Castle Orchard (22 page)

Allington, seeing one of Phil’s toy soldiers on a table, picked it up. It was a meagre thing, cut out from card, but brightly coloured. He turned it over in his hand, examining it for the detail of the uniform.

He said, ‘How gaudily we go to war, with what splendour of lace, silver and gold, scarlet jackets, pelisses edged with fur, officer’s sashes seven foot long. What fanciful trimmings, rosettes, cordings in silk, the gold epaulet with a garter star.’

Phil said, emboldened, ‘I want to be a soldier.’

Allington put the toy back on the table. ‘You
think
you want to be a soldier. I will tell you how it is. I wore my uniform at certain times, for weeks, even months together, day and night. It was soaked in rain and snow, it was bleached by the sun, it was torn and patched, shapeless, filthy and threadbare, and I, I was half-starved and so were my men.’

‘All the time?’

‘No. We got into cantonments, we got new clothes, the commissariat caught up with the army. We had our inedible lumps of beef. We even occasionally got paid. I have been down to my last dollar and afraid to spend it.’

Phil was silent for a while and then he said, ‘I still want to be a soldier.’

He wished he could say why but Captain Allington did not ask him why and his mother told him it was time he went to bed.

When he had gone, Allington said, ‘I should like to discourage him.’ He started to quote Bunyan,
‘“Who so beset him round/ With dismal Stories/ Do but themselves confound;/ His strength the more is.”
I could have told him more dismal stories than I did.’

‘But did you dislike it so very much yourself?’

‘No. Though it was not the career I had wished for, I was happy – very happy.’

‘But you would discourage Phil. Well, so do I, but I wonder you should.’

Allington thought of how the boy would be at the mercy of his fellow officers, let alone the men, but he did not feel he could say it. Shortly after, he returned to the lodge.

Mrs Arthur watched him go. Was she not keeping him from his own house? She had a letter from Louisa which she now read for the second time.

The letter continued in the same vein.

Mrs Arthur went to the window and opened the curtain a little. There was a tiny flicker of light in the distance that immediately went out; she took it to be the candle in the lodge. She began to consider Mr Westcott’s coach and horses, but even more, the tipping of his coachman.

Captain Allington rode one of his two hunters, both gangly, temperamental thoroughbreds with sprightly, uncertain ways, Mrs Arthur supposed least calculated to suit a man with a lame leg. She was pleased to find her riding habit, though a little shabby, still fitted her. Dan had put her up on the grey, adjusted the stirrup and the girth, before mounting the second of the hunters and following along behind. It was sunny and bright. She glanced at Allington and he smiled at her. She thought he was pleased with himself for getting her out, but she couldn’t imagine why, for it was soon evident, as far as knowledge of the lie of the land went, he knew everything. Initially, he made a little pretence it was otherwise. As for herself, she had forgotten how it was that Castle Orchard had been her prison because she could go no further than the distance she could walk. Now favourite views, once so familiar, opened before her, the sweep of the downs, the woods all rust and gold, the river and the white chalk tracks. She was also aware that Captain Allington was an agreeable companion. Had she not been restricted to the society of dear Annie and the children, the rector and his brother? She thought he ought to find her dull. Was he not accustomed to London society and gentlemen’s clubs?

She asked him how he had come to employ Dan.

‘He was born in Cornwall, at St Jude, as I was myself, and always employed there. He wasn’t born deaf; he was ill as a small child. I pinched him from one of my stepbrothers. If you employ Pride, Dan is a great respite.’

Not only had Allington learned the lie of the land, he seemed to know every secret route, the quiet ways where no one came. They moved silently on the soft turf from one place to another, skirting farms and wayside cottages. She understood he had no intention of their being seen.

Mrs Arthur said, ‘You know the land better than I do.’

‘I thought you might tell me something more, some little byway I hadn’t discovered,’ he replied.

She did not believe him but she chose to ignore it.

He then said, ‘You learn a lot campaigning. I spent plenty of time behind the French lines.’

‘Wasn’t that very dangerous?’

‘Yes, but less so if you wore your uniform. You wore your cloak over the top, to hide the red of your jacket. There was the initial danger of being shot. Your best hope was to be taken prisoner if things went wrong.’

‘And if you hadn’t your uniform on?’

‘Then a mistake or a betrayal cost you your life.’

Mrs Arthur knew, without asking him, that he had been thus employed. The thought of it was so disturbing she involuntarily clutched at the mane of the long-tailed grey. How could she, as a woman, ever comprehend the horrors that had been daily life to men such as Captain Allington?

The grey horse went along quietly, smoothly. Captain Allington seemed content they should do no more than walk. His dancing, jingling thoroughbred had also settled to a gentle pace.

Mrs Arthur said, ‘You must speak good French.’

‘I speak French, as you would expect. When I joined up, a mere boy, I knew I would be going with the regiment straight out to the Peninsula. I was ambitious. It had occurred to me that if the Army was to be my career and I with no money and little influence, I had to draw attention to myself. I arrived in winter, which was fortunate, because it gave me time to study. I had Mordant’s Spanish Crammer and Guthrie’s for the Portuguese, but I was, of course, able to practise on the natives. I was considered a very dry fellow. Why say I was a boy, when children as young as Phil are officers at sea?’

She said, ‘Weren’t you afraid?’

Allington laughed. She thought how laughter, like his smile, so lit his face and altered it.

He said, ‘What a very feminine approach. Tense, yes, afraid, no.’

‘Pride was afraid.’

‘Pride was very ill-suited to soldiering.’ Allington started, after a moment, to say more. ‘One obeys orders, does one’s duty, upholds the regiment . . . the regimental band plays us into action. As an ensign I carried the colours. How they tug and pull in the wind, enough to send a lad over. They’re a target for the enemy, but in those days I was lucky. Some of the men took to religion, very holy and evangelical, but I never could see how they squared it with their duties as a soldier. The need to laugh and joke in the face of death was more appreciated than prayers.’

As he spoke, Mrs Arthur saw this boy he had been, intensely active, over-clever, no tuft of white in his hair, no scars, such as she had glimpsed on his arms when he had rolled back his sleeves to pick apples.

‘Sometimes,’ Allington said, ‘I would reflect on it. I liked to go off on my own, in the peace of the evening, the campfires lit below, the pungent odours of Spanish vegetation in my nose. The donkeys, the mules from the baggage train might set up a serenading. Rather better, the King’s German Legion would sing their native airs and tug your heartstrings. The British soldier seems only to be able to sing something coarse when drunk, but the Germans . . . I would sometimes think of my mother and be almost glad she didn’t live to see me grow up; she would have died a thousand deaths on my behalf. So many companions lost, so many, it made me wonder if the soul flew to its Maker with the swift beauty of a swallow, a rainbow arc of joy . . . or whether it flew there at all.’ He glanced at Mrs Arthur, turning sharply in his saddle to see if he shocked her, but she was pensive rather than shocked.

As they rode along the quiet, undulating downs in their varying shades of grey and green, Allington said, ‘You might not suppose there is any connecting link between these hills and Spain, but I know the wild thyme grows here. I’ve smelled it crushed underfoot. I liked to course my greyhounds in Spain and Portugal. To get a hare or two added to the comfort of the mess.’

He spoke of the difficulties of the commissariat struggling with squeaking, groaning bullock carts of flour and biscuit, ale or rum for a hundred thousand men, a whole army shifting without apparent rhyme or reason in various divisions from Portugal to Spain and back again, the roads unspeakable. It was easy for a regiment to outmanoeuvre its luggage and supplies, the price of local produce high and the wages in arrears. He said, if you were wounded and had no money for better food, it could be the end of you, but you were in as much danger from fever and dysentery. He told of dust, of mules, of baggage trains and of the unbearable sun.

They started to descend the downs. The chalk track dropped between steep banks, and as they approached level ground they passed through beech hangings red-gold in the mild English autumn.

He talked dreamily of the great golden plains, glistening palely under the powerful light; of earth as red as bricks when turned by the plough; of mountains, one craggy mass of rocks so high whole armies seemed like little crawling flies. He spoke of castles and villages perched on eminences; and of convents full of dark-eyed nuns, imprisoned by grilles that failed to inhibit clandestine whispered seductions in broken, alien tongues. The names of foreign places slipped easily from him. He talked of days of doing nothing, billeted in villages or towns, of theatricals, dances, horse racing and endless dalliance with pretty girls. They lived from day to day. He spoke of beautiful arcaded squares shadowy in the noonday sun; of cathedrals that took your breath away; of corn-ripe stone and cream-coloured churches. He told, without enthusiasm, of Catholic mummery, of tinselled Virgin Marys and decorated saints.

‘Ah well,’ he said. ‘My caçadores . . . Catholic to a man, good and bad, everything done in the name of God. They were touchingly anxious I shouldn’t be killed, they had so little hope for my salvation.’

Nearing Castle Orchard there were several places where the river could be forded. Captain Allington already knew them all. His horse plunged into the water and the water swirled about its hocks. The grey followed meekly after and Dan brought up the rear.

She had no conception of fighting in winter but he started to describe the storming of a town in January and a river to be forded, again and again, the ice knocking at the ribs, the clothes frozen solid on the body and the ground rock-like where the trenches must be dug. He talked of marching day after day, of lying down in the rain at night, no cantonments, no bivouac, merely rain-soaked ruts in a field of plough.

He then said, ‘I’ve probably taken you too far. Are you tired? We’ll go again another day.’

The Reverend Hubert Conway, though a gentle and unassuming man, had a clear idea of his responsibilities, however distasteful. He said to his brother at breakfast, ‘Stewart, it is my duty to remonstrate with Captain Allington. He doesn’t attend church, which will set a bad example amongst his tenants. Also there is the matter of Mrs Arthur, poor soul. I fear it will cause gossip, though it is not a subject I feel willing to raise.’

‘Mrs Arthur should go to her sister.’

‘It may not be convenient for her sister.’

‘In that case, what is Captain Allington to do?’ replied his brother testily.

The rector could not imagine what Allington should do, short of going elsewhere, or at least further than the lodge. This did not deter him from crossing the meadow that divided his establishment from Castle Orchard and asking Annie if Captain Allington was in.

Captain Allington was at his desk in the morning room, which had now taken on a bachelor air. He had hung his two Cornish seascapes, but the portrait of the Light Dragoon had never been unpacked and resided in the corner with its face to the wall. Allington sat with the window open to disperse the aroma of his occasional cigar. As a young soldier, a cigar smoked under excruciating circumstances of hunger, wet and cold, brought inestimable comfort. Now he thought it a poor habit and one in his changed circumstances he should abandon. He could surely manage without tobacco, especially if it might remind him of Johnny Arthur and his endless snuffboxes.

When Annie showed in the rector, Allington gave him a small bow but said nothing.

Mr Conway, disconcerted, said, ‘Mild for the time of year.’ He tended to say this when lost for words, whatever the circumstances of the weather. He thought Captain Allington’s room very cold with the window open.

Allington asked Annie to bring the rector a glass of Madeira. While it was fetched Mr Conway struggled with a few more commonplaces. Apart from offering him a chair, Allington made no response.

‘You will not take a glass with me, I see,’ Mr Conway said, forgetting his brother’s comments on Allington’s abstinence.

‘I take no alcohol,’ Allington replied. ‘Did you have business with me?’

The rector said nervously, ‘I have a duty to attend to the souls of my parishioners but they take their example, not unnaturally, from their betters, particularly their landlord. I fear that their attendance at church will slip and slide.’

‘My predecessor, the late Mr Arthur, set no such example.’

‘Indeed not, the poor, misguided gentleman. Let us hope he found salvation though no time to prepare for it, thrown off the box of a coach.’

‘Mrs Arthur sets the example, and while she resides here, will no doubt continue to do so. Otherwise, it should be your own persuadings, not mine, that get them into church.’

Captain Allington paused here and eyed Mr Conway coldly. He then stood up and went to lean in the open window embrasure. He said, ‘I have never met a man in your profession whom I found I could respect. It’s as though ordination was sufficient to render a man wise or holy. While I was a soldier there was rarely a chaplain worth his salt, rarely one to go out amongst the dead and dying to administer some little comfort to those who would have welcomed it; no one to brave the stink and pestilence of a hospital to reassure a dying man he had done his duty and could depart in peace. We buried our brother officers in unhallowed ground in shallow graves, and the only prayer we said was that their poor mangled bodies would be spared the ploughshare or the wolves. I can quote the service for the dead by heart, so frequently was I called upon to do it, but I thought myself ill-fitted for the task. As for chaplains, they were only notable for their absence.’