A Little Death (18 page)

People are very quick with the word ‘hell’: the weather is hell, the crowds are hell, the traffic is hell. You hear all the time that something is hell. But when you’ve walked across a battlefield in Flanders—well, I believe that is the nearest to hell that anyone can come in this world. Passchendaele is the one that really stands out in my memory, but it is almost impossible to describe what it was like. It rained most of the time, and I remember walking along beside saturated horses and watching the water pouring off their manes, with harnesses so slippery that the drivers could barely hold the reins to guide them. When the rain stopped, for as far as you could see there was mud. Just mud itself is nothing, nobody minds a bit of mud. But this wasn’t just a bit. There wasn’t a decent house, not a bush, not a tree that you could see, just shell crater after shell crater, all of
them filled up with muddy water deep enough to drown in and nothing safe and flat to walk on but the lines of boards laid down in between. Some of those craters were so close together they had only a narrow, slippery rim of mud between them and you’d fall straight in if you tried to get across. The water in most of those holes was so tainted by gas that it would burn your skin if you touched it. In some places, you’d see four or five craters that had joined up together to make one big lake—and if you fell in one of those you didn’t have a hope of getting out unless your pal could help, and then not always because the chances were he’d end up in there with you. In some of them you could see blood on the surface of the water, so you knew what must be underneath. There were bubbles, too, great bubbles that burst when the bodies in there released their gases. No one could fetch them away for burial, you see. They had enough to do taking care of the wounded—the dead had to fend for themselves. You walked along those endless lines of boards and you’d see dead men everywhere you looked. The ones that were just lumps in the mud weren’t so bad, because you couldn’t see the faces or hands. Unless you trod on one—that was pretty grim. If there was a gap in the boards, well, it had to be filled somehow, and there was a certain texture that you could tell immediately wasn’t mud, your boot came down on something soft, not sticky like the mud but something that made a sort of waving, yielding movement beneath your foot, and you knew you must be treading on a dead man’s stomach.

It is extraordinarily difficult to speak about this, even after so many years. That was the reason I never told Georgie. Because nobody can explain something so evil—because that’s what it was to me, an evil place. But it wasn’t just the mud and the death that made it
like a nightmare. It was that it heightened so terribly the sensation that one didn’t know what was going on. It was absolute confusion, a voice permanently bawling in one’s ear, giving orders with no apparent rhyme or reason. You just struggled through and did your bit and never looked beyond your nose. It was just getting the gun from this place to that and if you’d tried to think of anything else you’d have gone raving mad. Judging by what I’ve read since, that was quite a common experience. You didn’t know about the higher strategy and all the rest of it, you just got on with it. The hardest thing was never showing you were afraid. Sometimes I was more frightened of showing fear than I was of the war itself.

Of course, there were some chaps who’d worked it out. Roland was one of that sort—they make the best soldiers. Enjoy it, too. He joined up very early on, a public schools battalion. It was one of the pals battalions, but by 1917 when he and I met, nearly all the pals were dead and you wouldn’t have recognised the battalion because most of the men hadn’t been near a public school in their lives. Not that it made any difference to the Boche, of course, he’d kill you just the same. In any case, by the time Roland and I bumped into each other he wasn’t with that battalion any more, they’d loaned him out to another lot because of his experience. He was always calm, you see, never got the wind up. One of the best—he’d been decorated with the Military Cross for gallantry during the Battle of Loos and I suppose you wouldn’t be too wide of the mark if you said that Roland was a hero to me.

I found out later that I must have been only a quarter of a mile away from Roland when he died. We’d had a terrible day—rain pouring down and the guns hopelessly stuck in the mud. Every time we fired it grew
worse and the guns had to be got out before we could go again. We were supposed to be providing the barrage for the infantry attack. There were six guns in all, going off at intervals, but by midday we’d lost four of them and at least half of the men as well, with plenty of others wounded. The place looked like a casualty clearing station. If they could walk, we told them to try and get to the dressing station. As for the others, well, we didn’t see a single stretcher party all day and there was nothing we could do for them.

There was an old German pillbox nearby, so we settled down there for the night. I say ‘settled down’—but it was just a square concrete hut with a hole for the door. The rain was coming down nineteen to the dozen and the floor was a great puddle of dirty water. Not that it made any difference, because every man there was already soaked to the skin. In any case, there were ten or twelve of us and there wasn’t enough room for everyone to fit in at once, so we had to take it in turns. We’d got no rations, so we sucked our hard biscuits—it was either that or dunk them in the puddle, otherwise it was impossible to swallow the things. We were the lucky ones. We’d moved all those men who were seriously wounded, but it was impossible to get them through the pillbox door and in any case there were seven or eight of them. They were just laid on boards with the rain pounding down on them. We covered them with groundsheets to keep it off, but all the time the mud was sucking them down—they were literally drowning as they lay there. We tried everything we knew, we even propped them up with our weapons, but they just kept on sinking down into the mud. I calculated afterwards that I must have been awake for over sixty hours by the time we arrived at that pillbox, but I barely slept. I won’t forget that night as long as I live,
sucking those bloody biscuits and listening to the men dying outside, the choking sounds they made as the mud ran into their mouths and nostrils. There was one man who’d had both his legs shattered by a shell. He didn’t groan or cry out, he just kept repeating ‘Oh dear, oh dear’ to himself, very quietly. I don’t know if he was in a state of delirium or what, but it seemed so odd that he should be making this sound—more like a vicar who’s fallen off his bicycle than a mortally wounded soldier. It was said with just the same tone as Ada when she’s going upstairs and her knees are hurting her: ‘Oh dear, oh dear’. Whenever I hear her I think of that soldier. He must have been about my age—my age then that is, not now. I dozed off a bit towards morning and when I woke up the sound had stopped. He’d died while I was asleep.

I was wounded a couple of nights after that, a Blighty one in the chest, so that was the end of the war for me. I was in hospital when I heard about Roland. He’d bled to death from a stomach wound, waiting for a stretcher party—it wasn’t their fault, the mud was as impossible for them as it was for everyone else and it took twice as many men to carry a stretcher in those conditions. In any case, they would only take those they reckoned to save, that was what the doctors told them to do. It wasn’t official, of course, but it made more sense than wasting hours on a man who might go west as soon as he got to the hospital. Roland was too far gone—the chap who told me was his sergeant, he’d been with him when he died. The sergeant seemed a good sort and I wanted to say ‘I’m glad someone was with him’, but it was too much the sort of thing a wife or mother would say and I wasn’t a civilian who didn’t know what it was like. I’d seen enough men in that state to know there wasn’t any noble deathbed scene. I remembered I’d
given Roland Georgie’s favour and I had a terrible sense of the injustice of it, the
wrongness.
Because my life is nothing, it’s worse than nothing—if I’d died, then I’d be gone and forgotten, and out of this miserable existence. When I was wounded, a man called O’Hare took me back to the dressing station. I don’t remember much about it except that it was a very dark night and the two of us were stumbling from shell hole to shell hole like drunkards. I was surprised by the sight of my own blood, that it was coming out of me, I suppose, and not someone else. O’Hare was pretty well holding me up and he kept on talking to me, but I couldn’t really hear what he was saying or make any sense of it. At one point he started to sing, very quietly, I suppose to keep his own spirits up as much as mine—
At seventeen, he falls in love quite madly.
My mind must have been affected, because I suddenly saw Freddie coming towards me. I was afraid for him, he looked so small and I thought he’d get hit, but he didn’t, he seemed quite happy, playing in the shell craters as if they were puddles in a park. I tried to join in with O’Hare’s singing, because I had an idea that Freddie might hear it and come toward us, but my voice wouldn’t work. I remember the words:…
flirting sadly/With two or three or more/When he thinks that he is past love/It is then he meets his last love/And he loves her as he’s never loved before.
Poor Freddie. If he’d grown up to be a soldier he wouldn’t have stood a chance. You could see his hair from miles away.

Miss Louisa and Lord Kellway were married in 1920 and it was in all the newspapers. I was disappointed, because I really did think that she and Master Edmund… but I suppose it was all to do with the war. I’m sure Master Edmund was upset about it, although of course he didn’t show it. He went back to his work once he was better. He was very conscientious about it, but it wasn’t in his blood the way it was in Mr. James’s. Mr. James was away most of the time, always travelling around, and occasionally Master Edmund went with him, but normally he went to the office in town—unless
Madam
stopped him, that is. That was a great thing with her if Mr. James was away. Mr. Herbert would bring the car round in the morning and it would be stood on the steps for half an hour sometimes while she and Master Edmund argued. Miss Georgina would use the whole bag of tricks, feeling sorry for herself, saying Master Edmund and Mr. James didn’t want her or they wouldn’t leave her by herself, everything. After six months, I’d heard it so often I knew it as well as my prayers. Master Edmund would say, ‘Georgie, I’ve got work to do.’

‘But what about me? What am I going to do?’ ‘Georgie, I have to go. Jimmy’s not here.’ ‘Jimmy’s never here and I haven’t any idea where he’s gone. He could be in Australia for all I know. I can’t
think why the two of you don’t just throw me out and then you can run around with your stupid business as much as you like.’

‘I’ll only be gone six hours.’

‘What am I supposed to do in the meantime? I don’t just cease to exist when you leave the house, Edmund, although I can see it would be jolly convenient for you if I did.’

‘I know that, Georgie, but there are things I have to do.’

They’d go on and on like that, and sometimes it used to get nasty, because Miss Georgina’s got quite a temper when she wants. Once she said, ‘I can’t think why Jimmy doesn’t pay you to look after me. I’m sure you’d be much better at it than whatever you do in your horrid office.’

Master Edmund said, ‘Like a eunuch guarding a harem, you mean?’ Well, she’d got her mouth open, all ready to spit out something catty, but then she saw me and shut it, which was a blessing. The truth was, Miss Georgina wouldn’t do any of the things that ladies are supposed to do, going to tea and charities and that sort of thing, so of course she was bound to be bored with nobody to pay attention to her.

That was where Mr. Booth came in. He had some money in Mr. James’s business. He was a jolly gentleman, always joking and playing the clown to make people laugh. ‘Teddy’s coming, he’ll buck you up’—that was what Mr. James used to say to Miss Georgina. I was amazed she took to Mr. Booth the way she did, because he wasn’t young or handsome—if anything, I’d have said he was older than Mr. James and he had a big red face. But he was always smiling, that’s what drew people to him. He was mad for racing cars, he used to go everywhere to the races, even to France, and sometimes
he took Miss Georgina with him. Cars and parties, that was what he liked. The first time I remember him coming to Hope House, he lugged a great box of champagne into my kitchen: ‘I’ve brought my own refreshments!’ He’d carried it all the way up from the car himself, wouldn’t let his chauffeur so much as touch it. ‘The bubbles keep me happy,’ that’s what he told me. He thought that there wasn’t a problem in the world that couldn’t be solved with a glass of champagne. His chauffeur told Mr. Herbert once that he even kept some spare bottles in the car ‘in case there was an accident’.

I suppose he was what you’d call a character, really. At first I never thought a thing of him going about with Miss Georgina the way he did—after all, it was Mr. James himself who’d suggested it. But then some things started to happen that made me change my mind. The first one was this: Mr. Booth and Miss Georgina had been to see a show and then I think they must have been out dancing, because they came back ever so late, laughing and singing, making a dreadful racket. It sounded like bedlam and I couldn’t think what the noise was, so down I went and found the two of them cavorting about in the hall. I was just standing at the top of the staircase, about to go down to them, when Master Edmund nearly knocked me for six rushing straight past me. He was fully dressed and as angry as I’ve ever seen him. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ That’s exactly what he said and he never swears, not unless it’s an emergency. Then he looks at Miss Georgina and says, ‘What have you done to your face?’

She gave herself a little preen and said: ‘Oh! Don’t you like it?’

He said: ‘No, I don’t like it. You look like a prostitute. Go and wash it off.’

Because she was wearing this dark make-up, you see,
smeared round her eyes. Master Edmund wasn’t the only one staring, either, because in 1924 women didn’t wear paint on their eyes—well, they did on the films, but I’d never seen a real person wearing it. It looked as if Miss Georgina’s eyes had been blacked, what we used to call ‘an Irish beauty’ when I was young. Oh, she looked like a demon then, she’d been drinking Mr. Booth’s champagne and her face was flushed, with those great big eyes glittering, and Master Edmund looked quite as mad as she did. ‘It’s my house, Edmund. I do
live
here. I am so sorry if we woke you up. Let me make it up to you, darling. Give him some champagne, Teddy.’