Louis de Bernières - The Dust That Falls From Dreams

‘ Nom de couteau , then.’

‘Knife?’ enquired Christabel.

‘Well, you can say “ couteau de palette ” if you want to go the whole hog.’

‘I love whole hogs,’ said Sophie brightly. ‘It’s so satisfying to have the whole thing, and not a mere leg or a sliver of tripe.’

At tea, as Millicent bustled in and out, Gaskell was interviewed by the family, and she explained that she had been a war artist, but was now having to find a new career.

‘A war artist!’ exclaimed Mrs McCosh. ‘You were at the front? Were you allowed there?’

‘Mother, there were lots of women at the front. Who do you think the nurses were?’ said Ottilie.

‘Oh, I wasn’t there just as an artist. I was also driving ambulances for Lady Munroe. I took a great many photographs, and now I’m working them up.’

‘Lady Munroe!’ exclaimed Mrs McCosh.

‘An ambulance driver! That must have been utterly exhausting and terrifying,’ said Ottilie.

‘Well, you were at the Pavilion, weren’t you,’ replied Gaskell. ‘You must have seen some equally terrible things, and got just as tired.’

‘It really doesn’t compare,’ said Ottilie admiringly. ‘I was never under fire, if you don’t count the metaphorical batterings of the matron. And the amorous assaults of the doctors. And the Mahommedans hoping for another wife to add to the collection. The danger you must have been in!’

‘I rather enjoyed it, to tell the truth. These days I find myself constantly wondering if I will ever find anything else quite as important to be doing. I don’t miss being shelled and sniped at. Or the rats. Or the stench. But I do miss doing important things.’

‘She’s got a bullet wound,’ declared Christabel proudly.

‘Tell me, where does your family come from?’ asked Mrs McCosh, determined to guide the conversation towards more important topics.

‘Northumberland,’ replied Gaskell. ‘We have a modest estate near Hexham, on the River Allen.’

‘An estate!’ exclaimed Mrs McCosh.

‘Much fallen into decay, I’m afraid. Nearly all the staff left and never came back. All three gamekeepers got killed. How does one start again from scratch? It’s difficult. One simply doesn’t have the cash any more.’

‘The answer is mechanisation,’ said Daniel.

‘You can’t mechanise gamekeeping,’ said Gaskell drily.

‘I mean the general work on the estate.’

‘Well, we had a sawmill, but nobody knows how to repair it and keep it going.’

‘I’d know,’ said Daniel.

‘Daniel has an immense gift for engineering,’ said Rosie.

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ said Gaskell. ‘I’ll ask Daddy what he thinks.’

‘What are you going to do when you’ve used up all your photographs?’ asked Sophie, her mind wandering back to the conversation at its earlier stage.

‘I want to paint portraits. Honest portraits. All the wrinkles and malice and vice showing in the face.’

‘And blue flesh instead of pink,’ said Christabel, ‘just like corpses.’

‘Gracious,’ said Mrs McCosh, ‘that will never earn you a living. Can’t you paint lovely things like Sargent?’

‘They are lovely,’ said Gaskell with sincerity. ‘I am always astonished that he’s mastered so many styles. I do like his Impressionist paintings. And of course the portrait of Lady Agnew is just inexhaustibly wonderful.’

‘Impressionist?’ queried Mrs McCosh. ‘You mean those paintings where the artist has apparently lost his spectacles, and all is somewhat blurred?’

‘Gaskell doesn’t have his kind of talent,’ said Christabel. ‘She’s got a different kind altogether. She sees the beast within.’

‘I have no beast within,’ said Mrs McCosh.

‘Neither do I,’ said Rosie.

‘I’m sure I do,’ said Fairhead.

‘Silly man, no you don’t,’ chided Sophie, ‘you are all kittens and fluffy bits. Fairhead bared his teeth and growled at her. ‘I’m horripilated,’ she said.

The family warmed to this exotic and entertaining creature and she was invited to stay for supper, which naturally led to her being put up for the night in the old head footman’s room, now that there were no footmen. It was neat and comfortable, but it was on the top floor, up a carpetless staircase. Millicent dusted the room and made it up in a hurry, and stole some flowers for it from the vase in the dining room.

After everyone had retired, Mr McCosh remarked to his wife, ‘What wonderfully fascinating green eyes she has! I haven’t seen such green eyes in all my life! What a lovely melancholy voice! What alabaster skin! What a lovely woman altogether!’

‘My dear, she is utterly mannish, neither one thing nor another. Quite the strangest creature. And she has a monocle! Outlandish! Even men don’t wear monocles any more. Her eyes are very remarkable, I do concede.’

‘She’s an artist,’ said her husband. ‘And she’s from the North. And she plays golf. And she shoots. She could help you with your campaign against the pigeons. And those wondrous green eyes! Like emeralds!’

‘I can see you are quite in love.’

‘I love only you, my dear.’

‘Hush, I hear flying pigs,’ she said, cupping her hand to her ear.

That night Mr McCosh woke up. He had heard creaking on the stairs, and thought it might be a burglar, but soon he returned to his dream about getting a hole in one on a heavily bunkered 400-yard hole sited inside the oddly attenuated old hall of Eltham Palace whilst Gaskell and Christabel danced a foxtrot on the green.

DANIEL’S SQUADRON WAS back from France, along with all their machines, and based temporarily on the enormous playing fields of a large, architecturally intriguing, but academically undistinguished public school near Brighton. The magnificent but ill-equipped cricket pavilion held the separate offices of the squadron’s three flights. The Snipes and the two RE8s were lined up at the eastern edge of the cricket pitch because the prevailing wind came from the west. In the absence of hangars they had been covered with tarpaulins, and roped to stakes, just in case a high wind should flip them. They were awaiting the arrival of some Besonneau hangars, which seemed unlikely ever to come. Small white tents, most of them empty because the personnel had found lodgings locally, were laid out in lines in one corner of a field, where they were sheltered by a row of elms. Six Nissen huts and sheds stood elevated upon railway sleepers, containing the messes of the sergeants and officers of the three flights.

For the schoolboys it was utterly thrilling to have real aeroplanes and real pilots in the grounds, many of them the owners of noisy and wondrous motorcycles, and the 1st 11 had already lost 2–1 at football against the airmen, and won 3–2 against the groundstaff. In the summer it was anticipated that the school cricket 11 would probably triumph because they had two fast bowlers, whereas the squadron could boast solely a leg spinner, and had no wicket keeper. Daniel had high hopes of fielding a good tennis team, and the squadron leader was fully intending to defeat the schoolmasters at golf. He had ordered Daniel to become good at it by Easter, and submit cards for a handicap.

At thirty-two, Squadron Leader Maurice ‘Fluke’ Beckenham-Gilbert was old by pilots’ standards, since most had not managed to survive more than a few months in action. He had started his military life in the Green Howards, and seen enough action on the ground to make him envious of the men circling above. He had risen from second lieutenant to acting major in six months, and calculated that he would be lucky to survive another two. His own father had been something of an aviation pioneer, having had the money and enthusiasm to invest in a Blériot monoplane not long after one such had been the first to cross the English Channel. His father had survived many prangs more or less intact, and had been the kind of father who was quite prepared to allow his heir to take to the skies with minimal instruction. It was therefore easy for Maurice to transfer to the Royal Flying Corps, on the grounds that he already had his ticket and knew how to fly. He had survived service in Rumpties, had got through the Fokker Scourge, had flown Camels and Nieuport 17s, but he maintained that the Sopwith triplane was the sweetest of all. He had actually managed to cadge one from a unit of the RNAS after they had switched to Camels, and now it stood alongside the SE5s like a small lovable terrier at the end of a line of wolf hounds. Fluke had never wearied of each day’s improvised adventures, and now wondered somewhat wistfully what possible use the peace might be to him.