Easterleigh Hall (46 page)

Evie walked out into the stable yard with its empty stalls. These would soon take more pigs as Lady Veronica felt that it was wasted space, and indeed it was. Perhaps they could have more in the rear stables? She strolled out to the drive, saw Harry using his crutches to manoeuvre himself down the front steps and joined him.

‘Harry, how are you today? Did you enjoy the rabbit pie?'

‘Great grub, Evie.' He was such a lovely lad, and at least he would not be returning to the Front. His parents were so relieved that they had brought flowers on their last visit for all the staff. These had lasted for many days in the front hall and gave it an air of elegance which was at odds with the hustle and bustle, somewhat calmed by the arrival of the orderlies who manned the front desk. ‘You should have your muffler on,' Evie said, drawing her shawl tighter. ‘Annie will be cross. She spent many hours and many swear words making it.'

Harry laughed, and then they turned at the sound of a bicycle crunching on the gravel. It was Arthur, the young telegraph boy whose family lived in Easton. Evie and Harry watched him. Crunch, crunch. Her heart seemed to beat in time with every turn of the bicycle wheels. Harry eased a hand from his crutch and gripped her arm. He said, ‘Try not to worry until you have to.'

The boy skidded to a halt. ‘Can you take this, missus?' The lads hated these telegrams, because they all had fathers or brothers or friends out at the Front. Evie said, ‘Of course.' But she wanted to insist he took it away again. She read the name of the addressee. Harry saw it, sighed, and almost whispered, ‘Would you like me to take it to her?'

‘What, and carry it in your teeth?' They almost laughed. She looked at the cedar tree – so still, so strong. She entered the hallway, leaving Harry in the fresh air, which he would ruin by lighting his pipe, balancing on his crutches. Lucky boy, lucky mother and father, for there would be no such telegram for them now.

There was snow on the wind. Would it be a snowy Christmas? Think of that. The orderly saw the telegram and smiled sympathetically. Evie walked to the green baize door, opened it, and went down to the kitchen. Lady Veronica wasn't there. Evie checked the kettle. Yes, simmering as usual. She saw her knitting on the chair. Knit one, purl one. She made tea, poured it into a cup, not an enamel mug and added sugar, lots. She walked slowly to the door, and called down to the game pantry where she'd remembered Annie was teaching Lady Veronica to pluck disgustingly ripe grouse.

‘Veronica, will you come here?' She'd never called her just Veronica before, but now the woman needed to know that she had a friend, a proper friend, and she needed to be warned in advance.

Veronica came into the kitchen, her face pale. She saw the cup and saucer. She knew, Evie could tell. She knew. ‘Who, Auberon or Richard?' Evie made her sit. ‘Let's see, shall we?'

It was Captain Williams, wounded in action. One leg and one arm amputated to avoid gas gangrene. He was in hospital in Le Touquet. ‘You must go and fetch him back yourself,' Evie said. ‘You really must. He needs you.'

Lady Veronica was rereading and rereading the telegram, her fingers shaking, her lips forming the words. She murmured, ‘Of course I must.'

She packed immediately, and Evie's da, who was working in the gardens on his off shift, drove her in the trap to the station. As they disappeared down the drive Evie, standing by the front steps, thought of those words again. ‘Yes, it will break our hearts,' she sighed, and gestured to Harry. ‘If you don't come in we'll be treating you for pneumonia and Matron will put me on bedpan duty, and that might mean she cooks.'

He smiled, emptying his pipe on the grass while he rested on the crutches. ‘A fate worse than death, for us,' he said. He tucked his pipe into his hospital blues and swung his way over. She told him of Captain Williams. ‘That's his war over then,' he said with a satisfied smile.

Evie nodded. ‘Indeed it is.'

She thought of Lady Veronica. As well as breaking hearts war could begin to heal them too, and this might be a case in point. She accompanied Harry inside and then arranged with the orderly for Captain Williams to be assigned the main bed in Lady Veronica's room. She had insisted on that before she left, tears in her eyes. ‘He's my husband, where else should he go? Please free his room up for more patients, Evie.'

A letter arrived from Grace the next day. It was the second Evie had received from her.

Dearest Evie,

I can get no further than Le Touquet at the moment. The convoys come in and we rush to attend to them, and take down their particulars on slips of paper. My feet are swollen from rushing about. My dreams are full of maggots in wounds, of bedpans that I am emptying, of instruments I am sterilising in operating theatres. I hold kidney trays of instruments as the surgeons operate, or the triage nurses investigate. You know, Evie, these brave souls poke at wounds so terrible that no one would believe such horrors. I think I dream because I'm too busy to sort out the images while working. We VADs are called Very Artful Darlings by some, and Victim Always Dies by others. I have a friend, Lady Witherspoon. She had never washed a cup till she came here and is absolutely marvellous and flinches at nothing.

I have Captain Williams here. A telegram has gone and I have sent this with a friend so that it follows, hotfoot. He has lost an arm, and a leg; this bloody gas gangrene, but at least it's halted the beast and he'll live. He needs to come home, his sole thought is of Veronica. He talks of bruises, to her, not him. He talks in his sleep of her, and his recovery will be so much better at home. She must come for him. Tell her.

I send my love to you, dearest Evie. Write to me again. And no, before you ask, I have heard nothing of our friends, except that it's stalemate after the Marne battle.We know the casualty lists and so far they have not been amongst them. I miss Easton. I miss you, but I love my work. It makes me feel a valuable human being. We can never go back to being appendages, can we?

Your friend, Grace.

Evie folded the letter and placed it beneath her pillow, where she kept the letters from those she loved. Besides, Grace and Jack should lie together. She reread all her letters every night by the light of the oil lamp. She knew every one by heart. Simon's last one had told of his love for her.

‘The trees, Evie
,
were proper trees when we came. Now they are stumps, and the birds have gone. Such is war.'

She peered through the window out to Fordington. Would they ever fetch sea coal again, all of them? Well, no, not all of them, for Martin, Tony and two others of the marra group had gone, and Bernie. The pitmen's families had been allowed to keep on the cottages until they had found alternatives, at Mr Auberon's decree. Families whose pitmen had enlisted kept their houses, with his father's surprising agreement.

Things were changing, a few for the better. Yes, such is war.

JACK, SIMON, JAMES
and another private staggered into the casualty clearing station carrying a youngster. ‘Only sixteen, he is,' Jack told the VAD. She looked so young herself, so tired, and so blood-spattered. He surveyed his men with their muddied puttees, muddied boots, muddied hair and knew he looked the same, but at least the mud hid the boy's blood.

Tommy was dead, Jack had known that the moment after the shell hit the road, but they couldn't leave him there, by the side of the road, alone, especially not so close to Christmas, poor little bugger. He checked the other VADs quickly, but none were Grace. Where was she? Safe? God, he hoped so, but he knew many nurses were losing their lives.

The four men turned to leave, stepping over the walking wounded who were sitting or half lying on the ground, some smoking. There were grunts, groans, screams. There was the steady shouting of triage nurses and orderlies, and the barked orders from the doctors up to their elbows in blood. There was the stench. None of it was new. It was just how things were. Martin would have said, ‘A home from bloody home, bonny lad.'

They rejoined Brampton's platoon and Jack marched the men in fours back to the line which had been their destination when the whiz-bangs came over; they were still coming. Jack skidded on the frosted cobbles. Tommy's parents would be told he suffered no pain, but what else could Brampton tell them? The truth? He screamed his life away while the lice crawled all over him? Perhaps not.

They were reinforcing the line at Givenchy, casualties were streaming back along the road towards the aid station and Newton, the new captain, was ahead with Brampton.

‘Williams was a good bloke,' Jack said to Simon, who had grown quieter by the day and merely nodded. It was hard for the lad, he wasn't used to death like the pitmen, he wasn't used as they were to the darkness of the trenches, which were now being dug deeper and had the look of permanence. What a way to fight a bloody war. It was supposed to be cut and thrust by a proper army and get the hell out of it. Now it was cut and thrust and then entrench, attack, counter-attack, count your dead, bring in more lads who were more at home with a plough . . .

It was shift more sandbags overnight, stand up to your knees in mud, slip on your dead mates, freeze your ruddy bollocks off, itch with lice, the latrine a bucket rammed into a trench wall, food that might be, sometimes, brought up from the rear. Static it was, this war, and lucky if you moved forward or back even a few yards. Lucky if you lived. Lucky if the few yards didn't cost hundreds of lives, and thousands of limbs.

Jack looked at Simon. Aye, the lad was a gardener, used to creating life, to planting seeds, cutting vegetables and flowers, used to being in daylight, to loving Evie. Jack was marching alongside him now. He liked to do that with the weaker ones, but everyone was weak sometimes and he had to get Simon back home. He must. Evie. Lovely Evie and her friend Veronica. Would it have to be Lady Veronica now Williams was back?

The pace was lifting. They were closer, the noise was greater, the frost had been drowned by the mud and if he couldn't feel them twisting his ankles he'd not know the cobbles were there. Beside him Simon was laughing, just laughing and laughing, his unshaven face drawn and exhausted like everyone else's. ‘What's up, Si?'

‘It's just such a bloody joke, Jack. We plug up the lines. We hide in the trenches, we shoot them, they shoot us. What's it all about?'

The laughter stopped. Johnny from Derbyshire flung over his shoulder, ‘Didn't you know, Si, We're here, because we're here, because we're here. Ours is not to reason why.' He waited, and then sang, with the whole platoon joining in, ‘Ours is just to do or die.'

Jack grinned at Simon, who was laughing a proper laugh now. ‘Answer enough for you, lad?'

‘Aye, but I'd rather be like the captain, at home tucked up with the wife.' Simon hitched his rifle. ‘On the other hand, it'd be a mite better to be home with all your bits attached. Evie said in her last letter that Lady Veronica came out for him, said Grace saw him at Le Touquet.' He patted his tunic pocket. Jack drew a deep breath. Grace. Lovely Grace, but then they heard the sound of more incoming shells and the platoon slid into the roadside ditch. Jack tasted mud, foul, evil-tasting, germ-laden mud. The water was icy.

‘Damn it to hell,' Doug ground out. He was a recent recruit, a pitman who'd joined with his marra, Chris. He was a steady lad who'd helped them shift Tommy without being told. ‘You get on to the front of the column, find Chris when this silly beggar's stopped wasting his ruddy shells,' Jack ordered him. ‘A man needs to be with his marras.'

The shelling was subsiding. Men scrambled up the muddy sides and out of the ditch, the memory of the hot showers from last night washed away by the brackish icy water. They formed up and headed towards the crashing and screaming guns and the flashing lights, and towards the stench of blood, guts and mud.

Jack slid on the cobbles again. His rifle clanged against his water bottle. Ahead he saw Brampton doubling towards him, shouting, ‘Sergeant, take over this ammunition.' He pointed to where it had been discarded in the road. The two ammunition carriers were being stretchered back, their mules dead. ‘Yes, sir,' Jack yelled.

Doug and Simon lugged 1,000 rounds of machine-gun ammunition between them, while Jack, Johnny and the rest of the platoon carried their rifles for them, and distributed the remaining ammunition. ‘Nice evening's walk, lads,' panted Corporal Steven Mace, his rifle slung round his neck.

They slid and scrambled through the mud, passed the support trench and headed without stopping for the front line. The flashes lighting up the sky were brighter, the screams and explosions pounding around them louder, and ahead was the outline of the trench. ‘Well, about bloody time,' Jack thought, gesturing his men in and then slipping into it himself. Now the icy mud was up above their knees, and there were no duckboards. They struggled along, the mud dragging at their feet, threatening to suck off their boots. The parapet had been rebuilt with sandbags full of clay. They passed a lookout.

‘Huns are counter-attacking with a bit more punch,' the lookout yelled as Jack passed. ‘Happy times, eh Sarge?' They slid into the enfilade, the long corridor trench, and tried to hurry towards those they were reinforcing.

Enfilades made Jack feel exposed. If the enemy surged and broke into the trench there was no zigzag to help defend against their advance.

Captain Newton was doubling along the trench towards them, with Brampton at the rear, and behind him Roger whose face was as white as the moon. So far no bullet had found the batman, but to do that one would have had to wind its way into one of his numerous hidey-holes. Jack watched the man with hatred. Hatred seemed to be his constant companion now. If he stopped hating one person he moved it on to someone else, just couldn't do without it.