Tom’s letters home were few and far-between, and, although written with immense labour, were never more than half a page long. ‘I am well. I got your parcel. How are Nipper and Slip and the workshop?’ There was not much to say. The censor would only cut it out. So he wrote about the yellowhammer, heard so often in the hedgerows, saying A little bit of bread and no chee-eeese, just the same as it did in England. And he pressed speedwell flowers and herb robert between the folded sheet of paper. It astonished him daily that the same flowers grew in Picardy as grew in the fields and lanes at home.
‘Things can’t be too bad over there,’ Jesse said to Betony, ‘if young Tom’s got time to gather flowers.’
In England, now, the May was out and the wild June roses would soon be coming. The weather was good. Hay harvest had started at Anster and in the evenings Jesse and his sons were out in the fields, helping Janie and her husband Martin with the haymaking. William had now had his eighteenth birthday. Jesse was rather worried about him.
‘Won’t you get into trouble, boy, stopping at home now conscription’s come in?’
‘It’s no odds to me. I still ent going.’
‘If William was to work on the farm full-time he might be exempt,’ Janie said.
‘I don’t care to be exempt ‒ I just ent going,’ William said. ‘I didn’t start this damned war so why should I down tools and go fighting in it?’
‘Yes, but suppose they put you in gaol, boy?’
‘They’ll tarnal well have to catch me first!’
One day soon after, William and Roger were delivering ladders at a shop in Chepsworth. Roger disappeared for a little while and returned triumphant.
‘I’ve been along to the recruiting centre. They took me this time. No questions asked.’
‘Are you gone in the head, you stupid fool? You’ve got no right! You’re still under age.’
‘If I look eighteen then I’m good enough to be eighteen. I’m a lot stronger than some of the chaps I seen there today.’
‘I’m going down there to get your name took off their list!’
‘If you do that,’ Roger said, ‘I’ll run away south and join up there.’
William saw that Roger meant it. He stood for a moment in a quivering rage. Then, suddenly, he was calm.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘if one of us goes, we’re both going.’
‘But you don’t want to!’ Roger said.
‘I ent letting you go by yourself. A kid like you needs looking after. Besides, what’d I look like, do you think, with my younger brother gone and not me?’
So William and Roger joined together, and together confronted their parents at home.
‘Don’t worry, mother,’ William said. ‘I’ll take care of Roger for you and I’ll make certain-sure we don’t get parted.’
Within a month, they were in camp at Porthcowan, training with the Royal Artillery.
‘It’s not a bad life, considering,’ William wrote in a letter home. ‘In fact I reckon it suits me fine.’ And at the end, in a casual postscript, ‘I came out top in the ranging tests yesterday morning. The instructor says I’m a born gunner. I might put in for a stripe directly if everything goes according to plan.’
Being William, now that he had become a soldier, he was determined to be a good one.
One Sunday in May Betony went up to London and spent the afternoon with Michael. He was looking better: stronger; more relaxed; yet when she told him so, his eyes darkened and a shiver went through him.
‘I’m practically one hundred per cent, which means I’ll soon be posted abroad.’
‘Are you sure?’ she said. ‘Sure you’re fit again, I mean.’
‘You just said so, yourself.’
‘I said you looked it, but I’m no doctor.’
‘No, well, we’ve got plenty of those, and they look me over now and then.’ Then he said abruptly: ‘How are things in munitions nowadays?’
‘Frightening,’ she said. ‘I was in Birmingham yesterday, where they’re making shells. The output is tremendous, and it’s just the same wherever I go.’
‘That’s the stuff! We might get somewhere if we’ve got things to throw.’
‘Is something coming?’ Betony asked. ‘A big offensive?’
‘Shush,’ he said, smiling. ‘How do I know you’re not a spy?’
They were having tea at The Trocadero. He passed his cup across the table and watched her, secretly, as she filled it. There was something about the shape of her face, and her calm expression, that took him by surprise each time he saw her. She seemed so unconscious of herself; of the way she looked, the way she smiled. He had not been mistaken. He wanted her badly.
‘Betony,’ he said, ‘do you have to go back to Chepsworth tonight?’
‘Yes. I’ve got to be in Gridport at eight in the morning.’
‘Oh, that work of yours!’ he said. ‘Couldn’t you be late just once in awhile?’
‘No, Michael, I’m afraid not.’
‘Would you have stayed with me, had you been free to?’
‘I’m never free for more than one day.’
‘You’re just trying to spare my feelings. The answer is no, obviously.’ His gaze fell away and he stared at the sugar-bowl on the table. ‘I’d like you to know,’ he said slowly, doing his best to make light of the matter, ‘that I don’t try it on with every young woman I meet.’
‘Do you meet so many, at Yelmingham?’
‘You’d be surprised at the number of homes we officers are made welcome in. It’s all meant to sustain our morale and there’s a certain titled lady at Gaines who takes her task very seriously indeed.’
‘Are you trying to make me jealous?’
‘Drink up,’ he said. ‘We ought to be moving if we’re to catch that train.’
He drove with her in a taxi to the station, and kept up the same light-hearted conversation till her train pulled out.
‘Give my regards to your family,’ he said. ‘And don’t forget to call on my mother. She’s very anxious to get to know you.’
Towards the end of May he was pronounced fit for general service and ordered to rejoin his old battalion. He had forty-eight hours’ leave and arrived at Chepsworth at eleven o’clock on Saturday morning. After lunching with his mother he walked out to Huntlip, but Betony was not at home. She had gone to Stafford on a special course and was not expected back until Sunday. ‘What time on Sunday?’ Michael asked.
‘We don’t rightly know,’ Jesse said. ‘She didn’t go by train, you see. She went in a special motor bus, along with some very important people.’
‘Can I get her on the telephone?’
‘Laws!’ Jesse said, and his blue eyes opened very wide. ‘I shouldn’t think so!’
So Michael left a note and returned home. His leave slipped away, pointless and empty, with his mother pretending not to notice his silence. She feared for him dreadfully, three times wounded yet returning once more to the battle zone, and she thought it wrong that the same young men should be called upon again and again for duty.
And yet at the same time she took pleasure in the sight of him in his uniform, with the three stars on each epaulette, and the three yellow wound-stripes on the sleeve. She took pride in him because he was her son, and because he had been among the first to answer his country’s call for men. She forebore to reproach him for his silence. Her only complaint came at the end, when he refused to let her see him off at the station.
‘Is it because of that girl?’ she said. ‘The carpenter’s daughter? Will she be there?’
‘I don’t even know if she got my message.’
‘If she hasn’t, you’ll be leaving all alone.’
‘I’ll chance that,’ he said. ‘I’d much rather say goodbye here.’
‘Very well. It’s as you wish. I will be praying for you, my son, and thinking of you constantly.’
‘Good,’ he said, and stooped to kiss her. ‘I may be too busy to pray for myself.’
His t
rain left at nine that evening. It was drawing out as Betony ran down onto the platform. She saw him at once and hurried forward, trying to take his outstretched hands as he leant towards her, out of the window. Their fingers were joined momentarily ‒ a brief exchange of warmth and softness ‒ then the train gathered speed and tore them apart. Betony hurried along beside it, and Michael looked down at her with anguished eyes, his lips apart but no words escaping between them. He wanted to open the door and jump out. She was growing smaller all the time. She had come to a standstill.
‘Michael, take care, take care!’ she called, and he heard her even above the noise of the engine. ‘Come back safely! I’ll be waiting for you!’
Chapter Three
Staying in London overnight, he heard much talk of the coming offensive, even among the hotel staff. He mentioned the matter to Morris Tremearne, a fellow captain in the Second Battalion, also staying at The Kenilworth.
‘Even the bootboy knows there’s going to be a push. And now there are hints in the newspapers. We may as well send the Kaiser a telegram, stating the exact time and place!’
‘Ah, that’s the beauty of it!’ said Tremearne. ‘The fuss we’re making, the Germans’ll never believe it’s going to happen, don’t you know!’
Michael turned away, catching the eye of his new batman. Lovell was discretion personified, but his glance was expressive.
Three days later they were with their battalion in Bethune. Michael was glad to see men he knew. Six months was a long time. He tried not to think of those who had vanished in the interim. He tried not to keep counting them.
‘My God, you look smart!’ Lightwood said. ‘I hardly knew you.’
‘Plenty of new chaps coming up, not all of them hopeless,’ Ashcott said. ‘This specimen here is a good man. ‒ He’s brought the latest gramophone records.’ And he waved a hand at the new young subaltern standing beside him. ‘His name’s Spurrey. We call him Weed.’
‘What’s the new C.O. like? Big man or small?’
‘Big and fatherly and serious-minded. Has a proper respect for flesh and blood. Treats us almost as human beings.’
‘What’s happening here at the moment?’
‘We’re up and down the canal mostly. We know it like the backs of our hands. Still, the big push is coming, so they say, and soon we’ll be sleeping in the Kaiser’s palace.’
‘Has he got a palace?’ Spurrey asked.
‘I’m damn sure he doesn’t live in a dugout!’
‘Four miles,’ Michael said, listening to the guns firing at Givenchy. ‘It sounds nearer.’
‘That’s because you’ve been away. You’ve got used to the hush at home in England. What did you do with yourself, all that time? Pickle the onions?’
‘It’s mustard, not pickles,’ Michael said. He was used to jokes about the family business. ‘But I never go near the factory if I can help it.’
‘Mustard! Of course! That explains your famous coolness under fire. You’ve had it hot and strong all your life, what?’
‘Besides, I haven’t been in Chepsworth all the time.’
‘No, you’ve been manning a desk at Yelmingham, you lucky devil. Still, I expect you’re glad to be back in the swim. It must be pretty dangerous in England now, with all those women driving the trams.’
The next day, they were in the front line, in the Cuinchy sector. Michael had command of B Company, and his sergeant was a man named Bill Minching, a veteran of Mons and Festubert: quiet-spoken; steady-eyed; unupsettable, as Lightwood said. Almost half the men in the Company were new drafts but they looked on Michael as the newcomer.
A working party, under Minching, was out one night digging a new communication trench. Some rain fell and in the morning, when Michael inspected the finished work, there was water at the bottom of the trench. The men slopped about in it, thinking it nothing, but Michael gave orders that duckboards were to be laid down immediately.
‘One of those, is he?’ a private named Biddle was heard to say. ‘Believes in giving us plenty to do!’
Minching tapped him on the shoulder.
‘You may have webbed feet, Biddle, but the rest of us are not so lucky.’
Two men were killed by shellfire that day, and two were wounded. One of the wounded was Private Biddle. He was carried away with a deep jagged gash spouting blood from breast-bone to navel, and, passing Minching, he spoke weakly.
‘Seems I’m a goner, don’t it, sarge?’
‘Oh no you’re not!’ Minching said. ‘You’ll just be laid up for a bit, that’s all. You’ve got a Blighty one. ‒ Ent that the answer to your prayers?’
Biddle believed him. New hope came into his eyes. He lay back smiling.
‘Carry on, my good men,’ he said to the bearers, ‘the surgeons are waiting.’
‘Will he live?’ Michael asked Minching later.
‘I don’t know, sir, but faith can work wonders, so they say.’
One afternoon, during an off-duty period in Annequin, a young subaltern, exploring the ruins of a bakery, set off an old enemy shell that had lain there, rusting, for over a year. He was blown to pieces.
‘It’s a bad place, this,’ Spurrey said to Lightwood at mess that evening. ‘I don’t like it. It gives me the creeps.’
He was nineteen and had come out in April with his friends Hapton, Challoner, and Wyatt. All three friends were now dead. Wyatt was the man killed by the old ‘sleeping’ shell.
‘Don’t like La Bassée?’ said Hunter-Haynes, as though offended. ‘You surely don’t mean it!’
‘How about a stroll down to the brickstacks?’ Ashcott said, patting Spurrey’s shoulder. ‘Plenty of souvenirs to be had there … such as a bullet in the head.’
‘You should look on the dark side, young Weed,’ said Spencer, ‘then every day is a kind of bonus.’
‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,’ said Lightwood, ‘though I must say the will is a hell of a long time in probate.’
‘You’re quiet, Andrews,’ Ashcott remarked.
‘He’s got inside knowledge, I bet,’ Lightwood said. ‘How do you do it, Andrews, old man? Have you got the colonel’s ear?’
‘I’ve got Minching’s ear. He’s good at sorting out the rumours.’
‘And what does the omniscient Minching predict?’
‘A move southwards in the near future.’
‘Nothing more specific than that?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Ah, well,’ Lightwood said. ‘I doubt if Staff themselves know very much more. I don’t suppose they’ve stuck a pin in the map yet.’
After their tour of duty in the trenches, they returned to Bethune and had a fortnight’s training there, mostly mock battles. They now knew, officially, that the great offensive had begun, thirty miles southwards, on the Somme.
‘Shall we be in it?’ Spurrey asked.
‘Up to our necks,’ Ashcott said, ‘but not yet, I hope.’
‘Why not yet?’
‘There’s a marvellous girl living near the soapworks, and I mean to have her, that’s why.’
‘You and whose army?’ Lightwood murmured.
On July the eighth, after dark, the battalion entrained at Lillers station and travelled southwards through the night. Early next morning they arrived at Saleux, and from there they marched nine miles to St Sauveur.
After the coal-pits and slag-heaps of Artois, Picardy was lovely indeed: a district as yet hardly touched by war: a country of orchards and big sweeping fields full of green standing corn, where poppies flared along the roadsides, and the air smelt sweet and fresh and clean.
At every farmhouse, every hamlet, people turned out and watched from their doors. A very old man bowed gravely, straightened and gave a military salute. An old woman wept into her apron. Children ran beside the soldiers.
‘Tommee! Tommee! Soldats anglais!’
‘Napoo lay boutons!’ the soldiers said, as many small hands plucked at their tunics.
&n
bsp; ‘Napoo lay badges!’
‘Napoo nothing! Allay bizonc!’
‘Après la guerre finee. Maybee. Ah, and viva to you, too, you cheeky monkey!’
But the men were tired. They grew more silent with each mile that passed. The day was a hot one and they marched in a cloud of thick white dust that dried out their mouths and gave them a terrible raging thirst. So at St Sauveur they stopped for rest, drink, and food, before pressing on another eight miles towards the banks of the River Ancre.
They came at last to Vecquemont, a glimmer of lights in the dusk now falling, and here they stayed, the men flopping down beside the road while the officers went to arrange billets. The people of Vecquemont were not best pleased. They stood about, blank-faced, unmoving. Yet when a battalion of the Glasgow Highlanders marched through half an hour later, with the pipes playing, they were given a rousing cheer.
‘That’s what we’re here for,’ one of their officers said to Michael. ‘The Scots turn-out is good for morale. It gives the civilians a bit of a boost. And you English fellows, too, of course.’
‘Cocky bastards,’ Lightwood said, as the Highlander turned and swaggered away. ‘Strutting about in their fancy dress!’
All next day they remained at Vecquemont, giving the men a chance to recover from their seventeen-mile march and make themselves ready. They left early the following morning, and, determined not to be outdone by the Glasgows, marched smartly out of the village.
‘We may not have a howling cat to lead us,’ Sergeant Minching said to his men, ‘but there’s nothing wrong with the way we march.’
‘Good old Three Counties!’ a voice shouted from the ranks. ‘Especially Leominster!’
At Morlancourt, eight miles westwards, they rested again for twenty-four hours, and the men handed in unwanted equipment, including greatcoats. They were now within close sound of the guns. No civilians were to be seen. The villages here had all been evacuated some time before. After dark on the twelfth, they marched three miles to Becordel, close to the old front line of 1914. There they met up with other battalions, and the whole brigade went into camp.
In the morning, Michael rode up with the other company commanders to a ridge called Calou, from whence they could see the new battle zone, a mile or so distant, under bombardment by British artillery. The noise was deafening. The enemy line danced and quivered under the smoke. The air was never still for a moment.
The Sorrowing Wind (The Apple Tree Saga Book 3) Page 4
