‘The war’s going to change a lot of people. The papers don’t tell us much, but things are not going well for the French, so heaven knows what’s happening to the British Expeditionary Force.’
Sara told him that the family appeared to be more worried about Caspar than anyone else. ‘He’s out there somewhere, with his regiment. Belgium, I think.’
He nodded, ‘And what of the twins? Is it Rupert? And…?’
‘Ramillies…’
‘Yep, Ramillies. There are so many Railtons, and I guess I’m not overly good with names.’
‘Rupert’s safe enough. In Monmouth. The ship’s an old bucket, but she’s an armoured cruiser, and Rupert’s with eleven of his old friends from Dartmouth. Andrew says he’s safe and well out of it all, off South America.’
‘And Ramillies, what’s he up to?’
She gave a humourless snort. ‘By my reckoning Ramillies is the darkest of horses, and the most brilliant. Got a flair for languages, like his cousin James. He’s also far away from any danger – trailing in the wake of the enigmatic Giles. Ramillies is acting as his aide, and, I should imagine, it will be Ramillies who’ll eventually be the Eminence grise of Whitehall.’
Dick pursed his lips, ‘Never really figured out what Giles Railton does at the Foreign Office.’
‘You’re not alone in that, dear Richard. Soon after we were married, I asked John what Giles did. You’d probably be surprised, but John could be quite poetic at times. He said, “My uncle lives on the far side of the moon, and comes down to earth in the most unlikely places, and in a hundred disguises.” Then he quoted what he said was a Russian proverb – “The moon shines, but it does not warm.”’ She laughed, without humour. ‘If I were a true Railton, I certainly wouldn’t have told you that. Uncle Giles is a secret moon man, and plies a hidden trade. Enough!’
He shrugged, as though to imply that it was not enough, and Sara half smiled. ‘I’ll add one thing. I wouldn’t trust Giles Railton an inch. Not with anything – family property, family ties, country, secrets… even life.’
Dick, catching her mood, quickly changed the subject. ‘And Andrew? He was hoping to go back to sea: his own ship.’
‘No such luck. Chained to the Admiralty. He’s happy enough, though. So’s Charles for that matter, even if he never speaks about the job he’s doing. They’re a very secretive lot, my Railtons.’
‘Yes, my Railtons,’ he echoed. ‘You’re very much one of them now. If I do get to marry you, I’ve no illusions as to which family I’d be joining.’
By mentioning marriage again, Dick had crossed into mutually agreed forbidden ground, and a silence shouldered itself between them. For a while, they sat separated by their own thoughts.
Presently, it was Sara who suggested they should take a turn outside. She led the way to her own favourite place, the rose garden.
‘You can bear to come here now?’ He remembered that terrible day, such a short time ago, when John lay near these very bushes, gasping his sudden last breath.
‘I come here a great deal. There’s peace here.’
The moon was high, and the roses almost all gone now, leaving only the scent of other flowers: night stocks and a hint of rosemary mingled with the clear, clean smell of country greenery. He did not have to look at Sara to know she was smiling.
‘John’s peace?’ he asked.
‘I like to think he found peace here. Does that sound sentimental?’
‘It might from any other woman.’ He turned, his arms enfolding her.
Sara, in spite of her good intentions, found herself returning the embrace. Her eyes stayed open, staring ahead into the darkness, aware of the stars pulsing through the universe, and the great shadow that was Redhill, looming in the moonlight.
Dick saw it as well, and shivered, involuntarily, as he recalled what Sara had said of Giles Railton. Other words came to him – Shakespeare, out of context, yet seemingly right: Let us be Diana’s foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon.
The kiss was not passionate, by their own choice, though it lasted long. Sara, with her own brand of romanticism, allowed herself to imagine it as some physical, shared, prayer: Oh God, let the peace of this place be echoed through the world. Let the peace come, and let the slaughter of battle not take place.
Deep inside, she knew the impossibility of what she asked.
*
‘If the damned military would only listen.’ Giles sat, weary, in front of C’s littered desk. ‘We warned them of the build-up, that it was going to be a copybook offensive: the Schlieffen Plan with a few modifications by Moltke.’
Smith-Cumming grunted, ‘Not your fault. If anyone’s to blame it’s the French, and then our own senior military people. You do not meet an offensive battle plan as they, and the French, have done.’
Giles was past listening. ‘We told them, well in advance. We even managed to warn the idiots about the size of the German army that would be passing through Belgium. But no! They’ll only believe it when the forward units are wiped out. How in God’s name do we make them understand?’
The head of the Secret Service gave a grimace. ‘We do our best to go on providing good intelligence. In the end, perhaps these antiquarian strategists of the General Staff may see reason. Our kind of work is only as good as the use military commanders make of it. What we have to do…’ A knock at the door put an end to what could have been a lecture on the military value of intelligence.
It was a messenger with the latest dispatches from the headquarters of Sir John French – Commander-in-Chief BEF –which, when read, only brought more concern.
As Smith-Cumming scanned the flimsy pages, and then passed them to Giles, both men grew more sombre – though Giles Railton quickly allowed his near despair to burst into the thunder of fury. ‘After all we’ve provided for them, they still fall into the snare! God knows how many lads’ll go to their graves because of this folly!’
Giles had a right to be bitter and angry. He had spent hours going through the fine detail of all he knew of the Schlieffen War Plan. The Committee of Imperial Defence could not have been better or more thoroughly briefed. Giles’ plea was that the whole General Staff should know everything and share it with their French counterparts long before the crisis had got out of hand.
And now the trap was sprung, just as the dead von Schlieffen had planned, and his successor Moltke had reshaped.
The main German thrust moved with great strength, curving through Belgium, cutting a great swath, like some giant scythe, towards France. The German strategists had banked on the French counter-attacking heavily in the north-east. This was the core of von Schlieffen’s plan – for it was how the French could be caught, pincered and crushed; while the forces moving through Belgium would envelop and rape Paris itself.
But the closed minds of the Allied military commanders of the ‘Entente Powers’ appeared oblivious to the warning.
‘Even when we had aerial evidence of the size of the advance into Belgium, they would not accept it.’ Giles spoke almost to himself. He had experienced battle, and knew the horror that was now taking place only a few miles across the Channel.
Smith-Cumming found the ability to grunt out a laugh, even at this grim moment. ‘They wouldn’t even accept my agents’ information of five hundred and fifty troop trains crossing the Rhine bridges each day. Well, they know now.’
The dispatches lay on Smith-Curnming’s desk, silent witness to the awful truth. Sir John French, with the one hundred thousand strong British Expeditionary Force, had come up against the forward units of the German First Army near Mons. Now the BEF was in retreat.
Giles was still angry. ‘Someone has to pay for this.’
He was not to know that – like many thousands of others – a member of his own family was about to pay.
Chapter Three
The Sergeant pointed at the wooden signpost, set at a fork in the road. ‘Right, my lads, that’s where you’re goin’.’ The signpost said Le
Gateau 6K.
One hundred thousand regular soldiers had crossed the Channel with the BEF. The whisper was that casualties were now incredibly high. Sergeant Graves sadly looked at the platoon in his charge. Schoolboys in uniform, he thought.
‘Why we goin’ to this Lee Cat-ee-ow place, then, Sergeant?’ The rake-thin lad called Lofthouse, and well nicknamed ‘Lofty’, had to shout to make himself heard, for the hot road was crowded: horse-drawn carts, French and Belgian civilians, old men, women, children, trudging along the grass verges, while the road itself was clogged with troops.
‘You are reinforcements for Two Corps, lad. Commanded by General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien.’ Sergeant Graves pronounced it ‘Smith Doreen’. ‘You’ll be part of the 14th Infantry Brigade, with the Second Suffolks.’ In his mind he said ‘and God ’elp you’. ‘Now, let’s see what you learned at Aldershot. I want you fresh, and marchin’.’
A squad of infantry went past, in ragged file, the men hardly turning their heads to look at the platoon – their eyes dull, and many limping from the blisters of miles.
‘Strikes me, we’re goin’ the wrong bloody way,’ Lofty Lofthouse muttered to the young private marching beside him. ‘They’re all coming from this Lee Cat-ee-ow place. What you reckon?’
‘Dunno.’ The tall boy next to Lofthouse had about him the look of the country, and he could not keep step properly, as though used to a different pace – behind the plough perhaps.
The air was heavy as lead, with thunder in the distance – not that they would be able to distinguish thunder at the moment. Ever since they had landed at Le Havre the sound of guns had been background music for their journey. As for the clogged roads, they were the reason for the march to Le Cateau; for the transport on which they had travelled from Le Havre had been forced to a halt by the retreating Belgian, French and British troops, combined with the endless stream of refugees. Khaki figures could be seen in the fields, while ambulances, and men hobbling, bandaged and grey with pain, spoke of fearsome work ahead.
As they marched towards Le Cateau, Sergeant Graves worked out the possibilities. Unless troops were really in rout from the enemy, the time always came for them to turn, stand and fight. This, according to all the elementary strategy he had learned, usually meant that a stand had to be made in order to buy time for others: so that an Army, Corps, or Division, could regroup, re-arm, and take up a defensive line.
Lurking in the back of Sergeant Graves’ mind was the unhappy notion that, possibly, they were heading towards Two Corps because Two Corps was going to buy that much-needed time for the British Expeditionary Force.
Though the Sergeant’s thinking was accurate enough, nobody knew – at this moment – as the little platoon of reinforcements plugged along the dusty road, that any covering action would be fought at all. In fact, only now, in the late afternoon of 25 August, had the bulk of Two Corps arrived, under pressure from the enemy, in the Le Cateau area.
They had fought their way slowly back from the Mons battlefields, in harness with One Corps, and, at this moment – as the sergeant’s half-trained, untried reserves broke into a bawdy song – the men and artillery of Two Corps were skirting the Forest of Mormal, to the north-east of Le Cateau, and the clutch of villages which lay between it and the town of Cambrai to the north-west.
Sergeant Graves’ orders had been less specific than he had allowed the recruits to know. Yet, to all intents, this tiny band of raw boys was destined to join their allotted units in the field of battle, and move back the way they had come – under the fire of German rifles, machine-guns and artillery.
Four-and-twenty virgins came down from Inverness,
And when the ball was over there were four-and-twenty less;
Singing, I’ll do ye this time,
I’ll do ye now;
The lad that did ye last time, he canna do ye now.
The young civilians in uniform sang with gusto, but all Sergeant Graves could think about was the countryside through which they marched.
The roads suddenly became clearer, less crowded; but the sound of sporadic gunfire was closer by the minute. They marched through bleached, dry, slightly undulating ground – bare but for the occasional tree, and without cover, except for the odd ditch in the hard-baked earth. Bloody ’ell, Graves thought. It’s like soddin’ Salisbury Plain without the trees. Graves did not relish the thought of having to stand and fight in this place.
Nor did General Smith-Dorrien, but later that night he would be faced with no alternative.
*
‘Young officer, Mr Railton, needs a batman. One volunteer.’ A sergeant, Martin by name, stood in the doorway of the barn, on the outskirts of Le Cateau, making the request sound like an order from God.
Sergeant Graves had handed over his ‘children’, as he called them, to a sergeant-major of the 2nd Suffolks, just outside Le Cateau itself, at exactly five minutes past six, as the storm clouds began to gather and the air seemed to thicken like soup.
‘Children, Sarn’t? The children of this regiment have become old men in the past week. Same’ll happen to these lads – those that’re spared.’ And the men were quickly, and efficiently, split up and sent, in twos and threes, to those platoons now under-strength from casualties suffered during the gruelling cross-country chase from the Mons battlefields.
Three of the reinforcements sat in the barn with hardened campaigners, nineteen and twenty years of age, who told them stories of the fighting; exchanged cigarettes; ate bully beef; and drank hot sweet tea, brewed up in mess tins and billy cans.
As the new arrivals heard of the bitter fighting around the Mons salient, one of them, goggle-eyed, asked, ‘What’s it like? What’s it really like when the shooting starts?’ half in fear and half excitement and anticipation.
‘Noise, blood and guts.’ A corporal from North London, still young enough to have acne scarring his face, drew on a thin cigarette. ‘It jus’ ‘appens, see. One minute you’re scared shitless; the next you don’ ave time to think. Not ’till after, like.’
‘And them bloody Jerries.’ Another man – a fat, red-faced private – spat on the stone floor. ‘You don’ ardly ever see them; but when you do it ain’t ’alf strange. Like grey ghosts, they are, in them uniforms, and the ’elmets, wi’ spikes on ’em, like a London copper.’
There was muttered agreement, and a short silence. Then an older man, around twenty-three or four – neat as a bank clerk, even in the dusty, stained uniform – cleared his throat. ‘Funny,’ he looked up at the beams in the barn’s roof. ‘It’s funny. We were in this village – don’ ask me the name of it. Odd name it had. Well, we was there all morning, and Jerry, he kept on coming in waves, like; and we just went on shootin’ at ’im, and forcin’ ‘im back. I know I killed my first man that morning – saw him slide down like he’d had too much plum duff and cider. Round dinner time it went all quiet, an’ the sergeant – ’Awkins – you remember ’Awkins, copped it last night, other side of that big wood; them trees; that forest…’
‘Mormal, I heard an officer call that forest “Mormal”,’ from someone sitting well back in the corner.
‘Yes, the forest. Well, Sergeant ’Awkins says as how half on us can stand down. It was all quiet, and the sun shining and everything. I went off and sat on a doorstep. Didn’t think no people was left in the place. Then out comes this kiddie, ’bout four or five years old. Bright as a button, and not frightened or nothing. She starts to jabber away in her own lingo, then comes and sits on my knee. Well, eventually she finds this whistle.’ He reached for the top right-hand pocket of his tunic, bringing out a silver police whistle on a chain. ‘Me Mum give it me: use to be my uncle’s, him in the police force. Died of pneumonia, 1910. Always keeps it here,’ patting the pocket. ‘Never know, do you? Anyhow, she gets hold on it and puts it in her mouth, then starts blowin’ and blowin’ – makes one hell of a din, but she was so happy; so happy blowin’ away.’ He seemed to take a deep breath to control himself. ‘First time I was eve
r homesick that was. First bleedin’ time. Funny.’
There was a violent crash and roar, echoing around outside, shaking the barn, but only the newcomers flinched.
‘Said we was in for thunder,’ the man with the whistle nodded. ‘Been sayin’ it all day.’ He looked at the suddenly startled eyes of the newcomers. ‘No, it’s only thunder. You’ll know all right when it’s the Jerry guns.’
And it was at that moment the sergeant came in demanding a volunteer to be young Mr Railton’s batman.
Billy Crook did not think twice. He just stood up and ambled over to where the NCO stood. Sergeant Martin looked at him as though he was deformed. ‘Ho yes,’ with a humourless laugh. ‘And what makes you think you can be a batman, an officer’s servant, then, Sunny Jim?’
Billy Crook’s voice was cloaked in a Berkshire burr. ‘Use to work for ’em, Sergeant.’
‘Work for who?’
‘Railtons. Haversage way.’
‘And where the hell might Haversage way be?’
Billy genuinely thought the NCO was joking. ‘Come on, Sergeant, everybody knows Haversage. Haversage, and Redhill Manor – that’s where I worked and lived.’
‘That’s enough of the dumb insolence, lad.’ The Sergeant peered closer at Billy Crook, his brow creasing. Strange, he thought. This lad had a similarity to Mr Railton, but he could not quite put a finger on what it was. The eyes, perhaps? Or the nose? ‘Mr Railton was related to the late General Railton, did you know that, lad? General Sir William Railton?’
‘I was at the Manor when he died.’ Billy stood, unperturbed by the Sergeant’s suspicious gaze. ‘They sent me down the hill, to the Vicar, that night. First time I ever saw the Vicar, close up like that, the night they sent me, the night The General died…’
‘All right, lad. Get your kit and come with me.’