Master Georgie Part 6

I waited a long time. The human noises died away and the frogs croaked again. Sometimes I floated off and walked through a garden in Cheshire, belly swollen, fingers snipping off blown roses. I could hear the clack of Annie's knitting needles. Once, Mrs Hardy hovered above me, demanding to know what I'd done with the tiger-skin rug. A pearl of mercury slid down my eyes, but it was only a diamond of light shining through a hole in the canvas.

When at last I rose and emerged into the open, the mist was rolling away across the lake and dawn streaked the sky.

Not a yard distant a man and a woman lay on their backs in the dew, she with her legs splayed wide. They were sleeping, not dead, for their mouths gaped open and both were snoring. A dog had its snout in Dr Potter's cooking pot tipped from the fire.

Georgie was in the medical tent, fast asleep on a straw mattress behind the instrument table. His arm was flung out across the chest of the fire-eater, who, covered in a hospital night-shirt, the rouge still hectic on his cheeks, lay on the bare ground beside him. This close, I knew him; it was the duck-boy. He had a blister on his lip and blobs of sealing wax spattered his beard.

Behind me a sick man called out for water. He was trying to raise his head, the claw of his hand raking the air. I took no notice and slipped away. He swore after me.

When reveille sounded I found myself at the lake, though I have no recollection of walking there. By now the crimson flush above the hills had faded into shining day. I stood, resentment wriggling like a worm within my breast. It had been my conceit that it was enough to give love, that to receive it would have altered the nature of my obsession. When pa.s.sion is mutual, there is always the danger of the fire burning to ashes. Rather than lose love it was better never to have known it.

A crane sailed down the sky and landed in the reeds. It frightened me that the child who had trailed Master Georgie at a distance was now treading on his heels, clamouring to be noticed. I knew I was in the wrong; Georgie had made no promises, raised no false hopes, and yet...and yet - A voice called out, 'My dear, what a night. Wasn't it amusing?' and Mrs Yardley, her hair spilling from its pins and her face creased, waded through the gra.s.s. The crane splashed upwards. Then, remembering the sick soldier craving water, misery overflowed and I wept.

Mrs Yardley was very sympathetic. I was in a state to behave stupidly and went half-way to confiding in her. I admitted, or rather hoa.r.s.ely sobbed, that I loved Georgie. Just voicing it gave comfort.

'Of course you do,' she soothed, and patted my hand. 'It's only natural.'

'Last night, after the concert, he said he'd come to me -'

'Come to you,' she repeated.

'But he didn't-'

'He has his medical duties,' she said.

'What about his duty to me?' I cried. 'What about me?'

'There, there,' she murmured, 'you poor child,' and took me in her arms, which dried up my tears, for there's nothing I dislike more than to be pitied. I'm not a 'poor' child and never was, unless the description is strictly related to poverty. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that Georgie owed me something, on account of the babies, when she said, 'I wish I had a brother,' and that closed my mouth. I'd forgotten she supposed I was Georgie's sister.

When I returned Dr Potter had rekindled the fire and put the water on to boil. He was attempting to grind coffee beans with the heel of his boot.

'Pompey Jones is in the camp,' he said, stomping away. 'He and George have gone to the river to wash.'

"That time Mrs Yardley and I were frightened by the dogs,' I said, 'I saw how they dealt with the beans. They had a crusher with a handle.'

'Well, I haven't,' he retorted, and stamped the harder.

I changed my dress for the duck-boy, not Georgie. He was taller than I remembered and fuller in the face. His black hair, damp from his swim in the river, was drying into curls. He strode right up and took my hand, saying he was heartily glad to see me. He wasn't at all shy or subservient. It had been three years since last we met, at Christmas, the time I'd come back from being made into a lady and gone to Georgie's room in moonlight.

The concert troupe posed for a photograph before marching off. Preparing the plates for the camera proved difficult because flies kept sticking to the collodion mixture. The duck-boy wasn't a soldier but an a.s.sistant to a photographer he'd met in Chester who thought the world of him. They had been sent out by an important newspaper. He had taken part in the concert at the last moment, owing to a colour sergeant who recited monologues succ.u.mbing to the fever. Before leaving England he'd gone to see Mrs O'Gorman; she'd cried at the sight of him. He'd found her in good health apart from a certain stiffness of the joints, which was only to be expected at her age.

Georgie helped with the photographs, even though it meant neglecting his medical duties. The results would be sent back to England, so that the public would be aware of the good times the troops were enjoying. Dr Potter said it was a case of securing the shadow ere the substance faded, meaning, he gloomily prophesied, that it was likely those captured by the camera would shortly be dead.

Georgie was allowed inside the photographer's van. It was a curious vehicle, painted all over in white, its sides slotted with gla.s.s windows. When disembarking at Varna it had nearly sunk in the mud.

The duck-boy and Georgie spent most of the morning discussing thicknesses of solution, physical as opposed to chemical development, the effects of temperature and the exact.i.tude necessary for exposures. Georgie's own equipment had been lost when the ship caught fire out of Scutari, and Dr Potter declared messing about with Pompey Jones would do him more good than a week of rest.

Later, I encountered Mrs Yardley. She was saddling her horse, and crying. At first she said she didn't want to talk about it, then almost immediately did so. She had spied the colonel twinkling at the wife of a captain in the Grenadier Guards. I thought her foolish for letting on she'd noticed. It would have been wise to turn the other cheek.

The performers departed at midday, leaving the duck-boy behind. He was his own man as regards time. He sought me out in the afternoon; I was in the open, cutting Dr Potter's hair.

'Well, Myrtle,' he said. 'Was it worth it?'

I replied I didn't understand the question.

'Being turned into a lady. Is it what you expected?' He was eyeing me steadily, from head to foot, taking in my faded gown and the men's boots I wore; they were practical because they stopped the insects fastening on my ankles.

'I don't regret it,' I said, defensively. 'If that's what you mean.'

'From what I hear,' he said, 'you've been done no favours.'

Dr Potter jerked his head from the scissors and said, 'I note you're as insolent as ever, Pompey Jones.'

'That's observant of you,' he retorted. 'But then, I was never made into a gentleman, was I?' He fingered his blistered lip. 'I shan't do the fire-eating again,' he announced. 'I've lost the knack.'

'Certain knacks are better lost,' remarked Dr Potter. They stared each other out; the duck-boy's lashes were singed. Brushing the hairs from the shoulders of his stained coat, the doctor retreated down the avenue of bell tents.

'You shouldn't speak to him like that,' I said. 'He's an educated man.'

'He understands me,' said the duck-boy. 'He always did, and not on account of his learning. For what it's worth, I reckon him and me see eye to eye.'

He was digging into the pocket of his vest as he spoke. 'I've something to show you,' he said, bringing out a flat object wrapped in the folds of a red handkerchief. Uncovering it, he held out a square of copper plate. It was black all over with some scratch marks in the middle.

'What is it?' I asked.

'Why you, of course...standing by Mr Hardy's bed.'

I was astonished to think of him keeping the picture by him all these years, particularly when there was nothing to see.

Today is in the nature of an anniversary,' he went on. It was August, if I'm not mistaken, when I first saw you -'

'In that house,' I said. 'On the stairs with the broken banister -'

'Before that...you were sitting on the station steps...in the rain...in Lime Street.'

'You did a good thing,' I told him. 'A boy stole the woman's duck and you brought it back.'

He laughed at me then, and explained it was nothing but a street trick. The station was a good place to try it on, what with the waiting and the dumped down baggage. They worked in pairs and split the money. One boy did the thieving and the other the retrieving. Even if the owner didn't cotton on to what had been lost, ten to one a pa.s.ser-by with more bobsticks than sense, noting the return of property, would hand over a few coppers - as a reward for honesty. Sometimes the accomplice said, 'No, sir, I cannot profit from doing what is right,' and more often than not the amount was doubled.

I was speechless.

'Of course,' he said, 'you had to know which ones were gullible, otherwise you might end up with nothing more useful than the promise of a corner in heaven.'

Deep down I thought it a clever trick, though I declared he should have been ashamed of himself.

'I never was,' he answered, voice flat, and asked if I was content with my life.

I nodded.

'I know about the children,' he said. 'From George.'

At this, I felt elation, because it meant that Georgie had bothered to talk about me. The lingering resentment at his preferring to be with the duck-boy dropped clear away, and suddenly the day was beautiful, the vista of tents and distant lakes, previously grey under a leaden sky, now miraculously glowing with radiant light. A troop of horses trotted towards the dirt road, coats silky in the sunlight. I enquired what else Georgie had confided.

'Just that,' he replied. 'And that he was glad...seeing that Annie was no longer capable of producing offspring.'

I might have accused him of being the cause of her disappointment, due to his shenanigans with the tiger's head, but then, hadn't I every reason to be grateful for the outcome? Instead, I blurted out, 'I love him. He is my reason for living.'

He looked at me sombrely and asked, 'Did they send you away, then?'

'Not on my own,' I protested. 'Both times Annie and I went to a cottage...in the country. At night she knitted and I told her stories. I had to make them up in my head because she's allergic to books. I respect her. She has never shown jealousy.'

'Why should she?' he scoffed. 'She has never known hunger.'

He wouldn't stop questioning me. He wanted to know what old Mrs Hardy had thought of it all, and I said Ldidn't know, but that, like me, she'd only ever wanted Georgie's happiness.

He looked away. I fancied he was sad. Presently he murmured, 'I'm thankful I'm not a woman.'

At that moment Dr Potter returned, carrying a haunch of mutton. Jubilantly he described finding a provision wagon overturned down by the lake. It was empty, but after searching about he'd come across the meat lying at the bottom of a slope.

'That was lucky,' said the duck-boy. 'Particularly if there was no sign of the driver.'

'Indeed there wasn't,' the doctor retorted crossly. 'Otherwise I should have paid him.' Sitting down on his stool, the leg of mutton clasped between his thighs, he began to pluck off the maggots. Soon after, the duck-boy left us.

'He knows about the babies,' I said.

'From Mrs O'Gorman, no doubt?'

'Georgie told him.'

'Then Georgie is a fool. One should never confide in the Pompey Joneses of this world.'

'What have you against him?' I asked. 'Georgie likes him, and thinks him kind, as I do.'

'Not so,' he said. 'He may yet do you both harm -'

'He keeps a picture of me,' I protested.

Then Dr Potter said that keeping the picture was an affectation, as was the apparent kindness. 'One day the mask will slip,' he warned. 'As Seneca succinctly put it, Nemo potest personam diuferrefictam.' Nemo potest personam diuferrefictam.'

I didn't wait for the translation and walked off. I wished it was Georgie who held my picture against his heart, however darkened by time.

Plate 5. October 1854

FUNERAL PROCESSION.

SHADOWED BY.

BEATRICE.

I have taken to dreaming, and not only at night. In the past - what years have turned to dust in the s.p.a.ce of eight weeks - it was the approach of darkness that brought on fantasies. Then, the image of Beatrice stayed within the cup of my shut eyes. Now, she zooms free, circling my head; I would take her for my guardian angel save that she frowns so. Only the other morning I was disturbed by George pumping my shoulder with his fist. He was shouting, Totter, stop it. Stop apologising.' I protested I hadn't spoken, but scarcely had the words left my mouth than my wife's face, distorted with irritation, loomed up in front of me. The wind was tugging at my clothes and blowing the smoke into my eyes, yet her glare held me captive. To cope with this visitation, for I am not yet mad, I reminded myself that a thirst a.s.suaged by water p.i.s.sed in by dying men and a stomach subjected to hunger were guaranteed to spore hallucinations.

We left Varna the second week in September, along with some sixty-four thousand British, French and Turkish soldiery. Many of the women were turned away from boarding, and rejected, stood wailing on sh.o.r.e. Myrtle, by virtue of her peasant dress and brown complexion, and leading her pony laden with baggage, was let by without hindrance. Mrs Yardley wasn't with us; she'd fallen out with her colonel of the roving eye and gone home. I was glad she could no longer fasten on to Myrtle. The two were incompatible, not least in their att.i.tude to virtue, Mrs Yardley's conviction being that the easy sort was sinful.

George was wild with anger, owing to the compulsory leaving behind of a great deal of hospital equipment, including ambulance wagons, litters and operating tables. There simply wasn't room. He was all for going on sh.o.r.e to demand they be loaded, but was a.s.sured they would be sent out later.

We waited two days before sailing, during which time the sickness continued. At night the bodies were flung overboard and sank, the bubbles winking in the lantern light. By morning, the weights having worked free, the dead achieved a bloated resurrection and bobbed to greet the sun.

Once out at sea some said we made a splendid sight, the fleet arranged in five lines, each composed of a division of the army, the French on our right flank, the navy to the left, the Turks a little behind, Lord Raglan out in front. I didn't share the enthusiasm, the men about me presenting a sorry picture, their once fine uniforms much tattered and their boots worn through at the soles.

Worse, that first night fire broke out in the hold. Patent fuel had been mixed up with the coal and become heated. Result - spontaneous combustion. The smoke was dreadful and all were required to help shift the stores up on deck. Not until the hoses had extinguished the blaze did I learn that ninety tons of ball cartridges had been stored alongside the coal, without the protection of a magazine. Throwing the ammunition over the side had been deemed unthinkable, although the risk of blowing all onboard to Kingdom Come was considerable.

We landed at Kalamita Bay, on the western sh.o.r.e of the Crimea, on the 14th of the month. No one knew whether the Russians had any knowledge of our coming and I was full of apprehension as to what awaited us. In the event, nothing did, nothing in the way of a human enemy. The beach was deserted and the ridge of distant hills bare of either troops or guns.

We camped further along the Bay, waiting for the cavalry and artillery to disembark. That night it rained, and it was not the gentle drizzle of an English autumn but a monstrous pounding that drowned the fires and churned the ground to mire. A few had tents, the rest put up blankets, but both means of shelter collapsed under the force of the downpour and one was drenched to the bone. My letter from Beatrice, received at the end of August and containing homely news - the weather was fine, the children well, the air of Anglesey conducive to a sharpening of the appet.i.te - was blotted beyond recall. I tossed it into the mud; nowhere had it said she missed me.

Reveille sounded at 3 a.m. the next morning, and not many of the fit had to be shaken from slumber. We rose as we had horribly dozed, shivering in our clothes. There was no wood dry enough to make fires and we went without breakfast. My hat, formerly too large, had shrunk, and I was obliged to bind it to my head by means of a strap.

It took a further day and night, both fortunately fine, before the supplies were unloaded, the sick taken back to the ships and the dead buried. George was dismayed to discover that not a single ambulance wagon had been brought ash.o.r.e and precious few stretchers. Nor was there enough food, though later some Tartars arrived at the camp willing to sell sheep and a quant.i.ty of wine. This transaction had barely been completed - the cooks were engaged in slitting throats - when a pack of dogs rushed in, and, round-ing up the living animals, cunningly scurried them away. Shots were fired after the retreating Tartars, but no one had the energy to go in pursuit.

In the morning a chaplain conducted divine service. Though I'm an unbeliever, the ragged voices singing familiar hymns brought water to my eyes. In the afternoon George was ordered to report to one of the steamships. He returned with the news that he had been relieved of his present post and was henceforth attached to the Royal North British Fusiliers, a Scottish regiment, his predecessor having fallen overboard midway between Malta and Gal-lipoli. He was togged out in the shrunken uniform of an officer of the 21st, and had inherited a blood-letting bowl, a leather ap.r.o.n, almost new, and a tin of leeches, the occupants long since expired. As the Fusiliers were not required to wear kilts, he supposed he should be grateful for small mercies.

At last, on about the 18th, the order came to march. We set off in great style, the band playing, spirits high. Anything that lay ahead was thought to be better than the h.e.l.l of inaction we had recently quitted. Nor were the troops burdened with excessive baggage, each man carrying on back or saddle nothing that couldn't be rolled up in a blanket. Hadn't he with him the only two things that mattered, a stout heart and his weaponry! As long as the cavalry had their swords and lances, the infantry their Minie rifles, the artillery their howitzers, what else, on G.o.d's earth, was needed! Inessentials such as tents, cooking pots, medicine and changes of clothing would surely follow.

We marched all day. The band stopped playing after the first hour. Once we had our backs to the sea the flies returned. We started without water and found none on the way. Some of the sick got at the wine and it was the end of them. They lay down at the wayside and slept into death. In the beginning we tried to urge them onwards, talking to them of home and mother and loved ones. Later, we trudged by without a glance.

I had no horse, thinking it too much trouble, and regretted it. Myrtle plodded beside me. Exhausted as she became, she wouldn't mount her beloved pony, convinced he carried enough weight. He was called Seel, after the street in which she'd been found. She'd brought with her two oranges, one of which she used up squeezing between the lips of a boy trumpeter. His last words were comical. He said, 'Good Lordy! Another day.' Myrtle wanted to keep the remaining orange for George, but thankfully he had gone on ahead. I swear it saved both our lives.

When I had the breath I told Myrtle about the little villages I had once visited in the vicinity; the grapes growing on the vine, the black bread that could sustain a man for a month. She chewed on orange peel and flicked the flies from her face.

I dreamed again, of walking through the plum orchard in Blackberry Lane. Beatrice was on the swing, pushing her little white slippers against the air. I called, Be careful, not too high, and she called back, You were never one for the heights, and pushed the harder. I walked away, hoping to make her come after me, but she didn't.

'She was never afraid of losing him,' I said, and I must have been talking out loud because I heard Myrtle say, 'If you're referring to Annie, why should she have been? She never knew hunger.'

We covered twenty-five miles, over scrubland, and climbing higher bivouacked at dusk beside a small river. Nothing, I foolishly thought, not even Mardonius's advance across the plain of Plataea, could be compared to the brutality of that march.

It had been believed when we disembarked that the army would advance directly on Sebastopol. Bickering having broken out between Lord Raglan and the French - his Lordship favouring an attack from the north, where the fleet could give protection, the French preferring a thrust from the south - this design was not carried through. Result - we stayed put for several days and the Russians" mustered reinforcements.