‘Rupert von Kessel,’ he said, digging into his memory.
‘I think that was the name, yes.’
‘When you say ‘feeling’ what do you mean, exactly?’
‘Oh, they used to argue about whether there was going to be a war and what they’d do if there was. Dead against joining in, Mr Greville was. And then, there was Miss Marianne. I think that Austrian…’ She hesitated. ‘All the young fellows liked her, but she wasn’t a bad girl, you mustn’t think that. I reckon, if things had turned out different, her and Mr Greville might have made a go of it…but then, she’d have had sorrow to contend with. You know he joined up and was killed? It surprised us all, I can tell you, when he went off and enlisted like that, even though he went as one of those – you know, noncombatants. Because he was as much against the fighting as the rector was, you know. And especially him going off with his father poorly as he was – Mr Foley. They said it was all the excitement of the party, but I reckon it was more to do with Mr Greville than anything – and then on top of it, Miss Marianne, of all people, being found like that next morning.’
She was losing him. ‘What are we talking about, Mrs Noakes? What was wrong with Mr Foley?’
‘Why, he had a heart attack! The night of the party, he was taken bad. The house was in an uproar. They called for Mr Greville but he was nowhere to be found. We were told the next day, he’d already gone off and joined up, without telling anybody.’
‘Even though he was so against the war?’
‘Even so, and that was what was so queer. He’d taken his mother’s motor car and driven over to Birmingham and enlisted there. Left the motor with the stationmaster to be picked up.’
And von Kessel, Reardon remembered, again dredging his memory of the case, had made a hurried exit back to Austria at the same time, having left his departure until practically the very last minute – just before Britain had declared war against Germany…although his own country, Austria-Hungary, if Reardon remembered rightly, had not been involved in the conflict for perhaps another week. It had been foolish in the extreme, with a reckless disregard for his own safety, to leave his going so late, but when had hot-blooded and careless young men of that age ever listened to caution? Reardon didn’t give much for his chances of having got out of the country, however. More than likely he had been intercepted and imprisoned as an alien. He made a mental note to investigate this.
So, both young men had disappeared in a great hurry, at the same time. And the very next morning, Marianne Wentworth had been found in the lake.
‘Well, thank you very much, Mrs Noakes. You’ve been very helpful.’
‘I don’t know that I have, really.’ She stood up and then said, uncertainly, ‘You wonder how I could’ve known all this…? Well, servants see and hear a lot, you know, though if you’re a good one you keep what you hear to yourself. They say things in front of you, the gentry, as though you’re deaf and blind, look through you as though you’re not there, some of them, pass you cleaning the stairs as though you didn’t exist. The Oaklands folk aren’t like that, none of them, but all the same, you pretty much know what’s going on. Well, anyway…’ She stood up.
‘Thank you, Mrs Noakes.’
‘You’re welcome.’ She nodded and left him.
Sam was in the taproom when Mattie went through, polishing the pewter tankards kept on hooks behind the bar, all of them different, each of the regulars having their own.
‘What did he want, Mattie?’ he asked suspiciously.
‘What everybody thinks he wants – to know about Miss Marianne.’
‘Are the police opening that business again, then?’
‘He’s not in the police now.’
Sam stared. ‘What’s in it for him, then?’
‘He didn’t say. And I didn’t ask.’
Her husband leant across the bar and lifted her chin with one great forefinger. ‘Well now, Mattie, don’t you go getting yourself involved in this. I know what you think about all that business of the rector’s daughter, but it won’t do no good. I’ll have a word with him.’
‘Don’t be stroppy with him, Sam.’ Despite his flaxen hair and his blue eyes, her husband, with his big shovel hands and the muscles and sinews developed with working in the smithy, could be intimidating at first sight, to those who didn’t know him, and he’d become prone to arguments against authority since he’d been in the army. ‘Poor chap. Whatever could’ve happened to him out there?’
‘You don’t want to know about that,’ Sam replied grimly, as he always did. He would never talk about his experiences; none of them would, those who had returned. They never said in their letters, either. It was as though they had entered into a conspiracy to keep their womenfolk from knowing what it had been like, though sometimes Mattie had thought it was worse, imagining. ‘Don’t you worry, Mattie m’duck,’ he said now, ‘I wouldn’t think of causing no trouble with him. He’s all right, I can tell.’
If Sam said so, Mattie was happy enough with that.
And that night, Sam joined Herbert Reardon in the parlour after another tasty supper of tender chicken and fresh vegetables, followed by apple pie. He came in with two pints of the strong, home-brewed ale that the Greville Arms was famous for, reckoning Reardon wouldn’t want to join the locals in the bar. What they talked about, far into the night, Mattie didn’t know, but she could guess, she heard it often enough since her husband came home.
Sam had gone into the war not caring much about politics or politicians, except for his admiration for the visionary Lloyd George and his Liberal reforms. What working man didn’t admire him? Dole for the unemployed, pensions for the old folk, and support when they became sick and infirm? Sam had believed in the great man’s grand promise after the war that Britain could be made into a land fit for heroes to live in. Believed it for a while. Dust and ashes now, when the bloody government, who had managed to find millions a day to defeat the Germans, left the same heroes – crippled, hungry and despairing, without jobs – to beg on the streets.
Chapter Fourteen
A few nights before, Nella had started a spell of night duty. She had long since found that, even in a convalescent ward, it wasn’t the easy option people thought it, with men asleep all through a quiet night and nothing much to do. Most of the patients at Oaklands were, or had been, serious cases, and few nights went by without someone reliving the horrors they would never speak of during the day. Then, they kept up a cheerfulness, and the sense of humour which had kept them going throughout the worst of what war could do. But the unguarded night for many was tormented by wild dreams of fighting for breath in the gas-filled trenches; or the terror of being drowned in six feet of mud, or buried by debris, being caught on the wire and left wounded when they were sent on what was virtually a suicide mission, over the top, straight into the face of the enemy guns.
Sometimes it was just sufficient to hold their hands until the terror had abated somewhat, or simply to listen – it was easier to talk in the dark. And there were the quiet periods, of course, when it was possible, with the aid of a lamp turned low on the desk at the end of the ward, to write up notes and patients’ records, when most of the men were asleep or if not, lying quietly, waiting to get through the night.
It had been one of the quiet nights in the ward which had once been the ballroom, towards midnight, and Nella was waiting for Burkin to arrive and relieve her so that she could take her break, when the ward suddenly erupted. She rushed to investigate the uproar.
Sergeant Major ‘Bomber’ Broadbent was one of the living legends in the hospital. Reputedly a terror for discipline on the front line, though fair-minded and personally fearless, he was a treasure to the nursing staff. He’d lost the fingers of his left hand and half his jaw, and was having to learn how to speak so that he could be understood, but that didn’t prevent him from chivvying those men who were well enough, exhorting them to join in activities to pass the time and keep up morale – entertainments between themselves, whist dr
ives, anything he could think of. His current project was to involve any of those who were able to wield a hoe, or pull a weed, in a campaign designed to make a start on smartening up the Oaklands gardens. He was stoical about his injuries and didn’t normally cause any trouble, but the noise was coming from the direction of where he slept at the far end of the ward. When Nella got there she found that he had rolled out of his bed onto the floor and was kicking up his legs, not shouting in pain, but singing, roaring like a bull.
‘Sorry I can’t help you, love. It’s me bunions, see,’ said Taffy Davies, who made terrible jokes, from the next bed. He had had an amputation of his right foot, and most of the muscles and bones in the same leg were shattered, too.
‘Ighty-iddle-de-ighty, take me back to Blighty,
Blighty is the place for me!’ roared the sergeant.
‘Stow the hymn-singing, chum! Give us a bit of hush, for Gawd’s sake,’ came from the other side of the ward, an injunction taken up by several others until, all at once, quiet descended like a blanket. With a soft jingle of keys and a steely glance Matron had arrived on the scene to investigate. Five foot tall, Miss Inman ran her hospital strictly according to Miss Nightingale’s principles and many more stringent ones of her own, and all of the men, not to mention some of the doctors, were terrified of her.
‘Nurse Wentworth, this man is drunk! Where did he get this?’ she demanded, picking up a now empty whisky bottle that lay on the floor beside Bomber and holding it fastidiously at arms’ length from her starched bosom.
‘Visiting day today, Matron. You know how it is.’
‘Yes, I do know – and so should the visitors. Haven’t they been warned often enough not to bring drink in to the men? They might be convalescent, but they’re still patients. Nurse Wentworth, get him back into bed immediately. I’ll send someone to help you.’
‘That’s all right, Matron. I’ll give nurse a hand.’
A male voice sounded behind Nella; a pair of strong hands appeared to help heave the dead weight of the big soldier into bed.
‘In that case, I’ll leave you to it.’
‘Yes, Matron,’ Nella replied to her outraged, departing back. ‘Come on, Bomber.’
‘Oh, you’re a lovely girl, Sister. Give us a cuddle, Sister. Ighty-iddle-de-ighty, tickle me up me nightie…’
‘You’ve blotted your copybook with Matron this time,’ Nella said, trying not to laugh. ‘Just as well she didn’t hear that.’
‘I expect she’s heard much worse,’ commented her helper.
The task of getting him into bed accomplished, quite suddenly the sergeant major stopped singing, his head fell back and immediately he began to snore loudly.
‘Don’t be too hard on the poor bugger – begging your pardon, Sister,’ Taffy Evans remarked, ‘but the whisky does him more good than his medicine, you know. Lovely tenor he’d have, though, if he’d learn to sing proper.’
‘Would you like a hot drink, Taffy?’ she asked, tucking the sheets around the snoring sergeant major.
‘No, thank you, love. Time all of us got some beauty sleep.’
‘Goodnight, then.’
Her helper was still standing by the bed. She turned and smiled at him. ‘Thank you, Captain Geddes.’
‘A pleasure, Nurse Wentworth. Quite like old times.’
Of course she had known before she saw him who it was that was offering to help her. She didn’t need to turn around to know the owner of the voice with the soft Scottish burr, though one didn’t expect the new MO to be doing duty rounds with Matron; perhaps he was getting the feel of his new position. And at least it had eased the potential awkwardness of their first meeting. He accompanied her to the door, held it open for her to pass through. In the corridor, he faced her. ‘It’s so good to see you again, Nella. And looking better than the last time I saw you.’
‘Well, that wouldn’t be difficult, the state I was in,’ she answered, tucking a stray strand of hair under her cap, knowing she sounded prickly and defensive, though what she said was true. When she had arrived back in England after the exhausting demands of the previous years and that last, debilitating illness, she had been looking like a scarecrow, without Amy telling her so. She looked up and found him smiling.
‘You haven’t changed in the least.’ She wondered what that meant. ‘I wrote to you when I heard you were ill.’
‘I never received it.’ Nor ever saw you again. ‘What happened to you after that?’
‘What happened? What happened to all of us. Passchendaele happened. I was simply one of the lucky ones.’
The third battle of Ypres would be known for evermore as Passchendaele, from the tiny village, the struggle for which over half a million men were wounded, died, were reported captured or missing. ‘We were both lucky,’ she said soberly.
Despite the exhausting years he had spent in France, he appeared much as he had always done, relaxed and casual, a smile in his blue eyes, though he looked older: his face was thinner, and there were lines which hadn’t been there before. ‘I’m only here for a short time,’ he said. ‘Just long enough to see to the closure of the hospital before I say goodbye to the army. Splendid place to convalesce, isn’t it?’
‘You should have seen it before the war.’
They had reached the dispensary, which she was making for in order to prepare the medicines for her first round in the morning, before the patients’ breakfast and the end of her shift. ‘I hope we might have a chance to talk, Nella. There’s a good deal I have to tell you. Can you make it soon?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she replied brightly. ‘There must be a lot of news to catch up with. In fact, I’m due for a break in half an hour. Shall we say the nurses’ sitting room?’
For the next half hour she wrote up the patients’ notes and reports and didn’t have much idea of what she wrote. Duncan Geddes had brought the past with him, peopled by sad ghosts and painful memories.
Chapter Fifteen
1916
Flanders. A small town on the French Belgian border whose unpronounceable name she couldn’t now remember. Once it had been near the front line but by then, as fronts shifted and moved backwards and forwards, from place to place, each side struggling for a few miles’ advantage which neither ever seemed to gain permanently, the shattered town was at present several miles away, attempting to resume something of its normal life, or as much as it could hope for. It was crammed with army personnel on leave, seeking a brief respite and some relief from the intolerable strain of being under constant fire. There was little to do, but everyone was grateful for clean beds and baths, and a decent night’s sleep, able to hear the guns only as a not-too-distant, monotonous crump rather than as if in the next room. It was also a relief from army food – almost any sort of food was in short supply, but the Belgians generally knew how to make the most of what there was.
Nella was staying there with Daisy Musgrave.
The day before they came, after giggling over a little blonde VAD who had daringly cut her own hair and looked like a badly shorn duckling, they had cut off their own hair and then wept together when they saw their crowning glories lying on the floor of the tent. But the tears were short-lived. Long hair was impossible when there was neither time nor hot water to wash and dry it, and when it was expected to be kept tidily pinned up under every condition. ‘A much overdue decision, Nurse Wentworth,’ Daisy declared in the voice of Griggs, a mutually detested sister, and they subsided into giggles.
The two of them, for their few days’ leave, were sharing a room in a small hotel in the bomb-shattered town, and had arranged to go out to dinner that night. However, during the day Daisy had come across a young captain, one of the scores with whom she had often dined and danced the night away in London and in grand country houses, in the palmy days before the war. She seemed to know half the officers in the British Army, so many of whose names later featured in the frighteningly lengthening casualty lists. They all adored her, loved her not only for her feminine
company but the feeling she gave them that life could still offer some sense of fun and gaiety. She flirted outrageously with them all, but it meant nothing; it was only this young man who brought colour to her cheeks, and sometimes tears to her eyes when she read his letters, and whose name had become exceedingly familiar to Nella.
‘Would you mind, darling?’ she asked. It was obvious she meant not only the cancellation of their dinner arrangements, but also that she wanted Nella to make herself scarce from their shared room.
‘Daisy, you mustn’t!’
‘Yes, I must,’ she replied fiercely, and looking at the pretty face from which all smiles had vanished, Nella said nothing. Unlike her young man, if Daisy were found out, her contract would be terminated and she would be sent home in disgrace, but Nella was not as shocked as she would have been once, nor did she feel she had any right, or wish, to judge. Morality had a different slant here for men in the trenches, and for some of the women, too, taking the reckless ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die’ attitude, a possibility that became more like absolute certainty as the war dragged on. She had arrived in France an innocent, as she now saw it, but by now there was no room for shock at anything, after what she had seen and experienced.
She left their room in the cold winter’s evening before George Chiversleigh should arrive and wandered disconsolately out to look for somewhere to have dinner alone and unnoticed, and in the half-destroyed place, with ruined buildings on every side of it, and the fountain in the centre nothing but a heap of stones, she almost bumped into Captain Geddes. Their surprise was mutual. Neither had known the other would be here; in fact they knew little of each other’s activities outside the tented lines of the hospital where they worked as part of a professional team.
‘I was looking for somewhere to have supper, Nurse Wentworth. They tell me there’s a good place along the end of this street. If you haven’t already eaten, why don’t you join me?’
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