The Storms of War (38 page)

‘Have you told my family?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t.’

‘Are you in pain?’ How stupid and empty her words sounded when she said them. All the other men were probably laughing behind their hands.

‘They give me things for that.’ He shuffled himself up to a more upright position. The bandages bulged a little over his chest. ‘Look, Celia, I don’t want you to come here any more. I have met a girl. I’m going back to marry her after the war is over. There’s no reason for us to see each other.’

‘What kind of girl?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘In France?’

‘No, here.’

‘But how could you have met one here?’ The new girl danced in her head, dark-haired and shiny-lipped, a little like Nurse Rouse.

He coughed again, longer this time. ‘Celia, I did.’

‘I want to be your friend,’ she lied, a lump in her throat as she forced herself to speak. ‘We are friends.’ She didn’t say,
I realised when I was in France that I was in love with you. We could get married, that’s what people in love do.
The other men around her were probably listening to every word.

‘It seems a million years ago, you and me in Stoneythorpe. It’s all over now. I’ve a new life.’

‘In the garden, before you left—’

‘It doesn’t mean anything. That’s all in the past. Celia, I wish you would listen to me. You have a new life now as well.’

She wanted to scream but forced herself to be calm, reminding herself of the gas, what he must have seen. ‘You said we would be friends for ever.’

‘I was wrong.’

She felt the tears pricking at her eyes and fought to push them back. ‘You’re all I have now.’ The girl twirled in her head, laughing.

‘You have your family.’

‘All the time I was in France, I thought of you. I drove the ambulance and I wondered if I might see you. I thought that I was helping men like you.’ He put his head back and stared at the ceiling. ‘Did you never think of me at all?’

‘No.’

She glanced down at her hands in her lap. The floor under her feet was spotlessly clean, black and white marble tiles, arranged in neat squares, sharp lines cutting them in two, four and eight. She raised her eyes, even though he was not looking at her.

‘What happened to Michael?’

‘He died. Like so many of them.’

‘But you were there. Professor Punter, Michael’s tutor, came to the funeral and said that he had heard from another of the men that Michael saved you. Tell me.’

‘We pulled each other up. I can’t remember any more.’

‘You must!’

He looked at her. ‘You want to know? Yes? Well, I’ll tell you.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Crashes, explosions, blood, screams, commands to go forward even though they were firing on us. Keep going, they said. Keep moving. If you turn back, we’ll shoot you. That’s what they said. So we kept moving.’

‘And that is how Michael died. He didn’t save you?’

‘Something like that.’

‘An enemy shot, then he fell – and then what?’

‘I told you, Celia, I can’t remember. Nobody will know. Stop trying to make sense of it all. It was war.’

‘We thought we might receive other letters from men in his company. But no one wrote to us.’

‘Most of them died. Now, we shouldn’t talk of it any more. It’s not fair on the others here.’

She was crying now, wiping away tears with her arm, feeling them soak her sleeve. ‘Why are you so angry with me?’

His voice came out a little softer. ‘I’m not angry with you, Celia. I am just trying to tell you that things have changed.’

‘I haven’t changed. You haven’t.’

‘I have. I’ve done things you wouldn’t forgive.’

‘No, Tom! I’d forgive you anything. And I’m sure there is nothing to forgive.’

He shook his head. ‘Oh no. There is much to forgive. Celia, I wish you would stop it. You have always idealised things, and now here you are idealising me. It doesn’t work. I’m not who I was.’

‘Yes you are!’

‘Sssh!’ hissed the nurse from across the ward. ‘Keep your voice down.’

‘I’m going to marry this girl. There will be no reason for you and me to see each other.’ He dropped back on the pillows. ‘Celia, it’s time for you to go.’

‘I’ll marry you!’ she said, her words coming out more loudly than she could have imagined. She thought she heard one of the men behind her laugh. ‘I will marry you!’ Her heart flooded with emotion. Miss Celia de Witt of Stoneythorpe, her father’s hope to be a great debutante, now the ambulance driver who would marry
Tom! What would the Cottons think? They would be stunned, excited. Grateful.

Tom sighed. ‘I don’t want to marry you, Celia.’

Her heart dropped. ‘The other girl.’ Sitting close to him, holding his hand.

‘Even without her, I wouldn’t want to marry you.’

She knew her hands were twitching, her face too, as if there were a hundred twigs inside her waiting to burst out of the tree. ‘Emmeline said you admired me.’

He gave a hard laugh. ‘Your family thinks everyone is in love with them.’

‘Your sister said something similar, said we expect admiration because we have money.’

‘Mary does not know a thing. Celia, we were childhood friends, no more. Now we are older, and I’m sorry, but I do not want to marry you. I don’t know why you ever thought I did. I’m sorry you’ve been thinking of me. There was no point to it.’

She stumbled to her feet, her head ringing and tears blurring her eyes. ‘I’ll marry you!’ came a voice from one of the other beds, and her heart burned with humiliation. An arm caught hers. ‘This way, miss.’ One of the nurses helped her to the door. Celia wiped her hand hard across her face, and then took one last look behind her. Tom was weeping. She wanted to reach out for him – and then in a moment she was out of the door, into the corridor, and Nurse Rouse was taking her arm.

‘Sorry, Miss Witt,’ she was saying. Celia flung herself against her chest and wept. The nurse patted her hair. ‘Come now, miss. Some fresh air would do you good.’

She half pulled Celia forward to the door and tugged it open. Celia bent double and took great gasps of air. ‘I can’t!’ she said.

‘Don’t try to speak, Miss Witt. Just breathe.’ The nurse patted her back.

Celia fought hard – against her tears, the desire to scream, the desire to throw herself on the floor. Finally she managed to stand. ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’

‘Who?’

‘The girl he’s going to marry.’

Rouse raised an eyebrow. ‘He hasn’t told me, Miss Witt. I’d expect I would know if I was.’

‘You’re pretty.’

‘And I’d be dismissed if Sister thought I had been talking like that to patients, don’t you know that?’

‘Oh yes.’ Celia blushed. ‘I feel … I feel …’

‘Don’t feel. Try not to. Just think about putting one foot in front of the other. That’s what you have to do.’

‘I am sorry.’ She leaned against the wall, holding her side. In front of her, another VAD was pushing a man in a wheelchair around the grounds. He was holding his hands against his face, as if the light was too much.

‘I had a fiancé, you know. He was killed by a bomb. At least you still have the man you love.’

‘He doesn’t love me back, though.’

‘He’s alive. And the doctors think he should make a complete recovery from the gas.’

‘That’s good news.’ She reached out a hand for Rouse. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Virginia. Don’t tell the chaps, though, or I will cop it.’

‘Sorry about your fiancé, Virginia.’ The nurse was turning the wheelchair around and beginning the slow walk back to the hospital.

‘Just another war story, isn’t it? They tell us we have to buck up, get on with it. No use in crying, that’s what my mother says. Crying is what the Germans
want
you to do. Every tear shed by me is a victory for the enemy.’

‘Your mother knows what she thinks.’

‘She certainly does. She runs fund-raising committees at home. Money for our brave boys and girls. Sometimes I think she is almost pleased, deep down, that I lost George. Means she has something to talk about when other women start on about sacrificing their sons.’

‘Surely not?’

Virginia nodded. ‘No, you are right. I am being unfair to her.
I just cannot bear all that talk of bravery. George is dead, and all for what?’

Celia shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘And here I am, a VAD, one of the lucky ones, used Father’s money to pay for the uniform and lecture fees. At my last hospital, I did nothing but wash up all day long. I hardly ever saw a patient. On breaks, they got me to cut up squares of paper for the WCs. Mother would demand stories and what could I tell her? That the proper nurses had been beastly to us again? After my first day, I took my apron back to the lodgings and scrubbed it for three hours to try to make the cross less bright, so I’d look like I had been there longer. Didn’t work. Here we see the patients, at least. Anyway, I should go in.’ She turned away, then came back. ‘You know, Miss Witt. He shouts out your name in his sleep. Quite a lot. He told me once in the midst of a morphine shot that he had a girl back in Hampshire.’

‘But now he has someone else.’

‘Who knows? They say odd things, soldiers in hospital. Some of them try to make their family suffer, so that they feel the same misery as them. Others want to pretend everything is perfect. Some don’t want to see people at all. Listen, what I am trying to say is don’t give up. He might change his mind. I don’t know; things will be different. When the war ends.’

‘That might be another twenty years.’

‘Listen, Miss Witt, I should go.’

Celia grasped her hand. ‘Give me your address. Your mother’s address. I will write to you. Not about him. Just things.’ She held out her pocket notebook, kept with her even though she wasn’t in uniform.

Virginia hesitated, then scribbled out an address in Macclesfield. ‘But don’t write to me, really don’t. What would we say? If you get married, maybe I’ll come. If the Germans haven’t bombed us to bits before then. Now go! I can’t tell you how much dishwashing I will get tonight, thanks to you.’ She waved her hand and disappeared back into the building.

Celia turned away, gazed at the brick walls and glittering
windows to imprint them on her memory, then began her walk back to the station.

‘Oi, darling, waiting for me?’ said a soldier on the platform at Paddington.

She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Sergeant. I’ve devoted my life to votes for women.’ She ran into a fug of people heading to the Underground, and let London take her up.

‘Where have you been?’ Emmeline was by the door when she opened it. ‘You’re wearing a dress.’

Celia looked down at herself. She had been so caught up in her thoughts on the way home that she had forgotten to change into her uniform.

‘You told me you were driving Russell to Bournemouth,’ said Emmeline, tugging her inside.

‘I … er … changed in the canteen.’

‘I think you are lying. You have been crying, I can tell.’ Emmeline threw herself on to the sofa, legs stretched out in front of her, in a way she would never have sat in the old days.

‘Why do you care?’ Celia perched against the bookshelf.

‘Because you are my sister, that’s why. Because we can’t afford for you to lose this position by truanting off.’

‘I am not going to lose my position.’

Emmeline pulled herself upright. ‘Really? He sent a minion looking for you today. They said you had gone to visit Mother. He came to check.’

‘Oh.’ Celia sat down on the sofa.

‘So where have you been?’

‘Actually, I went to see Tom.’ The words fell into the quiet room, splashing like someone falling into a pond. Emmeline recoiled, then came forward, furious. ‘You did what?’

‘Tom is in hospital. I went to see him.’

Her sister’s face flamed. ‘I do not believe it. I cannot. How could you?’

‘He’s ill, sister.’

‘That … that servant! The man who took Michael to his death? How could you? I cannot believe it.’

‘He did not take Michael to his death. They were in it together.’

‘Oh yes, but he survived and Michael did not. Why do you think that was? Because Tom pushed him forward, I would say. I always knew he was no good. He’s infatuated with you, always was.’

‘Emmeline, stop this. Listen to yourself. Don’t you know how many thousands of men died out there? You can’t blame Tom.’ She wished she had not sat down next to her sister. All she wanted to do was escape.

‘You see him wrongly. You always did. You thought he was perfect. Not a killer.’

‘Oh, Emmeline. You are being ridiculous now. I’m not listening to this any more.’ And yet a small, sharp splinter of doubt was weaving itself into Celia’s heart. What had Tom said?
I’ve done things you wouldn’t forgive.
He did not want to talk to her of Michael. She put her head in her hands.

Emmeline inched towards her. The sofa sighed under her weight. ‘And what did he say to you? I wonder. I know. Not content with pushing Michael forward to take the bullet, he thought he might ruin you as well. He wants you to come to him when he is free.’

‘Not true. Actually,
I
offered myself to
him.’

Emmeline let out a small scream. ‘You did what?’

‘As I said, I offered myself to him. I asked him to marry me.’

Emmeline dropped back on the sofa. ‘I want to die! How can this be true? You offered to marry him?’

‘Yes, I did. He turned me down.’

Emmeline put her hands over her face. Celia felt like saying
Who helped you when you really wanted to die?
Emmeline sat up. ‘I can’t understand this. But we shall say no more about it. You will not go to see him again.’

‘You don’t have to command me. I won’t. Because he has told me not to.’
I don’t want you to come here any more.

‘Celia, I came to you when you were sad in the gardens. I spoke to you. I did not tell you that you must live so you could try to marry Tom Cotton.’

‘So what did you tell me to live for?’

‘For us.’ She moved to Celia and took her hand. ‘You need to live for your family. And I have something else to give you purpose. You must keep working for Captain Russell.’

‘What do you mean?’ Celia asked the question, but something was creeping up inside her, words that might come together to make a sentence, an answer. Tom flooded her head, turning her down, moving his face away.
Your family thinks everyone is in love with them.

‘Haven’t you guessed? Have you not understood what is going on? Celia, we are helping people.’

It was there, but through a thick fog. Celia could not reach it. ‘What do you mean?’ she repeated.

‘Those parcels I give you. Do you not wonder what they are?’

‘I’m delivering them to a friend of Samuel. Artistic things.’ As soon as Celia said the words, they sounded hollow, untrue. She wished then that she could stand up, leave the room, run out into the square. But she was held there by a spell, unable to move.

‘And there is no one better than you to do it, the driver of Captain Russell.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Do you know, Celia, what they do to men who will not fight?’ The front door banged shut and they felt the walls wobble.

‘They have to do other war work?’ Celia had seen articles in the newspapers about the Quakers, who were working hard as stretcher-bearers, factory workers, building roads. They said they were happy to tend the sick and help the men. She supposed some of her stretcher-bearers in Étaples had been Quakers.

‘I know what you’re thinking. Not the religious men. What if you won’t help the war effort at all, because even raking the land or driving a bus helps a great plan of aggression? Samuel does have poor lungs, but not that bad. Not really. He could certainly go out as a driver like you did. But he chooses not to, for that would be to participate in a great evil.’

‘He chooses not to?’ The men in her ambulance, crying out. Those who had shot through their own hands so they never had to return. Tom flashed through her head, his lungs full of gas, set
to go again once he was fitted up and ready.
Things have changed,
he was saying. Michael bending down in no-man’s-land, taking Tom’s hand, saving him.

‘The deaths of those masses of men are a sinful waste. Germany and England will go on fighting until there are no young men left. Samuel says that one day all young men will choose not to go and instead the politicians will understand that they have to make peace, not war.’

Tom’s lungs full of gas, told to hold a handkerchief to his nose. Celia gazed around, her eyes taking in the room, the books, the paintings, the geranium on the table. The bright stabs of colour entered her pupils; she could feel them, but she could not register what they meant. ‘Mr Janus might be arrested.’

‘He might be. But he is down as sick. Soon they will expect him to go to do some sort of work. But we have work here. As I said, what do you think happens to men who object to the war?’

‘Taken to prison.’ She pulled her mind from the screams of the men in her ambulance, fixed her gaze on the poor geranium, its leaves browning no matter how much water they gave it. Mr Janus had found it in a market, said it would cheer the place up a bit. Now it was sitting listening to Emmeline with her.

‘And what do you think happens to them there?’

Celia shook her head.

‘They are treated in the worst way you can imagine. They are given no food, no water, no covering; their clothes are taken from them. If you were to murder ten women, the government would treat you more kindly. We have to protect these men.’

Celia felt the panic rising in her chest, tightening her lungs. ‘And these are the parcels I am delivering.’

‘That is right. Food, clothes, water. These men are hidden behind panels, in cellars. You are perfect. No one would suspect the driver of Captain Russell, formerly an ambulance girl in France.’

Celia put her head in her hands. ‘Emmeline. What are you doing? What will happen to you if you get caught?’

‘Us, you mean. We will all go to prison. Jemima and Rufus too. They will beat us and force us to eat, I suppose.’ The excitement in
her voice bubbled through. She didn’t understand, thought Celia, she didn’t know what it would be like. Tibor Schmidt was in her head.
You’re not in the Black Forest now.
She looked up at her sister.

‘Emmy, while I was in France, they tried to use me to interrogate a German. I said no. The man there told me that they would always be watching me.’

‘Oh, just words.’ But Emmeline looked less sure.

‘And we are German! They have Father. They are watching us.’

Her sister’s face clouded. Then she stood up and clapped her hands. ‘Well, we will just have to stay careful, won’t we? Look out for informers.’

‘The risk is too great. I don’t think you really understand what prison is!’

‘It is too late now. You’re already involved. You’ve done it enough times. We’re going out tonight. You will come with us.’

Celia gazed at the geranium again, all the things in the flat, looking back at her. It was her price for being here, she saw this. Her mind was full of Michael, dying in some muddy field in France, Tom, his head bandaged, lungs scarred by the gas. ‘I can’t leave you to do it alone. But Emmeline, what has happened to you? You would never have done such things before. You wanted to marry Sir Hugh Bradshaw.’

‘Well I was wrong, wasn’t I? Samuel has shown me the right way to live.’

‘How did you get the
idea
to do this?’
Tom
, she wanted to cry,
you could take me away from this.
No answer came.

‘I don’t know much. Neither should you. But Rufus comes to tell us where we should go and what to do. That is enough for us to know.’

That night, Jemima and Rufus came to the flat at eleven o’clock, Jemima straight from her shift at the hospital. They were wearing dark coats with hoods over their heads. Emmeline made Celia wear the same. The five of them hurried out carrying boxes, bags of food, clothes and bottles of water. They split up at Bloomsbury Square – Celia was with Jemima, Emmeline with Samuel, and
Rufus went alone. Jemima and Celia visited six houses, delivering food, dropping off water. They walked in the darkest parts of town, skulking through the shadows at the back of houses, on the edges of squares, one fifty paces behind the other, first Celia, then Jemima, taking it in turns to look behind them. Jemima took the bundles upstairs and left Celia to wait and keep watch at the bottom. ‘Best you don’t come,’ she said, when Celia asked. ‘The less you know, the better.’

‘How long would we be in prison?’ Celia said.

Jemima shushed her urgently. ‘Never! Don’t say that. Anyway, they will be kinder to us because we are women. Not that it will ever come to that. We are careful. Come on. Last one now.’ They were standing outside a row of hotels in Paddington. They did not have a list. Rufus had given them six slips of paper, one for each address. When they had made the delivery, they had to tear the paper into little pieces and throw them into a drain. Now there was only one left. ‘Gloucester Terrace,’ she said. ‘Not far. Off we go.’

Celia thought miserably of Tom. In France, driving, she had told herself that he would be proud of her. But she could not see him being proud of this, letting men avoid what he went so keenly to do.

They cut up past Paddington station, still busy with people. Celia felt relieved, light-hearted even, that they had finished nearly all of their addresses. Jemima moved forward to lead the way. ‘Then to bed!’ she smiled at Celia over her shoulder, before pushing ahead to increase the gap between them. They passed through a flurry of girls who looked like VADs. One of them smiled at Celia. Celia could not smile back.
I am saving a few men – but what about the rest? You will have to clean them up, patch up their wounds and listen to them as they scream.

It was when they were about ten yards past the station that Celia began to think that there was someone behind her. It was not that she could actually see anyone. It was just a feeling that she had. He – or she – seemed to be walking in time. When Celia stopped, so did he. She set off again. He did too. She could not tell
Jemima, for then he would know. She could not run away, for that would leave Jemima on her own. She carried on walking, hoping that he would turn off, just be another workman on his way home. He did not. Jemima was walking quickly now. Celia supposed she wanted to get home. She picked up her own pace and felt sick as the man behind her did the same. Then she realised. It was the house they were going to that he wanted, not Celia. She had to tell Jemima not to stop there. But how could she? She walked on in miserable indecision. She had no idea where they were, but surely they were not far away now. Jemima trailed the hand that meant left turn. Celia heard the man cough behind her. She knew then, as sure as she could ever be, that she had to act.

Two men rounded the corner towards Jemima, working men who looked as if they had come straight from the public house. Celia took a deep breath, gathered her coat around her and ran, her heart in her mouth, her feet pounding the cobblestones. She fell on to Jemima from behind, barrelled her forward into the men. ‘What the hell?’ shouted one of them as he fell. Jemima was screaming and his friend was shouting too. ‘Muggers! Police!’ The fug of alcohol fumes rose from them both.

‘Stop it!’ hissed Celia to Jemima. ‘Stop it!’ She looked up to see a man – it had to be him – in a grey coat sauntering past. He tipped his hat. ‘May I help?’

‘No!’ spat Celia. She met his eyes, pale blue, mocking.

‘Call the police!’ the man on the floor was shouting.

‘Very well,’ said the blue-eyed man. He squatted down and reached out his hand. They all stared as he pinched a little of Celia’s sleeve, then Jemima’s. Then he stood up once more. Celia stared at his legs. ‘I shall tell the first policeman I see.’ He raised his eyebrow. ‘I suggest you all take care. Especially you ladies.’ He sauntered on, turning once to look at Celia and doff his hat again.

‘What the hell is happening here?’ said the bigger of the two men. ‘Who the hell was he?’

‘I am sorry, gentlemen,’ said Celia. ‘I am really terribly sorry. I meant to run into my friend here to play a joke on her. I had simply no idea that you two gentlemen were here. I do apologise.’

‘I should think you should apologise,’ he said. ‘Knocking over law-abiding citizens like that. I should call the police on you.’

Jemima was sitting up. She pulled back her hood to reveal her hair. The moonlight made it shine brightly. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, in a majestic voice, ‘that my friend was so boisterous. But you must allow her one last moment of play. We are to become nuns next week. We are here delivering food to the poor.’