Easterleigh Hall at War

by Margaret Graham

  Sarah turned her round. ‘Never say that, you have been so tired, you have seen so much and it takes time to heal, but the fear just has to be faced.’

  They ate breakfast at the central table, and then Grace rose and found Matron in her office. She knocked. ‘Enter,’ she was told.

  She did so, standing before the dreadnought’s desk like a naughty schoolgirl. ‘I’m ready,’ she said. Matron stood, and what passed for a smile crossed her face. ‘Of course you are. Sister Newsome will find you a uniform. Welcome back, VAD Manton.’

  That was it, so easy, but it wouldn’t be, Grace knew that. This was the first step, though.

  Sister Newsome was in the acute ward, Veronica too. She saw them exchange a look, and a smile. Grace said, ‘I’ve been Evie’d, haven’t I?’

  Veronica stroked her face. ‘You look wonderful. Well done.’

  Sarah told Grace that evening, after her shift, when she came to the conservatory to clear her bed now that she was moving to the nurses’ quarters, that Evie had bribed them with a pre-war sponge cake, made with sugar, butter and jam, to create the moment. They would have done it anyway, but hadn’t known quite how to, until Evie made her suggestion. They shared the cake with Grace.

  In July 1918 the Germans’ successful counter-attack faltered. The French, British and US forces were advancing, and the injured were pouring into Easterleigh Hall. Millie was silent, preoccupied, and read letters she had received from Heine repeatedly, but what could Evie do about that? Grace was working, wearing her cap, bustling, busy, and no one admitted to thinking about their men overseas. What was the point?

  At the end of July Evie received a black-edged envelope in an unfamiliar hand. She took it to the pantry, away from the splash of onions sautéing on the range for the onion savoury. In the cool and quiet she opened the vellum envelope. Inside was a black-edged letter and she did not want to read another word, but she did. It was from the mother of Captain Neave, telling Evie that ‘dearest John’ had been killed at Ypres. Evie had to read the letter twice because it was too much, just too much. She could still see him laughing at Lady Margaret’s wedding, and being naughty with Harry beneath the cedar tree. Lovely, lovely John. So many injured and dead, so many had passed through their doors to go out into the maelstrom again in France, Turkey, Africa, on the land, sea and air . . . She wiped her face, dried it on her sleeve. ‘We’re so lucky, our son’s body was found and has been buried. He was the most perfect of boys, the most perfect of men. My dear, he spoke of you often, your humour, your loyalty, your hard work, your dreams that you shared with him under that cedar tree he talked of so much. It was the image he took with him to dark places . . .

  ‘He made provision in his will for you. I will be hearing the details from his solicitor, but it will be a sum sufficient for the purchase of an hotel. May it bring you the peace you deserve, when or if our world finally rights itself. I would be honoured to be a guest, in his place.

  ‘I pray that news of your family and loved ones is good.

  ‘His loving mother, Mavis Neave’

  Evie pushed the letter into her pocket and proceeded to visit her patients above stairs, smiling, always smiling, and then descended to make egg custard for one young woman who had been blinded in an ammunition explosion and craved the food her mother used to make. She left the list of other requests for Mrs Moore. ‘Just for a moment,’ she whispered, her throat too full for other words, and immediately Mrs Moore and her swollen hands pushed her from the kitchen.

  She walked steadily to the cedar tree, picking up Harry Travers from the hives, for the two men had shared each other’s struggles as they fought to recover. In the shelter of the tree she showed Harry the letter, and held him as he cried and stumbled over his words, talking of the plans he and John had made to travel the Continent, and then the Empire. ‘When will this bastard war end, Evie? When?’ he sobbed. Neither of them mentioned the money. It was of no importance because it seemed impossible that the war would ever end, and if it did, what on earth would be left?

  Chapter 14

  Easterleigh Hall, September 1918

  A CONVOY ROLLED up the drive and discharged its usual cargo, including more and more Australians and South Africans who fought like tigers, so Jack said in his letters. The marquee was still on the lawn, serving as a triage area, but extra huts had been erected to take convalescents. These were not put up in rows, as Dr Nicholls felt they were too much like barracks, but higgledy-piggledy beyond the formal gardens, the walled nursery and the orchard. Richard hurried along with his clipboard, a pencil behind his ear, much as Sergeant Steve Samuels had done. Steve was now serving at a casualty clearing station at the Front and Ver grumbled to Evie, as she watched her husband lick his pencil, standing next to Matron on the steps, ‘Steve just left his bad habits behind. My prim and proper husband licking a pencil, for heaven’s sake, what would his mother say?’

  Evie hugged her. ‘The days when he cared what anyone said are long gone. Oh, except you, of course. He most certainly cares what you say.’

  Ver hugged her back. ‘No, not what I say, but he’d rather cross the battlefield than cross you or Matron. Why call a spade a mere shovel when you can call it a . . .’

  Evie put a hand over her friend’s mouth. ‘Now, now, that’s not the language of a lady, you’ve spent too much time around these soldiers.’

  They laughed. Matron turned and smiled. Evie grinned back, because Matron smiled properly these days, such were the advances as the Anglo-French forces pursued the Germans as they withdrew from Amiens to the Hindenburg Line. Elsewhere the US was co-ordinating with the French and British, and sheer force of numbers must surely win the day. So had said Richard, but somehow for Evie there was no winning or losing any more. There was just the numbness of existing in this outrageous folly, and the laughter of friends making life bearable, even enjoyable. ‘How can that be?’ murmured Evie.

  Ver turned to her, her blonde hair shining in the late summer sun. ‘How can what be?’

  ‘Oh nothing, just thinking. Is Mart’s mum managing with James and Penny, and how is Lady Margaret really, now that lovely man is dead?’

  ‘Now that women over thirty, with property, have the vote she seems to have perked up. I do rather fear that now Granville is gone, she might revert to Lady Margaret, the horselike pain in the neck.’

  Evie laughed. She had thought the same thing herself at the Major’s funeral, after Lady Margaret referred to ‘servants’, not the wartime term ‘staff’, taking up the back rows only. Major Granville would have insisted on the ‘staff’ intermingling. She knew it had rankled with Veronica, but would it continue to do so after the war, or would everyone revert to type? But that was too far away, and not to be even thought of in the face of this suffering.

  She watched as a soldier was taken from triage on a stretcher. The two orderlies carrying him came up the steps past them. The bandage covering his head was blood-stained. Flies buzzed. That was the sound of war, thought Evie, the flies which buzzed and droned in the ambulances as they arrived, so many flies, and came into the Hall with them. She flapped them away as she walked by the side of his stretcher. ‘Well, bonny lad, you’re safe now. We’ve a Matron who is more like a dreadnought, and nurses who sometimes resemble angels, and at other times naughty children. It works well.’

  The boy’s grimy hand, with torn nails and ripped knuckles, was lifting, seeking hers. ‘I’d kill for a bloody fag, bonny lass. Probably have, in fact.’

  She always kept some Woodbines in her apron pocket, and matches. The orderly nodded. ‘Aye, Evie, he’s allowed.’ They were now in the great hall where there was organised chaos. Sister Newsome would not have any unnecessary noise on her shift, though, or she’d have what was left of everyone’s guts for garters, or so she never tired of telling the injured, who laughed, if they could bear the pain, or smiled if they could not. Evie lit a cigarette for the lad, placed it in his mouth, touched his face, and repeated, ‘You’re safe now. I’
ll come to see you later.’

  Grace hurried through the hall, waving to her, back in harness with more energy than she’d had for a year or two, she’d told Evie. Her hair was arranged in a low bun, allowed by Matron, to cover the absence of ‘one of the party’ as she so delicately called Agatha, the missing ear. It was a name given by a concussed corporal, loudly, because he had been deafened and had trouble with volume. He’d learn.

  Evie went through the baize door, and set off down the stairs. As she did so she passed Millie standing truculently at the entrance lobby to the small storeroom which Mr Harvey had seconded as the silver pantry, after the electrification. The larger one, with the safe, now housed the extra linen. He was only parted from his keys while he slept, so he assured everyone. Evie stopped. ‘Is there a problem, Millie?’

  ‘Yes, I was on my way to see you. How dare you speak to Captain Richard about the laundry without talking to me first?’ Evie shook her head. ‘Well, now you’re seeing me, and what did I say that upset you?’ she replied.

  Millie flounced before her, down the stairs, her hands deep into her pockets, her shoulders hunched in fury. Evie wanted to help her on her way with a carefully placed foot, but refrained. ‘What do you feel I’ve done wrong, Millie?’ she asked again.

  ‘I heard you telling Captain Richard that the laundry could provide more sheets, more quickly, with winter coming, if washing lines were put up under a covered area. Do you think we haven’t enough to do?’

  They were walking along the central corridor. Evie said, ‘I don’t think it would mean you have to do more, it’s just that the drying would be easier.’

  Polly stuck her head out of the laundry, her hair lank from the steam. ‘There you are, Millie. We’ve a load more to boil, so some of this needs to go out. You said you’d do it.’

  ‘So I will.’ Millie pushed the girl aside and swept into the laundry. Polly raised her eyebrows at Evie. ‘It’s since that damned Hun’s been confined to the camp after the hives were pushed over. Been in solitary too, she told us, after he gave that guard a pasting when he heard the Germans were on the run from that salient.’ She closed the door and returned to the cauldrons, as the kitchen staff called the huge coppers. Evie started to walk towards Richard’s office, then realised she’d forgotten to bring some figures that Ron Simmons needed.

  She turned back, rubbing her arms. So much was still the same, but so much seemed to be different with the change in fortunes along the front line. The POWs were restless, uneasy. Yesterday Evie had told some of them as they helped in the herb garden, ‘Please, don’t worry. You’ll be returning home, we won’t hurt you.’

  Joachim had replied, ‘All this suffering, just for defeat.’

  Carl had held out her sage. ‘Your blockade has made my mother starving hungry. She is ill, she said in her letter. Ill, do you hear?’

  She’d taken the sage from Carl, who was from Berlin. ‘But it’s been a disaster brought about by your Kaiser, by all those in power I suppose, paid for by us all.’

  She’d thought he’d strike her, so quickly had he raised his hand, shouting, ‘My Kaiser is without blame.’ Tom, a guard, had stepped forward. ‘Best be on your way, Evie.’

  Carl called after her, ‘You would not have won, you English Fräulein, if America had not saved your pretty lives.’

  Evie had not replied, she’d been too shaken. Carl, a student in London before the war, had always been so gentle, so relieved to be out of the fighting. But as she thought about it now, entering the comfort of her kitchen, she wondered if perhaps he was feeling guilty. The prisoners would be going home, all of them. They hadn’t fought, they were alive, those that survived captivity. Yes, perhaps it was guilt they felt, and the thought clarified something in her mind, but before she could grasp it she saw Millie hurrying along the corridor to the back steps which led up into the yard, her basket laden high with sheets, and she sighed.

  Perhaps the girl was right, and she was a busybody. There was always so much to do, and plan. Well, she couldn’t apologise to Carl, because he’d been confined to camp after yesterday, but Millie was Jack’s wife, for good or ill. She’d follow and talk to her, but then she saw Mrs Moore trying to heave out a large dish of parsnip pie, perked up with pigeon, with hands obscenely swollen from the rheumatism that had been steadily reappearing. Evie hurried to help her, asking one of the volunteers to remove the other pies from the two larger ranges.

  Mrs Moore straightened, and slipped on to her stool, resting her hands in her lap. She had not once reached for the gin bottle as she used to do. Would she when the war was over?

  Later that day Evie used her half-hour break to join her mam in the children’s nursery in the garage, where there was space to really romp about and create mayhem. They played the quieter games in the indoor nursery beyond Captain Richard’s office. Susan Forbes was sitting on an upturned barrel made more comfortable by a cushion. Mart’s mam wheeled Margaret’s daughter Penny into the yard and sat on another barrel, while James played with the volunteers’ children. Well, they had begun by volunteering, but Richard had insisted, after a bequest from one of his parents’ friends, that they were paid.

  As Evie joined her mam, leaning against an upright at her side, she wondered if she should mention the money that Captain Neave had left her, and which she had banked in Gosforn. But it was tempting fate. Something could go wrong. The war could never end.

  Susan put her knitting down, another pair of khaki socks, reached up and took her hand. ‘Tired, bonny lass?’

  ‘Aye Mam, a bit. How are the children? Have you heard from Mart, Mrs Dore?’ Evie always enjoyed her visits to the noisy nursery. The garage’s service pit had been covered over with huge wooden planks. A small playhouse had been built by two orderlies, painted by Evie and her mother and placed over it. Several of the convalescents had carved cars and created doll’s houses, with soft furnishings made by whoever felt like it.

  They talked of nothing in particular, and it was good. As she was leaving, her mam said, ‘That Millie must have turned over a new leaf, Evie pet. Perhaps it’s because the war might be ending. She often comes in and just watches our Tim when he’s here after school, as though she’s just discovered him. He’s a bright lad for six, you know, Evie. Knows his tables, or the two and three times at the least. She was here not an hour ago, with cleaning materials. She’s been sorting the attic up top over the last week or two in her off time.’ She pointed up to the boarded area where Geoff the chauffeur had slept. ‘She meant well, but the first two days she brushed all the dust down through the cracks and we had to take the children into the stables to look at the pigs. Pall after a while, pigs do. They smell, the bairns said, and they weren’t wrong.’

  They all laughed. Evie stared at the ladder leading to the attic. ‘This I’ve got to see. What is she expecting it to be used for?’

  Her mam picked up young Lucy from Hawton, whose mother helped Evie in the kitchen, her desserts a miracle of economy, while Evie climbed the ladder and peered into the space. The floor was clean, and so were the windows. There were sacks neatly stacked at one end, and the bed had been turned on its side. ‘She said it would make a good area for a train set for the older ones,’ Susan called up, standing with Mrs Dore at the foot of the ladder, James clinging to her skirt.

  Evie called down, ‘Well, I’m blowed, good girl Millie. We’d have to secure the hatch somehow, and hold that thought, ladies, because I’ll be keeping my great hatch of a mouth shut from now on, where Millie’s concerned. I speak before I think, perhaps.’

  She climbed back down the ladder, almost into her mother’s arms. Susan’s hug was warm and comforting as she said, ‘No you don’t. It’s just that no one knows quite what to say about anything, any more. It’s so strange, all of it. We don’t even know what to think, or to feel, or hope.’

  When Evie went in, she joined Millie in the laundry, putting her arm round her shoulder, but Millie pulled away. Evie said, ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t ha
ve interfered, and it’s grand that you’re sorting out the attic for the bairns. Tim will love it.’

  Millie started to fold the sheets that had been freshly ironed, her back to Evie, ‘I’ve always been a worker, Evie, and it’s time you realised you’re not the only one in this war. It’s hard for us all, really hard. There are so many things to decide.’

  Evie sighed. ‘Well, you decided well with the attic. It could all be over very soon. Our men will be back, we can all get on with our lives.’

  ‘Oh, go back to work, Evie. I don’t need your blathering.’

  It was a freezing October and Auberon clung to the side of the shell hole, digging in his toes, hearing Jack shouting into his ear, ‘I’m getting too old for this.’

  Mart on Auberon’s right yelled above the artillery, and machine-gun fire, and snipers, ‘Stop bloody grumbling. You’re in lovely cold mud, on your way to sliding down into stinking water at the bottom, with heaven knows what bits of which people are floating in it. What could be better?’ Zip zip. Crump. Rat-a-tat.

  Charlie had stabbed into the side with his rifle barrel. ‘I’ve found a branch,’ he yelled from the other side of Jack, nodding at his rifle. Auberon shouted, ‘Tell him why it’s not a good idea to do that, will you, Jacko.’ He checked his watch. They should be following on behind the creeping barrage, not hiding in here. ‘Damned Hun machine gun’s got us pinned, Don’t they know when they’re beaten?’ Zip zip. Crump. Rat-a-tat.

  Mart yelled, ‘Well, obviously they’re not beaten. It’s our wishful thinking, sir.’

  Jack was shouting over at Charlie, ‘Not a good idea, Corporal, if you’re thinking of saving your life by firing the damn rifle. Now all that’ll happen is that a lug of mud will block it, it’ll explode and you’ll go up in a puff of smoke.’ Zip zip, rat-a-tat. Crump. Debris flew over them, into the water. Aub heard the splashes.