Sunset Ridge

by Nicole Alexander

  Thorny rolled his eyes. ‘Bloody new chum officer, couldn’t find his way to a whore-house, that one.’

  ‘You lot are being transferred across permanently,’ Thaddeus continued through the men’s sniggering.

  ‘W-what? Joining us?’ Luther punched Harold in the arm. Dave added his approval to the chorus of voices.

  ‘Well, looks like you won’t be getting rid of me so quickly, eh, Thaddeus?’ Harold’s words had an edge to them.

  ‘War isn’t the place for petty grievances, Harold,’ Thaddeus replied.

  ‘You’re right, mate. A man should know when he’s bested,’ Harold retaliated. Accepting a letter from Trip, he brandished the envelope for all to see before making a show of smelling the paper as if it were scented.

  Thorny gave a low, appreciative whistle.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Captain Egan interrupted, singling each man out with a hard stare. ‘And put that blasted fire out, Harrow, before you have Fritz on top of us. Now, you’ve heard the orders: we will be moving out tonight, and not before time.’ He gestured to Thaddeus. ‘Harrow has made sergeant.’ The announcement brought enthusiastic as well as ribald comments, soon silenced by a wave from the captain. ‘Keep your heads down, men, and we’ll be out by nightfall. Post your sentries, Sergeant.’

  Thaddeus accepted the men’s congratulations, aware of a new wedge between him and Harold. He now outranked his old friend.

  ‘Can I have your boots, Luther, if you get knocked?’

  Luther stopped wiggling his toes and considered Trip’s request. In comparison to Trip’s regulation issue, his boots were well cared for.

  Trip squatted opposite in anticipation. ‘Oh, and this is yours.’

  Luther stared at the letter before tucking it inside his uniform. ‘I t-tell you w-what,’ Luther replied, ‘you give me t-ten quid and a p-packet of smokes now and th-they’ll b-be yours.’

  Trip searched his pockets for the money and cigarettes and was about to hand them across when a thought came to him. ‘But what if you don’t get knocked?’

  ‘Don’t be b-bloody silly,’ Luther replied, taking the bartered goods. ‘Of course I w-will.’

  Temporary field hospital, France

  July 1917

  Sister Valois directed the walking wounded up the creaking stairs of the chateau. The least able were assisted by volunteer orderlies who also offered words of encouragement. At the end of the line a soldier faltered on the first step. Placing a hand on his elbow, she urged him onwards. The blind always proved difficult to accommodate but at least the worst of this young man’s injuries were nearly healed. The men moved stiffly, grateful for the support the age-smoothed banister provided. On the landing above, framed by a six-foot-high tapestry of seventeenth-century huntsmen on horseback, three nurses in their pristine uniforms waited to take the men to their respective wards. Sister Valois lingered a little longer than necessary at the foot of the stairs until the last of the men reached the second level. The receipt and care of the wounded may have given her greater satisfaction if she did not have to send them back to the hell from which they had only recently escaped.

  Yesterday nine men had been released from her care only to be returned to the front following their allotted leave time. Although Sister Valois’s emotions never overtook the professional and some­what aloof attitude she had so carefully cultivated since the beginning of the war, she found it increasingly difficult to feign indifference. The soldiers had been driven away in a civilian bus, and one of them, a Parisian, had pressed a palm against the rear window, his narrow face staring coldly at the chateau until the bus turned out of the long driveway.

  The soldier had taken part in General Nivelle’s April offensive at the battle of Aisne and complained bitterly of having to return to the battlefield. Nearly all of his friends were dead, he had told the occupants of the ward upon his discharge, and following the failed April attack – which was supposed to have ended the war within forty-eight hours – thousands of his fellow French soldiers had mutinied. Waiting at the end of the ward with clipboard in hand, Sister Valois had been stunned by the news. It was the first she had heard of such cowardly behaviour, and she worried for the men listening to such dispiriting tales. When on the Parisian’s leaving she protested at the impromptu address, he cited the continuing high French casualties. They only wished for a decent amount of leave, the Parisian claimed, as they were being forced to stay at the front-line for weeks on end.

  ‘Excuse me, Sister Valois, the other ambulances have arrived.’

  Thanking the male orderly, she crossed the parquet floor and walked through the interconnecting reception rooms. In the main salon, with its mirrored doors and gilt chandeliers, she surveyed the neat rows of cots housing the convalescing soldiers. Those who were able wrote to loved ones or played cards, while a curtained section at the far end of the room provided a wounded junior French officer privacy from the enlisted men and access out onto the chateau’s grounds.

  The entrance hall bustled with the arrival of stretchers. Red Cross staff, American medics and French drivers were being disgorged from the ambulances, which were reversed up under the portico to escape the light rain. A French orderly was doing his best to stop the forward movement of the wounded until Sister Valois’s arrival, and he smiled in relief at her approach. As the queue grew, so did the mutterings of discontent from the ambulance staff. Joining the throng were a number of volunteer aides, while a handful of junior nurses assembled quietly and awaited instruction.

  ‘We cannot possibly accommodate all these patients.’ Sister Valois counted five more wounded than space allowed. Her complaint, addressed to the head of the ambulance convoy, was met with apology.

  ‘I have my orders, Sister, and to be frank, where else would I take them?’

  The stretcher-bearers waited patiently, their arms taut with the strain of the injured they carried.

  ‘Very well.’ They could hardly be turned away. ‘We will make do.’ Her orders were quick and precise. The volunteers were assigned to bring extra cots from storage and squeeze them into the already cramped converted bedrooms upstairs while the incoming patients were assessed. The worst of the injured would be assigned to Ward A, the dining room, with those patients not expected to survive. It was against Sister Valois’s rules – she firmly believed that placing a wounded man next to another with little chance of survival did nothing for recovery – but Ward A contained spare cots, and bed space had to take priority over mental-health concerns.

  When the last of the wounded had streamed into the chateau, Sister Valois stood in the entrance hall, arching her right foot. Hours walking across the chateau’s parquet floors gave her aching cramps in both ankles and all toes, a condition heightened by sheer exhaustion. The rattling of cots and the steady clomp of boots echoed through the old building, occasionally interspersed by a female voice of complaint. She wondered if the ghosts the junior nurses and volunteers spoke off would finally be evicted from the building with this latest influx of wounded. Certainly there was barely a corner unused. Next on the agenda would be to inform the kitchen staff of the extra mouths to feed, and she would have to cancel all leave for this coming weekend now they were at capacity again.

  ‘Are you the nurse in charge?’

  Already thinking of the extra sheets required, she stared blankly at the man standing in the doorway of the chateau. Behind him ambulance drivers leaned on their vehicles, smoking and laughing.

  ‘I said, are you the –’

  ‘Yes, Captain, I am Sister Valois. I speak English.’

  ‘Good, because my schoolboy French is limited.’ He strode towards her. A freckle-skinned, sandy-haired man of middling height and weight and a cautious smile, he introduced himself as Captain Harrison of the American Field Ambulance.

  ‘We have seen very few Americans here.’ Sister Valois ushered him forward, noticing the thick lashe
s framing pale kindly eyes. ‘You will have to walk with me, I’m afraid, Captain, we are rather busy today.’

  They arrived in the first of the reception rooms in which volunteers were placing clean linen on a number of cots. Captain Harrison gave a low, appreciative whistle as his gaze travelled beyond the occupants of the makeshift ward to the frescos on the ceiling and the gilt-framed portraits of unknown men and women hanging on the buttercup-yellow walls. ‘Very nice.’

  Sister Valois checked the contents of a clipboard passed to her by a junior nurse and inspected an ulcerated leg belonging to a Frenchman aged in his forties. ‘It needs to be lanced and drained,’ she advised the nurse in French.

  The owner of the leg winced. ‘Not again, Sister.’

  ‘What is a little scratch compared to what you have already endured?’ she reminded him kindly. The soldier nodded reluctantly and she turned to the captain, who was observing her with interest.

  ‘I won’t hold you up,’ he began. ‘Although it is a rather long story. I’m currently on leave and I thought I would pay you a visit.’

  ‘Me?’ Sister Valois queried in English before moving to the next new arrival and switching back to French. ‘A saline drip and, Nurse, redress this wound.’ She pointed at the bloody head bandage.

  ‘Well, a patient of yours, actually,’ the captain said almost sheepishly. ‘This is going to sound a little strange, but –’

  ‘I assure you, Captain,’ she interrupted, ‘I have heard and seen many strange things. Please excuse me.’ Scanning another clipboard, she turned to the nurse hovering at her side and addressed her in French. ‘This soldier should be in Ward A.’ She tapped the clipboard. ‘Can you not read? He has been burned by gas. Call the orderlies and tell the nurse on duty in Ward A to exchange one of the lesser cases with this young man.’

  The chastised nurse nodded. ‘Yes, Sister.’

  Captain Harrison cleared his throat. ‘As I was saying, Sister, the reason for my visit today . . . it’s about a dog.’

  Sister Valois stopped prodding at a distended abdomen. ‘Did you say a dog?’

  ‘Yes.’ Captain Harrison waited until the examination had been completed and then drew her aside.

  She found herself remembering what it was like to be touched by a man. A single word came to mind: comforting.

  Captain Harrison continued: ‘A dog and a French soldier by the name of –’

  ‘Francois Chessy.’ Sister Valois raised a hand to her throat. ‘He is here.’

  ‘So, he’s still alive? I have to say, it was some task tracking him down.’

  ‘Francois is strong in the mind, stubbornly strong. This strength may yet be his saving, for he has been in hospital since his wounding last year at Verdun.’

  Captain Harrison considered this piece of information. ‘And he had a brother, Antoine?’

  ‘Yes. Antoine died at Verdun. But the dog you speak of, Captain, have you seen him? Have you seen the war dog they call Roland?’

  ‘Roland,’ Captain Harrison repeated. ‘I didn’t know his name. Some orderlies at a field hospital near Amiens asked if I would take the animal, and for some reason I agreed. But, you know this animal, this “war dog” as you call him?’ He thought of the great mangy dog and found it difficult to equate such a lofty description with the wolf-like mongrel he knew.

  ‘Yes,’ the woman replied.

  He could sense the expectation bubbling up within her. Perhaps the rumours were true, Captain Harrison thought. Certainly the animal was graced with an uncanny sixth sense when it came to differentiating between the wounded and the dead, but dragging soldiers to safety in no-man’s land? That was a stretch.

  Sister Valois touched his sleeve. ‘You have not answered my question, Captain. Have you seen Roland?’

  ‘Yes,’ the captain answered slowly. ‘Yes, I have.’

  Chessy farmhouse, ten miles from Saint-Omer, northern France

  August 1917

  ‘G’day. I’m looking for the artist.’

  Harold stopped dunking his smalls in the water trough and inclined his head to direct the soldier towards the open patch of ground in front of the farmhouse. Dave had the best spot of the billeted diggers: dappled sunlight from nearby trees, the cool stone of the house behind his back, and an admiring Frenchwoman who treated him to titbits from her kitchen. None of them could top Dave’s gift of a sketch of the farmhouse with the owner standing in the doorway.

  ‘Over th-there, next to the b-bloke shaving,’ Luther added. This boy appeared younger than the last, a skinny, flea-bitten sort who was likely to get blown back across the Channel to England if a shell landed near him. The young soldier glanced around and then walked through the groups of resting diggers. Some played cards or slept, others cleaned the dishes from the portable field kitchen, while a handful played cricket with a cloth ball and a length of timber.

  ‘Sixty-six and still not out,’ Thaddeus yelled as he lobbed the ball into the trees. Trip and Fall rushed after it. Thaddeus sat down in front of the wicket – a broken bird cage – and grinned.

  ‘Show-off,’ Harold mumbled in Thaddeus’s direction before turning back to watch the newest subject head off to find Dave. ‘More stray soldiers have been here than I’ve had cooked breakfasts.’ Stripping off, he clambered into the animals’ watering trough, his knees close to his chin. ‘We can thank Captain Egan for Dave’s new-found celebrity. Not that we’re making much out of it. A man can’t live on smokes. We’ll pass the word along that from now on it’s a bottle of plonk or a chicken in return for one of his sketches.’

  ‘F-fair enough.’ Luther hung his shirt to dry over a branch and sat on the ground. The men were lethargic this morning. They had spent the past few days loading cut lengths of timber onto carts to be used to reinforce trenches. The week prior they had been transported on buses from Tatinghem to Saint-Omer and on arrival had helped another work detail load munitions for transportation to the front. It was obvious that the brass had a new push coming. ‘Have you t-talked to Thaddeus yet?’

  ‘No,’ Harold stated.

  To be fair, trench life since Harold’s arrival had not allowed much time for chinwags. ‘Isn’t it t-time you t-two made up?’ Luther suggested. ‘What are y-you fighting about, anyway?’ He thought back to the day Thaddeus was promoted to sergeant and the antagonistic way in which Harold had sniffed appreciatively at a letter received in that day’s mail.

  ‘It’s between us.’ Harold’s words were clipped. ‘Best you stay out of it.’

  Luther wasn’t inclined to stay out of it, especially because he couldn’t get a word out of Thaddeus either. What he did know was that there had been two fights between the former best mates last year: one at the Banyan Show and another out the back of Lawrence Ironmongers a couple of days before he met up with Thaddeus on the Western Mail.

  ‘There is something I want you to know, though, if you can keep it a secret.’

  ‘What?’ Luther asked.

  ‘Corally Shaw and I are engaged.’ Harold leaned back in the trough. ‘Does that bother you? I know you and she had something going for a while back at the show last year, and she stood up for you in court.’

  Luther was slow to respond. There were two letters from Corally secreted in his pocket and neither mentioned anything about Harold. He thought back to the day at the cemetery when Corally first told him that Harold had asked her to wait for him until after the war. It wasn’t possible, was it? ‘Really? You kept th-that quiet.’

  ‘Well, I had to. Actually, if you want to know, that’s one of the reasons your brother and I fell out. That and what my mother would call a personality clash.’

  ‘Are you t-telling me you two were fighting over C-corally Shaw?’ Luther could not believe it. First Harold was telling him that he was engaged to Corally and now he was saying that she was one of the reasons Harold and Thaddeus were avoiding each ot
her. ‘Does Th-thaddeus know about you and Corally?’

  ‘Not that we’re engaged.’

  Luther’s head spun. Something was very wrong. Corally was writing to him, and as for Thaddeus . . . Luther was sure that Harold had his wires crossed. Everyone expected Thaddeus to marry well, and if he was promoted in the field again, he would return to Australia with the pick of the graziers’ daughters to choose from. Hell’s bells, Luther would bet his rum ration on Miss Bantam resurfacing. Lighting a cigarette, he concentrated on controlling the trembling in his left hand. It was as if his stutter had taken up residence in this new yet unscathed part of his body, for his speech was much improved.

  Harold splashed water on his face. ‘Are you going to tell me who you’ve been writing to?’

  Luther drew on the cigarette. ‘A friend.’ As he blew out a ring of smoke his thoughts turned to Corally’s last letter.

  I shuld ave written soonir, Lu, but Im not real good at putting pen to paper. I just want you to no that you were rite that day in the cematary. We are like peas in pods and I liked your kiss. Weve got somthing speshal. I hope you come home soon.

  Whenever he thought of Corally’s words Luther felt stronger, taller. He was cloaked in the bond they shared, and that letter, tucked protectively against his chest, carried him safely through the worst of the skirmishes they endured. When he hopped the bags, snipped at barbed wire or led night raiding parties into German trenches to discover which divisions were against them, Corally was there, her words reminding him of another, better life.

  ‘A friend, eh?’ Harold soaped his hair and disappeared underwater.

  Obviously Corally and Harold did step out together before the war, Luther decided. After all, he and his brothers had been confined to Sunset Ridge for weeks, leaving Harold at a loose end. But an engagement? Luther remembered clearly the day in the courthouse when Dave had repeated Corally’s wish to visit them at Sunset Ridge. That didn’t sound like a girl who wanted to out with Harold.