The Dust That Falls from Dreams (13 page)

T
he following morning, Rosie and Millicent emerged from the door of the kitchen carrying a large galvanised dolly tub between them, and they began to go in and out with jugs of water from the kettle on the range, filling it with hot soapy water.

When Rosie unwrapped the clothes, Millicent stepped back and waved her hand in front of her face. ‘Cripes, miss,’ she complained. ‘That’s right niffy.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Rosie. ‘You really don’t have to help me. I know it’s horrid.’

‘I will help, miss.’

Rosie had a washing bat, and Millicent a three-legged dolly stick. With these they stirred the mixture until a kind of loathsome scum began to gather on the surface of the water. They poured the water down the drain outside the kitchen and began the process again. They washed the uniform three times before the scum began to clear. ‘Why don’t we get clean water and leave ’em to soak?’ suggested Millicent. ‘We can have another go tomorrow. We’re both all of a lather, in’t we?’

‘Just think,’ said Rosie, wiping the perspiration from her face with a handkerchief, ‘we used to have a permanent whitster to buck the clothes. How times have changed.’

‘Well, now we all have to do our bit, don’t we, miss? You didn’t used to know how to wash clothes at all, miss, and now you’re no different from anybody else.’

‘I think I prefer it like this,’ said Rosie. ‘The only thing worse than having too much to do is not having anything to do. I much prefer being busy.’

‘Me too, miss, but me and Cookie don’t half have to do a lot these days.’

The following morning the uniform was washed again, put
through the mangle, and hung out on tenterhooks on a line inside the boiler room. Rosie was ashamed that she had broken her promise to burn it, and did not want Mrs Pendennis to see it drying on the line outside.

In the warmth of the boiler room the clothes dried out, and even acquired the pleasant aroma of coal. Rosie inspected them where they hung on the line, and stroked the fabric. She put a forefinger through a shrapnel hole and thought about how Ash must have crumpled and fallen. The bloodstains had not entirely gone, but now they seemed bearable. Later on, in the light of experience, she would understand more deeply how fabric carried into a wound could set up complications, and how the mud that was carried into a wound by that fabric was purulent and lethal because it was made of corpses.

Rosie went into Eltham on the omnibus and bought a very small suitcase at Elliot’s. Into it she put Ash’s uniform, his memorabilia, his diary and their letters to each other, and then she slipped it under her bed, next to her statue of the Virgin.

She often took the suitcase out and stroked the bloodstains, putting her fingers through the holes and holding the fabric to her face.

St Omer

6 April 1915

Dear Rosemary
,

I heard recently on the grapevine that Ashbridge Pendennis was killed in February, at Kemmel. I am in the RFC now, and met him in the trenches, as I expect he told you. Thereafter I used to go and stunt for him. Anyway, I got the news from an HAC man that I came across at a CCS near here (not allowed to give locations) when I was delivering an airman with a head injury
.

I know that you two were engaged to be married, and so I just wanted to tell you how very sorry I am about this terrible loss. You must be inconsolable, so what could I say to console you?

I have been out here a few months now, and have seen many terrible things. It is very hard to justify them, but I realise that in a way this war has nothing to do with Great Britain or America. I mean, Great Britain could simply have disregarded its treaties and stayed out. Ashbridge was American, and had even less to do with it
.

But I am half French, and so this war means everything to me, and I am incalculably grateful to Ashbridge and everyone else who has come out to here to help us. What I am trying to say, on behalf of France and myself, is ‘thank you’ to him, and to you for your great sacrifice
.

Our liberty, when it comes, will be his everlasting monument
.

Yours ever
, je vous embrasse,

Daniel Pitt

R
osie arrived at the hospital an hour early. It had its own railway station, and so her trunk had been sent in advance, containing all fifty-one items stipulated, which included even a lantern, galoshes and a collapsible rubber basin. Everything had been assembled at some trouble and expense, and she felt with all these articles she could probably survive for months. Slipped into pairs of stockings and wrapped up carefully inside her apron (white), her apron (coloured), her wool dress and dust skirt, was her plaster statuette of the madonna and child, and her mending bag contained the battered New Testament and Psalms with which she had once been sent off to school.

As she was too young for Foreign Service, she had been posted, just as she had hoped, to Netley. She had arrived courtesy of a first-class travel warrant, and had read the regulations over and over on the train. She was entitled to seven days’ leave in the first six months, and was to be paid twenty pounds for her first year’s service, which was just two pounds more than Millicent earned at home as a housemaid, and she would receive two pounds and ten shillings in uniform allowance, which she had already spent during a rather sober spree on the ground floor of Selfridge’s, now entirely given over to nursing supplies.

Although much bolstered by the happy thought that, almost identically equipped, Ottilie was at the same moment making her way to Brighton Pavilion, Rosie was confounded by the vast size of Netley. She stood by the sentry box before its grand facade thinking that it must be several times larger than Buckingham Palace. Built by command of an empress, the place was on such a scale that it could have belonged only to the greatest empire on earth. It had been constructed to echo the style of Osborne House, just across Southampton Water, whence the late Queen had frequently ventured forth to visit her wounded troops, of
whom she kept photographs, and for whom she had knitted shawls which became so highly prized that no one dared or wanted to use them.

At its centre was a copper dome, green with verdigris, and to either side stretched wings of granite, brick and Portland stone, set up in the classical style, with Italianate turrets and spires. Hundreds of windows were set into walls that were 440 yards long. On the greensward of the grounds hobbled or sat the wounded in their blue uniforms, and all seemed peaceful and orderly. Here and there a VAD with the red cross on her breast supported an elbow or strode forth on a mission.

She plucked up her courage and entered the building through the vast double door. She found herself confronted by the stupendous skeleton of an elephant, whose bleached bones had been set up in the lobby. There were alligators and crocodiles mounted on the walls, row upon row of snakes preserved in formaldehyde, and fish were set into the plaster of the walls in imitation of a shoal. Vast sets of horns and antlers were set up by the hundred, as if this were not a hospital but the country house of an implacably bloodthirsty aristocrat.

Rosie was just emerging from the museum, and wondering where to report, when mayhem suddenly broke loose. There was a great commotion as people began to pour out of the building – doctors, nurses, VADs, FANYs, stretcher-bearers. As if drawn irresistibly by their collective purpose she followed them, still carrying her valise, only to realise that a hospital train had come in.

Nothing could have prepared her for this, although she would soon become familiar with it. As the wreckage was unloaded onto the platform, the doctors scurried from one man to another, injecting morphine into those who would certainly die and so require no other attention.

She stood, fixated by horror. There was a stink of excrement and putrefaction that grew steadily worse as the bodies were laid out on the platform. She saw heads bound up with filthy bandages, white faces with black gaping mouths and wild eyes, black and green rotting stumps bound with improvised tourniquets, flesh bubbling up with blisters that gave off poison gas. She saw
wounds patched with field dressings that had not been changed for days, and great pools of dried black blood across chests and stomachs. She saw faces without jaws, and skulls cracked like eggs. She saw bellies bound up with bandages that she somehow knew were retaining bowels, scooped up and thrust back into their cavities. There was a low moaning like that of cattle being driven from one field to another, interspersed with sharp shrieks, whimpering and keening. She heard prayers, appeals to mothers and sisters, the curt orders of doctors as they detailed the nurses and the stretcher-bearers. Some stalwart souls, eyes bulging with pain, made no sound at all.

Astounded by this horrible tumult, and sickened by the pall of smoke and wet sooty steam, it was a few moments before she realised that an officer was standing next to her, his arm in a bloody sling, one of the luckier ones. ‘You should see the ones who didn’t get this far,’ he said, in a strangely deadened voice. ‘I saw a man with his head compressed into his chest by a shell. The crown of his head was just poking out at the top.’ He paused, said, ‘Major Frederick Arbuthnot, Irish Guards,’ and fell silent, leaving Rosie wondering whether that had been the name of the casualty, or whether he had been introducing himself. ‘Better get to the sawbones,’ said the officer, and he set off on foot towards the hospital.

Rosie knew that she had to do something. She knelt by a doctor who was checking a soldier for signs of life, and said, ‘What can I do?’

‘VAD?’ asked the doctor without looking up at her.

‘Yes.’

‘Trained or untrained?’

‘Untrained. Just arrived.’

‘Well, the first thing you do is ask “shrapnel or bullet”. Treatment depends entirely upon which one it is. Now just find someone who’s dying and hold his hand. Say prayers. Say what you like. Just don’t get in the way.’

Rosie knelt by a skinny runt of a boy from the East End. He was breathing stertorously, and no one was tending to him. She took his hand, which was cold, clammy and limp. At first she could not see what was wrong. As she looked at his face, overwhelmed
by pity, the tears began to roll in huge drops down her cheeks. Suddenly he turned his head and looked at her, holding her gaze. ‘Don’t cry for me, miss,’ he said. He began to convulse and shudder, then closed his eyes.

The Grampians

19 June 1915

My dear Rosebud
,

I am writing to you with bad tidings, but I did think that you would like to be amongst the first to know
.

I am very sorry to have to tell you that both Sidney and Albert Pendennis were killed on the 16th of June in the same engagement at Hooge, where they were caught by machine-gun fire, side by side, as they went over the top. Half of their battalion apparently perished with them
.

I do not know many of the details. Mrs Pendennis came round to tell us, and, as you can imagine, the poor woman can hardly speak and is utterly prostrate with grief and despair. I shudder to think of the agony of those who lose all their sons. You may remember that the same thing happened to two of the Pitt brothers, who perished in the South African war, when Daniel and Archie were fortunately too young to join them. As you may know, the Springfields have lost all their sons, and so have the Baskervilles and the Revells. I have never regretted only having daughters, and even less do I regret it now
.

Please do write to Mr and Mrs Pendennis, should you find yourself with a spare moment. I expect it would be consoling for them, and they would like to feel that even though all their sons have gone, they still have a daughter of a kind
.

Let me repeat, dear Rosebud, how proud I am of what my brave and pretty bairns are doing in this war. If it were possible for a father’s pride to bear his daughters up, then you would be shoulder-high
.

Your loving and grumpy and proud old daddy
,

Hamilton McCosh

PS The new workshop for making artificial limbs is up and running in Woolwich. Just as you suggested, I have largely employed the wounded, and a marvellous job they are doing too. I am going to set up another workshop to make the wooden struts for aeroplanes
.

PPS My idea for a new kind of golf ball has made a wee bit of progress, but of course it seems frivolous under these circumstances, and I don’t have much enthusiasm for it at present
.

T
he world was still absorbing the shock of the
Lusitania
’s sinking. In Stepney a mob was setting fire to the shop of a German-born baker, and stoning the policemen who had arrived to intervene. Rosie was with Bouncer at her station at the window seat, as usual, watching life go by in the street outside. She was exhausted from her work at Netley, and was taking advantage of a weekend off, having managed to coordinate matters with Ottilie so that they would both be at home at the same time. The casualties from Artois had not yet begun to come in. The rag-and-bone man had just gone by in his cart, his head bowed down with drowsiness and drink, but every few minutes he would raise it and call ‘Raggabone! Raggabone!’ Rosie always felt sorry for his horse, a ruined old grey, and she had told the servants that if ever they took something out to the cart, they should take the horse a carrot. It had not occurred to her that the rag-and-bone man himself was equally in need, and that he and his horse were starving together.

A short, stocky man in khaki came to the gateway, stood for a second, confirmed that he was at the right address, and strode up the drive. She listened to the man’s hobnails on the stone steps, and then for the tinkling of the brass bell. She wondered if she should call someone to answer the door, but the footman had gone to war, and there was no way of knowing where Millicent was, so she answered it herself. War had changed even the protocol of answering doors.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked the soldier, before noticing that he wore the insignia of the Honourable Artillery Company.

‘Yes, good morning,’ replied the soldier, removing his cap. He pulled a handkerchief from his cuff and mopped his brow. ‘Scuse me, miss, but I’ve been going at a right old trot.’

He put the handkerchief back in his cuff, and held out his
hand. ‘Leonard Hutchinson, corporal. Well…acting corporal. Might you be Miss Rosemary McCosh? Or might you be one of her sisters?’

‘Yes, I’m Rosemary.’

‘Then it’s you I’d be wanting to speak to, if you can see your way clear.’

‘Is it about Ash?’

‘It is, miss.’

‘Then you’d better come in. Can I get you some tea?’

‘That would be very congenial. Thank you, miss.’

‘Come through to the drawing room. Shall I take your cap?’

‘That’s very good of you, miss. I don’t want to cause you no trouble, though.’

‘It’s no trouble at all. I understand that you were one of the men who carried Ash to the first-aid post. I have been wanting to thank you. And anything I can do for you is no trouble, I do assure you.’

Rosie rang for Millicent, and she soon appeared with a small trolley.

‘I’ve never seen such dainty teacups in all my born days,’ said Corporal Hutchinson admiringly, as he sipped at his tea. He had horrified Rosie by heaping mountains of sugar into it.

He was ruddy-faced and strong, with a crease across his cheek that must have been left by a bullet. His ears and nose were coarse, and his lips somewhat out of kilter, but the overall effect was pleasant, giving the impression of good humour and kindness. She noticed that his hands shook when he picked up his teacup, and that sometimes he steadied it by drinking with both hands.

‘I’ve come about Ash,’ he said.

‘Yes, you did say so.’

‘We had an agreement. I’d go and see you if something happened, and he’d go and see my lot if something happened to me.’

‘He gave you a message?’

‘Not so much a message. He wanted me to tell you that he was loved by his comrades and that he died well.’

‘I do know how he died. His mother had a letter from Major Phillips, and she showed it to me, and the Reverend Captain
Fairhead has written to both of us several times. He didn’t die well. Not as he would have wished. It wasn’t a soldier’s death, was it?’

‘Course, it was, miss. We die in hospital as well as in the field. More of us do, I’d say. He weren’t killed outright in a charge, if that’s what you mean. A soldier’s death, it don’t often happen very quick. And most of us is got by shells. You know, splinters and shrapnel. They say that there’s many more die of sickness than wounds. Anyway, the other bit’s true.’

‘The other bit?’

‘The bit about being well loved by his comrades. That’s why I’m here. We loved him, miss. He was a right good comrade, and there was no man braver. And he was mighty strong. He carried me half a mile once, when I did me ankle in, and that’s with all our kit. And he always won the sandbag-filling competitions. In the end there was no point betting.’

‘Where are you from, Corporal Hutchinson?’

‘Walthamstow, miss. It’s a long way out. Just a village, really. Close enough to enlist with the HAC, though.’

‘How did you get in, if you don’t mind me putting it so bluntly?’

‘I don’t mind, miss. You mean I’m not a gentleman ranker.’ Hutchinson looked up at her and explained. ‘I was chauffeur to a gentleman, miss, and so we went out together. You’ll find many a gentleman and his valet, or his gamekeeper, or his chauffeur. Mine said he wouldn’t come if I wasn’t allowed, so they allowed. They always do, miss. Anyway, he’s gone now. Killed straight away, pretty much. Caught a moaning minnie.’

‘I am sorry. That must have been terrible for you.’

‘It was, miss. It’s hard to get over, that kind of thing.’

‘Is it true that you called Ash “Yank”?’

Corporal Hutchinson nodded. ‘He didn’t mind a bit. Some of the lads called me Rabbit.’

Rosie looked puzzled, so he explained. ‘Hutchinson…Hutch…Rabbit. One-a these days they’ll be calling me Bunny, I just know it.’

‘Is it as bad as they say, in the trenches?’

‘It’s a lot worse, miss.’

‘Is it?’

‘You couldn’t possibly imagine, miss, even if I explained it.’

‘Isn’t there anything good about it?’

Hutchinson pondered and said, ‘The friendship.’ He reached up his right hand and showed her his forefinger and middle finger side by side. ‘Yank and me were like that. Best friends. We would’ve been best friends all our lives. And you know what? I’m nobody from nowhere and he was a toff from round here. That’s one good thing. Then there’s other things.

‘Sometimes the Huns have little concerts in their trenches. They’ve got these brass bands. You can listen to it when there’s not much else goin’ on, and it’s a right treat. They play lovely, things, miss, sad things, and it’s not all blasted out and soldierly at all. Sometimes we give them a clap. And there was a Hun who used to sing, when the sun went down. It was a lullaby, really lovely, sent a chill down your spine, it did, miss, but we in’t heard ’im for weeks. Must have been got, I suppose. And then, when you go to occupy a trench, someone’s always drawn a cap badge on a piece of paper and stuck it up, so you know who was there before. And once we got lovely parcels all put together by a girls’ school, and every parcel had a card in it with a message. And it’s nice watching the Zeppelins and the aeroplanes, and if you can’t sleep the star shells at night are exceeding pretty. And the Very lights, they’re not as strong as magnesium, but they’re still pretty. And it’s nice thinking of home. And the concerts are very jolly. You get officers dressing up in frocks and doing daft songs. And there’s going to
estaminets
for egg and chips when you’re behind the lines. And I saw some violets growing where you wouldn’t expect it. And there’s Flying Corps types who come and do stunts for us, and I think you know one of them, miss. Lieutenant Pitt who used to live next door. He wrote “Long Live the Pals” under his wings, so we’d know it’s him. And it’s even quite nice when we’re just chatting.’

‘I expect you do get a lot of time to talk to one another,’ observed Rosie.

‘No, miss, I mean chatting is getting together round the brazier and delousing.’

‘Oh my goodness!’

‘You can run a taper up the seams and then scrape ’em out dead, but you might burn the stitches, so you got to watch out. Or you can dig ’em out and crack ’em, with your thumbnail. If it’s icy you can turn your shirt inside out and let ’em freeze.’

‘I used to send Harrison’s Pomade to Ash,’ said Rosie ‘He was always asking for it.’

‘Funny stuff, that. You rub it on, and the little blighters come running up the seams and out at your neck, and you have to catch ’em as they pop up out the top.’

‘Lifebuoy soap,’ said Rosie. ‘At Netley we use Lifebuoy. The lice can’t take it if you rub it along the seams.’

‘Really, miss? I didn’t know that.’

‘I’ll give you some before you go. I’m sure we’ve got some in the kitchen.’

‘That’s very good of you, miss.’

Rosie went and called down to Millicent, and then she returned to her armchair. ‘You were telling me what’s good about it.’

Hutchinson fell silent for a second, and then said, ‘Sometimes you can turn bad things into good things. I mean, the rats are something terrible. Bloody terrible. Millions of ’em, all huge, like this –’ he stretched his hands apart – ‘and they run over your face at night, and they nick your food no matter how you try to hide it, and they even eat the candles after lights out. I swear those rats know how to open an ammo box. But it’s damn fine, excusing me, miss, to go on a rat hunt. You block up all the holes with cordite, all except one hole, miss, and then you light it, and when they come rushing outta that last hole, you whack ’em with a trenching tool, but you mustn’t whack ’em with a rifle butt ’cause they break, and then you’re in big trouble, and sometimes when it’s quiet you take a potshot at the ones between the lines, and it don’t matter if you miss because the bullet’s going in the right direction to catch a Boche if you’re lucky. Those rats eat the corpses, miss, which is why they get so huge, and that’s one reason why we hate ’em, and they eat out the bodies inside and then they live in the ribcage, millions of ’em, all squeaking. And I’ll tell you something else, miss. Rats is cannibals. Throw ’em a dead one and they’ll strip it.’

‘We get rats in the cellar sometimes, and now that we’ve got
chickens we’ve got them at the end of the garden too,’ said Rosie, so overwhelmed by this information that she had no sensible response to it. Millicent entered, and Rosie told her to find some Lifebuoy soap, and wrap it for Corporal Hutchinson. She took a moment to inspect the guest, and their eyes met. Millicent felt her heart leap in her chest, and he perceived her shock. He gave her a little wry smile, and nodded his head almost imperceptibly. She went out and leaned against the wall beside the door, before scurrying away to find the soap.

Hutch resumed his monologue, as if the chance to talk had liberated his tongue at last.

‘Sometimes the Gonzoubris are right nice to us, the French ones, not the Dutch ones. The Dutch ones want the Huns to win, but no one gets told that at home.’

‘Gonzoubris?

‘The locals, miss.’

‘Why on earth are they called Gonzoubris?’

‘Search me, miss.’

‘I’m sorry, I interrupted you.’

‘You can’t get salad because the Gonzoubris all have pet rabbits,’ continued Hutchinson. ‘They don’t eat it themselves. They just give it to the rabbits. If you want salad you have to crawl around at night and nick it from the bunnies. And the local beer’s complete muck.’ He paused. ‘There was a sweet little girl, though. Can’t tell you how sweet she was, a proper little darling. She’d come and sell us vegetables. But in the end she was got by a shell. Couldn’t even find the bits. That was sad, that was.’

‘I hear the men talking to each other in the hospital,’ said Rosie. ‘They don’t often tell me anything. A lot of what they say is hard to follow. It’s like a different language, you know – crumps, whiz-bangs, woolly bears, archie, flaming onions, moaning minnies, sausages, coal boxes. Of course they explain if you ask. But they don’t tell me what it was really like. I glean it from what they say to each other.’

Millicent came in once again, this time bearing a plate with four scones on it. She glanced at Hutchinson coquettishly as she left, and he caught her gaze, smiling at her.

‘Corporal Hutchinson?’ said Rosie.

‘Yes, miss?’

‘Please can you tell me what a death yell is?’

Hutchinson put down his tea and wiped his brow with his sleeve. ‘It’s like nothing you ever heard,’ he said at last.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s the scream of a man who’s already dead, but he just keeps screaming.’

‘Already dead?’

‘First time I heard it, it was a man who got a bullet and it took the back of his head off. You know, when a bullet gets tired it starts to tumble, and that’s the worst kind to catch. He was dead, no mistaking, but he kept up that yelling. It was the worst thing I ever heard. I heard it two or three times since. You don’t want to dream about it night-times, I can tell you.’

‘How awful,’ said Rosie, blenching.

‘It’s a pretty stiff order, miss. You know what bothers me, miss? What really upsets me? It’s the horses.’

‘The horses?’

‘It’s terrible, the way they scream. I counted once, miss, at the roadside, a place we called Suicide Corner, and I reckoned there’s a horse killed for every two men, give or take. It’s awful, miss, you can’t help ’em in a gas attack ’cause you’re trying to get your own mask on and how do you get a mask on a horse that’s in a panic, even if you had one? And what use is a mask when it’s mustard gas and they’re just one big horrible blister? And you’ve got no stables so they freeze all night and they’re all covered in ice in the morning, and when they get shelled you can’t hide ’em and there’s guts and legs everywhere, and they don’t understand what’s happened, they’re still trying to stand up on legs they haven’t got. And you know what, miss? When you can’t talk to your mates you can always talk to a horse. That’s what the blokes do. They go and tell the horses how bleedin’ frightened they are, and that way they don’t have to tell anyone else. And those horses, miss, they ain’t Boche or British or Froggy. They’re just horses, they don’t know a damn thing about the Kaiser or the bleedin’ King of the Belgians. They’re innocent, not like us, and they’re out there being cut to pieces and slogging their guts out and not understandin’ any of it.’ Hutchinson paused and looked out of
the window. His lips were working, and Rosie could see that he was fighting back tears. ‘I’m sorry, miss,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to go on about it.’ He fell silent for a minute, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and added, ‘I always used to work with horses, before, when I was a kid. A lot of ’em ain’t very bright, but they’re lovely, you know, inside. My dad was a drayman.’