Post of Honour (28 page)

He had made insufficient allowance for the terrible attrition of the Somme battles. A reply came by return of post and he was offered, subject to a routine medical check, a temporary commission in the Royal Army Service Corps, Transport Section. He sat staring at the letter hardly knowing whether to be astonished, elated or dismayed and then, remembering Will and Smut and Jem and all the others, and weighing their worth against that of Sydney Codsall and Gloria Pitts, he made his decision. Fearing that Claire would try and talk him out of it he filled in the application and posted it, asking for an interview at the earliest possible date.

IV

H
e confessed that same night, when he and Claire were sitting late in front of the library fire. Her temperate reception of the news confounded him, so obviously so that she laughed, telling him, in Mrs Handcock’s phrase, that ‘she could read ’un like an ha’penny book!’ She could have said a great deal more on this subject, how she had watched him, anxiously and sympathetically, for months past as news reached the Valley in dribs and drabs of casualties, as fissures opened between combatant families and those who, by luck or design, had made money and managed to remain uncommitted. It was this, she felt, that was wearing him down for she had long ago accepted the fact that the social health of the estate concerned him very deeply, perhaps even more deeply than their domestic accord. This was the yardstick he used to measure his worth as a human being. She had watched him wince at the emergence of the Sydney Codsalls and their ilk, at rifts between men like Eph Morgan, whose only son had been killed, and men like Abe Tozer, the smith, whose son-in-law was said to be coining money in a Birmingham foundry. She too had been dismayed by the attack upon Elinor Codsall and by the traces of slime that survived Henry’s earnest attempts to make amends and yet, in the main, she had been unable to help him much for although she was Valley born she still looked at the Valley through clear glass and not, as he so obstinately did, through a stained-glass window. It was because she knew him so well that she had known it would end like this, in him going off in the wake of the others and she said, in reply to his question as to how she could know something he had not finally decided himself, ‘Oh, I knew you would go, sooner or later, and if I were in your shoes I suppose I should do the same. I don’t say I’d do it in the spirit of the slop one reads in the papers but, from a man’s viewpoint, it must seem that all the best are being sucked in and the discards spewed out! If you were ten years older you’d have to grin and bear it; as it is, thank God, you aren’t likely to be sent into the line; if they accept you at all, that is!’

‘They’ll accept me,’ he said, so huffily that she laughed again.

‘Yes, I suppose they will, for you’re a good deal lustier than some of the men they’ve taken. However, don’t run away with the idea that leg of yours will stand up to unlimited demands. What kind of jobs do they do in the Service Corps?’

He was so relieved that she accepted his enlistment as inevitable and was not disposed to make a song and dance over it that he became expansive. ‘The RASC take all the ammunition, stores and rations up the line. I shall try and wangle my way into a horse or mule section!’ but she reminded him that Ikey had told them mechanical transport had now all but superseded the horse in France, and that if he was judged on his handling of the old Belsize he would prove an expensive addition to the forces of the Crown. He was not entirely fooled by her gaiety but caught himself admiring her performance.

‘I don’t know why you should be so ready to consign me to the awkward squad,’ he grumbled, ‘I was in uniform the first day you saw me and you fell over yourself to catch my eye if I remember rightly!’

‘Yes I did,’ she agreed, ‘but you were young bones then! Besides you were the best catch in the county!’

‘I’ve still got a shot or two in my locker,’ he told her. ‘Come over here and I’ll prove it,’ but she declined the invitation and instead sat on the hearthrug looking into the coals as Paul watched the effect of firelight on her hair. As he mused he thought of something he had always been meaning to tell her but had somehow forgotten, not once but a dozen times, since their encounter with Grace at the time of the Coronation visit to London.

He reached out, heaved one of the heavy books from the shelf at his elbow and thumbed through the pages until he found the colour reproduction of Rubens’ young wife, Helene Fourment, as Bathsheba, receiving King David’s letter.

‘I don’t know whether you’ll be flattered or otherwise,’ he said, ‘but this was something I always meant to show you. The first time you and Grace met, that afternoon you came here with Rose soon after we were married, she produced this as soon as you had gone, and said you were Helene Fourment reincarnated. It wasn’t wholly a joke either, I think she half believed it.’

She showed interest at once, taking the book and studying it carefully. ‘Grace said that? All those years ago? But I was slim then and this girl would turn the scale to eleven stone! It was probably an attempt to put you off, I expect she saw you looking me over too attentively!’

He laughed, saying that even then he was inclined to think that Grace had been considering abdication. He could say that now and half-believe it for somehow, in the last year or so, he had begun to share a little of Grace’s impatience with parochialism. ‘You were never slim,’ he said, prodding her. ‘You had a neat waist and still have but you were always what the Edwardians called “a fine woman”, meaning that you had plenty to catch hold of! However, Helene was reckoned a great beauty, so I always regarded the comparison as a compliment, tho’, if I remember rightly, she did use the adjective “ripe”.’

‘It’s one that certainly suits me now,’ Claire said. ‘Are there any more of Hélène? Did he paint her often?’

‘He was always painting her. Damn it, the man was over fifty and she was sixteen when they married so can you blame him? If I could paint I’d have you sitting for me nude, half-dressed or over-dressed, eight hours a day!’ He took the book from her and looked closely at it again. ‘That’s an idea, Claire,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Would you like to sit for someone really good? After all, we look like being here permanently, so it’s time we laid down an ancestor or two!’

She was secretly delighted at the suggestion but made a protest nevertheless, saying that it would have been a pleasant notion ten years ago but today, at thirty-three, it was too late for that kind of nonsense.

‘Rubbish,’ he said, ‘look at some of these old hags of the Lovell family! I’d a damned sight sooner sit looking at you and pack this lot off to a sale. If we could get a London artist down he could do the children as well. I’ll write off to Uncle Franz, for I wager the old codger would know someone and keep his price down.’

She said slowly, ‘All right then but don’t be so eager to throw your money away. As a matter of fact I’ve a confession myself. I didn’t mean to tell until the plan was a lot further advanced but if you really are likely to go soon you ought to know at once. Had it ever occurred to you that
I
might want to play a more positive part in the war?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘frankly it hadn’t! You always seemed far better at carrying-on-as-usual than me.’ And then he remembered that long ago she had an ambition to nurse and had taken a course at St Thomas’s Hospital during her exile in London. He said bluntly, ‘Look here, I’m damned if I’ll stand for you working yourself to death as a VAD! I want you here when I come home and you have the children to think of.’

‘Oh, it wouldn’t involve leaving here,’ she said, airily, ‘but if you do go I don’t think I could hang around here passing the time, living for leave periods or the end of the war. I should have to have something to keep me occupied and as long as John Rudd is active he can care for the estate far better than I. I had . . . well, it occurred to me that we could turn this barn of a place into a hospital!’

‘A hospital! For stretcher-cases?’

‘No, that isn’t practical, something more modest like a convalescent home for about fifty to sixty wounded men who wouldn’t arrive until they were on the road to recovery. As a matter of fact I’ve already discussed it with Doctor Maureen.’

‘The devil you have!’

‘She thinks it’s a first-class idea. We’ve got at least ten rooms we now use for lumber. I could shift the children out of the east wing and clear the furniture from the big drawing-room that we hardly ever use. Then we could have a main ward on ground level and patients that could move about could sleep three to a room upstairs. If we needed more space we could get a couple of Nissen huts put up in the paddock. I got the idea watching Dandy Timberlake after he came home from Gallipoli. Men get patched up in big hospitals and then they go home on leave, most of them to industrial cities and some, I suppose, to near-slums. Then, as soon as their scars heal, they get reboarded but they aren’t really well at all, they’re still suffering from shock and nervous exhaustion like Dandy and some of the others about here who have been out a long time. A month or so in a place like this, with organised exercises, fresh air and sea-bathing from May to October would work wonders. I should like to do it, providing you agree.’

‘Well,’ he said, greatly impressed in spite of himself, ‘I suppose it’s possible but who would you get to run it?’

‘I’d run it,’ she said. ‘I’ve kept up-to-date reading Maureen’s journals and if we gave the house the Government couldn’t very well turn us down, could they? As to staff, there are more than a dozen wives in the Valley who would be glad to do something useful. We could even organise a local crêche, with a roster of nannies and older children taking their meals at Mary Willoughby’s so that their mothers could work part-time over here. They only drawback I can see is whether you really want the place knocked about by strangers and turned into a kind of barracks. After all, this is what you’ll be fighting for, and in spite of anything you might think at the moment your dream isn’t dead, Paul, only hibernating. Do you think I don’t know why you divert every penny you receive from the scrapyard into a special account, earmarked for post-war development!’

‘This is ridiculous!’ he exclaimed, laughing. ‘I don’t have a shred of privacy! How the devil did you know I had made up my mind not to make a personal profit out of munitions or other fiddles?’

‘Oh, I keep an eye on your papers when you’re on your rounds,’ she said carelessly, ‘and for all you know I go through your pockets from time to time. You ought to know that, seeing you’re likely to be turned loose in France among the mesdemoiselles and the WAACs! But don’t sidetrack me, I’ve got to know exactly how you feel about this plan. It’s got to have your blessing before I go ahead with it.’

He said, pulling her down on his knees, ‘I think it’s a damned good idea and with Maureen to keep an eye on the venture you’ll make a sensational success of it! Yes, it has my blessing, Claire. You’re nearer the truth than you know about the home background of those poor devils. There isn’t one in fifty who owns a square inch of the land he’s fighting for and Grenfell says their physique compares very poorly with the men they’re up against! Take a look at some of those strapping Fritzes in the camp and see for yourself, it’s a point worth taking!’ Then, teasing her, ‘I suppose when I do get leave and come back here pawing the ground I’ll be met by a starchy matron who regards me as a patient rather than a warrior in search of solace?’ and he ran his hands over her thinking what a fool he must be to sacrifice her society for the desolation Ikey had described to him in Flanders or even the cheerlessness of a base camp populated exclusively by men. She said, after a moment of this, ‘I’m always telling you we’re too old to do our courting in an armchair! Let’s go to bed,’ but the prospect of forsaking the warm fire and putting a term to one of the rare moments of intimacy was uninviting, so she remained where she was holding the future at bay and presently she provoked him into enacting one of those boisterous scenes that always made her chuckle in retrospect, as though they were not man and wife, with a growing family and a longish partnership behind them but a couple of youngsters making the most of a lucky opportunity in the front parlour, when everybody was out of the way.

V

P
aul’s summons to report for initial training at a nearby Officers’ Training Camp came in late November, 1916, but before he left Grenfell travelled down from London and spent a night or two at Shallowford. He was a very different James, Claire decided, from the buoyant, quietly confident professional they had often entertained in the days following his return to Parliament. The strain of long-night sittings and a share in decisions involving the slaughter of thousands of men showed in the lined face and patches of white hair above his ears. He had lost most of his jauntiness and now walked with a slight stoop. He was not, he told her, in the best of health, being sadly troubled with chronic indigestion and periods of sleeplessness, aggravated by his growing disgust for the jealousies and scramble for power among some of his senior colleagues and opposition members of the wartime Coalition. It was like, he told them, being aboard a crippled vessel among a lot of elderly passengers who had dismissed the crew and taken upon themselves the job of charting the ship’s course. Paul soon realised that he was not only losing faith in his revered leader, Asquith, whom Grenfell said was too much of a gentlemen to survive in such a scrimmage but had also come to dislike and distrust the firebrand, Lloyd George, who was openly flirting with Unionists, men like Bonar Law and the newspaper magnate, Alfred Harmsworth, in the hope of replacing Asquith as Premier. ‘I’m not so prejudiced as to think The Welsh Wizard wouldn’t make a good pilot,’ Grenfell admitted, ‘but the way he’s going about it could split the party down the middle and we are going to need men of Asquith’s integrity when this business is over. Sometimes I find myself more in sympathy with the men who had the guts to stand up in August, 1914, and condemn the whole business as an international crime! I wasn’t one of them but I supported the idea of a negotiated peace months ago and I’ve suffered for it since! Maybe Old Keir Hardie was right when he said, “If I had my time over again I should steer clear of politics and preach the gospel”.’