Remembrance Day

by Leah Fleming

  Guy stood in the large kitchen farmhouse, clutching his dark hat, wondering how he had got to this moment. He was clothed in a sober black coat and trousers that smelled of camphor, and a stiff shirt. His beard was trimmed and his hands were twitching. He needed a drink, but all that was on offer was water. In his pocket was the crumpled letter.

  Hans Clemmer guided him in. ‘This is the young man who has come from afar, Izaak. He brings news.’

  Facing him was a stern-looking man, who towered over him, with a full beard and wearing a checked shirt and trousers ready for the day’s work. His wife stood by his side with anxious eyes. Guy was about to break their hearts.

  It was one thing writing letters of condolence in the trenches when you didn’t have to face parents in person. Delivering the bad news was quite another.

  ‘Sit down, Englishman.’

  Guy was getting used to this formal manner with strangers, their broken English and sudden burst into a language straight out of a German textbook, to his ears.

  He told them how he had met Zacharias on board the Regina, how sick he was and how he had dictated this letter before he passed away in his sleep.

  The woman put her hand to her mouth as he handed over the letter. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, seeing the pain etched on their faces.

  ‘Your son is your son all his life…however far he strays from the track,’ Izaak sighed. ‘You do not expect to bury your grown-up children, only your babies. He did what he thought was his duty and made his choice. Now he has paid the price. We will read this later,’ he said, taking the letter and placing it on the table unopened. ‘And you, young man, did you enlist for your country? You’ll be marked by your memories? It must be heavy burden to bear, knowing you have killed your fellow men in anger and in cold blood. The Bible says, “Thou shalt not kill…Do not be overcome by evil but overcome with good.” That is our understanding of Scriptures so we resist the call to arms.’

  ‘Yes,’ Guy replied, feeling very weary.

  ‘Come, young man, what are your plans now you have brought this to our door?’

  ‘I have no plans, sir.’

  Izaak turned to his wife and back to Guy. ‘We have need of a pair of hands to plough the fields and see to the horses. You are welcome to work here until you are given guidance for what is to come. Is that not so, Miriam?’

  The woman nodded, looking at Guy over metal-rimmed spectacles.

  Hans Clemmer smiled. ‘I think Mr West is in need of time to grow fresh skin around himself. I shall leave you in their care. The Lord gives and the Lord takes, brothers. Blessed be his name.’

  ‘Amen,’ they all said in unison

  It was as if it had all been decided above his head and he hadn’t the energy to protest that he must be on his way. Then a girl came running through the door.

  ‘I’ve finished the milking, Pa,’ she rattled in their quaint German. Seeing the stranger, she stopped and bowed her head.

  ‘Rose of Sharon, this is Mr West. He’s brought sad news of your brother. Now the Lord has sent him to take his place.’

  Her golden hair was plaited over her head, her cap was awry, her dress was grey and white stripes with a grubby pinafore on the top and her feet were bare, but her eyes shone out at Guy like sapphires.

  ‘The Lord be with you, Brother West,’ she said in perfect English, and he looked into those shining blue orbs and knew he would not be leaving for a while.

  18

  The dry searing heat drained Selma of her normal energy, but the luxury of diving into the turquoise-blue-tiled swimming pool was wonderful. The Grunwald residence, Casa Pinto, sprawled over three acres of prime real estate as Cornelius’s new wife, Pearl, kept reminding them. Lisa’s uncle worked in the big barns they called Hollywood Grange on the outskirts of the sprawling city. He was in the film industry, doing some sort of bookkeeping, Lisa said.

  Selma was getting a distinct feeling that she was outstaying her initial welcome and that Pearl was eager to see Lisa settled at the local high school and out of the way. Their arrival had disrupted her routine. She had been a vaudeville artiste, and now ruled their black servants like an Eastern potentate, so the thought of taking on a teenage girl and her companion did not appeal. But she was polite enough when her husband was around.

  Cornelius Grunwald was a grizzled fifty-year-old with dark hawk eyes, who seemed to spend most of his time on the telephone or dashing out in his enormous car to meetings with clients, while his wife sunned herself on the terrace, reading magazines and Sears and Roebuck catalogues.

  Lisa wouldn’t hear of Selma leaving. ‘Please don’t go and leave me with that crocodile. She smiles and then bites my head off. Poor Uncle Corrie, he wasn’t very clever, was he, choosing her after Aunt Minnie?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s a gold digger. I’ve never seen her do a hand’s turn, and you know what they say: all that glitters…I don’t like her.’

  ‘But she’s your aunty now.’ They had to be sensible. Lisa must stay here.

  ‘I know, but don’t go yet. I’m sure Uncle Corrie will find you somewhere in his office.’

  ‘But I’m not qualified. I’d be hopeless in an office. I can shoe horses and groom them…if we had one, that is.’

  ‘There you go, you’ve made a job, and you can teach me to ride and Jamie too. He needs to ride well in cowboy pictures. You’d love that.’ She winked.

  Since their arrival in Hollywood, James was always calling in. He’d found work waiting tables while trying to get auditions. At least Pearl had offered to help him find a decent agent. She was all sweetness and light when he turned up to take Selma out.

  Only last week, he dashed round to tell them there was a big party going on in Beverly Hills and they were looking for extra catering staff. So Lisa and Selma were dragooned into service in little black dresses and white lace caps and pinnies to stand at the door and serve fruit cocktails.

  Selma nearly dropped her tray when she saw Douglas Fairbanks drift in with Mary Pickford on his arm. Lisa whispered that the actress wasn’t his first wife, nor he her first husband. ‘They do that a lot…swap wives about. A girl at my school told me she’s had three stepfathers already!’

  Selma tried not to look shocked but Jamie was trying to circulate and get noticed, tossing his lion’s mane of hair, winking at her across the room. She felt protective of him, as if it were her job to make the Grunwalds secure him that first rung on the ladder, but she didn’t know the first thing about this mysterious movie world. To her untutored eye the studios looked like a lot of grubby barns huddled together under a brown haze of smog that pricked her eyes and hid the sun.

  ‘Uncle Corrie says you can teach us all to ride,’ Lisa shouted. ‘And Jamie too!’

  Selma’s feet were aching, and her jaw too with trying to smile. The room was full of tobacco smoke and the smell of strong spirits and Jamie kept helping himself to half-empty glasses.

  ‘Just a perk of the job…come and eat your fill. The girls won’t eat in case they get fat and the men are too busy swilling down the booze. Isn’t this the place to be seen?’

  Selma wasn’t so sure. There was a raw hungry look on some of those faces; people smiled with their teeth but not their eyes when they were talking to each other. The waiters were barked at like dogs or else ignored entirely. It felt a million miles away from Sharland gatherings.

  True to his word, Uncle Corrie hired some horses and Selma got a chance to show them the basics of how to approach the animal, saddle it up, groom and comb and then sit and ride. She couldn’t help showing off, riding bareback and racing off.

  Lisa was nervous and stiff but Jamie was impatient, wanting to do everything at once, and kept falling off. He was rough with the horse, who had a will of its own, quick to flare up.

  ‘This is hopeless!’

  ‘Be patient. You need to make a friend of him so it trusts you. They can tell if you are nervous. Don’t force it. You have to practise. Black Magic needs to respect
you.’

  Sometimes she left them to canter over the desert track, her thighs gripping the sides, hair in the wind, at one with the beast, and it brought back those summer days with Guy, making her suddenly homesick for the green hills.

  Perhaps it was time to return to England, but she pushed that thought to the back of her mind. Lisa needed a friend and Jamie was becoming more than just one. They were all strangers in a foreign land, clinging together for support.

  The poor lad was exhausted, trying to work at anything and everything, turning up for castings—a bar man in a saloon brawl; an extra in a crowd scene—and when there were no castings, he lugged cameras and cases of film to locations. He was on set from seven in the morning until after midnight.

  His spare time was spent at the local boxing ring and gymnasium, or midnight training swims in the Grunwalds’ pool. He grew his hair like a poet. His idols on set were John Barrymore and Richard Dix. No one bothered about his gingery hair in black-and-white movies—it could be sky blue—and his accent didn’t matter either.

  Selma felt so proud of his efforts and watched over the weeks as he tamed his impatience and rode so well that he left her standing when they raced on the shoreline.

  One night they huddled together on the sand.

  ‘Do you ever think of home, Jamie?’ she whispered. ‘Scotland and your family?’

  He shivered. ‘What would I be thinking of that lot for?’

  ‘But your parents—’ she continued, but he put his fingers over her lips.

  ‘What’s there to miss? A pa who was gae handy with the leather strap and his wee wifie who got her head bashed if Partick Thistle took a pasting at the football match. It was no picnic growing up with them but I found a way…in the army, in the plays. When you act you become another person. I can change my voice and be anybody I choose. When I’m famous I’ll have a house like Pearl’s, and no more waiting tables…another life with a yacht and horses, you’ll see.’

  ‘I wish I knew what to do next,’ she confessed. ‘I’m on borrowed time. One day Lisa will not want me to look after her and Pearl keeps dropping hints that I’ve outstayed my welcome.’

  ‘You worry too much. You’ll get by. Come here and give me a kiss…You and me will always be fine, Selma.’

  They kissed and cuddled under the stars. It was the most romantic night of her young life. She felt safe, for Jamie was going places and he would let her tag along too. She lay back in his arms, content in this safe haven. Together, everything was possible, together they would make his future happen.

  Young love is blind to the pitfalls of passion, the dark alleys where she cats pounce and bite. Love is blind to everything but each dizzy meeting, each kiss, caress, each promise that these feelings will never end.

  Jamie and I were soon lovers. This time there was no prudish holding back. No one was there to stop me, no one cared where I was late at night, sneaking out for our secret trysts under the stars.

  Oh, those heady nights when clinches turned into careless lovemaking, snatching moments between shoots and location work. Little did I know the world we were courting was a world full of uncertainties, filled with a colony of rootless insecure actors who spent their lives in constant fear of being typecast, out of the public eye or being upstaged by more beautiful creatures snapping at their heels; a world of bored wives who wooed new flesh to their sides for the excitement of the chase.

  We were such innocents abroad, but unknown to me Jamie was learning fast how to hustle and play this game. I should have been his sister, not his wife. By the time I realised that sobering fact, it was far too late to change matters. There was a baby on the way.

  Essie stared at the photograph in hurt and unbelief, thinking, I don’t believe it! Selma had gone and got herself wed. What was she thinking of and to the Scotch lad, the actor? Look at the two of them, not a penny to rub together and all dolled up like a dish of tripe and onions. She had to sit down, feeling faint.

  It was her silver and brass day, and the scullery girl, Maggie, was sitting opposite, eyeing the picture with a sigh. ‘He’s so handsome!’

  ‘Handsome is as handsome does. Get on with your polishing.’

  She’d been shocked at how the place had been let go: dust everywhere, dull brass door knobs, fire irons, dirty curtain linings. Every room needed bottoming out. Lady Hester just didn’t see the grime. She needed new spectacles. It was going to take months to put this place in order. Why was it rich folk didn’t appreciate what they had?

  ‘Is he a film star? This husband of Selma’s,’ Maggie asked.

  ‘Hardly that, he’s got a part in some Wild West picture. They’re going down south to film in the desert and she’s going with him.’

  ‘Look at that dress! It’s proper lace, and the garden full of flowers. Can you imagine getting married in a garden round here?’

  Essie sniffed. She wasn’t going to tell Maggie that James Barr was a left-footer, a Catholic, so there was no proper church wedding. Why couldn’t they wait and come back home and do it properly? How could these paupers pay their fares back to England?

  They did make a handsome couple, though, and Selma looked radiant behind an enormous bunch of roses. Lisa was the bridesmaid in a floral print dress and caped sleeves.

  How she missed her daughter’s company. She would have loved to be there but she’d have to content herself with buying a pretty frame for the portrait and showing it off. In her heart she ached to have been part of all the preparations and excitement, and to have sized up the groom for herself. But no use getting upset. The deed was done.

  Perhaps they would make a trip back here one day and she’d see him for herself.

  She’d settled down in Waterloo House better than she’d thought. She had her own bedroom and sitting room on the top floor with a view right over the village out onto the Ridge.A view for all seasons,she smiled, watching the chimney smoke from the village cottages showing which way the wind was blowing.

  Sometimes when she prepared Lady Hester’s supper, they would sit down in the kitchen and share a pot of tea. Under all that stiff bravado was a woman of many opinions, who spoke of the old days when her boys were lads with a yearning that matched Essie’s exact feelings.

  True to her word, she’d insisted Essie go back into the WI. There were new faces among the old, some speakers were interesting, and, worryingly, some were spouting about there being another war coming if they didn’t heed what was going on in Germany.

  Then Essie thought about Angus, who never wrote home, and how Hester pined for news. What had gone wrong there she’d never know. You didn’t ask such personal questions of such a proud lady. There were rumours he’d turned to drink, that he’d gone to Australia in search of gold, that he was in prison, or worse. She kept the boys’ rooms as if they were due home any minute: beds aired, floors polished, clothes laundered.

  They made Essie shudder, these ghost-filled rooms, empty of all life and warmth, never disturbed; wardrobes full of warm tweeds and suits that would cover the backs of soldiers, out of work, begging at back doors. It was a crying shame.

  Lady Hester spent hours in her flower borders, shaping, pruning, planting, lost in her green world. Someone once quipped that ladies of her age went for God or their garden. Essie hadn’t time for either.

  Asa would be ashamed of her heathen ways. Sunday was her day off and she would read, go for a walk, make sure the luncheon was ready for when Hester came back from church, and then retire to the cane chair by the attic window to write reams to Selma.

  In the little silver comforts tin that came with Newton’s effects, she popped in spare coins: threepenny pieces, halfpennies for her holiday fund. One day she’d get herself across that ocean and see this land of plenty for herself.

  As the seasons sped past—seed time, haymaking and harvest—Guy found his strength returning. Everyone pulled together on this ninety-acre farm with its small herd of cattle, horses and four grain crops to sow and reap. Their living depe
nded on the whole family working from dawn to dusk. He found their quiet frugal way of life a revelation, such hard labour for little reward. Then when Hans Clemmer’s brother’s barn caught fire all the farmers in the district left their own work to help rebuild the barn with gifts of wood, nails, food and tools. In a tight community every man was your brother, your friend and your keeper.

  They jabbered away in their version of German, they called ‘Pennsylvania Dutch’ and gradually Guy began to pick up key words—and insults! They absorbed him into their community until it was natural that he began to attend their services in the stone meeting house, sitting on the bench—men on one side, women on the other—so he might catch secret glimpses of Rose of Sharon in her prayer cap and shawl, sitting demurely.

  That was a trial, trying to understand preaching in another language, but it didn’t matter. These folks preached with their simple lives, their trust in him and shared concern for the sick and the elderly. By American farming standards, many of them were poor smallholders, but what they really had was a peace, contentment and surety about their faith that moved him.

  He’d gone to church at school and drumhead parades in the army, but nothing prepared him for this simple piety. For every aspect of daily life, there was a Bible quote for guidance; their plain clothes set them apart as unworldly. There were no picture houses, theatres, dance halls, speakeasy bars to distract them; just get-togethers in houses, music on the piano, feasts of home cooking when everybody brought something.

  Guy knew his motives were clouded by his attraction to Rose. He knew that he must be of their faith to have even a chance of courting her. When he thought of all the women that he had used for pleasure in the past, there was only Selma in the same class as this girl, and she was a girl from his other life: the life that he had put behind him for ever.