The Very White of Love: the heartbreaking love story that everyone is talking about!. S Worrall C

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      In the evening Martin slips away to the mess tent to write to her. A group of officers are playing bridge. He waves to Hugh Saunders. Less than a week ago, he was wearing tennis whites and had a tennis racquet in his hand. Now, he is in khaki and packing a Colt 45. Other officers were solicitors, bank managers or doctors. From a leather armchair at the back of the tent, the commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Burnett-Brown MC, BB for short, a stocky, barrel-chested man with a bristling moustache and bullish head, is digressing on the French tactics at the Battle of Austerlitz, his polished breeches kicked out in front of him, as though he were at his Pall Mall club. His nickname among the officers is ‘The Little King.’

      Martin remembers his conversation with Uncle Charles about pals battalions. Apart from the second-in-command, Major Brian Heyworth, a tall, plain-speaking barrister from Manchester, who only joined the battalion after moving to Beaconsfield, and is regarded by some as an outsider, Martin has known most of these men and their families since boyhood. Over there are the Viney brothers, scions of the Aylesbury printworks, now officers in the battalion: Lawrence with his bald pate and narrow-set eyes, Martin’s current tent-mate; and his elder brother, Elliott, a ruggedly handsome captain with a pencil-thin moustache and the same chiselled jawline as his brother. Their family has been linked with the battalion for several generations. Oscar Viney, the brothers’ father, commanded a Company on the Somme in 1916; their mother is an old friend of Aunt D.; and Martin has known the brothers since boyhood.

      The young man next to them is David Stebbings, the battalion’s intelligence officer or IO. Stebbings’ small features and narrow eyes, which give his face a compact, slightly inscrutable look, added to his keen mind, make him perfect as an intelligence officer, one of the key roles in the battalion, responsible for the collection and distribution of all intelligence as it affects the battalion, observing and making maps of enemy positions, as well as distributing the latest news of the campaign.

      His mother, Anne, has known Aunt D. since the 1920s and in the summer holidays Martin spent many happy days with David, riding their bikes through the woods or climbing trees.

      Martin’s sense of the battalion being like an extended family is enhanced by the fact that, unlike in regular army units, officers address each other by their Christian names, whatever their rank. Captain Viney is not ‘sir’ to Martin, he’s Elliott. Captain Ritchie is simply James. The fact that, in the year since Nancy came into his life, many of them, like Hugh Saunders, have also become familiar to her, makes Martin’s affection for them even greater.

      Martin collects a gin and tonic and a sheaf of writing paper and finds a quiet corner of the tent. In the background, the sound of a Tommy Dorsey song, ‘All I Remember Is You’, drifts across the tent. It’s true, thinks Martin, smiling.

      He arranges the paper, takes out his pen, removes the cap and begins to write. But the ink has run out. He crosses the tent and asks the orderly if there is any more. The orderly hands him a bottle of Parker’s permanent black ink. Martin returns to his perch at the back of the tent, unscrews the barrel of the pen, dips the nib into the bottle, then lightly squeezes the filler between his forefinger and thumb, watching as the rubber sac is engorged with ink. Like his heart, he thinks. Bursting with love.

       Carissima mia,

       I am a little shy of writing to you after reading that marvellous letter which you sent me. This will be neither as long nor as picturesque as yours but it may give you a glimpse of the life I’m leading now while you are basking in the sun lying on the heather, dreaming and criticizing the skies.

       I wish you had been to see me off at Wycombe – all the men’s sweethearts came, so I felt a bit lonely. I’ve been put in command of No. 5 platoon of HQ Company, a platoon that call themselves Pioneers and spend their time digging trenches, putting up barbed wire, etc. I have been busy supervising the digging of a long zigzag trench on the edge of the parade ground to be used in case of air raids. It isn’t likely that we will be raided, but it keeps the men occupied.

       This being England, it has rained almost constantly. The weather is helped by the multitudes of motor vehicles of all kinds, which are driven furiously all over the camp by terribly keen young territorials on most unimportant duties. But the men are keeping well and dry, thank goodness – only one member of our platoon has been reported sick and been detained in the hospital tent. They are cheerful and keen. The brighter soldiers among them are already beginning to show themselves. СКАЧАТЬ