The First of July (14 page)

She inclined her head minutely, then looked around the room, taking in the company. He became conscious of a hubbub of voices, metal on china, clinking glasses, murmurs filling the silence when she stopped speaking. He realized how warm it was, noting that the skin of the black footman standing on the far side of the table was beaded with sweat. He could smell the gardenias. Yet outside, New York was frozen.

Finally, after a minute, she turned back to him.

“A wealthy man, a comfortable man,” her smile softened any mockery, “a well-connected man. Clearly a thinking man. But what else might you be or not be?”

That night, he wrote to an Army friend of his father’s who was currently commanding the Somersets. And the next day, he spoke briefly to a rather perplexed secretary at the British Embassy.

Over the next month, spring officially came closer but the weather got colder. He was restless and left his office early one day, intending to be home before Marina returned from her weekly painting classes. The air hurt his lungs as if particles of powdered glass were suspended in it. It was only early afternoon, yet the sun was beginning to set. He bought the papers and read them while stamping his feet to keep warm. An already out-of-date
London Illustrated News
had a cheerful picture of Australian soldiers training in England before departing for France. They looked healthy and happy: farm boys tanned by a recent southern summer. He read that Australian volunteers had overwhelmed recruitment offices. Boys looking for adventure, something outside the narrow confines of the world they knew, of sheep or mining, and on his home turf now, ready to fight. It had begun to feel as if America was the only nation not at war.

On the inside pages was an account of the battle being fought between Austrians and Russians in the snow and bitter cold of the mountains and forests of the Carpathians. He had no real idea where this was, nor could he envisage the two forces. A new atlas of the imagination was required for this war. The first photographs of Austria’s armies parading as they went to war had looked somehow exotic, like the early nineteenth-century prints of men in shakos and gold-frogged jackets that his father had hung in his study at Abbotsgate. There was nothing of this here. The soldiers photographed in
The Times
were unidentifiable: dark, crouched bundles of despair or death in churned-up, dirty snow.

As he turned for home, he glanced back toward the park, a favorite view of his in summer, and saw something extraordinary. Between the bare trees rose a column of misty colors: indigo, pink, and green, a frozen helical rainbow rising from the ground until it vanished into the sky. He looked around to see if anyone else had seen it, but he was alone in the white expanse of frozen grass, with the shimmering prism of light an unknown distance away.

He left the park, turning his back on it. It was, he was sure, a combination of sunlight, temperature, and perhaps humidity. The sun would set in half an hour and the effect would not survive that, he thought. But he was still full of the wonder of it as he sat in the drawing room, gazing out into the New York evening: a darkness that never was dark, a wilderness of light, it had seemed to him when he first arrived.

Then, standing at the window, about to draw the curtains, he saw Marina’s father’s car pulling away from the curb, his driver at the wheel. When she came through the front door, he had turned on the lights and was waiting in what she called the vestibule and he still called the hall. She was still in her dark vicuña coat and a velvet hat trimmed with white fur, colorless strands of hair curling onto her pale skin. The tip of her nose was pink, but otherwise she was a picture in monochrome. Feeling a surge of love for her, he put his arms around her and, for the first time, felt reciprocation in her embrace: her chilly cheek against his, her lips on his neck, her fur hat tickling his eyes.

“This is purely in pursuit of warmth,” she said. “Life-saving.”

He pulled her closer, spun her around. Pushed her before him toward the bedroom, then unpinned her hat, set it carefully on the table, unhooked her coat, sat her on the ottoman at the foot of her bed, and, kneeling, unbuttoned her boots from ankle to calf. He ran his hand under her heavy skirt and up her calves, then stopped and glanced up, suddenly uncertain, and she returned his unspoken question with a look of such beauty and tenderness that he felt a vast sense of relief, enough to make him fumble for a second in loosening her stockings.

Later, he told her what he was going to do.

Looking back, he thought it had been an overly dramatic gesture, but he no longer wanted to exclude her from any part of his life, in mind or body. Even as the British Embassy was making its ponderous inquiries, his father’s friend, a former colonel of the 2nd Wiltshires, had written back with enthusiasm, having misread Harry’s inquiries as a direct request, and offering suggestions for his return. His fare would be paid: “Second class, I’m afraid.”

Clearly, the colonel said, Harry would wish to see his family and the estate; but if he could let him know of his arrival, they could then arrange for him to be met at regimental headquarters. There would be the matter of a medical and a few other minor administrative chores, but he looked forward to welcoming Harry to the regiment. He would explain then about training, likely deployment, and so on. Plenty of time for that. He ended by saying “I know your father would be tremendously proud of your decision.”

Over the next few weeks, green spikes of new growth emerged from the mud and grass of the park and a foam of almond and cherry blossom filled the front gardens of Fifth Avenue mansions. He thought that, despite everything, or perhaps because of it, he had never been happier. To his astonishment, Marina had supported his decision and, she explained, clinging to him, her tears were of pride as much as in anticipation of a long period apart. It was her father who was astounded and seemed to be unsuccessfully concealing his puzzlement. To him, this rash and unnecessary response to a nonexistent call to arms was evidently the act of a negligent husband.

Harry’s first impulse was to not tell any of his friends, but of course this was unrealistic. The news didn’t just slip out, it ricocheted like a bullet around their social circle. Some people clearly thought he was mad; some verged on almost perfectly concealed contempt.

“Well, of course, you’re an Englishman with an island to protect,” said one.

Some were amused; some ardent tennis and golf players seemed to think soldiering was a kind of demanding, if not very exclusive, sporting event. But others shook his hand.

To his regret, two of their heartier friends insisted on throwing a farewell party and, although it was a jollier affair than he or Marina had imagined, he was relieved when at last he could slip away, wanting to spend his last hours in New York with his wife. The next day, after very little sleep, he woke with a pounding head. He stood in front of the mirror in his silk dressing gown, tipping a headache powder into water. He drank it with a shudder and then, in the mirror’s reflection, saw Marina still curled up on her side, asleep in a tangle of sheets and blankets. If only she were pregnant, he thought. How he hoped she might be. The strength and suddenness of his longing surprised him.

Hours later, he stood on deck, his face already sticky with salt from the Hudson breeze, the ship leaving on an ebb tide. The last cargo appeared to have been stowed; the nets, which had been busy swinging crates into the hold when he had arrived with Marina and her father, now hung limply from the cranes; and his arm ached from waving, his face from smiling.

The crowd was less jolly, yet no less frantic than when he had embarked on his honeymoon so short a time ago. It was not surprising: this was a British liner and, as there were threats regarding German attacks on shipping, few travelers now went to Europe simply for fun. A yellow streamer rose up from the crowd and landed gently on his shoulder, breaking his concentration for a second so that he could no longer find Marina’s face in the mass below.

Even when the huge hawsers were freed and the great ship began to move away from the dock, she had not reappeared. The vessel vibrated under Harry’s feet, the noise of its massive turbines drowning out the shouts from the crowd. Harry felt a rush of panic as his eyes scanned the throng in increasing desperation, trying to find his wife, but the waving arms blurred his vision. Eventually he fixed on the Manhattan skyline. The expanse of dark water opened wider and wider, the churning river smelled and moved more like the sea it was becoming, yet the dense buildings of the city seemed to stay immobile, with no sense of the distance growing between ship and shore for a very long time.

In the week’s journey across the Atlantic, he had had little time to absorb the vast change in his circumstances, to take in how much he missed his wife, nor even to write a letter to her without interruption. His early notion—that there might be some justice if the ship was torpedoed and he went down with it—was soon deadened by the tedium of daily lifeboat practice.

He had decided not to stay overnight at Abbotsgate, but merely to join his stepmother for luncheon. Teddy was home on a temporary leave from school. Harry had bought him an antique, but reasonably sharp, trapper’s knife. He had found it in New York’s Italian quarter and suspected that if it had ever been used for hunting, it was more likely to have been in the Appalachians than the Apennines. Teddy was delighted and brandished it between his teeth like a pirate.

“When will you have a uniform?” he said. “Will you be a colonel? My friend Walter’s father is a brigadier. Have you got a revolver yet?” Harry helped himself to more molasses tart.

“Will you go to France?” Teddy said, still chewing. “I’m really half French, of course, because my grandparents were French but it doesn’t show.” He darted a look at his mother. “Though all my grandparents are dead. Will you kill Germans, do you think?”

Isabelle raised her eyebrows, then said, calmly, “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

She had been very controlled throughout the day. She was, Harry thought, well aware that the brevity of his stay was a conscious decision, not a necessity.

Abbotsgate looked well cared for despite a reduction in manpower, although the gardens had already been simplified, he noticed. He spent an hour with the agent in his small office in the stables, discussing national demands for wood and the Army’s requisition of horses. But it was like visiting the house of a good friend rather than one that was, rightfully, his own.

All in all, it had passed off better than he’d feared. When he came to say good-bye, Teddy had gone riding with a friend. After Phillips had put his case in the car, he and Isabelle were left alone in the great hall, which, despite the warmth outside, was cool. He kissed her on the cheek, his eyes moving inexorably to the portrait of his father, and then he turned, rather awkwardly, to go before looking back one last time.

“You’ll let me know… .”

“You’ll be busy,” she said, with a half-smile.

“Letters will get to me.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll take care of you both.”

She nodded.

He held her gaze for a second and stepped out into the sunlight. The car was on the gravel, Phillips at the wheel.

“Harry,” she said, stepping out with him and putting her hand on his arm, and, ridiculously, he drew back at the unexpected contact.

“No, it doesn’t matter,” she said, looking embarrassed. “But go safely.”

“Of course.”

With immaculate timing, Phillips got out, opened the door, and said “Good afternoon, Sir Harry.”

“Isabelle,” he said, suddenly without words.

“Harry.”

He settled into his seat and looked out of the rear window, his eyes not on Abbotsgate but on the slender figure in gray who stood motionless on the steps, her hand raised in a frozen wave. Eventually his neck ached too much, and he turned to face forward.

“Trowbridge, sir?” said Phillips, out of courtesy. He knew perfectly well where they were going and why. The car gleamed, fit to pass a sergeant major’s scrutiny.

“Bad news from Turkey,” Phillips said, as if they were talking about a day’s racing. “Wouldn’t fancy my chances there. Never been one for hot weather. And the Turks are devils when they’re roused.”

Somewhere between Abbotsgate and Taunton, as Phillips chattered on and the car brushed through narrow lanes, both his earlier lives were ending. The layers of what he had been—a son, a brother, an only partly honest husband, a selfishly happy exile, an absent landowner—were all stripped away now, and he was left just as a man like any other.

All the skills and weaknesses that he had known or discovered in himself, used or hidden, all the advantages he’d been born to and the deceits he had pursued, meant nothing, faced with the unknown question of what kind of man, what kind of soldier, he would be. But then he reflected that it was much more likely, now that he had made his grand gesture, that the war would be over in six months, and he would be stuck in a Whitehall office in the country he had worked so hard to leave, stamping requisition forms eight hours a day.

Frank, Huntingdon,
Winter 1915

T
HE ARMY HAS MORE FORMS
than it does bullets. Forms to say you haven’t got a squint or a crooked spine or an undescended whatnot. Forms for next of kin, forms for summer uniforms (other ranks, cotton, medium), and, eventually, when they’d taken Hercules from me, regulations having changed, a form for Machine, Folding, General Service, Twenty-four-inch, Frame No. 211567. I called her Nora.

I set off to a new life in September 1915—my second new life, really, London having been my first. Hercules went in the luggage compartment. There was nothing to see from the train: good flat cycling country north of London, but not much else. So my mind turned on this and that, including a bit of guilt that I hadn’t gone home to see the old man, but I told myself it was only training, there was no actual fighting yet.

I arrived feeling tired and a bit blue, and a bit of a civilian when I saw all the lads in khaki drilling on the square. But then a soldier approached and you could have knocked me down with a feather. It was Isaac, holding his cycle upright and firmly, not clutching it as I did, saluting the sergeant in the approved manner. I had yet to learn this, and it took me a while. Hercules would always wobble the minute I held him with one hand and raised the other. Nora was worse. The more senior the officer, the greater the wobble.

“You never said you were a cycling man,” I said first thing.

“You never asked,” said Isaac. “And you never said you were either.” But ours had been a friendship of minds and of aspirations, so perhaps it wasn’t so surprising.

“You went away pretty fast,” I said. “Nobody knew where you’d been sent.”

He looked a bit shame-faced. “I couldn’t face those women,” he said. “That Connie was the most belligerent pacifist I’d ever heard.” And, unexpectedly, he smiled at me. The first I’d ever seen on him, I think.

“And my brother was carrying on night and day,” he continued. “Saying our parents were Russian and if I had to fight, it should be for Russia. Despite the fact that I’m sending my pay back home.”

“Blimey,” I said. “Do you speak Russian?”

“No. My brother does, but he’s against the officer class on principle and he won’t fight—not in any army. He’d go to prison first. I could have coped with the Russians, having Esperanto, but I don’t like the cold.”

“I’m glad to see you,” I said. “I feel a bit useless, to be honest.”

“You’ll feel better in uniform,” he said. “Though they’re a bit short; you may only get a cap and a badge. And they’ll swap your rig for a standard machine. BSA, folding bike. New regulations.”

I felt a bit funny about that, seeing as Hercules had been Dick’s, and I hoped they’d keep him safe, but I was curious to see a folding bicycle, although to the end I was worried that Nora would suddenly fold at a crucial moment.

Nora was a bit of miracle, I thought when I first put my hands on her handlebars (unfolded), but Captain Porson, the adjutant, thought folding bicycles were a liability and a handicap. He’d been a semi-professional when he was young. Now he’d point with his stick to the pivots, which allowed you to fold them on the order “Machine, FOLD!” and he’d say “Weakness at the crucial point, d’ye see? We need cycles that are robust: to cope with all terrain from the tundra to the veldt, from Dar es Salaam to the pyramids of Egypt, from the plateau of Troy to the clays of Flanders or the rivers of Picardy.”

Captain P was very keen on geography, and also on what he called “machine versatility.” He was forty-five if he was a day, had been injured in the war against the Boers, and would never leave England to fight again.

“And here some genius,” he’d say, in full flow, “has devised some toy engineered to be light, undoubtedly at the cost of strength, and to collapse under stress.”

It didn’t seem likely to me. It was more of a problem getting them to fold at all if any grit had gotten in the pivot. Once they were folded and hoisted on your back, it helped to have a chum to get them off again. The first time I stood up with Nora hanging on to me, I very nearly fell over backward with her unexpected weight. But it was all a matter of getting to know her. In the end, she was part of me.

Captain P was always writing letters about “design iniquity” to the higher-ups and to magazines like
The Gentleman’s Tourer
until he got told to stop. Though what advantage Jerry could ever have had from knowing we had folding cycles beats me.

The weeks of basic training were a surprise. The things I thought I might be good at, if I thought at all, which I soon learned was not encouraged, had me struggling, and the ones I thought I’d struggle with, I could do pretty well.

I had learned to shoot as a boy, my appearance was always praised, and I was punctual to a fault. The British Army was much of a mind with Mr. Nugent on punctuality. I was fitter than a lot of Kitchener’s lads and even some of the Terriers. We did this run, lie prone, fire position, jump up, run down routine. Isaac trailed behind. He’d run, lie down, cough as he did when he was anxious. Find his handkerchief, struggle to his feet, blow his nose, and stand there rolling his eyes.

“Fritz has just blown your head off, Meyer,” Mr. Pierce, the most junior of officers, would shout, trying to sound tough. He had a slight lisp, bad luck for him.

Isaac never remembered about firing positions, didn’t really want to believe in them, seeing as how he was going to be riding a bicycle to war and just pass on messages, but he was a tremendous map reader. I liked maps, but nothing like him. Isaac could also look at any map and see how the terrain, as we now called it, lay.

“You’d need low gear and a lot of puff there,” he’d say, stabbing at the paper with a finger. Or: “It would probably be easier to take the longer road, given the valley.”

It was odd: he hated open spaces and loved cities tight with highways and alleys, but on a map he was master of the land. What’s more, he could strip and rebuild a bicycle like it was a magic trick at Maskelyne’s Hall.

“I used to work in a repair shop as a boy,” he said, adding: “Bicycles are the future for the common man.” I could almost hear myself speaking and was proud he was my friend.

Things I still had to learn: marching, stripping guns, army etiquette. What I found hardest was cycle maneuvers. Of course, the other lads almost all had their own cycles, and I hadn’t been entirely clear with the officer who’d given me the tip back in the shop. I’d only ever ridden down a few London streets. The rest was polishing the bike while I dreamed of touring holidays. Of us new recruits, one was a grocer’s errand boy, one was a country postie, two or three belonged to cycling clubs, and there were twin brothers who had worked in a factory making bicycles. They’d all been cycling practically since they could walk. I had an image of their fat little baby legs pedaling in their cradles while mine were just kicking in the air.

The training NCOs had this thing you did, weaving between posts.

“Call yourself a cyclist?!” the training sergeant bellowed.

I wanted to say “No, I never did, not really. I just thought about it a lot.”

I was humiliated when I fell off; and just when I’d grasped the weaving with Hercules, they gave me Nora, the regulation Army cycle, and I fell off all over again. Then they mounted the gun, which shifted the balance, and it was right back to the beginning once more. I was nervous that if I didn’t grasp it, they’d send me to the infantry.

But Isaac was a true friend and when we had half a day’s leave, we went off into the countryside nearby and he laid out some stones and I practiced all afternoon. It was a kindness, because he detested the countryside with such a passion that I had doubts whether he had ever left London before: “Green, green, so much green and no houses, no one wants to live here, all that nothingness and buzzing things trying to get in your throat.”

After, I bought him a couple of beers in a public house and we came back a bit squiffy. I fell off Nora, twice, but even Isaac was all over the road and giggling. He was most unlike himself.

The relationship between bicycles and me was quite different before I had Dick’s Hercules, and it was different again now that I was training to be a professional. I expected that it would be different again when I was, in my way, a weapon.

Winter was coming: the wind and rain blew in from Russia, they said. Our new caps had flaps for our burning ears. What with the flaps and the wind, you couldn’t hear an order, which was either a disadvantage or an advantage, depending. At last we learned that some of us were to be attached to serving regiments and would be sent off to France.

“We’re looking for the
cream der lah cream
, as they say where some of you are going,” said our sergeant, with a wink. “Our reputation is at stake.”

He looked at us all as if we were potential saboteurs.

But when the list went up, there was one officer—our young Mr. Pierce—with a sergeant, a corporal, and twelve men, and two of those were Private Isaac Meyer and Private Francis Stanton. We had our photograph taken, all fifteen of us, holding our machines and with all our equipment neatly stowed as per King’s Regs. Underneath the picture, it said
Hunts Cyclists Batt.
, with our badge. It was a stag rearing up, and one lad said it was like me and the bike in my early days, but I ignored him. I wrote to Dad and sent him the picture and hoped all was well in the coffin trade and said that when I got leave, I’d come and visit him.

Deep in my heart, I thought what an outcome: I, an Englishman, would be pedaling in the tracks of those French and Belgian heroes of the Tour de France. But as things turned out, I was very glad I’d kept that thought to myself.

Isaac held on to his picture, as he said he had no one to send it to. His brother would tear it up in the name of world peace and international brotherhood. Isaac was in an altogether dejected mood.

“Anyway,” he said, “some of us may not come back. And I can look at it and remember our comradeship.” And he coughed.

There was a smoking concert in the canteen the evening before our departure, and everyone was in a very merry mood. The sergeant sang “When Maiden Loves, She Sits and Sighs” and nearly brought the house down with his sighing and quivering moustaches. The lads ended the evening with a rousing performance of the famous “Song of the Hunts Cyclists.” Every verse, many of them more than once. When it got to the verse about France, we boys who were actually heading off there got a lot of nudging and even free beers coming our way.

We’ve signed to go to France,

And we hope we get a chance,

For we’ve all come out for duty and for fun;

We’re the Hunts Battalion boys,

And we’re all our mothers’ joys,

But we’re also sons of Britain—every one.

Isaac whispered “Except me, who’s Russian.” Then he added “And you and me not having mothers. Not that we weren’t a joy to them once, no doubt.”

But I could see that he looked excited as well as entertained by all the carrying-on.

Cheer Ho! Cheer Ho!

Do we dream this thing? Oh, no!

We have waked from simple slumbers by the gun,

And the thing that we’re about

Is to wipe the “Germ–Hun” out

Or to die like British Soldiers—every one.

I’d never thought the last verse was the best. Even we recruits knew that if you slumbered by your gun, you’d be up on charges; and it was noticeable that those who were being sent off to Scarborough to cycle around, looking for spies at railway stations, were the most enthusiastic about dying like British soldiers every one.