by Leah Fleming
‘But our window’s been smashed.’
‘Just little toerags up to mischief. Think nothing of it,’ he replied, but his eyes told another story. ‘Put the kettle on. Your mam and me have something to tell you.’
‘We’re leaving the smithy?’ she asked, sensing change in the air.
‘Now why should I do that?’ He smiled a weary smile. ‘How would you like to go and visit Aunty Ruth and Uncle Sam in Bradford?’
‘For a holiday?’
‘Not exactly. A bit of a longer visit, a change of scene,’ her mother added.
‘You mean leave Forge Cottage? But Dad needs me.’
‘Not at the moment while things are quiet. Do you good, a change of air, and you could be helpful to Aunty Ruth in the house. You’ve allus wanted to travel.’
‘But not to Bradford. To London…to York, maybe, but Bradford? Do I have to go?’
‘We think it is for the best. You’ve been a good help in the forge, but it’s not suitable for you in the long term…’ Her mother’s hands were shaking as she sipped her tea.
‘Am I not good enough?’
‘Nay, lass, it’s not that. Things are just different now. We may have to sell up if it doesn’t improve. So time to take stock. You know you’ll be very welcome with Sam and Ruth. They make a big fuss of you.’
‘I don’t want to go. I’m needed here if there’s trouble.’
‘We think it best,’ they said in unison.
‘Why? What have I done to be sent away?’ She felt the tears coming that had been threatening.
‘Look, Selma, you have done nowt wrong, none of us has. Always remember that. It’s just…things are difficult and I’d rather you had a break from this village, full of gossips and small minds. Go and get a chance to better yourself.’ Asa wasn’t looking her in the eye and his voice was trembling. ‘Just you trust in a father’s good intention and a mother’s love. We’ll manage fine, the two of us. Besides, lots of girls your age go into the city for jobs.’
‘I’m not a town girl, never have been!’ she snapped back.
‘So now’s your chance to sample it.’
‘You’re not listening, I don’t want to,’ she insisted.
‘You’ll do as you’re told, lass. We mean what we say. It’s for your own good. One day perhaps you’ll understand the reasons. We only want what’s best for you, love.’
There was no standing against the two of them when they held a united front. One of them she might have wheedled into submission, but not two of them. Even she knew when she was defeated. There was no gainsaying this decision. For whatever reason, they wanted her out of the way. Things were going on that she didn’t understand but one way or another she would find out.
Guy woke from his dozing, hearing that blessed tune going round and round in his head of ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World.’
Someone in the day room had been playing it repeatedly: a young second lieutenant from the dragoons, who sat rocking back and forth listening to it, his ear right up into the trumpet of the phonograph. It was pitiable to see a young boy so shaken up with nerves.
Guy was getting used to being in Holt Park sanatorium, with its nauseous smells and noisy neighbours, who screamed and shouted for their mothers in the night. There were old men wandering up and down with their pyjama bottoms round their ankles, confused eyes like glassy pebbles.
At least he was in the private wing. God help the poor souls locked up in the open wards. He had his own room overlooking the park. It was not far from the town of Warrington; a barracklike institution with turrets and battlements, trying to pretend it was anything other than a lunatic asylum.
He was miles away from Yorkshire, but not far from smoking chimneys and factory smells, with a tincture of open sea in the air when the wind was keen.
Dr Mac had arranged his stay discreetly, admitting Guy under the name of Charles West. They’d cleaned him out of all the poison in his system after some terrible nights of nightmares when he shook and grew agitated. They put him into a deep sleep and he woke up feeling more like his old self, his mind back on its tram tracks. He felt a fraud for taking up a bed but reasoned he was better off here, having time to think what to do next.
When he thought of Waterloo he thought only of the misery of the past year since his father had drowned at sea.
The thought that he was a deserter shook him to his core. If Angus was exposed as an impostor, the charge would be laid at his own door for aiding and abetting the deception. Once he knew the truth he must be considered to be in collusion with them both, however unwillingly. What on earth could he do to salvage the situation?
He’d kept thinking about his brother. Where was he? They’d never been out of touch for so long. He couldn’t get the thought out of his mind that he might not see Angus again. That fear kept him awake at night until he had no choice but to write to him, sending the letter to be forwarded on. It could do no harm. He needed to express his fears and feelings on paper; his fury at being deceived, his anger at Angus for taking such risks with his own health, with the other men. He had lost him his chance of happiness with Selma. Angus was weak to let Mother twist him to suit her own purposes. He wanted him to know what a monster she had become, how cloying her love was for them. He never wanted to see her again.
‘She has ruined both our lives by allowing you to play this part. I’m writing this to bring you to your senses. For God’s sake come home before it is all too late!’ he advised.
In the middle of the night he unlocked his leather writing case and poured his heart onto the page, addressed his own name in blocked letters and took it to the lodge gate first thing for the porter to post.
Only then could he sit in the sunshine and relax. It felt like a weight off his mind. Angus would read it and understand the concern behind his harsh words.
Guy didn’t mind having no visitors. It gave him time to read and build his strength in the gymnasium. He made up a foursome in the evenings with three officers who were in Holt Park for drying out, but somehow they always managed to produce some spirit out of the air or their hotwater bottles. They had accepted his own story and shared some of their hairy experiences in that offhand, blackhumoured way he knew so well. They were all old men before their time, who had found the last dregs of their courage in the bottom of one glass too many.
Two weeks into the cure, Elliot-Jones was reading yesterday’s Times and bemoaning the huge casualty lists.
‘Another crop for the worms!’ he sighed. ‘A place called Passchendaele…anyone know it? Another push in the mud gone wrong…a pile of chaps from your neck of the woods, West.’ He flung across the pages in Guy’s direction.
Guy was in no mind to read them but the instinct of curiosity got the better of him; great columns of names and one or two he recognised until one name hit him between the eyes. Captain Guy Arthur Charles Cantrell, missing presumed killed. He started to shake and dropped the paper.
‘You all right? Someone you know bought it?’ said Britton.
Guy couldn’t speak. Shock froze his tongue, his mouth went dry and the sides of his vision blurred into a cloud. Somehow he nodded.
‘Sorry, old chap…bad luck,’ offered Anderson, getting out of his chair to fetch his stick. ‘What you need is a tot of brandy to steady the nerves.’ Out of his stick handle he produced a secret silver flask. ‘Get that down you…You never get used to it. How they expect us to go back into that shithole without this ammunition, buggers me. Go and have a bawl out in private. The doc says it helps, but I haven’t got a tear left.’
Guy stumbled back to his room and stared out of the window in disbelief. Angus was dead. He knew what missing in action meant: blown up, lost in no man’s land with no body parts recognisable, sunk deep into the mud, trodden underfoot to emerge, months later, as rotten meat.
Angus, you got your desperate glory, he sobbed. How can you not exist any more? The ties that had bound them in the womb were severed. How had he not known?
Why had he not felt his death as Angus had felt his wounds?
Now he was utterly alone in the world. If Angus had stayed safe, would it have been his own fate? Why did he keep on living?
He hugged this pain and, later, the guilty realisation that he was free. Guy Cantrell no longer existed. Only Charles West did, free to go where he pleased, no longer a condemned man.
He couldn’t re-enlist—that was courting danger—but there were other services to join. Let no man say he was deserting his country. As a voluntary patient he was free to walk away now any time. Liverpool wasn’t far away. What better place than a seaport to disappear,to reinvent himself?
How could he be thinking such selfish thoughts when his brother lay broken? How could he harden his heart against his grieving mother? But that was for her to live with, not him. He would write to Dr Mackenzie to find out more details and give him warning that he would not return as Angus.
He was an orphan now, full of guilt that he had written such a harsh letter to his twin. From now on he would look after himself, live as he pleased, beholden to no one, not even Selma.
She could be no more than a figure of his innocent imagination. This had to be a clean break from all that had gone before: no looking back at what might have been. There was nothing for him in West Sharland now but bad memories and there was no law that said he must return.
He would mourn his brother in private. For the rest of his life he’d feel the loss of him but Angus died while living out his dream. Charles West must take his chance and live for both of them now.
3
NEW WORLDS
1917-1932
There’s a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams,
Where nightingales are singing
And a white moon beams.
Stoddart King, 1915
13
It took all of Hester’s strength to dig the hole in the back of the rose border, a hole deep enough to bury Angus’s bloodstained uniform that had arrived in a brown paper parcel like laundry from Sowerthwaite two weeks after the telegram.
She’d opened the paper not knowing the horrors within. The stench of mud. stale blood and dampness made her gag with revulsion. This was no living smell but the smell of death and destruction.
His trousers and jacket were ripped apart, a sleeve and leg were missing. Mercifully no underclothes were returned but she could imagine the state of him torn apart, bleeding. Her mind refused to accept the rest.
His cap was caked in sweat and blood, battered. How dare they send such obscenities to a family? Only his belt and his badge remained intact. She would keep them and the letters, of course.
My beautiful sons destroyed, she wept, not wanting to look at the crumpled uniform but unable to tear her eyes from it; Guy’s uniform in fact. There was no glory in battle only bloodied broken limbs, sinews and such suffering. Were his thoughts of her when he lay dying in the mud? Now she was putting the cloth to rot in the soil where it belonged. She would plant roses one day in this sacred spot.
She sat nursing his wallet, cradling it, looking into the dark earth. With Angus’s terrible loss at the Second Battle of Ypres in the summer of 1917 any hope of a reconciliation with Guy was now out of the question. With her son’s death, her whole family had collapsed into the Passchendaele mud.
Angus’s personal effects had been sent on ahead with a letter of condolence from his senior officer. In her worst moments, she’d pondered if her own letter, giving him a dressing down and telling him that Guy had disappeared, might have contributed to his recklessness.
She knew the officer’s words off by heart.
Dear Lady Cantrell
It is never easy to write such a letter to the parent of a fellow officer but you will want to know that your son was a first-rate chap, a crack shot and a good example to his men. I never saw him flinch before them. He knew his duty and volunteered to go on a listening patrol in no man’s land. It takes a special courage to face the unknown in the darkness but Guy was determined to see it through no matter what the danger. The loss of such a courageous young man is grievous to all of us. Conditions were too treacherous for us to retrieve his remains but some of his men went out later to bring him back.
He was given a military funeral with a firing party and buried with honour. I hope this is of comfort to you and his twin brother…
The padre who wrote had also sent some last effects among which was Guy’s own letter from his hospital, pulling no punches in its anger and frustration, telling him exactly what had gone on at Waterloo House, and how he was now incarcerated at Holt Park under an assumed name. The humiliation of that visit still stung in her chest like a knife wound.
She had taken the first train to Warrington and a cab to the hospital, full of hope that the dreadful news she was to impart would somehow bring Guy back to his senses. The two of them must stand together, prop each other up in grief, find strength to face the future. She was even prepared not to blow his cover and call him by his new name.
She stood in the secretarial office and gave her name and demanded to see her son immediately. The slip of a secretary eyed her up and down, told her to take a seat and shouted to a porter.
‘Have we got a West in the private wing? His grandma’s come to see him!’
Hester blushed at this insult. Do I look so old? There was no mirror to confirm that she had aged over the past year, stooped by grief, drained by wearing black. She waited until her back ached on the hard chair.
A doctor came rushing past and stopped. ‘Ah, hah! You want young West? Done a bunk, dear lady, walked out one fine morning and not been seen since. Had some bad news in the family and thought it was time he got back into the fray…Sorry to disappoint but he was doing well enough. Would you like a cup of tea? You look as if you need it.’
How could he be so cheery, so unconcerned, so brisk and she so woebegone by this news? Somehow Guy had found out about Angus. Perhaps he was on his way back home? She must turn round and retrace her journey to Sharland in the hope that he was returning as she dearly hoped. She had waited weeks for his return. Now he was lost too and it was all her fault.
There was another fear haunting her sleep. Had they both driven Angus over the top? Had Guy’s angry letter and her complaint made him even more reckless? She hoped Guy never found out that his brother had let down Frank Bartley. Now so many doubts and fears raged in her brain like a fever. She had to know.
She had to know that Angus was safe somewhere. How could he leave this life without saying goodbye? What if he thought she was still angry at him? He needed to know she begged his forgiveness if her letter had disturbed him enough to try to prove himself again. Had he sought his own death in this way? No, no! That was too terrible to think about. She had to know he was safe. There was only one way to find out.
Hester waited until it was dark before she quietly drew up the car in Sowerthwaite town square. She walked through the side streets, early for her appointment. She didn’t want anyone to know her business in such a dismal area of the market town. Her face was veiled in black netting, her beaver coat hung shapeless over her shrunken shoulders. She drifted like a black shadow between the high stone walls of the alley leading to Bond End Row.
The recommendation had come accidentally from her cleaner who’d heard that Martha Holbeck gave a good reading of cards and was well used in the district.
Hester fought her conscience for nights on end. Was this witchcraft at work? But what was the harm in giving it a chance? Only desperation would have driven her to this. She had to know.
The back door was open and she was to wait on a wooden chair at the kitchen table until a bell rang. The note’s instructions had been precise. There would be other clients inside not wishing to be seen.
The paraffin lamp glimmered on the scrubbed deal table. At least the woman kept a clean house. It was a plain working man’s cottage and she thought of the famous song ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’.
‘I’ve left my gamp in the back.’ Into the room rushed Essie Bartley, who looked at her, nodded, grabbed the umbrella and fled.
She had aged ten years, her face lined with sorrow, her hair almost white. Hester could feel her cheeks stinging with embarrassment. Did the Bartleys know? Did they know it was her son who had not given testimony to their son’s good character? Did they know how he had really died and why?
In those brief seconds of their encounter she saw only the familiar face of another brokenhearted mother like herself, another bereaved soul. Violet had whispered that there was trouble in the village; Jack Plimmer had come back on leave with rumours about the Bartley boy being shot at dawn for desertion or perhaps cowardice. No one would believe it at first, Frank being such a lively lad, but then letters came from sons who told a similar tale and the village had been split in two over the matter. The churches were ready to believe Jack Plimmer’s version, while the chapel folk now wouldn’t have a word said against the Bartleys.
Just one glimpse of the utter exhaustion on that woman’s face blew away years of dismissing her and her family as mere tradespeople with whom she had nothing in common. What courage it must take to stay and face all that calumny with dignity. Then there was the daughter, who Violet said had gone to stay with relatives and to work in Bradford.
So I needn’t have worried about that romance after all, Hester sighed. If only she’d not interfered and let things be, Guy would have gone back, leaving Angus at home, and Selma would have left anyway. Things would have taken their own course.
‘Lady Hester, please step this way. I hope I’ve not kept you waiting but, as you see, there are many like yourself in need of the strength to keep going.’
