by Edwards, Eve
Helen released his hand, nodded to the sister-on-duty that she had succeeded in quieting the patient and then continued her work. The men and women in the hospital rarely spoke about the serious things that surrounded them, or told each other what price they were having to pay for enduring it. The confession Cook had made to her had probably taken him as much by surprise as it had Helen. She sensed he rarely spoke to anyone about what was really going on in his head. It had been an honour that he had picked her. Soldiers often felt able to unburden themselves to the nurses as they were outside the ordinary military apparatus, reminders of the families back home, wives, daughters, mothers. The fact remained that she could do no more than listen. She could not stop the commanders sending men to the front, could not argue that this one had had enough and should be allowed home. Her voice was no more than a spark whirling up from the bonfire of the Somme.
Had Sebastian felt like this, she wondered? Cook thought him a hero, but she suspected that fighting had come no more naturally to him than it had to the cockney. How she would love to be sitting beside Sebastian right now, letting him rest his head in her lap like he once had, sifting her fingers through his hair and allowing him to tell her what he had really felt about killing men and putting himself in danger for king and country.
Your country needs you. The slogan had driven many men into the teeth of battle and she had played her part in sending them there by expecting to be defended. But what did the soldiers now need from their country if they were so lucky as to survive? Ordinary men turned into killers – that would take its toll on their generation. How could you go from that back to being a bank clerk, a student, a farmer – or an artist?
She tucked the sheet round the boy, thinking of Sebastian and how he must have looked when he passed through hospital, though she had not seen him. An hour ago, just before she had parted company from Cook to go on duty, he had asked her if she had news of her ‘young man’. Cook was devoted to Sebastian as his commander and the one who had recommended Reg for promotion to Lance-Corporal. It was a comfort to Helen to be able to speak of Sebastian with someone who knew him.
‘Yesterday. He managed to write the letter himself. He’s getting better he says,’ she had replied. ‘Thinks he should get himself back on active duty as soon as possible.’
Cook’s response was emphatic and heartbreakingly familiar in the soldiers she nursed.
‘If you love him, tell him to keep well away. He’s done his bit.’
WHITE TOWERS, NEAR TAUNTON, 17 SEPTEMBER 1916
Pencil lax in his fingers, Sebastian gazed out over the striped lawn from the terrace, watching the shadow-clouds race across the surface, turning patches of grass from dark emerald to muddy green then back again in one of nature’s conjuring tricks. The wind whipped the tops of the trees of the copse at the end of the garden, shaking them with the vigour of his dog playing with a blanket. Sun glittered on the glass of the Orangery, in which he sat, splinters of light like frozen shell bursts.
So utterly strange. Part of him was still dangling by his fingertips over the blast furnace of the Somme slaughter while somehow at the same time idling in the English countryside in a scene of almost mocking beauty. His soul was disorientated as if it were a passenger that had slept through his station and woken up somewhere completely unexpected. No one here really could understand what was happening across the Channel. If they did, would they not run screaming in the streets, beat down the doors of Downing Street and demand an end to the madness?
‘My dear, do you want more tea?’ His mother came in from the house and pressed her hand comfortingly on his shoulder. Charlie, his chocolate Labrador, trotted in on her heels and slumped at Sebastian’s side, exhausted. That dog needed more exercise or fewer biscuits.
‘No thank you.’ He touched her hand, signalling that she should remove it. ‘Has the post come?’
His mother swallowed her exasperation at his often-repeated question. Being a convalescent at home had revealed new sides to his mother’s character. Normally a waspish woman keen to have her way, he would have laid bets that Lady Mabel would make a terrible nursemaid, but she had been so relieved to get Sebastian back that she was more than happy to put up with his foibles while he recovered. Never having been comfortable with showing affection before, she now took every chance to touch him, reassuring herself he was still with her. Sebastian found the change sad because its cause was so terrible. She had already lost Neil and had so nearly been deprived of Sebastian; that realization had brought barriers tumbling down. Well, half down at any rate; his mother was not yet of the overly demonstrative school of love. A casual touch from her meant as much as a hug from another.
She squeezed his shoulder. ‘No post so far. I’ll bring it when it comes as I always do.’ She bore his devotion to a girl she had never met with resignation. He suspected Helen was not quite real to her.
‘What about the newspapers? Any more word of what’s happening on the Somme?’
‘Your father has them. I’ll go and see.’ She retreated with a steady tick-tick of her heels on the tiled floor.
He was being an annoying patient, Sebastian knew that, not suffering in stoic silence as a chap was supposed to do. The problem was that, while he fretted about his slow climb to regain mobility, he had little to occupy him but worry about Helen stuck a few miles from the front line. He couldn’t even sketch – his lines seeming pitiful chicken scratches when lives were being lost every second in France. The grinding campaign on the Somme had continued all summer; more lives thrown into the war machine in the hope of the decisive breakthrough, but emerging only as minced meat. He knew how vulnerable even the forward medical stations were to shelling or aerial attack. He could be sitting here wrapped in a blanket while Helen lay dying somewhere; how was he to know? Only her letters had kept him sane.
He touched the pile of envelopes that he slipped down the side of the armchair in which he spent all day. In their exchange of notes, they had worked out that he must have passed through her hospital without realizing it, but she had been so busy during those awful days, and he barely conscious, that it was perhaps no surprise that they had not met. The confusion had meant that only the most urgent cases or most vocal patients had come to her attention – he had been neither.
As soon as she had heard of his injuries, she had written that she wanted to come to see him, but her duties had kept her in France so far. With casualties piling up every day, a nurse could not abandon her post, not when she was most needed. They had both known they would have to be patient, but the separation was at least as painful as his wounds. Sebastian wondered if in some way it was harder for him as he was the one condemned to do nothing but worry whereas at least she had her work to sustain her. He could now sympathize with the lives of the women left behind while their menfolk went off to fight. Waiting for news was the worst.
Footsteps returned at a rapid beat. ‘Here, darling, I’ve got The Times. Your father says it’s good news for once. It seems they’ve invented some new kind of armoured car that can roll over the wire.’ His mother placed the paper on the table beside him. ‘Ready for more tea?’
Sebastian fumbled with the large pages, finding the broadsheet awkward to manage while stuck in his chair. ‘Really, Mother, no thank you.’ She was right: there did seem to be some positive news at long last from the front. He felt his own uselessness more than ever. ‘I’ll read this properly later. I think I’ll take a walk.’
Charlie looked up at that hopeful word.
His mother was less keen. She rubbed her palms together. ‘In that case, I’ll fetch your father.’
The last thing Sebastian wanted was company to witness his weakn
ess. ‘On my own. I have my sticks. I’m only going as far as the terrace wall.’ Ten yards away. The distance was as difficult for him to cross as a patch of no man’s land.
‘Then let me help you up.’ Without waiting for an answer, she removed the paper, blanket and letters from his lap. ‘Don’t tire yourself. The doctor said you must take it slowly. Not expect miracles.’
‘The doctors also said I’d lose the leg, but see, it’s still with me.’
She placed her arm round his shoulder and heaved as he pushed. ‘I know, darling. We are all proud of the way you’ve bounced back.’
He gritted his teeth against the agony. Sweat beaded on his forehead; his skin felt clammy. ‘Not so much of a bounce – more a trickle back.’ He grasped a stick firmly with his right hand, wrapping his left cautiously round the second. One bullet had deprived him of his little finger, but the hand had healed much quicker than his leg and he had lost very little dexterity, thank God. He had also come home with a scar across the left side of his face. It caught the corner of his eyelid, making it droop slightly. Steven had claimed he now looked like a pirate; Sebastian thought it just made him look perpetually tired, like a basset hound.
‘I’ll wait here, shall I? It really is a lovely spot you’ve chosen.’ His mother plumped the cushions on the chair, gathering up the letters that had slid down the side.
‘Please don’t. I’ll be fine. I’d like to do this on my own. I’ll send Charlie if I need help.’
His mother snorted. ‘That dog is the worst-trained animal in England. I doubt he’d come for anything but a treat.’
‘If I really needed help, he’d dig deep and overcome his innate laziness.’
Reluctantly, she retreated. Sebastian knew full well she would send other messengers to check on him – Pennington most likely – but he could count on privacy for a few precious moments. Taking a breath, he put one foot in front of the other, Charlie keeping pace. The grinding pain was familiar, perhaps less than the week before. Creeping like an old man, he made his way across the tiles, over the step – pause for a breather – then continued until he reached the thigh-high grey wall. He sat on it, feeling like a castaway finally making the shore. He had made it – his first goal. Recovery was no longer a dream.
Charlie looked up at him in disgust as if to say, ‘Is that it?’ before settling down in this new patch of sunshine.
‘Sorry, old chap. That was a marathon for me.’ The only thing now was getting back without falling flat on his face. Maybe he would wait for Pennington to sail by and signal him to come save him.
16
WHITE TOWERS, 19 SEPTEMBER 1916
Sebastian was feeling pleased with himself. He had managed to walk to the wall and back to his seat without collapsing. He had even allowed his father to witness the small victory, a sure sign he was regaining his confidence.
‘I think you’re making splendid progress,’ Theo Trewby acknowledged as his son sat down with a relieved thump, a glance askance like a batsman checking with the umpire he really had hit a six. Elbows resting on the arms of the garden seat, Theo arched his long-fingered hands and tapped his mouth, certain about his verdict.
Sebastian revelled in the congratulations. ‘Thanks. I didn’t think I’d make it.’
‘We had every faith in you.’ Theo had a poise that reminded Sebastian a little of a large wading bird, an egret perhaps, stepping carefully through the muddy waters of English society. He smiled to himself – Helen would like that or maybe she would correct his naturalist’s observation. Ever since they had been together he had taken more notice of the wildlife around him, almost as if she had lent him her eyes in exchange for his heart. ‘We’re very pleased that you’re on the road to a full recovery.’
Ah. Sebastian knew his father well enough to sense the hollowness to those words. ‘You’d prefer that I stayed wrapped up in a blanket for the rest of the war?’
Theo shifted uncomfortably, his big frame making the chair creak as he crossed his legs. He shared with Sebastian a long, lean stature that made normal furniture inadequately sized to meet his needs. ‘The thought does have its attractions. Will you rejoin your regiment?’
That prospect seemed very distant to Sebastian. ‘I suppose I should. When I’m fit.’
‘I could ask your grandfather if there’s something in Whitehall or army HQ for you.’ An American democrat, Sebastian’s father hated using his wife’s aristocratic connections for favours, but for his son he would sacrifice such principles in the blink of an eye.
The offer reminded Sebastian of the special dislike the men reserved for the red tabs from headquarters when they toured the front. ‘I’m not sure I could face myself in the mirror if I became one of the paper-pushers.’
‘You need paper-pushers to make any business work.’ His father said it in a self-mocking tone as he classed himself as one of these drones.
‘Yes, but I don’t have to be one myself.’ From the evidence of other conversations, other moments shared like this in the late-afternoon sunshine, he knew that his father had a shrewd idea what the front was really like. Theo’s imagination had always been more vivid than his wife’s, perhaps because his was a generation that had been born in the long shadow of the American Civil War. If anyone could understand, it would be Theo Trewby. ‘I don’t want to go back to the trenches if I can think of something honourable to do with myself.’
His father poured them both a glass of brandy. The sun was dipping behind the copper beech on the western boundary of the garden so the indulgence was permitted. This father-son moment over the brandy had the sanctity of the confessional; Sebastian could be absolutely sure he would not share anything he said with anyone else in the family.
‘It’s not that I lack the guts for fighting, Pa. I just can’t bear to return to the filth, the stupidity of the whole thing. If we’re going to win this thing, I can’t see it happening on the ground. It will be other factors.’
Theo nodded. ‘Britain needs us.’
‘You mean America? Is that likely?’ His father had an uncanny knack for knowing which way politicians would go; it was an instinct on which he had built his fortune.
‘Almost certain I’d say. It will take a while though. You don’t mobilize so many men at the drop of a hat.’
The spring of tension inside Sebastian uncurled a little. If his father was right, then the war could be won. He had not realized that he had lost faith in that prospect, imagining the struggle going on for endless years, France turned into a wasteland, the youth of all countries spent like small change on useless purchases of land that were lost the following week. It was hard to believe in a world without the war now.
‘I was wondering, Seb, if you’d thought of trying for the Royal Flying Corps? It would mean you were based back from the front line. Not an easy ride by anyone’s estimation – plenty of risk involved – but at least you’d be out of the trenches.’
Sebastian laughed, having a brief image of himself looping the loop, unable to control the joystick. ‘What makes you think I have the skills necessary to fly a plane?’
‘Actually, I was thinking of you being the navigator, the man in the second seat. They need photographers, people who can interpret maps and whatnot. I thought your artistic training might set you up for this.’ He turned to inspect the horizon. ‘A mite safer than being the one in the cockpit.’
Sebastian was not sure what he thought about the proposition. He had always imagined that the men in the aircraft were somehow a breed apart. No one he knew had gone in that direction; all his friends had been funnelled into either the navy or the army. The airmen had a reputation of being a bit eccentric.
&
nbsp; Then again, he had a taste for eccentric after the ghastly ordinariness of the trenches where individual sacrifice meant so little. At least in a plane you were someone special; your fall – if it came – would be noticed. Better to die like Icarus than a worm cut in half by the plough.
‘I’ll think about it. It’s a good idea, but there’s my old regiment to consider.’ And that meant loyalties that he could not abandon lightly. Would they think it a defection?
Theo rumbled deep in his throat, a satisfied sound. He knew his seed of an idea had not fallen on rocky ground. ‘Good, good. Your mother and I would be happier, I think. If you have to go back, I’d prefer to know you were spending your nights far back, out of range of a stray shell.’
Female voices in the house gave the men warning that they would soon have company. Theo tossed down the last of his brandy.
‘Theo, Sebastian, look who’s dropped in!’ his mother called, waving from the orangery doors.
Sebastian had left strict orders with his mother that he did not want to see anyone other than immediate family. It was amazing that she had managed to keep to them for so long. He cast a panicked look at his father, delaying the moment when he would have to face the visitor.
Theo met his eyes sympathetically, understanding that his son did not like anyone to see his scars. ‘It’s all right, Seb; it’s only Jilly Glanville.’
‘Is Jack with her?’
Theo shook his head then turned on his company manners. ‘Ah, Jilly, lovely to see you. You’re looking mighty fine, if you don’t mind this old man telling you so.’
‘Mr Trewby, you are a born flatterer.’ Jilly’s voice was soft, suited to the company of an invalid. Sebastian could feel her at his shoulder – hovering – concerned. He was going to stand up if it killed him; a gentleman did not sit in the presence of a lady. Reaching for the arms of the chair, he pushed himself to his feet. ‘Oh, please, Sebastian, don’t get up for me.’ He felt her fingers gently touch his elbow. ‘There’s no need.’