by Janet Tanner
“Keep Ted safe. Keep Ted safe.”
The words reverberated through her being like the echo of a great shout. But in the January woods, nothing broke the heavy silence.
THE SECOND spring of the war came slowly, refusing to be hurried even by the innovation of British Summer Time.
“Why they have to muck about with nature, I don’t know,” Charlotte grumbled as she rose in the dawn that had suddenly taken a pace or two back into darkness.
But when the longer evenings meant that lighting the lamps could be delayed for an hour or so, she felt a stirring of gratitude. While daylight lasted, fears and depression could be kept at bay. When the curtains were drawn and the lamps threw their long and eerie shadows, she felt somehow as if the darkness had crept inside her, and the unlit corners of the room reflected the nightmares that lurked in the corners of her mind. Two of her boys in France when there was no need of it—it was more than flesh and blood could stand. And just to make things worse, the Derby Bill had been passed now, bringing in conscription for all unmarried men between the ages of eighteen and forty-one and ending voluntary enrollment. If it had happened just a couple of months sooner, they would have refused to take Ted.
But what was done was done. There was no way of changing it now. And early in the year, when Fred came home for a well-earned leave, she tried to forget all her worries, planning a family celebration.
They would all be eager to see him, so Charlotte invited Jim and Sarah and the children, and arranged for Jack to swop his week at Wells around so that he could be at home while Fred was there. On the day he was due, Dolly and Amy both managed to get some time off, and Peggy said she would meet Harry out of school.
Charlie Durrant soon heard of Fred’s homecoming and looked out the flags they had hung out for the coronation. But when she saw them, Charlotte thought it was going too far, and asked him to take them in. With Peggy worried about Colwyn, who was in hospital in France, and the Cottles, whose boy Bert would never come back, living so close, she thought it would be salt in the wound to lay emphasis on the fact that Fred was safe and well.
By midday, everything was ready for him, and the house was spring-cleaned from top to bottom so that nothing had to be done while he was at home. James had concealed a barrel of beer—a real treat—in the wash-house. Charlotte had an enormous dinner prepared, Fred’s favourite boiled beef and dumplings, with enough vegetables to feed an army, followed by boiled apple pudding with milk and sugar.
“If I know our Fred. After all this time away, there won’t be much of that lot left,” she said with a smile. But she was wrong.
Jack had gone down to meet the trains in, and she kept going to the end of the rank to see if there was any sign of them coming. But when at last they did turn the corner, she could hardly believe the figure in the khaki greatcoat was Fred. He looked so thin even at a distance!
Forgetting she was still wearing her pinafore, she ran down the hill to meet him. Her eyes were blurred by tears, but in her arms he felt like a bundle of bones, and she held him away, looking at him, shocked by what she saw.
There were hollows in his cheeks, and a wary, haunted look in his eyes. And as she held him, she felt his nerves twitch compulsively once or twice.
“Whatever have they done to you?” she asked.
He shifted his kit-bag, impatient to get home. “Oh, I’m all right give or take a bug or two.”
“Bugs!” Charlotte exclaimed, taking a step backwards. The boys both laughed, but the wary look did not leave Fred’s eyes, and she turned away so as not to see it.
“Come on home,” she said. “We’ll soon have the water hot for you to have a bath, and you can get out of those clothes. They smell awful.”
Fred laughed again. “I’m not surprised. You can’t march half-way across France and not sweat, Mam.”
She tucked her arm through his. “ Jack, take that kit-bag off your brother. Can’t you see how done up he is? You’ll feel better with a hot meal inside you, my lad. Boiled beef and dumpling—how does that sound to you?”
“Sounds champion,” he said.
But when it was on the table in front of him, there was something wrong. He ate, gobbling hungrily, but with no enjoyment. He seemed unaware of his surroundings and had no desire to talk about the war.
“Tell me what’s been going on here,” he said at last.
“Nothing much except that we’ve had to wave your brother off, too,” Charlotte said shortly and was disturbed by the way Fred’s eyes narrowed, one lid twitching slightly.
“You shouldn’t have let him go.”
“How could I stop him?” Charlotte asked. “I tried to stop you, didn’t I? But you’re grown men, both of you. What you do is up to you.”
“I wish I was old enough,” Jack said, and they both looked at him in surprise.
“Oh, Jack!” Charlotte sighed.
Fred put in, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, our Jack.”
“I shouldn’t go in the army,” Jack said. “I’d join the Royal Flying Corps, or the RNAS. I’ve always wanted to fly, you know that.”
“But this is no game, Jack,” Fred said shortly, and again Charlotte was disturbed by the look in his eyes.
At that moment, however, James came home and the conversation was forgotten as father and son greeted one another. Then, when he’d had time to get changed and have something to eat, Jim came with Sarah and the children, and soon after that Dolly, Amy, and Peggy with Harry, so that the house seemed to be over-flowing with people and chatter. It was rather like a party, with a lot of laughter, and the kettle sitting on the hob to keep the teapot topped up. But when Charlotte looked at Fred, she knew she had done the wrong thing in letting them all come today. She had so badly wanted to make it a celebration that she had made the mistake of thinking he would be as pleased to see them all as they were to see him. But he wasn’t. Oh, he was laughing with them, and shaking hands, but all the time he was as taut as a violin string, and when he thought no one was looking, the haunted look returned to his eyes.
After tea she started dispersing them as soon as she reasonably could. Jim and Sarah took the children along to see their other grandparents, the Brimbles. James tapped the beer, and Fred seemed pleased to have a drink, but still he wasn’t really relaxed, and although he went off to bed quite early with Jack, she could still hear them talking when she went up herself after midnight.
The next evening when Fred had gone down to the Miners Arms with James to see his mates and have a pint, she asked Jack what they had been talking about.
“It’s not that I want to pry,” she explained. “I just can’t make him out, that’s all, and I wondered if he said anything to you.”
“Not really,” Jack said. “He seemed to want to talk, and yet when it came to the point, he didn’t. And he’s got a wound in his shoulder, too, that he didn’t mention.”
“A wound? You mean …”
“Oh, it’s not much. Nothing to worry about.”
“That’s all right, then,” she said. But she knew it wasn’t. Fred was different, and in an odd way, it frightened her. There was a hard edge to him that hadn’t been there before.
When Fred and James returned from the pub, Charlotte presumed he would want another early night, but he didn’t. The others went on upstairs, and Charlotte remained with Fred, but he was still restless—it was as Jack had said, he didn’t seem to know what he wanted to do.
“Did you enjoy your drink, Fred?” she asked.
He shifted in his chair. “It was all right. But nothing’s really like you remember it, is it?”
“How d’you mean?”
“When I was in France, I kept thinking about home, and I had this rosy picture of what it was like. I’d lie awake and picture the sun coming up so that half the valley’s in light and the other half in shadow, and it all looked so clean and good …”
“Well?” she said gently.
“It’s not like that really, is it?�
� He took out a cigarette and lit it. “It’s all grey and dirty, and coal-dust everywhere.”
“It’s winter, Fred. It rains here just like anywhere else.”
“I know. But still …” He hesitated, then went on, “And it’s not only that. It’s everything. The food doesn’t taste right …”
“Oh, thank you very much!”
“Sorry, Mam, there’s nothing wrong with it, I know. It’s me, I expect. I’ve had too much stodge. I can’t taste any more. In France I used to dream of your stews and boiled puddings, and now …”
“That’ll come back,” she said. “ Your stomach’s all upset.”
“An’ me mates,” he went on. “I can’t even talk to them any more. It’s like there was a barrier between us. The blokes out there, in France, they understand. They’ve been through it all, too. But here—they don’t know what they’re on about.”
Tears ached in Charlotte’s throat. “Is it very bad, my son?”
He didn’t answer, and she put her hand on his arm. “If only you could talk about it, tell me …”
“Tell you?” He jerked round suddenly, his eyes blazing. “You wouldn’t want to know, Mam.”
“That’s not true, Fred.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I want to know so I can … oh, share it with you, I suppose.”
“All right.” His voice was hard. “Supposing I was to tell you I’ve had mates killed both sides of me, or walked over German gunners lying dead in the trenches and felt me boots sink into them. I’ve killed a man, Mam, as close as I am to you, putting round after round into his face until there was nothing left of it because it was either him or me. Now, do you still tell me you want to hear more?”
The ache in Charlotte’s throat had become a choking knot. She thought she was going to be sick, and her whole body had turned cold.
“Oh, Fred!” she said softly.
She sat down on the arm of his chair, putting her arms around him and pulling his head into her. At first he drew back, but after a moment he relaxed, burrowing his face into the fullness of her breast. Gently she stroked his hair as she had when he was a child, and gradually she felt the tension ease out of him.
“I’m glad you told me, Fred,” she said.
For how long they sat there, neither ever knew, but in the end it was James who disturbed them, poking his head around the stair door to ask if they were ever coming to bed.
“Yes, we’re coming,” she said. She felt heavy, now, and old—as if she had lived for a hundred years, and taken the troubles of the world on her shoulders. But she seemed to have helped Fred.
Next morning he was much more his old self, eating a good breakfast and even laughing at a photograph in the newspaper of two women humping sacks of coal in one of the big cities.
“They wanted men’s work, now they’ve got it,” he said. “But give me a woman that looks like a woman every time!”
“That reminds me, Renee Presley up the rank was asking after you the other day,” Charlotte teased. “ You ought to go up and see her.”
“I might do that,” Fred said, and Charlotte and James exchanged glances. Renee was Edie’s older sister and not a bad-looking girl. Fred had known her all his life, and if anything was going to come of it, Charlotte thought it would have happened before now. But it was good to hear Fred making plans and having a joke.
Throughout the rest of his leave, things continued to improve. It was as if talking to Charlotte had cleansed him somehow, and released him from the nightmare. But all too soon it was over, and time for farewells.
They all went down to the station to see him off, hovering around him in an uncertain knot. “ You might run into our Ted in France,” Charlotte said foolishly, as they stood on the platform.
Fred did not snap at her as he might have done earlier in his leave that the line stretched for hundreds of miles, with back-up sectors too, and he’d have as much chance meeting a flea in the market as meeting Ted. Instead, he smiled and gave her a quick hug. “You never know.”
And then the train was in, stopping to fill up with water at the tank so that it seemed to be in the station for hours and the parting was delayed until it was almost unbearable. But at last the guard waved his green flat, the driver whistled back, and they were off. Harry and Jack ran along the platform beside the carriage for as long as they could, but Charlotte stood with James, watching until Fred’s head, poking out of the window, was just a faceless blur. The train rocked slowly around the bend, the signals clacked back to a neutral position, and the clouds of steam spread into the murky sky. Charlotte swallowed at the loss and despair that rose steadily in her throat.
“Come on, Harry!” she said.
Together they went down the station slope, back to the house that would seem bereft and empty, back to the waiting and the praying. There was nothing else to do.
FOR TED, the war had begun disappointingly.
When he had boarded the steamer that was seeing service as a troopship, he had been ready and eager to do his bit, but two weeks, and a good many blisters later, it seemed to him that he was no closer to having a crack at Fritz than he had ever been.
When he walked down the gang-plank on to French soil, he was told he would be among those who would go to the Front immediately, and far from frightening him, he found the prospect exciting. He said as much to Wally Gifford, the taciturn Geordie who had shared a billet with him and Redvers on Salisbury Plain.
“Ah’ll save me judgement, lad,” Wally replied morosely, but Ted knew that the mournful expression was only a cover-up, and Wally was in reality as eager as he was to try out their new-found skill with a gun, a bayonet or a hand grenade.
The first stage of their journey was by train, and Ted watched from the window as mile after mile of bleak and ravaged countryside unfolded before him. Then the men were set down and formed into a column for the route-march that would take them to the lines, and the anticipation of action stirred in him again. As they swung along the ribbons of dirt track or tar macadam roads, he managed to ignore the blisters that his overlarge boots had raised on his heels by leading the others in a bawdy song or two, undeterred by the rumble of the guns and the scream of shells that grew louder and more resonant as they neared the lines.
After several days’ marching, they reached the valley where their unit was camped. It was nightfall when they arrived, and most of the men who had been ‘over the top’ that day and emerged more or less unscathed had already marched back and wearily dressed ranks outside the orderly room tent, but a few stragglers were still drifting in—men who had been separated from the rest of their company in the fighting.
While he tucked into a supper of stewed beef topped with hunks of French bread, Ted watched them with fascinated curiosity. It was hard to believe that these weary, staggering, mud-stained figures could ever have been part of a smartly turned-out and well-drilled squad. They looked shattered now, hardly able to hold their heads up under the weight of their tin hats. Their rifles slanted wearily against the uniforms that were spattered with blood and dirt.
For a moment or two their dejection sobered him, but when they had disappeared like grey shadows into their tents, his enthusiasm began to return.
“Our turn tomorrow,” he said softly to Redvers, and then, while he finished his stew, he pictured what he would do—hurl a hand grenade into a Hun trench, perhaps, and then bayonet the bastards one by one as they tried to run away.
Take that—and that! he thought, stabbing at his bread with his spoon, and wishing he could have the chance of doing the same to Alfred Church.
Because they were not yet official, there were no tents for Ted and the other new men, and after they had tried, without much success, to erect a tent from ground-sheets, they were reluctantly allowed to share with the ‘old sweats.’
“Not very friendly, though, are they?” Ted commented to Redvers as they got themselves undressed.
“Not that I want them too close.” Redvers hi
ssed back. “ They’re bloody lousy—look!”
Ted turned, startled to see that most of the men were probing the hairy parts of their bodies. “What are they doing?” he muttered softly.
“Looking for bugs. Bugs, you know—fleas!” Redvers told him, and Ted was unable to suppress a shudder. Guns he had expected. Bombs he had been prepared for. But to have bugs crawling all over you was something else again.
That night, Ted’s sleep was interrupted by the mutterings and mumblings of the seasoned soldiers. Even asleep they still seemed to be fighting, their arms and legs jerking spasmodically. Ted awoke as dawn began to break, and after lying awake for a while, he decided to get up and go to the latrine.
The camp lay quiet in the cold grey dawn, but there was a great disturbance coming from the tents where the cookers were situated, and Ted, curiosity getting the better, of him, went across to them and asked what was going on. At first, realizing he was one of the new draft, they were unwilling to tell him, then one of them gave him a nasty grin. “You’re in luck, chum,” he sneered. “They’ve had too many losses in this unit, and we’re being pulled out until they can get it up to strength again.”
“You mean, we’re going out of the line again?” Ted asked, almost disbelieving.
The cook laughed. “ That’s about the size of it. Looks as if you’re one of them that comes up smelling of violets, doesn’t it? There’s not many as gets here and then has a rest before he’s done anything.”
“Some of the blokes’ll take it out on you for that, an’ all,” said a plump man who looked as if he finished up every bit of uneaten food himself.
“Take it out on me? What for?” Ted asked.
“For not being through it with them. They even takes it out on us sometimes. But you can’t blame the poor buggers. Just thank your lucky stars you’re sound in wind and limb yourself.”
From somewhere over the ridge of hills came the sound of shells exploding, and the cook pointed with his thumb.
“It’s started,” he said unnecessarily. “ Just you think o’ that, lad, when they start calling you a conchie, and remember when you’re well off.”
