Her Father's Daughter

by Beezy Marsh

  Word had reached the brigade that after the first tank assault on Cambrai last week, church bells had rung out back in Blighty, but everyone here knew that the powers that be were just looking through rose-tinted spectacles. The Boche was dug in hard and little ground had been gained. Tanks had got stuck in the canal and one had even busted up the bridge that the troops needed to use to get across to attack enemy positions. Newfangled machinery was a wondrous thing in battle, but only when it worked. Yes, horses were old-fashioned but as far as Harry and his men were concerned, they were bloody effective war machines and more reliable than tanks.

  Harry had learned to blot out the deafening din of exploding ordnance, but the sheer scale of the enemy’s artillery barrage that morning made his ears ring to the point where he could no longer form a sentence. Up ahead, a small copse of trees was being felled by a relentless shower of mortars from the Hun lines, blowing everything to splinters with a roar and whoosh, punctuated by the staccato fire of British Lewis machine guns in response. Suddenly, through the smoke and shrapnel, wave after wave of enemy soldiers came charging down Villers Ridge, firing on every living creature in their path. Seconds later, another sound joined the battle. Enemy aeroplanes buzzed low, strafing lines of men in khaki beneath them. Harry watched his fellow Tommies drop like skittles, as still more coal-scuttle helmets and grey uniforms appeared on the ridge and it seemed the front would be overrun by Germans in moments.

  The 55th had been given their orders, to hold the position at all costs, so the gun was rolled forward to provide the creeping barrage of supporting fire which would force the Hun back or at least make them dive for cover. The ground was hard, frozen solid, which made the going easier, as Harry gave Domino a little nudge to walk him on. They couldn’t have gone more than twenty yards when someone yelled, ‘Incoming!’ and the gun, horses and men were blown ten feet in the air in a blinding flash of white light.

  Snow was falling when Harry came to and the battlefield was eerily quiet.

  A searing pain in his abdomen nailed him to the spot. He inhaled sharply, hearing himself rasp. Glancing down, he saw blood oozing through his khakis, underneath his ribs, and the shock of it made him want to scream. He wriggled his toes, relieved to find both legs still attached, but he was stuck fast, buried deep in the earth from the blast. He tried to move, to pull himself free, but his strength was draining away; the effort provoked a gush of blood, which spread downwards, spilling out over his trousers. Instinctively, he fumbled in his top pocket and pulled out the bundle of Kitty’s letters, holding them to the wound to try to stem the flow. For an instant, he was floating high above himself, looking down at his broken body as his blood seeped crimson through Kitty’s needlework and drenched her words. Then he was back in the shell hole, as the snow started to form a blanket over him.

  Turning his head to the side, he felt warmth on his face, and heard an unmistakable whinny. It was Domino, bloodied, but still alive lying next to him. A deep gash on the horse’s belly had exposed the muscle underneath which was twitching in a nest of red sinews. Domino’s back legs lay at crazy angles, his rump half covered by earth. The animal’s eyes rolled in a silent agony.

  ‘It’s all right, boy, we’ll be all right,’ Harry murmured, his hands closing fast around the letters. They lay there together, Domino’s breath mingling with his own. And then the blackness enveloped them.

  A shot rang out. ‘I’ve put him out of his misery, poor blighter. Shame to see such a fine animal end up like that. I used to ride them on my dad’s farm when I was a boy. He’d weep to see what we do to them over here.’

  ‘Another goner here! Come on, mate, let’s get you back where we can give you a decent burial at least.’

  Harry tried to scream but he could make no sound. His fingers were frozen solid, he was unable to move. He felt himself being pulled from his grave in the shell hole and covered with a tarpaulin as he was carried away.

  11

  Kitty

  Newcastle upon Tyne, December 1917

  Mum held the telegram between trembling fingers, her mouth gaping in shock.

  Kitty rushed to her side and snatched it from her, sinking to her knees on the red tiles of the hallway floor.

  Deeply regret to inform you that your son, Acting Sgt RFA 149044, has been reported missing.

  Mum let out a wail loud enough to wake the dead. ‘Not my boy! Oh, dear God, not him, please!’

  The world seemed to be spinning around them and they clung to each other for comfort, sobbing.

  Ever since Harry had left for the front more than a year ago, they’d been living in fear of this moment. Now it had happened, nothing could prepare them for it, nothing could help them through it. They were like so many families who received one of the dreaded War Office telegrams saying that a soldier had disappeared in battle.

  They were caught in the no man’s land of despair, clinging to the faint hope that their loved one could be a prisoner behind enemy lines but haunted by the reality that he may have perished on the fields of France and Flanders.

  Mum was poleaxed by the news, unable to eat or speak, and she took to her bed, while the Misses Dalton tended to her. Every postal delivery over the coming days brought fresh agony: the terror that a buff-coloured envelope would bring the cold certainty of death in battle.

  Kitty had to go out to work. She couldn’t afford to lose her job, and so each day she made the journey down into the city on the tram, past the long lines of women queuing for food outside the shops. A gloom seemed to hang over Newcastle after three years at war. People were hungry, tired and working all the hours that God sent in the munitions factories, with no end to the conflict in sight. Every day brought more battle-damaged ships back to the Tyne for repair, and the remaining men of Newcastle got to work, patching them up and sending them off to sea again.

  At her desk at the Shipbuilder, Kitty tried to focus, to lose herself in the intricate details of her work, truly she did, but instead she found herself gazing out of the office window and drifting off up the grey waters of the Tyne until it reached the sea. She floated on, around the coast and past the White Cliffs of Dover, washing up on the beaches of France. She picked her way through the ruins of bombed-out French villages to the battlefields. Harry was leading the gun column, so smart in his uniform, astride Domino, with Top Hat trotting along beside them and the rest of the horses following. She ran alongside her brother but just couldn’t keep up. Before she knew what was happening, a shout went up – ‘Over the top, boys!’ – and khaki-clad Tommies clambered out of the trenches into no man’s land, guns at the ready. The rat-a-tat of machine guns rang out as the Germans did their worst, and the soldiers fell to their knees in the mud, which seemed to swallow them whole. Kitty called out to Harry but he couldn’t hear her, and he rode on with Domino and Top Hat, until he was consumed by the fog of war, shells exploding in his wake.

  The clatter of her fingers on the typewriter keyboard brought her back to reality, her face wet with tears. Mr Philpott was standing beside her.

  ‘Catherine,’ he began gently. ‘Come into my office for a moment.’ He offered her his arm and she leaned on him for support, because her legs were giving way beneath her.

  ‘Sit down, please.’ He motioned to the chair in front of his desk and she settled herself, wiping her eyes on her sleeve for a moment, because she couldn’t remember for the life of her what she had done with her handkerchief.

  He opened the ornate cigarette box on the edge of his desk. It was decorated in the Chinese style, with two fat, orange koi carp swimming in opposite directions to each other. He offered it to her and she shook her head.

  ‘Is it Harry?’

  ‘Yes,’ she cried, covering her face with her hands. ‘He’s missing. Nobody knows what’s happened to him. Forgive me . . .’

  He rushed to her side and put his arm around her.

  ‘Don’t apologize, Kitty, please,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be at work today. You must go home to b
e with your mother.’

  ‘But you need me here, and I need my wages or we won’t be able to eat,’ she said, barely registering the fact that he’d called her by her pet name. She stared at the floor with shame that she’d had to talk about money so openly in front of him.

  ‘I won’t dock your pay, you need to have some time to . . .’ He stopped himself and they looked at each other. They both knew in that instant that the word on his lips was ‘grieve’.

  The bitter wind of a Newcastle winter howled through the back alleys by the Quayside and whipped up the cobbled streets towards the city centre. As she made her way back to work, Kitty wandered along the quay, her hair billowing out behind her. She’d taken a few days off to recover her composure but the dread of waiting for the post each day with little else to occupy her but Mum’s sadness was more than she could bear. She’d always found it easier to just try to get on with life as best she could. She used to love coming down to the quay with Harry after Dad had gone, to show him sailing ships with their tall masts, so they could lose themselves in the hustle and bustle of it all. Once they were nearly knocked flying by a drift of pigs being herded along to the market and laughed themselves silly about it for days.

  Wherever she went in the city, she was reminded of her brother. They’d grown up darting on and off trams together, visiting the central library, walking with Mum to the fish market. It didn’t seem possible that she’d never see him again, but she knew life had to go on, somehow.

  Back in the offices of the Shipbuilder, the room fell silent as she walked in and Gerald, the chief sub-editor, was the nicest he’d ever been, even bringing her a cup of tea, which he plonked down a bit heavily, sloshing some on her neatly typed copy and prompting a flurry of apologies. After a few hours, things returned to normal – which was a relief, actually – and Mr Philpott had started calling her ‘Catherine’ again, like he always did. There were a few quiet moments when she caught him glancing over at her from his office, checking that she was all right, but other than that, it was business as usual.

  Mum had bought them both a little pendant badge that so many war widows wore nowadays. It cost a shilling and was in the shape of a silver heart, with one word engraved on it: ‘sacrifice’. She’d pinned it to Kitty’s lapel before she’d left the house, but Kitty didn’t need to wear a badge to show the sacrifice that Harry had made; she felt it, deep in her own heart.

  Christmas was fast approaching and after work, she made time to wander through the Central Arcade. They barely had the will to celebrate, with Harry missing, but Kitty wanted to do something to mark the day at least. The Central Arcade was one of her favourite places, with its magnificent barrel-vaulted roof and mosaic flooring, and shopkeepers had done their best to make it festive, despite the war, putting up holly, ivy and ribbons along their frontages. It was nice to see other people enjoying the festivities and Kitty took some comfort in that. People liked to gather in there, to peer at the things they couldn’t afford to buy, mostly, and to take shelter from the elements, especially on a really chilly winter’s day. Kitty had been saving hard to buy some new ribbon from the milliner so that she could smarten up Mum’s felt hat for her for Christmas. It was a small gift, a token really, and she also bought a couple of yards of lace to add some detail to one of Mum’s blouses as a special surprise.

  She was still clutching her brown paper bag of Christmas treats as she came through the front door of their home in Simonside Terrace, stamping her feet to bring some life back into them after the freezing walk from the tram stop. Glancing down, she spotted a letter lying on the doormat. She picked it up, her heart pounding, and tore open the envelope.

  The handwriting was not Harry’s, but his words washed over her, bringing with them a great tidal wave of relief.

  My dearest darling Mum and Kitty,

  I am asking the nurse to write this for me. I’m weak from a bullet wound but hope to be entrained soon to return to Newcastle where you can see for yourself that I am still your loving son and brother.

  I don’t remember much about the past few weeks, as I have been so sick with sepsis, but I am now at the British Red Cross hospital in Calais and doing much better.

  I was one of the few from my brigade to make it back alive. I was shot and lay in a shell hole with Domino for days before I was found. I’m sad to say, Kitty, the old boy didn’t make it but the fact he was there with me helped keep me going, so he was loyal to the last.

  It was snowing hard and I froze, which stopped the bleeding, so the doctors say; that and the fact that the German bullet passed clean through me. They thought I was dead when they took me off the battlefield. I sat bolt upright in the morgue and that gave the stretcher bearers a fright. It is, as the doctor said, nothing short of a miracle that I’m here. Life has given me a second chance.

  I can only imagine how worried you both must have been but please don’t fret any more because I am safe now.

  I will write to you again soon and cannot wait to see you back in Blighty.

  Sending you both all my love,

  Harry xxx

  Kitty clasped the letter to her and shouted up the stairs, ‘Mum! Come quickly! It’s a miracle – Harry’s alive!’

  Her mother stood at the top of the stairs, her hair hanging loose and her eyes red from crying. She steadied herself with one hand against the wall as she made her way down towards Kitty, shaking her head in disbelief that after so much bad news, the impossible had happened. ‘Can it be true?’

  Kitty ran to her, waving the letter triumphantly. ‘Yes! It’s him! Our Harry’s coming home to us!’

  They hugged each other and Kitty felt the warmth of her mother’s embrace, her breath in her hair mingling with tears of joy and relief. They would be a family again.

  It was like the sun had come out again in Kitty’s world and the years seemed to fall away from Mum, who was so happy she was even singing in the scullery in the mornings, like she used to when Dad was alive. Knowing that Harry was safe and would soon be on his way home was the best Christmas present they could ever have wished for.

  Even the sleet and the snow of Christmas Eve couldn’t dampen Kitty’s spirits and she decided to go to a service at St Nicholas’s Cathedral, to give thanks that Harry had been spared. Mum and Dad had got married there and she and Harry had been christened in the cathedral too, so it seemed the right place to be. It was a landmark for all Geordies, with its spire visible for miles across the city.

  Mr Philpott had asked if he might accompany her and she couldn’t find a reason to say no, especially after he’d been so kind to her when Harry was missing in action. After locking the office door for the Christmas holidays as all the other sub-editors trooped off to the pub, they muffled themselves up against the cold and set off together. Snow started to fall, deadening the sound of their feet on the cobbles and dusting the blackened buildings so they looked as if they’d been coated with icing sugar.

  Mr Philpott wanted to go over every last detail of how Harry had survived a German bullet and come back from the dead. It wasn’t often that anyone got such good news from the front, so the story had done the rounds of the office and Mr Philpott agreed it would probably be the talk of the Bigg Market by now.

  The cathedral was lit by candles and already packed to the rafters with the well-to-do folk from Jesmond, with the ladies swathed in fur. Kitty didn’t have anything as posh, of course, but she was wearing a lovely new scarf that Mum had knitted for her and a beret too, in blue wool; she’d been allowed to open her present early on account of the filthy weather, to keep her from catching cold.

  Mr Philpott sat next to her in the pew and they had a whispered conversation about their plans for Christmas Day. A hush fell over the cathedral as the Bishop of Newcastle, in his golden robes and mitre, led the service. Looking around her in the candlelight, as the choirboys sang ‘Silent Night’, Kitty couldn’t help wondering how many people had lost a loved one in the conflict. She felt lucky, blessed even, for Harr
y to have been given a second chance, by some small miracle, which she would never understand but always be grateful for.

  After the carols, just as she was preparing to say goodbye to Mr Philpott on the cathedral steps, he put his hand in his pocket and produced a little gift, beautifully wrapped with a red ribbon. She was frozen for a moment, as the wind whipped the snow into a flurry, catching in her hair and making her shiver beneath her thin woollen coat.

  ‘I’d like you to have this,’ he said.

  Kitty was flabbergasted. ‘That’s too kind. I’m afraid I haven’t got you anything . . .’

  ‘Catherine, there’s no need for you to buy me a present. Just seeing you open this will be gift enough for me.’

  She was blushing as scarlet as the bow around the little box, but she untied it with fumbling fingers and opened it to find a stunning emerald ring inside, nestling in a velvet case.

  ‘It’s beautiful!’ she gasped. ‘I couldn’t possibly accept this, Mr Philpott. It’s too expensive for a start.’ She tried to hand it back, but he covered her hands with his own and held them for a moment.

  ‘Please, call me Charles. I want you to have it. You see, I was hoping you might accept it, as a token of my affection,’ he said.

  She gazed up at him and found genuine warmth in his eyes, which seemed to make her heart flutter.

  He got down on one knee, in the freezing snow, as people around them looked on in amazement. ‘The thing is, Kitty, I’m in love with you and I want you to be my wife.’

  Kitty kept the ring hidden in the drawer of her bedside table and told no one.

  She was so blindsided by the proposal that she’d told him she needed time to think. She couldn’t quite believe that the editor, the man who she’d worked with day after day, wanted to marry her.