The Passing Bells (29 page)

“Seen what happen, Sergeant?”

“Why, sir, a man losin' control of himself. I think the colonel's half 'round the bend.”

Oh, God, Fenton thought, what a bloody awful situation. The sight of the stuporous men in the square, the drug-deepened sleep of the wounded, made him realize how deathly tired he was himself. It would have been the simplest and most natural act in the world to lie down on the floor and close his eyes—and if a German boot woke him in a few hours, so be it. And there was a colonel down the hall, a regimental commander—most probably an elderly man who had seen long, honorable service—who was just as tired but was unable to cope with it, who had let exhaustion dictate his decisions. He must, somehow, relieve that man, assume command as senior officer capable of duty, and lead the ragtag and bobtail conglomeration of troops out of the town by dawn. It seemed like an impossible undertaking at the moment, like being asked to scale an insurmountable cliff stark naked.

“I respect your comments, Sergeant, but kindly keep them to yourself from now on. Is there anything you can give me that will keep me awake?”

“Sorry, sir. We don't have even a coffee bean or a palmful of tea.” He smiled wryly. “I can put you to sleep quick enough.”

“Thank you, Sergeant, but I can do that quite well on my own.”

He found the three officers in the mayor's office, the two lieutenants lying on the floor and the colonel stretched out on a leather couch. There was an oil lamp on the desk glowing feebly. Fenton turned up the wick, but no one moved a muscle as the sudden light fell upon them. He kicked the two younger officers until they stirred, groaning and mumbling, then shook the colonel vigorously. The colonel was white-haired, with a long cadaverous face. Sixty at least, with a faded ribbon from the South African war stitched to his tunic. Off the reserve list, yanked from his London club to lead a regiment to France and into battle. He could almost feel sorry for the man.

“Wake up, sir. Wake up.”

Slack-jawed and glassy-eyed, the colonel stared at Fenton.

“What? What's that you say?”

“Wake up. Time to move out.”

The colonel struggled feebly to sit up, and Fenton helped him by pulling on his tunic.

“Move out?” the old man said bewilderedly. “Move out, you say? What the deuce you talkin' about, sir? What the devil do you mean?”

Fenton glanced at the lieutenants, who were now on their feet, rocking slightly from fatigue. They were both Ninth Brigade men, one from the Winchesters and the other a Royal Fusilier.

“Had enough beauty sleep?” he said icily.

The Fusilier lieutenant rubbed his face vigorously. “God, what time is it?”

“Time to move along,” Fenton said. “Go out on the square and start getting the men on their feet.”

“What the devil you think you're doin'?” the colonel muttered thickly. “Get the men on their feet? By Harry, they've earned their rest, sir . . . earned their rest . . . fifty-two hours without sleep . . . two battles . . . they've done all they can do.”

“Not quite, sir,” Fenton said quietly. “Not quite enough yet.”

The lieutenants seemed unsure of what to do, tensely aware that some sort of clash was developing between two superior officers.

“Stay for a moment,” Fenton told them. “I'll need you as witnesses. I am about to request that the colonel place himself on the sick list.”

The colonel's face turned a mottled shade of purple.

“Sick list? What the deuce you talkin' about?”

“There must be something the matter with you, sir, to permit your command to fall asleep and be captured by the enemy.”

The elderly officer opened his mouth several times, spittle drooling from a corner of his lips. He was staring up at Fenton with the pop-eyed fixity of someone on the verge of apoplexy.

“What's that you say, sir? What? Good God . . . jetsam . . . not
my
command . . . flotsam . . . found 'em here . . . tired to the bone. . . . Can't expect 'em to go on . . . too bloody much to ask of any man. Not fair . . . not—”

Fenton interrupted coldly. “No colonel of the Winchesters would give up without a struggle unless he was an ill man. I needn't remind the colonel of his regiment's history.”

The man's face became darker, the eyes more protuberant.

“Coldstream,” he said thickly. “You bloody Guards are all alike . . . arrogant bastards, every man jack of you. Who the hell you think you are talkin' to me like that . . . tellin' me what to do? Ill? I'm not
ill,
sir!”

“You are either ill or a coward, sir. If you refuse to place yourself on the sick list, then I have no other recourse but to leave this room, come back with a rifle, and blow your head off.”

The colonel seemed to stop breathing. His mouth worked soundlessly, then the staring eyes rolled back and he slumped forward. Fenton put his hands out to keep him from pitching to the floor.

“Poor old duffer,” the Fusilier scoffed.

“Watch your tongue,” Fenton said sharply. “Fetch the medical orderly and be damn quick about it.”

The young officer darted from the room while the other lieutenant lurched almost drunkenly toward the couch.

“Is he all right?”

“Yes. Get out on the square. Rouse the men. Blow bugles . . . ring bells . . . kick posteriors . . . but get 'em on their feet.”

“I'll try, sir.”

Fenton glared at him. “Not
try.
I didn't ask you to
try
.”

The colonel's wrist was clammy, but there was a faint, steady pulse. He would be all right. Or would he? No, how could he ever be “all right” again? The man might live to be a hundred, but he had died in France just as surely as poor old Webber had died. He let go of the wrist and eased the colonel onto his back. The orange-yellow-and-black South African ribbon looked a bit frivolous on his chest.

When he returned to the square, he saw that some progress was being made. Roughly one-quarter of the men were standing up, but there was nothing martial in their attitudes. They had ceased to be soldiers. They looked like tramps crawling out from under bridges in a cold dawn. Lance Corporal Ackroyd was helping the two lieutenants get men up, swearing and pleading with them, tugging at their belts and straps, kicking them. Some men rose, others lay half stupefied, muttering curses and threats. It looked to Fenton like a hopeless task, and time was running out. The Germans would be stirring smartly at dawn and moving on toward St. Petit Cambresis in a gray-green tide. He spotted three Cameronian privates buckling on their equipment near the fountain. One of them had a canvas sack slung over one shoulder, bagpipes jutting up from it.

“You there!” Fenton shouted at the man. “Blow us a tune.”

“He dinna 'ave the breath, sir,” one of his mates called back.

“He'd better bloody well find some!”

The piper grinned sheepishly and took his pipes from the bag. There was a slow howl like a dying cat, and then the skirling of “Blue Bonnets over the Border” issued forth, clear and stirring, with just that hint of sadness which all pipe music seemed to contain, summoning a vision of gallant men doomed on bleak moors in lost causes. The bonnie prince had listened to those same notes before Culloden.

“Walk around, man . . . walk around.”

The piper moved slowly among the exhausted men, picking his way carefully to avoid stepping on anyone's face. Soldiers began to stand up. A few cheered feebly. A Royal Fusilier corporal cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Bugger the Jocks!”

There was some laughter here and there. More men got up and began to buckle on their equipment.

“If you don't like Jock tunes,” Fenton called out, “let's hear it from the Londoners!”

A mouth organ apeared from one man's pocket, a small concertina from a pack. “Who's Your Lady Fair?” and “The Old Kent Road” competed with “Blue Bonnets.” Singing began, and the troops started to form fours and move slowly out of the square. There was a distant neighing of horses and the clatter and creak of the transport wagons. The men knew which way to go—south across the railway and a small bridge; slim poplars marked the road.

Fenton remained in the square until the last man, wagon, and horse had left the town. It was dawn, the dark stone of the church steeple turning to a pale rose. Swallows dove from the sun-tinged belfry into the dark folds of a chestnut tree. It reminded Fenton of Abingdon on any summer morning.

He turned to go, pausing for a moment to look at the medical orderly who was staying behind with the wounded. The man stood on the steps of the town hall, smoking his pipe, seemingly unconcerned. Perhaps he was relieved that he wasn't marching out with the others, that the war was over for him.

“Good luck, sir,” the orderly called out.

Fenton raised his arm in a pointless gesture of farewell and walked away, limping slightly, the cobblestones painful to his feet, following the droning bagpipe out of the little town.

“Over by Christmas”—that was what everyone had been saying. “Home before the leaves fall.” He pondered the truth of it as the first shells howled out of the dawn, the German gunners searching for the St. Quentin road and the troops they knew would be on it. The shells were fifty yards off target, air-bursting black and crimson, ripping shrapnel paths through a vineyard.

“Home before the leaves fall.” A damn good joke, that.

10

The morning crackled with frost, the grass snapping under Jupiter's hooves as Lord Stanmore cantered out of a leafless copse and headed back across the fields toward Abingdon Pryory. A black February day with slate-gray clouds lowering against the frozen earth. The earl could feel the chill penetrate to his bones, and he was grateful when the stables came in sight. An elderly groom, well scarfed and sweatered against the cold, waited to take the horse.

The earl left the stable area in a hurry. It pained him more than anyone knew to see the rows of empty stalls, the shuttered cottage where George Banks had lived, the deserted bunkhouse that had once been noisy with the shouts and laughter of grooms and stableboys. All of the horses, with the exception of Jupiter and a twelve-year-old brood mare, had been given to the army in October. Cavalry losses had been heavy at the Marne and during the many clashes following the epic German retreat. The call had gone out for remounts, and the earl had been generous. He did not regret his gesture of patriotism—it was, after all, the least he could do—and yet, seeing the empty stalls brought a lump to his throat. The call to the colors had not stopped there. Banks had taken a commission in the veterinary corps, and the grooms and stableboys had joined the yeomanry or the regulars. No one left at Abingdon Pryory but the middle-aged and the elderly, the halt and the blind. And not just men either, the earl reflected bitterly. The last of the young maids had departed after Christmas, answering their country's call for women to take over the jobs that men were leaving. Men and more men. Kitchener had asked for one hundred thousand volunteers to form the nucleus of his New Army. Over a million responded.

YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU

On posters one saw Kitchener's likeness, grim, steely-eyed, pointing his finger directly at one's face. Advertising the war, selling it like Pears' soap or White Manor Tea Shops. And of course the men would go, hurrying to the flag for a bit of excitement and adventure. The girls, too . . .

WOMEN OF BRITAIN ANSWER THE CALL

. . . to train as nurses in Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service, the QA's, or the Red Cross, or to learn the tricky business of stuffing lyddite into shell cases. Much jollier than waiting on tables or polishing the staircase banisters. The result of this exodus being that fully two-thirds of Abingdon Pryory was closed off, the furnishings covered with white sheeting. A house embalmed and awaiting resurrection. Dust settling gently in deserted corridors. Weeds peeking up through the flagstones on the terrace. He complained of neglect, the lack of help.

“It's the war, Tony,” was Hanna's only reply. As if he had to be told! Charles in uniform, Roger Wood-Lacy as well. Not in France—yet. “In France.” What an ugly sound—ominous as the sounds he had heard in late October and during the first weeks in November, early in the mornings when the air was still, the rumble of artillery bombardments across the channel in Flanders. And then the casualty lists on the first page of the
Times
to be scanned over breakfast. Fifty-eight thousand names of the dead, wounded, and missing after Ypres alone. So many names that he recognized, could put faces to, the names of men he had hunted with, played cards with, but mainly the names of their sons. No, he didn't need Hanna to remind him that there was a war going on.

The chill lingered even after two cups of strong tea, the final cup laced with a dollop of Jamaica. There was a permanent frost on his spirits, and he felt incapable of dispelling it. God knows the paper was of no help. Nothing in the
Times
but the war, the lengthening number of names in the Roll of Honor. Not too many wounded and missing listed. The fighting had bogged down in the snow and freezing sleet. Many of the dead would be those poor devils who had finally, perhaps even mercifully, succumbed to wounds received in the summer and autumn at Mons, Le Cateau, the Marne, Messines, and Ypres. He glanced at the list with a heavy heart. Two names stood out. Gilsworth, R. T., Col. 1/Hampshire. Sutton, A., Capt. Royal Horse Guards.

He remembered Andrew Sutton as a boisterous fifteen-year-old taking every jump with a wild, blood-chilling yell, like a red Indian. Damn fine horseman. He must send the marquess and Lady Mary a letter of condolence. The eldest son. Christ, what a terrible blow. And poor old Ronnie Gilsworth. How many times had they tramped through the fields above Pately Bridge after snipe? Some good news from the Dardanelles. Admiral Carden's ships had successfully bombarded the Turkish forts on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Royal Marines had landed and poked about in the rubble without being fired on. The Turk had fled from the power of British naval gunnery. What they hoped to achieve in that remote corner of the world was not clear, but something was afoot. Strictly a navy show. Give the poor bloody devils of infantry a rest for a change, and yet the military seemed divided. The army very much against it. There was an article by Repington on page four: