‘I think it’ll go on until every single soldier’s dead,’ Rosie said gloomily to Kitty.
Kitty tried to comfort her. ‘No they won’t,’ Kitty said. ‘Something’ll happen. You’ll see.’
What happened was an act of Parliament that neither of them expected. It was passed on February 6th and reported in the papers the next morning. Women over thirty who ‘occupied premises of a yearly value of not less than £5’ were to be given the vote.
Kitty saw it at work and brought it to the Star that evening to show to Rosie.
‘We been passin’ it round all day,’ she said. ‘Whatcher think a’ that? Our Sylvia said they’d have ter do it.’
Rosie read it thoughtfully. ‘It’s only for middle-aged women though,’ she said. ‘Not for us.’
‘It’s fer women,’ Kitty told her happily. ‘That’s the important thing. It’s the thin end a’ the wedge. They’ll ’ave to give it to all of us in the end.’
The encouraging news carried them through the chills of the winter but then April began and there was another news item that brought a terrible and familiar fear. General Sir Douglas Haig had decided that there would be yet another push. His speech was reported in the papers and it made Rosie so angry she didn’t know what to do with herself. ‘Every position must be held to the last man,’ he’d said. ‘There must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end.’
‘Vile, monstrous, stupid, old imbecile,’ she raged. ‘I don’t notice his stinking back to the wall. Oh no! He’s skulking in some great, big, comfortable house somewhere safe keepin’ out the way. It’s the poor devils in the trenches what are going to fight to the last man. Our Jim. That’s who’ll cop it. How can he be so cruel?’
But Haig was the general and when he gave an order it had to be obeyed.
Over in France a gentle summer was under way. The sky above the wreckage of the battlefields was peacefully blue, birds sang joyously in the trees behind the long-embattled lines, the distant fields were lush with green corn, the distant roads dusty and untroubled, the sun shone like a blessing. But the men waiting in their stinking trenches hardly noticed it. They were taut with the dread of what was to come.
‘They must start soon,’ Jim said irritably, climbing onto the parapet for his next turn on watch. ‘What are they waiting for?’ The tanks were already in line, the artillery was ready, the ammo had been delivered.
‘Don’t wish it on us mate,’ Fred said, following him. ‘They can wait for ever far as I’m concerned. I’m in no rush.’
It began two days later with the usual preliminary barrage but this time it was louder and longer than anything they’d ever heard. It went on for six days non-stop and the noise was shattering. Then on the seventh day it died down and the signal was given for them to attack. Jim walked through the filth of no-man’s-land surrounded by tanks. There were hundreds of them heading towards the German trenches in their implacable ponderous way, rolling straight across, heading out towards the next line. Shells exploded all round him, the machine guns fired incessantly, men were dropping everywhere he looked, being blown apart before his eyes. But he trudged on, keeping in the shelter of the nearest tank, through the enemy trench and out the other side, pushing the Germans back. At last.
The attack went on until the next line of trenches had been captured. He and Fred were light-headed with relief. The first push was over, and they’d come through. Imagine that. They were so tired they slept where they stood but they were alive. The next morning they were ordered to attack again. There was a second line of trenches to be taken, their artillery had moved into new positions and were already firing, they had tanks to support them. It was possible.
That day, it seemed to Jim that the Germans were fighting more desperately. The machine-gunners still had their range and were killing at will, there were men dropping in their hundreds, but they were still advancing, dodging behind the tanks, firing when they could.
Then things went wrong. The tank they’d been following was hit by a shell and skidded to a halt.
‘Find another one,’ Jim yelled to Fred and followed where his mate ran. It was murderously hot and there were shells exploding and men being killed to right and left. And then suddenly there was an explosion immediately in front of them and the air was full of mud and shrapnel and there was a burning pain in his thigh.
‘Oh shit!’ he cried. ‘Shit! Shit!’ Then he was falling, and the darkness took him.
Chapter 11
‘Anything?’ Kitty asked. She’d been waiting for Rosie at the tram stop for quite a while, her sallow face wrinkled with anxiety and her brown eyes strained.
Rosie gave her a hug, took her arm and began to walk towards the Star. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing yet. I’d’ve written if there had been, you know that, Kitty.’
The street was so warm in the evening sun that the shop blinds were still down and as usual at that time of day it was full of people, either heading home or off to the pub; dockers and stevedores weary in their work-stained clothes, women in black with shopping bags over their arms returning with their last-minute bargains from the Borough Market, boys in cloth caps and down-at-heel boots running errands, skinny girls with toddlers on their hips trailing after their mothers.
‘It’s seventeen days,’ Kitty mourned.
‘I know.’
‘That’s a dreadful long time.’
Rosie was monosyllabic with distress. ‘Yes.’
‘Ain’t there someone we could write an’ ask?’ Kitty said and her voice was desperate, ‘We can’t just wait like this.’
‘I’ve thought an’ thought,’ Rosie told her. ‘Truly I have Kitty, an’ I can’t think of anyone. We ent had the telegram. That’s one thing.’
Kitty stopped walking and turned to face her. ‘I can’t bear it, our Rosie,’ she wailed. ‘He could be dead, or lyin’ out there in the mud, all shot to bits, or anythin’. They ought to tell us. It ain’t right ter keep us hangin’ on an’ on an’ on like this.’ Tears rolled out of her eyes and down her cheeks, but she was too fraught to notice them.
Rosie had been holding onto her own self-control all through the long seventeen days and the sight of Kitty’s tears pushed her into an outburst of frightened weeping. They stood clinging to one another in the crowded street until the first fit had eased and the passers-by gentled around them eyeing them with pity. Grief was too universal now to be mocked or commented on but one or two of the older women touched them gently as they passed in unspoken sympathy.
‘Don’t let’s go to the Star,’ Kitty said, when she was calmer. ‘I can’t face all that larkin’ about. Not tonight. Let’s go back to my place, eh?’
So that’s what they did, and the peaceful room comforted them a little. When they finally kissed goodbye, Rosie said. ‘It’ll come soon, Kitty. It’s bound to.’ But they were both so down that neither of them believed it.
It came three days later, and it wasn’t the much-feared telegram, nor a postcard in Jim’s bold hand but a letter in an envelope postmarked ‘Tooting SW’ and addressed in unfamiliar writing. Rosie’s hands were shaking so much that she tore the envelope in half as she opened it.
It was an official letter written on notepaper with a printed address across the top of it.
‘Church Lane Military Hospital
Church Lane, Tooting
SW London
‘Dear Miss Goodison,’ it said.
‘I am writing this letter at the request of Private Jim Jackson, who is a patient at this hospital in Ward 24. He asks me to tell you that he has been wounded and is not able to write to you in person, but he wants you to know that he is now recovering and hopes you will be able to visit him. Our visiting hours are at the head of this letter.
‘With kind regards,
‘Nurse M Aitcheson.’
Rosie was sick with relief. He wasn’t dead. Oh thank God. Thank God. But then her common sense re
turned, and she wondered how badly he’d been wounded and wished Nurse Aitcheson had told her more. It must have been bad if he can’t write, she thought. I’ll send a postcard to Kitty and then I’ll arrange time off so that I can go and see him. She was full of unstoppable energy. Now that she knew where he was and that he was alive, anything was possible.
It took two trams to get to Tooting and felt like a very long journey but the conductress on the second tram told her where to get off and pointed her in the right direction. ‘That’s Church Lane up there,’ she said. ‘Go past the church and it’s just a bit further up the road. Huge place. You can’t miss it. Good luck!’
She was right. Rosie could see the building rising above its surrounding wall as she approached it and when she’d walked through the gate, past a sign that read ‘Tooting Military Hospital’, and followed a short, straight driveway up to the front entrance, she saw at once that it was a very big hospital. It was three stories high for a start and had so many windows she couldn’t count them. The entrance was very grand, surrounded by four white pillars which supported a balcony like the one at Buckingham Palace and there was a huge clock tower rising importantly above the chimneys. It gave her hope just to see it. They’ll look after him in a place like this, she thought. Bound to.
Finding the ward was easy too. A uniformed porter standing behind the reception desk just inside the door, told her all she had to do was follow the signs. ‘You’ll find it’s all pretty straightforward.’ It was finding Jim that was the difficult bit. Ward twenty-four was crowded with beds so close to each other that there was barely room for a chair and a small locker between them and every one was occupied by a gaunt-looking man with a shaven head either lying flat on his back asleep or propped up on pillows with the bedclothes tightly tucked around his legs. They looked like grotesque dolls and most of them smelt so sour that even passing them made her retch. But none of them was Jim. She walked from one end of the ward to the other and back again, checking every bed but there was no sign of him. In the end she gave up searching and went to ask the nurse who was sitting at a desk at the far end of the ward, keeping watch.
She looked up and smiled as Rosie approached and said, ‘Can I help you?’ in such a kind voice that Rosie took heart.
‘I’m looking for Jim Jackson,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think he’s here.’
‘You must be Rosie,’ the nurse said, smiling again. ‘He is here. Let me show you.’ And she stood up and led the way to a bed in the middle of the ward, where a gaunt man was lying on his back asleep with his mouth open. ‘Jim!’ the nurse said, giving his arm a little shake. ‘Wake up. Your Rosie’s here.’
No, Rosie thought. That’s not Jim. It can’t be. But then the man opened his eyes and looked her, and they were Jim’s lovely tawny eyes in that haggard face, gazing at her with such pain that she wanted to scream and howl at the sight of him. She sat down heavily on the hospital chair, took his limp hand and made a huge effort to speak to him, but she had to swallow three times before she could get a word out. ‘Hello our Jim,’ she said, huskily.
To her horror, he turned his head away from her and began to cry.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ she whispered to the nurse.
‘He’s had dysentery,’ the nurse said. ‘Still has it, to be truthful. It’s not as bad as it was when he came in but it’s bad enough. It makes them very weak. He’s lucky to be alive.’
‘A nurse wrote to me,’ Rosie told her. ‘She said he’d been wounded.’
‘That was me,’ Nurse Aitcheson told her. ‘And yes he was wounded. His right thigh was full of shrapnel when he came in and rather seriously infected. He had a long struggle with that too but the infection’s clearing now. He’s a very brave man.’
‘Yes,’ Rosie said. ‘He always was.’ She lifted his hand and held it to her face and kissed it. ‘My poor Jim.’
‘See if you can coax him to drink some water,’ Nurse Aitcheson said. ‘Dysentery dries them out. That’s his drinking cup.’ She nodded her head at a cup with a spout like a miniature teapot that was standing on the locker. Then she left them to it and went off to attend to another patient who was groaning.
Rosie stayed on the ward until the bell rang to mark the end of the visiting hour. She managed to persuade him to drink some water and held his hand while he slept and kissed him on the two occasions when he woke and looked at her. When she left him, she felt as bleak as he looked, and she cried all the way home. Her poor, poor Jim to be lying there in that dreadful smell all day looking like a skeleton and feeling so weak. But when she reached Southwark, she gathered her strength and her determination, put her chin in the air and went off to tell Kitty what she’d found and to plan how they could take it in turns to visit him.
‘You go on your afternoon off an’ I’ll go on mine,’ she said. ‘That way he’ll get two visits a week an’ we can keep an eye on him.’
‘Is he very bad?’ Kitty asked mournfully.
I can’t protect her, Rosie thought, sadly. She’s got to know, or it’ll give her a shock like it did to me. So she told her, not in too much detail, but just enough to alert her. Kitty wept piteously despite her caution. And then they sat with their arms round each other, while Rosie tried to comfort her. ‘We’ll soon have him out a’ there, don’t you worry,’ she said. ‘Then we can feed him up an’ get him well again.’
The two young women visited the hospital every week from then on and every single visit was difficult. Sometimes Jim seemed a little better and was sitting up. He didn’t say very much but at least he seemed to be listening to them. But at other times he was lying down and weepy and listless and could barely answer them when they said hello. It worried them terribly.
‘I shall ask someone if there’s anything we can do for him,’ Rosie said when she and Kitty went to the Star on Thursday evening. ‘We can’t let him go on an’ on like this. I’ve hardly had a word out of him this afternoon.’
Kitty sighed. ‘But who’s there to ask?’ she said. ‘I mean for to say, the nurses are ever so nice, but they don’t seem to know much, do they? I mean they only say coax him to drink his water an’ a fat lot a’ good that is, the state he’s in.’
‘I been thinking on the way home,’ Rosie said. ‘I think I ought to try an’ find a sister. There’s bound to be one somewhere about an’ she’ll be bound to know.’
Kitty was too down to be convinced. ‘She might not,’ she said.
‘Oh she will,’ Rosie reassured her. ‘I worked with a sister once an’ she knew everything there was to know. Lovely she was. I shall find the sister first thing I do, I promise, the minute I get there.’
It was a cold depressing journey, for autumn had denuded all the trees and a fog had been gathering since mid-morning. The dampness of it was chill to her lungs and tasted of soot and sulphur but Rosie wasn’t going to let a bit of cold deter her. She pulled her muffler over her mouth and walked up Church Lane as quickly as she could so as to keep warm, passing the now ghostly church and peering through the murk to make sure she didn’t miss the entrance. The hospital loomed before her like a castle from a fairy story — oh if only it was, and she could find her fairy godmother — and then she was through the half-open door and in the foggy entrance hall and following signs she could barely see. I must get him out of here, she thought as she walked between the clammy walls of the corridor. It’s worse than ever today. He should be back at home all nice an’ snug, by a nice coal fire. I could build it halfway up the chimney and put a blanket over his knees and make him really warm and give him a jug of beer and tempt him with something tasty to whet his appetite.
She reached the ward full of determined plans and there, to her great delight, was a plump lady in the familiar dark blue uniform of a ward sister bending over one of the patients, talking softly to him and holding a cup to his lips. Rosie walked into the ward on hopeful feet and waited at the foot of the bed until the sister stood up and straightened her back. Then she stepped forward to ma
ke herself known. And found herself looking into the gentle, reassuring face of Sister Sunshine.
They recognised one another in the same instant, Sister Castleton with surprise and pleasure, Rosie with a rush of relief.
‘Rosie, my dear girl,’ Sister Castleton said, all smiles. ‘How good to see you.’ But then she saw the expression on Rosie’s face and moved into practical concern. ‘Ah!’ she said. ‘Come into my office and tell me all about it.’
It was a small office at the end of the ward but a very warm one. There was a gas fire popping with exertion in one wall with two easy chairs drawn up beside it and a pair of good thick curtains to shut out the fog.
‘You have a young man here,’ Sister said when they were both comfortably seated.
‘Jim Jackson,’ Rosie told her.
‘Ah yes. And you’re worried about him, naturally. You know he’s had an infected wound, don’t you? And dysentery?’ They were only just questions and when Rosie nodded, she went on. ‘The wound is healing. Rather slowly but it is healing. But I’m afraid the effects of the dysentery are lingering. It’s a horrible disease. It drains them of water and energy.’
‘Yes,’ Rosie said, sadly. ‘We seen that, me an’ his sister.’
‘But?’ Sister prompted.
Rosie thought about it for a few seconds and decided to confide the worst of her worries. ‘When I first met him,’ she said, ‘he was like a lion, a great strong feller with lots a’ thick hair. Determined sort a’ man, if you know what I mean. The sort that ’ud stand up for you through thick an’ thin.’ She could see him so clearly charging through the crowd to tackle the roughs that afternoon in Trafalgar Square. ‘Now he’s so low I can’t recognise him. He’s hardly the same man. I know I shouldn’t say this because it sounds so terrible, but it’s almost as if he’s lost the will to live.’
Everybody's Somebody Page 13
