Читать книгу The Remnants - W. P. Osborn - Страница 19

“The Royal West Kent Regiment will proceed immediately to the Khyber Pass in India to support and relieve Her Majesty’s forces in command of the northern frontier.” The long feared regimental orders swept through the camp like a whirlwind, ‘four days leave and we’re off!’ was the order of the day.

Danny arrived at the kitchen door of Meaford House seven hours after hopping a lift on a freight wagon bound for Tunbridge Wells and hitched a ride out from town by an old farmer. His first real challenge of the day was to persuade Lily to permit him the time to bid farewell to Rose.

“Ah, another soldier’s farewell. How many times must I suffer this?” Lily moaned. Without looking up, she continued to churn away at her mixing bowl and muttered, “You go out to that old tack room in the small barn and I’ll send her there to ya. You’d best be quick about it, young fella ‘cause if you’re caught, they’ll be no mercy for either of ya.”

He waited breathlessly behind the door until she pushed it open with a slow creak. In one fluid motion, he stepped out from behind the door, pulled her hard against him and kicked the door shut with his left foot.

“Ouch!” she whimpered, “That hurt!”

“So sorry, Luv,” he grinned, “but I’ve been just crazy to see you.”

She paused, head down at first and then lifted her face up and smiled. She eased forward to kiss him softly on his lips, “I’ve missed you too, Danny.”

He pulled her close again and began to ramble in her ear, “I just had to see you before we left. I have to tell you everything right now.”

Surprised and confused she pulled back again to stare into his eyes. “What do you mean, ‘before you left’? Where are on earth are you going?”

He hung his head slightly and exhaled, “India, Rosie. They’re sendin’ us off to India.”

“India? When. Now? You don’t mean straight away?”

“Straight away. Some kind of emergency on the frontier.”

“India. Oh, my God, Danny. India!” She began to cry and then she yelled much louder than she should, “You’ll be killed for sure. I just know it.”

“Not me, Luv. I’m not dyin’ on some dusty friggin’ hill in India. I’ll be comin’ back to ya Rosie, just as quick as I can.” She folded her head down into her chest again and continued to weep.

“Scuttlebutt says we’re only goin’ for a year - eighteen months at most.”

“Eighteen months! That’s a year and a half! Oh, Danny, that’ll feel like forever.”

“No, Luv, we won’t let it. Not if you write to me regular.”

She waited in a long moment of reflection, dabbed her tears aside and nodded quietly. Then she lifted up on her toes and pulled him by the collar in a long embrace.

He closed his eyes as they began to fill with tears, “Promise me you’ll wait for me Rose. I won’t make it if you don’t wait. You’re all I’ve got in the world.”

She eased back to face him directly and wiped a tear from his face. “Yes, Danny, I’ll wait for you. Just promise me you’ll be back soon ‘cause I won’t wait forever.”

“I will, Rosie. I promise you no more than a year and a half at most. I promise.” He kissed her wet cheeks and gently wiped away several tears with his fingertips, “When I get back my hitch will be nearly up and we can get married and start all over.”

“A year and a half, Danny. I’ll give you just a year and a half for you to come home to me. If you’re not back I’m off to sail away with Maggie.”

“I promise ya Luv. I’ll be back in your arms in less than that.”

They fell silent again, lost in each other’s arms in that shabby little tack room, each offering a private silent prayer.

Finally Rose eased upward and pulled his face next to hers and whispered, “We’d best hurry now, Luv, we haven’t much time.” She reached behind and slid the bolt shut and began to unbutton her dress. He waited a moment and raced to undo his tunic and kick his boots off into the corner. In less than a minute they were lying naked on a saddle shelf that was barely covered by an old horse blanket. “Just don’t leave me with a baby,” she whispered.

Twenty minutes later there was a soft knocking at the door and a young woman’s voice called out softly, “Rosie, you’d better hurry along. Mrs. Beechly has been askin’ for ya and it’s less than an hour til we serve dinner.”

“Coming, Lucy,” Rose called back toward the door, “I’ll be there in just a minute.” She turned back to take Danny’s face in both hands. “Now, you just you remember your promise to me, cause if you break it, you’ll lose me forever and that’s for certain.”

“No worries Darlin’. I’ll never break my promise to you, never.”

“Alright then, that’s our pact. I will wait but you must be back for me in eighteen months.

“I promise, Rose. I promise.”

“And remember this,” she glared, “We can never trust those generals and officers to look out for us, no more than we could ever trust His Lordship. They’ll never let us out from under Danny, they’ve got it all too cozy with us workin’ class under their boots.”

She quickly re-tied her apron and fluffed her collar and kissed him softly on the mouth.

“Good-bye, now Darling Dan. Please, keep yourself safe for me.”

“I will Rose, I promise.” She smiled once more and slid through the narrow door then latched it firmly as it closed.

Six days later the city of Portsmouth was plastered at every corner with all the attributes of martial splendour. It was a strongly held tradition that His Worship, the Lord Mayor, would proclaim for every military parade since the victories of the Elizabethan fleets. The Royal West Kent Regiment was “marching out for the Empire” with all the pomp and regalia preserved for the very best of British military tradition.

The massive flags of the regimental colour party pulled them all steadily forward followed closely by a thirty-piece brass band that blared away, prompting the huge crowd into deafening rendition of “A British Grenadier.” The band was trailed at ten paces by their commanding officer, Major General Sir Edward Parks. He sat defiantly mounted on a shining black stallion, followed by a pair of pretentious colonels mounted on parallel snorting steeds, whose every stride seemed to prance to the music note for note. The senior officers were followed in turn by a single corporal leading the regimental mascot, a large, full horned white male goat draped in a bright crimson mantle fringed in gold and proudly emblazoned with the regimental shield.

The entire regiment followed, all sharply divided into their various companies led by an officer and three NCO’s. They marched in tight formation, eyes front and every step in precise cadence, their Remington rifles pressed tightly into their shoulders. Danny and Jack moved as one, shoulder-to-shoulder in the middle of the second row of the third company, with young Terry tucked neatly into the column precisely one step in front of Jack.

Rose and her mother waited anxiously at a curbside among the cheering crowds packed along the high street. It was Lily who spotted him first, “There he is!” she called cautiously, pointing her hand toward a face buried in a line of men now cresting in a wave over a knoll in the road. For a moment Rose searched desperately to follow her mother’s hand. She finally spotted him and began to wave her handkerchief in nervous despair.

Danny looked to be lost in a blur, rows and rows of men all cramped together tightly in a measured gait. An occasional fading cheer spiked the clatter of hundreds of steel-toed boots that stamped across the cobblestones. The moment had begun to overwhelm him. His eyes darted across the crowd searching desperately for the solitary face that defined his world. He was absolutely thunderstruck when for barely a heartbeat he spotted her just off to his right. She stood beside her mother at the curb, wearing that same lovely yellow dress from the day they met, wide-eyed and dreamlike, waving her tiny hanky and mouthing his name.

“Was it really her?” his inner voice begged to know, “Rosie” he called aloud.

Then he gulped hard, swallowing his tears, as his feet kept moving in stride. He braced himself, ready to run to her, to take her in his arms and race away into the crowd. He only needed to break ranks and cross the road to her. His felt knees begin to buckle, one step more and then another as the line kept propelling him steadily onward now just beyond her view.

“Steady boy,” Jack muttered beside him, “steady on.” Danny jolted back, closed his eyes and swallowed hard, finally surrendering into the surging wave that dragged him onward.

Rose had glimpsed the single tear rolling down his cheek and the halting bit of his smile intended just for her. She thought she’d heard him call out to her but the voice was so faint that she could not be sure. As he pressed steadily on, further and further away from her, Lily whispered, “Good God, he’s so young. They’re all so very young.”

Rose stepped back just in time to witness Danny become fully enveloped in a blaze of red tunics and then he was suddenly lost, disappearing somewhere further down the road. She strained again to try to see him and then rolled into her mother’s shoulder and wept.

* * *