Ghost Swifts, Blue Poppies and the Red Star

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  She was suddenly back in the tearooms, talking with Mrs Selmes and Mrs Davison about how they could get their message through to all the men frequenting the Coach and Horses and the Queen’s Head night after night. They were eating jam sandwiches and Victoria sponge cake, drinking tea. Mrs Selmes had a suggestion but Harriet couldn’t hear her properly, her voice was surprisingly distant and faint. Through extended shrouds of blackness, Mrs Selmes and Mrs Davison vanished and Harriet found herself quite alone. The tearoom was deserted. But directly opposite, a huge single-file queue had formed at the door of the Coach and Horses. Everybody, whom she knew from the village, was there; even Reverend Percival himself was waiting to get inside. It was all so hopeless. Another stretch of blackness pulled her away and she tried to discern some inaudible sounds that didn’t seem at all to fit where she thought that she was. Harriet tried to call out to them, to save them, but nothing would come out of her mouth.

  Chapter Ten

  12th September 1919, Boezinge, Belgium

  There it was again: a sort of tapping sound. This time, Harriet opened her eyes, having absolutely no idea of where she was. She followed one of the squiggly lines above her head until it met with another line. She followed that one to the floor and abruptly sat up with a start, remembering, with a suddenness which made her flinch, exactly where she was. ‘Goodness me,’ she mumbled, her heart thumping inside her chest. Daylight streamed in through the windows. What time was it? Was it morning? It must be.

  On the bed beside hers, Fraser was on his side, his legs curled up to his chest under the woollen blanket, sleeping soundly.

  A knock came from the door and Harriet recalled that familiar tapping sound, which had woken her.

  She cleared her throat. ‘Yes?’

  Fraser stirred at the sound of her voice.

  ‘Mrs Tillens is doing breakfast,’ came Joe’s voice from the other side of the door. ‘And Arthur’s ’ere. You both comin’ down?’

  ‘Lovely, thank you,’ she croaked. ‘Yes… Be right there.’

  Fraser groaned and tugged the blanket over his head.

  Harriet swung her feet down onto the floor, quickly retracting them, when she remembered how filthy it was. She carefully slid into her shoes and stood up, detesting the feeling of having slept in her same clothes. She longed for a hot bath and a clean dress, but that would just have to wait. First, they needed to get out of this condemned place. She pulled the blanket away from Fraser’s face. ‘Come on. Wake up. We need to get a move on. We’ve a busy day ahead of us.’

  He grunted and sat up, looking dreadfully dishevelled, also having not changed out of his clothes. Harriet tentatively touched her hair, then promptly withdrew her hand, preferring not to dwell on her appearance.

  Fraser exhaled, as he squeezed his feet into his shoes, evidently with some difficulty. He stood up, sighed again and walked over to the door.

  Harriet followed him downstairs to the kitchen, where she found Mrs Tillens washing dishes in filthy grey water. She greeted them with a nod of her head. Joe was sitting at the table, pressing an entire boiled egg into his mouth. Harriet smiled warmly, thought of how Timothy would likely be doing the same right now at home, and said good morning.

  Joe acknowledged Harriet and Fraser with a wave and pointed at the man sitting opposite him, chewing furiously on his mouthful in order to be able to speak.

  ‘Please,’ Mrs Tillens said, thrusting two tin cups at Harriet and Fraser, which looked suspiciously as though they might have been retrieved from the trenches.

  ‘Thank you kindly,’ Harriet said, staring at the muddy liquid.

  Fraser thanked her, seeming not to have noticed the state of the receptacle, and sipped the drink with slurps of enjoyment.

  Harriet tried, with a subtle nod of her head and a widening of her eyes, to point out the poor condition of the mug, but he was blissfully oblivious.

  ‘Mrs McDougall,’ Joe finally managed to say, ‘this is the one and only, Arthur Dooley.’

  Arthur—a tall unhealthily thin man with a blotched, crimson face and a clump of black unkempt hair—stood up and saluted: ‘Arthur Dooley at your service.’

  ‘Lovely to meet you, Mr Dooley,’ Harriet greeted, unsure of how to take the man.

  ‘Please, step into my office,’ Arthur said, pointing to the vacant chair beside him. ‘And call me Art. Or Arty. Or Arthy. Or Ar. Or whatever you fancy, really.’

  Harriet carried the cup of coffee to the table and sat down, trying to ignore his eccentricity. Fraser wandered over and leant on the wall behind Harriet, at the same time sending a clump of plaster to the floor.

  ‘Ey!’ Mrs Tillens called.

  ‘Sorry…’

  ‘So,’ Harriet began, ‘I believe you served with the Special Brigade in the war?’

  His eyes narrowed, as though he were deep in thought. ‘The war?’

  Harriet shot a look at Joe, and then at Fraser. Surely, he hadn’t forgotten it...had he? ‘Yes, the Great War.’

  Arthur’s eyes widened madly. ‘Oh, the Great War! Yes! It was great, wasn’t it!’ He made a sudden loud explosion-noise with his mouth and throat. ‘Guns. Bombs. And gas. Oh, the gas! Gas, gas, gas…’ His voice jumped an octave and he pulled his wiggling fingers to just below his chin. ‘The cute little rats all scurrying along and then—’ he made another similarly guttural explosion-noise and then did his best impression of a rat dying, ‘—dead!’ He picked up Harriet’s mug and gulped her coffee down in one go, for which action she was unexpectedly thankful.

  ‘And you were in P Company?’ she said, trying to exert a firm steer on the conversation.

  ‘The Suicide Company,’ Arthur corrected.

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘That’s what we were called: The Suicide Company.’

  ‘Right,’ Harriet said. ‘Do you remember my son. He was called Malcolm. Malcolm McDougall.’

  Arthur nodded quickly, continually, excitedly.

  ‘And is there anything you can tell me about him, particularly towards the end?’ she pushed, uncertain of this Arthur’s having the ability to converse seriously on the subject.

  Arthur made a further explosion-noise and then repeated his parody of the dead rat. For several bizarre seconds his head was tipped to one side, his tongue hanging loosely from his mouth.

  ‘Art, stop playin’ silly buggers and tell Mrs McDougall ’bout her son,’ Joe said, kicking him hard in the shin under the table.

  Arthur yelped, looking genuinely offended, like a scolded dog, and gazed at Harriet, as if unsure of what more needed to be said on the matter.

  ‘He was a good one,’ Arthur said, his tone having changed completely to one of a sincere and coherent adult. He nibbled on his thumbnail for a moment, gazing at the floor. ‘One of the best, actually.’ His fingers became twitchy again, dancing in front of his face, as if of their own volition. ‘Chemicals! Chemicals! He would sit in the trenches working on the formulas that we had to follow.’

  ‘Was that the reason he went to the laboratories in Woolwich?’ Fraser asked.

  Arthur nodded furiously again. ‘He was one of the best; oh, yes!’ He looked directly above him and pointed, making everyone else in the room turn and also look up, including Mrs Tillens, who was apparently trying to follow the conversation with great effort and interest. ‘Thirty percent chloropicrin, seventy percent chlorine: YELLOW STAR! Sixty-five percent chloropicrin, thirty-five percent hydrogen sulphide: GREEN STAR!’ His fingers burst open above his head with a mini-explosion. ‘All the stars, so bright. He tried to make them human. Hello, I’m a star! No, humane.’

  All things humane and matters concerning gas-warfare, did not, in Harriet’s book, coexist naturally. ‘What do you mean?’

  In a peculiar, yet vaguely familiar voice, which Harriet deemed to be a poor impersonation of Malcolm’s, Arthur said, ‘If we’re going to kill the buggers, let’s at least try to do it quickly and humanely.’ He dragged out the final word of the sentence, tilting to one side,
as he did so. ‘Phosgene. Smells like hay. Makes you choke on your own blood.’

  The words were Malcolm’s, of that Harriet was certain. Despite Arthur’s obvious idiosyncrasies, hearing from him that Malcolm had tried to use his knowledge of chemistry for some good touched her, settled her in some way.

  ‘What about Red Star?’ Harriet asked.

  Arthur frowned sternly. ‘Red Star? Red Star?’ He shrugged. ‘No idea.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Harriet persisted. ‘You’ve never heard of it?’

  Arthur filled his cheeks with air and shook his head. ‘Red Star? Red…Star?’

  ‘For goodness’ sake,’ Joe said sharply. ‘Art, ’ave you ’eard of Red Star before, or not?’

  Arthur shook his head. ‘Nope, there’s no Red Star. Lots of pretty colours, but not red.’

  ‘And what about what happened just before he died?’ Fraser asked.

  ‘The Bosche sent over a mortar bomb. BANG! Gas! Gas! Gas!’ Arthur mimed putting on a gasmask, then he flopped back in his chair, pretending to be dead.

  ‘Before that bit,’ Fraser said.

  Harriet frowned at him, seeing from Fraser’s face and composure that he was losing patience with this man.

  ‘Working on the front line…’ Arthur recalled. ‘Malcolm noticed it… ‘Ah, look, some of the gas batteries are broken.’’ Arthur turned around to address Fraser. ‘Circuit breakages. Malcolm: ‘I’ll carry the exploders up’. He climbed the parados in broad daylight—’

  ‘Parados?’ Harriet interrupted.

  ‘Top of the trench,’ Fraser explained. ‘Parapet in front, parados behind.’

  ‘I see,’ Harriet said. ‘So, he climbed out of the trench in daylight?’

  ‘Yes, indeedey,’ Arthur confirmed. ‘Out of the trench, connecting exploders, getting the batteries fired. Boom!’ He put on a squawky, bird-like voice and added, ‘They work! They work!’ His voice switched to exaggerated German: ‘Hallo! Ich kann dich sehen, weisst du! Bang!’

  Harriet didn’t know quite what to say. Thankfully, Fraser was holding his tongue. She looked at Arthur, folding a large piece of bread into his mouth, his recollection evidently over.

  ‘Is that it?’ Joe asked.

  ‘‘Get them on a stretcher! Take them to the Dressing Station!’ Bye, Malcolm…not coming back,’ Arthur said through a mouthful of bread.

  ‘Anythin’ else?’ Joe pushed.

  Arthur shook his head. ‘Didn’t return.’ Then his head flopped backwards with his mouth open.

  Joe looked embarrassed and mouthed the word ‘sorry’ to Harriet. After a short pause, he asked her, ‘D’you still want me to show you the Dressing Station and all that gubbins?’

  ‘Yes, please. If that’s okay,’ Harriet replied.

  ‘’Course. We’ll need to be headin’ off in about twenty minutes, though—is that alright?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Harriet confirmed, rising from the table and making her way towards the door.

  ‘Not eat?’ Mrs Tillens said.

  ‘Not eat, thank you,’ she answered.

  ‘I can probably ’ang on for you to get some quick breakfast,’ Joe said. ‘She don’t take long to cook it.’

  ‘No, no,’ Harriet insisted. ‘It’s quite alright. I’d sooner get on if it’s all the same to you.’

  Joe shrugged and said, ‘Meet you by the wagon, then.’

  ‘Perfect,’ Harriet said, desperate to leave this awful madhouse behind. ‘Come on, Fraser. Let’s get our things together.’

  ‘‘I’m taking a G.S. Wagon into Poperinge!’’ Arthur called, sitting upright again. ‘‘Don’t let on.’’

  Harriet paused. Arthur was using the mimicking voice, which he had just used for Malcolm. She turned around, noticing that Fraser had also picked up on it. ‘Is that what Malcolm said? Did Malcolm say that?’

  Arthur looked from one person to the next, as if he were in trouble. ‘No. Yes. I’m not supposed to let on.’

  ‘He’s dead, you know,’ Fraser responded impatiently. ‘It doesn’t matter much, now.’

  Arthur raised a finger to his lips and whispered. ‘‘I’m taking a G.S. Wagon into Poperinge.’’

  ‘General Service Wagon,’ Fraser muttered for Harriet’s benefit, then addressed Arthur, clearly enunciating each word: ‘What was he doing in Poperinge, Arthur?’

  ‘Nobody knows,’ he said with wide eyes and expanded arms.

  ‘When did he take a wagon to Poperinge?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘The night before…’

  ‘The night before he went up onto the parados to fix the…the things…the batteries?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Was that usual for him to do that?’ Harriet asked.

  Arthur shook his head so hard that Harriet feared that he might fall off his chair.

  ‘Thank you, Arthur. You’ve been most helpful.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Fraser added, following her out of the room.

  ‘Is there anything off to think about Malcolm taking a wagon into Poperinge?’ Harriet asked when they were upstairs in their bedroom.

  Fraser took a moment to answer. ‘It is quite odd. Soldiers with his kind of job would have to move up and down the line, and cadging a lift from a G.S. wagon wouldn’t have been uncommon, but taking one into Poperinge… I don’t know.’

  Harriet sighed, wondering if she would ever know the full extent of Malcolm’s final movements. She sat on the bed, thinking.

  ‘It can’t be because of her, though, can it?’ Fraser said. ‘Lina Peeters, I mean. She was in Woolwich at the time.’

  ‘I had just reached the same conclusion myself,’ Harriet said. ‘I don’t know. Come on, let’s get out of this place.’

  Fraser placed his bowler hat onto his head, picked up a suitcase in each hand, and headed down the stairs. Harriet followed, thanking and paying Mrs Tillens on her way out to the Sunbeam, where Joe was waiting in the driver’s seat.

  ‘Cheerio,’ Fraser said to Jesus, tipping the front of his bowler hat, then climbing into the old ambulance.

  Harriet scowled at him, then got in beside him, taking one final look at the condemned farmhouse.

  Then, they were on their way.

  The journey back to Essex Farm Cemetery somehow seemed much shorter than their journey had been in the opposite direction. Joe drew the Sunbeam to a stop just outside the entrance. ‘Leave your cases in ’ere; they’ll be safe enough.’

  Harriet and Fraser climbed down and followed Joe across a pathway, diagonally facing the stone cross that stood at the cemetery gates. They had walked just a few paces when Joe pointed in front of them. ‘So… That’s the Essex Farm Advanced Dressing Station.’

  ‘Oh,’ Harriet murmured. A little way ahead of them was an ugly concrete structure cut into the mud bank of the canal. It looked nothing at all like a structure in which critically wounded men could satisfactorily be treated.

  They continued across the grass towards it, then, when they had reached the first room, Joe stood back, allowing them to peer inside.

  Harriet stared into the gloom but could see nothing at all inside; all that she could detect was the harsh smell of mildew and damp rising from within. How had the Duchess of Westminster described the place? Something like windowless and dreary, something of an understatement.

  ‘This was the Officers’ Mess,’ Joe said.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Fraser commented wryly.

  Joe moved to the next door. ‘This one was for walk-in cases, then the next was for stretcher cases.’

  Harriet stepped inside the latter room to which Malcolm would have been conveyed, unexpectedly feeling a cold wetness in her shoes. She glanced down and, from the limited amount of light entering the doorway behind her, could see that she was standing in a couple of inches of water.

  ‘Great. My shoes are now soaked,’ Fraser lamented from behind her. ‘Just brilliant.’

  Suddenly, the room was illuminated with a burst of white light, as Joe struck a match.

 
; ‘Glory,’ Harriet said, observing the room. But for the cold water in which they were standing, it was empty. It probably could have housed eight, or maybe ten beds at a push. The walls were a horribly dull concrete-grey, lined with wet green streaks and the ceilings were oppressively low. As the light from the match began to flicker and fade, she hoped with all her heart that it hadn’t been like this for Malcolm’s last few hours of life.

  ‘What was..?’ Fraser began to say, stopping when the light died, plunging them into a horrible cold darkness.

  ‘What was what?’ Harriet said.

  ‘On the wall,’ Fraser replied. ‘Have you another match, Joe?’

  Joe answered by striking another.

  ‘There!’ Fraser said, an excitement evident in just that single word. He was pointing to the wall on the opposite side of the room.

  Harriet strained her eyes but could see nothing. She stood back, allowing Joe and Fraser to approach whatever it was, which he thought he had seen.

  ‘Look, Ma,’ Fraser said, beckoning her over with a wave.

  As she walked, the water crept uncomfortably higher over and into her shoes, reaching to her ankles. She leant in between the two men, staring at the wall. It was some kind of a blemish, like a large blueish birthmark. Then Joe held the light to within just a couple of inches, and she could now identify it: a single blue poppy with the letters MMcD marked in black below it.

  ‘Malcolm painted it,’ Fraser said needlessly.

  The light died again, and Harriet wondered if this was the poppy to which Mrs Leonard had referred; the one which she had said ‘…would help with it all.’ It certainly wasn’t helping anything, right now. In fact, being here in this God-forsaken place made it worse, and, feeling a sudden wave of nausea, she hurried from the small enclosure.

  Back outside in the warm sunlight, Harriet sucked in great lungfuls of air, as though she had been holding her breath underwater for some time.