Lorimers at War

by Anne Melville

  ‘A wife!’ Alexa was dumbfounded. It had never occurred to her that Matthew would marry anyone else.

  ‘A wife to whom I can never be a husband again.’

  ‘But you can still paint.’ She did not know what else to say. Her beloved Matthew reduced to this! And married.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he agreed. ‘I’m a very lucky chap. I can still paint.’

  Alexa realized that whatever comfort she tried to give would increase his bitterness rather than assuage it. She longed to put her arms around him, to feel his arms around her, to give him one last kiss. Instead, she said goodbye quietly and went out of the room before he should see her cry.

  10

  As the time of her grandchild’s birth approached, late in 1917, Margaret went to Jennifer’s family home in Norfolk. She felt entitled to some leave, for this was her first absence from Blaize since she had taken charge of the hospital there. By now her work was almost entirely administrative: there were plenty of doctors on the staff to deal with medical emergencies.

  She found her daughter-in-law in good health, but strained and apprehensive. Margaret herself had been forced to approach the birth of her only child without a husband at her side for support, and sympathized with the young woman’s fears about the coming ordeal. She did her best to be reassuring and was rewarded by Jennifer’s increasing serenity of mood.

  The sea was not far away from the Blakeneys’ home, Castle Hall, but the flat land between was low and marshy, making it difficult to walk there easily. Its presence made itself felt mainly by the sea mists which spread inland every evening and often, at this time of the year, did not disperse until noon. They made outdoor exercise undesirable for Jennifer, who by now was in any case too big to move easily. The baby’s head had dropped, making walking difficult. Mr Blakeney, Margaret’s host, was elderly and frail even for his years. He too kept to the house in these cold days. Margaret, more active than either and for too long confined to her office, felt the need to spend some time each day in the open air.

  She went out in the afternoons during Jennifer’s rest period, using the first day to explore the Blakeneys’ own grounds. The grey stone house, shabby but comfortable, had a modest garden of lawns and flower beds at the back, with a spinney at what appeared to be the boundary. But on the far side of the trees, still within the estate, were the ruins of the old castle which gave the house its name.

  Except for a single tower at one corner, little of the structure had survived, but enough of the outer wall remained to show what an extensive area it had once protected – and because the stone foundations were set in a high bank of earth, there was still a feeling of shelter inside. Outside, on the other hand, the wall was steep, an effective defence. At its highest point it was set on an outcrop of rock immediately above the marsh which twice a day filled with tidal water and twice a day drained itself back into the narrower channel of a river running out to the sea.

  In the days before the war, when gardeners were easy to come by, the grass inside the walls had probably been kept neat, but now a thick growth of nettles and brambles made it impossible to cross. Round the circumference ran a well-trodden stony path, however, and as Margaret walked along it both on that first day and on later occasions she revelled in the peace of the deserted site. If she paused to look out, either inland or across the marsh to the sea, she could see birds by the hundred, but no people at all. The change from the bustling grounds of Blaize and the constant demands made on her there was so restful that for the first time she was able to appreciate how tired she had been when she arrived.

  On other days she explored some of the nearby villages, marvelling at the richness of the huge churches which had been built in the centuries when the wool trade made Norfolk wealthy but which today dominated only shrunken and impoverished communities. She was returning from one of these walks when she saw approaching from the other direction the elderly village postman. He had returned to his old employment when his younger successor went off to the war. He got off his bicycle to open the gate, and recognized Margaret as the guest at the Hall.

  ‘How’s Miss Jennifer, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Very well. It won’t be much longer. Can I save you the journey up to the house?’

  ‘If you’ll sign for this. Telegram. Name of Scott.’

  ‘That must be for me.’ Margaret frowned as she signed. Only that morning she had read in the paper that more than two hundred thousand British soldiers had been killed or wounded in the Third Battle of Ypres. Blaize, no doubt, like every other hospital, would be under pressure to increase its number of patients. She hoped that her deputy was not calling her back just at the moment when she could be of use to Jennifer. She opened the telegram.

  ‘Is there any answer?’ asked the postman.

  Margaret shook her head, unable to speak. She stood still, leaning against the gatepost, as the old man mounted his bicycle, wobbled, and pedalled slowly away. Then, equally slowly, she walked up the long drive.

  She could not face Jennifer yet. Instead of going into the house she continued to walk across the garden and into the ruins of the castle. Only when she was sure that no one could see her did she sit down on the stone wall and take the telegram out again.

  It was intended for Jennifer. Margaret had forgotten that Robert’s wife had the same surname as Robert’s mother. It was Jennifer who had become Robert’s next of kin, Jennifer to whom the War Office expressed its regrets.

  She read the words again. They were not an announcement of death: not quite. Robert was missing, believed dead. Earlier in the war she would have seized on the uncertainty. It was unbelievable that Robert should have been killed and in 1915 or 1916 she would have refused to believe it. But now any attempt at optimism was crushed by the weight of probability. Too many women had been widowed, too many widows had lost their only sons. It was no longer possible to pretend that such things could not happen: they happened every day. She tried to cling to the element of hope – that if he were known to be dead, certainly dead, someone would have said so. In this moment of shock, though, she could not make herself believe anything but the worst. ‘Missing, believed dead’ meant only that that no one had found the body.

  The thought of Robert being only a body was too much for her to bear. He was all she had. His cheerful grin and mischievous eyes, his lively kindness and affection, had been everything in the world to her for twenty-three years. Without him she had nothing left. Clutching the telegram to her chest she rocked backward and forward, trying to control her emotions. Whatever she might think of the Kaiser and his advisers, she had never before hated the Germans as a race. The men in the enemy army were doubtless as puzzled and frightened as most British soldiers by what was happening to them. But at this moment she hated the man who had fired the bullet or the mortar or the shell which had killed her son. Had Robert been frightened, she wondered; had he been for long in pain? When he was a little boy she had shared his pains with him and she felt this one as well. Not exactly sobbing, not exactly screaming, she began to wail as she rocked, throwing the despairing sound out across the marsh to join the desolate cries of the water fowl.

  It drew to an end at last. She had come to Castle Hall to support her daughter-in-law and it was time to consider how best to do this. The first decision was an immediate one. The news must be kept from Jennifer until after the birth of the baby and if possible until she had completely recovered her strength. Margaret knew enough about the depression which often followed childbirth to realize the danger of providing a real, rather than an imaginary, cause for it. That meant that newspapers must be destroyed, the telephone guarded and visitors interrogated and if necessary warned. But most of all it meant that Margaret herself must be as cheerful and businesslike as usual, allowing nothing in her manner to suggest that anything was wrong.

  Never in her life had she found it easy to lie, even when it was kind or sensible to do so. And Jennifer naturally liked to talk about Robert. Sometimes she asked her mother
-in-law to describe his boyhood, but more often she was concerned with her life with him after the war. If Margaret was to join convincingly in such conversations from now on she must first convince herself that nothing too terrible had happened. She set herself to do so.

  Robert was missing. That was bad, but it was only temporary. There would be more news soon. Until it came there was nothing to mourn and when it did come, the news would surely be good. Almost certainly he had been wounded, but the lack of sure information must suggest that he had been taken prisoner. She would not believe that he was dead until someone proved it to her. There was bound to be a period of suspense and she had the power to spare her daughter-in-law that anxiety. If the news could be kept from Jennifer for a little while, she might never need to hear it at all.

  Margaret brushed the stone dust off her coat as she stood up. She straightened her shoulders and walked back round the castle wall towards the house with the firm step and all the determination which had enabled her to survive earlier tragedies in her life.

  She had hoped to reach her bedroom and to wash some of the strain away from her swollen face before anyone saw her; but Jennifer, restless, was waiting in the front hall. Margaret took one look at the young woman’s wide, frightened eyes and gripped her hands.

  ‘Has it started, dear?’

  Jennifer nodded. ‘Should I lie down?’

  ‘Only while I examine you,’ Margaret said. ‘There may be still quite a long time to wait and you’ll be more comfortable moving around at first. Give me a moment to wash and change my clothes. I’ll come to your room.’

  The monthly nurse was already in the house, so would not have heard any news from outside. Between them they could guard Jennifer from any careless word. Mr Blakeney would have to be told, but that could wait until the printed casualty lists in the newspapers began to include the victims of 30 November. For the moment, Margaret applied herself to the task of welcoming a new life into the world, and found some comfort in the familiar routines.

  As she had warned Jennifer, it would be some hours before the birth could be considered imminent. Margaret prescribed a hot bath and took the opportunity to shut herself in the library and telephone Lord Glanville. Piers received the news with a groan of sympathy which revealed his personal distress. He had known Robert since babyhood and loved him almost as his own son. Anxious to complete the conversation before she was interrupted, Margaret pressed the only important question.

  ‘What are the implications, Piers? What are the chances that he’s only missing? He doesn’t necessarily have to be dead, does he?’

  She was asking for reassurance and Piers did his best to provide it, although the uncertainty in his voice gave the clue to his real opinion.

  ‘No, of course not. Not necessarily. I’ll find out everything I can, Margaret. The Germans are supposed to send lists of their prisoners, as we do of ours. It’s bound to take a little time before details come through. I’ll make enquiries – and make sure that any information which arrives reaches us at once. But Margaret –’

  ‘Yes?’

  She heard him sigh. ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he repeated. Margaret knew what the hesitation meant. He was warning her not to hope too much, because he was already almost sure that she would be disappointed. It was a question of statistics, of probabilities. In any kind of normal society a young man of twenty-three would have an expectation of life of forty years. But a young man in France was lucky to survive twelve weeks. Robert had been lucky, in that sense. The telegram which Margaret had hidden in her drawer could have been expected at any time in the last two and a half years.

  She ended the conversation with a reminder that any news should be communicated only to herself. Then for the second time that day it was necessary for her to conceal her heartache under a cloak of cheerful efficiency.

  The baby was a girl, small but healthy, her downy hair suggesting that the blondeness of her mother’s Danish ancestors had only slightly subdued the bright red of her father and grandmother and great-grandfather. Margaret tried to feel joyful but found it impossible. She could control her grief only by suppressing all emotion. Fortunately Jennifer was too tired and too happy on her own account to notice. Margaret waited while Mr Blakeney was shown his granddaughter, checked that mother and child were comfortable in the care of the nurse, and went back to pace up and down her own room.

  The charade continued for eight days. When at last she was called to the telephone to speak to Lord Glanville her first reaction was one of hope, but the sympathetic gravity of his voice allowed the hope no encouragement. He had managed to get in touch with Robert’s commanding officer and had learned the details of the German counter-attack at Cambrai – which had recaptured almost all the ground gained by the British in the Third Battle of Ypres. The number of confirmed British casualties was already over forty thousand and it was thought that almost ten thousand had been taken prisoner.

  ‘Then if Robert’s missing, surely it’s most likely that he’s a prisoner of war!’ Margaret exclaimed.

  ‘His name hasn’t yet appeared on any of the lists, I’m afraid.’

  ‘But if he had been killed, someone would have seen.’

  ‘The German attack took place during a snow blizzard. It sounds as though there was little visibility. And a great deal of confusion as our men were pressed back. But in fact he was seen to fall. His sergeant and a linesman both reported it, and they were each of the opinion that he had been hit in the head.’

  ‘But afterwards.’ Margaret had to force herself to say the words. ‘Afterwards, if he were dead, his body would have been found.’

  ‘He was hit right at the beginning of the enemy attack, and the area where he fell was over-run by the Germans. Later in the day our troops made a sortie and recovered the ground temporarily, although it was lost again the next day. They brought in any wounded they could. But Robert wasn’t amongst them.’

  ‘Then surely that’s good news!’ exclaimed Margaret. ‘The Germans must have found him first and taken him prisoner. Taken him to hospital if he was wounded. They wouldn’t trouble to move the dead body of an enemy in the middle of the battle. Surely it must mean that he’s still alive, Piers. What other possibility can there be?’

  The silence which followed was almost as terrible as the explanation which gradually she forced out of him. Margaret had known Piers long before he married Alexa. They had been friends for twenty years and their honesty with each other was a fundamental ingredient of the friendship. Piers might try – as he was trying now – not to tell her the whole truth, but he could not bring himself to lie. Little by little, as he gave reluctant answers to her direct questions, Margaret built up a picture of a desolate countryside in which snow turned to slush and slush seeped into the pulverized soil and turned it into liquid mud. In mud like that even living men drowned. The body of a dead man would simply sink beneath the surface and never be seen again.

  In more than thirty years as a doctor Margaret had seen a good many deaths, but she could not think of Robert’s death as being like any other. When she replaced the receiver at the end of the call her mind was numb but her body was retching. She needed to be alone, and it was the worst possible timing which allowed Jennifer at that moment to come slowly downstairs for the first time since her baby was born.

  Jennifer was radiant with happiness. Her fears of childbirth had been forgotten, her body had recovered from its tiredness and she was delighted by her beautiful daughter. Contentment enveloped her as she came into the library.

  ‘The vicar has just left,’ she said. ‘He came to arrange for my churching.’

  At any other time Margaret would have registered a protest. She disapproved strongly of the service prescribed for the churching of women. On her wedding day a bride was exhorted by the church to have children and it seemed illogical that when she had obeyed that instruction she should immediately be regarded as unclean. It was a pagan ceremony which ought to be resisted. But today she was in n
o mood for argument, and Jennifer’s happy mood allowed no opportunity for it.

  ‘He asked at the same time about a date for the christening,’ she said. ‘I imagine there’s no hope of Robert having leave in the near future, so I shall have to choose a time to suit the godparents. And before that I must make a final decision on a name for Baby. It’s a great difficulty.’

  ‘Did you and Robert not discuss it and have your choices ready?’ To her own ears Margaret’s voice sounded unfamiliar, a low expressionless mumble; but Jennifer appeared not to notice anything unusual about it.

  ‘Oh, Robert refused to be serious. I suggested that a daughter might be called Roberta, and he wrote back to say that that would be perfectly all right as long as he was allowed to call her Bobbie or Bertie. I wasn’t having that, of course, so then I asked whether he would consider Florence, because I so much admired Florence Nightingale. He didn’t like the name, but suggested that if I really wanted to call a daughter after a city there was plenty of other choice: Paris, for example, or Troy or Petra. Berlin, he thought, might be a little unwise in the circumstances.’ Jennifer giggled at the memory of what had clearly been a long-running discussion by correspondence. ‘He makes a joke of everything, doesn’t he? I don’t think he could really make himself believe that there was going to be a baby. He had to wait until it arrived. Well, of course, I wrote to tell him straightaway, and pointed out that we really must settle the matter and suggested three more names. So the question is, how long will it be before I get an answer? Our letters have been taking about five days each way, so I should hear by Christmas. Mother, what’s the matter?’

  Margaret did not answer, could not answer. Her voice was no longer under control. It would be unforgivable to disturb the young mother’s joyful light-heartedness, but it was impossible to pretend any longer. She could not even think of any excuse to take herself out of the room, but remained frozen in silence and misery and on the verge of fainting.