Ghost Swifts, Blue Poppies and the Red Star

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  ‘I should now like to read to you from the first book of Chronicles, chapter twenty-nine, verse eleven,’ the Reverend Percival intoned from the pulpit. ‘Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all.’ He paused, seeming to take stock of the congregation before him. ‘It is a time for victory and celebration, and thanksgiving to our Lord, but, it is also a time for reverence and of solemnity, as we remember the price of that, our victory. The price paid by young men across our Empire and, it pains me to say, yes, from our little Sussex village. I look out amongst you all, and I see that cost etched on every face gathered here. And it is with all of these things in mind that I read the Sedlescombe Roll of Honour.’ Another longer pause. ‘Henry Robert Adeane, Edward Sidney Barwick, Bertram Henry Bateup, Harry Boxall, Charles Bryant, Frederick Bryant, Boyce Coombe, Leonard Cramp, Frank Crittenden, Reginald Dawson, James Dengate, Walter William Goodman, Edward Harris, William Hobbs, Christopher Hodgson, Charles Henry Johnson, Edward Cecil McDougall, Malcolm McDougall…’

  The vicar continued to read aloud the names of the dead men of the village, but upon hearing the names of her two boys, Harriet sagged down into the pew, as if receiving the news afresh.

  Her sister, Naomi placed her arm over Harriet’s shoulder and pulled her in close. Together, they sobbed until all twenty-nine names had been delivered.

  ‘Our brave men, who have paid the ultimate sacrifice to their country, shall not be forgotten, and their death shall not have been in vain,’ the Reverend Percival said quietly. ‘Mrs Naomi Dengate has requested that we sing, in memory of our fallen sons, Now the Labourer’s Task is Over. Please be standing.’

  As the congregation rose to their feet, the organ struck up its mournful drone, then they began to sing:

  Now the Labourer’s task is o’er;

  Now the battle day is past;

  Now upon the farther shore

  Lands the voyager at last.

  Father, in Thy gracious keeping

  Leave we now Thy servant sleeping.

  Harriet could not sing beyond the first verse. Her throat closed and her eyes filled with tears, as she thought of her two sons, killed within six months of each other, lying alone on a battlefield.

  She stared blankly at the vicar, a long-familiar numbness sheathing her whole body.

  Chapter One

  30th July 1919, Sedlescombe, Sussex

  Despite the organ’s having fallen silent almost an hour ago, Harriet could still clearly hear the haunting tones of Handel’s Dead March in her mind. Sitting in her kitchen, those monolithic sounds were all that she could hear over the unbearable silence that filled the house.

  She was at the kitchen table, her quivering hands clasped around her china cup of tea, wondering if perhaps she had been too hasty in dismissing the kind offers of family, friends and neighbours, who had not wanted her to be alone today.

  Taking a sip of the tea, she winced at its tepidness and went to put the cup down, but the shaking of her hands—worsened by the wretched music in her head, no doubt—meant that she caught the edge of the saucer and sent the cup tumbling to the floor.

  Harriet leapt up and looked at the hopelessness of what she was seeing: the dark spray of tea on her black ankle-length dress, which she had purchased only yesterday from the boutique shop on Battle High Street; and the china cup—her finest—lying broken into eight pieces on the flagstone floor.

  She began to sob, watching abstractedly, as her falling tears became absorbed into the small tea-puddle at her feet. She realised, of course, that she was not crying for the new dress, nor for the precious china cup, yet she couldn’t stop herself.

  A knot of complicated and deep internal emotion began to unfurl, as her crying increased. In a breathless wail, she sagged down onto her knees. Feelings and emotions, which she had tried to keep stoically restrained for the past two years, tumbled forth.

  She clamped her hands to her ears to shut out the music playing in her head but, in filtering out the background sounds, the noise only intensified, resounding thickly, as though her mind were some enormous cavern. The horrid title alone, Dead March, made her shudder, picturing as she did a regiment of uniformed ghosts, trudging in death’s footsteps. They had played the piece at both Malcolm’s and Edward’s funerals. Well, they couldn’t be called funerals, of course, since there had been no coffin to put in the ground: ‘A Service of Remembrance’, Reverend Percival had piously designated them. Harriet had been against the idea, but John had got his way, insisting in his pompous manner that it had been ‘…the right way to honour them’. She had failed to see past the emptiness of the gesture: a funeral—albeit under a different name—without a coffin or a body over which to mourn.

  She hadn’t mourned, though, she could see that now. Not properly, at least. After the remembrance services had taken place, John had drawn a line—both publicly and privately—under the boys’ deaths, compelling her own grief to recoil inside of her, where it had taken on the form of a deeper, darker entity of its own, and which she could only ever acknowledge in the most cloistered of moments.

  With her vision distorted by the tears and the biting pain behind her eyes, Harriet stood up, steadying herself with the table edge for a moment, before moving down the hallway to the parlour. The room, with its north-facing windows, had a slight chill to it and Harriet shivered, as she entered. It was a room reserved for high days and special occasions, and was, therefore, rarely used. In the centre of the room was an oval-shaped, polished walnut table, with two matching bureaus and a writing desk at the edges of the room. On the ochre walls were hanging an assortment of watercolours and oils, and in pride of place above the fire were hung the framed portraits of her boys.

  Harriet dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief and pulled open her bureau. There, above two tins, labelled Couttie’s Assorted Biscuits, were two neatly folded khaki uniforms, which had been returned in brown paper packets from the War Office. When Edward’s had arrived, Harriet had taken to her bed, inconsolable, grasping his tunic to her chest until John had tussled it from her. The tunic hadn’t smelled of Edward, and she had assumed that the War Office had tactfully removed the residues of war. However, six months later, when Malcolm’s had arrived, she had been able to see that that had not been the case. Harriet could still see John now, as clear as day, standing by the front door, watching her with his arms folded, waiting for her to break down at the unforeseen sight of the horrific, indelible blood stains on his tunic. But she hadn’t expressed her heartache and deep anguish; she had taken the kit, had wordlessly placed it inside her bureau and had made a cup of tea.

  Setting the uniforms down on the table, she took the tins from the bureau and sat down with a long sigh at the table. She was exhausted, her heart was heavy and her head hurt, but at last the tears had stopped. She wiped her face and prised the lid from the tin: Malcolm’s, she found. It contained the letters and postcards, which he had sent home—the paltry remains of the last two years of his life during which Harriet had no personal memories of him upon which to draw. Her memories ended on a cold afternoon, when he had stood on the doorstep, shaken John and her by the hand, and cheerfully strolled down the path. He’d taken one final glance back at her, then he had gone and all her memories of him terminated there. Of the next two years of his life, all that remained was contained in the Couttie’s Assorted Biscuits tin on the table in front of her, which had become an unacknowledged metaphor for her emotions surrounding the boys’ deaths, only ever opened when she was certain that John would be out of the house for some considerable amount of time.

  She began to re-read Malcolm’s first letter home, despite being able to recite it by heart: Dearest Ma & Pa, I received your welcome parcel, yesterday. Thank you. Very pleased to hear that all at home are well. I am still in the best of health and training is quite all right. We’re all ea
ger to get out there and get on with it, to be frank. I’ve met some decent lads here. One of them, Timothy is from down the road in Bexhill. I shall write again when there is more news. Your loving son, Malcolm.

  His naivety at wanting to get on with it had astonished her when the letter had arrived, and it had astonished her afresh with every subsequent reading. What on earth had they been told in their training? John, of course, had nodded and grunted some sort of patriarchal approval.

  She placed the letter on the table and picked out an embroidered postcard from the tin, admiring the attractive needlework. She ran her forefinger lightly over the coloured stitching, then paused, sitting up straight at the low familiar squeal of the front gate’s hinges’ being opened. She sighed, waiting for the door to be knocked. No doubt, it would be her sister, Naomi, coming to check on her. Or perhaps one of the neighbours. Maybe even one of her brothers or their wives.

  She put the tin down on the table and stood up. Oddly, the anticipated rapping on the door didn’t happen. She frowned and wandered over to the front window.

  Someone was standing at her front gate, gaping at the house, yet not moving.

  It was a man. A soldier.

  The Dead March, repeating in her mind, finally petered out.

  As though in a trance, Harriet walked to the door, pulled it open and drew herself slowly along the path towards this apparition.

  ‘Hello,’ he eventually said. His voice was so quiet and indistinct that she knew that he wasn’t real.

  ‘Hello,’ she replied, playing along.

  He stood, staring at her, his dark eyes empty, his face blank, saying nothing.

  This wasn’t the first time that this had happened, but this was the most vivid, the most real.

  ‘I did my best to get here, but I was too late,’ he said, this time his voice was louder and clearer.

  Too late for what? she wondered, but didn’t like to question him, lest he should disappear. She studied the detail of him, holding her breath and not daring to blink.

  For a few long seconds, nothing happened. Neither of them moved. Neither of them spoke. Then, Harriet, in a breathless burst, asked, ‘Do you want to come in?’

  He nodded but still didn’t move.

  ‘Ma,’ he whispered, reaching his hand out to her.

  She didn’t understand, yet found herself walking the last steps towards him, still very much entranced. She extended her hand to his, long before their fingers could meet.

  ‘Ma,’ he said again, almost childlike, as she drew nearer still.

  The detail of his face was bewildering, like nothing her mind had ever conjured before. He was wearing his uniform, that of the Border Regiment. His boyish face and short hair made him appear younger than thirty years of age, but then she wondered if perhaps she was projecting him as he had been, when she had last seen him.

  He was just inches away now, and Harriet reached out, touching the very tips of his fingers. She flinched, then moved in, quickly running her hand up his left arm, in those fleeting moments, feeling the detail of every fold and crease in the fabric until, at last, her hand came to rest on his warm face.

  ‘You’re…back,’ Harriet mouthed, bursting into tears. She pulled him tightly to her, and, with his strong arms on her back, only then did she believe what her eyes had been trying to tell her; that her only surviving son, Fraser had returned home to her. ‘Are you home for good?’ she breathed, almost not daring to ask the question.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Demobilised today.’

  ‘Oh, thank God!’ she stammered tearfully. ‘Come inside.’ She released her grip on him, finally believing him to be real.

  Fraser sighed, staring at the open front door of his home. ‘You can’t imagine how many times I’ve pictured this moment over the last four years.’

  Harriet placed her arm around his shoulder and sobbed: ‘Me too.’

  She placed a hand in the small of his back and gently guided him towards the visible house interior. Under her hand she felt his rigid frame relax, as he took slow steps forwards.

  At the front door he drew in a long breath, then entered inside with a noisy exhalation, a mixture, Harriet supposed, of profound relief, familiarity, but also uncertainty. Dropping his kit bag on the floor, he knelt down and removed his boots. He walked towards the sitting room with a nervous gait, one which suddenly reminded Harriet of the times when he had been that boy, creeping up the hallway, playing soldiers, anticipating an imminent ambush by his two younger brothers.

  She followed him into the sitting room, where he faltered slightly, having been about to sit in John’s armchair. He sat instead in the Windsor chair by the window, and she took her own armchair beside him and dried her eyes once more.

  ‘It’s so quiet,’ he whispered.

  Harriet listened for a moment. Now that the Dead March had ended, she could hear very little, just the almost indistinct, mixed shrill of birdsong from the back garden—bluetits and robins, they sounded like. ‘Yes, I rather suppose it is,’ she acknowledged.

  ‘It’s too quiet,’ he complained. ‘Can you put the gramophone on?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Vivaldi?’

  ‘Anything,’ he said.

  Harriet hastily got up and placed a record on the gramophone. As the music began to smother the silence, so Fraser visibly appeared to relax again.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Harriet asked. ‘You must be gasping for one.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ he replied.

  ‘You just sit and relax,’ she said, heading to the kitchen. Out of his earshot, Harriet steadied herself and let out a soft whimper. The sheer relief of having her Fraser home reignited the locked grief inside of her, and she felt the emotion rising once again.

  ‘What happened in the end?’ Fraser asked, startling her. She turned to see him, leaning on the doorframe. ‘With Pa, I mean?’

  The shock re-compressed her anguish, and she was able to swallow down her emotion. ‘It was his heart,’ she answered, filling the copper kettle with water and placing it on the hot range. ‘He became dizzy and short of breath. Doctor Johnson called on him several times and said it was beating to its own strange rhythm. Mitral heart disease—something to do with the valves. There wasn’t much that could be done for him in the end… He died peacefully in his bed four days ago.’

  ‘And was he still a miserable old bugger?’ Fraser asked.

  Disregarding the vulgarity of his vocabulary, the light-heartedness caught Harriet off-guard, and it took her a moment to reply: ‘Well, he was never going to change, was he?’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose so. And how was the funeral?’

  Harriet faltered at the question and answered before she had untangled her true sentiment. ‘It was what he would have wanted: a full congregation; representatives from all the various organisations he had served with over the years; his favourite hymns and bible readings.’

  A protracted silence fell between them, as she prepared the tea things, all the while contemplating Fraser’s question. The painful truth was that the death of her two sons had conferred upon her an everlasting and numbing grief, which would forever eclipse any other pain or sorrow that she could ever know in her life; even that caused by the death of the man with whom she had been married for thirty-one years. She realised now that she had experienced John’s death and his funeral that morning through the eyes of a detached stranger.

  The kettle’s furious whistle broke the moment and settled her indecision about whether or not to explain to Fraser that which she had just come to realise for herself. She removed the kettle from the range, filling the teapot with boiling water, and settled on, for the time being at least, not speaking about it any further. ‘Do you want to go and get changed?’

  Fraser shrugged. ‘Into what?’

  ‘I don’t know… Shirt and trousers?’

  ‘What for?’ he asked.

  She glanced at him and could see that he wasn’t being facetious. ‘To be more comfortable…
To start to draw a line under it all… To forget the war…’ She instantly regretted her choice of words, as if forgetting were as simple as removing his uniform. She braced herself for a deserved rebuke, but none came.

  ‘Okay,’ he said softly, and left the room.

  Harriet made the tea, placed it onto a wooden tray with a plate of homemade lemon soufflé cakes, and carried it into the sitting room.

  Vivaldi had finished and she thought it a good idea to have something playing before Fraser returned. She flicked through the ten-inch records, pausing briefly to consider each one in turn. Handel, perhaps? No, it would only remind her of the funeral. Brahms? No, his bearing a teutonic taint had far outweighed any of his musical accomplishments and he had not been played in their home for more than four years. Liszt? Yes, perfect choice. She carefully laid one of his records on the gramophone and lifted the needle into place.

  The dramatic—perhaps melodramatic—opening bars filled the sitting room, as Harriet sat down in her armchair and picked up her cup of tea.

  Fraser entered moments later, wearing a white shirt and a pair of brown trousers, frowning. ‘Is this Dante’s Divina Commedia?’

  Harriet nodded. ‘I thought it would be pleasant background music…’

  Fraser raised one eyebrow. ‘You do know it’s about a journey through hell and purgatory, don’t you?’

  The instant mortification stung Harriet. ‘Oh, gosh, I’m terribly sorry…’

  ‘It’s fine, Ma,’ he insisted, giving a fragile smile.

  She couldn’t quite meet his eyes, as she encouraged him to sit: ‘Come and have some tea and cake.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, sitting opposite her and picking up his cup without the saucer. Harriet noticed him shifting slightly in his seat, and the fingers of his free hand fidgeting. She could but try to imagine actually how difficult it was for him. Time—she had been advised on many occasions by many different people—was apparently a great healer. Her duty, she saw clearly now, was to offer him routine and distraction.