At seven thirty on the morning of the first day of July 1916 – a glorious summer’s day, unusual for that year, of sunshine and birdsong – the long-awaited Push, the Big Show, the battle that was, so it was said, to mark the beginning of the end for Jerry, to open the way to Berlin and the heartland of Germany, began. Not a man nor boy of the British Expeditionary Force along the Somme front that day but knew the importance of the action; proud they were to be there, and optimistic. It wouldn’t be easy – no one believed that any more – but they’d have Fritz running like a rabbit, see if they wouldn’t – and then, in next to no time, it would be back home to Blighty—
When the whistles blew on that glorious morning battalion after battalion scrambled over the parapets and into No Man’s Land confident – for hadn’t they been told so? – that the enemy lines had already been demoralized if not entirely shattered by the British bombardment.
Not so.
Warned by the premature explosion of mines, dug deeply and securely into their concrete bunkers, the enemy was waiting; and as the British battalions, the boys of Kitchener’s Army, struggled forward, rank upon rank, into a barbarous storm of bullets and high explosive, so they died, falling in their thousands and in their tens of thousands, climbing over the heaped bodies of their comrades to be mown down in their turn. It was a slaughter the scale of which had never been known by a British force before, the staggering extent of which was so great as to take weeks if not months to be understood or accepted even by those who were most closely involved with it. The day was a shambles, a horror of death and destruction barely comprehensible even to those who took part in it; it was the day when flesh, blood and bone were pitted against the advanced and merciless tools of modern warfare and lost. Some infantry battalions lost up to ninety per cent of their strength; dead and dying men littered the smoky, sunlit battlefields, a sacrifice ill-planned and, some said, for nothing.
Number Three Casualty Clearing Station, close by the village of Bray-sur-Somme, was swamped almost as soon as the battle started. Convoy after convoy rolled in from the Front with its pathetic load of crippled humanity. Limbless and eyeless they were carried, half dead already from shock and injury, into the great canvas wards. In Resuscitation they were warmed and coaxed back to a chance of life on the operating table, or they died, giving up the fight on a whisper of breath, too shocked and exhausted to battle further. In Preparation they lay in patient queues, awaiting a table and the precious time of an overworked surgeon, often unaware of how badly injured they were, the lucky ones lulled by shock and morphia into peaceful near-euphoria. An endless stream of shattered, blood-soaked, helpless bodies flowed back from the battlefields to the clearing stations, their only chance of life lying in the steady, overstrained hands of the doctors and nurses who awaited them. Work in the operating theatres went on non-stop as shells howled above the canvas roof and landed in the compound outside. There was no rest to be had and, as that first night fell, no sleep. The battle here was every bit as desperate as that being waged just a few short miles away, the high courage and dedication as great as any shown in the heat of combat.
Hannah worked for eighteen hours, slept fitfully for four and then came back on duty. The wards were packed now and the stretchers had overflowed into the compound, the wounded patiently waiting their turn, the more able-bodied sharing their cigarettes and their cheerful irreverent camaraderie with their less fortunate comrades, the delirious babbling incoherently to the open sky, those beyond help or relief lying in the summer dust as the flicker of life died within them. For two days and then for three the terrible traffic continued; the evacuation trains took those well enough to be moved, making room for a new influx. Many of the men now being brought in had lain beneath the sun for a day, perhaps two, and the signs of gangrene were already there. Hannah worked herself – as they all did – to the edge of exhaustion, then returned to the task after a snatched meal and an hour or two’s disturbed sleep. It was difficult to keep track of the days. She heard in a message from Ben through one of his colleagues that Peter’s battalion was fighting in the north, had sustained heavy casualties but had now partially achieved its objective and had dug in. Peter had come unscathed through that first terrible day.
There was no news of Giles.
At first she managed to push the thought of him to the back of her mind; there was so much to do, so very little time to think of one’s own personal worries; but yet the rat gnawed.
By the fifth day the battle had shifted a little away from them, two evacuation trains had pulled away with their load within the last twenty-four hours and the Clearing Station was a little less like a blood-stained madhouse, though still a steady stream of wounded was coming in. Weary to the bone, the staff of the Station managed a little more time to themselves, time to eat, to lift their heads and to see that the lovely weather had held, time above all to sleep.
And time to worry.
When Fiona came to tell her that Matron was looking for her, her thoughts flew immediately to Giles.
Fiona shook her head sympathetically. ‘Sorry, old girl, I couldn’t tell you – there was a phone call from your brother, I think – the doctor one that is – best you cut along and find out.’
She had never seen Matron so tired; the small, determined face was grey with fatigue, the eyes deeply shadowed; but she smiled as Hannah entered her small cubbyhole and Hannah’s heart lightened a little.
‘Hannah, my dear – there’s news come through.’
‘Giles?’
Lady Bennet shook her head. ‘Ah – no – I’m afraid not.’
So disappointed was she – and so terribly relieved – that for a moment she lost all sense of what was being said. No news. That, surely, must be good news? And – if he had been dead – surely she would know? ‘I’m sorry?’ she asked, a little dazedly.
‘Your brother-in-law,’ Matron repeated gently. She glanced at a piece of paper on her desk. ‘Bedford? Ralph Bedford?’
Hannah looked at her blankly. ‘What about him?’
‘Your brother rang – your brother-in-law’s been wounded. Quite badly I’m afraid.’
Hannah looked at her in total incomprehension. ‘Ralph?’
With infinite patience Lady Bennet nodded, waiting for the news to sink in.
‘Ralph’s been wounded?’
‘Yes.’ Matron sat back in her chair tiredly. Her desk was militarily neat, the piles of paper regimented and weighted down with empty shell cases. ‘On the first day. But the news is good – he’s on the mend and on his way home. Major Patten seemed to think he’ll do. He’s quite the hero it seems.’
Hannah stared at her, this time as if one of them had taken leave of her senses. ‘Ralph? A hero?’
Lady Bennet nodded. ‘He’s been recommended for a medal – I don’t know the details of course, but according to your brother he put up quite a show. Major Patten asked me to tell you.’
‘Yes. Of course. Thank you.’ Hannah, still bemused, stood up and turned to the door.
‘Hannah? I gather there’s no news of Captain Redfern?’
Hannah shook her head. ‘No. No news.’
Matron nodded again, kindly. ‘No news is probably good news, child. Try not to worry.’
‘Yes, Matron.’
She thought often in the days that followed of Ralph, and of the apparent heroism that had so unexpectedly earned him a medal; but she shared her thoughts with no one, not even with Ben when he managed the briefest of calls en route to one of the other clearing stations. Ben had a little more information – Ralph had, it seemed, with total disregard for personal danger, single-handedly rescued several men who had been mown down by an enemy machine-gun as they tried to break through the wire to the German trenches. Time and again he had gone in alone under the hail of bullets and dragged them clear. In the end his luck had failed him and he himself had lain wounded until darkness before anyone could bring him back to the lines. Ben shook his head, his face bemused and affectionate. ‘Ralph! Who’d have guessed it? It’s amazing the courage someone can show under such circumstances. I have to admit I’d never have thought it of him.’
‘No,’ Hannah said.
‘I spoke to one of the men he rescued. “Brave as a lion,” he called him. “No concern for his own safety at all.” Good old Ralph, eh? Not that we should be surprised that he’s come up trumps.’
‘No.’ There was no doubt at all in Hannah’s mind as to what had happened; Ralph Bedford had decided to die and had survived, an unlikely hero. She could imagine now the rue of his smile as he contemplated such unlooked-for outcome.
And Giles? – Giles, who had so wanted to live? Where was he?
The answer came in a letter from his mother, the words restrained and sympathetic, the writing graceful and determined. Hannah read it blindly, ‘—found your photograph and letters among his possessions – so terribly sorry to have to tell you – hope very much that perhaps some day we might meet – a terrible loss to us, and I think to the world – what a very dreadful and wasteful thing this war is.’ The words blurred. She crumpled the paper in her hand, bent her head to rest her forehead upon it,what a very dreadful and wasteful thing this war is.’ She closed her eyes. Outside the whistles shrieked, heralding a raid.
She did not move.
‘Bloody war.’ Sally leaned at the window of Ben’s room, looking out into the peace of the château’s park. Wounded men strolled or chatted in the August sunshine, wheelchairs were pushed along the paths by uniformed nurses. A row of beds had been pulled out into the sunshine and their occupants lay enjoying the warmth on skin that was pale and bloodless. Ben had been away for nearly four weeks, on active duty at the Front. His message that afternoon had ended a time of nagging worry; he might not have been out there in No Man’s Land with a rifle in his hand, but she knew the man well enough to know that he would not shirk danger. She had walked into his arms and they had made love almost without speaking. They had lain afterwards, limbs entangled, for a very long while, warm flesh to warm flesh, steadily beating hearts, whole, healthy bodies; alive and together and, for the moment at least, safe. In common with a large proportion of the rest of the world they were finding it harder and harder to think of tomorrow. ‘I swore I wouldn’t let this happen again,’ Ben had said into her hair, his big hand caressing the soft skin of her belly.
She had tugged at his hair, hard enough to hurt. ‘Enough of that sort of talk, you,’ she had said. ‘You may have survived four weeks in close proximity to ferry – but don’t fancy your chances with me if you start that!’ And they had made love again violently, his hunger fed by hers. She turned now to look at him. He lay, still naked, on the bed his arms behind his head, eyes closed. They flickered open now at her words.
She crossed to the bed, sat beside him, ran a hand across the thick hair of his chest. ‘I was just thinking of poor Hannah.’
He trapped her hand in his, brought it to his lips.
‘Rotten luck, Giles going like that.’
‘Yes.’
More than a month after that fateful day on the Somme the battle still raged the length of the Front, a deadly stalemate of death from which neither side could withdraw.
He opened her hand, kissed the flattened palm. ‘Your friend – what’s his name? – Eddie? He’s all right?’ The question was very casual.
She eyed him. ‘He’s fine.’ She grinned a little, ‘He’s got his stripe back. He’ll make brigadier yet.’
‘You’ve seen him?’
‘He’s written once or twice.’ She had spoken to Ben about Eddie in the same vein as she had told him of her other friends; it had surprised her to detect a faint and to her amusing trace of jealousy in his references to the younger man. She had not, of course, told Eddie about Ben. She had not told anyone.
She stood up reluctantly. ‘I ought to go. I’m on duty in half an hour.’
He swung his legs to the floor and stood, cupping her face in his hands and kissing her nose. ‘You’ll come again?’
‘Of course.’
He wrapped long arms about her. ‘I hate this hole and corner business. I wish—’
She pulled away from him, shaking her head. ‘Don’t. Don’t wish. There are altogether too many things to wish for, and most of them aren’t possible anyway. Don’t even talk about it. Just take things as they come. It’s all we can do.’ She had noticed, without comment, the small pile of letters on the table that had obviously been awaiting his return, all of them inscribed with Charlotte’s pretty, feminine writing. ‘I can’t come tomorrow – the colonel’s got me booked all day. But – perhaps the next day?’ She kissed him lightly on the cheek and not so lightly on the mouth, then pushed him away, laughing at the all too obvious signs of his arousal. ‘You’re a positive ruffian, Ben Patten – a greedy one at that! And I’ve got to go!’ She checked in the afternoon silence of the building that the coast was clear and slipped through the door and down the stairs.
He watched her go from the window, swinging across the park with her long, almost masculine stride, stopping for a brief word with a man in a wheelchair, her head bent attentively to his. He picked up Charlotte’s letters, which he had not yet opened, looked at them for a long moment, slammed them back down upon the table with a sudden sharp movement of savage frustration, and turned back to the window, his face grim.
Sally had gone.
The battle for the Somme, which had deteriorated to a bleak and exhausting war of attrition, went on – into its second month, its third, and then incredibly on into October, with the casualty lists mounting on both sides. In the British mind, through the medium of the newspapers and their stirring prose, place names and nationalities became linked, in heroism and in blood; Thiepval and the Ulstermen, Beaumont-Hamel and the Newfoundlanders and Highlanders, the Australians at Pozière, the South Africans in Delville Wood; and all along the line the county regiments and shattered pals battalions fought with dogged courage. Everyone in the area was involved in the desperate, bloody and apparently interminable struggle; by early October Sally was spending as much time ferrying supplies and medical teams to the forward dressing huts and casualty clearing stations as she was in her duties with the colonel. Whenever she could she made her destination the Number Three Station outside Albert, so as to catch a few precious moments with Hannah. Number Three was one of four clearing stations clustered along the road and the makeshift railway out of the town. The Station was a big one, with several wards and two operating tents, and it was well situated right beside the railway siding so that the movable wounded could be transferred to the trains with a minimum of effort. A ruined farmhouse and a huge barn stood by the side of the road. The compound was very close to the front line and often suffered shelling and aircraft attack; it never failed to amuse Sally to see Hannah and her fellow nursing personnel neatly garbed in uniform and tin hat. The wounded were ‘taken in’ in a steady flow.
On a day early in October Sally popped her head around Ben’s door and was rewarded by the warmth of the smile that lit his face at sight of her. She kissed him swiftly and lightly. ‘Can’t stop – I’ve literally got two minutes. I’m taking some supplies for Number Three – any messages for Hannah?’
He hugged her, shook his head. ‘Nothing special. Just my love. And Ralph’s home – she probably knows – limping but whole. At least he’s safe. He won’t be back.’
She had no need to ask where he had the information from; a letter in Charlotte’s clear hand lay upon the table. ‘Any other news?’ She was elaborately casual, refusing to ignore it. She hated those letters. Each time they came she saw – almost felt – the change in him. Ben Patten’s conscience had a razor’s edge that nothing it seemed could dull and that a letter from Charlotte could hone painfully fine. Their most passionate arguments always materialized after the arrival of such a letter, though, infuriatingly, Ben would constantly deny it.
‘They’ve had some more bad raids, but since we’ve started shooting the blighters down they aren’t so keen, apparently.’
‘I saw that in the paper the other day. They seemed to think that the zepps are too vulnerable now – that the raids will stop pretty soon.’
‘I hope so. Charlotte gets pretty scared, I think.’
There was a very faintly awkward silence. I get pretty scared myself sometimes; the words were so mawkishly obvious that she absolutely could not bring herself to speak them. ‘And Doctor Will?’
‘Working himself into the ground, as you’d expect. Tea? I’ve just made a cup—’
She shook her head. ‘I really don’t have the time. I just popped in on my way to the stores.’
Ben reached for the battered tin teapot. ‘What’s all this about Toby registering for conscription?’
Half-way to the door she stopped and very slowly turned. ‘I beg your pardon?’
He looked up, surprised at her tone. ‘Toby. Hasn’t he told you? He’s registered to join up next spring.’
‘He can’t,’ she said flatly. ‘He isn’t old enough.’
There was a small silence. Then, ‘We don’t actually know that, do we?’ Ben asked gently.
She shrugged. ‘He isn’t eighteen. I’m certain of it. He couldn’t have been more than three years old when I found him and that was in 1904. That makes him fifteen or sixteen.’
‘According to Charlotte he swears he’s older. He looks it, she says.’
‘But the school?’
‘They’ve agreed to let him go, apparently. He’s registered, with their permission, claiming that he’s eighteen next April – he’s hoping to get a commission.’
‘Is he indeed?’ Sally’s voice was tight with anger. ‘Well, we’ll see about that.’
‘Sally—’
She turned on him. ‘Keep out of it, Ben. It’s none of your business.’
‘But – there’s nothing you can do.’
‘Oh no? Watch me. I’ll get leave – I’ll shoot myself in the bloody foot if I have to – I’ll get back there and I’ll bang some bloody sense into his head if it’s the last thing I do! Of all the harebrained, stupid bloody notions I ever heard!’ Fuming, she had reached the door. She turned. ‘I’ll have to go or the quartermaster will give the run to someone else. I’ll see you tomorrow?’ She was brusque with worry and with hurt. But still she smiled at him.
He nodded. She blew him a brief kiss. As she left he turned back to his letter.
Sally could not get Toby out of her mind. As she jolted painfully slowly along the rutted road she brooded upon the news. She had received a letter from him just last week – brief, blandly cheerful, totally uncommunicative, as she had come to expect. He wrote at least once every two or three weeks in reply to her doggedly more frequent letters. Not once had he mentioned joining the army. ‘Silly little bugger!’ Thoroughly put out she cursed viciously as she was forced to bump off the road to avoid a shell hole. The traffic in the opposite direction was getting heavier; ambulances, trucks, converted gun carriages with planks resting upon them on which sat wounded men, horses and carts. Even the odd group of walking wounded, thumbs up, hoping for a lift as each successive vehicle passed. Vaguely she registered the unusual increase, but was too concerned with her mental argument with Toby to take much notice. If this stinking war went on for another two or three years then he would have to go; but to lie about his age – voluntarily to put himself in such danger – Christ alive, the little fool had no idea what he was getting into!
The volume of oncoming traffic had grown all at once to perilous proportions; rumbling and jolting amidst clouds of dust, spreading across the road in a flood. Once or twice she was forced to a stop in the face of it. The barrage too, a mile, perhaps two away, was heavier than usual and seemed to be getting more violent. Jolted at last from her preoccupation, and suddenly alert, she manoeuvred her careful way through the last half-mile of crowded road.
The Clearing Station when she reached it was a scene of organized chaos.
She left the car and ran into the huge compound. ‘What’s going on?’ She grabbed the arm of a passing orderly.
‘We’re evacuating, miss. Jerry’s broken through the line in two places. Give an ’and, would yer? There’s a train in.’
‘Of course. How can I help?’
‘Walkin’ wounded to the front of the train – we’re mostly loaded, but there’s a few could do with a bit of an ’and.’ He indicated a shuffling line of men, some supported by their comrades, others limping upon crutches or, eyes bandaged, being led, each man with a hand on the shoulder of the man in front. Sally hurried to where a patient, his own arm in plaster was with his good arm supporting a limping boy.
‘Here – let me help—’ she hitched the lad’s arm over her shoulder.
He grinned, the smile all but toothless, his scarred face cheerful. ‘Thanks, miss.’
They struggled to the crowded train, and she helped hitch the wounded lad aboard. Shells screamed wickedly close, and their bursting concussed the ears. Sally rammed her tin hat squarely upon her head as she ran back down the line of walking wounded. A young man sat upon a packing case, head drooping, crutch propped by his side.
‘Come on, my love – up we come.’
He shook his head, tried to smile. ‘Can’t.’
‘Of course you can. Here – take this.’ She thrust the crutch at him, then slid an arm about his waist and hauled him, wincing and pale as death, upright. ‘Only a little way—’ If she had been a man she believed he would have refused, preferring to stay to be blown to pieces or captured than sustain the ordeal of the agonizing hundred yards between him and the train. But ready to face anything rather than to give way to such cowardice in front of a woman, he allowed her to half-drag him to where an orderly took him from her and loaded him on to the train as unceremoniously as a sack of potatoes. Nurses were everywhere, ushering their charges like busy and competent sheepdogs, turning not a hair as shells landed around them and in the not too far distance machine-gun fire chattered menacingly. She could see no sign of Hannah.
She made several more trips with wounded men, the last gripping hands with two blinded soldiers who, having waited patiently for someone to come for them, walked through the emptying compound as serenely brave as if they had been strolling on a golf course in the peaceful parklands of the Home Counties.
‘Sally! What the devil are you doing here?’ As she turned from seeing her charges safe on to the train she all but walked into a tin-hatted Fiona, and behind her Mercy, her arms full of bags and boxes.
The train had begun to move. The last few trucks were moving into line behind the field ambulances. A motorcycle roared. ‘I’ll have to move the car—’ Sally shouted above the noise.
Fiona grabbed her arm. ‘Jolly good! You’ve got the car? Bring it over to the barn. Mercy had the one good idea of her life – why leave the supplies to the Boche? There are drugs over there – we can’t afford to lose them – we can load most of them into the car—’ And she was gone, disappearing into the dusty haze as a line of trucks rumbled out of the compound.
As Sally, heart thumping, manoeuvred her car out of the way and closer to the stone barn which, reroofed with corrugated iron, was used as a store, the barrage began in earnest. Debris sprayed in a fearsome fountain, its centre a bloom of blood-red flame as a shell landed just a hundred yards outside the compound. Every instinct told her to turn the car and get out on to the road, back – back from the advancing enemy, back from the rain of death that was splitting from the sky.
‘Right, here we are.’ Grinning all over her blackened face, Fiona appeared at her side, dumping an armful of small boxes into the capacious back seat of the car.
‘Where’s Hannah?’
‘She’s on the train – gone – it’s all right, she’s safe. There are just a few more of these – Mercy’s bringing them.’
They both turned at the same time to watch the door of the barn; both saw the figure that appeared silhouetted against the sudden inferno flare of flame within it.
‘Mercy!’ Fiona was running almost before the explosion happened. Sally, throwing herself down, felt the blast rock the ground beneath her. When she lifted her head it was to see that Fiona was up again, and running; running like a madwoman towards the spot where the tangle of limbs and torn flesh that had been Mercy Meredith lay like a discarded toy. Sally staggered to her feet. The barn was a roaring furnace, the old timbers devoured by the curling petals of flame, the tin roof crashing in a towering cascade of sparks. Another shell landed, and another. In the distance men were shouting, and the guns cracked. The stone wall of the barn shivered and rocked. Fiona was on her knees beside Mercy’s wrecked remains.
‘Fiona! Look out!’
Fiona began to tug at the body.
Without thought Sally flew to her, running as she had never run before, the heat from the blaze scorching her face. ‘Fiona!’ She grabbed the other girl’s arm, not looking at the horror that lay on the ground beside her. ‘Come on! Get out! The wall’s coming down!’
Fighting her, Fiona bent to the body again. ‘We can’t leave her here!’
‘Fiona – she’s dead! Leave her! The wall’’ Dragging and pulling at the other girl, shrieking like a maniac, Sally hauled her away, had almost got her clear when, caught by the blast of another explosion, the great wall collapsed, the stone shrieking and splintering as it fell. Fiona sprawled forward, caught by the blast. Sally felt a sharp pain like the sting of a wasp on her face as a sliver of flying stone caught her and cut to the cheekbone.
‘You all right, miss?’ There were figures then, hurrying through the smoke, anxious hands to lift her to her feet.
‘My friend – she’s hurt I think—’
Fiona was sitting, white faced, teeth gritted against pain. Bright blood stained the arm and shoulder of her nurse’s uniform. ‘Bandages and a splint if you’ve got one about you,’ she said perfectly coolly. ‘The arm’s broken, and the shoulder doesn’t feel too good.’
‘We’re going to have to get out of here, miss – excuse me – if you don’t mind?’ Quickly and efficiently the orderly was tearing up Fiona’s own apron. ‘Johnny – go find something to splint the arm – and jump to it lad, Fritz is almost here.’
Sally put a hand to her face, stared in puzzlement at the blood that smeared it. ‘I’ll get the car.’
‘You sure you’re all right, miss? You look a bit gruesome.’
‘No. I’m fine. See to Fiona. I’ll get the car.’ The strangest calm had descended upon her. Without hurrying she walked to where the car stood. The sounds of battle were very close. The last of the trucks was pulling out of the compound.
‘Here we are, miss.’ The orderly, a large man with a neat moustache and a cheerful smile supported the bandaged Fiona to the passenger door and helped her in. ‘Will you be all right?’
‘Yes, thanks. I’ll follow the trucks.’
The man slammed the door, sketched a quick salute and stepped back. Sally moved the big car smoothly to the end of the procession. In silence they bumped across the shell-pocked surface of the road. The early October evening was darkening; the sky was a wonder of light and colour as the barrage boomed about them. Behind them the great empty tents stood, ripped and torn by the bombardment. Tracer bullets seared the air. An aeroplane buzzed in the shell-burst sky. Sally drove as carefully as she could, aware that Fiona’s teeth were clamped into her lower lip and that every time they lurched across a rut or crater she caught her breath in pain.
It was a long time before either of them spoke.
‘Well, old girl – it seems highly likely that you just saved my life,’ Fiona said. Behind them the sounds of violence were fading a little.
Sally smiled a little, eyes straining into the gathering darkness at the rocking tail lights of the lorry ahead. ‘You’d have done the same for me.’ She glanced at the white-faced girl beside her. ‘You’d have done the same for Mercy if she hadn’t been killed in the blast.’
There was a small silence. Then, ‘Poor bloody Mercy,’ Fiona said, the feeling in her voice as telling as prayer. ‘She’s not going to see Eastbourne again, is she?’
They finished the journey in silence.
Sally got her leave. She was shamefaced about using the spectacularly nasty-looking wound on her face as a lever, but not, in her determination, shamefaced enough to resist the temptation. The avuncular Colonel Foster was a committed if unknowing ally. ‘A week, my dear girl. I wish I could have made it longer – really, Commander Lady Marston is quite a tartar!’
‘A week is fine, sir. Thank you.’
It took two precious days to get to London; but her arrival at the Bear was worth the waiting. Bron stared, taken so open-mouthed that Sally laughed outright.
‘It’s me, Bron – it’s Sal!’
‘Well, I never! Well I never did! An’ whatever have they done to you – oh, your poor face!’
‘It’s nothing. A nasty scratch. Oh, Bron – aren’t you going to say “Hello”?’
They fell into each other’s arms, laughing and talking all at once. When Charlotte came across them, very cool and contained in grey silk, her newly bobbed hair crisp about her head, it was like a shower of rain in the sunshine, damping the flying dust of their chatter. ‘Good Lord,’ she said. ‘Sally, isn’t it?’
It had not occurred to Sally until that moment that the uniform in which she stood had seen better – or certainly cleaner – days. One of the two tunics she owned had been spoiled by blood the day of the evacuation of the Clearing Station; the one she wore now had been on her back every day for three weeks. ‘Yes,’ she said carefully, appalled at the antagonism that flared in her at the sight of this woman who was married to Ben, ‘it’s Sally.’
She saw the faint flinch of distaste in the other woman’s eyes at the scabbed wound on her cheek; noticed with caustic amusement that she did not refer to it. ‘Well, for heaven’s sake,’ Charlotte said lightly, ‘shouldn’t you come in? You’re causing something of a draught standing there with the door open.’
Her reunion with Philippa was something she had alternately avidly anticipated and dreaded according to her mood. She need not have worried. The little girl, dark-haired, soft-eyed, heartbreakingly like her father, hesitated for only a moment in the doorway, whilst Marie-Clare, her face alight with pleasure, whispered in her ear. Then, ‘Mama! Mama!’ the child cried, and launched herself across the room into Sally’s arms.
Sally whirled the small, warm bundle into the air, eyes clenched against tears.
‘Mama – tell me about France!’ Incredibly, Philippa’s words were attractively tinged with a very un-English accent. Sally laughed towards Marie-Clare, who spread wide, not too apologetic hands. ‘We pray for you every night,’ the child said, ‘and Marie-Clare reads your letters. Oh, Mama!’ The small arms clung, the small, smooth face pressed tightly against Sally’s uninjured cheek.
‘Thank you,’ she said later to Marie-Clare, ‘I was very afraid that – that she might have forgotten me. It would be my own fault if she had, I know.’
Marie-Clare, slender and composed, the two-year-old Louise slumbering in her lap, shook her head. ‘Rest assured, Sal-lee.’ Still, for all her command of her new language, she made two pronounced syllables of the name, ‘My charge of Flippy is a charge of love; for her, oh, yes, most certainly and above all for her – but for you also.’ The quiet eyes were warm. ‘How could I let her forget you?’
Toby was another matter entirely. ‘Well—’ his smile was by no means unpleasant – but neither was it the mischievous, gleaming thing that had conspired so often with her in the past. Nor was she prepared for the size of him, the easy, handsome confidence, ‘behold the conquering heroine—’
‘Don’t be daft.’ She lifted her face to his, received the briefest of salutes. ‘Very dashing,’ he said, indicating the still-raw scar on her face. ‘How did that happen?’
‘I—’ She stood helpless. To someone who had been there, or some fiery place like it, to one who had been on any part of that endless Western Front for the past two years a few brief words would have sufficed; but how to explain to one who did not – could not – know? Suddenly she understood with flawless and painful clarity the damaging predicament of which she had so often heard; the isolation of a man, home from the war, unable to share his experiences with those he loved, allowing them to fester sleepless within him – glad in the end to go back, back to the comrades who understood. ‘It was a shell. A piece of stone caught me. It isn’t as bad as it looks.’
The smile became markedly less warm. ‘That wasn’t the way Hannah told it.’
‘Hannah?’
‘She wrote. Told us all the gory details.’
‘She probably exaggerated.’ As she said it she knew how badly she was handling him.
He shrugged. ‘Yes. She probably did.’
‘Toby – I heard that you’d registered to join the army next spring?’
‘Oh?’ The cool, fair eyebrows were questioning.
She shrugged a little, cursing herself. She had not intended to confront him so. ‘The Patten grapevine. It works, even in France.’ Her laugh was nervy, false. She saw the look in his eyes and cursed herself further.
‘Then – yes. I’ve registered. I’m hoping to get a commission.’
‘You aren’t old enough.’ The words were sharp, authoritarian. They made him, she saw with more than a little disquiet, smile.
‘We don’t know that.’
She took a breath. ‘I know – I know that we don’t know exactly how old you are – but you aren’t eighteen – I’d swear to it.’
‘Swear away.’ His voice was even, his eyes cool.
She fought temper and trepidation in about equal parts. ‘Toby, please, listen to me. You don’t know what you’re doing – you don’t know what it’s like over there!’
‘And I never will unless I go.’
She fought for control; how many times had they flared at each other, fought like tigers, forgotten it in minutes? But this was too important, and the boy she faced was not the dirty-faced urchin she had known. ‘Do you know why you’re so likely to get a commission?’
He waited.
‘Because the young men that took their commissions so eagerly two years ago – a year ago – yesterday! – are dead. That’s why.’
The silence lengthened.
She raised fingers to her damaged cheek, rubbed at it distractedly; saw his eyes follow the movement avidly and snatched her hand away. ‘Toby – give yourself a chance – you aren’t old enough yet.’
‘And if I wait?’ he asked very reasonably. ‘It might all be over before I can get there?’
‘And would that be such a bad thing?’
‘Yes, it bloody would.’ The words were still even, very reasonable, but the blue eyes sparked. ‘You’re all out there – Peter, Ben – even Ralph’s come home with a medal, God help us all! – you – Hannah!’
‘It isn’t what you think. It isn’t fun. It isn’t heroics. It’s bloody murder. It’s fear, and it’s killing, and it’s muddy trenches and foul food and choking gas—’ She stopped, jolted by the look on his face, realizing with sudden awful clarity that she was, so far as he was concerned, arguing not her own case but his.
‘I’m going,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think you can stop me. I don’t actually know why you want to.’
She opened her mouth, but he would not let her speak.
‘You left me for Philippe – and now you’ve left me for the war – what right do you have to tell me what to do?’ For the first time he let open antagonism show, not the hot resentment of childhood, she noticed with sinking heart, but the cool and considered judgement of a young mind matured in intolerance and misunderstanding.
‘That isn’t fair,’ she said.
‘Life isn’t fair.’ The small, taunting smile dared her to remember how often she had used those words to a hot-tempered child.
They looked at each other for a long, silent moment. Then ‘Would you like some tea?’ Toby asked lightly and very politely. ‘You’ve probably heard that Mrs Briggs has left us – gone back to the country to nurse a crippled nephew I believe – but Bron really makes an excellent cup of char—’
‘I’m sorry to say it, Sal,’ Bron said a couple of days later, eyes and voice sympathetic as she busied herself at the big black range, ‘but I doubt if you’ll get the better of young master Toby once he’s made his mind up. Not even Doctor Will or Miss Charlotte can do that. Never known such a one for his own way—’
‘He won’t even talk about it now,’ Sally admitted gloomily. ‘We had a bit of a row yesterday. And now he’s avoiding me. Oh, Bron,’ her voice was soft, ‘we used to be so close.’
Bron turned. ‘True. Yes, that I remember. I mind when you were ill – when you first came – and the lad wouldn’t leave the door.’
‘He’s changed so.’
‘Ah, Sally my love,’ Bron’s voice was quiet, affectionate, half amused, ‘it isn’t just the lad that’s changed, mind – now is it?’
Sally, her eyes on the diamond pattern of the scrubbed tiled floor shook her head. ‘I suppose not.’
Bron looked at her. ‘A demon he was when you left to marry,’ she said quietly.
Sally’s head came up sharply. ‘But Bron – what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t take him with me.’
‘Of course not. We all knew that. I’m just thinking that perhaps the lad himself didn’t see it that way. You were all he had.’
‘No! Not by that time – he had everyone here.’
‘Not the same, cariad, not the same. It’s not your fault, mind – it’s not anyone’s fault – but it seems to me our Toby’s learned to do without anyone. What he wants he sets out to get for himself. An’ I wouldn’t want to be the one to stand in his way, either, for all he can be such a charmer.’
Sally sighed, hitched herself on to the kitchen table, one leg swinging. ‘You may be right,’ she half smiled, an edge of bitterness in it, ‘—and so may he. Perhaps to be free of other people is the best way to be.’
‘Ah, now – you don’t mean that—’ Bron stopped. When she spoke again her musical Welsh voice had sharpened perceptibly. ‘Well now, look what the cat’s brought in. Slumming are we, Kate Buckley?’
Sally turned. Kate leaned in the doorway, smartly dressed in brown and beige, her small hat stylishly tilted, her matching parasol sloped against her shoulder in the manner of a soldier with a rifle. She laughed outright at Bron’s waspish tone. ‘You said it, not me. Hello there, Sal. How’s tricks?’
‘Pretty good. You?’
The handsome face sparkled with faintly malicious curiosity, ‘Just fine. Been playing pirates?’
‘What? Oh – this?’ Sally touched the healing gash on her cheek, grinned a little. ‘Old war wound.’
‘Very becoming I’m sure.’ Kate turned to Bron. ‘Well, my Taffy friend – dust off your best bib and tucker – you’re invited to a wedding—’
‘Oh?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Whose would that be, then?’ Bron was repressive.
‘Whose do you think? My very own. Two weeks on Saturday.’
‘Oh?’ Bron said again provocatively, and Sally hid a smile. ‘Quick, isn’t it?’
‘All the style nowadays, didn’t you know? Kiss the girls goodbye and back to the Front—’
‘He’s a soldier then?’ For all her efforts Bron could not keep her curiosity in check, nor could she quite conceal the gleam of envy in her eyes.
Kate preened. ‘A sergeant no less. In the Gloucesters. A lovely hunk of a man. A tram driver in civvy life. Ding, ding!’ She pulled an imaginary bell cord, grinning.
‘Congratulations,’ Sally said.
‘It’s him you should congratulate,’ Kate said pertly. ‘He’s marryin’ a girl that’s done well enough for herself I don’t mind tellin’ you – supervisor I am now, down Silvertown.’
‘Ammunition?’
‘That’s right.’ Kate shrugged, ‘Bullets for the boys. An’ long may it last, I say—’
‘You’re enjoying your war?’ Sally could not quite keep the caustic edge from her voice.
Kate was ready for it; had perhaps, Sally thought later, actually provoked it. ‘I should say. Anything wrong with that?’
Sally shook her head.
‘Not as if I’m the only one,’ Kate said and winked, very deliberately, at Bron. ‘Eh, Bron? There’s folk not a million mile from ’ere might say the same if they were honest as me.’
‘That’ll do,’ Bron said sharply.
Sally glanced at her in surprise.
Kate, expression blandly innocent, smiled. ‘I’m all for it meself. Nothin’ wrong with enjoyin’ yourself; it’s po-faced hypocrisy that I can’t stand. Well – better go – the bride-to-be’s got a few more calls to make. The Bethany church, ten o’clock, two weeks on Saturday. Got that?’
Bron nodded, avoiding Sally’s eyes, and with no goodbye turned back to the sink.
As Kate, with a last spiteful smile at Bron’s sharply turned back, shut the door behind her, silence fell.
‘What was she talking about?’ Sally asked, her curiosity aroused as much by Bron’s obvious and transparent discomfiture as by Kate’s words.
‘Oh, nothing much.’ An iron saucepan clattered loudly in the sink. ‘You know Kate. She’s got a tongue that spreads poison the way a knife spreads butter, mind.’
Sally shook her head. ‘Didn’t sound too poisonous to me. But then I don’t know what she was talking about—’ She eyed Bron’s back and waited.
Bron resisted temptation for a creditable moment longer, then turned, wiping her hands on her apron. Her good-natured face was solemn. ‘They did cause some gossip, it can’t be denied. But it was true I know that Doctor Ben asked him to cheer her up—’
‘What are you talking about, Bron?’
‘Why—’ Bron hesitated for a second longer, ‘Why Miss Charlotte and Mister Peter – when he was home, see? They – they saw a lot of each other – though natural it was, of course it was – it’s just there was talk, see?’
‘Talk?’ The single, questioning word was flat.
‘Well – you know what people are.’ Bron was still wiping her hands absentmindedly on her apron. ‘Nasty minds they’ve got, most of them.’
Sally forced her voice to lightness. ‘You’re not saying that there’s anything in this – talk?’
Bron’s expression was becoming more and more worried. ‘Why no – of course not – but—’
The silence was infinitesimal. ‘But?’
‘Well – it’s the letters – one almost every day she gets from him, and one a day like a religion she writes back.’ Bron’s voice had dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. In her relief at finding someone, at last, to speak to of her worries the words tumbled over each other, ‘I don’t like to say it, truly I don’t, Sal – but you can’t help wondering, can you? I mean – she doesn’t write to Doctor Ben like that – once a week it is, if he’s lucky. And his letters – why they’re read at the breakfast table for all to see. But—’ she had joined Sally at the table, pulled out a chair and sat down, her work-roughened hands folded before her, her honest face earnest, ‘but not Mister Peter’s – oh, no – they’re read upstairs in that – that boo-dwar as she will call it! – and then packed away in ribbon, under all them nighties of hers, with his picture—’ She stopped at the look on Sally’s face, ‘Well, I couldn’t help it, see?’ she said, indignant and defensive at once, ‘I was tidying the room and – well – I just happened to find them – an’ it isn’t right, is it? I mean – his own brother—’
Sally was sucking her lower lip, her schooled face inscrutable. ‘You really believe that Miss Charlotte – Doctor Ben’s wife – is having – or had—’ she hesitated, ‘an affair – with Mister Peter?’
‘I don’t know, do I?’ In her defensiveness Bron resorted to near temper. ‘I’m only saying there’s bin talk, and she does keep his letters and his picture in her drawer, and – you know what an airy-fairy creature she is – who’s to know what goes on in that mind of hers?’
Sally, eyes distant, nodded.
‘That bloody Kate,’ Bron muttered. ‘If she’d kept a still tongue I’d never have said.’
‘Kate doesn’t know about the letters?’
‘Diawch! Of course not!’ Bron looked hurt and scandalized at once, ‘What do you take me for, Sally Smith?’
‘I’m sorry.’
Bron stood up. ‘Mountains out of molehills. There’s probably nothing in it.’ She cast a sudden anxious glance at Sally, ‘You’ll say nothing?’
Sally forced a reassuring smile. ‘Of course not, Bron. Not a word. As you say – there’s probably nothing in—’
‘Right—’ Bron smiled, relieved, ‘Now, a cup of tea for you?’
Three days later Sally left to go back to France. She found it harder, this time, to leave Philippa, who at nearly four years old and so much like her father in looks and temperament seemed suddenly much the most precious thing in the world. The weather had turned miserable; cold and wet, the sea a sullen grey that merged with the chill horizon. As they neared the French coast the distant echoes of war grew louder; she had forgotten, almost, that sound of incessant bombardment. The train journey to Amiens was drearily slow, the compartment, which she shared with a group of politely curious young officers, as cold as an ice-box.
She did not immediately contact Ben. She had known from the start that she could not repeat Bron’s gossip; but for the moment, fresh as it was in her mind, she was not sure she could trust herself. Much as she longed to see him, it seemed better, for the moment, to stay away.
It was two days after her return, with rain and mist and already freezing temperatures making life in the trenches all but unbearable, that he came to her. She was astonished to see him; by mutual consent he had kept away from her billet except for the most innocent of contact.
One look at his face told her the news was bad.
‘What is it? Ben – what’s happened?’
He slumped into a chair wearily, lowered his head to his hands. ‘It’s Peter,’ he said baldly. ‘A sodding sniper got him. They don’t think he’ll live.’