Past Caring (22 page)

Strangely, I stopped short of the door, pausing for the first time
in that day’s headlong rush after truth, unable to think of what I
would say if that door were at last opened to me. And whilst I stood
there, poised in indecision , a voice addressed me from behind.

“Are you looking for someone?”

It was dear old Mercy speaking and I could tell from her tone
that she had not recognized me from the rear. When I turned, a
smile dropped from her face.

“I had hoped you would stay away forever,” she said gravely.

“I would have done, M, but for this morning’s announcement in
The Times
.”

“Why should it have surprised you?”

“Because I did not expect to know the groom as well as the
bride.”

“Does that give you a right to try to spoil their happiness?”

“It may do. Where are they now?”

“On their honeymoon. They’ve gone abroad for a month. Don’t
ask me where, for I shan’t tell you.”

“I don’t want to know.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To find out how—and why—they met.”

“Edwin”—it was a triumph of a kind that she should use my
Christian name—“it’s nothing to do with you. They met shortly after you . . . after your wedding was cancelled. Gerald was acquainted
with the Lambournes, who introduced him to Elizabeth. He made
her happy again. Knowing you was just a remarkable coincidence.”

“Did he mention our time in South Africa together?”

Mercy said nothing, but glared and walked straight past me to
the door. I looked after her.

124

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

“Well, did he?”

“He said as little of you as he could. To have known you was no
recommendation. But we did not hold it against him.”

She opened the door and went to enter. A crazy thought came to
my mind with which to stop her on the threshold.

“Did he tell you about his actions at Colenso?”

Mercy looked back once, coldly, then closed the door behind
her. There was nothing left to do or say. I walked away down the
path. It was foolish, I reflected, to cast aspersions on Couch’s war
record when what I really wanted to cry out against was that he
should have benefited from my rejection. It was incomprehensible,
yet incontrovertible.

I drove slowly over Putney Bridge into Fulham, then traced my
way to Garrard Court, South Kensington , a large apartment block
near Sloane Square. The lift attendant gave me Couch’s number, but
warned me that Couch was away “consequent upon his nuptials.”

He was right. There was no answer.

So I booked into a nearby hotel and glumly surveyed my plight
during a solitary evening in the bar. My impetuous descent upon
the capital had achieved nothing. Without confronting Elizabeth—

which I could not bear—or Couch, I had no hope of finding out
what had drawn them together or whether it was connected with my
unexplained disgrace. In the absence of any way forward, I knew
that I should abandon the enterprise. But I had only to think of
Elizabeth to know that I could never do that.

So, the following morning, I went to Rotherhithe and the in-salubrious premises of Mr. Palfrey, private enquiries agent, whose
services had been called upon by the Metropolitan Police from time
to time during my years at the Home Office. I had never seen
Palfrey or his place of work before and neither encouraged me to
linger longer than was necessary to commission some discreet observation of the Couchmans when they returned to London. Odious
and, for that matter, odorous as he undoubtedly was, Palfrey nevertheless had a record that inspired confidence and I left the matter in
his clammily capable hands.

I felt vaguely unclean at having to resort to such measures, but
anything was preferable to nothing. It was with distaste tingeing
my dismay that I drove out of London that morning and headed in

P A S T C A R I N G

125

the only direction I could go—back to Barrowteign. My mother
was relieved to see me again so soon. I told her that I had seen
Mercy, learned nothing and proposed to leave it at that. I made no
mention of Palfrey.

Knowing that Elizabeth and Couch were not due home until
late July, I did not expect to hear from Palfrey until some time during August. As it turned out, I had by then other matters of moment
to concern me, as had we all. Five days after my return from
London , an Austrian archduke was assassinated in the distant
Balkan city of Sarajevo and, during July, a crescendo of ultimata
exchanged between the great European powers led us inexorably
from that obscure act to the outbreak of a world war.

My involvement in this was accelerated by the fact that I had,
ever since leaving South Africa, remained an officer in the regimental reserve. At first, this had been invaluable to a young M.P., for in
those days we were unpaid, but I had never seen any reason to sever
the link after becoming a salaried minister.

So it was that, on the morning of August 4, when I read in the
newspaper that we would be at war with Germany before the day
was out unless they undertook not to violate Belgian neutrality in
their moves against France, I also received notification from the
War Office that the reserve was to mobilize and that I was to report
to my regimental barracks in Exeter by noon the following day.

As one who had read the runes during previous weeks, this
caused me much less surprise than my mother. But for all her consternation

, I knew that, in her hands, Barrowteign and little
Ambrose would be safe. By the following morning, when war had
been formally declared and I was ready to set off, Mother had
found consolation in the prevailing notion that hostilities would be
over by Christmas. My own expectations, which I kept to myself,
were far less sanguine but even they went nowhere near the ghastly
reality of the next four years that drove even Elizabeth far from my
thoughts.

For all my political awareness, I was as ignorant as the rawest volunteer of what lay in wait for those of us who blithely set off for
France in that summer of 1914. The regiment was in good heart,
126

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

convinced that our cause was just and that our abilities, honed so
relatively recently in South Africa, were more than a match for the
Germans. The sense of unity and purpose was infectious, though I
remained cynically immune. Nevertheless, I believed what the
strategists told us—that we had the beating of the enemy in short
order—because I supposed that they knew their business. Had
not Sir Edward Grey, my esteemed former colleague, said in
Parliament that the consequences of war were scarcely worse than
the consequences of peace?

The truth did not take long to confront me. The Battle of Mons
in late August—into which the regiment flung itself with conviction
and enthusiasm—was the beginning and end of the war we all expected. Casualties were heavy, but they could have been borne had
there been some profit in the engagement. In truth, it merely
marked the grinding to a halt of the German advance on Paris and
the firm entrenchment of both sides along a line through north-eastern France, which was also a demarcation of the war we were
due to wage.

Once trench warfare had begun , our cavalry expertise gleaned
from South Africa became redundant and our generals’ strategic
thinking was bankrupted. I had been attached to the staff of Sir
John French—Commander-in-Chief—during the Mons engagement, but thereafter found myself given a captaincy and a platoon
to command at the front. From such a vantage point, I could examine at first hand French’s methods of overcoming heavily defended
trenches. These amounted to throwing infantry against wire and
artillery in the hope of breaking through to an extent that might be
exploited by the cavalry. Occasionally, this happened and a salient
was created in the German trench line. Yet a salient, being exposed
on three sides, was impossible to defend and, however far-advanced,
was always bound to be constricted and ultimately strangled.

The persistence in such a strategy—in the absence of any
other—was worse than futile, it was criminal. The pride of the regular army was sacrificed in one bid after another to make the breakthrough that would count and which never came. French made way
for Haig, who was no better, indeed somewhat worse. For whereas
French had fatuously hoped to convert trench warfare into the type
of war he could win , Haig saw the trenches as means of wearing

P A S T C A R I N G

127

down the Germans by attritional methods until they no longer had
the manpower to fight.

The reality this represented for the fighting man was almost
certain death for the sake of a distant, weary victory. Yet most of
them did not realize this. By the close of 1914, most of my regiment
had been killed or invalided and replaced by eager young recruits
who found themselves marching to a muddy grave for no clear
reason.

I led, myself, a seemingly charmed existence. I rapidly sickened
of leading suicidal advances over the top, but continued to do so because refusal required a moral courage I did not possess. I would
have been accused of cowardice—and probably been shot for it—

and would have felt guilty of treachery towards my fellow suffering men at arms. So I persisted in an intensifying mood of
indifference to my own fate. Perhaps that was my salvation , for that
indifference saved me from either impetuosity or panic, both fatal
conditions. I won no medals but a reputation for leading survivors,
who thanked me with their loyalty for still being alive each roll call.

We fought for each other, not for the generals—whom we rightly
distrusted for plotting our every gadarene rush upon the guns
whilst sipping claret in safely distant châteaux—or for the public at
home, who knew and understood nothing. I, especially, did not fight
for the politicians, who were quite capable of fighting amongst
themselves. As I later learned, the making and breaking of wartime
coalitions at Westminster became merely an extension of the struggle for power between Asquith and Lloyd George, with Lloyd
George the ultimate victor. More than with any of these, we hapless
soldiers felt fellowship with our opponents. The sanest thing we did
was lay down our guns and celebrate Christmas with the Germans
between the lines at the end of that first year of war, only for that to
be taken from us. Strict orders were issued warning that men would
be shot for any form of fraternization. It was deemed to be bad for
morale, as if killing and being killed for no purpose was not. Amidst
all the madness and mutilation , I learned a lesson I never had as a
politician: that we cannot properly lead those with whom we have
not shared suffering.

The year 1915 came and went and, with it, a second Christmas
by which the war was still not over. We who were not dead were
128

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

deadened by the horror of it all. We no longer expected it ever to
end. For me, an end of a kind came with that crowning insanity: the
Battle of the Somme, which stretched from July to November, 1916.

I picked up several bad doses of mustard gas and then , one pointless
day in early September, took a shrapnel hit in the leg and my
Somme at least was over. I spent the autumn laid up in a convalescent home near Brighton , my mother a constant visitor.

Just before Christmas, a relative stranger came to see me:
Winston Churchill, whom I had encountered earlier in the year
whilst passing through Armentières. He had then been serving as a
colonel in the Royal Scots Fusiliers, having come out to France in
disgrace following the failure of his brain-child: the Dardanelles
expedition. Now he was home again , trying to recover his political
reputation, but, whether in the trenches or in Cabinet, he was always possessed of a cherubic irresponsibility. We had first met on
the boat to South Africa sixteen years before and, since he was the
only one of my former Cabinet colleagues likely to seek me out, I
was pleased to see him. He sat by my bed, beaming and ruminating
upon the ways of the world—and of war.