Now we are left in the mud and rain to begin the dreary business of repairing the damage as best we may and getting the dead moved. B Company has lost 2 officers and 3 wounded, and about 30 of other ranks. Very bad indeed for one day’s shelling.
I hope you got the note asking for the Sir Thomas Browne. It’s on my fourth shelf, a blue book. I’d also like the Japanese verse anthology and The Tempest, if you can send them, and a good novel, which choice I leave to you – just in case I ever get five minutes for reading. The same address, though it is all taking ages, as I told you. No, I have no news of leave and shouldn’t hope for any yet. I have no idea about Christmas. It’s all the luck of the draw.
John sends his love. He is much better at getting through all this than I am in spite of his not being well. He’s kept me going lately, though he would say that the boot’s on the other foot. But that cannot be true, I’ve not been fit company for anyone lately. Even Coulter remarked that ‘Mr Barton looks a bit seedy’, which is his way of saying ‘bad tempered’. Have you a chance of getting anywhere to buy me a few postcards with reproductions of paintings on them? I’d like Turner, particularly. Don’t go to a lot of trouble or expense. But I should so much like to look at something as far as possible removed from this dun, grey, muddy scenery. I think of you all having been in Wales with great envy. I should like more than anything else to be at St David’s now. Or anywhere. But I’m here because I’m here because I’m here!
‘How do you feel?’
‘Wet. I’m sick of this.’
‘Yes. What’s it like down at that end?’
Barton sat on the bunk and began to unwind his puttee. ‘Much the same. Race got his legs blown off this morning – that shell we thought had landed behind out of the way, I think. Apparently it didn’t.’
‘I can’t remember which one is Race?’
‘Glazier’s platoon. The one with the odd eyes.’
‘Odd?’
‘One blue, one green.’
Hilliard was still amazed at how much Barton took in, how many of the men he had come to know well, the small things he remembered about them. He said, ‘If you stay here long enough you’ll be a C.O.’
‘I wouldn’t want to Promotion isn’t my line.’
‘You’d make a good C.O.’
‘No, because I’d tell them the truth; I should have a demoralizing effect.’
‘That is exactly the opposite of what you do. You keep us all going, you should know that by now.’
‘There’s something wrong with this sore on my foot. It looks a peculiar colour.’
‘Let’s look – did you cut it?’
‘I suppose I must have.’
‘You’d better get dressed. Go and see Farquharson.’
‘Not with this. Anyway, I want to eat and sleep. I’ll stick a dressing on it myself if it doesn’t heal up.’
‘My father sent us a bottle of brandy in the parcel today. I’ve only just got around to opening it. And some quince jam.’
‘Praise be!’
Hilliard found a cup and poured out a good measure of the brandy and handed it to Barton. Then he said, ‘There was a letter from my sister.’
‘Beth.’
‘Yes. She’s getting married. She says on Saturday. I don’t know which Saturday – that could be tomorrow, I suppose. Tomorrow is Saturday, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Barton put a finger into the alcohol and was dabbing it experimentally on to his foot. ‘Anaesthetic,’ he said.
Hilliard touched the envelope which lay on top of the opened parcel. ‘You can read it.’
‘Do you want me to?’
‘Yes.’
Barton took the single sheet of thick paper.
Dear John,
It is so nice to have your letters and we are glad to know you are fit and cheerful. We wish you were home but it seems that things are going well from what we read in the papers, and that you will all be back before very long. This letter will come to you with a parcel from father, but it is really to let you know that I am getting married on Saturday. It will be quiet, though there will be what mother calls ‘a few’ (and I think are a lot!) people back here for luncheon afterwards. We shall miss you, of course. It may seem that it has all been arranged suddenly but I have been thinking about it for some time as I told you when you were home and we have been planning things here for a while. There has seemed no time to write to you.
We are going to the Isle of Purbeck for ten days and after that I shall be
Do write. I must stop now, there are so many things to do you wouldn’t believe. I shall never be ready. Mother has a marvellous new lilac dress and coat in silk from Worth, for the wedding.
Our love to you and all kind wishes from Henry.
Barton held the letter for a long time after he had finished reading what it contained, for he did not know how to comment, it was so brisk and cool and distant, so lacking in emotion or character. John had talked about his sister, but mostly as she had been when they were children. What was she like now, what did she conceal beneath this formal letter in the plain, dull handwriting? He thought of the long, loving, detailed letters from his own family, which came by every mail and the difference between them. He wished suddenly that John had no father or mother or sister, so that he would be able to bring him entirely under the wing of his own. These aloof strangers ought not to exist at all.
‘She said she was going to marry Henry Partington.’
‘Yes. You told me.’
‘He’s a lawyer. He is a dull, stuffed, crass, insensible fool and he will put my sister in a rich home like a padded cell and she will give luncheon parties and tea parties and dinner parties and knit socks for the men and believe that we shall all be home by Christmas and be dutiful to the son by his first marriage and in a short time she will become indistinguishable from my mother – except that she will never be so beautiful or so elegant. She will be quite content and whatever she used to be will have gone, be buried. I’m glad I’m here, David, because I would truly rather be in the middle of this than sitting in that church in a tight collar and then sitting at our dining table and hearing my father make a dull speech and Henry Partington make a stupid speech, and the vicar and Beth’s godfather and… I should go off my head.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Barton reached out a hand. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, that’s enough of it. I’m sick of the whole business.’
‘Yes.’
‘But poor Beth! And how happy she sounds!’
‘Does she? Is that a happy letter?’
‘Did it seem a miserable one?’
‘It seemed – I didn’t get the impression that she felt anything at all. It’s so – formal.’
‘She is, now.’
‘What you should be doing is drinking some of this excellent brandy.’
‘How’s the foot?’
‘Hurts. Go on – have some.’
‘Yes. Then I’ve got to do these letters – oh, I’m sick of reading other men’s secrets, I feel like Paul Pry every day.’
‘I wish Coulter’d bring up the dixie, I’m hungry and I’m dropping asleep on my feet and I daresay I shan’t get more than a couple of hours anyway.’ Hilliard had slept while he was out in the trench, supervising the carrying party.