Alice's Girls

by Julia Stoneham

  ‘I was at public school when the First World War started,’ he said at last. ‘My father had been head boy in his day and an older cousin was, when I arrived there, captain of the school cricket eleven.’ They watched as a heron flapped languorously across their field of vision and landed clumsily in the shallows on the far side of the river.

  ‘I am listening,’ Alice said, swirling the brandy slowly round her glass.

  ‘To begin with everyone thought the war was a bit of a lark,’ Roger said. ‘We believed it would all be over by Christmas, of course. Everyone did at that point. No one had the slightest idea about what really lay ahead. Some of our sixth-form boys, who were old enough, marched off to volunteer – and we all cheered. We younger ones were green with envy. We felt cheated. After a few months the headmaster began reading out names of old boys who’d been reported missing or killed in action. Some of them were the older brothers of my friends. You’d file into assembly, there would be prayers and a hymn. Then the head would read out the names – Howarth major, when you were standing next to Howarth minor. But we still cheered when the next group marched off, and there were white feathers for anyone who didn’t volunteer and a wooden leg for our best rugby player when he came home on crutches and with his face scarred almost beyond recognition. There was, we began to understand, a darker side to this war. Some people tried to ignore it. Which would probably have been the best thing to do. Maybe that’s what I should have done, and maybe, even then, I was guilty of having an unhealthy reaction to it all.’ Roger flicked his cigarette stub out into the river. ‘You would have been too young to remember much about it, Alice, but that war caught me at a time when I was, I suppose, at my most impressionable.’

  ‘And suggestible?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Possibly. But at the time, you don’t know that you are suggestible, do you?’ Alice shook her head. She had been a toddler when the war began. Having lost both her parents almost before she could remember them, she was being mothered by her Aunt Elizabeth. She vaguely recalled Armistice Day, or possibly only thought she did, having been told about it and subsequently seen newspaper photographs and newsreel footage of celebrations which always looked grainy and grey, suggesting to her that it was the images she remembered, rather than the actual events.

  ‘My closest friend at school was Robert Thomas,’ Roger told her. ‘We called him Rob. His older brother, Leo, had been at Oxford when the war began and he’d enlisted, become an officer and survived most of the early scraps. Ypres, Mons and so on. He seemed to have a charmed life. I had met him once when I was staying with the Thomas family in the summer holidays of 1913. Rob and I became a bit obsessive about the war. We put together a scrapbook full of facts and newspaper cuttings about it. We had a sort of roll of honour, adding the names of boys from our school as they were reported dead or missing, week after week. We listed their rank and regiment, any decorations they had been awarded and the circumstances of their deaths – if these were known. More often than not, they were not known. They simply vanished along with thousands of others. Bodies never recovered. “Known only to God” as they were afterwards described. Then, in 1915, Leo was wounded at the second Battle of Ypres. He died, not cleanly but horribly, of gangrene, after they amputated first one and then the other of his legs.’ Alice didn’t speak but slowly shook her head. ‘It had a curious effect on Rob and me.’

  ‘What effect?’

  ‘It made us angry!’

  ‘Understandably.’

  ‘Incredibly angry. And there was nothing we could do with the anger. We wanted to— ’

  ‘To put an end to the carnage. To see the war stopped.’

  ‘No! Not stopped, Alice! We wanted it won! We wanted the German army routed! Otherwise our people would have given their lives for nothing! And we felt an overwhelming sense of guilt! Those men were dying! They were going out into the trenches, facing what had to be faced and we, because we were too young, were not! You see, in our eyes we were men by then! At sixteen we were strong and fit! We asked, repeatedly, to be allowed to volunteer and were refused. But in the end we managed it.’

  ‘Managed to enlist? At sixteen?’

  ‘Some friends of Leo’s told us how to apply to the medical unit. We’d be used as stretcher-bearers. Bringing the wounded in from the lines and delivering them to the field hospitals.’ Alice was staring at him in astonishment. ‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘We had no concept of what we were in for, and even now, even after all this time …’ He fell silent and Alice watched as he swallowed his brandy and gathered himself. ‘We worked in pairs. One at each end of a stretcher on which we laid the injured and the dead. Often our load consisted of more than one man – or the body parts of more than one man. We slithered through the mud, Alice, pulling men and bits of men out of the gore and then struggled back to the bright lights of a tent that passed for a hospital, where we delivered our load. The casualties who didn’t survive that initial journey were laid on the ground, side by side, outside the tent. The luckier ones were patched up and transported to a larger hospital, and if they made it that far, shipped home to die or recover.’ He spoke fluently and in a low voice, as though he was visiting territory no less painful for being familiar to him. ‘We worked together, Rob and I, through what became a disorienting nightmare. Nothing we had read, or seen or heard had prepared us for what we experienced. We were covered in blood. And not only blood, Alice. Other things. Guts. Brain. Bone fragments. Our clothes and our skin were sticky with it. The air we breathed tasted of warm blood! I remember looking at Rob and seeing his face, just recognisable under his tin hat. He stared at me and saw, I’m certain, his own feelings mirrored. Over and over again we delivered our dying and our dead and over and over again we were ordered back to the lines. Days and nights ran into each other. I don’t know which of us cracked first. I remember that there was a group of riflemen behind us, moving forward to relieve a section of men in the trenches. We would have been silhouetted against the gunfire ahead of them and they must have seen us drop the stretcher and turn back. Which of us turned first I don’t know. We ran together, clinging to each other, aimlessly, away from the lines. The riflemen claimed afterwards they thought we were Germans infiltrating Allied lines. Or deserters – no one had much time for them. Anyway, they fired. I sensed the impact when Rob was hit and felt him go down.’ Roger had finished his brandy. He sighed and looked at Alice almost as though he was glad to be back with her, here above the river on a quiet afternoon.

  ‘And …’ Alice hesitated. ‘He was dead?’

  ‘I supposed so.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘That was when it all got very strange. I have absolutely no recollection of anything that happened to me from then on, for almost a whole year. I discovered, slowly, afterwards, that our headmaster used contacts he had in the War Office, and that because I was under age and more or less out of my mind, it was decided that I was not to be shot as a deserter but repatriated, in a straightjacket. My treatment must have been pretty radical. Whatever it was, I knew nothing about it because a lot of heavy sedation was involved. Even after I was released into the care of my parents I was out of things most of the time. They took charge of me. Their way of dealing with it – they saw the entire situation as a colossal failure on my part – was to deny it ever happened. They were deeply embarrassed about it, and everyone – friends, neighbours, even family – was told I had been extremely ill, having been infected by the blood of a diseased frog which I had been dissecting in a chemistry class at school!’ His face broke, briefly, into a wry smile. ‘I was forbidden to mention my escapade in France and was so damaged by the whole situation that for a while I almost believed my parents’ story! I certainly didn’t, to begin with, have the strength to resist them. When I asked what had happened to Rob they refused to tell me. Eventually I made my way to his parents’ house. I had remembered that they lived in Weymouth and I rode there on my bicycle. It was a heck of a way and I could barely stand by the time
I turned up on their doorstep! I suppose I must have known Rob was dead. I think I just needed to have it confirmed after my parents’ evasiveness. Rob’s father gave me the details. He was shot dead. Both of us, Rob posthumously, were charged with desertion and vilified for falsifying our ages on our application forms. Rob’s mother reacted badly to my visit. She needed to believe I had instigated the whole wretched scheme. But I hadn’t. We were equally determined, Rob and I. Equally committed. It must have been impossible for her. I mean, there I was, gaunt, sick and shaking. The last time she’d seen me I’d been a robust schoolboy, knocking tennis balls about the garden with her son.’

  ‘But you were alive, Roger, and her boy was not.’

  ‘Precisely. Pretty hard on Rob’s father too. But he was very decent about it. Lashed my bike onto the back of his car and drove me home – I doubt if I’d have made it otherwise. Set me back a few months, that episode did. Back to the phenobarbitone, etcetera. It was about then that I started to accept the fact that if I was going to survive – you feel you have to, at that age, the will to live asserts itself despite everything – I had to do what my parents wanted. Handle it their way. So I did. I went to agricultural college. Time passed and I had begun taking over a share of responsibility for the farm when my mother, who had been in poor health for some time, died, and father, to everyone’s surprise, remarried and took off for Bournemouth where his second wife already lived in some style. So there I was, walking wounded by then, psychologically speaking, but coping, getting to grips with the running of the farms. That was when I met Frances. She was a …’ he hesitated, uncertain how to describe the young woman he had married when they had both been barely out of their teens. ‘A fragile person,’ he continued. ‘With a dependent disposition. I think this did me good in a strange way. It encouraged me to take charge of things. She never did know what a mess I was, under my carapace! We were living “happily ever after”, Frances, Christopher and I, when we lost her – quite suddenly, as the result of a pregnancy that went wrong and revealed a more serious problem. Chris was only nine years old at the time. I didn’t handle that very well. Didn’t know how to help myself, or the boy. I think I was scared, Alice. I felt as though I’d fought my way through a lot but that I couldn’t expose myself to any more … Any more loss, I suppose I meant. I just wasn’t up to it. Then, when Chris joined the RAF, I was faced with two possibilities. One was that I might lose him altogether. And the other was that he might … might lose himself, in the way I had lost myself in my war. And then, when he did, when he cracked up … Well, you know how I reacted. I have no excuse, Alice. But there was a reason for it, and the reason was that I was incapable of anything else. Anything better. I love that boy, Alice. But I failed him. He has survived that failure and is, understandably, in the process of making a life for himself without my destructive input. I don’t propose getting in the way of that.’

  Alice had leant across the table and taken his hands in both of hers. She was shocked by what he had told her. Mixed with that reaction was the knowledge that she had been right to suspect that some major experience had damaged him and was responsible for his reaction to Christopher’s problem.

  ‘You must tell him, Roger!’ she said, gravely. ‘All of it.’

  ‘I have thought about it, Alice.’

  ‘And decided what?’

  ‘To say nothing. What would be the point? All this goes back too far. It’s history. Just as the horrendous events that triggered it all are history. I’m damaged goods, Alice. I’ve been experiencing these moments of disequilibrium more frequently lately. They had almost stopped and then, when that Italian fellow was injured, and again and more seriously when poor Margery died … Well, you saw what happened. When Chris cracked up I had some bad days. Kept them pretty much to myself but they happened just the same.’

  ‘It was probably Christopher’s breakdown that sort of reactivated it all. But now that it’s over … and when you talk to him about it … won’t it—?’

  ‘No, Alice,’ he interrupted. ‘I’m convinced that my relationship with Chris is beyond recovery. I don’t want his pity. I have to let him go.’ Stunned, Alice let the seconds pass before she spoke.

  ‘Without telling him why? Without giving him the chance to let you know he understands? Without him knowing how you feel about him? Without giving him your blessing?’

  ‘Well, I daresay I’ll manage that!’ Roger said, almost amused. ‘I’ll go and dance at their wedding, if that’s what you mean. It’s in three weeks time, by the way. I was summoned to dinner by the Webster parents. All very civilised. It’s to be a quiet, family affair. You’re on the guest list, I gather. They consider that you’ve been a good influence on Georgina. I don’t think I would be so sanguine were I in their shoes and my daughter was off to the other side of the world.’

  ‘I think that’s more your responsibility than mine!’ Alice said, and he looked sharply at her, surprised by her tone.

  ‘Driving him away, you mean?’

  ‘In effect, yes. You are so stubborn, Roger! Can’t you see it?’

  ‘And now you’re cross with me!’ He was concealing his concern behind a show of innocent confusion.

  ‘No! You fool!’ she said. ‘I’m not cross! Just …’ She struggled unsuccessfully for the right word and only managed, ‘Sorry!’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Yes! And more than sorry, Roger! Desperate! For Chris. For you. And, heaven help me, for me!’ She got up from the table, stumbled up the riverbank and wove her way between the tables on the terrace. Roger saw her go through the open french doors at the rear of the pub and disappear into its shadowy interior. As he settled the bill he could see her through the lobby window, standing beside his car. The wind had risen and she was pulling her jacket more closely round her.

  They drove for some miles without speaking.

  ‘Try this,’ Alice began. ‘Try putting the past out of your mind. Try thinking about what happens now and what happens next. To you, to Christopher, to Georgina … to all of us, Roger. Don’t think about how things got locked into this state. If you want to tell him about what happened to you and Rob, then tell him! If not, confine yourself to letting him know how much you value him. How you’ve always valued him. How it was the difficult events in your life that shocked, disappointed and depressed you, not him, or his life! And if you feel it’s best to let him go to New Zealand, then let him! But don’t let him leave believing you don’t care!’

  They had arrived at the farmhouse gate and as Alice reached to open the car door Roger put his hand on her arm to stop her.

  ‘No,’ she said. The door was open and she was easing away from him. ‘Let me go, Roger. Please, my dear. I don’t want to be involved in this … this unhappiness anymore. I’m sorry.’

  Chapter Seven

  Since she had opened what she called her ‘tea room’, Rose’s work in the hostel was officially reduced to three hours each morning, when she would help Alice with the clearing up of the kitchen after breakfast, clean the bathroom and spend what remained of her time with mop and broom wherever they were required. Most mornings she met the postman at the farmhouse gate and scanned the letters before propping them on the dresser where the girls would find them when they arrived back from work.

  ‘’Nother letter from the sergeant for our Marion! I don’t know what ’e finds to say to her!’

  ‘It’s love, Rose!’

  ‘Is it, though? Or is ’e just stringin’ ’er along?’

  ‘I think it’s pretty serious,’ Alice said, preparing to cross the yard to the barn where half a dozen hens had established themselves amongst the disused mangers, and where, with any luck, she might find enough eggs for a batter for the toad-in-the-hole she had planned for tonight’s supper.

  It had occurred to Alice to wonder how Marion and Winnie would resolve their ambition to be joint landladies of their own pub if ‘the little sergeant’, as both the girls called Marvin Kinski, was to propose marriage to M
arion, who seemed, from Alice’s observations and the almost daily letters between the two of them, to be very attached to him. How would Winnie take it if her best friend and potential business partner was to become a GI bride, board a ship and vanish into the uncharted territory of the United States of America?

  Kinski, originally from the Bronx, was a professional soldier and had consequently spent most of his adult life in army accommodation on a succession of military bases scattered across his vast country, without forming an allegiance to any particular part of it.

  Aside from appearing to be slightly preoccupied, neither Marion or Winnie had sought Alice’s advice on the subject and she, with other things on her mind, was content not to involve herself in it.

  They sat facing each other in a café in Exeter with a steamy windowpane between them and the rainy street outside. Their hands were clasped on the stained tablecloth, their teacups were empty and there were only cake crumbs on their plates. A small box, its lid open, exposing a modest diamond set in gold, lay between them and Marion’s eyes were anxiously searching the sergeant’s face. This was the third time he had proposed marriage and each time a similar discussion had taken place.