A Future Arrived (9 page)

“Horses!” Fenton muttered in disgust. “Whoever it was who said that England was hell for horses and heaven for women didn't know what he was talking about. The average Englishman would much prefer to make love to a horse.”

“Difficult.”

“Where there's a will, and all that.” He took a sip of his beer. “I read your book, by the way.
An End to Castles
.”

“How did you manage? It's not out yet.”

“Arnold Calthorpe sent Winnie a galley proof. Thick as thieves, those two. Winnie's money helps keep his presses churning out pamphlets for No More War International.”

Martin set his glass on the bench and took a leather cigar case from his coat pocket. “A pacifist wife. How does that go down with the brass hats?”

He shrugged and accepted one of Martin's cigars. “The eccentricities of military wives has been an accepted toleration since Marlborough's day.” He passed the cigar under his nose. “Perfect. Cuba?”

“Tampa, Florida.”

“Ah, America. The best of all worlds under one roof. I must go there one day. Perhaps when I retire.”

“Not thinking of doing that, are you?”

“Well,
I'm
not, but one or two others have suggested it.” He lit his cigar and blew smoke from the corner of his mouth. “I liked your book, Martin … at least parts of it. You were bang on regarding the French fortress line. That defense minister … Maginot … allocating billions of francs for a bloody concrete trench! ‘Verdun with air-conditioning' … as you so succinctly put it.”

“He was wounded at Verdun and swore that French soldiers would never have to endure that kind of slaughter again.”

“His motive was noble. It's his tactics that are wrong. Dangerous, in fact. A lulling sense of security that paralyzes the initiative of the army to achieve mechanized mobility—but for God's sake don't let me get started on
that
subject.”

Martin grinned at his old friend. “No shop talk in the mess—as you used to say.”

“I still do, but I don't mind exchanging a view or two with a chap in civvy street. Your motive is as noble as Monsieur Maginot's, and just as wrong. For a man who has seen as much war as you have, I can understand your passionate hatred of it. But the solution for peace which you propose in your book rests on a dream.”

“An ideal. A goal worth seeking. No more than that.”

“We share the same goal, dear chap. We have different approaches to the problem. God knows I want peace eternal. If Maginot remembers Verdun, I remember the Somme and Passchendaele. No more massacres of poor bloody infantry for a few yards of stinking, bloody ground …
ever!
As most
professional
soldiers, I'm as belligerent as a nun, but I do want England to have the best army in the world. A small cadre of forces second to none … modern, innovative, daringly imaginative … so no nation would risk drawing a sword against her. Peace through power. How does that strike you painted across a banner?”

“I prefer—the power of peace.”

Fenton laughed and leaned back against the wall, tilting his face to the sun. “One might hear that phrase uttered at the League of Nations … in a speech expressing moral indignation at what the Italians are doing in North Africa. Do you think Mussolini gives a damn if some Swedish pastor is morally dismayed? He wants his new Roman empire and he'll get it if he has to shoot every Arab in Libya. To believe otherwise is naïve, wishful thinking, and you're hardly a naïve man.”

“No, but I am a hopeful one. Total world disarmament of heavy weapons and bombing planes is the only certain answer. And it's possible to attain.”

The brigadier scowled and took a reflective puff on his cigar. “Perhaps. But that disarmament commission at the League hasn't come up with anything positive on the subject in four years.”

“It's not for lack of trying, and you know it. Whenever they make a recommendation one nation or another raises an objection. They're meeting again next month. I might go to Geneva and observe the conference. Their problems would make an interesting article, perhaps even a book.”

“There's only
one
problem, dear fellow, and that is which nation will have the courage to be the
first
to toss its guns into the sea and stand naked to its enemies. Do you remember when Jacob came back from the Balkans after that bugger of an archduke got scuppered at Sarajevo?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I've never forgotten what he told us … that there was an awesome amount of hate festering beyond our bucolic horizons. It seems to me there still is.” He drained his beer and stood up. “But there's nothing we can do about that, is there?”

“Not much, I'm afraid.”

“Except have another pint.” He raised his glass as though brandishing a sword. “Come three-quarters of the world in arms and we shall shock them! If God … and the budget … be willing.”

T
HE DINNER WAS
not up to the Countess of Stanmore's epicurean standards. The half holiday had played havoc with the kitchen staff, the chef and his helpers having raised too many pints to Coatsworth's memory in the pubs of Abingdon. Still, if the saddle of lamb was a bit overdone and the roast potatoes verged on the raw, no one else appeared to notice or care. Hanna took a sip of wine and looked down the long table at her guests. So many of the people she loved most in the world seated before her. It lacked only the presence of her daughter and grandsons, and Anthony home from the hospital, for her contentment to be complete.

“Did I tell you that Alex is coming over this summer?” she said to Winifred.

“No. How wonderful.”

“And bringing Colin and young John with her. I shall have a nice, noisy house for a change.”

There was a sudden blare of dance music from the direction of the ballroom. Winifred smiled wryly. “You have a noisy house now.”

“The girls tuned in the wireless set, bless them.”

Winifred half rose from her seat. “I'll tell them to turn down the volume.”

Hanna waved her back. “No, dear. I enjoy music.”

“Jack Hylton's band by the sound of it,” William said. “‘The Syncopation Hour from Savoy Hill.'”

Hanna reached out and touched Winifred's hand. “Remember when Alex used to play her gramophone in the ballroom and taught you all the latest steps?”

“
Tried
to teach me, you mean. The Texas Tommy and the Castle Walk. I was hopeless.”

“Only charmingly out of step,” Fenton remarked. “I quite fell in love with you. Your interpretation of the Bunny Hug was my undoing.”

The girls were dancing by themselves, whirling across the large room in the spangled light from the chandeliers, dipping and swaying to the throbbing tones emanating from a large super-heterodyne radio receiver on the bandstand. When the adults entered with their coffees and brandies, Jennifer ran to her father and begged him to dance with her while Victoria, unconsciously playing the coquette, led Charles playfully onto the floor as the band swung into a foxtrot.

The girls were sent to bed at nine thirty—despite the protests of the twins that they be allowed to stay up until ten. Hanna and Winifred retired shortly after that and the men sought the billiard room. It was past midnight when Fenton went to his suite in the south wing of the huge house, strolling down the long, dimly lit corridors smoking a cigar and humming softly to himself. He felt mellow with brandy and the triumph of having, finally, beaten Martin at a game of snooker. He was surprised to find Winifred awake, sitting up in bed in the dark, the window drapes open and moonlight flooding the room. He put out his cigar, loosened his tie, and sat on the bed beside her. “Can't sleep?”

“I haven't tried. I've been letting my thoughts roam.”

He bent to her and kissed her brow. “Over hill and dale?”

“This house. So many undertones.”

“Undertones of what?”

“Sadness. Did you notice Hanna's expression while Charles was dancing with Vicky?”

“No. I had a galloping colt of a girl to manage.”

“She had such a
pensive
look on her face.”

“Not surprising. It's been that sort of a day.”

“It had nothing to do with the funeral if that's what you mean. When we were going upstairs to bed she insisted I come to her sitting room for a glass of sherry and to look at some photographs.”

“What photographs?”

“Oh, nineteen fourteen … the spring before the war … when mother brought me here practically every weekend … in
expectation
, as she so bluntly put it.”

He grunted and bent down to unlace his shoes. “You and Charlie posed formally in the rose garden.”

“Yes.”

“The prints suitable for reproduction in the
Court Circular
… The Marquess and Marchioness of Dexford announce the engagement of their daughter …”

“It was the
way
she showed them. Such a wistful return to the past … dragging me along with her … knowing I've seen the pictures before … also knowing those were not happy times for
me
.”

“Or Charles, for that matter.”

“He thought of me as a younger sister in those days. Hanna was certainly aware of his feelings—and mine.”

He stroked the petal softness of her arm. “Don't let it upset you. She was just being nostalgic. A world that might have been.”

“I suppose you're right. We have so much, you and I. And Charles has so little.”

He took hold of her and pressed her gently against his chest. “Hanna may wish he had more, but he has what he wants most at the moment … inner contentment and peace. God knows he went through enough hell to achieve it.”

He tightened his arms about her, feeling the warmth of her body through his shirt, the beat of her heart. He was thinking of the High Street and the cold cenotaph. The names of the war dead cut forever into marble. So many other names left uncarved—Charles Greville's among them. Not enough quarries in the world to mine the stones.

M
AY BROUGHT A
warm wind out of the southwest that set the windows of Burgate House rattling and whipped the great elms into frenzy. Deep banks of dried leaves, dormant since winter, swirled across the grounds in a blizzard of browns and reds.

Charles Greville stood in front of the tall windows in the common room and looked out on the rose garden and the wildly thrashing bushes. A freakish wind, he was thinking, almost tropical in its warmth and intensity. It would dry out the sodden ground, which would be a blessing, but play merry hell with hay ricks and hop poles throughout the Weald.

“The tea's ready … and there's hot scones.”

Charles turned his back to the tumult in the garden and smiled at old Mrs. Mahon as she wheeled in the tea urn.

“Lovely. Did you make the scones?”

“No, Mr. Greville. Not this morning. I let Millie try her hand at it. My recipe, of course. Ballyconneely scones right enough.”

“The ones your mother used to bake?”

“And her mother before that, let me tell you.”

The scones were heaped on a platter and covered with a white napkin. Charles took one, hot from the oven, and bit into it, scorning butter or jam.

“Delicious.”

“Yes, I thought as much meself. Young Millie has a natural talent for baking. I'll show her how to make a porter cake. Guinness, brown sugar … walnuts and cherries … lemon peel and sultanas, eggs and flour … keep for a week before eating. Oh, it's a lovely cake it is.”

At seventy-eight, Mrs. Mahon was more likely to talk about cooking than actually to do any. Millie was in charge of the kitchen staff now. She was a young woman from Somerset, strong as an ox, with a West Country accent few could fathom.

Charles reached for another scone as Mrs. Mahon poured him a cup of tea. “I'm glad I was the first one down.”

“Oh, Mr. Simpson was up at the crack of dawn, thunderin' out into the wind he was with never so much as a sip or a bite to sustain him. I saw him from the kitchen windows runnin' toward the playin' fields like the devil was chasin' after him.”

“I'll go and see what he's up to. You might fill a vacuum bottle with tea and I'll take it out to him.”

“I'll do that. Be the cricket ground. He's been mutterin' about it since Christmas.”

Charles, vacuum bottle in hand and a pocket filled with scones, braced his body against the gale and walked into the teeth of it. A dying oak at the bottom of the lane was down, sprawled in all its leafless magnificence across the gravel road and two fences. He skirted the tangle of limbs and branches and cut across the field that the boys used for football and the girls for hockey. He could see the tall, stooped figure of George Simpson beyond the low hedge in the adjoining field. He was staring down at the ruined pitch and even at fifty yards Charles could see that his expression was grim. Winter snow and frost followed by the rains had scarred the billiard-table smoothness of the cricket ground, cutting miniature ravines and covering the once velvet grass with a layer of mud—mud that was fast drying in the wind.