The Maltese Angel

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘And you think I’ll go the same way?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Her tone was emphatic now. Yet she added, ‘It’s the look of you at times, and you keep things bottled up. David says you do.’

  He brought her head up from his shoulder, saying, ‘Then I’m discussed between you and David? Why?’

  ‘Oh, we have a natter at times. He’s very fond of you. Well, he thinks you’re great, your principles and all that. Quite candidly, I think all you fellows in that unit, in all your units, are great because of your principles. But you haven’t got to let them get on top of you, not out here.’

  She now put her hand up and stroked his cheeks and her touch sent a quiver through him. She began to unloosen his tie and the last button of his coat that hadn’t been undone, and he did not stay her hand. And when a few minutes later they were both standing up and her last piece of clothing fell to the floor, she stood looking at him for a moment before, stretching her hand behind her, she rolled back the blanket on the bed. And then they were both lying side by side, and when she whispered, ‘You hadn’t to get wounded,’ he made no answer, but as his lips passed over her face he wasn’t seeing it.

  After rising from her side, he got into his clothes before, bending over her again, he kissed her on the brow and said, ‘Thank you, Susie. Thank you.’

  She was half asleep as she murmured, ‘You’re welcome any time, sir.’

  There was no longer any moonlight as he stepped out into the night, but he stood looking at the stars in the sky. He was feeling greatly relaxed, changed somehow. Would anybody believe that had been his first night with a woman? No, he could hardly believe it himself. And now the question he asked was, why had he put it off for so long? Why? For it had been the most marvellous, most wonderful experience. He could face the morrow now and the days ahead on the train, for there’d always be Susie to come back to. And what about the seven days’ leave? Yes what about it…?

  As it turned out, she wasn’t able to get seven days off, but was given a forty-eight hour pass. And they spent it in a little village some long way behind the lines. And he experienced a feeling of comfort and ease that was like a soothing salve on his mind.

  Five

  Things were going from bad to worse. They all knew this and it was being voiced in many quarters: where were the bloody generals who were ordering them forward only for them to be thrown back on all sectors again and again? Exacerbating comments but, in truth, very telling when voiced by the wounded crammed now like sardines in the trains. Why didn’t they come up to the front? No; they were sitting in their comfortable billets and drinking their bloody port after dinner, toasting the Royal Family…England…the Flag.

  And the officers. Who did they think they were anyway? Young snots, hardly able to wipe their own noses. When it came to leading men…leading men, huh! Doing it in their pants, some of them, but they still looked down their noses at you.

  Yet in the trains there was no distinction of rank, no officers and men, only a bloody mass of mutilated bodies. Even so, here and there, a voice would rise in defence of a particular officer, or even a sergeant who had perhaps risked his own life and in doing so had enabled a speaker to be on that particular train.

  He had stopped writing so many letters home. Although he had the occasional comfort of Susie whenever she was free, the horror of the war seemed, at times, to be turning his brain: as David described it, the world had turned into a slaughterhouse and the abattoir was very messy. And to the comment of their latest addition, one Sydney Allington, ‘God made the back to bear the burden,’ David immediately retorted, ‘Yes, Mother Shipton,’ a reference which the young man did not understand, but nevertheless one which simply strengthened his growing opinion of Gerald, David and Jim as being strange company, and further made him question why any of them were there at all, at least in their capacities as non-combatants. And he continued to address them formally.

  It was in March 1918 that three outstanding things happened, two of which were to propel Gerald’s mind into the oblivion for which he would often crave in order to escape the horror of the everyday scenes he was forced not only to look upon, but to deal with.

  The first took place when again the train was making slow progress back to base. They had taken on four sitting passengers, now propped up against the end partition of the carriage.

  While entering the train, he had noticed that two of these men had helped each other, one using his only usable arm to help his companion hop. And now bending down to the nearest man, he asked, ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Not too bad. But Lawson, my friend here, I think his leg’s giving him gip.’ And the tone of the man’s voice made Gerald look more closely at the mud-covered uniform. Then he leant across to the man Lawson and said, ‘Feeling low?’

  ‘Not too bad, sir. I’m all right, thanks to the captain here.’

  Gerald turned his attention back to the other man, saying now, ‘Rough show, sir?’

  ‘Yes, you could say that.’ He was about to speak again when Allington, the odd man out of their particular team, tapped him on the shoulder, saying, ‘Mr Ramsmore, you’re needed further down; Mr Mayhew requires your assistance.’

  After nodding at the soldiers, Gerald turned away, thinking to himself, Requires your assistance. That fellow got on his nerves more than did the war. He had almost said, bloody nerves and bloody war, and he must stop that: he was becoming as bad as the others in using such expletives with every other word.

  He found David having trouble with a delirious and very ill man: ‘Get the needle,’ was David’s greeting, and inclined his head further along the carriage to explain his call for assistance: ‘Jim’s got his own hands full.’

  Gerald knew it was no use saying, ‘What about Allington?’ because David couldn’t stand the fellow. How odd that one individual could mar a team. Yet if they were to go into it, Allington’s motive for being here at this moment was purer than theirs, for in his case God had come into it.

  It was more than an hour later when he made his way back to the men propped up at the end of the carriage. The train had gathered some speed, and he could see that the private was dozing. The officer had his eyes wide open, and, on seeing him he put up his good hand to beckon Gerald down to him.

  ‘Ramsmore?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s my name.’

  ‘Strange coincidence, so is mine.’

  ‘Really? Well, well, it’s a small world, as they say.’

  ‘May I ask if your Christian name is Gerald?’

  ‘You may, and it is.’

  Gerald straightened up a little; then bending again, he peered into the young officer’s face and said, ‘Don’t tell me your father’s name is Beverly?’

  There was a small chuckle now as the young man answered, ‘No, but my grandfather’s is.’

  ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

  Somewhat stiffly now Gerald answered, ‘I bet you have.’

  ‘Oh, not in the way you’re inferring.’ The words had been rapidly spoken. ‘Oh, no; I mean, along this route. Those over there know damn all about it. I’m…I’m very pleased to meet you.’ And when the hand came out Gerald shook it warmly.

  ‘My name is Will. We must get together and have a crack after this. Are you on the same run all the time?’

  ‘Most of it.’

  ‘My God! You chaps certainly have had your bellyful of war and no medals. How long are these runs?’

  ‘Eight, ten hours; it all depends.’

  The young officer peered at his wristwatch and remarked, ‘We’ve been going for five and a half hours. Good Lord!’ And the next moment he asked, ‘Have you been home lately?’

  ‘No; not since I came out here last year.’

  There was a pause; then peering up at Gerald, the younger man said somewhat thoughtfully, ‘You know, I have never seen my step-grandmother, or is she my step-great-grandmother? Yes, she would be, wouldn’t she? They say she’s a very nice
lady.’

  ‘Yes, she is. And you must rectify your omission when you get back. She would be delighted to see you. Although, as I understand it, most of the house has been taken over by the military.’

  ‘My grandfather often talked of the Hall where he was brought up. But he seemed to think you had lost all the land.’

  ‘Not quite; there’s still a few acres left. I ran a smallholding, you know.’

  ‘You didn’t!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good for you. You must be longing to get back out of this hell-hole.’

  Gerald did not answer but straightened up. Was he longing to get back? He’d had a strange thought in his mind of late that he would never get back, that he would never live in that house again. It had become an obsessive thought about which he could do nothing other than aim to ignore it.

  There was a commotion further down the carriage: a man was crying out, not for his mother or father, but for someone called Little Jackie, perhaps a son.

  He intimated that he must go, and the young man nodded and said, ‘We mustn’t lose touch,’ in answer to which he himself nodded and muttered, ‘No. No…’

  He saw his distant relative twice while he was in the base hospital prior to his being moved on down to the port when they had shaken hands and promised to meet up again. Will had also said he would go and see his step-great-grandmother.

  The second thing that occurred shocked his system more than even war scenes and the ambulance trains had done.

  The last stretcher had been passed over to the hospital orderlies, who had protested loudly as to where it was expected it should be put. ‘They’re hanging from the ceiling,’ said one. ‘And if they don’t soon clear some of them to the boats, you can put off your next run, for they might as well lie outside where they are, as lie outside here.’

  David and Jim had heard it all before, and they gave as much as they got, but Gerald had turned away. He was now making for the showers and his bed. But having to pass the nursing staff kitchen and day quarters, he stopped a nurse who was coming out of the door and asked, Is Susie about?’

  She glanced behind her into the room, then closed the door; and now, looking up at him, she said stiffly, ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘What do you mean, she’s gone?’ He turned and looked about him. There was no evidence of a bomb having been dropped overnight.

  The girl now said, ‘She left yesterday. She’s been posted.’

  ‘Posted! Where to?’

  She shrugged her shoulders; and when it seemed she was going to walk away, he said, ‘Well, do you know where she’s been posted to?’

  ‘Not quite. I hear it’s back home…sort of training job or something.’ She now smiled and bit on her lip before walking away, leaving him standing perplexed.

  It had been three days since he had seen her, and then only to have a quick word. Surely, she must even then have had an inkling it was about to happen. Why hadn’t she mentioned it to him? Why? She had been a bit…well, offhand lately. He swung about to go hurriedly in search of David.

  He met him emerging from the bunkhouse, and without any lead-up he said to him, ‘Do you know anything about this? Susie’s gone, they say. Well, the nurse seemed to think that she might have been sent home.’

  ‘Yes.’ David glanced away before looking back at him, then said, ‘Yes, that’s what I understand, she’s been sent home. I think she’s going into a training job there.’ He smiled now, rather sadly, as he said, ‘She’ll be a great miss, will our Susie. She was a great comforter. Oh yes.’

  Gerald’s eyes narrowed and he moved his head slightly to the side without taking his eyes off David. There had been something in that tone he hadn’t liked, that he wished he hadn’t heard, that he didn’t want to understand. Still he pursued with his questioning: ‘What do you mean by a great comforter?’

  ‘Well, she was, wasn’t she? Great girl, Susie. I knew it would come as a bit of a shock to you. It was to me, I can tell you. And not only to me. Oh, Susie’s little grey nest in the West will be sadly missed.’

  He was seeing the room now: the boiler, the table, the oil lamp, the frying pan, the bed. Oh, yes, the bed, and the comfort of that bed. There wasn’t much room in the bed …

  David’s voice seemed to come to him from a distance. Although it was in an undertone it was very loud in his head, for he was saying, ‘Don’t look like that, man. You must have known. God! You must have known. And you know, you were favoured: it lasted a long time compared…’

  When Gerald’s fist shot out it was warded off painfully by David knocking it aside. But when he repeated the action, he felt the impact of David’s fist on his mouth. And he not only tasted his own blood but smelt it, and it smelt as strong as a carriage full of mangled flesh. He knew he was now being pinned against the hut wall by David’s thick stubby arms and chest and, with his face close to his he was spilling words over him: ‘All I can say, chum, is you’re a bigger bloody idiot than I thought. Couldn’t you see she was one of nature’s bedwarmers? And I say, thank God for it. She knew what she was doing all right, and she enjoyed it. There are women made like that. And we knew what we were doing, too, the risks we ran with any of them…and what they ran an’ all. Anyway, you’re not an infant. You know what’s going on. Why did you think she was any different when she came so easy, as she did? It should have told you.’

  David slowly eased himself off Gerald’s shoulders, muttering as he did so, ‘Sorry. You’d better have your lip seen to. Funny, but you’re the last person on God’s earth I expected to battle with in this bloody war. The only thing I can say is, I didn’t start it, and I’m not going to say now that I understand your reaction, because I just don’t. I was always under the impression that you knew what you were doing and you knew who you were doing it with. Anyway, I know the matron’s been on her track for some time. She was giving her girls a bad name. You know, some of them in there’—he jerked his head back towards the hospital—‘are wearing chastity belts. Of course, I don’t blame them, nor do I blame the Susies of this world, for God knows what we would do without them. The alternative, as I see it, has always left a nasty taste in my mouth.’ He now leant forward and looked into the white, stiff-drawn face of the man whom he liked and called a friend, and he said, ‘In spite of our high-falutin’ moral stand against this wholesale slaughter, we remain men with the needs of men. There’s no bloody saints among us. Some heroes mind, those who are back in the English prisons. Oh yes, those back there in the English prisons are the real heroes for you. Only yesterday I heard about the treatment meted out to a couple of them, and it’s unbelievable that Englishmen are torturing Englishmen. Give me the Germans any day, rather than such individuals.’ He paused now before again leaning forward and saying, ‘Come on. Come on, old fellow. Say something. Let’s forget about this. Come on.’

  But Gerald couldn’t say anything. He pulled himself from the wall, wiped the back of his hand across his bloodied chin, then turned and walked away. And David stood looking after him for a moment, then he bowed his head and muttered, ‘Damn and blast!’

  He was no fool. He was no simple-minded individual; he was an educated, highly intelligent man. Without being swollen-headed, that was how he saw himself. He saw the futility of war and the greed and the insensibility of those who created it and of those who kept it going. Like drovers driving their herds of cattle to the slaughterhouse. But then, not quite: they sent in their cattle, their battalions, but they did so from quarters well behind the lines, some even from as far away as London.

  Yet being knowledgeable in this way, why hadn’t he the insight to realise that first night that, unlike himself, she was well practised in the art of so-called loving. As she had admitted, she had wanted him for a long time, but then she hadn’t said, as she could have, that he wasn’t like the rest of her clientèle.

  Clientèle.

  My God! What had he just thought? He wasn’t just a fool, he was an idiot; and more so, for marriage had cros
sed his mind. He had gone as far as to wonder if his mother would take to her. He did, however, recall the doubt there. But why should there have been a doubt? He had never gone into that, for he knew the words to describe her that his mother would have used: cheap and slightly common. But would that have deterred him, the way he was then feeling about her?

  How had he felt about her? Had it been love or just body hunger? Were you capable of distinguishing between the two when you were in that state?

  During the following days different members of the unit remarked on the change in Ramsmore. He had never had a lot to say, unless you could get him into a conversation on books or poetry. But now he scarcely ever opened his mouth. That was, until around the 17th of March, when a long section of the front was pinned down for two days and nights by gas shells. And this was the third and final thing that sent him into oblivion, albeit not right away.

  First, he had to experience the results of the gas attacks. The cases were horrifying: a choking, throttled mass of humanity. For two solid days and nights the Germans had bombarded the great stretch of the front with gas shells. And this was soon commonly recognised as being the prelude to their making a big push. The Red Cross and its orderlies, their own Friends’ Unit and its orderlies, everyone available was mustered to cope with the influx, which soon developed into a mêlée. Even so, it became evident to many and was remarked upon that Ramsmore was not just talking, that he had taken to much swearing and blaspheming. And David made it clear he preferred the dour man, that to him the present pattern had all the signs of an approaching breakdown.