Eve and Her Sisters

by Rita Bradshaw

  They were passing through a small French town and officers in staff cars slid past, the motorcycles of despatch riders scooting by. It was good to be walking briskly for a change after all the time in the trenches. They passed a French sentry who raised an arm in salute, calling, ‘Bonne chance, mes camarades.’

  ‘Aye, the same to you, chum,’ Al yelled back.‘With knobs on an’ all.’

  ‘He was wishing us well.’

  ‘I know that, I’m not as thick as I look.’

  ‘That’d be impossible,’ Caleb agreed, straight-faced.

  ‘The corp reckons this assault on the Somme is the biggest battle of the war up to yet. Umpteen divisions of our lot and the Frenchies on a fifteen-mile front. If it’s anything like them poor blighters at Gallipoli had to put up with, it’ll be another disaster in the making. I had a cousin in that lot and he wrote his mam they had to skedaddle with their tails tucked atween their legs. Mind, they did get ninety thousand men out of there without losing one, so that’s something.’

  Caleb nodded. He wasn’t interested in a retreat which had happened six months ago. As Al elaborated on the mistakes that had been made in Gallipoli, he let his mind focus on the letter he had received that morning which was tucked in his tunic pocket. He had come to rely on Eve’s letters like the bread he ate and the water he drank. They provided a link with a world that wasn’t bloody and soul-destroying, a world where normal folk still went to bed at night in a real bed and got up in the morning to a cup of tea at their own fireside.

  She had written the usual stuff. Nell’s little lad was walking already and into everything, and the next one was due in a couple of months. He could see Nell churning them out like clockwork every year, the way she and Toby were going.

  His mother was the same as ever and sent her best. By that he took it to mean his mam was driving Eve mad and had sent no message to him at all.

  She had acquired a dog, a stray, she thought. She’d found him skulking in the yard one night and took him in for a meal and he’d stayed ever since. Sensible dog, he thought, a smile touching his lips. Obviously knew when he was on to a good thing. If he came back in the next life as a dog he’d make a beeline for Eve’s door. And it wouldn’t hurt for her to have some protection when the inn was closed either. More than once over the last months he’d worried about that.

  ‘. . . an’ about damn time, that’s what I say, eh?’

  ‘What?’ Caleb became aware that Al was waiting for an answer and he hadn’t heard a word. ‘Sorry, you can’t hear yourself think with them bawling out “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag”.’

  ‘Better than “Keep the home fires burning”.They’ve done that one to death the night.’ Al hoisted his pack further up his back. ‘I said it’s about time they tightened up the call-up net, in my opinion. Our Ellie’s written the government’s going to conscript all men between the ages of eighteen and forty-one, married or not, ’cos they can’t get enough volunteers. Now I’m not saying everyone should’ve been as barmy as me an’ you and put their hands up for this lot from the start’ - Caleb knew that was exactly what Al was saying, having listened to his views on what he called the lily-livered blighters back home who were sheltering behind their wives’ skirts - ‘but a blind, deaf an’ dumb man knows we’re not going to win this war without every last jack man mucking in.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘You know so, man. We all do. Our Ellie says some of the women have taken to handing out white feathers to blokes who are weak-kneed, shaming ’em like.’

  Poor devils. As Al talked on, Caleb’s mind returned to Eve and home. He realised the two had become synonymous in his mind. And it was funny, but he could picture Eve in his head as clear as day whereas when he tried to conjure up Mary’s face, it was indistinct, blurred. It hadn’t been that way at first. It had been after Ypres when most of the men he had joined up with had been cut to pieces by German guns or had their insides burnt away by choking chlorine gas that he had realised he hadn’t thought of Mary in days. He still loved her, he would always love her, he told himself firmly, but the ache of her loss which had paralysed him at first was easing. The blood and guts of trench warfare had seen to that.

  ‘Looks like we’re nearly there,’Al said as they heard one of the officers up front shouting orders.

  ‘There’ turned out to be astride the River Somme in Picardy. After making their way to their positions, they waited for morning. At 7.30 a.m. the artillery barrage was lifted and Caleb and Al and forty-four divisions of British and French soldiers went over the top. Caleb and Al, along with every other British soldier, were carrying entrenchment tools, two gas helmets, wire cutters, two hundred and twenty rounds of ammunition, two sandbags, two Mills bombs, their groundsheet, haversack, water bottle and field dressing - almost seventy pounds of equipment each. They staggered into no-man’s-land at little more than a slow walk, their orders to seize four thousand yards of enemy territory by nightfall.

  In the first five minutes Caleb lost his friend and most of his battalion, cut down by relentless machine-gun fire. He saw Al fall, his face blown away, and within seconds there were heaps of dead and dying. The noise, the screams, the thunder of guns was numbing, he couldn’t take in the horror of the slaughter he was seeing. They were being mowed down indiscriminately, officers and men together, but still they had to go forward into the guns.

  He didn’t pray, he didn’t think, he didn’t do anything except stumble forward in the noise and din and falling bodies, the smell of gunpowder and blood and mud sticking in his nostrils. The German defences were formidable and deep, even the capture of the first and second lines brought little advantage and no respite from the guns.They had been assured the bombardments by the air force in previous days had destroyed the heavy barbed-wire obstacles in their path, but more soldiers were getting tangled in the wire, hanging like screaming puppets until they were blasted into oblivion.

  At midday the attack was suspended so the stretcher-bearers could work in no-man’s-land. The German guns were silent, and the men sat in small stunned groups in the trenches. Caleb looked round him. Every man was blood-splattered, filthy, the whites of their eyes showing stark in their grimy faces. Al was gone. He couldn’t take it in. And how many others? Hundreds, thousands. Why was he still alive? Lots of those men had had wives, bairns. Al and his Ellie had three.Why was he alive and they had gone?

  Someone passed him a mug of tea and he drank it without tasting it. He felt tired, bone tired. They had marched all night and fought all morning. What was Eve doing right now? In that other world that he hadn’t valued until he had left it. He shut his eyes but he could still see red, a red the colour of blood, behind his closed eyelids.

  The British artillery fire resumed at four that afternoon even though there were still wounded to be retrieved from no-man’s-land. The toll rose swiftly until nightfall. Caleb was amazed to find himself alive at the end of the day.

  That night he sat dozing on and off in his dugout, wondering when his turn would come. He wouldn’t survive. No one could survive this slaughter for long. He hoped when he went, it would be like Al, blown away into oblivion in a moment of time. One searing shaft of pain and then nothing.There were too many lads who’d been maimed or burned or blinded. Blinded. His stomach muscles clenched. Left helpless like a baby, needing someone to lead you for the rest of your life. He wouldn’t be able to tolerate that, he’d have to end it.

  He’d write to Ellie. He nodded mentally to the thought. Tell her Al hadn’t suffered, that he’d been joking and laughing till the very end which had been quick. Al would have wanted him to do that and it might give his wife some comfort in the midst of her mourning.

  Would there be one soul who would genuinely mourn for him? He doubted his mother would waste a tear, they’d never got on. He’d often thought it was funny that his da, who’d been a gentle, kind man, should have been taken, whereas his mam had gone on and on. Only the good die young. He’d heard that
phrase bandied about a lot in the last months, but certainly it applied to his parents.

  As dawn broke he reached in his haversack for his sketch pad and pencil. Working swiftly, he drew a picture of Al as he had often seen him in the evening when his friend would take the small picture of his wife out of his tunic pocket and stare at it for a long time. Al’s face had lost its habitual toughness at those times and Caleb had realised he was seeing the husband and father rather than the soldier.The picture finished, he wrote a quick letter and put the two together in an envelope. He’d see it was put with Al’s effects which were being sent to his wife. He’d do it this morning before he went over the top again. Just in case. He went to put the notepad away and then paused.

  He would write to Eve. It hadn’t been long since he had written but that didn’t matter. The desire for a link with home was strong this morning.

  A tiny movement on the perimeter of his vision caused him to glance up. A small bird was perched on top of the dugout, looking at him with bright black eyes. It was a beautiful little thing and as he stared at it the tiny head tilted for a moment before the bird flew off.

  Well, how about that. Caleb glanced round to see if anyone else had noticed but his comrades were fast asleep.

  Feeling the need to share the wonderful normality of the incident, he swiftly captured the little bird on paper before beginning to write beneath his sketch, ‘You’ll never guess who came to see me this morning . . .’

  When he had finished the letter he read it through, realising he had said far more than he had intended. He had told her about Al and the letter he had written to Al’s wife, about the mindless madness of the last hours, of the ache in his heart for England’s green countryside.

  Would she think him weak, womanly? He read the words once more. But it was how he felt. He would give the rest of his life for a day spent tramping England’s countryside with his sketch pad. A muscle in his jaw working, he put the letter in an envelope and addressed it to Eve. He would send it. He could trust Eve to read it and not think the less of him. She would understand. She was like that.

  His sergeant, a rough diamond, appeared round a curve in the trench, rousing the men who were still sleeping. When he reached Caleb he stood for a moment. ‘Get any sleep, Travis?’

  ‘Some, Sarge.’

  ‘I was sorry Griffiths bought it yesterday. He was a good lad, was Griffiths.’

  ‘Aye, he was, Sarge. One of the best.’

  ‘We go over in fifteen minutes so get yourself something to eat.’

  ‘I’m not hungry, Sarge.’

  ‘I didn’t ask if you were hungry or not. I told you to get something to eat. All right?’

  ‘Aye, Sarge.’ Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes before likely as not he’d be blown to smithereens.What did it matter if he went to meet his Maker on a full stomach or not? Nevertheless, he did as he was told after dropping the letters into the mail bag. Sergeant Todd was a good bloke who was easy to talk to but no one in their right mind would consider disobeying him.

  Fifteen minutes later Caleb was in position. The deafening explosions meant the sergeant had to bellow at the top of his voice when the moment came for the men to go over the top.

  Caleb began to stumble forward as shells screamed and men shouted in a repeat of the day before.Then to his horror he found he’d blundered into a tangle of barbed wire. Panicking, he tore at it with his hands. He didn’t want to die like this, caught like a lump of meat on a skewer. And then he was free again and the relief was almost exhilarating.

  The barrage from the German guns was fierce but still they advanced inch by inch. Men fell to the right and left of him and once or twice the force of the shell which had blasted them knocked him off his feet but only for a moment or two. He didn’t know how far they had advanced or how much time had gone by when they reached the abandoned dugout. The sergeant was in front of him and as he reached him he bawled at Caleb and the privates behind to get into the trench, which they did gladly.

  A shell burst overhead and a shower of wood, dirt and clay rained for a moment or two. It had hit the far end of the trench and he could see a couple of men frantically digging out another who had been buried.The sergeant had joined them and was yelling orders.They went over the top again and now it was mayhem, men being killed indiscriminately by not just the German artillery but their own. Caleb was firing his pistol but he had no idea if his bullets reached their targets, and then there was a period of face-to-face fighting before once again the Germans retreated a few hundred yards. He knew his steel blade had taken at least one of the enemy out, he had seen the man’s eyes widen and the blood spew out of his mouth as he’d sliced into his chest. Five years ago he would never have dreamed he would stick a bayonet into a man’s belly with as little feeling as if he was swiping at a fly. What had he become? What had they all become? Living pawns in a macabre game played by the old generals.

  And then he knew he had been hit. He felt no pain, just the impact of what registered like a giant fist full of heat. He hit the ground and lay for a moment, stunned. And it was when he went to pull himself up like all those other times he had been knocked down that the pain made him cry out.

  ‘Stay put, lad.’ Sergeant Todd’s face was thrust close to his. ‘I’ll be back for you in a while.’

  He nodded. He didn’t believe him. It was the sort of thing you said to give someone hope, knowing the odds were stacked against them. He’d done it himself.They both knew that stuck here like a broken doll he’d likely be blasted into smithereens within minutes. He looked down at his legs. Hell, what a mess. He screwed up his eyes against the pain.

  Could he crawl back to that trench? When he tried to bend his knees the pain was so unbearable he fainted. When he came round he was aware of indistinct figures some way in front of him, lunging and turning as they fought. Everything in him shrank from lying here waiting for a German bayonet or bullet to finish him off. Steeling himself, he brought his torso off the ground with his arms and began to drag himself round, his legs trailing behind him.

  How many times he passed out before he reached the dugout he didn’t know. He passed bodies and bits of bodies, pushing them aside as they blocked his path. He had almost reached the trench when the weakness overcame him. He lay a couple of feet away, unable to move. And then a head appeared above the parapet and a pair of arms reached for him, dragging him unceremoniously over the edge. As he hit the ground, agony exploded in every cell of his body and he knew no more.

  Chapter 14

  ‘He’s alive. Here.’

  As Mildred handed her the telegram which had come that morning, Eve drew in a long shuddering breath. Gathering her wits, she read the few words which stated Private Caleb Travis had been injured in the course of duty and shipped back to England to a hospital down south. The words swam before her eyes but conscious of Mildred’s hard gaze she forced herself to say quietly, ‘I’ll make arrangements to go and see him.’ He was alive. She had thought . . .

  ‘See him? It’s over two hundred miles away, girl.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Who’ll take care of things here while you’re gallivanting? ’

  Eve took a step backwards, her face now looking as hard as Mildred’s. ‘Nathaniel is more than able to take over and Ada needs no supervision in the kitchen. She’s more than competent.’

  ‘And me? What about my needs? Who’ll take care of me?’

  ‘Ada and Winnie—’

  ‘I don’t want either of them numbskulls bumbling about in here. It’s took me long enough to get you to do things right.’

  ‘That’s up to you. I’m going to see him so you have the choice of Ada and Winnie or nothing.’

  Mildred glared at her. ‘I’ll see my day with you, girl. As God is my judge. Taking advantage of a poor invalid.’

  Eve turned away. She had heard it all before. Countless times. Mildred’s threats and rages had little effect on her these days. ‘Eat your breakf
ast,’ she said tonelessly.

  Out in the passage she stood for a moment, clutching the telegram to her breast. Then she made herself walk into the kitchen. Ada and Winnie were waiting for her as she had known they would be. ‘He’s alive,’ she said. ‘But hurt. He’s in a hospital in Oxford.’

  Ada’s brow wrinkled. ‘Oxford? Isn’t that down south?’

  Eve nodded. ‘I shall need to make arrangements to go and see him. Will you be able to cope if I go? With Mrs Travis, I mean? She’s already playing up about me going.’

  ‘Oh aye, lass. Don’t worry about that. She don’t bother me none. I can give as good as I get.’ Ada’s eyes narrowed. ‘Sit down,’ she said, ‘before you drop down. You look bad.’

  She felt bad. Weakly, Eve murmured,‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Aye, and I’m a monkey’s uncle. Here,’ swiftly Ada poured her a strong cup of tea with plenty of sugar, ‘get that down you, lass. You’ve had a shock.’

  As she sat down at the table, the big shaggy dog who had been lying on the clippy mat in front of the range fire immediately came to her side, whining as he pushed his head into her hand. Eve patted him and took a sip of the scalding hot tea, her mind racing. She would have to travel by train and she had never ventured on one before. How would she go about it? And she would have to find somewhere to stay in Oxford, at least overnight. The prospect was daunting but not as daunting as staying here and doing nothing.

  Five days later she was standing outside the hospital in Oxford. Caleb’s letter had arrived that very morning just as she was about to leave for the train, and she had read and re-read it countless times on the journey south. It had been different to the ones before it, and not just because of the beautiful little drawing of the bird. The others had been more in the nature of reports, stating where he was and what was happening around him. This one revealed his thoughts, the inner man, and because of that it was infinitely precious.