Again Desmond and Phillip were driving through the Blackwall Tunnel, out past riverside docks of the East End to fields of stubble and roots, along narrow lanes through the villages with names like Little Warley, Childerditch Street, and Herongate, passing hundreds, thousands of men and women on foot, clad in their Sunday best, farmers in dog-carts and traps, bicyclists and bands of boys, all hurrying east as they made their way to Snail’s Hall Farm, where the Zeppelin’s empty frame lay glittering like part of the Crystal Palace in the bright sunlight of the hot day as it straddled two burnt fields across a scorched hedge, broken in the middle where it had sunk down upon an oak tree. It was seven hundred feet long.
Outside the cordon of sentries with fixed bayonets stalls had been set up. The vendors offered cakes and mineral waters, cockles and oysters, even picture postcards and Sunday newspapers. Many people were moving towards the webbed broken frame rising above the fields.
Phillip led the way direct to the line of bayonets.
“Sapper Neville, I think Intelligence demands that we both make a closer inspection.”
“Walk just behind me, with a confident air.”
“Very good, sir.”
Phillip, booted and spurred, his badges of rank hidden by a British Warm, walked towards the wreckage. A sergeant came forward, but before he could speak, Phillip said, “Have you seen the General Commanding the London District, Sir Francis Lloyd, sergeant?”
“No, sir,” replied the sergeant.
“In the circumstances the General will not expect a General Salute when he does come.”
“Very good, sir.”
Approaching the buckled frame, they saw the white corrosion of fire on the aluminium girders and cross members, and the oak tree, forty feet high, with all its branches crushed around the trunk. Many R.F.C. officers were peering at equipment from one of the gondolas laid out by mechanics. A smell of burning hung in the air.
Phillip overheard a major talking about the crew in the barn, and soon found his way there, without asking questions.
At the door of the barn he said to the sergeant of the guard, “Have you seen Colonel West of the Gaultshires?”
“I don’t know the officer, sir!”
“You can’t mistake him, sergeant. He’s got a black patch over his left eye, and a hand missing. If you do, tell him that I’ve arrived, will you? He’ll know who I am.”
“Very good, sir,” replied the sergeant, as he sprang aside.
Two rows of bodies lay on straw. Their faces looked to have been tarred, and the tar to have cracked, revealing old red paint beneath. Their thick greatcoats were frizzled, their long felt boots grew black lichen. The arms and legs were those of dummies, ready to dangle loose about skulled faces with stubbed ears and noses, and flat eyes. He counted twenty-one. The twenty-second corpse, lying apart, was not burned. Grass stuck to the Iron Cross in the button-hole of the reefer jacket.
“He’s the commander, sir,” said the sergeant. “He was picked up in the field, some way off of the airship. There’s the impression, six inches deep in the ground, where he plonked down. He was lying on his back, with his hands still clasped behind his head, as though to protect his skull. Pity it wasn’t Mathy, sir.”
“His turn next, sergeant.”
Prophetic words: within a week Mathy was to perish with his crew in the flames of L 31, shot down by Tom Cundall, whom Phillip met again on this Sunday afternoon.
“When are these chaps to be buried, d’you know?”
“I did hear in Great Burstead churchyard, on yonder hill, next Wednesday, my beamish boy. Not even lead-lined coffins. War-time economy.”
“They’ll need some chloride of lime before Wednesday.”
As they walked to the runabout, Phillip said to Desmond, “How about coming to see the funeral?”
“Not me. I’ve had enough. Besides, I’m going on Wednesday to be interviewed for a commission in the gunners, at Woolwich. I’ve got a lift back in a tender to London, so I won’t be returning with you.”
“Well, goodbye, Desmond. And the very best of luck.”
But Desmond was already walking away.
“Lily?” said Cundall.
Phillip nodded. Cundal squeezed his hand.
*
Great Burstead church stood on high ground beyond the town of Billericay. It had a square tower, from which arose a pointed shingled spire. Phillip arrived at Snail’s Hall Farm three days later just as the procession was starting along the narrow lane winding up to the graveyard.
On a lorry, covered by a black pall, lay twenty-one coffins.
Behind them was a trailer pulled by a second lorry, bearing the coffin of the commander. It had a brass plate on it. Commander Brodruck, killed on Service Sept. 24, 1916.
This was a mistake. Later, it was known to be Petersen.
Following the coffin was an open Crossley in which sat officers of the R.F.C. No Cundall’s face. At the tail of the procession was a squad of airmen, and then a few sightseers.
Last of all walked Phillip, feeling lost, wondering if the spirits of the dead men were lingering in the autumn air, looking down, faintly curious, at the poor little bodies below. Was Lily there, too? He felt that the dead would not be angry, nor would they know any more fear. If only he could write poetry in which his feelings, and the scenes he had known, would live forever, like Julian Grenfell’s poem.
The leaves of the elms were turning yellow. Gossamers glinted across the stubbles, the drift-lines of hundreds of thousands of unseen little spiders come to earth, each a thread of hope. The threads made vast tunnels to the sun, like fragile formless airship frames. What happened to the myriads of tiny travellers, floating in the warm air, all going—whither? For what purpose? To flee the frosts, to reach the haven of the golden sun, each to return its gift of life, like the hundreds of thousands marching into the sunrise of July the First? Male spiders, thin and nervous, died for love: did each one have a speck of soul, of love, within its frame?
The mass grave was in one corner of the churchyard, beside a small pit for the commander. He hoped no one had taken his Iron Cross, for a souvenir. It should be kept, and returned after the war to his wife, for his son; but perhaps he had not been married. Then for his mother.
The blue sky was as gentle as the eyes of Lily. She and her mother were being buried that afternoon. She would understand why he had come to this funeral of the unloved. Surely thoughts had their own existence, like gossamers.
The six R.F.C. officers carried the coffin of the commander to the pit beside the other coffins around the mass grave. Was God, during the service, looking down sadly upon the scene? Now the Vicar was saying, ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life’, but when he came to the ‘our dear departed brothers’ he changed it to ‘these men here departed’. Dear departed brothers, thought Phillip, while it seemed that the eyes of Lily were regarding him steadfastly.
Soon, too soon, it was over, and bugles were sounding the Last Post. Goodbye, brothers: your mortal envelopes lie here in Mother Earth, your spirits drift as gossamers across the sea, to where thoughts of love will help you on your journey to the sun.
*
He went to Tollemere Park, but Mrs. Kingsman was away. Dust sheets covered the furniture. He learned from the butler that Father Aloysius had died of wounds. The butler asked him if he might offer him luncheon, but Phillip declined, and after a drink said goodbye, returning by way of Horndon-on-the-Hill, to see the church where, a year before, Kingsman, Cox, Wigg, and he had stopped on their way to Southend. Goodbye, Jasper Kingsman: will there be a wall-memorial for you, in due course, with your son? In quiet autumn sunshine he drove on down to the marshes of the Thames, and boarded the ferry for Gravesend, to cross the estuary with its smoking steamships and brown-sailed barges borne upon the tarnished waters rushing to the sea. Standing by the rail, he was beset by anguish so piercing that he felt he must go to the other passengers, and beg to be allowed to speak to them. But he stood still. The anguish passed, with his tears.
When he got home, what would there be to do?
For it seemed that the old life was now gone for evermore. The next day he would be going back to Grantham, to rejoin the Training Centre. This time he would work hard, and do his job properly. What “Spectre” West could do, he could do. When the time came to take over a section he would live for the horses and mules and grooms and drivers which would be in his care. He would be part of one of the many new Companies which were going out every week, to the Battle of the Somme.
Devon—Suffolk.
January 1956—January 1957.