The First of July(40)

He picked up his book again and opened it unconvincingly. He looked up almost immediately and, as he sat forward, as if about to admit Benedict to a great secret, finally their legs touched and Benedict could feel the warmth of Theo’s through his trousers.

Theo’s eyes were very slightly narrowed and the air of restlessness became one of suppressed excitement.

“But now, you see, I’ve got an idea. Things are changing. Every day. We’re at war, or as good as. I don’t want to miss out.”

He eyed Benedict as if to gauge how his speech was being received.

“I like the organ, strange beast that it is, I like the music when I’m allowed to play anything halfway decent, but sometimes I feel like an old man sitting there. In ten or twenty years’ time, my life would be just the same—thud, thud, thud, cold, stiff fingers on Christmas Day, slippery and sweating in July, except with Agnes grown stout and a brood of squealing infants we couldn’t afford. As soon as we’re at war, I’d rather join up, rather be part of it than spend decades with Stainer or banging out Ur-bide with Meeee.”

“Your father—”

“My father. My father—if I took a commission, I wouldn’t be in thrall to my father. I’d be paid as a subaltern.”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course I am. You can’t think of one thing against it.”

“Actually, I can. Though I can see what you’re saying. But who says any regiment will take you?”

“Us, Benedict,” he said, and his smile was so transparent, so hopeful, that Benedict was silenced, in anger and excitement. How dare Theo think that he, Benedict, would go to war just because he asked? How dare he?

And yet. And yet.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN


Harry, England,

August 1914


FOR THE LAST FEW DAYS, he and Marina had been traveling just ahead of war—or running away, really, Harry thought—but at Abbotsgate they had come to a standstill while the war moved inexorably toward them, gathering speed. The British ultimatum had been sent and gone unanswered; at eleven o’clock this evening, there would be a formal declaration of hostilities. Politicians and military commanders were poised over their long-devised plans. Everybody knew it.

At Abbotsgate, time was briefly suspended. The rituals were observed: the obituary in The Times, a crowded funeral in the ancient church, the heartfelt obsequies: his father had been much liked, his death premature; but even back at the house, as they held their delicate cups of tea, the black-clad guests talked, quietly at first, of little else but the approaching conflict.

The Lord Lieutenant stood on the terrace, talking to Harry and a neighbor. “The local militia is ready,” said the Lord Lieutenant, “and there’s been a surge in recruits.”

“While we were in Paris we watched the French mobilization,” Harry said. “It was quite …”—he searched for a word—“… quite quick. And quite chilling.”

And it had been, in its simplicity. On every street corner, posters went up in hours. Men had left their jobs. Dinner was chaos with too few waiters; banks remained closed, despite the clamor of Parisians and foreigners at the doors, but the bank workers had gone. There were queues at recruitment offices, and men marching badly in their everyday working clothes, led by corporals in caps, red pantaloons, and blue jackets.

“It’s their territory that the Germans will invade within hours, of course,” said a neighboring landowner with connections to the government. “I imagine we British would be pretty keen to keep the Kaiser out of our country. And the French were humiliated by the Germans in living memory. But there’ll be a bill before parliament here in days. Recruitment. We’re not up to strength even with the territorials. The Germans have every man under forty-five in their reserves, every one of them trained as a soldier.”

He was blunt and weathered; even as a very young man, Harry had thought he was cleverer than he let on.

“You’ll stay?” the Lord Lieutenant said to Harry, and it was just barely a question.

“If there’s war?” Harry was surprised.

“To take over the estate. Your estate. But yes, to war too. Will you take a commission?”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Harry said. It was not the entire truth: the possibility, vague enough not to be too unsettling, had crossed his mind when he was talking to Wilding. “Anyway, I doubt they’ll need me and I don’t think they’d want me. I’m not very young, I’ve been living in America a long time, my wife is American.”

“It depends on how many volunteers we get and how long the war goes on.”