I had already experienced how quickly day fell to night here, but that wasn’t my problem, not at that point. The snow had increased heavily, and I was having trouble seeing in front of me as exhaustion began to consume me. I was running on a heightened state of awareness yet confused at the same time. I pictured dismally my compass, unused in the top drawer of my desk at the manor, never foreseeing that my journey to find my brother would take a detour into wilderness. I wrapped most of my face in my woolen scarf so my eyes could just see out of slits, though my eyelashes were caked with ice. Finally Sadie stopped. She’d had enough of trudging through thick snow. She was telling me this venture was hopeless.
I shivered. The fur that lined my jacket seemed not enough to block the chill, and my fingers, though gloved, ached to bend. I had been warned at an earlier stop about the cold, but I did not think much about it, my mind only on the prize. And one often has to experience something to fully understand. I had felt the icy English winters, but even they hadn’t prepared me. Sally had warned me never to distance myself from roads, and here I was doing just that. And though I might add that circumstance had forced me, I scolded myself for being so ill prepared.
Above me the sky seemed to be descending, squeezing out the last of the light. I climbed off the seat to check Sadie’s legs sunk in deep snow. I pulled her by the reins in front of her, stepping through the snow, and she reluctantly followed. But I understood the effort she was making, when I too grew very weary from weighty steps as my feet were saturated and the muscles in my legs grew stiff. Stopping, I looked about me and called out to see if anyone was someplace near. There was no response. I felt completely alone in what appeared an eerie, alien world.
“Sorry, old girl,” I whispered in Sadie’s ear and climbed into the back of the trap, curling my body to fit. I pulled up the blankets over my head and body as before, hoping that the snowfall would pass and Sadie would feel energized to start again. This time, however, I was losing to the fierceness of the damp and cold, which had infiltrated the flimsy cloth walls. As I lay there with the wind whipping around us, rattling the rig, I thought of Mother and wondered then how she would handle things with two sons gone. I felt myself drifting, and more morbid thoughts crept in. I wondered if Mother would miss me as much as she missed Edgar and if I would still be here by spring, my body thawing. I thought all such things to do with my end.
I can’t tell you how long I lay there, perhaps an hour, but at some point my teeth stopped chattering and I stopped feeling the cold. I felt in a strange way peaceful. This was broken by the sound of shouts and a dog barking. I was too stiff and tired to sit up, but I was able to raise the cloth wall slightly to observe wolf-like dogs appear from out of the misty clouds, ahead of a sled with two people wrapped up in fur and woolen masks.
One of them jumped off the sled and walked swiftly toward me, his face covered with a mask.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
I nodded, just.
“He’s alive,” the man said to another, who came to pull off the blanket and examine me.
“Can you walk?” said the second man gruffly.
I cannot remember answering as the two men lifted me out of the trap to carry me to the sled.
“I will bring the horse,” said the same man.
I didn’t question, nor did I care where I was being taken and by whom. And I did not understand what was happening to my body, my heart slowing down and my head giving up the fight. I was tucked warmly into some sort of tent structure that was lined with fur on the front of the sled. I heard the dogs barking and felt the sled lurch into action. In my delirium I was apparently thanking the dogs.
Eventually we stopped, though I had no idea of time or any clear memory of the journey. Someone called out ahead, and the man I was with responded. Several people lifted me and carried me up some stairs into a cabin.
I felt the warmth rush at my face, burning slightly, as they placed me on a low cot beside a blazing wood burner, and someone carefully pulled away my frozen mask to take a look at me. I was only vaguely aware of my shoes being removed and an examination of my feet. Then as several blankets were thrown over me and arranged, a large man bent down to put his face close to mine. His skin looked craggy, his hair cut badly, but his blue eyes shone.
I put my hand out to him, believing perhaps that I had died and that, if this was death, it wasn’t so bad.
The man whose face was near reached for my hand.
“Rudy,” said Edgar out of the haze. I felt his hand grip mine tightly.
EDGAR
FROM 1916
CHAPTER 30
It was awful, the war, but one knows that already because much has been written about it over the years. After months in a trench when our feet were swollen and we could no longer feel the tips of our fingers, our backs permanently damp from the rain and our minds no longer drifting to a future, I had grown a weary tolerance of fate. If I lived, that was good. If I died, it was good also. Both had their merits. Of course I did not voice these thoughts aloud. I was the one that people leaned on to bolster their spirits. The soldiers sought strength from me constantly, the pieces of me taken until there was nothing left to take.
There were many of us. I can picture most of their faces, but the ones that feature are the ones I saw beside me. Men I thought would be my allies through life as well, when we returned to dear old Blighty. Roger, Scott, Willy, Burke, Irish Ted, and the others were closer than any family. They are as clear as the raised veins in the back of my now-coarse hands. Roger was sent home with half a lung, Scott lost his toes by way of trench foot and Burke his brains, and Irish Ted was claimed by an infection from the shrapnel of an exploding bullet. And Willy was executed.
I received letters from Mother, who I knew waited on every small bit of information from me. The pressure of that alone seemed to add to the pressures in the trenches: the fact that I was so needed there as well. I was at least happy that Rudy was not involved in all this muck, that he had been too young. I imagined that he would have been good with army commands. He was quiet, tolerant, and did what was expected of him without complaint. He had been a lovable child, a sweet boy often overlooked because he was so quiet. People presumed that because he didn’t ask for anything, he didn’t need anything. But I saw early that he needed love like the rest of us, and I couldn’t help but take him under my wing. And I promised to keep him there while I was in his life.
There is a mental picture I have of him that shows our differences. Rudy walking around picking up the dead bodies of birds that Laurence and I had shot, checking if they were badly injured or not, attempting to revive the ones he thought would make it, then burying the ones that were dead and marking the tiny graves with stones. He couldn’t kill anything, so I’m glad he didn’t have to join the rest of us in hell.
While Rudy was soft in the center when he was born, Laurence seemed to crawl out from under hell’s rock, screaming and begging for attention. Blessed with good looks, he used them to get most places in life. Charm was something he could put on when necessary. Cruelty was something that came more naturally. He enjoyed saying things that would get under your skin, the mention of a girl you were keen on, bragging about a subject he did better in. To taunt and provoke was something that amused him: a laying of mines for someone to step on, waiting and watching for the reaction. He seemed to do as he pleased, his behavior unchecked. We weren’t close, but God knows I had tried over the years to form a friendship.
I had heard late in the war that Laurence had shipped out, and I knew that he would survive. If I were a betting man, I would have bet my fortune on it. I suspected that he would not only survive the war, he would attempt to prosper from it as well. I, on the other hand, was born into expectation. The oldest, the leader, the one who would continue the family name and see the young siblings through adolescence as if having gone through it first alone made me an expert on all boys young. I was a model child, respected, allowed for, and I made good
decisions. And though for the period before the war, I lived up to those expectations, it had been tiring and costly to my state of mind. I have to say that one’s duty bore a greater responsibility than shown. I had to wear my disdain, my irritation, and my weariness on the inside. On the outside I had to be like Mother, accepting, tolerant, and not outspoken, but a leader nonetheless.
My sport was probably the only thing I lived for. I played rugby in the winters and rowed and sailed in the summers; and without sounding again like I’m boasting, I was always captain of something. In photographs I am there in glass cabinets along school hallways where also sits my name on plaques on trophies. My closest friends were spoiled toffs, but they were lovable spoiled toffs. We did not get up to all the roguish things that many of our peers did, but some of them. We once purposely sank one of the school rowing boats and another time climbed out of the dormitory windows to swim in the river. And that was about the extent of my misbehavior.
There was never any doubt about me signing up for the war. Duty above self had been ingrained in me by Mother, church, and school masters throughout my childhood. And of course there was another duty also, to take care of Mother, Rudy, and the estate. We assembled in Étaples at the start of the war, were given some information about the defense lines and the customs of the country, and were then sent to an area for our groupings. Then came talks by our commander advising us that only respectable fraternization with locals would be tolerated, though rules such as these were not possible for some, me included. I entered the war with the rank of lieutenant because of my class and the privilege of officers’ training, which did not feel like a privilege most times. Being separated from others in the group by a title felt at first like I had been penalized and isolated. But solidarity won far above rank, and by the end of the war, titles meant nothing to many of us.
The first battle we fought revealed that nightmares are real. We stayed in trenches, and the shelling and the rain of dirt and ash, sometimes human, gave me an entrance into war that none of us were prepared for. Not that I hadn’t been told about it, but partaking in it is something that words can only paint in watercolor, not blood, the retelling of our stories often muted so as not to shock the listener. We stepped out and faced the enemy, and bullets whizzed by me. I killed men sometimes with my bayonet and sometimes with hysterical anger that men will only experience in these moments. I can think of no other situation where one can charge like a beast and mutilate another human with a mixture built up from hate and lust for vengeance and then walk away and tell ourselves we are but human after all. It is these sorts of things that would encourage some journalists and civilians—who wrote and read about these accounts and published in cold, emotionless black print—to criticize such perceived depravity without understanding, without empathy. We simply had no choice.
Somehow miraculously I survived this and the boredom of hours, days, months, and years in the trenches, where to make fun of the dead in rare unfiltered and sleep-deprived moments had been the only source of entertainment, with the occasional letter from home to supposedly lift our spirits. Rudy’s letters were the ones I waited for. He was truthful. If it was bad at home, if a horse was lame, he would tell me. Mother’s letters would smell like roses as an accompaniment to the words, to supposedly keep me chipper. Her letters were also a little shallow and cold, though I knew that she loved me in her own way. She would describe the meals they had, unaware that food in the first months was something I dreamed about more than anything else, as well as lying in a soft, warm bed, listening to the drizzle of rain as it hit the lake outside my top-floor window.
But Rudy’s letters I pined for. They told me that things would still be the same when I returned and the only change would be me. They were often beautiful, too, the descriptions so clear, about early morning sunshine and snow and the smell of the barn at Lakeland and the sound of Chess thundering across the greens and the clattering of delivery carts on the terrace pavers. And it was these that helped me, I believe. That got me through some of it.
So I begged him for more of his thoughts and observations and then wrote my own. When I first realized that my mind would often race to darker thoughts, thoughts I couldn’t control, and these after my first battle in France, I began poetry as a way of coping. Though, these pieces I didn’t send, not wishing anyone back home to read them. These told of the stench; the cold, damp socks; the moans of the wounded; the grotesque and fetid flesh wounds; the relentless shelling that could blow a man into hundreds of pieces; the way the earth exploded in front of you, jolting your body, sounding in one’s mind hour after hour. The slosh and mud where we slipped again and again, wading through early morning mists toward an unseen enemy, helpless and strangely alone, hanging for my life on a rifle and bayonet in a large sea of dull army green and faceless tin hats. And during that first heated charge, one did not dare to turn toward the screams and shouts of the fallen.
The numbness of what follows after experiencing war is probably the biggest surprise of all, together with the feeling that we did nothing worthy or brave even though our commanders assured us differently, with pinned medals and congratulatory pats on the shoulder. At times, remote from the complexities of the whole war, the killings felt more personal. As if the battles we won would prove the better man.
My letters home became rare because I could not find anything to write about without Mother worrying. I could not describe the uniforms, which after days of wear felt scratchy and uncomfortable, or the rancid smell of trench foot when it was exposed by those beside me after weeks of rain, sunk in ten-foot-deep mud holes. I could no longer describe the tinned food that was indescribably tasteless, so much so that I would have to be reminded to eat it. Perhaps the loss of appetite was in fact the first sign that my mind was not equipped for war. I could not tell Mother that I lost three friends in one day, their parts left in sloshy fields that looked like the world had ended as the fog closed in to claim the remains. I sometimes prayed, too, something I had not ever felt the need to do before then.
So after weeks of battles, which we survived and won, we had our first leave, sent back to billet with families. I was first sent to a hospital in Armentières, released, and then to the baths of a woman’s psychiatric hospital in Bailleul, where the nuns looked after us. I was still unaware of my disease, implanted in neurons and searching for ways to manifest.
The village was beautiful and starkly contrasted against the vestiges of others I had seen, now just shadows of structures, blights on the landscape, and memorials in some abstract future. The shelling had ceased temporarily, though I could still hear it, feel the vibrations through my body. There was no sleep that night, tortured as I was with the tremors and the fear that I might not wake. I don’t remember anyone from that first day, my mind at the time little more than a house for the noises that had followed me from the battlefield.
The following evening I was taken to a soiree organized for a number of enlisted men, as a thank-you by the local community. Some of the women there were the prettiest I had seen, all eager to pay attention to us, in some way showing a certain gratitude I didn’t feel I’d earned. That night, the beer swirling through my veins, there were no dreams of bodies and smoke. I had a sense of freedom that I hadn’t felt in months.
The next morning I enjoyed once more the taste of food, the smell of coffee, and the sun that filled up the space in my tiny window, the memory of small pleasures returning. The steaming-hot baths were much-needed therapy, and the nurses and nuns there were some of the kindest people I had met so far.
My friend Roger introduced me to some girls. Mariette was very pretty. She caught my eye first, as well as the eyes of most of the men in the unit. She wore a fitted dress that accentuated a long, narrow waist, arms perhaps too thin, and a long nose that surprisingly suited her face. I remember now her features vividly: curious eyes of darkest brown and hair that had caught fire from the sun. She was beautiful, flirtatious, but her flighty mannerisms told me she
was very young.
It was only when I turned to the woman next to her that my heart galloped faster. Helene was someone like me: someone who did not want the attention. She was pretty but withdrawn, with pale-green eyes, long dark hair, and satiny brown skin. She wore her hair tightly pulled back, an old work shirt, and a pair of oversized men’s trousers that disguised her womanly shape, blending her into the heavy male landscape. I had a sudden yearning to know her, to hear about her life.
The girls looked nothing alike, and I am not at all certain that they were actually sisters of blood, but I would come to see that blood in this case didn’t matter. They were closer than any family I had ever seen.
Roger was due to leave the next day. My respite was longer because the officers perhaps were a little unsure if I was ready. They had seen the shaking of my hands when I was first admitted into hospital. It was Roger who suggested I take up his billet at the orchard, promoting its friendly hosts, the perfect place to heal. There was no point, I concluded, in making friendships, but Roger in the end pressured me into moving in with the Laviers.
I stayed in a little room at the back of the house, separated by a patch of grass where several chickens were cooped and the occasional duck wandered freely. The main house was very small inside, the rooms at the back smaller.
I did not move there with any designs on Helene, and I can’t say exactly why my thoughts about her changed from mere curiosity, to wonder, and then to love. She worked hard like Jerome, trimming branches from the trees and sorting bad fruit from the good. One day I watched her in the orchard alongside Jerome as they inspected the trees. She leaned in close to catch everything he was saying, her hand reaching up behind him to rest on his shoulder, such causal closeness only possible with those one trusts. The gesture, though minor, caused some of the stone that walled protectively around my battered heart to crumble and fall away. I suddenly wanted to know her, to be close to her, to feel her hand on my shoulder also.
In a Field of Blue Page 30
