‘Any news on lists of names?’
‘It’s too early. Angela?’
‘Come and meet your nephew.’
Theo prised himself out of the chair and followed Georgiana into Angela’s bedroom. Angela was lying in bed staring at and cuddling her son. She didn’t even look at Theo, just held out her hand to him. He squeezed it.
‘He’s beautiful, isn’t he?’
‘A handsome fellow.’ Theo stroked the baby’s cheek with his forefinger.
If Georgiana didn’t know Theo better, she’d have said he’d sounded emotional.
Angela finally looked away from her son long enough to see how tired her brother was. ‘You’re sleeping on your feet.’
‘Just finished a long shift.’
‘There’s fighting upstream?’
‘Not for officers above the rank of captains. The majors will be standing at the back pushing the ranks forward,’ Theo reassured her clumsily. ‘I have to get back. You did write and tell Peter that he was going to be a father, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, but he hasn’t replied. The mail is so uncertain.’
‘I could call into the wireless room at HQ on the way and ask them to send him a wire.’
‘Would you?’
‘I would,’ he smiled. ‘Have you picked out a name for young Smythe?’
She gazed down at the child. ‘Peter Charles Theodore Smythe.’
‘Charles for our father?’
‘And another Charles I knew and loved and valued as a friend.’
Georgiana turned away from Angela and Theo and folded back the sheets and blankets on the baby’s cot. Theo stroked the baby’s cheek again, dropped a kiss on Angela’s head, and went to the door.
‘Would you like tea, coffee, something to eat, Theo?’ Georgiana asked.
‘No, thank you. I have to go.’ He walked past her. Georgiana saw that she wasn’t the only one struggling to hold her emotions in check.
British Relief Force, Shumrun
February 1917
The sky grew gradually paler, but the grey was unrelenting. Simply a lighter shade than that of the night. Rain teemed down in sheets, cold, penetrating, and interminable.
‘This trench is a right bloody sodden mess, isn’t it, sir?’ A private in the Cheshires addressed Michael who was crouched beneath a flimsy shelter he’d patched together from his mackintosh and two ammunition boxes.
Michael carried on scribbling in his notebook. ‘No more than any other sodden mess of a trench in this area, private. You know the saying, “if God meant for soldiers to be content with their lot in life he would have staffed the army with angels”.’
‘You’re a war correspondent, sir?’
‘Daily Mirror.’
‘My missus likes reading that. I’m not much of a reader myself.’
Michael had learned long ago that the man who admitted that he ‘wasn’t much of a reader’ generally couldn’t read much beyond his own name.
A runner came down the line, ‘Anyone seen Major Smythe?’
Michael held his hand out from under his waterproof to attract the runner’s attention. ‘Who’s asking?’
‘Message just come down the wire for him, sir.’
‘I’ll look for him if you’re busy.’
‘I am, sir. Thank you. Much obliged, sir.’ The runner handed Michael a piece of sodden folded paper. There was no envelope, Michael opened it carefully.
Peter Charles Theodore Smythe born 4.15 a.m. Mother, son, well. Congratulations, Theo
Michael checked the date – 3 hours ago. ‘This is one piece of news I can’t wait to pass on to Major Smythe.’ He pushed his notebook and pencil into his pocket, shook out his mackintosh, and slipped it on.
‘Do you know where Major Smythe is, sir?’ The runner asked.
‘I’ll find him.’ Michael fought his way through the trenches until he reached the river. He found Peter in the front line trench on the British side, standing on a rifle step watching through his field glasses as the Turkish guns blasted the British foothold on the opposite bank. Michael tapped Peter’s shoulder. He stepped down.
‘The Gurkhas are advancing. We’re getting there. You here to write copy, Michael?’
‘Why are you shouting?’
Peter pointed to his ears. ‘Shell blast.’
Michael handed Peter the scrap of paper. ‘You play your cards close to your chest,’ he yelled in Peter’s ear. ‘Not a word.’
Peter read and re read the note. ‘It makes sense.’
‘What?’ Michael yelled.
‘Perry said I was a coward who wanted to get back to my wife and child. I thought he was talking about Maud’s baby …’
Michael laughed at the bewildered expression on Peter’s face. He dug out his flask and handed it to him. ‘You’re a father, Smythe, Congratulations.’
‘Congratulations, sir … congratulations …’
Within seconds Peter was surrounded by a sea of junior officers slapping his back and wishing him well.
‘I need to send a return wire.’
Michael pulled out his pencil and notebook. ‘I’ll do it for you,’ he mouthed above the noise of the shelling and congratulations of officers. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘If wishes could carry me, I’d be home tonight. Love to both of you, Peter.’
Michael walked back and looked for the command post. General Maude insisted on hourly wireless updates, which infuriated most of his staff officers. It took twenty minutes to set up the wireless and fifteen minutes to take it down. Thirty-five minutes during which Maude and his staff were forced to remained static. Minutes the majority of his senior officers believed could have been put to better use.
He walked past the staff tent to the wireless operator’s shelter, which also held a tea station manned by sepoys. He was in luck. The lieutenant was just about to disconnect the wireless. He persuaded him to keep it open a few more minutes, handed over Peter’s message, and watched him send it.
‘Two sugars isn’t it, sir?’ A sepoy who remembered Michael from previous visits, asked from behind the tea urn.
‘It is,’ he took the tin mug the man handed him and warmed his hands on it. ‘Thank you, just what I needed.’ As he’d stocked up in the stores before the battle, he offered the sepoy a full pack of cigarettes. The man beamed.
‘Thank you, sir. You just come up from the river, sir?’ the sepoy asked.
‘I have.’
‘Do you know if we’ve crossed to the Turkish side?’
‘We most certainly have.’ Michael tried to forget just how precarious the British foothold was.
‘Do you think we’ll win, sir?’
‘It would be unthinkable to put in all this effort and get nowhere.’
‘That’s probably what the Expeditionary Force thought before they surrendered at Kut, sir.’ A wounded private with bandages around his head, arm, and leg limped towards them on crutches.
‘Pessimism’s a court martial offence, private,’ Michael joked.
‘If the cell’s dry, I wouldn’t mind, sir.’
David’s orderly, Singh, ran up. ‘Mr Downe, sir, you on your way somewhere?’
‘Not particularly, why?’
‘We’re desperate for help in the field hospital, sir. The doctors are overwhelmed by the numbers of wounded. Men are still flooding in and half the stretcher-bearers have been hit.’
Michael turned back to the wireless operator who was busy disconnecting wires.
‘Any plan to advance?’
‘Not for the next twenty-five minutes, sir.’
Michael turned up the collar of his mackintosh, headed towards the river and the booming artillery, and hit a crowd of walking wounded. He glanced over to the trenches that held the aid stations and field hospitals. They were so packed with injured and bleeding bodies he couldn’t see the surgeons.
Behind the mounds of wounded waiting for attention was a hillock of bodies. He paled. Lying on top was the corpse of B
oris Bell; beneath him, a stretcher and two dead stretcher-bearers, their skulls riddled with bullets. He lifted Boris’s corpse and placed him gently on a line of sandbags before extricating the stretcher. He looked around. A sepoy was standing, staring, mesmerized by the mass of walking wounded. Michael hailed him and held up the stretcher. The sepoy joined him. Without exchanging a word they headed towards the river.
Chapter Twenty-eight
British Relief Force, Shumrun
March 1917
David swam slowly out of confused dreams into consciousness. Disorientated, he opened his eyes. The oil lamp in his tent was flickering low, shedding amber light that sent shadows dancing on his cot and the walls of his tent. He reached for his pocket watch and opened it. Four o’clock. It was dark so it had to be early morning. But which day?
He had a vague memory of going to bed in daylight but he had no idea of the month let alone the day. He also recalled a letter from home. Had he dreamed it?
He found it on his campaign chest, opened it, and read it. He hadn’t dreamed its contents. The impact of the life-changing news it contained hit him anew with full force. All his life he’d managed to avoid taking responsibility for any and everything, especially his mistakes, and the debts he incurred, but fate had conspired against him – or so it would appear.
He returned the letter to its envelope and stowed it in the top drawer of his chest. He’d placed a framed photograph of himself with Georgiana on top. It had been taken by a Jewish photographer in the Basra Club shortly after he’d travelled downstream with the wounded from Kut. He’d paid the man for a copy and if Georgiana remembered it being taken she’d never mentioned it again, so the print had remained his secret.
He looked at it for a long time. Georgiana certainly couldn’t be described as beautiful, not in the conventional sense, but neither was she as plain as she tried to make out. One thing was certain, he adored her more than any woman he’d ever known simply because she treated him as her intellectual inferior, which in his most honest moments he admitted he probably was.
She’d lent an element of surprise to his life which had jerked him out of cynicism and complacency. He never knew what she was going to say or do next and the only thing he was absolutely certain of was he didn’t want to imagine a life without her.
He took out his writing case, opened it flat to give himself a surface to press on, unscrewed the top of his ink bottle, and picked up his pen.
Dear Georgie,
This isn’t going to be a letter about what we’re doing upriver because frankly you don’t want to know, I don’t want to write about it, and even if I did, the censor would have to paint thick black lines all over my nice clean letter to you and that would spoil it. Especially in view of what I want to say and the importance history will bequeath on this epistle.
I’ve had news from home. Frankly I don’t want to talk about that either because I don’t want to think about it.
The only thing I do want to write about is us.
Marry me, Georgie.
I’ll list all the reasons why you should.
First, you’re absolutely the only woman other than my mother who’s willingly put up with my company for more than a few hours.
We’d look really good together I’ll be the handsome one and you can be the intelligent one.
I need you to be my mentor and give me good medical advice which will benefit my patients and hopefully prevent me from making any more fatal mistakes than I’ve already made. Not that I know of any that I’ve made as yet. (I put in that last sentence for legal purposes in case someone sees this and remembers that I doctored a friend or relative of theirs who has subsequently died.)
I miss you more than anyone would believe it possible for a devastatingly handsome man like me to miss a girl. It’s very cold at night wrapped in a damp soggy blanket with no warm body to cuddle.
I expect to receive your acceptance by return of post – given it’s wartime I’ll allow six months for it to reach me,
Your loving fiancé, David.
P.S. Peter is over the moon at the news that he’s a father. He’s handed out cigarettes to everyone in between firing salvos at the Turks. We have no cigars upstream and that should tell just how uncivilised the conditions are here.
David read what he’d written and added another postscript.
If I wrote what I really feel about you I’d probably frighten you off but I want you know that my heartfelt feelings aren’t entirely the result of being terrified of being blown into oblivion at any moment.
He pushed it into an envelope, sealed it, and wrote Georgiana’s name and address on the back. He cleared away his writing case, pen, and ink and lay back on the bed.
If by some miracle Georgiana did agree to marry him, would she be as appalled and devastated as he was by the life-changing news he’d received?
Turkish Prison Camp
March 1917
John went into the kitchen after he finished patients’ rounds to find Mrs Gulbenkian in tears and Hasmik and Rebeka trying to comfort her.
‘What on earth is the matter?’
Mrs Gulbenkian’s English had improved to the point where she understood him. She looked up, saw the sympathetic expression on his face, and sobbed all the louder.
Rebeka wrapped her arm around Mrs Gulbenkian’s shoulders and shook her head at John.
He retreated to the room that had been claimed as a day room by the fittest among the convalescent patients. They’d enlisted the help of the POW officers and orderlies, and moved the beds to clear an area for chairs and makeshift tables. John found Crabbe playing bridge with Bowditch and two other officers, and in direct contradiction of all medical advice, smoking.
‘Missed us so much you had to come back, or did you forget to discharge one of us to the officers’ accommodation?’ Crabbe asked.
‘I’m hiding from the nurses in the kitchen. Something’s upset Mrs Gulbenkian.’
‘She’s heard from her cousin in America.’ Crabbe took the hand on the table, shuffled the cards together with the others on his pile, and led with another trump.
‘And?’ John pressed.
‘The cousin pleaded poverty and said he could neither send her the money for passage to America nor sponsor her to go there even if she found the money herself. Nor could he offer her a room to stay should she somehow make her own way to the land of milk and honey.’
John sat on the end of Crabbe’s bed which was close to the table. ‘That leaves Mrs Gulbenkian with nowhere to go at the end of the war.’
‘Exactly.’
‘She was so sure her cousin would come to her aid. She was going to take Hasmik with her. She even offered to take Rebeka.’
‘I thought Rebeka might be making other post-war plans.’
Crabbe’s wink suggested to John that he and Rebeka hadn’t been as successful at concealing their relationship as they’d believed.
‘Don’t worry, we can always take them back to England with us when the peace treaties are signed.’ Crabbe took another hand and threw away a low club. ‘Mrs Gulbenkian and Rebeka have cared selflessly and without payment for British troops, therefore we can hope the powers that be will regard them as British nurses.’
‘We can hope.’ John echoed. He waited until Crabbe finished the hand. ‘Fancy a walk outside? It’s dry.’
‘But freezing cold.’
‘It will disinfect your lungs.’
Crabbe picked up his greatcoat, which he used as an extra blanket on his bed, and followed John outside.
‘I’ll make an appointment to see the colonel,’ John wrapped the muffler that Mrs Gulbenkian had knitted him from wool sent in a Red Cross parcel around his neck. ‘If enough officers sign a letter asking the War Office to accept Mrs Gulbenkian, Rebeka, and Hasmik into Britain, someone in authority might take notice.’
‘They might. They might take even more notice if I marry Mrs Gulbenkian.’
‘Marry?’ John thrust his hands de
eper into his greatcoat’s pockets to warm them. ‘You’re seriously thinking of asking Mrs Gulbenkian to marry you?’
‘Why not? She’s a fine-looking woman.’
John thought for a moment. ‘You’re right. It’s just that I’ve never thought of her that way.’
‘Hardly surprising; you’re what, twenty-eight, twenty-nine?’
‘I feel a hundred and ten most days,’ John murmured.
‘Mrs Gulbenkian – Yana – is forty.’
‘Yana? I had no idea you were so close.’
‘We have a few things in common. I’m closer to fifty than forty. Even before I was wounded I knew I’d be put out to grass after this show. I’ve a major’s pension to look forward to, which is not insignificant, and I’ve a bit put by as well, so I can afford to lead a comfortable life in retirement. I think I’d enjoy sharing it with a woman.’
‘The way you play cards I’m guessing you’ve more than a bit put by.’
‘Enough to buy a small house in the country with a garden big enough for a few chickens, and a goat. Yana’s fond of goat’s milk and fresh eggs.’
‘There are several cottages on my father – my family’s estate,’ John corrected. He still found it difficult to believe that his father wouldn’t be there to greet him when he returned home.
‘You’re going back there after the war?’
‘If I survive until the peace treaties are signed.’
‘You’d sell me a cottage?’
‘Or rent, whichever you prefer. You’d make an excellent neighbour, one I could bore with war reminiscences any time I chose. Does Mrs Gulbenkian – Yana – know you’re making plans?’
‘She will before the day is out.’
‘And Hasmik?’
‘I’ve always wanted a daughter.’ Crabbe turned when they reached the fence. He gazed back at the winter shrivelled, uninviting garden. ‘I could adopt Rebeka as well.’
‘No, you couldn’t, she’d object. She’s too old to be adopted by you or any man.’
‘You’re married.’
‘You don’t need to remind me. I’ve written to Maud telling her I want a divorce. I’ve also written to my brother Tom asking him to begin divorce proceedings.’
Scorpion Sunset Page 32
