The Field Marshal turned away, blinking rapidly. Tyas Ackroyd, of all people! The old fool, going and dying like that! He drew a deep breath, aware for the first time how fond he’d been of him.
‘I’m sorry, Hedley,’ he said slowly, trying to control his voice and stop the tears coming. ‘I had good reason to be fond of your grandfather. How’s everybody taking it on top of your father?’
‘Not too badly, sir. We’d been expecting it ever since he had to retire, of course. It was just as though he were tired and wanted to go to sleep.’
Lady Goff watched her husband come down the stairs. He was in full fig, in the complete panoply of the 19th Lancers. His uniform was a little tight across his stomach and his overalls were looser round the thighs than they were once, but, despite his age, he still looked an impressive figure.
‘Bloody uniform,’ he growled as he reached the hall.
‘Dear Coll.’ His wife kissed him. ‘You look magnificent.’
‘I’d have preferred,’ he grumbled, ‘to look magnificent for something other than Tyas Ackroyd’s funeral.’
She handed him his sword which he clipped in place, then he put on his schapka and let the peak rest on his nose. The green and red dyed blackcock’s feathers hung over his cheek with the cord that attached the helmet to his shoulder. Studying him, she was aware how little time they had together now and felt desperately close to tears.
She handed him his gauntlets which he dragged on one after the other in silence, then she held up his cloak.
‘Shan’t want that,’ he said.
‘You’ll catch your death of cold.’
‘No, I won’t.’
‘I’ve ordered the Vauxhall.’
‘You can send it away.’
His manner was gruff but she was well aware of the hurt he felt and ignored his brusqueness.
‘You’ll need the car,’ she said.
‘No I won’t.’
‘You’re surely not contemplating walking all the way to church?’
‘Yes I am. Back, too.’
‘You silly old man,’ she said softly. ‘You’re nearly eighty, it’s much too far.’
‘No, it isn’t! Dammit, it’s only just down the lane. I’d do it for Tyas if I were a hundred and eighty. Robert turned up yet?’
His wife drew a deep breath, dreading having to tell him something she’d known for forty-eight hours.
‘He can’t manage it.’
The Field Marshal’s head jerked round. ‘What in God’s name does he mean? – he can’t manage it.’
‘He has to go to London.’
‘That bloody woman, I expect!’
Lady Goff sighed. ‘Perhaps that was his intention originally, dear, but Elfrida’s insisted on going with him this time. I think she’s wise. She’s sent her apologies.’
‘He should have been present. Tyas wasn’t just a servant in this house.’
‘No, dear. But you can’t dragoon people into it and Robert’s never felt the same about the Regiment as you have.’
‘Pity Dabney ain’t home.’
‘It’s always a pity Dabney isn’t home. Still, Josh says he wants to go.’
‘He shall walk alongside me.’
‘He’s too young.’
‘He’s ten.’
‘That’s far too young.’
The Field Marshal sighed. ‘Then he shall sit next to me in church. Represent his father. Future of the Regiment. I’m the past, like poor old Tyas. He’ll go into the Regiment.’
‘He might decide he doesn’t want to.’
‘Rubbish, woman. Bound to.’
‘Robert didn’t.’
‘Robert’s an ass. Always was.’
Lady Goff sighed. The Field Marshal was in his most intractable mood. She was well aware, however, that the occasion meant a lot to him. The previous year he had gone halfway across the country to attend the funeral of some old man who had died in a workhouse in London, simply because he had ridden at Balaclava, and had come back in a foul temper, demanding to know why the bloody Government let men die in poverty after they’d served their country well.
‘Where does the cortège start?’ she asked.
‘Tyas’ cottage.’
‘Surely there’s no reason for you to walk there? It’s a good quarter of a mile. You could be driven there and then walk. It would reduce the distance a little.’
He considered for a moment. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll do that.’
Sitting in the Vauxhall with his grandmother, Josh watched as his grandfather waited. His mother was working for the Red Cross in York and, claiming that the dead were less important than the maimed and dying, she was coming alone in her own car. Without her, Josh felt lonely. He had no idea she was thinking of her husband, whom she might also be mourning in a matter of days, and that she found it hard to be present at all. He had been crowing over a new cricket bat with which he expected to score an incredible number of runs when he had heard of Tyas Ackroyd’s death. Not only had he lost a friend but he felt also that somehow a part of the past had vanished. He was shivery and chilled and he could only put it down to the sorrow he felt.
His mother’s car drew up alongside the Vauxhall and he gave her a grave nod. His grandfather was a small slight figure rigid as a ramrod but swaying a little in the blustery wind.
‘I’m sorry Tyas is dead, Grannie,’ he said.
‘Yes, dear,’ his grandmother said. ‘I think your grandfather is too.’
It had been Tyas Ackroyd he remembered, who had first taught him to ride.
‘If you learn to ride like a Clutcher,’ he had said, ‘you’ll have learned proper.’
The boy thought for a minute, trying once more to imagine his grandfather and Tyas Ackroyd riding down the valley at Balaclava. He’d seen pictures of the charge but somehow all he could ever imagine was the Braxby Hunt going into Rush’s Meadow after a fox.
They were using a haywain from the Home Farm to carry the coffin. It had been washed and cleaned up and the two great Percherons which were to pull it, groomed to within an inch of their lives, waited now, pawing the ground, the black crêpe on their harness fluttering in the breeze.
The Field Marshal was shaking a little with the effort of keeping still. His hand lifted to the salute as the coffin appeared.
Josh stared about him, trying to stop his eyes prickling. As they waited, another small boy on a bicycle appeared. He was dressed in his best suit, with a black tie and his hair plastered down into spikes. It was Robert’s son, Aubrey, Josh’s cousin.
‘Thought I ought to come,’ he whispered as he climbed into the car on the other side of Lady Goff. ‘I borrowed some of Father’s brilliantine.’
Josh felt like weeping. When rotten old Aubrey could manage to turn up, it clearly meant something. He blew his nose hard. Perhaps Aubrey wasn’t so bad, after all, he decided. He’d have to remember to include him more.
As the little cortège moved off behind the haywain that carried all that remained of Tyas Ackroyd, it was followed by black-coated relatives, among them a sprinkling of uniforms. The Vauxhall took its place at the rear and Josh could see his grandfather, clutching his sword in frozen fingers stumping along behind, a small figure with the schapka bouncing on his nose. Without knowing why, Josh found his eyes had finally filled with tears.
At the graveyard alongside the church, with the Percherons stamping at the ground, the Ackroyd family and relations, followed by the Field Marshal’s family and anyone else who could crowd inside, moved into the pews. The two boys sat down alongside their grandmother. On her other side was Josh’s mother and the Field Marshal, and just in front Hedley Ackroyd.
‘We are gathered here today to say farewell to Tyas Emmott Arthur Ackroyd—’ Josh was startled to realise that the old man he’d known only as Tyas had had other names as well ‘—who was one of that dwindling band who rode with the fearless Lord Cardigan down that Russian valley in the Crimea nearly sixty years ago with the Light Brigade…’
Glancing at his grandfather, Josh saw his face was like stone. Turning, he looked at his grandmother, and was surprised to see there were tears on her cheeks and, in a strange moment of adult awareness, he knew they were not just for Tyas Ackroyd.
As they filed out of church again and took their places behind the coffin, Josh sidled forward until he was alongside his grandfather, trying to stand as rigidly to attention as the old man as they lowered the coffin into the hole in the earth.
‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery—’
Josh’s thoughts wandered. He had never thought of Tyas Ackroyd in that way. Until recently, Tyas had been a mischievous old man with a fund of funny stories, a fondness for helping himself to Grandpa’s whisky – something which Grandpa was well aware of but said nothing about – a tendency to demonstrate sword drill with the fire irons when he should have been cleaning them, and a liking for his pretty nieces. According to Grandpa, he had been quite a boy in his youth and had certainly never seemed to be full of misery.
After it was over, Aubrey reached for his bicycle and lifted his hat to his grandmother.
‘Wouldn’t you like to come home for tea, dear?’ she asked.
‘No, I’ve got to get back.’
As he rode off, Josh stared after him. ‘Old Auby’s not bad, you know, Grannie. Better than I thought.’
‘Most people are, dear.’
They talked for a few moments with the relatives, then they solemnly put on their hats and moved away as the Field Marshal headed for the Vauxhall. His wife hung back, knowing he wished to be alone.
‘I’ll go back with Fleur, dear,’ she said. ‘Josh can go with you.’
The Field Marshal nodded and they climbed into the car together. As Fleur’s car moved off, the Field Marshal lifted his hand and touched his driver’s shoulder.
‘Just a moment, George,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’
They sat silently. It had begun to spot with rain and the splashes were striking the windows and sliding down the glass. The boy was surprised to realise that his grandfather was singing, half to himself in a low shaking voice. He recognised the song at once.
‘Wrap me up in my old stable jacket
And say a poor devil lies low.
And six of the Lancers shall carry me
To the place where the best soldiers go.’
The old man stopped and, without turning his head, spoke to the boy.
‘When they buried my father,’ he said slowly, ‘that song went round and round in my mind. They played the Dead March in
Saul,
but he wasn’t a fussy man and I think if he’d been asked, he’d have preferred that above all others.’
There was a long silence. ‘They had a good trumpeter that day,’ the old man went on in his faraway voice. ‘The trumpet had its origin in heaven, boy. Did you know that? I’ve heard many beautiful things in my time – the slow march of the Gordons, for instance, and that heart-tearing
Lament for Culloden.
But nothing beats a good trumpeter. There was always only one thought in the darkness when I heard the Last Post at night: Military funerals, boy. Muffled drums and lonely graves in empty fields all over the world. Cavalrymen who’d gone ahead.’ The old man paused. ‘They’re notes of loneliness, boy, and the exile of men far from home, but they’re also notes of pride, for men who died defending their country.’
As he stopped speaking there was a long silence except for the blustering of the wind that shook the high-tonneaued car and the soft spatter of rain on the windows.
When the old man spoke again, his voice was thin and old.
‘Josh—’ he stopped, cleared his throat, then went on in a stronger voice ‘—should I predecease you, which I have no doubt I shall, you will remember that as a field marshal I am entitled to a little more pomp and ceremony than poor Tyas. I don’t want it – bloody tiresome business for all concerned – but they’ll probably insist on a band and medals and all that rot. You will therefore – assuming you’re old enough and that the war is over – arrange that the band will be that of the 19th Lancers and that they will play me to my grave with the Dead March in
Saul
. That’s because funerals are supposed to be sad and the Dead March in
Saul
’s the saddest thing we know. However, I don’t expect
you
to be sad, my boy, because by then I shall have had a good run for me money and I’ve enjoyed most of it, apart from the bits where the grocers in the army took over and those people in the cads’ cricket team were in the ascendant.’
‘Grandpa—’ the boy looked anxiously at the old man ‘—you’re not going to die soon, are you?’
‘I don’t intend to hurry it along, boy,’ the old man said briskly. ‘It’s nevertheless the one event that none of us can escape. I’m not worried. I’ve done most things and it’ll be a new experience. There’s one thing, however, I want you to do for me. I’ve never been of a musical turn of mind but I’ve always thought that
Morning
from
Peer Gynt
would be a suitable tune to go to Heaven with. A touch of sadness but also a touch of hope. I’ve been told more than once by the Rector that I might not get into Heaven because I haven’t been much of a believer, but personally I think God’s far too intelligent to blame me if I’m wrong and He might even welcome a pleasant tune as I arrive at the pearly gates. Will you arrange it for me?’
‘Of course Grandpa.
Morning
from
Peer Gynt.
’
Josh was still wondering who
Peer Gynt
was when he noticed the old man had become silent again. His thoughts were clearly sombre. And Josh saw his mouth working, as if he were chewing, and caught glimpses of old brown teeth.
‘It does occur to me, of course,’ the Field Marshal went on slowly, ‘that the band may well be engaged elsewhere. They may still be in France or serving in India, in which case it might be difficult to get them home. In that event I will settle happily for just two trumpeters, one at the head and one at the foot of the grave, to play the Last Post and the Reveille. The Last Post for my departure and the Reveille for my entry into Heaven.’
There was another long pause. ‘It has also just occurred to me,’ the old man continued, ‘that perhaps neither the band
nor
the trumpeters will be available. In which case, anybody will do who can play an instrument. Even the first violinist from the theatre in York.’ There was another long pause. ‘There is
still
one final snag. Perhaps the Rector would refuse permission for such a tune to be played on such a solemn occasion. It might not meet with the mealy-mouthed attitudes of the Church. In that case, you will just have to sing something for me. Under your breath, if necessary. Think you can do that?’