The Valley of Bones (21 page)

‘It’s about your mother,’ he said. ‘It’s
all damned awkward. I thought the sooner you knew the better. There was a lot
of difficulty in getting hold of your address. When I found by a lucky chance
you were in the neighbourhood of Thrubworth, I decided to try and see you, in
case I lost the opportunity for months.’

‘But what is it?’

‘Your mother is behaving in a very
extraordinary way. There are serious money difficulties for one thing. They may
affect you and Charles. Your settlements, I mean.’

‘She’s always quite reckless about
money. You must have learnt that by now.’

‘She has been
unwise about all kind of matters. I had no idea
what was going on.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘That’s one of the points. She has
closed both houses and gone to live in a workman’s cottage to be near Norman.’

‘Norman Chandler?’

‘Of course.’

‘But I thought Norman had joined the
army.’

‘He has. He has been sent to a camp in
Essex. That’s why your mother has gone there. What’s more, she wants to divorce
me.’

This news certainly surprised Flavia a
lot.

‘But—’

‘I’ve nowhere to go,’ said Buster,
speaking with great bitterness. ‘When I was last in London, I had to stay at my
club. Now this news about a divorce is sprung on me. Your mother went off
without a word. All kinds of arrangements have to be made about things. It is
too bad.’

‘But does she want to marry Norman?’

‘How do I know what she wants to do?’
said Buster. ‘I’m the last person she ever considered. I think Norman, too, has
behaved very badly to allow her to act in this way. I always liked Norman. I
did not in the least mind his being what he is. I often told him so. I thought
we were friends. Many men in my position would have objected to having someone
like Norman about the house, doing the flowers and dancing attendance upon
their wife. Norman pleased your mother. That was enough for me. What thanks do
I get for being so tolerant? Your mother goes off to Essex with Norman, taking
the keys with her, so that I can’t even get at my own suits and shirts. On top
of all that, I’m told I’m going to be divorced.’

At that point there was another loud
knock on the front door. This must be Stevens. I went to let him in. Umfraville
followed me into the hall.

‘Look here,’ he said, ‘tell me quickly
what’s happened to Buster to upset him so.’

‘Mrs Foxe had a friend called Norman
Chandler – a little dancer she adored, who was always about her house. He was
quite a good actor too. It looks as if she has got fed up at
last and
kicked Buster out.’

‘Buster is going to get me into this
secret set-up at Thrubworth. I’ve decided that.’

‘How’s it going to be managed?’

‘I once took a monkey off Buster at
poker. Apart from his other misdemeanours, I’ve never seen my money. I know
where I can make things unpleasant, if Buster doesn’t jump to it and get me
fixed up. Boffles Stringham once said: “Mark my words, Dicky, the day will come
when Amy will have to get rid of that damned polo-playing sailor.” That day has
come. There are some other reckonings for Buster to pay too.’

Another knock came on the door.
Umfraville went back to the sitting-room. I admitted Stevens.

‘I’m a bit late,’ he said, ‘we’ll have
to bustle back.’

‘There’s rather a commotion going on
here. My brother-in-law, Robert Tolland, has just had his leave cancelled. He
wants to get back to Mytchett tonight. Will it be all right if he comes with
us? We pass near his unit and can drop him on the way.’

‘Of course. If he doesn’t mind having
his balls crushed in the back of the car. Is he ready?’

‘He’s just gone off to pack. Then
there’s a naval officer making a scene with his step-daughter.’

‘Bring ‘em all on,’ said Stevens. ‘We
oughtn’t to delay too long. I’d just like to have word with that lady about her
brooch.’

We went into the sitting-room. By that
time things had quietened down. Buster,
especially, had recovered his poise. He was now talking
to Frederica, having presumably settled with Flavia
whatever he had hoped to arrange. Flavia and Robert had
retired to a sofa and were embracing. Stevens said a word
of greeting to Frederica, then made at once for Priscilla. Frederica turned
again to Buster.

‘I’m glad to hear Erry is behaving
himself,’ she said.

‘I agree we were all prepared to find
your brother rather difficult,’ said Buster, ‘but on the contrary – anyway so
far as I am personally concerned – he has done everything in his power to make
my life agreeable. He has, if I may say so, the charm of all your family,
though in a different manner to the rest of you.’

Umfraville interrupted them.

‘Come and talk shop with me for a
moment, Buster,’ he said.

They went into a corner of the room
together. Isobel and I went into another one. It was clearly time to get under
way. If we did not set out without further delay, we should not be back by the
required hour. Then Isobel went rather white.

‘Look here,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry to
have to call attention to myself at this moment, but I’m feeling awfully funny.
I think perhaps I’d better go to my room – and Frederica or someone can ring up
the doctor.’

That was the final touch. In a state
of the utmost confusion and disquiet we left them at last, arriving in
Aldershot just in time, having dropped Robert on the way.

‘Not feeling much like going on the
square tomorrow, are you?’ said Stevens. ‘Still it was the hell of a good
weekend’s leave. I had one of the local girls under a hedge.’

When, during those rare, intoxicating moments of
solitude, I used to sit in a window seat at Castlemallock, reading
Esmond,
or watching the sun go down over the immense brick
rampart of the walled garden, the Byronic associations of the place made me
think of
Don Juan:

I pass my evenings in long galleries
solely,
And that’s the reason I’m so melancholy …

The long gallery at Castlemallock,
uncarpeted, empty of furniture except for a few trestle tables and wooden
chairs, had these built-in seats all along one side. Here one could be alone
during the intervals between arrival and departure of Anti-Gas students, when
Kedward and I would be Duty Officer on alternate days. That meant little more
than remaining within the precincts of the castle in the evening, parading ‘details’
– usually a couple of hundred men – at Retreat, sleeping at night by the
telephone. We were Gwatkin’s only subalterns now, for this was the period of
experiment, later abandoned as unsatisfactory, when one platoon in each company
was led by a warrant-officer. If an Anti-Gas course were in progress, we slept
alternate nights in the Company Office, in case there was a call from
Battalion. I often undertook Kedward’s tour of duty, as he liked to ‘improve
his eye’, when training was over for the day, by exploring the neighbouring
country with a view to marking down suitable sites for machine-gun nests and anti-tank
emplacements. Lying in the window-seat, I would think how it felt
to be a father, of the times during the latter part of the Aldershot course
when I had been able to see Isobel and the child. She and the baby, a boy, were
‘doing well’, but there had been difficulty in visiting them, Stevens’s car by
then no longer available. Stevens, as Brent prophesied, had been ‘Returned to
Unit’.

‘I shan’t be seeing you lads after
tomorrow,’ he said one afternoon.

‘Why not?’

‘I’ve been RTU-ed.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘I cut one of those bloody lectures
and got caught.’

‘Sorry about this.’

‘I don’t give a damn,’ he said. ‘All I
want is to get abroad. This may start me on the move. I’ll bring it off sooner
or later. Look here, give me your sister-in-law’s address, so I can keep in
touch with her about that brooch.’

There was a certain bravado about all
this. To get in the army’s black books is something always to be avoided; as a
rule, no help to advancement in any direction. I gave Stevens the address of
Frederica’s house, so that he could send Priscilla back her brooch. We said
goodbye.

‘We’ll meet again.’

‘We will, indeed.’

The course ended without further
incident of any note. On its last day, I had a word with Brent, before our
ways, too, parted.

‘Pleased we ran into each other,’ he
said. ‘To tell the truth, I was glad to spill all that stuff about the Duports
for some reason. Don’t quite know why. You won’t breathe a word, will you?’

‘Of course not. Where are you off to
now?’

‘The ITC – for a posting.’

I sailed back across the water.
Return, like the war news, was cheerless. The Battalion had been re-deployed
further south, in a new area nearer the border, where companies were on
detachment. Gwatkin’s, as it turned out, was quartered at the Corps School of
Chemical Warfare, the keeps, turrets and castellations of which also enclosed
certain Ordnance stores of some importance, which came under Command. For these
stores, Gwatkin’s company provided security guards, also furnishing men, if
required, for Anti-Gas demonstrations. When the Battalion operated as a unit,
we operated with the rest, otherwise lived a life apart, occupied with our own
training or the occasional demands of the School.

Isobel wrote that her aunt, Molly
Jeavons – as a rule far from an authority on such matters – had lent her a book
about Castlemallock, its original owner, a Lord Chief Justice (whose earldom
had been raised to a marquisate for supporting the Union) having been a distant
connexion of the Ardglass family. His heir – better known as Hercules Mallock,
friend of d’Orsay and Lady Blessington – had sold the place to a rich linen
manufacturer, who had pulled down the palladian mansion and built this
neo-gothic castle. The second Lord Castlemallock died unmarried, at a great
age, in Lisbon, leaving little or nothing to the great-nephew who inherited the
title, father or grandfather of the Castlemallock who had run away with Dicky
Umfraville’s second wife. Like other houses of similar size throughout this
region, Castlemallock, too large and inconvenient, had lain untenanted for
twenty or thirty years before its requisitioning. The book also quoted Byron’s
letter (a fragment only, said to be of doubtful authenticity) written to
Caroline Lamb who had visited the house when exiled from England by her family
on his account. Isobel had copied this out for me:

‘... even though the diversions of
Castlemallock may exceed those of
Lismore, I perceive you
are ignorant of one matter – that he to whose
Labours
you
appear not insensible was once
known to your humble servant by the chaste waters of the
Cam. Moderate, therefore, your talent for novel writing, My
dear Caro, or at least spare me an account of
his
protestations of affection & recollect that your host’s namesake
preferred
Hylas
to the
Nymphs.
Learn, too, that the theme
of assignations in romantick groves palls on a man with
a
cold & quinsy & a digestion that lately suffered the torment of supper
at L
^d
Sleaford’s…’

This glade in the park at Castlemallock
was still known as ‘Lady Caro’s Dingle’, and thought of a Byronic interlude
here certainly added charm to grounds not greatly altered at the time of the
rebuilding of the house. An air of thwarted passion could be well imagined to
haunt these grass-grown paths, weedy lawns and ornamental pools, where moss-covered
fountains no longer played. However, such memories were not in themselves
sufficient to make the place an acceptable billet. At Castlemallock I knew
despair. The proliferating responsibilities of an infantry officer, simple in
themselves, yet, if properly carried out, formidable in their minutiae, impose
a strain in wartime even on those to whom they are a lifelong professional
habit; the excruciating boredom of exclusively male society is particularly
irksome in areas at once remote from war, yet oppressed by war conditions. Like
a million others, I missed my wife, wearied of the officers and men round me,
grew to loathe a post wanting even the consolation that one was required to be
brave. Castlemallock lacked the warmth of a regiment, gave none of the sense of
belonging to an army that exists in any properly commanded unit or formation.
Here was only cursing, quarrelling, complaining, inglorious officers of the
instructional and administrative staff, Other Ranks – except for Gwatkin’s
company – of low medical category. Here, indeed, was
the negation of Lyautey’s ideal, though food enough for the military
resignation of Vigny.

However, there was an undoubted
aptness in this sham fortress,
monument to a tasteless, half-baked romanticism, becoming now, in truth, a
military stronghold, its stone walls and vaulted ceilings echoing at last to
the clatter of arms and oaths of soldiery. It was as if its perpetrators had
re-created the tedium, as well as the architecture of mediaeval times. At
fourteenth-century Stourwater (which had once caused Isobel to recall the
Morte d’Arthur),
Sir Magnus Donners was far less a castellan than
the Castlemallock commandant, a grey-faced Regular, recovering from appendicitis;
Sir Magnus’s guests certainly less like feudatories than the seedy Anti-Gas
instructors, sloughed off at this golden opportunity by their regiments. The
Ordnance officers, drab seneschals, fitted well into this gothic world, most of
all Pinkus, Adjutant-Quartermaster, one of those misshapen dwarfs who peer from
the battlements of Dolorous Garde, bent on doing disservice to whomsoever may
cross the drawbridge. This impression – that one had slipped back into a
nightmare of the Middle Ages – was not dispelled by the Castlemallock ‘details’
on parade. There were warm summer nights at Retreat when I could scarcely
proceed between the ranks of these cohorts of gargoyles drawn up for inspection
for fear of bursting into fits of uncontrollable demoniac laughter.