In Pale Battalions (14 page)

“It’s sad to think,” I said, “that this house has lost its heir.”

“That’s not peculiar to Meongate, is it?” he replied. “It’s a universal condition. This whole war is Europe’s surrender of its birthright.”

“Is it?”

“Of course. What you’re caught up in, my friend, is the death agony of an era, the end of Europe as the centre of Western civilization.”

“And you think your country will inherit that role?”

“In part—the British part, that is. And we’ll be better at it, because we’re a younger, more vigorous people. We’re not shackled to our past.”

“It’s an interesting point of view.”

He smiled. “It’s very British of you to take it so well. As for this house, it will survive, though to do so it may have to pass into new ownership.” Then he smiled again and left me to guess at what he really meant.

I was still sitting there after Mompesson had gone to bed and Thorley had hauled himself away, when Gladwin returned, shortly before midnight, with a great crash of the front door.

92

R O B E R T G O D D A R D

“Still up, young Franklin?” he said, striding in to warm himself by the dwindling fire.

“Just about. Mulling over my first meeting with Mr. Mompesson.”

“So he got here, then.” He grunted and said no more.

“How was the chess?”

“We adjourned. I’m not sure I’ll live long enough to finish this game.” He glared down at the fire. “You might have kept this in for me.”

“Sorry. Is it cold out?”

“Cold and fine. Clear as a bell. It was on nights like this that John used to take himself up to his observatory to study the stars.

No one goes up there now. I’ve not been since the comet in 1910.”

“That’s the turret on the roof of the wing?”

“Yes. Didn’t you know John was our resident astronomer?”

“I’m not sure he ever mentioned it.”

Gladwin grunted again and looked doleful. The memory of Hallows as an enthusiastic astronomer seemed to depress him. He plodded to the door. “I’m away to my bed. Sleep well.”

I went up a little later. The house was dark and silent now, though, when I looked out my window, I saw that, as Gladwin had said, it was a fine night, moonless and velvety black, the stars thickly sprinkled across the sky’s impenetrable dome. I felt wide awake: Mompesson’s prophecies had left me restless. Inspired by the night and Gladwin’s recollections, I decided to take a look at Hallows’s observatory.

The guest rooms were on the first floor of the main building, facing the drive. The family rooms were in the wing of the house where the stairs to the observatory were, and so I felt something of an intruder as I made my way there, careful to make as little noise as possible, anxious not to disturb anybody. The house seemed wholly at rest as I located the spiral stairs and began my ascent.

It was a wasted journey. The door at the top, leading to the observatory, was locked. Not surprising, I supposed, in the circumstances. Stifling a vague annoyance, I retraced my steps.

As I reached the foot of the stairs, a figure moved swiftly past in the darkness. I stopped short, taken aback by this silent manifesta

I N P A L E B A T T A L I O N S

93

tion, then looked out into the passage. It was Mompesson, I felt certain, padding noiselessly and swiftly away from me and evidently unaware that he had been seen. At the end of the passage, a line of light beneath a door seemed to mark his destination. I watched as he reached it.

He turned the handle and pushed the door open. It was a bedroom, richly furnished and softly lit. I could see for certain now that it was Mompesson and, as he took a step into the room, I could see that he was expected. Lady Powerstock rose from her chair by the dressing table and turned to face him. She wore a pink, full-length silken gown and—to judge by the hugging fit of the material—nothing else. Her long hair fell freely in dark tresses over her shoulders. She spoke and Mompesson replied, but I could not make out what was said. Then she turned away. As she did so, Mompesson released the door and it swung slowly towards me, narrowing the angle of my view to Lady Powerstock’s retreating figure. She pulled loose the sash of her gown and shrugged it casually from her shoulders. She was naked beneath. The gown slid down her back, clung momentarily to her hips, then fell to the floor. What she was offering Mompesson was clear in every mature and sensuous curve of her body. And, on what she was offering, the door in that moment clicked shut, leaving me in the dark, with only a remembered glimpse of her body.

Even as I stole back to my room, my reaction began to appal me. I felt no outrage on behalf of a dead friend or his betrayed father, rather a keen and self-centred resentment. Why, after all, should an arrogant, uninvolved American be able to walk into a war-wounded house and make free with its luscious mistress? Why were those of us who’d suffered months of torment and denial to be left to spec-tate as he came, and took his fill, and went? It was too much. Even sleep—when it came, fitfully and late—did not assuage my anger, nor relieve the awful, unconfessed desire that lurked behind it.

As is the way of restless nights, dawn brought slumber and it was mid-morning when I woke suddenly, roused by the clopping of horses’ hooves on the drive. I rose and stretched and walked to the window.

94

R O B E R T G O D D A R D

I suppose I’d expected it to be Fergus, leading out Lucy, but no, it was two horses I’d not seen before, one a tall black hunter with Mompesson in the saddle, cutting an imposing figure in top hat and long coat. Aboard the other—a smaller, quieter animal—was Leonora, in black riding skirt and cape, with a grey scarf around her hat. There was, in her dress and bearing, an observance of mourning, but why was she out riding with Mompesson? All I’d learned of her since first coming to Meongate would have led me to expect her to refuse such an invitation. Yet, there they were, heading away together across the park. I thought of what I’d seen the night before and of Hallows’s widow associating with a man who held in contempt both Lord Powerstock and the cause for which Hallows had died. There was something wrong, I knew, something awfully wrong.

I bathed and dressed and went downstairs. The house was in a lull of refracted mid-morning sunlight, quiet in the way of waiting rather than of rest; too quiet, in the way Sergeant Box may have warned Hallows that spring night in France, may have done, without being heeded, any more than I heeded whatever there was to be gleaned as I followed the thread the wrong way, into the labyrinth.

There was a chink of fine porcelain and a scent of coffee from the morning room. I followed it to find Lady Powerstock entertaining Cheriton, of all people, over the silver tray and ancestral service.

She wore pink and seemed—I dreaded the thought—invigorated beneath her years, drawing even from Cheriton a snatch of nervous laughter. As I came in, she looked at me with her deep, far-seeing eyes, as if . . . Then I cursed myself for displaying a hint of embarrassment and accepted her invitation to join them.

“Ralph has taken Leonora out riding,” she said airily as she filled a cup for me.

“Yes. I saw them go.”

“I’m sure it’s good for her to get . . . some fresh air,” Cheriton put in.

“Quite.” Olivia smiled. I looked at her—the charming, attentive hostess with her younger guests, conversing politely over morning coffee—and thought, for one moment, that I must be mistaken, that somehow I’d misconstrued . . . But no. What I’d seen couldn’t be misconstrued.

I N P A L E B A T T A L I O N S

95

I decided to test the water. “Mr. Mompesson evidently has little respect for the war effort.”

“It’s not his war,” Olivia replied.

“Or yours?”

Her brow darkened just a little at that, but her voice gave nothing away. “We women do what we can.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“No? Well, what do you think, David?”

Cheriton flushed as she turned towards him. I’d not realized they were on first-name terms. To judge by his reaction, nor had Cheriton.

“I . . . I don’t know.” Olivia smiled, a mixture of triumph and placation. “Matter of fact, think I’ll . . . get a breath of air myself.” He rose jerkily from his chair. “Lady Powerstock, Franklin: excuse me.”

After he’d gone, Olivia refilled our cups and timed her pause to make me think she would change the subject. But she didn’t.

“Ralph’s been a great help to us at this sad time.”

“Really?”

“I have the impression you don’t like him.”

“I wouldn’t say that. How did John get on with him?”

“I couldn’t say. John was not a man who displayed his feelings.

Perhaps you saw a less reticent side of him.”

“Perhaps.”

Her clothes rustled in the stillness of the room as she leant forward to replace her cup on the tray. “Lord Powerstock tells me you admired the picture in the library.”

“It’s very . . . striking.”

“My first husband painted it.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d been married before.” Everyone in that house, it seemed, had a past.

“Yes. He died young. A long time ago.” She smiled. “There’s no reason why you should have known.” Nor any reason why I shouldn’t have been told before. But I hadn’t been. “This war, of course, has made early death tragically commonplace.” “Yes.” She’d disarmed me with her recollected widowhood, defied me to impute any dishonour to the model in the picture.

“It is such a shame, when there is so much pleasure to be had from life.”

Now I was the one eager to change the subject. “It’s for fellows like Cheriton that I feel especially sorry.”

96

R O B E R T G O D D A R D

“We try to do what we can for all our officers—while they’re here.”

“While they’re here.” My stay at Meongate was beginning to afford me little pleasure and less rest. I felt myself a spectator at a sport I didn’t understand; I wasn’t even sure who the players were, and the rules seemed made only for breaking. That weekend—so outwardly calm and comfortable, an embodiment of country house life—tested my nerves with all the undercurrents of its wayward passage.

Mompesson’s swaggering presence cast its smirking shadow across the people and the place. Guests came to dinner that Saturday evening, laughed at his jokes and contributed to two enthusiastic foursomes at bridge. Leonora consented—without demur—to partner Mompesson and I had to watch from the sidelines as they played, while one of the visiting bridge ladies’ husbands told me about his son’s reports of a quiet time in Mesopotamia. It was as much as I could do to remain polite.

Sunday was a warm and cloudless day. Mompesson had brought a note of positively Edwardian gaiety to Meongate and few but I could resist. So, moodily, I shunned the afternoon party on the croquet lawn and went for a walk in the park. At the far end, where it met adjoining farmland, there was an apple orchard, and there, in a folding chair he’d set up amidst the blossom and fallen fruit, I found old Charter, well lunched and sleepy in his sunny corner.

“Ah, Franklin,” he said, doffing his straw hat.

“Sorry to disturb you.”

“Don’t mention it. High jinks on the croquet lawn not to your taste then?”

“Not really.” I turned over a box that had been used to collect some of the apples and sat on its base. “It might be more accurate to say that Mr. Mompesson is not to my taste.”

He gave a rumbling laugh. “You must realize, Franklin, that in a world of old crocks like me and wounded soldiers like you, fellows like Mompesson are apt to dazzle the ladies.”

“What would you say if I told you I found his familiarity with Lady Powerstock repugnant?”

I N P A L E B A T T A L I O N S

97

“I’d agree with you, but I’m biased. Olivia and I are the firmest of enemies.”

“She mentioned to me yesterday that she’d been married before.”

“Did you not know?”

“No. Who was he?”

“Artist—so-called. Name of Bartholomew. You’ll not have heard of him. Died three years before Edward met her. That’s all we were ever told.” But there was a twinkle in his eye.

“You look as if you know more.”

“Matter of fact, I do. Made enquiries when Edward showed he was set on marrying her. Not that what I found out swayed him a jot. He was too far gone by then.”

“What did you find out?”

“Mr. Bartholomew drowned. Lost overboard from a cross-Channel ferry in October of 1903. Bizarre, ain’t it? As to whether it was an accident or suicide, who knows? With Olivia for a wife, anything’s possible.”

“You really don’t like her, do you?”

“No, young man, I don’t like her. Partly because she’s not a patch on my Miriam. But there are other reasons. And I think you know what they are.”

“Not a worthy wife for Lord Powerstock?”

He grunted derisively. “If she was my wife, I’d know how to deal with blighters like Mompesson.”

“Oh yes?”

“But she isn’t, so, damn it, it’s no business of mine.”

Nor of mine, strictly speaking. I left Gladwin to doze in the sickly sweet air of the wasp-lazy orchard and made my way dis-consolately back towards the house. There was nothing for it, I’d decided, but to brave the croquet lawn, so I cut through the rhododendron glade in its general direction.

Halfway through, along its winding path, I saw two figures coming in the opposite direction: Mompesson and Leonora, deep in conversation. I could have hailed them, but something stopped me.

I stepped off the path and positioned myself behind one of the rhododendrons. They could not see me as they approached.

“I’m sure you’ll appreciate,” Mompesson was saying, “that you really have no choice.” His tone was affable, with a steely edge.

98

R O B E R T G O D D A R D

“You think not?” Leonora: cool and defensive.