Valentine Joe

by Rebecca Stevens

  By the time Rose pushed her way through the station, sweat was dripping into her eyes, but she wasn’t going to stop even for the seconds it would take to remove her coat. There was no time. The platform was even more packed with men in khaki, both fit and wounded. Some looked as if they’d just arrived. Their uniforms were clean and neat and they were hiding their anxiety with jokes and banter. Others were filthy and silent, their faces taut and closed. They were going home on leave, Rose guessed, or at least somewhere away from the fighting, but they didn’t look relieved or excited. They just looked blank and exhausted as if they’d never be capable of feeling anything again. The nurses buzzed around the wounded men, supporting the ones on crutches, tending to the ones on stretchers. Rose noticed that the new arrivals avoided looking at the wounded men with their grey, resigned faces and their bloody bandages.

  Again she went in amongst them, slipping through the crowds like a fish, looking at faces, searching for her Joe. An older nurse with a crucifix around her neck crossed herself and muttered a prayer as she passed, but Rose didn’t care. She had a job to do.

  She was beginning to lose hope when there was a ripple through the waiting crowd and a small cheer went up from some of the men. A train was approaching. The nurses started to busy themselves with their patients, helping those who could walk to the edge of the platform, lifting the stretchers of those who were helpless.

  ‘Good luck, chum!’

  ‘See you back in Blighty!’

  ‘Not if I see you first!’

  There were grins and backslaps. But there was no sign of Joe.

  The train drew up at the platform with a sigh of steam and a hiss of brakes. Doors were flung open and people surged towards it. Rose could see that the train had been specially adapted to transport the injured men. Some carriages had seats, others were lined with bunks, three deep on either side. It was a sort of hospital on wheels.

  The stretcher-bearers delivered their burdens, nurses guided their patients, doors were slammed, the platform was emptying . . .

  And still there was no sign of Joe.

  Then, as the last door was slammed and the guard raised his whistle to his lips, there was a cry from the far end of the platform.

  ‘Wait!’

  It was a young nurse with a pale, determined face, leading a small group of men. Men who were staggering and coughing and half blind. They were the gas casualties from Essex Farm.

  ‘Joe!’

  He looked around at the sound of her voice, but he couldn’t see her. His eyes were too bad and the platform was too crowded. A big soldier on crutches stepped in front of Rose and by the time she’d managed to slip past him, the young nurse and her patients were on the train and the door was slammed behind them.

  Joe had gone.

  Rose didn’t stop to think. A wounded Tommy with a bandaged head was leaning out of the window of the door nearest to her, accepting a last cigarette from his mate.

  The guard blew his whistle.

  The train gathered its energy in a great huff of steam. And Rose jumped, catching the top of the open window with both hands just as the train started to heave itself away from the platform. She hung on as the bandaged Tommy shouted his last goodbyes:

  ‘See you, boys! Be lucky!’

  As the train began to gather speed, Rose used all her strength to drag herself up. First she got one elbow on the edge of the open window, then the other. She was now so close to the soldier that she could smell the disinfectant of his bandage and the tobacco on his breath. As she hoisted her body up, he flinched and moved away, back into the carriage.

  Rose was halfway through now. Her head was inside the train, while her legs were waving about outside, and the edge of the window was digging painfully into her stomach. One more heave and she was inside, in a heap on the floor. She was bruised and filthy and exhausted. But she’d done it. She was on the train.

  She struggled to her feet and looked around. The carriage was lined with seats, facing a central aisle, each one taken by a wounded soldier. Some seemed to be gas casualties, but none was Joe.

  ‘Nurse!’

  The cries of the wounded men followed Rose as she made her way along the train. Were they talking to her?

  ‘Nurse!’

  She’d got on near the front, in the carriage next to the engine, so she knew that if she walked back through the train, she’d be sure to find him.

  ‘Nurse!’

  The young women looked crisp and clean and calm, with their spotless uniforms and gentle efficiency. No wonder the men called them angels. Joe had called her an angel on that snowy night back in Ypres. His angel in the snow. It seemed a lifetime away.

  ‘Nurse!’

  The cries became part of the rhythm of the train as it ground its way through the countryside, great clouds of white steam rolling past the windows.

  ‘Nurse!’

  Rose stumbled on through another carriage, this one lined with bunks. The men were quieter here, lying with their eyes closed or staring into the thick grey light that filtered through the window blinds. Surely the light hadn’t been so dim when the train left?

  As Rose passed through the carriage, swaying with the movement of the train, something touched her hand. She turned and met the blue-grey eyes of a young man lying on one of the bunks.

  ‘Nurse?’ he said. His voice was very weak.

  Did he mean her? Rose looked around. There was no nurse to be seen, so she turned back to him. And he smiled. It was one of the happiest smiles she’d ever seen. And there was no doubt about it – he was smiling at her.

  ‘Nurse.’ He said it as if to confirm her existence.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rose was flustered, ‘I’m not a nurse actually. I can’t—’

  The young man smiled again. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I know what you are.’

  He held out his hand. Rose took it. It was rough and dry and very cold.

  ‘Warm,’ said the young man. His voice wasn’t much more than a whisper now. ‘I didn’t expect you to feel – warm.’

  ‘You’re going to be all right,’ said Rose.

  It was what her mum used to say when she was ill or upset. And it always made Rose feel better, even when she knew it wasn’t true. It wasn’t true now, she was pretty sure of that. The young soldier wasn’t going to be all right. That was why he could see her.

  Rose felt quite calm now. She smiled down at him and repeated her lie: ‘You’re going to be all right.’

  The young man squeezed her hand and smiled a sleepy smile. ‘I’m all right now,’ he murmured. ‘Lying here. Holding your hand. This. Is. Heaven.’

  Rose didn’t know what to say. She brushed strands of fair hair back from his cold damp forehead and smiled into his eyes.

  ‘Thank. You,’ he whispered. He drew a long, shuddering breath then turned his head away. The smile froze on his face, as if he’d turned into a photograph of himself.

  Rose gently detached her hand and moved away as a young nurse hurried up to her patient. There was nothing anybody could do for him now. And she had to find Joe.

  ‘Nurse!’

  When had a train ever been so long? Rose’s legs felt heavy, and her eyes had dimmed. The outlines of the bunks and the nurses and the hands that reached out to grab her coat as she passed were just shadows in the thick, grey mist that seemed to be filling the carriages.

  ‘Nurse!’

  The voices of the men and the whispers of the nurses were getting fainter and fainter like the memory of something that had happened a long time ago.

  ‘Nurse!’

  Like the smell of her dad’s jumper after he’d been working on the allotment. Or the smile on his face when he came to pick her up from school. It was all drifting out of reach.

  Except for Joe.

  He was the only thing that mattered. There was nothing now but the rhythm of the wheels and the grinding of her thoughts as the train hurtled on.

  She had to find him. She had to find him. She had to find
him . . .

  And then, just as she thought she couldn’t go any further, a terrible scream sliced through the air (was it the train’s whistle? The screech of its brakes? Was it her?), then an almighty crash and a horrible, shuddering hiss as the train crunched to a halt.

  And Rose fell. Down, down, down.

  She wasn’t conscious of hitting the floor. She wasn’t conscious of anything at all.

  When Rose opened her eyes she saw nothing. There was no difference between the darkness behind her closed eyelids and the darkness around her. For one awful moment she thought she’d gone blind, and then she looked up and realised she could see a few stars twinkling in the black. So it was night-time and she was outside. There was no sound.

  And it was terribly, terribly cold.

  Her borrowed coat was long and heavy and thick, but all she had underneath it were her owl pyjamas, and they weren’t enough. No socks, no vest, no scarf, no gloves. Her feet were freezing inside her boots and her hands ached. It was the sort of cold when you couldn’t imagine ever being warm again.

  Then there was the smell.

  It was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Like filth and muck and rubbish bins and the time the downstairs loo got blocked and flooded the kitchen and Mum had to get in a man called Dave the Drain who’d stood there in the middle of it in his wellies and poked a stick down the toilet.

  This smell was worse than that, actually. There was a horrible sweetness about it that stuck in your throat and clung to the inside of your nose and got into your head and curled itself around your brain like smoke. Rose had the feeling that it would be with her for the rest of her life, following her like a guilty memory.

  She reached out her hand in the dark and felt the ground next to where she was half sitting, half lying, her back propped against something. It was icy cold and wet. Sticky.

  Rose shuddered and huddled down in her coat, breathing in the faint violet scent of its previous owner. She tried to remember. She’d been on the train – yes, that was it, the hospital train – looking for Joe, when it had stopped suddenly and she’d fallen. She must have hit her head or something, she didn’t know. But where was she now?

  If only it wasn’t so dark. And quiet – the thick black air was heavy with silence. It was like she was alone in the darkness with only that smell for company. And she thought, for the second time since this – whatever-it-was – had started, Am I dead? Did the train crash? Was it hit by a shell? Did we all die?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a boom, a sound so faint it was almost gentle, and the world lit up.

  It was the whitest, brightest light Rose had ever seen, and for the ten or twenty seconds it lasted, everything was as clear and sharp as a glossy black-and-white photograph. Muddy walls on two sides, wooden boards on the ground, humped shapes sprinkled with snow, piles of rifles, shovels, rubbish, bits of wood, filthy tarpaulins, a dented petrol can, a tin helmet, a dog.

  A dog?

  There was a rattle of gunfire, and then the light died and the darkness was deeper than ever.

  ‘Tommy?’ Rose whispered.

  She heard his paws tapping along the wooden boards towards her, then felt a wet nose in her hand.

  Tommy! She buried her face in his fur and felt his tail thumping against her legs and she thought, If Tommy’s here . . .

  When she looked up, Rose realised that the darkness wasn’t as deep as it had been. It was beginning to look grainy, like slush, and she could make out vague grey shapes. Someone somewhere started to sing:

  ‘Roses are shining in Picardy . . .’

  Another voice shouted at him to shut up, and then, to Rose’s right, there was a rasping sound as someone struck a match. As the flame flared Rose saw, only a few feet away, the soldier light his cigarette. He was slumped against the muddy wall like she was, so covered in mud and filth that he seemed to be part of it, as if he’d grown out of the earth.

  Rose watched him smoking in the thick grey light, his cigarette glowing as he inhaled, and she realised where she was.

  She was in a trench. On the front line. And over there, where the bright white light had gone up, was the German army.

  The air was getting less solid now, and through the mist Rose could make out more shapes. Next to her was a huddled brownish-grey heap, half covered with a tarpaulin and speckled with snow. Rose put out her hand to touch it, and then withdrew it quickly. There was a pair of boots sticking out from the end, cracked filthy boots encrusted with mud.

  It was a man. Asleep or . . .?

  The shape stirred and groaned. Asleep. Thank goodness.

  Rose heaved herself up with an effort. Her body was sore and shivering, and there was still a sharp pain in her shoulder from where she’d fallen in the hotel. She wrapped her borrowed coat around herself as tightly as she could and looked down at the dog.

  Where is he, Tom?

  Did he get back to England safely?

  Did he recover from the gas?

  And then, in spite of what she and the officer had said to him:

  Did he come back?

  Tommy seemed to understand what she was thinking. He turned and trotted off along the trench, casting a look back as if he expected Rose to follow him. She took a deep breath and stepped over the mud-encrusted legs of the sleeping soldier. Then, as the dark grey of the night started to turn into the light grey of the dawn, she set off along the trench after the dog.

  She slipped past another humped shape, slithering on the slippery wooden boards that covered the ground, and turned a corner. There were deep ledges and cubby holes carved out of the walls of the trench, where Rose could make out more sleeping forms. Sometimes she had to step over the legs of men who were propped up against the sides, heads slumped on their chests, their faces hidden.

  Another corner and Rose nearly fell over someone. ‘Sorry!’ she said, automatically, realising she was standing on his hand. Of course, he couldn’t hear her. Joe was the only one who could. And Tommy, of course.

  But there was another reason.

  As Rose moved her foot and looked down at his face in the grainy grey light, she realised with a thud of horror why he would never respond.

  This soldier was dead.

  There was no mistaking it. He was lying on his back on the muddy boards with his eyes open. There was blood on his tunic, thick and dark in the gloom, but it was his face that left Rose in no doubt.

  She’d never seen a dead person before, not one who’d been dead a while. They’d asked her if she wanted to see her dad, but she’d said no. She hadn’t really known why, but she could tell Mum was relieved. She’d always thought a dead person might look like they were asleep, much the same as when they were alive, just still and quiet and peaceful.

  But she’d be wrong.

  There was no way this man could be asleep. His face was so strange and sunken-looking, it was almost as if he’d never been alive. He was just a shell, an object. Rose tried to think of the person he’d once been, of his face laughing or sad or looking into someone else’s eyes. But she couldn’t. It was like he’d never existed. That was the worst thing.

  And then, as she went to step over him, another thought hit her. All those other soldiers, the ones she’d thought were asleep, whose faces she couldn’t see – were they dead too?

  Rose looked up at the strip of sky above the trench. It was getting lighter. The air was becoming less opaque and the sky had a greenish tint. A new day was about to begin.

  ‘Wuff!’

  Rose turned as Tommy gave one of his polite little barks and she saw him. He was there. Lying on his back on one of the muddy shelves cut into the side of the trench, a helmet tilted over his eyes.

  Joe. Even though she couldn’t see his face, she knew it was him.

  Rose dropped down beside him, not caring about the icy slush that soaked through the knees of her pyjamas. Was he dead too? She felt Tommy’s body, warm against her side.

  Please let him not be dead, please.


  Tommy snuffled at her hand.

  Please.

  She brushed the snow off the tarpaulin that covered Joe.

  Please . . .

  He smiled. Then, without moving his helmet, he said, ‘There you are.’

  A shaft of light penetrated the trench and the same voice as before sang: ‘There’s never a rose like you . . .’

  Rose felt angry. ‘You came back!’

  Joe tipped the helmet back from his face and sat up, swinging his legs off the shelf and looking down at her with those bright brown eyes. His face was so grey and tired and dirty it was like a mask. But his eyes were the same. He looked like a cheeky wild animal watching her from behind a hedge.

  ‘I had to,’ he said.

  ‘You didn’t. How could you? After what happened to your friends.’

  Joe shook his head. ‘That’s why I had to, Rose.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘They were my best mates,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t leave them here on their own.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I had to do something. And this’ – he gestured at the desolate scene – ‘this was all I could do.’

  He’s different, thought Rose. Older. Or maybe just really, really tired.

  ‘It won’t change nothing, I know that,’ he was saying. ‘None of it will.’

  ‘Then why—?’

  ‘People like us, Rose, we just want to live happy quiet lives, don’t we? Little house. Enough to eat. We don’t know what this is all about, this war.’ Joe spat out the word as if it was a piece of bad meat. ‘And if we did, we wouldn’t care.’

  ‘So why, then? Why did you have to come back?’

  Joe shrugged. ‘Cos I’d rather be dead than spend the rest of me life feeling bad about me mates.’

  ‘It’s not your fault they died.’

  ‘I know that.’ Joe sounded as if he’d been thinking about this a lot. ‘But they did, Rose, and I didn’t and I can’t bear it.’

  Rose felt her eyes fill with tears. ‘Oh, Joe,’ she whispered. She did understand, of course she did. She felt the same about Dad. ‘I just . . . I wanted you to be safe. That’s all.’ Her voice went up in a squeak as she tried to fight back her tears.