In Pale Battalions (11 page)

Surprised to find myself still alive, I crawled back to our trench. You could say I was lucky. Lucky to be hit before I’d gone far and to finish with nothing worse than a smashed shoulder. Yet no man who fought on the Somme that day should be called lucky. Ill fortune attended all our parts. With Hallows gone, I am not sure I much cared whether I lived or died. Perhaps that is why I survived.

A week later, I was in a hospital bed in London. England, in the summer of 1916. That, I suppose, is where my strange tale has its true beginning.

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Iwas not in bad shape. Towards the middle of August I was transferred from hospital to a guest house in Eastbourne, taken over for convalescent officers. We were an odd collection, glad to be recovering but reticent about returning to France. Things had been going badly on the Somme—there was no other way they could go. The daily roll of honour read like a petition against inhuman generals. I picked my way along the seafront past old ladies and young men in Bath chairs, thinking—sometimes—that I could hear the guns across the Channel. Who, in the brightly painted charm of an English seaside resort, could believe that it was really happening?

Cousin Anthea paid me several visits. What was I going to do?

Spend some time in Berkshire? Discussing the Somme with my uncle was a ghastly prospect, yet I would have to make up my mind: my shoulder was healing well and I would soon be discharged.

Early in September came salvation: a letter—unsolicited—from a benevolent society for injured officers, whose patron, the Countess of Kilsyth, arranged, so I gathered, for victims of the war—provided they were of suitable breeding—to be farmed out to the country houses of her titled acquaintances for rest and re-cuperation. I sat in a deckchair on the guest house balcony reading the letter with some relief, relief which became surprise when I turned to the attachment, a note from the particular household I was invited to join. The vellumed letterhead read:
Meongate, Droxford, Hampshire
. It was from Lord Powerstock: “Having heard 72

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so much of you from my late son, I am hopeful that Lady Kilsyth will send you to us.” And she had. I was to keep my promise after all.

I reached Droxford railway station in the late morning of a fine Indian summer’s day. No other passengers got off on the raked-gravel platform, though the train waited whilst crates of watercress were loaded. I walked out through the booking hall in a state of trance. Behind me, a whistle blew and the train moved out. A ticket collector, red-faced from doubling as a porter, caught me up and took my ticket with a smile and a comment on the weather. Then I was alone on the forecourt, wondering what to do next. I’d been told I would be collected, but there was no sign of anybody. The train chugged off along the valley and silence began to settle around me in the heat. A swarm of gnats hung beneath the carved eaves of the station building. Somewhere, a dove was cooing.

Then, along the lane, there came on the gentle breeze a jingle of harness and a clopping of hooves. A pony and trap came into view, making fair speed, and wheeled into the yard. It stopped beside me, the pony pulling up with a stamp that raised some dust.

Dust that hung and drifted, a little like gas . . . but settled more quickly. I looked up at the driver: a stout, barrel-chested old man in faded blue frock coat and pale breeches, straw hat shading a white-whiskered face flushed with rather more than just the heat of a summer’s day.

He greeted me with patrician good cheer. “Good morning, young man. You must be the famous Lieutenant Franklin.”

“Hardly famous. I . . .”

“Spare me the false modesty. I’m too old for it. Haven’t I come to collect you rather than leave it to a servant? Come. Hop aboard.”

His twinkle-eyed humour was infectious. He wasn’t at all what I’d expected.

I stowed my bag and climbed up beside him. “Forgive me, but . . . are you Lord Powerstock?”

“Bless you, no.” He loosed a rumbling laugh, then twitched on the reins and started us back down the lane. “What do you think of Lucy’s bells?” He gestured towards the pony’s head. There were little silver bells fastened to the bridle, tinkling as we rode. It was the

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same sound I’d heard on his approach—a puzzling sound, somehow out of place in the Hampshire farmland.

“Very nice,” I said lamely.

He laughed again. “They’re troika bells. From Russia. A personal gift from the Czar.”

“Really?”

“No. Not really. But they are from Russia. I did business there once.” He looked at me and winked. “When I was your age. A long time ago.” He paused and we bowled along the lane without speaking for a while. Then he began again, as if remembering something he’d been about to say. “Lord Powerstock? That’s a good one. No.

I’m a skeleton in his cupboard, though a fleshy one, as you see.

Charter Gladwin’s the name: a sort of relic of family history.”

“For a relic, you manage this pony well, sir.”

He laughed again, as he did often, with ease, unforced and bub-bling, like wine overflowing a re-charged glass. “Always defer to age, young man. It’s an excellent policy, though I never followed it myself. After all, who else in these parts is likely to be able to remember the old Queen’s coronation?” “Nobody—I imagine.”

“Exactly. But you’ll be wanting to know what I’m to do with young John—Captain Hallows. Well, I’m his grandfather. My daughter was his mother. Now they’re both gone. Just me left.

Comical, ain’t it?”

“Well, I hardly . . .”

“No. You’re right. Not comical. A damn shame. I liked John. A fine young man. Good few of ’em being lost out there, I dare say.”

“Yes,” I said grimly. “There are.”

“Poorly equipped, badly led, sadly wasted. Ain’t that the size of it?”

“You seem well informed, sir.”

“Not at all. It’s what they said about the Crimea. I didn’t think much could have changed.” He laughed and, this time, despite myself, I laughed with him.

The lane was rising now, taking us between high hedges over the swell of a gentle down and away from the line of the railway.

We were leaving behind the water meadows of the curving Meon and climbing through sheep-cropped pasture and shady hangers of oak.

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“The house will be in view soon,” the old man announced. “I’ll try to be on my best behaviour when we get there. You’ll have to do the same.”

“I’ll try not to offend anyone.”

“It’s just there’s been a black mood hanging over the place since John died. Not that I’m saying he should be forgotten, but it’s been four months now. Edward—Lord Powerstock—don’t seem able to pull round. As for Leonora . . .” He tailed off in tongue-clicking disappointment.

I recognized Leonora as Hallows’s wife. “She’s bound to have taken it hard.”

Gladwin grunted at that and set his face to the road. We had reached the other side of the down now and were following a straight lane beneath arching chestnut trees. To the left of us ran a high brick wall, breached and patched in places. From the trap, glimpsed between thickly leaved trees, I could see a large house set in its own grounds. A few minutes later, we wheeled off the lane between open wrought-iron gates and up a curving drive through patches of sunlight and shade, then emerged from the trees and crossed open parkland towards the house itself.

“Welcome to Meongate,” Gladwin muttered. “Hope you like the place as much as I do. Between you and me, it’s why I let my daughter marry into the family.”

It was easy to see what he meant. Meongate stood gracefully in its park, well proportioned without being grandiose, an L-shaped structure of brick and flint, the drive leading past the main frontage of the house whilst a cross-wing at the far end ran away behind the building to form an angle enclosing an ornamental garden. Halfway along the roof of the wing, standing as high as its tall, slender-stacked chimneys, was a single glazed turret supporting a weather-vane. Sun caught the vane’s gilded figure, warmed the brickwork of the house and lit the ivy-framed windows. Here were all the comforting English rural virtues cast in stone and leaf; here—little knowing what awaited me—I came home in Hallows’s place.

We drew up before the open front door and Gladwin heaved himself down with a great shudder of the trap. A man appeared from the porch to take my bag and Gladwin bellowed good-naturedly at him.

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“Not bad, eh, Fergus?” He flipped open a fob-watch. “There and back in just over the half-hour.”

“You’ve been driving her too hard,” Fergus muttered as he went in with my bag.

“You’re an old woman,” Gladwin boomed after him. He winked at me as I climbed down and Fergus reappeared. “Lucy likes a run—which is more than you do.”

This time, Fergus only grunted as he led the pony away. We turned towards the house, where a woman was now standing in the doorway to greet us.

“Brace yourself,” Gladwin said to me from the corner of his mouth. “It’s her Ladyship.”

“Her Ladyship?”

“The second Lady Powerstock. The painted lantern of his Lordship’s later life.”

As in everything, Gladwin exaggerated. The woman I was looking at was an elegant, Italianate beauty not many years past her peak, dark hair drawn up from a classical, high-cheeked face, a floral-patterned dress with a hint of silk shaping itself to a figure that conceded nothing to what I took to be her age. Was there, withal, something—something in the icy edge of her smile—to warn me? I cannot say.

“Lieutenant Franklin,” she said, holding out her hand in a way that made me bow as I took it. “How wonderful to meet you.” Even while I was saying how pleased I was to be there, she was glancing towards Gladwin and hardening her tone. “I understood that Fergus was to meet you.” The old man did not respond directly. He grunted and looked at me. “I’ll not come in with you, Franklin. One or two things to attend to. Olivia will look after you. We’ll meet again later.” He plodded away, hands defiantly grasping his lapels and head tossed haughtily back.

As soon as he was gone, Lady Powerstock led me through the porch into the hall, suddenly dark after the daylight and heavy with the polished wood of a vast, decorated fireplace. A broad split stairway led to a circular landing, from where sunlight seeped down and played in shifting patches on richly patterned carpets and wall-hung oriental rugs: touches of exoticism amid the stillness of a slowly ticking clock.

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“I’ll have your bag taken up to your room, Lieutenant,” she said. “Unless you want to go straight up yourself, I’m sure my husband would like to meet you.”

“As I would him.”

“Then please come with me. He’ll be in his study at this time.”

We made our way along a passage leading from the hall towards the wing of the house. I attempted some light conversation.

“Your house seems a million miles from the war.”

She smiled. “You’re not the first to say that.”

“No?”

“Thanks to Lizzie Kilsyth, we’ve been able to entertain many young officers who feel the same way. There are two others here at the moment. You’ll meet them later.”

“I’m sure they feel as privileged as I do.”

“Perhaps. As a matter of fact, in your case it is we who feel privileged.” We had come to a turning in the passage. She paused by the door facing us and knocked. “My husband has been greatly looking forward to meeting you.” Then she smiled again. “As have I.” She opened the door and I went in. The study, wood-panelled and book-lined, was at the corner of the house and its high windows looked out across the park to one side and a sunken lawn to the other. Facing the lawn windows was a desk and from this Lord Powerstock now rose and turned to greet me.

He was a tall, grey, stooped man with a lined face in which so-briety had long since stiffened into sombreness. His son had been for him only one of the certainties war had swept away. The Victorian age had vanished and left him, beached and bereft, in a world he no longer understood, where grief was merely a metaphor for all the sensations of his loss.

“My dear boy: you are most welcome.” His hand trembled slightly as I shook it. “How are you feeling?”

“Recovering well, thank you.” As I spoke, he glanced towards his wife, but already the door was closing behind her: we were alone together in a room where I sensed he was always alone.

“Glad to hear it. My son spoke of you often.”

“John spoke often of you too, sir. He missed his home and family keenly, I think.”

Lord Powerstock nodded slowly and moved to a cabinet near his desk, where glasses and decanters stood on a silver tray. “Would you

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care for a drink, Franklin? I can vouch for the malt—if whisky’s your poison.”

“I confess it’s become so of late.”

He poured me a generous measure, then some for himself.

“You’ll go a long way these days to find the equal of this.”

“Then, if you don’t object, sir, here’s to an honourable peace.” I added the honour for his sake.

He drank and mused on the toast. “Is that the Army speaking, Franklin?”

“I can only speak for myself.”

“I’ll wager it is, all the same; John said as much often enough.”

“I wouldn’t want to pretend it’s anything other than a ghastly business.”

“I’d think the less of you if you did. Since we subscribed to the Kilsyth Foundation, we must have had a couple of dozen officers here. Most of them are brave men who’ve been asked to do too much.” He walked to one of the windows and I followed. “Take young Cheriton, for instance.” He pointed to a figure patrolling a border path beyond the lawn, a thin, pensive figure smoking a cigarette, whose every jerked movement spoke of jangled nerves.