For King and Country (30 page)

She couldn’t lie in bed a minute longer. The house wasn’t big enough to contain her, or this sudden burst of energy within her. She got up, threw on her clothes, and went downstairs.
Snatching her coat from the peg, she told her mother: ‘I need some fresh air, Mam. I’ll not be more than a few minutes.’

‘Are you out of your mind? It’s freezing outside, and it’s nearly dark. Get back to bed this minute!’

‘Just a few minutes,’ she repeated, and escaped through the back door and into the cold twilight. The stars were out, and the moon was rising, and in its last quarter. She got to the
end of the garden path and out of the gate, and hearing the back door open glimpsed her mother sillhouetted at the top of the steps with the mellow light of the kitchen behind her. ‘Sally,
Sally! Come in!’

‘Just a few minutes!’ she called, directing her steps towards the path through Annsdale woods until she was out of earshot of the house. With renewed life surging through her she
lifted her arms and threw back her head to gaze at great galaxies of stars, full of gladness and, for the moment, ecstatically alone.

She’d walked to the last of her strength, and it was beginning to rain, when her brother Arthur came striding towards her.

‘Hello! I was just coming to see you, our Sally. I thought you were supposed to be at death’s door.’

‘I was, and then the fever broke, and I’ve been in bed so long I wanted some air. But I wish I hadn’t come so far.’

‘You’ll end up with pneumonia, before you’ve finished.’

‘I hope not. I’m so thankful to be alive.’

He offered her his arm. ‘Away, then. Hold onto me, and let’s get you back home.’

‘I should be out of the army now, this minute. I shouldn’t have to go back at all now the bloody war’s over, but I’ve got to, for nothing better than
guarding bloody prisoners and scrubbing pots and pans. I’ve a bloody good mind to hop it.’

‘Don’t,’ said Sally.

‘Why not? Why shouldn’t I?’

‘Because they can shoot you for it, and even if you don’t get caught, you’ll spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, hiding from the police, scared that
somebody might turn you in. And people say they never stop looking for you.’

‘They’ll have to look a bloody long way to find me, then. I’m going to Australia as soon as I get loose.’

‘What’s Kath say about that?’ their mother asked.

‘It doesn’t matter what she says. We’re going.’

‘But you can’t make her go if she doesn’t want to, Arthur,’ Sally said.

‘And you can’t go and leave her and the bairns,’ their mother said.

Arthur sat staring at the fire for a while, his jaw tense. ‘I bloody can, though. I’m sick of having her bloody family interfering in our business, sticking their noses in where
they’re not wanted.’

Sally gave a little cough. ‘Kath seems to want them, though.’

She would have been wiser to stay out of it. He scowled at her. ‘If she thinks more about her family than she thinks about me, she can bloody stop with ’em. They can have her
altogether.’

‘What’s so good about Australia, anyway, Arthur?’ their mother asked. ‘They’ve got a awful reputation, some of the Australians. There’s one in the paper
today, Francis Jesset, an Australian soldier, in court for stealing a linen collar and a pair of. . .’

‘Aye, there’s one in court, and there’s hundreds dead and wounded in France and Turkey and Palestine and Italy,’ Arthur flared, ‘defending the bloody Empire, but
they don’t get a mention, and there’s no better lads on this earth. They’ll stand for no old bull from the so-called upper classes, though, and that’s why
they
can’t stick ’em. I’m sick to the back teeth of England, and English courts and the English bloody class system. And I’m sick of the way our lads were treated in France,
living in pigsties half the time, fed on dog biscuits and bully, and tea that tasted of petrol, and only a bob a day to take to the
estaminet
if you were in the rear, to buy a few chips or
an egg, or a glass of watered down beer while the officers were living off the fat of the land. The Australians showed our lot the road home, though. Do you know what they got paid?’

‘Four shilling a day,’ said Sally.

‘How do you know?’

‘I’ve heard a bit of talk about some of them getting themselves into trouble with it. The sort of trouble our lads couldn’t afford to get into.’

‘Why, that doesn’t make them any worse than anybody else, does it? Their government treats them a lot better, though. Did you know that the Australian government wouldn’t stand
for any of their lads getting shot?

‘Aye. I’ve heard some of the officers arguing about that at the hospital.’

‘Have you heard of field punishment?

‘Yes,’ Sally said. ‘Some of the lads in hospital told us about it.’

Arthur stared at her, brows drawn together, expression black and brooding. ‘Aye, well, I got a dose of that, last year, in the middle of summer. The bloody sun scorching down, and they
spread-eagled me against the gunwheel and knotted me up with my hands about a foot above my head within range of the enemy guns – and left me there with all the bloody flies crawling all over
me, until some Australian lads came by and cut me down. The sergeant daren’t tie me up again, either, because they’d threatened him with all sorts. And I was supposed to have been tied
up for two hours every other day for a fortnight, but it didn’t happen. So that was the end of that, except for being robbed of me pay and being put down the leave roster, and I still had to
do all the shit-shovelling and extra fatigues that go with “field punishment”. Oh, aye, I still had that to face, but there was no more getting knotted up to gunwheels, to bake in the
bloody sun for hours at a stretch. The Australian lads put paid to
that.
’

‘Why, you must have done something to deserve it, I suppose, field punishment,’ said their mother.

‘Aye, I did. I called the officer something I won’t repeat, and to his face, and I meant it, too. And I still mean it because he is one, and if I ever lay eyes on him once I’m
out of the army, he’ll know about it. And that’s why I like the Australians, do you see, because they’re men, and they make bloody sure they get treated like men, and they treat
other people the same way, and they kowtow to nobody.’

Well, there was no denying it. Australia and Arthur would certainly suit each other, Sally thought, and she couldn’t help smiling. ‘A few of the nurses at the hospital are talking
about going to Australia,’ she said. ‘They want me to go with them, help solve England’s surplus women problem, like, by getting ourselves out the road. They were saying the same
sorts of thing as you, about the wages being twice as much as we get, and everything.’

Arthur’s eyes lit up. ‘It’s not just that, Sally man, not just the money. The Australian government treats its soldiers like human beings, not just bloody cannon fodder. And
I’ll bet it’s the same with their women. You should come, Sal. Come with us. Come with me, if I end up going on my own. I’ll see you right till you get a job and get settled.
We’ll get on a lot better in Australia.’

‘I’ll be another two years before I’m qualified, Arthur. I couldn’t get a job in Australia yet.’ Their mother’s face fell, and Sally saw it. ‘And
anyway, I told ’em I could never go and leave me mam,’ she added.

He gave her a challenging stare, and tipped his chin towards his mother. ‘You’ve left her already. You’re never here anyway; you’re a slave to that bloody hospital, by
all accounts. If me mam ever needs any help, it’ll have to be our Ginny or Emma that helps her, or our John when he gets back. One day off a month? How are you going to look after her, with
one day off a month? It’s bloody serfdom, man.’

‘You’re not the only one that’s made that comment,’ said Sally. ‘But I’m happy nursing, and I want to get back to that “bloody hospital” as you
call it, as fast as I can, or they’ll make me make the time up before I can take my finals.’

‘Why, come away out with us,’ Arthur had insisted, on her last night at home. ‘I’ll pay you into the pictures. It’ll do you good, get you away
from the same four walls.’ And he’d been so determined to do her a good turn she’d let herself be persuaded to go with him and Kath.

But she ought to have known better. He’d been aggressive enough at times even before he went to France, but now his mood could change in an instant, and it only took something like this to
bring him to flashpoint.

‘Make me, then,’ he goaded the usher, his voice loaded with menace. ‘
Make
me stand up.’

Sally and Kath were already on their feet for the National Anthem with the rest of the cinema audience. Sally reached around Kath and gently touched her brother on the shoulder. ‘Away,
then Arthur,’ she cajoled, ‘we all have to stand up for the king.’

Arthur stayed contemptuously in his seat. ‘We all
don’t
,’ he said.

Kath sat down again beside him, and seeing her teeth glint in the darkness, she guessed Kath took some pleasure in Arthur’s show of independent masculinity, but Sally quailed as the usher
began to jab Arthur in the shoulder.

He reacted instantly, starting round with fists clenched and shoulders hunched, and Sally could well imagine the look of naked aggression that would be confronting the usher. ‘I’ll
see you as soon as this is over,’ he swore, ‘and I’ll knock your bloody brains out, poking me. You’ll be swilling ’em off the bloody pavement, mate, when I get you
outside.’

To Sally’s horror, people were turning round to see what the matter was, but that was immaterial to Arthur, and Kath seemed to revel in it. Something about Arthur’s expression or the
tone of his voice must have convinced the usher that the threat was not an idle one and Sally was relieved to see him back away, and vanish. It was not until the last note of ‘God Save the
King’ had faded into silence that Arthur and Kath stood up, and they filed out with the rest.

How on earth had she imagined that four years of war would mend him? If you want to be made a public spectacle of, come out with our Arthur, she thought. What had possessed her to do it? To have
everybody’s eyes on her, to be a person who might be remarked on or pointed out by anybody was something she’d always hated, and now she wanted to avoid it more than ever. In a
situation like hers, it was better to be invisible.

But Kath took a bit of fathoming. One minute she was denouncing Arthur to all her friends and relations, and the next they were as thick as thieves. One minute refusing to emigrate with him, the
next taking his side in an argument, solid as a rock, glorying in his dominance. And he was the same with her. Whoever said ‘never interfere between man and wife’ was right, Sally
thought. They’re more ‘one flesh’ than outsiders might imagine, to hear them talk. A closed book to everybody but themselves.

She looked at her brother, a bit calmer now he’d asserted himself, and thought that all the qualities of the born warrior were summed up in him, the dominant male. How odd it was that he
was the only one to encourage her to strike out for herself in the world, and believe she could do it.

T
he sitting room was empty, so Sally took the armchair nearest the fire. With a bit of luck the seniors would let her keep it, considering
she’d been so ill. Crump was first up from the dining room, arriving even before the tea. She flung herself into the chair opposite, and then leaned eagerly towards Sally.

‘I’ll tell you who was floored when you went off, Wilde, as if you couldn’t guess,’ she burst out. ‘Lieutenant Maxfield! I knew there was something wrong as soon as
I went on duty just by the look on his face, before ever Sister told us you’d been taken bad. By, but we had some work to get through that morning! I don’t think half the patients got
washed. I’m surprised you’re back so soon, though, and I’m glad, an’ all.’

‘You’ll not be glad when I tell you the doctor won’t let me start work. He says my chest’s not right, and he’s sending me home again. Matron says I’m overdue
for the two weeks off I was supposed to get at the end of my first year, so I’ve got to take them now, and see how I am after that.’

‘Silly old dodderer. They ought to sack him, and let Dr Campbell look after us,’ Crump grinned, with a wicked expression on her face. ‘He’d be more like it. I
wouldn’t mind him listening to my chest.’

‘That’s why they picked the old dodderer, I suppose,’ Sally smiled. ‘He’ll be a lot less trouble in the long run.’

Crump rolled her eyes heavenward. ‘Hm, maybe,’ she said, and then scrutinizing Sally, ‘I’ve got to admit, you do look a bit whammy, Wilde. Maybe the old doc’s
right. You’d better stay off for a bit. You’ll be going home again, then.’

‘Aye, but not today. I’ll have a walk round Leazes Park this afternoon, and I’m staying in Jesmond with a friend of my sister’s tonight. And tomorrow, I might have a walk
in Jesmond Dene. Get plenty of fresh air.’

‘Genteel Jesmond! I didn’t know your family mixed with the elite, Wilde! I think Jesmond Dene’s the bonniest place in the whole of Newcastle, except we never get much chance to
enjoy it. You don’t want to catch a chill, though,’ said Crump, jumping up at the sight of the tea trolley. She was first there, but the other probationers began to troop in before she
sat down again, and after handing Sally a cup of tea Crump perched on the arm on her chair, while they brought her up to snuff with all the gossip. How good it felt to be back.

‘Well now, how did I know somebody would tell you I was better?’ Sally laughed.

‘Because you know Nurse Crump’s the sort of good-hearted lass that cannot hold her own water,’ Will said. ‘And she fancies herself a bit of a matchmaker, an’
all.’

‘You’re right. That’s why I was careful to let her know I’d be on the Leazes. Your face is healed, Will. You’ve got the dressing off.’

He raised a hand to shield the scar. ‘Horrible, isn’t it?’

It was horrible, but, ‘It doesn’t look so bad,’ she said.

‘It’s getting dark. You’ll think it’s bad when you see it in broad daylight. I look in the mirror, and a gargoyle looks back.’