A Rose In Flanders Fields

by Terri Nixon

  ‘Were you injured anywhere else, other than your jaw?’ I asked him.

  He touched a hand to his head and shrugged. ‘A small wound. The nurses cleaned it up and said it would soon heal.’

  ‘Are you in pain?’ The way he looked at me answered louder than any words might have done. But it was not physical injury that was causing it; he was broken, confused and lost, and terrified he would remain that way for the rest of his life. ‘We’re going to help you,’ I said gently, and stood up. This time when I took his hand he didn’t pull away. He glanced past me at Archie, but he didn’t look as guilty as he had when we’d been out in the open and might have been seen by anyone. I was aware of Archie rising silently to his feet and slipping out of the room. For the first time in over a year, my husband and I were alone together. I had to try.

  ‘Do you understand we’re married?’

  He nodded. ‘Archie told me. So how is it that I can’t remember?’ The sudden wretchedness in his voice brought tears to the back of my throat. ‘I know we were…that we used to meet. That we loved each other.’

  I shouldn’t push him, yet I couldn’t help it. ‘Do you love me still?’ But it was too much. He dropped my hand, and pain sliced through me. ‘Will?’

  I wished I had managed to choke that question back, but it was too late, and he turned away, his arms folded tight across his chest. ‘I know I love you,’ he said with quiet desperation, ‘and that I’ve loved you beyond reason since we met, but I can’t…’ his voice dropped until it was barely a whisper, ‘I can’t seem to feel it.’

  ‘It will come back, I know it. It has to, one day,’ I managed, trying to convince myself as much as him.

  He looked back at me and his eyes glistened. ‘I could take hold of you now, and swear to never leave your side again. I could do it, and you would want to believe it, but it would just be words, to make things easier for us both. No matter how much I would wish it, it wouldn’t have come from my heart.’ He shook his head, bewildered. ‘I don’t understand it, Evie.’

  ‘Well, you called me Evie, that’s a good start,’ I said, and was rewarded by his first, faint smile. ‘Come on up to the room, and try to get some rest before dinner.’

  ‘I don’t think I can eat dinner.’

  ‘Then sleep. You need it.’ I held out my hand, and although he didn’t take it, he followed me out into the hall, looking around him with cautious, guilty interest, as if he were still the tradesman and he’d taken a wrong turn.

  He hesitated at the foot of the main staircase, but I waited patiently, and eventually he gave me an apologetic half-smile and nodded for me to lead the way to the room Mother had set aside for us. Once inside he looked at the bed, carefully made up by Peters, and with two sets of night-clothes folded neatly on the pillow.

  He cleared his throat, and his hands fussed mindlessly with his buttons for a moment before falling away. ‘I’m not sure about…I don’t –’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I lied. Part of me had hoped the forced intimacy of sharing a bed might re-ignite some feeling, even if we simply lay side by side and talked. But he wouldn’t so much as remove his jacket in front of me. ‘I’ll sleep in my old room,’ I said, and tried to smile but felt my mouth trembling. ‘Will, listen to me: we’re going to find you again.’

  ‘I hope so,’ he said, and his eyes met mine at last, and stayed there. In them I read hope and despair in equal measure. I reached up to touch his face, and he didn’t move away but neither did he relax or touch mine in return.

  ‘Sleep now,’ I said, ‘no one will disturb you, I promise.’

  Archie smiled a greeting as I went down for dinner, and for the first time I had the opportunity to look at him properly. His hair was thick and very dark, almost black, and he had quite arresting grey eyes; his height and build might have made him seem imposing, but that gentleness was still evident, and I realised it had not simply been brought into play for Will’s sake after all. There was something familiar in the lines of his face, too, that I couldn’t place, but Boxy and I had met many of the officers stationed nearby, often fleetingly during duties or in the town, so perhaps that was where I’d seen him.

  Then I remembered: he had been the one to tell me about Lizzy. He had introduced himself then, and I had steeled myself for the worst news about Will – but the shock of hearing it was Lizzy who lay close to death had been so intense it had wiped away everything else. I had probably been unforgiveably rude to him, but I honestly couldn’t remember. I apologised now, just in case, but he brushed it away.

  ‘You were upset and frightened. Really, don’t give it a thought, your manners were unimpeachable.’

  I doubted it, given the circumstances, but I smiled with gratitude and took my place opposite him, and next to Mother, who had sat at the head since Father died.

  During the meal we talked of Will, of course, and while he lay upstairs, hopefully sleeping away some of the terror and exhaustion, we learned how Archie had found the farm from Uncle Jack’s co-ordinates.

  ‘It was a shabby wee place, but dry, and the farmer’s wife had been bringing some kind of food out to him whenever she could, although it wasn’t really enough. They couldn’t bring him into the house; if they were caught, by either side, harbouring a deserter…’ He caught my stricken expression and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Evie, but that’s the way they’d have looked at it.’

  ‘I know. I just hate to hear it.’

  ‘Go on,’ Mother said. ‘How did Jack discover where he was?’

  Archie took a sip of wine, and I could see him choosing his words carefully. ‘To begin with he had the co-ordinates from Wingfield’s notebook. That was down to Lizzy, of course.’

  ‘Lizzy?’ Mother looked at me with growing puzzlement but before I could say anything Archie went on.

  ‘Aye, I gather she’s quite the brave wee thing. I’m glad to know she’s improving.’

  Mother frowned at me. ‘But didn’t you say Lizzy was at Shrewford for an interview? What on earth was she doing with Samuel’s notebook?’

  ‘It’s…there’s more to it,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you, I promise. But I want to hear about Will now.’ Truthfully, I had no idea how to explain the news about Jack and Lizzy; if she had baulked at my own marriage how would she react to the startling news that her oldest, most trusted friend had fallen in love with her scullery maid, a girl half his age? And eventually, of course, there was the risk that the rest of it, the truth about my father, would come out, and where would that leave trusted friendship then?

  ‘Will was in a bad way,’ Archie said. ‘He wasn’t badly hurt, the cut on his head had all but healed, it must have been a clean one, or the farmer’s wife had tended it. But he was starving, and couldn’t risk leaving the barn to find anything in the way of food.’

  ‘If he had no memory of why he was there, how did he know he should stay put?’ Mother wanted to know. I wondered at her tone; did she believe him to have been lying?

  ‘All he knew was what the woman told him,’ Archie explained, ‘and that was that he must stay hidden. He was confused, traumatised, and too weak to leave anyway.’

  ‘Thank God for the farmer’s wife,’ I murmured.

  Archie nodded. ‘She did her best, aye, but Wingfield had already found out where he was. He has…’ he broke off and glanced at Mother, ‘contacts in the region.’ Spies, my mind supplied, in Uncle Jack’s voice. I wondered if Archie was one too, and that was why Jack had turned to him for help. ‘As soon as he’d heard Will was missing,’ Archie went on, ‘he put them to work. They actually found him pretty quickly, but, because Wingfield had his own reasons for not wanting him brought out, they made the farmer’s wife work for them. She was to keep Will there until someone came to pick him up, and no matter what, she wasn’t to tell anyone. Not the English, not the Germans, not even the French. Only Wingfield’s men.’

  My voice hardened. ‘So she actually betrayed him?’

  ‘You have to think of it from her
side,’ Archie said gently. ‘She’d have been terrified for her life, and that of her family. And she kept him alive, you must remember that. I can only hope she was spared when Wingfield found out, which I presume he has by now.’

  Guilt set in for my swift judgement of the nameless, faceless woman. ‘How did you manage to get him out without being seen?’

  ‘And how did you know to go in the first place?’ Mother added, and I had the feeling she wanted to know more about Lizzy’s role, but Archie had sensed my wish to keep that part of it quiet, at least for the time being.

  ‘All I had to go on was a telegram, with the co-ordinates disguised as a series of telephone numbers, and the message: Urgent: remove WD. Take picture of E.’ He shook his head. ‘Not a lot to go on. But I did already know about Will being missing, I’d been helping to look for him since September.’

  I looked at him, startled. ‘Had you?’

  ‘I wasn’t able to cover as much ground as I’d have liked, getting leave hasn’t been easy. And I’d never met the lad, of course, but when I heard about him I did what I could.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I mumbled. I wished I’d known before; the looks of pity on people’s faces as they recognised my refusal to accept the worst had stung, but maybe if I’d known this earnest young officer had also been asking questions I might have felt less lonely.

  ‘I went back to your ambulance base,’ he went on, ‘and Barbara gave me a picture of you. It wasn’t a good one, but it was clear enough, of the two of you when you first joined up, before you cut your hair.’

  ‘What did he say when you showed it to him?’ But I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know.

  Archie spoke gently, knowing his words would hurt. ‘He told me you were the daughter of the house, but that he didn’t know you personally, and I was mistaken. Even then, he was trying to protect you.’

  I felt a wrenching pain for the golden time when all this had seemed such fun, an exciting secret and impossibly romantic. ‘And when you told him you knew the truth, and that we were married?’

  ‘At first he denied it outright, and he meant it. Then, as he accepted there were gaps in his life he couldn’t account for, he knew he had little choice but to believe what I told him.’

  I nodded. ‘Well, he knows it now, but knowing isn’t really enough, is it? Not if he’s forgotten how to feel.’ I heard tears thickening my voice, and took a hurried gulp of water. There was a silence at the table, and then Mother touched my hand before turning back to Archie.

  ‘Was it dangerous? Going out to that farm alone?’

  ‘It was behind our own lines, so that was something. But doing it unseen posed a lot of problems, I admit. The rain was appalling, which actually helped in one way, although it made the going slow. There are patrols out, and I wasn’t sure if Samuel had posted anyone to guard the farm itself, but I suppose he had no reason to believe Will would be found. He didn’t know the notebook had been stolen, after all.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel like stealing,’ I put in, a little sharply, ‘I don’t think it’s fair to lay that at Lizzy’s feet.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry. Poor choice of words.’

  ‘How did Lizzy get it?’ Mother persisted.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘What’s important is that Uncle Jack knew what to do. And it’s thanks to all three of them that Will’s upstairs now, and not d…dead or facing a firing squad.’

  Mother reached across the table and squeezed my hand again. ‘We’re so glad he’s home safe, darling.’ She smiled, and it seemed less of an effort now. ‘You must tell him to treat Oaklands as his home.’

  I didn’t want to tell her we had decided to keep to separate beds, not after she had clearly swallowed every instinct she possessed to accept our status as man and wife, so I smiled gratefully and said nothing, and after dinner I went down to the kitchen. The servants were enjoying a lively discussion over their supper, but they all rose to their feet immediately, which made me feel strange; it had been very different world where I had expected just this kind of reaction, and it had never sat well with me even then. I gestured for them all to sit, and smiled at Peters.

  ‘I’m going to make up my old room, Alice,’ I said. ‘Will needs to sleep tonight, and I’ll probably keep him awake.’

  She stood up again. ‘I’ll do it, Miss Cres…Mrs Davies.’

  ‘No, I’m quite happy to do it, I just wanted to tell you, and to ask if you wouldn’t mind bringing me a cup of cocoa there in about an hour?’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Alice, things are different now,’ I reminded her gently, and she nodded.

  ‘As you wish, I’ll bring the nightcap in an hour.’

  ‘Who is attending my husband and Captain Buchanan?’

  ‘Mr Dodsworth, Miss.’

  I turned to the butler. ‘Please see to it that they are both left to sleep as long as they wish tomorrow.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And thank you all, for your help and understanding,’ I added, before turning away and stumbling up the little dark corridor to the main staircase. It wasn’t until I reached the privacy of my own room, where the memories assaulted me at every glance, that I gave in to the despair that had been trying to break free from the moment I had seen Will at the station. The beautiful, vibrant young man I had known, now hunched and silent, his eyes empty, his hands constantly moving, seeking a grasp on something that remained forever out of his reach. And I didn’t know if he would ever find it again.

  Chapter Ten

  It was two days after Mary and Martin’s wedding that his memory came back. We had stood together watching our friends become man and wife, and later we had been with Lizzy and Jack when they had, in typically oblique fashion, let us know they too planned to marry, and yet, amidst all this warmth and love Will still refused to let me touch him in public. He had been home since November and it was now mid-December, Archie had gone back to Belgium, where he was joining the company near us in Dixmude, and although I had begun to sense an increasingly discomforting intensity in his behaviour towards me, I missed his company; we had become good friends. He had also been a buffer between my husband and me. I could never be frightened of Will, but he was quicker to anger than I’d ever known him, and slower to calm. It took most of my energy these days trying to read his mood, and I was still exhausted, and growing more so even as he grew physically stronger. His nervous hand-movements had grown less frequent, and now if he felt himself doing it he consciously stopped himself.

  Mary’s wedding had been a beautiful occasion, the town draped in softly falling snow, the little church full of well-wishers, and only the absence of a generation of fighting-age men reminded us that there was another world out there, and that it was a bleak and terrifying one. Here, people hugged one another and chatted and, caught up in everything, I had slipped my hand through Will’s arm. For a moment it remained there, but then he had stepped away, effectively removing it, and I had just smiled.

  I seemed to spend a lot of time doing that, nowadays. Lizzy’s romantic news had even brought a fleeting smile to Will’s face too, he had known her almost as long as he had known me and they were extremely fond of one another. Uncle Jack looked so handsome and proud, holding her close without fear of what anyone looking on might think, and it hurt when my own husband would not let me do the same.

  Still, I smiled.

  When it happened there was no flashing moment of brilliance, no bump to the head, no recognition of an old photo or diary, or even the sight of his own carved wooden creations from another time and place. Another life. Will simply woke up, the week before Christmas, and remembered. We still slept in separate rooms, but I had taken to coming into his room with a cup of tea, rather than have him snap at Dodsworth should his waking mood not be a good one. This morning he was still sleeping and I sat on the bed watching him. I could feel a little smile on my face despite everything; in sleep he lost all the tense anxiety he had brought home with him, and was my warm, swe
et Lord William again; his face smoothed out, his hair flopping untidily across his brow, one arm flung over his head in utter abandon. I hadn’t known him sleep so deeply, nor clearly so well, in any of the admittedly too-few nights we had spent together.

  The eiderdown was pushed down around his hips, and I watched the light movement of his chest beneath his pyjamas as he breathed, and instinctively placed my hand gently over his heart; he didn’t jerk awake at my touch, he merely opened his eyes and I knew, without a word passing between us, that he was back.

  A second later he was sitting upright, his eyes wide and horrified. Then he clutched at his stomach and turned away, and my skin broke into goose bumps at the anguished cry that echoed around the room. Frightened, I reached out to touch his back but he shrugged my hand away, doubling over as he retched, his shoulders shaking. When he finally stilled, I touched him again and this time he turned back, breathing hard, and seized me in a painful embrace. I felt his chest hitch, and, with my face buried in the hollow of his shoulder I just wrapped my arms around him and held him, silently willing him towards calm.

  ‘It was…they were…’ His voice choked off and I soothed him with wordless, meaningless sounds, my hands on his back feeling him tremble in every muscle. He was so much physically stronger now that it was hard to believe he could be shattered all over again by remembrance, but I knew then that I couldn’t ask him what he had seen that had driven him away from his unit and out of his mind.

  We remained locked together for a long time, then Will’s eyes found mine and their bright blue colour was deepened by emotions I had despaired of ever seeing again.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve been –’

  ‘Hush,’ I said. ‘There’s time, we can talk all you want, but not now. And you have no reason to be sorry.’