by Holly Green
‘Traffic jam!’ he whispered hoarsely, to explain his sudden stop.
The man following him groaned and hitched the stanchion to a less painful position, causing the wire to cut into Tom’s shoulder. The company had been withdrawn from the front line, ostensibly ‘for a rest’; but there was little chance of that. While billeted some six miles back from the line, it was their job to bring up essential supplies; and, since all movement during daylight hours attracted a barrage of shells from the Germans, the work had to be done at night. This meant a two-mile tramp along a cobbled road, carrying the huge variety of items required by the men manning the trenches; apart from barbed wire, and the metal posts to support it, there were sandbags to repair trench parapets, duckboards for the worst flooded areas, balks of timber, ammunition, grenades, and the daily rations of bread and jam and tea and sugar and bully beef. At the end of the two miles, they reached the beginning of the communication trench. From here, it was a further three miles along a narrow, muddy ditch, often up to the tops of their boots in water, with frequent right-angled bends designed to make the progress of an attacker more difficult but which also rendered the manoeuvring of cumbersome loads even more exhausting. On top of this, they were not the only company on the same errand, with the result that there were frequent hold-ups while the party ahead negotiated a particularly difficult obstacle.
This time, the jam had a different cause. Word was whispered from man to man: ‘Stretcher party coming back.’ There was no way a stretcher could be carried past in the narrow trench, so there was only one solution. Tom turned, with difficulty, and gave his order, sotto voce; ‘Up!’ With a struggle, they heaved the wire up out of the trench and scrambled after it. All along the edge, Tom could see the shadowy figures of waiting men. He knew what they were feeling. In spite of the darkness, the sense of exposure was inescapable. At any moment he expected to hear the whistle of an incoming shell. It seemed a long time before he saw the men ahead slipping back into the trench and then heard the panting and splashing of the stretcher bearers passing his position. He looked behind him and gestured his company down again into the muddy darkness.
They reached their designated area sometime after midnight, handed over the supplies and set off back to their billets. The going was easier without their loads but they had to climb out twice to make way for groups heading in the opposite direction. By the time they finally reached the road and could make out the dim shapes of shattered trees and ruined houses after the total blackness of the trench, Tom was exhausted and he knew his men were in the same condition, but they still had a two-mile slog ahead of them.
Tramping along, with nothing particular to focus on, his thoughts turned as always to the two most important people in his life: Ralph and Leo. He had heard no news of Ralph since he was carried away unconscious after their night expedition into no-man’s-land. He had made repeated enquiries, but to no avail. He could only comfort himself with the thought that Ralph had still been breathing and the wound, as far as he could tell, did not appear to have struck any vital organ, but the uncertainty was a perpetual torture. Occasionally, at moments like this, he allowed himself a comforting fantasy. If Ralph recovered, he would undoubtedly be given leave to convalesce. If he, Tom, could only wangle some leave at the same time … But he knew it was improbable. He had had two weeks after finishing his officer training, not long ago. A man was lucky to get that once in a year.
Putting the thought aside, his mind turned to Leo, but there was little comfort there. Since a letter that had reached him last November he had heard nothing, but the newspapers had carried reports of the Serbian defeat and he could only fear the worst. While he was on leave he had made a point of calling at Sussex Gardens, but the staff there had heard nothing. He had also contacted the solicitor who handled Leo’s affairs, but he was as much at a loss as the rest. The situation in Serbia was chaotic and somewhere in the middle of it Leo had simply disappeared.
Dawn was breaking as the weary men shambled into the village. Tom dismissed them and went to his own billet, which was in the house of an elderly man who had once been the village schoolmaster. He was an irritable character who appeared to find Tom’s inability to speak French a personal affront; but in compensation, his housekeeper was a motherly woman who made it her mission to provide her English lodger with whatever little treats were available. Neither of them were up when Tom let himself in, but the old range in the kitchen had been stoked up and only required raking to glow into life and the big iron kettle was ready on the hob.
Tom drew it over onto the hotplate and fetched his tea ration from his room. It was only then that he noticed two parcels and a small packet of letters on the table. The long-awaited post must have come up during the hours of darkness and his batman had collected it and left it for him. His stomach clenched with anxiety as he sorted through the envelopes. None was addressed in the handwriting he longed to see. There was one from his mother, one from a distant cousin who seemed to have decided it was her duty to send him uplifting quotations from the Bible, one from a newspaper editor presumably regarding some drawings Tom had sent him; and a fourth that appeared to have originated in Calais, addressed in a hand he did not recognise. He tore it open with shaking hands.
Inside was another envelope, and there, at last, was the familiar script. He ignored the covering letter and opened it.
My Dear Tom,
I hope this letter will get to you quickly, because I know you will be wondering what has happened to me. Well, you can stop worrying! It seems I have been very lucky. The sniper’s bullet went straight through without touching anything vital and the docs say I shall be fit to leave hospital quite soon. They will be sending me home for a bit, of course, but I shall make sure that I get a medical board asap so I can be passed fit and get back to you and the rest of the chaps. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of you getting a spot of home leave so you can join me?
Don’t worry about me. I’m being well looked after by some really lovely nurses. Oh, and on that topic, guess who picked me up from the train and drove me here in her ambulance. None other than Victoria! It seems she and the other FANYs are established as regular ambulance drivers and doing a rather splendid job. It wasn’t the first face I should have wanted to open my eyes to, in an ideal world, as you can imagine. Still, I suppose I have to admit that the whole FANY set-up has turned out to be not as crazy as I first thought. If only Leo had stayed in France with them! I asked Victoria if she has any news, but she has heard nothing.
My main worry is what you may be getting up to while I am not there to keep an eye on you. Please try not to do anything silly. You are much too valuable to go risking your life on some daft escapade. I mean it, Tom! I expect you to be there, hale and hearty, when I get back.
I shall have to stop now. I get tired rather quickly. If you want to write, it is probably best to send it to Sussex Gardens, as I hope to be back there soon.
Take care, old fellow.
Your affectionate friend,
Ralph
Tom laid the letter on the table and rested his cheek on it. In his exhausted state the sudden relief almost reduced him to tears. The sound of the kettle coming to the boil roused him, or he might have fallen asleep where he sat. He got up and made himself a mug of tea, then resumed his place and began to look through the rest of his mail.
Victoria’s covering letter was brief and told him no more than he had already learned from Ralph. His mother’s letter was almost as short, simply informing him that she had ordered a hamper of food for him from Fortnum and Mason. Tom had long ago given up expecting any kind of emotional sustenance from his mother’s communications, so he turned his attention to the parcel, which contained the hamper itself. Pate de foie gras, chocolate and strawberry jam had to substitute for maternal affection. He drank his tea, ate some chocolate and dragged himself off to bed.
Chapter 19
Victoria was on leave. It was the first time she had been back in London si
nce she had set off to join the FANYs at Lamarck, and she was finding it a disquieting experience. After the unrelenting effort of dealing with the constant stream of casualties, the primitive living conditions and the tedious rations, it seemed unbelievable that life in London continued almost unchanged. The streets were full of servicemen home on leave, determined to have a good time; the theatres and music halls were booming. It was true that there was a certain sense of constraints being loosened and old taboos overthrown; but the men and women of the class among which Victoria had grown up continued to live much as they always had done. There were complaints about shortages of staff and the unavailability of certain luxuries but no sense, as far as she could see, of the cataclysmic events taking place across the Channel.
It did not help that there were very few of her contemporaries in town. Victoria had always been a rebel, uncomfortable in drawing-room society, and most of her friends had either been men whom she had met during her career as a racing driver or women in the FANY. Now they were all engaged in the fighting, in one capacity or another, and she found herself at a loose end.
One morning she was strolling along Bond Street, idly looking in the windows of jewellers and dress shops, when a voice hailed her.
‘Victoria! Over here!’
She turned and saw across the street a woman with a familiar face but one she could not immediately place. The woman crossed the street, dodging between the hansom cabs and the motorcars that clogged it, and caught Victoria’s hand.
‘It is you! I was sure it was. Don’t you remember me? Lozengrad!’
‘Of course!’ Recollection flooded back. ‘Sylvia Wallace! How are you?’
‘I’m well, thank you. And actually it’s Sylvia Vincent now. I’ve been married for … gosh! … it’s nearly a year, now. And how are you? What are you doing with yourself these days?’
‘Look,’ Victoria said, ‘we can’t talk standing in the street. Let’s go into Fenwick’s coffee shop. Then we can have a proper gossip.’
Once settled over cups of coffee and a plate of fancy cakes, Victoria began by describing her work in France.
Sylvia shook her head regretfully. ‘You’re doing such a wonderful job! And I’m just sitting at home, being useless. After working with Mabel Stobart in Lozengrad, I feel ashamed not be doing something. I wanted to go with her to Serbia, but Martin – that’s my husband – wouldn’t hear of it.’
‘It’s probably lucky for you he wouldn’t,’ Victoria said. ‘Goodness knows what has happened to them.’
‘Oh, but they are all back in England!’ her companion exclaimed. ‘Didn’t you know?’
‘Back? When?’ Victoria demanded. ‘How do you know? How did they get out of Serbia?’
‘I had tea with Georgina MacIntosh last week. You remember her from Lozengrad? She went with Stobart this time, too. The poor things had a terrible time. They had to retreat through the mountains in awful conditions, but they finally made it to somewhere called Medua, on the Albanian coast, and got a boat to Brindisi. Poor Georgie looked worn to an absolute shadow …’
‘Did she mention Leo Malham Brown?’ Victoria interrupted. ‘You remember Leo. She was at Lozengrad with us.’
‘Wasn’t she the girl who dressed like a boy? I didn’t know she went on this last expedition.’
‘Well, she did. I haven’t heard from her for months and I’ve been assuming the worst. But if all the others got back, she must be with them.’
‘Well, I suppose so,’ Sylvia said. ‘Georgina didn’t mention her by name, but she did say that the whole party got through, thanks to Stobart.’
Victoria gathered her gloves and handbag. ‘I must go! It’s been lovely meeting you again, but if Leo is home I must go and call on her and find out if she’s all right. I can’t think why she hasn’t been in touch.’ She fumbled in her bag. ‘Here’s my card. Do give me a call and we’ll get together for a proper chinwag – but please excuse me now.’
Leaving Sylvia looking slightly bemused, Victoria hurried out of the shop and called a taxi. A few minutes later she was ringing the bell at 31 Sussex Gardens. Beavis, slightly greyer, slightly plumper, answered it.
‘Beavis! Is Miss Malham Brown at home?’
‘Miss Leonora, madam? No, I’m afraid not. But Captain Malham Brown is here. Shall I announce you?’
Ralph was in the library, smoking a cigarette and reading The Times. He got up stiffly when Victoria entered.
‘Victoria! This is an unexpected pleasure. Come in, please. Beavis, bring some coffee, please. I’m sure Miss Langford would like a cup.’
‘No, really, thank you. I’ve just had coffee with an old acquaintance. Ralph, is Leo home?’
Ralph nodded dismissal at the butler and indicated a chair opposite his own. ‘Sit down, please. No, she isn’t. What makes you think she might be?’
Victoria dropped into the chair, her excitement ebbing. ‘This friend I met, she was with us at Lozengrad. She told me Mabel Stobart and all her party were back in England. I felt sure Leo must be with them.’
‘No,’ Ralph said. ‘Leo is in Corfu.’
‘Corfu! How do you know?’
Ralph reached into his pocket. ‘This letter arrived yesterday. Here, you can read it if you like.’
Victoria scanned the letter eagerly. It was not long. Leo explained how she had come to be separated from the rest of her group, described briefly the privations of the trek through the mountains and said that she probably owed her life to the kindness of ‘a Serbian officer’. She went on to outline the work she was doing with the international committee on Corfu and finished by expressing the hope that the letter would reach her brother and find him ‘in good health and spirits’.
‘She doesn’t say anything about coming home,’ Victoria commented, when she had finished.
Ralph responded with a wry smile. ‘No, she doesn’t, does she. But you know my sister. Never happier than when she’s organising people. I expect she’s in her element out there.’
‘She’s obviously been through a terrible ordeal,’ Victoria pointed out. ‘Aren’t you worried about her?’
Ralph hesitated a moment, frowning. ‘To be quite honest, I’ve got to the point where I’ve given up worrying about her. For the last six months I haven’t known whether she was alive or dead. Neither has poor old Tom. She insists on going off on these mad expeditions and she seems to have a remarkable talent for survival, so I’ve come to the conclusion that I just have to let her go her own way.’
‘But you must be thankful to know that she’s all right.’
‘Yes, of course I am! I just wish she’d come home and marry Tom and behave like any other decent woman.’
‘Present company excepted, of course!’ Victoria said waspishly.
He gave her a crooked smile. ‘All right. I know you’re doing a wonderful job out there, and I suppose she is too. I’m just tired of wondering what she’s going to get up to next.’
Victoria studied his face for a moment and saw the faint lines around his mouth and the shadows under his eyes. She remembered making a cruel joke to Leo about his shiny boots and felt contrite. She softened her tone.
‘Anyway, what about you? How is the wound healing?’
‘Pretty well, thanks. It still gives me a stab if I move too quickly, but the medics say I should be able to go before a board in a week or two. I’m just praying they will pass me fit to go back to the trenches. Frankly, I’m going out of my mind here. It all seems so … so unreal, pointless …’
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Victoria said. ‘People here don’t seem to understand what it’s like over there.’
‘They don’t want to understand,’ Ralph said bitterly. ‘They just want to think of it as a glorious sacrifice. Have you seen these houses with photographs in the windows, draped in black crepe, just so everyone knows that their son or husband or brother has died for his country? It makes me sick!’
‘Some of the letters to the papers are pretty mawkish, too
,’ Victoria agreed.
‘I want to shout at people that there’s nothing glorious about it! What’s glorious about thousands of men dying for the sake of a few yards of muddy ground?’ Ralph hitched himself up in his chair and winced. ‘Mind you, I’m as much at fault as anyone, I suppose. When I have to write home to some grieving mother or wife, I don’t tell them their son or husband died in agony after lying up to his waist in mud all day with half his face shot off. I tell them he was shot while bravely doing his duty and let them think it was quick and virtually painless.’
‘What else can you do?’ Victoria said. ‘Why make their suffering worse? But I sometimes think that if some of those wives and mothers could spend a day or two with me, and see the casualties coming off the trains and the barges, the war would be over by the end of the week. People wouldn’t stand for it, if they could see the reality.’
Ralph sighed and they were both silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Look here. What we both need is to be taken out of ourselves. How do you fancy a night out?’
‘A night out? Where?’
‘Oh, anywhere you like – as long as it’s not the opera! I can’t offer to take you dancing, I’m afraid. How about the music hall? I feel like some good, rowdy entertainment. What do you say?’
Victoria hesitated. Once upon a time she would have laughed out loud at the notion of a date with Ralph. But he did seem to have mellowed and was not the bumptious, self-satisfied prig she had thought him before the war. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Music hall it is.’
‘Excellent! I’ll pick you up around seven, and we’ll have a bite of supper afterwards.’
The evening was more enjoyable than Victoria had expected. She had never been to the music hall before and initially the rowdy voices and the haze of tobacco smoke that hung over the long tables and the crowded benches gave her reason to doubt the wisdom of agreeing to Ralph’s suggestion. But she had developed a taste for gin during her service in France, as an antidote to the stresses of the job, and Ralph saw to it that her glass was frequently re-filled, while he kept pace with her in pints of beer. Very soon they both relaxed and allowed the convivial atmosphere to sweep them along. The chairman kept the evening going with a swing, summoning act after act onto the tiny stage. There were comics and singers and magicians and conjurers, and Victoria found herself applauding and joining in the choruses with the rest. Top of the bill was Marie Lloyd, resplendent in a huge hat and a frilled parasol. Her sly innuendo, pressed home with winks and nudges, had Victoria giggling helplessly during songs like ‘A Little of What You Fancy’ and ‘She Sits Among the Cabbages and Peas’. Ralph roared with laughter, too, but they both sobered up and glanced at each other ruefully when she sang her well-known recruiting song, ‘I Didn’t Like You Much Before You Joined the Army …’ The mood passed, however, and they left the hall humming and holding onto each other’s arms.
