When Blackbirds Sing

by Martin Boyd

  Dominic took off his clothes—it was the first time that he had been completely dressed—and climbed into his iron bed. In the dead traditional room the other weak and wounded men lay in their black beds, either asleep or reading by shaded lamps. The wood beyond the park was veiled in blue mist, and further obscured by the reflections on the glass. Everything was still and fading, the autumnal wood, the bleak room where there was no colour left on the walls, as across the park the glowing leaves had fallen from the trees. Upstairs in Hermione’s room the colour remained, the tradition still lived, but it was no longer alive for him. Even Sylvia, so much herself in that kind of room, because of it, became unreal to him. She had been a symbol of the things he had missed, but which now were dead. He could not feel any contact with her.

  Between her face and his was the face of the boy he had shot. Because of the response in that boy’s eyes as he shot him, he could no longer meet her eyes. This had become not so much an emotional obsession, as a reasoned perception of his mind. He reasoned about everything connected with that incident.

  He was better here, he thought, in the dead room, under the bare walls, the cold pillars and the hollow dome, than in the room above where the old life remained. He could not respond to the rays of its colour. There had never been tenderness between himself and Sylvia, only the passion of their bodies. Now he saw clearly, with his mind but not with his heart, that she had tenderness to offer him. He was puzzled, but he could find no response to it.

  In a few days he had a letter from Lord Dilton, who wrote:

  I was very sorry to hear that you were so badly wounded, but Sylvia tells me that you are now well on the way to recovery. I wrote to you in France when I saw your name in the casualty list, but things were a bit chaotic at the time and I suppose you did not get the letter. The first battalion was badly cut up.

  If you have nowhere to go when you leave the hospital, Edith and I would be very pleased if you came here. It would not be exciting, but we should do our best to make you comfortable. If you don’t help me to drink it, some of the best wine will go over. We shall put you on the establishment when you’re fit again, which I hope will be soon. You’ve done well, but I am glad that you’re out of it.

  He did not reply to this letter until he had left Hermione’s hospital, a few weeks later.

  CHAPTER TEN

  When he left the hospital Dominic went to the little hotel in Mayfair where he was now known. On arrival he rang up Cousin Emma’s house. She was out, but he said that he would come round to collect some luggage he had left there. The parlourmaid told him that it was not ready to take away. The suitcases were in the boxroom, and his clothes had been put away with camphor in chests of drawers. They would need to be aired and pressed. He said that did not matter, and he took a taxi down to Brompton Square. The parlourmaid helped him pack his clothes. When they had done this she asked him to wait to see Cousin Emma who would be back soon, and sorry to miss him, but he did not feel sufficiently braced to meet her, and he only left a grateful message.

  He went back to the hotel and changed into a creased and smelly grey suit. Then he went out and sat in the park near Stanhope Gate. He wore no overcoat as he hoped that the fresh air would take the smell of camphor from his suit. But he was soon cold and he went back and lit the gas fire in his hotel bedroom. He hung his coat on a chair before the fire and lay down on the bed, and tried to think what to do.

  This hotel room was now the only room he had, apart from his farm, where his wife and child lived on the other side of the world. But his farm had almost ceased to have material reality for him, in spite of Helena’s evocative letters. It had been too long an unattainable dream, and the letters had the nature of a medieval description of heaven. He had as so often in his life followed his impulse without seeing the next step. He had put on civilian clothes, and then saw no direction in which he could turn. He had left the hollow room, the dead tradition in which he had lived hitherto, but he had no other dwelling, no one even that he could go to see. Cousin Emma would be incredulous and hostile when she saw him no longer in his smart uniform. When he thought of going to see Sylvia the jam at once came violently down in his brain. He could not even give himself a reason why he could not see her.

  He could not go to see Colonel Rodgers, even if he were in London, though now that he had been wounded and could, if he wished, put the ribbon of the Military Cross on his tunic, if he were wearing it, there was no one who would welcome him more warmly. He had something to establish himself with, to make him respected among his fellows, and he could not use it. To do so would be to ignore all that had happened in these last months, to ignore the boy whom he had shot, and to whom in some curious fashion he now felt his life belonged. With that feeling the jam in his brain was eased. He found that at last he could write to Lord Dilton. He crossed the room and sat down at a table where there was some stamped hotel paper in a box. He wrote:

  Dear Colonel,

  You have always been such a good friend to me that it is hard to write what I must say now. I am not coming back to the battalion. I have taken off my uniform and shall not wear it again. I cannot give my clear reasons in a letter, but I know that I must do this. I cannot do anything else. If there was any possible way in which I could avoid giving this return for your help and kindness, I would do it. I realise that you will have to take some disciplinary action against me. I shall be waiting at this hotel.

  Yours sincerely,

  Dominic Langton

  He went downstairs, bought a stamp at the reception desk, and himself took out the letter to post it. He had to be absolutely certain that it would go. He was more peaceful when he returned to his room, knowing that the letter was irrevocably in the pillar box. He had a light dinner sent up to him and went to bed, where he slept until eleven o’clock the next morning.

  There was a telegram on his breakfast tray: “Meet me at B——’s Club one o’clock tomorrow. Dilton.”

  Dominic spent the rest of the day drowsily in his room, except for a short walk in the park. The journey to London and the unaccustomed activity of the previous day had used up his slight reserves of strength. But the next morning, after another long sleep, he felt reasonably well again.

  He dressed himself as tidily as possible. His civilian shirts were quite fresh, and unlike his suits, smelled faintly of lavender. The gas fire had drawn most of the smell of camphor from his coat, but not all the creases. His hat was Australian, with a rather wide brim. As he walked down St James’s Street, where all the young men were in uniform, he looked rather as if he had been dressed in a waxworks.

  Lord Dilton was waiting for him in the hall at B——’s. He gave a slight start when he saw Dominic in civilian clothes. Although he had read in his letter that he would be wearing them, he had been so disturbed by his statement that he would not be returning to the battalion that he had not taken in the rest. He shook hands in a serious friendly way and said: “I’m glad you could get here. Are you quite fit now?”

  “Yes,” said Dominic. “I’m much better, thank you, sir.”

  “Well, we’d better go and find some luncheon.”

  Lord Dilton, forgetting that Dominic would not be in uniform, had intended to give him lunch at his club, but his appearance was a little odd. In his wax-works style clothes he did not look like an officer in mufti. He thought Dominic must be suffering from slight shell-shock, and hoped to persuade him to have further treatment and then return to the depot. He wanted to have as little attention as possible drawn to his present aberration. If he succeeded he did not want to be asked why Dominic had dressed like that to lunch with his colonel. He took him along to the grill room of the Carlton Hotel. When they were seated he said: “We’ll have something to eat first, and then talk things over.”

  During luncheon he talked about his herd of black cattle, and other things to do with farming. When they had their coffee, he said: “Perhaps we had better go back and find some quiet room at the club where we can ta
lk.”

  Dominic demurred. He did not want to talk as Lord Dilton’s guest, above all in a place like B——’s, where the tradition, which (in the bleak dining-room ward) he had felt to be dead, was alive and where every influence around them would be against him. He suggested that they should go back to his hotel. Lord Dilton thought it wise to humour him. In fact he preferred this himself, and they took a taxi there.

  There was a small public room at the back of the hotel, furnished with a mahogany table, two leather armchairs, a statuette of Cupid and Psyche, a copy of Who’s Who and a telephone directory. Dominic had never seen this room in use, so they went there, and sat in the leather armchairs on either side of a gas fire.

  “You wrote to me,” said Lord Dilton, “that you couldn’t give me the reasons for your attitude in a letter. Can you give them now?”

  “I’ll try,” said Dominic, but he began again to feel the stoppage in his brain, and he sat back in his chair without speaking. After a while Lord Dilton said: “You know the seriousness of the position you want to take, and its consequences for others besides yourself?”

  Dominic had not thought of the consequences for others, except perhaps Helena, and in his mind she was too far away to be much affected. But the mention of these consequences made the jam in his brain worse. He felt as if he were an ant trying to oppose the downhill progress of a steam roller. He closed his eyes trying to think how to begin.

  Lord Dilton felt some responsibility for his attitude, which, apart from the friendship he had for him and the fact that their families were old territorial neighbours with links through marriage, was one of the reasons why he had come to see him. From any other subaltern he would have thought a letter like Dominic’s crazy insolence, and would have put the proper machinery in motion to bring him to his senses. But Dominic had succeeded to this extent in life, that he had brought people to expect and even to accept his unpredictable behaviour.

  Lord Dilton after his conversation at dinner on that night during Dominic’s leave, when he was returning from Cornwall, had twinges of conscience. He thought that a colonel had no right to talk in that way about the war to one of his subalterns who was on active service, even if he was a friend outside the army. He was a responsible and conventional country gentleman, but the conventions to which he subscribed were being superseded. He believed strongly in authority, but also that authority should be patriarchal and benevolent; whereas now, directed by the press magnates and political adventurers, it was becoming rapacious and destructive of what he regarded as civilization. As with Dominic, his conventions no longer fitted the circumstances, so that, although very different from him, he had in a lesser degree the same inner conflict. He thought that he might be responsible for planting seeds in the hotbed of Dominic’s mind, which in the cool English earth of his own, did not produce such reckless and disproportionate growths.

  “What consequences do you mean?” asked Dominic at last.

  “If you refuse to fight you will bring disgrace on your wife and child; also it will be a black mark against your regiment.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said Dominic. “But whatever I do harms someone. That would be a lesser injury. At least I don’t take their lives.”

  Lord Dilton was going to say: “There are worse things than losing your life,” but although he believed that on rare occasions this was true, he felt suddenly nauseated at the idea of using the jargon that induced the country to fling a whole generation into the Moloch jaws.

  “If you feel that way,” he said, “you can come back to the depot, and we’ll put you on the establishment for the rest of the war. You’ve done your share. You’ve been decorated and badly wounded. No one could criticise you. You’ve done very well.”

  “I don’t feel that I’ve done well and I couldn’t go on teaching others to do what I won’t do myself.”

  Lord Dilton was surprised to find that he was relieved at this refusal, but he said: “It’s right to fight for your country.”

  “But I wasn’t fighting for my country. I would do that to defend Waterpark and Dilton. They are all of this country that I know. But you said on that night when I dined with you that we were fighting to ruin ourselves, to wipe out the Diltons and the Waterparks.”

  Lord Dilton looked gloomily at the gas fire. “I was afraid that was it,” he said. “I should not have spoken to you like that. I was feeling sore about Wolverhampton, who was an old friend of mine.”

  “But what you said was true, sir.”

  “We can’t take the law into our own hands. If everyone did what he thought right we’d have anarchy. A government must function, even a bad one, which I admit we have—damned bad one. Anyhow the government does allow for these conscientious objectors.”

  He used the words reluctantly, unwilling to believe that they could apply to a personal friend and an officer in his regiment.

  “But I’m not a conscientious objector,” said Dominic. “I would fight for Waterpark and for my farm in Australia if anyone threatened them. But they are not threatened, except by our own government. That’s what you said. When conscripts fight conscripts they are not defending anything. Neither is a menace to the other, or they would not be conscripted. The murder is forced on them from behind, by their governments.”

  “There must be a government,” repeated Lord Dilton, “and I suppose, newspapers.”

  “The government has no Divine Right. It’s only a Tweedledum agreeing to have a battle with a German Tweedledee. They could stop tomorrow if they wanted to. If anyone attacks me or what belongs to me, I’ll fight; but I won’t commit murder because someone else tells me to. That’s what I’m really trying to say.”

  That was the nearest he could get to the true cause of his attitude, the one particular murder which he could not bring himself to mention. He advanced arguments about the politicians and about the Wolverhamptons, because he thought that they would be acceptable to Lord Dilton. He believed that they were true, as much as he knew about them, but they were not his concern. What made it impossible for him to fight again was the brief exchange of human recognition as he shot the German boy.

  He believed that then he had violated every good thing he knew, all his passion for the beauty of the created world, which he had felt when he watched the Spanish divers, when he had held the chestnut bud in his hand on the steps of the village church. More, that glance came from the recognition of their deepest selves, a recognition of kind, which wiped out all the material obligation of their opposed circumstances.

  In that act he had violated the two things to which his whole being responded in worship; the beauty of a living human body, all the miracle of its movement and thought; and the relation of two souls in brotherhood. He had affronted both nature and God, which cannot be separated. Although it was his own single act that overwhelmed him, he was also oppressed by his awareness of the accumulated anguish of the war, the senseless death and hideous wounds multiplied and multiplied and multiplied.

  He went on advancing arguments which he thought would appeal to Lord Dilton, about the responsibility of governments and the fate of the landed gentry; but they were a deathly weariness to him. He was only filled with a passion of repudiation, which his mind was too ill-informed to present logically, and his body too weak to support.

  “But it’s anarchy,” Lord Dilton protested. “You can’t expect me to support you.”

  “I don’t expect you to, sir,” said Dominic. “But I don’t believe it’s anarchy. It’s the real law against artificial law.”

  “What d’you mean by the real law?”

  Dominic was silent. It was something he felt more than thought about.

  “The real law is natural,” he said at last.

  “Nature is savage enough—red in tooth and claw.”

  “It’s natural to kill your real enemies, those who threaten you; or to kill animals you want to eat. It’s not natural to kill people you don’t know, because you and they are told by Lloyd George and
Bethmann-Hollweg, or whoever it is, to kill each other. Lloyd George and Bethmann-Hollweg are not greater than God, to vet his laws, but we behave as if they were. I found that out in the very moment that I was wounded. Not because I was wounded, but just before, and I will never commit murder again. Nothing shall make me, nothing at all. I am sorry, sir.”

  Lord Dilton sat back in his chair. Dominic had spoken with such absolute conviction that he saw it was useless to continue the argument. In fact Dominic looked completely exhausted. The abandoned posture of his body showed that he had nothing more to say.

  “Can you wait a bit before doing anything definite?” asked Lord Dilton. “It’s obvious that you’re not fit yet.”

  “What I feel has nothing to do with being C.3.,” said Dominic. “I only know that I mustn’t serve any longer.”

  “Who tells you that you mustn’t?”

  Dominic puckered his forehead. “The Holy Ghost, I suppose,” he replied.

  “You are not serious!” said Lord Dilton angrily.

  “It’s the only way I can explain it,” said Dominic.

  They sat silent for a few minutes. Lord Dilton looked flushed and bothered. At last he appeared to come to a decision.

  “Until you’re fit, there’s no need to declare yourself,” he said.

  “Everyone will know. They’ll ask why I’m not wearing uniform!”

  “You’re wounded and on leave. Tell ’em to go to the devil,” said Lord Dilton, who was himself in mufti. “When I was young, soldiers didn’t go about in private houses wearing uniform. But I suppose it pleases these young fellows they have now. Anyhow, will you do nothing for a bit?”

  “Nothing is about all I can do,” said Dominic, smiling bleakly. The old friendship between them grew stronger.

  “Will you come down to Dilton until you’re quite fit? We won’t talk about it until then. Put it in cold storage for a while.”