by Vince Cross
After a few minutes in the shadows of the cellar, I slowly pulled myself together, and started to count the bottles of wine by candlelight. If I remember rightly there were three hundred and thirty-one. Well, I had to do something to take my mind off the gnawing fear which gripped me as the explosions continued overhead! I took some of the bottles out of their racks, and blew off the dust. I looked hard at the labels and tried to memorize each one. I put the bottles back and then tried to say out loud a list of the French villages where the wine had been made. I counted the rows of the bricks from the floor to the top of the cellar vault, and down the other side to the floor again. I paced up and down the length of the cellar to try to keep myself warm. End to end it was a hundred and twenty-five paces. I sang myself songs at the top of my voice. And at long, long last the explosions above me stopped. Suddenly I felt very hungry and thirsty. The second of my candles was burning down, and I thought that I couldn’t bear to be alone down there in the dark any longer.
The cellar door at the top of the steps was still ajar, so I crept out into the house, terrified about what I might see. The kitchen at least still seemed to be in one piece. The broad sunny daylight streaming through the window caught thousands of speckles of dust in its beams. The clock said ten o’clock. I watched it for a few moments to see if the hands still moved. They did, but how could I know if the clock was right or not? I was beginning to lose all sense of time. I wasn’t even sure now how many days I’d been at Rosie. I took a glass, ran the kitchen tap into the sink for a few moments, and poured myself some water. Even after the bombing, a blackbird was singing joyfully in the sunshine of the kitchen garden. Some things stayed the same, despite the war.
I plucked up courage and made my way through the house to the stable yard. It was a mess. The buildings to one side, where the food had been served and the horses shod, were now just a pile of rubble. By the gateway the road had disappeared into a gaping hole. Judging by the spades and picks which lay beside it, a start had already been made on its repair. Across the yard an officer faced a line of maybe forty soldiers. They were a sorry sight, dirty and exhausted, but they were standing to attention as best they could. I could pick out Ginger by the hair poking out from under his army cap, but I couldn’t see Charlie. One by one, in alphabetical order, the officer was shouting their names.
“Mountford…”
“Sir,” the private soldier answered.
“Newell…”
“Sir!”
“Perkins…”
No answer came. The officer looked along the line of men, and then back at his list. I looked across at Ginger. His head was bowed. My heart missed a beat. In that moment, I knew something was badly wrong.
“Pickles?”
“Sir!”
“Rogers…”
The officer continued with the list. Other soldiers failed to answer to their names too. Smithson and Varley were both missing. At “Wainwright”, the captain dropped his voice to finish the roll-call. His eyes avoided his men’s, and he said sombrely, “I think I should ask the padre to say a few words.”
A tall stooping man came forward. He wore army uniform, but no hat. A clergyman’s collar was visible at his neck.
“Today your company has lost some of its best men,” he began, “And you have lost some of your best and most faithful pals.” My chest and stomach tightened. My eyes began to fill with tears. This was going to be about Charlie. I knew it. “They volunteered to fight for their King and Country in a foreign place when they could have stayed at home in safety. They laid down their lives for their friends. They have done a great thing, and now, lads, we know we must honour their names by continuing to fight the Hun with all our might, so that these brave men will not have died in vain. I call them men, but like some of you they were really just boys of eighteen or nineteen years. But by their courage and comradeship they showed themselves to be truer men than most. Let us now bow our heads and pray that God will give us strength for our tasks as he takes them into His Eternal Kingdom.”
The soldiers took off their caps as the padre prayed. I couldn’t hear what he said for all the sad, confused thoughts buzzing around in my head. As they finished by reciting the Lord’s Prayer together, I let out a wail of anger and despair which echoed around the yard.
They must have let Ginger fall out of line, because the next thing I knew he was kneeling beside me.
“Let’s you and me find somewhere quiet for a mo’,” he said softly. Taking me by the hand, he led me round a corner to a private spot where an old garden seat still caught the morning sun.
“Is Charlie dead?” I asked.
“You’re a big brave girl, and I’m not going to tell you no fibs,” said Ginger, kneeling in front of me. “Charlie’s not coming back.”
He stopped. His chest heaved. For a few moments he was unable to speak.
“I’m sorry,” he said eventually. “Charlie was the dearest friend to me.”
He wiped a dirty sleeve across his eyes and nose.
“What happened?” I said in a small voice.
“We don’t know … not the whole story,” he answered. “We were taking the boards and supplies up to the boys in the front line all last night, backwards and forwards, trying to make ’em a bit more comfortable. It was bloomin’ hard work, I don’t mind telling you, because it was so dark. We were stumbling around and falling over and hitting each other on the head with the planks.” Ginger had a spectacular black eye. “Then the cloud cleared. We didn’t know the dirty Hun had been planning to hit us so hard.”
“The Zeppelin…” I began.
“Well that was probably part of it,” Ginger answered. “Just before first light, while they were giving you hell down here at Rosie, what seemed like the whole Jerry army came over the top and through the wire straight at us. I was one of the lucky ones ’cos I was well on my way back home at the end of the shift. Corporal Warren says Charlie was still up near the line. He reckons a grenade caught him at the top of the communication trenches, and probably Smithson too. They know Varley copped a sniper’s bullet. The silly so-and-so never could keep his head down. We told him a thousand times that if you’re six foot and something tall in your stockinged feet, you’ve got to bend your knees or you’ll be a certain goner. Up the line, ‘C’ company lost half a dozen lads, and another ten wounded. The miracle was, between us all we gave the Hun a very bloody nose. They’ve been clearing Jerry corpses out of the way all morning.”
“Where’s Charlie now?” I asked.
Ginger looked away and said nothing.
“So I can’t see him?”
“Best not to ask,” he croaked. “Truth is, there might not be anything of Charlie left to see. Even if there was, you wouldn’t want to go upsetting yourself.”
I began to cry again.
“Try to remember him the way he was,” Ginger said gently. “That’s what I’ll do. He was a lovely lad was Charlie. We were the best of pals. We joined up together, and we trained together on Thetford Heath. Shared a night out on the beer more than once in better times. And then we ended up serving together…” Ginger broke off, turning his face away from me so that I wouldn’t see his tears.
“He thought the world of you. Said you were a real bobby-dazzler, and nothing bad could happen because of you turning up the way you did. You’d think we were all hard men what with the things we do and see. But then, underneath the King’s uniform, we’re all as soft as putty.”
I let him be for a few moments, and then I spoke up in a strong voice that even surprised me, “I want to see where it happened. Will you take me there?”
Ginger turned back towards me, startled.
“I can’t do that. They’d have my guts for garters.”
“I want to see,” I repeated more loudly.
“It wouldn’t be safe. Not for you or me.”
“It’s not exactly safe here, is it?” I sulked. “Life’s not very safe. It’s only luck I wasn’t killed in the house last n
ight. I’ve lost everyone important to me – my dad, my brother…” I caught my breath. “…my mum and grandma. And now Charlie too. I’ve got to say goodbye. To him at least.”
There was silence. The engine of a lorry revved into life. Somewhere, miles away, the heavy guns kept on rumbling. By the corner of the building there was a large flowerpot with one of the rose bushes that had given the house its name. Against the odds so late in the year, a single stem of red roses showed its face to the sun. I went over to it, and cupped one of the flowers in my hand. Ginger watched me silently.
“All right,” he finally agreed. “Look, don’t get your hopes up. I’ll have a word with the sergeant. We’ll see what he says.”
CHAPTER FIVE
In half an hour he was back.
“Sergeant Oliver says we can do it, but he’s coming too, and so is Corporal Warren. They all had a high opinion of Charlie. The sergeant major’s going to turn a blind eye. But if we go, we go now. It’s all quiet up there at the mo’. The Germans are having a kip after their early start. And once we’re done we come back sharp-ish. You understand, Annette?”
I said I did.
“Can I borrow your knife, Ginger?” I asked.
He pulled it from his waistband, and gave it to me. I went and cut the stem of roses from the little bush.
What happened next sometimes now seems like a dream, but I promise the four of us really did walk out of Rosie’s main gate, and up the road towards the lines. It felt good to be outside in the real world again. We strode briskly between fields studded by muddy shell-holes. The trees in the fields and at the roadside were mostly just burned, twisted stumps. Soldiers coming the opposite way gave us the oddest of looks. I was beginning to resemble a street urchin. My brown boots were covered in mud, and the dress of my skirt and my petticoat were grimy with the dirt of three days. Where the road bent away sharply to the right, we dropped down into the field on the left and into a ditch which began to zig-zag its way forward. Sergeant Oliver went first with Corporal Warren in the rear. I walked between them and just in front of Ginger.
“From now on, talk quietly,” he whispered. “No point alarming Jerry. Just follow the sergeant.”
It was just about possible to pass someone coming from the opposite direction, but sometimes only with difficulty. We were walking on boards similar to ones I’d seen stacked in the yard, presumably the same kind that Charlie had been carrying up to the line last night. We quickly came to a point where one side of the trench had fallen in. Some men were shoring the sides up where they could, and hacking with their tools at the earth to widen the space, or perhaps to start a new trench running at an angle to the old one. As if it were the most natural thing that I should be there, one said, “Hello, me old darlin’. How’s it goin’?”
“Am I dreaming,” said another, shaking his head, “or are the nurses getting younger every day?”
“Just keep your thoughts to yourself, private soldier,” the sergeant muttered gruffly. “And concentrate on the job in hand.”
A few yards further on the sergeant ducked down to the left, and I found myself in a small underground cavern. On one side of the floor was a mattress. Two men sat on it, while another lay sprawled with his knees drawn up towards his chest, apparently sleeping. A billy-can of water was boiling on a stove. Some shelves had been cut in the mud and chicken-wire walls, and on them sat a row of dirty mugs and some bottles.
“Welcome to the dug-outs,” Ginger said. As he spoke, a rat scurried out of a dark corner across his feet and into the trench outside.
I must have looked surprised, but rats don’t worry me. I’ve spent my life in old barns and workshops.
“Say good morning to Heinrich,” laughed one of the men. “Or maybe it’s Heinrich’s brother. I thought I’d got rid of him for good last night.”
“Right,” whispered the sergeant. “It’s just a few more yards now. Outside is what we call Shaftesbury Avenue, after the street in London. Then we get to a place where lots of trenches run into each other, so we call that Piccadilly Circus. About there is where we reckon Charlie was hit.”
We left the dug-out and moved forward to the place the sergeant had described. As we stood there, grim-faced, worn-out soldiers passed by. My three companions removed their caps. Ginger produced a small book from his pocket.
“It was Charlie’s favourite,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. He only lent it me yesterday. He said he read it every December, regular as clockwork.”
Taking a scraper from the corporal, Ginger hollowed out a space on the edge of the trench, level with his head.
“Keep your arms and head down, private,” hissed Corporal Warren. “I don’t want to lose another good man.”
Then Ginger placed the small book in the hollow and filled earth in on top of it, pressing down with the flat of the scraper until the ground was level again.
“Here, Miss Annette. Let me,” he said. And he took the rose stem I was clutching and placed it over the spot where the book now lay hidden.
“Charlie Perkins. We’ll never forget you,” he said carefully.
And as if we’d rehearsed it we echoed his words. “Charlie Perkins. We’ll never forget you.”
And I never have. I don’t think a single day passes without me remembering him. Charlie. My hero.
If I were you, I’d be hoping for a happy ending to this story. Even now, I occasionally see a figure on the street or in the market and my heart skips a beat. Just for a second I think it’s Dad, or Michel, or Charlie, but it never is. None of them are ever coming back. Dad always used to say that every cloud has a silver lining. Somewhere up in the sky the sun still shines even if we can’t see it. So let’s be sunny for a while and not dwell on the sad things.
*
I spent one more night at Rosie, and then early the next morning a woman called Miss Bell announced herself in my room. She wore a khaki-brown jacket and a khaki riding skirt under her greatcoat. With her cap planted on top of her solid square head, she looked just like a woman soldier, but she wasted no time in telling me that actually she was a FANY, a member of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. Miss Bell was a lot kinder than she looked or sounded. With her she’d brought a suitcase. Inside was a selection of clean clothes, some of which fitted me. She insisted I had a bath, and when I’d changed she sat me down and started her questions.
She looked at me very directly and said quite gently, “So, Annette … your family … they’re all dead or missing?” I thought hard, and made my decision. I looked her straight back in the eye and said they were. I couldn’t help swallowing hard as I spoke, and wondered if I’d given myself away.
“And I gather you still have relatives in Oxfordshire … in Witney?”
“Yes ma’am,” I answered with the greatest politeness. “22 Starmer Street.”
My memory has always been very good. I’d only seen the address a handful of times on the back of letters from England.
“And their names?”
“My uncle is Herbert Martin, and he’s married to my Aunt Emma.”
“And how well do you know your uncle and aunt?”
This time I was honest.
“I’ve never met them, ma’am.” And then I added hopefully, “But I’m sure they’d take me in. They’ve always said how much they’d like to meet me.”
That was true. They’d said so in their letters.
“And do you think of yourself as Belgian or English?” Miss Bell suddenly asked in French. Without missing a beat, I answered, also in French,
“I’m half and half. But what’s the point in staying here? There’s not much left of Belgium now.”
“You speak both languages very well,” she replied. “And you seem very mature for your age. How old are you exactly?”
“Nine years and four months.”
She thought for a while, and then said, “OK. My instructions are to take you to the English Channel at Le Havre, and then for us t
o catch a boat to Portsmouth. Once we reach England I’m to leave you with another nurse while I come back to France. How do you feel about living in England, at least for a while? Lots of Belgian people have done the same thing this year…”
“I should be very pleased,” I said and as I spoke it felt as if an enormous weight had been lifted from my shoulders.
Two days later, after a painfully slow journey across France by train, I was standing in a wintry but peaceful Oxfordshire. No guns. No soldiers. Just the sound of the wind in the trees and the grass. Was there really a war going on four hundred miles away?
Uncle Herbert and Aunt Emma were happy to take me in, though life with them was very strange at first. They already had three children of their own, all younger than me, and so I had to learn to be an older sister for the first time, looking after the others and teaching them to read. For a few years I went to school too, and then when I was twelve (by which time the family had grown by one) I spent my time at home helping Aunt Emma. I’ve become an excellent cook, and a good gardener. In a few years’ time I think I should like to become a teacher.
Two years ago, after the end of the War, I had a great shock. A letter arrived. It was from my mother, asking if Herbert and Emma knew anything of what had happened to me. Grandma had died the previous summer. The farmhouse was in ruins. The land around it was an unworkable mess. My mother was more or less penniless and at her wits’ end.
In the following months, she eventually sold the farm for far less than it had originally been worth, and now she lives in Witney too, in a small thatched cottage she rents from a farmer. She’s always been a clever dressmaker, and that’s how she makes a living now. She and I live together, and these days we seem to get on with each other, more or less. We don’t talk about why I ran away: she never asks and I don’t say. Maybe some day we’ll be able to share our feelings a little more. Uncle Herbert and Aunt Emma know the truth, but they keep their thoughts to themselves.