On The Black Hill (Vintage Classics) (12 page)

Benjamin said that Zeppelins looked like cucumbers.

He never thought of abroad. He wanted to live with Lewis for ever and ever; to eat the same food; wear the same clothes; share a bed; and swing an axe in the same trajectory. There were four gates leading into The Vision; and, for him, they were the Four Gates of Paradise.

He loved the sheep, and the open air made him strong again. His eye was quick to spot a case of pulpy kidney or a prolapsed uterus. At lambing time he would walk round the flock with a crook on his arm, checking the ewes’ teats to make sure the milk was flowing.

He was also very religious.

Crossing the pasture one evening, he watched the swallows
glinting
low over the dandelion clocks, and the sheep standing out against the sunset, each one ringed with an aureole of gold – and understood why the Lamb of God should have a halo.

He would spend long hours patterning his ideas of sin and retribution into a vast theological system that would, one day, save the world. Then, when the fine print tired his eyes – both the twins were a little astygmatic – he would pore over Amos’s colour print of ‘The Broad and Narrow Path’.

This was a gift from Mr Gomer Davis, and hung beside the fireplace in its frame of gothic niches.

On the left side, ladies and gentlemen were strolling in groups towards ‘The Way of Perdition’. Flanking the gate were statues of Venus and the Drunken Bacchus; and, beyond them, there were more smart people – drinking, dancing, gambling, going to theatres, pawning their property and taking trains on Sundays.

Higher up the road, the same sort of people were seen robbing, murdering, enslaving and going to war. And finally, hovering over some blazing battlements – which looked a bit like Windsor Castle – the Devil’s Attendants weighed the souls of sinners.

The right side of the picture was ‘The Way of Salvation’; and here the buildings were, unmistakably, Welsh. In fact, the Chapel, the Sunday School and the Deaconesses’ Institution – all with high-pitched gables and slate roofs – reminded Benjamin of an illustrated brochure for Llandrindod Wells.

Only the humbler classes were to be seen on this narrow and difficult road, performing any number of pious acts, until they, too, trudged up a mountainside that looked exactly like the Black Hill. And there, on the summit, was the City of New Jerusalem, and the Lamb of Zion, and the choirs of trumpeting angels …!

This was the image that haunted Benjamin’s imagination. And he believed, seriously, that the Road to Hell was the road to Hereford, whereas the Road to Heaven led up to the Radnor Hills.

THEN THE WAR
came.

For years, the tradesmen in Rhulen had said there was going to be war with Germany, though nobody knew what war would mean. There had been no real war since Waterloo, and everyone agreed that with railways and modern guns this war would either be very terrible, or over very quickly.

On the 7th of August 1914, Amos Jones and his sons were scything thistles when a man called over the hedge that the Germans had marched into Belgium, and rejected England’s ultimatum. A recruiting office, he said, had opened in the Town Hall. About twenty local lads had joined.

‘More fool them,’ Amos shrugged, and glared downhill into Herefordshire.

All three went on with their scything, but the boys looked very jittery when they came in for supper.

Mary had been pickling beetroot, and her apron was streaked with purple stains.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘You’re far too young to fight. Besides, it’ll probably be over by Christmas.’

Winter came, and there was no end to the war. Mr Gomer Davies started preaching patriotic sermons and, one Friday, sent word to The Vision, bidding them to a lantern lecture, at five o’clock, in the Congregation Hall.

The sky was deepening from crimson to gunmetal. Two limousines were parked in the lane; and a crowd of farm boys, all in their Sunday best, were chatting to the chauffeurs or peering through the windows at the fur rugs and leather upholstery. The boys had never seen such automobiles at close quarters. In a nearby shed, an electric generator was purring.

Mr Gomer Davies stood in the vestibule, welcoming all comers with a handshake and muddy smile. The war, he said, was a Crusade for Christ.

Inside the Hail, a coke stove was burning and the windows had misted up. A line of electric bulbs spread a film of yellow light over the planked and varnished walls. There were plenty of Union Jacks strung up, and a picture of Lord Kitchener.

The magic lantern stood in the middle of the aisle. A white sheet had been tacked up to serve as a screen; and a khaki-clad Major, one arm in a sling, was confiding his box of glass slides to the lady projectionist.

Veiled in cigar smoke, the principal speaker, Colonel Bickerton, had already taken his seat on the stage and was having a jaw with a Boer War veteran. He extended his game leg to the audience. A silk hat sat on the green baize table-cloth, beside a water-carafe and a tumbler.

Various ministers of God – all of whom had sunk their differences in a blaze of patriotism – went up to pay their respects to the squire, and show concern for his comfort.

‘No, I’m quite comfortable, thank you.’ The Colonel enunciated every syllable to perfection. ‘Thank you for looking after me so well. Pretty good turn-out, I see. Most encouraging, what?’

The hall was full. Lads with fresh, weatherbeaten faces crammed the benches or elbowed forward to get a better look at the Bickertons’ daughter, Miss Isobel – a brunette with moist red lips and moist hazel eyes, who sat below the platform, composed and smiling, in a silver fox-fur cape. From her dainty hat there spurted a grey-pink glycerined ostrich plume. At her elbow crouched a young man with carroty hair and mouth agape.

It was Jim the Rock.

The Joneses took their seats on a bench at the back. Mary could feel her husband, tense and angry beside her. She was afraid he was going to make a scene.

The vicar of Rhulen opened the session by proposing a vote of thanks to Mr Gomer Davies for the use of the Hall, and electricity.

Rumbles of ‘Hear! Hear!’ sounded round the room. He went on to sketch the origins of the war.

Few of the hill-farmers understood why the murder of an Archduke in the Balkans should have triggered off the invasion of Belgium; but when the vicar spoke of the ‘peril to our belovèd Empire’ people began to sit up.

‘There can be no rest,’ he raised his voice, ‘until this cancer has been ripped out of European society. The Germans will squeal like every bully when cornered. But there must be no compromise, no shaking hands with the devil. It is useless to moralize with an alligator. Kill it!’

The audience clapped and the clergyman sat down.

Next in turn was the Major, who had been wounded, he said, at Mons. He began with a joke about ‘making the Rhine whine’ – whereupon the Colonel perked up and said, ‘Never cared for Rhine wines myself. Too fruity, what?’

The Major then lifted his swagger stick.

‘Lights!’ he called, and the lights went off.

One by one, a sequence of blurred images flashed across the screen – of Tommies in camp, Tommies on parade, Tommies on the cross-Channel ferry; Tommies in a French café; Tommies in trenches; Tommies fixing bayonets, and Tommies ‘going over the top’. Some of the slides were so fuzzy it was hard to tell which was the shadow of Miss Isobel’s plume, and which were shell-bursts.

The last slide showed an absurd goggle-eyed visage with crows’ wings on its upper lip and a whole golden eagle on its helmet.

‘That’, said the Major, ‘is your enemy – Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.’

There were shouts of ‘String ’im up’ and ‘Shoot ’im to bloody bits!’ – and the Major, also, sat down.

Colonel Bickerton then eased himself to his feet and apologized for the indisposition of his wife.

His own son, he said, was fighting in Flanders. And after the stirring scenes they’d just witnessed, he hoped there’d be few shirkers in the district.

‘When this war is over,’ he said, ‘there will be two classes of persons in this country. There will be those who were qualified
to
join the Armed Forces and refrained from doing so …’

‘Shame!’ shrilled a woman in a blue hat.

‘I’m the Number One!’ a young man shouted and stuck up his hand.

But the Colonel raised his cufflinks to the crowd, and the crowd fell silent:

‘… and there will be those who were so qualified and came forward to do their duty to their King, their country … and their womenfolk …’

‘Yes! Yes!’ Again the hands arose with fluid grace and, again, the crowd fell silent:

‘The last-mentioned class, I need not add, will be the aristocracy of this country – indeed, the only true aristocracy of this country – who, in the evening of their days, will have the consolation of knowing that they have done what England expects of every man: namely, to do his duty …’

‘What about Wales?’ A sing-song voice sounded to the right of Miss Bickerton; but Jim was drowned in the general hullabaloo.

Volunteers rushed forward to press their names on the Major. There were shouts of ‘Hip! Hip! Hurrah!’ Other voices broke into song, ‘For they are jolly good fellows …’ The woman in the blue hat slapped her son over the face, shrieking, ‘Oh, yes, you will!’ – and a look of childlike serenity had descended on the Colonel.

He continued, in thrilling tones: ‘Now when Lord Kitchener says he needs you, he means YOU. For each one of you brave young fellows is unique and indispensable. A few moments ago, I heard a voice on my left calling, “What about Wales?”’

Suddenly, you could hear a pin drop.

‘Believe you me, that cry, “What about Wales?” is a cry that goes straight to my heart. For in my veins Welsh blood and English blood course in equal quantities. And that … that is why my daughter and I have brought two automobiles here with us this evening. Those of you who wish to enlist in our beloved Herefordshire Regiment may drive with me … But those of you, loyal Welshmen, who would prefer to join that other, most gallant regiment, the South Wales Borderers,
may
go with my daughter and Major Llewellyn-Smythe to Brecon …’

This was how Jim the Rock went to war – for the sake of leaving home, and for a lady with moist red lips and moist hazel-coloured eyes.

IN INDIA, MARY
had once seen the Lancers riding to the Frontier; and a bugle-call sent tingles up her spine. She believed in the Allied Cause. She believed in Victory, and in answer to Mrs Bickerton’s ‘appeal for knitted garments’ she and Rebecca spent their spare time knitting gloves and balaclavas for the boys at the Front.

Amos hated the war and would have no truck with it.

He hid his horses from the Remount Officers. He ignored an order from the Ministry to plant wheat on a north-facing slope. It was a matter of pride, both as a man and as a Welshman, to stop his sons from fighting for the English.

He read into the Bible a confirmation of his views. Surely the war was God’s visitation on the Cities of the Plain? Surely all the things you read in the papers – the shelling, the bombs, the U-boats and mustard gas – were they not the instruments of His Vengeance? Perhaps the Kaiser was another Nebuchadnezzar? Perhaps there’d be a Seventy Year Captivity for Englishmen? And perhaps there’d be a remnant who’d be spared – a remnant such as the Rechabites, who drank no wine, neither lived in cities, nor bowed before false idols, but obeyed the Living God?

He expounded these opinions to Mr Gomer Davies, who stared at him as if he were mad and accused him of being a traitor. He, in turn, accused the minister of glossing over the Sixth Commandment and discontinued his attendance at Chapel.

In January of 1916 – after the Conscription Act became law – he learned that a Rechabite Friendly Society held regular meetings in Rhulen, and so came into contact with Conscientious Objectors.

He took the twins to their sessions in a draughty loft over a cobbler’s shop in South Street.

Most of the members were artisans or manual labourers, but there was a gentleman among them – a lanky young fellow with a big Adam’s apple, who dressed in shabby tweeds and rewrote the minutes in elevated prose.

The Rechabites held that tea was a sinful stimulant: so refreshments were limited to a blackcurrant cordial and a plate of thin arrowroot biscuits. One by one, the speakers professed their faith in a peaceable world and pronounced on the fate of their comrades. Many were under sentence of court martial or in jail. And one of their number, a quarryman, had led a hunger strike in the Hereford Detention Barracks, when the sergeants tried to make him handle the regimental rum supply. He had died, from pneumonia, after forcible feeding. A mixture of milk and cocoa, syringed up his nostrils, had filtered down into his lungs.

‘Poor Tom!’ the cobbler said, and called for three minutes’ silence.

The company stood – an arc of bald heads bowed in a pool of lamplight. Then all linked hands and sang a song, the words of which they knew, but not the tune:

Nation with nation, land with land

Unarmed shall hue as comrades free

In every heart and brain shall throb

The pulse of one fraternity
.

At first, Mary found it hard to reconcile her husband’s violent temperament with his pacifism: after news of the Somme, she conceded he might be right.

Twice a week, she walked down to Lurkenhope to cook a meal for Betty Palmer, a poor widow, who had lost her only son in the battle, and lost the will to eat. Then, in May of 1917, she patched up her quarrel with Aggie Watkins.

She saw a lonely figure in black, dragging her feet round the market booths, drying her tears on her sleeve.

‘It must be Jim,’ she cried out loud.

Aggie’s face was blotchy from crying, and her bonnet was awry. A light rain was falling and the street vendors were
covering
their wares, and taking shelter under the arches of the Town Hall.

‘It be Jim,’ Aggie sobbed. ‘’Im were in France and workin’ with mules. An’ now comes this card as says ’im’s done for.’