In Distant Fields

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘How is London nursing?’ she asked after a minute’s silence during which Allegra silently repeated something from her book.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, how is London nursing?’ Kitty said again.

  There was yet another pause, this time longer.

  ‘If you really want to know, Sister is a bugger,’ Allegra announced suddenly, looking almost as surprised at herself saying such a word, as Kitty was at hearing it. ‘If she says, “Well, Lady Allegra Knowle,”’ Allegra continued, ‘“I never thought to see someone the likes of you wielding a bedpan” – if she says that one more time I think I shall probably crown her with one.’

  Kitty laughed, both shocked and pleased at Allegra’s outburst, as did Allegra, for the same reason, after which they started to chatter and cheer each other up, both grateful for some amusement, however trivial.

  ‘Do you really think Tita and I should go to London as well, and learn to be bona fide nurses?’ Kitty asked finally. ‘Because if you do—’

  But Allegra stopped her with a shake of her head. ‘I was just being spiteful, forgive me. I’m just jealous, frankly, of you being here at Bauders – and Tita too. And even Harry.’

  ‘There’s no need – and Harry’s gone, by the way. He went earlier today, off to drive ambulances.’

  ‘I had no idea. I’m really rather out of touch. Good for Harry.’

  ‘He failed his army medical, you see. He was devastated, really devastated.’

  ‘Then even more good for Harry. He’s come on a stone, he really has. But to get back to London nursing, you will be of much better use, both of you, if you stay and help Mamma, as you said earlier. I don’t think she has any idea of what she is letting herself in for.’

  Allegra shook her head, a worried look in her eyes.

  ‘What do you mean exactly, Allegra?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Kitty,’ she said. ‘These things have to be done, don’t they? And somebody has to do them.’

  Kitty said nothing, resuming the folding of her now finished sleeping bag, while Allegra picked up her nursing book again, and pretended to study it, before looking up yet again.

  ‘There is one more thing, Kitty. I wonder if you would mind looking after Jolly for me? It would be such a favour if you would take care of Jolly.’ She lifted the still half-asleep little terrier up on to her knee to hug him. ‘He’s such a country boy I really can’t possibly have him with me in town, and I really don’t want James talking him with him, although he is quite happy to do so.’

  ‘Almeric told me that a lot of his friends are taking their dogs, which I don’t think is altogether fair, really I don’t. So bewildering for them, don’t you think?’

  ‘I could not agree more. Poor dogs – why should they be subjected to all that noise and heaven only knows what else? And suppose he got lost – the French don’t have the same understanding of dogs as we do, so I would hate to think what might happen to him. So, all in all, if you wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on Jolly for me … I notice he does so like you anyway, and I would be grateful.’

  ‘I will take extra special care of him, Allegra,’ Kitty reassured her and she touched her lightly on the arm as she saw the look in her eyes. ‘I shall look after him as if he was my own.’

  Livia was staring at Valentine, whom she was quite sure she still loved with all her heart, but whom, just at that moment, she thought she might not be going to understand as well as she might have once hoped.

  ‘You don’t wish to enlist, did you say?’

  Valentine strolled over to the window and, drawing aside the net curtain, he stared out at the street below. Only a few months before, London would have been filled with impeccably dressed men and women making their stately way about the capital, their stylish clothes the envy of Europe. Now all he could see were uniforms, and more uniforms, and the figures of hurrying women, all of whom, for some reason he could not understand, seemed to be dressed in grey. Not that they were dressed in grey, they just seemed to be dressed in grey, dark grey.

  ‘No I don’t want to enlist, Livia, my beloved. It isn’t compulsory – at least as yet it is not – and frankly what use would someone like me be in the army? I might make quite an impressive soldier on stage, but people like me, brought up in the theatre all our lives, what possible good would we be at the party?’

  Livia stared at his back. She had heard what he had just said, she had just not taken it in.

  ‘Valentine,’ she said carefully, ‘this really isn’t a matter of role-playing, or whether or not you would be suitable for the part, you know,’ she added, laughing. ‘This is actually about defending your country, darling. You know hearth and home and all that.’

  Valentine dropped the curtain and, turning, he walked across the room to her.

  ‘I know you’ve given up a terrific amount to be my wife, and I love you for it. I love you and I know you love me, or else you wouldn’t have done what you have done – but I must be honest with you, I think I would make a useless soldier, I do really.’

  ‘Well, I think I can understand that,’ Livia replied with some relief. ‘After a life of being brought up in the theatre, I think I can perfectly understand that joining up would come as a bit of a …’ She was about to say ‘shock’ but changed her mind, not wanting to sound either tactless or patronising. ‘It would come as a bit of a change, after the life you have lived, that I do understand.’

  ‘But then there is something else. My father doesn’t believe that we can possibly win against Germany, not with France, Russia, and even Japan on our side. He goes to Germany a great deal, as you know, taking the waters at Baden-Baden and all that, besides organising all his foreign tours – so he knows Germany and Austria pretty well, a lot better than most, I dare say. And what he says is that they have been training their armies, particularly the German army, for years now. They have been waiting for this day, for this eventuality. They train their sons the moment they leave school for two years and then they send them home as fully trained soldiers – so when the balloon goes up they can call on at least three million highly trained young men. And who have we got? Young men who’ve done a bit of square-bashing at school, and not a lot else besides, but who just now suddenly get sent off to some training camp somewhere – rather like chaps get sent to crammers if they can’t pass their exams – and then off they go to fight the foe half trained and underequipped. It’s laughable, Livia. I am afraid we don’t stand a chance, not against a fully trained and mobilised army like the Germans have. We don’t have an army, not a proper one. The Kaiser scoffed at the Expeditionary Force! You know what he said – he called it General French’s contemptible little army!’

  ‘I don’t believe you’re saying this, Valentine. At least, I do believe you’re saying it, because I can hear you, but I don’t believe you truly believe it, darling. You’re just repeating what your father thinks. You’re better than that. You don’t need your father to think for you.’

  ‘I am repeating what my father says, that I think is true, but it is also not the point, Livia. I agree with him, that’s the point. I don’t think we have a chance, any more than I believe we should have rushed in to defend Belgium.’

  ‘What?’ Livia gasped in astonishment. ‘What?’

  ‘What did Belgium ever do for us? When did Belgium ever help us out?’

  ‘Against Napoleon, for a start.’

  ‘That was Prussia.’

  ‘This kind of thing is not simply the return of favours, Valentine! Belgium is an ally! And it is a matter of your conscience that you should join up and fight for your country!’

  ‘I don’t really think you can speak for my conscience, Livia. My conscience is quite clear on the matter, which doesn’t weigh heavy on it in the least. The fact is, I don’t believe war to be an answer for anything. Nothing at all.’

  ‘What do you believe in then? Sitting back and letting the enemy run all over us? Let them have what they want? Like your countr
y? Like – like me?’

  ‘That is not the point, Livia. All I am trying to say—’

  ‘It’s very much the point, Valentine! If you’re not prepared to fight for me to defend my honour—’

  ‘That is altogether different. That is a philosophical principle, and what it means is that I do not believe in fighting wars at all.’

  ‘Or defending your country?’

  ‘I am talking about fighting in a war, darling. I am prepared to do many things, but not mow down my fellow man. The Germans, the French, the Russians, whoever we have been talking about, they are just people. The sons of mothers who love them, and want nothing more for them than a happy life. They did not give birth to them to have some other mother’s son kill them, because of some wavy little line in some piece of earth somewhere, or some tally little treaty conjured up to enhance some conceited politician’s place in history. I am immovable on this, Livia. Much as I love you, I am immovable.’

  ‘I thought you felt the same as I did.’

  ‘As did my mother. We all think everyone in a family will think the same, and we so often do not,’ Valentine stated. ‘My mamma is even now preparing to go out and sing to men and boys in village squares everywhere, to lure them into signing up, to deceive them into thinking that they are going to have a good time at the party. I do not agree with her. She does not agree with me. But we still love each other.’

  A silence fell in the room as Livia realised that she too still loved Valentine, no matter what, and that she had to respect his conscience, no matter what.

  ‘I am not a coward, Livia,’ Valentine went on. ‘This is to do with what I believe, and nothing at all to do with cowardice. I think war is wrong. I think we should always find another solution.’

  Livia stood up and went to him. ‘I understand, and I appreciate how you feel, Val. Truly I do. It would be quite wrong for me to feel otherwise.’

  Valentine took her in his arms and they started to kiss, and how they kissed.

  ‘I am so glad you understand how I feel, Livia,’ Valentine said eventually, letting her go. ‘I thought, as a matter of fact I knew, it would be difficult for you, but I so hoped that you would understand, darling.’

  ‘Of course I understand. I love you, Val.’ Livia put up a tender hand to stroke the side of his face. ‘And I will always love you, always, but I also, like your mother, have the absolute right to follow what I believe in, to act in line with my conscience.’

  Valentine frowned. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I am going to be a volunteer nurse.’

  ‘But you’re married now.’

  ‘I know, Val.’ Livia smiled. ‘But I truly can’t sit by and knit scarves and socks while our boys are at the party. I feel I must do something more to help.’ Livia stepped back and away from him. ‘Sister Agnes says they need all the volunteers they can get hold of – at the Front. Tomorrow I am going to the Foreign Office for my laissez-passer to France.’

  ‘But, sweetheart!’

  Livia allowed Valentine to pull her back into his arms, but as he did so she said, ‘It’s as you just said earlier, Val – all a matter of one’s conscience.’

  Valentine smiled ruefully. ‘That is a hit, Livia, a palpable hit!’

  Livia too smiled. ‘Yes, Val, a hit but not a war!’

  Chapter Eleven

  Home for Christmas

  ‘Almeric is quite convinced,’ Kitty said, having read and reread yet again Almeric’s first letter from the Front. ‘He can’t say much in a letter, of course, because of the censorship – even though he’s written clear as anything “Contains only personal and family matters!” on the envelope – but he does say the way things are, they all expect to be home for Christmas.’

  ‘You’d agree with that, Wavell, would you not?’ Circe asked her butler as he served tea in the library, which he still insisted on, despite the fact that Bauders was now ready to receive its first patients and the whole place was in readiness. ‘What was it that friend of yours in Milltown was saying? The Austrian army is finished, is it not, Wavell?’

  ‘So they tell me, Your Grace,’ Wavell replied. ‘Not only is it now no longer a fighting force, but I am told the soldiers are starving and mutinous – and the Germans have had the stuff— the, er – centre well and truly knocked out of them at Châlons.’

  ‘Yes, that certainly was good to hear, was it not?’ Circe asked generally. ‘One more push, John said when we last spoke. For the life of me I cannot see how they can withstand any more – the Russians on one side of them, the French and us on the other. And they are most definitely running low on supplies.’

  ‘And suffering from food poisoning, I hear tell,’ Wavell added. ‘My acquaintance tells me the Germans on both fronts are dying from a disease picked up from eating contaminated vegetables. It is, it seems, practically certain that the Austrian Emperor will be suing for peace and I further understand that the Kaiser is already preparing to flee.’

  ‘So,’ Circe turned to Kitty with a look of delight, ‘dear Almeric could well be right, Kitty. They could all be home for Christmas.’

  But some were home even earlier, the first of them arriving at Bauders from the Front at the end of November, forwarded from the hospitals that had tended to their wounds, those of them that were deemed well enough for recuperation being sent to one of the many large houses that, like Bauders Castle, had been converted to nursing homes, where they were greeted with open arms and treated as honoured guests.

  And yet, strangely, quite against the tide of rumours that had been circulating, the war showed no signs of an early finish, for in spite of everything that had been thrown against them, including massive and punitive assaults by the Russians, and the predicted collapse of the Austrians, the Germans were fighting back and doing so with increasing success on not one, but on every front.

  The first wounded that arrived at Bauders were welcomed personally by the Duchess as if she were greeting her house guests as of old, a protocol on which she had insisted as everyone had prepared to receive their patients. Circe told everyone working under her that since the people who were being sent to her had just spent a good spell in hospital, the last thing they would want would be to be treated as if they were in yet another hospital.

  ‘We are having them to stay,’ she insisted. ‘We are to put Bauders and everything here, as well as ourselves, at their complete disposal, in order to help them complete a happy recovery.’

  As a result of this careful and thoughtful preparation, even though there were fully trained nurses and two doctors in attendance, the wounded soldiers picked up visibly from the moment they were brought by ambulance to the still magnificent castle. There were fires burning in all the fireplaces, the servants’ hall was turned into a warm and welcoming canteen where Cook and her team prepared nourishing meals and refreshments for those not still confined to their beds, and card games and simple entertainments were arranged to dispel any longueurs in the evenings. At first the authorities had tried to persuade the Duchess to receive only wounded and recovering officers, but she quite simply refused, pointing out that since officers and men fought side by side in the trenches why then should they not recover side by side? Bauders was open to anyone and everyone, she insisted, and if those with commissions wished to have an officers’ mess to themselves, they would have to go and get better somewhere else. The authorities finally bowed, not just to her judgement, but to her implacable will.

  But first everyone at Bauders had to deal with their initial intake: two dozen men back from the war, a third of whom had been injured and were still confined to their beds, leaving two-thirds to have their dressings changed, and many more intimate functions to which they could not attend themselves. Circe directed all such operations, however intimate, with a calm eye and a firm but kind voice, as necessary. But there was something missing. Some element that had always been part of Bauders’ bustling life, something that they all loved now but had no time for. Music.

  �
��We need Elizabeth,’ Circe said one evening to Kitty and Partita. ‘The men have spotted the piano and although one or two of them play with a couple of fingers, they haven’t a proper pianist among them, and they’re dying for a sing-song. Do you think we might recruit her?’

  ‘I think we might,’ Kitty said, with a look to Partita.

  ‘What a good idea, Mamma. As it happens, Pug goes off tomorrow morning, so Elizabeth will be sure to be at a loose end with nothing to do but knit.’

  Pug put his arms around Elizabeth again and hugged her close to him. She was so slim and slight; whenever he held her he had the feeling he was holding a young bird, and that he should be cupping his hands for her rather than putting his arms around her.

  They walked round the garden, enjoying the last of the late autumn sun.

  ‘There is one thing I have always meant to ask you.’ Elizabeth stopped, looking up at him with shy amusement. ‘Why were you called Pug when you don’t even begin to resemble one?’

  ‘A nickname from school. My mother had several pug dogs, as it so happened, at the time, and because there was another Stapleton at school, one of us became Pug for obvious reasons and the other became Fox because of his red hair.’

  ‘Very well then, now I know, when the war’s over I shall make sure to get a pug dog and call it Algie, after you, beloved Pug.’

  ‘Time to go, time to leave, but only for a little while, eh?’

  ‘Yes, of course, only for a little while.’

  His mother waved at them both from the window, reluctant to come out now that it was time for their farewells. Pug waved back at her. He had been so happy with Elizabeth during the past weeks that leaving her was almost too much to bear. The truth was, as he had once admitted to her, he had never thought of himself as anything but a bit of a joke, someone to cheer people up, so when he realised that Elizabeth really did love him for himself, just at first he had found it all but impossible to believe. Overnight the clown had become a knight in shining armour, and now, like all knights, what he had to do next was prove himself in battle. Like the knights of old he would go off to war, and he would prove to Elizabeth that she had been right to choose him.