In Distant Fields (47 page)

‘So you shall, Mamma,' Partita laughed. ‘You and – you and Consolata Catesby – you can both be the Ugly Sisters!'

Circe sighed. ‘That is very sweet of you, dearest, but you can be the one to tell Consolata.'

Not much later they saw two people walking slowly up the long driveway, their shoulders rounded, their hands held tight together. As soon as she saw them Circe knew they were messengers of the Fates and a chill ran through her heart. Sending Partita back to her work before she too noticed the sad pilgrimage, rather than instructing Wavell to see to them, Circe went herself to meet the visitors in person.

They were possibly about the same age as she, Circe thought as she got closer sight of their faces, yet they seemed centuries older, their
ashen faces shadowed with grief and despair. The man, tall and gaunt, took off his hat slowly when he saw the Duchess to nod his head respectfully, while the woman whose hand he had been holding made a small curtsy.

‘Your Grace,' he said, ‘we have met but I dare say you might not remember.'

‘I remember your face very well,' Circe replied. ‘But if you might be so kind as to remind me of your name?'

‘Taylor, Your Grace,' he replied. ‘Sidney and Margaret Taylor. We live over Blenham way, and I did work in the factory there. The linen mill.'

‘Please come in,' Circe said, standing to one side of the door, knowing at once why they were there. ‘You must be tired after your journey.'

‘Thank you, Your Grace, but we don't wish to put you out,' Mrs Taylor said. ‘We'd heard the fine work you were all doing here.'

‘Thank you, Mrs Taylor, but I insist you come inside and let us give you some refreshment.'

Mr Taylor looked at his wife and nodded once, then thanking the Duchess again for her kindness, they walked through the front doors into the Great Hall.

Circe took them through to the library, while Wavell hurried away to make tea and sandwiches.

‘I think you know why we're here, Your Grace,' Mr Taylor said.

‘I think I do, Mr Taylor,' Circe replied. ‘And if I am right I can only tell you how deeply sorry I am for you at this time.'

‘It's our Tommy,' Mrs Taylor said, at which point her husband put a hand on her shoulder, as if to ease the pain.

‘Yes, Mrs Taylor, I was afraid this was so.'

‘He's dead, Your Grace,' Mrs Taylor continued, looking at Circe with the saddest pair of eyes Circe could remember seeing. ‘Our Tommy. He's dead, I'm afraid. Killed in action.'

‘They'd just gone over, you see,' Mr Taylor explained. ‘The second time that very day. They'd survived one raid, then they was sent out again.'

‘It were a direct hit, apparently, so they say.'

‘I am so sorry, Mr Taylor,' Circe said gently. ‘We all thought the world of Tommy. He was like one of the family.'

‘He loved it here, Your Grace,' Mrs Taylor said. ‘Never happier. That's why we has come to tell you in person. We wanted to tell you in person because we knew how happy he was here.'

‘I'm glad you did, Mrs Taylor, although I only wish you had not had the occasion.'

‘He was a lovely lad,' his father said. ‘A very happy boy. What he liked best of all was to laugh. He liked nothing better.'

‘He was a fine boy,' his mother said, still looking steadily at the Duchess. ‘You understand we are not just here for us.'

‘Of course.'

They had come to tell Tinker in person, but it seemed that Tinker already knew the moment she saw Wavell, the moment she saw the expression on his face. He walked her through to the library, holding her arm, already supporting her, knowing what was to come.

Livia was in Flanders, working in a Red Cross hospital run under the direction of Nurse Florence Cadell, a quiet-spoken Scotswoman who showed little emotion whatever the circumstances and seemed imbued with apparently endless energy and drive. Livia herself had been in the hospital for a few weeks, working under her maiden name of Catesby, when the realisation came to her that she had never yet seen Nurse Cadell off duty. Whenever Livia returned from her few hours of snatched sleep, Nurse Cadell would be still at work, quietly attending the wounded and giving comfort to men under her care, whom she was careful to keep from knowing that they were close to death. She seemed to inspire hope and courage in everyone, so much so that after the initial shock of working in a hospital so close to the front lines, inspired by the example of the woman running the hospital, Livia found herself capable of work she would previously have considered impossible. She also discovered in herself an ability to accept the terrible wounds she came across. Nurse Cadell, she saw, had the gift of addressing and treating each newly arrived patient as if he were someone
very special to her, someone to whom she was prepared to give as much love and attention as was possible to ensure his survival.

As she worked alongside Nurse Cadell, Livia could not help thinking about Val, and about the stance he had taken on the war. Nor could she help wondering whether he had been right. Surely nothing, but nothing, was worth what these poor men were being put through? And then she saw him.

She had just come back on duty one evening after snatching a couple of hours' sleep, her first real rest in nearly two days, due to a sudden flood of badly wounded men, victims of a bloody engagement fought in the defence of some obscure ridge not fifteen miles distant, when through the half-glass door she saw what she was suddenly sure was Val. Whoever it was, at any rate, was in deep conversation with Nurse Cadell, the man talking animatedly while Nurse Cadell listened attentively.

Yet Livia held back until they parted, after which, her heart pounding with excitement, she started to run forward.

‘Valentine?' she called, hurrying forward down the ward towards the office, some fifteen yards from her. ‘Valentine? Val?'

He had not heard her the first time but when he did he turned quickly to stare at the figure hurrying towards him out of the half-light. Then, as Livia was halfway to him, he turned quickly and hurried out of a door to one side. By the time
Livia reached the door and pushed it open the figure she was pursuing had run down to the end of the corridor and was still hurrying through the double doors ahead of him. When Livia in turn reached the doors, finding herself in the busy lobby of the hospital, there was no sign of him. He had vanished.

She ran outside the building in the hope she might catch sight of him, thinking that whatever his hurry it could not have been precipitated by the fact that he had identified her because if that had been the case he surely would have waited to greet her or even hurried to her side, rather than running away. Unless, of course, she had been mistaken and it had not been Valentine. But there was no sight of anyone recognisable in the throng outside the building, so big a crowd of people – attendants, nurses and ambulance drivers – that any hope of catching him disappeared at once.

‘I'm sorry to trouble you, Nurse Cadell,' Livia said, returning to the office at the top of the ward. ‘That man who was in here just minutes ago …?'

Nurse Cadell looked up at her. ‘What about him, Nurse?'

‘I had the impression, the distinct impression—'

‘Yes?'

Something in Nurse Cadell's tone and manner indicated that she neither welcomed this intrusion nor was she ready to impart any information about
her caller. Certainly Livia was sufficiently deterred to stop.

‘I thought I might have recognised him,' she said. ‘For a moment I thought it was someone I knew.'

‘Were you speaking about Monsieur Lacombe, Nurse Catesby?' Nurse Cadell replied, now consulting a list of her duties on her desk. ‘Gerard Lacombe. He helps here in an advisory capacity.'

‘Monsieur Lacombe?' the bewildered Livia returned. ‘He's a Frenchman?'

‘I would have to agree with that, Nurse. Now, if you don't mind, we have rather a lot on our hands today. They're still bringing them in from this latest engagement so I shall need all hands, please.'

Nurse Cadell had risen from her desk and was now at the door of the office, holding if open for Livia to leave.

‘You know our Monsieur Lacombe, Nurse?'

‘I was mistaken, Nurse Cadell. I didn't get a very clear view of the man and obviously my first impression was wrong.'

‘Who did you think it was?'

‘Just someone,' Livia replied quickly. ‘Someone I knew from England.'

For a brief moment Livia was aware of a sudden inquisitive look in Nurse Cadell's eyes, but then she was gone, hurrying off to administer to the wounded who were being brought into the ward, with the still puzzled Livia in her wake.

*    *    *

Harry was also busy. It was up to him and his fleet of ambulances to deliver the wounded from dressing station to clearing station. From there, those who survived the initial traumatic journey would, it was hoped, be transported to base hospitals on the French coast, the luckier ones being sent home to recuperate in Britain.

Harry had been ordered to the grim, slag-heaped landscape of the heavy coal mining area of Loos only at the last minute. It was there where he learned a large-scale Allied offensive was planned. It was to be another battle that, if successful, was predicted would bring about a swift conclusion to the war. When he arrived he found nothing but chaos. No one either in or behind the lines had been prepared for the devastation of the conflict, a battle where the enemy machine guns were deployed with dreadful effect, their barrels raking at will along the Allied lines, each gun firing up to ten thousand rounds in an afternoon, killing hundreds and hundreds of the troops advancing steadily and unflinchingly into their deadly fire. Those who managed to survive found untouched barbed wire greeting them, entanglements the artillery had failed to destroy, an impenetrable obstacle that forced them to wheel about and retreat, whereupon they were once more subjected to a hail of machine-gun fire. In under four hours over eight thousand officers and men lay dead in the mud.

In all his time driving motor ambulances, Harry had never seen injuries like the ones he saw that day, nor had he seen such alarm and disarray in both the dressing and the clearing stations, the latter set up in huts, tents and sequestered local accommodation, the medical staff at both posts all but unable to deal with the stream of desperately wounded men being brought by stretcher off the battlefield and then transported by motor ambulance to the not exactly adjacent clearing stations. Because of the distance between the posts, and the uneven terrain, Harry and his fellow drivers found that they were unloading dead soldiers at the end of the journeys, prompting Harry to remark, as he had so often before, that the clearing stations were too far from the dressing ones and should be moved closer to the lines.

‘Sir?' he asked when he found a moment to seek out the chief medical officer at the clearing station at which he had just arrived with all but one of his casualties now dead. ‘Sir, don't you think we'd all save a lot more lives if these clearing stations were nearer the dressing ones?'

‘I'm busy, damn you!' the officer shouted back at him over the mayhem. ‘I don't have the time to answer questions!'

‘Think about it, sir!' Harry called before leaving to return to his ambulance for his next dash. ‘It makes sense!'

Amongst the wounded waiting for transport at
the dressing station, Harry saw the mud- and blood-covered figure of a young officer sitting on an upturned crate with his elbows on his knees and his hands supporting his battle-weary head. Normally Harry would not have looked twice at such a sight, since he would have considered a man capable of sitting up to be capable of waiting in turn for his ambulance ride, unlike the casualties lying on stretchers around him outside the tin shed spilling over with dead and wounded. Yet Harry stopped because he thought there was something immediately recognisable about the young lieutenant, and when he retraced his steps to take a second look he found himself staring into the all but blank eyes of Gus.

‘Gus?' he said disbelievingly. ‘Gus – Gus, is it you?'

Gus looked up at him for a moment uncomprehendingly until all at once he recognised him and the vacant look in his eyes became one first of identification and then pure delight.

‘Harry,' he croaked, getting slowly to his feet. ‘Well, I'm dashed – Harry Wavell.'

Seeing how unsteady he was on his feet, Harry sat him carefully back down on his crate and kneeled before him.

‘I haven't got long, Gus,' he said. ‘I have another run to do.'

‘Another run?'

‘I'm driving ambulances, Gus – and I have to get some more of you blokes back to the clearing
station. Are you all right? Are you injured? Because if you are I'll see if I can shift you up the line.'

‘I'm all right, Harry,' Gus replied, so wearily that for a moment Harry feared he might expire. ‘At least I'm not wounded. At least I don't think so. Do you have such a thing as a cigarette?'

Harry produced a battered packet of cigarettes and lit them each one.

‘There's blood coming down your arm, Gus,' he said. ‘And a burn mark on your uniform. Looks to me as though you've been hit.'

Carefully Harry rolled back the sleeve of Gus's tunic as far as he could, to find a moderately bad flesh wound on his forearm.

‘You're bleeding quite badly, Gus. We'd better get you into the dressing tent over there – come on.' Harry eased him back to his feet, put Gus's good arm round his shoulder and began to lead him across to the first-aid post. ‘I think the bullet went right through – at least that's what it looks like, but I'm no doctor.'

‘They heard us coming, Harry,' Gus said, barely above a whisper, forcing Harry to put his own head as close as he could to Gus's. ‘After the first wave, we were attacking this redoubt – but they must have heard us long before we got there.'