Louis de Bernières - The Dust That Falls From Dreams

‘She didn’t actually want other women to vote, though. She really only wanted it for herself. She took not being allowed to vote as a personal insult, and not as an affront to womankind in general. It’s good of you to come,’ said Rosie.

‘Felt I had to,’ replied Fairhead. ‘I am visiting a fair number of people, when I get the opportunity.’

‘But there must be so many!’

‘Thousands actually. Obviously I kept notes, but the rate of attrition was so high that one simply couldn’t keep track. It’s a blur of faces and wounds and short conversations and trying to listen to last words. I do remember Ashbridge very well, though. He was one of my first.’

‘I hope you’re not just visiting the relatives of officers.’

‘Good gracious, no. Why would you think that?’

‘It was only officers who got in the papers when they got killed. I always thought that was very shocking,’ said Rosie. ‘At Netley I got into masses of trouble for saying that officers and men shouldn’t be treated separately.’

‘I think I agree with you,’ said Fairhead, ‘but it’s never been done like that. Old habits die hard. And you’re forgetting that Ashbridge wasn’t an officer.’

Rosie put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, I am sorry. Of course he wasn’t. But he was a gentleman, you know, officer class.’

‘There are man-made gentlemen and natural gentlemen,’ observed Fairhead, aware even as he said it that it was something of a cliché. ‘Ashbridge would have been the latter if he hadn’t already been the former.’

‘His friend Hutchinson was a natural gentleman,’ said Rosie. ‘He said he’d got to the front by coming out with a real one.’

‘Yes, I was very sorry to hear about what happened to him. Such bad luck after getting through the war, don’t you think? I hear you were most kind to him in his last days. Yes, er, he came out with a gentleman, and the gentleman concerned wouldn’t agree to go to war without him. I forget his name, one of those Frenchy names, de Soutoy or something. I remember him quite well, tall and confident, had hampers sent out, used to say “dash it” whenever his monocle fell out. He got a bullet through the face that took the back of his head off. That used to happen rather a lot.’

‘And Hutchinson stayed on?’

‘Too valuable to let go,’ replied Fairhead. ‘He was an excellent soldier, and he felt he owed it to the gentleman he’d lost. Nobody asked him to go back home, but he would have refused, and no one would have gainsaid him, so that was that, and he stayed on, out of loyalty.’

‘What was it about Ashbridge?’ asked Rosie. ‘Why did you write to me so many times? There must have been so many other bereaved to attend to.’

‘I wrote thousands of letters, all in pencil and all on pages torn from notebooks. I wrote them in dugouts and field hospitals and trains and carts. That was my war, comforting the dying and writing to their relatives. All the same, Ashbridge was special.’

‘He was to me,’ said Rosie.

‘I think you want to know why he was special to me.’

‘I do, Captain. I would very much like to know.’

‘Because he was so beautiful.’

Rosie looked at him, a dark suspicion arising in her imagina-tion. ‘Beautiful?’ she echoed.

Fairhead stood up and went to the window, as if looking out over the wintry garden might make it easier to muster his thoughts. He watched a magpie and a rook, engaged in a tug of war over a crust of bread.

‘War destroys everything,’ said Fairhead. ‘That’s obvious and well known to us all. But I have always felt that what is beautiful is especially sacred, that the loss of something beautiful is more tragic than the loss of something banal. As a Christian, I am quite sure that I shouldn’t feel this way, but I do. I was most affected by Ashbridge because he was the Greek ideal, if that makes sense to you.’

‘Of course it does.’

‘Athletic, bold, humorous, congenial, courageous, intelligent, honourable, stoical … one could go on and on. He was an Apollo.’

‘Have you ever seen a picture of Rupert Brooke?’ asked Rosie.

‘Yes!’ exclaimed Captain Fairhead. ‘The similarity struck me at once. The photograph of him with his left index finger up the side of his face, and that enormous tie, or is it some kind of cravat?’

‘I adore Rupert Brooke,’ said Rosie. ‘I read him every day, especially the love poetry.’

‘His poems are somewhat irreligious,’ said Fairhead. ‘They have a sort of pagan barbarousness about them.’

‘Do you mean the funny one about how fish think that God is a fish?’

‘No, no. I find that most witty, although I am sure I shouldn’t be amused. There is a sensuality I don’t feel comfortable with. How can I put it? It sometimes seems forced, or perhaps a little posed.’

‘Well, I know he was irreligious, and a socialist too, but actually I think there’s something quite religious about his irreligiousness. Does that make sense? Do you remember the one called “Failure”? The poet goes to Heaven to confront God “Because God put His adamantine fate/Between my sullen heart and its desire”? And it turns out that God’s throne is empty and everything is overgrown with moss. I think one would have to be very religious to have written that, to be so very disappointed with God. And there’s that one about angels carrying God’s dead body. Why would you write that if you weren’t terribly religious, deep down?’

‘I’ll have to think about that one. In fact, I have to confide in you, Miss McCosh, that I have come out of the war with the gravest doubts. You may recall the absolute faith and confidence of the first letters that I wrote to you. I’m afraid it fell off rather greatly as time went by. I would very much like to go to Heaven and question the Lord.’

‘Doubts, Father?’

‘Of course there were many times when I felt I was carried through on the shoulders of Our Lord, that it was the Lord who bore me up.’

‘I felt the same after Ash died, and then at Netley,’ said Rosie eagerly.

‘I am sure you did. You must have seen many of the same things as I did. One cannot manage such horrors unless one is carried by the Lord. All the same …’

‘Yes?’

‘I am sorry to say this, but I have been forced to question my vocation. I kneel to pray, and find myself accusing Him. I want to know why such things are tolerated; why they are tolerable to Him. I can’t help thinking of my sister, and of Ashbridge, of course, and then the many thousands of others.’

‘You receive no answer?’

‘Not as yet. I will wait.’

‘I do hope an answer comes,’ said Rosie.

‘Don’t you have doubts?’ asked the Captain.

‘Ottilie and Christabel do. My sisters. Sophie is either so silly or so bright that I never know what is really happening in her head. But I don’t have doubts. I don’t think about philosophical things. Not because I can’t; it’s because I don’t need to. I know that Jesus said, “I am with you always.” He is here, and I know that Ash is too. He promised, before he left. And I almost feel I know Our Lady personally.’

‘You’re lucky, Miss McCosh — luckier than I am. Do you know what helped me to soldier on?’

‘Do tell me,’ said Rosie.

‘It was the parable of the Good Samaritan. If I lose my faith entirely, if I decide that God is a delusion, I will always have that parable as the epitome of what is worth believing and what is worth acting upon.’

‘Yes?’

‘I mean the idea that all men are our neighbours, and that one must love one’s neighbour as oneself. The rest of Christianity can go to hell, if push comes to shove. I hope I don’t offend you. Everything I did in the war came out of that belief. I learned it whilst tending to the enemy wounded.’