The Angel of Mons - Chapter ten

Ten

George was almost surprised when his commanding officer granted him home leave without hesitation and three days after receiving the letter, he was walking down thoroughfare at Waterloo station passing columns of raw recruits. He kept his head down and marched with a focused determination in a straight line, scattering those around him as if they were timid pigeons on Trafalgar square.
George booked a room for the night in a cheap hotel at Euston Square. It was cold and the walls were damp. A single gas light popped and spluttered on the wall next to the door. He lay for a while on the small bed listening to the sound of a couple in the room above as they laughed and stumbled, as they fell and as they fumbled with each other noisily and energetically. George walked across the room and pulled back the curtain with the tips of his fingers. He could see carriages and omnibuses fighting for space on the narrow street, and opposite he noticed the warm lights of a small pub on a street corner. George grabbed his jacket and his cap and left the room slamming the door behind him causing a momentary suspension of activity in the room above. The pub was full of railway workers and George sat quietly in a corner alone with his thoughts, staring into space. His eyes wondered around the ornate wood carved ceiling, the glass panel and the polished bar.
He spotted a young man sitting at a table opposite. He was looking up into the lights, and jerking his head in sharp quick darting nervous movements whenever anybody moved, or a coin was dropped to the ground. Now and then the young man would reach out across the small dusty round table in front of him and move his fingers across its surface as for a moment he searched for his drink.
George watched him for a while in the knowledge that the young man would never know. He noticed his eyes were like large clouded marbles. They looked hard and blistered. They bulged from his skull and discharged constantly as if he were weeping bitterly. On the chest of his tell tale blue uniform was pinned a service medal issued to the BEF in August 1914. He had been one of the first thought George, he would have been at Mons.
The young man finished his beer, and without signal, hesitation or request, another man who until then had been sitting talking to friends at the bar walked across and placed a fresh pint of frothing ale in front of him. The young man turned toward the bar and grinned, a broad toothless smile. He nodded. And again in silence he sat, with his own thoughts while he drank his beer. When that one was finished it too was replaced. This time by an elderly gentleman in a tatty top hat.
George finished his drink and walked over to the bar counting his change on the palm of his hand as he waited to order. He was served by a slight young woman with a pointed face and a soft coy smile.
“Can I buy one for him?” asked George without looking up from his hand.
She smiled at George, holding her head to one side but said nothing as she delivered George two pints of dark bitter.
“What happened to him?”
“We don’t know,” she said, being careful to pitch her voice at a level that only George could hear above the other conversations. “He started coming here about a year since. We think it was the gas.” She paused and sighed. George looked into her green eyes and nodded slowly. “He never speaks, just sits and smiles. The locals took to him. His glass is never dry.” She looked over her shoulder at the large clock behind her. George noticed it was nearly ten-o clock. “You’ll find out why in a minute.” She looked enigmatically at George and walked purposefully down the bar reaching to take a glass from a small bald man in overalls at the other end of the pub.
The young man finished his drink and George delivered his replacement. Very much to the approval of the twenty or so other men who raised there glasses in silence to him. As George sat down, he noticed the clock as it struck the hour, and as it did, all the men in the bar turned toward the young man and all conversation ceased. George heard the sound of a match strike on the far side of the bar as one man lit a cigarette, lit a friends, blew out the match and lit another to provide a flame for a third man.
The young man slowly stood and raised his head so his white swollen eyes were pointing blindly toward the heavens. And he began to sing. So quietly at first that George wondered if he would falter and stop. But no, the voice gently grew and George sat; mouth open staring at the young invalid soldier. He may never speak thought George, but he had never heard a sound quite like his singing voice. Pitched in the middle, it was as smooth as a choir, as perfect as a frozen lake, as constant and warming as a summers day. Every note slipped perfectly into the next, and as they did the young mans face seemed to come alive. His cheeks took on the colour of ripened apples and his body shook off its broken hunch and stood proud and tall and steady at the table.

“There’s a long long trail a winding, unto the land of my dreams, where the nightingale is singing and the bright moon beams”

To George, the voice was so perfect, so moving, it seemed almost as if it were not of this world. Other than the perfect flowing tones, the crowded bar was silent and its hardened faces - reflective.
When man finished the final perfectly pitched note, he gently lowered himself to his seat and drank the remains of the beer George had bought for him. The others in the pub stood for a long moment in silence, before they softly began to applauded.
At precisely ten thirty, the young bar maid called time. George took his empty glass to the bar, did up his coat, and headed toward the door. As he passed where the young soldier was sitting, George felt the mans hand reach across and gently grasp his arm. George stood still and pulled his arm slightly, he turned and looked at the others in the bar as if unsure of what he should do. Then he looked down at the young man who gently smiled up at him and nodded. George looked into his swollen broken eyes and although he knew it could not be possible, he felt the man was looking deep into him. So much so, George looked away for a moment, like an awkward child being gently challenged.
“I’ve seen the Angel,” whispered the man so quietly George could barley hear what he was saying, “and now I’ve touched the Angel.” The young man squeezed George’s arm once more before releasing it.
“Thank you,” whispered George, frowning, “you sing like an Angel.”
The young man laughed softly and raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps we will meet again,” he whispered once more so softly, George wondered afterwards if he had imagined their brief conversation.

Lying on his bed under the dingy gaslight George reached over to his jacket. He pulled out his wallet and slipped his fingers into a pocket at the back. He slowly withdrew the tiny chain of flowers that he had put there just over a year before, in another lifetime. George lay back nestling his head into the thick pillow, he placed the chain on his forehead and fell asleep, fully clothed lying on top of the blankets. As he slept, a small smile allowed itself to spread across his dry lips.
When he woke, George found the chain on the pillow beside his head. He gently lifted it to his lips before putting it back in its place in his battered brown wallet.
Euston station was quieter than he’d expected. He looked up the time of the next train on the giant gantry which hung above the entry to platforms and watched as a tiny young man ran from side to side with wooden signs updating the information, as the trains panted on their way up and down the line.
In the twenty minutes he had to wait, George bought a Newspaper and found a stall handing out tea and sandwiches to soldiers.
Even with time on his hands, George still found himself running down the platform and jumping onto the nearest carriage just as it clattered away from the station. Once it had crossed the mass of tangled points at the exit of the station, a calm seemed to descend over the train as it struck up a determined rhythm from the engine that was complimented by the sound of the heavy iron wheels clattering across gaps between the rails.
It was dark when he eventually arrived in Albury. The gaslights and candles were burning in the cottage windows and the smell of cooking blew welcoming across the pond. He could see into the Greyhound and noticed that it was empty. He marched across the farmyards and onto the muddy path that lead up the hill toward the Gables. He didn’t see another living soul.
His mother stood at the door her eyes wide, her fingers over her open mouth. She said nothing but simply stepped forward her arms outstretched. George noticed for the first time how grey her hair was. He noticed dark lines around her eyes and that her skin was patchy and yellow. He also noticed how small she looked. She reached up and held him tight around the neck her body shaking as she silently sobbed onto his shoulder. She was suddenly old he thought.
Graham was tall and his voice had changed. There remained very little of the child he remembered. His face was marked with the blotches of adolescence. And instead of toys and playing he talked of the simplistic accounts of the war which he had read and asked George for confirmation of the bravery, the honour and the high spirits, which in front of his mother, George was only to willing to concur.
After he had had a chance to wash and change, his mother lead him by the hand into his father’s study. There she removed a white envelope from the top draw of the desk and placed it, unopened on the polished surface. She squeezed his arm as she walked passed, looked up at George and smiled. “I’ll be in the drawing room,” she whispered.
The study was lit by a single lamp on the desk, which burnt bright and cast long shadows across the wall. George sat in his father’s old chair and lifted the envelope. “George,” was written in large flowing letters across the centre of the envelope in his father’s unmistakably copperplate hand. He took a deep breath and reached across the desk and without even looking lifted a large bone letter opener from a rack of pens and inks.
He lay the letter, still unopened on the desk and lit a cigarette. There was a pain inside him that nagged like toothache. Something he had never known before. He looked around the room in the dim light and wondered how many things were untouched. How many things in the room had remained exactly as his father had left them. The books on the shelves, the seat where he spent so many hours working, writing letters and reading. He wondered if any trace of his father remained in the room and looked around the desk for a moment in search of a mark from his palm, our a fallen hair.
George lifted the letter and began to read.
“Son I pray that as you now are reading my final note, you have survived this terrible war and are home safe and I hope unhurt.” George ran his fore finger around his eyes and sniffed. He read no more. He simply folded the letter and placed it in the inside pocket of his uniform jacket. It was as if he were not ready, as if he were not yet in a position to read his fathers final thoughts.
They said little over dinner. Graham spoke of grand strategy and how he hoped there would still be a war when he was old enough to fight. George insisted for the sake of his mother that it would be long over before then.
The space at the end of the table where no place was set seemed dark and forlorn. George found himself constantly looking over, and on the first few occasions he found it impossible to believe that he was gone, and that he would never sit quietly at the head of the table again. George longed for those dinners when his mother and father spoke and laughed and debated many subjects of which he had no understanding but that made him feel warm and safe.
George barley set foot outside the grounds of the Gables during the days that followed. He walked through the dark braken and watched the deer as they cautiously ate from the ground, looking up constantly as they caught a whiff of him or heard the distant call of a crow.
On day three, his mother announced a visitor, Elizabeth Jackson.
George stood by the window of the study smoking as she was ushered into the room. He smiled broadly as he strided across the room to greet her. She looked at the ground and stretched a brave smile. Her skin was pale and her hair, which was tied back looked unkempt. She had dark lines under her eyes George thought perhaps she had been crying. He kissed her cheek and then frowned when he noticed that she kept her eyes focused on the ground by her feet. George offered to take her coat and as she slipped it from her shoulders her body began to tremble and tears ran down her face. She turned and threw her arms around George. He could smell her fragrance and his mind wondered for a moment back a warm summers afternoon in another lifetime perhaps. Suddenly his face changed, he frowned and gently pushed her away, looking down as he did so. Her hands released him and moved down to grasp her swollen body. Her large brown tear full eyes met his and he looked away.
“I told everyone that I met Peter who was on leave in London back in March and that was when it happened.” George stepped back. He took a deep breath and stroked the side of his face. “I need you to help me George, I need you to say that Peter was on leave,” she said, struggling to speak through the tears.
“What do you expect me to say to Peter?”
She bit her lip and looked at the ground, her hands reaching for a handkerchief in her sleeve. She said nothing, just shook her head.
George went over to the window and leant against the frame, his shoulders rounded his neck bent. “How could you Liz, for Christ’s sake how could you?” he said, struggling to control his voice, shouting quietly. Liz sobbed, walked over to the chair by the desk where she placed her hand on its back and slowly lowered herself.
“More importantly, what in Gods name do you intend to say to Peter? I take it you haven’t told him?” She said nothing, simply fixed a glassy stare at the floor next the desk, tears rolling down her face as she continued to silently sob. George paced. Occasionally he paused and looked at Liz, as if he were about to speak. “You will have to tell him you know. What would you have done if he had come home with me? It could have happened you know. He could be standing here now, what would you have said to him?”
She made no reply. But looked up at him and shook her head. Eventually she gathered herself and wiped away the tears. “George I need to know that you will help me. I need to know that if anybody asks you will say that Peter was in England, on a special training course and I met with him.” She paused and looked up at him. “I will tell him when the time is right. I think it would be wrong to put it in a letter I know it will hurt him too much. But I will tell him when he gets home. But not now.”
“What if someone else mentions it in a letter, his parents for example? When they write? What if they mention it?”
She paused before she spoke and bit her lip. “Peter’s parents,” she paused again and wrung her hands and took a deep trembling breath, “they don’t write, and although they have asked me too, I make no mention of the matter.”
“But they think you do,” said George raising his voice.
Liz looked him in the eyes and her shoulders began to tremble.
George shook his head and turned once more to look out of the window. He slowly shook his head and sighed.
“George, please,” she said, her face was pale her eyes red.
He looked at her and stared deep into her eyes for a long moment. He nodded to her and once again turned away. He was aware of her standing behind him. He could see her ghostly reflection on the glass as she picked up her coat and quietly let herself out of the room.
Two days later, George felt almost happy to be on his way back to France. He would be among friends. And although death was around him all the time there was an almost reassuring simplicity to life there. All he had to do was try to stay alive.