There was no-one to be seen when she reached the yard, but seeing Rob emerge from the door into the kitchen, she called to him, ‘Where is Patsy?’ And he answered, ‘On her bed, miss; and Mr Carl is sending me for the doctor.’
‘Has she not come round?’
‘She’s come round all right, miss, but…but she’s hurt her back.’
Straight away, she hurried to Patsy’s room, and there, bending over her, asked, ‘Where are you hurt, Patsy?’
‘I’m…I’m not sure, miss. At the present moment I feel I’m hurt all over,’ and she tried to smile; but then said, ‘The bottom of me back pains, the more so when I move me legs.’
‘You can move your legs?’
‘Yes. Yes, thank God, I can move me legs.’
Jessie raised her eyes to where Carl was standing at the foot of the bed, and when he said, ‘Your father will be the death of all of us before he finishes, miss,’ the bitter note in his voice being such as she had never heard him use before, she turned from him and looked again at Patsy, and asked, ‘How…how did it happen?’
‘Well, as far as I could see, miss, I had just stepped out from the dairy when I heard her screaming at him. He must have been coming out of the tack room and she dunched into him. He was about to raise his hand to her and I just got to her in time; at least I thought I was in time to pull her away when his arm knocked us both flying. He really meant to swipe her. Oh yes, he did. But it caught us both. If she had got the full force of it and hit the ground with her head instead of me hitting it first with me backside, her brains would have been knocked out. Because it was no light blow, oh no, not with the forearm. And the force of it! It was like a chop.’
‘Oh, Patsy, Patsy, where’s it going to end?’
‘You tell me, miss, just you tell me. But what you’ve got to face up to, miss, is Janie’s no longer a child. She’s thirteen years old and an old thirteen at that, and it’s this place that’s put the age on her. She’s never had a child’s life. So you shouldn’t blame her because her mind thinks beyond her age. And let me tell you something, she’s not afraid of him, not when she could scream at him, “I wish you were dead!”’
‘She said that…? No. No.’
‘Oh yes, yes, and more than that, judging by the bits I caught before we were sent flying. Anyway, we must get down to brass tacks, mustn’t we, miss? Because I can’t get up for a while. As I said, I can move me legs but the pain’s hellish when I do that. Anyway, it’s about time there was some help in this house again. It was cut off needlessly after Miss Angela went. So, for the time being, if you don’t want to have it on your own hands, you should get McNabb’s wife in again. She was quite good and she’s clean.’
‘Yes. Yes, Patsy. I’ll do that.’
She nodded now at Carl, then went out; and he, going to the bed and sitting on its side, bent over Patsy and said, ‘I’ve wished it many a time, dear, and not more than I do at this minute, that we had up and left when we had first made up our minds. Even with the circumstances as they were. I could have said to hell with the bribes of a half share. What life have you had here? Working morning, noon and night. And now this, knocked flat on your back, and we don’t know yet what damage has been done. Backs are funny things. I feel like going to him this minute and giving him, not a piece of my mind, but the whole bloody lot of it. I no longer feel, as I did years ago, that I owe him my life. He’s had more than the best part of it.’
When her hand came on his cheek, she said, ‘As long as I’ve got you, I’ll consider me life all right. And I’ve given you very little in return for what you’ve given me. Now, now’—she tapped his cheek smartly—‘don’t start. I know, I know what you’re going to say: as long as you have me you’re all right. Well, for once I’m going to make meself believe it and you can believe it when I say, as long as I have you I’m more than all right. And now, you know what I want?’
‘No, dear, no.’
‘A cup of strong tea with four spoonfuls of sugar in it. Really strong, thick enough to keep a knife standing up in it, and helped with a wee drop of the hard.’
He smiled, and when he bent and kissed her, she said, ‘You know something? You’re too bonny for your own good.’
Now he pushed her face to one side, at the same time clicking his tongue, then left her.
But when she was alone the smile went from her face and she bit tightly on her lip. Her back felt bad; the pain was gripping her waist. She hoped to God there was nothing wrong and she’d be able to get on her feet in a day or so …
The doctor’s verdict was that she might have cracked a bone at the bottom of her spine: she must lie still for at least two weeks, by which time she would likely be able to get on to her feet again.
Later, not for the first time in his career, Philip Patten had to admit to himself that his diagnosis had been wrong. It was to be many months before Patsy could get on her feet, and then it was with much effort and a great deal of pain and only with the help of crutches.
Four
Trains, trains, trains. Stretchers, stretchers, stretchers. Bodies, bodies, bodies. Blood, blood, blood. That’s what the wheels were saying. That’s what all the train wheels said. They never speeded up the rhythm: they slowed it down, they stopped, but they never speeded it up.
He was tired. His body was crying out for rest; but more so, his mind pleading for it.
How many ambulance trains had he travelled on over these past months? When did he come here anyway? May? Yes it was May, when the Arras affair was on. God! God! That was an introduction. They were shovelling them in then, those who got back across the Somme at Abbeville. And many of those that were left were wishing they had never got back.
How many times had he thrown up? If it hadn’t been for Jim Anderson and David Mayhew he might have joined the mutineers or the absconders and risked being shot. Jim had said he had suffered from diarrhoea for the first three months. ‘But you get used to it,’ he had said. David was more laconic, less sensitive. ‘It’s what you asked for,’ had been his comment. Yet it was David who had taken him aside and said, ‘We’ve been put here because we’re needed. I’ve asked God time and time again, why is this happening? Why is He allowing it? And the answer is, as the answer always is, man’s free will. It’s a paltry answer and I’ve told Him that. But He’s also reminded me that His Son was crucified for doing good and that we and fellows like us are in the same boat.’ And then David had added in his usual manner, ‘And it’s no good crying out like His Son did, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” because we’ll get the same answer, “You asked for it, so you’ve got to see it through.”’
Yes, it was David that had been his prop really, and still was. But if they should ever have a quiet minute together again, and God only knew when that could possibly be, he’d ask him if he, too, had this whirling repetition in his brain that woke him out of sleep, repeating everything three times.
David’s voice came to him now, saying, ‘Have a word with Geordie at the far end there, will you? because if he starts ranting again he’ll wake the whole lot up. And as long as we’re stuck here they might as well get a little sleep, those who can.’
Gerald repeated to himself, ‘Those who can,’ as he looked along a double row of stretchers flanking each side of the long railway carriage. This carriage was supposed to take only twenty-five in some kind of comfort, but there were over forty on this trip. How many had been left behind altogether? He didn’t know. What he did know was that by the time the next train arrived, some of them wouldn’t need to be lifted up.
He stepped cautiously down the narrow, dimly lit aisle. The place was hazy with breaths that took a little of the chill off the atmosphere. Suddenly the carriage shook violently and a voice to his side said, ‘A couple of inches more and it would have been goodbye, Blighty.’
He looked at the man whose stretcher was on a rack to his shoulder and he uttered a platitude that was beginning to wear thin in his vocabulary: ‘A miss is as good as a mile.�
�� And then he moved on to where the voice could be heard above the mutterings and groans; but before he reached the source at the end of the carriage, the train shuddered again and he had to thrust both hands over a platform stretcher to steady himself against the blacked-out carriage window. The man whom he was leaning over and whose whole face was bandaged, as was one arm, muttered through a slit where his lips were, ‘Why don’t they get their aim right and finish with it?’
He could give no answer, and especially not a quip, and so moved on to the man who was doing the talking. He had pulled himself up over his pillow, with his head now resting against the partition that divided this section from the rest of the train, and he greeted Gerald with, ‘How much longer are they gona dither here? A sitting bloody duck, that’s what we are. Nobody seems to learn a bloody thing in this war. Keep moving. Keep moving. That’s the thing to do.’
Gerald dropped down onto his hunkers and he said quietly, ‘Arty, isn’t it?’
‘Aye, that’s me name, Arty Makepeace. And that’s a hell of a joke, isn’t it? Makepeace.’
His voice only just above a whisper now, Gerald said, ‘There’s one or two along the line there not too good. They’re trying to sleep it off.’ And the man’s voice now was even lower as he said, ‘For the last time, you mean.’
‘Could be. Could be.’
‘Aye, well, join the band.’
‘Oh, you’ll be all right.’
‘Think so?’
‘Yes, once you get back to base; and after that it won’t be long before you’re on the boat.’
The man’s voice had become really quiet now when he said, ‘Funny thing, you know, this is my third bloody year out here. Aye. Aye, end of ’14 I joined. And I’d begun to think nothing could touch me, all because me wife always finished her letters with, “I’m praying that God will protect you”. And, you know, I had got to believe it up to this.’ He now pointed down to where the blanket sank below his left knee. ‘Went through a lot, I did, and not a scratch. Bullets going through me cap, an’ the seat of me pants, but not a scratch. Even this bloody year, when I was in the counter-attack at Arras. Aye, I was, and we thought we were away. Oh, aye, we did. After having been pushed back across the Somme at Abbeville. Oh, we were all cocking our snooks, when it happened again. You know summat? The lot that they’re sendin’ over now are like bloody boy scouts. Some of the buggers couldn’t tell their arses from their elbows. Trained. Aye. By God! They call it training!’
His voice was rising again, and so Gerald interrupted the threatened flow, whispering, ‘What’s your regiment?’ And thankfully a whisper came back to him: ‘Tyneside Scottish. We were with the Tenth and Eleventh Battalions, you know. Eeh! The commander. He was a bloke. A leader all right; he ferried us across in little boats. But what did we meet, eh? Air attacks, tanks, and their bloody infantry.’
‘Shh! Shh!’
‘Now don’t you Shh! me, lad. Anyway, you just sound like me old man. He always used to say, “Shh! Shh thy gob!” And, you know, it’s a funny thing, I’ll tell you somethin’. I’ve been more frightened of the bloody mud than the bullets, crawling in it, being choked by it, gulping it down. If we lose the war, an’ it’s a penny to a pound that we will, it’ll be the mud that’s done it. But the funny thing is, I was brought up with mud. You see, me old man always had an allotment, kept our bellies full many a time mind, but workin’ on it he would sometimes put the fork through his boot or get a cut in his hand. What did he do? He stuck mud on it. Aye. If the ground wasn’t wet he would wet it, you know, then stick mud on it. That was when he was outside the house. Inside he went for salt. So—’ He now pointed down towards what was left of his right leg below the knee, and he went on, ‘When I was lyin’ in that bloody shell-hole, half covered in water, I thought of me da an’ the mud. And when I came to meself an’ saw what’d happened, well, that’s what I did. I packed the stinking thing with mud an’ I’d like to bet that was why I lived to reach that stinkin’ station. How long did we lie on that stinkin’ platform eh…? For how long?’
Gerald didn’t give him an answer. But he knew some of them had been left there for twenty-four hours and for many it had turned out to be just four hours too long. And the rest of them, those who had been picked up with this lot, would now probably go the same way if this bombardment went on much longer.
The man now lay back on the pillow, but as Gerald was about to move away he found his wrist gripped, and the voice, now quite low and solemn, said, ‘You have my respects, lad, and all your gang. As that bloke across there said’—he now jerked his head towards a stretcher at the other side of the aisle—‘you lot were the heroes of this bloody senseless game. That’s what he said after your mate got it just afore we pushed off. By! that was a quicker do: here the day an’ gone the morrow. You know, he was an ’ero; he could have been picked up on the last train, but he gave way to a bloke that was in a bad way.’ He suddenly paused. ‘I’m sweatin’ like a bullock now. I was freezin’ a minute ago.’
Gerald put his hand on the man’s brow. It was wet. Here was the answer to his jabbering; he was in a fever. He now pulled the blanket up under his chin, saying quietly, ‘Lie still. I’ll be back in a moment.’ Then he exclaimed, ‘Ah now! Listen! We’re moving off, and we haven’t got all that far to go.’ He did not add, just another five hours, that was if they weren’t held up again.
He had got only halfway down the carriage when he had to stop and help David Mayhew hold down a burly sergeant. The poor man was back in the trenches giving orders and yelling: ‘Over! Over! Over! Come on! Lift it! Never mind the bloody moonlight. If they can see you, you can see them. Over! Over! Over! Hell! Move it.’
As they pressed the man down, David, gasping, said, ‘This is where we need Arthur and that damn needle of his.’
Yes indeed, Gerald thought. Arthur the hero. Arthur Sprite had almost completed his training as a doctor when he had joined their ranks and become such an asset to them. Yet strangely, he hadn’t been liked. Perhaps it was because he had aimed to show his superiority from the beginning. That he was brave, there was no doubt; but there had always been the question as to the reason why he was one of them. Was it on religious grounds? Political? Personal morality? Or what? Strangely, he could never be drawn.
Anyway, he was dead now, killed while carrying out an apparently brave act. As David had pointed out, there had been no need for him to dash along the road to the two wounded men supporting each other. Having got that far, they would have made it the other few yards to the station and the Red Cross vans. But no, he had to be spectacular and he had raced along the road and right into the bomb that had not only killed the three of them, but also blew the last van to smithereens. Daily he was asking himself what drove people to do the things they did. What had driven him into this hell-hole? Principles? What were principles but the sparks of one’s ego? Variety? No. No. No. Don’t start again, he told himself.
It was two-thirty in the morning when the train drew slowly into the base. There was no need for lanterns for the moon was shining, transforming the night almost into daylight. And now there was a scramble to get the wounded from the train and into the field hospital.
He and David had laid the last man of their section in a sort of outpatients’ tent, waiting their turn for a doctor’s attention, when a nurse, coming by, looked at them and said, ‘You’re late as usual.’ And they both said together, ‘Hello there, Susie.’
‘You’ve packed some in this time.’
‘Not one half of what we’ve left behind,’ said David. ‘And we’ve had to crawl most of the way, so slowly at one period that we picked up some stragglers, six of them, three of them in a bad way. They had become separated from their unit. But who hasn’t! Well, here I’m off for something to eat.’
‘You’ll be lucky. Oh, I forgot, you’ve got a kitchen of your own; half of ours got it.’ Her voice sank. ‘And two orderlies with it.’
David said nothing to this, but he sighed and turned aw
ay. And the nurse, looking at Gerald, said softly, ‘You look all-in.’
‘Me, look all-in? I could go for another…full ten minutes.’
‘How long have you been on this trip?’
‘Since the beginning of the year.’
‘Don’t be daft.’ She pushed at him, then added, ‘But it must feel like that at times. It must be twenty-four hours, at least.’
He sighed now and said, ‘Well, I’ve got a forty-eight coming. And you know what I’m going to do in it?’
‘Yes. Yes. Sleep.’
‘Right on the dot, Susie. Right on the dot.’
‘I’d like to take a bet with you.’
‘Yes?’
‘You won’t sleep for twenty-four hours; you’ll hardly sleep for twelve.’
‘Perhaps you’re right…’ He knew she was right. You got past sleep. You might be lying on your bed, and there you were, your eyes wide open, staring straight ahead into the past…you were on orderly duty, running here and there. Then quite suddenly there was Dunkirk and the ambulance train, and the sickness in his stomach mixed with anger by the sight of more mangled men.
It had been in Dunkirk that he first saw Susie, during the bombardment. The Germans were firing their long-range guns on the town from Dixmude. And he could even hear her now saying, ‘If you don’t want to have to lie on a stretcher, lie on your belly, man.’
It was a brief meeting in the mud; he was not to see her again until some three months later, and that was in Rouen.
Then they had met in this medical outpost that seemed to be part of no man’s land. That was two months ago. Since then, now and again, they had exchanged a few words, as they were doing now.
The Maltese Angel Page 39