He missed — a failure he regretted for the rest of his life. Ashamed of the regret, whose twinges came sharply on him as soon as he saw his father’s whitened face still intact, he rushed out of the house swearing never to come back.
After a few days on the streets there seemed nothing else to do but go for a soldier, which he did with the South Notts Hussars, who were being fitted up for service in the Boer War. When his mother got wind of his enlistment she wrote to the Army Office to say he was too young for active service, and had him called off the troopship at Southampton an hour before it left.
It was as well he didn’t go, for the regiment supposedly disgraced itself in South Africa by refusing to charge at well-hidden and deadly Boer rifles, many troopers having already been killed and wounded because of the slovenly tactical arrangements of their officers. It was due to these casualties that Lord Roberts, one of the commanders in the war, was booed and hissed when he led a parade into Nottingham at the end of it.
Bert went home to an uneasy parental truce and got work with a firm of upholsterers. He enlisted as a cavalryman when the Great War began, and was on guard at a camp outside Boulogne when the horses broke loose one night during an air-raid. One of them kicked so violently that his arm was broken in three places, and he was stunned by agony, unable to get off the ground. An officer who saw him lying there shouted that he was trying to hide from the bombs, adding that if he didn’t stand up like a man and go about his business he would have him court-martialled.
Bert’s response was not clear enough to be heard through the noise of gunfire and bombs, and the officer thought he was being insolent instead of explanatory, so lifted his stick with the intention of hitting him if he didn’t get back to work. Night, uneasy horses, loud bangs of anti-aircraft guns, and the sweat of fast-running panic created a permanent nightmare. To Bert war seemed to have spread over everything human and animal, even back to the dreamy recesses of his past life — which now seemed idyllic. It was as if it had gone for ever in the great rattle-bang of the midnight sky, and he blamed the young but bloodshot face fixed near by.
Rage overcame his pain and shot him to his feet, and he threatened to smash the officer with his one good fist if he didn’t get out of the way. He was surprised at the effect of his action, but glad nevertheless, for the officer sidestepped him and walked quickly to another part of the camp in case his historical ability to restore order should be impaired at the present place before it had had time to go into action there. Bert never forgave him for thinking he was a coward, and for treating him, he said, as German officers were said to treat their own men.
In the darker moments of his subsequent life he was haunted by the encounter, which he worked into a well-endowed focus for his personal hatred. The officer fully intended to have him court-martialled for insubordination but desisted when told of the smashed arm, though he did not apologize or make any comment. Such was the way in which the ‘splendid material of the New Armies’ was treated. For the first time men of self-respect were brought up against the brutal realities of what they had committed themselves to defend.
Perhaps the Great War conveniently used up Bert’s excess of spirit, for when it finished he was content to work at his craft as upholsterer. He did not want to take over his father’s business, though only he had the skill and perseverance to do so, but stayed the rest of his life at one firm. He was an elderly man when I knew him, a quiet person who had the reputation of keeping very much to himself. By then he was proud of the fact that he had been employed for so long at the same place, one of whose workshops had his own name over the door.
Yet he had more inner turmoil to contend with than his brothers, a restlessness that curbed any ambition, so that he needed all his energy to live a normal life. It was hard to imagine, seeing that bald, glint-eyed man sitting by the fire with a pipe between his teeth which he wouldn’t always take out to talk in his clear and measured voice, that he’d joined the cavalry during two wars, and had been a daredevil in horsemanship.
His brothers testified to his prowess as a rider, saying that his absolute way with horses was due to human strength, animal sympathy, and a cunning that blended both. Frederick said he’d taken well to the military life from time to time, even describing him as something of a martinet, which may have been because he was the only one of the six sons to rebel against his father.
But there was something of the tethered horse in him too, of a man who knew how to tame a horse and who realized that he also had been broken in, and placed firmly under the domestic saddle. Perhaps life would have been insupportable if he hadn’t, yet in an unguarded moment he allowed one to see his unsettled eyes wondering what he was doing in the imprisoning parlour where he sat and told his tale. He was the only one of my father’s family who was connected in spirit to the Burtons, though as far as I know he never met any of them.
50
Edgar snubbed the roses of Picardy by surviving the Great War as a prisoner of the Germans, then went back to work for his father. He married some time during the twenties, but his wife left him after a few months. She accused him of leading her an unspeakable life, while he in his brooding silence could not begin to fathom what she meant.
My sister talked about life at the Sillitoes when I saw her in Nottingham City Hospital just before she died of cancer. She remembered further back than ever before, and recalled a visit to their shop when she was four or five. I must have been with her as well but, being barely two years of age, had no memory of it.
We spent much of the time playing on the stairs while sharp arguments went on in one of the rooms. The ground floor of the house consisted of the shop and work-alcoves. On the next floor was a large lounge and the living quarters, and the top storey was occupied by several bedrooms.
Perhaps they were talking about who should take over the business when the old man died, an honour which eventually fell to my father. It meant little that he could not read or write, because in those days there were many such men who nevertheless prospered. And he had been reasonably trained as an upholsterer, perhaps to make up for the early neglect.
However Edgar wanted it for himself, and talked him out of it with little difficulty, since my father was particularly softhearted where family affairs were concerned.
But Edgar lost control of the flourishing business in less than half a year because of his drinking. The shop — as my sister put it — had to be sold under him, and he then took up odd-jobbing and journeying in the upholstery trade. This might have given him a fair living, but he needed the oblivion or good-feeling of being drunk, and boozed all that he earned.
In our part of the family he was known as ‘Eddie the Tramp’, and now and again would come and bed down with us a few nights. As we were often destitute he must really have been at the end of his tether, though maybe it was the company of a brother and a few children he wanted, rather than the cups of tea and pieces of bread he’d get by way of food.
On each occasion he probably hoped to stay longer than he did, but my parents never managed his company for more than one night, suddenly deciding he drank too much, or stank too much, or said too little, or took up too much space in the small room, or stared at them when in fact he was only looking emptily at the wall. And then there’d be shouting, and he’d snatch at his cap and bag of tools, and be out of the door before either my sister or I knew what was going on.
He once spent Christmas with us when he hadn’t slept in a bed for months, and smelled like it. My father gave him his spare shirt, and my mother sent him to the public baths before they closed, telling him not to call in any pub on the way back or there’d be no hot dinner for him.