A Time to Love

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘Var! Var!’ Dumpling sighed. ‘Vhat’s the use of var? I put a darn in this liddle jersey, nu?’

  ‘I’ve ‘alf a mind ter get mesself a job,’ Ellen said. ‘Whatcher think? Take me mind off things. Earn a bit a’ cash.’

  ‘You ain’t short, bubeleh?’ Dumpling asked, with quick concern. ‘I got plenty money just now. You ain’t ter go short.’

  ‘No,’ Ellen said, touched by her generosity and thinking how typical of her it was. ‘We manage. It ain’t that. It’s just … I need ter keep mesself occupied, that’s all. Gracie’s a good age now. She could look after the boys if I wasn’t here.’

  ‘So vhat sort of job?’ Dumpling said, squinting a length of wool through the eye of the largest darning needle.

  ‘I don’t rightly know,’ Ellen said, easing the sheets into the copper. ‘There must be something. I’ll ’ave a look round.’

  But in the event it was her sister Tess who found work for her.

  She arrived one wet Tuesday morning when Ellen had three irons on the go, the clothes horse was draped with steamy washing, and the kitchen walls were running with moisture. She was transformed. The last time Ellen had seen her she’d been swathed to the ankle in a faded blue apron covered with brown grease; now she wore a smart blue uniform of a very different kind, a peaked cap, an impressively military jacket with brass buttons all down the front, black boots, leather gaiters, and a skirt so short it barely covered her knees. Her hair was all tucked inside her cap and without it her face looked clean and exposed and confident. ‘I changed me job,’ she said.

  ‘So I see,’ her sister said. ‘Done you a power a’ good an’ all.’

  ‘Guard on the Metropolitan Railway,’ Tess said proudly. ‘Whatcher think a’ that? Beats bein’ a skivvy any day a’ the week. I didn’t ‘alf give that old girl a piece a’ my mind when I give in me notice.’ The memory of it made her chuckle.

  ‘You’ve put on weight,’ Ellen approved.

  ‘Hard work gives you appetite,’ Tess said. ‘I ’ave pie and mash every evening now. The pay’s ever so good.’

  ‘I was thinking a’ taking a job mesself,’ Ellen said, holding the next iron close to her cheek to test its heat.

  ‘Go down the London General Bus office,’ Tess advised. ‘It’s right near ’ere, just up the Mile End Road, corner a’ Lawton Road. They’re on the look-out fer women conductors. My driver was tellin’ me on’y yesterday. His niece is going along.’

  ‘I’d ’ave ter write ter David,’ Ellen said, starting on the first petticoat. ‘See what ’e says.’

  ‘D’you write every day?’

  ‘Every day as ever is.’

  ‘Poor old Ellie. I bet yer miss ‘im. I’m walkin’ out. Did I tell yer?’

  No, she hadn’t. What a piece of good news! ‘Tell us!’ Ellen said eagerly.

  ‘’Is name’s Bill. ‘E’s in the Artillery. Ever so ‘andsome. I got a photograph. D’you want ter see it?’

  ‘Is ’e in France?’ Ellen asked putting down the iron at once to admire the portrait.

  ‘Went last Thursday. That’s one a’ the reasons I come ter see yer, ter tell the truth.’

  ‘Both in the same boat eh?’ Ellen said.

  ‘You an’ me an’ ‘alf the world,’ Tess said, sighing.

  David’s next postcard gave a rather absent-minded consent. ‘Cannot tell you where we are now. Near a famous battlefield. Very dull country. Miles and miles absolutely flat, criss-crossed by canals. I will send you a parcel of sketches soon. My love to the kids. Keep smiling. I.L.Y. David. P.S. You will make a beautiful conductor.’

  Although he couldn’t tell her so, he’d been moved to Hoograaf, just west of Ypres, to join the 17th London rifles, and the war was only a few miles away.

  The parcel of sketches arrived on the day Ellen started work. She’d got the job so easily she could hardly believe her luck.

  ‘Five questions that superintendent asked,’ she told Aunty Dumpling afterwards. ‘Just five an’ I was on the pay-roll.’ And only one of them was really important. She’d known that the minute he’d asked it.

  ‘You can get some pretty rough types on the buses these days,’ he’d said, trying to assess the strength in those slender wrists. ‘Could yer cope with drunks, d’yer think?’

  She’d drawn herself up to her full five foot six. ‘I can handle ’em,’ she’d said. ‘I was born in the Nichol.’

  ‘Was yer?’ the superintendent said, much impressed. ‘Oh well then.’

  ‘Never thought it’ud stand me in good stead ter be born in that dump,’ she said to Aunty Dumpling.

  ‘God moves in a mysterious vay his vonders to perform,’ that lady told her, nodding happily. ‘So vhat’s in the parcel?’

  They examined the sketches together, but rather perfunctorily, because Dumpling had come without her glasses and couldn’t really see them, and Ellen was preoccupied with the arrangement of her blue cocked hat. But they agreed that they were ‘ever so good’ even if they were all drawings of soldiers, and Ellen said that the very first thing she would buy when she got her wages was a good chest of drawers to keep them in. ‘All laid flat with tissue paper in between,’ she said, buttoning her jacket. ‘I could keep ’em lovely for when ’e comes ’ome. How do I look?’

  ‘Smart as sixpence,’ Dumpling said. And so she did.

  They put her on route 14, and once she’d got used to it she thoroughly enjoyed it. It ran from Putney Bridge in the south-west right across London to the edge of Epping Forest, and there were so many places on the route to remind her of David and happier times: Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square, the Strand and Essex Street and the magazine, Ludgate Circus where she’d watched the old Queen’s Jubilee, the Aldgate pump where she and David had stopped to drink, and Whitechapel High Street and the long familiar width of the Mile End Road.

  Before long she felt really at home on the route and had learned to deal with drunks and jolly the munition workers along and ease wounded soldiers into their seats without appearing to help them. True to her vow, she bought a chest of drawers with her first pay, and she and Gracie put all David’s sketches safely and reverently away. It was very satisfying to be earning extra cash. ‘We shall eat well this winter an’ no mistake,’ she told the children. But more rewarding than anything else was the sense that she was doing an important job and being valued for it. Even being drenched to the skin in heavy rain was worthwhile now, and when the first flurries of snow began to swirl about the traffic, she simply wore an extra jersey under her uniform and went on with the job, red-nosed and feeling valiant.

  ‘So you can see some good has come out of this war, after all,’ she wrote to David. ‘I feel I am somebody, not just old mother Cheifitz, but Mrs Cheifitz the bus conductor. I can see why men work. It is very cold here. Looks like more snow. We are well. Hope you are same.’

  It was very cold in Hoograaf too, and the first snow was falling on David as he read her card. The flat fields were already dusted with delicate white powder, and Clifford had discovered two more chilblains on his swollen toes.

  ‘We could do with a spot of action,’ he complained. ‘Least it’ud warm us all up.’

  His wish was granted almost at once and with such noise and brutality it stopped them all breathing.

  The white air was full of diabolical noises, screams and howls and high-pitched whines, and they could feel the pressure of a terrible wind rushing and battering just above their heads, and reed-thin in the uproar a voice was shouting, ‘Take cover! Take cover!’ But there was no cover to take, David thought, stupid with fright. Where were the dug-outs? Then bodies were hurling to the ground, and he fell with them, automatically, his hands scrabbling in ice-sharp grass, his mind not functioning at all. Then the first explosion roared behind him, and he could hear the patter of earth or shrapnel, followed at once by a series of explosions so close together that they produced one long continuous roar. There was a pain in his ears and he could feel the sweat running down his bac
k and dripping from his armpits, his heart was thudding against the hard earth and he knew he was praying, but wordlessly, almost without thought.

  A sergeant came crawling over the grass towards them, waving his right arm to indicate that they should follow him, which they did, copying his every move, flattening themselves whenever he did, and scrambling to their feet to run the last few yards towards the cover of the barn, crouched low and moving so fast they had no breath left at all when they finally flung themselves down behind the wall.

  ‘Bli! That was close,’ Evans shouted to David.

  ‘They ain’t finished with us yet,’ the sergeant shouted back. And as if to prove him right the shelling doubled in intensity, with an outburst of explosions that were uncomfortably close. The noise above them continued, paining their eardrums and making their stomachs shake, but now there was another kind of screaming mingled with it, a wailing noise, like an animal in a trap.

  ‘Some poor bugger’s copped it,’ the sergeant shouted, peering round the edge of the barn. ‘Stretcher party’s on the other side. You, you an’ you, foller me!’

  One of the men he’d pointed to was Joe Evans. The third was David.

  Afterwards it occurred to him that he hadn’t felt any fear when he was obeying that order, even though he knew he was running straight back into the line of fire. He simply jammed his tin hat firmly on his head and ran, following the sergeant. There were three men lying on the ground little more than a hundred yards in front of them, and he could see that one of them had had his leg blown right off at the knee. Shreds of flesh were trailing from the stump, but he was sitting up and grinning, as if he was enjoying some private joke. It wasn’t until they were right on top of him that David saw that the man was dead. The sergeant wasted no time on a corpse. The two other men were obviously alive, writhing and groaning, one with a gaping flesh wound on his thigh, the other clutching his chest. He and Evans lifted the man with the flesh wound, supporting his weight between them in the way they’d been taught, and urging him to ‘hop lively’ as they ran back again, their only thought now to get behind the safety of the wall.

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ the wounded man said as they joggled him over the rough ground. ‘Thanks, mate.’ Over and over again. And when they were all back behind the wall and he started to shake violently, he was still trying to thank them. ‘Th-th-th-thanks.’

  ‘Save yer breath, mate,’ David told him, putting his head close to the man’s face so that he could hear, and applying the first aid pack as quickly as he could because he was losing blood at an alarming rate. ‘Somebody give ‘im a fag.’

  And then the sergeant returned with his casualty and took over. ‘Well done, lads. That’s the style. Billings.’

  ‘Sah!’

  ‘Cut across to the farm. Tell ’em two casualties.’

  While Billings was running, there was a loud crump followed by a clatter, and peering out they could see that a shell had crashed through the side of the other barn. The air was pink with swirling brick dust and there were two legs hanging limply out of the hole. Clifford began to moan.

  ‘Put a sock in it!’ the sergeant told him brusquely. ‘We don’t want none a’ that.’

  But he went on moaning, ‘Ma! Ma! Ma!’ over and over again until the barrage died down. Then he crawled into a corner and was sick.

  It all seemed to have lasted for a very long time, but the sergeant looked at his watch and told them it was ‘quite a short one. Half an hour, that’s all, lads. You can think yerselves lucky.’ And while they were still blinking the brick dust out of their eyes he organized them into rescue parties and digging parties, and set about restoring order. ‘Now you can all write ‘ome an’ say you’ve been under fire,’ he told them. ‘You’re one a’ the lads.’

  David was quite shocked by the speed with which their seven corpses were gathered up and bundled out of sight. It didn’t seem respectful to be treating them so casually. War, he thought. No time for ceremony or kindness. One minute you’re alive, next minute you’re dead. Quick and cruel and inevitable. But even while he was feeling critical and disapproving, he knew he was going to draw this attack in as much detail as he could remember, and he had a sneaking feeling that that was disrespectful too.

  His squad spent the rest of the morning clearing the rubble, the barrage didn’t start again, and by mid afternoon they were all back to normal.

  ‘Overshot the mark, that’s what,’ the corporal told them. ‘Wasn’t meant fer us, that lot. Somebody got the range wrong.’

  And for that, David thought, seven men died. There was no sense in this war at all.

  During the next four days he spent every spare moment he could scrounge making rapid sketches, of those dead legs suspended from the hole in the wall, of the dead man grinning, and the man with the thigh wound smoking, and Clifford being sick, and Billings running bent double with chunks of earth and shrapnel falling all around him. They were fierce angry drawings, the lines heavy and black, and when they were finished his new friends found them rather shocking.

  ‘You won’t show that to my Ma, will yer?’ Clifford asked, looking at his portrait anxiously. ‘I wouldn’t like ’er ter see me like that.’

  ‘’E don’t know yer Ma, you daft ha’p’orth,’ the corporal said.

  ‘Upset ’er, that would,’ Clifford persisted. ‘I wouldn’t want to upset ’er.’

  ‘Whatcher going ter do with ’em?’ Evans wanted to know.

  ‘Send ’em home.’

  ‘Never get past the censor.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Oh do me a favour. You got a corpse in that lot. They ain’t supposed ter see corpses back ’ome.’

  He was probably right, David thought. ‘I won’t send ’em then,’ he said. ‘I’ll find someone down the village ter do it for me. Make up a parcel, pay ’em the postage, little tip. You’ll see.’ In a passionate unreasonable way he felt it was necessary to tell the truth about this war and to send it back to England.

  He found his first postman the next afternoon when they went down to the village bath-house for their weekly dip. Despite the fact that he couldn’t speak any English the keeper of the local inn managed to understand what was required of him. ‘Bien, je comprende,’ he said, nodding his head vigorously. ‘Je mettrai le pacquet á la poste. Oui. Bien entendu.’ And he was more than pleased with his pourboire.

  So David returned to camp that evening relatively clean and extremely pleased with himself for outwitting the authorities.

  ‘More ways a’ killin’ the cat, eh?’ Evans said. ‘What’s your old lady gonna say when she gets that lot?’

  ‘Nothink much,’ David said. ‘She’ll understand why I drew ’em. She’ll keep ’em for me.’

  But when the sketches arrived in Mile End Place a week later, Ellen was very upset by them. They were so very different from anything he’d ever drawn before. Even the style of the drawing was different, with those thick heavy lines instead of the short delicate ones she was used to. He’s changing, she thought, and the thought upset her. But the subject matter was more frightening than the style.

  ‘What terrible pictures,’ she wrote back. ‘You have drawn them ever so good. I don’t mean terrible like that. I mean that poor feller with his leg. I never thought war was like that. It’s awful.’

  ‘I got to tell the truth about this war,’ he answered. ‘Now I’m here, it’s the least I can do. I’m beginning to think that was why I was given my talent. For a true record. To let people know how it really is. I had no idea, either, before I came here. I didn’t intend to join. That was my own stupidity, which I now regret. But now I’m here, I must draw what I see, as truthfully as I can. There is another parcel on its way. We are going somewhere else in a couple of days, so I might not be able to write for a day or two, but don’t worry. My love to the kids. I.L.Y. David. P.S. I am going to buy a watch. Sometimes it is necessary to know the time out here.’

  He sent her drawings of a concert party just after Chr
istmas, and they cheered her, because they were funny and everybody in them was healthy and alive. But as a wet spring gave way to an even wetter summer, the sketches he sent grew steadily more sombre. Dejected men trailing waterproof capes, exhausted men squatting on their haunches eating food from a battered tin, men on the march looking miserable. And all drawn in the new style, the black lines quick and angry.

  He’s growing away from me, she thought sadly, and wrote him the most loving letter she could, to try and remind him of the life he’d left behind. But the things she really wanted to say would have been embarrassing on paper, and the letter was dull and ordinary.

  Then late in May she got the postcard she’d been dreading.

  ‘We are going up the line in a day or two. I will write as soon as I can. I.L.Y. David.’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  They trudged into the Ypres salient by night, moving steadily nearer and nearer to the noise of the guns. The preliminary bombardment had already begun and the distant sky was punctured by continual red flashes and shaded by the prolonged pink glow of flares. It was a long march and they were carrying the full weight of a sixty pound pack, so although they began with songs they ended in weary speechlessness, with only the appalling thunder of the guns and the rhythmic suction of their own boots for accompaniment. Not that they could have heard a song even if they’d had the energy to sing it, for the noise of the bombardment was so intense it was like a physical presence, pressing down on their heads. The air was full of solid sound, high-pitched, nerve-wracking screams, an endless howling and groaning, and so many explosions they formed one continuous pulsing roar that beat in their ears like blood. After an hour they were all shaking under the intolerable pressure of it.

  David was trying to remember the Psalms, ‘The Lord is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.’ But the words brought no comfort. He did fear, and the nearer he got to the front the stronger and more constricting the fear became. As he stumbled along the duckboards, with that awkward pack rubbing a sore between his shoulder blades, and his sense of hearing swollen to a physical pain in his ears, his other senses were being saturated too. The stench of decaying flesh rose sickeningly on either side of him out of the darkness, and he wondered how it would be to have his own flesh torn by hot steel, and what the pain would be like, and how he would behave when the time came. We’re marching towards agony, he thought, and all we do is sing and grumble and make a joke of it.