by S. C. Howe
Tom had kept walking. Passing through Cleobury Mortimer, he bought food, water, a first class stamp and a postcard of the common, and went to write to Joss. But his mind went blank and he blinked. In the end, he just wrote: On my way back, T-T’, and, pushing it in the post box, felt he had let Joss down, once again.
Sweat trickled down his temples and into his neck, so he shouldered off his mariner’s coat, which began to smell, and was marked with stone dust and stains. His trousers had a brown sheen over the cloth. His underclothes felt sticky. He hadn’t been able to shave for days and his chin and jaw were dark with stubble. His eyes were sunken through lack of sleep. Still he walked. Walked into the night. A rising moon glinted off pools surrounded by sedge and reeds and looked oddly menacing. His mind swam. From the dark, the faces of the dead hung, gaping at him. The terrified faces of men he had had to leave, as he chose one over another, saw the begging eyes staring out from the night, and the inhuman filth they had been forced to live in. Why had he been made to choose? It was cruel. Inhuman. Unbearable. It was there, all waiting for him. He shivered, felt the heat of fever soaking into him. It was his reckoning time now. There was no escape. Looking down the valley he saw yellow lights kindling across the void; that was home, it was familiar and safe, but it was far away. Too far. As he walked, the fever deepened into delirium. A frost descended silently, cooling his boiling forehead. He kept walking and was aware at some stage of walking through woodland; dark looming shapes of ancient oaks rising up suddenly, secret pools through which he splashed regardless. When the dark eased into daylight, he lay down in a survival hole he scooped out of a friable sandstone bank – war taught you some useful things – and he slept as a weak late winter sun crawling over him and gently warmed him up. He shivered and slept fitfully, had to crawl out suddenly and squat as diarrhoea ripped through him, wrenching his insides. Then he lay back down. More hours passed, and, as the cold of night began to grip, he stood up, stinking and sweating, and walked along a woodland path that was becoming familiar to him now, like a remembered phrase through the chaos in his mind. If he could just get through each hour. The moon was lighting him, like night-time sunshine, so everything was strangely bright in monochrome. Sitting down on the frost-whitened path, he saw the absurdity of what he was doing. He needed to be back at the farm, with Joss, not enacting some overblown nightmare. So back he was going. Reaching forward he pulled at some of the frozen vegetation and forced it into his mouth. The cold burnt his palate but he snapped a bramble, and, stripping the frosted leaves, chewed them, his hands shaking feebly. Thinking of Joss and knowing he had to live, he found acorns on the floor and made himself eat them to stay alive.
A freezing mist oozed out from the low-lying marshes on the edge of Kidderminster, suspended motionless over skeletal willow and alders, like frozen ghosts. Visibility shrank with each step, as though some spell was being worked. Then silence, the feeling of absolute stillness and isolation, the strange silence of newly fallen snow but without the snow. It was as though this silence, like a vapour, was soaking through every part of Tom’s mind. In the distance came the sound of a church bell chiming the hour, some night-time hour. He managed to get across a canal lock by lying across the top and shuffling over; he could not trust his balance. Getting to his feet, he started walking, unsteadily but still moving. If he walked a hundred steps at a time, if he kept his mind on numbers and moved his legs with each digit, he would get there. Never had numbers helped him so much. Through the delirium that thought made him laugh. Then he vomited by the side of the path and lay in an uprooted tree hole near the marshes, his stomach clenching uselessly on bile as he sweated, having to crawl out several times to relieve himself in a miasma. He lay, in and out of consciousness, vaguely aware of a thaw, of a greenish blur growing in front of his eyes, but it was like peering through agitated water. Then he was too weak to move at all. He closed his eyes and eventually sank slowly into unconsciousness.
Voices floated in the air. They were far off, but also curiously close to hand.
‘I wouldn’t. I’d get some in town. Anyhow, you don’t know whose feet they’ve been on...What’s that!’
It was light. There were sounds of heavy footsteps coming through the undergrowth and a large pointed muzzle poked into his face. Then a voice; like the sound of a long-lost world, like the jingling of bells from ancient memory.
‘It’s a tramp by the look of it.’ Barratt stepped back, wafting his hand in front him.
Fingers were held to Tom’s neck. ‘He’s still alive.’ Tom was pulled sideways. ‘Bloody ‘ell mate, you’re a bit ripe,’ came Sykes’ voice.
Barratt pushed a large black greyhound away from the bundle and sank to his knees, staring at the face.
‘Fielder?’ The horror in Barratt’s voice made Tom open his eyes. They stared in mutual shock. ‘What the hell’s happened to you?’ Barratt snapped, trying not to gag. ‘Help me get him up...and get that bloody dog tied up, will you!’ he ordered as the greyhound bucked and span, then lifted his leg over the nearest tree.
‘His name is Whistle,’ said Sykes, hauling Tom up, oblivious it seemed to the state he was in. Humping him onto his back, he looked at Barratt.
‘Back to the cave, or the hospital?’ he asked.
Barratt thought quickly. ‘The cave’s nearest, but we need to get a message to John Deerman. You remember they gave us a lift back last summer to the cave in a cart.’
Sykes whistled, the greyhound barked. ‘You mean this is one of them?’
Barratt nodded. They plodded on, Sykes talking away, seemingly unaware of his load.
Barratt scratched his head. ‘We need to get Alice’s father to him. He’s a doctor. We need to get him cleaned up.’
‘Well. I’m boiling up a vat of water for myself, but old stinky ‘ere can have it, I suppose.’
‘His name is Thomas Fielder,’ Barratt snapped. ‘And he was one of my best stretcher- bearers.’
‘Well at the moment mate, he’s just puked down my neck, so sorry if I’m not being polite.’
Tom remained unconscious when Sykes dropped him in front of the cave where it was sunny, and surprisingly warm. With absolutely no hesitation he peeled Tom’s clothes off, tossed them into the fire and set to work cleaning him up with pales of warm water and carbolic soap as the greyhound frolicked in the meadow below the cave and span in circles. Barratt brought towels and a set of Sykes’ clothes over, looking away as Fielder’s naked body emerged from the crud. Bucket after bucket was used, and lastly Sykes washed Fielder’s hair in an easy, practised way.
‘What exactly did you do in the war, Sykes?’ Barratt asked, lighting a cigarette.
‘Worked as an orderly in a morgue for a while,’ Sykes said casually. ‘Dealt with far worse than this, I can tell you.’
Barratt winced and walked away.
‘There we go,’ said Sykes, pulling the clean set of clothes onto Fielder and then drying his hair. ‘And when you’re feeling a bit better we’ll give you a shave, ‘ow about that then?’
Tom opened his eyes and immediately vomited to one side.
‘Oh bugger,’ said Sykes, and, hauling Tom up, placed him on his own mattress by the fire and covered him over with several blankets.
‘I need to get Alice,’ Barratt repeated. ‘She’ll know what to do.’ With that, he slithered down the bank and jogged over to the track.
Sykes sat by the cave entrance, smoking a cigarette quietly, looking out over the meadow down the bank at the clouds skeining over the light winter’s sky. A couple of blackbirds were singing loudly close by and the mildness in the air made Sykes smile. Spring was coming in. Whistle was laying on his blanket by the fire, fast asleep, four paws pointing skyward.
The sound of concerned voices made Sykes refocus. Alice and a tall, older middle-aged man, who Sykes assumed was her father, peered in the cave. Sykes got to his feet, wiped his hand on his waistcoat as Alice introduced him to her father.
‘Do you have a lamp?
’ asked Dr Cole. ‘I need to have a good look at the patient.’
Sykes lit an oil lamp hanging inside the cave entrance. As Dr Cole looked over Tom, Sykes stood with Alice. There was an uncomfortable silence.
‘Where’s the old man, then?’ Sykes asked, not looking at her.
Alice turned a little towards him; he could feel her frown of enquiry.
‘Barratt,’ he said.
‘Oh... Charles thought he should go over to Heathend and tell John Deerman. Father doesn’t want Tom to go to the hospital as it’s rife with influenza patients; he thinks it would be better if Tom was nursed at home.’
Sykes pictured himself mimicking her well-spoken voice, but instead he merely nodded.
‘Father says we’ll take Tom back in the car,’ Alice said, trying to engage him in further conversation. ‘People always do so much better in their own home.’
‘Hmm.’
At that moment, Whistle loped out of the cave, and, after peeing up a tree, came over and greeted Alice in his indiscriminately friendly way: big, silly canine grin on his jet-black face.
‘Oh, he likes anyone,’ said Sykes, and, unusually for him, realised how that could be misinterpreted. Alice was stroking Whistle; it was obvious to Sykes she liked dogs. ‘I got him from a man that used to race him.’
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ said Alice, stooping in front of the dog that was leaning his head against her shoulder.
‘Yeah, they usually bash them one on the head,’ said Sykes. Alice winced. ‘But I got to him before they did it.’
‘What’s his name?’ Alice continued stolidly.
‘Whistle. Whis for short.’ As if on cue, Whistle stared forward, his ears held front-out comically, then lunged down the bank and sped in long, graceful arcs around the meadow. They laughed, Sykes almost, in spite of himself.
Dr Cole emerged holding the lamp. ‘Gastroenteritis,’ he said. ‘May sound strange but it’s a relief – I was concerned we’d have another influenza case. Alice, would you sit with him while we get the car further in?’
Sykes followed the doctor down the bank. Alice went into the cave with the lamp.
‘You’re not hallucinating,’ Alice said, sitting down by Tom. ‘I’m really not the lady with the lamp.’
Tom tried to sit upright. Alice restrained him. Her dark eyes peering at him – he looked back at her, at her wide eyes, her carved symmetrical mouth, at her classical aquiline nose, a young face, old in contemplation. Tom felt shame spreading over him like sweat.
‘Would you like a drink of water?’ she asked gently.
He nodded. She poured some from the bottle Sykes had pointed out and held him expertly as he drank, holding him from behind his back.
‘I worked in the hospital during the war,’ she explained, helping him into a sitting position and draping another blanket over him.
‘I feel as though I’ve been asleep for ages,’ Tom said, peering around the cave. ‘Where am I?’
‘A cave at Honeybourne, the Wolverley side of Kidderminster.’
‘How did I get here?’
‘Charles and a friend of his found you on the path towards Kidderminster town,’ Alice told him. But didn’t tell him of Barratt’s alarm: “I don’t know what on earth has happened to him,” Charles had said, “but it looks as if he’s been in the wars. Totally out of character. And the way we found him, he must never know. Poor chap’s self-conscious enough as it is.”
Alice boiled water for tea and helped Tom to drink it. As he revived, he seemed to recover great globs of memory.
‘I’ve really made a mess of things,’ he said at length. Felt his throat tighten, felt his eyes blear into a panic of emotion.
Alice knelt beside him. ‘I’m sure you haven’t,’ she said.
Tom looked away. How on earth could he say anything to this lovely young woman?
‘I acted in a deplorable way,’ he said. ‘And I can’t forgive myself.’
‘Was anyone else actually hurt? Physically?’ she asked.
‘No, but I know I’ve hurt the person I love most.’
‘Do you think keeping away is going to make things better?’
‘Not now. But what I did and what happened to me – I can’t… Well, it’s as though nothing can be like it was before. I did something unforgiveable.’
Alice gambled on the information. ‘I gave up once,’ she said. Tom searched her face in the lamplight. He hesitated, knew this revelation was going to cost her. ‘My fiancé and I argued on his last leave from the Front,’ she continued. ‘Gerald went back soon after and was killed within days of arriving in France. I was convinced that his death was my fault; that he’d deliberately not taken care because we’d argued so badly.’
‘So what happened?’ Tom asked and wished the minute he had spoken that he hadn’t.
‘I eventually did what I should have done straight away. I wrote to his CO and asked if he could tell me about the circumstances of Gerry’s death. The fact was a stray shell hit their part of the line and Gerry and several others were blown up. It was another of those awful random deaths at the Front, but certainly nothing to do with anyone not taking care...What I’m trying to say Tom is that it took me over a year to allow myself to find this out... Don’t punish yourself, or John.’
Tom looked at her in surprise. Went to speak, but closed his mouth. He’d revealed himself to Roger Deerman, exposed that about his nature that he believed should have been known only to Joss. Deerman had probably superseded that incident with some other emotionless encounter. And as for that woman, well, he had just been another of her several clients that day. By continuing to run in despair, Tom thought, the only person he was hurting was Joss, and that was the very last thing he wanted.
‘Whatever you think you’ve done,’ Alice said. ‘Try and see if there is another way of looking at it, if there is another way through. And do it soon, don’t waste a year of your life as I did.’
Tom held his fingers up to his cheeks, and softly kneaded his face. There was something in the movement that touched Alice; it was though he was just realising he didn’t have anything to hide. She could sense his deep gentleness of character, sense his shyness, how much he loved. Sensed all this without being told anything. He looked at her; she was sitting with her legs out straight, as children do when they are with friends and are unselfconscious. So he sat, trying out the feeling of forgiveness. They talked then, over mugs of tea as the greyhound slept and snored, and the nausea, that had so racked him, receded. Tom told her about life at the Front, then life at the farm; Alice told him how she had worked out of the despair and guilt she had felt after Gerry’s death. How she had seen Barratt for the first time and knew they would be able to talk. She told him about their talks after meetings, of the caretaker rattling his keys, and Tom had laughed, and Alice saw the light come back into him, and, with it, the return of hope.
‘I’m going to let you into a piece of our information...Charles and I will be parents by the late summer or early autumn,’ she said at last.
‘Congratulations!’ he said and she sat up straight, as though relieved and surprised by his reaction.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘However, I’ve yet to tell my parents, who will not be pleased with me, at all. Of course, Charles and I will marry soon – I don’t think a child out of wedlock would be a good idea, even in these topsy-turvy times. Charles and I could run off and get married, and then tell our parents, but that would upset them terribly. So I’m going to have to summon up the courage to tell them very soon, certainly before I start showing, and Charles is going to have to tell his parents. Wish us luck!’
‘They’ll understand, they’ll support you.’
Alice looked at Tom. ‘And from what I gather, John is probably the kindest and most understanding man on earth. But you already know that, Tom.’
Tom looked at her and coloured slightly. To relieve the awkwardness, Alice kicked her foot in the air and laughed.
‘Do you know what is
rather embarrassing?’ she said. ‘That I’m giving out leaflets describing ways to avoid unplanned pregnancies, just as Charles and I didn’t!’ Her hand flew to her mouth and she went scarlet. ‘Oh I am sorry – you didn’t want to know that! I’m sorry, it’s being a nurse for all these years!’