by George Hagen
“They believe the end of world is coming on November eleventh, nineteen eighteen,” Charity explained. “Armageddon. It is vital to prepare for that day, to save as many souls as possible, so that they may gain entry to heaven.”
“And you believe this?”
“Of course!”
Tom frowned. “Charity, I had an old friend who used to predict Doomsday. It never came, but he would advance the date along the calendar convinced that it was fast approaching. I know that I cannot—and I will not—prevent you from doing what you believe is right, but I wonder about the wisdom of this campaign. My friend's name was Pendleton. Perhaps it is a coincidence, or perhaps not…”
“Father, I hardly think every old figure from your childhood has relevance to my life.”
Tom gave his youngest daughter a helpless smile. “I hope that is not the case too. How can I stop you? You are nineteen, a grown woman.”
Charity hugged him, not realizing that his remark was meant as an appeal rather than a concession.
THE NEXT MORNING TOM drove Charity to the fairgrounds. There was frost on the grass. The trucks and caravans were lined up ready to leave.
Before Charity hopped into the Pendletons' battered bus, Tom gave his daughter a copy of Masterson's Simple Cures to Common Ailments.
“What's this?” she asked.
“Oh, just a little common sense,” he replied. “I put a pound note in every chapter,” he explained, hoping this would be an incentive for her to leaf through it at least once.
She hugged him and boarded the bus, and Tom studied his footprints in the frosty grass. He expected to feel lighter of step with Charity on her way in the world, but this was not so. His burden felt heavier.
Audrey had explained this sensation in one of her recent letters about Jonah.
The daily vigilance I felt for my son was not relieved when he became old enough to avoid skinning his knees or having his pennies stolen by bullies. Once he could earn his own living, my day-to-day concern for his welfare advanced to concern for the world at large. I became invested in the larger forces that would govern his life—the honesty of people, the virtue of authority, the generosity of society towards the weak and unfortunate, and peace between nations.
You see, Tom, once we assume the parental burden, we become helplessly invested in the justice of the playground and, by extension, the justice of the world at large.
A BRIGHT BOY
WHEN WILLARD BENCH BECAME HEADMASTER OF ST. PETER'S, TOM decided that the school was doomed. He transferred Arthur to King Henry IV School in Ballydorp.
King Henry's was a more serious school than St. Peter's. While the boys of St. Peter's entered their fathers' businesses in the Johannesburg suburbs, those at King Henry's were expected to go to college in England. King Henry's link to the mother country was never so obvious as when South Africa announced her entry into the war: seven schoolmasters volunteered. When news came that two had perished while serving on the Western Front, the war lost its abstract quality, even for a fifteen-year-old boy.
Memorial services were held in the great assembly hall—a vaulted room that would have pleased Cedric the Saxon. Each service brought a cry for more men to enlist. It was made clear that King Henry's contribution to the fighting forces, and the peace of the world, was essential.
The boy who had the best command of the facts was Wally Hill, who kept an updated list of all the South African soldiers who had been killed in France, Africa, and the Balkan Peninsula. Wally had a missing front tooth, and his surrounding teeth were splayed so that, when he closed his mouth, they rested on his lower lip like tablets. When there was an argument about war statistics, everybody went to Wally to clear the matter up.
By his fifteenth year Arthur was fluent in French, thanks to Madame Wardour. He spoke to her only in French and surprised his teacher at King Henry's with his easy command of the language. No boy at King Henry's was permitted to have an easy time at any subject, however, so Arthur was delivered to Mr. Boyle's Latin class, to be humbled by a dead language. Andrew Boyle was a handsome fellow with a thin, drooping mustache and a sophisticated air. He taught a university-level Latin class and inspired many of his boys to become classics scholars, to the dismay of their parents. He was quick to point out that brilliant writers deserved to be read in their own languages. Cicero should be read in Latin, Cervantes in Spanish, Dante in Italian, and Milton in English.
Arthur, however, seemed to trouble Mr. Boyle from the start. Within a month or two, the teacher asked for a private meeting with Tom.
“Your son, Mr. Chapel,” said Boyle, “has an extraordinary grasp of language. He understands the rules—declensions, syntax, vocabulary— but he insists on making up everything else.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well”—Boyle paused—“he invents his own nouns and verbs. They soundlike Latin, and they conjugate logically, but they are not Latin. It's remarkable.”
“You mean,” Tom replied, “he is making it up?”
“Yes,” said Boyle. “I've seen plenty of boys dodge their way through my classes—idiots, many of them, and a few bright ones who are simply too lazy to do the work. But Arthur is no fool. He's not lazy, either. He understands Latin very well. But…” Boyle pushed a paper across his desk for the doctor to see. Tom squinted: the words below his son's signature lookedlike Latin.
“Those words don't exist,” said Boyle. “They make good sense, in a way, and Arthur seems to have invented his own language—which is all very well, brilliant, perhaps, but I can't give him good marks for a mastering a tongue I don't understand.”
“What do you propose?”
“He's a bright lad—but solitary. I think he needs a friend.”
Tom admitted that he had been concerned about this for years. Boyle offered to introduce Arthur to other boys.
That was how Arthur met Wally Hill. Wally was personable and sensed Arthur's unusual intelligence. He showed Arthur a code he had put together to foil the enemy. Arthur revealed his secret language. In short, the war became Arthur's social icebreaker.
Arthur pored through the newspapers for war news that Wally would appreciate. When a South African fighter pilot and cricket hero, George McCubbin, shot down the famous German ace Max Immelmann in an air battle over Flanders, Arthur spotted the article in the paper and took it directly to Wally Hill.
“Well done, Chapel. I could use a bright boy like you,” Wally said and engaged him as his deputy. He showed Arthur his “war room”—a garden shed that had been wallpapered with maps, airplane charts, and news clippings about prominent battles. He lent Arthur his dog-eared copy of The First Hundred Thousand, by Ian Hay which Arthur devoured hungrily. It was a funny, rousing description of soldier life under General Kitchener at the beginning of the war.
After his air victory, McCubbin had been given permission to visit the country of his birth. When Arthur discovered plans for the man's visit to Johannesburg in the newspaper, he danced around the house.
Tom protested this: “Arthur, will you please sit down? I hardly think a victory celebration is appropriate.”
“Why, Papa? He beat the German pilot.”
“What's wrong with supporting our side?” Margaret asked, frowning.
“A war is not a football match,” snapped the doctor. “When people are dying at the hands of others, only one thing is worth celebrating. The war's end!”
Downcast, Arthur sank into a chair.
Margaret, however, would not let Tom have the last word. Charity's departure had been the final straw for her; although she had never expressed the desire to leave home, she felt that, as the eldest, she should have received the first offer. She frequently sent him out of the house for infractions such as smoking a cigar or pouring himself one too many glasses of sherry. Today, she vented her scorn for his politics. “Any defeat of the Germans is worth celebrating! Our own neighbors' lives are at stake.”
“Our neighbors?” The doctor balked. “The oth
er day a patient told me that Immelmann was a relative of hers. She was heartbroken about his death.”
Porridge bowl in hand, the doctor stalked into the garden. His family watched him scatter the oats across the lawn while the birds flocked down.
Iris studied the newspaper. “It says here that Max Immelmann had studied to be a doctor. How ironic,” she mused.
“Ironic?” said Margaret.
Iris gave her sister a patronizing smile. “Surely you, as a nurse, know the Hippocratic oath, darling: First, do no harm”
LETTER FROM ABROAD
TOM RECEIVED A LETTER FROM CHARITY THAT WAS JOYFUL AND detailed, describing the camaraderie of her flock, the singing of psalms, the joy of the mission, and the exotic cities she was visiting as the Pendle-tons toured South America—Buenos Aires, Montevideo, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Caracas. “I send my love to you, Margaret, Iris, and Arthur,” she wrote, with more emotion than she had ever expressed at home. It occurred to Tom that perhaps the Pendletons had, indeed, liberated his daughter. She was seeing places and people who might change her philosophy and her sense of herself. He hoped her exposure to so much of the world might disabuse her of the conviction that Armageddon was the only solution to its ills.
Carnahan's letters to Iris were all the same: a mundane description of drills, brief moments of fighting, and an expression of undying love. When she read them, Iris felt ashamed that she did not love him. The letters began to gather, unopened, on the sideboard. A visitor changed that. Peter Carnahan's mother, looking as if the wind had blown her to the Chapels' door, appeared clutching a yellow telegram. Her eyes were red with fury. “I've been informed of Peter's death on August seventeenth, nineteen fifteen,” Mrs. Carnahan said, her voice cracking bitterly. “But I'm sure it's wrong.”
Carnahan's mother had badgered the cricket umpires during his games; Peter could do no wrong and, apparently, that included dying. She held up the telegram between thumb and forefinger.
“Place of birth: Parkhurst,” she read. “Well, that's wrong. He was born in Parktown.” She settled on another line. “Age twenty-one. Well, he's twenty-five, so that's wrong too! I ask you, Iris, how am I to know whether this Peter Carnahan is mine or some other luckless mother's boy?”
Iris had met the woman only once before, when she had visited Peter's house to be greeted frostily: “How is Margaret? Such a pretty girl.” Iris recalled the many photographs of Peter on every mantelpiece and table—the woman lived for her son.
“Mrs. Carnahan,” began Iris, “I'm sure I have a letter more recent than August the seventeenth.” As she said it, however, she began to panic: as long as the letters had arrived, she had assured herself that Peter was alive and well. As she sifted through the envelopes, Carnahan's mother stood at the threshold, tall, glassy-eyed, and furious.
“Here it is,” Iris remarked with relief, when she found it. The letter was addressed to her in Carnahan's clumsy script—he was a graceful athlete, but his writing was almost illegible.
“Look,” she said, showing the date to Mrs. Carnahan, hoping that would satisfy the woman.
“Read it to me,” the mother commanded, lowering her broad frame into an armchair.
Iris opened the letter, read the first line, and caught her breath.
“Read it,” Mrs. Carnahan repeated.
“Dearest Iris” she read.
As I write this, my feet rest in six inches of mud. I think I must have a slight fever because the evening actually seems less dismal than usual. A very light rain falls about us, and tiny droplets linger on our uniforms. We look as if we are sheathed in silver. We'd be magnificent if we weren't so miserable. At nightfall we're to attack a machine gun position. It's the third try in as many days, and I've been out twice before to bring back the wounded from earlier assaults. It feels like a matter of luck, Iris, and I can only hope for the best.
My captain has given up trying to read my scrawl and simply stamps my letters “censored” as a formality, which is why I dare say the following: Iris, it's awful here. Haven't had a bath in weeks. Nobody knows what's going on. Two boys doing reconnaissance this morning were shot down by friendly fire. I worry less about being killed by a German than by someone on my side.
I'm giving this note to a fine fellow next to me named Harry Dill. If you receive it, I'm afraid my luck has run out.
Iris lowered the letter. There must be some mistake, she thought. Nobody of her age had ever died. At least, nobody she knew well. Then she wondered if she and Mrs. Carnahan had at least one thing in common: both had believed it impossible for Peter to be dead. Impossible.
“Is there any more?” asked Mrs. Carnahan.
Iris was never normally at a loss for words, but now she didn't know what to say. She felt the pressure of a hand on her shoulder. Mrs. Carna-han's lips trembled by her ear. “Is there more in the letter, dear?”
“Yes,” gasped Iris.
“Please—” It was a plea. “Read it.”
Iris focused her eyes on the words.
Here's a funny thing: I have named our trench Horvaths' Orchard in your honor, dear Iris, because that was the last happy moment I can remember. When my knees start to wobble, I just imagine you marching through the apple trees half-naked in my trousers, and it still makes me laugh. Thank you, Iris, for all the good memories. I will love you always, Peter.
Iris dropped the letter.
Mrs. Carnahan rose from her chair. “Would you show me the orchard?”
“What?” said Iris.
“I want to see the orchard he mentioned.”
Iris wiped away her tears with the palms of her hands. “It's a long way …,” she said, tipping her head in the direction.
“Please,” said Mrs. Carnahan. “Please, Iris.”
So they made their way down the path behind the Horvaths' property, up past a row of white stinkwood trees, along a stone wall, and entered a grove of apple trees. The grass was soft and thick. As Mrs. Carnahan surveyed the scene of her son's last carnal experience, Iris felt a creeping sense of humiliation.
“How pretty.” Mrs. Carnahan sighed, turning from the trees to Iris. “How often did you come here?”
Iris blanched. Did the woman really need to know how often she had slept with her son?
“Oh, Mrs. Carnahan,” Iris gasped. “I don't know. What does it matter now?” The strength drained from her legs, and she sank to the grass, overcome with remorse. Poor Peter, with his tender pledges, his innocent affection, his pride, and his last words: I will love you always.
“I'm sorry,” Iris wept, “I'm so sorry—”
Mrs. Carnahan knelt beside her. “I'm sorry too.”
Iris shook her head and sobbed. “He was such a nice, sweet boy. I should have told him not to go!”
The look on Mrs. Carnahan's face, however, was not reproachful. “Well, my dear, at least you turned him into a man. The army did nothing but turn him into a corpse.”
MRS. CARNAHAN REQUESTED that Iris stand beside her at Peter's memorial service. She sent a black dress for her to wear; it was a gorgeous, elaborate thing of black lace, with many layers and ruffles. Even Margaret admired its quality. Iris took one look in the mirror and realized with horror that it was, in effect, a wedding dress.
When Mr. and Mrs. Carnahan arrived to escort Iris to the church, Tom sent Arthur outside to chat with them while he searched the house for her.
He found her buried under the sofa cushions—her favorite spot as a child.
“Don't tell them I'm here, Papa,” Iris begged.
“Iris, it's a memorial service. Poor Carnahan.”
“But they're treating me like his wife” said Iris. “I didn't deserve to be his wife. I certainly don't deserve to be treatedlike his wife.”
Tom smiled at his daughter. “You make a very pretty widow,” he admitted.
“Poor Peter,” Iris fretted. “He was so simple. I'm an absolute spider! I'm a monster, Papa, a monster! Margaret will be looking at me with that serves-you-blood
y-right expression on her face. I can't do it!”
“You were always so good at make-believe, Iris. I remember listening to you in the afternoons from my office.”
Iris looked at her father. “Make-believe?”
“Just for today,” said Tom. “The service can't last forever, can it?”
“I suppose not,” she said.
So, as the Carnahans' voices echoed in the hall, Iris clambered out of her hiding place while Tom shook out the beautiful black dress and hoped his assurances would be confirmed.
IT WAS A SUCCESSFUL memorial service—if such events can be successful. Kind words were spoken about Carnahan's character; he was remembered as a brilliant athlete and a good fellow. His life had been so short—there wasn't much to say, so faith was pledged in the armed forces, the Allies, and all the courageous boys doing their bit for the war effort.
The young clergyman who delivered the sermon was new, sent from a seminary in Cape Town. Tall, nervous, and awkward, John Bonney had a large, shiny face and receding temples. His eyes searched the mourners for approval and finally settled on Margaret, whose slender figure, full bosom, and saintly face startled him. By the end of the sermon, his eyes addressed her only. Margaret was perplexed; she had never suffered such scrutiny without feeling angry, but his demeanor was sincere and appealing.
In subsequent weeks Iris found herself adopted by Mrs. Carnahan. She was invited to join her in church on Sundays, pressed to attend birthday celebrations, and summoned for the burial of Bumsy one of the family's three Yorkshire terriers. Mrs. Carnahan even confided her most private feelings to Iris about their first encounter. “I thought you were one of those girls who turn an honest, brave boy into a craven sensualist,” she said, “but Peter was brave to the end.”
“Oh, I am awful,” Iris admitted, hoping this would exempt her from the next pet burial.
