Valiant Gentlemen

by Sabina Murray

  VI

  London

  November 1914

  Sarita’s back at her father’s house on Eaton Square with its measured sweep of the street and gleaming façade, the careful birds, the precise and tasteful flutter of leaves, the lack of natural clutter. Cricket calls the Sanford house the “white sepulcher.” Somewhat dead, it is peaceful and right now the world is in such a state of riot that she’ll take the quiet. At least the food is reliable: good coffee and fresh fruit at breakfast, an unfussy lunch, dinner. It really doesn’t matter what she’s eating, just as long as she’s not responsible for the organization of it. All she needs to do is show up in the right room at the right time, as if she’s a child of twelve. Father likes having her around, but he prefers his grandsons: rugged Charlie and clever Herbie and meticulous Roddie. And it’s strange to be so displaced in her father’s affection, but it would be even stranger to still command it.

  Widely accepted is that Charlie is the favorite and that he’s closest to Roddie, but her father relaxes around Herbie, finds his jokes funny and his fondness for poetry of interest, although they don’t like the same poets. Herbie loathes Kipling and is the only person she knows who feels this way. Herbie likes the modern poets that Sarita has never heard of and has little hope of ever hearing of, unless she accidentally overhears Herbie in an argument with his grandfather about who is worth reading, or with Charlie over the purpose of reading poetry in the first place. She wonders if Casement is still working at his lines. There’s the possibility that he’s some sort of secret agent, but she’s not sure what spying involves, other than lurking around street corners and standing in the shadows, listening in on conversations. But Casement always stands out and aren’t spies supposed to blend in?

  In the next few weeks, she’ll be relocating. The estate agent has found Sarita a house in Weston-Super-Mare, furnished, although she’s insisted on buying a new mattress for herself as she can’t abide the thought of lying on someone else’s. There are many rental properties in this part of Somerset as the place is a resort. Families typically spend a few weeks there in the summer, taking in the cool air and enjoying the beach, although Charlie will, apparently, be using the ample sand and broad reaches of flat land to learn how to dig trenches and play at being a soldier.

  And after Charlie’s training? Well, after that, the war had better be over and they can return to Rolleboise and bring the Villa Sarita back to its normal state. She can’t imagine the appalling mess that Herbert has made of the house, having turned it into a hospital. It’s official, sanctioned by the Union des Femmes de France, which is some branch of the French Red Cross, although it sounds like a club that caters to gentlemen. Villiers has said in a letter to her that the downstairs furniture has been stored in the barn as there are no horses and that the living room is now filled with rows of cots. The hall closet—where the coats once hung—has been fitted with shelves and stocked with medicine. Sarita should be in Rolleboise helping, but there is so much else to do. She has just returned from New York where Cricket has had another baby—a sweet little boy, but Cricket is depressed and moaning the state of her complexion and the fact that half her hair has fallen out. Hair grows back. If Sarita were a different sort of mother, she would have reminded Cricket that she was lucky to come out of childbirth alive.

  Herbert had come to see her off at the port in a paranoiac state brought on by the specter of U-boats intent on destruction. Why would Germany sink a passenger boat full of well-heeled Americans? Surely the fact that America has resolutely stayed out of the war would prevent the Germans from doing anything so provoking. But Herbert had gripped her shoulders and looked into her face with a look of such abject despair that he’d made her worried. That’s where Roddie gets it from. Everyone has been blaming her mother for the boy’s nerves and odd obsessive behavior, but it’s all Herbert. And now he won’t let her return to Rolleboise because if the Germans move south, she won’t be safe and he’s adamant that her presence in her own house would be inappropriate. That had been an argument for the books, Herbert saying that it was improper to have his wife in a house full of convalescing soldiers and what would she do? Empty bedpans? Perhaps he had a point, but what she would like to know is what he’s doing there. Herbert is an explorer and an artist and an expert in South American finance. Is he emptying bedpans?

  It’s all well and good to be fussing like this, to have the humor and good sense leavening the situation, but the truth is she’s been living with a black dread that eats at her guts like a cancer. She’s lost weight and the lace at the neckline of her dress gaps, the skin under her chin looks loose, and her hair is thinning. And that must be where Cricket gets it from.

  Sarita had been hoping to complete this latest ridiculous task: the ordering of more somber, war-appropriate clothing, but it seems that she will have to make do with what she has. Her regular London dressmaker—another patriot—has volunteered to make uniforms and is supervising some factory in Kent, but she had referred Sarita to a seamstress, a tiny Jewish lady, who accidentally showed up on the front doorstep and had to be rescued from an intense and xenophobic berating delivered by one of the maids. This Mrs. Beldenstein was a nice enough woman with decent English, clearly skilled, but the whole time she’d been taking measurements and showing fabric samples, she kept breaking into fits of weeping. When it came to the actual ordering of garments, the woman was in a state of collapse. Sarita had to ring for the maid to bring some sherry. Apparently Mrs. Beldenstein’s son, only sixteen, had enlisted under a false name. Who knows where he is? Sarita had reminded her that, yes, they are taking those younger than enlistment age, but no one is to serve until they are nineteen. By the time this woman’s son is of service age, the war will be over.

  After calming her down, Sarita wasn’t sure that she trusted the woman to make a straight seam, even less produce a few uninteresting dresses in navy wool. So she’d ordered undergarments—that she didn’t need—and some dressing gowns for the babies as this woman does some nice embroidery. And now she is waiting for Herbie, who was supposed to be home half an hour ago. Of course, he’s decided to defer Cambridge until the war is over, and now has to go meet friends to get some laughs as opposed to pretending to learn things with friends to accomplish much the same.

  Sarita pours herself a glass of the sherry as the maid did bring two glasses and she can’t think of why she’s been resisting it. No doubt, her father will wander in, and catch her at it, or Paz, who is as condescending as ever. The crystal makes a nice loud clink as she pours it in and she’s just about to take a sip when she hears the front door slam shut.

  “Where’s my mother?” she hears Herbie’s voice call from the hall, and the ingratiating, sugary reply from that same housemaid who nearly took poor Mrs. Beldenstein’s head off two hours earlier.

  Herbie appears at the door and makes a show of leaning in the doorframe, casual, like the boy who delivers the ice. “Drinking by yourself, are you?”

  “You’re late.”

  “And you, Mother, are very early.”

  “It’s six o’clock.”

  “Not quite.” Herbie wanders over and pours some sherry into Mrs. Beldenstein’s glass and knocks it back. “Cheers.”

  “You could ring for a clean glass, Herbie.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “Not now. We have to be at the Nicholsons’ in an hour.”

  “Oh Lord,” says Herbie. He sinks into the chair beside her and discomposes his limbs. “Do we have to go?”

  “What do you think? It’s a courtesy to your father. And you know Nicholson was just appointed head of the Royal Flying Corps. His son is training as a pilot.”

  “Will he be there?”

  “I doubt it. They do have a daughter about your age.” Sarita sips her sherry. Herbie looks disheveled and she wonders what he’s been up to. “You smell like cigarettes.”

  “That is because I smoke,
” says Herbie.

  She’s shaking her head again, a gesture that is fast wearing out, but she’s not sure how else to communicate her resigned disapproval. “Get dressed, quickly. And tell your grandfather we’re leaving.”

  Herbie pulls himself out of the chair. “Can’t you let Grandfather know? Every time I see him, he makes me recite ‘Hiawatha.’”

  “It’s not every time.” But it is with fair frequency and at this point even Sarita knows the first lines, the shores of Gitche Gumee, the shining big sea water, and that Nokomis. “Just tell him we’re late, and if he insists, just say it quickly. And have someone tell Paulson to bring the car around.”

  “And what will you do?”

  “I, Herbie, will sit here and drink my sherry.”

  Herbie is down the table with Joyce but, as Nicholson is addressing him, it would seem the entire cohort is invited to their conversation. They’re already on dessert as Nicholson is one of those people who likes to fly through the courses, as if adding a squandering of time along with the waste of ice and silver polish and food is what would tip the scales.

  It has already been established that Charlie has enlisted with the 10th Royal Warwicks, and that all the other enlistable-aged sons have enlisted in equally acceptable regiments. Herbie is the only boy at table, being barely old enough to sit through a dinner, and young enough to not be billeted. He’s been entertaining this Joyce all evening, and now has Nicholson’s attention.

  “How, sir, is it decided who can train as a pilot?” asks Herbie. And this is innocuous enough a question given Nicholson’s position and Herbie’s age, but something sets her nerves on edge.

  “No one knows how to fly a plane, so we ask them if they can ride a horse or operate a boat.”

  “Really?” says Herbie. “I would think that knowledge of motorcars would be more appropriate.”

  “This is not a widespread skill.”

  “Or perhaps a good understanding of maps.”

  “Herbie was telling me,” says Joyce, “that he drove his family three hundred miles through France when the Germans were advancing.”

  “Sarita,” says Nicholson, “is that true?”

  “I suppose it is.”

  “And,” adds Joyce, “he did all the navigating on secondary roads. He has an amazing sense of direction. It’s uncanny.”

  “That is also true,” says Sarita. “And if he weren’t sixteen years old, he’d be a good candidate for a pilot.”

  “I’ll be seventeen in a couple of months,” says Herbie.

  “Still useless for the war effort,” says Sarita.

  At this point, Mrs. Nicholson stands, signaling that it’s time for the women to leave. She has two tall feathers woven into her hair, which stick up over her head. Along with her glass-blue eyes, narrow nose, and large-shouldered black dress, she looks like a cassowary or an emu or one of those exotic birds. Maybe that’s the intention. Sarita rises with her, pulling herself to full height. She stares down at Nicholson, who raises an eyebrow. There is Herbie, reaching for a cigarette. She sees his eyes following Joyce, who is an exceptional creature—one of those lean, golden Dianas that England churns out every now and then, to churn out its ruling class. She gives Herbie her strongest cautioning look. He responds with a face composed in the sweetest confusion, and mouths with brilliant, false innocence, one word: What?

  When they return to Eaton Square, it is nearly midnight. They were among the last to depart the Nicholsons’ South Kensington house, most of the guests having left a half hour earlier. Herbie was “walking around the garden” with Joyce, which left Sarita chatting with Amy Nicholson, who, small kindness, is a straight-talking, intelligent, although terrifying sort of woman. “Good looking, that son of yours,” she’d said. But she knew what the source of Sarita’s discomfort had been.

  In the car on the way home, Herbie had chattered on about how he did like Joyce. Who wouldn’t? He’d added something about Charlie’s absence working in his favor, how Joyce pretended she’d never even heard of Charlie. And Sarita, patient, had let him unspool the fullness of that blathering until he ran out of nonsense and found himself left with the only thing he really wanted to share with her.

  “I want to be a pilot,” he’d said.

  “Your father is against it,” she’d replied, which was true, “and so am I.”

  Herbie’s response? “Glad to know you two agree on something.”

  Who knows what’s going on in his head? There’s golden-haired Joyce and his fantasy of soaring miles above the earth—in the clouds with the gods—and there’s his mother with a gaping collar and thin hair. She reaches the top of the stairs and hears herself sigh. At the end of the hallway, she can see the light spilling beneath her father’s study door. She taps on the door and opens it.

  “Father, what are you doing still up?”

  “Waiting for you.” Her father stands from the desk and she sees that he’s accompanied his usual jacket and tie with pajama pants. “What does Nicholson have to say?”

  “A lot. You must be referring to something in particular.” She sinks down into the wingchair and props her feet on the hassock. Her father pours drinks for them both.

  “You actually talked of something other than the war?” She feels like she’s his agent. Truth is he has moved large amounts of money—the budget of entire nations—from one account to another based on snippets of information that she picked up at dinner parties. He comes over with the glass. He’s a bit stooped now, but still strangely vigorous. Vigor in a man that age can seem psychotic, particularly as his eyes have not lost their youthful glimmer.

  “Nicholson wants Herbie.”

  “Herbie? What on earth for?”

  “To be a pilot. To join the RFC.”

  “Herbie?” A few moments tick by. “Better in the air than in the trenches,” he finally says.

  “Better at Cambridge,” Sarita responds. She takes the glass and restores herself. “So, how was your day, Father?”

  “We should invest in jute.”

  “Jute? What is jute?”

  “It’s the stuff needed to make the sandbags, which are used to reinforce the trenches.”

  “We can’t profit from the war,” says Sarita.

  “I’m sure we won’t, no matter what we do.” Her father looks grim, yet confident. “Do you think Charlie can kill a man?”

  Sarita thinks this through. She’s seen the boys lined up in the fields, running at the sacks of straw, bayonetting them through, aiming for the heart. Could Charlie do that to man? “I’m sure he could. If other boys do it, he can do it.”

  “What about Herbie?”

  Herbie with his butterfly net. Herbie with his canoe, and his modern poets, and his peppermints and cigarettes. And his oysters. She’s stopped breathing.

  “Let him be a pilot, Sarita. Otherwise he’s a sitting duck.”

  The house in Weston-Super-Mare is cramped, drafty, and obsessively decorated with trimmings, knickknacks, sea shells, seascapes, cloying figurines of barefoot children brandishing little spades. The windows are hung with lace that further filters winter’s gray light. There is little to do but walk the narrow footpaths of the town, stop in at the markets in search of something fresh. The house is staffed with people from the village—an old man to fix the fires, a bent woman who is most often dragging a bucket around with grimy water, a girl to do the cooking who is too simple to have been recruited for one of the factories. Grim company, perhaps, but Sarita has little need for company. In the morning she dresses, writes to Herbert, picks her way through cold meat and cheese at lunch, takes the daily letter from Herbert with the two o’clock post, and reads about the goings-on in his hospital that was once her home.

  This house echoes and whines with the wind. The exchanges between old man and bucket woman are carried on the damp air, as if they were whispering at her
ear: their language sounds like moaning, composed in pain and strangely absent of consonants. The girl has a high-pitched voice and complains when addressed, her voice ringing like a cat with its tail caught in the door. Sarita should be more generous. Money has made her brittle. No. Not money. This war. If Villiers were here, she would have company, although Villiers is up to her elbows creating vats of bland, gentle food for the damaged men who now inhabit Rolleboise. Madame Villiers—­Margarite—reduced to her surname as a way of making her accept that she has English employers.

  Sarita’s read Herbert’s letter twice. Apparently, the majority of his patients—all officers—are suffering from tremors and other odd symptoms. Some of the men can’t speak, or see, although the doctor can find no medical reason. At any rate, they’re not fit for the Front. Herbie has been indispensable as a driver. Apparently a shipment intended for one of the field hospitals had accidentally been sent to Rolleboise. Some of the items were not essential—a box of glass eyes, for example—but there was also a crate of bottles of hypochlorite for the Dakin’s solution and Herbie had been the only one who could take it up. Herbie described the camp as a rage of noise—explosions and shouting. In one of the wards, he’d seen a boy who had been a few years ahead of him at Eton. His legs were gone, which is a common injury. Herbert says it’s as if the men have fallen victim to an enormous scythe. The boy had died with Herbie holding his hand. That you had been here to comfort him and me, but it is quite impossible. And perhaps it is, because there is now a rule that no nonessential women are allowed at Rolleboise, Army Rules, but also impossible because she doubts she has comfort to give.