‘My grandfather,’ cried he, ‘bore this sword at Waterloo!’
Another ‘Oooo’ extended the final syllable, and the Major and the Vicar smiled at each other. The sword’s magical properties increased. It flashed back at us the golden dazzling moments of British victories. Its needle-sharp point proclaimed our freedoms. Its sleek curve was as perpetual as the spumed steely coastline of our island. The Squire swung it through the evening air, and its high hiss was the civilised thrum of the great Empire, quietly valiant, subduing only the primitive and bloody places of the world, erecting Industry in its stead.
Yes, dear reader, all these moth-eaten images spun through my mind, and allowed me for a moment (the sentiment was short-lived) to comprehend the effect, to be buoyed up, as it were, on the swell, and not sink in spluttering condemnation.
The Union Jack draped over the front of the podium swelled slightly in the evening breeze, that carried on its bosom the scent of golden fields awaiting the reapers’ blades; and the Squire lowered the sword and touched the front edge of the podium, so that all eyes followed its line to the heart of their flag.
‘Once again we are called. Once again the foe knocks at our gates. Once again our young men, our hearts of oak, have the opportunity to join this great march, to wield this same sword, to follow this same flag. The flag that says we are free forever. No Napoleon, no Hun, no barbarous tyrant will ever tear it from us.’
The effect, as I have said, was short-lived on me, once the usual threadbare patches had returned. But for the humble folk gathered in the square, whose lives were generally field-hedged, or scullery-encompassed, whose intellects then (even more than now) resembled their living rooms — shut up and musty, turned into parlours for the odd Sunday or the once-a-year guest, the odd jolt in an unchanging routine; and whose concerns therefore barely rose above the washing-tub or the driving coulter or the pennies in the sugar-tin — for these people the Squire’s speech somehow unbarred the bolts and blew open the doors: some featureless excitement was emerging; something to harass boredom out of its hole, to arrest the mangle in its squealing, eternal revolutions.
There was one exception to this depressing phenomenon: the under-gardener of the Manor remained transfixed not by the venerable sabre that had slashed flesh at Waterloo, but by the house-martin. Whether his interest was real or otherwise, I did not, and still do not, know; the several conversations on matters botanical and ornithological I had had with him made me pretty certain of his deep knowledge. But I fancy the house-martin was a kind of point of meditation, whose real purpose was to deflect that hypnotic flash. I felt ashamed of my own brief thrill, and there arose in me a corresponding defiance — even a sense of disgust at the emotions unleashed across this still summer’s evening in rural England. But the Squire was now at the climax of his oratorical symphony: this was the point of the meeting, and an injection of the lowest element of that ‘radical Fire’ which binds love and wrath, and is called Envy.
‘The Major has asked me to tell you that any man here who is willing to defend our country, to fight for freedom, in the name of God, may step forward and declare himself. Yesterday, the village of Bursop gave to the cause thirty of its young vigorous men. Thirty! And, I hear someone call out — harvest is only a week away! But the women and children of Bursop are doughty enough, apparently, to gather the corn, and free their menfolk for an even nobler harvest. Shall Ulverton be bested by Bursop? Shall Bursop be the name that rings down the annals of history, as the village that stepped forward when the hour called, and laid itself upon the, ah …’
There was a brief pause, as the Squire’s grasp of metaphorical nicety gave out, and the choices had evidently narrowed to a morbid few, reeking of pagan rather than Christian virtues, and being altogether too passive (I assume ‘pyre’ and ‘altar’ were prime candidates) for the occasion. In retrospect, how fitting would that metaphor have been! This hitch in the proceedings was saved by a shout from one of the smocks, to the effect (I paraphrase) that Bursop folk were ineffectual layabouts, and we could do better — whereupon the whole crowd roared to a man, or shrieked to a woman. Such behaviour would not have seemed so hateful had they been picking teams for their annual cricket match, but memories of my nephew’s facial injuries in the South African war loomed before me, and refused to evaporate. I began to feel nauseous, and spun a mental thread between myself and Percy Cullurne, who remained unsettlingly oblivious to the proceedings.
The Squire grinned and adjusted his pince-nez, and my fondness for him was as the melting snow. Suffice to say that a few more shovelfuls of the poorest quality coal, and the blaze was undousable. Another great roar, a shifting and shoving about, and suddenly there they were — the spoils of eloquence: thirty-two strapping fellows (well, most of them were strapping) in a neat line between the people and the podium. They shifted from foot to foot, they tossed pebbles from one hand to the other, they scratched their noses, they grinned ostentatiously at loved ones. I thought of Carlyle’s dictum, that ‘there is nothing in the world you can conceive so difficult, as that of getting a set of men gathered together as soldiers’. I reflected: here are a group of agricultural labourers, or whatever, in their Sunday best, which was not saying a great deal, who would no more ‘walk into the cannon’s mouth’ for one man as they would wipe their dirty boots on entering the scullery — and yet in a few months or so, that is exactly what they will be doing. I remain with ‘cannon’s mouth’, for my notions of war were then as outmoded, dear reader, as the flashing sabre was — and if you were to conquer the temporal flux, and return as you are to that square, and stand beside me and whisper of all that you now know — of spitting machine-guns and lumbering metal monsters, of men cut down like fairground toys, of hideous waste in a universe of sucking mud, of gas and shrieks and drowning horses — I should think of you as utterly mad!
For did not the poignancy of that moment clutch even at my cynical heart? India and my wife’s death had not quite corroded all my softer faculties, I fear: a faint tinge of pride, that my newly-adopted home had pipped Bursop by two runs, as it were, crept into my visage. My mouth found itself curving into a satisfied smile, my head nodded at the frumpy lady to my right, and the cantankerous gent to my left, and for a moment I was sealed in tight with the lot of them.
It was at that moment that I realised, with an unwarranted jump to the heart, that Trevick and the other ‘diggers’ were absent. This thought was all but instantaneous with a sudden concern that all our barrow ‘team’ would be despatched forthwith to Flanders. There was a flurry, a straightening of backs, a darting in and out from under a black cloth, a shuffling of the three Important Persons into a group beside the Sacrificial Lambs, and the flashlight exploded like a tiny bomb, making the Vicar jump a little, which explains why his face is a thankful blur, his deadly role forgotten to history (I have the photograph before me now). I fretted at the absence of my companions on the barrow. An awful truth began to dawn upon me. And as this livid light rose in my mind, I saw Percy Cullurne leaning against the water-pump that dribbled into its trough between the podium and the New Inn, and is still tenaciously known as ‘The Well’; he was cupping a handful of water to his mouth. The line of men were having their hands shaken by the Major, and the crowd were waiting for the next stage in the proceedings. The Major stepped onto the podium for a final address. There was quiet. Then as he opened his mouth there was a squeak from the water-pump, then another: it had (and still has) an infernal squeak. Percy Cullurne had a hot face, and was bathing it, snorting and shaking his great wide head. I was reminded of the baptism of our Lord, for some reason. Anyway, there was a hint of purification about the action.