Poppy Day

by Annie Murray

  ‘We’m gunna play tag,’ they commanded. ‘So come on with us.’

  Jess smiled over at the twins’ mom. ‘No saying no to them, eh? Bet they give you the run around?’

  ‘Not ’alf.’ The woman smiled wearily.

  ‘Eh—’ Vi said. ‘Look – ’e’s come an’ all!’

  Peter Stevenson was walking towards them, a little self-consciously, Jess thought, one long arm raised in greeting. He was dressed casually in grey flannel trousers and a dark green sweater, with a jacket over one arm. Beside him, holding his spare hand and walking with stolid, rather uncertain steps, was a young boy.

  ‘Oh look,’ Sis said. ‘His little lad. Poor little bugger.’

  ‘Oi,’ Vi said. ‘Watch yer mouth.’

  ‘Morning!’ Peter Stevenson put his bag down. They all replied, cheerfully though with a shyness that his own reserve brought out in them. He wasn’t like some of the men they were used to, full of lip, and they weren’t sure how to talk to him.

  The whole group must have numbered about sixty or seventy people, and now they were closer, the little boy was overcome and turned away, pressing his face into his father’s thighs.

  ‘Now, Davey – there’s no need for that, is there?’

  Peter Stevenson gradually prised the boy away from him and squatted down to look into his face. The child tried to move close again and hide his eyes.

  ‘These are the ladies from the factory and their families,’ he said gently. ‘They all want to see you, and we’re going to have a picnic together, remember? Maybe have a game or two.’ He turned, smiling. ‘He’s always been shy, but recently . . .’ He stopped. They all knew what he meant.

  Jess watched the careful way he looked into his son’s face, reassuring him. But David’s eye was caught by a movement beside him. Grace had crawled across the grass and was looking up at him with her mouth open, drooling. The boy squeaked with alarm and clung to his father again.

  ‘She wants to play with yer!’ Polly said. Grace moved closer, kneeled up at the side of him, wrapped her arms round the boy’s legs and started sucking experimentally on one of his kneecaps. He started to giggle.

  All the women laughed too, and for the first time Jess could remember, so did Peter Stevenson. By the time they ate dinner the sun came out, coats and cardigans came off and everyone relaxed visibly in the warmth. Jess lay back, straw hat on the grass beside her, feeling the sun on her eyelids, warming her stiff limbs. She stretched like a cat. It was so nice to lie still! She knew in a while she’d have to give Polly a rest and take her turn traipsing round after Grace who wouldn’t sit in one place for a second. But for now she felt drowsy, half detached from the shrieks and laughter around her, the distant chug of a bus on the road. She could hear women talking lazily round her, and mixed with their chat, the occasional low sound of Mr Stevenson’s voice which she found reassuring. She remembered the tender way he had looked at his son and for a moment a great longing filled her. When had her own father ever looked at her like that? The sunlight and country smells of grass and earth took her mind back. The orchard at Budderston, the hayfield, Louisa . . . And Alice. She recalled Olive’s sudden, so far as she could see, unprovoked anger that day. Had it been out of bitterness at all Olive had endured, when Louisa had escaped so much of it? The three women haunted her. Even though Olive was part of the present, the past felt mysteriously, nudgingly present. But shortly the actual present crashed in on her.

  ‘Oh, take ’er off of me for a bit, will yer, Jess – she’s running me ragged!’

  Jess sat up drowsily. Polly was clutching a beaming, grubby-faced Grace whose arms and legs were pedalling frantically in her eagerness to be off.

  ‘Come on then, Gracie.’

  It was a little later, while Jess was trailing round after Grace as she half crawled, half staggered holding Jess’s hand, ferreting into people’s bags and picking up odd bits of soil and leaves to eat, that some of the older children tired of games and discovered the stream.

  There were four boys all about Ronny’s age, including David Stevenson. Ronny, who had quite recovered from his quiet moments of awe and wonder, was the undoubted ringleader. Jess saw them hurtle down into the shade which shrouded the low banks of the stream. After a second or two’s uncertainty they pulled their shoes and socks off and their shrieks of agony and delight could be heard at the coldness of the water.

  ‘Let’s go and keep an eye on ’em,’ Jess said, picking Grace up. ‘Ooh, you’re a lump. And don’t go thinking you’re going in with them ’cause yer not.’

  When she reached the stream the boys were all bending over something they could see in the water, prodding at it with their fingers. She stood watching, Grace struggling in her arms. In a moment Sis came to join her.

  ‘They awright? Not getting into any mischief, are they?’

  ‘Not so far, but there’s no telling.’

  A couple of other women were looking across towards the stream, but seeing Jess and Sis there, sunk down again thankfully. Peter Stevenson had got up and was also walking towards them.

  ‘Is David in there?’ he called, sounding anxious.

  Jess nodded. ‘They’re all awright.’

  He had taken his hat off and his black hair was blowing waywardly about. He seemed aware of it and tried to smooth it with one hand but it sprung up again. When he reached them, Jess felt small again beside his tall, rangy figure.

  ‘Don’t get your clothes wet, will you?’ he called to the boys.

  They ignored him, their eyes fixed on the water in search of tiddlers.

  There was silence for a moment. Jess felt self-conscious beside Peter Stevenson. He was staring across the stream, out through the trees the other side, to the grass beyond. His face was sad and her heart went out to him.

  ‘Who’s looking after Davey?’ she asked. ‘I mean when you’re at the works.’

  ‘Oh – I’ve got a housekeeper. Very kind lady. And sometimes my mother comes – she’s been very good too. Things could be worse,’ he finished valiantly.

  Could they? Jess wanted to ask. Instead she said, ‘’E’s a lovely little lad. Got your eyes.’

  She saw him smile. ‘He’s a good boy. We help each other along.’

  Ronny spotted them watching and grinned.

  ‘Oi, Jess, Sis – come on in ’ere with me, it’s bostin’!’

  ‘No ta, Ronny,’ Jess said. ‘I’ve got to hold on to Grace.’

  ‘I’ll take her if you like,’ Peter Stevenson offered.

  ‘Oh – no, yer awright. I’m not keen on cold water.’

  ‘Oh—’ Ronny pleaded. ‘Go on!’

  ‘I’ll go in with them.’ Sis had been rather hoping for a paddle. She slipped her shoes off and slithered down into the water. ‘Oh my God – it’s flipping freezing!’ She laughed, holding up her skirt, trying to tuck it between her knees, and waded unsteadily over to the boys.

  ‘You’re close, you and your sisters, aren’t you?’ Peter Stevenson observed. He stood in a relaxed manner, hands loosely clasped behind his back.

  ‘Oh we ain’t sisters,’ Jess laughed, rearranging Grace in her aching arms. ‘Well, Sis and Poll are – I’m their cousin. Their name’s Beeston – well, Poll’s was before she was married. Mine’s Hart.’

  ‘Oh – sorry. Too many names to take in. But I thought you all lived together . . .’ he trailed off, afraid of seeming too nosey.

  ‘We do. I came to Brum to live with my auntie just before the war. She sort of took me in when I . . .’ She had been about to say ‘ran away’ but it sounded bad, she thought. Flighty. ‘I er, didn’t get on too well with my stepmom so I thought I’d just get out of ’er way. Auntie’s been good to me.’

  ‘That’s a hard thing to do. Your mother . . .?’

  ‘She died years ago. Only Sarah – that’s my stepmother – well, the older I got the worse we got on.’ She spoke matter of factly, not thinking she gave away any of the pain of the situation, but Peter Stevenson could sense it
in the way she looked away at the ground, touching her cheek against Grace’s.

  ‘I lost my father when I was ten,’ he told her, his eyes on Sis who was holding hands with Ronny and Davey, larking about with them. ‘Changes everything, doesn’t it? If he’d lived I’d’ve stayed on at school, but as things were, it was out to work as soon as possible. Still – could be worse,’ he said again. He smiled, and Jess smiled back shyly.

  ‘I’ll have to move back and put this one down,’ she said, looking at Grace. ‘My arm’s’ll drop off else.’

  As she spoke, there was a great yell from Sis. The two lads had been pulling playfully on her arms and Sis had slipped on one of the rounded, slimy stones at the bottom and was now sitting down, laughing and shrieking at the same time.

  ‘Oh my – oh flippin’ ’ell, it’s icy cold! Oh, you little perishers . . .’ She struggled to stand up, water pouring from her clothes.

  Jess started laughing, but Peter Stevenson said, ‘Oh goodness – let me help you.’ And stepped into the stream, wading along without even rolling up his trousers.

  Sis was still trying to get to her feet, splashing about almost hysterical with laughter.

  ‘You’ve still got yer shoes on!’ she cackled, pointing at Peter Stevenson, seeming to find this the funniest thing of all. ‘Oh my word, look at that – they’ll be ruined!’

  Peter Stevenson took a couple of strides then looked ruefully down at his feet. ‘Oh dear!’ he said. ‘What an idiot!’

  Jess and Grace walked back up the grass with Sis and Peter Stevenson dripping alongside them, all of them unable to stop laughing. Ronny and David, having expected a serious ticking-off, were laughing as much from relief as anything.

  Polly looked at them with amused incomprehension as they approached, holding out her arms to take Grace.

  ‘What in the . . .?’

  Having all been released into laughter, none of them could seem to stop.

  Jess and Peter Stevenson’s eyes met as they laughed, each enjoying the other’s mirth. As he looked at her pink cheeks and wild, wispy hair, the thought came to him, what a lovely girl she is, that Jess. Somehow sad, but lovely.

  Thirty

  France, October 1917

  The hospital train approached the railhead at a shrieking pace, smoke puffing out into the chill blue sky. As it drew nearer it slowed, with an intermittent screech of brakes, eventually to ease its way alongside the platform with a glide which barely suggested it was moving, and halt with a final swooshing climax of steam.

  The orderlies awaiting its arrival were working against the clock, each carrying a clipboard, making their way back and forth along the tightly packed rows of stretchers, several deep, which occupied the length of the platform. The wounded men on the stretchers were covered with grey blankets, only their faces visible, some appearing swaddled like babies and just as helpless. They had been assembled from the Casualty Clearing stations and many were deep in post-operative shock, glassy-eyed, silent. But amid the terse calls of the orderlies and the hiss of the engine, low groans and an occasional cry of pain cut through the cold air.

  By and large the orderlies treated the wounded men with gentleness and respect. Just one or two were brusque, unable or unwilling to see into the extent of their shock and incapacity. The embarkation details had to be completed before their patients could be entrained and they were under pressure, so that for the less sensitive of them the prostrate men became a mass of spiritless items with which they had to deal.

  ‘Name?’

  A ginger-haired orderly stood over one young man with full lips and cropped wavy hair who was one of those evidently suffering from shock, his face deathly pale. The lad stared up at him with a frozen gaze, straining to make sense of the question.

  ‘Can you tell me your name, chum?’

  His licked his lips. ‘Jem . . .?’

  ‘Jem? Jem what?’

  ‘No . . . not . . . My name’s . . .’ He frowned desperately. ‘Green. Ned . . . Edward Green. 15th Warwicks. D Company . . .’

  ‘That’s a good lad. Now – what’s your address?’

  After a moment he managed to say, ‘Oak Tree Lane, Selly Oak, Birmingham.’ His childhood address was the only one that came to him.

  ‘Right. District Three. That’s it then. Soon be on your way to Brum, chum.’

  The train rumbled along at a more careful pace with its full load en route to Boulogne. The men lay trussed up three layers deep along the sides of the compartment. Ned was on a middle berth. He was aware of what was going on around him only in a dreamlike, distanced way. Nurses moved about the carriage, holding on where they could as they went about their duties to keep from lurching over. One of them, seen sideways on, had a pale, sharp face and when she turned, Ned was convinced in his delirious state that it was his wife. She must have come on the journey to look after him, he thought. Despite everything. He was filled with enormous shame and humility. Who was looking after Ruth, he wondered, and supposed Mary had left her with her mom so that she could be here to look after him.

  There was a ghastly smell in the compartment, the suppurating odour of gas gangrene. He heard groans, the sound of retching, a shout here and there. He didn’t know how far apart the cries came but they seemed to clang into his brain, unbearably loud, making him moan quietly. The stench seemed to intensify with every mile, even though the nurses, sickened, slid windows open. It mingled itself with the fractured images in Ned’s head.

  ‘Gas!’ He tugged at the bed covering, trying vainly to find his respirator.

  ‘What is it? Are you in pain?’

  Mary’s face loomed close, level with his, wearing a nurse’s veil. She was so young, so sweet. ‘Is it your leg?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he sobbed. ‘I’m sorry, Mary, sorry . . . sorry . . .’

  ‘Sssh.’ Accustomed to incomprehensible outbursts of woe, the young woman squeezed his hand, the other going to her nose and mouth at the smell of decomposition. The gas gangrene case was below him. ‘Try and sleep. We’ll soon be there.’

  During that autumn, John, the oldest son of the Bulli-vants, had come home to Oughton Place after months in hospital. Olive saw him arrive. She was coming up the road with a bag of shopping when the ambulance pulled up and saw them bringing a wheelchair out of the back. The rest she watched from inside, standing a little back from the window, the handles of the bag still cutting into her hand.

  Mrs Bullivant stood in the road holding a bundle of clothes in one arm while the other made nervous gestures as if in an attempt to help, but there was nothing she could do. They lifted him out and placed him in the chair. No legs, or at least, two bits of legs which ended mid-thigh and stuck out a little bit over the seat. His trousers were folded up at the bottom and pinned. As they put him down he cried out, and Olive saw the bones of his skull move under his skin. Her hand went to her mouth. Almost more shocking than the legs was the sight of John Bullivant’s face which had once been solid, almost bullish, with a thick, black moustache, and was now clean-shaven, cadaverous and twisted with pain.

  There was a low step up into the house, and they had to manoeuvre the chair up over it while John clung, obviously petrified, to the arms. They disappeared inside.

  Olive went through unsteadily to the back, put her bag down and reached for the kettle, overcome by the pity of it. She found her lips were moving, praying for her own, for Bert, for Sis’s Perce, for Ned . . . Her bitterness towards him seemed petty, horrible, when his wrongdoing was set against the disfigurement she had just seen. Her heart ached for Mrs Bullivant. Two sons dead, one maimed, how much more was there for her to bear?

  It was quiet for the first few days after John arrived home. Mrs Bullivant told Olive he was starting to get used to things at home. Her face was strained and she looked exhausted.

  ‘Mr B’s not finding it easy seeing ’im like this, yer know,’ she confided. ‘John used to be such a big strapping lad.’

  ‘Look, Marion,’ Olive said, drawn t
o her neighbour by her staunchness. ‘I’m always ’ere. Anything yer need ’elp with. You know that. I mean if yer wanted to get him out for a bit of air and that – when yer ready. You’d need help shifting the chair out, wouldn’t yer?’

  ‘That’s good of yer,’ Mrs Bullivant said resignedly. ‘It’s nice to have a good neighbour and I’ll let you know when ’e’s ready. But ’e’s dead set against anyone seeing ’im.’

  Not long after, when they were all home having tea, they heard shouting from next door. Polly paused, a spoon halfway to Grace’s mouth.

  ‘’Ark at that – is that . . .?’

  ‘Well, ’e sounds back to normal any’ow,’ Sis remarked. John Bullivant always had been a mouthy so-and-so before the war.

  ‘No,’ Jess said. ‘Listen.’

  It was a man’s voice all right, but the way it was raised, the rage and anguish registered in it was that of a small child or a lost soul. None of the words was comprehensible, but the emotion was. Jess had not seen John since he was home, but the sound of his distress, the softer sounds of his mother trying to comfort and quiet him brought tears of pity to her eyes.

  ‘Poor, poor man.’

  ‘’E’s twenty-four,’ was all Olive said.

  As the days passed, there were more outbursts next door. Olive thought about how Bert had been when he had left: strong, upstanding, full of physical confidence. So far as she knew he was still full of life, although having suffered bouts of fever. He wrote her short letters full of wry details about Mesopotamia which he summed up as ‘flies, beggars and s—t’. The thought of him coming home in the same state as John Bullivant was almost beyond imagining. But then she thought of Mrs Bullivant’s other sons. At least John had come home.

  She took courage one morning when she knew the younger children would be at school, and went next door and knocked. The step was newly scrubbed and Mrs Bullivant came out calmly to her, but didn’t invite her in.