Time Squared, page 15
All the men she knew were on the move. The Ardens had recently returned from David’s assignment in Africa, and Kate wrote that he was quitting his job at the News to sign up as a private. He planned to draw the reality of war, she said, a modern disciple of Goya, although Eleanor couldn’t make out from Kate’s headlong prose whether this was despite David’s pacifism or because of it. Even Murdo Crawley had given it a bash at a couple of regiments, although he’d fooled no one with his blind eye and had begun to talk about running for Parliament.
“I’m damned if I’ll let them make me useless.”
Murdo had looked almost bitter lately, even with his wedding only a few days off. It would be a double wedding, the same ceremony doing for Murdo and Alicia as for Stansfield and Margaret Darcy. Eleanor wished them all very well and felt particular sympathy for Murdo, longing to be useful herself. She was alone too much and tended to fall into circular thinking: If Robert is at headquarters, then he’s safe. But if he’s safe, he’ll feel a coward and try to get into action, where he’ll want to prove himself by being far too brave. Her studies hadn’t helped. Her Greek and the fraying elegance of mathematics had become resolutions she couldn’t fulfill: And wouldn’t Henry James laugh?
(What on earth did Henry James have to do with it?)
Eleanor had realized earlier this autumn that she needed to get out of the house. When the Red Cross had posted a bill offering first aid classes, she’d jumped at the chance, running upstairs in the Middleford Arms on the appointed day. There she’d joined a covey of young ladies in a dusty high-ceilinged room normally used for amateur theatricals. Mrs. Browne had been in charge, the daughter of a physician, as she hadn’t always cared to be reminded.
“Young ladies,” she’d carolled, rapping the podium. “Young patriotic ladies.”
Soon afterward, Eleanor had found herself modelling the patient, lying on an ancient canvas stretcher while the unpleasant Agnes Moreland bound her foot too tightly. A toy patient on a symbolic stretcher that would rip apart if anyone tried to lift it: Eleanor’s enthusiasm had dissipated rapidly. Speaking above her, Mrs. Browne said that if they passed the first aid exam, they’d get a certificate that would allow them to roll bandages at the local Red Cross depot.
Not to nurse, not to clerk for the army. Roll bandages. Her aunt’s suffragism was on hold for the duration, the leaders wanting to prove female support for the war. Yet with her foot bound like a Chinese wife’s, Eleanor had finally found herself sympathizing with the fight for women’s rights.
Her aunt had brightened when she’d told her. “I knew you’d get there eventually.”
“I’d rather go to France. Not that I have any idea how to help.”
After a pause, her aunt had replied, “You’re quite a good shot. Maybe we can cut off your hair and send you over as a sniper. Even better: cut off one of your breasts so you can volunteer as an Amazon. If you think the army is so greatly in need of your help.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you so savage.”
“Then you haven’t been listening, my dear.”
* * *
Turning on her heel, Eleanor ran out of the garden, angling up the dales toward the old oak below the bench where she and Robert had first talked. She’d already read the letter four or five times. But when she got there, she took it out and read it again, the writing deteriorating badly toward the end as Robert raced to get all his thoughts on paper before bottling himself back up again for duty.
I’ll send this off later today. But for now it’s very early, and I’m enjoying the beauty of the dawn. I’m not artistic like Kate, but you’ll know what I mean when I say the pinks and oranges are deep as wells. I look out the window aware that I’m not so much looking up at the sky as looking down from our small warring planet; down through the thin skin of atmosphere into the depths of eternity.
On other mornings lately, I’ve stood among the men as they craned back their necks to watch the sunrise, congregating in the middle of the trench we’re ordered to dig, some of them sitting on sandbags, knowing better than to take so much as a glance over the trench’s edge. German snipers await the fool who lifts his head. As a young chap at Sandhurst, I studied troop formations during the Napoleonic Wars, Waterloo back to Albuera then back again as far as the Romans. Past editions of your faithful officer would order the infantry into position, the artillery, the cavalry into position, until the battle order was given, the bugle sounded and the carnage began. There was a comprehensible beginning to the fighting and a definite end, orders to withdraw from engagement serving the same function as factory whistles at the close of day, the surviving men flooding off the field as if clocking out of one of Blake’s dark satanic mills.
Here it never ends. Snipers fire whenever the mood takes them and shells fall randomly behind our lines. Even stretcher-bearers entering the field can be picked off as they evacuate the wounded. In Napoleonic times, I remember reading, the field would be eerily silent after battle, if busy with camp followers, wives (some of them officers’ wives) searching for their dead and wounded husbands, looters picking over the bodies, some chap getting himself a new sword. Now, at the front, one is constantly at war, unable to risk a moment’s inattention, making sure not to lift one’s head to enjoy the sunrise or a beautiful smoky sunset amid the ever-present smell of never-you-mind. I’m already walking in a stoop, having quickly lost the pattern officer’s proud erect carriage.
“Hardly sporting,” the old men say, sending horses out to be machine-gunned, insisting on fighting the war in the way Wellington fought a hundred years ago, when the enemy now is two hundred yards away and modern and mechanized and planning.
She would soon have this one by heart, as she had all the others. Yet something went different, and Eleanor looked up with a prickling sense of expectancy. It wasn’t the letter. Instead she knew that something was about to happen. Someone was going to come around the corner below, although the road was empty, a slash on the landscape. This wasn’t déjà vu. The word glimpse came to mind. Something was about to happen that had happened here earlier and would happen again in the future. It was going to be ephemeral; nothing important. She felt ephemeral, a breath on the landscape, barely tethered to the earth. The hill was eternal and she was transparent, a will-o’-the-wisp.
When Stansfield Mowbray motored around the corner, Eleanor remembered him appearing the same way earlier this year. But this was more than a memory; beyond anything she’d experienced before. She was back there. Stansfield had been driving his new Rolls-Royce with Miss Darcy beside him and Alicia and Murdo Crawley in the rear. Now, the motor carriage looked populated with the same four figures, yet she could also see that Stansfield was the only one in it. She was living in both times at once, and there was a third time crowding in that she sensed but failed to make out when a Rolls-Royce drove around the corner faster than she easily could make out. She felt disembodied, unable to move, so panicked she couldn’t breathe. A breath that couldn’t breathe.
Then the Rolls-Royce lurched with a delayed pop and her weird displacement ended. Stansfield had a puncture. He stopped and got out to look at the tyre, leaving Eleanor to put her letter back in its envelope and pause a moment to gather herself before starting downhill. She walked slowly on the rocky old path, feeling anxious, hugging herself until she reached flat ground and angled sideways through the squeeze stile by the road. She’d torn her skirt the last time she’d seen Stansfield here and hadn’t been able to repair it afterwards, not so one couldn’t tell. Her hair was in a tumble. Stansfield wouldn’t care, but without quite thinking about it, she decided to cut it all off.
“Hullo!” she cried. Stansfield was already removing his spare tyre from the side of the car. “I don’t suppose I can help?”
“S’all right,” he said companionably, jacket, off, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows as he loosened a bolt. “It happens often enough that I’ve got a method.”
Eleanor sat down on a large stone at the side of the road, remembering that she hadn’t had much for breakfast. She was hungry, that was all. Hungry and getting a headache, even though she never got headaches. She watched Stansfield unscrew more bolts and remove the tyre, then throw himself down on the ground to pump the car up on a jack.
Stansfield always looked happier when he had a job to do. When he was asked to be sociable and idle, he got his vacant blow-to-the-head look. He needed to move, and Eleanor imagined he’d make an exemplary officer. He would be efficient and capable and considerate with his men, a noble chap. It was possible to like and even admire Stansfield once the threat of marriage was past.
Unbolting the flat tyre, he asked, “Have you heard from Kitty?” Lady Anne still wouldn’t allow a letter from Catherine to enter the house, making Eleanor the conduit to her siblings.
“Kate?” she replied. “As we’re to call her. She’s well and painting. They’re in London. Her husband signed up.”
“Husband,” Stansfield said dubiously, frowning at the bolt in his large greasy hand.
“My aunt wonders about the marriage. Whether there’s an earlier Mrs. Arden hidden away in Wales.” Stansfield cocked an eyebrow but didn’t seem surprised. “I don’t see Kate going into that knowingly, and she’s far too clever not to know. What do you think?”
Stansfield paused for a while before shaking his head. “Kitty’s deep,” he said, and corrected himself humorously. “Kate.”
Going back to work, he rolled the blown tyre aside and crouched to bolt on the spare, his strong arms working, muscles admirable. When he was finished, Stansfield dropped from his crouch to sit back against the car, legs bent like a boy, greasy hands clasped in front of him. They enjoyed a pleasant undemanding silence on the windless day, having known each other forever.
“Look here,” he said after a time. “I know you and Margaret took against each other. But when I’m off, she’ll be living at the Close. I’d consider it a great favour if you’d give it a try. Being friends, you know. Mother isn’t the easiest row, is she?”
Eleanor hesitated. She didn’t want to lie to Stansfield but couldn’t see the two of them getting along. If she were able to define what she didn’t like about Margaret Darcy, she might be able to talk herself out of it. But what could she do about something as intangible as the angle of Margaret’s chin? Her superior air, which wasn’t unusual and was clearly defensive, a girl from trade meeting her fiancé’s county family and his oldest friends. (It was true. Eleanor was a snob.)
“All right. I’ll give it a try.”
Stansfield looked pleased. “She’s solid, you know. One can count on Margaret. I shall. For life, you know.”
For Stansfield, that stood as eloquence. Eleanor was touched.
“Give us a lift home?” she asked, getting up and brushing the chalk off the back of her skirt. Stansfield held the door open for her.
“Hear you’ve got a beau,” he said shyly, as she got in.
“I don’t know if he thinks of it that way, but we write. Robert Denholm. Captain Denholm.” Settling herself, she added, “Maybe you’ll see him over there.”
“Good job if I do,” he said, and shut the door.
13
The next afternoon, Eleanor paused at the top of the garden as she arrived at the Mowbray’s annual fête. She was pleased with her dress, the ruched bodice in the light greyish green that suited her better than any other colour. The slim skirt was done in a darker striped cambric. Even her fashionable aunt approved: the perfect afternoon dress, exactly what was wanted. Yet Eleanor had paused not to show it off (as Agnes Moreland was whispering to Margaret Darcy) but to take a good look around.
Under a pale blue sky, the usual marquees dotted the lawn, serving the usual tea and cakes. Down the hill, the games were being played where they’d always been played. The thwack of a distant cricket bat, the applause. Everywhere she saw the faces she’d always known. No one in Middleford would miss the Mowbray’s fête nor, she suspected, particularly enjoy it. They were too conscious of being on their best behaviour, the wives worried about what their husbands might say, the husbands wanting a beer.
But here was the difference this year: khaki. The dressmaker’s son stood outside the nearest marquee worrying his neck under the scratchy woollen collar of his Red Cross uniform. Bob Flodden was an asthmatic refused for military service, but his mother had told Eleanor he was going out as an ambulance driver. A gaggle of four other young men showed off the uniform of the British Expeditionary Force, three farmers’ sons and the baker’s boy, all of them looking so thoroughly impressed with themselves that they almost managed to look unimpressed by the baronet’s park. Lean poplars above, lean boys below. Walking shadows, Eleanor thought, and shivered.
Practical-minded Middleford was surprising itself by sending its sons off to war, overtaken by a patriotic need to thrash the Kaiser before he crossed the Channel. The fête was timed to celebrate the Mowbray marriages, especially the heir’s marriage, but also to let Sir Waldo beam approval on the local war effort. Doing errands in town beforehand—her new dress, a stunner of a hat—Eleanor had heard mothers talk as if they were sending their sons off on short-term loan, like books going out from the lending library. Mrs. Flodden, pinning a sleeve: “Our Bob’s not a shirker. He’ll do his bit, even with the asthma. Have some fun with the parley-vous and be home in time for Christmas pudding.”
Watching Mrs. Flodden bobbing around her in the mirror, Eleanor had decided against playing Cassandra and repeating what Robert had written. Mrs. Flodden had to know she was repeating a superstition anyway, like saluting a magpie to ward off sorrow.
“Good morning, Mr. Magpie. How’s your lady wife today?”
“The boys’ll be home by Christmas.”
Not much difference and Mrs. Flodden knew it, a tiny shrewd brave woman, supporting five children on her meagre earnings, the ones her husband didn’t drink.
Eleanor was about to step into the fête when someone spoke behind her.
“Look at you. You’ve cut your hair.”
Eleanor turned to find Margaret Darcy, who brushed a surprising kiss on her cheek.
“That’s the only way you’d notice, from behind,” Eleanor said. “The effect is rather spoiled in front by one’s hat. I hope you’re well. Not too over-burdened by the preparations.”
Margaret simpered, there was no other word. But Stansfield must have been after her as well. She was obviously making an effort.
“I hope you know how delighted we all are. I can’t remember not knowing Stansfield. He’s always been such an inevitable part of my life, like the Mowbrays’ great oak. They must have introduced you. It dates to the time of Elizabeth.”
“I hardly think Stansie’s a tree,” Margaret said, her voice going as thin as her smile.
“You’ve cut your hair?” Agnes Moreland asked, joining them. “Your beautiful hair, Eleanor. It’s going to take forever to grow it out. When surely it’s only a fleeting fashion. In France.”
Mademoiselle had cut it that morning à la garçonne, approving for once of Eleanor’s fashion choice, which she usually found too British. The only problem was her stunning new hat, which had been made to sit on top of a large coil of hair. When she’d tried it on afterwards, it had flopped down into her eyes as if she were a child playing dress-up. Eleanor had to borrow one from Mrs. Crosby and spend half the morning transferring the red silk poppy trim.
“My aunt launched one of her bon mots,” she said. “‘The only reason one pays attention to fashion is to stay ahead of it.’”
“Your aunt or Oscar Wilde?” Agnes replied. Margaret tried to hide it but she liked the dig, and gave a significant eyebrow raise to Agnes.
“It’s as good as one of Mr. Wilde’s, isn’t it?” Eleanor replied blandly. It was obvious Margaret and Agnes were going to be friends and that she needn’t bother. I tried, Stansie, she said silently, and after Agnes sweetly savaged her dress—“Is that meant to be a military colour?”—Eleanor excused herself to circulate.
Mrs. Browne, resplendent in a new Red Cross uniform, wanted her back in the first aid class. Some of the girls were signing on after the course as Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses, helping with the injured lads sent to Middleford’s small hospital. “Finding a role,” she said pointedly before leaving. Eleanor stood wondering whether she ought to go back when there was a sudden tug on her bodice. Mrs. Flodden was behind her, straightening a seam. Eleanor had no idea why people kept doing that, as if she were a public concern, like an orphan (she was an orphan) or perhaps a clogged pump.
“Doesn’t Bob look handsome in his uniform?” Eleanor asked over her shoulder.
“Doesn’t his mother think so?” Mrs. Flodden replied, giving a final tug and going for cake. Afterward, Eleanor saw her aunt in animated conversation with a manufacturer—a recently widowed manufacturer—and was wondering whether to join them when she saw Lady Anne bearing down on her. Despite Elizabeth Mortlake’s promise, Lady Anne still hadn’t entirely forgiven her for Kate’s marriage. She often felt relegated to the fate of the Rev. Mr. Warfield, still a source of disappointment five children after failing to marry one of her daughters.
Lady Anne arrived already talking. “I was happy to see you with Margaret. I do so hope it continues.” Squinting hard: “I would like that.”
