Grace Hardie

by Anne Melville

  There was no grass within sight on the night of 23 October. As darkness fell, he was sitting halfway up a hill in a pillbox captured from the enemy. Its concrete walls were more than three feet thick, so that its present occupants could listen with less anxiety than usual to the artillery bombardment which seemed set to continue throughout the night. But almost certainly the shelling meant that the Germans were planning a counter-attack at dawn. On their way to the British line they would have to pass the pillbox and, because they had built it themselves, there was no protection facing the direction from which they would come; only an open entrance. The men who were stretched on the floor, taking it in turns to attempt sleep, knew that dawn would spell danger.

  So loud and so continuous was the bombardment that it might have seemed impossible to catch the sound of any new element in the pattern of shrieking flight and explosive blast. But Philip was not the only one who suddenly raised his head to listen more intently, holding his breath as though amidst the thunder of the guns a faint inhalation would prove a barrier to hearing. Yes, there it was again; a thinner scream in flight, a duller thud on landing. A newcomer might have interpreted the sound as that of a mercifully unexploded shell, but an old hand knew better.

  ‘Gas!’ he said quietly. There was a scuffling as his companions, like himself, made sure that their respirators were at hand. They would wait until the last moment before putting them on.

  Without distracting the sentries who were watching for any movement of an approaching army, Philip went outside and, flattening himself against the wall of the pillbox, moved quietly round until he was looking down on his own lines. He lifted his head, feeling for the wind, and found that it was almost still. If the gas shells had burst behind the trenches, the heavy poison might linger in the dip instead of climbing the side of the hill towards them. But even as he prepared to report this conclusion, a new salvo of heavy artillery shells exploded below, their blast pushing the cloud of gas towards the pillbox.

  For a second or two he waited and watched as new explosions revealed the tendrils of mist, unnaturally tinted to the colour of a Clouded Yellow butterfly, creeping up the hill. By the time he made his way back into cover a look-out in the trench below was beating an urgent warning on the empty shell case which served as an alarm gong. Already the air was tainted with a smell stronger than that of the corpses putrefying in the mud.

  Time had taught Philip to control his fear of bullets and shell splinters, but imprisonment in a gas mask always brought him near to panic. The men who were his friends, the men who trusted him and on whom he in turn must rely, were transformed within seconds into unrecognizable, identical, goggle-eyed toads. The nose clip which forced him to breathe through his mouth made him feel as though he could not breathe at all, and the air so painfully pulled through the filter was not like real air. It brought no strength, and every breath felt as though it might be the last, so great was the effort needed to fill his lungs. Still, there was no other protection on offer, and wearing the respirator would make the difference between life and death. He was as quick as the others to pull it on.

  The use of gas confirmed what the bombardment had already suggested: that a counter-attack was imminent. The enemy was expected to sweep down the hill to the southern end of the newly-established British line in an attempt to re-occupy the hundred yards of land which they had lost a few days earlier. The occupants of the pillbox, reinforced by a detachment from the trenches further north, would emerge from behind the Germans and chase them until they were forced to turn and fight on two sides. It was not a plan in which Philip placed much faith; nor did he see any great benefit to be gained even from success. But the whole strategy of the war was incomprehensible to someone who was a mere cog in the fighting machine.

  That was partly his own fault. As an educated man, a graduate, he had twice been offered and on a third occasion had been pressed hard to take the training which would earn him a commission. But unlike Frank, who was recognized as officer material on the day he volunteered, Philip had no wish to give the orders which would send men to their deaths. An unendurable life could best be endured in the ranks. He had refused all promotion.

  The sound of the German artillery underwent a subtle change. Although still as fierce as ever, the range had altered. Every man in the pillbox was an expert on trajectories and blasts and could interpret the slightest grace-note in an orchestral score which was played fortissimo throughout. The attack had begun. They waited in the darkness while lines of low-stooping Germans, as though operating to the British plan, ran past them down the hill. What could the occupants of a few pillboxes hope to achieve by attacking from the rear? Nevertheless, the men obeyed instructions, grouping themselves ready for the downhill dash as they watched for the Very light which would signal them to move.

  The Germans were expecting them. The bullet which had Philip’s name on it hit him in the throat while he was zig-zagging between huge mud-filled craters. Its force spun him round before he fell dizzily forward on to his hands and knees. He could no longer breathe through his mouth, as the respirator forced him to do, and he tore the mask off to free his nose, not caring that the muddy ground was carpeted by the heavy gas. His lungs were bursting; he must breathe something, anything.

  There was a moment in which he was aware of every separate part of his body as though it belonged to someone else: his head, thick with pain and incomprehension; his throat, bubbling as it spewed out blood; his lungs, on fire; his legs, inexplicably devoid of strength, as if they were made of melted wax. With a single deep sigh he brought all these pains together and abandoned himself to them. There was just time for him to realize with relief that he was escaping from hell at last.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Christmas was approaching before Grace and her mother, after weeks of anxiety, were able to visit Philip in a Berkshire hospital; for so great were his injuries that he had not for many weeks been judged fit to endure the cross-Channel journey. Their first glimpse did little to reassure them. He was alive, certainly, but that was all that could be said. Propped by pillows into a sitting position, he remained motionless, his eyes closed and his face pale and strained. To breathe was painful and not to breathe was death. Grace recognized the signs of mental strain as well as physical suffering.

  But what caused her to gasp with horror was the tube protruding from his throat. At the sound he opened his eyes. Unable to speak or even to smile, he did at least manage to move a hand so that his mother could take it. The two visitors sat down at the side of his bed and talked of their happiness at seeing him alive and their love and hopes for him – dividing the conversation between themselves since it was clear that Philip could not contribute to it. They told him all the family news of the past few weeks before the nurse appeared again to clear the tube and tell them that the patient must not be tired by too long a visit.

  Outside the ward, the two women clung to each other in a dismay that they had done their best to conceal in front of Philip. Then Grace sat down to wait while Mrs Hardie went to speak to the doctor in charge.

  The hospital was a converted country house, and on this raw December day those patients who were convalescent were taking exercise by walking round and round the great hall or up and down the double staircase. Some, their empty trouser legs pinned up, needed the support of crutches, whilst others, to judge by their ungainly movements, were attempting to come to terms with newly-fitted artificial limbs. One-armed men led blind men up and down; men with bandaged heads pushed other men in wheelchairs. A few, wearing hospital blue like the rest, but revealing no visible wounds, were talking to each other with a curious whistling sound. Grace followed these with her eyes, wondering whether this would be Philip’s fate for the rest of his life.

  Her mother, pale-faced, came to sit beside her.

  ‘What did the doctor say?’ Grace asked.

  ‘The throat wound may heal. He won’t die of it, in any case, after surviving as long as this. But –’ her v
oice broke and she looked down at her lap, crumpling her gloves between her fingers.

  ‘But?’

  Mrs Hardie sighed before speaking with a briskness perhaps copied from the doctor.

  ‘His lungs have been almost destroyed by gas. Burnt in some way. There’s nothing that can be done about that. For the rest of his life he must be careful never to move too fast or work too hard or become too anxious. Just force himself to go on taking regular shallow breaths. Think of it, Grace! He’s twenty-five, only twenty-five. He’s lost three years of his youth already, and now he’s never going to be able to live as a young man again. Never run or play games or – oh!’ She was forced to pause, gripping Grace’s hand to restore her courage.

  ‘And there’s another thing,’ she continued, almost in a whisper. ‘A kind of mental collapse. No one understands it or knows what to do about it, the doctor said, but it affects men who’ve been under shellfire for a long time. A kind of withdrawal from life. Sometimes they’re frightened of any sudden noise; sometimes they don’t appear to hear it at all because they cut themselves off from whatever’s happening all round them. No one will be able to tell whether Philip is suffering in this way until he can talk again, if he wants to. But they seem to be afraid –’

  ‘That won’t last, surely,’ said Grace. ‘When he’s home again at Greystones, safe, with nothing to be frightened of, whatever it is will cure itself.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’ Mrs Hardie stood up and did her best to smile. ‘Yes, we must hope so. We must talk to him about home. Remind him of all the things he loves. Grace, when we were in there with him, why didn’t you tell him about Christopher?’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell.’ But Grace’s pale face flushed, for she knew this was not true. As they were driven in a cab from the hospital to the railway station, she used thoughts of Christopher to banish from her mind the tragedy of Philip’s wounds.

  In the three years since her first meeting with Christopher Bailey their friendship had developed by correspondence. At first he had written about the war, describing his life in the trenches or in rest billets behind the lines. The battle of the Somme altered all that. Perhaps it was one of Grace’s own letters which forced a change of subject, for her description of Frank’s death and its aftermath could have left him in no doubt how deeply she was upset. More probably, though, he was silenced by the terrible nature of his own experiences.

  So he began to write instead about England; describing his childhood, his home, his family, until Grace felt as though she knew them well. In return, he asked her to describe the minutiae of her own life. Her duties and customers in The House of Hardie were one source of material for her letters, but mostly she liked to describe the changing face of the woods and meadows and gardens as the seasons passed. The need to paint an accurate picture in words sharpened her observation. She carried a small note pad on her walks and the care with which she noted every detail for her next letter intensified the possessive love she felt for her family home.

  The pleasure she took in putting most of her experiences into words made it all the more strange that she should never have mentioned to Christopher the memorial she had made to Frank, nor any of the carving or clay modelling with which she now filled her free time. Was it because she expected him to disapprove? Certainly this was not one of the accepted occupations for a young lady. Water colouring and embroidery and playing the piano were all approved pastimes, but it was a different matter to embark on an undertaking which dirtied clothes and roughened hands.

  From time to time, indeed, when she first began to carve, Grace had cut herself with some tool which slipped out of control. Her fingers were no longer those of a gentlewoman, soft and smooth, for no amount of soaking in lemon juice and glycerine could soothe away all the blisters and splinters and scars.

  Well, it was wartime, when many unusual activities could be excused. Only a few years earlier it would have been unthinkable for someone like Grace to work in a shop, even if it did belong to her own family. It was not shame which led her to conceal her new hobby, but a fierce determination to preserve it as something private to herself. In a household such as Greystones, of course, it was impossible to conceal what she was doing, and she made no attempt to do so. Whether she worked at one end of her mother’s studio or out in the open, it could be no secret from the servants and family. What they did not know was the depth of feeling which she brought to the task. That was too private to share even with Christopher.

  So Grace kept the greatest pleasure of her life to herself with as much care as Christopher censored all the details of war. The word pictures which she sent him instead had a curious effect – for Christopher began to write poems. Even someone who had acquired little literary taste during her years in the schoolroom recognized that the verses were not great poetry, but she was flattered to find herself always the central character.

  At first he wrote of her as he remembered her, and as he pictured her daily life. Later he tried to imagine her childhood. By the end of the year his viewpoint had changed again. No longer did he picture her wandering through the grounds of Greystones on her own; he provided her with a companion and a new home. The change of style was so gradual that it was some time before Grace realized that his poems were love letters.

  The discovery should have made her proud and happy, but instead it disturbed her. Did he love her as she really was, or had he created a different girl in his imagination and fallen in love with her? He wrote of her as beautiful, but Grace knew that she was nothing of the sort. It was not that she was ugly: but a portrait of her own mother as a young woman had convinced her that beauty was to be found in softly-waving corn-coloured hair, a rosebud complexion and a slender, graceful body. Grace had inherited none of these.

  It was for this reason that she brushed aside every attempt on her mother’s part to suggest that Christopher saw her as a future wife. She was not prepared to discuss the subject now. In any case, she was too deeply affected by the sight of her brother to tear her thoughts away from him for long. As the train rattled towards Oxford, her heart swelled with the desire to express Philip’s fate in some visible form. She could create something like the memorial to Frank – although in this case, thank goodness, the subject would still be alive.

  How should it look? She felt herself withdrawing from all awareness of her surroundings, grateful that her mother was in no mood to talk. There was in her mind a sense of swirling which must be allowed to move until it settled its own form. Perhaps it was the swirling of the gas which had so nearly killed her brother; or perhaps it represented the invisible barrier which he had created to cut himself off from the world.

  Could such a feeling be expressed in a hard material? She envisaged a central figure which would stand for Philip’s endurance, surrounded by circles or spirals. But the technical difficulties would be very great. She had not yet thought how they might be solved when they arrived at Greystones.

  Letters which had arrived in the course of the day were laid out in the hall. There was one from Christopher. Grace smiled as she opened it, putting Philip for a moment out of her mind. Then her smile faded as she read its contents.

  Part Six

  Christopher 1917–1919

  Chapter One

  Christopher’s letter began by acknowledging the receipt of two parcels. He thanked Grace for the contents of one of them and promised that the other would, as she had commanded, be kept for opening on Christmas Day.

  Suddenly, in the middle of a page, his tone – and even his handwriting – changed. Words sprawled over the paper to express a frenzy of emotion.

  ‘But shall I still be alive on Christmas Day to receive your gifts?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘I have to answer that yes, of course I shall, because often and often I’ve noticed in recent months that death comes to those who half expect it, that it’s the fierceness of a man’s determination to survive which ensures survival. Yet how is it possible to maintain such determination when one is pe
rmanently tired and tense, battered by noise and rain and constantly under fire?

  ‘There’s only one answer, dearest Grace – at least, only one as far as I’m concerned. I must have something – a way of life, a special person – on whom I can centre my hopes and dreams of the future. I need to know that there’s someone who is praying for me and whose happiness is bound up in thoughts of my return one day, just as my own hopes of happiness rest on a life shared with her.

  ‘Dearest girl, tell me that you’ll marry me. On my next leave or after the war is over – I don’t mind which as long as you promise me that the time will come, certain sure, when you’ll be mine for ever. Write to me now, my darling. Tell me what I want to hear. Nothing in the parcel you’ve sent me can give me half as much Christmas joy as a letter from you to say that you’ll be my wife.’

  Grace read the letter three times: first of all standing in the hall; then walking round the house; and at last in her bedroom. Not until later that evening, as she sat at dinner, did she reveal its contents to her mother.

  ‘Darling!’ Some of the distress which had aged Lucy Hardie’s face during the hospital visit was smoothed away by her smile. ‘I’m so happy for you! Dear Christopher! I was beginning to think that nothing good was ever going to happen again, but at last …’

  ‘You think I should accept his proposal then?’

  ‘Surely that’s what you want to do? He’s made it clear enough how much he loves you, and you love him too, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Grace honestly. ‘I hadn’t thought that way. I feel – I hardly know him.’