The Riggs Retreat at High Beach was exactly as she remembered it, with the great sign still balanced on its roof, and the veranda crowded with potted plants and cane chairs and tables swathed in white linen. But the customers were all wounded soldiers, bandaged and scarred, bulky in their coarse blue uniforms, and the familiar planks beneath their boots were littered with fag ends and empty cigarette packets.
They were all more than happy to tell her how to get to White Lodge. ‘Follow the road for a hundred yards, ma’am. You’ll see the turning. First left. It’s all marked. Straight down the ‘ill.’ And when she left them they cheered her out of sight.
It was a new, wide road curving through the beech trees where she and David had gone exploring all those years ago. As she cycled down, she was remembering the house, standing so quietly in its mossy clearing, empty and delapidated and echoing. The sight of it now gave her quite a shock.
It was full of people, and their presence made it look smaller than she remembered and oddly unfamiliar. And then it was so smart and clean, the stucco brilliantly whitewashed and all that rusty ironwork repaired and painted blue. Soldiers sat in wheelchairs all along the balcony and pale faces gazed vacantly from the upstairs windows, peering out between new dark blue curtains. In front of the house the grass was gone, and in its place was a gravel drive, full of staff cars and Red Cross ambulances and a bustle of coming and going. It was a well-organized, purposeful place, not a bit like the gentle palace of her dreams.
Nevertheless, it was the place she’d come to search, and the dream still occupied a corner of her mind with its unshakable insistence. She got off the bike and stood holding the handlebars while she decided where to begin. There were two neatly painted signposts on either side of the drive, pointing the way to places such as ‘Outpatients’, ‘Wheelchairs’, ‘Epping Ward’, and as one of them directed ‘Bicycles to Stables’, that was where she went. And having settled her machine among all the others, she found another sign labelled ‘Visitors’ which led her to a new wooden porch and a side door she didn’t remember.
She didn’t recognize the first room she entered either, but that might have been because it was full of desks and filing cabinets and movable screens. However there was a kindly lady sitting behind the second desk who asked her who she’d come to visit and said she didn’t think there was anyone of that name at White Lodge. ‘Is this where you were notified?’ she asked, scanning her list of names.
How can I tell her? Ellen thought. She’ll think I’m off me head.
The lady was smiling encouragement at her. ‘They get things wrong sometimes, you know,’ she said sadly. ‘There are so many casualties.’
‘’E went missin’,’ Ellen said, ‘Seven months ago. September the 20th. Someone said they seen ‘im here.’
‘I’m afraid they were mistaken, my dear,’ the lady said more sadly than ever. ‘If he were here, we would know. We have a record of every single name, you see.’
Strong emotions boiled in Ellen’s brain, frustration, rage, anguish and terror. She’d been holding them in check all through those seven terrible months, and now they erupted and overwhelmed her. ‘He’s here!’ she yelled. ‘Don’t you understand! He’s here! I know he’s here. I’ve been askin’ an’ askin’ fer weeks an’ weeks an’ weeks. He ain’t missin’! He’s here! You got ter let me see him. Please, please, please!’ Her eyes were full of hot tears and her face was distorted. ‘Dear God, please let me find him!’
She was aware that the lady had left the room. She heard the swish of her skirt and the sharp tap-tap of her heels, but she didn’t care. She was out of control, crying with a total and terrible abandon, choking with sobs, and soon she wasn’t even able to stand, but sank to the floor with her head in her hands and the tears oozing between her fingers. ‘Dear God, please let me find him.’
Two people were talking in hushed voices at the other side of the room and she knew they were talking about her, but it was all meaningless and the words she heard made no sense to her now. ‘… missing … convinced … poor girl.’ But presently someone came and stood beside her and she realized that a warm mug was being eased into her hand, and she tried to stop crying long enough to do as she was told and drink.
‘Mrs Cheifitz,’ a voice said close to her ear, ‘if you will come with me, we will look for your husband.’
She opened her eyes and looked up at the speaker with gratitude and a flickering renewal of hope. ‘Drink your tea,’ he advised. ‘You must try to recover a little before we begin.’ He was an elderly man, tall and skinny, with thin grey hair and a weary face. He reminded her of someone, but in her present state of emotional exhaustion she couldn’t remember who it was. ‘We will look for him, my dear,’ he said.
So she drank her tea and dried her eyes and followed him out of the office and along a corridor, keeping her head down because she’d recovered enough to be self-conscious about the way she must look. And suddenly there were the familiar tiles under her feet, blue, green, buff and white in geometrical patterns. And she looked up and saw that they were in the hall, with its high carved ceiling and the wide staircase leading up to that Venetian window and the lovely, panelled doors still painted with birds and blossom. And the sight of it restored her strength so that she lifted her head and straightened her spine. Now she would find him.
‘We will begin upstairs,’ the elderly gentleman said, ‘and I will show you all our injured soldiers, with the possible exception of a few who might be up at the Riggs Retreat.’
‘I seen them,’ she said. ‘’E ain’t there.’ And as the words sounded bare and ungracious, she added, ‘Thanks all the same.’
‘This way,’ he said, smiling at her rough honesty, and although she knew that David was behind that painted door in the great room where the fireplace was, she followed her guide without argument, for he was a kind man and trying to help her, and she could hardly expect him to know what she knew.
So they walked from room to room and bed to bed, and in the next half-hour she saw more suffering than she could ever have imagined, for this was where the worst cases were, men without limbs, or mute with shell shock, men riddled with shrapnel or deep in groaning nightmare. She was torn with pity for them, especially when they looked up at her as she passed, but of course David wasn’t among them. Not upstairs. She’d known all along he wouldn’t be upstairs.
‘You’re sure?’ the gentleman asked. And when she nodded. ‘Well, that’s a relief at any rate. Now I can show you our walking wounded.’ There was a great deal more hope for them.
‘We have four wards downstairs,’ he said, leading the way again. ‘Epping, Bury, Knighton and Great Monk. All named after parts of the forest. We thought it appropriate.’
Who cares? she thought, wishing he’d walk a bit quicker. He did everything so slowly, and the measured tones that had comforted her such a short time ago seemed turgid now, a weight holding her back from where she wanted to be. Oh buck up, do! she urged him, inside her head. Take me to the big room. That’s where we oughter be.
But he didn’t. They searched the three small wards first and they were so crowded it was another quarter of an hour before she finally walked through the painted door into the room of her dreams. And there were the long windows on all three walls, and the moulded ceiling, still picked out in blue and white, and the marble fireplace and everything, just as she’d seen it in her dream. Her blood was racing with excitement now. She could feel her cheeks glowing with it, and the soles of her feet springing from the floor with every step because she ought to have been running. Now, now, now, her thoughts were crowing. Now I shall find him.
The room was full of soldiers, sitting on their beds or shuffling about on their crutches, and there was a ward orderly moving quietly about among them, swabbing the linoleum with a mop and a bucket of disinfectant. For a brief anguished second she realized that if she did find him he could be wounded like all the others she’d seen that afternoon, but her excitement rushed the thought away. Find him first, she told herself. She could think about everything else after.
The men in this room were restored to enough health to take an interest in her. ‘Who yer lookin’ for, missus?’ they asked, as she rushed from bed to bed peering at faces.
‘My husband,’ she told them. ‘Rifleman Cheifitz, Seventeenth London Rifles.’
‘We got quite a few a’ them,’ one man told her. ‘’Ackney an’ Poplar. Never ’eard a’ no Rifleman Cheifitz though. ’E ain’t ’ere, missus.’
‘Yes!’ she insisted, warm with urgency. ‘’E is! ’E’s here somewhere.’ She saw the pitying looks that passed from one pair of eyes to the next, but she wasn’t deterred. And even when she’d searched from one end of the room to the other and looked at every single soldier, including the ones on the balcony, and still hadn’t found him, she wouldn’t admit defeat. ‘I must a’ left someone out, that’s all,’ she said. ‘’E’s in this room somewhere. I know ’e is. I’ll just ’ave ter start again.’
There were two armchairs set beside the empty fireplace and neither was occupied. The elderly gentleman took her by the elbow and led her across to them, for what he had to say to her now was painful and would be better received sitting down.
But she remained obdurately on her feet, leaning against the mantelpiece, frowning.
‘It is very hard to accept that a person one loves might be dead,’ he began gently.
‘’E ain’t dead,’ she said stubbornly. ‘’Ow many more times I got ter tell yer? ’E ain’t dead.’ And then the dream began to wash in and out of her mind in a sudden capricious tide, one moment clear and strong, the next receding and fading. ‘Oh hush up, do!’ she begged, leaning on the mantelpiece, her forearm pressed against the chilly marble, yearning after those tantalizing images. And he hushed, watching her quizzically.
She was standing here. Right here with her arm on the marble. Yes, yes, that’s how it was. And turning. So. Walking forward towards the window. Sunlight dropping square columns through the two at the end. Full a’ motes, all swimming about. And walking forward. Uniforms everywhere. Blue cloth, red ties. Yes, yes, that’s how it was. Walking forward and the middle window open to the balcony. And David …
The ward orderly was standing right in her way, stooped over his bucket. ‘Shift!’ she ordered impatiently. ‘Look sharp about it!’ Stupid man! If he didn’t move, the dream would fade away altogether.
And he straightened his spine and stood up and looked at her. And he was David. A very thin David, with his moustache shaved off and all his lovely thick hair cut back to a wretched stubble, but undeniably David. Warm and breathing and alive.
For a second she was so full of emotion she couldn’t move or speak, joy, triumph, relief and love in exquisite abundance. She’d found him! He was alive! Praise be to God! ‘Oh Davey, Davey, Davey!’ she said stretching out both hands towards him expecting him to catch her in his arms and hold her close and kiss her and tell her they’d never be apart again.
But he didn’t. He didn’t put his arms round her. He didn’t even hold her outstretched hands. He simply stood where he was, clutching his mop as though it were supporting him. And his eyes were the eyes of a dead man, totally blank, without a flicker of light or expression, two terrible voids in his dear familiar face.
The shock struck chill into the centre of her body. ‘Davey?’ she said, and she withdrew her hands to cover her mouth because it was trembling. ‘Davey! What is it?’
The elderly gentleman was standing beside her. ‘Is this your husband?’ he said.
She nodded. It wasn’t possible to speak to anyone except David.
‘You are sure?’
Another nod. Her dear, dear David was still looking at her with those awful eyes. ‘Davey. It’s me. Don’t yer remember?’
‘That’s old Ikey,’ a soldier called to her. ‘’Is name ain’t Cheifitz.’ And the news was passed along the ward. ‘She sez Ikey’s ’er old man! Never! Fancy old Ikey!’
‘Perhaps he just looks like your husband,’ the elderly gentleman was saying.
She tossed her head with exasperation. This was too awful and too ridiculous. ‘I’ll show yer!’ she said looking at all the faces around her. ‘Put that damn mop down!’ she said to David, and when he obeyed, oh, far too meekly, she seized him by the hand and led him to the fireplace. He’s got no will of his own, she thought. I’m leading him about as if he was young Benny. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘I got sommink ter show yer.’ And she stooped and crawled into the hearth, pulling him in after her.
The drawing was still there, a bit faded and smudged at the edges, but still there and still recognizable. ‘Look!’ she instructed, touching it with her fingers.
He looked at it blankly but at least it provoked speech and his voice was unmistakable. ‘A good drawing,’ he said.
‘You done it.’
‘Did I?’ But his voice was flat, as though he didn’t care.
‘It’s me. See?’
He turned his lifeless eyes from the drawing to its model, but there wasn’t the faintest flicker of recognition for either of them.
‘You signed it an’ all. Look, there’s yer initials D.C. David Cheifitz.’
‘Yes,’ he said but the word was as lifeless as his eyes, a flat dull pebble of a word.
She appealed to the gentleman. ‘What’s the matter with ’im?’
‘Shell shock, probably,’ he said. ‘This looks like loss of memory to me, and loss of memory is a very common occurrence among shell shock cases, I’m afraid. I had no idea Mr Ike – um – your husband was a victim. Not that he’s ever been particularly communicative. He came to us from Bexhill, you see …’
She wasn’t listening to him. ‘Don’t ’e really know who I am?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
She crawled out of the hearth, her brain working furiously. ‘There’s got ter be a way!’ she said. ‘We come here before, to this house. Years ago. ’E can’t’ve forgot that!’
David had followed her out of the hearth and now he stood before her, humbly, as though he was waiting for orders. The sight of his subservience annoyed her. ‘Come on!’ she said and she was upset that her voice sounded sharp. But it couldn’t be helped. His inability to remember or recognize anything was like an invisible wall between them. She’d have to be sharp if she was going to break through that. ‘Come on, Davey!’ She was going to remind him.
He glanced at the gentleman to see if he was supposed to obey her, and the gentleman said, ‘Carry on!’ in his kindly voice and she led him to the door and out into the hall.
‘We come in through the back door, an’ all through the kitchens,’ she said feeling she had to explain everything to him. ‘An’ we found a flight a’ stairs, an’ up we come, through this door,’ leading him there and opening it. ‘Green baize. Remember?’ But she could see he didn’t. ‘Then we went up the stairs,’ leading him up, ‘an’ you said you’d like ter do a drawing a’ that winder. Lovers in the winder, or some such. Remember?’ But he was still blank. ‘We stood at the top a’ the stairs on that little landin’.’ And you kissed me, she remembered. Surely you ain’t fergot that.
There was a nightmare quality about this one-sided conversation. It wasn’t natural to be talking to David and getting no response at all. It wasn’t natural to be standing so close to one another and not be touching. They’d reached the little landing now and were side by side in front of the triple window. Perhaps it’s a dream, she thought. Perhaps it ain’t happening after all, and she put out her hands, very tentatively this time, and took him by the shoulders and turned him so that they were facing one another.
And his flesh was warm under her fingers, and as he moved towards her the familiar salty smell of his skin lifted into her nostrils and her senses began to prickle as though they were stirring from a long sleep. She gave a little moan and dropped forwards against his chest, and holding his poor shaven head between her hands kissed him instinctively and passionately full on the mouth.
The blank eyes, a fraction above her own, were reflecting light, the pupils dilating, gathering in upon themselves, the brown irises softening and shifting. And she knew that he was looking at her at last. And then he was kissing her, his mouth urgent, and his hands caressing the small of her back, just as she remembered so well, oh so very well. ‘Ellen, Ellen bubeleh,’ he said, lifting his head. ‘Oy, I never thought I’d live to see you again.’ And then his face crumpled into anguished weeping, and his entire body began to shake and he sank to his knees, clinging to her skirt, frantically, as though he were drowning. And she sank with him, cradling his head in her arms, crooning maternal comfort without being aware of what she was saying. ‘Hush, my lovey, it’s all right now. Hush. Hush. You’re with me.’
He wept for a very long time, terrible gulping sobs, on and on and on, clinging to her skirt with both hands and with his head burrowing into her lap. And the soldiers on their way up and down the stairs walked delicately round them, touching their heads in unspoken sympathy with their rough gentle hands.
Afterwards there was a doctor to see them both and questions to be answered and forms that were filled in by somebody or other, but it was all a hazy business and a long way away. They had found one another again, and that was all that mattered. When the questions were over they were allowed to walk in the grounds among the beech trees, where they talked disjointed nonsense and laughed a great deal and kissed one another in every clearing. And when the bell sounded for supper they kissed goodbye almost cheerfully and she promised to come back next day and bring the kids. And he said he remembered the kids although privately he wasn’t quite sure.
‘They’ll let you ’ome on leave soon,’ she told him as they walked back towards the new porch. ‘Bound to. Wouldn’tcher think?’
But after she’d left him and as she was walking through the hall towards the fine front door, which was now labelled ‘Exit’, she was waylaid by the elderly gentleman, who explained that he’d been on the telephone to Bexhill and Bexhill thought it advisable for Rifleman Cheifitz to return to them for further treatment.
Her face fell visibly. ‘How long for?’ she said. ‘We thought ’e’d get a bit a’ leave. ’E’s earned it, surely ter goodness.’
‘Two or three days;’ the gentleman said. ‘A week maybe. He will need careful treatment as his memory returns you see, my dear. I’m sure you appreciate that. Bexhill is an excellent place.’
She stood before him, her eyes very blue in the spring sunshine. ‘’E ought to ’ave leave,’ she said stubbornly.
‘As soon as I can arrange it,’ he promised. ‘I give you my word. We shall send him down by ambulance tomorrow morning.’ And as her face fell again, he hastened to reassure, ‘The sooner he goes, the sooner he will come back.’
And at that she cheered up. Just wait till I tell the kids, she thought, an’ Mama Cheifitz and dear old Aunty Dumpling.
They were waiting at the gate as she came through the archway into Mile End Place, Aunty Dumpling looking anxious, with little Ben holding on to her skirt, Mama Cheifitz stooped and grey, holding her solemn Jack by the hand, and Gracie standing between them in her blue pinafore, her dark hair just like David’s.
She ran towards them shouting her news, so that they wouldn’t waste another second thinking him dead. ‘He’s alive! I found ’im. He’s coming ’ome!’
All the way down to Bexhill David was remembering things. Not in any discernible sequence, but at least without effort. For the first time since the explosion his brain was functioning again, throwing images onto his inner eye, and feeding his memory with smells and shapes and textures and colours. Ellen’s dark hair, bristling under his fingers, and her lovely breasts lifting with pleasure and those long legs threshing under the coverlet. Why had they spent such a long time away from each other? The war, was it? He had a vague sense that he was slipping in deep mud somewhere, but then Aunty Dumpling’s plump hands filled his mind, sewing ruffles, and he could taste her prune cake. And there was his daughter sitting on his knee, lisping her first words, and giving him goose pimples by stroking his moustache. And it surprised him to remember that he’d had a moustache. He must grow it again. Then a series of paintings and drawings, all enjoyable but making little sense; a child’s painting of a procession; a tenement at night, dark blue and with golden candles in all the windows; a beautiful anguished girl drifting downstream in a boat hung with tapestries; sunlight dappling a girl in a blue cycling suit. And then he was standing on the steps of a town hall somewhere as confetti tossed in the air before his eyes and he gave himself over to the sheer happiness of knowing that he had married his Ellen and that soon, in a few short days, they would be together again. Anything was possible now that he knew that.
As the ambulance drew in at the hospital gate he had a moment of apprehension and bewilderment, fearing that he wouldn’t know where he was. But the grey walls were familiar, and so was the ward where a young nurse led him. He’d sat in that chair by the window and cried for hours when the doctor asked him who he was and he couldn’t remember. He could feel the hot tears on his cheeks even now, and hear the doctor’s voice. A tall man, with a long saturnine face. Now what was his name?
And there he was, standing in the doorway, walking towards him, holding out his hand in greeting, his long face smiling.
‘Norris!’ David said, remembering at once.
‘Well, that’s a good start!’ the doctor said.
The next few days were full of questions, probing, encouraging and, too often, still baffling. But the first one was a pleasant surprise.
‘What do you think of that?’ Dr Norris said as they sat on either side of his desk in the dark consulting room that David remembered quite well. And he picked up a magazine from the desk and handed it across to his patient.
The Essex Magazine! How that cover brought memories! Old Quin in the litter of his office, the presses rolling, Mr Palfreyman consulting his matchsticks. ‘I used ter work there,’ he said. ‘I was a graphic artist.’
‘You still are,’ the doctor told him. ‘Look at page nine. You’re quite a celebrity these days.’
He couldn’t remember the drawings at all, but he knew they were his. ‘I must’ve sent them,’ he said. And he read the captions, hoping they would enlighten him. ‘Four more portraits of the war from Rifleman Cheifitz, our own absent hero. By popular demand.’
‘Well!’ he said, bashful with pleasure.
And the doctor told him about his fame and encouraged him to remember his work.
On the second day the questions were domestic. ‘You remembered your wife, I’m told.’
‘Oh yes!’
‘Tell me about her.’
‘We was at school together. She pinched my cake …’
On the third day Dr Norris turned to military matters. ‘Can you remember the war at all?’ he asked, very casually.
‘Not much. I can remember the mud. An’ the noise. Nothink particular.’ But even as he spoke a very particular image came into sharp focus in his mind.
A headland stretched before him, a wind-buffeted expanse of springy turf, bracken and brambles and squat spiky bushes, and he was afraid. He’d been walking for days, and all on his own. The Jerries could be anywhere, with all them trees fer cover. Terrible stunted trees, survivors, armoured and belligerent, tough hollies with leather leaves curled into spiteful claws, hawthorns, grey and threatening and bristling with spikes, brambles trailing barbed wire, blackthorns like bayonets. And a dark figure running towards him.
‘Sounds like the place where you were found,’ the doctor told him. ‘A farmer brought you in apparently. No marks of identification, barely any clothes, and no idea who you were. You’ve been quite a problem to the authorities.’
‘Why was I on me own?’ he asked.
‘Oh, we’ll get to that by degrees,’ Dr Norris said. Horrors had to be absorbed slowly. ‘Now we’ve started, it’ll get easier. You have my word for it.’
They returned to the topic next day, and this time it did seem easier. He remembered the dixies and Maconochie’s dreadful soup. And the rats squealing when the barrage died down.
‘You can remember being under fire?’ the doctor asked.
He didn’t want to. But he could. ‘Evans always used to say …’ he began. And Evans’ mangled face roared soundlessly before him, filling his vision, and those terrifying, living hands were still clawing the air. Fear closed his throat and the blood was beating in his ears. He grabbed at the desk as he passed out.
‘Do you feel able to talk about it?’ Dr Norris said calmly when they’d brought him round. ‘It would be better for you if you could.’
It was a long painful confession and by the end of it he was drained and drawn and defeated. ‘I left my mate ter die in the mud,’ he said. ‘He could a’ been alive an’ I run off an’ left ’im.
‘He would have been dead,’ Dr Norris said. ‘Nobody could have survived injuries like that.’
‘Honest?’
‘You have my word for it. There’s no need for you to feel guilty about it. You did all that anybody humanly could.’
There was a long pause while David digested the information and the doctor wrote up his notes. Then he put down his pen and gave David a smile.
‘I think we’ve progressed about as far as we can for the moment,’ he said. ‘What would you say to a spot of home leave?’
‘When?’
‘Well, today’s Thursday. Would tomorrow suit? Start with a weekend.’
He sent Ellen a postcard as soon as he got back to the ward. ‘Coming home tomorrow evening. Will be on the 6.15, London Bridge.’ And with great joy he remembered the way he always used to sign his postcards to her. ‘I.L.Y. David.’
The train back to London Bridge was late and travelled slowly. But what did that matter when his mind was full of memories and the tracks were singing. ‘On the way home! On the way home!’