by Phillip Rock
“Silly old bugger,” Fenton muttered, slumped on the back seat of his car.
The civilian beside him nodded in agreement. “Yes, but it wasn’t the worst advice in the world. Most men would jump at the chance of retiring at forty.”
“The man’s a bloody fool, Jacob.”
Jacob Golden, owner and publisher of the London Daily Post, tugged the brim of his fedora low over his pale, slender face and gazed out the side window at a straggling column of rain-blackened cavalry. The rain had stopped and morning mist clung to the ground, obscuring the more distant shapes of tanks lumbering off across the plain, nose to tail like so many weary elephants. “Oil and water, Fenton. It’s as simple as that. Water for horses, oil for tanks. The good Sir John can’t get them to mix.”
Fenton swore under his breath and leaned forward to roll up the glass partition, insulating them from the soldier-driver.
“Who the hell can? Towerside’s stupidity is that he insists on trying. He claims it’s for the good of the service. The perpetuation of the useless bloody cavalry, he means. The fool’s been around horses too much—not the brightest animals in the world, I might add.”
“May I quote you on that? Brigadier makes un-English comment, says horses are stupid. Good heavens, you’ll be disparaging dogs next.”
The brigadier fished a battered box of cigarettes from one of the many pockets in his oil-splattered black canvas coveralls. The black beret and his own dark, hawklike face gave him a satanic look. “You believe he’s right, don’t you? Chucking it in, I mean.”
Jacob stifled a yawn. “You know my views by now. Why bother to ask?”
“It would make Winnie happy. And the girls. Pillar to post. No proper home. Odd sort of life for them.”
“Army brats, as the Yanks say.”
“Do you really think Vickers would offer me a directorship?”
“Of course. They love having old soldiers at board meetings. All that talk about the glorious past over cakes and port.”
“Twenty-two years.” He lit a cigarette with a brass lighter of primitive design. Engraved on one side of it were the words To “The Hawk” in gratitude. The Officers and Men. 8th Btl. The Green Howards. 1/4/19. An irreverent lot, he recalled dimly. The Hawk, indeed! Saucy bastards. But he had been secretly pleased by the sobriquet at the time. Now everyone in the army called him that, except the men of course—at least not to his face. “I’ve been around a bit in twenty-two years, Jacob.”
“We all have, dear chap.”
“The Coldstreams. Those were the good years. Playing at soldiering. Palace guard … the Marlborough Club … parties every night … bedding Mayfair debutantes right and left. A shame the war came along and mucked it all up.”
“Yes. A pity. But that’s the Germans for you. Always ruining a chap’s social life.”
“You facetious bastard.” He blew smoke through his nostrils. “If I gave it up now I’m afraid the Tank Corps would suffer the loss. Not that any one man is indispensable, mind you.”
Jacob yawned openly and drew his Burberry closer around his thin body. “You are … at this particular time. They may dread the sight of you at the War Office, but they have to respect your views. And certainly the readers of the Daily Post respect them. A fully mechanized army means jobs from Bristol to Leeds. No one derives a living from the cavalry except harness makers. As your oldest friend, I would have liked seeing you out of the service years ago. As a newspaper publisher with the largest daily readership in the world to keep entertained, I find you indispensable in your current role.”
Fenton, Jacob knew, would do what he wanted without any advice from him. What he wanted, of course, was to stay in the army, in his precious Tank Corps, to run it and mold it without interference from mossback generals who did not share his visions. The interference would continue because new concepts had always been resisted—an army tradition—and Fenton would grit his teeth and hang on to fight for his convictions. His intractability was apparent in every line of his handsome, weather-worn face.
Jacob’s smile was knowing as he looked at his friend, the tall, whip-lean body now slumped forward with fatigue, head nodding toward his chest. He reached out and took the smoldering cigarette from between the brigadier’s fingers and tossed it out of the window.
A long friendship and an unlikely one, he was thinking. They had first met as boys at a preparatory school as renowned for its excellence as it was infamous for its snobbery. Fenton the son of Queen Victoria’s favorite architect, and he the son of a Jewish press lord. That his father was the confidant of kings and the savior or destroyer of prime ministers had meant nothing to the boys of that school. He had simply been dismissed as “a detestable little Jew” whose father owned “that common rag, the Post,” and every effort had been made to make him feel unwanted. But Fenton, the tallest and strongest boy in the school, had befriended him, though not entirely out of his fierce sense of fair play. The elder Wood-Lacy, who had designed the Daily Post building in London, had asked him to do so. It had hardly been a friendship made in heaven, their views on almost all matters being too disparate for that, but Fenton had offered his hand and, over the course of those school years, a bond had been forged. Time had done nothing to diminish it. They had followed widely different paths, but that long ago handshake remained as firm as ever.
Jennifer Wood-Lacy spotted the car as it turned off the Andover road and up the narrow lane leading to the house. She whistled for the dogs who were chasing rabbits through the brambles and began to run across the muddy field, oblivious to the petulant cries of her twin.
“Oh, wait for me, can’t you!” Victoria was shouting, burdened by a pair of rubber boots too large for her feet. “Do slow up! Oh, don’t be beastly!”
Jennifer ran on unheeding, a tall thirteen-year-old, leggy as a colt. Both she and her wailing counterpart had their father’s looks … the dark, aquiline features, the black hair, but she was more daughter to the man than her sister. Was, she had always liked to think, the brigadier’s son, riding by his right side into battle. Budding breasts had shattered the dream. Victoria was in ecstasy over hers. Simply drooling at her femininity. It was enough to make one physically sick. She ran faster, leaving her sister far behind, vaulted a low hedge and reached the lane just as the car turned the bend. The driver slowed to a halt as she jumped the ditch and stood in the center of the road waving her arms.
“Good morning, Lance Corporal Ryan,” she called out cheerfully.
“Good morning, Miss … Jennifer?”
“Of course Jennifer,” she snapped. It was irritating to be confused with Victoria. Identical twins, but she would never have it so. She thought of her sister in the bathroom that morning, reverentially massaging her tiny mammary glands with some dreadful cold cream she had bought at Boots. Her fury almost choked her, but dissipated instantly as she opened the side door.
“Good morning, Daddy … Uncle Jacob.” She climbed into the car and sprawled onto the seat between them, closing the door as she did so. The two muddy Airedales started barking and running up and down the road. “Drive on, Lance Corporal Ryan!”
“The window’s up,” her father said. “And besides, I give the orders here. We’ll wait for Vicky.”
“She wants to walk,” she said hurriedly. “She insists on walking five miles every day. She’s quite dotty about it.”
Jacob could see the girl far off across the field, stumbling, waving her arms. “She doesn’t walk very well, does she?”
“She couldn’t find her Wellingtons this morning so she had to wear Mother’s.”
Fenton scowled. “I wonder how that happened.” He tapped on the glass partition and the driver put the car in gear. “This childish behavior toward your sister has to cease at once. You were always the best of pals. I won’t scold you in front of Vicky, so let this be the final word on the subject.”
“Yes, Daddy. I shall love her as dearly as I love Kate. You’ll see.” She snuggled against him, eyes closed
, breathing in his essence, the manly odors of tobacco, petrol, and motor oil, luxuriating in his presence as the car swept on up the lane toward the house a half mile away.
“You smell more than usual like an armored car,” Winifred said as she came into the bedroom in her robe, her long brown hair still damp from her bath. She was thirty-four, six years younger than her husband, tall and full bosomed with a roses-and-cream skin that had never known makeup paints or powders.
Fenton grunted as he took off his coveralls and tossed them into a corner. Even his long underwear was oil stained and he peeled that off also.
“Not an armored car, Winnie, a bloody abomination of an experimental command tank … the Hercules Mark Two. Oil and petrol lines leaky as sieves. A wonder we didn’t go up like a ruddy bomb. The exercise, needless to say, was another comedy of errors. Dragoons floundering about … bolting in front of the tanks. Came damn close to squashing half the king’s horses. I’m not in a human mood just now.”
“Sorry. You look human enough to me. The basic model of a naked male—Mark One.”
Fenton strode to the closet and wrapped himself in a frayed silk dressing gown. “Not a total loss, though, I suppose. At least it gave Jacob a good look at the folly of trying to wed cavalry to tanks. He’s planning an editorial on the subject to coincide with the War Office budget meetings next month.” He sat on the edge of the bed and glared at his toes. “Not that it’ll do much good. Whitehall is gaga over horse soldiers. Regimental elite … high social tone. Christ, they believe the charge of the Light Brigade was a glorious British victory! Bad form to get drunk before noon, I suppose.”
“What you need is sleep.” She sat beside him and rubbed his shoulder. “Hanna telephoned this morning. Coatsworth passed away yesterday … and Anthony had a minor attack.”
He looked at her in concern. “What kind of attack?”
“Angina. Nothing serious, but they’re sending him up to London this afternoon for tests at Guy’s. He’ll be there a week or so.”
“He won’t like that, poor chap.”
“No, I don’t imagine he will. Coatsworth’s funeral is Saturday. Hanna would like us to come.”
“Of course.” He shook his head, smiling with faint sadness. “Coatsworth dead. Hardly seems possible. I was ten when I first met him. Ten! Good Lord.”
“He must have been close to ninety, I imagine.”
“Easily, an elderly man even then. Roger and I had been invited to the Pryory to spend the summer. Father had been engaged to remodel the house and the east wing was covered with scaffolding. He warned us to stay off it, but it was too irresistible. Roger was eight, the same age as Charles. They looked to me for leadership and oh! did I lead them! Up those rickety towers and along narrow catwalks, climbing about like ruddy apes. Coatsworth would bellow at us to come down before we broke our necks.”
She rubbed his back, kneading the taut muscles. “And did you obey the poor man?”
“Of course, but we took our sweet time doing so. A noble gentleman, Coatsworth. He never told my father or the earl what we were up to.”
“Hanna would like us to stay over for a week and keep her company. That is if the army can spare you.”
His laugh was sardonic. “If I ask General bloody Towerside for a week’s leave he’d urge me to take a few years! You can call Hanna and tell her she has house guests.” He turned to her, parting her robe and resting the side of his face against her breasts. “God, you smell wonderful.”
“Lavender soap.”
“No. Inner loveliness. The perfume of the soul. I’d make love to you, my sweet, but I feel like a corpse.”
She kissed the top of his head. “You’re making love to me now.”
He rolled over on the bed and was asleep instantly. Like a cat, Winifred was thinking as she covered him with a blanket. He would snap awake in three or four hours, springing up as refreshed as though he had enjoyed a full night’s rest.
She dressed and went downstairs. She could hear the twins shouting at one another in the back of the house, Victoria’s voice a high-pitched note of aggrievement …
“You’re beastly! Beastly! …” and Jennifer sounding pained and affronted … “Me? Me? Never! …”
It was not an argument that she cared to referee at the moment and so she continued on through the old, rambling house to the drawing room.
Jacob Golden sat on a sofa drinking a cup of coffee. Eight-year-old Kate Wood-Lacy sat beside him showing off her collection of flowers that she had pressed and dried between the pages of a thick, unwieldy book.
“And this is a primrose,” she said, turning the pages with her small hands.
“A primrose by the river’s brim …” Jacob said. “Wordsworth.”
“I plucked it from the garden.” She turned the pages. “And this is a jonquil.”
“I can’t think of any poem with a jonquil in it.” He smiled at Winifred as she walked across the room toward them. “Can you, Winnie? Daffodils, but not jonquils.”
“No jonquils.” She sat on the sofa beside her daughter and brushed a strand of soft brown hair from the girl’s forehead. They looked alike. The hair, the oval face, the same cream-and-blush complexion. “I saw Nanny on the landing. She said you didn’t tidy up your room as told.”
“I will.”
“Indeed you will—or you stay here with Nanny when we go to the Pryory on Friday.”
The little girl closed the book with a snap. “I’ll tidy up … you’ll see. Will Uncle Anthony let me ride the pony again?”
“Uncle Anthony is in the hospital, dear. He’s not feeling very well, but I’m sure Mr. Gardway will take you for a ride.”
“The earl’s ill?” Jacob asked.
“Angina. I’m sure he’ll be all right. His old butler died and I suppose it was a shock to him. He’d been with him for ages.”
Kate got off the sofa, cradling the heavy book with both arms. “I’ll go to my room now, Mummy. Do you mind not seeing all the flowers, Uncle Jacob?”
“I don’t mind, Kate. You can show them to me the next time I come.” He watched her leave the room. “A delightful child.”
Winifred smiled ruefully. “Thank God I have one calm and collected girl. Jenny continues to be a hellion and Vicky, heaven help us all, has just discovered womanhood! She’s a confused mixture of Janet Gaynor and Joan of Arc.”
“Just a phase.”
“Oh, Lord, I suppose so.”
“Where’s his nibs?”
“In bed. I must say you look terribly alert.”
“Spent most of the night asleep in the back of a staff car. Saw all I needed … watery moonlight and total confusion.”
“Care to stay over and dine with us?”
“I’d like nothing better, but I must get back to London for a board meeting.” He stood up and held out his hands to her. “Come on, walk with me to my car.”
They strolled slowly side by side through a large, overgrown garden toward the garages.
“Towerside suggested that your loving husband retire … take a job with Vickers, perhaps.”
“What nonsense.”
“The cavalry generals would love to be rid of him, you know. Prophets are without honor in this country, especially in the army. Fenton is viewed with some alarm. Too unorthodox … too much the zealot. He considered Towerside’s suggestion for a moment. Felt it would make you happy. Would it?”
She paused and looked at him. “No. I pray the day will come when soldiers no longer exist, but in the meantime, I happen to love one. Can you even conceive of Fenton not being in the army?”
“Difficult to imagine.”
“And if he were nudged out I think he’d disintegrate into a brooding, bitter man. I couldn’t bear to witness it.” There was a wood bench under a grape arbor and she sat down. “I don’t mind living in rented houses, trailing around like a camp follower … Egypt, India … tutors for the girls, training new servants every couple of years … don’t mind any of that as l
ong as he’s reasonably content in his job. And soldiering is his job. I made my peace with that fact years ago. I wish he had left the service after the war, but he didn’t.”
“Stubborn pride … not wanting to live off your money while he looked about for another career.”
“It goes deeper than that, Jacob. Heavens, we live off my money now. A brigadier’s wages don’t stretch far these days. No. He’s obsessed with the idea of remodeling the British army to his own specific vision. It’s not a vision that many share, so naturally he’s resented … even feared. The army is like the civil service, everyone jealously protecting their own little place in it. They look on Fenton as a threat.”
“Yes, and not without reason. At least in this country.” He sat on the bench beside her. “Would you find a few years in India too abhorrent?”
She watched swallows dart in slender blurs over the wild, unpruned garden. “Why do you ask?”
“I’ll come to that.”
“It’s not Hampshire, but I’ve always liked the country … Simla especially. Even Quetta during the cooler months.”
“Don’t for God’s sake say anything, but some of my gray lads have come up with something.”
“Your what lads?”
“Gray lads. A host of petty clerks … Whitehall drones … faceless, meek little creatures who pass on information to me for a quid or two. I have a network of them. Even have a gray lad at Buckingham Palace.”
She laughed and squeezed his arm. “Oh, Jacob, it’s a good thing they no longer hang, draw, and quarter people on Tower Hill!”
“I can think of some people in Britain who would relish a revival of the practice—for the exclusive chastisement of labor leaders and Jewish newspaper owners. Anyway, one of my inquisitive little spies informs me that a move is afoot in Delhi to start modernizing the Indian army. The plan is for a completely mechanized brigade—including the dehorsing of two cavalry regiments and placing the bewildered chaps in armored cars. Fenton’s gospel to the letter. Our lad would be the obvious choice to train and lead such a group, but politics being what they are, there’s no guarantee he would be chosen. I will have to go to work on it with my usual quiet diplomacy and Byzantine intriguing. It’s all extremely hush-hush at the moment. If Fenton got wind of it he’d go smashing his way through the War Office cliques like a bull in a china shop ruffling feathers and stomping on toes. So mum’s the word, please.”
