The Horizon (1993) (24 page)

It was the head groom, coming up from the stable where he kept his pony and trap.

‘Thank you, Marker. Glad you’re still here.’

They walked towards the outflung shadow of the great house and then she said, ‘I must leave you now, Major.’

She seemed to hesitate, then she said, ‘I hate and loathe this war. What it does, what it destroys. I work here when I can – they need all the help they can get. It never stops.’

Jonathan asked quietly, ‘The soldier from the Greenjackets. Was he . . .?’

She put one hand on the side door. ‘I’m not sure what might have happened.’ She pushed open the door and light spilled over her hair. It was the colour of dark chestnut.

She stood watching him, sensing his despair. ‘You
see, I was in love with your brother David.’ She gave a quick smile. ‘But he never knew I existed.’

Jonathan followed her, and hesitated by the massive fireplace where he had seen the shell-shocked Captain Beamish.

Then he made up his mind and walked after her. She paused outside another door and closed it behind her. Jonathan heard her say, ‘Well, here I am, Malcolm – I told you I’d come!’

Jonathan did not hear the reply. He was staring at the notice on the door.
All the patients here are blind. Please do not discuss it
.

A different sergeant was sitting at the reception desk, a dark quiff of hair plastered to his forehead. He stood up and clicked his heels.

‘Good walk, sir?’

‘I was speaking to Doctor Pitcairn’s daughter, Sergeant.’ What was the matter with him? People might get the wrong impression. But she had been in love with David. It was incredible.
He never knew I existed
.

The sergeant walked round the desk and held out his hands to the fire.

‘Oh, our Angel – that’s what we calls ’er, sir.’ He saw the uncertainty on his face and said gently, ‘She teaches them poor lads Braille. Gives ’em heart. Most of ’em ’ave nothing else left.’

He became suddenly business-like as one of the orderlies clumped in.

‘She’s just gone in, Harry.’ He looked at the corridor meaningly. ‘Just ’ang about till she’s finished.’

As the orderly opened the door with its warning notice
the sergeant said to Jonathan, ‘It don’t follow that because a bloke’s been blinded that ’e’s automatically a gentleman, if you gets my meaning, sir?’ Then he reached into a drawer of the desk. ‘So nice talkin’ to you, sir, an officer wot’s seen an’ done the things you ’ave, an’ that – I forgot to give you this.’ He pulled out the familiar buff envelope.
Orders
.

‘Thank you, Sergeant.’ He would have a drink, maybe two, and then he would open them.

But all he could see was the hurt in her eyes, the sting of her tone when she had told him about her love for David.

Perhaps she had been the girl in his dream, whose face had always been unclear. Of one thing he was certain: he could never forget her now.

Harry Payne slipped off the tailboard of the farm cart and waved to its driver.

‘Thanks, mate!’

The horse trotted away and Payne stood watching it for some while, remembering what this great estate had once looked like when the general had ruled the place. More to the point, how it must have been before the old fellow’s extravagances had taken their toll.

He knew the soldier on the gate was staring at him curiously and automatically straightened his shoulders, testing the weight of his neatly-stowed pack and all the other clutter that hung about him. There was even more now, he thought grimly. A steel helmet on his pack, and an anti-gas respirator for good measure. It had been bad enough at Gallipoli: he remembered seeing the soldiers floundering in the sea as their equipment had carried them to the bottom. With this little lot they would not have got even that far.

He hoisted his Lee-Enfield rifle on its webbing sling and walked towards the gateway. To many he might look like just another soldier, but Payne was a true professional and proud of it, despite all that had happened. His cap was tilted at a jaunty angle, the R.M.A. grenade shining like gold, while his boots gleamed like black glass.

The soldier said, ‘Your guvnor’s not back yet.’

Payne strode on. They knew everything here, and gossip was rife amongst the staff. It probably helped to take their minds off the patients and the cruel reminders of a war they had not shared. He grimaced. Not yet, anyway. They would be calling up schoolboys if things got much worse. He thought of his young brother, who had lied about his age and had signed up with the Corps. Payne could have stayed in Winchester for a longer period; Major Blackwood had said so. He always thought of everyone but himself.

But Payne had been surprised to discover he was glad to come back, even to this place with its human derelicts.

His father had been in the Corps, with a few uncles as well. He had died of fever while serving in a gunboat during some godforsaken campaign in Africa long before the war. It had been hard for his mother to manage, so she had married a local fishmonger. His lip curled with contempt. A mean bugger to all accounts, although he always had enough brass to spend on booze at the King’s Head with his cronies.

God, his mother would miss young Titch. He had been the apple of her eye. Perhaps in some way he had reminded her of her man. Payne had two sisters, both
married and making good money, one in a munitions factory, the other stitching uniforms. His mother would be doubly lonely now, he thought. And he had noticed that his step-father had removed the picture of his real father from the parlour.

His step-father had remarked on one occasion, ‘The armed forces are no way to find a proper living – I did tell you that, Flo.’

Payne had retorted, ‘Most of them are
dying
at the moment, Mr Green.’ He could never bring himself to call him anything else. But he had refrained from making it worse. His mother, so frail and troubled, would only suffer for it.

His boots crunched up the winding gravel driveway. Even they sounded angry. No, he had not been sorry to get back. The major had sent a message to explain that he had had to go to London. Never a moment’s peace.
I’ll bet he’s been going over it all again while I was in Winchester
. He almost smiled. He had done enough of that himself.
Where to next, I wonder?

Maybe they would get a ship together. Whatever it was he would stay with the major. When was he coming back, tomorrow? He would clean his kit for him, if old Jack Swan hadn’t already done it. He was as pleased as Punch to be ‘back in the regiment’ as he called it, doing things for the Blackwood family.

‘
Take that man’s
name
,
Sergeant-Major!
’

The voice scattered Payne’s thoughts and automatically he stamped to a halt, his fingers opening in readiness to salute.

But it was one of them: a tall, gaunt man who was
hobbling across the wet grass leaning on two sticks. He looked wild and outraged, and Payne waited patiently to see what would happen.

‘You – what’s your name?’ He peered at him searchingly. ‘Don’t you usually salute when you see an officer?’ He gestured with his head towards his shoulder. ‘Don’t you recognise my rank?’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’ Payne felt a sense of hopelessness closing in. It was so cruel and unreal. The man with the wild stare was wearing a dressing gown with no piece of uniform at all. Payne had stood in the line with Blackwood and seen awful things, men screaming and dying as they had fallen to splinters and bullets. He had even felt the agonised breath of a Turkish trooper when they had clashed, bayonet to bayonet on that crumbling parapet; seen his eyes roll like marbles as he had wrenched the bayonet from his ribs and kicked him away. But this was something he could not fight, and he found himself thinking it was a mercy that Titch had been spared this living death at least.

‘I’ve met your sort before, you know!’ The man in the dressing gown gave a desperate grin. ‘Think that because of a war we’re going to allow all the standards to go to blazes, what?’

From one corner of his eye Payne saw a white-coated orderly emerge from a door and then stand stock-still as he saw their drama.

‘Where
is
that bloody Sergeant-Major?’ He swung round angrily and one of his sticks slipped to the ground.

The orderly called in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘I’ll take over. Leave it to me!’

But keeping his eyes on the man in the dressing gown, Payne lowered himself beneath his pack and equipment and retrieved the fallen stick.

‘Here you are, sir.’ He was careful to be very formal, as he would have been with Colonel Waring. ‘Sorry about the salute, sir. I don’t know what I was thinking of.’

The man snatched the stick and snapped, ‘Well, in future . . .’

Payne was unable to watch as he suddenly burst into tears.

The orderly murmured, ‘You were lucky, mate. He can be a bit difficult.’ He took the man’s arm and added, ‘Come along now. Time for some coffee.’

But the other pulled his arm away and turned to stare at Payne. His face was streaming with tears but he managed to call, ‘Smart turn-out, that man!’

Payne waited until they were swallowed up by the buildings and continued on his way to the stable-yard, beyond which was the cottage he would share with Jack Swan.

He was still brooding over the encounter, and was not prepared for a woman’s voice calling him by name.

‘You must be Harry Payne! Mr Swan told me all about you.’

‘Not too much, I hope.’ It gave him time to recover himself.

It was not a nurse as he had expected, but a tall girl in a green, fur-collared coat. Her long chestnut hair was hanging quite free, and when she smiled he believed she was the prettiest thing he had ever laid eyes on.

‘And who might you be, er, Miss . . .?’

She said, ‘I’m not miss, I’m Alexandra Pitcairn. My father’s the local doctor. I work here in the hospital when I can.’

She brushed some hair from her eyes, and her smile was gone.

‘I was in the house just now and I saw what happened, what you did. I suppose you’re quite hardened to it, obeying orders, fair or otherwise, without question?’

‘You get used to it, Miss.’ What was she working up to?

‘That officer with the two sticks . . . he probably led a lot of men like you to their deaths in the name of duty.’

It was not a question, and Payne waited for more. She had a low, almost husky voice. Local girl, not like some of the snooty, affected officers’ wives he had met.

She said abruptly, ‘I’ll show you your room. I was helping Mr Swan get it ready for you.’ Then she added in her strangely direct manner, ‘I was very sorry to hear about your brother. I can imagine how you feel.’

Payne remembered his step-father’s boozy grin when he had left, the falseness of his handshake. It would wipe that smirk off his face to have to stand on the firestep, shoulder to shoulder with his mates.

As they walked she asked, ‘What about Major Blackwood? – Is
he
able to command his men to attempt the impossible? Do you enjoy doing what you do for him?’

He answered as sharply as he dared speak to any woman, ‘I clean his boots. He doesn’t expect me to lick ’em!’

They entered the cottage and she led the way to a room with its own cheerful fire already alight in the grate. He felt her watching him as he slipped off his heavy pack and leaned his rifle against a cupboard. It was like undressing in front of her. His eyes moved to the neat bed and he tried not to picture her there.

‘I think Major Blackwood is the finest man I’ve ever met.’ He said it so simply and firmly that she stared at him. ‘As for men getting killed, we all know the risks. I’ve seen a lot of good chums go. But you hope for the best.’

‘Mr Swan tells me that your major has been decorated, or will be very shortly.’

Payne hid his surprise. So that was it. She had met him already and formed an opinion of him which in no way fitted the man.

‘I was there, Miss.’ His eyes were faraway, seeing it again. ‘A lot of fellows went west that day. We started with a colonel in command but after the major fell what was left of us was in the hands of a junior lieutenant. I knew it was going to happen – I’m sure he did too. But the Aussies were being shelled by one of our own ships.’ He was leaning against the mantelpiece, his face warmed by the fire. ‘He stood up, calm as you please, framed against that bloody sea – begging your pardon, Miss . . .’

She said quietly, ‘I hear much worse. Please tell me. I want to know.’

‘Well, the ship ceased fire, then Johnny Turk started shooting at him. Even they couldn’t miss. I thought he was done for. When I saw his wounds I could have wept. But we made it.’ He looked sideways at her. ‘Never
thinks of himself. I sometimes wonder why he went into the Corps at all. I once heard him say, because it was expected.’ He forced a grin. ‘Like me, I suppose. We never knew nothing else.’

Mercifully Jack Swan appeared and beamed at both of them.

‘All shipshape, Harry.’ Then he looked at the carpet. ‘Sorry about the kid.’

Their eyes met, and there was understanding and compassion in them that the girl had never seen before between such hardened men. Why had she told him about David Blackwood? She had only ever told her mother, and she had died in an influenza epidemic. Even her father didn’t know. And yet she had told David’s brother, a perfect stranger; and once she had almost asked Jack Swan about serving with David in China.

She said uncertainly, ‘I must go. I have a class of two waiting.’ She looked at Payne. ‘Enjoy your stay.’ Then she was gone.

Swan said, ‘Come into the kitchen. The missus has done some mulled wine for us. Just the stuff to give the troops, eh?’

Payne said, ‘Why does she have it in for the Blackwood family?’

Swan shrugged. ‘Didn’t know she did. The estate owns her father’s house, but then it used to own just about everything around here.’ He reached into a cupboard above the stove. ‘Now tell me all the news about the mob. I hear old McCann’s a bloody sergeant-major now. God, the Corps must be desperate!’

Payne shook his head. Once a Royal Marine, always a
Royal Marine. But he was thinking of the girl’s face, her expression of shock when he had described the moment the major had been smashed down.