Edmund Hawkes was wondering if he was nothing more than a glorified scout leader. He’d been here not yet a fortnight, in France, and all he wanted to do was go home. Have this terror end, and all go home. Did they do this to every junior officer? he wondered. Sling them into the deep end to see if they would sink or swim? Well, the Honorable Edmund Hawkes—not feeling very Honorable right now—knew the answer, and he didn’t feel as if his head were above water. It was baptism by fire—fire, fire, and more fire.
There was a cough behind him, a phlegmy attention-demanding clearing of the throat. Hawkes looked up. His sergeant stood to attention. Edmund sighed—the man did not intimidate him, but rather saddened him. He liked his sergeant, who, he knew, had more experience of soldiering in his little finger than the average newly minted officer had in his whole body. He understood that his sergeant’s most difficult job was in making sure his officer knew what he was about.
“Well, Sergeant Ellis. Are the men ready?”
“Five minutes, sir. The bombardment ends, we count—”
“Very good, Sergeant Ellis, very good. Issue the rum, and give me a minute.”
“Sir!” The sergeant saluted, turned back, out into the trench.
Here we go. Hawkes looked around the dugout, his eyes resting on a photograph of himself with his mare and his dog—dear Bella, dead already within a day of landing in France, when a makeshift stable sustained a direct hit from an enemy shell. He should have left her at home, should have left her to canter across fields, to linger by the lake, blowing into the water and then drinking her fill. He closed his eyes and tried to remember how her gallop felt, how she powered herself, carrying him across the fields, over a gate, and another, then slowing to a canter, then trot, and down to the lake. Would he soon be dead too? Would his early luck hold? And if it did, how many letters would he begin to write, telling a wife, a mother, that the man had not suffered, that he had died instantly in the service of his country? Died instantly? Hawkes remembered studying classics at school, and it seemed Aeschylus had it down: “In war, truth is the first casualty.” But what else can you say when a man has been blown into a million pieces, a million pieces and his blood seeping down into a foreign field? He died instantly. Of course he bloody well died instantly—no one can live without a head, a heart, or a brain. Would he, too, die instantly within the next five minutes, or ten?
The Honorable Edmund Hawkes pulled at the cuffs of his uniform jacket, checked his Webley revolver, replaced it in the holster, and moved out into the trench. Men were lined up, each with a sixty-pound pack on his back and a Lee Enfield rifle. How the bloody hell are they supposed to run with that? Hawkes pushed his thoughts to the back of his mind and put his hand on the shoulder of a man whose whole body was shaking. Man? No, boy, more like. A Kentish boy with blue eyes and cherry-red lips, a boy who had never known a woman’s love and might never yet.
“It’s all right, Saunders. Chin up. Your mother’s proud of you, you’re a good soldier.”
He caught the eye of one infantryman after another, not flinching, not drawing back. Two days ago he had become the most senior officer in his unit—promotion by war’s attrition. His inadequacy pulled at his gut, but he walked all the taller for it—it was what the men expected. He cleared his throat.
“You fight for the honor of our land across the Channel, for the honor of every town and village, for every man, woman, and child in the British Isles—remember that! Remember that, and go forward, and may God go with you, and with us all.”
He nodded at his sergeant, who gave the command to fix bayonets. He stepped towards the ladder—ladder into bloody hell—and put his foot on the first rung. He took his pistol, readying it to fire.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes, sir!
“Bearers up!” he called, summoning the stretcher bearers to attention.
Edmund Hawkes could not hear himself speak. His teeth rattled as the cannonade escalated, with shells flying over the trench and towards the enemy. He looked at his watch, counting down the seconds now. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Then silence. A split second, one, two, three . . .
Hawkes glanced at his sergeant, remembering their first charge together. Ellis had thrown a football over the top when he gave the order to charge, so the men had kicked the ball one to the other while running towards the German guns. Play up! play up! and play the game. Now he caught sight of the shaking boy; his men were looking towards him, waiting, waiting, one second after another, time expanding and contracting about him, his ears ringing, no sounds, not even his voice, not even his voice, as he raised his arm, his arm with the hand that grasped the pistol, and his sergeant lifted his whistle, and then one after another, though it was slow and fast all at once, Edmund Hawkes, the Honorable Edmund Hawkes, ran up the rungs, and within another second could hear someone shouting. . . .
Charge!
And the voice came from within him, tearing into his throat, bursting into his ears, as he ran into the fog, into the smoke, and into the shells and guns.
“For king and country!”
And though he could barely see, Hawkes ran, and alongside him his men ran, holding out their rifles, running as if running were all they had to do. He fell, picked himself up, and ran. Now more men were in front of him. It was a horse race, a Grand National of war, a Derby of running soldiers. He saw the boy fall, the boy who’d been shaking. He’d found his legs and was galloping hard, screaming into the smoke, screaming at the Hun to get the effing hell out of his England. And then he’d gone down.
Hawkes came to his knees alongside the boy, looked down at the blood-black hole in his stomach, then at the boy’s face. And in that moment he thought he saw everything there was to know about that face, and it was as if time were standing still again and the noise receding, scared away by the running bellowing men, who opened their mouths but no sounds came out anymore.
“I’m dead, aren’t I, sir? I’m a dead man.”
Hawkes reached for the boy’s hand.
Dead man. Dead boy. It was all the same, really.
“You’ll be all right, son. You’ve done yourself proud, done your mother proud.”
Hawkes knew this already; he knew mothers were important. The dying and wounded always asked for their mothers, their lips working like babies seeking the milk of sustenance.
“Tell her then, sir.”
“I’ll tell her you’re one of the best. I’ll see her myself.”
A sweet sickly stench came from the boy’s center, yards of bloody rope seeping from his body. Then at once the hand became lifeless, and it was done. All around him, men were dead and dying, calling with their last ounce of life, the sounds of shelling and gunfire giving way to something that reminded Edmund Hawkes of the mournful baying of dogs.
“Retreat, sir. Go back. Call the men back.”
Hawkes turned to Ellis, who had his head down as he staggered towards him, his right arm hanging, held in place by his left hand.
“Sir! Retreat! Now!”
The sounds came back, whooshing into his head almost as if he had been struck by a shell, and again he heard the voice, the voice that came from his mouth yelling to the men to pull back. And bearing the weight of his wounded sergeant, the Honorable Edmund Hawkes—Captain Hawkes, now—staggered home to the trench, because in that moment the trench was home. But he knew, even as he fell down into the earth, as he pulled his almost-unconscious sergeant to him, that he would return to the battlefield. He would go out with the stretcher bearers into the night to bring back wounded, even if it meant prizing their torn bodies from barbed wire. But he knew, too, that he had not surmounted fear, that he might never overcome the terror inside. He knew it lived with him, would eat with him and would go to bed with him at night and come to him in his dreams. Yet he was not afraid of death, of that final moment of life. He was afraid of the dying that came before the end.
The letter came on a Friday at five o’clock in the evening, instructing Thea to be at H
yde Park the following afternoon. It cautioned her to destroy the communiqué once read. She was to wear plain clothing, and no jewelry or other identifying accoutrements. She should not stand out from the crowd. There must be nothing to distinguish her from any other woman in the park that day. Thea followed the instructions to the letter, and on Saturday afternoon made her way from Queen Charlotte’s Chambers by foot and by bus to Hyde Park, at the Lancaster Gate entrance. When she arrived, not one face was familiar, though she had known the others she was to meet as soon as she saw them clustered. There were two men and two women, and another man joined them just after Thea, a man she might have passed in the street and never noticed. He walked up to the group and nodded. The taller man passed a clutch of pamphlets to her. He was wearing a bowler hat and a suit of plain dark grey worsted—she noticed the trousers had a shine where a hot iron had been taken to them without a pressing cloth in between. She looked at the pamphlet; her stomach turned as she saw the drawing, an almost photographic depiction of a British soldier dying, tangled in barbed wire.
“Right, my friend here and I will hold the banner and call out our message. You, you, and you”—he looked at the women, nodding his head toward each one in turn—“you will distribute pamphlets, call out to people to join us. We are representing everything that is peaceful—do not be drawn into argument or dispute, simply state your message. Do not hold a gaze with anyone, because you must not be remembered. We are here to uphold peace in our country, peace for the people of Britain, and peace in Europe.” He paused. “Are you ready?” He cast his eyes across the group. “Shall we?”
The man waited for each person to nod their agreement, and then set off. Holding the banner high, the two men marched along the broad walk, with the women and the young man who had been late marching behind. Thea held out her pamphlets, and at first she smiled, then remembered that no one should recollect her face, so she kept her hat low, and saw only hands as she pressed a leaflet into them—hands with gloves; small, childish hands; hands with long fingers and ink-stained hands. Then she pushed a pamphlet into a thick, work-worn hand, a hand that might have been her father’s or Tom’s, and she felt the stab of nausea touch her again.
“What do I bleedin’ want this for? You wicked piece of nothing—my boy’s over there, fighting, and all you can do is go on about peace. Tell the bleedin’ kaiser about peace, girl.”
Thea turned, and as she did, the young man of their group came closer.
“But sir, surely your son should be here, in England. He should be with his family, perhaps helping you in your work—surely he should not be on a foreign battlefield.”
Thea felt the group cluster and heard the banner flapping in the breeze. A small crowd had begun to form, and soon people were calling, telling them to go home, go back to where they came from.
“We come to you in peace, with a message of support for our soldiery, and a desire to bring them back from the brink of death—the people of France and Belgium have suffered even more from bombs and shelling since war was declared.”
The man’s voice was drowned out. A woman shouted, “What about the poor Belgian babies, what about the Germans, knifing them right through!”
And still the crowd grew. A woman pulled the pamphlets from Thea’s hand and twisted them into a ball, which she threw over her shoulder.
Then, in the distance came the police whistles. The sound of authority catching up with her again.
“Disperse!” said the first man to speak when they’d met. “Go now!”
Thea did not wait for a second instruction. She felt a hand take the arm of her coat.
“See what this one does when they nab her for sedition! See what she does, the little trollop! So much for defense of the realm!”
Thea pulled her arm away and ran. She ran towards the gate. The park was busy on such a sunny day, so she slowed as she mingled with sweethearts arm in arm, with families and children, and then she walked as quickly as she could to the Underground. Her breath was echoing in her ears, and behind her she heard footsteps gaining on her. She turned a corner and stepped to one side. Three boys on the brink of manhood ran past, teasing each other and pushing as they galloped on.
Tube, bus, and walk. Walk with a brisk step, head down. Walk to the front door, take out the key, in the lock . . .
Thea closed the door behind her and walked upstairs to her room. Everything was as she left it. Neat. Tidy. Fresh flowers in a vase on the table. She closed the curtains and turned on the gaslight, then took off her plain coat, hat, and gloves and sat down in the armchair. She pulled the pillow to her stomach, curving her body around its softness, and rocking back and forth, her eyes closed.
Rap-rap-rap at the door.
“Miss Brissenden?”
Thea started, her eyes open wide.
“Miss Brissenden, are you there?”
She came to her feet and, still clutching the pillow, opened the door. It was the warden. A woman in her fifties, she was of Thea’s height and always dressed in a black skirt with a white blouse and wide belt. It was the belt that changed with the season or the occasion—today the belt was deep red, and matched the combs in her hair and the rouge on her cheeks.
“Oh, Mrs. Montague, good afternoon,” said Thea.
“I thought you mustn’t have seen this parcel waiting for you—and there’s some post, too. I’d left it on the downstairs table—you walked right past without noticing.”
Thea nodded. “I was in a bit of a hurry.”
“Well, here you are then.” The woman smiled. “Nice day?”
“Yes, thank you. I—I went to the park—Green Park. It was quite beautiful today, but I do have a headache now.”
“Right you are, then. I’d best be off—I’ve a friend coming round for a bit of supper tonight.”
“Oh, lovely,” said Thea. “Well. Have a good evening, Mrs. Montague.”
Thea smiled and closed the door.
She brought the box into the room and set it upon the table. With scissors she cut the brown paper, and a second layer of paper underneath. It was a cake tin, with a letter on top.
Dearest Thea,
I know how much you love walnut cake, so I baked one to my very own recipe. You will find there are lots of walnuts to pick out—do you remember at Camden, when we would buy a little round walnut cake and cut it into small pieces so we each had the same number of walnuts? I wanted to make sure this was the best walnut cake you could possibly taste, ever. You will find I have put in a goodly amount of brandy, so it keeps nicely in the tin. I have mixed in everything you love in a walnut cake, dear Thea. I do hope you enjoy it.
“Oh, Kezzie.”
Thea sat on the chair, holding the tin in her lap. In all her years away from the farm, even when she was at school, then college, she had never been sent a cake. Her mother would not have thought it necessary. Food was something you put on the table, or took in a basket to a sick friend, or to a husband, out in the fields at harvest time. Thea lifted the lid, drew the tin towards her face, and breathed in the sweet, spicy fragrance of rich walnut cake. It was as if she could distinguish each and every ingredient—best butter, eggs from the farm, flour from Dallings Mill, cinnamon, sugar, golden syrup, candied cherries, and walnuts. Whole walnuts, not chopped walnuts. And there was another ingredient that Thea knew was there, but had no distinguishing fragrance, though it was fresh and sweet and she knew it had been bound in with each sweep of Kezia’s wooden spoon. It was as if Kezia had poured her heart into the cake, so that when Thea took a bite, which she did, later, with a cup of tea, she felt the old warmth of friendship return. She could taste companionship itself, and she longed for her beloved Kezzie to be there, in the room with her, crumbling the cake and counting out walnuts.
Chapter 8
Religion and politics are topics of conversation which should always be avoided. They are subjects upon which difference of opinion is very rife, and may often lead to heated arguments which are as tiresome and unpleas
ant as they are ill-bred.
—THE WOMAN’S BOOK
Dear Sis . . .
Tom could not bring himself to write “Thea,” though he often felt that he had lost Dorrit anyway. It no longer mattered that she had changed her name, because the girl he had once run across the fields with, had followed to the top of the big climbing tree, limb by limb, and who had been his close confidante, felt lost to him. Calling her “Sis” brought her back, reminding him—and her, he hoped—that they were once as thick with each other as siblings could be, like twins, until he had chosen Kezia, and she had chosen him back.
He had decided to tell Thea himself. Kezia had offered to write the letter, and had then left the idea hanging, so that he might choose to set pen to paper. That’s what he loved about Kezia—she made him do what was right, but left it up to him to know what right was. He didn’t think she even knew she had this quality, and sometimes suspected that being the daughter of a man of the cloth had imbued her with a certain knowing that eluded him, and others. Perhaps being brought up with righteousness was a gift, after all. And it was usually when he caught himself with fanciful thoughts that Kezia altered his viewpoint, and there was always something special on those days—the discovery of a posy of dog roses next to his plate, as if to garnish the table while he ate. But it was clear that Kezia believed it should be Tom who wrote to Thea to announce and explain his intentions.
“But don’t ask her to come back to the farm, Tom. I can manage—with Bert and Danny and anyone else I can get, I can manage. Thea won’t want to come home, Tom, so don’t expect it of her.”
Tom took Kezia’s words to heart, and set to writing again.
Dear Sis,
This is your brother writing to you.
Tom always began a letter in this way, as if Thea would not be able to tell the solid hand, with the stream of lettering divided in places where he had pressed hard with the nib, which had separated so two lines of ink ran apart, then together, then apart. He had not written a letter to Thea for some time, usually choosing a postcard to reply to her, with quickly scratched news from the farm, and always an invitation. Come back soon, Sis.