Nellie could hardly believe almost a year had passed since that miraculous telephone conversation with Sam, in Duff’s office. What a Christmas that had been, not just for her but for all of the family. Who cared what privations they suffered? They’d known Sam was alive and they’d celebrated with what they’d had. Nellie felt that she had been given back her life and had firmly believed she would have Sam in her arms by New Year. But it was to be many months before Nellie saw Sam again, for as soon as he was declared fit for duty, he was sent back up the line, to fight on. She wouldn’t allow herself to think of the dreadful possibility he might be snatched from her again, so through the whole of the last year she had tended the flame of hope, keeping it alive until today, 11 November 1918, when her faith in Sam’s penny-farthing ‘promise’ was finally vindicated, for the war was over and he would be coming home!
Although the long agony of waiting to see Sam again was almost over, the end of the war seemed somehow to take her by surprise and she found she didn’t know quite how to greet it, her deep relief tinged with grief and overshadowed by too much loss. Lily wouldn’t be celebrating, not with Jock still missing, and Nellie suspected that her friend had given up hope. In the end, it was her fellow custard tarts who helped her celebrate Armistice Day properly. After clocking on that morning she found the packing room in uproar, the girls surrounding a red-faced Ethel Brown, who looked as though she were about to start another war.
‘Pipe down, you lot,’ Ethel roared. ‘I said I’m going to see about it!’
‘What’s going on?’ Nellie asked Maggie Tyrell, as she pushed through the circle of angry women.
‘Old Plum Duff’s got a bloody cheek. He’s not letting us have no time off to celebrate! Ethel’s going up there!’ Maggie jabbed her thumb at the ceiling as Ethel marched down the factory floor, the girls cheering her on. ‘Go and tell the mean old git, he’ll have another strike on his hands if we don’t get today off!’ Maggie shouted after her.
Nellie didn’t think much of Duff’s chances today. The women were so fired up it seemed to unlock the floodgates in her too. She finally allowed joy to bubble up in her own heart; the war was over, Sam was coming home! Letting it sink in, she suddenly found herself caught up in Maggie Tyrell’s skinny arms.
‘Come on, Nellie, give us a smile! It’s over!’ she said, swinging Nellie clear off the floor. They both toppled over, laughing, just as Ethel burst through the swing doors.
‘Come on, girls!’ Ethel bellowed. ‘Poor old Duff’s in tears up there. It was a mistake, he was gonna let us off anyway. The mayor’s up the town hall at ten, let’s go and have a party!’
Nellie joined the custard tarts streaming out of the factory, hundreds of them, singing, dancing, holding up the traffic in Spa Road, some jumping aboard vans and car running boards, pulling the whole street into their celebration. On the way, they gathered with them the women and children queuing outside the soup kitchen; then the tramps, outside the Sally Army, peeled away to join them too. It seemed the whole of Bermondsey had stopped work to converge on Spa Road, till, like a raggle-taggle army, they all reached the town hall. There, bunting had been hastily looped around the entrance and the Salvation Army band was playing ‘Tipperary’. Nellie joined the others, singing herself hoarse, until the mayor came out on to the town hall steps and there was a hush. After his speech, the bells of St James rang out, peal after deafening peal, and she allowed herself a moment to look around. How different the steps of the town hall looked today, revellers instead of eager-faced recruits, unbridled joy instead of anxious faces peering at the names of dead and wounded. The casualty list was still posted there, but Nellie’s heart was overflowing with happiness; tears of joy streamed down her face as she realized she need never search for a name on that list again.
It was the Friday before Christmas and she’d taken the day off work. Sam was due to arrive at Waterloo Station this very morning, and she wanted everything to be perfect, including herself. Nellie took the mirror off the kitchen wall, propping it up on a chair. It was the only way she could see herself full length. She smoothed her hands down the bodice of the midnight-blue dress she’d been saving for Sam’s homecoming. She tightened the broad, pleated sash, which emphasized her small waist, then pointed her foot; the shorter length showed off her ankles, which thankfully, were shapely. Satisfied, she hung the mirror back in its place above the kitchen fireplace and sat down to wait. Tonight the whole family would celebrate Sam’s safe return. Matty and Alice had spent all week cleaning the house. Nellie had baked a cake, with black-market butter and flour, and Freddie had ‘found’ a crate of beer outside Courage’s. They would all have their chance to welcome Sam home but now, just for an hour, she wanted him to herself.
It was no good; she couldn’t sit still. Was that footsteps? She went to the door, peering the length of Vauban Street. No, it was only a neighbour, bashing a rug against her front wall. She went back to the kitchen mirror, checking the back of her hair, which was caught up softly at the nape of her neck. Walking to the window, she twitched the net curtain. If he’d been lucky enough to get a lift on an army lorry, he might be turning the corner any minute. Resisting the urge to check the front door yet again, she sat there, willing him to hurry up, her imagination clearing his way through the weekday traffic, speeding his feet along the crowded pavements. What was taking him so long? What was there to keep him? She imagined farewells to his mates at the station; had he stopped for a beer? But, no, surely he wanted her arms round him, as much as she wanted his.
She’d almost given up, thinking perhaps his troopship had been delayed, when she heard it – the sound of boots ringing on cobbles. She flew to the door, flinging it open, and in a moment was in his arms, kissing him unashamedly in full view of the neighbours.
‘Oh, Sam, thank God, thank God, you’re home!’ she said, pulling him into the passage. He kicked the door shut behind them, taking her in his arms, squeezing her so she could barely breathe.
‘Ohhh, Nellie.’ His voice was thick with an emotion that seemed more like pain than joy. ‘Ohhh, Nellie.’ He kept repeating her name till she pulled away from him and looked him full in the face for the first time.
He was gaunt, grey, his chin dark with stubble. She searched his eyes. Their dark depths had always been lit by a gentle, welcoming warmth, so often revealing his feelings when his words could not. But not now. With a shock that made her take a step back, she realized there was no answering look in those eyes, which before had always sought her own. They told her nothing.
He noticed her recoil and, heaving the pack off his back, looked down at himself, shamefaced. ‘Look at the state of me, and I’ve made your new dress dirty.’ She began to protest, but he went on, ‘It’s been a long old haul, I must stink to high heaven and I’ve not slept all night…’
Putting her fingers to his lips, Nellie said softly, ‘Sleeping can wait…’ And, grabbing his hand, she led him into the kitchen.
Heedless of his filthy tunic, she twined her arms around his neck till he dipped his head, kissing her with a probing hunger she’d never experienced with him. His kisses were fierce but, after four years surrounded by death, had she really expected gentleness? She found herself matching the depth of his kisses. He still smelled of the battlefield, but she clung to him, her own mouth searching for that old answering tenderness. But with each kiss he felt further away and instead of finding him, she succeeded only in losing herself.
Nellie’s relief that Sam was back, and in one piece, carried her through the rest of the day. She filled the tin bath for him with boiling water from the copper, she fed him mounds of toasted ‘real’ bread, with the black-market butter, and put all his muted reactions down to his tiredness.
But when the others came home and still no spark returned to those dull, bruised eyes, Nellie had to admit that something was very wrong.
There had been a case of mistaken identity; it had robbed her of Sam for many months, but then he’d been restored to her, or so she’d believed. But identities are fluid things, she now realized, and in the furnace of a war, such as Sam had experienced, how could his have stayed intact? Surely the metal of any soldier’s character would melt and re-form every time they faced death, or saw a pal blown to pieces in front of them? Her foolishness shamed her. She’d believed she was getting back ‘her Sam’ from the war, but from the first time he’d held her in his arms, his uniform still caked with mud, still smelling of blood and sulphur, she felt this was not her Sam.
The signs were there to see, from the start. Their reunion had left her feeling anxious; she was hoping for a word from him, that he was overjoyed to be back, even that he loved her. But she’d got neither. In the evening, during the family celebration, he sat like the silent centre, around which all their emotions of relief and happiness swirled. Matty, dressed in her stage finery, sitting next to him, her arm through his, sometimes leaned her head on his shoulder. Nellie wondered if the young girl had noticed Sam’s odd remoteness too. Looking across the table at Sam picking at his food as the chatter got louder, Nellie thought he looked uncomfortable, cornered almost, and her heart sank as she realized he would rather not be the centre of all this loving attention.
Then, halfway through the meal, Freddie stupidly asked if there had been any more news of Jock. Nellie kicked him under the table, but it was too late. Sam, his already ashen face turning white, pushed his chair back and stumbled round the crowded table, out into the yard.
‘You idiot, Fred!’ Bobby hissed. ‘Why d’ye go an upset him?’
Matty went to follow Sam, but Nellie stopped her. ‘I’ll go,’ she said, glaring over at Freddie. ‘Alice, will you cut the cake while I get him back in?’
Sam was smoking, leaning up against the brick shed. She put her arm through his, leaning in close to him. ‘I know it’s hard, with Jock not coming home,’ she said softly.
He took another deep drag on the cigarette and blew smoke in the air while she waited for him to answer. Shaking his head, he threw down the cigarette, grinding it with his boot.
‘It’s cold out here, best get in, duck,’ he said.
Nellie went to bed, full of misery at the change in Sam. For so long she had looked forward to his homecoming and now it felt as if she had lost him anyway.Waking next morning with a sick feeling in her heart, she told herself she must simply wait patiently for him to learn to trust her, with all those dark tales she knew must be locked up inside him, along with what he knew of Jock’s fate. She hadn’t seen him for over two years and she was beginning to realize how little she knew about his war. Still, she wouldn’t push him; she told herself to be grateful they both had the rest of their lives to get to know each other again.
It was barely dawn and Alice still slept quietly on. As Nellie forced herself to get out of the bed, she thought she could smell burning. Hurrying across the cold lino to the window, she looked out over the back yard to see smoke billowing up. ‘That bloody Freddie!’ she muttered, thinking some of his contraband must have contained combustibles. She pulled on her shoes and dashed downstairs. Grabbing her coat from the passage, she sprinted through the scullery and out into the back yard, where she pulled up short in front of Sam.
‘What are you doing?’ she panted. ‘I thought the place was on fire!’
He looked up at her through flames, his gaunt face lit by their false ruddiness. He was in his civvies, which only served to emphasize how emaciated he’d become. A thin neck stuck out of his collarless shirt; his trousers were baggy and cinched in tight around his waist. It seemed to Nellie as though the war had pared him down to the bone. There was nothing left of him.
‘I’m burning my uniform,’ he said flatly.
Then she saw that he’d stuffed his uniform into the old dustbin. It was full of khaki, now crackling into flame, blackening and turning to ashes. Only his greatcoat had been spared, laid over the penny-farthing trailer, along with his spurs. He saw her looking at it.
‘I might as well hand back the greatcoat – up the army depot at London Bridge. They’ll give me a few bob for it,’ he said, turning away from her to poke the flames to life again.
‘Sam,’ she said hesitantly, ‘I think we ought to go and see Lily, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know anything, Nell,’ he said, and his reluctance was painful to watch. ‘I’ve got no good news for her.’
‘But still, she’ll want to hear whatever you can tell her. It’s the not knowing that eats away at you, I had it for long enough with you. She’ll be happy you’re home…’
Although Sam didn’t looked convinced about that, he finally agreed, and later that day they took the tram up to Rotherhithe to see Lily. It was heartbreaking for Nellie to see how brave her friend was in the face of Sam’s return, her joy unfeigned. As they sat round the kitchen table, Lily took Johnny on to her knee, listening, while Sam stitched together all her dark imaginings, with a few threads of fact about Jock. He told how they’d both been driving their team when it was hit with shrapnel. Jock had fallen, along with the other team driver, and Sam had been forced to go on alone. They’d been separated on the battlefield and Sam hadn’t seen Jock again. The battle of Ypres had dragged on another week or so, their battery decimated and Sam himself wounded.
‘After that, I didn’t know nothing till I woke up in that Belgian hospital,’ he said flatly. He’d forced out these bald facts in short, emotionless sentences and when he saw Lily’s tears begin to fall he simply got up and walked out. Nellie gathered Lily and Johnny into her arms. ‘I’m so sorry, Lil,’ was all she could say. ‘He’s not the same.’
The year turned and it was January of 1919 before Charlie came home, still only seventeen but now a manly, seasoned soldier. She hoped he might be able to reach Sam, but although the brothers greeted each other warmly enough, they never mentioned the war in her hearing. Wicks’s yard had closed during the war, so neither of them had a job to return to. They both sat, every day, scanning the newspaper advertisements for jobs, exchanging the odd complaint about the scarcity of work for returning soldiers. Charlie, always self-sufficient, one day announced, to everyone’s surprise, that he’d decided to stay in the army. Nellie waited for Sam’s protest, but he greeted the news with uncharacteristic indifference.
In the weeks since Sam’s return Nellie had been forced to admit that she hadn’t grown to know this new Sam at all. She began to ask herself how she could marry a man who was now a complete mystery to her. It was a cruel irony. For all she knew, this Sam might as well be that other soldier he’d been mistaken for in the Belgian hospital. He had come back older, sadder, harder, but worse than all this, Sam wouldn’t talk to her. She wanted to take the burden of some of his awful memories, but from the moment he’d stepped off the boat from France he hadn’t said a word about it. Perhaps he never had been a great talker, but she could always tell what he was feeling. Now she didn’t even know if he was happy to have survived. He was impenetrable.
And she wasn’t the only one hurt by his indifference. Even Matty couldn’t penetrate Sam’s new rock-hard exterior. It was a bitter sadness to Nellie, seeing how the little canary hovered around her once adoring brother. When she hugged him, he would slowly disentangle himself with a cutting, ‘You’re not a little girl any more, Matty.’ Nellie almost felt that those who loved him most were being punished, or perhaps he was punishing himself, by pushing them away. But what had he done wrong, except fight in a war not of his making?
One night, early in the new year, Nellie and Sam were sitting up late, waiting for Matty to return from the Star. She came in with a troubled look on her face.
‘Want something to eat, love?’ Nellie asked, but Matty shook her head, glancing at Sam. ‘Actually, I’ve got some news!’ She waited for Sam’s response and when it didn’t come, sighed.
‘Good news, we hope! Don’t we, Sam?’ Nellie said, rather too brightly.
‘Well,’ Matty went on, ‘that American agent’s been after me again. I’m thinking of taking him up on his offer.’ Again the young girl looked hesitantly at her brother. Stirring in his seat, he looked at her blankly. ‘Well, it’s your life, Matty, you must do as you like.’
Matty’s face crumpled. Turning away, so Sam couldn’t see the tears on her face, she left them alone together. Nellie couldn’t believe what she’d witnessed. She guessed Matty had no intention of going to America but merely wanted Sam to protest, as he once would have done. Nellie decided enough was enough. She screwed up her courage.
‘Sam, I want to know what happened to you out there…’ She paused as the fire crackled and wind soughed down the chimney, filling the little kitchen with a burst of smoke. He poked the fire.
‘Needs sweeping,’ he said.
‘For God’s sake, Sam.’ She was getting angry. ‘I can’t pretend any more! You’re a different feller. Look at the way you’ve treated Matty and you’ve hardly said two words to Charlie since that boy came home. If you’d seen the hell he went through looking for you, you could at least show some interest in him! I know it’s the war but I think if you could just talk to me—’
He cut her off. ‘Well, you should know me by now, Nellie. I’m a quiet old stick at the best of times. Anyway, there’s things I don’t want to put in your mind, you’re better off not knowing. ’
He wasn’t angry; in fact, she would have welcomed some anger. Any feeling would have been better than this impenetrable shell. But what did she expect? He’d been away for most of the time they’d been courting. Perhaps she was now as much a stranger to him as he was to her. She remembered him as a soft boy, certainly far too soft on her and how she’d scorned him for so long. In the end she knew that what had attracted her was his goodness. He was a good man, one she knew would always do the right thing. She’d taken to studying that old photograph of him she’d carried all through the war. She could see in it now, the beginnings of the change, his face set and grim, trying to look like a hard man, but under the man’s uniform there had still been her Sam. As she bent down to kiss him goodnight, he turned his cheek to her. Standing up, she felt her heart shrivel a little.
‘Goodnight, love,’ she said, and, wishing she believed it more, ‘We’ve got all the time in the world for talking.’
But it was to be weeks before Nellie eventually found out that it had happened at Ypres. ‘Wipers’, Sam pronounced it, not because he didn’t know better but just because to give it a silly name might somehow diminish its horror. Like calling the devil ‘old nick’. But whatever it was called, it was at Ypres she’d been robbed of her Sam, the good man she’d grown to love. Oh, he had come back all right in body, the head wound that had left him unconscious for weeks all healed up. He still had all his limbs attached, eyes seeing, ears hearing, though he had grown deaf in the clamour of firing off a million shells a day. But however grateful she was to have him back, through the long winter weeks of 1918 she had become convinced it was a different Sam who’d returned from Flanders. His coldness, she was sure, wasn’t intended to wound, yet for her it bordered on cruelty. He hadn’t once told her he loved her since he’d got back. Now it was she who hung about him, waiting for a smile. And still he wouldn’t talk.
Then one sad day, towards the end of January, she made her decision. ‘The wedding’s off, Sam,’ she said.
He was sitting by the fire, reading the job adverts in the South London Press. He looked up sombrely and began slowly folding the newspaper, while she stood in front of him, waiting. The old Sam would have pleaded, perhaps even cried, at least asked for an explanation. Instead, he looked at her fixedly and said, ‘If you think that’s best, you must do what you want.’
‘How can you be so cold about it?’ she blurted out. ‘You’re not the same, Sam! I always liked you to be strong, but not hard. I know it’s the war’s done it. If you’d only tell me about it, maybe I could help you get back your old self.’
Sam shook his head. ‘Leave it, Nell!’ he shouted, flinging the paper aside. ‘I’ve told you there’s things happen in war that a woman’s got no business knowing. Now leave it alone, will you, for Christ sake!’
He’d never raised his voice to her before, and she recoiled. Although Nellie had learned early to stand up for herself and had carried her whole family through the war, what she loved about being with Sam was that she didn’t have to be the strong one all the time. He’d always had his soft side to others as well as her, but where she was concerned, he’d been unfailingly protective. This new, silent Sam now revealed a coldness she’d never imagined his warm heart could contain. He simply didn’t seem to care.
‘I’ll find lodgings somewhere else. I don’t want it to be awkward for you, Nell.’
He walked out, without another word, and she didn’t follow. He’d left his army greatcoat hanging over the back of the kitchen chair and as she picked it up, a small book fell out of the pocket. It was his army service book; it had a buff cover with Royal Field Artillery. ‘C’ Battery Camberwell Howitzers printed on the front. With it was a voucher for the return of his greatcoat, promising a pound if he took it to the receiving office at London Bridge Station. She put the voucher on the mantelpiece, then, sitting down by the fire with the coat over her knees, she opened the book. The light from the gas lamp revealed brown stains on the cover… blood? Was it Sam’s? Or maybe it was just from the mud at Ypres. Here, perhaps, was a speck of that slimy sea of clay and ooze into which her poor boy had vanished.
She knew she shouldn’t read it, but the temptation was overwhelming. If he hadn’t been such a closed book himself since he’d come back, maybe she would not have opened it. She angled the book up to the lamp. She read all the official entries, his enlistment date, his boyish signature. It was a sparse record of his four years. Training, posting to France, where in France? Just ‘in the field’, which field? A muddy, bloody one, with no name. Wounded early in 1916, he’d been sent to hospital and then back to the fighting. She remembered the day she’d come upon him in the bath. How sick she’d felt, seeing that scar snaking across his chest. Here it was recorded, so matter-of-factly. Then came the record of that leave in April 1916, when he’d been so passionate and asked her to marry him. Nellie smiled, remembering the excitement of walking out with her handsome soldier beau. She turned to the conduct sheet, all signed off as exemplary, until she reached October 1917; then came something that shocked her to the core. The model soldier had been charged with neglect of duty and locked up in an army prison.
She had to read it twice. Sam? Neglect his duty? Never! Desertion? No, she knew they shot them for that. But something had happened. Was this what was stopping him from talking? Was it guilt? What had her Sam done that warranted imprisonment? She had to know.
That evening, before she left for the Star, Nellie took Matty into her confidence. ‘Matty, I’ve called off the wedding.’
‘Oh, no, Nell, you can’t! He still loves you, I know he does!’
‘Well, I wish he’d tell me that himself. You wouldn’t know it, to hear him.’
‘I know he’s not been himself, but you could bring him back… don’t give up on him, Nellie, not after all you two have been through.’
Matty had more faith in her ability to get through to Sam than she had herself. But the girl was right: she couldn’t give up on him. She waited up for him, and when he came home, he looked more weary and sad than she’d ever seen him.
‘I’ve found a room with one of my old mates from Wicks’s,’ he said. ‘Can Charlie and Matty still stay here for a bit till they’re settled?’ he asked dully. Nellie’s heart twisted at the thought of breaking up her adopted family.
‘Don’t talk like that, Sam. This is their home.’
Sam sat himself in her father’s old chair. With one leg crossed over the other, foot swinging gently, he began rolling a cigarette. That was another thing he’d picked up out there: he’d come back a chain smoker. He stared blankly into the fire. Quietly, she sat down opposite him and placed the book on the arm of the chair.
‘I’m sorry, I read it. About you being locked up. What happened, Sam? Did you do something bad? Tell me. I won’t think none the worse of you. What does it mean, neglect of duty? You’re not one for breaking the rules.’
Sam looked into her eyes for a long moment, then he shook his head, as though he could shake away the memories held there. She took it as a dismissal.
‘All right, Sam,’ she said, getting up to leave. ‘I won’t trouble you no more with it. I always thought you was a good man, but if you can’t even tell me, it must have been pretty bad, whatever you did. Goodnight.’
As she turned away, suddenly Sam started to talk. ‘I’ll leave you to decide if it was a bad thing I did, Nell.’ His words were slow and heavy, as if he was struggling to get them out. ‘Bad and good got all topsy-turvy out there. It was hard to know, sometimes, which was which.’
Nellie watched as he took out his tobacco pouch and rolled yet another cigarette. He pinched the end, pulling out loose strands of tobacco, struck a match and watched the tip glow as he inhaled. She studied his beloved face, noticing again how its boyish smoothness had been etched by the sorrow of war. He no longer needed to play at being the hard man: the war had made him into one. Staring into the fire, he seemed to forget Nellie was there and his story began to pour out.
‘I think I was a good soldier, Nell, or as good as any. I did my duty, and I wasn’t a coward. I didn’t get locked up for desertion, they would have shot me for that! No, it was the horse. I did it for the horse.’
‘The horse?’ She couldn’t have been more surprised. ‘What happened with the horse, love?’
‘I called him Dandy Grey Russet. It wasn’t his army name, but we all gave our horses pet names. It was from one of those sayings me mum had, she’d call me in from the streets. “Let me wash that neck of yours, it’s dandy grey russet”, and she’d scrub till my skin was red raw, or she’d say, “That shirt needs a bloody good wash, it’s dandy grey russet!” Where it came from, I couldn’t tell you… it just meant that shade of grey, you know, when things need a wash.’
Nell smiled, her face softening. ‘Your mum couldn’t abide dirt, could she?’
Sam carried on. ‘As soon as I saw that horse, I thought, I know what I’ll call you! He was a Yankee horse, shipped over from America to France, poor beast had no choice. See, by 1915 we’d run so short of our own horses, all dead or worn out, we had to buy up American horses. But they was a sorry sight, after months swilling about in a boat on the Atlantic. Shaggy coats, no shoes. Mustangs they called ’em, meant to be tough, and they never once disappointed us. Anyway we fed ’em up, clipped their manes, put shoes on ’em, and by the time I first saw him, my Yankee was such a beautiful sight! Light grey, black eyes, charcoal mane and tail. So being a Yankee Doodle Dandy and a grey, I couldn’t call him anything else but Dandy Grey Russet!’
‘That was a lovely name to give him, Sam, he sounds beautiful.’
Sam looked up, remembering she was there. She held her breath, hoping she hadn’t broken the spell, praying he would carry on.
‘Soon it was just Dandy. We learned the ropes together. At first I think I was on the floor more than I was on his back, but we soon got to know each other’s ways. I was driving a six-horse team, pulling a big old howitzer. We had three drivers on each team. I was the front rider on Dandy, farthest from the limber. All our team were Yankees, tough as you like. By the end of training, we weren’t six horses and three men, we were like one animal. We lived and breathed together and sometimes, when it was cold enough with the snow on the ground, we even slept together. We’d take our blankets down to the picket line and sleep with our horses for the warmth.’
‘Oh, did you ever get the socks?’ She bit her tongue, it sounded so pathetic, but for the first time Sam smiled.
‘Thanks, Nell, I got them, they fitted a treat.’
‘So, how was it you got into trouble for the horse?’
‘I got to love Dandy. He had a lovely nature – brave, clever, heart of gold. He always set the pace, always eager, would do anything you asked, go anywhere. He was special. We had to pull that gun over rocks and streams, through woods, up hills, and when it got bad, we pulled it through battlefields, bumping across dead and dying men, through sucking, stinking mud, always the mud. Dandy would fly through the shelling and I’d just about stay on his back.’
Sam threw his cigarette end on to the fire and immediately started to roll another. He inhaled deeply.
‘I remember, once, we came up to a shell hole too quickly and I thought we’d tumble in and have the gun roll on top of us, but I swear he turned into a Pegasus and flew! Where he went the other five followed, we was like some flying chariot. How the gun didn’t pull us back to earth, I don’t know, but it bounced behind us till we got to the line, with it still in one piece. And then came the day when we both got wounded. Do you remember, Nell, that day I was in the bath, you saw my scar?’
‘Do I remember? I couldn’t sleep for worrying how you got it, and you never did tell me.’
‘In the records, it says I was wounded by my horse falling on me. But it was nothing of the kind. Dandy saved my life that day. We’d just unhitched the gun when Jerry starts their bombardment, we fire back and the whole field explodes with shells. Dandy could take the noise, didn’t shy and bolt like some of them. But he was trembling. I speak in his ear and he stays with me solid as a rock. I’m looking for a way through the fire and smoke when all of a sudden Dandy’s pushing me back towards our guns, where I don’t want to go. “No, yer stupid beast,” I shouts at him, “not that way!”’ I’d just unhooked him, and normally he’d know it was time for us to get behind the lines till our guns needed to be moved on again. But he just wouldn’t budge and I got angry.’
Sam leaned forward, staring into the fire; he seemed to be following the battle in the flickering flames. ‘I could see a way out of Jerry’s firing range and I was damned well going that way. But Dandy keeps shoving me with his flanks and edging me back towards our guns, there was no way I could get him to turn. Suddenly his legs buckle and he falls ever so slowly on to his knees and then over on to his side, with me pinned underneath. That’s when I hears the whine. They say you don’t hear the whizz bang that kills you. Well, I heard this one, and it would have killed me if I’d carried on going the way I wanted. It landed just in front of us and Dandy got sliced with the shrapnel, down his left flank, and I got sliced down mine. But I tell you, Nell, that shell would’ve blown me to bits if I’d been up front, leading Dandy where I wanted him to go. I swear that horse knew what was coming, and he saved me.’
‘Thank God for the horse,’ Nellie gasped. ‘I love him too now!’
‘We went to the hospital together. I got strapped up and he had a couple of days’ peace in a field far away from the shelling. I fed him up with warm bran mash, the way he liked it. Looked after him like a baby, I did. Dandy thought he was back on the prairie. It was lovely to see him kicking out in that field. But peace didn’t last very long in that place.’
Just then Nellie heard the front door; it was Matty back from the Star. She opened the kitchen door, but Sam didn’t even look up. He was oblivious, lost in the memories that had begun to pour out. Nell simply nodded at Matty, who crossed quietly to the scullery. Nellie heard her making tea. Sam carried on.
‘After a few days we had to hitch up our team and get back up the line. But that wasn’t the last scrape old Dandy got me out of. A whole year I didn’t get a scratch, it seemed like nothing could touch us. Then we got to Ypres.’ Sam took in a great heaving breath and shook his head. ‘We should never have pushed on. The rain, you never saw nothing like it, solid from July to November, turned the place to a swamp. It wasn’t the right time to push forward, but the bloody generals had to stick to their plan, didn’t they? It was all for a ridge. Passchendaele; I don’t know what it means, but I know what it felt like. It felt like hell, rain and thunder, shells pounding and mud churning. We had to ride our horses into that, moving the guns further up the line. Our own bloody shells had broken up all the drainage, the rain had nowhere to go, just turned the earth into yellow soup. It was awful, stank of blood and guts and sulphur and gas. We put down duckboards, but either side the mud was treacherous. The standing order was that if the horses went into the mud, they had to be left or shot, on no account was we to stop for the horses, we had to push on... for the ridge, for Passchendaele.’
Matty crept in, put two cups of tea on the table, and silently took her own tea up to bed. Nellie heard the creak of the stairs, and when all was quiet, she asked Sam to carry on. She felt spellbound, carried back to the thick of that battle she had so long tried to imagine. Only now was she realizing how far away Sam had really been from her during all those years of fighting.
‘Our team was nipping along when two wheels of the gun carriage edged off the duckboards and started to sink. We whipped our poor old beasts on till they couldn’t pull them through that sludge any longer. First the back driver, Tom, got hit and he fell off, with his head half blown off, and then the shrapnel hit Jock behind me, he hung on for a bit, then he fell off.’ Here his voice broke. ‘I couldn’t stop for him! Me and Dandy pressed on, we had to, Nell. If we’d stopped, the gun would’ve sunk, we had to get them to the line. I heard Jock, yelling at me to push on and get the gun out. And we did! Those brave beasts broke their hearts, pulling that gun, and when we got to the new line the bodies were lying two deep. It was carnage, what was mixed into that mud, I can’t tell you. All sorts, arms, legs, bits of flesh…’
Sam started shaking, the cigarette fell to the hearthrug, and Nellie threw it on the fire. She handed him the cup of hot, sweet tea, cupping it for him with her hands; as he drank it down, the shaking subsided, but Nellie was frightened she might have pushed Sam too far.
‘Oh, my poor love, you don’t have to go on, not if it’s too hard.’
‘It’s getting late, duck. I wanted to tell you, but it’s getting late and…’
Nellie knew that, for now, she would have to be patient. Sam’s silence had cracked, but she had to have faith that eventually the truth would pour out, and she would have her Sam back. He still hadn’t told her he loved her, but for that, too, she would have to wait.
Two days passed, and though Sam didn’t move out into lodgings, neither did he open his heart to her again. It was early in the morning and they were all rushing to get ready for work. Sam had already left for London Bridge; he was going to hand in his greatcoat and collect his de-mob suit. It was to have been his wedding suit. A knock on the door came shortly after he’d left and, thinking he’d forgotten something, Nellie dashed to open the door. She was instead met by a round-faced young man, with curly fair hair and an eye patch, still dressed in khaki. Nellie started back in shock. Expecting Sam, she had instead come face to face with a ghost.
‘Jock!’ He caught her as she stumbled forward into his arms.
‘Sorry to give you such a shock, Nell. I only got back last night. Lily told me to get round here first thing and tell you and Sam before any one else!’
Alice came running in when she heard Nellie’s cry, then the boys careered down the stairs, till the little kitchen was full to bursting. Tears of joy were followed by a barrage of questions. Alice plied him with tea and toast, while the family gathered round to hear Jock’s story. That day at Ypres, when Sam had had to leave him, the shrapnel wound hadn’t killed him. Instead, he’d been left half-blinded and insensible. Somehow, he had crawled to a shell hole. When he’d regained consciousness, the battle had moved on and the shell hole had filled up with water.
‘I kept slipping down, couldn’t see, couldn’t climb out. I thought that was me lot, I’d drown there, for sure. Then I see this head peering over the shell hole. Sodding Bosch! They had me out of there in a jiff, decent enough fellers, bandaged me eye and makes me join a line of prisoners. Put me on a train to a prison camp in Munster and that’s where I’ve been ever since! Couldn’t believe it when they tipped us all out. The Jerries told us the war was over, just downed their rifles and walked out the camp. Left us to our own devices, so I started walking home!’
By now, Nellie and Alice were late for work, so Jock offered to walk down to Duff’s with them.
‘I really wanted to see Sam, where is he?’ Jock asked as they turned into Spa Road.
‘He’s gone to hand his greatcoat in.’
Jock nodded and said, anxiously, ‘Lily told me the wedding’s off. She says he’s a different bloke and I’ve got to talk some sense into him.’
‘Well, I wish you would, Jock. I’ve tried, God knows,’ Nellie said, shaking her head.
‘I don’t know what’s happened to him, Nell, but it was only the thought of marrying you kept him going out there!’
‘Well, he’s told me it was his horse kept him going! He started to talk about what happened out there, then he clammed up again.’
‘It changes you, Nell. We’ve all come back different. It’s not you he’s shutting out, it’s himself. Some of us just shut ourselves down out there… had to. I reckon, right now, he’s scared stiff of losing you, but he wouldn’t say.’
Alice put a comforting arm round Nellie’s shoulder and smiled gratefully at Jock.
‘Jock, do you know what happened with that horse of his?’ Nellie asked. ‘Something bad enough to get him locked up?’
Jock shook his head. ‘Locked up? I didn’t know nothing about that! Probably already in the prison camp by then. Listen, I’ll see if I can catch him on the way back from London Bridge, try and get it out of him.’
They had just reached Pearce Duff’s and stood on the corner opposite St James’s railway arch. Jock gave them both a hug and was about to leave them when Nellie noticed something, almost a bundle, halfway through the arch. She put her hand on Jock’s arm and pointed. The arch, one of hundreds in the viaduct, was more a deep tunnel – cavernous, echoing, dripping with moisture, encrusted with soot and thick grime. It boomed with the noise of steam trains thundering overhead every few minutes. Sam had always laughed at her when she’d hurried him through one of these arches. He hardly even registered he was walking beneath twelve railway tracks and could never understand why they made her so jumpy.
‘You go and clock in, Alice,’ she said, ushering her sister towards the factory gates. ‘You’re late enough already. I just need a word with Jock.’
Alice dashed off as Nellie steered a puzzled Jock towards the arch entrance.
‘What is it, Nellie? What’s in there?’
‘Sam would have gone through this arch on his way to London Bridge,’ she said, her throat like sandpaper. She and Jock walked cautiously about three feet into the tunnel, when the first train passed overhead. It was like being locked inside a vast drum, with a giant pounding on it over and over again. Then she saw the bundle move, a huddled figure swamped in an army greatcoat, his hands clamped to his ears to shut out the reverberating memories, and she knew it was Sam. As the second and the third trains clattered over in quick succession, she could see his whole body trembling: he was back at Ypres. She could imagine him, holding the horses steady as the guns fired and fired for hours on end, till his poor ears became instruments of torture.
Now Sam was on all fours, crawling back towards them and the light of day. His progress was agonizing, as though he were crawling through sucking mud; he strained every muscle to move forward an inch. Nellie went to run to him, but suddenly there were twelve trains overhead and then the clattering, shuddering, hissing and thudding were magnified to an ear-splitting level. Billowing, choking drifts of dirty smoke filled the arch and, to Sam, it must have felt as if he had entered the mouth of hell once more.
Jock held her back. ‘No, let me go, Nellie. I know what to do.’
Jock walked quickly forward into the darkness of the tunnel, wreathed in smoke and silhouetted against the filtering sunlight of the entrance. As she followed, more slowly, she could see Sam looking up, his face, through the clearing smoke, ghastly white and bathed in sweat.
‘Jock?’ he croaked, and shook his head. ‘No, you never got up! Jock, is that you? Get your head down, man!’
Then Sam screwed himself up into a ball, until Jock bent down and put a firm hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s over, Sam, it’s over. You’re home, we’re both home. Come on, I’ll take you through.’ And, raising his friend up gently, Jock led Sam to the other side and into Nellie’s arms.
Nellie allowed Jock to take him home. It seemed that only someone who’d been in the same hell as Sam could get through to him. She wasn’t in the same world as those two, couldn’t hope to be. She joined Alice on the factory floor and though she’d been docked an hour’s pay, she didn’t care. She worked in a dream, praying that, somehow, Jock would now be able to reach Sam through the crumbling shell he’d built around himself.
When she clocked off that afternoon, it was already getting dark. The lamps weren’t yet lit so she didn’t notice the figure waiting for her outside the gates. It was only when he called out to her that she realized it was Sam.
She spun round. His voice sounded so youthful, she could almost believe it was the young Sam who’d once hung about for her outside the factory gates. Perhaps it was a trick of the twilight, but in the gentle blue shadows his face seemed younger, too, the lines softer.
‘Jock got you home,’ she said quietly.
He nodded, tears in his eyes. ‘He got me home.’
Silently, she linked her arm through his and they began walking back to Vauban Street.
That evening, at Alice’s urging, the family made themselves scarce. They all trooped off to see Matty at the Star, leaving Nellie and Sam sitting alone by the fire. They talked, first about Jock’s miraculous return and then, as the night drew in around them, Sam was finally able to tell her how a horse had got him imprisoned.
‘You deserve to know the rest, Nell,’ he said, as she rose to light the gas lamps. ‘Where did I get to?’
She sat down opposite him again and saw his brow furrow. ‘That day at Ypres.’
‘That’s right. I’d got the gun to the new line and the gunners helped pull it out of the mud. That’s when I saw Dandy, struggling. His forelegs was sunk in yellow slime. His wind was like a bellows and his eyes rolling, poor devil. He couldn’t get to his feet. I was begging him, he didn’t have no strength left in him. Pretty soon his back legs got stuck too. His lovely grey coat was all crusted with blood and yellow ooze. I laid down in the mud and looked him in the eyes and I swear, Nell, I was crying like a baby. I didn’t cry for Tom, or Jock, or any of the other lads, not even for me bloody self. I was crying for a horse. I says, “Come on, Dandy, my old son, don’t let me down now, get up, old mate.”
That’s when Captain Carstairs comes up, starts pulling at me. “Get up, man, we’ve got to push on,” he says. “We’ll have to shoot the horse, he’s done for. Here!” And he hands me his revolver to shoot the dear old lad who’d saved my life, and that’s when I did it, Nell, that bad thing they locked me up for. I said, “No” to an officer on the battlefield. He could have shot me on the spot, but he wasn’t a bad man. I told you good and bad got all mixed up. There we were blowing up men and calling it a good thing, and I wouldn’t shoot my old friend, Dandy, and that was a bad thing. But old Dandy was the only thing kept me believing I was still human. The only thing that kept any warmth or kindness alive in me. He was all I cared about. And the terrible thing is, if I could have traded Dandy for one of my pals, I would have.’
Nell tried to protest, but Sam just shook his head.
‘It was a bad thing – to disobey that order. I put all my mates in danger, holding up the line, for a horse. So in the end I was clinging to Dandy’s neck when Captain Carstairs pulls me off and he puts a bullet in Dandy’s head. He was decent enough to let me say goodbye. I kissed my old friend and thanked him for my life; then we moved on to take the ridge.’
He paused, taking a deep breath, then went on. ‘I don’t want you to know the terrible sights, Nell, thousands dead, screams, hell, it was. And after the battle, when they put me in the army lock-up to do my week’s sentence, all I could think about was my dear old pal, Dandy Grey Russet. I got it all wrong, didn’t I? How can you care for a horse more than for thousands of men? After I’d served me time, I didn’t care whether I come home or not. They sent me back, with a different horse, and we got blown up near enough straight away, ended up in that Belgian hospital, out of it for a month.
‘The war did something to me, Nell, and that’s why I couldn’t talk. I came back not knowing who I was, or what was good or bad any more. And there’s the guilt I can’t shake. Whenever I try to sleep at night, I see Dandy struggling to get out of that mud, looking at me as if I could save him, the way he’d saved me. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t save him and I couldn’t save Jock, or any of them. I couldn’t even save myself. Nellie, Sam Gilbie died in the mud, with his horse. So I understand why you’d want to call off the wedding. Why would you marry a stranger?’
There was a long silence. The banked-up coals on the fire were still glowing, but the flames had died to a weak flicker. Sam knelt and, with the tongs, lifted a few pieces of coal on to the fire, which sputtered and crackled into life. When he looked up, Nellie was silently weeping into her handkerchief.
‘Oh, Sam,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t a bad thing you did. I think that horse saved more than your life.’
Still kneeling, Sam reached over to lay his head on her lap. He wept too, great sobs of grief, his tears making dark patches on her skirt. She stroked his hair.
‘I thought I’d lost you forever, but you did come back to me, Sam, just like you promised.’
‘I love, you, Nell, and I’m still your Sam.’ He paused. ‘Will you marry me?’
Nellie kissed the tears from his face and answered, ‘Yes, of course I will.’
Now the wedding was back on, they needed to start saving and Sam desperately needed to find a job. Old Wicks had died during the war, but the nephew who’d inherited the disused yard wanted to make a go of the business again. The next day, Sam went to see him at the newly reopened yard. Young Wicks was only too happy to take Sam on. He’d already begun replacing the horses taken during the war, he said, and now he needed drivers. He showed Sam into the familiar old stables to see the new stock of horses.
‘There wasn’t a lot of choice, they took nearly every sound horse in the country, but you can take your pick of this lot.’
Sam walked slowly along the stable block, carefully inspecting each horse, till he stopped at the corner stall. Striding past Young Wicks, he headed straight for the horse and put his arms round his neck. The beautiful grey with the charcoal mane didn’t seem to mind at all, but nuzzled Sam’s pocket, as though he knew he would find a treat there.
‘He’s taken to you right away!’ said Young Wicks. ‘Almost like he knew you. I reckon you two’ll do fine together.’
Sam patted the grey’s smooth neck and said, ‘Yes, we’ll do fine.’
So it was settled that he would start back at Wicks’s the very next day and when Nellie went out to see Sam off, she waited on the doorstep, wanting to see him safely back in his old familiar place, up on the driver’s seat, reins in hand. As the cart rattled out of Wicks’s yard, she had her first glimpse of his new horse, the handsome dappled grey he’d told her was the image of Dandy Grey Russet. She waved and called out: ‘He’s beautiful!’
Sam smiled and his eyes met hers with that loving warmth she had so missed since his return. Her Sam was finally home.
Nellie and Sam were married at St James’s Church, on a bright, crisp day in February 1919. Lily was her bridesmaid and Jock Sam’s best man. After they’d exchanged vows, the newly married couple stood beneath the portico of the church while the photographer gamely tried to establish order among the rowdy, chattering guests. Eventually, they were all ranged in tiers on the steps below the portico. Sam drew her closer and his dark eyes looked into hers with undisguised adoration and happiness, while her bright blue eyes brimmed with love and joy, that this day had finally arrived. The photographer was in position and called for attention. Nellie waited patiently as the jostling subsided and, in the moment’s silence, as they posed obediently, she drank in the sight of all her cuckoo’s-nest family gathered around her. Alice, with her new young chap, stood beside Lily; Bobby and Freddie, both now taller than her, stood next. Next to Jock was Charlie, looking smart in his new uniform, and Matty, elegant, in her finest stage dress. Beside her stood Eliza James, a woman who’d once been Madam Mecklenburgh but was now Nellie’s sister, holding fast to the wriggling hand of little William, in his sailor suit. Further down the steps were the Boshers and young Johnny, and from the bottom step she could hear the booming voice of Ethel Brown, trying to keep Maggie and the other custard tarts in order.
It was a day when all that Nellie had ever dreamed of came true and, looking back now over the years, she remembered all the people whose lives had intertwined with hers since that fateful strike of 1911. Some had made choices which were not always wise, and others had made mistakes that were often regretted, but she had made a promise. A promise to Lizzie, which, in the keeping, had proved not a burden after all but instead the source of all the happiness her heart could ever hold.
We hope you enjoyed this book.
To find out about Mary Gibson, click here.
For an invitation from the publisher, click here.