In Distant Fields (29 page)

Harry nodded. ‘How long does it take to train?'

‘Far too long. A minimum of five years, in peacetime. But in wartime …' He stopped and regarded Harry. ‘You're obviously very
determined, which is admirable, I can see that, but what I can't see is you having enough time to qualify as a proper doctor.' He stopped again. ‘We're going to need all the ambulance drivers we can get. And stretcher men. And orderlies. If you're prepared to undertake any of those duties they require very little training.'

‘I see. Well – if you think that's what I should be doing—'

‘I think it's what you
could
be doing. It's not up to me to say what you should be doing.'

‘Of course,' Harry said. ‘Thank you. I think that's good advice. Thank you.'

‘Have a word with the chap at the desk in the office out there. He can steer you in the right direction. And – good luck.'

Harry nodded and left, his spirits partially restored after his disappointment. He might not have the enemy in his sights directly, but he did have something positive now at which to aim; and if that was the only way he could help in the war then he would just have to give it his very best effort.

Cecil Milborne slowly descended the staircase, watched all the way by Maude, who was standing in the hall.

‘You're in uniform, Cecil,' she said, in her surprise stating the obvious.

‘Goodness me,' Cecil replied, staring at himself. ‘So I am. I wonder how that happened.'

Maude looked at her husband and wondered
at his ability to be sarcastic even at this point in their lives.

‘Is there a particular reason, Cecil?'

‘I imagine even you, blessed though you are with only a tiny intelligence, can work out why I should be wearing my uniform, Maude.'

‘Aren't you a little old to be thinking such things, Cecil? They are asking for the services of men between eighteen and thirty.'

‘I am a reservist, Maude, remember? And now is the time for men such as I, trained officers, experienced in the field, to put themselves forward for active service. There are many men of my age all ready to go. Personally, I simply can't wait to have a go at the Hun.'

‘I can understand that, Cecil,' Maude sighed. ‘You are, after all, something of an expert at having a go.'

Cecil eyed his wife with his usual practised malevolence.

‘Show them a thing or two,' Cecil said, checking his appearance in the hall mirror, ‘our so-called sons. Hughie busy enjoying himself in America and Bertie idling about the place as usual. Show them a thing or two to see their father off first. I'm taking the matching bays with me – be just the thing. And I'll find myself a batman
en route
no doubt – don't see any problem there. Odd, having to take off without one's valet, but then ever since the declaration, Werner is nowhere to be seen.' He turned his face to one side to check his profile now he had
put on his officer's cap. ‘Another good thing about uniform, Maude,' he added. ‘Makes one look even younger.'

‘Werner's gone back to Germany, Cecil,' Maude said, eyeing him. ‘You can hardly be surprised. Cheeseman has always been convinced your valet was a spy, and that whenever he said he was at the cinema he was actually spying on the local camp at Wynorth.'

Cecil now checked his other profile. ‘Wouldn't have learned very much at that camp, Maude, except perhaps some new English swear words, and a most odd recipe for bully beef.'

‘He left yesterday evening. I thought Cheeseman would have told you. He slipped away when you were up in town, seeing to whatever you had to see to.'

Maude knew perfectly well that Cecil kept a mistress in London, and could not have cared less.

‘Plenty to do when one's off to war, Maude,' Cecil told his mirror image. ‘Sort of thing you wouldn't understand. Goodbye, dear. I'll keep you posted, don't worry.' He nodded to his wife and made for the door.

‘I hope you have a good war, Cecil. If there is such a thing.'

‘Course there is,' Cecil assured her. ‘Long as you know what you're doing.'

So Cecil departed to fight his war, and Maude returned upstairs as Cheeseman opened the front door to allow his master to go out to the waiting car.

Maude closed her bedroom door and, going to her yellow satin Regency chaise longue under the window, watched Cecil being driven off. As he went she realised she might not see him again. And while it was an odd thought she found it was not a deeply distressing one. In fact, she found it to be quite a relief that he had gone. How very different it would be if she had to say goodbye to Bertie or Hughie, but then she put such thoughts from her head, knowing that, like everyone else's children, if needs be, her sons must do their duty.

Sadly, she was not able to dismiss the thought for long.

‘I suppose you know what I'm going to say, Mamma,' Bertie said to her that night at dinner. ‘It's inevitable really.'

‘I have absolutely no idea, Bertie darling,' Maude replied, feeling the blood chill in her veins. ‘No idea at all.'

‘Don't pretend, Mamma,' Bertie said seriously. ‘Papa thinks the army won't have me and I won't have the army, but that just isn't so.'

‘There is time enough for this sort of talk, Bertie, in the
future
,' Maude replied. ‘Not now. Besides, we are not going to be looking at a war of any great length, so I understand – which no doubt is why your father saw fit to take himself off.'

‘I don't like to disagree, Mamma, but the signs are the very opposite.'

‘I do not believe so, Bertie. The Expeditionary
Force landed in France without a single casualty – and Japan is almost certain now to come in on our side.'

‘Mamma, the Germans have taken Brussels with hardly a shot fired, Namur has fallen without any sort of a fight and the Allies have had to withdraw from the Meuse.'

‘We have held Mons, Bertie. It isn't all doom and gloom, do you know?'

‘The Germans are preparing to drop dynamite on our ports and our cities, Mamma,' Bertie insisted. ‘This shoot is not going to be over by Christmas by any means, and I simply have to enlist. No, please don't look at me like that – and don't say anything. This is something I have to do – like everyone else has to.'

‘Bertie—'

‘Hughie will be back from America as soon as he can arrange it – he cabled me, which was decent of him. I couldn't look him in the face if I don't do this, I truly couldn't.'

Maude stared at Bertie. He looked so thoughtful and now, it had to be said, suddenly so mature.

‘Of course, Bertie,' Maude said after a moment. ‘You know, I was going to find all sorts of reasons why you couldn't and you should not join up.'

‘Of course you were.'

‘But I see it differently now. You have to be part of this, you simply have to be – otherwise after it's all over you'll feel you have been on
the outside of it, and you won't belong to your generation. I understand that.'

Bertie smiled at his mother and put a hand on one of hers, once more wondering how on earth she had managed to stay married to his father.

‘I shall enlist tomorrow, and if all goes well I gather I shall have to go to London and then almost immediately to camp to begin my training. But when finally I get sent over there, is it all right if I take Scrap? He could be rather useful, I imagine. I understand a lot of chaps are taking their dogs – the sporting ones that is. And Scrap, being trained to the gun, won't mind at all, even though he's a half-and-half.'

‘Of course you must take your dog, if that's allowed.' Maude fell silent, regarded her food, and took a small mouthful.

‘With you all gone,' she said finally, ‘I shall have to find myself something to do. I certainly can't sit here and twiddle my thumbs.'

‘Of course you will find something, Mamma,' Bertie replied, looking at his mother. Just as she had seen a new look in his eyes, her younger boy now saw a new look in his mother's eyes. It was as if she had been freed from a long prison sentence, and at last she could see the gates opening, the green of the grass beyond, the sun playing on the sea, and a sky that had suddenly lost all its clouds.

‘I knew you were going to tell me what you have tonight, Bertie,' Maude said. ‘I knew it.'

‘I imagine you did, Mamma,' Bertie replied,
once more putting a hand on one of hers. ‘Otherwise why are we having – my favourite – roast chicken, sausages and masses of bread sauce?'

It had all seemed to happen so quickly. One minute they had all been thinking the troubles in the faraway Balkans would all blow over, thanks to an endless succession of treaties, and the next moment it seemed as if most of the world was at war. Or, as the Duchess put it to Partita and Kitty, ‘If our politicians hadn't made so many treaties we might still have been at peace.'

Even then, as the BEF, as it quickly came to be known, left the southern shores of England, a small under-rehearsed army of men sent to the docks in army lorries with no one to wave them off or to wish them well, there was still hope, however faint it might appear, that once the Kaiser saw that Britain meant business, the King's cousin would come to his senses and pull in his military horns. Yet the very opposite had happened. Seeing the size of the force Britain had sent to teach him this so-called lesson, the Kaiser simply laughed at what he called his cousin's ‘
pathetic little army
'.

So now, as the Duke and Duchess of Eden supervised the clearing of all treasures and valuables from Bauders, prior to it being prepared as a hospital for recuperation, even the small hope that the war would at least be short had faded, and John and Circe, like so many others with sense, prepared for a long campaign.

‘Even Hawkesworth's gone to offer his services,' John told Circe as they took a break from supervising the storage of all the fine furniture and paintings, silver and other items safely in a wing of the castle. ‘Told him he's far too old, but he's determined to be of some use, though I have to say, my dear, I shall not be too sorry if they send him back here, marked unwanted. If this place is going to be run efficiently we need his effort, so it's not as if he won't be doing his bit, do you know?'

‘We shall have to keep some of the servants, John,' Circe replied, collapsing in one of the few remaining good chairs. ‘And gardeners and groundsmen. We can't just let the place go to ruin.'

‘We certainly can't let the farmland go neglected,' John agreed. ‘Going to need all the food stuffs we can grow.'

‘They'll make provision, surely? The government?'

‘If they get their thinking caps on in time, I imagine they will. If the chaps have got any, that is. Thinking caps. Then there's the matter of the horses,' John added, unwilling though he was to broach one of the subjects closest to his heart. ‘In the meantime, I say—'

‘The meantime, John? What precisely do you mean by that?'

‘Until it's been decided what to do, my dear,' John added quickly, clearing his throat as if to pass over it. ‘Best to turn them away, I suppose.

Let them down, let ‘em live out best they can. Except for the working stock – the shires, of course; any of them that's busy working, stays working.'

‘You're not intending to turn all the horses out, John? Not with winter coming.'

‘Going to have to, my dear.' John cleared his throat once more and, folding his hands behind his back, stood staring out over his land, trying not to think the unthinkable. ‘They'll be perfectly all right, once they're roughed off, provided we give ‘em plenty of hay – which we shall, always provided they don't requisition all the fodder. Anyway …' He fell to silence as did Circe, as they both pondered on the seemingly endless list of things they had to do. ‘Anyway, Almeric's with his regiment, as you no doubt know, and so too, I have to say, is Gus.'

‘I know,' Circe said, staring down at her hands. ‘I know.'

‘All the boys are off. Young Catesby. Stapleton. Although I gather young Wavell has been spun.'

‘I wasn't aware of that, John.'

‘Got something up with his ticker, it appears. Nothing serious, but enough to have him spun. Wavell tried to persuade him that was that, to stay at home. But young Wavell wasn't for that at all. Off to drive ambulances, I understand. Wasn't for staying at home at all.'

‘He wouldn't be, John. None of them would be.'

‘No,' John said slowly, still regarding the landscape. ‘Don't suppose so. Dare say you're right.'

Circe stood up and went to her husband's side, taking his arm. ‘It's going to be all right, John,' she said. ‘Everything will be back to rights very soon, don't worry.'

‘I shall have to join my regiment, you do know that, my dear.'

‘No point in having your own regiment if you can't do that, dearest,' Circe teased him, smiling suddenly. ‘Gracious, it's the Boer War all over again.'

‘I was a bit more active then, Circe. Dare say the only thing I'll be armed with this time is a pen. But we'll see. We'll see.'

‘Your experience will be invaluable, Colonel,' Circe said, this time seriously. ‘When it comes to command, I imagine there are few better.'

‘Didn't tell you?' John said, turning to her with a smile. ‘Been made a general, so they say. Means a little bit more pocket money and that's going to be useful, what with Christmas coming up and all that. Now then – got to pop up to town for a bit, get things sorted. Sure you can manage all this without me?'

Circe nodded but refused to let go of her husband's hand.

‘John?' she said. ‘John – I don't think I tell you enough, truly—'

‘Nonsense,' he said brusquely. ‘Course you do. Course you do.'

‘I don't, John,' Circe insisted. ‘I really don't tell you nearly enough how much I love you.'