Circles of Time (8 page)

He stood by the car and looked up at the sky. A pale, waxy moon hung above the city, partially obscured by drifting clouds. He hated London at the moment with an almost irrational passion and wished to God they were home in Suffolk spending a normal leave, just he and Winnie and the twins. Taking the boat out and sailing on the Deben, or hitching Rosie to the dogcart and rattling up the road into the village for cider and cheese at the Four Crowns. The colonel on well-deserved leave with his wife and children. Only he wasn't on leave, he was in limbo, caught in a trap designed by the army high command with Machiavellian thoroughness.

He had been called back from his post in Ireland the previous November with orders to proceed to the Middle East in January. That order had been canceled before he had even stepped off the boat from Dublin. Instead, he was to report to Wellington Barracks, London, and remain there as a casual until further orders—a “casual” being nothing but a poor bloody sod of an officer with nothing to do but sit around waiting for the powers in Whitehall to have pity and ship him elsewhere. Finally, after eight interminable months, he had been told to report to Horse Guards for posting. Posting where? He had no idea, but would find out at 0900 in the morning.

He leaned against the car and stared at the sky. Great rifts in the clouds now. The stars beyond. He was not a great believer in God, but surely there was something that controlled the destinies of men, a divine finger that reached down from the stars to stir the trash heaps of the earth. That finger had touched him as it had touched Charles Greville. They were two men forever linked, sharing a common event and perhaps doomed by it.

He entered Sutton House through the tradesmen's entrance at the rear, going through the kitchens so as to avoid his father-in-law and his cronies. It was Lord Sutton's whist night, the gathering larger than usual judging by the trays of food being prepared by cook and her helpers. The marquess still followed the Edwardian custom of dressing his footmen in eighteenth-century livery, and one of them was leaning against a wall in velvet doublet and satin knee breeches, his powdered wig askew, smoking a cigarette and nursing a bottle of beer. He made an attempt to hide both, but Fenton just winked at him as he walked toward the servants' stairs.

Winifred was seated at her dressing table removing her makeup when he came into the bedroom.

“Did you see Father?”

“No. I came in the back way.” He sat on the edge of the bed and took off his shoes. “That chap Fenworth is with the group tonight. I spotted his limousine and driver. I'm sure he was invited so that we could have a little chat at the mellow end of the evening.”

“Why not go down and have it?”

“Because he'll press me for a decision on that job offer. Christ! Fenworth Building Society.”

She stared fixedly at the mirror and rubbed cold cream from her cheeks with a soft cloth. “I thought it sounded interesting.”

“I just can't see myself taking the early-morning train from Ipswich and strolling down Threadneedle Street in a black suit. Besides, I already have a job.”

“You may or may not,” she said tautly. “That's something you won't know for certain until tomorrow. It wouldn't hurt to have another string to your bow.”

“I have strings—all in basic khaki. I'll have a job, it's a question of what kind.”

She lay stiffly on her back, very much on her side of the bed. He sounded cheerful enough. She could hear him humming in his dressing room. Whistling in the dark. He was concerned and worried, but not nearly as concerned as she was. The past months had been a nightmare for her, not knowing from one day to the next when his orders would come through and he would be posted to a permanent command. Commuting twice a week to London to be with him, their house in the country in a state of chaos with most of their belongings packed away in crates since Christmas. Their plans had been so definite in that long-ago time—she and the twins and his mother to go east with him, to stay in a large rented house in Gezirha on the Nile. But she hadn't been pregnant then. It would be foolish to go to Egypt now. And there was the possibility that he wouldn't be ordered to that part of the world anyway. They could send him God knows where, to any spot where the Union Jack flew—Hong Kong, Sierra Leone, Malaya. Life could be so simple and pleasant if he resigned his commission. It wouldn't bother her in the least to see him go off to London every morning on the train. The Fenworth Building Society. Offices throughout Great Britain and Northern Ireland, their advertisements pasted on buses and boardings and the walls of the underground—“Build a Future—Invest in the Fenworth Society.” What was wrong with that?

Fenton switched off the bedside lamp and opened the window drapes. Moonlight filtered into the room in an ivory glow. He stood by the window gazing out at the dark buildings across the square.

“My mind's racing like a bloody engine,” he said.

“Not as quickly as my own.”

“I could have Peterson send up a bottle of champagne. Nothing like the bubbly to make one drowsy.”

“I associate champagne with celebrations. I hardly feel like celebrating anything at the moment.”

He walked over to the bed and sat beside her. “We have a lot of things we could raise a glass to. Or, anyway, I do.”

“Do you, Fenton?”

“I have you. That's worth a toast.”

She reached out and touched his hand. “I've been lying here feeling sorry for myself. Prenatal collywobbles, I suppose. I'll get over it.”

He bent down and kissed her. “I love you, Winnie, and I want you to be happy.”

“It would make me happy to see you going off to work every day in the city, but only if it was what you wanted. I couldn't bear it if you were miserable.”

“I'd get used to it.”

“No you wouldn't. I was just being selfish.”

“Beneath that wonderful exterior of yours is something even more wonderful.”

He pulled the covers back and got into bed beside her. She sat up and slipped the silk nightgown over her head and then lay back, waiting for him. His lips glided across her breasts and then down over the swell of her belly where a new life pulsed—lingering, caressing, until she clasped him tightly in her arms and drew him to her with a soft cry.

H
E DROVE PAST
the palace toward the Mall. A platoon of grenadiers was leaving Wellington Barracks and marching up Birdcage Walk to the tapping of a drum. They looked splendid in their red coats and bearskin hats, the morning sun glinting off brass buttons and shiny rifles, but he could not think of them as soldiers. They were actors in a pageant, relics of some dimly remembered play. He could not reconcile their scarlet ranks with his own vision of soldiers—dun-colored creatures in steel helmets, muddy and stained, seen through the smoke and haze of a daybreak in Flanders.

He parked the car near the War Office and checked his image in the window glass. He was wearing mufti and the sight made him smile. With his dark suit, bowler, and furled umbrella, he could have been taken for a director of the Fenworth Building Society—if he weren't so obviously an officer in the Guards.

“Good morning,
sir!
” The khaki-clad old sergeant in the foyer snapped to attention.

“Morning, Sergeant. I have a nine o'clock appointment with General Wood-Lacy.” He glanced casually at his wristwatch. “A bit on the early side.”

“Quite all right, sir. The general's in his office. Do you know the way up?”

“I do indeed.”

He walked up two flights of stairs and along a dark, narrow corridor, its walls lined with engravings depicting forgotten campaigns. The building was a warren of corridors, but he followed the proper ones, which led him, like the passages in a maze, to the oak-paneled antechamber of the general's office. An elderly, white-haired lieutenant colonel rose from his desk with a smile.

“Fenton, dear chap. So good to see you again.”

“How are you, Blythe?”

“As well as can be expected, I suppose. It's rather a sad day for me. I shall miss the old boy.”

“As I'm sure he'll miss you. Always imagined the two of you retiring together.”

“That had been my hope, but General Strathling talked me into staying on for another year or two and joining his staff in Delhi.” He came out from behind the desk and placed a hand on the brass knob of the door he had guarded, in a sense, for a good many years. “I'm still trying to persuade your uncle to come east. Purchase a house in Simla. He always enjoyed the Kashmir. You might put that bee in his bonnet if you have the chance.”

General Sir Julian Wood-Lacy, V.C., C.V.O., was standing by a window when Fenton entered the room. The large office was barren except for the desk and a couple of wood chairs. The bookcases and files had been emptied, and pictures and maps taken from the walls.

“Looks like you've closed shop.”

“Half a bloody century is enough for any man.” The general took a puff on his cigar and looked away from his view of St. James's Park. “You're on time for a change.” The old general, whose face had once graced a recruiting poster because of its bulldog pugnacity, eyed his nephew from head to toe and back again. “You look prosperous, like one of those stocks-and-bloody-bonds wallahs.”

Fenton smiled and brushed his sleeve across his bowler before placing it on a hat rack near the door. His umbrella went into a stand fashioned from the leg of an elephant.

“Now that you're almost in civvy street, General, I'll recommend a tailor. Purdy and Beame, Burlington Street.”

The old man scowled and scattered cigar ash on the carpet. “Don't be so damn cheeky. Care for a brandy?”

“At nine in the morning? I have more respect for my liver.”

“I stopped respecting mine years ago.” He glanced about the room helplessly. “If I can only find the bloody bottle.”

Fenton sat down in a chair facing the desk and pointed toward a row of shelves on the far wall. “Forlorn bottle and two lonely glasses in yon bit of shelf. And I change my mind. One drink to your glorious career.”

The general snorted as he stumped across the room. “What's so bloody glorious about it, I'd like to know? Just one more crock who put in his time.”

“Let's not be modest. Old Woody, the hero of Mons.”

“Hero of Mons my arse.” He made a guttural sound deep in his throat that sounded like a threat, then poured brandy into the glasses and carried them back toward his desk. He walked stiffly and with great care. “Getting lame. If I were a horse I'd be shot out of pity.”

“You need sun. India, perhaps.”

“
He
told you to say that, didn't he?” He handed Fenton a glass and then sat at his desk with a grateful sigh. “Bugger Blythe. I'm not going to spend my last years staring at the Himalayas. I've got that bit of rough shoot in Yorkshire and a sturdy little house to go with it.” He drank some of the brandy and then toyed with the glass, rolling it between his thick, strong hands. “I asked for the job of passing on your new orders. I'm sure you know why.”

“I can guess.”

“Blythe has prepared a letter I dictated. A letter ostensibly from you. I think it is a good letter, one that certain people in this building will be quite relieved to get. The letter states, in simple, soldier prose, your reluctant but necessary decision to retire from the army as of today in order to devote yourself to your family and business interests. The letter will be received with gratitude and your early retirement will be honored with a full colonelship. A nice little gesture on their part. What do you say to that?”

“Ah,” Fenton said.

“And what does that peculiar sound signify?”

“Relief. Rather like hearing the second shoe drop.”

“Then I take it you intend to do the sensible thing and sign the letter?”

“On the contrary. I intend to receive my orders and comply with them.”

“You bloody fool.”

It was uttered with a quiet intensity, not untinged with respect for the tall, hawk-faced man seated across from him. Sir Julian had never married, and at seventy was not likely to do so. His only living nephew was the nearest thing he would ever get to a son. He swallowed the rest of his brandy.

“How long have you been in the army?”

“Thirteen years.”

“And you have no more idea how the system works than some Oxford Street ribbon clerk!”

“May I beg to differ, sir?”

“You may not, sir!” He was speaking to just another subordinate who needed a good dressing down, and, by God, he was the man to do it. “You believe you've served king and country for thirteen years, but that is not true. As a professional army officer you have served only the general staff. It's they who set the standards, and one either complies with those standards or gets out. The staff has always had a horror of the unorthodox and they have had more than enough of it in the past few years, thank you very much! They've had to contend with Colonel Lawrence dashing about like some Drury Lane fairy in a bloody soppy burnoose. They've had Trenchard pulling his flying corps out of the army and forming his own service—and they have Elles wanting to do the same with his tanks. They do not like it, sir. They do not like it one bit. And they sense the seeds of heresy in you, by gad. Your peculiar behavior in nineteen seventeen will never be understood or forgiven. Your insistence on having Major Greville court-martialed was bad enough, but the mysterious appearance of the hearing transcripts in the hands of that German fella—”