by Leah Fleming
She would find him perhaps in his Sunday best shed, painted black and boarded neatly. This was where he wrote his sermons for the men’s class on Wednesday nights. The local men came for a chat. It kept them teetotal and out of the Plough and Red Lion, Granny said.
Dad never went to the men’s class but they all stopped off to chat with him and examine his latest machine lying stripped in the barn. Sometimes it was just a piece of farm machinery but lately he’d had some interesting automobiles, a Prince Henry Vauxhall and, of course, Mr Salt’s new Model T Ford in for a decoke or a service. Mam said he ought to go and sleep in the barn, he spent so much time there.
One day Nat would have had the garage, Bagshott & Son, but not now. Since the war began no one was allowed to use their car much. The farm machines kept Dad busy enough and he ‘chuffered’ people to and from the station. Most of the village folk had to use Shanks’s pony and walk, or beg a lift in a dog cart.
When she looked out of her bedroom window in the attic Iris liked to see the barn door open and hear all the familiar noises stirring the place to life. But since the news that Nat was gone it was strangely silent in there and Dad’s face often had a grim look on it. He didn’t whistle any more.
She would sink back under the bedclothes, looking up at the way the walls were curved with thick beams. She could bang her head at either end. Iris liked being high and lifted up above them all in her nest. There were lots of night people up here too: a girl with a sad face and a very old lady with a smile. Sometimes the wispy grey lady joined them along the passageway which linked the rooms. Mother had painted the walls and put up lovely flower drawings which she’d found in an old trunk under the stairs. Dad had framed them in polished wood and some were kept downstairs in the parlour on show.
The night people ignored Iris and went about their business. She never told anyone of her visitors. They kept her company when the wind howled over the roof and the moon was hidden and her candle blew out. She knew they meant her no harm for they belonged here as much as she did. Sometimes there was a warm smell of rose petals and smoke wafting through the walls but lately the cottage had been sad and silent. Everything had changed since the bad news came.
Percy’s Patch
Iris caught glimpses of Captain Henry on his walks around the edge of the village. He walked alone at the quiet ends of the day or sometimes drove the Salt horseless carriage with Aggie sitting waving in the back seat. Iris was cross that her friend had a brother to crow about now that there were so many telegrams in the village and the list of fallen heroes grew ever longer; farmers’ sons and the blacksmith’s grandson, even Old Dog Barker’s eldest was now a prisoner-of-war. The honour of having a black-edged poster in your window had lost its swank value at school.
The first week after they were officially notified that Nat was dead, Mother shut herself away. She scrubbed the passageway, scoured and pounded all the spring bedding, bottomed the house thoroughly. She cut up Nat’s school uniform to start a peg rug and Iris never saw her weep. She just screwed up her face tightly and clenched her fists whenever anyone spoke to her about him.
Granddad suggested a memorial service at the Chapel for there was no body to bury, but Mother would hear none of it. She would wait until the war was ended and only then, if he did not come home, would there be a memorial. Inside her there was still a flicker of hope which never quite went out and drove Dad to distraction. Mother muttered to herself a lot nowadays and wore a dirty pinny. She never brought flowers into the house and couldn’t be bothered with her rose bushes.
There were queues for every item on their shopping list; the horse and cart farmer measured the milk and butter ration; even bread was portioned out. The grocer’s cart never had any treacle and Dad said it was time to sort out the garden again to grow more stuff for themselves.
Then came the terrible afternoon when Iris came home from school to find all the men in the bottom garden with a mechanical plough, turning over her patch, grubbing up Stinging Nettle Lane and the Ghost Walk and even through to Fairy Glen.
‘What’re you doing?’ she screamed as she watched all the wild patch churned over. The bushes ripped, her tepee destroyed. All that was left was bare soil. It was no use yelling at them to stop for it was all destroyed. ‘But it’s my garden,’ she wept.
‘It’s no use being mardy, our Iris. There’s a war on and we need food in our bellies this winter. This’ll do well for tatties and roots… Think of all the soups your mam can fill us with. Food doesn’t grow on trees, you know.’
‘Yes, it does. Apples, pears, cherries…’
‘Don’t be cheeky with me! You’ve had your playing with it, now it has to earn its keep. You can look after the patch, if you like. You can be Dad’s little helper.’
‘But I don’t want soup… I want my garden. The veg have stolen my kingdom. It’s not fair!’ She had gone to school Queen of the realm and come home robbed of it all. How could her own dad be so hard?
‘Iris Bagshott… come back here or I’ll clip your ear.’
‘Leave her, Jim. Leave her be. We all have to make sacrifices but she’s too young to understand. It was her play den. Come on, child. It’s not that bad. You can have it back when the war’s over.’
‘Why can’t the King fight his own battles instead of Nat doing all the work?’
‘We have to do what’s right and fair. We’re lucky enough to have all this ground to grow food. And it won’t be forever.’
‘But it won’t be the same, will it?’
‘Nothing will be the same after this war, we have to accept that,’ Mam sighed. Iris turned away, sniffing back tears, and ran off to the banks of Primrose Way. If her kingdom was lost for now, perhaps forever, she would never look in that direction again. She was the banished Queen of the fairy stories but one day she would return and never leave this place again.
*
It was raining. Iris sat in the kitchen at Granny Bailey’s with all the contents of the button box spilled over the oilskin cloth of the kitchen table.
‘Tell me again about the chime hour child?’ She loved to hear the story of her birthing. It made her feel important and only Granny Bailey could tell it properly, with all the gory details and the relish of one who had actually been there on such a momentous occasion.
‘You were born just as the parish clock struck the half-past or was it the quarter hour… a real chime hour child, born with special powers, never to be bewitched in life. Your mam and dad waited many years for your coming after Nat.’
‘That’s the story of the rosebuds, isn’t it? The little rosebuds under the bushes. Mother’s little roses, too small to flower…’ Iris could never pass the rose beds without thinking of all the could-have-been brothers and sisters buried there.
‘Yes, she kept losing her rosebuds and Granddad and I put them away nice and close by so they would make her flowers grow. That’s why she loves her rose bed. But when you were born… Ah, well! I didn’t need to look out a burial gown or a box to put you in. I took one look and knew you were going to be staying around. There was something in the way you gripped my pinky, minutes after you were shed.’ Granny grabbed hold of her little finger and squeezed it tight. ‘Just like this.’ Iris did the same.
‘And she called me Iris.’
‘We called your mother Rose, and she called all her girl babes after flowers… Lily, Daisy, Lavender, and then you, Iris Rose, the last. Your mam’s a brave lady and now she’s having to be very brave.’
‘She never cries, Gran, just scrubs and cleans all day and won’t sit down. Dad gets cross with her.’
‘I know that’s how it takes some but he’s no better under the bonnet of some carriage or locked in his barn all hours. It’s hard to lose a son.’
‘But they’ve still got me?’
‘It’s not the same for a man. He had great plans for his worksheds. The Bagshotts have come a long way fast, from the town slums back to field work and engines. A man likes to think there
’s a son to keep his name going.’
‘Can’t girls keep it too?’
‘They get wed and change their names.’
‘I’m never going to change my name then. I shall be Iris Rose Bagshott all my life.’
‘Oh, you’ll change your tune soon enough.’
‘It’s not fair! Aggie Salt’s dad got his son and his name back.’
‘Aye, but at a price, lovey, at a price. His name’ll not be going on if what I hear is correct,’ Granny said in hushed tones.
‘Why?’ Iris did not understand.
‘You’re far too young to be told of such matters. Captain Salt will not be getting wed, now nor ever, take it from me.’
‘He can marry me and then we’ll both keep our names. I like him, he listens when I talk…’
‘Don’t you go pestering him with questions. He’s an officer and a gentleman. He’d be far too polite to tell you to push off.’
Iris was fingering all Granny’s collection of postcards and picked up the pretty tinted ones from Nat. ‘Shall we put these in your box along with the other bits?’
‘Of course, all of his cards must go in my box. But he’ll live in our hearts as well. We don’t need bits of paper to remember him by.’
‘Tell me again about all the bits and bobs?’ Iris was examining each item spread out before her. It was raining outside and she loved having her Granny Bailey all to herself.
‘Surely you know them by heart by now? You tell me where they came from, so you’ll always know about your kin.’
‘This is the button from Billy Bailey’s soldier’s coat who fought at the Battle of Waterloo, yes?’
Granny nodded her approval and Iris picked up a piece of faded creamy lace.
‘This is from the gown of a lady at Longhall Manor who once lived in this house, given to your great-granny who was her maid.’
‘Her name was Susan and the lady’s name was Hittybel, I think.’ Iris always laughed at the sound of that name.
‘This is a sea shell from the Coral Islands off Wales which was brought back by a preacher to the Chapel to show the Sunday School there is a real sea?’ Granny smiled and nodded.
‘Here’s the pretty ring you found in the garden patch with no stone in it but made of gold, and the cart wheel penny you found by the barn door that’s got a King’s head on it. This’s the bit of flower off your mam’s wedding bonnet, who worked at Longhall in the dairy.’
‘And this here’s your Great-granny Alice Barnswell, in the photograph on the mantelpiece. Isn’t she a fine looker, like your mam?’
Iris knew which piece to keep ’til last: a little length of striped orange and blue crinkly ribbon. ‘Here’s your sister Nora’s ribbon, the one who was taken by Jesus just before her wedding day.’
‘Don’t forget the tin badge we bought off them ladies who called on the village in a horse and cart and stood on Fridwell Green and asked us women if we wanted the vote. Your mother felt sorry for them so she bought the badge. She’s all in favour of it. I just liked the colours so she gave me it for my box. See, green for hope, white for purity and purple for sacrifice. Nothing changes, does it? That just about sums up these times.’
Granny Bailey sighed. ‘Come on, enough chattermongering, you’re holding up the works. Go and fetch me some potatoes from up the garden shed and take these bits of paper to the privy while you’re at it. These tatties have gone manky. It’s a good job they’re on with planting the late crop. We shall be needing them come winter.’
‘I hate vegetables!’ Iris puckered her face into a pout.
‘Think of the starving children in poor little Belgium.’
‘They can have mine, if you like?’
‘That’s enough lip. Off and do your chores.’
*
As spring became summer, Henry Salt kept to his room, finding the atmosphere at home stifling. His mother fussed incessantly, overfeeding him and wanting him to tell her all about his injury. He could give her only the sanitised version and was thankful that his memory of the worst bits was beginning to fade.
Sometimes he woke and it was as if he was back there in the trenches again… explosions thudding through the soles of his feet as he was edging forward on a push; pain which shoved him flat on his face as the shell cut into his left thigh. Something had gone right through his chest and when he came to again he was lying in the mud, thanking his lucky stars it would soon be nightfall and the stretcher bearers might risk coming up and over to collect him. In his dreams he would relive the stench and the filth and the fear of rats gnawing at his open wounds. He would call out and no one came to rescue him. He could see the faces of dead men, their limbs crawling with maggots. Soon they would come to get him… He would cry out, waking in a sweat, feeling the pain in his balls which were no longer there.
By some miracle he was found and taken to a dressing station where a doctor saved his life by treating his wounds promptly but shook his head at their severity and put him in the moribund tent. Henry lay with the dying ones, listening to their gasps and cries of: ‘Mam… I want my mammy!’ It was always the last name on men’s lips as they died.
The nurses were surprised to see him still alive in the morning and shunted him down the line in an ambulance, bumping over the ruts, the first of many agonies. Then a field hospital and afterwards he was laid by some railway track in the Red Cross tents where an angel in white fed him tea through a spout before he was shipped off to the port.
Henry lay on a stretcher for five days in his own filth, listening to the groans of other ruined men. At some point he was taken to another hospital and cleaned up again, examined and patched together for the journey home. Hours and hours of being carried like a lump of meat, the pain of jolting movement and the harshness of plaster on his raw flesh and the horror of the maggots which sucked off his pus, keeping him alive. How could he ever tell of the humiliation of seeing his private parts picked over and examined, heads being shaken and commiserating looks directed at him?
Now the first flush of visitors had dwindled to the local Vicar and his wife who hovered meaningfully, as if about to give him a blessing. Henry never wanted any of that stuff again, not after he’d seen how some Padres ducked and dived away from danger. Only the Catholic priests stayed all the way with their men, kneeling in the mud and throwing back grenades to protect their injured. As the weeks went on it grew harder for him to rise from bed in the morning. He had no energy even to think about the future, to shave or wash or eat. His thigh ached with every movement, but it was toughening, the stitches held.
Henry could feel a strange void in his trousers, a movement of air. Sometimes he could swear all his tackle was in place, could feel it, but when he looked he saw the empty space again. He did not want to think about it.
He would go for a walk up into the Chase and shoot some rabbits. At least he could still shoot a gun straight. His hands might tremble but his aim was sure enough.
*
He had forgotten just how beautiful the woods were, coppiced spruce, larch and beech beneath the oaks, with the peppery sweetness of fir cones floating in the air for good measure. A carpet of bluebells lay as far as the eye could see, dappled light streaming down on to shades of purple, lilac and the bluest of blues. The scent of the flowers brought back memories of those walks up to the front in springtime, before the French woods were destroyed by shell bursts, but this was the wood of his childhood, a place of magic and promise, fairy tales and dreams.
How many times in the trenches had he tried to lose himself in scenes of home, to stiffen his courage and resolve to stay alive? For this he had fought, this piece of England, this blessed plot, this Midland heartland. And it was still safe from the enemy. When all around him had been blackened stumps, craters swimming in blood, when all that grew fat were rats tussling for the limbs and bowels of his own men, it was thoughts of this beauty which had kept him sane. Now he was here, alive, home at last, Henry felt nothing but a terrible aching sadness.
What was the point of his endurance? He might as well be dead if he could not feel anything. Here was as good a place as any to end it all. If he could not return to active service, he might as well be dead. What use was a man who could give no heir nor service any woman? Better to end his humiliation privately with this shot gun, now.
But he had seen so many botched jobs in the trenches, the guns swerving from their target, maiming instead of killing outright. He had watched one poor soul take three hours to die with half his brains stuck to his helmet but enough left to let him suffer agonies of remorse for the impulse to end his suffering. Perhaps he should go deeper into the forest and find a sturdy trunk to sit by. He remembered his first Sergeant’s words: ‘When I does a job, I thinks about it three times, measures it up twice and does it once properly.’ He must do the same. He would take off his boot and sock and put his gun so… placing the barrel carefully in his mouth. Then he could stretch his foot and fire the trigger. Henry fingered the stock, feeling the polished smoothness of the wood. He checked his bullets. One would be enough if he did the job well. There was a steel-edged calmness to his actions. He had all the time in the world to do the deed.
He checked in his pocket for his wallet and an envelope. Thank goodness he had a pencil tucked into the leather binding. He must leave no loose ends, no questions as to the balance of his mind. Never had he felt more certain, more sure, more excited. Why had he not thought of this before? He would say his farewells and try to explain why he cared nothing for the future.
