,’ shuddered Mrs Yardley. ‘Now he’ll know what the rest of us endure.’
‘I speak confidentially,’ Georgie said. ‘But I was given to understand by Hall that over eight hundred men have perished this month. He recommends our own immediate removal to higher ground.’
‘Where the French are,’ said the colonel. ‘And they too are dying.’
‘Dulce bellum inexpertis,’ put in Dr Potter. Mrs Yardley promptly nodded earnestly, as though she understood, which stopped Dr Potter from his usual helpful translation and left two of us in the dark.
The entertainment commenced an hour later. Dr Potter declined to come with us, thinking the word concert implied a diet of music. A makeshift stage, consisting of ammunition boxes, had been constructed close to the lower lake. It was illuminated by a row of lanterns hung along the wire stretched between the previously erected poles, thus dashing the hopes of those anticipating the thrills of a tightrope act.
The scenery was both ingenious and artistic, being composed of a folding screen painted on either side, the one depicting the interior of a railway carriage with a window cut in it, the reverse showing a splendid portrait of Queen Victoria with a lion at her feet.
The concert began with a novel rendering of ‘She Wore a Wreath of Roses’, the ‘she’ of the title, simpering within the railway carriage, represented by a stout soldier dressed in female clothing and wearing on his head an absurd circlet of vine leaves, the grapes dangling about his ears. A second soldier stood in the frame of the window and sang to the plucking of a banjo. Out in the darkness a tambourine jangled.
The laughter and cheering that accompanied the first and second verse was enthusiastic enough, but when it came to the last—
And once again I see that brow,
No bridal wreath was there …
Master Georgie Page 9