Expectation

by Anna Hope

  Acknowledgements

  If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a very special village to raise a child and support the mother while she writes a novel. While writing this book I was fortunate enough to move to such a place – thanks to all my family in the Shire, but especially to Judith Way for deck therapy, to Cherry Buckwell for the walking cure, to Kate Christie for goddess-mother love, to Fionnagh Winston for wit and wisdom, to Rebecca Palmer for a home from home for my daughter, to Kelly Tica for boundless love, support and chicken soup, and to Rachael Stevens for sorting my life out, on so many levels, more times than I care to count.

  Thanks to Ben and Toby for great chats about Seattle and LA – even if they didn’t make it into the finished book.

  To Olya Knezevic, who told me to watch Autumn Sonata.

  To Judith, for taking me to Canterbury, lending me her library card and sharing her love of the city.

  To the lady who opened the Tomb of the Eagles on a wild and wet day in November and gave her time so gently and generously.

  To Philip Makatrewicz, Thea Bennett and Cherry Buckwell, who read the book in early drafts and whose clarity and enthusiasm were incredibly helpful.

  To Josh Raymond and his legendary skinny black pen, whose edits are worth an ISBN number in themselves.

  To the Unwriteables, still going strong after a decade of love and support.

  To Naomi Wirthner, who called me in to her Seagull, and wove the magic round us all.

  To my mum, Pamela Hope, whose activism inspired and shaped me, and who came with me on a memorable walk to Greenham Common.

  To Dave, for making it work somehow.

  To Bridie, for hearing the call, and answering with your wild bright wondrous self.

  To my wonderful editor, Jane Lawson – she who understands what an ending must be.

  To the inimitable Alison Barrow. I feel so lucky to have you on my team.

  To my agent Caroline Wood, whose dedication to this book and desire to see it be all it could be were unwavering. Caroline, you have helped more than anyone else to bring this book into being – thank you so much for your rigour, enthusiasm and support.

  And finally to the beautiful women who have shaped my life, the horizon watchers, the fierce dancers, the van converters, the river swimmers, the caretakers, the ones who know the old ways. Thanks for all you’ve taught me and all we’ve shared. More, please, more.

  If you enjoyed this then don’t miss Anna Hope’s heart-breaking historical tale

  WAKE

  ‘Powerful and humane, a novel that charms and beguiles’ Sadie Jones, bestselling author of THE SNAKES

  A heart-breaking historical tale of love and hope set at the end of the Great War.

  Remembrance Day 1920: A wartime secret connects three women’s lives:

  Hettie whose wounded brother won’t speak.

  Evelyn who still grieves for her lost lover.

  And Ada, who has never received an official letter about her son’s death, and is still waiting for him to come home.

  As the mystery that binds them begins to unravel, far away, in the fields of France, the Unknown Soldier embarks on his journey home. The mood of the nation is turning towards the future – but can these three women ever let go of the past?

  Available in paperback and ebook

  READ ON FOR AN EXTRACT

  DAY ONE

  Sunday, 7 November 1920

  THREE SOLDIERS EMERGE from their barracks in Arras, northern France. A colonel, a sergeant and a private. It is somewhere close to the middle of the night and bitterly cold. The men make their way to a field ambulance parked next to the entrance gate; the colonel sits in the front with the sergeant, while the private climbs into the back. The sergeant starts up the engine, and a sleepy sentry waves them out and on to the road beyond.

  The young private holds on to a strap dangling from the roof as the van lurches over the rutted road. He feels shaky, and this jolting is not helping things. This raw morning has the feel of a punishment: when he was woken, minutes ago, he was told only to get dressed and get outside. He has done nothing wrong so far as he can tell, but the Army is tricky like that. There have been many times in the six months since he arrived in France when he has transgressed, and only afterwards been told how or why.

  He closes his eyes, tightening his grip as the van pitches and rolls.

  He had hoped he would see things, over here. The sorts of things he missed by being too young to fight. The sorts of things his older brother wrote home about. The hero brother who died taking a German trench, and whose body was never found.

  But the truth is he hasn’t seen much of anything at all. He has been stuck in the rubble of Arras, week in, week out, rebuilding houses and churches, shovelling bricks.

  In the front of the van, the sergeant sits forward, concentrating hard on the road ahead. He knows it well, but prefers to drive in the day, as there are several treacherous shell holes along it. He wouldn’t want to lose a tyre, not tonight. He, too, has no idea why he is here, so early and without warning, but from the taut silence of the colonel beside him, he knows not to ask.

  And so the soldiers sit, the engine rumbling beneath their feet, passing through open country now, though there is nothing to show for it, nothing visible beyond the headlights’ glare, only sometimes a startled animal, scooting back into darkness on the road ahead.

  When they have been driving for half an hour or so, the colonel rasps out an order. ‘Here. Stop here.’ He hits his hand against the dash. The sergeant pulls the ambulance over on to a verge at the side of the road. The engine judders and is still. There is silence, and the men climb down.

  The colonel turns on his torch, reaches into the back of the van. He brings out two shovels, handing one each to the other men, then he takes out a large hessian sack, which he carries himself.

  He climbs over a low wall and the men follow him, walking slowly, their torchlight bobbing ahead.

  The frosted ground means the mud is hard and easy enough to walk on, but the private is careful; the land is littered with twisted metal and with holes, sometimes deep. He knows the ground is peppered with unexploded shells. There are often funerals at the barracks for the Chinese labourers, brought over to clear the fields of bodies and ordnance. There were five dead last week alone, all laid out in a row. They end up buried in the very cemeteries they are over here to dig.

  But despite the cold and the uncertainty, he is starting to enjoy himself. It is exciting to be out here in this darkness, where ruined trees loom and danger feels close. He could almost imagine he were on a different mission. Something heroic. Something to write home about. Whatever is happening, it is better than churches and schools.

  Soon the ground falls away, and the men stand before a ditch in the earth, the remains of a trench. The colonel climbs down and begins walking along it, and the others follow, single file, along its zigzag lines.

  The private measures his height against the side. He is not a tall man, and the trench is not high. They pass the remains of a dugout on their right, its doorway bent at a crazed angle, one of its supports long gone. He hesitates a moment before it, shining his torch inside, but there is nothing much to see, only an old table pushed up against the wall, a rusted tin can still standing open on the top. He pulls his light back from the dank hole and hurries to keep up.

  Ahead of him, the colonel turns left into a straighter, shorter trench, and at the end of that, right, into another, built in short, zigzag sections like the first.

  ‘Front line,’ says the sergeant under his breath.

  After a few metres, the colonel’s beam picks out a rusted ladder, slung against the trench wall. He stops before it, placing his boot on the bottom rung, pressing once, twice, testing its strength.

  ‘Sir?’ It is the sergeant speaking.

  ‘What’s that?’ The colonel turns his head.

  The sergeant clears his throat. ‘Do we need to go up that way, Sir?’

&
nbsp; The private watches as the colonel swallows, as his Adam’s apple moves slowly up and down. ‘Have you got a better idea?’

  The sergeant seems to have nothing to say to that.

  The colonel turns, scaling the ladder in a few swift jerks.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ mutters the sergeant. Still he doesn’t move.

  Standing behind him, the private is itching to climb. Even though he knows that on the other side there will only be more of the same blasted country, part of him wonders if there might be something else, something close to the thing he came out here for: that vague, brave, wonderful thing he has not dared to speak of, even to himself. But he cannot move until the sergeant does, and the sergeant is frozen to the spot.

  The colonel’s boots appear at the height of their heads, and torchlight is flung into their faces. ‘What’s the hold-up? Get yourselves over here. Now.’ He speaks like a machine gun, spitting out his words.

  ‘Yes, Sir.’ The sergeant closes his eyes, looks almost as though he may be saying a prayer, then turns and climbs the ladder. The private follows him, blood tumbling in his ears. Once over, they stand gathering their breath, their beams sweeping wide over the scene before them: great rusting coils of wire, twenty, thirty feet wide, like the crazed skeleton of some ancient serpent, stretching away in both directions as far as the eye can see.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ says the sergeant. Then, a little louder, ‘How’re we going to get through that?’

  The colonel produces a pair of wire-cutters from his pocket. ‘Here.’

  The sergeant takes them, weighing them in his hand. He knows wire, has cut it often. Apron wiring. Laid enough of it, too. They used to leave gaps, when they had time to do it right. Gaps that wouldn’t be seen by the other side. But there are no gaps here. The wire is tangled and crushed and bent in on itself. Ruined. Like every bloody thing else. ‘Right.’ He hands his shovel to the private. ‘Make sure you light me then.’ He bends and begins to cut.

  The private, trying to keep his beam straight, stares at the wire. There are things caught and held within its coils, things that look to have been there for a long time. There are tattered remnants of cloth, stiff with frost, and in the torchlight the pale whiteness of bones, though whether human or animal it is impossible to tell. The country smells strange out here, more metal than earth; he can taste it in his mouth.

  On the other side of the wire, the sergeant straightens and turns, beckoning for the men to follow. He has done a good job, and they are able to pick their way easily through the narrow path he has made.

  ‘This way.’ The colonel strides out across lumpy ground, which is littered with tiny crosses. Crosses made from white wood, or makeshift ones made from a couple of shell splinters lashed together. Bottles, too, turned upside-down and pushed into the mud, some of them still with scraps of paper visible inside. The colonel often stops beside one, kneeling and holding his light to read the inscription, but then carries on.

  The private searches the man’s face as he reads. Who can he be looking for?

  Eventually the colonel crouches by one of the small wooden crosses, set a little way apart from the rest. ‘Here.’ He motions for the men to come forward. ‘Dig here.’ A date is written on the cross, scribbled in shaky black pencil, but no name.

  The private does as he’s told, lifting his shovel and kicking it into the hard ground. The sergeant joins him, but after a couple of spades of earth he stops.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What are we looking for, Sir?’

  ‘A body,’ says the colonel. ‘And bloody well get on with it. We haven’t got all day.’

  The two men lock eyes, before the sergeant looks away, spits on the ground and continues to dig.

  Beneath its frosted crust the mud is softer, clinging, and they do not have to dig for long. Soon metal scrapes on metal. The sergeant puts down his shovel and kneels, clearing the mud from a steel helmet. ‘Think we might be there, Sir.’

  The colonel holds his light over the hole. ‘Keep going,’ he says, his voice tight.

  The men crouch low, and with their gloved hands, as best they can, they clear the mud from the body. But it is not a body, not really, it is only a heap of bones inside the remains of a uniform. Nothing is left of the flesh, only a few black-brown remnants clinging to the side of the skull.

  ‘Clear as much as you can,’ says the colonel, ‘and then check for his badges.’

  The dead man is lying twisted in the earth, his right arm beneath him. The men reach down, lifting and turning him over. The sergeant takes his pocketknife and scrapes away at where the shoulder should be. The man’s regimental badges are there still, just, but they are unreadable, the colours long gone, leached into the soil; it is impossible to tell what they once were.

  ‘Can’t see them, Sir. Sorry, Sir.’ The sergeant’s face is red in the torchlight, sweaty from effort.

  ‘Check around the body. All around it. I want anything at all that might identify him.’

  The men do as they are ordered, but find nothing.

  They stand slowly. The private rubs the small of his back, looking down at the meagre remains of the man they have unearthed, lying twisted on his side. A thought rises in him, unbidden: his brother died here. In a field like this in France. They never found his body. What if this were him?

  But there is no way of knowing at all.

  He looks back up at the colonel. Impossible to tell if this is the body he was searching for either. This has been a waste of time. He waits for the man’s reaction, bracing himself for the expected anger on his face.

  But the colonel only nods.

  ‘Good,’ he says, chucking his cigarette on the earth. ‘Now lift him out and put him in the sack.’

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

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  Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Doubleday

  an imprint of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © Anna Hope 2019

  Cover design by Jo Thomson/TW

  Cover photo © Georgia Kokolis/Gallery Stock

  Anna Hope has asserted her right under the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781473543423

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