Passions of War (23 page)

There was an excited buzz of questions and exclamations, above which Marian Gamwell's voice rose decisively. ‘How is this going to happen, Boss?'

‘The British Red Cross Society will commission us to provide transport for the sick and wounded. They will provide the vehicles and all the necessary accommodation, stores etc. and we will do the driving.'

‘Does that mean we are becoming part of the Red Cross?' Beryl Hutchinson asked.

‘No. Mac has managed to negotiate a deal whereby we retain our independence and our identity. We shall wear our own uniform but be entitled to the same privileges as members of the BRCS.'

‘Where are we going to be based?' Gamwell asked.

‘Here, in Calais. The BRCS are setting up a camp for us.'

‘Will we all be going?' someone asked.

‘No. We can't abandon our work here, so some of you will remain. Eighteen of us will move to the new base. The people I have selected are as follows . . .'

Victoria gripped her hands so that the nails bit into her palms. She wanted, more than anything she could remember, to be one of those chosen. Driving was her passion, she almost felt it as her vocation. She had done her bit as a nurse in Lamarck, but now at last there seemed to be a chance to concentrate all her efforts as an ambulance driver. Franklin was reading out the list of names: Baxter Ellis, Gamwell, Hutchinson, Lowson . . . and there it was, at last! Langford. Victoria gasped with relief and realized she had been holding her breath.

‘When do we start?' she asked.

‘January the first,' was the reply.

Luke hobbled along the hospital corridor in search of Sophie. It was evening and the windows were open to catch the cooling breeze from the Nile. He had been at the hospital for almost two months and his leg was nearly healed; and he was bored almost to insanity. But now, at last, something was about to happen.

He found Sophie in the sluice room, washing out bedpans. She glanced round as he came in and then went on with her work, keeping her face turned away from him.

‘Hey!' he said. ‘I've got some good news.'

‘What news is that?'

‘Well, first, the rest of the guys are being evacuated from Gallipoli. The generals in London have finally realized that all they are doing is getting thousands of good men slaughtered for nothing. The whole thing has been a shambles from the very beginning. Thank God it's over now.'

‘So now you will all be able to go home,' she said.

‘I don't know about that. Rumour is that the troops are going to be redeployed to the Western Front. It can't be worse than Gallipoli. At least they'll be away from the heat and the flies.'

‘But not you,' Sophie said. ‘Not with that leg.'

‘No,' he agreed, ‘not yet, anyway. Guess I'm due for a spot of home leave.'

He was not sure himself whether to feel relief at the prospect or a sense of disappointment at missing out on the next scene of the drama, whatever that might be. He had developed close bonds with the men in his unit and he felt a sense of duty to go with the survivors, wherever they were sent. However, it was clearly not to be – at least, as he had said to Sophie, not yet – so he might as well enjoy his luck while it lasted. ‘The other bit of news is there's a ship leaving the day after tomorrow to take guys like me home. So it won't be long now before I can show you the farm and introduce you to the family.'

She turned to look at him then and he saw that she had been crying. ‘Luke, I know about the ship. But I can't come with you.'

‘Why not?' He moved closer and reached for her hand. ‘Sophie, I know you miss your home and you want to go back, but it's impossible right now. You know that, as well as I do. Maybe in a few months or a year, when we've finally routed the Turks out of the area, you'll be able to go back, but it's too dangerous now. You have to think of little Anton.'

He saw the tears well up in her eyes again. ‘I don't want to go back, Luke. But I can't come to New Zealand with you. I asked the adjutant to post me to the ship as a nurse, but he says the immigration people at Wellington would just send me straight back because I have no papers.'

Luke stared at her. ‘That can't be right. You saved my life. Wait right there, I'm going to talk to the adjutant myself.'

The adjutant, however, simply reiterated what he had said to Sophie. ‘I'm sorry, old man, but it would be irresponsible of me to let her board the ship, knowing she'll be turned back at the port. There's only one thing I can suggest, and that is that you go and see the consul. He might be able to provide some kind of emergency paperwork that would allow the young lady to stay in New Zealand for a while, at least. I'm afraid that's the best chance I can offer.'

Luke went straight out of the hospital, jumped into one of the horse-drawn gharries that waited at the gate and asked to be taken to the New Zealand consulate. There he insisted on an immediate audience with the consul, declaring that the situation was an emergency and using his status as a soldier wounded in the service of his country to press his case. The consul listened to his story and agreed with him that it showed remarkable heroism on Sophie's part, which deserved its reward, but his final verdict was the same.

‘I'm sorry, Sergeant, but I don't have the authority to produce papers for a resident of what is, for better or worse, an enemy country. Whether we like it or not, the lady is in law a Turkish citizen.'

Luke ground his teeth in frustration. ‘What about natural justice?' he demanded.

‘Not within my remit, I'm afraid,' the consul replied.

At that moment Luke had an inspiration. ‘Would it make a difference if we were married?'

‘You and this young lady?'

‘Me and Sophie, yes.'

‘Well, of course that would be different. As your wife she would have the right of residence.'

‘And she wouldn't be turned away by immigration?'

‘I don't see how she could be.'

‘Then that's the answer.' Luke got up, thanked the consul, and took his leave.

He found Sophie about to go off duty and persuaded her to come and sit with him in the garden. They found a bench under the shade of a palm tree at the edge of a dusty patch of grass.

‘I went to see the adjutant,' he began, ‘and he told me to go and talk to the consul.'

She gave him a weary smile. ‘You should not wear yourself out like that. You are still not strong and it will do no good.'

‘I'm not so sure about that. There is a way, but I'm a bit doubtful about suggesting it. I don't know what you will think about it.'

‘A way I can come to New Zealand, with you, and bring Anton with me?'

‘Yes.'

‘Tell me. I will do anything I can.'

‘It isn't anything difficult. All you have to do is marry me.'

She stared at him. ‘Marry you?'

‘Yes. I know it's a big step. You're still grieving for Iannis and obviously you're not in love with me. But it would be a formality, that's all. I wouldn't expect you to – well, you know. We might have to share a cabin on the ship, but I'd respect your privacy. Am I making sense?'

For a long moment she sat looking down at her hands, which were clasped in her lap. Then she said, without looking up, ‘You would do this for me?'

For the first time the full implications of what he was suggesting came home to Luke. It had seemed so obvious when the consul had mentioned the idea but now he realized that he was offering to commit himself to what was in essence a legal deception. Presumably he would be able to escape from the marriage in due course; words like divorce and annulment floated through his mind. If that was what he wanted . . . But what did he want? Why was it so important that Sophie should come home with him?

He answered in the only way that seemed to make sense at that moment. ‘You saved my life. It's the least I can do in return.'

Slowly she raised her eyes and the expression in them was unfathomable. ‘Then, if you are prepared to do this thing for me, I accept. And I thank you.'

Luke and Sophie were married by the hospital chaplain the following morning and the next day they took ship for New Zealand.

‘Stand to! Stand to!' The hoarse whispers of the NCOs ran along the trench and men tumbled out of bunks hollowed in its sides, bleary-eyed but with their rifles in their hands.

Tom yawned and shivered. It was almost the end of his three-hour watch. Soon he would be able to go back to the dugout for breakfast. Orderlies came along the trench with the morning ration of tea and rum. Tom headed for company HQ to wake the other officers, pausing on the way to exchange a few words with a man here and there. He knew all his platoon personally now, and consciously modelled himself on Ralph in taking an interest in their backgrounds and their problems. Besides which, he had sketched most of them and handed them the results, which had earned him the nickname of ‘Doodles'. He was not supposed to know that, but he had heard it whispered along the trench at his approach.

He had returned from England just in time to see the New Year in with Ralph. The regiment had been in reserve in the village of Poperinghe but now they were back in the trenches and in many ways that was a relief. He had survived his officer training, but only just. It had put him at the mercy of some of the regiment's ‘old hands' – both officers and NCOs. Some of these men had served in the Boer War and were intent on preserving what they called ‘the traditions of the regiment'; traditions which, in Tom's opinion, were merely a continuation of the bullying and meaningless rituals of public school. Junior officers were regarded as some kind of inferior being, to be humiliated at every opportunity. Tom, being a volunteer rather than a regular soldier, was a particular subject of contempt. When it was discovered that he was an artist, to boot, he became the target of every disciplinarian in the battalion. He was punished for failing to salute in precisely the prescribed manner, sent for riding lessons during which he was made to jump fences bareback on a particularly intractable mare, and forbidden, along with all the other junior officers, from drinking anything stronger than beer in the mess. Before the war he had not been particularly aware of snobbery and class divisions, but his time in the army had brought home to him the patent absurdity of such attitudes. In civilian life he would have been regarded as a social equal by even the most senior officers, because he was the son of a baronet. In barracks, he was treated worse than an errand boy.

At the end of his training he had been given two weeks' leave, which he had spent at Denham Hall with his parents. If he had found his training a time of trial, this period of so-called relaxation had made him more eager than ever to get back to France. His father, always fond of a drink and a gamble, spent most of his time carousing with the red-faced local squires who were only too happy to accept his hospitality, or at his London club. His mother, meanwhile, whom he had always found chilly and aloof, seemed to have withdrawn almost completely from family life. Neither of them seemed to have any concept of conditions on the Western Front and his father's only response to the information that Tom had volunteered for active duty and officer training was a derisive snort.

Returning to France, he had seen Ralph with fresh eyes and realized how much he had changed. The bright gloss of youth had gone, both physically and mentally. Even his hair was no longer the colour of a freshly fallen chestnut; instead it was more like the dulled relic of the previous autumn. The devil-may-care courage had gone, too, replaced by a bitter endurance.

At company headquarters, a two-roomed dugout in the side of a trench connecting the forward and support lines, he woke his fellow officers but found that Ralph was missing.

‘Called back to battalion HQ, sir,' his batman informed him. ‘Some kind of a flap on, I expect.'

Ralph had been promoted to captain and was now in command of the company, a transition that seemed to put a distance between them. Tom was sitting down to a breakfast of bacon, eggs, coffee, toast and marmalade with the others when he came in.

‘Good morning, gentlemen. No, don't get up. Finish your breakfasts. HQ have intelligence that Fritz is digging a sap out towards our front line. They want us to go out and verify it. It means going out after dark and locating the area, then lying up in a shell-hole for the day, listening for sounds of digging. I need a volunteer to come with me.'

‘I'll come,' Tom said at once.

Ralph turned to him with a frown. ‘No, not you, Tom. You're needed back here.'

‘But . . .' Tom protested, but at the same time a young sub-lieutenant called Carver, who had only been with them for a few weeks, piped up.

‘I'll come with you, sir.'

Ralph nodded. ‘Thank you. Be ready immediately after stand-to this evening. Now, is there any of that bacon left?'

Tom opened his mouth to argue and then thought better of it. At worst it would be insubordination; and even if Ralph could be persuaded he could not go back on what he had said in front of the others. He must wait until after he had carried out his routine morning duties: inspecting the men's rifles, checking that the trench was kept clean, and organizing work parties to repair and improve the defences. The trench system had developed by this time into an underground village, with a network of communication trenches and support trenches, where it was quite easy to get lost. The trenches were protected by a revetment of sandbags and broken into sections by traverses, to impede any enemy forces that might get into them. There was always work to be done to keep these in good repair.

When he was sure that all this was in hand Tom went back to the HQ dugout. By good luck, he found Ralph alone except for another officer who was fast asleep in the inner room. He launched into his argument without preamble.

‘Ralph, this has got to stop.'