A Rose for the Anzac Boys (3 page)

When we’d finished we shook hands with the Turks and said, ‘Good luck’. One of them spoke English and said, ‘Smiling may you go, and smiling come again.’ I like that.

By the way, there’s a good story going around the ranks. Seems the Turkish and British generals were in the British HQ tent discussing the details of the truce when this New Zealand batman puts his head in the tent and yells out, ‘Hey! Have any of you muckers pinched my kettle?’

Don’t blame him either. The one thing that makes life worthwhile here is a good cup of tea and bleak is the night when you can’t get it. You just have to hope no maggots drip into it but, like old Campbell would say, a bit of muck is just a bit more tucker. Wonder if he’d say that about lice. We’ve got some big ones here. Tried washing my clothes in sea water the other day to get rid of them but it just made the blighters hungrier!

Don’t know if you’ve got any of my other scrawls. I’m sending this to the first aid post with one of the boys so hopefully it will get away. Look after yourself, Sis, and don’t worry about me. None of our lot have caught it yet. I’ve made some good mates here. I reckon we’re too tough to die.

‘Smiling may you go, and smiling come again.’

Your loving brother,

Tim

‘Midge? Midge, are you there?’

The high, clear voice was unmistakable. Midge looked up as the pale and spotty face of the Honourable Anne peered through the curtain of branches.

Anne was always pale, apart from her spots. ‘Mummy believes red cheeks are ill bred,’ she’d said once, as though Lady George had sent the midwife a polite note requesting exactly the correct details in a daughter: the straight blonde hair (so much easier to put up than curls), the long pale hands. Only Anne’s spots and her big feet failed to be aristocratic. ‘My dear, the feet come from great-grandmama’s gardener,’ she said. Midge never knew if she was serious or not. Anne was more concerned about her spots than her feet.

Midge stared. Her…yellow…spots.

‘Anne, what on earth—’ she began.

Anne touched her face automatically. ‘Miss Scatchley’s latest idea,’ she said. Miss Scatchley was the science mistress. She wore a white lab coat and had even studied science for two years at Oxford, though of course had not been allowed to sit the exams. ‘Flowers of sulphur dusted on each lunchtime.’

‘Does sulphur get rid of spots?’

Anne shrugged. ‘One suspects I’m her latest scientific experiment. Item: one spotty aristocrat. Item: one pot of flowers of sulphur. Process: combine the two. Result:—’

‘Did you find her?’ Ethel’s big square face appeared beside Anne’s, tendrils of red hair escaping from her plaits. ‘I
said
she’d be under the willow tree.’

‘It must be a colonial thing,’ said Anne. ‘Trees and whatnot.’

‘It’s nothing to do with being a New Zealander,’ Midge protested.

Anne grinned. ‘Of course not.
Everybody
prefers a tree to a sitting room these days. Darling, the Hollow Beast wants to see you. Urgently. In her study. Now.’

The Hollow Beast was Miss Hollington.

‘Cripes, lass, what has tha doon?’ said Ethel in her best exaggerated Yorkshire accent. She held out a hand to help Midge up. Ethel’s hand was large and square like her face.

‘Nothing. At least I hope it’s nothing.’ Midge brushed the leaves from her tunic.

‘You’ve got mud on your stocking,’ said Ethel helpfully.

‘Have I? Blow.’ Midge rubbed at the patch of dirt.

Anne’s grin grew wider. ‘Pull the dirty bit round to the back. That way the Beast won’t see it till you’re going out.’

‘Yes, and maybe you can walk out backwards, like she’s the Queen and you can’t show her your bum,’ added Ethel.

A year ago, Midge had wondered what the daughter of an earl was doing making friends with the orphaned daughter of a New Zealand sheep farmer and the daughter of a Yorkshire wholesale grocer and Quaker. Anne’s company was cultivated even by the sixth formers. ‘All hoping,’ said Anne once, with a small grimace, ‘for invitations to one of Mummy’s little parties. Just dripping with dukes and viscounts, you know, in case one of them decides to marry her youngest daughter.’

Which was, Midge realised, one answer to the question. She longed for Glen Donal, not an English fiancé. And as soon as she turned twenty-one and inherited her money, she’d be back there with Tim no matter what Uncle Thomas said. And Ethel…well, the daughter of a wholesale grocer, five feet ten inches tall and with shoulders like a rugby player and a face like a pony, would never be accepted into society, even if befriended by the daughter of an earl, no matter how much deportment Miss Hollington tried to drum into her, or how wealthy her father was.

Or maybe it was simply that Anne liked them.

‘What were you doing under there anyway?’ demanded Ethel.

Midge held up her letters. ‘From Aunt Lallie and Tim.’

Anne nodded sympathetically.

The three walked slowly back towards the school.

‘How are they?’ Ethel kicked one of the stones on the drive with her shoe.

Midge bit her lip. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Tim’s all right so far. He says none of his lot have been hurt yet.’

Anne stared. ‘Are you sure? The casualty lists are enormous.’

‘Well, that’s what he wrote,’ Midge said uncertainly. ‘But that Gallipoli place sounds like a nightmare. And Aunt Lallie’s letter was strange. She’s never written anything like that before. She’s in charge of a dysentery ward in Egypt. But it all sounds—I don’t know. Chaotic. Like nothing’s organised at all.’

Ethel screwed up her nose. ‘Dysentery is where you get the trots, isn’t it?’

Midge nodded. ‘Really badly. And they don’t stop. Oh, it sounded awful! Just two nurses for two hundred and thirty men. I should be out there too. Helping!’

‘We’re doing what we can,’ said Anne gently. ‘I’m sure the army will get things under control soon.’

‘Will they? All we’re doing is bandage-rolling! Making baby clothes for refugees! It’s not enough!’ Not when Tim was facing guns, she thought, and Dougie too, and Aunt Lallie with all those dying men.

Suddenly, it was all too much. When you were young, you were helpless, Midge thought. She’d been helpless when her mother had died, leaving her a tiny baby; helpless when diphtheria took her father, not even allowed to visit him in case she was infected; helpless when her older
brother brought her across the world to an aunt and uncle she’d never met. And helpless when her twin brother followed everyone else to the war. Tim and Dougie were doing something. And she was just a problem to be shoved away at school.

She bit her lip, unwilling to say anything that might hurt her friends. Three of Anne’s cousins were in France as well. And Ethel’s brother had decided his future lay in wholesale groceries, not in uniform, which was an even touchier subject these days when everyone was expected to do their bit.

Anne looked at her curiously. ‘Darling, be sensible. Even if they let you leave school, you couldn’t be a nurse or even a VAD overseas till you’re twenty-three.’

‘Eight years away! The war will be over by Christmas,’ Midge said.

Anne nodded. ‘My uncle in the War Office says that the French and English could drive the Germans back now if they wished. They’re just waiting for the New Armies to come out to make the victory a decided one. Midge, my sweet, you just have to accept it. Even the Duchess isn’t taking on girls our age.’

The Duchess was Millicent, Dowager Duchess of Sutherland. As soon as war had been declared she’d sailed for France and established the Millicent Sutherland Ambulance. Other women, like Mrs St Clair Stobart, had followed, organising private cars, nurses, doctors, medical supplies, whatever they could gather to help the official medical services that were overwhelmed by the numbers of wounded and dying.

Midge turned to Anne eagerly. ’You know the Duchess? I can drive, you know. I could drive an ambulance. ’

‘Mummy knows her, of course. But, darling, she wants professionals. We haven’t even passed our first aid certificates yet. Or at least women with…with experience.’

‘Older, you mean,’ said Midge bitterly.

‘Well, yes.’

‘There has to be something we can do!’ She clenched her fists in frustration. It was illogical, she knew. But it seemed like the war
must
be over sooner if only she could
do
something.

‘Comforts for soldiers,’ suggested Ethel.

‘Packages of toffee and writing pads! They don’t even have enough food over there sometimes! Dougie said the last time they were sent anywhere, they were two days without any food at all. One lot of men went three weeks without rations!’

‘Ah, lass, they be needing Carryman’s Cocoa.’ Ethel deliberately spoke in the broad accent that Miss Hollington was working so hard to get rid of.

‘What good is your dad’s cocoa when it’s over here?’ Midge said. ‘They need it there!’

‘Cocoa makes you spotty,’ said Anne.

A bell chimed in the distance.

‘Prep,’ Anne said. ‘Come on, Eth. The war is far away, darlings, but Miss Jenkins and her posture classes are all too near. And you, Midge, still need to see the Hollow Beast.’

Miss Hollington’s office looked like a parlour with a desk shoved in the middle. It had blue damask curtains, a pink and blue chintz sofa, and polished wood floors with a blue and red Turkish carpet.

Why do we demand that German butcher’s shops close down yet still keep Turkish carpets, wondered Midge, as she shut the office door behind her.

Miss Hollington looked up from her desk. ‘Ah, Margery. I’m afraid…well, I’m not sure…’

Midge stared. She had never seen Miss Hollington uncertain before.

‘You have received a letter,’ Miss Hollington said, starting again.

Midge nodded. ‘I got two this afternoon.’

‘I mean another one.’ Miss Hollington picked up a plain buff envelope from her desk. It had ‘OHMS’ printed on it. She cleared her throat. ‘As I am in the position of your temporary guardian here, I thought it my duty to open it.’

And you wanted to stickybeak, thought Midge.

‘I have to say its contents surprised me. But perhaps you can explain.’

Miss Hollington pulled out what looked like a form and handed it across the desk.

‘B104-83,’ read Midge. ‘It is my painful duty to inform you that a report has been received from the War Office to the effect that Private Timothy Smith was posted missing on 22 May…’

It was like the breath had been sucked out of her body. Tim dead? No! The words wriggled like worms in the sand. Missing. Missing, not dead. Of course he wasn’t dead. Tim couldn’t be dead. Death had taken Mum and Dad. It was impossible that Tim could go as well. She’d know if Tim was dead! Twins…felt things, didn’t they? Not that she ever had before, but surely if Tim were…hurt…she’d know…

Dimly, Midge was aware that Miss Hollington was still talking.

‘These letters are sent to the man’s next of kin. But when your uncle enrolled you he did not mention any relative called Smith.’

‘Timothy Smith is my brother.’ Was that her voice? It sounded small and far away.

‘Your brother?’ Miss Hollington cleared her throat.

‘According to your enrolment form, your brother’s name is Douglas Macpherson.’

Midge shook her head to clear it. ‘Tim’s my twin brother. He was too young to enlist. So he enlisted as a private under another name.’

‘Ah.’ The suspicion melted into sympathy. ‘My dear Margery, I am so dreadfully sorry. How wonderfully brave of him. You must be so proud…’ She broke off. ‘Of course that explains it. I assumed your brother would have to be an officer, and officers’ next of kin receive telegrams, not letters…’ She seemed to realise Midge wasn’t listening. ‘Margery? You will have to tell your aunt and uncle of course.’

‘Yes…’

Miss Hollington patted her hand. ‘Would you like me to inform them for you, my dear?’

‘What? Yes. Oh…yes.’

There was something wrong. Tim
couldn’t
be dead. She’d know if he were dead. There’d be an ache…an absence…

Something
was
wrong! Midge looked at the date on the form again: 22 May. She grabbed the letter from her pocket and scanned the date: 24 May.

‘Miss Hollington! That letter’s wrong!’

Miss Hollington stared. ‘My dear girl, what do you mean?’

‘Tim wrote me a letter two days after it says he went missing! It’s all a mistake. There have to be lots of soldiers called Smith,’ she added eagerly. ‘Someone else has died—’

‘My dear,’ said Miss Hollington gently, ‘I think it is more likely that your poor brother got the date wrong.’

‘But he can’t have! It was just after the truce! Tim was
there
! I read about the truce in the paper. It
has
to be a mistake.’

Miss Hollington looked troubled. ‘My dear, I would hate for you to keep hoping. I am very much afraid your brother is dead.’

‘He’s not dead!’

‘Of course he isn’t,’ declared Anne.

Ethel looked uncertain. ‘No, but what if it’s this officer who’s made a mistake with the date? What if he meant to write the 26th?’

They were in Miss Hollington’s private parlour, with its stuffed owl and tasselled curtains. A gesture, Midge thought, to the grief she refused to feel. Miss Hollington had even called Anne and Ethel from prep to be with her; had told the maid to bring them cups of tea and seed cake. Ethel had eaten the cake, while Anne made Midge sip the tea. But Midge couldn’t cry. She couldn’t mourn. Tim
wasn’t
dead!

‘If he’s alive he’ll write to you,’ said Ethel practically.

‘But what if he’s been taken prisoner or injured? That would be why they think he’s dead, because he’s not there! There’s lots of reasons why men go missing.’ Midge put down her teacup and began to pace around the Turkish carpet. ‘I need to talk to the men who were with him.’

‘Well, you can’t,’ said Ethel, picking up the last of the cake crumbs with her finger.

‘I hate being young!’ Midge cried passionately. ‘And I hate being a girl too!’

Anne and Ethel exchanged glances.

‘Darling, I wish we could help,’ Anne said.

Ethel hugged her, which was a bit like being hugged by a friendly gorilla but comforting. ‘We’ll keep hoping for you, lass. Keep hoping the poor lad is safe in some nice Turkish prison with his own harem.’

‘I don’t think Turkish prisoners get harems.’

‘Then we’ll have to send him one in a food parcel. There, now you’re smiling.’

‘Of course I’m smiling, it’s all a mistake!’ But inside Midge felt cold, as though the snows on Big Jim mountain had seeped into her heart.

She smiled through dinner too: Irish stew and spotted dick, with the lumpy custard the girls called ‘mouldy blanket’. Her smile had worn out, though, by the time they were sent up to bed. But she still refused to feel sorrow. She just felt empty, as though not feeling sad had used up all of her emotion.

Midge had thought that the pupils at an exclusive English girls school would be pampered, with rooms of their own, a maid to help them dress perhaps. She had discovered that the more exclusive the school, it seemed, the hardier they tried to force their girls to be. The fifth formers at Miss Hollington’s slept on the verandah, with just a thin wall and an open window between them and the
English damp. At least, thanks to Miss Hollington’s respect for Anne—or for her title—the three had beds together.

Midge sat on her narrow bed to pull off her stockings. Bother, a ladder. She must have got it under the willow tree. Was it only this afternoon that she’d read Tim’s letter? But she couldn’t, wouldn’t, think of Tim. She had to think of ordinary things. The stain on the ceiling shaped like a sheep. The French exam tomorrow…

Anne lifted her candle and peered into the tiny mirror that was all Miss Hollington allowed her boarders. ‘Fourteen spots,’ she said gloomily. ‘Yes, that’s a new one by my nose. And that one on my chin—it’s not a spot, it’s a volcano.’

Midge shoved her stockings into the darning bag. She’d have to mend the ladder before she put them into the wash or it’d run even further. (Tim, she thought. Tim. And shoved the thought away.)

‘How many were there this morning?’ asked Ethel.

‘Twelve and a half.’

‘You can’t have half a spot!’

‘It was only a red blotch this morning. Now it looks like Mount Vesuvius.’

‘I think they’d go away if you stopped worrying about them,’ said Midge wearily, pulling her nightdress over her head.

‘Easy for you to say. You’ve only had four spots since the beginning of term. And Ethel’s only had one. A teeny one too. Which is simply not fair. She’s been
raised
on cocoa.’

‘You counted my spots?’

‘My life is ruled by spots,’ said Anne, pulling back the bedclothes and getting into bed. ‘You just don’t understand! They’re the first thing Mummy looks at when I come home each term. How can she present a daughter with spots? Four daughters successfully married off and now the last one has to get spots. I think she’d rather I ran off with a footman.’

The springs creaked as Ethel plonked herself down on her own bed. ‘But you don’t want to be presented.’

‘My dear, what else can one do?’ Anne tried to fluff a little life into the hard flat pillow. ‘One’s job is to look so totally ravishing that the marriage settlements are signed and sealed by the end of one’s first season so Mummy doesn’t have the expense of a second. Which means no spots.’ She glanced at Midge’s face. ‘Darling, forgive me. Here I am blithering on about my spots when you’re torn up about your brother.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Midge. She tried to smile. ‘I like the blithering. It takes my mind off Tim.’

Tim laughing that year he brought a jack-in-the-box back from school and she screamed when it leapt out at her. Tim’s face as he waved goodbye as the train carried her away on the first leg of her journey to England…

‘Lights out, girls.’ Miss Jenkins’ shoes clattered over the wooden floor. The shadows from her lantern swung back and forth across the walls.

Midge blew out her candle; listened to the puffs as the others blew out theirs too. Darkness descended as Miss Jenkins and her lamplight retreated down the corridor.

Night was the hardest time. Impossible not to think of home. Impossible not to think of Tim. Was he really in a shallow grave in that strangely named place, Gallipoli? No. Impossible. But impossible to lie here doing nothing too, when Tim…

‘Are you all right, darling?’ It was Anne’s whisper.

‘Yes.’

Tim had to be alive! What would she do without him? All their plans…Glen Donal was her world! Other girls dreamed of marriage and children, or even of going up to Oxford when they left school, even if girls couldn’t be awarded a degree. But all she wanted was Glen Donal. The mountains with their caps of snow, the air so sharp you could brush your teeth with it, the lambs’ tails dancing…

Even Anne and Ethel couldn’t understand.

She turned her face into her pillow to muffle her tears. It wasn’t fair! She was locked up here, knitting socks and studying verbs.

‘Midge?’ It was Ethel’s voice, a whisper in the chilly darkness.

‘What’s up?’ Anne sounded half asleep.

‘I just got an idea.’ Ethel was a grey bulk now, sitting up in bed.

‘Can’t it wait till morning?’ Anne said.

‘Maybe I’ll have forgotten it by morning.’

Anne rolled over and pulled her pillow over her ears. ‘Unless it’s a way to get rid of spots I’m not interested. Not till after breakfast anyway.’

‘Listen, clever clogs, I’m serious. It’s about the war. About us doing something. Something real.’

‘What?’ Midge wiped her eyes and peered across at Ethel in the dimness.

‘Just an idea, mind, so don’t go jumping at me like fleas on a blanket. But I wondered…’

‘Come on!’ urged Midge. Ethel had never had an idea in all the time she’d known her.

‘Well, I know you were joking about Carryman’s Cocoa, but I was just lying here and suddenly I thought, maybe that’s it. We take them cocoa.’

‘That’s your idea?’ said Midge blankly. ‘Cocoa?’

‘Listen up, will you? There are thousands of soldiers going through the railway stations over in France every day, and wounded coming back. And what is there for them to eat or drink? Nowt.’

‘She’s right,’ said Anne. She sat up and pulled her pillow onto her lap. ‘Those little stations only have a tiny café, if that. Nothing that can cope with thousands of soldiers.’

‘And if the trains are like the ones here, they’ll be waiting a precious long time for them. So this is the plan. We organise a—what’s it called? A buffet.’

‘Bu-
ffay
,’ said Anne.

‘Bu
ffay
then. A canteen. Over in France. Calais, maybe. And we give them a good thick buttie each—’

‘A sandwich,’ Anne translated for Midge. ‘Ethel, do try to speak the King’s English.’

‘And cocoa—something good and hot to line their stomachs. My da will pay for the lot of it and make sure we get supplies as well.’

For the first time since Midge had known her, Ethel’s voice had a note of eagerness and passion.

‘But why should he? Surely he’d never let you—’ began Midge.

Ethel snorted. ‘I could go sail one of those submarines for all my da cares. It’s our George he cares about, keeping him safe to run Carryman’s Cocoa in the future. And this’ll keep the newspapers off George’s back, and Da’s too. If anyone starts muttering, they can point to me over in France and the grand job Carryman’s Cocoa is doing for “our boys”.’

Midge was silent. Serving cocoa—it was a long way from nursing, like Aunt Lallie. No romantically holding a mug of water to a dying soldier’s lips, or striding onto the battlefield to bring back the wounded, or driving an ambulance through a hail of bullets. But Ethel was right. No one would let them go and nurse in France, not for years and years. But they might just let them do this. And maybe she’d meet soldiers over there who’d fought with Tim, or who knew someone who had. And even if no one knew anything about Tim at all—well, she’d be fighting in the same war as him and Doug. She’d be
doing
something. Something grander and braver than studying irregular verbs. Something for King and country!

‘Well?’

Midge lifted her chin. ‘You’re on.’

‘Anne?’

Anne hesitated, her pillow in her arms.

‘Come on, lass!’ Ethel said. ‘I’m offering thee a chance to get free of this place forever! Do you want to come or not?’

‘Of course one would like to. In another year, perhaps, when we leave school…’

‘Garn,’ said Ethel rudely.

‘The war will be over in another year,’ urged Midge.

‘And we’ll just have been stuck here learning how to walk with books on our head.’

‘They’ll never let us! It will never work,’ said Anne.

‘Then we’ll have to make it work.’ Ethel’s eyes glinted in the darkness, as though she could see it all.