by John Masters
He saw other regimental and brigade signs. He threw his rifle into the ditch and walked on. Now a supply company, and division headquarters, and it was mid-morning. He smelled stables and saw horses and mules among trees. The sun was hot, and the rutted road nearly dry, and steam rising from the fields. His pack was heavy, and he slipped it off on to the road behind him, and his steel helmet was heavy, and he let it fall; it clanged once and again into the road. His haversack hurt his thigh; his bayonet flapped against his leg; his water-bottle was empty--all he let go, unbuckling them and letting them fall, because ahead he saw that the road was going to fork and he would have to choose, right or left, when he got to that place. He would not be able to, in fact he must not even dare to try to make that decision, but must sit down in the road, and wait. He unbuttoned his tunic.
‘Halt,’ a voice said.
He halted. They meant him. They must, because there was no one else in sight except the two military policemen with red caps and pistols standing beside a barn at the edge of the road.
They came forward to him, and, ‘Where are you going, chum?’ one of them asked.
He thought about it and said: ‘I don’t know.’ He added: ‘I won’t fight any more.’ He was happy that they had spoken to him, and wanted them to understand that whatever they decided, he would do it--except go back towards the fighting, where he’d get a medal.
The corporal’s face hardened then, and the other said: ‘Let’s see your pay book, chum.’
He fumbled in his pocket, but he didn’t have it. He remembered he had thrown it away.
‘Where’s your rifle, chum?’ the corporal said. He had a notebook out and was writing in it with a stub of pencil.
‘I threw it away,’ he said.
‘Threw--rifle--away. And your equipment, chum?’
‘I threw it away.’
‘Threw--equipment--away. Name, rank, number, and regiment or corps?’
He thought again and knew that he was not William Smith after all. Peter Savage the murderer was who he was, and must remain until it was all finished.
He said: ‘Peter Savage, Lieutenant-Colonel, Thirteenth Gurkha Rifles.’
The corporal closed the book with a snap and looked at him almost pityingly.
‘Come along,’ he said.
Chapter 29
Emily heard the distant clang of the front doorbell, and, a time later, Alice’s tapping steps along the stone floor of the hall. Her father awoke with a start and sat up, his knuckles tight on the arms of the big chair where he sat by the window, the inevitable newspaper across his knees, inevitably open at the casualty lists.
‘That was the front door. It will be a telegram--from Charlie Moss. His son has been out eighteen months, and not touched yet. Or Peggy. Harry’s been out since before Neuve Chapelle.’
‘Now, Daddy, you mustn’t worry yourself,’ she said. All the same, it probably was a telegram, and telegrams usually meant death in the autumn of 1916.
Alice’s steps approached, and she came in, holding out the envelope with gloomy relish. ‘It was Jones the post, m’m. A telegraph letter, for you.’
‘It won’t be Moss,’ her father said. ‘It’ll be Harry. Open it, Emily--open it!’ But she had already opened it, and it was from Peggy: ARRIVING ON SEVEN-FORTY TRAIN AND ON IN STATION TRAP HOPE I CAN STAY THE NIGHT PEGGY.
She gave it to her father. He read it, and then again, as though he disbelieved it. ‘No one killed,’ he said. ‘It’s strange.’ He handed it back to her, and slowly his head sank again on his chest.
Emily went out thoughtfully to speak to Alice and Bertha. The bed in the Sea Room would have to be made. Even if the train was on time, Peggy couldn’t be here before nine. Daddy liked to eat at seven and went to his room immediately afterwards. It was better that way. She and Peggy would have supper alone.
It was six o’clock now. Peggy had sent the telegram from Birmingham. Strange. Stranger that she was coming at all. Strangest to be walking alone in this great house, with all the voices stilled or gone--Gerry dead at the foot of an Italian mountain; Mally dead, lying in the churchyard in the valley; Daddy, here but gone; Peter, gone; only the children made loud sounds here now, and it was impossible to remember back so far, to the time when she had been as young and had filled this house with those shouts and laughs. It was October, and the wind blew through the great house as though the stone walls had ceased to exist. But it had been warm with voices and lights and quarrels. What had happened?
She spoke to Bertha, helped Alice make the bed, and went upstairs to give the children their supper.
Peggy was coming to Llyn Gared. As though she had already heard the whistle of the train, she began to gather her emotions together to meet the assault--for that it would certainly be. The power to feel, dried for a year, welled up slowly in warm spurts as she watched Rodney and Elizabeth dip greedily into their bowls of bread and milk. The knowledge of hate, dead for a year, came again to life in her as she held the baby to her breast. It was a year since Peter came to Gaerwen cottage by Cwm Bychan, and went away. Now, soon, Peggy would be driving in the dark along the mountain road, which was heavy in this unaccustomed drought with the same dust that had heralded the coming of the young men from Cambridge. She and Peggy had been so young then, stirred by feelings that were no more than ripples over the surface of a little pond, yet seeing those ripples as great waves of passion and themselves as parts of the single storm-tossed ocean of womanhood. Now in the years it had come true. It would be no light ripple that stirred Peggy to come now, without explanation or warning.
The baby was light in her arms and light on her breast. He was not a Savage. He was not greedy as babies should be, as her others were, but took his nourishment almost politely, with his blue-wash eyes gentle on her and ready at a sign to turn away. He seemed humbly eager to make sure he did not hurt her. She pressed his head softly closer so that he could not see her face, could only feel the nipple in his mouth and the breast clutched in his hands. Rodney had finished his supper and stood now a yard away, as he often did, watching, with arms folded. Rodney was not jealous; he was a strong little boy, over four now, and quick and accurate, but he did not seem to know what jealousy was. Elizabeth would take his toy while he was playing with it, and he only looked at her, turned away, and found another. Or he would begin a private game, and soon she would put down her newly-won toy and wait humbly till he asked her to join him, or pushed the new game towards her. Emily smiled to see him, a thin baby man, standing there with a censorious look while she bared her breast for Gerry; but he was not censorious, either. The terrible and wonderful truth was that he was waiting for Gerry to play with him. Gerry was six months old. Whenever she put him back in his cot Rodney went and stood there, leaning over, holding out his finger, and talking to the baby. Gerry loved him.
Peggy was coming with news of Peter. Emily felt strength running like wine into her veins.
There had never been any news at all. The police came once to the cottage and went away. Peter had not written, and she had not expected him to. In the first six months--longer, until after Gerry was born--she had not wanted him to. Then, gradually, the sense of death began to envelop her, the death of feeling and emotion. She had sent Peter away because he was a murderer. But life without him was a slow death of her own spirit, because somehow the rope had formed a permanent union and she, at least, could not survive alone. Could he? Peggy would tell her, tonight.
She tucked the children into bed, read a story to Rodney and Elizabeth, and went downstairs. Her father was finishing his lonely meal in the dining-room, and she sat with him until he rose, kissed her forehead, and went slowly up to bed, the newspaper in his hands. Then she waited.
At nine she heard wheels crunching on the gravel and went to the front door. Alice had just opened it, and the lamp in the porte cochère shone on the dusty wheels, on Jones-the-trap’s long, cold nose, and on the smoothed, round beauty of Lady Margaret Walsh.
Peggy came f
orward quickly to embrace her. ‘Emily! . . . You look well. . . . It’s lovely to be back at Llyn Gared. How are you, Alice?’
There wasn’t a male servant in the house these days, for they had gone to war, or worked in ammunition factories. The three women struggled up the stairs with Peggy’s heavy suitcase, and then Emily returned to the drawing-room. She was excited now, but knew she must control herself as fiercely as Peter did.
The fire burned quietly in the big fireplace. Alice came in and out, putting up an occasional table near the fire, spreading cloth and cutlery, bringing in the cold supper and the plates. ‘Will that be all, m’m?’ Emily thanked her, and she went. Emily waited by the fire.
Peggy had a menacing confidence about her. The long skirt, short fur-trimmed jacket, and dark blue travelling bonnet were in the height of inconspicuous fashion. Her face was made up, but you’d have to know her very well to know that it was. Her eyes were wide, frank, and watchful. Now it was she who carried a hidden dagger. Emily waited, holding more firmly with each minute on to one strength: she needed Peter.
At last Peggy came gliding into the room in a velvet dress that swept the floor, her head up and the gaslight flaring through her piled hair. She was a vision--not from the past, for never here at Llyn Gared had Emily seen her like this, but from another world, a strange world to Emily now, where people knew heights of love and depths of despair, jealousy, and malice.
‘How nice,’ Peggy said. ‘Cold mutton. Where do you get it from, dear? Of course there are plenty of sheep on the hills still, aren’t there? Do you think I could have a little wine?’
‘I’ll get it,’ Emily said, and went out.
So Peggy would play a game with her, waiting, glowing with fashion and with the news she carried, and, below that, close to her heart, her feeling about the news--delight? triumph? vindication?
She’d find out; but she would not be the first to speak of it. She stopped suddenly, half-way up the cellar stairs, the dusty bottle of burgundy cold against her chest. Peter had been killed! Her heart sank, and her feet seemed to be losing their grip, the wide tread of the steps becoming a steeply tilted ramp. With an effort she recovered herself. It would not be that; that would be too simple, too final an end to bring Peggy here to watch it.
As she re-entered the drawing-room she found herself smiling as she said: ‘A Nuits Saint George, nought-eight. It’ll be too cold, of course, but that can’t be helped.’
She could smile easily because there was a warmth in her feet, where she had felt the ground move, and in her heart, which rose now as the ground had sunk then, and was filling with a wonderful anger.
For a few minutes they ate and talked lightly, Emily feeling better all the time. Then, the food only half finished on her plate, the glass empty at her right hand, Peggy wiped her lips delicately on the napkin and said: ‘You must be wondering why I came down, Emily.’
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Have some more wine.’ She refilled the other’s glass. ‘You’re always welcome here.’
Peggy’s eyes flashed momentarily; then she said: ‘There is a special reason, as a matter of fact. I’ve heard something. It may be just a rumour. You know how many rumours there are--the Russians coming through England with snow on their boots---‘
‘I’ve never heard that one,’ Emily said. ‘Tell me.’
Peggy’s voice was a little sharper. ‘I’ve heard something about Peter. It’s incredible, I can’t believe it, but I thought how awful it would be if you heard it from someone else, so I thought I’d come down.’
‘He’s not killed?’ she asked steadily, looking straight at Peggy.
‘Oh, you know he’s in the Army then?’ Peggy said.
‘I know nothing at all.’
Peggy said: ‘It’s rather worse than being killed, in a way.’ She drank again, making the movements last a long time, and again wiping her lips carefully, and delicately laying down the napkin on the tablecloth. ‘He’s supposed to have been arrested as a deserter.’
Emily kept her head up. This was really ludicrous. Peter? Deserting? ‘In action?’ she asked.
‘That’s what they are saying,’ Peggy said.
Emily nodded slowly. It could not be true. But it was true; this one fact she must be really sure of and hold on to like a pillar--that whatever evil rumours Peggy brought her would be true. Peggy would have checked and double-checked them before she came here. What good news she brought, if any, would be rumours, later to collapse like the bright hopes they had raised.
Peggy was speaking. ‘You know, dear, it was I who told Peter where you were hiding when he came back from the Italian front.’
‘I know,’ Emily said.
Peggy said: ‘I knew you’d be angry with me--perhaps you still are--but I couldn’t bear to think of you and Peter separating because of some misunderstanding when perhaps getting together again and having a chance to talk it out might have put everything right.’
Emily glanced up and saw that her torturer’s eyes were bright and large, and her hands flat on the table, the forefinger and second finger of the right hand meeting and parting, like scissors, on the stem of the wineglass.
Peggy continued: ‘Well, you were right, and I was wrong. When Peter left you he must have gone straight to join up in the infantry--as a private soldier, my dear, and under an assumed name--Smith, I heard. After a time they sent him out to France, and then in the big battles in the late summer--Harry was in them too--Peter ran away. Just threw down his rifle and ran away.’
Emily held her head up. It was the truth and nothing but the truth, perhaps, but not the whole truth; there would be more, and worse. Worse? Was it really so bad that Peter should have run away from a fight? Such a thing could happen only if his whole outlook on life had changed. That might not be bad at all.
Peggy said: ‘Harry is going to get a D.S.O. . . . The military police caught Peter, of course, before he’d got very far. It’s taken a long time to come out, because of course they don’t publish that sort of thing in the papers, and then apparently they spent weeks trying to find out who he really was and why he’d been hiding under a false name, and it was all so complicated, because he’d deserted from the Gurkhas in a way, too, hadn’t he? And no one would believe what anyone else said, and---‘
‘Where is he?’ Emily interrupted harshly.
‘He’s supposed to be in London,’ Peggy said, her confident expression of sympathy deepening.
Emily said: ‘You know he’s in London, don’t you, Peggy? You’ve seen him, haven’t you? Do you think I’d believe you’d come down here without making sure of every last detail that might hurt me? Hating us so much has made you more stupid than you used to be, Peggy.’
Peggy’s fingers stiffened convulsively on the stem of the wineglass. Then she relaxed, and when she spoke her voice was commiserating. ‘I’m sorry you should think that, Emily. Yes, I’ve seen him. I wanted to break it to you gently.’
‘Yes,’ Emily said. ‘Go on.’
Peggy said--seeming to pick her words with care, but Emily knew she had rehearsed them--’I came down, really, to tell you that you ought to think of taking the children out of the country--for a time, at any rate. Peter’s changed out of all recognition. I don’t think he’s quite sane. He can’t be, really, to do this--running away from a battle. You know how mad just saying it is in connection with him, but it’s true.’
Peggy waited for Emily to deny it with fear and anger, but Emily only nodded. Perhaps Peter had been mad before and now he was sane, but she did not want to talk to Peggy about it.
Peggy said: ‘He’s--completely empty, Emily. He doesn’t seem to care what he’s done, or what’s going to happen to him, or what he’ll do next. There’s no one looking after him or speaking to him. He has been in open arrest so he’s been able to go about if he wanted to, but he didn’t, much. But sooner or later he’ll remember that you are rich--well, not so rich now, I suppose, like the rest of us--and then he’ll come to you and you’l
l be left with him, and all the talk, for the rest of your life. Think of the children! Think of little Gerry. Honestly, Emily, you ought to go now. Go and stay with those friends of Mally’s in Virginia for a few years. If you do that I think he’ll disappear again and not bother you ‘
Emily said: ‘Don’t be silly. I must go and see him.’
Peggy sat back slowly, and now the look of triumph was unmistakable. She had succeeded. Now the vision was coming true in front of her eyes, of Emily tied for the rest of her life to a trembling piece of flotsam--Emily, who had married him for his power, his destiny, his vivid awareness of living. That was why Peggy had savoured so lovingly the cold and echoing sadness of Llyn Gared when she came in, and looked so tenderly down the long, empty passages. These were the prospects of Emily’s life, until death.
Emily could not keep her head up any longer, and it bowed slowly under the weight of Peggy’s implacable joy. Yet, after a time, she thought she could bear it, and even move forward under it. This feeling of burden was nothing to that other, of the world slipping away from under her feet, when she had imagined Peter gone for ever. There was even a new hope, for Peggy’s news made it certain that Peter would not reject her; he was not strong enough to reject anyone. She glanced up and saw a subsidiary gleam in Peggy’s smooth, adult face. Peggy was not spent, as she ought to have been with the accomplishment of her purpose. It was better to go forward against her than to suffer the wounds to be made in Peggy’s good time.
Emily said: ‘You have seen him--often?’
Peggy nodded, and looked away. After a moment she refilled her glass. ‘As a matter of fact, yes. I told you, I wanted to be sure. I didn’t want to alarm you without good reason. He’s living with his grandfather. No one seemed to want to go and see him, now that Gerry’s dead, so I went. I got him to take me out two or three times, trying to cheer him up, you know-- but it was no good.’
Emily sat up quietly. The burden was gone, or become so light she did not feel it, or love had given her strength to make its weight inconsequent. She was so full of pride and anger and her love for Peter that when she spoke her voice was thick and deep.