Thea was soon on her way once more, her hands tucked inside thick leather gloves. She would have to write to Kezia, to ask her to send a pair of silk gloves to wear underneath the leather outer pair—anything to help keep her warm. For now she would have to press on, weighing the requirement for a swift return against the need to maintain the comfort—such as it was—of the wounded men. If she went too fast, she would hit the ruts hard, and hear a cacophony of screams from the back of the wagon. If she went too slow, she would deliver more dead than alive. It was a balancing act, a high wire to be negotiated. And every evening she would do her best, with pails of water, disinfectant, and a scrubbing brush, to sluice the inside of her ambulance, watching the blood run out into the mud—gulleys streaming red with the essence of men, some already committed to the earth before nightfall.
Thea forced the ambulance back and forth to the casualty clearing station, often passing Hilary on the way. Once they almost slid into each other.
“Let’s not give the boys any reason to talk about women and motor vehicles, Thea—the last thing we want to do is to lose Mildred and Gertie.”
Mildred and Gertie, thought Thea. She’d never considered giving the ambulance a name until Hilary asked what hers was called, and she gave the first name that came to her mind. Now it proved useful. Come on, Gertie. Just one more mile, Gertie. Let’s not get caught in that mud over there. Listen to those boys, Gertie—come on, we’ll sing too. It was as if she had a friend on the long journey to the battlefield, someone to talk to when she was afraid, or angry, or tired in every bone in her body. With Gertie, she was never alone.
“I know one thing,” said Jimmy Watson—Private Jimmy Watson. The men in the dugout looked up from the latest delivery of letters.
“What is it now, old son? Who’s got on your nerves this time? Ain’t Fritz over there enough for you, you’ve got to go looking for trouble?”
It was Cecil who had replied to Watson’s announcement—or rather pronouncement, like a glove thrown down to see who might pick up the challenge of an argument.
“It’s all very well you sitting there with your tin of biscuits, Cecil, my old cock, but it turns out”—Watson waved the letter in his hand—“it turns out my old woman’s got herself a job and is doing very nicely, thank you. She’s making the bullets and I’m firing ’em, so we’ve got a right little family business going. Trouble is, it seems she don’t have much time to write a proper letter, but she’s all happy about going off to the music hall with her friends with the bit extra in her pocket. Friends! Makes me wonder what I’m doing here, in all this mud, my feet dropping off, if all she can do is go down to the pub with her mates.”
“I’m sure it’s not as bad as that, Watsy. Really. She’s working hard and it’s her night off. She’s entitled,” replied Cecil.
Tom glanced across at his friend and shook his head. He wondered why Cecil had taken the bait. You didn’t want to get Jimmy Watson going—he’d never let up.
“And it’s not as if I get a tin of biscuits, like you, or a cake, like old Brissy over there—and didn’t you get a new pair of socks as well, and a wrapper of homemade toffee?”
Tom nodded.
“I tell you, I’ve been over here since last September—so what’s that? Almost six months? And what are the two things I’m really interested in?” Watson held the sheet of paper between finger and thumb, as if it were soiled clothing. “Letters from home, and when I’m going to get a decent plate of food in front of me. Now I know two more things.”
“Oh, put an effing lid on it, Jim,” another voice shouted out. “I’ve got nits crawling up and down me legs, I can hardly see the writing on the page, and all I can hear is you and your two effing things this, and your two effing things that. Put an effing sock in it, will you?”
Watson returned the volley. “If my feet weren’t stuck to the mud, I’d clock you one—rearrange your dial for you.”
“Come on now, that’s enough of that—we’ve got plenty on our plates with the chaps in the opposite trench gunning for us, without going for each other’s throats.” Cecil nodded to Tom. “Read us one of your missus’ recipes, Tom. Or has she let us down this time?”
Tom smiled despite himself. He hadn’t wanted to read the letter aloud. He wanted to keep Kezia for himself, squirrel away these moments and savor them, cherishing her as if she were here with him, stroking his head until he slept.
“Go on, Brissy, let’s have it.” Another disembodied voice came from within the rat-stench darkness. “It’s going to be that bleedin’ bully beef and biscuit again tonight for us, so give us something to make our taste buds perk up, and maybe it’ll all go down a bit better.
Tom sighed, and turned back a page. Someone leaned closer with the lantern, and he began to read.
“Bert went out and came back with four nice wood pigeons for us. When we were first married, I knew nothing about preparing a bird, but now you should see me—I’m much quicker about it. Bert said the best flesh is on the breast, but as far as I could see, it was the only flesh. So I took as much meat as I could, then put the carcass on the stove with water and onions and some herbs from the kitchen garden. I thought the boiling would get some more meat off the bones, and make a nice stock for the gravy. As you know, Tom, I don’t really care for a plain sauce, and I thought with pigeon especially, you need something extra to bring the flavor out. I’d put up a good half-dozen jars of blackcurrants in the summer, and I thought the color of them and their sweetish tart taste would do well with the bird, so here’s what I did. I simmered the pigeon flesh with some best butter, just to get it going and brown it, then I added blackcurrants, and—”
“I don’t know where your missus gets her ideas from. Mine would never think up something like that.”
“Ssshhh! Let ’im get on with the story.”
Tom didn’t know who had spoken, but he felt as if he were a teacher in school, reading a story before the children went home. He remembered Mrs. Willis reading the story at the village school, remembered the sleep-inducing dreaminess of her soft voice. Once upon a time . . .
“Are you going to tell us what happened next, or what?” Jimmy Watson winked at Tom. “Get on with it, mate, don’t leave us hanging.”
Tom cleared his throat. “I added the blackcurrants and—what do you think I did?” He paused, looking round at his audience.
“Well, what did she do?”
“I remembered seeing a bottle of brandy in the back of the desk drawer, and I suspected it would really bring out the gamey taste of the pigeon and do very well with the blackcurrants. It’s very French, you know, fruit with brandy. They have a liqueur over there called cassis, which is really blackcurrant brandy. Have you tasted any, since you’ve arrived in France?”
“Chance would be a fine thing.”
“Shhhh!”
Tom ignored the interruption.
“So, I added a few tablespoons of brandy to the pigeon and blackcurrant, and then, just for taste, I chopped a tiny bit of onion into it, then I let it cool down.”
“Then what did she do?”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” said Tom.
“This is making my stomach rumble,” said Cecil. “And I could swear my tongue is swelling up.”
“Your tongue will swell up all right, if you don’t let him talk. You carry on, Brissy.”
“When it was all cool, I spooned it into a pie dish, and made a light pastry. Not flat ordinary water pastry, but a light puff pastry. I cut the pastry into a lid, and then nicked a little cross in the middle to let it breathe. I brushed an egg over the top and put it in the oven. I laid the table for us, and put out some roast potatoes and parsnips, which went down a treat with the pie. Did you like it, Tom? What do you think? Should I have added more salt? Or did I overdo the pepper? It might have been a bit too peppery.”
“I would’ve gone easy with the blackcurrants, myself,” said Jimmy.
“No, not me,” said Cecil. “I reckon by the
time the gravy is on the pie, the blackcurrants would have really given that bird some body.”
“What’s for pudd’n?” asked another soldier.
“Let me see,” said Tom. “Oh, yes, she stewed some apples and put a little mountain—that’s what she said, ‘a little mountain’—of whisked cream on the top.”
“Nice, you don’t want a lot after that pigeon with brandy, do you? I mean, she put that pastry on, which wasn’t your ordinary flat pastry, so a bit of apple pie would have fair popped you, wouldn’t it?”
The men nodded, then one of the youngest said, “I wouldn’t have said no to a slice of apple pie.”
Cecil put his hand to his ear. “That sounds like Knowles—better look lively.”
The men put away their letters and stood to attention at the very moment the sergeant entered the dugout.
“What’s this, a party? Another mothers’ meeting? Time you lot started moving again, so look lively about it. No bleeding long sticks of fancy French bread here, you know. No captain bringing the loaves and hoping the fishes would turn up of their own accord. Now then—” He looked at Tom. “Our brave knight in shining armor, Private Gravy, mentioned in dispatches for his skill and fortitude—you’ll be on sentry duty again tonight, just after Private Watson here, if he can tear himself away from his wife’s mumblings.”
As the men filed out, Tom heard Jimmy Watson muttering, “Him and his effing ‘look lively,’ I’d like to make him look effing lively.”
Tom looked up at the stars. It was a clear night, though not moonlit, thanks be to whoever was up there watching them. He’d read only part of the letter to the lads, only the bits they really wanted to hear. He’d begun to wonder how much of Kezia’s letter was truth. Was she really eating well? Was the farm really kept up? He wished he knew how things stood. He wished either Bert or Danny had been the writing sort. Perhaps they’d be telling him what he wanted to know. After Knowles had left the dugout, he took the letter from his tunic pocket, and read it again, a candle held down close to the paper.
There’s been talk in the village about us being able to keep Mabel and Ted. All the horses are gone now, except our two, and the mare, which the army never wanted anyway, because they said she’d be more useful in the pot than hauling a gun carriage. So I’ve put the horses to work in the village. It was a blow to everyone, you see—we need horses for everything, don’t we? Mrs. Joe does the village milk round now, and Ted is sent down to take churns from the farms to the station first thing in the morning, and when she’s done her round, Mrs. Joe collects all the mail from the early train and we take it to the post office for sorting. Bert, Danny, and I, we do what we can before we get down to work on the farm. There’s been a lot of post going backwards and forwards to France from the village. You would have thought one thousand men had come from this one small place, not a hundred or so, counting those from just outside. Mabel can get fussy sometimes; you know she hates to leave the farm, but it’s as if she knows she’s got to work away from home, so Bert has taken her over to Bennetts Farm and Rushley Farm to help them out. The blacksmith says it will put him out of business, now that there’s no horses. At least ours won’t want for hay. And the saddler in Brooksmarsh reckons he’s getting extra work now from a boot maker in Ashford, what with the army having a lot of new feet marching for them! I don’t know what the village will do, if we don’t have a blacksmith. I worry that the men from the army might come back again and take Mabel and Ted—the last thing I want is them to see Mabel looking as if she’s turned over a new leaf, or the mare doing more than just taking me around the farm and into the village. Mind you, I think everyone’s on the lookout, because Mabel, Ted, and Mrs. Joe are saving the day here. No one wants to see them go.
Tom kept the last few paragraphs for the half hour before he put his foot on the ladder for sentry duty; he wanted to savor each word as if it were a bite from Kezia’s rich pigeon pie.
But something else happened this week, and I don’t know what you might think about it. A man in uniform came to the farm. For a minute I was scared he had come for Mabel and Ted, or to tell us to plant even more turnips, but he was from the military police—he came with Constable Ashling from the village. Anyway, he said he was going round the farms because they’ve got prisoners of war, German boys, and they want them put to work, being as all our men are at the front. I told him I had village women working, and he said he could give me one German—he knew we had lost most of our workers, aside from Bert, who’s getting on now, and Danny, who’s lame. I called Bert over to see the man, and he said he’d be happy to make a German work on the land, and work him hard, so we had the German come for the first time on Monday. His name is Frederick. Bert and Danny call him Fritz. I know this will be a shock to you, seeing as you’re over there, but even Bert says he seems to be a polite boy. He speaks English very well, and it turns out he was a student in Heidelberg, but was sent to join the army even before we went to war. He told Bert that his grandfather is a farmer, and he has spent all his summers on the farm, so he knows a lot about what to do when asked. Bert says he reckons the boy is glad to be here. He told Bert he hated the fighting, and it was terrible in the army. He said he was always hungry, and he’s grateful for anything he gets to eat. Constable Ashling comes for him every evening after work, and takes him off and locks him in for the night, then he brings him back for work in the morning.
Frederick is a gentleman to the women who come up from the village and always bows when he sees them and says good morning, and though they were very suspicious at first, they say good morning back and then nothing more. Everybody needs the work, and I have to say, even Bert said we need the lifting power the German can give us. They’ve said we might get a land girl too. They’re training women to work on the farms, but as Bert said, our village women don’t need so much training, and he’d rather not have a town lass here, even if she does try her best. I think he was a bit embarrassed when he remembered that I’m a town lass. Bert reckons the German is a good ploughboy, leading the horses from the front while Bert is behind with the plough, and says he does the turns just right. Danny always had some trouble leading into the turns, on account of his lameness. Frederick doesn’t look like he wants to escape, which is what I thought he would do. But where would he go? I think he likes it here, and he seems very glad to be away from France.
Tom felt sick. What was the point of him being here, in France, shooting at Germans, when one of those same Germans was on his farm, saying good morning to his workers, and making a polite little German bow to his wife every time he saw her? And was he eating his food? Was he eating his pigeon pie with blackcurrants and brandy? What was it all about, this war, with him staring up at the stars and waiting for the enemy—the same enemy leading his plough into a perfect turn—to come for him? A wave of fatigue fell heavy across his eyes, as if they’d been covered with a warm towel. He wanted to feel his wife in his arms. He wanted her food in his belly, and her body close to his at night. He wanted to run his fingers across her skin, to feel the sweat of them together.
“Get up there, Private Gravy. Go on, lad, don’t be shy. And you’d better keep your eyes peeled for them boys over there in the other trench—we don’t want any of their silly-looking grenades coming over that parapet and planting us all minus our crown jewels.”
Tom put his foot on the step and assumed sentry position.
“I didn’t hear you, Private Gravy. I didn’t hear you at all. P’raps it’s my ears gone, on account of the shelling.”
Tom stepped down and saluted. He did not make eye contact, but looked ahead. “Yes, sir!”
“You’ve gone and done it again, Gravy. Another smudge on your very stained copybook. Now you get up there, and you scramble where I know you’re looking hard at that wire. And you stay there until I tell you otherwise.”
“Yes, sir!” Tom marched once in place, turned, and placed one foot on the fire step, again in sentry position.
“Another ste
p, Private Gravy.”
Tom took one more step.
“Don’t be shy—the Germans won’t. Just you be careful you don’t get a hole in your brain box.”
Another step. Knowles came closer.
“I am watching you, Gravy. I am watching you very hard.”
Tom could smell his breath. He was sick of smelling the sergeant’s putrid bully-beef-and-Camp-coffee breath. Knowles lingered and then turned away, walking off in the direction of another dugout.
“You’re always effing watching me, you bastard,” muttered Tom.
He listened into the darkness, his hands firm on his rifle, his bayonet fixed. Sounds of the night descended, and he listened for the rats and the noises that meant feasting for the beasts, and those that meant the enemy was on the move. The enemy that might end up living a peaceful life on his farm if they were caught. He thought about his land, and allowed his mind to walk along the road to the fields, to Twist, to Pickwick, through Micawber Wood, and out to the perimeter line overlooking the Hawkes estate. And where was Edmund Hawkes anyway? Tucked up in his bunk in his officer’s dugout—more like a palatial room when compared to the men’s, with its soaking wet mud walls. He brought himself back to the farmhouse and imagined walking towards the back door, holding up his hand so the collies would stop at the threshold. He pulled off his boots—his father would have clomped mud across the ancient red tiles, but Tom thought more of Kezia, of the neat, clean, and tidy house she kept for him. He’d married a gentlewoman, so a gentleman he would be when he was in their home. An Englishman’s home is his castle.
Oh, the smell of her cooking. The waft of pigeon and blackcurrants and that spoonful of chopped onion, and her herbs, dried in the pantry and smelling for all the world like the arid, heady shank of summertime. Ah, now the peppery waft of hops enveloping the farm, a breeze bringing the fragrance through the open window. No more could Tom feel the sharp needle of cold in his boots, or his numb freezing fingertips. He could instead sense his wife’s lips on his cheek. And the dinner she set before him, on best china plates. Tom felt the cloud of fatigue spread out and envelop him like a soft blanket as he slipped deeper into the dream. Oh, Kezia, my Kezzie. Hold me close and never let me go.