The Iron Stallions (16 page)

‘That feller Bawtry,’ Reeves went on. ‘You remember him? Once helped himself to your second best suit. He’d been recalled as a reservist and arrived in France on May 12th with a squad of men as replacements. He found us just as we reached the beaches. An hour later a Messerschmitt got him. Sergeant Dodgin got the DCM. Your cousin Aubrey’s joined us, and so has a feller called Pallovicini who says his family breed horses. Oh, and Eddie Orne’s been invalided out.’

‘Why? I thought he was all right. We had a letter from him. He was wounded in the leg.’

‘Bit more than that, old boy. He’s had it off.’

It seemed desperately important to find Orne and Josh sat by the telephone for hours, before he finally traced him to a convalescent home in Nottinghamshire.

Orne looked pale but remarkably cheerful, sitting in a wheelchair with the empty leg of his trousers pinned up round his stump.

‘Don’t worry, Eddie,’ Josh said. ‘It’s always been the policy of the Regiment to do something for people who’ve had to leave it through no fault of their own, and I can probably find you a job if you want one.’

During August, still limping heavily but beginning to look forward to returning to the regiment, Josh made his way to Colchester where the Lancers were based, to find out what his future was. The battle was still going on over Southern England and all the way up in the train he listened to the sound of aeroplane engines.

Leduc greeted him with warmth. ‘When are you going to be fit, Josh?’ he asked.

‘Another month or two, they say.’

‘Pity,’ Leduc said. ‘I’m to be given a brigade and I’d have made sure you got the Regiment. But they’re off to the Middle East soon and they’ll never send them overseas without their commanding officer.’

He called for drinks and lifted his glass as it appeared at his elbow. ‘Well, here’s to the war, Josh. It’s not much of one as wars go.’

‘Perhaps they couldn’t afford anything better, sir.’

Leduc smiled. ‘You’ll get the regiment in the end, I suppose, and that would be right, so you’d better hurry and get that bum of yours better.’

Ailsa was waiting when Josh got home. ‘What did they say?’ she asked.

‘Sitting bones all right,’ Josh said. ‘Muscles still a bit dicey. They say I wouldn’t be able to cope with a tank.’

‘Then get yourself a job where you don’t have to use a tank.’

‘The Regiment doesn’t ride horses any more.’

‘Then join another regiment.’

Josh stared at her. ‘Don’t be damn’ silly, Ailsa,’ he said sharply. ‘My name’s Goff. Goffs have belonged in the Regiment ever since it was raised. Dammit, a Goff raised it.’

The argument irritated him but Ailsa didn’t pursue the question and they went to bed in a good mood.

‘Duty calls,’ Ailsa said. ‘We still need that family.’

But they hadn’t even started taking off their clothes when the telephone rang. Josh went downstairs and was surprised to hear Reeves’ voice.

‘Hello, Josh, old boy,’ he said. ‘Glad it’s you rather than Ailsa.’

‘Something wrong, Toby?’

‘My little brother’s bought it.

‘Oh, God! How?’

‘Christ, how are any of them in the RAF buying it these days? The buggers raided London today. Simon’s lot caught them as they bolted home and he was shot down into the sea. Break it as gently as you can to Ailsa, Josh. He was her favourite, really. Not so clumsy and clottish as me.’

By this time the fields of Kent and Sussex were strewn with the incinerated wreckage of aircraft, and more than once Josh saw cars go past the house containing captured German aircrew. Late in September Ailsa decided to go to London. She was faintly mysterious and for a moment Josh wondered if she’d got a boy friend there. He knew there’d been one or two little affairs since they’d been married but recently she’d been very attentive and she was still determined to have a child, which didn’t seem to go with affairs on the side. When he learned her Mother was to accompany her he felt faintly relieved.

‘Make sure you’re away before dark,’ he said.

‘What will you do all day? Go and see a girl friend?’

‘I don’t have girl friends.’

‘The way you’ve been working me over lately I shouldn’t have thought you had either the time or the energy.’

He drove them to the station with the last of the petrol. Late in the morning, a formation of German aircraft passed overhead. They looked like small silver fishes against the sky and he guessed they were heading for London. Then abruptly, he saw the formation break and saw minute flashes in the sky which he knew was the sun on the wings of manoeuvring aircraft and he assumed the RAF had got among them.

The formation had broken up now and he could see the contrails curving across the heavens. The Germans were struggling to turn for home but several had been shot down. The battle came lower and lower until he could see a Heinkel trying to manoeuvre just to the north with a Spitfire on its tail.

On the rising ground behind the house, a farmer had stopped his tractor and a boy with him was shouting and pointing excitedly. Then, as the rattle of guns came from overhead and cartridge cases began to tinkle to the ground, they left the tractor and started to run. As they did so, Josh saw pieces fly off the Heinkel, then a puff of smoke and a trailing brown stain scarred the sky.

The machine screamed down, still shedding pieces of metal, and vanished from sight over the rise with a tremendous ‘whoomph’ that shook the ground and sent up an enormous pyre of smoke. Looking up, Josh saw one of the crew coming down after it, his twisted parachute failing to slow his descent. He landed on a small bothy in the next field and went through the roof in a shower of tiles and pieces of lath and timber.

Josh was first to reach the bothy. The walls were still standing, but the roof had fallen in, and there was no means of getting inside because the door was secured with a padlock. As Josh struggled, the tractor arrived and the farmer ran towards him, brandishing a fork. Shoving the fork into the padlock, he broke it off and pushed the door open. Inside, the bothy was full of fallen tiles and broken timber. In one corner was a harrow red with rust and the German’s body was impaled on the raised handles.

Thankful that Ailsa had not been there, Josh waited at home. The aeroplane containing the remainder of the crew had struck the ground at full speed and as far as they could make out was twenty feet down.

The RAF officer who arrived shrugged. ‘Might just as well fill up the hole,’ he said. ‘Those gentlemen dug their own grave.’

That evening, Ailsa rang. ‘I’ve got news for you,’ she said.

‘I’ve got news for you, too,’ Josh replied. ‘We had a Heinkel crash in the next field.’

There was a long silence then Ailsa’s voice came again. ‘I’m glad I wasn’t there,’ she said soberly. ‘Especially just now.’

‘Why just now?’

Ailsa sounded strangely awed. ‘We’ve rung the bell, Josh. I’m going to have a baby. The specialist confirmed it. Next May, he said.’

‘That’s tremendous news, darling! Make it a boy! We need someone to carry on the name.’

Ailsa sounded pleased with herself. ‘Thought you’d like it,’ she said. ‘What’re you going to do now? Get drunk?’

‘Have a stiff gin or two, perhaps, to wet its head. You’re not staying in London, are you?’

‘No, I’m staying the night with Mother at Hawsehurst. That’s well out of the danger zone. We shall be all right there. We’re going to do some shopping in Tonbridge. Baby clothes and all that nonsense.’ There was a long pause then Ailsa’s voice came again. ‘I think we
will
move to Braxby, Josh. After all. It’ll be safe there and splendid for a baby. It’s funny how you change when you’re in pod. I think I’ll even
like
Braxby, Josh. I’ll do it up. Make it really splendid again. I’ve been talking money to mother and she points out that now poor old Simon’s gone there’ll only be two of us to share what she has and there’s more than enough.’ There was another long pause. ‘Josh?’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you love me?’

‘Of course.’

‘Sometimes, I wondered. I love you enormously, darling. Having the baby’s made me realise.’

Mixing himself a stiff drink, Josh sat down to contemplate the idea of fatherhood. That there would be another Goff at Braxby was the only thing he could think of. There had been Goffs at Braxby for nearly a hundred and fifty years and the thought that they might go on for another hundred and fifty pleased him enormously.

He was a little drunk when he went to bed, and wishing Ailsa were curled up close to him. Their relationship, a product of the blasé Thirties, had been a remarkably casual one but it had stuck, and without much effort, too, so that he supposed he must have loved her more than he’d ever realised. She’d always had a marked sense of humour and an animal joy of life. Marriage to Ailsa had never been something romantic to gush over, but rather something to laugh about, to make jokes about, to get happiness from, and he suddenly realised how empty the house was when she was away.

He woke with a slight headache. When Ailsa hadn’t returned by tea-time he began to wonder where she was. For God’s sake, he thought, you’d have imagined the one thing she’d have wanted was to get home and celebrate with him. As evening came, he began to grow worried and tried to contact her mother in Hawsehurst but, with the air raids, communications had been disrupted and the telephone lines were choked. Eventually, he reached the Hawsehurst exchange but they said there was no reply to the number he required. He waited a while then tried again and, in the end, as it began to grow dark, tried the police.

‘Where was that, sir?’ he was asked.

‘Hawsehurst. It’s near Tenterten.’

‘Hawsehurst, sir? Just a minute.’ There was a long silence then a woman’s voice came.

‘My name’s Warwick,’ she said. ‘I run the Women’s Voluntary Service here. We have some names.’

‘What sort of names?’ Josh barked. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Just a minute, sir–’

‘People have been telling me to “just a minute” for a quarter of an hour now! Has something happened to my wife?’

There was another silence and he heard the rustling of paper, then the voice came back again.

I’m afraid it’s bad news, sir. A German aeroplane jettisoned its bombs and several houses were flattened. About fifteen people were killed and a lot injured. It took out most of the village street. I have a name here, sir. Mrs Ailsa Mary Joan Goff. There’s a Mrs Reeves at the same address. A Mrs Elizabeth Reeves. Would either of those–?’

Josh drew a deep breath. ‘Both of those,’ he said. ‘Ailsa Goff is my wife. Elizabeth Reeves is her mother.’

There were few relatives at the funeral and Toby Reeves was refused leave on the grounds that the Germans were expected hourly.

The Germans didn’t come, however, and as October arrived it began to be obvious that they weren’t going to. In November Josh sold the house he’d had in Kent and moved to Braxby. In December the Regiment was ordered abroad and Reeves appeared at Braxby on overseas leave, looking as defeated and bewildered as Josh.

‘I’ve nowhere else to go,’ he said dazedly. ‘The family home’s gone and this is the only place I can think of.’

For one so extrovert, he looked curiously lost and it seemed to be time for Josh to air his own bewilderment.

‘Look, Toby, all this money Ailsa left. I can’t accept it. It’s yours by right.’

‘Rubbish, old lad!’ Reeves helped himself from the whisky decanter. ‘The money was hers to do as she pleased with.’

‘All the same–’

‘Good God, man, there’s plenty for all! We were never short of the ready and in any case, there’s nothing I can do about it. She’d made a will. I can’t change it. I don’t even want to.’ Reeves paused, his expression strangely wistful. ‘So long as I can come here occasionally.’

Despite Reeves’ encouragement, Josh couldn’t bring himself to touch the money Ailsa had left. Wandering about the hollow-sounding rooms at Braxby he wondered what in God’s name a solitary widower like himself was going to do with it. He would rattle round the place like a pea in an empty pod. Yet he couldn’t bear the thought of parting with it.

The two elderly Ackroyds who looked after the place watched him warily, wondering what he was going to do. His mother was equally doubtful.

‘It all seemed such a wonderful idea when your grandfather said it should come to you,’ she said. ‘But everybody was assuming then that there’d be a family to go with it.’

For a long time he debated what to do. Wightman, the family solicitor, helped him through the business of clearing up his grandmother’s affairs, and as he stood staring at the magnificent emerald that he’d never had the chance to put on Ailsa’s finger, he realised that, with what he’d been left and what was to come to him from Ailsa’s property, he was wealthier than he’d ever been in his life. But Wightman also had a nasty shock in store for him.

‘Your Uncle Robert’s found a clause in your grandfather’s will that’s going to be difficult,’ he said. ‘The house was to come to you and the phrase went “so that it shall always be in the hands of a true Goff.” The idea behind it was that your Uncle Robert had become a Cosgro, but unfortunately, if anything happened to you, it would leave
him
as the only
true
Goff. Certainly he changed his name to Cosgro-Gough, but he could argue his way round that.’ The solicitor looked over his spectacles. ‘Are you thinking of remarrying, Josh?’

‘It’s a bit early for that,’ Josh said.

‘I was thinking of a family and another Goff coming along.’

Josh sighed. ‘For a little while,’ he said, ‘so was I.’

It seemed important to see the Regiment depart. There were a lot of new faces since Dunkirk. A few men had been lost and experienced officers and men had gone to strengthen newly formed regiments and their places had been filled by fresh intakes. There were still a few old hands, however. Syd Dodgin and Winder, also with three stripes on his arm now and looking amazingly like Eddie Orne, greeted him cheerfully.

‘We’ll be all right, sir,’ Dodgin said with a grin. ‘We’re very sharp-witted these days. We ’aven’t got anything else to sharpen, so we ’ave to be.’