In Pale Battalions - Retail

by Robert Goddard

  Christmas came and went. I declined an offer of home leave. The year 1917 opened dull and drear and found us, drained of spirit, cast on the frozen ramparts of a mindless, endless war.

  I thought often of Hallows, and Leonora, and all that had happened at Meongate. But I wrote no letters and received none. It seemed somehow safer that way, as if, in some wasteland that was Picardy, there was at least some form of refuge, some consolation to be had in its blank and grinding ruin.

  Rumour abounded that the battalion was to follow Colonel Romney to Egypt in the spring. I paid the prospect no heed. France, Egypt or the ends of the Earth. What, after all, did it matter? In February, I was promoted first lieutenant – reward, I think, for still being alive.

  During March I had a long weekend due and arranged to spend it in Amiens. Cousin Anthea was in the area, having just returned from England, and I agreed to meet her in a café near the cathedral. It was a cold, grey afternoon with flurries of snow. I arrived first, sat at a corner table and ordered Cognac.

  Anthea burst in late, with a gust of her irrepressible, ever-jarring good cheer. She was a bundle of energy and enthusiasm, with a schoolgirlish laugh and an undimmed conviction that all would turn out for the best. To the nursing profession, probably a godsend. To me, at the low ebb of my wintry soul, anathema. The café was dark, full of glum-faced, elderly customers rustling newspapers and saying little, wreathed in fumes of ersatz coffee and stale garlic. I wanted only to rest and retreat into the shadows of their unyielding company. But Anthea would have none of it.

  ‘I can’t stay long, Tom. We’re terribly hard-pressed at present.’

  I nodded. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Very well,’ she said emphatically. ‘Never better. I thrive on hard work.’

  ‘How was England?’

  ‘Everyone’s in very good spirits. It seems certain now that the Americans will come in on our side.’

  ‘So I’m told. What about the family?’

  ‘Fighting fit.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Papa’s taken a new gardener. He had to let Moffat go. He simply wasn’t up to the heavy work any more. Oh, and apparently’ – she leaned intently across the table – ‘Charlotte’s expecting again.’

  I was momentarily nonplussed. ‘Charlotte?’

  ‘Your cousin, silly. In Keswick.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’

  ‘Didn’t you stay with some people called Hallows last summer?’ she said abruptly.

  ‘Er … yes. Why?’

  ‘There was an obituary notice in The Times the last day I was home. I thought I recognized the name – and the address.’

  I felt my throat dry suddenly. ‘What name?’

  ‘See for yourself. I cut it out. I thought you’d be interested.’ She reached into her bag and took out a folded piece of paper. I snatched it from her.

  ‘HALLOWS: on 19th March 1917, in Ventnor Cottage Hospital, Isle of Wight, peacefully, after a short illness, Leonora May Hallows (née Powell), aged 25 years, of Meongate, Droxford, Hampshire, beloved widow of the late Captain the Hon. John Hallows. Funeral service at the Parish Church, Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, on Friday, 23rd March at 12 noon.’

  And so she was gone, her fragile beauty plucked and lost like a flower before the storm. As soon as I read it, I knew it was it was bound to be. I had loved her. Time was to show that she was the only woman I would ever love. Yet I had known her for such a short time. The first afternoon at Meongate – to the last at Bonchurch. Less than a month, so much less, than the lifetime for which I would remember her.

  Anthea was no longer with me when, an hour later, sobered by grief beyond the reach of all the drink I’d consumed, I leant on the parapet of one of the bridges crossing the Somme and saw again, in my mind, Leonora’s face, turned to look at me, her gaze travelling past me to the future she would never know. Nor was it only grief that caused the tears to well in my eyes. There was guilt, a wounding accusation of self, gouging at the centre of my loss. I should have saved her, should have found a way to protect her. Instead, nursing self-pity in the name of a love she could never return, I had left her to meet her fate.

  I thumped the stonework of the parapet until my hand ached. I bowed my head and wept. And then I knew. It was too late for Leonora, but, for the sake of what I’d felt for her, I knew what I had to do. I had thought myself free of them, immunized by the futility of war, but now I knew: I must go back.

  With the funeral already past, there was little point to such a journey and even less need for haste. But that isn’t how I felt. Having refused leave when it was my due, I obtained it now at short notice on spurious grounds: an ailing parent. The battalion, I was told, would embark for Egypt in the first week of April. I would either have to follow them or join a different unit. Not that I cared either way. By the end of the week, I was back in England.

  I walked down to Bonchurch from Ventnor on a bright morning – the last of March – and went straight to Sea Thrift. From within, the dog barked vaingloriously at my knock. Then Grace Fotheringham came to the door.

  ‘I thought you would have come sooner, Mr Franklin.’

  ‘I came as soon as I heard.’

  ‘Won’t you step inside?’

  I’d not entered the house before and found it, now, as I might have expected: light, airy, femininely dainty, with the breeze stirring curtains at every open window, daffodils in slender vases sharing the brightness of the morning.

  She led me into the sitting room, where french windows looked out on to the garden. The dog sniffed suspiciously at my feet. ‘You’ll want to know what happened.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She gestured for me to sit down, then sat opposite me. ‘It seemed a simple chill at first, then it turned to influenza. The illness was complicated by her pregnancy and the strain of delivery was too much for her. She contracted pneumonia and died five days after birth.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘The Powerstocks wanted nothing to do with the funeral. That’s why it was held here. Only an elderly uncle attended: a Mr Gladwin. Her own family are in India, I believe.’

  ‘And the baby!’

  ‘She’s still at the hospital. Premature, you understand. But she’s going to be fine. I expect to be able to bring her home on Monday.’

  ‘You’ll bring her here?’

  ‘Where else? I had a distasteful letter from a Mr Mayhew making it quite clear that Lord Powerstock felt no obligations to the child. I can hardly send her to India. I shall look after her myself.’

  ‘Have you named her?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve given her her mother’s name. What else could it be?’

  What else indeed? I could have walked the mile to the hospital and seen you then, I suppose. But I didn’t. I’d come looking for another Leonora, denied me by loves and loyalties outweighing mine. And she wasn’t there any more. So I thanked Miss Fotheringham and prepared to leave.

  ‘Why did you wait so long to call?’ she asked as she showed me to the door.

  ‘I’ve only been in England since yesterday.’

  She frowned. ‘Come, come. That can’t be. The sexton told me he’d seen a strange man at the graveside two days ago. Who could it have been but you? The description certainly fitted.’

  I ran all the way up the hill to the church, a larger, grander affair than the old church I’d visited with Leonora: a stern monument to Victorian propriety, bounded by railings and an aura of pious rectitude.

  I stepped inside the gates and paused to catch my breath. There were daffodils scattered gaily between the grim, upright gravestones, rooks cawing in the bare trees above me, an acrid scent on the breeze from a distant bonfire. Every clear, sun-etched line of stone and branch denied the mystery that I knew, now, was nearer than ever before.

  There was only one new grave, the earth still mounded and un-turfed, one wreath left, the inscription on its card washed blank by recent rain, its scattered blooms flecking the grass around. I’d brou
ght no flowers, could only stare, with sudden grief, as much at my own inadequacy as at this final confirmation that Leonora was truly gone.

  There was nothing to do. Now I’d jumped to the instinctive conclusion, now I’d raced up the silent lane to this place of rest and found only what I might have expected, I felt cheated by my own need to believe that there was something beyond what I saw. I retreated to a bench beneath the eaves of the church, within sight of Leonora’s grave, and sat there, waiting for disappointment to fade. I lit a cigarette and watched a squirrel nosing curiously amongst the stones. But it didn’t help. All I felt was the creeping lassitude of an overdue despair. Two years caught in a war beyond reason had drained my spirit. I should, I knew, have stayed in France, or gone to Egypt, followed death’s beckoning finger without resistance. Instead, I sat alone in an English churchyard at the brittle edge of spring and felt only the weariness of one who had already lived too long.

  I fell asleep. A trance of sunlight and solitude and warm stone. The body took its pleasure where resolution had given way. I slept deeply, as tired men will do, dreamlessly, almost contentedly.

  When I woke, he was sitting next to me. How long he’d been there, or what had stirred me, I couldn’t tell. He might, I reflected, have been there for ever: quiet, ironic, overlooked. He seemed much more than a year older, reduced, somehow, in his drab civilian clothes, worn to a greyness of skin and spirit by whatever lie he’d lived. I looked at him and knew him, but only, as it were, as the brother of a friend: a certain family resemblance to the man I thought I knew.

  ‘Hello, Tom.’

  I said nothing. I did not know what to say.

  ‘It’s good to see you. Better than you know.’

  It was still his voice, beyond any doubt of faded recollection, his authentic voice within an unprotesting stranger.

  ‘I’d hoped you would come.’

  Then I spoke. ‘Why? Why did you do it? I don’t understand – any of it – to this day.’

  ‘Understanding is perhaps too much to ask. When it came to the point, it would have been easier not to go through with it. But it had to be. Do you believe in destiny, Tom?’

  ‘I’m not sure – not any more.’

  ‘I knew it would end when it did: in 1914. The world, I mean, my world. When I married Leonora that spring – three years ago – I sensed the need of haste, as if, slowly, imperceptibly, the life I’d lived so safely and securely was tilting beneath my feet, creaking inaudibly towards the moment when it would open and consume me. And so it was.

  ‘It wasn’t that I simply didn’t fancy my chances of survival. I knew there was none. For destiny can’t be dodged, can it? Not for long. I thought of what would happen after I’d gone, of Leonora alone at Meongate. And when I met Mompesson, I knew at once what would happen. Because he told me, not in so many words, but clearly enough. And I believed him.

  ‘That’s why I set out to dodge destiny, just to walk away from it, at a time of my choosing. Is that cowardice, I wonder? Or merely disobedience to fate? I planned it to coincide with your leave because I couldn’t risk being swayed by friendship. I’m sorry to have deceived you.’

  ‘I was told you’d gone out with Box to check the wire: that neither of you had come back. But your papers were found later on a corpse in no man’s land. That was Box, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. I’d intended simply to slip away from him, but he ran into an enemy patrol and got hit. So I went back and did my best for him. I put my tunic round his shoulders to keep him warm while we crouched in a shell hole and the German artillery let loose overhead. By the time it had quietened down, Box was dead. Then I thought: Why not leave my papers on him? I had no need of them and, if anyone took him for me, so much the better. So I did. I left Box where he lay and took off by a route I’d already reconnoitred. I headed south and cut through the lines where transport was heaviest, then doubled back to Hernu’s Farm. I’d cached some money and clothes in an outbuilding and found it all intact. I was on my way. I walked all through the next day and, in the evening, caught a train at a place called Montdidier. It took me to Paris.

  ‘There, with money and respectable clothes, it was easy enough to pass myself off as a journalist. I was able, after a period spent cultivating the right contacts, to obtain an excellent forgery of a passport in the name of Willis. With that, it was possible to return to England at my leisure. Once home, however, it wasn’t so easy. Money was fast running out and, besides, I hadn’t thought any further than seeing Leonora again. So I went to Meongate, under cover of darkness, and the joy of being with her again was enough.

  ‘But only for a moment. Then I realized I’d gone too far: it wasn’t possible for me to come back from the dead. Leonora tried to persuade me to give myself up, but that I couldn’t do: it wouldn’t have been fair to saddle her with a deserter for a husband. So I simply went away – and hid.’

  ‘You went to Fletcher. And I know why.’

  He smiled grimly and glanced down at the ground. ‘You’ve done well, Tom. Yes, I went to Fletcher – and he sheltered me. I’d long wanted to see the man who meant so much to my mother. Odd it should have been when I had no choice. Or perhaps not so odd. Perhaps I recognized a fellow exile from the human race.

  ‘At all events, Fletcher found me a room in Portsea and I stayed there, wondering what to do. Every weekend, I went to Meongate in secret and spied on the house from the woods to see if Mompesson was visiting. He usually was. One day, I saw you too. It came as a relief to know you were there. I hoped you might somehow protect Leonora. For all the melodrama of my flight from France, what could I do that wouldn’t ruin her or break her heart?’

  ‘But on September 22nd you did do something, didn’t you?’

  He looked up again. ‘Matters couldn’t go on as they were. Fletcher kept warning me to leave Portsmouth and he was right: I couldn’t remain there. That evening, I entered Meongate in daylight, via the stables, and went up to the observatory: I knew I’d be safe there.’

  ‘Because it was locked – and you had the key?’

  He glanced at me and frowned. ‘Key? No, I had no key. It wasn’t locked. But what I saw from the observatory that evening made me wish it had been.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘My wife … and Mompesson …’ Abruptly, he rose from the bench and took a pace forward. ‘I shan’t speak of it. All that I’d striven to protect – all that I’d deserted for – was taken from me in that moment. Since then, I’ve been what I am today: a man as good as dead.’

  ‘What you saw may not have been as it appeared.’

  He swung towards me. ‘Don’t you think I don’t know that – now? At the time, it was too much for me. I fled the house. It was nearly dark by then. I went to the church, where it was empty and still, and prayed beside William de Brinon’s tomb. But I found no absolution. I felt excluded – even there – by my own deceit. As I was leaving, keeping to the shadows as I went, I saw you pass by at the end of the lane, heading for the inn. I needed you then, Tom. I needed your friendship. At last, I felt ready to tell somebody the truth.

  ‘I waited for you to leave the inn and, when eventually you did, I showed myself. But you didn’t recognize me. You were drunk, too drunk to know me. It was the final irony. I tried to tell you the truth, as we tottered back across the fields towards Meongate, but you didn’t hear a word. I left you sleeping in a barn. I didn’t think you’d remember. If you had, you’d have thought it was just a dream.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Truly sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. If anyone’s to blame for what’s happened, it’s me – or Mompesson.’

  ‘I don’t blame you for killing him.’

  Hallows turned away again and gazed towards Leonora’s grave. ‘I didn’t kill him, Tom. I never went back to Meongate. I walked through the night across the downs to Petersfield and caught the first train to London the following morning. I’ve not been back to Meongate from that day to this.’

  �
��That doesn’t make sense. It must have been you.’

  He shook his head. ‘No. It wasn’t me. That afternoon, wandering the streets aimlessly, I saw, blazoned on a news-stand, an Evening Standard headline: COUNTRY HOUSE MURDER OF AMERICAN. So I bought a copy. And there it was. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Mompesson was dead. What I might have done – what I should have done – somebody else had done for me. And, at last, I understood how my destiny was bound by Mompesson’s. Once he was dead I had to seem the same. I might have talked my way out of desertion, but from murder there was no escape. Even now, an unsolved crime waits to claim me the moment I declare myself. I’m trapped, Tom, more certainly than by the war. I’m trapped between a choice of deaths.’

  I rose and stood beside him, where I could see his face. He continued to look away. ‘When did you know she was pregnant?’

  ‘Ten days ago. Her death too I learned from a newspaper. That’s the price … of being a stranger.’ His voice thickened. He looked back towards her grave. ‘I came here at once and went to the hospital. I said I was a cousin. They told me there that she’d had a child. Suddenly, amongst strangers, posing as a dutiful but unconcerned relative, I learned that I was a father, a father who could not claim his child.’ He broke off, then resumed in a faltering tone, ‘Now, at last, I understand what might have forced her … to do as Mompesson required … why she should have come here … why she killed him. Now I understand … what I left her to face … alone.’

  ‘Where have you been since September?’

  ‘It’s better if you don’t know. It would have been better if you’d gone on believing I was dead. Because that’s what I am, or should be. But you could tell me what you’ve been doing since then. I’d like that.’

  So I told him about the war I’d returned to, the war that had gone on without him. We walked as I spoke, trudging slowly round the gravel paths that threaded between the gravestones. A greyness was entering the sky and the day and, with it, a growing chill.

  ‘When will it end, Tom?’

  ‘Who knows? This year, next year? Three years from now? I can see no end to it.’