‘To see what has happened! He hasn’t turned up, nor any of his men!’
Madame Descartes sighed. Cecile ran, all the way down the lane to the barns. She stopped, aghast. Everything was empty of the men in khaki, everything. And everything was silent. Not even their ghosts whispered. She stood rigid with shock, disbelief and heartbreak.
A movement caught her eye down by the cottage. Out of it came old Jules. She ran to him.
‘Ah, Madame Lacoste—’
‘Where are they, Jules, where, where?’
‘Gone, and before dawn,’ said Jules.
‘But no-one said anything, no-one spoke to my father or to me.’
‘No-one is allowed to say anything of troop movements to civilians, Madame Lacoste, no, not even if one is living in the same house as the officers. They go when they must, and that is that. But here is something addressed to you.’
Jules gave her an envelope inscribed with her name. Cecile ripped it open and took out a brief note.
‘Cecile, here is a hasty scrawl to say au revoir and to thank you and your family for my time with you. One day, if events let me, I’ll come back and see you. You have been very sweet to me. For the time being, goodbye, Cecile. Kisses from your English sergeant, Robert Adams.’
Cecile could not believe her sense of desolation.
He was going back into that terrible war, and perhaps never coming out of it.
Chapter Thirteen
Round and round the rink the skaters went, the metal wheels of some skates rasping over the polished floor, boxwood wheels of others gliding smoothly. Speed skaters flashed by sauntering couples. The three-piece band in a little gallery above the alcoved restaurant played on.
It was Rachel’s third visit to the rink with Sammy, and Rachel was a young girl light of heart and flushed with pleasure. It was all of a pleasure to be with Sammy. Imagine, he’d said she was his one and only. It could last until – well, it could last for three or four years. Just a nice happy friendship, that was all. Well, they were both too young to worry about anything else. How amazing to feel so secure in the company of a boy who was only sixteen. Someone had said he wasn’t sixteen, not yet he wasn’t. Rachel wasn’t bothered. He looked sixteen and he had all the confidence that gave her this feeling of security and took away her sensitivity about being a Jewish girl among Gentiles. He took care of her and wouldn’t stand for anyone calling her names.
‘Sammy, it’s got to be my turn to pay for tea and buns.’
‘Well, Rachel—’
‘You’re spendin’ so much money on me.’
‘Well, Rachel—’
‘I’m never ’ard-up, honest, Mother left me money of my very own and my Daddy sees I get a weekly allowance.’
‘Crikey, are yer rich, Rachel?’
‘Course not, you silly, not actu’lly rich.’
‘Well, Rachel—’
‘Sammy, will you stop sayin’ “Well, Rachel”?’
‘The point is, me fam’ly’s a bit funny about fellers not lettin’ girls pay. I ain’t funny about it meself, except—’
‘Oh, good,’ said Rachel, ‘come on, then, I’ll stand treat.’
‘Girl after me own heart, you are,’ said Sammy, but he had this problem about what was right, not so much with Lizzy and Tommy as with Chinese Lady. Chinese Lady seemed to have ears and eyes that went everywhere, even if she was just sitting by the kitchen fire and doing some darning.
So, although it caused him the usual amount of grief and pain, he thwarted Rachel in her attempt to pay the bill, and settled it himself. However, he got fourpence back when he took her home and stood in the passage with her before saying goodbye.
Well, as soon as he stepped in with her, Rachel said, ‘Sammy, you been awf’lly nice to me again, so can I kiss you?’ This had happened on each occasion. The first time it had cost her tuppence for two kisses, the second time thruppence for three, and today she was willing to advance further.
‘Well, it’s no secret now, Rachel, that I ’ave to stick to me principles. I said to yer dad last week, didn’t I, that a bloke that’s got ambitions to be a businessman has to ’ave principles and stick to ’em, and yer dad said yes. So yer see, Rachel, I’ve got to charge a penny each for kisses.’
‘Sammy, I like you ’avin’ principles, it’s only right,’ said Rachel. ‘Look, I’ve got four pennies in me purse today, I don’t mind a bit payin’ for four kisses.’
‘All right,’ said Sammy, ‘I don’t want to be unco-operative, not with a war on. Purse yer lips, Rachel.’
‘Oh, my life,’ said Rachel, but not in a shy way. More in the nature of can this be true? Sammy stood with his back to the closed door, and the light in the passage that led to the stairs was dim. Rachel lifted her face, pursed her lips and closed her eyes. Sammy gave her four very nice kisses, and she thought each one ever such good value for the money.
‘There, ’ow was that for fourpennyworth?’ asked Sammy.
‘Sammy, you do kiss nice.’
‘Kind of yer to say so, Rachel,’ said Sammy, a born bliss to a girl, even at his age. ‘Now, would yer like to come to Sunday tea tomorrow?’
‘Me?’ breathed Rachel.
‘You can meet me fam’ly,’ said Sammy. ‘Well, me mum would like to see you, she thinks a lot of yer dad’s Walworth Road pawnshop.’
Rachel’s velvet brown eyes shone. Sunday tea with a Gentile family? Sammy’s family?
‘Sammy, I’d love to, ever so much.’
‘Come at four, then. Mind, what with the war and all, it won’t be like the Sunday teas we used to ’ave. Mum can’t get the currants or sultanas for makin’ a lot of fruit cakes, but it’ll still be Sunday tea.’
‘Thanks ever so much, Sammy.’
‘Listen,’ said Sammy, ‘if you sort of happen to ’ave a tanner goin’ spare next Saturday, I’ll give you a baker’s ’alf-dozen, if yer like.’
‘Sammy, what d’you mean?’
‘I’ll give yer seven kisses for sixpence.’
‘Sammy, seven all at once?’
‘No, one at a time, Rachel. You’re a nice girl, and you deserve a bit of a bargain.’
What a lovely girl, thought Chinese Lady over Sunday tea the following day. So well-behaved, and just the kind of girl who could improve Sammy by socializing with him. Of course, they were both young, but it didn’t do any harm for a girl and boy to go about together, it would help them to grow up more sociably. Of course, it couldn’t come to anything when they were older. Rachel being Jewish could only walk out formal with one of her own kind, but she and Sammy could get to be nice friends together.
Rachel met only Chinese Lady and Tommy over tea. Lizzy was out, first to visit Ned at the hospital and then going to her house again with Emily, but that didn’t prevent Rachel thinking what a nice homely atmosphere there was. And Sammy’s mum and brother were homely too, and so kind to her. It gave her such warm feelings to have a Gentile family accept her into their house, and to treat her just as if she was one of them. And when Lizzy and Emily came in later, the homely atmosphere became charged with liveliness. Lizzy and Emily both made a fuss of her, and Lizzy said crikey, no wonder Sammy’s actually digging into his pocket. It’s like the fall of the Bank of England, said Tommy. Sammy said he wasn’t amused.
Everyone kept away from talking about the war, and Rachel didn’t mention it. She knew Sammy’s eldest brother, called Boots, was out there in France with the army. In a strange way, Rachel sensed this family of homely people were all too aware that one of them was absent.
The clouds came, light at first, then greyly spreading, and the weather in Northern France became pale and insipid. Here and there rain showers fell, dampening parts of the Somme sector.
But in the early hours before dawn on the morning of the first of July, the sky was clear, although there was mist in the valleys. The huge offensive began with a gigantic bombardment of the German defensive positions, and at dawn the first waves of men climbed out of their trenches.
&nb
sp; The waiting Germans cut down the cannon fodder.
Ambulances from Albert were dispersed at various points of the sector, and Alice and Polly were among the women about to face their most horrendous day of this horrendous war.
If the first day was hideous, so were successive days. Alice and Polly were appalled at the extent of the casualties and the ghastliness of wounds. They were operating in an area west of La Boiselle, where the sound of the guns bombarded their eardrums and stretcher-bearers and walking wounded created a slow-moving, never-ending picture of stained, torn and mutilated khaki against the distant background of smoke and carnage. Out of the hell on the seventh day of the vast labouring offensive came wounded Northumberland Fusiliers, along with casualties from other regiments. Medical Corps men and the ambulances were being stretched to the limit. Alice and Polly were close to exhaustion, eyes hollow, faces grey and teeth gritted, but they kept working. They helped to load the stretcher cases, knowing their duty was to get them to the field station for immediate treatment. They had lost count of the men who were dead on arrival, although each one was a bitter blow to them.
Alice spotted two Northumberland men, both with heavily bandaged heads and arms, the bandages blood-stained. They weren’t ambulance cases. Like all others who could walk they were making their way to the station on foot, and on foot they were like zombies. Alice ran over to them. She had met them weeks ago in Jacques’ estaminet.
‘Have you seen Sergeant Hawes, have you seen him? Is he all right?’
‘He’s coming, lass, coming,’ said one man and went on with the other.
Sergeant Ben Hawes appeared a few seconds later, his head bandaged, his face as grey as the clouds above, his waterproof trench cape worn over his shoulders, covering his body. The spitting rain was cold. July had turned wet and treacherous.
‘Ben!’ shouted Alice, and ran at him.
His fatigued eyes blinked.
‘Well, it’s nobbut you, lass,’ he said, his face a grimace of pain, his voice tired out.
‘Alice!’ Johnny was calling her, her fully laden ambulance ready to be driven off. Polly was on her way, her ambulance vibrating over the torn road, and she was silently mouthing violent damnation on the generals.
Two German batteries began to return the British gunfire. Shells began to whistle, fall and explode, and the never-ending line of wounded men crumpled and collapsed as they dropped to the ground to find cover.
‘Alice!’ shouted Johnny again.
A shell struck ground and earth took fire and erupted and spewed. Alice and Sergeant Ben Hawes disappeared from Johnny’s sight in a great gushing cloud of dirty smoke. The blast took the Medical Corps corporal off his feet and shook the laden ambulance.
Alice came to with the smell of fire and smoke in her nostrils, and with her left arm broken. Sergeant Ben Hawes lay close by, inert, his trench cape blown around his shoulders. Men were shouting, the German guns still firing. Alice drew a great painful breath, came up on her knees and edged herself forward.
‘Ben? Oh, my God.’ She saw then what the trench cape had covered. His left arm was a stump bound thickly, and the field dressing was dark with drying blood and wet with new. ‘Ben?’
The Northumberland regular, the man of Mons, the Marne and the trenches, the sergeant his men called Old Horse, opened his tired grey-blue eyes again.
‘That wor a nasty one, lass,’ he sighed. ‘You all right?’
The enemy’s shelling stopped as the German batteries were found and caught by British heavy guns. The spitting rain turned into a sour downpour. Alice felt none of it. She felt the pain of a broken arm, and she felt for what Ben was suffering. But there was a light shining somewhere in her disordered mind.
‘I’m all right,’ she said, ‘just a bit of a headache. You’re the one, look what you’ve let them do to you, look—’
But Johnny arrived then, badly shaken and slightly concussed, but in automatic discharge of his duties. He took over. He brought Alice to her feet, discovered her broken arm and ordered her to get back to the ambulance. Alice refused unless he first put Sergeant Hawes aboard.
‘No room—’
‘Make room, d’you ’ear?’
‘Alice, there’s—’
‘Make room! He’ll die out ’ere, with all the others who can’t get up. We can save ’im, can’t we?’
‘There’s other ambulances comin’.’
‘Do it!’
With the help of a slightly wounded stretcher-bearer, Johnny got Ben aboard the ambulance, squeezing him in over the floor. It was reliable old Johnny who then drove the ambulance to the field casualty station, Alice beside him, holding her broken arm, her mouth set, her teeth grating.
At the station, with the casualties unloaded, and Ben now lying on a stretcher, Alice went down on one knee beside him. His eyes opened yet again as she touched his shoulder.
‘There you are, lass.’ His voice was a tired sigh, his bandaged stump lying limply. ‘Blew t’ bloody thing right off, don’t you see.’
‘You’ve had the war, Ben Hawes, and you’ve had the army too.’ It was the subconscious awareness of that which had sparked the little shining light. ‘Somehow, some way, when you’ve convalesced, I’m never goin’ to let you out of my sight again. D’you understand?’
‘Tha’s a sweet lass, Alice, fit for a better man than I am.’
‘Blow anyone better, I want you,’ said Alice. ‘Now d’you understand?’
‘Aye, lass, I understand.’
‘Good,’ said Alice, and kissed his lips.
She watched as orderlies took him up for treatment. By then, her eyes were wet, but the little shining light was still bright.
Her broken arm kept her out of action. Polly, however, continued to drive, to collect, to suffer and to swear.
It was on the 13th that the West Kents, after days of exhausting endeavour and heavy losses, were ordered to attack a German strongpoint in Trones Wood in support of the 7th Buffs. Major Harris, the eternal soldier, led his company in, Boots and his platoon not far from him.
‘Stay on my immediate right with your platoon, Sergeant Adams,’ he had said.
‘What’s left of it, you mean,’ said Boots. Freddy Parks was among the absentees. But Freddy had been lucky. He was out of it only because of a badly wounded knee, a Blighty one. Others were dead and already buried.
‘Do as you’re told, you bugger,’ said Major Harris. The only feelings he ever showed were those relating to disgust at the way the generals were fighting this war. All other feelings never reached the surface. Except now, when his orders meant he was going to keep his youngest sergeant in his sights.
The Somme offensive had been hell from the beginning. Trones Wood was a hell of its own. It erupted anew with flame, fire and shot as the West Kents went in. It was the last engagement Boots and Major Harris were to fight together. Close to the German machine-gun strongpoint, the Major went down riddled by bullets, and Boots fell beside him, the victim of the blinding flashing explosion of a German stick grenade.
On the 15th, Cecile Lacoste went to the British Army’s area headquarters in Albert, where she made anxious enquiries about the casualty lists. It took some while to receive the information that Sergeant Robert Adams of the West Kents had fallen in action with his company commander, Major Harris. The news devastated Cecile.
She was not to know that on this particular day the complete casualty details relating to the battle for Trones Wood were not yet established. As far as the Albert headquarters staff were concerned, the initial report that Major Harris and Sergeant Adams had died together still stood as correct.
It was quite true that Major Harris, riddled with bullets, had died before stretcher-bearers could reach him amid the tempest of German fire. It was also true that Boots had fallen alongside his commanding officer, blinded by the searing flash of the exploding grenade and knocked out by its blast. It was hours before he was picked up. Hospitalized before being returned to Blighty for expe
rt examination and diagnosis, his waiting days were spent in the knowledge that somehow or other he had to come to terms with the possibility of being permanently sightless. That and the death of Major Harris, a born soldier and the man he most admired, made those days the kind he never wanted to experience again.
He did not ask any nurse to write a letter for him to Cecile Lacoste. What was the point?
And when corrections had been made to casualty lists, the entry concerning Sergeant Robert Adams recorded he had been wounded in action, not killed. No-one advised Madame Cecile Lacoste of the amendment. She was not his next of kin, or any kin.
Alice, given three months home leave, married her Northumbrian man in October. As a wife, she was then entitled to ask for work in Blighty, and the St John Ambulance Brigade found her a position at their London headquarters, while Ben was taken on by the Army Recruitment Board. Alice wrote to Polly, of course, and with the Somme offensive finally over, after a small amount of ground had been won at horrific cost, Polly wrote back to say well done, Alice, all the girls hope your future troubles will only be little ones. See you when the flags of victory are flying, ducky. Some bloody victory.
There was nothing that would ever bring Polly home until the war was over and she could part from her Tommies in the knowledge that she had done her full bit along with them.
Rachel and Sammy became almost inseparable, and her father, Isaac Moses, did not fail to note the simple unalloyed happiness she derived from the friendship, the happiness of a Jewish cockney girl accepted by a Gentile boy and his family purely for what she was, a warm-hearted and lovely young sprite. It cut her up when she met Sammy’s eldest brother Boots, home from the war and blind, but such a fine-looking man. Sammy said not to cry, Rachel, Boots was going to marry Emily, and Emily would be Boots’s own personal godsend.
Saturday afternoon roller-skating sessions continued, as well as the tram rides there and back.
‘Sammy, later on, when I’m older and I – oh, you know.’
‘Course I know, Rachel.’
‘Well, we’ll still be friends, won’t we?’
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