The Dust That Falls from Dreams (8 page)

O
n the 1st of February, it was turning very much colder, and it occured to Rosie that she could unravel old things and make new ones. She reasoned that if she were Ash, she would want a balaclava and mittens, so she set about dismantling an old scarf that had begun to fall apart on its own. Ottilie kept her company, turning some worn-out sheets side-to-middle so that the servants could have them.

On the 3rd of February there was such a fearsome gale all night that Rosie just lay in bed and shuddered. She could not sleep nor turn her mind off for thinking of what it must be like for Ashbridge. Even praying could not calm her agitation because all her prayers turned into desperate pleading.

Her mother was sixty on the 6th and she and her sisters went to a concert at the Queen’s Hall. Rosie could not remember the programme. She was still visiting the Cottage Hospital almost every day, and was beginning to find it both more easy and more comforting than it had been, because nothing lifts one out of misery more effectively than being inspired by sympathy.

On the 10th there was good news, which was that Bill Burman was out of hospital. He came to dinner with his wife, and was obviously in severe pain. He grimaced and winced a great deal, and it was awkward to sit him down at table because the underneath of it was somewhat complex and he unable to bend his leg at the knee. Even so, he seemed quite cheerful. He said that he was glad he’d done his bit, and was just as glad he was out of it. He said he had seen things too ghastly to describe, and that he did not feel that he had really taken it all in yet. He said that the jitters often take a long time to arrive, according to the doctors. Now he had the worry of his brother Edward being out there. His golf club had appointed him their new secretary, apparently, and he was very pleased about that. It was quite a
consolation. He had been thinking that he would help to set up a local firewatch, because the Germans were clearly very keen to wage war on civilians as well as on soldiers.

He and Rosie had a sparkling little dispute about whether it was time to give up thees and thous in modern verse. Bill said that there were so many words that rhymed with thee and thou that it would be a shame to give them up, because it would limit what one can say, and Rosie maintained that there was always another way to say the same things. They did agree that spelling rhymes ought to be disallowed. Bill asked Rosie if she would read them some of her verses, but she said that she did not feel she had written anything good enough yet.

2
7th. All sorts of inspections etc. Orders to stand to at half-hour’s notice. Kaiser’s birthday attack expected. Aeroplanes. Route march. Pay parade – fifteen francs!

Germans are using their dead to consolidate parapets. Stink abominable when wind shifts. Don’t know how they put up with it. Bad enough casual bodies lying around in places where unretrievable. Out in front are two French officers, beautiful in scarlet and blue, bloating and rotting. Also three pigs and a cow. Always a point where you can’t help vomiting. Then you get sent out at night, have to bury them with respirator on. Boche do the same. Unspoken agreement not to notice each other.

28th. Direct to trenches. Description of our trench. Rather wide, would be waterlogged, but thank God frozen hard. After passing through danger zone halt behind fire trenches then proceed across fields. Fired at. Little cave at the end of our trench. Nine men in a space six by four with brazier in middle. My, it was fine, though all had to go on guard at night for one hour. Stevenson was Rear Admiral today, got killed carrying latrine buckets up communication trench. What a way to go. Hutch just got there in time to give him a last puff on gasper. Hutch pleased about Players in the post. Slept well. Daniel stunted and dropped bottle of whisky on a little parachute.

29th. Water bottle frozen. 1200 approx. Fritz began shelling with lyddite five yards from trench! Again at 1500. Read almost all of
Quo Vadis
today. No good getting panicky. If they get you they get you, and much safer in a trench than not. Came back across fields as moon was too bright for usual way. Kemmel shelled. Killed twelve.

Can’t help thinking about how nice it is when resting behind the lines. No stench except when the wind turns in the wrong direction.

And you can sleep. Slept for twelve hours once, all my webbing and equipment on, and my boots. The sergeant didn’t have the heart to disturb me.

30th. Did not do anything but waited to be called as raid expected. Mother sent me Vest Pocket Kodak. Not supposed to have it but lots do, and nobody gets charged. Took picture of Hutch, with the stray dog we adopted when it was dug out of a ruin. Call it Fartillery because of productive guts.

Comradeship. Nothing like it in civvy street. Rises up out of your heart because so relieved to be still alive and temporarily safe. Sergeant from the South Lancashire Regiment turned up, when we were completely done in, with a huge jug of beer in his hands. Gave it to us, and went. Didn’t have to do it, could have given it to his own boys.

31st. Fatigues cleaning up shelled houses for fresh billets. Shells certainly wreak havoc. So sad to see these homes empty and think that a few months ago this village prosperous and happy. At night did headquarters quad at chateau. Beautiful night, and imagined I was at home, i.e. bath then dinner with Mother, after dinner, study, and then bed. Boche interrupted with shells.

Hands need time to heal. Always blistered/cracked/bleeding so much labour, exposure frost and water. Delicious to ease boots off and waggle toes and just expose flesh to air. As usually on fifteen minutes’ notice to depart, we’re expected to sleep with boots on, but hardly ever do. The WOs don’t want to sleep in theirs either, so conspire in pretence.

1st of Feb. Quite tired. Feet hurting for first time. Think it’s rheumatism. Slept well in school. Rosie’s packet arrived, and scarf from Mrs Beale. Dreamed of Mother, that she was out here with me.

Keeping us fit and busy marching us round the countryside. Choreographed tourism, get to see troops from all over the place, pleasant little ruined villages. We go to tiny place of Albertine and Emma, two fat/cheerful sisters who’ll cook anything we bring. They make omelettes, and a kind of soup that ain’t soup at all, milk with crumbled bread, and there’s horrible vinegary wine, coffee, local beer (not bad at all). Always a scuffle to get near stove, blazes away like billy-o. Plenty of fuel in ruined houses. Five francs
on pay day, enough for omelettes at Emma and Albertine’s. Hardly understand a word they say. Make do with patois.

2nd. Warm today. Raining. Made hurdles all afternoon with sticks and string. Dreamed last night of Baltimore. Far away and long ago.

Re. lice: all been bedded down in church, and Catholic lice got into this poor Protestant’s clothes, and poor Protestant clothes of brothers’. Quite enjoyed seeing Catholic services. Sort of barbaric magnificence.

Difficult to wash at best of times. Have to find an intact cottage and pay for bucket of hot water, then strip off in front of them and wash, because they want to guard their bucket. Aren’t bothered by sight of naked soldiers, certainly do roaring trade.

Spent much time picking lice out of each other’s hair, like monkeys, but then shaved heads completely. Seem to be different kinds of lice. Head kind, bedding and clothing kind, and the private parts kind, obtainable from naughty girls. Not got that kind, because well behaved, but plenty of boys say that you didn’t need to be having fun to pick them up somehow. Then you get scepticism from MO.

Told not to scratch bites because diseases get in. Louse shit in the wounds. Skin comes up in weals and scars.

Instructed to soften nits with vinegar, then comb hair over and over with nit comb, then burn the nits. Else soak rag in paraffin, sleep with that on head, held in place with bathing cap. Before use of bathing cap again cook it in oven, if can find one. Total absence of bathing caps, paraffin and handy oven, however, so shave heads and make smelly bonfire of hair. Odour just like farrier shoeing horse.

Body lice little blighters survive washing pot unless most extremely hot. Don’t actually live on you. Live in seams of clothes and visit just exactly when about to relax/feel a bit happy/composed. Then bite under armpits and round waist, fury of itching/scratching/swearing. Were told to soak clothes in Lysol and rub selves all over with paraffin and eucalyptus, and sprinkle inside uniforms with sulphur.

Hutch said, ‘But, sir, we don’t have any of those things,’ and MO replied, ‘Very true, Private Hutchinson, but I have been
telling you what you ought to do, and not what you actually can do.’

Best thing to shave every single hair body, so nowhere to attach eggs, and then spend hours going through seams of uniforms picking out the lice/cracking them with thumbnail.

Think that lice good for morale. Companionable occupation when nothing happening, can sit on pediments naked/shivering, cracking lice/cracking jokes without thought of shells/shrapnel. Sometimes keep a tally. If male louse, call out ‘Dog!’ and if female, call out ‘Bitch!’ Boys scratch score on side of trench with bayonet. Always on mission break all known records.

If a purplish red one, means recently feasted, your own blood explodes over your fingers. Enjoy killing those ones most of all.

If infestation very severe, scrape them off with knife. Heard that in the hospitals they have lice infesting stumps of limbs.

T
he 4th of February 1915 was beautiful, serene and sunny, and Rosie felt much happier, in case Ashbridge was also having a good day. She wrote two letters to him, one telling him that the garden was full of aconites, and mentioning in the other that Bouncer had cut his paw on a piece of broken glass.

On the 5th she and her sisters went to an exhibition of Modern Portrait Painters. Rosie was not impressed, but Christabel thought that some of them were very fine. Ottilie said how strange it was that civilisation just managed to carry on, even in wartime. Sophie said it seemed very anonymous, which puzzled the others until they realised that she meant anomalous.

That night was wild and wet, the wind lowing like a cow in the eves of the house.

On the 6th Rosie wrote a poem for Ashbridge, and then went to St John’s to pray for him. She noticed for the first time the plaque on the wall commemorating the two Pitt brothers who had died in the Boer War. She wondered at herself, that she had been going there all these years and never noticed it before. The carving was wonderful, particularly of the drapery. It put her in mind of Archie and Daniel Pitt. She knew that Archie was in India on the North-West Frontier, trying to control the Afghans, and that Daniel had been there too, but now he was in France in the Royal Flying Corps. Rosie knew that his chances of lasting at all long were very poor indeed. She felt the same kind of lurch in her stomach as she did when she thought of Ashbridge being killed. It would be such a sadness, because he had been great fun as a boy and probably still was. How nice it would be to see him again, she thought, and smiled at the memory of him vaulting over the wall, and wondered if he still looked the same. He had very bright blue eyes, she remembered, and long legs and narrow shoulders.

Rosie did nothing on the 7th, because she was suffering from a deep lassitude born of helplessness, but on the 8th she went to the Cottage Hospital to see if she could be of any help there, and came back feeling not at all well. She blamed the fumes of Lysol, which made you feel quite drunk and heady.

On the 11th it turned out that Rosie’s lassitude and reaction to Lysol had really been the German measles, and it was perfectly horrible. She hoped fervently that one couldn’t get it twice, which is what people always used to say. Mrs McCosh moved her into the spare room because it was further from the rest of the bedrooms than hers was. The rash subsided very quickly, and Rosie’s mother devoted the morning to reading her the poems of Mrs Hemans. In the afternoon Rosie got up, had a bath and dressed, but did not go downstairs. Rosie decided that she did not like Mrs Hemans very much, and, if you were going to read women poets, you would get a lot more out of Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, of both of whom Mrs McCosh disapproved. Rosie enjoyed Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s experiments, and was slightly ashamed of not enjoying Robert Browning at all. She wrote to the Poetry Bookshop to complain that their 1911–12 anthology of contemporary Georgians did not contain one woman poet, saying that ‘This cannot be because there are none of the requisite high standard; it must be because you have failed to take note of who they are, or have not troubled yourselves to find out.’

On the 12th and 13th Rosie got up and dressed, but stayed in the spare room, reading Coleridge and Keats. She felt considerably better, but still exceedingly weak and low in spirits. Mrs McCosh came up and offered to read to her but she declined, as she preferred to read to herself, and was not in the mood for any more Mrs Hemans.

On the 14th Rosie felt particularly desolate because it was St Valentine’s Day.

On the 15th of February, the news came about Ashbridge Pendennis.

3
rd of Feb. Beautiful day. Nothing doing. Slept in church where lice caught. Daniel flew over, upside down at fifty feet. Wondrous.

Find can now buy huge meals of custard from what used to be post office. Made in big fish mould, so call it ‘Kemmel Fish’. More people selling coffee. Impressive how adversity turns out entrepreneurs. Will always be someone clever enough. World proliferates with little Hamilton McCoshes.

Not supposed to be in village at all, so technique is invent reason to go to quartermaster’s store/think up complaint that has to be dealt with by MO. Got put off when Boche started shelling village again. Killed nine men, but eventually Kemmelfishitis returns, and off we go.

4th. Awoke in church to find men kneeling all around me – weird. An old lady nodded to me, but after returning nod found was nodding and bowing to a saint. Slept well. Dreamed of Baltimore again.

Fond memories of worst trench. Had to get there in dark, and the ground frozen solid except covering of slime. Turnips poking out of soil so slipped and stumbled every step. Fell over French corpse, fell in ditch. Got snagged by brambles and thorns, panic because got left behind whilst trying to detach. Man in front whispers what’s just happened so doesn’t happen to one behind. Some ditches single plank across, always slippery with mud. Laden down like mules with equipment and provisions.

New trench an old one. Was German then French, shallow slimy one. Fritz hands and feet sticking out of parapet. Cuts in hands festering because nowhere to wash. Nearly vomited from stench. Hutch did. No sleep because of smell, so set about improving trench instead.

Realised couldn’t deepen it. Ground too hard, so went behind
lines at night, retrieved bricks from broken-down cottage. Bricks not best protection (shatter), but did raise/improve parapet. Sun came out morning, melted ground. Back in putrid stuff again.

Beautiful day, and was peaceful. I love to watch the aeroplanes. Daniel Pitt stunts almost every day on way back from patrol. Came in very low today, practically head height, bombed us with rotten apples. Completely mad, must have been fired at by every Boche machine gun within a mile. Those who stunt at low altitude don’t last long, they say. Has painted ‘Long Live the Pals’ under bottom ailerons in bright red. Makes me want to cry. Good old Daniel.