‘Bonjour…hallo,’ Harriet greeted with a smile. She began to formulate a sentence in her head when Fraser cut in.
‘He’s English, Ma.’
‘Oh, glory,’ Harriet said. ‘I see. Sorry.’
‘Bonjour,’ he answered with a titter. ‘Most of us Imperial War Graves Commission gardeners are English,’ the shirtless man revealed in an accent, which Harriet couldn’t quite place. East End of London, or Essex, perhaps? He looked to be in his mid-twenties with short blond hair and a tanned muscular physique. He wiped his right hand on his trousers and offered it to Harriet. ‘Joe,’ he said.
‘Mrs McDougall,’ she answered, shaking his hand. ‘Could you answer a question about this cemetery for me, please, Joe?’
‘Well, I’ll give it a go, yeah,’ he said with a grin.
‘Why are there blue poppies growing on my son’s grave, but not on any other?’ Before he could answer, she quickly added, ‘It’s not a complaint; they were a favourite of his. I just don’t understand, is all.’
‘I don’t know, to be honest. We certainly ain’t put ’em there. When we started off plantin’ here, it was all fairly basic: blue cornflowers, white camomile, yellow charlock, red poppies… Now we’ve got our own nursery up and running, we’ve got dwarf lupins, nasturtiums, linarias… But what we ain’t got—anywhere—is them blue poppies.’
‘I see,’ Harriet said. But, actually, she didn’t see at all.
Joe laughed. ‘We quite like it, really. One of the bigwig ’orticulturists came over from Kew Gardens, demanding to know how they’d got there and wantin’ us to dig ’em up, but us gardeners ’ad a right old barney with him, saying that we didn’t need to know ’ow they got there; someone or somethin’, or nature or whatever had put ’em there and that was good enough for us. He stormed off in a right ’uff but let us keep ’em.’
‘That’s very good of you,’ Harriet acknowledged. ‘Thank you.’ After a moment, she said, ‘So you were here in the war and yet you chose to stay on afterwards?’ She tried, but knew that she had failed, to hide the astonishment from her question.
‘Na, I didn’t stay. Most of us gardeners, who are here now, went home after the war. But our jobs had gone. I tried lookin’ for a few months, but there just weren’t nothin’. Then I saw the Imperial War Graves Commission was offering jobs out ’ere and, well, I applied and ’ere I am.’
‘That must pose some difficulties,’ Harriet said, casting her eyes over the cemetery, finding it enormously hard to comprehend how these men, having been forced away from their families for months or years on end, would choose to return to somewhere so far from home.
‘It was ’ard at first, being back ’ere, yeah,’ Joe answered. ‘But these men—’ he motioned to the graves around him, ‘—they was me family for nearly four years, you know. It just feels right to be back ’ere, looking after ’em, when their families can’t, like.’
Harriet nodded, realising then that he had taken her mention of difficulties in working here to mean simply being back at a place where such despicable acts of inhumanity, such devastation, such hell, had occurred. The haunting, dramatic opening bars of Liszt’s A Symphony to Dante’s Divina Commedia played in her mind and she remembered Timothy’s insistent refusal ever to return to the Western Front. She found the bravery in these gardeners, their returning to the now-empty trenches and silent battlefields, utterly extraordinary.
‘So, were you actually here…in the war?’ Fraser questioned.
‘Not ’ere, exactly, na. Wipers. Somme…’ he said matter-of-factly, as though he were casually describing previous holiday destinations. ‘A mate o’ mine, Arthur, who shares me billet was ’ere, though, with the Royal Engineers. When was your lad ’ere?’
‘He died from gas poisoning on the 4th July 1917,’ Harriet answered.
Joe thought for a moment. ‘D’you know, I’m sure that’s when Arthur was ’ere. He should be back at the billet sometime today. He’s a bit of an odd one, but a very good ’orticulturist. Where you stayin’ tonight?’
‘Now, there’s a question,’ Fraser replied. ‘We’ve got no idea.’
‘Pretty sure the landlady of me billet, Mrs Tillens will be able to put you up for a night or two. She’s got a farm’ouse outside Boezinge. God only knows ’ow it survived the war. Mrs Tillens swears it’s because of the life-sized bullet-ridden Jesus she’s got guarding the entrance.’ Joe chuckled, then quickly stopped. ‘Sorry, er, no offence meant if you’re religious or—’
‘It’s fine,’ Harriet reassured him. The days of her feeling the need to take offence at religious mockery had been long since confined to the past. ‘Do you think she might have room for us?’ Harriet asked.
‘As long as you ain’t precious about where you sleep—it’s pretty rough—just to warn ya.’
‘Oh, Joe,’ Harriet said, becoming overwhelmed once more. ‘That’s so terribly kind of you. Thank you. I think the way I’m feeling right now, I could quite happily sleep in a field.’
‘Yeah, done that a few times, too,’ Joe said. ‘Ready, then? I’m done ’ere for the day.’
‘Yes, yes, absolutely,’ Harriet said, casting a quick eye to Fraser, who nodded his agreement.
Joe bent down and picked up a rucksack, which rattled and clanked with the variety of tools inside. As he led them back towards the entrance, Harriet noticed for the first time that darkness had crept upon them. She turned to see Malcolm’s grave, but it was lost in the shadows. ‘Goodnight,’ she whispered to him.
‘Here we are,’ Joe said, when they arrived at a Rover Sunbeam, parked beside the cemetery entrance.
Harriet stared at the vehicle, wondering how on earth they could have missed it on their way in. It was a battered, old automobile with two seats at the front, behind which was a section covered by a canvas painted in army-green. A circular emblem on the side, which revealed its previous incarnation, had been poorly painted over in a different shade. The words Imperial War Graves Commission had been hand-painted—again, badly—across the side.
‘War ambulance,’ Joe said. ‘The old bone-shaker we call her. Hop in.’
Once Harriet and Fraser had squeezed into the passenger seat, Joe started the engine and Harriet could feel her insides jangling before he had even removed the handbrake. ‘Is it far?’ she asked with false brightness.
‘Just a couple of miles,’ Joe responded, pulling the former ambulance out onto the main thoroughfare.
They rumbled along at a speed with which Harriet was not particularly comfortable, swallowing down several gasps, as Joe swung the vehicle out into the oncoming carriageway in order to overtake several slow-moving horses and carriages.
‘Nearly home!’ he announced, pulling the old Sunbeam off the road and onto a dirt track at a speed which suggested that he had almost missed his turning.
‘Glory!’ Harriet yelped, grabbing on to Fraser’s arm, as she slid sideways, banging into Joe.
‘Sorry,’ Joe said with a grimace.
Harriet managed a laugh, as she straightened herself up and looked out at the new landscape unfolding before them.
From their elevated position, Harriet looked out across the countryside. One barren field merged into another for as far as the eye could see. She could just make out one property, a farmhouse at the end of the track upon which they were now driving.
As the farmhouse drew closer, Harriet could see that it was dilapidated with crumbling out-buildings, broken walls and fences, and small hillocks of assorted debris dotted around the overgrown garden.
Joe pulled up just outside the white boundary wall and switched off the engine. ‘It don’t look like Arthur’s back just yet.’
Harriet climbed out after Fraser, grateful to be free from the confines of the Sunbeam’s cab. She followed Fraser and Joe to the gate.
Jesus came into view. He was, as Joe had suggested, standing at the entrance on a stone shelf, looking down upon them. Apart from being painted in somewhat garish pastel colours, he indeed
resembled the Jesus depicted in Harriet’s family bible: bearded, with a headdress, arms by his side with his palms open, facing forwards and outwards, as though he were inviting them inside. This Jesus, however, had several bullet wounds to his neck and chest. Rather awfully for the owner, Harriet thought, somebody had desecrated the statue, crudely adding trickles of red paint to the bullet holes.
Harriet sighed. Really, after all that had gone on in the world, had people no shame?
Joe noticed that she was staring at the effigy and intuited her thoughts. ‘Mrs Tillens swears it’s blood,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t go correctin’ her, for God’s sake.’ He glanced up at the statue. ‘Sorry.’
‘Right,’ Harriet said.
The front door was ajar and Joe, with Fraser and Harriet close behind him, entered the farmhouse. Fraser removed his bowler hat, struggling to carry it alongside the two cases.
Harriet was shocked by the devastation that she saw in the room; some kind of sitting room, she supposed. Every wall was covered in a complicated pattern of spidery lines. As they passed through the room, it took her a moment to realise that they were cracks in the plasterwork, like those in a shattered mirror still held in its frame. Some were hairline, others were large enough to fit all one’s fingers inside. Where some of the cracks had merged, deep islands of plaster had dropped from the walls and were now lying—exactly where they had fallen, goodness only knew how long before—on the floor. In the room itself were five chairs, all with torn fabric, and a wooden dresser, fiercely scratched and tarnished. Between the chairs were… What were they? Bits of tangled metal? Was that a pile of bullet shells? Then there was an upturned rusty bicycle with no wheels. Beside that was a collection of well-worn military hats, some of which she recognised as being British, others she presumed to be German.
‘What is all this?’ Harriet murmured.
‘Crap she’s constantly finding ’round the farm,’ Joe uttered. ‘War memorabilia. She found an ’and once—fingers an’ all—and put it on the mantelpiece for a while.’
‘Oh, my good godfathers!’ Harriet shrieked.
‘Ma,’ Fraser chastised. ‘Shush!’
Harriet glowered at Fraser’s back. ‘A hand, though!’
The room, which they entered next, had the same fracture lines dominating the walls and ceilings, and Harriet wondered what on earth could be left holding the house up, and how on earth anyone could live in such a place. There was a very old stove, a few mis-matching cabinets and a wooden butcher’s block in the centre of the room, upon which a small army of flies were cavorting. This was the kitchen, Harriet supposed, making a mental note not to eat a single thing while they were here.
‘Mrs Tillens?’ Joe called out. He moved to the far end of the kitchen, from where an open staircase ran upstairs. He stood on the bottom step and craned his neck sideward to try again: ‘Mrs Tillens?’
‘Wat?’ an old woman snapped, suddenly appearing at the open back door. Harriet was quite startled and, without thinking, took a step backwards. She had hair far longer than Harriet had ever seen on a woman before. Long, grey and lank, and her face was shrivelled and shrewish. She wore a long dirty apron and, in one hand, was holding a flapping chicken upside down by its legs. She eyed Fraser and Harriet suspiciously. ‘Who is it, these people?’ she asked Joe in pidgin English.
‘They’d like a room,’ Joe replied. Then, looking to Harriet: ‘How many nights?’
‘One,’ Harriet and Fraser replied in unison.
Mrs Tillens scowled. ‘Joat—Yes. You have one night,’ she confirmed.
‘Thank you,’ Harriet said.
‘Dinner will be more francs,’ Mrs Tillens said, promptly raising her other hand to the chicken’s neck and, in one downward thrust, broke its neck. ‘Kieke…Kip. You eat chick’n?’
Harriet shuddered but somehow managed to maintain her veil-like smile. She said, ‘No, we’re full, thank you,’ at the same time as Fraser attempted something from his stock phrases: ‘Nee. Dank uwel!’
Mrs Tillens shrugged. ‘It no problem.’
Harriet conjured a not-especially-convincing yawn. ‘I think we just need our beds. It’s been such a jolly long day…’
‘I’ll show you to your room,’ Joe said. ‘Follow me.’ He took them upstairs, where the damaged walls, messy floors and broken furniture continued. ‘That’s our room, in there,’ Joe said, cheerfully pointing inside a small room, clogged with seven or eight beds.
Harriet struggled to elicit sense from her addled brain. ‘Is it… Do you find it…?’
‘It’s alright,’ Joe answered. ‘Try sleepin’ in a trench waist-deep in water with bombs going off around your ears.’ They moved across the hallway and he said, ‘That’ll be your room.’
‘Thank you, Joe,’ Harriet said. ‘You’ve been terribly kind.’
‘That’s okay, Mrs McDougall. I ’ope Arthur’ll be back by mornin’ to talk to ya.’
‘Where is he, then?’ Fraser questioned, saying the very thing which Harriet had been about to ask.
‘He’s one of the mobile gardeners. A driver, a cook and half-a-dozen gardeners head off in a lorry for a few days at a time with camping gear, cooking equipment and tools; the lot. They go off into the wilderness, tendin’ to the cemeteries what are closer to the old front lines. I do it meself sometimes, but I don’t like it much. Eerie and you don’t very often see another soul all the while you’re gone.’
‘How awful, but oh, how good of those men,’ Harriet commended.
‘It’s a job, ain’t it. Anyway, ’opefully he’ll be back before you ’ead off tomorra.’
‘Well, good night, Joe, and thank you again.’
‘Night,’ he said, heading back to the stairs. He paused at the top. ‘Can’t get you a nightcap, can I? She does make a very good genever.’
‘No, thank you,’ Harriet replied, not sure what a genever might be.
‘Yes, please,’ Fraser said.
Harriet went to speak, to rebuke him, but she caught herself before the first words came out of her mouth. She said nothing and followed him inside their room.
‘Well, this is nice,’ Fraser said, setting the cases down beside him and tossing his bowler onto one of the two beds.
Harriet scowled at him, breathed deeply to try to unwind from the day, and glanced around her. This was going to be a long night, she feared. The room contained two wire beds with a straw mattress and a dishevelled blanket on each, presumably left unchanged from the last visitor. But for the two beds, the room was entirely empty. No dresser. No wardrobe. No washstand. No coat hooks. No lamp. Not even any curtains. Nothing. Part of her wanted to let go of her resolve and just cry. Part of her wanted to walk right away from this forsaken place and never return. Two things kept her from leaving directly, though: one, was the chance to talk with Arthur; two, was her acute tiredness, which was likely also intensifying her emotions. In truth, she wouldn’t have the energy to walk back to the main road, never mind trying to find another place to stay. No, this would simply have to do for this one night.
She sat down on the other bed, removed her coat and then removed her shoes, hurriedly pulling her feet up from the dirty boards. She unpinned her hat, then began the laborious task of carefully removing all the pins from her hair, almost tempted for the first time in her life to leave them in.
‘There we are. ’Ere you go, mate,’ Joe said, entering the room with a small glass of apple-coloured liquid.
‘Cheers,’ Fraser said, taking the glass. He inhaled a great vulgar sniff, then sipped at the edge. ‘Wow, potent. Quite warming. Nice. Thank you.’
‘Enjoy. See you in the mornin’. Mrs Tillens does a really smashing breakfast, by the way.’
‘Great,’ Harriet said, already set on not partaking. ‘Good night.’
‘Night,’ Joe answered, pulling their bedroom door shut.
Fraser set the glass down on the floor between the two beds, took off his shoes and coat, then picked up the glass and offered it to Harriet.<
br />
She shook her head vehemently: ‘Absolutely not!’
‘Try it, Ma. It’ll help you sleep, at least. Medicinal.’
‘No, Fraser,’ she said, eyeing the glass, as though it might contain poison. Well, it did. But Fraser didn’t take the glass away. It just stayed there between them.
‘Try it,’ he insisted. ‘One mouthful. And I promise I won’t tell Reverend Percival, if that’s what you’re worrying about.’
She scowled, both at him and at herself. Her resolve was weakening, and she saw herself reaching out and taking the proffered glass. She actually had a glass of alcohol in her hand! Was this the first time? Yes, surely it must have been. John was never much of a drinker, and on the rare occasion that he did have a pint, it was in a public house; never at home. Of course, he had become teetotal just prior to the Great War, when Harriet, alongside some other villagers, had established the Sedlescombe Temperance Tea Gardens.
‘Go on, then,’ Fraser urged.
She took the glass to her nose and inhaled, almost choking on the repellent fumes, at which display Fraser roared with laughter. She wanted to hand it back to him and go to sleep but, instead, she placed her lips to the coolness of the glass and took a small swig.
‘Oh, my godfathers!’ she shrieked, her head lurching about of its own volition, as the hot bite of the alcohol made its way down the back of her throat. She thrust the glass back in Fraser’s direction and let go, not caring if he had taken hold of it yet, or not. She went to say, ‘What the dickens is it made from?’ but, when she opened her mouth, nothing came out but a feline hiss.
Fraser was laughing such as she hadn’t seen him laugh in a very long time. Seeing him like this softened her compulsion to tell him off. She smiled begrudgingly and lay down on the bed, surprising herself at how comfortable it actually turned out to be.
Her eyes were unexpectedly heavy and she closed them for a moment. She thought of those days, which she had found so purposeful, so determined, running the Temperance Tea Gardens. She had firmly believed alcohol to be the devil’s poison, which would doubtlessly lead the consumer onto a slippery slope to eternal damnation. But now? Just like her faith, just like her dabbling with the paranormal, just like her belief in the fundamental goodness of the human race, it was a great swirling mass of confusion, contradiction, conflict and ambiguity.
Ghost Swifts, Blue Poppies and the Red Star Page 13