by Liz Trenow
‘Tomorrow, I think.’
‘Will he agree to see us, do you think?’
Ginger followed Alice’s lead and replied in broken English. ‘Of course, he is good man. My boys love him.’
‘Your boys?’
She rested a hand on her hip, an affectionate smile on her lips. ‘That is what I call them, the soldiers. I miss them sometimes. They are so strong, fighting on the battlefields, but here they are like babies. All they want is food and drink, lots of drink, to help them forget. And women, of course.’
‘You don’t mean . . . ?’
The girl shrugged. ‘Bien sûr. The women must have food for the children, you understand. Five francs for ten minutes.’
Alice heard Ruby gasp beside her.
‘But me, I give just smile, a joke, you know, a kiss on the cheek. For a little happiness.’ Ginger smiled. ‘This is a small thing when they give life for our country. Also is why Monsieur Clayton set up Talbot House, like a home.’
‘Didn’t you say there was a chapel, too?’ Alice asked.
‘Mais oui. In room under roof, what you call it?’
‘The attic?’ Ruby suggested.
‘People say it fully to burst for service.’
Alice struggled to visualise a chapel in an attic. The only ones she’d known were solemn stone, hard and cold. Even though Sam’s faith had been tested by Amelia’s death she felt sure he would have sought out such a place, had he known about it.
‘What was it like here, during the war?’
Ginger looked thoughtful. ‘I am only thirteen when Germans come and my father and mother want to send me away but I stay. Then fighting come closer and shells fall and make us scared. There are sad boys, muddy and tired, who drink too much and my father send me upstairs to bed. But I am not afraid. It is only the ones who shake who frighten me most.’
‘Shake?’ Alice asked.
Ginger demonstrated, her hands trembling, her body juddering, face contorted.
‘Shell shock, that’s what we call it,’ Ruby chipped in. ‘It’s from the trenches and the constant shelling. It is an illness; they cannot help themselves.’
‘Many run away,’ Ginger said. ‘They hide in woods because they fear to be shot. They come at night and ask my father to help them. But what can we do?’ She shrugged her shoulders.
‘Even now, after the war is over?’
‘A few, still.’
‘What do you think?’ Ruby asked, when the waitress had gone back to her duties.
‘About what?’
‘About those poor deserters. The ones still coming out of hiding?’
Alice shrugged. ‘You never know. Don’t you hold out hope? You said your Bertie had never been found.’
Ruby looked down at her hands. ‘Of course I never give up hope. Who does?’ she said in a whisper. ‘But so much time has passed now. I can’t help thinking that if Bertie was still alive he’d have moved heaven and earth to get back to us.’
‘But somehow I’m not ready to accept that,’ Alice said. ‘Being here makes it feel so real, as though Sam could just appear, walking across the square.’ She sighed. ‘But hey, this is a pretty gloomy conversation for lunchtime. Let’s decide what to eat.’
Although most of the customers around them were tucking into large plates of meat and potatoes, Alice preferred the American way: a light lunch with a larger meal at dinnertime. On the menu she spied croque monsieur, a French treat she’d enjoyed in Paris, and described to Ruby the fat slices of ham and gruyere toasted between slices of bread topped with a white sauce. They both ordered it, with two glasses of lemonade.
*
After lunch, they headed back to the hotel to find Freddie, but he seemed to have disappeared. As the church clock sounded two o’clock, Alice faked a yawn. ‘I’m heading up to get unpacked and take a rest. Do you want to meet up later for tea? After that we can take a walk and explore the place,’ she suggested. ‘When the sun’s not so hot, perhaps?’
She had decided not to confide in Ruby, not just yet. She’d be bound to disapprove and in any case, if this first rendezvous was a complete disaster, there would be no need for her to know. In her room she hurriedly changed out of her red travelling jacket; it was too warm for the weather and the colour she’d chosen for its cheerfulness now felt garish and inappropriate. Her coolest outfit was a calf-length green pencil skirt with a lightweight cotton blouse in white picked out with matching green embroidery on the cuffs and collar. Flattering, modest and not too formal, she thought approvingly.
She spent a few moments tweaking her bob into place, and, after some subtle rouging of her cheeks, a few pats of face powder and a fresh application of her trademark scarlet lipstick, she tried out her most alluring smile in the mirror, looking at herself sideways, tilting her head this way, then that.
This is either the best idea in the world, or the very worst, she said to herself, but there is only one way to find out. She slipped quietly from her room and tiptoed down the stairs.
9
RUBY
Ruby was grateful for a couple of hours’ respite. Alice was exhausting company, always talking, always busily planning her next move. She was used to a slower pace, needing time to herself, to get her thoughts in order.
She tried to rest but the multiple impressions of the past couple of days passed through her mind like the insistent flickering of a kaleidoscope. She had resigned herself to living a quiet, unadventurous life, asking no questions, trying to bury the past and live behind a mask of normality. And yet, against all of her better instincts, she had agreed to cross the Channel and join a tour of the battlefields. That was crazy enough.
Now, somehow, she’d allowed herself to be persuaded to accompany a brash, bossy American woman to this small war-torn town in the remote hope of finding a single grave. Ginger’s stories had made it so much more personal. Bertie could have been – probably was – one of those boys she’d spoken of, desperate for good food, a warm bath and an affectionate word. He’d certainly have enjoyed the strong Belgian beer; he loved his brew. Did he queue for ten minutes with a woman desperate to feed her children? She winced, quickly pushing the thought from her mind.
He’d never been religious and she doubted that he’d have visited the curious-sounding attic chapel, but he may have gone to read books in the library at this Talbot House place, and he’d certainly have enjoyed the musical entertainments Ginger spoke about.
She went to the window overlooking the now deserted square, trying to imagine what it had been like during the war, full of troops coming and going, men in the cafes and bars, trucks trundling through, smart, puffed-up-looking officer types marching to and from their important business at the Allied headquarters in the town hall, its tower still dominating the square. She shivered, despite the warmth of the sunshine, to think of the men who’d entered unwillingly through its stone gateway, facing punishment or even death for desertion or other misdemeanours.
It’s all ruddy rules, Ruby, Bertie had written in one of his letters. No one knows what they are till you get caught breaking them. Then they tell you, right enough.
The memory of his words made her smile. And then, in a heartbeat, she could hear his voice in her head, his real voice, the voice that in the turmoil of her grief she’d found herself unable to recall, the voice she’d mourned for so long.
‘You were here, Bertie, weren’t you? I can hear you, my darling,’ she whispered.
Now she could picture him clearly, sitting with his mates at a cafe table. He’d be ordering a large, cold beer, rolling a cigarette. He’d tell a joke and someone would tell another and as he laughed he’d carelessly lean the chair back onto its hind legs. She could almost hear his mother reprimanding him: Don’t do that Albert, you’ll break the chair. And he’d be running a hand through the tight curls that sprouted back so defiantly after each military haircut, determined never to be tamed.
From the day they learned he was missing Ruby had found herself unabl
e to continue writing in her diary. No words written or spoken could ever express her pain. But his precious letters were tucked into the back of the notebook, along with the terrible notices they’d received from the army, and she took it with her everywhere.
She went to her case, still unpacked on the floor beside her bed, and found it. Seating herself at the small table beside the window, she flicked through to the first blank page, took up the pencil, licked the lead and held it to the paper, her fingers trembling. And then she began to write.
You were here in Hops, Bertie. I am certain of it. And now I’m here too, with you. If you asked me to describe what I’ve just experienced, I’d call it ‘feeling your presence’. None of that spiritual guff – you know me well enough – and not as a spirit or a ghost, none of that nonsense, but just feeling close to you. Closer than I’ve felt for months.
She could feel her shoulders releasing, her sadness easing. Writing seemed to soothe her like a dock leaf rubbed on a nettle sting, or a cold paddle in the river on a hot day.
Bertie my darling, I am doing my best to find your grave, to honour the terrible sacrifice you made for our country, to find a way of helping us face life without you.
She sighed and began to write again, slowly, deliberately.
I have not been a good wife to you, dearest Bertie, and I don’t think I can go on living unless I can admit it to you and beg your forgiveness. While you were away so bravely fighting, I did something terrible . . .
The pencil seemed to freeze in her hand. How could she have betrayed her beloved with that slick, smooth-talking man?
When Bertie was at war she’d felt so lonely and lost without him. One evening, after he’d been away several months, she went out with friends, drank too much and flirted with a tall, snappily dressed man she barely knew. From the way he bought rounds of drinks and offered his fancy cigarettes to everyone at the table it was clear he had plenty of money, and she found herself admiring his generosity.
Her friends went home early and they stayed on chatting and laughing. He offered to walk her home and one thing led to another: kissing and groping, a surge of animal desire and a short, hasty coupling against a wall.
She had never seen him again but, even now, the memory made her nauseous, stinging her throat with acid bile. It was a moment of insanity for which she would never forgive herself, let alone expect the forgiveness of anyone else, alive or dead. She threw down the pencil and gazed towards the window, watching the dust motes hanging in a shaft of sunlight.
It was then she saw the print, hanging on a wall in the shadows, a map of Flanders, in a dark-wood frame. Around its edges were small coloured illustrations of places of local interest: cathedrals, ancient buildings, famous landmarks and the like. Or at least, how they’d looked before the war.
She soon located Ypres, its magnificent medieval Cloth Hall intact, and the cathedral towering behind. More modestly, Hoppestadt was illustrated with a horse and cart carrying barrels to celebrate the town’s brewing fame. What caught her eye next, with its familiar burden of horror and grief, was the word Passchendaele. The word made her fizz with impatience; she began to pace.
Now that she had felt Bertie’s presence, finding his grave became even more urgent. All she needed was a few more hours at Tyne Cot. This was what she had come for; why else would she be here, if not to discover what had happened to him? She needed to confess, to say a proper goodbye and beg his forgiveness. Only then, perhaps, might she be able to cast off the pain of her guilt. You couldn’t do that writing in a diary.
There was no reply from Alice’s room. Pulling on her shoes, she went downstairs and into the simple bar area with doors open to the square. She didn’t see him at first, sitting in the shadows, and the sound of his voice made her start. ‘You looking for your friend, love? Yankee lady with the lipstick?’
The Cockney accent was unmistakeable. As her eyes adjusted she saw him more clearly: that unruly ginger hair and those disturbingly blond eyelashes and brows that gave him an expression of constant mild amusement.
She replied as politely as she could. ‘Yes, I am looking for my friend, Miss Palmer. Have you seen her, by any chance?’
‘Went that-away,’ he said, ‘’Bout half an hour ago. À propos of very little,’ he added, ‘I’m waiting for a customer who booked a tour. Got the car and driver organised and everything. Lovely day for a trip, ain’t it? But he hasn’t turned up, the b . . .’ He checked himself. ‘Anyway, I’ve been on my loney-oh all afternoon. Care for a drink?’
‘That is kind, but no thank you, not just now.’
She went back to her room and stood by the window looking out over the square, watching people come and go, feeling trapped and restless. The church bell chimed half past three. The afternoon was wearing on. Wherever could Alice have got to?
Then it came to her, a thought almost surprising in its simplicity. Mr Smith was a tour guide, short of a customer, and she was desperate to get to Tyne Cot. For all of Alice’s doubts, she saw nothing wrong with the man. The days were long at this time of the year, there were still plenty of hours of light left, and it wasn’t as though she had anything else to do, here in this little town. And what she most wanted, right now, was to find Bertie.
Uncertainties crowded in, but she pushed them away. He’s a soldier. One of your kind, Bertie. Can I trust him? There was no answer, of course, but she knew what he would have said; it had become a kind of catchphrase for the pair of them: C’mon, Ruby, take a chance.
Swiftly, before she could change her mind, she ran downstairs again. ‘How much would you charge for a trip to Tyne Cot, please?’
‘Ten francs plus five for the driver and the car,’ Mr Smith responded promptly, his eyes twinkling. ‘As it happens, I’ve booked the car for this afternoon but I’ve given up on the wretched man. How’s about it, miss?’
There was an envelope of Belgian francs in her suitcase, as yet untouched, that Bertie’s father had thrust into her hand at the last minute.
‘That would suit me very well, Mr Smith,’ she said.
‘Freddie, please.’
‘Then you must call me Ruby.’
*
Half an hour later, she was sitting in the front seat of an ancient green motor van, with Pain Frais roughly stencilled on each door, beside a gaunt-faced middle-aged Belgian with the blue-grey bruises below his eyes of someone who has too little sleep. Freddie had introduced him as Monsieur Vermeulen – ‘he only answers to Max’ – the brother of the hotelier Maurice. Apparently he owned the best bakery in town, and the smell of fresh bread lingered deliciously from the morning’s deliveries, mingled with the not unpleasant aroma of tobacco smoke from the cigarette that seemed to be a permanent fixture hanging on Max’s lower lip. Freddie climbed into the back, seating himself on a couple of wooden bread crates. ‘Don’t you go worrying about me, darlin’, I can put up with almost anything after them trenches,’ he said.
Was it the Cockney accent, or the cheerful, irreverent humour so like Bertie’s, that made her warm to him? For some reason she felt safe in his presence. They’d had the briefest of conversations about where she wanted to go and how long it would take before she’d made up her mind, running back upstairs only to retrieve her hat and slip a note beneath the door of Alice’s room.
As the van clattered through the streets Ruby felt an unusual lightness in her chest, a fluttering sensation as though her heart was dancing. Then she recognised it: this was the same feeling she’d experienced on the steamship, a mixture of nervous anticipation and excitement. Here she was, the girl who found it alarming to travel a new bus route in her home town, in a car with a couple of strangers in a foreign country. The heavy feeling of dread that had been lying in the pit of her stomach for so many months, even years, had somehow lifted.
Just look at me, Bertie. I’m on my way to find you. Taking a chance.
*
Despite the fact that Freddie apparently spoke no French or Flemish, and Max barely
a word of English, the two men managed to maintain a fluent conversation of grunts, gestures and a few common words of ‘Franglais’ that provided them much amusement and helped distract Ruby from the alarming rattles and clunks of the van.
The journey took longer than she remembered from the previous day, and was certainly much further than the map on her bedroom wall had suggested, but they finally arrived at Tyne Cot, the great field of crosses laid out in every direction. As Max settled into his seat and closed his eyes for a snooze, she and Freddie climbed stiffly out of the van.
‘Trust me, I done this plenty of times,’ he said. ‘We take an area each to make sure we don’t miss anything. Then we’ll take the next section and so on. I’ve found any number of graves the army swore blind were not on their records. So you never know, we might just get lucky.’
Buoyed by his optimism, Ruby set off across the field following the paths of baked mud, criss-crossing the area he’d indicated. A few rows away he was doing the same, walking slowly, checking every name. Between them, surely they would find her beloved.
Freddie spotted another Barton, and Ruby the cross of an A. Burton on which the lettering was badly worn. But then they noticed he was a sergeant, so it couldn’t have been Bertie. A couple of further false alarms caused her heart to skip a beat but, as the time passed, her spirits began to flag. The sun was warm, and she found herself having to stop every few minutes to wipe her brow. There was no sign of Private Albert Barton.
‘Is there much more to cover?’
He indicated a large area to their left. ‘You take that side and I’ll take the other,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid we’ll have to leave at five. Max has to be back in Hops in time to mix the dough and set it to prove. I give him a hand, some evenings. My uncle was a baker, back in the day, so I knows a bit about it.’ He smiled a little ruefully. ‘Keeps me out the bar and gives me wallet a treat.’
‘What time is it now?’
He pulled a battered metal watch from his pocket. ‘Half past four.’
