In Distant Fields (38 page)

No one could look at her, not wanting to ask the question, ‘
Who
will put up the tree?' Besides Circe and Partita and Kitty, there were so few of them left now. Just Jossy and Tully and a few old gardeners outside, and a few women from the village inside.

‘I dare say we should be given the footmen's
country liveries. They would be a great deal warmer when we are doing this kind of work,' Partita grumbled as she and Kitty, hindered not helped by Bridie and Tinker, struggled to put the tree up straight, and then stood on ladders to decorate it.

Their breath made circles in the cold air of the hall, and their arms and legs were much scratched, and their faces too, when they were finally able to stand back and view the tree.

‘Well, it's not much compared to the old days,' Tinker opined finally. ‘But at least it's a tree, and at least it's got something on it other than its branches.'

Partita sighed. ‘It looks more like something in Whiteleys than Bauders, Tinks, but it's the best we can do.'

‘Very nice, dears, really – very nice,' Circe said bravely, a little later. ‘I am sure all our brave wounded will appreciate what you have done. I am quite sure they will.'

Everything was to be, as much as possible, as it had been before, which of course was not at all possible. Nevertheless, there were some things that could go on as they used to. For instance, a carol concert was to be given in the house, although not by the servants for the servants, but by the church choir so that those still bedridden could enjoy the traditional music of Christmas. And also there was to be a banquet thrown for patients, staff and family around a vast table set in the servants' hall. A yule log had been
brought up to the castle by Jossy and Tully to burn brightly in the servants' hall, and Circe, Partita and Kitty had even manufactured the hand-made crackers that were now such a tradition at Bauders, filling each one, not with some cheap novelty, but with generous gifts of watches, pens, silver key rings, gold tie pins, and jewelled cufflinks, presents that amazed and stunned the patients.

‘This has been the very best Christmas I have ever had,' young Jack Wilson told Circe, bowing extravagantly and at the same time kissing her hand gallantly.

Although the subject of favouritism was never aired, it was silently accepted that Jack had become everyone's favourite. No one could resist Jack.

He had been wounded at Mons in the chest and back, but from the moment he arrived, he was determined to cheer up all his fellow patients, despite the fact that he himself was in constant pain. Jack was the lead singer, Jack was the gamesman, Jack was the spirit of recovery.

‘Jack, you are a terrible old exaggerator!'

‘No, I mean it, Duchess. You have given us all the best Christmas ever, certainly my best Christmas ever,' Jack insisted. ‘This has been a day of days. The day they come to claim you – which, God forbid, will not be for a hundred years or more – you will go up there in a cloud of pink glory, surrounded by all these lovely angels all blasting away on their trumpets and shouting whatever it is angels shout. ‘Cos
you're a right angel, Duchess, and all your lovely staff.'

‘You're tipsy, Jack,' Partita laughed. ‘Your eyes are spinning all the way round in your head.'

‘I am not tipsy, Lady T,' Jack told her, looking very serious. ‘I am very slightly squiddly-diddly. Now, if I might have a Christmas kiss … ?'

Partita leaned over his wheelchair and kissed him on the top of his head.

‘You're a bad lad, Jack Wilson, and we all know it. Don't forget we've got our eyes on you.'

‘I think we should all have a Christmas kiss!' another of the patients called, picking up the thread. ‘Because Jack's right, this is the best Christmas ever!'

‘Oh, very well,' Partita agreed. ‘Come on, everyone – kissing time!'

Every patient got a Christmas kiss from all the young women and from the Duchess too, a kiss on both cheeks and a tap on Jack's cheek from Partita for trying to pinch an extra one. After which, all the patients sang ‘For They Are Jolly Good Fellows!' to the Duchess and her team before everyone prepared for bed. But as they moved to go, an older patient, a man called Michael, who from the moment of his arrival had hardly been heard to utter, sitting most of the time staring out of a window at the parkland and the winter skies, now suddenly began to sing ‘Silent Night' in a light, lyric tenor. No one tried to join in. How could they? He had the voice of an angel.

‘Odd, isn't it?' Kitty said to Partita as finally they made their way to their beds. ‘That beautiful carol that poor Michael just sang,' and as Partita turned to look at her, ‘it's German.'

Letters were the hope of everyone, telegrams the dread, even in a house such as Bauders, where they had been commonplace once it was discovered they were the best and most efficient way of communicating the needs of such a vast household. Telegram boys could be required to deliver as many as half a dozen a day during busy times of the year, increasing to over a dozen when weeks such as Christmas approached. If the Castle stretched the patience of the Post Office, the Post Office quickly learned to economise once it realised just how many telegrams were being sent to Bauders, collating them into just one or two deliveries, the boy being dispatched to deliver them on pony or bicycle.

But now there was war, the significance of the telegram altered almost immediately. Far from announcing the arrival of a guest, or the birth of a relative's child, or any other such urgent but
not fateful news, the telegram now generally meant only one thing, which was why Partita, having taken Kitty into her confidence, had decided that they should keep a constant telegram watch.

‘I don't want Mamma receiving any bad news on a silver salver,' Partita explained to Kitty. ‘Or even by chance, should she be near the front doors when the boy arrives. If one does come with a black border then I think it best if the news is broken gently. So what I propose is a series of shifts, rather like a fire watch. Whoever is free is to keep an eye out front. Since you and I are always up so early now, we can keep the first lookout for any post – and I shall instruct Wavell that telegrams are to be brought straight to me, or you if I'm not to be found, so that we can read the contents before Mamma.'

It soon became second nature, not just to the girls but to everyone, to watch for the post, but as the New Year matured and winter turned to spring, no telegrams arrived, only letters – letters for the patients, letters for the Duke and Duchess, letters for Partita from just about everyone, and for Kitty from Almeric – and her mother.

Violet did not write often, because she too was nursing, this time in the Lake District where she and Dr Charles had decided to settle before war was declared and he was called abroad, first to Switzerland, then to France. But although mother and daughter wrote dutifully to each
other, the truth was that their time of intimacy was over. It was not that Kitty did not love Violet any more, or that Violet did not love Kitty, it was just that once Violet had chosen Dr Charles, she had effectively severed her relationship with Kitty. It was just a fact. Nothing would ever be the same again and, truthfully, the polite tone of their letters to each other reflected this.

In the mornings the wards and sitting rooms would be full of cigarette and pipe smoke but silent as the patients opened their letters from their chums and families and read them over and over again. After they had fully digested their contents, first they would read interesting or amusing bits out to each other and then there would be a general discussion on the state of the war according to what they had learned from their chums' letters, which, due to censorship, was of a very limited scope. That was of no consequence since they had the newspapers to keep them generally abreast of developments, while the letters they received were to boost morale and keep hope alive, just as were the letters they wrote and sent each and every day to their comrades in arms. Having already served in the theatre of war, they knew how important it was to get letters, so they would write to their comrades whenever they could, even if they had little to say. What hadn't happened they would invent in the hope that it would raise a smile
somewhere in the trenches, and bring a little light relief to their men.

As for the family, Circe would take her letters from Almeric and Gus off to read in her bedroom. She would read them once as soon as they had arrived – unless she was busy with her duties, when she would set them aside until there was a free quarter of an hour – and then she would reread them slowly and carefully at bedtime, trying to guess at what Almeric, in particular, was saying between the lines, which she knew very well would be something that he was not meant to say. Gussie's letters were not perused in the same way. Gus being Gus, he sought only to amuse and reassure, a character trait that Circe found most endearing.

Partita and Kitty, on the other hand, would save up their letters all day, storing them up for bedtime, which was necessarily much earlier than they had been used to, thanks not just to the patients but also to the cold of the castle. Partita would get letters from her brothers and, eventually, even from Peregrine, who had joined up without telling anyone in September, and was now fighting with his battalion near somewhere they were not meant to know, but one of the newly arrived had whispered was called Ypres.

They all knew from newspaper reports where the fighting was intensifying but other than that it was left to guesswork and information filtered in carefully by the Duke in London, who let Circe
know a certain amount of privileged information without breaking too many rules.

What he did not tell her was that Almeric was also fighting in the same area, not a dozen miles from a hill that was to become notorious. The impression those at home received was that victory was in the offing, although, as John pointed out to Circe on the telephone after the victory that never happened, after all the optimism that preceded and followed the engagement at Neuve Chapelle, there would be no celebrations until they had the Germans sitting round a table ready to negotiate.

Circe was delighted to receive a letter from Edward Bletchworth, the vicar of Bauders, who had volunteered to go to the Front as a chaplain the week after Christmas. Ranked as a captain, the official status initially of any priest who volunteered as a chaplain, he had not only surprised himself by his enrolment in the army but most of those who knew him in and around the environs of Bauders. He wrote:

This has been nothing short of a salutary experience, I can assure you. Not because of the behaviour of the men, which I have to say by and large has been exemplary, but because of the behaviour of many of my brothers in the cloth. When I arrived here one of the men said to me that he supposed I was yet another stay-behind chaplain, as they call us, meaning that when the men go to the front the
chaplains stay safely behind, usually in easy reach of a mess or a canteen, reappearing only to offer the troops bromides and cigarettes, or to read aloud the letters the less literate have just received from home. The shame of being included in a band of such pusillanimous men haunted me for days and days, and I determined at once that I was not going to be that sort of a chaplain, and that I would go wherever necessary, wherever God called me to go or wherever I was needed by the men. Some of them still do not find it easy to have a chaplain sitting amongst them at times when they are not engaged in battle, and to be honest, listening to their language, their songs and their humour, I can understand why they feel inhibited. But after the initial shock of hearing mouths as vulgar as one could not even imagine (!) I have tried not to make my presence felt as if it were judgemental, but just to be there in case any one of them may need me, which from time to time they have, seeking me out for a quiet word or some consolation before they face the enemy again. I cannot begin to understand how so many of my brethren have chosen to play it safe, although that is not at all true when I come to consider it. They are doing so in order to save their own skins, and so it does not take a very great deal to understand the ready criticism that, while we are prepared to talk about the Kingdom of Heaven, very few of us seemed
prepared to enter it. To say I am not frightened would be an unholy lie and mischief. Only the other day I was administering communion in what I can only describe as a hellhole below ground while all the time the most mighty shells were exploding around our small band. The noise was so great that I had to shout the service out at the top of my voice, and the ground shook so much that I thought we must all be sucked down straight away into its very depths – yet thank God to whom we were all praying I must say very mightily, we were spared, and as I spoke the Blessing the gunfire stopped as if on cue. Two of the men were crying, a sight I am now becoming well accustomed to, and understand that they do not cry from cowardice or from fright, but simply because they must. Here we all are, trying to hang on to the very thread of life, and while they try to kill us we fight or we pray or we hope – but when it is over, when the bombardment stops, some of us cry from relief, or perhaps from the joy of still being here.

As I write today, I and Father Joseph from County Mayo (the Catholic priests, by the way, are courageous beyond belief) are sitting side by side in what they call a funk hole, each with a tin mug of lukewarm tea that tastes like champagne, all we can hear, of all unlikely things, is the song of birds sitting in blasted trees. They know it's spring and while it's unlike any spring they have so far experienced,
they do not know why it is different. We do, which is why we thank God for our life and pray to Him that we will be spared. It is all a very long way away from the warmth and safety of Bauders, yet when I think of it and all my little congregation back home I realise I am only next door.