The First Casualty (3 page)

The bitter sarcasm masked Agnes’s pain but now the tears came. She pulled a handkerchief from her cuff and blew her nose, then she slipped the wedding ring from her finger and slid it discreetly beneath the grille that separated them. Kingsley stared down at it.

‘Take it,’ Agnes said quietly.

He picked up the ring and put it on his little finger.

‘I still love you, Douglas,’ Agnes added, almost whispering now, ‘and I always will. I think that is the hardest thing of all.’

Then she rose to her feet once more. This time she would clearly not be sitting down again.

‘We shall not speak again, Douglas. You shall hear from me via Mr Phipps at the Downey Street Chambers.’

‘Very well,’ Kingsley replied.

‘When we are divorced, will you allow George to take his grandfather’s name? My name?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank you. Goodbye.’

Agnes hurried from the room as quickly as her fast-dissolving dignity would allow. For a moment Kingsley was visited by the recollection of her turning and running from him in happier times, in the summer of their courtship. It had been at the Gardens at Kew, which they had visited for a Sunday picnic. He had begged a kiss, a kiss which she most clearly intended to grant him but not before a suitable chase had ensued. He had chased her for fully half an hour before winning his prize. Agnes had never been easily won over in any part of their lives together.

Kingsley watched her disappear from the room, wondering if his heart would break. Logic informed him that of course it would not. The heart was no more than a muscle, a pump which distributed blood about the body; it had nothing whatsoever to do with a man’s emotions. But if that was the case, why did it ache so?

FOUR

The Lavender Lamp Club, London

On the same evening that Kingsley was receiving his visitor at Brixton Prison in south London, in Frith Street just off Soho Square a very different kind of reception was under way. Captain Alan Abercrombie, late of the London Regiment (Artists Rifles), was bidding farewell to a few friends at the end of a short period of leave from the Western Front. He was not in uniform — uniforms were banned at the Lavender Lamp, or Bartholomew’s Private Hotel to give it its proper title. Soldier patrons were invited to remove their tunics and don one of the beautiful silk dressing gowns that hung from hatstands in the entrance hall of the club.

The Lavender Lamp had got its name from its proprietor’s preference for gas lamps, which he liked to shade with lavender-coloured screens imported from Italy.

‘Gaslight is so much softer and more romantic,’ Mr Bartholomew explained to guests who enquired how it was that such a wealthy establishment had not yet gone electric. ‘One cannot make love under electric light, it’s so terribly
brutal
. It leaves
nothing
to the imagination, dear. I doubt that
Mr Edison
was a very romantic soul. Although I must concede that it is to his genius that we owe the happy fact that I may still hear the voice of
dear
Oscar, although Oscar himself has long since left us.’ An early wax-tube recording of Oscar Wilde reading ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ was one of Mr Bartholomew’s most treasured possessions. Mr Bartholomew always claimed to have been, in his youth, intimate with the great writer but nobody really believed him.

Inspector Kingsley would certainly have heard of the Lavender Lamp Club, which was an exclusively male establishment. He would have been aware that some of the things that went on in the upstairs rooms by the light of Mr Bartholomew’s gas lamps were highly illegal, and had Kingsley been a witness to them he would reluctantly have been forced to make an arrest. But the police never visited the club (with the exception of one or two highly placed officers who went there on a non-professional basis), for this was no low brothel but an exclusive social club where gentlemen of status who shared certain tastes met privately behind heavily barred doors. Nobody got past Mr Bartholomew and his sturdy porters whom Mr Bartholomew did not know personally or who had not been personally recommended to him. At the Lavender Lamp Club patrons were free to drop the constant, grinding pretence that they wore like a cloak in almost every other circumstance of their lives. For a happy hour or two, they could be themselves.

Mr Bartholomew knew Captain Abercrombie, of course — or Viscount Abercrombie as he had been in civilian life — for the young captain was a celebrity, a published poet and decorated soldier, a famous wit and bon viveur and a highly valued patron of the club. As were the friends with whom Abercrombie was sharing magnums of Veuve Clicquot ‘06 and dishes of cold partridge with water biscuits and chutney, all being consumed in an atmosphere of the greatest hilarity.

‘I think I shouldn’t mind a bullet very much,’ Abercrombie remarked as he busied himself pouring champagne. ‘It takes you either straight to heaven or back to Blighty, which surely must be nearly as blissful. Unless of course one was hit in the tool shed.

That
I simply couldn’t bear. If ever young
Private
Abercrombie was unable to come to
full attention
I think I’d stick my head above the parapet and let Fritz finish me off there and then.’

‘Well, don’t go waving it about at the front,’ one of his companions remarked. ‘From what I recall it would make one a devil of a target.’

‘It would, my dear, it would,’ Abercrombie replied with mock sorrow. ‘
Fearfully
easy to hit, I’m disgustingly proud to admit. When brother Boche finally throws in the towel I intend to run a flag up it!’

The laughter was loud and the champagne flowed. Abercrombie was not the only soldier whose leave was up that night and the party had a determined wildness to it, as any party might when a number of the guests present are well aware that it may be the last party they ever attend. Guests who in the morning would venture forth to do their duty by, and perhaps give their lives for, a country which despised them.

‘I say, do you suppose,’ a major in the Blues and Royals in a gown of emerald and turquoise enquired, ‘that after the war, what with them talking about giving women the vote and Home Rule to the Paddies and God knows what kind of autonomy to the wogs, they might start going a bit easier on us poor old queens? Eh? Any chance, d’you think?’

‘Not a bit of it,’ another replied. ‘If there’s one thing the average Englishman cannot abide it’s a sodomite and there’s an end to it.’

‘Which is most puzzling,’ Abercrombie added, ‘when one considers how many average Englishmen
are
sodomites, or damn well wish they were.’

This sally provoked more laughter, more bottles were ordered and one or two younger men who were not the viscount’s guests but were known to Mr Bartholomew joined the group, and there was dancing and flirting and cuddling in corners and one or two couples began to drift towards the staircase that led to the rooms above.

‘Play ‘Forever England’,’ a young man called out to the piano player.

But Viscount Abercrombie was not happy with the request.

‘Damn it, anything but that! I forbid it!’ he said firmly.

The young man looked crestfallen.

‘I’m sorry,’ he stammered. ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘My dear sweet boy,’ the Viscount replied, in a softer tone, ‘have you any idea how often I have to suffer that wretched dirge? It follows me about the place like some jilted lover. Everywhere I go it’s a step or two behind me and I have to smile and nod and pretend I’m delighted. A nightmare, dear boy. A bloody nightmare.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I had no idea. Don’t you like being famous then? ‘

‘Well, I like being lionized and admired and petted, of course, but you can’t turn it off, you see. I dread to dine out because I know that by the time my soup’s arrived there will be a giggling gaggle of moon-faced flappers hovering behind the pastry trolley and I shall have to smile and write my name on their menu cards until my food has gone stone cold.’

Viscount Abercrombie pressed a glass of champagne into the young man’s hand and called for cognac and sugar to make a proper drink of it.

‘It’s worse for me, being a
bachelor
,’ he added, taking the man’s hand and leading him to a velvet divan. ‘All the fat mamas push their revolting skinny little darlings on to me, hoping to make a famous match. Little chance of that, I fear, despite the pleadings of one’s
own
mama.’

Abercrombie laid his hand upon the young man’s knee.

‘So who are you then, young scout,’ he enquired, ‘apart from a charming boy who has no taste in music but looks delightful in silk? ‘

‘I’m Stamford,’ the man replied, his voice shaking with nerves. ‘Well, Stamford, what brings you to Bartholomew’s Private Hotel?’

‘I heard about it from a fellow I fagged for at Harrow…We kept in touch and he told me that I’d be…welcome here.’

‘And he was right.’

‘We were…‘friends’ at school.’

‘You mean he used you shamelessly, the beast.’

‘I didn’t mind.’

‘I’ll bet you didn’t, my primrose pal. And here at the Lavender Lamp we can all pretend we’re still at school, eh?’

Abercrombie leaned over and kissed Stamford on the cheek. The young man went red and smiled brightly.

‘I was so hoping that I’d get a chance to meet you,’ he said. ‘We’re to be in the same regiment, you know.’

‘Well, darling, what a coincidence! Perhaps we shall share a puddle together. You can massage my trench feet and I shall rub yours.’

‘Is it truly terribly awful? I’ve spoken to other fellows who say it’s pretty grim.’

‘And they were honest men, young Stamford, pretty grim is exactly what it is except grimmer.’

They were closer now. Abercrombie had his arm around the shoulders of the younger man and had poured them both another champagne and cognac.

‘It’s all right for you,’ Stamford said, ‘you’re so terribly brave. ‘Terribly, darling. I
drip
with medals. I’d rather thought of having a couple made into earrings. Wouldn’t that look smart on parade?’

‘You see, you can even joke about it. I’m sure I never shall. I’m scared that I shall funk it and let everybody down.’

‘Tell you what,’ Abercrombie said, ‘let’s not talk about it, eh? Let’s pretend that there is no beastly rotten war at all and that the only interest we need take in soldiering is cruising for a compliant Guardsman outside the palace when we fancy something rough.’

Abercrombie kissed Stamford again but this time on the mouth. When their lips separated the young man grinned nervously and took up a little leather manuscript bag that lay on the velvet cushions beside him. Abercrombie’s face fell instantly.

‘Sweetums, please, please don’t say that you have poems in that satchel.’

Now it was the turn of the young man’s face to fall.

‘I…Well, yes,’ he stammered. ‘I’ve written one about…’

‘Your feelings on going off to war?’

‘Yes, exactly!’ the young man replied, looking pleased again. ‘Just like poor old Rupert Brooke, silly Siegfried Sassoon and brave Viscount Abercrombie with his simply thrilling and stirring ‘Forever England’?’

‘Well, I would never class myself in — ’

‘Are you proud, young Stamford? Do you hope to do your best? Shall you miss the country of your birth but nonetheless are content to go and die for it if needs be?’

The young man was crestfallen.

‘You’re laughing at me.’

‘Well, come on, am I right?’

‘That’s what I wrote about, yes.’

‘What’s it called?’

‘It’s called ‘England, Home and Beauty.’

‘Good. No need to read it then, eh? Put away your satchel, little schoolboy, and dance awhile with me instead.’

‘I think you’re very cruel,’ Stamford said, tears starting in his eyes. ‘I’m a poet, just like you. I thought that you might respect that.’

‘I’m not a poet, darling. Not any more. Bored with it. Such a yawn, don’t you know. Haven’t written a thing in months. Not a bean. And by the way, have you any idea how many people come up to me and want me to read their silly stuff? They send it to me in the bloody post! Simply
everyone’s
a poet these days, darling! I think that’s why I’ve chucked it in, just
too, too common for words
.’

‘So you won’t read my work?’

‘No, little poet, I will not.’

‘I see.’

Stamford put his satchel aside.

‘Can we still be friends?’ he enquired. ‘Even though you think me contemptible?’

‘Darling! Contemptible? Whatever gave you that idea? I think you’re sweet and lovely and very, very beautiful and honestly if I were ever again to read
anyone’s
poems I should read yours first and only yours but, you see, I shan’t, ever…and tonight, well, wouldn’t it be more fun to dance?’

The pianist was playing a waltz and Abercrombie took Stamford by the hand.

‘Come along, sweetie,’ he said. ‘I’ll be Albert, you be Doris.’

Together they waltzed as best they could in the limited space available in front of Mr Bartholomew’s little bar. Two or three other couples shared the floor and they all danced together until, one by one, they drifted towards the staircase.