The Wars Read online

  Then he’d look at Robert—once he’d spoken. Never while he spoke. He was really only talking to himself, Robert guessed, before he slept.

  —

  ONE AFTERNOON Robert came late because he’d been to a matinee at the theatre. His mind was full of music and it was hard to sit there on his death watch and not tap his toes. Harris was more or less asleep, his breathing more and more forced. There was talk of an iron lung—but these were rare and at a premium. There was nothing to be done but listen. All at once, there was laughter down by the doors that led to the corridor and Eugene Taffler came in with a woman Robert recognized as Lady Barbara d’Orsey. It was she who’d been laughing but when she came round the corner, the laughter stopped. Her arms were filled with freesia. There was snow in her hair. Her lips were parted.

  The effect of her sudden appearance was the same as always when you see someone materialize whose fame has kept them at a distance. You think how small they are and you wish they’d stand still. Her picture, like those of Cathleen Nesbitt and Lady Diana Manners, was ‘everywhere.’ Recently, more often than not, she was photographed with Taffler; dancing for charity—joking with the Prince of Wales—riding in the park. Taffler was looking more like a Boy’s Own Annual hero than ever, dressed in his uniform with its green field tabs; carrying a swagger stick and groomed within an inch of his life. He’d just had his hair cut—a sure sign he was returning to the front. It was always the last thing you did. His head seemed enormous. His eyes and his mouth were like pictures of a mouth and eyes: static. His hands were naked. Robert blushed.

  He stood up. It seemed the only thing to do. Taffler spotted him at once and came across the room, leaving Barbara d’Orsey behind him near the doors. All the time she waited, she stood with her furs against one cheek, gazing from the windows and showing no apparent interest in anything, though Robert noticed that her hands were shaking.

  ‘It’s Ross, isn’t it?’ Taffler said, taking Robert’s hand in both his own. His pleasure seemed genuine. It probably was. Considering where they were it must have been heartening to see someone still unscathed and in such good health as Robert at that moment. (The bruises on Robert’s legs had paled and he no longer limped or felt any pain.)

  Robert stammered an explanation about Harris and after he’d done this, Taffler said he must come across the room and meet Lady Barbara. Robert didn’t want to intrude. Taffler insisted. He put his hand on Robert’s elbow and guided him between the beds.

  Nothing happened this first time they met. Barbara was distracted. Robert noticed the shape of her eyes and the way she watched him. She stared—not rudely—but with kindness. It was as if she willed him politely to go away. Robert soon took his cue and left them. For a moment, Barbara didn’t move. She looked around the ward and then at Taffler much as to say: what am I supposed to do now? He indicated a figure in a bed at the farthest end of the room.

  Watching from his chair beside Harris, Robert could not help witnessing the scene that followed. Taffler and Barbara moved down the aisle with Taffler’s hand on her elbow just as he’d used it to propel Robert earlier—Barbara tightening her grip on the flowers in her hand. In the bed where they stopped was a man entirely encased in bandages. He was quite unable to move. Robert had already been intrigued by his silence.

  Barbara stood at the foot of the bed and looked at the man without speaking. The aroma from her flowers filled the ward. The profile she turned to Robert was unsmiling. She held the flowers the way that wreaths are held—as an emblem, not as a gift. Taffler went to the head of the bed and leaned down over the man to speak. Barbara took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Whatever it was that Taffler said, it went unheard by anyone except the man in the bandages. Robert could see he was straining to reply—but no words came: not even a whisper. Finally Taffler touched him on the shoulder as a signal they were going and, collecting Barbara, he left quite suddenly without turning back and without even nodding in Robert’s direction. Barbara still held the flowers and her expression was as blank as that of someone drugged. When they’d gone Robert could feel the man in the bandages ‘screaming’ and the sensation of this silent agony at the other end of the room was finally so strong that Robert had to go and get one of the nurses. When she came and had administered some morphine she thanked him for his quick response. She told him the man had been trapped in a fire and his vocal cords destroyed when he’d swallowed the flames. Robert asked who he was. The nurse said ‘Captain Villiers.’ Then she said something strange that made Robert blush—though he didn’t know why. Perhaps it was the nurse’s vehemence—and the way she lowered her voice. ‘Just don’t ask me about that woman. I don’t know how she dares to come here.’ That woman was Barbara d’Orsey.

  11 This part of the narrative is told by Lady Juliet d’Orsey, whose memories of Robert Ross—for reasons that will become apparent—are the most vivid and personal we have. At the time of the events she describes, she was twelve years old. She is now in her seventies.

  Juliet d’Orsey is the fourth of the Marquis and Marchioness of St Aubyn’s five children. She is the lone survivor and has never married. She still resides in rooms at number 15, Wilton Place—the St Aubyns’ London address since 1743. The lower floors of this house are currently occupied by the Ministry of Scientific Research. To reach Wilton Place, you get off at Hyde Park Corner and walk down Knightsbridge passing St George’s Hospital and shortly afterwards a somewhat sinister sign proclaiming the Royal Society for Prevention of Accidents. Wilton Terrace is to the left, in sunshine.

  You can feel the bureaucratic atmosphere of the Ministry as soon as you enter the hall. The place is infused with the threat of large numbers of people in hiding. Everyone is studiously dedicated to ignoring what you want. Backs are turned as soon as they perceive that you’re a stranger and might ask questions. Secretaries wander up and down the stairways, with their hands against their foreheads, muttering ‘Where—where—where did I put it?’ Telephones jangle for hours on end, unanswered. Someone turns to you and says: ‘Was that the ’phone?’ When you ask for Juliet d’Orsey, they tell you they’ve never heard of her. One bright lady informs you ‘She was fired last week.’ Other doors mysteriously close as you approach. You’re aware, through a window at the end of a hall, that a large black Daimler has drawn to the curb. A hatless little man gets out and stands on the sidewalk looking lost. Everyone stops and holds her breath: the Minister has just arrived. Dear God—will he come inside? At last you make your way by trial and error to the second-floor landing and a door marked LADY JULIET D’ORSEY—PLEASE RING TWICE. You feel like Aldren on the moon.

  The door is opened by Lady Juliet’s young companion who introduces herself as Charlotte Krauss. Miss Krauss is twenty-eight or so and wears a neat, tan dress. She tends to pocket her hands and stands on her heels. She is bright and attentive and discreet. She retires almost at once to make some tea. You have already been directed down a long cream-coloured hall hung with ancestors and lit by open doorways. At the far end there is a wide and charming drawing room full of tall blue chairs on an apricot carpet. A fireplace, crowded with blazing logs, dominates a whole wall. The windows, leading to balconies, look out directly at the portals of St Paul’s, Knightsbridge—a Gothic miscarriage where a choir practice is presently in progress.

  Lady Juliet has her back to you. ‘Just one moment,’ she says, without turning, and you wait with your briefcase and tape recorder in your hands in the middle of the rug. There are freesia on the mantelpiece in a plain white vase. Something in Latin being sung across the road comes to a conclusion and finally Lady Juliet turns to you and says: ‘I know you’ll forgive me. I can’t resist the Mass.’ She smiles and moves to the other end of the room by the fire, where she lights a cigarette and throws back her head in order to see you through the sunlight. ‘All I ask,’ she says, fitting the cigarette into a holder, ‘is that you don’t call me Juli-et. I cannot abide Juli-et. It maddens me!’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

/>   ‘Here, we say Joolyut. Joolyut. Joolyut. Say it for me.’

  ‘Joolyut.’

  ‘That’s right. How-do-you-do?’

  She has short, grizzled hair that has always been curly and fine, long quivering hands that are crippled with arthritis. She is tall and seems to be dangerously thin. She is one of those women who live on a starvation diet by their own free choice. Hers consists of spinach and melba toast, cigarettes and a lot of gin. The gin has no effect whatsoever on her speech or her clarity of mind. It is simply one of her foods. She sits with her hip against one side of the chair, leaning towards the other side, smoking one cigarette after another. She doesn’t seem to be able to butt them very successfully. The ashtray smoulders the whole afternoon.

  She is proud of Robert Ross. The only time that anger flashes is when she mentions his detractors. The name of Stuart Ross, for instance, causes her to stutter. ‘Still,’ she admits, when she’s regained her composure, ‘a brother is a brother. I had them myself. There are enmities in families that have to be foreborne. But oh…when it turns to hate. I gather he refuses to speak to you.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I don’t understand. It’s as if Robert did something evil.’

  ‘Some say he did.’

  ‘Some maniacs. Oh yes—I’ve heard that, too.’

  For a moment she looks from the window and listens, seeming to draw restraint from the Mass in progress.

  Exaudi orationem meam,

  ad te omnis caro veniet.

  Hear thou my prayer—unto thee shall all flesh come…

  ‘It’s comforting, isn’t it,’ she says.

  But you wonder.

  12 Transcript: Lady Juliet d’Orsey—1

  ‘They met—my sister and Robert Ross—because of that man Harris. And Jamie Villiers…’ (Captain James Villiers was the man in bandages Barbara and Taffler went to visit.) ‘Jamie had always been a friend of ours. He was very close to my brother Clive. Clive’s only sport was riding. Jamie was one of the finest point-to-pointers in the country. His greatest ambition was to ride the Grand National. This was unheard of—of course; not just because he was the son of a duke but because he was enormous. Enor-mous! Tall as a giraffe. And just as sweet. Dear Heart. He was a lovely man. Barbara was devoted to him. Weren’t we all? But Barbara made a dreadful nuisance of herself. I should explain that all of Barbara’s friends were men. Women—myself amongst them, alas—irritated and irked her. They make me itch, she said. She adored our brothers, who were closest to her in age. I was eight years younger. Temple was a mere babe. So Barbara grew up with Michael and Clive and all of their friends were her friends. It was always understood, in our family, that when somebody spoke of “the girls” they referred to me and Temple—never to Barbara. For as long as I can remember she had a taste for heroes and athletes. She enjoyed the spectacle of winning—but more than that, she made a sort of cult of exclusivity: letting people in and out of her life. She was like a club. But she wasn’t a snob. Anything but. It was just that a wall went up if you didn’t intrigue her. I think that was it. You had to intrigue her or you didn’t exist. There she is over there. It’s not a bad picture. You can see the sceptical eyes and the strange perpetual smile. I’ll tell you a secret about that smile. It wasn’t a smile at all. It was a nervous dimple on her left side. True. I swear it. I was saying…Jamie Villiers. Yes. This was before the war. I was only nine. Or eight or something. Barbara always tagged along when Clive and Jamie took the horses out. Clive and Jamie were both at Cambridge. Just. I think they hadn’t even been up a year. Barbara hadn’t an ounce of sophistication. She was very much like a man in that. I’ve never met—have you?—a truly sophisticated man. World-weary and discreet—of course. But never sophisticated. Barbara couldn’t even see what she was interrupting. She could be such a dreadful clod, you know. Day after day she’d tag along till Clive had to tell her. Well—he had to indicate that she was mucking up a friendship. She came storming into the house—this was up at Stourbridge St Aubyn’s—and flew around in an absolute rage. I don’t understand! I don’t understand! she kept saying. Finally, I had to tell her. They’re in love, I said. Barbara said: Who with? She really was rather stupid. I said: Don’t you know anything about boys at all? They’re in love with each other. (LAUGHTER) Oh dear. Barbara hated me for that. And Clive. They had the most frightful argument. Mummy had to stop them. Mummy was enormously understanding. She’d had her own brothers and knew this thing would pass. But Barbara said that Clive had undermined Jamie’s morals and she called them Oscar and Bosie and ultimately settled her affections elsewhere. On Ivan Cromwell-Jones, I think—or someone like that. But you see—that isn’t just an amusing story. There’s a point. Barbara’s wrath. Her coldness in the presence of someone else’s death. No one else was allowed to love—or possess—or to steal her heroes and her lovers. If you substitute the war for Clive in that story…well, I’m sure you get my point.’ (At this juncture Charlotte Krauss arrived with the tea tray. You were invited to listen to the music and make a choice of sandwiches while the tea was poured. Miss Krauss—with no attempt to hide what she was doing—laced the bottom of Lady Juliet’s cup with gin and placed the bottle on the table with the smouldering ashtray. Then she departed and the machine was switched back on.) ‘Barbara went through a lot of men and didn’t get back to Jamie Villiers till the summer of 1915. That was when he got his first decorations and came home a hero and Barbara snatched him away from Diana Menzies. You can see that Barbara was possessive, to say the least. Once she set her cap—that was that. It couldn’t matter less who got hurt. She even tried to hold on to Clive and Michael. Her brothers! (LAUGHTER) Oh, I can tell you I’m certainly glad I wasn’t a boy in our family! Or in love with a boy in our family. Later, when Clive was engaged to Honor Hampton, Barbara refused to give her blessing and made life hell for poor dear Honor—who of course never did marry Clive. He was killed on the First of July.’

  (When men and women of Juliet d’Orsey’s vintage refer to the ‘First of July’ they inevitably mean the first of July, 1916. It was on that date the Somme offensive was begun. In the hours between 7.30 a.m. and 7.30 p.m. 21,000 British soldiers were killed—35,000 were wounded and 600 taken prisoner by the Germans. This is perhaps as good a place as any to point out that Lord Clive Stourbridge, Juliet and Barbara’s eldest brother, was one of the Cambridge poets whose best-known work—like that of Sassoon and Rupert Brooke—had its roots in the war. Other poets who were present on the First of July, besides Stourbridge and Sassoon, were Robert Graves and Wilfred Owen. Both Sassoon and Graves have written accounts of the battle.)

  ‘The thing you want to know about is Barbara meeting Robert and how it was that Harris brought about their ultimate relationship. These are the circles—all drawing inward to the thing that Robert did. You know—I’m guessing at this—but I think that Robert was in love with Harris. Somewhat the same way Jamie had been in love with Clive. It may be pedestrian to say so—but the truth is often pedestrian and I think the fact is that extremely physical men like Robert and Jamie and Taffler are often extremely sensitive men as well. Not your local football players, mind you! They’re more apt to be maudlin and sentimental. But the true athletes—the ones who seek beauty through perfection. I think they seek out poets and artists just as poets and artists seek them out. Maybe not always as lovers—though “love” has so many ways of expressing itself outside of the physical. I certainly don’t want to paint a picture of a lot of poets and athletes lusting after one another’s bodies! But love—yes. Robert, though he never said so, loved Harris. It was clear in the way he dealt with his death and in the way he spoke of him afterwards to me. The war was part of it too. You cannot know these things. You live when you live. No one else can ever live your life and no one else will ever know what you know. Then was then. Unique. And how does one explain? You had a war. Every generation has a war—except this one. But that’s beside the point. The thing is not to make excuses for the way
you behaved—not to take refuge in tragedy—but to clarify who you are through your response to when you lived. If you can’t do that, then you haven’t made your contribution to the future. Think of any great man or woman. How can you separate them from the years in which they lived? You can’t. Their greatness lies in their response to that moment. Well—let’s forget about greatness and get back to what I began to say. The war. Siegfried said a marvellous thing—’(Sassoon)—‘He was taking his troops to the front and they were walking along a road that had been shelled and he saw a soldier lying dead by the road whose head had been smashed. It was an awful shock. The first dead man he’d seen, I think. And he said that after a while you saw them everywhere and you sort of accepted it. But the acceptance made him mad and he said this marvellous thing: I still maintain that an ordinary human being has a right to be horrified by a mangled body seen on an afternoon walk. So what it was we were denied was to be ordinary. All our ordinary credos and expectations vanished. Vanished. There was so much death. No one can imagine. These were not accidents—or the quiet, expected deaths of the old. These were murders. By the thousands. All your friends were…murdered. (PAUSE) I know “the bomb” is terrible. But if the bomb falls, we all die together. In the war you had to face it day after day—week after week—month after month—year after year. Every day another friend. And what I hate these days is the people who weren’t there and they look back and say we became inured. Your heart froze over—yes. But to say we got used to it! God—that makes me so angry! No. Everything was sharp. Immediate. Men and women like Robert and Barbara—Harris and Taffler…you met and you saw so clearly and cut so sharply into one another’s lives. So there wasn’t any rubbish. You lived without the rubbish of intrigue and the long-drawn-out propriety of romance and you simply touched the other person with your life. Sometimes to the quick. Robert sat by Harris day after day and day after day Barbara and Taffler came to see Jamie. This is the hardest thing of all for me to admit about my sister. Her silence in Jamie’s presence. Was it cruel? Of course it was. Not to let him hear her voice. Nothing was left of him, you know. Nothing but nerves and pain and his mind. No voice—no flesh. Nothing. Just his self. Later, as you’ll see, this forms a sort of pattern…well—a very definite pattern. Barbara standing at the foot of the bed. Someone else doing all the talking. Barbara with her flowers. Her freesia. Emanations. There they are on the mantle. And she was like that cold white vase and never said a word. She stood and watched them dying like a stone. Ariadne and Dionysus. Well—it’s not a bad analogy. Yes? Deserted by one god—she took up another. Every year, Dionysus was destroyed and every year he was born again from ashes. So Barbara went there every day and stood by Jamie’s bed with Taffler and every day she saw Robert Ross. Probably only from the corner of her eye. But she was aware of him. She’d come back here—sometimes with Taffler—and sit by the fire with a glass of sherry in her hand and watch the flames and Taffler would tell them about the other men in the ward—Robert and Harris among them. Mummy was the one who said we should invite Robert up to St Aubyn’s. But that was not till later and that’s when I met him myself and he told me about Harris. After their arrival in England, Robert and Harris were in the infirmary at Shorncliffe together—Harris getting worse and worse and Robert recovering his legs. Harris did a lot of talking through the nights when neither man could sleep. He’d never been abroad. He was an only child and had a brilliant mind. Almost, if not, a poet. Certainly a storyteller. Lying in the dark he told Robert tales of forest fires and men out lost in ships in winter storms. Of summers climbing shale and watching birds. Of the high, hot valleys filled with clattering stones and rivers running underground. And whales. He told of having swum with schools of whales and claimed that underwater you could hear them sing. Robert was sceptical. Whales made no sound at all. Now, of course, we know that Harris was right. I even have a recording of whales myself. But Robert didn’t believe it. Then. Harris said that sometimes the whales would beach themselves and then the fishermen would come in boats and slaughter them. Harris said he would sometimes lie offshore and let himself be carried in by tides that washed him up the sand—the sand was red and he told how he would float that way sometimes for hours, just to get the feel of landfall—sort of the way a million years ago or more we came ashore ourselves as fish or frogs or whatever it was we were—floating through slaughter. But Robert said: we were always men. He didn’t believe all that stuff about fish and frogs. He said he believed that everything was what it was. No—said Harris—Everyone who’s born has come from the sea. Your mother’s womb is just the sea in small. And birds come out of seas in eggs. Horses lie in the sea before they’re born. The placenta is the sea. And your blood is the sea continued in your veins. We are the ocean—walking on the land.’ (THERE IS A PAUSE—THEN LADY JULIET SAYS) ‘I wish someone would tell them that, downstairs in the Ministry of Scientific Research!’ (YOU CHANGE TAPES) ‘Robert asked Harris once if he wasn’t afraid, swimming around with whales that way and floating on the tide. Drowning had always been a particular fear of Robert’s. No. Harris said: he wasn’t afraid at all. His mother had died when he was three. He’d grown up eating alone with his father at a twelve-foot table with a candle in the centre between them. Burning and silent. When he died, Robert took his gloves with the bitten fingers and the long blue scarf he’d wound around his neck.’ (The Mass intrudes at this point—‘Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison.’ Then Lady Juliet concludes.) ‘The last scene of this ties them all together: Robert—Harris—Barbara—Taffler—even Jamie, I suppose. You have to remember they’d seen each other every day for over a week. Harris’s death occurred two days before Robert was scheduled to leave for France. He opened his eyes—smiled the way he always did when he woke—and waved. Thank you, he said. And died. Like that. Robert went away and walked in the snow. He didn’t know what to do. His leave was nearly up. He didn’t want to abandon his friend to strangers. The army might have buried him—but that was grotesque; a body in a box beneath a flag he’d never had a chance to fight for—and by the time all that could be arranged, Robert would be gone. He’d tried to get a response near the end from Harris’s father—cablegrams and letters. Nothing. He’d even requested his own father to send a cable from Toronto. Nothing. Then it was solved—through a dreadful mistake. When Robert returned to the Royal Free Hospital the day after Harris’s death to ask their advice and to deal with Harris’s effects, he discovered to his horror that Harris had been cremated. The technical reasons for this are far too complicated to be of interest—having to do with procedures in the morgue and mistaken identity and a rather stupid orderly. Suffice it to say that when Robert arrived he was told of the mishap and offered the ashes as a fait accompli. They were in a square wooden box about the size of a very large cannister of tea and the box was wrapped in burlap. Robert sat in the foyer of the hospital with the box in his lap. He sat there for hours. He sat there so long that he was there when Barbara and Taffler arrived to visit Jamie. He explained what had happened. Barbara, as usual, was carrying flowers. This time they were roses. The problem was—what to do with the ashes. Robert couldn’t carry them to France. And there wasn’t any church where they’d accept them because no one would accept the ashes of a man who hadn’t been a parishioner. Barbara said: Why don’t you scatter them? Where? Robert asked—and Taffler said Where would he like to be, do you think? Robert thought about it. The sea, he said. But the sea was too far. Barbara decided on a compromise. They would take the ashes to Greenwich and scatter them on the river. The river is marvellous there and wide and the next best thing to the sea. So that is what they did. They hired a cab and drove all the way to Greenwich—Robert sitting on the jump seat with the ashes on his lap—Barbara sitting apart from Taffler with the roses cradled in her arm. Nobody spoke. They left the cab at King William’s Walk. It snowed. They decided to throw the ashes from the end of the pier. Robert went first and Taffler followed. Barbara stood in the centre of the pier with the ros
es hanging down against her side. She could hardly see through the snow, she said. It was terribly cold and the wind blew down the river and all the mournful whistles sounded from the ships. The cab had gone. They were deserted. Only the three of them stood there. Just before he removed the lid from the container, Robert turned to Taffler and said to him: This is not a military funeral. This is just a burial at sea. May we take off our caps? Taffler, who had seniority, said yes. He removed his cap and Robert did the same. The tide was in their favour and the flats across the river were melting in the rush of snow and water. Robert pried off the lid and placed his hand for a moment over the exposed ashes. They were grey. A sort of yellowish grey. Robert thought: I’ve never seen this done or read about its being done—not even in Chums or Joseph Conrad, so I don’t know what to say. He made it up. Go, he said, in peace. And sing with the whales. That was all. Then he scattered some of the ashes with his fingers—flinging them as far as he could, but the wind would not let them settle on the water. Robert turned to Taffler. He remembered the stones on the prairie. And the long Varsity passes. You’ve got a better arm than me, he said, Would you put him in the centre of the river? Taffler nodded. Even in the snowstorm, he removed his jacket. He handed it to Barbara. She said it was like a ceremony. He also handed her his cap. Robert gave him the container. Taffler weighed the box and stared at the river, gauging the distance and measuring the wind. Then he leaned way back and wound the box behind his ear—just like a football and giving a great, inadvertent yell he threw it out so far it passed the centre and was gone from sight. Barbara said they stood and watched for a very long time, until the roses began to crumble. After, when Taffler had put his jacket on and he and Robert had struggled back into their greatcoats, the three of them walked away towards the Royal Naval College, Barbara trailing rose petals, and Barbara said to Robert: You may not realize, Lieutenant Ross, that General Wolfe was born at Greenwich. No. Robert hadn’t realized. Yes, said Barbara. Then he grew up and got your country for us. Robert said: No, ma’am. I think we got it for him. We? Barbara asked. Soldiers, said Robert. It was the first time he’d truly thought of himself as being a soldier. Maybe it was because of the ashes on his fingers. That night, he boarded the troop train at Victoria Station and went down through the dark to Folkestone where he crossed in a storm to Boulogne and was in France.’