The Letter

by Ruth Saberton

  “But if we don’t, Daisy,” he said quietly, raising her chin and tenderly wiping her tears away with his thumb, “and if the worst does happen, I want you to know that I do love you and one day, maybe in another place, we will be together. I love you. Never forget that. I love you and I promise I will come back to you. I promise. I’ll write to you too. Every poem I write will be for you.”

  “I’ll write to you too,” she choked. “I’ll write every day, Kit.”

  He kissed her once more, the gentlest and most bittersweet kiss they’d ever shared, before his hands began to slip from hers, the fingers sliding away from her own until just the very tips of them brushed hers. Then her hand fell away from his in a rush of empty air as he leapt into the boat.

  Would she ever touch Kit Rivers again? Hold him? Kiss him? Feel her body melt into his? Daisy didn’t know. Her world was spinning around her, and then she was wading into the water and desperately trying to grasp the hull. She couldn’t let him go. She couldn’t. She had to catch hold of Kit and keep him safe. Nothing was more important: not the war, nor her godfather nor even her family. None of this mattered.

  “Kit!” she cried, blinded by tears and panic. “Kit! I love you! Please don’t leave me! Come back! Please!”

  But the wind snatched her words and Kit couldn’t hear her cries above the slapping of the sail. All Daisy could do was watch as the little boat drew further away from the shore. Kit was waving and his hair glinted in the sunlight, but she could no longer see his face. Moments later the boat rounded the headland and he was lost from sight.

  Daisy sank to her knees, not caring or even noticing that the sea was swirling around her and soaking her skirts, but knowing that somehow she would have to find the courage and the strength to face whatever lay ahead. Kit had gone, had slipped out of her reach, and she would live now only for letters and the hope that the man she loved would hold her in his arms once more. Until that day came, Daisy knew her nightmare was no longer confined to the darkness; it would stalk her through the daylight and be her constant companion until she saw her beloved Kit again.

  Chapter 11

  Daisy, 1916

  The nightmare returned with heart-pounding regularity over the many months that followed. Sometimes Daisy dreamed she caught up with Kit and briefly grasped the rough fabric of his uniform in her fingertips, only for it to slip from her touch as he moved away, forever out of reach. She now knew it to be more than a child’s night terror: it was a vision of what had come and what was still to pass.

  The difference was that the dream had become less nebulous. The waking remnants were mixed now with details gleaned from Kit’s letters and ugly imagery from his more recent poems. Gone were the gentle stanzas in homage to Keats or the elegant Shakespearean sonnets; in their place was a heavy, harsher rhyme that weighed her heart down. Kit’s verse had grown powerful and devastating and Daisy wept to read it. His letters might be scant in terms of military detail but somehow his poetry, which conveyed the horror of the mud and the shells and the artillery’s mocking laughter, managed to escape the censor’s heavy pen.

  She would kiss the precious pages Kit’s hands had touched (it was the closest she could get to kissing him), before tucking them safely into her tin with all his letters and her sorely neglected journal. The hours she’d once spent poring over that and her dreams of being a writer felt as though they belonged to a stranger. Daisy no longer knew who that girl was; she bore no resemblance to the person Daisy had become. Her leg had long since healed, with only a trace of a limp remaining, and her skin glowed from being outside; all thoughts of keeping the freckles at bay were long forgotten. When at last she fell into bed after each long day working in the garden, she was too tired and unhappy to pick up her pen.

  Sometimes it seemed impossible to Daisy that there had ever been a time before the war. The summer of 1914 felt as though it belonged to a different life altogether: a golden age when cricket matches had been played on the village green late into the light evenings, and the fields had rippled with wheat before the clatter of reapers had come and piled the wagons high with the harvest. The horses that had pulled these carts were long gone, having been taken away by the army. They were now far from home, just like the men who’d once harnessed them and harvested the crops. Women worked in the fields now and the grass was long on the village green because there were no young men left to mow it, let alone to bowl or field. Most of them would never return and their names were spoken of in quiet tones and with many tears.

  Gem was one of those for whom the village grieved. The young man who’d left with such high hopes and a head full of dreams of coming home to marry his girl had been killed in action, and with him three other lads from Rosecraddick. When the news came, poor Nancy had fainted clean away in the kitchen and had been unable to speak for days. She was quiet now, twisting her engagement ring around and around with a haunted expression, unable to comprehend what had happened to the merry boy she’d loved.

  “He could have died while I was making meat pies,” she’d choked once, when Daisy had walked into the kitchen and found her sobbing over the saucepans. “My Gem died far from home, Miss Daisy, and I was probably thinking about making pastry or chopping vegetables. Why didn’t I sense it? I should have known, not carried on making dinner when all the time he was dead. What kind of fiancée was I? How did it all still feel so ordinary?”

  There was nothing Daisy could say to this; Nancy was right. The banal nature of everyday chores juxtaposed with the horrors abroad appalled her. She’d written about this to Kit, whose response had been a bleak poem, Home Fires, and weary agreement that none of it made any sense.

  So far Kit hadn’t come home. His first leave had been spent at a field hospital, following a shrapnel wound that became infected. A “scratch” was how he’d described his injury, although Daisy knew this was an understatement purely for her benefit. She’d been terrified when she’d heard on the village grapevine that Mr Rivers had been injured, and beyond relieved to receive a letter from Kit that put her mind at rest. His second leave was due very soon and he’d promised Daisy faithfully that this time he would make it home to Cornwall. Colonel Rivers was also very unwell – his health had never fully recovered – and when Daisy had seen him in church she’d been struck by how frail he’d seemed. There was talk in the village now of a serious illness, and Reverend Cutwell was often in attendance at the Manor. Daisy knew that Kit was afraid of leaving it too late to see his father and she worried that time was running out.

  So much has passed since I last spoke to Father that I am certain the issues of the past will no longer seem of such importance, Kit had written, in his last letter. Mama tells me he is very weak. I would like to seek his blessing on our marriage before it’s too late. We have been at odds in the past and I would like us to be reconciled. Being in this place has made me view so much in a different way. How could my father have understood what the nature of this war would be? We who are here can scarcely comprehend it. I am ready to speak to your father and I am prepared to speak to mine. When I am home we shall be married.

  This letter had filled Daisy with elation and terror in equal doses. She longed to be open about her love for Kit and wanted nothing more than to be his wife, yet she also knew that Kit was very much mistaken: his father hadn’t changed his views. Social status was everything to the Rivers family. Even in these troubled times, they insisted upon rank and protocol being adhered to, and Daisy suspected they would still see a union with her as deeply degrading. She was also afraid that if Kit and his father argued, a rift could form that might never have an opportunity to heal; in the future, this could poison everything between them. Daisy hated the thought that she could be the cause of a family estrangement. She hadn’t said as much to Kit, but she was resolved not to announce their engagement or marry until the war was over and Kit was safely home for good. Then he would have time to make his parents understand that he and Daisy loved each other. Surely that day couldn
’t be too far away? The fighting had been going on for so very long now, and at the outset everyone had said it would be over by that first Christmas. The end had to be close, didn’t it?

  Yet no end to the conflict was forthcoming. Poor Mrs Polmartin was now mourning her son, and she wasn’t the only one to have lost someone dear. Daisy was tortured by the thought of the danger Kit was in. He was Captain Rivers now, promoted after his injury (which had been sustained when he’d returned to a shell hole for an injured comrade), and as much as Daisy’s heart had swelled with pride at his courage she was also terrified by it.

  Daisy lived for Kit’s letters and seeing him again, and she hoped he wouldn’t be disappointed in the changes he would find in her. Working in the garden now that the lads had left had roughened her hands, her hair was longer and wilder than before, and her face was freckled and rosy. She was stronger too from the physical work and no longer as slight as she had been in those first few months in Cornwall.

  Daisy’s brother Eddie, who was fifteen now and still at school, was bitterly afraid he would miss the chance to see action. He wrote endless letters bemoaning his age, and when he came to stay in Rosecraddick for the holidays he drove Daisy demented with all his talk of wanting to “join in the game” before it was over.

  How could Daisy explain that the reality was as far from Boy’s Own stories of gallant drummer boys and noble deeds as anything ever could be? Kit’s poems portrayed unimaginable horrors taking place in what was surely hell on earth.

  Daisy hadn’t acquired her knowledge of the Front just from Kit’s poems or even gleaned it from the newspapers – most of which were buoyed up with patriotic talk anyway. Rather, she’d heard it first-hand from her father, who’d enlisted and joined the Royal Army Medical Corps as a surgeon. With Eddie safely at boarding school and Daisy remaining with her godfather at the Rectory, Charles Hills was serving in a field hospital on the Western Front and had ordered the Fulham house to be closed up. He’d been home on leave just once, making the long journey to Cornwall for some much-needed rest and fresh air. Daisy had been shocked by how haunted her papa’s face was and how thin he’d become, and she’d heard him shouting out in the night on more than one occasion. When they’d gone for a stroll together on the cliffs one afternoon, he’d told her a little of what he’d seen – and her heart had quailed for Kit.

  They’d walked up to the headland and looked out over the sea, as grey as shrapnel that day and topped with white spume. It seemed impossible that across this bleak expanse were France and Belgium, where men drowned in mud or, blinded, stumbled into tangled wire. Daisy had read somewhere that the gunfire could even be heard in Kent. Kent? Impossible! How loud must it be for the men who were fighting? She had heard too that the terrible noise caused men to collapse and lose their reason. “Shell shock”, they were all calling it now. Apparently even Dickon Trehunnist had succumbed and was in hospital, unable to speak or feed or even, some said, toilet himself. Daisy had been no friend of Dickon’s, but to think of all that swaggering confidence reduced to such a piteous state had brought tears to her eyes. Nobody deserved that.

  “Tell me the truth about the Western Front, Papa. I need to know the truth. I have friends there,” Daisy had said.

  And the man I love.

  Here Papa had bowed his head. His curls, once the same deep red as her own, were now frosted with grey.

  “Sweetheart, just keep on doing your bit. What you’re doing is important too. You don’t need to know the details.”

  “Just keep on knitting socks and scarves and pretend everything’s fine, you mean? I’m not an idiot, Papa!”

  “I know that—”

  But Daisy hadn’t been in the mood to listen to a lecture. “I should be there too! I could join the VAD. Nobody needs to know how old I really am.”

  The thought of joining the Voluntary Aid Detachment had crossed her mind many times. Growing up as a doctor’s daughter and having spent time in a sanatorium had taught Daisy a great deal about the realities of sickness. She wasn’t squeamish. She was practical, and Daisy knew she could be of use at the Front. Just how many socks could she knit? How many meals could she help Mrs Polmartin, a hollow-eyed shadow of her former plump self, prepare? The Reverend would manage without her to help around the house, and he could eat his meals in the kitchen. Daisy needed to be doing something more useful than this. She had to do something that counted – and although she wasn’t old enough to join the VAD, plenty of boys lied about their age to enlist. Daisy fully intended to do the same if Papa wouldn’t help her.

  “I’m eighteen, Papa. I can deal with the truth,” she’d said.

  “Can you? I don’t think I can.”

  “The truth is better than not knowing,” Daisy had insisted.

  Her father had looked out over the sea.

  “I’m not sure I agree, my dear, but I won’t lie to you,” he’d replied, so quietly that Daisy had had to lean forward to catch his words over the breaking waves. “It’s carnage. There are injuries I couldn’t have imagined, not even in my worst dreams.”

  “But aren’t we winning, Papa?”

  The papers were full of how one big push was needed, but her father just gave a harsh and mirthless laugh.

  “No side can ever win a war like this. There are shells and bayonets and every possible invention designed solely to maim and kill. There are men who’ve lost limbs, had their faces blown off, been blinded and shredded by shrapnel. Some cry for their mothers and their wives. Others lie in mud for days dying in craters with the dead bodies of their comrades decaying around them and praying death comes soon.”

  Daisy couldn’t speak. She could hardly breathe.

  “The lads are lame because their boots are useless and their feet rot away in the wet trenches. They have lung infections and pneumonia too. Some men become insensible as though their wits have fled with the horror of it all – and those poor souls are trapped in their own private hell, pushed right over the edge of sanity by the brutality. They scream and howl and claw at their own faces. The scenes are burnt into their brains. Do I need to go on?”

  She shook her head. “No, Papa.”

  He’d turned to her then and, to Daisy’s distress, there were tears running down her father’s cheeks. “I despair of it and, above all, I despair of mankind. We’ve found a way to kill and maim on a scale that’s unimaginable, and we’re using it with impunity. The lucky ones are those who die quickly or those who died early. For the rest there? It’s a living death. Believe me, Daisy, this war will be remembered as the bloodiest in human history. Generations will be wiped out. Whole villages will see their menfolk cut down in their prime – and for what, I no longer know. All I can do is my best to ease their suffering.”

  Her father’s bleak words had echoed Kit’s verse and Daisy had cried too then. She’d wept for Gem and Nancy, for Dickon and Bertie, and for her foolish little brother who longed to fight. She’d cried for the fear of what might happen to Kit and for the sheer waste of it all. When her tears had all been spent, Daisy and her father had walked back to the Rectory in reflective silence. The next day, Papa had kissed her goodbye and returned to his posting. Daisy thought of him often and was so proud of what he did that it hurt. Papa was brave and good and clever and was doing his bit to help. Reflecting on his words, Daisy had vowed that after Kit’s leave she would make plans to join the VAD, and her age was not going to prevent her. She needed – wanted – to do her bit. Remaining here in suspended animation was not enough.

  In the meantime, she helped Mrs Polmartin run the house, worked in the Rectory garden and shouldered Nancy’s chores. She soon gave up knitting socks for the soldiers though.

  “The soldiers have enough to bear without having to wear these!” Nancy teased, holding up Daisy’s attempts at knitting for victory. “Are you working for the enemy by trying to cripple our boys? I’d stick to helping in the garden if I were you, Miss!”

  Daisy had to agree. Her newly acquired gardenin
g skills were superior to her knitting. Sometimes when she caught sight of the back of the Colonel’s head (when he was well enough to attend church), Daisy wondered what Kit’s father would make of his son’s future wife working with the soil. She imagined he would be utterly horrified, and this made her even more resolved to get Kit to understand that they needed to wait to announce their engagement.

  Whenever she had a spare moment, Daisy still wrote in her diary, catching up on the day-to-day business of life in Rosecraddick, but most of her writing time was dedicated to penning letters to Kit. She wrote to him every day, pouring out her feelings but always doing her best to avoid telling him her fears. She wanted to be brave for him. She sent news from home, including funny anecdotes that she hoped would make him smile, and wrote of her dreams for their future. As long as she could write to Kit, it felt as though he was never far away. Daisy liked to imagine him reading her letters in his bunk, comforted by the knowledge that she was thinking of him always and that both she and Rosecraddick were waiting for him.

  In reality though, the glorious summer days of swimming with Kit in the cove or walking hand in hand with him through the cool woods had taken on a dreamlike quality. Sometimes Daisy was afraid that his face was starting to fade from her memory. When she closed her eyes she could see him again, but whenever she tried to focus on him he slipped out of reach, just as in the old night terrors. Some nights she could lie in her bed and see his features vividly – the dear face she’d last seen before he’d sailed away from her, his eyes warm with love – but on other nights she could scarcely picture him at all. This was when she would have to leave her bed, prise up the floorboard and open the tin. Shivering on the bedroom floor, Daisy would spend the darkest hours piecing Kit back together by candlelight through the tender words of his letters, the old entries in her journal and, most treasured of all, the lock of blond hair tied with a strip of red velvet. Kit had left this hidden in the church wall with a letter telling her how much he loved her, and when Daisy had found it several days after their parting, the loss of him had floored her anew. She would close her eyes, trace her lips with that lock of hair and imagine that the soft touch was Kit’s mouth brushing hers as he pulled her close. Their magical afternoon in the boat was one memory that was still as bright and as vivid as the sharp Cornish light.