Echoes of Yesterday

by Mary Jane Staples

  Oh, my God, thought Polly, what would this girl do if she knew he was alive?

  ‘Many soldiers have no known grave, my chicken,’ said Jacques.

  ‘That’s very true, Eloise,’ said Polly, and wondered if she should leave immediately and put all this behind her. If she told Eloise her father was alive, and exactly what he was like, the girl would probably go rushing off to England. Should she tell her? Could she do so without speaking to Boots first? She must think about it, if she could clear her mind of all its confusions. She must think about it long and hard, which meant she could not leave, not yet.

  The entrance of patrons brought relief. They took Jacques and Eloise away from her. She went up to her room, paced about and then came down again. She left to go to her car, and in it she drove out of Albert in a new kind of emotional state. Oh, bloody hell, she said to herself, what a swine you are, Boots, you’ve made love to other women but always turned me down.

  What would he say if he knew about Eloise? What would he do? He would have his family to think about, Emily especially. Oh, damn Emily.

  On she went, driving with no clear objective guiding her, but she ended up in the village of Guillemont as if drawn by a magnet. And from there she walked again to the remains of Trones Wood, though the new growth springing up amid the scarred and lifeless trunks, and where Eloise’s mother thought, because of incorrect information, that Boots had died. She halted and she stood in long and silent reflection. She was quite alone, except for the ghosts of the fallen, and because of that and all her new emotions, she heard again the sound of the guns.

  Meanwhile, Boots and his family, together with Lizzy and Ned and their four children, and Nick, were holidaying at Salcombe for the last week in July and the first week of August. Everyone except Chinese Lady was involved with a hired sailing boat, and all were under the instruction of Mr Finch who in his youth had known the sailing waters of the Baltic with his German family. Hilarious was the fun, and vivaciously alive was Annabelle, either in her bathing costume or her shorts and shirt. She dazzled Nick. Rosie dazzled all the other young men there. Women looked at Boots in his summer drill slacks rolled up above his knees and his open flapping shirt.

  ‘Come here, you,’ said Emily once.

  ‘I’m needed?’ said Boots, arriving at her side.

  ‘Yes, you’re needed so I can give you an earful,’ said Emily. ‘Stop talkin’ to all these women who keep edgin’ up on you. You’re a husband and father, and you’re out of circulation, and Chinese Lady says you’re not decent showin’ your legs and chest the way you do when you’re talkin’ to women you ’aven’t ever met before.’

  ‘All right, Em, tell Chinese Lady I’ll put my raincoat on.’

  Up came Rosie in shorts, shirt and bare feet, hair tied with a ribbon and face turning golden brown.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she smiled.

  ‘I’m givin’ your dad an earful on account of him lettin’ women come up and rub elbows with him,’ said Emily.

  ‘Oh, that’s not his fault,’ said Rosie, ‘it’s his sex appeal.’

  Emily blinked.

  ‘Sex appeal, what’s that?’ she said. ‘It don’t sound nice to me, Rosie, nor half decent.’

  ‘Oh, it’s the latest thing among Hollywood film stars,’ said Rosie. ‘All the film magazines talk about them having sex appeal now.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like the sound of it one bit,’ said Emily, ‘and nor will your grandma. And I don’t want to hear you saying your dad’s got some – here, where’s he gone?’

  ‘Oh, just to share some of his sex appeal with the lady in that posh yacht,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Well, you can just go and tell ’im to bring it back here,’ said Emily. ‘I never heard of anything more – more—’

  ‘Improper?’ said Rosie.

  ‘Well, whatever it is, you tell your dad to get rid of it or cover it up.’

  Rosie shrieked.

  ‘Mum sweet, you can’t cover it up.’

  ‘Well, it ought never to ’ave been invented,’ said Emily, ‘so you make sure your grandma never gets to hear about it.’

  ‘Bless you, no, never,’ said Rosie, ‘and I’ll tell the lady with the posh yacht that Daddy’s sex appeal is all yours, Mum, and that he’s got to bring it back here so that you can put it somewhere safe.’ Away Rosie went, laughing.

  Emily couldn’t help smiling. That young lady had her own appeal. And she was so like Boots, she had the same sense of humour, the same way of enjoying life, and she could easily have been his natural daughter. Emily sighed a little then. She’d done her best in her marital relationship with Boots, but she’d only produced one child, their son Tim. She knew he’d have liked more, he was always at his best with young people, and always specially good fun when in company with Tim and Rosie and his nieces and nephews.

  Look at some of them now. Annabelle, Bobby, Emma, Edward, Tim and Rosie, all clambering around the hired boat, all having fun with Boots. And with Ned too, wearing summer trousers down to his sand-shoes to hide his artificial leg, with Lizzy watching him to make sure he didn’t fall over the oars or something. Lizzy, her oldest friend, had a really good marriage, being the boss and Ned not minding it that way. It was a bit more difficult for herself to be boss with Boots, he just didn’t take her seriously enough, he’d say something to make her giggle when she didn’t want to giggle.

  Nick was down at the boat as well, a lovely young man and a firm friend to Boots, as well as being such a good companion to Ned and Mr Finch. He was also Annabelle’s one and only. She had given the push to all her other boyfriends. Look at her, what a picture she was, all colour and sparkle, and such a teasing minx to Nick. But you could tell how she felt about him by the way she responded to him and the way she provoked him into tickling her. She went mad with shrieks and laughter, and then came back for more. It was what you felt when you were in love, you wanted to be touched. Oh, the years when she herself would have died with bliss to have Boots tickle her, only she’d been such a skinny thing and nowhere near as pretty as Lizzy had been.

  ‘Come on, Aunt Em’ly,’ called Bobby, ‘come and help push the boat. Grandpa’s going to sail it with some of us in it.’

  ‘Comin’, Bobby,’ said Emily, and down she went to help push and launch the hired yacht, her skirt tucked up, her slim legs shining in the sunlight. And as she went she thought of her years in Walworth and the poverty, and the blessings of having lovely neighbours like the Adamses, who’d been even poorer than her mum and dad. Imagine, out of that hard life had come a summer day with poverty far behind them, and the young people actually enjoying all the wonders of messing about in boats, like only rich people used to do.

  Chinese Lady, seated in a deckchair and under an old-fashioned parasol, watched them all as the boat was pushed into the water, then she returned to the book she was reading, a holiday novel bought for her by Boots. It was by Ethel M. Dell, and Chinese Lady was deep into the author’s detailed description of the hero. She was trying to work out what it all meant.

  Rosie could have told her it meant the hero had sex appeal.

  Chapter Five

  Polly found herself staying on. If Jacques was kindness itself, Eloise was happy each day to serve her French breakfast and to have her around to talk to. And there were always questions.

  Where would I begin, ma’moiselle, if I wanted to find out if my father had brothers and sisters? Do you think, ma’moiselle, it’s foolish perhaps to want to know about his family, to find out if I have English uncles and aunts? Ma’moiselle, I must stop talking like this, don’t you think? Only I think you very English, and attractive in a very English way, and I keep saying to myself, ah, Eloise, you are English too but in a French way, do you think so, ma’moiselle?

  Polly answered all questions in oblique fashion, and put together comments that made Eloise smile. Jacques spared the girl from her work one day, when the weather was particularly fine, and Polly took her out into the countryside for a picni
c lunch. Eloise was delighted, and said how kind English people were, and with such good manners. She liked ma’moiselle very much, she said.

  ‘For my good manners, Eloise?’

  ‘For how nice you are, and for your sense of humour. That is sometimes the best thing for people to have, a sense of humour, don’t you think so?’

  Boots has his share of that, thought Polly.

  ‘If one has no looks, Eloise, and no fine hat and dress for Sunday Mass, a sense of humour would be a great help.’

  ‘Oh, yes, one could laugh away one’s liabilities,’ said Eloise.

  On the way back, the girl asked Polly if she would like to see the farm which once belonged to her mother’s parents and where her mother met her English sergeant. Polly, traumatized, said yes in a hollow voice, and Eloise directed her there. She showed her where to park the car, beside a gate in a leafy lane. Out of the car they stepped, Eloise opened the gate and they entered a farm lane.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Polly, pointing.

  ‘Oh, that’s the long barn where the soldiers of my father’s company were billeted, and see, there’s a smaller barn farther on, which he and the other sergeants used. And look, down there is the cottage used by the officers. My mother told me all this.’

  ‘Yes, Eloise, of course,’ said Polly, and bit her lip. The scene was so peaceful, so rural, and it was painfully easy to visualize how like paradise it must have seemed to the trench-weary West Kents. And what would the addition of a farmer’s daughter have done for Boots, if not to keep him here and out of the town’s estaminets? No wonder she herself had been robbed of the chance of meeting him.

  The summer insects winged, the sun laid its heat on the barn roof, and such was the country quiet that she was sure she would hear the sound of the guns yet again any second.

  ‘Ma’moiselle?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Ma’moiselle, you look so sad.’

  ‘Well, you see, my young friend, they were here and then they went, and so many of them died. They had faults, Eloise, the faults of men, but even so they were the best of men, with so much courage, as your soldiers of France were. Your father was a volunteer—’

  ‘A volunteer? Ma’moiselle, how did you know that?’

  Polly, biting her lip again, said, ‘Well, you see, Eloise, Britain didn’t begin conscription of men until 1916, and as your father was a sergeant he must have enrolled with the Army long before service became compulsory. Do you see?’

  ‘Yes, ma’moiselle. You have very deep feelings about your Tommies. That is what the French and Belgians called them, Tommies. Ma’moiselle, do you find it hard to forget them?’

  ‘Hard? No. Do you think I try to? No, never. In four years I lived a lifetime with them, Eloise, and can never forget them.’

  ‘I think that is a proud and precious thing, ma’moiselle. See, if we walk down this lane we shall come to the farmhouse. It’s the lane my father walked every day to see my mother before the war took him.’

  Oh, God, I shall come hopelessly apart, thought Polly, as they began the walk. I’m crazy. One should never go back to one’s yesterday, not when yesterday is so emotionally painful. What am I doing now if I’m not walking in his footsteps again? What help is that to me?

  Her legs moved stiffly. Eloise swung along beside her, a girl not of sadness or maudlin sentimentality, but a girl who seemed to take pleasure in being the daughter of a man she had never known. There was an eagerness about her in her wish to show Polly where he had met her mother.

  ‘That is the farmhouse?’ said Polly, as it loomed up solid and enduring.

  ‘Yes, and that is the dairy,’ said Eloise. The stone-built dairy was as enduring as the farmhouse. ‘See, it’s where they met, just outside the dairy, and would you believe, ma’moiselle, my mother chased him with a pitchfork, thinking he had come to steal the chickens. She shook her fist at him, told him many things to his discredit, called him many names, and in the end he laughed, yes. He thought her very amusing, you see, and he wasn’t at all afraid of her tongue or her fist or her pitchfork. Oh, she told me this many times, how he laughed at her, so of course, she fell in love with him there and then. Is it easy, ma’moiselle, to fall in love with men who laugh at you?’

  Polly remembered the moment when she had finally met him, in 1920, and in a dreadfully grotty shop by Camberwell Green, full of army surplus. She had gone there to deliver an order for her stepmother, already involved with Boots’s brother Sammy in respect of blankets and so much else for a new orphanage. Only Boots had been there, and she could hardly believe that such an arresting man could be in charge of a stupid shop. She lingered, however, her whole being disturbed, and she told him eventually to close the shop and come up to town with her. More or less, he laughed at her, and she stormed out with insults on her lips. But she went back on another day, she had to, and from then on she made a place for herself in his life. Compulsion drove her, and how bitter she was when she found out he was married, for she knew he had been the one man in France she had subconsciously looked for.

  ‘It’s very easy, Eloise, to fall in love with a man whom you feel is meant for you alone.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ A man barked the question and they saw him moving towards them from the farmhouse. He was short, squat and very dark, his old felt hat pulled low, a black moustache sitting thickly on his upper lip, his expression ill-tempered.

  ‘That’s my Uncle Petrie, my mother’s brother,’ whispered Eloise. ‘Don’t let him upset you.’ She lifted her head as he rapidly advanced on them.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked again, looking at Eloise and ignoring Polly. Polly thought him a mishap of nature, a squat black beetle masquerading as a man by standing upright.

  ‘I’ve only brought an English friend of mine to see the farm,’ said Eloise.

  ‘Well, you’re not welcome, and nor is she, or any damned English people. Clear off, both of you. I know what you’re after, brat, you’re after half of the farm. You’ll not get it, you’ve no claim, you’re illegitimate.’

  ‘And you, m’sieur, are the ugliest and most unpleasant creature in a country made for cultured and civilized people,’ said Polly, ‘and I count it a sad misfortune to have met you.’

  ‘Get off my land, English whore!’

  ‘M’sieur, I would not stay here, no, not for all the gold in the Bank of England,’ said Polly. ‘Come, Eloise, leave him to his pond, his frogs and his mud.’

  He stood roaring after them as they went back down the lane, Eloise holding a hand to her mouth to stifle laughter. When they were out of sight and hearing of her uncle, she spoke.

  ‘Ma’moiselle, how brave you were, and did you see his face when you said to leave him to his frogs and his mud?’

  ‘Well, I should think he’s first cousin to a frog, wouldn’t you, Eloise? Except, perhaps, that’s unkind to frogs, for I’m sure frogs aren’t nearly so ugly and have far better manners.’

  Eloise burst out laughing.

  ‘Ma’moiselle, oh, I do like English people, and am proud my father was English. I will find his grave one day, I’m sure, and then I will tell him so.’

  That night, restless in her bed, Polly made her decision. She did not say so to Eloise when she left two days later. She said nothing at all about the fact that she was going to tell Boots he had left a flower in France.

  ‘Ma’moiselle, oh, I’m so sorry you are leaving. Uncle Jacques and Aunt Marie are also sad. It’s been so much pleasure, and you have put up so well with all my talk and questions. Perhaps you will visit us again one day?’

  ‘I think we shall see each other again, Eloise. Yes, I do think so, and perhaps before very long.’

  ‘Ma’moiselle Polly, you will always be welcome,’ said Jacques.

  ‘Always,’ said Eloise. Polly kissed her, then Jacques, and slipped into her car. They waved to her from the doorway of the estaminet as she drove off. ‘Au ’voir, ma’moiselle, au ’voir!’ called Eloise.<
br />
  And Polly called back, in English, wartime variety.

  ‘Cheeri-oh, old things, toodle-oo!’

  ‘Oh, she is so English, isn’t she, Uncle Jacques?’

  ‘They were all like that, Eloise, when they were comrades of France. Cheeri-oh and gawd blimey, you know.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Eloise, watching Polly’s car turning and receiving a last wave from her.

  ‘Yes, cheeri-oh and gawd blimey,’ smiled Jacques.

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It means the English Tommies are about.’

  ‘I’m half-English, Uncle Jacques.’

  ‘Yes, we’ve agreed on that many times, my chicken.’

  ‘And I’m about.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Cheeri-oh and gawd blimey, Uncle Jacques.’

  Chapter Six

  ‘Well, dear old thing, what d’you say, then?’ said Polly. She was sitting on the garden terrace with her father at their Dulwich home. Below them, the lawn, perfectly patterned by the gardener’s mower, stretched green and smooth. ‘I have to tell him, don’t I?’

  ‘Have you asked yourself what Boots himself would want?’ said General Sir Henry Simms, spruce and iron-grey.

  ‘Yes, a dozen times, until my own answer was positive. Boots would want to know, and he would want his child. You know what he’s like about young people. And I have a feeling, a very sure feeling, that Eloise would want him to want her.’

  ‘And Emily?’

  ‘Emily’s not important,’ said Polly brusquely.

  ‘Emily is very important,’ said Sir Henry.

  ‘Emily is in my way, and always has been,’ said Polly, and took a long swallow of her cool gin and tonic. ‘Oh, look here, old thing, it’s Boots’s decision and no-one else’s.’

  ‘But his decision could affect Emily seriously. Suddenly, she’ll find herself a stepmother, suddenly she’ll find that before Boots married her he’d loved another woman. Incidentally, why didn’t he return to France when the war was over, why didn’t he contact the Frenchwoman again?’