Echoes of Yesterday

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘Oh, the usual,’ said Boots, ‘two of them. Twins, I’d say. Well, they’re identical.’

  ‘Well, fancy that,’ said Emily.

  ‘Just a passing comment, Em old girl.’

  ‘Not so much of your “old girl,”’ said Emily. ‘It’s Polly Simms that’s gettin’ on a bit. Crikey, she must be nearly middle-aged, poor woman. That’s not your style, is it, takin’ a middle-aged woman to lunch?’

  ‘I did have tea at the Dulwich orphanage once with her stepmother, Lady Simms,’ said Boots. ‘Now there’s a middle-aged woman with a great deal of style.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Emily. ‘How can a middleaged woman ’ave a middle-aged stepdaughter?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Boots.

  ‘You sure Polly’s goin’ to discuss an orphanage contract with you?’ asked Emily in dark suspicion.

  ‘Quite sure, lovey,’ said Boots. ‘Lady Simms is an old customer and a very nice one. And her middle-aged stepdaughter has all the details of the specific requirements.’

  ‘I’m a lemon, I am,’ said Emily, ‘I still ask questions when I ought to know the kind of answers I’m goin’ to get.’

  ‘We all have our moments, Em.’

  ‘You’d better not ’ave any, not with Polly Simms,’ said Emily darkly.

  When Polly and Boots entered Romano’s in the Strand, the head waiter asked if they’d reserved a table.

  Polly, who was at her most brittle, gave him a crushing look.

  ‘Good grief,’ she said, ‘don’t you know Lord Adams of Clapham Manor?’

  ‘Ah,’ said the head waiter.

  ‘Any old table will do,’ said Lord Adams of Clapham Manor. ‘A corner one.’

  Polly gave him a hard time over the lunch in the lush Edwardian atmosphere of the restaurant, popular for many years with young bloods and their damsels. Boots asked about the exact requirements concerning uniforms and athletic wear for the many orphans. Polly silently extracted a folded sheet of paper from her handbag and chucked it into his lap.

  ‘It’s all there,’ she said.

  ‘And you want to discuss terms, etcetera?’ said Boots.

  ‘Do I hell,’ said Polly, ‘I’m not a costing clerk.’

  ‘What’s up, Polly?’

  ‘Is that a serious question?’ asked Polly, playing about with a fish fillet. ‘Here, wait a moment, what d’you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Running an eye over requirements,’ said Boots.

  ‘If you don’t put that piece of paper away, I’ll stab you to death with my fish fork,’ said Polly. ‘You’re supposed to be drooling over my unblemished beauty. I could be lunching with Sir Claud Blenkinsop of Dulwich Court, you know. He nevers fails to drool.’

  ‘Needs a bib, poor bloke,’ said Boots.

  ‘Do you ever think about my unblemished beauty, you stinker?’

  ‘Frequently.’

  ‘Do you ever think of doing something about it?’

  ‘Well, I could put a roll of film into my camera and photograph it,’ said Boots.

  ‘In my undies, of course?’ said Polly.

  ‘In a punt with a parasol,’ said Boots.

  ‘Ye gods, just a parasol? What happens afterwards?’

  ‘I pass,’ said Boots.

  ‘Listen, d’you realize I’m thirty-five?’

  Boots, who knew she was close to thirty-eight, the same age as himself, said, ‘I realize you don’t look a day over thirty.’

  ‘Eureka!’ murmured Polly to what was left of her fish, ‘he loves me. Listen, old darling, I had horrible dreams about the Somme last night.’

  Boots let his eyes rest on the bodice of her stylish dress, much as if he was making a guess at her measurements, which quite pleased Polly.

  ‘H’m,’ he said.

  ‘Darling, anytime you like you can conduct a private examination,’ murmured Polly. ‘Honest to God, lover, you won’t be disappointed.’

  ‘Tempting,’ said Boots. ‘Did you say you dreamt about the Somme?’

  A waiter removed their plates. Another waiter served them their main course. The silver cutlery glittered with light, and the little green velvet bow on the front of Polly’s hat danced as she looked at the food and then at Boots.

  ‘Yes, I did say so.’

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ said Boots.

  ‘I was in Albert before the storm broke,’ said Polly.

  ‘I know, Polly, you’ve said so before.’

  ‘You were there too.’

  ‘On a farm, outside the town,’ said Boots.

  ‘Yes, you’ve said so too. Why didn’t we meet?’

  ‘You’ve asked that several times, Polly.’

  ‘I’d be Mrs Robert Adams now, mother to your children, four at least,’ said Polly, knowing that would touch him, knowing how much he liked young people, and how much he would have liked a sister and brother for Rosie and Tim.

  ‘It couldn’t have happened, Polly. I had nothing then, nothing, except my uniform.’

  ‘You’d have had me and everything that’s made you the man you are today. It should have happened.’ Polly looked almost melancholy. Her eyes, as grey as his, were dark with lament for the lost opportunities of those weeks in Albert. She had identified so closely with the fighting men that she had never been able to see herself marrying a man who had not known France and Flanders, and so often she had felt that among those thousands of men there was one made for her alone. And there had been. Sergeant Robert Adams of the West Kents. But she’d been robbed by Emily.

  Boots really was touched then, for the mournful darkness of her eyes was so unlike her.

  ‘Polly—’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Polly picked up her knife and fork. ‘Here we are, having a lovely lunch, and I’m no better than a wet blanket. But—’ She stopped.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I do love you, you know.’

  ‘Well, you know, Polly, love doesn’t always have to relate to the physical. There’s the urge, we both feel that, I daresay. But there’s always something else, there’s always the permanent pleasure of knowing that certain of our friends are very special to us.’ Knowing just what her time as an ambulance driver had meant to her, Boots said what he felt would mean most to her now. ‘We may not have met during the war, but that doesn’t alter the very special fact that we’re old comrades, Polly, that when I was doing my bit you were doing yours.’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ said Polly, ‘are you trying to break my heart?’

  ‘Not consciously,’ said Boots.

  ‘I’m going to France tomorrow. No good asking you to come with me, of course, so that we can be very special together? No, silly of me. I think I’ll get drunk.’

  ‘Help yourself, Polly, I’ll drive you home.’

  ‘Same old friendly pal,’ said Polly.

  ‘Same old Polly,’ said Boots.

  Chapter Two

  Polly attended the funeral of her old school friend and wartime colleague. She was in what she herself conceded was a funereal mood, and was veiled and in black. She thought of the Lucy she had known before and during the war, a character who flung herself as cheerfully and breezily into her war work as she had into jolly hockey sticks. Polly watched the coffin being lowered before the eyes of the bereaved husband. Women were weeping. Polly was sad at this loss of a wartime friend. The friends she most cherished were those who had shared with her the years in France and Flanders. Oh, my God, they were long gone, those years, and she would be old all too soon, she would be over forty and on her way to fifty. She wanted every year back, she wanted to be in Albert again, and to know Boots was there.

  She left Amiens the following day, saying goodbye to the widower, the Frenchman who had understood the extrovert nature of Lucy. Restless, melancholy, she would not stay, she had to go and to be by herself. She got into her car and left, without having the least idea of where she was going or where she wanted to go.

  It was morbid, perhaps, and even stupid, but two
days later she knew where she wanted to go, and so she began a tour of the battlefields. She avoided the places which she knew drew tourists from the countries that had sent their fighting men to the war. Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans and Canadians made visits, and their old soldiers sometimes made pilgrimages.

  Polly kept to herself and went her own ways, to the silent and ghostly battlefields, recalling memories of a kind that fitted her emotional mood. The guns that had never been silent were silent now, and the quiet of it all in the brightness of summer wrenched at her heart. She was never going to be able to forget her times among the Tommies who, caustic and earthy though they were, could nevertheless fill the estaminets with laughter and go over the top again and again because their generals told them to. Boots had been one of them. Perhaps that was why she was here. Which woman was it who had run off lines about those men? One of the ambulance women whose sentimental side had not yet perished at the time. And what were those lines?

  Polly remembered.

  When it is over, this war,

  I shall come again to these places

  And stand in the silence of peace

  To listen once more for the sound of the guns

  And for the laughter of those

  Who died.

  Let it come again, their laughter,

  For they brought it out of battle with them

  And shared it with us.

  They failed no comrade, nor their country,

  Nor us, their women.

  She motored slowly each day over roads that had once been full of craters and mud, causing her ambulance to shake, rock and skid. Those ambulances and the women who had driven them, dear God, who could ever forget?

  Take her up to Hellfire Ridge, girls,

  Give the old bone-shaker a go,

  Let her jump all the craters and bumps, girls,

  Let her gaskets gurgle and blow.

  And so on.

  She had recited that many times to hundreds of men and heard them roar with laughter at the final line. ‘To pick up what’s left of your boots.’

  Boots.

  He was constantly on her mind, and it was a compulsive journey she made to the village of Guillemont. From there she walked to Trones Wood in the region of the Somme, where Boots had fought his last battle for the West Kents, and where he lost the man he admired above all others, his company commander. Trones Wood, still no more than a place of scarred stumps, amid which green summer growth was sprouting, was eerie in its silence. But she was not a gawping visitor looking for gruesome souvenirs of the horrendous first battle of the Somme. She was here because of her mood and emotions.

  In its silence and its scarred reminders of battle, the place to Polly breathed of the men who had fallen, the men who had miraculously survived, and the incomparable comradeship of all of them. Was there anything in the world she would ever value more than having been part of that comradeship, the only worthwhile thing to have been born in that hell of a war?

  Having been so close to the front line many times, having seen the men going up to the trenches, tramping, marching and with rifles slung, it was not difficult for Polly to conjure up a vivid mental picture of the storming of Trones Wood by the West Kents and the great flash of the exploding German grenade that had blinded Boots, and left him blind for four years. Thank God that that was all it had done. In her persistence, she had dragged from him more anecdotes than anyone else had, and she always thought, whenever he spoke of Major Harris, that it was his company commander who had turned him, a young volunteer, into the man he had become.

  She wandered around the scarred stumps, treading, she supposed, in the long-vanished footprints of Boots and his West Kents, and at no time did she feel she was indulging fanciful sentiment. The moment was real for her, and she would not have been surprised to have looked up and seen her mud-splashed ambulance close by.

  ‘Madame?’

  She turned and saw an elderly French farmer in his black beret. She mentally winced. He had noted, of course, that she was not young, and assumed she was married.

  ‘Good afternoon, m’sieur,’ she said in French, the language she had perfected, as Boots had, because of being among the French during the war.

  ‘This was once Trones Wood, madame.’

  ‘Yes, I know, m’sieur.’

  ‘You lost someone here, madame?’

  ‘I lost comrades, m’sieur. Tommies. They were all my comrades. I drove an ambulance, you see.’

  ‘Ah, then you are a brave woman, madame.’

  ‘A frightened one many times, m’sieur, believe me.’

  ‘But still brave. You are English?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Polly.

  ‘My son, a soldier, was also a comrade of your Tommies.’ A little smile creased the farmer’s brown face. ‘For once, the English and French fought together, not against each other. But it was a terrible war. Madame, if you would like to come to my farmhouse, my wife will make you some English tea.’

  Polly hesitated. In her mood, she knew she was best by herself. But the farmer had kindness and sympathy written all over him.

  ‘Thank you, m’sieur, I should like some English tea.’

  ‘Come, then, madame.’

  ‘I’m not married, m’sieur.’

  ‘What does that matter, ma’moiselle? You are still welcome.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Polly, and accompanied him to his farmhouse. It was not far, no more than a quarter of a mile, and there she was introduced to his grey-haired but rosy-faced wife, who happily set about making the pot of tea. When she was filling the pot, the son arrived, a man of forty and an ex-soldier of France. Handsome, smiling, he was delighted to meet Polly, and was at once extravagant in his compliments. Over the tea, which Polly found execrable because of its biting strength and its massive foundation of tea-leaves, the farmer, his wife and his son all bombarded her with comments and questions. They all talked at once and across each other, and the son smiled at her, looked at her legs, smiled again and looked again, and the low ceiling of the farmhouse living-room bore down on Polly and made her feel suffocation was on its way.

  In their hospitality, the family offered her a room for the night. Polly said thank you, but she was going to put up at a hotel somewhere. They expressed disappointment, and the son took another look at her legs. It was he who saw her to the door of the farmhouse when she said goodbye. However, he made no move to open the door for her. Instead, he smiled again.

  ‘Come, let me show you the room you can have,’ he said. ‘You will like it, it is next to mine.’ He put a persuasive hand on her arm.

  ‘Let go, if you please, m’sieur,’ she said.

  ‘Come,’ he said, and smiled yet again, keeping hold of her arm.

  Ye gods, what a glutinous cretin, thought Polly, and socked him one in his breadbasket. He let go and she escaped.

  On her way back to Guillemont, she thought again of Boots, son of a cockney mother, and in making her comparisons between him and the smiling son of a French farmer, the latter came nowhere. He was bound to, in any case. Polly had become a one-man woman years ago.

  She could not return to England, not yet, not in her present mood. In her present mood she was quite capable of confronting Boots and raising the roof a mile high unless he became her lover. She drove to Bapaume and took a room in a hotel there.

  Chapter Three

  Annabelle Somers, elder daughter of Lizzy and Ned Somers, called on Boots and his family on Friday evening, bringing her young man, Nick Harrison, with her. Annabelle, in her eighteenth year, was like her mother in her rich brunette colouring. Bubbly of personality and slightly precocious by nature, she was in the throes of her first serious relationship. It was very serious, actually. Well, what else could it be when Nick, a tall and very personable bloke of twenty-one, made her pulse jump about all over the place whenever he looked as if he was going to kiss her? And when he did, oh, crikey, she actually went swoony like modern girls weren’t supposed to.


  She threatened to tell her dad about him.

  ‘Why?’ asked Nick, saying goodnight to her at the time.

  ‘Why? Why? You’re not supposed to make me nearly faint when you kiss me. You don’t want my dad to come to blows with you, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Nick, ‘I like your dad.’

  ‘Well, then, you’d better try again,’ said Annabelle.

  So Nick gave her another goodnight kiss as they stood on the doorstep. Annabelle’s knees simply went all wobbly again, but she decided not to make any further complaints.

  They were all in the garden on this warm July evening. Chinese Lady, her husband Edwin Finch, Emily, Boots, Rosie and twelve-year-old Tim, together with Annabelle and Nick. They were talking about their forthcoming summer holiday. The senior Adams family and the Somers family were spending it together in Salcombe, Devon, taking over the whole of a guest house for a fortnight, commencing the last week in July. Annabelle had spent a little while persuading Nick to get his holiday dates changed to coincide with hers so that he could join them. Nick said that as he’d only started with his present firm in March he might have a job getting the dates changed. Annabelle said she’d ask her Uncle John to come down heavy on him if he didn’t try. Her Great-Uncle John was Nick’s previous awesome boss, with a lot of influence in the City. Nick asked if that was fair. Annabelle said what’s that got to do with it? I thought I’d ask, said Nick. He managed to get the dates changed, and Ned and Boots both said there was always room for one more if one more happened to be the lovelight in Annabelle’s eyes. Annabelle said having a daft dad was something most girls had to put up with. Having a daft uncle as well was a bit trying.

  Boots had ideas of everyone doing some sailing. Salcombe was a favourite place for mucking about in boats.

  ‘Can you sail a boat, Nick?’ asked Rosie.

  ‘Never had the chance,’ said Nick.

  ‘That’s done it,’ said Tim, ‘none of us can, Nick.’

  ‘The idea,’ said Boots, ‘is that we all take lessons from an expert.’

  ‘All?’ said Chinese Lady, as straight-backed as ever. She associated a straight back and a firm bosom with respectability. That is, she hadn’t anything to be ashamed of. ‘If you think you’re goin’ to get me in some boat out at sea, you’ve got another think comin’. I’ve never been out at sea in a boat in all my life, and I’m not startin’ now.’