*
The next morning, as Jude lingered over his breakfast with a look of sheer contentment on his face, Amy broached the subject of letting Ben and Dora take Henry and Mary to live with them. ‘Do you think I’ve let Bert down?’ she asked, this thought having troubled her ever since the children’s departure.
‘You’d never let anyone down; you’ve a heart as big as China,’ Jude replied, the words full of love and admiration. ‘You did your best for Bert’s children and for poor Beattie – God rest her – and look how you coped with all that trouble your Samuel caused, not to mention Bessie and Raffy and all that carry-on. You’ve nothing to feel guilty about – you’re a wonderful woman. And anyway, it makes perfect sense to let Mary and Henry go to a couple who can give them so much more than we can because,’ he shrugged his shoulders, ‘I’ve no idea what I’ll do when this war’s over. I don’t want to go back down the pit but I will do if it means I can give you everything you deserve. I’d give you the world if I could.’ He looked earnestly into Amy’s face.
‘You’ll go to college and get your qualifications, young man,’ Amy said severely. Jude stood and pulled her into his arms. Pressed against him, Amy silently promised that when he came home for good, she would move mountains to make sure that, in one way or another, his future involved working with books.
Two weeks later, Jude returned to France.
*
In the months following his return to France Jude marched, or shuffled, and fought wherever and whenever he was ordered. Now, having travelled north in a cattle truck he arrived at Neuve Chapele, a damp, smoky region between cotton mill towns in the Lys Valley to the south and the French coalfields to the north. Years of warfare had destroyed the region, the towns and villages reduced to rubble. Unlike the chalky soil of Picardy, the trenches here were in marshy ground and Jude spent his days caked in the ooze of his surroundings. He was used to eating with fingers slimed with mud and resting his weary body on rotting sandbags. This was the pattern of his life.
*
On a night in July 1918 Jude was on revetting duty, packing sandbags into the top of the trench. Stars speckled the violet sky, Jude tilting his head to gaze up at them. These same stars were shining down on Amy and Kezia, he thought, feeling a moment of violent loneliness: God, how he missed them. Would he ever see them or hold them again?
A line from Shakespeare came into his mind, and although he didn’t always understand old William’s strange use of language, he liked the bit where Juliet said, ‘And when he shall die take him and cut him out in little stars’. Was that what Amy would do with him, he wondered?
‘Nearly done,’ said Billy Cooper, breaking Jude’s reverie as he rammed a sandbag into place. ‘Maybe we can get us heads down for an hour or two.’
He had no sooner spoken than the sky lit up, red and yellow flashes accompanied by a dreaded shrieking. Jude and Billy dived to the bottom of the trench as an eleven-inch shell hit the ground above their heads.
‘Bloody hell, that were close,’ Jude said, as a minenwerfer tore into the sandbags they had so recently replaced. Shells rained down, Jude remarking, ‘We’ll be buried alive if this keeps up.’
Worming their way back along the trench to the fire step and their comrades they were stopped in their tracks by an almighty explosion, the sound reverberating above their heads and Jude wondering if the stars were about to fall. Turning the corner to approach the main trench, he staggered back as his eyes took in what lay before him.
‘Bloody hell,’ he whispered, his voice rising to a scream as he shouted, ‘God almighty, what have they done?’
The main trench and the fire step were one gaping hole, the dismembered bodies of lads he had worked with only an hour before lying like butchered meat. Jude stumbled forward into the body of a young lad, one eye begging for help in what was left of his face, the other side blown completely away. Jude fell to his knees and gripped the boy’s hand. ‘You’ll be all right in a minute, lad,’ he mumbled.
The eye fluttered and closed, the lad’s head rolling to expose the massive injury. Jude shuddered. ‘See,’ he whispered, ‘I told you you’d be all right in a minute, an’ now you are.’ With gentle fingers he removed the young soldier’s identification tag.
Billy had gone ahead and Jude now followed him, crawling amongst the debris to tend their wounded and dying friends. The few who had survived without injury joined them and the following day, after burying their dead comrades and waving farewell to those who were carted away to the field hospital, the battalion reformed.
But that horrific scene would not leave Jude’s head.
*
On the last day of July 1918 on the frontline at Warnerton on the River Lys, Jude tramped along a trench in the footsteps of his compatriots, the rank, raw stink of human excrement commingling with the ever-present mud. Jude lifted his sodden boots, suction protesting with every step as he ploughed on. Was this the way it would end? A perpetual trench to heaven or hell, littered with the detritus of all that man had to offer for king and country.
The smell grew stronger and his stomach heaved. Memories of the pit bottom in Barnborough flittered through his mind, the stink reminding him of the piles of shit left behind by colliers on the previous shift. Maybe Amy had been right; he should have stayed working down the pit. At least he had known why he was there, which was more than he could say for this place.
The line halted, a sharp blast of a whistle the signal to ‘go over the top.’ Jude scrabbled to the top of the ridge, rolling over into open ground and then up onto his feet. As he moved forward a dim uneasiness flitted across his mind like something you see but don’t see out of the corner of your eye. The ground beneath his feet trembled and then exploded as an almighty roaring was thrown back from the sky.
In the following days Jude struggled with the fact that he was still alive and his physical injuries minor. However, his guts had turned to water and the left side of his face had developed an irritating tic. His body trembled at the slightest sound and his hands shook so badly he couldn’t hold his rifle. When he could no longer walk in a straight line the orders came to ‘get that man on the next shipment back to Blighty.’
Jude’s war was over; he was going home.
*
Amy didn’t usually have premonitions, but from the moment she lifted the small, brown envelope with its typewritten address she knew to expect bad news. Inside was a single sheet of paper explaining that Sgt. Jude Field was suffering from war neurosis and had been transferred from the frontline to a hospital in East Suffolk from where he would shortly be transferred to a hospital in Leeds, it being nearer to his home address.
Over the past four years, Amy’s ears had grown attuned to the postman’s arrival in Wentworth Street. From whichever part of the house she was in she listened for the squeak of his bicycle’s wheels or the rattle of the letterbox and the plop of a letter on the mat behind the front door. Waiting to hear the familiar sounds had become part of her daily routine, her feelings fluctuating between intense hope and impending sorrow. So far, each one of Jude’s letters had filled her with pleasant relief, but for the past seven days she had waited for another letter with a typewritten address on its envelope, a letter from a stranger. And although she dearly wanted to hear that Jude was closer to home, each day of waiting left her with a feeling of cold dread.
Now, with her ears pricked, Amy waited in the silence of her kitchen for the flat iron to heat on the stove. She glanced at the clock – not long to wait if Jack was keeping to his usual time. Please God, let him bring it today. Amy lifted the iron and spat, her spit sizzling on its plate as she crossed from the stove to the table. The letterbox rattled. She thumped the iron face down on the blanket padding.
The same kind of brown envelope with the same typeface lay tantalisingly on the mat. At last, she thought, breath whooshing from her lungs.
The letter said much the same as the one before. Jude was now resident in the military hospital at
Beckett’s Park and would remain there until he was considered well enough to return to duty. A list of visiting times and a map showing directions to the hospital was included.
Dazed, Amy wandered back into the kitchen, her senses instantly alerted as the acrid smell of burned wool nipped at her nose. She lifted the iron from the blanket padding and gazed forlornly at the scorched imprint. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She read the letter again, and five minutes later, she was on the road to Intake Farm.
27
Beckett’s Park Hospital
November 1918
Amy’s spirits were high, and even though the railway platform had been crowded with fellow passengers all wanting to exchange the glorious news, and the journey had seemed to take forever she hadn’t minded one bit. It was the 12th of November and everywhere was celebrating. All the towns and villages she had passed through sported flags and bunting, fluttering in the stiff breeze, and on the busy city streets passers-by stopped to smile and say how wonderful it was that war was over.
‘Give them brave boys in there a cheer from me, an’ tell ’em we’ve done for the Kaiser and the Hun,’ said the cabby, as she paid her fare outside the hospital’s front door. Assuring him that she would do just that, Amy pulled her thick, woolly scarf closely round her head to ward off the biting wind and hurried to get inside.
She was now an old hand at visiting and knew several of the doctors and nurses by sight, greeting them cheerfully as she trotted confidently down the long corridor. It seemed a lifetime since she had first walked its length worrying about where to go or saying or doing the wrong thing. Amy pushed open the door, a smile on her face.
Jude was sitting at a table littered with hanks of black wool and boxes holding all manner of bits and pieces. Alongside him, other men and nurses were doing the same. Last week he had woven a small cane basket, Amy carrying it home to proudly show everybody before placing it on the kitchen table and filling it with dried flowers.
Now, Amy nodded and smiled greetings to the nurses and the two women and a man who were also visiting their loved ones. She had spoken several times with the man, a retired colonel visiting his officer son, and both the women, one visiting her husband and the other her son. Talking with them had been a comfort; they were all in the same boat, desperate to regain the men they loved from the clutches of a war that had so terribly changed them, wanting nothing more than to release them from their torment and back to the men they had once been.
Amy went and stood at the worktable so that she was facing Jude. He was concentrating on stitching an eye in place, his own eyes narrowed and the tip of his tongue pressed against his upper lip – just like Kezia did when she was concentrating. Amy suppressed a giggle. Nurse Brennan looked up and said, ‘Hi there, Mrs Leas, isn’t it just great that the war’s over?’ Her smile was wide and Amy responded with one equally wide, but she couldn’t help thinking that for some of the men in Beckett’s Park, the war would never be over.
However, Amy agreed with the pleasant Irish nurse who had a soft spot for Jude, and at the sound of her voice Jude gave a start. He glanced this way and that, his face wearing the puzzled expression it so often wore these days. Then he saw Amy and his features crumpled into a half-smile. Lips trembling, he clumsily pushed back his chair and then shambled towards her. Amy clasped his hand and led him to the chairs by the window, pleased to see that he was walking more steadily than he had on her previous visits.
Before he sat down, she hugged him and kissed him on the mouth. His lips didn’t respond, but neither did he push her away as he had on other occasions. ‘The war’s over, Jude, isn’t it wonderful?’ she gushed, holding on to him. ‘Think of it, love! A world at peace.’
He pulled away from her and sat down heavily in the nearest chair, his face a blank. ‘Over,’ he echoed, but Amy wasn’t sure that he understood. For the remainder of the visit they talked about Kezia and other things, although Amy did most of the talking, and then she read him a chapter from Piccadilly Jim – Wodehouse always made him smile – and even though Jude was now reading for himself he liked listening to Amy. ‘Over,’ he repeated, as she closed the book, Amy unsure whether he was referring to the book or the war.
It was time for her to leave, and as Amy kissed Jude goodbye, she felt a faint, familiar stirring in his lips and before she knew it, he was kissing her as warmly and sweetly as he had in the past. It was their first proper kiss since the visits began, and the blood sang in Amy’s ears; he was coming back to her. When Jude ended the kiss, he gazed at her as though he was seeing her for the first time and then he sat down, a contented smile lighting his face and eyes. He appeared to have forgotten Amy was still at his side and, reluctantly, she left him with his thoughts and slipped quietly from the room.
Amy was almost afraid to believe in the progress Jude was making week on week, yet Dr Mackay had told her several times that the signs were good. Only last week he had said that whilst Jude still engaged in violent tremors and bitter speech, these fits were short-lived and increasingly rare. Amy had been delighted, and although Dr Mackay had warned her that Jude might have to contend with them for years to come, she was undeterred. She felt in her heart that Jude was recapturing his strong, beautiful spirit.
Now, she walked buoyantly down the corridor just in time to meet Dr Mackay coming out of his office. Falling into step with her, he asked had her visit gone well. She told him all about it, even the kiss, and before he left her in the foyer he said, ‘You may well have him home for Christmas, Mrs Leas.’
28
Intake Farm, Barnborough
Christmas, 1918
‘Do you think he’ll ever work again?’ Bessie glanced covertly at Jude as she whispered in Amy’s ear.
Amy felt a prickle of irritation and pulled away sharply. ‘He’s only been home four days,’ she hissed, lifting the jug of mustard sauce that Bessie had made to go with the pork she had roasted for their Boxing Day dinner.
‘I was only asking,’ whined Bessie, placing a conciliatory hand on Amy’s arm. Amy shrugged her off and marched to the table, setting the jug down with a thud. Perhaps it had been unwise to come to Intake today. It was too soon to bring Jude into a crowded house, particularly when everyone kept fussing and talking to him as though he were deaf or stupid; or attempting to jolly him along as Freda was now doing. ‘Come on then, Jude, give us a kiss.’ She dangled a sprig of mistletoe above his head.
Samuel and Raffy laughed out loud but Jude sat woodenly, staring at his boots.
Albert and Fred cheered Freda on, Maggie yelling, ‘Hey, Auntie Amy, she’s stealing your husband.’
Jude raised his head and looked round anxiously. When his eyes met Amy’s, she could see he looked tired, diminished, his expression haunted. Her heart aching with love, Amy went to his rescue but before she reached him Jude shot up out of the chair and blundered past her, out into the yard.
For a moment everyone was stunned into silence until Kezia let out a loud wail. ‘See to her, Maggie,’ cried Amy, heading for the door.
Outside, Amy peered into the dusk. Jude was leaning against the house wall, the glow from the kitchen window lighting his face. His eyes were closed and his jaw tilted upwards as he dragged deeply on a cigarette, its glowing tip sparking in the twilight. He looked utterly at peace. Amy stepped quietly back inside the house.
Kezia ran to her, pushing her tearstained face into Amy’s legs and begging to be cuddled. ‘He’s just nipped out for a breath of air,’ said Amy, lifting her daughter and trying to sound casual. ‘Daddy’s having a cigarette and a bit of peace and quiet, love.’
Freda arched her eyebrows and glanced up at the ceiling. Bessie bustled from the stove to the table with a large platter of sliced pork in her hands. ‘Come on,’ she said, overly cheery, ‘let’s all sit down. He’ll be back in a minute.’
*
Outside, Jude flicked the butt of his spent cigarette onto the cobbles then ground it under his boot. He had sorely wanted to j
oin in the fun but his mind and body wouldn’t let him. No matter how hard he tried, he saw something looming beyond his reach, something dark and impenetrable that got in the way of every happy moment. Mixed emotions surged through him and he didn’t know what to make of them. On the one hand he knew he loved Amy and Kezia and felt a kinship with Raffy, Samuel and Bessie, but some inner reserve over which he had no control kept him detached, hard to reach. Strangely, it also made him feel safer: safer, but not better. He prised his back from the wall, and forcing himself to walk tall and straight, he went back inside.
‘Just nipped out for a fag and a breath of air,’ he muttered, unaware that he was repeating Amy’s excuse. He essayed a grin and sat down at the table. ‘This looks good. Well done, Bessie,’ he said, as heartily as he could manage, but deep inside he doubted he would enjoy any of it.
‘I hope the weather stays dry for New Year’s Eve,’ said Freda. ‘I don’t want to get married in a downpour.’
‘It’ll not rain, it won’t dare, not if it knows it’ll have you to listen to,’ Samuel said jocularly. He addressed Jude. ‘Does our Amy hold you responsible for everything, even t’bloody weather, cos this one does.’ He flicked a thumb at Freda.
Freda laughed and pulled a face, but Jude just looked confused. Rain! Just for a moment his brain returned to a trench in Lys: mud, blood and pouring rain. Paralysed, he couldn’t breathe, the glimpse of that other time so painful he didn’t know what to do next. His knife and fork slipped from his fingers, clattering onto his plate, and for the remainder of the meal he sat motionless, his eyes fixed on the clock on the mantelpiece. The others pretended not to notice, Freda and Bessie chatting about the forthcoming wedding, and Amy doing her best to join in. Raffy also tried to lighten the mood with a few funny stories, although his saddened eyes rarely left his son’s face. Maggie, Albert and Fred led Raffy on in a bid to make things seem normal; after all it was supposed to be a celebration.
The Collier’s Wife Page 23