Роберт Шеррифф - The Hopkins Manuscript

‘I wrote last month… for a commission in the Infantry Army. The reply came this afternoon.’

I held the thin, shabby strip of paper in my hand. I read the words through a quivering mist of unreality. ‘Robin Parker: appointed Lieutenant – the 14th Expeditionary Battalion.’

‘Robin!…’ I began, but he stopped me with a weary, impatient gesture of his hand.

‘I know. I know exactly what you’re going to say. We agreed that our job was to stay here. But that was over a year ago… in the days when everybody believed we’d win easily in a month or two. It isn’t like that anymore. It may sound silly and… and sentimental, but I still believe terribly that we are the people who must get this beastly thing put right. My people were always soldiers. D’you suppose my uncle would have stayed at The Manor House and grown potatoes with the country in this awful danger?’

Many a time I have regretted my passionate outburst. I was not angry with Robin: I was furious at the senseless folly of it all: furious at the impotent devilishness of it…

‘You’re a fool!’ I shouted. ‘A senseless young fool! D’you imagine you’re serving your country by walking out like this! You’re not! You’re just playing into the hands of a beastly crowd of money grabbers who don’t care a damn for England or anybody else! One day when these upstarts have cut each other’s throats, the world will turn to people like us and bless us for keeping a few corners of a madhouse free from lunatics! D’you realise that the only way to save a few shreds of humanity upon earth is for people like us to stand firm and carry on! D’you think you’ll save women and children from starvation by going off and playing soldiers with a lot of other fools!’

I stopped. I was exhausted. I sobbed for breath, and I was alone. Robin was walking slowly down the hillside.

It was quite dark when I returned to the house. For nearly an hour I wandered to and fro, ashamed to go inside.

Through the library window I could see Robin. He was writing at the desk, but I could not go in to him. Quietly I went up to my room. The door of Robin’s bedroom stood open and the light was on. Pat was moving between the bed and the cupboard by the wall. I went in to her, puzzled to know what she was doing.

On the bed lay the cadet uniform that Robin had worn at Eton: Pat was brushing it and cleaning a stain from the sleeve. She looked up at me almost guiltily, with a shy, embarrassed smile.

‘When is he going?’ I asked.

‘He’s told you?’

‘Yes.’

A shadow of relief passed across the girl’s face. ‘He hated telling you,’ she said. ‘We talked it over and over a hundred times. It was all so terribly difficult.’

There was a little silence. The old clock in the hall was striking seven. ‘He’s going tomorrow,’ said Pat. ‘He’s got to get to Canterbury somehow – his regiment is waiting there.’ She saw me looking at the old worn uniform upon the bed. ‘I’m afraid he’s grown a lot since he wore this at Eton, but they say there aren’t any uniforms at Headquarters any more. They’ve got to take anything they can. I’ve let the sleeves out as far as they’ll go.’

‘How long have you known about this, Pat?’ My voice sounded hard and dull – I could not bring a spark of life to it. The loss of Robin was in itself well-nigh unbearable: my shame at the way I had behaved towards him had numbed me.

‘For over a year,’ replied the girl. ‘Ever since they first called for men he was tortured by a… a sort of urge. He knew that his work here was important: he knew how much you depended on him… but when things began to go so terribly badly… he just had to go.’

‘Did you never think of consulting me, Pat?… did you never feel that I could help?’

‘We thought of that – always,’ replied Pat. ‘You’ve been so good to us – but you had so many things to worry you. We just couldn’t bring ourselves to throw the decision upon you.’

For a moment her fine, clear eyes were upon me, and then she glanced unhappily away towards the windows. The wind was rising: it came in little moaning gusts across the downs. Upon the dressing table lay Robin’s underclothes, neatly, in little piles – pitifully threadbare now – pitifully inadequate, I thought, to face the grim menace of this winter. Beside them lay a few of Robin’s little treasures that Pat and he had selected to take with him – an old pair of binoculars that Colonel Parker had carried through the Great War of thirty years ago – a pipe that I had given him last Christmas – a clean towel – two slim volumes of Kipling… I thought of this dear, devoted girl – quietly, secretly planning with her brother the things that he would most need in that groping, twilit journey to his duty.

‘He just felt it… it was the right thing to do,’ said Pat in a low, trembling voice. ‘However silly it seems – whatever we think of the men who have brought us to it – it’s still our country, isn’t it?… it’s still worth giving everything we have to save it.’ Once again her eyes were upon mine. ‘Are you very angry with him?’ she asked.

I looked down at the empty haversack upon the floor, opened in preparation for tomorrow’s journey. I took Pat’s hand and turned my eyes away.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m very proud.’

A solitary train crawled through Beadle Station at six o’clock each evening. Two years ago there used to be as many as half a dozen, all stacked with building materials for the new towns, but now there was no need for them, and this one old train meandered through on its aimless way to Winchester and London. Robin was to go by this train to London and thence to Canterbury as best he could.

He cycled into Mulcaster that morning to say goodbye to Joan Cranley, whose brother had left some weeks before to serve with the Medical Corps of the Expeditionary Force. He returned to lunch, and in the afternoon we went for a last walk around the farm. I had asked his forgiveness on the previous night, and on that last walk he became the charming, carefree boy whom I knew and loved so well.

‘I’ve taught Jim all I know about the fish and the rabbits: old Humphrey will keep an eye on him: they’ll carry on all right till I come back.’ We stood for a few moments, watching the dark little shadows whisk to and fro in the clear, slowly-moving water.

‘You’ve made a wonderful job of this, Robin,’ I said.

We walked up to the ruined Manor House – to Colonel Parker’s grave beneath the old cedar whose splintered trunk was already a haze of green again. We went on, over the downs to the eastern crest where the great plain lay beneath us in the pale autumn sun.

‘Remember this place?’ said Robin.

There was a lump in my throat, and I could scarcely speak. ‘The place where I first met you and Pat…’

‘I came climbing up the slope with Pat’s flabby little hat… and you were there. What years ago it seems!’

He turned away: he took my arm and we walked back to our house.

Tea was ready: a big substantial tea of eggs and fried potatoes. There was no telling when the boy would see hot food again.

‘Come on, Robin!’ called Pat. ‘You’ll miss either the tea or the train if you don’t hurry up!’

Robin came down from his bedroom and stood before us with an awkward, boyish grin.

‘Do I look very funny?’ he asked.

He was in his uniform. In a smart cadet parade at Eton he might have looked funny in a uniform three sizes too small, but to me, at that moment, he looked splendid. I had not realised how tall he had grown in the past two years: the tightly-fitting tunic enhanced his height and suddenly he seemed to tower above me.

‘You’ve done marvels with these sleeves, Pat: nobody’ll notice how short the trousers are so long as I keep the puttees on.’