Sarum

by Edward Rutherfurd

  D-Day would be coming soon. He would miss it, of course, since he had been given a staff job. He was not sure if he were sorry or not. His career had been skilfully conducted: he had usually been able to see which way the wind was blowing. A spell in the Grenadiers, several shrewdly timed transfers including a year in military intelligence in the War Office. He had always been good with high ranking officers’ wives: too good some said. Too good, it was always understood, for his own well-born, rather fluffy little wife, married young, who had left him and then died. And now, would he make it to general? Probably not. Perhaps, if he stayed on after the war; but he was not sure he wanted to. He had several more interesting irons in the fire in the business world that he had been keeping warm when there was time; he might stand for Parliament as well. Why not? He could afford it. Good war record. He was sound, as they said.

  Archibald Forest-Wilson was a very fortunate man, but dissatisfied. Tall, dark, with a long, saturnine face, a short moustache he confined to the centre portion of his upper lip, heavy-lidded black eyes under black eyebrows that turned upwards at the corners, his face was like a falcon’s. With men he was hard; with women, extraordinarily gentle – a combination which fascinated the latter in particular. He was an excellent shot. But his greatest love was fishing. He was skilful with the dry fly; it was a joy to watch him cast, but it was with the wet fly that he really knew happiness, trailing it, subtly, seductively under the surface, tempting the fish on to the hook, feeling their play and reading their mind from the tug and pressure beneath the surface of the water. There was something very deep, even primitive in Forest-Wilson that loved, above all, this manner of fishing.

  Thoughtfully he watched the golden curls on the back of his pretty driver’s neck and noticed how she held her head.

  Damn his father, though, he reflected. True, he had very sensibly married the second daughter, and co-heir, of the last Lord Forest. The Wilsons had had to give up the house near Christchurch in the last century, when their fortunes had dipped, but this marriage had made his father a rich man and he had bought an estate near Winchester. But then, when he had the chance to buy a title from Lloyd George, he had quibbled about the price. The fool, his son now thought, as he bumped into Wilton. He could probably have taken the old Forest title; as it was, there was just the estate, no more, and that was not enough. For Archibald Forest-Wilson was an ambitious man. The war would be over soon: it was time he married again, got an heir. Perhaps, even – why not? – that title.

  Once again he found himself gazing at his driver: a nice girl – one of us. He had spoken to her several times. How old she was? Twenty-five maybe, twenty-six? He was forty-three. A bit old. But then, age gave him some advantages too.

  The little car bumped past the gate of Wilton House and drew up by Kingsbury. He got out lazily.

  “You’re going off for the day now I think, aren’t you, Patricia?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He smiled pleasantly.

  “I’m sorry I can’t offer you lunch, but the general’s expecting me. Perhaps you’d be free some other day – assuming nothing more dramatic intervenes.”

  “That sounds very nice.”

  Her smile was proper. So it should be to a brigadier. But he had easily taken in every detail of her: good legs, good figure, nice breasts, neither large nor small, stunning eyes. The short golden hair and the buttoned A.T.S. uniform certainly suited her very well. Hadn’t he asked her if she hunted once? Yes, he had. She had said yes.

  Hunting bored him personally, but he usually liked women who did.

  “Well,” he said easily, tucking his swagger stick under his arm, “I must be getting along.”

  Patricia Shockley. A nice girl: and interesting too, perhaps.

  At half past one Patricia Shockley sat opposite the large, burly form of John Mason in the narrow little restaurant near the entrance to the close called the House of Steps. It was just that: a medieval house, with heavy beams, and an extraordinary number of small steps and staircases between its many rooms and landings. It was also one of the best places to eat lunch.

  But Patricia Shockley was not enjoying it.

  What could she say?

  “Tell me, is it because I’m not in uniform?”

  There were little beads of sweat on the front of his head, where the hair was rapidly thinning. Would he sweat so much if he did not insist on wearing, even at the start of summer, that heavy brown suit of herringbone tweed and those heavy brown shoes, always polished until you could see your face in them, and which required those thick brown socks? Did he wear a woollen vest and underpants too? She imagined he did.

  He was thirty-five. He might have been fifty. More. Sometimes she could almost scream.

  Now. Should she tell him it was because he was not in uniform; should she tell him the truth; should she think of some other excuse? If in doubt, she decided, the truth.

  “John, I’m just not in love with you. I’m sorry.”

  “I thought perhaps . . .”

  “Because I let you kiss me? No.”

  “I see. That wasn’t my fault.”

  Of course not. Nothing was ever John Mason’s fault. It was not his fault that his weak lung had prevented him getting into the army, though it preyed on his mind and made him feel guilty every day. Thank God women aren’t handing out white feathers in this war, she thought. As it was, John Mason had done more for the war effort than ten other men. He had done just enough of his work as a solicitor to pay his bills. All the rest of his time was devoted to war service. In the early days, he had been one of the few to take the threat of gas seriously and help organise some first aid volunteers; the volunteer fire brigade; the A.R.P. wardens; Mrs Roper’s hospital car service for ferrying patients about; and the system of inviting officers and G.I.s into Salisbury houses for a meal: there was almost nothing he had not had a hand in. He was an excellent organiser.

  And no, it was not his fault she had felt sorry for him, let him take her out several times and, one evening, kissed him and let him return her kiss. She had thought it would do him good.

  Would she have gone further – if he had not immediately become so serious and asked her to marry him? No. She did not think so.

  “Perhaps later you may . . .”

  “No.” She must be absolutely firm. “Please forget me.”

  He looked at her hopelessly.

  “I’ll try.”

  She refused to feel guilty any more. Enough was enough.

  It was absurd of him, John Mason thought dismally, to suppose this lovely, golden-haired girl in her trim uniform could possibly be interested in him. Yet behind her outgoing ways, he was sure he could see something vulnerable, childlike, that needed protecting. He would have protected her.

  The coffee came. Thank heaven, she thought, that whatever the rationing, coffee was always in plentiful supply.

  She was going to say; “We’ll have lunch next week.” Then she thought better of it. “I think we’d better not meet for a little while, John.”

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  “No it isn’t.” She got up. “I must go.”

  She fled.

  John Mason sat and considered. She had said: “It isn’t.” Did that mean she was upset? Clearly she was. And if she was upset, then she must at least feel something for him. She cared. He sipped his coffee moodily: he would not entirely give up hope.

  The people of Sarum had done their best to make the huge influx of Americans welcome. But often they were puzzled. Two years of familiarity had ironed out many difficulties for both sides now, but misunderstandings remained.

  The growing mutual respect with regard to the fighting itself had been a help. In 1942, the arriving Americans had often been contemptuous of their allies who had failed to win the war. At the same time, the first batch to reach Sarum in the summer of 1942 had come straight from training in Florida and arrived to face the English summer dressed in cotton and without a greatcoat between them. Ev
en by English standards, that summer had been exceptionally cold and wet. The new arrivals who had made their scorn rather plain now retired in droves to hospitals with ’flu and even pneumonia. It had not been a good beginning.

  The Africa campaign had changed all that. The contempt had gone; so had the arrogance. “Our boys were like a bunch of bananas,” a cheerful G.I. informed Patricia: “some green, some yellow, some plain rotten.” They had a new hero, too, that they shared with their allies: the British General Alexander.

  The citizens of Salisbury also learned to know them better. For the American army, they soon concluded, organised itself in a somewhat different way; unlike the English, whose smaller numbers usually forced them to try, at least, to convert every soldier into a fighting man, simple observation soon taught the people of Sarum that in the U.S. Army there were two very distinct categories: those groups who had been selected as only good enough for support duties – clerks, paymasters and the like – and the combat troops, who, though they seemed to lean up against any free-standing object in a casual way that was surprising, had a tough, resilient quality about them that had to be admired. Soon, anyone in Sarum could tell one group from the other at a glance.

  “Our best men seem like coiled springs,” Patricia had once remarked to Forest-Wilson; “theirs are like rubber.”

  “And just as indestructible,” he assured her.

  Despite their respect for the fighting men, however, it was less easy for the townspeople to accept it when they heard their modest terraced houses referred to as slums; and although there was some fraternisation, it was soon clear to the girls of the town, the English nurses and the women in the services stationed nearby, that the visitors found them and their rationed clothes dowdy. When the first American nurse arrived at the hospital with the unheard-of luxury of nylon stockings, there was an outcry.

  Of course, there was the problem of money. The further down the scale in rank one went, the more striking the difference. For instance, the generals or senior officers that Patricia drove around the plain were about as well off as their American counterparts. A colonel was a little poorer, but not so much as to be noticed. A major, however, was paid only two-thirds as much as his American colleague; a captain, half; an American second lieutenant was two and a half times as well off as his English equivalent. But below this, in the bulk of the enlisted men, the difference was truly extraordinary. The private in the U.S. Army made, in English currency, the princely sum of three pounds, eight shillings and ninepence a week. This was almost five times the pay of an English private.

  Faced with this spending power, the people of Sarum were simply flabbergasted. It was for most of them the first time that they had realised that their island, at the heart of the mighty British Empire, was poor.

  The lingering misunderstanding between the locals and their visitors however, concerned two things: attitude, and food.

  The problem lay partly with the G.I.s who, being homsesick, endlessly told the Sarum folk how much better life was back home. Partly the fault also lay with the U.S. authorities who, to counteract this homesickness, sent their men a vast selection of foodstuffs utterly unobtainable to their hosts, and who, it seemed, had also forbidden their men to drink British milk on the grounds that it was dangerous. And partly, the everyday habit of America was to blame: for the people of Sarum had never seen waste like this. Food was left on the side of plates, paper, string cheerfully discarded, things were used once, and thrown away, on the simple principle, completely incomprehensible to the islanders, that there would always be more.

  There was blame to be apportioned on the other side too, and this was even simpler: the people of Sarum thought their country was the best. Were they not still the British Empire?

  But on one thing both visitors – to whom it was a novelty – and townspeople came to a surprising and total agreement; this was the benefit of British fish and chips, eaten off British newspaper. The G.I.s’ consumption of this impressed even the locals.

  The most important rendezvous and general information post for the G.I.s in Sarum was the Red Cross Club in the High Street. Besides the usual canteen and recreation rooms a most important service was provided by volunteers at the information desk: the flower service. Nowhere else in Sarum was it possible for an American G.I. or officer to arrange for flowers to be sent home.

  It was here that Patricia Shockley went immediately after leaving John Mason. She felt in need of reassurance, and her friend Elizabeth, a sensible young married woman, who was doing a stint at the desk that afternoon, always provided sage counsel.

  “I did right, didn’t I?”

  “Absolutely. You couldn’t do anything else.”

  “Thank God for that. Will he leave me alone now?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. He looks persistent.”

  “Damn.”

  The young American Air Force officer who now entered made his way towards them. He had a light athletic walk: his blue eyes seemed to take everything in.

  “I must be off,” Patricia said. But she lingered for a moment.

  “This is flowers?” he enquired of Elizabeth.

  “It is. To America, I assume?”

  “Right. Philadelphia.”

  “You will wish to send red roses, of course, with long stems?”

  “That’s right. How did you know?”

  Elizabeth groaned pleasantly.

  “Because no American we have yet encountered at this stall has ever sent anything else. Except one, who sent his mother a poinsettia for Christmas, but I expect he came to a bad end. We couldn’t I suppose interest you in carnations, tulips, gladioli . . . ?”

  “Roses. Red,” he laughed.

  “For your fiancée?”

  “No such person. My mother. It’s her birthday.”

  “Red roses, to Philadelphia, then.” Elizabeth leaned forward with mock confidentiality. “Do tell us though, Lieutenant, why is it always red roses with American servicemen?”

  “Because it’s what they expect us to send.”

  “Ah.” She nodded. “You wouldn’t like to surprise them?”

  “No.”

  “And the name?”

  “Shockley. Adam. For Mrs Charles Shockley.”

  It did not take them long to find out all about him, including the fact that he had never been to Salisbury before.

  Yes, his family had come from England once, but he did not know from where. Yes, the name Adam was common in his family. Patricia tried to remember. There had been an Adam Shockley, she was sure, on the family tree that her father had lovingly preserved in his study. He had gone to Pennyslvania, she thought.

  “There’s a chance we may be related,” she told him. “There aren’t that many Shockleys about, you know.”

  “And what is there to do in Salisbury now that I’m here?” he asked.

  “If you’ve a couple of hours I’ll show you around,” she offered.

  “Are you sure . . .”

  “I’d be happy to. I’m off duty,” she replied. Besides, it would be a relief to put John Mason out of her mind.

  She showed him the cathedral and the close, with its sedate old houses and the shady plane trees round the choristers’ green. She showed him the river with its long green river weeds and its swans. She took him past the poultry cross and into the market place. He was astonished by the age of everything he saw.

  “You really mean that little gabled house,” he had pointed to a little timber house with an overhanging front in New Street, “has been there just like that for six and a half centuries?”

  “Yes. Funny isn’t it?” She grinned. “And you realise, don’t you, that this is only the new town? The old town’s up there.” And she waved in the direction of Old Sarum.

  “It’s incredible,” he admitted.

  They wandered through the market. It was a market day, but there were not many stalls and the place seemed rather bare. In particular he was puzzled by the odd assortment of crockery that seeme
d to be on sale on a number of stalls.

  “Don’t they have any that matches?” he asked, “any sets?”

  “Not nowadays,” she answered. “This is wartime. People are glad to pick up any old cup and saucer they can.”

  He nodded. It was foolish of him to have forgotten the terrible shortages over here.

  “What do you miss most?”

  “Nylon stockings,” she told him at once.

  They had tea at the Bay Tree, where they had one more attempt at establishing their family connection. It did not get far, but they cheerfully swapped information about their respective families. His father was a successful lawyer, she learned, living in that large, comfortable and endless suburb, the Philadelphia Main Line. She told him something of her own family: about their rambling house with its two paddocks in the New Forest, a few miles from Christchurch; her father, a retired colonel, “Who organises anything that moves within a five-mile radius,” she explained; her brother in the navy.

  “When this is all over, you should come and see us, Cousin Adam,” she laughed.

  How delightful she was. She seemed to find everything so amusing. He wondered how one asked for a date in the ancient city and concluded there was only one way to find out. He asked.

  “That sounds very nice. When did you have in mind?”

  “I’m flying tonight. But tomorrow I’m not.”

  “Tomorrow then. But you must let me pick the restaurant. I know the territory.”

  When he asked himself, towards the end of that extraordinary and frantic period before June 1944, exactly when he had known – known with absolute certainty that they were going to have an affair – he concluded that it was at the precise moment when she had opened the door of that dark, Victorian house she shared with a dozen other A.T.S. drivers on Milford Hill.

  He had been thinking about her – except for the harrowing moments just before he had released two 1,000-pound bombs at a target spitting a fury of fire at him the previous night – he had been thinking of her almost continuously. Her golden hair and her laughing eyes were before him, like a lighted beacon that makes a great halo in the cloud, through that night all the way home.