Circles of Time (4 page)

Martin tossed the paper aside. “It doesn't sound like the general wrote it. I talked with him a dozen times during the war and he could barely put five coherent words together. I doubt if he could tell you what a ‘Fleet Street stringer' is, under threat of torture.”

“Well, maybe he didn't write it, Marty, but he signed his name to it.”

“No doubt of that—and didn't miss a dig.
German
-American,
callow
reporter as opposed to
responsible
journalism. My
loss of credentials
during the war … comfort to
German
enemies. A well-put-together smear.”

“What are you going to do?”

Martin shrugged and reached for a cigar. “Ignore it, I guess. What
can
I do? Write a letter to
The Times
defending the book? Nothing I could say would ever convince the war apologists that I'm right and the general is wrong. Anyway, I'm seeing my publishers tomorrow and I'll sound them out about it.”

Johnson finished his drink and stood up. “Back to the mines. I've got a thousand words from Salonika to blue-pencil. Turks and Greeks slaughtering each other under the olive trees. Wars go on and who the hell cares about the last one.”

C
ALTHORPE
& C
ROFTS
was a small firm started before the war to publish the works of experimental poets and avant-garde writers. They had avoided the self-conscious precociousness common to that type of endeavor and had put out a dozen or more books that had been both critical and commercial successes.
A Killing Ground
was their first venture into nonfiction. Jeremy Crofts had been dubious about taking a book that most of the houses in London had turned down flat, but Arnold Calthorpe had argued so strongly for it that he had finally given in. To Calthorpe, publishing the slim manuscript was an almost holy duty. Unlike his partner, who suffered from partial blindness in one eye and had been medically unfit for service, Arnold Calthorpe, in a burst of patriotic fervor, had enlisted in 1914 at the advanced age of thirty-five. He became a captain in the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry and served three years in the trenches. The experience had left him with chronic rheumatism and a deep, livid scar that nearly bisected his face. It had also left him with a deep rage at the war which had destroyed so many of his friends.

“Yes,” he said, staring through his office window at the green of Bloomsbury Square below. “We were certain there would be letters to
The Times
from various military fossils. That was to be expected.” It was starting to rain again, a brisk wind driving it against the glass. He rubbed his finger joints and turned into the room. “Going to be a beastly summer. If I had half a brain I'd chuck it all in and move to California.”

Martin, seated in a leather armchair, smiled. “Hardly your style, Arnold. Motion pictures and orange trees.”

Calthorpe leaned against the edge of his desk and reached for a tin of cigarettes. “Care for a fag, Rilke?”

“No, thanks. I only smoke cigars.”

“That's Jeremy's vice. He has some good ones in his office. I'll filch a few.”

“Don't bother. I carry my own.”

The publisher lit his cigarette and tossed the still-smoking match into a wastebasket.

“I don't believe for a moment that General Sparrowfield actually wrote that letter. Neither, I'm sure, do you. The fact is, your book not only condemns the way the generals handled the war, but makes a mockery out of the war reportage that was printed in every newspaper in Great Britain. It must be acutely embarrassing to certain correspondents who have just written books of their own. Their view of the fighting differs so drastically from yours, one can only wonder if they observed the same war.”

“I know that. I can think of one or two men.”

“And one or two newspaper publishers, if it comes to that. Northcliffe, Lord Crewe …”

“But there can't be many people left in England who aren't aware of the truth by now. Every man who came back from France told what went on there.”

“Did they? My dear Rilke, most of the men who got demobbed never talked about the war at all and still don't—especially to civilians. It's just a hideous experience they keep to themselves. I know how they feel. I'm the same. I can't talk about the war, even to my wife. Not in any depth, anyway. She couldn't possibly take in the ghastliness of it. She chides me when I duck every time I hear a motorcar backfire—but then, Doris was never sniped at in Polygon Wood.” He began to pace the room, leaving a trail of cigarette ash on the carpet. “An embarrassment, Rilke. No more than that.
A Killing Ground
will not incite mobs to storm Fleet Street and burn down the citadels of the Tory press, but it would please some people if it, and you, could be discredited.”

“It'll take more than a letter from an ass like Sparrowfield to do that.”

“Granted the chap's an ass, but he commanded a division on the Somme, fought with distinction during the Boer War, and is a crony of field marshals, lords of the realm, and other exalted pillars of the Empire. In other words, old boy, he could be a rather imposing adversary in court.”

“Court?”

“We received a letter by special post about an hour before you arrived. It's from a firm of solicitors in Chancery Lane. The general is prepared to sue you for libel.”

“That's ridiculous. Every line in the book is documented fact.”

“Perhaps, but the libel laws in this country happen to be arcane, and any damn thing could happen.”

It was silent in the room except for the faint hiss of rain against the windows and the desultory tapping of a typewriter in another part of the suite.

“What's your view of this?”

Calthorpe ambled over to his desk and plucked another cigarette from the tin. “It's really not up to me to say. Under our contract you absolve us from liability in cases of libel, slander, or plagiarism. The financial burden is on your shoulders, I'm afraid, and lawsuits can be expensive, win or lose.” He lit his cigarette and puffed moodily, eyes narrowed against the smoke. “The letter was terribly brief, so I telephoned the firm and talked to a rather cheery fellow, name of Ormsby. Wanted more facts before I talked to you. They offer a simple way out: Sparrowfield will drop the suit if you will compose a letter of apology for all the nasty little things you said about him and his staff and publish that letter in either
The Times
or the
Evening News.
”

Martin stood up and walked over to the window. A simple letter of apology. That would be the end of it—until another “defamed” officer was dug up and convinced that he had cause to seek satisfaction. Apology after apology printed in the newspapers until his credibility as a critic of the war was damaged beyond repair.

A libel suit would be expensive and would take time. And there was one other factor to consider: Sparrowfield's letter had specifically drawn attention to the fact that he had violated censorship regulations during the war—
could well have afforded comfort to our German enemies.
The implication being that this
German
-American had a past history of being anti-English.

That was nonsense, but it would mean having to defend himself against malicious innuendo, explaining just what it was that he had written in 1917 that had caused his press credentials to be canceled. To do that, he would have to bring Charles Greville's name into the courtroom, and the so-called antiwar tract he and Jacob had printed as a protest to the mindless butchery on the western front—Major the Honorable Charles Greville's account of the horrors that had led to his mental breakdown. He had felt it was his duty at the time to publish his cousin's words, not because Charles was a relative but because Charles was a kind and gentle man who had been shattered by an obscenity. He was still shut away in a war hospital in Wales, quietly forgotten except by his family and friends. The Grevilles would not be happy at the idea of his raking up the past in a court of law.

“Well, Rilke, what's your answer to the lawyers?”

Martin continued to stare out of the window. The wind had shifted and the rain was no longer slanting against the glass; it was now swirling toward the buildings on the opposite side of the square. Four ragged men, driven from their shelter in a doorway, were running across the little park, stumbling and sliding in the wet. He remembered the way the Tommies had stumbled and slid in the mud at Thiepval as they pressed for the German trenches, and how they stumbled and fell when the machine guns caught them in front of the wire.

“I shall tell them—very politely—to go to hell.”

A
NTHONY
G
REVILLE, NINTH
earl of Stanmore, walked slowly across the gravel drive toward his car. The new Rolls-Royce, which had been covered with a patina of brick dust for the past few days, now gleamed like polished ebony as his chauffeur completed the task of washing it with buckets of water and a chamois-skin rag.

“Nicely done, Banes.”

“Thank you, m'lord. A bit difficult, I must say. That brick don't 'alf stick.”

The earl nodded, and wiped abstractedly at his old tweed jacket. “Gets into everything. Clothes, hair …”

“That's a fact, sir.” The man rubbed a speck of dirt from the windscreen. “Is His Lordship ready to go?”

“Yes. You might just get my bag from the cottage.”

“Very good, sir.” The chauffeur put the chamois in the boot of the car and then walked off down the path toward the caretaker's cottage.

The earl lit a cigarette and gazed back at the house. The south wing was still covered with scaffolding, but all the brickwork had been completed—crumbled bricks replaced, stained ones wire-brushed good as new. The other wings of the great house were finished and gleamed in the sun. Two years of work coming to an end—God and the contractor willing.

There had been problems right from the start with a succession of indifferent or grossly incompetent contractors. The present one had been on the job for a year and had kept up nicely with the work schedule—so far. Hopefully, by the end of July it would all be finished and the landscape gardeners could move in and have the plantings completed before the winter frosts sealed the ground. Wishful thinking, he knew, but all things were possible.

The contractor, a burly ex-footballer from Leeds, stepped outside the metal-roofed shed he used as an office and waved cheerily. Lord Stanmore waved back. Their relationship had not been without strain, but they had finally seen eye to eye on the little things, the details that the contractor had thought nit-picking and the earl important. He had finally impressed upon the man the fact that Abingdon Pryory was an old house being restored, not reconstructed to conform with modern architectural trends. On their very first meeting the contractor had been so insensitive as to poke fun at the fact that “Pryory” was spelt with a “y” where the “i” should properly have been. He had remained amused even after the earl's explanation of the misspelling: that the structure originally built on the site had been so entered in the Domesday Book. Everything erected after the eleventh century had retained the name, poor spelling and all, as part of a continuing tradition.

“Tradition, is it!” The contractor had laughed. “Can't say I'm much for ruddy tradition!”

“Then perhaps you're not the man I'm looking for,” Lord Stanmore had countered icily.

As a great deal of money was at stake, the contractor soon revised his opinion and began to treat the idea of “tradition” with the same respect as his employer.

The chauffeur put the car into gear and drove cautiously down the drive, past the mounds of sand, bags of bricks, and piled scaffolding that lined it. The earl sat in the back and stretched out his legs with a sigh. He had put in some taxing days with the contractor, but, by Harry, everything was on the proper course now. He could envision what the place would look like when all of the work had been completed—the clipped lawns rising gently toward the terrace, the rambling house of brick and stone, sun glinting off its hundreds of windows. Better even than before the war, when Abingdon Pryory had been judged the most beautiful house in Surrey by the editors of
Country Life.

A pity the army hadn't read that laudation when he had turned the place over to them in 1915. It might have made them more deferential toward what they had been given—or rather loaned for the duration of the war. The army had used the house as a rest center for officers, a place where battle-wearied men might find strength and renewal before returning to the trenches. The concept had been noble enough, but, for whatever reason, the facilities had been grossly abused. Far from being grateful for the luxury of two weeks in a lovely manor house, many of the men had treated house, gardens, and outbuildings with an animosity better levied against the home of a Prussian general than an English earl. Walls had been defaced, balustrades broken, doors parted from their hinges, and the stables chopped up for firewood. There had been even greater official desecration: Windows had been removed to get at the leading; iron gates and fencing torn down and shipped to the smelters.

“Lead for bullets, iron for shells,” a brigadier general in Whitehall had explained after the war. A moderate sum had been offered in compensation for damages, but he had been expected to refuse it out of patriotism, and had.