‘You know what?’ he said, as if the idea had just come to him. ‘Why don’t you just enjoy your well-earned leave? Relax, indulge yourself. Next Monday morning report to this address. In civilian clothes.’
He took out a little notebook and wrote down a number and a street.
‘And what will happen then?’ I asked.
‘You’ll be given new orders,’ he said, a little coldly, I thought, implying I would have no choice in the matter. ‘You’re a serving soldier, Rief, don’t forget.’
And he wouldn’t divulge anything else. We talked in desultory fashion about the course of the war – the big attack at Aubers Ridge – and my experiences in the E.S.L.I. and my work at the Bishop’s Bay Camp.
‘I think you can consider that chapter in your life closed,’ was all he said.
So here I sit in a small hotel in Bayswater (Greville and I have sublet the Chandos Place flat) with a week of leave awaiting me. My mind is empty – I have no expectations and speculation would be fruitless. God knows what Munro has lined up for me but it must be more interesting than Frau Schumacher’s constant health issues.
Funnily enough, my little nugget of regret about my Swansea life concerns Cerridwyn. I can see her – all dressed up for her trip to London – standing outside the ticket office at Swansea station waiting to meet me. And then the nine o’clock train will leave. Of course, she’ll wait for the next one just in case, but with hope dwindling as time goes by, and, after an hour or so when I don’t appear, she will go home, cursing the tribe of men and their endless, selfish duplicities.
9. The Claverleigh Hall War Fund
‘It’s a huge success. I could never have predicted it. We’ve already made over £200 and it’s not even lunchtime. We made £500 yesterday,’ Lysander’s mother said, speaking in tones of humbled incredulity, as they stood on the main drive looking at the rows of parked motor cars and charabancs and a hundred-yard queue of people waiting to pay their shilling entrance fee to the ‘CLAVERLEIGH HALL GRAND FÊTE’ – as the banner at the gateway to the park proclaimed.
‘Bravo,’ Lysander said. ‘Lucky Belgian refugees.’
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘We’re much bigger than that now. We’ve just sent another six ambulances to France.’
The Claverleigh Hall charity had started shortly after the outbreak of war as a blanket-drive, a local scheme to provide warm clothing, blankets and tents for Belgian refugees. Anna Faulkner had been galvanized by their initial success and the Claverleigh Hall War Fund, as it then became, provided her with a focus for her energies and her organizing capacity that Lysander had not seen demonstrated for years – not since she had effectively run the administrative side of the Halifax Rief Theatre Company, anyway. Suddenly she had a cause and the considerable sums of money she raised meant that her voice was listened to. She started going up to London once or twice a week for meetings with civil servants at the Home Office and then senior soldiers at the War Office once the Claverleigh Hall Field Ambulances came into being. Her new plan was to open a training school for nurses to deal specifically with the most common wounds and ailments suffered by the troops on the Western Front. Who needs a midwife when you’re suffering from trench-foot? was one of her more memorable slogans and she began to be invited to sit on committees and add her name to petitions and other good causes. She was looking even younger, if that were possible, Lysander thought. That’s what having a purpose in life gave you.
‘How’s Crickmay today?’ he asked. He hadn’t seen his stepfather since he’d arrived.
‘No change. Very poorly. Wheezing, coughing. He can hardly get out of bed, poor darling.’
‘I’ve got to go back to London after lunch,’ he said.
‘He won’t be at lunch,’ she said. ‘I’ll pass on your best wishes. He’ll see you next time you’re down.’
Then she hurried away to change the brimming cash-box at the entry-gate and Lysander set off on a wander round the park, past the stalls selling jams and cakes, the coconut shy, the beer tent, the dog show, the jokey races – egg-and-spoon, three-legged, sack – the livestock exhibits and the gymkhana – keeping an eye out for Hamo, who had arrived an hour earlier and had gone in search of some seed potatoes for his vegetable garden.
He found him at the cricket nets where, for sixpence, you were granted the chance to bowl at two of Sussex County Cricket Club’s leading batsmen – Vallance Jupp and Joseph Vine.
Hamo was looking on in some amazement.
‘Some of these kids are astonishing,’ he said. ‘That nipper there just bowled out Jupp twice in one over. Very embarrassing for him – the ball span two feet.’
‘Any news of Femi?’ Lysander asked. He knew that Femi had gone back to West Africa, homesick and unhappy in Winchelsea.
‘He’s arrived in Lagos. But I don’t suspect I shall hear much more. He’s got money and he speaks good English now – he’ll be fine . . .’ Hamo looked south, towards the Channel, towards Africa, symbolically. ‘It was last winter that finished him – that and being stared at all the time. It’s amazing how rude the English can be when they see something unfamiliar. As soon as this war’s over I’ll go out and join him. Set up a business together, bit of trading.’ Hamo turned his burning pale blue eyes on Lysander. ‘I do love him dearly, you know. Miss him every second of the day. A completely honest, sweet person. Straight and true.’
‘You’re very lucky,’ Lysander said and changed the subject. ‘I hear Crickmay’s not well at all.’
‘He can hardly breathe. Some sort of terrible congestion of the lungs. Walks ten paces – has to rest for five minutes. Just as well your mother’s got this great charity thing going. Otherwise she’d just be sitting around waiting for him to die.’
They wandered through the fête. There was a big crowd gathered round an artillery piece – a howitzer – and a small, sturdy aeroplane with a blunt nose, all doped canvas and stretched wires. Lysander saw that the East Sussex Light Infantry had a recruiting tent erected and a sizeable queue of young men had formed in front of it. Swansea was waiting for them.
‘I haven’t had the most exciting war, I realize,’ Lysander said as they passed the queue.
‘I wouldn’t complain,’ Hamo said. ‘It’s a filthy awful business.’
‘However, I’ve a feeling it’s all going to change.’
He told Hamo about Munro’s visit to Swansea and his new instructions.
‘Sounds very rum to me,’ Hamo said. ‘Civilian clothes? Don’t agree to do anything rash.’
‘I don’t think I’ve much choice,’ Lysander said. ‘It was made very clear that these were orders to be obeyed.’
‘Any fool can “obey” an order,’ Hamo said, darkly. ‘The clever thing is to interpret it.’
‘I’ll remember that.’
Hamo stopped and touched his arm.
‘If you need my help, my boy, don’t hesitate. I’ve a few friends in the military, still. And remember I’ve been in a scrape or two, myself. I’ve killed dozens of men, you know. I’m not proud of it – not in the least. It’s just a fact.’
‘I don’t think it’ll come to that, but thanks all the same.’
They left the crowded park, shouts and cheers rising in the air as someone breasted the tape in the sack race, and walked up the drive to the Hall where luncheon was waiting for them.
10. The One-On-One Code
The number and the street turned out to be a four-storey terraced house in Islington with a basement below a finialled iron railing, a stuccoed first floor with a bay window, and the top two of soot-blackened brick. Completely normal and undistinguished, Lysander thought, as he rang the bell. A uniformed naval rating let him in and showed him into the front room. It was virtually empty – there was a chair in the middle of the floor facing a gate-legged table with three other chairs set around it. Lysander took off his raincoat and hat and sat down to wait. He was wearing a three-piece suit of lightly checked grey flannel, a stiff-collared shirt and his regimental tie. The E.S.L.I would be proud of him.