Valentine Joe (15 page)

‘Wuff!'

Rose turned as Tommy gave one of his polite little barks and she saw him. He was there. Lying on his back on one of the muddy shelves cut into the side of the trench, a helmet tilted over his eyes.

Joe. Even though she couldn't see his face, she knew it was him.

Rose dropped down beside him, not caring about the icy slush that soaked through the knees of her pyjamas. Was he dead too? She felt Tommy's body, warm against her side.

Please let him not be dead, please.

Tommy snuffled at her hand.

Please.

She brushed the snow off the tarpaulin that covered Joe.

Please . . .

He smiled. Then, without moving his helmet, he said, ‘There you are.'

A shaft of light penetrated the trench and the same voice as before sang:
‘There's never a rose like you . . .'

Rose felt angry. ‘You came back!'

Joe tipped the helmet back from his face and sat up, swinging his legs off the shelf and looking down at her with those bright brown eyes. His face was so grey and tired and dirty it was like a mask. But his eyes were the same. He looked like a cheeky wild animal watching her from behind a hedge.

‘I had to,' he said.

‘You didn't. How could you? After what happened to your friends.'

Joe shook his head. ‘That's
why
I had to, Rose.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘They were my best mates,' he said. ‘I couldn't leave
them here on their own.'

‘But—'

‘I had to do something. And this' – he gestured at the desolate scene – ‘this was all I could do.'

He's different
, thought Rose.
Older. Or maybe just really, really tired.

‘It won't change nothing, I know that,' he was saying. ‘None of it will.'

‘Then why—?'

‘People like us, Rose, we just want to live happy quiet lives, don't we? Little house. Enough to eat. We don't know what this is all about, this
war
.' Joe spat out the word as if it was a piece of bad meat. ‘And if we did, we wouldn't care.'

‘So why, then?
Why
did you have to come back?'

Joe shrugged. ‘Cos I'd rather be dead than spend the rest of me life feeling bad about me mates.'

‘It's not your fault they died.'

‘I know that.' Joe sounded as if he'd been thinking about this a lot. ‘But they did, Rose, and I didn't and I can't bear it.'

Rose felt her eyes fill with tears. ‘Oh, Joe,' she whispered. She did understand, of course she did. She felt the same about Dad. ‘I just . . . I wanted you to be safe. That's all.' Her voice went up in a squeak as she tried to fight back her tears.

Joe patted the ledge next to him. His movements had lost their old quickness, and he didn't crackle with energy like he used to, but his eyes still twinkled as Rose sat down.

‘It's my birthday soon,' he said, with a trace of his old grin. ‘A month today.'

‘Valentine's Day,' said Rose.

‘Yup. I'll be sixteen. What an age, eh?'

He held up one filthy forefinger and touched Rose's face. His expression grew serious as he looked at her. ‘I made you something, Rose.'

‘A present?'

‘Yeah. While I was in the hospital, coughing my guts up into a bucket. I haven't got it here, though, wasn't sure I'd see you. Left it in Wipers.'

Rose was ashamed how disappointed she felt. She really wanted that present. ‘I'll never find it there.'

‘Ah, but you will,' said Joe. ‘That's the cleverness of it. D'you remember the hidey-hole we found last winter? In the wall of the old ramparts?'

Rose remembered. It had been snowing that day too. Was it really almost a year ago?

‘It was the night before your birthday,' she said.

‘That's right.' He gave her his old look out of the corner of his eyes. ‘And you was going to give me a birthday kiss.'

Rose didn't know what to say. She held his gaze as long as she could before looking away.

‘Anyway!' Joe was grinning properly now. ‘When we heard we was coming out here, I left it there, your present. Right at the back of that hidey-hole where Tommy chased the cat.' Tommy wagged his tail at the mention of his name. ‘Yes, you, you rascal!'

‘Who looked after him when you were back home?'

‘Chaps, I dunno. Everybody loves Tommy, don't they, mate?' The dog wagged his tail again, as if he was glad to have his two favourite people in the same place.

‘I told him to look after you,' said Rose.

‘And he has done, haven't you, boy?' Joe turned to Rose,
his face serious again. ‘Promise me something, Rose.'

‘What?'

‘That you'll go and find it. Your present. If I don't come back.'

‘Come back from what?' Rose felt her voice rising again. His birthday was a month today, that's what he said. So that made today 14 January 1916.

A month before his sixteenth birthday.

It couldn't be. Not today. Not
today.

‘Come back from what?' she repeated. ‘What d'you mean? Joe?'

‘Wakey wakey!'

‘Joe!'

An older soldier was making his way along the trench and everywhere the grey humps were stirring and revealing themselves to be sleeping soldiers.

‘Rise and shine, boys,' the old soldier continued. ‘The sun is coming up on a brand-new day.'

You'd have thought there'd be complaints and banter from the soldiers at being woken so early, but none of them said a word. They didn't even look at each other as they gathered their kit together and picked up their rifles.

‘Stand to!'

The soldiers leapt to attention, all facing the same side of the trench. Joe was with them. Rose saw there were ladders propped against the muddy walls. She was trembling, and it wasn't because of the cold. She got up and touched Joe's sleeve. ‘What does it mean? Joe? What's happening?'

She wasn't even sure she'd said it out loud, but Joe flicked a quick look in her direction as another man made his way down the trench. He was in a different uniform from the others, cleaner and smarter. In the midst of her
panic Rose guessed he was an officer, even though he didn't look that much older than Joe. An image flashed up in her mind of the boys from the sixth form college where most of the people from her school went on to do A levels. He looked just like them. Behind him another young soldier was carrying a bottle which he offered to the men. They held out tin cups and threw back the liquid he poured out for them. Rose caught its sharp chemical smell.

‘Joe?' Her voice was no more than a whisper.

Joe swallowed his drink quickly with a slight shudder. ‘This is it, Rose,' he said quietly.

‘What?' she said. She decided to carry on feeling angry, because she didn't want to feel anything else. ‘What is “it”, Joe?'

‘We're going over the top. Do you know what that means?'

Rose knew.

A shell flew over, its horrible fluttering whine sounding quite familiar now. There was a half-hearted cheer from the men as it exploded over the German line with a stomach-churning boom.

‘One of ours,' Joe murmured. ‘Little taster for them. Then it's our turn.'

More shells went over. The earth shuddered with noise. The young officer was studying his watch. He nodded to the older man, the one who'd woken the soldiers.

‘FIX!' the old soldier yelled.

There was a swish and a clatter as the men drew blades from their kit. Then waited.

‘BAYONETS!'

The men obeyed as one, attaching the blades to the ends of their rifles. They did it automatically, like men in a
dream. Another shell flew over towards the German line.

Rose looked up at the strip of whitish-grey sky above the trench. She felt – empty. She hadn't been able to save him. In the end, all this had been for nothing.

The men gazed at the muddy wall of the trench. One soldier crossed himself and whispered a prayer. Another looked at a little photograph in his hand. The rest of them just stood. And waited. The officer stared at his watch. The sky was getting lighter.

‘How about that kiss?'

Joe's voice was just a whisper in her ear. Rose turned her face towards him and looked into his eyes, unable to speak.

She wasn't aware of moving towards him but she did. As the sky turned pale in the cold winter dawn and the men stood waiting like statues, Rose closed her eyes and felt Joe's lips on hers, cool and gentle and a bit rough. Another shell exploded, making the earth shudder. It was like the end of the world.

Joe pulled away and looked at Rose, his face still only inches away from hers. He touched her cheek with one finger. ‘My Rose in no-man's-land,' he whispered.

‘Joe—'

‘I've got to do this.'

Why?
Rose thought.
It's not fair! I can't lose you too. Not after Dad, not after all this!
But she didn't say that. She said, ‘I know.'

‘Look after Tommy, won't you?'

‘Of course.'

‘Promise?'

‘I promise.'

He kissed her again. She wanted to cling to him, hold on to him, beg him not to go. But she didn't. She just stood
there, trembling, watching his face to make sure she would never forget the smallest detail: the little scar above his eyebrow, the single freckle on the side of his nose. His grin.

‘Don't forget your present,' he said.

‘I won't.'

He let go of her. ‘Bye, Rose. And – thanks.'

But I didn't do anything
, said a desperate little voice in her head. Joe seemed to hear it.

‘Believe me, love,' he murmured. ‘You did.'

The officer drew his pistol with one hand, and with the other held a whistle to his lips. The men tensed, like runners at the start of a race.

‘Joe – I can't bear—'

‘You can, Rose. Trust me. You can. You will.'

Rose sank to the ground and put her arms round Tommy. The whistle blew, the sound cutting through the air like a scream, and the men started to move up the ladders. Joe gave her his funny little salute, then turned to join his mates.

And the world exploded.

R
ose was woken by the buzz of her phone. She opened her eyes to sunshine slanting through window blinds. She was lying in her bed in the neat white hotel room with the picture of poppies on the wall.

She was back.

Whatever had happened had happened. And now it was over. She didn't know how she'd got back. Or why. All she knew was that she'd loved someone and lost him. Again.

It wasn't fair.

Rose reached for her phone, grimacing in pain. Her shoulder still hurt from last night, or whenever it was that shell had hit the hotel and nearly killed her. Joe's story had come to an end, she thought, and all she was left with was a bruised shoulder and a broken heart.

The text was from Grandad:

Good morning sleepy head. Have gone for walk. See you 12 outside hotel x

Sleepy head
? Rose checked the time. It was nearly ten o'clock. Grandad must have been up for hours.

She swung her legs on to the floor and stared at the tiny specks of dust twinkling in the bands of sunlight, wondering what to do. The bright modern room seemed less real to her than the mud of the trenches.

Did it really happen?

There was no sign of the heavy coat that had kept out the cold of a winter's day a hundred years ago. Rose remembered its faint smell of Parma violets and dust, and wished she'd kept the button she'd felt in the pocket as a souvenir. She would have liked to look at it and try to imagine the face of the coat's owner and think about what might have happened to her. Was it the girl she'd heard singing in her room last night? A girl like her, who'd lost someone she loved? She'd never know. The coat and its button were gone for ever.

Like Joe.

And Dad.

And the old city of Ypres which Rose had felt sleeping beneath the stones of the new town.

Perhaps none of it had happened at all.

And then, as she stood up, she saw her boots. They were lying discarded on the floor by the bed and they were caked in mud. Rose picked one up to look at it more closely. The mud was nasty yellowish stuff, thick and claggy, like clay. And it was still wet. It was the mud of the trenches, and it was as real as the sunlight on the wall and the carpet beneath her bare feet. She put the boot gently back down on the floor. She'd have to clean the mud off, she supposed. But not yet.

She wasn't quite ready to wash away the past.

Rose pulled up the blind. Sunshine flooded in, making the bright room even brighter. It was a beautiful day. The sort of blue winter's morning that reminded you of Christmas when you were little and you went for a walk in the park after breakfast with your mum and dad, riding your new scooter or clutching the giant cuddly animal that your grandad had bought you. Rose smiled as she remembered all those animals. One year it was a black panther with bright green eyes that scared her a bit. The next it was a huge orang-utan, bigger than she was, whose long ginger hairs got up her nose when she cuddled it. And then there was the year they'd stopped and drunk ginger beer (because it was Christmassy) in a chilly pub garden before going home to dinner. That was the last Christmas they'd had with Dad.