Softly Grow the Poppies (11 page)

Then he became aware once more of the young woman behind him who was, after all, doing her best. He turned sharply. This was a pleasant room. A man’s room with a big desk, leather-topped with a heavy silver inkstand, deep, comfortable leather chairs, a side table on which Sir Harry Summers would have kept his decanters and glasses and a French window through which came the smell of the country – grass, mayflowers, the smells of spring. And on the walls, pleasing to the eye were old prints of hunting dogs and horses. A typewriter and a telephone sat on the desk, a couple of rugs lay on the oak floor and a clock ticked on the mantelshelf above the fireplace where a cheerful log fire burned.

‘Miss Beechworth, you do some good work on the wards and are a great help to the nursing staff but may I ask you to promise you will not give false hopes to the men, those who have lost limbs or their sight. Some of them may recover and be well enough to be sent back to the battlefields so—’

‘Good God, Dr Roberts, you mean to return these poor men to that . . . place after what they are suffering,
have
suffered? I cannot believe—’

The doctor sighed again. ‘There you go again, Miss Beechworth. I really must beg you to—’

‘I will not stay out of the wards, Doctor, and I will not promise that I can stop myself from sympathising with them. They need someone to talk to, to pour out their pain and anguish; so many of them are terrified you will report them fit to return to duties they cannot cope with. This is not my house but while Mrs Summers is incapacitated I am in charge of it and you have no authority over me, nor my women. One of them has already lost a son in the trenches; oh yes, we have had a terrible description of the trenches and two of the women who are helping here know that their sons are still there and what is happening over there. My own . . . I have a person who . . . means a lot to me –’ she gulped and reached for a chair back to steady herself – ‘and I can only hope that if he should find himself as some of these men do there will be a woman who will help him, not just physically but emotionally. He is . . . he is very dear to me . . .’ She dashed a hand across her eyes and turned to the door, fumbling with the handle to open it. As she moved into the passage that led from the study into the main hallway, Dolly was stumbling down the stairs, her face like chalk and behind her was Polly who had just taken a tray up with some delicacy to tempt Miss Alice, as most of them still called her, to eat a little something.

She still carried it but her eyes were filled with her easy tears.

‘What – God in heaven, what?’ Rose stammered, clutching Dolly’s arm, for she thought she might fall.

‘It’s the lass . . .’ Dolly hung on to Rose, showing every one of her sixty-odd years.

‘What, Dolly?’

‘It’s Miss Alice. She’s gone.’

T
he man in the bed opened his eyes. His head was swathed in bandages that came down to below his eyebrows and he could barely see. He turned his head, doing his best to get a better view of exactly where he was. There were other beds with men in them all lying very still, and what he supposed were nurses bending over them. Where the hell was he? His brain did not seem to be functioning as it usually did. How had he got here? Why was his head bandaged? It ached abominably and he groaned with the pain of it and as one of the nurses heard him she came across to him from where she had been attending to another man.

She smiled and said something to him but he couldn’t understand what she said. His heart missed a beat for he believed he was in hell. He hurt all over, his head the worst, but even worse than that was that he could remember nothing. What had happened to bring him to what looked like a hospital ward and . . . and . . .
who was he
?
For some frightening reason he couldn’t remember his own name!

The nurse, who was dressed in a snow-white apron and a handkerchief headdress, spoke to him again, laying a comforting hand on his and for a brief moment something she said made sense to him. Just a word or two but it was in . . . in German he thought.

‘
Guten tag
,’ she said, which he understood. He must have learned the language at school, he supposed, for though he could remember nothing else, he knew he was English. How did he come to be here? he asked himself again. What the devil was he doing in what was obviously a German hospital? his tired brain begged to know but he couldn’t recall, try as he might.

She smiled again, a pretty smile that brought dimples to her rosy cheeks and for a flash lasting a mere fraction of a second he caught the end of another smile, just like this one, from other lips, then it was gone and he was really frightened. Had he been in an accident? Was he on holiday when he had had an accident? Oh God! What the bloody hell was the matter with him that he must fight so desperately to understand his situation? It had made his head ache more violently than ever so he closed his eyes hoping that when he woke again it would all become clear to him. That someone would speak to him in his own language, explain how he came to be here with his head in a bandage and the worst bloody headache he had ever had.

When he opened his eyes again the nurse with the pretty smile was talking to a man in a white coat further down the ward. The men in the other beds which were arranged neatly on either side of the ward were very quiet, not moving beneath their tightly made bedclothes. One or two, like him, had bandaged heads and at the far end there was a screen round a bed. Some other poor sod who was so ill no one was to see him, he supposed, though why he should think that he could not imagine. He had never been on a hospital ward before so what had brought him to this one? The bandage on his head must mean it had been hurt in something, an automobile, a . . . a motorcycle, perhaps he had even fallen off his horse; a horse . . . a horse: that had chinked its way into his empty brain – something to do with horses? The man – was he a doctor? and the nurse with the pretty smile were both looking at him and began to walk towards him. The man took his wrist in his hand, glancing at a watch as he did so. He spoke to the nurse and nodded then spoke to him in the same language as the nurse. Again he caught a word or two but not enough to give him a clear understanding of what the doctor was saying.

‘
Wie heissen sie
?’

‘I can only speak English,’ he told them, wondering how he knew when everything else was a blur.

The doctor looked astonished. ‘You are English?’ he said, his own speech broken and with an accent.

‘Yes.’ Was the man a fool? Could he not see by his uniform . . . his uniform? Now why had he thought of that – a uniform? First a horse, then a uniform?

‘We were not knowing. We thought you to be from the . . .’ He babbled something to the nurse who shrugged, then answered him in German.

‘Ach, now I am seeing. You were picked up by . . . erm . . . stretcher-bearers . . . German. You have no . . . er . . . er papers . . . no . . .’ He made a gesture of circling a ring round his neck. ‘
Die identifikation
. . . not there and were brought with our own . . . er . . . hurt . . . to this infirmary. I am a’ – he tapped his head – ‘of the brain. You had no clothes . . . you were . . .’ Here again he made a motion of brushing something from his body. ‘Ach . . . mud, much blood and your head . . . splinters . . . shrapnel, so I remove . . . operate on you. Your name is . . .?’

‘I . . . I can’t seem to remember.’

‘Your rank?’ The doctor looked at him sympathetically. ‘You remember, hey.’

‘Rank? I was a soldier?’

‘
Ja
, but of course. You do not recall?’

‘
Nein
, nothing.’

The doctor patted his arm. ‘It will soon . . . come back . . . yourself you will find.’

‘
Bitte
, please, help me,’ he gasped as he clutched the doctor’s arm. ‘I must have relatives who will think me dead.’

‘Dead. Oh no, you will not be dead . . . not now.’ The doctor loosened the patient’s grip, nodded kindly and moved on to another bedridden man.

He reached out an imploring hand to the doctor who turned, sighed, then came back. ‘You . . . erm . . . I took some . . . splinters from your head . . .’ He muttered again in German, turning to the nurse who raised her eyebrows. ‘I surgeon of the head . . . I did not see you . . . while later . . . they had cleaned you . . . they thought you were about to dead . . . die, but I . . .’ He waved his slender hands about. ‘I . . .’

‘Operated,’ the man in the bed murmured.

‘
Ja
, operate and take out splinters . . . put in small . . . platter . . . no, no . . . plate and here you are . . .’ He waved his hand airily about the room.

‘I . . . please, I cannot remember. I must have had papers on me to say who I was?’

The doctor turned to the nurse and said something to her but she shook her head.

‘
Die krankenschwester
– nurse – says no papers, so no name.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘This war . . .’ then shook his head sadly as he moved down the ward.

‘Well, she can’t have gone far. She was only alone for a few minutes. Ask the men to search the grounds and . . . and tell one of the men – no,
all
of the men from the farms to search for her.’ Rose shook her head and opened the door of the cupboard under the stairs, peering inside as though to find her friend there.

Dolly wrung her hands and tears wobbled in her eyes prepared to stream down her cheeks. She who had been the strong one in the Beechworth family ever since she had come to work for Miss Jane, Rose’s mother, when she married William Beechworth, all those years ago. She had been staunch and unruffled through all the family’s traumas and joys and had never shed a tear in public though when Miss Jane, Mrs Beechworth died, those she did shed had been in private. She was now old and tired and easily upset. She loved Miss Alice, the girl who had vanished, almost as much as she loved her own daughter, which Miss Rose was although Dolly had not given birth to her. She sniffed and brushed her nose with the back of her hand. ‘I only went to the bathroom. I thought I’d give her a bath. In her bed, like. She was weak as a kitten, she ate now’t. I filled the basin and got a clean towel an’ that. I were goin’ in when I saw Polly comin’ up wi’t tray an’ we talked fer a minnit. I were askin’ after ’t babby. Polly ’ad bin over to Ashtree but when we gorrin’ she were gone. Dear sweet Jesus, it were my fault . . .’

Rose put her arms about the elderly woman and hugged her. ‘No, Dolly, no, you are not to blame but we shouldn’t stand here wasting time; we must set out to find her.’ Her face became hopeful. ‘Perhaps she’s gone to see the baby.’

But Polly’s face, as always when there was bad news, was streaming with tears and she was shaking her head. ‘No, Miss Rose, I’ve just come from there. Babby was bein’ nursed by Edie Smith but Miss Alice weren’t there. Eeh, that babby’s comin’ on a treat . . .’

‘Well, we shall telephone the police and ask them to start a search. She is unfit to be on the loose by herself. Not only is she weak from the birth, she is mad with grief over Charlie. Run down and tell one of the nurses what has happened and that I cannot help them for the moment while I get in touch with the police.’

They found the note an hour later. It was tucked beneath her pillow and at the same time Rose heard that Sir Harry’s stallion, Corey, an absolute beast to ride for anyone except Sir Harry, had gone from the stables.

‘I have gone to find Charlie,’ the note said. ‘Something inside me tells me he is not dead. He is the light of my life and the light has not gone out so he must be alive somewhere. I will find him. The baby is to be called William, dear Rose, but call him Will. His father will like that.’

The search was spread far and wide but it seemed Alice Summers had vanished along with her young husband. Dolly went to pieces which again was not like her for she had been Rose’s support and stay for years. But she was older now and she had a great fondness for Miss Alice – Mrs Summers – and having cared for her during her pregnancy, her labour and her grief over the loss of her young husband, she clung to Rose as Rose, as a child and young woman, had once clung to her.

‘Nay, I shouldn’t ’ave left ’er on ’er own,’ lapsing into her native Lancashire dialect as she always did when upset. ‘It were my fault, my fault. I blame messen, I do . . .’

Rose took her in her arms and held her tight, her own heart bursting with fear for her friend, her frail, but strong friend who had lost the love of her life and gone out to look for it in the maelstrom of the war across the Channel. Already coming the other way back to England were Channel steamers full of the badly wounded, the very decks crammed from bow to stern and from port to starboard with men who lay still and frighteningly silent, those who moaned or called for their mothers, men with different coloured tags tied to them to denote the condition and urgency of their case to those who would meet them from the ambulance trains.

And rattling through stations all over the country were trains packed with young, cheering, excited men, longing to get over there and do their bit before it all ended. It was a well-known fact that one British soldier was worth ten Germans and the Hun would be defeated very soon. Lord Kitchener had pointed his finger and ordered them to go and who were they to disobey?

They never gave up hope. The police found Corey in a meadow where other horses, mares, were placidly cropping the lush grass. Eleven months later the farmer who owned the meadow was astonished at the beauty of the foals produced in the spring of the following year from his mares but remembered the stallion that had been among them for a short time. He had reported it to the police for he was an honest man, but was delighted with the results of the horse’s short stay. That had been at Pinfold Farm on the outskirts of St Helens, which was within riding distance from Old Swan and then a walk to St Helens railway station.

She must have boarded a train from there to London, which, of course, was where she could find some way of crossing the Channel to where Charlie had last been seen alive!