The Passing Bells (60 page)

“Hello, Lydia.”

“Charles.” She bent slightly toward him and kissed him on the cheek. He put down his kit bag, took her firmly in his arms, and kissed her on the mouth—a hard, lingering kiss.

“That's the way, ol' sport,” a passing sergeant called out.

“Yes,” Lydia murmured when he released her, “it is.” She touched his face with a gloved hand. “It's good to have you back, Charles.”

“And it's good to be here.”

“I didn't tell Hanna and your father. Felt you wished to surprise them or you would have written to them.”

“One letter was all I could manage. But, yes, it might be nice to just walk in.”

She was looking at him oddly. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine. Not a scratch.”

He couldn't tell her how he felt because he couldn't explain how he felt. Disembodied, as though he were two people walking side by side. Flesh and shadow, and difficult to know which of the two was
him.

“Do you want to go to Park Lane now and see them?”

“No,” he said. “I'm horribly dirty. I'd like to go home, take a hot bath, and get to bed.”

She gave his hand a squeeze. “Whatever you want, Charles.”

The palest of light filtered through heavy silk curtains and glowed against the cream-colored walls of the bedroom. He was not there. He was floating off in some vast distance of time and space. Silent shell bursts crawled through a wasteland of pollarded trees. A man writhed against ripped sandbags, mouthing screams. The naked woman on the bed writhed as well, head twisting on the pillow. He was above it all. Serene. An impassive watcher. He felt nothing, neither pleasure nor pain. Beyond feelings of any sort. No room for frenzy. One must remain calm at all costs. The woman clutched at his back as the shadows of the second platoon slipped through curtains of rain. They became lost to view, then reemerged beyond the wire. Half a dozen bent figures.

Christ! Where's the rest of them?

Whose voice was that? he wondered. It hardly mattered. They were dead, of course. Foolish of the chap to have even asked.

“Lovely,” Lydia whispered against his cheek. “Not the old Charles.”

“No,” he said stonily. “Not quite the same.”

Watching his father made him think of the parable of the prodigal son, a roast sirloin of beef being a fitting substitute for a fatted calf. The earl carved the meat to perfection and Coatsworth served. It hadn't been his job in the old days, but the servant problem was acute—a condition that seemed to dominate the conversation.

“I really don't know what we'll do, Charles,” Hanna said. “We're one of the last houses on the street that is still a private residence. The Prescotts donated their house to a branch of the war ministry, and Lord Doncannon gave up his place to the Red Cross. It's becoming quite impossible to maintain and I expect we'll have to move into a flat.”

“Nonsense!” Lord Stanmore growled.

“I quite agree,” Lydia said. “That is nonsense, Hanna. I know I can find you a perfect little house near Regent's Park that would suit you.”

“Alex not home?” Charles asked, just to change the subject.

His father paused in his carving to swipe the knife against the steel.

“No. Decided to spend her leave in Paris. Can't for the life of me understand why.”

“And William? Still at Eton?”

Hanna laughed nervously. “Good heavens, no, Charles.”

“The lad's eighteen,” the earl said. “Training with the Public Schools Battalion. He gets passed out as a second lieutenant next week.”

“Difficult to believe,” Charles said as Coatsworth bent forward to serve him. The slices of beef sent rivulets of scarlet juice across the white plate.

His mother seemed to be sending signals to him, and so when she excused herself right after dinner, complaining of a sudden headache, he dutifully escorted her up to her room.

“Headache better?” he asked as he closed the door behind him.

“Much.” She faced him, her face pale and drawn. “May I be blunt, Charles?”

“By all means.”

“William has become a terrible concern to me.”

“Being in the army, you mean?”

“I can understand his anxiety to join up. He's big, strong, fiercely patriotic. He was in the Eton Boys' Brigade last term . . . and the term before that, I believe. All of his friends joined up as well . . . all with the same excessive zeal to serve their country. I can't fault that, can I?”

“No.” He thought of young Baker waving his pistol. Second Lieutenant Owen Ralston Baker. In hospital now. Both eyes blown out by the same shell that had ripped poor Martin's hip. “It's becoming a boys' war now, Mother.”

Her hand darted to her throat, fingers worrying a string of jet beads.

“William is such a superb horseman, as you know. It would please your father and me if he took a commission in the Queen's Bays—the Second Dragoon Guards. One was offered.”

“Oh.”

“That's all you can say?” she asked sharply. “
Oh?”

“Oh is simply an interjection, Mother. It gives me time to think. Naturally he turned the offer down.”

“Why
naturally?
It's one of the most prestigious regiments in the army.”

“If this were the Boer War, he'd jump at it, but the cavalry is something of a joke in France. All dressed up and nowhere to go. His refusal to join the Bays is understandable. He's a true Greville.”

“If . . . if he were
ordered
into the regiment . . .”

“As I was ‘ordered' into NS Five?” He smiled and shook his head. “It won't work, Mother. You and Lydia should know better.”

“What has Lydia got to do with it?” she asked cautiously.

“You know perfectly well what Lydia has to do with it, Mother. Lydia has entree. Now more than ever with Lloyd George in Downing Street, Archie minister of war production, and David Langham as—what? The gray eminence? I'm sure Lydia could get Willie posted to the dragoons—‘ordered,' if you will—but he'd only slip out of it.”

“How could he slip out of a direct order?”

“By resigning his commission and then reenlisting as a private in an infantry regiment. He'd be commissioned by that regiment the same day. The infantry is starved for young subalterns after the Somme. Officers with fighting spirit are ducking out of the cavalry every day, using the dodge.”

Hanna's laugh was like a wail. “Fighting spirit! I think William is too young to have ‘fighting spirit.' He thinks the war is some sort of game . . . like a Rugby match!”

“Football,” Charles said blandly. “Quite a few chaps kicked footballs toward the German lines when they went across. They were shot down, of course. Germans are such poor sports.”

“Don't be so glib!” she hissed.

“Am I being glib, Mother? I'm sorry. But we must all take our chances. There's no room for cowardice in the British Army.”

The fervidness of his tone surprised him.

The cocktail party had become firmly entrenched as a London social custom, replacing afternoon tea. There were those who claimed that the cocktail party had been invented by Lydia Foxe Greville. Not true, London's leading light-comedy actor remarked. It was simply that Lydia had raised the rather barbaric custom to a fine art. The house in Bristol Mews sparkled from sundown to early evening with bright, brittle conversation, or huddled, serious talk among huddled, serious men, the conversational gamut depending on which circle of Lydia's friends one happened to drift in upon. Charles found all of the talk boring. He stood apart from the crowd, barely touching the contents of his cocktail glass and letting the verbiage wash over him the way waves wash over a rock in the sea. A woman with an ample bosom only partially concealed by a gown in the latest style came up to him and said: “I understand from Ivor Novello that you've seen a good deal of the fighting in Picardy.”

And he said matter-of-factly: “You know, the first thing that strikes one about the front is the almost overpowering stench of human feces. It's the shells, you see. Men tend to become terribly constipated—for a variety of reasons—and then when they're hit by a shell all of that
accumulation
simply bursts forth and is scattered everywhere. It's more pronounced in summer, but that stands to reason. Does it not?”

“What on earth did you say to Countess Blandhurst?” Lydia asked him soon after with a frown.

“Who? I haven't said a word to anyone all night.”

“She feels insulted.”

“Does she? How curious.”

And there was David Langham, speaking to two admirals and the First Lord of the Admiralty.

“Haig is certainly aware of this U-boat problem. He would like to break out of the Ypres salient and smash for the channel ports . . . past Langemarck and Passchendaele to Bruges, cutting off Ostende and Zeebrugge. He smells victory in that direction sometime this summer.”

“Only if the wind is in the proper direction,” Charles said.

He felt the sensation very strongly while walking down Regent Street. It was morning, shopkeepers opening their shutters, the winter day bright and clear. Brisk, cold wind. Patches of snow in the street, dirty gray piles in the gutters. He walked slowly until he came to Conduit Street before daring to stop and look back. No one was behind him, and yet he could have sworn that had not been the case since he turned into Regent Street from Hanover Square. Someone had been following him step for step, practically at his elbow. And yet that was clearly impossible. Odd. Shadow and substance. Which was which? He lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke into the wind, standing on the corner of Conduit until he had finished it, then crushing the butt under his foot. He continued walking, more quickly than before, and he was quite alone this time. Just Charles Greville in uniform, with his Burberry trench coat well buttoned up against the wind. He turned sharply—a drill turn, pivoting on the heel of the right foot—into Burlington Street and then into Savile Row. In the window of one shop he spotted a small, neatly printed sign which read:
OFFICERS' TRENCH ACCESSORIES ALSO SOLD
. He went in, the door ringing a copper bell as he opened it. It was a uniform shop primarily, and several young men were standing about in various stages of their fittings. One sat astride an elevated barrel which had been painted red and had a saddle fastened to it.

“Make sure the jacket doesn't blouse out.”

“No fear of that, sir,” the tailor said. “I can assure you.”

He selected what he wanted from a display case, and the clerk nodded his approval.

“A fine choice, if I may say so, sir. Would you also be interested in a truly first-rate trench compass?”

“I don't think so,” Charles said.

“Or a guaranteed water- and moisture-proof matchbox.”

“No. This will suffice. Thank you for your patience.”

“No trouble at all, Major. We are here to serve.”

“Quite so. As is everyone in these times.”

He swung onto a bus leaving Piccadilly Circus for Southwark—Battersea—Clapham Junction—Wimbledon. He got out at the end of the line and walked to Wimbledon Common, toward neat rows of canvas-roofed clapboard and tar-paper huts. A wood draw-gate barred the path, a sentry from the Public Schools Battalion standing beside it with rifle and fixed bayonet. The man presented arms, and Charles walked around the gate, which was no more than a symbolic barrier to traffic, and on into the camp.

“Dashed nice of you to drop in, Major Greville,” the second-in-command said, leaning back against his desk. “I believe we met at Albert last August.”

“Perhaps. There was a Public Schools Battalion at High Wood.”

“Yes, but we're primarily a training unit now. Our lads are being posted to any number of regiments.”

Charles looked out the window of the hut. He could see the drill ground, squads of men marching in lines, a group of men far away at the old cricket grounds spearing straw dummies with bayonets.

“The training looks efficient.”

“We turn out first-rate infantry subalterns . . . a credit to any regiment they join.”

“Where will my brother be sent?”

The second-in-command, also a major, rubbed the side of his ear with his thumb.

“Well, a sticky situation, don't you know. Been ordered to the dragoons, but refuses to go. Wants to join the Fifth Bedfords in trenches near Arras.” The man chuckled. “And he'll do it, too. Young Greville has a mind of his own.”

“Yes, he does. I bought him something useful to have in trenches.”

“Dashed good of you. He'll be along shortly. By the way, perhaps you'd like to give the lads a bit of a talk after mess. They've all heard my tales of the Somme any number of times. Another view of the show might be refreshing.”

There was a crisp knock on the door and then William stepped into the hut, his boots and puttees covered with mud. He saluted his own major smartly and then grinned at Charles.

“Major Greville . . . sir!”

“Hello, Willie,” Charles said. “There's something I want you to have.”

The duty clerks and the OOD heard the quick splatter of shots and burst into the room from the outer office. Acrid blue smoke hung in spirals, drifting down toward the figure writhing on the floor, clutching a bullet-splintered knee. They hurled themselves on the trench-coated man holding a pocket pistol and bore him down across the top of a desk. He did not offer any resistance as he let the gun fall from his hand.

“What in God's name did you do?” the second-in-command shouted, coming out of his momentary paralysis.

“I gave him a Blighty,” Charles said calmly. “He didn't shoot himself . . . he didn't shoot himself.”

19

The rain had ceased, but ominous banks of cloud obscured the peaks of the Welsh mountains and slipped like dark smoke into the valleys. The crenelated façade of Llandinam War Hospital was shrouded in mist.