Peacehaven

Alfred Mason laid his pencil down quietly next to the drawing board, straightened his chair and legs, filled, tamped, and relit his pipe, and looked out of the window in front of him. It was the 27th of August 1947, and the air beyond the window was heavy with the syrupy scent of honeysuckle and compost, shot through with the rich chemical tang of Castrol motor oil from Davis’s garage. The sound of hammering and men’s voices and the faint whisper of the wireless drifted up the hill. A tubby hornet investigated the windowpane, swaying from right to left in the air for a moment, riding the warm updrafts from the hot flagstones beneath the window, before turning tail and flying off into the clear blue sky like a brabazon bomber. The doppler shift of its diminishing wingbeats sounded like a thin air raid siren fading into the warm afternoon glow.

Beyond the honeysuckle grew masses of speedwell and campanula, the forget-me-nots and mimosa not yet blossoming but coming into leaf, and the heliconia and sweet peas beginning to die off. The lazy murmur of honey bees was audible from the workshop, even at twenty feet away with the window pulled to. Beyond the flower borders stood a short run of badly cut green grass, shot through with fairy rings of ox-eye daisies that had escaped the shears and scythe. Beyond the lawn stood a beech tree, bowed and bent now by years of winter gales gusting down the South Downs. Slung over a large bough were two knotted cords of rope, a child’s swing and relic from the previous owner of the house. Where the rope had cut into the young tree, deep cuts had been gouged in the bark and living cambium, causing the tree to form swollen calluses in shock. Over the years, the thick grey bark, now so heavily scarred and worn that it resembled elephant hide, had folded over and trapped the rope within the branch itself. The rope was now frayed and threadbare, and the seat – a pair of unvarnished ash boards nailed together – had grown into a soft lichenal cushion. No-one had sat on it for the better part of two years.

Beyond the beech tree stretched undulating waves of farmland reaching all the way to the broad backs of the south downs, now glowing black and tan in the late afternoon light. Each ripple and flank of earth blazed with golden grass, wheat, and corn. In winter the fields looked like a smooth stretch of green velvet, sown with winter beet and silage grass, but in summer the fields shone as if aflame. Each bright field trembled in the heat and wind, and men in cream shirts open to the waist scythed down rows of tall corn and gathered them into conical stooks. The glare and activity of the fields was thrown into sharp relief by the shadows at the foot of the downs, in which little rivers and run-off streams ran and mingled in the cool and the dark. Sedges and rushes grew there, and little reed warblers trilled softly in the summer evenings. Mist pooled in the hollows and poured across the fields in the hours before dawn.

Over the crest of the hills flew a single decommissioned Lancaster bomber, its deployment bays removed and replaced with patent leather seats for pleasure flights from Shoreham Aerodrome. The large aircraft swung heavily over the house and turned east along the downs. The view at this time of day must have been extraordinary, with the roads and fields and villages and rivers forming a continuous mosaic of sunlit colour lapping against the downs. To the south of the downs would stretch the unbroken waters of the Channel, and perhaps, with the air this clear, the French coast and the cities of Calais and Dieppe. To the right, Newhaven and Lewes would be in full view of the afternoon sun, a complex filigree of light and shade, with the flitting movements of vehicles and people and green seawater in the bay. To the left the land would have been cloaked in the shade of the downs, empty and quiet, with perhaps the odd motorcar or herd of cows on the move. The aircraft seemed to hover over the hills for a moment like a monstrous crow, before dipping its wings to the east and turning to bank over the Channel. The low growl of the Merlin engines softened and blurred as the wind caught it, and then it was gone.

Alfred regarded the pastoral scene quietly. No indication of his feelings or temperament crossed his face. The window in front of his drawing board was wide open, and light flooded into the darkened workshop. Rogue dust motes spun in helical twirls where the light caught and warmed them, and somewhere in the house, a tap dripped quietly. Alfred placed both hands on the arm rests of his chair, pulled himself to his feet awkwardly, straightened his back, and left the room. In the cool and quiet of the study, faint noises could be heard as Alfred poured lukewarm, over-stewed tea into thin bone china teacups in the kitchen. There was a faint jingle as Alfred stirred the tea and tapped the spoon dry over the rim of the cup, then a louder tinkling as he threw it into the sink. There was stillness and silence for a moment, interrupted by the rough country burr of a visiting bumblebee, which flew through the workshop window, sleepily circled the room a few times, and flew out the way it came in. There was the reluctant creak of a walnut floorboard yielding to pressure, and Alfred re-entered the room. He sat down heavily in his chair, absentmindedly placed the teacup on top of a green hardbacked book to his right, picked up his pencil and began to draw.

Alfred Mason (MC, DSO, CGC), had returned from Germany some three years previously and had been stationed in Eilenburg for the five months before he returned home in the September of 1945. Eilenburg was a small city near the Elbe river, yet Alfred and 32nd never saw the arrival of the Russians and Americans and their triumphant ascent to the Reichstag.

Eilenburg was already a ruin when the 32nd arrived. The city had been razed to its foundations by allied artillery, blazed down to shattered outcrops of mortar and burnt brick over the course of a few nights, and amongst the detritus and mulch of the city centre a command post had been set up. It was here, in this corpse of a town, that the 32nd spent the summer. Huddled in a sunbaked collection of tents in the ruins of Eilenburg, a scant sixteen miles from Torgau, the 32nd were ordered to keep the peace and maintain supply routes. They would remain there until the end of the war.

The 32nd were weary to the bone from numberless days of forced marches, little action, and endless trudging patrols. The normally plush existence of high command, experienced briefly by Alfred after his promotion during the Ardennes-Alsace Campaign, disappeared into a dull routine of drills, training exercises, and waves of paperwork and remits. Alfred spent much of his time away from the 32nd, shuttling between Leipzig and the ruins of Eilenburg, sleeping in an empty hotel one day waited on by an aging Polish waiter who spoke no english and a camp bed in a cold tent under a smashed statue of the Führer back at barracks the next. The men of the 32nd, who had seen action in Africa, Italy, Normandy, and Luxembourg, became just another company ringing the perimeter of the heartland of Germany. Relief was bought in as elements of the 32nd came and went, but the replacements were overwhelmingly young and bright-eyed and eager and held no interest for the remaining veterans. The monotony of the dog days of summer combined with the growing listlessness and fatigue of the troops bore down heavily on the 32nd, and Capt. Mason most of all.

Alfred’s friend and fellow officer Marcus Tenbury had been returned to Sussex on a medical discharge after sustaining a compound fracture to his left leg from falling from a motorbike after a drunk orderly had pulled out in front of him after sampling too much Wernesgrüner beer. For four years Marcus Tenbury had been a stalwart of the 32nd, a decorated officer and close friend of Alfred, who had served with him in Africa and Europe. He had been peppered with shrapnel at Arnhem Bridge and incarcerated in a military hospital in Paris for the better part of three months, but had returned and fought alongside Alfred at The Battle Of The Bulge. Both had survived.

Nevertheless, fate had decided that Marcus Tenbury’s war would be finished not by the snipers bullet or exploding shell but on his back in the evening light and the sun-warm dust of a Nordsachsen country track with a smashed leg and a frantically apologising orderly standing over him while a team of medics loaded him onto a stretcher. With the departure of his friend, Alfred saw out the remaining months of the war in the brick dust and dead ashes of Eilenburg with the remaining 32nd. Of the two hundred and twenty five men of the 32nd Guards Brigade, Alfred was one of the remaining thirty four. Of the thirty four, six had been sent home earlier in the war for either training or reassignment, two had commenced command of other units, and one had been shot through the femoral artery after pursuing an escaped POW with a stolen Luger and had bled to death on a sunny Saxony hillside. A further two were retained in the military hospital in Leipzig due to a vicious fistfight that had broken out between them and two other soldiers from the 34th, which had left one of them in a coma and the other with a broken jaw. These were men who had served alongside each other for four years in four countries and two continents. Corporal Stanfield of the 32nd and Private Wilson of the 34th had fought alongside each other in Africa and Sicily and again in the Ardennes.

By April 22nd, the 32nd had been restored to a standing strength of two hundred. Over three-quarters of the new troops were young men who had never fired a gun in combat and would not get the chance to do so now.

Alfred stopped staring out of the window, and gazed down at the paper in front of him. He picked up his pencil and carefully copied the north-west corner of the sketch. The glazing firm has supplied an accurate sight-size template of the proposed window, and in featureless monochrome it was hard to imagine the carmine and cobalt plates that it was his responsibility to cut and shape and slot into the grey leadlight skeleton. Alfred stared at the bright drawing board, now glazed with hot light. He moved to draw the curtains a little, and caught sight of a gently spinning stained glass roundel. He had made it for his wife shortly before the outbreak of the war.

It was a simple etching of a wren on a willow frond, largely clear glass, its tail feathers raised, its head craned around. The rufous and copper tones of the little bird had been picked out in selenium and copper, mixed in with a little chromium for the faintly dun, greenish tinge of wren feathers in shade. Thin lead calms had been laid around the tertial feathers, a painstaking process which had taken him many hours and had resulted in at least three near-disastrous errors, which had only really been saved by the calm intervention of his then mentor Jonathan Lambs. The wren roundel had been little more than an exercise in the balance of colour and shading, but Lambs had realized the significance of the piece to his young apprentice and had guided and helped him throughout its creation. Alfred had given it to his new wife on December 12th 1939, under the bare branches of the beech tree. They had kissed on the swing and brushed their feet together in the fine powdering of snow under them as they swung back and forth. They hung the little wren roundel from a nail above his wife’s dressing table, so she could look at it each and every morning.

Six months and seventeen days later, Alfred was in barracks near Headcorn in Kent for training as a junior officer. Three months later still, Alfred was an NCO of the 12th platoon in Bir Hachiem in North Africa and in that time had been transformed from a quiet, reflective young apprentice of the noted stained glass artist Jonathan Lamb into Alf ‘Mace’ Mason, a sunburnt, stern sergeant, respected but not necessarily liked by his men, reserved and withdrawn but with an excellent combat record to date and an efficient, though cold, manner with his troops during battle. The following year ‘Mace’ Mason had become 2nd lieutenant Alf Mason of the 32nd Guards Brigade, stationed in Sicily, with his own office and orderly by the seafront in a tranquil farmhouse near Palermo, fresh goat’s milk in his coffee each morning and Adriatic tuna cooked over camp stoves for dinner. Two years on, 2nd Lieutenant Alf Mason was now Lt. Mason, who had survived the beaches and fields of Normandy and had lain in a shelled foxhole in the Ardennes for the better part of a month, sleeping under pine boughs while the snot froze in his nose and the blood of his friends washed the snow pink around him. By the end of the war, Lt. Mason had finished his metamorphoses as Captain Alfred C.L. Mason, commanding officer of the men of the 32nd and the XXX Corps, a distinguished, multiply decorated officer, who had a hotel room away from the troops on weekends and a choice of wines for lunch and a Mercedes limousine and driver that had once belonged to an SS Standartenführer at his beck and call.

And now, in the quiet of a summer afternoon, in a dozing parish at the foot of the South Downs not ten miles from Lewes, he was Alfred Mason once more, The Civilian, stained glass artist of the Worshipful Company of Glaziers and Painters of Stained Glass. His medals were in a glass case on top of the bureau in his bedroom. They were already beginning to gather dust.

The Lancaster was flying back over the downs in the last of the afternoon light, the final rays of sunlight turning the aircraft into a disc of burning silver. The throaty murmur of the four Merlin engines reached him then, and as the big aircraft flew overhead, Alfred remembered the first time he’d heard it, amongst the noise and excitement of Headcorn aerodrome. Hundreds of men bustled about, and the din of Merlin, Lucifer, and Griffon engines was deafening. Squads of infantry scurried everywhere with hands clamped over their ears, and great cloud of dust and grass clippings blew in funnels down the makeshift streets of the tent village.

Alfred had dived into the Officers Mess to escape the noise. A fine gauze of dust hung all but motionless in the empty room. An electric fan lazily threshed the air. For a Kentish village in early summer, Headcorn was a fine introduction to the heat and cloying atmosphere of North Africa. Alfred sat down on a wicker chair for a moment, coughed to attract the attention of the orderly, who bought over a bottle of Kentish pale ale and a packet of Camel cigarettes. Alfred sat in the warm half-light, the throbbing waves of noise building and fading as aircraft took off and landed outside, and read the dispatch orders from Airforce Command at Croydon. Sifting through the sheaves of paper and their neat copperplate ranks of auxiliary orders and quartermasters bills, Alfred drank from the tepid bottle of beer and tried to work out requisition calculations and who to send the receipts to. Every so often a fellow NCO would force his way through the canvas flaps, cheerily shout hello, grab a bottle of whatever was to hand and a copy of the newspaper and either leave, sit at an adjacent table and begin to silently work out their own paperwork, or slump onto one of the ancient Chesterfield sofas and fall asleep.

It was at that moment that Alfred was introduced to Marcus Tenbury. Marcus was a 2nd lieutenant, a commissioned officer, known around Headcorn as a popular and even-tempered officer, ‘A Man Of Learnin’’ as referred to by several of the squaddies around camp but as comfortable around the infantry as the officers and respected by both. Marcus had breezed into the Officers Mess, ordered a bottle of beer and a ham sandwich from the orderly, sat in the chair opposite Alfred, and started spreading mustard on his sandwich. Alfred returned to his work, and it was several minutes later that Alfred realized that Marcus had craned himself over the paperwork and was staring critically at Alfred’s calculations.

“You forgot to carry the one”.

“I’m sorry?”

“You forgot to carry the one. There, under the recent acquisitions table. Easy mistake to make, this damnable heat and dust isn’t particularly conducive to quick thinking. I shouldn’t worry about it”.

Marcus lowered his voice and leaned conspiratorially over the table as Alfred sat in startled silence.

“Especially when half of these lading bills will end up in the bin at HQ without anyone ever having read them anyway. Of course, it’s the form you forget to do or fill in wrong that they’ll want, and they’ll hound you ‘til they get it, too”.

Marcus grinned, stretched luxuriantly, yawned, and drew a cigarette out of Alfred’s pack.

“You don’t mind, do you old boy?”

“No, no, help yourself”.

“Thanks”.

And so they sat in the dusty half-light, Alfred hunched over his forms self-consciously, Marcus smoking contentedly to himself, occasionally pointing out mistakes, and asking idle questions about Alfred and his past and where he was from what he’d done before all this. Alfred supplied short, friendly answers, tempered with subservient politeness in deference to his superior rank. After ten minutes or so, Alfred had finished the forms and tucked them into his satchel before making to leave.

“Here, are you off to see old Talbot?”

“Well, yes, I thought I’d better get these dispatches and so on over to him before 4 o’clock drill”.

“Nonsense, old boy, Talbot’ll be in The Seven Stars in Ospringe, there won’t be anyone to hand them over to. I know for a fact he’ll be well into his third glass of claret by now, and then he does so like a little nap when he gets back to digs. I should hand them to Bailey over in D block – he’s got a meeting with the old brass at eight anyway, no need for you to go rushing off”.

There was a furtive slap on the canvas door of the officer’s mess, and a muffled voice asked if anyone knew where Lieutenant Tenbury was there.

Marcus started in mock-alarm and dived for the back exit of the tent.

“Old boy – Alfred, is it? – would you mind fielding the cubs for me while I run out the backdoor? You don’t mind? I’ve been dealing with the recruits all afternoon, and I must say, they’ve quite worn me out.”

“No, no... I’ll tell them you’ve gone into Headcorn, if you like?”

“Ah, that’d be excellent. Excellent cover. Cheerio then, Sergeant. If they ask too many questions, send them to the quartermaster to count bullet orders. That’s what I do. Takes the wind right out of their sails”.

Alfred decided that he rather liked Lt. Tenbury.

The drone of the Lancaster faded into the west as Alfred slowly put his pencil back down next to the drawing board. The summer sunlight was softening now, and the honeyed glow of the setting sun glowed orange over the desk, spangled with the shadows of honeysuckle blossom. All afternoon, from its outset at midday following an early lunch of cold cuts and stout in The White Hart, to its eventual end at the departure of the Lancaster into the west and the cooling of his tea, he had succeeded in drawing one small corner of the north aisle window. Two curved graphite lines on a sheet of parchment represented an entire afternoon’s work. Below that, a mess of smudged etchings portrayed the better part of a week’s draft sketches. Alfred sharpened his pencil quietly, placed it in a pot next to the drawing board, picked up the cooled cup of tea and carried it out of the room. He shut the door on his way out.