Louis de Bernières - The Dust That Falls From Dreams

Ash walked out into the snow, and lay down on his back. He stretched out his arms, and swept them up and down two or three times. Then he got to his feet carefully, dusted himself off, and came back up the steps into the conservatory. They stood side by side, looking down at what he had done.

She said, ‘It looks like an angel.’

‘It is an angel. It’s a snow angel. We used to make them back home when I was a kid, in Baltimore. It’s an American invention.’

‘You think everything’s an American invention.’

‘Well, have you seen it before?’

‘No.’

Ash indicated the angel with a toss of his chin. ‘Always think of me as your angel. I’ll be watching over you. The keeper of your soul.’

Rosie felt very uneasy, a little spooked. He said, ‘I’d better go, my love. The train won’t wait, and it’s quite a walk with a backpack full of razors and socks and field dressings. I’m meeting Sidney and Albert at the station.’

‘We could send someone for a hansom,’ she suggested, and he replied, ‘No, it would take too long, and I reckon I should get myself in training. I’m mighty sure there’ll be some long marches ahead. Before I go I want to recite something for you.’

‘Recite something?’

‘Yes indeed. I found it in that Georgian Poets book you love so much, and I memorised it, so I could say it at this moment.’

‘Is it Rupert Brooke?’

‘Uh-uh. See if you recognise it.’

He pursed his lips whilst he recalled the verse, and then recited:

‘Breathe thus upon mine eyelids — that we twain

May build the day together out of dreams.

Life, with thy breath upon my eyelids, seems

Exquisite to the utmost bounds of pain.

I cannot live, except as I may be

Compelled for love of thee.’

Rosie recognised it and took it up:

‘O let us drift,

Frail as the floating silver of a star,

Or like the summer humming of a bee …’

‘It’s Harold Monro! What is it? “Child of Dawn”?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Now do you think you could breathe on my eyelids? Just so I can see what’s so darn good about it?’

He closed his eyes and leaned down, and Rosie breathed on his eyelids. Suddenly he opened his eyes and said, ‘It’s not quite what Monro cracked it up to be. Might you allow a kiss instead?’

Eventually Ash went to say goodbye to her mother and sisters, and then they gathered to see him off at the door. Theatrically, Ash affected French manners, and kissed each of the sisters’ hands, and then their mother’s. She did not know quite where to put herself. She said, ‘I will write to the King personally to ask him to make sure that you are somewhere safe,’ and the sisters smiled little secret smiles to each other. Mrs McCosh was always writing to the King, and was the fiercely proud owner of a little pile of polite and non-committal acknowledgements from his secretary.

Finally Ash took both of Rosie’s hands and said, ‘We’ll get spliced on my first leave, then.’

She nodded, and said, ‘I’ll pray for you every day, especially before I go to bed.’

‘Thanks, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘And long live the Pals.’

Rosie said, ‘Pals forever,’ and then he was gone, striding out into the snow with his baggage on his back and his cap on his head. He waved from the gate, and Rosie felt a little hurt that he so obviously could not wait to get away, and out into battle. That was how all the young men were, suddenly caught up by a very specific, important and tangible reason for living. Rosie could not blame him, and would later wish that she had had told him how proud of him she had been. The last she knew of Ash was the sound of him whistling ‘Gilbert the Filbert’, trilling the notes like a blackbird as he strode away.

After he had gone Rosie went to the conservatory to look down at the snow angel, and Sophie, Christabel and Ottilie followed.

‘Ash said he was my angel. It was a funny thing to say.’

‘Do you mean funny ha ha or funny peculiar?’ asked Sophie.

‘Funny peculiar, of course,’ said Christabel on Rosie’s behalf.

‘Oh good,’ said Sophie. ‘I hate it when I don’t understand jokes.’

After tea Rosie opened Ash’s present, and it was an etching called Adieu by L. Rust. It depicted an old-fashioned infantryman wearing a shako, with a musket over his shoulder, on the point of stepping forward. A maid in a pinafore stood at his left side, on tiptoe, her arms draped about his neck and her eyes closed. Her attitude suggested depair and resignation and absolute devotion. Either he was kissing her nose, or was whispering something. Rosie thought it would have been something like ‘I have to go now, I really do’. The contour of the girl’s body exactly folded into that of the soldier. The effect of the picture was poignant, and it made her begin to cry. She took it upstairs and propped it against the wall on top of her bookcase, and then she retrieved her figure of the Virgin Mary from under the bed and put her in front of the mirror. She talked to her about keeping Ash safe, and then wrapped it up again, and replaced it.

She put on her coat and hat and muffler, and walked to the church. It was a freezing day, with the kind of raw cold that burns into the bones, but even so the church was full of women on their knees. She slipped into the pew beside Mrs Ottway, who had two sons at the front, and tried to pray, but could not help sniffling. Mrs Ottway put out a hand and took hers, and they prayed together. They said the Lord’s Prayer. Afterwards ‘Thy will be done’ echoed and re-echoed inside Rosie’s head, and she remembered the words that Jesus spoke in the Garden of Gethsemane, words that she would repeat to herself all through her life when she needed tiding through.

When she returned home, Bouncer was waiting on the other side of the door. During that night he howled inconsolably, and the whole house was reduced to helplessness. Everyone was down there by candlelight in their night attire, including the servants, trying to work out what to do, and in the end they shut poor old Bouncer in the conservatory and hoped that he would not perturb the neighbours too much. Mr McCosh thought that the dog might have had a stomach ache, but Rosie said that dogs howl only when they suffer mental distress. After that time Bouncer often howled at night.

As for Rosie, she longed with ever decreasing faith for the day when ‘we twain may build the day together out of dreams’.

Regimental no. 1967

Rifle no. 1695

Pte Ashbridge Pendennis

DIZZY, SICK AND exhausted by the time we got to Kemmel. Don’t think I ever felt seedier. Trudged in full view of the Huns up on the hill. No idea why they didn’t mow us down. A miracle.

Officers got told off. Came in cattle trucks, then buses that still had ‘London General Omnibus Company’ on the sides, but then it was slogging through mud and rain, mile after mile, with rifle, ammo, a cape, a goatskin and supplies. Aching and shivering, sweating and freezing. End of my greatcoat so soaked in earth and water. Terribly heavy. Sidney and Albert and I ended up almost carrying each other. Thank God they were there. Arrived, slumped down and slept, without removing our webbing. Could hear bombardment not far off. First time under fire, and too tired to care. Am extra fit because of ribbing about being a Yank, so always trained hard to be one and a half times as good.

Kept worrying about when I would get a chance to zero my sights. Was thinking, ‘What’s the point of this gun if I aim it and miss?’ Other fellows had been developing the same obsession.

My gun quite old, but good. Nice feel to it. Obviously loved by a previous owner. ‘PLG’ in tiny letters on the stock, and a lot of wax or boot polish rubbed into the woodwork. Glows dark brown. Barrel immaculate, not one pit. Bolt slides perfectly. Must always look out for mud up the barrel, because then it could explode in your hands. Took a tip and plugged the muzzle with a tiny cork from a medicine bottle. Am almost as worried about looking after that cork as I am about the gun.