Until We Meet Again (15 page)

‘It’s all right,’ laughed Tilly. ‘I’ve been through all the gamut of jokes about red hair. It’s not always true. I don’t think I’m particularly hasty tempered. My twin brother – I expect you’ve met Tommy, haven’t you? – he’s more inclined to be impatient than I am. But my sister, Jessica – she’s another redhead – well, she’s a real placid soul.’

‘You’re lucky to belong to a big family,’ said Priscilla pensively. ‘And you have stepsisters and brothers as well, haven’t you?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Tilly. ‘There’s quite a crowd of us actually. Dominic has often told me the same thing, that he wished he had brothers and sisters. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be the only one.’

‘Parents tend to focus exclusively on an only child,’ replied Priscilla. ‘There’s nobody else for them to think about, and all the attention
can become suffocating at times…’ She stopped suddenly, glancing guiltily across the room as though she had said too much. ‘I shouldn’t really be saying all this, should I? My parents have always been so good to me. I have never wanted for anything.’

Except freedom, thought Tilly, but she did not say so. She guessed that Priscilla was unburdening herself in a way that she had never done before. ‘Maybe they don’t know how you feel,’ she replied. ‘I expect they’ve become so used to thinking of you as their little girl that they don’t stop to consider that you are a grown-up and that you have a will of your own… What is it that you would really like to do, Priscilla?’

‘When I said I was envious…’ Priscilla began ‘…what I really meant was that I admire you for what you have done; having the courage to leave school and train to be a nurse. I could never be a nurse, I know that.’ She gave an ironic smile. ‘I’ve been far too delicately bred.’

‘You don’t know what you can do until you try,’ said Tilly. ‘I wasn’t sure that I could, and at first, when I started my training, I didn’t know how I’d be able to stick it, but I did.’

‘Well…’ Priscilla gave a slight shrug. ‘I don’t aspire to that. But what I would really like to do is to help at your parents’ nursing home, in some
capacity or another. Perhaps not on the nursing side; as I’ve said, I don’t know whether I could cope with that. But do you…do you think your mother could find a niche for me? That’s always supposing, of course, that my parents don’t raise too many objections.’

Tilly stared at her in delight. ‘Do you know, I think that is a wonderful idea! Bother your parents! Sorry…but you know what I mean. Anyway, that is something they surely couldn’t object to, could they? And my mother would welcome you with open arms. All my sisters – Jessie and Maddy and Hetty – they are all going to help, although we don’t know exactly what they’ll be doing yet. And I shall probably get a transfer there eventually.’ In fact, Tilly had suddenly decided that she really did want to be a part of it all.

Dominic entered the room at that moment and she called across to him. ‘Dominic, come and listen to this. Priscilla wants to…’ Priscilla put a finger to her lips in a ‘shushing’ gesture then motioned towards her parents. They, however, were still engrossed in their game of whist.

‘Oh…sorry,’ said Tilly. ‘I didn’t realise I was shouting. Dominic, come and sit down and listen to this… Where have you been, by the way?’

‘For a smoke,’ he said quietly, pocketing his packet of Player’s cigarettes. ‘I’ve been out into the
garden. Mother doesn’t approve of me smoking so there’s no point in upsetting her.’ Dominic – and Tommy as well – had not smoked before joining the army, but now they both did so, although not in front of the ladies. Tommy had told his sister that it helped them to relax after a day on manoeuvres. He had not added that it might be needed more than ever when they were involved in the real thing, but Tilly had already guessed at that.

‘Right then,’ said Dominic, sitting down on the settee between the two young women and putting an arm around each of them. ‘What is it you want to tell me?’

‘You tell him, Priscilla,’ urged Tilly.

Priscilla’s face was aglow with enthusiasm as she turned to her cousin. Gosh! he thought. She looks almost pretty. He had never seen her so animated before. If only she would smile more often. She was smiling now as she said, ‘I’m going to help at Mrs Moon’s nursing home! Tilly says she’s sure they’ll be able to find a place for me. At least…well, it all depends on what Mother and Father say, doesn’t it?’

Dominic’s reaction was just the same as Tilly’s had been but rather more emphatic. ‘Be hanged to your parents!’ he said. ‘Good for you, Prissy! I think that’s a great idea. Why don’t you tell them now?’

‘Oh…do you really think I should? So soon?’ Priscilla was looking apprehensive again.

‘Of course you should!’ said Dominic. ‘Don’t be such a cowardy custard! There’s no time like the present. They won’t dare to object, not in front of my parents… Listen, everyone,’ he called out before the two young women could stop him. ‘Mother, Father, Uncle Cedric, Aunt Maud… Priscilla has something she wants to tell you…’

‘I would never have believed that my cousin could show so much spunk,’ said Dominic as he walked home with Tilly later that evening. ‘You’ve worked wonders with Priscilla, darling. She really seems to have taken to you.’

‘Yes, I do believe she has,’ Tilly replied. ‘And I like her too. She just needed someone to encourage her to stand up for herself. Her parents tend to undervalue her, don’t they?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid they do,’ agreed Dominic. ‘My father says that Priscilla does a great job in the office, but Uncle Cedric is loath to give her too much responsibility, and doesn’t give her credit for the work she does do. He did say, though, “What about your job as the estate agency?” For which, between you and me, they pay her a pittance. So he was, at least, admitting that she had her uses.’

‘She won’t earn a great deal if she goes to
work at the nursing home,’ replied Tilly. ‘It will be largely voluntary work, apart from the trained nursing staff. I’m not sure how it will all work out, but my mother seems to have all the facts and figures at her fingertips. I expect the helpers will be paid a nominal wage. At all events, I’m sure Priscilla won’t be any worse off. She did say to me, though, that she doesn’t go short of anything, that her parents are really very good to her.’

‘In their own way, maybe they are,’ said Dominic. ‘Her mother buys all her clothes, for instance.’

‘Mmm…and chooses them, too, by the look of it,’ observed Tilly. ‘But I mustn’t be unkind. I’m sure when she starts working alongside my sisters there will be a big change in her. Has she no friends of her own age? Girls she was at school with, for instance?’

‘She doesn’t seem to have any apart from the other choir members, and I gather they are rather older than her,’ said Dominic. ‘My aunt and uncle belong to a Baptist church, a somewhat sanctimonious lot they are! Uncle Cedric’s an elder there, or whatever it is they call ’em, and Priscilla and her mother sing in the choir.’

‘Yes, she has a lovely voice,’ remarked Tilly. Priscilla had been persuaded to sing with Tilly accompanying her on the piano. She had sung
‘Where E’er You Walk’, in a rich contralto voice. Maud Fortescue had declared that her daughter had inherited her own talent for singing, but she had declined to perform herself that evening.

‘Your father took Priscilla’s part, didn’t he?’ said Tilly. ‘Your aunt and uncle looked too flabbergasted to speak at first, when she told everybody what she wanted to do.’

‘Yes,’ laughed Dominic. ‘She certainly took the wind out of their sails. And I was pleased that my father said what he did.’ Joseph Fraser had praised his niece for her sterling work in the office but had agreed that she must do what she felt was right; and he had reminded his brother-in-law that their firm had dealt with the transaction for the convalescent home. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then…’ Dominic kissed her goodnight at her gate. ‘I’ll call for you in the afternoon and we’ll take it from there. Goodnight, my darling. Sleep well.’

They both knew that it didn’t matter where they were so long as they were together. They had to make the most of their short time of leave, and tomorrow would be their last day for who knew how long.

They walked along the promenade the following afternoon, crossing the Spa Bridge to the part of Scarborough that in the summertime was frequented by holidaymakers. There were few people to be
seen there that afternoon; all were wrapped up warmly against the chilly wind that blew in from the sea. Here was the Grand Hotel, and nearby was the Arcadia Theatre, where Will Catlin had put on his Pierrot shows, in long-time but friendly rivalry to Uncle Percy’s Pierrots. Further along on Sandside were the stalls near the harbour, several of them still open today selling a myriad variety of seafood – cockles and mussels, shrimps, crabs and freshly caught fish – whilst overhead the seagulls wheeled and cried, the bravest descending to claim a tasty morsel.

From there, they took the Marine Drive, the road that led around the headland and the castle on the cliff. Tilly recalled that they had taken this same walk, but in the opposite direction, on the evening that she had first become better acquainted with Dominic. They had been to watch Maddy performing in the Pierrot show. It had been just as the war was starting. Who could have imagined then that a year and a half later it would still be continuing, with no end in sight.

They both kept those thoughts to themselves, however, as they approached the North Bay and made their way to Peasholm Park, another place that brought back memories of more carefree times. They were unusually quiet as they walked along the woodland paths, each lost in their own
thoughts as to what tomorrow and the many – maybe thousands – of tomorrows would bring. Dominic drew her close to him in a secluded glade. There was no one else in sight, the other visitors to the park keeping to the main paths near to the lake.

‘Tilly…’ he began. ‘I love you so very much. I’m not sure whether or not you will feel the same about this…but I would like to show you just how much I love you.’ He hesitated, looking at her questioningly.

‘You know how much I love you, Dominic,’ she answered quietly, somewhat bemused at what she guessed was in his mind.

‘I have a friend called Adrian,’ he went on. ‘He was at school with Tommy and me. His parents have gone away for a couple of days. I know that we could go there…this evening…and have some time completely to ourselves. You know what I am saying…don’t you, darling?’

‘Yes, I know,’ replied Tilly. ‘And I want you to know that I feel just the same as you do.’ She paused, smiling at him regretfully as she shook her head. ‘But we mustn’t, Dominic. It would be wrong. I know we love one another very much… and so we could say that that makes it all right. But we know, don’t we, deep down, that it would be a mistake. Our parents, for instance…they
would be so disappointed, and we would feel guilty about it. No… We must wait. It may not be for so very long.’

He smiled back at her understandingly. ‘You are right, of course,’ he said. ‘I thought that was what you might say…and I am glad that you did. It doesn’t make any difference to the way I feel about you… You’re not angry with me for suggesting it?’

‘No, of course I’m not,’ she answered. ‘But we must wait until we are married. It will be all the better for the waiting.’

‘Perhaps on my next leave,’ he said, ‘whenever that is, we could get a special licence and get married. We don’t need a big fuss of a wedding, do we?’

‘Let’s just wait and see,’ said Tilly. ‘We know, don’t we, that nothing and nobody can ever come between us.’ They kissed again, longingly and passionately, but both of them knowing that the decision they had made was the right one.

They took the short way back to the South Bay, through the town and over the Valley Bridge to Tilly’s home, where Dominic had been invited for tea. The rest of the family tactfully retired to bed early, leaving the young couple alone together by the embers of the log fire. They both knew that in a few hours’ time they must say goodbye. Dominic
would return to his camp to await the call for his regiment to depart for the battlefield, and Tilly to her nursing duties in Bradford. She leant against him, her head nestling on his shoulder as together they watched the flames flicker and then die.

Chapter Fourteen

‘T
here’s a letter for you,’ Jessie said to her husband, Arthur Newsome, one morning during the first week in January. She looked a little puzzled at the name and address, which was written in a childish hand in block capitals; the envelope felt flimsy too. ‘I don’t think there’s anything inside,’ she added, passing it to Arthur.

He slit open the envelope in his usual precise manner, using the knife by his side plate. ‘I think you’re right, my dear,’ he said, turning the envelope upside down. They both gasped as a single white feather fluttered down onto the table cloth. They knew only too well what it meant.

White feathers, recognised as a sign of cowardice, were being sent, or handed out, to young men whom the perpetrators believed ought to be in uniform. ‘The Order of the White Feather’
had come into being in the early stages of the war, after the initial rush to enlist had fallen off. More men were needed at the Front, and so this conspiracy had been started by an admiral of the British Navy by the name of Charles Fitzgerald. It was his belief that the best way to get at the men was through the women. Handbills had started to appear on hoardings all over the place with wordings such as ‘Is your son (or husband) in uniform yet?’ Indeed, several influential women had become supporters of the scheme, including the novelist Baroness Orczy, who had written ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’.

‘How very cowardly to send it through the post,’ said Jessie. ‘I think it’s despicable what these women are doing. To hand out white feathers in the street is bad enough, but at least that is being open about it. But to send it anonymously…’

‘Yes, I agree,’ replied Arthur, clearly very shaken by the incident. ‘I can’t imagine who it is, and I don’t think I really want to know either, but it must be somebody who doesn’t know me or my circumstances. I tried so hard to join up and no one can guess at the humiliation I felt at being rejected.’

‘And there must be lots of other men in your situation,’ said Jessie. ‘These women – I can only assume that they are all women who are doing
this – they don’t know the first thing about the young men they are handing the feathers to. I’ve heard about them; well-to-do young women in the main who obviously have nothing better to do with their time.’

‘Yes, I suppose they want to be identified with a cause of some sort,’ agreed Arthur. ‘It’s a pity they can’t put their time and energy to better use. Anyway, their efforts will not be required much longer. The Government is talking about bringing in conscription.’

‘Yes, that will sort out the shirkers at any rate,’ said Jessie. ‘Probably there are some who don’t want to go, maybe because they’re just plain scared and – let’s face it – who wouldn’t be? Or they might not approve of war; maybe they think it’s wrong to take up arms against one’s fellow men, no matter what the grounds for it might be.’

‘Part of me agrees with that,’ said Arthur. ‘War is dreadful, whatever the provocation. All the same, I would have gone if I’d been allowed to do so.’ He paused for a moment. ‘And there’s a way that I still can,’ he continued. ‘I can’t be a soldier. But there’s something that I can do, and this has just made up my mind for me. I’m going to enlist in the ambulance service.’

‘You mean…to go overseas?’ asked Jessie.

‘Yes, of course that’s what I mean. I know
ambulance drivers are needed over here with all the wounded soldiers returning from the Front, but they must be crying out for them over in France and Belgium. And nobody will be able to say then that I’m not doing my bit.’ His raised voice spoke of his resolution and his defiance against those who dared to suggest he was a coward.

‘Will they accept you, though?’ enquired Jessie. ‘Your eyesight, I mean. It prevented you from joining the army. Might they turn you down for the same reason? You can’t pretend that you don’t need spectacles.’

‘I very much doubt that they will refuse to take me,’ said Arthur. ‘It was my flat feet – to my acute embarrassment – as much as my eyesight that was the stumbling block. Well, I won’t be doing any marching, will I? I’ll be sitting on my backside most of the time when I’m not at the end of a stretcher. And you know as well as I do that I’m perfectly at home behind the wheel of a vehicle.’

‘Yes, indeed you are,’ replied his wife. ‘You’ve been driving ever since you were old enough, haven’t you?’

‘And even before that,’ smiled Arthur. ‘My father used to let me have a go at the wheel when my mother was out of sight. Anyway, my love, all I can do is try.’

‘And you know I will support you all the way, don’t you?’ said Jessie.

‘I know you will, my dear. You do see, don’t you, that this is what I must do?’

Jessie nodded and tried to smile encouragingly at him. Her throat felt tight with the emotion she was trying to keep in check. She more than anyone knew how Arthur had agonised over what he saw at his inadequacy compared with other men in his age group. Now he would be able to prove himself. She knew she would miss him and she would never stop worrying about him, just as she knew her sisters worried about their husbands, and Tilly about her fiancé. And Tommy as well, of course, her and Tilly’s brother. The two young men, now nineteen years of age, would shortly be sent to join the fray.

She guessed that Arthur would not be in much less danger than if he were actually involved in the fighting. It would be pointless to ask him to drive carefully. As if aware of her thoughts he said, ‘You mustn’t worry about me. I’ll be driving an ambulance with a big Red Cross on the side, and not even the Germans will stoop to fire at the Red Cross.’

‘No, of course not,’ she smiled.

He kissed her goodbye as he left for the office. ‘I’ll make enquiries right away,’ he said. ‘I shan’t
tell my father, though, or anyone else about…this.’ He picked up the feather and threw it onto the fire, where it was rapidly consumed.

‘No, neither will I,’ agreed Jessie. ‘I am very proud of you, you know, Arthur.’

Within a few days the Government had introduced conscription, making it compulsory for young men over the age of eighteen to join one of the armed forces. And a week later Dominic and Tommy were posted to France.

The war on the Western Front had reached a stalemate by 1916. The lines of trenches that each side had dug to protect themselves ran for four hundred miles from the Belgian coast to the Swiss frontier. The optimism that had prevailed at the start of the war had largely disappeared as the men saw their plans to capture the German lines continually being bogged down in a sea of mud and barbed wire. The mud was the first thing that new arrivals to the Front noticed. Mud which came up to the knees, even to the waist at times.

And as well as the mud there was the endless noise. This was another thing to which it was difficult to adjust. The sound of shells exploding on the battlefield could even be heard across the channel on the east coast of England, but the sound of it at close quarters was something that had to be experienced to be believed. It was often likened
to the noise of Hell, at least to what one imagined Hell might be like. It could not be worse, though, than the conditions endured by the thousands of raw recruits, day by day, in the futile battle of the trenches. Especially for those who did not have the stamina to endure.

And it was not only men who lived in the trenches. There were lice…and rats. By now these beasts had infected the trenches to such an extent that the military authorities had adopted special measures to deal with them. The French army had appointed rat-catchers who pursued the rodents with dogs. In the British trenches, too, ratting had become a popular and very necessary sport.

And, as if conditions were not already insufferable enough, the Germans had introduced another deadly weapon, that of poison gas. If it didn’t actually kill it could seriously impede the enemy, making them ill or even blinding them. The stench of it was in the air, carried by the wind along with the foul odour of death, which was always present; the stench of the rotting corpses of men and of horses, too, those unfortunate defenceless beasts that, in the early stages of the war, had been used and – unlike the human volunteers – had not been given a say in the matter.

Dominic, safe for a time in his dugout, was trying to compose a letter home to his beloved
Tilly, as well as one to his parents. He chewed the end of his pen, deliberating as to what he could – in any honesty – tell them. There could be no mention of the atrocities: the rising death toll, the deafening sound of shells and machine guns, the plague of rats, and the continual danger that they faced even when further back in the reserve trenches. Nor could he mention the poor chap who had lost his nerve, sent out of his mind by the infernal din from the shells. He had turned tail and run away, and had been shot on the spot by his commanding officer. Apparently it had not been the first time he had gone out of his mind and it had been feared that his conduct might influence others. He had not been the first, though, and he would certainly not be the last.

Letters had to be realistic, however, to a certain extent. Those back home already knew that it was not exactly a picnic that their menfolk were enjoying.

At the moment Dominic’s and Tommy’s battalions were in the reserve trenches, but they knew that their turn would come. So far they had taken part in minor skirmishes, but nothing that could be considered a major attack. Most of their days, if they were not actually involved in the fighting, were spent in routine tasks, and so Dominic wrote of the daily inspection of rifles. ‘Stand-to’ was at
dawn, when they waited to see if there was to be an attack. If not, then the command to ‘stand-down’ came an hour later. Their rifles were cleaned and inspected every morning, and maintenance of the trench was carried out each day. The barbed-wire entanglements were repaired at night; there was no need to mention to the folk back home that the wiring parties were also instructed to find out information about the enemy’s defences, nor that their lives were in constant danger from a sniper’s bullet.

The work that had gone into constructing the trenches – their own and those of the enemy – had amazed Dominic. They were like a network of roads with junctions and paths leading off to the right and the left. They had even been given place names such as Piccadilly and The Strand, the intersections being named Hyde Park Corner or Marble Arch. There were other more personal names too; Thomas, James, Albert or Henry Street, or – ironically – Stardust Way, Sunshine Street or Moonlight Avenue.

There could be no harm, either, in writing about their daily diet. Dominic’s mother, in particular, was anxious to know that he was getting enough to eat. Few would complain about the quantity of the food; it was the quality that was lacking. They ate a good deal of corned beef – known as bully
beef – and tinned stew that went by the name of Maconochies. When there was no bread available they ate hard biscuits, resembling dog biscuits but much larger, sometimes made more palatable with a smear of jam. And the daily ration of rum was something they all looked forward to. Water was in short supply. There was usually enough to drink, but not always sufficient to wash and keep oneself clean; there was no need to mention the lice, though…

Dominic knew that he wrote a good letter. It came easily to him, in the way that writing essays had always been a satisfying task when he was at school. After all, it was the way by which he intended to make a living when this wretched war came to an end. Sometimes it was hard to believe it ever would. ‘If all’s well and the Lord’s willing,’ was a phrase he had often heard his mother use when she was hoping that something or other might come to pass, probably without thinking too much about what she was saying. It was hard to believe in this particular hell-hole that all would be well. Dominic, like many others, had tried to hold fast to the simple faith of his childhood, but the age-old tenets he had learnt at Sunday school about ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ seemed totally irrelevant now. And would the outcome of the war depend on the willingness of the Lord to bring it
to an end? No; he had decided that his mother’s old adage was far too facile.

He wrote for a while with Tilly’s photograph at his side. She was looking smart and efficient but still as lovely as ever in her nurse’s uniform, although the black and white photo did not do justice to her blue eyes or her red-gold hair, only part of which could be glimpsed beneath the snowy-white headdress. But whenever he closed his eyes he could conjure up her image in his mind’s eye and she was constantly in his thoughts. He was trying to make the account of his days interesting and amusing, although God knew there was little to laugh at. It was amazing, though, how most of them managed to keep so cheerful. As he wrote he could hear the sound of singing drifting over from a nearby trench. It was the old tune ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’ – a great favourite amongst the men and able to bring a smile to most faces.

After the account of how he spent his days – carefully edited – he came to the more intimate part of the letter.

‘My darling,’ he wrote. ‘I have been reading, once again, the book that you told me was your favourite of Hardy’s novels,
Far from the Madding Crowd,
one that is a favourite of mine as well. Do you remember the passage where Gabriel tells
Bathsheba of his love for her? It is one that I know off by heart. “And at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be…and whenever I look up, there will be you.” That is how I like to think of you and me, my darling; maybe years and years from now, when we’re quite old, we will be there by our own fireside. Bathsheba didn’t love Gabriel, of course, at that point in the story, but she came to love him in the end, as you know. We are lucky, dearest Tilly, that we have found one another while we are still young. But our love will last for ever…’ He closed with endearments and his hopes that it would not be too long before they were together again.