Andrew Wareham - End to Illusion

“Good. At least you are thinking! Marry the girl with my blessing, Richard. Can we meet her before you go back to France?”

“You should, sir. I will try to make the arrangements. I will go back down to London on Monday and speak to Lord Elkthorn, see what he has to say. He might have other ambitions for Primrose. For that matter, she may give me the rightabout!”

“So she might. Everything up in the air until you have spoken to them. We are due to go out to a dinner tomorrow night. I’ll telephone old Farthing, see if there’s room at the table for you. Do me no harm to show you off, especially as a colonel and with the VC as well!”

“Farthing – can’t place the name, Father.”

“Moved in, bought a bigger house locally, four years ago. He owns one of the big boot and shoe places and has a bit of a farmhouse and a few fields as well. Making a mint with contracts for army boots just now. Got a son a bit older than you, might be interested in Alexandra. Better than that bloody farmer of hers!”

“Nobody interested in Vicky, sir?”

“No. Pity. Worth twice as much as Alex – brighter by far. Cleverer than you, for that matter.”

“So she is. What about encouraging her to join one of the Services? She could make a place as a woman officer. Could be a way of getting known.”

“No! Not right for a woman! Don’t care what they say, womenfolk have no business going off to war! Or leaving the house at all, for that matter!”

Richard shrugged and dropped the topic. Vicky would have to run away, it seemed.

Farthing was the epitome of the manufacturer’s son who had inherited the firm his father had created and lacked the old man’s abilities in almost every possible way. It was hard to go broke in wartime, government contracts being readily available and always overpriced, but Farthing was trying to achieve bankruptcy from all he said. The house was big and expensively ornamented with supposed Old Masters on the walls, all recently purchased.

Farthing himself was expansive and stupid.

“Managed to get hold of a genuine Rubens recently – guaranteed by the auctioneer! Paid a good few thousand for it. Wouldn’t have expected so many bidders at a country auction but I was not to be gainsaid – that painting was to be mine!”

Richard knew nothing of auctions but suspected that it would not be too difficult to arrange for false bidders to drive a price up. He congratulated Mr Farthing on his fortitude.

“Spent most of last week going off to another sale up in Scotland. Nothing much there when I got to it. Waste of time but there was a chance of something good. I manage to get to one place or another most weeks, you know, Colonel.”

It seemed that his factory saw him rarely.

“Thinking that my son ought to join up, Colonel. I suppose you would say he should, being a military man yourself.”

“I would hope that every healthy man of an age might serve his country, Mr Farthing. Not, I would add, necessarily in uniform. Our factories and farms must produce for the nation. We could not survive without them and some men must stay at home, more than go to war, actually. There is a need for young women to go to work or to volunteer for the services as well. Tens of thousands of casualties demand a mass of extra nurses in the hospitals. If your son is busy in the factory, better he should stay there. Soldiers cannot march without boots, sir.”

Farthing’s son had a pallid, weak look to him. Richard would not have fancied him as one of his officers, or as a husband for his sisters.

“Oh, young George is not to get his hands dirty in a mere factory, Colonel Baker! Better things to do than that, as have I! No, he is considering forgoing his leisure in London and putting on khaki in its place. I don’t know if you are aware of any senior man needing staff, perhaps? You are to be part of a new division, I hear.”

“Staff? I know little of that sort of gentleman, Mr Farthing. I am afraid my acquaintance is limited to fighting soldiers.”

Farthing suspected that to be a rebuke. He turned his attention to others of his guests.

“Miss Victoria! I do not know that you have visited my house before.”

“Miss Baker, more correctly, sir, being the elder daughter. No, Mr Farthing, I have not had the pleasure of accepting your hospitality previously. I know little of art, I fear, and have not seen a collection to match yours.”

Mr Farthing was sure that was a compliment. He introduced her to Mr George Farthing, sure that they would have much in common. Richard observed her to shake the young man’s hand with no signs of pleasure, treating it like something the cat had brought in. She did not rub her own hand dry afterwards, though showing some signs of searching for her handkerchief.

Dinner was long, rich, well cooked and accompanied by expensive wines.

“After your months in France, Colonel, you must be used to good cooking!”

“Well, no, Mr Farthing. In the trenches we normally eat tepid mutton stew, enlivened occasionally by bully beef and biscuit. More fortunate mortals have a mess to eat in. Those of us actually engaged in the fighting eat whatever is sent up to us, with no choice of victuals.”

“But, officers, surely…”

“We live with the men, in the front line and sharing their hardships for lack of alternative. The food ranges from the poor to the outright appalling, I am afraid.”

“Shocking, Colonel! Not for the men, of course, horses for courses and all that – they would not appreciate fine food if it was given to them. Stew will do for their palates! The officers must surely deserve to be treated better! I am amazed that a refined digestion should tolerate such stuff!”

“So am I, remarkably often, Mr Farthing. There is no alternative, however, and a glass of rum to wash it down, when that is available, does much to alleviate the flavour.”

Richard noticed young Mr Farthing to be horrified, suspected his military ambitions were receding.

“Will you be sent back to France soon, Colonel?”

The Reverend somebody or other, Richard had not caught his name, offered the question in a quiet voice, as if unused to speaking in the presence of rich company.

“In July, I believe, sir. The division is to take a part of the lines as its own, I am told. There is some prospect of another advance and we may be sent to tidy up a salient, or indeed create one, prior to the battle.”

“You seem almost happy at the prospect, Colonel.”

“Wrong word, sir. Never ‘happy’. Content to be where a man should be in these perilous days, perhaps. I have found myself, I would say, out in France. It is a shocking thing, sir, but the war has been good for me.”

The clerical gentleman was correctly shocked but too meek to say so. Richard presumed he was in some way obligated to Farthing and would say nothing controversial at his table.

The port circulated after the women withdrew, the eight men present coming together at the head of the table. Richard was introduced to three he did not know, one of them the Chairman of the Hospital Board, an ancient and long retired major of a lesser cavalry regiment.

“Strange war, this one, Colonel Baker. You cannot be thirty yet are a colonel!”

“Twenty, sir. Very rapid promotion in the trenches as the Army has expanded and so many officers have been killed or sent home unfit for further service. Many of the older men have fallen ill – consumption in all its forms and various other chest ailments. Good officers rendered incapable of service by standing in mud and water for weeks at a time. The trenches are mostly on lower ground and are appallingly unhealthy.”

“But, why is that so? Could we not have dug in on the hillsides?”

“The Germans got there first, sir. They chose their own ground, almost always higher than was left for us.”