The Passing Bells (47 page)

The cooks had tea brewing and were fixing breakfast for the staff—only twelve now where once there had been forty. Servants' hall was closed off and the staff was seated in the kitchen when Fenton walked in. He was given a massive country breakfast of bloater, eggs, ham, and fried bread, and held the servants in awe with the type of stories civilians liked to hear about the fighting. When he had finished eating, one of the room-locater boards emitted a tinkling sound and a small white disc popped into view, revealing that Lord Stanmore was awake and calling for his tea. Coatsworth sighed and poked his feet into a pair of carpet slippers.

“I'll inform his lordship that you're up and dressed, sir. He hasn't been riding lately . . . just hasn't had the heart for it, I suppose.”

“I assumed the horses were gone.”

“That they are, sir . . . except for Jupiter and one of the mares. Rose O'Fen . . . corking good jumper in her day and still full of mustard.”

“Yes, tell him I'm up and that I'll be at the stables.”

The old groom was happy to have company and the horses were eager to be saddled. They frisked about, kicking their heels and snorting. Missed the companionship of the other horses, Fenton felt sure. There was something almost sinister about the rows of empty, shuttered stalls. The two men had just finished tightening the saddle girths when the earl hurried toward them, his jacket only half buttoned.

“Why in blazes didn't you tell me you weren't going to sleep late? Thought a returned soldier would lie abed to all hours.”

“Rather hoped I could, to tell the truth. But here I am. Anything I should know about the mare?”

“She's going on fifteen and has a sensitive mouth.”

“I'll be gentle with her if she'll be patient with me. Haven't been on a horse in a year and a half.”

Time seemed to slip backward in the exhilaration of the ride. Memories of the past rushed to the surface, brought vividly alive by the rhythmic thudding of the hooves on the frosty ground. But the illusion faded quickly. There was nothing to sustain it. His horse was old and in poor shape. The earl was old and embittered. They rode slowly and in silence past the fringe of a leafless wood and then along a rutted path that led to the back of Abingdon Pryory. When the roofs of the house came into view, the earl reined in and lit a cigarette.

“Giving it up, Fenton.” He waved his cigarette at the distant house. “Moving up to London.”

“Yes. Coatsworth told me.”

“I'm lending all this to the army. Not sure what they'll be doing with it . . . officers' training school, I expect. Well, I shan't miss it. It's only a house now, you see. It's not the house I loved so much as the life I lived in it. That life's gone and all I'm left with is a ruddy big building impossible to maintain. I shan't come back here until the war's over and I can restock the stables, lay out some new gardens . . . perhaps turn the flat land near Herons' Copse into a first-class polo field.” He smoked silently for a moment, staring out across the meadows and the evergreen woods that screened his house. “Deluding myself, Fenton. A door's been slammed shut and it will never open again.”

“That's nonsense, sir.”

“No, Fenton. All of this is as dead as a dodo bird. Even if the war should end tomorrow, nothing would ever be the same.”

The earl went in for his breakfast and Fenton walked slowly along the terrace, slapping his riding crop against his right boot. It had been a mistake to come down to Abingdon. A mere force of habit—or perhaps a yearning to recapture something that he knew in his heart was irretrievably gone. There would have been no point in telling the earl that the giving up of his house and manner of living was not the greatest loss to be suffered in 1915. He would no doubt have agreed but not truly believed it. After all, it was the greatest loss for
him
, and it was not an easy matter to visualize two hundred thousand graves.

The door to the conservatory opened and Charles hurried out. He was in uniform, a Burberry slung over one shoulder, and he looked harassed and irritable.

“I have to grab the eight-forty to Salisbury,” he told Fenton. “My so-called commander just rang down and ordered me to Wiltshire . . . to see some farmer who owns a ruddy big steam tractor.”

“A what?”

“Steam tractor! The fellow bought it in Canada before the war. I have to commandeer the bloody thing and arrange for its shipment to Newbury.”

“Want me to come along?”

“No. Just drive me to the station. Father's latest chauffeur can't get out of bed. He's seventy-six, so that's hardly surprising.”

With Charles gone, there didn't seem to be much point in staying for the rest of the weekend. Fenton thought up various excuses for going back to London as he drove the Rolls-Royce back to the house. Lydia and Hanna were having coffee in the breakfast room.

“Did he make his train?” Lydia asked.

“Just. He asked me to tell you that he'll get back to London sometime Monday afternoon.” He made a show of looking at his watch. “And speaking of London, I'll hop the three-forty-two for Waterloo. Sorry to cut my stay short, but I've got a devil of a lot of things to do. Seeing Charles rush off made me feel guilty for neglecting the war.”

Hanna sipped at her coffee. “We love having you . . . even for a few brief hours.”

“No point in your taking the train,” Lydia said casually. “The service is atrocious. The three-forty-two will end up being the four-thirty-five and you'll be forced to stand in the corridor. I'm driving up in an hour.”

“Oh?” Hanna said.

“Yes. I thought Charles told you. The drapery man is due in this afternoon to measure the windows and bring the swatches.” She glanced at Fenton over the rim of her cup. “Charles and I bought a house in Bristol Mews. I'm in the middle of redecorating it. A horrible amount of work, I might add.”

And that was that. He was grateful to be gone. So was Lydia. She no longer dared drive a German car, but her Napier Six was suitably rakish and powerful. She drove at her usual breakneck speed and said nothing until the house was far behind them.

“I can't tolerate being there without Charles.”

“No drapery man?”

“A small white lie, but I couldn't face being alone with them. I could stand it if Alex was up and about, but she's pretty much taken to her bed.”

“What's the matter with her?”

“They say it's the flu, but I'm not so sure. Something happened when she was in France, but I can't get a word out of her. Very curious. She used to overwhelm me with confidences.”

She concentrated on the road. There was very little civilian traffic but a good deal of army transport, most of it horse drawn. She passed the long columns slowly so as not to spook the animals.

“I find you a bit curious as well,” she said. “You haven't said anything. Not one word.”

“About what?”

“Charles and me.”

“You seem like a happy couple. What am I supposed to say?”

“You never thought it would happen, so you must have some degree of inquisitiveness.”

“I gave up being inquisitive about anything that happens these days. I wouldn't have raised an eyebrow had you married the Prince of Wales.”

“Please don't play the bastard with me, Fenton. We've known each other too long for that.”

“Very well, I'll be suitably brotherly. Are you happy?”

She hesitated slightly. “Yes.”

“Do you love him at all?”

“He loves me. That's all that matters.”

“Did you get him his job with NS Five?”

She stiffened. “What makes you ask that?”

“Because I know how the army works. General Haldane's a Royal Engineer. There must have been any number of RE officers he could have picked with more technical training than Charles. I suspect a bit of string pulling by you or Archie.”

“All right. I talked to a few people. Is there anything wrong in that?”

“No. I would gladly have done the same. He probably realizes it, but he thinks he's only doing this until he's fit for duty in the line. Is that how it works, or is there something he doesn't know yet?”

“He's locked in for the duration of the war,” she said flatly.

“He'll hate you for it when he finds out.”

“How regimental you sound. He might just be grateful for being spared the trenches.”

“Most men would be, but not the Right Honorable Charles G. As long as you're married to him, you might take the trouble to understand his class.”

“God! The peerage have their little ways, don't they? Duty . . . self-sacrifice . . . stalwart resistance to change. One wonders sometimes if they'll emerge from this war with their coronets intact.”

“I assume they'll survive,” he said quietly. “They always have.”

“Charles will survive. That's all I care about.”

“With coronet in place?”

She brushed a loose strand of hair from her forehead and smiled.

“England will always be England. The power may rest one day in the hands of an ex-Liverpool solicitor, but the people will bow at the sight of a coronet, be it tarnished or not.”

Bristol Mews was a short brick-paved street near Berkeley Square. Lydia parked the car in front of a narrow three-story house that had been built during the reign of George II. The windowsills had been freshly painted white, the shutters and front door a gleaming black.

“Handsome-looking place,” Fenton said.

“It's quite charming on the inside, too. Care for a drink?”

“I could go for a whiskey, yes.”

There were painters' ladders in the foyer and a strong smell of turpentine, wallpaper paste, and wood shavings throughout the first floor.

“It takes forever,” Lydia said. “It's so difficult finding good workers, and those you do find are unbearably independent. It's more ordered on the upper floors.”

She led the way up a gently curving stairway to the second-floor landing and into a large room furnished in the Oriental manner, with black- and red-lacquered cabinets and tables, a huge Chinese screen, and low divans covered in pale green silk.

“Like it?”

“Yes,” he said, after giving it some thought. “A change from Burgate House.”

“Daddy told me to take furniture from there, but there was nothing in the old place except Sheraton and Hepplewhite. I wanted something different.”

“Very exotic. I feel out of place in khaki.”

“There's whiskey and soda in the teak cabinet. Help yourself while I change.”

An elderly maid came in to light the fire while Fenton was pouring himself a whiskey. No neutral spirits—which made him think of Winifred. He was still thinking of her when Lydia came back into the room, her traveling suit of heavy tweed replaced by a flowing silk hostess gown in shades of blue and dark green. Yes, he thought, it had been cruel of Charles to compare Winifred to Lydia. The difference between them was not as marked now as it had been then, but there was certainly an air of chic about Lydia that Winifred would never acquire.

Lydia closed the doors and walked over to the fire, the glow of the flames turning her loose hair a shimmering copper. Fenton fixed her a brandy and then sat beside her on a divan facing the fire.

“How long will you be in England?” she asked.

“Four or five months. I go up to Leeds after New Year's and start training a battalion. One of those chums-and-pals conglomerations . . . all the lads enlisting together. I'll feel a rank outsider.”

“I'm sure they'll be proud having a Guards officer commanding them. I know I'd be.”

“I can just see myself ordering
you
about.”

“I don't know,” she said tautly. “That would depend on what you ordered me to do.”

She set her drink on a low table and turned to him. He moved his arms around her, feeling the warmth of her body beneath the silk gown.

“I want you, Fenton.”

“You
have
Charles.”

She undid the middle buttons of his shirt and slipped a hand through the gap.

“His love is ethereal. Passion shocks him.”

“You'll have to teach him. One doesn't learn much about women at Eton and Cambridge. Be patient.”

She kissed him on the mouth, her tongue gliding against his teeth.

“I don't feel very patient at the moment,” she whispered. “Please, Fenton . . .”

He could take her to bed. Or he could take her on the divan. A pleasant afternoon's rutting in Bristol Mews—the first step to becoming her lover. She might talk to a few people and he would find his orders mysteriously changed. Staff job in Whitehall. Nothing to be ashamed of. Brother officers would say that he jolly well deserved it after Mons, the Marne, Festubert, and Loos. Her tongue sought the deeper recesses of his mouth. Lingered, drew back.

“Please . . .”

She was warm . . . vibrant . . . passionate. Infinitely desirable. But there was a taste of brass in his mouth. The taste of tarnish.

“No.” He pushed her gently away from him and stood up. “We're much too late for this, darling Lydia. We quite missed the boat.”

She lay back against the cushions, staring at him, her eyes reflecting the fire.

“You're not serious.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I am.”

“Why? Charles would never know. You wouldn't be hurting him or ruining his marriage in the slightest.”

He buttoned his shirt and straightened his tie. “I wasn't thinking of Charles, actually. He never crossed my mind. I was thinking of myself. Everything is becoming so shabby these days. So lacking in worth. I just don't feel like joining the trend.”

“You son of a bitch,” she said quietly as he walked out of the room.

15

Martin Rilke struggled along Oxford Street, the wind yanking at his umbrella and threatening to tear it from his hand. A middle-aged woman waiting at a bus stop stared at him without sympathy.