The Silver Locket (9 page)

The nurses cut off dirty uniforms, washed the men and got them into bed. Rose smoothed the blankets and smiled at a man whose left arm was a stump, and whose remaining hand had lost three fingers to a grenade.

‘Thank you, Sister.’ The wounded soldier – a middle-aged reservist, Rose supposed, called up and sent to France when it all started – glanced up at her and sighed. ‘You look like you ought to be at school. If you don’t mind my asking, just how old are you?’

‘I’m eight – twenty-four,’ lied Rose, and blushed.

‘Eighteen, eh?’ The soldier shook his head. ‘So you’re just a kid, but at least you had the sense to be a girl. There’s boys of your age dying over there.’

‘I know,’ said Rose. ‘But you’re out of it now.’

‘Yeah, I’m out of it.’ The wounded soldier closed his eyes. ‘I used to be a carpenter, you know. I made chests and cabinets and boxes, lovely things they were, inlaid with mother of pearl and ivory. But I won’t be doin’ that no more. Last week, I saw this lad just turned nineteen get blown to bits. I wish it had been me.’

‘It’s horrible!’ cried Rose, as she and Maria snatched a coffee break later that day. ‘Men are being mutilated, driven mad–’

‘I know.’ Maria stirred her coffee, round and round and round. ‘Rose, if you can’t deal with it, you only have to say.’

‘
I
can deal with it!’ Rose glared at Maria. ‘
I
can look at mangled limbs and bullet holes with all the flesh and muscle hanging out,
I
can deal with horrible, great wounds! But what about the men? What are they
doing
out there? Just sitting in their wretched trenches like a row of targets, waiting to be shot at, bombed or blown to smithereens?’

‘You’ve heard what the men have been saying down on Stafford Ward,’ Maria said gently. ‘You know what must be happening over there.’

‘But I didn’t really think about it. I didn’t understand how awful it must be until today.’ Rose could not drink her coffee. ‘It’s wicked,’ she continued. ‘It’s evil and it’s cruel. It’s not a war, it’s just a pointless slaughter.’

‘You sound like a pacifist.’

‘I want to go to France.’ Rose looked at Maria earnestly. ‘I’m going to join the VAD, then volunteer for service overseas.’

‘You can’t, you’re much too young.’

‘I’ll lie about my age.’

‘If you go abroad, you’ll need to forge a birth certificate – unless you plan to steal one?’

‘But I can’t stay here and do nothing!’ Rose exclaimed.

‘You’re hardly doing
nothing
.’ Maria met Rose’s anguished gaze. ‘Listen, spend the next few months here at St Benedict’s, learning how to treat these dreadful wounds, and how to deal with your own emotions. Rose, you’re very young. Let yourself grow up a bit.’

‘Everybody treats me like a child,’ muttered Rose.

‘We wouldn’t let a child see what you have seen today,’ Maria said wryly. ‘If you don’t want that horrid coffee, let’s get back. We’ve work to do.’

‘Come along, my dear. It’s nearly supper time, but you’ve still got lots of work to do.’

In the stuffy bedroom of a grimy house in Wolverhampton, the midwife wiped the expectant mother’s face with a damp cloth. ‘I know it’s hurting, but you need to push. I can’t do it for you.’

‘I can’t push any more.’ Chloe was exhausted, for she’d been in labour all that day and half the previous night. ‘I’m so tired, and it hurts so much! I’ll never have another baby, ever!’

‘That’s what everybody says, but they all change their minds.’ The midwife crouched to look between her patient’s parted legs. ‘You’re nearly ready now. So if you can ride this next contraction, and then push really hard, your baby will be here. Come now, Mrs Denham, do your best. Just think how proud and happy Mr Denham’s going to be.’

‘My husband doesn’t care about me or the baby.’ Chloe bit her lip. She didn’t want to think of Alex.

He didn’t love her and he never had, for since he’d been in France he had never written a proper letter, saying that he missed her and was looking forward to seeing her again.

She felt another contraction coming, braced herself, but this one hit her with the force of a typhoon. She screamed in agony and terror. She’d thought she couldn’t push any more, but now she heaved and grunted, straining like a man trying to lift a weight almost as heavy as himself.

‘Stop a moment – Mrs Denham, please!’ The calm, efficient midwife suddenly sounded frightened. ‘Mrs Denham, wait, the cord is round your baby’s neck!’

But Chloe didn’t want to wait. She shut her ears to the midwife’s warning. She pushed hard once again, then it was over, and she closed her eyes.

She could hear the midwife saying she was so sorry, so very, very sorry, and Aunt Emily crying. But she couldn’t really take it in, because she was so tired – so very tired.

It was ten o’clock at night when Rose and Maria finally got away to have a meal in the canteen. Private Kingsley had been very difficult today, but Rose found she could soothe and comfort him. So she’d sat at his bedside for an hour or more, crooning the nursery rhymes and lullabies her nanny had once sung, and finally he’d drifted off to sleep.

Maria had had a little smile playing about her lips, and been looking as if she had a secret all that day, but Rose hadn’t had a chance to ask what it might be.

They lined up for their plates of mince and vegetables, then sat down to wolf their soggy supper.

‘Come on, then – spill the beans,’ said Rose, as she pushed her empty plate away.

‘Beans?’ said Maria, looking blank.

‘Staff Nurse Gower, don’t be such a tease!’

‘Oh, very well, I’ll tell you. But it was Sister Hall’s idea, not mine.’ Maria started on her treacle pudding. ‘You said you’d like to go to France.’

Chapter Six

All over Christmas, Alex’s company had manned a line of deep, dry trenches full of ammunition that they knew would blow them all to glory if the Germans bombed it.

They’d managed to have a fairly merry Christmas, all the same. They’d had plenty of whisky and food, and enough packs of cigarettes to supply a whole brigade.

The enemy had been quiet, even at night. Although there had been rumours of British front line troops and their German counterparts from the trenches opposite playing football in the mud and mess of no-man’s-land, there hadn’t been any of that sort of fun in Alex’s sector of the line. An unofficial cease-fire was declared on Christmas Day, but only so burying parties could go out and dig some graves unscathed.

After stand to arms on New Year’s Day, Alex took the letter from Chloe’s mother from his pack and read it once again. He had not imagined it – there it was in Board School black and white, the news that the baby girl had been stillborn, that Chloe herself was very ill and would most likely die.

He knew he could have got compassionate leave. He could have gone to Wolverhampton, could have sat in Chloe’s Aunt Emily’s dark Victorian parlour while he waited for his wife to die, but what would have been the point?

The thought of facing Quartermaster Sergeant Jarman and his moon-faced wife, who he knew despised him for a vile seducer of their virgin daughter, made him feel sick.

He was sorry for Chloe, of course he was – he couldn’t begin to imagine how upsetting it must be for a woman to lose her newborn child. But it didn’t seem anything to do with him. He thought it would probably be much better if he didn’t see any of them again.

The way things were going, he doubted if he would – for in this sector, an officer had a life expectancy of round about a fortnight.

He shoved the crumpled paper back into his pack and walked out of the dugout to breathe the frosty air.

On this first day of the brand new year, the sun was shining and the sky was blue. It had snowed a few hours earlier, and the broken, battered trees amongst which they had dug their lines of trenches looked almost pretty, white with rime.

The men who were busy shoring up some sections of the trench that had become unstable whistled as they worked. A lark or something similar – Alex didn’t know the song of one bird from another – was singing overhead, its thin melody trickling through the unharmonious crumping of the heavy guns.

‘Happy New Year, sir!’ Corporal Brind, the happy poacher who had kept the company in festive fare throughout the festive season, even getting hold of a fat goose for Christmas Day, grinned cheerily at Alex.

‘Thank you, Corporal Brind.’

‘We never thought we’d be out ’ere this long – did we, sir?’ The corporal shook his sleek, dark head. ‘There’s my old lady, thought she’d ’ave me ’ome for Christmas Eve. I ’ope she didn’t let any other bugger get their leg over instead.’

‘I’m sure she didn’t,’ murmured Alex, and rubbed his bleary eyes.

‘Mr Denham sir, I ’ope you’re right. If she’s been playing fast and loose, she’ll ’ave ’er teeth pushed so far down ’er throat she’ll ’ave to eat ’er breakfast with ’er arse, pardon my French.

‘Anyway sir, Captain Ford sent me to look for you. There’s another gentleman joining us this lovely morning. I think you’ll be showing ’im the ropes. Look, ’e’s coming now.’

Alex looked, and Michael Easton’s cold blue eyes bored into him, stopping his smile of welcome in its tracks.

He saw the new lieutenant looked hangdog, anxious – frightened? The artillery behind them had just opened up and missiles were flying through the air towards the enemy lines. So although it was fire from their own side and the inevitable counter-attack had yet to come, the noise was deafening.

Easton would soon get used to it, he thought. After a week or so, he’d actually miss it – on the rare occasions when it stopped. He was about to say as much when Captain Ford came stumping down the trench, scowling at a sheaf of papers flapping in his hand and kicking clods of frozen earth aside.

He glared at Michael Easton. ‘You must be the new lieutenant,’ he began, and grimaced. ‘Mr Easton, isn’t it? You’re in time to have a bit of fun. What’s the matter, man?’

Michael gulped and shuddered.

‘God, don’t say they’ve sent me yet another windy blighter?’ Captain Ford brushed past his junior officers and went into the dugout. ‘Come into the parlour, anyway. Mr Denham, you could come in, too. Where are Lomax and McCarthy?’

‘They went out with a digging party, sir.’ Alex looked along the trench. ‘I think they’re coming now.’

‘About time, too.’

The other two lieutenants came in brushing snowflakes from their shoulders. Captain Ford began to dole out papers from his bundle.

‘Sorry to burden you with all this skite, Lieutenant Easton,’ he said insincerely, as he handed out the maps and notes and lists and plans. ‘I’d have liked to let you find your feet, but there isn’t time for that. If you get stuck, ask Mr Denham here.’

‘So we’re to be involved in a new show?’ asked Freddie Lomax.

‘Mr Lomax, you’re a genius.’ Captain Ford glared at him irritably. ‘Yes, I’m afraid those buggers at HQ have noticed our boys haven’t had much exercise of late, so we’re going to a busier sector. By this time tomorrow, the London Irish will be in our cosy quarters here, minding all this ammunition, and we’ll sitting in some filthy hole five yards away from the front line.

‘All right, get the lazy buggers moving. We’re to be entrained by four o’clock this afternoon.’

‘I suppose they must use trains?’ asked Rose, as she and Maria sorted through all the forms to be completed, before they could be attached to the army as civilian nursing volunteers.

‘They must do – how else would they get the men out of the battle zones?’ Maria handed Rose another sheaf of documents to sign. ‘Rose, are you sure you want to go to France?’

‘Of course I’m sure.’

‘If they find out you’ve lied about your age, they’ll send you home again.’

‘I’ll have to take that chance.’

‘What about your parents? I think you ought to visit them before you leave the country.’

‘If I do, they’ll try to stop me going.’ Rose looked down at her ruined hands. Lady Courtenay would be appalled to see the rough and reddened skin, cracked and discoloured nails and ragged cuticles that were the inevitable result of having her hands in water all the time, of nursing men with gangrene, frostbite and infected wounds. ‘I’ve written to them, of course.’

‘Well, if you change your mind, Matron is sure to let you have some leave.’ Maria grinned. ‘You could say you have an ancient grandmother in Scotland, whom you’d like to see before she dies.’

‘I don’t think so, somehow. But what about you, Maria? You never talk about your family.’

‘There’s only Phoebe,’ said Maria, shrugging. ‘We never knew our parents. My first memory is of the orphanage in Bethnal Green. Then they farmed us out, to be brought up by a foster mother. But she died last year, and Phoebe – well, she has her life, I have mine.’

‘I met her in a restaurant once,’ said Rose. ‘I don’t know if I mentioned it?’

‘I don’t believe you did.’ Maria sniffed. ‘I dare say she was with some man?’

‘Yes, quite a young, good-looking one, in fact. She said he was in property.’

‘He was probably a gangster, then.’ Maria shuddered, then handed Rose another sheet of paper. ‘All right, fill in this one next. What are you going to say? You’re Miss Rose Helen Courtenay, formerly a governess, of 15 Heston Terrace, Chelsea Bridge. You’re twenty-four years old. You cannot find your birth certificate, but you have a baptismal one from St James the Great in Alton Road – and various other documents that verify your age.’