Thomas Turney had had a telegram the day before, informing him that his grandson, Tommy, Charley’s boy, was on the Dangerously Ill list at the South African hospital at Abbeville. A letter had arrived that morning, inviting him to visit the wounded soldier.
“I think I ought to wait to hear what Dickie has to say, Papa.”
“Yes, of course, Hetty.” He constrained himself from remarking that Dickie might for once think of others before himself; but for many years now the old man had learned to submit, to accept things as they were. So he checked his thought: of course Hetty must wait to consult Dickie. Poor fellow, he had been nervy ever since he had been blown into the gutter by that Zeppelin aerial torpedo which had fallen in Nightingale Grove, and been covered with powdered glass, when on duty as a ‘Special’. In any case they couldn’t go before the next morning, there was no hurry, the tickets were reserved.
Richard objected at once. The thought of having to look after himself dismayed him. Then there was, to reinsure his protest, the thought of submarine danger in the Channel, Gotha raids on all bases mentioned in the communiqués from G.H.Q. It was out of the question! He could not face the blankness of coming back to a silent house, of having to prepare his own meals after arriving home, fagged out, late from the office. Besides, there was his allotment to think of. England might soon be starving! He was about to put his foot down, as he thought of it, when Hetty said first, “Elizabeth and Doris will see to things, I am sure, Dickie.”
“Oh, you are, are you?”
Elizabeth, he thought, could be relied upon to do nothing that did not please herself, while in the presence of his younger daughter, Doris, with her taciturn reserve and curt manner of addressing him, he never felt comfortable.
“I think I might manage for myself, if the girls would rather be alone. Why can’t they go next door, if Mr. Turney’s mind is set on taking you away?”
“Oh, I am sure everything will be quite all right, Dickie. Doris will be able to manage, I will tell her all there is to be done.”
After supper of fried cod steaks and bread-and-margarine pudding (with currants) his thoughts had come round to the idea of a few days of freedom. He and Zippy the cat would enjoy themselves, and he could always play his gramophone!
“Well, take care of yourself, old girl! We don’t want to lose you, you know, if you think you ought to go!” he joked, varying the words of a popular song.
At 9 o’clock the post-girl’s double knock came on the front door. Before the war there had been six deliveries between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m.; now there were only three. Doris, sitting silent at the table (she was reading Modern English History) got up quietly and went to the door. There was a letter to her from Willoughby, and a telegram addressed to Richard Maddison. She returned with composed face, to give the telegram to her father.
“The girl is waiting to see if there is any answer.”
Richard opened his ivory-handled pen-knife, and with the back of the long blade carefully slit the orange envelope, then as carefully removed the folded message. He glanced at it; laid it on his knee; stared ahead at nothing, before saying, “Good God.” Then, he found, he was unable to speak.
“What is it, Father?”
“Read it,” he sighed, passing the bit of paper, which half-folded itself, held so lightly in the limp fingers of the long thin hand.
“It says only ‘blinded temporarily’, don’t forget, Father! Anyway it must be a mistake, for it says ‘Lieutenant-colonel P. S. T. Maddison’, and Phill’s only a full loot. Oh yes, and look there—it has been re-directed from Beau Brickhill, so it obviously went to Aunt Liz’s first! They’ve got Phil mixed up with someone else.”
Richard examined the form, then decided to send a reply asking for confirmation: but on second thoughts he considered that the War Office would be closed, or the department which dealt with such routine matters.
“Now, if you please, do not tell Mother about this matter, until I am able to make enquiries tomorrow, and find out the facts.”
“Then shall I tell the girl there’s no reply, Father?”
“Yes, if you please.”
Doris returned to her study of the Chartist riots and Reform Bill. But the words had no meaning. Nor was Richard able to take in what the leader of The Daily Trident was about. Could there have been a clerical error? The initials were correct; only the rank and address were in error. ‘Temporarily blinded and in hospital’. Might that not be a gentle let-down? Then the awful thought. Supposing he is blind … it would mean having Phillip on his hands, living at home, for the rest of his life. Terrible! A variation of Hugh Turney always about the place! He shrank from the word burden; poor fellow, he had done his duty, and was lucky to have got out of it with his life. Of course. Even so, the thought persisted, to be brushed aside as unworthy, but to recur again and again: he would no longer be able to call his home his own!
But—the boy, blinded in battle! Whatever was he thinking of?
He tried to read his newspaper, but the words meant little or nothing; he left the room, and went into the scullery, to wash up what Hetty always called the tea-things. He had not done this for years, while his wife was at home; now, in the light of a candle, he lived again a scene of his early married life, when Phillip was a baby and he had nursed him during many anxious nights because his mother was ill and could not feed him; so he had taken on the little fellow, while addressing envelopes, by the light of his dark lantern, and Hetty slept upstairs. The little fellow had been comforted and once had smiled at him! The years of misprision fell away; Phillip was still his boy—and now he was blind. Oh, how could he have been so selfish as to think that he would be a burden in his own home, after all he had gone through?
He went back to the sitting room, having washed and wrung out the dish cloth and hung the drying cloth neatly on the clothes-horse—leaving the place cleaner than he had found it—with new resolutions.
“I suppose you wouldn’t care for a game of chess, Doris?”
“No thank you, Father.”
Silence. Then, “You’ve heard about your Mother’s proposal, I suppose?”
“Yes, Father. I think she ought to go.”
“Oh, you do, do you?”
“Yes, Father, I do. Mother deserves a little respite sometimes.”
“From what, pray?”
“From all of us.”
Richard was rebuffed. He had intended to ask her advice, but now retired behind The Daily Trident, wherein he read that many soldiers were being temporarily blinded by mustard gas. This relieved him greatly, and when Hetty came back from her nightly game of bezique—it had alternated every week with picquet throughout the war—with ‘Mr. Turney’, he told her the good news, adding that ‘her best boy’ had somehow got himself described as a Colonel. Elizabeth had come in with Hetty, and she said, “I bet he gave that rank to some orderly, and sent the telegram himself, just to swank! How like Phillip!’’
“But you don’t know that, dear,” replied Hetty. “I hope you won’t go telling people that.”
“Well, it is just what he’d do!” she cried querulously. “You always make excuses for him, don’t you?”
She turned and went out of the room, leaving the door open. At once Richard got up and shut it, to sit down again without a word. Just like that selfish creature, always strutting about in new clothes, thinking only of her own appearance! He snorted when Hetty said, “Mavis, I mean Elizabeth is very tired, Dickie. She has been to the Spring Sales, and needs her supper. I’d better go and see to it.”
Hetty had hardly left the room when Doris got up, closed her book, put back her chair, opened the door, “Good night, Father,” and shutting it with a slight bang—she could never remember to turn the handle first—went upstairs to bed.
Not one thought had she taken about her correspondent in France, Willoughby, that evening, except vaguely in connexion with the face of Percy Pickering. Now in the darkness of her bed she lay and wept silently, as she had wept during
many of the past five hundred and sixty-seven nights, the coming of which she had longed for during each day since Percy had been killed.
*
Thomas Turney and Henrietta his younger daughter travelled with about a hundred other civilians in what looked to be a very important boat, for beyond the railings shutting off the forward part of the boat were to be seen many red-banded caps among the officers. They landed at Boulogne in the late afternoon, after a queasy journey for her (mal de mer, as Hetty had thought of it since Convent schooldays in Belgium) and were taken to the Hotel Bras d’Or, which was run by the British for relatives of the D.I.—as the Dangerously Ill were spoken of.
Hetty was almost like a girl again, travelling with her father ‘on the Continent’; only now the scenes no longer had for her a background of gaiety. A slow train took them along the coast to Abbeville, outside which was the 1st South African hospital. It was late when they arrived at the relatives’ hostel in a poor-looking street in which, surprisingly, was a small château within a courtyard out of which rose a great chestnut tree.
Within the salle à manger was a long table, or series of tables, at which was served a plain dinner of meat, cabbage, and watery black potatoes on a soiled table cloth, its presence there contrasting with the former life of the house, as shown by the tapestries upon the walls, the armoires holding delicate glass and china, the candelabra hanging from the ceiling, and—so reminiscent of Thildonck days—sacred poems, written in purple ink, in delicate thin Italian handwriting, others woven in silken thread on perforated white card-paper. The presence of the shabby tablecloth was soon explained: the guests were of all classes, only a very few being of what she thought of as good families; the majority were working-class people. Poor things, she thought, all of them.
She could not sleep in the strange bedroom, but lay awake, the candle burning beside her for company. Would it last through the darkness, this little gleam, so faithful that it seemed to have a soul? Once she blew out the flame, to save the candle’s life, and became aware of the rolling of trains passing continuously, far away, an undertone of the war which now seemed so vast and terrible, an evil spirit controlling millions of men and women, something quite apart from themselves; and somehow the lost light of the candle was as though she had killed a friend. Kind, thoughtful Dickie had given her a box of matches to bring with the candle, saying that both would be scarce in France. She revived the flame, and it was Dickie’s kind thought in the rising gleams; the thoughts of others, too, for the small flame was trembling all the time with the distant gun-fire; then it was blinking at the nearer thump-thumthump-thump of bombs. She could bear it, with the flame of loving-kindness glowing upon the prieu-dieu on the wall and the tapestry of the four-poster bed which reminded her of Mère Ambroisine and her schooldays at Thildonck.
And yet—and yet—was there a strange smell in the room? Or was it her imagination? She sat up, and it seemed to be stronger. At last she could bear it no longer, and getting out of bed, began to search about the room. Tracing the smell to a cupboard, she opened the door to see, staring at her with glass eyes glinting in candlelight, a stuffed spaniel. This was a shock; but it became horror when she saw, running out of various holes in the body, at least a dozen mice. She shut the door at once, and put a chair against it; even so, she could not stop herself from thinking what would happen if it opened in the night.
It now became a matter of endurance, centred round the life of the candle. Would it last the night? The darkness seemed congealed behind the heavy curtains across the shuttered windows. She felt she could not breathe, while the image of the stuffed dog being slowly pulled apart under its hair by restless tiny mice was, in some way she could not determine, part of the war.
She prayed, and feeling calmer, dropped asleep, to awaken with the candle still burning beside the bed-head. Its light was welcome, and she got up happily and pulling back the curtains saw that it was already day, with the sun shining on the leaves of the chestnut tree, and flowers in white-washed tubs around the courtyard. German prisoners were down below, sweeping the cobbles; she peeped at them, strange objects from another world in their lead-grey uniforms into which large blue patches were sewn, and their small round grey caps with red piping. She felt a slight fear, but when one smiled up at her, and touched his cap, his eyes nearly as blue as Phillip’s, the remoteness of vague war-conceived ideas left her, and she smiled back happily, thinking that they had mothers, too.
After petit dejeuner they went to the Y.M.C.A. in the Place Amiral Courbet. She thought the canteen women’s uniforms very neat, grey skirt, coat, and triangular badge. It was surprising to see English newspapers on sale there. One had heavy black headlines—METEREN IN FLAMES. The Germans claimed thousands of prisoners, but the Americans were pouring into France.
“It will be a race against time, I fancy,” remarked Thomas Turney.
There was an hour before the ’bus would take them to the hospital, so they walked into the town, seeing the collegiate church of St. Wulfrum partly destroyed by bombs, its window spaces filled by wire frames supporting mica sheets. A notice on the door proclaimed that bougies were interdit, obviously lest they show light at night to the Gothas.
It was a sad visit to the South African hospital. The D.I. Ward sister, in her pale buff and navy blue uniform, told them that Corporal Turney was very ill indeed. Both his thighs had been removed almost to the pelvis. He was unconscious.
“Gas gangrene develops so quickly. A stick bomb went off beside him as he was firing his rifle, and his legs were badly torn, with compound bone fractures. They were removed above the knee in a clearing station, but sepsis had already set in.”
He lay with mouth open, and eyes closed, his face a greenish-grey. Hetty only just recognised in that face a trace of the boy who had played with Phillip, and once, had taken all Phillip’s birds’ eggs to bed with him, hiding them under his pillow. Phillip had been very kind, she remembered; he was heart-broken, but he had not said much to Tommy, four years younger than himself.
“I’m afraid we may lose him,” said the nurse.
The next day they went to the funeral in the cemetery outside the town. There were other coffins in the G.S. wagons drawn by black horses, with soldier drivers on the seats. Almost white coffins, of deal. The yellow mounds of clay recalled Randiswell cemetery, the graves of Mamma and Hughie. It was all the same world, of course, and God still watched over it, with Mary and Jesus and all the saints, whose beauty of spirit was born of suffering, she thought as she and Papa followed the coffin up stone steps past the cypresses of the civilian cemetery. How it all came back to her, the childhood dread of French cemeteries—the iron frames above graves adorned with black and white silver crucifixes on mauve wreaths made of beads.
Beyond was the military burial ground. There they waited. Something seemed to be not right among the chaplains in uniform: apparently some of the coffins had got mixed up, and as two were Nonconformist, one Roman Catholic, one orthodox Jew, and the remainder Church of England, it took time to determine which was which; and when this was done, the order of burial had to be arranged in accordance with procedure laid down by G.R.O.—first C. of E., then Nonconformist, Catholic, and Hebrew. She wept, she could not help it, it was all so sad, the bewildered mourners, the open distress of some, the voiceless grief of others.
After a rest in the little château in the Rue Duchesne de Lamotte, containing so much elegance within, while in the gutter outside its sewer moved with grey deadness, she went for a walk with her father. They came to a river, and looking down from the bridge she saw the water flowing swiftly cold on its way to the sea, and heard, with a shock, Papa saying that this was the river Somme.
What (wrote General Harington) was to be the next phase of this drama? The enemy did not leave us long in doubt. With Castre, Fletre, Meteren, all in his hands it was soon obvious that Strazeele and Hazebrouck were next on his list. We were forced to leave Cassel, except as an advanced headquarters. We were near the c
limax. If we lost these towns, we should be in a very serious position. We had very extensive and valuable railway plant at Strazeele; Hazebrouck was the keynote of our railway communications. It was indeed a race against time.
Sir Douglas Haig had ordered the 1st Australian Division, under Major-General H. B. Walker, up from the south to our rescue. It was due to arrive at Hazebrouck at 2 p.m. How we counted the minutes and how disappointed we were at hearing that all the trains were delayed! The trains had to come via Etaples—the only route left. The enemy knew this and made a determined bombing attack on the bridge at Etaples, missing only by inches. The trains were delayed; the whole course of the war might have been altered by those inches.
Few people knew what a race it was—all the officers, N.C.O.’s, servants, cooks and policemen of the Second Army Schools were indeed putting theory into practice around Strazeele. They were determined to hold on till they heard the whistle of the trains bringing relief and they did so.
The first trains of the Division arrived some nine hours late. From the moment Walker and his men arrived we never looked back. The onslaught into the Flanders plain had expended itself.
Richard had good news for Hetty when she returned. Doris had loyally kept the secret of the telegram; and now he had a letter to show her as well, written by Phillip, the sentences rather like a jig-saw puzzle, but obviously he was in good heart and spirits.
“Oh, and he was at Boulogne when we were there! If only I’d known! Papa and I could have seen him!”
“He’ll be home before very long, I’ll be bound. Well, tell me all about it.”
He listened in wonderment, asking many questions. It had never occurred to him that, except for war-time conditions, life was going on ordinarily in France and Belgium.
“Now tell me how you have been getting on, dear.”
“Oh, I’ve managed, thank you.”
Richard had enjoyed his little holiday, as he thought of it. The two girls had breakfasted next door with Miss Turney, and also supped there; his breakfast had been prepared for him on a tray, and he ate ‘in solitary splendour’ in the sitting-room, with the eastern sun shining through the open french windows, and birds singing outside. An oasis in his life; he had worked at his allotment for an hour every evening, and returned to listen to Elgar, Wagner, and his favourite records of Frank Bridge’s The Sea in the sitting-room; and there had been the May number of Nash’s Magazine, as well as The Daily Trident, The news was better from France, too: the Germans had been stopped.
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