by John Masters
Fred said, ‘I have cards, sir. I had them printed when I joined the 8th Battalion.’
The adjutant held out his hand – ‘Let me see one, please.’ Fred found a card in his wallet and handed it over. The adjutant read, and said, ‘What’s your club?’
‘I don’t have one.’
Clifford’s one eye blinked and he looked as if he had been shot. His mouth turned grimly down – ‘In this regiment all officers are required to belong to a London club. You’d better see about it at once.’
Fred felt the colour rising in his neck. Daphne’s father had brought up this subject before they were married … why the hell should he join a London club? But he was a Regular now. He said, ‘I don’t know anything about clubs, sir.’
Clifford glared for a moment; then his manner softened. He said, ‘Apply to join the Rag, Stratton. I’ll propose you and that’ll be enough. It’s very reasonable, and very comfortable … and it’ll save you money in the long run, as you can spend a night or two in London – we never refer to it as “Town” in this regiment – much more cheaply than in a hotel … That’s all. Wait … the Brigadier-General’s chaprassi delivered this note for you while you were in with the CO.’
Fred pocketed the envelope, saluted, and went out. Outside, standing close to the sentry at the end of the Orderly Room verandah, both sheltered by the overhang of the roof from the blinding sun, he read the letter – Dear Captain Stratton – My wife and I would be pleased if you would come to tea next Thursday. Plain clothes.
The letter was on heavy paper stamped in deep blue: Flagstaff House, Hassanpore.
Inside the sprawling bungalow it was cool and almost dark, at first, when you walked in from the glare of the afternoon sun. Two mails were working in the garden and the Union Jack fluttered from a tall white pole in the middle of the circle of the gravelled drive. An empty sentry box at the outer gate contained a box for calling cards, but Fred brought his in, and left them on the hall table while the khitmatgar in his high turban and kullah, white achkan and green cummerbund went to announce him. The general came out, rubbing his hands. His blue eyes were a little more protuberant in the plump face, Fred thought, and there was a little more belly under the white duck suit – he was wearing a coat and tie, of course, as was Fred … but it was Old Rowley.
The general shook his hand vigorously – ‘So glad to see you, Stratton. It’s been a long time … not so long, really, I suppose, but so much happened after you left.’
They were walking into a big room, again nearly dark, curtains drawn, but still some light filtered through from the furnace of the day. There were flowers in vases, polished tables gleaming, silver-framed photographs on them, a mantelpiece, a fireplace … they’d need that in the cold weather, for a couple of months. A woman came forward – ‘My wife,’ Quentin Rowland said. ‘Captain Fred Stratton, my dear.’
‘We’ve met,’ she said. ‘Your father used to work at the factory … and you were manager at High Staining, weren’t you?’
‘Yes, Mrs Rowland,’ Fred said. He wondered if she knew how he had left that last job … found on top of Carol Adams, fucking away in the hay, by John – the general’s brother – and his wife, on a rainy afternoon when they came back early from a trip into Hedlington. A long time ago now.
He was beginning to see more clearly as his eyes became accustomed to the twilight in here. He was also becoming aware that it was not as cool as he had at first thought. The punkah swinging overhead was stirring hot air, not cool. Someone was bringing in a loaded silver tray, another carrying forward a small tea table. Mrs Rowland was wearing a long, cool, white dress. She was tall and thin, hair fair, greying, eyes grey: she looked strange, wild … must be in her mid-forties, and Old Rowley the same. She was wearing a man’s wristwatch. It looked huge and out of place on her bare, slender wrist.
They were asking him questions about his wife … who she was, when she was coming. He answered the questions, noting the pictures round the walls. Several scenes of the trenches. He knew who’d done them – Archie Campbell, the 1st Battalion adjutant after Boy. He’d seen Archie making the sketches often enough in the line, in billets, in a rest area, anywhere, everywhere.
The general said, ‘We’ll try to get you a bungalow in the lines, Stratton. Wouldn’t want to leave your wife alone all day out near the bazaar these days. Especially as she’s going to have a baby.’
Fred said, ‘Why not, sir? Isn’t it safe?’
Quentin Rowland said heavily, ‘This province is in a bad mood. You’d have thought they’d calm down after what General Dyer did to them in Amritsar, but it’s the opposite. More hostility. More subversive pamphlets … terrorism … Why, the swine attacked and murdered a canal engineer in a canal bungalow last month.’
‘I read about it,’ Fred said. ‘They said it was dacoits, who did it for money.’
The general shook his head – ‘Nonsense. It was some damned fanatics … We’ll have to be on our toes here. And if there’s trouble, it’ll fall on the battalion. We don’t want to use the Indian battalions in aid of the Civil Power unless it’s absolutely necessary.’
Fred sipped his tea with a sinking feeling. Riots, terrorism, his wife behind bars all day, a knife in the back any time you went shopping out of the military lines. This was not what he had thought of when he looked forward to being a sahib, a ruler. Too bloody late now.
He half-turned his head to hear something Mrs Rowland was saying to him and caught sight of a portrait lit by a shaft of light from a side window – Archie Campbell, a self-portrait, looking weary, tin hat on the back of his head, in a dugout, just the head and shoulders, and – this was typically Archie – the neck of a whisky bottle showing level with his chest, as though on a table beside him.
Fiona Rowland saw the direction of his glance and said, ‘Archie Campbell … but, of course, you knew him.’
‘Very well, Mrs Rowland.’
‘He was our best friend.’ Her hand went out and the general’s hand crept out to cover it. They sat there, looking at each other, oblivious to him for a while; until at last Mrs Rowland eased her hand away and said brightly, ‘Another cup of tea, Captain Stratton? And as soon as your wife comes, you must bring her round, and I will help her furnish your bungalow …’
Quentin and Fiona were having a last weak chhota peg in the drawing-room before going to bed. The servants had been dismissed, the bungalow closed down, the night sentries posted. Fiona, leaning gracefully back in an armchair, said, ‘Well, Quentin, we are well settled in here now … so, what do we have to look forward to? How should we plan for the future?’
Quentin stood by the mantelpiece over the empty grate, looking down at her – ‘Retire in three, four years,’ he said. ‘I’m very lucky to have got a brigade, not being p.s.c …. but I won’t go any further. Retire to Hedlington … see if I can do something to get the recruits and Depot staff a better time when they’re not on duty … try to get the town to know more about the regiment, and the men who make it …’
‘The regiment, always, all the time,’ she said, smiling.
‘What else is there for me – except you?’ he said. ‘I’m not a brainy chap … my job’s been to teach everyone his responsibilities … make them all understand that they depend on each other, all doing their job, up and down the scale … spotting brainy fellows, seeing they don’t forget that their brains won’t be any use unless they understand the men who’re going to have to carry out their plans … understand them, and love them … Then, when they go on up and become generals, they’ll have their feet on the ground. I’ll never be a general and make great plans … wouldn’t know how to do it … and I can’t save the men from being killed, wounded … but I’ve tried to teach them a spirit, a feeling that it’s worth it, for the comradeship, the trust … and that’s all in the cap badge. There are lots of fellows like me, who’ve been doing that all their service … no one’s ever heard of ’em, nor ever will. And it’ll always be the same, in the army. We
haven’t succeeded always, everywhere, none of us … but we’ve tried.’
She whispered, ‘My dear, sweet, great Quentin …’
Daily Telegraph, Tuesday, June 3, 1919
SOCIETY WEDDINGS
LORD RIBBLESDALE AND MRS ASTOR
Lord Ribblesdale was married very quietly on Saturday, in St Mary’s, Bryanston Square, to Mrs John Jacob Astor, widow of Colonel Astor, who was drowned in the Titanic when the vessel went down on April 15, 1912, in the Atlantic on its first voyage to New York. Lord Ribblesdale is the fourth holder of the title and succeeded his father in 1876. He was Master of the Royal Buckhounds, which have since been given up, from 1892 and 1895, and before that was a Lord-in-Waiting to Queen Victoria for five years. He is a very popular member of the House of Lords. His first wife, who died eight years ago, was a sister of Lord Glenconner and of Mrs Asquith. They had two sons and three daughters. The eldest son, who served in the 10th Hussars, was killed in action in Somaliland, and the second son, The Hon. Charles Lister – a brilliant scholar who entered the Diplomatic Service – lost his life in the present war, leaving many most interesting letters, which were subsequently issued in a volume edited by his father. His daughters are Lady Wilson … Lady Lovat … and Mrs Capel, who married as her first husband, Mr Percy Wyndham, Coldstream Guards, who was killed in the retreat from Mons.
Cate thought, there is a noble family that has given generously of its blood to the country: Lord Glenconner’s son, a war poet almost of Fletcher Gorse’s class, had also been killed in the war. They had done no more than humbler folk, but the Ribblesdales were certainly entitled to say that they, unlike some, had not sheltered behind their wealth and position. He remembered seeing Sargent’s portrait of the Marquess in a Royal Academy summer exhibition, some years back: a technically brilliant work, and also extraordinarily searching in the way it had captured the nobleman’s very English face and manner, the careless, slightly bored, grace … He wondered if Ribblesdale would now have to forgo his cosy rooms in the Cavendish, and his cosy, unplatonic friendship with its owner, Rosa Lewis. The first Lady Ribblesdale had been a Tennant, as eccentric and original in her way as Margot Asquith, her sister. She had had other, perhaps higher, things on her mind than worrying about her husband’s affair with the cockney Mrs Lewis. But Mrs Astor …?
His fellow passenger in the first-class compartment coughed, and he lowered his paper. He was taking the train up to Town to watch some cricket at Lord’s. Lord Walstone, who nowadays usually had his chauffeur drive him to London in one of his Rolls-Royce motor cars, was also taking the train today, because of the filthy weather, lowering clouds and heavy rain: no cricket until after lunch, for certain.
Walstone cleared his throat again, and said, ‘Cate, you’re a gent, born one, I mean. You always know what’s right … I don’t … My wife – you know what women are – my Ruthie told me months ago I’ve got to do something, because I’ve made a lot of money, and I’ve got a title … but what does she want me to do? What should I do? I’ve been thinking about it ever since, but damned if I can find an answer. Tell me. Cate.’
The man was pleading, Cate thought, pleading rather touchingly, his fat, strong hands outspread, they two alone in the compartment, the slashing rain blurring the windows, the train rocking on towards London, the engine ahead whistling for a level crossing.
‘Is that all she said,’ he asked cautiously, ‘just that she wanted you to do something?’
Walstone said excitedly, ‘She said we could only eat so many pounds of caviare a day – I hate the ruddy stuff, fish jam, I call it … only sit in so many motor cars at once … buy so many fur coats … and once we’d got enough money in the bank to do everything we could do, we ought to look for something more. But what, eh, tell me that?’
Cate began to say something, but Walstone overrode him, continuing, ‘I don’t mean being Lord and Lady Bountiful in Walstone … we’re doing all what we can there, without getting the folks’ backs up.’
Cate said, ‘Perhaps she had in mind some sort of service … to the country, or to some particular segment of it … Have you ever thought of devoting yourself to politics? You would do very well.’
‘Spent too many years hating politicians,’ Lord Walstone growled. ‘No, that’s not for me … I suppose starting the ’Ounds again doesn’t count, though it’s going to take up plenty of my time, I can tell you.’
‘The RSPCA,’ Cate said. ‘But you’re not particularly interested in animals, and one has to be … the RNLI, but you are not a man of the sea …’He felt a wild desire to go on dredging up unlikely causes for Hoggin to serve – unwed mothers, maltreated songbirds, distressed gentlewomen; but held his tongue. The trouble was that there didn’t seem to be any cause large enough and general enough to harness Walstone’s tremendous energy.
He had an idea, and said, ‘Look, Walstone – you have a skill, a talent for making money …’
‘I do, and that’s the truth,’ Walstone said.
‘Your wife’s pointed out that you’ve made enough for yourselves, and your children. But if that is your skill, your vocation – as well as your avocation – you obviously ought to go on doing it … for someone else, some worthy cause …’
‘But what?’ Lord Walstone wailed. ‘New hospitals, universities, houses for poor folks – I’ve thought of ’em all. None of ’em’s lit a fire yet.’
Cate said nothing and after a time Walstone said, ‘Well, I’ll just have to keep on thinking, won’t I? And hope something turns up.’
Chapter 24
The Great Air and Road Races: June, 1919
Thursday 12 June
In the west the full yellow moon was sinking into the dawn haze. From the east daylight was spreading across the grass, delineating the shape of the great hangars, gleaming momentarily in the windows of the hutments beyond, and, at last, picking out in sharp detail the bulk of the Hedlington Buffalo standing outside a hangar, like a great winged beast ready to charge and, perhaps, seize some object off the airfield ahead – the control tower, or one of the cars drawn up at the side – some prey larger than the men around it, whom it dwarfed.
‘Wind’s good,’ Guy Rowland said to his co-pilot and flight engineer, Frank Stratton.
‘The weather report from France is good, too, sir. It just came in on the wireless. All clear as far as Bordeaux.’
Beside Guy, Florinda Lady Jarrow said plaintively, ‘When are you starting, Guy? I have to be in Piccadilly Circus by eight.’
‘As soon as the tanks have been filled, and Frank’s measured them with that rod in his hand,’ Guy answered. He knew that Florinda had promised to attend the start of Billy Bidford’s motor car race from London to Constantinople … but why did they have to start their race so early?
Florinda answered his unspoken question – ‘They want to get out of the West End before the traffic gets really heavy … but not before people can see them, and the newspapermen can take photographs. The sponsors insisted on that, for the publicity.’
‘So do ours,’ Guy said. ‘But we’re taking off as soon as we can.’ A mechanic came up and said something to Frank, who went with him and climbed up on to the great machine. Frank began thrusting his measuring rod into the tanks, one by one, and checking that they were as full as the gauges stated.
Florinda said in a low voice, ‘Come home safe, Guy.’
He bent down and kissed her on the lips, his raised goggles brushing her forehead as he did so. She put her arms round his neck and returned the kiss with warmth and affection. Major-General Sykes came up and Guy, breaking free, saluted – ‘You know Lady Jarrow, sir … Any news of Alcock and Whitten Brown?’
‘They haven’t taken off yet … Still not quite ready. For your sake, I hope … no, I can’t take sides. Just as long as it’s one of you and not a Yank or a Frenchman. Nungesser’s dying to have a go, I know, but I don’t think they have a machine capable of it.’
Frank returned from his mission – ‘Tanks full, sir.
Food and water checked and properly stowed. Compasses checked … The machine was under guard all night, just in case. We’re ready.’
Guy said, ‘We’ll then, let’s go. Bye, Florinda. Give my good wishes to Billy … Goodbye, sir.’
He climbed laboriously up the stepladder on to the lower wing and then crawled into the fuselage through the entry port on that side, and so into the second cockpit, which he would share with Frank Stratton. The forward cockpit was, in service use, the gunner’s place, but the Scarff ring and the twin guns had been removed, as also the tail gunner’s turret, with its seat and guns. All the weight so saved was used for the extra fuel and oil; spare sparking plugs, contact breakers and other spares, including two huge tyres for the landing gear; food, water … for drinking, not for the engines as they were radials, air-cooled; a first-aid kit.
The ground crew came up to their places. The propellers were laboriously turned one by one by ground crew standing on the wing and using starting handles geared to a 10:1 ratio, while a starter magneto provided the spark. In five minutes all four propellers were whirling slowly. Ready to go, G-BGR throbbed and shuddered mightily. Guy thought, we ought to have named it … but what? Why hadn’t he named it ‘Florinda’? Because it would seem like begging. Billy hadn’t named his racing Sunbeam ‘Florinda’ either – just ‘148’, the number of his CMB at Zeebrugge.
‘All ready?’ he asked. Frank raised his right thumb and Guy pushed the four throttles slowly forward. The engine sound rose in pitch and the great craft began to move. They taxied slowly up to the far end of the field, turned into the wind, and stopped. One by one Guy ran each engine up to full throttle, while chocks inserted by ground crew held G-BGR steady, and Frank scanned the oil-pressure gauges. Then Guy ran all four engines at once, full throttle, while holding back the control column with all his strength to prevent the machine from keeling over on to its nose. The roar was deafening, even through his fur-lined leather flying helmet. The wind sock was flaring straight down the field towards him. The controller was leaning out of his tower, a green Very light flashing up against the dawn sky. Guy glanced down, raised his thumb, and eased back the throttles. The ground crew jerked out the chocks. Guy pushed the throttles forward against the stops. G-BGR started to rumble down the grass, its speed rising steadily.