by John Masters
‘No, you do it. Warn her … And, Christopher, find out whether she knows that Archie Campbell was killed in action a week ago. I tried to make sure she would be informed, but you never know … Tell her I’m bringing back his things … personal things.’
‘Very well,’ Cate said, puzzled. Who was Archie Campbell, that he should matter so much to Quentin’s wife?
Chapter 17
To the ‘Khaki Election’, December 14, 1918
The wind was gusty from the south-west, with scattered banks of cloud at 5000 feet, but visibility good below them. It was raining lightly, and damp. The rain spattered Guy’s goggles as he swung the Buffalo to port on its final upwind landing run. The airfield was clear ahead, with twelve Fokker triplanes lined up on one side, and three SE 5As of the RAF on the other. His copilot said, ‘Air speed fifty-two, sir.’
That was only five knots above stalling speed. Guy repeated, ‘Air speed fifty-two,’ and eased the throttles slightly forward. The wind was about twenty knots in the gusts, ten otherwise, and he’d better have a little more margin.
‘Air speed sixty-five, sir.’
‘Air speed sixty-five,’ Guy said. Half a mile to go, dropping steadily, the big radials thrumming like huge banjos, the big four-bladed propellers whirling lazily. It was strange to see those Fokkers lined up there, as though for inspection … one bigger plane behind them, too … a Junkers of some new model, big, all metal, shiny.
The Buffalo touched down, the tail skid gradually settled. They were down.
An RAF captain came forward from a group of men, most of the others wearing German uniform. The captain saluted, ‘Good morning, sir. They’re ready. But they’d like to give you lunch first.’
‘All right,’ Guy said. His official orders from General Sykes had been to fly a Buffalo to an agreed airfield in Germany and bring back some German pilots who had volunteered to give the British information about their new aircraft types, and an important German politician who wanted to impress upon the Prime Minister the urgency of getting a peace settlement so that order could be re-established in the conquered country.
The captain said, ‘The German major asked if he could speak to you privately, sir.’
Guy looked at the men standing twenty yards back and started walking towards them. The captain said, ‘It’s the one in the middle, sir – Major Traustein.’ The major barked a command and all the Germans sprang to attention, clicking their heels, their hands stiff down the seams of their trousers.
‘Major Traustein,’ Guy said. ‘You want to speak to me? My German’s not very good.’
‘I speak English … a little … enough, Herr Oberst,’ the German said.
Guy said, ‘Well, let’s walk over here a bit … The rest of them can look over the Buffalo.’ The RAF captain said a word and the young German officers rushed forward like children let out of school towards the huge four-engined biplane standing there so close in the light rain.
Walking away with the major, Guy said, ‘Well?’
‘Herr Oberst … we have Frau von Rackow here.’
‘Here? Good God! How on earth …?’
‘We heard two days ago that you were coming. I spoke to the lady on the telephone because Werner had told me before … before … that it was her great wish to meet you after the war. It was his, too – Werner’s … So we flew a pilot back to the nearest airfield to her home – their home – and brought her here in that Junkers J.l …’
‘So that’s what it is. Nice looking machine.’
‘The cockpit and tank are armoured, sir … Germany is in chaos. We can do anything we want to. So we wait here, keeping our discipline and formation as a Jagdstaffel in case we are needed. I did not fight the French and British to have Germany taken over by the Bolsheviks … Herr Oberst, Frau von Rackow is in that hut. I have arranged for you to lunch there with her, alone. It is all laid out – cold pheasant, wild pig, champagne, everything.’
‘All right,’ Guy said. ‘Thank you.’ He looked suddenly at the German, who stood stiff before the cold blue and the warm brown eye. Guy said, ‘It was an accident … I hope … I don’t know.’
The major said stiffly, ‘All the German Air Force believes that, Herr Oberst.’ He clicked his heels and bowed from the waist. Guy walked to the hut, his greatcoat unbuttoned, the peaked cap in his hand, the rain speckling his fair hair.
She was of medium height, blue-eyed, with long, braided golden hair. Her expression was clear and frank, her young face and jaw rounded. In the photograph Werner had shown him the night they spent together in the barn, she had been smiling. Now she was not, and there were lines of weariness round her eyes. Her body was heavy, in this fourth month of her pregnancy.
She was standing in the middle of the room, a table covered by a big tablecloth hiding whatever was on it behind her, chairs drawn up to it, a fire burning in the grate. She was wearing black, with a dense black veil drawn up now to show her face, and the blue eyes. She said, ‘Guy … Wait … Don’t move … Oh!’ She burst into tears and stumbled towards him, her hands outstretched. He took her and fell naturally against her, the swell of her belly pressing into him. She sobbed against him, while he patted her back and shoulder. She stood away at last and he pulled out a chair from the table and said, ‘Sit down, gnädige Frau … that’s right, isn’t it?’
She smiled through the tears, saying, ‘Maria, please, Guy … I speak English good enough?’
‘Very good,’ he said.
‘He taught me. His mother’s English, you know.’
‘Yes.’
They remained as they were then for some time without speaking, but looking at each other, she seated by the table, he standing. She said at last, ‘You received the letters … mine, too, after he died?’ Guy nodded. ‘What are you going to do, now that it’s over?’
‘I don’t know. I keep wondering what he would have done. What we might have done, together. I think we could have done so much.’
‘I know, I know! He was the same. The last time I saw him he kept saying, I wonder what Guy will do after it’s over. The world will be in such a mess, he said, and it’s only young people like us who can do what needs to be done …’
‘I wonder … Look, Maria, we must eat. I have to start back in an hour or my general will blow me up. Let’s see what we have here.’ He eased off the tablecloth, revealing all the good things the German had mentioned. He began to open a bottle of champagne, saying, ‘Not supposed to drink when I have to fly … but there wouldn’t have been many sorties flown by the RFC if that rule had been strictly enforced. Anyway, to hell with the rules. I’m going to have as much as you do.’
He poured for her, and for himself, and raised his own glass. He said, ‘The navy – our navy – has a toast: the Immortal Memory. They mean Nelson, but …’
She said, ‘Ah, to us, it will be … him.’
‘The Immortal Memory,’ Guy said, and Maria said it with him. They began to eat, facing each other across the table. Guy noticed that she ate very lightly, and after a time, enjoying his second helping of the excellent cold smoked wild boar, said, ‘You must eat more, Maria. You are eating for two.’
She looked up – ‘I will name him Guy. Will you be his godfather?’
‘Of course. What if it’s a girl?’
‘It will be a boy,’ she said with finality. ‘You must come and visit us, so that you can be, a little, his father … We have a big house …’
‘A schloss,’ Guy said. ‘An eighteenth-century schloss.’
‘Yes. Thousands of acres of heath and forest … two villages. Werner’s family is noble, mine is rich. We meant to have many children, and bring them up both German and English … Werner’s mother’s family has – a big estate in Wiltshire.’ She looked up and at him – ‘I wish it could still be. When I have had time to say good-bye to him, in myself …’
Guy was about to speak, but held his tongue in check. She was blushing. The tone of her voice just now had been very soft. He under
stood that she was saying, give me time to know you, then – she was hoping he would take Werner’s place – offering him marriage, herself, her fortune, estates, and homes in both countries. He could not give her an answer now, even if she had demanded it. Perhaps, soon, if he could bring the fire of life back into himself, as it had burned when he was a killer, the Butcher of the Three Threes … But now, he did not have it.
He said slowly, ‘Let me come back, Maria, when I have recovered. I am not … what I ought to be. I have not been since – that day. Perhaps I never will be … We must wait.’
‘I shall wait,’ she said. ‘When you have loved the best, and been loved by the best, nothing else is desirable … except another best.’
Four hours later Guy was facing General Sykes across the big table in the Chief of the Air Staff’s office. ‘Well, that’s done,’ the general said. ‘Herr Flass has been sent on to the Prime Minister and the pilots have been sent down to Farnborough to have their brains picked. Now’ – he leaned back in the big swivel chair – ‘I have been told that the Prime Minister – and others – have offered you safe seats in Parliament. Is that true?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What have you decided?’
‘I haven’t, sir … But I want to fly … develop heavy bombers, and commercial flight …’
‘You could fly as much as you liked. I’d see that you could always get back into the RAF, with your present rank, or something more appropriate.’
Guy said unhappily, ‘I don’t know whether I’m cut out for Parliament, sir … debating, compromising, lying sometimes.’
‘You could do a lot more for the preservation of the idea of a separate air arm for this country, in Parliament, than you can in uniform. You’re a good organiser and administrator, a good tactician – one of the best in all those things. But there are others nearly as good, or better in some respects … Douglas, Portal, Dowding, Slessor. You are unique in being a top ace, with the VC, two DSOs, two MCs … Parliament is full of hero worshippers.’
Guy said, ‘Do I have to make up my mind now, sir?’
The general said, ‘Yes. The election date has been fixed – December 14th. There’s no time to lose.’
Guy thought, this is like an air fight, with Jasta 16 coming at you out of the clouds and you have to weigh a dozen courses of action and simultaneously choose one, and act. He said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, but in that case it’s best that I say no. The only wise decision for me now is to stay with what I know and think I can do well – service in the Royal Air Force. Saying yes could do a lot of damage, to England.’
The general surveyed him for a long time without speaking and at last shook his head – ‘We had to take your youth, out there. But it’s a shame. That’s all.’
Winston Churchill stood in the little room off the Hedlington Oddfellows Hall, talking to Richard Rowland, Lord Walstone, and the Mayor of Hedlington. Churchill was smoking a large cigar, whose fragrant fumes filled the chamber. The door was slightly ajar so that through it they could see the people filing into the big hall, and the row of empty seats on the platform, the speaker’s dais in front, the reading lamp lit over it.
Churchill said, ‘The situation is this … The Prime Minister has decided that everyone who voted against the Government in the debate on General Maurice’s allegations – that was in April this year – will be regarded as an enemy, and will be opposed by a supporter of the Coalition – either a Coalition Liberal or Coalition Conservative. Your father, Rowland, voted for the Government, and though he has applied for the Hundreds, we are willing to treat you as a supporter … You have given the central office an undertaking to that effect?’ He cocked an eyebrow interrogatively.
Richard said, ‘Yes. I have. Though I thought that General Maurice’s charges were well founded, and hear the same from everyone who knew of the situation in France at that time.’
Churchill waved the cigar – ‘The substance of the matter will be settled by history, my dear sir. The politics of it is that the Prime Minister had to find some arbitrary way, some sharp knife, to divide the sheep who would support him in a new government, from the goats, who might not. He chose that debate … We are now sure that the opposition Liberals – Asquith’s Liberals – will not put up a candidate. Considering how closely you came to defeating your father here in 1915, they think it would be a waste of money to oppose you when you will be in the sun of the Prime Minister’s enormous prestige …’
Lord Walstone said, ‘There’s a Socialist standing, Mr Churchill … A fellow called Wilfred Bentley.’
‘We know about him,’ Churchill said. ‘War hero … gassed, won an MC, then turned pacifist, or at any rate, wanted peace negotiated … rather like that poet, Sassoon … Don’t underestimate him, though we don’t think he has much of a chance.’ He turned to Richard – ‘Make it short, Rowland. The PM won the war. Support him by voting for you. Hang the Kaiser. Squeeze Germany till the pips squeak. Back to business as usual as soon as possible. Bring the men home at once.’
‘I have heard that it would be wiser to keep conscription, now that we have it,’ Richard said.
Churchill raised his hands in mock horror, ash falling off his cigar on to his coat as he did so – ‘Good heavens, man, don’t mention such a thing,’ he said in a stage whisper – ‘It would be a wise idea, but’ – he drew his hand across his throat – ‘political suicide … Patience, Rowland, patience. Wait and see. Dear me, I sound like Mr Asquith.’
A man with a big blue flower in his buttonhole poked his head round the door – ‘Ready, sir.’
Churchill continued – ‘And when you introduce me, don’t call me the Minister of Munitions. No one wants to hear the word any more. Just say, the Right Honourable, etcetera.’
He turned to walk out on to the platform. The man with the buttonhole said, ‘There’s a rough crowd come in, sir. Socialists, like. Looks as though you may get a rotten egg or two thrown at you.’
‘I am wearing my electioneering suit,’ Churchill said. ‘Lead on, Rowland.’
Quentin and Fiona were looking at a large oil painting propped against a wall of the drawing-room in their Hedlington flat. It was of a tall blonde woman – grey-eyed, slender – gracefully holding up a pin flag labelled ’06, in the centre of a putting green, a large hotel or castle vaguely outlined behind. The woman was half-smiling, with parted lips, and her pose was extraordinarily voluptuous, for she was fully naked; but a putter dangled negligently from her left hand. Fiona said, ‘He painted that in 1906 – just after I’d reached the semi-final of the Women’s Championship. It was played at Dalmellie that year. Archie’s teasing me, really, in that picture. He kept it in his studio till 1912, then gave it to me … I put it in storage. When we get to Hassanpore we’ll hang it in our bedroom.’
Quentin thought, good heavens, what will the Indian servants think? And the rest of the British, especially the wives? But if that was what she wanted, and she didn’t care, why should he? And perhaps she was right, to put up this permanent reminder of the link that had now come to bind them together again, where they had been separated – the life and death of Archie Campbell, who had loved her, and left this memorial to that love.
He said, ‘All right, my dear … And most of the others we’ll put in the gol kamra … that means drawing-room … the war scenes. They’re so awfully good.’
She was staring at the picture of herself, as though mesmerised by her own beauty. She whispered at last, ‘I could never have believed, then, that he would ever leave me … least of all, this way.’
Quentin took her hand awkwardly. He noticed that she was wearing Archie’s big wristwatch on her slender wrist. He said, ‘He hasn’t left you, Fiona … or me. I can hear him chuckling, as he used to … hear him swapping jokes with Father Caffin, our padre, in the dugout … see him crouched against the front wall of the trench, making sketches, before we went over the top …’
She said, ‘Perhaps he made the sketches to take his mind off … w
hat might happen next.’
‘Perhaps,’ Quentin said eagerly. ‘They were awful, those attacks – most of them, till the end … knowing so many good men were going to catch it … and always, I kept thinking, what if Archie’s one of them. How can I tell Fiona? Because she loves him, and I am responsible for him … And, Fiona, I don’t know how to say it … I loved him, too.’
She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek – ‘You’re right, Quentin. Archie will never leave us now. And we’ll never leave each other, inside ourselves, because of him … I’d better get on with the packing. Will you be OC Troops on board?’
‘Don’t know,’ Quentin grunted. ‘Hope not. More damned bumf to deal with, if I am … But I don’t become brigadier-general until I take over in Hassanpore, and I expect there’ll be some full colonels and generals on board … I’ll start writing out and sticking on the labels. You’ve marked the trunks that are Not Wanted on Voyage?’
The crowd outside the Beaulieu Arms was small, indeed only courtesy could call it a crowd, for it was really half a dozen men and women, who happened to be passing by on their various errands, and saw the decorated Rowland Ruby car with the big placards on the sides, front and back – VOTE FOR ROWLAND; and the two men standing beside it, Richard the candidate, and the Conservative agent for the constituency. Richard was making a speech, the same one he was making half a dozen times a day; it was the same speech he had given in the Oddfellows Hall in Hedlington the night he opened his campaign, introducing Winston Churchill – hang the Kaiser, squeeze Germany till the pips squeak, back to business as usual, away with all forms of controls or compulsions, bring the men home.
One of the women facing him, a shopping basket over one arm, said, ‘That’s it, sir, when are they going to bring the men home?’
Richard had had the same question asked nearly every time he spoke. No one asked the questions he himself would have asked – on what legal grounds could one hang the Kaiser? How exactly did you squeeze money or goods out of Germany without damaging your own trade and industry? But it was always this one. He said, ‘The Government is determined to bring everyone back as soon as it can be done. There are limitations of shipping and of accommodation at the various barracks where men must pass through the demobilisation process. A considerable force has to be maintained in Germany until we are sure that the Germans have really disarmed, and can not restart the war …’