The three women grinned at one another. ‘Us,’ Evie said. ‘Us to reckon with, the monstrous regiment of women.’ Grace squeezed their arms and together they marched abreast and it was as though the sea parted, because suddenly they were there with the placard propped up on one of the Victorian pillars and the men searching for their loved ones. Where was Mr Auberon’s platoon? Where?
She saw Jack with Tim in his arms, and Millie, her face flushed, looking around while hanging on Jack’s arm. Martin was with them, and his mother too. Millie smiled at someone as he called to her. It was Roger. Evie watched as he came towards Millie and Tim, his son. Her brother stared at Mr Auberon’s batman, daring him to lay claim to the child he, Jack Forbes, held in his arms. There was no way the child should grow up being influenced by such a person, or so Jack had told Evie the last time she had seen him.
Her da was just behind him, but moved to place himself between the two men. Her mam was off to one side, listening gravely to something Captain Williams was saying.
‘I must go, Jack might need me.’ Evie darted forward, but Simon emerged from the milling crowd. Grace held her back. ‘I’ll do it, you go to Simon.’
Everything else was forgotten as she ran and stumbled in between everyone else to reach him, just as he was trying to reach her, and then she was in his arms and he held her, burying his face against her hair. Where was her hat? What was it about hats? What did it matter?
His khaki was rough. It felt so strange. Everything was so terribly strange. All these men leaving, going to fight, but they’d be safe, because they were strong, brave pitmen. But no, Simon wasn’t a pitman, he was a singer and a gardener, and he was gentle. He said, ‘I love you, I love you.’ Again and again, and she was saying it too. His lips were on hers, their eyes fixed on to one another, her arms locked around him, and his around her.
Jack was here now. ‘Let her go for just a moment, Si. A brother has some rights and the lass has to breathe.’
It was Jack who held her now, so big and strong. ‘I’ll take care of him, bonny lass,’ he said. ‘Never fear, I’ll take good care of him.’ Her mam came up, tapping her shoulder. ‘Let your mam give Jack a cuddle now, Evie.’
Evie stepped back and saw Grace on the other side of her mother. She saw the love shining from her. Over her mam’s head Jack was looking at Grace, and his love matched hers. Evie ached for them, but now there was someone by her side.
‘May I speak to you, just for a moment?’ It was Mr Auberon, or rather, the Rt Hon. Lieutenant Brampton. Evie was impatient. She wanted to be with Simon. She looked for him but he was with his father and mother, so she swung back to her employer. ‘Yes, Mr Auberon, just for a minute though.’
He looked older, stronger. The sun had tanned his face. His eyes were a deeper blue. How sad that he had no one to wish him goodbye except for a sister. She softened. ‘I wish you well, Mr Auberon. I truly do.’ And she did.
Everything was in the past and though Timmie had died, he’d died with his family around him, whereas if . . . She swallowed. His smile was strained. He bent a little closer, saying quietly, ‘Please, I ask you to be my sister’s support. You attended the same meetings, you both sided with the socialists. If you can bear to do it for a Brampton, please be her support, or even her friend.’ He touched his cheek, then his lip. ‘Teach her to protect herself. Forgive me asking. I have no right, but you’re a wonderful woman, Evie Forbes.’
He straightened now, his colour heightened. He reached for her hand, held it, bent over it, kissed it. He straightened, gave her a half-salute and then he was gone into the melee and the whistles were blowing, the steam was gushing from the boilers and the men were dragging themselves from all they had known. Where was Si? Here, here. He held her, kissed her, but Jack was pulling him away, his sergeant’s stripes coming into play. Martin, too, was playing his corporal’s role to the full. They were going, piling into the train, hanging from windows. Evie, her family, Simon’s family and Grace stood together looking for their men, but then Evie glanced around. Where was Lady Veronica?
She saw her standing back near the placard, quite alone, and hurried to her, taking hold of her arm because she looked so frozen, so pale. ‘Come with me. You’re not alone, we’ve all got one another.’
Lady Veronica turned then. ‘I couldn’t let my husband kiss me. I couldn’t.’ She touched her bruises. ‘The poor beggar,’ Evie said. ‘You can do better than that, he’s not the one who clobbered you, for God’s sake. Pull yourself together, he’s a good man.’ She walked Veronica over to their group. ‘You can blow him a kiss,’ she said. ‘He’s there, on the carriage step.’
Captain Williams was looking along the train, checking that all the doors were shut. The guard was waving his flag. Suddenly Lady Veronica called, ‘Richard, Richard. Be careful, please.’ He couldn’t hear. Evie joined in, then Mam, then Grace. ‘Richard, Richard, this way.’ He looked towards them at last and Lady Veronica blew a kiss. ‘Be safe,’ she called. ‘Just be safe and come home.’
He was scrambling into the carriage as the guard slammed the door but he leaned from the window, waving. He returned the kiss and his face was alight with love. Evie put her arm around Lady Veronica, whose face contained something, but what? Simon was leaning out as the train shunted forward, screeching and grinding, and then he was gone, pulled back because another man leaned out, waving, and then he was gone, and another took his place.
Veronica felt the pressure of Evie’s arm and made no attempt to move away from this group, from their friendliness, their warmth. Everything was different now; nothing that was ‘proper’ seemed to matter. Britain was at war, her brother was gone, Richard too.
She watched the train leave, smelt the coal, heard the steam, and the crying around her. ‘You need a friend,’ Aub had said.
‘Esther is living in London. Margaret used to be a friend but she came to us only to burn us down. How could she?’ she’d replied.
‘You have Evie. You think the same, you go to the same meetings, so make her a friend, Ver, at least for the duration of the war, and never be alone with him again. Never.’
On 18th August, after laying over at Folkestone for several days, Jack herded the platoon on to the cross-Channel ferry which was to take them across to France. Their packs were a damned nuisance and all sixty pounds of them dragged at their shoulders and banged into the bloke behind, or swung into the bloke beside them if they turned. ‘Down packs,’ he ordered. They did so, Martin digging him in the ribs and saying, ‘I’d rather be in the pit than slopping about on the top of this great bloody sea. Makes you feel right queer, man.’
Jack squatted down, dragging out cigarette paper and tobacco from his pocket. ‘Get down, out of the wind, and there’s a bucket over there if things get bad.’
Simon was leaning on the rail, enjoying a last look at Blighty. The blokes were singing, ‘Who’s your lady friend?’ and he joined in. Jack strung the tobacco along the paper, rolled it, licked it, smoked it. Who was his lady friend? And did she love him? He knew she did. After the station, she knew he did. He had withdrawn after Timmie’s death, because she had told him she no longer needed his help to dig, his help for anything. Why? If only he’d not listened, gone with his gut. One day he would ask her to be his love, somehow. But what about Millie?
He exhaled, the wind snatching at his breath. He owed Tim the chance of a decent life, and if Roger ever approached the boy again he’d kill him. He took a drag at the cigarette, the tobacco burning red. He’d made that threat before about Brampton and had done nothing, but there was still time and Roger was different, anyway. He wasn’t a fool or a bastard, he was just evil, a snake.
Martin was hanging over the bucket now, poor beggar, but it wouldn’t be long.
Lieutenant Brampton was moving between his men, returning their salutes, saying, ‘How are you? No one too sick?’ Doing his duty, Jack grinned, but he looked right poorly himself. He got to his feet as Brampton reached him. ‘Everything all right,
Sergeant?’
Jack saluted, pinching out the remains of his cigarette. ‘All present and correct, sir. We’ve a few not so well but a bit of solid ground beneath their feet will work a treat, either that or a good slab of fatty pork in between some bread.’
He kept his face still as Brampton’s face paled even further and he rushed away. Bernie called across, ‘You’re a heartless beggar, Jack Forbes, with a cast-iron stomach.’ Jack watched Brampton proceed, keeping in contact with the men, smiling, joking when all he must have wanted to do was vomit. He hated himself for admiring the bastard.
Above them the gulls were wheeling. Would Da still go sea-coaling? Yes, of course he would. Would he grow his leeks? Probably even more seriously than ever, with the war on. Would the pigeon fledglings he’d bought off Alec survive? Of course, if his da had anything to do with it.
By, his homing birds would do well for the army, and those that survived would be home by Christmas, along with everyone else, or so his da said. Jack squeezed his way along the ferry, listening to the singing, seeing some men playing cards, some writing letters home already, some just talking, sitting on the deck propped up against their packs. At the prow the officers were assembled, clustering around the colonel.
Jack stood quietly watching them, rolling another cigarette, lighting it behind his cupped hand. Such fancy clothes these professional soldiers wore, like those who had already gone to fight, and die. What the hell was going to happen to make it stop by Christmas? He looked back again at his own platoon, all previously Territorials. They were considered trained. Bollocks. They knew nothing of war, any more than he did. He smoked his cigarette down as far as he could, before pinching it dead. Dead. Words could take on different meanings, he thought.
As they approached the French coast at Boulogne the men crammed the rails, peering through the Channel mists at the marquees on the clifftop. They stretched along the cliffs and straggled up the slopes of the hills.
‘That’s where we’re headed, is it?’ Bernie was pointing to the encampments.
‘Ours is not to know, or to reason why, lad,’ Martin said, his colour on the verge of coming back now that the end of the torture was in sight. Behind them Jack wondered if this was where Grace would end up, because some marquees bore the sign of the Red Cross. It gave him comfort to think that she’d be there, safe but near.
‘Ours is just to do or die,’ Bernie finished for Martin.
They left port immediately, heading they knew not where, knowing that they just had to put one foot in front of the other and march along the slippery smooth cobbles out of the port and through one village after another, twisting their ankles and suffering huge blisters, feeling the sun beating down, stepping aside to let pass the London buses, London taxis, lorries and carts which were travelling back towards the coast with the injured.
They passed roadside cafes but didn’t enter, and on the second day they entrained into a cattle truck and the old steam engine clunked them along for thirty miles, and they all slept. Jack dreamed of forming fours, right wheels, left wheels, and excavating trenches, and marching, marching until they thought as one. With one exception: Roger still wheeled right when everyone wheeled left, with a pigeon in each pocket. Jack woke with a start as the train pulled into a siding, glad to be awake, glad that Roger stayed near Brampton, as a valet should. What a world, that a servant came to war with his master.
They slept in a barn that night, ignoring the rats and shovelling down bully beef. Towards the end of the next day they slogged through Frameries, and the townsfolk cheered them. They were to sleep in another barn and Jack watched as Captain Williams gathered the officers together, and they all handed over cash. They bought a barrel of beer for the men, and for a moment Jack felt he would follow the beggars to the ends of the earth and through whatever was thrown at them.
The field kitchen made soup and on top of that they had bully beef again. Their blisters tended, they were on the road again the next day and could hear the guns, and the firing. Not long now, then. Jack and Martin exchanged a look. Around them stood slag heaps with the sun turning them to gold. ‘Just like home,’ Jack murmured. Simon called, keeping in step as he looked back, ‘Where’re we going, Jack?’ Jack increased his pace and caught up with the front ranks. ‘Not sure the officers know, so why should I?’
They stopped at another village that night, and the officers were treated to smacking kisses on either cheek, courtesy of the hairy mayor. In return they stepped back a pace and shook hands firmly, well out of reach of such foreign behaviour. The men laughed, though they did it quietly.
In response to an order from Captain Williams Jack told the men to dig trenches on the far side of some unused rail tracks, though exhaustion was dragging at them. ‘Come on, we’re getting closer to wherever it is we’re going. You can hear the big guns, so who knows what’s going to happen? Get digging.’
Some villagers came to help as Brampton inspected the work so far. Jack said politely, ‘Merci, mais non.’ He explained to them in French that they must not assist the men, for if the Germans came they could be shot as francs-tireurs.
Brampton listened closely, and when the villagers returned to their houses he said, ‘Your French is very good, Forbes.’
‘Aye, me sister taught me. She needs it for menus, and recipes, doesn’t she, and her . . . Well, she just needs it. Grace Manton taught her. She’s almost fluent.’
As the men settled down for the night Auberon sat outside the officers’ billet in the local chateau having a last cigarette and watching the flashes from the guns, and listening to the distant thumps. He thought of all the secrets he and Ver had discussed in the kitchen at Easterleigh, and ran his hand over his face. It had never occurred to him that kitchen staff would understand French. Presumably Mrs Moore had knowledge of the language too, as she had also been inherited from Miss Manton.
He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, looking out at the trees in the distance. What colossal arrogance to assume that those downstairs, and miners and soldiers, knew nothing. He ran his hand through his hair. Had Evie fed Jack news of Auberon’s response to potential strikes? Had she told of their father’s behaviour? Was it she who had learned from Roger about the intended purchase of the Froggett houses? He started laughing now, softly. What a bloody amazing girl.
They marched a further five miles the next day into Belgium, towards the sound of artillery fire, leaving the trenches unused. It was 23rd August and they stopped in a village for a break. The villagers brought out bread and oil, with tomatoes. The town ahead was Mons, the mayor told Jack. It meant nothing to him. The men thanked the villagers and Jack sprinkled salt on the oil, squinting against the sun. Had there ever been such a wonderful summer? The fields were full of butterflies and heavy with wild flowers, scabious, cow parsley and poppies, such a profusion of poppies. Whatever was to come, it didn’t half knock working at the coalface into a cocked hat.
He dug in his battledress pocket for the stub of a pencil he carried and wrote a quick note to Evie, telling her that he’d dobbed her in: Auberon knew that she spoke French. He told her that he loved her and to give his love to Tim, Mam and Da, and Millie, of course. He crammed it back into his pocket as Brampton approached. ‘Tell the men to prepare for action, Sergeant.’
There it was, straight out of the blue. Jack stared again at the butterflies flitting from flower to flower, weaving in between the long sun-baked grass, at the new green growth showing amongst the stubble of the more distant cornfields. He sprang to his feet. ‘Yes sir.’ His salute was smart.
They deployed immediately, marching from the village towards the heavy guns which were firing rapidly now. German shells were landing half a mile in front and they kept moving towards them. ‘Steady,’ called Lieutenant Brampton, taking the lead. Ahead Captain Williams led the 4th Battalion, sitting astride his horse as though he was taking a stroll in Hyde Park. Lieutenant Brampton walked. He wouldn’t bring Prancer, Jack had heard, in case he was hurt
, but he’d been taken anyway. The talk was the daft beggar was trying to find him.
They passed a private leading a pack mule laden with ammunition. Two minutes later a shell landed. The mule and the man were gone. The blast caused them to stagger and duck. Shrapnel spattered. ‘Steady,’ roared Jack and Brampton together. Martin, marching at Simon’s shoulder, called, ‘By, lad, we could do with more than this beggar of a cap. A saucepan would be a grand idea.’ He was humming, just like he used to in the cage.
Jack grunted. ‘One day they’ll think of something better, probably when the whole bloody thing is over.’
The incoming shells were slower than those of the British artillery, which was equipped for rapid firing. They were trotting now, their packs banging against their backs, until they flung themselves into the shallow trenches that fed into those of the 5th Battalion’s. ‘Took your bleedin’ time,’ a private said, ducking as more shells went over. Somewhere a church bell was ringing.
Jack and his platoon prepared to fire, lying across the front of their trench, elbows propping them up, rifle butts on shoulders. ‘Hold your fire,’ came the order. They held as the first patrol of German cavalry they had ever seen charged out of the wood to the left of them towards the line. For a moment it seemed like a storybook come to life, unreal, but then fear drenched Jack like nothing he had ever known, his mouth dried, his fingers froze. Closer they came. Closer. ‘Fire,’ Brampton screamed and now Jack was pressing the trigger.
These were men he was firing at. Living breathing men, and horses, but they were charging him and his marras. He pulled the trigger again, felt the recoil. Again and again he fired and wondered how he could live with the guilt of killing, but by the end of an hour that guilt was gone. It was survival that mattered. All day they fought, their barrels red-hot, as the Germans came across in waves only to be repulsed.
The battalion had been trained in rapid rifle fire and the rifles sounded more like machine guns. There was smoke, the sound of trains roaring through the air which were in reality shells. There were the screams, the neighs of horses. A British shell landed on a charging line of Hun cavalry. Carnage ensued. The cavalry gave way now to infantry who were approaching across the open ground only to be mown down, but there were so many, far too many.
Easterleigh Hall Page 32
