A Rose In Flanders Fields (34 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

I was brought back to reality some little time later, as the sun began to dip, spilling orange light into the little front room of Mrs Parker’s cottage. Lizzy was sitting opposite and looking at me with an odd expression. I blinked and roused myself, and noticed she was holding a piece of folded paper.

‘What’s that?’ I sat up straight suddenly, panicked. ‘News from France? Already?’

She frowned. ‘No. News from Belgium. Specifically from you.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’ Then I recognised it: the letter I’d written in the depths of unaccustomed despair, and had been so glad I had not been able to post. ‘Lizzy –’

‘This is… well, it’s terrible.’ I saw then that she’d been crying although she was dry-eyed now and just looked haunted. ‘Why did you never unburden yourself like this before?’

‘I shouldn’t have done it now,’ I said. ‘I’d decided not to post it, it was unfair of me to throw this kind of thing at you.’

‘Why?’ She stood up and turned away, pretending to straighten the antimacassar, clearly agitated even beyond what she was willing to let me see. ‘If writing to me helps you, as this must have done to some degree, then why not do it?’

‘Because you have your own worries.’ I levered myself off the chair with some difficulty, and tried to take the letter from her, but she lifted it away and scanned it again.

‘
“I must stop writing now, I feel I have poured enough grief into your life. Please forgive me for that, and I promise I shall be back to my old self very soon.”
Well, there you have it,’ her voice cracking slightly, ‘Lizzy can’t possibly be expected to shoulder the grief of her dearest friend, and must be protected from reality at all costs!’

‘That’s not what –’

‘The point is, you
are
my dearest friend. You were so keen to hush Kitty when she was trying to tell me what it was like. But I think of you out there all the time.
All
the time. And all I have to base these thoughts on is what you’ve been telling me in your letters. So now I’m to understand it’s all been a lie?’

‘No! We do have fun sometimes. It’s hard to imagine, with all of that going on, but it’s true.’ I sighed. ‘Why don’t I make us a cup of tea and we can sit down and talk. I’ll tell you all of it. The good, the bad, the frightening and the just plain absurd.’

‘Promise?’

‘Absolutely. Everything.’

‘All right. But you sit down, I’ll make the tea.’

‘Don’t be silly, I can do that much. My shoulder feels much better already.’

She looked at me for a moment, and her eyes flashed with a hint of their old humour. ‘Doubtless, and I’m glad to hear it, but the fact remains you make horrible tea.’

We talked. For perhaps the first time since New Year 1913, we sat down together and put everyone else out of my mind while we learned about each other all over again and I told her everything. I didn’t hold back on the horror, and more than once she paled and swallowed hard, but I made sure she also knew of all the interesting snippets that went on day to day: we had been known to raid the town’s abandoned wine cellars on trips ostensibly taken to stock up on necessities; we would regularly ignore warning signs and sentries outside crumbling buildings in the pursuit of fresh, clean bedding, and we’d often send up to HQ for cigarettes and rum for the patients, pretending they were for us.

‘And Boxy once dressed up as a Tommy to see how far into the support trench she could get; she was only discovered when she stumbled over…’ I sobered; the funny aspect had quickly dissolved when Boxy had relayed the incident too.

‘Over what?’ Lizzy’s voice was gentle.

‘It was, well, a man.’ I met her searching look, and shrugged. ‘Part of a man. Sticking out of one of the trench walls.’

She blanched, but her gaze was steady. ‘They’d left him there?’

‘They have to. So many fallen. No time to recover them all.’ I shook my head. ‘Hard to know who’s the luckier of the dead; those killed quickly during an advance, but left alone out in No Man’s Land, or those who make it back to the clearing stations in the most awful agony, but are at least given a funeral of sorts when it’s over.’

We were silent as we considered, but of course we would never know. The question itself was too dreadful to contemplate.

‘For the families, it must be better to know their man had a decent send-off,’ Lizzy ventured.

‘It’s not that decent,’ I pointed out. ‘Barely individual. Row upon row of plain boxes, when they’re available. More often just a huge hole in the ground, and boys wrapped in their blankets. There’s a chaplain, of course. And a bugler, most of the time. But the funerals go on all day long, and “The Last Post” sometimes wobbles so much you wonder if the poor chap is going to get through it yet again, but they always seem to.’

Lizzy touched my arm. ‘I know this has been horrible to hear, but I’m glad you told me.’

I was, too; it was a relief to shake off some of the dark burden which I never felt able to put onto Will’s shoulders, and know that it was received, if not happily, at least willingly.

I took one of Lizzy’s home-made biscuits from the tin, and bit into it, then pulled a face. ‘My tea might be terrible, but at least it would have softened this.’

Lizzy smiled, as relieved as I was at the lightening of the tone. ‘Jack hates them too. He used to pretend he didn’t, but when I caught him putting one in his pocket to feed the birds with, he had to admit the truth.’ I couldn’t help laughing at the picture she painted, and then, of course, our thoughts were with the man in question, hardly daring to hope he would find Oliver, and that they would reach Archie in time to stop him sending that potentially lethal telegram.

The early April evening was fully upon us now; there was still a bite in the air, and although it was already Easter it still felt like winter. We’d had above average rainfall, the papers said, but we didn’t need to read those to know it was not yet even near time to think about shedding layers of clothing. Lizzy set to making up the fire, and banished me upstairs in case I offered to help.

‘If you want to write to Will, there’s paper in Emily’s room. I have some letters too, I can post them in the morning before I go back to the farm.’

‘You’re going back to work?’

She sighed. ‘Well, Kitty’s in no fit state. Mrs Adams will need someone to help.’

‘Is there anything I can help with? Something I can do one-handed maybe?’

‘Your left arm’s not exactly up to working either,’ she reminded me. ‘No, you’re here to convalesce, and convalesce you shall.’

‘I can go to the village,’ I said, putting on my stubborn voice. ‘I’ll take the letters, and pick up anything you need from the shop.’

‘I need a bag of potatoes and some coal,’ Lizzy said, and I glared at her.

‘Stop being difficult!’

‘Go and write to Will.’

I went.

My dearest Will,

I am just scribbling a short note in case you have heard about the shelling of Number Twelve, and might be worried. It’s true we were hit quite badly, but I am only slightly hurt and have been sent back to England to recuperate. I am staying at Dark River Farm with Lizzy, who is quite determined I must not lift a finger and so I think I will recover very quickly.

I hope this letter finds you in decent spirits, and not too down about it all. Easter is here, and our weather is perfectly horrible, I shudder to think how it must be in the trenches. I hope your funk hole is kept away from the water and that you are getting at least a little sleep despite the noise.

I hated the thought of him tucked into one of those ghastly little holes, scraped out from the side of the trench and just big enough to sit in and cover himself with his greatcoat. But not even the most comfortable bed would provide a good night’s sleep, with the constant bombardments going on night after night ahead of the next push. I bent to the letter again, determinedly not mentioning our last meeting and his insistence on pushing me away. Nor, of course, could I tell him I had lost the rose.

I will send a parcel soon. Is there anything you would like in particular? I will put Oxo cubes in, of course, and socks and chocolate. I will also send some of Lizzy’s home-made biscuits, and you may choose whether to eat them, or to throw them at Fritz and hope they hit square; there would be plenty of broken heads if so!
The effort of trying to sound normal was giving me a headache, but I pictured him smiling reluctantly as he read the letter, so I continued.
Perhaps we could send them to Lawrence to throw beneath the wheels of his tank and make the mud less of a problem!

In case you think I’m being mean, I have said nothing here I have not already said to Lizzy, and made her laugh by saying it.
I pondered on my closing, but determination seized my hand and wrote,
I miss you terribly, Lord William, and only wish I could prove it, so you will no longer even consider I might be better off without you.

Take care of yourself as best you can, and I will do the same until we are once again able to take care of each other.

Your ever loving wife

E.

The letter I wrote to mother was even shorter. I had not visited her since my return to Belgium after Christmas, and neither of us suggested it in our notes to one another. I had long since stopped trying to sound bright and breezy; she had seen some of the truth now, more than she’d ever wanted to, and the pretence of all being well was insulting to us both. So I simply asked after her health, and that of Mrs Hannah and the others, and told her I was likely to be moving to a different station soon, and that any mail should be directed to HQ until I had more information for her. I didn’t tell her about the shelling, or that I was injured – she would see the Devon postmark and simply assume I was visiting Lizzy, and she would understand. I closed by sending her my love, and hoped she knew I meant it. We might have grown distant in the years since the war began, and she might not yet have come to terms with who I was now, but we were still mother and daughter, and we still had memories of happier days that, I desperately hoped, would someday return.

Finally I wrote to Lawrence, who was having the devil of a time at Courcelette; the Germans had recently withdrawn, but everyone said it was a struggle to hold the trenches and although I couldn’t mention that, I tried to communicate how my thoughts remained with him. I remembered the little brother who’d taken such an awed shine to Will, despite the difference in their stations, but I also remembered the way I’d seen him last Christmas too, and it was as if I were thinking of two different people. This war had done so much to our young men, and even those who returned would never be the same again. I felt a familiar surge of anger, but anger would help no one; I just had to straighten my backbone, give thanks for each day that passed with no terrible news of a loved one, and play my part.

I gathered up my letters, and took them downstairs where Lizzy was at the sink washing her hands. I could see a pan on the stove with the lid set just off, and heard bubbling from within it. Immediately my stomach began to grumble, and Lizzy heard it and laughed.

‘Won’t be long.’

‘Smells heavenly.’

‘It’s basic, but filling. Have a piece of bread while you’re waiting.’ She waved me towards the bread bin, and as I nibbled on a crust I watched her work. She had grown up in this house, and it showed in the easy familiarity of her quick, comfortable movements. I couldn’t help feeling a pang of envy; I had never felt at home in any kitchen, until I’d come here. At Oaklands it was a risky business even going in there, and on the few occasions I had, I spent most of my time worrying someone would tell mother.

In this kitchen though, where Uncle Jack had clearly been absorbed into its history as effortlessly as he had at Oaklands, I felt I could just get on with things. I hoped it would be the same when Will and I found our own home together after the war. To beat back the fear that such a day might never come, I affected a stern expression and tapped the table.

‘Right then, Just Lizzy. Your turn.’

She looked blank. ‘My turn for what?’

‘Well, I’ve told you all the awful stuff. The cruel stuff. The stuff I wanted to shelter you from. Now you can jolly well tell me everything. Prison, the Wingfields, all of it.’

She protested, but I was relentless; I’d felt so much better once I’d unburdened myself, and I wanted nothing less for her. ‘I mean it, I want to hear it all. But let’s not have any biscuits this time.’

Lizzy laughed, but it was hesitant, and very short. ‘I haven’t bottled everything up the way you have,’ she pointed out. ‘I’ve been able to tell Jack.’

‘But you haven’t told him all of it, have you?’

I could see my guess was right; she bit her lip. ‘Not all, no.’

‘Then it’s time you told someone,’ I said gently. ‘And who better? Come on, sit down.’

With the stew making the occasional blupping sound, and the cosy smell of it wafting around the kitchen, it was hard to imagine a world like the one Lizzy described. But her words, plainly spoken, blunt even, painted a picture of which little detail needed filling in by the imagination. Her stories of violence and terror in Holloway were delivered without emotion, yet I could feel the weight of reality behind every one. She had struggled, those years, far more than I had realised, and far more than even Jack knew. This girl had been through fire as punishment for something she had not done, and if my admiration for her grew as a result of learning of it, so my loathing of the Kalteng Star intensified with every word she spoke.

She didn’t mention Jack’s having seen Samuel Wingfield in Germany, and I remembered their murmured conversation, overheard in the haze of discomfort and exhaustion, and wondered if I’d dreamed it after all. But the thought was swept away as she moved on to describe how she and Jack had crept through the cold darkness at the Wingfields’ home, not knowing what lay in store for them, and I felt my own flesh rise into goose bumps.

‘How on earth did you both manage? And with Uncle Jack hurt too.’