Blunted Lance (16 page)

‘That will be enough of that!’ The words came from the doorway and the old man shrank back in his chair, winking at the boy.

Lady Goff studied her husband, her violet eyes dis-approving. She was white-haired now but had lost none of her beauty, despite the lines on her face, and none of her shape. The old man’s heart filled with pleasure at the sight of her.

She was regarding him with mock horror. ‘I expect you’re frightening the life out of the child again.’

The boy grinned. ‘Not really, Grannie. I like to hear Grandpa’s stories.’

‘All about battle, murder and sudden death.’

‘What’s a man’s life but battle, murder and sudden death?’ the Field Marshal growled. ‘Especially if he’s a soldier.’

The old lady frowned, her eyes unhappy for a moment. ‘It won’t happen to Josh. He might even decide not to be a soldier.’

‘God forbid that he goes into business like his Uncle Robert.’ The Field Marshal frowned. ‘And if you saw him in the green of the Regiment, you know it’d make your heart turn over with pride.’

‘Probably,’ Lady Goff conceded. ‘Probably with fear also.’ She frowned. ‘Surely you read the papers? The Kaiser’s been waving his sword again.’

The Field Marshal tried to change the subject. ‘Bonfire’s all ready,’ he said. ‘Ellis Ackroyd’s got the fireworks. Don’t it make you proud on your birthday?’

‘It makes me feel old.’

‘Don’t look a day over forty.’

She gave him a quick smile, almost a grin, the sort of smile that had jerked at his heart when he was young and had never stopped since, and it made him think about his son, Robert, once more. He’d heard rumours that he was having an affair in Leeds with the wife of Lord Balmael. Knowing Lord Balmael, he wasn’t surprised. Balmael was in the Guards, a dim, stupid, honourable man whose father had been a self-made rough-diamond and whose wife was much the same. But Robert was a Goff, and Goffs didn’t go in for that sort of thing. It jabbed at his liver and he tried hard to push it to the back of his mind before it gave him a headache.

‘Tyas tells me his rheumatism’s bad,’ he said quickly.

‘So’s his arthritis,’ his wife said. ‘
And
his memory. Oughtn’t we to have Ellis in the house to take over?’

‘Tyas stays as long as he wants to.’

‘He dropped the best tea-set last week.’

The Field Marshal grunted. ‘He didn’t drop me when he carried me off the field at Yellow Tavern with a hole in me leg as big as a cricket ball. For that he stays as long as he wishes.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of asking him to leave, dear. But he’s older than you and I felt we ought to have someone ready to step in, in case he decides to retire.’

‘I’ll see Ellis. He’ll know what to do.’

‘Very well. In the meantime, I’d better find out what he’s done with the tea and muffins. Don’t start terrifying that child with your stories of Zululand.’

As she disappeared, Josh stared at his grandfather who winked at him again.

‘What shall we talk about, Grandpa? Cricket? Yorkshire are doing very well against Lancashire. Kilner got 93.’

‘Did he now? He’ll be playing for England, I suppose.’

‘Who’ll they pick, Grandpa?’

‘Hobbs, of course, for a start. And Rhodes. And how about this feller, Coe, who hit 237 for Leicester against Hants? The way I see it, it goes like this.’

He thrust his newspaper at the boy with the team written in the margin,

Hobbs

Hirst

Hearne

Coe

Woolley

Fender (captain)

Rhodes

Kilner

Slater

Jaques

Booth.

‘How’s that?’ he asked.

‘That sounds a good team, Grandpa. They ought to beat anybody.’ There was a long silence. ‘Grandpa, why is our Regiment called the Widowmakers?’

‘Not
our
regiment, boy.’

‘We founded it.’

‘We raised it. That don’t make it ours. We only had it on trust. Lord Ellesmere has it now.’

‘Why are we called the Widowmakers?’

‘Because we’ve made quite a few in our day. In the Peninsular, chiefly. Boney’s time.’

‘Did you fight Boney, Grandpa?’

‘Good God, boy, I’m not that old!’

The boy grinned and abruptly switched subjects again.

‘Why did Uncle Robert resign his commission?’

The old man blinked and considered, trying to be tolerant.

‘Your Uncle Robert decided he wasn’t cut out for soldiering. Decided he was better suited for business. Besides, he married your Aunt Elfrida and she wasn’t keen.’

‘I thought our family never married Cosgros, Grandpa. Cousin Philippa said we didn’t. She said there was a feud between us and that you started it. She said you shot one of the Cosgros.’

The old man sat bolt upright. ‘Damned if I did, boy! I just sent him home from Zululand. Told him there was no place in the Regiment for him.’

‘Why? Was it full?’

‘Sort of. He shot himself in Paris on the way home. Couldn’t face his family. Didn’t measure up. Aut nullus aut primus.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Regimental motto: Nothing but the Best.’

‘Is that why Uncle Robert sent in his papers?’

The old man tried to change the subject again. ‘You’re growing a big chap, young Josh. You’ll be able to join the Regiment yourself before long. Know why you’re called Joshua?’

‘No, why?’

‘After the Joshua Pellew Goff who founded the regiment.’

‘Then why does Uncle Robert call himself “Cosgro-Goff”? Father’s simply “Goff.”’

The old man grunted. ‘Your Uncle Robert’s started getting some damn funny ideas lately,’ he growled. ‘I fancy that when he was taken into the Cosgro business, he decided he ought to become a Cosgro like the rest of ’em.’

‘Sometimes he even spells his name differently – G.O.U.G.H.’

If George were called ‘Ball’, Sir Colby Goff thought, he’d probably write it ‘Testicle.’

‘Fashion, boy,’ he said shortly. ‘Fashion. Great ones for fancy spelling, some people.’

‘Tyas Ackroyd says he’s not a proper Goff, anyway.’

‘Little pigs have pig ears and Tyas ought to be careful what he says. All he means is that your Uncle Robert’s not a soldier and the Goffs have always been soldiers. That’s all. Tyas is getting too damned old. Like me. After all, Chelmsford’s gone. Buller’s gone. Wolseley died last year. Only leaves me, Wood and Roberts. Soon there’ll be nobody left from those half-baked little wars in the last century except Kitchener.’ He saw the look of alarm in the boy’s face and decided he was growing maudlin. He sat up. ‘Still, the family’ll see it through, won’t we?’ he said briskly. ‘Your father’s a good soldier.’

‘You and I would see it through, too, Grandpa.’

‘That we would. We’d not let the Regiment down.’

‘Specially if it came to a charge.’

‘God bless me soul! Yes. It’s the sort of thing the Goffs go in for, I suppose.’

‘Hedley Ackroyd says aeroplanes and motor cars will do that sort of thing in another war.’

‘Does he, by God? Well, if Hedley Ackroyd says so, probably it’s right. I expect he’s thought about it. He seems to think about most things.’

‘Father says Uncle Karl’s coming to stay with us?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I heard him say it might be for the last time. What did he mean?’

‘This war in Europe, boy.’ Josh heard his grandfather sigh. ‘The thing’s got a bit out of hand, y’see, and there are quite a few people who might be at each other’s throats before the year’s out. If it comes, your Uncle Karl will be in it.’

‘Will he be killed?’

‘God forbid, boy.’

The old man frowned. All the same, he thought, his mouth working, there would be a distinct bloody possibility.

The younger children, who had been put to bed in the afternoon to allow them to stay up, were in a state of hysterical excitement by the time Dabney arrived. He strode into the house where they were all gathered and kissed his wife and children, then his mother, then he turned and embraced his father. He was a quiet man but his manner was brisk and commanding and even without his uniform he was clearly someone of consequence. And, despite his slightness, there was an air about him of a man who knew exactly what he wanted and exactly where he was going, aggressively male in spite of his build, his face wearing an expression that was full of strength and ancient wisdom and belied his youthfulness of manner, an air of self-confidence that showed in his every gesture, in the tilt of his head, the set of his feet, the arch of his back, the way he held his shoulders. The Field Marshal regarded him warmly, guiltily aware that he had never made any bones about this being his favourite child.

With his arrival, the family would be complete for the first time in years, because the Hartmanns had arrived earlier in the afternoon from Germany. Dabney was immediately aware of the strangeness of the gathering, because over it brooded the international situation and the awareness that before long the two branches of the family might even be enemies.

His sister, Helen, was clearly worried. She looked well and prosperous, and plump nowadays in the German manner, with a brood of children around her, but she was clearly upset that the international situation might cut her off from her childhood home.

‘Will there be a war, Dab?’ she asked.

‘God forbid!’

‘That’s no answer.’

Dabney looked up at her under one eyebrow. ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘It isn’t. But it’s the best I can do. You should tell Karl-August to stop that idiot of a Kaiser talking through his hat.’

‘Karl says the British are trying to prevent the German empire expanding.’

‘Does he really believe that?’

‘I don’t think so really. But that’s what the Kaiser says. So, it’s what the government says and what everybody in Germany says.’

Her husband appeared alongside her, holding his youngest son by the hand. Dabney patted the child’s head and gave him an abstracted kiss because he was watching his son, Josh, struggling with his other German nephew, Constantin, in the far corner of the room in a wrestling match. Despite the yells of delight, the faces of the two small boys were twisted into grimaces as they fought, and the thought that they might one day be doing it in real life troubled him.

‘How’s your father, Karl?’ he asked.

Karl-August shrugged, a tall good-looking man going a little grey, his eyes intelligent and brooding. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Growing old, of course. Do you think there’ll be a war, Dabney?’

Dabney sighed. ‘God forbid,’ he said again. ‘Wars benefit nobody. I hope everybody has enough sense to avoid one.’

‘There’s a mood in Europe, nevertheless.’

Karl-August was right, of course. The German Emperor was eager for a war to get what he wanted. The French wanted a war to get revenge for their humiliation in 1870. The British didn’t want a war because they had all they needed, but they would go to war if they thought they were in danger of losing it.

Dabney’s wife, Fleur, was talking earnestly with Helen. She caught his eye and smiled at him over Helen’s shoulder and he thought with agony of what she might have to go through if there
were
a war. He had no fears for himself – war was his profession – but once it had been his duty in Cape Town to inform the wife of a brother officer who had been killed by a sniper. Unaware of the message he brought, she had risen smiling to meet him. As she realised he hadn’t returned her smile, her eyes had gone strangely dead and empty and when he had told her his news, she had said nothing for a moment, sinking into a chair abruptly, her fingers picking at the material of the arm. Then she had lifted her hands to her mouth and pressed them tightly over her lips as though she were trying to stop herself crying out. Her anguished whisper – ‘Oh, God, what am I to do?’ – had wrenched at his heart. That, he felt, must not happen to Fleur.

They had been lovers before they had married. She had met him in London when he had returned from Cape Town. Her family had thought she was staying with a friend and the friend had been sworn to secrecy and had promised to lie if necessary. She had waited for him, her clothes neatly on the chair alongside the bed, a slender white wand in the semi-darkness, shy yet eager at the same time, as aware as he was that this was not just a clandestine meeting in a hotel bedroom but a culmination of years of waiting. To them both there had been nothing sordid in it; it was merely a step forward to the state of marriage which they had both believed in and had expected since they had been children.

As they talked and Ackroyd and one of his granddaughters circulated with the sherry, the Suttons arrived, John every inch a farmer, red-faced and sturdy in tweeds, his wife, Jane, Dabney’s other sister, looking as if she’d just left the preparations for the harvest supper. Their two daughters drifted at once to where Dabney’s daughter, Chloe, was gazing entranced at Helen’s youngest child. Then he heard Tyas Ackroyd, bent and old, whisper in his father’s ear.

‘The Cosgros ’ave arrived, sir.’ It sounded vaguely like an alarm.

The Cosgro-Goffs swept into the room in a noisy avalanche, the children hurtling across to join their English and German cousins. The two daughters, May and Ann, took after their mother, plump, pretty in a way that would fade quickly as they lost their youth. The boys were too fat, too smartly dressed, and Dabney saw the eldest, Aubrey, try to join the wrestling match between Josh and Constantin, only to receive a push that made him sit down heavily and back away, unwanted.

Dabney was about to stride across the room and admonish his son when he saw Robert advancing on him with his hand outstretched. ‘Hello Dab,’ he said. ‘How’s the army?’

‘Ticking along,’ Dabney said quietly. Having repudiated the army, these days Robert seemed to enjoy making it sound like an infants’ class, as if he considered it a puerile, futile thing compared with the importance of making money. It constantly irritated Dabney and sometimes he was hard put to reply lightly.

His annoyance seemed to sail over his brother’s head and Robert turned aside. He never spent long talking to Dabney, almost as if with his contempt there was also a faint sense of guilt. He swung round to his brother-in-law.