Amelia shook her head vehemently, but Mary Ann ignored this signal. She looked back over her shoulder and gestured to the man to come on in.
The soldier came down the single step leading from the hall to the kitchen and followed Mary Ann into the kitchen. Amelia put her hand to her mouth when she saw the man in Frederick’s uniform. The man came into the kitchen and pulled a chair out for himself.
‘May I, Miss Pim?’ he said, and sat down without waiting for an answer.
Amelia stared at him, her green eyes brimming with enquiry, but still she didn’t speak.
‘You’ll have a cup of tea,’ announced Mary Ann, and it was an announcement, not a question.
‘I will,’ said the soldier, and laid his hat between himself and Amelia on the table.
‘Sure, we all will.’ Mary Ann was babbling, but not nervously; rather it was as if she was perfectly at ease with this man, whoever he was.
‘Grand,’ said the man.
Amelia still said nothing, but her silence didn’t seem to disconcert the visitor at all.
‘I have come from the house of friends of yours, Miss Pim,’ said the soldier. ‘The Goodbody family.’
At the name Goodbody, Amelia went rigid, and she turned her eyes away from the man with a quick flicker of green.
‘They are in great sorrow,’ said the soldier simply.
‘Sure it’s dreadful, dreadful,’ said Mary Ann, almost to herself, bustling with the tea things.
‘I was able to bring them some news of their son’s last hours, and I think it did them good to hear it. It helps to know the facts, even if they are hard to bear. I think it is better than to be wondering always.’ The man’s country tones were soothing, and he spoke quietly and directly.
Amelia still didn’t look at him, but you could tell from the way she held herself that she was listening. Her listening was almost audible in the room.
The soldier started his story, quite formally, with the pertinent facts: ‘Our regiment was the Dublin Fusiliers. We were with the eighth battalion of the Sixteenth Irish Division.’
Amelia knew all this. She had written to Frederick, hadn’t she. But there was something soothing about his manner of telling it. He sounded like an old storyteller starting a story with a conventional beginning, or an advocate laying the facts before a magistrate. Her body slackened a little, as she relaxed into what he had to say.
‘We were on a march, a long, agonising march it was.’
Amelia remembered the boots that didn’t fit properly, and her anxieties about socks. It all seemed very far away now, and almost trivial.
Quietly, as if not to break a spell, Mary Ann served the tea.
‘We marched along what they call the allées pavées. That means avenues, paved avenues. And they were really like avenues, with trees on either side. Long, long stretches of tree-lined roadway, paved with hard stone, and everywhere the land very flat and laid out like a chessboard all around us. The only mountains they have there are slag heaps. It’s a coal-mining area, the north of France.’
Amelia could see these weird avenues stretching for miles through the flat countryside, and peopled by the struggling army, dragging themselves dispiritedly along and wishing for a stream to bathe their aching feet.
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ asked the soldier suddenly, in a different voice, not his story-telling one. He pushed his empty teacup aside and took a pipe and a tobacco pouch out of his pocket, and a small pen-knife.
‘I like the smell of a pipe, myself,’ said Mary Ann. ‘Do you mind, Amelia?’
Amelia shook her head.
The soldier put the pipe, cold and empty, between his teeth, while he opened the tobacco pouch and took out a small plug of tobacco, hard and black and fibrous. He pared at the wedge of tobacco with the pen-knife, releasing the sweet aroma into the air. Deftly, he caught the tobacco parings in the hollow of his left hand, while he continued to pare with his right. When he had gathered a sufficient harvest, he folded up the penknife neatly, and laid it on the table. Then he started to finger the fibres that nestled in his hand, rubbing them over and over again between his fingers and occasionally lifting the golden strands up out of his hand, as if to let the light through them, as a woman making pastry lifts the dough mixture as she rubs it, to work air into it and make it light. The rubbed tobacco cupped in his hand was flecked with sunshine and bore no resemblance to the dense chunk from which he had pared it.
All the time the soldier worked at the tobacco he kept the pipe between his teeth and so didn’t speak. Amelia turned her eyes upon him, to see what the cause of the silence was, and she watched this operation with interest, for her father didn’t smoke and she had never seen this done at such close quarters before. Now he lifted the precious golden handful to his nose and gave a satisfied sniff.
‘I always think it’s almost a shame to smoke it,’ he said with a smile, but he started to pack the bowl of his pipe with it all the same. ‘Tobacco is like coffee. Never quite as good when used as it is when you smell it. One – no, two – of life’s little disappointments.’
Amelia smiled at him for the first time. She was warming to him, as he had intended she would.
He pushed the tobacco down with the flat end of the penknife and pressed more on top of it, working it down well until he had used it all up and the pipe was almost full. Then he sniffed the tobacco again and laid the pipe down without lighting it. It was as if he was drawing the maximum pleasure from the pipe by prolonging the anticipation.
Then he continued with the story as if there had been no interruption:
‘We were at a place called Hulloch, near Noeux-les-Mines. Did I mention that it was a coal-mining area? That’s what les mines means, I believe, in French. I was sorry to hear that. I thought it such a pretty name, till I knew what it meant. Ugly countryside. Anyway, it was at Hulloch that it happened. We were gassed, you see. Dreadful. Not many survived that. Young Goodbody went down. I saw him myself. He put his arms out, as if he was swimming, and then he just sank, in a little heap. It was all over quite quickly.’
‘Oh!’ said Amelia, her hand to her mouth again, and tears swimming in her eyes.
The soldier looked at her and picked up his pipe and fondled it.
‘I thought you would like to know that, my dear.’
Amelia kept her hand over her mouth, and the tears that had been in her eyes a moment ago were now trickling down her cheeks and over the back of her hand.
The soldier passed no remarks on this.
He went on: ‘There’s no use pretending it’s a pleasant death, but it’s probably better than spending months in those awful rat-infested trenches, up to your ankles in muck and then getting your head blown off when you are ordered to go over the top.’
Amelia’s tears came faster.
‘I was lucky. Got my mask on in time. My lungs were damaged, though, quite badly. That’s why I’m home now. Shouldn’t be smoking of course.’ And as if he had just remembered this, he put the pipe, unsmoked, back into his pocket.
‘I’m very sorry,’ he said, in a softer voice. ‘War is a wicked thing, my dear. Very wicked and evil.’
Amelia took her hand from her mouth, swallowed hard, and said: ‘Yes; yes it is. Thank you for coming.’
Mary Ann gasped. Amelia had spoken at last. First came tears, then words.
‘Did Frederick’s family send you?’ Amelia went on. Her voice was not much above a whisper.
‘Oh no, no. Frederick did.’
‘Frederick did?’
‘In a manner of speaking. Forgive me. I don’t mean to be flippant. We were friends, Fred and I. We each promised that if we survived the other, we would visit each other’s families and girls.’
‘Did Frederick say I was his girl?’ Amelia ventured with a blush.
At this the soldier laughed aloud: ‘He didn’t need to tell me! He never stopped talking about you, morning, noon and night. Amelia this and Amelia that. He carried your letter about with him, in
his pocket, till it was crumpled and worn and nearly in shreds, and that little token you sent him, whatever it was. It was completely in shreds, that. A pressed flower, was it? Anyway, it was just a little rag of fibres, like my tobacco here, but it was there, tucked into the letter and taken out and mulled over and tucked away again, several times a day.’
At this point, the soldier stood up to go. He took his pipe out of his pocket, and held it in his left hand. Then he delved into the pocket again, and took out something small and bright and round and laid it on the table. Amelia thought for a moment it was a sovereign.
‘I thought you might like to keep this. A button off his tunic. It’s not much. Not like a lock of hair or a photograph. But it’s something of a keepsake anyway.’
Amelia picked up the little bright button and held it for a moment in her fingers. It was still warm from the soldier’s pocket, round and bright and warm, like a tiny sun. Then she dropped it into her own pocket and said: ‘Thank you again,’ and stood up to say goodbye.
Just then Edmund came clattering into the kitchen, demanding tea for his grandmother. He stopped short when he saw the soldier.
‘There are no guns here now!’ he said defiantly. ‘We are pacifists in this house.’
‘Indeed and I’m sure you are,’ said the soldier. ‘And look, I haven’t got my gun with me either.’
Edmund looked at him suspiciously, but the soldier held out his hands for inspection.
‘Well,’ said Edmund. ‘You have a pipe. That’s almost as bad. Pipes aren’t allowed either.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said the soldier seriously, ‘but as you see, I haven’t smoked it, so maybe you’ll let me off this time.’
‘All right so,’ said Edmund grandly.
Amelia accompanied her guest to the door. As she shook hands with him, she asked: ‘One more thing. I forgot to ask. When did this happen?’
‘Oh, it was let me see, three weeks ago, maybe, or four? I was shipped home immediately. There were so few of us left, they said it would be simplest to send us home to recuperate.’
‘How recently? Since Easter?’
‘At Easter, in fact. It was a Monday. Easter Monday that would have been, I suppose.’
The soldier bowed to Amelia and strode down the path. At the gate, he stopped and put the pipe in his mouth. He cupped his hand around it, and with a few short puffs he lit it. He turned then and raised his hand. Then he was gone. Amelia hadn’t thought to ask his name.
She slid her hand into her pocket and fingered the button. She looked at the flowerbed. Somebody – Papa, she supposed – had dead-headed the daffodils and irises and tied the stems back neatly with string. The tulips were almost in bloom now, little red and yellow heads like small light bulbs struggling to see out of the wide blue-green foliage.
Amelia closed the front door and put her head around the drawing room door.
‘Mary Ann’s just making a fresh pot, Grandmama,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘It’ll be along directly.’
Grandmama nodded. ‘Thank you, Amelia,’ she said, and looked not in the least surpised that Amelia had spoken.
… and a Present for Amelia
Amelia’s mother thought Amelia ought to go and pay her respects to the Goodbody family.
‘Would that not be presumptuous, Mama?’ asked Amelia.
‘In what way, dear?’ asked her mother.
‘Well,’ Amelia stopped and blushed. ‘Well, it might seem to be saying that I had some sort of special relationship with Frederick.’
‘But you had, Amelia.’
‘We were just friends,’ Amelia mumbled, twisting her fingers about each other in her lap.
‘No, dear, not just friends. You liked each other very especially, and one day, when you were older, you might have married.’
‘Oh, Mama, don’t say such a thing.’ Amelia blushed deeper.
‘I don’t see why not,’ said Mama. ‘There’s no point in pretending otherwise. Those are just simple facts.’
‘We weren’t engaged, Mama,’ said Amelia, pronouncing the word ‘engaged’ as if it were a rather shameful idea.
‘Of course not. But just because you’re too young for that doesn’t mean that you feel any less at his loss. And I think it is right that you should go and sympathise with his parents before you go back to school. In any case, you are going to have to speak to Lucinda, and I think it would be better to do that in her home rather than in a corridor at school.’
So Amelia and her mother put on their best visiting hats and went to call on the Goodbody family.
Everyone was in black, for mourning, even Lucinda.
‘Don’t you think it wonderfully dramatic?’ she whispered to Amelia, sitting next to her on a rather uncomfortable conversation seat in the Goodbody’s magnificent drawing room.
Amelia opened her eyes wide in horror.
‘Good heavens, Amelia, I don’t mean Frederick’s being killed. That’s perfectly horrid, of course. I mean my mourning. Don’t you think black is marvellous with my colouring?’
It was true that black suited Lucinda. Her creamy throat rose pure and smooth out of the black ruffles, her face looked like alabaster, and her glorious hair looked more glorious still, as the only moment of colour in her whole person.
‘Yes, I think it suits you very well,’ Amelia whispered back.
‘It’s a pity you weren’t engaged to Frederick. Then you could have worn black too. Though I don’t know if it would have suited you as well. You might just have looked washed out. Some people do look appalling in black. You need strong colouring for it.’ And Lucinda put a loving hand up to her head and patted her auburn curls.
‘So maybe it’s just as well you weren’t engaged,’ she went on. ‘What did you make of that dreadful oaf who came with his lurid story though? He did call on you afterwards, didn’t he?’
‘You mean the soldier with the pipe?’
‘Pipe!’ screeched Lucinda. ‘He didn’t produce a pipe in your house, did he? What ever did your mama say?’
‘Oh, Mama wasn’t there.’
‘You mean you received him on your own? How very unconventional!’
‘No. Mary Ann was there too.’
Lucinda snorted. ‘Well, she hardly stayed in the drawing room all through the wretched man’s visit, did she?’
‘No. No, we were all in the kitchen, actually.’
Lucinda was speechless at this idea. She looked at Amelia as if she was from another species. There was a long silence between them, during which Amelia could hear their mothers at the other side of the room talking in low tones.
Just then Amelia’s mother stood up.
‘Time to be getting along now,’ she said. ‘Amelia?’
Amelia stood up too. She shook hands stiffly with Lucinda, who remained seated. Her hand was limp in Amelia’s, as if what Amelia had told her about receiving Frederick’s comrade in the kitchen had affected her bone structure.
Lucinda’s mother stood up too and kissed Amelia’s mother lightly. Amelia held her cheek out to be kissed, but Lucinda’s mother took her right into her arms and gave her a warm, wordless hug. Amelia was surprised, but returned the hug just as warmly.
‘I’m ever so sorry,’ she whispered in the older woman’s ear.
‘So am I, my dear, so am I,’ said Mrs Goodbody.
‘I do think, Mama,’ said Amelia as they pattered home together, ‘that Lucinda Goodbody is quite the most odious girl I ever met.’
Her mother smiled to herself, and thought that Amelia was markedly better.
When Amelia and her mother jostled in at the front door, they beheld a most extraordinary sight. Mary Ann stood locked in a tight embrace with a man who appeared to be Amelia’s father. At least, he was shorter than Amelia’s father, and darker, but one could be forgiven for mistaking him for Amelia’s father just for a brief moment: he was, after all, wearing Mr Pim’s greatcoat.
Amelia’s mother gasped. Amelia gave a shocked little yelp, wh
ich turned into a cry of recognition and pleasure. She jumped up and down on the floor with excitement and beat a frantic tattoo on Patrick’s back. He loosened himself a little from Mary Ann’s clasp, half-turned and, seeing Amelia, drew her also into the embrace. The three young people stood and swayed together for an ecstatic moment. Amelia was the first to shake free. She turned a shining face to her mother:
‘It’s Mary Ann’s brother, Patrick, Mama. He’s safe. He’s not dead.’
‘No,’ said her mother, in an amused tone. ‘I can see that he is most emphatically not dead. And I see that that is a source of gratification to you two. How do you do, Mr Maloney?’
Patrick took her hand and shook it hard.
‘Oh look, your hand, your arm, it works! I fixed it, and it works!’ Amelia touched Patrick’s arm reverently, and ran her fingers along the forearm, where the wound had been.
‘Oh yes, indeed it does, indeed it does!’ cried Patrick, pumping Amelia’s mother’s hand harder than ever in demonstration.
‘I see,’ said Mrs Pim. ‘But would somebody like to tell me why it is such a source of surprise that not only is this young man alive, but his hand and arm are in working order?’
‘Yes, of course, but first I have to take my coat off,’ said Patrick, shrugging it off as he spoke. ‘At least, it’s not my coat, and to return it was one of my reasons for coming here today.’
‘Yes, I thought it looked familiar,’ said Amelia’s mother.
Amelia’s mother did eventually get to hear the whole story. She could hardly believe what she had slept through that fateful Friday night, all the comings and goings in and out of the house with bandages and cooking sherry and cushions, and the smuggling out of Patrick in the early morning in the milk-cart, wearing a purloined coat. As the three young people told the story, it seemed more and more unlikely and absurd, and they saw funny aspects to it now that they had been too overwrought to see at the time. Before long, the four of them were chortling over the dining table (for Amelia’s mother said it was too important an occasion for the kitchen) and swinging back in their chairs to laugh some more.
No Peace for Amelia Page 14