The Rose Stone

by The Rose Stone (retail) (epub)

  DARLING SOPHIE. THEY WON’T WIN. BE BRAVE.

  R.

  She read it again and again. Touched the scrawled words, gently and reverently, with her finger.

  “Sophie?” Anna’s voice, outside the door, “It’s time to go.”

  She folded the precious note carefully, tucked it into the pocket where she could touch it. “I’m ready.”

  * * *

  Two weeks later Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the confused and grim train of events that was to lead like a lit fuse to general conflict burned on. Russia mobilized in support of her Serbian allies. Germany – her acquisitive eyes as always on French soil – followed suit. Within days these two nations were at war, and Germany’s attack on France was launched. Ignoring the guaranteed neutrality of a tiny and totally defenceless country, the German army marched into Belgium, raping a country and brutalizing a people whose simple misfortune was their geographical situation. Roused at last, the British bulldog raised a belatedly outraged head and growled a warning. Supremely confident that his grandmother’s country would never actually take arms against him, the Kaiser ignored the threat. Twenty-four hours later, on an unprecedented wave of jingoistic fervour, Britain declared war upon Germany and her young men began to queue at the enlisting posts for fear of being left out of the fun.

  It was upon that very day that Sophie began to suspect that she was pregnant.

  Chapter Twenty

  London, in those first few weeks of war, was a city of strange contrasts; a city of confidence, her streets full of young men in uniform, fresh and unblooded, off for a not unwelcome bit of excitement after these past years of peace and politics, her girls too caught by the high-hearted urgency of the time, their enthusiasm kindled by the opportunities offered by war to break from the confines that peace had imposed. Yet, of course, there was fear too, and heartbreak, and those to shake their heads at the dauntless naivety that foresaw no possibility of defeat, to wonder in the darkness of the night what their sons, lovers, husbands, brothers might have to face before the so-blithely-forecast day of victory arrived. There were fears of another sort, too – fears that no civilian population in Britain had ever had to face before: in the first month of the war Zeppelins, menacing giants of the sky, brought fire and death to beleaguered Antwerp and the reports of the raids that appeared in the British newspapers caused more than one thoughtful eye to lift to the skies of London, more than one ear to strain for the thrum of a distant engine on a clouded autumn afternoon. The possibility – some would have said the probability – of an air attack on the civilian population could not be ignored. By the darkling evenings of early October city streets were dim, their lights shaded or extinguished altogether, trams and omnibuses travelled all but unlit and private houses were blinded and curtained against the lamplight. And with the darkening of the streets came the darkening of the horizon of war. The debacle of the French defeats in August had been no more than a chauvinistic public – already sadly biased against these, their comparatively newly acquired allies – had expected. The British retreat from Mons, though a shock, could be accepted as a temporary setback. But for those with eyes to see and knowledge of the terrain over which the armies marched and fought the first signs that this was to be no swift and gallant encounter to be decided by a few brief and bloody battles were already there. At Verdun in September the French forced the Germans back to a ridge on the north bank of the River Aisne, and in the indecisive and tragically costly battle that followed for fourteen days thereafter lay the first inklings of the terrible stalemate of trench warfare. Along the rest of the Front the struggle for dominance swayed fiercely in those first few months, and unheard-of names that were to become all too familiar to British ears found their way into conversations over the dining table, the shop counter and the public bar. The Marne. Le Cateau. Guise. Flanders. And – in October – Ypres. The casualty lists grew with each day and each fierce attack. Ypres was held – just – and the small, pretty city unwittingly and unwillingly became both a symbol of freedom and a focal point of horror. The fight to save it decimated the old regular British Army. Only the remnants remained – remnants whose urgent job it would now be to train the young men who had so cheerfully obeyed their country’s call to arms, and whose experience of fighting was on the whole confined to school yard scuffles or the occasional bloody nose on a Saturday night. By November the flaming, clamorous line of the Western Front had been drawn in shed blood and barbed wire through France and Flanders and the armies were dug in as best they could be. Yet the situation could not be said to be equal, for the enemy had gained a good deal of his objective in those first fierce months and was now ready grimly to defend it, and so the German dispositions were made in concrete and steel and with an eye to permanence. Not so the Allies. To win this war they must attack, advance – so there were few well-serviced or solid bunkers for Jacques or Tommy or his Commonwealth mates. On the whole he crouched in and swore at a hastily-scraped hole in the ground shored up with corrugated iron and sandbags and – more and more frequently as the weeks moved on and the constant bombardment smashed the ground – knee-deep in filthy water. For now the gods had taken a hand in man’s ill-managed affairs, and the rain had started.

  For Anna – as indeed for most women – the greatest and most immediate effect of the war was in seeing some of the menfolk of her family don uniform and leave for France. The first – and perhaps the most surprising – departure was Ralph’s, his chaplain’s collar incongruous beneath his khaki uniform jacket, his gentle smile unchanged.

  “But – Ralph! Why?” She was at a loss for words.

  They strolled in the garden at Bayswater. The grass and paths were heaped and scattered with fallen leaves that skittered in small swirling whirlpools in the light breeze. The sky was bright and peaceful with sunshine.

  For the space of perhaps half a dozen quiet paces he did not reply. Then, “I’m not sure I can answer that myself,” he said. “It has nothing to do with – with bravery – or patriotism—”

  “What then?”

  “It’s,” he hesitated, “I think it has something to do with James,” he said very quietly.

  She looked a question.

  He shook his head. “Dead – buried friendless in a strange land. Someone must have prayed for him. I hope so, anyway.” She glanced at him again, sharply. She had always believed Ralph to be closer to James than to any of them, yet in those years since her brother’s death she had never suspected this haunting.

  “And perhaps too,” Ralph continued, “it’s that if my flock goes to war then it ill becomes me to hide beneath Mother Church’s skirts.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. No one would have accused you of that. And anyway you’re surely over age? They’re calling for volunteers between eighteen and thirty years old. I’m thirty-seven. If my arithmetic serves me well that makes you thirty-five.”

  His smile this time had in it the faintest hint of self-mockery. “They aren’t so particular about parsons.”

  She shook her head stubbornly. “I still don’t understand.”

  “Anna – in war, always, men are close to death. To pain. To fear. God can help them. Heal them. Strengthen them. Keep them whole.” He gestured, a small, self-deprecating lift of the hand. “Perhaps through me. I have to try.”

  She could find no counter to that. They paced for a moment in silence, then stopped by the small overgrown pool that had been such a childhood favourite. “Michael’s going, you know,” Anna said.

  “Yes, he told me.”

  “It’s ridiculous. He doesn’t have to go, either. He’s a year above thirty.” She broke off a small dead twig from the tree by which they were standing and snapped it, quickly and nervously, in her fingers. “I can’t think what’s happened to everyone.”

  “War’s happened to everyone.”

  “I suppose so.” She threw the pieces of twig into the clouded water, watched them spin in slow, lazy circles. “Ralph – what do you think?
I mean – will it all be over by Christmas as some people are saying? I read in the paper the other day that it could go on for as long as three years.” Nicholas, tall, fair, handsome Nicholas with his bright, bright eyes was nearly fourteen years old and already mad for a Subaltern’s uniform. She turned troubled eyes to her brother. “It couldn’t last that long could it?”

  He laughed, gently exasperated. “My dear Anna – I’m a chaplain, not a general. How would I know? We must just pray that it does not.”

  “Yes, of course.” Her tone did not indicate that she took much encouragement from that course of action.

  “What will you do?” he asked. “Have you thought? Will you stay in London?”

  “Why yes, of course. The boys are safely away at school, so we don’t have to worry about them. And we’re hoping that Victoria will join some friends in the country. Joss is doing something mysterious with all that money he’s making – armaments or something, I believe. It’s all very hush hush and he spends a lot of time away, in the north—” Her voice was even; any wife talking about her busy, absent husband. Ralph – no man’s fool despite his gentle nature – felt a twinge of sympathy for his sister. Anna needed warmth, love; he doubted that his brother-in-law had ever provided her with either. “And as for me,” Anna continued, and grinned suddenly, reminding him, briefly, of the mischievous, teasing older sister of childhood, “I’m not altogether useless, you know. I’ve already been co-opted on to God knows how many committees – Red Cross, Belgian Refugees, Ambulances for the Front – there must be half a dozen at least. Mind you, that’s nothing compared to Arabella. She’s careering around London on a motorcycle, you know. Must be rather fun, I should think.”

  Ralph looked as near to shock as his calm, pleasant face allowed. “Good Lord! You aren’t thinking of doing something like that, are you?”

  She laughed aloud at that. “Of course not! What do you take me for? I’m no Arabella to believe that we women should don uniform and fight shoulder to shoulder with the men—” “Heaven forbid.”

  “Quite. Someone’s got to look after things at home. While there’s still something to look after, that is. Still – I do suppose that if this business goes on for very long women are going to find themselves as involved as men. If General Kitchener keeps taking our men and the armaments factories entice our domestic help away we’re going to find ourselves doing a little more than twiddling our thumbs and watching for Zeppelins.”

  “You’ve never twiddled your thumbs in your life.”

  She grinned again. “That’s true.”

  “And what of your own work?”

  She shrugged a little. “That I’m afraid will have to take a back seat for the duration. Designing expensive jewellery could hardly be said to be the most patriotic or useful thing to do at the moment. My talents lately, such as they are, have been turned to designing posters and raising money.”

  “And what of Sophie? How is she?”

  The small, sudden silence was enough to make him turn and look at her. Then, “She’s pregnant,” Anna said, flatly. “With Richard’s child.”

  He stared at her, his kindly face stricken. “Oh, no.”

  She nodded. “There’s no doubt, I’m afraid.”

  “But that’s – terrible. A tragedy for the child—”

  “Yes. So everyone thinks. Except Sophie. Her father had to be physically restrained from grabbing the nearest pistol. Louisa is devastated. Alex nearly had a heart attack. And Alice – well, I’d better not go into what the charming Alice said, or I might have a heart attack myself.” Anna sighed, and the false bright, edge to her voice died. “But Sophie – Sophie is perfectly happy. Richard will marry her, she says, as soon as he is able. Perhaps she’s right. I don’t know. Alice can’t keep him from her forever, can she?”

  “Do they see each other? Sophie and Richard?”

  “No. Alice has seen to that. At the Military Academy – you know both the boys are at Woolwich now? – he’s been put on his honour not to approach the girl. You know Richard. That’s as effective as locking him in a cell. Sophie writes to him, I know. But he isn’t allowed to answer. Yet she has perfect and utter faith that he’ll come to her when he can.”

  “Perhaps he will.”

  “He’d better,” Anna said, unexpectedly grimly. “Or I’ll shoot him myself.”

  He smiled at her vehemence. “You’re very fond of her, aren’t you?”

  “Yes I am. More than I knew.” More than of my own daughter – not for the first time the guilty thought flicked through Anna’s mind. She could never understand why Victoria’s pleasant docility could aggravate her to screaming point whilst Sophie’s headstrong and volatile nature, which others found so difficult, sometimes exasperated her, but at the same time always endeared the girl to her and touched her heart. “Our Sophie, I’m afraid,” she added wryly, “is that kind of person. She brings out extremes in other people.”

  “Do you think—” Ralph hesitated. He looked faintly uncomfortable, “Do you think I should, well, talk to her?”

  Anna could not stop her sudden laughter. “Oh, Ralph, dear! And say what? That she’s a naughty girl and should not have done such a thing? Or that God forgives her wickedness? She’d laugh at you.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Of course you didn’t.” She was instantly contrite. “But – that’s what Sophie would think you meant. Whatever you said. No, Ralph, leave Sophie to go her own way. I’m coming to think that’s the best thing to do.” She turned to him and took his hands in hers, her face suddenly serious. “When do you leave?”

  “In two days.”

  “You’ll be careful? Truly careful?”

  He kissed her cheek. “Of course.”

  He left her there by the pool that had so many associations with their childhood, and she watched his retreating back with a gleam of anxiety in her pale eyes. The uniform he wore – so strange – so very alien to all she knew of her peace-loving brother – was like a symbol of all that had changed in the world, all that was threatened. She felt the faint and surprising sickness of fear creep through her bowels. Nothing she had read, nothing she had heard or seen so far, not even the tragic lists of the dead had so brought home to her the reality of the war. “God keep you.” She was startled to discover that she had spoken the words aloud.

  * * *

  The celebration of Christmas 1914 was at home inevitably overshadowed by nostalgia for the past and fear for the future, and in the trenches by the mud, the enemy bombardment and the bloody weather. For a few brief hours along a few brief miles of battlefront enemies met, exchanged cigarettes, addresses, photographs and then went back to their guns and their avowed intention of wiping each other out; a strange interlude that illustrated the best and the worst in human nature. Ralph Rose, his well-attended evening Communion over, sat, still and alone, looking out across the barbed wire, allowing himself the luxury of his first cigarette of the day and wondering at the lunatic inconsistency of man.

  It was in January that the much-feared airships made their first foray across the Channel and attacked the English east coast. Four people were killed and much damage was done to property; and Londoners slept even more uneasily in their beds when they heard the news. Across the water the guns rumbled, the shells sang their song of death and blood seeped into the ditch-pitted slime and filth that had, just a few months before, been peaceful cultivated countryside. At Neuve Chapelle the British Army lost thirteen thousand men in a battle in which all the ground that was gained was taken in the first three hours yet that lasted for a costly and exhausting three days. For one small, wrecked village it was a desperate price to pay; a price it was becoming increasingly obvious would be demanded again and again for every square foot of advance.

  In Bayswater, Anna found herself fighting an unexpected battle of her own.

  “I’m sorry, Mother. I don’t want to upset you. Or – defy you.” Victoria, flushed with the stress of a confrontation she would hav
e given blood to avoid, clenched her hands hard upon an already ruined lace handkerchief and, contriving to look contrite and defiant at one and the same time, stumbled obstinately on through an obviously prepared speech, her eyes avoiding her mother’s astonished face. “I will not run to the country and hide my head whilst the rest of the world fights a war. I’m not a child.” She stopped, the sensible and reasoned words running dry on her.

  Anna, as much amazed as actually angry at this defiance, waited.

  Victoria lifted her head. The softly pretty face was as intense as her mother had ever seen it, the wide, violet eyes dark with unwonted agitation. “I want to be a nurse, Mother. I want it more than anything in the world. I don’t want to go to France, or drive an ambulance, or be a heroine. I just want to be a nurse. Here, in London. I want to help. To do something.”

  In the silence, rain drummed against the window.

  “You’re very young—” Anna started to say.

  “I’m seventeen years old. I’ll wait till I’m eighteen if I must, though I’d rather not. Boys of my age died at Neuve Chapelle, Mother. No one told them they were too young.”

  Anna, nonplussed, shook her head. “Shouldn’t you wait? Perhaps go away for a while – think about it.”

  “No. I am sure. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”

  And she was. To everyone’s astonishment Victoria stuck to her guns with a stubborn determination that no one – not least herself – had suspected she possessed. Faced with such obduracy Anna gave in; indeed, for the first time in her daughter’s short life she found herself regarding her as an individual, and one to be admired. Victoria’s training, at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Smithfield, was gruelling, and nothing in her sheltered life had in any way prepared her for it: no one who knew her well believed that she would stick it out for more than a week. Yet she scrubbed floors, emptied bedpans, ran messages, washed soiled dressings for fourteen hours a day and cheerfully thrived upon it. Her meals were snatched and her sleep interrupted. She lost weight, gained blisters and confidence. By choice, to be close to her work, she roomed with another girl near the hospital; and from her very first visit home it was obvious that Victoria had found a vocation and the strength to pursue it. Anna’s respect for her daughter grew, and Victoria – tired, thinner than perhaps suited her, her hands red and rough – nevertheless glowed in the warmth of her mother’s approval at last.