Softly Grow the Poppies (21 page)

‘Keep going, lads,’ he heard himself shouting, at the same time condemning himself for encouraging these bone-weary young men to run towards the barbed wire behind which the Germans lay. Down they went, and down, and from somewhere something slammed into the front of his thigh and to his own astonishment he stepped on to the prone body of one of his own men and fell down. Private Joe Turner, he thought it was, and he found himself apologising to the soldier who was already dead. He lay for several moments doing his best to stand up and it was probably his inability to do so that saved his life. He began to crawl through the muck and mud and across fallen men, some of whom cried out in pain, calling to Private Turner to follow him, but he was on his own until he toppled into a hole made by a shell, one of their own that had fallen short of the target, the Hun.

There were several others already in the crater, one of them shrieking, ‘Make it stop, please, Jesus, make it stop,’ until a tired voice told him to put a sock in it. They huddled together, those men, glad to be safe for a minute or two, if you could call a machine-gun-strafed hole safe, then Captain Summers began to do his best to rally them. But they were not to be rallied. They’d had enough and one of them was heard to mutter that if the officer thought he was getting out of here in broad daylight he’d got another bloody think coming. It was still raining and with so many men in the crater it was beginning to fill up with rainwater. Harry struggled to climb up the slippery walls of the packed hole but he found the leg that had been hit would not hold his weight and it was damned hard to climb with only one leg workable.

‘We’ll wait until it’s dark, lads,’ he told them, but he was so bloody tired he had no strength to enforce his will on them and could you blame them for not wanting to move. Poor sods had been fighting valiantly for months in this battle along the Ypres salient, some of them in these same trenches and across this same bit of land, for three years. He himself had not been on leave since last autumn, rallying his men in this hell on earth, breathing in death and destruction along with the stink of rotting bodies and yet here they still were at the end of the first day of the Third Battle of Ypres and he had worked out that they had advanced no more than half a mile.

He must have passed out then, for the next time he came to it was to the sound of a young voice, the voice of a boy, screaming for his mam. Then suddenly the voice fell silent and he realised that one of the other men had hit the lad to quieten him as he was driving them all to the edge of insanity.

It was very quiet and as dark as the inside of the parson’s hat, as his old nanny used to say, and he knew that it was time, the only sensible time to make a bid for their own lines.

‘Give me a hand, lads. Push me up to the top of the crater and then help one another as best you can. I’m going to crawl on my belly so those who are up for it, and that means all of you who are not wounded, follow me.’

‘I’m not goin’,’ a belligerent voice answered.

‘This is an order, soldier.’

‘Oh, sod it,’ came from the darkness but the men began to inch their way, pushing him upwards until he reached the lip of the shell-hole. He put his head tentatively over the top, just his forehead and eyes and could see absolutely nothing.

‘Right,’ he whispered, ‘follow me.’ Slowly, inch by inch, he hauled himself over the lip of the shell-hole and crawled as near to the ground as he could, his belly brushing against the silent dead who lay in a carpet between their position and the trench from which they had erupted hours ago. It seemed to take ages but was actually no more than an hour and he was amazed because it seemed to him that they had run for miles that morning.

The men still in the trench almost cried out as Harry and the few men who had followed him fell in on them.

The hedges were bright with wild rose, elderberry and honeysuckle. There were cows knee-deep in clover and poppies as Rose, Will and the two dogs crossed the field from Summer Place to Beechworth. Tommy had chosen to stay behind beside the bed of a soldier who was dying from the gas he had breathed in weeks ago and from which he had never recovered. The dog sensed that the soldier, Billy Collins, who was all of eighteen years old, was near to death and he lay on the polished floor ready to give comfort, as he did to so many of the men should they show signs of distress. Billy, Private William Collins, whose mother was expected any moment, was not quite so tucked up as Staff Nurse Long liked her patients to be since it was so warm, and his arm fell over the edge of the bed, his hand dangling near Tommy’s nose. The dog licked it tenderly and the boy, the
soldier
, since he had fought valiantly in France, did his best to open his eyes; though the nurses bathed them each day the lids became glued together with the nasty matter caused by the gas. His breathing was hoarse and when his mother arrived and was taken to his bed she began to weep. This was her baby. She had fought him every step of the way when he volunteered but it did no good, he had gone anyway and now he was to leave her for ever.

‘Be brave, Mrs Collins. Try not to cry for it will only upset him. Kiss him, give him a hug and tell him about all the things that are happening at home in . . .?’

‘Preston,’ Mrs Collins managed to say, then, with the strength that amazed Alice, who was the nurse who had led him to her son, she smiled.

‘Eeh, our Billy, what yer doin’ fiddlin’ wi’ that there dog? I’m that surprised they let the animal in.’

‘He has a twice-weekly bath, Mrs Collins. The soldiers love him and he loves them. He often comes in here to comfort those who are—’ She nearly said ‘close to death’ but quickly changed it to ‘who need a bit of fuss. He does them a lot of good.’

‘Aye, our Billy always liked a dog. We got one at ’ome called Tinker. You remember our Tinker, lad?’ The lad did his best to smile but as his hand wavered in the air his mother took it, sitting in the chair they had placed beside the bed for her. She brought it to her lips and Alice tiptoed away.

Rose sauntered in the late summer sunshine while Will frolicked round her with Ginger and Spice. The cows in the field eyed them suspiciously but the dogs were accustomed to them and took no notice of their presence. Rose had been hoping to get a word with Alice about Will but Alice was always busy and she had had little success.

The perfume of the wild flowers was heavy and sweet and she breathed in deeply. Dear Lord, let me have a letter soon or I shall run mad, she said out loud but Will was rolling in the grass with the dogs and nobody heard her. She had written to Harry only last night, telling him of the enormity of her love for him, of the future that she prayed for to a God she was not sure existed because would a loving God allow the massacre and maiming of so many men, the agony they suffered, the pain she herself felt in her desperate worry over Harry. Her love was strong, steady, the love of a mature woman, patient and honest as she had always tried to be, and she would wait for him until the end of her life. It was not romantic, a dazzling emotion felt by the young boys and girls who were caught up in this war. It was enduring, indestructible, a love that filled her heart and mind and would never change. She had told him so in her letter, begging him to write soon. She knew he was busy;
busy
? What a word to describe what he was doing, but if he could just send her a line, a postcard, to let her know he was still – she hardly dare think the word –
alive
.

She shook herself from her morbid thoughts, or tried to, opening the field gate and calling to Will who was crawling through the long grasses with the dogs barking and jumping all over him. He stood up and ran towards her, the dogs at his heels and when they entered the stable yard Tom was there sitting in the sunshine smoking his pipe. He stood up at once, flustered, for he felt guilty that he, the last man left, apart from the boy, Jossy, to tend to the gardens and even the parkland and wooded areas of Beechworth, should be found lolling about.

‘No, Tom, stay there and finish your pipe. You deserve a rest with all the work you do. I don’t know where we would be without you what with all the young men at the front.’

‘Aye, tha’re right, Miss Rose, and gerrin’ a real pastin’ by the sound of it. Eeh, wharra’ waste o’—’ He suddenly remembered that Miss Beechworth’s young man was one of those getting a real pasting and he clamped his lips firmly over his pipe. First young Mr Charlie getting lost, though thankfully he was found again, and Sir Harry fighting for his Liverpool Regiment
and
his life in the thick of it.

Will addressed Tom in his own particular way which they all seemed to understand and the gardener listened intently.

‘Me come wiv you, Tom. Will come wiv you. That there grass needs cutting,’ he told him, using an expression, one among many, that he picked up among the servants. He nodded his head sagely.

‘Nay, Master Will, tha’re right there and termorrer thi’ an’ me’ll ’ave a go at it.’

‘Can Will push, Tom?’ meaning the ancient lawn mower.

‘Aye, I don’t see why not but Sparky’ll give us a pull.’ Sparky was company for Sir Harry’s hunter in the paddock to the side of the house. Though the lad often held him up Tom didn’t mind. If it helped Miss Rose and Miss Alice that was something.

It was three days later, just as Rose was passing it, that the telephone shrilled out. For a moment her heart missed a beat for that was what the machine did to you. It was probably the hospital authorities looking for beds since they all knew by now that a battle had recently been fought in which many wounded had been reported but nevertheless they hated the damn thing. It was known as a ‘candlestick’ model with the earpiece hanging from its side and with some trepidation she put it to her ear and spoke into the receiver.

‘Yes,’ she answered briefly.

‘Is that the Beechworth House Hospital?’ a masculine voice asked politely.

‘Yes,’ she said again.

‘Ah, may I speak to Miss Beechworth?’

‘This is Miss Beechworth.’ And though she was expecting the call to be about wounded soldiers and any space she might have for them, her pulse raced and she felt the need to sit down.

‘Forgive me for interrupting you, Miss Beechworth, but it’s Tom, Sir Harry Summers’s friend.’

‘Oh, please, don’t . . .’

‘I’m sorry to distress you but I work at the War Office and I have just heard—’

‘Please, oh please, don’t tell me . . .’ She wanted to scream at him, to swear but she leaned against the wall and did her best to hang on to her fading senses.

‘I’m afraid Harry has—’

‘Don’t you dare tell me he is . . . is . . . please . . .’

‘He has been wounded, Miss Beechworth, but not fatally. A leg wound. I should not be giving you this information but Harry asked me particularly to let you know if—’

‘Where is he, for God’s sake, where is he? Not still at the front . . .’ for she had seen wounded men who came straight from the fighting and the condition they were in.

‘No, he is in a hospital in London where he is to be operated on—’

‘Not . . . not amputation?’ She slowly slid down the wall until she was crouched on the floor.

‘I can tell you no more than that, I’m afraid. Wandsworth, you know it? But if you could get up here—’

‘I’ll be on the first train, tell him.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell him that but—’

But she had hung up and was screaming down the hall towards the kitchen where Dolly and Nessie and Polly stood huddled together as though their proximity to each other gave them courage. They all had their hands to their mouths.

‘Dolly, oh Dolly, it’s Harry; no, not dead, wounded in London and I’m off to the station to get the first train.’

‘Oh lass, whatever next? As if we haven’t got enough wi’ Mr Charlie and . . . and . . . see, get a bag packed an’ go. Me an’ Nessie an’ Polly’ll manage. We’ll see to Master Will. Miss Alice’ll have to give a hand here an’ you know how good Tom is with that little lad. Eeh, I dunno, will this damn war ever be over?’ She put her apron to her eyes and rubbed them furiously then gave herself a shake and was her old self. She had looked after this family, Rose’s mother and the miscarriages she had suffered and she’d not let the lass down now even though she did feel that the good Lord was laying too much of a burden on her old shoulders.

She sighed as she heard Miss Rose thunder up the stairs and drag a suitcase to the floor, packing it hurriedly with clean underclothes, a nightdress and odds and ends she might need, though what could they be, for goodness sake. She wasn’t going gallivanting. She was going to the man she loved who lay in a London hospital where they would do everything they could for him.
If it was not too late
. The dread of gangrene pierced every one of them who had nursed wounded men. The muck they picked up as they lay where they had fallen and even Dolly who had never nursed a wounded man knew that was what frightened those who had.

The station at Lime Street was a seething mass of soldiers and their loved ones who had come to see them off, or to meet them as they came home. Many of those who had come from the battlefields just stood, with the accoutrements of war they were forced to carry everywhere they went hanging about them, waiting for someone to tell them where to go, waiting for orders since that’s what they had been doing for three years.

She could have wept for them, these poor bits of flotsam who were going home for what should have been peace but whose confusion was reflected in their gaunt faces.

It was the same on the train that she eventually boarded but these men were going back, knowing what to expect and obliging death and wounds as they had been instructed. The sadness in her for them was mixed with the worry that was infecting her for the man she loved.

Dear sweet Jesus, let it stop soon, she begged, as the man in the shell-hole with Harry had begged.

H
e was lying flat on his back gazing at the ceiling when she entered the ward.

‘Are you a relative, Miss Beechworth?’ a harassed nurse asked her as Rose enquired at the desk for Captain Summers. ‘It is not visiting time, you know.’ She looked Rose up and down as though to find some reason why she should not be allowed to enter the hospital, never mind the ward where the wounded officers lay.