by Liz Trenow
‘With the Reverend, I think. They were going back to the hospital. What’s up?’
‘I’ve found my brother . . . or at least, where he’s buried.’
The smile slipped from his face. ‘I am sorry for your loss.’
‘It’s somewhere called Corfu Farm. Do you know it?’
‘Of course. That’s where I ended up. It’s a field hospital where they took you from the clearing station, if you survived long enough. It was close to the rail lines so once they’d patched us up we got shipped back to the coast.’
Oh Sam. You were so close to safety, ready to be brought home. You so nearly made it.
‘What date did you say he died?’ Freddie asked.
‘October 1917.’
‘Chances are he’ll have copped it at Passchendaele.’
‘Passchendaele? How do you know?’
‘That was when the Canadians came in, at the height of the fighting around there. By God we was pleased to see them. The good news is, though,’ he went on, ‘if he died in hospital, at least they knew who he was, and his grave will be marked.’
‘Then where would he have been buried?’
‘Lazyhook, the cemetery next door, most likely.’ Freddie took a sip of his beer.
‘Is it far, this place?’
‘Not far. You could get there in twenty minutes.’
So close. ‘Would you be able to take me, Freddie, can we borrow the baker’s van?’
He glanced away as though discomfited by something he did not want to admit. ‘Sorry, I’m tied up this afternoon.’
Frantic now, she pulled out a handful of notes. ‘Would this make any difference? Please? It’s really important to me.’
Freddie looked at her with an amused expression – or was it just those pale eyelashes? Either way, it left her feeling awkward. ‘Sorry, love, no can do, not today. Not even for all that cash. How’s about tomorrow?’
‘It has to be today. We go back to Ostend tomorrow.’
He scratched his stubbly chin. ‘What about your French friend, the one with the sports car? Surely he’d give you a lift?’
*
She’d been reluctant to ask Daniel – he’d told her last night about the amount of work he had on this week – but she was left with no choice. The receptionist at his hotel raised an eyebrow. ‘You wish me to pass this note to Monsieur Martens?’
‘Yes please. As soon as he returns.’
‘Would you wish to give it to him yourself, madame?’ He gestured towards the lounge.
She found Daniel at the long table, papers and charts strewn around him.
‘Bonjour, Aleese. This is a pleasant surprise.’ Behind the smile was a guarded look she had not seen before.
‘I am sorry to interrupt your work,’ she said, flustered now. ‘But I really need your help. I’ve discovered where my brother is buried, and it’s just down the road from here, at Lazyhook.’
He frowned. ‘I do not know this place.’
‘Near a military hospital they called Corfu Farm – that’s what Freddie said.’
The frown cleared. ‘You mean Lijssenthoek. Yes, it is just a few kilometres away.’
‘Would you be able to drive me, Daniel? It’s really important.’
He paused for a beat before his face softened. ‘Of course, ma chérie. In one hour or so?’
‘Thank you so much,’ she whispered gratefully, reaching for him.
‘See you at half past three.’ He caressed her cheek with the lightest of touches. ‘And now I must return to my work.’
*
Just as Freddie had promised, it took only twenty minutes to reach the place that turned out to be spelled, according to the signpost, Lijssenthoek. All those consonants! No wonder the Brits had such trouble getting their tongues around it. A small settlement of traditional single-storey Belgian cottages had been swamped on one side by a large railway depot and, on the other, dozens of wooden huts, stretching into the distance, row on row. In the sunshine they looked almost cheerful, like a holiday camp by the seaside.
Daniel turned off the engine. ‘This was the field hospital they called Corfu Farm,’ he said, into the silence. ‘The cemetery is over the other side.’
‘I never imagined it could be so enormous,’ Alice breathed. ‘It’s like a whole village.’
The place had evidently been evacuated in a great hurry. A badly damaged ambulance lay rusting on the roadside and the area in front of the huts was littered with the abandoned debris of war: coils of barbed wire, wheel rims and other vehicle parts, rubber tyres, wooden sleepers and planking, and crates stencilled with hieroglyphics of military code.
In contrast the huts, linked by gravel pathways, looked quaint, almost homey. Although now strangled with weeds, you could tell that once upon a time the spaces between the pathways had been dug and planted as flower beds.
They peered cautiously into the first empty hut: metal camp beds still remained in rows, their white paint peeling where rust had broken through. Stretchers were piled against one wall, torn canvases hanging from them in a pale cascade. Three pot-bellied stoves were ranged along the centre of the hut, metal flues leading upwards to chimneys in the ceiling. A Union Jack flag hung forlornly from the wall above the nursing station, which was arrayed with trays and bedpans; an enamel cup still contained tea leaves, as if the nurse drinking from it had just left the room. The floor was stained with what looked like mud but could just as easily have been dried blood, Alice thought with a shiver.
‘It’s like a ghost hospital,’ she whispered, as if afraid that the spirits would hear. It wouldn’t have surprised her to see a nurse appear through the door, or a patient being carried in on a stretcher.
Yet it was curiously reassuring, reminding her of the illustrations she’d seen in the illustrated magazines: long tents with rows of metal beds, nurses in spotless starched white headdresses. At least in his last hours or days Sam would have been looked after and made as comfortable as possible. There would have been people to comfort him, to give him water and talk to him. He would not have suffered alone in some muddy battlefield.
When they emerged from the hut the sun had gone in, obscured by heavy clouds that seemed to have appeared from nowhere.
‘Better get on with it. Looks like rain,’ Daniel said, as they followed the path to the cemetery past a dozen more huts and through a small copse at the edge of the encampment. The sight, as they emerged, seemed to punch the breath out of her: field after field of wooden crosses, separated by wide walkways, stretching away towards the horizon as far as the eye could see.
‘I had no idea,’ she gasped.
‘It is one of the largest cemeteries after Tyne Cot.’
But it was nothing like Tyne Cot. This place was well ordered, with graves in neat rows between paths of parched grass, set with hedges and mature trees. In places, people had even attempted to create flower beds in which a few rangy rose bushes still managed to bloom despite the choking bindweed. Poppies and ragged robin flowered in abundance along the hedgerows and, above them, larks were singing. Bravely singing, Alice remembered. She’d have thought the place beautiful had she not been so painfully aware of its terrible history.
Sam would have been evacuated here away from the front line on one of the trains which still lay rusting in the railway sidings. There would have been time to dig the graves in a more orderly way, to give them a proper burial, possibly even with some kind of a short service as they were interred.
After half an hour her eyes were aching from reading so many names and dates. Just as she was beginning to despair she came upon a group of graves, dozens of them, dated October 1917. Walking more slowly now, reading every name with the utmost care, she found herself concentrating so hard that she almost forgot to breathe. But the dates moved on: November, December, even into 1918, and her feet felt heavy with disappointment.
Then she heard Daniel’s call from a hundred yards away in a corner beside the hedge. ‘Over here, Alice.’ As s
he approached the letters swam into her vision: In Memory of Pvt S. Pilgrim, Canadian Corps, injured in action, died 29th October 1917. R.I.P.
She stared at it for a long moment before the ground started to shift beneath her; she began to feel dizzy and unsteady. Falling to her knees, she grasped with both hands the base of the tall white wooden cross. ‘You stupid, stupid boy,’ she heard herself shouting. ‘Why did you have to go and get yourself killed? Why?’
Resting her face against the rough soil, she barely noticed the stones pressing into her cheek, the harsh scratch of grass and thistles. Thunder rumbled in the distance and then she became aware of raindrops falling onto the parched ground, throwing up small puffs of dust as they landed. She began to sob quietly, the tears mingling with the rain as it fell onto her brother’s grave.
Too soon, she felt Daniel’s strong hands pulling her up, pressing a handkerchief into her hand. ‘Come on, we’re getting soaked. I must get back to the car. I left the hood open.’
She remembered the letter she had written, and now pulled it from her pocket and laid it at the foot of the cross, carefully choosing four smooth stones to hold it down, one at each corner. Then she hesitated; there was something she hadn’t done. She pulled away from him, running towards the hedgerow, pulling up handfuls of red campion, cornflower and poppy. Splitting the flowers into two bunches and binding their stalks with strands of grass, she laid one of them on the grave. The other she would press, and give to her parents.
Kneeling at the foot of the cross once more, she traced her finger over the carved letters. We will never forget you, Sam, my dearest, sweetest baby brother. How can I leave you here, in this sad, quiet place? You were only nineteen and all your dreams are over. Oh Sam, how could you do this to us?
When she finally looked up again, Daniel was far in the distance, striding back to the car, scarcely visible through the pall of rain.
24
MARTHA
She could barely believe that they were on their way to visit Heinrich’s grave. At last.
Ruby met them in the lobby with commendable promptness and they set off to navigate the streets according to a scrappy map apparently provided by Freddie. Martha was surprised at how calm she felt, given that she had taken such a leap of faith, placing their fate in the hands of virtual strangers. But this was the long-planned-for moment; a meeting with her destiny. What happened now was out of her control.
Partway along a deserted, dusty side street they found the place, a small corrugated-iron building with green metal double doors, padlocked with a sturdy metal chain. They waited ten minutes, then another five. Otto fidgeted impatiently, kicking at small stones, while Martha stood alongside Ruby, feeling awkward once again that they had no words of a common language.
At last Freddie appeared, waving in his hand what looked like an enormous malign insect but was in fact a black Bakelite cup with wires sprouting from it. After struggling with the padlock for a few moments, he managed to release the chain and wrenched open the metal doors with a creak so loud they must have been undisturbed for years. Inside was what Martha at first took for an army lorry: a large vehicle in the same green as the garage doors, only considerably rustier. It had definitely seen better days.
He folded back the engine cover and fiddled with the cup, clicking it into place and linking up the wires. Task completed, he closed the cover and climbed up onto the wide bench seat that straddled the width of the cab. He stretched his arm beneath the dashboard and pressed a button. Nothing happened. He cursed and pressed several times more but despite making heavy grinding noises, the engine failed to come to life. After many further curses the engine finally started with a deafening roar, filling the garage with a choking cloud of black smoke.
‘Eureka!’ he shouted. ‘Climb in.’
Ruby went first, next to Freddie, then Otto. Martha climbed in last. It was only then, as she was about to pull herself up, that she noticed, painted on the side of the canvas covering the back of the lorry, a bright red cross. She found herself smiling: these English were full of surprises. And here was another one: Freddie trying to teach the English girl how to manipulate the gears. Martha suspected she’d never driven anything before, let alone an Allied army ambulance.
Ruby managed to find reverse gear and he manoeuvred the ambulance out of the garage. Then she crunched into first and they set off down the street accompanied by his shouts: ‘Second. No, down to second. Try again.’ She jiggled the stick into the right position. Then another shout: ‘Up, across and up again, into third, now! Up again! Oh, here.’ Freddie took his hand off the wheel, steering unsteadily with the stump of his left arm while leaning across to help her find the gear. At last, after much cursing and laughter, the girl got the hang of it, and they progressed more smoothly.
It could be one of her more surreal dreams were it not for the powerful realities: solid tyres hammering so hard on the cobbles that it made her teeth rattle, the trail of black smoke behind them, the discomfort of being squeezed onto the hard bench seat, the way she had to cling on for dear life when they turned a right-handed corner to stop herself falling out onto the road. And all in the company of two English people.
For five long years the English had been the enemy, the worst of the worst in her book: a nation who lied and cheated, who reneged on their promises, instigated the cruel food blockade that caused so many thousands of ordinary German citizens and children to die of starvation. It was the English who unleashed deadly poison gases causing untold suffering among their troops; the English who tunnelled underground and blew thousands of unsuspecting Germans into a million smithereens.
And yet here she was on her way to finding her son’s grave thanks to the generosity and compassion of two English people. She wished she had the words to express her appreciation properly.
‘What an adventure,’ she said to Otto, speaking in French. Sandwiched between herself and Ruby, he seemed to find it hilarious when the girl crunched the gears once more, earning herself further good-humoured curses. It was such a joy to hear him laugh. There had been so little of that lately.
‘Nous arrivons, Heiney,’ he said. It didn’t matter that he’d used the wrong French word, she knew what he meant. We’re coming. Bittersweet tears stung her eyes: how he missed his brother.
As they left Hoppestadt she plucked up the courage to ask, ‘How far? How long?’
Freddie said something about kilometres and the girl held up her hands, opening the fingers on both hands and then again: twenty. She showed the palm of her hand, drawing with her index finger a clock hand travelling through three-quarters of a circle. Forty-five minutes.
They drove straight through Ypres, past the main square with its piles of rubble and devastated buildings, the broken tower of the cathedral pointing to the sky as if to summon God’s wrath. The road worsened as they left the town and their progress slowed as Freddie manoeuvred the clumsy vehicle around countless potholes and diversions.
Martha had already witnessed through the train windows the devastation of no-man’s land, the mud-brown landscape, the trenches, the shell holes, the broken guns, tanks and other machinery, the shattered trees and the barbed wire rolling over the land like rusty surf. But driving right through it, at the same level, the destruction was even more starkly shocking.
Otto’s face paled as they passed the first group of roadside graves: dozens, even hundreds of crosses, mostly simple constructions of wood with hastily scrawled lettering, or slabs of stone flat on the mud. She took his hand and he squeezed hers back. By the time they had passed five, ten, and then twenty such graveyards, they had become accustomed to the sight. Crosses were just another part of this strange, sickening landscape of war.
After what seemed like hours of lurching and bumping, Freddie announced that the piles of rubble and timber through which they were passing was what had once been the village of Poelcappelle. She heard the bitterness in his voice as he pointed out the skeleton of stonework at the crossroads that
was once the village church, and her face burned when he spat out the word Kraut not just once, but several times.
Although she could not follow every word his meaning was clear: these had once been homes, where villagers had lived peacefully and happily until the Germans came. And now all that had been destroyed by her nation’s guns. She shivered: if they ever learned her true nationality, these good people, they would never forgive her.
Within a few minutes, they were rattling into the ghost of another village, at the centre of which was an even larger pile of stone and timber. ‘Langemarck Church,’ Freddie announced. Shortly afterwards, he pulled off the road and drew the ambulance to a stop.
‘The German cemetery.’
Although the area was largely flat they seemed to be at a high point, with the land falling away in every direction. On the horizon, heavy grey clouds piled one upon another into menacing stacks. The air was still and almost silent save for the raucous calls of crows, black scavengers who seemed to be the only birds brave enough to return. Otherwise, the place was deserted.
To one side of the road was nothing but crosses and flat stone grave-markers, reaching away into the distance. Martha felt her heart falter as she struggled to contemplate the scale, the immensity of human tragedy. Under every scrap of this vast piece of land lay men, thousands of them. How would they ever find Heinrich among so many?
Into her mind flooded the memory of a mural she’d once seen on the wall of a Catholic church: hundreds of naked bodies trying to scramble upwards out of the earth in their desperation to reach heaven. Here, on this ordinary field of Belgian mud, the Day of Judgement had arrived. How would she and her country be judged?
‘We’ll wait for you in the van,’ Ruby said. ‘Take your time.’
*
At first, they wandered randomly between the crosses, taking turns to read names out loud as though, with each utterance, they were paying respect to the memory of the men they named. But after twenty, thirty, forty names, it became just too difficult, too repetitive, too painful.