Kissing Kin (3 page)

There had been a scurry to collect her overseas kit in time, for Dinah’s appeal in Bracken’s name to the right people in Washington had procured a passport for Camilla with startling promptness. Her luggage loaded with warm things to wear and with goodies for the family in England, she caught the boat—a small English liner—in a breathless state, and found herself launched, alone and still incredulous, on her adventure.

The announcement of America’s entry into the war came by wireless during an otherwise uneventful voyage, and went to everyone’s head far quicker than the champagne which was drunk to celebrate it. But Camilla was secretly glad that she and Calvert had both got away before it happened. Everyone said, on soberer thought, that it would be months before America could be of any practical help, even now, and they would both have gone mad if they had had to wait and cross with belated American units after all.

Camilla dropped off to sleep in her bunk on the night of April 6th feeling smug and excited and impatient—and a little dizzy with champagne. She and Calvert had beat the gun. They were in it. All the slow-coaches back home would be kicking their heels for months yet, wasting time. The war might be over before America had contributed much besides moral support…

London was showing the Stars-and-Stripes when she got there, and in Flanders the Canadians had just taken Vimy Ridge
with terrible losses. She was proud to say, “My brother will be coming over with the Canadians,” even though it caught in her throat. She would see him again before he went into the Line. They always trained a while in England, but replacements would be badly needed now.

Mr. Lloyd George was Prime Minister of England, and had introduced what was described as a sort of war-time Lent, which was an honourable competition in voluntary self-denial, and he was regarded with general goodwill and so far with only a little misgiving. He had most of the faults and virtues of a born warrior and a constitutional democrat. He was boundlessly energetic and optimistic. After the rounded
parliamentary
periods and sleek diplomacy of Mr. Asquith, he reacted on the war-weary British public like an astringent tonic.

Aeroplanes were doing more bombing than Zeppelins now, over England, and several were heard in London the first night Camilla was there, though nothing was dropped on the city and all the damage proved to be in Essex. She was sitting with Virginia in the little upstairs parlour where visitors to the St. James’s Square house were received by the family, when the first low hum became noticeable.

“
What’s
that?
” said Camilla, and felt her heartbeats quicken.

“Oh, you’ll get used to that,” said Virginia without moving. “It’s the Jerries again. Usually nothing much happens.”

“Can we see them?” Camilla demanded above the sound of the guns which had wakened to duty belatedly in the Park. “Somebody must see them because we’re firing back to them, aren’t we?”

“You can look if you like,” said Virginia, who was very tired. “But it’s an awful fag to open the windows on account of the black-out curtains and turning off the lights, and so on.” She reached for a cigarette from a silver box on the table, lighted it, pulled a chair round to face her own and put her feet up in its seat. “I wish I could remember a time when my feet didn’t hurt right up to the knee,” she added plaintively.

Camilla sat still and looked at her while cigarette smoke
curled out across the room and the ground defence in the Park carried on.

“How long have you been doing that?” she asked curiously.

“Smoking? I forget. Quite a while. Archie doesn’t mind, and it seems to help, I don’t know why.”

“Could I have one?”

Virginia nodded and pushed the silver box a few inches along the table.

“You will sooner or later. I’ve no objection.” She yawned, covered up too late, and slid down in the chair. “I’m sorry to be so dull, my dear, but I’ve had a really grisly day. Three of our kitchen people have gone sick—some sort of bad tummy—and I had to help out there. You’ll be a godsend, I’ll never forget how we worked poor Phoebe when she turned VAD, though it was nothing to what she got later on in Belgium.”

Camilla noticed that the hand which struck her match—her own hand—was not quite steady, and her knees felt queer. She envied Virginia’s cast-iron composure with all that noise going on outside and that strangely naked feeling overhead, and thought, Give me three years and I can do it too. Casting about for something to pin her mind to, the way you fight off the first qualms of seasickness, she said, “Is Cousin Sally still at your house in the country?”

“Mm-hm. Indefinitely.”

“Virginia, will you please tell me about Cousin Sally, she’s a
total
mystery at home. What exactly did she
do?
”

“Some other time, darling,” pleaded Virginia. “I really haven’t the strength to-night to begin on Cousin Sally, it’s much too complicated. We’ll have a cup of weak tea, shall we, and some biscuits, and by then the raid will have drawn off and we can go to bed.” She passed a fretful hand across her aching eyes and forehead, swept off the white nursing coif she wore and dropped it on the table.

“Virginia, you’ve got your hair cut short!” cried Camilla. “I thought you had, but I didn’t—how
sweet
you look, doesn’t Archie mind?”

Virginia ran her fingers through the short dark curls at the back of her neck.

“It’s less trouble this way. And Archie says it looks much nicer than long hair when I wake up in the morning,” she said complacently.

The blue VAD dress and white cap and apron made Camilla look very young and earnest. She found the work sheer sickening drudgery, and had often to grit her teeth against the surge of nausea which was partly stretched nerves. Bed-pans and bloodstained linen and greasy dishwater and dreadful smells—and then the hum of German aircraft
overhead
and the necessity not to show the slightest concern lest one be thought a coward. It was hardly fair, because the others had plenty of time to get used to it. But everyone was kindness itself and pretended tactfully that she was used to it too.

The arrival of Pershing in France in May coincided with—and assisted—a wave of optimism born of the British campaign around Arras. The first American troops were soon in France—it was only a token force straight from the Mexican Border, lean, springy, eager men who inspired the remark that it might have taken a long time to get America into the war but it would take a lot longer to get her out of it. Bracken came back from France for a few days’ rest and said things looked a little better—there had been some trouble in the French Army, but now that Pétain was boss he would have things straightened out in no time. Bracken was more worried about Russia, now many weeks gone in revolution. Russia’s leaders still insisted that a separate peace was unthinkable, but Bracken said he didn’t like the look of Russia. But then, Virginia reminded him, he never had.

The third anniversary of the shooting at Sarajevo passed, and Calvert arrived on Salisbury Plain with a new lot of Canadians. Camilla wanted to rush off to see him, and began looking up trains to Amesbury, but was persuaded to wait till he could get leave and come to London, which, late in August, he finally
contrived to do. He was made much of in St. James’s Square, and Virginia gave a theatre party to see
Daddy
Long
Legs
at the Duke of York’s, and they all wept just enough to enjoy
themselves
, and had supper afterwards at Scott’s, and tried to forget that now the Russian front had quite collapsed and America would never be in time to compensate for the loss of the Ally on the East. Soon the fresh German divisions which had been pinned down by the possibility that Russia might go on
fighting
after all would be streaming westward to be used against the weary, battle-worn men in the Allied trenches. And that would mean an endless demand for Allied replacements. And that meant Calvert and his new toy, the machine-gun.

The Canadians in Flanders were already famous for their snipers and their runners. Now they had taken the machine-gun to their devoted bosoms and did such deeds with it that
conscientious
correspondents like Bracken Murray hesitated to report them for fear of being charged with exaggeration. Camilla had to listen while Calvert talked of his gun like a man in love—had to look at diagrams and keep track of figures—almost expected to be swept off to Salisbury Plain to meet the beloved in person. The machine-gun was “she” to all its besotted crew. Like any exacting mistress, she was full of crotchets, and unless tenderly treated would jam at a critical moment, or just plain quit on you and there you were. But you knew all her whimsical ways and her complicated innards and her dirty little soul, and if you were on your way to France with a Canadian machine-gun battalion in the summer of 1917 your gun came just next after your God, and your girl, if you had one, was a poor third. Sisters—well, twin sisters always knew how you felt.

He confessed to them the last night that this was his
embarkation
leave and he was off to France within a few days. Camilla, hard pressed by her own exhausting duties when he had gone, had less time to worry about him than she had anticipated, and the brigade he was sent to was then in a rest area behind Lens. His letters were great fun, and she read them
aloud to Virginia. He had enough French to make friends with the civilian population, and the French Canadians in his battalion often turned things into quite a circus, particularly with the children they encountered. Gradually from his anecdotes and the second-hand tales of past heroism which had become legend in the ranks, one name began to stand out—his lance-corporal, whose name was Raymond, though they were rather at a loss in London as to whether or not that was his surname. Raymond was an American too, who had joined up in Canada soon after the
Lusitania,
and had reached France in time to win his V.C. in the reeking mine craters round about St. Eloi, where he was the sole survivor of his machine-gun crew. During that endless fight he had repaired his gun again and again under blistering fire, and kept it shooting inside a mounting ring of German dead. He was completely cut off, but held his key position against three separate German rushes until the counter-attack could come up behind him and
consolidate
. And then, soaked and muddy and spattered with blood which was not his own, moving in a sort of deliberate, stolid fury with no room for words, he had loaded up with hand grenades and gone out alone and cleaned up a still active German machine-gun nest which was raking the
newly-established
line from a vantage point on the left. He brought back with him a whimpering wounded German by the seat of the pants and dumped him disgustedly for somebody else to look after. The rest of them, he said, weren’t worth bothering about by the time he got there.

Raymond was kind of sheepish about his V.C., and it wasn’t from him that Calvert had got the story of that day at St. Eloi. Since then he had handled his gun coolly and with deadly effect at Sanctuary Wood and Vimy. Three of his men had died at Vimy, which was the reason for Calvert’s assignment to the crew. But Raymond never got a scratch. By all the odds it couldn’t go on, and he was due for it soon. But Raymond wasn’t worrying. He took what came.

Before very long it became obvious by Calvert’s letters that
they had gone up into the Line, though there didn’t seem to be much doing just where they were, except for raids, mostly volunteer affairs to collect information, usually at night.
Raymond
, who moved as soundlessly as an Indian, often volunteered for raids. It gave him a chance to pick up things. He was passionately interested in the German fighting
equipment
, and when he went on raids always acquired respirators and small arms and whatever loose gear happened to be
available
, which later he took apart at his leisure to see how it worked and then put it back together again as good as new. He possessed a very good Luger, complete with its rifle-stock attachment, and a pair of officer’s binoculars. And once when there weren’t any Germans left in any condition to give information as prisoners, he brought back a disabled German machine-gun—not for the first time, apparently—and had been tinkering it happily in his spare time ever since. He said it would soon be in shape to do a little shooting for them in the opposite direction if they could find some feed for it next time they went visiting….

Rain was their main trouble, Calvert wrote. Rain and mud up to the waist. You ate mud with your meals, and it got into your gun, which was worse. If Camilla thought
he
was crazy about the gun, she should see Raymond, who talked to it. “Here, what’s the matter with
you?
” he would remark affectionately when the gun baulked at a critical time and other people began to shout and swear. “You got the stomach ache?” he would say. “Somepun you et, no doubt.” And he would start taking it apart with unhurried, gentle fingers, murmuring encouragement to it meanwhile, and he would find the trouble and mend it, and when the gun was together again he would give it an approving slap on the back and say, “Feel better now?” And the gun would go back to work, looking docile and smug about the whole thing because its feelings had been pampered, without names being called. You mustn’t call your gun names and hurt its feelings when it had the stomach ache….

The fighting around Arras and on the Aisne had been bitter but inconclusive, and in midsummer the tide of battle turned back into Flanders, so that all the old familiar places were heard of again—Messines, Wytschaete, and hallowed Ypres—the fateful Salient. The weather went mad, and the armies existed in a continual downpour and an ocean of mud. Still the Allies inched forward towards Passchendaele, beyond which their real objectives lay, and in ten weeks of gruelling struggle and endurance they accomplished what had been allotted to the first fortnight. Passchendaele was still ahead of them.

Early in October Phoebe came back from the hospital in France to marry Oliver at last. It would have been sooner, but he had been sent on a long inspection tour with his general, and then the Matron at Phoebe’s hospital had collapsed and she couldn’t leave while they were shorthanded because when she came away this time she was not going back. There would be plenty of work for her to do in London, where Oliver had taken a furnished flat near Westminster for them to live in till they could find a small house. The child Hermione was at Farthingale to be out of the way of the raids, which affected her nerves to the point of hysteria. Virginia remarked grimly that Hermione’s mother had not been able to stand up to the raids either. A soldier’s child, Camilla thought in some surprise, even if she is a girl—well, yes, and only nine—but her father must feel a bit let down. And then Camilla would stiffen her own back and remember she came of fighting stock herself, with no nerves to speak of….