“You’d better get going,” Hamish said. “Good luck.”
“Right,” I said. I got on the bicycle. “Now, remember—”
“On you go.” He grinned, showing his large teeth. I felt hot-eyed with inarticulate gratitude. He gave me a shove, and I bumped off down the track towards the home farm. I would not see him again for three years.
Everything went as planned, at least on my side. The ride to Innerleithen was actually quite entrancing. The road followed the Tweed, and to my excited eyes the slow river and its fragrant meadows grew ever more hauntingly beautiful in the darkening, dusky light. I bought my ticket to London, one way, third class, price one pound fifteen shillings, and made my connection successfully at Reston.
Sometime after midnight, sharing a smoky, blurry compartment with two sailors and someone who looked like a commercial traveler, I crossed the border into England. I left Scotland behind me and along with it my youth. Even at the time it seemed epochal enough. I knew somehow that nothing would be the same after this particular adventure. I did not think of the future, of my meeting with Faye. I was happy in the present moment, and there was nothing in my past, I felt, to make me want to cherish it. I hunched into my overcoat collar and tried to go to sleep. It took me an hour or so to achieve it. The sailors talked (they were rejoining a dreadnought in Southampton) and drank something from a bottle. The commercial traveler tried to engage me in conversation, but my taciturnity proved too much for him. I looked out at the dark countryside and tried to memorize, as if taking a talismanic inventory, the strange names of the stations we flashed past — Pegswood, Morpeth, Croft and Northallerton — as we traveled down England.
I recount the following events exactly as I recall them happening. I make no excuses for myself or my bizarre behavior. I was seventeen. Please remember.
The sun shone in London. I was astonished at how much warmer it was than Scotland. I felt I had entered another climate. I was not overawed by the city; if anything, the traffic in Edinburgh seemed heavier, though here the noise was more concentrated and the streets were distinctly less clean. I took an underground train from King’s Cross to Paddington. My kilt drew few curious glances. I realized at Paddington, where I saw a battalion of the Highland Light Infantry disembarking, that kilts had become reasonably commonplace south of the border since 1914.
But on the train to Charlbury my neutral composure began to desert me. I looked out of the window at the bland and innocuous countryside and told myself to calm down. Faye would be surprised but glad to see me, I reassured myself. Everything would be fine.
At Charlbury Station I secured directions to the Hobhouses’ address from a cabby. I walked up the hill through the small town, its dullocher buildings looking quite peculiar to me, I recall. It was just after luncheon and the shops were being reopened. I had not eaten since the evening before and, as I passed a baker’s, almost swooned from hunger. I bought a slice of veal and ham pie and checked I was going in the right direction. Everyone appeared to know where Vincent Hobhouse had lived.
I walked on up through the town eating my pie. It was too warm for my overcoat. I took it off. The sky was milky, the sun invisible. The dust on the verge was white. My heavy boots crunched on the gravel of the unpaved road. At one point two small barefoot urchins chased after me, laughing at my kilt and shouting insults at me in their incomprehensible dialect. I shied a couple of stones at them and they ran away.
The Hobhouse home was a large, solid, late-Georgian building set on a hill overlooking the town and the Windrush Valley. It had a spacious garden with many mature trees — a gloomy cedar, two monkey puzzles, elms and limes — and was surrounded by a tall beech hedge. Further down the hill was a small nursing home, past which I walked, and beyond it a row of cottages. The house was set back from what I later learned was the Oxford road, and beyond it lay open fields and countryside.
I walked up the drive. Two lolloping spaniels, followed by a little girl in a sailor suit, ran to intercept me. I stopped. I felt myself perceptibly weaken. I was suddenly appalled by the full audacity of what I had done.
“Hello,” I said, with fake bonhomie. “Is your mother in?… You must be Alceste.”
“I’m Gilda. This is Ned and this is Ted.” She introduced the dogs. “My father’s gone to heaven.”
I felt sick. “I know. I’m your cousin. John James Todd. Come to see you.”
Gilda took me indoors. We went through an entrance hall and an inner hall. I was left in a cool pale drawing room, heavy with the scent of potpourri and encumbered with the ornaments and collectibles of long inhabitation. On a round table was a group of leather- and tortoiseshell-framed photographs. I saw my mother’s face. I closed my eyes.
“Johnny?”
I turned round, blood booming like surf in my ears. Faye. I felt my stomach rotate with stupid love. She wore a green apron over her dress and I found myself wondering — absurdly — if she had been cleaning silver. Her hair was tied loosely at the back with a velvet bow. She looked younger even than her photograph. I felt like laughing. I had never seen anyone more beautiful. Instantly, all my doubts disappeared. I had done the right thing.
“What are you doing here?” Her tone was puzzled. Her eyes took in my kilt, my socks, my boots. All my doubts returned. I had made a ghastly mistake.
“I’ve run away from school.”
“But why?”
Because I love you, I wanted to shout.
“Because … I want to join the army.”
* * *
What in God’s good name made me say that? What malign fate put those words in my mouth? If I had only told the truth, think what I would have avoided. I am not sure how the subconscious mind works but this was no long-repressed ambition; nothing could have been further from my wishes. After the first flush of war fever, Minto Academy’s aggressive instincts had faded rapidly, partly as a result of waning interest, partly encouraged by Minto’s passionate neutrality. Every old Mintonian who died prompted another melancholy panegyric in favor of peace. Tones of “I told you so” seemed to hang in the air for days after every futile battle. By the end of 1915 everyone’s enthusiasm was at a low ebb. I must have blurted out my “reason” as a consequence of an instinctive association of ideas. My embarrassment. Faye’s eyes on my kilt, the Highland Light Infantry at Paddington—ergo, soldiering.
At first, as it turned out, it did its job admirably. All Faye’s suspicions and surprise were allayed. To my vague disappointment she did not try to dissuade me. She reminded me I was too young, but perhaps I could join up next year. Possibly, her zeal arose from the fact that I was her nephew and not her son. In fact she told me that Peter had volunteered immediately on leaving school in the summer of 1915 and he had joined a public school battalion. Faye thought this might be just the place for me. Peter would be able to supply all the right information and advice — might even get me into the same battalion. I found myself agreeing with diminishing enthusiasm. Peter, it transpired, was coming home on leave that very weekend, I should wait in Charlbury at least until then, Faye counseled, when I could ask him anything I wanted.
Four days. Four days alone with Faye (if one excluded the servants and Gilda and Alceste). I experienced a temporary relief. Problems and decisions could be postponed for a while. I was here, I was with her, living under the same roof. That had been the immediate aim of my running away and I had achieved it. I allowed myself to sink into the warm pool of her welcome.