Authors: Yelena Kopylova
Dorset. Four days of the seven he stayed down
there, but spent hardly any time with her; her off-duty hours were limited. Even when they met in his room in
the hotel they were strangely both constrained. Although she was warm and loving and he wanted above all things, above all things to love her, there was a barrier between them. The barrier was Victoria. They both knew
it, although her name was never mentioned. She loomed up between them as his wife and Nellie's sister.
It was just before they parted that he said to her, "I've written to my solicitor today, I've asked him
to go ahead with divorce proceedings," and her only answer to this was to put her arms around his neck and
press her mouth to his.
Now she was back in the North and he was
here, and all he seemed to be living for was to be moved nearer to her, for he knew that once he was on his
feet, divorce or no divorce, they would come
together.
And there was another thing he didn't like to think about that happened on that leave; he had made it his business
to look up Johnny only to be told that Johnny
was dead. He had been kicked by a horse while on
some kind of manoeuvre up on the fells.
Johnny who didn't want to go to France in case
he caught one had died by a kick from a horse.
Life was crazy. The whole world was crazy.
"Ah, that's it. Nice to see you sitting up,
Major."
"I'll feel better when I'm standing up,
Doctor."
"All in good time. . . . Well, while I'm
here I might as well have a look at my
handiwork."
There was some gentle shuffling, the curtains were
drawn round the bed, the bedclothes were drawn back,
pads removed, then began the jokes.
"Nearly a complete board for noughts and crosses
here. Whose move is it next?"
"Mine I hope." There was no amusement in
Charlie's tone.
"All in good time. All in good time. Healing
nicely, Sister, don't you think?"
"Yes, Doctor, beautifully."
"When can I be moved?"
"That will do for now, Sister. Put the pads on
temporarily, leave the dressing, I want a
word."
The nurse now pushed a chair to the side of the bed,
then departed.
The doctor sat down, gave a special nod
to the sister, and she too departed; then he looked at
Charlie, and he said slowly, "You may go back
North once you are on your feet."
"You mean it?"
"Yes."
"You got them all out then? I thought. ..."
"Not quite."
He pressed himself back against the pillows now and
stared at the doctor. "It's still there then?" he said.
"That's about it."
"But you said ..."
"Yes, I know what I said, but when we got in
we thought it was a bit tricky. You're a lucky
man you know to be alive."
"dis . . And I mayn't be alive much longer?"
cc
"Oh, nonsense! Nonsense! You could go on for
years and years until you become a doddery old
farmer."
"That's if it stays put?"
"No, no, of course not; we're hoping it
moves. They do you know." "But in the right
direction." 'As you say?-the doctor lowered his
head now-"in the right direction."
"The other direction would be short and swift?"
There was a pause before the answer came: "Yes,
short and swift."
Charlie rubbed one lip over the other before he
asked, "And if it went in the right direction would you try again?"
"Like a shot." The doctor put his hand over his eyes. "Sorry, like a surgeon."
They both smiled now, then the doctor said, "Of
course when I say you may go North it will be
into hospital. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Well, we can't let you go in the condition you're in at present, it'll be a little time yet. I
don't think you realize how badly shattered you were and we've dug into you seven times in the last three
months, but if you'd had any flesh on your body you
know the shrapnel
wouldn't have got so far. You've got to be built
up, and it's got to be done before you get back to your farm and pick up everyday responsibilities, you
understand?"
Yes, he understood, and also the meaning behind all the doctor's kindly chat. They wanted him in
hospital for observation in case the piece of
shrapnel inside him decided to move. If it
moved in the right direction they could get it out, or
given time, he understood it could settle in and make
a home for itself where it was at present near his heart.
It was three weeks later when he went North,
but before that time he'd had a visitor. It was on the
day after he'd had the conversation with the doctor when the nurse, waking him from a doze, said,
"There's someone to see you." His heart had leapt at the thought that Nellie had made it after all. He'd
had a letter from her only that morning to say that the dragon of a sister wouldn't even allow her to put her
two weeks" leave together in order to make the
journey South, but she had put in for her discharge
offering as an excuse her mother needed her to run the
farm. And her mother had willingly gone along with her
on this, hoping that she would eventually return home.
But when his visitor turned out to be Betty, he was
really visibly startled and not a little touched by the thought that she must have some affection for him to have undertaken the journey to this out of the way place.
It was only a matter of nine months since he
had last seen her and he was shocked at the change in
her. She looked haggard, old, and her expression
was even tighter than usual, so much so that it was hard to believe she was only twenty-four years old.
Then in a matter of minutes after the usual
greetings had been exchanged he thought he had found
the explanation for her visit when, looking him
straight in the face, she asked bluntly, "Is it
true what I hear about you and Nellie Chapman?"
He considered her for a moment before replying,
"Well, Betty, if what you have heard
is that I intend to marry Nellie once the
divorce is through, it's true."
"You're mad."
"That's as may be, but that's what I intend to do.
And this time I know what I'm about."
"And what about me?"
"Well, we've been over this a number of times,
Betty, haven't we? We agreed that when you left
to marry Wetherby I would
see that you didn't go to him emptyhanded."
"And what if I don't marry Wetherby?"
"What do you mean, has something happened?"
"I'm not marrying Wetherby." Her lips
scarcely moved as she brought out the words and he stared at her for a moment before putting out his hand and placing it over hers. But it hadn't rested there a second before
she jerked her own away from his hold and demanded, "So where does that leave me now?"
"There'll always be a home for you there, Betty, you know that." But even as he said the words he was thinking in agitation, Oh no, not this now! Betty's tongue,
he knew, could impregnate a house with so much
acid that it would turn everything sour. Yet what could he do?
"A home?" she repeated. "Where? In
the corner of the kitchen? I've run that place since
my father died, yes, since he died because Mother
wasn't any good, and you weren't much better. It would
have gone to rack and ruin if it hadn't been for me and now you say I'll always have a home."
He was feeling very tired and he was
becoming increasingly agitated inside. He lay
back on his pillows, and a nurse passing up the
ward came to his side and said, "You all right,
Major?"
He nodded at her, saying, "Yes. Yes,
I'm all right." Then the nurse, looking across at
his visitor, said, "Please don't stay long,
he's easily tired."
Although Charlie closed his eyes for a moment he
felt rather than saw Betty's impatient shrug and
lift of the head.
When he again looked at her she was searching in her
handbag for something, and she brought out a sheet of paper, saying, "Will you sign this? I want to sell some
cattle."
"But you have my authority to sell the cattle; it was all arranged before I left."
He watched her press her lips together and turn
her head to the side, saying, "Well, I
wish you'd tell the authorities that. The laws are
changing all the time, men coming round to examine this, that, and the other, and because it's your farm and you're back in England they want your signature."
She handed him a pen, and he obediently wrote his
name on the bottom of the folded sheet of paper.
As she replaced the paper in her bag she brought her
short body straight up in the chair and asked,
"When are you likely to be home?"
"Oh"--he shook his head-"not for some time yet I should think, they're going to transfer me North, but
I'll still be in hospital. I don't suppose
they'll let me out, for good that is, until I'm
fit, but as soon as ever I can I'll take a
trip out and see you."
She was on her feet now-she had pushed the chair
back-and she stood looking at him for a moment before she said, "Good-bye, Charlie." There was something about the emphasis she laid on the words that made him sit
up and lean towards her, saying, "Now, you're not
to worry, Betty. I'll see you're all right,
I promise."
"I'll be all right, never you fear." She pulled at the belt of her coat, and he noticed that it was
one she had worn long before the war. She had
never spent money on herself, not like their mother.
"Good-bye, Charlie." Again it sounded like a
definite farewell.
"Good-bye, Betty. Take care of yourself.
I'll. . . I'll be with you soon."
TCP 14
She had walked to the bottom of the bed by now, and she stood there for some seconds and stared at him before she turned and went down the ward, a small, shabby,
dowdy figure.
He felt an urge to jump up and run after her
and to take her in his arms and comfort her. She must be taking the business of Wetherby very hard. He had
always known the fellow was no good, but if Betty had
liked . . . loved . . . and was capable of adoring
anyone it had been Robin Wetherby. It was odd that
this small sister of his who was so accurate in her
appraisal of others had not been able to see through
Wetherby. Indeed love could be blind. Anyway, he
decided he would talk to Nellie about her, and
Nellie would agree with him that he must be generous
towards her.
He closed his eyes. He had become upset
by her visit; he felt very tired, he wanted to sink
through the bed and down into the earth, down, down.
He'd had this experience a number of times of late.
He couldn't understand it. Why hadn't he felt like this during all the battles? But he had, that time on the
Menin road just outside Ypres. That was when he had
been transferred to the Third.
They were making for the Blue Line and were being peppered most of the way by machine-gun fire from the ruined
houses, and he had become so tired that he felt his
legs were giving out. But it was on the road he
realized that in the last extreme officers and men
became as one: there were officers who gave their lives for their men and men who gave their lives for their
officers. Never again after this did the ah-lah twang
of some of his fellow officers irritate him. Whether
the breed of officer he had encountered back home was
of a different species he didn't know. Perhaps the
simple answer was that when a man was confronted with
death his spirit rose and faced it. Death had a way of
levelling rank.
It was after the Menin road and the battles that
followed in October '17 when they fought through rain and gale, mud and slush, when men from colonels
downwards died like flies, and when the subaltern often found himself in command, that the pips began to descend on to his own shoulders. . . .
But he was going down again, down, down, he was
sinking into the mud. He grabbed at a leg and it
came away in his hand. The top was all raw flesh
but there was no blood coming
from it because it was frozen. Now he was crawling into a hole. It was a big hole, it widened even as he
looked at it; there had been water in the bottom which
had been soaked up by the bodies heaped there, but those pressed tight against the sides were live. The hole
began to spin and he opened his mouth and shouted, yelled, bawled, and all the men scrambled out of the hole, but as they stood up so they toppled back one after the other
as an aeroplane came diving towards them, the
pilot hanging head down, his face on fire. When
he fell among the men he landed on his feet, and he
looked young and unscathed and he flung his arms wide
and he laughed as he shouted, "They only gave me
days but I've been alive for six weeks and now
I've got all eternity!" All eternity. All
eternity. All eternity. The heap of men in the
middle of the hole got higher, the whirling became
faster. A face was pressed close to his; it was the
adjutant's. How had he got there? He should have
been back at base. He was smiling quietly at