Blunted Lance (17 page)

‘Hello, there, Karl,’ he said. ‘What the devil’s your Emperor thinking about, with all these antics he gets up to?’

The behaviour of the German Emperor had baffled Europe for years but Karl-August stiffened, his intelligent face set. ‘He is thinking about Germany, I suspect,’ he said with a touch of pride. ‘As King George thinks about England.’

‘Yes, but all this talk of war! Dammit, the world’s big enough for everybody and war would play hell with business.’

Not, Dabney thought, with the Cosgro business. They were in wool and now had an interest in Sheffield steel. A war demanding uniforms and guns would make them a fortune.

Robert was growing fat, he noticed, while Elfrida wasn’t growing any slimmer. Robert looked as though he didn’t expect to be much affected by the crisis that had crept up on Europe. It had arrived almost unnoticed and talk of war had become common coin these days. Everybody was used to the fear of a major conflict, and it was even accepted that suffering and death were part of the European background. Because Europeans had been used to war for thousands of years, it was not considered unusual for men to go off occasionally under their banners and carrying their weapons, their honour in their helmets like a plume.

Dabney looked across at his brother. Not Robert, though, he decided. Never Robert. Robert would never go to war again.

He could hear him now, sounding off.

‘Of course, the Franco-Prussian War left a lot of bitterness. You have to admit that.’

‘In France,’ Karl-August said patiently, ‘Germany has as bad a neighbour as it is possible to have.’ The German was trying hard to be tolerant of his brother-in-law’s views.

‘Well—’ Robert shrugged – ‘of course, whatever happens, we shan’t be in. We’ve had a policy of splendid isolation for years from all your Continental animosities. In any case, with the royal family German and a lot of German families coming over here with them, like this family the country’s drawn more to our German “cousins” than towards France, whom we’ve never really trusted. All the same—’ Robert paused to deliver a pontifical rebuke ‘—when things were going badly for us in South Africa, there was a great chorus of delight on the Continent and it was led, old man, by your Emperor. He even offered to help Kruger.’

Karl-August smiled. ‘I think your navy precluded anything like that.’

‘But he’s built up his own navy since then, hasn’t he? That’s why we had to become friendly with France. We didn’t want to. After all, they’re a pretty scruffy lot and we’d much rather have been friendly with the Germans.’

‘You have the Entente Cordiale, nevertheless.’

‘It’s not a treaty. It doesn’t bind us and nobody in his senses in this country would ever go to war for France.’

Karl-August gave a sad smile. ‘Nevertheless,’ he said, ‘I think the whole of Europe is walking on eggs. And if war does come, I have no doubt that it will have nothing to do with anything your government has said or done – or my government either. It will spring from something quite trivial which will set things in motion and then there will be no going back.’

As Dabney stood with one arm round his wife and one round his mother, his father joined them. ‘For God’s sake,’ he hissed, ‘get Robert away from Karl-August! He’s on his high horse. Karl-August’s trying hard to be tolerant but if we allow Robert to go on much longer this blasted war he’s on about will break out here in our own drawing-room.’

Lady Goff smiled and, without a word, crossed to Karl-August. Taking him by the arm, she swept him away, leaving Robert with his mouth open, his sentence unfinished.

Deprived of his victim, he turned to his brother and father. ‘You know, Father, Karl-August’s wrong,’ he said. ‘Quite wrong. The way he sticks up for that damn fool, William II, is ridiculous. If war comes, it won’t be our fault. Who’d get the command, Father? French? He did well in South Africa.’

His father grunted noncommittally. ‘Europe isn’t South Africa. These days it’s magazine rifles and machine guns. To go after a herd of elephants with a machine gun would be a massacre. It’s not much different with men. Perhaps that’s what made South Africa no damn use at all as a preparation for a European war. That was a sporting war but, as far as Europe’s concerned, we’d better forget about sportsmanship, and use everything we’ve got.’

Robert looked at his father disapprovingly. ‘That’s strange talk from you, Father.’

The old man shrugged. ‘War’s a dirty business,’ he said. ‘Anybody who tries to suggest otherwise is a fool. If we can win while keeping it decently dirty, so much the better, but if we can’t then we’d better go in for something a little less clean and aim at winning.’

‘Do you think there
will
be a war, Dab?’

Dabney drew a deep breath. ‘I think that must be the fourth time today I’ve been asked that question.’

‘Well, what
do
you think?’

‘I think there will.’

‘Well, we’re not involved.’ Robert sounded smug. ‘We haven’t a treaty with any of the other powers.’

Dabney moved away. ‘I expect,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘that someone’ll find a way round.’

As the pale summer sky changed to violet and then to deep blue, they all trooped down to the lower meadow, the women and the smallest children in the gig, followed by all the Ackroyds from the Home Farm and the cottages. Tyas Ackroyd and the Field Marshal rode in the big Vauxhall, driven and maintained for the family by one of Tyas’ grandsons.

‘Drinks all ready, Tyas?’ the Field Marshal asked.

‘Ellis ’as ’em under control, sir.’

‘Food?’

‘Hampers already down there. Soup. Pies. Parkin. Toffee for the children. The beer barrel’s been broached.’

Since the summer had been so beautiful and the heat had built up, it was still warm despite the hour. By the time the car arrived, everybody was waiting, the children wide-eyed, eager-faced, and excited at being out of bed. Ellis Ackroyd and his wife and daughter were already passing round the drinks, and the older children were gathered in groups chatting, among them Robert’s elder daughter, May, Jane’s daughters, Philippa and Rachel, and Helen’s daughter, Gabriella von Hartmann.

As the flames began to sweep up the pile of logs and brushwood, there were gasps from the smaller children and while they were still staring, three rockets went up together, and a line of roman candles flared into brilliance.

In their light, Dabney watched the faces of the youngsters around him. Among them was an older boy in a Norfolk suit and breeches, his hand touching that of Dabney’s niece, Philippa Sutton, his sister Jane’s daughter.

‘See Hedley got here then, Tyas,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir. He usually does what he says he’s going to do.’

As they moved among the watching children, the boy in the Norfolk suit moved to where Dabney stood with his father.

‘Pleased to see you so well, sir,’ he smiled to the Field Marshal. ‘I’ve come to report.’

‘Report what?’

‘My progress, sir. It’s thanks to you I’m at university. The least I can do is tell you how I’m getting on.’

The boy had the same look old Tyas had, the same look Ellis had, the same direct manner.

‘No need to feel beholden, my boy,’ the Field Marshal said.

‘Nevertheless I do, sir, and I try to prove I’m worth it. I think I’ve done well in my exams and hope to get a good second. To get a first you have to do a lot of swotting and I’m not sure that’s what university’s about. I’ve preferred to use the time in other ways.’

‘What other ways?’

‘I’ve learned to fly, sir. It’s the coming thing.’

‘Is it, by God?’ The Field Marshal’s eyebrows shot up. ‘That what you’re intending to go in for?’

‘I might.’

As the boy turned away, Dabney noticed he moved back at once to Philippa Sutton and saw once again that surreptitiously their hands touched.

As they stood watching, the Field Marshal spoke quietly.

‘Tell me, Dab,’ he said. ‘Everybody’s occupied now. How are things with the Regiment?’

Dabney shrugged. The Field Marshal was little involved with the army these days. He was ageing fast and he limped badly from old wounds. But he missed the army and he missed the men, and he liked to keep in touch through his son.

‘They’re in good shape, Father,’ Dabney said.

‘I’m glad.’ The old man frowned. ‘We may have need of them before long.’

Dabney nodded. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But not just yet, I think. There’s nothing in the evening paper to alarm anybody. Only some Austrian archduke assassinated in Bosnia, and that won’t affect us.’

Dabney couldn’t have been more wrong.

The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, had set alight a slow-burning fuse. Believing the assassination the work of the Serbian authorities, towards the end of July the Austrian government issued an unacceptable ultimatum to Serbia and five days later, without giving them chance to appeal against it, declared war. Immediately, in support of a promise made to the Balkan Slavs, Russia mobilised and the following day Germany issued an ultimatum to France, informing her that nothing that had happened was any of her business.

The rumours grew. The war everybody had been expecting had come at last. In Germany, reserves were being called up, escorted to the station by weeping wives and children. And as Germany mobilised, France, her ancient enemy, mobilised too. The streets filled as crowds of men began to move towards the barracks, and two days later the British Fleet was at sea.

Fleur’s face was horrified. ‘But
we
can’t possibly be in the war, Dab,’ she said.

Dabney’s expression was grim. ‘We can now. German troops are massing on the Belgian frontier and we have a treaty to protect Belgium.’

Fleur stared at him with shocked eyes. ‘Then you–?”

‘Not only me,’ Dabney said grimly, ‘but Karl-August, too. I expect Ellis Ackroyd’ll have to go, too. He’s still a reservist. So, for that matter, will father.’

She looked startled.

‘A field marshal’s never too old,’ he explained. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll have to stand up and be shot at but he’ll be busy. Everybody’ll be in it in the end.’ He managed a smile. ‘Such a good summer, too, and Yorkshire doing so well.’

The papers were full of dark and foreboding stories, and breakfast was a silent business.

ENGLAND GIVES UP PEACE NEGOTIATIONS, stated the headline, over the smaller one announcing Germany’s invasion of Belgium. Mobilisation, it continued, was progressing with great enthusiasm, and the two sets of allies were squaring up to each other.

Then came a moving letter from Helen. Even the envelope showed the feelings that had been aroused, because some German postal clerk, seeing the address, had scrawled ‘Gott Strafe England’ across it.

Karl-August was already in uniform, it seemed, uncertain whether to feel despair at the way things had turned out or pride at his country’s readiness, and Helen described the trains full of soldiers chalked with ‘Nach Paris’ and ‘Nach Petersburg,’ the men inside cheering and singing. She had just returned to Berlin from England; her luggage had been lost in the chaos of the crowds rushing home from the summer holidays and she had heard it had gone to Holland. In the Unter Den Linden, mobs were pacing up and down, singing ‘Deutschland Über Alles’ and ‘Die Wacht Am Rhein.’ Here and there a company of infantry or a squadron of horse, wearing their new grey uniforms instead of the old-fashioned Prussian blue, shook hands and accepted food or bottles of wine. She had seen the Kaiser in his car, and the Crown Prince, and the Socialists were all busy saying it wasn’t a people’s war.

‘I wish to God,’ she wrote, ‘that it wasn’t. There seems little else I can say. Now I am a German and must think like a German. But I am still English by instinct and can’t find it in me to hate the land where I was born. This may be the last letter I shall be able to get to you, though I shall continue to try via Holland, where we have friends who might be persuaded to forward them. But just in case we don’t manage it, I must say goodbye for the time being.’

The call came to Dabney at Colchester where the 19th had recently moved from Ireland. With only a small volunteer army, the mustering of reserves was different in England. The men arrived quietly, less than willing but not shirking their duty. Many of them were clearly too old and it was obvious at once they would be useless as fighting soldiers.

The remounts were also beginning to stream in and Dabney moved through the stables between a long row of intelligent heads. Swishing well-kept tails had been squared to a hand’s-breadth above the hock, coats had been brushed and polished, and hooves oiled as if by a manicurist. Burnished saddles lay on the racks and in the armoury swords and lances were being sharpened and rifles checked.

Running a hand down a fetlock, Dabney turned to the sergeant alongside him.

‘Pleased with this one,’ he said. ‘Good batch, that last lot. But we’ll have a different man on the grey mare. His hands are too heavy for her.’

News had arrived that Sir John French had been appointed commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force, and since he was a cavalryman it was expected there would be action.

There was a lot of anxiety that it would be over before they could arrive and that the French would wipe the Germans off the map, but Dabney had listened too often to his father, and the belief that it would be over by Christmas was not his view. His father had said it would be a matter of years, not months, and he had heard that Kitchener, at the War Office, had said the same thing.

He wasn’t sure what to expect. It was still believed that the cavalryman was first and foremost the soldier of the charge and the mêlée and that if he were regarded merely as a mounted rifleman a great deal would be lost. The lance-versus-sword question had always ended in acrimony and most people had tried to steer a middle course between the conflicting ideas on cavalry employment and armament, but the argument had eventually been settled by an army order allowing the Lancers to retain their nine-foot weapon for escort duties, reviews and ceremonial parades, though they were now armed also with a rifle and a sword.