In Distant Fields (31 page)

‘I thought you'd already left, Al,' a voice behind Almeric said, and turning, he saw his sister Allegra, putting on her coat and pulling on her gloves.

‘And I thought you were learning to be a nurse.'

‘I am. I had a couple of hours off so I thought I'd come and take a last look round.'

‘We're not selling Knowle House,' Almeric laughed. ‘Only putting it in storage, as it were.'

‘Imagine,' Allegra said quietly, looking up the stairs. ‘Does this mean one won't be able to stay here at all?'

‘If you don't mind sleeping on the floor. Everything is to be stored, and the house made into a club for young officers home on leave. I gather Opal and Julie and a whole lot of Mamma's friends are going to run it. Good idea, don't you think?'

‘That means it's going to go on, doesn't it, Al? The war, I mean. Papa wouldn't hand over Knowle House for an officers' club unless he knew it was all going to go on for longer than they're saying.'

‘I'm inclined to agree, Allegra,' Almeric replied. ‘Although I did hear Papa say that whatever happened Knowle House had to do its bit, no matter what the duration of the war. If there was a need, I seem to remember him saying, then they would make sure that Knowle was pushed into service. Good idea to have a place for young officers. Somewhere where they can come and relax. Put everything behind them for a while.' Almeric fell silent, all at once imagining himself to be one of their number, sitting in an armchair in his own family home, surrounded by companions putting everything behind them for a while. ‘Right,' he said, returning to reality. ‘Time for me to go and catch my train.'

‘You're all right, aren't you, Al? You like this sort of thing, army and fighting and so on?' As Al gave Allegra a look as they walked to the door: ‘What I meant was—'

‘I know what you meant, Allegra darling. And I'm fine. I'm in altogether good shape.'

Almeric smiled at her and took one last look round. Never once had he thought that their whole life would be taken down and put away in storage, perhaps never to be reclaimed. Like so many he had imagined that they would sail across the Channel, give the enemy a bloody
nose and come back to everything being absolutely and exactly as it had been before.

‘What ho,' he said to his sister with a wink. ‘What ho.'

Then he was gone.

Maude had left Cheeseman and a couple of maids in charge of the house, and taken herself off to London, determined to make something of herself at last, determined to join the growing numbers of women and girls who were offering their services for nursing. Bertie had already gone off to training camp, and Cecil, of course, could not wait to don a uniform, so there was only Hughie left, and since he was in America, there was nothing much more to be done about anyone.

My chest
,
you know
,
dearest Mamma – I am sure you will remember it – a bit noisy for running about the battlefield. Everyone will hear me coming!
he had written from America.
If it got on the top brass's nerves the way it got on Papa's whenever he came across me, which happily for him was rare enough, they would order me to be shot at dawn
.

That had made Maude laugh, and she had read and reread the letter, before stepping out of the train, and looking up and down the crowded station platform. For the first time it struck her, as she saw the constant crowded movement around her, that not only was her country at war, but everyone in her country was going
off
to war. The young men that passed them with cropped hair
and determined expressions were already giving the civilians in suits that had occupied the first-class carriage with her more than passing glances, glances that already held in them a vague disparagement, glances that told Maude, and them, that it was time for them to change out of their smart tailored suiting and join the rest of the world, who were busy climbing into uniforms. Her young footman, Jakes, had not been able to wait. He did so love a uniform, did Jakes. So off he had gone, could not wait to see himself in a smart new army uniform, the way he had not been able to wait to climb into a footman's uniform. Cheeseman, of course, considered himself too old to go, and that was only to be expected, and very practical from Maude's point of view, because it meant that she
could
go, leaving her house and grounds in his safe hands, bless him. And she did bless him. She sometimes felt more married to Cheeseman than she did to Cecil, which was hardly surprising, really.

‘So you are staying in London while the war lasts, are you, Mamma? Off to join some splendid knitting circle, no doubt?' Bertie teased his mother when, having been given a pass for the day, he was able to join her for luncheon.

‘No, Bertie, I am not good at knitting, I am happy to tell you,' Maude smiled. ‘All that stitch counting, it does so preclude good conversation. Besides, knitting is for the women who are at home, and I am not going to stay at home. I am going to nurse; and if they do not want me as a
nurse, if they consider me too old, then I shall go into some other kind of war work. Perhaps making things for use on the battle front.'

In the event of having been turned away from nursing, Maude had actually put factory work second from the top on her list, which for a woman from her background, she knew, and was happy to know, would be considered unthinkable. If she was forced to admit this to Bertie, she fully expected him to be outraged, but happily he was far too busy fulminating about the treatment that had just been meted out to Victor Aldridge, his boyhood fishing friend.

‘So, poor old Victor finds himself being confronted by this counter jumper with a list of schools pinned to the wall behind his desk, if you please. It seems that he hasn't attended the right school, so he won't be able to join our regiment. Victor could go up to Oxford tomorrow and get a double first with one hand tied behind his back, but this numbskull, who can only think in straight lines, tells him he is not officer material because – because he has not attended a public school, of all things!'

‘Poor Victor …' Maude murmured in a vague voice as she stared round the dining room. On the surface, everything looked the same: people eating luncheon, talking to each other, no one scanning the newspapers, no lists yet published; and yet everyone knew, out there, over the Channel, on the borders of France and Belgium, everyone knew that the fighting had begun.
Somewhere someone's son, a Hughie or a Bertie, must already have been killed; some other mother would soon be grieving.

‘I must go. I'm meeting Sister Agnes at two thirty, and she will not be grateful if I am so much as a second late.'

Bertie stood up. ‘Goodbye, Mamma.' He leaned forward and pecked his mother on the cheek.

‘You're not off now, are you, Bertie?'

Maude stared into her beloved younger son's face. Bertie was so handsome, but more than that, he was so decent; and yet the look in his eyes was sad, as if he already knew something that he would never tell her. Please God, he did not.

‘I leave for Bovington at four o'clock,' he stated, but he was careful to smile, rolling his eyes in such a way that made it seem as if he was saying, ‘So
dull
.' ‘You know how it is, Mamma. They have to try and make something of us. All very jolly, sleeping under canvas, learning to teach the men something called “fearfulness”. We are all nothing more than grown-up Boy Scouts really!'

Bertie had looked into his mother's eyes and seen how much she minded that he was going back to camp, that they were saying goodbye yet again, for perhaps – well, perhaps for quite a bit of time – so he was intent on pretending that he wasn't really off to war, wasn't really going to be shot at, might be going on a bit of a jolly to
France one of these days, but would soon be back to plague her, he hoped. He turned away as she left the luncheon room. He turned because he wanted to photograph his mother as she was that early afternoon in London, in her summer dress and straw hat, her gloved hands carrying some delightfully frivolous handbag, her long blonde hair looped up carefully, as it always was, under the hat, small drop pearl earrings, a thin gold bracelet over her glove, gloves whose buttoning she always slipped her hands through to roll back up her sleeve while she ate, and then slipped back again, once she was leaving. Yes, he had it all in the camera of his mind.

It was only a short walk to Sister Agnes's nursing home, but Maude was glad of it, and of the slight breeze that was blowing, hoping that as it danced past her it would take with it the picture of Bertie in his uniform, of his bonny looks, of his youthful expression, trying so hard to be brave the way he had always tried so hard to be brave when leaving for school, lifting up his face to say goodbye, his eyes blinking away the tears he did not want her to see. It was all hard, so hard, and knowing that thousands were going through the same thing did not help at all. What could help was to put herself to use. If only Sister Agnes, whom she had heard was a stickler, would not turn her away as useless, someone who knew nothing more than how to ring a bell for her maid, and draw up menus for Cheeseman to take to Cook.

*     *     *

As Partita followed her mother through the miles of corridors at Bauders, she found she was all too glad of Kitty's company. As the youngest of the family, to her, the whole of her life seemed to have been spent as an appendage to those of her older brothers and sisters, and apart from her mother, she liked to tell herself that, discounting the loyalties of people like Tinker, Tully and Harry, she had never really had a real friend of her own. Naturally, now everyone was gone, or nearly everyone, she felt even more sorry for herself, and at the same time more than ever grateful for Kitty's companionship.

‘I just hope we'll be able to help all these poor fellows, the ones who are going to be coming here,' Circe fretted as she tried on one of several vast aprons that were awaiting her approval. ‘It's all very well to plunge oneself into these ventures, but in the cold light of day one does suddenly realise what little one knows.'

‘You will be wonderful, Mamma,' Partita reassured her. ‘Firstly you have a natural understanding about medicine, and you always have had, and secondly, if you're not good with people I would love to know who is. One look at you and Tommy will be throwing away his crutches and dancing the grand fandango.'

Circe nodded, not really paying much attention.

‘I do hope they don't find this place too bleak,
Partita. I mean, look, hardly a stick of furniture where it used to be.'

‘I think there's still enough furniture here for most people, Duchess, really I do,' Kitty said, a little primly.

Circe nodded again.

‘I suppose so, Kitty, but really one does wonder. After all, whoever comes here must be treated as a guest, not as a prisoner, and without so much of its usual fittings, poor old Bauders looks really rather bleak and medieval.'

‘They're not coming here for a holiday, Mamma.'

‘Or a lecture course on fine art,' Circe added, looking down herself and smoothing out her overstarched apron. ‘What a perfectly ghastly piece of costume. I am not sure that I am cut out to be a matron, really I'm not, Tita.'

‘Are we going to have enough hands, Mamma?' Partita wondered. ‘Everyone seems to be leaving the old place in their droves – two more this morning, and seven yesterday, Wavell told me.'

‘We hope there are enough of us left who are too old for active service,' Circe replied. ‘I must say I was worried, just like you, and said as much to your father, but Papa thinks that we will have enough of an élite corps to keep the place going on all fronts.'

‘Heavens, Mamma!' Partita stood back and stared at her mother. ‘You not only look like a matron, you're beginning to sound like one!'

The Duchess sighed. ‘All too true, Tita, all too true.'

She turned and nodded to the people who had carried her old gilt and inlaid favourite
bonheur du jour
down from her boudoir to place it at the top of what only a few days before had been her dining room.

Once Circe had decided on her apron and a dress appropriate for her duties, she returned everyone to the drawing room to help make up the beds, stifling any complaints from her daughter before they were joined by the maids she had designated to help them.

‘We're all going to have to turn a hand to these things, lovey,' Circe told Partita, who was still looking amazed at the prospect of making up beds. ‘Not only are we short-handed, but we have work to do, work that cannot be done by others.'

Partita pulled a face behind her mother's back and looked round the room, pulling an even more dismal face as she regarded grubby walls bearing only the outlines of where the magnificent Van Dyck portraits had been hanging, and bare floorboards stripped of their vast, faded oriental rugs. Gone were all the fine furniture, the silver, the china and the porcelain, the room being now furnished instead with rows of hospital beds and simple tables and side cupboards, ready to hold all the medical necessities of the sick and injured, newly acquired oil lamps, and piles of sheets and blankets ready to be made up on the beds.

‘What on earth is that?' Kitty wondered as she saw Partita pulling on some sort of a bonnet. ‘You look like a shepherdess.'

‘It's the only spare bonnet I could find that was remotely suitable,' Partita said, tying the ribbons of the lace-trimmed bonnet under her chin. ‘I got it from the dressing-up box.'

‘Baa-baa black sheep,' her mother smiled when she saw her. ‘All you're short of is a crook. Now come along, you two, we really don't have all day – especially since you both have to go off for your classes.'

The three of them took armfuls of bed linen, which they then placed on a set of as yet unmade beds. The Duchess looked at the bed, then at the pile of bedclothes, then at Kitty.