The Iron Stallions (25 page)

‘Does
he
enjoy living here?’

‘Loves it, sir. Wants to go to agricultural college. If you want someone to run the place, he’ll do it when he’s old enough.’

It seemed now that the Ackroyds had improved themselves sufficiently to stand on their own feet, they had acquired another family to stand by them, the same sturdy types wedded and welded to the land about them.

Humbly grateful, Josh made a point of riding round his small estate with Rosanna. She rode with a straight back, her hands low, her heels well down.

‘Who showed you how to sit like that, Rosie?’ he asked.

‘Sergeant-Major Orne and Sergeant Ackroyd. They said I had to learn to ride like a Clutcher. I can jump. Would you like to see?’

‘Later, Rosie. Let’s go and see old Ellis.’

With Kitty riding on the saddle in front of him, they trotted down the lane to where the old man lived. Square, sturdy, still straight-backed, it was hard to believe he had ridden in one of the last horsed charges in Europe.

‘’Lo, Master Josh,’ he said. ‘’Ow’s that nephew of mine doing?’

‘He’s a corporal, Ellis, and he’ll make sergeant before long. What’s this I hear about you teaching Rosie to ride?’

The old man smiled. ‘Couldn’t have somebody from the Big House sitting like a sack of spuds, could we? My grandfather taught your father. My father taught you. Me and Eddie Orne got our ’eads together. She’s a good ’un. It’s a pity she isn’t a real Goff.’

‘I think she will be, Ellis,’ Josh said quietly. ‘Given time.’

They returned Kitty to Fleur and rode along the fells. Rosanna was clearly happy, chattering when they were alongside each other, silent when they were moving fast, and properly giving all her attention to her mount.

‘That’s a new pony, isn’t it, Rosie?’ Josh asked.

‘Yes. It’s bigger. Granny Goff bought it for me.’

‘Is that what you call her?’ Josh paused. The moment he’d been looking for seemed to have arrived. He’d thought a lot about the two children and couldn’t imagine anybody who had had the freedom of the Yorkshire dales wanting to return to a London back street. He knew he’d be happy if they prefer red to stay and had been waiting the opportunity to suggest it. ‘I think the war’s going to end before long, Rosie,’ he said.

‘Next year perhaps or the year after. When that happens, by rights you ought to go back to London.’

The girl’s head turned quickly. ‘I don’t want to go back!’

‘What do you want to do?’

‘I want to stay here with you!’ She looked worried. ‘Will I have to go back?’

Josh smiled. ‘I was thinking you could both stay here aways, Rosie.’

‘For ever?’

‘If that’s what you want?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘I’d like to change your name, in fact. To mine. So that you’d be like my own daughters.’ Josh paused, then decided the child was old enough to understand. ‘I was married, Rosie. My wife was killed in an air raid. Probably the same one that killed your mother. She was going to have a baby. It would probably have been a little girl like you. So I wondered if you’d like to take her place. If my wife hadn’t been killed, we might have had two children by this time. A bit younger than you and Kitty, but that wouldn’t matter.’

The child considered for a while, slowing her pony to a walk. ‘Couldn’t I just marry you?’ she asked.

Josh didn’t laugh. ‘I’m a bit old for you, Rosie. What you’ll need when you’re old enough is a young man your own age. You could get married from here then, couldn’t you? Come down the staircase in your wedding dress, have a marquee on the lawn. That sort of thing.’

‘Champagne?’

‘I think we could run to it.’ Josh suddenly found he was enjoying thinking about it.

Rosanna was silent for a while. ‘If I was your daughter, would I get to call you Father?’

‘You do already.’

‘But then I’d really mean it. What would
I
be called?’

‘Rosanna. Same as now. We’d just add my name, that’s all. You’d be Rosanna Keyho Goff. Something like that.’

She frowned. ‘Can’t I just be Rosanna Goff?’

‘If you want it that way. We could even add one or two other names, if you like. Fleur, for my mother. Perhaps Augusta, after my grandmother. She was a great lady. She was an American.’

‘Could I have
three
names?’

‘If you like.’

She beamed at him. ‘Sounds posh.’

He smiled back at her. ‘It’s nice to keep names in families. My father was called after his grandfather. I was called after my grandfather, his father, and after Joshua Goff who founded the Regiment.’

Rosanna was listening raptly and, as their mounts walked slowly, side by side, Josh gave her the lot, just as he’d had it and his sister Chloe had had it from his grandfather. If she was going to be a Goff, she might as well learn where her responsibilities lay, because, whatever she thought, she’d have to live with them.

‘Joshua Goff was in India when they won the battle of Wandewash,’ he said. ‘He was sent home with the news…’ He told her the family history up to the death of his grandfather and she listened intently.

‘He was a great soldier,’ he ended. ‘He became a field marshal, which is as high as you can get. My father was a major-general.’

‘Will
you
be a major-general?’

Josh considered. He’d always thought he wasn’t the stuff major-generals were made of, but they’d given him the regiment and if the war lasted long enough he might well get a brigade. That would do, even if he got no further, and he felt his grandfather and his father and all the other Goffs would approve.

‘Perhaps not a major-general, Rosie. Would it matter?’

Rosanna smiled. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘So long as you came home.’

Josh smiled back at her. The lost feeling had disappeared, and the absence of Jocelyn suddenly didn’t seem so important.

‘I’m home now, Rosie,’ he said. ‘Really home.’

Training started again and the Regiment, part now of the brand new 43rd Armoured Brigade, began to work up. New officers arrived and a few of the old ones disappeared. Neill had been lost at Alamein and Ormonde had vanished to a new regiment. Toby Reeves was second-in-command now, quiet these days and no longer the noisy extrovert. He was seeing an American Waac in London who seemed fond of him but he insisted he had no intention of changing his will.

‘For Gods sake,’ Josh said. ‘Suppose you marry her?’

Reeves gave him a quiet smile. ‘Well, I’ve thought of
that
, of course,’ he said.

For the first time they were hoping to meet the Germans on equal terms. They had left their Honeys in the Mediterranean and taken over brand-new Shermans which had arrived straight from the factories with messages from factory girls still tucked behind the gun mantlets. Like the Honey, the Sherman was American, and was driven by a four hundred and twenty-five horsepower engine. It was too high for easy hiding but had twice the thickness of armour plating, and the commander rode in a tall round turret, with his head between the flaps of the top hatch. The gunner sat to one side of the gun with, next to him in the fighting compartment, the loader who worked the radio and kept the gun supplied with ammunition. In the hull of the tank were the driver and his co-driver, who operated the machine gun in the bows.

Seventy of these enormous weapons arrived for the 19th and the drill started at once. On guns, driving, radio and loading – so that every man could do every other man’s job – and above all on care and tidiness because turret mechanisms could be jammed by a loose piece of equipment, and a blow-back from the gun could set off the ammunition in the racks in the enclosed space of the turret.

The Shermans were tremendously strong but, because word had got around that they were vulnerable to a shot from an 88, they had acquired the nickname, Tommy’s Cooker; and just to make matters worse, the Germans, as usual, remained one jump ahead. Their new Panther was heavier, faster and more powerful, while their new Tiger possessed a gun which was bigger than anything yet thought of. They could only hope there weren’t many of them.

They spent days on the coast firing the guns, their faces scorched by cordite fumes, the blast whipping the dust up in clouds, the tracers skipping along the surface of the sea like stones flung by a boy playing ducks and drakes. Radio operators roared round the countryside with junior officers in fifteen-hundredweight trucks, practising call signs and how to net frequencies. Drivers worked with crowbars tightening the tracks, cursing on bitter winter mornings when the steel bit like fangs. Then they moved to Nottinghamshire and practised in scrub wood, sliding about in mud patches, the officers with their eyes glued to the periscopes to grow used to them.

They remained with the 7th Armoured, the old Desert Rats, who had built up a tremendous reputation for themselves as deadly fighters. They were expecting to lead the way to Berlin but among the men there was some grumbling because, having been in action almost continuously since 1940, they had a feeling that the brunt of the fighting this time could well be left to soldiers who, so far, had never been beyond the shores of Britain.

Josh had a feeling too much was being expected of them, and even that they might not live up to the standard that had been set, because too many of them had passed the peak of their fighting efficiency, too many of them had grown old in war, and some of the hardened campaigners were clearly not relishing another round of heavy fighting.

Aware of the hugeness of the undertaking before them, he even had a feeling tank tactics themselves needed updating. They had learned in the desert how to combine infantry and artillery with tank action but there seemed now a need for a new flexibility. France, he felt, would impose tank barriers that could be infested by infantrymen, and that was something that needed thinking about. The German beach defences would also undoubtedly create a problem for the invaders, but, remembering the disaster at Dieppe, no one was prepared to accept slaughter at the water’s edge and a whole new tribe of specialised tanks were produced – to bridge ditches, to flail a path through minefields, to demolish beach obstacles and to throw flame through loopholes of pillboxes. Finally, there were the floating tanks.

‘Floating tanks?’ Aubrey’s face creased into a smile. ‘They’re joking.’

Planning took up much of Josh’s time but he was aware that his Uncle Robert still hadn’t given up on the house. It seemed even that he was actually banking on him being killed in the invasion, perhaps even before, because conferences took him to London a great deal and the Germans had suddenly started bombing again and people were being killed once more.

There were a lot of scars about the city now but there was a new look about the people. They were shabby and tired, but they had a feeling that they’d passed the crisis. The years when they’d had to endure defeat and loss were behind them now, and, though there was still a long way to go, they felt they’d got over the hump.

The Americans were everywhere. They were a lively, good-humoured lot who disliked English beer, laughed a lot at English customs but fell over themselves to admire tradition, history and ancient buildings. Their chief offence was that they seemed congenitally incapable of walking and it was always impossible to get a taxi because they had them all.

Trying near the Marble Arch to get to King’s Cross, Josh waited for what seemed hours, hopping with impatience, before an unoccupied taxi spotted him. As it drew up, he wrenched open the door and fell thankfully inside, only to find that a woman had wrenched open the opposite door and fallen inside, too.

‘Mine I think,’ she said.

‘On the contrary. However, perhaps we might share–’

Josh had been busy getting himself seated and now he turned. ‘Lou!’ he said.

‘I spotted it from – Josh!’

They were staring at each other, their mouths hanging open, and the driver turned. ‘When you two’ve sorted yerselves out,’ he said, ‘how about tellin’ me where I’m supposed to go? We’re holdin’ up the traffic.’

Josh made a quick decision. ‘Know a good restaurant?’

The driver nodded. ‘Sure.’

‘Double fare if you get us there before they’re full.’

The restaurant was in Fleet Street and, as they sat back, Louise gave Josh a sad, wistful smile.

‘How are you, Josh?’ she asked.

‘Well.’

‘Married?’

He hesitated. ‘I was. Ailsa Reeves. I expect you remember her. She was killed by a bomb in 1940.’

Her face twisted in anguish. ‘Oh, Josh!’

‘It’s all right now. I’ve got over it.’ He changed the subject quickly. ‘What are you doing?’

She shrugged. ‘I was about to move,’ she said. ‘The Germans have wrecked my flat.’

‘I thought the bombing had finished.’

‘You have to live in London to know it hasn’t. It’s what’s beginning to be called the Little Blitz. It isn’t much. But it blows in windows. It kills people. It wrecked my flat. I’ve lost everything and I was just heading for a friend’s place. I happened to be staying there last night so I was lucky. But it’s left me with nothing but what I stand up in.’

‘What are you going to do?’

She gave him the small wry smile he knew so well. ‘God knows.’

‘Can’t you leave London?’ he asked.

‘My job’s here. Or it was. I’m not sure, in fact, that I’ve got one any more. I was working for an American publishing firm who have an office over here but that’s gone too.’

‘What about your husband?’

‘George’s dead, Josh. He was in a destroyer and they ran into the
Hipper
in the Barents Sea on a Russian convoy. His commanding officer got the VC. George just lost both legs and was blinded. He died soon after they got him home.’

‘I’m sorry, Lou.’

She sighed. ‘If I’d loved him, it might have been worth it.’

‘Didn’t you love him?’

‘There hadn’t been anything between us for some time. I was just working up the courage to get a divorce when they brought him home.’

‘No children?’

‘We tried at first but we didn’t seem to be lucky. Perhaps that made a difference but I don’t think so. George wasn’t exactly the faithful kind. When I heard about him, of course, I dropped the divorce and became a good and dutiful wife again. I got a job in Portsmouth and went to see him regularly in hospital. I thought he was never going to die. Now he’s gone and my home’s gone, too.’ She gave a little sigh and reached across to touch his hand. ‘I’m not the only one, Josh. There are plenty more. You’re one yourself.’