‘So this is it,’ said Rose.
‘Yes, I reckon this is where we’re going to make the breakthrough, in the valley of the Somme. Rose, you look quite well today. You actually have some colour in your cheeks. How do you feel?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re not exactly fine. You still cry at night, and some mornings you look terrible. But today, you seem much better, so you’re coping, getting stronger.’
Rose supposed Maria must be right. Sitting here in the warm sunshine, she was not in pain. The awful, sickening, churning misery, the debilitating grief that threatened to destroy her sanity, overwhelmed her only now and then.
On a day like this, she could be philosophical. She could think about him without crying. Even God could not change history, and she blessed the day they’d met in Rouen, when he’d told her what she’d known since that appalling party.
They’d wasted so much time. But the months they’d had together had been worth a lifetime of regret.
‘Letters, Sisters!’ An orderly came striding down the track, carrying the canvas bag he’d taken off the lorry that had just pulled up beside the line. ‘Here you are, Miss Courtenay, three for you.’
Rose glanced through them. One from Celia Easton, one from Elsie, one from – no, it couldn’t be, after what had happened. But all the same, he’d written.
So perhaps he’d changed his mind?
Chapter Fourteen
Then she realised he must be dead, that this was something found among his things, to be sent to the daughter he’d disowned. It would a legacy of blame, saying she was responsible for Lady Courtenay’s death, and she’d also driven her father to an early grave.
She wondered who would inherit Charton Minster, but couldn’t summon up the strength to care. Opening the letter, she saw there were several pages, covered with Sir Gerard Courtenay’s bold, Victorian script.
‘My dear Rose,’ he’d written, which was the first surprise. ‘I hope you are in good health, and doing well in France.
‘When you were last in Dorset, we parted on bad terms. You may have regretted certain hasty things you said to me. You have always been inclined to speak first and think later. We are father and daughter still, however, and although a less forgiving parent might have been more harsh with you, I am prepared to overlook your faults and lay no blame.
‘Michael Easton had some leave a couple of weeks ago, and came to see me. Michael is an excellent young man, who is bravely doing his duty to his king and country. In spite of all the hardships that our gallant officers are suffering in this present crisis, he was bearing up remarkably.
‘He still respects and honours you. Last autumn, he could have withdrawn his offer of marriage, and I would not have blamed him. But it seems this fine young man is still in love with you, and still wishes you to be his wife.
‘I urge you to think about this very seriously. It is what your mother would have wanted and would give me tremendous pleasure, too. Michael knows you are my heir, but he has expectations of his own, and I feel he is a generous man who would love a beggar maid if her mind and character were pure.
‘I should be so pleased to see you settled with a husband who could guide you and protect you, and form your opinions, for the rest of what I hope will be a useful life.’
‘It’s good news, I hope?’ enquired Maria.
‘Well, it isn’t bad.’ Rose put the letter in her apron pocket, and looked at Maria thoughtfully. ‘I didn’t know my father was a such a gullible old man.’
She stood up and stretched. ‘Come on, let’s help the men with those supplies.’
As Rose laid out dressings on the trays and made up quarts of sterilising fluid, she thought of Michael Easton, the fine young man who fathered children then abandoned them, and who was interested in Rose because one day she’d have some money.
Then Michael wrote himself, to say he still had one day’s leave, and he’d like to meet her for a chat. Maybe he could take her out to tea, the next time she was due in Rouen?
She thought perhaps she ought to go and meet him. If she didn’t, Michael would probably tell her father she was being difficult. Sir Gerard would write again, and so it would go on.
She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t allowed to see him by herself. These days, all the rules and regulations that had governed nurses’ conduct since the beginning of the war were very much relaxed. In the early summer of 1916, it was common to see sisters arm in arm with officers, sitting in cafés with their beaux and flirting decorously.
Three weeks later, Michael was waiting on the station platform as the train pulled in. She saw him from the window, and realised she’d forgotten he was so handsome, so broad-shouldered and so tall. In his smart, clean uniform and highly-polished boots, he looked every inch the gallant British officer and perfect gentleman.
‘Hello, Rose,’ he said. He turned to the lieutenant at his side. ‘This is Freddie Lomax, he’s in my company.’
‘Good afternoon, Miss Courtenay. I’ve heard so much about you.’ Freddie Lomax smiled. He shook hands with Rose, then turned to Michael. ‘Miss Courtenay’s even prettier than you said.’
Maria and Fiona had been too tired to go walking, but Rose persuaded Judith to go with her into Rouen. When the cathedral was in sight, Michael’s friend took Judith off towards the nearest shops, while Michael led Rose down a narrow alley. ‘It’s a short cut,’ he said.
When they were half way down, he stopped and penned her up against a wall, his hands on either side of her so she could not escape.
‘I thought you were taking me to tea,’ she said, hoping he wasn’t going to try to kiss her or anything like that.
‘First of all we need to clear the air,’ said Michael gravely.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Rose, that little girl is not my child!’ Michael’s large, blue eyes were wide and candid. ‘Celia told me what you did, how you went to London, and how you brought the baby back to Dorset. It was jolly decent of you to care, and now things have settled down, everyone agrees it was a splendid thing to do.
‘But whatever Phoebe may have told you, she and I – Rose, I know I’m fallible. But I have more integrity than that.’
‘You’re saying you never went to bed with Phoebe?’
‘No, upon my honour.’
Rose looked at him and wondered who was lying – him or Phoebe? But she was far too tired to argue. She didn’t have any proof that he had ever slept with Phoebe, anyway. So she decided she’d back down – at least for now.
‘You must be very angry with me, then,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Michael, I didn’t even think about the consequences for you. But when Phoebe told me–’
‘There’s no need to apologise,’ smiled Michael. ‘It’s turned out for the best. The baby has a proper home, and Celia has an interest in life. Of course, we can’t keep Daisy down in Dorset. When the war is over, we’ll have to look for Phoebe. Then we can reunite her with the child.’
‘You’re being very reasonable about it.’ Rose hoped Michael couldn’t hear the insincerity in her voice.
‘I don’t see the need to make a fuss.’ Michael stroked a strand of Rose’s hair back from her forehead. She felt as if a spider’s web had brushed against her face, and needed all her self-control not to shudder.
‘Do you have an answer to the question I asked you, long before this wretched business started?’ Michael smiled again. ‘I said I wouldn’t rush you, and I won’t. But I went to see your father when I was on leave. Poor man, he’s lost so much.’
‘I know.’
‘He’d be thrilled if you and I got married.’
Rose looked up at Michael. She wondered if it might work out. She wanted children, Michael would need an heir to his estate and, if she married him, she’d have a home, security, a spotless reputation. Nobody in Charton, even Mrs Sefton, would dare disparage Michael Easton’s wife.
One day, she’d be Lady Easton. Could she love Sir Michael? Maybe n
ot, but it would not be hard to be his wife. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine – but that would not be fair. ‘Let me have a week or two?’ she asked him.
‘I don’t want to hurry you. I know you’d like to see some more of life before you finally settle down. You nurses are doing splendid work in France. So just tell me when the answer’s yes.’
‘You’re being very understanding.’ Rose felt she was being stifled. It was as if a soft but heavy pillow were being pressed against her face. Ducking under Michael’s arm, she walked off down the alley.
He soon caught up. ‘I suppose you heard about poor Denham?’
‘I – yes,’ she managed to say at last, glad they were no longer face to face.
‘Old Henry’s terribly cut up. Alex wasn’t his son, of course, but the poor chap treated him like one. He must feel the loss.’
‘You went to see him, then?’
‘Celia and I drove over there one morning. I thought it might buck him up a bit. He asked what happened and, when I explained, he cried.’
‘What did happen, then?’ asked Rose, wanting to know but dreading it.
‘He’d gone out on patrol with two more men. They were carrying grenades, and when he got hit they all exploded. Some Irish Guards out mending wire found him, burned to death.’
‘How horrible.’ Rose felt Michael’s gaze upon her, but she couldn’t look at him.
‘At least they got the body back,’ said Michael. ‘They found his papers in his pockets, badly singed but legible. Paper doesn’t always burn, you see. Especially if it’s damp. So even if they’re in a shocking state, bodies can often be identified.’
‘W-where is he buried?’ faltered Rose.
‘In a cemetery near St Etienne.’ Michael was still looking at her, and now his voice was sharp. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I was just making conversation.’ Rose dug her nails into her palms, determined she would not betray her lover, that she would not cry.
‘I understand the body was in an awful mess,’ continued Michael. ‘It wouldn’t have survived the trip back home. It could have been much worse, though. Those two other chaps weren’t ever found. A bit rough on their families, and–’
‘Michael, I don’t want to know all this.’ Rose’s throat had closed. The tang of roasted flesh was in her nostrils, and she felt light-headed.
But Michael carried on. ‘Denham was always reckless,’ he continued. ‘Always out on night patrol, or on hare-brained escapades that didn’t ever amount to anything. Some of the chaps said he was brave, but Denham wasn’t brave. He was over-confident and took too many risks, usually with other people’s lives.
‘Ah, here it is – the Golden Bell. I hope you’re hungry, Rose? I must say I could eat a horse.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Rose when she and Judith got back on the train.
‘Well, you don’t look fine.’ Maria frowned. ‘You’ve had more colour lately, but tonight you’re pale as death.’
‘I’m tired, like all of us,’ said Rose. ‘I’ll be all right, don’t make a fuss. Maria, where exactly is St Etienne?’
‘Twenty or thirty miles away, I think.’ Maria shrugged. ‘It’s just a tiny place. A couple of streets, a baker’s shop, a church, some little farms. There’s an army hospital a mile or two outside.’
‘Does it have cemetery?’
‘Yes, I think it does.’
Then Maria understood.
The trains went back and forth, sometimes with heavy loads of wounded after raids or skirmishes, sometimes just half full, for there had been no battles or disasters that warm, pleasant summer. In the valley of the Somme there was a slow but steady build-up of artillery, and increasing restlessness among officers and men.
Then the guns began to roar, and by the end of June everyone in the district was half deafened, for the barrage carried on and on, night and day and day and night, remorseless and unending.
‘There can’t be any Germans left alive along this stretch of front,’ observed Maria, as the guns continued to pound a countryside in which Rose thought nothing could survive.
Then, as suddenly as they’d started, all the guns fell silent.
‘Ladies, we’ve attacked!’ As Rose and Maria stood in the sluice making up some demi-johns of Dakin’s antiseptic, Sister Glossop bustled down the corridor, the streamers on her head-dress flying and her sharp glance darting everywhere, as she checked for smuts or specks of grime that might have dared pollute her pristine train.
Rose felt the thud and shudder as the engine coupled with the carriages behind it, and soon the train was racing eastwards through the glorious summer afternoon.
‘We’re probably going to have to treat a lot of wounded Germans,’ Sister Glossop told them. ‘So although we must be fair, of course our soldiers must take precedence.’
‘Do we keep the Germans and our boys apart?’ Maria asked.
‘Yes, it might be best.’ The sister smiled complacently. ‘But there shouldn’t be many of our own chaps needing treatment. This must have been a splendid day for them!’
The orderlies and nurses didn’t rush to make up bunks or set out trays of dressings. There wasn’t any need, if they would be returning with an almost empty train.
‘How many?’ called Maria, as the carriages shuddered to a halt and a man in khaki came running up the railway line.
‘It’ll be thousands, Sister!’ Rose could see the man looked grey. ‘Our lads are being massacred over there! It’s not a battle, it’s a slaughter!’
‘But we thought this was going to be the end?’ Rose could hear the rumble of what she feared must be German guns. She could see the flashes as shells burst overhead, although the day was bright. ‘A great attack, they told us. The Germans would be finished. Our guns have been firing at them for a week or more, so surely almost everyone is dead?’
‘We might have wounded one or two.’ The soldier wiped his hand across his eyes. ‘The barrage didn’t even cut the wire, let alone kill Germans. When our lads went over, the Jerries came out of their dugouts, and then they gunned them down.’
‘But what about the British guns? Our men surely didn’t go over without our guns supporting them?’
‘I don’t know what happened, Sister, but it was a balls-up.’ The soldier turned to stare along the track. ‘You’d better roll your sleeves up. Here they come.’
Rose watched aghast as stretcher after stretcher case was loaded, as the bunks were filled and men were dumped down on the floor, in all the corridors and even in the sluice.
‘We can’t take any more,’ cried Sister Glossop, as stretcher bearers clambered over bodies, looking for spaces underneath the bunks, shoving two wounded men together so they could squash a third, a fourth in somehow, somewhere, anywhere. ‘We won’t have room to move.’
‘Major Leighton’s orders, Sister,’ said a stretcher bearer who was carrying a slim, blond boy, and who looked like some appalling mummer from a ghastly carnival. Ribbons of soiled dressings hung like summer fairings round his neck, his cheeks were striped with gore, and his khaki overall was streaked and splashed with blood. ‘You must take eighty more, and pack them in.’
‘We can’t,’ repeated Sister Glossop, looking as if she’d cry.
‘I’m sorry, Sister, but the major says you must.’ The stretcher bearer gently moved the sister to one side, then lugged the pale, blond boy on to the train.
Eventually the train moved off, clanking and swaying as it chugged away from Armageddon. The orderlies and nurses began to cut off filthy, muddied uniforms and tried to staunch the flow of blood from men whose bodies looked like human sieves.
As one man was treated, Rose was horribly aware that the one in the next bunk was dying. She worked with desperate haste, and soon her apron, sleeves and cuffs were wringing wet with blood.
The floor was ankle deep in blood, dripping from men who lay like leaking wineskins on the bunks, the shelves, the floor. Everywhere she looked, Rose saw scenes from some appalling
nightmare. She slopped and squelched her way down corridors awash with blood, swirling and foaming with the jolting movement of the train, like some devil’s wash day.
The long summer twilight ended. A host of stars lit up the purple sky, and less than half the casualties had been seen. Rose worked on doggedly. The fumes of chloroform the doctor used on men who needed an immediate amputation made her feel light-headed. As she passed a table where an orderly was trying to get a sergeant to go under anaesthetic, she tripped and nearly fell.
‘All right, Sister?’ asked the blood-boltered orderly who’d caught her, as the chloroform-soaked pad he wielded hit her squarely in the face.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, and swayed on down the train. But now the soldiers all merged into one amorphous mass. They swam together in a shoal of khaki, then retreated in a blood-stained haze.
‘Go and get some air, or you’ll pass out!’ Grabbing Rose and dragging her towards an open window, Maria pushed Rose’s head right out and told her to inhale.
‘Come on, Rose!’ she cried. ‘Some nice deep breaths! Great lungfuls – breathe in – out – and in again! Feeling better now?’
‘Yes, thank you.’ Shuddering and gasping, Rose came back inside. ‘My m-mother always told me it was very dangerous to lean out of a train,’ she gulped, as she wiped a bloodstained hand across her streaming eyes.
‘Did she, now?’ Maria somehow managed a faint smile. ‘Try not to look so worried, Rose,’ she said. ‘You’re doing very well.’
‘But we’ll never see to all of them before we get to Rouen. What will happen to the ones we haven’t got round to treating?’
‘Do what you can, be glad we’re saving some.’ Maria shrugged. ‘But most of them will die.’
Rose went on down the train. In one carriage there were half a dozen dark-haired officers, all with dreadful wounds. They all had Alex’s face. Those who still had faces, anyway.
As Rose cut away the shirt of one, she was almost glad Alex had died. He wouldn’t have wanted to have been a human gargoyle with half a mangled body or a nightmare of a face. He was better off dead.
The Silver Locket (Choc Lit) Page 17
