Leon Uris (38 page)

Tarbox gnashed his discomfort. “Who?”

“Terrific kid.”

“Who?”

“I teamed up with a kid named Chester Goodwood.”

Johnny flipped through the pages on the clipboard, then squinted. “The little fucker?”

“He is a bit short.”

My notation says he should be leading ponies for blind kids at the A&P shows.”

“He didn’t ride that bad, did he? I mean, he’s a polo player…jumped horses at Harrow.”

Tarbox shrugged.

“He
is
a good rider,” Rory pressed.

“He rides good enough, but Jaysus, five will get you fifty he’s a real underage runaway.”

“Take him, he’s a steal,” Rory said.

“I know you sheepmen are queer, but that shit doesn’t go in the army.”

“Cut it out, Tarbox. He’s a kid who needs a break. I just needed a break…you needed a break when the Squire gave you your first big muster…we all need a break. This kid is a wizard with the books and numbers.”

“Numbers! Books! What the hell has that got to do with the Light Horse?”

“You’re glinking me, Johnny Tarbox. You weren’t in the crater of a volcano when the old man upstairs passed out the brains. Did you or did you not tell me you’re going to be the battalion Serjeant Major? My mother does that job on the ranch and she spends half her life at it. Think! Muster rolls, pay rolls, sick reports, quartermaster reports…and the HORSES—you know how much ledgering and numbering and bookkeeping one fucking horse takes? You’re going to have five hundred of them and, I shit you not, you’re going to need Chester Goodwood.”

Johnny was confused by the sudden waterfall. God! Johnny hated doing the books. To him it was an extension of marriage, itself.

“As soon as we board ship, I’m assigning Chester to me. If this little fuckhead fucks up, I’ll throw his fucking ass to the sharks and you won’t live long enough to shovel all the horseshit I have in mind for you.”

“Good man, John Tarbox,” Rory said, elated.

“Just this once, Larkin!”

“Johnny, the name is
Landers,
for Christ sake—Rory
Landers.
”

With the onset of hostilities in Europe, Brigadier Llewelyn Brodhead trained his Midlanders and Coleraine Rifles at Camp Bushy to a fighting edge.

The standing army of Fusiliers and Hussars of old standing brigades emptied out of England and crossed the Channel. For the moment the German thrust into Belgium and France had been halted.

Brodhead was at the ready, anticipating the order to move out. Then, Lettershambo Castle was destroyed and his troops were frozen in Ireland, lest an insurrection break out.

When his orders came, it was not at all what he expected. After a few hard nights of chewing on the pros and cons, Brodhead concluded that it was not some sort of vengeance from the Liberals, but a fair and equitable decision. He sorted things out and actually found himself in an interesting situation.

Captain Christopher Hubble, the best known junior officer at Bushy, was the Brigadier’s man. He was the first to be called in.

Chris found the Brigadier in his usual military posture, pacing from desk to window and puffing out a smokestackful from his pipe. For a moment the Brigadier stopped and stared out to the neat barracks and grounds near the river, then spun about and shot a hard look at the younger man.

“Orders have come.”

“That’s a relief. We were getting a bit on edge.”

“They’re not what you think, Chris. Bang on. Both the Coleraine Rifles and the Midlanders are being broken up, reduced to one-fifth size. The other four-fifths—officers, warrant officers, and enlisted men—are to be transferred, one-fifth each to form the nucleus of four new brigades. That is, the War Office is making us a victim of our own success.”

“Sounds to me, sir, like someone is punishing us for the resignations incident.”

“That’s what struck me at first. Our units, Chris, top to bottom, have the best people in the army. Hundreds of thousands of civilians are enlisting. Tens of dozens of new brigades have to be formed from scratch. The new forces simply have to have what experienced men we can provide.”

“Yes, that makes sense.”

“The Coleraine Rifles will be brought up to original strength again. Taking note that it is your family’s regiment, I’d like to put a proposition to you. I’m odd man out. I’ve been given a new assignment. Bang on, Chris, you and I have gone through a tremendous experience together, and I personally see you as one of the finest junior officers anywhere. I know what it means to you to remain with the Coleraines, so I realize the sacrifice I am about to ask you to make, and mind you, it’s not an order, it’s a request.”

“I’m grateful for your consideration in times like these,” Chris said.

“I did something a bit out of school. I had a chat with your father. As you know, we’re very thick. He expressed some dismay, of course, but gives his blessings to me. I’m taking on a very interesting command. I want you aboard with me.”

“I rather fancy the idea of fighting the war with you, sir.”

“Good man. Now then, assuming you will join me, I have obtained top secret clearance for you on any matter I think is a need-to-know situation. You will be privy to a lot of totally hush-hush information.”

“I’m very flattered, Brigadier Brodhead.”

Brodhead leaned on his desk showing white knuckles. “At this moment there is a huge convergence of Australian and New Zealand volunteers forming up into a convoy. Neither country has many standing peacetime troops so they are also breaking up the experienced units and using them to form the skeleton of new units. Same situation as ours.”

“I follow you.”

“I’m speaking of forty to fifty thousand of them. When we get the ships and escorts to them, their convoy will rendezvous near India to be joined by a few old Indian brigades and thence proceed through the Red Sea and Suez Canal for training in Egypt. The Aussies and New Zealanders have only one-third of the officers they require. Some, I suppose, will come right up through their ranks. We are to supply the rest. I have been kicked upstairs, Chris. I am to assume command of the joint Australian-New Zealand Expeditionary Force as their Major General.”

“Congratulations…Brigadier…well, have to get used to saying, General Brodhead.”

“Has a rather nice sound,” Brodhead agreed. “My first task is to put together a cadre of two hundred officers from a pool of a thousand men. I got first crack and I think I’ve got the best unassigned officers in the entire army. We shall be on the way to Egypt shortly and hopefully we’ll arrive before the advance contingent of Aussies.”

Major General Brodhead sat and weighed his coming words with all the added responsibility of the new rank. “While we admire and honor the fighting skills of our colonials, it has been the unwritten law that the top commanders and key staff officers remain British.”

“One can certainly understand the need for London to control the war,” Chris said.

“Yes, down to the battalion level, whenever possible. I think that one of the reasons I was selected was that I was a light colonel and commanded a battalion of Aussies during the nasty business with the Boers. Now I see the New Zealand chaps as Englishmen, once removed. The Aussies, however, are wild colonial boys, their ranks filled with Irish of the wrong persuasion, and they behave as one might expect from the great-grandchildren of a penal colony. But properly disciplined and trained, they are bully in combat, smashing fighters.”

“So, I take it we are to establish just who is running the show at once.”

“Yes, and we don’t have enough time to train them properly. We’re going to have to push them right up to the edge and then over it. Now, Chris, comes the interesting part of our little discussion.”

“I thought it was pretty damned interesting up till now, General.”

“I have a particular mission for you that I feel is absolutely essential to the success of the coming campaign. I can’t give you the details now, but I’ve been cleared to unseal your orders aboard ship, en route to Egypt.

“When I say that win or lose depends on what you make of your assignment, I mean it,” Brodhead continued. “I can also assure you you will absolutely hate the command and probably loathe me.”

Chris knew he had been boxed in. Father, General, urgency and importance—and really no way out. “Well, sir,” Chris said with a sort of smile, “seems like you and I are destined to be stuck with one another. I’m at your service.”

Brodhead unleashed a half-wicked smile, opened his drawer, and tossed a pair of crown insignia on the desk.

“I wore these when I was a major. They’re yours now.”

Chris took the crowns with some ambivalence. What a show at his tender age. On the other hand, the General must have something really nasty up his sleeve.

“This is war, Chris. Do this job for me, without question, and I’ll do everything in my power to skip you right over light colonel to full colonel. That could mean commanding your own regiment and, if the war goes on a year or two, a full brigade.”

Heady stuff!

“Is Jeremy on the list?” Chris asked.

“Yes, he’s been doing a fair job of late. I’m promoting him to lieutenant, but for reasons we both know, he’s your responsibility, and if he fucks up, I’ll not spare him. Lord Roger knows that as well.”

“Actually, he’s eased up on his drinking a bit. Maybe Egypt will do him some good.”

When Major Hubble was dismissed, the General heaved a great sigh of relief. He knew, in his guts, that Chris Hubble could do the job. It was key stuff.

“What till the poor chap finds out what I have in mind for him,” he mumbled under his breath.

“Your son Christopher is on the secure line, m’lady,” Lawrence, her secretary, said.

“Hello, Chris,” Caroline said as Lawrence left and closed the door behind him.

“Major Chris,” he corrected.

“My goodness! Congratulations! When did all this come about?”

“Yesterday, Mother. I’m up at the manor with Father and Hester. Mum, sorry, but Hester and I won’t be able to come to London this weekend as we planned. Darned sorry.”

“Oh, how disappointing. Hester did so want to see the Drury Lane production and she was chomping to do some shopping.”

“Well you see, Mum, Hester might just dash over by
herself, maybe visit with you for a week or so, if you can see clear. She’s rather disconsolate about the latest miscarriage and you’ve been her biggest comfort.”

“Poor darling. Please have her phone me later. I left my diary at the house. And you will join us later?”

“No, Mother.”

No matter how one tries to prepare for the news, no matter how marginal the relationship might be, no matter the inevitability…when the message comes through that your son is going to war, the numbness and dryness of mouth and wetness of forehead and hand bursts in from its hidden pores. Although they were on a secure line, there were no more questions that could be asked and no more answers that could be told.

“Will you be seeing much of your brother in the coming days?”

“Yes.”

The shock wave hit her again.

“He’s got a couple of pips, First Lieutenant now. I must say, Mother, he’s been starting to show some good stuff lately.”

“Ask him to call me, Chris…please ask him to call me.”

“Of course.”

“God bless, Chris.”

“Cheerio, Mum.”

The earldom was immense and everyone had developed a sense of where everyone else might be, in case of business. Chris knew Jeremy’s most likely watering holes, and on this night was certain he’d find his brother at the Dooley McCloskey public house at the crossroads in the upper village of Ballyutogue.

Dooley and the old-timers were gone, but the new faces were quite similar to those of the Protestant boys who slipped up to escape their wives. However, no one
from the Protestant town came to the Heather since the Lettershambo raid, with tonight’s exception of Lord Jeremy.

Lord Jeremy had been a Gaelic footballer down in the Bogside and a longtime intimate of Conor Larkin. It could be said with some certainty that Lord Jeremy was probably the only Viscount Coleraine in the earldom’s history who was actually welcome there.

Life between the brothers was a little less acid these days. Their long childhood of yapping and snapping was followed by years of separation due to education and indifference and due to values and who was loyal to whom.

Then came the terrible events with Molly O’Rafferty. Jeremy had surrendered the girl under the concerted assault of his father, his brother, and Maxwell Swan. It was Chris’s voice that wounded him the most. It was sharp, biting, injuring his mind, slicing up his insides. Jeremy realized that he’d never escape his father, for Chris would take up when his father signed off.

In those morose months when Jeremy was first sent into the Coleraines, he tried to drink Ireland dry, a venture unsuccessful by many men with far greater capacities. In those days Chris offered him neither pity nor comfort, but used his superior situation to consolidate his own position.

Later, when the officers of Camp Bushy resigned, Jeremy went through certain motions that he was going to defy them all and refuse to join the mutiny.

On this occasion it was Jeremy and Chris alone, and Chris caved in and sent Jeremy blabbering back to his bottle with no more than a whimper.
Who was who
in the
real
hierarchy was established.

Jeremy haunted the pubs of Dublin around the Liffey like a Dickensian ghost listening for the sweet drift of ballad from the angel’s voice of his Molly.

Self-pity was honed to an art and became a wise fool’s manner of justifying his weak spine.

Then things took a change. Not a sudden eruption of throwing off of shackles, but a dawning of realization. The day Lettershambo Castle was taken down and Conor Larkin went to his death, Jeremy began to come out of his fog.

Memory began to make him smile again at the childhood wonderment of being stripped to the waist, black with soot, pumping the bellows in the Long Hall, and of those magnificent hundreds of hours being tutored by the big fellow, and how Conor gleaned from every poem and historical event meanings that no one else could see, and of his hero’s pulling him out of the mud on the rugby patch and dragging him back to scrum and the smell of ale in the shanty town pubs…

And the tragic realization that his own mother and Conor had a love far more desperate than he had on with Molly O’Rafferty. Conor Larkin walked away from it like a man.

A man, that’s the game. Being a man.

Dooley McCloskey’s establishment was quiet for the lack of Protestant drinkers. Major Christopher Hubble entered and looked about with a crawling feeling that assassins were all around, ready to close in and stab. They tipped their hats and resumed drinking, smiling inwardly over the raid.

Jeremy was parked in a corner in a reverie. He looked up, saw his brother, and winced, wondering what savage news brought him into the enemy lair on this night.

The chair opposite Jeremy needed cleaning. “Sit down,” Jeremy said. “I’ve never known the chairs to give anyone a rare disease.”

Jeremy found an extra glass and poured Chris a drink and Chris took it quickly. Good, Jeremy thought, better to have him a little mellow. “Are those crowns on your shoulders, Major?”

“You’ve a pair of pips awaiting yourself.”

“First Lieutenant Lord Viscount Jeremy Hubble emerges from the family dungeon. Ye gods, the empire must have run out of subalterns to promote,” Jeremy said. “Chris, I’m really sorry about Hester’s miscarriage. Is she all right?”

Chris nodded, mumbled that she was fine, and lowered his eyes as though the whole business was a mark against his masculinity.

“We’re to report to camp tomorrow by ten hundred hours,” Chris said.

“I thought as much,” Jeremy said. “I had to say my good-byes to Conor and promise him I’d start doing right about what I’ve been doing wrong so he’d be proud of me. I need him to be proud of me. Understand? I need that now. The best times of my life when I wasn’t with Molly were when I was walking in his shadow…”

Chris grumbled in irritation.

“You’re pissed because he went and scattered all your pretty little guns clear all over County Londonderry. Well, that’s Ulster. Here we are, all drinking together in a fine old pub. See, nobody’s mad at anybody. We can get along.”