‘What do you find to say?’ Hilliard had once asked, watching the flow of Barton’s hand on and on, page after page. He had looked up, puzzled.
‘Oh, there’s no shortage of material, surely?’
‘Isn’t there?’
‘I tell them what we do all day, I describe this place, what I can see, who goes by, what the band’s playing, and then there are all the questions to answer and ask – oh, we have jokes and so forth.’
‘Jokes?’
‘Family jokes – you know the kind of thing.’
Hilliard did not. His own letters to his family – and he wrote to them collectively, now that he had nothing private left to say to Beth – were dull, full of polite thanks for parcels and always, when he read them over, very much the same. He never referred to Barton.
‘When the war’s over or we manage to hit leave at the same time you can come and meet them all,’ Barton had said. ‘Then you’ll know who I’m talking about and writing to, you’ll get them sorted out.’
Though Hilliard had imagined them endlessly, these people who shared so much with Barton, he had looked at their faces, staring out at him from the photographs, and put names to them and remembered their individual characteristics, as Barton had described them, he built up the family piece by piece within his own mind. It pleased him.
He said, ‘I wouldn’t much like you to meet my family.’
‘Oh, I think we’d probably get on rather well.’
‘No.’
‘Why? I get along with most people.’
Yes, that was true, and he saw at once that Barton would charm his mother and tease Beth, would listen to his father without impatience, would take trouble over the Major, and that they would all like him. But he wanted to keep Barton to himself.
Then, Barton’s mother had sent him a message. It came at the end of one of her long letters. ‘And all kind thoughts to your nice friend John Hilliard.’
Barton had read it out mockingly. ‘You’re my “nice friend” – there now!’
Hilliard felt both acute pleasure and, again, a curious unease. He was afraid, too, of being known and referred to by this person he had never seen, by Barton’s mother, whose name was Miriam and wore her hair in a soft, loose bun at the nape of her neck, whose features were both plain and pretty and also strangely old-fashioned. Hilliard could not imagine his own mother sending any messages to a young man she had never met, even making allowances for the informalities of wartime. He had only managed to say, ‘Oh – well, thank her very much.’
‘Right.’
And he had watched Barton’s hand move smoothly across the paper, seen the words form upside down. ‘Hilliard says, “thank you very much”!!!’
The message back in the next letter had been, ‘John Hilliard is clearly a man of few words.’
‘So you’ll have to do better next time,’ Barton had said.
He gave Hilliard most of his letters to read, sharing them with as little concern as Hilliard shared the Fortnum and Mason’s groceries in his parcels.
After that, a dialogue was established between him and the Barton family, mother and father, brothers and sisters, short messages were passed, jokes made and he was at first uncertain how to manage it all, for he had never experienced such people. But when he said as much, Barton looked amused and only said, ‘Well, you have now!’ Hilliard knew that he did not completely understand, for to him his own family were the norm, were altogether known and presented no problems. Besides, people never did present problems to him, he got along, as he said, with everyone.
‘I hope we keep Mr Barton with us, sir,’ Coulter said, coming up into the apple loft one afternoon when Hilliard was changing into his riding boots. ‘He’s done the world of good to this company, anyone can see that. He’s done the C.O. good as well, sir.’
‘You’re right, yes.’
‘You know what happens though, sir – we always lose our best officers.’ Then, turning and catching sight of Hilliard’s expression, he added, ‘No, sir, what I mean is, they ship them off to another Battalion or put them up at Brigade H.Q. just when we need them. You know that, sir – how they mess us about, and it’s never the ones we could do without, is it?’
‘Well, let’s hope it doesn’t happen.’
‘Yes, sir. By the way, sir, I don’t know if anything’s up but I hear the Brigadier’s coming down tomorrow.’
‘Probably just routine.’
‘Checking up on us, yes, sir.’
‘I suppose we’d better get some rifle cleaning done though – give him something to approve of!’
‘If you ask me, sir, the men are all a bit sick of rifle cleaning and such, they’ve cleaned them till they’re about worn away, this past week or so.’
‘I know. But do you think they’d rather be on the move?’
But the Brigadier’s visit passed off quickly and without event, the men waited all the rest of that day and on into the evening, for some order. None came. It was only Hilliard who was sent for by Garrett – Garrett, who looked more than ever anxious, as though this long rest period were getting on his nerves, too, he would rather move back up and have it over with.
He said, ‘Captain Franklin thinks one of B Company might go off on a gas course. He thinks it would be useful. I’ve told him I didn’t want to spare you, Hilliard. If we get our marching orders this week I want you with your platoon. There are few enough experienced officers left in this Battalion, God knows. But Franklin’s got some bee in his bonnet about it. I said I’d have a word with you. Perhaps we’d better send Barton? That’s what Franklin had in mind.’
‘How long would it last?’
‘A week plus a couple of days’ travelling.’
‘Are you asking for my opinion, sir?’
‘I suppose so.’ Garrett shifted the papers about on his desk. ‘Yes. Opinion. Advice. I don’t know.’
‘We’re not likely to stay here much longer, are we? We can’t possibly.’
Garrett was silent.
‘Well – you probably don’t know anything about it, but that much does seem obvious. We don’t get an indefinite rest period and we’ve overstayed this one, surely? So the chances are that we’ll be going somewhere or other within a day or two. And – I would rather Barton stayed and went with us. I think…’ He paused. Garrett was staring down at the table, perhaps not even listening.
‘I think we heed him.’
‘Yes.’ A bluebottle droned on and on against the window pane, behind the desk. For a long time, Garrett sat, mesmerised. Hilliard noticed the faint, brown discolorations on the backs of his hands, like the mottling on the skin of a much older man. Garrett was not fifty. ‘Yes, I know.’ He looked up and into Hilliard’s face. ‘Only Franklin seems to…’
What? Garrett did not finish. Then, Hilliard knew for certain that the Adjutant disliked both Barton and himself, distrusted them, perhaps, and had done so for no good reason, from the beginning, from the first night at the dining table when he had not smiled at Barton’s stories about his horse-riding Aunt Eustacia.
‘Well – I’ll think about it. I can’t decide just now. I thought I’d find out how you saw it, that was all.’
Hilliard went out of the room and through the low doorway into the yard. The farm dog came bounding across from between the trees, nuzzling at his legs, as he nuzzled those of anyone who stopped for a moment in his vicinity. Hilliard roughed the hair of its head automatically. Franklin wanted Barton to go. Perhaps the gas course was only the first move in some plan to get him permanently transferred. Well, had he himself not wished, every day now, that Barton should not have to go up to the front line?