Charles returned to the present when Leonard turned to speak to him. ‘Smells delicious, doesn’t it?’ he asked.
‘My stomach’s doing summersaults,’ Charles replied. They were in a grand, high-ceilinged room once used as a library before the house had become another casualty of war. Each wall had been lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves; but only a few books now remained. Small handfuls had been hastily grabbed by the exiled previous owners and half a dozen ‘borrowed’ by transient soldiers; the bulk that had remained had slowly kept the braziers and cooking vats burning for the past few weeks, when the claws of winter had sunk into the house. For Charles, the sight of the empty shelves, knowing that all those precious tomes had been consumed by fire, was desperately pitiful. It was just another consequence of war to which desensitised men paid no thought. Nobody whosoever even raised an eyebrow to the literary destruction. But how could they, Charles thought. They had marched until their feet had bled. They had stood for hours in freezing water. They had witnessed shells ripping apart their friends and enemies. They had watched helplessly as rats had devoured their comrades’ internal organs. No thing or person held any value anymore.
Yet it broke Charles’s heart as much as seeing the death of his friends. For him, it symbolised a further lowering of humanity. If we can’t even care for a pile of books, he thought, what hope do we have of caring for other human beings?
Charles watched from his position in the line, as one of the three cooks began to wrench, break and snap away chunks of the actual shelving behind him. He slowly fed the pieces into the fire.
Finally reaching the front of the queue, Charles received his plate of food: boiled potatoes, carrots and a piece of chicken, all swimming in a watery brown liquid that reminded him of the stuff slopping about in the bottom of the trenches. ‘Delicious,’ he said flatly.
In the adjoining lounge and dining room, a variety of makeshift tables had been assembled, some covered with tablecloths and a vase of fresh flowers. The two rooms were raucous with light-hearted chatter and laughter; it was a welcome sound for Charles, as he took a seat on a long table between Leonard and Edward Partington.
‘This is alright, isn’t it?’ Edward said cheerfully.
‘Better than the alternative order where we had to spend the day relieving the Sixth,’ Leonard answered, tucking into his dinner.
‘But that only means that they’re still stuck in the trenches,’ Charles muttered. ‘Poor buggers.’
‘Rather them than me,’ Edward said. ‘I want to get back home in one piece. The less time I spend at the end of Fritz’s gun barrels the better.’
‘Hear, hear,’ Leonard said, raising his glass of rum. ‘Happy Christmas, folks. Let’s hope we don’t see another one on active service.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ Charles said, his glass joining the others above the table.
From the end of the room a gravely, throaty cough drew the attention of the men: conversations lulled and cutlery was placed down. Another cough and the room fell silent. Major Carmichael, standing on a wooden crate, pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. He was a short man with a generous sprouting of grey ear and nasal hair. ‘Good afternoon, men,’ he began in his clipped voice. ‘I would just like to interrupt your meal, if I may, to say a few words. I shan’t ramble on for too long. First of all, on behalf of the lieutenant colonel, I would like to express gratitude to the officers, NCOs, and men of the Royal Sussex for their fine conduct under what has proven to be very trying and difficult circumstances during these opening months of war. The regiment’s diligence and dedication has not been without its losses; the iron regiment has suffered greatly. However, with a new year ahead of us and new blood swelling the ranks, I know we shall prevail in our just fight. And in recognition of the entire British Army’s endeavours, you have been issued with Christmas cards from their Majesties the king and queen and also a gift sent on behalf of Princess Mary, from the nation, which I trust you shall take great pleasure in opening. All that remains now, is for me to wish you all a very pleasant Christmas Day. Orders have been received that we shall be moving off at six am tomorrow to relieve the Sixth. Happy Christmas.’
The room was instantly ignited with chatter.
‘Well, that speech ended on a high note—Jesus, talk about a good way to ruin a day,’ Edward complained.
‘Happy Christmas one and all,’ Leonard said, mimicking the major’s voice. ‘But tomorrow you’re back at the front.’
Charles shook his head dismally and tried to filter out all extraneous thoughts so that he was left alone, imagining that he was enjoying Christmas dinner with Nellie and Alfred. He wondered what they were doing right at this very moment. He greatly hoped that they were warm, fed and happy. If that were true then he could cope with anything that the British Army threw at him.
The Christmas cards from the king and queen, along with the gift from Princess Mary, were distributed among the men as they ate their hot Christmas pudding.
Charles studied the card; on the front was a split picture with King George on the right and Queen Mary on the left. On the reverse of the card was a facsimile of a handwritten greeting, signed off by the two monarchs: With our best wishes for Christmas 1914. May God protect you and bring you home safe.
Edward held his card up to his face. ‘Terribly sorry, your Majesties, but I didn’t send you a card. I’ll make sure I do next year, if the Hun haven’t bumped me off before then, that is.’
Charles smiled and looked at the gift from Princess Mary. It was a five-inch-long brass box, embossed with an image of the princess surrounded by a laurel wreath. He opened the lid and removed the contents: a pipe, an ounce of tobacco, a packet of twenty cigarettes in a yellow monogrammed wrapper and a tinder lighter. ‘Kind of her,’ he muttered.
Leonard pocketed his gifts and cards. ‘Come on, let’s head to our room and have a sing song.’
Back in the bedroom, the men slumped down onto their beds. Outside, the light was fading. From the brazier came a ghostly yellow glow. Leonard, with his mouth organ poised, sat up and began to softly play O Come All Ye Faithful. Charles, along with the other men, quietly joined in, as memories of Christmases past seeped into his mind. He knew that there was a very good chance that this could be the last Christmas he ever saw. With that solemn thought in mind, he pulled out the standard army will, which he had been putting off completing in the naïve view that he would be able to survive the war. But so few of the original British army had survived the first four months of war. It was time to be realistic now.
To the sombre, dulcet tones of his comrades’ singing, Charles completed his last will and testament.
‘Blimey, this is all getting a bit maudlin,’ Frank joked. ‘How about something rousing, like Sussex by the Sea?’
‘Good idea,’ Charlie said.
Leonard began to play the opening bars of Sussex by the Sea and Charles quickly realised that he preferred festive melancholia to fabricated optimism and cheer. Still, he sang the full five verses along with the other men.
By silent shared agreement, the singing ended and the men lay in the beds immersed in their own thoughts.
Chapter Fourteen
25th December 1914, Beachy Head, Eastbourne, England
Nellie Farrier stood at the very edge of Beachy Head, the tips of her muddy black shoes touching the final blades of grass before the five-hundred-foot drop to the shingle and rocks below. Here she was as close to Charlie as she could possibly get. She stared out across the English Channel. Today, the skies were clear of all but the odd white wisp, and on the horizon she could see the faint coastline of France. Her eyes carefully traced the undulations in the distant hills, following as they rose and fell just like the coastline on which she was standing. Soon after finishing her Christmas dinner, which she had helped to prepare with Dorothy and Gwen, Nellie had opened her Christmas present from Charlie—a large brass shell, which he had fashioned into a vase. On the bottom, he had etched To m
y darling Nellie, Christmas 1914.
Nellie turned her head, angling her ears towards the sea. She heard nothing but a squawking from some distant seagulls. Not a single gun was firing. She smiled, knowing in her heart that if Charlie had survived the intervening days since his last letter to her, then today he should be safe. She imagined him, out there somewhere, opening the present that she had sent to him. She knew that the practical gifts of socks and food would be welcomed, but that he would most cherish the new photograph of her and the baby. Gifts for the body and gifts for the mind, she had thought when choosing what to send. For Nellie, the latter was the most important. After his impoverished upbringing in Lambeth, she knew that Charlie could withstand the physical anguishes and discomforts at which whispers and rumours from the front had hinted. It was his state of mind for which Nellie had always been the most concerned. She remembered his pasty face when he returned home with the inevitable confirmation that the Battalion was being posted to France to face the coming war head on. She had stood, dazed, watching as he had gathered up the few precious belongings that he had to his name. Nellie had never seen him like that before; he seemed entirely oblivious to her and her desperate pleas. He had zipped from the house and had sold and pawned everything of value, including his own parents’ wedding rings, in order to procure a generous life insurance, should something happen to him whilst on active service.
‘But, Charlie, you’ll be alright,’ Nellie had soothed when he had returned with the insurance in place. ‘You’ve been in the army now for four years.’
Nellie remembered how adamant Charlie had been. He had shaken his head and spoken simply and clearly. ‘This is different, Nell. This is going to be like nothing we’ve ever seen before.’
‘But the papers…’ she had begun.
‘Forget the papers,’ Charlie had interjected, a slight quiver in his voice. ‘They’re just saying what the government wants them to say. Look at what’s going on: the whole world is lining up to fight, building tanks and war ships, like they’ve never done before, calling up men in their thousands. This will be a war like no other.’
Nellie had begun to cry and Charlie had leaned in and held her. What had worried her more than anything in her life, and still now worried her was her first sight of Charlie’s tears, as he quietly sobbed on her shoulder.
A loud crack from somewhere over the seas jolted Nellie back to her precarious place on the cliff-top. She looked down at the waves breaking their white crests on the great chunks of rock so far below her. The narrow band of beach, that had accepted the lives of so many helpless souls, looked strangely peaceful and tranquil. For the briefest of moments, Nellie considered how easy it would be to take one step forward and make all the agony, sitting so heavily on her heart every minute of every day, simply disappear. She thought of little Alfie and took a step back. She couldn’t do it to him and she couldn’t do it to Charlie.
Nellie took another step back and chastised herself for being so weak. ‘We will get through this wretched war,’ she shouted out to the horizon. ‘Me, you and Alfie—we will get through this.’
Taking in a long, steady breath of air, Nellie whispered goodbye to Charlie and began the descent from Beachy Head. She walked slowly at first, reluctant to put distance between her and her husband. Then her thoughts turned to Alfie, whom she had left in the care of Gwen and Dorothy, and her pace quickened. Although she had only been gone for an hour, the time was amplified by her lamenting Charlie’s absence. She could do nothing to be closer to Charlie, but she could get home quickly, hold her baby tightly and pray.
Chapter Fifteen
29th August 1974, Westbere, Kent, England
Nellie was sitting on her white cast-iron chair in the shadow of the two large elder trees at the bottom of her garden. The mid-morning sun had just risen above the cottage roof, promising another blistering day. She stared at the vacant chair beside her and thought of her dear Len. It had been six weeks now since his passing. Well-meaning widowed friends from the village had passed on clichéd thoughts about her life gradually getting better with time. But she didn’t have the kind of time left that could even attempt to repair the gaping hole his death had left in her life. The practical, everyday chores and responsibilities that had been solely Len’s—driving, dealing with finances, reading the meters, tending to the allotment—could be overcome, but there was not sufficient time left in the world to overcome the emotional chasm created by sixty-two years of marriage, friendship and companionship.
A flash of movement caught Nellie’s eye. She looked up and watched Margaret tottering down the garden path, carefully clutching a tray, her bump having grown considerably in the short space of time that she had been with her. Nellie smiled. Two weeks had passed since her arrival and her son’s transparent plan of dumping Margaret on her as a means of distraction from her grief was working. Nellie had made it her mission—one final adventure—to drag her granddaughter out of herself and to prepare her for life in the world after the event.
‘Oh, Granny, I hope these are okay. I don’t think they’ve risen properly,’ Margaret moaned, as she set down the tray containing two cups of tea and a plate of freshly baked scones.
‘Nonsense, they look perfect,’ Nellie remarked, taking one from the pile.
Margaret grimaced whilst she waited for her grandmother to take a bite.
‘Goodness me, you’ve got the knack,’ Nellie said. ‘Cooked to perfection.’
Margaret smiled and took the empty seat beside Nellie.
Nellie sipped at her tea and nibbled the scone, aware that something was bothering Margaret. She watched as the girl stared fixatedly at the purple smoke tree at the garden’s perimeter, her mind elsewhere. ‘Thinking about the baby?’
Margaret shot a mournful look at her and nodded. ‘Sort of. There’s something I haven’t said…’
‘Go on.’
Margaret returned her focus to the tree and, after a few seconds’ pause, mumbled the words that were troubling her. ‘I wasn’t attacked.’
Nellie set down her teacup and wrapped her fingers over Margaret’s trembling hand, considering what she had just heard. It was obvious why she had said that she had been raped: to remove some of the judgement and prejudice that she had still faced at being pregnant at sixteen years of age. ‘Does your father know?’
Margaret nodded and her eyes welled with tears. ‘He made me promise never to tell anyone the truth.’
Nellie inhaled sharply. It certainly went some way to explaining his awful attitude towards his own daughter, she thought. ‘What about your brother, does he know?’
Margaret shook her head. ‘Nobody else. Just Dad…and now you,’ she sobbed.
A long silence hung in the air between the two of them.
‘Are you angry with me, like Dad is?’ Margaret eventually said.
Nellie squeezed her hand reassuringly. ‘Not one bit, my girl, not one bit.’
Margaret looked at Nellie doubtfully. ‘Really?’
‘You’ve had your reasons. What about the father, does he know?’
‘He’s long gone. He lives in America.’
‘No chance of him coming back?’
‘No.’
‘I see,’ Nellie said quietly.
Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, Margaret turned to face Nellie. ‘I just don’t think I can keep it a secret, especially when I’ll probably end up seeing the baby as it grows up.’
‘This is a tricky one,’ Nellie uttered. ‘But I think it might be for the best, though, if you don’t change your story. Hand the baby over to your brother and move on with your life as a sixteen-year-old girl.’
‘But how do I keep it a secret my whole life?’
‘It’s possible, believe me,’ Nellie said, reflecting on her own secret that she had carried with her for sixty years. The secret that she would take to her grave.
Margaret’s silence allowed Nellie’s mind to wander back to the dreadful day that the news of Charlie’
s death had arrived. A cold, impersonal form had been delivered to the house in Eastbourne. Not even a telegram, as received by the relatives of deceased officers. Nellie could still recall it with clarity. Army form B.104-82. Charlie’s life whittled down to a standard form. At the top of the form was stamped the regiment and Battalion name. Below it, the handwritten word Madam preceded a standard typed letter. She still knew every word of it, all these years later. It is my painful duty to inform you that a report has been received from the War Office notifying the death of:-
There then followed a soulless mixture of stamps and handwritten words, which had told her little of what had actually befallen poor Charlie. In the field, France had been noted as the location. A standard expression of sympathy from the monarchs was written at the bottom of the form, before being signed off by an unidentifiable signature and the words Officer in charge of Records.
Despite the extraordinary events that had followed, Nellie could still feel the hollow grief that tore into her, the echo of which she could feel right now. Mercifully, she had had Gwen and Dorothy to help her through the dark days which had ensued. She had immediately ceased her trips to the cliff-tops of Beachy Head, fearing what the terrors inside her might have led her to do. In fact, her grief had led her to a dangerous, inward-looking place where her care for herself and for Alfred had slipped. It had been more than three weeks until the letter had arrived, which had caused such emotional confusion in her mind. It was a short, simple letter purportedly from Charlie’s best friend, Len, telling her that she should use Charlie’s enclosed will to help cash in his assurance policy and to use the money to move away from Eastbourne. At the bottom of the letter was a hand-drawn orange lily, identical to those on the bottom of Charlie’s previous letters and postcards. For hours Nellie had sat in bed clutching the letter, reading it over and over again, trying to make sense of it. She had compared it to the other postcards sent by Charlie and knew then that he was alive. The handwriting was different—yes—but only very slightly; it was definitely Charlie’s. Her elation at this discovery was matched by her fierce anger towards him. How could he put me through three weeks of torment like this? she had thought. The money she had eventually received from the insurance did little to quell her fury towards him. Days had followed where Nellie had been forced to maintain her grief for the benefit of those around her. It wasn’t until she had finally moved away to Westbere that she had forgiven Charlie. She recalled that her forgiveness of him and the acceptance of their situation had occurred right here, in this very garden, when one evening she had lit a small bonfire, placing on it all traces of Charlie. She had genuinely mourned him, as she tossed photographs, letters and postcards onto the pyre. With great reluctance, she even burnt the only copy of their wedding photograph. By the following morning nothing had remained of Charles Ernest Farrier, but for one sepia portrait of him in uniform. She had scribbled out his name and concealed the picture under her mattress.
The Orange Lilies Page 10