in which, nearly forty years previously, Dr Lawrence himself had slept.
‘Here he is, John,’ Winifred whispered, ‘here’s our Samuel.’
Dr Lawrence peered into the cradle.
‘Splendid. What a funny little fellow.’
* * *
Sam, his younger brothers Humphrey and Albert, and his sister Freda, grew up in the rambling house on the edge of the village of Stonethwaite in Cumberland. Their father’s surgery occupied half the ground floor. During surgery hours, patients waited on hard wooden chairs in the hallway. There were two consulting rooms: one for Dr Lawrence, large enough for minor operations, and a smaller one for Dr Jasper, his junior partner.
At the back was a small dispensary, where Dr Lawrence made up pills and medicines. Stacked on one shelf were glass bottles of ominously coloured liquids: red, green, and brown, each sealed with a cork. Dr Lawrence was a great believer in the placebo effect for simple country people. These bottles contained nothing but sterilised water, some harmless colouring, and a little alcohol added as a ‘pick-me-up’. His patients swore by them.
‘Ah no, Doctor, not the green one; my Betty takes that. It’s the red one ’as worked wonders for my rheumatism.’
Apart from the kitchen, the house was always cold, even in summer, the sun rarely having time to penetrate the thick stone walls before the chill of evening returned. On the bitterest winter nights a meagre fire smouldered in the sitting room grate. Bedroom fires were lit only on rare special occasions, such as when Freda shivered and quaked with scarlet fever. Winifred was in charge of the running of the house. It was a house looming with heavy dark furniture inherited from an earlier age. Carpets were worn and soft furnishings threadbare.
Sam had no memory of anything new ever being bought for the house. Even shoes were considered an extravagance, and were kept for as long as possible. As the eldest, Sam sometimes had new shoes bought for him, but only when his toes were firmly pressed against the tips. Shoes were patched and mended, their soles and heels reinforced with crescents of metal. When unarguably outgrown, Sam’s shoes eventually passed to Humphrey, and finally to Albert. Sam’s feet caused him problems for the rest of his life.
Meals were bland and simple, in accordance with Dr Lawrence’s taste. He considered that excessive use of seasoning overstimulated the appetite and the senses, and was to be avoided. Each week, Winifred struggled with the domestic budget allowed by her husband. She made careful lists and opted for the cheaper cuts of meat, which were cooked at length in the Aga until reasonably tender, and stretched with turnips, potatoes, barley and suet dumplings. Certain items not absolutely essential were omitted from the shopping until the following week. She supplemented the family diet with produce from a large vegetable and fruit garden. It did not occur to Winifred to suggest that Dr Lawrence might have increased her household allowance. The children always left the table a little hungry.
While they were very small, the children were taught to read and write by their nanny in the nursery. Nanny Lawrence was a kindly spinster of middle years, from whom the children enjoyed occasional demonstrations of affection. When Sam was nine, a governess arrived and introduced him and Humphrey to the rudiments of history, mathematics and French. Two years later Nanny Lawrence disappeared, despite anguished tears shed by Albert and Freda, then aged six and five. At the same time, a tutor was engaged to prepare the older boys for their entrance examinations. He performed his task with rigour, caning Sam and Humphrey viciously across the knuckles for any lack of effort or application.
The austerity of home life prepared Sam well for conditions at boarding school. He expected neither comfort nor affection, and received none. The battlefields of France and Belgium were rapidly absorbing a generation of young men. Many of Sam’s teachers were old men or survivors of the war, returning damaged and embittered, and resenting their pupils’ untouched youth and opportunity.
Despite its harshness, Sam’s childhood was not without pleasure. His father’s work meant he was rarely present at home, except when occupied in the surgery. The children were expected to entertain themselves, when not actively engaged in schoolwork. They roamed the hills and country freely on foot and by bicycle, slabs of bread and cold tea packed into knapsacks. Sam often helped his mother in the vegetable garden. She was not a talkative woman, but he sensed her quiet fondness for him as they worked side by side, planting lines of potatoes, turnips and carrots.
‘Well done, Samuel. By autumn we’ll be enjoying these.’
When Sam reached the age of seventeen, Dr Lawrence called him into his study for a discussion about his future.
‘Are you considering medicine, Samuel? I have contacts at St Thomas’s, you know. I’m sure they’d take you on, as long as you don’t make a mess of matriculation. It’s a fine profession.’
‘I don’t think I’m really cut out to be a doctor, Father. Not like Humphrey.’
‘Not cut out for it? I don’t know about that. That seems a somewhat flippant way to refer to your future. You do realise we can’t send you all to university, don’t you? If you don’t want to pursue medicine, have you thought about the other options? There’s law or there’s the army.’
Sam longed to escape the constraints of his life. He longed to see the wider world. In 1922, he became one of the youngest officers to graduate from Sandhurst. Dr Lawrence and Sam’s godfather – an uncle in Ireland – shared in paying for his commission, with money long set aside for just such an eventuality.
His first posting was to Ireland. It was not the exotic setting he might have hoped for, but he liked the Irish, and recognised that history had dealt them a poor hand. His commanding officer warned him against this view.
‘Be careful, Lawrence. It’s a mistake to try to see both sides of the argument – or to consider the argument at all for that matter. Our job is to keep order, nothing more. Keep out of the politics.’
In Ireland Sam learned that great charm was not incompatible with extreme brutality. There was a spate of house burnings by the Black and Tans, after which the IRA considered what reprisals against the Protestants might be appropriate. IRA leaders of the local Brigade felt it would be unjust to burn the homes of people not involved directly in anti-Catholic acts. Instead they decided to target Leindown Castle, residence of Lord and Lady Tullycomb. Lord Tullycomb was a member of the British House of Lords and a determined opponent of Irish National aspirations. British officers sometimes stayed at the Castle, and officers from the local garrison – including Sam – were occasional visitors there.
The IRA also selected Leindown for its history of devout Unionism and its longstanding links with the British establishment. At the time of the attack, Lord Tullycomb was away in Scotland on a fishing trip. The only occupants of the Castle were Lady Tullycomb, her daughter Hester, and five servants. The Castle and most of its contents were burnt to the ground in the raid, but no one was harmed.
Sam participated in the subsequent military investigation. He was impressed by Lady Tullycomb’s steadfast refusal to identify the attackers, saying only that they had ‘behaved like gentlemen’. She informed the military that she and Hester had been allowed to identify some of their most treasured possessions, and then ten IRA men had been assigned to carry these objects out of the house. Two armchairs had also been taken outside for herself and Hester to sit in safety and comfort. Sam noted that these chairs were placed in the rose garden, where the women would be sheltered from the sight of their home being destroyed, and where the smell of burning might be masked by the fragrance of the blooms. He was ordered to remove these references from his report, his commanding officer being concerned that the true criminality of the act should not be disguised.
On another occasion, Sam was cycling back to his base following a match at the nearby tennis club, when he rounded a corner and stumbled upon an IRA ambush. A general – a highly decorated hero of the First World War – and his friend, a colonel, together with their wives, were driving in the other direction, in order to play tennis themselves. Seeing signs of an ambush ahead, and unable to turn the car around in time, the general accelerated the car in a desperate attempt to escape.