Where are you, Tom? Where are you, in France? Are you in a tent? Or a farmhouse? Kezia closed her eyes and tried to imagine where her husband might be, how he would be sleeping. Was he warm enough? Did he miss her? She wiped the tears again and said aloud, “Oh, Tom, please come back to me. Wherever you are, come back to me.”
It was Ada who woke Kezia at seven o’clock.
“Oh, my goodness. Where are the men? I didn’t cook the breakfast. Where are they?”
“Don’t you worry, Mrs. Brissenden. They saw you through the window, sleeping, so they went off to the oast house, and they had their dinner for breakfast. They made a pot of tea on an old paraffin stove they keep up there—they bring it out and boil a kettle outside. Bert said there’s nothing like a cup of tea brewed in the elements.”
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. I’ve got to get ready, there’s work to do.”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Brissenden. The women are in the milking shed now, and Danny took the mare into the village for the usual round.”
Kezia rested her head in her hands.
“Ada, would you be a dear and make me a cup of tea?”
“Of course I would, Mrs. Brissenden. You just rest now. You’ve had a lot on your plate since Mr. Brissenden left the farm.” Ada went to the stove and put the kettle on the hot plate. “Oh, do you want me to take that letter down to the postbox when I leave? It’ll be no trouble.”
“Thank you, Ada—the sooner it gets over to France, the sooner I’ll get a letter back, eh?”
Tom did his best to keep out of Knowles’ way for the remainder of the day, and was grateful to be in his dugout once darkness fell. He was not assigned sentry duty, which was just as well, as far as he was concerned.
“Oi, Brissenden, read us one of them dinners what your missus cooked.” A voice broke the silence. The men had been writing letters and cards home. For the most part, they did not mention the battle to come, but instead asked questions of their loved ones, and petitioned the recipient to “Give my love to Gran” or “Tell Uncle Charlie I said hello.” Another asked his mother to give Trixie, his dog, a rub around the ears, and tell her that her master had a leave coming up soon. Yet another asked his wife if the baby was ever going to come—the whole battalion was waiting for news so they could go out and have a drink to wet the baby’s head once they’d marched back to camp.
Someone held a candle closer, enabling Tom to see as he leafed through the clutch of envelopes, each one thick with news from home.
“How about this one—her roast chicken?” said Tom.
“Go on—she’s written about three of them roast chicken letters, all of ’em different, and each one’s tickled my taste buds.”
“Shhhh,” warned Cecil, “everyone quiet now.”
Tom began to read:
“I thought I’d try something else with the roast chicken. First of all, you would be proud of me, because I cleaned the chicken myself. It was about time, and I know I made a good job of it, though you should have seen the kitchen floor, there were feathers everywhere.”
Tom paused, leaning closer to the light.
“I bought a lamb’s heart from the butcher—which I am sorry to say came from New Zealand, which I know is a thorn in your side, what with all that wheat coming in from America and cutting prices at the market. They say they’ve ploughed up half the country to plant wheat over there. But the U-boats have slowed some of that coming in, and Bert reckons we’ll get good prices come harvest time—mind you, there might be price pegging going on.”
“Never mind about that bit, Brissenden. I don’t want to know about the effing prices, just the food.”
“All right, all right,” said Tom.
“I cut the heart into pieces and sautéed—that’s a French word, you pronounce it ‘so-tayed,’ and—”
“French words—I’ve had all I can swallow of the bleedin’ French words.”
“Shhhh!”
Tom smiled at the voices, though Kezia’s was loud and clear in his mind.
“And so-tayed them in some best butter with rosemary. I know you don’t like too much rosemary, but it brings out the flavor of the meat. I put in some more herbs, such as I could scratch from the kitchen garden in winter, and I added onion and a little celery seed. Then came the bread crumbs, and some chopped dried apple. I mixed it up well and packed the whole lot into the cavity.”
Tom felt a lump grow in his throat, imagining Kezia working in the kitchen, her hair tied in a loose bun on her crown and her sleeves rolled. She always seemed to be wearing a different day dress and clean pinafore from the housewifery part of her trousseau.
“Keep going, mate—dinner’s not cooked yet.”
“I sealed the cavity with a spear of rosemary, then I rubbed best butter into the skin with salt and pepper and a little curcumin. It gives something extra to the taste, though it isn’t spicy. Then I put the bird in the oven to roast. Oh, you must have loved that dinner. Instead of just roasting potatoes on their own, I added some turnip and some parsnip and carrot, and I rolled the whole lot in olive oil—I treated us to a small bottle from the shop; they ordered some in because I kept asking for it. I chopped some thyme into the vegetables, and roasted them at the same time. It all came out perfectly, and there are even leftovers. There was so much food, I reckon we could have fed your whole battalion.”
“I’ll drink to that, mate,” another voice came from behind Tom.
“Do you think she overdoes that rosemary a bit? It sounds all very nice, but I wonder about that stuff.”
“ ’Ave you ever tasted it?” asked another man.
“No, but all the same.”
“The thought of that lamb’s heart in the middle—well, your missus does you proud, Brissy, I will say that for you.”
“Reckon we could do that with a tin of bully beef?”
“I don’t know. But I reckon all you can really do is make stew.”
“I tell you, Tom, mate, if I cop a Blighty tomorrow, I’m going to tell them to just send me back to your missus. I won’t take liberties, mind. All I want is grub like you get.”
Tom laughed, and the men joshed for a while longer, talking of food, of their favorite dishes, cooked by a mother, wife, or sweetheart. And soon something akin to sleep claimed each man, though his hand remained on his rifle, and his ear was tuned to the outside of the dugout. Who knew what tomorrow would bring? For now it wasn’t worth thinking about, but home was. Yes, home was always worth thinking about.
Thea had not slept. She was up long before dawn, by lamplight checking and rechecking Gertie. She drank tea with Hilary, and each woman managed to eat a couple of slices of bread with plum jam. Soon they would be on their way, soon they would be driving towards the fighting, towards the casualty clearing station to bring back wounded from battle. Sometimes she thought it was like a conveyor belt in a factory, with fresh human raw material moving up the line to the front, which she brought back to the hospital after that material had gone through the regimental aid post, the advance dressing station, the casualty clearing station, then her ambulance, and on to the hospital. But both she and Hilary prided themselves on their speed, despite the fact that they felt so very slow most of the time.
Thea packed her own first-aid pack into her coat pocket, filled a flask with hot tea, and wound a scarf around her neck. Before leaving the billet, she put on two pairs of silk gloves—dear Kezia had embroidered her initials on the inside of each glove—before pulling on the thick leather gloves, solid with dubbin to keep the water out. The flask was pushed underneath her seat, and she looked out towards Hilary.
“I hope this doesn’t take too many turns to get going today—my back is calling for me to return to my bed,” shouted Hilary, her voice thinned by the rain and wind.
“Me too. Take care, Hil—this is going to be a long one.”
They waved, then Thea moved to the front of the engine, slotted in the starting handle, and began to turn. Once, twice, three times . . . This time, please go this time,
Gertie, love. The engine rumbled and shuddered into life. Thea ran to the driver’s seat, placed the starting handle on the floor beside her, and turned the steering wheel. In the near distance shells crumped and boomed, while overhead aeroplanes dived and swooped, avoiding enemy fire and ready to drop messages. They were the eyes of the army, keen eagles watching khaki-clad specks of life running in the mud below.
Captain Edmund Hawkes had received his watch, synchronized so that along the extent of the front line, a phalanx of men from the battalions would move over into no-man’s-land and towards the enemy trenches. He inspected his men one last time and, walking along the trench, he stopped to talk to them, individually and in clusters. He spoke of their bravery, of loved ones at home waiting, proud, behind them all the way. He reminded them to run, then go down, then rise again, go down, fool the enemy, don’t let him get his eye on you. He spoke of taking the opposite trenches, of honoring the regiment, and the whole of Kent, the Garden of England.
And still the barrage raged. Don’t worry, lads, the artillery boys will have knocked Fritz for six. And then it stopped, and Hawkes began counting. He was on the fire step now, men were at the ladders, and Knowles was to the side of him. He began counting down the seconds. Hold on, lads. Ready. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
“Bearers up,” shouted Hawkes, and the stretcher bearers stood ready behind the men.
He lifted the whistle. Five—four—three—two . . . everyone counting in his mind, now, then the whistle reverberated through his ears and into his brain.
“Charge! Charge!” Hawkes could hear himself screaming, could feel his legs clambering over the parapet, men around him, all screaming in the charge, bayonets fixed, struggling to run with sixty-pound packs. Once again he felt himself slowing, yet he was running as fast as he could. His legs felt heavy, as if coated with treacle, though he knew he had not lost speed. Hawkes could feel every sense in his being come alive, while his soldiers were falling around him, hitting the ground amid those still on their feet. The waft of smoke and the acrid smell of cordite filled his lungs, and it seemed the only color he could discern was red. Red across the chest of a man whose heart had been blown clear through, red across thighs, red wounds in the stomachs of boys. And still Hawkes ran, onward, towards the enemy’s trench. For some reason he would never be able to understand, as hard as he might try, later, to recollect these seconds, Edmund Hawkes turned to look back. And as he squinted into the smoke, he saw Knowles lifting his weapon and taking aim. Once again Hawkes felt as if time were waiting for him to catch up, as he perceived the trajectory of the as-yet-unshot ammunition from Sergeant Knowles’ gun, and he realized that the person who would fall was not the Hun, not the enemy, for he was still too far away. Knowles was intent upon blasting a hole through Tom Brissenden.
Hawkes’ scream was long and loud as he lifted his revolver, yet his entreaty to stop was not to be heard across the landscape, across fields that had once grown sugar beet and barley, and into which the blood of hundreds of men was now seeping. “No! Stop!” he shouted again, and at that moment Tom Brissenden looked to his side—not that he could have heard, but Hawkes wondered, later, if he might have sensed the bullet that Knowles would never live to fire. Edmund Hawkes felt his hand on the pistol stock, felt his finger hook the trigger and then pull back. And he saw Knowles rise up and fall in a shower of blood. Then he remembered nothing else of that day, except sometimes, afterwards, in the weeks before wounds claimed his life, he thought he could recall a smile on Tom Brissenden’s face just a mere particle of a second before the enemy’s shell exploded between them.
Reverend Marchant was walking from the casualty clearing station operating tent when Thea pulled up in Gertie, turning the steering wheel sharp to the left and reversing as close as she could to the opening where eight wounded men would be transferred from a recovery tent to the slatted wooden bunks in the back of her ambulance. It was her fourth journey of the day. Though he was close enough, she was in a hurry, so had not noticed him as he watched her, taking account of red-stained leather gloves as she leapt from the driver’s seat and ran to the back of the ambulance. She pulled open the doors, and did not flinch as blood ran from the ambulance floor back out onto the dirt.
“Thea! Thea! Over here.” Marchant walked towards her, and waved when she turned.
“Oh, Reverend Marchant—so sorry, I didn’t see you. I must hurry, as men are coming in so fast, they need to make room here.” The noise of an engine roar caused her to look over her shoulder. “Oh, here’s Hilary—I wondered where she’d got to.” She turned back to Kezia’s father. “Look, I have to get on. So sorry. Perhaps a cup of tea later?”
“Yes, of course, Thea—can I help you?”
“Not really—unless you’re a dab hand with a spanner. We’ve got to sort out Hilary’s engine. Shouldn’t take too long—it can’t.”
Then she was gone, running towards Hilary’s ambulance, whereupon she unlatched the bonnet and, taking an oily cloth from her pocket, began unscrewing something Marchant could not see. In any case, Reverend Marchant had no knowledge of engines, any more than of the working of the human body. His faith in the spirit was strong though, and never more so than today. He returned to the line of men lying on stretchers outside the operating tent. Nurses were moving back and forth, stopping here and there to mark a man’s forehead, or to call orderlies to remove a man to the operating tent, or perhaps to the line of stretchers bearing those who had died, with blankets drawn across their shattered bodies. Marchant went back to work, turning his attention towards the living—the dead he could deal with later.
It was some twenty minutes later that he saw Thea bringing the ambulance to the other side of the casualty clearing station. All around, it seemed people were shouting—there was no other means of making oneself heard. The cannonade was becoming louder and louder, the sound of gunfire ricocheting into his mind and distorting his thoughts. Where is she going? Then Thea saw him, and waved from behind the steering wheel. He ran over to her.
“Where are you off to? Shouldn’t you be driving away from the battle, not towards it?”
Thea raised her voice to be heard. “The advance dressing station is full to overflowing, so they need more ambulances to bring wounded up here. I said I’d go.”
“For God’s sake, Thea, you’re going right into the shelling. Let one of the men go.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve a red cross on my roof and on the side, I’ll be all right—Gertie and me, well, we can get through anything.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Marchant.
“No, they’ll need you here—and believe me, I have enough to do worrying about the boys in my wagon. I don’t want to be worrying about you too—no offense meant, Reverend Marchant, but I don’t know how I would explain it to Kezia if it was down to me that you got so much as a shrapnel splinter in your finger.” Thea waved and pushed the ambulance into gear, while Marchant stood back so she could proceed. It was then that Thea stopped the vehicle and smiled at him again, and did something he would remember always, for though somewhat unseemly—he was a man of the cloth, after all—it was as if she knew. Thea reached out from the ambulance and, having removed the thick leather glove, held her silk-covered hand to his cheek. “You know, there are times you do so remind me of our beloved Kezia.” She smiled and shook her head. “She worries too, doesn’t she? But I am quite safe. Tell her I’m safe, when you write. And give her my love, won’t you? My heart misses her so much.”
For but a second Marchant covered her hand with his own, then she raised her eyebrows, signaling that she must be on her way, and pulled back her hand. She replaced the leather glove, waved, and pressed down on the accelerator.
The man of God watched the ambulance rock from side to side as Thea negotiated the rutted mud-filled road, manoeuvring around stretcher bearers moving the wounded. Then he turned away, and began to walk back to the cluster of tents, pausing to look up at the flying machines overhead.
It w
as as he took his third step—and he remembered that it was his third step, one for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Ghost—that he felt his whole body lifted by an explosion that seemed to pull the ground from under him, causing a riptide of terror and falling bodies. And he would remember landing upright, his feet on the ground, and that his legs began to move before he could even think, before he could even see in the direction of the explosion, before he heard his own voice screaming through his mind. Thea! Thea!
Chapter 19
Self-sacrifice in the cause of duty may become almost a fetich [sic] with many women. No woman, however, is justified in making herself a domestic drudge.
—THE WOMAN’S BOOK
Kezia decided to travel into Tunbridge Wells on Friday. She was familiar with the home of Camden’s headmistress, a flat in a Georgian house only a few steps away from The Pantiles. When she was a new teacher at Camden, she had been invited to tea with Miss Hartley, and had thought how lovely it would be to have the flat as her own, with such a perfect view of the bandstand. Miss Hartley said it could be noisy at times, but Kezia had only imagined sitting on the window seat and watching the world go by. She remembered these things while on the train, the gentle side-to-side rocking taking her back to another time. Before the war.
In the headmistress’ modest sitting room, Miss Hartley greeted her guest with an unaccustomed gusto, revealing the level of her concern regarding the lack of teaching staff. Miss Hartley was even happier to know that Kezia had considered the proposition and was agreeable to teaching one day a week, and perhaps more if she discovered that, in time, her responsibility to the farm allowed a greater absence from its demands. A doughty housekeeper full of bustle brought the women tea, although as she reached for the cup, Kezia was embarrassed to realize that her soil-stained fingernails were in full view of her hostess. She took the cup with care to hide the offending nails, and did not sign the letter of agreement until she had put on her gloves once more. She would begin work as soon as school resumed after the Easter holiday, and at term’s end would be free by the time the farm became busy with summer harvesting. Tom was bound to be home by then anyway. It was unlikely, she explained, that she would be in a position to sign an agreement for the autumn term. At this point, anyway.