About the Author
Nathan Dylan Goodwin was born and raised in Hastings, East Sussex. Schooled in the town, he then completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in Radio, Film and Television Studies, followed by a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing at Canterbury Christ Church University. A member of the Society of Authors, he has completed a number of successful local history books about Hastings, as well as several works of fiction, including the acclaimed Forensic Genealogist series. His other interests include theatre, reading, photography, running, skiing, travelling and, of course, genealogy. He is a qualified teacher, member of the Guild of One-Name Studies and the Society of Genealogists, as well as being a member of the Sussex Family History Group, the Norfolk Family History Society, the Kent Family History Society and the Hastings and Rother Family History Society. He lives in Kent with his husband, son and dog.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
nonfiction:
Hastings at War 1939-1945
Hastings Wartime Memories and Photographs
Hastings & St Leonards Through Time
Around Battle Through Time
Finding Henry
fiction:
(The Forensic Genealogist series)
The Asylum - A Morton Farrier short story
Hiding the Past
The Lost Ancestor
The Orange Lilies – A Morton Farrier novella
The America Ground
The Spyglass File
The Missing Man – A Morton Farrier novella
The Suffragette’s Secret – A Morton Farrier short story
The Wicked Trade
(The Mrs McDougall Investigation series)
Ghost Swifts, Blue Poppies and the Red Star
Ghost Swifts, Blue Poppies
and the Red Star
by
Nathan Dylan Goodwin
Copyright © Nathan Dylan Goodwin 2018
Nathan Dylan Goodwin has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This story is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Where the names of real people have been used, they appear only as the author imagined them to be.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the author. This story is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent in any form of binding, cover or other format, including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Cover design: Patrick Dengate
www.patrickdengate.com
Dedicated to the memory of the McDougall family
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Historical Information
Acknowledgements
Further Information
Prologue
11th November 1918, Sedlescombe, Sussex
A broad smile rose on Harriet Agnes McDougall’s face. A raspberry, and so late in the season. She crouched down and held it gently between her thumb and forefinger. Although it was beginning to bear the brunt of the coming winter, hardening and shrivelling somewhat, it would certainly still be sweet enough to eat, and yet, something inside prevented her from freeing it from the plant. It would be almost cruel to remove it now. Her smile gradually faded, and she realised that she was bestowing upon the fruit some rather human resilience in its having survived the first hints of winter.
Although she was sixty-five years of age and her once-dark hair was now grey-white, an active life had granted her the full and healthy body of a woman many years younger. Her bright turquoise eyes continued to garner admiring comments and observations, which, her parents had often informed her growing up, had begun at birth.
Harriet rolled the fruit tenderly between her fingertips, with strange admiration, then stopped abruptly.
The church bells were ringing.
She released the raspberry and, coming to, stood up, straining her ear towards the church, not a quarter of a mile away. They were ringing in such a way as she hadn’t heard for a very long time; years, perhaps. They were sounding the Grandsire Doubles, an unmistakeable, complicated and significant arrangement.
The damp November air suddenly caught in her throat, as a realisation dawned upon her.
She walked briskly—almost running—through the vegetable patch and along the garden path to the house. At the kitchen doorway she didn’t bother to kick off her garden shoes but rushed straight in, looking first into the dining room and then into the sitting room. John was sitting in his armchair in his usual position with his arms folded over his stomach and his head tilted back. He had aged significantly over the last few months and, with his tired and lined face, appeared much older than his sixty-five years. But then, she fancied that she had aged, too. Perhaps it was not such a surprise, given all that had happened.
‘John,’ she said urgently, crouching beside his chair. ‘Can you hear it?’
He sat up and pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. ‘What?’
‘Listen.’
His face furrowed in mild annoyance at whatever it was for which he was supposed to be listening. ‘What?’ he said again, shrugging.
‘The bells of St John’s. Can’t you hear them? Something’s happened… I think it could be the news we’ve been waiting for.’
John raised his eyebrows, pushed his head back and closed his eyes.
Harriet inwardly sighed, as she left the room, hurried down the hallway and flung open the front door. The bells were appreciably louder now, and there was other noise with it, too. Her sleepy little Sussex village had suddenly woken up with a start.
She rushed down the path and paused momentarily, placing her hands down on the black iron of the front gate. Before her, the village green—an almost perfect triangle of grass—was alive with activity, as her neighbours were moving about with a peculiar mixture of excitement and giddy indecision: Mrs Selmes and Mrs Plummer—sworn enemies since the dawning of time—were embracing; Mr Playford, wearing his Sunday best, was standing in the centre of the green, sobbing through a wide grin, his bowler hat clutched to his chest; the four Everndon girls were holding hands and dancing in a circle; the elder Mrs Ditch was running up the street; and, all around the village, doors were being flung open, revealing faces characterised by disbelief and joy.
It could mean only one thing.
Harriet took a short, sharp breath, trying to maintain an air of stoicism, as she marched directly across the green to the Post Office opposite. As she walked, she noticed the red, white and blue bunting suspended from the front windows of Asselton House in front of her. She glanced to the other houses nearby; to Forge Cottage, to Holmes House and to the Pump House, all displaying patriotic flags and streamers.
‘Have you heard the news?’
Harriet glanced sideways, as she reached the Post Office. It was Mrs Morris. Her cheeks were the colour of a
ripe tomato, and her eyes were puffy and wet. She pointed at the Post Office window beside them.
And there it was: the confirmation of the cessation of hostilities.
The war had ended.
Harriet looked back at Mrs Morris, their faces mirroring each other with dual lines of tears. Harriet extended her arm, taking Mrs Morris’s hand in hers and squeezing it gently. The most recent telegram—surely, God willing, the last—had been handed to her husband, Mr Morris, a little over a month ago.
‘It’s over,’ Mrs Morris wept. ‘It’s over.’
Harriet nodded and pressed their hands together more tightly. It was over in a political sense. It was over in a militaristic sense. It was over in a global sense. But for Harriet and millions like her, it was not over and maybe never could be.
She released Mrs Morris’s hand, smiled feebly and walked in a ghost-like trance back to Linton House. Inside, she could hear from the rise and hollows of John’s breathing that he was asleep. She hesitated at the sitting room door, wondering whether to wake him and tell him the news. No, she reasoned, it could wait. He would only grumble at being disturbed and mutter something about its being an inevitability. She climbed the stairs and went to the front bedroom—the one shared by her two sons, Malcolm and Edward—and closed the door behind her.
The room was ready for their arrival; exactly as they had left it. Harriet passed between the two single beds and walked over to the mirror. As she rested her hands on the cold porcelain washstand below it, she remembered the comedy of watching the boys proudly running a safety razor over the first glimpses of facial hair; Malcolm first, soon (and unnecessarily) followed by Edward. How quickly the transition from boys to men had come and gone, she thought. She turned immediately, when her own pitiable reflection snapped into focus.
On the wall above Malcolm’s bed were the display cases, containing an array of moths and butterflies, which he had collected and pinned himself. ‘I’m a lepidopterist,’ he had once informed her, when, at the age of ten, he had failed to return home before dark, following an expedition on the trail of the rare Silver-studded Blue butterfly. ‘It means I study butterflies and moths,’ he had proudly added. As the fleeting memory faded, Harriet’s eyes shifted to one of his very detailed and precise sketches, which he had taped to the wall. A Ghost Swift moth with various parts of its anatomy annotated in his neatest handwriting. She scrutinised the picture for the umpteenth time, trying to revive something more, or something new from her memories of his childhood. She found now that her reminiscences of the boys’ younger years existed in her mind like a collection of familiar short stories, ones which never changed, grew, nor were augmented. Nothing in the house, none of their possessions awakened fresh memories any longer. She imagined that, with time and age, they would further diminish, merge and finally fade into one warm but inaccessible sentiment of their youth. Perhaps, given the pain which came alongside the memories, that was the kindest thing.
She sat down on Malcolm’s bed and carefully picked up his green and brown-striped pyjamas from his pillow, holding them in her lap for a moment, before raising them to her face and drawing in a long breath through her nose. The smell of him, of Malcolm, had gone. Now they smelt of nothing at all, but for several months after he had left, the smell of him had remained. With effort, Harriet could just about bring it to mind. It was a musky masculine scent, which seemed common to all young men, yet the subtle differences between the boys were sufficient for her to be able to tell to which of her sons a worn item of clothing had belonged.
With a myriad of emotions flooding her senses, the comforting embrace of Malcolm’s bed suddenly appeared enticing. Although she was reluctant to crumple the fresh sheets, she kicked off her shoes, pulled up her legs and gently placed her head down onto his pillow. Her habit of sleeping on the boys’ beds since they had gone had reduced in recent months, becoming furtive and clandestine, reserved for those scarce occasions when John and his stern disapproval were out of the house.
Harriet drew in a breath and held it for as long as she could, before exploding the air out in a noisy exhale. She closed her eyes, trying to change the track of her thoughts, determined not to cry. She pulled herself into the darkness of her mind, switching off her senses one at a time until all that was left was an empty blackness.
She woke suddenly and sat bolt upright. Her forehead was damp, and her thoughts were a muddled amalgam of dream and reality, neither of which offered her a satisfactory explanation of where she was. She had fallen asleep on Malcolm’s bed, she remembered. But that was just moments ago, in broad daylight. Now, the room had been plunged into pitch darkness, yet there was a strange bright light streaming in through the window.
Harriet’s dream quickly faded into oblivion, as she used the brightness to confirm that, yes, she was in Malcolm and Edward’s bedroom. She had obviously fallen into a deep sleep, and it was now after dark. But what about the light? There was something unnatural in its quivering dance on the ceiling, which told her that it could not be moonlight alone.
Cautiously, she walked over to the window and saw a sight so unfamiliar to her as to induce a gasp: a giant bonfire in the centre of the village green and, more striking than that, from almost every house in view was to be seen the soft amber glow of light.
Harriet stared, mesmerised by a sight, which she had not witnessed for more than four years. Slowly, as she began to make sense of what she was seeing, her eyes picked further detail from what was before her. Crowds of people—their faces not quite recognisable from the low light—had gathered around the fire. A small group of village lads—spared from enlistment by a matter of months, or just weeks in some cases—hoisted up a life-sized effigy of the Kaiser. How it had been fashioned in such a short time, she had no idea, but that it was destined for the top of the fire, she was convinced.
She watched as the group of villagers behind the effigy formed into a procession of thirty or forty people and began to walk the length of the green. Across the way, the Queen’s Head was lit up in all its glory, and silhouetted before it, stood an ensemble of silent village men.
She knew that she had to go out there, to be amongst them, her neighbours, friends and family.
Harriet descended the stairs and entered the sitting room, finding John in his armchair with his pipe pressed between his lips. The only light in the room came from the hot fire, which etched ugly shadows onto his face. She marched into the room, pulled wide the curtains and smiled.
‘There!’ she declared. ‘Isn’t that simply wonderous?’
John looked at her, baffled. ‘Isn’t what?’
‘Why, the light of course. Just look at it! The village is all lit up—every house is glowing with the news.’
John raised an eyebrow, slowly elevated his right hand and removed his pipe. ‘And the Lighting Order?’ he asked, a trace of his father’s Scottish accent just audible in his deep voice. ‘I presume you’ve spoken with PC Knight and he’s passed on permission from the Home Office?’
‘It’s over, John,’ Harriet sighed, turning from the room peevishly. In the hallway, she picked up her coat, then opened the front door, passing her arms into the sleeves, as she hurried down the front path.
She reached the village green just as the procession, singing the looped chorus of ‘Rule Britannia…’, turned at the apex and began to make its way back in her direction. She clapped spontaneously, as the grinning lads, now carrying the Kaiser effigy by his four splayed limbs, passed by. Harriet maintained a half-smile, as she caught the glinting eyes of those passing her gate. Almost all of them had lost a man to the war. Her smile widened when her gaze fell upon the mournful eyes of her sister, Naomi, whose son, Jim had been killed last September on the north-west frontier of India. Her other son, fourteen-year-old Frank, narrowly spared by his age, was one of the boys dragging the Kaiser through the village.
Naomi reached out and grasped Harriet, pulling her into the throng, which had now doubled in size. They walked togeth
er without speaking until the parade drew to an abrupt halt.
Moments later, the effigy was hoisted up and launched into the flames to a rapturous round of applause. As the fire quickly consumed the figure, the crowd began to fracture into smaller groups, but with a general movement further up into the village.
‘Now what?’ Harriet asked.
‘There’s a service up at St John’s,’ Naomi replied.
Harriet stopped walking. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said quietly. The unwavering faith of her younger self was now broken, fragmented and complex: some days she thought that she felt His presence in her life; other days she doubted His very existence. What she was coming to realise of late, however, was the irrelevance of that question. Instead, she found herself asking how so many millions of men could be taken from this earth at such a young age. Whether the answer was of a divine or political nature, it was cruel and barbaric.
‘Harriet?’ Naomi pressed.
‘Sorry… No, I don’t think I’ll come,’ she answered.
Naomi took Harriet’s hands in hers. ‘I understand, but I’ve requested a song specifically for our boys.’
‘Which song?’
‘Now the Labourer’s Task is Over.’
Harriet nodded mechanically and allowed herself to be led to the church.
The service, conducted by the Reverend Percival, was a sombre, yet celebratory affair. Harriet and Naomi had a central spot in a pew adjacent to the aisle. As the congregation sang O God our Help in Ages Past, Harriet glanced around her, not recalling a previous time when the church had been so well attended. She offered a weak smile to her brothers, Herbert and John, both of them escaping the threat of the telegram by the fortuitousness of only having sired daughters. Every seat had been taken, and many were left standing at the rear. The song finished and the congregation was seated.
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