From Susanna’s point of view, the first result of there being a war was a changed attitude on the part of the grown-ups towards lessons. First Esther was allowed to disappear from the schoolroom entirely. Quite casually she got into uniform, and bicycled off every morning to a hospital in the next village. For a time nothing half as exciting as this happened to Susanna, but lessons changed character, the famous women vanished, and distinguished generals and admirals took their places, and she and Miss Crosby spent hours poring over maps of Belgium and France, underlining important places in red ink, which simple occupation would not in peacetime have been considered lessons at all. Then, suddenly, lesson hours began to shorten, and sometimes vanished altogether. First the troops camped near the village ran short of mattresses, and all the women of the neighbourhood turned to and made some more. Miss Crosby was clever with a sewing machine, so Catherine sent her to help, and since there was nothing else to be done with her, she sent Susanna too, who made herself very useful, and thought it enormous fun. The mattresses were hardly finished, and Miss Crosby and Susanna back at the schoolroom table, before the village was full of Belgian refugees. The refugees longed to be understood; they loathed having their worst tales of horror received with a polite “Oui, oui,” or, from those who fancied their French, an extremely foreign shrug of the shoulders, accompanied by an inexpressive “Vraiment!” So Miss Crosby’s assistance was called in, for she really understood French, and heard the tales of suffering with such tears in her eyes that every Belgian heart was warmed. The more the Belgians settled down, the more valuable Miss Crosby’s French became, for the Belgians, swollen with sympathy, considered nothing good enough for people who had suffered as they had. They could not believe that food could be scarce so far from the firing-line, but if indeed it were, then who had more right to such as there was than “Les braves Belges”? The village, however, had begun to lose interest in Belgians; their own miseries were crowding them, if not out of sight, at least into the background, so Miss Crosby became a buffer, tactfully translating screams that “Such vegetables would never, no never, make a soup” into polite speeches of thanks, delivering gifts of thin fowls and scrag ends of meat, with such an air that it closed Belgian mouths already open to say that such food was an insult to their nation, even on occasion snatching the very words from their lips as she murmured: “N’avez-vous pas déjà asset souffert?”
Then at the end of 1915 a hospital was opened just outside the village. It required a lot of getting ready, and of course Miss Crosby, and therefore Susanna, helped, and for a time lessons were dropped altogether.
“It’s only temporary,” Catherine comforted, when Miss Crosby exclaimed in horror at the way Susanna’s lesson hours were dwindling.
But when the hospital was finished, and the first batch of wounded in bed, it was found there was nobody free to look after the linen-room, so as a makeshift Miss Crosby was roped in, and spent hours counting dirty things and handing out clean, and organizing parties to mend. She tried not to let these activities encroach on Susanna’s work hours, but of course they did. She begged Catherine to do something about it.
“You really must find someone to take my place at the hospital; Susanna’s work is being painfully neglected.”
“I know, Crossy dear, it’s a disgrace.”
“It’s a tragedy.”
“Oh, not as bad as that. What she’s missing in grammar and arithmetic, she’s making up in other ways. Talking to the Belgians is very good for her French, and she sews quite nicely since she’s been helping you at the hospital.”
“That’s begging the question. You employ me to teach Susanna, not to help in a hospital; so, much as I love the work, I must insist that I am released as soon as possible.”
“Bless you, Crossy, you are always so stern with me, but I give in—I’ll start looking for somebody this very day.”
And that was the end of the matter. Catherine looked, but she never found, and as the time went on Miss Crosby hadn’t the heart to bother her, for really, with Esdras and Tobit in the trenches, Susanna’s lessons did seem rather unimportant. Besides, Catherine, who had trained as a V.A.D., was put on to night duty, and such hours as she did appear during the day were devoted to the increasingly pressing subjects of coal and food. Also, at this time David upset the house and entire village by deciding to go to the front as a chaplain. In the end, in spite of several passionate interviews with his Bishop, he was kept at home and given another village as well as his own to look after. Everybody but David was thankful to hear of this decision. Catherine, walking home from the hospital, was stopped by an old woman.
“Oh, Mrs. Churston, ma’am, I hear Vicar be not to go for the war, we be terrible pleased in the village, for as we been sayin’—‘What’ll us do if they Germans land, and Vicar away?’ ”
As the months passed, Susanna found herself living with increasing eagerness for the next holidays. The novelty of unusual hours and occupations was wearing off, and the strain of being the only child in a house that had always been full of children, and of hearing nothing but talk of the war and food shortage, told on her. She grew silent, almost morose, and never laughed from the beginning of the term to the end. From the first day of the holidays she was a changed person; it was as though a cork had blown out of her; she clattered noisily and endlessly up and down the stairs, she shouted to the boys, she slammed all the doors, and generally made herself a nuisance.
“Susanna has got out of hand,” said Miss Crosby. “I was afraid she might without regular lessons.”
But Susanna didn’t care what was thought about her; she was savouring to the full the pleasantness of being with Baruch, and of spending her days fooling and laughing and pushing unhappiness into its proper place in the background. Not that even in the holidays could the war be entirely avoided, but the boys looked at it from the same angle as she did. There it was, but no need to be always jawing about it.
In the summer holidays of ’15 they helped on the land, looking after the cattle and later picking the apples and plums.
“There you are, my dears,” said a farmer friend whose plums they had been picking. “Here be a nice basket for yourselves; you’ve been a won’erful help. My Georgie he was a rare one at the fruit picking from the time he could stand a’most, thought a lot of fruit, he did; said he were goin’ to have a fruit farm over in Canada, but of course this war come an’ settled that.”
“But Mr. Pullen,” exclaimed Susanna. “He’ll have his fruit farm after the war; he’s only missing, you might hear from him any day.”
“No, Susanna, wounded and missing telegram say, but before it come we knew he were gone. Missus said to me sudden, ‘Georgie’s gone,’ and I thought an’ then I knew it were so.”
The children left the farm soberly.
“Mrs. Honeysett’s nephew has been killed,” said Manasses. “She heard today.”
“And Bert at the Mill is seriously wounded,” added Maccabeus.
Baruch, who was carrying the plums, stumbled, and all the fruit fell in the road. With yells the children fell on it and threw it back in the basket, together with handfuls of white dust. Some of the dust got on to Susanna’s nose; they decided this was screamingly funny, so, with roars of laughter, spitting plum stones to right and left, they arrived home.
“Seems a shame,” said Susanna to Baruch that night, “that Georgie was killed before he could go to Canada, and you and me, because we’re too young for the war, will be able to go.”
Baruch nodded, fidgeting uneasily.
“Let’s play that new patience,” he suggested.
That September Esdras was wounded. It was only in a minor way, through the foot, but it kept him at home for some months, first in a London hospital, then hopping about on crutches in the grounds of a convalescent home, and finally in the Vicarage on sick leave. Heavenly as it was to have him safe at home, Catherine found him an anxiety. She couldn’t keep him happy; war nerves had made him incurably restless. In the Vicarage and village there was little to amuse him, though she gave up her hospital work entirely in order to entertain him. Whenever he could he dashed off to London for a few days, returning incredibly the worse for wear, and while he was at home had a habit of limping off by himself for hours on end. Catherine was inclined to feel the London exploits the safer of the two. Before the war rumours had reached her that he was seeing too much of Fanny Griggs; she was married now, but was he amusing himself with someone else? After he had been home for two months a medical board sent him back to the trenches.
He wrote to Catherine some weeks later. While he had been at home she had felt miserably out of touch with him; with the arrival of his letter she felt him with her again.
“Dearest Mother,
I have been wanting to write to you ever since I got back, but have been too busy. Don’t worry about me (my soul, I mean, not my body). I am not awfully good at this war business, and must get through it in my own way. I know you worried about me while I was home, and however little I showed it I felt a cad, but if it’s any comfort to you to know it, I behaved quite decently all the time, at least up to my own standards if not quite up to Father’s. I have been sitting in a shell-hole writing this and humming ‘Rock of Ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee,’ one of my more appropriate quotations, don’t you think?
Love, Esdras.”
During the January of 1916 Judith came home. Catherine took a day off from the hospital and went over to see her. She found her comfortably settled in her house in the country, but indescribably gloomy. She poured out a tale of woe. She was expecting a baby in the autumn. Her husband had placed her in the depths of the country, and had then settled himself in London doing some sort of government work which he wouldn’t discuss with her. All the women in the world were doing useful interesting things except herself, and she was bored, bored, bored.
“But, darling,” Catherine expostulated, “you’ll be fit to do some war-work if you want to, at the end of the year.”
“Yes, clean out the pantry of the local hospital, I suppose; a job any fool could do.”
“Perhaps Harry will let you and the baby join him in London; you’ll find any amount of interesting work there.”
“Harry let me bring his baby to London! Not if I know my Harry. As soon as he knew we were expecting Kitchener, he said: ‘That knocks London on the head for you, old lady.’ And he sent off a cable then and there to tell them to get this place ready, and came back to me grinning from ear to ear and rubbing his hands. ‘That’s splendid,’ he said. ‘I like to think of you settled down at ‘Gales’ just the place to bring up a baby.’ ”
“It’s a beautiful house.”
“Oh yes, I know, but it’s terribly depressing. Everything creaks, and the wind always howls round the chimneypots. That’s why it’s called ‘Gales’ I suppose.”
“Come home for a bit.”
“I can’t very well. Harry doesn’t seem to know when he’ll get a day off, but he’ll pop down here when he does and expect to find me waiting for him.”
“I wonder what his work is.”
“So do I. Nothing very exciting, I imagine. He loves having secrets from me; he never talked to me about his work while we were in Egypt, though I could have been a great help to him, and, goodness knows, there was nothing mysterious about his job there; he discussed it with everybody else, even with the Arabs.”
“Why don’t you come home with me and let Harry join you there?”
“He wouldn’t like it; you’re all busy, he likes being the only person who has to work.”
“Well, he can’t hope to find that anywhere in wartime.”
“He can here.”
“It’s very bad for you sitting about by yourself; surely Harry will let you join him in London for a week or two?”
“Just at present he’s got no coal, and I must say I would hate that. Here we’ve heaps of wood.”
“Yes, and you’ve no idea how lucky you are; this is the first warm room I’ve been in for weeks; we mostly burn what Susanna can pick up. I’ve almost forgotten what a hot bath feels like, so if you’ll have me I’ll come and stay with you a little later on, and I’ll send Crossy and Susanna—a holiday will do them both good. Goodbye, darling, go and see your grandfather whenever you can. He’s alone there now, you know; both the uncles have gone to the front—really wonderful of them, for they’re over age, of course. You’ll find your grandfather is very proud of them.”
Tobit was wounded. He was some time in a hospital, and then was sent home. The war didn’t seem to have changed him at all. He spent his days contentedly pottering about the garden, assisted by Susanna.
“Funny,” he said to her one day as he happily sniffed at the wallflowers. “With me having such a nose for smells you’d think I’d be knocked over in France, but I’m not, you know; got used to them right away, and now I never notice them. Funny life living in a trench. I’ve got so used to it that often I’m just pottering about looking for plants as if I were at home.” He sucked at his pipe. “Wonderful stubborn little fellows, plants; no matter how often you blow them to bits, give them a little breather and some rain and sun, and they all crop up again.”
Susanna gasped.
“Flowers! Near the trenches?”
“Bless you, yes. There’ll be primroses out in the woods now; at least there were where I was last year.”
There was a long silence, both of them busy with the weeds; then Susanna straightened her back and examined a dandelion she had uprooted.
“Fancy,” she said, “primroses in a war.”
“Funny things, wars,” Tobit grunted.
The Easter holidays that year were very cheerful, only marred by the fact that Esdras wasn’t there. Finding Tobit at home was sufficient excuse to send the children into the wildest spirits. With both their brothers in France they felt sometimes, if they were at all hilarious, that the grown-ups were thinking them callous. They knew they were not; they knew that they might hear any day that one or the other brother had been killed, but this prospect wasn’t one to brood on. Grown-ups had to be given in to, and if they liked thinking of depressing things, there it was. So it was grand in these holidays at least to have an excuse to be cheery. Aware, as they said goodbye to Tobit on their return to school, that his sick leave was nearly over, they were at pains to be especially casual.
“Cheerio, Tobit.”
“So long, old thing.”
David was shocked.
“Do you think,” he said to Catherine, “they can realise how little leave Tobit has left?”
“I expect they do, but children are so sensible, they never deliberately flagellate their feelings like we do.”
Tobit went back to France in June. Most regretfully he dragged himself away from the garden.
“Seems a pity to leave all this,” he said to Catherine, waving his arm round the lawn. “Still, I’ve been lucky in having the pink may out before I left.”
Seeing that Susanna would be sixteen in August, Catherine gave up the unequal struggle with her lessons. It was farcical to go on trying to fix in three hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. So she had her taught cooking, and attached her in a minor way to the hospital kitchen staff.
“And you go and have a talk to Mrs. Bell,” she said to Miss Crosby. “She’s in charge of the kitchen, and between you, you can allot Susanna’s day, half to the pots and pans and half to arithmetic.”
Baruch, arriving home for the summer holidays, was most upset by this new arrangement. Susanna’s time was no longer his to command.
“There’s things you could do in the hospital if you liked,” suggested Susanna doubtfully. “Orderly, you know, but I don’t think you’d like it.”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t,” Baruch agreed. “I shall go and help Mr. Pullen again, like we did last year.”
On their birthday they had a picnic.
“Down there,” said Susanna wistfully, as they unpacked the basket, “we gave a tramp scones, fat buttery scones.”
“And buns,” added Sirach.
“And we had cake with icing,” Maccabeus almost whispered.
“Oh, lord,” said Sirach, “if we only had them now.” An aeroplane murmured in the distance; he got to his feet, and shading his eyes, strained after the little speck till it vanished. “Oh, how I hope the war lasts long enough for me to fly. Come on, we’ve eaten enough of this muck; let’s go and look at the cairn.”
The cairn was a heap of stones he had erected on the hillside to the memory of Samson’s fight. He wandered down to it, followed by Manasses and Maccabeus. Susanna looked after them.
“Sirach said the other day about wanting the war to go on till he was old enough to join the Flying Corps, and mummy said he must never say it again; it was awful to want the war to go on one second longer than it must.”
“All women talk like that,” Baruch retorted. “Lot of silliness.”
“Why, you don’t want to fly, do you?”
“Of course I do, who wouldn’t?” He rolled over on his back. “It must be fine up there dashing about, and when the Boche comes over strafing him good and proper.”
“Or him strafing you.”
“Yes, or him strafing me—exciting, anyway; but as a matter of fact I couldn’t fly; I wouldn’t pass.” He tapped his glasses. “They told me so at school, so if there’s still a war on I’ll just go into the ordinary army, I suppose.”
“Don’t be silly. There won’t be a war when we’re grown-up.”
Baruch twisted over on to his chest and rolled a stone down the hillside.
“Might be. I say, look at that, Sukey. What a long way it’s rolled.”
Susanna didn’t answer, but looked at him in bewilderment. He, of all people, to speak so casually of going to the war. Of course he didn’t really expect it would last so long, but that he could speak calmly of the bare possibility amazed her. Of course, fear of ordinary things was outside his understanding, but when one thought how people came back from the war, it took no imagination to grasp the awful things there would be to see.
“You might go into the Navy,” she said tentatively.
“What did you say? I say, Sukey, find a large stone, and see if it will roll far enough to hit the others.”