The Care and Management of Lies (20 page)

Hawkes shook his head. “I’ve lost count of the number of my men I’ve seen killed, but I’ve also seen enemy soldiers dead in their trenches or sprawled across barbed wire. I’ve seen photographs of a wife and children spilling out of a German’s pocket into his insides, which were outside him at the time. No, I don’t want to kill them. But I don’t want them to kill us either—if they targeted the camp, it would be a catastrophe.”

Tom looked at Hawkes, then back at the German soldiers going about the business of war. “Right then, Captain Hawkes. According to Sergeant Knowles, the Germans reckon we’re using machine guns, when it’s only the standard-issue Lee Enfield. Because it’s so bloody quick.” Tom positioned his rifle, stock tight into his shoulder, and pulled back the bolt. His hand appeared not to change position, so swift was his movement as he pulled back the bolt time and again, firing four shots in quick succession. Each bullet hit its target. The German soldiers fell one after the other, dead almost before they’d heard the shot that killed the first man. Hawkes felt heavy and rooted, as if he were being buried, the earth thick upon his chest. At once he was aware of Tom pulling him up by the arm. “Come on. Move, Captain Hawkes. We don’t know how many more might be behind them.”

Edmund Hawkes and Tom Brissenden made their way back to the camp, keeping close to the tree line, crouching at every sound and both feeling easier as they neared the camp boundary. As soon as they returned, Edmund Hawkes summoned Knowles and made his report. He commended Tom for his quick thinking and courage at a crucial moment, and ensured his name would be mentioned in dispatches to superior officers. His report confirmed earlier intelligence and made recommendations for increasing security. What Hawkes did not know, as he completed his report, was that by mentioning Tom Brissenden’s bravery and quick thinking, to say nothing of a dexterity with a rifle that should have singled him out as a marksman, he had made the farmer even more of a target for Knowles. Instead he felt pleased at his generosity towards Tom, and tried not to think of the farm that would have been his, had it not been for a dilettante grandfather. Nor did he think of the wife he coveted. Today had confirmed something he had suspected, that Tom Brissenden was the better man. He sat back in his chair and took out his notebook again. He began again.
To The Armaments Maker.

Dear Kezia,

We’re now back in camp for two weeks. What they don’t tell you when you first enlist, and what you can’t imagine, is how boring this soldiering business is, and it’s even more tedious when we go up the line. It can get busy now and again, but not always for long—sometimes I feel like a rabbit, doing not much in my hole until I have to go out, and then all I do is run in case that fox gets me. I don’t often feel as if I’m going to get the fox.

So, we’re bored and we’re hungry. It’s not too bad here, but in the trenches you can get a bit peckish, especially because we’re cooking for ourselves in mess tins. Did I tell you, they even give us these recipes in our soldiering manual? You have to be a genius to work out this one—it’s what they call Plain Stew.

“One man prepares two rations of meat—his own and that of his rear-rank man. The rear-rank man prepares the onions and vegetables, and passes it to the front-rank man, who adds them to the meat, together with a little flour, salt and pepper. The rear-rank man then prepares potatoes for himself and his front-rank man, and places them in the mess-tin, with sufficient water and a pinch of salt. Thus in a kitchen of eight mess-tins there would be four mess-tins containing meat and four containing potatoes.”

I copied that for you to have a bit of a laugh. As Cecil says, we’re all a bit rank here, so no one knows who should be doing the cooking.

Tom reread his news so far and wondered if it would be wise to let Kezia know he’d been a bit hungry—what with her being able to cook nice dinners, it might make her feel bad about it. He didn’t want to waste paper—ink and paper were at a premium—so he crossed out “we’re hungry” and wrote above the line “fed up with the same food.” Just another little white lie. He thought it wouldn’t hurt to keep in the bit about being peckish, because everyone gets peckish now and again. And it would make her laugh, telling her about the mess-tins. He continued the letter.

What we really miss is good white bread. I reckon the army only thinks of calories in and calories out, so we don’t always get anything you would recognize as food you’d get on a plate at home. It makes us miss home comforts all the more. There’s a lot of the lads who are quite put out by not getting proper bread. We’re given this stuff called biscuit, which I reckon is more like that hard tack they give sailors. And when I say there are lads who are put out, I mean they are getting very angry, with some wondering why they enlisted in the first place, to not have decent bread. At least I have your cake.

Talking about biscuits, Cecil, my mate, he was sent a tin of Huntley and Palmers biscuits by his wife, which was very nice indeed, but no one gets cakes like you send to me, Kezzie. The cake I received yesterday was spicier than the last one, so I reckon you put a fair bit of something in there—was it nutmeg? Or cinnamon? You probably sneaked in more of whatever it was than usual, but I didn’t mind. I had to fight the other lads off—they’ve become used to getting a slice of your cake or tea bread. You said you weren’t much of a cook when we were first wed, but if the cake’s anything to go by, well, you’re a diamond. I miss you, Kezzie.

Tom finished the letter with questions about the farm, and put the letter in the envelope while imagining his wife in the kitchen, or her garden. He thought of the sweet smell of her hair when just washed, and the fragrance of lavender that seemed to linger on her skin. He imagined her drawing an iron across the linens, and setting the table, and his mouth watered as he envisioned the breakfast laid out, with freshly baked bread and butter churned on the farm. He kissed the envelope and placed it in the military post.

As had become his custom, Edmund Hawkes was the first reader of Tom’s letters home. He skipped through other mail from his men to home—letters that asked after Spot the dog, or if Dad was still busy with his racing pigeons, or whether Granddad had won any money on the horses lately—and then lingered over a letter from Tom to Kezia. On some occasions he felt as if he had found love by proxy, though he was a little disconcerted by the almost-eloquence of Tom Brissenden’s declarations of affection for his wife. He had thought Tom a much more simple man. At other times Edmund Hawkes felt like a voyeur, one of those men who paid to look through a small round glass in nighttime Soho, men who kept their heads down to avoid recognition, who wore their jacket collars pulled up, and who would give up a few coins to press an eye to a hole as if looking into a kaleidoscope—yet there was no cavalcade of color, just a few moments’ worth of excitement to be had while watching a woman reveal herself layer by layer by layer. Silk and lace and bare skin. But he felt a little less guilty when he read this letter, for it contained important information. It seemed his men were restless, though not mutinous. And with good reason, he thought. As an officer, when in camp Hawkes enjoyed a hearty breakfast, a satisfactory luncheon, and a commendable supper, with wine. There was never a shortage of port or brandy. He could rest easy—well, easier than the men—on most nights. Even the officers’ more personal comforts were of a better quality—a little more time with a cleaner girl at a different kind of
estaminet
.

His men wanted bread. Good bread that smelled of a bakery at home, and not rough brown biscuit. He had seen men cluster around Brissenden just to hear a description of Kezia’s cooking, or taste a morsel of her precious cake. Now he read the letter again, and knew what he must do. He would provide that most basic of staples for his men. He would go into the town and place an order with the baker, and he would bring to his men enough pure white crusty bread, bread thick with the fragrance of yeast and sugar, so that each man would remember that lovely bread from Captain Hawkes dripping in gravy or with a layer of cheese mounted upon it, and the flavor and fullness of this gift of bread would linger long after the men had marched up the line again. Up the line and over the top.

Chapter 14

No one can be more trying than the person who continually gives way to low spirits, going about with a martyr-like expression.

—
THE WOMAN’S BOOK

T
hea wrenched the Rover into gear and pressed down hard on the accelerator. Her arms felt filled with cold lead in her heavy coat, while the engine groaned and shuddered as she maneuvered the ambulance along a rutted road towards the casualty clearing station. Though all but ignored by the British powers-that-be, the Rathbone Brigade had been welcomed with open arms by men and women working in the blood-soaked aid posts and casualty clearing stations. Thea ground the gears home again, doubling the clutch and using every ounce of her strength to pull the vehicle over to pass a line of soldiers marching up to the forward lines, their throaty songs lingering on the sleet-drenched terrain.

“I should have stayed at school. I should be in front of a class of nice little well-fed children, keeping my head low and out of sight. I should have stood my ground to support the pacifists. I should not have run away.” Thea spoke aloud, as if to hear her own voice imbued her with strength. Men called out to her as she passed.

“Give us a lift, love?”

“Need a mate beside you?”

“How about getting in the back with me, darlin’?”

“You’ll be lucky,” she yelled back, her voice barely audible, so the soldiers saw only the movement of her mouth, and laughed all the more. At least she’d made them laugh.

The ambulance rumbled past, and soon she was out on the open road, but with another column ahead. This time it was a Gurkha regiment, returning from the front. The noise of the engine dulled the sound in the distance, but she leaned sideways, her head half out of the door so that she might hear. The men did not sing a marching song. There was no resounding “Tipperary” but instead a refrain that seemed to adhere to the very air around her. It was a lament voiced in their native tongue, a song that perhaps echoed a longing deep in the heart, and it pulled at her as surely as if she understood each word in every fiber of her being. These men yearned for home, craved something familiar—she could feel it. Tears began to fall down her cheeks, which she wiped away with the back of her hand, already blood-smeared from an earlier run. She was exhausted, and in the depths of her fatigue, she felt her acute sense of injustice rise up, a renewal of the anger that had led her to risk her freedom fighting for suffrage, and then for peace.
What is happening?
Why wasn’t this terrible war being brought to an end? Why weren’t the politicians, the leaders of these countries, sitting at a table right now, locked in a room and not allowed to come out until they had brought to a halt this boulder of death rolling down a hill unchecked, crushing everyone caught in its path? Was this how all wars went on?

Thea turned the steering wheel hard to the left and circled at the rear of the casualty clearing station. Using two hands to pull the gear lever into reverse, she then backed the ambulance close to the tent, where wounded would be loaded onto tiered wooden trestles for her to take to the hospital. The shelling was so close, she felt her insides shake with every thud, with every explosion.

“Oh, good, Miss Brissenden,” said the senior nurse who greeted her. “You made fair time since the last journey. I’ve eight men, two acute with internal wounds, three amputees and some heads, one facial. We have to get them all in somehow. I can’t spare a nurse, otherwise I would send one with you.”

“I’ve never had a nurse back there yet, Sister. I’ll just plough on through and do my best to keep everyone as comfortable as possible. Let’s strap them in to the extent that we can—the holes and ruts in the road are worse than ever this morning. The horse artillery went through with more ammunition for the front, and they’ve churned everything up.”

“I’ve seen them—even the gun carriages are moving at full gallop,” said the nurse. “Both horses and men seem fearless, though we’ve got a surgeon back there who calls them the arse hortillery. All in good heart though—they’re heroes, all.” She gave a half laugh, an embarrassed response to her use of soldiers’ language. “Brissenden, I should tell you—there’s a German boy in this load.”

Thea nodded. “That’s perfectly all right, Sister. He probably didn’t really want to be here either.”

The sister looked at Thea. “Be careful, Brissenden. Keep those thoughts to yourself, or you will find yourself back in England—and on a charge of sedition. I don’t know that conditions in Holloway Prison would be any better than this for you.”

Thea met the sister’s eyes, feeling the old fear rise again. She swallowed. “I apologize, Sister. I’ve just seen a bit too much today, I suppose.”

“No more than anyone else here has seen, and a lot less than most of my nurses in the past twenty-four hours. Now then, let’s have these poor blighters loaded up and get you on the road. I expect to see you back in about two hours then, perhaps three. Is your colleague on her way?”

“I expect so—I passed her, so she’ll have a quick cuppa and slice of bread and jam, then turn around. I daresay I’ll go by her again. Do you have some hot water to top up my flask?”

The sister nodded and reached to take the flask from Thea’s hands. “Oh, my girl, your fingers are frozen. Your charges will be on the ambulance and ready to leave in ten minutes, once they’re all in. Come on, let me warm your hands—it’s not the best remedy, but it’s the quickest. Steep them in water with Epsom salts, then make sure you dry them properly and put on some Vaseline jelly—you don’t want chilblains.”

Thea followed the sister, who she suspected might not have been much older than herself, yet some of the strands of hair that had come free from her cap were grey, and there were lines around her eyes. The tent flap was pulled back, leading into an area where nurses poured hot water from large pitchers into enamel bowls, then ran back into the main operating tent. An orderly came through with two more steaming pitchers. The nursing sister poured a shallow measure of hot water into a bowl, and added a handful of Epsom salts. She nodded to Thea, who dipped her hands into the water, and at once felt an exquisite pain as her fingers began to thaw, accepting the heat. She lifted her hands from the water, then lowered them again. She wondered if the sister intuited that she had not been able to feel her fingers for most of the journey, and she hadn’t realized herself that she was frozen.

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.”