He told how, against military advice, Haig sent in a new weapon, the tank, fifty tanks, in fact twenty-nine of which broke down before reaching the battlefield. The rest got stuck in the mud. He wrote of how men were ordered out of the trenches to certain death, how he watched whole lines of them throwing up their arms under machine-gun fire and falling to the ground, never to move again, only to be replaced by other lines, equally doomed. He told of how generals discussed tactics over fine wines in warm chateaux while their men died in the mud, and how men with trench foot literally crawled through the mud to the dressing stations, rather than take precious stretchers away from the seriously wounded; and he told how by November, when the battle was finally declared over, and a great victory won, 460,000 British soliders had been killed or wounded, and less than ten miles of territory gained.
But once home on leave, sitting in the drawing-room at Cheyne Walk, his head in his hands, gaunt and somehow colourless with exhaustion and misery, he did tell Celia something else: how one morning, finally sick with exhaustion and despair, he had been standing, after a sleepless night filled with shells and fire, ordering his men out of the trenches, out into the line of fire. The last man had gone up, and Oliver had found himself staring up into the grey air, thinking of the ghastly dead landscape out there, full of noise and horror and death, quite literally petrified, unable to move. And that last man, a difficult, sullen character called Barton, had looked back down at him, and said in a tone of absolute derision, ‘Not afraid are you sir?’ and Oliver had moved at once, dragged to his senses, had climbed out behind him.
But in the second of that hesitation, a shell had come; had ripped off the soldier’s arm, his leg and half his head, and Oliver stood there, staring at him, thinking that if his courage had not failed him, it would have caught him, that shell; he would have been lying there, screaming in agony. He had done the only thing that could be done under the circumstances, had gone on, into the grey hell, had fought bravely, had seen another of his men hesitate and run up to him urging him on, running beside him.
‘But for as long as I live I shall remember Barton, and know that it was my fear that killed him. And it should have killed me. And—’ his voice shook, he tried to meet her eyes and could only do so for a moment, ‘all I could feel for a while was gratitude that it had not. And then, do you know what I did that night? Sat down and wrote to Barton’s widow, told her how her husband had died a hero’s death, how he had died instantly, when he actually lived for hours; when I should – I should have said—’ and he started weeping helplessly.
‘No,’ said Celia, putting out an arm to hold him, drawing it back, unable to touch such misery, ‘no, you should not have said that. What good would it have done? It would have made Mrs Barton’s grief far greater, and it wouldn’t have brought him back. My God, Oliver, you’ve been so brave for so long, you’ve led your men all this time, you mustn’t crucify yourself for one break in your courage.’
But Oliver continued to crucify himself; he spent much of the leave alone, taking long walks along the river, or reading in his room, and even refused to go down to Ashingham to see the children. ‘Don’t make me Celia. I can’t face them, can’t be brave and tell them wonderful stories of valour and glory on the battlefield.’
He was home for ten days, and he did not once ask Celia any questions about Lyttons, about how she was managing with her own difficult life; nor did he make love to her or even express any desire to do so. She struggled to be patient, to leave him be; but when he went back, she sat staring at the river, on a dull, heavy February day, and wondered how her marriage, how any marriage, could survive so dreadful an onslaught.
As Oliver returned to France, Billy Miller was brought home: not dead, at least, although he frequently wished that he was, in those first dreadful months. An enemy bullet had struck him when he was within inches of safety, returning from a night raid, and badly injured his right leg. After weeks in a field hospital, gangrene developed, and the leg was amputated just below the knee.
CHAPTER 13
‘You surely wouldn’t enlist, would you?’ Jamie’s face was anxious, frightened, almost.
‘We shall have to see,’ said Laurence, ‘I’d like to go, of course; any man would. Well any man except a coward. But there’s no question of it at the moment, they won’t take men who are at college. I may get my chance in the fall, but, in any case, they will be enlisting experienced men; I don’t imagine I shall get my chance for a while.’
This was not strictly true, but Jamie was not to know that. ‘Thank heavens,’ he said and smiled awkwardly at his brother. ‘It does all seem to be getting horribly near. Do you know I saw a whole lot of women, wearing khaki, coming out of a house in Madison Avenue today. Surely they aren’t joining the army?’
‘Oh no. But I’ve heard about it, it’s some kind of centre for women and the war effort. They’re volunteering to do some sort of work, either here or over there, driving or nursing or whatever. Very commendable. I don’t see our revered stepfather doing anything to defend the country he speaks so sentimentally about.’
‘Robert! That’s ridiculous, Laurence. How could he go? He’s far too old, surely.’
‘How naive you are, Jamie. I’m quite sure that if he volunteered, a job would be found for him. But he prefers to stay. I suppose one cannot entirely blame him. He’s safe here, after all. One must try to put oneself in his shoes – however difficult. Cowardice is a very unattractive characteristic, I always think.’
Jamie looked at him uncertainly. And then went back to his study, to do some more work. But he couldn’t concentrate. The whole conversation had upset him considerably. First Laurence – of whom, despite everything, he was very fond – talking about volunteering to go and fight in Europe, and then a new conflict set up over Robert, the idea planted of his cowardice. He wanted and needed to admire Robert, not despise him. And he was quite sure he wasn’t a coward. But Laurence did have a point. Sometimes Jamie felt he was in a maze, and every time he found the way out, Laurence was there, telling him to go in the other direction, getting him lost again. If only, if only his mother hadn’t died. Life would be so wonderfully simple.
‘Can we get him down here?’ said Barty, ‘Please, please? Mum can’t look after him, and there are lots of men here without legs, he’d feel better about it maybe. And I could help, well I do anyway.’ Her lip quivered.
‘Oh Barty,’ said Celia. She put her arms round her, hugged her tight; unusually Barty responded, clung to her. She was not physically demonstrative with Celia, rather the reverse; it was as if she knew she didn’t really belong to her, or with her. Perversely though, she had loved to sit on Wol’s knee, kissed him goodnight fondly rather than dutifully. It had annoyed Celia once; now, like so many other things, it was a distant memory.
‘Darling, I’ll see. I’ll ask – well, I’ll ask Matron. But, I do agree, it would be lovely to have Billy here.’
‘Celia, no,’ said Lady Beckenham. ‘This is a convalescent home for officers. It’s simply out of the question that a Corporal should be allowed here.’
‘But Mama, Billy is family. Surely—’
‘Celia,’ said her mother, her face very hard suddenly. ‘Billy Miller is not family. You still seem to have trouble accepting that. And we can’t make exceptions. Now you must excuse me. I have to see to the horses.’
Barty didn’t believe that there was no room for Billy at Ashingham. There seemed to her to be endless room. None of these people knew what no room meant. They should see Line Street. She was fairly sure why Billy couldn’t come. It was because he wasn’t an officer. But that was so awful, so wrong and unfair, when he was her brother, that she hardly dared even think it. And she certainly didn’t dare discuss it with Aunt Celia, simply because it was so horrible, and if that was right, she would have felt she would have to – well run away or something. Leave Ashingham. Go home. Home to London and be in danger like the rest of them, from the bombs and everything.
Last time Sylvia had come down, she’d brought Marjorie with her. It hadn’t been very nice, because Marjorie had been horrible and unfriendly, and rude to everyone, even to Nanny and Dorothy; but Barty had felt in a way it was understandable, listening to Marjorie’s stories about life in London now. There was hardly any food, and the queuing was worse than ever, although there was going to be something called rationing, her mother said; everyone would be allowed at least a bit of everything which would make it more fair. The bombs were awful and terribly frightening, with noise and fire in the sky and they all had to go under next door’s table, which was very strong, when there was an air raid, and say prayers, it was the only thing to do, although it wouldn’t help much if a bomb actually hit the house. Some houses a few streets away had been hit, and five people killed. Half the men in their street had been killed, or badly injured like Billy; it was awful to see them Marjorie said, sitting around, some of them blind, some of them without arms or legs. At least everyone had to go now and fight, it was the law, even Bob Carter with his bad back, and actually it had turned out there was nothing wrong with his back at all.
Aunt Celia and LM didn’t come down to Ashingham so often now: only about once a month, instead of every weekend. They couldn’t get petrol for the little car. The twins and Jay hated not seeing them, and they all cried dreadfully on Sunday evenings when LM and Celia had to leave again, and Barty worried a lot about them too; in spite of everything, she was terribly fond of them both and the thought of Cheyne Walk being bombed was dreadful. It was so big and strong, though, she somehow thought a bomb would just sort of bounce off it.
And she felt so guilty, living safely down in Ashingham, in the lovely house, in the middle of the countryside with plenty of food; she loved playing with and looking after Jay, too, and was fiercely proud that he would only go to sleep if she read him a story. And the previous summer she and Giles had had a wonderful time, helping with haymaking and the harvest, and picking beans and peas until their arms ached. Most of the farm labourers had gone off to the war, there were only a couple of the older ones left and a few boys; a lot of the work was done by landgirls, rather jolly most of them. They were as grateful for help as the nurses were in the convalescent home; even the twins were pressed into service the summer they were six, and had to help picking peas.
The twins were much nicer now; ever since her father had died they had been kinder to her, and they weren’t so spoilt either, their grandmama, as they called her, was very firm with them, sent them to their room if they showed off or were cheeky. They’d made an awful fuss at first, and said they’d tell their mother, or refuse to come out of their room again, but when they discovered that meant missing a meal because Lady Beckenham was quite happy to leave them there all day if necessary, they quite quickly started to do what she said. There had also been one dreadful occasion when she smacked them both very hard indeed: that had been when she discovered them stealing strawberries from the strawberry beds, after they had all been expressly forbidden to do so; and another time, when she found them walking behind nice old Miss Adams, mimicking her limp, Lady Beckenham had got her horse crop and made them pull down their knickers and had given each of their small bottoms a hard whack.
Barty had been quite sorry for them, it had obviously hurt a lot and they howled with pain; but she observed that they never did tell their mother as they had threatened, presumably beause they were so ashamed of themselves. When they had to apologise, as part of their punishment, to Miss Adams and Nanny and Dorothy, and Giles, who had been at home at the time, they seemed genuinely sorry and cried.
She overheard Aunt Celia saying to Lady Beckenham that they seemed very happy, and Lady Beckenham had said she had told her before, a disciplined child was a happy child. For the previous Christmas, the twins had been given a dog by their grandparents: a black labrador they called Soot. They had to look after him themselves and feed him and brush him. Barty had thought they’d try and get someone else to do most of it, but they were extremely conscientious, and when Soot was ill after eating a decomposing rabbit, they insisted on sitting up nursing him all night in the gunroom.
‘Quite right,’ said their grandmother when Nanny came to her anxiously, wondering if it should be allowed, ‘he’s theirs and they should look after him. Won’t do them any harm.’
But none of this happiness made Barty feel any better about Billy.
Dispatches, the novel written by Muriel Marchant, at once touching, sad and patriotic, and even with flashes of humour (inserted for the most part by Lady Celia Lytton, its editor) was a huge success: despite being published on inferior paper, with a simple jacket, it had sold almost five thousand copies. Second, third and then fourth editions had been rushed out, and Celia had proposed a sequel. Muriel had written this in record time, and three months later, Further Dispatches reached the bookshops.
‘Wonderful,’ Celia said happily, when news of the books’ sales reached her, ‘I think we should embark on a third straight away. It’s bound to sell. Don’t look like that, LM, it’s paying the beastly rates increase. If that goes up one more time we’re going to be in genuine trouble.’
‘Those books are what our father would have called below stairs stuff,’ said LM.
Celia said briskly that she was surprised at her talking like that, given her radical views on the social structure of the country, and LM said it was nothing to do with social structures, it was intellectual ones she was worried about.
‘We have never compromised on those. I can’t feel comfortable with this. Or that terrible poetry,’ she added. Celia had discovered that poetry did not have to be good to sell; whatever it was like, it seemed to reach out to women particularly, and to comfort them.
‘Well that terrible poetry is paying the wages. LM, surely you should be grateful that Lyttons is surviving. Plenty of time after the war to raise standards again. And you must be pleased with the children’s books, they’re very good, and doing well. Respectable enough for you?’
‘I suppose so,’ said LM warily.
‘My dream, you know,’ said Celia, ‘is to find a children’s writer. A really, really good one, creating classics, like Lewis Carroll and Louisa May Alcott. But I don’t hold out a lot of hope for it. God, I’m tired. Couldn’t sleep last night. The noise of those zeppelins – I’m sure they’re getting closer. Thank God we don’t have to risk our children’s lives.’
‘Indeed. Although I sometimes wonder if Jay quite realises who I am,’ said LM soberly. ‘And actually, if we shouldn’t move the whole enterprise out of London, whether it’s not just foolhardy, staying on, risking our lives, and the lives of the people working for us. They’re all so loyal and—’
‘Oh LM, so do I. But then I think of all the work involved in moving, and decide it’s not worth it. The war surely can’t go on much longer. And it would be difficult, far away from printers and the delivery vans and so on. Yes, the staff are loyal, but then you have to remember we’ve given lots of them great opportunities, jobs they’d never have got if men had been around, chances to develop their talents and skills. I do often wonder what Grandpa Lytton would say if he knew the entire editorial department and almost all the art department is staffed by woman. You know this war’s certainly done one thing. It means that women will definitely get the vote. No one would dare push them back into the home and under their men’s jurisdiction now.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ said LM.
‘Of course I’m right. You just wait and see.’ Celia looked at her. ‘LM, are you ever – well—’
‘Frightened? Terrified. Quite often,’ said LM cheerfully, ‘but it’s like not being able to sleep. You just get used to it, don’t you? Shall we go home now?’
‘Yes, let’s. Cook managed to get some beef yesterday. Tough, I’m sure, but I’ve been looking forward to it all day. It really is much better now, she says, with meat rationing. She hardly has to queue at all. I hear they’re going to persuade farmers to use more land fo
r growing food as well. I don’t know how Mama will feel about that. Ploughing up her precious paddocks. Anyway I want to ask your advice about something. It’s really, really difficult, and please don’t give me a lecture, because it won’t help.’
‘I promise I won’t, said LM. ‘I’m much too tired.’
‘Barty darling, I have some good news,’ shouted Celia down the telephone. ‘Billy can come to the nursing home in Beaconsfield, the one where Jay was born. Next week. I’ve arranged for a private ambulance to bring him down. He really needs nursing anyway, at the moment, it seems, not just what he’d get at the convalescent home, and he’ll get it there. And you’ll be able to see lots of him, and – what, Barty? On Thursday. Ask my mother to find out what time they want him. Got to go now. Love to the twins and Jay. Bye darling. See you soon.’
‘Lady Celia, can I talk to you?’
Gill Thomas was standing in Celia’s office doorway; she looked nervous and rather flushed.
‘Of course. Come in. Would you like a cup of tea? I’m afraid we’ve long since exhausted this week’s biscuit ration.’
‘Yes, that would be very nice.’ She sat down. She was a pretty girl, with shining dark hair and rosy cheeks; she looked as if she should have been living in the country, milking cows, rather than doing her genuinely innovative design work.
‘It’s not about Barry?’
‘Oh no. No, nothing still. I suppose that’s good news really. I have to tell myself that, anyway.’
Barry, Gill’s fiancé, had been taken prisoner almost nine months earlier, and was in a German camp somewhere near Metz. That was all she knew.
No Angel Page 30
