In the Bleak Midwinter

The tall man spent some time scanning the list of names on the white marble tablet, ignoring the usual spiel at the top of the pediment. A list of thirty two men of the parish. Men of Piccadilly. He heard the footsteps, the deferent, diffident tread of a clergyman, impossible to ignore in the empty sepulchral space. 

‘In from the cold?’ a voice enquired. 

‘In all ways,’ said the tall man. He turned to face the fleshy vicar, and knew at once that he had been a padre in another life. The extensive decorations, the comforting smell of snuffed wax, and all the evidence of the holly and the ivy could not outdo the abiding memories of the western front. 

‘I was looking for a name,’ he explained. ‘and I found it.’

Whose?’ asked the vicar. 

‘It’s no matter,’ said the other. ‘Can’t do much about it right now, marble being what it is.’

His comment was cryptic, but the vicar’s profession was worm-riddled with enigma, and this example, like so many others, he chose to ignore.

‘Fancy a glass of port?’ he asked, little eyes twinkling. ‘Send you on your way with a cup of Christmas cheer?’

‘Why not!’ said the tall man before extending a hand. ‘James Rhodes.’ 

‘Philip Talbot,’ said the clergyman. ‘Come, come. The vestry’s warm, at least.’ 

*****

The vicar had been helpful enough. In keeping with a national preoccupation with the weather, they discussed the early snowfall in London and how much the children would like it, although the coal fires and the low pressure had created a smog so dense that it was difficult to see one’s hands, and crept like a spectre under every roof, be it grand or humble. They spoke of the winter of ’16/17 on the Ypres Salient where the snow was thigh-deep in places, and the funk holes froze over. Enemy fire ricocheted off the ice, making it a matter of blind luck whether you were shot or not, like a grouse facing a scatter gun. During an interval, when the Reverend Clayton poured another snifter of port, he enquired about his guest’s foot. ‘Forgive me, but is that a prosthetic? I noticed your cane.’

‘It’s quite a beauty,’ mused James. ‘Polished wood with a metal hinge at the ankle. I was lucky to get away with just the one foot. Frost bite,’ he explained. 

‘Yes, I saw plenty of it,’ Clayton recalled. ‘Particularly from that winter.’

‘I was invalided out,’ James offered, ‘but I couldn’t relax at home, not with the boys still over there. I returned, although it was a desk job behind the lines for me. Still, I made myself useful.’ 

‘Did you enlist, or were you already in?’

‘My brother and I were both army career men, although I’m not convinced I would coerce my own two boys into the life, young as they still are.’

‘Bless them and bless you too, James, in all that you do. I wish you a merry Christmas, sir, and a happy 1924.’

*****

He left in the direction of Berkeley Square, just a short distance from the church. The motorcars and the horse-drawn traffic had dispersed the street snow, but the pavements were treacherous, and he walked with the shuffling gait of an old-timer, leaning heavily on his cane and wrapping his scarf against the smog. 

The reverend had been vague on the house number, but he knew that the young ones were throwing a party while the old ones were at the country estate. A life of brittle privilege, James thought, damaged young things burying the past with bad manners and cocaine. He thought of his wife, his beautiful boys and his modest home in the suburbs, and could not imagine a moment where he would swap places with the braying asses he saw tripping up the steps of the likely residence. He sat on a bench outside the gated garden and lit a cigarette. His coughs were muffled by the atmosphere, but he made no resolution to give them up. The comfort of a smoke in the trenches was deeply ingrained, as was the burn of brandy and the intangible comfort of sweet, hot tea. 

He stubbed out the Capstan Navy Cut with his enlarged cripple-boot and limped towards the entrance, where a morose footman stood against the open door, thinking of his colleagues already at the country house, and the prospect of having to clean up with a skeleton staff on Christmas Eve. James joined the back of a group of eight or so, most of whom were already drunk or high, their language affected and crude. He slipped in unchallenged. 

There were not as many as he’d imagined. Perhaps forty, and although it was still early, he assumed that others were already gone for Christmas elsewhere. A gramophone played a scratchy tune in the morning room, (or whatever they called it), and flappers twirled their fake rocks to the music while louche men in high-waisters looked on. He stood in the spacious entrance hall for some moments, regarding them, and then walked towards a portrait in a recess at the foot of the central staircase. It was of Captain Fred Wilmslow, to use the shortened form, captured from a photograph when he enlisted. The longer form included the honorific of Viscount. 

‘Who are you?’ asked a high-pitched, flirtatious voice behind him. ‘You’re spectacularly handsome!’

He turned to see a cadaverously skinny woman with a dark bob, peering at him through short-sighted eyes. There was white powder around her nostrils, and her pupils were dilated. He extended a hand. ‘Captain James Rhodes, 1st Battalion, Royal Fusiliers.’ She shook it vigorously, sizing him up. 

‘Wasn’t that Freddy’s regiment?’

‘I would like to think that friends of a man who died for his country might remember these things?’ he said.

‘I was his sister,’ she sighed. ‘Poor old Fred. We’re just all desperately trying to forget it,’ she continued. ‘The only men left are either completely bonkers or deformed.’ 

‘That’s not true,’ he said, thinking of all the brave, stoic men he knew who just got on with things the best they could. 

‘Daddy tried to marry me off to a man with only one arm! Can you imagine?’ she shuddered. Not even good for Bridge,’ she blundered on. ‘So, who invited you?’

‘One of your brothers,’ he said.

‘Which one?’

‘I don’t recall. You have so many. I was at the Club last week, and he invited me.’

‘Oh, I see,’ she said, losing interest. ‘They’re always doing that, bringing in all sorts of waifs and strays. Present company excepted. You really are very handsome,’ she repeated. ‘I don’t suppose you’d marry me, would you?’

‘No, you don’t suppose,’ he said, coldly. She took the hint and wondered off, no doubt to discover the source of the fabricated invitation. 

*****

James poured a brandy from a decanter in a lonely room full of aspidistras and a marmalade cat which rubbed itself against his prosthetic foot. Various overcoats were piled in a corner, and a low fire burned in the grate. He took a chair by the window and waited. He thought it might take fifteen minutes. In the event, it took seventeen. 

‘Who the hell are you?’ demanded a young man who was clearly the new viscount. Behind him trailed the myopic sister and three other brothers not old enough to have served, but old enough to be drunk. James repeated the name and rank he had given previously. 

‘No one here knows you,’ the young man persisted. ‘I must ask you to leave.’

‘Oh, I intend to,’ the captain said. ‘But before I do, I’d like to tell you a story. Doesn’t everyone like a story at Christmas?’ 

‘Concerning?’

‘Your brother.’ 

‘What about him?’

‘Pour yourselves brandy,' said James, assuming the role of master in this house.

*****

‘I’ve just come from St James’s. There is a plaque on the west wall which has your brother’s name on it, and it should not be there.’ 

James raised his hand at the predictable gasp of outrage. 

‘Shut. Up.’ 

They took brandy from the decanter and sat down, all their power pricked by a captain of His Majesty’s army. 

‘It is very true that Freddy was killed in the war, but it is less true that he was killed in action, as you were perhaps told. In fact, Freddy was killed by firing squad, blindfolded and tied to a post. We had the decency to get him drunk beforehand, although I was quite against it.’

‘And you know this how?’ asked a nameless sibling.

‘Because I was the one who shot him.’ 

James stood up and went to the window. He watched their distorted reflections as the snow continued to fall. 

‘You will hear my story without interruption. I’m a government man now and you can’t touch me.’

Silence prevailed. 

‘There is little point in describing the horrors of war to those who weren’t there. It’s the reason we don’t. But I would like to describe to you the winter of ’16/17, when it snowed and then rained and then snowed again, all accompanied by a freezing wind, from November ’16 right through to April ’17. Many men simply died from the cold, in that lull between offensives. Runners were sent from behind the lines with mugs of tea, but by the time they reached us, there was ice forming on the top. Brandy and cigarettes were the only currency, along with the letters from home. 

I shared a dugout with your brother during those months. As officers, it was deeper and warmer than the letter boxes the privates had, but I was a captain by profession and your brother was one by merit of birth. He knew nothing about warfare, but worse than that, he knew nothing about men. I found his company and his methods repellent. 

He smoked endlessly, so he was always running out. At those times, he would cadge them off me until I told him no more. I was the same rank as him in that life, so he went looking elsewhere. During these endless scavenging exercises, word got to me that he was abusing young men in a sexual way, taking their cigarettes and threatening to have them court-martialled if they complained.’

‘Nonsense!’ said the sister. 

‘I told you to be quiet. I am a Christian man, and counter to the teachings, I do not believe that homosexuality is a sin - but I don’t believe your brother was, not in the true and loving sense that can exist between men or women of that nature. He was simply brutal, and men were the only objects at hand. It came to it that I went to every man in every trench and told them not to give him cigarettes, and to come to me if anything untoward resulted from it. Just the knowing that another officer was on their side galvanised them, and your brother quickly ran out of his smokes. To be frank, apart from his duties as a nobleman, your brother joined because he was an out and out psychopath. 

On Wednesday the first of February 1917, your brother went looking for some. He came across a sergeant on look-out patrol, the most of his body perched on a ladder with just his helmet above the parapet. It was darkening by then, just after six in the evening, and he was sure to keep the glow of his fag below the sightline. Freddy startled him by demanding cigarettes, but the sergeant ignored him, as he’d been told to do by me. Particularly by me, because I was his older brother, and he followed me in everything I did, for good or bad. Your brother crossed to another ladder, then unoccupied, climbed up and crawled towards my flesh and blood. He then blew his head off with his service pistol at point blank range. He then took the same ladder down, and lifted the pack of fags from my brother’s pocket. We’d fought since 1914, and he was killed by one of our own.’

‘Disputed!’ The new viscount said. ‘Biased interests.’

‘Um, except that I was not there and did not testify against him. What your brother was too absorbed in himself to notice was the five muddy, freezing, little men who watched him do it. And so he was court-martialled and shot, and as the war progressed, it became more politic to say that such men were missing and presumed dead. What doesn’t happen, however, is their appearance on a war memorial. I believe your father must have had something to do with it.’ 

‘And what exactly is your role within the government?’ asked a younger sibling. 

‘I work for the Home Office Imperial War Graves Commission. I am tasked, along with others, to make sure that all our memorials are a true reflection of our heroes. Your brother does not belong in their number. He was tried by his peers for cold-blooded murder. If he had committed the same crime in civilian life, he would have been hung, a viscount or not, it makes no difference. We shot over three hundred soldiers, mostly for cowardice under fire. I am certain that future generations will exonerate them. But thirty seven men were shot for murder, and their convictions stand. Your brother does not belong on that plaque, and whatever pressure was exerted to put him there, I will make it my life’s work to have him removed.’

‘Just one question,’ asked the youngest sibling. ‘How did you know it was you who shot him? Aren’t there five or six of you, most with blank cartridges?’ 

‘Any soldier knows a blank from a live.’ 

He stood up, wished them a merry Christmas and a happy 1924. He had no particular beef with these foolish people, but he made sure to tell them at the door that if any allusion was ever made to his brother being a hero, it would be closed down by the Home Office, and that at some point his name would be erased from the tablet and all other memorials.

*****

The snow was blowing something fierce. He longed for home, but as he called for a cab to take him to the station for the slow train back to it, he saw a man squatting on the pavement with a cap on the floor and saw him for what he was. But to be sure, he asked for his name and regiment, and after he was satisfied, he gave him his card, and enough money for a room over Christmas. ‘You will call me when this runs out.’ It was an order. ‘The Salvation Army will give you your Christmas dinner. You’ll be amongst your own kind, there. Do you understand me, private?’ 

‘Yes, Sir!’ 

‘Well up you get then! And a merry Christmas to you.’