Past Caring (21 page)

And so I went, without a word, before breakfast, driving up the
old coach road to London in reckless fury. Nowhere could I be
happy. At least in London I could be alone in my misery and nearer
to Elizabeth.

Not that that did me much good. I went down to Putney on several occasions in search of her, not to speak to her, but merely in the
hope of a fleeting glimpse. I gained not a one and the house appeared to be shut up. Eventually, I nerved myself to enquire of a
neighbour, who told me that the Latimers had gone abroad for several months in the interests of Mercy’s health. She did not know
where.

There was no more to be done on that front and I could raise no
interest on others. I put in a few token appearances at the Commons,
but now found proceedings there tiresome. I was constantly berated
by the Whips for my erratic attendance and, in mid-October, my
constituency party chairman wrote to me enquiring as to my intentions. I replied in short order saying that I would not seek re-election and that, unless an election was called soon , I would take
steps to vacate my seat. There was no reply, which seemed to write
finis to my political career.

Towards the end of October, my mother came to stay with me
and we were swiftly reconciled. She reported that Robert had been
so upset by the circumstances of my departure from Barrowteign
that his relations with Florence had deteriorated markedly. I was
prevailed upon to return at Christmas and seek to heal the breach,
but I agreed only for my mother’s sake.

Before then , there were other developments. On November 10,
the Constitutional Conference broke down without agreement,
though not without rumours reaching even my remote position in
the party that there had been mooted, in its latter stages, some form
of coalition. This came as no surprise to me in view of what I knew
of Lloyd George’s manoeuvrings, frustrated at the last, it seemed,
by feeling within the Conservative rank and file. That had been the
weakness in his scheme all along and maybe Asquith had been
shrewd enough to know that.

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At all events, this made an election inevitable to meet the King’s
pre-condition for the creation of peers. It was called for early
December and, forewarned by my letter in October, the constituency party had a respectable candidate to succeed me in a
Londoner who had lost his seat the previous January. In a sense, this
came as a merciful release, since it neatly avoided having to give
Asquith the satisfaction of my applying for the Chiltern Hundreds.

In another sense, it left me farther adrift than ever, for I was no
nearer recovering myself than I had been in the summer. The government was returned to office and my part in public life was ended.

I went down to Barrowteign at Christmas and tried to put a
brave face on the festivities, but my truce with Robert was an uneasy one and Florence I blatantly avoided. Little Ambrose seemed
to enjoy himself and my mother took some comfort from the apparent unity of her family, but it was not for me a season of hope.

The early days of January 1911 were marked by heavy snow
and high winds in Devon. Nevertheless, Twelfth Night celebrations
went ahead in Dewford on the evening of January 5 and Robert and
Florence attended to represent the family. Not wishing to walk in
such weather, Robert drove down to the village. We expected them
back by midnight. As it turned out, they never returned. They came
back as far as the level crossing where the Teign valley railway line
crossed the estate, but were destined to progress no further.

So far as anybody could ever after establish, their car became
stuck by one wheel in a snow-filled pothole between the lines at a
time when the blizzard made visibility extremely poor. The crossingkeeper was out rescuing some sheep that were also his responsibility and so there was no-one to assist Robert in freeing the wheel.

He would not have been alarmed by this, since he would have
known that there were no trains due at such a time. Unhappily,
stormy seas had flooded the main line at Dawlish and a much-delayed express train to Plymouth was accordingly re-routed via
the Teign valley. Proceeding faster than may have been prudent in
an attempt to make up lost time, the engine driver stood no chance of
seeing Robert’s car as he rounded the bend just north of the crossing,
braked far too late and carried the car away. Florence, who was still
aboard, went with it, whilst Robert, who was presumably working
on the wheel at the time, was thrown to one side.

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I was called from the house, where I had been sitting gloomily
by the fire, and hurried down to the crossing. There was a scene of
utter confusion in the darkness and swirling snow, with the driver
and crew of the train gathered by the mangled wreck of the car, carried half a mile down the track after the impact. For Florence there
was no hope, but Robert we found horribly injured, lying some
yards from the crossing, yet still alive. It was obvious, however, that
he was not long for this world. He seemed to recognize me, clutched
my hand, muttered the name of his son , then died in my arms.

A bitter night it was, with the bitterest moment—that of telling
my mother, who had been asleep in bed—still to come. With one son
a shadow of his former self, she had now to face the loss of another
outright. There seemed no easy way to tell her after we had carried
Robert’s body up to the house, leaving others for the moment to ex-tricate Florence from the wreckage. I simply blurted it out and she
broke down. The doctor was called to attend to her, whilst I returned to the scene of the accident to assuage with labour my regret
for harsh words exchanged which could never now be withdrawn.

A week after the event, we assembled at Dewford Church on a
bright day, with the snow melting, to bury Robert and Florence side
by side. If my mother was still numb with the shock of the tragedy,
I was bemused that another blow should have come from an unexpected quarter to add to those I had already borne.

Yet life had to go on. In particular, Ambrose had to be cared for
and this concern was a great aid to my mother’s recovery. As her
surviving son , I rallied round as best I could. I had always liked little Ambrose and he me, so I shared with my mother responsibility
for him, assisted as we both were by his nanny, who proved to be a
tower of strength. Other than with this, I was entirely occupied in
management of the estate now that Robert was no longer there to
handle such matters. I sold my house in London and settled permanently at Barrowteign , the running of the place keeping me busy
and leaving me little time to brood. For all that the house was sadder without its master, I was at least usefully engaged in maintaining it.

Society and politics I continued to shun , falling out of touch
with national affairs. When the Parliament Act was finally passed
in August 1911, ending two years of struggle between the Commons

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and the Lords, I paid it no heed. I could never be a country gentleman in my brother’s mould, but I could absorb myself in life and
work at Barrowteign to some effect. It was as good a therapy as any
for one in my condition. As the years slipped by, I did not learn to
forget Elizabeth, but at length I adjusted to being without her. I did
not succeed in becoming a happy man , but at least I ceased to be an
entirely hapless one.

A man forms habits to cope with reality. Deprived of political
life, I could at least read about it in the newspapers and did so assiduously. Wryly, over breakfast at Barrowteign , I read how my successor at the Home Office, Churchill, turned the siege of Sidney
Street into an exhibition of his own flare for theatricality. Ruefully,
I followed his successor in turn , McKenna, in his ever more desperate dealings with the Suffragettes.

As for Elizabeth, I could glean nothing of her, though I scanned
the personal and social columns for anything that might tell me
how she fared. I was determined to make no more active enquiries
and stuck to that, for life at Barrowteign had become sufficient for
me. Nevertheless, I was momentarily shaken when I read that a
Suffragette had died after throwing herself under the King’s horse
at the 1913 Derby, but, as soon as I had established her identity, my
mind was at rest again.

The following summer, that rest was lost to me. By a cruel coincidence, it was on the morning of 22 June 1914—four years to the
day after Elizabeth and I celebrated so tenderly our impending
wedding—that I read the following announcement in
The Times : The marriage took place at St. Peter’s, Putney, on Saturday, June 20th, between Miss Elizabeth Latimer of Sutler Terrace, Putney, and Major Gerald Couchman of Garrard Court, South Kensington, formerly of the Devonshire regiment.

I read the announcement again—then again. What could I do?

What was I to say? The words would not rearrange themselves before my eye. They continued, however hard I looked, to shout at me
in silent mockery. Elizabeth married was one thing, which appalled
but did not surprise me; Elizabeth married to Gerald Couchman
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was quite another. Two figures from my past had only one connection and that was me. What could this mean?

“What is it, Edwin?” My mother had noticed my dismay from
across the breakfast table.

“Nothing.”

She picked up the paper from where I had let it fall and scanned
the page. “Oh, Edwin ,” she said at length. “I see here what it is. It is
not nothing and I know how you must feel. But surely you must
have expected it sooner or later.”

“Not to that man.”

“I paid his name no attention. Do you know him?”

“As you do. Look again.”

She did so. “Good heavens. Gerald Couchman . . . surely you . . .

surely we . . .”

“Yes, Mother. That is my friend Couch, however clearly our
hearts say that it cannot be so.”

“But I never knew they were even acquainted.”

“Nor I. Nor were they, I swear, until . . . until when? That is the
question.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that it is a mystery that they should know each other,
since I am their only apparent connection. And where there is one
mystery may lie the answer to another. I must go to London at
once.”

I strode for the door and paused only at my mother’s word.

“What will you do in London? What is the point in going there after all this time?”

“To find out what I can.”

Mother could see that it was useless to attempt to stop me.

Within the hour, I was ready to go. After a word with our bailiff on
what to do in my absence, I was off. After 31⁄2 years of avoiding even
a short visit to London because of the indulgence of my emotional
and political nostalgia that such a trip would represent, now I was
speeding in that direction with no clear plan of action, just a new-found conviction that stoicism was no longer enough, that the sense
of injustice that had all along burned within me might not merely
be self-perceived.

London was subdued by midsummer heat when I reached it in

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the late afternoon. I sped past the carts and cabs of sprawling subur-bia, leaving dust and shouts in my wake, heading straight for
Putney. There, by the church where once I had wept openly for my
lost love and where, but two days since, she had married, I halted. I
walked slowly down the road to Sutler Terrace and viewed the
house. Everything was as I remembered it: the well-tended lawns,
the wistaria arch leading to the garden behind, the polished brass
knocker on the dark green front door, closed to me forever four years
before. I pushed open the gate and walked up the path.