The Fleethaven Trilogy (39 page)

‘I’ll come back, Will,’ she promised him quietly, but that was the only thing she would concede.

‘Huh,’ he was muttering almost to himself, ‘and to think it were me that was daft enough to tell you about the squire going out there. I could kick mesen.’

The journey, even in the company of the squire and his younger son, Arthur, was for Esther a nightmare. She had never been anywhere other than the village in the Wolds where she had grown up and Fleethaven Point. Now she found herself being pushed on to a huge steam train that hissed and chugged and puthered smoke. She sat on the seat in the carriage at the side of the squire, her hands clenched around the holdall carrying her few belongings, her eyes tightly shut against the scene flashing past the window.

‘Do look at the countryside, my dear. It’s very different from our Lincolnshire, but every bit as beautiful.’

Esther took a peep, forcing her eyes beyond the rushing hedgerows to the fields further off, rolling by at a more sedate pace. ‘Oh, you’re right, Squire. It’s lovely. Where are we?’

‘We’re travelling south towards London. We’re in Cambridgeshire now, my dear.’

Esther smiled briefly, but said nothing. She was trying desperately to remember the picture of England divided into its counties in her school atlas, but she could not recall where any other county was except her own. She leaned back against the plush seat. Never mind, she told herself, it’s all beautiful, no matter where it is.

When they alighted at the huge, bustling station in London, fear washed over her again. It was a world such as she had never seen before – all metal and brick and stone. Not a blade of grass nor a tree to be seen. The engine gave a roar and belched out a jet of steam. Esther squealed in fright and clung to the squire’s arm.

Mr Marshall laughed. ‘There, there, my dear. Don’t be afraid. We’ll take good care of you. Just mind you don’t get separated from us, that’s all.’

There’s no fear of that, Esther thought grimly. I’m hanging on tight to you, mester.

They stayed the night at an inn in Dover, although Esther could not accustom herself to someone else waiting on her. As soon as the maid appeared in her bedroom with a jug of hot water for her to wash, Esther made to take it from her. In the dining room, when the waiter brought her food, she stood up to help him. At the end of the meal she began to clear away the crockery. Blushing, she realized her mistake and sat down again. The squire, noticing her confusion, kindly made no comment, but merely patted her hand and exchanged a word with the waiter, thoughtfully taking the attention away from Esther.

The following morning as they took their leave, she was carefully counting out her coins to pay the landlord, when the squire whispered, ‘Put your money away, my dear, the bill is all settled.’

She looked up at him, ‘Oh, Squire, you are kind.’

Esther was quite relieved to leave the inn, having felt very out of place.

There was worse to come. The ship crossing the Channel rolled and tossed and Esther was sea-sick. The squire was solicitous, but, she noticed, even he looked a little pale by the time they landed in France. Then, what they saw in this strange land obliterated any memory of the fearsome journey. Their own minor discomforts paled into insignificance compared with the destruction and desolation they now beheld.

How the squire found a means of transport, Esther did not know. It was a dilapidated trap pulled by a scrawny pony, yet better than anything owned by the inhabitants of the towns and villages through which they passed.

The people she saw were hunch-backed with misery. Little groups, whole families with children in tow, seemed to be on the move, pushing all their worldly belongings in carts, going somewhere, but not seeming to know where, or to care. As they passed through villages, Esther realized why. Houses and cottages lay in ruins, some reduced to a mere pile of rubble, whilst others had every window broken, the glass hanging jaggedly from the woodwork. Doors hung drunkenly off their hinges, open to the street and huge holes gaped in the sides of houses. People sat about dejectedly, the spirit pounded out of them by the four years of relentless war being fought all around them. Small children wandered alone, dirty and unkempt, their feet bootless even in the cold of winter. These people had watched their homes being shot to pieces, their land ravaged.

Esther glanced at Squire Marshall and saw there were tears in his eyes. Forgetting, amidst all this horror, their relative positions in life – he the squire and she his tenant – she put her arm through his and squeezed it tightly. Seeking some kind of comfort himself, she felt him grip her hand and hold on to it, whilst they looked around them. They didn’t speak, their throats constricted by the sights they saw. Beside them young Arthur sat white-faced and silent.

The pony plodded on slowly, making for the area where the squire had been told some of the biggest battles of the war had been fought, the place where he believed his son had died. The sky was grey with heavy cloud and a fine drizzle clung to their clothes and seeped through making them feel chilled. At last they crested a rise in the ground and there it lay before them, stretching as far as they could see through the mist and the gloom, the land ravaged by years of war.

Wordlessly, the three of them climbed down from the trap and leaving the pony standing, they walked forward, drawn by the awful sight before them, mesmerized by the destruction they were witnessing.

No birds flew overhead, no cattle grazed the land. As far as Esther could see there was not a speck of green. No blade of grass, no living leaf, only thick, greasy mud. Shell-torn trees, blasted limb from limb, struck out grotesquely like burnt sticks. Esther looked down into the trench below where she was standing. In the bottom was at least six inches of murky, stagnant water and the slimy, sloping sides were littered with empty cans, discarded weapons, even items of muddy, torn clothing. A single boot stuck up out of the mud. Everywhere ran the rats. A huge brown one came running down the trench, stopping every now and then to sniff and search. It paused just below Esther and sat up on its haunches, staring up at her boldly. The rats back at home in her barn would have scuttled away at her approach but this monster was tame – frighteningly tame. It dropped down on to all fours and sniffed at the boot then pushed its head into the top and with sharp teeth began tearing at the grey, slimy pulp oozing from the boot.

Esther gave a gasp and clamped her hand over her mouth as the bile rose in her throat. The rat was pulling at rotting human flesh.

She turned away, closing her eyes and her mind against an appalling thought.

Supposing that had been Jonathan’s boot. Reason told her not to be foolish. But it had belonged to some young soldier just like Jonathan – some young man whose foot had been blasted away by a shell and left to rot in the trenches.

The trenches ran everywhere, twisting and turning, deep ravines gouged out of the ground, like a gigantic warren where men had lived for months and years. Here they had eaten, slept, laughed and cried with only each other – and the rats – as companions. Here they had died.

A low mist hung a few feet above the ground like a shroud. The smell of death was all around them.

It was as if the reaper of death had laid waste the fields of young corn, destroying not only that harvest, but ravaging the land so completely that there could be no future growth. A generation of young men had been wiped out and with them generations of unborn sons.

She turned and with eyes that were suddenly opened to the world that lay beyond the safety of Fleethaven Point, she looked towards the two men. ‘Oh, Squire, oh, Squire!’ She shook her head. ‘I never thought – never in a million years – did I imagine anything like this.’

The squire blinked his eyes rapidly and pulled a large kerchief from his pocket. He blew his nose noisily. ‘Nor I, my dear. Foolish old man that I am . . .’ He glanced at his son, standing speechless with shock beside him, and then back to Esther. ‘I should have known better than to bring you two young people . . .’

Esther ran to him and grasped his arm. ‘Don’t say that, Squire. It’s – dreadful – awful, but I’m glad I’ve seen it. Now I understand.’

He looked at her questioningly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I was so naive, so innocent,’ she said. ‘I thought when that Major Langley was whipping up the young men to follow the call of arms, it was just a game to him, to all of them. I was angry, irritated, that they were going off in a blaze of glory, leaving us to cope as best we might. All that talk of honour and duty and – oh, you know what I mean. But this – this is real. This is what they came for – to stop this happening in our land – in England. All this destruction . . .’ she waved her hand to encompass the ravaged land as far as they could see. ‘It’s just sheer wickedness. And they – our men – came to try and stop it. This land won’t be fit to grow anything for years, will it? I mean, what are these poor folk who live here going to do?’

The squire shook his head and gazed about him almost in a trance as if he were overwhelmed by the enormity of the devastation. ‘I don’t know, my dear, I just don’t know.’ He paused and then went on more to himself than to the other two with him. ‘I had this stupid notion that I should find Rodney’s grave on a grassy hillside, a pristine white cross above it, and that I’d be able to lay flowers on it and . . .’ His voice broke and Esther, still holding his arm, gave it a comforting squeeze. ‘How very foolish I’ve been,’ his voice dropped to a husky whisper.

Esther looked across at Arthur. He had said nothing for a long time. His face was pinched, his lips blue with cold and he was shivering visibly.

‘Come, Squire,’ Esther said gently, the first of them to recover their senses. ‘We’d best find some shelter for the night. Your boy looks about done in.’

‘Eh?’ Roused from his ghastly reverie, the squire looked at his son. ‘Oh, dear me, yes. Come along, let’s leave this dreadful place.’

Together they walked back to the tired-looking pony and climbed into the trap. The squire turned the conveyance round and they made back towards the nearest village.

Along the road they passed a family – a man, wife and three children. The man was pushing a handcart loaded with all their possessions.

‘Excuse me.’ The squire halted the trap. The man paid no attention but trundled the cart along the side of the road.

‘I say – excuse me. Do you know if there are any British soldiers still here?’

The woman glanced up and the children stared at them, wide-eyed with fear.

Nervously, Arthur cleared his throat and asked the same question in his halting, schoolboy French. One of the children – a girl, barefooted and ragged – ran forward and plucked at the man’s coat, but the man trudged on. Arthur jumped down from the trap and followed the man a short distance along the road, and though they could no longer hear what was said, it appeared Arthur was still asking questions.

Esther saw the man let go of one of the handles of the cart and gesture briefly to the road behind him, but he neither stopped nor slowed his pace.

Arthur came back to the trap. He climbed in and sat down. ‘I think – though I’m not sure.’ he added apologetically, ‘he said “at the hospital back there”.’

‘Never mind, my boy. You tried. We’ll just keep going.’

As the trap moved on, Esther took a last look at the forlorn little family, homeless in their own country.

It was growing dusk by the time they came to the village. A huge building loomed up before them; impressive, but bleak and dismal. Miraculously, it was still standing, comparatively unscathed. ‘That must be the hospital they told us about,’ the squire said. ‘I’m sure this must be the one where – where Rodney died. That’s why I’ve come here. I thought he might be buried close by.’

‘I never knew where Matthew was,’ she murmured and added in the secrecy of her own thoughts, or Jonathan. They – ’ she began and then corrected herself swiftly. ‘He – Matthew – was in the same regiment as your son, Squire.’ And so, she thought, was Jonathan. ‘Do – do you think they might have records of any sort about what happened to people or . . .?’

The squire was looking at her. ‘Do you really think there’s a chance that Matthew’s still alive?’

Esther drew breath – it was the closest she had come to having to tell the squire a deliberate lie. Fixing her mind, for the moment, on her husband and not on Jonathan, she answered, ‘It – it was only – presumed.’

‘Well,’ the squire said slowly, ‘I understand there are still some of our men here.’

‘Still here?’ Esther repeated, sudden hope flaring in her breast. ‘In this hospital, you mean? Why? Why haven’t they been sent home?’

The squire shrugged. ‘Several reasons, I suppose. Some may be too ill to travel yet. Maybe – maybe they don’t know who some of them are, if their identification papers were lost. I’ve heard of that happening.’

‘Really?’ Esther gazed up at the square, grey building. It looked more like a prison than a hospital. It was a gruesome place. There was such a mixture of feelings within her, a sudden dread of what she might find.

They were made welcome by a nursing sister at the hospital. She displayed surprise, though not displeasure, at their coming and bustled about making ready a narrow bed for Esther in her own quarters. Embarrassed, she said, ‘I’m afraid all I can offer you gentlemen will be a bed in a ward.’

‘Don’t mention it, dear lady. Are you sure you can spare us that? I mean, are you sure we won’t be taking up a bed you need for patients? I wouldn’t want to do that.’

‘Oh we’ve the room now, sir.’ Her eyes were weary and sad and there were shadows beneath them that told of long months of soul-destroying nursing of the wounded, sick and dying. ‘We’ve a few patients left, of course. Those still too ill to make the journey home,’ she said, confirming what the squire had already thought. She sighed heavily, ‘Of course there are several who are so shell-shocked, they don’t know who they are or where they come from. Naturally, we shall repatriate them as soon as we can but . . .’ She shook her head. ‘Oh, dear me, it’s so sad, so very sad.’