Grace Hardie (23 page)

‘I'll get some food,' she promised. ‘And I won't say it's for you. Wait here.'

It was not easy to raid the kitchen undetected. The cook would be preparing the evening meal, and even if she left the room empty for a moment would know exactly what she had in store and be quick to notice any theft. A confident lie had the best chance of success.

‘Mrs Charles, have you anything you could spare for a poor family? A jug of milk for the children, and some bread and cheese. And perhaps a cut off the cold mutton if there's enough.'

‘Shouldn't be any poor families nowadays,' grumbled the cook, although the comment did not prevent her from opening the bread bin. ‘Plenty of work for everyone.'

‘The father has been wounded. He's lost an arm. I suppose it will be a little while before he finds what he can do with only one hand. I saw him looking for work in
Headington Quarry, but with no success; so I told them to come this way.'

Whether or not Mrs Charles believed the story, she cut the meat and the loaf generously, pressing together two thick slices loaded with pickles and adding others with cheese. For good measure she found a jam pasty for the children and tied the offering in a cloth.

‘Sarah will take it down to the gate,' she said. The kitchen maid was already standing beside her, holding the can of milk.

‘Thank you, but I promised to return myself. I'll wait while they drink the milk, so that I can bring the can back.'

She hurried off before any other help could be offered, wondering whether her lies had been convincing. It would have been unwise to ask whether the servants had already been questioned about Kenneth and impossible to be sure that they would help to hide him.

The plant room was in darkness again when she returned; but when she called his name Kenneth stepped forward from a corner, eager to see what she had brought. For a second time she lit the lantern and saw his eyes glistening with an unnatural brightness as he broke off mouthfuls of the bread and cheese and began to devour them.

‘You should save something for breakfast tomorrow,' suggested Grace. Seeing that he was too ravenous, she pushed the jam pasty out of sight. ‘And drink the milk first.'

Kenneth swallowed it as though it were a yard of ale, to be taken in a single gulp as a sconce. He handed the can back to her and returned his attention to the victuals.

‘I must leave you now,' Grace told him. ‘Mother will be expecting me for dinner. But I'll come back later, after she's gone to bed.'

‘Don't tell her, Grace.' Kenneth interrupted his eating
for long enough to stand up and put a hand on his sister's arm. ‘I've deserted, you see. This is more than a game of hide and seek. If anyone gives me away …'

‘Your own mother! You surely don't think –'

‘You must keep quiet unless she says something first, to let you know how she feels. Wait for her to speak. You mustn't know anything until she tells you, d'you see? When we were children, I didn't sneak on you, either, remember? The day you hit the baby.'

For a moment Grace failed to realize what he was talking about. Then, as she remembered, her face flushed with anger rather than shame.

‘You didn't need to say that. I don't have to be blackmailed into behaving decently.'

‘No.' Kenneth's arm dropped to his side. ‘You've never been a tell-tale. I'm sorry, Grace. I'm frightened, that's what it is. These past five days – I've felt like a fox with the hunt after me. So many of them, all faster and stronger than I am. And all the time not knowing whether I'd find my lair earthed up when I tried to go to ground.'

‘I'll be careful,' she promised. ‘And I'll come back. However late it is.' She practised the rhythm of the knock by which she would identify herself and then, with a troubled face, left him in the darkened room.

If Mrs Hardie noticed that her daughter arrived home later than usual, she made no comment on the fact. Grace for her part waited to learn whether her mother had anything to say about Kenneth. So dinner that evening was a silent meal. Only over dessert, when for the first time there was no servant in the room, did Mrs Hardie abruptly come out with the words which must have been on her mind all day.

‘Two military policemen called here this morning. They told me that Kenneth has deserted.'

‘Deserted? Kenneth?' Grace put astonishment into her voice. ‘How can he be said to desert when he has made it clear from the start that he doesn't wish to fight?'

‘Wishes are not respected in time of war. He was refused exemption and so was deemed to have enlisted like any other fighting man. I understand from what my visitors told me today that even before his desertion he'd embarked on a course of disobedience. Well, there are minor punishments for that kind of thing, I suppose. But desertion is a different matter. The penalty is death.'

Grace half stood up in her chair and then slowly sat down again, hardly able to believe what she heard.

‘Death? The army wouldn't shoot its own men. There must be other punishments.'

‘I suppose that the punishment for running away has to be greater than the risks involved in remaining on duty. Men in danger must often be tempted to run away. And so –' Mrs Hardie looked down at the tablecloth, her eyes full of tears – ‘I dare say it seems necessary from time to
time to make an example, to show what will happen to anyone who fails to stick it out.'

For a moment both women were silent. Then Mrs Hardie, looking up, spoke more firmly.

‘My father was an army officer who died for his country,' she said. ‘My eldest son has been killed in action. I still have one son at the front, in danger of death every day, and I'm as proud of him as of Frank. I can't be proud to feel that I'm the mother of a coward as well. All the same, Kenneth is my son, and I love him. I'm not prepared to see his life sacrificed in such a stupid way. I'd give him shelter if I thought that was a sensible thing to do. But it would be foolish; dangerously foolish. Wherever he tries to hide, it ought not to be here.'

‘I'm sure he must realize that this is the first place the military police would look for him.' Then Grace hesitated, not knowing what to say next. Was her mother's last remark a plea for the chance of a meeting with Kenneth? ‘But if he were to appear one day –?'

There was a long silence. When at last Mrs Hardie spoke, it was with her head bowed so low over the table that Grace had to strain to hear the words.

‘It would be best if I didn't know,' she muttered. ‘It's not that I would send for the police; of course not. And if someone else saw him and reported his presence I would deny any knowledge of it. But I might feel angry at being forced to lie. And it would be hard for me to conceal the fact that I'm ashamed of him. To part in bitterness would spoil what might be our last meeting. It would be better that it should never take place.' She stood up. ‘I'm tired, Grace. I think I'll go straight up to my room and read for a little in bed.'

She was giving her daughter the chance to spend the rest of the evening as she liked, and Grace took immediate advantage of it. The plant room was dark, and locked from
the inside, but the door opened at once to her knock.

‘I took some cheese and fruit from the table,' she said, setting it down in front of him. ‘But it's difficult – there always seems to be one of the servants watching. I'd never noticed before. Kenneth, you were right about the military police. They've been at Greystones today. Mother told me.'

‘You didn't let on –'

‘No. She expects them to come back again. You were wise to warn me. If she tried to lie to them, they'd probably guess. Kenneth, how did you get into this? What made you run away?'

‘I've been an idiot. I realize that now. Telling them the truth, that was my mistake. I ought to have gone along with the system and obeyed all their stupid orders until the time when it really mattered. In the heat of battle, I don't suppose anyone would have noticed whether or not I pointed my rifle at a man's body or into the air. But – do you know how the army punishes those of us who aren't heroes, Grace?'

‘No.'

‘The order that I disobeyed was to do bayonet practice. “Imagine that the sack is the body of a Jerry,” the sergeant said. “Drive your bayonet into his guts and twist it.” Well, I could do the imagining bit well enough. And because I imagined it, I couldn't stab it. Not wouldn't, but
couldn't
. For that I was sentenced to two years' hard labour. You'd think that they'd prefer to be quit of someone who was never going to be of any use to them, instead of wasting money and men on guarding people like me.'

He sighed with the absurdity of it all and for a moment was silent.

‘There were four hundred men in the prison camp,' he told her. ‘Sixteen to a bell tent, with barbed wire all round. It was January when I arrived there. There was snow on
the ground. They took away all the clothes of the new arrivals. Sixteen of us were forced to take a cold bath in the open – all using the same water and the same wet towel. We were never given our woollen underclothes back again; only a thin prison uniform. We were put on to a ration of eight ounces of dry bread, morning and evening, with water to drink. The next day they started us on shot drill.'

‘Shot drill?'

‘You stand with a bag of sand between your feet. The bag is supposed to weigh twenty-eight pounds. There are detailed rules about these things, you see. But in the snow or rain it soon becomes far heavier. There's a warder in front of the line blowing a whistle, and at each blast you have to make a sharp movement. One, pick up the bag of sand and balance it on the palms of the hands. Two, take three quick steps forward. Three, place the bag down between the feet and stand up straight again. Four, bend down to pick it up – and on and on until your body can hardly stand it any longer and your mind is almost mad with the uselessness of the exercise. So in the end, after days or weeks or months, either you can't go on or else you refuse to go on. That's expected, I suppose, because the next punishment is ready and waiting.'

He paused, as though even to describe it was too much to bear, and then began to speak again.

‘We called it crucifixion. The army call it Number One Field Punishment. They put you with your back to a post or tent pole or gun carriage. Your wrists are handcuffed high behind you. There are straps round your chest and knees and ankles. And there you stand in the cold and rain while anyone who's passing takes a swipe at you. When they release you at last, you can't move; can't even stand. After I'd had three days of that, they thought I'd give in, so they sent me back to the drill ground. But I was
so angry by then that I wouldn't obey orders even if I could.'

‘What did they do to you then?'

‘Put me on another charge for disobedience. I wasn't allowed a lawyer. There was an officer supposed to speak for me, but he was on
their
side. I was sentenced to death. They left me to think about that overnight, and then said it had been reduced to ten years' imprisonment.'

‘That's cruel!' gasped Grace.

‘A little game they like to play. In the past, I was told afterwards, they'd go as far as to take a prisoner out in front of a firing squad. But one man died of fright when they did that, using blanks, and there were questions asked in Parliament. So now they can't take the joke quite as far.'

‘So they put you in prison?'

‘I was in a prison camp already,' he reminded her. ‘There were some pits dug at one end of it. I'd been told about them before. They lowered me into one of those. It was ten feet deep and not more than two feet across. I had to stand up all the time, with water above my ankles. Could hardly even turn round. Almost dark, because it was so deep. Nothing but mud in front of my nose. It wouldn't have taken long to go mad in a place like that.'

‘How did you get out?'

‘One of the sergeants chucked a couple of live rats down when he was passing. To keep me company, he said. Well, they drowned fast enough. But one of the guards, an ordinary Tommy, thought that was the last straw. He didn't join the army to see Englishmen treated in such a way, he said. He threw down some bits of wood so that I could climb out of the pit, and told me a place where I could get under the wire. Asked me not to make a break until after he went off duty, that was all. Just one decent chap!'

Kenneth buried his head in his hands, and for a moment Grace thought he was crying; but when he looked at her again she saw not tears but hatred in his eyes.

‘The pleasure it gave them, Grace! The officers ordered those punishments, but the NCOs
enjoyed
them. And I thought, is this why we're at war – to give pleasure to bullies, sadists? If I get through this, I shall get out of England and never come back. I hate it, hate it. I don't hate the Germans, poor sods. Don't suppose they like fighting any more than I do. But the bloody British army – oh, I hate that, all right.'

Grace was horrified at what she heard and shocked by his language. None of her brothers had ever sworn in her presence before. She was aghast, too, at his bitterness. ‘What can you do?' she asked.

Kenneth's fingers combed nervously through his shortcropped hair. ‘I don't know. I don't know where to go. I can't stay here, I realize that, nor try to work again for The House of Hardie. But what else is there? No one will employ a stranger, a man of military age, without asking questions that I can't answer.'

‘David will help you if he can.' But even as she spoke, Grace wondered how much he could do for his twin. David himself, when he realized that even marriage and a claim to be short-sighted were not likely to protect him from conscription much longer, had managed to arrange that he should be commissioned into the army to work in the legal department of the War Office, safely in London.