He noticed her anxious glances and smiled. ‘I’m trying to break the nicotine habit, and it makes me nervy. When in the line, smoking is constant. It is the main way to relieve tension. The noise is relentless, unremitting. I have heard men weep to make it stop. And, of course, once you begin smoking you come to rely on it too heavily.’
Maggie said nothing, only slipped her arm through his as he talked, much as she had done those many months ago at the bus stop back home.
He gave a shuddering sigh. ‘One’s mind crawls with thoughts continuously. The only thing to do is to force another thought in, to push out the ones you cannot bear.’ He stopped suddenly and turned to face her. ‘I must tell you this, Maggie. Your letters are my lifeline. Your threat to stop them terrified me. Never stop writing to me, I implore you.’
He had twenty-four hours. Although Charlotte was unable to be free until the evening, Maggie did manage to change her shift, and as nurses and officers were not supposed to be seen off duty together, they borrowed bicycles and went out into the countryside for the afternoon.
Francis spoke about the coming Offensive. His battalion would be in a forward position just beyond Ypres, at a place called Langemarck, facing their objective of the Passchendaele ridge. He told her that one of his men, a platoon sergeant by the name of Seth Verrall, who had been in the push forward at Loos in 1915 and on the Somme in 1916, had begun to sob when he’d heard this news.
‘He thinks that he’ll never survive another battle, and the thing is, Maggie, he probably won’t. The ones who lose heart completely seem to draw fire. The other men avoid them.’
The image of this man’s face was in Francis’s mind. Verrall had pulled off his helmet as he began to cry and Francis had seen the blue veins pulsating under the pale skin around the temples. The man’s weeping had upset him deeply. He sympathized but was at the same time embarrassed by Verrall’s breakdown in front of the others. Was it the man’s crying that made him uncomfortable? Had Verrall started screaming or tearing off his uniform as some did, would he have borne it better? Did he despise the man because he had the courage to weep? He had little experience of this. A woman’s tears moved him to pity. He had found it almost unbearable to watch Charlotte in the days following John Malcolm’s death. One of the younger privates had grabbed Verrall’s arm, and pleaded with him. ‘Don’t crack up now, Sarge, or we’re all done for.’ The rest of the platoon had gathered round and eventually had coaxed and joked their sergeant back to a state of normality.
Maggie could only guess at the effect this scene had had on Francis. She watched his hands and his eyes, and guessed that one of his great fears was that he too would lose heart and infect his men. She tried to cheer him and told him stories from the hospital. His favourite was how both she and Charlotte had been glad to go to France to get away from the dreaded Sister Bateman, only to find on arrival that she too had enlisted and was in charge of their ward. For the first time in many weeks Francis laughed out loud.
They stopped at an estaminet and ate some bread and cheese. She noticed how the sunlight gave the soft yellow of his hair a golden depth. He caught her watching him and stretched his hand out and took hers. ‘You are such a good sort, Maggie.’
It was the kind of thing her brother would have said. She was pleased, but at the same time strangely disappointed that Francis thought of her in terms of being a ‘good sort’. Yet if she had been asked she would have been unsure as to what more she would have wanted him to say.
Later that night in the big recreation room, these thoughts were still in Maggie’s mind as she looked at Charlotte. As soon as Charlotte entered the room she was surrounded by the men. Her fragile good looks seemed to make them want to protect her. Yet Maggie knew that underneath that gentle exterior was great strength. Charlotte was the one who could wash out the filthiest wound without flinching, and sat with death, stroking the hand of the failing young soldier, quietly talking down his terror. The screams and groans of the grievously wounded did not upset her. When Maggie had rushed to the rest room one day with her hands over her ears, Charlotte had come and put her own cool hand across Maggie’s brow.
‘How can you stand it?’ Maggie asked.
‘I think that any one of them might be John Malcolm and it makes it much easier.’
Now Maggie wound up the gramophone handle and put on a record. At once those who were able began to dance. Maggie stepped back and bumped into Francis.
‘I leave in an hour, and came to spend some time with Charlotte, and say goodbye.’ He glanced around. ‘The Matron is not about, and I shall pretend that I am a patient.’
Maggie watched Francis as he danced with Charlotte. Their heads were close together as they talked and his arms encircled his sister as if to protect her. Maggie felt suddenly sad and did not know why. It is because he is going away tonight, she thought, and I will miss him.
Francis looked across Charlotte’s shoulder and met Maggie’s glance. In the space of a second Maggie’s heart contracted and she caught her breath. When the record ended Francis came and stood in front of her.
‘I really must leave now. Perhaps you would partner me in a waltz before I go?’
Maggie hesitated. ‘I’m clumsy,’ she said. ‘You might be better with someone else.’
Francis smiled and took her arm.
They danced slowly without speaking. When it was over and they parted it seemed that something between them had changed.
Chapter 29
AS THE TRAIN left Newcastle Alex moved his position, walking down the corridor looking for anyone who might be getting off at the next stop. Eventually he found a woman with a baby and a young child who seemed to be collecting her things together. Alex stood close by her carriage door, and as the train slowed down and he saw the station sign for Durham his heartbeat began to quicken.
It was easier than he’d hoped. The woman gratefully accepted his offer to carry one of her bags and Alex took the hand of the child and helped him from the train. They moved together as a family group off the platform, and no-one gave them a second glance. Alex then went quickly to the gentlemen’s toilet and changed into a pair of long trousers and some of John Malcolm’s clothes that he had packed in the haversack. Now he was ready. He waited until another train came in before leaving the toilet and, mingling with the passengers, he walked casually to the exit. Ahead of him he could see the bulk of Durham Castle and the Cathedral Tower. He would get directions to the regimental headquarters from someone there.
The Recruiting Sergeant of the Durham Light Infantry put his chin in his hand and studied the boy carefully. He was quite a big lad, but a lad none the less, he was sure of it. Things had been tightened up after the outcry over fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds enlisting and no obvious under-agers had to be taken. But now they were so desperate for men that they could take them in at seventeen. And even if the parents found out later and objected, the boy couldn’t be released as long as he had been passed medically fit as an eighteen-year-old.
‘And you want to join the Bantams, you say?’
‘Yes, please.’ Alex stood as tall as he could and tried to deepen his voice.
‘There was a whole Bantam Division, the Thirty-fifth, but it’s been reorganized. There isn’t a division specially for Bantams any more.’
Alex held his head up and tried to hide his disappointment.
‘There’s still our own Nineteenth Battalion.’ The Sergeant spoke slowly. ‘Although it’s the Eleventh that’s needing men at the moment.
‘Anything,’ said Alex quickly. ‘It doesn’t matter to me which battalion I’m with.’
‘They’re Pioneers. That’s a lot of construction work, digging, laying telephone lines. Are you up to that?’
‘I am,’ said Alex confidently. He had after all dug a real trench with Sergeant Cooper.
The Sergeant looked at Alex. He was burning with it. Trying to act calm, and making a good job of it. But you could see that he was desperate to go for a soldier
. It was a few years since he’d seen that kind of enthusiasm, and it gladdened him to know that there were still some young men who wanted to fight back against tyranny. He guessed this one to be around sixteen, but he could be seventeen, in which case by the time his training was complete he would be old enough to serve. He was healthier than some of the older conscripts, and by his complexion, an outdoors boy. And he was fit. Not an underfed rickets-ridden slum dweller, glad to be given the chance of three square meals a day, but strongly built, country bred and fed. Could be an asset, and should be able to keep up in training and marching. He couldn’t place the strange strangulated vowel sounds. Scotch, he guessed, trying to sound English. Well, good for him.
‘Nice journey getting here?’ he asked in a friendly tone.
‘Yes, thank you,’ Alex said politely before he could stop himself.
‘Aha, thought so!’ said the Sergeant. ‘You’re from over the Border, aren’t you?’
‘Ah,’ said Alex.
‘I can always tell,’ the Sergeant said. ‘It takes a lot to fool me. What’s your mother and father saying about all this?’
‘They’re dead,’ said Alex. ‘Da got killed in the Boer War.’ Alex had heard Hugh Kane’s stories a dozen times. He knew them off by heart, and repeated one of them now.
‘And you think you could be a soldier, like your da?’
‘Yes, sir!’ said Alex. He saluted and stood to attention as Private Cooper had taught him.
The Sergeant nodded once or twice. ‘You’ve got the look of a soldier’s lad about you.’ He hesitated. ‘It would help if you’d a letter of some sort.’
Alex bit his lip to hide his smile of triumph. ‘Will this do?’ he asked. And taking Kenneth Kane’s birth certificate from his pocket he laid it carefully down in front of the Sergeant.
Chapter 30
Maggie felt slightly sick. Alex had gone to enlist! She knew that there was tremendous pressure on the regiments to supply more men after the disastrous battles around the Somme. Alex was fairly tall and fit. He looked young, but they were so desperate for men now that they might not investigate this too deeply. At the earliest opportunity she showed her father’s letter to Charlotte.
‘You will write to Francis,’ Charlotte suggested.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I don’t see what else we can do,’ said Charlotte.
Maggie heard Charlotte say ‘we’ rather than ‘you’, and she wanted to hug her.
‘He is a very clever boy,’ said Maggie.
‘If he is clever, then he will be resourceful,’ Charlotte said.
‘Yes, and we know how desperate they are for soldiers,’ said Maggie.
The thought lay unspoken between them. They also knew what happened to these soldiers. Their wards were full of the maimed and sick.
Francis’s reply, although immediate, was not encouraging. He concurred with both her and her father’s fears that a keen recruiting sergeant would overlook Alex’s youthful appearance.
Alex’s birth date was June 1901. Maggie calculated that her young brother was now almost sixteen, and a very healthy boy compared to some others, so the Army probably accepted him as being seventeen. Charlotte’s birth date was January 1900 and she had passed for twenty. And Alex would most likely pass a medical as fit as an eighteen-year-old, and therefore might have been sent to France already. Maggie’s spirits settled lower. Francis promised to search out whatever sources he could, and contact her again as soon as he had any information.
‘The United States of America have joined the Allies,’ said Charlotte. ‘When their soldiers arrive, there will be less urgency to recruit in Britain.’
‘Yes, but when will they arrive?’ said Maggie. ‘It takes time to train and equip men, and it is a long journey across the Atlantic.’
The Matron suggested that Maggie might wish to return home. ‘Your parents now have no children at home. Perhaps you should consider where your duty lies?’
Maggie was suddenly conscious of the meaning of the Matron’s words. She raised her head. It had not occurred to her to rush home to look after her parents. This in itself showed her how much she had changed.
‘I would be very sorry to lose you, your organizational skills far exceed any army quartermaster that I’ve encountered. And your nursing is thorough. You are one of my most efficient members of staff.’
Under this wholly unaccustomed praise, Maggie’s face went red.
When she left the Matron’s office she went in search of Charlotte to ask her advice. Should she rush home? What good would it do? She recalled the day she heard of John Malcolm’s death. It had been her mother who had been strong, when her father had ceased to function for several days. Did her mother abrogate responsibility because she had never been allowed to take it, other than for mundane tasks? Did this present generation of women, as the Matron had said, now use action to define themselves? The world would be a sorrier place without the actions of women. On a basic practical level, many men would have died. This was not because of them being women as such, but because of their skill, working as a fellow alongside men.
‘We could go and stay in the Red Cross nurses’ quarters in London for a few days,’ said Charlotte slowly. ‘My mother is living there now while our home is being used for convalescing soldiers. I could visit her while you make enquiries about Alex at the War Office. That might be more helpful than you going back to Stratharden. If you were making the enquiries in person then your parents would be more reassured. And both of us would benefit from a rest.’
Charlotte was right. Almost immediately on leaving France she and Maggie became young girls again. Although still obliged to wear their off-duty uniform they took advantage of the relaxation of discipline, and began to enjoy the absence of work and worry. London seemed a different city in warm weather, and the girls enjoyed the fresh air, free from the smell of blood and disinfectant. They walked in the parks admiring the flowerbeds of tulips and early roses, they ate in restaurants where there seemed to be very few restrictions on food, and often stopped to enjoy tea made from unchlorinated water.
The War Office was unyielding. Despite the letter that Francis had obtained for her from Major Grant they refused to let a member of the public have access to official records, especially in wartime. Through dogged persistence Maggie eventually wore down a clerk to give her some information on the recruits around the time that Alex had run away. She had a small moment of hope when he told her that the figure had been disappointingly low for the beginning of April. He came back after an hour or so. He was not allowed to give her the exact number but it ran to several thousands.
‘Thousands!’ she repeated.
He promised that he personally would search the lists name by name for that of her brother, and pay particular attention to the London regiments. When Maggie returned the next day she knew immediately by his demeanour that he had not found the name of Alexander Dundas. He was sympathetic but could do no more – although one comment he made lingered with her. Rather than try to find her brother only via the Army, perhaps she should think also of conducting her search from her brother’s point of view. Was there any place or regiment that he had spoken about in particular? She resolved to write home and ask her parents to question Alex’s friend Hugh Kane more carefully and to search thoroughly through any belongings Alex might have left behind.
In addition to making enquiries about Alex, Maggie took advantage of some free time to visit the bookshops. She had not imagined there to be so many books in the world, far less contained in one city.
‘You should visit the British Museum, and the famous round reading room,’ suggested one bookseller. ‘It is a wonderful experience.’
Maggie spent a morning there while Charlotte visited her mother. Later that day in a small bookshop on Charing Cross Road Maggie fell into discussion with the owner about the purpose of literature, and its functions of shared observation and influence.
‘Has there been anything written abo
ut the War?’ Maggie asked him. ‘Some article or commentary that is not official, not a newspaper report …’ She struggled to explain what she meant. ‘Perhaps something uncomplimentary, a piece of writing that would show what a person might truly feel. Rather than factual accounts, more the emotional impact. And also, perhaps, from the point of view of a person who might not wholly support the idea.’
‘There have been poems, mainly in journals such as the Westminster Magazine or the Cambridge Review,’ he told her, ‘but there is a recent publication which might be of interest.’ He brought her a slim volume bound in dark grey. ‘The Old Huntsman is a collection of poems by a young officer called Siegfried Sassoon. He has spoken out against the continuation of the conflict. His poems are sensitive and are becoming more well known.’
* * *
Chapter 31
THE WORDS OF the poet resonated within Francis like a struck tuning fork. The desperate loneliness of his spirit was eased a little by Sassoon’s poems of protest, anger and lament. In his billet at Poperinge as the weather became milder he managed to sleep better. He awoke in those first days of early summer to mornings mantled in blue and gold, and sought peace by drawing, reading and writing in the garden of the Talbot House all ranks club on Gasthuisstraat.
From there he wrote to Maggie, who had now returned with Charlotte to the hospital in Rienne.
The next day the rain began.
Continuous, monotonous rain which ran off the roof of his billet, and quickly flooded the yard. Francis knew that nearer the Front the trenches and shell-holes would be filling with water. The frozen mud of the last winter had thawed to a gluey porridge and would now not have a chance to dry out. The constant shell-fire was systematically destroying the drainage system of the wet Flanders plain over which the infantry had to advance. Common sense dictated that they should cease the bombardment, at least until immediately prior to the order to attack, but field officer and private knew that this would not happen. The preparations had been made. The Offensive, although delayed, would take place. It had been planned, and like some unavoidable Biblical curse would continue. Inevitable, unchangeable, and doomed.
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