Soldier of the Horse (10 page)

Tom took a quick look for Belle and saw her standing quietly a few yards away, tethered by her harness and the wrecked cutter. She'd be fine for now.

“Take me home,” Ellen said. “Please. I just want to go home.”

“The hospital,” said Tom firmly. He sat beside Ellen and put an arm around her. Ellen was embarrassed when she realized tears were streaming down her face. She gritted her teeth against the pain. That, and the thought of facing her father.

When they pulled up to the hospital on Sherbrook Street, the man jumped from behind the wheel and ran in for help, returning with an orderly who pushed a wheelchair to the door of the car. Tom and the orderly eased Ellen into the wheelchair, and she was whisked away into an examining room where nurses who recognized her as a volunteer at the hospital crowded around. A doctor appeared and shooed the extraneous help from the room.

Tom left to call John Evans. Ellen smiled when he returned to her side and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Your father is on his way,” he said, sounding grim.

The doctor took off her coat. “I'm just going to palpate your arm, and it may hurt. Please try to remain still.”

Ellen kept her eyes on Tom, who had moved to the side of the room at the doctor's request. His steady gaze held hers as she winced under the doctor's hands.

The doctor straightened from his examination. “A fractured ulna,” he announced. “Fortunately, not in the wrist itself—higher up. And not displaced, near as I can tell. We'll immobilize it.” He turned to the orderly hovering by the door. “Take her to the cast room.”

Ellen was wheeled down the hall, Tom walking alongside. The doctor reappeared to give her something for pain, then mixed plaster of Paris. Ellen felt drowsy, her eyelids heavy, and she watched, detached, as the doctor applied the cast. Forcing her eyes open, she glanced around for Tom and saw him standing by the door. He looks so worried, she thought. She tried to smile at him and she must have managed it because he smiled back.

Footsteps pounded down the hall; her father hurried into the room. He was bareheaded, his overcoat unbuttoned and flapping around him. “What the devil went on with you two? What happened?”

Ellen tried to talk but her tongue felt thick.

“Belle shied from a rabbit,” Tom replied. “The cutter tipped over and we were both thrown out. I'm very sorry.”

Ellen looked at her father, whose hands shook as he took off his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders. He glared at Tom.

“It wasn't Tom's fault,” Ellen managed.

John Evans turned away from Tom. He bent and put an arm around his daughter. “Never mind, my dear. We can sort this out later.”

The doctor smoothed a last wrap on Ellen's cast. It looks so white, she thought. Just like the snow outside. What happened to my beautiful day?

“Aren't you coming?” she asked Tom, as her father wheeled her down the hall toward the exit.

“Tom will collect Belle and see she is properly looked after,” said her father in a decided voice. “And I will look after you.”

Tom did collect Belle, who had been taken in hand by the helpful neighbour who had driven them to the hospital. Once Belle was led home, stabled, fed, and watered, John Evans invited him into the house.

“I will be taking Ellen to stay at my sister's, at Bird's Hill, in the morning,” he told Tom as Ellen sat, wrapped in a comforter, on a couch. “Anne will be happy to look after her for a few days.”

Tom and Ellen had a few minutes alone in the parlour. She was pale and tired-looking, her arm, with its heavy cast, in a sling. They were both conscious of her father, who hovered in the next room.

“How is Belle?” she asked.

“She's doing very well, none the worse for wear. But what about you?”

“I think I need sleep. When will I see you?”

“Just as soon as possible.”

Ellen reached toward Tom and he took her hand, which warmed with his touch. “I'll be away for a few days,” she said. “And then . . .”

“And then, we'll be together again. You look after yourself, and get better. Don't worry—I'll be here when you get back.”

“You'd better be,” she said, giving a toss of her head and doing her best to smile.

♦  ♦  ♦

The long-awaited figurative trumpet call sounded at Fort Osborne Barracks the next day at 0800 hours, when the commanding officer addressed the men of the 1st Reinforcement. “You have until 1600 hours to pack, at which time you will be granted leave until midnight tonight. Final kit inspection and parade take place at 0700 hours tomorrow, after which you will march to the
CPR
station for entrainment to Halifax and a ship to England to join your regiment. Good luck.”

The rest of the day went by in a blur of packing and double-checking uniforms and equipment. Tom squeezed in a last ride on Rusty, who would be left behind to train the next recruit assigned to him, then rode the streetcar to his family home in East Kildonan.

He tried to reach Ellen on the telephone, but the operator could not connect with anyone named Evans in Bird's Hill, and there was no answer at the Evans residence. Thoughts of Ellen were uppermost in his mind, making it extra hard to say goodbye to his brothers, sister, and especially his mother, who was not doing well. He worried that he'd never see her again.

His father drove him back to the barracks gate where they stood a moment. Bill put out his hand for Tom to shake, then clasped him in a strong embrace. “Good luck, son. I know you'll make us proud.”

A sudden upwelling of emotions hit Tom at the thought of not seeing his family or Ellen again, perhaps for years. If ever. But that was too hard a notion and he banished it from his mind. Bill, who had never been a man to show his feelings, held Tom a moment longer, and when they stepped apart he brushed his sleeve quickly across his eyes.

A lump in his throat meant Tom could only mumble, “I will, Dad.” He reached out and touched his father on the shoulder for a moment, then turned and walked into the barracks, a sense of leaving part of himself behind crowding out fear of the unknown.

LIFE AT SEA

♦   ♦   ♦

It seemed to Tom as if one minute he was in Winnipeg and suddenly, the next, he was marching from the Halifax terminal to a dock where the men of the 1st Reinforcement boarded ship. Now that their vessel had butted its way into the teeth of an Atlantic gale, he couldn't believe there were men who actually enjoyed life at sea. He was on his hands and knees, scrubbing the deck in the officers' head. As the Royal Mail Ship
Cape Wrath
rolled, he clung to a water pipe so he wouldn't carom across the space and crash into a bulkhead. Water in the drains gurgled and growled with the ship's movements. He felt queasy and didn't know how long he could handle it—one instant he would be pressed into the deck and seconds later almost weightless, grabbing at whatever was handy to avoid flying through the air. Without warning his stomach rebelled. He bent over the nearest toilet and vomited the dry crackers he had forced down at breakfast.

Physical weakness and a previously unrevealed fear of the sea took hold of him. He staggered down the passageway and onto a ladder to the upper deck. He made it to the leeward rail and hung there, staring down at the grey, heaving seas and shivering in the biting, North Atlantic wind.

A diminutive sergeant named Flowerdew approached along the passageway and stopped, hands clasped behind him. He swayed in time with the gyrations of the deck.

“Keep your eyes on the horizon,” he advised. “I learned that trick on my first crossing. It helps.”

Tom wiped his mouth on his sleeve, waited for his stomach to settle. “Seems to help that my belly is empty now, too.”

Flowerdew nodded and strolled off. He was typical of many who had volunteered as soon as war broke out. British originally, he had homesteaded in Saskatchewan and grown fruit in the interior of British Columbia. When hostilities commenced he had been a junior officer in a reserve cavalry unit, but in order to get into the regular army and go overseas immediately with the cavalry, he resigned his commission and volunteered as a private. Flowerdew made no secret of his ambition to distinguish himself in battle. Tom had heard other sergeants call him “Flowers,” obviously not a reflection on his manhood.

As the fresh, cold air cleared his head, Tom followed Flowerdew's suggestion and concentrated on the horizon. They had been four days at sea, and for the first time he saw a sleek shape, low on the horizon. When a sailor passed behind him, he called out, “What's that?”

The sailor squinted. Tom envied him—he didn't have to hold on to the rail.

“Destroyer. They'll shepherd us, kind of like sheepdogs. In case of submarines. Of course, they'd be no help against a battleship.” The sailor went on his way, oblivious to both the rolling of the ship and having planted the seed of something new for Tom to worry about.

Tom distracted himself as best he could by focussing on the destroyer as it moved on a parallel course, much faster than the
Cape Wrath
, a faint blue haze trailing from her funnels. Maybe the sailor was kidding about the battleship.

A pale Bruce Johanson joined Tom at the rail. “I couldn't stand being down there one more minute. That damn Planck had me shovelling out horse manure. Lance-Corporal Hicks is still down there—he's worried about horses going down in this weather and not getting back up. I told him I was sick. Sick of being on this tub, more like.”

“Can't be any worse than scrubbing the deck of a stinking head on your hands and knees.”

“They figure another ten days of this till we get to England.” Johanson's young face perked up. “Maybe there'll be some fillies who've never met any real cowboys. We can give them a good gallop.”

Spray shot over them as the ship rolled heavily. Tom looked down to see the grey sea foam high against the black hull, and tightened his grip on the rail. “Maybe. Personally, I just want to get on dry land. Fighting the Germans can't be any tougher than this.”

Johanson went below again to help with the horses. Tom took a last look around but could no longer see the destroyer. He left for his cleaning station, where the drains still gurgled and his stomach still churned.

Next day the weather was worse than ever. Rain and strong winds lashed the sea and huge swells bore down on the
Cape Wrath
's starboard bow, adding a sickening pitch to her wild rolls. Aft, where the reinforcements were quartered, the deck corkscrewed under Tom's feet.

He forced down some dry bread and coffee, then went back to the upper deck to clear his head. A group of miserable soldiers huddled at the base of the ship's smokestack: the “funnel watch,” sailors called it, where seasick men gathered at the ship's most stable location.

A corporal joined them and took charge, allocating the men to various housekeeping tasks: cleaning washplaces and heads, helping the cooks with meal preparations, tending to the horses below. Tom got lucky—the corporal ordered him to report to the cook, to “peel spuds.” At least the galley would be warm and dry. He could wedge himself into a corner with a paring knife and a sack of potatoes.

“One moment, Corporal.” Lieutenant Inkmann had appeared, looking freshly shaved.

“Sir?”

“The officers' mounts need extra attention in this weather. Macrae needs the experience.” Inkmann turned and walked away, swaying with the roll of the deck.

The corporal had a quizzical expression on his face as he turned toward Tom. “You heard the lieutenant.”

“Bloody hell. Since when does an officer say who does what?” Tom spluttered. It was unusual for an officer to interfere with a noncom's work, and he didn't trust Inkmann.

“Since right now. I don't know what he's got against you, but get at it. Hicks is already down there. Go give him a hand.”

Tom took a deep breath of the clean air. The cold, wet, upper deck he left behind looked good as he climbed down the series of ladders to the lower hold where the officers' horses were stabled. On each deck the smell was worse than on the one above it, reeking of hot engine oil and dank air. As he reached the bottom, he felt as though he had descended into a seaborne hell.

He looked around for Eddie Hicks, a gangly young man from Dauphin, Manitoba. He had been an early recruit who just missed the departure of the regiment for Europe, a keen but inexperienced soldier. Down here, the smell of urine and horse manure mingled with the fetid odour of the bilges. Tom steadied himself, clinging to the ladder with one foot on the deck.

The horses were haltered and tied in narrow stalls that had been thrown together in Halifax. One horse lay jammed down on the deck, its head jutting out into the passageway that ran the length of the compartment, its eyes rolling in terror.

Lance-Corporal Hicks yelled, “Get over here, Macrae. Hold his head so I can check him out.”

Tom lurched along the passage, grabbing at posts as he went so the violent heaving of the ship wouldn't catapult him into the far bulkhead. He hunkered down on his knees by the pitiful animal's head, one forearm across the long nose, his other hand tightly around the horse's ear.

“Hold him steady,” said Hicks. “I'll have a look.” He peered into the dark stall. “Can't see a thing.” He clambered past Tom to get in closer. The horse twisted its hindquarters off the deck and lashed out with a hoof, catching Hicks on the leg. He dropped with a curse.

Tom hung on until the animal quieted, then shifted to put his knees on either side of its head. He took hold of a groaning Hicks by the shirt with both hands and pulled him out of the stall.

“Feels like my fucking leg is broke,” said Hicks through gritted teeth.

Tom looked around, hoping someone else would appear to lend assistance. “Listen, I've got to get help. You'll have to control this horse.”