A dog was barking a long way off. A million miles from his life and the dread which he must conceal from everyone.
‘Good morning, Colonel! You
are
an early bird!’
He lurched to his feet, surprised she was here, guilty at what she might see in him.
She was wearing a cool-looking flowered dress, with the same country boots showing beneath it. The smile on her lips was uncertain and questioning.
‘Is something wrong? If I’ve come at an awkward
time I do apologise . . . It’s just that we heard you were back.’ She tossed the long chestnut hair from her face. ‘This is always a nice walk, isn’t it?’
He was suddenly certain that this was no casual meeting. She had been coming here to see him.
He said, ‘I wanted a place where I could think. I was sorry I missed the chance to talk with you at the barracks. You’ll never know what a difference it made to me – your being there, I mean.’
She looked at him directly. ‘Well, you were going to be pretty busy. I could see that. And besides . . .’ She seemed to change her mind. ‘My father was very pleased.’
Had it been David she had seen receiving the D.S.O. on that last cold day of January, instead of himself?
He asked, ‘May I walk with you a while?’
She was searching his face for something. Or someone.
‘It’s your land. Or will be again when this terrible war is over.’ Then she changed the subject once more. ‘When I found you just now, lost and miles away in your thoughts, I saw the young boy you used to be. Wistful. Full of hope, perhaps.’
He said suddenly, ‘I’ve thought about you a lot. Ever since we met on this path.’ He hurried on as something like a warning showed in her face. ‘I used to ask myself, what colour were her eyes? Blue or grey? I was even wrong about that. They’re green.’
She seemed disconcerted, thrown off guard.
‘Like my mother’s. You don’t remember her, do you?’
‘Of course I do.’
They began to walk, but he was careful not to brush against her.
She asked abruptly, ‘Are we going to win this war, Colonel Blackwood?’
‘Please call me Jonathan.’ He glanced at her fine profile, the tiny pulse beating in her throat. Then he answered her without hesitation. ‘Nobody’s going to win.’
‘You mean that, don’t you? When I met you I imagined you would be quite different about it. I felt so badly afterwards. Not because of the medal – expect you’ve earned that a dozen times over – but because of . . . things. What Harry Payne said about you.’
That’s the first I’ve heard of it
. But he said nothing, watching each emotion, afraid of losing or forgetting it.
‘Down at the barracks too. Those poor men . . . they have nothing left. Like the ones I teach. I sometimes think some of them must hate me because I’m whole, or because I’m safe at home.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said, but she did not appear to hear.
‘You went amongst them. I saw what it did for them, and what it was doing to you.’
They walked on in silence, pausing only once to listen as the cuckoo called again.
‘Is it true you’re leaving soon?’
He replied quietly, ‘So they say.’
What was the point of it? There was no future for him: how could he even dare to think of it? So that they could snatch a few hours or days together before he was lost to
Armageddon, or worse, come back to her like some horror from the grave?
She said in a small voice, ‘People will miss you around here.’ She said it with barely controlled emotion, so that her soft Hampshire accent was more pronounced. She did not wait for him to answer but said, ‘What were you thinking of, when I found you by the path?’
‘About all this, I suppose. What would happen to it if . . .’
She put her hand on his arm. ‘Don’t say it! Don’t even think of it.’ There was anguish in her voice, and he supposed it was for David. ‘You should find some nice girl who understands your sort of life . . .’
He glanced down at her hand. Small, well-shaped and strong. With skin like hers she would soon be brown when the summer came.
He said steadily, ‘I’ve found her. But like David, she doesn’t know.’
‘I told you that in confidence.’
‘And I told you this – Alexandra.’
When he looked again there were patches of colour in her cheeks.
‘You mustn’t talk like that.’
‘I know. But I just did.’ He paused, and plunged on. ‘I’m thirty-four years old, and like my brothers and all my family I’ve always served the Corps. I was closer to David than anyone, but I can never be like him. Or like any of them.’ He could not stop now; was afraid to stop in case she turned away from him. ‘When I take my men to Flanders it won’t be me who’s leading them, it will be the Blackwood family. And I don’t think I can deal with
it. It’s all such a . . .’ He groped for the words. ‘Such a bloody waste.’
She waited, but he said nothing else. They walked on.
They paused by the fence with the rickety stile and she said, ‘I must go back now.’ There was a silence, then she went on, ‘I’m twenty-six . . . and until a few minutes ago I thought I knew everything. You’ve proved me wrong in almost every aspect of this war. Men who treat you like a friend when they’ve hardly anything left . . .’ Her voice caught, but she persisted. ‘And those who lead them into battle, or direct it from a safe distance. I always thought they must be callous, and wanting only glory.’
He reached out to touch her hand but she pulled away. ‘No, please. It’s all too quick. I must have time to think.’
He was losing her. But she had never been his to lose.
He asked, ‘May I see you again? Just to walk with you?’
‘I shall be at the hospital tomorrow.’ Then she said, rather desperately he thought, ‘We can be friends, can’t we? Is it not enough?’
He smiled. ‘I feel better already.’
He watched her climb the stile, and on the other side she turned, her eyes half-closed against the sun. Then she smiled in response.
‘
My friends
call me Alex!’ She did not look back, although he watched her out of sight.
When he reached the house he could not convince himself that it had happened, or that he was not reading too much into ordinary words and gestures.
Tomorrow then . . .
He found Payne in the stable-yard with an army
motor-cyclist, his goggles pushed to the top of his cap. The rider saluted and pulled an envelope from his pouch, and he sensed Payne watching him grimly as he signed for it.
He hardly saw the motor-cycle go, puttering down the drive into the silence as he tore open the envelope.
She had green eyes, and he could call her Alex . . .
The paper seemed to mist over as he tried to hold onto her picture in his mind.
Payne asked quietly, ‘Trouble, sir?’
He looked at him and beyond him to the high copse and the golden sea of daffodils. It had been only a dream after all.
He was surprised how calm and empty he sounded.
‘The battalion embarks for France in five days’ time.’
Doctor Alfred Pitcairn finished washing his hands and dried them vigorously on a towel. He was a neat, wiry man who looked more like a university professor than a country G.P. He glanced at his list of house-calls and did not look up when his departing nurse called a greeting to someone in the passageway. The door opened and closed again. Alex was home.
She came in and crossed to the desk where her father heard all the woes and symptoms of people he had known most of his life, and those of their offspring as well, although there weren’t too many of those left in the village.
‘Hard day, Daddy?’ She moved to the open window and stood looking out at the garden.
‘The usual. Some decent food would do them more
good than I can. They’re going to ration bread now, I hear, as if things aren’t bad enough.’
She said suddenly, ‘How much longer do you think it will go on?’
He put on his jacket. ‘I’ve almost stopped asking myself that.’ She sounded troubled. ‘What is it, Alex? Your work?’
She did not answer directly. ‘I went to see Colonel Blackwood today. I thought I should apologise for dragging you away after the presentation.’ She paused. ‘He was very nice to me. Not at all what I expected.’
Doctor Pitcairn sat down and began to fill what he had always called his cutty pipe. There was more to it than that, he thought.
‘Are you making comparisons, Alex?’
She said defensively, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Your mother told me, you know. We had no secrets. I decided to say nothing about it.’ He watched her sensitive face. ‘But at the barracks I saw it all there again. Try to forget him, Alex. You’ll meet some other nice young man, you’ll see.’ She moved about the room touching things so familiar that she no longer even noticed them. ‘And talking to his brother isn’t going to help.’
He watched the pipesmoke drifting through the window. She was a lovely young woman, he thought, so like her mother as she had once been, and yet there were no men in her life, apart from that youthful infatuation with David Blackwood and the cheerful young subaltern in the Rifle Brigade. Even if he had not been killed, nothing would have come of that. There was no one else, certainly not locally. The men still at home were farmers
working on the land; cider and darts in the pub, and after marriage far too many children. He wanted something more than that for Alex. She was not a headstrong girl, not with him anyway, but she was solitary and very private. He had been surprised when she had asked to be trained to teach blind children, but he no longer doubted her sincerity. When she was not at Hawks Hill she helped partially-sighted veterans to train others who were completely blind.
She was looking at him now but her gaze was far away.
‘He asked if he could see me again. I think he’s lonely, and can’t talk to his men about things.’
He put down his pipe and said quietly, ‘John Potter the grocer was in here just now with a poisoned hand. He said Colonel Blackwood’s batman was in the shop today, buying a few things.’
‘Harry Payne. Yes, I’ve met him.’
‘He says they’re off soon. Very soon . . . inevitable, I suppose.’
‘But he’s only just got here! He’s not ready for it!’
‘I know. I was talking to one of the army surgeons. He said he knew Jonathan Blackwood in hospital in Plymouth. He was pretty badly wounded . . . worse than I realised.’
‘But they can’t make him go, Daddy. Not after that . . .’
He walked round the desk and held her closely. ‘He’s a Blackwood, Alex. You know what that means. Besides which, they need men like him, if only to bring this bloody thing to an end.’
‘But the Americans are in the war at last. They’ll make
all the difference, won’t they?’ She looked at him despairingly. ‘It can’t last forever!’
‘It takes time,’ he said. ‘The Americans may not be so eager to throw lives away for nothing.’ He had almost added,
the way we do
, but the expression in her eyes had been a warning. ‘Perhaps the orders will be changed.’ It sounded so inadequate that he was suddenly angry with himself. ‘Are you going to see him before he goes?’
She wiped her eyes with her handkerchief, the same one she had raised to Jonathan on that cold bright day. An army lorry was rattling through the village, filled with soldiers who were singing lustily as if they hadn’t a care in the world.
‘
Take me back to dear old Blighty . . .!
’
‘I said I would.’
Doctor Pitcairn glanced around his untidy consulting room, imagining life without her to chat to about everything under the sun. It was as selfish as it was natural, he thought.
‘I’ll use my bicycle,’ she said. ‘It’s quicker.’ She kissed him. ‘Don’t worry about me, Daddy. I can take care of myself. And anyway . . . it’s nothing like that.’
He smiled sadly. It was everything like that.
She was surprised to find Jack Swan moving a metal trunk down the curving stairway, assisted by one of the orderlies. She blurted out the reason for her visit, very aware that the sergeant on the desk and the white-coated orderly were both gaping at her.
Jack Swan was breathing hard from carrying the heavy trunk, and took far too long to answer.
‘Just missed him, my dear. Motor car came about an
hour back.’ He saw her shocked surprise. ‘All a bit of a rush.’
She said in a whisper, ‘Gone? Not coming back?’
The sergeant said unhelpfully, ‘There are a lot of troops on the move, I hear.’
She looked past him. The sunlight was still there, throwing patterns through the trees; but she saw none of it.
Wheels grated on the drive and she ran to the door. But it was an ambulance, the red crosses like blood in the sun. The sergeant folded his newspaper and grunted, ‘’Nother one, Fred. Fetch the duty orderlies.’
Jack Swan lowered his voice. ‘He left you a letter, Miss.’
She was still staring at the driveway. She had thought it was the car, bringing him back.
‘Letter?’
Swan glared as men hurried past, their faces like masks as they prepared themselves for what they were about to see.
‘Come into the kitchen. You’ll be more private there.’
He closed the door very quietly behind her and sat impassively on a chair outside.
For a long time she stared at the envelope with its unfamiliar handwriting before she was able to tear it open, imagining him at his desk even as Harry Payne had been packing their kit.
My very dear Alex: I am sorry we cannot have our walk tomorrow . . .
She saw tears falling on the letter. This time they did not stop.
Captain Christopher Wyke sat at a trestle table, his face set in a frown of concentration as he checked through yet another list of equipment and stores. He could feel the warmth of the filtered sunlight through the sloping side of the tent, and was conscious of the incredible silence after all the bustle of training. On this fine morning the camp was all but deserted, save for the H.Q. platoon and a few military policemen.
His father, the major-general, had been delighted that he had secured the position of adjutant to the battalion.
‘With a commanding officer like Blackwood an adjutant’s job is a sure step toward promotion!’ The Old Man had added with a chuckle, ‘Or to a nervous breakdown!’