In Pale Battalions - Retail Read online

  He held up the magazine so that I could see the title. It was the Illustrated London News. When I went over and knelt beside him, I saw that he had it open at the front page. There was a photograph of the Prince of Wales, dressed in military uniform, inspecting a guard of honour in the company of a frock-coated, foreign-looking gentleman.

  ‘Who’s the man with the Prince of Wales?’ I asked.

  ‘That is the President of France. They’re inspecting French troops at Thiepval. Do you know where Thiepval is, Leonora?’

  ‘Somewhere in France?’

  ‘More than that. It’s the centre of the Somme battlefield. The Prince of Wales went there to unveil the new Memorial to the Missing.’

  My eyes took in the two photographs on the facing page. The one at the top, taken from the air, showed a vast brick monument of arches, pillars and raised blocks looming above bare fields, the concourse before it crowded with onlookers and parked vehicles. The picture beneath had been taken at ground level from amongst the crowd. From there the tall, slender central arch of the monument was visible, at its head the British and French flags, at its foot a line of soldiers standing to attention. In the foreground, the crowd watched, some straining from vantage points with cameras, others huddling beneath umbrellas.

  ‘What does it mean, Grandpapa – a Memorial to the Missing?’

  ‘It is to commemorate the men who died in the Battle of the Somme and who have no known grave. All their names are recorded there.’

  ‘But why is it so big?’

  ‘Because there are so many names. See, it tells you how many there are.’

  I looked at the script beneath the photographs. There, sure enough, was the number: 73,412 men with no known grave.

  ‘Your father is one of those, Leonora. His name will be recorded there. One day, perhaps, I will take you to see it.’

  It was, in its way, an absurd suggestion, considering his debility. But for him to have spoken my father’s name, which he so seldom did in my hearing, was achievement enough. It emboldened me to ask him more.

  ‘Does that mean my father doesn’t have a grave?’

  He frowned and set his jaw. ‘Yes. I’m afraid it does.’

  ‘What about my mother? Does she have a grave?’

  The frown softened. ‘Oh yes. Of course she does. Whatever made you ask that?’

  ‘Then … where is it?’

  He turned his face aside and squinted towards the window. ‘It is … far away.’

  ‘Won’t you tell me where?’

  ‘Perhaps … when you’re older.’

  ‘How much older?’

  He looked back at me. ‘When I … think you’re ready.’

  We were no longer talking merely of the whereabouts of my mother’s grave. I think we both knew that what he was promising me, at some undetermined future date, was an answer to all my questions. What he was promising me was what he, at least, felt I deserved.

  ‘I’m tired now, Leonora. Leave me to sleep.’

  He let me take the Illustrated London News with me. I went up to my room and lay on my bed, devouring every word of the article, studying every figure in the photographs. You’ve seen the Memorial now and so have I. Then I could only imagine what it was like, could only pretend to myself that one day my grandfather would keep his promise and take me there. I read and re-read the quotations from the Prince of Wales’ speech until they were imprinted on my memory. Even to this day, I remember his words.

  ‘These myriads of names must form no mere Book of the Dead. They must be the opening chapter in a new Book of Life – the foundation and guide to a better civilization from which war shall be banished.’

  Fine words for 73,412 men with no known grave. And my father one of them.

  As it grew dark, the house filled with people. There was laughter, a babble of conversation, a gust of jazz music from the gramophone. Car doors slammed as other guests arrived. Somewhere I heard Payne’s loud, brutal voice, slurred by drink. It was too much. As soon as the light left the sky, I sought refuge in the observatory, knowing that there I could escape the noise, that there they could not find me.

  I would probably have been content to watch for shooting stars and wait for the party to finish had not the lamps come on in one of the rear bedrooms of the main block. I was surprised to see Olivia standing in the uncurtained window, for it was not her room and the party was still in progress. Curious, and secretly pleased to have her at a disadvantage, I trained the telescope on her.

  She raised her head and rubbed at her throat, as if feeling the heat. Then she eased the window down and took several deep breaths. She was wearing a clinging pink silk dress, decorated with lace. It showed off her figure to flattering effect.

  She turned away from the window and, as she did so, a man came into view, crossing the room to meet her. It was Sidney Payne. He seized her by the waist and kissed her full on the mouth, the force of his lips distorting her face, then on the neck. Her head swayed back and she laughed. He ran his right hand down over her hip and thigh, then kissed the tops of her breasts above the low neck of the dress. I could see an ugly flush of greed on his face, but not on Olivia’s, now Payne wasn’t looking at her, there was something even worse: that same expression I had seen in the painting, that inimitable, weary loathing. Then, with awkward, staggering steps, they moved, still entwined, across the room – towards the bed, I supposed – at any rate out of sight.

  I couldn’t have stopped watching if they hadn’t moved away, but suddenly I felt grateful that they had. Alone in the observatory, I began to cry, not because of what I’d seen but because of what it meant. Olivia had given me a glimpse of the future, a foretaste of what life at Meongate would be like once she had sole dominion. I could have guessed what it would be like. But now I knew.

  My suspicions were confirmed sooner than I might have expected. One afternoon in November of that year, I was summoned from the hockney field at Howell’s and told to report to the Headmistress’s office. She was customarily stern and autocratic, so her gentleness of manner on this occasion forewarned me. My grandfather had suffered a fatal stroke and I must return home at once.

  Very early next morning, my housemistress drove me to Wrexham and put me aboard the express for London. She was, I think, rather puzzled by my evident composure, but I could not help that. My grandfather had never disclosed enough of himself for me to mourn him in any heartfelt sense. Yet my composure was in part a device. I was determined to steel myself against whatever changes would now follow, determined to deprive Olivia of the satisfaction of knowing that I feared for my future at her hands.

  It was as well that I had prepared myself, because, at Meongate, I found Sidney Payne already in residence. Fergus told me that he was certain Payne’s perpetual presence had hastened his master’s death. We were united in hatred of an interloper who threatened us both. Yet we were also helpless. The Powerstock title had died with my grandfather, and nobility, literally as well as metaphorically, left Meongate with his funeral cortège.

  After the burial, Mayhew, the family solicitor, accompanied us back to the house for the reading of the will. A sleek, spare man of few words, he declined an offer of sherry and read the document at a swift, expressionless clip. Olivia and I comprised his audience, though Olivia seemed scarcely to be listening as she strolled around behind him. I, on the other hand, listened intently to learn what provision my grandfather had made for me. I had already reasoned that whatever he’d left me would be placed in trust until I came of age. I would therefore have to wait six years for independence from Olivia. It would be unpleasant, I knew, but not unbearable.

  Mayhew concluded his preamble. Olivia moved slowly behind his chair. ‘“I devise all my real estate and I bequeath all my personal estate after payment of my just debts, funeral and testamentary expenses to my wife Olivia and I appoint her sole executrix of this my will.”’

  There was nothing else, no mention of me, no provision of any kind for his only gran
dchild.

  ‘“Lastly I revoke all former wills in testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of May One Thousand Nine Hundred and Seventeen. Signed: Powerstock.”’

  I was speechless. How could he have ignored his granddaughter? He had made the will when I was two months old. Mayhew began to gather his papers. At last, I found my voice. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Mayhew looked at me. ‘Don’t understand what, young lady?’

  ‘You didn’t read out my name.’

  ‘It was not there to be read.’

  ‘But … I’m his granddaughter.’

  Olivia stopped in her tracks and looked towards me. She was by the window now, with the light behind her, so I could not see the expression on her face as she spoke. ‘Edward has entrusted your welfare to me, Leonora.’

  There was nothing more to be said in her presence. I rose and left the room. I went into the garden, paced the lawn and tried to marshal my thoughts. I was Lord Powerstock’s only blood relative, the only member of his family left, yet – nothing! Meongate, my home, my family’s home, was mine, was theirs, no more. I looked towards the window from which he had so often watched me, struggled to understand why he should have done such a thing. Is that what he would one day have told me, had he lived? I would never know.

  Turning back towards the house, I saw Mayhew climbing into his car. I ran across to him, holding up my hand to attract his attention.

  ‘Mr Mayhew!’

  ‘Yes, young lady?’ His expression gave me little confidence.

  ‘Can you tell me … why my grandfather ignored me in his will?’

  ‘I cannot.’

  ‘But … it isn’t right.’

  ‘I witnessed the document myself. Lord Powerstock’s intentions were unmistakable.’

  ‘Aren’t I entitled to anything?’

  He thought for a moment before replying. ‘You are entitled to contest the will. But, as a minor, you could only do so through your guardian – Lady Powerstock.’

  So that was it. Mayhew drove away and left me, alone and at Olivia’s mercy. Such rights as I had were hers to dispose of. Lord Powerstock had consigned to her the future and to me – nothing at all.

  What that future might hold was not long in becoming apparent. When I returned to Meongate a month later, for the Christmas holiday, a party was in progress. I walked up alone from the station in the chill of a December afternoon to find lights blazing from every window of the house, sounds of music and laughter wafting out into the dusk. Fergus greeted me with a warning that I should be prepared for the worst. Olivia had given instructions that I was to join the party as soon as I arrived.

  There were a dozen or so guests, forgathered in the drawing room, logs piled and roaring in the grate, jazz blaring from the gramophone, gin fumes and cigarette smoke hanging in the air, Sidney Payne red in the face and laughing loudly at a joke he had just told. Some I recognized as Payne’s business associates who’d been to Meongate before, hard-drinking, coarse-voiced men with women twenty years their junior goggled-eyed and giggling on their arms; others were newcomers. I don’t think any of them noticed me come in.

  Except Olivia. She had been reclining on a chaise-longue, smoking a cigarette in a holder, and rose now, arrayed in crimson silk, to greet me with a watchful smile. ‘Welcome home, Leonora,’ she said, loudly enough to arrest the conversation nearest her. ‘You’re just in time to drink a toast. Sidney, a small glass of champagne for Leonora.’

  Payne stepped forward and handed me a glass, breathing cigar smoke over me as he did so. I did not look at him. My eyes remained fixed on the gloating triumph I could read in Olivia’s face.

  ‘Sidney and I have announced our engagement,’ she said. ‘I’d like you to drink to our happiness.’

  ‘I’ll be one of the family now,’ said Payne, somewhere on the fringes of my awareness.

  I drank – or, rather, sipped – and asked if I might leave, but Olivia insisted that I remain. So I sat, still in my school uniform, on a hard chair, clutching but never finishing the glass of champagne, and watched and listened as the party proceeded.

  One couple began to Charleston in the centre of the room, another to kiss passionately on a sofa in the corner. Voices grew louder, faces redder, laughs more hysterical. Drinks were spilled, cigarettes trodden into the carpet. My eyes began to water, my ears to throb. And through it all Olivia remained where she was, drinking little and laughing less, watching me as I endured the flagrancy of her strangely joyless victory. For it was more than merely a party, more than an announcement of her engagement. It was a declaration of intent.

  Towards the end, Payne became very drunk. I noticed him back one of the girls against the wall and whisper something in her ear which made her laugh. As I watched, he lifted the hem of her dress and slid a five-pound note into the top of her stocking. And she laughed again.

  Then I looked at Olivia and saw that she too had been watching him. When her gaze shifted back to me, it bore the expression of the woman in the painting, as I so clearly remembered it. With no other hint of her reaction, she left the couch, walked over to me and took the glass from my hand.

  ‘You may go now,’ she said.

  By Easter, they were married. Payne’s son by his first wife served as best man. I was not required to come home for the ceremony, which took place at a register office in Portsmouth and was followed, so Fergus later told me, by a weekend-long party at Meongate.

  In my self-centred way – for at sixteen who is not self-centred? – I convinced myself that Olivia had contracted a loveless and repugnant marriage simply to further her hatred of me. Looking back, I doubt that had much to do with it. Her extravagant tastes and Lord Powerstock’s deficient financial management had probably rendered a remunerative union essential if she was to continue to live as she wished. Payne, for all his obvious faults, had made enough money out of the post-war building boom to ensure that she could be kept in the manner to which she’d become accustomed. Or so she must have calculated.

  But the true consequences of their marriage went beyond anybody’s calculations. If Payne, his odious son and their circle of acquaintances rendered me a stranger in my own home, I had at least an ally in Fergus and school, in term-time, to retreat to. So when Angela Bowden, a schoolfriend whose father owned a chain of estate agents along the south coast, told me that Payne had been implicated in a building scandal, I thought little of it. When she showed me a newspaper cutting which talked of land subsidence beneath some new houses he had erected on the slopes of Portsdown Hill, just outside Portsmouth, I was at first merely amused. When I read the allegations of bribed building officials and corrupt City Councillors, I didn’t really understand what it all meant. I simply reckoned that anything blackening Payne’s name was to be welcomed.

  The true significance of events dawned on me the day I returned to Meongate for Christmas in December 1933. It was exactly a year since Olivia’s engagement party, exactly a year since she had, as she thought, sealed her prosperity for life. I walked up from the station wondering what I would find at the house, dreading every prospect that occurred to me yet never once guessing what truly did await me.

  No party was in progress this time. No chandeliers were blazing, nor fires crackling. There was not even Fergus to greet me. I went into the drawing room, where I could see a light was on, and encountered Payne, asleep in an armchair, snoring loudly and smelling of whisky. I dropped my bag heavily on the floor but he did not stir.

  Growing puzzled, I rang the bell. After several minutes had passed, Sally appeared, looking more sullen and pinch-faced than ever.

  ‘Where’s Fergus?’ I said.

  ‘’E’s left us, Miss. Didn’t the mistress tell you?’

  ‘No. Where is she?’

  ‘In the study, like as not.’

  I found her where Sally had said, seated at what had been my grandfather’s desk. She looked tired and much older than when last I’d been home. Her only greeting was
an icy glare.

  ‘Sally told me Fergus has left,’ I said.

  ‘Fergus was dismissed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Prying once too often.’

  ‘But he’s been with the family—’

  ‘Too long. Far too long. Old ways are changing here, Leonora. Fergus going is just one example.’ She rose and crossed to the window. I noticed for the first time that her prodigious self-control had deserted her. She was angry, though for once not at me. ‘My husband has declared himself bankrupt.’

  ‘Bankrupt?’

  ‘I thought you would have heard about it.’

  ‘You mean those houses on Portsdown?’

  ‘You have heard. Yes. The houses on Portsdown. My husband’s prosperity, it seems, was as poorly founded as they were. He’s a ruined man, facing criminal charges. But that’s a small matter. My concern is to avoid being ruined with him.’ She turned to look at me quickly enough to catch a glimpse of my immediate reaction. ‘And don’t think you’re not implicated, because you are.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Oh but it is. You won’t be returning to Howell’s after Christmas. I can’t afford the fees. I’ve just been writing to your headmistress.’

  ‘Not … returning? You can’t—’

  ‘But I can, Leonora. I can.’ She moved closer. ‘As your guardian, I can do exactly as I like. Your education is now an unwarranted extravagance.’

  ‘But what … what will I do?’

  ‘With Fergus gone, there’ll be plenty for you to do here. You can help Sally.’

  No better than a servant, then, in my own home: that was her plan for me. I ran from the house and made my way down to the riverbank, where Fergus had so often fished. The overhanging trees were stark and bare, frost already forming on the grass. I draped my raincoat over a fallen trunk and sat there sobbing, confronting in all that bleakness the misery Olivia threatened to make of my life. No Fergus to confide in, no schoolfriends to return to, no hope of release. In the end, I dried my tears and resolved not to show any weakness to Olivia, not to give her any hint that she had the better of me. I would bide my time – and escape her yet.