—
After the bright of the sunny day outside, the gloom and fug of the small, black-beamed pub was almost impenetrable, the smell of frying liver and stale beer, the acrid catch in the throat from so many pipes and cigars. Students, law clerks, and tradesmen stood four deep at the copper bar, and Hugh pushed through with some difficulty to where his cousin and two friends were grouped close around a barrel table, eating pies with all the grace of dockworkers. Daniel was in his shirtsleeves, tie stuffed in his pocket, a dark stain of spilled liquor over his heart. A pint of beer and a glass of sticky whisky sat by his plate, and in the midst of loud debate, one of the men rose to his feet and refilled the whisky glasses to the brim.
“To poetry and to death!” he said, raising his glass and drinking it in one swallow.
“To poetry that transcends death!” said the other, downing his glass and slumping away from his plate.
“Above all to poetry!” said Daniel, and would have drunk, but Hugh reached to stay his arm.
“Hello, Cousin,” he said.
“Hu-Hugh,” said Daniel, having some difficulty with the h sound of his name. “You are just in time to toast the King. We are all going in the army!”
“The King!” said the friend with the bottle, raising the bottle itself and drinking from its neck.
“To King and country!” squeaked the other, unable to rise again from his seat.
“The King!” The pub erupted in cheers, and Hugh could not make himself heard amid a rousing chorus of “Land of Hope and Glory,” made mercifully short by the inability of all to remember more than four lines of the chorus. As the noise died away, Hugh perched on a low stool and asked a passing barmaid to bring him a steak and kidney pie.
“Anything for an officer, love,” she said, giving him a suggestive wink.
“Just the pie, no peas or gravy,” he added.
“Hugh, you will be very proud of me,” said Daniel. “My father will be proud. My friends, those that are left to me in this cruel world”—with this he pulled out his tie and wiped his eyes with it—“will be proud. We are off to war, Hugh. We are off—all in the valley of death rode the five hundred.”
“Six hundred,” said the friend trapped in his own chair.
“What, Tubby? This is my friend Tubby Archer, Hugh.”
“Six hundred—Light Brigade…six hundred,” said Tubby.
“Six hundred? Shit, that’s a lot of horses,” said the other. He was now cradling the bottle as if it were a small child.
“Longshanks, my friend—it is indeed—that’s a, tha’s a…” Daniel could not speak for laughing, his mouth hanging open, his eyes streaming with tears.
“Landlord says keep it down a bit, will you, gents?” said the barmaid, squeezing through with a steaming pie for Hugh.
“Sorry,” said Hugh. “Perhaps you could bring a pot of coffee.”
“No, no, no!” said Daniel, waving a stern finger at Hugh. “We’re off to enlist in His Majesty’s army and we won’t go sober.”
“No we won’t go sober, if we go at all,” sang the three friends.
“Sorry,” said Hugh again.
“Not to worry,” said the barmaid. “You let ’em holler all they want, poor dears. They’ll be a lot more quiet when they wake up under the sergeant major.”
She gave Hugh another wink and squeezed away while Daniel moaned, “Come back, Peg o’ my heart. I love you!”
The three friends subsided into a low, harmonic rendition of “Peg o’ My Heart” with only a passing adherence to any particular key. At least they were quiet enough for Hugh to be able to take a few bites of his pie and a draft of strong beer. When they were finished, all three seemed maudlin and close to tears, a marginal improvement on drunk and loud.
“What’s all this about enlisting?” said Hugh. “I thought you were rather the pacifist.”
“No, not a pacifist, just a poet,” said Daniel. “But the time has come, Cousin, the time has come to show the likes of some that real men, real bravery lies in the trenches.”
“Heading for the infantry, are you?” asked Hugh. He could not hide a smile at the thought of fastidious Daniel in a muddy trench.
“Longshanks here—this is Bill Longshanks from the Poet’s Circle of Greater Pimlico—Longshanks has an uncle can get us in the Artists Rifles. Officer training. All poets and artists and so forth. No rich dilettantes, but only true artists on a mission to limn new forms of bravery and construct, with sonnet and brush, a new brotherhood of artist-soldiers.” He paused to peer in his beer tankard, and, finding it still half filled, he raised it high as if to toast. “We are away this very afternoon, my boys.”
“You should probably sober up. Things may seem different with a clear head.”
“No, no, I will hurl myself into the valley with the horses,” proclaimed Daniel. “No time to lose.”
“No horses,” said Longshanks. “Just rifles and so on. Probably go by train. Four o’clock from Kings Cross.”
“They need me, Hugh,” said Daniel. “They need an editor for the regimental journal.”
“I said Daniel Bookham is the man to write our history in epic verse,” said Longshanks.
“Even under the barrage I shall toil in my dugout by a single candle,” said Daniel. “And when the bugle sounds the end of day, and they pull our battered bodies from the carnage, they shall find me clutching to my breast the final issue…” He wiped a tear from his eye, and his friends, too, nodded their heads low and seemed to mourn already the destruction of the regiment.
“I think you’re putting the cart before the horse, nonexistent as the horses may be,” said Hugh. “This is not a decision to be made in your cups.”
“It is the biggest adventure our age shall see,” said Longshanks, who did not seem quite as drunk as Hugh had first thought. “It is the ultimate canvas, and no second-raters invited!”
“Hear, hear,” chorused Daniel and Tubby Archer. Hugh understood, with a sinking feeling, that the whispering recruiters would resort to no end of stratagems; that flattery and insult, career prospects and love, family honor and the shining gold of opportunity would all serve equally well for the purpose of recruiting men to wear the khaki.
“I signed up, so I am the last to dissuade you,” said Hugh. “But I asked my father’s permission and my mother’s blessing before I did, and you, Cousin Daniel, will do the same, and best to warn Uncle John and Aunt Agatha as well, I think.”
“We could go tomorrow,” said Tubby. “Earlier train, you know—time to pack a hearty lunch and settle our affairs.”
“Tomorrow would do as well,” said Longshanks. “But I will telegraph my uncle today of our intent, and you will not, I know, make me a liar by any shirking?”
“But might Tubby’s landlady not discover his purpose in the delay?” asked Daniel. “I thought he meant to leave via the back window.”
“I shall pack my brushes and leave via the front door,” said Tubby. “I shall inform the lady of my purpose in the gravest tone and promise her a pound of my flesh from the King’s own pay.”
“Best we plan to have a hansom cab standing by,” said Daniel. “We might have to make a quick getaway.”
“I have time to take you to your father’s house,” said Hugh to Daniel. “Or perhaps we can find him at his club?”
“No need of that,” said Daniel. “A note by the last post will do. My father will be nothing but ecstra-extar-ecstatic at the news.”
“Then I think we had better go and see Uncle John at the Ministry,” said Hugh. “I have a feeling you will need his help to tell Aunt Agatha that her favorite nephew is going to war.”