Harvest of War (2 page)

‘Don't be too sure.' His French counterpart tapped his nose meaningfully. ‘I hear rumours of a planned coup. If Venizelos takes over there will be nothing to stop us opening a new attack.'

‘Then I pray God he succeeds, and soon!' Sasha exclaimed. ‘If I have to stay cooped up here much longer I shall go out of my mind.'

Leo squeezed his hand under the table. She understood his frustration. When they left Corfu in June he had thought that it was the first move in a campaign that would drive the occupying Bulgars and Austrians out of his homeland. The following weeks of inactivity on top of the long wait in Corfu had driven him to distraction. Her own attitude was very different. For her, every day's delay meant another night they could spend together; a few more precious hours when she did not have to worry about his safety.

Nights like this one. A full moon came up, so that towers and minarets stood out black against the sky, and the tables along the quayside began to empty. Sasha and his two companions ended their inconclusive discussion and finished their wine and they all said goodnight. Sasha had managed to find accommodation for himself and Leo in a small hotel near the port and had booked separate rooms, as a concession to convention. In public they had tried to maintain a decorous distance, until they discovered from various casual remarks that his men had taken their relationship for granted long before they themselves had given in to their mutual attraction. Since then, Leo had hardly ever slept in her own room.

Later, after they had made love and Sasha had fallen asleep, Leo lay watching him in the moonlight that streamed through the uncurtained window. Asleep, his face was unprotected by his usual expression of proud self-reliance and she could see how the strain of the past months had aged him. There were lines at the corners of his eyes and the hair at his temples was flecked with white. But there was something else as well, a vulnerability that contrasted with her early memories of him. She recalled their first meeting, when he had regarded her with such faintly veiled disdain. ‘That insufferable man,' Victoria had called him. Yet even then she had sensed a kindred spirit. ‘So damned arrogant,' he had said of his first impression of her, echoing her grandmother's assessment. Well, as she had told him, it was obviously a case of like calling like.

She turned on her back and allowed herself to dream of the future. Sasha had told her that his marriage had never been consummated. It was his engagement to Eudoxie that had stood between them since their first meeting in 1912 but it had never been anything but a marriage of convenience, arranged to heal the long-running vendetta between two families. Eudoxie was fifteen years his junior and suffered from poor health. According to Sasha, his early attempts to ‘carry out his duty as a husband' had brought on such violent asthma attacks that he had not persisted, and not long after the wedding he had been recalled to his regiment and war had broken out. He had given instructions for his mother and wife to take refuge in Athens but so far he had not heard from them and had no idea if they had managed to evacuate the country while the borders were still open. But whatever happened, he had promised Leo that when the war was over he would ask for a divorce and they would then be free to marry. She had no doubts about his sincerity. She put her hand to her throat and fingered the locket he had given her when they parted that first time, and which she had worn ever since. He had said that he planned to leave the army once his country was free again and lead the life of a Serbian country gentleman. She imagined the two of them on the estate which she had visited once, on the occasion of his family's ‘Slava day'. They would ride out every morning to see how the crops were progressing, pick cherries and plums in season, drink wine produced from their own vines. Maybe they would breed horses. It was a subject that interested them both. The images soothed her and she drifted into sleep.

Leo often remembered with pleasure the rides she had had with Sasha when they were encamped around Adrianople during the war against the Ottomans, and thought sadly of the fate that had befallen their horses on that terrible retreat through the mountains. There was a detachment of
Spahis
, cavalry from French Algeria, stationed in Salonika, and she sometimes watched them exercising their Arab mounts on the beach – beautiful horses whose delicate build belied their capacity for speed and endurance.

One day, Sasha met her at the hospital with the words: ‘Come with me. I want to show you something.'

He took her to the cavalry barracks and called to a stable lad to bring out ‘the horse'. The boy led out a splendid bright bay and trotted him round the
manege
where the horses were schooled.

‘What do you think?' Sasha asked.

Leo narrowed her eyes. ‘Good conformation. Nice short back and powerful hocks. Lovely head carriage. Very nice.'

He laughed. ‘I'm glad you approve. And, you see, I have taken to heart what an impudent boy once said to me about greys being too conspicuous on the battlefield.'

Leo grinned back at him. It was hard to believe now that once, almost four years ago, he had mistaken her for that youth. ‘You've bought him?'

‘Yes. After all, I shall need something to carry me when we eventually start the campaign. I am going to call him Plamen.'

‘Flame,' Leo translated. ‘Yes, very appropriate.'

‘Bring out the other one,' Sasha called to the boy.

‘Two?' Leo queried.

The boy came back with a chestnut mare with a white star on her brow. ‘You told me once your father gave you a horse like this one and she was taken by the army,' Sasha said. ‘I thought you might find this an acceptable replacement.'

Leo looked from him to the horse and back again. ‘Sasha, she's beautiful! Thank you!'

‘She has a name, too. Zvesda – Star.'

Leo climbed over the fence and approached the horse, who stretched her neck and blew through her nostrils at Leo's outstretched hand. The stable boy, smiling, handed her a piece of carrot. The horse took it with delicate lips and Leo slid her hand up the glossy neck and scratched her gently between the ears.

‘She likes you,' Sasha said from close behind her.

‘And I love her,' Leo replied. ‘She's perfect – and you are very kind. I couldn't ask for a better present.'

After that, they rode out together along the beach every day before breakfast. During the day, Sasha drilled his men and conferred with General Bojovic, who now commanded the Serbian army; Leo continued with her duties at the hospital, and at night they slept in each other's arms. It was a time of joy for both of them, but joy for Leo that trembled always on the brink of anguish, knowing that it must be short-lived.

Letters arrived for Leo, redirected from London. There was one from Tom, to whom she had agreed to be engaged in a move which suited them both for different reasons, and a shorter one from her brother, Ralph. Both men were currently fighting on the Western Front. There were two from Victoria, who was in the same area with the FANY. Tom described the beauties of the French countryside as if he was there for a holiday, and Victoria relayed funny anecdotes about incidents in the Calais Convoy, the FANY detachment which had been set up to collect wounded men from the front line and transfer them to hospital. Neither of them spoke of the war, except tangentially, and since all the letters had been written several weeks earlier Leo had no way of knowing if her friends were still alive.

It was over a year since she had left her FANY comrades to join Mabel Stobart's Women's Sick and Wounded Convoy in Serbia, and more than that since she had last seen Tom. Although their engagement had been a matter of convenience for them both, freeing Leo from the oppressive if well-meaning control of her brother Ralph, and providing Tom with camouflage for desires he was afraid to acknowledge, she had developed a genuine affection for him. She found it hard to imagine how a gentle, artistic soul like Tom could survive in the midst of the horrors she had encountered while she was in France. But so much time had passed and so much had happened to her since she left there that her memories had become vague. Tom and Victoria seemed to belong to a different life and she herself was a different person. She wondered what they were doing – and if they had survived until now.

Victoria clung to the steering wheel as a blast rocked the Napier and threatened to turn it over. Ahead, the road was lit up by the flash of explosions and, outlined against the glare, she could just make out the silhouette of the railway station and the adjacent building. Once it had been the veterinary hospital, but now it had been turned over to human use. Above her, the sky was criss-crossed by the beams of searchlights and over the noise of the engine she could hear the roar of aero engines and the scream of descending bombs.

Her companion, a VAD called Monica Dickenson, leaned over and yelled in her ear. ‘They're getting a terrible pasting. Do you think we should hold back for a bit?'

‘We can't!' Victoria yelled back. ‘There are wounded in there to be evacuated.'

She pressed the accelerator and drove the Napier forward. As if some higher power had intervened there was a pause in the bombing and they reached the entrance of the hospital safely. As soon as the ambulance stopped the doors of the building opened and stretcher-parties appeared. Dickenson jumped down and opened the back of the vehicle and four stretchers were hurriedly slid into position.

‘Look out!' someone yelled. ‘He's coming back. Take cover!'

A man tugged at Victoria's door. ‘Quick! Take cover!'

‘I can't!' she shouted back. ‘I can't leave four wounded men out here. Get in, Dickie! We've got to move!'

Dickenson jumped up beside her and Victoria reversed and turned the Napier to head back towards Calais. As she did so she heard the German plane swoop low overhead and another bomb exploded somewhere behind them. A short distance away she saw a dark shape beside the road.

‘That looks like some kind of barn or shed,' she shouted to her companion. ‘I'll pull in there and hope he doesn't spot us.'

The open-sided barn offered little in the way of shelter but at least they felt less exposed than on the open road. Victoria turned off the engine and they both climbed into the back of the vehicle, where the four patients lay on their stretchers.

‘You girls ought to be in a dugout, not out here like this,' one of the men said.

‘Can't leave you all alone, can we?' Victoria replied. ‘Cigarette?'

‘You're an angel of mercy, and no mistake!' he exclaimed.

One of the patients was only semi-conscious, but the other three willingly accepted cigarettes and they all lit up as the bombs continued to crash around them. Eventually, silence fell and Dickenson climbed down and looked out at the sky.

‘I think it's over. It's all quiet.'

‘Right!' Victoria scrambled back to the driving seat. ‘Let's get out of here while the going's good!'

A few miles away the Second Battalion of the Coldstream Guards was back in billets again after a spell on the front line. This time the officers, including Tom, were housed in a small chateau which had somehow remained undamaged in a fold in the hills. For once, he had a room to himself and was enjoying the unaccustomed luxury of a comfortable bed and the occasional hot bath. Even the mess dinners were no longer as drearily formal as they used to be. Many of the old hands had disappeared: some killed, others transferred to fill the gaps in other units. New men had taken their places, many of them not regular soldiers, and the atmosphere had become much more relaxed and collegiate.

In spite of this temporary improvement in physical conditions, morale was low. After the long months of minor skirmishes they were all weary and bored, and a stream of bad news had done nothing to help. First, word had arrived that the entire British force in Mesopotamia had been obliged to surrender to the Turks; then they read in the papers of the Easter Rising in Dublin and soon after that of the inconclusive battle of Jutland, at which the pride of the British Navy had been humbled by the Germans. No one could see how the present stalemate could be resolved and there was a general feeling that the war would drag on for ever.

The family who owned the chateau had decamped to safer lodgings, but some of the servants, either too old or too young for active service, remained. Among them was a boy in his mid-teens; good-looking after a fashion with full, red lips and thick dark hair which he was constantly pushing back from his brow in what struck Tom as a rather affected manner. His name was Louis and he helped out in the kitchen and generally fetched and carried. He often hung around the officers' quarters, waiting for the chance to run errands, for which he was rewarded with cigarettes and chocolate.

One evening, Tom was in his room, tidying himself before going down to dinner, when there was a knock on the door. Louis stood outside with a glass of Pernod on a tray.

‘For you, Lieutenant,' he said.

‘No, not me,' Tom responded. ‘I didn't ask for it.'

‘Yes, for you,' the boy insisted, stepping adroitly round Tom into the room.

‘No!' Tom said again. ‘I don't even like Pernod. You must have got me mixed up with one of the others.'

Louis put the glass down and gave Tom a lascivious smile. ‘You give me cigarettes, yes?'

‘No. Why should I give you cigarettes? I didn't send for that drink.'

The boy stepped closer. ‘Yes, you give me cigarettes and I . . .' He leaned in and whispered in Tom's ear a suggestion of such extreme obscenity that Tom felt himself grow hot with shame.

He took a sharp step backwards. ‘No! You will do no such thing! Get out, and take your foul suggestions with you. I wouldn't dream of indulging in anything so gross.'

Louis's eyes widened mockingly. ‘No?'

‘No! Now, get out.'