The Poppy Factory (18 page)

Ma disappeared into the kitchen to make tea, and when I asked what this was all about there was Pa looking shifty. Eventually, he said, ‘This is difficult for me, my dear.’

Whatever he was about to tell me was definitely not going to be good news. And then it all came pouring out: what he’d been trying to figure out all week. He got Alfie on the light work, to begin with, serving customers and the rest, and at first he seemed to get on well. He’s a friendly chap, good with people, Pa said, and the punters seem to take to him. When the shop was quiet Pa started introducing him to accounts and the rest – and though he’s not very confident with numbers, he’s a quick learner. In fact, he said, he seems to be most at home when he is in the office, adding up columns and making them square.’

‘Go on,’ I said, dreading what was still to come.

‘He seems okay with minced beef, sausages and bacon, and cold cuts like ham and cooked poultry, but he flat refuses to handle other meat, especially the large joints. He won’t help me carry out the carcasses in the morning to hang out on the display hooks, or bring them back in the evening. I could understand that, it’s heavy work and takes two hands, which means he can’t use his stick. But he won’t even go into the cold store, or handle a saw or a hatchet. I even caught him using a fork to lift the liver onto the scale. When I questioned him, he said he’s just getting used to it, wants to take it one step at a time.’

I said perhaps it was just something he needed to get used to, but then Pa said there was something else. When I pressed him, he said, ‘I set him to cleaning the trays of an evening after we’d closed, and even that seems to be a problem. I caught him carrying them to the sink with his eyes closed.’

‘What? Walking across the shop with his eyes closed?’

‘When I asked him about it, he denied it. Said I must have caught him blinking. D’you think the poor lad’s experiences over there have made him afraid of blood?’

‘Have you asked him, directly?’

‘No, I was hoping you’d do it. Might be easier for him to open up to his wife.’

I doubted it. What I didn’t tell Pa is that Alfie’s nightmares have been terrible this week: every night struggling with the sheets as if he’s trying to fight someone off, crying out in his sleep or waking up in a pool of sweat, shaking and crying. But he still refuses to talk about it.

So here I am, waiting for my husband to come home. I don’t expect the conversation to go well.

Monday 16th February

Alfie has gone off to work this morning, with a weak smile.

‘Weak’, because he knows that I know what’s really going on in his head, after yesterday.

When he got back from The Nelson we had ‘the conversation’. I told him what Pa had said, and asked him the questions I’d been composing in my mind. At first he did the usual Alfie thing, refusing to speak, but then I got cross and started to shout about the need for him to face up to whatever was going on, or it would get worse and worse and he would never be able to face Pa again or even make a proper life for himself.

He started shouting back at me, then, about why didn’t I stop criticising him all the time, that he was doing his best and if it wasn’t good enough then why had I married him in the first place? And hadn’t he told me, in the hospital, that I should go off and find a ‘proper’ man, someone who could take me dancing and have enough money to buy me decent clothes and not have to live in this hovel?

That made me even more angry because, although it is small, I like our little flat and have worked hard to make it homely and comfortable, and I said just that, and if he didn’t like it he could always go back to his parents’ house.

I regretted it immediately because he went paler still, his face crumpled and his head slumped on his shoulders. Then the sobs came deep from inside his chest, like an animal in pain. It started me off too, and there was little else I could do except keep my arms round him.

Eventually he found his voice and said he was sorry, and I apologised back, we had a big hug, and I made tea. Then I told him that unless he could talk about it, Pa would never be able to understand or give him any leeway, he’d lose the job and we’d be penniless again. What harm was there in trying to tell me? Even if it was something terrible he’d done in the war, I would never think the worse of him for it.

After another long silence, he took a deep breath and cleared his throat. It wasn’t easy, that much was clear from the way his hands wrestled with each other in his lap, as if they were locked in some kind of fight to the death. But once he’d started talking, it was as if nothing would stop him. The words just poured out like water from a tap, although never once did he catch my eye.

I’ll do my best to record what he said:

‘It was Thomas, my mate Tommy, who I was out on patrol with that day. We’d been together all through – met on day one, when we were first mustered for France, and got on right away. After a week or so we’d got like brothers, looking out for each other, covering each other’s backs, you know the kind of thing. We went through some rough times, I tell you, it’s impossible for anyone who wasn’t there to understand what it was like, all the mud and the lice and the chaos, with no-one knowing what the hell’s going on, and the shells coming over day and night, and the snipers ready to get you if you make the smallest slip. People were dying every day, even when we weren’t on a big push. It’s like being in hell. Bloody weird how we got quite used to it. After a while it felt almost like normal.

When Tommy’s brother bought it, and they wouldn’t give him leave to see his folks, he was so angry he was on the point of deserting. But I talked him out of it – they always get caught and some even got shot for it. It was selfish, really, cos the truth was, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to cope on my own, without him.

One time when we were going over the top, a shell landed that close I got knocked out by a clod of something – not injured but out cold. I came round lying in a shell hole with Tommy, who was unhurt, and a couple of others who were moaning like hell because they’d had bits blown off. We tried so hard, but we couldn’t save them, and afterwards we just lay and cried in each other’s arms till it got dark and we could crawl back to our line.

It wasn’t till later one of the other lads told me they thought I’d been a goner that day. Where I’d been knocked out was right in the open, the most dangerous place to be, and Tommy had crawled through the wire with bullets whistling past him, to drag me to safety in that shell hole. I owed my life to that man, Rose, and he risked his own life to save me.’

(He went quiet for a long time after that but I held my tongue, and eventually he gathered himself and started again.)

‘How we survived, I’ll never know. Half of our unit dead, and we’d seen three officers come and go but Tommy and me were still alive, heaven knows why. The other lads used to touch us, for good luck.

When Armistice Day finally arrived it was almost a let-down. They’d told us the previous evening but we didn’t believe it, and that morning the Germans were shelling us just as fierce as ever. We even had a direct hit in the trench that killed three men at around half nine – could you believe it? Then, at eleven on the dot, everything stopped. Complete silence, except for the ringing in our ears. Some of the lads said even the birds stopped singing, though there were precious few trees or bushes left for them to sing in.

A few people cheered but most of us just moved along the trenches shaking hands and not saying much. I think we were too exhausted to celebrate, and some people just sat down and cried. Got a bit sad myself, thinking of your brothers.

All Tommy and me wanted to do was have a bath and a good meal, and we got our wish soon enough. By the evening we were back in the village and the French women couldn’t do enough for us: we had baths and delicious meals and they unearthed bottles of wine and beer that they’d hidden underground.

Next day we were nursing sore heads and looking forward to a bit of relaxation, so it was a real shock when our commanding officer came by and said that although the fighting had stopped we still had work to do, so we wouldn’t be going home for several weeks. Weeks! We were so shocked – stupid really, I suppose we’d just expected to get on the next boat home. We’d be helping the Frenchies clear up, restoring homes, shell clearance, that sort of thing. He promised not to work us too hard and we’d have proper days rest, too, and good rations, so we reckoned we could live with it for a while.

We got pretty excited when they said we might be demobbed in time for Christmas but that passed with no news and Tommy and me was pretty fed up when they told us we had to go out again with our unit the day after Boxing Day. It was a new town where we hadn’t been before, about twenty miles away where there was still buildings to be searched and much work to be done to help get the place back on its feet again. We sang our hearts out marching there, trying to cheer ourselves up. We were split up into units of four to spread across the town, with an order to report back at the Otell Dervee – that’s what they call the Town Hall – at midday. We was on our way back there when it happened.’

(His face had turned the colour of a plucked chicken, with beads of sweat breaking out on his upper lip. I suggested he should take a breather while I made more tea, but he just carried on.)

‘I’ve got to tell it, Rose, now I’ve come this far, need to tell you what it’s like, when I go to the shop … that meat … the blood, and those bones. I get visions …’

(Go on then, I said, if you are sure.)

‘So that’s when it happened, when the unexploded shell went off. We were picking our way through an empty building, must have been a factory or something, and Tommy and the two others were ahead of me when ‘whoomph’. I felt myself being blown backwards against the wall, and the crack of my leg and then, silence. Well, I knew immediately what had happened and started shouting for help. I couldn’t stand on the leg but for some reason I didn’t feel any pain, that didn’t come until later, so I crawled over towards where they’d been. Christ, I wish I hadn’t made it.’

(He stopped again, his jaw clenching and unclenching, trying to stop himself breaking down. I could sense what was coming and felt like crying myself but knew I had to hold it together for him.)

‘One of them had most of his face blown away, and he was moaning, calling for his mother. The other one was silent, dead already, his guts spilling out onto the concrete in a pool of his own blood. Tommy was a few yards away from them, lying on his front and calling out for me: get me out of here, mate, get me home, please, Alfie, get me home. Please, Alfie, please, Alfie, he kept saying, over and over again.

I was talking to him, telling him to hang on in there, that help was on the way and we’d get him home in no time, which seemed to settle him. Jesus, I’d have given my own life to save him, but there was no way any of them could have survived. Didn’t stop me praying, all the same.

He asked for water and went to turn him over so’s I could give him a sip, and then I saw what that shell had done to him. It had just ripped his leg right off him, and the skin, so the whole right hand side of his body, his leg and arm, his crotch, his chest, was just bare, like raw … raw …’

(The tears were pouring down Alfie’s face by now, and he wasn’t even trying to wipe them away any more. He didn’t need to finish, the picture was so clear in my head: the young man’s body flayed by the blast, the missing leg and the mess of raw muscle and bone, like one of those carcasses hanging in Pa’s shop.)

‘He died in my arms, Rose, right then. He looked up at me and whispered again, take me home, mate. Then he closed his eyes and sighed and I was willing him to breathe in again, but when he didn’t I just started screaming for help because I still believed he could be saved. Then I must have passed out myself, because by the time they got to us I was nearly dead too from all the blood I’d lost.’

‘You did your best,’ I said, putting my arm around him while he sobbed. ‘You could never have saved him, not with those injuries.’

We were too exhausted to talk much more, that evening, just had a quiet tea and went to bed early. I woke in the night with my own visions of what that shell had caused, of the young soldier with his face blown off, the other in a pool of his own blood. And of Tommy’s leg torn away and his poor flesh, mangled and stripped of its skin like the carcass of an animal in the butcher’s shop.

But Alfie slept on peacefully by my side and, for the first time in a fortnight, he went through the whole night without a nightmare. Perhaps talking about it is the start of purging those terrible memories.

PS: I almost forgot. Tomorrow is Johnnie’s birthday. My big handsome brother would have been turning twenty-three, probably married with a couple of children, and working with Pa in the shop. At least Alfie is alive, even if I hate what that bloody war has done to him.

Sunday 14th March

After opening up to me, Alfie’s nightmares really did seem to get better, at least for a while.

He’s been going to work every day as usual, and if I pass by the shop he gives me a cheery wave. When I ask Pa, all he’ll say is that Alfie’s doing his best, though there are some tasks he still feels he won’t do. Gently does it, he said.

But he’s struggling, I know it. Not that he’s said anything, I can just tell. A dozen times I have been about to ask him, but have bitten my tongue. For a week or so I thought I was just imagining things, exaggerating the little signs in my head. Leave it to Pa and Alfie to sort it out, I tell myself, it’s not your business to interfere.

But I can’t ignore what I see with my own eyes:

a) The nightmares have returned, and we are both short of sleep.

b) He’s exhausted at the end of day, not only because of the nightmares. The work isn’t physically that hard, even bearing in mind his disability, but I think the effort of holding himself together is draining every ounce of energy.

c) He’s drinking again, every evening, sometimes to the point of coming home incoherent. When I tackled him about it the other day, he got all prickly, telling me to stop criticising him, and wasn’t it perfectly natural to want to relax at the end of a hard day, like most men? Most men don’t drink to get drunk, I wanted to say back, only the unhappy ones who’re trying to forget.