Through Glass Eyes (12 page)

James wrote about how proud he was to wear his uniform, despite the coarse cloth of his jacket making his neck itch and his army boots rubbing the skin from his heels and ankles. He was pleased that he had learned to shoot long and straight, and had Edward to thank for that. He said the training was tough, but he was revelling in the company of other boys who, like himself, shared a sense of freedom at being away from home for the first time. Above all, he was counting the days when his regiment would sail for the Continent. It was obvious to Lucy, the thrill of going to war excited him.

The second letter was shorter and though it still bore an air of elation, it was tinged with frustration. He was tired of basic training, PE and more PE, drill and more drill, and a sergeant who seemed to dislike every new recruit, particularly the young lads like himself. But he said he was not alone.

The third letter had been posted in Dover the day before he sailed. Never had a boy sounded more proud to be going to fight for his country.

As Lucy gazed into the fire, she was pleased for him and proud of him too. Every mother should be proud to see her son go to war, to fight for England – the posters on the streets and in the daily papers reminded her of that fact. But it didn’t stop her worrying. Every night she prayed for James. Prayed that he would survive the war and return home safely one day. But she was aware the predicted early end to the conflict had never happened and that the war in Europe was worsening. The army needed more men and rumours, that the government was considering conscription, were strengthening. Lucy knew it was every woman’s duty to encourage her husband, son or brother to enlist. Enthusiasm for the war was infectious and throughout the country, men were responding in their thousands. The fact that on the battlefields hundreds were dying, and the injured soldiers were being shipped home to fill hospital beds, seemed completely irrelevant.

Every morning and afternoon over the following months, Alice wandered into Lucy’s front room, sat down at the piano and attempted to play.

From the kitchen, Lucy could sense her frustration as she reverted to the first few simple exercises Edward had taught her. Despite her previous accomplishment, her efforts were crude and childlike. At times her perseverance gave way to exasperation and she thumped her fists down on the keys or slammed the piano lid shut.

Sometimes from outside the door, Lucy heard Alice sobbing but resisted the temptation to sympathize or interrupt. Then after a short break the notes would ring out again, chords or five finger exercises, repeated over and over again.

‘Your girl taking lessons?’ said Stan Crowther, standing at the cottage door one Saturday dinnertime. Pansy listened to the sounds drifting from Lucy’s front-room.

‘No,’ she said.

‘What’s all the piano playing for then?’

‘To make her fingers work again.’

‘Good idea,’ the man said. ‘How old is she? Fourteen? Fifteen?’

Pansy nodded. ‘Are you coming in?’ she asked.

Crowther kicked off his boots on the front step and followed Pansy into the living-room. ‘Can’t have her sitting around all day when you’re out working. Plenty of jobs for girls in munitions. Time she brought a wage in, isn’t it? Helped you with the rent money.’

‘She’s set her heart on nursing,’ Pansy said proudly. ‘And besides, I’m fortunate, I don’t have to pay any rent.’

‘Well, who’s the lucky one then?’ Crowther’s eyes scanned the neat room. ‘Nice little place you’ve got here.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, a little guiltily. She didn’t intend hiding the truth or deceiving the man, but she hardly considered the peppercorn rent of a shilling a year worth mentioning.

‘You know they’re paying girls two pounds ten shillings a week in the munitions factories, and they’re looking for women to work as conductors on the buses, because there are no men about to do those jobs. Don’t you fancy giving that a try?’

‘I’ve got my job, thank you very much. Four days work suits me and I don’t mind house cleaning. It keeps us in food and I’ve only got to go as far as the village.’

‘Suit yourself. Just thought a bit of extra would be nice to line your pocket.’

Pansy looked at the man sitting opposite her. ‘Why don’t you get a regular job, if there are so many around?’

‘I’ve got plenty to occupy myself during the week. I don’t only come here for odd jobs. There’s plenty of work to be had.’

‘Tell me something,’ Pansy said inquisitively. ‘You’re a fit fella, why haven’t you signed up like the rest of the men folk? I heard the army needed every able-bodied man.’

Crowther laughed. ‘Don’t be daft, woman! I’m not going to no bloody war to get my block knocked off for no one.’

Pansy’s eyes narrowed.

He quickly corrected himself. ‘But I tried,’ he said. ‘Failed the eye test. They won’t have you if you can’t pass the medical.’ He sneered. ‘I’m classed as unfit.’

From the doorway, Timothy was watching.

‘Lad a bit shy is he? Different from his sister, eh?’

Pansy turned to her son. ‘Go fetch Alice from next door. Tell her dinner’s ready. Then come and wash your hands!’

The boy ran off without saying a word.

‘And what about her next door?’
Crowther continued. ‘I don’t think she likes me. How does she manage?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘With food money and rent and the likes?
I ain’t never seen her going out to work.’

‘That’s none of your business, Stanley. She manages all right, thank you very much! Now before I get cross, do you want a plate of stew and dumplings or aren’t you stopping?’

‘Don’t mind if I do,’ he said, half-smiling, as he unfastened the buttons on his waistcoat. Then he knocked the ash from his pipe on the inside of the chimney, slid the empty pipe into his breast pocket, sat down, stretched out his legs and waited to be served.

‘Why do you invite him in every time he comes around?’ asked Alice. ‘I don’t like him, Mum. He looks at me kind of funny. Always makes me feel creepy.’

‘Because I quite like him, that’s why! And it’s a long time since I had a man around the place. And he’s handy.’

‘Yes, Mum, but he only does the jobs because you pay him. And you have to go out to work for your bit of money!’

‘Well he works for his and he’ll do anything.’

‘I’m sure he will,’ she said sarcastically, ‘given half a chance.’

‘Alice! Hold your tongue!’

‘But I see the way he looks at you. I wouldn’t trust him, if I was you.’

‘That’s quite enough, girl!’ Pansy said. ‘Anyway, talking about money, I think it’s time you got yourself a job so you can bring some money into the house. All you do is sit around all day fiddling on that damn piano. I reckon if your fingers are strong enough to push them keys, then they’re strong enough to work on a production line.’

The words made Alice boil. What her mother was saying was true. She knew she had done almost nothing recently either inside the house or out, and she felt guilty. But it wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t burnt her hands on purpose. She didn’t set the room on fire. She’d only tried to put it out.

‘If that’s what you want,’ Alice yelled, ‘I’ll go out and get a job. And I’ll save up and go and live somewhere else, then you can have your fancy man calling on you every day and I won’t have to get out of the house, and you can do what you do with him, whenever you want!’

Alice ran from the kitchen, through the cottage and out onto the lane, slamming the door behind her.

From the next cottage Lucy could hear Pansy calling after her, begging her not to go. From the window she saw Timothy running down the hill after his sister, shouting her name.

But Alice didn’t look around. She just kept on running, her gait stiff and ungainly as the knurled skin at the back of her legs was stretched to the limit.

Chapter 11

Bad News

It was a long and tedious winter, cold and bleak in more ways than one. Lucy missed the warmth which had previously existed between the two families living next door to each other. With Edward and James away, the atmosphere was not what it used to be, and the widening rift between Lucy and Pansy was pulling the two friends apart.

The month of December 1915 was not an easy month, but for the sake of Alice and little Timmy, Lucy made a special effort. She wrapped presents and made cakes, even helped the children with the decorations. But the sight of the paper chains dangling from the ceiling rekindled memories of the previous Christmas, and when it was time to take the trimmings down Lucy was relieved to pull them from the walls. After screwing the chains into tight balls she pushed them deep into the ashes. The decorations smoked before the flames appeared, but it wasn’t the smoke which made Lucy’s eyes water.

 Alice never mentioned last year’s fire or complained about her burns, even on the days she had to struggle down muddy tracks or through deep snow to get to work. She liked her job at the munitions factory and liked the girls she worked with. Even wearing trousers instead of a skirt was a novelty to her. Wearing the factory uniform made her proud to be contributing to the war effort. But her desire to become a nurse never wavered. It was a matter of waiting until she was old enough to begin her training.

Lucy missed seeing Alice. Missed the times they had spent together and the conversations they had shared as if they were mother and daughter. Because Alice left for work before dawn and was not home until late, Lucy hardly ever saw her.

On the days Pansy worked, Lucy minded Timmy. Though he was only four, he was a bright boy and ready for school, but in size he hardly looked it. He was small, delicate and fine-boned like Pansy, but unlike Alice as a child, he never demanded Lucy’s attention and was content to amuse himself.

When she sat alone at night Lucy would think about James and reread all his letters. Though she valued them and anxiously awaited news, she noticed that recently his tone had changed. The youthful enthusiasm of his earlier letters had disappeared and the grim picture he painted was becoming increasingly depressing. Gazing into the fire, with the bundle of letters on her knee, she tried to image the scenes he described, to picture what the battlefields in France were really like. The bullet-riddled houses blackened and pockmarked like lumps of coke, charred piles of rubble where people once lived, villages razed to ash and cinders, the smell – not of wood-smoke and warmth but of bodies rotting in trenches, and the fields so bombed and burned that not even a single blade of grass remained. 

Lucy shuddered. It was a horrible war and it was showing no signs of stopping. It didn’t end in 1914 as predicted, and 1915 had come and gone and nothing had changed. Now older men were being conscripted to replace the young ones who were being sent home on stretchers, or in boxes, or merely identified as a name on a War Office telegram:

His Majesty regrets…killed in action…deepest sympathy

How could James possibly live through it? Survive to the end – whenever that might be? If only he could come home. If only he could be injured – not badly but enough for him to be withdrawn from the front line – not merely to be sent to the field hospital but returned home to England. But it was said, of men brought back, once they had recovered from their injuries they were sent back to fight on the front line. Lucy’s heart ached for them. For their mothers. For James.

She couldn’t write back. Not immediately. There was nothing positive to write about. She had not heard from Edward and was worried about him, hoping he was all right. She was worried about the trouble Stan Crowther had stirred up between herself and Pansy, and between Alice and her mother. Since her father’s death on the moors, Alice had always been very close to her mother, but now Stanley was demanding all of Pansy’s attention.

Maybe her negative thoughts were unfounded, Lucy thought. Perhaps Alice’s job in the munitions factory would change her outlook. For the first time she had a little money of her own and she enjoyed mixing with other girls her own age. Occasionally her mother had allowed her to go out dancing and she had met a few nice boys. But they were all very young and none of the boys were interested in courting girls, they were merely biding their time, waiting till they were old enough to go to war.

On the positive side, Lucy was amazed how much movement and strength Alice had regained in her fingers during the past year. Handling ammunition all week had proved good therapy for her fingers. Lucy was only sorry Sunday afternoon was Alice’s only chance to play the piano, and because her tunes were always bright, and the music cheered them both, she always looked forward to that

Alice still limped a little on her right leg, but as the months had passed it had become less noticeable. Her hair had grown sufficiently to cover the keloid scarring running from behind her ear. She was thankful her face was not marked and pitied the poor soldiers burned on the battlefield.

Lucy cut out the red cross from a length of satin ribbon. It was very striking on the bleached apron. The cape she made from a remnant of red velvet and the dress from an old white table cloth. At first, the skirt was too long, falling almost to the doll’s feet, but the miniature nurse’s veil, with a second red cross sewn in the centre, was perfect. Lucy pinned the veil to the doll’s coarse hair so it wouldn’t fall off. Heavily starched, it stood out perfectly at the back.

‘About time Constance had a change from that old school tunic,’ Lucy said, handing the doll to Alice. ‘Do you like her nurse’s uniform?’

‘You’re so clever,’ Alice said, wrapping her arms around the doll and leaning forward to peck Lucy on the cheek.

‘It won’t be long before you have your own uniform,’ Lucy sighed.

Alice’s eyes glowed with excitement. ‘Only a few months now.’

‘I’m going to miss you,’ Lucy said, ‘but I know you will make a good nurse.’

‘And I will miss you too. Will you write to James and tell him what I am doing? And to Uncle Edward too?’