Until the Colours Fade (48 page)

To George’s amazement several of the most aloof and
reserved
officers in his battalion were sobbing like children, less in grief at the carnage around them than with relief at the ending of the unendurable tensions of the past ten minutes. George too felt the reaction, his legs trembled uncontrollably and he was aware of the pain in his arm and hand, dully at first, but then with a sharper edge. During the next quarter-of-an-hour some of the men who had been in the trenches the night before lay down and slept. George could feel the stickiness of blood drying on both his hands, some of it his own, some belonging to others. A dark stain outlined the rent in his sleeve; he felt very thirsty; after drinking some water from his canteen, he gave the rest to several other wounded men from his company. Then he sat down next to a mortally wounded major in the Grenadiers, who
tried to convey some wish to him, but failed owing to a natural lisp much aggravated by a perforated lung. George had been
sitting
some minutes when he saw Towers on the other side of the battery. He was lying next to an embrasure, one leg twisted sharply out of alignment; his thigh smashed by a bullet: the sort of complicated fracture which inevitably meant an amputation. George had a vision of Towers cursing because he had got his feet wet in a puddle; recalled his ironic tone of voice: ‘They might have waited till after breakfast.’ With the help of another man, George managed to pull Towers up into a sitting position with his back against the rampart: an action which caused the wounded man such anguish that he clawed up handfuls of stony earth to stop himself screaming. His eyes were glittering and his face white, and beaded with sweat.

‘I want to see it.’

George shook his head, but Towers was so insistent that he gave in, cutting away the upper part of the trousers with a
bayonet
. There was not much blood since the ball was still in the thigh, and had evidently hit no artery. Two dark purple ridges showed where the bone had snapped and was pressing against the skin. Towers twisted his neck to see it, and touched the
swellings
with his fingers, then he rested his head against the
sandbags
and shut his eyes. There was no sign of any stretcher parties.

‘Braithwaite,’ he murmured. George bent close to him, expecting some personal request in case Towers died of shock during the amputation. The corners of his handsome mouth lifted slightly. ‘Braithwaite,’ he whispered, ‘you owe me
eighty-seven
pounds from last night.’ George nodded and looked away as tears sprang to his eyes. ‘No surgeon’s going to get you off.’

‘’course not.’

A longish silence followed.

‘Why d’you go rushin’ out this morning without waiting? Couldn’t wait to get at ’em, eh?’

‘Thought I’d be killed in the tent.’

Towers smiled; apparently thinking George was being modest.

‘You’re not so bad, Braithwaite. Good fellow, in point of fact.’

Not trusting himself to speak, George squeezed his friend’s hand and then, seeing that he had no revolver, left him his with his ammunition pouch. Russian ‘corpses’ had a habit of coming to life and shooting French and British wounded.

Shortly after ten o’clock the Russians attacked in overwhelming
numbers and drove the Guards out of the Sandbag Battery, forcing them to leave their wounded where they lay. The Guards made a stand further back on the spur and repelled the first charge. Several officers advanced calling on their men to follow them, but very few did. George himself tried to lead his company forward, but seeing the annihilation of several other small groups, he ordered them back. Not long afterwards the Brigade, or what was left of it, retired to the ridge.

Towards noon, the Guards with two regiments from the 4th Division managed to re-take both the spur and the Sandbag
Battery
, but George Braithwaite was not with them. At the
beginning
of this second advance he fainted through loss of blood from his wounded arm. He did not, therefore, see the heroic charge of the 77th on the principal Russian battery, nor witness the critical intervention of fresh French troops and the decisive attack by the Chasseurs d’Afrique and the Zouaves, which finally swung the battle in the allies’ favour.

George had heard much of this by nightfall; but not until the following day did news of what the Grenadiers had found when they stormed the Sandbag Battery for the last time, reach George’s hospital marquee. All the wounded officers and men left behind had been hacked to death. Lieutenant Towers had escaped this fate; he had shot himself with an Adams service revolver.

Of the fifty-two men in George’s company, who had gone into action, only nineteen returned to the camp on their own feet. The Brigade of Guards lost six hundred men: half their strength. The whole army suffered less, but was still reduced by a third. The victory was named the battle of the Inkerman after the ruins on the cliffs overlooking the eastern side of the plateau. The Russians left almost five thousand dead on the battlefield: a total nearly twice the combined British figure for killed
and
wounded. Russian wounded were thought to be over ten thousand. Yet in relation to the total numbers each side could dispose in the Crimea, the British had lost a higher proportion of their fighting strength. Since the defences of Sebastopol had not been
significantly
weakened by the defeat of the Russian field army,
Inkerman
would prove a pyrrhic victory.

The choice facing Lord Raglan was no longer when to attack the town; but whether to raise the siege, or to subject the remains of his army to a winter campaign. Against the advice of three divisional commanders, he decided to stay.

Tom Strickland clambered up from the caïque onto the crowded landing stage at Galata and paused to gaze back across the waters of the Golden Horn at the twin minarets of the Yeni-Cami and the distant dome of the Suleymaniye on the Stamboul
skyline
. As he pushed his way past the fruit sellers and money
changers
at the end of the quay and skirted the fish market, large drops of rain started to fall from a leaden sky. Dodging between a heavily laden donkey and a porter bent double under a gigantic swordfish, Tom hurried on towards his hotel, stuffing his sketch books under his coat as he went.

*

Two months before, Magnus had told Tom of his own plan to go to the Crimea, and had offered to recommend him as a potential war artist to various newspaper editors; but Tom had refused to consider this at the time. He had not yet forgiven Magnus for his criticisms of Helen, and had thought pity responsible for his friend’s kindness. Only a week later he read in the papers that Sir James Crawford’s squadron had sailed from the Bosphorus for Balaclava; from this Tom had concluded that Helen would already be on her way home. Miserable though he had been in the months after Helen’s marriage, her residence in Turkey had saved him from the temptation of trying to see her. But as soon as he had thought her back in England again, his old longing to force from her the final meeting, which he had previously been denied, had returned with obsessive force. And when this
happened
, his work, which until then had kept him sane, no longer served to divert him. Soon he had started to give in to
compulsions
he had hitherto resisted.

He had revisited Blandford’s Hotel, walked past the Belgravia house, and even spent a day at Barford. But his most frequent waking-dream had been to return to Hanley Park. Only the fear that Catherine would see him there had prevented him going at once; and then he had forced himself to imagine the horrifying consequences of discovery for Helen. Unable to decide what to do, incapable of work, and finding his only pleasure in thinking of the past, Tom had finally decided that his duty to himself and
to Helen was to leave the country. Though Magnus had by then left for the war, his suggestions had still been fresh in Tom’s mind; and while he had not supposed that even the novelty and horror of war would destroy his every memory of Helen, he had been unable to think of anything more likely to help him see his loss in a more rational perspective.

With contacts of his own from the days when he had worked for an engraver, Tom had not been defeated by Magnus’s absence. After several failures, he had managed to persuade Colnaghi to commission him to produce a series of portraits of senior officers serving in the Crimea, with supplementary drawings of other aspects of life in the camps and trenches: the end result to be a book of chromo-lithographs.

Tom had arrived in Constantinople a few days after
Inkerman
, his intention being to spend a week in the Turkish capital before embarking for Balaclava.

*

The rain was sheeting down by the time Tom reached Myserri’s Hotel. The hall was as crowded as usual, and resounding to the clink of spurs and the clatter of scabbards. A number of officers were evidently sailing for the Crimea later that evening, since porters were dragging out trunks and
portmanteaus
. Ever since the first ship-loads of wounded from
Inkerman
had started arriving at Scutari on the other side of the Bosphorus, the mood of the guests had been one of unrelieved gloom, and the presence in the hotel of the members of the Sanitary Commission, sent out from England to inquire into the state of the army hospitals, did little to improve morale. Three days before, the commissioners had found that the
Barrack
Hospital’s entire supply of drinking water had been
flowing
through a conduit partially blocked by the decaying carcase of a horse; the day after that, the scandal had been latrines sited next to water tanks in the courtyard. But while stories of rats gnawing at the hands and feet of dying men had not improved Tom’s appetite, they had at least increased his respect for the determination of Dr Sutherland and his fellow commissioners and inspectors to change matters. In fact he had quickly come to enjoy their company more than that of most of the officers in the hotel.

On entering the smoking room, Tom saw Dr Sutherland and his colleague Mr Milroy sitting at a table on the far side of the room, drinking brandy and water with other members of their
party. After Sutherland had invited him to join them, Tom pulled up a chair. A heated dispute was in progress about whether the Inkerman victory banquet, held the night before at the Embassy, should ever have taken place. While some claimed it had been a necessary gesture to bolster Turkish confidence, others argued that it had been inexcusable for the ambassador to lay on a feast for five hundred guests when, scarcely a mile away across the Bosphorus, thousands of wounded were dining on salt pork and watery broth.

Apart from Tom, the only other person at the table taking no part in the discussion was Dr Padmore, a slim pale-faced man in his late thirties, whom Tom liked for his slightly wistful sense of humour and retiring manner. Padmore, the Commission’s chief medical officer, was also a keen archaeologist, and had
accompanied
Tom on several of his sketching expeditions which had involved visits to Roman monuments in Stamboul such as the Cisterna Basilica. Because of Padmore’s mildness, it had come as a surprise to Tom to hear that his
cross-questioning
, when the Commission sat taking formal
evidence
, was merciless.

A servant in a red fez and matching cummerbund had just brought more brandy when Milroy began to bemoan the five to one discrepancy between men and women at the ball which had followed the Embassy banquet.

‘My God, man, didn’t you dance with Lady Stratford?’ asked Sutherland.

‘Her ladyship dance with a Sanitary Commissioner? My dear Sutherland, the cabinet may have given us certain powers and priority, but there are limits, you know.’

‘What about her daughters then? Nice-looking girls too.’

Tom was usually amused by Milroy’s stolid refusal to see anything amusing in Sutherland’s good-humoured mockery, but tonight the exchanges between the former Borough Engineer and the Government Inspector of
Hospitals
had a quite different effect on him – all talk of the Embassy banquet serving to remind him of Helen’s time as the ambassador’s guest. So certain had Tom been that she would return home after her husband’s departure for the Crimea that he had never entertained any serious suspicion that she might have stayed on, until his second day at Myserri’s when he had seen her name listed in a recent number of the
United
Service
Magazine
, as one of those present at an Embassy reception attended by the Sultan. This function had taken place just over a
month earlier, but by then Crawford’s squadron had
undoubtedly
sailed for the Black Sea. Though disconcerted, Tom had not abandoned his previous conviction; after all there was nothing very surprising about her staying for another week or so after the fleet’s departure. Yet though he fought against it, a needling doubt had entered Tom’s mind, not sufficiently disturbing to make him seriously reconsider his plan to remain a full week in Constantinople, but a source of underlying tension none-the-less.

As he listened to Milroy and Sutherland, Tom became
painfully
aware that a word from either of them could set his mind at rest. Presumably they would have heard somebody mention the fact that Sir James Crawford’s wife was there, if such had been the case. He stared fixedly through the cigar smoke at the crudely painted pattern of birds and pomegranates on the
opposite
wall. Not having eaten since midday the brandy had made him light-headed, but not enough to save him from a mounting feeling of agitation. Several times he was on the point of asking a direct question, but on each occasion he had sat back before speaking. It was absurd, he told himself, to be sitting with a thumping heart unable to make an inquiry which he could have made at any time since his arrival. But before this moment he had never been presented with such a direct
temptation
to find out. Now it seemed quite plain to him that unless he appeased his craving to know one way or the other, his remaining days in the city would be ruined by the continuing uncertainty. If she was still in Constantinople, it would not be so very terrible, although the thought of being obliged to leave earlier than he had intended was an irritating one. But every moment that he delayed told him more clearly that he would gladly give up far more than three days’ sketching to have his doubt resolved.

Tom turned to Padmore who had just finished saying
something
to John Rhodes, one of the junior inspectors.

‘Did you go … to the banquet, I mean?’

‘Do you think I shouldn’t have done?’ asked Padmore with a convincing show of guilt.

‘Of course not. I didn’t mean that at all. I wanted to ask whether somebody was there; a lady.’ Tom saw Rhodes raise his eyebrows and felt the blood rise to his cheeks. ‘I painted her
portrait,
you see….’ He hesitated awkwardly, having lost the thread of whatever justification he had intended to give. Angry with himself for showing his embarrassment, he added with
unnecessary
abruptness. ‘Her name is Lady Crawford; Admiral
Crawford’s wife.’

Padmore smiled apologetically.

‘I’m afraid the nearest I came to anyone so exalted was a colonel’s lady. Not even the right service. Sorry.’

Rhodes, who Tom had noticed liked to appear to know the answer to every question, put down his glass and pursed his lips thoughtfully.

‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘See that fellow over there with Major Pearson?’ He glanced in the general direction of the door. ‘Skene’s his name. Captain Skene. He’s some sort of attaché at the Embassy. He’ll know. Ask him.’

Tom felt suddenly dizzy and weak.

‘Mightn’t he find it rather strange … somebody he’d never met asking him just like that?’

Rhodes considered this for a moment puffing at his cigar.

‘See your point, Strickland. Awkward one this.’ He drummed on the table with his fingers for several seconds and then raised a hand authoritatively. ‘I’ve got the answer. Leave it to me.’

He got up and Tom watched him walk over to a youngish man in a black evening coat sitting with a group of army officers to the right of the door. Tom strained to catch what was said but there was too much noise in the room. The triumphant smirk on Rhodes’s face as he returned showed that at least he had not been rebuffed.

‘Said we were having bets on how many generals’ and
admirals
’ wives were at the banquet. Obliging fellow told me straight off, no questions asked. Four generals and two admirals … their wives, you understand.’

‘He wanted to know which wives,’ interjected Padmore.

‘All in good time.’ Rhodes favoured Tom with a
self-congratulatory
grin. ‘Lady Stewart and Lady Crawford.’

Tom gripped the edge of the table to steady himself.

‘Thank you,’ he muttered, pushing back his chair.

‘Nothing to it, if you know who to ask.’

*

When the others rose to go to the dining room, Tom slipped out into the darkness of the courtyard with its trellised arcading and orange trees. Standing alone under the shelter of the eaves he watched the rain pattering down on the gravel around the
central
fountain. The following day he had previously set aside for finishing several oil sketches of the Sultan Ahmet mosque and the Church of the Pantokrator, but now the thought of any kind of work seemed ridiculous. The definite answer he had received,
far from bringing him the peace of mind he had predicted, had left him a prey to a new and frightening indecision. Though pained by his reviving memories, he was also animated by a
pulsing
nervous excitement, akin to fear but not without
undercurrents
of pleasure.

In this strange mood he could clearly recall his thoughts before Rhodes’s revelation, but not the feelings and motives
behind
them. His firm intention had been to leave the city if Helen turned out still to be there; a simple matter of arranging the
earliest
possible passage to Balaclava. The correctness and
inevitability
of this course had seemed too obvious to question then, but now….? In England he had persuaded himself that only fear for her reputation had prevented him going to Hanley Park. Yet here he was, planning to sail at once from a foreign city where the risks of any meeting with her being discovered were a fraction of those which would have been encountered in
England,
with Catherine still at Hanley Park. The plain implication of this astonished him. He had left England, just as he was now planning to leave Turkey, not out of consideration for her, but because of his
own
fears. If she were to receive him with anger and hostility, his world of memories and make-believe would be shattered. Far easier to leave for the East, dressing up cowardice as gentlemanly concern for a lady’s good name, than to risk an angry and painful confrontation which might destroy past
illusions
. Yet such a confrontation would be far more likely to cure him than this endless running away.

He stared at the drops of rain falling from the dark leaves of the orange trees and breathed deeply to control a sudden surge of panic. See her, he told himself. See her. Wasn’t that the only way he would ever lay the ghost she had left with him? Perhaps he would discover after this lapse of time that the ideal figure he had made her in his mind had owed more to a lover’s selective
imagination
than to the woman herself. Anger also came to buttress his resolution. Helen had loved him, and yet he had never once argued against her decision to marry but, like some scared lackey eager to keep his place by acquiescence, had politely handed her the knife to use whenever it might please her to sever their connection. Should he now continue to sacrifice himself for the minimal risks to her reputation which a meeting might involve?