Selected Stories (95 page)

Once, on one of Michael's leaves, he had taken her over a munition factory, where she saw the progress of a shell from blank-iron to the all but finished article. It struck her at the time that the wretched thing was never left alone for a single second; and ‘I'm being manufactured into a bereaved next of kin,' she told herself, as she prepared her documents.

In due course, when all the organizations had deeply or sincerely regretted their inability to trace, etc., something gave way within her and all sensation – save of thankfulness for the release – came to an end in blessed passivity. Michael had died and her world had stood still and she had been one with the full shock of that arrest. Now she was standing still and the world was going forward, but it did not concern her – in no way or relation did it touch her. She knew this by the ease with which she could slip Michael's name into talk and incline her head to the proper angle, at the proper murmur of sympathy.

In the blessed realization of that relief, the Armistice with all its bells broke over her and passed unheeded. At the end of another year she had overcome her physical loathing of the living and returned young, so that she could take them by the hand and almost sincerely wish them well. She had no interest in any aftermath, national or personal, of the war, but, moving at an immense distance, she sat on various relief committees and held strong views – she heard herself delivering them – about the site of the proposed village War Memorial.

Then there came to her, as next of kin, an official intimation, backed by a page of a letter to her in indelible pencil, a silver identity-disc, and a watch, to the effect that the body of Lieutenant Michael Turrell had been found, identified, and re-interred
⁶
in Hagenzeele Third Military Cemetery – the letter of the row and the grave's number in that row duly given.

So Helen found herself moved on to another process of the manufacture – to a world full of exultant or broken relatives, now strong in the certainty that there was an altar upon earth where they might lay their love. These soon told her, and by means of time-tables made clear, how easy it was and how little it interfered with life's affairs to go and see one's grave.

‘
So
different,' as the Rector's wife said, ‘if he'd been killed in Mesopotamia, or even Gallipoli.'

The agony of being waked up to some sort of second life drove Helen across the Channel, where, in a new world of abbreviated titles, she learnt that Hagenzeele Third could be comfortably reached by an afternoon train which fitted in with the morning boat, and that there was a comfortable little hotel not three kilometres from Hagenzeele itself, where one could spend quite a comfortable night and see one's grave next morning. All this she had from a Central Authority who lived in a board and tar-paper shed on the skirts of a razed city full of whirling lime-dust and blown papers.

‘By the way,' said he, ‘you know your grave, of course?'

‘Yes, thank you,' said Helen, and showed its row and number typed on Michael's own little typewriter. The officer would have checked it, out of one of his many books; but a large Lancashire woman thrust between them and bade him tell her where she might find her son, who had been corporal in the A.S.C.
⁷
His proper name, she sobbed, was Anderson, but, coming of respectable folk, he had of course enlisted under the name of Smith; and had been killed at Dickiebush, in early ‘Fifteen. She had not his number nor did she know which of his two Christian names he might have used with his alias; but her Cook's tourist ticket expired at the end of Easter week, and if by then she could not find her child she should go mad. Whereupon she fell forward on Helen's breast; but the officer's wife came out quickly from a little bedroom behind the office, and the three of them lifted the woman on to the cot.

‘They are often like this,' said the officer's wife, loosening the tight bonnet-strings. ‘Yesterday she said he'd been killed at Hooge. Are you sure you know your grave? It makes such a difference.'

‘Yes, thank you,' said Helen, and hurried out before the woman on the bed should begin to lament again.

Tea in a crowded mauve and blue striped wooden structure, with a false front, carried her still further into the nightmare. She paid her bill beside a stolid, plain-featured Englishwoman, who, hearing her inquire about the train to Hagenzeele, volunteered to come with her.

‘I'm going to Hagenzeele myself,' she explained. ‘Not to Hagenzeele Third; mine is Sugar Factory, but they call it La Rosière now. It's just south of Hagenzeele Three. Have you got your room at the hotel there?'

‘Oh yes, thank you. I've wired.'

‘That's better. Sometimes the place is quite full, and at others there's hardly a soul. But they've put bathrooms into the old Lion d'Or – that's
the hotel on the west side of Sugar Factory – and it draws off a lot of people, luckily.'

‘It's all new to me. This is the first time I've been over.'

‘Indeed! This is my ninth time since the Armistice. Not on my own account.
I
haven't lost anyone, thank God – but, like everyone else, I've a lot of friends at home who have. Coming over as often as I do, I find it helps them to have someone just look at the – the place and tell them about it afterwards. And one can take photos for them, too. I get quite a list of commissions to execute.' She laughed nervously and tapped her slung Kodak. ‘There are two or three to see at Sugar Factory this time, and plenty of others in the cemeteries all about. My system is to save them up, and arrange them, you know. And when I've got enough commissions for one area to make it worth while, I pop over and execute them. It
does
comfort people.'

‘I suppose so,' Helen answered, shivering as they entered the little train.

‘Of course it does. (Isn't it lucky we've got window-seats?) It must do or they wouldn't ask one to do it, would they? I've a list of quite twelve or fifteen commissions here' – she tapped the Kodak again – ‘I must sort them out tonight. Oh, I forgot to ask you. What's yours?'

‘My nephew,' said Helen. ‘But I was very fond of him.'

‘Ah, yes! I sometimes wonder whether
they
know after death? What do you think?'

‘Oh, I don't – I haven't dared to think much about that sort of thing,' said Helen, almost lifting her hands to keep her off.

‘Perhaps that's better,' the woman answered. ‘The sense of loss must be enough, I expect. Well, I won't worry you any more.'

Helen was grateful, but when they reached the hotel Mrs Scarsworth (they had exchanged names) insisted on dining at the same table with her, and after the meal, in the little, hideous salon full of low-voiced relatives, took Helen through her ‘commissions' with biographies of the dead, where she happened to know them, and sketches of their next of kin. Helen endured till nearly half-past nine, ere she fled to her room.

Almost at once there was a knock at her door and Mrs Scarsworth entered; her hands, holding the dreadful list, clasped before her.

‘Yes – yes –
I
know,' she began. ‘You're sick of me, but I want to tell you something. You – you aren't married, are you? Then perhaps you won't… But it doesn't matter. I've
got
to tell someone. I can't go on any longer like this.'

‘But please –' Mrs Scarsworth had backed against the shut door, and her mouth worked dryly.

‘In a minute,' she said. ‘You – you know about these graves of mine I was telling you about downstairs, just now? They really
are
commissions. At least several of them are.' Her eye wandered round the room. ‘What extraordinary wall-papers they have in Belgium, don't you think?… Yes. I swear they are commissions. But there's
one
, d'you see, and – and he was more to me than anything else in the world. Do you understand?'

Helen nodded.

‘More than anyone else. And, of course, he oughtn't to have been. He ought to have been nothing to me. But he
was
. He
is
. That's why I do the commissions, you see. That's all.'

‘But why do you tell me?' Helen asked desperately.

‘Because I'm
so
tired of lying. Tired of lying – always lying – year in and year out. When I don't tell lies I've got to act 'em and I've got to think 'em, always.
You
don't know what that means. He was everything to me that he oughtn't to have been – the one real thing – the only thing that ever happened to me in all my life; and I've had to pretend he wasn't. I've had to watch every word I said, and think out what lie I'd tell next, for years and years!'

‘How many years?' Helen asked.

‘Six years and four months before, and two and three-quarters after. I've gone to him eight times, since. Tomorrow'll make the ninth, and – and I can't –I
can't
go to him again with nobody in the world knowing. I want to be honest with someone before I go. Do you understand? It doesn't matter about
me
. I was never truthful, even as a girl. But it isn't worthy of
him
. So – so I – I had to tell you. I can't keep it up any longer. Oh, I can't!'

She lifted her joined hands almost to the level of her mouth, and brought them down sharply, still joined, to full arms' length below her waist. Helen reached forward, caught them, bowed her head over them, and murmured: ‘Oh, my dear! My dear!' Mrs Scarsworth stepped back, her face all mottled.

‘My God!' said she. ‘Is
that
how you take it?'

Helen could not speak, and the woman went out; but it was a long while before Helen was able to sleep.

Next morning Mrs Scarsworth left early on her round of commissions, and Helen walked alone to Hagenzeele Third. The place was still in the making, and stood some five or six feet above the metalled road, which it flanked for hundreds of yards. Culverts across a deep ditch served for entrances through the unfinished boundary wall. She climbed a few
wooden-faced earthen steps and then met the entire crowded level of the thing in one held breath. She did not know that Hagenzeele Third counted twenty-one thousand dead already. All she saw was a merciless sea of black crosses, bearing little strips of stamped tin at all angles across their faces. She could distinguish no order or arrangement in their mass; nothing but a waist-high wilderness as of weeds stricken dead, rushing at her. She went forward, moved to the left and the right hopelessly, wondering by what guidance she should ever come to her own. A great distance away there was a line of whiteness. It proved to be a block of some two or three hundred graves whose headstones had already been set, whose flowers were planted out, and whose new-sown grass showed green. Here she could see clear-cut letters at the ends of the rows, and, referring to her slip, realized that it was not here she must look.

A man knelt behind a line of headstones – evidently a gardener, for he was firming a young plant in the soft earth. She went towards him, her paper in her hand. He rose at her approach and without prelude or salutation asked: ‘Who are you looking for?'

‘Lieutenant Michael Turrell – my nephew,' said Helen slowly and word for word, as she had many thousands of times in her life.

The man lifted his eyes and looked at her with infinite compassion before he turned from the fresh-sown grass toward the naked black crosses.

‘Come with me,' he said, ‘and I will show you where your son lies.'

When Helen left the Cemetery she turned for a last look. In the distance she saw the man bending over his young plants; and she went away, supposing him to be the gardener.
⁸

1
.
The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows
: First published in the
Civil and Military Gazette
, 26 September 1884; collected in
Plain Tales from the Hills
, 1888.

2
.
pice
: Coin of very small value.

3
.
the City
: Lahore in the Punjab, where Kipling worked as a journalist on the
Civil and Military Gazette
from 1882 to 1887.

4
. pukka: Proper.

5
. chandoo-khanas: Opium dens.

6
.
Baboos
: English-speaking, educated Bengalis; clerks.

7
.
Anarkulli
: Area of Lahore.

8
.
first chop
: Top quality.

1
.
The Story of Muhammad Din
: First published in the
Civil and Military Gazette
, 8 September 1886; collected in
Plain Tales from the Hills
.

2
.
Professor Peterson
: Then Professor of Sanscrit at Elphinstone College, Bombay.

3
. khitmatgar: Table servant.

4
. budmash: Evil-doer.

5
. jail-khana: Prison.

1
.
The Other Man
: First published in the
Civil and Military Gazette
, 15 November 1886; collected in
Plain Tales from the Hills
.

2
.
Simla
: The summer capital of the Government of India, in the lower Himalayas.

3
.
Jakko
: Mountain at Simla.

4
.
P.W.D.
: Public Works Department.

5
.
Terai hat: A
felt hat with a wide brim.

6
.
tonga
: A light, two-wheeled carriage drawn by two horses, much used on the roads to and from Hill Stations.

7
. bukshish: A tip.

8
.
Peterhoff
: The Viceregal residence at Simla before Lord Dufferin had a grander Viceregal Lodge built. This was completed in 1887.