The Passing Bells (53 page)

“No . . . I shan't be missed.”

The Royal Windsor Fusiliers and the Green Howards had fought side by side at Inkerman in the Crimean War and had shared the same marching tune ever since, “The Bonnie English Rose.” It was an apt description of Winifred, Charles decided as they walked on the moors after supper. The rain had stopped and the sky flamed with sunset. He stood beside Fenton and watched Winifred striding through the gorse in muddy boots, whistling for her Bedlington, which was off on a rabbit hunt.

“I'm glad for you and Winnie. You seem very happy together.”

“She's a fine woman.”

“And a downright lovely one.”

Fenton lit a cigarette and blew smoke through his nose. “I detect a vague bitterness in your manner, Charles. Are you and Lydia getting along . . . or is it rude of me to ask?”

“Oh, we get along without strain . . . considering the circumstances.”

“What circumstances?”

“My job. I hate what I'm doing, Fenton. And I feel manipulated . . . pulled onto an inside track by invisible wires. Well, not so invisible, come to think of it. I've just closed my eyes so far.”

Fenton dropped his half-smoked cigarette at his feet and crushed it with the heel of his boot.

“If Lydia is pulling a few wires, it's only for your benefit. You came within an inch of being killed at Gallipoli, old boy. She wouldn't be human if she didn't think of that. And you're not skulking in an attic, you know. For every man at the front, there are a dozen serving usefully—no,
vitally
—behind the lines. Only amateurs feel compelled to charge the foe with drawn sword. Professionals take the billets as they come, fair or foul, good job or bad. Make the best of it.”

“It's rather a question of my own self-respect, Fenton.”

“Bugger that,” Fenton said angrily. “You're one of the few men left in the army who went ashore from the
River Clyde.
That ranks with the Charge of the Light Brigade or the bloody stand at Albuera. There isn't a soldier alive who wouldn't touch his cap in respect. Stop sticking needles in your flesh.”

“A man should do what he feels is the right thing for
him
,” Charles said with a quiet intensity. “If he doesn't, he pays for it in some way. This may sound like an odd paradox, Fenton, but I never felt so alive, so needed, as I did at Gallipoli. My function was simple . . . to lead and inspire my men. I did that well. I was a damn good officer and . . .”—his voice trailed off until it was virtually inaudible—“I was happy.”

Fenton found it impossible to sleep. Not that it mattered very much. He had told his batman to wake him at four, as always. Usually, he was in bed by ten-thirty, and after a quick shave, a spot of breakfast, he was off to the camp before reveille. But tonight he had sat up drinking with Charles until two in the morning. No more talk about Lydia or his problems, thank God, just jawing about old times at Abingdon Pryory. But the man's moodiness had still remained, like a dark shadow beneath the surface.

Winifred stirred and moved against him. Her hand created an opening in his pajamas and drifted slowly across his chest in a loving tracery.

“Thought you were asleep,” he murmured.

“No. Just silently respectful. I could almost hear you thinking. Dull army matters, no doubt . . . How many cans of bully beef per man . . . boot laces . . . spare socks? I wonder if Napoleon thought about such things.”

“Probably.”

“But that's not on your mind, is it?”

“No. I was thinking of Charles. I have a feeling he's going to do something rash.”

“Charles never does anything rash.”

“He let you get away. But that was more foolish than rash, I suppose.”

“Some people might say it was sensible.”

“Some people still think the earth is flat.”

She lay silently beside him, listening to the night wind moaning and whispering down the chimney. Then she said, “Does Charles know that Lydia was in love with you?”

He raised himself on one elbow. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Women can sense those things. I'll never forget the look in her eyes when you were teaching me how to tango. She was dancing with Charles, but watching us. I was just eighteen, but women are born with the instinct for understanding other women. Were you in love with her?”

“Does it matter?”

“No. Even if you were, you're not in love with her now. A woman can sense that, too.”

He bent his head and kissed her. “You're the only woman I love . . . the only woman I shall ever love. I'm a disgustingly lucky man, Winnie.”

“Like Napoleon?”

“His luck ran out. And besides, I'm taller than he was.”

Charles stayed at the factory for the next two days—forty-eight hours with virtually no sleep, watching what Ross and Bigsby instructed the mechanics to do. He kept meticulous notes and drew diagrams of each procedure. When the job was completed to Bigsby's satisfaction, the men from the test center at Hatfield Park who had brought the tank drove it out of the building and onto a flatcar on the railroad siding. They then covered it with canvas, so not an inch of its metal body could be seen.

“And that's that,” Ross said. “What do you do now?”

“Follow it down to the test ground and demonstrate it for some generals and war ministers. Rather like selling a terribly expensive motorcar to people who don't really want to buy one.”

“You handle the test, do you?”

“Oh, no . . . just the selling part. I mingle with the brass . . . answer questions, tell a few jokes, and talk shop. Above all, I keep cheerful . . . even when the damn thing runs off its tracks or the engine explodes. Keep cheery about it . . . make light of the problems with a sort of ‘Well, sir, we'll do jolly well better next time' attitude.”

Ross shook his head in wonder. “Queer way to fight a war, ain't it?”

“Yes. I think it is.” He held out his hand. “Good luck in America, Ross. It's been splendid seeing you again, and I mean that most sincerely. Truly splendid. You know what you can do and you do it to perfection. I admire that. You must be a very happy man.”

Ross frowned slightly. “Well, sir, I don't know about that, but I'm satisfied. Is that what you mean?”

“Yes. I suppose it is, Ross. I suppose it is.”

There were more people than Charles had expected. The ground was relatively dry except for the mud-filled hollow, which was one of the test obstacles. The absence of rain and the crisp April air had everyone in a good mood, and they strolled about in the sun outside the refreshment tent downing whiskey sodas or drinking tea and munching ham sandwiches. The usual type of crowd had come—army and navy officers, frock-coated civil servants, and ministers. General Haldane did not mingle with any of them. General Haldane, Royal Engineers, chief of NS 5, stayed as far away from them as possible, his pale eyes fixed on the tank as if he were examining every bolt, screw, and rivet. He was sixty-two and had spent forty years of his service life in India and Burma building railroads and steel bridges from Mysore to the Salween. He had no capacity for small talk of any kind. He was waiting for the driver of the machine to signal that his crew was ready. When he did so, he turned to Charles and growled, “Tell 'em all to watch. And keep bloody well cheery.”

She was dressing for a dinner engagement when he came home, dried mud on his boots and badly in need of a shave. His entrance into her pristine dressing room was almost an obscenity.

“Charles! You could at least have telephoned.”

He slumped into a small velvet chair and looked at her, groggy from fatigue.

“How fragile you look,” he said.

She turned back to her dressing-table mirror and applied the slightest amount of rouge to her cheeks.

“Most naked people do.”

“Half naked,” he corrected. “What do you call those skimpy things?”

“Underclothes.”

“Must be more to it than that. Hardly the army manner, is it? Chemise, mark one. Garter belt, model nineteen sixteen dash seven one two H.”

She glanced over a white powdered shoulder. “Are you tipsy?”

“God, no. Just worn to the bone. Big Willie did himself proud for a change. Even knocked over a small tree. Went seven miles at four miles per hour and didn't break down once. No jammed gears . . . no stalls for lack of petrol. Everything clicked. General Haldane was so pleased he smiled—at least I think it was a smile. If an iceberg could smile, it would look like Haldane's smile. He thanked me . . . and I told him I was chucking it in . . . resigning from NS Five. He wasn't the least bit surprised.”

“That's because he already received notice. Someone on the General Staff informed him this morning.”

“So I got the appointment,” he said in a flat, weary voice.

“Of course. You impressed General Robertson favorably, to say the least.”

“I'm chucking that in, too. I don't want to be on
Wully's
staff.”

She studied an eyebrow in the glass. “Oh? What do you want to do then?”

“Go to Windsor and rejoin my battalion.”

She plucked a solitary hair with a pair of tweezers. “That's ridiculous. You don't have medical clearance and you're on staff. Don't make gestures, Charles.”

“It's not a gesture. I want to be doing something that fits my abilities for a change . . . and my temperament. I just won't fit on Robertson's staff. There's too much politics involved . . . too much spying and skulking about expected. Haig is Robertson's creature, and any mutterings about Haig from divisional commanders must be quashed. That's where I would come in—and others like me—hanging about various HQ's in France and keeping our ears open. I don't want that kind of employment. I want something clean . . . manly. I want to be a company commander and take my chances in the line like everyone else.”

“Not ‘everyone' is in the line.” She put the steel tweezers down very carefully, as though they would smash if she dropped them on the table, then turned in her chair and looked at him. “I fail to see anything
manly
in wanting to get killed.”

“I don't expect to be killed. I expect to serve a few tours in trenches and then be rotated by the winter . . . given a battalion to train. The same kind of process Fenton went through.”

“Fenton's a regular army officer,” she said, measuring each word. “What he did in France . . . what he's doing now . . . is expected of him. You fulfilled your martial duties on Gallipoli. Nothing further is expected of you except the wearing of a uniform and the performance of some useful task. Being a staff officer is such a task, Charles. There's more to it than ‘skulking about,' as you put it. It's a job that requires intelligence and tact—two qualities you possess in abundance. Now, why don't you take a bath and a shave, put on some clean clothes, and come with me. I'm meeting some people at Claridge's and then we're going on from there to the theater.”

“No, I'm going to get some sleep. I want to be at Windsor first thing in the morning.”

She stood up and leaned back against the edge of the dressing table.

“Manly,” she said softly. “That's the crux of it, isn't it, Charles? Your periodic bouts of impotence distress you.”

He looked away from her. She reminded him of an illustration he had seen once in an erotic novel someone had abandoned in a railway carriage,
La Passion de Marie.
The nearly transparent chemise . . . the lace belt supporting dark silk hose.

“That's only a symptom. I know the cause.”

“And you hope to cure it in the trenches?” Her tone was mocking. “I could cure it in one night! You really make me laugh, Charles. Your conceptions of
honor
and
duty
and
good form
and
playing the game
belong to another century! What about your duty to me? And I'm not talking about your duty in bed. That failure is no more than prissy ignorance, not a disease. No . . . I mean your duty to me as your wife. There are more than enough widows these days without your going out of your way to create another one!”

“There's no point in our talking about it,” he said, getting to his feet. “You simply wouldn't understand.”

“Why? Because I'm not of your class? Because I wasn't initiated at birth into the code of noble peers? For God's sake, Charles, don't turn your
noble heritage
into high bloody farce!”

He left quietly. He did not slam the door, but there was a finality about his departure that she knew to be absolute. She sat down and looked at herself in the mirror. Lydia Foxe Greville . . . future Countess of Stanmore, German bullets permitting, mistress of Abingdon Pryory and all it contained. Her childhood dream. A dream from an age rapidly fading. No, she thought, smoothing her eyebrows with her finger tips, an age already gone.

17

Lieutenant General Sir Julian Wood-Lacy enjoyed speaking to war correspondents. He felt that he owed the breed a debt for their treatment of him after Mons. He had emerged from that debacle as something of a hero, although he had done nothing to deserve it; had simply handled his division in adversity with calmness and intelligence, fighting when he could, pulling back when it seemed prudent to do so. A competent job of generalship, no more than that, but the London press had been determined to wring glory out of defeat for the sake of civilian morale. The adjective “glorious” was tagged on to the word “retreat,” and the old general with his John Bull face and manner was elevated to the military pantheon and promoted from the rank of commander of a division to that of the leader of a corps.

“I should like to propose a toast to the memory of Lord Kitchener,” the general said, raising his glass of sherry. “I hate to think of poor K's body floatin' out there in the North Sea. Indeed I do. No way for a
soldier
to die. Served under him in the Sudan, don't you know. A hard taskmaster, but ‘
de mortuis
' and all that. Drink up, lads.”