The Chocolate Tin

by Fiona McIntosh

  ‘We’ve got some tins to fill before the new load comes down the line,’ Nel said, pointing to the low stacks of gleaming tins.

  Alex glanced down the line and could already see hands busy at work and tins in motion. ‘Let’s get a move on, then!’

  She followed Nel’s every move, clipping open the lid, instantly inhaling the rich scent of the block of chocolate that sat so neatly within the brassy shine of the tin. She peeked below the thick, protective corrugated paper and under that a thin waxy sheet. Beneath this final layer sat the delicious food: a shiny block of chocolate divided into pieces as thick and nearly as long as a finger that could be snapped or bitten off. Each finger of chocolate was alternately engraved with Rowntree or York, and the lush aroma, almost like a fermented berry, was so rich it was as intoxicating as any liquor. Alex smiled as she inhaled, knowing this was the perfume that would scent her future.

  The lid’s underside carried the Royal warrant to Rowntree and she mimicked Nel in deftly and carefully wetting a finger so she could slide off one of the firm’s notes that were to be inserted. The thick paper was waxed, translucent but printed clearly, and it slid crisply into her hand. Alex eased it over the chocolate’s wrapping and snapped the lid closed and put it into a waiting basket.

  And so it went. She began to gain confidence, no longer so aware of Nel or the people surrounding her. Alex’s hands moved increasingly faster through the air as she went about her task. Even sounds faded until she was in her thoughts and only the smell of chocolate pervaded the invisible bubble that had seemed to coalesce around her. Alex was aware she was smiling as she worked; at last she was doing something for the soldiers and if it could bring them just a few minutes of release from the ugliness of their war, this made her feel useful, necessary even. Was it wrong to love this work? There were moments when she wished she could please her mother entirely by looking forward to a life of leisure: essentially being a supportive, loving wife, an affectionate and capable mother, a friend who could keep up with the latest gossip and trends. But already, after just an hour at her counter in the Rowntree’s factory, Alex could sense the shift coming over her. She could never look forward to that life of what she believed was just a step away from indolence. Perhaps that wasn’t fair. Her mother was not lazy, not even vaguely idle, but to Alex her mother’s pursuits felt hollow, bordering sometimes on pointless.

  And that scared her. She did not wish to look back over the years from the perspective of older age and have regrets that she didn’t live her days on her terms. That said, Minerva Frobisher was a woman at ease in her daily duties; Alex was well aware that her mother was genuinely happy now that enough years had passed since the death of her son, and her daughter was soon to be married.

  Alex sighed to herself. She must be growing up to accept that she and her mother were cast from different moulds, and could acknowledge that life was less predictable and surely a lot more interesting because of the variety of moulds. This was a notion Matthew had tossed her way only the previous evening when she’d made him understand that she couldn’t be a wife to him as her mother was a wife to her father. It was an odd remark but Matthew, as usual, seemed to follow her thoughts clearly.

  ‘You’ll be the wife to me that you can be and I shall be the best husband that I can be for you. At least we’re going into this arrangement – which any marriage surely is – with integrity.’

  Again it was his oddly cryptic style but she’d nonetheless mentally hugged him for his response and there were moments when she wondered if he were some sort of angel in her midst to be so magnanimous and understanding.

  ‘What’s it like to be in love, Nel?’ she murmured.

  Nel gave a soft guffaw. ‘I dunno. That’s an odd question, Miss.’

  ‘Alex,’ she reminded her workmate. ‘Is it? Why?’

  ‘It’s like . . .’ Nel frowned, looking up to the whitewashed walls for inspiration, her hands still busy. ‘Well, Miss, it’s like everyone else is going about their everyday business and unaware that you’ve stepped outside from the world they’re in. And this new world is just me and Stan, you know? Nothing else matters. I mean, I love my mum and our family but all I can think of is Stan. I even spend time thinking about what his hands look like. Even his fingernails and how neat he keeps them in spite of his oily work on the railways.’

  Alex nodded.

  ‘Are you in love, Miss?’

  She sighed. ‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking someone who knows what it feels like.’

  Nel chuckled. ‘Well, when you see him, do you feel like your heartbeat goes a bit wonky?’

  Alex screwed her nose up slightly, thinking on this. ‘I do find myself laughing a lot with him and I would hate it if suddenly he were not there. Does that count?’

  ‘Of course. Does he make you feel like it’s hard to breathe?’

  ‘No.’ She laughed. ‘But whenever I do see him or especially when I’m with him, I feel immediately happier for it.’ Alex shook her head. ‘It might be the opposite for me; I think I’ve been moving through my days like you describe, Nel. Everyone else is in one world and I’ve been in another. Except Matthew’s focused me again and I feel myself returning.’ It was her turn to lift a shoulder. ‘Well, it’s like I belong once more and my life is jubilant for him being in it.’ She could see Nel didn’t understand a bit. ‘I suppose what I’m trying to say is perhaps my heartbeat does feel wonky, as you say.’

  They both giggled. Peggy arrived.

  ‘Well, I’m glad to see the laughter isn’t stopping your progress, Nel,’ she remarked.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ Alex admitted, aware that the supervisor preferred not to single out their esteemed volunteer.

  ‘How are you finding this repetitive work, Miss Frobisher?’

  ‘I’m enjoying myself enormously.’

  The older woman blinked and Alex read this to be confusion. ‘It’s our pleasure to have you here. Thank you for helping.’

  ‘No, thank you for having me. Oh, here comes a new batch,’ she said, noticing two women arriving with tray-loads of tins for stuffing.

  ‘I won’t keep you,’ Peggy said and moved away.

  Alex caught Nel’s attention and mouthed Sorry.

  Nel grinned, nodding towards the fresh tower of tins being placed before them, and Alex fell silent and into her thoughts again. She pondered Nel’s description of love and wondered if one day she would experience that sense of dislocation from everyone else, cleaving to Matthew, with her mind dominated only by thoughts of him and the tilt of his head, the ease of his smile, the slope of his shoulders. No, she couldn’t imagine it. Wasn’t she supposed to feel all that at the outset, or could it creep up, developing as love grew? She shook herself clear of these questions. She certainly liked the idea of being his wife and the honesty of their relationship. It would do.

  The morning break came and went and it was just before lunchtime as the clock drew two minutes to noon when Nel whispered that they’d be making way for the next shift. ‘I’ll take these over to the next station,’ she said, heaping her last tin onto the top of a tray, which she lifted onto a second tray.

  ‘Nearly done,’ Alex promised, reaching for the final tin she would pack for today. She glanced up towards the clock.

  ‘One more minute, ladies,’ Peggy called out.

  Alex would never know why that warning felt so prophetic, or even why it might have prompted her odd move. In that moment she acted entirely on impulse, with no idea from where it stemmed; later she would smile to herself and wonder at the curious decision, shaking her head with private embarrassment that she was surely in a whimsical frame of mind, profoundly affected by her fondness for Matthew. Whatever it was, at one minute to noon on her first day at the factory, her only day in the packing role, and in her opinion her first day back into a happier existence, she reached for one of the stray pencils and a small oblong of torn-off paper that had been used as a separator for the company notelets. Looking over her s
houlder, she checked no one was close, especially Peggy; it would be her only chance and, hardly daring to believe she was doing it, she scrawled a quick message.

  Come home safely. With love . . .

  Alex blinked. She couldn’t use her real name but she didn’t want to lie either. In this moment, suddenly feeling both romantic and romanced in her life, she wanted to share it. She wanted the fellow in the trench who opened this tin to know that someone – a stranger – was thinking of him and caring about his survival and his life . . . and to feel loved, even by someone he didn’t know. She wanted to be true to him and so in a moment of recklessness she added the fond childhood name her brother had called her. Kitty.

  She folded over the paper and slipped the handwritten note beneath the firm’s printed piece. She’d toyed momentarily with slipping it between the postcards in the cunning ‘fake bottom’ that had been fashioned in the tin but the twins were checking all those elements carefully and she could be found out, whereas she’d heard they wouldn’t need to check where the chocolate was kept. Without thinking it through further, she snapped the lid closed as Nel arrived behind her. There would be no reason to open that lid again, she was sure. She held her breath, hoping she had not misjudged; her daring to flout the rules would cause a horrible stink, she was sure, if discovered.

  ‘Here, I’ll take those, Miss. You’ve worked very hard today.’

  Alex watched the tin join the horde of others and cross the room on a tray to be lost among a host of identical tins. She followed them being unloaded and could no longer pick out her special tin. That was how it should be.

  A random note, at a random time, into a pair of hands of a random soldier. She grinned, feeling as though fate was guiding her life right now. She would become Alex Britten-Jones while a soldier in a trench would scratch his head over a note from someone called Kitty and she hoped he would smile and feel the affection and sense of romance she was feeling at this moment. She stood and stretched.

  ‘Thank you, ladies, for a solid effort.’

  A chorus of farewells followed and, sighing happily, Alex began untying her apron.

  ‘Follow me, Miss,’ Nel offered. ‘I can walk you to the gate if you’d like? Are you going over to the dining hall?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I hadn’t planned. I’m meeting someone, actually,’ she admitted. ‘Maybe tomorrow? But definitely let’s walk to the gate together, thank you.’

  The whistle blew shrilly and Peggy called the morning shift to an end. ‘Enjoy your luncheon, ladies.’

  Peggy arrived once again as the two girls were saying their farewells to the others.

  ‘Thank you for your help today, Miss Frobisher. Tomorrow I gather you will be handling your new role?’

  ‘And next month I begin my tour escort training.’

  ‘Ah, yes, most befitting. You’ll enjoy seeing all the corners of the factory,’ Peggy admitted. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Frobisher. It’s been our pleasure.’

  Alex shook the woman’s hand politely and had to work hard not to let her gaze move to the stack of tins, one of which carried her personalised message. Already she was regretting her spontaneity. What if it were discovered before it left British shores? Worse, what if it was given to a brigadier or someone senior?

  ‘Penny for your thoughts, Miss?’ Nel murmured.

  ‘Shouldn’t we blow a kiss to them?’ It was the first excuse that leapt to her mind.

  ‘Pardon, Miss, really?’

  ‘Yes, why not?’ Alex chuckled and lifted her fingertips to her lips and kissed them before flinging her hand towards the crates. ‘We’re sending them all of our love, aren’t we?’

  Nel laughed with delight and followed suit, encouraging the others to do the same.

  As she slipped out of her spotless apron, she was still burning with internal guilt at the note. She would tell no one about this . . . not even Matthew, although she was sure he’d applaud such wantonness.

  Maybe a winter wedding, if she couldn’t convince her mother to let her remain engaged for a full year. It would create predictable despair, but what if Matthew were conscripted? At worst, if it had to be this year, then a winter wedding would bring joy to the interminable months of freeze ahead and enliven a Christmas and New Year that was shaping up to be a maudlin, colourless affair. Nevertheless, a war wedding meant Minerva couldn’t go over the top with her wedding breakfast because it was not appropriate. A small country wedding at the local church, if the Minster was not available, and a quiet wedding breakfast at Tilsden Hall. Perfect. It suddenly sounded right. Now, to convince Matthew, as to be fair to Minerva, it seemed that he was the one in a rush to call themselves husband and wife.

  7

  NEUVE CHAPELLE, ARTOIS, FRANCE – 18 NOVEMBER 1915

  Sergeant Tom Fletcher looked up from where he leaned and fancied the sky to be the grey silk of an enormous parachute billowing above him. He’d seen one of those new safety devices for pilots being tested, although he couldn’t imagine ever trusting one to save his life. Even so, in that heartbeat of whimsy he felt a moment of weightlessness, as though life was suspended and mankind hadn’t been consumed by the madness of war.

  Tom and his men were members of the West Yorkshire Regiment, and proud to call themselves soldiers of the 2nd Battalion Prince of Wales’s Own. Today, as afternoon gave way to evening, Tom and his companions were in the Aubers Ridge trench on Mine Avenue, as it was known on the maps, near the Western Convent Wall. The frontline and wide sprawl of German trenches over this low sloping ground that was, to Tom’s gaze, near enough flat, were mere yards away. His battalion had relieved the Scottish Rifles three days previously for those boys to fall back to the reserve line. For Tom and his men a relatively quiet forty-eight hours by their standards had followed and they’d given them up mainly to repairing the flooring of this section of the trench.

  Being part of one of the forward posts meant that nothing about their accommodation was especially trustworthy. Neither floors nor walls of their trench were stable; they were hastily dug and hastily prepared so the sappers could get access to the frontline. Looking down, he realised the muddy waters were now just sloshing at his knees. Who needs bullets, he thought, for this grey stream they lived in was sucking the energy out of them as effectively as any mortal wound.

  Tom blinked at the sound of Don Turpin’s phlegm-riddled throat being noisily cleared with a spit, accepting in that second, surrounded by the sounds of men – their coughs, sneezes, groans, snoring and, often, their cries – that his whole world had become various hues of impolite grey, just like this sky over northern France. From the near-charcoal of the endless earth they tunnelled through and lived in to the pallor of his fellow soldiers’ complexions, grey was the overarching colour, he decided. Plumes of smoke, gun barrels, the dirty colour of hessian sandbags, his cap, even the bandages they wore and the sheet rain they endured and Don Turpin’s spittle; grey ultimately dominated.

  Tom’s days were squandered by inactivity in the daylight hours where these weeks nothing moved . . . perhaps only Satan’s gaze that watched for the telltale glimpse of a head. That was the nickname they’d given the German sniper in the trench opposite. War had become a bitterly frozen stalemate in Fromelles, where boredom itself was one of the greatest threats.

  ‘I’m hoping for a gallantry medal, Sarge, when I clip that sod with one of my bullets,’ a fellow drawled from the trench parapet and stamped his boot at an inquisitive rat emboldened by the silence.

  They gathered they were up against the 16 Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, or so Tom gathered from the exchange of information across trenches. It was revolting to share a broken English discussion with men you needed to kill. Tom refused to enter these conversations out of self-protection; he never wanted to lose sight that this was the enemy and it wanted to destroy him and his men. He had to keep a measure of hate keen in his mind.

  Tom hated the rats even more than the Germans. The Germans at least could sing. The rats �
�� grey, of course – got busy in the dark, scurrying in numbers to chew on the dead, hunt out whatever crumbs of food had been haplessly spilled, to nibble on exposed flesh . . . chilblains, gangrenous limbs . . . anything vaguely meaty.

  The only way to escape was into memory, and he let those memories crowd as a painful itch snagged in his feet and he recognised that it was likely frostbite. Tomorrow he would check for the telltale discolouration of the skin on his toes, not that there was much he could do about it except resign himself to the numbness. Maybe that was a good thing, he thought, wishing in that moment that he could catch frostbite of the mind and not have to think.

  Memory, as comforting as it could be, was dangerous nonetheless; he silently berated himself that he should simply aim to survive minute to minute and if enough minutes were lived, he might one day get back to York and see its beauty again in full colour. He might get to hug his mother, Rose, who now only had him to worry about. Her recent letter had again been dulled by her dip into memories at losing his brother Robert at Ladysmith during the Boer War. He had stopped trying to soften her loss by saying Robert had helped to win that battle in February 1900 because it was obvious his mother didn’t want heroes or medals. She wanted her sons.

  Inwardly he smiled now to recall his small mother, with wavy hair that reminded him of burnished walnut and her favourite charcoal-coloured hat, grabbing him by his sleeve and dragging him back down the street on the day he’d sneaked out to follow his brother into the army.

  He’d earned his education but by 1904 he’d followed through on his early determination to chase adventures and see the world. He joined the army. The world was a quieter place by then and his mother hadn’t seemed so frightened by his decision and had been impressed by his rise over the next decade to the rank of sergeant and by his portion of wages, dutifully sent to her each month, most recently from Malta.