‘Thought I’d do something useful while I waited,’ he grinned at her, unsure.
‘If you’ve dug up me spring vegetables, there’ll be hell on!’ Maggie replied, unpinning her hat and letting the wind ruffle her black hair. ‘Come in and I’ll make some tea.’
‘I’ve made some,’ George answered, pulling on his army jacket.
‘Well, come in and drink it,’ Maggie ordered.
They sat either side of the fire, awkward and tongue-tied.
‘When do you leave?’ Maggie asked.
‘Catch the train from Central Station on Monday,’ George told her. ‘I’ll stop at home if you don’t want me here.’
Maggie cocked her head and replied thoughtfully, ‘Funny how you still call your father’s house your home. You haven’t lived there in donkey’s years.’
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘I know what you mean,’ Maggie cut him off and abruptly stood up. ‘You’ll stay for tea, won’t you?’
George stood up too and rummaged in his knapsack. ‘I’ve brought some sausage and sugar - a few other things. You’ll not have time to stand in queues.’
Maggie moved around the kitchen, preparing the food.
‘Do you see anything of Tich?’ she asked.
‘Once or twice,’ George answered. ‘We’re in different companies. But he seemed in good fettle when I last saw him.’
‘He seems so young,’ Maggie sighed. Whereas she, at twenty-three, felt so old, as if she had lived ten years in the past two.
‘The lad has a stout heart,’ George commented. ‘You lasses treated him like a bairn for too long, that’s all.’
‘And throwing him at the Hun will make a man of him, I suppose,’ Maggie mocked. ‘You lads are all the same, not happy unless you’re scrapping.’
‘You used to like a fight, remember?’ George countered.
‘Aye, well, not now,’ Maggie replied, tossing the sausage into a heavy pan. ‘I want a quiet life. I’ve done with protestin’ and all that.’
‘I doubt it,’ George grunted.
After they had eaten and Maggie was about to clear the table, George caught her hand.
‘Come and sit a while by the fire, Maggie,’ he said quietly and led her to a chair.
They sat together while George talked of his months at camp and the men who had become his companions. Maggie watched his face grow animated and realised that he was enjoying his new life. She felt a stab of envy, recognising the heady pull of comradeship. She had experienced it herself among the suffragettes and the knowledge of it had fortified her flagging spirits in prison. Yet somewhere along the way, her ardour had been extinguished, Maggie thought with regret. Or maybe it merely lay untended but smouldering like the embers of a fire that refuses to die?
She looked at George and accepted for the first time that she should not condemn him for what he had chosen to do. The war was hateful, but he wanted to fight not just for his fellow comrades but for his own self-esteem, his own sense of justice. When Pearson’s had sacked him they had robbed him of his work and his reason for being; now he had found it again among the Tyneside Scottish.
‘Read to me,’ Maggie suddenly requested, interrupting George’s tales. ‘Read to me like you used to - poetry, anything.’
George drew the blinds and picked a book from the mantelpiece and read. From time to time, he would pause to put coal on the fire and then continued his story. Maggie closed her eyes and listened to his strong familiar voice, recounting the words of Dickens.
Sometime in the night, he roused her from sleep on the chair and carried her to their bed in the corner. For the first time in months they made love and George whispered his longing for her, his regret at the wasted period of growing apart.
‘I love you, Maggie Beaton,’ he declared. ‘When I come back I’ll wed you. You’ll not put me off any more, do you hear?’
‘I hear,’ Maggie laughed and kissed him.
‘We should’ve done it long ago. Why didn’t you let me marry you, Maggie?’
Maggie sighed and put her head on his shoulder. ‘I was happy as we were - our own little Utopia,’ she answered. ‘Besides, everywhere I looked, married women seemed imprisoned, unhappy, like our Susan. I didn’t want that.’
‘It wouldn’t be like that with me, lass,’ George insisted.
‘No.’
‘So you’re agreed?’ he persisted. ‘When I come back, we’ll get wed?’
Maggie shivered. ‘Don’t you mean if you come back, Geordie?’
George gripped her to him and kissed her hard, as if he could smother her doubts.
‘Course I’ll come back, Maggie, so you better wait for me!’
They stayed in the cottage for three brief days and nights, like creatures reluctant to give up hibernation. They ate and read and slept and made love and talked of plans for the future. All talk of the war was avoided, but it hung over them, like a storm cloud, intensifying their last bitter-sweet moments together.
On the final morning, George crept from their bed and put on his uniform as the pink dawn light nudged under the sleepy blinds. Maggie watched him dress in silence, clinging to the moment. Soon she would have to get up and answer the blare of the factory hooter. It would be a relief to have the mindless work to do; it was the return to the empty house that she dreaded, more than this parting.
‘I’ll send you one of them fancy French postcards, lass,’ George promised.
‘Just come back safe, Geordie,’ Maggie implored. ‘That’s all I want.’
Then George kissed her quickly, urgently, and left. She watched him from the cottage door, fighting down the fear that she might never see him like this again - tall, broad-shouldered, smiling confidently beneath his thick moustache. A sick longing for him engulfed her and nearly made her rush after him. If it would have stopped him going, she would have done so, but Maggie knew that nothing could now keep George here, not even their love for each other.
George looked back and waved. Maggie stood barefoot in the doorway, her hair still tousled from sleep, wrapped in an overcoat. He felt a rush of guilt for leaving her there, alone and sad-faced in the early morning light. Then she raised her hand in farewell and smiled; the warm, confident smile that had won him to her years ago. He turned and marched down the hill with the picture of Maggie in his mind. She was a fighter and survivor, he assured himself, and would be there standing in the doorway to greet him on his return.
***
Maggie submerged herself in work once more, escaping to the farm to enjoy the lengthening spring days. Clouds of blossom appeared on the fruit trees and were shaken off by brisk west winds. The trees broke into new lush green and the smell of mown grass came once more to the surrounding fields.
She thought of George most in the twilight hours, when the half-light played games with the shadows of trees and walls. Once or twice she was sure she saw his figure approaching up the pathway and rushed out, only to see the shadow disappear as the light shifted and faded from the garden. Often she sat down to write to him but fell asleep exhausted before she had begun. It was easier to cope with living without him by pretending he was just out at a meeting or the pub and would soon be back. If she wrote to him in France, then his being there amid all the danger became frighteningly real. She would write to him soon, Maggie vowed half-heartedly.
It was about the time of the first haymaking that Maggie realised something was wrong. She had been working long hours and had felt an uncharacteristic lethargy. Increasingly, she had to drag her weary body back up the hill at the end of the day. At times she was so nauseous that she had to rush from the workshed without permission, to retch outside.
One day, one of the women followed her out and startled her with the question, ‘Have you missed your time, hinny?’
‘What do you mean?’ Maggie spluttered, colouring hotly.
‘Your monthly bleed, lass,’ the woman said forthrightly.
Maggie thought, then nodded slowly.
The woman snorted. ‘Better be gettin’ your lad up the aisle sharpish, then!’
Maggie’s mouth gaped open in bewilderment. The woman turned to go but Maggie gripped her arm: ‘Do you mean … am I...?’
‘Expectin’? Aye, looks like it to me, hinny.’
Maggie went pale and felt her legs go weak. ‘My lad’s in France,’ she whispered.
The woman clucked in disapproval. ‘Well you’ll have family to help out, won’t you?’
Maggie, too ashamed to admit how alone she was, simply nodded. ‘But you’ll not tell the bosses,’ she begged. ‘I need the work.’
‘I’ll not tell,’ the woman agreed with a sympathetic look, ‘but it’ll show in time.’
Maggie toiled home that evening, sick and worried. She was carrying George’s child. How could she possibly manage alone, up here, once she could no longer work? At first she cursed him for the seed implanted inside her that now threatened her livelihood. He had always been careful to avoid making her pregnant. But on his last visit they had not been careful, Maggie admitted, they had been reckless in their lovemaking, silently afraid it might be the last time.
Then the disgrace of what she had done overwhelmed her. She was carrying an illegitimate child, a child with no name and probably no home. What would her mother and grandmother have thought of such foolishness? As for her sisters and Aunt Violet, Maggie could well imagine their horror and disgust at the shame it would bring to the family. She knew without asking that they would never take her back now. Even if Susan were to take pity on her, Richard Turvey would never allow her to seek refuge under his roof.
George was the only person she could tell, Maggie realised. She sat down and attempted to write him a letter, breaking the news. But as she wrote the stark words, panic filled her and she crumpled it up and threw it on the fire. Why had she waited so long to write to him?
Maggie looked at his photograph on the mantelpiece and reread the three elaborately decorated postcards that had arrived from France in the last month telling her how much he missed her. Maggie felt encouraged and wrote again. She asked him to send her money so that she could continue to pay the rent on the cottage once she could no longer work. Somehow she would manage until he returned, Maggie assured herself, her optimism growing as she sealed the envelope.
The next day, Maggie posted the letter and willed herself to be patient for a reply.
***
After a week of attacking exercises, George’s brigade was moved eastwards by train and billeted among the ruined houses of Albert. They left the pretty, undulating countryside of neat farms and flowering gardens for a land of stunted woods and muddy farm buildings. They marched past stagnant ponds choked with tins and broken crockery, with only a solitary chateau on the outskirts of the village to relieve the dismal landscape of the Somme valley.
At Albert, the bombed cathedral stood like a stark skeleton among the fields; there was one remaining cafe miraculously serving meals. Everywhere was a maze of telegraph wires. They were draped along hedges and drooped from trees like abandoned washing lines, needing continuous repair after shelling.
For a month they prepared for an offensive. George sweated under the June sun, digging support trenches at the Front and beavering underground, building galleries for the laying of mines. There was constant strafing from the enemy trenches, some of which stood only fifty yards away across the cratered ground, impenetrable fortifications protected by strong barbed wire and deep ditches planted with sharp spikes.
But George volunteered for raids on these trenches on windy dark nights when the wind was blowing from the German lines to theirs. With blackened hands and faces they went on short ten-minute raids to cut wires, damage a communication trench or raid a supply trench and then retreated quickly, with turned-up collars showing white linings so they would not be mistaken for German raiders.
Better to join in such raids than endure the waiting, smelling the fear of impending battle, George thought. Every day there were casualties from machine-gun fire or mortar attacks as they dug, or accidents from gas canisters being transported up to the Front. George had learned to dread the urgent ring of gongs, which meant reaching at once for his gas mask as the breeze brought the poison gas from the enemy trenches. He had caught whiffs of it from attacks on other units and shuddered at the deathly smell that had sent his brother mad.
The wounded would disappear, whisked from dressing station to field hospital, never to be heard of again until weeks later when word might filter back that they were home or deployed in a different battalion - or dead.
A week ago, George had come across Jimmy in Albert on a few days’ rest from the front line.
‘Champion!’ was Jimmy’s bright reply when George asked how he was faring. He was a runner between communication trenches.
‘Have you heard from Maggie?’ George asked diffidently.
‘Aye,’ Jimmy grinned. ‘She sent me some black bullets and a bag of lemon drops. Knew me sweet tooth would be missing them!’
‘That’s grand,’ George tried to smile, though it pained him that she had found the time to write to her brother but not to him.
He thought about her constantly in the dragging hours of inactivity, when the men sat around playing cards or writing long letters home in their cramped quarters. Did she miss him with the same intensity as he missed her? George wondered. Or did her silence mean she had put him from her mind, convinced that he would not return? What if she had found someone else?
George tortured himself with the thought, then chided himself for doubting her love, recalling that last sight of a sorrowing Maggie putting on a brave face at his going.
She loved him, he rebuked himself, but was working too hard to have time to write him letters. After all, Maggie was always better at spouting words than writing them, he thought ruefully. He would hear from her in good time.
‘Take care of yourself, lad,’ George told Jimmy with a clap on the shoulder.
‘Aye.’ Jimmy’s eyes shone with excitement. ‘There’s summat big on, isn’t there?’
George nodded. ‘Seems so.’
‘Bloody great!’ the boy cried.
Yes, bloody it will be, George thought grimly, but said nothing more, not wanting to dampen the boy’s enthusiasm. To Jimmy it seemed a huge adventure, a game more thrilling and daring than anything he had played at home with Tommy Smith and his old street friends. What tales he would have to tell! George could see Jimmy thinking.
‘I’ll be in the newspapers back home, an’ all,’ Jimmy said, brimming with pride.
George snorted. ‘And how’s that, young’un?’
‘Lord Pearson’s daughter - she took me picture yesterday with the other lads.’
‘Alice Pearson’s out here?’ George asked incredulously.
‘Aye. Said she was official like, taking photographs for the army. Just wait till that yellow-bellied Turvey sees me all over The Journal. He’ll not be calling me names no more!’
The next day George went back up the line. It started to rain heavily, huge thunderous deluges that filled the trenches like baths and turned them to quagmires. It made the daily job of trying to mend walls after shelling even more hazardous and some trenches were so waterlogged they could hardly be reached.
Then in the early hours of 25 June the artillery bombardment they had been waiting for began in earnest. The mortar teams fired and reloaded and fired on the trenches opposite and the Germans answered in kind. But the British assault was incessant and unlike anything George had ever witnessed. After that, it became impossible to repair the trenches and George and his comrades took cover and waited for ‘Zero Hour’ - their signal to go over the top.
For three days the British bombardment of the enemy continued. The world outside had turned into an inferno of flashing, bursting shells and dense clouds of smoke and dust. George, looking across at the German lines, thought he was seeing the mouth of hell. Everything smouldered angrily while the earth shook with the p
ounding from heavy guns, the air acrid with the stench of explosives.
‘No buggers can survive a drubbin’ like that!’ said one of the Tyneside Scots. ‘Not even Fritz.’
They were ready, every nerve strained by the deafening assault of the past few days. Then word came that ‘Zero Hour’ had been inexplicably postponed for another two days.
In frustration, George retreated to write to Maggie.
He wrote her a poem, teasing but tender, knowing he would probably never send it.
I long for the lass with the raven hair, with dancing eyes and face so fair.
I long for a drink of Newcastle ale, with its earthy body and froth so pale.
I long for a dance on a Friday night, to hold a lass in my arms so tight.
I yearn for a northern sky that’s fine, and a canny row along the Tyne.
I wish for a soak in a hot tin bath, and to hear my brother Billy laugh.
But most of all I long for the girl with the dancing eyes and the raven curl.
Would give up the rest without a care, for my bonny lass with the raven hair.
When someone tried to look at it, George blushed and shoved the damp piece of paper self-consciously into the D.H. Lawrence novel he had borrowed from the subaltern and laid his head down in an attempt to rest. The following afternoon, the battalion colonel paid a final visit to the men. Their mood was confident, for surely the enemy would be completely demoralised by the pounding of the last week.
That night, ladders and bridges to span trenches were brought up to the reserve lines in wagons. George was among those who went out in the dark to cut the final wires for their advance.
The men slept fitfully. At six the next morning, they were given a good breakfast. George looked up at the pale July sky and thought of Maggie awaking in the cottage and stoking up the fire to boil the kettle. She would be going about the mundane routine of getting ready for work, humming to herself and lifting the blinds to blink sleepily at the same summer sky...
He felt a searing pain in his stomach at the thought of her, then beyond the woods came a massive explosion that shook the ground beneath him. Another mine went off on the other side of the front line, and the Battle for the Somme began.
THE GREAT WAR SAGAS: Box set of 2 passionate and inspiring stories: A Crimson Dawn and No Greater Love Page 74
