Until the Colours Fade (54 page)

‘Lord, how I wept on the way back to the Hard when I’d left you. I never landed with such a heavy heart and touch wood haven’t done since.’

He saw Charles looking at him with bewilderment.

‘You never told me that before.’

‘No, no, I didn’t. So many things we never say.’ Sir James was horrified by the pain these last few words seemed to cause Charles.

A few minutes later they walked out under the colonnade and crossed a terrace bordered on one side by acacia trees. The light was fading fast but they could see below them the steep fall of the cliffs and, at their base, jutting from the dark water, tall
fantastically
shaped rocks. A little to their right the monks had cut
terraces
into the cliff face and made gardens there, planted with vines and shrubs; from the lowest terrace a zig-zag path led down to a small pebbly beach. The air was windless but very cold. From the chapel came the sound of singing; the monks were at vespers. Sir James saw a glimmer of candlelight and reflected gold from the icons under the darkened porch. A single strong bass voice seemed to hang and linger in the air after the rest had stopped. He found himself both moved and troubled by feelings the sound had evoked. Beneath them the tall black rocks, symbols both of permanence and of a lost faith; within their core, fossils innumerable proving … he knew not what precisely, except that the Bible, that one-time cornerstone of his belief, was now cracked and chipped by the geologists’
remorseless
hammers, and scratched by the pens of scholars challenging the truth of the New Testament itself. Remembering his own father’s certainty, Sir James felt a passionate longing to share it still, to say with him that any man who does his duty and trusts in God need fear no danger; do what you can as well as you can, and let the rest remain with Him. But now he could not, and those simple words, once so reassuring, held no comfort. People say that this war is different because of the journalists, the Minié rifle, a steam navy and the overland telegraph, but these are
small changes. This war is different, truly different, he thought, because of the weakening of belief; because men’s attitudes to war itself are governed by their faith, or lack of faith, in
immortality
. The war’s true terror lay, not in the Lancaster’s rifled barrel and the moorsom shell, but in the sense that death, under an empty heaven, in an indifferent universe, was final.

Yet looking out across the darkening sea, he found some
comfort
; if that were so, it had been always so, whatever men had believed. Seeing Charles’s despondent face, he longed to console him. If death comes to all, soon or late, he thought, the manner of it may not be so unimportant, since it is the only
embellishment
a man can give to its inevitable coming; and as this thought formed, some lines of Browning came back to him, and turning, he said them out loud:

Even before coming out onto the terrace, Charles had known that he could not tell him; and, as they rode together, part of the way towards the Balaclava col, he felt more light-hearted. His father also seemed less burdened, and during their remaining time together he repeated an artillery officer’s explanation of why so few men were killed by shells, bursting even within six feet of them. Because their bodies exposed no more than eight square feet in all, their chances of being struck were as eight to one tenth of the surface of a sphere in square feet of six feet radius: or in layman’s language chances of seven to one in favour of escape. They laughed because Sir James was sure that he had got it wrong, but had tried to remember the gist of it as some
consolation
during the bombardment. Charles said:

‘I wonder what happened to the artillery officer?’

But Sir James merely shrugged his shoulders and smiled. At the top of the col they shook hands and parted without tears, both remembering that other parting on
Electra
’s deck so long ago. As Sir James reached a sharp descent where the track turned, he called back:

‘God bless you, God bless you, Charles.’

He had arrived at Balaclava under an inky sky, pierced here and there by narrow shafts of white light, where the booming
northeaster
had torn ragged holes in the heavy clouds. Above the
harbour,
the cliffs and hills were black, brown and grey, as if rinsed of all warmer colours by the storm; but Tom was not displeased by his first sight of this sombre landscape, since it so well accorded with his mood. Whether the grief he had known in Turkey had been worse than the emptiness he now felt, Tom could not judge, since the occasional stabs of active pain he still suffered, came with an almost retrospective feel, like the sharp twinges a man ‘imagines’ in a limb already hacked away. But at these moments, his mood was angry as well as leaden. The knowledge that she had truly loved him, and probably still did, had not, as he had expected, brought peace of mind but a deeper hopelessness.

Few men, passing for the first time under the overhanging sterns of the ships moored along the wharves, found consolation in the sights and smells around them; but Tom was relieved to be where he was. Here at least, at the war, among these thin
grey-faced
men in their patched and filthy uniforms, there would be no room for ‘High Art’s’ heroic themes. Among the men of a
devastated
army, Tom thought his inner desolation would serve him well in his task.

Confronted with scenes such as those he had already
witnessed
at Scutari, and feeling as he did, he would not be tempted to impose lofty sentiment or add elevating moral tags to his
subjects
. Let other artists back in England paint men with clean hands and faces writing letters by a camp fire’s light: entitled
Thoughts
of
Home,
or companion pictures of
A
Soldier’s
Death
and
A
Widow’s
Sorrow
– this last selling in thousands as a print: the young woman gazing with tearful but beatific eyes at her husband’s last letter, sword, epaulettes and lock of hair, sent home from the fatal battlefield; no anger at a life thrown away, no haggard grief-stricken face, but an expression of sorrowful and yet proud acceptance of a death so noble.

For Tom a brief flirtation with improving themes was over. If assuring him of no other benefit, his personal emptiness
would save him from false sentiment. He would not portray heroes fighting for Queen and Country, but merely men killing other men, some shooting, others being shot. That would be all. No more for him ‘High Art’s’ agonising imperative: to make a picture ‘say’ and ‘be’ more than a literal presentation of certain facts. For scenes of war, there should be no artist’s
interpretation,
however morally impeccable, between the beholder and these facts. He should be given nothing more. Why should he be, when there was nothing else to give?

On his first night in the Crimea, Tom slept under the table in a cramped cabin used as an office by the Assistant-Agent for Transports. Next day he intended to make other arrangements. One more brush with the past was inevitable: he would have to visit Magnus, rather than be sought out by him; but with Magnus, as with all Crawfords, Goodchilds and Braithwaites, the future demanded, if not an absolute severance, at least a new distance and detachment. Never again could he allow himself to depend upon Magnus’s help. A new life, even if it were to be an empty one, required that caution.

*

After several days of high wind and sleet, Magnus woke to see a clear sky and the plateau bathed in soft sunlight. The air was sharp and cold, and the puddles around his hut still frozen. After lighting a small fire to boil some water, he pulled his sheepskin blanket around him and lay down with a flat stone for a pillow, enjoying the smell of wood-smoke and the sound of the larks overhead. Far away, two guns were firing at each other at lengthy intervals, like talkers involved in a dull conversation, demanding no heated or urgent replies; their occasional
thudding
making the intervening stillness seem more pleasantly
tranquil
than on mornings of unbroken silence. From the Light Division’s Camp, away to his right, blue wisps of smoke from breakfast fires curled upwards in slow spirals. By the time the water on his own fire was boiling, Magnus had started to doze.

On hearing his name, he opened his eyes and saw Tom looking down at him; the pan of water had slipped down, extinguishing part of the fire. He jumped up, and still slightly dazed, clasped his friend’s hands, and began asking him about his journey; when he had arrived, where he had spent the night, what his work would involve, how long it would take, and many other questions. Had he eaten that morning? Perhaps he would like some ham or dried fruit? He had a pound of excellent raisins –
good ones were very rare, even at extortionate Balaclava prices.

While Magnus was speaking, Tom was saddened almost to tears by the sight of such obvious pleasure. Couldn’t he see that everything had changed? That the past lay between them like a wall? Magnus’s inability to understand his love for Helen, and his own failure to speak openly of it, had irrevocably destroyed the trust they had once shared – Helen’s marriage merely setting the final seal on what had been already over.

But when Magnus offered to show him the lay-out of the
batteries
and trenches from Cathcart’s Hill, Tom did not feel able to disappoint him so soon after their reunion. Afterwards, by the time they reached the hut again, the sun had melted the ice in the ruts and puddles on the track and the ground was soft underfoot. The distant strains of a band came from the direction of the French camps; no guns were firing in the batteries.

Sitting on empty ammunition boxes on either side of the embers of the fire Magnus had lit an hour earlier, they faced each other in silence. Just outside the siege park an 18-pounder was being limbered-up; its team of skeletal horses waiting to drag it down to the batteries. At first, Magnus had tried to persuade himself that Tom’s uncommunicative mood had been due to the strangeness of his new situation, but when all his attempts at cheerfulness met with the same lack of response, he could bear it no longer.

‘Why did you come to see me?’

‘I didn’t want you to find out I was here and hadn’t told you.’

‘That was all?’

Tom stared at the patchy grass at his feet.

‘We can’t go back, Magnus …. I can’t separate you from your family. I wish I could.’

‘Can’t separate me from
them
?’

‘Unless I forget her I’m done for. You didn’t understand then; how can you now? It isn’t your fault…. Charles, Helen … your father. You’re part of the pattern. Nothing can alter that.’

‘Part of the pattern,’ echoed Magnus quietly, then with bitter anger: ‘Was I part of any pattern when I came to Charlotte Street; when we went to the workhouse? On election day? Strange I never knew it. I thought I was myself.’

‘Nothing was your fault. I said that. If Goodchild had lived … if I’d never painted her portrait…. Just chances.’

Magnus gazed across the plateau towards the Light Division’s white sprinkling of tents.

‘I suppose you saw her in Turkey?’

‘Yes; once.’

‘Will you again?’

‘No.’

‘Charles knows you were in Constantinople. He says he’ll tell father about last summer. Do you want to stop him?’

‘Do you think your brother would believe a word I said?’

‘The truth can be quite persuasive. I told him you’d see him. I don’t think he believed you’d have the guts.’

‘I don’t care what he believes.’

‘Nor do I.’ Magnus paused. ‘But then I don’t much care what happens to Helen.’

Tom bowed his head.

‘All right. I’ll see him.’

Magnus got up and kicked over the box he had been sitting on.

‘I’d like to know what happens … to complete the
pattern,
you understand. I’m sailing with the Azov squadron and’ll be away for a week. Perhaps you could meet me here on New Year’s Day? Easy to remember. Say eight in the morning?’

‘All right.’ Tom moved away and then stopped. ‘I’m sorry, Magnus.’

Magnus walked a little way with Tom towards the col. They paused at the brow of the next hill and saw the forest of masts in the distant inlet, and, beyond the black rocks at the mouth, the brilliantly sparkling sea. Far out, a warship under all plain sail was gliding across the bay, a cluster of signal flags below her ensign at the mizzen-peak. When Tom moved, Magnus remained where he was.

‘I’m glad we were friends once.’

Tom turned as though about to reply but then walked on.

From H.M.S.
Curlew
’s poop, Magnus watched the sharp rise and fall of the foreshortened bowsprit as the small corvette’s blunt bows thumped into the short choppy waves combed up by the freshening wind. The jarring thud that accompanied each sudden drop into the narrow troughs made every timber shudder and hurled up clouds of spray which flicked in foaming streaks across the forecastle. The bow wave rolled outwards on each side, its breaking crests whipped off into the air by fierce squalls racing like dark clouds across the grey broken water. Seas, which would scarcely have wetted the middle-deck ports of a
three-decker,
were seething in the low-lying
Curlew
’s scuppers and hissing ominously by, a few feet below the main-deck rail. The light was slowly seeping out of the sky, changing the identifiable shapes of the accompanying vessels into dark smudges; their presence only revealed by the plumes of smoke arching astern and the faint gleam of their navigation lights. Darkness came quickly and with it flurries of snow, lashing faces already wet and caked with brine. Behind the spokes of the wheel, the face of the steersman stood out grotesquely, lit by the glow of the
binnacle
lamp. His eyes stinging and watering. Magnus clambered down the deck-ladder and paused a moment under the break of the poop before going into the commander’s cramped
battened-down
cabin.

By the light of a smoky lamp hanging from a beam,
Commander
Hislop, his Master and First Lieutenant were staring at a damp-looking chart spread out on the central table; Hislop looked up irritably as Magnus came in and then forced a smile. Magnus sympathised with him; to be taking a journalist as
passenger
was bad enough, but to be responsible for a journalist who was also the admiral’s son was an even worse burden for a man to carry when he had many other thoughts on his mind. But since the little
Curlew
had no wardroom, and the gunroom was
occupied
by sleeping marines, the commander’s cabin was the only place where Magnus could reasonably be expected to go. Hislop called him over to the table and explained where the
squadron
’s first rendezvous was to take place, just before dawn the following day. Latitude 44° 54’ Longitude 36° 28’: a position a
few miles south of the straits of Kertch. Now, a few minutes before 1.30 a.m., they were steaming past Sebastopol in the opposite direction WNW, within sight of land, all usual lights displayed, to give the enemy the impression that they were bound for Odessa and not the Sea of Azov. In an hour’s time, just below the horizon, with lights extinguished, they would alter course.

Until reading his father’s detailed instructions to his
commanding
officers, Magnus had neither understood the risks of the operation, nor had he known that his father intended to go in with the gunboat flotilla deputed to silence the batteries
commanding
the straits. Half-an-hour of explosive violence would produce success or virtual annihilation. If the batteries survived the gunboats’ attack, the marines, following in their open boats, would be blown out of the water before getting within five miles of the bridge.

Sitting on a slatted locker-lid, while the Master checked the chronometers for the last time before giving orders for the
alteration
in course, Magnus felt a rush of emotion. His father’s note had said nothing about the chance that they might never meet again. His request to him to accompany the squadron had
combined
reconciliation with a challenge: an insistence that he finally recognise the worth of the service he had often derided in the past. Magnus suspected that if in the end he had to write an account of an important action, which was also Sir James Crawford’s obituary, this possibility would have been foreseen by his father.

As
Curlew
’s movement changed to a steep roll on the new course, Magnus reproached himself for past misunderstandings. With relationships, no reversal, however seemingly conclusive, should be taken as final. If true of his dealings with his father, why not of his friendship with Tom? While the wind harped in the ship’s rigging, Magnus resolved that whatever else he might achieve before leaving the Crimea, he would heal the breach with Tom; and this determination, above all others, absorbed him as
Curlew
steamed on remorselessly through the night towards the rendezvous.