A Rose for the Anzac Boys

by Jackie French

  Midge held the drawing to her. ‘No! It’s the most beautiful, I mean the most wonderful present…’ Her voice broke.

  ‘I think she likes it,’ remarked Jacko.

  Harry looked at her in concern. ‘Jeepers, we didn’t mean to make you cry.’

  Midge sniffed and pulled one of Miss Davies’s handkerchiefs out of her apron pocket. ‘No, it’s so lovely. And after everything you’ve all been through you thought of this…’

  ‘Should’ve given you a medal, not a picture of some flowers,’ said Jacko. ‘Reckon all you sisters should get medals. You’re dinkums, the lot of youse.’

  ‘Miss Macpherson, haven’t you done the trays yet?’

  It was Aunt Lallie. Her apron was as starched as her manner.

  Midge clutched the drawing to her. But Aunt Lallie didn’t seem to see it. ‘I’m just getting them now, Sister.’

  ‘See that you do. It’s nearly time for the temperatures.’

  Midge tucked the drawing under her arm and bent to get Harry’s tray.

  He said quietly, ‘We chose roses ’cause that’s what you are, Miss Macpherson. A rose, among all us thorns.’

  She straightened. ‘I…I think that is the nicest thing that anyone has ever said to me. And this is the best present ever.’

  She looked up to find Aunt Lallie’s eyes still on her. She began to carry out the trays, hearing Aunt Lallie’s firm step behind her. Her aunt said nothing till they were outside the tent and walking down towards the mess tent. Midge waited for the rebuke. But Lallie said nothing, until Midge had unloaded the trays onto the tables by the orderlies’ tubs. And then it was just, ‘Happy birthday, my dear.’

  ‘I—’ began Midge.

  ‘You thought I’d forgotten?’ Aunt Lallie smiled. ‘Come and sit down.’

  The tables in the mess tent were strictly for the nursing and medical staff, not the VADs. Once more Midge was aware of her uncertain status. She put her sketch on her lap as Lallie pulled something out of the pocket of her apron. ‘I’d like to give you this.’

  It was a locket, small and square, like a tiny book on a silver chain. Midge opened it. A boy and a girl stared at the camera. They were six years old, perhaps, seated on a small plush sofa, their arms around each other. Neither smiled, but they looked happy, as though they were waiting for the photographer to finish so they could get back to their game.

  Like me and Tim, thought Midge. She even had a photo at home almost the same.

  ‘Your father and me,’ said Aunt Lallie.

  ‘I can’t take this!’ It must be unbearably precious, Midge thought, to have travelled with Aunt Lallie all this way.

  Lallie shrugged. ‘I can see it whenever I shut my eyes these days. I…I had your father for longer than you, my dear. I wish I could give you my memories of him too. It’s best that you have it. Besides, I wanted to give you something.’ She smiled. ‘When was the last time I was with my favourite niece on her birthday?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’ Midge slipped the locket around her neck so it hung under her apron, and smiled. ‘Yes, I can—when you came out to New Zealand on holiday.’

  ‘Those were good months. You were all so happy. Have you heard from Douglas lately?’

  Midge nodded. ‘I got a letter last week. Doug’s letters never say much. Just that he’s well and all that. You know he was made a captain.’

  ‘I do. You must be proud of him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Midge was silent. Somehow she wondered if Captain Douglas Macpherson was still the brother she knew. Perhaps, she thought, Margery Macpherson wasn’t the sister he had once had either. Would Tim have changed too? Even if he were still alive, the laughing boy she’d known would have gone.

  He has to be alive, she thought. Surely I’d feel something if he were dead! Suddenly she wanted to ask Lallie if she’d known when her brother died. But the words didn’t come. Besides, she didn’t want to think about death today. Her fingers touched the precious roses on her lap. She wanted to think of flowers…and mountains…and the world after the war. But what was the use of having an ‘after the war’ if there was no Tim and their plans to go home to?

  ‘Aunt Lallie, will you come out to us again after the war? Please come! To Glen Donal, I mean.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Her aunt looked at her shrewdly. ‘So you still plan to go back to Glen Donal?’

  Midge looked up, surprised. ‘Where else?’

  ‘You might have married by then,’ said her aunt drily.

  Midge hesitated. ‘There was a man…’

  ‘But he was killed.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘So many are. You wanted to marry him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Midge frankly. ‘I liked him. More than that, maybe. Or I might have, if we’d known each other more. He was…nice. A kind man.’

  ‘The sort you could have breakfast with?’

  ‘Yes. That sort of man. But he was regular army and I’d have been an officer’s wife. I don’t know if I’d really have wanted that. Running the house, having tea with other officers’ wives. I need space about me. I want Glen Donal, Auntie. Ever since I was forced to leave I’ve known I have to go back there. I want the mountains and the smell of trees and the shearing and the lambs. It’s who I am. What I am.’

  Her aunt was silent for a moment. ‘If Tim is really missing and Dougie doesn’t survive, the property will be yours. Have you thought of that?’

  Midge flushed. ‘Yes. But I could manage it all, Auntie. I know I could.’

  ‘I believe you could. Though you may have a battle getting others to accept it. But if Dougie survives Tim, Glen Donal will all belong to him. My dear…have you ever thought you might tire of sharing someone else’s life? Being Mrs Solicitor or Army Officer? Being the sister of the man who owns Glen Donal? Never someone in your own right, but just in relation to a man.’

  ‘Is that why you’re a nurse?’

  ‘Partly. It may be an uncomfortable life at times, especially now. But it’s my own life. Not a shadow of someone else’s.’

  ‘I…I don’t know. I never thought of it that way. I couldn’t be a nurse, Aunt Lallie. Not forever.’

  ‘You may find it hard to go back to just being Dougie’s sister, after the war,’ said Lallie softly. ‘Even if you and Tim do go out on your own, what will happen when he marries? No one will really take you seriously as a farmer, my dear. They’ll look at Tim, not you, for the decisions. I think many of the women who have served in this war will find it hard to step back into the background.’

  Midge frowned. ‘Yes, but—’

  The world erupted. Noise so loud it wasn’t noise at all, but only shock, propelling her into Aunt Lallie’s lap, then both of them onto the ground, the table tumbling after them, the noise turning into echoes, each almost too loud to hear, and then retreating, to be replaced by human screams.

  ‘Margery.’ Aunt Lallie’s voice was calm from somewhere underneath her. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Y-yes.’

  ‘Can you get up?’

  ‘Yes.’ She sat; felt rather than saw Lallie unfold herself next to her, pushing the table back, then using it to help her stand. ‘You’re all right too?’ It hurt to talk. No, it hurt to hear. Her ears buzzed. A pain was beginning, deep inside her head. Her fingers hunted blindly for the paper with the roses. Yes, here it was, unharmed. ‘What was it?’

  ‘Rocket.’ Aunt Lallie’s voice was still calm. No, not calm, thought Midge. Controlled.

  She watched as her aunt straightened her cap and cape, then walked swiftly out of the mess hut. Midge limped after her. The screams were coming from outside.

  The pain had turned into a headache. Every noise was too loud but also not loud enough. She rubbed her ears as she stumbled out the door, but it made no difference to their ringing. And then she ran.

  Along the duckboard path, stumbling and tripping because the explosion had tilted the rough boards. Everyone else, it seemed, was running too.r />
  What had been the main surgical tent was now a crater, rimmed with black. Part of the tent hung over the lip, leaving the surgical tables exposed, like beds where someone was changing the sheets. One was even upright, though the patient it had held was gone. The other tables were crumpled, some with one leg standing, some with two, some with a shred of body and some with…

  ‘Margery, go back.’

  ‘But Aunt—’

  ‘Reassure the patients in the other tents. Tell them it was a single rocket, or a bomb perhaps. But there is no danger. Tell them they are safe. You understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She stared at the crater again, her eyes drawn unwillingly, unable to let go. And then she turned into the nearest tent.

  ‘A stray bomb, or a rocket. I’m afraid I don’t know more.’ Smile, she thought, smile. Nothing works like a smile. ‘No, the front isn’t any closer. Really, it’s all right,’ to a young man who was moaning into his pillow. The nerve cases were the worst, she thought. You could touch the others’ wounds. But the nerve cases were far away, back in whatever horrors they had witnessed.

  ‘Miss Macpherson! You’re all right?’

  It was Harry, his face grim. His hair flopped over his forehead. His hands looked poised to grab her, if necessary, out of harm’s way.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. You shouldn’t be out of your bed.’

  He relaxed slightly. ‘You’re sure you’re not hurt?’

  She straightened her cap. ‘I’m sure. Please, Harry.’

  She had used his Christian name, she realised. But it didn’t seem to matter now.

  Into the German hut, answering the guards’ questions too. It was harder, this afternoon, to look at the faces of the Huns, to know what their countrymen had done. But she kept on smiling, telling Korporal Schmidt so he could translate for the others. ‘A rocket or a bomb. But you’re safe now.’

  Korporal Schmidt nodded. He hesitated. ‘Fräulein… your friends perhaps were hurt?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know who was hurt.’

  ‘Fräulein, I am sorry. It is war that does this, not men. War takes men and turns them into war. I am sorry. My English is not good.’

  ‘It is quite good,’ she said automatically.

  He nodded. ‘Thank you, Fräulein. I will tell the men.’

  Funny that an enemy could be so kind, she thought vaguely.

  The air smelled sulphurous outside. She stood with her eyes shut and let the breeze play on her face till a gust of wind crept up from the trees. Freshness and green leaves…She opened her eyes.

  A VAD stood staring into the crater, a bowl of theatre instruments forgotten in her hands. Miss Hardersley, thought Midge. She was engaged to a captain in the Guards. Her brother had died at Ypres.

  Midge ran over to her across the duckboards. ‘Do you know who was hurt?’

  Miss Hardersley nodded. There were tear tracks in the dust on her face. But the tears had dried. ‘Dead,’ she said flatly. ‘Not hurt. Matron called the roll. Sister Samuels, Alice Glennings. She…we were at school together, you know. Did our training at the same time.’

  What could you say, thought Midge. There were no words of comfort that Miss Hardersley hadn’t used herself a hundred times.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly.

  Miss Hardersley nodded again. ‘Corporal Anderson has concussion and a fractured tibia, but they say he’ll be all right. He was helping with the stretchers on the far side when it happened. And they can’t find Mr Fineacre. No one knows if he was in there helping with the surgery or somewhere else.’

  ‘I…I’ll go and look in the graveyard. Sometimes he’s there.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe.’ The girl looked down at the instruments in her hands, as though she’d just remembered them. A few more deaths, but the struggle to keep men from dying went on. ‘Matron will skin me,’ she muttered as she hurried off.

  Midge walked slowly down the duckboards, past the plot of rhubarb one of the orderlies was cultivating (no one knew what he fed it with. No one, said Aunt Lallie, quite wanted to ask) and down the hill to the graveyard. Shadows dappled the crosses as the breeze washed over flowers and the grass.

  But Mr Fineacre wasn’t there.

  The replacement chaplain arrived next afternoon. Midge stood with him among the dancing flowers while they consigned Mr Fineacre to his final home, with the boys he’d tended.

  Letter from the Reverend Mr Fineacre to his son, Terence.

  Sent 5 June 1917.

  My dear Son,

  If you read this it will mean that I have died for the cause for which I left your mother and yourself. I know that it will be many years before you are able to read this letter. I have written it so you will have your father’s voice one more time. You were too small, I think, to remember me when I went away. I also feel that I need to explain to you why I am no longer there for you.

  My dear Son, please never feel that I abandoned you. I did not want to go to this war. Others did, for adventure and to see the world, or because times have been tough and they longed for regular money and honour to call their own.

  It is impossible to tell you, my dear boy, how much I wanted to stay with you and your mother. Even if I left this war tomorrow you would be a big boy, almost four by the time I saw you next. I have missed your first steps and your first words and all the other things that a parent can hold dear in his memory.

  So I must tell you why I left you and it is this: when your country calls you, each man must do his duty if he can, or for the rest of his life know that he has failed his land in her hour of need. The men here need me more than any parishioner back home; they need far more than I can ever give. But when things are bad, all you can do is your best.

  There are many things a father needs to teach his son, but I have only a few words to give you now. Even though I am a clergyman I’ve never been very good with words. I would like to tell you how to dream of a better world, how to do justly by your fellow man. But I hope that as you travel life’s road you will find others who will show you these things as I have not been able to. I hope, too, you will read the words of Our Lord and find the inspiration and the clarity on which I have tried to build my life.

  Life is so very short, my son, no matter how long you live. Fill every minute of it. Be a comfort to your mother, and know this is the last prayer of your Dad.

  Your loving Father,

  Colin Fineacre

  She was still by the new white cross inscribed with Mr Fineacre’s name when Harry found her. Up on the nearby hills guns puffed white smoke. The trees up there were skeletons, black, not green. Spring didn’t touch the world up there. Men moved, almost too small to see.

  We are the ants of war, she thought. Tiny, industrious, helpless in others’ scheme of things.

  The guns’ rumble was even louder today. The casualty station would have to move again soon, and fast, if the battle came closer.

  ‘Miss Macpherson?’

  She didn’t turn. ‘My name’s Midge.’

  ‘Are you sure you want me to call you…’

  She did turn then. She saw hesitation in his face, the knowledge of the gap between them: his ‘cockie’ farm against the rolling valleys of Glen Donal; the sergeant speaking to a ‘lady’; a gap as wide, almost, as between Anne and her imaginary footman.

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve been crying.’

  She nodded.

  His hands hovered again, helpless, as though he wished to touch her but knew he couldn’t. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled something out.

  ‘Here.’

  She felt something pressed into her hand. She looked down. It was the photograph she had given him (was it really only a year ago?) on the crowded station platform after Gordon’s death.

  ‘I can’t take this, Harry! I gave it to you.’

  ‘I reckon you need it now. Please, Miss…Midge. I want you to have it. I want you to look at it just like I ha
ve this last year. To see that cocky expression on that ram’s face and know that somewhere far away there’s still sheep being born and shorn and dogs barking and creeks flowing. Good things. Real important things. More important than all this.’ His hand took in the mud, the crosses, the torn and wasted hills.

  She looked down at the photo. And suddenly he was right. She could see the trees, the silver glint of water. She could even smell the mountain’s snow and grass.

  ‘I can see it without the photo. I want to be able to think of you looking at it,’ he added softly. ‘It would mean a lot to be able to think of you doing that.’

  She slipped the photo into her apron pocket. ‘Thank you.’

  She held out her hand to him. He took it. His hand was warm and rough and very comforting. He wasn’t wearing his sling, she realised. He would be heading back to his unit soon.

  ‘Will you be all right?’

  It was a silly thing to ask a man going back to savagery among the trenches, but he understood what she meant.

  ‘She’ll be right, Miss…Midge. And I’ll imagine you looking at that photo too. You don’t mind?’ he added a bit anxiously. ‘Me imagining you while I’m out there?’ He was still holding her hand.

  ‘No. I don’t mind. I…I’ll keep writing.’ She wanted to say more, to give him more. But what else could she give him now?

  ‘I’m glad,’ he said simply.

  Someone would see them, she realised. She pulled her hand away reluctantly. ‘I’d better go. We’re so short-staffed.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll stay here a bit. Say goodbye to the padre. He was a good bloke. He did his best for us.’

  It was as good an epitaph as any, she thought.

  She looked back as she neared the tents. He was still watching her. He lifted his hand in a half wave as she went in.

  Chapter 14

  12 June 1917

  Dear Miss Davies,

  I’m sorry I haven’t answered your letter before. I have been moving round a bit and your last letter only just reached me. Please thank the children for the scarf—tell them I love the bright colours. Thank you too for all the news of home, and the cuttings from the newspapers. They mean a lot to me. I can just imagine you on your new bicycle!