The Soldier's Return

by Rose Meddon

  ‘You know, I’d give anything to have this house in my family,’ he said, gesturing towards it as they walked on.

  With his comment seeming to come from nowhere, she wondered what had spurred it. ‘You would?’

  ‘Goodness, yes. Beautiful gardens, rolling countryside—’

  ‘And you say that without even having been down to the cove yet!’

  ‘—wildlife to observe. It’s such a shame I don’t have my notebook. It was with my kit where we were billeted in Sussex, which hasn’t caught up with me yet – despite my writing to request that they send it on to me.’

  She offered him a sympathetic smile. ‘That’s a shame. Where were you taken to hospital – after the crash, I mean?’

  ‘Folkestone. It wasn’t too bad. Couple of other RFC chaps there. By comparison to them I was lucky – just one clean fracture to the bottom of my shin bone. I felt it crack as I hit the ground. I remember the pain, and laying there trying to get my wits together. Eventually, I started to crawl towards where Ned was in the wreckage – you know, to see how he’d fared and try to help him, but others got to him first. Apparently, the farmer’s boy had seen us coming down and had gone for help.’

  Knowing precisely how Ned had fared, she tried to stop herself from picturing the scene. ‘He was proper lucky. You both were.’

  ‘Lucky or unlucky? Depends on your view. We were barely three miles from an airfield. When she first started to splutter, we both thought she had it in her to stay up just long enough for us to make it there. But then she started to drop too quickly,’ he said with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘Anyway, as our squadron commander is forever pointing out, any landing you can make is a good landing.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose it is.’

  ‘And, since we both survived to tell the tale, then he must be right.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed again.

  ‘And your husband?’ he asked after a while. ‘Where is he serving at the moment?’

  ‘France.’ Oddly, on that bright afternoon in early summer, she felt closer to him than she had in a long time. Perhaps it was because she was back in Woodicombe, where her memories of him were strongest anyway. ‘He’s been there throughout. ’Course, I only have his word for it. As Naomi pointed out a while back, they could be almost anywhere. As family, we’d be the last to know.’

  They walked on, the copse ahead of them filled with birdsong, from among which she could pick out the warbling of a chaffinch.

  ‘What does he do?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s a driver. Being able to drive something – anything, I think – was what made him so eager to join up. Mr Lawrence – Naomi’s husband – spoke for him. They went out there together.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘It is, yes. It made it—’

  ‘I say, listen…’

  Stopping in her tracks, she fell still. ‘Cuckoo,’ she said, the sound of it on the warm air lazy and muffled.

  ‘Calling quite slowly, too,’ he observed, straightening up to listen.

  ‘Not surprising,’ she said. ‘We are in June now.’

  ‘Good heavens, yes, I forget that. Being laid up has completely thrown my sense of the seasons.’

  ‘The cuckoo comes in April, Sings his song in May, He changes his tune in the middle of June—’

  ‘And then he flies away.’

  ‘You know it, too,’ she said, regarding him with surprise. ‘I always thought it was just one of Ma Channer’s old rhymes. Confess to being a-fret over something and she’s certain to have some or other piece of lore to cheer you up.’

  ‘Ne’er cast a clout, and all that?’

  She smiled. ‘For certain that’s one of them, yes.’ Close now to the edge of the copse, they drew to a halt. ‘As soon as you’re up to it, you should make a point of following this path down to the cove,’ she said, gazing through the birch trees into the sun-dappled green of the woodland. ‘If you like it up here, you’re bound to like it down there.’

  ‘Are there rockpools?’

  ‘At low tide, right down by the water line there are. Above that, though, it’s sand.’

  ‘I hope to be here long enough to see it,’ he said, his eagerness apparently genuine.

  When they had stood for a while, listening to birdsong and soaking up the warmth, she turned to look back at the house. ‘We’ve been gone quite a while,’ she felt moved to point out. ‘And you’ve still got to walk all the way back.’

  The sigh he gave was a wistful one. ‘Shame I can’t manage a little further. The woods look lovely.’

  In that moment, Kate felt a sort of ache in her chest: a pining; a melancholy. It caught her off-guard. ‘The woods are lovely,’ she said softly. ‘There’s deer and badgers – if you know where to look for them. And squirrels. And the nests of just about every woodland bird you can think of.’

  ‘Sounds enchanting.’

  ‘It is. Though happen I didn’t realize it until now.’

  With his head held at an angle, he stood for a moment, appearing to reflect. ‘I fear it is all too common a failing of human nature not to appreciate a thing until we no longer have it.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed but, not wanting to spoil such a fine afternoon with maudlin thoughts, she gestured back across the lawn. ‘Shall we?’

  ‘Given the distance we’ve covered, I suppose it would be wise.’

  As they retraced their path, their original footsteps through the grass still visible, his progress was more laboured than when they had set out. Indeed, by the time they reached the house, his pace had slowed considerably, his injured leg struggling to even drag his foot over the flagstones. And, when the doors to the study – flung wide for the air – came into view, he stopped altogether and turned towards her.

  ‘I hope you’re not over tired,’ she said, thinking him about to confess to that very fact.

  ‘I will admit to being rather weary. Glorious though it is, this heat doesn’t help.’

  Puzzled that he seemed reluctant to take what had to be less than a dozen paces back to the doors, she agreed. ‘No, I’ll warrant it doesn’t.’

  ‘Look, Kate,’ he said, leaning so heavily upon his stick that he appeared lopsided – one of his shoulders a lot lower than the other and a look of discomfort on his face. ‘I hope you won’t think this a terrible imposition, but do you think I might ask a favour of you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do you think you might acquire for me a notebook and pencil? There are so many unusual things to see here that it seems a crime not to jot some of them down – make a few sketches, even.’

  ‘I can do that,’ she replied, flattered that she should be the one he asked. ‘If there’s not already a notepad in the house somewhere, I’ll fetch you one from the stationers in the village. You might have to wait a few days, but I won’t forget.’

  ‘Thank you. Being able to note down some sightings would be great.’

  ‘Then I’ll see what I can do.’

  * * *

  As luck would have it, the following day, Naomi proposed going into the village. ‘I’ve a stack of letters to send,’ she complained. Seated at the breakfast table, she had been trying to coax Esme to eat her boiled egg. ‘No, not like that, darling. Dip the soldiers in nicely,’ she urged, pushing her daughter’s plate closer to the edge of the table. ‘Just lately, I’ve fallen terribly behind with my correspondence. But, these last few days, with some time on my hands, I’ve finally been able to catch up.’

  ‘In which case, I hope you’re feeling wealthy,’ Kate replied.

  ‘Wealthy?’

  ‘Price of a stamp has gone up – from a penny to a penny-ha’penny.’

  ‘It has? Oh well, like the rising cost of everything else, there’s not much we can do about it, is there? Letters must be written. Anyway, is there anything you would like me to bring back for you? Or would you like to come with me?’

  ‘If it’s all right, I’ll come with you.’

 
‘Very well. I shall aim to leave around ten.’

  For Kate, whizzing along in the little yellow motorcar proved both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. The weather still being fine and warm, Naomi had insisted on folding down the roof, the sensation of the air rushing past only adding to the petrifying sensation of speed. And, despite having secured her straw hat with a scarf tied under her chin, she felt obliged to keep it pressed to her head with her hand – just in case.

  ‘This isn’t an ambulance, you know,’ she shouted at one point, the hedgerows feeling precariously close to her arm. ‘We’re not making one of your emergency dashes!’

  ‘I’ve never driven an ambulance at anywhere near this speed!’ Naomi shouted back. ‘Too much traffic always. This is much more fun!’

  Watching Naomi tug on the steering wheel to avoid a particularly treacherous rut, Kate found herself drawing away from the door. If Naomi struck one of the hedgebanks, they would have need of an ambulance themselves.

  On the outskirts of the village, Naomi finally slowed the little motor to a more sedate pace, and Kate dared to remove her hand from where she had been clutching at her hat. ‘No doubt we will cause quite the stir anyway – without having to speed past,’ she said as they trundled along by Church Green. ‘Two women out alone in a bright yellow motorcar.’ And she wasn’t wrong. Despite it not yet being the height of the holiday season, the village was busy and, from the pavement, everyone who noticed them seemed to do the same thing – turn back for a second look as though witnessing something that couldn’t possibly be. ‘Do you think Mr Russell chose this colour on purpose,’ she turned to ask Naomi as they continued on towards the quayside, the body of the little car rattling over the cobbles. She couldn’t make up her mind what she felt most – pride at being out unescorted, or embarrassment at drawing such attention. Judging by the expressions on the faces of some of the pedestrians, their London ways – as they would no doubt be denounced – were already beyond the pale.

  ‘He told me he left that to the man at the garage,’ Naomi replied. To Kate, she couldn’t have looked less concerned by all the attention, appearing girlish and carefree. Light-hearted. ‘I’m rather pleased he chose this colour, especially since the alternatives were apparently maroon, tan or dark blue.’

  Maroon and tan sounded masculine and unremarkable. But the dark blue, well, she imagined that would look refined: “understated”, to use one of Naomi’s own expressions; everything, in fact, that this yellow – a match for the colour of yarrow, or the flash on the wing of a goldfinch – most definitely wasn’t.

  ‘Dull,’ she said, deciding not to disagree.

  ‘Quite.’

  When Naomi eventually brought the vehicle to a halt across the street from the post office, and they both climbed down, Kate realized that the looks they were drawing divided into type according to the sex of the onlooker. While the women frowned and hurried on past – or avoided looking altogether – the men made no attempt to disguise their fascination, their expressions betraying one of several things: astonishment that the little vehicle should have no male driver; downright envy; or something altogether more lascivious.

  ‘The men all think you’re fast,’ she whispered as they crossed the street; fast being a word she had read in one of Naomi’s cast-off magazines.

  ‘The men can all think what they like,’ Naomi replied, bowling in through the door of the post office to send the little bell into a frenzied tinkling and bring stares from the half-dozen faces within. ‘Bother,’ she said as her eyes fell on the queue of people ahead of her. ‘We’ll be here for ever. And I want to go to the chemist after this.’

  ‘Well,’ Kate said, counting five people already in the queue and determining to head off any unnecessarily loud moaning about “country ways”, ‘if you can just wait a moment while I pick out a notebook for Rowley and a packet of envelopes for myself, I’ll queue for your stamps while you go on to the chemist. How many do you need?’

  ‘A dozen,’ Naomi said, opening her purse and fishing about for coins. ‘Although, if it’s always like this in here, you might as well make it two dozen and be done with.’

  The notebook chosen – a pocket-sized moleskin one with narrow-ruled pages – Kate resigned herself to waiting. As it turned out, the delay was no more than ten minutes and when she went back out onto the street, it was to find Naomi already back at the motor, staring out across the harbour, her pale grey skirt flapping about her legs and her flowery blouse rippling in the breeze.

  ‘All done,’ she said, arriving alongside her.

  ‘You would think, wouldn’t you, that with all the changes this war has brought on, people would be a little harder to shock.’ Naomi remarked, turning to look at her.

  Deciding not to ask her what Naomi had done to raise eyebrows, she opened the passenger door and climbed up onto the seat. ‘This is Devon,’ she said drily. ‘North Devon, at that. Most folk up here will never journey beyond Barnstaple – if they even get that far. Truly,’ she said, when, climbing up beside her, Naomi frowned, ‘they believe everyone beyond here – especially down in places like Torquay – is racy. So, the sight of a lady getting down from a motorcar, having driven it here on her own, let alone cranking it started all by herself—’

  ‘Well how else is one supposed to start it?’ Naomi wanted to know, reaching to let off the brake lever and then squeezing the bulb horn to signal to the crowded quayside that she was pulling away.

  Dismayed that Naomi had so little grasp of just how backward attitudes in North Devon really were – the true extent of which she herself had only come to discover upon moving to London – she shook her head. ‘Folk down here would maintain that you’re not supposed to be starting it at all.’

  ‘Preposterous,’ Naomi countered, turning the little motor in a large circle and then pointing it in the direction from whence they had come. ‘What on earth would they say if they knew that in town, I drive an ambulance.’

  Hastily throwing her scarf over her hat and then tying it under her chin, Kate again shook her head, her cause a lost one. ‘But folk here don’t know that.’

  ‘Then the next time someone stares at me, I shall tell them.’

  Determined not to rise to Naomi’s bait, Kate sat staring ahead. ‘As you wish.’

  Once they had driven back past Church Green, and were heading away up the hill, Naomi turned briefly towards her. ‘What do you think of Rowley?’

  For some reason, Kate felt herself blushing. ‘He seems very nice,’ she said, wondering at Naomi’s reason for asking.

  ‘I think so too. Nicely mannered. But then I suppose with academics for parents, he would be. That said, I have come across some terribly opinionated and boorish sorts from those scholarly families.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He’s doing well, though, isn’t he – Rowley, I mean? He seems able to walk quite the distance now.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, raising her voice to be heard as they gathered speed. ‘He seems very determined.’

  ‘Unfortunately, determination alone would appear to be no guarantee of success,’ Naomi replied, slowing a little as the lane narrowed to pass between two cottages. ‘The single-mindedness on Ned’s face when he is helped to his feet is unmissable, and yet he still doesn’t seem able to take more than a single step.’

  No, that much she’d seen for herself. ‘I suppose it’s going to take time,’ she said.

  With the lane in front of them opening out once again, Naomi changed gear and the little motor began to regain speed. ‘I suppose.’

  ‘We have to remember that his legs were in that traction device for ages. Nurse Hammond says it is going to take a while to build them up again. She says all he needs is nourishment, exercise and patience.’

  ‘I know. I also know that she’s seen this before, and so I do try not to worry.’

  ‘But you worry anyway.’ It was only natural, she reminded herself; she worried too, not that it would help Naomi to know that.
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br />   ‘I do. Although I try not to show it in front of Ned.’

  ‘No. We must have a care to always sound encouraging.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Naomi agreed.

  Yes, Kate thought as, ahead of them, and between a blur of green hedgerows, the dip down into Woodicombe came into sight. Worries that Ned might never walk again were something she would be best advised to keep to herself. And, while doing so, hope to be proved wrong.

  * * *

  A letter from Luke!

  Back at home after their bone-jarring ride, the sight of an envelope on the hall table had made Kate gasp with delight. Having snatched it up from the salver, and grinning with joy at the discovery, she had stolen into the drawing room, crossed to the window seat at the far end and torn open the flimsy brown envelope to scan his words. Then, satisfied that it didn’t start with news that would confirm her greatest fears, such as I have been injured or I am in hospital, she relaxed her arms, sat down, and read on at a more sedate speed.

  My Dearest Kate.

  Thank you so much for your last letter. It arrived here today. You can’t imagine how pleased it made me to learn that you are safely back at Woodicombe. Though we are the ones out here fighting this war, we seldom get told much of how it is going. But we do hear of when something happens in London, and I don’t mind saying how shook we always are to learn of Zeppelin raids and bombs upon our capital city and of ordinary folk getting hurt. So I shall rest more easy now, knowing that you are back home in Devon and out of harm’s way. Besides, it is easier for me to picture you there, since I know what it all looks like and the sort of things you will be doing.

  I am going along fine enough. A few days back, we met up with a battalion of Americans. They don’t half talk funny, and have the cheek to say the same of us! They all seemed like nice lads, though.