by Leah Fleming
She was a widow now. Charles lay at the bottom of Scapa Flow; a sailor’s, not a soldier’s, death. How strange…Were his last thoughts of them or of panic for breath as the waters closed over his head?
‘Is there no hope of other survivors?’ she asked, knowing that lifeboats could be cast adrift many miles. She thought about the Titanic disaster.
‘It was a terrible night, Lady Hester. The lifeboats were smashed to pieces by heavy seas and the explosion was midship. The Hampshire sank in minutes. Only twelve men have survived, reaching the shore in the lifeboats. The wind and the cold took its toll. The waters round to the Brough of Birsay are treacherous.’
‘What were they doing going out on a night like that? Stupid to set off into a storm,’ Angus asked angrily.
‘You might well ask…but we only know that they were on their way to Archangel for some negotiations with the highest Russian officials. The German navy had left mines around Scapa Flow but they were undetected. It was all a terrible coincidence. Had they not turned back because of the storm…Had the weather not been so inclement…We shall never know.’
Hester didn’t want to hear any more of their commiserations. Nothing would bring her husband home again. Their life was changed for ever by this sickening news. And Guy was going into battle even as they spoke.
‘Thank you for telling me all this in person. No letter or telegram can ever convey such bad news but I would appreciate being left now to consider all this with my son.’
‘Of course, Lady Hester,’ said the chaplain. ‘There will be a memorial service in London in due course, but we will keep you informed of any other developments, should they arise.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, rising, her knees shaking. ‘Angus will see you to the door.’ She flopped down again, suddenly exhausted by the images in her head: the crashing waves, the broken ship, the scrabble for lifeboats, the cries of the injured and the fear of the doomed men as they wrapped their cork vests over themselves in hope of a rescue. It must have been chaos. There was never any hope.
Oh, Charles, to have drowned in an undignified scramble for safety whilst trying to get Lord Kitchener into a lifeboat. They had survived the explosion, but not the savage seas.
How she needed to weep at such scenes but not a tear would fall. She just felt numb inside. Never to see him again or hear that loud booming voice…Theirs was never a romantic passion, but there was respect and friendship, a steady sort of married love. For the past years they had lived separate lives, joined mostly by concern for the boys, but she would not wish that sort of death on anyone. Just when they were looking forward to a more settled way of life in retirement, along came war, and now this.
‘Oh, Charles,’ that was all she kept repeating. His voice rang in her ears and she shut her eyes and saw him resplendent in his dress uniform. His tall elegant figure with those long legs, ‘Give ’em hell’ Cantrell, poor, poor Charles, food for the fishes at the bottom of the sea.
Stop this! Hester drew herself together into an effort to get out of the room. There was only one place of consolation for her and that was the walled garden, where the first of the June roses was already opening its buds in the sunshine.
It would be good for just the two of them to have a few hours to themselves before the news drifted through the village and all the formal acts of mourning would begin, a few hours to sit in peace and look out over the Ridge. ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills: from whence cometh my help.’
Just to feast on the fresh green of the fells was soothing and with it came a relief of sorts. I am now as everyone else, a war widow. We have had our quota of suffering, like Violet; the odds have been satisfied. And to her horror she secretly sighed with relief at the thought that this meant Guy would be spared.
Guy had never received so many letters of sympathy from strangers, from his old headmaster and the vicar, from officers who had served with Charles Cantrell in the past. With every post there were more and more tributes to his father; tributes that gave him fresh insight into his father’s army career, his friendships, his club associates, and even one from a lady who claimed to be her father’s special friend, a Mrs Amy Trickett from Balham Common. So many tributes from people he’d never met. His mother wrote a terse note telling him his father would want him to do his duty and how proud he was to have him serving in the Yorkshires. Angus wrote that the Village had sent wreaths and attended the church memorial service in droves. It was a splendid occasion with hymns and readings, but strange because there was no burial or coffin, just a picture of Father with a laurel wreath round it like a frame.
Mama was holding up and talking about opening a wing of Waterloo for wounded officers, and she was keeping so busy she kept falling asleep at the oddest times like between the entrée and the dessert, or while she was sitting doing her infernal sewing. Angus was going to oversee all the new arrangements.
I wish we could exchange places. I’d rather be with you any day.
They say they can hear the Allied guns across the Channel in London on a clear day, so you’re the ‘Give ’em hell’ Cantrell now. Go to it and good luck.
Selma’s letter was short and simple. She sent pressed flowers from the hay meadows, asking if they were the same as in the French fields. She’d drawn a sketch of the Ridge with Jemima in the foreground and enclosed a copy of the memorial service for him to treasure. How strange that he didn’t feel anything much, just numbness.
His father’s death was a keen quick end. Now Guy was seeing so much death that was anything but: men hanging on the wire in agony, blown apart. Stomach wounds were the worst, with entrails spilling out and poor beggars pleading to be put down like wounded horses, endless crying for help in no man’s land, he listening as the cries for mothers got weaker and more spaced apart. It was a living hell, and there was more to come.
West Sharland was another planet away from this shit hole. No wonder he could read things and not feel emotion, as if he were floating above it all into another world. Sometimes he feared he would end up a dithering idiot, but he must stay strong for his men.
On the first day of the Big Push they’d gone over the top after the bombardment expecting there would be nothing but wasteland between them and the German trenches. The wire would be flattened with such great gaps so they could run through. But it was a hopeless fiasco. They were hit by machine-gun fire and he’d watched men mown down and not get up and waited for something to explode inside him. There were bodies sleeping in the fields as if they were sunbathing, others alive, twitching, begging for water, calling to their comrades. But they moved on like automatons. He was no longer afraid, as if every one of his senses was alert to danger, eyes, ears, muscles tensed up for a fight.
The devastation got worse, and they didn’t get far in no man’s land before there was no recourse but to turn back while thousands lay piled high in the sunshine, never to return. All this slaughter for a few yards of territory, and then, under cover of darkness, he and his party crawled over the top to collect the dead or the few wounded still breathing.
What a shambles! What a terrible waste of life and limb! He couldn’t believe he’d made it so far, and with this standoff came a terrible shaking fear that the next time over would bring his last moment alive on this earth.
What an act it was to stay calm, fighting the urge to sweat and pant, trying to look full of confidence, knowing his men were eyeing his every move in the dugout. They would take their lead from his demeanour. Hidden from view he felt that first courage leaching away, felt his resolve weakening, his hands shaking with fear.
I don’t want to die yet. I don’t want to end up like these grinning skulls sticking out in the shell holes, picked clean by rats; these shiny long white faces staring, accusing with hollows for eyes. His dreams were full of dancing skeletons and rats the size of moggies.
No one had warned him that in battle he’d be out on all fours in the mud, dragging bodies back to dig shallow graves, taking off identity
tags, making lists of names and numbers, ferreting through bloody clothes for letters and remains, writing letters to widows, letters to strangers. This was not the sort of boy heroics he had been expecting and all his childish hopes of glory died in seconds on the poppy fields of the Somme in those first few days of action. Now he knew what his father meant about two hours of battle being worth two years of training.
In those first weeks of July, the sense of desolation grew as one by one his officer chums were blown up or just simply disappeared. He felt their loss more than that of his own father. Over the months they’d all become his family more than his own and that made him feel sick with guilt. Now they were lying in shallow graves while his remaining company was living a gypsy life, scavenging for cover and food until the mess wagons arrived with supplies for their platoons.
After battle there was always plenty to eat, for more than half his men were gone but their rations still kept coming and must be shared out. Feet must be inspected, wounds examined, charges of ill discipline dealt with on the spot. There was no let-up, and all the time he must look as if this fiasco was just a minor blip in the battle plan and encourage them on to the next fight.
There were hints he’d be made captain, for who else was left to do the job? He was one of only a handful of officers living, already on borrowed time.
Then the blessed order to fall back into the reserve line came, and then further back for some rest. That was the worst time: behind the lines, with time to think about all of the responsibility left on his shoulders, the huge losses, where they would be sent next, how to wind down for a few days in the estaminet without the smoke and noise and thunder in his ears.
Guy lay back in a haystack, utterly exhausted, weary of all the nonsense and futility of trying to shift the Hun from their trenches. It was backwards and forwards like some dance of death, and for what…a few yards of territory?
Perhaps there was a bigger plan at work but he didn’t know what it was. His job was to obey orders, not to question them.
Then he was ordered to HQ, and his first thought was, what have I done wrong now?
‘Cantrell.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘At ease! You’re off, so get your kit.’
‘Off where, sir?’
‘Spot of leave…orders from above…Your father was with Lord Kitchener?’
‘Yes, sir, he was.’
‘Bad show…Ten days’ leave. Don’t just stand there. Get your kit. Just time to catch the hospital train…’
‘But, sir, my men…There’re others who’ve been out longer…’
‘Orders, Cantrell. Just go. You can argue the toss when you return.’
‘Sir!’ he saluted briskly, not believing what he was hearing. He was going home to Yorkshire, leaving this hellhole and going north out of the fray. Suddenly he felt very unsure. He wanted to stay where he was with his shaken men. It felt like desertion, and he didn’t deserve leave. He’d achieved nothing. How could he bugger off without a by-your-leave? But orders were orders and who was he to question them?
He should feel overjoyed at this release but then why was he feeling so afraid?
8
Hester was busy overseeing the preparation of bedrooms for the first contingent of wounded officers. The iron beds arrived by lorry and she’d got Mrs Beck from the village to clean out the large bedrooms, ready to receive them.
Since the Battle of the Somme, as the papers called it, there was a rush to equip private homes with beds, and Waterloo House was assigned a voluntary auxiliary nurse and an orderly to prepare the hygiene routines. There was a cook and assistant, so the servants’ rooms in the attic had to be cleared out.
Suddenly her home wasn’t her own. The staff were taking over. Angus kept out of the way, happy to drive Charles’s car to fetch supplies or see to the horses.
Hester felt so bone weary at the end of the day, no time to enjoy cooked meals or anything much but her garden chores. Here she could find some peace and quiet from all the bustle and gardening kept her from worrying about Guy.
Not a word from him this week. Not since the Big Push had fizzled out and the terrible realisation that most of the Sowerthwaite Pals had been killed in the first wave of battle. All those brave local boys, school friends, members of the football and cricket teams, lines of them massacred. The whole town and the villages surrounding were in mourning. Young men at the peak of health and vigour gone for ever. Who would take their place? What would become of their wives and sweethearts? It made her own loss bearable in so far as Charles had had a good life, had travelled the world and seen his boys grow to manhood.
What gaps would these men leave when war was over?
Not a word from Guy, but bad news travelled fast from France. The military post was most efficient. Why, only the other day, the first poor Mrs Marshbank knew that her son was fatally wounded was when a letter of condolence came from a fellow soldier and this before she even got an official form!
When Hester looked at Angus she could see Guy in so many ways, which was always a comfort. But still, it was not like her son not to write. Perhaps the girl in the village, the Bartley girl, might have received word. Time to make a detour from her errands and humble herself by visiting the forge.
Hester had to admit she seemed a spirited sort of filly and her mother was a willing horse in the Women’s Institute these days. But assistant teacher and Sunday school teacher she might be, she still was not one of their sort. She may not know anything either, but it was worth a try.
Selma was busy stoking the fire. They’d had a delivery of coal and she was covered in dust and muck. June had been a busy month, with grinding and sharpening the sheep shears for clipping time. Now it was time to see to scythes and hay forks and repairs to mowing machines for haytiming. Even a blacksmith had his own seasonal rhythm. Horses always needed good shoes for the jobs ahead. There were the usual queues to be seen to.
Over the last months, Selma felt her muscles sharpening, her calloused hands hardening up, her shoulders broadening, and after an incident with a spark in her long hair, she’d pleaded to have her hair bobbed short. She was sick of the smell of singed hair. In her breeches and her collarless shirt, she felt like a boy but this was her job and she was sticking to it; feeble as she was when it came to the real heavy work. Now they were that thronged with comings and goings, she didn’t know the day of the week, or the hour, so when she saw the figure standing in the doorway she ignored him.
‘We’re closed!’ she shouted, not looking up—even a blacksmith had to eat—but the man didn’t move.
‘Is Selima in the house?’ he asked, and she looked up.
‘Who’s asking?’
‘Tell her Guy is home on leave…’ He took off his army cap.
Her eyes stared at the silhouette in the doorway and she felt herself blush. He didn’t recognise her under all this dirt and mucky clothing.
‘You just told her!’ she called back, smiling, pulling off her hat to release her bobbed hair. ‘You’re home!’
‘Selma, I’m so sorry…I thought…’ Guy stammered.
‘I know what I look like. I should have warned you, you don’t wear skirts in a forge!’ She paused, embarrassed. ‘There’s no other way, as you can see, to stay safe. How lovely to see you safe and sound. There’s been such terrible losses around here.’
‘I know. I heard about the Pals brigade.’
‘I was at school with so many of them. But enough sadness, this is just brilliant…what a wonderful surprise. If only I’d known, I’d have tried not to give you such a fright!’
Guy was staring at her in all her mucky glory, while her father hovered by the back door observing them both.
‘Back from the wars then, Mr Cantrell,’ he said. ‘One of the few left. This one’s my right-hand help now…doing champion for a girl. Might I add, not of our choosing. This is not work for women, but as the boys were desperate for glory, beggars can’t be choosers.’
‘D
ad!’ All his compliments vanished in his last sentence but she knew he was teasing.
‘I say as I find.’ Asa Bartley stood firm.
‘I think it is rather splendid for her to volunteer…and I’m none too clean myself.’
He looked marvellous to her. Selma wanted her dad to disappear, but he stood there staring at them both while she couldn’t take her eyes off Guy. He had grown so tall, so thin and gaunt in the cheeks, even more like his brother than before. He looked worn out, and his eyes were tired.
‘I can’t believe you’re here. I got your last letter only yesterday. It sounded terrible. Your mother must be so relieved to see you,’ she added.
‘She doesn’t know yet,’ he replied.
‘What doesn’t she know?’ Selma saw his mother standing in the doorway, staring at the scene before her and looking at Selma in fury.
‘I just called on the off chance, Miss Bartley, that you might have had word from Guy, but I see you have already renewed your acquaintance in person…’ She was staring in disbelief at Selma’s outfit now. ‘I thought you were teaching school.’
‘I was, but my father needed a boy,’ she stuttered, not sure whether to bob a curtsy or not.
‘Well, he certainly has made one of you, I see. I didn’t expect my son to arrive unannounced but you obviously have first call on his attention.’
‘I wanted to surprise you,’ Guy replied, now looking awkward.
‘You certainly did that, my son,’ said his mother sharply.
But her father intervened. ‘You must be thankful that the Lord has brought him home in one piece,’ he said, which didn’t help the situation at all.
Hester Cantrell drew herself up to her full height, bristling at his impudence. ‘Thank you, I don’t need telling what is between me and my maker, Mr Bartley. Come along, Guy. Angus will want to know you’re back. Good day to you both,’ she said pulling Guy’s arm.