For the rest of the time until the train chugged into the station they sat very close together, talking softly and kissing now and again.
Kirby magically reappeared as the train drew to a halt although they hadn’t been aware of his presence before then, and Daisy found she couldn’t let go of William. He was very gentle as he dried her face with a crisp white handkerchief, tucking it in her pocket as he said, ‘I’ll collect it when I return, all right, darling? When I return.’
‘Oh, William, William.’
He had to put her from him and get into the carriage, the door closing behind Kirby and the bags just as the train began to move. For a crazy moment Daisy wanted to run after it. William was going and she didn’t know if she would ever see him again. It wasn’t fair. Sixteen years, and then they had barely had twenty-four hours together. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair. How could God let it happen like this?
She stood there long after the sound of the train had faded away, one hand pressed tightly over her mouth and the other resting on William’s brooch. She might have remained there longer such was her state of mind, but a voice saying, ‘You all right, lass?’ brought her out of the whirling panic. She glanced quickly at the young man who had spoken to her, intending to nod and walk away, but then her eyes returned to the empty sleeve tucked into the pocket of his jacket and stayed there.
She had to drag her gaze away to look him in the eye and say, ‘Yes, thank you. I . . . I’m all right. I was just . . . seeing someone off.’
‘Aye.’ He nodded. ‘I saw. A captain no less. Rum ’un, this war, ain’t it, lass? Don’t matter if you’re in the ranks or an officer, there’s still family at the back of you. Mind, I’m out of it now after copping this little lot.’ He nodded to the empty sleeve. ‘I was a miner afore I joined up so it’s put paid to that. Funny thing, when I come round in the hospital the main worry on me mind was how me an’ the wife’d manage, but do you know what she said? She’d rather have me alive an’ home with one arm than out there with two. She meant it an’ all. Canny lass, me wife.’
Daisy smiled a little shakily. ‘I’m sure she is and I know exactly how she felt.’ She said goodbye and began walking. One arm, and he couldn’t have been more than twenty-one or two. And there would be so many who would come home minus limbs, perhaps blinded or driven out of their minds. Even more who wouldn’t come home at all. But William would. He would. She had to believe that, like she did with Tommy, or else she’d go stark staring mad. And William had Kirby with him now. If nothing else the valet would try to make his master’s life as comfortable as he could.
Her hand went to her mouth again as she thought, Will Kirby try to poison William’s mind against me? Would it have been better to say something, to have it all out once and for all? But how could she have done, with William about to leave for France and Kirby with him? But it wasn’t really that. She had felt sorry for the man, just like the tinker’s dog. Kirby would be thrilled to bits if he knew of the comparison! A dart of humour pierced the blackness for a moment. Ma Stratton had got the dog round fine, it had been a good-natured animal at heart. As for Josiah Kirby - she just hoped it wasn’t a case of extending the hand of friendship only to have it bitten off. But it was too late now. She couldn’t change what had occurred on the platform although in hindsight she had to admit she had followed her heart rather than her head. Still, she had enough to worry about with both William and Tommy over the water. She didn’t need to anticipate trouble.
The last remnants of sunshine were dappling High Street West when Daisy emerged from the station. She stood for a moment looking about her. Everything seemed the same. The same shops, the same busy crowds, the same barefoot urchins darting here and there.
She breathed deeply, willing herself to start walking as though this was just another fine summer evening. She supposed she ought to count her blessings that her three brothers were too old to be caught in the latest net of conscription which had been extended to cover all men between the ages of eighteen and forty-one, regardless of their marital status. She knew Kitty was worried out of her wits that Alf might be called up soon. They had said the war would be over by Christmas when it had started, so what had gone wrong?
But the war couldn’t go on for ever. She walked faster now, her chin lifting as it always did when she was telling herself to buck up. One day Tommy and William would come home, and if things worked out Tommy might never have to go back to that noisy, dirty machine shop. Unless he wanted to, of course. He could join them at Greyfriar Hall; they would need all the help they could get to make the place into a working children’s home.
It was that night that Daisy first lit the two candles. She placed them in the window, whispering, ‘One for each of them, God. Guide them safely home. And let them know how much I love them.’
On 31 May seven thousand British sailors were lost when Dreadnought fleets clashed at Jutland, causing the sea to be awash with bodies. But it was the sinking of the Hampshire on 5 June with Kitchener on board which caused a pall of grief and dismay to descend on the British people. He had been the ordinary man’s hero, and England went into mourning.
Towards the end of June William was called to operational headquarters. On his return, Josiah took one look at his young master’s face and feared the worst. ‘Sir?’ He paused in his task of pressing William’s trousers. They might be in the thick of it but Sir William’s uniform would always be immaculate while Josiah had breath in his body.
‘We’re in the hands of lunatics, Kirby.’ William brushed a weary hand across his face. ‘It’s the Somme. Damn it, the least intelligent strategist can see there’s nothing to be gained on the Somme. Victory will merely free the Germans from an awkward salient, or, if we’re too successful, saddle us with one of our own.’
Josiah nodded. He didn’t understand the ins and outs of it all like the master, but he trusted Sir William’s judgement more than the old generals in their bath chairs. Always a man of few words, he said, ‘When, sir?’
‘We start now. You’re coming with me in the staff car. See to things, would you?’
Within an hour they were on their way, the car passing soldiers making for the front, heavily laden with their packs but marching at a smart, swinging pace, some singing music-hall tunes accompanied here and there by a mouth organ. They were heading towards the points of flame stabbing the darkness where British shells were falling.
Josiah sat very still in the vehicle which bumped and jolted along, the motor cycles of despatch riders passing it now and again. It was hard to believe he had only been out here with the young master for a matter of weeks. It seemed like months, years, an eternity. Once there had been another life but it seemed unreal now, the blood and guts of the last weeks wiping it away.
Now, he was surprised he had ever been concerned about Mr William having a fancy for the fishergirl. Mind, the last time he had seen her she hadn’t looked the same as the fierce little upstart he remembered. He had looked at Daisy Appleby on that platform and she had seemed a woman of presence with a self-possessed air about her, aloof and cool. Until she had seen Mr William that was. Then her face had lit up. It still pained him to remember how her face had lit up. Certainly May had never looked at him like that in all the time he’d known her. Perhaps that should have told him something? But he had let go of May now, in his head. What was the point of holding on when he would be dead soon? And he was going to die, they all were. No one could survive this butchery. So it didn’t matter about May or the fishergirl, the only thing which was important was staying alive as long as Sir William and serving the young master right to the end.
It was probably better it was going to end out here in France because he couldn’t have stood by and done nothing if Mr William had persisted with this notion of marrying a girl from the common people. There had been enough disgrace to the family name with his mother insisting on the divorce and then up and marrying a French count before the paper was even dry. But at least she had made
a new life for herself in France and was out of the way, unlike the fishergirl. No, he would have had to step in and, strangely, it would have given him no pleasure, not since the incident on the railway platform. The fishergirl had shown herself to be kind there and kindness was a rare commodity in a woman, or so he had found.
The car catapulted into the air a few inches, courtesy of a large pothole, and Josiah heard Sir William swear profusely.
The last of the Frasers he would be, which was a shame. A great shame. A grand old name which Josiah had been proud to serve would die with him. This damn’ awful war . . .
At 7.30 the next morning the artillery barrage was lifted and the British went over the top in regular waves. In the first five minutes of the battle thousands of British men and lads were cut down by relentless German fire. The enemy’s machine guns mowed men and officers down in rows, and the German defences were formidable and deep.
Later that night William walked amongst what was left of his division. The day had cost the British Army nineteen thousand dead and fifty-seven thousand casualties - all William knew was that they were going to have to do it all again tomorrow.
They did do it again, and again, and again. They did it all through July and August, and by September William and Josiah, like thousands of other men, had become numb and accepting.
But now it was the first week of September, and the morning was dry after days of heavy rain which had turned the trenches to mud. William’s lieutenant was counting down before they went over the top, and as he listened one of his hands was on his gun and the other on a letter in his pocket which he had received from Daisy a few days before. It was a little bit of sanity amid all the madness.
‘Three, two, one. Over, lads! Over!’
William knew Kirby would be following behind him as he climbed out of the trench. He had given up telling the valet to stay put and keep his head down because the man always appeared at his shoulder a few seconds later. By rights Kirby should be serving some doddery old master he had grown old with while enjoying the mellow fruits of his years of service, not existing minute to minute in this hell-hole. But as far as Kirby was concerned a valet’s rightful place was beside his master at all times, be it in the land of plenty or the land of want.
A shell exploded to the left of William, blowing him right off his feet, but he knew when he got up again he still had two arms and two legs, which was more than could be said for some of the poor blighters who had been nearer to the deafening blast.
The screams and cries and pounding noise of the artillery always produced a kind of whirling vacuum in his head; he could usually remember very little of the action afterwards. Anything specific, that was.
The nights were different. The men composed songs once darkness fell, their tunes usually adapted from music-hall hits to relieve the tedium of life in the trenches. The words were usually self-deprecatory and often obscene, but William thought no other army had ever gone to war proclaiming its own incompetence and reluctance to fight like this one, and no army had ever fought better.
There were rolls of barbed wire in front of him. It caught at his clothes with cruel barbs, tearing at his skin. There were men to either side of him and behind, Germans in front, and the barrage indiscriminately blasted away with no respect for friend or foe. Once free from the wire he continued to move, and when another shell burst just behind him, the force of the explosion blasting William and several other men into a trench, he didn’t realise for a moment or two that he was injured. It was only when he tried to get up that he realised one of his legs was shattered, bone sticking out at all angles, and that his arm on the same side was hanging useless. He lay panting for a second before turning to the other men, intending to tell them to carry on, but they had done all the fighting they were ever going to do.
How long he sat there surrounded by dead bodies he didn’t know. He made no effort to staunch the blood from his wounds but remembered wondering why he felt no pain, and then, at the same moment it hit with white-hot savagery, Kirby flung himself down into the trench beside him.
‘You’re hurt, sir.’
It wasn’t like Kirby to make unnecessary remarks, William thought dazedly, managing to grind out, ‘So it would seem,’ through teeth clenched in agony.
‘If you will allow me, sir.’ Josiah had unceremoniously stripped the shirt off one of the dead men which he now tore into several strips before getting to work on William’s leg. The rough bandaging did the trick and stopped the worst of the flow of blood, but William’s clothes were already soaked a deep red and there was a pool beneath his injured leg.
‘We have to get you back to the medics, sir.’
William watched as Josiah cautiously raised his head above the parapet only to duck down swiftly as machine-gun fire whizzed by. ‘L . . . later.’ Every little bit of William was concentrated on holding on to consciousness. ‘Let our men advance first. We . . . we’re too close to the . . . enemy line. They’ll pick . . . pick us off like rabbits.’
‘You haven’t got time for later, sir.’
‘Be that as it may, there . . . is no point in both of us . . . dying.’ The pain was unbearable now, excruciating. It brought back memories of von Spee’s thugs and he found himself thinking, as he glanced through pain-dazed eyes at his leg, All that work the surgeons did and this is how I reward them. Monsieur Richer would have my guts for garters if he could see how I’d treated his artistry. He turned his head to look at his arm which was now hurting every bit as much as his leg.
‘Dislocated, I think, sir, badly.’ Josiah had noticed the direction of his master’s gaze. ‘Or it could be broken. It isn’t bleeding too much anyway.’ He didn’t mention the wound towards the back of the younger man’s head where it looked as though he had been all but scalped in part. ‘And I’m sorry, sir, but I really am going to have to get you back to base.’
The valet’s tone was such that he could have been an adult addressing a recalcitrant child who was insisting on remaining at a party too long. William would have smiled if he had been able. Daisy would have appreciated the humour. He glanced at his shattered leg. Or maybe she wouldn’t.
‘We can get back to where there’s assistance if we crawl, sir. All you have to do is to get over the top and I can pull you.’
‘Not . . . not with the snipers. You’ll be a sitting duck.’
‘Snipers or no snipers we have to try, Master William.’
This was the Kirby of his childhood, the stern but caring disciplinarian who in many ways had been more of a father to him than his own. It came to William with a real shock of surprise that Kirby had been an anchor to the small confused boy he had been, and furthermore that he felt some affection for the dour individual. William knew he wouldn’t make it if they waited but it seemed crazy two lives being lost in what he saw as a suicide mission. ‘We’ll wait, Kirby. I’ll tell you when--’
And then Kirby took the decision out of his hands, grabbing him by the collar as he said, ‘Forgive me for the liberty, sir,’ and hoisting him upwards with a strength William would not have believed him capable of.
He must have passed out with the pain because the next thing he was aware of was being dragged through mud on his back, and then an English voice yelling through the din, ‘Get down, you fool! What do you think you’re doing - providing target practice for Jerry?’
‘I’ve a badly injured officer here, I need help.’
‘We all need help, mate. Another dozen or so divisions’d be nice.’
Again William fainted but help must have been forthcoming because when he next surfaced he was on a canvas stretcher which two soldiers were dragging as they crawled along, and Kirby’s voice was behind him, saying, ‘Not long now, Master William.’ There was something very comforting about becoming Master William again. It spoke of toasted muffins thick with raspberry jam in the nursery, of walks with his nurse and one of the footmen when the worst that could happen was that he fell over and got his clothes dirty, of pla
ying war with his lead soldiers in front of the nursery fire . . . Oh, Daisy, Daisy. This was no game.
He felt a weight on his chest as the shell hit but no surprise. He had been expecting it.
It had been a strange sort of day. Daisy had awoken early in the morning after a nightmare which had left her sweating and shaking, and long before dawn had broken she had been downstairs in the kitchen, drinking tea and telling herself the feeling of foreboding she couldn’t shake off was nothing more than the residue of the dream.
She had got to work very early, and when by nine o’clock Mr Newton still hadn’t arrived she was beginning to get worried. Then she’d received a message to say his widowed sister had collapsed the night before and he had had to go to Hartlepool. He expected to return the next day and could she hold the fort until then? Due to his absence the day had been even more hectic than usual, and by the time she got home that evening all she wanted was a hot bath, a couple of aspirin for the headache which had been with her since the nightmare had woken her, and an early night.
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