As they turned away, I said, ‘I’m very sorry about Hector and your dress, Miss. My offer is still there to have it cleaned for you.’
And Jane Godley looked at me. A look I’ve rarely seen in my life, and I’ve lived a very long time. The look she gave me was of utter hatred. There were actually tears of anger in her eyes.
‘The very thought,’ she whispered, harshly.
They turned and walked away.
I pursed my lips and looked down at Hector, who stared up at me like a victim. ‘Trouble’s coming, Hec,’ I told him.
His eyes told me he knew I was right.
*
And trouble she was.
Brewis, the old butler, told me he’d overheard her and Greene talking that evening over their lemonade. Brewis and I often chatted when we bumped into each other around the grounds and he said that Miss Godley had virtually demanded my sacking for my “impertinence”. On that occasion, Greene had talked her down, saying I was a good man and we had just got off to a bumpy start. Brewis also told me that she would not let it go. She was pouring poison into Greene’s ear at every opportunity and his protestations were getting weaker. He needed her and her money more than he needed me.
On that August evening, as Hector and I celebrated my birthday with a nip of best scotch for me and a bone for him, a groom knocked on my door and told me Greene wanted to have a word with me. When I got to the house, Brewis’s face told me everything I needed to know. He squeezed my arm in sympathy as he showed me into the library.
Greene was standing with a rather large glass of whiskey in his hand, staring out across the lawn that was now wonderfully manicured thanks to my work over the years. He turned when Brewis introduced me and sighed.
Strangely, I felt sorry for him. The padding I had first noticed when I came to Longwood back in 1919 had grown. Greene was becoming podgy and flaccid. His dark hair was thinning. The whip-thin, iron-willed individual was no more; murdered by a slim, blonde weapon named Jane Godley. I waited for him to speak.
‘I’m afraid I have some rather bad news, Rob,’ he started as an opening gambit, but then stopped, unsure of where to go next. As I looked at him, I tried to remember the man he had once been before he had been eviscerated by that bloody woman.
‘Bad news, sir?’ I asked. I was not going to make it easy for him.
Greene turned back to the window. He seemed unwilling to look me in the eye.
‘I’m afraid I’ve had to do some, erm, shuffling. Yes, shuffling.’ He turned again and tried to look at me, but his eyes flickered constantly around the room.
‘Of resources, I mean,’ he continued. He nodded at me, as if what he had said made sense.
‘Resources, sir?’
‘Personnel,’ he finished.
I stared just past his right ear as I had always done when talking to an officer. I remained silent.
‘Oh, come along, Rob,’ he said, testily. ‘You know the situation. She don’t like you, man. She don’t like you for whatever reason and she won’t stop harping on about it. She complains endlessly. Deakin this and Deakin that.’ He gulped at his whiskey and looked at me like a boy who has been whipped. ‘She wants you gone.’
I let the silence hang for a second longer before saying, ‘I see.’
The silence grew again until Greene drew himself up. It seemed as if he was going to say something else, but then he slumped once more and just looked at me.
We had shared so much, him and me. In two years of battle we had shared more than most people share in a lifetime. And he was turning away from that for a woman. For the first time in my life, but certainly not the last, I felt something turn and heave within me. Something raw and elemental. Something furious. It seemed to swell inside me before quickly fading away.
‘You want me to leave, sir?’ I asked, keeping my voice calm, ignoring whatever that strange feeling had been.
Greene sighed, about to refute it, perhaps to say it was not him who wanted me gone, but he seemed to realise how that would make him look. He nodded.
And that was that. My time at Longwood was over. Greene gave me a decent parting payment, which was nice of him, I suppose. We shook hands like men, but I couldn’t help thinking that his grip had become soft. War had not defeated him, not for one second. But Jane Godley had.
I packed my bag and left the Gatehouse the next day, taking Hector with me. I wasn’t leaving him there to the tender mercies of that malicious bitch. She’d probably poison him.
We walked out the gate and strode down the lane towards the train station, neither of us quite sure of what would happen next. When we got there, however, the last train had left and so, as it was a warm evening, we spent a comfortable enough night in a hedgerow.
I stroked Hector’s flank as he slept beside me and wondered what that strange feeling had been when Greene had dismissed me. It was like nothing I had felt before, a savage and disturbing wrench within me. For a moment, standing there in Greene’s study, I had felt a surging hatred, previously alien to me. I searched myself for an answer but found nothing and I soon forgot about it. I had obviously just been disappointed by my sacking, that’s all. I sighed, wondering what I was going to do now. I was once more adrift.
Something will come up, I told myself, uncertainly.
Eventually I slipped into slumber.
IV
The docks at Southampton were rammed. The noise of the cranes and of the stevedores shouting and swearing at each other reminded me of the trenches. The huge bulk of the steamer St Agnes blocked the sun.
The money I’d saved from Longwood and the final payment from Greene had kept me going long enough until I found myself a job at a local farm where Hector and I had slept in a barn and I worked the fields until the winter came.
At first I didn’t know what to do with my life, but on a visit to the local town I’d seen an advertisement in a shop window showing a steamer under the watchful gaze of the Statue of Liberty in New York. As I sweated and toiled in the fields that image stayed with me and I eventually made my decision.
I would try my luck in the Land of Opportunity. I would go to America.
Hector couldn’t come, of course. The voyage would be too much for him, even if they had allowed him on the ship, which they didn’t. The farm owner was a good sort, however, and said he’d take him in as he was a well-trained dog, so, when I’d got the money together in early January 1923, I gave Hector a final pat on the head and told him to be a good boy.
Twice I almost turned back on the country lane that led to the train station, but I knew he was better off on the farm where he could grow old in peace with the other working dogs. I missed him though, old Hector, and I often thought about him in the years that followed. He was always a good friend.
The voyage took just over a week. I was way down in the bowels of the ship, in steerage where my sort belonged, bunked up with a couple of Irish lads who had been in the war too. We had plenty to talk about and, being Irish, they always knew where the parties and the beer was. The crossing was quite pleasant.
The day dawned when we slid past that statue and we docked on Ellis Island where I went through customs and exchanged my few pounds for a few dollars at a kiosk outside. I wrapped my thin coat around me and walked out onto the cold streets of New York.