Until the Colours Fade (50 page)

The sentry at the entry-port marched Magnus to a
petty-officer
, who brought him to a mate, who in turn led him up to the quarter-deck to see the commander; and every man in this
meticulously
ordered hierarchy seemed politely surprised that a
civilian,
in a tarred canvas coat and patched trousers, should have the temerity to ask to see the Admiral. It was after evening
quarters
and the marine band was playing on the middle deck, the music wafting up to the exalted heights of the quarter-deck and poop. Having explained to the commander who he was, and having noticed the distinct alteration in that officer’s frigid
manner, Magnus was led down the after-companion and entrusted to his father’s flag-lieutenant, who finally ushered him to the admiral’s quarters, past the marine sentries and through a pair of maplewood veneered doors with china handles, into his father’s day cabin.

Ahead of him, through a doorway in the panelled bulkhead, Magnus could see the graceful square-paned stern-windows. On a small round table were several decanters in coasters and some glasses on a silver tray. The day cabin itself was comfortably
furnished
with three armchairs, a long Regency sofa, and an oval mahogany table in the centre. The ports were covered by wooden blinds, and, had it not been for the curve of the beams supporting the deck above, and the white planks showing at the edge of the carpet, Magnus might have supposed himself in an ordinary
low-ceilinged
room ashore. The flag-lieutenant went through into the stern gallery and after some murmured words returned with Sir James, and then withdrew.

Father and son shook hands formally, and Sir James said, with an overt jocularity that did not conceal a real grievance:

‘I suppose a son, who refuses two invitations to dine without giving his father a single reason, can’t be expected to send a note asking whether a casual visit will be convenient.’

‘Remembering your views on my profession, I thought it better not to embarrass you at your table…. I need your help, father. I want you to go aboard a hospital ship in the harbour. Lord Raglan can’t know the conditions the wounded are living in.’

‘If an admiral complains, everything will be put right?’

Magnus ignored the gentle mockery in his father’s voice.

‘If you see for yourself, you’ll move heaven and earth to bring a change.’

‘While there’s a shortage of medical supplies in the camps, there’s bound to be the same in the hospital ships.’

‘I’m not talking about a shortage. There are three bed-pans for every hundred men, no mattresses for men who’ve lost arms and legs. Scores of them are starving because they can’t eat hard biscuit, and there’s no soft bread.’

‘The whole army’s starving, Magnus.’

‘Because of official lassitude and incompetence.’

‘The truth is far simpler. Nobody planned for a winter siege; everything stems from that disastrous underestimate of the enemy’s strength. All other failings are subordinate.’

His father’s sad philosophical tone maddened Magnus.

‘Have you been to the port recently?’ he asked, seeing his father stiffen defensively.

‘I was there yesterday and everything I saw bears out what I said. Quays choked with timber for huts and no chance of getting it to the camps until the railway is finished. If it could be got there, there’d still be no carpenters to put the huts together. Every plan was made two months too late and now everything has to be done at once with chaos the inevitable result. Three months will set matters right.’ Sir James frowned and swept a lock of silver-grey hair from his forehead.

‘In three months there’ll be no army left,’ cried Magnus.

Sir James cleared his throat and looked down at the floor.

‘Large reinforcements will arrive in the New Year.’

Magnus looked at him in disbelief and horror.

‘But the men in the trenches now are going to die … every man of them dead by the spring? Are you resigned to that?’

Sir James turned away without speaking. A moment later Magnus was shaken by the emotion and anger in his voice.

‘I’m resigned to nothing. Charles and Humphrey are in those trenches. If you knew how I hate this cabin and my own security … yet you speak as if I have no personal stake in events ashore. Do you think we don’t hear when the batteries are in action? There are days when I’ve blocked my ears or gone down to the orlop deck to escape the noise.’

Moved by this outburst and mortified that he had spoken harshly, Magnus said gently:

‘If either of them is wounded, mightn’t you wish you’d gone aboard one of the hospital ships? Even if great changes are
impossible,
small things can be done.’

Sir James sighed heavily and walked away towards the
doorway
into the stern gallery.

‘Suppose I see your ship and go to Lord Raglan, there’ll be a Board of Inquiry and the wretched surgeon in charge will be
censured.
The Principal Medical Officer at Balaclava may be
dismissed
for clearing the vessel. To what purpose? Will anybody better take his place? Will the ships suddenly be transformed?’ He gazed at Magnus with sympathy and sorrow. ‘The system of supply is woeful; the confusion between departments even worse, but the whole edifice can’t be knocked down and built up again during a war.’

Magnus sat with bowed head, knowing that his father was right. He looked up and caught Sir James’s eye.

‘If you do one thing, I’ll never forget it. Send half-a-dozen
launches from the line-of-battle ships to ferry out the wounded.’

‘Gladly. If the Captain Superintendent had mentioned….’ He broke off and looked at Magnus with sudden pain. ‘Why in God’s name didn’t you stay in the army? Why, Magnus? Isn’t that what’s wrong … too many officers who think transport and supply too far beneath them to concern themselves with the most basic needs of their men? Too few men like you holding
commissions
. Instead like the rest of the press you’re searching for scapegoats and lowering the nation’s morale. It’s a waste; a
useless
waste.’

‘But we’ll make sure it never happens again, father. No waste in that.’

Sir James shook his head sadly.

‘Every government neglects the army in peace-time and always will.’

‘Not after this war.’

‘In twenty years even the best memories fail; you’ll see, even if I don’t.’

As Magnus rose to leave, his father took his arm and walked out to the companion ladder with him.

‘You won’t believe me perhaps,’ he murmured in a low voice, ‘but every hour I spend on this magnificent ship fills me with humiliation and shame at the navy’s impotence to cut short the war. I have attempted repeatedly to persuade Dundas and the First Lord to sanction another naval bombardment at close range and for my pains I have earned the reputation of an
unstable
hot-head. When Dundas goes home, Sir Edmund Lyons will succeed him and I shall remain second-in-command.’

‘I’m sorry.’

His father shrugged his shoulders and smiled at Magnus before calling his flag-lieutenant to take him to the entry-port. As they were leaving, Sir James called after them:

‘I’ve not forgotten the launches, Magnus.’

As the gap of water widened, and Magnus gazed back at the towering masts and rows of gun-ports, he felt an aching sadness. The war held them all captive; his father as much as any. Magnus thought of him in his splendid but solitary quarters and no longer felt resentment. Charles or Humphrey might die; the chances were that one of them would, and what consolation would his marriage be if that happened? Ignorant of his wife’s infidelity and probably doting on her, the man was to be pitied rather than envied. After witnessing such terrible suffering
earlier
that day, Magnus was surprised that thoughts of his father’s
marriage had any power to move him; and yet as he sat back against the transom, listening to the regular squeak of the oars in the rowlocks, he felt a stirring of compassion close to forgiveness. Ahead the sea and sky were dark and grey except for a faint streak of red beyond the besieged city.

An old white-bearded man got up from the turbaned group of coffee-drinkers sitting under the plane trees and, taking his
long-stemmed
chibouque from his mouth, stared at the small black carriage clattering into the village square, and at the unfamiliar uniforms of the two mounted soldiers following. The women
filling
their earthenware jars at the marble fountain would not have abandoned their work to gaze at a richly ornamented araba or a pasha’s teleki preceded by a retinue of kavasses, but many had never seen an English brougham before and, although
ignorant
of the meaning of the crown on the door panels, did not doubt that the traveller was an important one. The brougham came to a halt and the Turkish coachman jumped down from the box and went across to the coffee and sherbet stall under the trees to ask directions.

As the brougham moved off again, Helen looked out at quiet streets and verandahed wooden houses with closed lattices. Not a fashionable summer resort like Therapia, Orta-köy had a sad neglected air made worse by the greyness of the day and the
blustery
winds. The gaps between the houses were dotted with fig trees and choked with weeds. By the side of the uneven muddy road, a blind woman sat on the door-step of a small unkempt cemetery surrounded by a rusty iron railing. Inside, under the cypresses, some goats were browsing among the headless
Janissary
-stones. Helen’s head was aching with the continual rattling of the windows and the groaning of the springs. At times the roads had been so poor that she had been obliged to cling tightly to the corded strap-handles to prevent herself being thrown from the seat. She felt irritable and intensely apprehensive.

*

There had been many reasons for Helen’s protracted stay in Turkey: a desire to be close at hand in case any harm befell Humphrey; a horror of returning to live with Catherine at Hanley Park; and, just as pressing, a strong feeling that the longer she stayed away, the less likely it would be that Tom might try to see her again. At the time of her marriage, Helen had been terrified in case his initial grief and anger, at the cruel
suddenness of her departure, might drive him to follow her, but as the months had passed, this once disturbing possibility had come to worry her less, becoming in the end little more than a memory – until she had opened his letter.

On first reading it, Helen had been afraid. Never for a moment believing that he had been surprised to learn that she was still in Pera, she had at once concluded that Tom had come out for the sole purpose of seeing her: impelled either by love or a desire for revenge. The letter gave her no positive indication which, although the chillingly sarcastic reference to Charles with its implied criticism of her for having failed to warn Tom, made her for a time consider vengeance the likelier of the two. Yet when she recalled being with him, her memories of his tolerance and touching uncertainty gave the lie to this. She had done much to provoke him, but he had never repaid her with anger or reproach. She thought of him by the river, as he stooped to pick up her veil – brushing grass from her skirt – sitting miserably on their ugly bed in Blandford’s Hotel, head in hands, under the hissing gasolier – radiant beside her in the autumnal woods near Barford – memories, which brought back not love or pain, but a nostalgic tenderness mingled with regret.

A year ago, a war ago, a world ago – before her daily fear for Humphrey’s safety, before the bombardments and assaults, the diplomatic banquets and receptions, before poor James had first made love to her in Valetta, apologetically, as though his body had belonged to someone else. A century it seemed since she had traded her old self for a new name and, so different had her new life been, that recalling the past, even with Tom’s letter in her hand, she had found it hard to understand that events from a
distant
world might still have power over her; that figures from an English summer might touch her in a Levantine winter.

But, re-reading the letter, fear had once more returned,
replacing
tenderness and nostalgia, and soon turning to anger. The facetious formality of tone, the absence of any thought for the difficulties she would face in contriving a meeting outside the city, and finally his veiled threat to call unannounced at the Embassy, unless she complied with his wishes, had filled Helen with furious indignation.

To explain why she should need a carriage for a whole day, she had been forced to work out an elaborate excuse about visiting a distant relative, who had fallen sick on his way to the war, while staying with friends in Orta-köy. Had she made no mention of
illness
, it would have been thought extraordinary that any gentleman
should ask her to travel in winter when the roads were at their worst, instead of calling on her at the Embassy. Lord
Stratford
had then raised difficulties; his dear Lady Crawford could not travel alone with a groom and footman, she must have a small military escort; then, by offering her sick relative the
services
of the Embassy’s physician, his lordship had placed her in a situation from which she had only extricated herself with the greatest difficulty. But angry though she was, Helen knew that if she handled the meeting badly, she might face far greater
inconvenience
and danger than that arising from the few lies she had so far been obliged to tell.

*

Tom started nervously as Fuad, the cook, opened the door and shuffled across the coarse matting, carrying a bowl filled with a messy-looking pilau of red mullet, rice and herbs; glancing absently at the food, Tom gave a brief nod of approval and turned with a troubled and preoccupied expression to gaze out at the dark yews and myrtles in the garden. When nothing had turned out as he had imagined, what did it matter that the fish had been inexpertly boned and would have to be washed down with a sour and watery local wine? Having assumed that the house in Orta-köy would be well-built and comfortable, it had shocked him to find it no more than a wooden summer kiosk,
evidently
only used by its owner when the flies and smells of the city compelled a brief exodus during the hottest months of the year.

The warped window frames and lattices were no defence against winter winds; and a few pans of glowing charcoal
produced
nauseating fumes and little heat. Apart from a long divan in the window of the principal room, the furniture was
rudimentary
: two camp stools, a deal trestle table covered with a dirty embroidered cloth, and several hard upright chairs. Fuad’s gaunt face and ill-fitting English tail-coat, worn with a green hadji’s turban and baggy traditional trousers, were at one with the makeshift air of the house. Only the tubs of tree-geraniums and jasmines in the hall saved the place from utter drabness.

But no surroundings, however congenial, could have eased the taut expectancy of Tom’s nerves, nor have helped him recapture the determined and aggressive mood in which he had written his letter. He could no longer understand how he could ever have believed that simply by seeing Helen, he would be able to break her hold over him. Even before his arrival in the village, he had dreaded that her coming would merely remind him of the magnitude
of his loss. She might prove understanding and tender, not callous and indifferent to him, as he had imagined. What if she were to confess to unhappiness comparable with his own? He had seen himself shaming her, forcing her to admit that she had wronged him, led him on, lied to him and ended their affair with a brutal unconcern bordering on contempt.

But now, with her arrival imminent, every vestige of his former certainty had vanished, leaving him agitated and
overwrought
. The thought of her physical presence both scared and stirred him, bringing panic and elation, confusing and alarming him in case he should prove unable to think or even speak
coherently
when she arrived. And soon it came to him with a sudden clarity that shook him: this is what hope feels like – the dread of disappointment a man feels when he has rashly allowed himself to hope against the odds. And Tom knew with sinking certainty, that if Helen showed him any trace of love, he would surrender unresisting, gladly, and that his past intentions had meant nothing; that time since his parting from her had been no more than an interval, a pause before this inevitable admission of frailty.

*

It rained heavily shortly before midday, and afterwards the sun shone fitfully for a while. Tom had put on the best clothes he had brought with him, but feeling the absurdity of appearing in such surroundings wearing a ‘half-dress’ morning coat and quadrilled velvet waistcoat, he changed into leather trousers, untanned Napoleon boots and an old brown frock-coat. Then, to make it appear that he had just come in from a walk or ride, he went out into the garden and stamped about until his boots were
convincingly
muddy, tousling his hair to add further conviction.
Opening
the lattice commanding the verandah and the road, he sat down to wait, and partly to calm himself, partly to soften the
possible
disappointment, pretended to believe that she would not come, that he had been mad in his presumption ever to have
supposed
she would. From the imam’s school beside the mosque he could hear the faint sound of children chanting; closer at hand, sparrows were splashing in the newly formed puddles on the road. A veiled Armenian woman, munching a cucumber, rode past on a milk-white mule carrying long wooden troughs of bread to the bakery; two street dogs began a desultory fight. As time passed, his feigned pessimism turned to a genuine
despondency
, so that when at last he heard the clatter of hooves and saw the approaching carriage, he felt a breathless shock of real surprise.
He was also stunned to see in addition to the liveried
coachman
and groom, two British hussars in full dress trotting beside the coach: living symbols of the now even greater gulf between their respective stations; and he felt a humiliating sense of guilt for having dared to summon her. Then his pride lived again. This cavalcade had come at his bidding to the very place he had chosen, at his appointed time; and the meanness of the house, and those around it, merely enhanced this victory. Tom clapped his hands to summon Fuad and sent him out to welcome his guest; then, turning abruptly, he thrust his hands deep into his pockets and walked stiffly across to the divan, where he stood staring out blindly at the yews behind the house.

On hearing the soft rustling of a dress, he remained motionless for several seconds, as if lost in thought. From the corner of his eye he saw Fuad bowing low, his hand raised to his face in a
profound
salaam. As the servant withdrew, Tom turned with lowered eyes, not daring to look at her face, taking in at a glance a cream-coloured merino dress and astrakhan-trimmed pelisse. He moved forward several steps, trying to slow his movements to convey confidence and ease, praying, in the lengthening silence, that she would speak first. With burning cheeks and lips too stiff and tight to form a smile, he heard himself murmuring banalities about being glad that she could come; assuring her that had he known about Turkish roads and summer kiosks he would never have subjected her to the journey. And then he stopped, shocked by the grating artificiality of his voice and the fact that he had apologised. He looked up and her expression robbed him of further words; expecting, if not sympathy for his predicament, at least understanding, he saw only an icy indifference, which pierced him to the heart. A year ago, only a year and she would have run to him with open arms; parting as at Barford with
tearful
kisses. He shot her a look of tortured resentment, but the set of her features remained the same; the pale gold of her skin and the warm rich lights in her hair mocking by contrast the freezing hostility in her eyes.

‘Why have you forced me to come here?’

The slightest tremor of suppressed anger ruffled the precise polished surface of her voice; her tone an absolute denial of any claim he might suppose he had on her. Humiliated and outraged, he burst out:

‘I did not think our former association so bereft of meaning, so far beneath consideration….’ The thread of his sentence had gone. ‘Because,’ he went on, his voice rising, ‘I deserved better
than to learn with the cut of cane in the face what should have come from your lips when we were together. Or did Captain Crawford come as your personal messenger?’

She raised her brows and inclined her head as if surprised by such an immoderate and ungentlemanly tirade; then said with only a hint of questioning:

‘You wish revenge for what was no fault of mine?’

‘No fault that you kept silent knowing what that man knew?’ He stared at her with incredulous fury. ‘No fault that you left me in a fool’s paradise … did that knowing the appointments for the Black Sea, knowing what they meant?’

For the first time he saw her hesitate, noted a slight movement of her hands as if impulse had almost broken her studied reserve, but she replied with the same distanced blandness:

‘Nothing could have been changed, whether you knew or not. A sudden death is less painful than a lingering one.’

‘Dead I may have been to you after our parting, but a living death …
I
did not cease to feel when you had gone. Did it not cross your mind that I might wonder how it was that you never found time to see me before you left? Was I supposed to shrug my shoulders and go on as if ours had been no more than a casual encounter in a crowded summer?’ His legs were shaking and he could feel tears starting to his eyes.

‘How you choose to remember me is your concern, but one thing I will remind you. Nothing that I ever said could have given you reason to hope that I might break my word to the man I had pledged myself to.’ She raised a hand to the brim of her feathered hat, a gesture half nervous, half mannered elegance. The ghost of a smile played on her lips. ‘No sweet farewell could have brought any alteration.’