The Grass Memorial

by Sarah Harrison

  ‘Shouldn’t we go down?’ asked Emmeline. ‘The poor creature looks half dead, and what are they doing here on their own?’

  ‘Stay with me.’

  The same question concerned Harry as they rode slowly down the slope, and he kept one hand on Piper’s rein as the black ears pricked forward so urgently that the points all but met.

  ‘There’s no need to hold on to me, Captain Latimer,’ protested Emmmeline, ‘I’m quite capable of controlling him.’ But he was adamant.

  ‘He’s a young horse, and nervous. We don’t want two casualties.’

  The man had seen them coming, and stopped. He appeared tranced, his arms hanging loose at his sides, his head sagging. Harry had the impression that he only remained on his feet out of an ingrained habit of respect for a lady and an officer.

  ‘What’s going on? Where have you come from?’ he called. The man seemed to attempt to reply, but there was no sound that Harry could hear, and at that moment the horse collapsed like a pack of cards, front and back legs buckling in turn, head swaying, before crashing on to its side and lying with its saddle slewed to reveal weeping red sores. Piper shied, and Harry held him with difficulty and ordered Emmeline curtly to dismount, which she did this time without protest.

  The man pointed in the direction he’d come, croaked a single word that sounded to Harry like ‘finished’, and sank to his knees.

  Harry dismounted himself and went over to them. The man remained on his knees with his head sunk on his chest, as though too exhausted even to fall any further. His hair was caked with sweat and dust and round the inside of his collar was an angry suppurating crust of broken skin. The flesh of his face and neck was swollen red and covered in small cuts and abrasions and his hands were raw with broken blisters.

  Harry addressed Emmeline. ‘Mrs Roebridge, would you ride back to camp and tell them we have a casualty here? I suggest you ride the mare. And if you would first give this man a drink from your water bottle?’

  For once she was shocked into silence, and while he exchanged the saddles, she advanced warily on the man and proffered the bottle which he snatched and gulped at, shaking his head like a dog.

  ‘Hurry if you would. Leave the bottle. We’ll make what progress we can if someone can be sent to meet us.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Given a task of real urgency, Emmeline rose to the occasion, cantering away on Clemmie with as much well-bred determination and composure as if she’d been riding to hounds in the shires.

  Having poured some of the water over his head the man seemed to be reviving to the extent that he sat back on his heels and watched dully as Harry inserted the neck of his own water bottle into the side of the horse’s mouth. But it seemed too far gone to respond, and its throat palpitated with shadow irregular breaths.

  ‘I don’t like the look of him.’

  ‘Nor I, sir, he’s hurt hisself.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘With Lord Cardigan’s party, sir. I was about the fittest—’ he gave the ghost of a smile ‘—so they sent me on to report.’

  ‘Whatever happened? Were you attacked?’

  The man shook his head. ‘No, sir. Worn out, sir. Worn out, worn down, done in, man and beast. And nothing to report.’

  Something in the man’s voice, now that he was more animated, made Harry study him more closely. He was trying to get to his feet, using the horse’s rutted flank as a lever, but he couldn’t manage it.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ said Harry, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘I believe we know each other.’

  ‘Believe we do, sir. On board ship.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘They got me another horse, sir.’ The man grimaced. ‘This one.’

  The next morning the rest of the reconnaissance party returned, unrecognisable as the proud column that had left camp two weeks earlier. Even the most ardent of their brigade commander’s admirers couldn’t but feel that this had been a mission of profligate waste. The men were drawn and drained, carrying their saddles and almost dragging behind them their wrecks of horses, many of whom could scarcely put one foot before another and would not have looked out of place in a knacker’s yard.

  But Harry had seen enough weary and fruitless suffering in the space of the last few months to last him a lifetime. It was the face in profile of the commander as he rode rigidly and haughtily upright past the onlookers, that impressed him most. A face with a long, patrician nose netted with red veins, a sensual petulant mouth, fine curling hair and whiskers, and light blue eyes whose hooded lids and arched brows gave the whole a supercilious expression.

  Above all, Harry saw the face of a man engorged with vanity, spoiled by pride, and impregnably certain of his own rightness.

  The days toiled by. Harry ached with homesickness. Not only for his family and friends, and the familiar detail of the place where he had grown up, but for England itself, his homeland, in the soil of which his flesh and blood had its roots, and was buried. The smell, the light, the shape of England, its capricious but benign weather, the outline of its towns and villages that was like a secret language, the sound of its streets and the quiet pulse of its rivers. He had travelled before, been to Paris, Rome, and Vienna – it was almost unbelievable that he was now less than a hundred miles south of the Danube delta – yet he felt, but for the identity conferred by his constricting uniform, lost.

  At night, heartsick for Rachel, he scarcely slept. But when the heat was less intense he attempted to banish her by sifting through his other memories as though they were entries in a commonplace book. He had a particular recollection of one morning in the spring of 1851, when he and a group of fellow officers had been out riding in Hyde Park. Their route had taken them down Rotten Row, alongside the enormous glass structure that had been erected to house the Great Exhibition. The Crystal Palace held no particular fascination for the Hussars, since they had watched it go up from its inception, but on this particular morning it was full of infantrymen, marching up and down the wooden floors like toy soldiers in a giant dolls’ house. As Harry and the others rode by the front rank of soldiers kneeled, raised their firearms to their shoulders and fired a round of blanks into the huge space above them. Pigeons clattered in alarm from the roof and the less experienced horses danced sideways. The soldiers rose and continued with their pointless marching.

  ‘What the deuce are they up to?’ enquired George Roebridge of Harry over his shoulder.

  ‘Polishing the floor?’

  ‘No dusters.’

  ‘No dancing either,’ commented Fyefield, ‘more’s the pity. It’s going to be packed to bursting with the British working man, his wife, children, dog and dog’s dinner, gawping at the achievements of their betters.’

  ‘Exactly!’ exclaimed George, with the air of a man who had stumbled on an important scientific discovery. ‘That’s it – they’re testing the building. Seeing if it can take the punishment. The perfect occupation for a standing army in peacetime.’

  By this he meant, of course, the perfect occupation for infantrymen, and his observation was greeted with general laughter. Harry considered reminding Hector Fyefield that the working man of whom he was so dismissive had had a hand in the manufacture of some great achievements. But he did not do so, and the conversation turned to other things as they advanced on Kensington Gardens, the gloss and glitter of their turnout attracting general admiration in the spring sunshine.

  It occurred to Harry now that Roebridge’s facetious comments notwithstanding, the activities of the infantry in the Crystal Palace that morning were more purposeful and of greater use than their own, and possibly even than that of the British expeditionary force stranded at Varna. And the thousands from every walk of life who had flocked to the Great Exhibition had at least contributed to a general celebration of peace, prosperity and scientific advancement. But only three years later those same crowds had exulted in the departure of cavalry and infantry alike on this uncertain and ill-
prepared errand. Harry was a younger son of no special ambition or talent, who like his brother officers had purchased his commission and become a member of the exotic tribe that was the Hussars. But unlike Hugo he was by nature a thinker, and here where there was unlimited time for thinking, that was not an easy or comfortable thing to be.

  Least comfortable of all were his thoughts concerning Rachel, which would not be banished. The image of his brother’s widow was with him always, retreating when duty drew his attention elsewhere, but always returning unbidden. That he was in love with her he could no longer doubt nor deny. At this distance he could with impunity admit what he had always known: that he had fallen in love with her on the day, at the very instant, that he met her. But distance had also served to turn his love into an obsession. He could not see her, nor talk to her, he could not demonstrate his feelings by the performance of even the smallest service. Worst of all was the possibility that he might not come back. It seemed increasingly likely that he might die here in Devna, unused and unsung, and join a pile of stinking corpses in a communal grave like poor Colin Bartlemas. And even if he were to survive this, the immediate future held only uncertainty and danger. In the meantime Hugo’s child would be born in October, while Rachel was still in mourning. Loyalty, decency and every kind of social prohibition were ranged against him and served only to intensify his feelings. He was in turmoil.

  He had written to her just before their departure, and again since arrival here. In his effort to convey only what was fraternally correct he feared both letters might have seemed cold and stilted, and the fact that he had received no reply appeared to bear out these misgivings. But then why would Rachel, whose heart and mind must be wholly preoccupied with the terrible loss of her adored young husband, be in the least affected by the tone of letters from her brother-in-law? He wished neither to appear cold nor to overstep the bounds of propriety, while all the time burning with fierce, unexpressed passion.

  It coloured all that he did. When that evening he sat down at the entrance to his tent to write to the parents of Colin Bartlemas, it was with the shameful awareness that his letter, its style and content, might at some point reach Rachel’s notice, and so it was doubly important that both should be apt, sensitive and well considered.

  Naturally, he must spare them the squalid details of their son’s death. But neither could he avoid the painful fact that Colin had died long before facing the challenge of battle he’d so welcomed. His personal effects – his cap badge, penknife, wallet, pipe and prayer book – looked a pitifully small legacy on the ground next to Harry as he laboured, scratching out half a dozen attempts before arriving at what he hoped was the right note.

  My dear Mr and Mrs Bartlemas,

  It is with the greatest sorrow that I write to inform you of the death of your son Colin who was also my own true and lifelong friend. At a time when the so-called ordinary soldier is too often seen as a ne’er-do-well for whom no serious role in civilian life is possible, Colin was a recruit of whom the Army could be justly proud, the more so because his true and honest heart was always in the countryside and the work that he knew – the horses, the dogs, the woods and the fields around Bells. After I had entered the Army he once told me that if there were to be a war he would join up to do his bit, and when the call to arms came the very qualities that were so much admired by those of us who knew him ensured that he enlisted.

  I know that now, reading this letter, you can think only that he is gone, and of your own loss, which my own much humbler experience can help me in some small way to appreciate. But when in time the first pain of that loss is dulled, please remember that Colin’s tragic and untimely death was caused by his good and stalwart character, a character loved by all who knew him ...

  Here Harry broke off and stared out over the sea of tents. Along with the ever-present flies, a dull, sour smell hung over this place. The bubbling chorus of lakeside frogs, which had so diverted them at first, now sounded like nothing so much as hollow laughter. Here and there men stunned by the heat lay on the ground as if already dead.

  He returned with an effort to his writing.

  He bore the pain of sickness courageously, and I know that you were in his thoughts when he died. (Harry did not in fact know this, nor even believe it, since the extremes of cholera did not allow for the luxury of reflection, but the spirit of it was true.) I enclose some of his things, and hope that along with them you will accept my very deepest sympathy.

  Yours,

  Henry Felix Latimer

  Harry worked on the letter until there was no light left, and set it aside with a sense of relief.

  The next day he read it through, despaired of its jejune, well-meaning sententiousness, and threw it away. The voice did not sound like his, nor the subject like his rough and ready friend. Those at home who knew them both would have to take his feelings on trust. He parcelled up Colin’s possessions, wrote three simple sentences to accompany them, signed himself ‘Harry Latimer’ and left it at that.

  He had the strong conviction that Rachel, above all, would know instinctively what lay behind the letter if she were to see it, and not think the less of him for it.

  He had last seen her a week before they had embarked for the Crimea, when he had returned to Bells to make his farewells. He’d been shocked by his father’s apparent frailty, and asked his mother if there were any physical cause, beyond those of old age and bereavement.

  Maria responded with the slight show of temper that was, with her, a sure sign of anxiety.

  ‘He will not eat! Whatever is put in front of him, no matter how much trouble has been taken, he turns his head away—’ she demonstrated the turning of the head in a histrionic way that was all her own ‘—as if just to look at it makes him feel sick!’

  ‘Perhaps it does. Has he been seen by a doctor?’

  She made a small, impatient sound and flicked her hand. ‘He refuses. And besides, neither of us has any faith in doctors.’

  ‘But he looks so terribly thin and pale. I think you should send for Dr Jaynes whether or not Father wants it.’

  ‘Dr Jaynes is a stupid old fool,’ declared Maria. ‘I shall look after my own husband myself.’

  ‘But if Father won’t allow you to look after him . . .’ Harry allowed the comment to hang, but she turned away and her failure to answer confirmed him in his opinion that both parents were terribly afraid.

  At dinner that night, he noticed that although – perhaps out of regard for his son’s presence – his father did not spurn the food in the manner demonstrated by Maria, neither did he do more than stare at it, and push it around somewhat, so that soup, fish, meat and pudding were all removed uneaten.

  Percy did however suggest that the two of them have a glass of port together at the table, and when Maria had gone, Harry spoke his mind.

  ‘Father, you aren’t well.’

  ‘Out of sorts, merely.’

  ‘Much more than that. You’re too thin.’

  ‘Nothing tempts me . . .’ Percy held up his glass and peered into it. ‘Except this.’

  ‘But you’re wasting away. You must eat.’

  ‘I don’t wish to.’ The tone was almost petulant.

  ‘Then you must make yourself, not just for your own sake but Mother’s. And mine, too. The regiment embarks in a few days and I can’t bear to think of leaving you like this.’

  ‘Ah, blackmail now.’ He smiled thinly, rubbing his face with a hand that was already skeletal, the bones standing out like twigs.

  ‘Look on the food as medicine, force it down if you have to. But eat.’

  Percy favoured Harry with the chilly look which in spite of his reduced condition retained much of the power that had always been able to quell offspring and employees alike. ‘Am I to understand that you are—’ he narrowed his eyes in a threatening imitation of disbelief ‘—ordering me to do so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They stared at one another. Harry felt his father’s gaze flicking b
ack and forth across his own, as if trying to read it. Then the paper-fine eyelids lowered slowly, once, in a kind of acknowledgement.

  ‘I’ll do my best. But I promise nothing.’

  There had been no news from his parents as yet. It added to Harry’s sense of helplessness that while he was doing no good here, he could not help his father either.

  The morning after his conversation with Percy he had ridden over to Bells to call on Rachel. It was cold and a light rain was beginning to fall but still, he was told, Mrs Latimer had walked up to the churchyard to Mr Latimer’s grave.

  ‘But that’s a steep climb of two miles at least,’ said Harry in disbelief.

  ‘Two and a half sir.’ Jeavons assumed one of those expressions at which more senior servants quickly became expert, indicative of a host of personal opinions kept perfectly under control for propriety’s sake.

  As he rode up the hill on Darby with the rain spattering in his face, Harry reflected that he seemed surrounded by people with no concern for their own wellbeing. The thought of Rachel trudging up here in her condition was a worrying one. It occurred to him that Hugo had been so much loved, so vital a force in the lives of those around him, that his loss had robbed them of all judgement.

  But when – long before she saw him – he’d found her, he understood. She was crouched by the grave, setting seedlings in the sodden earth with her bare hands. She wore a cloak but in spite of the rain had thrown it back off her shoulders so that her arms were free. Her pale hair was in an untidy, countrywoman’s bun, and where it had come loose around her face he noticed that the damp had given it a slight curl. Or perhaps (and this thought thrilled him) this curliness was natural, but generally subdued into that quiet, perfectly controlled elegance.