Custard Tarts and Broken Hearts

by Mary Gibson

  Then, halfway through the meal, Freddie stupidly asked if there had been any more news of Jock. Nellie kicked him under the table, but it was too late. Sam, his already ashen face turning white, pushed his chair back and stumbled round the crowded table, out into the yard.

  ‘You idiot, Fred!’ Bobby hissed. ‘Why d’ye go an upset him?’

  Matty went to follow Sam, but Nellie stopped her. ‘I’ll go,’ she said, glaring over at Freddie. ‘Alice, will you cut the cake while I get him back in?’

  Sam was smoking, leaning up against the brick shed. She put her arm through his, leaning in close to him. ‘I know it’s hard, with Jock not coming home,’ she said softly.

  He took another deep drag on the cigarette and blew smoke in the air while she waited for him to answer. Shaking his head, he threw down the cigarette, grinding it with his boot.

  ‘It’s cold out here, best get in, duck,’ he said.

  Nellie went to bed, full of misery at the change in Sam. For so long she had looked forward to his homecoming and now it felt as if she had lost him anyway.Waking next morning with a sick feeling in her heart, she told herself she must simply wait patiently for him to learn to trust her, with all those dark tales she knew must be locked up inside him, along with what he knew of Jock’s fate. She hadn’t seen him for over two years and she was beginning to realize how little she knew about his war. Still, she wouldn’t push him; she told herself to be grateful they both had the rest of their lives to get to know each other again.

  It was barely dawn and Alice still slept quietly on. As Nellie forced herself to get out of the bed, she thought she could smell burning. Hurrying across the cold lino to the window, she looked out over the back yard to see smoke billowing up. ‘That bloody Freddie!’ she muttered, thinking some of his contraband must have contained combustibles. She pulled on her shoes and dashed downstairs. Grabbing her coat from the passage, she sprinted through the scullery and out into the back yard, where she pulled up short in front of Sam.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she panted. ‘I thought the place was on fire!’

  He looked up at her through flames, his gaunt face lit by their false ruddiness. He was in his civvies, which only served to emphasize how emaciated he’d become. A thin neck stuck out of his collarless shirt; his trousers were baggy and cinched in tight around his waist. It seemed to Nellie as though the war had pared him down to the bone. There was nothing left of him.

  ‘I’m burning my uniform,’ he said flatly.

  Then she saw that he’d stuffed his uniform into the old dustbin. It was full of khaki, now crackling into flame, blackening and turning to ashes. Only his greatcoat had been spared, laid over the penny-farthing trailer, along with his spurs. He saw her looking at it.

  ‘I might as well hand back the greatcoat – up the army depot at London Bridge. They’ll give me a few bob for it,’ he said, turning away from her to poke the flames to life again.

  ‘Sam,’ she said hesitantly, ‘I think we ought to go and see Lily, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know anything, Nell,’ he said, and his reluctance was painful to watch. ‘I’ve got no good news for her.’

  ‘But still, she’ll want to hear whatever you can tell her. It’s the not knowing that eats away at you, I had it for long enough with you. She’ll be happy you’re home…’

  Although Sam didn’t looked convinced about that, he finally agreed, and later that day they took the tram up to Rotherhithe to see Lily. It was heartbreaking for Nellie to see how brave her friend was in the face of Sam’s return, her joy unfeigned. As they sat round the kitchen table, Lily took Johnny on to her knee, listening, while Sam stitched together all her dark imaginings, with a few threads of fact about Jock. He told how they’d both been driving their team when it was hit with shrapnel. Jock had fallen, along with the other team driver, and Sam had been forced to go on alone. They’d been separated on the battlefield and Sam hadn’t seen Jock again. The battle of Ypres had dragged on another week or so, their battery decimated and Sam himself wounded.

  ‘After that, I didn’t know nothing till I woke up in that Belgian hospital,’ he said flatly. He’d forced out these bald facts in short, emotionless sentences and when he saw Lily’s tears begin to fall he simply got up and walked out. Nellie gathered Lily and Johnny into her arms. ‘I’m so sorry, Lil,’ was all she could say. ‘He’s not the same.’

  The year turned and it was January of 1919 before Charlie came home, still only seventeen but now a manly, seasoned soldier. She hoped he might be able to reach Sam, but although the brothers greeted each other warmly enough, they never mentioned the war in her hearing. Wicks’s yard had closed during the war, so neither of them had a job to return to. They both sat, every day, scanning the newspaper advertisements for jobs, exchanging the odd complaint about the scarcity of work for returning soldiers. Charlie, always self-sufficient, one day announced, to everyone’s surprise, that he’d decided to stay in the army. Nellie waited for Sam’s protest, but he greeted the news with uncharacteristic indifference.

  In the weeks since Sam’s return Nellie had been forced to admit that she hadn’t grown to know this new Sam at all. She began to ask herself how she could marry a man who was now a complete mystery to her. It was a cruel irony. For all she knew, this Sam might as well be that other soldier he’d been mistaken for in the Belgian hospital. He had come back older, sadder, harder, but worse than all this, Sam wouldn’t talk to her. She wanted to take the burden of some of his awful memories, but from the moment he’d stepped off the boat from France he hadn’t said a word about it. Perhaps he never had been a great talker, but she could always tell what he was feeling. Now she didn’t even know if he was happy to have survived. He was impenetrable.

  And she wasn’t the only one hurt by his indifference. Even Matty couldn’t penetrate Sam’s new rock-hard exterior. It was a bitter sadness to Nellie, seeing how the little canary hovered around her once adoring brother. When she hugged him, he would slowly disentangle himself with a cutting, ‘You’re not a little girl any more, Matty.’ Nellie almost felt that those who loved him most were being punished, or perhaps he was punishing himself, by pushing them away. But what had he done wrong, except fight in a war not of his making?

  One night, early in the new year, Nellie and Sam were sitting up late, waiting for Matty to return from the Star. She came in with a troubled look on her face.

  ‘Want something to eat, love?’ Nellie asked, but Matty shook her head, glancing at Sam. ‘Actually, I’ve got some news!’ She waited for Sam’s response and when it didn’t come, sighed.

  ‘Good news, we hope! Don’t we, Sam?’ Nellie said, rather too brightly.

  ‘Well,’ Matty went on, ‘that American agent’s been after me again. I’m thinking of taking him up on his offer.’ Again the young girl looked hesitantly at her brother. Stirring in his seat, he looked at her blankly. ‘Well, it’s your life, Matty, you must do as you like.’

  Matty’s face crumpled. Turning away, so Sam couldn’t see the tears on her face, she left them alone together. Nellie couldn’t believe what she’d witnessed. She guessed Matty had no intention of going to America but merely wanted Sam to protest, as he once would have done. Nellie decided enough was enough. She screwed up her courage.

  ‘Sam, I want to know what happened to you out there…’ She paused as the fire crackled and wind soughed down the chimney, filling the little kitchen with a burst of smoke. He poked the fire.

  ‘Needs sweeping,’ he said.

  ‘For God’s sake, Sam.’ She was getting angry. ‘I can’t pretend any more! You’re a different feller. Look at the way you’ve treated Matty and you’ve hardly said two words to Charlie since that boy came home. If you’d seen the hell he went through looking for you, you could at least show some interest in him! I know it’s the war but I think if you could just talk to me—’

  He cut her off. ‘Well, you should know me by now, Nellie. I’m a quiet old stick at the best of times. Anyw
ay, there’s things I don’t want to put in your mind, you’re better off not knowing. ’

  He wasn’t angry; in fact, she would have welcomed some anger. Any feeling would have been better than this impenetrable shell. But what did she expect? He’d been away for most of the time they’d been courting. Perhaps she was now as much a stranger to him as he was to her. She remembered him as a soft boy, certainly far too soft on her and how she’d scorned him for so long. In the end she knew that what had attracted her was his goodness. He was a good man, one she knew would always do the right thing. She’d taken to studying that old photograph of him she’d carried all through the war. She could see in it now, the beginnings of the change, his face set and grim, trying to look like a hard man, but under the man’s uniform there had still been her Sam. As she bent down to kiss him goodnight, he turned his cheek to her. Standing up, she felt her heart shrivel a little.

  ‘Goodnight, love,’ she said, and, wishing she believed it more, ‘We’ve got all the time in the world for talking.’

  But it was to be weeks before Nellie eventually found out that it had happened at Ypres. ‘Wipers’, Sam pronounced it, not because he didn’t know better but just because to give it a silly name might somehow diminish its horror. Like calling the devil ‘old nick’. But whatever it was called, it was at Ypres she’d been robbed of her Sam, the good man she’d grown to love. Oh, he had come back all right in body, the head wound that had left him unconscious for weeks all healed up. He still had all his limbs attached, eyes seeing, ears hearing, though he had grown deaf in the clamour of firing off a million shells a day. But however grateful she was to have him back, through the long winter weeks of 1918 she had become convinced it was a different Sam who’d returned from Flanders. His coldness, she was sure, wasn’t intended to wound, yet for her it bordered on cruelty. He hadn’t once told her he loved her since he’d got back. Now it was she who hung about him, waiting for a smile. And still he wouldn’t talk.

  Then one sad day, towards the end of January, she made her decision. ‘The wedding’s off, Sam,’ she said.

  He was sitting by the fire, reading the job adverts in the South London Press. He looked up sombrely and began slowly folding the newspaper, while she stood in front of him, waiting. The old Sam would have pleaded, perhaps even cried, at least asked for an explanation. Instead, he looked at her fixedly and said, ‘If you think that’s best, you must do what you want.’

  ‘How can you be so cold about it?’ she blurted out. ‘You’re not the same, Sam! I always liked you to be strong, but not hard. I know it’s the war’s done it. If you’d only tell me about it, maybe I could help you get back your old self.’

  Sam shook his head. ‘Leave it, Nell!’ he shouted, flinging the paper aside. ‘I’ve told you there’s things happen in war that a woman’s got no business knowing. Now leave it alone, will you, for Christ sake!’

  He’d never raised his voice to her before, and she recoiled. Although Nellie had learned early to stand up for herself and had carried her whole family through the war, what she loved about being with Sam was that she didn’t have to be the strong one all the time. He’d always had his soft side to others as well as her, but where she was concerned, he’d been unfailingly protective. This new, silent Sam now revealed a coldness she’d never imagined his warm heart could contain. He simply didn’t seem to care.

  ‘I’ll find lodgings somewhere else. I don’t want it to be awkward for you, Nell.’

  He walked out, without another word, and she didn’t follow. He’d left his army greatcoat hanging over the back of the kitchen chair and as she picked it up, a small book fell out of the pocket. It was his army service book; it had a buff cover with Royal Field Artillery. ‘C’ Battery Camberwell Howitzers printed on the front. With it was a voucher for the return of his greatcoat, promising a pound if he took it to the receiving office at London Bridge Station. She put the voucher on the mantelpiece, then, sitting down by the fire with the coat over her knees, she opened the book. The light from the gas lamp revealed brown stains on the cover… blood? Was it Sam’s? Or maybe it was just from the mud at Ypres. Here, perhaps, was a speck of that slimy sea of clay and ooze into which her poor boy had vanished.

  She knew she shouldn’t read it, but the temptation was overwhelming. If he hadn’t been such a closed book himself since he’d come back, maybe she would not have opened it. She angled the book up to the lamp. She read all the official entries, his enlistment date, his boyish signature. It was a sparse record of his four years. Training, posting to France, where in France? Just ‘in the field’, which field? A muddy, bloody one, with no name. Wounded early in 1916, he’d been sent to hospital and then back to the fighting. She remembered the day she’d come upon him in the bath. How sick she’d felt, seeing that scar snaking across his chest. Here it was recorded, so matter-of-factly. Then came the record of that leave in April 1916, when he’d been so passionate and asked her to marry him. Nellie smiled, remembering the excitement of walking out with her handsome soldier beau. She turned to the conduct sheet, all signed off as exemplary, until she reached October 1917; then came something that shocked her to the core. The model soldier had been charged with neglect of duty and locked up in an army prison.

  She had to read it twice. Sam? Neglect his duty? Never! Desertion? No, she knew they shot them for that. But something had happened. Was this what was stopping him from talking? Was it guilt? What had her Sam done that warranted imprisonment? She had to know.

  That evening, before she left for the Star, Nellie took Matty into her confidence. ‘Matty, I’ve called off the wedding.’

  ‘Oh, no, Nell, you can’t! He still loves you, I know he does!’

  ‘Well, I wish he’d tell me that himself. You wouldn’t know it, to hear him.’

  ‘I know he’s not been himself, but you could bring him back… don’t give up on him, Nellie, not after all you two have been through.’

  Matty had more faith in her ability to get through to Sam than she had herself. But the girl was right: she couldn’t give up on him. She waited up for him, and when he came home, he looked more weary and sad than she’d ever seen him.

  ‘I’ve found a room with one of my old mates from Wicks’s,’ he said. ‘Can Charlie and Matty still stay here for a bit till they’re settled?’ he asked dully. Nellie’s heart twisted at the thought of breaking up her adopted family.

  ‘Don’t talk like that, Sam. This is their home.’

  Sam sat himself in her father’s old chair. With one leg crossed over the other, foot swinging gently, he began rolling a cigarette. That was another thing he’d picked up out there: he’d come back a chain smoker. He stared blankly into the fire. Quietly, she sat down opposite him and placed the book on the arm of the chair.

  ‘I’m sorry, I read it. About you being locked up. What happened, Sam? Did you do something bad? Tell me. I won’t think none the worse of you. What does it mean, neglect of duty? You’re not one for breaking the rules.’

  Sam looked into her eyes for a long moment, then he shook his head, as though he could shake away the memories held there. She took it as a dismissal.

  ‘All right, Sam,’ she said, getting up to leave. ‘I won’t trouble you no more with it. I always thought you was a good man, but if you can’t even tell me, it must have been pretty bad, whatever you did. Goodnight.’

  As she turned away, suddenly Sam started to talk. ‘I’ll leave you to decide if it was a bad thing I did, Nell.’ His words were slow and heavy, as if he was struggling to get them out. ‘Bad and good got all topsy-turvy out there. It was hard to know, sometimes, which was which.’

  Nellie watched as he took out his tobacco pouch and rolled yet another cigarette. He pinched the end, pulling out loose strands of tobacco, struck a match and watched the tip glow as he inhaled. She studied his beloved face, noticing again how its boyish smoothness had been etched by the sorrow of war. He no longer needed to play at being the hard man: the war had made him into one. S
taring into the fire, he seemed to forget Nellie was there and his story began to pour out.

  ‘I think I was a good soldier, Nell, or as good as any. I did my duty, and I wasn’t a coward. I didn’t get locked up for desertion, they would have shot me for that! No, it was the horse. I did it for the horse.’

  ‘The horse?’ She couldn’t have been more surprised. ‘What happened with the horse, love?’

  ‘I called him Dandy Grey Russet. It wasn’t his army name, but we all gave our horses pet names. It was from one of those sayings me mum had, she’d call me in from the streets. “Let me wash that neck of yours, it’s dandy grey russet”, and she’d scrub till my skin was red raw, or she’d say, “That shirt needs a bloody good wash, it’s dandy grey russet!” Where it came from, I couldn’t tell you… it just meant that shade of grey, you know, when things need a wash.’

  Nell smiled, her face softening. ‘Your mum couldn’t abide dirt, could she?’

  Sam carried on. ‘As soon as I saw that horse, I thought, I know what I’ll call you! He was a Yankee horse, shipped over from America to France, poor beast had no choice. See, by 1915 we’d run so short of our own horses, all dead or worn out, we had to buy up American horses. But they was a sorry sight, after months swilling about in a boat on the Atlantic. Shaggy coats, no shoes. Mustangs they called ’em, meant to be tough, and they never once disappointed us. Anyway we fed ’em up, clipped their manes, put shoes on ’em, and by the time I first saw him, my Yankee was such a beautiful sight! Light grey, black eyes, charcoal mane and tail. So being a Yankee Doodle Dandy and a grey, I couldn’t call him anything else but Dandy Grey Russet!’