The Silver Locket (19 page)

‘A few months later she was pregnant, probably with William’s child, but there’s a possibility she had other lovers, too. William wouldn’t marry her, and so she married Henry. He was very much in love and would have taken her on any terms.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Three or four years later, she saw William at a party. She went away with him. But they didn’t always get on well, her parents had disowned her, so she travelled back and forth to Dorset, dragging me.’

‘You must have been so puzzled and confused?’

‘I don’t remember.’ Alex shrugged. ‘Mrs Sefton called me the encumbrance, and wouldn’t have me in her house. But Henry was always very kind to me.’

‘Poor Mr Denham.’

‘Yes, he should have had a better wife. He certainly deserved one.’

‘It’s strange I don’t remember Mrs Denham. You and Mr Denham used to call at Charton Minster, but your mother never came.’

‘She was not invited. Rose, your family is respectable, and so
my
mother would have been as welcome as the plague.’

‘Alex, did you love your mother?’

‘I loved her very much. She was the sort of person one couldn’t help but love. While she was dying, William was distraught. I thought he would go mad with grief.’

‘But he’s still alive?’

‘I think so.’ Alex shrugged again. ‘Although he’ll have another mistress now. I don’t suppose he thinks about my mother any more.’

‘What a horrid person he must be.’

‘No, he’s a charming man. I always liked him.’

‘You’re so forgiving, Alex. I don’t think
I
would be.’ Rose twisted round to look at him. ‘Do you see much of Michael?’

‘Yes, because he’s in my company.’

‘Do you get on well?’

‘We rub along.’ Alex didn’t tell her Michael was a liability, whose only talent was shooting those unwary Germans who happened to stick their heads above the parapet. Thanks to Michael, Freddie Lomax and the other officers all knew Alex’s personal history. Michael had made a special pet of odious Corporal Brind, and Brind had spread Lieutenant Easton’s stories all around the men.

But there were compensations. It had been particularly pleasant to hear Sergeant Norris tell the happy poacher to keep his filthy slander to himself, that in the sergeant’s frank opinion it didn’t matter if Mr Denham’s mother was a whore or Queen of Timbuctoo. The captain was no more incompetent than any other useless officer, and Corporal Brind’s own parents must have been a pair of dirty-minded, mad baboons.

Alex wrapped a quilt round Rose’s shoulders. ‘Easton’s been telling everyone he’s going to marry you.’

‘He just wants Daddy’s money. If I were a pauper, Michael wouldn’t look at me.’

‘
I
think he’s very proud. You nurses are doing splendid work in France.’

‘If he knew what splendid work I’d done this afternoon–’

‘Rose, do you regret it?’

‘No, and I never shall – even if I live to be a hundred.’ Rose rubbed her eyes and yawned. ‘Oh Alex, I’m so tired!’

‘Then go to sleep.’ Alex pulled the quilts and blankets round them, then snuffed out the light.

‘Rose?’ It was nearly dawn and Alex knew he had to leave. Otherwise, he would be on a charge.

‘Let me sleep,’ moaned Rose.

‘Darling, I must go. I have to find the Armagnac, then take that wretched car back to Harfoix.’

‘Go on, leave me then.’ Rose looked at him with drowsy, sated eyes. ‘But how will I get back to Auchonville?’

‘There’s a train to Belancourt at ten, then you can walk.’ He stroked her hip. ‘The exercise will do you good.’

‘You’re such a beast.’

‘I know.’ He smiled. ‘I love you.’

‘Do you honestly?’

‘I love you and I’ll always love you. Rose, I promise you.’

‘A morning promise. One made to be broken before it’s afternoon?’

‘One to be kept until the sun stops rising in the sky.’

‘But
I’m
supposed to be the liar.’

‘So don’t say you love me.’ Alex kissed her on the mouth. ‘Go back to sleep instead.’

‘It was very quiet last night,’ said Elsie, as Rose pulled off her gloves. ‘In fact, I put my feet up on the stove and went to sleep. But this afternoon it will be bedlam. They’re bringing thirty patients from Harfoix, all of them gassed.’

‘That’s all right,’ smiled Rose. ‘I’ll get them settled. You and Nancy Harris can still go into town.’

‘How is your cousin?’ asked Miss Troy, who’d just walked in.

‘He’s in excellent spirits,’ Rose replied. ‘He was thrilled to see me.’

‘I’m sure he must have been,’ said Elsie, wryly. ‘Rose, your new collar must be rubbing. You have a sore patch on your neck.’

Rose broke all the rules but didn’t care. She worried about being caught, but only because if she were caught she’d be sent back to England.

Nurses were forbidden to go anywhere alone, unless they had permission from their matron and a pass. They were not allowed to go out walking with officers or men. They couldn’t even go for walks themselves unless they went in pairs.

But whenever Alex managed to arrange an errand to the riding school in Belancourt, or to the training camp nearby, whenever he could snatch a couple of hours and get a lift to Auchonville, Rose would beg Miss Troy or Elsie Dennison to cover up for her, sweeten them with cigarettes and chocolate, then slip out on her own.

‘I suppose it’s that peculiar young man we saw in Rouen?’ Elsie said one evening, as Rose came panting in and flung herself down on the camp bed in the spartan wooden hut they shared.

‘He’s not peculiar, he’s lovely!’

‘I hope he’s worth the mess you’ll both be in when Matron or the military police catch up with you.’

‘Matron never notices a thing, and the police are busy chasing soldiers who have cut and run.’ Rose smiled at her friend. ‘Elsie, will you do my Wednesday morning? Then I’ll do both your Friday nights.’

‘Yes, all right.’ Elsie glanced up from the letter she was writing to her fiancé in the Dardanelles. ‘I don’t know where you get the energy.’

But Rose was never tired. She fizzed and buzzed with restless energy, her grey eyes sparkled and her complexion glowed. Although she was forever swapping shifts, trading one night off for two on duty, so that when she wasn’t with Alex she was almost always on the wards, she found she needed hardly any rest.

The hospital was full, but the nurses weren’t rushed off their feet. Apart from men who had been gassed and needed special nursing, most patients at this time of year were sick, not gassed or wounded. A few were injured, but most were getting over colds, croup, frostbite or trench foot.

‘It’s always quiet in winter,’ muttered Alex, when they met for half an hour in Auchonville the following Saturday. ‘The next big push will be in spring or summer. Then you’ll learn what war is all about.’

It wasn’t spring or summer yet. Rose refused to think about the awful implications of a push, as Alex called the great attack everybody knew was coming soon and ought to end the war.

What would happen then? Alex had signed on for twenty years or more, so when this dismal business was all over, where would he go next?

‘God only knows,’ he said, as he and Rose sat in the market square, enjoying the December sunshine on an unusually bright, clear day. ‘Let’s hope it’s India or Burma.’

‘Why?’ asked Rose.

‘It’s easier to get promoted there.’ Alex lit a cigarette, then let a perfect smoke ring rise high into the sky. ‘I want to be a colonel and make Henry proud of me.’

Rose looked at the smoke ring, floating higher and higher, losing substance, shape and form. Alex had said he loved her, promised he always would, but if he went to India, what would she do then? Tag along behind the baggage wagons with the other riff-raff, in a motley crew of money-lenders, cooks and whores?

‘What are you thinking, Rose?’ asked Alex

‘I – nothing important.’ Rose looked at him and saw he was dishevelled, grimed and filthy. He hadn’t shaved for days. He hadn’t even combed his hair. His boots were clogged and dirty, and his trousers caked with dried-on mud.

Several buttons were missing from his jacket, which was scuffed and torn. He smelled of trenches – of lice-repellent, smoke and dank latrines, of mouldy clothes and slime.

How could he bear to live like that? How could he and millions like him crouch in sordid holes, ever fearful of a gas attack, a bombing raid?

When he
did
escape, when he snatched an hour of peace and spent it sitting in a village square, smoking cheap French cigarettes and staring at the bright blue cloudless sky, how did he find the courage to go back?

‘Captain Denham, sir?’ A lorry trundled up to them, and a cheerful corporal grinned and waved. ‘You said one o’clock, sir – but I managed to get all this lot loaded up by ten. So we’ve time to drop the parcels off at Nelanville.’

‘Good show, Corporal Ross.’ Alex threw his cigarette away. ‘I have to go,’ he murmured, as Rose realised with a sinking heart they would not be having lunch together.

He wouldn’t even kiss her in front of odious, over-zealous, grinning Corporal Ross.

The nurses held a raffle to decide which two should be off shift on Christmas Day.

‘I’ve won!’ squealed Rose, delighted.

‘So have I,’ said Elsie Dennison.

‘What shall you do, Elsie?’ Rose asked, beaming.

‘Sleep,’ said Elsie, rubbing her red eyes. ‘I’ll come and watch the boys open their presents, then I’ll go back to bed.’

‘What about you, Rose?’ enquired Miss Troy.

‘I’ll give a hand with breakfast, help take round the parcels, and then I’ll have a rest,’ Rose answered, glibly. ‘I’ve got a stack of books I haven’t read.’

She wrote to him immediately to tell him the good news. She hardly dared to hope he’d get away. But it seemed he might
. ‘It’s my turn,’
he said
.
‘I spent last Christmas in this stinking midden. My darling, say your prayers.’

Rose knew there was no need to pray, for nothing could go wrong. Even when Miss Troy came down with raging tonsillitis, she knew she could escape just after two, when Elsie would fill in.

One of the QA nurses at the hospital had happened to remark that when she got some leave, she and another sister liked to go to a hotel a mile or two from Auchonville, and rent a room just for the afternoon. There, they’d have a long, luxurious bath, eat cakes and read the latest novelettes, pretending they were having a quiet Sunday back in England.

‘I’ve booked a room,’
wrote Rose.
‘So if you don’t come, I’ll sit and stuff myself with food, and drink a bottle of brandy. Then cry all on my own.’

But Alex came. ‘My darling, you’re so clever,’ he exclaimed, as he came out of the steamy bathroom, looking like a Roman senator, swathed in snow-white towels.

‘So where’s my Christmas present, then?’ asked Rose.

‘I
have
got you something.’ Alex grinned. ‘But if you could have anything you liked, what would it be?’

‘Just you,’ said Rose. ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ she told him, as she kissed him, as she inhaled the scent of warm, clean skin, as she held Alex tight.

‘The manager knows what’s going on, but doesn’t give a damn.’ Rose shrugged like a Frenchman. ‘These English nurses, just so many prostitutes and harlots, thank God our lovely French girls don’t behave like English whores.’

‘If any Frenchman spoke like that in front of me, I’d knock him down,’ said Alex. ‘God, I hate the French! The British army’s trying to defend their stinking country, but all they do is grumble, charge us ten times what their filthy goods and rotten services are worth, and water down the beer.’

‘So if we’d let the Germans march through Belgium unmolested, the British wouldn’t be in France and the French might actually prefer it?’

‘I’d put a bet on that,’ said Alex. ‘But this summer ought to see the end. It can’t go on much longer, after all. There won’t be anybody left to fight, and men are going to mutiny if they have to spend another winter up to their necks in slime.’

‘I don’t know how you stand it.’ Rose didn’t want to think about what he was going back to, and she didn’t want him to think about it either, so she kissed him, then she tickled him until he caught her wrists and forced her back against the pillows.

‘Alex,’ she continued, ‘I knew there was something strange about you. I’ve just realised what. You don’t smell of alcohol today.’

‘I’m on the wagon.’ Alex wound his fingers in her hair. ‘I used to drink because it gave me courage, even though it made me careless, too. I would go on a bombing raid and make lots of mistakes, but I would somehow muddle through. But now I want to stay alive.’

‘You mind you do,’ said Rose. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you died.’

‘I won’t die, I promise. But I don’t know what we’re going to do when this is over.’ Rose saw Alex’s eyes grow dark with longing. ‘Chloe’s given me no grounds for a divorce. Other men will want to marry you, so I may have to let you go.’