The First of July (12 page)

“Why don’t you recite some poetry?” he’d said. And then to his father, “She’s awfully good.”

She’d demurred but had finally been persuaded to do one speech from the play she was in. His father’s friends, who had seen the production and loved it, were thrilled.

“What are you appearing in next?” Mrs. Daubeney had asked.

“I am returning to France,” Isabelle said with slight awkwardness. “I have a part there. In a very good play.”

But his father had jumped in and said “Oh, we can’t let you go. It’s years since we’ve made proper use of the piano and it’s always impossible to lure Harry home. Surely a woman with your talents would make a perfect Shakespearean heroine here in England?”

She had smiled, but Harry felt embarrassed by his father’s ignorance of the world of the theatre or even of what it was like to be poor. He lay awake afterward, wanting her badly, wondering if he dared tiptoe up to her room, or whether she, who so often took the initiative, might come to his, but eventually he must have fallen asleep and was awoken in the morning by a maid knocking on the door.

Isabelle had been hard to reach over the following two or three weeks. He had even gone to her lodgings, but she was never in. He’d left a note at the theatre, knowing that the play’s run would end in days. She answered, affectionately, but explaining that she was very busy with arrangements for her departure. He longed to see her, but his dreams were of her body and her magical transformation from her usual modest demeanor to an almost wanton pleasure in making love. Was it because she was French, he had wondered? Were there English girls like her?

A month after their evening in Abbotsgate, his world fell apart. His father wrote to him, a letter shot through with happiness as well as his customary enthusiasm. He was going to remarry. He had been lonely for so long, he said, and Harry felt a twinge of guilt. But, his father had continued, although he must seem very ancient to Harry, he was not an old man. Now he had met a woman who had changed everything, and they were to be married as soon as possible. Harry was astonished. He’d had no idea his father had a woman in his life. His father had, he said almost boyishly, never been so happy—a slightly insensitive reflection on his time with his own mother, Harry had thought—but he was still amused by his father’s impetuosity. He turned over the page. So, his father concluded, he had Harry to thank for introducing him to Madame Isabelle Dessonnes, and he knew that Harry would welcome her as his stepmother and the new Lady Sydenham. They both hoped they would see him at Abbotsgate as soon as he could get away.

He had raged. For three nights he had drunk until he felt sick. He felt like a fool, utterly betrayed by his father and his lover. He wanted to cry to relieve the massive tightness that knotted his muscles. It was obscene: she was young; his father was in his late forties. She must have seen an opportunity for protection and wealth, and for that she’d sing to the old man and let him paw her. Well, that was only what she deserved. That was the tradeoff. He could have given her money himself. But not a title, of course: what an extraordinary elevation for a young foreign widow and struggling actress. He wrote accusing letters to his father, revealing everything, and burned them all.

And so it had gone on in misery, in jealousy, and finally in coldness. He eventually wrote to his father, wishing him well, without warmth, and regretting that he could not come to the wedding as he been an offered a position in America. His father had written back, anxiously, saying he realized it was difficult for Harry with his understandable loyalty to his dead mother, and the speed with which they had made their decision, but he was not a young man and he hoped Harry still wished them happiness. Harry had not replied and had left for New York ten days later, by which time his father and Isabelle were man and wife. Not long afterward, his father wrote to say Isabelle was pregnant; but only a little later a further letter followed, announcing the arrival of his brother. “Far too early, far too small,” but, his father reported, “a game little chap who struggled through after worrying us all for a few weeks.” He was, his father said, the very image of Harry as a baby.

Harry counted the weeks. He knew to the night when he had last possessed Isabelle in the hours before they left for Abbotsgate, and he knew of propriety preserved by claiming a miraculously short pregnancy yet a viable child. What a fool his father had been. What a fool Isabelle had made of them both.

Now, yet again a widow, she stood beside Harry in the cemetery and wept.

“What will become of me?” she said. He knew in that instant that she had indeed loved his father, or come to love him, but he chose the easier answer.

“You and Teddy must go on as you are.”

“You mustn’t leave us,” she said. “I mean, yes, your life is in America. But this time you must come back often. Please, Harry. If anything should happen to me, Teddy would be quite alone. I beg you, if you want no relationship with me, please start one with Teddy.”

He felt ashamed, not wanting to deal with this now. She added, smiling now, but still with wet cheeks, “He already hero-worships you from the tales your father told of you. A naughtier, braver, more mischievous son never lived, the way your father told it.”

“Teddy seems a very nice chap.” He cursed himself for his clumsiness.

“We were lucky,” she said, and happiness returned briefly to her face. “He’s a jolly, uncomplicated boy, full of curiosity, friends with everybody. He wants to be a gamekeeper when he grows up, or be very rich and breed horses.”

“I will do my very best by you and Teddy,” he said. “My very, very best. With this war—it may not be easy here.”

“This hateful war,” she said, and he could still, just, hear her French accent. “But America will not involve itself; you can come to us on American ships and be safe; and besides, a war, however bad, does not last long, whereas Teddy will live for many years, I hope. Write. Tell us of New York. Bears. If you see bears, I think Teddy would be very happy.”

“Perhaps you would both come and visit us?”

She nodded.

“Not many bears in Central Park, but I could arrange a camping expedition into the mountains,” he said, finding that the idea of showing Teddy the hugeness of the American wilderness was suddenly exciting. “Sleep under the stars by some great rapids. See bison, bears, yes, rattlesnakes—”

Now she was at least trying to laugh, but she paused. “Does Marina know that we were once, that we … ?” She was unembarrassed and looked at him steadily, although it had never been mentioned between them since the last, vile letter he’d written to her.

He shook his head. “Better not,” he said, hoping his reaction wasn’t just pragmatic. “Too late now. Too complicated.”

And probably fatal for his marriage, he thought. He looked up. The long day was turning into a fine, soft evening.

Owing to the summary rejection by the German Government of the request made by his Majesty’s Government for assurances that the neutrality of Belgium would be respected, His Majesty’s Ambassador in Berlin has received his passport and his Majesty’s Government has declared to the German Government that a state of war exists between Great Britain and Germany as from 11
p.m.

FOREIGN OFFICE STATEMENT,
AUGUST 4, 1914

Benedict, England, September 1914

B
ENEDICT HAD NOT NOTICED THAT
autumn was coming until he leaned out of his bedroom window on that last day. It was a hazy, golden morning: swaths of cobwebs on the vicarage shrubbery, the thick grass damp and the leaves of the horse chestnut edged in rust. The view had been the same as it had every year of Benedict’s life, but the certainties of those earlier autumns had now been put aside. It had been a difficult weekend at home, yet he had felt elated by the tension, as if the distance between him and his family was widening and in that breadth was freedom. His father had been perplexed, angry, and then, obviously, frightened. It was enough that the small, safe world in which he lived had been threatened by good German Protestants, now that his only son—whose musical accomplishments had made him so proud, whose place at the cathedral was something he thanked God for, daily, in his prayers—was throwing away all he had achieved.

“There won’t be any organs in the Army,” he had said. “You won’t be able to practice, you know. All this God-given talent thrown aside. What kind of a soldier do you think you’ll make? Do you think this is God’s purpose for you?”

And so it had gone on: the pointless conversations in the cold study after church, his father’s insistence that they pray together for guidance, and later, at tea, his mother clinging to him as if his death was certain. As they walked in the yard over wet yellow leaves, his sister had given him a rueful smile and a little squeeze of the arm.

“Do you know when you’ll be going?” she said.

“I’m volunteering with Theo. It was his idea.”

“Of course. It has the feeling of one of your friend Theo’s grand schemes.” But there was light observation, not harshness, in her words. “What is he escaping this time?”

“Gloucester. Organs. A woman called Agnes Bradstock. God, for all I know.” He laughed, as he only ever did with Lettie. “Or for all God knows, I suppose.”

“Miss Bradstock? The bishop’s daughter? Goodness.” Now she too was amused. “He’ll need to be sure to be sent overseas. India, at the very least.”

“We’re planning on joining the artillery. I can’t ride a horse; I think I’m seasick, so no Navy. The Gloucesters were a possibility, but Theo is desperate to get his hands on machinery. A big gun would do. It seems somehow… .” He paused to think just what it seemed. “Better. More important. It seems more important now, to me, to be useful, and I think I might be quite a good gunner.”

He also wondered whether it would be easier to fire at targets he didn’t have to see.

“I’m glad you will have a friend with you,” Lettie said. “You can watch out for each other. And who knows, you may just do a bit of training in a camp and then come home, war over, and even if you aren’t awfully good at shooting, you’re bound to be the best at marching. And very handsome in uniform.” After a long pause, she added, quietly, “I wish I could go too.”

He surprised both of them by reaching out and holding her close for a second, yet feeling, deep down, that there was a terrible dishonesty in the gulf between what she thought she knew and loved about him and what he knew about himself.

Theo was delayed in returning because of some unspecified crisis at home, so Benedict went alone to the Army interview, accounted awkwardly for Theo’s absence, given that Theo had actually fixed the appointment, and emerged from an office in a camp near Salisbury to find he had signed various papers and was now, subject to a medical, a second lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery. A junior officer in Kitchener’s New Army.

“Well done, young chap,” said the interviewing major. “We need more like you. First class.”

He was to await a letter of confirmation and further instructions, allowances for uniform and so on—the major waved a hand as if Benedict knew what was involved, and the sergeant major standing behind him clearly did, as he nodded approvingly.

Benedict hoped Theo’s training would still start at the same time as his, but at least the school of gunnery wasn’t far away. The major, a cheerful middle-aged territorial, came around the desk and shook his hand enthusiastically. “Do your best by us and we’ll do our best by you.
Ubique
. The regimental motto. You’ll know what it means.”

“Everywhere.”
Benedict wondered if it was a test.

“Ha. Right. But for you, my boy, mostly the firing ranges on Salisbury Plain.” It was obviously a joke he used a lot.

Benedict wrote to his father and had a far easier interview with Dr. Brewer than he’d expected. “Ah, yes,” said Brewer. “You and Theodore, I gather.”

Benedict must have looked surprised, because Brewer went on: “In here not half an hour ago with the news. Well, hard for the cathedral but good for the country. We all have to make sacrifices. Some of us are too old to fight, but ‘O that I had wings like a dove, for then would I fly away,’ eh?”

Benedict could hardly wait to get back to Theo and share Brewer’s rare lapse into sentimentality, but Theo was nowhere to be seen. When he eventually showed back up at their lodgings in the Close, he smelled of alcohol.

“Been down the docks celebrating with Captain Ahab,” he said, lying prone on his narrow bed.

“I thought you were stuck at home.”

“Didn’t want to tell you the splendid news until I was certain.”

“Your father let you have the ring for Agnes?”

“Good God, no!” Theo raised his head and looked almost shocked. “Of course not.” He seemed to lose his train of thought for a minute. “No. I’ve been accepted. For a commission.”

Benedict found himself beaming, and a certain nagging worry slipped away. “Why, that’s marvelous. When do you start? Do you know? I don’t yet. Perhaps we’ll go to Salisbury together, brother gunners—
Ubique
and all that.”

“I saw a very good friend of my father. He fixed it. I’m going to be a pilot—well, once they’ve trained me, but I went up and showed aptitude, they said—probably from years at the organ.”

His head was sunk into the pillows, but his hand came up in a snappy salute. “Meet Second Lieutenant Theodore Dawes-Holt, Royal Flying Corps. War is here and I am ready.”

It would always be the same, Benedict thought. To be Theo’s friend was to be alone.

Frank, London,
1915

F
ROM BAD TO WORSE.

Poor François Faber the outsider, the furniture mover from Luxembourg. I expect he thought that his triumph in the Tour de France six years ago had been as hard as it would ever get: cycling 3,500 miles in snow and gales, digging out his bicycle, getting blown to the ground, being kicked by a horse, wading through potholes, sometimes all alone as others around him fell. He ran the last stretch to the finish, carrying his cycle with its broken chain. The next day he went fishing. If I could have been any man, I would have been François Faber, the Giant of Colombes.

I read in May that poor Faber had joined the French Foreign Legion and been mown down by the German guns. I could understand how he would have felt that France, which he’d conquered with his Peugeot-Wolber, was a land to fight for; but I was so angry and upset, I couldn’t even speak of it. I devised a new system for storing gloves until I was calmer.

It was becoming impossible. At the Institute, I went to classes once on the Greeks. The speaker looked like a dry old stick, like he might have lived in ancient times himself. He had been a professor at the university up in Bloomsbury and he had this way of making it all come alive, and for a while we were in a world of monsters and pagan gods who were up to all sorts of things. So my situation, I thought now, was like Odysseus choosing between Scylla and Charybdis. On one side a monster, on the other a whirlpool. The professor had said, and you could tell he liked this bit: “So, which would you choose if you were Odysseus, captain of the ship?” No one answered, though I thought I’d choose the whirlpool, seeing as how I had learned to swim in the Dart as a lad, so stood a chance, and I didn’t like the thought of being dinner for some octopus; but it turned out that Odysseus chose the monster and risked losing a few men, rather than the whirlpool and risk losing the ship. Later on, I realized that he had been what they called “officer material,” whereas I was a typical soldier in seeking only advantage for myself.

It seemed that Mr. Frederick Richmond was Charybdis and Connie was Scylla. As Mr. Richmond’s long arms were picking off the men and sending them to their fate, Connie was all seething passion for the Cause. Mr. Richmond expected every able-bodied man to join the colors. Connie demanded that every man of conscience turn away from war. For Mr. Richmond it was all
King and Country
, for Connie it was
Thou Shalt Not Kill.

In time, two things came to change my view. First, one of the senior hands volunteered. Dick Wilson was in the luggage department and in the way of being a friend of mine. He had a Hercules bicycle that was his pride and joy, and he had sometimes let me ride it around St. James’s Park. We planned trips we might make when I had bought my own machine. Our first was to be a place called Box Hill in Surrey; but we hoped, one day, to follow the Thames from Henley to the source. This was, of course, a dream, but the hours we had spent on it! We had a map and had worked out timings on trial runs around the Serpentine.

Dick had said nothing about his intentions to be a soldier, and the first I knew of it was him coming to say good-bye. Mr. Richmond publicly gave him and another man, a young lad from stores, the five guineas he’d promised. Florence kissed him, confirming the view I’d formed of her excitability, not that Dick looked anything but embarrassed.

“These men are heroes,” Mr. Richmond said. I knew it was wrong of me but, after my course on the Greeks, I thought there was more to being a hero than signing your name, being kissed by Florence, and saying good-bye to a world of gentlemen’s trunks, valises, and Gladstone bags.

Dick looked a bit proud, as well as a bit awkward, when he came to shake my hand, knowing, I think, that my own position had just gotten a little harder.

“If you should ever think of joining,” he said, “the Bedfordshires seem a good lot. Infantry. Horses make me chesty.” Then he shook my hand again.

“By the by,” he said, “I’m giving up my lodgings for the duration and I don’t have any family, so I was wondering if you’d take the Hercules, look after it until I come back?” He must have misread the expression on my face, because he added quickly “Only if you want it, of course. It might be useful. I mean, you could ride it around. Even go to Box Hill.” He tried a smile.

So that’s how I came to have a bicycle for my own use, although I’d have needed a heart of stone not to feel some unease and I hoped the lads of the Bedfordshires would do all right.

About this time, my old father fell ill. Mr. Frederick Richmond gave me leave for one week, and I traveled back to Devonshire. My landlady let me leave the Hercules in the shed. I cleaned and greased it, sad that I had taken it out only once since Dick left but full of ideas for what I might achieve on my return.

The old man had gotten through the worst by the time I arrived, though it was a shock to see the years on him since I’d last been there. What was troubling him most, I thought, was spleen. The news was that soldiers who had fallen in battle were being buried where they lay. Without coffins. Or not buried at all, but left in fields to rot in their boots, one of the brothers from Leafield Farm had told him. I tried to reason with Dad. If there wasn’t a war, I said, they wouldn’t be dead, so they wouldn’t be in his coffins anyway.

“But they would have died sooner or later,” said my father. “And needed coffining then.”

I didn’t like to point out that these dead soldiers were lads of twenty and that in the normal way of things by the time they were of a dying age, he’d himself long have been six foot under. But then it turned out that even those locals who, in his words, “died like good Christians” (by which he usually meant paying his bill promptly) were, in respect of the war, seeking simpler service than in times past. Now even the magistrate, the gentleman farmer, and the lawyer’s widow wanted no display in matters funereal, no silk-lined coffins, no fine woods, no marquetry. So suddenly I did feel sorry for the old man, though at least his being irked at the War Office meant he wasn’t after me about volunteering. In fact, quite the reverse. It turned out nearly all my boyhood pals had gone. The 9th Devons had swept them up, and they were even now on their way to France.

“You won’t go, son, will you?” Dad had asked one evening. “You’re all I’ve got.”

Two feelings hit me hard. One was that I was fond of the old man, for all his curmudgeonly ways, and two was that maybe this war business was bigger than my own inclinations.

I got back to London and spent a while in the shed with the bike, buffing the saddle and easing the bell. I oiled the gears. The spokes shone like new; only a little wear of the tires revealed that it had been ridden at all. It was a fine evening and I had intended to ride to the Institute, for a talk on Alpine Beauty which Connie had been eager to catch, but I had the beginnings of a headache and things on my mind. Since I had tried to explain my predicament to Connie, there had been a cooling in her manner and, every time we met, Nancy was with her and talking nineteen to the dozen. Connie must have become deaf to it, because Nancy was forever spotting soldiers in the street and imagining how they would be with their sweethearts and comparing Army uniforms with those of Navy lads.

The next Monday, I was off to Messrs. Lord and Stevas, military outfitters of Duke Street, St. James. I would take a cut in pay, I would be more junior, but, in using my knowledge of selling goods toward military ends, I could do my bit for the war. Or so I thought. Mr. Frederick Richmond—any doubts about my patriotism having been assuaged by his wrongly held belief that my father was trembling on the brink of the final abyss and I was, with proper filial respect, sacrificing my own longing to serve my country until he was beyond my attentions—had provided me with a splendid reference.

Duke Street was a very different place from Regent Street, and Lord and Stevas was an immeasurably different establishment from Debenhams. Masculinity dominated the street and the outfitters. The shop itself had an aroma I came to associate with war before I knew what war really smelled like. The shop was all leather, chalk, polish, tobacco, and hair oil. It was, I suppose, the smell of gentlemen, and I had not known many gentlemen. On one side of the shop was a life-sized model of half a horse, and on this cavalry officers could test the cut of their breeches, but John Quickseed, the head tailor, had a trick of writing down a man’s measurements having simply looked him over and only then confirming his dimensions with a tape. In a back room, which smelled of oil, steam, and wool, was a cutter, a Pole, Jakob Rozenbaum (who, Joe, the junior assistant, told me, had once had his own workshop in Stepney, but people had taken against him on account of his German-sounding name and burned it to the ground the year before), and an old chap, Albert, who acted as a finisher.

I had thought that khaki was khaki. But this was not so: there was every combination of styles and combinations, or weights, of rolls of cloth from brown to green, from buff to gray to cream, that Mr. Nugent (his Christian name, I discovered later, was Montgomery) indicated with a wave of his hand. Linings and buttons and twisted silk cord and stiffeners: barathea, viyella, twill, tropical lightweight wool, worsted, serge, drill. Mr. Nugent explained that some officers came to be outfitted knowing in every detail what they required, but others needed assistance, so that every one of us must know exactly what the requirements were for his regiment and rank, and judge what further, more personal embellishments he might care to make and how far he might exceed the basic allowance he was allotted.

“Pockets,” Mr. Nugent said; “some gentlemen are very keen on pockets.” He paused and I could have sworn a look of distaste crossed his face, but then it was gone.

“Some junior officers may even need our invisible guidance: yellow shirts have been one such area. Cavalry officers are also a law unto themselves. We have, currently, a most eccentric officer commanding the 29th Division, for instance. One more point,” he said, fixing me with a stern look. “When an officer has but lately joined his regiment, he may, in anxiety or excitement, be inclined to purchase every single item that he believes he could conceivably need. It may not seem like good business to constrain him in his expenditure, but the officer who goes to join brother officers who are regulars can easily find himself a laughingstock. We do not want Lord and Stevas associated with his feelings of humiliation.”

This was just the start: officers were, of course, just men going to live abroad, to the colonies or to the Continent, and they needed the collars and handkerchiefs and socks that any gentleman might require, plus cased clocks, stud boxes, binoculars, and hip flasks; these were, said Mr. Nugent, a great favorite with many a subaltern’s mama and could be engraved to choice. These were to be my province, my predecessor having joined the Rifles a month earlier. I was quite impressed by our cigarette-case covers, canvas or wool in dull tones.

“For,” said Mr. Nugent, “what if an officer opened his case to offer a brother officer a cigarette and the sun, reflecting off the metal, alerted the enemy to his position?”

“What about spectacles?” I asked. “Might they similarly catch the light?” I had read this in a book when I was young. But Mr. Nugent continued as if I had never spoken.

One afternoon when we were quiet and Mr. Nugent elsewhere, the junior, Joe, beckoned me. We went down a short passage and he opened a door that swung back as silently as everything else here. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw long racks, covered with white sheeting, from under which hung khaki tunic sleeves and trouser hems.

“The waiting room,” said Joe. “It’s for unclaimed orders.”

When I didn’t appear to react sufficiently, he said “Them as has ordered new stuff but never lived to wear it.” He would have suited well as an undertaker’s mute in the old days.

The day I started, I had written to Dick and told him how things had gone for me and the bike, and said I hoped he was getting along all right. From time to time I bicycled to work, leaving the Hercules in the park, as Mr. Nugent thought only butchers’ boys rode bicycles.

Then, weeks later, on a fine June day, I bicycled a different route and who should I see walking up Regent Street but Florence. I rang the bell at her and she jumped in a gratifying way, but she seemed pleased enough to see me. At least she smiled, which Connie had rather given up doing. But it turned out that her main pleasure in seeing me was to tell me bad news.

“Did you know Dick got it in Flanders?” she said and, from her expression, clearly judged I didn’t.

“Wounded?” I said.

She shook her head. “Fallen.” Then when the word didn’t quite provide the drama she required, she said, wide-eyed, “Gassed. We just heard, but it might have been a while ago. Not that he’s been a soldier long. Hard to think of Dick dead, isn’t it?”

Sentimental girl that she was, her eyes filled with tears and she got out a very small, clumsily embroidered handkerchief and pressed it to first one eye, then the other. “He was so reliable and decent, you wouldn’t think he’d have let himself be gassed.” She paused and screwed her eyes up. “It’s a terrible death, they say: you go blind and your lungs fill up with blood.”

My knuckles were tight on the handlebars and I found myself glancing at the bike, as if waiting to see a reaction. My throat tightened, thinking of gas, like at school how you’d imagine an itch when one of the other children had lice.

“But I’ve got his bike,” I said, and she said “Well, he won’t want it where he’s gone,” and she gave a sort of laugh. Which was in slightly bad taste, I thought, but she was upset, probably remembering she’d kissed him.

It preyed on my mind, and I found myself polishing Hercules every evening. Polishing away, as if Dick were coming back the next week. Before I went to work, I’d look in the shed to make sure Hercules had not been taken in the night. I had saved no more money, given that my landlady charged sixpence a week for the use of the shed, and I suppose having the use of the bicycle had dulled the urgency. But all the time now I was thinking it wasn’t my property. I’d heard it said that soldiers made wills before they saw active service, and perhaps there was someone somewhere who should by now be riding Hercules.