The Foreign Field

Book 31: Morland Dynasty

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

It’s 1917 and the Allies are determined to finally defeat a weakened Germany—everything is building up to the summer’s Big Push. Germany strikes back with U-boat attacks to starve England out, giant airplanes to bomb London, and the cunning withdrawal to the Hindenberg Line. Every Briton must do his bit, and the Morlands are involved at every stage: fighting and nursing in France, stoically surviving at home, and finding love where they can along the way. Continuing the great saga of the Morland dynasty, The Foreign Field carries its members into a new set of conflicts and tests their courage to the limit.

Release date: August 25, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 528

Sample

January 1917

The journey, like all journeys in wartime, was tedious. The train moved slowly, with frequent unexplained stops, often being
diverted onto a siding to allow military traffic to pass. And it was crowded – there were even people standing in the first-class
corridors, officers going back from leave. In second class, the heating worked only fitfully. At times the bitter cold from
outside seemed to seep in like creeping death; at others the compartment was as steamy as a jungle, and Helen sweltered in
her thick travelling clothes. She was large with child and could not keep struggling in and out of her outerwear, even had
there been elbow room to do so.


The air smelt of sulphur, and everything was grubby: there was dried-out orange peel on the floor and smuts on the antimacassars.
Cleaning standards had certainly declined as the war went on, with so many people going into war work. To add to Helen’s trials,
her year-old son, Basil, had recently discovered the delights of crawling, and objected passionately when restrained. The
nursery-maid she had borrowed for the journey – from the wife of the wing commander at the flying school – was too excited
about the whole expedition to be much use.


Still, Helen had known how it would be before she started. Having been brought up in the philosophy of ‘what cannot be cured
must be endured’, she had packed sandwiches, plenty to read, and her knitting bag, and determined to make the best of it, despite her aching back and swollen ankles.


Her mother-in-law, Henrietta, had been doubtful about her making the journey at all so late in pregnancy, but there was no
help for it. Jack was in France with the Royal Flying Corps, and her sister Molly, who had helped at her last lying-in, was
now working as a clerk in the Ministry of Munitions and could not get leave. Mother could not leave Daddy, who was unwell,
and in any case she was too elderly and nervous to be much relied on.


It was the last straw when her excellent nursery-maid, Becka, had left to work in the aircraft factory. Helen could hardly
blame her. Not only would she earn much more, but she would be working with other young women, whereas at Downsview House
there was only the cook, who was old, and the housemaid, who was half witted. And it was two miles from the nearest village.
The spectacular views over Salisbury Plain, which so enchanted Helen and Jack, did not weigh with Becka at all.


With only weeks to go before her confinement, Helen had found it impossible to replace Becka; and since Mrs Binny and Aggie
could not do their own work and look after Basil and a new baby, the only thing to do was to go ‘home’ to Morland Place. Uncle Teddy was delighted, of course,
and had wanted to send his motor and chauffeur for her. But the heavy winter weather had made many country roads impassable;
and, as Henrietta pointed out, if Helen had to travel on the main roads via London, she might as well be on the train. At
least the train was sure to get through. Teddy, alerted to the possibility that the motor might get stuck somewhere, with
Helen in labour on the back seat, gave in gracefully. Jack was pleased about it, anyway. Helen had wanted to give birth in
her own dear home, but Jack was glad to think she would be at Morland Place with every attention and comfort around her.


The worst bit, Helen reflected, as the train came sighing and huffing into Waterloo, would be the struggle across London to King’s Cross. Because of the unreliability of timetables,
she had had to leave plenty of time between trains, but porters were fewer, older and less obliging than before the war, and
taxicabs harder to find. And there was the question of Basil’s napkin: it could hardly be expected to continue its rearguard
action indefinitely. She would need the privacy of the station hotel to effect the change.


As the train lurched to a halt, everyone jumped up and began scrambling down their baggage, jostling to get out first and
secure a porter. Helen, too large to compete, gave up hope and sat tight with her charges until the rush subsided, noting
rather grimly that no-one offered to help her. Cleanliness was not the only casualty of wartime rail travel. By the time she
finally stepped down from the train, there was hardly anyone left on the platform. She looked round hopelessly for a porter,
and was immediately accosted by a smart young man in a chauffeur’s grey uniform.


‘Mrs Compton?’ he enquired, touching his cap. ‘I’m Perkins, madam, from Lady Overton’s. Her ladyship’s compliments, and will
you please to take luncheon with her at home? And I’m to take you to the station afterwards and see you onto your train.’


‘However did she know I’d be here?’ Helen wondered, but she guessed the answer even before Perkins gave it.

‘I believe Mr Edward Morland telephoned to her ladyship and arranged it all, madam. Is this all your luggage, madam? Oh, no,
don’t you trouble, madam, please. I can manage it if the girl can carry your little boy.’


So Helen had only herself to get along, and soon found herself in the cradling comfort of a large motor-car, being whisked
through the streets of London with as much expedition as the traffic would allow. The noise and crowdedness were almost a
shock to her after two years in the country, and Mabel’s eyes were out on stalks. It was a foggy day, and everything was so
grey that the occasional splashes of red, of pillarbox and omnibus, were a welcome relief to the eye. The snow in the streets had been worn to grey-brown slush by wheels
and feet, and was banked up unattractively at the edges of the roads and pavements. Though it was the middle of the day, the
street-lamps were lit, each wearing a fuzzy halo of fog, and at the busy junctions policemen directed the traffic with torches.


But the welcome at Manchester Square could not have been warmer. The door was opened by Ash, the late Lord Overton’s former
manservant, and two maids, one of whom whisked Basil and the girl away while the other showed Helen to a bedroom where hot
water, towels and all other conveniences awaited her. Much as Helen adored her young son, it was blissful to have him taken
over by someone else. He had just begun to express his sorrow and rage over the disruption to his life in the only way he
knew.


Refreshed, she was shown into the drawing-room, where a wonderful fire was leaping under the chimney. It glowed on the polished
legs of furniture and glinted cheerfully on silver and glass, making the day outside look even dirtier by contrast.


Venetia, Lady Overton, came towards her with both hands outstretched. ‘Welcome, my dear. You must be so tired. Come and sit
by the fire. Did you find everything you needed upstairs? Luncheon will be served directly. I’ve told them to lay it in here
– I hope you don’t mind. I thought it would be cosier and, frankly, these days one has to economise on fuel and effort. The servant problem gets worse all the time.’


Venetia was tall for a woman, and very thin – bony as an old horse was how she described herself. Her hair was still thick
and luxuriant, though quite white now, and she wore it in the old-fashioned style, wound on top of her head like a crown,
which made her look taller. Though she was in her sixties, she worked harder now than she ever had. Her step was vigorous,
her eyes bright, her face firm, and the hands that pressed Helen’s and led her to the fire were strong and capable.


‘I hope you don’t mind my kidnapping you,’ she said. ‘Teddy’s idea was that I should lend Perkins to take you across London,
but when I knew how much time you would have between trains, I thought it would be nicer to bring you here for luncheon. Stations
are dreary places to wait, and station hotels are so crowded.’


‘How can you think I would mind?’ Helen smiled. ‘I feel as if I have been rescued from one of the circles of hell. I hope
Basil isn’t making a nuisance of himself?’ she added, with a last surge of conscience.


‘Don’t worry about him. I have two perfectly capable maids upstairs looking after him and your girl. I’m sure you must have
had enough of him by now, after being confined in a railway compartment with him for so many hours.’


‘He was rather like a bee in a bottle,’ Helen admitted. ‘It’s wonderful to be relieved of all responsibility for a while.’

Venetia gave her a glass of sherry and sat down opposite, looking at her with satisfaction. ‘I kidnapped you with the intention
of getting to know my godson’s wife a little better, but remarks like that make me feel I know you already. There’s too much
sugary sentiment about children. I adored my own, but I should have gone mad cooped up at home with nothing to do but listen
to their unedifying noises.’


‘I haven’t really had much choice in the matter lately,’ Helen said.

Venetia glanced at her maternal shape. ‘How long to go? Three weeks? Four?’

‘Four,’ Helen agreed.

‘You look well. I suppose you didn’t mean to have another so soon?’

Helen managed not to blush at such a direct question, reminding herself that Venetia was a doctor – one of the first lady
doctors ever to qualify – and also that intellectual briskness had already been praised. ‘In wartime, things sometimes don’t
go as planned,’ she said, with a fair attempt at insouciance.


‘I should recommend you not to have another for a year or two,’ Venetia said. ‘Incessant child-bearing is not good for the
general health. Besides, you have a mind and a brain. Tell me about flying. I’ve achieved many things in my life, but I’ve
never once left the surface of the earth.’


So Helen told her about her former job, delivering new aircraft from the factory to the RFC units. She had had to give it
up, of course, when she became pregnant. ‘People tell me I’m still performing valuable war work by having babies,’ she concluded,
a touch wistfully.


At that moment Ash and a maid came in with trays, and luncheon was set at an oval table by the window. Outside the fog swirled,
condensation dripped from the bare black trees, and the occasional motor and horse crept miserably by down in Manchester Square.
But inside, in the warmth and brightness, Helen delighted in a meal that had not required any decisions from her, and conversation
with another intelligent human being. It made her realise how lonely she had been in the last few months, shut up in a house
in the country with the servants and a small child.


They talked of Venetia’s work: as well as operating at two hospitals, she sat on several committees, and ran her own charity,
which provided X-ray ambulances to the Front.Then conversation drifted on to affairs in general.


It was fascinating to Helen to hear Venetia talk about public figures with a casual intimacy. To Helen they were just names
in the newspaper, but Venetia had been on the inside all her life. On her own account, or through her late husband, she seemed
to know everyone in Westminster, the Court and Horseguards. Helen revelled in the conversation: stimulation such as this had
not come her way in many long months.


She asked about the inside view of the way the war was going and got a prompt answer.

‘Haig feels that if the weather had held off a few more weeks he could have broken through last year on the Somme,’ Venetia said. ‘The Germans were exhausted, their supplies and reserves stretched to breaking-point. It’s a pity they’ve
had these winter months to recuperate. The greatest uncertainty is the situation in Russia. Their losses have been terrible,
but it’s essential they continue fighting and divide the German effort.’


‘And will they continue?’ Helen asked. Venetia’s eldest son, Thomas, was in Russia, a military attaché to the Court of St
Petersburg.


‘Who can tell?’ Venetia said, and changed the subject rather abruptly to the servant problem – something everyone in the country
had experience of, from one side or the other. ‘I shall be losing Perkins next week, and my butler, Burton, went at the New
Year. I’d had him for so long it was like an earthquake below stairs! I asked Ash to stay on when Overton died to help Burton,
and to valet Oliver when he’s home – very light duties. Now he’ll be the only male servant in the house. I hope his health
will stand it.’


Just then Ash himself came in to clear, which was the signal that time was getting on, and Helen must prepare to resume her
journey. She felt rested and invigorated by her visit, and thanked Venetia warmly.


‘Don’t thank me, my dear,’Venetia said. ‘You’ve reminded me what intelligent female company can be. I hope we shall meet again.’

Perkins took them to the station, found their reserved seats, helped them in and saw their luggage stowed. Helen parted from
him with regret. But she only had to endure the rest of the journey. They would be met at York, and after that everything
would be done for her. She would not need to lift a finger at Morland Place until the baby was born.


The train pounded north through the increasingly empty countryside, and the early dusk slipped into darkness. Putting her
face to the window, Helen could see a black-and-white world, acres of snow under a black sky, black trees laden with white,
as though the branches had been iced like Christmas cake. It was a silent world, where men and women were indoors, all the animals were stalled, and small birds and
beasts had taken shelter in hedges and holes. From time to time they passed through a station, its roof heavy with snow, its
platform empty but for a lonely porter with a lamp. The lights of the train fled alongside, flicking up the cuttings and dropping
down the embankments. Here and there a yellow square in the blackness marked an isolated cottage snugged down for the night
against the bleakness all around.


But inside the compartment the smeary warmth of the steam heating built up a pleasant fug, and the rhythmic pounding of the
wheels lulled the senses. At last Helen, Basil, Mabel and the new baby all slipped into a doze. Just before her eyes closed
finally, Helen noted that it had started snowing again, and she thought of Jack in France, and hoped he was sitting cosily
by the fire in the mess drinking tea. At least when it snowed he could not fly, which kept him from harm’s way. But God help
the poor men in the trenches, was her last thought.


Coming out of the line near Bapaume, Bertie didn’t mind the snow. It softened the wounded landscape. There must be plenty
of parts of France that were still beautiful, but of course he never found himself in them. Everywhere he was sent was spoiled,
a ghastly waste of churned mud, shattered tree stumps, ruined houses, and the litter of destruction an army always leaves.
Even the villages behind the line, where they went on rest, were battered by the passage of thousands of careless men and
their machines. It was a condition the eye grew accustomed to, so that he hardly noticed it any more; but there was a part
of the mind or the spirit that continued, dimly, to protest at the unrelenting ugliness.


But the snow laid a soothing hand over things, covering the scars, easing the jagged edges, giving at least the illusion that
all was clean and white. And tonight his unit was finishing its time in the line, and he had fifteen days at rest to look
forward to. ‘Rest’, of course, was a misnomer: generally there was far more sheer hard work done out on rest than in the line.
But it meant proper food, proper beds, some little luxuries – and, best of all, the chance to get clean.


There was no point in even trying to keep louse-free in the line, even when in reserve. The close proximity of so many men
and the appalling dirtiness of the trenches and dug-outs made it futile. But almost thirty months of war still had not resigned
him to it. He had got used to monotonous food, and tea out of a petrol can, and damp cigarettes. He had got used to shaving
in cold water, wearing damp clothes, and living in a hole where he could not stand upright. He had even got used to stepping
on rotting body parts when he went out on patrol; and he rarely even thought about the constant threat of death from sniper
bullets and whizz-bangs and all the other jolly toys the enemy tossed over. But he could not get used to the feeling of vermin on his body. He would sooner share his bed with a rat (and that had happened too – they
wanted warmth as much as any creature) than his clothing with the common pediculus humanus humanus.

As soon as they got back to billets, he would set Cooper, his servant, to boiling as much water as humanly possible. Then
he would strip everything off and get into it, and stay in it until he resembled a prune. In his dunnage back there he kept a set of clothing that never went near the trenches,
so had never known the patter of tiny feet. The lust to be clean was stronger in him when he came out of the line than any
desire for decent food or good wine.


The house where the officers billeted did not have a bathroom – that would have been too much to ask – but it did have an
enormous hip-bath which Cooper lugged up to Bertie’s room, and which held him comfortably under water from chest to knee.
He had finished the urgent business of washing, and was stewing peacefully when Cooper came in bearing a tumbler of brown
liquid and a bundle of envelopes.


‘I hope that’s not cold tea,’ Bertie remarked.


‘Whisky, sir,’ said Cooper. ‘Not the sort we’re accustomed to, but beggars can’t be choosers. Brickett, Colonel Scott-Walters’s man, reckons ’e knows where ’e can lay ’is
’and on some proper gin, though, so we shall see.’


‘I can’t see Brickett letting you have any,’ Bertie said. ‘You wouldn’t give him any if you’d found it.’


‘There’s ways and ways,’ Cooper said, with mysterious dignity. ‘Brickett and me understands each other. A wangle here and
a scrounge there. Don’t forget we still got the only bottle o’ bitters in Picardy, sir, so if the colonel wants pinkers, Brickett ’as to sort ’imself out,
don’t ’e? Anyroad, don’t you trouble your ’ead about it,’ he concluded, with the implication that a mere officer’s intellectual equipment wasn’t up to solving the
problems a batman had to face. ‘You just drink your whisky.’


Bertie accepted the glass and sipped. It made his eyes water. ‘Aah! You are a saint in human form, Cooper. You deserve a knighthood
at least for this.’


Cooper was a man who loved a grievance, and was not to be bought off by idle compliments. ‘Pair of boots that fitted proper
would do me,’ he said. ‘You want to see my blisters.’


‘I don’t, I really don’t,’ Bertie assured him.

‘The Lord Jesus never walked on as much water as me,’ Cooper sniffed. ‘Letters ’ere for you.’

Bertie eyed them. ‘Anything official?’

‘’Ow long ’ave I been with you? I left them in yer room. These ’ere are the personal ones.’ He handed them to Bertie, then stepped out to retrieve the can of hot water
he had put down to open the door. ‘Mind your legs, then.’ He poured the hot water in – there was just room for it – and Bertie
felt the delicious warmth creep round him. ‘I’ll have a bit for your shave after,’ Cooper went on, ‘but you’d better not be
long, ’cause it won’t stay ’ot, and Major Fenniman’s bagged the rest o’ the copperful. Dinner in ’alf an hour, give or take,
and the major’s come up with a nice bottle o’ port, which ’e hinvites you particular to share – ’e says don’t ask where it come from.’


‘I shall be more than happy to know where it’s going to,’ Bertie said, and waved Cooper away. ‘Ten minutes, and then you can
shave me.’


‘It’ll be a cold shave, then,’ Cooper said. ‘Can’t keep the water ’ot more’n five. It ain’t reasonable in this weather.’ And
he stumped out.


Bertie sorted out the letter from his wife, Maud, and read that first. She had been carefully trained in the art of female
letter-writing, which meant her lines were beautifully straight, her handwriting elegant, and she made a little matter go
a long way. Her letters were always long, without actually communicating anything very much at all – except an underlying
current of faint discontent.


Bertie learnt that eggs had almost disappeared, the price of milk was beyond reason, and butter had become unobtainable. Since
she refused to have margarine in the house, she had been forced to serve biscuits instead of bread and butter when Lady Wolfitt
came to tea.


He sighed. If only she would take little Richard and go down to live at Beaumont, his estate in Hertfordshire, she could have
all the eggs, milk and butter she wanted. But then, of course, there would be no Lady Wolfitts to have to tea. Maud was London
born and disliked the country. It would have been cruelty to force her to go.


He learnt that Mr and Mrs Weedon (who on earth were they?) had closed up house and gone to stay with Mrs Weedon’s sister in
Sussex. That meant there was an empty house on both sides now (oh, yes, they were the next-door neighbours). It made Maud
nervous when there were Zeppelin warnings. She could never get used to the thought of the Germans flying over her head in
the night, and having no neighbour to turn to in an emergency made it worse.


He read that her Red Cross branch had raised twenty pounds at their last drive, which wasn’t as good as the Victoria branch, but with so many empty houses what could one expect? He read that Mrs Betteridge (no, even after some thought he had
no idea who she was) had heard her nephew, a very promising boy, had been killed on the Ancre. Little Richard seemed to have
one cold after another. Nanny had left quite suddenly to go to work for Mrs Monkton in Brook Street, and Maud had had the
greatest difficulty in replacing her. The new nanny was too young, in Maud’s opinion, and did not look very healthy, but there
was simply no choice these days. The only other candidate had had a shocking accent, and looked as if she drank.

Bertie thought for a moment of Richard, their only child, who was almost five. He had been two when the war started, and since
then Bertie had been at home for only a few weeks out of the two and a half years. Whenever he had leave, there was a shy
boy to win round all over again, a boy who hardly knew him, about whose life he knew desperately little. His son was growing
up without him, and whatever happened hereafter, he would never get back these years of Richard’s life.


He took another gulp of the punishing whisky, and went back to the letter. Ah, here was a piece of news that meant something
to him. Lord Manvers was planning to visit London again in March, and would no doubt spend some time at Pont Street. Manvers
had been a business acquaintance of Maud’s father, but Bertie had also known him in India, where they had both kept studs.
Manvers bred racehorses and Bertie polo ponies, but since they had sold them to many of the same people, they had met often
on the English social circuit out there. Bertie had always liked him. Manvers, on his recent visits home to look for breeding
stock and buy clothes and saddlery, had befriended Maud, and Bertie was glad of it. He was a kind and capable man, and now
that Maud’s father was dead she had no older man in her life to look up to.


But now, it seemed, he was leaving India and moving permanently to Ireland to set up a stud, only breaking his journey in London. He was finding the climate in India trying, and business was declining. Because of the war, many of his
best customers had gone to the Front, and others were not buying as they once had.


Bertie knew Manvers had relatives in Ireland. Perhaps he had got to the time of life when he wanted his own people about him.
Bertie thought it would be nice to visit him there after the war. He was vaguely glad that Manvers was moving closer to home.


He did, however, have one unworthy pang of jealousy, when Maud added that Manvers had not forgotten his promise to teach Richard
to ride next time he visited. Richard had been too young to ride when the war started, and since then Bertie had not been
home for long enough at a time to give him lessons. Lord Manvers, a civilian, was free to come and go as he pleased, while
Major Sir Perceval Parke, Bt, was the property of the British Expeditionary Force. Bertie could not help feeling that if anyone
was to teach little Richard to ride, it should be his own father; and that it would have been tactful of Maud to say so. But
tact had never been Maud’s strong suit. This damned war … !


He put the letter aside and picked out the envelope in his cousin Jessie’s handwriting: a letter from which he anticipated
much more pleasure, if a great deal more pain. He was still engrossed in it when the door opened and Cooper came in with the
can of shaving water and a martyred expression. ‘Shave, sir,’ he stated rather than enquired. ‘Dinner’s near-on ready.’


Bertie folded the letter to read again later – in bed, perhaps, if Cooper had been able to scrounge a decent lamp for him.
French candles, these days, were practically all animal fat. He rubbed his hand over his chin and thought of the exquisite
pleasure of shaving with hot water, followed by a meal that actually tasted of something, eaten at a proper table, without danger of interruption from
shells or alarms. It was interesting how this hardship business narrowed your focus and made you appreciate things you would once have taken for granted. The war had its compensations, after all. An absurd,
and probably unwarranted, cheerfulness broke over him, like a very small wave over a rock.


‘Oh, it’s not such a bad old war sometimes, eh, Cooper?’

‘If you say so, sir,’ Cooper said repressingly. ‘It’s the only one we got, any’ow.’

The imperial family was at home, in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, fifteen miles south of St Petersburg. It was their
principal residence, where they spent the larger part of the year, though the seaside house at Livadia in the Crimea was their
favourite place. The Tsar, who had come home early for Christmas, seemed in no hurry to go back to Stavka, the army headquarters
at Mogilev; and where the Tsar was, Venetia’s son Thomas must be also.


His position was an unusual one. He was a serving officer in the British Army, but his post, as military attaché and diplomatic
liaison, placed him half-way between the Tsar and the embassy; while the privileged access he had to the Tsar and the way
he was treated gave him rather the status of an old family friend. It made him invaluable to the British government; but he
hoped he was useful to the Romanovs, too. Nicholas and Alexandra had both treated him very kindly over the years. The very
fact that he was Colonel Lord Overton was due to imperial favour. He was a soldier who had never fought. He had come to Peter – as those who loved
the city called it – long before the war began, and his rapid promotions had followed in recognition of his services to diplomacy,
not in battle.


Occasionally he thought rather wistfully of the life he might have led had he not caught Nicholas’s eye; of the companionship
of serving in a battalion; of the satisfaction of risking your life for your country. Even his younger brother, Oliver, was
at the Front – with the RAMC, but in the firing zone all the same. There was a deep vein of loneliness in him, for his life had been given to serving a foreign court in a foreign country. He loved Russia and the Russians, spoke the language