The Dust That Falls from Dreams (3 page)

I
loved Ash the moment we first set eyes on each other, and it was entirely mutual, even though we were only little children. When we met he was fresh from America and was very put out by being in England. He told me later that he found it rigid and archaic, but I’m certain that if he had ever gone back to America he would have found it deficient because it was too callow.

Ash was really called Ashbridge, and he was from Baltimore. He had a lovely soft American accent, with that strong ‘r’ after the vowels. He never lost it and you never would have mistaken him for an Englishman. His family lived on the other side of our house, and he was one of our crowd of children that spent its time larking about, making mud pies, playing sardines and hide-and-seek, and British bulldog, and tag, and kick the can. Our mothers were somewhat genteel, but we children were almost wild when we were outside. We romped and fought in our walled gardens, whilst our respective governesses and nurses gossiped together and had tea in the conservatory. In May, Beeson’s men used to come and remove the windows of the conservatory. Thanks to the Luftwaffe and lack of funds, they’re off permanently now. When we were older we all played tennis on the lawn, in never-ending combinations of doubles and singles. We played American tournaments, and knockout competitions, and generally you won if Ash was on your side. If Ash and Daniel were both on your side, you would definitely win. Ash was school champion at absolutely everything. I remember a doubles game where you had to run round the net as soon as you’d hit the ball. We called it American Tennis, and it was completely exhausting, but it was such hilarious fun. The problem was that there was never really a winner, because the games were not won by a pair, but by the east end or the west end. Sometimes all nine of us played at once. My mother liked to play croquet, and every year she would aspinal
the hoops, making a great ceremony of it, and then causing arguments when she wanted to play croquet and we wanted to play tennis.

Because Ashbridge was American we got into the habit of calling ourselves ‘the Pals’. ‘Light-heart and glad they seemed to me, and merry comrades’. We were: Daniel and poor Archie, Ash and his brothers Sidney and Albert, and Sophie and Ottilie and Christabel and me; five boys and four girls. We had battle cries of ‘Long live the Pals!’ and ‘Pals forever!’ Then Daniel and Archie moved away after the Captain was killed, and Ash and Sidney and Albert were the only boys left.

Ash grew up to be a wonderful man. By the time he was eighteen he was occasionally sporting a military moustache, but otherwise he looked as he always had. He was nicely proportioned, with blond hair and grey eyes. He used to say: ‘I am built for speed and distance. If you want someone to run to Wales and fetch you something, then I’m your man.’

When I bought a copy of Rupert Brooke’s
Selected Poems
later on, I was stunned when I saw the picture of the poet at the beginning, and almost fainted away. I thought for a moment it was Ash. He was so beautiful that it gave you a kind of pain from which you might never recover. When I read Brooke’s love poetry I always think of Ash. I used to have lines that went round and round in my head. ‘
Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire of watching you
.’ ‘
Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill, laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass
.’ Unlike most people, I valued Brooke’s love poems a lot more than the famous patriotic ones.

Ash and I were real sweethearts. He was so kind, so solicitous. If I was ill, he’d call round and sit in the morning room, where we had family prayers, and he’d just wait for the servants or one of my sisters to come and give him snippets of news about how I was. Whenever I thought of Ash, I would get a lurching feeling in my chest, and my throat would feel dry. Sometimes we would just stand and look at each other as if we were paralysed. If we touched, I would get a tingle down my spine and into my legs. By the time we were about fifteen our passion was so great that we couldn’t even speak, and we communicated by little notes that went via the servants. I gave my notes to Cookie, who took
them round to their cook, and then their cook would bring the replies round to Cookie. As the cooks were always borrowing things from each other, it was all terribly easy. Entering into little conspiracies with the servants, when people still had them, was one of the small joys of life. I keep Ash’s notes and letters in a biscuit tin. I still read them sometimes, damaged though they are, and all the feelings come pouring back. Ash and I were engaged to be married when I was twelve and he was thirteen. Our first engagement ring was a brass curtain ring, so it was much too big to wear, and I keep that in the tin too. It was our secret, and anyone would have told us that we’d grow out of it.

We never did. On 29 May 1910, Ashbridge came round with a gramophone. He was practically the first to get one. We needed something to cheer us up after King Edward’s death, and so he brought it round almost every day, to entertain us, and one day he stayed until it was 11.20. Sometimes my sisters and I rolled up the carpet and had dances. We’d suddenly realised that you didn’t need to hire a pianist and violin player any more. It was when we were dancing to the gramophone that I truly had the chance to drink him in, to breathe him, to realise that I adored him so much that it would probably be impossible ever to love another. He used to look at me with his eyes so full of devotion that it made me shiver. The physical longing was almost too much to bear.

Just after war broke out in 1914, he came round to speak to my father. He had walked up the driveway singing ‘I’m Gilbert the Filbert, the Knut with the Capital Kay’. It was Basil Hallam’s song from the Palace Theatre that everyone had been singing before it was knocked aside by all the patriotic ones. Ash sometimes vamped it on the piano. He mostly liked to sing those sentimental plantation songs by Stephen Foster, like ‘The Old Folks at Home’ and ‘Poor Old Joe’ and ‘Massa’s in de Col’ Col’ Ground’. He had a lovely voice but the piano was always out of tune, and it even made sad songs sound comical. Father said we should get one with a metal frame, but we never got round to it. I think that poor Basil Hallam was eventually killed when he fell out of a balloon.

Ash and my father went into the dining room and shut the
door. I heard their voices, their laughter, and it was difficult to avoid the temptation to hover outside, because I knew what was going on and couldn’t wait to hear the result. I went and sat in the drawing room with my mother and my sisters. They were talking about the war, but I couldn’t think of anything except what Ash might be saying to my father. Bouncer was at my feet. He was an old dog by then and had completely lost his bounce. His muzzle was grey and his eyes rheumy, but he was still the same affectionate and not very clever dog, devoted above all to me and to my father.

My father was a clever Scotsman who went up to the City for three days a week, and stayed at his club. He made piles of money by thinking of things that needed to be manufactured, and buying and selling stocks and shares, and none of us ever really understood what he did or how he did it, apart from the steady stream of golf novelties that he came up with. He was regularly thrown into absolute dejection by losing all his money at once, but then he always managed to recoup his losses somehow, just in time to pay off the tradesmen. He put on an excellent show of being confident and jolly, but he was always mildly anxious and on edge. He used to say: ‘I’d like to get out of this gambling business and actually make something, get into manufacturing properly. Can’t think of anything that someone isn’t already making, though.’ At this time he was saying, ‘Perhaps I can dream up something that might be useful for the war. Boots? Bridles? Bullets? Barrels? Other things beginning with B?’ He did invent and sell several devices designed to improve one’s golf, golf being the great passion of his life. He treated it like a patriotic duty.

When my father and Ash came into the drawing room, they were both holding a glass of whisky in one hand, and a cigar in the other. Ash never did smoke, and he was letting his go out. Father exhaled a big puff of smoke, and said, ‘Wonderful news. Do you want to hear it?’

‘Ooh, yes!’ we all cried, except for Mother, who had a stern habit that she rarely let slip. She was the kind of mother who believed in exposing newborn babies on hillsides. Her favourite adage was ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’.

‘Young Ashbridge here has requested my permission to ask for
Rosie’s hand in marriage,’ said Father, ‘and I have given my consent.’

My sisters all squealed and applauded, my mother smiled faintly, and I believe I went pale. I could hardly prevent myself from trembling.

‘I have asked him to turn Mahommedan and marry all four of you. I begged him to take you all off my hands in one big shebang, but sadly he has eyes only for Rosie. I even advised him against marriage altogether, but he is not to be deterred. What do you say, Rosie bairn?’

‘But, Father, he hasn’t even asked me.’

‘Come on, old thing,’ said Ash, ‘I asked you when you were twelve. You have a brass curtain ring to prove it.’

‘Ask her again!’ cried Sophie. ‘Oh, how impeachably romantic! Come on, Ash. Ask her again!’

Sophie was my youngest sister. She was sweet, and, until we knew better, we all thought her a bit silly because she muddled up her words very dreadfully sometimes. Mother said, ‘Sophie dear, I think you mean “impeccably”.’

‘May I speak to Rosie in private?’ asked Ash, but my sisters wouldn’t allow it. ‘Be a sport,’ said Ottilie.

‘Oh, go on, Ash,’ said Christabel.

‘What if I say “no”?’ I said.

‘That would be exscreamingly hard for poor Ash,’ said Sophie. ‘You know you wouldn’t.’

‘Well, Rosie,’ said Ash, ‘what do you say? Will you marry me?’

I was shaking so hard that I couldn’t control myself. Suddenly I burst into tears and buried my face in my hands.

‘I think that means “yes”,’ said Christabel.

Ash knelt down before me and said, ‘Does it?’ and I nodded. Everyone except Mother danced and capered. Mother paused in her embroidering, and said, ‘My dear, I have always thought of you as a son, and now you will be!’ My three sisters held hands and did an impromptu circle dance. Ash stood up and beheld the mayhem with amusement and affection in his eyes.

After the merriment had subsided a little, Ash sipped at his whisky, and said, ‘There is something I do have to tell you all.’

We fell silent, realising that something ominous was about to
be said. Ash cleared his throat and announced, ‘I have enlisted with the Honourable Artillery Company. I feel that I have to go. To do my bit. I wanted to make sure I was really engaged to Rosie before I went.’ He hesitated, and added, ‘And Albert and Sidney have enlisted with me.’

My father was stunned, but my mother said, ‘Good boy.’ Sophie and Christabel and Ottilie exchanged horrified glances. As for me, I found myself standing up and saying, ‘Of course you have to go,’ but then I ran from the room, startled by the horrible wailing that I knew was coming from me.

I
ran out after her and found her in the room at the front where the family Bible is. She had collapsed on the window seat and was weeping in tremendous sobs. I picked her up in my arms and said, ‘Rosie, Rosie, Rosie.’ She laid her head on my chest and put her arms round my neck. I could feel her light body trembling.

‘You don’t have to go,’ she said.

‘I sure do, darling, I sure do,’ I said. ‘I’ve done the deed. I’ve taken the King’s shilling. I had no idea you’d be so upset.’

‘I thought we’d be safe,’ she said. ‘You’re American. You didn’t have to go. Or Sidney and Albert.’

‘But we love it here,’ I said. ‘We come from New England, and we love the old one just as much, probably even more. We’ve lived here most of our lives. I’ve always been ashamed of my countrymen for turning traitor back in 1776.’

‘No you haven’t. You’re always gloating about how you won and we lost. You think it’s brave and clever to throw perfectly nice crates of tea into the sea, and you always forget how Canada and Florida wanted to stay British! Anyway, you’ve got to love Scotland too,’ said Rosie, smiling despite her tears. ‘Father’s Scottish, remember? I’m half Scottish. You can’t just love England.’

‘I love both halves of you,’ I replied, ‘including any other parts from anywhere else. I’ve never been there, but I love Wales and Ireland too. And the Isle of Wight. And Croydon.’

‘Why do you have to go away, though? Why can’t you stay and work in a hospital or something? Why can’t you drive a train or go and be a fireman? So many people have…so many have been killed already. What about Mons? And the Marne? And Flanders? Have you seen the death notices in
The Times
?’

‘Don’t forget the Angels of Mons,’ I said. ‘God’s with us, not with them. We’re defending the right.’

Rosie’s weakness was God. She was always devout, even when she was a child. She was born with the kind of faith that you can’t argue with. This time she stayed silent for a moment, and then she said quietly, ‘We still had to retreat.’

‘You are going to be an officer?’ she said, and I knew what she was getting at; she was hoping there’d be a long period of training before I got sent away. I shook my head. ‘I enlisted as a private,’ I said. ‘You get there a whole lot quicker. I was hoping I might be a gunner. They’ve got two batteries of horse artillery, and two ammunition columns, and a battalion of infantry, but the darned batteries are up to complement.’

She sat down on the window seat again, and looked down at her hands. ‘I suppose I should be encouraging you,’ she said weakly. I knelt and held her hands in mine. ‘Rosie darling, it’s the adventure of a lifetime. How could I possibly stay out of it? Do you think I could bear to live the rest of my life knowing that I hadn’t done my bit? That I didn’t heed the call?’

‘Do you remember what he said, Sir John French? It’ll all be over by Christmas, he said. But it won’t be. The Boche have got Belgium. You could be away for months.’

I felt as if I was cajoling a child. I was fired up with excitement about going to war. I felt a deep happiness, a sort of elation, as if I had suddenly found my purpose in life.

I said, ‘Every man who’s never been a soldier regrets it when he gets old. I don’t want any regrets.’

When we went back into the withdrawing room, Rosie was on my arm, still weak from her fit of tears, but she was managing to smile. The family got to its feet and applauded me. The sisters each kissed me on the cheek and hung upon my arms. I was very moved and touched. It was my greatest moment of glory, really. I gave Rosie’s arm a little squeeze in mine, and she said, ‘We’ll get married as soon as the war’s over. I’m sure it won’t be long.’

‘I’m bound to get some leave,’ I said. ‘We can be married when I’m on leave, if the war goes on too long. Would it be asking too much if Albert was best man?’

I went out and bought a little etching. It was by a certain L. Rust, and it was called
Adieu
. I wanted to give it to Rosie at Christmas, but if I had already gone, I would leave it for my mother to take round to her.