Give Us This Day (26 page)

He went in, reminding himself that it was less than just for a father to acknowledge a family favourite, but how could one avoid a preference, with five sons and four daughters of such diversity? He had a flash of insight then, concerning this particular son, his wife, and that child in her belly, and all three acquired special significance in relation to this mellow corner of England that he had shaped and made his own, in a way that the network was not and never would be a durable monument to him. Alex had his career and George the business. Hugo had that extraordinary wife dancing attendance on him, and the girls had their husbands and families. Something told him it was Giles and his successors who would live here some day when he was dust, and maybe some of them would come to think of it as he was beginning to think of it, the only worthwhile legacy one generation could pass to another. Land, and what grew on it; contours, cunningly adapted to the eternal round of seasonal colours that nothing could change or distort, no matter how many cleverdicks came forward with their inventions. It comforted him somehow, a conviction that continuity was attainable, providing a man had patience to keep striving for it.

Four

Sacrifice to Dagon

I
t was deemed a signal honour to ride on reconnaissance with Montmorency. The Empire, woefully short of heroes of late, had plugged holes in the Pantheon Wall with a hotchpotch of newcomers. Small fry, by yesterday’s standards. Captains, sergeants, pipers, and even bugler boys, but welcome none the less under the present humiliating circumstances.

Captain the Hon. R. H. L. J. de Montmorency was at the apex of this improvised pyramid, having, so to speak, secured a year’s start over his competitors by winning the V.C. serving with the 21st Lancers, in Kitchener’s Sudan campaign in ‘98, and since added other dashing exploits to his credit, so that his name was familiar to the readers of every penny journal in London. It followed that anyone who rode with him was shortlisted for reflected glory.

Glory, after such a laggardly start, was rallying out here along the farflung battlefront. Times were already on the mend when Hugo landed at East London and trekked northwest through Queenstown, to the sector where General Gatacre was doing his best to wipe out the shame of earlier defeats on the central front. He was having some success, too, or so it was rumoured along the route. The Boer generals, De la Rey and Schoeman, were already giving ground and falling back to the north, the price paid for their inexplicable failure to exploit the rout of the British in this area when the tide of invasion lapped into Cape Colony.

The enemy moved slowly, however, far too slowly for Gatacre, who was now deploying his cavalry to chivvy them as the main offensive developed on the right flank. When Hugo received orders to ride ahead with Montmorency’s column, he was delighted, not so much because Montmorency was a popular leader, but because he had a suspicion that the long and purposeful arm of Lady Sybil would soon reach out from her field hospital at Queenstown and keep him out of Mauser range of the Boers while he was, as she herself had put it, “easing himself in,” a phrase that suggested a cushy billet well behind the lines.

He was not to know that his selection for a forward post was the direct result of a message Gatacre’s chief of staff had received from the daughter of the Earl of Uskdale, informing him that the famous athlete she had married, and shipped out here along with her nursing unit, had no aptitude for paperwork and would need careful coaching. It was an unfortunate admission, so far as Lady Sybil was concerned. A staff officer, mounting a massive advance against an alert enemy, was not likely to fancy the job of coach to civilians in uniform, and merely did what seemed to him the next best thing for a serving officer sponsored by the daughter of an earl. He attached Hugo to a proven hero, reasoning that this was the shortest route to newspaper acclaim and likely to please the lady concerned. Only that day he had received news that the Boers were pulling out at Bloemfontein. A token rearguard resistance was the worst Montmorency’s column were likely to meet while feeling their way across the Kissieberg hills to Stormberg Junction.

Like so many others in the great arc of Imperialists between the Orange River and the Tugela that winter, Gatacre’s reckoning was seriously at fault. The Boers were moving back certainly, and faster than his intelligence had deduced, but they were determined to make the British pay for any gains they made. Montmorency’s column rode headlong into a well-laid ambush that emptied fifty saddles at the first volley, and the survivors, milling about in the wildest confusion, could not see so much as a hat to aim at after they had galloped for cover.

Hugo had been enjoying the ride up to that moment. Half-dozing in the saddle, he jogged along, dreaming of conquests past and yet to come, seeing his presence here as little more than an exciting interlude in a lifetime of pot-hunting. He did not share the general view that an athlete approaching his thirtieth year was past his prime and should be casting about for the means of acquiring other laurels. After all, he was neither a sprinter nor a leaper, and long-distance runners often continued to compete well into middle age. An Italian, over forty, had just won the marathon at an international meeting.

Then, in a sustained crackle of rifle fire that reached him like the flare up of dry sticks on a fire, he was jerked back into the present, with wounded and riderless horses cavorting past him in all directions, dismounted troopers looming out of the flurry of dust, and Mauser bullets going over him like a swarm of bees.

He did what seemed the only thing to do, wheeling and dashing for the nearest cover, a scatter of low rocks at the foot of a broken hill on his immediate right, and when he got there, flinging himself to the ground and making a grab at his horse’s bridle, he was astonished at the scene of chaos that presented itself, not only along the track ahead, but right here, in the shelter of the rocks.

Dead and dying troopers were everywhere among terrified horses, some of them hit and screaming with pain. Dust rose in a red cloud, obliterating the field of fire. Equipment, including a scatter of long, useless lances, lay everywhere. A sergeant sat with his back to a rock, trying to staunch a spouting wound in his thigh, and his blood spattered Hugo as he stepped over his legs, making for a knot of unwounded men cowering behind a larger rock and emptying their magazines at nothing. He recognised none of them, and this was not surprising, for he had only joined the column the day before. The only man he could have identified was Montmorency, now lying dead, someone told him, a hundred yards higher up the pass. His informant, another sergeant, had something else to say about Montmorency. “Led us right into a rat-trap,” he shouted, above the uproar. “Didn’t even scout the bloody hills with a flank guard, and we’ll not hold out here for long the way those fools are loosing off!” Then, ignoring Hugo, he darted among the marksmen bellowing, “Hold your bloody fire! Wait until the dust settles! Save your ammo! For Chrissake, save your ammo!”

The dust was a long time settling, and in the interval Hugo’s horse rolled over, shot between the eyes and falling on its right flank where Hugo’s carbine bucket was strapped. He only looked long enough to satisfy himself that the horse was dead before drawing his revolver and accosting the frantic sergeant again.

“Aren’t there any officers left?” he demanded.

“Yessir,” the man said, breathlessly. “Mr. Cookham over there. But he’s plugged, I believe!” He pointed to another outcrop twenty yards higher up the slope where a group of about a dozen survivors were gathered round a young subaltern with a wispy moustache, who was supervising the erection of a barricade of loose rocks.

The rate of Boer fire had slackened somewhat by then, but it was still inviting certain death to venture on to open ground. Hugo decided to risk it and tore across the exposed patch, a bullet striking his spur and making a sound like a finger snapped on a wine-glass. He got there unscathed, however, and Mr. Cookham seemed relieved to see him. “You a regular?” he demanded, and Hugo said no, just a supernumerary who had joined the staff earlier in the week. The sergeant was right. Cookham had been hit in the upper arm and his left sleeve dripped blood.

“Well, here’s a how-de-do,” he said gaily. “It looks as if I’ve got my first command.” He glanced around the circle where the dead and wounded outnumbered the living by two to one. “Don’t think I’ll have it long, however. What’s your name, Supernumerary?”

Although he had been in Africa less than a month, Hugo was well aware that any regular, even a nineteen-year-old subaltern, would hold the Yeomanry and Local Volunteer units in contempt. He said, diffidently, “Swann, Mr. Cookham. Hugo Swann…”

The officer let out a whoop and said, “Swann, the runner?” and at once transferred his revolver to his left hand, grabbed Hugo’s right, and shook it. “Heard you were around. A rare pleasure to have you here!” he said. “You’ll set up a new record today, if we get out of here alive,” and the joke seemed to remind him of his duty, for he turned away and issued a stream of orders concerning the barricade, rate of fire, transfer of badly wounded to the patch of shadow under the tallest rock, and several other instructions that Hugo did not catch, for a wounded horse, dragging itself round by its forelegs, struck him and sent him staggering off at a tangent as another bullet shattered his wrist-watch and grazed the skin along the joint of his thumb. It was no more than a scratch, but enough to project him the far side of the dying horse at a bound. He landed on a dead lancer, spreadeagled behind the barricade.

Gradually the dust began to settle, and the blue of the sky showed through the haze. A long outcrop of rocks some two hundred yards distant in the left foreground became visible, clearly the point of ambush, for intermittent flashes revealed where invisible marksmen were peppering them from two angles.

Cookham said, breathlessly, “Have to hump ourselves higher up. They’ll pick us off one by one so long as we stay here!” And under his direction the ragged group of survivors began to claw their way up the slope in short, individual rushes, aiming for a bulkier outcrop thirty yards above their first position.

Most of them made it, although a trooper scrambling up beside Hugo spun round and went tumbling head over heels down the incline again, his carbine making a tremendous clatter among the loose stones. Up here it was possible, by risking a bullet between the eyes, to get a grasp of the battlefield as a whole: a shallow valley with larger outcrops clothed with scrub on the Boer side, and a long, steep ascent, bare of cover, at the rear of their own position. Cookham shouted, “How many of us, Supernumerary? Count ‘em for me, will you?” Hugo, counting, said there were two dozen on the ledge and some lightly wounded still firing from below.

Cookham had his binoculars unslung now and used them to sweep the valley left to right at the price of losing his helmet that whipped from his head and sailed away like a clay pigeon. He said, “Well, it’s better than I thought. They’ve only wiped out the head of the column. There’s no firing forward. Murchison’s lot have pulled back out of range, lucky devils! They’ll have sent someone back for reinforcements and guns by now but that won’t help us, frying up here.” He paused, frowning with concentration, and Hugo was struck by the contrast between his outward immaturity and his calm acceptance of responsibility involving the lives of every man between the ridge they occupied and the floor of the valley. Images of two of his brothers presented themselves: Alex, a veteran soldier by the time he was Cookham’s age (and very like Cookham now that he came to think about it), and Edward, at home beside the Thames, who was young enough to have been at school with Cookham. He thought, Either one o
f them could pull their weight in a show like this, but I’m not much use, damn it. I feel like a passenger in a ditched ‘bus, waiting for someone to tell me what to do. Th
e thought of those rows of silver cups, urns, and medals in the showcase at Tryst returned to him, as though heliographing their puerility and trashiness across thousands of miles of land and water. He said, ruefully, “I can’t even hit ‘em with this, Mr. Cookham. And my carbine’s back there, under my horse.”

“None of us can hit ‘em,” Cookham said, cheerfully. “I doubt if we could even if we could see ‘em. The sun is at their backs, and their worst marksman could shoot the feathers out of our bonnets. Still, so long as they know we’re here, they’ll hold off, and that’ll stop them moving south and laying another ambush for relieving troops. Something else too—they can’t even guess at our numbers.” He bobbed up again and took another quick squint through the binoculars. This time a flight of bullets passed over, the Boers firing high and overestimating the height of the ridge, for the bullets ricocheted from the rock face above.

“Checkmate,” Cookham said. “We can’t stir, but they dare not hold that position for long. By that time the batteries will be up, and they’ll have to look lively getting away over that broken ground behind them.” He sucked his teeth. “We’re snug enough by that reckoning. There’s no time for them to work around behind and fire down on us, but suppose… Pity you’re a miler, Swann.”

“Why?”

“If you were a champion sprinter, we might have a sporting chance to nab them… Remember that track, branching left two miles back?”

“I remember it.”

“I’ll lay a pound to a penny it passes behind that range of hills. If the relieving force sent cavalry and horse artillery down it, and they looked lively, they could cut the line of retreat before the Boer pulls out. Look…” and he whipped a pencil from his notebook and, propping the sheet against the rock face, sketched the manoeuvre, a narrow sweep behind the Boer position, masked by high ground at the junction of the tracks.

“Won’t they have posted lookouts above that track?”

“If they’re as smart as I think they are, but no more than two or three men. Murchison could pin them down if you got word to him.”

“How far back is Murchison’s column?”

“Under a mile. But to get down from here you’d have to move over the ground faster than you’ve ever covered it. Those chaps over there are the best shots in the world. I wouldn’t order anyone to take a chance like that.”

“You don’t have to order me.”

“You’d try it?”

“I’m no use up here, with a six-shooter, Mr. Cookham.”

Cookham considered him gravely. “You’re game, Mr. Supernumerary. We’ll give you covering fire, but for God’s sake raise the dust the minute you reach level ground.”

“They won’t stop me.”

He knew, somehow, that it was his moment. All the pounding over the Exmoor plateau as a boy, all those circuits of tracks over the years, all those cheers and trophies that had come his way in the last decade had led to this; a dash down a valley whipped by bullets from the rifles of the deadliest marksmen in the world, carrying a message from a wispy-moustached boy to a rearguard picquet. He knelt half upright, stripping off his spurs, tunic, and helmet.

“When you’re ready, Mr. Cookham.”

The boy said, slowly, “I saw you win the Stamford Bridge two thousand metres when I was on leave last year. You’ve got one hell of a stride, Swann. And more puff than a blacksmith’s bellows. Good luck—sir.”