A War Romance

by F. W. Harvey

  And a week after that, Mrs. Harvey, sitting alone by the same hearth, arose and went to the door in answer to a knock, and peering out upon a dirty grinning apparition in khaki, cried ‘Will! It is my dear old Willie!’ And the apparition kissed her.

  Then, ‘Where is Eric?’ he enquired. And Mrs. Harvey told him.

  ‘What a shame we shouldn’t be able to spend this leave together. Oh well, there are us two, anyway! Thank God for that!’

  ‘Thank God for that, my dear.’

  Willie dumped his pack in the hall. He hung up his great coat on a peg, and stood his rifle in the umbrella stand.

  ‘What baggy unsightly trousers they have given you, dearest!’

  Willie unbuttoned his tunic and fumbled laughing all the time with his back turned. ‘The old soldier always gets baggy trousers if he can, Mother!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They fit so nicely over the puttees, and they are so – well baggy, that you can bring home things like this.; And with that he produced from one leg the nose cap of a shell, and from the other a bottle of champagne!

  ‘Good gracious! But did you carry those things all the way from France?’ asked the astonished woman.

  ‘Every step,’ replied the soldier. ‘One isn’t supposed to, of course, but no one searches one’s trousers.’

  ‘But couldn’t you have got the wine at any rate in this country?’ enquired Mrs. Harvey, laughing.

  ‘Perhaps, but my experience is against it. I didn’t go to a wine merchant’s, but they told me in London that the private bar of an Inn was no place for the country’s defenders. As a matter of fact I had entered by mistake (for I prefer the public room) and only wanted a glass of beer. But that’s the spirit … I told them most of what I wanted to say before I left,’ he added dryly.

  ‘I agree with it all, but you need not repeat it, dear.’

  ‘You have read Tristram Shandy, Mother –’

  ‘Our troops swore terribly in Flanders,’ she answered. ‘And there is sometimes excuse for a little of it over here. It was a shame.’

  ‘Oh, that’s of no consequence. I could have got all and more than I wanted at other places,’ said Willie. ‘This bottle was what the Colonel gave me (he gave us one each when we picked up our D.C.M.’s.), and I wanted to drink it at home with you and Eric – that’s all.’

  ‘I will store it away for your son’ said Mrs Harvey, ‘and get another for you now from the cellar.’

  ‘Don’t replace it except with Minsterworth cider – dear optimist! (A wonderful chance we soldiers will have of getting sons!’) And then, his bitterness changing at her look, ‘To come home is a sufficient intoxication for me, or rather (since that’s hardly the point) I don’t feel like drinking. I wanted poor old Eric to pledge us good fortune – you and he and I, all together.’

  ‘Who but God knows good fortune when he sees it: but may both my dear sons find that!’ said Mrs Harvey, taking the bottle from his hands. ‘Now you are going to have a hot bath, and Dorothy (you must see her first) and I will lay supper for you by the time you have finished. She was so good through all our anxiety and my illness. Most servants have gone away into munition factories now. They can earn so much more money. Her sister has gone into one. But Dorothy refused. I thought she might like to. She is a strong girl and could stand it. Besides, I had promised her a rise in wages and couldn’t manage it after all, because of –’

  ‘How did things pan out?’ interrupted Willie.

  ‘Better than we had hoped, thanks to Eric’s wisdom. A little was saved out of that money. We must rely almost entirely on the land now, but that brings in more. My actual income is only a little below what it was – £250 a year. But everything has increased in price …’

  ‘And will, I’m afraid’ prophesied her son, with greater truth than he knew. ‘But where’s Dorothy?’ I must give her a souvenir, and my gratitude.’

  He tramped off to the kitchen, where he deposited a much prized German forage cap, some French buttons, an English half-crown, and a gaudily-woven card bearing in silk the flags of the Allies. It was the latter which Dorothy really prized, begging a similar one to send home. She courteously affected gratitude for all, but the French buttons were soon lost, and the German cap was thrown upon a dust heap. Her interest was in the kind of dinners they got in the intervals of war. Men had to eat whether English or Germans, and she supposed there was a set dinner hour for all. Willie explained. To think that there was no such hour shocked her almost to incredulity, but she endorsed the quoted maxim of an old soldier – ‘Meat for them as wants it: juice for me!’ Let the youngsters crowd round the ‘dixy’ for lumps! He would dip his bread in what was left – the liquid.

  ‘And he knowed,’ said Dorothy with approval. ‘Always you do the same, Master Willie!’

  He left her brooding over the possibility of turning old hens into delicious chicken by burying them (feathers and all) in the ground for a fortnight before cooking – which thing was done in Flanders, when fortune favoured the troops.

  Then he wallowed in the luxury of a hot bath, and reappeared forty minutes later in a dressing gown to eat beef steak, and drink cider unchilled by immersion of a crust toasted before the greatly rejoicing fire of old pear wood.

  He and his mother talked till midnight – an unheard of hour! Then, cool sheets! candle-light flickering upon familiar books and pictures: the sweet noise of wind in orchards: sleep unbroken through fifteen hours.

  About three o’clock on the following afternoon he got up, angry with himself for so remaining unconscious of his joy during those many hours of sleep, but mightily refreshed.

  He sat with his mother, or followed her about the house all that day, and they talked out their hearts to good purpose, lightening each soul and enriching it, by a double exchange.

  Concealing none of war’s horrors (since to veil is to magnify) he spoke frankly of happiness found in army discipline. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘it is the symbol, which has caused me to understand you and Eric and all who have thrown care upon God and made Him ‘responsible’ as it were, in return for service. One does not argue beyond choosing one’s cause on enlisting. After that it is just obeying orders. The end is not with you. So one is not proud with success, nor despondent for lack of it. Success is not your affair – only to do what you are command. And this breeds a careless energy impossible in others, and a happiness due to never unduly pondering the riddles of strategy which need be solved through but not by you. Our chaplain hit it off once in a daring phrase.’

  ‘Remember’, he said, ‘that if you are responsible, God is infinitely more so! And He loves you.’

  ‘Whether our war-lords also love us is a debatable point, but the first half of that saying remains true. Our responsibility is obedience. That, of course, would be an intolerable thing, were it it not for the first voluntary choice of ‘the cause.’

  ‘As for me, I have never worked my body so hard: risked it so wantonly: or fretted it with so many annoyances. But my soul has not been disquieted: my thoughts have not been over-clouded with anxieties. I have not fretted my mind. And oh, what relief it is from the misery and doubt and fret of my former existence, Mother!’

  ‘My darling!’

  ‘There is energy in peace. It is creative. There is no creative energy but in peace. When a man has solved his problems or (as we have done) brushed them aside, he can put himself into his work – himself and something else. But a distracted men puts only half of himself into his labour, and that half is poisoned. It is closed also to that more important thing than mere self which comes to help happy men. A tortured man can’t open his heart. He fears something will stab it. Yet grace comes only to those who do so. And grace is that which lifts man to anything greater than he is. You can call it grace or you can call it inspiration. It is the outer help and it applies equally to religion and literature.’

  ‘That is true, dear.’

  ‘Eric and I have approached peace from different sides. Yet w
e have come to the same kind of creed – “Whoso loseth his life shall find it.” It may not be the same kind of life that he and I shall lose. It cannot be, either one way or the other – but the end is happiness, and creation. Of that (whether we live or die) I am sure: for in a sense, we are both dead, and have found peace already. Our bodies – our rum wonderful old bodies – remain. But if they die, and peace will only be the greater – and the creative possibilities also.’

  Then, smiling, ‘this talk of mine is becoming sermony. I must visit Eric some time and sacrifice to his rum old body a drink of rum. I can’t go back “there” without seeing him,’ he added.

  ‘No, dear. And he would love to see you. You could go Friday. That’s your last day but one, isn’t it?’ (as if she, who was counting the days in her heart, didn’t know this!)

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you can come back home, and put on clean underclothes to go out in.’

  Willie smiled. ‘All right, darling.’

  ‘And how is the regimental paper going on?’ asked his mother. ‘I meet many old friends in it – poems of yours written long ago.’

  ‘Yes, I have had to use them up when topical matters ran short. They are often more suitable, since they deal with things which soldiers think of more often than they think of war – the county; the things they loved in peace; all that they are fighting for.’

  ‘Those are the ones I like best’ answered his mother.

  ‘Yes, with stray exceptions such as ‘Gonnehem’, ‘If we return’, and ‘In Flanders’, they are the best, and the strange thing is that since this regimental gazette of ours has become famous – for apparently it has – those same poems are seized upon and published with high approval by the same English papers and magazines which formerly refused them. To be passionately fond of England is a literary virtue in war-time, but so provincial in peace! Yet who would write of England at all except for that peaceful England – this England of quiet lives, and misty orchards? What man in his senses would risk life for that other fretful, profiteering, foolish, feverish place? No, Mother, I don’t value at twopence this new craze, but I am going to take advantage of it: even if I am called a soldier-poet, as if there were such a thing, or ever could be anything else than men whose call is to poetry in peace or war, and men whose call is to other things – poets or not poets …

  ‘I have been lucky. I have got a decoration –’

  ‘Will that help you, dear?’

  ‘Enormously. It will seem so strange to these people to find anybody without knock-knees and long hair writing verse. That is what they imagine a poet is. They don’t care for poetry, any more than they care for bravery. What they want is sensation …

  These are my children. I have no more than these – my poems. I am going to give them a good start in life. I am going to drive in a blow for my England, while the Philistines’ guard is down, and the aesthete hidden in the conservatory, alone (for once) with his languid lilies. I shall hit ’em both hard on the jaw, and go back to France feeling that I don’t care much whether I live or die.’

  ‘But how?’ asked Mrs. Harvey.

  ‘That’, said Willie, ‘is a little surprise. I wanted to tell you myself, and didn’t mention in my letters that a book of your old friends – your little grandchildren, is to be published by a very well-known London firm this month!’

  ‘My dear, I am so glad!’

  ‘Yes, it’s good, isn’t it? And what a joke!’

  ‘I don’t think it a joke, dearest. I think you have come into your own. If this horrible war has allowed it (as you say) then I have one single cause for blessing it.’

  ‘Thank you for them kind words ma’am,’ he laughed.

  CHAPTER IV

  Willie, with a great hamper of his mother’s, and a little ivory rosary which was his own gift to Eric, rode to the railway station on Friday morning in a carrier’s van.

  A buzz of local gossip sounded beneath that weather-stained hood above the rumble of wheels. It was the sort of talk which may still be heard in any country place throughout Severn Vale, and it echoed and re-echoed like music in Willie’s ears, and in memory long after that misty autumn day had gone.

  Greeting from those who knew him (e.e. almost everyone) were quickly followed by all sorts of enquiries concerning his recent experiences, and many quaint condemnations of ‘they malice-minded baggers’ – the enemy. Willie turned the talk into natural channels with questions of his own concerning crops and relatives.

  ‘Aye, a goodish summer, but now’ (’twas held) ‘weather would turn dabbledey.’

  ‘A good fruit harvest anyway.’

  ‘Aye, a great ’bundation o’ fruit, but few to pick it; the lads being gone to war. And there was nobody to put rungs in the daddocky ladders since carpenters were shorthanded too. Gaffer Herrige did vaal drow only ’tothey day and break his leg at ninety. But worser nor that did happen at the war they reckoned and many was the poor lad as ’ud be glad to be whoam a-picking. (Chorus of aye! aye!) It did seem sort of unreasonable o’ Providence to send war and quantities of apples together. Many did mind years when there had been no apples at all to pick. Then there was plenty of “buoys”, all eating their yuds off.’

  ‘How is old Gaffer Herrige going on?’ asked Willie.

  Mending rare – a wonder among ancient men.’

  ‘Zo’, jealously cried Bill Hatchet, ‘zo be my old uncle Zamuel a wonder. ’Twould surprise ye neighbours to hear how careful we got to be wi’ ’ee. Ninety dree a be, and can’t zee much. But can’t a hear! You got to be careful when he’s about I tell ’ee. He’ll hear anything. And smell! Golly can’t a smell! He do smell everything as soon as ever it do come into the house. Like a dog.’

  ‘A wer a gurt cheeze-smeller in his time, an did judge ’em at shows, I do mind’ commented a friend.

  ‘Zo a did, and maybe that accounts. Still, a be a wonderful mon’ repeated Hatchet.

  All this Willie noted, and thought how amused Eric would be at the retailing of it that afternoon in camp. The roadside elms loomed shadowy standing in circles of condensed moisture. Two leisurely trotting horses sent smoky breath before them. Mist wrapped the meadows, lying in long banks as they approached winding Severn. Mist lay like white music upon Piper’s Wood.

  ‘Your little Polly has grown into a big girl Mrs. Handscombe.’

  ‘Aye, Maaster Willie, she have growed. She be a rare gurt flitchen I can tell ’ee. And she do sing like a bird.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘She allus wer one to sing. I mind when I took her to church fust time, the christening except. Her couldn’t read at all, but a took a book and sang so as to astonish everybody. “What be you a singing now?” I axed her. “You don’t know no words” I said. ‘I do make they up, Mother’ said she.’

  ‘Ha, ha, ha’ laughed the company.

  ‘Well, take care of the sounds and the sense will take care of itself’ quoted Willie, but the jest passed unheeded.

  ‘Thy Feyther could allus carry a song, I mind’ put in another woman. ‘Tis a gift I reckon.’

  ‘Aye, that a could. Many’s the harvest whoam I’ve heard un raise wi’ a’s voice:–

  ‘Ploughed well, sowed well;

  Reaped well, mowed well’

  Carried well, housed well;

  Nur’ a load overdrowd:

  Harvest Whoam!’

  ‘A had another song a called ‘Riddle cum Ruddle’, but I do verget the words on’t’ put in a voice. ‘It did make ’un very dry.’

  ‘Aye, a singing mon do need liquor.’

  ‘That be natur’ agreed the rest.

  ‘So do ringing too!’ cried excitedly one of bulk bearing upon tremendous shoulders the kindly face of an October sunset: ‘So do ringers need liquor. And I knows it: for after the new parson come and forbade our lil’ cask in the tower, none on us had hardly spit in his mouth to wet his hands for a grip on the rope.’

  (‘Aye sure! Aye sure!’ was chorused around.)


  ‘Though ’twer hardly right on ‘Arry to call un to a’s face a whey-faced old sod’ he added. (This motion also was carried unanimously.)

  A distant threshing machine hummed like a gigantic bee. This sound faded. Trotting hoofs and such talk as before persisted upon the ear. Occasionally the hoot-toot of a motor, or faster-beating hoofs came up in a crescendo, and diminished. Silence fell upon the occupants of the van.

  ‘How is Will Jacks?’ asked Willie, thinking silence sweet, but speech better, in such company.

  The Cathedral hove in sight round that turning of the road past Over bridge. Severn was crossed. Soon in Westgate Street of Gloucester city, all would disperse to sell and ‘shop’.

  ‘Will Jacks – no good on as ever. His feyther did hang hisself, and there be some as do wish as ’e ud do the same. A’ do cruelly intreat his wife who do go about (poor creytur) looking like the jaws o’ Death.’

  This terrific phrase was the last to be culled by Willie on his way to town. Folks began gathering their parcels and baskets together. The van pulled up at ‘The White Swan’. Its occupants disappeared, calling encouraging remarks. Willie shouldering his hamper made hurriedly for the station.

  Catching his train, he reached Ludgershall after a tiresome journey and set out to find the camp and his brother. Small beauty that soaking day was on Salisbury Plain to set beside Minsterworth and the misty orchards! A bleak unbroken landscape met his gaze. He trudged on through mud, slush and water, to a spot where long ugly huts and tents tearing out their pegs by contraction of the grey ropes denoted the presence of a regiment. His shoulder ached with the weight of the hamper, but he marched joyously and with little scorn of surroundings. He was going to see Eric. Soon they would be talking together in some canteen. It was not from fatigue alone that he found himself trembling as he dropped his load within the lines of his reserve battalion. After enquiring at one or two tents he made for the orderly room. Harvey: Private Harvey, number 3285. A list was consulted. Yes, Private Harvey had gone on a draft to France the night before.