Hares started up all over the place, and to begin with the men of the infantry considered this great sport, the more energetic ones breaking ranks to chase them. The impromptu hunts, weaving in and out of the lines to the accompaniment of whoops and jeers, and the jaunty marching music of the bands, created what was almost a fairground atmosphere.
Some of the hunters were successful. Harry saw one victorious trooper with more youthful energy than sense, race to the front of his comrades and charge the length of the rank, roaring with elation, his kill held aloft in one hand so that its blood ran down his arm and on to his face. The men cheered and laughed but the trooper’s contorted blood-spattered face and wild shouts chilled Harry, and stirred a memory or expectation of something terrible.
As the sun rose, so their spirits sank.
Sickness and thirst marched with them still, and flourished as they tired. The proud glory of their setting out, when each man had felt a part of the grand endeavour, gave way to the grim trudge of reality. The stirring panoply of war dissolved before the squalid detail of individual suffering. Within half an hour of their departure the first victims of cholera and heat exhaustion were beginning to fall, and the marching armies traded a dense wake of discarded equipment, and dead and dying men, contorted by pain, vomiting and diaorrhoea, too weak to carry on. As the 8th Hussars rode forward on the flank, so the arabas rumbled by in the opposite direction, loaded with a pitiful human cargo. One or two of the more enterprising officers’ wives were seen to be carrying armfuls of rifles for the weakened men with barely the strength to carry themselves, so that these well-born ladies, riding on their ponies and mules, looked more like peasant women with loads of brushwood.
One by one, the bands, fell silent. And now in their place could be heard not the liquid purity of larksong, but the dry, dull buzzing of flies.
After one hour’s march, a halt was called. It was strange to see the whole great swathe of infantry, scarlet and blue, sink to the ground as if cut by a scythe. All were aware of that small, meaningless rise in morale that accompanied change: too long in one place and the collective mood grew sullen and restless; orders to advance and they were briefly inspired; too relentless a march and in their debilitated state they flagged and their spirits wearied. In what had so far been a war of stops and starts uncertainty was proving to be their greatest enemy.
Harry dismounted and let Clemmie put her head down. She blew with relief, stretched her neck; her lips pulled hungrily on the dry grass; she munched, content in the moment. Harry envied her her simple world. She had forgotten the fear and pain of the voyage, she did not anticipate the danger to come.
Next to him, Leonard Palliser’s grey gelding had thrown a shoe.
‘Dammit, this ground’s like rock – he’ll have to go back.’
Harry called to him: ‘If you see my man Betts at the rear, ask him to come up this way, can you?’
‘If I do. It’s no grand levée back there,’ said Palliser grumpily.
Harry loosened Clemmie’s girth. The cavalry saddles were becoming too big for their thin mounts, there was a real danger of sores and chafing. Her hide twitched and she shook her head as flies settled on her rump and around her eyes; but her once beautiful long tail had become short and tattered and though it swung from side to side it was no longer any use as a switch.
The infantry sat or lay; the cavalry stood amongst their horses. At ground level Harry ran with sweat and could begin to appreciate what the footsoldiers had been suffering. The scene was like a great colourful picnic, with men talking and reading letters and raiding their rations, except that many of those who lay down did so because they were unlikely to get up again. The cheerful sound of voices and the thin, jaunty music of the tin whistle drowned out the buzzing of the flies. Fyefield removed his shako, revealing a sunburned stripe, and lit a cigar.
‘I had no idea,’ he said, running a finger between his tight stock and reddened skin, ‘that it would be so infernally hot. I plead pig ignorance. But the devil of it is that the French seem comfortable.’
‘They appear to have what they need,’ agreed Harry.
‘Including,’ put in Philip Gough earnestly, ‘those rather excellent and amenable camp followers.’
Hector snorted with laughter. ‘If they were that amenable the French wouldn’t march so damnably fast . . .’
‘No, no,’ said Gough, ‘I believe they’re no more than cooks and nurses.’
‘I don’t deny it for a moment! And some of our fellows have brought along the flower of English womanhood – but speaking as a bachelor I feel bound to say that most are neither use nor ornament.’
‘They came for their husbands’ sakes,’ said Harry, ‘which is only to be admired. And they help where they can.’
‘Hmm.’ Hector sucked glumly on his cigar. ‘Not trained up like those French women though.’
Harry could hardly deny this, nor the obvious fact that their allies seemed in general to be more ‘trained up’ than they were. Preparedness and punctuality had been the hallmarks of the French performance so far; chaos, confusion and delay that of the British. The resplendent appearance of the British Army, which had stirred their hearts at the outset of the day, seemed now vainglorious next to the French who had without doubt withstood the rigours of the march better. In spite of large packs they had kept up a killing pace in their less arresting but looser and more comfortable uniforms. Élan, reflected Harry, was something the British Army – and especially its cavalry – aspired to, but here élan was proving to be dependent not on show, but on practicalities.
‘Ah, here we have it.’ Hector pointed with his cigar. ‘A visit from on high.’
Lord Raglan, Marshal St Arnaud, and a bevy of staff officers of both nationalities were riding along the front of the columns. As they did so many of the seated men got to their tired feet, waved or threw their caps in the air and cheered them to the echo.
‘I sometimes think,’ remarked Hector, ‘that the ordinary Britisher will cheer a leader in direct proportion to the level of hardship he inflicts. It seems that the worse time a chap’s having, the better he thinks the overall plan must be.’
‘Then let’s hope he’s right.’
Watching Raglan as he paused to address some grateful infantrymen, Harry knew that in this, as in all Hector’s acid and unheroic comments, there was more than a grain of truth. This dignified, stone-faced old man, maimed in body and reserved in demeanour, had as yet done nothing to earn the admiration of those he led. His tenure as Commander-in-Chief had been marked by indecision, secrecy and slowness. He displayed neither dash nor the common touch. His heart might be good, but his hand was cold and his nature cautious. Still, he was a ‘toff’. His attraction for the men rested entirely in his aristocratic bearing. He had the appearance, thought Harry, of a man vouchsafed greater wisdom and judgement than the hoi-polloi, as he looked down from his placid charger to disseminate terse, dry encouragement. Recalling the face of Lord Cardigan, returning unabashed from his disastrous reconnaissance of the Danube – the handsome, highly coloured voluptuary’s profile with its loose, petulant mouth and pale eyes – Harry wondered how on earth the one could ever presume successfully to command the other. Not that this was the only clash involving Lord Cardigan. The animus that existed between the divisional and brigade commanders of the Lights was well known and even the subject of much humorous grumbling both in the ranks and the officers’ mess. Lucan was a sound if choleric commander, who obeyed orders to the letter. But the perversity of human nature dictated that given the choice the men would have ridden into hellfire behind the arrogant Cardigan.
‘How is she, sir?’ It was Betts at his elbow.
‘Betts – she’s going well, but I wonder when to rest her. What’s your opinion?’
He ran an expert eye over Clemmie, and a hand over her fetlocks and pasterns. ‘No problems that I can see, sir. It’s the blooming heat that’s going to tire them.’
‘And all of us. Let’
s hope we reach some water soon.’
‘Sir. If we do it’d better not be sea water like the last lot.’
‘Is Deny doing well?’
‘You know that one, sir. That’s no cavalry charger if you don’t mind me saying, that’s a work horse. Keep going till ’e drops.’ Betts’ gaze drifted to the commanders and staff who were now directly before them at a distance of some seventy yards. ‘Seen any cossacks, sir?’
The question was asked expressionlessly, but Harry had a good deal of respect for his groom’s sardonic intelligence. The entire allied invasion force was spread out on the grass with their commanders-in-chief parading before them, in what was generally acknowledged to be some of the most perfect cavalry country imaginable, a vast sedentary target.
Palliser returned, huffing and puffing, from the rear with his fresh horse. ‘Latimer, may I borrow your man?’
‘Of course. Carry on, Betts.’
Twenty minutes after that they received the order to march. The great concourse of men rose with a sound like wind through wheat. The armies moved forwards once more in wave after slow wave over the dry plain.
Rachel was going through the house, room by room. It was something she had scarcely had time to do before Hugo’s death but now the process had assumed for her an almost sacramental significance. As his child grew inside her so she was slowly but surely growing to understand the place where he himself had been born, and to feel less like a stranger to it.
For this to happen it was necessary for her to discover Bells on her own. If she had a question to ask she would ask it, but otherwise the servants left her alone. Her relationship with the household was an informal one. She relied heavily on the competence of the farm manager, Collins, and that of Oliver in the stables, Morrish in the garden and Jeavons in the house. She liked the work done well, but she wanted it done well for its own sake, not under duress. It was clear that Maria’s incumbency had been characterised by temperament and inconsistency. Her mother-in-law had been held in affection for the master’s sake, but it was a wary affection. She could be expansive and indulgent one minute, haughty and demanding the next. Her employees had learned that it was her way, and meant nothing, but they were still on their guard. Rachel herself knew that while she could never be as open about her feelings as Maria, she could for that reason maintain an even keel. She strove not for popularity, only trust and respect.
She had taken on Mercy Bartlemas (at sixteen the eldest of the children now) as an under housemaid to replace the income lost with Colin, but when Mercy grew peaky and wilted Rachel asked Morrish if the girl might do odd jobs out of doors. Initially he was dumbstruck at the thought of this break with convention – a young female invading his precious territory! – but Rachel persuaded him that it was only for a trial period and once he’d grudgingly agreed, the arrangement was a success. Mercy was a country girl with no liking for indoors, a girl who liked to be out in the fresh air, not gazing at it through glass. Given a few simple tasks in a setting that suited her she blossomed as the rose, and being from a large family she was well able to cope with Morrish’s grumpy demands and teasing from the two garden lads. She did as she was told energetically and showed an aptitude for the work: she had green thumbs, things grew for her. Her sturdy figure in a brown sacking apron and muddy boots, hair frizzy as a rag doll’s, became a common and soon an unremarkable sight about the gardens and park. For Rachel there was real pleasure in knowing not just that her family was benefiting (more in kind than in cash) from Mercy’s job, but that here was another small link with the past, a young and vital one, making the beans and cabbages and flowers grow while her poor brother lay dead in a communal grave by the Black Sea.
She wrote of these feelings to Harry, in the letter that she wrote each night, like a journal, and posted once a week or so. She had no way of knowing how long these letters took to reach him, or if they did at all, but there was a comfort in the mere act of writing them. And even though she had heard nothing from Harry for some time she followed the reports of W. H. Russell in The Times and had formed a picture of where he was and what the conditions were like. Even so, this aspect of the present was at one remove, and the future was at best uncertain. The past had a greater solidity. That was a place she could visit and explore and which would only change with her own understanding of it.
There was a painting which hung in the hall by which she often paused because it showed the whole Latimer family – Percy, Maria and their two sons – perhaps twenty years ago. It was in most respects a conventional, well-executed painting of the family standing on a grassy mound, improbably in their best clothes, with a somewhat idealised view of Bells in the background. Rachel liked it for the story it told. Rightly or wrongly she perceived in it certain idiosyncrasies which the painter had been unable or unwilling to ignore – things which in a wholly respectful representation would have been left out. There was, for instance, a chair in the centre foreground which must surely have been placed there for Maria, in order for the family to present a traditional tableau – mother seated, paterfamilias standing at her shoulder, one son at her side, the other on her knee or on the ground nearby. Maria, however, was standing tall and proud next to her slightly shorter husband. What made Rachel sure that her mother-in-law had declined to sit was that the chair – and consequently the painting’s focal point – was occupied by a liver-and-white spaniel with its tongue hanging out. Maria wore a wine-red dress, its severe elegance offset by the red flower just visible in her hair. When it came to the boys it was Harry, the younger son, who stood next to the chair with his hand on the dog’s collar (it did in fact look as if it might leap away at any moment) and Hugo who sat cross-legged on the ground at the front, his chin in his hands, grinning impishly. Whatever the actual setting for the sittings, the artist had made no attempt to conceal the mud on the soles of Hugo’s shoes nor his slightly grubby fingers and disarrayed hair. His grin and Maria’s dramatic stare were vividly characteristic of mother and son.
The expressions of Percy and Harry were harder to read. In the case of Percy, Rachel knew her father-in-law well enough by now to understand that his forbidding and even slightly bored look was a carapace, painstakingly developed over the years, to disguise his thoughts and feelings. Harry was more mysterious, a small person – he could have been no more than three or four – with matters of moment on his mind. Often, when Rachel looked at the painting, she found herself going closer to study the boys’ faces as though sheer proximity might grant her an insight beyond the streaks and swirls of paint. It didn’t, of course, but she always came away with the same impression: that Hugo never doubted for a moment that life held for him adventure, friendship, love; whereas Harry jumped to no such conclusions, but watched and waited thoughtfully for what might transpire.
This impression was reinforced by some books she found in what had been the boys’ nursery and schoolroom before they had been sent away to Eton. Hugo’s written work was expansive but untidy, characterised by a lack of regard for correct grammar and punctuation. Asked to describe ‘My favourite animal’, he had covered three scrawled and spattered pages on the subject of his spaniel, Rowley – Rachel thought it might be the one in the painting – omitting no detail of the dog’s delinquent behaviour, from ‘chasing the chickens and eating most of one’ (a crime for which Rowley had apparently endured a dead hen tied to his collar for three days) to ‘barking at Father until he was driven nearly mad’ and ‘steeling the cricket ball when Little hit it for six’.
Harry’s composition on the same theme at an even more tender age was punctilious and painstaking, and took an entirely different interpretation. ‘The tiger is my favourite animal becos it is very beatiful and very wild. It has strips and yelow eyes. It eats other beests becos it is hungry. I have never seen one but it is in my book. I wud like to see a tiger.’
This was accompanied by a lifelike drawing of a tiger crouched over a hapless and profusely bleeding antelope, probably copied from the book in
question and captioned: ‘The tiger gards his pray’.
Rachel found the contrast between these two pieces piquant. Hugo was a person for the here and now, that was his passionate, childlike quality. Harry, it seemed, was the dreamer: the boy who thought of tigers.
Thinking she might like them, she took the exercise books to Maria who exclaimed nostalgically before being reminded of other things.
‘That governess – Salter! She did them no good.’
‘I think they wrote well, considering how young they were.’
‘Hmm . . . perhaps. But they did as they liked, always.’ Maria may have caught something in Rachel’s expression, for she added: ‘I didn’t employ a governess for the boys to be like me – I employed her to be different from me. That is the whole point of employing people.’
This, Rachel thought, was the attitude which the servants found confusing. But Maria’s tone brooked no argument. Percy had scarcely the energy to read, but Rachel read aloud some of the essays to him and they produced the trace of a smile.
‘I remember that dog . . . bad blood, couldn’t be trained. Tigers, now . . . never saw a tiger take a cricket ball.’
When she went home that day she left the exercise books on the small table next to Percy’s chair.
Throughout that late summer and early autumn Rachel had a sense of the mysteriousness of time – that it was impossible categorically to divide it into chapters and say that such and such was then, and over. Increasingly it felt to her as though the past bled into the present and illuminated it. More than anything she believed in free will, this belief even qualified her cautious religious faith, and yet there were aspects of people’s lives and behaviour which seemed to set them on a course from which no escape or deviation was possible. Hugo’s premature death was his means of grace. Harry’s soldiering was for the hope of glory.
The Grass Memorial Page 39
