Dark Angel

by Sally Beauman

  She began to pace up and down the icy platform. She waved her mittened hands in the air.

  “Blind, blind, blind,” she cried—so the Lancashire nurses gave her a curious look. “I should have seen. I hate myself.”

  Wexton listened. He did not comment. There was a stanza of a poem in his mind. As Jane spoke, it began to take shape. He stood still, hunched in his scarves and jackets and coats. He held on to the poles and rolled canvas of his stretcher. The canvas was wet; a thin crust of ice was forming on its surface. He felt he had a crust of ice on his upper lip as well.

  He stared downwind, along the rail lines, in the direction from which the train would approach. He listened to Jane; he listened to the poem; he also listened to something else. Distant, but growing more distinct, he could hear the throb of an engine. The wind distorted the sound. He thought, but he was not sure, that what he heard was the engine of the hospital train.

  From the past, Jane had moved on to the future. She was trying to explain the expression on Boy’s face: its gentle bewilderment, its unconvincing hope. This made Jane very agitated. She said she should have talked to Boy longer and tried to dissuade him. Turning back to Wexton, she began to explain that when she said goodbye to Boy she had had a premonition of misfortune.

  It was then that Wexton’s large hand hit her hard in the small of her back. He said: “Get down!”

  The blow knocked the breath out of her. She fell painfully, flat on the wet paving, the stones skinning the side of her face. One leg twisted under her; Wexton’s weight slammed against her back. The poles of the stretcher struck her across the head. Their bodies were a tangle of wet wool, canvas, mufflers. The air thundered, then lit. Wexton’s elbow jabbed her spine. He rubbed her face on the wet pavement. Jane fought him off. She wriggled an inch, then lifted her head.

  Wexton was insane. The platform was insane. What had been black was light. The edge of the platform was bitten off and furred with smoke. Flames ran up the poles of the station canopy. They fluttered like flags. They licked along the roof. The blackness was ecstatic.

  Someone screamed. A Red Cross nurse ran by, her cape alight. Her hair was burning. Her mouth was jagged. Jane knew that she must stand and do something about this, but Wexton would not let her. She lifted her head and he crammed it down again. She could feel his fist on her neck. This made her angry, in the most violent way. She fought Wexton; she hammered at his hands; she tried to hit his face.

  Wexton was too heavy for her and too strong. This was fortunate, for it was at that moment that the pilot of the Zeppelin airplane jettisoned his second bomb. He had been, in fact, off course. With a precision then rare, he hit not only the station but also the engine of the oncoming train.

  The engine reared itself up. It flung itself sideways. It erupted hot iron and steam. Hot coals flew into the air. Shrapnel whined. The carriages behind careened forward, lost impetus, collided, and skewed. An iron snake, chopped into fragments; these fragments veered off, one to the left, another to the right. The fourth mounted the third; metal copulated. There was silence, then a buzzing like flies, then a scream.

  Wexton had saved her. Jane knew this, finally, when she lifted her head, when Wexton, who was shaking, helped her to her feet. Just a yard from her, where they had been standing a few moments before, was a metal pole of some kind, part of the train, or a rail, perhaps once a part of the station roof. With the precision of a javelin, it now impaled a paving stone.

  The carriages of the train were burning. The wounded men inside them burned too. This sight, and this smell, Jane and Wexton never described, although when I was a child, Jane would tell part of the story, would recount how her friend Wexton saved her life.

  There were other incidents she left out, but which Wexton retold for me, all those years later, sitting together at Winterscombe. This was one of them. Toward the end of the night, when the sky was lightening and the horizon was no longer black but gray, Jane returned to the train. She returned to the last carriage; less severely damaged than those to the front of the train, it had been slower to burn.

  All the men in it except one had been brought out. That man, whose leg had been broken under the wheel of a gun carriage some days before, could be glimpsed through the broken door. He lay beneath a sheet of twisted metal. He made no sound. He was thought to be dead. The carriage was beginning to burn as Jane approached it.

  As she walked forward, the remaining glass in the carriage windows exploded. There was a burst of flame, a scatter of vicious confetti. Jane ducked her head. She clambered down from the platform and across the rails, which ran with hot grease. She grasped the wheel of the carriage and began to haul herself up. Wexton tried to haul her back. Jane clung to the jagged metal of the door. It was like grasping ice; her palms sizzled. She looked down and watched her skin peel back. Somehow, she brought the man out.

  Wexton helped her, along with one of the Lancashire nurses. The smoke made them blind. They lifted; they dragged; they pushed. The man was extracted; he was bundled upon a stretcher; he was conveyed to Wexton’s ambulance. There, her face blackened by smoke, her burnt hands hastily bandaged, my mother, Jane, attempted to dress his wounds. The man regained consciousness, but only briefly. Some three kilometers from Saint-Hilaire, he turned away his face and died.

  That man—one of the Hennessy brothers, as it turned out—was the first of the Hennessy family to die. Two brothers were to follow him, one at the battle of Arras, one at Messines Ridge. Jack Hennessy was to be the sole survivor of the four tall sons who had once carried Edward Shawcross’s body back to Winterscombe on an improvised stretcher, and Jack Hennessy—or so he said to me as a child—never forgot my mother’s attempt to save his brother.

  Shoveling coke in the basement, his instincts more than ever feudal, he would tell me war stories. He would tell me how, and where, he lost his left arm (an amputation that put paid to his ambitions to be head carpenter); he would tell me how, and where, his brothers died; and—undeterred by the fact that he himself had not witnessed it—he would give me this account of my mother’s heroism.

  Was it true? Wexton says that it was; my mother always claimed that Hennessy exaggerated. In her diaries she makes no mention of the incident—but Constance, in her journals, does. Its ironies amused her.

  So, she wrote some weeks later, when the news reached her. A Hennessy has died—assisted by Jane. The wrong Hennessy, alas, Acland. Still, I feel we both tried.

  Boy stood in the rain at the foot of the steps that led up to the Corinthian Club in Pall Mall. He looked up at the gray and august façade of the club. He was to meet there with Sir Montague Stern. It was evening, two days before Constance’s marriage.

  He had spent the day fasting; he felt he must prepare for this—a crucial meeting—in the correct way. He must be alert. He must not listen to the sound of guns he knew were the other side of the Channel. He must take his father’s role, since his father had ducked out of it. He must behave like an officer and a gentleman—reliable and predictable rails, they ran dead straight.

  He was confident. He was wearing uniform, a deliberate choice. He had a Sam Browne belt around his waist and, attached to that belt, a holster containing his service pistol. His cap felt like a helmet. Boy looked at the steps. He walked up them with firm strides.

  Boy’s choice of the Corinthian was an obvious one. His grandfather had been a member, as well as his father; Boy had been made a life member at the age of twenty-one. He might dislike the place, but he felt he had a right to it in a way Stern certainly did not. It was a mystery to Boy that a man like Stern had contrived to become a member at all. He expected Stern to look ill at ease and out of place.

  At first, all went well. The club porter greeted him instantly by name and correct rank, despite the fact that it was years since Boy had been there. His greatcoat was taken, his army cap, his swagger stick. Several old men, deep in leather chairs, looked up as he passed and greeted him with a nod. His father’s son.

 
; Boy now felt safe only when playing a role. His confidence increased. This confidence was strong in the hall; it was strong on the stairs; it remained strong when he entered the smoking room. Then he glimpsed Stern: Stern was standing at the far end of the room, his back to the fire; a club servant hovered. To his left was an elderly duke; to his right was the Foreign Secretary. They appeared to hang upon his words. Boy was outraged.

  It was then that everything began to go wrong. Stern greeted him with an easy warmth; he held out his hand, which Boy (who would have liked to punch him in the jaw) felt forced to take. The duke and the Foreign Secretary moved discreetly aside. Before Boy quite knew what had happened, he and Stern were both seated in leather chairs by the fire, and it was Stern, not he, who had placed the order for the whiskies. The servant returned with them speedily. Stern reached for a cigar case.

  Boy focused his eyes first on Stern’s waistcoat, which he considered monstrous, its colors loud. They moved on to the jacket Stern wore, which was too new and too aggressively waisted. They dropped to Stern’s shoes, which were handmade but likewise too new. Boy stared at them, transfixed with loathing.

  Boy, like his father and grandfather before him, despised new shoes. The point about shoes was that, once made, they lasted a lifetime. If new shoes were unavoidable, then they must be broken in first, boned and polished daily by a well-trained servant for at least a year before they graced the feet. Stern’s shoes looked as if they had come out of their box that morning. His suit shouted money, which was unforgivable. His sleek hair, as tawny as a fox, was well cut and a fraction too long. His shirt cuffs were too white, the links on those cuffs too large. He was offering a cigar, and that cigar was a Havana. Boy took it, then almost dropped it; he felt his fingers burned.

  The next moment Boy was glad of the cigar. He must remove the band, wait while its end was clipped, light it, puff at it; all these activities gave him time to think. He had already rehearsed what he would say; it merely remained to say it in the correct manner. Boy, aware that he was sitting on the edge of his chair, moved back. He crossed his legs, then uncrossed them again. He squared his shoulders. He ignored the nearby back of the Foreign Secretary. He attempted to fix Stern with the gaze he had planned, the same gaze he used when addressing his men before battle: the direct approach, man to man, no sign of fear and no need to insist on superiority of rank, for that superiority was innate, the essence of command.

  He could not begin. He had squared his shoulders but he could not begin. His mind blurred and muddled: This sentence, or that one? He took a sip of whisky. One of Stern’s well-shod feet tapped. At the back of his mind, in some recess that seemed never to clear, Boy heard the rush and reverberation of guns.

  He set down the whisky glass with care. His hand shook somewhat, and he hoped Stern did not observe this. It was something that happened now, this shaking, and when it began, it was not always possible to control.

  He eased his collar away from his neck. He was beginning to sweat. The room was too hot. It was too quiet. He was suddenly afraid that when he began to speak he would stammer. This happened, too; it had happened, once or twice in the past months, in front of his men—if he had missed sleep, if the events of the preceding day had been particularly terrible.

  In France, when this happened, he had his sergeant to turn to: Sergeant Mackay, a Glaswegian, small, wiry, foulmouthed, and indestructible. Mackay could step in and interpret, if need be, when the words jammed on Boy’s tongue. Mackay could …

  Except, no. Boy did not have Mackay anymore. Mackay had been at his side, right through, until—three weeks before—he took a rifle-grenade in the jugular, and proved to be destructible after all.

  Blood in the air. Mud in the air. Boy waved his hand in front of his face, as if to clear the cigar smoke. Subdued conversation; guns boomed. Boy set down his cigar and waited. He waited for the present to reassert itself—as it always did in the end. He pulled at his ear. The guns receded. Stern looked at his watch. Boy leaned forward. Clear and concise: an officer and a gentleman.

  “This marriage,” he said. His voice was too loud. He did not care. “This marriage,” he repeated. “I have come here to tell you. It will not take place.”

  By then, Boy had been in England two days. He had shunted back and forth between London (where he saw Maud) and Winterscombe (where the marriage was to be celebrated). The phrase he used now to Stern—“This marriage will not take place”—was one he had already used, many times.

  He had said it to his father, to his mother, to Maud, to Freddie, and to Steenie. Gwen wept. His father told him, brusquely, to mind his own business. Freddie said he could not help; he did not understand it either. Maud said that when Montague was fixed upon something, he was unswerving, and he was fixed upon this. Steenie had advised him to give in. “Stop this marriage?” He had raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Boy, you might as well try to stop an avalanche with a feather duster. Forget it, and forget it now.”

  Boy had ignored these remarks. He set off in pursuit of Constance. Constance, he feared, was avoiding him, and he did not track her down until late that afternoon. She was walking by the lake.

  A monochrome day, frost in the air, the grass crisp beneath his feet, a skim of ice on the lake. Out of the pallor of the air, Constance glittered.

  She was wearing a new coat, which was pale and impossibly expensive—even Boy could see that. This coat had a loose hood trimmed with white fox fur. The fur had stiffened in the cold, so that when Constance turned to greet him, with a laugh and a cry of pleasure, he found her face framed in a crown of tiny spikes, a halo of fox and diamonds.

  Black hair, eyes blacker than he remembered, a brilliant mouth, tiny puffs of warm air as she cried his name. She took his hand. She pressed it between soft kid gloves.

  She reached up on tiptoe. “Francis! You’re here!”

  She kissed his cheek. She danced toward him, danced away from him, displaying herself, displaying the small dog she had with her. A Pomeranian, snow-white, diminutive, absurd, and antagonistic. Boy could have killed it with one kick. The minute it saw him, the Pomeranian bared its teeth. Constance reprimanded the dog. She fastened its leash, which was scarlet leather attached to a rhinestone collar.

  “My engagement present, from Montague!” Constance ruffled the little dog’s fur. “Did you ever see a more preposterous animal—or a more vulgar collar? I love them both.”

  She danced toward him; she danced away from him. Boy had never felt larger or more slow. He pursued Constance, and dog, across the lawns. His feet plodded. They left large footprints in the frost. He explained (he was sure he had explained; he even felt quite certain that he had, as planned, proposed). Constance trickled through his hands; it was like trying to grasp water.

  When he had pursued her as far as the terrace, she turned to him. She stood on tiptoe once more. She kissed his cheek once more.

  “Remember? Darling Francis, of course I remember. I love you dearly too. I always have. I always will. You are my own special guardian and my brother. Oh, Francis, I’m so glad they gave you leave—I should hate to be married and you not there. I shall look for you in the church as I walk up the aisle. Do you remember the little ring you gave me once—the one with the blue stone? I shall be wearing that—something blue, you know, for luck. I want to be lucky. I shall wear it around my neck, so Montague may not be jealous—he can be so jealous sometimes.” She shivered. “Quickly—it’s cold, don’t you think? Walk with me, Francis. Take my arm. No—let’s run, shall we? I feel like running, and shouting and dancing. How good the air is! I’m so happy today.”

  She ran with him. She ran away from him. A small deft figure, the ridiculous dog at her heels. After that, she had managed—Boy was sure of this—not to be alone with him.

  Which left him, as he had feared from the first, with Stern. Constance, who was a woman, and a child, could not be expected to deal with Stern. He should have seen that from the first.

  “Will not take pl
ace?” Stern’s face came back into focus. He was regarding Boy with a detached and urbane amusement. “The wedding is the day after tomorrow. My dear fellow, I leave for Winterscombe later tonight. I had thought we might travel down together. Is there some difficulty, Boy?”

  “You are not a suitable husband for Constance.”

  A terrible thing was about to happen: Boy had no premonition of it at all. The sentences were flowing now. An officer and a gentleman. He never stammered once.

  “Leaving aside the question of your age, and your … friendship with my aunt …”

  “Leaving them aside?” A faint smile. “Boy, you surprise me.”

  “Leaving aside questions of your race, of the differences in background …”

  On and on. The words were like one of the new tanks. He could see them churning up the mud, tilting, flattening. Boy approached his conclusion: He suggested Stern do the honorable thing and call off this marriage. He appealed to his instincts as a gentleman, while making it quite clear he did not consider Stern a gentleman and never would. Stern sipped his whisky. He drew on his cigar.

  “Impossible, I’m afraid.”

  That was all. There was no mention of love, no attempt at justification. The arrogance of this stung Boy. He began to feel very hot. One gun boomed, then another. For the first time Boy began to feel afraid. He scented failure, and because of this he launched himself upon his last assault, one he had hoped to keep in reserve.

  He raised the topic of Hector Arlington. Boy did not understand finance as well as he might have liked but he felt he understood this saga well enough. His voice rose. He became excitable.

  “Hector and I were in the same regiment. We were very old friends. He told me how you’d advised his mother. Before he died—”

  “Ah, yes. A tragic thing. I was very sorry to hear of it.”