Consider the Lily (31 page)

‘You bloody fucking fool,’ said Rupert, stuffing his treacherous hands behind his back. Danny watched him, one eyebrow cocked.

‘So I am, sir, so I am.’

What was it Edwin said? Or was it Danny? Nothing is in its proper place any more.

In the late afternoon, shells bursting like peonies on the horizon, Rupert gave the order once again to go over. As they did so, a man stopped dead in front of him. Rupert cursed and shoved him aside.

‘Sorry, sir,’ said the man and thrust his face at Rupert’s. ‘I’m blinded, sir.’

Rupert, taking in the torn-away features, felt the brandy sloshing inside him.

‘All right, old chap,’ he said.

They pushed on into the fire. Wounded men lay in the shell holes and some of them, mainly Worcesters and Warwicks, cheered as Rupert and his men passed.

‘Give ‘em hell, sir.’

We’re in hell, thought Rupert, wondering if a mind could shatter into pieces, like bone. Or be pulped, like a brain inside a skull pan.

The shelling grew heavier, and the men fanned out in a line, moving like poachers through the trees towards a dug-out held by the Germans up to the west. At the edge of the trees they dropped onto their stomachs and waited for the order while Rupert surveyed the target with his binoculars.

‘Grenades,’ he said, just able to focus the unsteady lenses, terrified he was going to give himself away. Between them and the dug-out, which might or might not have been abandoned by the enemy, lay twenty yards of churned-up earth.

‘Where now, sir?’ said Danny.

Rupert was silent.

‘We’ve got to move, sir. Else they’ll mark us.’

I don’t know.
I don’t know,
Rupert wanted to say. I did once know about things, but I don’t any longer.

‘Where, sir?’ Danny’s voice nagged at Rupert.

‘Take the dug-out. Grenades. From the back.’

‘Are you all right, sir?’

‘Form the line. Pass the message down.’

Through an evening light that poets might have praised as a delicate gloaming, they slid along the earth, over pulverized wild flowers and past dead and wounded men.

With luck it will be me next, thought Rupert when Tommy Anson dropped his rifle and clutched at his shoulder. A scarlet rose bloomed on his khaki. ‘Get back,’ he told Anson.

‘Break a leg, then, sir,’ said Tommy between whitening lips and stumbled off.

Dusk settled over the wood – over the Piccadilly Circuses, the Pall Malls, the duckboarded Ritzes – much as it was doing in London. A presence whose softened outlines promised peace, comforts, for a few hours at least.

Danny threw himself onto his stomach and wriggled forward. The rest dropped to their knees and gave cover. A second or two later, Bletchford went forward, then Lyall. Danny reached the dug-out, ducked inside, reappeared almost instantly and beckoned. Bent double, Rupert wove towards it and pushed himself in.

Cunningly reinforced with concrete, much of the dug-out had survived the grenades and the previous bombardment, but the stench in it was beyond description.

‘Dead Huns, sir,’ reported Danny. ‘Three.’

Two of the bodies lay in water in which floated excreta and filth. A third had died on a wire bed pushed against the wall. Danny tipped the body off onto the floor, where it subsided with a squelch, and sat down.

‘Could be worse, sir.’

Later, when everybody bar Danny had vomited at the stench, two orderlies crawled in through the doorway pulling a stretcher with them. On it lay an officer from the Rifle Brigade.

‘Sorry, sir,’ said the senior orderly. ‘We have to leave him here until daylight. I’ve given him morphia.’

‘All right,’ said Rupert. ‘I’ll take over.’ He bent over to loosen the collar of the wounded man and, with a shock, recognized Lucius Brandon from Redfields.

‘Rupert, old son!’ whispered Lucius. ‘I owe you a game of tennis.’

‘Where are you hit?’

‘In the spine, I think,’ said Lucius, and directed enlarged and shocked pupils on Rupert. ‘Could you shift the gas helmet from under me, old son? Touch uncomfortable.’

Later Lucius said to Rupert, with tears rolling down his face, ‘Jolly good show, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Rupert.

‘The lads?’ asked Lucius, and Rupert shook his head. ‘The Hamps do all right,’ said Lucius, as if he had not noticed.

Later still, Lucius asked for a cigarette, but Rupert’s hands were shaking so much that Danny did the honours. Rupert took the lit cigarette from Danny and stuck it between his friend’s lips.

‘Give me one, too, Danny.’ Rupert’s voice broke the silence. The others crowded onto the wire bed, or sat slumped in water against the walls. The match flared into the gloom and stench. Rupert bent to take the cigarette from Lucius and saw that he was dead.

The next thing Rupert knew he was outside the dug-out, where he knelt, risking sniper fire, in the gas-streaked air. Shaking, retching, and cursing, while tears poured down his face.

‘Sir.’

Rupert never knew how long Danny had watched him before he, too, knelt in the mud and drew the weeping giant into his embrace.

“Old on, sir.’

Danny’s arms were hard and wiry, and he smelt of human filth and gunpowder. His skin was rough and unshaven, and bits of tobacco stuck between his front teeth. But his hands felt gentle, oh so gentle, and sure.

“Old on, sir.’ Danny patted and held and patted as a mother does a weeping child.

‘How can I?’ With no defences left, Rupert clutched at Danny. ‘I haven’t the strength.’

‘You ‘ave, sir. Just ‘old on to me,’ went the soft litany.

They remained locked together for a long time while the moon fought free of clouds. The mutter of pain and loneliness rose from shell holes around them, and the occupants waited in the blackness for release. Both men shivered as the temperature dropped and, little by little, the screeching fingernail grew fainter and Danny held onto Rupert, a rough, but unutterably tender saviour.

Robbie came back into the room and Flora pointed silently to Rupert’s fingers, marching in his sleep.

‘Leave him to me,’ commanded Robbie.

Flora fled to the stables. Tyson was out hacking on Vindictive but Jem, the stableboy, was at work in the tack room. He helped her to saddle Guinevere and led the horse to the mounting block. Flora paused only to clip back her obstinate hair and to pull on gloves, before clattering out of the yard and into the drive.

Half-way down she spotted Matty walking across the lawn with a trug in her hand, on one of her mysterious expeditions. Flora waved and Matty waved back and disappeared. Guinevere’s haunches rolled lazily, the saddle was old and comfortable and Flora’s bottom settled into it in a familiar way. She forgot about Matty, about Rupert and sick rooms and gave herself up to the day.

Guinevere tossed her head and proceeded at a dawdle. Flora let her; it was too nice to hurry. A mist was clearing up by Jonathan’s Kilns, trees were an optimistic green, a couple of peonies – blowsy ladies – bloomed in Mrs Riley’s garden, and a few bluebells still flowered on the verges.

She had been meaning to ride up to the Reeves’ shop in Dippenhall Street for cigarettes, a habit acquired in London and now rather necessary. She knew the shop as well as her own room, with its flitches of bacon, chunks of butter and lard, flypapers black with victims and boxes of sweets. Fred Reeves handled the vicious bacon cutter as easily as a butter knife and coughed and smoked over the bread and the famous lardy busters, and Sally kept her hair in curlers all day Saturday ready for Sunday.

But instead, Flora rode up the Well Road and turned towards Jonathan’s Kilns. The corn was well advanced and she stopped to squint down at it. Then she turned Guinevere’s head towards Horsedown Common and Matthew Potter’s land. He had just lost his wife, and poppies and corncockles had gained an upper hand in the south corner of his field. Poor chap, she thought. He never used to let that happen.

A thud of hoofs coming in her direction made her turn sharply.

‘Hallo, there.’ Robin Lofts cantered up on a respectable-looking bay a shade too big for him, which did not like being reined in. Dressed in a tweed jacket and breeches, Robin looked better on a horse than in a car and his pallor was tinged with pink from the gallop.

‘Hallo.’ For all her newly acquired worldliness Flora, who was all too conscious of their last meeting when she had wept into his handkerchief, suddenly felt shy.

‘Do you mind if I join you?’

On horseback, the difference in their height was cancelled, and Robin appeared bigger and bulkier than Flora remembered.

‘I didn’t think you rode—’ Flora bit off the rest of the sentence realizing that she might be considered rude.

‘You mean village doctors don’t ride for pleasure. Only the family in the big house.’ Robin’s lightly dealt irony took the sting out of his words. Almost.

‘No. I mean, yes. Of course I don’t mean that.’

Robin laughed but entirely without malice. ‘You did mean it,’ he said disarmingly. ‘It’s quite all right, and Roily keeps Aesculapius in his stables for me.’ He raised his whip and pointed towards Horsedown Common. ‘Shall we go?’

But Flora had dropped the reins, and down went Guinevere’s head. ‘Dr Lofts, I’ve done it again.’ She collected Guinevere, eager to put the situation right. ‘I didn’t mean to insinuate anything.’ Although, of course, it
had
crossed Flora’s mind to wonder if Robin liked his sister being married to the blacksmith, and where exactly that left the doctor in the social scale.

He laughed again. ‘Of course not, Miss Dysart.’

Hoofs sinking into a carpet of last year’s leaves, the horses picked their way through a clump of beeches.

‘My sister-in-law tells me you have some interesting and advanced ideas,’ said Flora. ‘I would like to hear about them.’

‘Goodness, I’d no idea I’d made such an impression.’ Robin seemed pleased, and Flora smiled secretly to herself.

He began to explain to Flora his views on the politics of medicine. He was in favour of a national health service where no one paid and rich and poor received the same treatment, he said, and admitted he was a Labour voter. Flora, who had not encountered many Labour Party supporters and who had been warned they were closely related to the devil, tried to maintain a suitably adult expression.

‘What else?’ she invited.

Never slow to talk about his interests, Robin treated Flora to a digression on mortality figures, diet, and his plans for Nether Hinton. With his grammar-school-masked Hampshire accent, his trick of jabbing the air with a finger to emphasize a point, his insight, his gentleness, and his almost shocking matter-of-factness over birth, death and sex, Robin introduced another dimension to his listener.

‘Why here, Dr Lofts?’ she asked at last. They had reached the edge of the wood and were idling around the perimeter. ‘Why Nether Hinton? Surely the city would be better for your schemes?’

‘Good question. And the answer is, I may have a few ambitions but I’m not a martyr. I love this bit of the world, and I don’t like the city very much.’

‘Nor do I.’

‘Anyway, Nether Hinton has its share of horrors. It’s still recovering.’

‘From what?’

‘From the war.’ He seemed astonished she should ask. ‘Bert Stain is minus a lung, Tom Dart an eye, and old Hal Bister had the privilege of losing most of his mind.’

In a couple of sentences, Robin made Flora see what had been staring at her for most of her life and she went bright red. ‘Yes,’ she said in the flat way which indicated she was upset. ‘Of course.’ It was followed by the unworthy thought that it did not matter what the local doctor thought of her – and that made her feel worse.

Robin’s bay manoeuvred around a fallen branch. ‘Miss Dysart,’ he said, ‘I’ve just been a first-class bore, and you’ve allowed it.’

Flora followed him. ‘But you’re not, Dr Lofts,’ she protested. ‘Certainly you’re not.’

She was overdoing it. Robin was not stupid and heard the false note. He grabbed hold of Flora’s reins. ‘Yes, I have. Confess.’

This time, his accent grated and it occurred to her that his tweed jacket was a bit loud. ‘No, you haven’t,’ she said crossly. ‘And you’re only suggesting that because you think I haven’t the wit to take in what you’re saying. That’s insulting, not boring.’ Which was precisely what Robin had been thinking. ‘I’ll tell you if you’re boring, if you wish, Dr Lofts, it would give me pleasure, but on condition you stop looking at me as if I was five years old.’

They gazed at each other across the horses, Robin rueful, Flora flushed and indignant.

‘Done,’ said Robin at last. Then he grinned and the atmosphere changed. With a queer, uncertain feeling inside, Flora returned the smile. ‘You were saying?’ she said.

Thus it was that Robin Lofts began his wooing of Flora Dysart, with a lecture on mortality rates in babies, the utter necessity of family planning and the place of green vegetables in diet. And Flora, never previously aware of a thirst for knowledge, drank it in with the fervour of the dehydrated.

‘Hallo again.’

It was a week later, and Robin trotted the bay up to where Flora, yo-yoing between hope and dread, loitered by the beech trees.

‘Hallo.’

A brown butterfly danced past the bay’s nose and Aesculapius performed a good imitation of an unbroken colt. ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ said Robin, struggling to keep his seat. ‘I thought this might be the best place.’

‘Have you?’ said Flora airily. Since she had last seen him she had been into the village at least twice a day for no reason and had developed an obsessive interest in overseeing Rupert’s medicines. ‘I was at the house.’

Robin wheeled the bay round in a tight circle. ‘Actually not like that,’ he said. ‘I wanted to get you on your own.’

He could have had no idea of the effect of his words for, suddenly, Flora was conscious of pulses beating in her stomach and groin. She felt hot, cold, radiant and pale, all at the same time.

‘Why don’t we ride up towards Snatchanger’s?’ she said.

At Snatchanger’s they cantered up to the top of the grass mound fringed by trees. Robin dismounted and tethered the bay. Then he held up his arms to help Flora down. She swung her leg over Guinevere and slid, more or less gracefully, down to the ground. Skylarks sang in the clear air and the sun continued to climb to its noon position. To the north, the land dipped and then rose, patchworked with fields, chalk outcrops and pinkish houses. Beyond lay Odiham, to the east Farnham, to the west Winchester.