Garrett had trained as a lawyer before taking his army commission and he still seemed much more like a solicitor than a soldier, though he had been in the army for so long. Hilliard wondered why he was in the army. He knew that Garrett had a wife and four daughters somewhere, in Worthing or Horsham or Lewes. He was not an imaginative man. But careful, a good planner, cool headed. Perhaps all that simply meant, brave.
Within the space of five weeks, and those after two years of consistent service in the Old Front Line, his air of calm and the slight ponderousness had vanished. His face was altered, was thinner, the eyes puffed but the cheeks drawn in, his fingers moved all the time about the rim of his glass, or smoothed down the patch of thinning hair. Mons, Le Cateau and Ypres, and then the first battle of the spring offensive had not shaken him. So what had the past month been like? Hilliard was appalled, he had not dreamed that this could happen and so quickly to a man like Garrett. To a man who was yet not ill or wounded, who had survived for so long by careful management, perhaps, and luck. Well, and he still survived, he was here. An old man in the yellow-grey lamplight.
It was possible to see what this room of the farmhouse had been like as a parlour: there was a wide stone fireplace and an uneven floor, you could imagine old soft sofas and coarse mats, stone jugs full of marigolds and cornflowers. The windows, long and loose in their frames, shaken by past shelling, were open now. The smells of the autumn evening came in, of grass and trees and rotting fruit, and the army smells, tobacco and bullet smoke, horses and cooking.
The guns were booming like summer thunder, away in the distance.
‘You lost Bates, of course.’
‘Yes.’
‘I think Coulter’s a good man, isn’t he? You’ll be all right with Coulter.’
‘Yes.’
For a moment, he wondered whether nothing else might be said, whether Garrett would not want, after all, to go over what had happened, preferring to leave the summer behind him. There were too many names to bring up, too many individual deaths.
Silence. The C.O. jerked his head and looked behind him suddenly, as though he had heard something unusual, and then turned back again. Hilliard could not get over his face, the change in his face. He waited for the usual questions about home.
‘We lost three quarters of the Battalion in a day and a half. Getting on for two dozen officers. Major Gadney, young Parkinson, Ward – all the best. Half of them went because we didn’t receive an order telling us the second push was cancelled. They just went on. You were well out of it. I’m glad you were out of it.’
Hilliard did not speak.
‘I’ve seen nothing like it. Nothing. Not that we were the only ones. They went mad, we might have been a pack of schoolboys in a scrum. Did you hear about the Jocks? Most of them went straight on to the wire. They were on our right, we watched it. The sun was shining, you could see for miles, even through the smoke, we just watched them go. We lost Pearcy and thirty-eight men all in one go. I’d just gone down there, I saw them. God alone knows what was supposed to be going on. I didn’t. I haven’t found out yet. None of us knows. I suppose it’s all on paper somewhere. Nothing came through to us at all, everything went to blazes, telephones, runners. Half the artillery blew themselves up with their own Lewis guns backfiring because somebody hadn’t attended to them properly. Most of Parkinson’s lot went up with a mine. There was a barrage they didn’t tell us about and we couldn’t get word through to them to stop, we were running into our own covering fire. And then they started to shoot machine guns from the left flank, they’d lost their bearings, they thought we were Boche. Not surprising. After an hour or so you couldn’t see a thing. It was a day and a half, two days, of absolute bloody chaos. Bloody pointless mess.’
Hilliard realized that this was what had upset his careful, lawyer’s mind more than anything else, this lack of order and reason. The mess.
‘And then we had another full week without any relief, and most of our support line gone.’
All the time he spoke he turned the whisky glass round and round in his hand, so that the lamplight caught it. Hilliard could not piece the story together, could not picture what might have happened in the battle, any more than Garrett could remember. He did not even know exactly when it had been. It did not matter. He had only to listen.
‘It was about eighty degrees during the day. I’ve never known it so hot.’
He remembered the heat, in the ward of the military hospital. They had pulled down the green blinds but it had felt no cooler. The Field-Gunner had tossed about, crying all day as he cried all night.
‘You were well out of it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Clifford went berserk. Do you remember Clifford? Swarthy looking chap, bit of a gypsy. Went completely berserk, they couldn’t hold him down, couldn’t shut him up, couldn’t do anything with him at all.’
‘Was he hurt?’
‘No.’
‘What happened in the end, then?’
‘Oh, he shot himself.’
Garrett’s voice trailed off. Hilliard did not remember the man, Clifford, but that did not matter, either. He wondered how long it was since Garrett had talked so freely. Talked at all. He could not say anything either at Brigade Headquarters, or to the newcomers. He had been waiting for Hilliard.
Then, he seemed to come to abruptly, and his eyes refocused. He said, ‘Well, what about you? You seem all right.’
‘I am, thank you, sir.’
‘Home?’
‘Fine, thanks.’
‘I’m due for a turn of leave. Doesn’t look as if I’ll get it, not yet, anyway.’
No, and better not, Hilliard wanted to say, you had far better stay here, in this farmhouse among the apple trees. Don’t go back to London, to England, don’t go and listen to what they say and read their papers, don’t try and talk to them as you are talking to me, for there is nobody, no one knows. Don’t go.
But that was not right. For Garrett was not like him. He would enjoy all the time he spent with his wife and family, would play golf and stroke the cat and go for a week to Cowes or Ventnor, and up to London to see a show, would drink malt whisky and china tea and eat in good restaurants, stay in the most comfortable hotels, would close his eyes and ears to what he did not want to see and hear, and his mind to what he wanted to forget. If he could. So much had changed, he was changed, he would not belong in England now. None of them belonged there. And Garrett had lost his faith.
Hilliard felt a wave of misery, that there was no one left and, of those who were, Garrett could no longer be relied upon. Garrett had been like a rivet, hard and secure, down the back of the Battalion.
He finished his whisky. The guns thundered. It had gone quite dark.
‘Have you met Mr Barton yet?’
As soon as he put his foot on the bottom rung of the loft ladder, he could see the other man’s shadow above him. Then he heard a board creak, as Barton walked across the room. Hilliard waited. He had never felt it before, this irrational disinclination to come face to face with someone. He was not shy though he did not make close friends. He had found his feet easily enough in the army, from the beginning. There were always new arrivals, changes, people to get used to, just as there had been at school. Some he liked, some he was indifferent to, a few he detested. As was normal. He knew nothing at all about the new subaltern except that Garrett had said. ‘Pleasant young chap. Lively.’ BARTON D.J.C. He had been here three days.
There was no further sound from above. He would have to go up, it was almost time for dinner. The large measure of whisky had made him slightly giddy.
Oh, for heaven’s sake ….
But he did not want to meet Barton. He wasn’t going to like him.
He went very quickly up the ladder.
Barton had his back to him, was reading a letter.
‘Good evening.’
At once the other man turned, said, ‘Hilliard?’ with pleasure. Hilliard stood upright in the loft and cracke
d his head again on the beam.
Barton grinned. ‘I’ve been doing that for three days! You think you won’t forget it another time but you generally do.’
He came across and shook hands. There was a lamp on the small table which lit up only the immediate area encircling it, and cast long fingers of shadow on to the wooden roof. The corners of the loft were in darkness. Hilliard could not see him distinctly, the side of his head blocked out the light.
‘I saw your things. I knew you’d arrived.’ He hesitated. ‘To tell you the truth, I was frightened to death of you!’
At once, Hilliard felt a wave of relief, coupled with an instinctive suspicion. It was all very well to feel something, to think it, but not to say so openly. ‘I was frightened to death of you.’ He himself would never have said, ‘I didn’t want to meet you, I thought I was going to dislike you.’ He realized now, that he Had been quite wrong.
Barton was younger than himself, though Hilliard was uncertain by how much, and he was more than a head taller. He had a particularly deep voice, with a faint hint of amusement in it, not at Hilliard but at himself.
He said, ‘I was just going down.’
‘Yes, we better had. I’ve been talking to the C.O.’
‘He told me rather a lot about you as soon as I got here. He was wanting to have you back.’
Hilliard brushed the sleeve of his tunic.
‘He thinks a lot of you, doesn’t he?’
‘I really don’t know.’
At once he was ashamed of himself for being so curt. But there was an openness about Barton which for some reason made him uneasy.
‘You carry on,’ he said, ‘I’ll join you.’
Barton hesitated. Then moved towards the ladder.
In the officers’ dining room, which had been the old dining room of the farmhouse and still retained the long refectory table, the light was better, he could see Barton clearly. He did not seem a man who would ever attract dislike. He was not quite twenty, and he looked older because he was mature, in complete possession of himself. It was not the premature ageing that often came to those who had been a short time at the front. He had some kind of central poise and calmness. But all around that, on the surface, nothing was calm or still, he talked easily and quickly, smiled, laughed at himself and, on all sides, attracted a response. Attracted, simply, liking. He did not seem a stranger, among all those here who were strangers. Looking around him, Hilliard realized for the first time exactly how many had gone.
He found himself watching Barton, listening, he felt drawn into the circle of his attention. He was talking about some relative, an aunt, who dashed about the Warwickshire countryside on a horse, riding astride not side-saddle, wearing breeches not skirts, to the horror of all who met with her. She was called Eustacia.
‘Only we none of us could ever say it properly, we all called her You-Stay-Shy. We still do.’
We?
Barton was cutting a wedge of cheese. He looked up for a moment, catching Hilliard’s eye. His own were a curious green-blue, under a low forehead and thick, black hair. His voice was still full of amusement.
‘The best thing is, she’s had nine children to date and I shouldn’t have thought there’s anything at all to stop her having another nine, in between the hunting seasons.’
What is it, Hilliard thought, why are we all listening and laughing and waiting for more? Is it that he is simply very young and new to this place, has no idea at all of the future, of what it is really like, and so there is still time left, a short time, for him to entertain us. He has seen nothing, he can talk in this way and assume that we have nothing else to occupy our thoughts. We might simply be out to dinner at some hotel in England, a party of officers on leave. The wine, reasonably good wine, was going round the table freely. He felt light-headed and warm, companionable, even among so many strangers, in the lamplight. He saw Colonel Garrett watching Barton too, and although the terrible change was still so noticeable on his face, he was more relaxed, smiling occasionally, in his old, tight way, he was clearly anxious for Barton to continue.
The others, the few who were left that he knew, had greeted Hilliard warmly enough, had said a word or two about what he had missed, and then changed the subject, hurried to eat and drink and introduce him to the strangers. To the new Adjutant, Franklin. A particularly tall man. Now, Hilliard saw that it was only Franklin whose attention was not wholly taken up with Barton’s story. He leaned back in his chair, one hand resting on the table in front of him, a blank, faintly detached expression on his face. He did not look at Barton, did not smile, was drinking little. Hilliard wondered where he had come from.
‘I’m going to write out a neat little notice. PLEASE LOWER YOUR HEAD. I shall get Coulter to nail it up, else Hilliard and I will have our brains bashed in before we get near any guns.’
He was still smiling. Hilliard stiffened, waited for someone to express, by a look or gesture, disapproval of the remark. For did they want to be reminded of the front line, of skulls cracked and brains spilled, here, tonight and by this new young subaltern, who had seen nothing, knew nothing?
He felt himself suddenly ready to defend Barton, as he might defend a younger boy at school who had blurted out something because he did not yet know the form. He thought, we need him, he has something none of us have, we need him to stay here, just as he is, to sit here night after night, telling us his stories, or nodding in that way he nods when someone else talks, sympathetic, happy to yield the floor – liking us. For there is little enough left of what he has. And what is that? What is that?
He caught Barton’s eye and Barton smiled. The C.O. was talking. Hilliard looked away, filled with unease.
The glasses and cutlery were cleared, Garrett brought papers, a map, he had things to tell them. Barton listened with great concentration, his body completely still, head turned towards the Colonel. Hilliard looked at him once and then did not do so again. He thought, what is it?
It was gone ten o’clock when they broke up from the conference around the dining table, and Hilliard wanted to get outside, after the wine he had drunk and the stuffiness from oil lamps and tobacco smoke. In one of the two large sitting rooms of the house, which served as an officers’ mess, someone had put on a gramophone record of The Mikado. Upstairs in his valise, there was ‘The Favourite Selection from Gilbert and Sullivan,’ bound in green cloth with gold lettering on the cover, bought as a present for Reevely, who had sung so badly and who was dead. Hilliard wondered what he was going to do with the music now.
He stood for a moment in the doorway of the farmhouse. From the stables, the sound of buckets clanking, as the horses were fed and watered for the night: from a barn, some of the men, singing; someone shouted to the dog. He stepped out on to the cobbles and breathed in the smoky smell of night. Someone came up behind him in the doorway.
‘Do you play cards, Hilliard?’
Captain Franklin. His face was curiously expressionless. He had hair and moustache of a pale brown, like gingerbread.
‘I don’t really, sir.’
‘Not even whist?’
‘I’m no good at it.’
‘No good at bridge then, I suppose?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Pity. We need someone to make up a four. Barton’s no use either.’
‘Sorry.’
‘All right.’
Hilliard felt that it was not all right.
‘Are you going out?’
‘I think I need to stretch my legs, yes.’
‘You might walk over to the stables for me, see if Preston’s there and ask him to keep an eye on my horse’s leg. He’ll know.’ He paused for a moment, and then added in the same tone, ‘If you’re going that way.’
‘Of course.’
Hilliard was irritated, he felt that the Adjutant had been putting him to some sort of test, because the message sounded unnecessary, and in any case he could perfectly well have sent his batman across with it. It had been mid-wa
y between an order and a request for Hilliard to do him a favour. But then, there was no reason why he should not, in fact, be ‘going that way’.
The stables were warm and the smell of hay and manure was nostalgic to him, even though his acquaintance with it only went back as far as that spring, in Wiltshire. They were good stables here, roomy and solid. The company’s horses did not seem to be so overcrowded as the men.
He opened the half-door and stepped inside. A Tilley lamp stood high up on the window ledge.
‘Mr Hilliard!’
‘Hello, Preston, how are you?’
The usual questions, the usual replies. But he was glad that here was someone he knew still left.
Preston had been a stable boy at Newmarket, and Hilliard suspected that he was under age when he joined up the previous year. But he looked after the Company’s horses as though they were all being carefully primed for the next race. Hilliard had once asked him if he did not feel these animals to be greatly inferior to the thoroughbreds he was used to. Preston had looked shocked. They were horses, so it was all one, they were what he cared about.
‘Captain Franklin wanted me to give you a message?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Apparently there’s something wrong with his horse’s leg?’
Preston did not reply, but turned away and picked up a bucket. The animals moved about, humped against their stalls, tossing their heads up now and again quietly.
‘Anyway he wanted you to keep an eye on it.’
Preston was slight, with a thin face and quick movements. He had little personality and little to say for himself, unless it were on the subject of horses, but there was an air of cleverness about him. He preferred to be in the infantry, though he could have gone into transport, where he would have had more to do with horses and less with everything else. Hilliard sensed that he either resented Franklin’s message or was scornful of it, but his face gave nothing away, nothing was said at all.