by Rose Doyle
He looked surprised. 'Are you sure?' he said gently.
'I'm sure,' Moll said, 'and there's no good you playing the fool with me either when it's Allie you really want to talk to.'
'You're right.' He straightened and brought his hand to his forehead and saluted.
'My name is Alicia Buckley,' I frowned, flustered and wary, 'and my companion is Miss Moll Hyland.'
'Am I to call you Alicia then? Not Allie?'
'There will hardly be a need to call me anything if the journey to the commander's quarters is as short as you say it is,' I said.
'May I call you Moll?' He looked gravely down at the child, who sighed.
'I suppose so.' She slipped from under my arm and took my hand. 'We might as well go with him, Allie,' she said.
He pointed to this and that as we went along. The post office, which he said was 'a haven of military precision and regularity', the savings bank, telegraph station and fire engine depot. He told us that the clock tower had an internal staircase which allowed people out on to an encircling balcony and that there were two hospitals as well as racket and ball courts. He had the bronzed fingers of a man who'd spent time under a sun a lot hotter than that summer's on the plains of Kildare.
'You seem less than fascinated by our encampment world,' he said when I didn't respond to a mild joke about the six pieces of cannon guarding the flag of England.
'On the contrary,' I said, 'I'd even like to know how the rank and file soldiers live. There are so many of them. Ten thousand, I'm told. How is it that war doesn't break out in the camp?'
'We're permanently at war,' he said, 'hostilities and faction fighting enliven camp life enormously.'
'What about the women who live here?' I asked, 'the wives of the soldiers, and their daughters? How is life for them?'
'It's not a bad life. For many it's better than the life they left behind.' He hesitated, seemed about to say something else, then changed his mind and said, with a shrug, 'There aren't a great many soldiers' wives in the camp. The accommodation is not ideal and the pay is bad. I would never bring a wife or children here myself.'
This left me wondering if he was without a wife in the camp because he didn't have one, or because he disliked the accommodation.
'You're very frank,' I said, carefully, 'about the army, about . . .' I made a vague gesture, 'all of this.'
'Why not?' He stopped. 'We've arrived.'
Soldiers stood guard at each of the three doors to the headquarters building. 'Thank you for escorting us,' I said, 'now maybe you could tell us which one of these doors leads to Major General Ponsonby's office?'
'You're a very single-minded young woman. I hope you get what it is you want from the commander,' he spoke lightly.
Far too lightly. He wanted to know my business, why I was intent on visiting his commander. He didn't believe my story of a casual call to please my father.
'I'm sure we'll have a pleasant meeting,' I said.
'You'll find the major general's offices through the second door. He may not be there at this time but is almost always there in the mid-afternoon. Perhaps you should wait until then?'
'Moll wouldn't like that.' I was firm. 'We'll take our chances now. I'm grateful to you,' I held out a hand and he took it briefly in his long, brown fingers.
'Are you staying close by?' he said.
'Quite close,' I said.
'Perhaps I could escort you home, when you've finished with the commander?'
'We've a car and driver waiting,' I lied.
The headquarters building, inside, was dark and smelled of polished wood. The commander's office, with his name on the door, was directly ahead of us as we went in. A young soldier, small and slight as a cane, stood guard. He looked worried.
'You've no problem telling lies,' Moll said softly as we went down the corridor towards him, 'only you're not so good at it as you think.'
'Be quiet,' I hissed and she looked sulky. She'd been well-behaved too long and the strain was telling.
We stopped in front of the soldier, who came nimbly to attention. His ears were too big for his head and rose in points on either side of his hat.
'We'd like to see Major General Ponsonby.' I was briskly polite. He looked confused. His training hadn't equipped him to deal with direct young women. He was also shy.
'He didn't tell me anything about. . .' He cleared his throat. 'I don't know as I can let you go in, miss.'
'I'm certain the major general will be glad to see me…' I was cut short, and the soldier put out of the misery of his uncertainty, when the door behind him was pulled roughly open.
The man who filled it was clearly Major General Ponsonby. He wore gold at his neck, in a high collar which looked in danger of throttling him, and more braided across his erect and very wide shoulders. His buttons were twice the size of the soldier's.
I dropped a quick curtsy. 'Major General Ponsonby,' I held out my hand, 'my name is Alicia Buckley. I wonder if we might speak?'
'Miss . . . er . . .' Taken aback he might have been, but he was no young and unformed soldier. 'What did you say your name was?' His irritation vibrated in the corridor.
'Alicia Buckley.' I dropped my hand. He didn't seem to notice. ‘I’d hoped you might be able to help with a matter of importance to a friend.'
He stared at me without blinking. He didn't look at Moll at all. 'Do you know anything about the business of armies, Miss Buckley?' he demanded.
'Very little,' I admitted.
'I thought as much.' His brows, when he brought them together, obscured his eyes. 'Commanding officers are not common soldiers, Miss Buckley. If you wish to speak with one you must proceed through…'
Moll's sudden wail was not so much anguished as heartbroken. She buried her head in my skirts and began a pitiful, muffled weeping.
'What's wrong with that child?' The commander looked startled.
'I'll remove her, Major General, sir.' When the soldier stepped forward Moll howled and held on to me as if drowning. A door further down the corridor opened and another gold-braided officer appeared. Then another door opened. Moll gulped and shuddered and went on crying.
'She'd hoped, Major General, as indeed I had myself, that you would give us some few minutes of your time.' I spoke in my most polished tones and loudly enough for everyone in the corridor to hear.
'She shouldn't be here.' Some of the fight had gone out of the commander.
'I realise that, now,' I was contrite, 'please put our incursion down to the ignorance of a city woman. I'm visiting in the locality, from Dublin. It was my father suggested you might be of assistance.' I smiled ruefully. 'Both my father and I mistakenly thought a camp on the plains, such as this, would be less formal than those in Dublin.'
He watched my face carefully as I spoke. When I stopped he rubbed the side of his nose and grunted. 'Your father was not completely wrong.' His smile was paternalistic and revealed large gaps between his teeth. But he'd relaxed. He'd found a role he could adopt with me. 'Unfortunately, I have a busy schedule and cannot speak with you now. Come back tomorrow, in the afternoon at three o'clock. I'll give you fifteen minutes then. Don't bring the child with you.'
He bowed, stiffly, and walked past us without another word. The young soldier followed him at a military trot from the building. The open doors along the corridor discreetly closed.
'You can take your head out of my skirts now,' I said to Moll.
We got out of the camp as quickly as we could, avoiding the officers' huts and Captain Browne. Captain Alexander Ainslie was nowhere to be seen.
'You shouldn't have been so quick to lie to that captain about us having a carman waiting,' Moll sniffed as we began a tired trudge across the plains. 'He might have given us a drive back.'
'I'd have had to tell him where we live,' I pointed out.
'He very likely knows anyway. I told you, you're not the great liar you think you are.' Moll looked back at the camp and stuck out her tongue. 'When I'm a woman I'll have not
hing to do with soldiers. I'll have nothing to do with any man. When Mama's dead I'll go to America and live my life there.'
'What do you know about America?'
'I know that it's far away and that it's a rich place.' She opened the bag carrying the currants and took out the bottle of scent she'd admired on the donkey cart. 'I'll have perfumes for every day of the week when I'm in America.' She dabbed her throat and hair liberally.
We ate the currants as we went. I said nothing about her stealing the perfume. I was only sorry I hadn't bought it for her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Allie
'I can't leave him. I'm doing it for his sake.' Sarah stared at James, on a blanket in the afternoon sun, as if she was being asked to abandon him to hell's fire.
'You're doing it as much for yourself as you are for him. What he hasn't got he won't miss.' Ellen Neary picked up the baby and laid him gently across her knees. James kicked his legs when she tickled him. 'It's not as if children saw much of their fathers anyway.'
This might have been true of children in general, and of Ellen's childhood in particular, but it was not the way to persuade Sarah to leave James in the wren village while she went with me to meet Major General Arthur Ponsonby. Sarah had never been good about taking advice. She had to learn everything the hard way.
'My child will know his father,' she insisted as she lifted James from Ellen's knees, 'and I will take him with me tomorrow. The army won't have the heart to deny him once they see him.'
'Innocence is one thing, Sarah Rooney,' Ellen stood, 'but stupidity's another. There's an excuse for the first but none for the second. Your stupidity will lose you your man.' She left us where we sat by our nest, her petticoat whipping about her brown feet with every angry step away.
James began to snuffle and then to cry. 'You can see how I can't leave him,' Sarah said, 'he can't be without me . . .'
'He won't even know you've gone,' I said, 'Ellen will take care of him, and Lucretia and Lil.'
'I won't have that Lil Malone near my child,' Sarah's voice rose, 'she reminds me of someone . . .' She took a steadying breath. 'It's better if I take him with me. I won't feel easy without him.'
'The camp's commander is full of pompous self-importance, Sarah,' I said patiently, 'we'll have to work up to telling him about James. It's my guess he'll be furious if presented with a baby.'
'I can't leave him. He's all that I have.'
'You've lost your reason. You may well lose your chance of meeting your soldier too if you go on like this.'
I took a book to the other side of the nest to read. My hands, turning the pages, were brown. My arms were turning brown too, and my face, from being in the sun without a hat and wearing only a camisole. It was the same with Sarah. Soon we would be no different from the other wrens.
But it was good that the weather was holding; I didn't want to imagine what life in the village would have been like otherwise.
When the sun cooled I took my medical bag and went to see Lizzie Early, who'd been vomiting again. I was fairly certain that Lizzie had a tumour and that there wasn't a lot I, or anyone else, could do for her. I gave her laudanum and Beezy gave her whiskey. It made things bearable, nothing more. She would soon have to go to the workhouse. She didn't want to, maybe because she knew she would never leave it alive.
Sarah dressed carefully for our trip to the camp. She washed her hair and dried it in the sun. She stretched her petticoats on the grass in the sun too, to whiten them, and shook out her blue sprigged cotton dress, sprinkling it with water to freshen it. When her hair dried she caught it up with combs. She looked beautiful. She went to just as much trouble getting James ready. When she'd finished he looked merely disgruntled.
‘I'm sorry, Allie,' she said as we walked along, 'I didn't mean it when I said I'd nothing but James. I have you.'
'I understand,' I said, and did.
I understood her feeling that she'd lost everything — her family and lover to circumstance, her sister to death. I understood because I sometimes felt I'd lost everything myself.
We walked slowly, not wanting to be overheated and perspiring when we stood in front of the commander. A sentry stopped us just inside the camp. I gave him my name told him about my appointment. He told us to go ahead. No one else stopped us.
The clock in its tower was striking three as we stepped into the headquarters building. The young soldier of the day before was on guard at the commander's door. His face took on a tormented look when I appeared with Sarah.
‘I’m sorry, ma'am, but you'll have to wait outside,' he told her and stood in her way.
'She won't do that,' I said, 'so you might as well let me go ahead and tell the commander she's here.' I gave him a rueful smile. 'In that way I'll be taking the responsibility. None of the blame will be on you.'
He stood to the side, reluctantly, and knocked on the door and opened it. Together, in one quick movement, Sarah and I slipped past him and into the commander's office.
Major General Ponsonby stood, disbelieving. 'Miss Buckley!'
The picture of the Queen behind him on the wall trembled as he brought his fist down on to the writing table in front of him. It was a big room, with wood panelling and a high ceiling. His anger filled it.
'This is an outrage. You were to come alone. But instead of yesterday's snivelling child you have brought an infant and . . .' he hesitated, 'nurse . . .' his second hesitation was longer, 'or mother. This is not a nursery. You are in a British Army station. You have abused the privilege of the meeting I agreed to. I must ask you to leave.'
He stopped. The outburst had taken energy. His hair,
magnificently black still with white sideburns, rippled with agitation.
'Please allow me speak before I go.' I stood in front of the table, trying to distract his gaze from Sarah and James, a waste of time since Sarah moved to stand beside me.
'I forbid you to say another word,' he turned his back and stared at the picture of his Queen. 'Be so good as to leave the camp and take your companions with you.' He lifted his hand and smoothed the folds of the Union Jack hanging to one side of the Queen's picture. 'Private Lynch,' he said without turning, 'please escort these females out of here.'
The soldier, who'd come into the room on our heels, stepped between Sarah and me. I'd seen more imposing figures doing card tricks in the Broadstone.
'Come along now,' he cleared his throat, 'you'll have to leave.' He took hold of our arms. He wasn't gentle.
'I'm here for a purpose. I'll not go until I've said what it is.' Sarah shook her arm free and strode the few steps to the writing table. 'I cannot believe the great British Army would deny justice to the child of one of its soldiers,' she said. 'I cannot believe you would deny a soldier the right to know he has a son.'
The commander didn't turn. He didn't speak either, just continued his study of Queen Victoria's picture. In it she was young and wearing her coronation robes, looking a lot more regal than she did in the widow's weeds she'd taken to wearing since Prince Albert's death. She had a calming effect on the major general, who was quieter when he at last turned.
'Any man, whether soldier or civilian, would know his child if he was married to its mother.' He looked over Sarah's head. 'I take it you are an unmarried woman?'
'My child's father and I had planned to marry. His regiment was moved to the Curragh unexpectedly from Beggar's Bush Barracks in Dublin to…’
'Yes, yes, it's a familiar story.' He was suddenly impatient. 'Women of your kind follow the army wherever it goes. You must understand that I am an officer in charge of men and that it is my duty to protect them. I don't want you, or your kind, in my camp. I cannot help you. This business is between you and your soldier.' He still didn't look at either Sarah or James.
'You could help all right, if you wanted to,' Sarah said flatly, 'but you don't. You may disparage me all you like but commanding this camp doesn't give you the right to deny my child his father. Have you no shame? Hav
e you no decency?'
Major General Ponsonby looked at her then and it was clear Sarah had lost her battle. He was the righteous, she the sinner. He reached behind him for a bell rope and pulled it viciously.
'You will be removed forcibly from the camp, madam, you and your friend, Miss Buckley, both.' He spoke with the barest movement of his lips. 'You talk to me of shame and decency? You who have seduced a soldier, or soldiers, for God alone knows how many men you've known. You impose yourself upon me in a flagrantly deceitful manner . . .' He leaned forward, so stiffly I thought he would topple. But he put his hands on the table and steadied himself. 'I command a fine body of men, madam. I have no intention of delivering one of them up to a whore. My men are diseased because of creatures like you. You peddle your filth and they are but men and lonely and avail of you out of need and you leave your curse with them. It's spread throughout the camp. We're in the midst of making the men clean again and I don't want your kind about the place.'
Sarah stared at him. 'I am not a whore,' she said slowly, in a whisper. The door opened and two soldiers came in. They stood wordlessly to attention by the wall.
'You are a whore and your child is a bastard.' Their commander permitted himself a grimly virtuous smile. 'Those are the facts of it. You had best repent your sins and put yourself at God's mercy. The army cannot help you and it cannot help your child.'
James began to cry. I looked at the standing clock, ticking in the corner. We'd been in the room less than fifteen minutes.
'I pity you, sir,' Sarah said, 'and I pity the Queen you serve if you are the best can be found to command her army. There's a name, where I come from, for men like you,' she turned for the door, 'I won't waste my time saying it.' She gave the soldiers a contemptuous look. 'I hope you're proud of yourselves, and of how you earn your shilling.' She walked past them, and through the door, before turning. 'I'll find my child's father, Major General, and I'll find him without your help,' she said then.
'Assist Private Lynch in the conducting of these women out of the camp,' the commander sat at the writing table, 'make sure they are outside the boundaries.' He called my name as I started to follow Sarah. 'Miss Buckley.'
