Blunted Lance (33 page)

At first his father didn’t seem to hear him, then he started and turned. ‘What’s that?’

‘I said, what’s it like in France?’

There was a pause. ‘Not very comfortable, Josh. But a damn sight less comfortable for the infantry than for us.’

‘I had a fight at school last week. Reeves Major said the cavalry weren’t pulling their weight.’

‘Did he? I take it that Reeves Major has a father in the infantry.’

‘No, sir, a brother. His father was killed in 1914. He was in the Rifle Brigade.’

Dabney looked down at his hands where they rested on the table beside his plate. ‘And what did
you
say, Josh, in reply to this calumny?’

‘I didn’t say anything, Father. I hit him in the eye. It was all right afterwards, of course. We’re quite good friends really, and Grandpa being in the Light Brigade at Balaclava carries a lot of weight. I also told him you were at Omdurman and got the DSO in South Africa, and another in 1914. That took the wind out of his sails, I can tell you.’

‘Did he have any answer to that?’

Josh hesitated. ‘Well, yes,’ he admitted. ‘He said you hadn’t done much since.’

Dabney paused. His son was looking at him, begging him to tell him that it wasn’t true.

‘Perhaps Reeves Major’s right, Josh,’ he said. ‘But it’s not our fault. After the South African War, which was all horses, everybody felt certain that this war would be the same. But it turned out to be more different than anyone expected and it just happened to be our bad luck – or good luck, whichever way you see it—’ he glanced at his wife who was watching him with tragic eyes ‘—that we were horsed soldiers and that we rode to war in a saddle instead of marching on our own hind legs.’

‘Does that mean, sir, that he’s right?’

‘I’m rather afraid he is, Josh. We had our day in 1914 and we didn’t do too badly. But since then, we’ve not done much. Sir Douglas Haig’s always hoped we’ll get our chance and that there’ll be a gap in the line we can go through, but it’s not happened yet and we’re still waiting.’

‘I see.’

Dabney studied his son. The boy was growing fast but he looked like taking after himself and his grandfather and would not be big. He hadn’t the shoulders and strength of Robert’s boy, Aubrey, not tall but sturdy, slim-hipped and strong-legged. His hands were fine but they were going to be strong, too. He was going to end up with a perfect cavalryman’s figure. It was a pity he would never be a true cavalryman.

His son was still watching him with troubled eyes. ‘
Will
it happen, Father? Will you get your chance?’

‘We all hope so, though I’m inclined to doubt it. War’s changed, Josh. The rifle, you see. It gave birth to the rifle pit and the trench, and that made the bayonet a pointless weapon, blunted the sword and the lance and forced artillerymen to place their guns beyond reach. Which meant that artillery had to grow heavier with a longer range.’ He paused. ‘It also dismounted the cavalryman. We fought in trenches in 1914, as you know. Nowadays, they prefer to let the trench fighting be done by men who’re experienced at it, and keep us in reserve for when the breakthrough comes.’

‘Suppose it never does, Father?’

There was a long silence. ‘That is the question,’ Dabney said gravely. ‘Sir Douglas Haig thinks it will. I’m inclined to doubt it.’

‘That means you’ll not be in the war?’

‘It does indeed.’

Josh was not too young to miss the glance of gratitude in his mother’s eyes.

‘It seems a bit unfair, Father.’

‘I’m afraid it does. On the other hand, all isn’t lost. We have a new arm you’ll have read about. Tanks.’

The boy was silent for a long time. ‘And will the cavalry
never
do anything?’

Dabney was silent again, then he sighed. ‘The cavalry,’ he said slowly, ‘has been superseded for its reconnaissance duties by the air, and if there are to be breakthroughs they’ll be made by tanks. I suspect, in fact, that they’re the cavalry of the future and when this business is over I intend to find out if they’ll give me a job.’

‘But, Father, Reeves Major says they only go at five miles an hour. A Sopwith Camel can fly at over a hundred. Even a horse can gallop faster than five miles an hour. What about the charge, Father? You can’t charge at five miles an hour and charges are what cavalry’s for, aren’t they?’

Dabney shook his head and his voice grew harsher. ‘Horsed charges are gone forever, Josh,’ he said. ‘Cavalry is finished and I’m ashamed to sit behind the lines with thousands of others with nothing else to do but tend our animals while men die every day in the trenches.’

As he finished speaking, Dabney tossed down his napkin, finished his wine, rose and stamped towards the door. For a moment his wife stared after him, then at Josh, then she rose herself and ran after him. For a long time, Josh stared uncomprehendingly across the table at his sister, his eyes full of tears. Something, he felt, was dreadfully wrong. Idols he had believed in all his life had toppled. His father, whom he adored, could find no joy in his service. It left him wretched and miserable and bewildered. There seemed a desperate need for something to be done.

‘Grandpa, I’m ten now. How old do I have to be to enlist?’

The old man moved restlessly. ‘A damn sight older than you are now, boy,’ he growled.

Joshua studied the Field Marshal as he huddled in his chair in the library among the silver statuettes of cavalrymen and the pictures of soldiers in gaudy uniforms. A clock ticked and the room seemed as silent, gloomy and dead as the graveyard where they’d buried Tyas Ackroyd.

There was a faint sun and it shone on his grandfather’s head which in the last few months seemed suddenly to have grown bald. The old man, inert as the stuffed pike on the wall, stared with puffy eyes at the newspaper. The headlines struck Josh. ‘French Attack Punches Hole in German Line.’ Since they’d announced only about a fortnight before that the British had punched a hole in the German line at Arras, this new French attack on the Chemin des Dames, or whatever it was called, seemed to him to presage the end of the war. The Germans couldn’t go on having holes punched in their lines as often as all that.

Rather to his surprise, his grandfather had not seemed impressed, which was why he had asked his question.

‘I could do exercises, Grandpa,’ he suggested.

The old man heaved in his chair. ‘Wassat?’

‘I could do exercises.’

‘What for?’

‘Build up my strength.’

‘What do you want to build up your strength for?’

‘Join the army, Grandpa.’

‘Too young. Have to be eighteen at least.’

‘Reeves Major had a cousin who joined up in 1915 when he was only sixteen.’

The old man shifted in his chair. ‘Then the people who accepted him ought to be ashamed of themselves. Boys of that age are nothing but a nuisance. Haven’t the stamina.’

‘He was nearly six foot tall, Reeves Major said.’

‘And as muscled as the pith of an orange, I expect.’ The old man grunted. ‘Bet he didn’t last long.’

‘Reeves Major said he was killed on the first day of the Somme.’

The old man was silent for a while. Poor little bugger, he was thinking. Josh was watching him closely and he felt obliged to go on.

‘I’d never have under-age boys in the Regiment when I was running it,’ he said. ‘Used to send them home and tell ’em to grow a bit. A few colonels turned a blind eye to keep the numbers up, though. Didn’t pay. Didn’t last. When the cholera was knocking us over like ninepins in the Crimea, it was always the youngsters who went first. Same in South Africa. Most of those who died of enteric were young. No lasting power, y’see. Strength gives out. Besides, a boy of that age doesn’t have the same
moral
strength as a man of twenty-odd.’

‘What’s moral strength?’

‘Guts. Ability to keep going when all the rest have stopped. The ability to make decisions when they’re alone instead of hanging on to everybody else’s coat-tails. Your father showed he had it at the Graafberg. I suppose I must have had it, too, or the Regiment would never have been represented in the Light Brigade at Balaclava.’

‘Have I got it, Grandpa?’

‘I expect so. Runs in the family. Didn’t you punch that Reeves boy in the eye?’

‘Yes, I did. He said Father wasn’t doing his share.’ Josh frowned. ‘But when I asked Father,
he
said he wasn’t, too. He said he wanted to join the Tank Corps. He said they were the cavalry of the future.’

The old man considered. ‘That’s a shrewd assessment,’ he said. ‘Perhaps he’s right. If they could only get the damn things to go as fast as a horse.’

‘Should
I
join the Tank Corps when I’m old enough to go to the war?’

‘Do you want to?’

‘I’d rather join the Regiment.’

‘Then don’t be in too big a hurry, boy. By the time you’re old enough they’ll probably have got ’em to go as fast as horses and then you’ll do your charging in a tank. Now you’d better push off. I’m tired and I want to go to sleep.’

Leaving his grandfather with his head sunk on his chest Josh wandered through the house. Since his father had gone back to France, he rarely spent his time at home. His grandfather was invariably pleased to see him and, with the Ackroyd men about the Home Farm, he was in male company such as he rarely saw at home. His mother always seemed abstracted these days and his younger sister was too small to occupy his attention for long.

Looking for his grandmother in the kitchen, he was informed by the maid who was making scones for tea that she had gone to lie down. Bored, he wondered why it was old people always had to lie down or have a nap in the afternoon.

Wandering into the hall, he stood before the portrait of his grandfather on the stairs. It had been painted to celebrate the fact that he was safe home from the Indian Mutiny.

‘Habit people had,’ his grandfather had once said. ‘People died a lot in those days, y’see. Typhoid. Pneumonia. That sort of thing. Sanitation was a bit indifferent and people caught things. When soldiers came home safe, there was always the feeling that they might drop dead of the plague any day, so their parents got ’em on canvas just in case.’

Studying the picture, sitting in a chair opposite by the fireplace, Josh decided once more that the figure was far too tall. But his grandfather had explained that away, too. ‘Always made you tall,’ he had said. ‘Looked better. Especially with shrimps like me.’ The figure was standing alongside a chestnut charger carrying a leopard skin and the gold-embossed shabraque of the 19th. The horse, he’d been told, had been called Bess, after his great-grandmother, because, so his great-grandfather had said, ‘she had the same sweet temper but was just as bloody stubborn if she wanted to be.’ He knew all about the mare, how she had been one of a string of three, of which one had died when the transport carrying her from England had caught fire, and one had died of disease in some place on the shores of the Black Sea. Bess, herself, having carried his grandfather down the valley to the Russian guns, had then borne the wounded Tyas Ackroyd to safety. Despite two bad cuts from shell splinters, she had been nursed back to health only to die during the winter when starving horses had been driven to eating each other’s manes and tails.

Sitting still, staring at the picture, he tried in vain to associate the dozing old man in the library with his watery eyes and bent knees with this brash virile youngster. Behind him were men of the 19th Lancers, their lance points gleaming dully against a grey sky. His grandfather was black-haired, as fierce-eyed as his charger, curly-whiskered and with his hand on the handle of his sabre. On his head was the flat-topped schapka, made of metal and basketwork, with the enormous clutching eagle that gave the Regiment its name, worked into the decoration on the front above the motto, Aut Nullus Aut Primus – The Best or Nothing.

The posturing figure was splendid in rifle green, a scarlet plastron covering its breast, a double gold stripe running down the wide overalls to its polished boots. Behind was a narrow inlet between two high hills on one of which was the shape of a fort.

‘Meant to be Balaclava,’ his grandfather had once told him. ‘Same chap did the head and shoulders that hangs in the Mess at Ripon. Makes me look as if I’m ruptured.’

The boy continued to stare at the picture, studying every detail of it, and it was only when a shadow fell across his face that he became aware that he’d been joined by a young man in khaki. He turned, realising that the uniform was different from a British uniform and that the cap he held in his hand had a brown polished peak instead of a British officer’s khaki cloth one.

‘Who’s that?’ the young man asked.

‘That’s my grandfather,’ Josh said. ‘He was in the charge of the Light Brigade. He’s in the library.’

‘Is he now? Well, that’s great because I’ve come to see him. My name’s Micah Burtle Love. I guess we’re related.’

‘Oh!’ Josh was unimpressed.

‘Your grandmother was a Dabney and she was related to my grandfather who was also called Micah Burtle Love. I’ve heard it said that your grandmother met your grandfather in one of the Burtle houses and that he actually went from her side to fight in the Wilderness and at Yellow Tavern. It’s quite a story where I come from.’

Josh rose to his feet. ‘I’m Joshua Loftus Colby Goff,’ he said. ‘I’m called after my grandfather and my great- grandfather, and also after my great-great-great-grandfather Joshua Pellew Goff, who founded our regiment.’ He jerked a finger at the portrait. ‘
That
regiment. The 19th Lancers.’

The young man smiled. ‘Well, I guess that’s interesting. Do you think I could see your grandfather?’

‘Shouldn’t think so. He always goes to sleep in the afternoon.’

‘How about your grandmother?’

‘So does she.’

Micah Love looked faintly disappointed. ‘That sure is a pity,’ he said. ‘How about you? Do you-all go to sleep in the afternoon, too?’

‘Not me, sir. It’s because they’re old, you see. Have you come specially to see them?’

‘I guess I have. All the way from London.’