Grace Hardie

by Anne Melville

  ‘You must keep quiet unless she says something first, to let you know how she feels. Wait for her to speak. You mustn’t know anything until she tells you, d’you see? When we were children, I didn’t sneak on you, either, remember? The day you hit the baby.’

  For a moment Grace failed to realize what he was talking about. Then, as she remembered, her face flushed with anger rather than shame.

  ‘You didn’t need to say that. I don’t have to be blackmailed into behaving decently.’

  ‘No.’ Kenneth’s arm dropped to his side. ‘You’ve never been a tell-tale. I’m sorry, Grace. I’m frightened, that’s what it is. These past five days – I’ve felt like a fox with the hunt after me. So many of them, all faster and stronger than I am. And all the time not knowing whether I’d find my lair earthed up when I tried to go to ground.’

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ she promised. ‘And I’ll come back. However late it is.’ She practised the rhythm of the knock by which she would identify herself and then, with a troubled face, left him in the darkened room.

  Chapter Eleven

  If Mrs Hardie noticed that her daughter arrived home later than usual, she made no comment on the fact. Grace for her part waited to learn whether her mother had anything to say about Kenneth. So dinner that evening was a silent meal. Only over dessert, when for the first time there was no servant in the room, did Mrs Hardie abruptly come out with the words which must have been on her mind all day.

  ‘Two military policemen called here this morning. They told me that Kenneth has deserted.’

  ‘Deserted? Kenneth?’ Grace put astonishment into her voice. ‘How can he be said to desert when he has made it clear from the start that he doesn’t wish to fight?’

  ‘Wishes are not respected in time of war. He was refused exemption and so was deemed to have enlisted like any other fighting man. I understand from what my visitors told me today that even before his desertion he’d embarked on a course of disobedience. Well, there are minor punishments for that kind of thing, I suppose. But desertion is a different matter. The penalty is death.’

  Grace half stood up in her chair and then slowly sat down again, hardly able to believe what she heard.

  ‘Death? The army wouldn’t shoot its own men. There must be other punishments.’

  ‘I suppose that the punishment for running away has to be greater than the risks involved in remaining on duty. Men in danger must often be tempted to run away. And so –’ Mrs Hardie looked down at the tablecloth, her eyes full of tears – ‘I dare say it seems necessary from time to time to make an example, to show what will happen to anyone who fails to stick it out.’

  For a moment both women were silent. Then Mrs Hardie, looking up, spoke more firmly.

  ‘My father was an army officer who died for his country,’ she said. ‘My eldest son has been killed in action. I still have one son at the front, in danger of death every day, and I’m as proud of him as of Frank. I can’t be proud to feel that I’m the mother of a coward as well. All the same, Kenneth is my son, and I love him. I’m not prepared to see his life sacrificed in such a stupid way. I’d give him shelter if I thought that was a sensible thing to do. But it would be foolish; dangerously foolish. Wherever he tries to hide, it ought not to be here.’

  ‘I’m sure he must realize that this is the first place the military police would look for him.’ Then Grace hesitated, not knowing what to say next. Was her mother’s last remark a plea for the chance of a meeting with Kenneth? ‘But if he were to appear one day –?’

  There was a long silence. When at last Mrs Hardie spoke, it was with her head bowed so low over the table that Grace had to strain to hear the words.

  ‘It would be best if I didn’t know,’ she muttered. ‘It’s not that I would send for the police; of course not. And if someone else saw him and reported his presence I would deny any knowledge of it. But I might feel angry at being forced to lie. And it would be hard for me to conceal the fact that I’m ashamed of him. To part in bitterness would spoil what might be our last meeting. It would be better that it should never take place.’ She stood up. ‘I’m tired, Grace. I think I’ll go straight up to my room and read for a little in bed.’

  She was giving her daughter the chance to spend the rest of the evening as she liked, and Grace took immediate advantage of it. The plant room was dark, and locked from the inside, but the door opened at once to her knock.

  ‘I took some cheese and fruit from the table,’ she said, setting it down in front of him. ‘But it’s difficult – there always seems to be one of the servants watching. I’d never noticed before. Kenneth, you were right about the military police. They’ve been at Greystones today. Mother told me.’

  ‘You didn’t let on –’

  ‘No. She expects them to come back again. You were wise to warn me. If she tried to lie to them, they’d probably guess. Kenneth, how did you get into this? What made you run away?’

  ‘I’ve been an idiot. I realize that now. Telling them the truth, that was my mistake. I ought to have gone along with the system and obeyed all their stupid orders until the time when it really mattered. In the heat of battle, I don’t suppose anyone would have noticed whether or not I pointed my rifle at a man’s body or into the air. But – do you know how the army punishes those of us who aren’t heroes, Grace?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The order that I disobeyed was to do bayonet practice. “Imagine that the sack is the body of a Jerry,” the sergeant said. “Drive your bayonet into his guts and twist it.” Well, I could do the imagining bit well enough. And because I imagined it, I couldn’t stab it. Not wouldn’t, but couldn’t. For that I was sentenced to two years’ hard labour. You’d think that they’d prefer to be quit of someone who was never going to be of any use to them, instead of wasting money and men on guarding people like me.’

  He sighed with the absurdity of it all and for a moment was silent.

  ‘There were four hundred men in the prison camp,’ he told her. ‘Sixteen to a bell tent, with barbed wire all round. It was January when I arrived there. There was snow on the ground. They took away all the clothes of the new arrivals. Sixteen of us were forced to take a cold bath in the open – all using the same water and the same wet towel. We were never given our woollen underclothes back again; only a thin prison uniform. We were put on to a ration of eight ounces of dry bread, morning and evening, with water to drink. The next day they started us on shot drill.’

  ‘Shot drill?’

  ‘You stand with a bag of sand between your feet. The bag is supposed to weigh twenty-eight pounds. There are detailed rules about these things, you see. But in the snow or rain it soon becomes far heavier. There’s a warder in front of the line blowing a whistle, and at each blast you have to make a sharp movement. One, pick up the bag of sand and balance it on the palms of the hands. Two, take three quick steps forward. Three, place the bag down between the feet and stand up straight again. Four, bend down to pick it up – and on and on until your body can hardly stand it any longer and your mind is almost mad with the uselessness of the exercise. So in the end, after days or weeks or months, either you can’t go on or else you refuse to go on. That’s expected, I suppose, because the next punishment is ready and waiting.’

  He paused, as though even to describe it was too much to bear, and then began to speak again.

  ‘We called it crucifixion. The army call it Number One Field Punishment. They put you with your back to a post or tent pole or gun carriage. Your wrists are handcuffed high behind you. There are straps round your chest and knees and ankles. And there you stand in the cold and rain while anyone who’s passing takes a swipe at you. When they release you at last, you can’t move; can’t even stand. After I’d had three days of that, they thought I’d give in, so they sent me back to the drill ground. But I was so angry by then that I wouldn’t obey orders even if I could.’

  ‘What did they do to you then?’

  ‘Put me on another charge for diso
bedience. I wasn’t allowed a lawyer. There was an officer supposed to speak for me, but he was on their side. I was sentenced to death. They left me to think about that overnight, and then said it had been reduced to ten years’ imprisonment.’

  ‘That’s cruel!’ gasped Grace.

  ‘A little game they like to play. In the past, I was told afterwards, they’d go as far as to take a prisoner out in front of a firing squad. But one man died of fright when they did that, using blanks, and there were questions asked in Parliament. So now they can’t take the joke quite as far.’

  ‘So they put you in prison?’

  ‘I was in a prison camp already,’ he reminded her. ‘There were some pits dug at one end of it. I’d been told about them before. They lowered me into one of those. It was ten feet deep and not more than two feet across. I had to stand up all the time, with water above my ankles. Could hardly even turn round. Almost dark, because it was so deep. Nothing but mud in front of my nose. It wouldn’t have taken long to go mad in a place like that.’

  ‘How did you get out?’

  ‘One of the sergeants chucked a couple of live rats down when he was passing. To keep me company, he said. Well, they drowned fast enough. But one of the guards, an ordinary Tommy, thought that was the last straw. He didn’t join the army to see Englishmen treated in such a way, he said. He threw down some bits of wood so that I could climb out of the pit, and told me a place where I could get under the wire. Asked me not to make a break until after he went off duty, that was all. Just one decent chap!’

  Kenneth buried his head in his hands, and for a moment Grace thought he was crying; but when he looked at her again she saw not tears but hatred in his eyes.

  ‘The pleasure it gave them, Grace! The officers ordered those punishments, but the NCOs enjoyed them. And I thought, is this why we’re at war – to give pleasure to bullies, sadists? If I get through this, I shall get out of England and never come back. I hate it, hate it. I don’t hate the Germans, poor sods. Don’t suppose they like fighting any more than I do. But the bloody British army – oh, I hate that, all right.’

  Grace was horrified at what she heard and shocked by his language. None of her brothers had ever sworn in her presence before. She was aghast, too, at his bitterness. ‘What can you do?’ she asked.

  Kenneth’s fingers combed nervously through his shortcropped hair. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know where to go. I can’t stay here, I realize that, nor try to work again for The House of Hardie. But what else is there? No one will employ a stranger, a man of military age, without asking questions that I can’t answer.’

  ‘David will help you if he can.’ But even as she spoke, Grace wondered how much he could do for his twin. David himself, when he realized that even marriage and a claim to be short-sighted were not likely to protect him from conscription much longer, had managed to arrange that he should be commissioned into the army to work in the legal department of the War Office, safely in London.

  ‘I tried to telephone him. A clerk told me what he’s doing these days. Drafting death warrants for people like me, it seems. And with a wife and baby, I can’t expect him to harbour a criminal.’

  ‘I know so little of the world outside Oxford,’ Grace confessed. There was a long silence whilst each of them considered the problem. When she spoke again, it was with the tentative voice of someone who knows that a suggestion will be unwelcome.

  ‘It seems to me that the safest place for you would be in the army. Under another name, of course. That’s the one place where the military police would never dream of looking for you. Could you consider such a plan? If you were to offer your services as a volunteer – perhaps with some story of being medically unfit until recently – you might be allowed some choice of sphere, like David. To serve as a stretcher bearer, perhaps.’

  Kenneth’s expression showed his distaste for the idea, ‘I think my only hope is to find work on a foreign ship. Once I’m out of England, I shall be all right. Until then –’

  ‘I brought you some money,’ Grace told him. ‘It’s all I have in the house. But I’m sure you’d be safe here for another day or two. I could take some more money from the shop.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want you to steal for me, Grace.’

  She couldn’t help laughing. ‘An escaped convict like you, shocked that I might put my hand in the till! I work without wages because it’s a family business, and because it’s a family business it can surely be used to support a member of the family. I’ll come again at this time tomorrow. And bring you clean clothes from your room as well. What else?’

  ‘Soap. And a haversack. Grace, can you understand? Could you kill a man?’

  ‘No. But it’s not expected –’

  ‘Why not? Is there such a difference between men and women? We’re all taught as children to hold life sacred. If as adults we grow up to hold differing views, it can only be because boys and girls are educated differently. But suppose that part of our education is deficient in some way. Then it can hardly be our own fault if we see life through eyes unlike our brothers’. A girl who asks for a gun and kills with it is thought unwomanly; a boy who refuses to shoot is derided as unmanly. But we’re not talking about crimes or sins; merely about conventions.’ His fists clenched with anger. ‘Well, I mustn’t burden you with my difficulties. Thank you for your help. And you’ll come back tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  As Grace hurried through the darkness to the house she intended not only to keep her promise but to think of some way in which Kenneth could start a new life. So it came as an unpleasant shock when, returning laden to the plant room twenty-four hours later, she found it empty.

  ‘Kenneth!’ she called quietly, first in the room and then outside it. There was no answer; no sound except for the rustling of the wind in the trees. Setting down the bundle of clothes and the pack full of food, she sat in the darkness for an hour, but he did not come. Had something happened to frighten him away – or, worse, had the military police watched her on the previous day and followed her to their quarry?

  Grace took the money from her purse and pushed it into a pocket of the suit which Kenneth had worn as a young businessman. Then, unhappily, she returned to her room in the tower and went to bed. Very early next morning she ran down to the plant room. The clothes, the food and the money had gone. Kenneth had not trusted her; it was as simple as that.

  Hurt and worried, she joined her mother at the breakfast table. ‘You’ve been crying,’ she said, recognizing an unhappiness that matched her own.

  ‘I found it hard to sleep last night. It frightens me, the way the family is breaking up. Such a short time ago, your father and I and you and the boys … So happy together. I knew that it couldn’t always be like that, of course. Still, I thought that even when you all married and had children of your own, you’d keep coming back here. But now – Frank is dead. And your father – I find it harder each day to hope …’

  She stopped, as though ashamed to break the convention by which every member of the family professed to be certain that Gordon Hardie’s long silence was due only to a severed line of communication.

  ‘Every time I say goodbye to Philip, I’m terrified that I may never see him again,’ she went on. ‘And now Kenneth. I say to myself that he can’t simply disappear – but he can! I may have seen him for the last time. Without saying a proper goodbye; without knowing.’ She dabbed with a handkerchief at the tears which were trickling down her cheeks, and then looked up. ‘Has he been here?’

  Grace nodded.

  ‘And gone?’

  ‘Yes. He didn’t say goodbye to me, either. But he’ll come back, Mother. When the war is over, Greystones will pull them all back. Just by being here. It’s our home.’

  Even as she spoke, she knew that her words could carry little reassurance. Frank would never come home again. And her mother’s fears for Philip were well justified. It was all too easy to believe that he might never return to their house on the hill.r />
  Chapter Twelve

  Private Philip Hardie’s life in the trenches was ruled by ritual. In this he was no different from his comrades, each of whom had private superstitions to be observed, talismans to be touched, runes to be repeated. It was the only way to cling to sanity and courage.

  Every morning at the moment of sunrise he passed the same thought deliberately through his mind: that he was lucky to be alive. Lucky in that he had survived another night; lucky because almost all the other volunteers who had travelled to France on the same troop train as himself had been killed many months ago. On the day he forgot to recognize his good fortune and give conscious thanks for life, he would place himself at risk. Until then he was safe. That was his superstition.

  His talisman rested in a breast pocket. Like many others he had faith that the slim New Testament supplied by a Bible charity would deflect any bullet from his heart. To be doubly sure, he kept inside its covers a photograph of his mother and sister on the terrace of Greystones. They were what he was fighting for – if the war had ever had any other purpose, he had lost sight of it by now. In Philip’s world at school and university and in the army there had been no room for women. He was twenty-five years old, but had not yet fallen in love. The family was the rock to which he clung.

  His most secret ritual was a legacy of his botanical training. Passchendaele in October 1917 was a lake of mud. For four months rain had been falling on the once-fertile countryside of Flanders, its drainage channels already shattered by the shellfire of the opposing armies. The water had settled, and the ground beneath was pulverized by continuing bombardments; trenches became streams and no-man’s-land was a sea of slime, pock-marked by craters in which it was easy for a weak or wounded man to drown. Long before the first frost signalled the beginning of an autumnal fall of leaves the trees were bare, their shattered trunks pointing accusing fingers up towards heaven.

  ‘In this mud-saturated environment Philip searched silently for traces of green. Each day he tried to find a trampled or floating root of grass which he could rescue and press into some less heavily trodden patch of earth, as though giving new life to a blade of grass could increase his own hope of survival.