To Do and Die

‘That's a fine-looking thing. May I?’ Now alongside the Morgans, Kemp's fingers took the pistol with an almost lascivious grace, coiling themselves around the chequered stock whilst gently tickling the trigger. Supporting it on his beefy left forearm he aimed at the curtain. ‘Only some of us had revolvers in the Punjab and they were nowhere near as fine as this. Remember, Mr Morgan, you'll have the advantage with a repeater, but don't go wasting shot at long range. Wait til' your man gets up close then stick the thing hard into his face before you fire. At Aliwal I had a pepperpot that Charteris – you remember him, Billy? – had urged me to try. All the barrels failed and I ended up using the wretched thing like a club. Oh, I do beg your pardon.’ Kemp cut himself short, realizing that he was marring Billy's moment.

The generosity and unexpectedness of the gift quite silenced Tony. He'd rehearsed a little speech that he expected to give once the toasts had finished – it was brief, self-effacing yet poignant with suggested danger and valour, honed to beguile both lady and maid – but in the event it was still-born. He tumbled out some almost adequate words before resorting to a toast to his father's and friends' health.

Extra peat had redoubled the effects of the drawing-room fire. A lacklustre enquiry or two from the vicar and his wife soon ran into the sand and Tony was desperately seeking another topic when Amelia Smythe appeared at his side. She was a shapely, almost pretty woman who suited the black dress and sparse jewellery that she wore. She was carefully groomed, her hair piled high, powder subtly applied, simple clusters of diamonds at her ears and throat, yet there was a sadness in her grey eyes and at the corners of her mouth. Morgan saw immediately that she was not bent upon platitudes, for she thrust her chin forward, strong opinion bubbling to be set free.

‘Mr Morgan, forgive my seeking your views, especially as we hardly know each other – oh, forgive me. Thank you for inviting me to your party, but have you thought what war will really mean? Are you quite sure that you will be able to send some other poor creature to eternity?’

‘Mrs Smythe, I'm a soldier – death is my trade.’ Tony immediately regretted his gauche reply, remembering how hollow the same phrase had sounded when Richard Carmichael had used it, trying to impress some miss at a ball in England. Why hadn't he managed a thoughtful reply to a serious question, for as he'd handled the pistol he'd wondered just the same thing? If he returned from this campaign would he and Keenan be full of that same lethal joy that he'd seen in Finn and Kemp? Could he rejoice over death and injury? Might he join the gouged veterans in Fermoy – or, like Mr Smythe, not return at all?

‘You heard Colonel Kemp, exhorting you to fire that awful gun – I mean no disrespect – only when you could be sure of killing with it. Have you prayed about this, can you tell me that Christian nations, today, are really not able to settle their arguments in some other way?’

‘But this war is a just one, someone must protect Turkey from being bullied.’ Morgan was struggling now. He'd read the Parliamentary debates in the papers and whilst he would much have preferred to adopt Keenan's stance that, as a soldier, he'd go anywhere and fight anyone he was told to, he knew that wouldn't do for the intense Mrs Smythe. Where were the barrack God-botherers when you needed them, Morgan thought, and why couldn't this comely woman pester his father and not him?

‘Can any act of war or killing be described as just, Mr Morgan? If you really believe that God could smile on those who seek to kill in his name, then I can only pray for you. Forgive my saying such things in your home on this your last night here, but I have to let you know how much I hate the idea of war and all the unhappiness it will unleash.’ The strident note had quite gone from Mrs Smythe's voice and her eyes were cast down almost demurely.

Tony wondered if his father had seen this side of Amelia. She'd made her points with a persuasive passion that had made him think seriously about what he was embarking upon for the first time. Could he continue to hide behind the simplistic arguments that his brother subalterns used and the jingoism of the press? Keenan and the other soldiers might be able to shelter behind the claims that they weren't paid to think or reason, but he was an officer who, if all this talk came to anything at all, would be required to lead men to their deaths.

Later, when cleaning and balancing his gift he questioned whether he would be able to do the things that war required. Would he be capable of taking this elegant tool and bludgeoning another man with it as Kemp had done?

Dinner finished late and Morgan was almost immediately asleep. Every creak of the house, though, every dream-grunt from Hector in the kitchen below woke him, making him check the half-hunter by the light of the moon, but still Mary didn't come. On this, of all nights, he wanted to see her to say a leisured goodbye, to store up memories that would warm him in whatever solitude and latitudes lay ahead. Then, with the first signs of light, his door opened and Mary – stepping wide in her bare feet to avoid a squeaky board – was with him. Cold beneath the eiderdown, her kisses covered his mouth and face, as she slipped from her nightdress and reached for him in one well-practised movement.

‘I'm sorry to be so late, your honour, but the table and kitchen won't clean themselves and James Keenan had a wee party as well as you!’ Her mouth tasted of drink.

‘I hope the Staff were kind to him … Oh, Mary.’ She smiled up from the shadows deep below the sheets.

‘We were, and herself said that we had to find you a gift, just like your father did. Trouble was, we had nothing to give you, so I thought this might answer.’

‘I'm glad that you came to give me the present and not Mrs O'Connor.’ The joke was old but Mary trembled silently as only she could. When she laughed her whole body was consumed by it. Her eyes screwed tight shut, the lines about them deep-etched. It delighted Morgan.

‘Tony, take me with you, I can't be without you.’ The mirth quickly faded. All the bounce, all the confidence had gone from her, her face crumpled as she pushed her head into his shoulder.

A great surge of joy and pleasure welled up through Tony as the idea seized him, but then it died as quickly as it was born. ‘Don't be daft, girl, we're going to war. There'll be time enough to catch up once I'm back.’

It was as if he'd punched her. From sweet softness and warmth she turned to blazing fury, hurling herself from the bed, her eyes alight, her whole body shaking with anger. ‘If I'm not good enough for you, Lieutenant-almighty-bloody-Morgan, I know someone who thinks I am. Well then, I shall accept ordinary James Keenan of Clonakilty's proposal of marriage – he's twice the man you'll ever be!’ She gathered her clothes around the gifts that nature had so generously given her and stormed from the room.

Morgan winced as the bedroom door banged yet again in the early morning. There was no denying how he felt about the girl, but he had hoped that the war would somehow magically resolve things. Knowing Mary, though, she would certainly carry-out her threat and no doubt conspire to embark with the regiment for whatever adventures lay ahead, married – goddamn her – to the soldier who would always be at his elbow. He groaned and turned into his pillow.

Handshakes, then Finn driving the jaunty. More goodbyes and stowing of gear before the coach took them on to the station at Cork and then to the Dublin packet which was full of officers and men from the Irish garrisons and others, like them, who were returning from leave. In the last, easy familiarity before the tendrils of the regiment coiled round both of them, Keenan and Morgan smoked together at the rail.

‘So, sir, Glassdrumman will miss you and I expect Miss Hawtrey will as well.’

‘Well, Keenan, we'll have to see, there's much ground to travel. And what of you, I was surprised that you didn't get down to Clonakilty to see your people. Did you write?’

Keenan tinkered with his stubby, clay pipe. ‘I did, sir, Mary gave me a hand with the letter, so. Jewel of a girl, that Mary.’

Morgan darted him a look, expecting some embarrassing reproach. But no, Keenan's face was set and sincere.

‘Sir, I need to ask you something. Mary's coming to join me in England and we're to marry. Will we be allowed to live together in barracks?’

Morgan couldn't believe what he was being told. So, Mary had been true to her word yet Private Keenan gave no sign of knowing what his future wife's actual relationship with his master really was. His departure for war, for deeds and glory, should have simplified things. Instead, the piquant little treat that he'd been pleased to dip into every time he came back to Ireland on leave was going to follow him back to the Regiment, married to his own servant.

‘You will, Keenan, but if we do get sent to war, there'll only be a handful of wives allowed to come with us and you'd better get used to the idea that a newly wed wife is unlikely to be selected.’ But even as Morgan replied to Keenan, he knew that if Mary was half the girl he thought she was, then she would somehow manage to be with them. He sighed deeply to himself.

THREE Weedon Barracks (#u1ef249af-83c1-5598-a839-eda893982948)

There was a stamp of feet as the sentries stepped smartly from their wooden boxes outside the barrack gates and presented arms. Morgan touched his hat (#litres_trial_promo) in acknowledgement of the salute whilst noting how both men had been alert enough to see an officer in plain clothes approaching in a civilian carriage. What he had failed to see was James Keenan's silent but frantic signals to his confederates from the open top of the vehicle: anything to avoid an officer's displeasure.

As they rattled through the gates of the modern, red-brick and tile barracks, Keenan couldn't resist the time-honoured greeting to those whose lot it was to stand guard. ‘It'll never get better if you pick-et, you bastards!’ whilst he flicked the oldest of discourtesies.

‘For the love of God stop it, Keenan,’ Morgan had half-expected something ribald from his servant as they approached Weedon Barracks – he had been in tearing spirits ever since they had boarded the carriage at Northampton station a couple of hours before.

‘We're not at Glassdrumman now and I've trouble enough with the adjutant without you adding to it!’ He was more giving voice to his own thoughts than trying to reprove Keenan, who in any event ignored his master, leaping from the carriage as it approached the Officers' Mess and busying himself with bags and cases.

‘Your honour will want to be in uniform? The other gentlemen are wearing their shell-jackets, sir, so I'll lay yours out with your sword and cap. Try not to tear that trouser strap again, sir, I had a devil of a job with it last time!’

Keenan's veneer of discipline had always been thin. The time at home in Ireland together had only helped to erode it further, but he could at least be trusted to help Morgan get the all-important details of dress right. He'd noticed that other regiments didn't seem so particular about things as the 95th, but then they had a depth of history and savoir-faire that his corps didn't. Raised only thirty or so years before, what they lacked in self-confidence was made up for by what was officially described as ‘attention to detail’ but which often translated into military myopia.

Keenan prattled as he stored Morgan's clothes and kit in his rooms in the Mess. The doings of this cousin and that, the purchase and subsequent escape of his mother's new sow and Mary Cade's near-perfection – as if Tony needed to be reminded – were a distracting enough backdrop to his dressing. As he levered himself into his plain blue overalls (#litres_trial_promo), they both became aware of a commotion below his window. A single voice bellowed encouragement, then others rapidly joined in.

‘That'll be Mister Carmichael: some boy him. Must be the new draft he's got his hooks into.’ Keenan, a second-best sash half-coiled around his fist, stared out of the window into the brassy March-morning sunshine.

Richard Carmichael, paragon and fellow subaltern of the Grenadier Company, stood there in Harrow colours and the lightest and most expensive running pumps. Steaming gently, he bellowed encouragement at the assortment of soldiers who bundled in behind him. Some wore canvas slops, others football shorts and pullovers but all were spattered with mud from the cross-country run. Carmichael had obviously raced them individually over the last part of the course. Fit as a hare and knowing every inch of the route, he'd had no difficulty in coming in a long way ahead of the new men. But why, wondered Morgan wryly, had he chosen to finish the race outside the adjutant's and colonel's office?

‘Where are the new boys from, Keenan?’

‘I don't recognise any of 'em. Sir, but most have come from the Eighty-Second and some from the Sixth, Forty-Eighth and Thirty-Sixth they say. Bag o' shite says I.’

Shite or not, they looked pretty good to Morgan. All volunteers, they seemed big and healthy and would more than plug the gaps left by the 95th's sick. Throwing the window open, he was about to shout across to his brother subaltern when his ear caught a strange thing. As each man came puffing home, Carmichael seemed to be addressing them in their native accents. The Irish and Scots were simple enough to imitate, the odd Geordie got a passable greeting, those from the slums of Derby and Birmingham probably recognized their own flattened vowels, but he saved his best effort for the pair of West Countrymen. They were yokelled in fine style, the young officer having been sharp enough even to learn their names. Carmichael was obviously delighted with his efforts, but Morgan couldn't help but notice the men's wooden faces.

As all the others trooped away a lone figure wheezed in. Younger, smaller, fatter and redder than any of the others, he panted across the finish line. His chest and shoulders heaved as he stooped, hands on thighs.

‘Hey, Pegg, you fat little sod, what about ye?’

‘Keenan, will you kindly remember where you are?’ Morgan elbowed him away from the window but not, he fancied before he saw a movement in the adjutant's office opposite.

Podgy Pegg even at seventeen, he had a man's appetite for ale and women that had him constantly in trouble, but his cockiness usually saw him right.

‘Now then, Mr Morgan, sir, welcome 'ome.’ Pegg braced his chubby arms to his sides – he was just about able to control his breathing enough now to speak coherently. ‘Mr Carmichael's got me showing the new 'uns around the place. Didn't know that meant runnin' with the bleeders an all.’ The warmth had gone from his voice, but instantly returned. ‘How's that Jimmy Keenan twat got on, sir?’

‘Less of the twat, lardy.’ Keenan's hayrick head now jutted from the other window and he was back at full volume. ‘I'm to be wed to Mr Morgan's maid.’

‘Keenan, please, the adjutant has no desire to know that; just get my things ready, will you?’

The commanding officer wanted to speak to the officers in the Mess. Many of the bachelors had been asked to find rooms in the town so that space could be made for a dining-room where they could all eat together. Now it was to be used for Colonel Webber-Smith's address and it buzzed with talk as the officers assembled. Almost all of them were there, including the captain and both subalterns of the Grenadier Company.

Morgan pushed his sword and cap onto the growing pile of others on the table in the hall. The officers were simply dressed in short, red jackets that flattered youthful figures but damned the portly – at thirty-two Captain James Eddington looked very much the part. Whether he had simply fallen lucky was open to question, but as far as the world was concerned, the Colonel's decision to give him command of the premier company in the regiment – the Grenadiers – was no mere chance. Now he lounged studiedly against a table, teacup in hand and whiskers just on the fashionable side of proper, curling around his collar.

‘What are your impressions of the new draft, Carmichael?’