Tomorrow, Jerusalem

by Tomorrow, Jerusalem (retail) (epub)

  Hannah worked for eighteen hours, slept fitfully for four and then came back on duty. The wards were packed now and the stretchers had overflowed into the compound, the wounded patiently waiting their turn, the more able-bodied sharing their cigarettes and their cheerful irreverent camaraderie with their less fortunate comrades, the delirious babbling incoherently to the open sky, those beyond help or relief lying in the summer dust as the flicker of life died within them. For two days and then for three the terrible traffic continued; the evacuation trains took those well enough to be moved, making room for a new influx. Many of the men now being brought in had lain beneath the sun for a day, perhaps two, and the signs of gangrene were already there. Hannah worked herself – as they all did – to the edge of exhaustion, then returned to the task after a snatched meal and an hour or two’s disturbed sleep. It was difficult to keep track of the days. She heard in a message from Ben through one of his colleagues that Peter’s battalion was fighting in the north, had sustained heavy casualties but had now partially achieved its objective and had dug in. Peter had come unscathed through that first terrible day.

  There was no news of Giles.

  At first she managed to push the thought of him to the back of her mind; there was so much to do, so very little time to think of one’s own personal worries; but yet the rat gnawed.

  By the fifth day the battle had shifted a little away from them, two evacuation trains had pulled away with their load within the last twenty-four hours and the Clearing Station was a little less like a blood-stained madhouse, though still a steady stream of wounded was coming in. Weary to the bone, the staff of the Station managed a little more time to themselves, time to eat, to lift their heads and to see that the lovely weather had held, time above all to sleep.

  And time to worry.

  When Fiona came to tell her that Matron was looking for her, her thoughts flew immediately to Giles.

  Fiona shook her head sympathetically. ‘Sorry, old girl, I couldn’t tell you – there was a phone call from your brother, I think – the doctor one that is – best you cut along and find out.’

  She had never seen Matron so tired; the small, determined face was grey with fatigue, the eyes deeply shadowed; but she smiled as Hannah entered her small cubbyhole and Hannah’s heart lightened a little.

  ‘Hannah, my dear – there’s news come through.’

  ‘Giles?’

  Lady Bennet shook her head. ‘Ah – no – I’m afraid not.’

  So disappointed was she – and so terribly relieved – that for a moment she lost all sense of what was being said. No news. That, surely, must be good news? And – if he had been dead – surely she would know? ‘I’m sorry?’ she asked, a little dazedly.

  ‘Your brother-in-law,’ Matron repeated gently. She glanced at a piece of paper on her desk. ‘Bedford? Ralph Bedford?’

  Hannah looked at her blankly. ‘What about him?’

  ‘Your brother rang – your brother-in-law’s been wounded. Quite badly I’m afraid.’

  Hannah looked at her in total incomprehension. ‘Ralph?’

  With infinite patience Lady Bennet nodded, waiting for the news to sink in.

  ‘Ralph’s been wounded?’

  ‘Yes.’ Matron sat back in her chair tiredly. Her desk was militarily neat, the piles of paper regimented and weighted down with empty shell cases. ‘On the first day. But the news is good – he’s on the mend and on his way home. Major Patten seemed to think he’ll do. He’s quite the hero it seems.’

  Hannah stared at her, this time as if one of them had taken leave of her senses. ‘Ralph? A hero?’

  Lady Bennet nodded. ‘He’s been recommended for a medal – I don’t know the details of course, but according to your brother he put up quite a show. Major Patten asked me to tell you.’

  ‘Yes. Of course. Thank you.’ Hannah, still bemused, stood up and turned to the door.

  ‘Hannah? I gather there’s no news of Captain Redfern?’

  Hannah shook her head. ‘No. No news.’

  Matron nodded again, kindly. ‘No news is probably good news, child. Try not to worry.’

  ‘Yes, Matron.’

  She thought often in the days that followed of Ralph, and of the apparent heroism that had so unexpectedly earned him a medal; but she shared her thoughts with no one, not even with Ben when he managed the briefest of calls en route to one of the other clearing stations. Ben had a little more information – Ralph had, it seemed, with total disregard for personal danger, single-handedly rescued several men who had been mown down by an enemy machine-gun as they tried to break through the wire to the German trenches. Time and again he had gone in alone under the hail of bullets and dragged them clear. In the end his luck had failed him and he himself had lain wounded until darkness before anyone could bring him back to the lines. Ben shook his head, his face bemused and affectionate. ‘Ralph! Who’d have guessed it? It’s amazing the courage someone can show under such circumstances. I have to admit I’d never have thought it of him.’

  ‘No,’ Hannah said.

  ‘I spoke to one of the men he rescued. “Brave as a lion,” he called him. “No concern for his own safety at all.” Good old Ralph, eh? Not that we should be surprised that he’s come up trumps.’

  ‘No.’ There was no doubt at all in Hannah’s mind as to what had happened; Ralph Bedford had decided to die and had survived, an unlikely hero. She could imagine now the rue of his smile as he contemplated such unlooked-for outcome.

  And Giles? – Giles, who had so wanted to live? Where was he?

  The answer came in a letter from his mother, the words restrained and sympathetic, the writing graceful and determined. Hannah read it blindly, ‘—found your photograph and letters among his possessions – so terribly sorry to have to tell you – hope very much that perhaps some day we might meet – a terrible loss to us, and I think to the world – what a very dreadful and wasteful thing this war is.’ The words blurred. She crumpled the paper in her hand, bent her head to rest her forehead upon it,what a very dreadful and wasteful thing this war is.’ She closed her eyes. Outside the whistles shrieked, heralding a raid.

  She did not move.

  * * *

  ‘Bloody war.’ Sally leaned at the window of Ben’s room, looking out into the peace of the château’s park. Wounded men strolled or chatted in the August sunshine, wheelchairs were pushed along the paths by uniformed nurses. A row of beds had been pulled out into the sunshine and their occupants lay enjoying the warmth on skin that was pale and bloodless. Ben had been away for nearly four weeks, on active duty at the Front. His message that afternoon had ended a time of nagging worry; he might not have been out there in No Man’s Land with a rifle in his hand, but she knew the man well enough to know that he would not shirk danger. She had walked into his arms and they had made love almost without speaking. They had lain afterwards, limbs entangled, for a very long while, warm flesh to warm flesh, steadily beating hearts, whole, healthy bodies; alive and together and, for the moment at least, safe. In common with a large proportion of the rest of the world they were finding it harder and harder to think of tomorrow. ‘I swore I wouldn’t let this happen again,’ Ben had said into her hair, his big hand caressing the soft skin of her belly.

  She had tugged at his hair, hard enough to hurt. ‘Enough of that sort of talk, you,’ she had said. ‘You may have survived four weeks in close proximity to ferry – but don’t fancy your chances with me if you start that!’ And they had made love again violently, his hunger fed by hers. She turned now to look at him. He lay, still naked, on the bed his arms behind his head, eyes closed. They flickered open now at her words.

  She crossed to the bed, sat beside him, ran a hand across the thick hair of his chest. ‘I was just thinking of poor Hannah.’

  He trapped her hand in his, brought it to his lips.

  ‘Rotten luck, Giles going like that.’

  ‘Yes.’

  More than a month after that fateful day on the Som
me the battle still raged the length of the Front, a deadly stalemate of death from which neither side could withdraw.

  He opened her hand, kissed the flattened palm. ‘Your friend – what’s his name? – Eddie? He’s all right?’ The question was very casual.

  She eyed him. ‘He’s fine.’ She grinned a little, ‘He’s got his stripe back. He’ll make brigadier yet.’

  ‘You’ve seen him?’

  ‘He’s written once or twice.’ She had spoken to Ben about Eddie in the same vein as she had told him of her other friends; it had surprised her to detect a faint and to her amusing trace of jealousy in his references to the younger man. She had not, of course, told Eddie about Ben. She had not told anyone.

  She stood up reluctantly. ‘I ought to go. I’m on duty in half an hour.’

  He swung his legs to the floor and stood, cupping her face in his hands and kissing her nose. ‘You’ll come again?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He wrapped long arms about her. ‘I hate this hole and corner business. I wish—’

  She pulled away from him, shaking her head. ‘Don’t. Don’t wish. There are altogether too many things to wish for, and most of them aren’t possible anyway. Don’t even talk about it. Just take things as they come. It’s all we can do.’ She had noticed, without comment, the small pile of letters on the table that had obviously been awaiting his return, all of them inscribed with Charlotte’s pretty, feminine writing. ‘I can’t come tomorrow – the colonel’s got me booked all day. But – perhaps the next day?’ She kissed him lightly on the cheek and not so lightly on the mouth, then pushed him away, laughing at the all too obvious signs of his arousal. ‘You’re a positive ruffian, Ben Patten – a greedy one at that! And I’ve got to go!’ She checked in the afternoon silence of the building that the coast was clear and slipped through the door and down the stairs.

  He watched her go from the window, swinging across the park with her long, almost masculine stride, stopping for a brief word with a man in a wheelchair, her head bent attentively to his. He picked up Charlotte’s letters, which he had not yet opened, looked at them for a long moment, slammed them back down upon the table with a sudden sharp movement of savage frustration, and turned back to the window, his face grim.

  Sally had gone.

  II

  The battle for the Somme, which had deteriorated to a bleak and exhausting war of attrition, went on – into its second month, its third, and then incredibly on into October, with the casualty lists mounting on both sides. In the British mind, through the medium of the newspapers and their stirring prose, place names and nationalities became linked, in heroism and in blood; Thiepval and the Ulstermen, Beaumont-Hamel and the Newfoundlanders and Highlanders, the Australians at Pozière, the South Africans in Delville Wood; and all along the line the county regiments and shattered pals battalions fought with dogged courage. Everyone in the area was involved in the desperate, bloody and apparently interminable struggle; by early October Sally was spending as much time ferrying supplies and medical teams to the forward dressing huts and casualty clearing stations as she was in her duties with the colonel. Whenever she could she made her destination the Number Three Station outside Albert, so as to catch a few precious moments with Hannah. Number Three was one of four clearing stations clustered along the road and the makeshift railway out of the town. The Station was a big one, with several wards and two operating tents, and it was well situated right beside the railway siding so that the movable wounded could be transferred to the trains with a minimum of effort. A ruined farmhouse and a huge barn stood by the side of the road. The compound was very close to the front line and often suffered shelling and aircraft attack; it never failed to amuse Sally to see Hannah and her fellow nursing personnel neatly garbed in uniform and tin hat. The wounded were ‘taken in’ in a steady flow.

  On a day early in October Sally popped her head around Ben’s door and was rewarded by the warmth of the smile that lit his face at sight of her. She kissed him swiftly and lightly. ‘Can’t stop – I’ve literally got two minutes. I’m taking some supplies for Number Three – any messages for Hannah?’

  He hugged her, shook his head. ‘Nothing special. Just my love. And Ralph’s home – she probably knows – limping but whole. At least he’s safe. He won’t be back.’

  She had no need to ask where he had the information from; a letter in Charlotte’s clear hand lay upon the table. ‘Any other news?’ She was elaborately casual, refusing to ignore it. She hated those letters. Each time they came she saw – almost felt – the change in him. Ben Patten’s conscience had a razor’s edge that nothing it seemed could dull and that a letter from Charlotte could hone painfully fine. Their most passionate arguments always materialized after the arrival of such a letter, though, infuriatingly, Ben would constantly deny it.

  ‘They’ve had some more bad raids, but since we’ve started shooting the blighters down they aren’t so keen, apparently.’

  ‘I saw that in the paper the other day. They seemed to think that the zepps are too vulnerable now – that the raids will stop pretty soon.’

  ‘I hope so. Charlotte gets pretty scared, I think.’

  There was a very faintly awkward silence. I get pretty scared myself sometimes; the words were so mawkishly obvious that she absolutely could not bring herself to speak them. ‘And Doctor Will?’

  ‘Working himself into the ground, as you’d expect. Tea? I’ve just made a cup—’

  She shook her head. ‘I really don’t have the time. I just popped in on my way to the stores.’

  Ben reached for the battered tin teapot. ‘What’s all this about Toby registering for conscription?’

  Half-way to the door she stopped and very slowly turned. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  He looked up, surprised at her tone. ‘Toby. Hasn’t he told you? He’s registered to join up next spring.’

  ‘He can’t,’ she said flatly. ‘He isn’t old enough.’

  There was a small silence. Then, ‘We don’t actually know that, do we?’ Ben asked gently.

  She shrugged. ‘He isn’t eighteen. I’m certain of it. He couldn’t have been more than three years old when I found him and that was in 1904. That makes him fifteen or sixteen.’

  ‘According to Charlotte he swears he’s older. He looks it, she says.’

  ‘But the school?’

  ‘They’ve agreed to let him go, apparently. He’s registered, with their permission, claiming that he’s eighteen next April – he’s hoping to get a commission.’

  ‘Is he indeed?’ Sally’s voice was tight with anger. ‘Well, we’ll see about that.’

  ‘Sally—’

  She turned on him. ‘Keep out of it, Ben. It’s none of your business.’

  ‘But – there’s nothing you can do.’

  ‘Oh no? Watch me. I’ll get leave – I’ll shoot myself in the bloody foot if I have to – I’ll get back there and I’ll bang some bloody sense into his head if it’s the last thing I do! Of all the harebrained, stupid bloody notions I ever heard!’ Fuming, she had reached the door. She turned. ‘I’ll have to go or the quartermaster will give the run to someone else. I’ll see you tomorrow?’ She was brusque with worry and with hurt. But still she smiled at him.

  He nodded. She blew him a brief kiss. As she left he turned back to his letter.

  * * *

  Sally could not get Toby out of her mind. As she jolted painfully slowly along the rutted road she brooded upon the news. She had received a letter from him just last week – brief, blandly cheerful, totally uncommunicative, as she had come to expect. He wrote at least once every two or three weeks in reply to her doggedly more frequent letters. Not once had he mentioned joining the army. ‘Silly little bugger!’ Thoroughly put out she cursed viciously as she was forced to bump off the road to avoid a shell hole. The traffic in the opposite direction was getting heavier; ambulances, trucks, converted gun carriages with planks resting upon them on which sat wounded men, horses and carts.
Even the odd group of walking wounded, thumbs up, hoping for a lift as each successive vehicle passed. Vaguely she registered the unusual increase, but was too concerned with her mental argument with Toby to take much notice. If this stinking war went on for another two or three years then he would have to go; but to lie about his age – voluntarily to put himself in such danger – Christ alive, the little fool had no idea what he was getting into!

  The volume of oncoming traffic had grown all at once to perilous proportions; rumbling and jolting amidst clouds of dust, spreading across the road in a flood. Once or twice she was forced to a stop in the face of it. The barrage too, a mile, perhaps two away, was heavier than usual and seemed to be getting more violent. Jolted at last from her preoccupation, and suddenly alert, she manoeuvred her careful way through the last half-mile of crowded road.

  The Clearing Station when she reached it was a scene of organized chaos.

  She left the car and ran into the huge compound. ‘What’s going on?’ She grabbed the arm of a passing orderly.

  ‘We’re evacuating, miss. Jerry’s broken through the line in two places. Give an ’and, would yer? There’s a train in.’

  ‘Of course. How can I help?’

  ‘Walkin’ wounded to the front of the train – we’re mostly loaded, but there’s a few could do with a bit of an ’and.’ He indicated a shuffling line of men, some supported by their comrades, others limping upon crutches or, eyes bandaged, being led, each man with a hand on the shoulder of the man in front. Sally hurried to where a patient, his own arm in plaster was with his good arm supporting a limping boy.

  ‘Here – let me help—’ she hitched the lad’s arm over her shoulder.

  He grinned, the smile all but toothless, his scarred face cheerful. ‘Thanks, miss.’

  They struggled to the crowded train, and she helped hitch the wounded lad aboard. Shells screamed wickedly close, and their bursting concussed the ears. Sally rammed her tin hat squarely upon her head as she ran back down the line of walking wounded. A young man sat upon a packing case, head drooping, crutch propped by his side.