Rose liked the turbines. They were like giant versions of those brightly coloured plastic windmills at the seaside. She remembered Dad buying her one in Brighton when she was little, and him and Mum laughing as she ran up and down the promenade to make it whizz round.
‘Heads up,’ said Grandad. He’d stopped and was looking through the hedge on their left. ‘This must be it.’
A stone monument pointed up at the sky in a field where a cow peered at them with gentle eyes and a line of drool hanging from her mouth. They followed a path leading up from the canal and then they were at the gate: Essex Farm Cemetery.
Rose didn’t know what she’d expected. Something bleak, grand, mournful. Vast. Graves stretching away into infinity, unimaginable numbers of men with names and no faces. Some of them without even names. Unknown soldiers.
But this wasn’t like that at all. It was – cosy. Quite small, like a room almost, with trees on three sides, branches moving gently. The identical gravestones were lined up, shoulder to shoulder, like tiny upright beds. And there was no sound. No birds, no cars. Nothing except the gentle whoomp whoomp of the turbines on the other side of the canal. There was no one else there. Just Rose and Grandad and the men lying beneath the turf.
‘They keep the grass nice, don’t they?’ Grandad’s voice sounded loud in spite of the wind.
The grass was nice, bright green and velvety, as if it had just been vacuumed.
‘Quite right, too,’ he went on. ‘Respect. Got to keep faith with the dead.’
Rose looked at the neat rows of identical gravestones and wondered if the soldiers lying there cared about the grass.
‘Look at this, Cabbage.’ Grandad had moved towards a row of cave-like concrete rooms cut into the bank near the cemetery entrance.
‘What is it?’
Grandad was looking at his guide book. ‘Advanced dressing station. First stop for the wounded when they were brought off the battlefield.’
‘This was where the doctors treated them?’ Rose couldn’t believe it. ‘In these tiny little caves?’ None of the rooms was much bigger than the bathroom at home, and they stank of damp and decay.
‘Yup. They patched them up here and then sent them on to a proper hospital, further away from the front line. Or home, if they were lucky.’
‘What if they weren’t lucky? Grandad?’ Rose knew he didn’t want to say. ‘That’s why the cemetery’s here, isn’t it?’
Grandad nodded. ‘Yes, love. For the ones that didn’t make it.’ He harrumphed and changed the subject, making a big fuss of rummaging in his bag. ‘Right, Uncle George, Private Thompson. I’ve got a reference number for him somewhere.’
‘A reference number?’
‘War Graves Commission. You get it off the internet. Surprisingly easy actually. Ah, here we go.’
Grandad produced a scrap of paper from his bag and made his way towards the cemetery, his limp more pronounced after their walk. He’d told Rose stories about being in hospital with polio when he was a boy after the war. Not this war, of course – the next one. How many wars did there have to be, before they stopped for good?
Rose lingered at the entrance, watching Grandad step carefully between the graves, looking at the numbers on the ends of the rows. Something was stopping her going into the cemetery. It felt sort of scary, like taking that first step into the classroom on your first day of school. Rose had clung to Dad’s legs, hiding her face in the knees of his jeans until he’d peeled her off and given her a kiss and a gentle push into the hands of the teaching assistant. He’d said she’d be all right, and she was, she really was. But everything was different from that moment. Her world had changed from being just Dad, Mum, Grandad . . . kitchen, bedroom, park, corner shop. It had expanded to include school, teachers, dinner ladies, other children and an infinite number of new smells, sights, feelings, experiences. It wasn’t a bad thing, it really wasn’t. But it was big.
And this felt the same, as if she was teetering on the edge of something momentous. There was something here, in this place, buried deeper than the poor dead soldiers beneath the grass. Something that was in the past. But it was also here now, waiting.
Waiting for her.
Rose took a deep breath and took the step, the single step, into the cemetery. Nothing happened, of course. The world didn’t explode or change colour. But something was different. It was like being in a house whose owner had just left, or Dad’s studio in the attic back home. Everything was still there – his paints, his canvases, his old jumper on the back of a chair. Even though he was gone, the room was still full of his presence.
It was like that in the cemetery. Rose could almost feel the dead soldiers breathing under the grass.
It’s a peaceful place to spend eternity, she thought, and took a few more steps, being careful not to stand on the graves. Across the cemetery she could see Grandad taking the rose from his buttonhole and laying it on the ground. He’d found Uncle George.
Rose tiptoed along the rows, reading the names on the headstones: Frederick, Henry, Alfred, Herbert. They sounded like old men with their old-fashioned names, but they weren’t old, thought Rose, and they never would be. Then, surprisingly, a German name: Benedikt. His gravestone was different from the others, a bit rougher, more worn-looking. Poor Benedikt. Rose wondered how he’d ended up here, buried beside the men he’d been fighting.
And now, a stone with a Star of David in place of the usual cross:
A.G. Cohen
West Yorkshire Regiment
19th December 1915 Age 22
Rose thought of Mrs Cohen back in Yorkshire, crying in her kitchen like her own mum had cried in their kitchen when Dad died. Was history full of mums crying in kitchens?
She walked on.
A grave in the middle of one of the rows caught her eye. It had more tributes than the others (most had none at all) – loads of the little papery crosses you could get everywhere in the city, a couple of bunches of shop-bought flowers, still in their cellophane, a small teddy bear wearing a poppy. That was weird. Why would anybody put a teddy on a soldier’s grave?
Rose made her way towards it, and read:
V.J. Strudwick
The Rifle Brigade
14th January 1916 Age 15
Rose’s heart clenched.
Fifteen?
Fifteen? That was only one year older than she was. How could that have happened? How could it be right?
‘“Valentine Joe Strudwick . . .”’ She hadn’t heard Grandad approach. His voice sounded loud and reassuringly normal as he read from his guide book: ‘“. . . was one of the youngest soldiers known to have been killed in action in the Great War—”’
‘Valentine?’ Rose interrupted. So that was what the V was for. She looked at the headstone again. Beneath his name and age and the cross was another inscription:
Not Gone From Memory Or From Love
Who chose that? His mum?
‘Name to give a boy, eh?’ Grandad was saying. ‘Born on Valentine’s Day, you see. I blame the mother. No dad would give a boy a name like that.’
Of course, thought Rose. His mum chose them both: his name and the inscription on his gravestone. His poor mum. She thought again of her own mum and felt a pang. Maybe they should have persuaded her to come with them. Rose didn’t like to think of her all alone. Especially not on Valentine’s Day.
‘Bet he called himself Joe,’ Grandad was saying. ‘Valentine! Tuh!’ He made the dismissive sound with his false teeth that he always made when he disapproved of something.
Yes, thought Rose. He would’ve called himself Joe.
He could have been a boy at her school – slouching along the corridors at school, bag dangling off one shoulder, whacking a friend round the head and running off, laughing at nothing, kicking a football. Not fighting – being killed – in some grown-ups’ war.
Grandad continued to read: ‘“Although the official age for active service was nineteen, many younger boys lied about their age in o
rder to join up, probably inspired by propaganda campaigns at the time and the belief that war would be an adventure . . .”’
‘But they must’ve known.’ Rose felt angry. ‘The army people, whoever was in charge. How could they not? There’s no way a fifteen-year-old can pass for nineteen.’
Grandad read on. ‘“It’s thought recruiting officers often turned a blind eye to underage recruits due to the urgent need for men to replace those that had been injured or killed at the Front . . .”’
‘Oh, Grandad . . .’
Rose felt so furious at the people in the past who had let this happen that she was afraid she might start shouting and screaming and stomping round the cemetery. Either that or burst into tears.
Grandad put the book away and held out his hand. Rose took it and they stood there in silence, their heads bowed. She swallowed hard, determined not to cry.
‘So you found Uncle George?’ she said. Her voice sounded unnaturally high and cracky.
Grandad gave himself a little shake. He wasn’t going to cry either. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I did. I said, “Hello, George, mate. You don’t know me, but I know all about you and I’ve come to say goodbye. And thanks.” And I left the rose for him. I think he appreciated it.’
Rose smiled. The cemetery seemed to come back into focus and she was conscious of the gentle spikes of drizzle on her face and the whoomp whoomp of the turbines across the canal.
‘Come on, Cabbage. Let’s get you back to the hotel. It’ll be getting dark soon.’
He patted her arm and moved off towards the gate. Rose lingered for a moment at the grave.
‘It’s your day tomorrow,’ she whispered. ‘Valentine Joe.’ She put the yellow flowers with their heart-shaped leaves down next to the teddy bear.
‘Happy birthday,’ she said.
It was getting dark by the time they got back to the city, and the warm yellow lights from the bars and restaurants looked blurry in the twilight, as if they were shining through gauze. Rose was glad to be back. Her feet hurt from the long walk and her hair had gone all frizzy.
She left Grandad downstairs in the hotel, telling Muriel about their outing, while she went up to her room. They’d arranged to meet up later for the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate. Rose wasn’t quite sure what it was, but Grandad wanted to go and that was enough for her.
She opened the door of her room, flumped down on the bed and was starting to take her boots off when something stopped her. The room was bright and cosy with its clean white walls and neat single bed. Everything looked completely normal, just as she’d left it: her suitcase open on the floor, phone charger plugged in by the bed. But there was something else. Rose sat quite still, listening with every part of her body.
Someone was singing.
It was a girl’s voice, singing a high, wordless little song, as if she was pottering around tidying up. It was what Mum used to do in the kitchen while she was clearing away the breakfast things on a Sunday.
Rose got up and opened the door to the tiny shower room that adjoined the bedroom, fitted in neatly under the eaves of the building. There was no one there, of course, she hadn’t expected there to be. But the voice was there, as clear as if its owner was in the room with her. She checked outside on the landing. Nothing.
And then it stopped.
It must’ve been someone next door, Rose told herself, then remembered there wasn’t a room next door. Downstairs, then. Or outside – sound carried in a strange way in this kind of weather. It was nothing, just one of those funny things.
Rose sat down on the bed again and got out her phone to text Dad. But for the first time she didn’t know what to say. Since she and Grandad had arrived in Ypres she’d felt different. There was something strange about the place, but she couldn’t explain what. Not in a text, anyway. And she couldn’t tell Dad about seeing Valentine Joe’s grave, because she didn’t understand her own feelings about that. It was all too strange, too big, too weird. So she plugged her phone into the charger and went to have a shower.
Maybe she’d text him later.
‘It’s not a gate though, is it, Grandad? It’s an arch. A really big arch.’
It was nearly eight o’clock and Rose and Grandad were waiting with a lot of other people at the Menin Gate for the start of the ceremony of the Last Post. Grandad had put on a proper jacket and tie for the occasion.
‘It would’ve been a gate at one time,’ he said. ‘Or at least a portal. A way through the city walls.’
‘And the soldiers would’ve gone this way? To the Front?’
‘Yup. And these’ – Grandad indicated the thousands of names inscribed on the walls of the archway – ‘are the names of those that didn’t come back. Some of them, anyway.’
‘Were they killed then, sir? All these people?’
It was the group of British schoolkids Rose had seen earlier. She recognised the mint-green fake-fur bomber jacket and the dark-haired girl with loads of make-up. There was also a Sikh boy she hadn’t noticed before, who was using his phone to take photos of a list of Sikh soldiers on the wall next to him.
Rose wondered how those Indian soldiers must have felt, leaving their hot, brightly coloured continent and coming halfway across the world to this cold grey country to take part in someone else’s war.
‘All these names are the missing,’ Grandad was saying. ‘Men whose bodies were never found. Men who have no graves.’
The teacher was explaining the same thing to his students.
‘No way, sir! There’s so many!’
It was true. There were so very many. Every inch of the walls was covered, every inch, with name after name after name. There were too many to take in. Too many to be real people. Until you started to read the individual names – then they became real: Private Campbell H, Corporal Day W, Sepoy Jagat Singh . . . Rose could see them in her mind’s eye: young men with crooked smiles and sticky-up hair and families back home, boys like the boys she went to school with, who played football and liked a laugh and had love letters and photos in the pockets of their uniforms. Each one of them someone’s boyfriend, someone’s brother, someone’s son. Someone’s dad.
There was a movement and a rustle of expectation in the crowd. Everyone turned to the road, where four elderly gentlemen in blue blazers were standing in a line, gripping bugles in their right hands.
The crowd grew silent. There was a single giggle from the dark-haired girl but that was quickly shushed by her friend. The men raised their bugles to their lips and the sorrowful wail of the Last Post curled out into the night like smoke. It was slightly out of tune, but when Rose tried to swallow the lump she felt in her throat she found it wouldn’t go away.
There was a minute’s silence when the last notes of the bugles died away, filled only with a few coughs and awkward shuffles, then another elderly gentleman in a blue blazer stepped forward, moustache bristling with importance. His voice rang out, strong and confident under the silent white arch:
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
A small procession of schoolchildren stepped forward to lay wreaths of poppies. And that was it.
The crowd gave a sort of collective sigh and people began to wander away. As Grandad and Rose joined the drift back to the city centre, Rose spotted the German boy who’d knocked her over with his bike. He was standing at the side of the road with a couple of other boys – one about his own age, the other a bit younger. As the boy raised his hand to Rose, his friend (or brother? Rose wondered) leant over and said something in his ear. Rose hid behind her hair and looked away.
‘Pizza?’ said Grandad.
‘Pizza,’ she agreed.
The night was clear by the time they left the restaurant. They’d sat at the next table to an Australian couple who said they’d come all the way from Adelaide to find the grave
of a relative. Grandad told them about going to Essex Farm Cemetery to say goodbye to Uncle George and how they discovered Valentine Joe’s grave. As she listened to the three older people exchanging stories and jokes, Rose thought Grandad seemed happier than she’d seen him since Dad had died. The trip was doing him good. That was what Mum would say anyway. But what was it doing for Rose? She wasn’t sure.
It wasn’t far back to the hotel. They said goodnight to Grandad’s new friends and wandered down the short street towards the square, past the souvenir shops selling books and postcards and pieces of shrapnel. There were only a few stragglers in the square now, a couple holding hands and a man walking a dog. The bars and restaurants looked warm and inviting, the golden light from their windows spilling on to the wet cobbles.
Muriel was outside when they arrived at the hotel, talking to a waiter who’d come out for a cigarette. Her face lit up when she saw them. She’d been working in the restaurant, she explained, and wanted a breath of air before they closed up.
‘I love the square at night,’ she said in her careful English. ‘It feels like the most beautiful place on earth. Come inside and have a last coffee or a drink.’
‘What d’you reckon, Cabbage?’ said Grandad. ‘It’s been a long day. D’you fancy a drink or do you want to head up to bed?’
Rose didn’t feel tired, but she didn’t want a drink either. Like the old city, stirring beneath the cobbles, she felt restless. Maybe it was because of what had happened today. She couldn’t seem to get Valentine Joe out of her mind.
‘I think I’ll just walk around for a bit, actually,’ she said. ‘I’m not that tired.’
‘You sure?’
Rose nodded.
‘You’ll be OK?’
‘I’m fourteen, Grandad.’
‘Ieper is a safe place, Brian,’ added Muriel. ‘Very quiet, very small . . .’
‘Unlike London,’ Rose reminded him. ‘And I’ve got my phone.’
Grandad gave her a long look. ‘Sure?’ he said.
Valentine Joe Page 4
