A Rose In Flanders Fields

by Terri Nixon

  ‘Stop it,’ he said, and reached across the table to run a finger over the back of my hand. ‘You’re not as tough as you like to pretend.’

  ‘Will, these boys need us. We do good things, we’re not just playing at this.’

  ‘I know! It’s just…I know.’ He sighed, and turned my hand over to lie beneath his, palm to palm. ‘And to be honest, if I was sent down the line I would want someone like you pulling me out and getting me patched up.’ He let go of my hand and forced a smile. ‘But I’ll never stop worrying about you, not until you’re safely back in Cheshire driving Mrs Cavendish mad.’

  ‘I’m saving up something special to torment her with,’ I promised, relieved he had not continued pressing until we argued; it would have been awful to part like that, not knowing when we’d see each other again. I deliberately silenced that voice that still insisted, if…

  He picked up his mug and swilled it around, pulling a face at the contents. ‘Have you heard from Lizzy?’

  ‘A short letter now and again. She’s had a bad chill but she’s a little better now. She’s horribly uncomfortable, and I hate thinking of her in there, but at least she’s safe.’

  ‘How about Jack?’

  ‘I had a few lines. I don’t think he’s had my own letters, because he never addresses anything I’ve said to him. Not even about Lizzy, and I know they got on famously and he would want to help. If it wasn’t for the fact I recognise his handwriting I might think it wasn’t from him at all. Presumably the censors have been on his mind; all he said was he’s gone overseas.’

  We finished our drinks, now stone cold, and I noticed people starting to move towards the door. It was almost time.

  ‘You seem to have made a real hit with your paper-folding,’ I said. Anything to prolong the conversation.

  He laughed. ‘It’s so strange. These are men who are brilliantly skilled, back home they build houses, and mend telephones for goodness sake! Some of them know the law of England like the backs of their hands. They perform complicated medical procedures every day of their lives. But watch a butcher fiddle with a piece of an old newspaper for two minutes and they’re completely flabbergasted!’

  I smiled at the honest puzzlement in his voice. ‘I brought the rose with me to Belgium. I can’t bear to be without it,’ I added, suddenly shy in case he should think it was funny rather than touching.

  But he looked pleased. ‘It must be a shocking mess by now.’

  ‘It is. But all the same…’ I really needed him to understand, but it was hard to find the words to explain it, even to myself. ‘When I look at it, it doesn’t just remind me of you, it’s almost as if it is you. It’s both of us.’ It sounded silly, and didn’t even really say what I wanted it to, but watching his mobile mouth soften into a smile, I realised he understood, and was moved to lean across the table and kiss him. There was a chorus of whistles from the table of Tommies in the corner so we didn’t stop, giving them the show they were so clearly enjoying, and not even caring if we were reported. When we broke apart we were both breathing faster; the memory of last night seemed very close at that moment.

  ‘You keep hold of that shocking mess if it makes you do that,’ he said with a grin. Then the grin faded and he grew serious as he rubbed his thumb gently over my cheek. ‘Some of the lads have asked me to make one for their own sweethearts. I’ll make them anything they want; cars, boats, houses…any other flower. But the rose will only ever be for you.’

  On my twenty-first birthday Boxy and I threw a party, and invited anyone who could come. Some of the officers from the local company had made themselves known to us, and were pleased to be invited. They brought as much contraband as they could manage, and we ate like kings and queens, and sang songs until well past midnight. The night was a cloudy one, for which we were all grateful; far less chance of an offensive than when the moon shone brightly, and when the party tapered off Boxy and I sat outside, waving off our guests and enjoying a rare quiet night. The guns still boomed in the distance but there was none of the harsh, screaming wail that signified a serious shell attack. We finished the last of the chocolate cake brought by the officers, and took quiet pleasure in the chance to talk as we went over Gertie at our leisure for once.

  I had still not told Mother about Will, and although Boxy confessed to finding it quite funny and romantic, she urged me to take the bull by the horns.

  ‘Come on, Davies, it’s not really fair. She has every right to know. Don’t you think she’ll adore your lovely man?’

  ‘It’s not a question of what she thinks of him,’ I pointed out, kicking at a loose board on Gertie’s runner. ‘You know that every bit as well as I do.’

  She shook her head. ‘Well, no matter what she thinks of the marriage, you’re going to have to brave it one day. Think how much happier you’ll be when you don’t have to think so hard about every letter you send, just so you don’t let anything slip.’

  ‘That would be easier,’ I admitted. Unspoken between us lay the other truth; should something happen to me, it would all come out, and mother would have an awful sense of betrayal to add to her grief. ‘All right. I’ve got some leave coming up next month, I’ll write and tell Mother I’m coming home for a few days.’

  ‘And you’ll tell her?’

  I sighed, and crossed my heart. ‘I promise. Now belt up and hand me that spanner.’

  Chapter Seven

  Cheshire, September28th 1915.

  Oaklands Manor in the autumn was one of the more beautiful sights with which I had grown up, and it had never palled. The huge oaks were cloaked in the glorious hues of red, gold and bronze, and the light that shone through them set them on fire against the bright blue sky. I stood, for a moment, looking down the long avenue of trees, remembering the day, three years ago, that Uncle Jack and I had driven away, holding in our laughter – not well enough – while Lizzy stood looking after us in the gloomy belief she had committed a terrible faux pas.

  Abruptly the date hit me, it was Lizzy’s birthday. She too would turn twenty-one today, and while I had spent my birthday with my new-found friends and comrades, drinking wine, singing songs and eating cake, she would spend hers locked away from the world, and from those who loved her. A cloud seemed to pass over the brightness of the day, although the sky remained unchanged, and I turned away from the glory of the gardens; I couldn’t enjoy them while Lizzy was suffering.

  I was still aching for the youth Lizzy had lost, when I stepped over the threshold into the big hall. Always so familiar, it now looked like something someone had once described to me but I’d never really seen. I looked around it with new eyes, and saw nothing but grand emptiness.

  ‘Evangeline!’

  I turned to see my mother, her arms outstretched, coming towards me from the morning room, and it was so unlike her to seek me out that I dropped my bag and went to meet her. She had always appeared so tall, statuesque almost, and myself so small beside her, but now she seemed to have shrunk until I was the stronger of the two of us. She hugged me close, and it was more than her usual affectionate, but slightly impatient embrace.

  Dodsworth had picked up my bag and waited patiently, but mother, still with one arm around me, waved her free hand for him to take the bag upstairs. Then she drew back and looked at me, her face pale.

  ‘How are you? You look tired. Come and sit down, I have something to tell you.’

  Bemused, and a little worried, I followed her into the morning room, her favourite place in the entire house. Instead of sitting down at her writing desk, she paced the room in much the same way as she had insisted gave her a headache when I did it.

  ‘Mother, what’s wrong? Has something happened?’ I went cold as the thought hit me: Uncle Jack?

  Mother took a short, sharp breath. ‘It’s Lawrence. He’s left. Gone.’

  ‘Joined up?’ Surely he was too young…but no, as strange as it was to realise, he had turned eighteen a few months ago. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s t
aken a commission and gone to France. Somewhere called Courcelette.’ It sounded as though the words hurt her to say, and, for a fleeting and unfair moment I wondered if she had even once spoken of me with that same frightened note in her voice. But I shook the thought away; it wasn’t the same thing at all. Lawrence was her baby, the sole heir to everything she had struggled to hold onto since the theft of the Kalteng Star, and he was directly in the midst of the action. There was a second’s pride in the fact that he’d volunteered, and I thought of his cousins, the Wingfields – I doubted if either of those boys would see a moment’s conflict over there unless they were forced to. But the pride vanished immediately, replaced by shame: after what I had seen, was I really just as bad as all those parents who saw their sons off to die, and then proudly claimed they had contributed to an assured allied victory?

  The next thought was that I should tell Will, he had always liked Lawrence and, of course, Lawrence still hero-worshipped him. I looked at Mother and realised I couldn’t tell her yet about Will and me, she had enough pain to cope with, without adding my deceit to the weight of it.

  I hugged her again. ‘He’ll be fine,’ I said, sounding firmer than I felt. ‘It’ll be ages before he’s put somewhere really dangerous, and the war could end at any minute.’

  She sagged against me with a little sigh of gratitude. ‘Are you sure? Ages?’

  ‘Absolutely positive.’ I was no such thing, but it would serve no purpose to worry her further. ‘They have lots of training, and if he’s taken a commission he’s quite likely to be based with the general staff at HQ. That’s miles behind the lines, honestly. Try not to worry, but if you can’t help it then at least don’t let him know it.’

  She eased away from me again and gave me a smile. ‘You’re right, it won’t do to let him see we’re upset, he’ll have enough to think about.’ She looked calmer now, and it occurred to me to simply blurt out my news just to get it out of the way. But I still couldn’t. Not yet.

  ‘I’d like a bath, if I may?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll ask Mary to run you one.’

  ‘How is everyone?’ I asked as mother reached for the bell. ‘I heard about Billy Duncan, the poor boy.’ As I spoke I realised what I’d said, and steeled myself for Mother to consider Lawrence’s dangerous situation again, and lose her carefully regained equanimity. But she merely looked puzzled.

  ‘Billy Duncan?’

  ‘The stable boy.’ I tried to suppress my impatience; Mother was not cold-hearted, but she’d never been one to take too much notice of those who worked for her, particularly those she rarely saw.

  ‘Oh, yes. Of course. Billy.’ I looked closely at her and decided she was too distracted about Lawrence to concern herself, but I felt a prickle of the old exasperation. ‘I gather Mr…uh, the gardener’s son was killed in a gas attack earlier this year,’ she went on, and I had the rather uncharitable feeling she thought I should be appreciative of her knowledge.

  I nodded. ‘Poor Joe.’ Then I added pointedly, ‘That was his name, Mother, Joe Shackleton.’

  ‘There’s no need to be snappy, Evangeline.’ But her words didn’t have the same bite I was used to.

  I spoke softly now. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’ Lawrence’s absence loomed between us, and I felt almost as if I should apologise for not being him, but, again, I knew that was unfair. I wished I could switch off that new, antagonistic part of me, but something about being here, instead of working, had taken the guilt I felt and turned it into a defensive kind of anger. It wasn’t Mother’s fault, but I couldn’t make her understand through my letters alone, and unless she saw it for herself she would believe only what she heard on the news. She wouldn’t come out and visit, although I offered to arrange passes, and so she remained encased in her bubble of misinformation. We were growing further apart every day, and I couldn’t see a way back.

  Mary’s pleasure at seeing me was evident, which buoyed my spirits a good deal. She took me upstairs and ran my bath while I changed out of my travelling clothes, and we arranged to meet after dinner and toast Lizzy’s birthday. It would be something to tell her the next time we wrote, and might help her to know how much we missed her and thought of her. On the other hand, would it simply serve to accentuate her isolation? I would have to think carefully about it, but I couldn’t let the day go unmarked.

  After my bath I walked the three miles into Breckenhall, enjoying the chance to stretch my legs after being cramped up on the train for so long; it was still too early for dinner, and I thought Martin might like to know how Will was getting on. The afternoon was still bright, although the day was rapidly cooling, and I enjoyed the sunlight that flickered through the trees and onto my face. It felt so peaceful here, a million miles away from the hollow boom of the guns, and the chorus of pain that was my life’s usual accompaniment. It was with this quiet enjoyment still painting a smile on my lips, that I pushed open the door to Markham’s shop.

  ‘I say, here’s a pretty thing,’ a voice said, and I looked around. Behind me, also about to step into the shop, was a young man a few years older than me. He wasn’t very tall, but he had an impressive bearing about him nevertheless, and his smile, when he bestowed it on me, was undeniably dazzling. I nodded acknowledgement of the compliment, but did not invite conversation and stepped over the threshold, aware he was following rather more closely than politeness allowed.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he went on, and something about the way his eyes roved over me quashed my natural tendency towards friendliness.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t see that being any business of yours,’ I returned, quite coolly, but he just laughed.

  ‘Quite right too. My apologies, I can tell you’re a lady of breeding.’

  ‘Accepted, and thank you.’

  Martin had looked up as the bell on the door rang, and warmth crossed his rather pale face. ‘Evie!’

  ‘Martin, how lovely to see you,’ I said, and crossed to him. We weren’t close friends, but the fact that he had been part of mine and Will’s secret made it natural that I should stretch across the counter to give him a quick hug and a peck on the cheek.

  ‘How’s Will?’ was his first question.

  I gestured behind me. ‘Perhaps you’d like to serve this customer first, and then we’ll have the chance for a proper chat.’

  ‘Good, I’d like that.’ Martin looked past me at the only other customer; the man who’d followed me in. ‘Can I help you, sir?’

  ‘No thanks, I’m just looking,’ the man replied, and began peering at the trays in the window.

  I swallowed an irritated grunt, and turned back to Martin. ‘Will’s in reserve at the moment, I was hoping he’d be able to come with me on leave, but they have an awful lot of work on. Digging, at the moment, mostly.’

  ‘Where?’ It was the stranger who asked, and I snapped my mouth shut over an automatic response, and my need to share what Will was doing just for the excuse to talk about him. This man was far too nosy for my liking, and we’d all seen the warnings about spies.

  ‘I’m sure you realise I can’t tell you that,’ I said, then added rather pointedly, ‘Are you on leave at the moment?’

  ‘I am,’ he said. ‘Been at the Front from the off. France.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’ He smiled again, showing very good teeth and clear, untroubled, hazel eyes. He really was quite handsome, but something about him irked me, and I instinctively mistrusted him; had he really been out where Will was, the chances were those eyes would not be shining quite so brightly. Even if he was stationed a long way back from the lines, and had managed to avoid being involved in any direct action, it would still have left its mark.

  ‘Are you from Breckenhall, Mr…?’

  ‘No. So, tell me, Miss, is Will your husband?’

  I thought he had something of a cheek asking so personal a question when he had rudely cut my casually polite one short, so I ignored him and turned back to Martin. ‘How are things with you, is
business going well?’

  ‘As well as you could expect,’ he said with a little shrug. We talked for a little while longer, and all the time the stranger hovered nearby, taking advantage of any lull in the conversation to ask something about me, or about Will – questions I either side-stepped or ignored completely. Unnerved by the whole thing, I wondered whether I ought to tell someone. If Uncle Jack were here, he’d tell me what to do. Mother might know how I could reach him, and I’d send another plea for Lizzy too; I was still convinced he would know of some way to help her.

  After a short while another customer came in, and I said goodbye to Martin, promising to pass on his greetings to Mary, and to Will the next time I wrote. To my relief the good-looking stranger stayed behind in the shop, and I only hoped Martin would adopt my stance and ignore those probing questions. I went straight into the café, where I enjoyed my first really good cup of tea for ages, before I noticed the evening had already begun to make its appearance and I ought to begin my walk back. This afternoon it had seemed a wonderful idea, to walk instead of being driven, but now I was regretting it as I came out of the café into the cool air and shivered. I drew my coat tighter about myself, then looked up at the sky.

  ‘Can I drive you somewhere?’

  I turned, already disliking that voice, and shook my head. ‘No, thank you. I’ll enjoy the walk.’

  The young man looked at me consideringly, his head tilted slightly, that smile still playing about his lips. ‘You’ve taken a strong dislike to me, haven’t you, Miss Creswell?’

  I frowned. ‘I suppose Martin told you my name?’

  ‘No, the lady who came in just before you left. She was terribly impressed to see you, I gather you’re one of the family from the big manor house?’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, and went to walk past him, but he caught at my arm.

  ‘Miss Creswell, listen. I’m sorry I’ve made myself objectionable by my questions. I understand you’re a lady of high standing, and I’d like you to accept my apology in the spirit with which it’s expressed.’