Sarum (188 page)
Authors: Edward Rutherfurd
There were other reasons to go to Sarum. The high ground of Salisbury Plain, for some forty years, had been a military training ground. There were several army stations there – no doubt there would have been something to see. A sharp-eyed scout might have realised that many of the country roads round the old cathedral city had been slightly widened and their ditches filled in; that around Old Sarum hill the roads were marked out in white – both suggesting the movement of tanks.
Having inspected Sarum, the plane might have turned north-east and followed the valley of the river Bourne in which direction it would have noticed other airfields.
But only if it had been able to come down, almost to touch the ground, would the plane have been able to see anything of the real secret of the area.
For as the great day approached, there was hardly a larger concentration of troops and armaments anywhere in Britain than there was at Sarum.
All over the plains, from Old Sarum north, trucks, tanks, weapons carriers, personnel carriers, jeeps, more tanks, and yet more tanks lay camouflaged, parked row upon row along the hillsides, by the edges of the trees, along the huge uncut hedgerows. English, Australian, Canadian, American troops, swarmed around the sleepy old city. In Lord Pembroke’s great house at Wilton resided the headquarters of Southern Command.
Sarum, for the first time in its history, had become one of the greatest encampments in Europe.
“The place is so loaded with armaments,” it was generally agreed, “it’s a wonder it doesn’t sink.”
Lieutenant Adam Shockley, pilot, Squadron 492, of the 48th Fighter Group, had taken the bus from Ibsley to Salisbury in the middle of the morning.
It was good to have a day’s rest. The squadron, with the two others at Ibsley, had been making almost daily sweeps over Northern France in their P-47s, attacking radar stations, airfields and bridges after having received intensive bomber training on their arrival at the end of March. The raids were continuing intensely. He knew the invasion could not be very far away.
Of the city of Salisbury with its grey-spired cathedral, its market place and curious round earthwork he knew nothing at all, except what he had seen from the air.
The bus moved slowly. He wished he had managed to hitch a ride in a car. It was hard to believe that this road, with just room for two cars to pass, classified as a major highway. The little town of Fordingbridge, a village really, was picturesque beside the river. They passed through Downton, and a few miles further, came to a dip. On the right he saw the wall of what he supposed must be a great estate. He grinned. He was used to seeing stone walls round some of the old estates near his home in Philadelphia. “But these English walls are really built to keep you out,” he thought. On the right, a signpost to the village of Britford.
Then he saw the spire. Almost dead ahead, and a minute later he was gazing across the broad valley floor to the ancient city.
It was a peaceful-looking place. He wondered what he would find there. Nothing much, probably.
Brigadier Archibald Forest-Wilson leant back in the rear seat of the little Morris that was serving as his staff car that morning and, half closing his eyes, contemplated the back of the neck of the pretty young woman who was driving him. There was so much activity on the plain that day and such pressure on vehicles that the smartly dressed young A.T. S. volunteer had reverted to a practice from the start of the war – the car was her own.
The pool of A.T.S. drivers was fairly large, but she had often driven him before, between the various camps around Salisbury Plain, and he had noticed her fair hair and striking blue eyes with pleasure.
They had come across the chalk ridges from the Gunners’ camp at Larkhill, and now they were dropping down the long, tunnel-like avenue to Wilton. He smiled at the prospect ahead of him.
The officers’ club at Wilton was a very special place. No matter what the rationing might be, it was mysteriously always possible to get a whisky and a steak there. “And nobody but a bloody fool would ever ask how that fellow does it,” he thought fondly of the local man who ran this excellent establishment.
D-Day would be coming soon. He would miss it, of course, since he had been given a staff job. He was not sure if he were sorry or not. His career had been skilfully conducted: he had usually been able to see which way the wind was blowing. A spell in the Grenadiers, several shrewdly timed transfers including a year in military intelligence in the War Office. He had always been good with high ranking officers’ wives: too good some said. Too good, it was always understood, for his own well-born, rather fluffy little wife, married young, who had left him and then died. And now, would he make it to general? Probably not. Perhaps, if he stayed on after the war; but he was not sure he wanted to. He had several more interesting irons in the fire in the business world that he had been keeping warm when there was time; he might stand for Parliament as well. Why not? He could afford it. Good war record. He was sound, as they said.
Archibald Forest-Wilson was a very fortunate man, but dissatisfied. Tall, dark, with a long, saturnine face, a short moustache he confined to the centre portion of his upper lip, heavy-lidded black eyes under black eyebrows that turned upwards at the corners, his face was like a falcon’s. With men he was hard; with women, extraordinarily gentle – a combination which fascinated the latter in particular. He was an excellent shot. But his greatest love was fishing. He was skilful with the dry fly; it was a joy to watch him cast, but it was with the wet fly that he really knew happiness, trailing it, subtly, seductively under the surface, tempting the fish on to the hook, feeling their play and reading their mind from the tug and pressure beneath the surface of the water. There was something very deep, even primitive in Forest-Wilson that loved, above all, this manner of fishing.
Thoughtfully he watched the golden curls on the back of his pretty driver’s neck and noticed how she held her head.
Damn his father, though, he reflected. True, he had very sensibly married the second daughter, and co-heir, of the last Lord Forest. The Wilsons had had to give up the house near Christchurch in the last century, when their fortunes had dipped, but this marriage had made his father a rich man and he had bought an estate near Winchester. But then, when he had the chance to buy a title from Lloyd George, he had quibbled about the price. The fool, his son now thought, as he bumped into Wilton. He could probably have taken the old Forest title; as it was, there was just the estate, no more, and that was not enough. For Archibald Forest-Wilson was an ambitious man. The war would be over soon: it was time he married again, got an heir. Perhaps, even – why not? – that title.
Once again he found himself gazing at his driver: a nice girl – one of us. He had spoken to her several times. How old she was? Twenty-five maybe, twenty-six? He was forty-three. A bit old. But then, age gave him some advantages too.
The little car bumped past the gate of Wilton House and drew up by Kingsbury. He got out lazily.
“You’re going off for the day now I think, aren’t you, Patricia?”
“Yes, sir.”
He smiled pleasantly.
“I’m sorry I can’t offer you lunch, but the general’s expecting me. Perhaps you’d be free some other day – assuming nothing more dramatic intervenes.”
“That sounds very nice.”
Her smile was proper. So it should be to a brigadier. But he had easily taken in every detail of her: good legs, good figure, nice breasts, neither large nor small, stunning eyes. The short golden hair and the buttoned A.T.S. uniform certainly suited her very well. Hadn’t he asked her if she hunted once? Yes, he had. She had said yes.
Hunting bored him personally, but he usually liked women who did.
“Well,” he said easily, tucking his swagger stick under his arm, “I must be getting along.”
Patricia Shockley. A nice girl: and interesting too, perhaps.
At half past one Patricia Shockley sat opposite the large, burly form of John Mason in the narrow little restaurant near the entrance to the close called the House of Steps. It was just that: a medieval house, with heavy beams, and an extraordinary number of small steps and staircases between its many rooms and landings. It was also one of the best places to eat lunch.
But Patricia Shockley was not enjoying it.
What could she say?
“Tell me, is it because I’m not in uniform?”
There were little beads of sweat on the front of his head, where the hair was rapidly thinning. Would he sweat so much if he did not insist on wearing, even at the start of summer, that heavy brown suit of herringbone tweed and those heavy brown shoes, always polished until you could see your face in them, and which required those thick brown socks? Did he wear a woollen vest and underpants too? She imagined he did.
He was thirty-five. He might have been fifty. More. Sometimes she could almost scream.
Now. Should she tell him it was because he was not in uniform; should she tell him the truth; should she think of some other excuse? If in doubt, she decided, the truth.
“John, I’m just not in love with you. I’m sorry.”
“I thought perhaps . . .”
“Because I let you kiss me? No.”
“I see. That wasn’t my fault.”
Of course not. Nothing was ever John Mason’s fault. It was not his fault that his weak lung had prevented him getting into the army, though it preyed on his mind and made him feel guilty every day. Thank God women aren’t handing out white feathers in this war, she thought. As it was, John Mason had done more for the war effort than ten other men. He had done just enough of his work as a solicitor to pay his bills. All the rest of his time was devoted to war service. In the early days, he had been one of the few to take the threat of gas seriously and help organise some first aid volunteers; the volunteer fire brigade; the A.R.P. wardens; Mrs Roper’s hospital car service for ferrying patients about; and the system of inviting officers and G.I.s into Salisbury houses for a meal: there was almost nothing he had not had a hand in. He was an excellent organiser.
And no, it was not his fault she had felt sorry for him, let him take her out several times and, one evening, kissed him and let him return her kiss. She had thought it would do him good.
Would she have gone further – if he had not immediately become so serious and asked her to marry him? No. She did not think so.
“Perhaps later you may . . .”
“No.” She must be absolutely firm. “Please forget me.”
He looked at her hopelessly.
“I’ll try.”
She refused to feel guilty any more. Enough was enough.
It was absurd of him, John Mason thought dismally, to suppose this lovely, golden-haired girl in her trim uniform could possibly be interested in him. Yet behind her outgoing ways, he was sure he could see something vulnerable, childlike, that needed protecting. He would have protected her.
The coffee came. Thank heaven, she thought, that whatever the rationing, coffee was always in plentiful supply.
She was going to say; “We’ll have lunch next week.” Then she thought better of it. “I think we’d better not meet for a little while, John.”
“It’s all right,” he said.
“No it isn’t.” She got up. “I must go.”
She fled.
John Mason sat and considered. She had said: “It isn’t.” Did that mean she was upset? Clearly she was. And if she was upset, then she must at least feel something for him. She cared. He sipped his coffee moodily: he would not entirely give up hope.
The people of Sarum had done their best to make the huge influx of Americans welcome. But often they were puzzled. Two years of familiarity had ironed out many difficulties for both sides now, but misunderstandings remained.
The growing mutual respect with regard to the fighting itself had been a help. In 1942, the arriving Americans had often been contemptuous of their allies who had failed to win the war. At the same time, the first batch to reach Sarum in the summer of 1942 had come straight from training in Florida and arrived to face the English summer dressed in cotton and without a greatcoat between them. Even by English standards, that summer had been exceptionally cold and wet. The new arrivals who had made their scorn rather plain now retired in droves to hospitals with ’flu and even pneumonia. It had not been a good beginning.
The Africa campaign had changed all that. The contempt had gone; so had the arrogance. “Our boys were like a bunch of bananas,” a cheerful G.I. informed Patricia: “some green, some yellow, some plain rotten.” They had a new hero, too, that they shared with their allies: the British General Alexander.
The citizens of Salisbury also learned to know them better. For the American army, they soon concluded, organised itself in a somewhat different way; unlike the English, whose smaller numbers usually forced them to try, at least, to convert every soldier into a fighting man, simple observation soon taught the people of Sarum that in the U.S. Army there were two very distinct categories: those groups who had been selected as only good enough for support duties – clerks, paymasters and the like – and the combat troops, who, though they seemed to lean up against any free-standing object in a casual way that was surprising, had a tough, resilient quality about them that had to be admired. Soon, anyone in Sarum could tell one group from the other at a glance.
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