They had letters, they’d never had so many letters in their lives – letters from Albert, cheerful letters about what a grand lot the lads were and how busy they were kept. ‘He says he’s missing home cooking and he’s picking up a bit of the lingo,’ Lillian read out for Rachel’s benefit, because Albert never once sent her a letter, even though she went around telling everyone that ‘her son’ was one of the first from the Groves to join up, which amazed Lillian and Nell because although Rachel disliked all of her stepchildren, she disliked Albert the most.
Nell got letters from Jack, of course, not quite so cheerful as Albert’s letters, not as long either; in fact Jack wasn’t much of a letter writer at all, and generally never got beyond, ‘I’m thinking about you and thank you for your letters,’ in his blunt handwriting. They even got letters from Frank, because, ‘Of course, he has noone to write to,’ Nell said. His letters were the best of the lot because he told them all sorts of silly little things about his fellow soldiers and the daily routine so that they often laughed out loud when they read his funny, spidery scrawl. Strangely, none of them – Frank, Jack or Albert – ever wrote much about the war itself and battles and skirmishes seemed to pass with little apparent involvement from any of them. ‘The battle of Ypres is over now,’ Albert wrote cryptically, ‘and we are all very glad.’
Nell and Lillian spent a lot of time replying to these letters; they sat every night under the bead-fringed lamp at the front parlour table, either knitting blankets for the Belgian refugees or writing letters on special lilac notepaper they had bought. Lillian developed an uncharacteristic passion for maudlin postcards and bought whole sets like ‘The Kiss Goodbye’ that she sent off indiscriminately to all three men, so that none of them ever ended up with a full set. And then there were parcels to send containing peppermint lozenges, knitted woollen mufflers and tenpence halfpenny tins of Antiseptic Foot Powder from Coverdales in Parliament Street. And on Sundays they often walked all the way over to Leeman Road to see the concentration camp that had been built to house the aliens and Lillian used to take apples to throw over the wire because she felt so sorry for them. ‘They’re people just like us,’ she said sorrowfully, and as one of them was Max Brechner, their butcher on Haxby Road, Nell supposed Lillian was right, but it did seem odd to be taking fruit to an enemy that was trying to kill their own brother – although Max Brechner, who was sixty if he was a day and got out of breath if he walked a few yards, hardly seemed like the enemy.
The first person they knew that came home on leave was Bill Monroe from Emerald Street and he was followed by a boy from Park Grove Street and one from over on Eldon Terrace, which seemed unfair as Albert had joined up before any of them. There was a big to-do one day because Bill Monroe hadn’t gone back when he should have done and they sent in military policemen to take him back. His mother barred the front door with a broom handle and had to be lifted out of the way by the military policemen, one at each elbow, and Nell, who happened to be walking home from work along Emerald Street at the time, was reminded of Percy’s funeral.
She had a further shock when an ordinary, civilian policeman appeared from nowhere and for a second Nell thought it was Percy. For a ridiculous moment she wondered if he’d come back to ask her why there was a little pearl and garnet ring on her engagement finger instead of the sapphire chips he’d given her which were now wrapped in tissue paper and put at the back of her drawer.
Bill Monroe was hauled off eventually and Nell didn’t linger on the street. She felt embarrassed for him because she’d seen the look of terror on his face and thought how awful it must be to be such a coward – and how unpatriotic as well – and she was surprised how many women came up to Mrs Monroe, who was raging and shouting and crying on her doorstep, and told her that she’d done the right thing.
Frank came home after the second battle of Ypres; he’d been in hospital in Southport with a septic foot and was given a few days’ leave before going back to the Front. It was odd because before the war they’d hardly known him yet now he seemed like an old friend and when he came knocking at the back door they both hugged him and made him stay to tea. Nell ran out and got herrings and Lillian cut bread and put out jam and even Rachel asked how he was doing. But when they were all sat round the table, drinking their tea from the best service, the one that had gold rims and little blue forget-me-nots, Frank found himself unexpectedly tongue-tied. He had thought there were a lot of things about the war he wanted to tell them but was surprised to discover that the neat triangles of bread and jam and the prettiness of the little blue forget-me-nots somehow precluded him from talking about trench foot and rats, let alone the many different ways of dying he had witnessed. The smell of death clearly had no place in the parlour of Lowther Street, with the snowy cloth on the table and the glass-bead fringed lamp and the two sisters who had such soft, lovely hair that Frank ached to bury his face in it. He was thinking all these things while chewing his bread and casting around desperately for conversation, until with a nervous gulp from the gold and forget-me-nots he said, ‘That’s a grand cup, you should taste the tea we get,’ and told them about the chlorinated water in the trenches. When he saw the look of horror on their faces he felt ashamed that he’d ever wanted to talk about death.
They, in turn, told him about Billy Monroe and he tut-tutted in the right places although secretly he wished he had a mother who could somehow – anyhow – prevent him having to return to the Front because Frank knew he was going to die if he went back to the war. He listened politely while they told him about all the things they were doing – they showed him their knitting – they’d stopped knitting for the Belgians and now they were knitting socks for soldiers, and Nell told him about her new job, making uniforms, where she’d just been made a forewoman because of her experience with hats, and Lillian was working as a conductress on the trams and Frank raised both eyebrows and said, ‘Never!’ because he couldn’t imagine a woman conductress and Lillian giggled. The two sisters were so full of life that in the end the war was left more or less unspoken of, except, of course, to say that Jack was well and sent his love and that he hadn’t seen Albert at all but he was a lot safer behind the big guns in the artillery than he would be in the trenches.
And Rachel, the toad in the corner, unexpectedly spoke up and said, ‘It must be dreadful in those trenches,’ and Frank shrugged and smiled and said, ‘Oh it’s not too bad really, Mrs Barker,’ and took another drink from his forget-me-not cup.
Frank spent most of the rest of his leave with one or other of the girls. He took Nelly to the music-hall at the Empire and Lillian took him to a meeting at the Educational Settlement but it was a bit above his head. They were all Quakers and conchies and socialists and they kept on about negotiating an end to the war. Frank thought they were a load of slackers and was glad he was in uniform. ‘Do you think you should be mixing with folk like these?’ he said to Lillian as he walked her home and she just looked at him and said, ‘Frank!’ and laughed. More enjoyable was when all three of them went to see Jane Shore at the New Picture House in Coney Street which had just opened and was really grand with its one thousand tip-up seats.
When he had to go back to the Front he felt worse than he had done leaving the first time and he could hardly bear to leave Nell and Lillian behind.
Lillian and Nell had plenty to occupy them after Frank went back. They worked long hours and they still had Rachel to contend with, although even she wasn’t as bad as their fear of the Zeppelins. They bought dark blue holland from Leak and Thorp’s for the windows and were obsessive about the blackout, especially as poor Minnie Havis next door had to go up before the magistrates for leaving a light showing. Tom came to visit regularly, although he hardly ever brought his new wife Mabel. Lillian said Mabel was a wet piece of dough, although Nell quite liked her. Somebody asked them if their brother was a slacker and they were outraged, but secretly Nell thought it wasn’t very brave of him getting an exemption like that. Lillian said wasn’t it en
ough that they had one brother that might get killed? and Nell threw a cushion at her because she never, never thought Albert was going to get killed and it seemed dreadfully bad luck to say something like that. Tom helped them fix the holland blinds at the windows and laughed off the idea of a Zeppelin attack. He believed in them after his hand got blown off though, and they went to see him in hospital and at least now noone could accuse him of being a slacker, not with his hand like that. Nell was just about to write a letter to Albert telling him about all this excitement when he surprised them by turning up on the doorstep on leave. All Rachel said was, ‘More mouths to feed,’ but then she’d never liked Albert.
They were convinced Albert had grown when they saw him; neither of them remembered him being so tall. He had fine lines round his eyes and would have slept all the time when he was home, if they’d let him. When they asked him questions about the war he always made some joke and never told them anything. They were greedy for Albert, they would have spent every minute with him, just looking at him, they were that happy to have him home. Albert had always looked after them and now they wanted to look after him and they hung around his neck and stroked his hair as if he was their baby not their great strapping brother. When he went, they waved him off at the station and they were still standing on the platform, looking at the empty rails, ten minutes after he’d gone. As long as they were still standing there they felt as if they hadn’t let him go and they had to tear themselves away to go home, where Rachel said, ‘He’s gone then, has he, the light of your life?’
Frank thought it was probably the noise that got to Jack in the end. For three days and three nights the barrage never stopped and as the guns seemed to get louder, so Jack seemed to get quieter and quieter, although he didn’t go mad with it like some chaps, he was just too quiet. Funnily enough, the noise didn’t bother Frank so much any more, he thought it was because he’d got used to the constant booming of the howitzers although in fact he’d gone deaf in his right ear.
It wasn’t the noise that bothered Frank anyway – it was death, or rather, how he was going to die, that worried him. There was no doubt he was going to die; after all, he’d been out here nearly two years and the odds were piled high against him by now. Frank had begun to pray his way through the war. He no longer prayed that he wouldn’t die, he just prayed he would see it coming. He was terrified of dying without any warning and prayed that he might at least see the mortar that was coming for him so he would have time to prepare himself. Or anticipate in some magical way the sniper’s bullet that would take his brain out before his body even knew about it. And please God, he begged, don’t let me be gassed. Only a week ago nearly a whole battalion in a trench that ran parallel to this one, a Pals’ battalion from a factory in Nottingham, had been taken by a low-level tide of gas that rolled quietly along towards them and took them before they realized what was happening. Now they were all quietly drowning to death in some field-hospital.
The night before the attack nobody could sleep. At four in the morning, when it was already light Frank and Jack lolled against the sandbagged wall of the trench while Frank rolled a cigarette for each of them and one for Alf Simmonds who was ducked down on the firing-step above them on sentry duty. Then Jack sucked on his spindly roll-up and, without looking at Frank, said, ‘I’m not going,’ and Frank said, ‘Not going where?’ so that Jack laughed and pointed in the direction of No Man’s Land and said ‘There, of course – I’m not going there.’
Alf Simmonds laughed as well and said, ‘Don’t blame you lad,’ because he thought it was a joke but Frank felt sick because he knew it wasn’t.
It was silent before the order came. The guns had stopped and there was no laughing or joking or anything, just the silence of waiting. Frank watched the clouds pass over in the blue sky above, little puffs of white that were floating above No Man’s Land as if it was any other bit of countryside and not the place where he was going to die very shortly. The new lieutenant looked as green as the grass that didn’t grow there any more, you could see the beads of sweat as big as raindrops on his forehead, they’d never had a lieutenant quite as nervous as this one. Or as mean. Frank suspected it wouldn’t be long before a sniper got this one, and not necessarily the enemy’s either. The men were still missing Malcolm Innes-Ward who’d been with them for six months before he was shot through the eye. He was helping drag a wounded man back from No Man’s Land when a sniper got him. The private helping him was killed as well and the wounded man died of gas-gangrene anyway, so it had all been for nothing.
Jack had got on well with Malcolm Innes-Ward, they’d spent long hours in his officer’s dug-out talking about politics and life and Jack had taken his death particularly hard. Innes-Ward and the noise, that’s what had done for Jack, Frank decided.
When the order came to go over the top it was more like a relief than anything and everyone scrambled up the ladders and over the parapet until there were only three of them left – Frank, Jack and the new lieutenant. Frank didn’t know why he hadn’t moved, it was just a momentary hesitation really – he wanted to make sure that Jack was coming with him – but then the new lieutenant started screaming at them and waving his gun around, saying he was going to shoot them if they didn’t go over, so that Jack said, really quietly, ‘Officers generally lead from the front, sir,’ and before Frank knew what was happening he was looking down the barrel of the new lieutenant’s Lee-Enfield. Then Jack said, ‘You don’t have to do that, sir, we’re going,’ and he half-dragged Frank over the top, and before they were even over the parapet Jack was yelling ‘Run!’ at him, which Frank did, because now he was more frightened of being shot in the back by the new lieutenant’s rifle than he was of being blown up by the enemy.
Frank was determined not to lose sight of Jack, convinced for some reason that if he could keep with Jack his chances of dying were lessened. He fixed his eyes on the regimental badge on the back of his jacket and the scrap of material tied as neatly as a girl’s hair ribbon on his webbing, but within seconds Jack had disappeared and Frank found himself advancing alone through what seemed like a wall of fog, but which was actually the smoke from the big guns which had started up again. The fog seemed to go on and on for ever but Frank kept on walking even though he didn’t come across Jack, or any other soldier, for that matter – living or dead.
It was only after quite a long time that he realized what had happened. He had died – it must have happened when he’d first lost sight of Jack, probably a sniper’s bullet and now he was no longer advancing across No Man’s Land but was walking through Hell and that’s what Hell was going to be for Frank – to trudge for ever across No Man’s Land towards the enemy trenches.
Just as Frank was trying to adjust his thinking to this new idea his foot slipped and he was half-falling, half-sliding down the side of a muddy crater, holding his rifle above his head and screaming at the top of his voice because this was one of the pits of Hell and it was going to be bottomless.
But then he stopped falling and sliding and screaming and realized that he was about two-thirds of the way down the side of a huge crater. Down below was thick, muddy-brown water and in the water a body floating face down. A rat was swimming round the body, executing slow, lazy circles and Frank was suddenly reminded how he and Albert had taught themselves to swim one sweltering hot day. It had been years ago, although now it could just as well have been another lifetime. They’d been on Clifton Ings and the Ouse had been that same thick colour as the water in the shell-hole. Jack had been ill with measles and it had just been the two of them that day. Frank closed his eyes and pushed himself back into the soft mud of the side of the crater and decided that the safest place to be was in the past.
Frank concentrated hard until he could feel the heat of a childhood sun on his skinny, nine-year-old shoulders and smell the cow-parsley and hawthorn along the banks of the Ouse. Now he could feel what the water was like when you first stepped into it, the shock of the cold and the strange feel
ing of his toes splaying out into the mud at the bottom. And he could feel the itchy hemp of the rope that they took it in turns to tie round each other – one splashing out into the river while the other one stood guard, ready to haul him back if he started to sink. And the willow tree in full, silvery-green leaf that trailed in the water like a girl’s hair.
Frank stayed in his crater for several hours recreating his first swimming lesson with Albert until by the end of the day they could both make it nearly half-way across the river. Exhausted but triumphant, they lay down on the hard, dry earth under the willow tree until the water evaporated off their skin and Frank remembered he had pieces in his jacket pocket (this was before his mother died) and they sat and ate the squashed squares of bread and strawberry jam. When they finished, Albert turned his jam-smeared face to Frank and said, ‘This has been a right good day, eh, Frank?’
He thought he might have fallen asleep because he looked up suddenly and found the gunsmoke fog had cleared and the sky was a pale blue. Standing above him on the lip of the crater was Albert, laughing and smiling, and Frank’s first thought was how perfectly like an angel Albert was, even dressed in khaki and with his blond curls crammed under his cap. There was a thin line of blood and grease along the golden skin of his cheek and his eyes were as blue as the sky above, bluer than the forget-me-nots on the tea-service in the front parlour of Lowther Street.
Frank tried to say something to Albert but he couldn’t get any words to come out of his mouth. Being dead was really just like being trapped in a dream. Then Albert put up his hand as if he was waving goodbye and turned and disappeared, dipping down over the horizon of the crater. Frank felt a terrible sense of despair when Albert was lost to sight, as if somebody had torn something out of him, and he began to shiver with cold. After a while he decided the best thing to do would be to try and find Albert and so he dragged himself out of the crater and set off in the general direction of Albert’s disappearance. When, some time later, he staggered into a dressing-station and announced to a nurse that he was dead the nurse merely said, ‘Go and sit over in that corner with that lieutenant then,’ and Frank walked over to a sandbagged wall where a subaltern on crutches was leaning, staring at nothing with one eye – the other one was bandaged. Frank reached into his pocket and found to his surprise that he still had his tobacco so he rolled up two cigarettes and gave one to the lieutenant. After he’d helped him to light it (the young subaltern was having terrible difficulty with his monocular vision) the two dead men stood in silence inhaling their cigarettes with dizzy pleasure as daylight faded over the first day of the Battle of the Somme.