She sat down at the tiny table and stared at nothing. Could she risk a nap? Or should she check on Dougie?
A cup of tea, she thought wearily. That was what she needed. She reached over to ring the bell for the steward. And then she saw them. Letters, carefully propped up next to the ship’s stationery in its leather folder. Three of them, one in a familiar hand. Harry’s.
She was surprised at the sudden lightening of her heart, as though a bird had started singing.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she had been aware that she hadn’t received a letter from Harry since she’d been in England, though she had continued to write to him. She had assumed that his letters simply hadn’t found her. Perhaps he had even been given leave finally, like other Australian and New Zealand troops, after their three years of almost continual fighting, and had more interesting things to think about than the wan girl he had met only twice. It hadn’t even occurred to her to worry about him. Perhaps your brain had only room for so much worry at a time. Harry had survived so long it seemed impossible he should be seriously injured.
And now she had a letter.
She looked at the envelope. It was stamped, so must have gone through the mail. Ethel must have sent it on, and then Aunt Harriet, and then the relatives’ hostel at Roehampton. It must have been travelling for weeks, or even months. She wondered briefly if it would ever have reached her if it hadn’t arrived before they sailed.
She tore open the envelope, her fingers clumsy with eagerness.
25 April 1918
Dear Miss Macpherson, [Harry still couldn’t manage to call her Midge, she thought. For him the gulf was still too wide.]
I write to you with hell at my back, because that is what it has seemed like, if hell is brimstone and fire raining down on you.
[She stared at the paper, shocked; not just at the words, but the ragged look of his writing. He had never written like this before.]
Things have been bad, but never like this. It has been the worst week ever for us, over 100 names on the list of missing. Two gas attacks last week. I got my mask and helmet on in time but Nipper didn’t. It got Spot too, one of the dogs the men have kept as pets. It was horrible to see him die, but there was nothing we could do to help him. None of us could bear to bury him, just left the poor creature to lie with his paws over his nose. I think three-quarters of those with me last year have been lost. Another two ‘victories’ and the whole battalion will be gone. In return for 100 lives we have got a few acres of uprooted earth and a ruined village. There was much talk that us Anzacs might finally get let off once the Americans arrived. But instead it has been worse than we have ever known; the officers safe in their dugouts sending us out to die. I think every man here has lost hope of ever getting out of this war alive.
They finally marched us out on Tuesday, the few of us left, ankle deep in mud. We camped close to morning in the ruins, then along the Anzac Light Railway in metal trucks, with our backs to the thunder of the battle we had left and our ears still ringing from the shells.
The ringing never goes away these days. I think it will be with me till I die. I have been lucky so far, but as one by one we are blown away or vanish in the mud I know my time cannot be long away. Cousin Fritz seems to throw larger shells at us these days, but we never know when one might hit and sometimes I think he doesn’t either, just throws them when he remembers. It is a stupid profitless war all right, and at times I think that Fritz knows it too, but we are trapped in it with no escape. It is hard to realise we are even still in France. It’s all us Aussies and Tommies. Not one of your lot either, though I know they are just up the line from us.
It is funny. Sometimes these days it is as though Australia and all in it have vanished and only here is real. There is no use writing to people in a dream land. But you are real and I can write to you. I know it sounds all very stupid. I hope that you will understand. Sometimes we are all so tired here I don’t think there is one of us who makes sense.
I think we will be going up the line again soon. I am giving this to a cobber who’s working as an orderly. He got a splinter of wood blown through his foot, the lucky blighter, so won’t be going with us. If I don’t come through he will send this to you. I want to thank you for your friendship. The only good things we have any more are dreams and hope, and you gave me both for a while.
I tried to think of home the other day, but for the first time it wasn’t there. It was like something has sliced it from my memory.
Or maybe it was never there and I imagined the whole thing—the sheep, the way the fences stretch across the grass. All the colour has gone from the world. There’s no green now. Just mud and blood.
Pay no attention to me, Miss Macpherson. I am tired, that’s all. I hope you find your way back to your place in New Zealand. I really do. If there is any good left in the world it must be there. When you get back among the trees and sheep and wide free sky think of me sometimes. I cannot tell you what your letters have meant to me. It’s funny, but when I started this letter my pencil almost wrote Rose instead of your real name. I hope you don’t mind but that is how I think of you, the one beautiful thing in all this war.
Yours truly, always,
Harry Harrison
If I don’t come through he will send this to you.
No!
She wanted to scream. Instead she stuffed her fist into her mouth so she didn’t cry out, alarm the other passengers, the stewardess, Dougie in his cabin next door.
The sense of loss struck her like a blow. To the world outside she and Harry had been from two different worlds. But they had understood each other in a way she had never felt before, even with Tim.
You hardly knew him, she told herself. Just like you hardly knew Gordon.
But it wasn’t true.
There had been a bond, however unlike any romance she had ever read. She had been happy when she thought of him; had felt safe, even with the sound of shells rumbling all around, when he was near.
He had been through so much, and had survived to smile. What had they put the man through in the last few months to write to her like that?
She should have been there for him, as she had been for Dougie. But she hadn’t. Had no right to be, had no way to be. And that loss froze her heart.
She let the letter fall to her lap. The sounds of departure filtered through the window: engine noise, the ship vibrating, the squawk of a seagull far above.
How had he died? Where had he died?
She picked up the second letter, stared at the unfamiliar writing for a moment, then tore it open.
Dear Miss Macpherson,
Please excuse me writting to you like this we have never met but Harry told me a lot about you so I thought I should write now becaus you wont have herd.
Harry court it a week ago but you are not to worry he is not dead the captain told us this morning after parade.
Miss Macpherson it was like this, we was in the trench and theer was this noise and the world exploded and it was dark I couldnt breethe. Then I felt hands grab my ankles and someone pull me out. It was a shell that had landed on the side of the trench burrying us all but not me so much just some cuts and a bruzed face. I yelled Harry is in there but allready they were digging him out with their hands and pannekins and everything they had becaus Harry is a right good cove and I don’t think there is one of us he hasnt done something for even giving me his ciggyrettes and wanting nothing in return not like some I could name.
Everyone was digging even Captain Sanders. His hands were all red and bleeding after from scraping at them rocks. There was Harrys arm and it twiched and Bluey yelled he is alive and we scraped where his face should be and thank God he was face uprite becaus we could get his mouth clear and he gave a coff and started to breethe while we dug out the rest of him.
Miss he looked crook as a chook when we dug him out his head bashed on one side and bleeding and a broking arm but they can fix that allright no worries it was his head that was really
crook. Bluey and I carried him to the casuallty statin and they put his head in a brase and tied him down so he couldn’t move it round becaus he was trying to scream by then I reckkon he didn’t know where he was or that we had got him out. And then he went real quiet which I reckkon was good becaus it stopped him moving and the ambullance took him then miss and that is the last I saw of him.
But like I was saying Captain Sanders says that Harry is in England he’s got his Blighty One so he won’t be comming back which means that he is safe and he deservs it if any of us do for all that he has done and Captain Sanders says that his head will be all right too they say so miss you are not to worry if you dont hear from him which Bluey said that you mite do but Bluey isnt one for writting becaus he left school when he was eight and the teacher was a [a word crossed out, as though the writer had thought better of it and left a blank instead].
Well that is all Miss. I hope you are well and that your brother is better too he is well out of it thats all I can say.
I remain,
Yours sincerelly
and faithfully, David Gerald Carter,
Private
She shut her eyes briefly. It was as though her heart was finally beating again. Two letters, one of death and one of life.
One more letter still to read. It, too, had been readdressed, had come a crooked way to find her.
Her hands trembled as she tore it open.
21 March 1918
Dear Miss Macpherson,
Harry Harrison said to write this to you. He said you wouldn’t like it but you has a right to know. I am not a good writer miss but I will do my best.
I was with your brother right up until the end. That is right Miss, I saw Tim killed there was no mistaking it. I was in the trench at Gallipoli with him and a shell hit us and it caved in. They dug me out miss but Tim caught it I mean he was still under there. I saw his face Miss then another shell hit us and we had to leave so I reckon he got buried a second time. But he was dead the first time. It would have been quick Miss Macpherson he would not have felt no pain so don’t you fret about that none.
I am sorry you did not know till now Miss. I reckon they need to tell families more but what can you say so much happened there I suppose we will never know the half of it even those who were there. Harry says to say hello he is writing to you too. He is a good mate miss the best there is.
Yours respectfully,
Private A. O’ Bryrne
Midge put the letter down. Pain? Of course Tim had suffered pain. Had any letter written to a dead man’s loved ones ever said ‘He died in agony’?
But she’d been there. She knew.
Had she always really known? Was that why she’d been so determined it wasn’t so, in spite of all the evidence? For her body felt no shock. She had thought that Tim’s loss would feel like a hand had been cut off. But she felt…what?
Not enough pain, she thought. Suddenly she longed for pain. But it wouldn’t come. Instead, she knew, the loss would tear at her, nibble at her, every day that she lived and he did not.
So that was it. The end. Hope gone, plans gone. Tim vanished with so many like him.
‘Smiling may you go, and smiling come again.’
Tim, she thought. My darling Tim. Tim of the laughter, Tim with his plans. Three children, tobogganing over the grass. One gone, one crippled. One who had to carry on.
It’s not fair! she thought. I want my brother back! I want my Tim! I want the years we might have shared together.
And now? She bit her lip. What a silly question. You carried on.
Slowly she opened the small bag marked Wanted On Voyage. She took out the precious picture of the roses that Harry had given her so long ago. Once again she traced the lines of the flowers with her fingertips. Then she wrapped it in its paper once again.
It was over. It was time to take Dougie home. Help him run Glen Donal, help him cope without his leg. It was so much easier, she thought, just to go where you were needed than to plan for any other life.
She glanced out the porthole. The ship had sailed while she’d been reading, slipping away from the wharf with none of the cheers and streamers of peacetime. There was grey sea there now, ruffled by wind and the wallow of the ship.
England was behind them. England and the war and all its horror. There was nothing she could do for Harry now. She couldn’t even write to him till they made port, had no way to find out his address. Tomorrow, she thought, Glen Donal will be closer still. Tomorrow and tomorrow, and then we will be there, with no echo of the guns around us.
And Harry? He was safe now too. He would marry a nurse, perhaps, as he convalesced in England, or one of the girls who waited back home in Biscuit Creek. He was out of the war at last. He and she could both go back to their own worlds. Somehow she knew there would be no more letters from Harry now.
He will get home, she thought, to his sheep and his fences and his family.
We have both survived. We are free.
Chapter 18
Glen Donal
New Zealand
24 November 1918
Dearest Ethel,
So the war is over. It is hard to believe it here, at the back of beyond as you call it. But it is hard to believe in the world outside at all sometimes. Even our time in France seems like a dream.
We celebrated with champagne, and the next day Mrs Campbell and I spent cooking and cooking and cooking and we had all the men and the families up at the shearing shed for a slapup afternoon tea, scones and sponge cake and ginger cake and lemonade and beer. The children put up Christmas decorations, streamers and Father Christmases, which is the best we can do for flags and bunting at short notice. Dougie made a speech and a very good one, thanking everyone who stayed behind and kept the place going. They also serve who shear the daggy sheep bums, but in fact he put it well and I think even meant it.
What was the Armistice like in France? And what will you do now? I couldn’t help thinking of you all as I stood there with my glass of shandy making small talk with old Mrs Cameron and the Fraser ladies. Did you all dance on the railway platform? But I suppose you had to be hard at work even after the Armistice, with so many men to go home. I felt a bit useless here, to tell the truth, despite the heroic baking.
Things flow on here just as I always imagined. We had a good lambing this year. The rabbits have bred up since the men were away and there was a landslip on the hills in one of the far paddocks. But all that news is important only to us and can’t mean a thing to you over there.
Well, I’d better go. We’re off to a tennis party after church. I have a new tennis dress, a most fashionable one with a dropped waist. Suddenly, as soon as we heard the war was over, I felt so dowdy, and Miss Davies has my measurements so she got a dressmaker down in Christchurch to make me up some clothes. There are ribbons and ruches and ruffles and other up-to-the-minute items that I have never heard of before, but Miss Davies assures me are all the rage. Miss Davies found someone to restring my racquet too.
Dougie is even playing tennis, can you imagine? He doesn’t do much footwork, but he’s awfully good at lunging and his serves are terrific. He looks very handsome in his whites. He is much in demand at mixed doubles, and not just because there are fewer men here now. So many never came home at all, but lots of other men have stayed in the cities. You can’t blame them wanting higher wages and more comforts after what they’ve been through.
Goodbye, old thing. I miss you lots. Don’t forget your loving friend,
Midge
1st London General
Hospital
8 December 1918
Dear Miss Macpherson,
Excuse a stranger writing to you. We met so briefly in France and England you may not remember me. But after so many years of hearing Eulalie read out your letters it is as though I have known you too. Your aunt was very dear to me. Please forgive any familiarity.
By now you should have received the official telegram, but I know telegrams can go astray. If
this letter then is a shock to you, please forgive that too.
I was with your aunt at the hospital when she died this morning. It was an easy death, compared to most. This new influenza strikes one down almost before you know that you are ill. Even yesterday your aunt seemed well, though tired as we all have been for so long. She collapsed on her rounds last night, and I was with her till the end. But I think I have told you that already. Forgive me, my dear. This letter is not as clear as it should be. But I did not want to delay writing.
My dear Miss Macpherson—or may I call you Margery? Because that is how all your aunt’s friends have thought of you these many years. Your aunt was a woman to be proud of.
Her last words were of you and your brother. ‘Give them my love’ she said and then, ‘Tell Margery to carry on’. I do not quite know what she meant by that, but perhaps you do.
I hope, my dear, that one day we may meet again, in memory of your dearest aunt.
I remain,
Yours sincerely,
Sister Alicia Atkins
13 May 1919
Dearest Midge,
I am getting married.
I know this will be a shock to you. It is to me.
You know, I used to dream that one day a blind convalescent would come here. I’d nurse him and he would fall in love with me, unable to see my face. A beauty and the beast but in reverse, with me the ugly one, and him unknowing. A nice obscure man, with a lovely manor house and lots of slobbery dogs, who didn’t need a wife to show off to the world.
Well, I got Gavin instead. He’s not what I expected, Midge. He’s not what Mummy expected either. He’s an archaeologist, though he was only on one dig out in Mesopotamia before the war took us all. He was in the Australian Light Horse out there too —not with our lot;a colonial, just like you, though he studied at Oxford—and came here to recuperate from appendicitis, of all things. As he says, to escape the entire war without a scratch then end up with appendicitis is something for the record books.
A Rose for the Anzac Boys Page 18