Page 62 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)
The new position was a couple of miles from the Fascist line, behind mud and stone parapets.
To their rear a former farmhouse was much battered, and most of its roof was missing, but with its outbuildings it provided enough shelter to serve as cook-house, store and headquarters.
Behind that was a swift-running stream, foaming over rocks, whirling in deep glass-green pools.
Basil made use of it for the first bath since leaving Barcelona.
He stripped naked, stepped in, and gasped.
The water was grippingly, agonisingly cold.
On the bank, Zennor laughed. ‘Where do you think that water comes from? It’s snow-melt from the mountains.’
‘Don’t care,’ Basil replied, between clenched teeth. ‘Worth it!’
He stayed in as long as he could bear it, and rubbed himself all over with the sliver of gritty soap he had been saving. Zennor contented himself with washing face, hands and feet. ‘I’ll go in when it’s warmer,’ he promised.
The main action was on the other side of the besieged town, but there was intermittent shell fire most days.
The noise at first was horrifying: not a bang or boom, Basil discovered, but a shrill, tearing, clashing noise, like metal being ripped apart by giant torturing hands.
It was hard to bear, but he discovered again that you could get used to anything; and he very quickly learned to tell simply by the pitch of the noise how close the shell was likely to fall.
Quite often the shells did not explode – the Fascist ammunition was almost as bad as theirs – so the dud would be picked up and fired back at the enemy.
The only military activity they had was going out on night patrol, into no man’s land.
Creeping about the fields among the remains of abandoned crops and inching along drainage ditches was at least different from the rocky places they had been used to, and occasionally they would find something fit to eat – a brick-like ear of corn, or a wizened piece of fruit.
Once they were required to make a feint to draw the enemy’s attention from an attack going in from the other side.
They advanced, firing and yelling, until told to retreat, and whether it did any good they never found out.
But that night a file of ambulances came down from the main action, jolting on the terrible roads.
Basil wondered how the injured inside could bear it.
If their wounds didn’t kill them, the ambulance journey might well.
‘I don’t understand what we’re doing here,’ he complained to Zennor one evening. The nights were still cold, but the daytime temperature was rising, and enough heat lingered in the evening to smoke a cigarette outside after the meal.
Zennor thought about it. ‘Well, I suppose if we weren’t here, there wouldn’t be a siege and the Fascists could just go where they wanted.’
‘That’s it? We’re just a fence across the road?’
‘If it wasn’t us, it would be some other soldiers. Maybe they’re more needed in battle than we are.’
Basil poked moodily at the ground with a stick. ‘It’s not that I really want a battle – I mean, when you think about being wounded or killed. But—’
‘I know. I’ve heard the men say the same thing: when are we going into action?’ He shrugged. ‘I suppose it’s our nature, as men.’
‘You’re a philosopher,’ Basil said. It wasn’t a compliment.
Charlie greeted James with cheerful warmth. Tall, elegant Fern kissed him on both cheeks in the French manner.
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ Charlie said.
‘There’s still a heap to do, and I need someone I can trust, someone who knows how I work.
Just one thing. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, but not one word to any journalist – in fact, not to anyone outside these walls, because they’re cunning devils and they’ll try anything to get a story.
They’re camped outside the front gates, have been for days.
That’s why we go in and out by the back entrance.
They haven’t found that yet. I send my motor out of the main gates every now and then as a decoy to keep them focused. ’
‘I saw your armed guard,’ James said.
‘He’s meant to be seen.’
‘But he wouldn’t really shoot at people, would he?’
Charlie hesitated for a telling second. ‘Only into the air. Although,’ he added, ‘a peppering of shotgun pellets in the backside is a pretty good deterrent.’
‘Charlie!’ Fern said warningly.
‘The threat of a peppering, is what I mean, of course,’ he added hastily.
It turned out that the Bedauxs were staying in the staff quarters too. ‘We’ve given our bedrooms to the happy couple. And it’s more convenient to be over here,’ Fern said, as they went into the small parlour where they breakfasted. The smell of coffee and new bread was torturing James.
‘We can come and go more easily, and don’t get sucked in,’ Charlie agreed.
‘Sucked in?’ James queried.
Charlie looked a little embarrassed. ‘The Duke’s accustomed to having equerries, you see, and he’s no good at being on his own.
He tends to buttonhole you, and I haven’t time to hang around and chat.
Don’t take me wrong, he’s an excellent fellow, and we’re very proud to be hosting his wedding, but with so much to do in such a short time … ’
James’s duties did not take him into the chateau very often, but he did encounter the Duke now and then, walking the dogs around the gardens, or setting off for a round of golf on the eighteen-hole course in the grounds.
His bow was met each time with a blank look and the merest twitch of acknowledgement.
James was sure the Duke had no idea who he was.
He was an odd-looking soul, James thought, so thin and small and undeveloped – James towered over him – that he looked from a distance like a fourteen-year-old boy.
His hair was flaxen and still thick, but close to, his face was covered with fine lines, like the glaze on an old piece of china, and there were heavy bags under his eyes, and a wattling of the flesh under his chin.
And his left eye was noticeably lower than the right.
Even when he smiled, his expression was sad: he didn’t seem at all like a bridegroom.
But one day James saw him approaching the house just as Mrs Simpson stepped out of the front door, and then his face lit up with an expression of almost religious adoration.
Mrs Simpson, when he was presented to her, looked him over intently but unsmilingly.
She was terribly thin, with bad skin, a big nose and a big chin with a slash of scarlet mouth in between, shiny black hair tightly drawn back, smart, elegant clothes and some very sparkling jewellery.
He could not for the life of him see what there was about her to make her worth a kingdom – and yet, there was that look on the face of the Duke.
It was, he thought, like the rapture of a lost toddler who suddenly spies its mother again.
His job involved a lot of driving: meeting people at the station and fetching things from the town.
He had to collect Mr Main Bocher and his retinue of assistants, who brought The Dress and conducted a final fitting; the next day it was a Mrs Spry to do the flowers, and Mr Cecil Beaton, to do the official photographs in full costume.
The rosy-cheeked maid, whose name, he had discovered, was Cécile, was upset about that, saying it was bad luck to wear the wedding dress before the wedding day.
James was called into the chateau to help with the photography session, since Mr Beaton was making all sorts of demands about moving furniture, lights, mirrors and drapes, which Mrs Simpson was countermanding as fast as he ordered.
Neither of them spoke any French. He was approaching the door of the Red Sitting-room when he heard Mrs Simpson’s harsh bray: ‘Where’s that young man, the tall one – Bedaux’s assistant?
He speaks French. Get him here – he might as well earn his keep.
’ And when he entered the room, she said, ‘Oh, there you are!’ as though he had been keeping her waiting.
‘Tell these people I want that armoire moved – it’s hideous.
And I want the two lamps from the Music Room brought in, the ones with the glass shades.
And the blue-and-green rug from the Library, the one by the window at the far end. ’
The Duke, in his morning-suit, with a gardenia in his buttonhole, was standing by, looking on helplessly. He reminded James of a clockwork toy that hadn’t been wound up.
Later he had to collect the clergyman from the station.
Under French law, there had to be a civil ceremony before the mayor; but the Duke was determined they should be married by the Church of England rite.
The Archbishop of Canterbury had forbidden any Anglican priest to have anything to do with it, and things were looking desperate when a letter came from a Reverend Robert Jardine, the vicar of a poor parish in Darlington, offering to perform the ceremony.
Jardine was a short, red-faced man with thinning black hair carefully eked over his scalp; his suit was worn at the seams. He chatted to James all the way back to the chateau.
He thought it a disgrace, the way the ex-King had been treated.
If a man had a sincere desire to wed the woman he loved under the auspices of the Church, no man, even the archbishop, ought to deny him.
He didn’t care a fig for the archbishop, anyway – Lang was an ecclesiastical cad.
Suppose the ex-King were to have his throne restored to him, where would Lang be then, having snubbed him?
The Church, in any case, was stuffy and outdated, riddled with prejudice and back-scratching.
There was no future in it for a modern thinker, or an ambitious man without the right contacts.
He was thinking of emigrating to California.