by Liz Trenow
‘It’s your husband, isn’t it? Died at Passchendaele? A young man, I assume?’ he added, after a discreet pause.
‘Twenty,’ she said, trying to steady her voice. The major was waiting, watching, expecting more. ‘He was only out there nine months,’ she added. ‘We’d just got married. They never found him.’
‘God bless you,’ he said simply. ‘It’s a brave thing to do, to visit the battlefields. I admire your courage. But I can reassure you that most people find it brings them some peace.’
Despite her initial wariness, Ruby warmed to his down-to-earth approach. She had been so busy just trying to put one foot after another, to get through each day, one at a time, that she’d forgotten to look up. The war was over but there was no relief from the misery: men returning were injured, often unable to find work or housing. Newspapers talked of strikes and unrest, food was still rationed. What had it all been for, in the end? But if, as Major Wilson said, this trip would help her make sense of it all, then it would certainly be worth it.
The group was soon gathered – around ten people, mostly older than herself – and shepherded onto the Dover train in a carriage that reeked of cigarette smoke and orange peel. A great weight of almost visible sorrow seemed to hang in the air. She glanced around at her fellow travellers. Most were couples, so far as she could see, speaking in low voices to each other, or just sitting in silence, drawn and sallow-faced. A man with an eye patch sat with his pale waif of a wife. She caught a brief glimpse of another single woman, tall and rather glamorous with a glossy brown bob, like a movie star, in a flame-red jacket and matching hat with a flamboyant brim. Red? To the cemeteries? How inappropriate. Happily she did not seem to be in the same carriage.
Being in the group made her feel even more alone and she wished for the umpteenth time that she’d found the courage to refuse Alfred’s request. She found herself sitting opposite a couple eager to talk about their two sons, killed a year apart, in the fields of Flanders.
‘They gave their lives for King and Country,’ the man said. ‘That is our consolation.’
‘We want to find their graves,’ his wife added, her voice serrated with grief. ‘So we can tell them how much we . . .’ She tailed off, sniffing into her handkerchief.
‘Don’t trouble yourself so,’ the husband chided, squeezing her arm. ‘I told you we must be strong.’ It was like being with Albert and Ivy all over again.
By the end of the journey, Ruby had learned everything about their boys. She didn’t mind, only relieved that the couple seemed so utterly absorbed in their own loss and pride that they never asked her a single question. Or perhaps they were just being polite. She was afraid she might not be able to retain her composure if someone showed sympathy. This is just between me and Bertie, she said to herself.
Now, as she stood on the deck of the ship in the sunshine, her heart began to lift. The weeks of waiting and the almost paralysing anxiety had almost disappeared. The sky was an unblemished blue, the water only gently ruffled by the slightest of breezes. The bracing tang of seaweed and salt that she’d first inhaled on stepping from the train was now overlaid with reassuring smells of fresh paint and varnish.
The last time she’d been on the water was at the artificial lake in Christchurch Park, when she’d found the instability of the little rowing boat unnerving. But this ship felt so steady beneath her feet it was hard to believe they were not still on dry land. A huge grey and white seagull landed on the railing just ahead of her, cocking its head to one side, interrogating her with a piercing yellow eye.
‘Hello, bird,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got anything to give you, I’m afraid.’
Men far below on the quayside began to wheel the wooden gangways away from the side of the ship. Great coils of rope, thick as a man’s arm, were slung from either end and hauled in by waiting groups of navvies. Their shouts were drowned by a sudden ear-splitting blast of the ship’s horn that seemed to reverberate through her body. The gull flew off, leaving a white splat on the high polish of the hand rail.
A single downy feather fluttered to the deck and she picked it up, turning it in her fingers, marvelling at its delicacy. But then she recalled, at the start of the war, reading reports of women handing out feathers like this, shaming men into joining up. She shivered and dropped it quickly. She’d rather Bertie had been called a coward and come home with one of these than with his call-up papers. At least he’d have been alive.
Almost imperceptibly at first, and then more quickly, the ship moved away from the dockside. Beside her, fellow travellers waved to their friends gathered below, calling farewells. They gathered speed swiftly, passing through the mouth of the docks and into the open sea. As the breeze picked up most of the passengers retired below, but Ruby was determined to watch the land as it receded. This would have been Bertie’s last view of England, and she owed it to him to look until it disappeared. What would have been in his mind, that day? Was he worried or frightened? Did he wonder when he would get to see those white cliffs again?
Or perhaps his mood was buoyed by the excitement of the journey, of the new sights and sounds. He’d have been with his mates, after all; they would have been jollying each other along and cracking jokes, of course. At school they’d called him the class clown. It cheered her to imagine how the other men would have come to love his impertinence, his generosity – always sharing his fags – and how he’d have made them laugh.
It was late afternoon and the intense whiteness of the chalky cliffs, illuminated by the sun, formed a wide luminous band, almost unearthly, along the edge of the land separating grey sea and blue sky. She stood, transfixed, as the ship pulled steadily away.
‘Quite a sight, ain’ it?’
The voice, with its unmistakeable American twang, made Ruby jump. She’d thought herself alone on the deck. She looked up into the eyes of the tall movie-star woman she’d observed getting onto the train. Bright scarlet lips smiled widely to reveal the largest, whitest teeth Ruby had ever seen.
‘Alice Palmer. Pleased to meet you.’
2
ALICE
Alice was weary. The transatlantic crossing had been peaceful enough but since docking in Southampton she’d been staying with her friend Julia, daughter of the American ambassador to London. Delighted to be together again, they’d gossiped late into the night, every night.
Despite the arrival of peace, London appeared so dejected and down at heel that Alice had found her own mood darkening. Even in the height of summer the weather here was more like winter in her native Washington: grey, cold and often rainy.
Her travel wardrobe of bright colours seemed out of place; most of the women they saw in the streets were still wearing drab, pre-war fashions, usually in brown or black. She was shocked to see war veterans reduced to selling matches on the street, and gaggles of haggard men with placards demanding the ‘homes for heroes’ they’d apparently been promised by the British prime minister. Her stay had been even more wearisome since she and Julia had curtailed planned sightseeing jaunts, terrified of catching the Spanish influenza that had already claimed thousands of lives.
Although at the American embassy there were no such shortages, she was horrified to learn about the strict food rationing ordinary people had to endure. Even now, eight months after the armistice, just a few ounces of meat and butter were allowed each week along with horrible white bread that tasted of dust and barely any fruit or fresh vegetables. We have no idea, back home, how much this little country has suffered and continues to do so, she wrote her parents.
She loved Julia’s company, but Alice was impatient to be on her way to Belgium, to the place where her kid brother, Sam, was last seen. There had been no reports of his death, nor even where he had been fighting; he had simply failed to return. She felt quite sure that, had he been killed, someone would have found a way to let them know. Somehow, somewhere, she reasoned, he must be alive. Perhaps he was too ashamed to return home, having joined up against their parents�
�� wishes. Or his mind had been so shaken by the experience of war that he felt he could not face ‘normal’ life ever again; she’d read about people like that.
Her father had battled to trace his son, almost obsessively, for two years, using his considerable political clout as a congressman to pull every string he could with the Canadian authorities. But they claimed to have no record of a Sam Palmer. Was there any possibility that he might have signed up under another name, they asked? It wasn’t unheard of for Americans to ‘cover their tracks’, they said, and Alice knew they were probably right.
‘Surely when he registered they’d have asked him for some kind of identity documents? They’re just being slack,’ her father had railed. But after every avenue seemed to hit a brick wall he’d buried himself in politics once more. Her mother, usually so sociable and cheerful, had fallen into a well of hopelessness, refusing to accompany her husband to official events, even declining invitations from friends. She ate like a bird, becoming alarmingly thin, and barely left the house these days.
But Alice found that she couldn’t let it go. The terrible truth was that, the night before he left for Canada, Sam had confided his plan to her. Shocked and disbelieving, she’d pleaded with him not to go. ‘For goodness’ sake, Sam, are you crazy? Don’t you know what it’s like over there? You could get killed.’
‘I have to do it. For Amelia,’ he’d replied, his jaw set in determination. ‘I’ll keep safe, honest. The Canadians aren’t in the thick of it anyway. It’s just that if I don’t go, I won’t forgive myself. We can’t let those bloody Krauts get away with it.’
They’d argued long into the night about the rights and wrongs of the war, and whether the US had a moral duty to join it. In the end he just clammed up and she had to accept that there was no hope of dissuading him. Before they retired to bed, he made her vow, using their old childhood oath – ‘keep the lie or hope to die’ – that she would never tell their folks. ‘They can’t stop me anyway ’cos I’m over eighteen, but just let me get a head start, won’t you?’ he pleaded. ‘I’ll write when I get there.’
In the morning, he was gone.
She’d kept the promise, but had been hugely relieved when his letter arrived, forwarded from an address in Ottowa, releasing her from the burden of his secret. It was the only one they ever received. She had it with her even now, safely hidden in a side pocket of her handbag.
Dearest people, it read. I write to let you know that I am safe and well, happy at last to be here with the Canadians in Flanders, doing my small bit to fight the Hun.
Forgive me for the pain I have caused you all. I could not share my plans because I knew you would try to stop me, and I am determined to do this for my dearest Amelia.
I simply could not go on living with myself while that idiot Wilson prevaricated. The Brits and the French and the Belgians are fighting valiantly, but we really do need US supplies and soon. Please do what you can, Pa, to make them see sense.
I’m on R&R at the moment behind the lines in a place they call Hops. You guessed it, they’re brewers around here! There are kind-hearted people helping us, and we’ve got good beer and enough food. It’s a little haven in a hellish war. So you mustn’t worry about me. I promise to stay safe and be home with you all soon.
Best love to you all, Sam.
When the war ended and as the months passed he failed to return, she could not shake the thought that she should, somehow, have stopped him. If only I’d told Pa, that very day, he’d have done something, anything. But what could they have done, when Sam was so determined that he had covered his tracks completely, and had almost certainly signed up under a false name?
Even so, in her darkest moments Alice felt herself entirely responsible for the death of her little brother, her beloved only sibling. It haunted her, filled her dreams. The only way of assuaging her conscience would be to find out what had happened to him, and that meant going to Flanders.
‘Over my dead body,’ her father had fulminated. ‘I suppose you imagine that you’ll just bump into him on a street corner? It’s not Washington, Alice. The whole of northern France and Belgium are one great muddy mess. You’ve seen it for yourself in the papers. Towns are destroyed, the people are still starving, crime is rife, transport simply isn’t working. I will not let my daughter put herself through such danger and hardship. And that’s final.’
She took her plea to her mother. ‘If your father says no, it’s a no,’ she said. ‘And anyway, what’s Lloyd got to say about this plan of yours?’
*
Her engagement to Lloyd had been the talk of the town. The dashing young pilot with one of the pioneering US Air Force units was due to inherit millions as the only son of a well-established banking family. He was the most eligible bachelor of her generation.
She’d set her sights on him long ago, as a teenager, watching with awe as he vanquished the reigning tennis champion with a display of athleticism and power that left the spectators sighing with admiration. For Alice, it wasn’t so much his skill on the court that caught her attention, rather the way his long tanned legs seemed to glisten in the sunshine.
They began dating just after she’d returned from France nursing a broken heart. Three years later, when she’d begun to fear the day would never come, he proposed. Photographs of the happy couple featured widely in society magazines, a lavish wedding was planned, and she genuinely believed herself the luckiest girl in the whole United States.
The accident changed everything, of course. Lloyd lost a leg after his plane flipped over twice on landing, and after that he’d become bitter and pessimistic, claiming that his life was over; he would never play tennis again or sail his yacht, and his career as an airman was finished. He would rather die than spend his life in a wheelchair at a desk in the bank.
Alice watched on helplessly as he wallowed in self-pity, wondering where their love had gone. Although she considered it more than once, breaking off their engagement was simply not an option. How could she, when he was already so maimed, so broken? How could she cause such heartache to her parents even as they grieved for their only son? It would cause such a society scandal; she would be forever tarred as the hard-hearted bitch who had deserted her brave hero in his darkest hour. Her father would never forgive her for bringing shame to the family and casting a smear on his political career.
So she’d gritted her teeth and set herself the task of bringing Lloyd back to life. It worked: over the following months he became more cheerful, more outgoing and optimistic, more like the man she had fallen for in the first place. All was well, she persuaded herself, she loved him and they would marry and live happily ever after. He was determined to walk her back down the aisle unaided by crutches, so they had postponed the wedding until he could be fitted with an artificial limb.
When she mooted the idea of going to Flanders to look for Sam, Lloyd had reacted with disbelief. ‘On your own, to Europe?’ he gasped, grey eyes startled in that handsome, strong-jawed face. ‘When the war’s been over barely six months?’
She stroked his hair and rubbed the back of his neck, which always seemed to calm him. ‘I love my brother almost as much as I love you, my darling. Pa’s done all he can to find him, but he’s got nowhere. It’s my only chance – and the longer we leave it, the colder the trail will get. At least that’s how I see it.’
‘Why can’t your parents go instead?’
‘Pa doesn’t see any point, thinks he’s done all he can. Besides, there’s a little thing called an election next year.’ The Republicans had been running around like headless chickens since Roosevelt had died and, what with the riots and economic problems, her father had been working all hours in the Capitol.
Lloyd brushed away her ministering hand. ‘I’m not happy, Alice. It’s a crazy idea. Wait till I’m out of this damn thing’ – he thumped the arm of the wheelchair – ‘and I’ll come with you. I can’t let you go abroad on your own. Who knows what kind of dangers you might have to deal with.’
‘You forget I’ve been to Europe before, Lloyd. My year at the Sorbonne – we went to Bruges and Brussels and Ostend. I speak French, remember? Anyway, I’ll be staying at the embassy in London each side, and the trip to Belgium is an organised tour with a very respectable company. They’ll look after me.’
She showed him the Thomas Cook brochure Julia had sent her, opened at the page with the description that she now knew almost by heart: Superior tour to the battlefields of Flanders: A Week at Ostend with excursions to Ypres, and the Belgian Battlefields. Fare provides for first class travel, seven days full board accommodation at a superior private Hotel, consisting of café complet, lunch, dinner and bed; electric trams to Zeebrugge and Nieuwpoort. All excursions accompanied by a fully qualified Guide-Lecturer.’
He read it and harrumphed some more, and she decided to drop it for the moment. Let him think about it, he’ll come round. In the meantime she telegraphed Julia.
A week later, at a candlelit table in his favourite restaurant – its wide doorways and no steps made it one of the few they could visit with his wheelchair – she showed him Julia’s reply: PA SAYS THOS COOK VERY REPUTABLE COMPANY AND TOURS POPULAR STOP SEE YOU SOON JULIA STOP
He read it, frowning. ‘You’re not still on about that trip to Flanders?’
She nodded. ‘Julia’s father’s a diplomat, remember? He’d be the first to warn us if he felt it wasn’t perfectly safe.’ She pinned on her most winning smile, the one she’d practised in the mirror, the one that seemed to work every time. ‘I really want to go, sweetie. I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t do everything possible to find Sam, and this seems like the last chance.’
