Yorkshire Rose

by Margaret Pemberton

  “To do what with?” Rose asked exasperatedly. “To make offensives from trenches over barbed-wired ground, in order to gain or retake a few hundred yards of waist-deep mud and to be mown down in their hundreds, in their thousands, as they make the attempt?”

  He didn’t answer her, because he didn’t know what to say. Instead he put his foot down harder than ever on the Renault’s accelerator pedal. The latest published casualty figures had been monstrous. They’d been so enormous they had been past all belief. An entire generation was being mown down. And to what purpose, dear Christ? he asked silently as the gas-lights of Ilkley came in to view. To what purpose?

  The Western front, running from Ostend across Flanders and then assuming a deep salient above Paris before swinging East to Verdun, had scarcely changed over the last twelve months. No ground was being won. No opposing army was being thrashed into retreat. An enemy surrender was as remote a prospect now as it had ever been. And every day that passed made Harry’s continuing survival a little less likely. Or did so unless he were injured and sent back behind the lines. Or unless he lost a limb, as poor bloody Charlie Thorpe had lost a limb.

  He made a despairing, inarticulate sound in his throat and Rose said tentatively, “I have an idea I’d like to put to you, Uncle Walter. It’s about Crag-Side, not the mill.”

  In the winter darkness the car began the climb up out of the centre of Ilkley.

  Walter changed gear. He didn’t like driving, but he had no option now. Every able-bodied man in the country had volunteered for one of the Services. Or nearly every man. Noel hadn’t and Walter couldn’t quite make out how he felt about that. It wasn’t general knowledge at the mill, thank goodness. With so many of his former employees now fighting in Flanders or Palestine or Egypt or God-only-knew where else, it would have been a humiliation impossible to survive if it were known his nephew was a conscientious objector.

  “He’s still contributing to the war effort,” Lizzie had said to him fiercely, explaining how Noel had abandoned his painting and gone to work in a Welsh mine. “He hates and loathes it underground, but it’s his way of helping to fight the war.”

  The fact that Rose was speaking to him impinged at last on his consciousness.

  “And Crag-Side is certainly big enough,” she was saying eagerly. “It will make a wonderful convalescent home for wounded servicemen. I’ve done some measuring up and I think we could make a ward for at least ten patients in the Chinese drawing-room and if we empty the winter garden of plants it would hold another twelve. The walls will need hanging with glazed linen – or at least that’s what Lottie advised when I wrote to her with the idea …”

  “Lottie?” Walter braked the Renault to a halt outside Crag-Side’s vast gates. “You’ve written to Lottie about converting Crag-Side into a convalescent home?”

  Rose nodded, or nodded as much as she was able to from under the sumptuous weight of her fur hat.

  “She thinks it’s a wonderful idea and can’t understand why we never thought of it before. She said the best room to turn into an operating theatre would be the bedroom that used to be William’s as it has a centre skylight as well as huge windows. She also thinks we should be able to manage quite well with a nursing sister, two trained nurses and a healthy number of VAD’s to assist.”

  Walter groaned. If Rose had involved Lottie in her plans then there was no help for it, Crag-Side was as good as a convalescent home already.

  He struggled out of the car in order to open the gates. No longer with the Duchess of Sutherland’s hospital at Boulogne, Lottie’s bossy efficiency was now being giving full rein in a field hospital far closer to the front. A friend of William’s, a young second lieutenant, had been hospitalized there and had written to William, ‘Your sister wears a big organdie Red Cross headpiece which doesn’t quite disguise her golden hair. She looks like a veritable angel from heaven and where the wounded are concerned she is an angel. She’s also, when it comes to any attempted interference by military old busy-bodies, as tough as old boots! If she says a man isn’t fit to return to the front, not even General Haigh himself would succeed in countermanding her!’

  He pulled open the heavy gates. There was more than a dash of his father in Lottie – and in his little Yorkshire Rose. He shook his head bemusedly. They were grand girls – girls to be proud of – and if they had decided that Crag-Side was to be a convalescent home, then who was he to argue with them?

  In Wales – without art, without Lottie, without the rest of his family, Noel was surviving as best he could. He hated the work. He had chosen it, knowing he would hate it, seeing it as a penance for his not suffering the hell of the trenches. He hated the claustrophobia; the dark; the coal dust that seeped into his every pore; the callouses that deformed his hands. Above all, he hated the social isolation. There was no one he could talk art with. No one he could remotely count as being a friend. Unskilled, he could only do the most menial of jobs and his fellows down the pit, Welshmen to a man, regarded him with undisguised suspicion. With his tall, lean build, he was as physically ill-equipped to be a miner as he was mentally ill-equipped to be one. But day after day he stuck it out. And day after day he thought of Lottie.

  He knew now that he had never valued her enough; that he had always taken her adoration totally for granted; that he had passively, and with mild amusement, allowed himself to be loved by her. Now, too late, he knew he had never troubled to truly love her back. And now, too late, he knew how deeply he needed her; how deeply, in his own self-centred way, he loved her.

  In January, conscription, which he had always known was only a matter of time, came into effect.

  ‘The House voted overwhelmingly tonight in favour of the Conscription Bill,’ William wrote to him from London. ‘You may like to know that I, like the majority of Labour MP’s, voted against it. The Home Secretary feels so strongly he has resigned over the issue. I imagine life is going to be extremely tough now for single young men who feel as you do. You’ll be called before a military tribunal and what will happen to you then, the Lord alone knows.’

  What happened, was that to his great surprise and to everyone else’s intense relief, he was classified as being employed on essential war work.

  ‘At least we’re spared the ignominy of Noel being publicly labelled a conchie,’ Nina wrote to Lottie from London. ‘As for me – I don’t care about anything anymore. What is there to care about? I’ve decided that instead of pining myself to death, I may as well party myself to death. Rupert would understand. Mother won’t.’

  Lizzie didn’t. “She’s behaving outrageously,” she said wearily to Sarah on her return to Bradford. “I simply couldn’t stay and stand by, watching her destroy her reputation and her health – and I couldn’t have done anything but stand by as she won’t listen to a word I, or anyone else, says.”

  “I thought she might have continued with her nursing,” Sarah said, lifting a wriggling and soapily wet Emma Rose from a small tin bath in front of the sitting-room fire.

  Lizzie handed her a warmed towel. “She hasn’t been back to Guy’s since she received the news of Rupert’s death. None of her high-society friends seem to think her behaviour outrageous. Their code seems to be to dance and drink and to behave as if there’s going to be no tomorrow.”

  “For many of them, there won’t be.”

  A spasm crossed Lizzie’s face. Sarah was right. Perhaps even Nina and her friends were right. “Dear God,” she said devoutly, turning her wedding ring round and round on her finger, “how much longer is it going to go on for, Sarah? When is it going to end?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  By the beginning of the summer, under Rose’s energetic supervision, Crag-Side was transformed into a convalescence home. Most of the patients were officers. Nearly all of them were under the age of thirty. Nearly all had lost a limb. Many had lost two. Many had been blinded during the gas attacks at Ypres and Loos.

  “By the time the war is over I doubt if there’ll be an able
-bodied man left,” Josie Warrender, one of the VADs, said wryly to Rose as they stowed freshly laundered bed-sheets into a high linen cupboard. “My mother always said I was leaving finding a husband a little late. I’m beginning to think she may have been right!”

  Rose stood on tiptoe in order to slide a pile of pillowcases away. She liked Josie. Tall and statuesque, with a square-jawed face and a mass of dark hair, she was a New Zealander and she possessed a direct, effervescent quality that reminded Rose of Lottie.

  “If you do grow into an old maid, you’ll have plenty of company,” she said to her cheerily, popping a bag of dried lavender on top of the pillowcases. “Me for one.”

  “It’s to be the biggest offensive ever,” Jenny said when Rose visited her later that day. “They’re calling it the Somme Campaign and the West Yorkshire Regiment is taking part. Two of its battalions are made up entirely of Bradford Pals, which means nearly everyone we know who is in uniform will be in it. I went to church to pray yesterday. I just can’t bear the thought of more of Charlie’s friends dying or being maimed.”

  Neither could Rose. Particularly she couldn’t bear the thought of Micky being killed or maimed.

  ‘It’s the boredom that’s the worst,’ he had lied on the last postcard she had received from him. ‘I have a hammock of sorts and I lie in it and try to shut the never-ending noise out of my head and think instead of the moors, and the horse and cart, and the pictures in my book of New Zealand.’

  Within days The Bradford Daily Telegraph was leaving Bradfordians in no doubt as to the calamitous way the campaign had opened.

  ‘At 7.30 am, on the morning of July 3rd, the artillery barrage was lifted and the British, three battalions of the West Yorkshire Regiment prominent among them, went over the top in waves, each man carrying 70 pounds of equipment. The objective was to seize some 4,000 yards of enemy territory in the first day. It was an objective that was not attained. In the first five minutes of the battle thousands were cut down by relentless enemy fire. By nightfall many battalions numbered barely a hundred men …’

  Rose had been unable to read on.

  “The casualty figures!” her mother had said when the first list had been published, tears streaming down her face. “Have you seen the latest casualty figures, Rose? The Bradford Pals have been nearly wiped out. Already the list of those killed is over a thousand names long, and names are still coming in! Gertie Graham’s nephew has been killed. Albert’s sister’s boy has been killed. Dr Todd’s son has been killed. Do you remember Mr Jabez who delivered our coal when we lived in Jesmond Avenue? He’s lost all three of his boys. There’s scarcely a street or a cul-de-sc in the city that hasn’t suffered a loss.”

  In sick dread Rose had forced herself to read each new casualty list as it was published. Harry’s name didn’t appear, nor did Micky’s. And Noel, at least, was safe. Working deep underground in his Welsh pit, Noel would survive the war. It was a straw to cling to; the only certain thing in a world which had spiralled into unimaginable hell.

  “There’s been a major pit disaster,” William said to her, telephoning from London, his voice made indistinct by static. “News has just come in of it. More than 400 men are trapped by fire underground …”

  “Which pit?” Her voice cut across his, choked with fear. He wouldn’t be telephoning her if it weren’t Noel’s pit. Noel, who she had thought safe. Noel, who was going to survive the war no matter who else died. “Which pit?”

  Walter drove her and her mother through the night to South Wales. Dawn was breaking as the Renault climbed the steeply climbing cobbled streets of the Welsh village that had been Noel’s home for nearly two years. None of them had visited him here, for he hadn’t wanted them to visit him. None of them had seen him since he had left Crag-Side so abruptly, leaving his weekend travelling bag behind him in his room. To all intents and purposes it had been exactly as if he, like Harry and Micky, had left two summers ago for Flanders.

  The doors of the pit cottages all opened directly onto the street, as did the doors in Beck-Side Street. Had Noel managed to feel at home here? In which pit cottage had he lived? Were any of the hundreds of women standing silently around the pit-head, his landlady? Question after question whirled in Rose’s brain as she fought to contain the fear consuming her. Was Noel amongst those trapped underground by fire? Was Noel dead?

  Despite the ostentation of the Renault they received no preferential treatment when they reached the pit-head. They were just three more relatives, waiting desperately in the pale light of early morning for news.

  “It was an explosion,” one woman, a shawl pulled close around her head and shoulders, said to Lizzie. “They must have been able to hear it in Swansea. It ripped through the pit just after the night shift went down. My man’s a day man, thank God, but my nephew’s still missing. There’s been no one brought out alive since midnight.”

  “They got close on 300 out immediately after the explosion,” Walter said when he came back to them after speaking to pit officials. “Noel’s name isn’t amongst them. That doesn’t mean, of course, that he isn’t safe. Lists can’t be accurate under these conditions—”

  “If he was safe he would be here,” Lizzie said starkly, holding on to Rose’s arm. “He would have seen the car, sought us out—”

  “Your boy may be helping with the rescue attempt,” another voice, a male voice, said quietly from behind them, and then someone else said, their voice raw with hope, “The cage is coming up again. There may be some more survivors!”

  There were, but Noel wasn’t among them. William arrived. In his capacity as an MP he talked to the men in charge of the rescue attempt and was able to relay back up-to-date, reliable information to those waiting outside the pit gates.

  “There’s a section of the mine they think the fire hasn’t broken through to. The question is, how long can any men trapped there survive? A rescue party is trying to reach them via a disused mine entrance on the other side of the hill.”

  “They’ll never make it,” the quiet male voice said again with dreadful certainty. “I know this mine. I’ve worked it all my life. If there’s fire down there, there’ll be methane too. Methane gas is deadly. Whoever is going down now isn’t going to come out alive.”

  There was more restless movement amongst the crowd. A stoutly-built woman walked out of the pit yard saying to those who clustered around her, desperate for news, “The Jenkinson boys have gone down, and Tom Burton and Evan Evans, and the English boy …”

  “English? Did you say English?” Rose left her mother’s side and pushed her way through to the front of those massing round the latest news-bearer.

  “Aye, cariad,” the woman said gently, noting the colour of her hair. “He’ll be your brother, will he? He’s been working with the main rescue party these six hours past and now he’s gone down again, though I doubt he’ll have any success.”

  Relief roared through Rose so intense she swayed on her feet. Until a little while ago Noel had still been alive! And if this next rescue attempt failed? If he were trapped underground? If he were to be overcome by methane gas? With fresh fear flooding through her she began pushing her way back to her mother and William. A young woman in the crowd began saying the Lord’s Prayer. Others joined in.

  At eight o’ clock chipped enamel mugs of steaming tea were handed round. At ten o’clock the woman who had broken the news of the latest rescue attempt said to Rose, “Would your Mammy like some cawl? My girl’s brought a jug up and there’s plenty to spare.”

  Not knowing what cawl was, but knowing it would be something sustaining, Rose accepted her offer with gratitude.

  “It’s soup,” Lizzie said to her, her hands wrapped about the mug that had previously held tea. “There’s bacon in it. What’s happening, Rose? Why is there no news? What’s happening?“

  It was midday when the news broke that men were being brought up via the shaft to the old workings. “They’re alive!” went up the cry. “Only twenty of them, but th
ey’re alive!”

  Some of the men walked out into the blessed light of day. Others, rescuers as well as rescued, were carried out on stretchers. Among them was Noel.

  “He’s broke his back, Duw,” a weary coal and smoke-blackened figure said to her as she rushed up to the stretcher, her mother and Walter and William only feet behind her. “The timber supports in the old working were so rotten they were giving way all the time we were down there. He shored the exit timber up for as long as he could and then, as we got the last of those trapped out, it gave way. He may be an Englishman, but he’s a hero, Duw. A real hero.”

  ‘At present he’s in Swansea General Hospital,’ Rose wrote to Lottie from Wales. ‘They’re not sure yet whether he’ll ever walk again. As soon as he’s well enough he’ll be transferred to Crag-Side to convalesce.’

  ‘There’s talk of a civilian medal for bravery,’ William wrote to Lottie from Westminster. ‘If he hadn’t physically shored up the timbers for as long as he did, his companions would never have got the last of the trapped men out. How he did it beats me. He’s built like a lath, not a Hercules.’

  ‘Thank God he injured his back and not his hands,’ Nina wrote to Lottie from her London town house. ‘I know it will be terrible if he can’t walk again, but it would be even more terrible if he’d lost his ability to paint.’

  At Christmas, Nina arrived at Crag-Side with a gentleman-friend in tow. He was twenty years her senior, a landed lord and a member of the Government. “He’s exactly what Nina needs,” Lizzie said to the rest of the family in deep relief. “He’ll steady her. He also says that now Lloyd George is Prime Minister we can look forward to a speedy end to the war. Pray God he’s right!”

  He wasn’t. At Easter, when Noel was ferried by ambulance from Swansea to Crag-Side, a fresh offensive was launched by the Allies against the famous Hindenburg Line, opposite Arras. ‘Thank God it’s a party I haven’t been invited to,’ Harry wrote to Rose. ‘I’m behind lines at the moment and may be for some time.’