Alice's Girls

by Julia Stoneham

  Under the envelope were dozens of newspaper clippings. They were yellowed and fragile. All bore dates of the early years of the First World War. Beneath these was a school exercise book in which, on page after page, were columns of names. ‘Beresford, James.’ Christopher read. ‘Johnson, Patrick, killed in action. Howard, Rupert, missing. Richardson, Norman (Prefect). Samuels, Ronald (Head of House), missing, presumed killed in action.’ Christopher realised that what he was looking at was a list of the boys at his father’s school who had died or been reported missing, which, it transpired, amounted to the same thing, in the trenches of Mons, Ypres, Marne and Neuve Chapelle. Some of the clippings were of the faded images of incredibly young men, all wearing the uniforms of officers and staring blankly, as though into their own particular infinity, at the lens of the camera.

  The buff envelope was unsealed. Inside were approximately fifty letters, a sheaf of the reports of some sort of official military enquiry featuring the name of Medical Orderly Roger Glover Bayliss and an assortment of medical certificates and character references. On top of this was an envelope addressed, in Roger’s hand, to Christopher.

  Dear Chris,

  Before you read all this and draw your own conclusions from it, I should explain, or try to explain, why this miserable story has been kept from you for so long. I think I believed, as my own parents, your grandparents did, that it was for the best if as few people as possible knew about it and that those who did know should be encouraged to put it out of their minds. They, and through them, I, was (and still to a great extent am), bitterly ashamed and guilt-ridden, particularly since I survived what happened and poor Rob did not.

  The letter went on to describe the sequence of events which led to the two schoolboys, obsessed with the situation in France, enlisting, despite being under age, as medical orderlies and becoming so traumatised by the horrors they witnessed in the trenches that, exhausted and terrified, they deserted their posts and fled away from the lines where they had been sent to retrieve the injured and the dead. As they ran, Roger’s account continued, his companion was shot dead, while he, court-martialled, convicted of desertion and about to face a firing squad, was discovered to be under age, pronounced of unsound mind and repatriated.

  Your grandparents never admitted to anyone the truth of what had happened and I was forbidden to speak of it. I believe their intentions were good, and for a long time, even after they had both gone, I continued to maintain their method of dealing with it. In so doing I became a person who, as a father, was unable to respond when you yourself experienced your own setback. It may seem strange to you that it has taken my friendship with Mrs Todd to enable me to understand something that has for so long underpinned my life in what I now recognise as a dangerous and destructive way. I do not know how much my treatment of you has influenced your decision to emigrate but if I have made you feel that I do not recognise your heroic service in the RAF or comprehend and understand what you went through when your breakdown overtook you, I want you to know that, on both scores, I value and respect you and I deeply regret my treatment of you for which I have no excuses beyond the explanation above of how these things came about. I am happy that you have found such a delightful partner in Georgina and I trust that your work in New Zealand will prove rewarding. I will not try to persuade you not to go but I want you to know that if, at any point in the years to come, you should feel inclined to return to Post Stone valley, it is, my dear boy, yours.

  ‘What’s all this?’ Georgina asked, arriving back to find Christopher sitting at the table on which was spread the contents of his father’s box. ‘Chris?’ she asked again, more seriously, catching his expression as he turned to face her.

  He took her through the contents of the box to the point where the shell-shocked and traumatised boy was returned to his home and sworn, by his embarrassed parents, to secrecy.

  ‘That’s outrageous!’ she breathed. ‘How could they do that?’ Her reaction was, she realised, similar to what she had felt when Roger himself had responded so coldly to Christopher’s breakdown two years previously. ‘Your poor father! To go through that … And then be told to shut up about it! And he must have felt so guilty! About his friend, I mean! My God, Chris! No wonder he …’ She paused, staring at the blurred, monochrome photographs of the young officers whose names were undoubtedly listed in the wavering columns in Roger’s exercise book. ‘Alice was right!’ she announced. ‘She was always sure there had to be a reason for your father’s treatment of you when you cracked up! And this is it! It explains everything! We must tell Alice!’

  ‘She’s still in London.’

  ‘Then we must tell her the minute she gets back!’ Georgina grew suddenly thoughtful. ‘But I wonder … I just wonder … whether she knew!’

  ‘How could she know?’

  Georgina considered this question for a moment and then shrugged. ‘She has been a bit … I don’t know … guarded … lately. Perhaps …’ she hesitated. ‘Perhaps he told her.’

  ‘But if he had, she would have told you, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Not if he asked her not to. Or even if she just felt he wouldn’t want her to.’ They sat for some time considering the ramifications of the evidence in front of them, their minds exploring its implications. Georgina was the first to speak.

  ‘Well …’ she breathed, eventually, ‘you’d better go and see him, hadn’t you?’

  ‘Why?’ he said.

  ‘Why? What d’you mean “why”?’ Her eyes scanned his face and she shook her head uncomprehendingly.

  ‘OK …’ he said hesitantly, sensing her urgency. ‘But not straight away, Georgie. I mean … I don’t want to embarrass him! What would I say? How would I …?’

  ‘Oh, my God, darling!’ She stepped away from him. ‘You’re as bad as he is! You don’t have to say anything! Everything is said!’ She laid her hands, palms down, on the papers on the table. ‘Just go to him! Tell him …’

  ‘Tell him what?’

  ‘Anything, Chris! That you’re glad you know all this! That you understand! That you love him!’

  ‘Love him? Love Pa?’

  ‘Yes! You fool!’ She was close to laughing at him.

  ‘But I don’t … Do I?’

  ‘Of course you do! Why d’you think it upset you when he was so peculiar about your crack-up? And because we all love our pas!’

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘Yes, we do! Idiot! However impossible they are!’

  ‘Can’t I sleep on it?’ he begged her.

  ‘Not with me, you can’t!’ They were both laughing. She went to him, found his mouth with hers and kissed him.

  Chapter Eight

  As her train cleared the outskirts of Reading, Alice became acutely conscious of the greens and golds of the summer countryside. She had enjoyed her days in London. Her prospective employers had been enthusiastic and welcoming. Their accountants had taken her through the contract they were anxious for her to sign and she had managed to conceal from them her astonishment at the generosity of the fees they were offering. She and Ruth had been to a matinee one afternoon and to a concert at the Wigmore Hall on the following evening, during which she had managed to put out of her mind her concerns about Roger Bayliss and about Edward John’s probably negative reaction to the prospect of a move to London. Now, with the Berkshire countryside sliding past, she felt herself responding to the soft shapes of the distant hills, the acres of waving barley and ripening wheat, the cattle, hock-deep in shallow streams, all under a serene sky in which a scatter of small clouds seemed, because of the motion of the train, to hang suspended.

  The envelope which reached her by post on the following morning was from her solicitor. It contained details of her divorce settlement. The modest assets accumulated over the twelve years of her marriage to James Todd had been divided into two approximately equal shares. To enable James to adequately support his new family, his brother Richard, a financially successful bachelor, had undertaken the cost of Edward J
ohn’s schooling. Relieved of this expense, Alice could, if she chose, afford to replace the home of which the bombing of London and her failed marriage had deprived her.

  With only five land girls still in residence, although more would soon arrive as temporary help during the harvest, Alice’s workload was reduced. Rose, potentially fully occupied by her tea room, now spent very little time at Lower Post Stone, leaving Alice, after her visit to London and her glimpse into her possible future, alone with her deliberations while she cooked and cleaned for her reduced household.

  Across the yard Dave Crocker stood, that morning, with a group of men who were wearing jodhpurs and carrying clipboards. Roger Bayliss had agreed to sublet one of the Lower Post Stone barns to a local riding school who needed extra stabling. Some alterations to the layout of the stalls were to be made at the tenant’s expense and it was this arrangement which was, that day, under discussion, Dave Crocker representing his employer. When the men had gone he dropped in on Alice, half a dozen warm brown eggs in his huge, weather-beaten hands. He accepted her offer of a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table, sipping, his heavy forearms resting on its worn pine surface, his eyes moving round the familiar space.

  ‘How are things with you, Dave?’ Alice asked him. ‘Are you glad to be back home or do you miss your colleagues? The army must have been quite an adventure, after being brought up here.’

  ‘Well … it were different, Mrs Todd, that’s for sure,’ he said, and sat in silence while the clock ticked the passing seconds away.

  ‘Is there any news of Hester?’ Alice asked gently, hoping he wouldn’t feel she was intruding into a sensitive area. ‘I mean … is she still with her parents? Or has she gone to—?’

  ‘To America?’ he interrupted. ‘No. She be with ’er folks, still.’ He grinned briefly and drained his cup. ‘I ’asn’t seen nothin’ of ’er in a long while but she knows where I be and she knows ’ow I feels about ’er!’ He sighed and continued to let his eyes roam the familiar kitchen. ‘Nice to see this ol’ place in good shape again.’

  ‘I wonder what’ll happen to it when the hostel is closed,’ Alice mused. ‘I suppose it will be left to go to rack and ruin again …’

  ‘No ’t won’t,’ Dave said. ‘Mr Bayliss wants it kep’ up. ’E was on about un on’y t’other day. ’E says as it’s to be maintained, like. An ’e’s put me in charge of keepin’ it in good order. I’m to take a look round, inside and out, every week ’e says, and keep a fire in, when the weather be cold or damp.’

  ‘But why?’ Alice wondered aloud, remembering the near derelict state of the old building which had been unoccupied for a decade before being utilised, three years previously, as a hostel.

  ‘I asked meself the same question,’ Dave said, ‘and I reckon ’tis ’cos ’e ’opes as young Christopher an’ ’is misses ’ll come and live ’ere when they gets back from that New Zealand they’re off to!’

  Alice had a second visitor that day.

  ‘The most amazing thing!’ Georgina announced, having tracked down Alice, who was in one of the hostel bedrooms where she had captured a spider in her duster and was releasing it out of the tiny window. ‘Christopher’s father brought him a box filled with documents about something that happened to him in the First World War! I know! I know!’ she said emphatically. ‘You’re going to say “but he was too young”! That was the trouble – well, part of it! He almost got shot as a deserter, Alice.’ Georgina glanced at the warden and then continued, ‘But the worst thing was that his parents were ashamed of him. Ashamed! Can you imagine? And when he was brought home – just think what a state he would have been in – they hushed the whole thing up. Pretended it had never happened. He was forbidden to talk about it to them or anyone. Can you believe it?’ Alice could and did. ‘No wonder he was so weird to Chris when he cracked up! He’s never told a soul, all his life! Until now, that is. We think that’s because he wanted to explain to Chris why he treated him so oddly when his breakdown was happening. In the box he brought, on top of all the documents, there was a letter from him to Chris. It said he felt Chris might have got the wrong impression and he didn’t want him to go overseas as the result of a misunderstanding. At the end of the letter he says he doesn’t want to dissuade us from going, but I think, maybe, he hopes that one day …’

  ‘You’ll come back?’

  ‘He doesn’t say that in so many words, but …’

  ‘How do you feel, really feel, about going, Georgie?’

  ‘I do rather hate the thought of not being here. Both of us do. I mean … this is home. For Chris and me. For my folks it’s not so bad. We’ve got Lionel, and presumably he’ll take over from my father one day. But the Baylisses have owned and farmed Post Stone valley since parish records began.’ Georgina sat in silence for a while. Then she said, ‘What would you do, Alice? If you were Chris and me?’ Alice laughed and shook her head.

  ‘At this moment, Georgie, I’m having enough trouble trying to sort out my own complicated life! You have to deal with yours, my dear. You and Christopher.’ She paused, watching Georgina accept her words. ‘And I try never to give advice,’ she added, smiling. ‘You know that.’

  ‘No. You never do. But you’re very good at pointing out the things that need consideration. So couldn’t you just do that? Please?’

  ‘I don’t think I need to,’ Alice said, sliding her duster across the narrow window sill. ‘But I am glad that Roger has told Chris about what happened to him. Very glad indeed.’ She was conscious of Georgina’s scrutiny as she shook the duster out into the quiet afternoon air, pulled the window to and fastened it. They sat down, facing one another, each on one of the two narrow single beds.

  Alice’s lack of curiosity regarding the details of Roger’s experience gave credence to Georgina’s suspicion that Alice possessed more of the facts of it than she was admitting.

  ‘I think you knew, Alice,’ Georgina said thoughtfully. ‘I think you knew about it and you couldn’t tell me or Chris because Roger had made you promise not to!’

  ‘On my honour, Georgie,’ Alice answered, truthfully, ‘I never promised him anything and he never asked me to.’

  Georgina was tempted to pursue this. It would have been easy to suggest that it was only because Roger trusted Alice not to abuse his confidence that he had sensed that it was unnecessary for him to ask her not to breach it. Whether it was her respect for Alice, her affection for her, or simply a measure of her own developing maturity that made Georgina hold her tongue, she did not know, but she smiled and after a moment altered the focus of the conversation by complimenting Alice on her powers of perception.

  ‘You always said there had to be a reason for the way Mr Bayliss treated Christopher and you were right! Perhaps …’ she hesitated, anxious not to offend Alice by prying into her feelings. ‘Perhaps knowing about that and understanding him better will … make things easier between you two? I mean … you do like him, don’t you.’ As often happened with Georgina, this was a statement, not a question, and Alice smiled at her as she continued to speak, asking, ingenuously, ‘Do you think you are on the rebound, Alice? From your marriage, I mean? Is that why …?’ Georgina let the question die and there was a pause before Alice responded to it.

  ‘Well, I suppose I am – not exactly on the rebound but certainly still reacting to losing James,’ she said. ‘I never imagined, when we were first married, and then when Edward John was born, that things could just … fall apart like that. I suppose no one ever does believe that their marriage will fail. I don’t suppose you think yours will, Georgie, do you?’ Georgina looked slightly taken aback and then shook her head.

  ‘And yours probably wouldn’t have, if it hadn’t been for the war,’ she said. ‘People behave very oddly when there’s a war on, don’t you think?’ Alice agreed and then sat for a while in silence before continuing.

  ‘The thing I’m left with, Georgie, is a reluctance to put myself in that position ever again,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to be
dependent. I don’t want to be waiting to be come home to. To being told what is going to happen without having any say in things. To having my decisions made for me. I consider myself very lucky that I have discovered that I’m rather good at something.’

  ‘At designing kitchens and things,’ Georgina said. ‘And earning lots of money!’

  ‘Well …’ Alice said, modestly, ‘enough to provide for myself and Edward John and set us up with a new home and—’

  ‘Brilliant!’ Georgina said, punching the air as though applauding Alice’s achievement. ‘Off you go, then! Your future beckons, Alice! What are you waiting for?’

  ‘There are complications,’ Alice admitted in a low voice.

  ‘What complications?’

  ‘Edward John for one. He’s very happy at his school and to move him now would unsettle him.’

  ‘But it’s only prep school, Alice. He’ll be off to public school next year anyway, and until then he could stay where he is as a full-time boarder, surely?’

  ‘Yes. But he adores living on the farm, Georgie!’ Georgina rolled her eyes in frustration.

  ‘And you adore Roger!’ she said. ‘Yes you do, Alice! You do! You’re simply going to have to choose between pleasing Roger and keeping Edward John happy or going to London and becoming a career woman – like your awful friend!’

  ‘Ruth …? How can you call her awful? You’ve only met her once!’

  ‘Because she’s trying to whisk you off to London while I want you to stay here and make my father-in-law happy! But like you, Alice,’ she said, brightly, getting to her feet, ‘I don’t give advice! And now I’m going home to my husband …’

  ‘Who is taking you off to the other side of the world when you would much rather stay here!’

  ‘No I wouldn’t, Alice! I can’t wait for this adventure … but I must confess it’s the voyage I’m after! It’s Port Said and the Suez Canal and Colombo and … flying fish and whales and yes … I know … one day the ship will dock in Wellington and reality will be waiting for us … But they say it’s very beautiful there … I’m sure we shall love it. No. Don’t say anything, Alice.’ So Alice did not say anything. What could she say when she herself was so confused by her own feelings?