In Pale Battalions (36 page)

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up residence at Meongate. The coroner then read a letter from Cheriton’s commanding officer in France.

“Lieutenant Cheriton was an enthusiastic but highly strung officer. Had his temperament been more robust, I would have been more dismayed than I am at the suggestion that he took his own life. He was originally certified as neurasthenic on 23rd June this year and invalided home three days later. I cannot enlarge upon the circumstances of his illness. Captain Speight, who might have been more familiar with his case, was killed in action on 29th August.” The coroner then addressed the jury on what he described as “a clear case of suicide.” He said that it was for the police to determine whether there was any connection between the two deaths but that the very absence of a note might tend to suggest that there was.

Without withdrawing, the jury returned its verdict that Cheriton had “killed himself whilst the balance of his mind was disturbed.”

This time I didn’t linger. I made for the exit, wishing to be away before there was either chance or need to speak to the Powerstocks.

But Shapland—moving with that disarming speed of his—caught me up.

“In a hurry, Mr. Franklin?”

“The cases are closed, Inspector,” I said as we emerged into the yard. “What do you want of me?”

“You heard what the coroner said: police investigations will continue. That means I’ll go on asking questions.”

“Not of me.” We turned out of the yard into the lane, made narrow by the throng. “I’m to resume active service next week.” I strode past the police station towards the main road. He didn’t follow and I didn’t look back.

The first train to Alton was due at ten to eight. I was at the railway station by 7:30 on a cold, mist-fringed morning, a light frost clinging to the rails. It was as I wanted it: an early departure, a clean break, a final leaving. It seemed so much longer than a month since I’d stepped off the train from Fareham, so much longer for me and for others. I dropped my bag by a bench and sat down to wait.

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I felt cold in the still air. I pulled up my greatcoat collar and lit a cigarette. A bell rang in the station building: train due. Then the door from the ticket office slammed and a figure walked along the platform towards me.

It was Charter Gladwin.

“Well met, young Franklin.” He smiled, doffed his hat and sat down beside me. “On your way, I see.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I take it ill you didn’t come to say goodbye to me.”

“I’m sorry. I expected to see you at the inquest.”

“And I expected to see you when you came back last week. I wanted news of Leonora.”

“I understood she’d written to Lord Powerstock.”

“She had. But that’s not my meaning.” I hadn’t heard him so gruff before. I genuinely regretted having let him down, but an old man’s consolation had seemed at the time of small moment.

“I am sorry, Charter. Since Mompesson’s murder . . . it’s been difficult.”

“But you have seen her?”

“Yes. I’ve seen her.”

There was a dull metal clank as a signal was raised. From the south, through the chill, motionless air, drifted the sound of a train whistle. “Where are you off to now?”

“My uncle’s place in Berkshire. Then, next week, I resume active service.”

“Glad to be leaving Droxford?”

“To be honest, yes. But I will miss you.”

He laughed, with some of his old guffaw, his breath misting in the air. “Good of you to say so. But I think it’s John you really miss.”

“Maybe it is.”

The train came into view with a sudden gout of noise and steam. It rumbled and juddered to a halt. “Mind if I join you?”

“You’re leaving as well?”

“No. But I’ll run up to Alton with you. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

We climbed aboard and settled ourselves in a compartment.

Charter lit his pipe and beamed across at me like some smug Pickwickian traveller. A whistle blew and the train drew out.

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“John was born in the old Queen’s golden jubilee year: 1887. He was a month old when the villagers and estate workers celebrated both his birth and the Jubilee. I came down from Yorkshire for the occasion. It was a grand day.

“He was a handsome, good-natured boy, a natural leader of men. You could have followed him to the ends of the Earth. But, even as his grandfather, I saw the signs of what was wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“I fear he was cursed with something most of us are spared: foresight. He knew what was going to happen. That’s why there was always that sadness about him. He grieved when Miriam died, of course, but he didn’t seem surprised. And the war? I think he knew it was coming. Not feared, or suspected, but knew.

“He loved Leonora, but even she couldn’t make him happy. I don’t think anything could. She could give him some form of contentment: that was all. It was the same contentment he got from gazing at the stars through his telescope or taking his dinghy out in Langstone Harbour.

“I’ve got through life by the skin of my teeth, not knowing what was going to happen next. But what if I had known? What then, eh? Can you imagine what that would be like?”

“No, Charter. Nobody can.”

His eyes drifted to the passing fields. He puffed at his pipe.

“How is Leonora?” He looked at me. “And the Fotheringham girl?”

“You know about her?”

“I know enough to guess that’s where she is. If I’m to see her again, I suppose I’ll have to take a trip to the Island.”

“She asked to be left alone.”

“I don’t think she meant by me, do you? Besides, I’ll certainly want to be on hand . . . for the birth of my great-grandchild.” He smiled as he said it and blew a smoke ring to the luggage rack. And I stared at him and heard his throaty laugh mock all my subtle deceptions.

The sun was beginning to turn through the mist. It picked out the curving line of the downs and filtered on to Charter’s white hair through the dust on the carriage window. Still he was smiling, waiting patiently for my mind to catch up with the implications of what he’d said.

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“Did you think I didn’t know? Old men don’t sleep well. I wake early of a morning. Early enough to see who might be leaving the house at crack of dawn. I know he’s alive, as, I imagine, do you.”

“Where is he, Charter?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you might have found him.”

“The trail went cold. He’d visited a man named Fletcher in Portsea.”

Charter ground his pipe stem between his teeth. “So he went to Fletcher. I might have known.”

“Since then, he’s vanished. He left his last known address the day before Mompesson was murdered.”

“Where do you think he’s gone?”

“I don’t know. I’ve no way of tracing him. And I’m not even sure I want to. If I did track him down, what would I find? And there’s something else. You can’t come back from the dead, Charter.

I think he may have come to understand that.”

The train shuddered to a halt at West Meon station. From down the platform came the scrape and thump of freight being loaded into the guard’s van. Abruptly, Charter hauled himself from his seat. “After all, I think I’ll get off here.” “You said you’d come as far as Alton.”

“I’ll walk back from here. It’ll do me good.” I followed him into the corridor. “We’ve said all there is to say, haven’t we?” He pushed a door open and climbed down to the platform, then turned round to look up at me. “So—take care, young man.” I pulled the window down and closed the door. “You too.”

“I never did tell you about that duel in St. Petersburg, did I?”

“No. You never did.”

“Well, it can wait now.”

The train lurched into motion. I held up my hand in farewell.

Charter stepped back and raised his hat. As the engine gathered steam, the platform—and Charter with it—slid away behind me.

My last sight of him was as a portly, silhouetted figure on the vanishing station, benignly waving his hat, for all the world a kindly uncle seeing off his favourite nephew.

ten

So I went back to the war. It had waited patiently, like some huge, dormant beast, waiting to claw me back. And now I went willingly, almost with relief. No Anthea to see me off at Southampton, no shocks awaiting me at Rouen. For I knew where I was going. Back to the third battalion, changed in all but name, still locked in the Battle of the Somme and entrenched now near the village of Courcelette, three miles east of where I’d left them as many months before. Three miles—for how many thousand lives?

I rejoined the third battalion at the beginning of November, by which time only the high command maintained the pretence that the Somme campaign was still in progress. By the 16th, it had officially closed and we were left to spend the winter in flooded or frozen trenches.

There were few faces I recognized. Sergeant Warren, who’d written to me in September, had been killed the same month, probably before my reply reached him. Colonel Romney had been transferred to Egypt. Lake’s successor, Finch, was a nerve-shattered alcoholic. As for the men, they were mostly new to it but, by instinct or reason, grimmer than their predecessors. Despair hung upon us under the grey skies of wintry France. Hope was a stranger. And I no longer cared.

Christmas came and went. I declined an offer of home leave.

The year 1917 opened dull and drear and found us, drained of spirit, cast on the frozen ramparts of a mindless, endless war.

I thought often of Hallows, and Leonora, and all that had 244

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happened at Meongate. But I wrote no letters and received none. It seemed somehow safer that way, as if, in the wasteland that was Picardy, there was at least some form of refuge, some consolation to be had in its blank and grinding ruin.

Rumour abounded that the battalion was to follow Colonel Romney to Egypt in the spring. I paid the prospect no heed. France, Egypt or the ends of the Earth. What, after all, did it matter? In February, I was promoted first lieutenant—reward, I think, for still being alive.

During March I had a long weekend due and arranged to spend it in Amiens. Cousin Anthea was in the area, having just returned from England, and I agreed to meet her in a café near the cathedral.

It was a cold, grey afternoon with flurries of snow. I arrived first, sat at a corner table and ordered Cognac.

Anthea burst in late, with a gust of her irrepressible, ever-jarring good cheer. She was a bundle of energy and enthusiasm, with a schoolgirlish laugh and an undimmed conviction that all would turn out for the best. To the nursing profession, probably a godsend. To me, at the low ebb of my wintry soul, anathema. The café was dark, full of glum-faced, elderly customers rustling newspapers and saying little, wreathed in fumes of ersatz coffee and stale garlic. I wanted only to rest and retreat into the shadows of their unyielding company. But Anthea would have none of it.

“I can’t stay long, Tom. We’re terribly hard-pressed at present.”

I nodded. “How are you?”

“Very well,” she said emphatically. “Never better. I thrive on hard work.”

“How was England?”

“Everyone’s in very good spirits. It seems certain now that the Americans will come in on our side.”

“So I’m told. What about the family?”

“Fighting fit.”

“Good.”

“Papa’s taken a new gardener. He had to let Moffat go. He simply wasn’t up to the heavy work any more. Oh, and apparently”—she leaned intently across the table—“Charlotte’s expecting again.”

I was momentarily nonplussed. “Charlotte?”

“Your cousin, silly. In Keswick.”

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“Oh yes, of course.”

“Didn’t you stay with some people called Hallows last summer?” she said abruptly.

“Er . . . yes. Why?”

“There was an obituary notice in
The Times
the last day I was home. I thought I recognized the name—and the address.”

I felt my throat dry suddenly. “What name?”

“See for yourself. I cut it out. I thought you’d be interested.”

She reached into her bag and took out a folded piece of paper. I snatched it from her.

“HALLOWS: on 19th March 1917, in Ventnor Cottage Hospital, Isle of Wight, peacefully, after a short illness, Leonora May Hallows (née Powell), aged 25 years, of Meongate, Droxford, Hampshire, beloved widow of the late Captain the Hon. John Hallows. Funeral service at the Parish Church, Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, on Friday, 23rd March at 12 noon.” And so she was gone, her fragile beauty plucked and lost like a flower before the storm. As soon as I read of it, I knew it was as it was bound to be. I had loved her. Time was to show that she was the only woman I would ever love. Yet I had known her for such a short time. The first afternoon at Meongate—to the last at Bonchurch.

Less than a month, so much less, than the lifetime for which I would remember her.

Anthea was no longer with me when, an hour later, sobered by grief beyond the reach of all the drink I’d consumed, I leant on the parapet of one of the bridges crossing the Somme and saw again, in my mind, Leonora’s face, turned to look at me, her gaze travelling past me to the future she would never know. Nor was it only grief that caused the tears to well in my eyes. There was guilt, a wounding accusation of self, gouging at the centre of my loss. I should have saved her, should have found a way to protect her. Instead, nursing self-pity in the name of a love she could never return, I had left her to meet her fate.

I thumped the stonework of the parapet until my hand ached. I bowed my head and wept. And then I knew. It was too late for 246

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Leonora, but, for the sake of what I’d felt for her, I knew what I had to do. I had thought myself free of them, immunized by the futility of war, but now I knew: I must go back.