The Care and Management of Lies (16 page)

“Private Gravy.” Knowles’ mouth was so close to Tom’s face that he swore he could smell yesterday evening’s coffee and this morning’s tea rolled into the sergeant’s night breath.

“Yes, sir!”

“A good show, Private Gravy. Keep it up. Keep it up every single day. Every single day, Private Gravy.”

“Sir!”

“Good morning.” Given the attention focused on Sergeant Knowles and Private Tom Brissenden, the voice at first sounded disembodied, before the men realized their commanding officer was present. The greeting came from the tent opening, where Captain Edmund Hawkes stood with another soldier at his side—his batman, Pullings.

The soldiers’ feet thumped to attention on the rough boards beneath them.

“At ease, men.” Edmund Hawkes looked down the row of men, each standing at the end of his camp bed. His eyes stopped moving when he came to Tom Brissenden, and then he turned to his sergeant and nodded.

“Brissenden,” said Hawkes, as he approached Tom.

“Sir!” said Tom, standing to attention, his salute firm.

Hawkes smiled. “At ease, Private.” He paused. “You’ve left a good deal of work on the farm, Brissenden—winter coming and then the spring sowing. And I’ve no doubt there’s been men down from the ministry to tell you to plough in the orchards.”

Tom glanced directly at Hawkes, but was brought up short by Knowles.

“Eyes front!”

“That’s all right, Sergeant Knowles,” said Hawkes.

“I’ve a couple of good workers, sir, and the boys in the village will like to earn a penny or two for piecework—the older lads have enlisted though. We’re not ploughing in the orchards—the russets have always done well for us.” Tom’s voice was modulated.

“Very well,” said Hawkes. “Good man for enlisting to serve your country. You had no need.” Hawkes turned, his eyes once more taking in each man standing. “None of you had need to enlist, but you came forward to the call of your country. Now your country asks you to march on to defeat the enemy—and each and every one of you will set forth on that march with a full heart, knowing the gratitude of the British people is at your back.” He looked at Knowles and nodded.

“Attennnn-shun!” ordered Knowles.

The men snapped their backs even straighter and thumped their heels together. Hawkes nodded, and left the tent, Knowles following in his wake.

The men stood to attention for another second or two, then looked at each other.

“Aren’t we supposed to wait for the at-ease?” said one soldier.

“He probably forgot,” said another.

“He didn’t bleedin’ forget anything. Attennnn-shun!” The tent flap was open again, and Knowles stepped in. The men stood at the end of their beds. “Well, that was all very nice, to be congratulated for turning up to fight for your country. There’s plenty dead and gone that did the same a lot sooner than you lot, and you’re going up after them. If you want to come back, you’d better toe the line.” He stepped towards Tom, a sneer on his face. “Even you, Private Gravy.” He turned to the men. “Otherwise, the man at your back will be me, and you don’t want that. I promise, you don’t want that.” Knowles paused. “Right then, my little nancy boys, after a turn on the parade ground, you’ll be cooking your own breakfast this morning, giving them
you-ten-sils
in your kit a bit of a go, so you don’t starve up the line when the cookhouse goes up because a shell has just hit it, and the only meat coming your way is a bit of the horse that just pulled your dinner along the road in the first place.” Knowles continued to give instructions, but Tom was only half listening. Kezia had told him she’d managed to persuade the army men who’d come to take the horses that their plough horses weren’t up to the job. Apparently Mabel had gone for one of them, then turned and kicked out, while Ted snapped away and took off at the first sign of her temper, so the men shook their heads and went to another farm. He smiled, imagining the scene.

“Oh, so now Private Gravy is finding something funny. Tell us what you were thinking about that was funny, while your compatriots”— he pronounced the word like a child in school, getting his mouth around each syllable,
come-pate-rye-ots
—“get shelled into little pieces.”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Nothing, sir. Nothing,
sir
! Well, for the trouble of your finding all this very funny”—he turned to the men—“all this serious business of soldiering, funny”—he looked back at Tom—“you, Private Gravy, will be on latrine duty today—because I for one have had enough of your S-H-one-T.” He paused, smirking. “Now then, at the double.”

Dear Kezia,

I hope all is well on the farm. I was very glad to hear that you still have Mabel and Ted, though I am surprised the army walked away from them. Perhaps Mabel really did put them off, because believe me, you don’t want trouble out here. Mind, she is a sturdy girl, and we need her on the farm. I saw Hawkes today. Captain, he is. He asked about the orchards, whether the farm still had the apples, because the ministry had been giving instructions to plough them in for other crops to be planted. You never said, so I told him we still had our russets.

Your last dinner was very nice indeed, and I felt a bit of a pig after eating so much. But my love, how could I refuse your cooking? That roast lamb fair made my mouth water. I’ve had a bit of mint sauce with lamb, but never had it cooked into the lamb, and with blackcurrants. You did a good amount of bottling in the summer. Makes all the difference to winter, having a bit of the taste of the harvest in the food. I don’t know anyone who would have roasted lamb with mint and blackcurrants though. And that mashed potato. I’ve never had it that way before either, squeezed through an icing bag into little hills on the tray, then put into the oven to crisp up the top. Looked like browned model mountains on the plate. You do overdo the sherry in the gravy, you know—we won’t have enough for Christmas at the rate you’re going.

We did a bit of cooking ourselves today. The recipe would make you laugh—straight from this little book we’ve each been given, on billeting and cooking. Before I enlisted, I never thought you could get a book on how to go off to war, but the army gave us all one. We had to set up a camp according to the book, and then cook ourselves a dinner. It was not one speck on your dinner.

Sitting at the kitchen table on a frozen December afternoon, Kezia folded the letter and placed it in the envelope. She was grateful Bert and Danny had brought their own dinners, because food was becoming scarce, even for a farmer’s wife. They were down to just eggs for the morning’s breakfast, and you had to stand in a queue at the butcher’s for a bit of bacon. They said all the food was going to the army, and there wasn’t enough coming in by ship anymore, from across the Empire or America, on account of the U-boats, though it was predicted it wouldn’t last long, unless Germany built more of the underwater vessels.

She dipped one slice of bread into a bowl of broth made from the last chicken she’d cooked, to which she’d added an onion. The meat off that chicken had lasted her a good five days before she’d rendered down the bones to make the broth. As she took each sip of the warm onion-infused broth, she wondered what she would write to Tom about next. It would be another story about a dish she’d cooked for him. She closed her eyes and let the broth linger on her tongue. No, it wouldn’t be turkey—but pheasant. Pheasant that had been hung for a good while to let it ripen. Pheasant with . . . pheasant with . . . oranges. Yes, she would lay small cartwheels of cut orange, complete with the skin, across the chest of the pheasant—she would make up a story about getting one somewhere, even if it were only a Seville orange, sold for marmalade. And she would fill the bird’s cavity with herbs. What herbs? Sage and thyme and then some of those tiny onions you couldn’t get anymore, only in her recipe—her special recipe for Tom—she would definitely use the little pearl onions, so that when you cut into the flesh, roasted to perfection, the smell would waft across the kitchen and set his juices going. Roasted potatoes, his favorite, would be set in a large dish on the table, and perhaps some winter greens, just shy of soft, especially for her Tom. She took another sip of the broth and felt her stomach growl. Yes, this was the meal she would describe.

Dear Tom,

Did you enjoy the dinner I cooked for you today? It was a treat, when Bert came to the door with a brace of pheasant. I know you don’t like anything too funny, but what did you think of the oranges laid across the bird’s chest? And what about those lovely little onions, the way they fell out onto the plate . . .

Edmund Hawkes looked at the pile of letters, in unsealed envelopes, ready to go out to wives, sweethearts, mothers, fathers, brothers, all the people loved by his men, and who loved them back. He had come to hate this particular job, the censoring of military post. He dreaded the humanness of the messages sent home from men who might be on borrowed time. And he could hardly bear the fact that tomorrow he would march up the line with his men, and—God willing—march back again a week later or two weeks later—perhaps more, or even less; perhaps four or five days later. Nothing was set in stone; reinforcements were always delayed these days. And when he marched back into the encampment, the line behind him would be about a third as long as it was when he set out. He sat back in his chair, in his room in the large country house abandoned by its owners and requisitioned by the army. The men had tents—cold, damp tents—and for a while there was no room for him in the house, so he was also under canvas, which he thought was no bad thing, for it gave him an opportunity to show he could bear the same circumstances as his men. But a more senior officer had gone up the line, so for the time being he was inside, enjoying warmth and comfort. A treat before death? He pulled his notebook towards the edge of the desk, took up his pen, and wrote “A Treat Before Death.”

Then he didn’t know what to write. Fine poet he made. What would he want to say? That a treat before death for most of his men was a visit to the
estaminet
, a goodly measure of beer, a girl on their lap, and then a girl on the bed—never
in
the bed, never the time. And was it two minutes with the girl on the bed, or three? Different treats for the men and the officers, who frequented a different establishment. Three minutes with the girl on the bed, then out the door, still fumbling with the buttons, passing another man going in for his three minutes. It was a treat
. A full warm belly, a drink, a girl.
And where was love, in all of this? Hawkes pinched the finger and thumb of his right hand into the corners of his eyes, then brought his attention back to the letters. Knowles had set aside two, especially, for him to read. He flapped the envelope destined for England, written on thick paper, penned in a hand more dexterous than he would have imagined.

. . . Your last dinner was very nice indeed, and I felt a bit of a pig after eating so much. But my love, how could I refuse your cooking? That roast lamb fair made my mouth water. I’ve had a bit of mint sauce with lamb, but never had it cooked into the lamb, and with blackcurrants. You did a good amount of bottling in the summer. Makes all the difference to winter, having the flavor of harvest in the food.

Hawkes read the letter, folded it into the envelope, and secured it, ready for its journey across the Channel and to Marshals Farm. Then he took the second letter, this time from Tom Brissenden’s wife.

I don’t think I’ve ever told you that I’ve never liked marrow. Cook would always remove the seeds and then cut the marrow into large pieces, and boil it until it was soft—too soft for my liking. I hated the way it seemed to slither on my tongue, almost as if I’d put a jellyfish into my mouth. I saw a jellyfish once—a whole cluster of them had washed up on the beach at Broadstairs while we were on holiday there. Funny, wobbly things they were, with a sting if you trod on one. But we have quite a few marrow in the kitchen garden, and as I always suspected the vegetable had more to offer, I have been experimenting—and I must say, I think it’s turned out very well indeed. Now, imagine this for your dinner. I cut the marrow across in one-and-a-half-inch rings, and removed the seeds but did not peel it. I placed the rings in a casserole dish. Then I boiled some rice—and before you cringe, I have discovered there’s more to rice than a sugared pudding with a spoonful of jam on top. When the rice was cooked, I fried some onions and tomatoes (bottled in the summer), with a spoonful of mixed herbs and added the rice to the frying pan. This was the stuffing for the marrow—to fit nicely into those round holes. And here comes the interesting part—I made a lovely cheese sauce with sharp English cheddar and poured it over the stuffed marrow. I thought it needed a bit of crunch to it, so I crushed some cream crackers, and sprinkled them on the top with a little more grated cheese and put the dish in the oven. I must say, I was a bit worried about how it might turn out, but when the top was a rich golden brown, I knew it would be just right. I knew you would love it—the marrow was soft enough but not soggy, and with the rice and cheese, it was a meal in itself. Can you taste the cheddar sauce? Isn’t it a delight? Soft on the tongue, yet different with the rice and tomato, and the crunch on top. Tell me what you think, Tom? Did you ever taste marrow like it?

He rubbed his eyes again, pushed his chair back, and walked to the fireplace. Pullings had kept a roaring blaze in the grate, with logs procured from a pile at the back of the farm. And as he looked out of frost-dusted windows, across the encampment of men—men standing alongside braziers, or setting off into town for one last evening out with their pals and a chance with a woman—his mouth watered. Tom Brissenden was eating the same food as any other man in the encampment. But with these letters, he was tasting love, and Edmund Hawkes wanted so much to taste love. It would be a rare treat.

Chapter 11

A cake to be baked to perfection should rise evenly and be smooth on the top, and by the time it has been in the oven half its time a light brown crust should be formed.

—
THE WOMAN’S BOOK

D
espite the cold, Thea was not hungry. Though perhaps she was. Her mouth did not feel the pull of food, and though her stomach growled, she felt as if she might retch as soon as she swallowed. But she knew she must eat, because her strength depended upon fuel, and she needed every ounce of power her body could pump out. And she was not even in France yet, but instead on a cold, windy, and wet Salisbury plain, in charge of a recalcitrant vehicle with an intemperate starting handle. She had cleaned every part of the engine, slathered oil where oil was needed, and removed scum from those places where scum soiled points and plugs. To no avail. Her back hurt, her fingers were frozen, and it crossed her mind that she would rather be responsible for encouraging a sweet mood in Mabel than a ticker of life from her ambulance. She leaned into the starting handle again, and cranked. And cranked. And cranked. The engine coughed. She cranked, it coughed again, and again, and finally took the juice, so she clambered into the driver’s seat and applied the throttle. Not too much choke. God, the last thing she needed was a flooded engine. She sat there for a full two minutes, her breath in short gasps lest any movement change the engine’s mind—she knew it had a mind, because it had been set against her all morning.

“Very good, Brissenden. That old girl’s a nasty one—bears a grudge. Now then, onward across that hill, where you will find wounded. You know what to do. On you go.”

The woman issuing instructions seemed to have been constructed for her chosen milieu. She was broad of shoulder, sturdy of hip, and had a stride like a major general. It seemed to Thea that her fellow volunteers were of this ilk, yet she knew it was the uniform and the determination that made them seem so, for in civvies they assumed a quite different demeanor, their femininity displayed in silk and fine fabrics. She tussled the ambulance into gear and maneuvered the steering wheel, so the nose moved into the direction of the “wounded.”

“Brissenden!” The woman held up her hand. Thea applied the brake. “Brissenden, you forgot something!” She reached forward, rendering herself invisible to Thea, who peered over the steering wheel. When the woman stood up again, it was to wave the starting handle. She stepped around to the driver’s side and handed the handle to Thea. “For God’s sake don’t lose this thing, whatever you do.”

The wounded—stuffed scarecrow-like straw bodies with red paint—were strewn across the field and made deliberately heavy with sandbag innards. Thea leaped from the ambulance and treated each one as if it were a much-loved man taken down by the Hun. She filled her ambulance and went on her way, the engine shrieking and moaning over every bump, every ridge that caused a slide into mud. She turned this way and that, imagining she had the leathers in her hands and two draft horses afore the plough, and returned to the encampment.

“Well done, Brissenden. All present and correct. Now let’s see how you do with real soldiers.”

There was the hospital training, the driving, riding on horseback across the plain, and the never-ending task of taking apart the engines and putting them together again. Whether it was a spanner in her hand, a wrench, or the bloody dressings from an amputation with the stench of gangrene not beaten, Thea knew this was a heaven lived before the hell—and she expected the hell, for it seemed that whatever she did in recent years, she ended in a corner of a darker place. She still lived with the sickness of imminent discovery—not of her involvement in the quest for women’s suffrage, but that her courage had failed her and she had run so many times from authority. The truth was that, here in this sodden field, she was running again.

Thea had been informed that she would be on a ship for France towards the end of January, or sooner if the request came for immediate reinforcements. It seemed that, far from being over by Christmas—and the London shops were full of the festive season—the war would linger into 1915. There were those who said it would even stretch into the following year, that it would become a war of attrition. She wondered how she would bear up in France, for at times her strength failed her, and her lack of appetite was obvious in her physical ability. It was at those times that she willed her bones to move, to bear weight, to push and pull and tug and lift. It was as if she were drawing strength from sheer determination—and she was a Brissenden, which meant determination was in her blood.

E
dmund Hawkes and his fellow officers led the column of men closer to the cannonade. He missed his beloved mare, missed the fact that she knew his every intention almost as soon as the thought had crossed his mind. Following her death, he had been given Wellington, a former hunter, a brave gelding intent only upon going forward, on jumping the next obstacle. Wellie seemed to question why they were breaking away and trotting back along the column, rather than remaining at the head of the field. When moving out to the front, it was Hawkes’ habit to circle away from the leaders, trot back, and position his horse to walk alongside the men—his men—encouraging them to keep moving, promising them a good mug of tea and a measure of rum when they stopped, or asking them about their night on the town. He would talk to a few here, one man there, or call out to another—he was becoming known as a soldier’s soldier, though he knew that in the eyes of Knowles, his manner was too familiar by half. Hawkes had the measure of Knowles, and understood that his sergeant would have liked to inspire a bit more awe in him. Awe was power in the hands of a sergeant—and to be fair, Hawkes understood his reasoning. With so many new recruits above and below Knowles in the pecking order, it must have seemed like the deaf leading the blind, as far as the sergeant was concerned.

T
om and Cecil marched together, heads bent against sleet peppered with snowflakes the size of mushrooms. At the front of the line someone began to sing, and soon the verse caught on down the column.

It’s a long way to Tipperary,

It’s a long way to go.

It’s a long way to Tipperary

To the sweetest girl I know!

Goodbye, Piccadilly,

Farewell, Leicester Square!

It’s a long long way to Tipperary,

But my heart’s right there.

“If I have to go through this war singing that song every ten minutes, I swear I will ask the Hun to take me prisoner. I will run into the next trench and hold up a white flag,” said Cecil. “I might even tell them to shoot me on the spot.”

Tom nodded, his mouth set against the cold. His feet were unfeeling in his boots, despite the marching, the heavy thud that should have kept blood circulating with each step. He had never been a smoker, not until he joined the army, and now he couldn’t wait for the column to be brought to a halt so he could have a ciggie. He could almost feel the scratchy burning at the back of his throat when he drew on a Woodbine, and now he craved the taste of tobacco in his mouth more than anything. More than anything except, perhaps, a dinner set before him by Kezia.

“Saw you got a letter from your lady wife before we left camp. Everything all right at home?”

Tom nodded again. He liked Cecil, he was a good enough fellow, but he could talk, and for the most part Tom was a listener more than a talker. It surprised him how much he and Kezia talked, long conversations, often into the night. His parents didn’t converse, apart from basic greetings. Did they ever talk alone, in their bedroom? He remembered once or twice hearing the low mumble of nighttime voices back and forth, a question asked and an answer given. Tom could talk to his old mate Edward, though not about anything of note, over and above the land, the crops, the harvest, and the price they were getting for cattle. He thought about Edward a fair bit lately. He’d been one of the first to join up, and Tom had wondered where he was. It wasn’t as if men sent letters to each other, not like women, not letters like Kezia and Thea would write. His thoughts turned to Thea as they marched along,
One-two, one-two
,
It’s a long way to Tipperary, it’s a long way to go, it’s a long way . . .
He loved his sister, held her in high esteem—she was his elder, after all, so he had always looked up to her. He’d thought his marriage to Kezia would bring them all together, and imagined Thea, one day, marrying a nice fellow, and them having children, and all the cousins would play on the farm, and there would be Sunday dinners together, and it would be family. He’d imagined himself talking to the man, whoever he was, walking him around the farm while the women cooked a leg of mutton with all the trimmings. Tom felt his eyes half closing even as he walked, even as the sleet stung his cheeks and his ears ached from the sharp wind. It was as if the memory warmed him, made him feel sleepy, as he would if the meal were inside him. Kezia would roast the mutton with rosemary, spearing the flesh with tips of the herb, so it looked almost as if she were creating a garden on top of the meat. And there would be roast potatoes, some greens and parsnips, all doused with rich gravy.

Tom felt the food in his belly, stretched his imagination far into his body so that every cell, every drop of blood, was engaged in digesting a meal that was so real, he could taste it. He could see Kezia taking the plates from the warming oven, bringing them to the table, telling the children to mind their manners if they wanted their Sunday dinner. There would be a girl and a boy, and Thea would have two boys—he knew she would have boys. His girl would have a bow in her hair and her best Sunday dress, and Kezia would tut-tut that there was mud on it already, because his girl would be a tomboy, climbing trees with her brother and cousins. Tom could see it all, could hear the clatter of plates in the kitchen, could see the blurry figure of this man of Thea’s and the women, working together, dishing up their Sunday meal, and there would be laughter, and joking, and they would sit, and . . .

The officer riding alongside held up his hand in response to another officer leading the march, and the company stopped, brought to attention. The order was given to fall out, so they staggered to the side of the road and were given leave to sit.

“You all right, Brissenden? You were miles away.” Cecil offered Tom a Woodbine.

Tom nodded and took the cigarette. “Obliged, thank you.” He paused to light up. “Just thinking of home, that’s all.”

“Your wife still making up fancy dinners to give you when you get back to Blighty?”

Tom nodded, and laughed. “I’m looking forward to it. New recipe with every letter.”

Cecil looked up at the sky, then back at Tom. “It’ll be a while, that.”

“I know.”

“Oh, God, look who’s coming down the line.”

It was Knowles. The men clambered to attention, the rain dripping from their helmets onto their mackintoshes, then down onto their boots.

“Attennnn-shun!” Knowles stopped in front of Cecil and Tom. “Well, what are you two nancy boys jawing about now?”

“Nothing, sir,” Tom and Cecil replied in accord.

He came close to Tom. “Just as well, Private Gravy. Because I am watching you.” He waited a moment and then marched down the line, barking orders.

“He’s well and truly got it in for you, mate,” said Cecil.

“Every bully needs a whipping boy, I suppose,” replied Tom.

“I’d watch out if I were you, that’s all.”

The order came along the line to form a column. Once more they began marching, and once more Edmund Hawkes rode up and down, as if to pull his soldiers along, though there was not a man who felt rested, warmer, or drier, or whose feet ached less for the brief sojourn. The sound of big guns came ever closer, and as the column of British and Canadian troops moved forward, so they began to pass another column, a slow stagger of men moving in the opposite direction, many bandaged, held up by comrades.

“Bloody hell,” muttered Cecil.

Tom said nothing, only watched as activity increased, as ambulances groaned along the rutted road or were pulled by blood-spattered horses. He saw Edmund Hawkes cantering back and forth now. It was a slow, measured canter. Tom knew he had already been up to the front line several times, and was—if you looked at the men returning—an old hand. He watched him each time he passed, and saw the pinched look on his face, and though his cap was pulled down and his collar pulled up, he tried to imagine the Edmund Hawkes of old, the young man who’d seemed so very confident in his world. This time it was like watching the ghost of someone who had not died. He cast his eyes sideways at the passing column, saw a few raise their hands in acknowledgement, though the men, who were from an Indian regiment, did not call or sing. They kept their haunted eyes focused in front of them. The strange thing, to Tom, was that though they were alive they seemed dead, their faces whitened by the chalky mud, and whatever it was that awaited him and Cecil and Edmund Hawkes, and every man marching towards the war.

K
ezia had not been up to London since before Tom’s enlistment. In the early days of her marriage she had taken the gig into the village several times each week, or perhaps more, and now she only found time to visit the grocery shop and post office once a week, on a Friday afternoon, and often persuaded the postman to take her letters, to save her time. The farm sucked up every ounce of her energy. She barely had the power to wash herself at the end of the day, and it seemed the only clothes she ever wore now were Tom’s. The men had become used to seeing her wearing trousers and a workmanlike shirt, a weskit, and then, later, her old woolen jacket buttoned up to her neck and a scarf tied to keep her warm. A knitted tam-o’-shanter was pulled down to just above her eyes, and covered her ears. She wore heavy leather gloves, and set about her day’s work with the same vigor as any young man who had ever worked on the farm.