Remembrance

by Theresa Breslin

  The bombardment of the previous week meant that there could be little left of the German defences, and they had just heard the sappers’ huge mine going off to the north at Hawthorn Redoubt. The Captain’s eye was on his watch as the minutes ticked towards 7.30 a.m. As soon as they’d given enough time for the dust to settle, they’d get out and walk forward to mop up any pockets of resistance.

  Beside him Eddie Kane swallowed in nervous excitement. ‘We’re really here! I can hardly believe it. Think of what we’re going to tell them when we get back home!’

  The whistles for his battalion blew, and laden with his full pack, John Malcolm clambered along the trench line and out through the path marked in their own wire. He struggled to his feet, gripped his rifle firmly with both hands, and walked steadily into the rising sun.

  Maggie was hurrying, late for the early morning bus, when she passed the postman on the village main street.

  ‘You have a special one all to yourself,’ he said and handed her a letter addressed to her in John Malcolm’s handwriting.

  Maggie thrust the letter in her coat pocket and forgot about it until break time in the factory, when she found a quiet corner to sit down and read it.

  Maggie stared at the words in surprise; it was unlike her brother to use such emotive words.

  Maggie crushed the letter in her hand. He was going to die. She knew it with blinding certainty. And he knew it too. She felt like running, now, this minute, to find Charlotte. To grasp the younger girl and hold her tight against her own body, to protect her from the terrifying truth. That they would never see him again, and, like so many others, he wasn’t coming back, not at all, not ever.

  Tim Bradley went down at once with a bullet in his head. The Captain spun back and fell heavily, arms and legs outsplayed. John Malcolm had to swerve to avoid him, but only briefly glanced down. He must keep going as he’d been told to do. It seemed that there was more enemy fire than they’d expected. Many of the Irish had fallen only yards into No Man’s Land. Eddie must have gone too, because without turning his head John Malcolm knew that there was no longer anyone beside him. He tried not to think about that, and concentrated on moving forward. But now there were more fallen men in front of him, and he had to walk round or climb over them, as they crawled about on the earth, or lay still upon it. The air sputtered and flicked at his face. He managed another hundred paces before there was a tearing pain in his chest and his legs which slewed him sideways, and he fell face down into a shell-hole.

  Maggie looked at the date on John Malcolm’s letter: 1 July 1916. She raised her eyes and looked down at the factory floor where the dust and the noise were never ending. Below her ranks of shells stood waist high to the men and women who walked among them checking primers on the nose cones. Outside it was midsummer. Here where sunlight could never reach was destruction and death.

  John Malcolm’s latest letter to Charlotte had caused her to stop and think. It didn’t start in her the feeling of absolute terror that his letter to Maggie had done, but it had left her anxious and thoughtful.

  Charlotte reread the letter, her eye caught by her name, Charlie. John Malcolm had written her name five times in his letter. She held the letter against her heart and imagined his voice, pretended to herself that she could hear him speaking the words. His other letters she had read so often that she knew them off by heart. Sometimes she recited parts of them to herself when she was busy in the ward, especially when doing some of the more unpleasant work. It kept her mind off the terrible smell and offensive bandages and made her happy, so that a smile was constant on her face. But this letter troubled her, snagging in her mind from time to time throughout the day.

  John Malcolm was aware of being turned over and his field dressing pulled from the pocket in his uniform. He felt someone working on his chest, and then a morphine tablet was slipped under his tongue.

  ‘Good lad,’ whispered John Malcolm.

  The man laughed. ‘Good lad, yourself,’ he said.

  ‘Can you get me in?’

  ‘Not at present, son. They’re raising merry hell out there.’

  ‘Are we winning?’

  The stretcher-bearer looked out beyond the shell-hole where the Irish and the Scots were piled in front of the enemy’s uncut wire, and then back to the face of the dying boy. ‘We’re winning,’ he lied.

  ‘All along the line?’

  ‘All along the line.’

  The stretcher-bearer had gone. John Malcolm wasn’t frightened. They had been told that the wounded might have to wait until nightfall to be brought in. He tried to ease his body round and saw that another soldier had dropped down beside him. He sensed that this man was saying something but his own hearing was dulled, his brain beating in tune with the slow delicious sweep of the morphine.

  The man gave him water from his own water bottle. He tried to say ‘thank you’ but although the thought and its meaning was there before him, the words would not come. Instead he told this soldier how proud he was to be in uniform, and how fighting to protect those at home gave his life a purpose he did not know it had. Time passed, and now John Malcolm knew that there was something he had to say. He struggled against the pressing pain in his chest, and the thickness of his tongue in his mouth. Things were not right. Something very fundamental was wrong: wrong with his body, wrong with the battle, wrong with the world. He didn’t know what it was, and when he tried to think about it, his mind moved away, one thought sliding behind another, all of them obscured by some other imminent thing, which when he reached for it was itself obscured. And through all of this, he sought in the labyrinths of his reasoning for the one thing that was right.

  And then he had it. John Malcolm smiled. It was suddenly so clear in his head and his mouth. The one shining truth that surpassed all others. He opened his eyes and looked into the light.

  ‘Charlie,’ he said softly.

  The soldier beside him waited what he considered a decent interval. Then he stretched across, and with his two fingers closed down the boy’s eyelids.

  The telegram lay on the kitchen table.

  Her father sat with his head in his hands, her mother with her arms folded rocking backwards and forwards.

  Maggie got to her feet. ‘I must go and tell Charlotte.’

  As she reached the end of the village she could see a slight figure leaning against the bridge. It was Charlotte, standing with her arms wrapped around herself.

  Maggie hesitated. ‘Are you waiting for someone?’ she asked her.

  Charlotte’s eyes met hers. ‘I am waiting for you,’ she said.

  Maggie handed her the telegram.

  The girl appeared to diminish before her eyes. Shrinking into herself, withdrawing to some other inner place, and then slow tears edged from her eyes and flowed unchecked. Awkwardly Maggie put her arms around her. When Charlotte’s tears had eased a little Maggie spoke.

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘I knew that nearly every house in the village had received a telegram. And I knew that if you had received one then you would come this wag to tell me.’ Her tear-stained face fixed itself on Maggie’s. ‘How can we bear it?’ she wailed. ‘What are we going to do?’

  Maggie felt her own tears begin. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’ And she sat down in the road and began to cry.

  Chapter 17

  ALEX WENT TO the end of the lane behind the shop and sat down with his shoulders against the wall of the wash-house block. If he tried hard he could squeeze tears from the back of his eyes behind his lids, but there wasn’t enough to make them run down his face. What was the matter with him?

  Why didn’t he feel like crying? John Malcolm was gone. His big brother, his only brother, was killed in the War. The person who had looked out for him when he was small and taught him how to box so that none of the street lads could pick on him. John Malcolm had wrestled with him on the drying green, and played chases with him up and down this lane. So why did he not feel more sad?

>   Perhaps it was because he didn’t really believe it. Everybody was acting as though he were dead, but maybe he wasn’t. It could be a mistake and John Malcolm might be a prisoner of the Germans. Although that could be worse. There were awful stories about what the Germans did to their prisoners. He’d heard they cut their hands off. Alex looked at his wrists. He didn’t fancy his hands being cut off. Better to be shot. He raised his arms as if holding an imaginary rifle and took aim along the lane.

  A late shaft of sun struck a path of pale light in front of him. His movements and the rubbing of his clothes against the wall was causing the dust to dance, and casting shadows through the air. Someone was standing there. Alex lowered his arm, his play acting forgotten. A soldier in uniform. Alex screwed up his eyes. The sunlight expanded slowly, and then there was nothing.

  A voice spoke behind him. ‘You been sent out the house too?’

  Alex looked round. It was his friend Hugh Kane. Alex nodded.

  ‘Did your ma get a telegram?’

  Alex nodded again.

  ‘Us too. Eddie’s dead.’

  Alex gulped. He hadn’t thought of any others.

  ‘There was lots,’ said Hugh. ‘Up and down the lanes, lots of doors got chapped this afternoon.’

  ‘How’s your ma?’ Alex asked Hugh.

  ‘She’s gone round to my granny’s house. Do you want to come home with me and I’ll make some pieces?’

  As he got up to follow Hugh, Alex looked back along the lane behind his house. It was empty. All he could see were shadows and sunlight.

  They walked through the streets. It was the middle of the day, yet many blinds were drawn down. In Hugh’s kitchen there was a black wooden box with brass hinges lying open on the table. Family papers, birth certificates, and a few sepia photographs lay vulnerable and exposed.

  ‘She was looking at our photographs.’ Hugh pointed to a formal group showing a man in uniform, two very young boys and a woman holding a babe in arms. ‘My da was killed in the Boer War when I was a baby, so now there’s only me and her.’

  Alex looked at the photograph. ‘Why are there three children?’

  ‘I had an older brother, Kenneth,’ Hugh pointed to the middle child, ‘but he died when he was two. Now there’s just me left.’ He put the photograph back into the box.

  Mrs Kane came into the house. Her face was puffed and swollen, but she smiled readily at the boys. Alex couldn’t think what to do. He stood up and, copying the actions of the men in his father’s shop, he stuck out his hand. ‘My condolences,’ he said.

  Hugh’s mother took his hand and covered it with her own. ‘And mine to you,’ she said. Then she burst into tears. Alex stared. It was the first time he had seen a grown-up cry openly. A wild panic entered his mind. He hated Germans, all Germans; that they could do this to the people he knew, strip them of their dignity, made him frightened and angry. ‘Put the box away for me, Hugh,’ she sobbed, ‘I can’t bear to look at them now.’ And she threw her apron over her face and went into the back room.

  Alex watched Hugh gather up the photographs and certificates. He stretched his hand out.

  ‘You make your ma a cup of tea, and I’ll do that.’

  Hugh handed over the box gratefully and went to the range.

  ‘Shall I put it away in the press?’ asked Alex.

  Hugh nodded.

  ‘I’ll just go then?’

  Hugh nodded again.

  Alex could see that his friend’s shoulders were shaking and he guessed that he was crying. He closed the box lid and placed it carefully on the top shelf of the cupboard. ‘Right, ’bye.’ Alex let himself out the front door and walked away down the road.

  That night Alex reached out in bed for his brother and knew before he awoke that there was no-one there. When John Malcolm had first gone off, Alex had gloried in the extra space he had gained, but now the bed was empty and cold. Where once he had cuddled against his brother’s back on bitter winter nights now he would be for ever alone.

  In school the next day the head teacher led the children in prayer for those loved ones who had died in the battles near the River Somme. ‘This is all you children can do, watch and pray,’ he told them.

  Alex kept his face still and his eyes looking straight ahead so that no-one would guess his thoughts. He spoke silently to himself. ‘No,’ he said, ‘there is more that I can do.’

  A week later Maggie met Francis at the bus stop as she waited for the early morning bus to the city. He was carrying a small suitcase.

  ‘I was very sorry to hear about your brother,’ he said gently.

  Maggie nodded. She could feel tears in her throat and didn’t trust herself to speak. He sat beside her on the journey to the city with his suitcase at his feet.

  ‘How is Charlotte?’ she asked him after a while.

  ‘She was very unwell for a few days. But now she is a little better and has returned to work.’

  Maggie remembered John Malcolm’s last letter to her and was uncomfortable. ‘Would company help? I could call at your house if …’

  Francis turned to her eagerly. ‘Oh, that is so kind of you. My mother is possibly not fully aware of how attached my sister was to your brother, and I’m sure that speaking to you would comfort Charlotte. She would appreciate it tremendously, especially when she realizes that I have gone.’

  Maggie stared at him and then at the suitcase. ‘You haven’t told her that you are going away?’

  ‘I left a note,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I am going to enlist.’

  Maggie shook her head in disbelief. ‘You cannot do that.’ And then, as he did not reply, she asked, ‘Who spoke to you that made you change your mind?’

  ‘I have not changed my mind,’ said Francis.

  ‘Then why are you going to fight in a war that you believe is wrong?’

  ‘In the circumstances it is the best thing to do—’

  Maggie interrupted at once. ‘Your sister would never wish you to rush off to war because …’ her voice broke on her brother’s name, ‘… John Malcolm has been … been killed.’

  ‘It is more complex than that. My mother is terribly upset. Her sister’s two boys, my cousins, Connor and Phelan, have also been killed.’

  ‘Perhaps you would be better at home if both your mother and your sister need support?’ suggested Maggie.

  Francis shook his head. ‘I feel that my presence is a constant reminder that others died in vain.’

  ‘You are not taking it upon yourself to complete what they began, surely?’ asked Maggie.

  Francis gazed at her. ‘It is all piled on my head.’

  ‘You mustn’t think like that,’ said Maggie. ‘You cannot accept responsibility for the deaths of others. They didn’t die because you weren’t there.’

  ‘Do you think that I am driven to do this by feelings of guilt?’

  ‘I don’t know what it is that is driving you,’ said Maggie. ‘What I do know is that you should not do something that you so clearly do not believe in.’

  Francis sat in miserable silence for a while.

  ‘You despise me,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, no!’ cried Maggie.

  ‘In many ways it is a relief,’ said Francis. ‘To go now and get it over and be done with it.’

  Maggie looked at him in alarm. ‘It won’t be very helpful to the Army,’ she said, ‘if you have such a careless regard for your own life.’

  Francis gave a small laugh. ‘You have such a turn of phrase, Maggie. Being “helpful” to the Army is not my prime consideration. I have been in touch with Major Grant, and he says he can secure me a commission in the Queen’s Westminster Rifles. He says that every regiment is crying out for officers.’

  They sat in silence until the bus reached the outskirts of the city when Francis turned to her and said, ‘May I write to you? Don’t feel obliged to reply or send anything,’ he went on hurriedly. ‘It’s only that it would be good to have someone to write to with whom I could be open.’


  ‘Please feel free to write to me at any time.’

  ‘Do you mind?’ he asked.

  ‘Not at all,’ she replied, and then catching sight of the factory gates she rose to go. ‘This is my stop.’ She held out her hand, and as Francis shook it Maggie found herself unsure as to how to bid him goodbye. She could hardly say ‘take care’ when he obviously didn’t intend to, and to wish him luck seemed absurd. He held her hand quite tightly and it was she who had to disengage herself. She gave a quick incline of her head and hurriedly got off the bus.

  Chapter 18

  AS SOON AS she was able Maggie went to see Charlotte, so that by the time Francis’s first letter arrived she was able to reply that she and Charlotte had talked and had tea together. Charlotte had lost weight, and Maggie felt like a fussy mother hen as she urged her to eat the sandwiches and cakes prepared by Annie. Annie herself hovered around the girls trying to coax Charlotte to try some of her special gingerbread, until eventually Charlotte suggested that she and Maggie go outside and walk in the garden.

  ‘Annie has the best of intentions,’ said Charlotte, ‘but I hate being fussed over.’