Heart of War (21 page)

There was a glisten in Lauder's eyes, too, Florinda saw, watching from the wings; and that was the secret. That was why he was a great artist, and she never would be, for she would never have that ability to give all of herself – to abolish what she actually was, and be only the person, the singer, alone on the Scottish hillside: and she knew it.

Lauder's expression changed; the near-recitative changed to a cheerful rhythmic tune. The audience moved, smiled, began to laugh, chuckle … Lauder waved the great stick in the air, banged it down:

Roamin' in the gloamin' on the bonnie banks of Clyde

Roamin' in the gloamin' wae my lassie by my side
,

When the sun has gone to rest, that's the time that we love best
,

O it's lovely roamin' in the gloamin'!

He stumped off, banging down the stick. The audience rose, clapping, shouting. He came back, waved the stick, and clumped off again. Once more … he stopped in the centre of the stage and said, ‘Let's have
Little Redwing
. And all of ye, sing wi' me. Ready?'

The sun shines bright on little Redwing, on little Redwing …

Just right for this moment, Florinda thought; though Lauder had said that he'd sing
A wee deoch an' doris
as an encore. But he had sensed that the people out there – the soldiers and sailors on leave – didn't want cheerful songs. There was no way of cheering them up that wasn't inherently a farce, considering where they were going. They wanted sentiment, tears in the eyes, songs of mother, betrayed love, loneliness.

The performance continued. The professionals were what Florinda wanted to be, and they gave their money's worth – what would have been their money's worth, if they were being paid. Jenny Jenkins had had too much champagne, but that did not prevent her singing half a dozen songs, three of them sentimental ballads, which had the soldiers sitting with heads bent, tears dropping slowly onto the floor. The lords and ladies in front sat quiet, controlled, but moved … Russell Wharton relieved the mounting tension with a gay dance with Jenny, and then a monologue that was full of double entendre and on the edge of indecency, but never quite stepped over; it was also very funny. The soldiers let themselves go, releasing in bellows of laughter repressed feelings that were, in truth, at the other end of the emotional spectrum. The jokes and innuendoes took a longer time to reach the pickled brain of the Marquess of Jarrow, who three times burst out laughing a good minute after the joke had been made. The third time he laughed so hard he fell forward off his chair face down on the floor.

Florinda was ready. She had had two soldiers standing by for this since the performance began. One of them was Recruit Fletcher Gorse, her brother … but few here knew that, and those that did held their counsel. She said, ‘Take him to the car – the red Rolls Royce outside the Mess. Woodward will look after him till I can come – he's the chauffeur.' The soldiers half-supported, half-carried him out, while Russell Wharton continued his monologue without a break.

Then it was Florinda's turn and she found her pulse quickening and her mouth dry as she smoothed down the milkmaid's dress, just below knee length, with milk pail and bonnet, that was her costume. Ever since the Swanwicks' eldest son, Lord Cantley, had made her his mistress, she'd faced down every kind of public and private disapproval without any emotion other than a fierce joy and pride in living her own life; it had been the same when Cantley joined the Guards and she went to live with Lord Jarrow; but this, facing an audience, was different. She was trembling, her palms wet. ‘Stage fright,' she muttered, ‘and I've sung a score of times in public now.'

Wharton said, ‘You'll never get over it … if you're any good.'

She walked out and Wharton, who was Master of Ceremonies as well as his other duties, introduced her. ‘My lord, ladies and gentlemen … Florinda!'

She did her best, singing, dancing, twirling, showing her white stockinged legs to the edge of her frilly underwear, amid swirling petticoats. She sang and danced a duet about the wickedness of men, with Jenny Jenkins; and another, about young love, with Russell Wharton, and found herself able to put her soul into it more than with most other actors she had sung with. Russell was, of course, a nancy, and so she could really throw herself into the fiction that she loved him – nothing would come of it: the singer and the man were not the same.

Two or three more turns followed – a conjurer, a pair of acrobatic clowns … and then the finale, with the whole cast on stage, Lauder in the centre front, Florinda on one side, Jenny Jenkins and Russell Wharton on the other all singing ‘Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!' At last the lights went out – there was no way of dimming them – except for a pair of spotlights over the stage. Lauder walked out of the darkness, stood under the lights, and said quietly, ‘
Keep the home fires burning
… I'll sing the verses.' He raised one hand, leaning on the stick.

They were summoned from the hillside, they were called in from the glen
,

And the Country found them ready, At the stirring call for men
.

Let no tears add to their hardships, As the soldiers pass along
,

And although your heart is breaking, Make it sing this cheery song –

He beckoned to the massed soldiers, bringing them to their feet. The deep throb of their voices filled the hall:

Oh, damn, Florinda muttered, wiping her eyes with her sleeve: Ivor deserves the millions he must be making from that song. It was just right; and it meant something. She
couldn't go to the war, but she could keep the home fires burning for those who did, for the nameless, hungry soldiers, by her singing and dancing.

After a pause the lights came up and the performers stood, bowing, as the audience clapped. Several minutes later, while Florinda again felt the tears coming to her eyes, Lauder raised his arms, and in the sudden quiet, said, ‘Tha's all … Gude nicht!' He turned and shepherded the actors off the stage toward the makeshift dressing rooms behind. There he put out his hand to Florinda, ‘It was gude of you to tak' the time, Lady Jarrow.'

Florinda said, ‘Oh, you know I have nothing else to do … Do you think I'll ever be any good, Mr Lauder?'

The little man's shrewd eyes fastened on her with new attention. He hitched the plaid up on his shoulder and took a firmer grip of the crooked stick, ‘Ye have a gude voice, and gude legs. Ye'll just have to work, lassie … work, and lairrn from ithers. Gude nicht, again.'

He turned away. Florinda found Russell Wharton at her side. ‘I heard,' he said. ‘He's right … but don't be discouraged. I've seen women with less natural talent than you have, reach the top of the tree, or near it.'

They were all about their business – at the mirrors, wiping off make-up, taking off dresses, and trousers in full view of performers of the opposite sex across the passage. Professionals.

Florinda's brother Fletcher came in and saluted – ‘His Lordship is sleeping comfortably, m'lady.'

She said, ‘Come on,' and walked out of the side door of the hall with him. ‘Poor little bugger!' she said; then, ‘How are you getting on in the Army?'

‘All right … wasting my time, mostly.'

‘Have you got a girl?'

‘None of your business.'

‘Well, who is it? I know you have one. I can tell by your voice.'

‘Is there anything more you'll be wanting of me, m'lady?'

‘Oh, fuck you, Fletcher.' She kissed him quickly and hurried across the square to the waiting Rolls. She'd better get the poor old drunk home.

In the anteroom of the Officers' Mess, its normal furniture
now back in place, and the chimney bench again round the hearth, but a faint scent of women's perfume still lingering, the clock over the mantel struck half past one in the morning. Three men sat in a close group in the middle of the room – Captain George Clifford, Captain Charles Kellaway, and 2nd Lieutenant Archie Campbell. Clifford was a Regular, pre-war adjutant of the 2nd Battalion in India, but now wore a black eyepatch over the empty socket of his left eye, which he had lost near Arras with one of the New Army battalions early in the year. On recovery he had been appointed as Depot adjutant, a job which had hardened the lines of his face and considerably shortened his temper. Kellaway had come to the Depot on this, the last day but one of his leave from the 1st Battalion, in order to take a draft of men to the active battalions on the Western Front. Archie Campbell, the eldest of the three, was humming Harry Lauder's
A Portobello Lassie
under his breath and half listening to the others.

‘It depends on the French,' Clifford said. ‘If they can hold out at Verdun, we'll end the war this year.'

Kellaway said, ‘They won't be able to hold out unless we help. We're going to make a big push. We must.'

Clifford said sharply, ‘Why do you say “must”? What do …?' He cut himself short. He despised amateur soldiers, Campbell knew, and Kellaway was an amateur … and a rich dilettante of the arts, perhaps a pouf into the bargain; but Kellaway commanded a company of the 1st Battalion, while Clifford was staying here …

Kellaway said placatingly, ‘Everyone was talking about it when I left. I've even heard it's to be on the Somme.'

Clifford nodded, ‘I suppose you're right … Let's hope we don't make a balls of it, like Loos, again.'

‘It won't be like Loos,' Kellaway said, ‘but there'll be a big butcher's bill. To be of any help to the French, our offensive will have to be far more than a token push.'

The room was swaying slightly round Archie, and he knew that if he tried to get up he would sit down again. This talk of war was boring, and … what, improper? No shop in the mess, they'd told him in the Argylls, and they had the same rule here; every mess in the Army had it. Perhaps in the old Regular Army war wasn't shop. He giggled at the thought, then said, ‘That Florinda lassie has a gude pair of
legs on her, does she no'?
An'
she can sing better than a corncrake.'

Clifford said, ‘We do not discuss women in mess, Campbell. You've been told that.'

‘Yes, sir,' Archie said. He felt rebellious.

Clifford stood up. ‘I'm off to bed … Sarn't!'

‘Sir?' The mess sergeant appeared in the door from the pantry.

‘How many waiters are still on duty?'

‘Three, and myself, sir.'

‘Send them to bed, except one. You can go, yourself. The waiter on duty can lock up.'

‘Very good, sir.' The sergeant stiffened in salute, and left the room.

‘Good night,' Clifford said. He walked out.

Archie peered dimly at Kellaway. ‘How about a wee drap, Captain Kellaway?'

Kellaway said, ‘I'll have a small one … Waiter!'

The waiter appeared, a stocky black-avised man in khaki uniform trousers, white jacket and white cotton gloves, by now none too clean. ‘Two small whisky and sodas,' Kellaway ordered.

‘A large one for me,' Archie said. He swayed forward, ‘You're going out to the 1st Battalion on Sunday, sir?'

‘For heaven's sake don't call me “sir.” Yes, I am. Looking forward to it.'

‘How can that be?'

Kellaway looked round the room, at the paintings of past battles, dead colonels, and packs of foxhounds; at the leather covered furniture and the mahogany table with its neatly arranged piles of
Tatlers, Sporting Times, Illustrated London News, Spheres, Times, Morning Posts, Daily Telegraphs;
at the tattered French colour taken at Madras, the Napoleonic eagle taken at Waterloo and on a side table the silver pisspot, now filled with flowers, once the property of a marshal of the French Empire …

At length he said, ‘You'll find out … You're the painter, aren't you?'

‘The
painter? Goad, ye mean ye've hairrd of me? But of course, ye're not a Regular!'

‘I have two paintings of yours,' Kellaway said. ‘A seascape and a Clydeside shipbuilding yard.'

‘I remember them,' Archie cried eagerly. ‘What do you think of Picasso? Braque? The cubists? Can you make head or tail of them?'

Kellaway nodded, murmuring ‘Thanks' as the waiter glided in, handed them their drinks, and glided out again. He said, ‘I don't understand them yet, but then one doesn't really understand an El Greco, for a time, at least.' He drank, and glanced at the clock. ‘I'm going to bed soon. I'm due in the C.O.'s office at eight to check the draft lists.'

Archie drank deep and again and leaned forward confidentially. His Scots accent was gone, as he said, ‘You really think there's a big push coming soon?'

‘I'm sure of it,' Kellaway said. ‘The French are insisting.'

‘Maybe I'll be out by then. Though they seem to think I'm too old … The adjutant was talking of keeping me here to do office work.'

‘Why don't you apply to be an official war artist?' Kellaway said. ‘You're wasted as a platoon commander. We can find plenty of them, especially with conscription.'

Archie said, ‘The same reason you want to get back to the battalion. I wouldn't be
in
the war if I was only painting it.'

Kellaway emptied his glass and stood up – ‘Well, I'm off. I hope you do get out soon, and to the 1st Battalion. We could talk about art and artists to our hearts' content. There's not much else to talk about.'

‘Quentin Rowland's your CO., is he not?' Archie said.

‘Yes. He's …' Kellaway stopped short: ‘Well, good night.'