It was hard to endure the steady stream of petty humiliations from the other boys. It was hard to do his homework by smoky oil lamp under the small, dark eaves of the cottage. He wished he had a father who understood the geometry of triangles, or could discuss which word might bring the heat of ancient battles to life from the dry simplicity of Latin. But his father worked with bellows and hammer, and kept his accounts in his head. It was lonely writing reports on places he could barely imagine; poring over the atlas, the pictures of native princes from around the Empire, or the treasures brought back to British museums by various scientific expeditions. He found geography to be no less fantastical than history, so that he found it no harder to imagine ancient Troy or Rome than modern Bombay, and found Latin more alive and exciting than living French.
The hardest lesson of all, heard once more from the library window today, was that Miss Nash’s promises had come to nothing and he could never escape who he was. In this he was no different from any other lad in the county. By face, by name, and by accent, everyone knew who everyone else was going back a hundred years. It was like a big brown label tied to his jacket with his family history printed in big letters. Or like being one of Mr. Hugh’s specimens, floating in a jar of foul-smelling preservative with a sticky label on the lid. It was not possible to change places with another boy, even for a day. It was not possible to be different.
“Oh, that’s only the Sidley boy—his father’s a Gypsy…”
“Aye, blood will out in the end, they say…”
And now the Headmaster’s voice rang again in his ear, “Such a boy could never adequately represent our school…”
He had dared to hope that sticking with the schoolroom, though the constraints chafed at him like chains, might be his escape. But it was clear now that he would never be allowed to leave the prison of who he was. They would smile, but their eyes would say “dirty Gypsy.” He was destined to live and die within a few miles of his father’s sooty forge, and all his fancy schooling would likely suggest only that he was wilier and less trustworthy than his father, who had never learned to read.
He pinched the butt of his cigarette between his fingers, feeling the sting of hot ash. The burn was like an offering to seal his vow. He would prove them all wrong about Richard Sidley. He would turn soldier, and like the wandering Trojan warriors of the Aeneid, he would seek his destiny on a grand adventure in foreign parts. He scrambled from the bushes and set off at a lope across the playing field towards the railway line. If he could sneak onto the next train as it slowed for the crossing, he might make it to Colonel Wheaton’s camp before tea.
Over the railway line, across the grass, While up above the golden wings are spread, Flying, ever flying overhead,
Here still I see your khaki figure pass, And when I leave the meadow, almost wait, That you should open first the wooden gate.
MARIAN ALLEN, “The Wind on the Downs”
The morning of the fete dawned clear, the bite of early October air quickly succumbing to the warmth of another Indian summer day. Beatrice opened her stiff casement and leaned her head from the cold room into a shaft of morning sun. A scattering of birds from the cobbles signaled a lone figure climbing the steep street, and Beatrice recognized the slow steps and bent back of the fishmonger’s wife, whose son had been among those lost in the first battles of the Expeditionary Force. How proud she and her husband had been of their young soldier, already a veteran of some years, and how much excited interest and respect the town had showered upon them in the earliest weeks, as the thirst for information and for the chance to feel close to the action had made the fishmonger’s a hive of activity and gossip. Now the woman seemed to have aged many years, and business was slower in the shop as many townspeople gave in to the callow instinct to avoid the grieving parents.
Beatrice had seen the same in her aunt’s village. For every person who stopped to smile in sympathy and speak a word about her father, there were others who turned aside into shop doorways or whisked across the street, lowering their umbrellas to obscure their faces. When forced to meet later, they would be so surprised not to have seen more of her.
On such a day as today, the widows and the grieving mothers were expected to keep their black weeds and pale faces in their shuttered homes. In history, and in the great art hanging in the museums, those who had borne the sacrifice of husbands and sons seemed always missing from pageant and feast, thought Beatrice. No parade of victory or peace ever included the biers of the dead. Held at the window by a consciousness of her own desire to hide, Beatrice made sure to catch the fishmonger’s wife’s eye and give a quick smile and a wave before retreating inside.
—
Hugh took one last look in the mirror and adjusted his stiff cap to an angle that might make him look less like a bus driver. The cap made his ears look large, he thought, and its shiny peak made a permanent frowning shadow over his eyes. He would have been happier and more dashing, he thought, in a surgical coat, but an officer must appear on public occasions in dress uniform, no matter how stiff and uncomfortable. Daniel, who was lacing his boots in a chair across the day nursery, managed to make his dress uniform look relaxed almost to the point of informality and seemed not to be suffering from constriction through the shoulders or the itch of new wool against any exposed skin. His hair had been cut and oiled flat but still curled across his forehead, and his face was cheerful as he poked lace through brass rivet and puffed on an illicit early cigarette.
“Your jacket will smell of tobacco all day,” said Hugh. “Aunt Agatha will lecture you.”
“All soldiers smell of tobacco,” said Daniel. “The Tommy of tobacco, sweat, and cabbage; the officer of tobacco, shoe blacking, and bay rum. It is an extraordinary universality.”
“My chaps smell of iodine,” said Hugh. “I’ve had two baths this morning, and a splash of Uncle John’s cologne, just so I don’t have to be sick of myself.”
“I just hope the Hun smell different,” said Daniel. “Hard to bayonet something that smells like your bunkmate.”
“According to the papers, the Germans will stink of the blood of innocents,” said Hugh.
“Words cast at the world like stones,” said Daniel. “These journalists risk turning a moral obligation to act into a blind crusade of revenge.”
“Who’s on a blind crusade?” asked Uncle John, knocking on the door and coming in.
“The press,” said Daniel. “They are inflaming the common man beyond all reason.”
“Is that the common view in your outfit?”
“We have a wide range of views,” said Daniel. “We enjoy some spirited debates in the mess.”
“And that is why it was always a bad idea to put all the writers and artists in one brigade,” said Uncle John, shaking his head but smiling. “If you can cease the sedition for half an hour, your aunt is telling me we must eat breakfast now if we are to be on time.”
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to run down and see my chaps at their lodgings,” said Hugh. “Give the turnout one last look before the parade. I expect they’ll have rustled up some grub.”
“My comrades will have to wait,” said Daniel. “Cook told me she’s been keeping back a nice piece of bacon just for today. I refuse to let duty come between me and fresh rashers.”
Downstairs in the front hall, as Hugh paused to adjust his cap one futile last time in the mirror, he caught the scent of bacon and saw, through the open door, a corner of the set breakfast table, the blue of hydrangeas on the sideboard, the white linen curtains stirred by a small breeze. Muffled sounds of pots and pans came from the kitchen, a shimmer of sun spilled across the dark oak floor, and the scents of wood polish and clean paint added to the more insistent smells of the breakfast table. Hugh felt a sudden sense of the importance of the usual breakfast table rituals, the value of the ordinary front hall with its umbrella stand and the sun through the panes of the front door. A desire to join Daniel and the family at breakfast after all delayed his hand on the doorknob, but a stronger voice told him he was being sentimental if not maudlin. His departure from the house would not tear it apart like some fragile theater scenery, and he would not allow the war to freight every entrance and exit with the weight of tragedy. His departure would mean nothing except extra bacon for Daniel. In service of such a brisk resolution, Hugh immediately detoured into the dining room and wrapped several slices of bacon in a napkin so that he might eat them on his way down the hill.