The Gates of Rutherford (33 page)

“Fritz!” the voice called. “Fritz!”

He couldn't reply. He thought of his mother and what she would do when she read the letter. He doubted that the officer behind him would ever order for his body to be recovered, and so he would simply disappear.

“Fritz!” Nothing but the stars. He looked up, waiting. A lot of stars up there in the heavens.

More voices. It sounded as if they might be discussing him. He was half expecting a shot in the back from his own officer, but nothing came. Perhaps he had already forgotten him and the insane order. Frederick heard the British calling again. More voices now. He felt their attention fixed on him. And then they began to shoot.

Bullets sprang up from the ground. They were raking the soil directly in front of him, deliberately not killing him. Trying to make him move. Trying to see his intention. Well, he thought, it was intention to die quickly and without fuss. And so he remained standing.

The firing increased, but always missing him. And then, for some
reason he could never understand afterwards, his body began to dance, to sway, to jitter as he stood. He staggered, stumbled, waved. Let it be over, he thought. The voices rose to shouts, and then to jeering. And then he dropped his gun, and as it left his hands he knew that he would never hold anything again.

He was taken prisoner that morning. He ran straight on. Or, rather, his body ran straight on into the British trench. Someone grabbed him, and he fell, and he was stamped on and then bundled back under guard. They talked about him a lot, and laughed. But he did not mind the laughing. The humor of his awkward and puppet-like dancing in no-man's-land had saved him. He had made them laugh with his shambling terror.

•   •   •

H
e looked again at the woman on the floor in front of him.

This is not Pilckem. This is not Pilckem . . . .

He put his hand gently on Mary's stomach.

“I am sorry,” he murmured. “Please to excuse. But . . .”

As softly as he was able, he soaped his hand again. Very gently, very slowly, he felt for the child. Sure enough, in a moment or two, he could feel a tiny arm, a shoulder. Mary barely stirred. The head of the child was there, the birth was not breech, but there was something beyond the small body.

He breathed in deeply, afraid of hurting the woman, afraid of hurting the child, afraid of his own clumsiness. Afraid of his traitorous, clumsy hands with a will of their own.
Very quiet
, he told himself.
Don't think about your hands. This is not the place, nor the time.

“Mein Gott,” he murmured.

“What is it?” Mrs. Nicholson asked him softly.

He frowned, but didn't reply. He closed his eyes. Here was another arm, another foot. He felt tiny fingers: slack, unresponsive.
The chest so fragile. He ran a fingertip over a rib cage that felt as small as a bird's. This child was not large, he thought. This child was not too big. He hooked his fingertip around the twisted cable that was the umbilical cord, and beyond that. And beyond that . . .

“We have two,” he said. “There is two.”

“There is not,” Mrs. March protested.

He didn't hear her.

They were both there, frozen in their battle to be born, lodged in the too-small space. A terrible shudder went through the body of the woman, and he felt it—he
felt
it in his own body and blood—that ancient imperative, that crushing need. To live and breathe. He laid himself down almost to the floor, and worked his fingers past the first child. Mary moved. “Please hold her so she stay the same,” he said.

Another child. Another cord, and the whole tangled together like a ball of twine. Very gently, he eased the shape of a small arm, and a hand curled in a fist, back. The second cord shifted and he felt a thrash, a resistance. “Come now,” he murmured. “You come and see the world.”

Mary suddenly woke, yelling, heaving. Her breath flowed over him as hot as fire. He could hear Mrs. March speaking, but the woman at his side was silent. Thank God. Silence was what was needed. Peace. Peace in the wide world, dear God. Just peace. “Come, little child,” he whispered. “Kommen jetzt mit mir, kleiner lieber ein. . . .”

It happened in a rush. The cord slithered; the second tiny body retreated for a moment, the first crushed his hand. He tried to extract it, straighten his fingers, pull his own flesh as far back as he could, and then in one fantastic movement, his fingers and the child rushed into the light together. Before he knew what was happening, he was holding a tiny body in his hands and the hands of the woman next
to him, and several voices rose up, and he lifted the child up, and he was gasping and laughing, and he tapped it gently, and it let out a cry. Such a cry. Such a great, thunderous, piercing, blessed cry. And moments later—perhaps forty seconds, thirty seconds, not even that—came the second miracle. Mary's second son was born.

Frederick sat back, overwhelmed, crowded out by the women, by the sudden storm of towels, wrappings, by Jenny's long hair brushing his face, by a slap on his back from someone. He looked at Jenny, and in the confusion she flung her arms around his neck, and kissed the side of his face; he didn't know if anyone saw them, and he didn't care. “Don't leave here,” she whispered to him urgently. “Promise you will never leave here.” She drew back fractionally, dropped her hands, and gazed at him.

“I promise you,” he told her. “Yes, I promise.”

Then he suddenly realized that his legs were in cramp and in an almost comic sudden reaction, he fell backwards. Jenny jumped up, smiled, and ran to help the other women. He found himself on his back, sweat stained, looking up at the ceiling, and into the face of the sergeant.

“Well, mate,” the sergeant said, smiling broadly. “Doctor's here now. He's right behind you. Better late than never, eh? Shall we send him home again?”

•   •   •

I
t was almost dark by the time that Mrs. Nicholson gently tapped on the drawing room door.

Hearing a muted reply, she went in to find William Cavendish in one of the large armchairs by the window. He was reading a book. He looked up at her, smiling. “One of my father's relics,” he said quietly.

She moved forward. “I've heard his lordship was a naturalist, a botanist.”

“Yes, he was,” William murmured. “A fine person. I miss him greatly.”

She waited until, smiling still, he closed the book and looked up at her. On the table next to him was a tumbler of whisky, and a letter.

“You asked to see me, sir.”

“I hear that the drama is over.”

“We have taken mother and children up to the nursery for the time being. I hope that is in order.”

He raised a hand and beckoned her to come, indicating another armchair by his side.

“Do you find Rutherford to your satisfaction?” he asked, when she was seated.

“Very much so.”

“Affairs in order, belowstairs?”

“There are some things to be remedied,” she told him.

“Yes,” William murmured. “Do as you think fit. That was what I meant earlier today. A free rein. It is pointless, on the whole, to consult me. I have never been involved in the arrangements.”

“No, of course,” she said. “But if I may say . . . it's the staffing. We're perilously low.”

“I realize that.”

“I may go to see an agency. There is one in Richmond. The house needs a certain sort of servant—trained, I mean—and they are scarce. But we may have more hope with the scullery maids and plain cook maids. There may be girls in the village. Poor Mrs. Carlisle is struggling.”

“You must do as you wish. Hire whom you please. Don't concern yourself as to cost, if that is your worry.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“As for the footman. . .” He stopped. He lifted the letter and looked dolefully at it. “As for the footman and gardeners,” he
repeated. “I estimate we shall probably lose Hardy to conscription in a few weeks. I have asked Mr. Bradfield to approach the larger hospitals to inquire about men seeking employment on discharge. There are various large houses that have let themselves out for convalescents; I trust that there will be men of a certain decent class who cannot conduct very hard manual labor or accurate office or factory work, but who might be trained in a capacity here.”

“That is very kind,” Mrs. Nicholson commented. “War wounded, you mean?”

“Exactly.” He glanced away temporarily. “Her ladyship is employing that type of person at Blessington, in a new workshop. I thought we might apply the same principle here.”

She smiled. “A practical solution, if they are mobile and willing to work.”

He looked back at her. “Do you have relations serving in the army?”

“No, sir.”

“No children, nephews, nieces?”

“None. I was an only child of only children.”

“Unusual.”

She gave an infinitesimal shrug.

“And you trained as a nurse . . . ?”

“For a short while. My father had actually left an annuity for me to have an education. It rather worked against me, I'm afraid. Unless one is really academic, and even then . . .” She saw that William's attention was not on what she was saying.

As she stopped speaking, he looked up at her. “Our boy is with the RFC, you know.”

“So I understand.”

“He will be coming home shortly. Within a few days.”

“Oh, that's very good news,” she replied. “I shall make sure everything is ready.”

“Yes, yes . . .” William's voice trailed away. He nodded slowly. And then he held up the letter. “This came an hour ago. Not a telegram, you see. So not the worst of news, thank God. But the postmaster recognized it as pertaining to us in its way. Nash's mother, in the village, has seen it.”

“Nash?” Mrs. Nicholson echoed. “You don't mean . . . not Mary's husband?”

“I do.” He gave her the letter, and she read it. When she was finished, she looked back at him. The fire burned through the very last of its embers, and the light faded from the room. “It doesn't say where he is,” she murmured. “‘Wounded.' It isn't very informative.”

“No, indeed.”

She offered him the letter again, but he shook his head. “No, keep it,” he told her. “And when you think that Mary is ready to read it, let her see it.”

She nodded, and folded it away. “I wonder if he is able to come home,” she ventured. “I wonder if he is able to.”

“Indeed,” William said, almost in a whisper. “Indeed.”

T
he Channel crossing had been remarkably smooth; something for which John Gould was grateful. Every time that he saw a ship, a dock, or the ocean itself he was brought back to an Irish town and a crowd of soaked and hollow-eyed survivors. The
Lusitania
was a garbled and recurring dream.

As the troop ship, full of wounded, traveled slowly out from Le Havre, he watched France disappear into the evening mist with trepidation. He watched the wake, a broad line in the dark sea, and prayed that no U-boats were following them. To either side were accompanying ships, smudges of grey merely, but their presence gave him no peace. He was determined to stand there all night, pacing the decks when he could; to go below was too close to the nightmare that he always carried with him.

He remembered the awful sensation of dropping in that other mirrorlike sea; he remembered the body that had floated past him and dragged him. He remembered climbing onto the rail with twelve-year-old Joseph Petheridge and instructing him to swim for
his life. Oddly enough, he even remembered the first of the water swirling about his feet as they prepared to jump, and how cold it had been, filling his shoes. From ordinary life to imminent death in a matter of seconds.

But, after that, he only remembered the faces on the dockside and the green-painted walls of a boarding house where he could do nothing but stare and shake. Words had felt heavy in his mouth: he had been literally struck dumb. Soldiers out here in France had told him the same, many times—that a man could go rigid with shock, and become an automaton in his movements afterwards. That the world became a plastic, artificial thing, a kind of grubby theater where it was possible to see, to watch, to feel hot and cold upon one's skin. But not to really feel. And not to speak at all, just tremble. For days. For weeks.

The night passed with interminable slowness. John went to the prow and narrowed his eyes, searching for the lights of England. It was only a few miles, but it felt like a thousand. He knew that he would probably go to France again, but he hoped that he would not be asked to do so while the war raged. He had already promised himself that he would do something to drum up financial aid in England and America, despite rationing having descended on England. He kept thinking of the children and their ragged souvenirs, and how glad they had been to have a few candies. He thought of the men and their blank faces. And the horses. Something, he thought, should be done about the horses.

“It's not just horses,” Harry had told him as they had approached Le Havre in an officers' staff car the day before. “There's all sorts of animals, you know. One of the squadrons had a little fox cub as their mascot. It loved going up, it really did. Used to stand with its feet on the dashboard and prick up its ears. There was a chap riding courier who had a collie
dog—a French farm dog, I suppose—on his pillion, front legs balanced on his shoulders. Then there's the messenger dogs . . .”

“Yes, I know,” John had replied. But he didn't like to think of the messenger dogs leaping across the trenches, or those laying telephone wires. Or the dog he'd seen in a reserve camp, its bandaged feet the result of mustard gas lying on the ground. Or, stranger still and somehow so poignant in their fragility, the carrier pigeons strapped with diagonal webbing in their boxes, ready to take news much faster than man could manage. “It's a crazy world,” he'd said, and patted Harry absently on the shoulder. Harry had looked out at the fields, waterlogged in the summer rain, and said nothing more.

And then, as they approached the port, Harry had suddenly said that he would not be going on board with John. “I've been called to IV corps,” he said.

“You have? When was this?”

“I received a message.”

“But when? Did I miss something?”

“I have received a message,” Harry repeated with dogged, raised-voice insistence. “One doesn't question.”

“To go to Nieuwpoort?” John asked softly.

Harry merely raised a finger to his lips, and smiled.

“Well then, I guess we must part,” John had said as they got off the train. “You've got some sort of transport, I expect?”

“Yes.”

John held out his hand. “Good luck. Don't be long, will you? Your parents will be expecting you.”

“I shall be as long as it takes.” And Harry had touched the brim of his cap, and promptly disappeared among the crowds.

Finally, the night was over. The dawn came up over the sea, and Dover came into view. “Dearest God, thank you with all my heart,”
John murmured, turning up the collar of his coat and speaking the words under his breath, self-conscious to feel so relieved.

It was a melee of men and machinery on the dock. He stood in line, carried his gabardine holdall, and showed his passport. “American, eh?” said the police officer who was shepherding civilians out of the way of the army trucks.

“Train to London?” he asked, by way of reply.

He got to the station, forced his way into a train, stood in the corridor, and gave his seat to a major who looked grey with fatigue. The man slumped after only a minute, even before the train started to make its way out of the station. In sleep, John could see anger etched in the man's face.
Angry even when asleep
, John thought. And wondered what made the man angriest of all. Himself, or others. Impatience or fear. Or even stepping onto English soil. Yes, there was a curious anger in that: finding England so usual, so ordinary, and so peaceful. A strange sort of frustrated, unreasonable anger.

It took many hours to get to London. In that time, John, too, fell asleep, sitting finally on the floor. Now and then he felt the nudging or tripping of passing feet; now and again, the train lurched or came to a full stop, and he vaguely registered the smell of oil and heard the rolling, echoing, and jumbled conversation of others. He didn't dream at all now; just felt grateful for the dirty floor and the stumbling feet and the patchwork of voices. It meant that he was going home. He curled up in his greatcoat with his holdall underneath him, and occasionally he would check that his notebooks were still there, feeling their outline through the holdall sides.

By the time that the train pulled into Charing Cross it was eight in the morning. John emerged into the light, rubbing his face wearily. He looked up at the Eleanor cross memorial, reconstructed by the Victorians; a copy of the thirteenth-century wooden one that had been taken down during the civil war. The white stone copy had been
here now for just over fifty years; Octavia had told him that on one of their first walking days in London together. A cross raised to a queen, a wife. “Imagine raising a gift like that, and it standing here for eight hundred years,” Octavia had mused. He had smiled, and kissed her gloved hand. They had paused, looking into each other's eyes. “I wonder who will remember us in eight hundred years?” she had mused.

“Rutherford will remember you.”

“Oh, I doubt it.”

“Why not? What do you English call a wandering wife? The Bolter. That's how you'll be remembered.”

“Oh my God,” she'd laughed. “How terrible.” She'd put her head on one side, looking thoughtfully at him. “No one will know you,” she'd murmured. “No one would guess why.”

“You know me,” he'd told her. “That's all that matters.” He'd glanced up again at the cross. “Shall I raise a great monument to you?” he'd asked. “Commission a sculptor, buy a piece of land and put you on it? Men could come and worship you.”

“Oh, John,” she'd said, and laughed. But, as they'd walked away, she had looked again over her shoulder. “He must have loved her very much,” she'd whispered.

John was suddenly consumed by his desire to see her.

He stood on the pavement across from the main square and the fountains, and then gave up on hailing any sort of cab. The road was packed, even at this early hour, crammed with the average Londoner going about his hurried business, and with military vehicles threading their own way through the chaos. Horses, vans, motorized buses, and pedestrians all jostled for position in the wide road.

He thought of turning back and going into the depths of the earth on the Tube, but he couldn't face it. It was only two miles to the house: he would walk. He began at an ordinary pace, going in the
direction of Buckingham Palace Road, down The Mall. The Palace shone in early sunlight at the far end; halfway down, he cut across the welcome green expanse of St. James's Park, across the bridge. Across the bridge to peace, and to the only thing that really mattered to him in the world. He picked up his pace, and passed by Grosvenor Gardens, Eton Square, and Sloane Square. The opulence struck at him, unnerved him. It didn't seem right. The world was somehow out of kilter. How the Londoners loved their greens and gardens, he thought. How precious it was, and how bizarre compared to the countryside across the Channel.

He caught himself shuddering, and closed off the thoughts purposefully in his head. A sort of panic, a sense of loss, was now clutching at him. He started to run. Before he knew it he was charging down Royal Hospital Road like a man possessed, oblivious to the looks of passersby. He passed the redbrick hospital chapel—he registered a flash of arched windows and cherry trees seemingly overburdened with the dark green leaves of late summer; it all whirled past while the breath burned in his chest.

The handles of the bag grew slippery in his hand. His legs ached. He felt a cold stream of panic-induced sweat course down his neck. She would not be there, he kept thinking. For some reason, she would not be there. Something had happened to take her away. As he came out on the street of Chelsea Physic Garden, he was suddenly utterly convinced that he would never see her again; that she had been spirited away while he was looking in another direction, absorbed by another place.

His feet pounded on the quiet pavements, past the delicate pale brownstone brick of the houses. Then all at once he could see the river, and the trees by the river. He was almost there, and when he at last saw the house, he had to stop. He couldn't breathe anymore. His heart banged inside him and the blood pounded in his ears. At last he got
himself together and walked quickly to the gate of the house, up to the door, and knocked hard on it, after trying to find his keys and failing.

Milly answered, and broke into a smile. “Oh, sir! Welcome home.”

“Thank you, Milly.” He dropped the bag, shrugged off his coat, and stood at the foot of the stairs. He hardly dared ask the question. “Is Lady Cavendish here?”

“Yes, sir, of course,” the maid said, giving him a puzzled frown. “She . . .”

But he didn't hear the rest. He bounded up the stairs two at a time, ran along the landing, and threw open the bedroom door.

Octavia was sitting up in bed, a cup of tea in her hand, the newspaper open on the coverlet next to her.

He stood there for a moment gazing at her, then reached for the nearest chair and fell into it, never taking his eyes off her. She stared for a moment, put down the cup, and then jumped out of bed and ran over to him. “Why, John,” she said. “Darling, what is it? Whatever's the matter?”

He started to laugh uncontrollably, shaking with relief. “Nothing at all,” he told her. “My love, absolutely nothing at all.”

•   •   •

A
t Rutherford, Louisa made her way to the nursery before breakfast.

At the end of the gallery—the long room that linked all the bedrooms—she stopped to look down at the portrait of her mother. Octavia's image hung on the wide stairwell; it was impossible to enter or leave the house without looking up at her, dressed in a voluminous satin gown with the Rutherford estate behind her. Louisa often thought lately that her mother's gaze had a distant quality. Growing
up, she had always assumed that it showed a lack of confidence; but now she wondered if Octavia was really gazing towards a future that she longed for, or to a place that she couldn't go. The hands clutching the intricate carved rail of the seat were gripping it rather than resting on it. Strange. She hadn't really noticed that before.