by Mary Mackie
Twenty
As 1914 ground on, my life altered irretrievably. I moved to Lynn, to lodge at Hawthorn House with Saffron and Eddy, and I began work as George Chorley’s secretary. Within weeks, the demand for tinned goods tripled: fearing shortages because of the war, people bought and hoarded far more than they needed. Our prices soared accordingly: Chef Foods prospered, as Grandmother had predicted.
The Lynn News continued to print lists of visitors to seaside hotels and guest houses, but these slowly gave way to a roll of honour naming all local volunteers. Emmet and the Laceys were pictured there – ‘More brave Norfolk sons, bound for the front’.
Harvest passed and, with autumn gilding the woods, many farm workers volunteered for the army. The newspaper reported the social doings of the Norfolk Yeomanry: during one football match, a certain P. Farcroft scored a goal. So, he had gone back to Suffolk. But no Farcroft-Roughton nuptials had been recorded in the Births, Marriages and Deaths column – I had searched the paper every week. Had they married without announcement? Or were they waiting until the war ended? More and more it became apparent that the trouble would not be ‘over by Christmas’.
Uncle Frank, commissioned as a war artist, went regularly to France and returned with sketchbooks full of terrible images, some of which were printed alongside the equally graphic photographs in picture magazines such as War Illustrated. He was reticent about his own adventures, but his manner grew graver every time I saw him.
At Denes Hill, Grandmother resented the intrusion of a dozen officers and men of the Gloucestershire Territorials. I think she pulled strings, for after a few weeks the lodgers found other billets and Denes Hill was redesignated as a Red Cross Convalescent Home for Officers. Soon, beds lined the ballroom and saloon, transforming them into wards for the patients. The piano went into the staircase hall and a billiard table appeared at one end of the library. Since the nurses who arrived to staff the hospital slept on the first floor, Tom, the only male member of the family still resident, moved into Uncle Frank’s rooms a floor above; Grandmother kept her own suite, with Anderson in the dressing room. She also kept the study for her own use. With Vicky’s room next to it, that area at the end of the south wing, with the tower stairs leading off it, became private family quarters.
Vicky, loosening apron strings at long last, undertook a formal three-month nursing course, in Lynn. She even became a member of the Rifle Club, much to her mother’s disquiet, and in early December joined the staff at Denes Hill.
Although I did what I could to help refugees, the wounded and those left in trouble at home, in conjunction with the Red Cross and the Work for Women Fund, I remained a passionate pacifist; I became a founder member of the Lynn Peace Association, and began to write material for leaflets and the Cry Peace magazine. Oliver didn’t share my views but he went along to meetings to indulge me, as he indulged me in a good many things. The family knew we were ‘walking out’. Neither Frank nor Saffron was entirely happy about it, but they allowed me to know my own mind.
On Fridays, Oliver accompanied me to the police station to report, after which we went to the cinema to catch up on the latest war news. He managed to acquire a car ‘for essential business purposes’: we didn’t use it about town, petrol being short, but we drove over to Eveningham most Sundays. With my reputation to consider, we visited his flat only when discretion permitted – he said that a man’s appetite, once roused, had to be satisfied now and then. Anyway, I enjoyed his lovemaking. It comforted me, provided brief respite from the pressures of the war, and it confirmed the bond between us, even if that bond was mainly physical. However, since neither of us wished to find ourselves in the embarrassing position of having to get married, he practised techniques of birth control and even gave me a copy of a rather scandalous pamphlet on the subject, by Dr Marie Stopes. But he relished the prospect of our enjoying a full married life without need for precautions. Wouldn’t I please name a date, or at least let him announce our engagement? He was a patient man but, after all, he was nearing forty.
‘We’ll tell them at Christmas,’ I conceded.
Touchingly delighted, Oliver brought out a Wells family heirloom, a ring with three rubies in a band. It proved too small for my finger, but we took it to a jeweller to be altered.
All too soon, Emmet completed his training and wrote that he was ‘going over’. His next letter assured us it was ‘just like a picnic. We can scarcely hear the guns at all.’ Tom loved to have the letters read aloud: they made him laugh. He thought it all a huge adventure and wished he could go, too. He might have been tempted to emulate the soldiers he saw parading around with rifles, but all the guns at Denes Hill had been locked away after the incident with Mad Jack.
Although she worried over Emmet and Frank, Grandmother resigned herself to the new situation, her house made into a hospital, her own meals served in her private sitting room, leaving the dining room for the use of staff and mobile patients. She forbore the loss of Billing and other male staff, who were needed in more useful places, but she was thankful that her familiar Annie and Mrs May, the cook, stayed on to help in house and kitchen. She even took upon herself the role of social organizer for the wounded officers. While the war endured, she would do her bit, though she remained optimistic that it would not last long. No more than a few months, that was all.
In retrospect, those months seem unreal: we inhabited a kind of limbo, almost relishing the novelty and excitement but half believing we would, one day soon, wake up to find everything back to normal.
The illusion died in mid-December, when German ships sneaked up through North Sea mist and bombarded defenceless communities at Hartlepool, Whitby and Scarborough, killing some civilians, wounding others, and destroying property. It made us realize our own vulnerability. How easily it could have been Hunstanton, or Eveningham. Would we be next?
Only two days later came news that Emmet had been wounded. He wrote that he was doing fine, it was just a scratch, he’d arranged it so he could come home for Christmas. He arrived on crutches, obviously in pain, his thigh heavily bandaged, but still with that indomitable good humour – which didn’t fool any of us.
Denes Hill being full of convalescing soldiers and medical personnel, Saffron invited Emmet, Tom and Grandmother – with her shadow, Anderson – to spend Christmas Day at Hawthorn House. We missed both Uncle Frank and Vicky, he in France, she on nursing duty at Denes Hill, but we toasted health to ‘absent friends’ and wished a swift end to the war. Then Oliver got to his feet, rapped his knife handle on the table to gain everyone’s attention, cleared his throat and said, ‘We all hoped the war would be over by Christmas. Sadly, we were wrong. Let us hope, then, it may be ended by Easter. But, whether it ends or not, I, personally, anticipate that time with pleasure. Kate has promised to marry me in the spring.’
I had promised no such thing. But my objections died before his proud smile as he opened a small box to show me the ruby ring and place it on my finger. It fitted perfectly. It was beautiful, and it weighed hardly anything – so why did it feel like a ball and chain?
‘Thank heaven for some good news, for a change,’ Emmet cried, coming to kiss me and shake Oliver’s hand.
‘I agree,’ Grandmother concurred. ‘A toast. To Catherine and Oliver.’
Saffron, catching my eye, mouthed, ‘Here’s luck!’ while her expression said I would need it. And Tom, I noticed with a pang, was frowning at Oliver. He didn’t understand engagements.
Delicately wiping a happy tear from a corner of her eye, Grandmother said, ‘We shall have a party to celebrate – a family dinner at Denes Hill. They can’t object to our using the dining room for one evening when we’ve given up our Christmas. Let’s hold it on January the nineteenth – Emmet and Tom’s birthday – then it can be a double celebration.’
What nobody mentioned was that it would also be another farewell to Emmet, who expected to be summoned back to the front any day.
* * *
Over Christmas, G
erman aeroplanes made three raids on Dover. Though the bombs did little damage, the attacks were another measure of England’s vulnerability – and of Germany’s lack of sensitivity in choosing that season to deliver such messages of hate. I no longer wondered which side I was on. H. G. Wells had put it succinctly:
We are fighting without any hatred of the German people. But we have to destroy an evil system that has taken possession of German life. This is a war to exorcize a world madness. We have to smash Prussian Imperialism. We are fighting a war for peace.
I knew about Prussian ambition and Prussian hubris – I had suffered because of it. But political necessity, waging war on evil, had a habit of destroying everything in its path, including the innocent on both sides. I remained concerned for family and friends in Germany, especially Mother and the Menschen. We heard that our Russian allies were pressing into East Prussia. How I wished I knew exactly where Lindhafen lay.
On the nineteenth of January, the day of the dinner party, I caught the afternoon train to Eveningham and, needing to call on Mrs Lacey, borrowed the dogcart and drove myself to Lenhoe, with old Willow between the shafts clopping gamely along muddy winter lanes. The weather was cold but dry, with a brisk wind that froze my cheeks, not helping the niggling headache that had been with me for several days.
At Lenhoe Manor, the parlourmaid who let me in was red-eyed from weeping, but before I could enquire into her trouble Mrs Lacey herself appeared in the drawing-room doorway, white as death but totally composed. ‘My dear,’ she greeted me, gliding across the floor to take my arm with fingers that dug painfully into my flesh. ‘I’ve just had a letter from Captain Mears. Bad news, I’m afraid. It’s James. He’s dead. Killed in action. Trying to save a friend. No – don’t say anything. He was fond of you, Kate. And you liked him, too, didn’t you? Such a sweet boy. We must be strong for him. He knew what he was doing. He gave his life willingly. Like so many others. Will you tell your grandmother for me, please?’
Her terrible, accepting calm, allied with the hand that still bit into my arm, told me that, beneath her composure, her nerves were in shreds. I led her into her drawing room and did what I could to comfort her, mentioning Vicky’s name to see how she would react. But evidently Mrs Lacey knew nothing of Vicky’s romance with one of her sons. I stayed with her until her husband returned from his business office in Hunstanton.
As I drove back to Eveningham, in a daze of sadness for the Laceys’ grief, sunset spread orange flame across the sky, deepening to a sullen red glow. It lit the underside of black bands of cloud against a backdrop of clear aquamarine, as though the mouth of hell had opened, to cast over the world a malevolent reflection of what was happening on the fields of France and Belgium. James Lacey, ‘short, but sweet’, was dead. And at Denes Hill they were preparing a party to celebrate my engagement and the twins’ twenty-fourth birthday, with Emmet due to report back to his depot at the end of the week. How was I to tell him what had befallen his friend? How was I to tell Vicky? Was it James she loved?
I decided not to tell them. Not until later. My headache had grown so bad that I couldn’t think.
The sanctum had become ‘my’ room when I had occasion to spend a night. Now, besides impressions of childhood, it held bittersweet memories of Philip. This was where I had last seen him, watched him leave, knowing he hated me. I remembered it whenever I slept in the tower – though ‘slept’ hardly describes nights spent tossing in bad dreams or lying awake with troubled thoughts and feelings swirling thickly about me. Most of the wounded men, resting several floors below, kept a cheerful face by day, but many feared their return to the front. Others had been spared, though maimed for life – men with missing limbs, men blinded or emasculated, men mangled so severely one wondered how they had survived. Their agonies disturbed the ether. At night, for me, the house resounded with anxiety, with bitter regrets and silent wailing.
My spirit friends hovered, too, crowding close to the troubled world. Their concern disturbed my sleep and coloured my waking hours. Among them, I often sensed my drowned uncle, John. But, thin though the veil spread at times, neither John nor I could break through with any clarity. I only knew he was there, anxiously observing, worrying and warning.
By the time I had changed, ready for the party, my headache was a dull, leaden numbness, the worst I had felt since… since the day Uncle Harry died, now that I thought about it. Oppression clouded my senses and churned my stomach. The ruby ring seemed heavy and tight on my finger, though it turned easily enough when I fiddled with it, as I often did. I had never felt less like attending a party. Were we mad, to celebrate when young men were dying senselessly? Was someone I cared for in danger?
Frank was still away, though he had sent good wishes. Saffron had decided to stay at home with Eddy, who had a chesty cough. But six of us met for the celebration – Grandmother and Vicky, Emmet and Tom, Oliver and I. I had hoped to speak to Oliver alone, to tell him about James, but he was delayed at the office and didn’t arrive until just before we were to eat. Then, he seemed so happy that I forbore to spoil his evening. He looked amazingly fit and handsome in his white tie and tails, and I thought perhaps, after all, we might find a measure of happiness together. I was fond of him.
The private dinner culminated in further toasts to our future. Even Vicky was generous in her good wishes: if she harboured a flicker of envy she hid it well – more so than some of the wounded officers, who joined us for drinks later. As we gathered in the staircase hall for a singsong, round the piano in the shade of potted palms, more than one man jokingly mourned the loss of another eligible girl: ‘And to a man too old to be a soldier!’ a wheelchair-bound twenty-two-year-old exclaimed. ‘Change your mind, Kate. Run off with me, instead.’ Everyone laughed immoderately at this self-mocking joke: Robbie had no legs to run with.
In the library, some patients played billiards while others played cards. The house rang with laughter and song. Vicky played ‘Oh, you beautiful doll’, and ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’, but when some wag broke into ‘Waiting at the church’ I shook my head at their foolery and moved away from the group, making for the main stairs, longing for peace and quiet. I kept thinking about James Lacey.
As I reached the foot of the stairs, Oliver slid his hand under my arm, asking, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I have a terrible headache,’ I confessed. ‘Would you mind if I went to lie down for half an hour? I’m sorry, but—’
His mouth tightened under the dark line of his moustache, but he said, ‘Of course. If you’re not feeling well…’
‘I’ll come down again the moment I feel a little better,’ I promised and, touching his arm in gratitude, escaped up the main stairs. I knew he would not dare to follow me, not in full view of the others. Why did that make me feel better? With some relief, I gained the head of the stairs and the upper corridor, out of sight of the revellers. Cool air embraced me, while behind me the merriment faded to a murmur.
As I opened the sanctum door and climbed the final flight of stairs, I felt I was truly gaining sanctuary. My head had begun to throb as if a storm threatened, but up here all was quiet and cool. I didn’t light the lamp but waded through darkness to the couch-bed, to throw a blanket round my shoulders; then I opened one of the windows and let the cold night air lap in, breathing it deeply, willing it to clear my head. The baleful, coal-red sky of sunset had darkened to black velvet scattered with bright stars. A dark, moonless night. A night when warnings beat in the air, fluttering against my nerves like unseen wings, tightening the band of pain round my head. I stood staring into the darkness, twisting Oliver’s ring round and round on my finger, uncertain about the future, grieving for James Lacey, longing for Philip…
I had opened only one of the casement windows. Now, as I stood staring out of it, something moved in the next pane to my right. Kate… The soundless whisper lifted the hairs on my nape and along my arms. ‘John?’ I murmured in answer, and felt his urgency, his anxiety. He seemed to be standing beh
ind my shoulder. I could feel him there, his presence a chill tingle on my senses, though when I glanced round there was nothing to see. Only his reflection shimmered faintly on the window, a dark figure half seen by starlight. ‘I’m trying to hear, John!’ I whispered. ‘Help me!’
I’m not sure what happened then. Did I close my eyes for a second? All I remember is seeing with a shock that the image in the window had changed. Someone was standing there. Someone real! I shrieked in alarm, fending him off when he reached for me.
‘For heaven’s sake!’ Oliver’s voice came tightly. ‘What on earth is wrong with you this evening?’
‘You startled me!’ I managed, licking dry lips, my heart beating so hard in my throat it almost suffocated me. ‘For a moment… No, nothing.’ For a moment I had been terrified – even after I recognized him. Stupid, Kate. Yes, stupid! He hadn’t done it deliberately. Hadn’t tried to sneak up on me. Why should I imagine he might do such a thing?
‘What were you doing?’ he demanded. ‘Praying? That’s what it sounded like. “Help me”, you said. Help you do what? Get out of this engagement?’
‘Oliver! What makes you say that?’
‘You make me say it! You, and all those jokers downstairs. I know what they think – you’re wasting yourself on me. I’m too old for you. Too old, too staid. They resent the fact that I’m not in uniform.’
‘They were joking. They don’t mean—’
‘“Many a true word spoken in jest”,’ he quoted bitterly. ‘Maybe you think I’m a coward, too. Believe me, if I were younger I’d have been over there by now, fighting with the rest of them.’
The thought turned me cold and I grasped his arm. ‘Don’t say that! I don’t want you to fight. Don’t even think about it!’