‘Don’t forget about Captain Franklin’s horse then.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with Captain Franklin’s horse that decent riding won’t put right again.’
‘Preston!’
‘Sorry, sir. Yes, I’ll go and take a look at it now, sir.’
‘All right.’
As Hilliard stepped out of the stables, he heard the splashing sound of a horse beginning to urinate against the stone floor.
Ahead of him, the shadow of a man, standing at the top of the drive.
‘Hilliard?’
Barton.
‘I though I’d walk with you for a bit, if that’s all right.’ His voice was friendly.
Hilliard had thought that what he wanted was to be alone, to go down between the fruit trees and into the dark lane and get his bearings. But now, with Barton standing in front of him, he realized that he did not, that he had had more than enough of walking by himself, of his own thoughts and memories and despair, had had too much solitariness, at Hawton.
He said, ‘Yes, do.’
Barton fell into step with him on the rough farmyard path. Away to the west, a succession of green Verey flares lit up the sky, followed by the guns. Then it went black again, as they came down into the lane facing a belt of trees. Again, Hilliard heard the sound of water.
‘If we go up here and turn off to the left we come into another orchard. It leads across to the church eventually. There’s a bit of a stream.’
Hilliard nodded and they went that way. The air smelled damp, there might be some mist at dawn.
He thought, I should remember this, I should remember everything about it, for it will not last. At once, the atmosphere around him seemed too insubstantial to be remembered, it was nothing, was only a walk between trees and through long grass at night, there were the usual sounds and smells, the hidden movements of small creatures in the undergrowth. There was nothing in particular to remember. And everything.
‘We’re for the front again next week, sir.’
The men always heard rumours and the rumours spread and turned out to be the truth.
Their footsteps swished through the grass. They came nearer to the sound of water.
‘I’m glad you’ve come,’ Barton said easily.
They went as far as the edge of the stream and then sat down, leaning against some willows. Barton lit a cigarette and the sparks flickered upwards through the leaves of the tree. His eyes and the lower half of his face were in darkness, but the line of his nose, with its high, narrow bridge, gleamed bone-white. The tree trunks were like pewter.
Looking at him, Hilliard though that Barton was handsome, and that he would have liked to introduce him to Beth. That thought had never occurred to him with any man before, probably because he had taken so few friends home. But he dismissed the idea almost at once, for Beth was too old, was twenty-four, was plain and about to marry the lawyer Henry Partington. Thinking of the new person she had become, he knew that she would not understand anything about Barton. He was not sure if he did so himself. But he wanted to understand. Beth might not.
‘I didn’t expect it to be like this,’ Barton was saying. His knees were up to his chin, head forward as he looked at the water. ‘I’d heard all the things you do hear about the war. I hadn’t expected it to be such a pleasant life.’
‘We are in rest camp, you know.’
You wait, he should be saying, you wait. But where was the point of that? Barton would find out, soon enough.
‘All the same, it’s a bit like being back at O.T.C. Rather boring. I thought at least we’d be under shell fire or sharing a room with some rats.’
‘Is that what you were looking forward to?’
‘Oh God, no!’
‘Then why say it? And this won’t last forever.’
‘No. I didn’t want to come out here at all, I was in a blue funk. I’d have done more or less anything… but I’m fit and of age, I couldn’t slip through the net. So I suppose I’d better make the most of it.’
‘Do you always tell people everything you’re feeling?’
Barton looked round at him in surprise. ‘Generally. If I want to. If they want to hear.’ He paused and then laughed. ‘Good Lord, we’re not at school now, are we?’
Hilliard did not reply.
‘Besides, it’s the way we were brought up. To say things, tell people what you feel. I don’t mean to force it on anyone. But not to bottle things up.’
‘I see.’
‘It’s my father mainly. He’s pretty busy so we might easily go through life seeing hardly anything of him. He makes a point of seeing each of us alone, for a while, every week, find-out what we’re doing, asking if we’ve anything to tell him, you know? It’s a bit like having an appointment in his surgery really!’
‘He’s a doctor?’
‘Yes.’
‘When you say “we…”’
‘There are six of us. Three brothers older than me, two sisters, younger. We all came tumbling one after another though, so we seem much of an age. It’s good that way, especially now. We’ve always been close, of course, but when you’re small children you just take that for granted, don’t you?’
Do you? Hilliard tried to decide. Yes, he had been close to Beth. But that had changed, now they were older, separated.
He said, ‘I have one sister.’
‘Younger?’
‘No, she’s twenty-four.’
‘Is she married?’
‘She – not yet.’
‘Tell her to get a move on, then you can have all your nephews and nieces – you’ll enjoy that.’
‘Shall I?’
‘Oh, of course. I do. I get on with my sisters best, I think. Both of them are married now.’
Barton slid down the tree-trunk into the grass, resting on his arm. ‘No, I withdraw that, there’s really no difference between any of us, we all live out of one another’s pockets. And the brothers-in-law now. They’ve just been absorbed into the family! I shan’t like it being out here and not seeing any of them. We’re all so split up now.’
‘Haven’t your brothers joined up?’
‘One’s got exemption because he has tuberculosis. Dick’s in the R.A.M.C. but he’s gone out to Egypt. My youngest brother’s in prison.’ He talked about them as though he had never in his life found any reason to keep things back. Hilliard was slightly embarrassed.
‘He’s a conchy. I nearly was, but then I realized it was nothing to do with conscience, it was just because I was frightened and wanted to get out of coming to France. Edward’s different, he really means it. He put up a terrific fight, and he’s having a rotten time, it isn’t much fun for him. I’m better off than he is, at the moment.’
What he felt most of all was envy of Barton. He tried to picture what it would be like to have a family, to whom you were so close, about whom you could talk so lovingly, people you missed every day, and admitted to missing. What would it feel like? What kind of people were they, all these Bartons? What did they say and do together?
‘I suppose you didn’t much want to come back either, did you? Especially since you already know what it’s like?’
‘I don’t…’ But there seemed no way he could begin to explain, not without telling everything about himself. He had never done that.
Barton had moved forward and was leaning his arm down into the stream. ‘This is pretty well dried up,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I wonder how long since it rained?’
Something seemed to click inside Hilliard. It was all right. Barton was all right. He could talk, after all, could tell him anything.
‘I didn’t mind coming back,’ he said, ‘it was so bloody awful at home. I couldn’t stick it. Not that I forgot what it had been like out here – I had nightmares about it. Nobody ever forgets. But I couldn’t bear to stay on at home, to stay in England at all, it’s… I can’t explain. I wish I could tell you.’