Heart of War (4 page)

Isabel Kramer said, ‘I think I know what he was up to, the old dear … Johnny and Stella have gone upstairs.'

Harry said, ‘Where are they going for the honeymoon, do you know?'

‘Yes. Claridge's. I believe Johnny would have preferred to go to the Lake District. Your grandson Guy had been talking to him about it, but Stella wanted the theatres, the restaurants, the great shops … the bright lights of Broadway, we say.'

Harry shook his head, ‘Can't think why anyone would prefer London to the Lake District – smoke, crowds, pickpockets …'

‘But we are not twenty years old,' Mrs Kramer said, ‘nor so beautiful as to exact homage wherever we go. And for that there have to be people to pay the homage … But they'll be back in a week, in the cottage you helped them buy in Beighton. It will seem very lonely for them, after this …'

Especially for Stella, she thought. Johnny had his work … work that seemed to absorb his whole attention every waking hour. Would Stella expect crashed cars, marching
armies, passionate love, every day, every night? She ought to find part-time work – back to the V.A.D. perhaps, or drive an ambulance: but such an idea would not cross Johnny's mind; nor Stella's, probably. She was a wife now, the world at her feet.

Alice Rowland, Harry's thirty-five-year-old spinster daughter, came up to them, smiling. Isabel said, ‘I've been meaning all day to tell you what an attractive dress that is.'

‘Thank you,' Alice said, ‘my brother designed it.'

Harry started – ‘What brother? Richard? Quentin? John? Tom? None of them have ever designed a woman's dress in their lives, that I know of.'

Alice said, ‘Tom, Father. When I was fourteen and had just, ah, grown a bust, and he was a midshipman on a battleship, home on leave, he drew a dress on a piece of paper that he said would look good on me. He made several sketches, and was as pleased as punch when I said I would make it up myself … but then he made me swear never to tell anyone he'd designed it. He'd be ragged to death, he said. And I haven't, till now. But this is a new copy, made a week ago, to the same design, modified to suit me as I am now … rather fatter all round than when I was fourteen.'

Harry said, ‘I can't believe it. Tom's never been interested in girls, still less in what they wear.'

Isabel said, ‘It's a
very
clever design, Miss Rowland. It is so simple, and clean, yet it's not severe … How old did you say he was when he designed it?'

‘If I was fourteen, he must have been sixteen.'

‘Well, he had an extraordinary talent,' Mrs Kramer said, ‘which I suppose he must still have. You don't lose something like that …'

Across the room the Countess of Swanwick watched Probyn Gorse manoeuvre Christopher Cate out of a conversation with two of his tenants, and slowly cross the room. At the same time Florinda had joined Harry Rowland, Alice Rowland and Mrs Kramer, and, a few moments later, somehow removed Harry and Alice, a few seconds before Probyn arrived shepherding Christopher Cate. For a minute or two the four of them stood close, talking, smiling – Probyn and his granddaughter, Cate, and
Mrs Kramer, the American widow; then suddenly, the two Gorses had vanished into the crowd, leaving Christopher and Mrs Kramer alone, tête-à-tête in the crowd. The earl said, ‘There's that blighter, Gorse. I'm surprised that Cate invites him … a convicted poacher, and gaolbird … and Cate a magistrate.'

‘He couldn't
not
invite him, even if he'd wanted to which I'm sure he didn't.'

‘And Florinda, look at her – talking to Naomi Rowland, quite at her ease, and she no better than a whore, really.'

The countess sighed, ‘Florinda's not a whore, Roger, she's a kept woman, a career on which our own eldest son started her … and, in a week or two, if the Society gossip columns are correct, she'll probably be a marchioness – when she will take precedence over us.'

‘It's ridiculous! It's …' the earl spluttered for words, but could not find them. His wife said, ‘Florinda did not invent the system, Roger. We and our ancestors did, and now we have to stick by it.'

All the time she had kept her eyes on Cate and Mrs Kramer. They were drifting out of the mainstream, inch by inch, themselves forming a cocoon of intimacy, their faces alight with interest in each other. It looked as though Probyn's manoeuvres were going to work. But then, they always did.

And there, talking now to Naomi Rowland, was David Toledano, burly, kindly, darkly handsome, in spite of his oft-broken nose, in the uniform of a lieutenant of the Royal Field Artillery. His battery had been posted to Egypt or Palestine, someone had told her, and he was on short leave before sailing with it. Now
there
was a suitable object for some machinations of her own. David was an Oxford rugby Blue, tried for England, and he'd inherit heaven knew how many millions one day; what better husband could there be for Barbara or Helen? She sighed. Her husband would have a fit: he didn't like Jews, and blamed the late King Edward VII for bringing them into Society. The countess sighed again. David Toledano would make some woman a very, very good husband, one day; but it wouldn't be any daughter of Roger Durand-Beaulieu, 9th Earl of Swanwick.

Cate looked again at the date of the paper. This was Friday's, the same he had been reading yesterday evening. And now the wedding was over, Stella and her Johnny safely in Claridge's, and everyone else back in their own homes. That sister of Stephen Merritt's was a nice woman, thoroughly well bred, vivacious, intelligent: attractive, too, and her accent very pleasant – a Maine accent, Stephen had told him …

A knock on the door made him look up, and call ‘Come in.'

The old butler, Blyth, entered and stood respectfully by the door. ‘I am about to lock up the house, sir, if that is all right.'

‘Yes, lock up,' Cate said. ‘And thank you for all you've done today … all of you. Please pass on my thanks to the rest of the staff. It was a long, tiring day for them.'

‘I will, sir.'

Cate said, ‘And … good heavens, you're leaving us the next day. The wedding has taken my mind off everything else. Come and see me here tomorrow, after lunch. I will have a little present for you which I hope will enable you to buy a few comforts for yourself that perhaps your sister can not provide.'

‘Thank you, sir. I do trust that Garrod will be able to look after you in every respect … Who'd have thought that a woman would ever be head of the staff at the Manor! I feel that I am deserting you, especially as Madam has …' he coughed, not finishing the sentence.

Cate said, ‘You've looked after us long enough. Since my father inherited, eh? Now it's time someone looked after you. Come and visit, whenever you want to. And write.'

‘I shall, sir. I have been very happy here, sir … so many, many years … so much has happened … I pray that all may be well for you and yours, sir, through these most, ah, insecure times. Good night, sir.'

‘Good night, Blyth.'

Alone again, Cate pulled down Plato's
Republic
from the shelf where he kept the leather bound philosophers, opened it at random and read aloud.

‘Don't you know that the soul of man is immortal and never dies?' he repeated; answering, after a time, ‘I hope I do.' Then he closed the book, and went up to bed.

Lieutenant Colonel Quentin Rowland, Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion of the Weald Light Infantry, leaned against the frozen mud of the parapet, elbows clamped against the unyielding ground, and peered into the eyepiece of the trench periscope. The sun was only just risen, casting long shadows over the torn earth, tangled wire, and frosted, jumbled debris of No Man's Land. The German wire was just over seventy yards away – too far for hand grenades, but in comfortable range of grenades fired from the rifle launchers and, of course, of mortars of all sizes, and of the artillery. Plugstreet Wood was a harsh caricature of a forest, done by a cynical artist, few trees and those bare, far apart, and as stiff in the cold as though they had been made of rusty iron. As one of them might be, he thought. The Germans had been known, in another part of the line, to make a tree out of steel or concrete, painted, with loopholes for an observer inside to peer through, and hidden telephone lines leading back to a trench or artillery gun positions.

He swept the front carefully. The battalion had been in the front line in this area for nearly two weeks now, and were due for a move back to reserve, and rest, this evening. The men would be careless, thinking of the sleep to come; and unwilling to risk their lives doing those small dangerous jobs that had to be done, and done well, if they were not to fall victims of a raid, or a surprise local attack. There was no need to worry about a major offensive: that would telegraph itself days or weeks ahead, through intelligence sources, identification of prisoners, and the watchful eyes of the Royal Flying Corps.

He focussed his attention back from the German wire to No Man's Land. He counted seventeen bodies in varying stages of decay and contortion – five German and twelve
British, all killed by machine guns in the open, in the middle of the night, when making trench raids to capture prisoners for identification. He spoke down without moving his eyes from the eyepiece, ‘How many bodies are out there, Stratton?'

‘Seventeen, sir,' Lieutenant Fred Stratton answered, ‘five Germans, eleven Black Watch, and one sapper.'

Quentin did not answer. Stratton was turning into a good officer, though he'd never be a gentleman; and never as reliable as his brother Frank. All platoon commanders had to keep an accurate count of the dead on their front: the Germans – and the British for that matter – would sometimes slip in three or four live men, by night, close enough to throw grenades into the enemy front line trench, or stage a small raid, from much closer than the sentries would expect.

The view through the periscope suddenly vanished, and the instrument itself was jerked from his hands, as a bullet smacked overhead. Glass tinkled. Regimental Sergeant Major Nelson muttered an expletive. The adjutant, Quentin's nephew Charles ‘Boy' Rowland, said, ‘He hit the lens, sir.'

Quentin slipped down into the trench. ‘Who did?'

‘The Boche sniper Stratton was telling us about, sir.'

‘Oh, yes,' Quentin said. He looked at the shattered glass and splintered wood of the periscope, and turned to Stratton. ‘How often does he do that?'

‘He fires at periscopes whenever he sees them, but not often at men. He waits till someone gets careless. I lost a man yesterday – clean through the head.'

‘I know. Private Gates. He was with us in India … should have known better … Any news of your brother?'

‘I had a letter yesterday, sir. Frank's out of bed and doing exercises … says he misses the old battalion and wishes he was back with us.'

‘No hope of that, I'm afraid, with his wounds … best Pioneer Sergeant we ever had. Still in hospital, I suppose?'

‘Yer, sir, Lady Blackwell's, in Hedlington.'

Quentin nodded. ‘Your sector is in good order, except for six yards of wire missing from the inside of the second double apron. Replace it this evening.'

‘Yes, sir, but … '

‘Early
tonight, Stratton, at dusk – before we are relieved. I'm not going to hand over my trenches to a New Army battalion in this state.'

‘No, sir. Yes, sir.'

Quentin turned to the company commander, Captain McDonald – ‘I'll be posting two replacement officers to you as soon as we get into our reserve billets. When they arrive, send Stratton back to B, where he belongs.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Quentin led on along the bottom of the trench, followed by Boy; Captain Ian Sholto the Regimental Medical Officer or R.M.O.; Mr Nelson the R.S.M., or Regimental, as all the soldiers called him; Father Caffin, the battalion's padre; and, in each company's sector, that company's commander – at the moment still Captain McDonald. Behind him Quentin heard Boy muttering to the R.S.M. about indents for wire; and, farther back, the soft brogue of Father Caffin telling a story, probably mildly dirty – and now Sholto's chuckle. He frowned, stopped in the bay between one platoon and the next, and turned on his adjutant – ‘How's Goodman doing as Pioneer Sergeant, Boy?'