by Heather Webb
“Official Radio from Paris—6:01 A.M., November 11, 1918. Marshal Foch to the Commander in Chief. 1. Hostilities will be stopped on the entire front beginning at 11 o’clock, November 11th. 2. The Allied troops will not go beyond the line reached at that hour on that date until further orders. It is signed by Marshal Foch at 5:45 A.M. this morning.” He paused to let the words settle around them all. “That’s it men. La guerre est fini. The war is over.”
Will heard the words over and over again. Hostilities will be stopped . . . The war is over. He wanted to say something, but nothing would come, nothing seemed right. He looked around. All the men were frozen, mouths open. Henderson threw up. Parker laughed, quietly at first, then hysterically, uncontrollably.
Walsh stood up. “Well, fuck me, lads.” He turned to the lieutenant. “We’re really going home?”
The lieutenant nodded, his thick mustache concealing a smile. “Yes, Walsh. We are bloody well going home!” Will couldn’t take his eyes off the piece of paper in the lieutenant’s hands. He watched, mesmerized, as this imposing man folded the paper with astonishing care and put it in the pocket of his greatcoat, placed his hands behind his back, closed his eyes, and raised his head to the sky. “It is over.”
At that, a gradual cheer filtered along the lines of men, growing louder, rippling along the trenches like a great wave of relief. Some lit a smoke, some laughed, some hugged each other as tight as their own mothers would and some crept quietly away to their beds and wept.
It was 0900 hours. Two hours to go. They were still due to relieve the men on the front at 1000 hours.
Will looked at his friends. “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve always liked the idea of a houseboat in the south of France. When will we leave, sir?”
The lieutenant looked serious. “This is just an armistice, Rawlins. A laying down of arms. There’s still a long way to go before any treaties are signed, but hopefully you’ll be home for Christmas.”
Henderson kicked his tin helmet across the ground, knocking over a mug and sending a shower of hot tea over everyone. “Bollocks to that. They said that four years ago, sir.” He punched at the sandbags before falling to his knees and sobbing like a child.
There was little else said. They all had their private thoughts as they hunkered down and awaited their orders.
Will picked absentmindedly at the lice in his hair. “I didn’t think it would be like this, Archie. Did you?”
“Like what?”
“Like this. The end. I didn’t think it would be so quiet. I’ve thought about it so often, about hearing those words: ‘It’s over.’ I always imagined we would run around naked and kiss each other, but I don’t feel like doing any of that. I don’t feel like celebrating at all.”
“Yeah. I know what you mean. I just feel . . . I don’t know . . . empty, I suppose.”
Will lit them both a cigarette. “If the war is over, what does that make us now? I’ve been a soldier for so long I don’t think I know how to be anything else. And what about all the men we’ve lost?” He thought of his brother, Jack. “They’re not celebrating, are they, poor bastards. They’re not going home.”
A short march away, on the banks of the Meuse River, the shelling at the front was still heavy. As news of the Armistice spread, the men agreed to give it one last push, to burn up their guns, to give all they had left. To fight to the very end. A farewell to arms.
At 1000 hours, Eleventh Battalion was moved up to the front line. Shortly afterward, the orders were given to go over the top. As he scrambled over the muddy bank, Will heard the lieutenant’s words. “It’s over.” But it wasn’t. He was still running, his rifle cold and heavy in his outstretched arms. The shells still roared overhead. The men still fell around him, dropping like sacks into the filthy French mud, begging for their mothers as death crept too slowly upon them. Nothing had changed. Nothing was over. Christmas would never come around.
Trapped in his dark prison, Will feels his mother’s arms wrapped around him, so warm and soft. He hears her, urging him to survive. “Breathe. Come along now. You have to breathe. You have to live.”
“BREATHE. COME ALONG now. You have to breathe. You have to live.”
Her words are all that disturb the silence in the small cottage bedroom. The clouds have darkened, the gray November day struggling to find its way through the narrow window so that everything seems awash with despair. Annie wants to scream. She wants to put her face to the child’s and roar and shout until it roars back at her in outraged defiance. She draws on every aspect of her training and experience, working quickly and efficiently: massaging the chest to stimulate the circulation, breathing for him—short breaths, count to five, massage again. She sees charts and drawings in textbooks. The circulatory system. A diagram of a heart, valves, and arteries. Why won’t it start? Why won’t he breathe for her? While she works, time seems to pause around her.
She remembers her boys when they were born. Jack, so slight and fair and quiet. Will, all eleven pounds of pink, bawling mass of him, with a shock of hair so black her mother said you could have hidden currants in there and never found them. Jack was always the quiet one, always the first to get the coughs and colds. Will had always thrived. He was a boisterous, noisy boy and brought out the best in his older brother. Annie loved nothing more than to listen to them playing with their cousins in the fields at the back of the house. “Boys will be boys,” her mother said whenever they appeared at the back step snotty-nosed and bloody-kneed.
Boys will be boys.
Jack couldn’t get to the front soon enough. Teddy, the eldest cousin and a reserve soldier, had gone off first. The other cousins, and Jack, had followed as soon as the call came for volunteers, with Will having to wait until his nineteenth birthday. Annie had never dreaded a birthday so much. He was gone before the last slice of fruitcake was eaten.
It was sometimes too hard to bear, their absence. More than anything, it was the silence and order they had left behind in the rooms of her home that Annie found so unsettling. Beds not slept in. Doors not slammed. Songs not whistled over the breakfast table. She’d had to stop the pendulum on the grandfather clock; the ticking had become so loud it drove her to distraction.
“Make the bloody thing stop, will you, Arthur? Tick, tick, tick all bloody day. It’s enough to drive a person daft.”
It was unlike Annie to curse. Her husband did the necessary. It was stopped at one minute past eleven. She’d often wondered if that was significant, or if it was as inconsequential as the patch of carpet the clock stood upon. Either way, that clock haunted her. It stood in the corner of the front room, waiting; a constant reminder of the pause they had all felt since the boys left.
“We’ll start it up when he’s back, love.” That’s what Arthur said when he saw her looking at it out of the corner of her eye. “When he’s back. Then we can all start moving on again.”
He’d been saying that for three years. The silence of the clock had become as unbearable as the noise it had once made. Annie couldn’t even bring herself to dust it, although her mother tutted when she saw the state of it.
“For all I care, it can be eaten by woodworm and covered in spiderwebs,” Annie said. “I’d be happy to never see that bloody clock again.”
Still, she wouldn’t let Arthur take it away. It had become something of a memorial to the war and as much as she had grown to hate it and all it represented, she was afraid of what might happen if it wasn’t there. So it stood in the corner of the room as it always had. A frozen relic to all that had once been and all that might be once again. Time, suspended.
AT THE FRONT of the church, Tom Miller repeats his prayers. His hand feels warmer beneath the vicar’s gentle touch. His heart beats a little steadier.
“The baby shouldn’t have come, Vicar. Not until the end of December. What day is it today?”
“The ele
venth of November, Thomas. The eleventh day of the eleventh month.” There is a pleasant symmetry about the date that pleases the vicar. The church bells will soon chime the eleventh hour.
“ ‘Not yet, little one,’ that’s what she said when it started. ‘Not yet. You’re coming to us too soon. Please, not yet.’ ” A tear slips down Tom’s cheek as his wife’s words sink through his bones. He shivers as he sits in silent hope. “ ‘The child is in distress.’ That’s what the midwife said. Told me there was nothing more I could do to help. Told me to come here, to pray. To pray for us all.”
“And it was the right thing to do, Thomas. We all need to pray at times like this. It can give us great comfort, and your wife wouldn’t want you worrying at home. She’s a good woman, Annie Rawlins. Delivered many a baby in this village. Your wife couldn’t be in better hands.”
Tom nods. Annie Rawlins is a good woman. He wouldn’t have left his wife and his unborn child with anyone but her.
He opens his eyes and looks around the church. He feels safe within the cool interior of the centuries-old walls. There is nothing here to harm him. Nobody to point at him or cross the street to show their disregard. It isn’t their words or the names they call him that pain him so, it is the disgust on their faces, the manner in which their words are said: spiteful, venomous, and cruel. They want to hurt him with their scathing remarks as much as the snipers’ bullets might have hurt him had he gone to fight. The women he used to call friend and neighbor he now avoids. The church is his sanctuary, his prayers for forgiveness his salvation.
There is a movement behind him, the softest of shuffles. He turns to see Jim Allinson, the village blacksmith and church bell ringer. Tom doesn’t want to be seen. He closes his eyes to make himself invisible and hears Jim shuffle past. The sound of his limp—an old war wound from the Boer—taunts Tom’s conscience. Another reminder of his own cowardice. Sometimes he finds himself incapable of walking, crippled by the steady rhythm of his unaltered gait as the soldiers on crutches struggle past.
The door to the belfry opens with a reluctant creak as Tom resumes his prayers. “Please save the child. Please, Lord. I beg you. Can you hear me?” His whispered words echo off the stone pillars, wending their way into the rafters above him. The bird flits from one beam to another. Does he stay by choice, or is he trapped?
Tom allows his tears to fall as his daughter steps through the great oak door and walks along the cold flagstones toward him. She places his coat around his shoulders.
“Come quickly, Daddy. You have to come home.”
OUTSIDE THE VILLAGE post office, Harry Parker, the postmaster, clips his trouser legs neatly above each ankle and cycles away. He hopes for a puncture or for his chain to come off. He hopes that somehow the terrible burden of news he carries in his mailbag will disappear; that something will happen to change the awful truth of its contents.
Everybody sees him coming. They avoid eye contact. Not my house, they pray. Please, not my house. Not today.
Annie has lost count of the number of times Harry has cycled past her kitchen window as she washes the breakfast dishes. She’s forgotten how many times her hands have stilled in the soapy water as her heart quickened. Please don’t stop. Please don’t. Since the news of Jack’s death, she cannot say how often she has willed him to keep going, urging the pedals to keep moving and the wheels to keep turning. Anything but the sound of the latch on the gate. Anything but the sight of the King’s telegram again.
So far, her prayers have been answered.
It is always some other poor woman who has sunk to her knees on the scullery floor as the dreaded news from the War Office is passed to her with a deep apology and the sympathies of the King and Kitchener. But Annie is not at her kitchen window today. She doesn’t see Harry rest his bicycle against the wall of her house and walk slowly up the narrow pathway. She doesn’t hear him bid Ada Mullins good morning as she scurries past. She doesn’t hear the joyful song of the blackbird in the beech hedge or the cruel click of the latch on the gate.
But her husband, Arthur, does.
He is buttering a slice of toast when he hears the latch. He looks at the clock on the wall, makes a note of the time. Somehow, that matters. He is glad Annie isn’t here. The cat stretches on her cushion in front of the Aga, blissfully unaware of the dark cloud they all live under, every morning the same dread and fear.
Arthur places the knife carefully on the plate, stands up, steadies himself for a moment against the wooden table, and walks to the door. The blackbird in the hedge sings on. Arthur thinks about dying. Thinks that when it is his own time to go, he would be content if the last thing he heard was a blackbird singing. He wonders if they have blackbirds in France. He wonders if the birds ever sing for Will and the boys.
Harry takes something from his bag as he walks up the narrow garden path; the flower beds that hug the pathway are bare brown earth. They’ll be bright with snowdrops in a few months, and then daffodils and crocuses and carnations in the summer. The Rawlinses always take great care of their garden. “They’ll be home before the daffodils are out, Annie.” He has said it to her every year, but the yellow flowers dance in the stiff spring breeze and still the boys don’t come home. It is a cruel reminder of the passing of the seasons, of the passing of time; of life. On days like today, Harry wishes he could hide away for the winter. That he, too, could hide with the daffodils.
10:59 A.M.
BENEATH THE MUDDLED earth, Private Rawlins sees a light emerging. He is being pulled, dragged. His mother is tugging at his arms, wrenching them free from the dirt. She is brushing the mud from his face, breathing for him. He chokes and gasps, gulping in desperate mouthfuls of the crisp November air. It rushes to his lungs, cold and wonderful. Again and again he gasps and breathes, gasps and breathes. Then he is being carried, lifted onto a stretcher, jostled around like a rag doll. He wants them to stop. Wants to be still. The pain is too much. The men beside him yell and shout, issuing instructions and orders. He sees their mouths move, their faces contorted with urgency, yet they don’t make a sound. Just a rush of air against his face. A gentle hush. He watches the blur of blue sky above him and imagines he is floating on his canal boat, his mother beside him. She tells him he has to go home, back to Brimsworth. He wonders if Jack and the rest of the boys might come out to play—kick a ball, collect conkers, catch a minnow. He closes his eyes and lets the silence wash over him like a sigh.
On the fence post, the barn owl watches for a moment until he is certain. Only then does he take flight, his vigil complete. A single white feather drifts to the ground behind him. The only sign that he was ever there.
THE INFANT’S MOTHER slips in and out of a fevered consciousness, her mouth too dry to speak, her mind too confused to find the words she wants to say. She looks about the room, this humble space where all her babies have been born, where she and her brother were born, where her own mother was born—and died. So much life and loss.
She closes her eyes. Dreams of a white owl passing the window. A feather drifts from its wing, flutters through a crack in the glass, and settles on her heart. She hears the taunting words of the women who will no longer sit beside her in church; the women who cross the street to express their disdain for the man who refused to fight, and for the wife who failed in her duty to encourage him to go. She wants to shout at them. But she can’t. Never has. “It’s best to remain silent, Vera. What good would it do to stand in the street and have a great row? They have their opinions and we have ours. Don’t give them the satisfaction of seeing how their words upset you. Walk tall. Bid them good morning. Smile. When this is all over, we will all sit together in church again. You’ll see.”
Dear Tom. Such a gentle giant of a man. She wants her son to grow up to be just like him: principled and kind-hearted.
Her son. Where is he?
She opens her eyes a fraction, sees the woman in the room, the whi
te peak of her cap, the stiff starch of her apron. Why is she still here? So much time has passed. It must be a week, maybe more. The woman is hunched over something, talking to someone. And then she is lifting something impossibly small and still. Vera grips the bedsheets as she tries to clamber away from the searing cramps in her womb. Something is wrong. She can sense it. She lifts her head. “The baby?” The words are all she can manage. Her head feels like a lump of slate. She lets it fall back against the sodden pillow and listens to the crunch of gravel on the path outside the house. The click of the latch on the gate. Time slows and stills.
“WHAT DO YOU have for me today then, Harry?” Arthur likes to confront things head-on. He believes that if you fear the worst, the worst will happen. He will not give in to his fear. “Did I win the pools? Can I buy Buckingham Palace?”
Harry Parker smiles. “Ah, there’s Arthur Rawlins. Never without a smile on your face. Don’t know how you do it, Arthur. I really don’t.” Arthur holds out his hand and prays for the familiar handwriting of his son and not the typed formality of the War Office. “A letter today, Arthur. All the way from France.”
Arthur grips the door handle and takes a breath. “Well, isn’t that a thing. Annie will be pleased when she gets back.”
“Another delivery, is it?” They’ve all noticed the increase in births since the war. Nine months after the men come home on leave, the babies arrive.
“Been out all night. At the Millers’.”
Harry’s face falls. “Ah. I’m heading there next.”
“If you see Annie, tell her she’s a letter from Will waiting for her. Lord knows what’s keeping her this time. Some women would have had three babies by now.”