Between Friends (69 page)

And so, knowing that she must protect the child Martin had left, still a baby and protected in the security of the house but soon to grow into an inquisitive and venturesome child, she turned to the only two people in the world she knew she could trust for there was no doubt she could no longer bear the uncertainty and fear alone.

NAMES SUCH AS
Liége, Mons, Marne, Aisne and Ypres, the Somme and Passchendaele, unheard of before the start of the war were now as familiar as the names of one’s own children as battle after battle was fought over ground in which scarce an inch was gained.

The bewildered soldier, as he went out obediently each day to be slaughtered, wondered at the inescapable madness of his superiors, crawling back each time to the same trench he had lived in and died in for over twelve months. Now and again there were ‘Big Pushes’ and the enemy would be thrown back a few miles but the Germans would then retaliate and the bit of ground won at such cost would be lost again and the ‘no mans land’ of half a mile between the two opposing armies was re-instated.

Great Britain’s first big offensive began on July 1st 1916 at the battle of the Somme and was to last until November. For the first three months the Allied forces pressed on, taking small villages at enormous sacrifice of troops but never succeeding in breaking through the German line. The approach of winter and the exhaustion of the men put an end to the active fighting, and Sargeant Tom Fraser wrote cheerfully to his wife about the sociability of the French people he had met and the loveliness of the weather in that fateful month. He had eaten the tin of apricots she had sent him and found them delicious. He had played cards the night before and won a ‘bob or two’ but then he was known to be lucky and he was in the best of health. He treasured the photograph she had sent of herself and Beth, he said, and could not get over how the small girl had grown and they were to take care of themselves for he loved them both dearly.

Of the horrors he saw daily he wrote not at all. Of the yellow mass of lyddite shrapnel which burst indiscriminately, taking half a dozen men with it, of blood soaked soldiers in such pain they wept like children, of frightened men, scattered and hurrying and stumbling back towards their own lines, holding in the blood from wounds which leaked and would not stop, of ‘Pals’ falling to the
left
and right of him, of tumbling into trenches in which the dead and wounded lay rotting together, of blood and vomit and rats as big as rabbits, of stink-holes and dug-outs and rum-jars which was the soldiers’ only comfort, of fearful screams and anguished moans and the terror of men who were obliged to conceal it and went mad in the process. Of shell-shock and trench-foot which swelled the feet to three times their normal size, of lice and dysentry and the sight of a trench when a shell burst in the heart of it, effectively shredding twenty-five men, turning it a brilliant crimson with their blood. Of the mud which captured complete regiments and of men sitting in it, lying in it crying like babies because they could go no further, of British soldiers gasping and choking and dying of the gas which their own leaders sent up.

No, Tom Fraser did not write of this but stored it away inside him where it lay in wait for him. He wrote of skylarks soaring heavenward in the deep blue bowl of the sky, of the pipe of tobacco he had enjoyed and the pleasure of his wife’s letters to him, of the comfortable ‘billet’ he had made for himself and the food parcel he had received, not even able to tell her of how he longed for her, or Beth or the home he loved for his mind could not cope with the memory of it.

But Meg Fraser, and all the other wives and sweethearts and mothers who saw their husbands and lovers and sons come home to ecstatic welcomes, who begged innocently to be told of ‘what it was like over there’ and who were dismayed by the almost sullen silence with which their questions were received, knew by now that there was something so utterly appalling over there in France their men could not speak of it. These women lived with the dread and fear, the ever present pre-occupation with death or mutilation. Hundreds of thousands of British ‘Tommies’ were losing their lives, their limbs, their sight and their reason on the battlefields of France and though Tom had remained unscathed as yet, escaping shrapnel and whizz-bangs, bullets and shells, surely, Meg’s agonised mind asked, by the law of averages his turn would come.

No, he said in his letters, though she had not asked, he was lucky and even joked about those with whom he served and their efforts to stand beside him when they went over the top, since it followed that as he bore a charmed life, so would those who clustered about him!

The Germans had started bombing raids in 1915, by Zeppelin
or
airships, great clumsy monsters which were soon shot out of the sky by the British fighter airplanes, the Hunter ‘Wren’ amongst them, which went up to get them, but in 1916 the enemy began bombing by airplane causing great confusion and resentment for the British people had never, like those in France, suffered war at first hand. The whole country was blacked out whenever an enemy airplane was sighted and during the raids, over one thousand ordinary British people lost their lives.

The battle of the Somme brought another terror to those at home, a mixture of dread and numbness which was overwhelming, in the daily chronicle of the wastage of young lives which was reported in
The Times
. In it was printed the names of those lost under the headline ‘Roll of Honour’. Regiment after regiment was named, seven or eight columns wide, ‘killed in action’, ‘died of wounds’, ‘wounded’, ‘seriously wounded’ … and on and on in unbearable record. In one day, the first of the battle, the British Army lost 19,240 dead and 57,470 wounded and publication of these names was spread over many weeks and was almost too much for the nation to comprehend since they could not believe it had happened. What had become of the great and glorious adventure, the fun, the lark, the expectation that it would all be over by Christmas they asked one another voicelessly, and there was no answer but despair!

But perhaps the greatest living dread was of the telegram! Just the sight of a Post Office boy in the street caused mothers to cry out in agony and apprehension and an unexpected knock on the door was the signal for panic! The poor lad who, as he often said, was not to be blamed for what was contained in the yellow envelope, was hated beyond any other and in the rural areas, should he appear in a country lane or on a dusty footpath, he was often followed by sympathetic women to his place of destination so that they might give comfort to the recipient of his bad news.

It was a Sunday in October and though the factories worked seven days a week she had taken the day off to spend it with her growing daughter. She was often saddened at how much of her childhood she was missing but in her effort to cram the work of two hours into one she was often forced to be at the field for eighteen hours in twenty-four and was acutely reminded of her days at the Adelphi when she had been learning her trade as an hotelier. Then, as now, she had taught herself to manage on a few snatched hours of sleep whenever she could, to catnap in her office
over
a cup of tea and she had become thin in her continual struggle to keep up with the demands of the war contracts for aircraft, ambulances, motor cycles, staff cars and armoured cars to be shipped to the front.

The past years had been hard on Meg Fraser. As the war escalated the pressure for the manufacture of the small, single seater airplane, like ‘Wren II’ was growing with every week. Martin’s machine was capable of great speed and rapid climbing and her new design made her ideal for air battles. Machine guns were mounted in front and accurately timed to fire between the whirling blades of the propeller.

Hour after hour, round the clock, ‘Hunter Aviation’ turned out the small machines which the Royal Flying Corps so desperately needed and it was a measure of the advance in the development and manufacture of the aeroplane that the 211 machines they had flying in 1914 had become, by the end of the war, a staggering 25,000, half of which were equipped for fighting and bombing!

Though Meg had men building, testing, working in the drawing-office from Martin’s original design, she must somehow keep the whole running, with ‘Hunter Automobiles’, as one well co-ordinated machine. There were many departments. Metal fitting shops, wood-working, erection and structural testing, each department run by one man, but those men must be organised into a system which had one aim. To produce as many aircraft and automobiles as could be humanly produced in the shortest possible time and it was Meg’s job to see that it was done.

She supposed sometimes, when she had the time to consider it that she might now call herself wealthy as the profits poured in and the investments she had made brought her a handsome dividend, but the careless speculation on it was no more than a passing thought. The future, the years which would follow the ending of the war, would inevitably come and what was in them was obscure but what she did now would help to make them secure for the next generation.

Beth was growing so quickly from babyhood, to childhood, so lively and with her enquiring mind and fingers into everything her bright eyes fell upon. She was in the garden at the side of the house ‘helping’ Will to gather leaves which he would put into piles for burning. As quickly as he raked them she would grab a couple of handsful, carrying them carelessly to the tidy heaps, dropping most on the way, distributing what was left in a casual
drift
on to Will’s neat structure. She was dressed in a scarlet warm knitted jumper and leggings but her head was bare and the mist of rain had put spangles of crystal in her russet curls. She was growing tall and sturdy, good-natured with none of her father’s mercurial and arrogant moods, strangely, and Meg often pondered on the irony of it, in temperament more like Tom Fraser than the man who was her natural father. Her charm was evident and she took advantage, as children will, no matter what their nature, of the adoration of her mother, of Will and Annie and Edie, and of Sally Flash who was her nanny, but she was never fretful or peevish when she was not allowed her own way and bore no grudge. She and Meg had that special bond which often exists between a child and a single parent, and though she was so seldom able to get home to be with her child at bedtime, or had already left for the factory before Beth awoke, the little girl, secure and loved by those in whose charge her mother left her, thrived and grew and accepted the absence of the normal family background which Meg longed to give her. She had a photograph of a serious Tom, taken in his uniform which she was enchanted with for it was her very own, bringing it to Meg’s knee as they sat before the nursery fire, kissing it tenderly, though she had no clear recollection of her ‘Daddy’.

‘Say it to me,’ she would beg her mother, and drawing her on to her lap, cradling the small and precious body against her own, Meg would slip back in time to the days when three children had stood hand in hand on the doorstep of a house in Great George Square, and speak to her daughter of her ‘Daddy’ and the child, dozing in the safe cradle of her mother’s arms was unaware that the boy her mother spoke of was not the soldier in the photograph.

Tom had been home on leave twice more during the three years they had been married, frightening her with his gaunt, wide-eyed stare as though even here in the peace and utter stillness of the beautiful Derbyshire fells his senses compelled him to search for an unseen enemy over the next hill, to listen for the sniper’s bullet, the whizz-bang and the constant dull throb of the barrage which preceded every battle. He was exhausted, stumbling like an old man about the gardens, standing sometimes for more than two hours in one spot, staring at a leaf on a tree, the petal on a flower, the scurry of an ant in the grass, his eyes nailed to the simple beauty, taken so much for granted by those who saw it each day, of the colour and movement of life itself. He was a man
apart
from other men – sharing only the companionship of those with whom he served and suffered – even from Will who was so like him in his own patient, enduring nature and who would himself, but for his leg, have been in France. Will, usually so taciturn, and shocked immeasurably by Tom’s withdrawal from everything around him, attempted to draw him out, to talk about the garden and Tom’s plans for it when ‘this lot’ was over, but Tom merely turned his washed out blue gaze on him as though what Will said made no sense at all. His world, his attitude said, was too far apart from theirs and the gap was unbridgeable, and somehow, though it was ridiculous, Meg knew, it seemed he was ready, after a day or two, to get back to it.

And at night in the merciful compassion of his wife’s arms, his strong yet gentle spirit deserted him completely and he wept like a child against her breast, defeated, tormented by his failure to love her. Meg comforted him, held him, loved his body with her own, smothered him with anguished concern telling him that it did not matter that he could not respond, and he left at the end of his leave looking more haunted than when he had come home. Only in the nursery with the child upon his knee, dozing together companionably before the fire did he seem to find peace.

Meg watched Beth now, smiling and shaking her head over the antics of the child. Will picked her up a dozen times, swinging her in a ‘twizz’, allowing her to ride, squealing with joy in his wheelbarrow, wiping her nose for her on his own white handkerchief, answering patiently every one of her interminable questions. How lucky she was, Meg thought in that moment before the doorbell rang, in having this man who, with his steadfast understanding was keeping Tom’s beautiful garden alive for his homecoming and who loved his child and kept her from harm. And Annie! What would she have done without her unquestioning and uncompromising friendship in these years of war. Between them, mother and son, they kept her world together for her while she got through the days and nights of grinding work and the total commitment of her mind and brain and body the war demanded of her.