The Storms of War (17 page)

‘It is the right thing to do,’ Rudolf said. ‘Sometimes you have to do the right thing. And do you not agree that it is better for me to go before they come for me? Anyway, I am sure that it is just a case of signing and registering all over again. I will not be imprisoned.’

‘How do you know?’

‘What sense would there be in sending everyone of German origin to prison? None. Anyway, they’re releasing all the men they took in summer already.’

‘You are naïve! Why else would they have called you to London?’

‘Well, naïve, or not, wife, I must go. Do you suggest I should lock myself in at Stoneythorpe?’

‘Yes!’ Celia could hear that her mother had stood up.

‘I wish you luck in such an endeavour! Now, let us be calm. Celia will come back soon. We cannot let her hear us speaking like this.’

Celia heard Verena sit back down. ‘Do not go to London, Rudolf. Please.’

‘I do not think I can hide. I am prominent already, through the business. And anyway, someone will be reporting me, you know. It says very clearly I must attend this meeting. There may be nothing you or I can do.’ Verena continued to cry. ‘Come now, dry your tears. We must make the best of things.’

‘But everybody else has left me. You cannot go as well.’

‘It is not my choice. Come, wife. It is Christmas Day!’

Sarah was approaching with the tea. Celia knew she could wait no longer. She knocked on the door and entered. Verena was leaning her head on the back of the sofa, hands over her face.

‘The tea is coming, Papa,’ Celia said.

‘Good, good.’

Sarah knocked on the door and Celia hurried to open it. She picked up the tray and brought it through. ‘I will pour,’ she said.

‘That’s it,’ said Rudolf. ‘A good cup of tea. Makes all the difference.’ He raised his cup to her. ‘Merry Christmas to us all.’

Four days after the start of a miserable New Year, Rudolf left to have his meeting with the gentleman from the Aliens’ Office in London. Verena locked herself in her room. Celia asked Mrs Rolls if she could eat her meals in the kitchen, but the cook would not allow it, so she took her lunch to the parlour and ate it in the armchair. There was no one to see, after all.

After she had finished her toad in the hole, she ran to put on her coat and boots. If she could eat in the parlour and escape being told off, she could go to the horses, even though Rudolf and Verena had made her promise not to. She walked up through the melting snow to the stables. She could hear the horses as she arrived, pacing and puffing.

‘Hello!’ she called. She had stood by this door with Tom; he had held her hand, held it up to feel the wood, taken her to ride on Silver, laughed when she failed to balance.

A man came to the door. Celia didn’t recognise him. He must have been found in another village, one that still had some men left. ‘You’re not allowed in, miss. Some of the horses are not so well.’

‘I just wanted to see Silver. I miss her.’

‘We have instructions, miss.’

‘Please. Just to see Silver.’

Another man came to the door and shrugged. ‘You could let her. Might do the horse good if it is hers.’

They opened the door and Celia went inside. The place smelt of illness. Arrow, Michael’s horse, was lying down at the back of his stable, and Arthur’s Red was also curled up in the corner. Emmeline’s Moonlight was standing up, swaying a little, hanging her head, her eyes closing. Her face was tired, her beautiful mane hanging lank.

‘That one won’t eat much, miss,’ the second man said. ‘Not good.’

Silver was at the back of the stables. Celia rushed up to her
but the man told her to stop. ‘She is nervous. Don’t go too close too fast.’

Celia wanted to cry when she saw her beautiful horse. Her eyes were open but dull. Her ribs protruded from her skin. Usually Silver smiled and rubbed her feet when Celia arrived. Now, she did not look up.

‘I’ve been neglecting her,’ Celia said, filled with shame.

The man shrugged. ‘You’re not the only one. We don’t know how much they were fed even before Mr Marks went away. We’ve had the surgeon in twice, but he says the medicine this one needs is out of stock. Still, good food and proper care will be enough, I’m sure.’

Celia put her arms around Silver and leant her head on her flank. ‘Poor little thing,’ she said. Silver hardly moved as she held her.

‘Try not to cry, miss,’ the man said. ‘You will make the horse sad too. No use crying over spilt milk.’

‘Do you think she will get better?’

‘Hope so, miss. Hold her close and give her some of your spirit.’

Celia was walking up the stairs to her room when Jennie stopped her. ‘There is a letter for you, miss,’ she said. ‘Miss Emmeline sent it to me and asked me to give it to you in secret. She said it was very important. Please don’t tell Mrs de Witt.’

Celia shook her head. ‘I won’t.’ She reached out her hand and took the letter.

‘Go now, quickly!’ said Jennie. ‘Go to your room and keep it hidden.’

Dear Celia,

I hope you can keep this letter secret from Mama. I know how her eyes are everywhere. I think of you often there on your own, my poor sister. Papa and Mama are happy to have you, I am sure, but perhaps you are lonely. I am very well here with Mr Janus. I am doing everything that society said I should not, but I tell you, I find
nothing wrong in it. It is wartime, and everything is different. London is very interesting, you know, much more in town than Hampstead ever was. There is a lot to see. The troops are always walking around and the railway stations are full of men departing, men arriving and people hanging over the fences just to watch them. I haven’t seen the King or Queen, but they waved out over the crowds on the day that war was announced.

Your loving sister

Emmeline

Celia folded the letter, wanting to cry once more. She immediately began to write a reply, knowing she could not send it without an address but needing to get the words down anyway.

Dear Emmeline,

Thank you for your letter. I am very happy to hear from you. Things are not so good here. We don’t hear much from Arthur and Michael, and Marks ran away and left the horses to starve.

She could not go on. She put down her pen and lay on her bed. She heard her mother’s footsteps hurrying past. ‘Everybody leaves me!’ Verena was crying.
Not everybody,
Celia wanted to call.
I’m still here!

She dressed and came down to wait with her mother for Rudolf. No sign of him by ten. ‘He must have decided to stay at his club,’ Verena said. Celia lay down to sleep and dreamed of fearful things, monsters in caves, faces full of hate. Something like the telephone woke her up, footsteps for it, a man’s voice, then footsteps past her door, but it could not be, for who would telephone so late?

Celia sat bolt upright. An explosion in the garden. Bang! Then another. The noise echoed around her room. She screamed and scrambled out of bed. The enemy were coming! She was about to run from the room when she realised she should get dressed first,
if the Germans were invading. She pulled on her dress and boots, reached for her jacket and dashed downstairs. Jennie, Sarah and Thompson were in the hallway. As she reached them, there was another terrible explosion. The freezing air was shaking over her head. She clutched Jennie.

‘The Germans are coming! We are being invaded!’ she said. ‘Hurry!’

‘No, miss,’ said Thompson. ‘They are not in Hampshire.’ They were standing there as if held to the spot.

‘Well what is it, then? We must stop them! They are coming for us! Where is my father?’

There was another awful noise. Celia clapped her hands over her ears, but too late.

‘He didn’t come back last night. Madam had a telephone call. I took it. Mr Lewis from the factory said they had taken Mr de Witt into custody.’

‘Don’t stand here!’ Celia said. ‘Come with me!’

Thompson shook his head. ‘No, miss, don’t!’ He reached to grasp her arm, but she was already running. She hurtled out into the garden and towards the noise. There was another one, the sound ricocheting through the sky. It was coming from near the stables.

‘Stop it!’ she cried. ‘Stop it, whoever you are!’ She ran, her heart in her mouth, her face burning. Another one.
This is what war sounds like,
she told herself.

The noise was definitely coming from the stables. She hurried on – and then stopped still. Verena was coming towards her, blouse awry, her hair fallen from its style. She was carrying Rudolf’s hunting gun in her hand. She staggered towards Celia and then fell to the ground.

‘Mama!’ Celia ran towards her, her feet pounding. ‘Mama!’ Verena was folding into the ground, tears pouring down her face. ‘What is it? What has happened?’

Verena looked up at her, eyes full of tears. ‘I’ve done it,’ she said. ‘No one was ever coming back for them. They’ve all left me. Now my husband, too. It was a cruelty to keep them alive.’

‘What do you mean? Keep who alive?’ And then she realised.
She stood up and began walking towards the stables, so slowly she could almost see herself moving. She was about to seize the door – and then Thompson was grasping her and carrying her up in his arms and bearing her away. ‘No, miss,’ he was saying, as she screamed and fought against him. ‘Don’t go in. Don’t look.’

‘I have to! Please!’

Verena had dropped the gun now and was sobbing on the ground. Jennie kicked it out of her reach and crouched down beside her. Thompson carried Celia, crying out and shouting, back to the house. ‘Hold on to her,’ he said to Mrs Rolls and Sarah, who were standing by the parlour window, white-faced. ‘I have to go back. She might not have finished the job.’ Celia shook off their hands and watched as he walked back to Verena, took the gun from the ground and set off to the stables.

There was another report and a terrible animal scream. Celia dropped to the floor and put her hands over her ears. ‘No!’ she cried. ‘No!’ Mrs Rolls knelt next to her, put her arms around her and rocked her, crooning in her ear. ‘There, there,’ she was saying. ‘There, there, miss. Soon be better now. Soon be better.’

Loos, France, May 1915

Twelfth (Eastern) Division 35th Brigade

Suffolk Seventh Battalion

The men were pressing against the door. Michael could almost feel the heat of their bodies: dozens of them, maybe.
Hundreds.
They had pushed him forward. ‘Go on, sir!’ they shouted. ‘Go in first!’ He had smiled as the hands jostled him, enjoying the sensation of being moved. He stared at the wood he had slammed shut behind him. He fancied he could see it bulge with the bodies of men – his men – pressing behind it, eager to come in. ‘One in, one out!’ the old crone had shouted, sticking her head out of the door.

‘I have three girls,’ she had said when he came through into the musty front room. Two other soldiers he did not recognise were lounging with bottles on a grubby-looking sofa. She had been in the shadows, rose up towards him. Toothless old crone, he thought immediately, and then despised himself for the thought. He stared at her, supposing she must be around his mother’s age, or perhaps a little younger. She was bent, her crescent-moon shoulders covered by a grimy red dress. ‘Three girls, monsieur.’

‘Dark, blonde, and not so blonde!’ snorted one of the men from the sofa. ‘First one’s the best. Youngest one too much of a child for my tastes …’

Michael shook his head. Why had he come here? Jamieson, a lieutenant from C Company holding his shoulder: ‘Go on. It will help you forget.’ Their cheers. His own weakness, thinking it would make the men like him, respect him, even.

The woman was advancing towards him. ‘I will just stay here,’ Michael stammered. ‘Have a drink.’

‘Oh poor show, my man,’ said the soldier on the sofa. The other one had closed his eyes. The woman was advancing towards him, shaking her head. ‘Business, monsieur,’ she was saying. ‘Business.’ She held up three fingers. ‘Three girls. Which one?’

Michael shook his head, desperately. ‘Madame …’ The house was so humble that it did not have a hall or an entrance; one just arrived straight in the parlour, such as it was. He backed towards the door. As he did so, there was a great cheer from behind it.

‘Oh come on. Get on with it,’ shouted the man on the sofa. ‘You’re holding everybody up.’ Michael heard the sound of him swigging drink. ‘Have some courage, old chap.’

He backed against the door, sure that he could literally feel the hot bodies on the other side.
Have some courage, old chap.
That was what they kept saying to him. His commanding officer before he sent him off into the field. Bilks as he passed him his gun: ‘You can do it, sir. Just show some backbone.’ The men didn’t see. But they did see; they laughed at him, sidelong, patted him, like Bilks did when he came around with the rum ration: ‘Pecker up, old boy. It might never happen.’

But I don’t have any courage!
he wanted to say.
I don’t have any backbone, not even with rum. I shouldn’t be here. Bilks should be commanding the men.
Even Andrews would make a better job of it. Michael had been to Winchester and Cambridge, learnt to read Theophrastus and debate ideas. But nothing had taught him how to command the men to go over the top, fill them with confidence, say,
These are the orders approved by Field Marshal French himself. They are correct. We will win the war. Rule Britannia!

‘The men look up to you, sir,’ Bilks had said last night in the dugout. ‘You are their officer. You have to be what they imagine an officer to be.’

‘I don’t know what that is.’

‘
Pretend
it.’ Bilks had two children, been a factory foreman in Derby. He was used to commanding.

Michael had stared at the other officers when he saw them passing. C Company had Derreny-Mills, a tall, athletic man with a voice that surely carried across the whole of no-man’s-land. The
man reminded him of Stallon, the sports captain at school, who had nothing but contempt for Michael. B Company had Griffin, solid as a doorstop, who looked like he should be dissuading drunk men from entering a pub. Actually he was a solicitor from Croydon and always gave Michael and his men a cheery wave. ‘All right, boys?’ he shouted. ‘Fritz blowing kisses again?’ Michael’s men always waved back enthusiastically. Michael knew they would be happier under Griffin. ‘Cheer up!’ Griffin shouted across to Michael, beaming. ‘Could be worse. We could be stamping house sales in Croydon.’

Most nights, Michael couldn’t sleep. He lay there in the dugout as the bombs crashed around him, wondering:
Why did I think I could do this?
The thin boy who had been no good at games, the one who no one wanted to pick for their team, who crept off to the library rather than play.
De Witt is not a team player,
he remembered one report saying. Rudolf had snorted. ‘Pah! Who needs it? The English always want to play in a team.’

He had thought it was just sport. But in Cambridge, where there were men who could not play sports, just as many as those who could, it was no different. He came to understand that the other students tolerated him, allowed him to sit with them in the bars or the public debates. When he contributed something to the argument, they nodded and smiled, talked of another question.

He’d met Jonathan halfway through the second term, happening to sit beside him in a lecture about Plato. He had seen him before, of course, everyone had; big and handsome, Jonathan was always surrounded by other students, laughing at his jokes. He even dared talk to the few girls from Girton at the end of a lecture on the philosophy of mind. He was the man everyone wanted to befriend. ‘I’ve seen you about,’ he said, sinking into the seat next to Michael with a pile of books. ‘De Witt, is it not? You’re a rather hard-working fellow. What do you do for fun?’

After the lecture, instead of going back to his own room to resume study, Michael followed Jonathan to his set, where the bedder had laid the fire and made tea. ‘This is a jolly cake,’ Jonathan said, sliding a pink-iced confection on to the table. ‘Clay’s
wife makes me one every week; suppose she thinks I need feeding up.’ He laughed then. No, Michael wanted to say.
It’s because everyone likes you. Show me how you do it.

As he finished his cake (better than anything they gave him at Magdalene), he began to panic. He thought he should go; surely there would be someone else Jonathan wished to see. Any minute now, crowds of chums might be coming through the door and he would be as superfluous as ever. He stumbled up, in agonies whether he had already overstayed, bid Jonathan a quick goodbye and hurried out into King’s quad. On the way home, he was in torment. What a fool he had made of himself: said the wrong thing, had no idea when to leave. Jonathan must think him a dolt.

Two days later, there was a hearty banging at his door. Michael opened it and Jonathan was standing there, grinning.

‘Studying again, old thing? You’ll give yourself a headache. Let’s go.’

Michael fiddled with his hair, not brushed yet. ‘Go where?’

‘Don’t ask questions; get your coat and come along.’ Jonathan seized his hand and began pulling him out of the door. Laughter was bubbling up in Michael, from deep down. ‘I haven’t finished my essay!’

‘I won’t hear another word. Come along.’ He tugged Michael out and slammed the door behind him, then led him down the stairs, through the quad, out into the street and into a cab. ‘To the Plough in Fen Ditton,’ he said.

‘We’re going to a pub?’ said Michael as the cab bounced north. ‘Wednesday, in the middle of the day?’ He thought his voice sounded like his mother’s, it was so scandalised.

‘Dear chap, these places are no fun at the weekend. Far too full. Now, let’s concentrate, look out for any gals from Girton. I might stop and ask them along.’

‘No, you simply can’t!’ His voice came out like Verena’s again, this time thickened with misgiving. He didn’t want two hearty girls from Girton with big hair buns and baskets of books coming
too. Hopefully, he thought, they would be far too busy with their studies to wish to do such a thing.

‘Isn’t this the life?’ said Jonathan, as they sat at the lunch table (thankfully free from Girton girls), looking out to the river. He reached over and laid his hand on Michael’s. ‘Now, this is why I came here from New York.’ He withdrew his palm and put it behind his head.

Michael looked down at his wrist. Surely, he thought, surely, if he looked closer, he would see the imprint there of Jonathan’s palm. He wanted to save it.

Within weeks, he and Jonathan went everywhere together. ‘What on earth does Corrigan see in de Witt?’ he heard someone say, sitting on the lawn, when he was by an open window in the library. ‘Corrigan!’ they called across. ‘Talk of the devil! Bet you’re here to see de Witt. What do you see in him?’

‘He’s the most honest man I have ever met,’ Jonathan drawled back. ‘Not like you lot.’

Honest! Michael wanted to snort. He was not that. He was a coward, welcoming the new interest in him that came because he was Jonathan Corrigan’s friend. Men moved to make a place for him at lunch. Burlington, a brashly handsome son of one of the richest men in Britain, the acknowledged king of Magdalene’s social set, called him over to chat at Master’s drinks. Even his bedder, Berts, had brought him some potatoes from his garden. ‘I’ll polish them up for you and make them nice. You can eat them with Mr Corrigan, so you can.’

Michael had invited Celia and Emmeline to come and visit. Celia had been begging him ever since he’d started at Cambridge, and every time he told her he had too much work to do. In the event, Jonathan was away visiting a friend of his mother’s on the only weekend Verena would allow Celia to come. Emmeline was too busy taking tea with Sir Hugh. Michael escorted his sister around town, responding to the waves of chaps as they walked. ‘You have an awful lot of friends,’ she said envyingly.

‘Oh, you know.’ He waved his hand airily. ‘I meet them at lectures.’

He took her to the Plough for dinner. ‘This is beautiful,’ she said, looking out.

‘Jonathan found it,’ he replied. He would never have known of it if it was not for him.

That night, as he walked her back to the Newnham home of one of Verena’s old deb chums, the only place Verena had deemed safe enough for Celia to stay, she held his arm. ‘I am so proud of you, Michael. You’ve so many friends. You’re
happy
here. I will tell Mama how well you are doing. And then she’ll let me come here, I’m sure.’

Celia. What was her life like now? The night before he left, he had tried to write her a goodbye letter, failed. He had tried to write one to all of them, his mother, father, Emmeline. He could not. He began and stopped, began and stopped, threw them aside. Then he picked up a paper to write to Jonathan.
Why did you leave me?
he wrote.
Why did you go?

He had received a letter three days after Jonathan had hurried away, saying he had had to go to New York for business interests, and hoped to be back for the beginning of term. When, on that night by the flower beds, Tom had talked of war, saying they should do it now, before the war was over and they had missed their chance to
live,
he’d thought of Jonathan.
I shall make you proud,
he told him in his mind.
I shall come back from the war a great man and you will be proud of me.

They ran away from Stoneythorpe in the middle of the night, not saying goodbye to Celia. He thought of her as she must be now, dashing around the summer flowers, singing as she ran, begging anyone to take her out on Silver. In her last letter, Verena had said that Emmeline was married – so Sir Hugh had come back after all. He supposed Celia must take Silver over to Callerton Manor to call on her sister.
We are all well,
Verena wrote to him.
I am well,
he wrote back. His words were a lie, but he knew theirs were truth. They were happy at Stoneythorpe, as they always were.

He had received a letter from Jonathan, forwarded by Thompson.

I didn’t hear back from you, dear fellow, suppose the letter has been lost. I wrote to your mother and she said you were on your way to France. They tell me there is an awful lot of mud out there! Well, as I said, I couldn’t get a boat out to New York in the end, they were all full of people dashing back home away from the Kaiser. Outlandish prices. Back at Cambridge now, place quiet without you. Seems like there are quite a number of you out there. Do you ever see Peter Burlington? He sends letters to the chaps here saying he’s having a bully time, lots of French food. It must be quite a riot out there. Are the girls pretty? Do they dance like I hear they do in Paris? Seriously, I am proud of you, old thing. Terribly brave. The men must really look up to you.

Michael meant to throw the letter away. He crumpled it into a ball. But then he smoothed it out, found himself keeping it, tucked away in his box in the dugout. He looked at the words and hated himself.
Brave. Proud.
Of what? Being a coward, shaking when a bomb flew over, retching when Fritz sent up another explosion. ‘Don’t worry, sir, none of the men saw,’ Bilks would say. If Jonathan saw him, he would pity him, despise him even. ‘Surely you can do better than that, old thing?’

Michael had seen Burlington once. ‘De Witt!’ he had heard. He could hardly bear to turn round. ‘Good for you, old thing!’ Burlington had shouted over an expanse of land that had recently been bombed. ‘We need to get the others out here. Heard anything from Corrigan recently?’

Michael shook his head.

‘We must have a drink sometime!’ shouted Burlington, as if they were talking across the quad, rather than scrubby land full of smoke dotted with stretcher-bearers scouring the ground for limbs. ‘Toodle-oo!’

One other time he saw a boy from school, another shy one, no good at sports, whose name he had lost from his mind. He told Michael that Stallon had gone straight into the army from school, was now terribly high up with the generals.

Of course,
Michael had thought. This place was for people like
Stallon: tall, confident, pushing people out of the way. What on earth had made him think that he could go to France? It was a place for leaders, or even for those who could just be cheerful, like Griffin, finding mud and cold more amusing than house sales in Croydon.