The Broken Chariot Read online

  Putting on weight and height, in spite of the thrifty diet, made him less likely to be bullied. He began to feel invulnerable though without turning into a bully, which at first made others suspect him of holding demonic punishment in store for some harmless remark, which an unfortunate boy would not realize until too late was a painful insult.

  Hugh and Maud, when home on leave, were unable to understand why he showed no happiness. He was heartless and faraway, even for a boy of eleven. Hugh put an arm on his shoulder to point out Firle Beacon from the garden of their furnished cottage, and Herbert moved as abruptly as if he had been touched by fire.

  ‘He was just being a manly chap,’ Maud told him, after Herbert had gone to bed. ‘Anyway, it’s his age.’

  Hugh paused between the measuring out of his whisky. ‘I remember being like that as a boy myself,’ he said with regret, ’and would have given anything not to have been.’

  She held his hand, that strong pragmatic hand perfectly in harmony with the eye of his sharp intelligence. ‘He’ll learn to love us when he grows up. In the meantime, my dear, we’ll make do with each other.’

  ‘That’ll always be so.’ He put down the glass to fill his pipe, ‘but it’s a shame children can’t realize that parents aren’t much beyond children themselves, in certain ways.’

  ‘I often wonder if I shouldn’t have had another child or two. Then we wouldn’t need to dote so much on Herbert.’ She recalled her feelings after his birth: No more of that. He tore me to blazes.

  Hugh stood up before going out to close the shutters. ‘No regrets. One child’s enough with which to surround Blue Force by morning!’

  The new blazer needed some name tapes, and Maud picked up the needle. ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll take him to the cinema tomorrow. They’re showing Fire Over England again.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen it myself.’

  Herbert was sustained by the hope of one day getting revenge on his parents who callously condemned him to a school which, without experience of any other, he thought was the worst in the world. They deserved to pay even for sending him home to any school at all. Having waited for him to be born, he imagined them gloating over the ease of his first years, then springing this deadly trap. What other explanation could there be? Everyone knew what they did, and if they didn’t the crime was all the greater. He evolved a potent fantasy of luring them to a valley in mountains as remote as those of Baluchistan seen from the top deck after leaving Karachi. The boulder behind the tree on the left bank of the stream was so vivid he could almost touch the moss. Taking an axe from his rucksack, he chopped them bloodily down, no pity at the look of horror as they died.

  He wrote the daydream as a story, every stark detail sketched in words of fiery resentment, and the English master said it was an excellent piece of composition, though moving his head from side to side, as if in his experience he had read much similar work. Then with his tone laced by a threat he told Herbert to put it in the dining hall stove and never to pen such a whining screed again. ‘In any case, don’t you know, boy, that you may never see your parents more? There’s a war coming on. In the meantime, write five hundred lines for your lack of filial love. Exodus chapter twenty verse twelve first line.’

  Thereafter the scene of carnage came to him less frequently, for which he was glad, because living the murder through in his mind had left him weak and ashamed, though the sense of injustice against grown-ups took a long time to go away.

  When the Second World War began there was a change of teachers, and his school was evacuated to Gloucestershire. The buildings were an even gloomier pile, all the boys listing gleefully its apparent illnesses of dry rot, rising damp, and deathwatch beetle, wondering how long it would be before the whole lot collapsed and buried them in a mound of dust.

  It was as if the war had been sent especially to enthral them. Sitting in the library every day to hear the six o’clock news was like being in a cinema, and Herbert craved to take part in the glorious actions being fought. He performed well enough in class to keep ahead of many, but his greatest interest from the age of thirteen was devoted to the Army Cadet Force. The khaki uniforms were made out of last war misfits, but with cloth gaiters fastened, belt pulled tight, and cap angled on, he found it a glamorous transformation from school uniform. Maybe soon he would get into proper kit, because the war was bound to be on when he was old enough.

  At times of despair he imagined a gaggle of Heinkels skimming like the blackest of black crows low over woods and fields on a deadly track to the sheds and towers of the school. His childhood nightmare of a world exploding in two and falling to crush life and soul out of him was overpainted by a smoking ruin in which everyone was dead or half-buried except himself and a few cadets coming from cover at the end of a tactical scheme. They would work tirelessly to rescue the living, especially those he saw reason to hate, so that he could go on hating them; or they would nobly clear up the mess and scorn all praise for their cool bravery among the as yet unexploded bombs. But the only sound of war in this backwater of England was the occasional wailing alert due to German bombers straying from the main path further south, or the dream-like ripple of ack-ack in the Gloucester direction.

  He and Dominic Jones were enthused by yarns of conflict and exploration in King Solomon’s Mines, Treasure Island and Sanders of the River but, above all, by Kim. Herbert saw himself as a district commissioner in some remote province of Africa, the ruler of an area as big as any country in Europe, sitting by the tent door at dusk while his native bearer set out supper on a camp table. Puffing at his pipe, he would see a range of purple-coloured mountains to be trekked through the following week, into an equally extensive territory administered by Dominic, a social and courtesy visit before coming back to his own zone for another six months, no doubt fighting through an ambush of rebellious tribesmen on the way.

  They talked of enlisting into the army, as an easy escape route into a wider world. The war would be on for years, and give them time to take part in an almost abortive and bloody but finally glorious attack on the mainland of Europe as members of a do-or-dare commando unit. On their return as heroes they would be cheered. Dominic pictured them with caps at a jaunty angle, toting walking sticks, and each with an arm in a sling. ‘Let’s chuck in a black eye-patch for good measure,’ Herbert laughed, at comforting fantasies which, by their nobility of unreality, fed his spirit and made life easier to endure.

  The first sentence of Ovid’s Metamorphoses – his favourite reading – stayed in his mind for a long time: ‘My task is to tell of bodies which have been changed into forms of a different kind.’

  And into different minds, he supposed, because if you altered one the other must change as well. But what body, and what mind? Who gave them to us? And who the hell was it fixed me up with mine, I would like to know? Whoever it was had made a different job of him compared to the others. For example, he didn’t know, for much of the time anyway, what mind and what body had been given him, because the relationship they had to each other didn’t always correspond to how he felt. Even so, he could handle them all right because his outer casing of memory and experience was strong enough to let him control them, and would protect him until such time as he didn’t need either any more. Nevertheless, it was difficult, one might almost say a fight, but since everything to do with the world was fighting, and since he enjoyed fighting, he kept bleak misery away.

  Such uncertainties were no bother when, loaded like a hiker and clutching his single-shot Boer War rifle, he set out on the five-mile obstacle course, eager for cold air after the rigid stuffiness of class room or dormitory. He changed in a few minutes from a more or less clean schoolboy into the roughest of filthy-dirty ragamuffins as he went over a wall with rifle and kit, hands quick at the nets for speed, a metamorphosis not described in Ovid. He crawled through irrigation pipes, then waded a ditch, avoiding the splash of boots into cress and frogspawn. On his belly under pegged nets he relished
the soil whose odours recalled Simla so keenly. He crossed the broader stream by a Tarzan rope, ballet-danced along a tree trunk and panted up a hill steep enough to be called an escarpment so that he could only get to the top by cunning zigzags. A hundred yards more or less on the level between scrub and sheep holes, he wended through a zone of bushes, and finally up fifty steps before dropping a dozen feet into home base, laughing at the poor sap who broke his ankle last year, while Herbert with his big stride made the course quicker than anyone else.

  He absorbed the mixture of art and precision in map reading, able with no problem to transform in his mind the diagrammatic scheme on paper to the reality of fields and woods on the ground. He seemed made for the rough-house of minor tactics, manoeuvres and field days, and even drill with its fuss of polished boots and drying blanco. Most of all he looked forward to annual camp when, whatever the weather, he and Dominic set up a tent and cooked their mess in tins over the smallest of fires – careful because of the blackout – by a stream inside the wood.

  Whether cold rain dropped on to khaki serge from the tent lining, or moisture fell from breath and sweat after a day in dry heat being stuka’d by flies and midges, Herbert was relaxed enough to be himself and not who anyone expected him to be. At which times he wasn’t bothered by that first sentence from Ovid at all.

  Nor was he when he manipulated the Bren, the Short Lee Enfield and the Sten, learning how to fire and pick to pieces and put them together again, hearing the satisfying click of symmetry from metal parts that fitted so perfectly into place. He got high scores on the range, and didn’t care that each bull’s eye at the butts winked at a despised face to be obliterated. By sixteen he had grown into a marker on which others formed their ranks. To pass his certificate ‘A’ (Part One) was easy, and made him the obvious candidate for promotion, so that he went up stripe by stripe to the rank of sergeant.

  Problems subordinated to routine and discipline became no problem at all, and he couldn’t dislike such a life when there was none other he felt he could deserve, an attitude which gave him less problems to contend with. Tall and lean, he had the same dark hair and Roman nose as his father (broken after a harder match than usual) with Maud’s well-shaped lips and blue eyes.

  Hugh’s missives from active service were short and curt: ‘I’m happy to hear about your attachment to the Cadet Force. Don’t forget that one day the army will be your home, so always let me know of any progress. I’m sure you’ll make a good soldier.’

  In more frequent letters Maud, this time driving an ambulance on the Burmese frontier, told him to do well in academic subjects, and not spend more of his time playing soldiers than was necessary to make him a credit to the school. In the meantime she was sorry not to be seeing anything of him, but she was sure he understood it was all due to this blasted war.

  Herbert also enjoyed days when the whole school set out in a mob on a cross-country run through brackeny woods, and by fields along muddy hedgerows where it was hard to maintain a sense of direction if you were leading. Keeping landmarks in view was good practice in going ruler-straight from A to B and not getting lost.

  He wondered whether Uncle Richard, a retired clergyman who lived in Malvern, had learned the same as a boy. If so he hadn’t remembered much. The sleepy aspect below his domed bald head, and his black rather shoddy clothes gave Herbert no confidence in his ability with the motor car when he drove to the school one Saturday and took him to tea at the Abbey Hotel.

  He smiled at the clumsy old buffer not being able to see much beyond the length of his car, during the sick-making twenty-five miles an hour along leafy and unsignposted lanes though it pleased Herbert in that at any moment a five-ton army lorry (or tank for preference) might speed around the bend in front and give a touch of real life to their journey as they clambered bruised and maybe even amused out of a ditch after being overturned.

  Knowing how much his uncle enjoyed such outings Herbert felt no need to talk, and in any case it wasn’t done with a grown-up who might be shepherding only by way of duty. After every excursion the old man slipped him a quid, drooling and winking at how vital the odd sovereign had been in his own schooldays; which must have been before the Flood, Herbert smiled, relishing the added padding to his stomach which the copious tea provided. ‘Thank you’, he said, folding the lovely green note into quarters and putting it in his pocket.

  For an otherwise blank hour of the week Barney the English master, who had served as a pilot on the Western Front, read to them from a Penguin Book called Caged Birds, about RFC officers imprisoned by the Germans during the Great War. Barney may have been one of them, since he related their adventures with such feeling, but nobody bothered to ask. Herbert borrowed the book, to go through it by himself, as if to memorize the cunning mechanics of escape. Dominic scorned such interest in boring anecdotes of compasses hidden in jam stones, and maps concealed between the linings of overcoats, or secreted inside cucumbers which were sent to the prisoners in Red Cross relief parcels.

  Herbert was enthralled by the deception played by the grounded fliers on their captors during months of patient labour. Their plans incorporated the tiniest details, as little as possible left to chance or luck. Those who tried were the elite, and the ones who got clean away were the heroes. He finished the book in his favourite refuge of the library, then took down the large twenty-year-old Times Atlas and turned its pages to various countries of the world, but came back to the double sheet of southern England to mull over the place names and decide on what dot he would most like to be.

  Parents who could spare themselves from work of national importance came for a quick look at their sons, bringing what food or comforts they could. To Herbert they appeared gaunt and miniature, out of place among the paths and high-up crenellations, people from the outside, another world.

  Dominic’s people drove up the lane in a Vauxhall Kingston Coupé, an elegant vehicle admired and wondered at by all the boys. When his sister Rachel also stepped down from the running board the car seemed even more the right motor to call at their gloomy school. Herbert wondered where they had found so much black market petrol, as he pressed against a bush to view them across the V for Victory Garden.

  Rachel seemed angelic compared to her squat, pimply, ginger-haired brother. Staring was not done but, unable to resist, and though his jacket was wet with dew, Herbert fixed on her peachy cheeks, crane-like neck, and tied-back blonde hair swaying between slender shoulders as she strolled along the path.

  A year younger than Dominic, she looked down on him by height, and also no doubt in spirit. Then she spotted Herbert and, quicker than any lizard, pushed the point of her tongue out and back, forcing him to wash away the tide of crimson at being caught like a dismal snooper.

  Schoolwork clocked the weeks along, time he thought could be better spent though he did not know how or in what place. Rachel’s face glowed in front of his eyes, a phantom to induce restlessness and longing, which detached him further from a system more oppressive than any German prison camp. He became less boisterous, even taciturn, which he supposed was due to something called growing up.

  The precision of Latin, maths and history enticed him into high marks at every test, though he scored the minimum in French. Barney the English master occasionally praised his essays, especially a sparse yet colourful few pages on his reaction to the D-Day Landings called ‘The Taking of Treasure Island’. Herbert described a skilful campaign fought by the crew of the Hispaniola, gave them Allied names and armed them for mutual slaughter with modern weapons. The Hispaniola was a tank-landing craft, and Ben Gunn commanded the French Resistance on shore.

  Barney smoothed his bald head, and tapped his artificial leg with a ruler. ‘Such comparisons shiver the timbers of credibility, but the imaginative exercise, plus the writing, keeps it afloat. However, in places there’s a little too much striving for Johnsonian orotundity – but, nearly top marks.’

  A convoy of cumulonimbus clouds blackened a wide track from th
e hill in the west, and an autumn storm played over the school as they were leaving the sports field for tea. A cloudburst at the same time as the lightning sent hailstones like shrapnel to pepper the science sheds and make the lawns dance. Herbert paused, sheltering in the colonnade, and the sudden all-illuminating flash seemed meant for him alone. His eyes didn’t flicker, his firm gaze ready for another which, in his exhausted state after the game, lit his interior sufficiently for an idea to be planted and begin to grow.

  A sulphurous explosion, synchronized with a bolt of lightning, shivered the windows, recalling the storms of Simla and his infant nightmare of a world divided, when the tree-covered sphere hovered as if to fall on his cradle and crush out all life. He could smile at such fear because the split had merely parted the bedrock of his existence and enabled him to see himself as two people instead of one.

  The effect was to lighten the weight he seemed always to be carrying, though too many pictures went through his mind for him to pull out any that were connected, or even made sense, and he didn’t at first respond to the call of Simpson the games master: ‘Come on Thurgarton-Strang! Get a move on!’ Realizing that the name was his, Herbert sprinted after the others, wondering the strange thought as to how much longer he would either run when commanded, or recognize the name thrown over him like the disabling net of a gladiator in the arena. He laughed so loud in his strides that Dominic, trying to keep up, wanted to know what it was all about, and got a sharp elbow for his unanswerable question.

  The Cadet Force did no campaigning because there was too much snow, followed by floods. An uninviting frontier of lapidary green lay between Herbert and the outside world. Even the birds looked as if they needed a tonic. Waterlogged fields beyond the trees made him shiver to look at them. His only diversions were trips with Uncle Richard to the Abbey Hotel in Malvern, and he afterwards treasured the pound note, which he kept in reserve with others for better weather.