Ghost Swifts, Blue Poppies and the Red Star

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  ‘This way, Mrs McDougall,’ the footman said, striding across the polished wooden floors to an open door on the far side of the hallway. He stopped, stepped backwards and indicated that Harriet should go in.

  She stepped inside what must have been the drawing room, with large bay windows overlooking Hyde Park. The Duchess rose from a chaise longue.

  ‘Ah, good morning. Mrs McDougall, I presume?’ the Duchess said.

  Harriet was suddenly taken with the idea of curtseying but couldn’t quite decide if it was indecorous or not. Instead, she smiled and offered her hand.

  The Duchess was a tall slender woman with an impossibly thin waist. She was strikingly handsome and wore her dark hair in an American close-cropped-wave style, which Harriet had only previously seen in Woman and Home magazine. Marcel waves, they were called, if she remembered rightly. A little too modern for her own taste.

  ‘Lovely to meet you, Mrs McDougall,’ the Duchess said. ‘Would you care for some tea?

  ‘That would be lovely, thank you,’ Harriet replied.

  ‘Tea for two,’ she instructed the footman, who nodded, smartly scuttled from the room and closed the door. ‘Come and sit down.’ The Duchess pointed to a long dark-wood table with an elaborate floral centrepiece, around which were positioned half-a-dozen chairs, upholstered in a deep burgundy colour and embroidered with ornate white roses.

  Harriet sat down, knitting her fingers together on the table, then quickly retracted them, fearing to display incorrect etiquette. She straightened herself in the chair and cleared her throat.

  ‘Relax, Mrs McDougall, please,’ the Duchess said pleasantly, having evidently noted that she was feeling on edge. ‘Did you have a good journey to London from good old Sussex by the sea?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. A very pleasant train ride,’ Harriet answered. ‘I don’t suppose I shall ever tire of travelling through the High Weald—such beautiful countryside.’

  ‘Indeed—a truly magical place. I appreciate simplicity and tranquillity of life all the more these days.’

  ‘You must have witnessed some awful things,’ Harriet commented.

  ‘Yes, I saw the absolute worst of humanity out there,’ she agreed. ‘But, do you know what, Mrs McDougall… I consider my time out there as a privilege, for I also got to see the absolute best of humanity. Acts of bravery, acts of kindness, acts of heroism the likes of which one could never imagine.’

  The skin on Harriet’s arms prickled with this unexpected elucidation that somehow goodness could be found among the brutality.

  ‘So, tell me about Malcolm,’ the Duchess said gently.

  Harriet cleared her throat and began to repeat the trite phrase, which had become so familiar to her: ‘He joined the Royal West Kents in—’

  ‘No, tell me about who he was before the war,’ the Duchess expounded. ‘Men in khaki is all I’ve known, Mrs McDougall. Regiments, battalions, ranks, service numbers—none of it about the man inside the uniform. One of my great lamentations—working out there, in the field—was that there was no time to get to know anybody. I should like to know who Malcom McDougall really was, if you don’t mind.’

  The question threw Harriet, and she took a few moments to extract the child, whom she had raised, from the man who had gone to war. ‘He was a happy boy,’ she started. ‘Always adventurous and keen to explore. He went to Blackheath Proprietary School in Greenwich and he—like his two brothers who also attended there—did very well. Academia seemed to come naturally to him, and he was generally a well-behaved boy.’ Harriet grinned at the returning warm memories. ‘The only time—to my knowledge, at least—that he got into trouble at school was for conducting his own scientific experiments in his dorm. The last one—making white phosphorous by boiling his own urine in a test tube—had him suspended for two weeks…’

  Harriet wondered if she had said too much, or if the reference to urine had been rather too vulgar, but the Duchess let out an unexpectedly raucous laugh, just as the footman returned carrying a silver tray. ‘Boiling his own urine! What a lark!’ she cried.

  Harriet smiled, noting the footman’s disconcerted expression, as he carefully conveyed the tea things from the tray to the table.

  ‘Thank you, Simmons,’ the Duchess said, pouring tea from a silver pot into the two cups.

  ‘And he simply loved the natural world,’ Harriet continued, sensing a genuine interest from the Duchess and enjoying sharing Malcolm with her in this way. ‘He would spend hours upon hours in the woodlands surrounding our home, making detailed observations of flowers, insects and birds. He’d sketch, make notes, take cuttings, collect bird eggs… He was a true lover of life and the natural word.’

  ‘He sounds a true delight. You must be very proud of all that he was.’ The Duchess added milk to the two cups, then slid Harriet’s across the table.

  Harriet thanked her and nodded, finding it a refreshing change that someone should think to talk about Malcolm’s successes before the war. Most people—even close friends and family—would focus on the sacrifice, which he had made for his country, a vacuous statement devoid of any real meaning or, for that matter, truth.

  ‘Did you bring a picture of Malcolm?’ the Duchess asked. ‘I cannot retain names for toffee…but I never forget a face.’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Harriet replied, opening her bag and withdrawing a postcard. On the front was a photograph of Malcolm, taken in 1916 in his uniform, and on the back was written, Dear Ma & Pa, something to remind you of what I look like! Love, Malcolm. Harriet passed the postcard across the table.

  The Duchess squinted and studied the image for some time without speaking, leaving Harriet unable to interpret clear meaning from her facial expressions. She supposed from the time that it was taking, that despite what the Duchess had said about not forgetting a face, she was indeed struggling to extract his image from those of the thousands of men, whom she must have encountered. Finally, she smiled and looked across to Harriet. ‘Yes. I treated him, undoubtedly—a lovely boy and such a shame.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh, yes, without question,’ the Duchess confirmed, giving an assertive nod of her head. She sipped her tea, then continued: ‘He was a charming man, and I remember him being quite excited that he had seen some blue poppies—would that be right? Blue?’

  Harriet’s reply caught in her throat and she had difficulty answering. She nodded, taking a drop of tea.

  The Duchess smiled, evidently pleased with her successful recollection.

  ‘How was he?’ Harriet managed to murmur.

  ‘All things considered, he was well,’ she replied. ‘Do you know much about the Advanced Dressing Station at Essex Farm?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘It was the terribly unattractive functional kind of building, which one might expect from a dressing station so close to the frontline, hastily dug from a bank beside the Ypres Canal: cold, dreary and windowless. But we did our best to make it comfortable for the men. There was an officers’ mess, a latrine room, a kitchen, a room for convalesced soldiers ready for evacuation and then there were the two medical wards: one was for walk-in cases; the other was for stretcher cases brought in by field ambulance. Malcolm, along with two other engineers, was a stretcher case.’

  ‘And what had happened? What was wrong with him, exactly?’

  ‘They were all suffering from the effects of gas poisoning,’ she answered.

  Harriet nodded, slightly exasperated that people around her seemed so inclined to spare her the detail, which she so desperately craved. As horrible or as awful as the truth might be, she simply had to know it. ‘Please, I want… I need to know everything. Don’t hide any details from me.’

  The Duchess nodded. ‘I understand. I lost my boy, Edward, when he was five years old. I hadn’t been there at the time and I had to know absolutely everything. One can’t grieve fully and completely without the truth.’

  ‘That’s exactly how I feel,’ Harriet agreed. ‘Although people around
me keep telling me to leave things well alone…as they are.’

  ‘I shall tell you everything as I remember it. Malcolm and his two comrades were brought to us by ambulance. I knew as soon as I spotted the brassards on their arms—red, green and white for the gas units—what their ailments would likely be. They were all conscious but suffering considerably from the effects of the gas. Malcolm also had a nasty, but treatable gash on his upper arm. Their faces were jaundiced, and they were coughing constantly: an unpleasant hacking noise, which produced a foamy green froth.’

  Harriet’s determination to remain stoically impassive was crushed. The image, which the Duchess had just revealed, was foremost in Harriet’s mind, displayed there as clearly as an authentic recent memory. She began to sob quietly.

  ‘Oh, Mrs McDougall,’ the Duchess intoned, standing up and moving around the table to place a comforting arm around her shoulders, an act of kindness that surprised Harriet and made her cry all the more.

  Harriet dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief, mortally embarrassed. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘There’s really no need to apologise. I should have been more sensitive.’

  Harriet shook her head. ‘No, I asked for the full truth and the full truth, however unpalatable, is what I would like.’

  The Duchess returned to her seat and drank some more tea, waiting for Harriet to have regained her composure fully.

  ‘Please, go on,’ Harriet said.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very well. In the early days of gas attacks, chlorine was used. The effects were almost immediate and really quite ghastly. Then phosgene began to be deployed. Ten times more lethal than chlorine but the effects would take longer to become evident and, if such an appalling and incongruous thing can be said of it, it was kinder at the end. Malcolm and his two comrades simply slipped into an unconsciousness from which they did not wake.’

  ‘Thank you for your honesty,’ Harriet said quietly.

  ‘The three men were buried, as was the general rule, that night in the cemetery attached to the Advanced Dressing Station. The curé read a burial service over the graves, each being marked by a simple wooden cross.’

  Harriet sighed, taking strange consolation from the detail of Malcom’s final hours.

  The Duchess smiled. ‘As I mentioned, the effects from the phosgene took some time, and so, once we had made him comfortable, he was able to converse with me. He was really quite enamoured by those blue poppies he had seen. He wanted to try and sketch them. He slept a great deal…’ the Duchess looked upward, as though trying to coax more from her memory. ‘Oh, and of course, he spoke of his only having been back at the front for a matter of days.’

  ‘Really? Where had he been?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘Home on leave,’ the Duchess answered with a smile and an accompanying look, which said that she clearly expected it to hold some resonance with Harriet.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Harriet said.

  ‘Oh,’ the Duchess said, her cheeks reddening sharply.

  ‘I think you must be mistaken.’

  ‘Yes, forgive me,’ the Duchess stammered.

  Harriet studied the Duchess carefully, noticing how she was struggling to regain her equanimity. She clearly didn’t think that she was mistaken at all but was pacifying her. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Look, I dealt with thousands of men during the war, in various states of consciousness and lucidity and—’

  ‘Please,’ Harriet interrupted.

  The Duchess sighed, wriggling in her chair. ‘I’m fairly confident that Malcolm said he’d been back to England on leave. I can’t recall any additional facts from the conversation, except that he had been to Woolwich, and the reason I remember it is because he talked about his staying in a guesthouse not far from where one of my nurse-friends lived.’

  ‘Woolwich?’ Harriet blustered. ‘So, Malcolm used his one yearly eight-day pass to go to Woolwich? Whatever for?’

  The Duchess flushed again. ‘I’m afraid that I really could not say. He might have told me at the time, but I honestly cannot bring it to mind. As I said, I might very well be wrong on this point…’

  ‘It’ll be those damnable gas laboratories,’ Harriet seethed, her hands beginning to quiver. ‘If only he’d come home… I’d have seen him…just before he died. It’s just not right.’

  ‘No, it isn’t, Mrs McDougall. My experience found very little, if anything at all, that was right with the Great War.’

  ‘Where was this guesthouse that he stayed in?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘I don’t remember, except to say that it was not too far from the Royal Artillery barracks.’

  ‘Right, thank you.’

  ‘Try not to take it to heart, Mrs McDougall. There could be any number of reasons why your son was back in England and unable to visit you.’

  ‘Yes,’ Harriet agreed absent-mindedly, though not able to imagine a single one. ‘Is there anything else that you can remember him saying?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I think that’s all,’ the Duchess apologised.

  ‘Thank you very much for taking the time to see me,’ Harriet said, drinking the last of her tea, and rising from her chair. ‘It really is very good of you.’

  ‘It’s the very least that I could do, but I rather feel that I have only made matters worse,’ the Duchess said with an enquiring grimace.

  ‘Not at all; I appreciate your candour,’ Harriet said, tucking Malcolm’s photograph back into her bag. ‘Good day to you,’ Harriet said, extending her hand out towards the Duchess.

  ‘Good day, Mrs McDougall, and the best of fortune with your quest.’

  The half-an-hour walk back to Charing Cross was somewhat of a blur for Harriet. She was walking through Green Park, mulling over what the Duchess had told her, when a young man wearing a shabby and dirty khaki uniform stepped onto the path in front of her. His face was haggard, his eyes puffy and bloodshot and he was missing his left ear. He held his head to one side, like a curious dog and thrust forward a tin cup. ‘Spare change, lady?’

  Harriet was taken aback at the sight of him.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,’ he stammered.

  Harriet fumbled in her purse and handed the poor wretched man some of her loose change.

  ‘God bless you, madam,’ the man said, with a nod of his lop-sided head. He moved off the path again, out of her way and slumped down onto a pile of grubby blankets—his home, she presumed.

  At the station, whilst she waited for the return train to Hastings, Harriet was approached by another former soldier. He sloped towards her, as though it were an effort to walk, his two hands forming a cup. His appearance was grotesque but at once almost farcical, as though he had just scrambled out of his own battlefield grave. His uniform, if such a filthy and bedraggled tunic and kilt could be described as such, belonged to the Seaforth Highlanders. His unpleasant odour reached her before he did, and Harriet could see through his dark beard that he had several teeth missing.

  ‘Can you spare a few pennies?’ the man slurred in a heavy Scottish accent.

  Harriet gazed into his rheumy eyes, wondering how life had taken him from fighting for his country to begging in Charing Cross train station. And why was he continuing to wear the uniform of his regiment, nine months after the Armistice? Surely, he’d had opportunity to change his clothes since then? Or was he perhaps wearing the uniform as a reminder to the public of his sacrifice?

  ‘Thanks, anyway,’ he mumbled, turning and wandering off in the direction in which he had just come.

  ‘Wait!’ Harriet called.

  The man stopped and turned to face her.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

  ‘Danny.’

  ‘How old are you, Danny?’ Harriet questioned.

  ‘Twenty-eight,’ he replied.

  His answer shocked Harriet. ‘Where are your family, Danny?’

  ‘What’s with all the bloody questions? It don’t mat
ter me name, me age or me family. None of it matters, lady; not to me and certainly no’ to you.’

  ‘But it does,’ Harriet countered. ‘Someone out there is missing you terribly and wishes you to come home.’

  The man laughed loudly.

  ‘Here,’ Harriet said, handing him the last of her change. ‘People care.’

  ‘Aye, sure they do,’ he said, waving a dismissive hand. He held up the money. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I care,’ Harriet insisted.

  ‘You care to a point, lady, aye, but you’ll be getting on your train back to your nice wee home. In a few days, you’ll nay remember me.’ The man pointed behind Harriet. ‘You’d best be going.’

  She hated that he was so completely right. She had to catch that train home and she would, in time, forget all about him. But what could she do? As Fraser had been so very keen on pointing out, she could hardly invite every displaced soldier to live with her at Linton House.

  Harriet sighed, as she watched him lumber away towards a smart-suited gentleman, who shooed him away like a street dog.

  ‘Golly,’ Harriet said to herself, as she walked up the front path. Fraser had evidently been hard at work in the front garden. All the rose beds had been weeded and the edges of the lawns trimmed neatly. She smiled, pleased at how it made the garden look, but more pleased that Fraser had taken the initiative to do something to keep himself occupied. Having seen the raft of poor dispossessed men today, she feared what might become of him were he to lapse into apathy.

  Inside the cool house, she sat down on the monk’s bench in the hallway and removed her shoes with a groan of satisfaction at the feeling. Then, she noticed the smell. Not unpleasant, as such, but certainly strange. She padded along the hallway, the odour increasing as she neared the kitchen.

  ‘Welcome home,’ Timothy greeted. He was standing at the kitchen sink, peeling potatoes and wearing, as she had told him to do, one of John’s old outfits, topped by an apron of hers.