How Dear Is Life (39 page)

H
OLDING
his umbrella over himself and Hetty, Thomas Turney stood on the Thames Embankment, watching the funeral procession of Lord Roberts on its way to the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Drifting rain had dispelled the slight fog of the late November morning, which began in doubtful grey, so they had come well wrapped up, Thomas Turney with soft brown canvas gaiters around his trousers below the knee.

As the gun-carriage passed, he removed his black square hat and saw upon the coffin, draped with Union Jack, the sword and baton, the medals and orders and decorations, together with the service cap of the dead Field-Marshal. Behind the gun-carriage a groom led a black charger, bearing large black full-dress riding-boots reversed in the irons.

Among the twelve pall-bearers, six in single file on either side of the gun-carriage, he recognised Lord Kitchener, Sir Evelyn Wood, both Field-Marshals, and Admiral Lord Charles Beresford. It was remarkable that not one of the twelve appeared to be in step with the muffled drum-beats, the band playing
Dead
March
in
Saul
in slow time which the Guards, rifles reversed, paced out with legs rigid and boot-toes pointed. No, the high and mighty seemed to be doing a step of their own forward, each in a different time, while white feathers in cocked hats undulated to the movements.

Rain swayed with the gusts of wind; a sparrow flew, a planetree leaf fell; the drum muffled in
crêpe
beat out hollow thuds to music seeming to sob with the finality of death, all glory done, yet all to do again, from one generation to another, anguish and hope, dust to dust.

“We’ll take the tram, Hetty, and get a cab from Blackfriars before the street is closed, if we’re so fortunate.”

So they caught up with the procession and passed it, leaving behind the bump and blare, the out-of-step elderly skipping, the rigidity of slow-marching guardsmen.

“I hope you won’t catch cold, Papa——”

“No, my girl, I’m well wrapped up. I put on my chest-protector, as a precaution. I hope Phillip is wearing his, you can’t be too careful in this weather.”

“He is well away from the trenches now, he writes this morning, Papa. They are getting up football teams among the companies. He thinks they may soon be training to be officers.”

“I see the scale of officer’s pay has been raised, Hetty, according to
The
Telegraph.
And the messing is not to be so expensive, as it was before the war. Income tax, d’ye see how it’s gone up? Lloyd George has doubled it in the War Budget, in this morning’s paper, to one and sixpence. The unearned tax, I see, is up fivepence to one and eightpence in the pound. We shall all have to practise stricter economy now—d’ye see they’ve put an extra threepence on a pound of tea?”

“Yes, Papa, Dickie told me this morning.”

They managed to get a cab to St. Paul’s, and walked up the steps where pigeons, descendants of wild rock doves, were strutting with the sparrows, as much a part of the London scene as the look of shut-away thought on the faces of the people.

They entered the Cathedral, and were in vast gloom beaded by remote candle-points. They sat down on one side of the nave; and kneeling, prayed for their wishes: Thomas Turney that his children and grandchildren would be preserved in all trials and tribulations ahead, particularly his three grandsons, and that a successful end to the war be forthcoming before all business, on which the welfare of the nation depended, was dislocated irreparably. Almighty God, he thought in supplication, would understand his meaning, clumsily expressed as it might be—Amen.

Hetty prayed for her son to be brought safely through the war, and for all sons of mothers: would Dear God answer their prayers, and bring peace upon earth once more, in the name of the Lord Jesus, to whom all sorrows were known, and by Mary the Blessed Mother of God, who had stood by and seen the Agony of Love for the World denied as it was denied now, O God, in the dreadful war because men’s hearts were hardened against Thy Word. I beseech thee, O God, to hear my prayer, and to bring my son Phillip through all dangers and trials. He is a good boy, Dear God, and when he has come to thy Word, his goodness will be a light, Thy Light, O Lord, among men.

She sat up, her eyes gleaming in the candles that burned for the dead in that cavernous stillness of marble and stone, murmurous with the remote traffic of the city, the dull thudding of a drum, its aisles whispering with the feet of the bereaved coming to their seats, and the flutters of a solitary rock-dove high up in the dome, lost within vast space, seeking a way to freedom.

August
 1953—
February 
1954

Devon.

THE FLAX OF DREAM

The Beautiful Years

Dandelion Days

The Dream of Fair Women

The Pathway

The Wet Flanders Plain

A CHRONICLE OF ANCIENT SUNLIGHT

The Dark Lantern

Donkey Boy

Young Phillip Maddison

How Dear Is Life

A Fox Under My Cloak

The Golden Virgin

Love and the Loveless

A Test to Destruction

The Innocent Moon

It Was the Nightingale

The Power of the Dead

The Phoenix Generation

A Solitary War

Lucifer Before Sunrise

The Gale of the World