—
AFTER THAT WE SAT a long, long while—Clive on the floor and me in the chair and Amanda on my lap. Then I said: why are Robert and Barbara so afraid? And Clive said: everyone they’ve loved has died. And I said: everybody dies. And Clive said: yes—but everybody isn’t killed. Then I said: that’s why Lady Sorrel lights her candles, isn’t it. So the Earl of Bath won’t perish. And Clive said: Yes. He said that in a way being loved is like being told you never have to die. And I said: Yes—but it doesn’t save you, does it. And he said: No—but it saves your sanity. Then I said: Are you afraid? And he said: Yes. And then I didn’t cry any more. Because he smiled.
—
ROBERT WENT AWAY yesterday. Clive goes today. Robert walked. I thought it was so strange that Barbara didn’t come. Instead, she stood at the top of the stairs and watched him from behind the glass. I was allowed to go to the end of the drive. I took his hand. He had on gloves. I loved him more than I could bear. He didn’t say a word. All week I’ve wondered what I should give him to take away. He’s already given me the sketch books with the toads and mice and himself asleep. Then the night before last I knew what it was and I wrapped it for him in a package. Today I handed it to him down by the gate and I said he mustn’t open it just yet. I said he had to wait till he was on the train. Maybe he won’t understand—but I think he will. It’s one of Lady Sorrel’s candles wrapped in tissue paper and a box of wax matches I stole from Wilson. Maybe he can use them in his trench. Right on the box it says: ‘WAX MATCHES—FOR ALL KINDS OF WEATHER!’ And the candle has only been lighted once. By me.
—
SOMEONE ONCE SAID to Clive: do you think we will ever be forgiven for what we’ve done? They meant their generation and the war and what the war had done to civilization. Clive said something I’ve never forgotten. He said: I doubt we’ll ever be forgiven. All I hope is—they’ll remember we were human beings.
—
SO FAR, you have read of the deaths of 557,017 people—one of whom was killed by a streetcar, one of whom died of bronchitis and one of whom died in a barn with her rabbits.
Five
1 Robert left Waterloo Station at 11.55 on a Saturday morning. He arrived in Southampton at 2.30 that afternoon and put his luggage on board a dirty, crowded little steamer which didn’t sail till six. In the meantime he sent a postcard to his mother declaring that his leave was over. (When she got this message Mrs Ross retreated with him into France.)
The crossing was rough till the sun went down and then the wind dropped. Robert leaned against the railings wondering how he was going to find his way back to Brigade H.Q. coming at it from such a roundabout route. He would normally have sailed from Folkestone to Boulogne but some ships had been sunk near the harbour off the English coast and for a while those ports were closed. The steamer arrived at Le Havre about 1.30 a.m. Robert and some others had to wait around the docks in the dark for two hours but they were finally given transport to the Canadian Base Depot and arrived there just as reveille was blowing at 4.30.
On the Sunday, Robert slept until noon. He kicked around the base till supper time and still had not received any word about leaving that night, so he went back into town and had his supper at the Metropole. The whole of the next day he sat in the sun against the wall of a transport garage. At 4 p.m. (Monday) his chit came through and he returned to Le Havre. Through a foul-up on the part of one of the Sergeants at the Depot, Robert was sent to one station and his kit bag was sent to another. The kit bag contained his socks, shirts and underwear, his binoculars and the Webley. He hastily left word with the local R.T.O. (Railroad Transport Officer) asking that the kit bag come on after him as soon as they located it. It was strangely disconcerting to have lost it. He felt as if he’d left his face behind in a mirror and the Webley in a stranger’s hand.
The following morning (Tuesday) Robert was in Rouen. He sat in the cathedral, had some lunch by the river and returned to the station at 3 p.m. The train wound down through evening and the dark until at 6 a.m. it arrived at a town that apparently had no name. Here they were told they could not get off and had to sit on board until 11 a.m. When, at last, the train pulled away it plunged almost at once into a thick green wood. This was now Wednesday. The nightingales sang in the wood at noon.
After the wood it rained. The darkened sky leaned down above a countryside the colour of chartreuse. Robert dropped the wooden slotted window into its gutter and rolled up his sleeve and let the rain beat down against his arm and his face. The air was filled with a sharp electric smell and Robert was briefly gentled back to the screened-in porch at Jackson’s Point where, even now, his family might be seated staring off across the lake at a late spring storm like this while Meg stood stoic over by the cedars with her ears laid back and her eyes half-closed. Bimbo would be lying on the glider while his father and Peggy scratched her ears—one on either side. Stuart would be back in the shed, no doubt, as he was every spring—hammering nails into his wagon—altering its sides and windbreak. One year it had been a Roman chariot. Another it had been some mad machine from Jules Verne. This year it would doubtless be a tank. His mother…
It got dark.
—
THURSDAY MORNING Robert got off the train at a town called Magdalene Wood. This was still twelve miles from his destination at Bailleul. It was now about four and an hour before sunrise. Robert decided he would not proceed until there was daylight. He sat on a bench with his collar up and settled down to sleep. When he woke there was an old white dog at his feet and he shared his rations with it. Then he got up and went and tapped at the station master’s window through which he could see the R.T.O. was boiling a kettle. Robert received a cup of tea and was told he would have to walk the next seven miles if he wanted to arrive in Bailleul before nightfall. There would be a wagon detail passing through Magdalene later that would bring his luggage—but if he waited for it, he would not arrive till midnight and that might mean he’d lose his chance at a room in the small hotel. Robert thanked the man and petted the dog goodbye and walked down the road with the sun coming up on his right-hand side.
The country he passed through now was beautiful and utterly peaceful. The guns had not yet started their pounding, but even when they did they were so far away they seemed to be in another world. The trees were just in the process of shedding their blossoms and the roadside was littered with white and pink petals. The air was filled with the sweet, sad smell of pollen and the bees had begun to buzz. Robert saw a small white farm with a cow in the yard and he thought: there cannot be a war. The barn was low and wide and thatched and there were bleating sheep inside. A man was standing on the stoop of the house preparing pails for the milking. Robert waved. The man waved back. The only signs of war were the ruts in the road. Robert hoisted his haversack and strode through the grass. He did not really know where he was. He passed a number of deserted buildings. It was suddenly an empty landscape. Where had all the people gone? Robert felt abandoned. He had lost his pistol. He had lost his clean white linen. The sun grew hot—then hotter. He hadn’t had a proper sleep since leaving St Aubyn’s. He walked in a daze of blazing light and sweat. He wanted only to arrive. He would eat, sleep and bathe in that order. Then he would find his gun. But it seemed a long, long way to go. At La Chodrelle he doused his head and neck with a pail of water—joined with two other horsemen and rode the last five miles to Bailleul. On arrival, Robert had a blinding headache. He had gone over two hundred miles in circles to get there from Le Havre. It should have been about a quarter of that. When he fell on his bed, fully clothed, he fell through a clouded countryside of small white barns and cows in yards and he slept to the sound of the water lapping his mother’s feet and of nightingales in an unnamed wood.
2 He woke in the dark. There was a candle by his bed. He lighted it. He looked at his watch. 1.30. When? He crossed to the window, strapping the watch to his wrist. He had bought it—after breaking the other—in Cambridge. No. He hadn’t bought it. Barbara had boug
ht it. Robert had been embarrassed. Barbara had said: ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll buy you anything I like.’ He pulled the curtain. It was pitchy black outside and the courtyard was filled with noise. There were horses there and a large Ford motorcar. Robert watched, looking down, till his eyes became accustomed to the light—or lack of it. He heard women’s voices. The women’s laughter. Nurses. The door of the hotel opened and a spill of golden light raced out across the stones. One—two—three nurses. And two men. There were also some orderlies trying to calm the horses. Robert felt as if he had been drunk and a long way off. He even wondered if he’d lost a day. His stomach was empty and his beard felt six weeks old. Where had he been? In dreams with his father. He opened the window to let in some air. The women were now inside—downstairs. He could hear them talking to the concierge—asking for food. Robert thought: it’s perfect. I will go down and join them. Then he saw himself in the mirror and remembered that he hadn’t bathed in days. His father told him women demanded two things of men before they would sit with them, eat with them or sleep with them: a clean body and a clean breath. Robert turned back from the door and sat on the bed. He would not go down. He could not present himself like this. He lay back and reached for his flask. He took a long, slow swallow of brandy. It made him shiver. Then he lighted a cigarette. He wondered where his kit bag might have got to by now. He’d been sleeping in the same shirt and underwear for days.
Lying there—listening to the mingled sounds of horses down in the courtyard and the women in the dining room—he slid his hand across his stomach and down between his legs. Bang-bang-bang! went the guns at the front. Robert didn’t listen. He undid his trouser buttons almost languidly—one by one. He was watching the ceiling through half-closed eyes. The women went on chattering and someone called for wine. A gramophone began to wobble out a song ‘Lil—Lil—Picadilly Lil—sitting on the hill—spooning with her honey—on a bright and sunny afternoon…’ Way off up the line, the guns kept thudding their monotonous rhythm and the smell of gasoline and sweat blew round the room. Robert undid all the buttons on his shirt and took it off. That was better. He stood up and slid his trousers and his underwear to the floor. He could see himself now—pale in the aureole of candlelight in the mirror. It was a shock. He seemed like a fugitive. His beard and the shadows round the sockets of his eyes made him look like an old, old man. He smiled. He’d thought he would stand and see himself like a god in the glass—and there he was: a scarecrow. Downstairs, they began to dance. ‘Lil—Lil—Picadilly Lil—don’t you want to hold me—tell me what you told me—on our Picadilly honeymoon? Oh Lil—sitting on the hill—spooning with her Bill—through the bright and sunny afternoooooon!’ Robert collapsed on the bed. He was out of breath and dizzy, though he’d stood quite still. A cool breeze swept across his chest and thighs. His groin was wet with perspiration. The soles of his feet were cold. He drank again from the flask. His eyes wouldn’t close. They looked up—sideways—at the ceiling. He made a fist around his penis. He thought how small it was. He drew his knees up. He felt—all at once—appallingly alone. The bed seemed just a shelf on which he lay above a vast and whirling chasm. A sudden vision of obliteration struck him like a bomb. The women laughed. The music played. The horses whinnied softly in the dark. The candle guttered out. Robert heard a long white noise. Oblivion. He slept with his fist in its place and the cold, wet blooming of four hundred thousand possibilities—of all those lives that would never be—on his fingertips.
3 Robert woke to find that it had rained. It was sometime after noon. A bent old woman brought him a jug of tepid water and a yellow cup of tea. He shaved. It was only a token. He would shave himself to the bone when he got to the baths. His hair was full of fleas but fleas were not so bad as lice. You could drown the fleas when you washed your hair and make a sieve of your fingers and scoop the corpses into the slop pail. You were given a bottle of strong, green liquid soap when you got to the doors of Desolé and if you used it directly on your skin it burned.
Robert was looking forward to his bath. He was going to treat it as an entertainment and revel in the water and the steam and afterwards he would buy himself an expensive meal, with a chicken, and sit downstairs with the gramophone music and a bottle of the local wine. He put on his riding breeks and boots and he wore the khaki sweater Eloise Brown had knitted for him. She’d sent it in a package with her photograph. Eloise Brown had always been in the background so long as Heather Lawson was around, but now that Heather was engaged to Tom Bryant, Eloise took a giant step forward. She was shy and sort of pretty in a pale, blonde way and Robert didn’t mind her attentions. The sweater was well made.
He paused on his way out to tell the concierge he would pay for a chicken that evening. The concierge could speak a little of every language: French and Dutch and German—Flemish, Walloon and English. He even had some Spanish that had lingered in the district from a time four hundred years before when Philip of Spain had laid his claim on the lowlands. The pullet would cost Robert dearly, he called out. But Robert said he would pay the earth.
—
HE TOOK HIS TIME as he walked through the town. There was transport of every kind lined up along the roads—some of it moving forward, some of it stopped. Ammunition wagons, guns and limbers, lorries and motorcars, motorbikes and ambulances vied for a place in the traffic. There were convoys bearing food and others bearing straw and hay for the horses. There were water convoys and convoys of medical supplies and long trains of horses and mules being herded up as replacements for those at the front. Troops mobbed forward, each man heavy with sixty pounds of equipment—with shovels and tin hats clanking on their backs. Officers rode in Daimler Limousines and Robert even saw a pair of RAYMOND/ROSS steam-driven tractors dragging a 12-inch howitzer. The noise was deafening along the roads—and the air was filled with the sound of songs that would intermittently drown out the neighing of the horses and the clatter of harness and the high pitched whine of the motors. ‘Keep your head down, Fritzie boy! Keep your head down, Fritzie boy! For all last night, in the pale moonlight I saaaaaaaaaaa-aw you! I saaaaaaaaw you!’ Robert began to sing along with them under his breath. ‘You were fixing up your wire—as we opened rapid fire—so if you wanna see your mother or your sister or your brother—keep your head down, Fritzie boy!!!!!!!!’ Robert thought of a Saturday crowd at a football game where everyone would link hands on the cold, fall afternoons and the long chains of singers would weave back and forth in the stands till the whole arena would be swaying from side to side. And his run to the ball! The kick…and the long, high arc with the roar of the crowd as the ball was lifted between the posts! Rah! Rah! Rah! Yea, St Andrew’s! Rah! Rah! Rah! Robert hadn’t dreamt of glory since he was ten or twelve. Now, it refreshed him.
He cut off down the road through the fields that would take him to Desolé. Its ditches were filled with bright yellow cowslips and paddling ducks. He wondered how the ducks had survived with all the hungry soldiers foraging for extra rations—and then he saw there was a child of about eight with an enormous blunderbuss sitting on a stile. Robert raised his hat to show that he had no designs on the ducks—but the child did not wave back. It scowled till Robert had passed and then it spat on the toe of its boot.
4 The yard at Desolé was crowded with inmates wearing their distinctive sky-blue smocks and with clusters of attending nuns. Robert had discovered that the nuns were deceptively sweet. They smiled a great deal and nodded a pleasant greeting when you passed but if there was a ruckus amongst the inmates, they rolled up their sleeves and waded into the fray like gladiators wearing skirts. Under their habits, they were strong and beefy as a horde of wrestlers. Robert had seen them throw the inmates up against the walls and batter them senseless with their fists. Then they would kneel and sweetly attend to the wounds they had inflicted as if a natural disaster had struck and they must do their best to revive the victims.
The baths themselves were located in what might have been a kitchen in the dark ages. Its high
, vaulted ceilings could barely be seen except for the light that broke through the rusty panes of glass. You stripped and left your belongings in one of an old row of cells abandoned over a hundred years before. These cells were windowless and were it not for the single lantern hung from the wall, they would be as dark as caves and just as wet and filled with the possibility of rats. Iron bars closed the ends of the corridor and there were iron doors that could be pulled shut on each cell, closing out all external light. Robert had never much liked it there and was always glad to leave his clothes behind and take up the towels you were provided with and beat a hasty retreat to the open cavern filled with steam. He hated small rooms—he hated being enclosed. He’d grown afraid of walls that pressed too close since the dugout had collapsed. He almost ran to the bathing room.
The attendants were chosen from the best adjusted patients and often they would be no more than retarded. Sometimes patients were allowed to bathe with the soldiers, depending on how many soldiers were there. They sat about the walls, wrapped in white sheets to keep them from catching a chill. Many of them didn’t want to bathe and were afraid of water. Every once in a while there might be a fracas when one of these recalcitrants had to be forced to remove his sheet and step up into the tub. On this particular day there were a dozen patients or more and with them a brace of male attendants strong enough to keep them under control. It seemed there were also men of every rank—whereas, in the past, the baths at Desolé had been the exclusive purview of officers.
Robert languished in his tub for almost an hour. He shaved again and washed his hair and lathered his body with the green lye soap from one end to the other. He scrubbed his toenails and fingernails and scoured his wrists and his shoulders with a brush that might have done justice to a wall of stone. When he was through and had lain in the water till the pads of his fingers and the soles of his feet were wrinkled, he got out and rinsed himself with four wooden buckets of clear, tepid water from the cistern. He’d just finished towelling himself dry and begun to walk to the cells for his clothes when one of the patients started to scream and yell obscenities at the attendant who was trying to manoeuvre him into a tub.