There seemed to be a constant coming and going of ambulances at Fivewells, with army doctors in uniform and nurses wearing white flapping headdresses. It seemed that every delivery van in Kent had been brought here and made into an ambulance, with a hood over the top and a space for a stretcher in the back. Archie stayed well away from them while he learned to ride the bicycle with Star in the basket. He’d hoped to go straight off and find Will, but in fact it took him all morning to get Star to see what he was meant to do. The idea was to lean the bicycle against the wall, put Star in the basket, then get on and ride away, but as soon as the bicycle moved Star turned round and round in circles, barking at the top of his voice and trying to escape. Twice he nearly managed it, and Archie had to get off and tip the frame sideways so that Star wouldn’t break a leg jumping out. After that he tried tethering Star with the lead, but Star was so determined to get out that he nearly choked himself. Archie sighed. This would take time.
“You needn’t think I’m going off and leaving you here,” he said. “You’ll have to get used to this.”
He had an idea when he was back in the potting shed. He had packed Star’s favourite things – Master Ted’s slippers, a towel, and the pom-pom Jenn had made – and one of Will’s socks, which might come in useful for finding him. The basket on the front of the bicycle was attached to the handlebars by two leather straps – the buckles were stiff and a bit rusty in places, but Archie managed to get them undone and heave the basket off. He carried it into the potting shed, lined it with Star’s shopping-bag bed, and put his toys in. One of his own socks turned up in the shopping bag, too, so Star must have helped himself to that when Archie wasn’t watching. Archie had grinned when he first saw it. That was what Star used to do with Master Ted’s boots.
“Try that, Star,” he said, and put him in the basket. Star put his paws on the edge, tipped it over, walked out, and went back for a sock. After that he was willing to stay in the basket so long as it was on the ground, and sideways.
The next morning Archie could hardly stand up. Every fall from the bike seemed to have left bruises. Wincing, he reached into his bag for the letters his dad and Lady Hazelgrove had written about Will. He wanted to get away, swooping along the Kent lanes looking for his brother, but it seemed that he’d have to be patient.
“Let’s try again, Star,” he said. This time he fastened the basket to the bicycle, lined it with Star’s bedding and toys, and sat Star in it.
“Stay,” he said firmly and wheeled the bicycle up and down the paths, rewarding Star with scraps left from breakfast. As he’d hoped, Star was soon more interested in the food than in what the bicycle was doing.
“What about a run on the grass now, Star?” said Archie at last. It wasn’t easy to wear Star out, but at least he’d be more likely to sit quietly in the basket if he wasn’t bursting with energy. It was another warm day, and Archie walked up and down the paths as Star galloped ahead, sending blackbirds flapping indignantly into their trees.
Archie was impressed. Everything in the Kent garden was two weeks ahead of Yorkshire. He could understand why Will had loved it. And it seemed cruel that Master Ted would never come here to his sister’s house and eat peaches from the walled garden, or play cricket on the lawns. It was all wrong, this war. Far away, a man in a blue uniform was walking on two sticks, with a nurse beside him. Archie looked away. It felt wrong to watch the injured man.
He was keen to be away and looking for Will. He called “Carr!” then glanced round to make sure nobody was likely to hear him and changed to, “Star!” Star, who must have run off some energy by now, followed him back to the potting shed.
“In you go, Star,” he said, lifting him into the bicycle basket. “We’re off to find Will.” He fed him a bit of cold sausage. “Good boy.”
Star was happier now he knew that the basket meant food and settled down, his ears lifted as he looked out. When the bicycle began to move he whimpered and scrabbled about, but Archie didn’t stop. Star put his paws on the edge of the basket, looked down, and saw that it was a long way. He’d have to sit still and make the best of it. Soon, he’d forgotten that he was moving at all.
It was a long ride up and down hill – mostly down – by the time Archie saw the row of tents and huts at Great Pimlow Army Camp. Star was used to this now, and enjoying it. He sat up with his paws on the edge of the basket, looking from one side to the other and occasionally barking at a rabbit. When Archie dismounted and wheeled the bicycle he thought of jumping down, but looked over the edge of the basket and decided to stay put for the moment.
Archie had been expecting to see a few lines of tents but Great Pimlow was the size of a small town, with rows and rows of huts. There were soldiers marching in time with rifles over their shoulders, and another group lying behind a heap of sandbags firing at targets. How could he find Will in all this?
He wheeled the bicycle past yards of barbed wire to the main gate of the camp. Two sentries in muddy-coloured battledress had already seen him, and were standing at the gate with their guns in their hands. Archie thought that maybe he was meant to hold his hands up, but he needed to hang on to the bicycle.
“If you’ve come to join up, son, you look too young to me,” said one of them. “Come back when you’re eighteen. Tomorrow will do.”
“I haven’t,” said Archie. “I haven’t come to join up.”
“Nice dog,” said the other. He had ginger hair, thin at the front, and put his hand out for Star to sniff. The first soldier ignored Star.
“Now, son,” he said. “I have a name, and you use my name when you talk to me. My name is ‘sir’. Now, if you don’t want to be a soldier, what are you doing here?”
“I’m here to find my brother, sir,” said Archie. “He joined up a few weeks ago but he’s only fifteen. I’ve got letters about it, sir.”
The “sir” soldier took the letter with an unpleasant smile on his lips, and Archie knew that sort of smile. Bullies looked like that when they were about to pick on you in front of your friends. But he hadn’t come all this way to be put off by a school bully in a uniform.
“That’ll be a letter from your ma, then?” he said with a smirk.
“No, sir, from Lady Hazelgrove of Ashlings Hall.”
“Oh, I say, Lady Hazelgrove from Ashlings Hall!” repeated the soldier in a high-pitched voice. “And who might she be?”
“Lady Dunkeld’s mother, sir,” he said. “Lady Dunkeld from…”
The mocking expression vanished. “I know where Lady Dunkeld comes from!” snapped the soldier. “Does she know about your brother?”
“Yes, sir, he used to work for her.”
The soldier glared at him, swore quietly, and snatched the letter. “Stay there,” he ordered, and turned to the ginger-haired soldier. “Corporal, if he moves, arrest him. On second thoughts, don’t bother. Just shoot him. What’s your brother’s name?”
“Sir, it’s Will Sparrow, but…”
“Will Sparrow, or ‘but’?”
“Will Sparrow, sir.”
The soldier muttered something about being more trouble than the blooming German army and stamped away to the nearest shed. When he was out of the way, the ginger-haired corporal came to talk to Archie. Star was sitting up with both front paws on the edge of the basket, so Archie lifted him down.
“Carr, sit,” he ordered. “Stay.” Star sat obediently, and stayed at Archie’s side.
“Don’t mind the sergeant, he’s always like that,” said the corporal. “He won’t get on the wrong side of Lady Dunkeld, her husband owns this bit of land. Does your dog bite?”
“No, sir, he’s dead soft,” said Archie, who liked the corporal. Star was wagging his tail so he liked him too, which was a good sign. “Only I reckon my brother must have changed his name so we couldn’t find him. He could be called anything. He might have used Taylor, because that was my ma’s maide
n name, or Carr after the family.”
“What does he look like?”
“Bit taller than me sir, bigger frame. Same colour hair. Big hands and feet, sir.”
“Could be any of ’em.”
Soldiers ran out from one of the huts and stood in ranks. Archie peered towards them, but he couldn’t see Will. He scanned the camp, watching every soldier who appeared, but Will wasn’t among them. The sergeant was striding back to them. Star, who had been sitting quietly at Archie’s heel, came to stand in front of him.
“No Sparrows in this camp,” he reported. “No starlings, no swallers, no blooming blackbirds neither. So just fly away before the cat gets you.”
“The lad did say his brother might be using a false name, sir,” said the corporal.
“Oh, did he? Well, young Sparrow, do you know how many men are in this camp?”
“No, sir.”
“No, you don’t. Let me tell you, it’s getting up to twenty thousand and if you think I can hunt through them all looking for one lad, you’re mistaken. He’ll have to take his chances with the rest of them.”
“With your permission, sir,” said the corporal, “perhaps the lad has a photograph of his brother?”
“We never had one done, sir,” said Archie.
“And you say he might have called himself Taylor or Carr? Sir, perhaps I can have a quick nosy at the register, see if we’ve got a Taylor or a Carr come in within the last few weeks? Just as it’s a lad that worked at Fivewells, sir, we could make the effort.”
“Five minutes, corporal,” said the sergeant. But there were no Carrs in the register, and the only Taylors were men in their thirties. They tried the Smiths, too – the corporal said they had an astonishing number of Smiths – but they were all older men, too.
“If I see a lad that looks anything like you, I’ll send a message to Fivewells,” said the corporal at last. “Best I can do. Your dog didn’t like the sergeant, did he? He was standing guard over you.”
Archie said goodbye and wheeled the bicycle back to the main road, then lifted Star back into the basket. “I’m supposed to be looking after you, not the other way round,” he said. “You’re a brave dog, you. Maybe I was stupid to think our Will would go to the nearest army camp to Fivewells. First place anyone would look, and he wasn’t going to make it that easy. He doesn’t want to be found.”
Going to Great Pimlow had been mostly downhill, so the journey back was up. Archie’s legs, unused to cycling, were tired and beginning to stiffen. Pushing the pedals was hard and painful, and to his shame he had to get off sometimes and push it uphill. By the time he reached the gates of Fivewells he was aching, hungry, and thirsty. He took Star from the basket but kept him on the lead, because a lorry was coming the other way. A red cross was painted on its side. More of them were parked outside the house, and nurses were hurrying out from the front door. Archie took the bicycle back to the shed, gave Star a drink, and went to the staff hall in the hope of something to eat.
“It’s Cook’s day off, and I’m not here to get tea for a garden boy,” snapped a kitchenmaid when he looked into the staff hall. “Or your dog. You can wait until staff dinner at eight.” But just as Archie’s stomach seemed to turn to stone, the housekeeper in her neat dark dress bustled into the room.
“You’re the boy who’s looking for his brother, aren’t you?” she said. “Come with me. You can bring the little dog.”
The housekeeper’s room was smarter and neater than the parlour at home and more comfortable, too. Soon Archie was eating bread and butter and cake and just managing to use polite manners though he wanted to devour the food like a wolf. There was hot tea, too, and “I can always find a few scraps for a doggy,” said the housekeeper, and presently the boot boy brought some cold mutton and potatoes for Star. Archie relaxed. The chair was comfortable, the housekeeper was kind, Star was fed and watered and lay contentedly, his head on Archie’s foot…
Brisk firm footsteps rang along the corridor. Somebody was clapping hands for attention.
“It’s Her Ladyship!” said the housekeeper, and sprang to her feet. Lady Dunkeld was marching through the servants’ quarters.
“We need stretcher-bearers!” she shouted. “And people to fetch and carry! We need strong arms!”
Archie jumped up. “May I leave S … Carr here?” he asked.
“Of course you can,” said the housekeeper, smiling down at Star. “He’s a nice dog. I remember when Her Ladyship’s brother used to come, he had one like it. It must be a Yorkshire breed of dog, is it?”
“Aye, he’s a real Yorkshire dog,” said Archie and hurried out to see what he could do to help, though he found he was so stiff that he was walking astride, the way Flora did when she’d wet herself. He nearly collided with a nurse.
“How can I help, miss?” he asked.
“We’re going to have a house full of badly injured men and they need to be kept warm,” she said. “We need fires lit in every room and plenty of logs to keep them going. Can you do that?”
“Logs is this way,” said the boot boy, darting past like a terrier. Archie followed him and found that when he arrived in the main hall with an armful of logs there was no need to ask which way to go. From every room, army doctors and nurses called, “In here with the firewood!”, and as soon as one fire had taken light and the log basket had been filled he sped away for more wood, forgetting that he had been tired and hurting because now he was doing something vital, now he was making a difference to war-scarred officers. He couldn’t help Master Ted, but he’d help somebody like him.
“You’re keen!” remarked a doctor as Archie pushed logs on to a fire and sparks flew up the chimney. It must have been his seventh or eighth trip up the stairs when somebody put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Stand back a minute. Stretchers coming through”.
Archie stood back so that stretcher-bearers could carry wounded men into what used to be the dining room and was now a ward. This time he couldn’t help looking. He couldn’t help seeing the man with bandages almost covering his face and the deep red stain, as big as Archie’s hand, soaking through. On the next stretcher there was no trace of blood, but the blanket was flat where the man’s legs should have been. Men who could walk were being helped up the stairs, some of them smiling bravely and even joking, though their eyes were desperate with pain and Archie had to turn his face away from the bloodstained dressings. Somewhere a man was talking, wildly, too fast.
“They’re still falling,” he was saying, and Archie saw a man on crutches with a nurse on either side of him. He was wide-eyed and shaking. “Where’s Nicholson? Where’s Nicholson? Is he dead? I have to write to his mother. They’re still shelling! Nicholson! What happened to Nicholson?”
The nurses led him away. The man behind Archie put a hand on his shoulder.
“It gets some of them like that,” he said. “War’s a noisy business. Especially this one. If you meet any of them around the grounds and they’re having an attack like that, try to keep them calm, talk gently, and bring them to one of the staff. Off you go with your firewood.”
When all the fires were made up and the log baskets full, Archie went back to the housekeeper’s room where Star sprang up at him in delight. He had been sitting by the door, said the housekeeper, alert to every footstep as he waited for Archie.
“Good lad,” said Archie. “Time to get you outside.”
He took Star for a long walk in the grounds. He needed to be in the fresh air, away from the house full of bruising and blood. He threw sticks and Star brought them back joyfully, thrilled with the game which, at this minute, was all he wanted in the world. He loved Archie.
Archie threw another stick. So, he thought, that’s what the soldiers look like when they first get here. That’s when they’ve already been to a field hospital. What do they look like when the shell hits them? When they’re scraped up from th
e mud? Will thinks it’s all swords and horses like in the stories, and shooting the way Dad shoots rabbits, one shot and it’s over. But it isn’t like that. It wasn’t like that when Master Ted … he shook his head. He mustn’t think about Master Ted’s death.
He made a promise to himself. It would not be Will. Will wouldn’t come back looking like that.
He was tired. Even Star seemed to be slowing down.
“St…” he began, and changed it to “Carr! Heel!” He was just in time, as Lady Dunkeld came round the corner.
“Carr!” said Archie. “Carr, heel!”
Star found Archie’s heel and sat beside it, looking up at him. Then he rolled over to scratch.
“What a nice-natured dog that is!” said Lady Dunkeld. “It was a great shame about Ted’s little mongrel. I was fond of that dog, I would have liked to keep him. By the way, did you find your brother?”
“No, my lady.”
“Try Amberhurst, there’s a camp there. It’s a long way, but you’re young and healthy, you’ll manage it. Cycle through the town and take the left turn at the crossroads, then keep going. If you fall in the sea you’ve gone past it. If you don’t find him there there’s always Littledown and Overton. Good hunting!” She looked down at Star. “I rather wish I had one like that.”
It would mean an early start in the morning. He walked back to the potting shed, slowly so he could look out for weeds and pull them out as he went along. He turned for a last look at the house, hoping that the men in their beds were comfortable, with clean dressings and something to take the pain away.
He whistled for Star, though he didn’t need to as Star was close by and ready to follow him to the shed. It was a way of saying what he felt at that moment – this is my dog. He comes to my whistle. Lady Dunkeld had said that she “would have liked to keep” Star. More than ever, she mustn’t know who he was. If she did, she could claim him and he couldn’t do anything about it. She was Ted’s sister. He was just the gardening boy. But he was the gardening boy who was everything to Star just now, as Star was everything to him. They went everywhere together.
Archie's War Page 8