Post of Honour (8 page)

II

W
ill Codsall’s summons was the plucking of the first brick from the parochial wall. News that he had been hustled away overnight sobered the Valley and sent some of the more thoughtful to the foreign news section of the
County Press
.
Henry Pitts, of Hermitage, was not among this minority, giving it as his opinion that the German Kaiser, long recognised as mad, had now degenerated into a homicidal maniac and that Will was fortunate in finding himself among those charged with hunting the lunatic down and packing him off to St Helena, which Henry regarded as the traditional lock-up of all unsuccessful challengers of British naval supremacy. It was an extravagant theory, and Henry’s father Arthur said there was surely more to it than that, for the British Army must have been very hard-pressed indeed to need the services of an amiable chap like Will. He was more inclined to think that the Yeomanry was being called out to replace regulars who had refused to bear arms against Ulster. Eveleigh, at Four Winds, being’ a more serious-minded man than either of the Pitts, was one of those who sought an answer in back numbers of the
County Press
,
there to make what he could of newsletters published under such headings as ‘Austria Threatens Serbia!’ ‘Tsar Pledges Aid to Slavs’, and ‘Where Britain stands in Balkan Dispute’, but he soon lost his way in a maze of despatches from St Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin, Paris and Belgrade, suspending judgment until he could consult Horace Handcock, the Valley oracle on foreign affairs. Eveleigh was a practical man and found it very difficult to connect the sudden disappearance of one of his neighbours with revolver shots fired at a bulging-eyed foreigner in a town of which he had never heard.

When he entered the sawdust bar of The Raven about seven o’clock that evening he was amazed to find more than a score of the Valley men already assembled and all, it appeared, in search of the answers to the questions he had sought in vain in the newspapers. Rumours, some of them too absurd to be credited, converted the usually peaceful atmosphere of the bar into a Tower of Babel. Churchill, they said, was calling out the fleet; the King had written a strong letter to his crazy German cousin ordering him to back down at once; Kitchener had been recalled from Egypt and was standing by to land the Army on the Continent whereas Horace Handcock, his face the colour of a ripe cider apple proved quite unequal to the task of sieving through these rumours, having been so generously plied with brown ale that he could only babble incoherently of spies, Zeppelins and lethal marigolds. About eight o’clock Eveleigh left in disgust, none the wiser save for confirmation that Will Codsall had left the Valley in uniform.

He should have waited a little longer. About eight-thirty Smut Potter looked in on his way back from Sorrel Halt and in his pocket was a special edition of a London newspaper, thrown from the window of a through express. It told of troop movements all over Europe, of Germany’s pledge to—support Austria against Russia, and of France’s pledge to back Russia and Serbia against Germany and Austria. There was no mention of England’s involvement and this was a source of disappointment to those present, so much so that, as the evening progressed, and after a labourer who could actually vouch for Will Codsall’s departure arrived, Will’s stock declined, for it was thought discreditable on his part to have slunk away without a word to anyone, as though resolved to fight the Kaiser single-handed. Then, to everybody’s relief word was circulated that Squire was in the bar parlour with John Rudd and Sam Potter asked the landlord if he would convey their respects to Mr Craddock and ask for enlightenment. A moment or two later Paul appeared and damped everybody’s spirits by announcing that Mr Grenfell, who was surely in a position to know, had told him over the telephone earlier in the day that Great Britain was almost certain to remain neutral if war broke out but that he, personally, did not think it would because the latest news in London was that the President of the United States and the Pope had offered their services as mediators. This information fell upon the heated company like a cold douche and Smut pinpointed the only consolatory crumb by saying, ‘Well, that’ll bring old Will home with his tail down, for it dom zeem as if any of us’ll get a crack at ’em!’ a remark that indicated to those who had known Smut in the old days that the poacher was not exorcised after all. Soon the forum broke up and the Valley men, their belligerence mellowed by beer and cider, dispersed, all but Horace Handcock who had progressed beyond the jovial stage and had to be forcibly restrained from staggering up the hill to denounce the German professor as a spy.

Paul was silent during the ride home and it was not until they were approaching the ford that he said, ‘Do you suppose I’m right, John? Are those idiots really disappointed with the prospect of us keeping clear of it?’ and John said that this was more than probable, for there wasn’t a man in the Valley apart from themselves who had ever been involved in a war. Paul digested this in silence but when they reached the end of the tow-path, said, suddenly, ‘It doesn’t make sense, John! What the devil would any of them get from war but death or wounds? And what would happen here if only the half of them rushed into uniform?’

‘I can’t answer that,’ John said philosophically, ‘but I can tell you this; there wasn’t a man among them who wasn’t damned envious of Will Codsall and that’s ironic, if you like, for he’s probably the only one in the Valley who would prefer to be ordered about by his wife than by a sergeant-major!’

‘But they always seemed contented enough,’ Paul argued. ‘Why should they want to go off and get shot at?’

‘You did it yourself once, didn’t you?’ John reminded him, ‘but this time it’s more than high spirits and boredom, I fancy. For a century or more we’ve been telling everyone we’re top nation and now we look like having to prove it.’

Paul said, ‘Come, John, you heard what Grenfell said; there’s no chance of us being involved, except as mediators. Do you honestly believe there’s a likelihood of us siding with France and Russia?’

‘Yes I do,’ John replied and Paul noticed that there was an edge to his voice. ‘Politicians like Jimmy Grenfell think they know better than most people but the fact is it must be difficult to see the wood for the trees in Westminster. I’ve been watching this damned naval race for a long time and I’ve thought about it too, more often than I cared to. If it doesn’t come now it’ll come next year or the year after, so maybe it’s as well to get it over and done with while we still have the pretence of naval superiority. At all events that’s what the Navy thinks!’

As John said this Paul had a vision of Roddy Rudd, the fresh-faced, motor-mad boy who had been dazzled by Grace and had once incurred his jealousy. ‘Where is Roddy now?’ he asked, and John said somewhere in the South Atlantic, serving as gunnery officer on the cruiser
Good Hope
.
‘And damned well out of it, I hope, at least for the time being,’ he added, ‘for don’t run away with the notion that the German Navy won’t fight or that, ship for ship, it isn’t a damned sight more up-to-date than ours!’

‘Good God, you can’t mean that, John,’ Paul said, for having grown up in the belief that one British-manned ship was worth ten of any other nation’s he found his agent’s disparagement unpalatable.

‘I do mean it and I have it on excellent authority,’ John said, ‘although it isn’t the kind of thing one should noise abroad. They’ve got better range-finders and thicker armour-plating and many of them can show a better turn of speed! And now, to more practical issues: Will you do anything to give Elinor Codsall a harvest hand at Periwinkle?’

‘Certainly I will, providing Will doesn’t come back looking sheepish the day after tomorrow. I’ll tell you what, John, I’ll lay you two to one in half-crowns that he will!’

‘You’re on,’ said John, ‘for if we’re to have everything turned upside down for the rest of our lives I don’t see why I should miss a chance of making five shillings out of it!’

Paul knew that he had lost his bet some time before the crowds began to gather outside the
County Press
offices in Paxtonbury awaiting the appearance of the latest posters, and before packets of newspapers screaming ‘War!’ were flung among excited newsagents’ boys when the Cornish Riviera made its three-minute stop at the cathedral town. He knew it even before the sombre Foreign Secretary, Grey, had made his prolix but unequivocal speech to the House on that tense Monday afternoon, for his telephone, still one of three in the Valley, linked him with a man whose sources of information were just as good as those of Grenfell’s and whose interpretation was more expert.

At about 2 a.m., on the night that Paul deflated the Valley jingoes in the bar of The Raven, he awoke to hear his telephone-bell shrilling in the hall, where it stood in an alcove under the stair well out of sight of Mrs Handcock who still regarded the instrument as a direct link with the Devil. And in a way, on that close August night, it was. When Paul went downstairs to answer it the voice at the end of the wire had the fruitiness of Satan who had just succeeded, against all probabilities, in winning over half Christendom.

Paul said, a little breathlessly, ‘Who is it? What’s happened?’ and through a soft chuckle Uncle Franz replied, ‘Now who would it be my dear boy? Who else, among your bucolic friends, would be awake and abroad at this hour?’

‘What the devil is the point of ringing me at this time of night?’ Paul demanded, although he felt relieved. ‘Is it about Grace?’

‘Not specially,’ the old man replied, enjoying his advantage, ‘although I do have news of Grace. The Glorious Cause has come to terms with their Tormentors. I understand Holloway is to be emptied of the dear old ladies on condition they wave Union Jacks in a day or so!’

‘Oh, get to the point, Uncle Franz,’ Paul growled, ‘I’m standing here practically naked and it’s gone two o’clock! It’s a miracle I heard the bell at all.’

‘Well,’ said Franz, slowly, ‘there isn’t a point, not really, particularly as you are not a man of affairs looking for a profit motive. I just thought you might like to know that I’ve leased the scrapyard for almost exactly the sum that you inherited from your father back in 1902!
Leased
it mark you, not sold it! It reverts to us again after five years!’

‘Good God!’ Paul exclaimed, ‘who is the tenant? The Tsar of Russia?’

‘Only indirectly,’ Franz said, ‘but I won’t bother you with details now. I rang because papers will arrive for you to sign in a day or so, and you won’t be under an obligation to read them! You have my word for it that they are . . . well . . . advantageous, shall we say?’

‘Did you ring to tell me that or for some other reason?’ Paul asked, suddenly seeing a chink of daylight through the old Croat’s smokescreen and Franz replied, blandly, ‘I suppose I really rang to stop you ringing
me
when the documents arrive for I won’t be available; I shall be on the move as soon as the balloon goes up!’

Paul said breathlessly, ‘You really think it will?’ and there was a pause before the old man replied, as though he was choosing his words very carefully. Finally, he went on, in a slightly more serious voice: ‘I don’t imagine it will affect you much one way but if you do have emergency measures in mind take them now! Don’t even wait for the morning papers. Germany, France and Austria have mobilised and Austria is over the frontier into Serbia. Germany will declare war on France tomorrow, if she hasn’t already done so. As for us, we shall be in by Tuesday at the latest!’

‘How can you be so sure?’ Paul demanded. ‘Grenfell rang two days ago and said it depended upon half-a-dozen unknown factors, any one of which might result in us standing aside.’

Franz said, ‘My dear boy, the politicians are the clowns who provide the curtain raiser, an entirely different cast act the play! If I thought you would follow my advice I could put you in the way of making another fortune between now and next Sunday but you have always had your nose too deep in the dirt to do that and, in a way, I admire you for it! At least you know yourself, don’t have self-doubts about your destiny, and have hit on the secret of real success, which is living one’s life the way one wants to live it! Judged that way you’re a very spectacular success indeed! Good night my boy! Sleep well . . . ’ but Paul cried,’
Wait
,
Uncle Franz! You’ve hauled me from bed to say this much so you can tell me a little more! What’ll be the outcome of this madness on everybody’s part?’

‘A very long war,’ Franz said, ‘so don’t be taken in by the Kaiser’s promise of Home-before-the-Leaves-Fall! Most of the poor devils won’t come home at all and those who do will never be the same again. Kitchener’s view is three years, although everybody is laughing at him right now. Personally I think he’s an optimist!’

‘Three years!’ Paul exclaimed, ‘but Great God, that would bankrupt everybody wouldn’t it?’

‘It will bankrupt a good many,’ Franz said, fruitiness reentering his voice, ‘but I am reasonably confident that neither you nor I will be among that number. I’ll give you one piece of advice that you may be inclined to take. Put every acre you’ve got under plough while you still have the chawbacons to do it! Who knows? You may come out of it better than I!’ and he rang off, leaving Paul holding the receiver and conscious, despite his half-nakedness, of sweat pouring from under his arms and striking cold in the draught from the big door. He reached beyond the telephone and slipped on an old hunting coat, too agitated to go back to bed and disinclined to wake Claire who had not heard the bell. He went through the library and out on to the terrace where the heat of the day still lingered and the cloying, old-world scent of wallflowers hung on the air like the perfume of meandering ghosts. There was a waning moon low in the sky over the Home Farm meadows and the night was so still that the whisper of the avenue chestnuts reached him across the paddock. He thought, grimly, ‘All over Europe men are shuffling along in the dark with their packs and weapons, and I daresay, by now, every. main road in Germany is noisy with the rattle of wagons. Almost everyone here and there thinks of war as I thought of it, during the voyage to Table Bay fifteen years ago, but it didn’t take me long to discover that war is a boring, bloody muddle, punctuated by moments of fear and disgust!’ And suddenly his memory turned on a peepshow that he would have thought forgotten, of smoke rising from a burned-out Boer farm, of sun-bonneted women and snivelling children standing behind the wire of a waterless concentration camp, of a private of the King’s Royal Rifles with a Mauser bullet in his belly calling on his mates to put another through his head. ‘It was bad enough then,’ he said half-aloud, ‘but that was a piffling affair by today’s standards! I don’t suppose a hundred thousand ever met on one field and now there are millions, and fighting will occur in densely-populated areas! Who the hell is to blame for misery on that scale? The Kaiser? The Tsar? Those tricky French politicians or the starchy British ones, like Asquith, Grey and that Jack-in-a-Box Lloyd George?’ He moved along the terrace to Grace’s sunken garden and when the perfume of roses she had planted, reached him he thought of her again, and how pitiful The Glorious Cause looked measured against a European war. What, precisely, had that cynical old rascal Franz meant when he implied there were men behind the politicians and generals pulling strings? Did he mean merchants like himself, who made a profit on war as his father had done years before? Or rabble-rousers, high and low, obsessed by the cult of nationalism who used their influence to convert happy-go-lucky chaps like Smut Potter and Horace Handcock into blood-thirsty patriots? And how did he himself view the prospect of war against the Kaiser’s Germany? He had never considered it a serious possibility, not really, in spite of all the years of newspaper talk and even now found it difficult to whip up rage or resentment against the Germans. The only two personally known to him, the professor and his son Gottfried, were amiable, intelligent chaps. What he did feel, however, pressing like a girdle about his ribs, was a sadness at the finality of the occasion, and the sensation reminded him of the time he had lost Grace and fled from the sleazy lodging of the prostitute near the Turkish baths. It was a profound certainty that the way of life that was his he was about to lose and with it the promise the future had offered, for if Grenfell’s predictions proved right it would be a savage, bloody business, no matter how long or short it proved, and if it did drag on, as Franz seemed to think, then nothing could ever be the same again for any of them. He wondered, objectively, if he would involve himself in it; if, before it was over, he would find himself alongside men like Will Codsall and some of the others who seemed eager to show their mettle but decided against, remembering that he was now thirty-five, with a wife and family to consider and that war was a young man’s business.