by Leah Fleming
He tried to make out he was a Yorkshireman craving adventure, wounded in the chest and discharged on medical grounds.
He knew most of them thought he was on the run: ‘Did you get a girl into trouble?’ ‘Is her father after you with a shot gun?’ He laughed and let them think what they liked. He was happy to be as far away as he could from all the terrible mess in Europe. He was no deserter. This was as dangerous a job as any he had done over there but the change of tactics to herding ships together in a convoy seemed to be keeping the wolves at bay.
It was rumoured that their next cargo would be troops from the eastern seaboard of the States: soldiers bound for France, instead of horses, and that America was on the move now, mobilising for war. In that were the seeds of hope. More fresh soldiers to the slaughter, he sighed, but Allied forces would outnumber the opposition soon, and then this war might just end.
Suddenly the whole earth shook, the bunk rocked as an explosion like nothing Guy had ever heard since the one at Messines Ridge in 1916 blasted him onto the floor. What the hell was that? He’d ducked instinctively, holding his ears as a series of explosions like huge guns ripped through the air.
‘It’s coming from the harbour. The Germans are shelling Halifax! Bloody hell, run for cover!’ one of the mates ordered.
‘Get the horses back. Cover their heads…They’ll be terrified!’ Guy issued orders in the old way as a pall of black billowing smoke suddenly darkened the morning sky. This was no ordinary shellfire, the huge cloud of smoke and dust rose high and then a terrible rain of shrapnel began to fall. Those who had helmets covered themselves from the deluge. Others were not so lucky and screamed as the hot metal pierced them.
‘The horses…we must stop them stampeding!’
No one was listening to Guy, too busy trying to find cover. The smell was choking and Guy felt the tension closing his chest. He must find air. They were south of the city, out of range of the first explosions. What had happened to the Philomena and to the poor sods in the harbour or those still on board? ‘We must see to the horses, and then go and give a hand. It looks as if the whole town is on fire. They’ll need our help,’ he shouted, trying to round up the fleeing crew.
He might not understand what was happening up there but it was serious, and many must have been killed in the blast. ‘Come on, chaps…we must help,’ he yelled. ‘There’s women and children trapped out there.’
No one was prepared for what they saw through the smoke and flames. A whole side of the harbour was flattened. Not a building standing. It was like a scene from Dante’s Inferno: charred corpses everywhere, children wandering in what was left of their streets, wide-eyed with terror, horses gutted. Such a terrible vision of innocent slaughter Guy never wanted to see in his life again. Sickened but determined, he forced the rest of his crewmates further down town to see the damage, to gather up all the children they could.
Then, as they got nearer, they saw all the wooden buildings were on fire and high on Citadel Hill, crowds were gathering, screaming at the furnace creeping ever towards them.
‘What’s happened?’ Guy kept asking, but no one knew for certain: two ships had collided in the Narrows and blown up, was one version; a submarine torpedoed the harbour, another. Someone said it was a Zeppelin bombing Halifax, and there was a great wave of shock that had rocked every ship to the north in terror.
Guy felt helpless. Damn and blast this war. These were civilians, innocent women and children going about their daily business. Now, even on the outskirts, there was not a home standing. Fires were smouldering and there was nothing much the survivors could do but organise themselves into rescue parties to dig out those still trapped and find water to put out the fires.
The town was full of men in uniform; those still ablebodied enough to help did their bit. But when rumour came that the naval magazine might blow at the barracks, it fired up more terror as crowds rushed for cover.
Guy stood firm against this tide of panic. ‘We must move in, chaps,’ he ordered, thinking on his feet, giving instructions, assessing the danger. He had to move forward and help in any way possible. Their own ship would be blasted out the water by now, stricken and unfit to use. They were stranded with their terrified cargo until help came. ‘Shift your arses, make yourselves useful! We can’t stand here and watch Halifax burn!’ he yelled.
The magazine didn’t blow because hundreds of volunteers like him slowly dismantled the ammunition dump, lifting, loading, unloading and throwing anything that might explode into the harbour.
To make matters much worse, that night it snowed incessantly, covering all the broken homes and streets with huge drifts. People took makeshift shelter where they could, in any building still standing, churches, barns, even in tents, frozen to the bone in the terrible blizzard. This was the final deathblow on the stricken town, but the fires were doused.
Guy was exhausted. Every sinew in his body ached as the crew spent the night comforting the horses. It was going to be a long night. At least they were warm, but his eyes were stinging with the smoke and heat, and his body sickened by all the terrible sights he had seen. This destruction was worse than in the trenches. How strange that, once again, he had survived when by rights he should be at the bottom of the sea. He didn’t understand why he was being allowed to live on when so many innocents had died. Had they not been punished enough without the blizzard’s cruel blow?
For as long as he lived he would never forget 6 December 1917. When was all this suffering going to end? For the first time in months, he thought of his mother alone for Christmas and felt a pang of sorrow for her. Just for a second, he also thought about Selma and Angus and West Sharland. But all he wanted to do was sleep.
Hester watched the village muster its venom against the Bartley family, some cool and distant, others downright vicious. It was common knowledge now that the boy had been shot at dawn. But Angus’s part in the tragedy would never be known. She would have to live with her own role in bringing this about for the rest of her life. This shameful knowledge gnawed away at her stomach alongside Guy’s desertion, breaking her heart. Was there no way to put things right? She didn’t know if Guy was alive or dead, and it was as much as she could do to face each day alone in the family house. There were no more officers to nurse. Only the garden was her solace as she began to take back the vegetables into rose beds and shrubbery once more. The horses had gone, just old Jemima left as a reminder of Guy, and she was looking old and weary, like herself.
She had a servant or two but little company. The Hunts had taken up a new parish, and there was now a young curate in charge, a puny weakling with flat feet who had dodged conscription, she surmised.
Martha Holbeck’s words kept worrying at her: an injustice to be righted. She kept both the boys’ rooms just as they had left them. She couldn’t bear to see them cleaned out and emptied,unable to face the desolation of cold lifeless bedrooms. She felt as if she was halfliving.What was there left for hernow?
Beaven knocked on the scullery door to say Jemima was limping and needed a shoe again and should he take her to the blacksmith in Sowerthwaite.
‘What’s wrong with Bartley? He’s my tenant.’
‘I just wondered, ma’am, if you wanted me to go there,’ came the cautious reply.
‘How can my rent be paid for if he has no custom? Take her down and leave her there.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he replied.
‘And you can take the firearms from the dining room. The clasp has gone. Tell him there is no rush.’
If her horse was seen in the paddock it would be noticed and word would get around that the lady of the manor was in no mood to abandon a good workman, whatever the circumstances.This silliness had gone on for too long. They may be on the other side of the social fence but the Bartleys were honest people. They were not responsible for their son’s behaviour, not like herself. Perhaps this gesture might help them over a difficult time and ensure they didn’t fall behind with their rent. What if they did?
Would she have the heart to throw them out of their cottage? How she prayed it would never come to that.
Ruth had persuaded Selma’s parents to come to see them over the New Year, but only Essie turned up, looking harassed in her black coat and a felt hat. She wore no other colour and Selma felt a flicker of shame at the sight of her rough boots and her shabby three-quarter coat. The broken veins in her cheeks were like red ink marks on white paper. Mam wore a weary look of resignation. She was here out of duty, not desire.
Since she had settled with Ruth Selma was getting used to Bradford life and all the attractions a bustling city had to offer. They had gone to a real pantomime and to the moving pictures, to a musical concert at St George’s Hall and to the Wesleyan Amateur Operatic Society’s production of The Arcadians.
There was so much to tell her mother about her new position as companion nursemaid to a young girl down the Avenue, Lisa Greenwood. Lisa had started at the High School for Girls as a day pupil, while her father was at work in Leeds University. It was Selma’s job to meet her from school, cook her a simple meal and see that she did her studies until he returned home.
It was a bit of a shock at first to realise they were German born. The first Germans she’d ever met. But Mr Greenwood didn’t have horns coming out of his ears. In fact, he was quite old with grey hair and a moustache; a professor of textile technology in Leeds, a learned man with a kindly twinkle in his eye. Lisa’s name was really Elise Grunwald, but they’d changed it by deed poll to sound more English. She was a remarkable girl, old for her age. Her mother had died when she was small. Lisa was clever and played the piano and violin. She and her father spoke German to each other in private but always chattered away in her schoolgirl English to Selma. The house was full of books and Selma was free to take anything off the shelves. She fancied the picture books full of paintings and sculptures the best.
Rose Villa was just like Aunty Ruth’s house from the outside but inside it was cluttered, with dark heavy furniture, framed pictures on the walls, a jumble of papers, instruments and books and the smell of rich cigar smoke.
Professor Greenwood had been sent into a camp for German nationals at the beginning of the war and Lisa was farmed out amongst the neighbours until Uncle Sam and some important people spoke up for him and they were all reunited.
Parent and child were very close in a way she’d never seen before. They laughed and discussed, argued on points of order, nit-picking until her ears were aching. The professor talked to Lisa as if she were an adult, not a child, but also realised there were some things in the home that needed a more female influence.
‘Make sure she doesn’t become too blue a stocking,’ he would joke. Selma wasn’t sure what he meant.
They went to the theatre at the weekends and kept themselves busy on Sundays entertaining other German friends. They didn’t go to church. ‘I have not found one church that can answer all my questions,’ Lisa’s father explained.
They never talked about the war’s progress or about their family. He had chosen to stay on in England and was cut off from his own kin.
There was a picture of Lisa’s mother in a silver frame. She had a strong face, like Lisa, fair, blue-eyed with strong cheekbones and a long nose. Not pretty but striking in a different way.
Selma often wondered how she was being paid to do such an interesting job. There was so much to tell her mother but she didn’t seem interested in her new exciting world.
Ruth had made one of her special high teas. They had had to queue for bread flour and fancy pies, but made a trifle and sponge cake with borrowed eggs. Mum hardly did justice to all this effort. In the months since Frank’s death she’d grown thin.
‘How are things with Asa?’ Ruth asked. ‘Has business picked up?’
‘Aye, it has, surprisingly. Her ladyship has deemed to honour us with her patronage. She keeps bringing in regular bits and pieces and now her tenant farmers have brought themselves down off the tops to do the same. Asa is busy enough and now he’s leading his Bible class again, and thinking of training up as a preacher. His head’s stuck in his Bible commentary book and we have a new preacher now, but his sermons are not much to my liking: lots of flowery sentences with not much meat in them. He is one that likes the sound of his own voice. There’s been a falling-off in attendance,’ she replied.
‘Are you still in that WI? I hear they’ve got groups all over the country now,’ Ruth asked, trying to pull Essie out of her mood.
‘No, I don’t go now not after…well, you know, I haven’t got time.’
‘You must make the effort,’ Ruth said briskly before swiftly changing the subject. ‘So what do you think of our Selma? Isn’t she a fancy piece these days?’
Essie looked her daughter up and down.‘But I’m surprised she’s not still in mourning. It’s been only nine months.’
‘Talk to me direct, Mam. I am here! I did wear it up until the New Year. But Aunty suggested I lighten up a bit. I have this job to do now.’
‘So I hear, but a girl of eleven is surely too old for a nursemaid,’ her mother sniffed.
‘She has no mother and the professor works long hours. I’m going to join the Wesleyan Players. They’re doing a pierrot show and I might get a turn.’
‘You soon forgot yer chapel ways. Dad’ll be most disappointed if you do.’
‘Come on, Essie, she’s only young once,’ Ruth protested. ‘Give her a chance to meet people her own age. What’s the harm in that?’
Mam looked up. ‘I’m not hanging together very well, am I? You do as you see fit, Selma. I don’t know what’s got into the world. What have we to show for this war but blood, sweat and tears? I’m that strung out, what with Asa being so thin and worn out, a puff of wind would blow him over.’ Essie paused to look around the room with a sigh. ‘You’ve got it real nice, Ruth. Mind you, you always did have a good eye, and it’s as well to know that Selma has a good home, if anything happens to us.’
Ruth was having none of it. ‘Nothing’s going to happen, Essie, so stop this sorry talk. We wanted you here to give you a treat, not a talking to…’
‘A change is as good as a rest, they say, but I never did stand easy under chimneys and mills with all that soot and smoke. But I suppose it has its compensation, and you have done me proud, both of you, with this fine spread.’ She smiled weakly. ‘But excuse me if I have little appetite. I can’t seem to taste my food these days. It stays in a lump down my throat and I can hardly swallow it. Sometimes I feel as if it’ll choke me.’
‘You should see the doctor,’ Ruth urged anxiously.
‘I’m not foiling out good brass for him to tell me what I already know. I’m that choked inside. It must be the time of life.’
‘What time?’ Selma asked.
‘Never you mind, but Ruth knows what I mean. If it’s not one thing it’s another.’
Selma was secretly relieved when they waved Essie off in the late afternoon. It had not been a good visit, and soon it would be her turn to go back home. But she hoped not for a while. Much as she loved her family she wasn’t sure she wanted to return just yet. Bradford was fast becoming her home.
Essie first noticed the little shrine in Elm Tree Square weeks ago: a wooden cross on which were a few bunches of flowers and a Union Jack, messages with names pinned onto it. But as the summer of 1918 drew to a close, the flowers faded and the notes blew away. Everyone was talking about a peace settlement coming soon. Not that they talked about it to her.
That first wave of anger against the Bartleys, those impulsive acts of vandalism, broken windows and hate messages had stopped, to be replaced by a cool silence. Cold shouldering was far worse in many ways, the whispering behind her back whenever she passed. It made it hard to sit on the bus and she took to walking the two miles into Sowerthwaite just to avoid it. She often looked for the strange figure in the mist but it never appeared again.
The only person who bothered to be civil to them both was their landlady, who took to calling
in person to bring repairs to Asa. She too had aged in the past few years, wearing deepest black at all times, her cheeks sunken, dark circles under her eyes. She looked as if she was in need of a good meal or two.
Essie recognised what it was like to be stuck in a grief that never left her. Asa said it was ungodly to take on so. He just kept his head down and took his solace in delivering sermons in the outlying chapels, riding out on a spare horse into the Dales and returning often soaked through, tired, but with a fire in his eyes. His faith was his great comfort. It was no longer hers. She wanted to stand up and argue with the new pastor. What did he know of the suffering that clung to her guts, squeezing all the joy out of her life: the joy of seeing spring lambs, the meadows full of flowers waving through the hay, cornflowers, pink corncockle, clovers, yellow rattle or the autumn colours and leaf fall? Everything around her looked a dull grey sludge, and when peace finally came and the streets were full of bunting and flags and dancing outside the Hart’s Head, she stayed inside and wept.
What were they dancing for? What had been gained but a load of pain? Who was there left to come back here? Would Selma ever leave Ruth’s comfortable billet to be a blacksmith’s daughter again? She doubted it.
‘Don’t take on so,’ Asa said, trying to bring some solace. ‘We have our Selma safe. The rest was the Lord’s will.’
‘What do you mean, the Lord’s will? To have my boy tied to a post and shot like an animal? How can you stand in that pulpit and talk about the Lord’s will? All those young men slaughtered, and for what? When are you going to face up to what He’s done to us, instead of all this pious talk?’
‘Now, Essie, don’t get angry.’
‘Why shouldn’t I be angry? What was done to Frank wasn’t right. It wasn’t just. I want answers, proper answers.’
‘It doesn’t do to stir up trouble. We have to live here now.’