‘What a dreadful fag, having to make sparks. It would certainly put me off trying to burn anyone. And how do people catch fire anyway? One isn’t exactly comestible.’
‘Combustible, Sophie!’ Rosie’s face fell dark. ‘Actually, people are highly combustible. The fat catches fire. It’s utterly horrible. You don’t usually die of being burned though. You die from inhaling the fumes.’
‘I do so admire you, being a nurse,’ said Sophie quietly.
52
Captain Pitt’s Dream
He is standing on a steep and stony hillside above a road that is curving downwards, round to his right, where it enters a wide tunnel whose mouth is shaped like a half-moon.
He is clutching a small ginger cat to his chest, and is looking out over a mountainous landscape that is all the several shades of charcoal grey and indigo blue. He has never seen the world in these colours before. Even the air and the sky are blue-grey, like the ugly ink supplied by schools for dip pens. He makes no note of the temperature and has no idea of the time or the season. He is in a world without temperature, time or season, but he is in shirtsleeve order with no cap on his head. He does not know why he is there, but is not puzzled about it either. He just stands and looks down at the road, with the ginger cat in his arms. Nothing is happening and the universe is still.
Suddenly there is a grinding and shrieking of metal, a roaring of engines comes from the tunnel, and two Mark IV tanks emerge. The khaki paint has been burned off, and now their partially rusted metal is of the same hue as the rest of this world. They are going at high speed, even though they are both burned out and smashed, and one of them has no tracks on the side facing him. They produce no exhaust. He watches in puzzlement as they pass. He thinks, ‘They should not be able to move at all.’
The small ginger cat panics, struggles and resists his attempts to hold on to it. It scrabbles out of his arms and hides between two rocks that are behind him. He makes a note of where it is, because he wants to be able to find it when the hideous noise has ceased.
Behind the tanks a squad of men emerge, leaning into the ropes with which they are dragging the wreck of a flying machine. He thinks it is an Aviatik, and the pilot is still seated in it, one arm over the side, and his head lolling. Along the fuselage he sees a neat and gently curving line of bullet holes. The propeller is broken. He hears the scraping noise as the plane is dragged along.
The men drawing the plane are like those who emerge from the tunnel after them, marching in endless streams together in lines of four abreast. They are dead men, in all the many states of decomposition. It is difficult to discern their nationality because their uniforms are as decayed as they are, but he thinks that the Germans are coming first, and then the Italians, and then the Turks. He knows without being told that these Italians died on the Isonzo, these Germans at Cambrai, these Turks in Mesopotamia. He wonders where the French and British are, but just now it is the horses that are emerging from the tunnel, shire horses, hunters, cavalry horses, pit ponies and cobs. They too are dead, and he wonders how it is possible for so many men and horses to be passing by when they have legs missing, or no legs at all. He thinks it strange that there is no stench, and that the bones do not creak as they rub.
He watches the march past of the dead for what seems like hours, and is transfixed by the infinite number of them. He worries about the cat.
More tanks and aeroplanes pass by, and the burned-out skeleton of a Zeppelin, two hundred yards long, pulled through the stones by those who must have been its crew. It should not have fitted in the tunnel, but somehow it did.
The dead have taken no notice of him. He tries to identify anyone he knew, perhaps Ashbridge and his brothers, perhaps those who left empty chairs in the mess week after week for months.
Suddenly one of the corpses turns its head and looks at him. Perhaps it is someone who knows him, but is unrecognisable with so few patches of dried leather left on the bones.
Death has looked at him, and he is abruptly terrified. ‘This is a dream,’ he tells himself, ‘you must wake up now.’ It is the rational part of himself intervening to save him from the horror and terror, as it always does when this nightmare strikes.
‘This is a dream, you must wake up now,’ says his rational soul, but he cannot wake up. All night, on the side of a stony hill in an indigo-and-charcoal world, he watches the dead emerge from the mouth of the tunnel. The march past is ceaseless, and has not ceased by the time he wakes.
When he does wake, still worrying about the small ginger cat, he thinks, ‘I have not seen them all yet. I can’t stop until I’ve seen them all. Tomorrow night perhaps I’ll see the rest.’ The fear has left him, and been replaced by curiosity. He wonders how many more there are, how many more nights will pass before all have been counted in.
53
Captain Fairhead Proposes an Outing
Captain Fairhead and Sophie got on so well that Rosie very soon lost her dark suspicions about Fairhead’s attachment to Ash.
Sophie was not a conventionally pretty girl. She was slight and had little bust to speak of, she was small and energetic, and her legs did not seem to come out of her hips at quite the right angle. She had a pointed face with thin lips, and her head was framed by an impressive bush of frizzy hair that was impossible to control in the manner of the times. In old age, when it would become as white as snow, it would grow into a magnificent and refulgent halo that made her seem like a frail creature from Faery, but at the time when Captain Fairhead fell in love with her it had the same shiny chestnut colour as Rosie’s. Fairhead was not such a fool as to think that love is only a matter of compatible souls, and he often wondered what it was that so attracted him and kept him awake at night with terrible longing.
‘The tip of your nose moves when you speak,’ he said to her one day, ‘and it moves in a slightly different way according to your facial expression.’
‘You’ve been observing me,’ she said. ‘How very underhand. From now on I shall make every effort to become invisible, except when you are not looking.’
She smiled at him mischievously, and he realised that what made her adorable was that she was more than the sum of her parts. She was animated and funny, and had the natural transient radiance of youth, of course, but she had developed an entire language of facial expressions that was perpetually amusing and interesting. She would pull a face to express whatever emotion she intended to convey, but she did it as a good actor would when mimicking a bad one for the amusement of other actors. She rolled her eyes, waggled her head, stuck her tongue out and flared her nostrils. She had a completely charming gesture which consisted in putting the tip of her forefinger to her nose when adopting a puzzled expression, and another one when looking into the distance, when she would put her circled fingers to her eyes in imitation of binoculars. She liked to hold conversations between her left and right hands, ventriloquising with her mouth whilst her fingers and thumbs took it in turns to talk. Captain Fairhead was enchanted. It made him feel happy just to be in her presence, and at night when he tried to sleep he was no longer tormented by the looming faces of the countless dead that he had seen off across the Styx, but was taken over instead by recent happy memories of Sophie and her quirky ways.
One day he was seated with Rosie in the conservatory, as it was not quite pleasant enough to be out on the lawn, and he said, ‘Miss McCosh, may I ask you a question?’
‘If it’s one I can answer, I shall,’ replied Rosie.
‘It is a somewhat delicate matter. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘It’s about Sophie, isn’t it?’
‘You are very astute, Miss McCosh.’
‘I think that in private you should begin to call me Rosie. In preparation for the future.’
‘The future?’
‘Well, forgive me if I mightily jump the gun, as Ash used to say, but I am certain that if you asked her, she would say yes.’
‘Gracious me! Certain?’
Rosie nodded
. ‘Don’t ask me how I know. I wouldn’t want to divulge things said in confidence and in private. But I have had conversations.’
‘Conversations?’ repeated Fairhead.
‘Yes. Conversations.’
‘I am completely overwhelmed. I hardly know what to say. I am ten years older than she is, and not one fraction as amusing. Do you think I can make her happy?’
‘I am sure you can, dear Captain, but whether you actually will or not is another question. And don’t forget that you have to ask Father.’
‘Do you think he will be…sympathetic?’
‘He’ll ask you to become a Mahommedan and marry all of us. That’s what he said to Ash. He loves his old jokes. He likes to pretend that he’s longing to get us off his hands. Your quest for Sophie’s hand has caused you to be here so often that he has become immensely fond of you. As we all have.’
‘Dear me, I’ve been coming too often.’
‘Of course not. We knew perfectly well what it was all about.’
I’ve brought a book for you,’ said the chaplain. ‘It’s been quite the rage for some time. I thought you’d like to read it. It might give you much consolation. I trust you haven’t read it already.’
Rosie took the book and looked at the front cover: Raymond or Life and Death by Sir Oliver Lodge.
‘He’s a formidable scientist,’ said Fairhead. ‘Nobody’s fool. When it came out in 1916, everyone was talking about it. And more recently that one by Sir Hereward Carrington. Do you know it? I’ll lend them to you if you like.’
‘Thank you, I would like to read it.’
‘I have been very impressed by Lodge’s book,’ said Fairhead. He paused. ‘It gives us the strongest grounds for hope.’
‘We have the promise of the Lord,’ said Rosie, mildly reproaching him.
‘I know this may be somewhat unorthodox,’ said Captain Fairhead, ‘but I have heard of a very successful medium in Merton, and I wondered if I could interest you and your sisters in accompanying me. As I say, it might be very consoling.’
‘I don’t think I should. I’m sure the rector would forbid it.’
‘Why should you ask him? I am a priest myself. What could be better for one’s faith than proof of the afterlife?’
‘Well,’ said Rosie, ‘it seems to me that the kind of afterlife supposedly proved by a medium isn’t the same as the one promised us by the Lord. I fear it may be very bad for one’s faith.’
Later on, at sunset, Rosie looked out of the window from her bedroom on the first floor, and saw shadows at the far end of the orchard, underneath the tree where Bouncer was buried. She opened the window softly, and heard giggles and hushings. She felt a wave of pleasure coming over her, to think of Sophie finding happiness with such a good man, and at the same time she felt a painful nostalgia for the time when an equal happiness had been in prospect for herself and she and Ash had been clasped together under that same tree, when Bouncer still lived. She also thought about the time when Daniel Pitt had taken her in his arms to comfort her, and how nice it had been to be embraced again.
Under the Bramley Sophie was covering Captain Fairhead’s face with bold kisses, and he was entering into a kind of delirium, that strange elation brought about by the impossible becoming the inevitable.
Later on, sitting side by side in the conservatory in the semidarkness, Sophie said, ‘I love this time of day.’
‘You enjoy a little crepuscule.’
‘Oh, very much. Do you know, dear, that when you first started coming here we all thought you were after Rosie?’
‘I’m very fond of Rosie. I can quite see why Ash adored her, but she’s really not quite my type.’
Sophie raised an eyebrow.
‘I know this will sound strange, coming from me, but she’s just a bit too religious. I find that kind of absolute and uncompromising faith a little hard to take. I keep wanting to say “but…but…” Do you know what I’m getting at?’
‘You mean she’s a fanatic?’
‘I wouldn’t be as hard as that. I just don’t think it’s normal, somehow, not to have any doubts. After what we’ve been through.’
‘I do know what you mean,’ said Sophie. ‘I think it’s a bit peculiar. She’s always been like that, though. Don’t tell anyone, but she keeps a madonna wrapped up and hidden under her bed. And she’s got a rosary. She thinks we don’t know. Well, Mama doesn’t. We wouldn’t tell her, of course. Imagine the fuss she’d make. Quite a hoo-ha.’
‘One thing that doesn’t seem to fit is her passion for modern poetry. It doesn’t go with being religious in such an old-fashioned manner.’
‘Wasn’t Christina Rossetti something of a religious fanatic?’
‘Almost morbidly so, I’d say. If a priest is allowed to say such a thing.’
‘It seems unseemly. Anyway, the thing about people is that they are all inexhaustibly peculiar. Apart from me.’
‘Well, my darling, it wasn’t her I fell in love with. It wasn’t her keeping me awake at night because I couldn’t stop thinking about her.’
She took his hand and squeezed it.
‘After we’re married, do you think I should stay in the army?’ asked Fairhead.
‘Do you still have enough faith?’
‘I have a vocation. It’s a different thing, but it has the same way of leaving one without choices.’ He paused, and then broke the silence by saying, ‘Besides, we’re never going to be rich. That’s one thing I can promise. No servants for us.’
‘Servants are so Parsee these days,’ said Sophie. ‘I couldn’t bear to be unfashionable. Before the war this place was so cluttered with servants you could hardly avoid falling over them. It’s so much more peaceful now.’
‘The word is “passé”,’ said Fairhead automatically, and Sophie smiled to herself.
54
The Drunk
It was only the third time that Daniel had called by, and he had not yet rung the bell because a rowdy game of British bulldog was going on in the street, and he was watching it with fond memories of his own schooldays. A posse of ragged urchins had wandered up from Mottingham, and were using the pavements as Home, and the road as their battlefield. It had begun because one of them had found a tennis ball that must have come over the wall of one of the wealthy houses, and a tennis ball was exactly what one needed to start a game of British bulldog.
The children had stood with their legs wide apart in a big circle in the middle of the street, and the ball had been tossed into their midst. It went through the legs of a little girl wearing a crushed bonnet on her head, and much grime on her face, and so she was ‘it’.
To cries of ‘British Bulldog, one, two, three!’ a magnificent hurly-burly of rushing, grabbing and throwing to the ground began, in which knees got grazed, noses bled and torn clothes were rent yet further. The little girl had managed to catch a tall child with a wall eye, and the two of them had caught two more, until at last there was only one very fast girl left, who had no chance against twelve bulldogs all in a line.
She became the first bulldog of the next game, and was standing in the middle of the road ready to begin when a new AC Six hove into view. Its driver was wearing an expensive herringbone tweed coat, goggles and a deerstalker hat, and was clearly neither skilful nor experienced. The car lurched and staggered as he crashed it into the wrong gear and pressed down on the accelerator too much or too little. Daniel and the children watched it with fascination, and the fast girl who was the new bulldog ran quickly to join her friends.
Just as the vehicle was about to pass, it swerved out, and then back again, mounting the kerb and sending two children spinning into the wall of The Grampians. The crack of a head hitting the wall was clearly audible above the screaming and the belated sound of the motor’s klaxon. The children began to wail and panic, running about and crashing into each other. The AC came to a halt twenty yards up the street, and the driver merely sat there, blinking and muttering. The car began to roll slowly backwards
, and Daniel ran forward, leapt into it and engaged the handbrake.
The screaming had caused many doors to open, and, running back, Daniel saw Rosie and Ottilie coming out onto the steps of their house. He waved at them to come down.
The two women dealt with the children as best they could, fortunate to have had those years of nursing behind them. Daniel ran indoors to call Dr Scott and an ambulance, and then ran out again. He instructed the children to fetch mothers and fathers, anyone to whom the injured children might belong, and they scattered in the direction of Mottingham, like a small flock of ragged birds.
It was at this point that the driver of the car clambered out. Unsteadily he went round to the nearside and inspected the bumper. When Daniel realised that he could do nothing for the broken children that the sisters were not already doing, he came up beside the driver. The latter gestured towards the bumper. ‘Damned shame,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to get it straightened. Only had the damned thing for two weeks, and it’s dented already.’ He pulled a fox hunter’s pocket flask from his coat, took a swig and offered it to Daniel.
Daniel waved a hand in astonished refusal. The driver was a man in his forties, portly and prosperous, with the red-veined face and watery eyes of a drunk. Once he had evidently been handsome and virile, but he had clearly been unmanned by alcohol for quite some time.
‘Come with me,’ said Daniel, taking his arm.
‘Steady, old boy,’ said the drunk, as Daniel frogmarched him down to where the injured children lay.
‘I’m making a citizen’s arrest,’ said Daniel. ‘You do as I bloody well tell you, or I swear I’ll break your neck.’