The Horizon (1993)

by Reeman, Douglas

  And those men he had sent on leave, proud of what they had accomplished together, ready for anything. Suppose he broke down this time, failed them utterly and came back like one of those shattered figures at Hawks Hill. He lowered himself onto a grassy hump and made himself face the other prospect: death, or mutilation in its most grievous form as he had seen too often.

  These men who had been forged into a weapon, proud to be in the Corps, eager to show the army what they could do; they were all depending on him. Because of a family name, and all the weight of tradition that went with it. The whole Blackwood family seemed to be rising from the ground to drive him on, no matter what failings or weaknesses he might imagine within himself.

  A dog was barking a long way off. A million miles from his life and the dread which he must conceal from everyone.

  ‘Good morning, Colonel! You are an early bird!’

  He lurched to his feet, surprised she was here, guilty at what she might see in him.

  She was wearing a cool-looking flowered dress, with the same country boots showing beneath it. The smile on her lips was uncertain and questioning.

  ‘Is something wrong? If I’ve come at an awkward time I do apologise . . . It’s just that we heard you were back.’ She tossed the long chestnut hair from her face. ‘This is always a nice walk, isn’t it?’

  He was suddenly certain that this was no casual meeting. She had been coming here to see him.

  He said, ‘I wanted a place where I could think. I was sorry I missed the chance to talk with you at the barracks. You’ll never know what a difference it made to me – your being there, I mean.’

  She looked at him directly. ‘Well, you were going to be pretty busy. I could see that. And besides . . .’ She seemed to change her mind. ‘My father was very pleased.’

  Had it been David she had seen receiving the D.S.O. on that last cold day of January, instead of himself?

  He asked, ‘May I walk with you a while?’

  She was searching his face for something. Or someone.

  ‘It’s your land. Or will be again when this terrible war is over.’ Then she changed the subject once more. ‘When I found you just now, lost and miles away in your thoughts, I saw the young boy you used to be. Wistful. Full of hope, perhaps.’

  He said suddenly, ‘I’ve thought about you a lot. Ever since we met on this path.’ He hurried on as something like a warning showed in her face. ‘I used to ask myself, what colour were her eyes? Blue or grey? I was even wrong about that. They’re green.’

  She seemed disconcerted, thrown off guard.

  ‘Like my mother’s. You don’t remember her, do you?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  They began to walk, but he was careful not to brush against her.

  She asked abruptly, ‘Are we going to win this war, Colonel Blackwood?’

  ‘Please call me Jonathan.’ He glanced at her fine profile, the tiny pulse beating in her throat. Then he answered her without hesitation. ‘Nobody’s going to win.’

  ‘You mean that, don’t you? When I met you I imagined you would be quite different about it. I felt so badly afterwards. Not because of the medal – expect you’ve earned that a dozen times over – but because of . . . things. What Harry Payne said about you.’

  That’s the first I’ve heard of it. But he said nothing, watching each emotion, afraid of losing or forgetting it.

  ‘Down at the barracks too. Those poor men . . . they have nothing left. Like the ones I teach. I sometimes think some of them must hate me because I’m whole, or because I’m safe at home.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, but she did not appear to hear.

  ‘You went amongst them. I saw what it did for them, and what it was doing to you.’

  They walked on in silence, pausing only once to listen as the cuckoo called again.

  ‘Is it true you’re leaving soon?’

  He replied quietly, ‘So they say.’

  What was the point of it? There was no future for him: how could he even dare to think of it? So that they could snatch a few hours or days together before he was lost to Armageddon, or worse, come back to her like some horror from the grave?

  She said in a small voice, ‘People will miss you around here.’ She said it with barely controlled emotion, so that her soft Hampshire accent was more pronounced. She did not wait for him to answer but said, ‘What were you thinking of, when I found you by the path?’

  ‘About all this, I suppose. What would happen to it if . . .’

  She put her hand on his arm. ‘Don’t say it! Don’t even think of it.’ There was anguish in her voice, and he supposed it was for David. ‘You should find some nice girl who understands your sort of life . . .’

  He glanced down at her hand. Small, well-shaped and strong. With skin like hers she would soon be brown when the summer came.

  He said steadily, ‘I’ve found her. But like David, she doesn’t know.’

  ‘I told you that in confidence.’

  ‘And I told you this – Alexandra.’

  When he looked again there were patches of colour in her cheeks.

  ‘You mustn’t talk like that.’

  ‘I know. But I just did.’ He paused, and plunged on. ‘I’m thirty-four years old, and like my brothers and all my family I’ve always served the Corps. I was closer to David than anyone, but I can never be like him. Or like any of them.’ He could not stop now; was afraid to stop in case she turned away from him. ‘When I take my men to Flanders it won’t be me who’s leading them, it will be the Blackwood family. And I don’t think I can deal with it. It’s all such a . . .’ He groped for the words. ‘Such a bloody waste.’

  She waited, but he said nothing else. They walked on.

  They paused by the fence with the rickety stile and she said, ‘I must go back now.’ There was a silence, then she went on, ‘I’m twenty-six . . . and until a few minutes ago I thought I knew everything. You’ve proved me wrong in almost every aspect of this war. Men who treat you like a friend when they’ve hardly anything left . . .’ Her voice caught, but she persisted. ‘And those who lead them into battle, or direct it from a safe distance. I always thought they must be callous, and wanting only glory.’

  He reached out to touch her hand but she pulled away. ‘No, please. It’s all too quick. I must have time to think.’

  He was losing her. But she had never been his to lose.

  He asked, ‘May I see you again? Just to walk with you?’

  ‘I shall be at the hospital tomorrow.’ Then she said, rather desperately he thought, ‘We can be friends, can’t we? Is it not enough?’

  He smiled. ‘I feel better already.’

  He watched her climb the stile, and on the other side she turned, her eyes half-closed against the sun. Then she smiled in response.

  ‘My friends call me Alex!’ She did not look back, although he watched her out of sight.

  When he reached the house he could not convince himself that it had happened, or that he was not reading too much into ordinary words and gestures.

  Tomorrow then . . .

  He found Payne in the stable-yard with an army motor-cyclist, his goggles pushed to the top of his cap. The rider saluted and pulled an envelope from his pouch, and he sensed Payne watching him grimly as he signed for it.

  He hardly saw the motor-cycle go, puttering down the drive into the silence as he tore open the envelope.

  She had green eyes, and he could call her Alex . . .

  The paper seemed to mist over as he tried to hold onto her picture in his mind.

  Payne asked quietly, ‘Trouble, sir?’

  He looked at him and beyond him to the high copse and the golden sea of daffodils. It had been only a dream after all.

  He was surprised how calm and empty he sounded.

  ‘The battalion embarks for France in five days’ time.’

  Doctor Alfred Pitcairn finished washing his hands and dried them vigorously on a towel. He was a neat, wiry
man who looked more like a university professor than a country G.P. He glanced at his list of house-calls and did not look up when his departing nurse called a greeting to someone in the passageway. The door opened and closed again. Alex was home.

  She came in and crossed to the desk where her father heard all the woes and symptoms of people he had known most of his life, and those of their offspring as well, although there weren’t too many of those left in the village.

  ‘Hard day, Daddy?’ She moved to the open window and stood looking out at the garden.

  ‘The usual. Some decent food would do them more good than I can. They’re going to ration bread now, I hear, as if things aren’t bad enough.’

  She said suddenly, ‘How much longer do you think it will go on?’

  He put on his jacket. ‘I’ve almost stopped asking myself that.’ She sounded troubled. ‘What is it, Alex? Your work?’

  She did not answer directly. ‘I went to see Colonel Blackwood today. I thought I should apologise for dragging you away after the presentation.’ She paused. ‘He was very nice to me. Not at all what I expected.’

  Doctor Pitcairn sat down and began to fill what he had always called his cutty pipe. There was more to it than that, he thought.

  ‘Are you making comparisons, Alex?’

  She said defensively, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your mother told me, you know. We had no secrets. I decided to say nothing about it.’ He watched her sensitive face. ‘But at the barracks I saw it all there again. Try to forget him, Alex. You’ll meet some other nice young man, you’ll see.’ She moved about the room touching things so familiar that she no longer even noticed them. ‘And talking to his brother isn’t going to help.’

  He watched the pipesmoke drifting through the window. She was a lovely young woman, he thought, so like her mother as she had once been, and yet there were no men in her life, apart from that youthful infatuation with David Blackwood and the cheerful young subaltern in the Rifle Brigade. Even if he had not been killed, nothing would have come of that. There was no one else, certainly not locally. The men still at home were farmers working on the land; cider and darts in the pub, and after marriage far too many children. He wanted something more than that for Alex. She was not a headstrong girl, not with him anyway, but she was solitary and very private. He had been surprised when she had asked to be trained to teach blind children, but he no longer doubted her sincerity. When she was not at Hawks Hill she helped partially-sighted veterans to train others who were completely blind.

  She was looking at him now but her gaze was far away.

  ‘He asked if he could see me again. I think he’s lonely, and can’t talk to his men about things.’

  He put down his pipe and said quietly, ‘John Potter the grocer was in here just now with a poisoned hand. He said Colonel Blackwood’s batman was in the shop today, buying a few things.’

  ‘Harry Payne. Yes, I’ve met him.’

  ‘He says they’re off soon. Very soon . . . inevitable, I suppose.’

  ‘But he’s only just got here! He’s not ready for it!’

  ‘I know. I was talking to one of the army surgeons. He said he knew Jonathan Blackwood in hospital in Plymouth. He was pretty badly wounded . . . worse than I realised.’

  ‘But they can’t make him go, Daddy. Not after that . . .’

  He walked round the desk and held her closely. ‘He’s a Blackwood, Alex. You know what that means. Besides which, they need men like him, if only to bring this bloody thing to an end.’

  ‘But the Americans are in the war at last. They’ll make all the difference, won’t they?’ She looked at him despairingly. ‘It can’t last forever!’

  ‘It takes time,’ he said. ‘The Americans may not be so eager to throw lives away for nothing.’ He had almost added, the way we do, but the expression in her eyes had been a warning. ‘Perhaps the orders will be changed.’ It sounded so inadequate that he was suddenly angry with himself. ‘Are you going to see him before he goes?’

  She wiped her eyes with her handkerchief, the same one she had raised to Jonathan on that cold bright day. An army lorry was rattling through the village, filled with soldiers who were singing lustily as if they hadn’t a care in the world.

  ‘Take me back to dear old Blighty . . .!’

  ‘I said I would.’

  Doctor Pitcairn glanced around his untidy consulting room, imagining life without her to chat to about everything under the sun. It was as selfish as it was natural, he thought.

  ‘I’ll use my bicycle,’ she said. ‘It’s quicker.’ She kissed him. ‘Don’t worry about me, Daddy. I can take care of myself. And anyway . . . it’s nothing like that.’

  He smiled sadly. It was everything like that.

  She was surprised to find Jack Swan moving a metal trunk down the curving stairway, assisted by one of the orderlies. She blurted out the reason for her visit, very aware that the sergeant on the desk and the white-coated orderly were both gaping at her.

  Jack Swan was breathing hard from carrying the heavy trunk, and took far too long to answer.

  ‘Just missed him, my dear. Motor car came about an hour back.’ He saw her shocked surprise. ‘All a bit of a rush.’

  She said in a whisper, ‘Gone? Not coming back?’

  The sergeant said unhelpfully, ‘There are a lot of troops on the move, I hear.’

  She looked past him. The sunlight was still there, throwing patterns through the trees; but she saw none of it.

  Wheels grated on the drive and she ran to the door. But it was an ambulance, the red crosses like blood in the sun. The sergeant folded his newspaper and grunted, ‘’Nother one, Fred. Fetch the duty orderlies.’

  Jack Swan lowered his voice. ‘He left you a letter, Miss.’

  She was still staring at the driveway. She had thought it was the car, bringing him back.

  ‘Letter?’

  Swan glared as men hurried past, their faces like masks as they prepared themselves for what they were about to see.

  ‘Come into the kitchen. You’ll be more private there.’

  He closed the door very quietly behind her and sat impassively on a chair outside.

  For a long time she stared at the envelope with its unfamiliar handwriting before she was able to tear it open, imagining him at his desk even as Harry Payne had been packing their kit.

  My very dear Alex: I am sorry we cannot have our walk tomorrow . . .

  She saw tears falling on the letter. This time they did not stop.

  Captain Christopher Wyke sat at a trestle table, his face set in a frown of concentration as he checked through yet another list of equipment and stores. He could feel the warmth of the filtered sunlight through the sloping side of the tent, and was conscious of the incredible silence after all the bustle of training. On this fine morning the camp was all but deserted, save for the H.Q. platoon and a few military policemen.

  His father, the major-general, had been delighted that he had secured the position of adjutant to the battalion.

  ‘With a commanding officer like Blackwood an adjutant’s job is a sure step toward promotion!’ The Old Man had added with a chuckle, ‘Or to a nervous breakdown!’

  He had certainly felt a sense of pride when the battalion had paraded in the early morning, ready to march the twenty-two miles to Southampton. They had looked fit, and some of them were obviously glad that the waiting was over.

  I was like that before the Dardanelles.

  The Royal Marine Artillery detachment had also left, but had taken the easier road in lorries supplied by the army. With any luck they would eventually be united with the promised howitzers when they reached France.

  ‘But you look far too young to be a captain!’ The girl named Hermione had been all over him at that last party at the Savoy.

  He smiled, the strain dropping away from his face as he remembered her passionate kisses, the warm pressure of her body.

  Maybe he was too young for his rank. Maybe th
ey all were. That was the thing about advanced promotion, his and everyone else’s for that matter. If the war ended tomorrow they would probably drop back to their original ranks. It happened often enough.

  But the war was not going to end tomorrow; and although there had been comparative stalemate on the Western Front the French army was now ready to advance, with only the victory at Verdun recalled by thousands of conscripted soldiers, and not the chaos and disgrace which had followed it.

  He stretched his arms, and winced. The wound still throbbed occasionally, but he had almost forgotten the intensity of the pain throughout his journey home on the hospital ship. Now it felt more like an old bruise after being kicked. That last fight was clearly fixed in his memory, however, with Blackwood’s face as he had helped drag him to safety always there.

  Now they were together again, this time not by accident, but because of the new battalion.

  He smiled again, recalling their discussion regarding extra marines. He had said, ‘No need, sir. We have all the men we asked for, everyone a volunteer.’

  Why should he be surprised, he wondered. Even that slovenly hulk Bert Langmaid was with them. For good or ill, he was still not certain.

  This time tomorrow there would be another battalion in their place, one which had been unlucky on the Western Front. Their numbers had been reduced by sixty per cent in one savage advance. Here they would be stiffened with new recruits, put together once more, and then maybe sent back.

  So many came here, and to places like this: regulars, territorials, volunteers, yeomanry, and now the conscripts.

  He allowed his mind to drift into more pleasant memories of the girl Hermione. He was sure his mother and father would approve.

  A shadow fell across the tent flap and his friend, Lieutenant John Maxted, who commanded the H.Q. platoon and would be one of the last to leave, came in.

  ‘Are you busy, Chris?’

  Wyke waved him to the one remaining chair. ‘Take a pew.’ Maxted was a funny chap, he thought, always calling him sir after his advanced promotion to captain, until he’d explained that it was only necessary to behave with such formality when duty required, or, as he had put it, laughing, ‘When you’re dealing with someone you really can’t stand!’ He said now, ‘Ready to leave, John?’