Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the Great War

The two sides were too evenly matched — and too equally supplied — for a quick victory. The war would drag on until everyone, even the high-ranking officers sitting in their comfortable chateaux miles from the front line, was heartily sick of bloodshed — and then it would drag on a little while longer.

He looked up, and watched the officers — almost all of them young second lieutenants — strolling around the comfortably empty upper deck. He did not begrudge them this moment of luxury, for while it was probably true that many of the enlisted men on this boat would eventually die in action, it was almost certain that most of these officers would.

He went below deck, to visit those men who would not be going back to France — men who had lost arms or legs (and sometimes both); men who had half their faces blown off; men who lay on stretchers, groaning and holding their stomachs, as if that would take away the pain.

He lit cigarettes for those men who could not light their own, and chatted to those who wished to talk.

‘Was it like this when you were soldiering in India?’ asked one of the soldiers who had lost a leg.

‘No,’ Blackstone said, ‘it was quite different.’

‘Was it as terrible as this?’ the soldier wanted to know.

‘All wars are terrible.’

‘But was it as terrible as this ?’ the soldier insisted.

The man had lost a limb defending his country, and deserved an honest answer, Blackstone decided.

‘No,’ he said, ‘if only by the sheer scale of the carnage, no war has ever been as terrible as this — and I hope to God that no war ever is again.’

Behind him — and amidst all this misery and suffering — he heard someone singing. He recognized the song. It was a ditty which was very popular in the music halls, and told the story of a patriotic young woman, who, furious at seeing a young man standing alone, marches up to him, and demands to know why he is not ‘fighting for your country as it’s fighting for you?’

Blackstone turned around. The singer was sitting alone in the corner. He had only a stump where his right arm had once been, and it was this stump that he was serenading.

He had reached the point in the song at which the young man answers the young woman’s question.

‘I would if I’d the chance,’ he crooned, in a cracked voice, ‘but my right arm’s in France; I’m one of England’s broken dolls.’

As Blackstone took the stairs back up to the deck, he resolved to track down the writer of that sickly, sentimental song and give him just a little idea of what real pain was like by bloodying his nose for him.

The White Cliffs of Dover had drawn much closer while he’d been below deck, and the boat would soon be docking in the port.

There were two very important things he had to do as soon as he got back to England, he reminded himself, and it was only when he had done them that this bloody episode in his life would finally be over.

They were in General Fortesque’s study, looking out on to the gardens and watching an old man examining a hoe and wondering what he should do with it.

‘I’ve failed you, General,’ Blackstone said. ‘I can tell you that your grandson was a fine officer and that his men would have followed him anywhere, but I can’t tell you who killed him.’

‘Can’t?’ the General asked sharply. ‘Or won’t?’

It came to the same thing, Blackstone thought. The old man had already suffered enough, without heaping any further heartbreak on him.

‘I’m not sure I understand what you mean,’ he said aloud.

‘Was my grandson a homosexual?’ the General demanded.

‘Why would you ask that?’

‘Charlie used to play with Danvers’ grandson when he was a boy. The rest of the family disapproved — including his parents — but I didn’t want him growing up believing that the working man is nothing but scum, and so I overruled them.’ He smiled wistfully. ‘I could do that, you know — I was the head of the family.’

Blackstone returned his smile. ‘And the head of the family is always right,’ he said.

‘I thought so at the time, and sometimes I still think it,’ General Fortesque said. ‘But then I also thought that as the two boys grew older, they would also grow apart. Yet even once Charlie had gone to Eton — and had a wide circle of friends drawn from his own class — he still found time for young Danvers. Of course, I never allowed myself to even contemplate the notion that there was anything improper or unnatural in their relationship. In fact, if you’d asked me only a few days ago, I would still have said that though it was a somewhat unusual friendship, that was still all that it was — a friendship. I would have said it, and I would have believed it — or, at least, I would have believed that I believed it.’

‘But you’re not so sure now that you did believe it?’

‘No, I am not.’

‘So what happened?’ Blackstone asked gently.

The General sighed. ‘I caught myself writing a letter to young Charlie’s commanding officer, asking him to see to it that young Danvers’ body was repatriated,’ he said.

‘I know about that letter,’ Blackstone told him.

‘I may not have been to the front myself, but I have some idea of what it’s like out there,’ the General continued. ‘I knew that recovering Danvers’ body from No Man’s Land would be a hazardous business, and that men might be injured — or even killed — in the process. I myself had no particular wish to see the body returned to England — and as for old Danvers, he’s reached the point now where he probably doesn’t even remember having a grandson. Yet I sent the letter anyway. Why was that, Sam?’

There was no point in pretending any longer.

‘Because you knew, deep inside, that that’s what Charlie would have wanted you to do,’ Blackstone said.

‘Because I knew, deep inside, that that’s what Charlie would have wanted me to do,’ the General agreed. ‘So I’ll ask you again, Inspector Blackstone, was my grandson a homosexual?’

‘Yes, he was.’

‘And now we’ve got that out of the way, perhaps you can tell me why he died — and who killed him.’

Blackstone outlined the whole story, and as it drew to a close, he cautioned, ‘But you’ll never get anyone in the army to admit that’s what actually happened, you know.’

‘Of course I won’t,’ the General agreed. ‘Nor would I even try. The Soames, Maude and Hatfield families have all lost sons — young men who, whatever else they might have done, did give their lives for their country — and it is not for me to add to the anguish that they are already suffering.’

‘I think you’re right,’ Blackstone agreed.

The General hesitated before speaking again, and when he finally did, he said, ‘Was this thing that went on between my Charlie and young Danvers merely an expression of their animal urges, or was there more to it than that?’

‘If it had been merely sexual, he would have kept quiet about it,’ Blackstone said. ‘But he had decided to come clean, even though he knew it would cost him almost everything he had ever held dear. I think you can draw your own conclusions from that.’

‘My late wife and I loved each other deeply, but true love doesn’t come to every young man,’ the General said.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ Blackstone agreed.

‘But when it does come, it is a glorious gift,’ the General continued. ‘And that, I think, is true whatever form that love may choose to take.’ He paused again. ‘Do you agree with me, Sam?’

‘I do,’ Blackstone told him.

The General looked at him quizzically. ‘You can be honest with me. I’m strong enough to take it.’