Echoes of Yesterday

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘No, no, not that,’ said Cecile, ‘that is nothing.’ She leaned to look into his eyes, her face close to his. ‘You are wanting to kiss me? Why don’t you?’

  ‘Would that be a good idea?’

  ‘Silly man, it would not be bad, would it?’ she said, and made the move herself. Her mouth swooped and she kissed him with all the fire of a Latin. ‘There, that is for saying unkind things about my cows,’ she said, but her face was flushed, so perhaps there had been a different reason for the kiss. Boots saw the flush. It deepened. She dropped her eyes and put a hand on his right thigh. He thought here’s a young woman, and a French one at that, who’s been widowed for a year and spends all her time on the farm. I think this is what’s called a meaningful moment. What would her parents say, I wonder? Well, they’re as French as she is, so would they say get on with it? On the other hand, her father carries a gun around.

  ‘D’you always kiss men who don’t say the right things about your cows?’ he asked, climbing to his feet.

  ‘No, only you. And now look what you have done, they are all over the place.’

  ‘Well, hard luck,’ said Boots, now tanned to dark brown, the trench grey invisible, his eyes clear and unrimmed. Cecile let warm breath escape.

  ‘Come, cheri, I don’t mind,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t mind what?’ said Boots.

  ‘That you ’ave fallen in love with me.’

  ‘Who said that? Did you say that, Cecile?’ he said. If he was in love with anyone, if he had ever been in love, it was with a close neighbour at home, a woman several years older than himself, Elsie Chivers, whose soft myopic eyes, gentle smile and equally gentle voice had fascinated him. Incredibly, she had been tried at the Old Bailey for the murder of her own mother, a harridan. Thankfully, the jury had found her not guilty.

  He conceded Cecile Lacoste to be very attractive, very French and very tantalizing, but he could not say he was in love with her. She had become a very welcome and entertaining diversion from everything that was bloody grim. She was also beguiling into the bargain. ‘Have I said—’

  ‘The cows, cheri!’ exclaimed Cecile, and they ran about, using sticks and slapping hands to get the herd moving together again. When all the brown-eyed animals were safely gathered in, Boots closed the gate. That left Cecile on the wrong side of it. ‘Now you ’ave shut me in with them, you idiot.’

  ‘You’re safer there,’ he said.

  Cecile laughed and climbed the gate. Down she came in a rush, her dress running upwards above her boots and stockings. Creamy thighs flashed, but blushes were conspicuous by their absence. Well, she was very French and minded not at all at showing Boots she had very good legs.

  ‘Now you may kiss me again,’ she said.

  The weather was still fine, little white clouds trailing, the fields under cultivation, lush with growth, the terrain soft with folds and undulations. The volunteer labour had returned to their billet, and the farm’s few French labourers were hoeing fields on the other side of the distant farmhouse. Somewhere, very far away, the eternal guns were rumbling.

  ‘Have I kissed you before, then?’ asked Boots.

  ‘Oh, I did not mind,’ said Cecile, and wound her arms around his waist to bring her warm body close to his. ‘See, if I could, I would keep you ’ere away from the war, and not let you go back to the trenches.’

  ‘Cecile—’

  ‘Why don’t you kiss me?’ she said, stretching her body until her lips were able to brush his.

  Boots was far from being a man of wood, as a lady ambulance driver, one Lily Forbes-Cartwright, had discovered when she introduced him to a little bit of what a Tommy fancied and deserved, and Boots performed an encore, as he did the following night before they parted for ever.

  He kissed Cecile, and Cecile stopped being a coquette, which she wasn’t, in any case. She was in love, and knew it and showed herself so.

  ‘Cheri, cheri,’ she breathed in ardent syllables between kisses.

  A dog barked somewhere, and somewhere was too close. Cecile unwound herself.

  ‘One man and his dog,’ said Boots.

  ‘My father’s dog,’ said Cecile. ‘Will you tell ’im?’ She simply couldn’t expel an aspirate.

  ‘The dog?’ said Boots.

  ‘No, no, my father.’

  ‘Tell him what?’ asked Boots.

  ‘That you ’ave fallen in love with me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t tell any young lady’s father that while the war’s still on,’ said Boots. ‘The war could muck it all up.’

  ‘Muck it all up?’ said Cecile.

  ‘Spoil it,’ said Boots. ‘Front-line men can’t afford to fall in love. Not fair to the women. Everyone knows it, the women as well. If it should happen to a bloke, he makes use of what sense he’s got and keeps quiet about it and waits for the war to end.’

  ‘Oh, but—’

  Cecile’s father appeared then, gun under his arm, his dog frisking at his heels. He smiled at Boots.

  ‘The cows are home?’ he said.

  ‘Only after knocking me down,’ said Boots.

  ‘It’s not meant,’ said the farmer. ‘They’re playful, and like playful contact with humans.’

  ‘Like dogs?’ said Boots.

  ‘And pigs,’ said the farmer, and laughed. ‘What do you think of Sergeant Adams now, Cecile?’

  ‘I think he could be a very good farmer,’ said Cecile.

  ‘At first, Sergeant Adams, my daughter thought you an impudence.’

  ‘I did not!’ exclaimed Cecile.

  ‘First impressions deceived her,’ said Monsieur Descartes.

  ‘I shan’t worry about it,’ said Boots. ‘And it’s time I left.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s time you had a few days to yourself.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Cecile, ‘we still need his help.’

  ‘Until tomorrow, then,’ said Boots.

  Reluctantly, Cecile let him go.

  But the inevitable happened the following day, at the farthermost limit of the Descartes land, where a cluster of trees formed a secluded copse and Cecile wished him, she said, to bring to the farmhouse a wheelbarrow full of split logs. Boots said it was a long way to push a loaded wheelbarrow.

  ‘This way,’ said Cecile, and stepped over a large fallen branch. She caught her heel, but her fall was quite graceful. It did nothing injurious to her, but it did cause her skirt and petticoat to run up and for her legs to show. Boots, leaning, extended a helping hand. Cecile took it and pulled him down beside her. She turned and put herself into his arms.

  It was very inevitable, what followed, and went a lot farther than kisses.

  Much farther. All the way, of course.

  Then there was the afterwards. She would cry, she said, when he went back to the trenches. Boots pointed out that that wouldn’t do either of them any good. Cecile said she didn’t expect it would, but she would cry all the same, and begged him to take very great care of himself, for her sake. Boots said he did that out of habit. Cecile said she would prepare herself for marriage. Boots, not expecting that prospect to be mentioned, since Tommies only had brief affairs with willing Frenchwomen, said circumstances were hardly in favour of weddings. Cecile said she hadn’t meant this week or even next month, but as soon as the war was over. Everyone knew the Boches could not fight on for much longer. Boots said everyone might be making a mistake. Cecile said she would simply wait, then, and that she would not mind going to England with him as his wife if he did not want to help her father work the farm. Boots avoided the complications of a discussion on that by saying, well, as things were, he’d not propose marriage to any woman, especially one who had already been widowed by the war. A proposal, he said, would not be fair to her, and that he’d mentioned that point yesterday. Better to wait on events and to see how they both felt later on. Yes, I have said so, I shall wait for you until the war is over, Cecile assured him. I know how I shall feel – as I do now. If the war is terrible, so is love when the guns are always in
my ears, she said.

  Boots felt that if he survived to the bitter end, he must at least come and see her. He also felt that by then she would have forgotten him, in which case his arrival would be an embarrassment to her.

  ‘You must write,’ she said.

  The little trailing clouds ran away.

  But in mid-Atlantic a huge depression was building up.

  At his headquarters, far from the discouraging desolation of the trench systems, Sir Douglas Haig, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, was finalizing plans for a huge Somme offensive with his opposite number of the French Army. It would be a combined effort by the British Fourth and the French Sixth, and both generals were prepared to hurl thousands of men into the storm of shot and shell.

  Alice meanwhile was looking in vain each evening for Sergeant Ben Hawes. She was eating her heart out, and Polly was getting cross with her.

  ‘Ye gods, Alice, if you’ve fallen in love, you’re an idiot.’

  ‘Well, I’m not made of upper-class unbreakable glass like you are.’

  ‘Alice, I’ll cut you dead if you ever say a thing like that again. That’s hurt me, you rotter.’

  ‘Oh, blow it, I didn’t mean—’

  ‘I hope you didn’t,’ said Polly. She had long chucked away any ideas that she was of a superior breed. Certain army officers, and the majority of staff officers, had inflated opinions of themselves, but in the field the commissioned men from company commanders down to young lieutenants knew the singular worth of the Tommies. And the Tommies knew the worth of the women ambulance drivers. Polly was one with these men, never mind their imperfections. ‘We’re all down to the lowest common denominator, Alice, we’re all scruffy, smelly and lousy, you, me, the rest of the girls and the men, but we’re the best the country’s got. There’s just one thing, old sport, don’t fall in love.’

  ‘Can I help my feelings?’ said Alice.

  ‘You can tread on them,’ said Polly, ‘best for you, best for Old Horse of the Northumberlands.’

  ‘Polly, if he wants me, he can ’ave me.’

  ‘Bloody hell, are you crazy?’ said Polly.

  ‘You’ve given yourself,’ said Alice.

  ‘Not out of love, out of sadness,’ said Polly. ‘You’re different, Alice, and I won’t let you do it.’

  ‘Don’t you think I feel sad?’

  ‘We’re all like that,’ said Polly. ‘Oh, all right, let your sergeant make love to you, then, but don’t blame me if it destroys you when the Jerries finally blow him to hell. It’s coming, Alice, a new offensive. Can’t you hear it, can’t you feel it? We’re in the almighty calm before an almighty storm, and it’s going to kill our souls.’

  ‘You’re a comfort, you are,’ said Alice with a weak smile.

  She asked around in the estaminet, she asked about the Northumberland Fusiliers until one evening a Royal Warwicks corporal came up with information.

  ‘Their battalion moved out two days ago, Alice, they’re up the line by now.’

  Alice winced under the blow. Polly thought, poor Alice.

  ‘Sorry, Alice,’ she said a little later.

  ‘Polly, I might never see ’im again.’

  ‘That’s the swine of it, don’t you see, Alice? That’s the permanent curse out here.’

  ‘I’m goin’ to get drunk,’ said Alice.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Polly, ‘I’ll join you.’

  ‘Sergeant Adams.’

  ‘Sir?’ said Boots, caught sluicing down under the cold tap after a day on the farm and another complicated and intimate interlude with Cecile way out in the fields. He should have said no to her, but damn it, what could a bloke do with such a passionate woman?

  ‘A long day, Sergeant Adams?’ said Major Harris.

  ‘Long enough,’ said Boots, towelling his wet chest.

  ‘Exhausting exercise?’

  ‘Not exhausting, no, sir.’

  ‘Well, who won, you or the farmer’s daughter?’

  ‘Call it a draw, sir,’ said Boots.

  The bleak eyes glinted, and there was almost the hint of a smile.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ asked the Major.

  ‘No, not yet, sir.’

  ‘Well, when you have, report to me. By seven. Have you got that, Sergeant Adams?’

  ‘Fairly clearly, sir. It’s the reason that’s a bit hazy.’

  ‘Is that a suggestion you’re entitled to one?’

  ‘No, sir, it’s—’

  ‘If you come up with “yours not to reason why”, I’ll have your guts,’ said Major Harris.

  ‘Yes, a bit hackneyed that one, sir.’

  ‘Seven o’clock,’ said the Major, and left.

  Boots finished his ablutions. Lounging members of his platoon were grinning. Up came Freddy Parks.

  ‘You for the ’igh jump, Sarge?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘Done anything you shouldn’t to the farmer’s daughter?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘I thought ’er dad might’ve put in a complaint,’ said Freddy.

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘D’you mind me sayin’ you sound like a flamin’ parrot?’

  ‘No, I don’t mind, Freddy, long-time-bloody-silly-volunteers-together.’

  The time, seven-forty. The place, a narrow churned-up country road, the view one of grey ugliness in the immediate east, where the village of Becourt, a mile away, was no more than a jagged scar in a pockmarked landscape. Becourt, or what was left of it, was behind the German lines. The trench systems, British and German, were visible only as obscene patterns, and from this distance seemed like a merged oneness. Struggling patches of summer green showed through the grey here and there.

  The battered old heap of an open army motorcar was stationary, Major Harris using his field-glasses to survey the unlovely scene. With other company commanders, he had been at battalion headquarters most of the day. He knew now precisely what the West Kents were in for.

  ‘Well, that’s for us,’ he said, letting the glasses rest against his chest.

  ‘That’s where we’re going in, sir?’ said Boots. There’d been letters from home today, from Chinese Lady, Lizzy and Emily. Emily, the girl next door, was proving a godsend, according to Chinese Lady. Well, she’d always been greatly attached to the family, and as one of Lizzy’s bridesmaids in March, she’d been in her element. Boots wondered what a man could say in reply to the letters without referring to the war as it affected the West Kents. Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye, we’re going over the top again any moment? ‘Doesn’t look good for ground cover, sir.’

  ‘What d’you want, Sergeant Adams, a suit of armour?’

  ‘They’re not army issue these days, are they?’ said Boots.

  Major Harris, in the passenger seat, produced a packet of Players Navy Cut. He took out two fags and gave one to Boots. Boots struck a match, and the little flame steadied as he cupped it. Major Harris took a light, Boots followed. They sat smoking, saying nothing. They saw a plane then, low in the sky, the evening sun picking it out. Its red-painted wings dipped and flashed as it flew homeward towards the German lines.

  ‘Albatros,’ said the Major.

  ‘Richthofen’s going home to his supper,’ said Boots.

  ‘The air forces are fighting a war,’ said Major Harris. ‘Only God and the devil know what the armies are fighting.’

  ‘Might be a good idea, sir, if we all packed up and took the first train home to Blighty,’ said Boots.

  ‘That’s a good idea, is it, Sergeant?’

  ‘It is as far as I’m concerned,’ said Boots.

  Major Harris regarded the grey wastes again. The trench systems showed not a movement, but he knew and Boots knew they were well occupied, by men, lice, rats and things that crawled out in the night.

  They sat there, in the car, silent again. They smoked their cigarettes down to the butts and threw the butts away. France lay scarred under the evening sun. In
Flanders, there was more fighting around Ypres, all for possession of piles of rubble. It would go on until the sun went down.

  ‘Start the car, Sergeant Adams. Let’s get back. I haven’t eaten yet. It’s a late mess tonight.’

  Boots started the car, turned it and made for Albert.

  ‘When’s the push begin, sir?’ he asked.

  No answer. And he knew he wouldn’t get one. Not yet.

  When they got back to the farm cottage, Major Harris said, ‘I’ve had a note from the farmer.’

  ‘A complaint, sir?’ said Boots.

  ‘Does he have cause for a complaint, then?’

  ‘No idea,’ said Boots.

  ‘If he might have, in respect of his daughter, I don’t want to know about it,’ said Major Harris, getting out of the car. ‘The note is actually a reference in your favour. It could probably get you a post-war job on a French farm. How’d you manage this sort of thing? No, don’t answer that, it’s not necessary.’ The familiar glint appeared in his eye. Boots wasn’t always sure if it related to amusement or irony. ‘Got your feet up in the farmhouse, have you, Sergeant Adams?’

  ‘Too risky, sir,’ said Boots.

  ‘Too risky?’

  ‘Well, when you act like one of the family, you could suddenly find you are one.’

  ‘And that’s not what you’ve got in mind?’ said the Major.

  ‘Home in Blighty, that’s what I’ve got in mind most of the time, sir.’

  Major Harris was silent for a moment, taking no notice of his adjutant, who had appeared at the door to the cottage.

  ‘Sergeant Adams?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Keep your head down,’ said Major Harris, and entered the cottage.

  Above the Atlantic, the huge depression was moving slowly but inexorably eastwards with the prevailing winds, light yet persistent.

  Cecile took a snapshot of her English sergeant the following day, and he took one of her. She said she would sent her snapshot to him when he wrote to her. Boots said keep it until he next saw her. Then, because she was so ardent, he made love to her again.

  It was two days later when Madame Descartes called out to her running daughter.

  ‘Cecile! Where are you going?’