The Carpenter's Children

by Maggie Bennett

  But his visit to Yeomans’ farm drew a blank, and he returned to report that he had not even seen Mary who was working outside.

  ‘Mrs Yeomans said she misses Mary’s help in the house, because she’s needed just about every hour of the day on the farm,’ he said ruefully. ‘Rounding up the cows and helping Dick with milking, seeing to the pigs, setting the horses to the plough – the girl must be whacked out. Since old Yeomans lost his farmhands to the army, he’s had to manage with her and Dick, all the hours God made. Anyway, I left a message for her about Sunday, but Mrs Yeomans said she doubts it, she hardly catches sight o’ Mary these days.’

  Mrs Munday shrugged. ‘It sounds to me as if Mary’s just making an excuse. It’s too bad of her; after all Eddie went through with her mother, you’d think she’d be glad to see her father happy again. Anyway, nobody can say we haven’t tried. Is there anybody else we can ask? The Birds? Their boys are—’

  But Tom needed to have some time to talk with Eddie, and didn’t want a third man intruding. ‘What about Miss Daniells? She was a very good teacher to them.’

  Violet agreed, thinking that if she and Annie Cooper turned out to have little in common, the schoolmistress’s presence would make things easier.

  And so it proved. The scones, home-made jam and fruit cake were highly praised, and little Freddie toddled from one to another, happy to be the centre of attention. When the ladies settled down to a freshly brewed pot of tea, Tom asked Eddie to come outside to look at the garden, not that there was much to see on a chilly late autumn afternoon with fallen leaves lying everywhere. They took refuge in the tool shed where they shook their heads over the scarcity of work.

  ‘There aren’t many jobs goin’ these days, Tom. People are leavin’ their paintin’ and decoratin’ till after the war.’

  ‘Same here,’ replied Tom. ‘And I see old Harry Hutchinson has lost his bricklayer and carpenter. I reckon he’d take us on like a shot, but I can’t say I’d fancy working for him, would you?’

  ‘Nor any other builder,’ agreed Eddie. ‘Harry’ll be in the same stalemate as us, people aren’t looking for new house-building while this show’s on, and Lord knows when it’ll be over.’ He glanced quickly at Tom as he spoke, remembering that there had been no word from Ernest. The newspapers were guarded in their reports of the war in Turkey, but it was becoming clear that the second strike on the Gallipoli Peninsula was no more successful than the first. The weather was said to be hampering the movement of troops, with storms and heavy rain.

  Tom nodded, having followed Eddie’s train of thought. ‘We’re not the only family desperate for news and at the same time dreading it,’ he said sombrely. ‘Lady Neville’s going through it, too, with her son Cedric out there, and not a word from him since the day he embarked.’

  ‘An’ there’s goin’ to be a lot more sent out afore long, Tom. This National Register’s got the names of all men between eighteen and forty-one, and now they’ve got to sign on and say that they’re willin’ to join up if asked. I see the king has added his two pennyworth, askin’ for more recruits from men of all classes, single ones first, unless they’re in reserved occupations, like coal minin’ or in one o’ these factories turnin’ out guns an’ shells an’ whatnot.’

  ‘What would you call a reserved occupation, Eddie? I mean, what about clergymen? And the farmers, surely we need them to provide food. How d’you think Dick Yeomans’ll get out of it? I hear he slogs from dawn to dusk, seven days a week.’

  This touched a nerve, as Tom had expected it might. Eddie frowned. ‘That’s right, he does, and so does my Mary. She’s out in all weathers, seein’ to the livestock an’ any other job ol’ Yeomans can find for her. And o’ course she’s always side by side with young Dick, so they’re bound to get close. I see her as a farmer’s wife, Tom, an’ a damn’ good one – not that it makes any difference what I think.’

  Tom smiled, remembering Eddie’s earlier indignation over the farmer’s son’s behaviour. ‘Well, I just hope that Dick’s occupation turns out to be reserved. I wouldn’t wish the Yeomanses to go through what Violet and I…’

  He stopped speaking as his throat constricted and his eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Oh, Eddie, if I’d only appreciated my boy’s good points, instead o’ criticising him all the time! And now I’d give my right arm to see him home again, and…oh, Eddie, I have to pretend to Violet that I’m sure he’s all right, but it wears me out, hiding my fear and dread from my wife! God help the pair of us if…’

  Eddie Cooper had put a hand on Tom’s shoulder, and now his arm encircled his friend. ‘All right, Tom, all right, you don’t have to pretend to me,’ he said quietly. ‘All right, ol’ man, let it out. You know I’d never tell a soul.’

  And so Tom Munday leant on his friend’s shoulder, and experienced a kind of relief in so doing.

  Some twenty minutes later, as the October dusk began to fall, the two men returned to the house through the kitchen door, where Tom dipped a dishcloth in cold water and dabbed at his face, standing in front of the shaving mirror.

  ‘That’s better! Now practise a grin,’ said Eddie, deliberately adopting a light-hearted tone. ‘The women won’t notice a thing.’

  ‘Where on earth have you two been?’ demanded Violet Munday as they re-entered the parlour. ‘What do you think of them, Annie? Men accuse us of chattering, but when they get together, they have twice as much to say!’

  ‘They call it putting the world to rights,’ agreed Mrs Cooper, smiling down at little Freddie who had climbed up onto her lap. Miss Daniells also smiled at the child, but said nothing; something about the men’s subdued manner suggested to her that their conversation had amounted to a good deal more than lofty male pronouncements on the state of the world.

  That night Tom Munday put his arms around his wife and whispered, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What for?’ she asked.

  ‘For asking those four to tea with us. It meant a lot to me.’

  ‘I can’t think why,’ she answered with mock reproach. ‘You spent half your time outside with Eddie Cooper.’

  At the farm the lamps were lit, and little Billy had been put to bed by his mother, who then joined her husband at supper in the kitchen, after which they retired early to bed, both having got colds. Bread and cheese and half a pigeon pie were left on the kitchen table, covered with a cloth. It was past nine o’clock when Dick and Mary came in, tired after attending the farrowing of a sow and putting the eight piglets to take their first feed from their mother. They hung up their jackets on a row of hooks in the scullery, and left their boots there. When they saw the repast on the table, Dick decided to open a celebratory bottle of apple cider from the pantry.

  Mary Cooper, pretty and plump, stood with her back to the last glowing embers in the range oven, and watched as Dick drew the cork from the bottle which foamed all over his hand; he hastily poured it into two mugs from the dresser.

  ‘Another long day, Mary.’

  ‘But a good one, Dick.’

  And then for the first time they melted into each other’s arms, as naturally as breathing, their tiredness forgotten; their supper would have to wait.

  December, 1915

  Rain, rain, torrential rain; nothing and nowhere was dry. Trenches overflowed, washing dead bodies over the parapet and opening shallow graves; No Man’s Land was awash with mud and blood and worse. Horses’ hooves and men’s boots sank inches deep as they moved. Lieutenant Neville wondered how long it would be before what remained of his company were all gone; with no clean water and nothing to eat but biscuits, tinned bully beef and tinned apricot jam with no bread to spread it on, it was no wonder that they were succumbing to agonising dysentery and the freezing cold, more likely to kill them than enemy fire.

  After twenty-five days on the line, a record for what it was worth, Neville had fifteen men left out of a company of fifty, and in poor shape, wet and shivering. The MO had died in the night, poor devil, and his body had been d
ragged out of the latrines with that of another unconscious man lying in his own stinking excrement. Neville thought he vaguely knew the man from North Camp, and ordered that he be carried down to the beach and put on a lighter to take him out to the hospital ship anchored in Suvla Bay. ‘He’s a goner for sure,’ the escort had commented. ‘They won’t want him on their ship in that state.’

  Neville shivered. Thank God he still had Lance Corporal Pascoe who could be relied upon to do whatever was needed, whether digging deeper trenches, patrolling the front line, grabbing an hour’s so-called rest or trying to sort out a fair ration from the depleted stores for each man who could still tolerate food. Pascoe would have to take charge if he, Neville, were struck down. God in heaven, what a waste…what a shambles it had all been, from the ill-fated landing on the Peninsula back in April, when huge numbers of Australian and New Zealand forces had gone ashore at Gaba Tepe, further down the coast, to create a diversion from the British invasion, and later to link up and together push the Turks back to Constantinople. That had been the plan, and it had sounded feasible; but nobody had reckoned the Turks to be such ferocious warriors, with the added advantage of fighting on their own terrain; nobody had foreseen the administrative bungling, the lack of liaison, the shortage of ammunition; the Dominion troops had eventually taken the hill at Gaba Tepe, but their numbers had been decimated, so it could hardly be called a victory. The second landing in August had met with no better success, and conditions were made even worse by the abominable weather; even the Turks had been flooded out.

  A messenger appeared at Neville’s side, with an envelope from the battle headquarters. Neville took it, opened it and stared at the single page; at first he could hardly take in what it conveyed, which was that all Allied personnel were to be withdrawn from the Peninsula, and that those at Suvla Bay, his own company, would be evacuated on the night of December 18th, only three days away; those at Helles would go in early January. Neville momentarily closed his eyes, then wrote a brief note for the messenger to take back, to say the message had been received.

  ‘Look at this, Pascoe,’ he said to the pale, mud-spattered figure who had just come into the dugout. ‘They say we’re to retreat, so whoever’s still breathing and standing up on the day appointed will take himself down to the beach and get on the lighter to the hospital ship.’

  ‘I hear you, sir,’ was all that the lance corporal replied. Since his best mate had been dismissed as a goner, his dreams of escaping from this place had become just that – dreams. And not likely to come true.

  ‘I’ll assign you to a rearguard action, Pascoe, with a couple of others to be decided. I’ll lead the rest of the men down, and see them onto the lighter, then wait for you and the others, to see you all safely on board.’

  ‘There’ll be a fair bit of farewell shelling from Johnny Turk, sir.’

  ‘We’ll have nothing to lose, Pascoe.’

  Just hope I’ll live to see it, thought the lance corporal, as an ominous pain stabbed him in the belly.

  It was later observed that the Gallipoli fiasco, which had caused such disastrous loss of life to both British and Dominion troops, achieved an evacuation with almost no losses, though there were a number of deaths on the hospital ship and at the military hospital on Malta to which the sick and injured had been taken.

  Pascoe stirred as he awoke, but did not open his eyes. He wanted to go on sleeping in this wonderfully comfortable bed, so dry and warm. He began to be aware of the sounds around him: the coughs, snuffles and grunts, the rattle of trolleys and clatter of bowls and basins; he could hear women’s voices speaking in low tones. The strong smell of carbolic disinfectant was a sweet, clean scent compared to the stench of a battlefield, and he gratefully breathed deeply as he drifted in and out of sleep…

  ‘Pascoe!’ whispered an eager voice. ‘I say, Pascoe old chap, it’s good to see you here! How’re the old guts – any better?’

  Pascoe opened his eyes slowly and looked at this young man who had been his latest company commander. ‘Lieutenant Neville,’ he whispered. ‘W-where?’

  ‘Where? We’ve landed up in hospital on Malta, old chap, and I wouldn’t change it for the Ritz. Can I get you anything? Water? Cigarette? They let you smoke in here.’

  Pascoe’s eyes were now wide open. ‘Corporal M-Munday,’ he muttered. ‘Can you tell me anything? Is he dead from dysentery, like the MO?’

  ‘No, he’s been very bad with dysentery and dehydration, but he’s here, in another ward. He—’

  ‘Let me see him. Let me go to him, sir.’ Pascoe struggled to sit up.

  ‘You can’t see him just yet, old chap. It’s been a close-run thing, and he’s not out of the woods yet. You’ll have to wait till—’

  But Pascoe had already thrust one leg out of bed, and now heaved out the other to stand beside it on the cold tiled floor, swaying slightly. ‘Let me lean on your arm, sir, and take me to him. If he’s alive, I must see him.’

  Neville was about to tell him not to be a fool, when an orderly came over to see what the fuss was about. Neville tried to apologise, but the orderly saw Pascoe’s desperation and reckoned that to bend the rules might be the best course. He went to find a wheelchair, but changed his mind and came back with a stretcher trolley.

  ‘This could get me into trouble, old son, but if it calms you down… Would you care to push the stretcher, Lieutenant? D’you know where Munday is?’

  ‘I’ll find him,’ said Neville, and obediently trundled Pascoe out of the ward and down a long corridor to another ward. It was quieter than the one they had left: men lay silently in their beds, weakened by the ravages of gastro-enteritis. Pascoe’s glance darted round the ward, alighting on an emaciated figure whose body hardly showed beneath the bedclothes. His eyes were closed, and his face was ghostly pale.

  ‘There he is – that’s him over there,’ said Pascoe, pointing to the man. The trolley drew up alongside the bed.

  ‘Be careful, Pascoe – don’t alarm him,’ warned Neville, and Pascoe nodded.

  He stretched out a hand and lightly laid a forefinger on the man’s forehead.

  ‘Ernest,’ he said softly. ‘It’s me, Aaron. It’s all right, we’re in hospital, we’re together again, Ernest. We’re alive.’

  Ernest Munday turned his head slowly and fixed hollow eyes on the face of his friend. A smile of pure joy lit up his face. His prayer had been answered after all.

  CHAPTER NINE

  April, 1916

  ‘I’m tellin’ yer, it’s a jolly good life, Grace! – and right up your street, ye’d be top o’ the bill in no time!’ enthused Madge Fraser, on a visit to her sister in Everham. Sunday was her day off, as it was for Grace Munday who had cycled over to see her, having told her parents that she would be unable to attend church with them and Ernest because she was meeting a friend.

  ‘Do we know this girl?’ her mother had asked sharply. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Marjorie Fraser, Mum, we met while she lived in Everham.’

  ‘Fraser?’ repeated her father. ‘Wasn’t she the other girl at the Railway Hotel?’

  ‘Yes, Dad, but she’s moved to London now, and works as a chambermaid at the Ritz Hotel,’ replied Grace, not quite meeting the eyes of either parent. ‘She’s visiting her sister this weekend, and asked if I’d like to go over. And seeing that I’ve got Sunday off, I said I would. You don’t mind, do you?’

  Neither parent looked pleased, but they reluctantly agreed to forego the pleasure of her company this Sunday.

  ‘As long as you don’t go tootling off to London at a time like this, my girl. Your mother and I have enough worry over Isabel living in constant danger from those Zeppelins.’

  ‘And make sure you call in and see your brother on the way back,’ added her mother. ‘He’s out with Aaron just now, and he’s very upset that Aaron’s going back to the fighting next month, in France this time.’

  ‘Oh, poor Ernest! Poor both!’ exclaimed Grace in genuine concern. ‘D’you th
ink Ernest’ll ever have to go back, after he’s been so ill?’

  ‘He’s regaining strength day by day,’ began Tom Munday, but his wife broke in. ‘I’m sure that Ernest won’t ever be called back into the army!’ she said emphatically. ‘Not after all he’s been through. The very idea! He was at death’s door.’

  Tom said nothing, but wished that he could be as sure. ‘Enjoy your day with your friend, my girl, and call in on your way back.’

  Grace pedalled off, a slightly guilty smile on her face as she reflected on what an old darling her father was. At least she’d told the truth about visiting Madge, even if she’d fibbed a little over Madge’s new life in London: she was not a chambermaid, but a chorus girl at Dolly’s, one of the new licensed music halls that had sprung up in London since the war began, as if to cock a snook at the Zeppelins.

  ‘A couple o’ girls share lodgin’s with me, but we could make room for one more little’un!’ Madge continued gaily. ‘It’s the best life I’ve ever ’ad, Grace! The ol’ Railway ’Otel was nothin’ compared to this – London’s full o’ soldiers on leave, wantin’ to forget about the war till they ’as to go back to it. They just flock in to see the show, twice nightly an’ a good chance o’ bein’ invited out arterwards – there’s these ’ere night clubs all over the place, champagne flowin’ like water. An’ fellers to dance wiv – an’ they all got money to chuck around – I tell yer, Grace, I never ’ad as much fun before – and no ol’ Tubby Tupman to spoil it!’

  ‘It sounds good, Madge,’ said Grace, ‘and I’d be tempted to come and join you, only…well, I’ve got a good life at Hassett Manor, looking after the wounded as they recover, you see. It makes me feel that I’m doing my bit for the war effort.’