The Dust That Falls From Dreams

by Louis de Bernières

  ‘Stuff that, sweetheart. I’ve been sodden for years. But I’m not going to ask if you’re not going to be accepting.’

  ‘Oh, Hutch! Well, what do you think?!’

  ‘Is that yes, then?’

  ‘Oh, Hutch!’

  The telephone began to bleep, and in the few seconds left, Hutch said, ‘Got no more pennies. See you Sunday, sweetheart.’

  Millicent sat down on the chair beneath the portrait that she had been dusting, and blew out her cheeks. She felt the most wonderful sense of jubilation, and began to laugh. Rosie came out of the drawing room and found her there, apparently idling, and Millicent sprang to her feet in embarrassment. ‘Oh, Miss Rosie, I wasn’t slacking. I wasn’t, I promise!’ Rosie looked a little sceptical. ‘I wasn’t, miss! I was recovering! I just had news!’

  ‘Happy news, by the looks of it.’

  ‘I’m going to get married, miss! Hutch is coming on Sunday, and he’s going to ask me. Down by the Tarn.’

  Rosie stood silent for a second or two, absorbing the news.

  ‘Why are you crying, miss?’

  ‘Oh Millicent, I’m so happy for you. I’m sorry. I can’t help it. It’s such wonderful news.’

  Millicent realised at that moment that Rosie was perhaps also crying for herself. She reached up her hands helplessly, as if to embrace Rosie, but knowing that it could not possibly be done. Rosie saw the gesture and reacted naturally to it. She reached out her own hands and the two women found themselves in each other’s arms, both in tears.

  Eventually Rosie detached herself, wiped her eyes with the exiguous handkerchief that she kept up her sleeve, and said, ‘I bet that’s never happened in this house before.’

  ‘Nor never will again, most like.’

  ‘Millicent?’

  ‘Yes, miss?’

  ‘Can I be your bridesmaid? For Ash’s sake? Because Hutchinson was his best friend?’

  Millicent was horrified, and flushed hotly. ‘But, miss, no gentlewoman has ever been no servant’s bridesmaid. What’ll Mrs McCosh say?’

  ‘Everything’s changed, Millicent. Before the war Ash and Hutchinson wouldn’t have got to be friends, would they? And there’s absolutely no need for my mother to know. I’ll go as the family representative. If you accept, of course.’

  ‘But, miss, I got four sisters.’

  At last Rosie perceived Millicent’s agitation, and felt ashamed of herself.

  ‘Oh, Millicent, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. It was thoughtless of me. It’s just that I’m fond of you. And I’m really not a snob any more. But I can quite see that it would seem awfully strange for your family if I were there. I am sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.’

  ‘It was nice of you to ask,’ said Millicent. ‘I don’t honestly think we’ll have any bridesmaids at all, though.’

  ‘May I come to the service? I’ll sit at the back, if that’s all right.’

  ‘Course it is, miss.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  43

  Autographs

  One of the nurses in Rosie’s tent had bought an autograph book and was filling it with inscriptions by the wounded soldiers in her care. The fashion had caught on because the men loved having something to do, and for many it was a chance to show how grateful they were to the nurses, to make up rhymes that lurched to scan, often didn’t rhyme very well either, and even to make oblique declarations of affection. Rosie went into Southampton and bought a very nice one at the stationer’s. It was bound in soft black leather, and the paper was thick and watermarked. Rosie had wanted a book of high quality in order to demonstrate to the men how much she valued them.

  The first man to write in it was Able Seaman Devonshire, who turned straight to the last page and wrote: ‘By hook or by crook I’ll be the last in this book.’ G. Grimble of the Machine Gun Corps wrote: ‘When on this book you look, when on this book you frown, think of the one who spoiled your book by writing upside down.’ Private Shaw 12367 of the 1st Battalion Scots Guards left his address in the hope that Rosie would get in touch with him at a later date. Private Humphrey 2021, 3rd Battalion the Queen’s Regiment, stuck a small photograph of himself into the book. He decorated a whole page with writing that looked as if it were done in relief. He did it with his left hand.

  Lieutenant Collier of the Yorks and Lancs drew an elaborate cartoon of some German soldiers being frightened by tanks. A. Hilberry of the Inniskilling Dragoons drew a cartoon of a sailor and a bulldog, and Private Francis Love in hut 19 drew some brooms and a carpet sweeper, subtitled ‘Some Mine Sweeping Equipment’. Bombardier Hood drew an ivy tendril in flower, very beautifully. Master Sergeant Montgomery of the 4th CMR wrote:

  Think of me when you are lonely,

  Cast on me one little thought,

  In the depths of thine affection,

  Plant one sweet forget-me-not.

  You are my friend, my friend forever,

  You may change but I will never.

  Though separation is our lot,

  Dear Old Pal forget me not.

  12767 Joseph Webber of the 2nd Suffolks stuck in a photograph of himself straddling a chair backwards, with his arms resting on the back. He drew an immaculate picture of his cap badge, and wrote:

  The best of luck I wish for thee,

  The best of all good things,

  The best of happiness and joy

  That fortune ever brings.

  Private Edwards of the 14th Battalion Durham Light Infantry, wounded at Ypres.

  ‘May your life be free from sorrow and care, may fortune always attend you, and may your days be filled with happiness is the sincere wish of Wm. J. Allen, 2nd CMR BC Canada.’

  V. Buxton wished VAD Nurse McCosh the best of good luck from her little Aussie, and wrote a strange rhyme about a kangaroo that she couldn’t decipher.

  Another little Aussie, Pte ME Obrien of the AIF, wrote:

  The Netley Red Cross Hospital is the first that I’ve been in,

  And the way that we’ve been treated, I’ll long to be back again.

  Though you may be wounded badly, there is no cause to fear,

  For you’re sure to recover quickly with the nurses they have here.

  Although Australia’s far away across the briny sea,

  I’ll not forget the hospital where the nurses were so kind to me.

  Impressed by his own talent, he wrote ‘Some poem!’ obliquely across the bottom of the page.

  The waggish HM of hut 19 wrote:

  Mary had a little lamp,

  It was well trained no doubt,

  For every time her sweetheart called,

  That little lamp when out.

  At Christmas 1916 Sergeant J. J. Hennessey of the Rifle Brigade (Prince Consort’s Own) reflected that: ‘As the stormiest days frequently end in the most gloriest sunset, so we hope and pray that out of this time of sorrow and strife may issue a nobler and better world than has been yet.’

  148928 MTASC, EAEF wrote:

  Little dabs of powder, little daubs of paint,

  Make a girl’s complexion look just what it ain’t.

  Rifleman Frank Neale of the Post Office Rifles wrote out all of Portia’s speech about mercy, from memory.

  On and on they went for three volumes, the rhymes, cartoons, reflections, words of gratitude, some beautifully done, some semiliterate, all sincere. As her life went by Rosie spent many hours alone with her autograph books, remembering the cheerful young men in the photographs, trying to picture those whose images had been slowly fading, admiring the immense talent of common soldiers from all over the Empire who could paint immaculate pictures of flowers or dogs, or bottles of whisky. To her they remained as young and cheerful as they had been back then, frozen in time by fond memory as old lovers are. These wounded young men who had left traces of their spirit in ink and pencil, verse and adage, were signals of the time in her life when she had been doing the most important things it would ever befall her to do, when experience was most
intense, when the immensity of her grief and exhaustion made the plasticity of the world shimmer before her eyes like the heat haze on a summer road, when the whole universe seemed to smell of carbolic and Lysol and surgical spirit.

  The contribution to which she unfailingly returned was the entry by Private J. C. Grundie of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, who had taken a particular shine to her because she was half Scottish. On 9 April 1918 he drew a picture of a young woman wearing a sun hat, with a trug basket in the crook of her arm, and a rake over her shoulder. Behind her was a picture of a steamer and a submarine, and from each corner of the page grew tufts of what looked like tropical fern. In the middle of these surreal juxtapositions he had written, in tiny italic script:

  When the war is done we’ll recall the fun –

  The fun that conquered the pain –

  For we’ll owe a debt (and we’ll not forget)

  To the jokes that kept us sane:

  How the wounded could laugh and bandy their chaff

  And kick up a deuce of a row!

  It may be in peace, when the sufferings cease,

  We’ll be sadder, aye sadder, than now.

  Rosie learned these prophetic words by heart, and hoped that for Private J. C. Grundie she too would remain forever young, with chestnut hair on her head, freckles on her face, and so much grief to cope with that she smothered it in work, and kindliness, and jokes.

  44

  The Metamorphosis of Mrs McCosh (1)

  Mrs McCosh adored Folkestone. Every Whitsun she travelled down by train from Victoria to stay with her friend Myrtle, who liked to style herself Mrs Henry Cowburn, after the fashion of the day. Mrs Henry Cowburn lived in a dilapidated four-bedroomed house not far from Little Switzerland with her husband, a former yeomanry officer and local solicitor, who was infinitely more interested in playing golf than in practising law, and liked to play with Mr McCosh whenever he had reason to come up to London, and with Mrs McCosh when she came down to visit his wife. He had served in the South African war and his intestines had never quite recovered from the dysentery that had nearly killed him, and had, indeed, done for most of his comrades far more efficiently than the guerrilla tactics of the Boers. Before setting off to the golf course he would take great pains to ensure that nothing gastrointestinal was likely to happen to him. Fortunately the green of the ninth was near the clubhouse, and he could usually manage until then. He ate prodigious quantities of eggs and bacon, in the belief, current at the time, that they had a binding effect. This diet certainly made an outdoor life in some ways preferable, but now that eggs were fivepence and bacon was one and eight, he had discovered to his delight that a more normal diet actually improved the state of his bowels.

  Folkestone had been greatly changed by the war, at first becoming somewhat dismal. It had been designated a prohibited area because of its proximity to France and its vulnerability to naval bombardment. All the Austrian and German waiters had been interned, and the hotels and boarding houses had fallen into desuetude. The Metropole and the Grand were barely ticking over, and the band no longer played its exuberant music on the Leas. The young men had gone into the navy or the Buffs, and their place had been taken by abject Belgian refugees, with their tales of atrocity and rape, and their hopeless penury. Myrtle was on the Committee for Belgian Refugees, and her three spare rooms were taken by three elderly musicians from the same orchestra who had all fled together. Her house was filled with melancholy chamber music played on borrowed instruments that were not nearly as good as the ones they had had to leave behind, as they often reminded her. On three days a week she manned the soup kitchens at the fishmarket. Major Cowburn was on the Emergency Committee, and was one of those in charge of destroying anything useful to the enemy in the event of invasion. He had a list of everything useful in the town, and detailed plans as to how to destroy it. In his garden he had prepared a large ziggurat of kindling so that a bonfire might be lit at short notice.

  Not long after the commencement of the war, Folkestone had begun to fill up with tens of thousands of Canadian recruits. On St Martin’s Plain were acre upon acre of tents, shops, huts, cinemas and canteens. Practice trenches reconfigured the landscape and became a hazard for drunks and unwary sheep. Millions of men had marched proudly down Slope Road, and many fewer were later to march wearily back up it.

  Mrs McCosh’s luggage had been sent on ahead. When she left the station she was somewhat displeased by the present appearance of things, and wondered with whom she might have a stern word. She felt the onset of a letter to His Majesty. To begin with, the coming and going of so many military vehicles had turned the roads into a sea of chalky mud that clung to one’s shoes like treacle, and furthermore, the empty houses were already falling into disrepair, giving the town a forlorn aspect that Mrs McCosh felt was certain to be bad for the general morale.

  Myrtle had come to meet her at the station, and they had exchanged embraces and delighted giggles as if they were still schoolgirls. Myrtle was slender, despite the approach of middle age, and her eyes were still bright with the humour and interest of youth. She always dressed, even in winter, in such a way as to give the impression that she was a fairy draped in diaphanous gauze. Mrs McCosh, on the other hand, dressed stylishly and expensively without in any way standing out from the crowd.

  ‘My dear, you look most scandalously well,’ said Myrtle to her friend. ‘It’s terribly unbecoming in wartime, don’t you think, to be so much in the pink?’

  ‘You’re becoming a poet,’ replied Mrs McCosh.

  ‘It’s so lovely to see you,’ said Myrtle, ‘I was inspired to rhyme quite accidentally. I do think you’re most frightfully brave to come. One lives in constant fear of a raid. It’s rather a jar.’

  ‘Oh no,’ replied Mrs McCosh, ‘in that, you are quite wrong. Everyone knows that Folkestone is perfectly safe.’

  She was referring to the widely held belief that the Germans would never attack Folkestone because in the recent past the local people had saved hundreds of German sailors from drowning after a collision between two warships, and it was certainly true that even though Dover and Ramsgate and Margate had been bombed, Folkestone itself had been spared.

  Myrtle was sceptical. ‘My dear, these people have invaded Luxembourg and Belgium, and think nothing of killing civilians. Why, I believe they even think it’s a good thing! And they invented that ghastly warfare with gas. I do hope you’re right though.’

  ‘I am always right, my dear,’ said Mrs McCosh drily. The two women set off gaily, receiving the respectful greetings of many a Canadian officer on the way. ‘I do love these Canadians,’ said Myrtle, ‘the way they sweep off their caps and even bow, and I don’t believe it’s the slightest bit ironical. And it’s amazing how many of them are sort of French.’

  ‘Sort of French?’

  ‘Sure, it’s quite like being in Brittany sometimes. They gabble away to each other in such a strong accent that it’s quite hard to follow. Of course, if one addresses them in proper Parisian French, they simply reply in English.’

  ‘Did you say “sure”? I do believe you are becoming a Canadian yourself.’

  ‘Oh, you should hear us all,’ said Myrtle. ‘Dear Henry almost has an accent. Oh, and I must tell you, I have three Belgian musicians in the house at present, so please don’t be alarmed if you come across poor shambling folk on the landing. They are nearly ghosts, but not quite. Two of them have very kindly agreed to share during your visit, so you shall have your usual room overlooking the sea.’

  ‘How lovely,’ said Mrs McCosh with evident insincerity, a little worried about having to be in the vicinity of unknown foreigners. She had not bargained on any such thing. ‘Of course, I have been having Belgian ladies to tea quite a lot myself.’

  ‘Don’t worry, they are perfectly sweet,’ said Myrtle. ‘They have such a glum air that it makes one want to tickle them.’

  It was a beautiful day in May. The sky was clear but for some tiny clouds, and the se
a was Mediterranean blue and flat calm. A small breeze was bringing the aroma of kelp and salty water to the promenade, and Mrs Hamilton McCosh and Mrs Henry Cowburn walked along it in a daze of contentment and wellbeing. They had been friends for a very long time, despite being so far removed from each other temperamentally, and it had been Mrytle who had seen Mrs McCosh through that terrible period that the latter always thought of as her ‘Dreadful Disgrace’ or ‘Awful Scandal’ when it had been revealed in the press that the Lord to whom she was engaged already had a wife in a lunatic asylum in America. She had felt humiliated and shamed by it even though she and everybody else had known perfectly well that she had not been remotely at fault. She had destroyed all her personal diaries that covered that period, and moreover His Lordship had recently died, so that Mrs McCosh finally felt completely free of him. She had been utterly grateful and astonished when one day Hamilton McCosh had proposed to her, although she had been slightly mortified when he had added, ‘And I have nothing but cobwebs in the attic.’

  They reached home at exactly the same time as Henry Cowburn himself, who was dressed in plus fours and was carrying one golf club and a new box of golf balls. He was returning from the monthly match of the Mashie Club, in which each player was only permitted the use of one club for the whole round. He had learned to putt left-handed so that the negative loft of the back of the club put a marvellous topspin onto the ball and sent it unerringly into the cup. The other members liked to josh him that he could only win by cheating, and win he did, every time. As the prize was always a box of half a dozen golf balls, he now had a fair store of them in the cupboard under the stairs, and was hoping to send Mrs McCosh home with a box or two for her husband.

  ‘Welcome to Little Toronto!’ he exclaimed, and Mrs McCosh held out her hand.

  ‘Did you win again, dear?’ asked his wife.

  ‘Absolutely!’ he replied. ‘Or should I say “sure”?’