Louis de Bernières - The Dust That Falls From Dreams

Not long after the commencement of the war, Folkestone had begun to fill up with tens of thousands of Canadian recruits. On St Martin’s Plain were acre upon acre of tents, shops, huts, cinemas and canteens. Practice trenches reconfigured the landscape and became a hazard for drunks and unwary sheep. Millions of men had marched proudly down Slope Road, and many fewer were later to march wearily back up it.

Mrs McCosh’s luggage had been sent on ahead. When she left the station she was somewhat displeased by the present appearance of things, and wondered with whom she might have a stern word. She felt the onset of a letter to His Majesty. To begin with, the coming and going of so many military vehicles had turned the roads into a sea of chalky mud that clung to one’s shoes like treacle, and furthermore, the empty houses were already falling into disrepair, giving the town a forlorn aspect that Mrs McCosh felt was certain to be bad for the general morale.

Myrtle had come to meet her at the station, and they had exchanged embraces and delighted giggles as if they were still schoolgirls. Myrtle was slender, despite the approach of middle age, and her eyes were still bright with the humour and interest of youth. She always dressed, even in winter, in such a way as to give the impression that she was a fairy draped in diaphanous gauze. Mrs McCosh, on the other hand, dressed stylishly and expensively without in any way standing out from the crowd.

‘My dear, you look most scandalously well,’ said Myrtle to her friend. ‘It’s terribly unbecoming in wartime, don’t you think, to be so much in the pink?’

‘You’re becoming a poet,’ replied Mrs McCosh.

‘It’s so lovely to see you,’ said Myrtle, ‘I was inspired to rhyme quite accidentally. I do think you’re most frightfully brave to come. One lives in constant fear of a raid. It’s rather a jar.’

‘Oh no,’ replied Mrs McCosh, ‘in that, you are quite wrong. Everyone knows that Folkestone is perfectly safe.’

She was referring to the widely held belief that the Germans would never attack Folkestone because in the recent past the local people had saved hundreds of German sailors from drowning after a collision between two warships, and it was certainly true that even though Dover and Ramsgate and Margate had been bombed, Folkestone itself had been spared.

Myrtle was sceptical. ‘My dear, these people have invaded Luxembourg and Belgium, and think nothing of killing civilians. Why, I believe they even think it’s a good thing! And they invented that ghastly warfare with gas. I do hope you’re right though.’

‘I am always right, my dear,’ said Mrs McCosh drily. The two women set off gaily, receiving the respectful greetings of many a Canadian officer on the way. ‘I do love these Canadians,’ said Myrtle, ‘the way they sweep off their caps and even bow, and I don’t believe it’s the slightest bit ironical. And it’s amazing how many of them are sort of French.’

‘Sort of French?’

‘Sure, it’s quite like being in Brittany sometimes. They gabble away to each other in such a strong accent that it’s quite hard to follow. Of course, if one addresses them in proper Parisian French, they simply reply in English.’

‘Did you say “sure”? I do believe you are becoming a Canadian yourself.’

‘Oh, you should hear us all,’ said Myrtle. ‘Dear Henry almost has an accent. Oh, and I must tell you, I have three Belgian musicians in the house at present, so please don’t be alarmed if you come across poor shambling folk on the landing. They are nearly ghosts, but not quite. Two of them have very kindly agreed to share during your visit, so you shall have your usual room overlooking the sea.’

‘How lovely,’ said Mrs McCosh with evident insincerity, a little worried about having to be in the vicinity of unknown foreigners. She had not bargained on any such thing. ‘Of course, I have been having Belgian ladies to tea quite a lot myself.’

‘Don’t worry, they are perfectly sweet,’ said Myrtle. ‘They have such a glum air that it makes one want to tickle them.’

It was a beautiful day in May. The sky was clear but for some tiny clouds, and the sea was Mediterranean blue and flat calm. A small breeze was bringing the aroma of kelp and salty water to the promenade, and Mrs Hamilton McCosh and Mrs Henry Cowburn walked along it in a daze of contentment and well-being. They had been friends for a very long time, despite being so far removed from each other temperamentally, and it had been Mrytle who had seen Mrs McCosh through that terrible period that the latter always thought of as her ‘Dreadful Disgrace’ or ‘Awful Scandal’ when it had been revealed in the press that the Lord to whom she was engaged already had a wife in a lunatic asylum in America. She had felt humiliated and shamed by it even though she and everybody else had known perfectly well that she had not been remotely at fault. She had destroyed all her personal diaries that covered that period, and moreover His Lordship had recently died, so that Mrs McCosh finally felt completely free of him. She had been utterly grateful and astonished when one day Hamilton McCosh had proposed to her, although she had been slightly mortified when he had added, ‘And I have nothing but cobwebs in the attic.’

They reached home at exactly the same time as Henry Cowburn himself, who was dressed in plus fours and was carrying one golf club and a new box of golf balls. He was returning from the monthly match of the Mashie Club, in which each player was only permitted the use of one club for the whole round. He had learned to putt left-handed so that the negative loft of the back of the club put a marvellous topspin onto the ball and sent it unerringly into the cup. The other members liked to josh him that he could only win by cheating, and win he did, every time. As the prize was always a box of half a dozen golf balls, he now had a fair store of them in the cupboard under the stairs, and was hoping to send Mrs McCosh home with a box or two for her husband.

‘Welcome to Little Toronto!’ he exclaimed, and Mrs McCosh held out her hand.

‘Did you win again, dear?’ asked his wife.

‘Absolutely!’ he replied. ‘Or should I say “sure”?’

‘You could but you shouldn’t,’ said Myrtle in her best Canadian accent, ‘’cause it ain’t good English.’

That evening they and the musicians dined on the rabbit that Henry Cowburn had bagged himself from the rough on the fifteenth. They agreed that the war would already have been lost but for rabbits, and afterwards the musicians played the famous andante by Vinteuil. It was soothing and sad. Mrs McCosh retired to bed feeling serene, not missing her own family one little bit.

The following morning the elderly musicians convened in the conservatory, where they played Beethoven amongst the bro-meliads and pelargoniums. Major Cowburn went to his office, where he intended to do as much work as possible in the morning so that he might be released to the golf course in the afternoon, and the ladies went for the first of the day’s promenades, firstly in Radnor Park, where they watched some girls playing tennis, and then to the cemetery, where Myrtle took her companion to visit the graves of her departed friends and acquaintances. She wiped her eyes at each, and told Mrs McCosh anecdotes about the occupants, all of which Mrs McCosh had heard many times before. ‘Just think, my dear, one day I shall be in here with them,’ she said, adding, ‘and on a beautiful day like this I don’t think I’d mind a bit. It’s such a nice place to rest in forever, don’t you think?’

It was indeed a perfect day. Despite the war and its losses, shortages and inconveniences, it was impossible not to feel a little joyful.