She sat up again, slowly this time, and took some long, steady breaths.
The faintest nascent rays of daylight were struggling to illuminate the bedroom, as Harriet’s thoughts began to re-collect, and she realised that, having slept so very badly, she had just woken from a nightmare. It had been about Malcolm, of course. The level of detail, which she had garnered in her investigations, had infused the dream with such awfully vivid imagery, for which she only had herself to blame. The nightmare had crept into her semi-conscious thoughts after having spent much of the night awake, fretting over Lina Peeters and her terrible living conditions.
With a tight grip on the iron bedstead frame, Harriet hesitantly rose from the bed, walked over to near the door and switched on the light.
She placed her bag onto the bed, removed her purse and counted out her remaining Belgian francs. She satisfied herself that there was more than enough to last until their return home later on that day. Taking a second-class train carriage would save money, too. She set aside a nominal amount, with which she would have to make do, and put it into her purse. The rest she tucked into an inside pocket in her bag, and then she sat back down on the bed. Only now had her heart rate and thoughts returned to something close to normal.
Harriet glanced up at the clock. It was just approaching half past five in the morning: too early to leave the hotel and too early for breakfast. A leisurely bath; that’s what was needed, she decided. Time just to relax and think—or not think. Gathering up her toothbrush, Pomeroy toothpaste, Oatline shampoo powder and bar of soap, Harriet quietly stole from the room, down the corridor to the bathroom.
Harriet knocked for Fraser at seven o’clock sharp. The long soak in the bath had done the trick, restoring her usual verve and zeal. She had washed her hair and was wearing a fresh black ankle-length dress.
‘Morning, Ma,’ Fraser mumbled, opening the door. ‘Sleep well?’
‘Wonderfully, thank you,’ she lied. ‘And how did you sleep?’
‘Wonderfully,’ he echoed, a strong note of sarcasm alluding to his own frequent private night terrors, where, like last night, he would wake at intervals with a murderous scream.
Harriet nodded, joining the pretension with a smile. ‘Let’s go and get some breakfast.’
As they entered the saloon, the waiter took their breakfast and drinks order, and then, under the cold reproachful stare of Jack and his wife, Daisy, they joined their three German friends at their table at the far end of the room, away from the other guests.
‘Are you certain that you want to join the—how do you say—quarantine table?’ Kurt asked with a sly grin.
‘Oh, just ignore them,’ Harriet said, with an indifferent wave in the direction of the other guests.
‘So, this here is your last day, yes?’ Stefan asked.
‘Yes, time to go back to old Blighty,’ Fraser replied. ‘I can’t say I won’t be glad to sleep in my own bed again.’
‘Yes, this is true,’ Kurt agreed. ‘But it will be a long time until we return to our home, so I don’t try to think of it.’
‘Has it been a successful trip?’ Stefan asked, addressing Harriet, next to whom he was sitting.
That very question had occupied most of Harriet’s thoughts in the bath. In little over one month, her investigations had gone a long way to filling in the gaps in her mind about Malcolm’s last few weeks. Not every query had an answer, but then maybe she had been expecting too much to know every detail. ‘Yes,’ she eventually answered. ‘I should say it has been very successful.’
‘And will you do this for your other boy, also?’ Kurt asked.
‘Oh, goodness,’ Harriet said, taking in a deep breath.
‘Edward died in Salonika in Greece,’ Fraser chipped in. ‘So…no.’
Harriet squinted at Fraser curiously, then faced Kurt with her considered answer: ‘Yes, I probably shall.’ In her peripheral vision, she saw Fraser’s mouth fall open, halt and then close again, before he rolled his eyes and lightly shook his head.
‘Fair shares for all,’ he quipped, quoting a clichéd family phrase, frequently used on the three brothers growing up.
Harriet was about to counter his statement, when the waiter arrived with their coffees and a plate of bread, ham and cheese each.
‘Thank you,’ she said pleasantly to the waiter. The interruption in their conversation drew a neat line under Fraser’s statement, and Harriet briefly toyed with leaving it there, but ultimately settled on the need to clarify: ‘It’s not about fairness, Fraser,’ she said. ‘It’s simply that the not knowing is more unbearable and more unpalatable than resigning oneself to live one’s life in ignorance or denial.’
‘I understand this,’ Franz said, having been quiet since their arrival. ‘My mother did so, also, for my brother. She had to go and find where he died on the Somme. She had to.’
‘Exactly. You’ll understand when you have children,’ Harriet commented to nobody in particular.
Fraser scoffed, assuming that the statement had been intended for him personally: ‘I’m never having children.’
The force of his words took Harriet by surprise: the certitude of having grandchildren from at least one of her three boys had taken root at some undefinable point during their childhood. That conviction had wordlessly been bestowed entirely onto Fraser, now, following Malcolm’s and Edward’s deaths. ‘Whatever can you mean?’
‘Just that. I do not want children,’ he said, as though he were refusing some heinous and monstrous proposal.
‘But…’ Harriet began, trying not to become upset. The news had wounded her heart much more deeply than she could explain or even understand.
‘Look around you, Ma. Look at the state of the world. What kind of a person would willingly bring another life into a world such as this?’
These were the scars of hopelessness and despair speaking, she told herself, stifling her tears. He would change his mind, in time. He just needed to meet the right girl, settle down and let nature take its course.
The conversation continued to ramble between the four men about their thoughts on child-rearing, but Harriet had stopped listening. She no longer had an appetite. She set down her knife and fork and stood with a fixed smile. ‘I’m going to go out and get some fresh air, then return to pack up and leave. I don’t expect I’ll see you boys again, so goodbye and God bless,’ she said, offering them her hand to shake.
Each of the men stood in turn and, with heartfelt civility, each said goodbye.
‘Do you want me to come with you, Ma?’ Fraser asked, visibly perplexed by her sudden keenness to leave without having eaten.
‘No, no,’ she reassured. ‘Absolutely not. I’ve got a short errand to run, then I’ll be back to pack. Finish your breakfast. Relax. I’ll see you later.’
Harriet returned to her room, collected her bag and strode from the hotel, drawing in long, deep mouthfuls of Belgian air. It was another cool day, where the sun was failing to penetrate through a solid grey stratum of cloud, as if signalling its surrender to the looming, vanquishing autumn.
She walked purposefully through the Plaine d’Amour, nodding her greetings to those whom she passed. It was still early in the morning, but already the place was bustling with life and activity, as it had been before. She reached Lina’s house and tapped lightly on the front door.
Lina answered almost instantly, as though she had been expecting someone. Her face, smiling and warm, changed to mild panic.
‘Hello,’ Harriet said. ‘Sorry to just drop by like this. I just wanted to give you something.’ She opened her bag, unclipped the internal pocket, and pulled out the folded bundle of francs. ‘Here.’
‘What? What is this for?’ Lina said, not taking the money.
‘It’s something, not much, but something in lieu of what Malcolm would have provided you with,’ she said, pushing the money closer. ‘Please, take it. I will feel so much happier.’
‘Really, Mrs McDougall, there’s no need,’ Lina insiste
d. ‘I make it work. There are many people who don’t have a home or a job, please, give it to them. I must go now and get ready. Goodbye.’
The door closed on Harriet, and she was left with the money in her outstretched hand and a curiosity about Lina’s curtness. Something didn’t feel quite right somehow. She went to knock on the door again but, as she did so, caught the sound of a single word from inside, which startled her to her core. The word, which she thought that she had heard, ‘Mumma’, had been spoken by a very young child and made Harriet press her head to the door. The response, when it came in Flemish, was undoubtedly from Lina.
Harriet gasped, as conflicting and confusing thoughts collided in her mind, and she felt the same rush of blood leaving her head, as had happened first thing this morning. She reached for the doorframe to steady herself, but, finding nothing to grip, her fingers slid across the wooden surface, and instead she toppled towards the door.
It was the smell that brought her out of the darkness. A musty odour with a sharp edge of mildew, which was distinctly reminiscent of the inside of the Essex Farm Advanced Dressing Station. Harriet opened her eyes and saw nothing familiar by which to recognise her surroundings. A low beamed ceiling. Strange dimness. She turned her head to the side, noticing only then the dull pain above her right eye. Familiarity began to arrive, as the room itself began to reassemble in her vision: she was inside the pre-fab; then came the memory of knocking on the door; lastly, as she took a good look at the small gathering of people in the room, she recalled what she had understood moments before fainting and banging her head. She saw Lina and smiled feebly.
‘How do you feel, Mrs McDougall?’ she asked, taking her hand in hers.
‘Bit of a headache, but…other than that…’ she said, trying to sit up, but falling straight back onto the mattress.
‘I wouldn’t try to move too much just yet,’ Lina advised.
‘Where’s the child? Harriet asked, scanning the outlines of the dim figures on the other side of the room.
‘What child?’ Lina said.
‘I heard a child in here. It said ‘Mumma’, and you answered it,’ Harriet said.
‘No, I think the bump to your head is making you imagine things,’ Lina asserted.
‘Oh, tommyrot!’ Harriet said, this time forcing herself upright. ‘I heard a child as plain as day, now where is it and, more importantly, whose is it?’
Lina sighed.
‘He’s yours and Malcolm’s, isn’t he?’ Harriet probed, seeing Lina’s pretensions falling.
Lina nodded. ‘She. Poppy.’
‘Oh! But why didn’t you tell me?’ Harriet gasped. ‘I was on the verge of leaving—never to see you again!’
Lina stared at the floor. ‘Because I thought you would take her away from me...from all of this.’
‘Take her away from you?’ Harriet stammered. ‘Goodness me, Lina. After all you’ve been through, not a thought could possibly be further from my mind. I’ve lost two of my own children, remember…’ Her words faltered, as she welled up.
‘I’m sorry,’ Lina muttered, taking Harriet’s hand.
‘Poppy,’ Harriet breathed, as Mrs Leonard’s words came back to her: ‘Find the poppy and it will help you…’ ‘What a beautiful name. How old is she?’
‘Fifteen months.’
‘I’m lost for words, Lina, really I am. Where is she now?’
‘My friend next door has her.’
‘Lina, I promise you I’m not going to take her away from you. Goodness, what unimaginable grief I would leave you suffering with. What type of a woman—type of a mother…grandmother—do you take me for?’
Lina stared at her, unblinking for some time.
‘Can I meet her before I go back to England, Lina?’ Harriet asked.
After a few seconds, Lina nodded but didn’t move.
‘Please,’ Harriet pleaded.
Lina bit her lip, then headed across the room and out of the front door. She left the door ajar, and Harriet gaped at it, unable to believe what she had just discovered. And she considered the irony of their conversations at the breakfast table this morning, where she had been forced to face an assumed, stark truth that she might never have grandchildren.
Two silhouetted figures appeared at the door, and Harriet, still dazed, strained her eyes to see the small child, to bring her features into focus, as she tottered across the room towards Harriet, tightly holding Lina’s hand.
At last, Harriet could discern the little creature. She saw past the grubby, torn clothes, seeing only her dazzling face, her happy grin and, unmistakably, Malcolm’s beautiful sparkling blue eyes.
‘This is Poppy,’ Lina introduced. ‘Your granddaughter.’
Harriet threw open her arms and scooped her up, holding her emotions firmly in check so as not to frighten this new acquaintance at their very first encounter. She squeezed her tightly, finding the little mite so thin and fragile that she could feel her bones alarmingly close to the skin. Sensing Poppy begin to wriggle, Harriet released her, sitting her down on her knee.
Lina said something in Flemish, followed by the word, ‘Grandma’.
‘Grandma,’ Poppy repeated with a giggle. She jumped down and tottered off into the murky depths of the room.
‘What a treasure,’ Harriet exclaimed. ‘I can’t believe it. She looks the mirror of Malcolm at that age, I can’t tell you.’
Lina smiled. ‘Would you like a water?’
‘Yes, please,’ Harriet said, suddenly noticing how parched she felt. She watched, as Lina moved to the kitchen area of the house, but which was really just a wash basin, a table and a small stove. Lina took a glass and plunged it into a metal bucket on the table.
‘Here,’ she said, offering it to Harriet. ‘Are you hungry? We don’t have much, but—’
‘No, no, not hungry at all,’ Harriet interrupted. ‘Do you manage for food? For yourselves, I mean?’
Lina shrugged. ‘Just about. There are no shops, yet. We must get our food from warehouses in the city, and on Saturdays there is a market in the Grand Place, where we get eggs and vegetables, perhaps some meat, if we are lucky.’
‘It’s no way of life for the two of you,’ Harriet said.
‘Perhaps not, but we manage,’ Lina insisted.
‘Well, one thing’s for certain. You are having that money I offered you earlier: no argument,’ Harriet said, delving into her bag and withdrawing the cash, which, she correctly assumed, they had placed back in her bag, when she had fallen.
‘Thank you,’ Lina said, now accepting it graciously. ‘I will get Poppy some new clothes.’
‘And fatten her up a bit.’
‘I will do my best. Do you want me to get Fraser and tell him what has happened?’
‘Oh, glory, no,’ Harriet rebutted. ‘I’ll be right as rain in a minute.’ Harriet sipped her water, feeling better but still drowsy, and the pain was increasing above her eye. ‘He didn’t get to know about the baby, did he? Malcolm, I mean,’ she said, judging Poppy’s age against the date at which he had died.
‘Yes, he knew,’ Lina answered. ‘It was very early days in the pregnancy, but I wrote to my sister in Poperinge to tell her that I thought I was…pregnant. By chance, Malcolm arrived when she was opening the letter and so he found out. Apparently, he was…erm…‘over the moon’.’
‘When would this have been?’ Harriet asked.
‘It was the night before he was killed.’
The night when he had taken a General Service Wagon into Poperinge. Now it made some sort of sense, although it seemed a strange risk to take for a social call. ‘Why was he visiting your sister?’
‘Because he was kind,’ she explained. ‘And he knew that I was worried about her. She was resorting to…awful things to make money to feed herself. When he could, Malcolm would take her provisions: tins of beef, biscuits, Maconchie—this horrible fatty thing in gravy—whatever he could get his hands on. Anything to stop her from doing what she had been doing. He went to see
her that night in Poperinge, and she had that letter from me, unopened.’
‘So, he was told that night that he was going to be a father and then died the next day.’ Harriet stared at Poppy, unsure of whether knowing that he would have a child, whom he would never meet, was a comfort or cause for even greater pain.
‘Yes. It was my sister who told me that he’d been killed a couple of weeks later, when some of his regiment were at Talbot House in Poperinge. She wrote to me, giving me the news, and telling me that she had seen him the night before, and that he had brought her some condensed milk, tea and jam.’
‘Grandma!’ Poppy suddenly declared, strolling up to Harriet and handing her an eyeless teddy bear, which had seen much better days. Harriet took the teddy, resolving to go out and buy the little girl some new clothes and toys as soon as she got home. And for Lina, too, for that matter.
‘Do you know what the time is?’ Harriet asked, suddenly aware that she had no concept of how long she had been out for.
‘Nearly midday,’ Lina answered.
‘Oh, my godfathers! Fraser will have sent out a search party by now. Heavens, I need to run.’
‘You must not run anywhere, Mrs McDougall. You’ve just had a nasty bang to the head.’
‘Poppycock, I’ll be alright,’ Harriet retorted, standing up just fine. But for the little pain in her head, she did indeed feel right as rain. ‘Why is it so jolly dark in here?’
Lina laughed. ‘It’s Mr Van de Velde, he’s got very sensitive eyes, or at least that’s what he tells everyone. Personally, I just think it allows him to sleep without anyone noticing. You get used to it in the end.’
‘Do you?’ Harriet questioned, placing her hands on her hips. ‘There’s an awful lot that you both are having to put up with.’
Lina shrugged.
‘Listen, can we go for a walk somewhere? You, me and Poppy?’ Harriet asked. ‘Get out of this dark dungeon!’
Ghost Swifts, Blue Poppies and the Red Star Page 19