Thanks to the Major my leave came through within a week. It was like the answer to a prayer. At any price I wanted to get away from the responsibility, away from the sight of khaki, away from everything to do with war.
London was too full of it, of immaculate men and filmy girls who giggled. I couldn’t face that.
I went straight down to the little house among the beeches and pines,--an uneasy guest of long silences, staring into the fire, of bursts of violent argument, of rebellion against all existing institutions.
But it was good to watch the river flowing by, to hear it lapping against the white yacht, to hear the echo of rowlocks, flung back by the beech woods, and the wonderful whir! whir! whir! of swans as they flew down and down and away; to see little cottages with wisps of blue smoke against the brown and purple of the distant woods, not lonely ruins and sticks; to see the feathery green moss and the watery rays of a furtive sun through the pines, not smashed and torn by shells; at night to watch the friendly lights in the curtained windows and hear the owls hooting to each other unafraid and let the rest and peace sink into one’s soul; to shirk even the responsibility of deciding whether one should go for a walk or out in the dinghy, or stay indoors, but just to agree to anything that was suggested.
To decide anything was for out there, not here where war did not enter in.
Fifteen dream days, like a sudden strong whiff of verbena or honeysuckle coming out of an envelope. For the moment one shuts one’s eyes,--and opens them again to find it isn’t true. The sound of guns is everywhere.
So with that leave. I found myself in France again, trotting up in the mud and rain to report my arrival as though I’d never been away. It was all just a dream to try and call back.
Everything was well with the battery. My job was to function with all speed at the building of the new horse lines. Before going on leave I had drawn a map to scale of the field in which they were to be. This had been submitted to Corps and approved, and work had started on it during my leave.
My kit followed me and I installed myself in a small canvas hut with the acting-Captain of another of our batteries whose lines were belly deep in the next field. He had succeeded Pip Don who went home gassed after the Armentières shelling and who, on recovering, had been sent out to Mesopotamia.