Master Georgie (14 page)

We left Varna the second week in September, along with some sixty-four thousand British, French and Turkish soldiery. Many of the women were turned away from boarding, and rejected, stood wailing on shore. Myrtle, by virtue of her peasant dress and brown complexion, and leading her pony laden with baggage, was let by without hindrance. Mrs Yardley wasn’t with us; she’d fallen out with her colonel of the roving eye and gone home. I was glad she could no longer fasten on to Myrtle. The two were incompatible, not least in their attitude to virtue, Mrs Yardley’s conviction being that the easy sort was sinful.

George was wild with anger, owing to the compulsory leaving behind of a great deal of hospital equipment, including ambulance wagons, litters and operating tables. There simply wasn’t room. He was all for going on shore to demand they be loaded, but was assured they would be sent out later.

We waited two days before sailing, during which time the sickness continued. At night the bodies were flung overboard and sank, the bubbles winking in the lantern light. By morning, the weights having worked free, the dead achieved a bloated resurrection and bobbed to greet the sun.

Once out at sea some said we made a splendid sight, the fleet arranged in five lines, each composed of a division of the army, the French on our right flank, the navy to the left, the Turks a little behind, Lord Raglan out in front. I didn’t share the enthusiasm, the men about me presenting a sorry picture, their once fine uniforms much tattered and their boots worn through at the soles.

Worse, that first night fire broke out in the hold. Patent fuel had been mixed up with the coal and become heated. Result - spontaneous combustion. The smoke was dreadful and all were required to help shift the stores up on deck. Not until the hoses had extinguished the blaze did I learn that ninety tons of ball cartridges had been stored alongside the coal, without the protection of a magazine. Throwing the ammunition over the side had been deemed unthinkable, although the risk of blowing all onboard to Kingdom Come was considerable.

We landed at Kalamita Bay, on the western shore of the Crimea, on the 14th of the month. No one knew whether the Russians had any knowledge of our coming and I was full of apprehension as to what awaited us. In the event, nothing did, nothing in the way of a human enemy. The beach was deserted and the ridge of distant hills bare of either troops or guns.

We camped further along the Bay, waiting for the cavalry and artillery to disembark. That night it rained, and it was not the gentle drizzle of an English autumn but a monstrous pounding that drowned the fires and churned the ground to mire. A few had tents, the rest put up blankets, but both means of shelter collapsed under the force of the downpour and one was drenched to the bone. My letter from Beatrice, received at the end of August and containing homely news - the weather was fine, the children well, the air of Anglesey conducive to a sharpening of the appetite - was blotted beyond recall. I tossed it into the mud; nowhere had it said she missed me.

Reveille sounded at 3 a.m. the next morning, and not many of the fit had to be shaken from slumber. We rose as we had horribly dozed, shivering in our clothes. There was no wood dry enough to make fires and we went without breakfast. My hat, formerly too large, had shrunk, and I was obliged to bind it to my head by means of a strap.

It took a further day and night, both fortunately fine, before the supplies were unloaded, the sick taken back to the ships and the dead buried. George was dismayed to discover that not a single ambulance wagon had been brought ashore and precious few stretchers. Nor was there enough food, though later some Tartars arrived at the camp willing to sell sheep and a quantity of wine. This transaction had barely been completed - the cooks were engaged in slitting throats - when a pack of dogs rushed in, and, round-ing up the living animals, cunningly scurried them away. Shots were fired after the retreating Tartars, but no one had the energy to go in pursuit.

In the morning a chaplain conducted divine service. Though I’m an unbeliever, the ragged voices singing familiar hymns brought water to my eyes. In the afternoon George was ordered to report to one of the steamships. He returned with the news that he had been relieved of his present post and was henceforth attached to the Royal North British Fusiliers, a Scottish regiment, his predecessor having fallen overboard midway between Malta and Gal-lipoli. He was togged out in the shrunken uniform of an officer of the 21st, and had inherited a blood-letting bowl, a leather apron, almost new, and a tin of leeches, the occupants long since expired. As the Fusiliers were not required to wear kilts, he supposed he should be grateful for small mercies.

At last, on about the 18th, the order came to march. We set off in great style, the band playing, spirits high. Anything that lay ahead was thought to be better than the hell of inaction we had recently quitted. Nor were the troops burdened with excessive baggage, each man carrying on back or saddle nothing that couldn’t be rolled up in a blanket. Hadn’t he with him the only two things that mattered, a stout heart and his weaponry! As long as the cavalry had their swords and lances, the infantry their Minie rifles, the artillery their howitzers, what else, on God’s earth, was needed! Inessentials such as tents, cooking pots, medicine and changes of clothing would surely follow.

We marched all day. The band stopped playing after the first hour. Once we had our backs to the sea the flies returned. We started without water and found none on the way. Some of the sick got at the wine and it was the end of them. They lay down at the wayside and slept into death. In the beginning we tried to urge them onwards, talking to them of home and mother and loved ones. Later, we trudged by without a glance.

I had no horse, thinking it too much trouble, and regretted it. Myrtle plodded beside me. Exhausted as she became, she wouldn’t mount her beloved pony, convinced he carried enough weight. He was called Seel, after the street in which she’d been found. She’d brought with her two oranges, one of which she used up squeezing between the lips of a boy trumpeter. His last words were comical. He said, ‘Good Lordy! Another day.’ Myrtle wanted to keep the remaining orange for George, but thankfully he had gone on ahead. I swear it saved both our lives.

When I had the breath I told Myrtle about the little villages I had once visited in the vicinity; the grapes growing on the vine, the black bread that could sustain a man for a month. She chewed on orange peel and flicked the flies from her face.

I dreamed again, of walking through the plum orchard in Blackberry Lane. Beatrice was on the swing, pushing her little white slippers against the air. I called, Be careful, not too high, and she called back, You were never one for the heights, and pushed the harder. I walked away, hoping to make her come after me, but she didn’t.

‘She was never afraid of losing him,’ I said, and I must have been talking out loud because I heard Myrtle say, ‘If you’re referring to Annie, why should she have been? She never knew hunger.’

We covered twenty-five miles, over scrubland, and climbing higher bivouacked at dusk beside a small river. Nothing, I foolishly thought, not even Mardonius’s advance across the plain of Plataea, could be compared to the brutality of that march.

*

It had been believed when we disembarked that the army would advance directly on Sebastopol. Bickering having broken out between Lord Raglan and the French - his Lordship favouring an attack from the north, where the fleet could give protection, the French preferring a thrust from the south - this design was not carried through. Result - we stayed put for several days and the Russians” mustered reinforcements.

Finally, orders came through that Sebastopol was to be encircled. I have always liked the word circle, reminding one, as it does, of childish games, Pig-in-the-middle, Ring-a-ring-a-roses, etc. Dr Johnson gives it much space in his dictionary; a line continued till it ends where it began; an assembly surrounding a principal person; an inconclusion found in argument, in which the foregoing proposition is proved by the following, and the following is inferred from the foregoing. This latter definition appears to me to furnish an accurate description of the muddle of this war, though perhaps
tishoo, tishoo, we all fall down
is sweeter on the ear.

Yesterday, Myrtle’s pony suffered an injury. We had ridden out to find fruit for George. Supplies having failed to arrive, our diet is severely restricted to salt beef and biscuits, and Myrtle was determined to venture into one of the villages. I could not help thinking that poor Naughton might have made himself a fortune if he had stayed on and applied himself to the grocery business.

Earlier, during the laboured encirclement of Sebastopol and our trudge to the Chersonese plateau, I had purchased an ill-tempered little mare for five pounds, there being, for obvious reasons, an abundance of animals without owners. I also managed to procure a greatcoat and a forage cap. I had no wish to accompany Myrtle, in spite of my warmer clothing, but felt it my duty.

The plateau on which we are camped is roughly the shape of the Isle of Wight, Balaclava lying to the east, Sebastopol to the south. A steep escarpment, the Sapoune Ridge, overlooks land between the Tchernaya River and Balaclava. We rode in an easterly direction and I cautioned Myrtle to go slowly as the path was littered with small stones slippery under the rain. She was singing, though how she could be so merry in such dismal circumstances passed my understanding.

We had been riding but half an hour when, mounting a ridge, we were afforded a glimpse of Balaclava, the masts of ships spread in a cat’s cradle across the bleak sky. At that moment the mare stumbled, and, giving vent to temper, promptly sank her teeth into the flank of the pony, who, bucking with pain, shook Myrtle to the ground.

She cried out at once that she was unhurt, and got to her feet. I thought it strange that she didn’t immediately see to the pony; instead, trembling violently, she pointed at the ground. There, not a few inches from where she had fallen, lay a human limb - a leg torn off a little above the knee, toes poking through the shreds of a cavalry boot.

‘I was sold a melon in Balaclava,’ I said. ‘By an elderly woman on a mule.’ It was the truth. I couldn’t remember clearly what season it had been when first I visited the Greek fishing village on my tour of the coast, though I doubted it was winter, on account of the melon.

‘The Tartar name for the place was Kadikoi,’ I continued, ‘meaning the judge’s village.’

Myrtle showed no sign of interest, which was a pity because I had a host of relevant facts in my head.

The town of Balaclava is situated on an inlet running deep into the land. Behind lies a basin of dark waters, surrounded, with the exception of a narrow gorge, by precipitous rocks which rise to an elevation of a hundred feef. In my time the Greeks possessed their own court of judica-tion, and an independent magistracy whose president was responsible to the Russian authorities.

While strolling beside the water I had noticed the presence of medusae, a sure indication that this was no lake but a gulf connected with the sea by some narrow outlet. The ascending slopes were not, as I had thought, formed of nummulite limestone but of Jura rock, pale red in colour and of a striking aspect at sunset. Numerous ruins stood on the summit, including the remains of a castle from which the entrance to the straits was commanded. I would have climbed up for a closer inspection had it not been for a weakness of breath, and instead returned to the village where I encountered the woman with the melon. Strolling about, the juice running down my beardless chin, I came to the opinion that a harbour more protected against storms and sudden attack would be difficult to find.

I had at that time about my person a copy of that passage in Homer’s tenth book of the Odyssey in which he describes the approach to the country of the Laestrigones, lines which Pope admirably translated thus:

Within a long recess a bay there lies,

Edged round with cliffs, high pointing to the skies;

The jutting shores that swell on either side,

Contract its mouth, and break the rushing tide.

Our eager sailors seize the fair retreat,

And bound within the port their crowded fleet...

In mentioning this passage, I should not like to be accused of attempting to prove too much by means of too little: indeed, I am in full agreement with Professor Streicher of Kertch in thinking there is not a scrap of evidence to support the dubious theory that Ulysses entered the Black Sea. All the same, it is remarkable to find a spot which so entirely blends with the poet’s description of localities.

I speak, of course, of Balaclava’s past. Alas, from what George has told me, its melon days are over. Now the headquarters of the British military forces, he has visited it twice in as many weeks in an effort to procure medical supplies and blankets. His description of the filth in the streets, of the harbour choked with the bloated carcasses of horses, camels and the occasional human, is disturbing. Our ships are loaded with provisions which, owing to bureaucracy, inefficiency and the difficulties of transportation, stay rotting in the holds. On the quayside, at the mercy of the rain and circled by starving dogs, lie hundreds of wounded waiting to be dispatched to the rat-infested wards of the hospital at Scutari.

In such circumstances, I presume death to be preferable to life. Strange to think that the dying, ignorant of history or art, feast dull eyes on a landscape, its dwarf cypresses scattered across the slopes, reminiscent of a painting by the sublime Titian.

‘I wish to go back,’ Myrtle said, turning her white gaze from the thing at her feet.

‘Homer,’ I told her, ‘describes the Laestrigones as cannibals.’ She appeared too distressed to respond and rode on ahead.

This morning George looked for me. I see little of him these days, his duties being heavy and his leather apron much stained. He very kindly asked if I was well. I replied quite well, and thanked him.