The Orange Lilies

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  ‘Cake! Coffee!’ Margaret chanted, as she strode into the lounge with a large tray brimming with an assortment of homemade cakes and biscuits—all with a Christmas theme.

  ‘Perfect,’ Morton said. ‘I could do with a break.’

  With an overly dramatic tug, Margaret pulled back the thick curtains, as if unveiling a grand masterpiece. Daylight streamed into the room, a reluctant sun emerging in the sky.

  ‘Looks like it’s going to be a nice day,’ Morton observed.

  ‘Fancy a trolley into Truro? Do the touristy things like the cathedral? Have a meal out?’ Margaret asked, sitting opposite him at the table.

  ‘Lovely,’ Morton said, leaning over and taking a fresh cup of coffee and a snowman shortbread. After taking a mouthful of each, he said, ‘I was just finding out a bit more about Leonard. He and Nellie married in January 1919. Seems pretty quick to me.’

  She raised her eyebrows and nodded. ‘Why not? After all that loss and devastation, why would they wait around? After all, there was a terrible shortage of men—I think Granny probably didn’t want to hang about.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Morton agreed, having not considered the huge post-war disparity between the sexes.

  ‘I’d say they had a long courtship via letters for several years until he was released from the POW camps at the end of the war.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess he was incarcerated until after the Armistice,’ Morton answered, returning his focus to his computer. ‘I’m just going to see if there are any POW records still surviving for him. I know the International Red Cross have digitised some of their records. Let’s take a look.’

  Margaret carried her coffee over to the table and stood behind Morton, watching excitedly as his fingers darted around the keyboard.

  ‘Here we go,’ Morton said, indicating for Margaret to read the screen. It was a scan of a simple index card, which the International Red Cross, in their role as a go-between, had compiled.

  Leonard Sageman. Soldat No. 6518 au Royal Sussex 2me Rgt. Comp. A. Disparu depuis décembre 1914.

  Rép. à Mrs Nellie Farrier, Swan Cottage, Church Lane, Westbere, Canterbury, Kent.

  Priv. Royal Sussex. Wound in thigh.

  Communiqué famille 4/1/15.

  ‘Am I right in saying that disparu depuis décembre 1914 means that he had been gone since December 1914?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Morton replied, without turning from the screen. ‘It must have been around the same time as Charles was killed. I might just take a quick look at Len’s war service, before Juliette and Uncle Jim get up and we’re required to do something other than sit in front of the computer doing genealogy all day.’

  Margaret laughed. ‘I’d be quite happy doing that. I love it.’

  ‘Me too,’ Morton agreed.

  He returned to the First World War record set and typed in Leonard Sageman’s name. He, too had a military attestation form, having joined up on the same day as Charles Farrier in 1910. Morton waited patiently until the form loaded onscreen.

  Apparent age: 22 years 8 months

  Height: 5 feet 8 inches

  Weight: 9 stone 9 lbs

  Chest measurement minimum: 27 inches

  Chest measurement maximum: 30 inches

  Complexion: Fresh

  Eyes: Blue

  Hair: Blond

  Religious denomination: C of E

  Distinctive marks, and marks indicating congenital peculiarities or previous disease: None

  Morton read the rest of the four-page document, but nothing further was noted about Leonard having been taken prisoner of war.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ Margaret said. ‘I can hear movement upstairs. Quick, read the unit diary entry for today.’ Margaret made herself comfortable and listened carefully.

  ‘One second,’ Morton said, saving Len’s military attestation form before navigating his way back to the downloaded unit diary. ‘Okay, ready?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Margaret said.

  ‘23rd December. Eppinette. Relief started at 6pm and was not completed until 6am 24th December. During these last three days of action, twenty-eight rank and file killed, wounded and missing. That’s it.’

  Margaret looked perplexed. ‘But they only just got to the front trenches.’ She paused, trying to take it all in. ‘So they troop the poor beggars through those awful conditions, make them stand in waist-deep water, get fired on, then marched back out again? Golly, it’s no wonder the war wasn’t over by Christmas.’

  ‘Morning,’ a croaky voice called from the stairs.

  It was Juliette, descending slowly in her pink dressing gown and slippers, with her hair hanging down messily around her face.

  ‘Oh, hi, Juliette—I thought it was Uncle Jim’s voice,’ Morton joked.

  ‘Ha ha,’ she mumbled, sitting at the armchair closest to the fire and tucking her knees up under herself. ‘God, I’ve got such a headache.’

  ‘We call those hangovers, in Cornwall, dear,’ Margaret laughed. ‘Coffee?’

  Juliette made an affirmative groaning sound that sent Margaret scuttling off to the kitchen. ‘Why are you up so early?’ she asked Morton.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep, so I came down to do a bit of research. I’ve just been looking at—’

  Juliette raised her hand and interjected. ‘No. Not now. Can’t cope.’

  Morton smiled. ‘Fair enough. I’m stopping, anyway,’ he said, pushing shut the laptop lid. ‘I think we’re going to head into Truro later, if you fancy it?’

  There was another groan from Juliette, but Morton couldn’t tell if it was a good groan or a bad groan.

  Three hours later, Morton, Juliette, Margaret and Jim were ambling slowly through the streets of Truro city centre, bustling with Christmas shoppers.

  ‘Won’t be a minute,’ Juliette said, darting into Next.

  He knew she would be a minute. Several minutes, in fact. Possibly even hours.

  ‘I’ll join you,’ Margaret said, leaving Morton and Jim as shopping widowers, watching the crowds of people milling about with bulging bags.

  ‘I’m really pleased you came down, you know, Morton,’ Jim said after a short silence. ‘I know Margaret was a bit nervous at first but I’ve not seen her this bouncy for a long while—ever since the girls lived at home probably. I mean, she’s always a sunny sort, if you get me, but I think it’s been a bit like a black cloud hanging over her that’s now lifted.’

  Morton met his uncle’s eyes. He had rarely seen him so serious; Morton’s entire recollection of him was as a jovial, animated giant who would never be drawn on life’s serious issues such as religion or politics. When such topics were raised in his presence, he would make a joke and politely excuse himself. ‘I’m glad we came down, too,’ Morton responded. ‘I can’t explain properly, but I just needed to come. I wasn’t trying to replace my mum, or for Aunty Margaret to be anybody else to me other than who she always was…’

  His Uncle Jim reached out and pulled Morton into a bear hug. ‘You know you’re always welcome here, boy,’ Jim whispered.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s been hard for her. I think the hardest part was carrying the lie around her whole life.’

  Morton stopped people-watching and switched his attention to his Uncle Jim. ‘What do you mean?’

  Jim’s ruddy face, already a healthy red, flushed burgundy and Morton knew there was something amiss. ‘Just that she was your birth mother and not your aunty,’ he stammered.

  It was very clear to Morton that his Uncle Jim was lying or at best economising on the truth. ‘That wasn’t the lie you were referring to, though. What did you mean?’

  ‘Nothing, I didn’t mean nothing.’

  ‘Uncle Jim, tell me!’ Morton said, suddenly feeling a wobble inside his stomach. A lie about his birth? What now? Was she not his biological mother after all?

  ‘Nothing to declare here,’ Juliette said, suddenly appearing and mock-concealing a large carrier bag behind her back.

  ‘Me neithe
r,’ Margaret said, imitating Juliette. ‘What are you boys looking so serious about?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Jim answered. ‘Come on, let’s go and find something to eat.’

  Morton stood and watched the three of them begin to move off down the street, a hollow feeling gripping and slowly tearing at his insides.

  Chapter Seven

  23rd December 1914, Eppinette, France

  Charles was right: there had been casualties last night amongst ‘C’ and ‘B’ companies. Many dead. Another old friend from the regulars, Arthur Jarret, among their number. Arthur, a born humourist with a fund of common sense, was well-regarded among the rank and file and Charles lamented his death bitterly. The Germans had stormed their trenches, resulting in the barrage of gunfire that Charles and his comrades had heard from their watery prison. Barriers had been erected hastily, followed by each side heavily bombing the other.

  Knowing that yet again he had escaped death only by chance had allowed Charles to keep something resembling his resolve last night when his mind, suffocating in loneliness, allowed in the dark whispering thoughts that questioned his very existence in this war. He, along with the rest of the company, had stood in waist-deep muddy water all night long with no relief. The men had tried singing and talking to help pass the desperately long hours but they soon found preferable the empty silence of the battlefield and their own thoughts as company. The temperature, hovering close to freezing, had anaesthetised the water holding the men in place, mercifully numbing their lower bodies.

  The sun had taken many, many hours to rise and when it had, it refused to penetrate through the dense clouds sitting just above the treeline.

  As Charles stood, rifle at the ready, an alarming thought recurred in his mind, whose seed had been sown back when the Battalion had taken the two hundred and fifty German soldiers prisoner, only for them to be fired upon by their own men: the inanity that such evolved sophistication and industrialisation could result in the complete and utter destruction of humanity. Borderless, nationless madness.

  Charles tried to clear his mind, knowing that such thoughts were highly dangerous. Yet they persisted, waiting in the recesses of his mind, with faces—real faces: dead and forever silenced. The faces of his friends. The faces of enemies.

  He recalled an attack on the evening of 1st November when, back in Château Wood, just outside Ypres, the Germans had unleashed a determined attack on the trenches held by the Second Battalion. They had fought hard and had held their position. The following day, Charles had been one of the men sent out to assess the damage. He had discovered four German bodies within the Battalion’s protective wire. Something had compelled him to do what he knew he shouldn’t; to look the men in their eyes and to see them—really see them. They had all been young, no more than eighteen years old. He had pulled out their papers and had read their names. Ernest Eucker. Kurt Fischer. Rolf Tomczyk. Hartmut Kern. Names he was certain he would remember for ever. He had thought of their parents, still blissfully unaware that their boys were lying dead with horrendous wounds and gaping holes in their bodies in a forgotten Belgian wood. Men who would likely be denied a dignified burial. Men whose flesh would be taken by animals and insects, and whose bones would be taken by the very Belgian soil on which they had fought and died.

  ‘Souvenirs?’ Stoneham had called over with a large grin on his face when he had seen Charles with their papers.

  ‘No, not souvenirs,’ Charles had responded angrily. ‘Leave them be.’ Charles knew that Stoneham was a scavenger of the dead, amassing a horde of war memorabilia.

  Stoneham had scoffed. ‘What do you think Fritz is going to want to do with this?’ He lifted up Rolf Tomczyk’s limp arm, aiming his watch in Charles’s direction.

  Charles had watched incredulously as Stoneham had bent the arm forwards, holding the watch in front of Rolf’s dead face.

  ‘Vot iz zee time?’ he had said with a hollow laugh. ‘Time to die!’

  ‘Stoneham, that’s enough!’ Charles had shouted, knowing that he had held no authority over him. But it seemed to work; Stoneham had let the soldier’s arm fall back down to his side.

  ‘This is in pretty good condition,’ Stoneham had said, turning the dead soldier’s head from side to side as he examined his Pickelhaube.

  ‘Stoneham!’ Charles had shouted, as he watched him wrest the helmet from the dead soldier’s head.

  ‘Oh shut up. You got a thing for Fritz or something?’ he said, letting the German’s head fall back to the ground.

  Charles had looked on in disbelief.

  ‘Shit,’ Stoneham had exclaimed.

  ‘What now?’ Charles had demanded, walking over to the protective wire where Stoneham stood. Then he had seen it. Just in front of the woods, lying as they fell, were more than a hundred dead German soldiers, their grey corpses lying twisted and distorted, like slumped marionettes denied life from a puppeteer.

  The two men had stood side by side, taking in the spectacle. A sudden eerie silence had descended upon the field and woods; the only sound came from the soft inquisitive scurrying of three brown rats, excitedly exploring the fresh corpses.

  Charles had turned and observed the smug look on Stoneham’s face, as if he were personally responsible for every extinguished life now in front of them. Charles had searched his being and tried to find some part of him that could share in the nationalistic elation that he knew those deaths should bring, but he just hadn’t been able to find it. They were soldiers, men just like him. Men desperately hoping for an end to the war.

  But the horror had continued. More shelling, more death and destruction had occurred in Château Wood before the Battalion had at last, on the 15th November, been relieved from Ypres. Rest and recuperation had finally been granted at Hazebrouck for the rest of the month.

  Finally, at six pm, the water-clogged arteries of the frontline trenches began to be relieved. It was several hours later when Charles Farrier was allowed to leave his post. His mind and upper body were prepared to go, but his lower body was not. As he went to leave, his legs refused to move and he fell headfirst into the freezing water. With deep, searing pain spiking into every muscle and joint in his legs and feet, Charles agonisingly lifted each leg, one in front of the other, slowly wading his way through the trench.

  When at last he set foot on the clean duckboards at the base of the communication trench, he broke. Previously stifled hot tears rolled down his cheeks, unstoppable until he breathed the first breath of air outside the trenches.

  The eyes of his comrades peered out from under their caps with knowing and understanding looks engraved on their faces.

  Chapter Eight

  15th August 1974, Westbere, Kent, England

  Nellie Sageman, clutching a small posy of orange lilies freshly cut from her garden, gently pushed open the black iron gate to the burial ground directly opposite All Saints Church in the village of Westbere. It was a still, humid day; Nellie pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and ran it across her brow, then over the nape of her neck. She had decided to make this a short visit and to get back as quickly as possible to the shaded canopy of the two elder trees at the bottom of her garden. If she felt so inclined later, she might cut down some of the elderberries for jam-making.

  She had aged well and, despite being in her eighties, Nellie had the strong well-defined features of a woman ten years younger. Her hair had whitened and her skin had thinned but inside she was still the same woman as in her twenties.

  The burial ground, an overspill from the churchyard, had seen the interment of deceased parishioners since the early 1890s. Just four weeks ago, Nellie had stood grieving as her husband, Leonard’s, body was added to their number. Yesterday afternoon a headstone had been erected to his grave.

  Nellie reached the grave and gasped. The white granite stone was exactly as ordered, but seeing her husband’s name etched in stark black letters tore at her heart anew. She silently read the inscription, tracing her bony fingers over the engraving as she
read. In loving memory of Leonard Sageman, a loving husband, father and grandfather. 2nd February 1890 – 17th July 1974.

  Taking a step forwards, Nellie placed the lilies on the grave, leant in and kissed the headstone. A long, happy and adventurous chapter of her life was now closed.

  She took a deep breath and left the burial ground, making her way back along the road to Swan Cottage, the home that she had lived in since 1915, when a life insurance policy had paid out following Charlie’s death. She looked up at the cottage with happiness. Painted cream and covered with a scented wisteria, the cottage was where many significant events in her life had taken place: she and Leonard had married from this house; their son, Alex had been born here and, of course, it was where Leonard had finally succumbed to pneumonia.

  With a smile on her face at the thought of seeing another birth here—in her lifetime—Nellie made her way inside the welcome coolness of the cottage. She collapsed into her armchair in the lounge and exhaled noisily.

  A light tapping on the lounge window made Nellie sit up with a start. The particular rhythm of the tapping told her that her son was at the door. She stood up and caught herself in profile in the mirror above the fireplace. ‘Goodness, look at the state of you, Nellie Sageman.’ She regretted allowing herself to doze after her visit to Len’s grave, having intended to have a tidy up prior to her visitor’s arrival.

  She pulled open the front door and smiled. In front of her was her sullen son, Alfred, and his daughter, Margaret, who cowered behind him like a terrified animal. ‘Alfred,’ Nellie said in plain acknowledgement. She leant across to catch a better look at Margaret. She hadn’t seen her since the funeral and noticed immediately how big she had suddenly become. ‘Hello, Margaret,’ she greeted, extending her arms out and pulling her into a hug.