A Close Run Thing

But her brother did not catch her meaning. ‘That business in the park is long past,’ he replied.

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows and sighed to herself. Armstrong sensed at once what her brother had failed to, though he could not know the precise details. She, equally sensible of his position, hastened to make some explanation: ‘You must forgive me, Serjeant; I did not intend trespassing on military questions. I am merely anxious to avoid any unnecessary ill-feeling in the district: the yeomanry are so intimate a part of our life at present.’

‘No offence, Miss ’Ervey, none at all. These yeomen are proud men: regulars have to step lightly with ’em. To call ’em cat-shooters is horrible cruel.’

This was uncommon diplomacy, thought Hervey: it would have done even Serjeant Strange credit. Nevertheless he was pleased when his father’s repeating half-hunter came to his aid, striking the half-hour so as to make the Reverend Thomas Hervey spring up with singular speed muttering something about Evening Prayer. Hervey’s mother felt a need to speak to cook, and Elizabeth said she would go with her father to church.

And so, alone in the garden, Hervey and Armstrong sat for some time without speaking, the late-afternoon birdsong supplanting their earlier talk. Both found themselves listening to it intently, even. From the tops of the elms around the house and the yews in the churchyard, and from deep inside the beech hedges, there came a ceaseless chorus of blackbirds and finches which would soften between midday and this hour, and then resume until only a last, solitary thrush remained in the gathering dusk, deposed in turn by the eerier night sounds. Out in the vale rooks chattered and cawed continually. Over the cornfields the sky was full of woodpigeons with their buzzing and queer calls; and even up on the downs, where there were no hedges and precious few trees, the larks were so numerous that there was continuous song from one end of the plain to the other. How little birdsong there had seemed in Spain and France by comparison.

‘By God, Mr Hervey sir, this is grand,’ said Armstrong at length.

‘Grand? Yes,’ replied Hervey, ‘but you should see Longleat House to know what is grand in the … grand sense.’

‘And that’s a grand family you’ve got, too.’

Hervey smiled. ‘You have never spoken of your people, Serjeant Armstrong.’

‘Never seemed any point,’ he replied with a half-shrug.

‘How so?’

‘Because they’re all dead, sir.’

Hervey was disconcerted: this was something he surely ought to have known. ‘Serjeant Armstrong, I … I am truly sorry to learn that …’

‘Well, that’s why I enlisted — had to start again.’

‘Start again? What do you mean?’

‘Well, you remember that tar on the transport from France, the one that ‘ad been at Trafalgar?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, intrigued by the association.

‘Well, how many of ’is mates d’ye think were killed in that battle?’

‘Four hundred or thereabouts, was it not?’

‘Ay, nearer four hundred and fifty, and nearly three times that many knocked about bad. Now, Lord Nelson ’ad twenty-seven ships o’ the line: that makes seventeen killed on each, as near as makes no odds.’

Hervey wondered how this surprising grasp of naval statistics connected with the circumstances of Armstrong’s family. But he forbore to hurry him: Armstrong had a way with stories.

‘And every man at Trafalgar is an ’ero, and every one of them four hundred and fifty is a dead ’ero. But no- one ’as ever heard of the men and bairns killed that same day in ‘Ebbum colliery — thirty-five of ’em, two of Nelson’s ships’ worth of dead ’eroes, and as many cripples. And the dead all sent to their Maker in a split second’s explosion of firedamp — my father and ’is father, and my two brothers. I was the youngest and should’ve been there with ’em except I’d been ’urt in a roof-fall a day afore.’

Hervey was all but overcome, not just by the horror of the accident but by his knowing so little of things. From time to time news reached Horningsham of accidents in the coalmines nearby in Somerset, but the details were always sparse. ‘But I never knew that men could be killed in such numbers,’ he said at length, his brow furrowing in disbelief.

‘And bairns, and their mothers and sisters an’ all sometimes,’ added Armstrong emphatically, though more in resignation than in bitterness. Bitterness was reserved for what followed. ‘And you know what, Mr ’Ervey? That explosion made two dozen widows and a hundred orphans in ’Ebburn village, an’ all thrown on the parish with no extra from the coal owners. My mother died in three months in a damp and lousy poorhouse.’

The birdsong swelled as Hervey sank once more into silence. Armstrong sat impassively, disinclined to tempt him from his thoughts. At length Hervey confronted his shame. ‘Serjeant Armstrong, I am truly humbled to admit of my ignorance of all this, and I cannot conceive of how I have never read of these things in the newspapers if they are so frequent.’

‘That one at ’Ebburn was small by comparison! And you know why you don’t hear of ’em? Because the papers are forbidden to report ’em, that’s why.’

They remained a full hour talking, though much subdued. And they spoke of matters of which, only a short time before, Hervey would never have dreamed. That they were able to do so said much perhaps about mutual respect, but equally, it seemed to him afterwards, about the Sixth and its discipline, a discipline of which martinets like Slade could never have any comprehension. Slade — even at this time the ghastly remembrance could intrude!

Serjeant Armstrong’s temporary assignment with the Warminster Troop proved not nearly so quarrelsome as many had anticipated. He was in any event unlikely to have failed to win the esteem of the yeomen troopers themselves, for any demands he would make on them would surely derive from experience rather than solely from the drill book. In a remarkably short time he was able to improve both their horsemanship and their sword-skills. He had been particularly careful, however, in his dealings with the troop serjeant-major, a foreman on the Marquess of Bath’s estate, and had shown him the deference that he would his own in the Sixth — probably more. And with Hugo Styles he was so correct in his compliments, and so leading in his instruction, that the lieutenant’s standing in the eyes of the troop must have been considerably enhanced thereby.

They drilled on a Wednesday and a Saturday, and occasionally on a Sunday. Styles attended every muster, for his fortune was sufficiently mature not to require his presence elsewhere, and Henrietta Lindsay accompanied him. Hervey, who, at the outset at least, felt a duty of supervision lest his Serjeant be placed in any position of disadvantage, was an equally punctilious spectator. At first he would stand aloof in some position of observation and watch the drill intently, until, by invitation or some other contrivance, he would find himself in the company of Henrietta and Styles. The latter tolerated his presence always with the very least civility that their status as gentlemen and officers compelled. Hervey’s disdain of Styles grew by degrees to detestation, for he could find in him no redeeming feature. His dress, speech and manner were contrived to an absurdly exaggerated extent. There were those in the Sixth, Hervey knew, who would certainly excel him in each, but they would give no offence in the doing. Styles was a man of considerable means, it was said, but there were some in the Sixth who were richer and yet would excite no such animosity. All these would-be candidates for equal disdain had the very quality, and in large measure, that Styles wholly lacked: generosity of spirit. And, what was perhaps more, they had shared the privations of a campaign. Hervey concluded that Styles was a man profoundly unsuited for anything but the most ornamental of commands. What a great good fortune it had been that the yeomanry had never been required to repel Bonaparte’s troops! One thing only puzzled Hervey: what it was that Henrietta found so agreeable in Styles.

Henrietta herself was always entirely civil at these meetings, but nothing more (or so it seemed to him). As the weeks passed, however, Hervey showed less attention to the evolutions on the drill ground and greater address at joining the other two observers, and so obvious was that address that the lieutenant’s duty of civility was placed under a greater strain than he was sometimes capable of bearing. But when Hervey found himself in Henrietta’s sole company, as when, for instance, Styles took command of the troop for some manoeuvre or other, she spent so much time asking whether he did not admire this or other about the lieutenant and his yeomen that he became wholly cast down.

Then, on St Bartholomew’s Eve, a fast day which the vicarage at Horningsham kept strictly, Hervey’s long- expected letter arrived.