The FitzOsbornes at War (34 page)

Rupert broke off.

‘Listen to me,’ he said, his voice uneven. ‘He’s
dead
, and I still can’t find anything nice to say about him.’

I forgot Rupert wasn’t my brother or my cousin, and I put my arm around him. ‘People don’t magically become nicer after they die,’ I said. ‘You had good reason to dislike him, and it’d be hypocritical of you to pretend otherwise now. It’s not as though you
wanted
him to die. Quite the opposite.’

Rupert’s shoulders rose and fell in a trembling sigh.

‘Anyway, you’re worrying about something that may not even happen,’ I went on, less certainly. I was suddenly conscious of the hard muscles flexing under my fingertips, of how I was so near to him that I could hear each breath he took. ‘I mean . . . Penelope might have a boy. Or Charlie might come back from the war completely changed. Besides, your father will probably live to a hundred.’

‘He
definitely
will, if it means keeping the estate from me,’ said Rupert, with something closer to a sob than a laugh.

‘Well, it seems a pretty nice estate to inherit,’ I said, getting up to survey the view and using this as an excuse to drop my arm from Rupert’s shoulders. I wanted to give him some privacy as he fumbled for his handkerchief, and I must admit, I needed some space myself. I could feel myself blushing. It was so strange to be thinking of Rupert as a . . . well, as a man. ‘Look at those fields!’ I said. ‘Like a giant patchwork quilt! Does it
all
belong to your family?’

‘As far down as the river,’ he said in a voice that now sounded almost normal. ‘You’ve seen the manor, though. Leaky roof, smoking fireplaces, chunks of plaster dropping off the dining room ceiling into the soup – and the whole thing’s falling apart even faster now that there aren’t any servants or tradesmen.’

He came to stand beside me and we both gazed at the manor. From this angle, the ivy-speckled lump of grey stone bore an uncanny resemblance to an enormous toad squatting on top of the hill.

‘Perhaps the Germans will drop a bomb on it,’ Rupert said. ‘That’d solve all our problems, one way or another.’

‘Don’t even
think
that,’ I said, with a shudder. ‘Anyway, the raids seem to have stopped for the moment.’

‘I expect all the Luftwaffe’s bombers have been diverted to Russia.’

‘Poor Russians,’ I said. ‘People are saying the Germans will crush them in a matter of weeks.’

‘The Colonel doesn’t think so,’ said Rupert. ‘He says they’ll hold out for years, that no one’s able to endure suffering like the Russians. But they shouldn’t have signed a deal with Hitler in the first place. They ought to have known he’d go back on his word. They could have been on our side, right from the start.’

‘Did you hear Mr Churchill’s speech?’ I asked. ‘Pledging support for the Russian people?’

Rupert’s mouth twitched into a wry smile. ‘All that sentimental twaddle about brave Russian soldiers guarding the fields, while the maidens laugh and the children play? After my dear old cousin’s spent the past thirty years railing against the evils of Communism in general, and the Soviet Union in particular? What did Veronica think of it?’

‘She almost threw a saucepan at the wireless when he said the bit about Russian mothers and wives praying for their loved ones. She yelled, “The Soviets are
atheists
, you idiot!”’

Rupert huffed out a laugh.

‘But she
is
a bit grumpy with Mr Churchill at the moment,’ I conceded. ‘She doesn’t agree with his policies about Spain.’

Actually, she’s
furious
at him, because she’s just found out he’s arranged for huge bribes to be paid to Franco’s generals, to keep Spain out of the fighting in North Africa. Yet another example of this government’s moral flexibility, I suppose – paying one lot of murderous Fascists, in order to help us defeat a slightly different lot of murderous Fascists.

‘Still, it’s good we have a European ally again, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘And the Communists were always
supposed
to be against Fascism. It’s as though things are back to how they ought to be.’

‘If only Anthony were here to see it,’ said Rupert sadly.

I sighed. Poor dear Anthony, he’d been so idealistic about Communism.

‘Perhaps Anthony
does
know,’ I ventured. ‘Perhaps he
is
watching what’s going on.’

‘Sitting on a cloud, peering down at us over his harp?’

‘You don’t believe in Heaven?’ I asked. I wasn’t sure
I
did, either, but it was a bit depressing to think that this dusty, overgrown graveyard was the best we could hope for.

Rupert was silent for a moment, thinking. I liked that about him, that he always took our conversations seriously.

‘I
want
to believe in some sort of afterlife,’ he said at last, ‘but the logistics have always baffled me.’

‘Oh, I know!’ I said. ‘So many questions, and the answers never make any sense. Do dead children ever get a chance to grow up? Do people who die of old age have to stay old forever, even if they were happier when they were young? And that bit in the Bible about the widow who marries again – you know, the idea of the woman and all her husbands living together for eternity. What if they didn’t get along?’

‘That would be Hell,’ Rupert said, and we couldn’t help sniggering.

‘I know there aren’t supposed to be bodies in Heaven, only souls,’ I said, more seriously, ‘but what would one
do
for eternity, without a body? Would one simply feel abstract joy, for ever and ever? It sounds a bit tedious, doesn’t it?’

‘The thing that got to me,’ said Rupert, ‘was when our Sunday School teacher announced that animals didn’t have souls – that when they died, they were like plants, they just went back into the earth. How could anyone spend any time at
all
with a dog, and not think dogs had souls? If dogs don’t have souls, then we don’t, either. Dogs feel the same things we do – happiness and loyalty and love and loneliness. I’ve seen birds get distressed when their mates died. Even lizards and insects must have thoughts and feelings – it’s just that humans can’t understand them. So I think life is a continuum, as Darwin said, and humans aren’t anything special. Except, unlike other animals, we make up a lot of stories about eternal life, because we’re so terrified of death.’

‘Being able to make up stories
is
special,’ I said. ‘A special, comforting skill.’ I glanced again at the gravestones. ‘Of course, that doesn’t mean the stories are true.’

‘And we won’t find out if they are,’ said Rupert, ‘not until it’s too late to change anything about our lives.’

‘This is
such
an optimistic conversation,’ I said.

Rupert smiled. ‘I suppose we ought to be getting back to the house,’ he said, without any enthusiasm.

‘Yes,’ I sighed. ‘I suppose so.’

I straightened my hat and he pushed back the lock of hair that kept falling over his face, then we turned towards the gate.

‘Thanks,’ said Rupert. ‘For the conversation, I mean.’ He caught my eye and seemed on the verge of saying something more, and I held my breath. But then he bent down to drag the gate out of our way and to point out some wild orchids beside the path, and the rest of our walk was like that, mild and soothing and familiar. It was a brief period of tranquillity before an awful, tense hour up at the house, followed by an equally uncomfortable drive back to Salisbury, during which it became clear that Aunt Charlotte and Lady Bosworth had known perfectly well who Lord Astley’s new heir presumptive was. It prompted them into a series of arguments on everything from the value of the Astley estate to the look of my hair. I was amazed at how those women positively
thrived
on all the bickering. But perhaps that’s more common than I’d thought. It would certainly explain why humans are always having wars. Then my train, when it finally arrived, was crammed with soldiers and took hours to drag itself back to London, especially past the last few miles of grey, bombed-out suburbia. When I eventually reached home, I was grimy and exhausted and, yet again, overwhelmed with dark and depressing thoughts – which I have now put down in writing.

24th August, 1941

T
OBY HAD A FORTY-EIGHT HOUR
leave pass, so the two of us drove down to Milford yesterday as a belated birthday surprise for Henry. She is fifteen now, and seems to consist of nothing but long, skinny limbs that are constantly getting tangled up in the curtains or tripping over chairs or knocking down vases. I asked if she’d like to come back to London with me, so I could buy her some new clothes before she goes back to school, but she said she couldn’t imagine anything more boring. Pretty much everything except Toby is ‘boring’, in her considered opinion. School is ‘boring’, but so is being on holiday, especially when she’s required to tidy her bedroom or help Barnes with the cooking. Even the village is ‘boring’, with Jocko and all her other friends out in the fields, bringing in the harvest, and Henry not allowed to join them (Aunt Charlotte says there are more than enough chores to keep Henry occupied at home).

Henry is currently sprawled across the floor of the sitting room, wearing a pair of khaki shorts spattered with blackberry stains and an old shirt of Veronica’s with the sleeves rolled up. Carlos is using one of her legs as a pillow, his eyelids drooping as she reads out a newspaper article about Bamse, the mascot of the Free Norwegians stationed in Scotland.

‘Look, Carlos,’ she says, holding up a photograph of a sooty-eyed St Bernard sporting a Royal Norwegian Navy cap and jaunty neckerchief. Carlos gives the paper a polite sniff, then lets his head slump back onto her leg. ‘Bamse displayed great courage in action last year, refusing to move from the gun platform of the ship
Thorodd
while she was under fire,’ Henry continues. ‘He now accompanies the sailors on their rounds, plays football with them on deck, and rides the bus into town by himself to gather up his fellow crew members if they are late returning to their ship. Bamse is essential to the morale of the Free Norwegian forces, who may be separated from their homeland, but valiantly continue the fight against the Nazis.’

She lets the newspaper drop. ‘See what a brave, hard-working dog Bamse is? And look at
you
, Carlos, lazing about, waiting for your dinner! What are
you
doing to help the war effort?’

Carlos heaves an enormous sigh.

‘Yes, I know,’ she says, patting his head. ‘You’re
far
too doddery to be able to do anything now. Look at these creaky old legs! Look at all these white hairs!’ She reaches down to rub his stomach and he collapses onto his side, tail thumping the floor. ‘He’d be eighty-three years old if he were human,’ she informs Toby and me.

I can’t remember the ratio of dog to human years, but this figure doesn’t seem quite right. I suspect Henry’s arithmetic skills haven’t progressed much over the past school year.

‘Well, I hope
I’m
still chasing down rabbits and knocking over the postman when I’m that old,’ Toby says, glancing up from his book. He hasn’t turned a page in twenty minutes, but he does seem calmer now. All through luncheon, I could feel his leg jittering under the table, and his glass trembled when he lifted it. I think it’s all the pills they give the pilots. Pills to keep them alert while they’re flying, pills to help them sleep when – if – they get back. I hope the doctors know what they’re doing. But the RAF probably doesn’t care if the pills
are
toxic or addictive in the long term. All that matters is that the job gets done now, and too bad if the job is stupid and dangerous.

Toby told me a little of what he’s been doing, and it sounded absolutely terrifying. Last year was awful enough, but at least
then
he and his fellow fighter pilots were flying over familiar, friendly territory, defending their homeland. Now they’re protecting the RAF bombers being sent to destroy Nazi targets in northern France.