In Love and War

by Liz Trenow

  Trying to navigate by the position of the sun, she passed a junction and heard raised voices. She turned to glance down the side street and glimpsed in the distance an argument playing out in the street. A short, dumpy woman pushed an old man aside so forcefully that he stumbled and nearly fell to the ground, all the while bellowing abuse at another couple. Unwilling to be drawn into what looked like a domestic altercation, she began to walk on.

  It was the word ‘Kraut’ being shouted that stopped her in her tracks. Looking more carefully, she recognised the couple as the Swiss woman and her son. Still she wavered, reluctant to become involved. This was the woman who wanted to visit a German grave, after all.

  She watched with growing alarm as the confrontation seemed to escalate. Mother and son retreated to the other side of the street and the woman collapsed against a wall while the old crone who’d been shouting at her grabbed the man and dragged him inside the house. The boy leaned over his mother, reaching out a comforting hand.

  Alice could ignore them no longer. She found herself running down the street towards them, calling out in French, ‘Are you all right?’

  The woman’s eyes were wide with fear. ‘They have stolen my money,’ she sobbed. ‘She has a knife.’

  Behind them, a shutter creaked open with a further furious shout: ‘Go home, Kraut murderer!’

  ‘Come on, I’ll buy you a coffee,’ she said, placing a hand beneath the woman’s elbow, trying to raise her from the ground. It was no use, her legs seemed to buckle beneath her.

  ‘Get her arm on the other side, we can lift her together,’ she ordered the boy. He stared, apparently uncomprehending, until she gestured to him. At last, after much pulling, they managed to bring Martha to her feet. Placing her arms over their shoulders to support her, they took one step and then another until, with agonisingly slow progress, they reached the main street. Through the buildings she could now catch a glimpse of the church tower, and navigated in that direction until they reached the square.

  Ginger led them to the table the Swiss couple had vacated earlier, deep in the shadows at the rear of the cafe. ‘You look as though you’ve all had a terrible fright,’ she said. ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Two coffees and a lemonade,’ Alice said. ‘And some biscuits, perhaps, or pastries? Something sweet?’ She turned to the woman. ‘Mrs Weber? Martha, isn’t it, and Otto? You’d better tell me what was going on.’

  ‘I was only trying to get my money back,’ Martha said, her face still as pale as paper. ‘But she threatened us with a knife. I was so afraid.’

  ‘She threatened you?’

  ‘Otto too.’ Between ragged breaths, Martha began to recount the story of how she’d been trying to recover the ten-franc deposit from the man who had refused to take her to her nephew’s grave. Ginger arrived with drinks and pastries. The woman ignored her food while the boy started to eat ravenously. Alice began to wonder whether he was actually a bit stupid – he didn’t seem to understand much of what she said to him. But at other times he’d seemed bright enough, and she’d observed him gabbling away to his mother when they were out of earshot.

  They really were a strange pair – so secretive. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why, even after such brief acquaintance, she felt so wary of them, so convinced that they were hiding something. She’d noticed from the start that the woman had a curious accent, and now she remembered: it reminded her of some family friends back in the US, immigrants originally from Germany, with whose children she’d played as a girl. They were good people but she recalled now how different the parents were from her own: strangely formal and old-fashioned. Heaven knows what had happened to them since the war.

  It had been tough for Germans, even those who had lived in America for most of their lives, during the war. Thousands had been interned, including half the players of the famous symphony orchestra in her home city. Even after the war ended and the detainees released, they were still shunned and treated with suspicion.

  Why, only a few weeks ago a woman claiming to be Swiss had applied in response to her mother’s advertisement for a housekeeper. ‘I am a good worker, very honest,’ she’d told Alice’s mother. ‘I was a nurse before the war, but it is so difficult to find a job now.’ On investigation she turned out to have been schooled in Germany and Alice’s father declared, with his usual tone of finality, ‘I’m not having Krauts in my house.’ So the woman, by far the best qualified of all the applicants, was turned away.

  She’d felt sorry for those people back home but now she had seen the terrible devastation and death the Germans had caused, she understood why they were so reviled. She hated the Germans for taking away Amelia, and Sam, and so many other young men she knew. It was natural, wasn’t it? Yet here she was, helping a woman who she strongly suspected was German and, like the would-be housekeeper, only pretending to be Swiss. What else could she have done, when they were being threatened by a madwoman? It was so confusing.

  She scrabbled in her pocket book and found a note. She needed to buy off her conscience. ‘This may help a little,’ she said, placing it on the table. ‘It’s not worth putting yourself in danger for ten francs.’

  The woman shook her head. Alice pushed it back. ‘Please. It will help you find your nephew. And now I must go.’

  Martha’s hand slipped out discreetly and the note disappeared. ‘Bless you,’ she said.

  *

  Standing in the queue at the post office once more, waiting to see whether there was any response from her father, Alice listened idly to the townsfolk gossiping around her. Everyone seemed to have some fresh news to exchange with each other, and with the man behind the counter, slowing even further his deliberate, unhurried delivery. Under normal circumstances Alice would have fidgeted impatiently, sighing and muttering about poor service and inefficient bureaucracy, but she found herself distracted by their little exchanges.

  ‘Did you see the price of those tomatoes?’

  ‘They’re bringing them all the way from Spain, would you believe?’

  ‘Time we rebuilt our own glasshouses, I’d say. So we can grow our own earlies.’

  ‘Need to mend our homes first.’

  ‘Have you heard Churchill’s suggested leaving Ypres as a monument?’

  Alice’s ears pricked up.

  ‘You mean, not rebuilding the Cloth Hall?’

  ‘Not rebuilding anything. Leaving it as a memorial.’

  ‘But where would people live?’

  ‘It’s bloody ridiculous, if you ask me.’

  ‘Our government won’t let them get away with it.’

  ‘There are architects already making plans.’

  ‘Thank the good Lord for that. Now we just have to get the money to pay for it.’

  Just as she was drawing close to the front of the queue the gossip took a different turn. She caught the name Vermeulen and listened more carefully – this was the baker, brother of their hotelier. Then she heard mention of someone called Peeters. It seemed he was the despair of his wife, drinking away any money he managed to earn from fleecing the tourists. This must be the couple she’d seen threatening Martha and her son.

  ‘Can I help you?’ the post office man repeated, first in Flemish, then in French. She’d been so absorbed in the conversation that she’d failed to notice that she’d reached the counter.

  ‘Have you a telegram for Alice Palmer, please?’ She did not really expect anything but it was just possible that, if he’d acted quickly and the Canadians had responded equally promptly, her father might already have heard back. So it was with some astonishment that she saw him reach into the pigeonhole marked with a ‘P’ and pull out a yellow envelope.

  ‘Sign here, please.’

  Outside, with trembling hands, Alice ripped open the envelope. Anticipating a negative response, or at the very least a ‘no news yet’ message, she could scarcely believe what she read: CANUCKS SAY SAMUEL PILGRIM ADDRESS UNKNOWN BUT SAME DOB SO LIKELY OUR SAM STOP DIED 30 OCT 1917 W
E ARE DEVASTATED WILL CONFIRM WHERE BURIED TOMORROW PA STOP

  Her head was spinning. What was a DOB? Some kind of acronym; a military term, perhaps? She ran through in her head words beginning with D. Then it came to her: Date Of Birth. That must be it. When he registered with the Canadians, Sam had given a false address but hadn’t bothered to change his birthdate. So it must be him: same writing, same birthdate, a name that had the same meaning. She gave a little whoop. She’d found him, at last.

  Only on reading it again did the words properly sink in: Died 30 Oct 1917. If this was her Sam, it meant that he was definitely not alive. Sam was dead. The shock made her gasp and she found herself bent over, struggling for breath. While his disappearance remained a mystery she’d been able to cling to the slim possibility that he might still be alive somewhere, perhaps shell-shocked, or simply ashamed, afraid to return home to face his future without his beloved Amelia, or perhaps just because he didn’t have the money for the transatlantic crossing. There could be any number of reasons.

  So, for the past three years, every day, almost every hour, she’d thought of him, cherishing the chink of hope that she might, somehow, find him alive. It wasn’t entirely deluded, she told herself. Look at the man Tubby went off to visit at the hospital. Look at Freddie, hiding away from his future here, in a place dominated by his traumatic past.

  She had rehearsed these and any number of other scenarios over the past few months. But now, none of them applied. If Sam Pilgrim really was her brother, and the coincidences were just too great to imagine that he was not, then the remote hope that had sustained her for all these years was extinguished for good.

  Staggering to a lamp post for support, she rested her head against the cold metal as the old anger welled up once more. How could he have been so selfish, going off to war, getting himself killed? And to leave without saying any proper goodbyes, taking a false name, covering his tracks so thoroughly that they might never have found out what happened to him? How could she ever forgive him for putting them all through such heartache?

  Now he was gone. Forever. She would never see him again, never have those midnight chats, those evenings of drinking too much of Pa’s port and sharing unwise confidences, never watch him grow into a man, fall in love again, have children, even grandchildren. She couldn’t imagine a life without him, her little brother, always there.

  She was still too shocked to cry. Like a wounded animal, her instinct was to hide away, alone. She would go back to the hotel, take refuge in her room and crack open that bottle of brandy, holding the grief close to her heart until she could face the world again.

  Nothing else mattered any more.

  19

  RUBY

  Ruby had been in a fervour of anticipation ever since Tubby mentioned the Englishman in the hospital.

  Now, waiting restlessly in the hotel lobby as the clock chimed three and the minutes passed, she could hardly breathe for the suspense. It was a million-to-one chance, of course, perhaps even less. She scarcely dared to hope, but now she was about to find out.

  What must it be like, lying there in the hospital bed, injured and in pain, possibly confused and unable to communicate, terrified about what might happen next? What horrors must he have seen? What terrifying ordeals had he endured? If he was a deserter, how must it have felt to be so fearful of punishment that you would run away, even knowing that being caught might lead to being shot by your own countrymen?

  And what had happened to him since? She tried to imagine the people who must have taken him in, cared for him, given him shelter, shared their own meagre food supplies with him, probably risking their own safety. What saints, these anonymous people.

  At last Tubby arrived, flustered and red in the face, sweating and apologising profusely for being late. ‘Please don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I know you are a busy man.’

  ‘Are you ready to meet my bearded friend? He’s in a bit of a pickle, you know. Shell shock. You need to be prepared,’ he said, as they set out across the square.

  ‘I scarcely dare ask,’ she panted, struggling to keep up with the chaplain’s brisk pace. ‘But what does he look like?’

  ‘Hard to tell beneath the beard, I’m afraid. He’s dreadfully thin, of course.’

  ‘Does he have any physical injuries?’

  ‘Nothing obvious,’ Tubby said. ‘No bandages. He’s lost the top of a finger somewhere along the line, but it looks like an old wound.’

  The top of a finger! The shock knocked the breath out of her so sharply that she had to stop walking. Tubby turned back to her. ‘My dear, you’ve gone white as a sheet. Here . . .’ He walked back to her, putting a supportive hand to her elbow. ‘Take a few deep breaths. That’s right. Slowly now. Was it something I said?’

  ‘Which finger?’ she gasped.

  He looked puzzled. ‘I cannot precisely remember, my dear. Why do you ask?’

  ‘My husband, Bertie. He lost a finger falling off a friend’s motorbike. The left index finger. Do you think it could possibly be . . . ?’

  ‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Tubby said. ‘Here, take my arm. It’s not far now.’

  She could see it so clearly now, with such certainty. It must be him. His face would light up with recognition as he looked up and saw her approaching down the hospital ward. She would fall into his arms, weeping and crying. I’m coming, Bertie.

  *

  The convent building had a forbidding air, all grey stone and gothic windows, like a Victorian church. At the top of the steps, under an imposing arched doorway, Tubby yanked the rusty chain and a bell echoed through distant corridors while Ruby tried to keep herself from fidgeting. Keep calm, take deep breaths, she told herself.

  After several almost unbearably long minutes the door was opened by a crisply wimpled nun, tiny and bent, supporting herself with a stick. She peered up at them suspiciously at first but then, on recognising Tubby, the dark little eyes brightened. She welcomed them, leading them at an agonisingly slow pace along three corridors and up a double flight of stone stairs. The further they walked, the more utterly convinced Ruby became that the man in the bed would be Bertie, and the more terrified she became of discovering that it was not.

  Apart from the almost overwhelming smell of coal tar soap and disinfectant, it was unlike any hospital she had ever visited: no nurses carrying covered enamel dishes, no doctors with white coats flapping as they rushed importantly to the next emergency, no anxious-faced relatives crowding the hallway. She saw no staff, and they seemed to be the only visitors. From the first-floor landing, through open doorways leading to the right, left and straight ahead, were long wards lined on each side by hospital beds, all made up with sparkling white sheets, all unoccupied.

  ‘The nuns did a wonderful job during the war,’ Tubby whispered. ‘There are a further three wards like this on the top floor and they could care for nearly three hundred at a time. But now, thank the good Lord, they hardly have any customers, just locals and the occasional Allied malingerer, like our man. He’s along here.’

  Ruby’s feet seemed to move of their own accord, carrying her forwards as though she were floating. Now that she was about to meet him, her mind had gone blank. Ahead of them, at the end of the long white ward, was an occupied bed.

  Even before she could make out his face, the chill of disappointment settled on her shoulders. The man, now clean-shaven with his hair cut and combed, was propped up in bed sitting perfectly still, hands folded over the sheet in front of him. But she knew, oh so intimately, how Bertie sat, how he held his head, how he placed his hands, how his shoulders sat on his body. And this was not him.

  The disappointment was like a hammer blow; she felt dizzy and nauseous, tempted to run away, out of the ward, out of the hospital, away from all her foolish hopes, her naive, ridiculous imaginings, away from Hoppestadt altogether. It was so unfair – she had believed so powerfully that she was close to finding Bertie alive. And now here was this stranger in front of her, and she had no i
dea how to respond.

  As they arrived at his bedside, he seemed barely to notice them. His eyes, open and unnaturally wide, stared into space, his expression was somehow inhuman.

  ‘Good morning, sir. How are you today?’ Tubby asked.

  The man started, eyes blinking furiously. The muscles in his jaw worked as he tried to speak – ‘Uh, uh, uh’ – and his body became racked with the effort, his head jerking, hands wringing the sheet. She could see now that it was the top of the little finger on his right hand that was missing.

  Tubby sat beside the bed and placed his broad, fleshy hand over the man’s clenched fist. ‘It’s all right, my friend. Don’t try to talk. Just nod or shake your head, if you can. Your speech will come back soon enough.’ After a moment the man’s hands stilled, and his body seemed to relax, his expression returning to that blank, unfocused stare.

  Ruby took the chair on the other side. As his gaze shifted slowly towards her she saw that, against the fresh-shaven pallor, his eyes were clear and bright, a surprising cornflower blue. It would have been a handsome face had it not been so distorted with mental anguish, and she could see now, even through her own disappointment, the human being inside.

  This man might not be Bertie but he was surely the son, brother or husband of a family back home who were even now going about their daily business, unaware that he was still alive. He must have been much loved and greatly mourned when they learned that he was missing. But now here he was with a future ahead of him, having survived against all odds. Imagine their joy when they learned the news? The important thing now was to trace them, and get him home as soon as possible.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, keeping her voice slow and even, emulating the chaplain’s soothing tone. ‘Can you tell us your name?’

  He seemed to gather himself, taking a deep breath and trying to force his lips around the words but all that came out was ‘jee jee’. He struggled for a few moments and then gave up, gasping with frustration. Ruby smiled at him again, trying to read his face.