‘We’ll probably go on to a music hall,’ Michael said, with a grin.
Florence gaped.
Helen linked arms with both Michael and Mabel, and they set off down School Gardens to the main road, giggling. Michael walked so fast – as if he were marching already – that the girls had to make little skips to keep up, which made Mabel giggle even more.
It felt festive, though it shouldn’t. This wasn’t 1914, with the war just begun and everyone predicting a swift and glorious victory. Helen remembered Dr Allen’s speech in prayers about the young generation being ‘privileged to be asked to prove itself in the theatre of war’. As a second-former, she had been very impressed. People knew better now: even she, a schoolgirl, had seen name upon name of the dead in school magazines and on the Roll of Honour in the school chapel. She remembered Sandy, on that long, tiring train journey, saying he couldn’t tell his mother what it was really like. Had he told Michael? She remembered them in the farmyard, hammering the palings together. They had looked like men, in their own world, smoking and chatting. She had been jealous. And if he had told Michael what it was really like – well, it hadn’t put Michael off.
She tightened her arm in her cousin’s. He’ll be gone tomorrow, she thought. And Sandy will be back in the front line soon.
She wasn’t jealous now.
FEBRUARY 1916
11.
It was a dank February afternoon. The days were lengthening but even so, it felt to Helen, letting herself into the house and shaking the rain off her school hat, as if spring would never come. Mama’s voice called from the parlour before she had even hung up her coat. She sighed – she’d been hoping to sneak up to her bedroom and start the new Elsie Oxenham book Mabel had lent her.
Mama was on the chaise longue, a rug over her legs. Her hair was not as neatly done as usual. Perhaps she had fallen asleep and ruffled it. She had a khaki muffler on her lap but it was only a few rows long, slipping off its needles. The lamps hadn’t been lit and the fire was almost out and, though the room was clean, it looked somehow forsaken.
‘I’ve been waiting for you to build up the fire,’ Mama said. ‘You know coal dust makes me cough.’
‘Sorry, Mama.’
Helen bent down in front of the grate and gave the fire a good riddling. There was a full scuttle of coal on the hearth and a basket of logs. Surely Mama could have put on a couple of logs? She seemed to have shaken off the worst of the chestiness that plagued her every winter; she just seemed cross most of the time.
‘There.’ Helen stood back as the fire, sullenly at first, and then with more conviction, leapt into life.
She frowned at her reflection in the over-mantel mirror, and pushed some wisps of hair behind her ears. A single plait was harder to keep tidy. An envelope poked out from behind one of the Staffordshire dogs. She pulled it out, and another one came with it, both Forces envelopes, both addressed to her. One was in Sandy’s familiar script; the other in Michael’s writing. This was the second time he had written from the training camp. ‘You know I can’t write home,’ he’d said on the morning they had gone to see him off. ‘So I’ll write to you instead.’
Sandy had written only a few days ago: she hadn’t expected a letter so soon, especially as he had hinted that they were moving up the line for what he called ‘some action’. Two in one day! All thoughts of Rosaly’s New School fled, even though Mabel had said it was first-rate. She couldn’t wait to get up to her bedroom.
But Mama said, ‘Don’t bother with those now, Helen. I’ve been on my own all day. Why are you so late?’
‘Miss Cassidy asked me to stay behind.’ She slid the letters into her blazer pocket. ‘She wants me to join her special class after school.’
‘Special class? You mean you need extra help? Your father won’t like –’
‘No!’ Helen flopped down in one of the armchairs. ‘The opposite, really. It’s her scholarship class – for girls she thinks are promising. It’s mostly older girls – Edith Hamilton and Patricia McBride – she’s never asked anyone from the fourth before!’
Her voice squeaked with excitement, even though she wasn’t really sure she wanted to join the class. That would be something to tell Sandy when she wrote back! If she was ever allowed to read his letter.
‘And what’s the point of it?’
Helen forced herself not to sigh. ‘The point is to help us prepare for college.’
‘College? Why would you want that? Don’t tell me you want to be a teacher like your father?’
‘I – I don’t know. But maybe.’
‘No,’ Mama said. ‘You’re only fourteen. I don’t want your head filled with nonsense about college.’
‘Papa will want me to go.’
Papa was always telling Helen to make the most of her opportunities at Belfast Collegiate. He hated seeing the children in his own school going to the mill or the rope-works or the shipyard at fourteen, even the bright ones.
There was a heavy silence before Mama said, ‘Papa will want you to come home after school and make yourself useful. You’ve no idea how long the days are for me here, alone.’
Helen chewed the insides of her cheeks.
‘And what’s the point in teaching? You’d only do it for a few years until you married. Unless you want to be an old maid like your precious Miss Cassidy?’ She twirled her heavy gold wedding ring on her thin finger.
‘I may not have a choice,’ Helen said. ‘All the boys are getting killed in France.’
In her pocket, the envelopes rustled. She hoped they weren’t being crumpled.
‘Don’t be dramatic, Helen. And talking of France – what did you do with those letters you lifted from the mantelpiece?’
‘They’re addressed to me.’
‘You’re too young to be writing to soldiers.’
‘Mama! Michael and Sandy are family.’
‘I might as well have lost my family when I married into your father’s.’ Helen hated it when Mama said things like that. ‘Goodness knows if we’ll ever be invited back home again.’ Mama sometimes called Derryward ‘home’.
‘Don’t say that! Will we not go for Easter as usual?’
Mama shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Sean and Bridie blame us for Michael joining up.’
‘Why?’
‘We sheltered him. Your father helped him find out where he needed to go. And Sandy – goodness knows what nonsense he put into Michael’s head. I don’t know why you had to take Sandy to Derryward that day. It’s caused nothing but bother.’
The unfairness of this stung like a dart. ‘But Michael was planning to join up for ages! It was nothing to do with Sandy!’
‘Well, that’s not what Sean and Bridie think. Now, will you go and make some tea?’
Helen wanted very much to tell her mother to get her own tea, but she made herself put on the trying-too-hard voice she’d been using a great deal recently to say, ‘Will I bring in some muffins, and we could toast them? There’s some of that damson jelly Granny brought round yesterday.’
She couldn’t escape with the precious letters until Papa came in, and then, with a leap of relief, she said she had lots of prep and dashed up to her bedroom. She closed the door and scrambled on to the bed, not bothering to take off her shoes.
She pulled the two envelopes out of her pocket and smoothed them. Which should she open first? It mattered. If she opened Sandy’s first was that saying she liked him better than Michael? Or vice versa?
Then again, she had had a letter from Sandy most recently, which made it Michael’s turn. She took a paper-knife from the desk by her bed, and slid open the top of Michael’s envelope.
It was short. He was enjoying camp life. The other lads were good sport. There was a lot of drill and trench-digging and bayonet practice. The sergeant was a demon, the food not as good as at home. They were all impatient to get to France and do some proper fighting. The fields of Kildare were lush and green and full of beautiful horses, but he missed the ro
ugh hills around Derryward. That was quite poetic, for Michael. She grinned, and placed the letter in the handkerchief box where she kept her special things.
All Sandy’s letters were there. He wrote every week or so, and at first, remembering their conversation in the train, she had been nervous that his letters would be full of unwelcome horrors – and annoyed with herself, for hadn’t she begged him to be honest? – but the most gruesome detail so far had only been about a rat. His platoon were a good lot, mostly Belfast lads like himself, though mainly inexperienced. One of them, who Sandy would only call Private C, was a bit windy – it took Helen a while to realise that meant cowardly – and needed a good bit of jollying along. Like Mama, Helen thought guiltily. But his second lieutenant, Robbie McGivern – now he was a great lad; the sort of lad he’d been on rugby teams with; they were old pals already. ‘You get to know a man pretty quickly out here,’ he had written.
She pulled a single sheet out of the envelope. It wasn’t as neat as usual, the handwriting sloping downwards on the page, the words smudged in places.
She knew before she read a single word, that it was going to be the horrible truth she had begged for and dreaded.
12.
My dear Helen,
We’ve had a sticky time since I last wrote. Won’t bore you with details. But we’ve lost some good men, and are at the wound-licking stage. I AM A1, YOU MUSTN’T WORRY ABOUT ME, NOT A SCRATCH.
Then the writing started to grow bigger and messier. Sometimes he was digging in so hard that the paper was nearly torn. It looked almost as though he were – well, not quite sober.
I think I told you about young C? Never took to army life. Even miles back from the line, he was slack and windy. I told you there was a big push coming? Usual thing; waiting all night to attack at dawn. And C’s whimpering and saying he’s sick – and that’s bad for the other lads. Panic in a trench – last thing you need. He’d got the wind up everybody. I told him to report sick – it was all I could think of, I just wanted him out of there.
Anyway the MO sent him back with a flea in his ear and told him to be a man. Or so I hear. Because he never came back. And in all the confusion – we attacked next morning – I think we thought he was dead anyway. And I don’t mind telling you, I thought, well good riddance to him. We’d lost Robbie in the attack – in the worst way, hit in the stomach, died in agony. I didn’t see it – but I heard it from the sergeant afterwards. And I couldn’t stop thinking about that.
Helen gulped. She had a horrible image of Robbie – in her imagination he looked just like Sandy – with his guts spilling everywhere. Like that long-ago lamb at Derryward, bleeding into the grass. She swallowed and forced herself to read on. At times she had to peer and squint to decipher the writing.
But late that day C was found and arrested for desertion. He was court-martialled. They asked me to report on his character because I knew him better than the Captain, who’d only arrived. I said he wasn’t a brave soldier and his influence on the other men was poor. So they passed the extreme sentence.
Do you know what that is, Helen? He was shot. By men of his own platoon. And maybe I could have stopped it. Maybe I could have pleaded for him. But I didn’t. I was angry with him. I wanted him to die. Because Robbie was dead and that little piece of NOTHING was alive. And didn’t deserve to be.
It happened this morning. I didn’t shoot him myself, but I had to give the order. The men are all upset. I –
The letter tailed off there. Helen turned the page but all that was written on the back – more neatly now – was
Sorry, you don’t want to know all this. To be honest I’ve had more than a tot of rum tonight. Filthy stuff. Don’t worry. Like I said I am A1. DON’T TELL ANYONE.
And write back if you can spare the time.
Sandy
* * *
Helen played with her dinner, but couldn’t force herself to swallow anything.
‘I hope you aren’t sickening for anything?’ Mama asked.
Don’t worry, Helen thought, I know you’re the only person allowed to be ill in this house.
‘I ate too many muffins at tea,’ she said. ‘Could I be excused? I have a letter to write.’
But she sat on her bed with her writing pad until her hands cramped with cold, and couldn’t find any words at all.
MARCH 1916
13.
By half-term – late this year as Easter wasn’t until near the end of April – the lower fourth had given up hope of Miss Linden ever returning. Annoyingly, it was Florence Bell, swollen with news and importance, who confirmed it.
‘Mummy met her in Robinson and Cleaver’s buying pillowcases. She’s staying home to comfort her poor parents.’ Florence sighed with the deliciousness of it. ‘They are stricken with grief.’
‘So you’ll need to find a new mistress to moon over,’ Helen said, rummaging in her desk for her algebra. ‘What about Miss Thomas?’
Even Florence giggled. ‘Those whiskers!’
‘Miss Cassidy’s the nicest,’ Helen said. She didn’t go in for pashes – certainly not on teachers – but she liked how Miss Cassidy kept on treating her the same even though she had refused to join the scholarship class. Helen couldn’t imagine Miss Cassidy leaving her job to comfort her parents. Yet everyone seemed to think Miss Linden was doing exactly the right thing. Was she? If Michael – if anything happened – would Nora give up her dreams to comfort Aunt Bridie? But then Nora’s dreams probably involved staying at home anyway, until she married. And Helen mustn’t think thoughts like that about Michael, who was still training and in no personal danger whatsoever.
Unlike Sandy. But she couldn’t let her thoughts stray in that direction.
‘We might get a new history teacher,’ she said. ‘We’ve learned nothing with Peg Leg.’
The classroom door swung open, and one of the older girls stood in the doorway: Edith Hamilton, a quiet, clever girl Helen had always liked.
‘I have an announcement about the school mag,’ Edith said, her clear voice making even the boys shut up and listen. ‘As you know, Miss Linden was the editor, and so nothing much has been done lately. Miss Cassidy’s taken over now, but if we’re going to have a mag this term we need volunteers. To write articles, edit, that sort of thing. You need to be able to spell. The meeting’s at break.’
When she had gone, Helen looked at Mabel. ‘We can spell,’ she said.
Mabel wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s spring. I’d much rather be outside with a hockey ball than editing reports of rugby and death. That’s all it is these days. Too depressing.’
‘Not all.’
But Mabel had a point. The magazine was called The Collegian, a slim, buff-covered volume which appeared every term. Some of it was dull – Dr Allen’s prize day speeches and accounts of life in India or Africa from some old boy who’d been there for decades. (There never seemed to be articles from old girls.) There were rugby and hockey and cricket reports, depending on the season, and lists of exam successes and prizes.
And then, since the autumn magazine of 1914, war news. Enthusiastic at first – details of old boys who’d joined up, and some old girls who’d gone to be nurses. Breezy letters home from the Front, full of affection for the old school. An account of the setting up of the Old Boys’ Parcel Fund, and the concerts held to raise money. The whole school went war-crazy for a time – girls were even allowed to knit at recreation.
In December 1914, the magazine reported the school’s first casualty. Helen hadn’t known Owen McArthur – he had left in 1908 and had been a regular soldier before the war. But like everyone else, she had felt a mixture of sadness and a kind of guilty thrill on reading about his death. After that, the casualties came too steadily for individual obituaries. In the last magazine, winter 1915, there had been five, two of them boys Helen remembered, class- and team-mates of Sandy’s. She always sent the magazine out to Sandy, even though she thought it must depress him these days. There was a Roll of Honour, amended ev
ery edition, of all the boys serving. It was always out of date by the time it was printed.
‘Sorry,’ Mabel said. ‘Not my kind of thing. And anyway, Winifred’s organising extra hockey practice for third-eleven hopefuls.’
Last term, Helen would never have signed up without Mabel. But, feeling shy, she went at break to the sixth-form room where the meeting was held. Unlike the Old Boys’ Parcels Committee, which was mostly girls, there was a good mixture of boys and girls, including George Rae, the only other person from the fourth. He made room for her at a double desk.
‘Should have guessed you’d be here,’ he said. ‘You always beat me at composition.’
‘Well, you always beat me at Latin,’ Helen said, but she couldn’t help glowing.
It was true she was good at writing. Perhaps, she thought, with a burst of ambition, I’ll be a lady journalist. She wasn’t sure there was such a thing, but she could ask Miss Cassidy.
As it turned out, only the sixth-formers would be allowed to write articles. Miss Cassidy, glancing down at her clipboard and then round the room, said, ‘Now, I need a team of really methodical people to check the Roll of Honour – it’s such an important job. Edith? Would you take that on? With – let’s see – Helen and George?’
Helen bit her lip with pleasure. She guessed that the Roll of Honour would involve painstaking work, transcribing details of the old boys’ regiments, rank and such information as their families had sent back to the school, sometimes through younger brothers and sisters. And yes, it might be depressing, as Mabel thought, because very often amending the list meant adding in the fact that someone had been killed or injured, but even so, it felt important to be trusted with something like that rather than just the hockey teams or the debating society reports.
‘It’s sort of war work,’ she explained to Mama that evening. She had deliberately waited until Papa was home, because she knew Papa would want her to do it. He had been a pupil at Belfast Collegiate himself. ‘I know you didn’t want me to stay for Miss Cassidy’s class but this is different.’
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