“Yes, very,” Thorburn said briefly.
He had seen Kent and the girl pass one of the windows. They came in. On their heels, Smith: he halted in the doorway, and asked Lackland,
“Excuse me, sir, would you mind speaking to Flying-Officer Henderson? He’ll come in if you’re busy.”
“I’ll come,” Lackland said.
He went off, in a brisk skirmishing way. The moment he had gone, Kent looked at the brigadier and said formally,
“I hear you’re not going, either, sir?”
“No,” Clarke said. “Too old and too far.” He looked slyly at the girl. “Seats going begging, eh? I don’t think!”
She smiled at him, but did not speak.
“Is that a fact, sir?” asked Kent.
Clarke looked at him with the menacing eye of an old goat.
“What the devil d’you mean?”
“Oh,” said Kent easily, “I wondered whether you might be standing down, as it were.”
“Not I!”
“Good.” He hesitated, glanced at Thorburn, and said, “I don’t know whether Colonel Lackland told you. I’m not going.”
Without moving his head, Thorburn could see the girl’s face. It was calm and shut: whether out of pride, or simple obedience to an order she had given it, it was unreadable. Unexpectant, she was looking in front of her, through a window all white-hot sky.
“I’m staying here—with the Home Army, not with”—Kent hesitated again, frowned, and said curtly, “I shan’t be serving with Colonel Lackland himself.”
“H’m, yes, I see,” Thorburn said. Comment on anything he saw would be resented. Leave it be, he warned himself; he’s been dealt an impossible hand, he must play it.
“Aren’t you behaving rather foolishly?” said Clarke.
“Very likely, sir.”
“And you?” Thorburn asked Cordelia. “Do you approve?”
She turned and looked at him with an unmoved simplicity.
“Forcing him to come was no good,” she said. “I tried it. He agreed to come with me, but it was impossible, I knew at the time it was; he wouldn’t be happy there, it’s too far off, they don’t understand anything yet. … Their time and ours aren’t the same.” She frowned at him. “How do people live who run away from their moment? Obviously they do live. But he—but Andrew couldn’t.”
The general forced himself to say,
“You’ll go over, won’t you?”
She said quietly, “I shouldn’t be any use here—because of the child.”
A shadow falling across the doorway became Smith. He asked nobody in particular if the passengers were ready.
“I think so,” Cordelia said. “I’ll call them.”
Smith disappeared.
“Don’t move. I’ll see about it,” said Thorburn. He had an instant of blinding anger. Unreasonable and futile. Why be angry? What, after all, is one young man, one young woman, in an age which has chosen separations, torture, death, as its sign? He moved his ungainly body across the room at an astonishing rate. “And you, too, you fool,” he threw at Clarke.
Clarke followed him out of the room.
“I don’t forgive them for coming,” Cordelia said, “but they’re kind.”
Kent did not speak. She put her arms round him and said steadily,
“Goodbye in this world, my darling.”
“Is there another?” he said with an effort.
She tried, looking at him, to say everything in the few words they had left.
“I don’t know. We were only just beginning. From now on, Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief, is what I must say. But you, my dear darling—”
Emil Breuner came in, saw them, murmured, “I am sorry,” and turned to go. Half with relief—the lifting from him of an intolerable weight—Kent said,
“Don’t go, sir. Passengers for New York this way.”
“It is time?” asked Breuner. He laid down each word as if it were unfamiliar and heavy.
A clatter of steps and voices in the corridor—Hutton and the little boy, Thorburn, Elizabeth Heron. Her air of happiness and good-humour was so natural that it deceived everyone except the girl—who, besides, did not look at her, and thought sullenly: What is she afraid of? Of the trip? Of what will happen to her over there? … Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder, smiling. Her husband had lagged behind a few steps; he came in with the air of a man who is being taken away in absence of mind, his own mind. He was, she saw, angrily uncomfortable, not quite at ease yet in the part of distinguished exile. Once we are there it will be all right, she thought: it will be an anxiety at first, then a habit; then, for life, his only possible place, the lie he believes. And why shouldn’t he go? what sense could there be in staying here, to be killed, his mind, his gifts, the work he can still do, thrown out like a cupful of dirty water? … If only, she thought, he behaves decently to Harry now. … She saw that this need not worry her: Thorburn knew perfectly well that in staying behind he was being worse than tactless.
“Well, my son?” he said lightly.
Heron dropped his pretence of detachment, and stammered,
“I wish you would come with us.”
“I can’t, I haven’t the courage,” Thorburn said simply. “It’s too much for me, I’m too old and stiff-necked.”
“But—”
“If you don’t care for it over there, you won’t, unfortunately, be able to come back,” Thorburn interrupted. “It can’t be helped, and you must remind yourself that you did the only sensible and the right thing.” He hesitated very briefly and added, “You’ll do very well.”
He turned quickly to Breuner.
“Well? Are you going?”
There was a long silence. Watching Breuner, Thorburn noticed at the same time Kent and the girl standing at the back of the room, not trying to talk: they were, he fancied, hand in hand.
“Yes,” Breuner said at last. “I will go.”
“Excellent,” said Thorburn warmly. He wanted to say something friendly, but any words he had would be impertinent and cruel: he held his tongue.
Nicholas had been running, excitedly, but taking care not to make a sound, between Hutton and the door on to the airfield: he stood a minute looking out, returned to stand quietly beside the soldier, ran back to make sure of the aeroplane. All at once he lost patience. Pulling Hutton’s arm, he cried,
“Oh, do come. We shall miss it.”
His mother looked at him. She was suddenly helpless; she could not protect him from this, and was even a little impatient.
“All you care about, eh?” Thorburn said to him. “But you must let me keep Hutton. I can’t do without him.”
“No, I can’t,” Nick said. The colour rushed over his face. “You’re coming, aren’t you?” he said to Hutton.
“No,” Hutton mumbled. “I have to stop here, I can’t come with you this time.”
The child caught his breath.
“You must—you must. I shall miss you.”
“Hutton will come later,” his mother said gently, “in another aeroplane.”
He did not speak for a moment: then he said under his breath, “No, he won’t,” and turned away his head. He wept silently, as always. He’ll forget it, his mother thought. Hutton lifted him up; he had carried him into the room, now he was carrying him out. With an impassive air, Heron followed them.
As she walked past Cordelia, Mrs. Heron hesitated, looking at her. The girl returned her look with one of unforgiving refusal, and she could only, taking Thorburn’s arm to steady herself, hurry after the others. Unkind, she thought; unjust.
Kent spoke to Breuner.
“Keep an eye on my wife for me, will you, sir?”
“Right,” Breuner murmured.
He drew back from the doorway to let them pass him. The girl was looking intently—at what? Following her glance, he saw the rock covered with lichen and the one bent tree: she will always see it, he thought. The image of his wife, serene, attentive, clumsy, came betw
een him and it. He walked on blindly. Provided this country keeps its memories, he thought with anguish—and its kindness.
The room, when Clarke came into it from upstairs, was empty. That was what he had hoped. He took one unfeeling look at the group pinned down by the shadow of the aircraft, turned his back on it, and fell into a chair. “Sooner them than me,” he muttered. Contentedly he rubbed his thighs, stretched his plump bandy legs, and sucked vigorously at his teeth. Grinning suddenly, he exclaimed,
“Got it! …
‘Speak, father!’ once again he cried,
‘If I may yet be gone!’
And but the booming shots replied
And fast the flames rolled on …”
Lackland and Thorburn came in. He looked at his friend with a gleam of irony.
“Didn’t feel like seeing them off, did you?”
“I didn’t,” Thorburn said briefly.
“Well, neither did I. For a different reason. I never say goodbye, it’s unlucky.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Lackland.
Since the general showed no signs of replying, Clarke said genially,
“We’re going home, my dear fellow, home. Stock-bridge. Ever been there? You must have—you fish, don’t you? Must have fished the Test some time. His dad, you know, owned a bit of it. It was me showed him how to tickle trout—his own dad’s trout. If we can only get back there, we’ll have time perhaps to do something of that before the bolshies cancel us as beastly relics—what?”
The general was thinking:
It’s not likely we’ll get that far. Damned unlikely. Our probable end, my dear Will, is a common grave somewhere on the way. And what’s wrong with that? A common grave of the common English—suit me very well, I shall know who’s shoving. … Amused, he stretched his head back, to feel the sun on his face. … Lie doggo until dark, he thought, then shake out of my unmanageable old bones and the rest of it, and be off. … He knew the road he would take to reach the village by night: on either side of him, not seen, felt breathing gently in sleep, country that was half downland; a whiff of rotting wood was old Pacey’s barn; then the turn of the road to plunge steeply downhill; thick darkness here, splintered by a gleam from the empty windows of a house; the changed feel of the air as he neared the Test, the silence, then a dog barking; and at last the deep narrow stream. Just here he would feel someone walking beside him, talking to him in a low common voice full of burst bubbles of laughter, admonishing, reassuring: We got here, didn’t we? …
The drumming noise of the engines was louder. He was mildly surprised to see Hutton in the doorway. Shouting above the roar, Lackland asked,
“Have you seen to the truck?”
“Yes, sir. It’s waiting.”
“Then get my things into it—I’ll be round at once.”
“I’ve got them, sir.” He glanced at Thorburn.
“Goodbye, my boy. Good luck,” Thorburn said.
“Hope you’ll be all right, sir,” Hutton mumbled.
He went off, his shoulders a little hunched, as though he were walking against rain.
Stretching himself, Thorburn looked at Clarke.
“Our time running out, I think,” he said easily. “Time we went.”
He noticed the change in the roar of the engine.
“I wonder how far I can take you, sir?” asked Lackland.
Yes, it’s off, he thought; they’re off. “You can’t, we’re going to walk,” he said brutally. “Very kind of you.”
“I beg your pardon, sir, but you can’t walk five or six hundred miles. It’s impossible. Your uniform alone—”
Thorburn cut him short.
“We’ll pick up more suitable clothes somewhere. I can’t endure the truck. And what point is there in our hurrying?” He laughed silently. “We have plenty of time.”
“I do beg you, sir, to consider that we don’t even know—”
“Consider, good cow, consider,” said Clarke.
“My dear Lackland, that’s quite enough. I’ll be damned if I’ll be bruised and jolted again in your infernal truck.” Mildly ashamed of himself, he added, “In any case, you have quite enough on your plate.”
“I’m not worried,” said Lackland coolly.
In the inquisitive glance Thorburn turned on him there was a gleam of friendliness.
“You have no doubts about the future, have you?”
“My only doubt is whether I can work it with the human material to my hand.”
“Ah—that’s the difference between us. One of them. I have every sort of doubt about the future—and very few about the human material. It won’t let you shape it as you like, you know, Lackland, sound fellow though you are.”
After a moment, Lackland said,
“I had the impression lately that you haven’t much opinion of my soundness.”
The general’s nearly inaudible laughter shook him.
“I didn’t say anything more about you than that you’re sound. An excellent soldier—better than clever, ambitious, able, as honest as need be. I believe this country always throws up a few chaps like you when it needs them.”
“I shall do my best,” Lackland said drily.
“I know it. You’ll forget one thing, though.”
“Oh? What—if I may ask?”
Rubbing energetically at the back of his head,
“The incalculable, my dear Lackland—in short, God.”
Fixing his cold glance on the general, at a point he could reach without tilting his head, Lackland retorted,
“And do you think I don’t believe in Him?”
Thorburn answered with some humility, even remorse,
“I had no right to imply anything of the kind; my tongue runs away with me sometimes, I really ought to be careful, damn it.”
Lackland said nothing. For a minute now, there had been silence outside, in the heat and bright air; the noise of the aircraft, dwindling, had become a barely audible vibration—it ceased. Kent came into the room. They turned to look at him and he said jauntily,
“Well, he’s off the ground all right.”
“They’re safe now, are they?” said Thorburn, with a slight effort.
“I hope so,” Kent answered. He turned to Lackland. “Are we off, sir?”
“Thank God, yes,” Lackland said, suddenly happy. He looked at Thorburn. “If there’s nothing more I can do. …”
“No,” Thorburn said. “Good luck to you.”
Lackland saluted and bustled out. The pilot hesitated.
“Goodbye, sir. Thanks for everything,” he said stiffly. Instead of saluting, he held his hand out. A firm clasp of his long fingers—they were cold—and off he went.
Clarke turned his eyes up.
“This music hath a dying fall,” he muttered. “Now, where the devil did I pick that up?”
“On the wireless, if I know you,” his friend said.
“That fellow Lackland”—he hesitated, grinned sharply—“he believes God believes in him. Which may be why he’s so damned useful at this moment. If he is.”
The sound of the truck came to them from the back of the house. They heard it, as it jolted off, for less than a minute: a turn in the road cut it off. Glancing round the room, Thorburn wondered if anyone would enter it again before the litter of newspapers disintegrated and rats had finished what was left of the food lying about.
“Well?”
“Holidays again, Master Harry,” said Clarke, sniggering.
“Come on, you old fool.” Smiling, he drove his knee clumsily at the other’s backside, all but overbalancing. The silly gesture returned to him from a remote past, together with this warmth in his body that might have been love.
They went out together, blinking as the sun leaped at them. “The boy—0 where was he?” sang Clarke. Opening his eyes, the general saw first the rank grass beside a runway, then a gull flying up, up, until it was a speck of radiance in the most enormous sky he had ever seen.
October 194
7 - February 1948
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The Moment of Truth Page 15
