by Anna King
The noise and the smells, together with the curious glances that Doris was attracting from two women gossiping on their doorsteps, propelled her into making a move. Pulling at a piece of string, she drew the key through the letterbox and inserted it in the lock. Then her face changed to one of puzzlement. The door seemed to be stuck. Pushing again, she realised that something was wedged behind the door. For an awful moment she thought that Emily had barricaded her out.
Aware that she was now a focus of attention, Doris redoubled her efforts – then gasped as she realised that it was Emily’s body that was barring her way.
Using all her strength, she lent the whole weight of her body against the door, until there was enough space for her to squeeze through the narrow opening and into the house.
‘Em… Em, are yer all right?’ Gawd! There she went again, asking those stupid bloody questions. Dropping to her knees, she attempted to roll the prone figure onto her back. With much huffing and puffing the feat was achieved. ‘Oh, Gawd, Em, yer look bloody awful. Hang on, mate, I’ll go an’ get some help.’ She used the floor as leverage to stand up, only to be pulled down again by Emily’s frantic hands.
‘Don’t… don’t leave me, Doris. I’m scared, don’t leave me, pl… Ooooh, Doris, help…’
Thoroughly frightened by now, Doris squeezed Emily’s hand and rocked back on her heels. What was she going to do? She couldn’t leave Emily in this state, but it looked very much as though her baby was coming – and coming fast.
‘Hold on, Em, I’m just gonna get some towels… No, it’s all right, I ain’t leaving yer,’ she gabbled as Emily’s hands tightened around her wrist. ‘I’ve got ter get some things from upstairs. Towels an’ blankets an’ stuff… an’… and I’ll get the kettle boiling.’
‘Wha… what for?’ Emily’s voice was barely audible.
‘What fer? Well, ter… ter… Oh, Gawd, Em, I don’t know. I ain’t never seen a baby being born before, but I’ve heard women talking about it, and they always boil a kettle. Look… look, let me go an’ get some help… Okay, okay, I’ll stay with yer. But at least let me go an’ get something to lay under yer, otherwise the poor little bugger’ll bash its bonce on the way out.’
Casting a hurried glance at the heaving body, Doris quickly climbed the stairs, and was back within a minute holding a pile of towels, which she unceremoniously thrust between Emily’s legs.
A sudden loud scream made the hairs on the back of Doris’s neck stand on end. She watched helplessly as Emily drew her knees up to her chin. Her face was bathed in perspiration as the pain racked her swollen body.
The cotton nightdress was drenched in sweat, and as Doris attempted to pull it up round Emily’s chest, she gave an unexpected chuckle.
‘Bleeding ’ell, Em. No wonder yer having trouble. Yer’ve still got yer drawers on, yer silly cow.’
Through a haze of pain Emily tried to smile, and with the aid of Doris she removed her undergarments. Then she was bearing down, harder and harder.
‘Ooooh, Doris, it’s coming. The baby’s coming…’
Her nails were digging into Doris’s hand, but Doris hardly felt the pain. Her eyes widened in fascinated awe as the baby’s bloody head began to emerge, then a moment of panic set in. Oooh, shit! What was she supposed to do now? Biting down on her lower lip, she gingerly caught hold of the tiny, slippery shoulders, terrified that she might do the child some damage. She was sweating as much as Emily now, as they both endeavoured to bring the new life into the world. Doris’s hands slid, causing her to take a firmer grip, spreading her fingers to catch hold of the baby under its arms. And, with a feeling of wonderment, she eased the wriggling form onto the towels, where it proceeded to kick and flail the air in angry protest at being removed from its warm haven.
Laughing and crying, the two women looked at each other, all past differences wiped out and forgotten in this moment of highly charged emotion. And then Doris carefully wrapped the child in a soft blanket and laid it almost reverently in Emily’s arms, saying shakily, ‘It’s a boy, Em, a lovely little boy. And… and he looks just like his dad, poor sod.’
All Emily could say was, ‘Oh, Doris, my dear, dear Doris. I’ve missed you so much.’
Doris gave a lop-sided grin, then slumped back onto her heels, her body spent.
Emily too was exhausted. She had never felt so tired in her entire life; nor so happy. Her cheeks damp with tears and sweat, she moved the blanket to one side and gazed down into the pair of deep blue, puzzled eyes that were surveying her warily.
An overwhelming feeling of love, so strong it could almost be termed violent, swept through Emily’s battered, bruised body. Doris was right. There was no denying who the father was, for Tommy Carter’s eyes were looking up at her and, in that moment of awe, Emily silently wondered where her baby’s father was at this minute – and even whether he was still alive.
But instead of seeing Tommy’s face, she pictured Matthew’s and was filled with confusion. And when Doris asked hopefully, ‘Can I have a cuddle?’ Emily reluctantly relinquished the soft burden.
The moment the child left her arms, Emily’s eyes began to droop and, try as she might, she couldn’t keep them open. Telling herself that she would just rest her eyes for five minutes, she drifted off into a light sleep.
And there was Tommy, smiling at her, holding out his arms – then the image changed, and it was Matthew who was smiling, his arms thrown wide, waiting for her.
Tommy and Matthew – Matthew and Tommy. Their faces were so clear in her mind, then they mingled until only Matthew’s remained, and it was his face she took with her into a contented slumber.
Doris gazed at Emily’s peaceful countenance, and with a muffled cry she brought her face down to the child she was holding and whispered, ‘You’ve got a son, Tommy, an’… and he’s beautiful. I’ll write an’ let yer know as soon as I can. Mind yer, I’ll probably get it in the neck from Em fer telling yer, but yer know me, I never could mind me own business. Oh, Tommy, yer’ll never look at me now, will yer? But it doesn’t matter, honest. Just so long as yer come back home safely. I’ll help Em look after him, I promise, ’cos… ’cos I love his mum and dad more than anyone else in the world.’ Raising her eyes in anguish, she sobbed quietly, ‘Where are yer, Tommy? Where are yer? Oh, Tommy, please don’t be dead. I can bear anything, as long as yer not dead.’
Chapter Nineteen
It looked like the end of the world. As far as the eye could see, bodies lay strewn over the battlefield like so many discarded dolls, their heads lolling to one side, their limbs, if still attached, flung out haphazardly, seemingly at variance with the shattered, mangled torsos. Here and there, as Very lights exploded against the dark sky, other shapes, large and round, could be seen – the dead horses, brave creatures that had galloped into the hail of bullets and shells, trusting their masters to bring them back unharmed. As Tommy Carter stared out over the bleak, corpse-laden landscape he was reminded of a picture he had once seen at Sunday school: ‘Armageddon’, the end of the world.
And he had helped bring another life into it.
The letter from Doris was inside his breast-pocket, resting against his heart, a heart that had almost become dehumanised by the atrocities and senselessness of war. Almost, but not quite, for Tommy Carter was an optimist, who always managed to see the good side of people, the funny side of life.
But once over the top of the trenches, he, like thousands of others, had to clamp down on human emotion, shut his mind to reasonable thought, for how else could he stick and twist his bayonet into another bloke’s belly, then pull it out and carry on until the next German barred his path? Out there in No-Man’s-Land, you had to stop yourself thinking the Huns were just ordinary blokes like yourself, with mothers, wives, sisters and girlfriends, all sitting at home and praying for their safe return. Blokes who, like yourself, enjoyed a pint, a laugh and a game of football, and had an eye for a pretty girl when out with their mates, while deep down inside they nurture
d dreams and hopes for the future. They were all there, just one and a half miles away – the Hun, the Bosch; the enemy.
Squatting in mud-filled trenches, the young men and old, clutching their rifles, their hearts filled with apprehension and fear, wondered if the new dawn would be the last they would see. They would be experiencing all the emotions Tommy was feeling, which all the platoons, battalions and divisions camped here on the Ypres Salient were feeling. But you couldn’t let yourself think like that, couldn’t liken the enemy to yourself, daren’t look them in the face as you plunged the cold steel into their bellies. For then you would see a human face, a real human being, and you wouldn’t be able to do your job. Your job! Legalised murder, that’s what it boiled down to, legalised murder – on both sides of the trenches.
And here, at Passchendaele, they didn’t even have proper trenches. Just a load of shell-holes, lengthened and widened, and reinforced with sandbags to hide behind. When leaving your particular trench on night attacks, you had to ask which way to go, because often you didn’t know where the next trench was. Then there was the diarrhoea brought on by drinking tea out of discarded petrol tins, and the agony of standing waist-deep in mud, while trying to empty water out of your trench with the aid of only a couple of bully-beef tins. Many of the men got trench-fever and trench-feet. The former left a man weak and listless, the latter nearly rotted his toes off.
The conditions were sometimes too terrible to describe, yet in spite of all the privations, the fighting went on. New arrivals were drafted into regiments that had sustained huge losses, swelling the ranks once more until the next battle.
The men in the front line were on duty for three to five days at a time. Then they would move back half a mile in support, and then further back, four or five miles away to billets, until it was their turn to return to the front line once more.
But there was laughter too, not least from the East End regiments, who kept their companions cheerful with their robust cockney humour. And the camaraderie was wonderful. Men he had never met before would share cigarettes, chocolate and food parcels from home with him. If one man was lacking in something, another would provide it with a grin, shrugging off murmurs of thanks, some replying that they were all in this together and that it would be a pretty poor show if they didn’t look out for one another. Oh, yes, there was a good side, and thank God for it, because without it, many of the men would have given up by now.
They had been here since 31st July. It was now 26th October, and rumour had it that this would be the third, final push, marking the high tide of the British advance towards Passchendaele – a place he had never heard of a year ago, and which might now be his final resting place.
Oh, give over, man, he rebuked himself silently. You’ve been thinking that ever since the fighting started, and you’re still here, aren’t you!
Setting his back more firmly against the mud wall, Tommy looked down the long dug-out, where shadowy figures lay crouched or hunched up as he was, too wound-up to sleep, sunk in their own private thoughts as they waited for the dawn to break. And when it did, they would go over the top again, their combat boots trying not to get bogged down in the mud, but, worst of all, trampling over the bodies of their own men who lay out there, trapped in a battlefield where no stretcher-bearers could venture to bring them back for a decent burial. Weeks of attacks and counter-attacks, plus a seemingly non-stop deluge of heavy rain, had turned the battleground into a morass, and wounded men had been left to die in the stinking slime, their voices filled with despair as they realised the impossibility of being rescued.
Men like Alfie Ford. No! Not like Alfie Ford, because he had been a real bastard, and a coward. What little courage the man had possessed had soon disappeared, and two weeks ago, so the story went, one of Alfie’s lieutenants had had practically to force the cowering soldier over the top at gun-point. Once out in the open, Alfie Ford had dropped to his knees in a vain attempt to avoid the bullets. Crawling on all fours, he had scrabbled along the muddy ground, his face alive with terror, then a shell had exploded a few feet away and he hadn’t made it back – nor had the lieutenant.
This war wasn’t only a living nightmare, it was, at times, a bloody shambles. The chances that four men, joining up at different times but known to each other, should meet up in the same stretch of France weren’t as improbable as one might imagine. After all, the battle plans were mapped out by generals sitting comfortably ten miles behind the lines, holed up in some French château, playing out the war on a game-board. Moving soldiers and artillery over the board was like a giant game of draughts. It was no wonder then that platoons, brigades and battalions not only crossed paths, but intermingled. And in the confusion men stumbled along blindly, uncertain of their orders and where they should be, and ultimately men died needlessly, while the powers that be played on.
Yet it had been pure coincidence that the Carter twins had crossed paths with Lenny and Alfie Ford, for their battalions were separated by two miles of dug-outs spread out across the barren countryside of Ypres. Tommy and Andy, on their way for a few days’ leave in the billets, had come across Lenny in the camp kitchen. The two men had joined a long queue for their first hot meal in days, when Lenny, his blunt features spreading into a wide grin of disbelief, had rushed up to them, grabbing their hands in delighted recognition. The three men had eaten their ration of watery stew, served up in tin cans, out in the open, using boulders as chairs. Tommy and Andy had remained solemnly silent as Lenny related his tale of having fooled the authorities into letting him join up. But his animation slowly faltered as, shame-facedly, he admitted that he hadn’t been allowed to bear arms, but instead had been allocated to latrine duties. The sergeant in Lenny’s battalion had spotted the young man’s intellectual disorder and, out of compassion, had ensured that the fresh-faced soldier was kept well out of the line of fire.
The three men had parted soon after their shared meal, shaking hands and wishing each other well, and the Carter twins had watched Lenny walk away, subdued now, his shoulders slumped as he returned to his obnoxious duty.
Thinking of Lenny brought forth, as always, an upsurge of pity. Poor Lenny! It was bad enough that his father’s last cowardly moments had been witnessed, and were now talked about with contempt among his battalion, without having the further humiliation of being detailed to latrine duties, a job usually allocated to elderly, dependable men, who were excused most camp parades and left to get on with their work without supervision. It was essential work, yet it was doubtful that Lenny Ford saw it that way.
Tommy and Andy had met up with Alfie Ford only once, when the burly man, blustering and disavowing himself from any part in his son’s enlistment, had sought out the twins, desperate to try to stop the story from spreading. He wasn’t liked much as it was, but if the men in his battalion found out just how low he had sunk in order to get back at his wife, his life would have been made hell. But neither Andy nor Tommy had felt any sympathy for the man. It had been Andy, his eyes cold and accusing, who had cut Alfie off in mid-sentence, saying curtly, ‘Piss off, Alfie. Go an’ find another hole ter crawl into. You ain’t welcome here.’
And Alfie had pissed off and crawled into another hole, only to be dragged out of it and ordered over the top. Now he lay out there somewhere, rotting along with hundreds of others. Tommy shook his head slowly, his steel helmet glinting dully in the dark, early morning. No! Even such a man as Alfie Ford didn’t deserve a death like that. No man did.
The slight movement of his head set off a crinkling sound that Tommy felt rather than heard. Flicking open the button on his breast-pocket, he extracted the letter from Doris and stared down at it. He couldn’t see the words, but he didn’t need to. They were imprinted on his brain.
He had a child, a son, and he didn’t know what to make of it. He had received the letter almost six weeks ago, and as yet he hadn’t replied. He had tried to write back, but each time his pen faltered, not knowing what to write, or who to write to. Should h
e reply to Doris, or to Emily? It was Emily who had borne his child, but she had kept quiet about it. She’d had nine months – no, make that seven months, he countered, because she wouldn’t have known at first. But she’d had plenty of time since, and she hadn’t written a word about it.
Oh, she had written to him, or rather to them both, her letters short and cheery, with not even a hint that she was pregnant. He had thought something was wrong when Doris stopped writing. Her first two letters had been much the same as Emily’s, but her third had been more personal – nothing too flowery, for Doris wasn’t the type for writing soppy love-letters, yet an element of intimacy had begun to creep into her writing. Tommy had replied quickly, surprised to find just how much he was looking forward to her next letter. But it had never arrived. Emily had continued writing to them both, and it was through her that they had learned of Doris’s accident. Both men had immediately written to their old friend and received a short letter back from Doris, stating that she was perfectly all right and not to worry about her. But still there had been no mention of the baby; until now.
Tommy shook his head in bewilderment. He couldn’t make it out. Couldn’t understand why Emily had kept her condition such a closely guarded secret. He had told her he would stand by her, if there were any consequences of their brief night together. Had she been afraid that hearing the news would make him act rashly, or cloud his judgment and so put his life at risk? Or was it simply that she didn’t want his support and his help, in any shape or form? His chin sunk lower until it was nearly touching his chest. He was surprised that his mother hadn’t imparted the news. One of her main pleasures in life was seeing others in trouble, and the sight of Emily’s swollen belly would normally have had her falling over herself to pass the news on. He gave vent to a long, silent sigh. Perhaps his mother had become more charitable in his absence, though it was more likely that she was too wrapped up in her worry for Andy to bother with anyone else.
