The Gates of Rutherford (32 page)

“You think we want to run anywhere?” Frederick said. “We are tired. We can't run.”

“Try it,” the young boy grinned.

Frederick looked from him to Jenny. Then he walked up the slope towards the gate.

“Hey, you!”

“Shoot me,” Frederick muttered.

The sergeant glanced over his shoulder. “Get back,” he warned. “None of your business.”

Jenny was staring at him; then she dropped her grip on the sergeant's arm, and ran. She rushed up to Frederick, out of breath, tears running down her face. “A gardener's boy went for the midwife in the village, but she's not come. The doctor isn't home. We can't find anyone, and Mary's in . . . she's in the stable yard. We can't raise her up, and when we try to, she says . . . she won't go in the house. There's something wrong. . . .”

“Who is this?” Frederick asked.

“Mary. Don't you remember? You saw her once.”

“The lady who is . . .” He didn't know the English word. He had tried very hard to understand what she was saying. But the words were so rushed, so garbled. “You speak slow, please,” he said.

She gazed at him in misery. “The baby.”

The sergeant was at their side. “I am sorry to speak to this lady,” Frederick explained. “But she is the lady I help with the work.”

The sergeant was frowning. “You're a farmer, aren't you?” he asked.

“We have a farm, yes.”

“Livestock?”

“We have. . .”

“Cattle. You have cattle, animals?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Calves then?”

“I don't know. . .”

“Births, man! You've had births.”

All at once, Frederick got the sense of what he was saying. “Oh no, I don't do this.”

“You
don't
?”

“I cannot.” Frederick glanced towards the stables, where a devastating cry of agony was ripping through the air. “With persons, sir. With women.”

The sergeant stared at him, and then at Jenny. “Show us,” he said.

•   •   •

T
o everyone's horror, Mary was now on her hands and knees close to the door of one of the empty stables. She was crawling, and Miss Dodd was behind her, the very image of fright. “She won't listen to me,” she wailed, as Jenny and the two men advanced. “Mrs. March has been out here, and Mary did so curse at her. She's gone away for blankets, but they shouted at each other. . . .”

“Do something,” Jenny pleaded to the men. She got down at Mary's side. “What is it you want to do?” she asked gently. “Mary, you are out in the yard. Talk to me. What is it you're trying to do?”

Mary put her head down, and let out an almost inhuman sound of pain that rose to an almighty scream.

“Oh my God, dear God in heaven!” Miss Dodd wailed.

Frederick turned away from the scene and spoke in a soft voice to the sergeant. “Maybe the woman goes for soap and water. To give her . . . make her with something to do.”

The sergeant, agreeing, told Miss Dodd to fetch water. “Unless someone else is bringing it?”

“I'll go,” Miss Dodd said, and ran.

The two men looked down at Mary and Jenny. “You have children?” Frederick asked the sergeant. “You know all this?”

The older man blanched. “I never seen them born,” he said. “That's not a man's job.”

“But you think this is my job?” Frederick asked.

“Better than nothing.”

“I am better than nothing, yes?”

Jenny suddenly sprang to her feet. “Stop arguing!” she screamed at them. “Help me get her inside the stable at least.”

Like a great clumsy six-handed beast, they managed to get Mary out of the sun and into the stable. There was a sprinkling of sand and hay on the floor. They heard Mrs. March come running across the yard. Behind her, her husband was struggling with a large enamel bowl and a tin flask, with towels hung over his arm. As the two of them got to the stable door, Mr. March looked at Mary. “'Ere's a right to-do,” he observed laconically.

“Give me those,” Mrs. March snapped. She gave the sergeant and Frederick a stare that would have frozen the Devil in his tracks. “You needn't be here, neither,” she said.

“We was called, missus,” the sergeant protested. He and Frederick stepped back out into the sunshine, each man turning his face away from the door. For his part, Mr. March simply shrugged. “Allus
an awkward lass, that one,” he told them, and walked back across the yard.

The two raised an eyebrow at each other, but said nothing. Inside the door, they could hear Mrs. March remonstrating with both Mary and Jenny, instructing Jenny to hold this, hold that—and accompanied by Mary's moans and protests. Then came a desperate scream. “Take her away!” Mary shouted, her voice sounding strangled. “She killed Emily, she killed her!”

A minute passed. More groans and curses—the latter from Mrs. March. And then the old woman came out into the yard, red in the face and sweating. “I've had five children,” she told the men. She wiped her face with her apron. “And nivver a fuss like that.”

“What's the matter?” the sergeant asked.

Mrs. March shrugged. “Tis a breech, I suppose.” She shuffled her shoulders, crossed her arms. “Killed Emily,” she sniffed. “I like that! Baby was premature, girl was bleeding. We couldn't stop it. She was nubbut skin and bone, poor child. Nobody could have done more than we did that night.”

Since neither of the men knew what she was talking about, they didn't answer, until the sergeant said quietly, “Breech. What's that mean?”

“Wrong way round. The doctor must come.”

“There's a woman coming from the village.”

“Mercer, you mean? Neither use nor ornament. She's over seventy. She'll nivver do it.”

“Well, can't you?”

“I might if she let me near her.” And the woman stared at her own feet. “Though it feels like summat not right,” she murmured.

“With this baby?” Frederick asked. He could hardly translate the sentences to himself, but he could see the expression on her face well enough.

“Probably big,” Mrs. March said. And, gratuitously, she spread her hands wide. “Seems very big to me.”

Inside the stable, Mary's cries had descended into sobs.

“What'll we do?” the sergeant asked.

“Nothing no one can do. Wait for the doctor.”

“Move her to the house?”

Mrs. March smiled grimly. “Good luck, boys,” she said, turned her back on them, and went back inside the stable.

•   •   •

T
hey waited.

They waited while the sun sank slowly, and the shadows crept across the yard. The other prisoners had been marshaled into the tithe barn, guarded there by the young soldier, Mr. March, and his sole remaining boy—all staring at their languid captives as if they expected to be overpowered at any moment. At one point, having checked on them and seen the faces of the unwilling makeshift crew, the sergeant returned to say that all of them must leave. “Got to get them back to camp,” he explained. “It's nearly seven o'clock. Orders is orders.”

Jenny rushed out, pleading with them to stay. “We could still carry her inside if it let up a moment,” she begged.

The sergeant pulled her gently to one side. “Listen, my love,” he told her. “I've got thirty men here, and yon bloody fellows look like they'll have proper hysterics if one of the Boche as much as scratched his arse. If you'll pardon me. We'll have to get back to camp.”

“Can't you leave Frederick here, with us?” Jenny said. “You said that you thought he'd be some help.”

“Well he isn't, though, is he? Even if I could.”

“But the midwife hasn't come, and the doctor hasn't come, and I don't know what we shall do,” Jenny whispered, and burst into tears
so pitiful, so heartrending, that the sergeant sighed. He looked at Frederick. “You tell me what you think.”

“I think?”

“Yes. Bloody hell, man, what—you—think.” He cocked his head towards the stable.

Frederick looked from the sergeant to Jenny. She stared at him blank-faced, lost.

He walked slowly to the door.

Mrs. March was squatting on the floor next to Mary, with the girl's head cradled in her lap. Blankets had been put under Mary's back, and one covered her stomach. “It's no use,” Mrs. March said. She was past shouting or cursing; she looked as if every atom of energy had been drained out of her. Miss Dodd and Mrs. Nicholson stood to one side, hands clasped, the bowls of water and soap on the floor beside them.

Frederick was reminded of his father then. A very distant memory. Perhaps a year or two before his father died. He was a small boy, and it had been summer then, just as this was summer; that same mellow light colored the pictures in his head. He had run to find his father, who had been out all night in the cow byre. It had been very early, and an opaque pink and gold flooded the sky, and was reflected on the ground. In his mind he saw his own small feet trotting along between the light and the shadow.

The byre had been a shed just like this—larger perhaps, enough for a milking stand. They had not had many animals; to his certain knowledge they had never been able to afford them. But they had enough to milk to make the cream and, occasionally, butter and cheese. The cheese house was a cool little place half dug into the shallow bank behind the sheds, where a small stream ran. Even though he had been so small, he had known the cows by name. He
remembered their immense-seeming bodies, their gusts of breath, and the searching of their faces lowered to his own.

That morning, his father had been propped, exhausted, against the shed wall, and at his feet lay a lifeless calf. Frederick had been helping him at midnight, until his mother had come and insisted that he go to bed. He had been so sure and so excited that he was running to see a new live calf—after all, hadn't he followed his father's instructions and felt in the mother animal, and actually felt the miraculously slim outline of a hoof, and a soft-nosed face beyond it? But there had been no live animal now. Instead, there was a dead body of a calf lying in the straw. It had been pulled from the mother roughly, to save the cow, and its legs were broken.

“I wasn't in time,” his father told them. “I wasn't quick enough.”

Frederick kneeled down now. He recalled the horror of it all so vividly, and it came rushing back to him now. If only these people knew. He had seen many a live birth, helped at many such a one, but it was the dead calf that inhabited his mind now. He breathed deeply, trying to banish the image; and just for a second—a very fleeting second—Jenny's hand brushed his own as she stood up to get out of his way.

Mary's gaze was unfocused, her eyes brimming with tears, her face a ghostly color.

“Mary,” he said quietly. “Hello.”

There was a beat or two of perfect silence.

“Mary,” he prompted. “May I see? Will you allow, please?”

Mrs. March at once stiffened with outrage. He looked at her, and the reaction faded as quickly as it had come. She turned her face away.

He picked up the soap, and washed his hands. He looked from one woman to the other. The one in the black dress met his eye. “Please,” he said. “You help me.”

She did as he asked, and he felt their eyes on him, everyone in
that stable, and the ones outside. He tried to concentrate, to be calm. Most of all he tried to steady his hands. He looked at the poor woman lying in front of him, and he had a ghastly flashback to others lying in pain, and especially to the boy with the broken back. Where had that been?

Near Pilckem.

The officer had been drinking that night. Frederick could see it in his eyes, and smell it on his breath. He had staggered to Frederick at three in the morning while Frederick was on sentry duty.

“I want you to go out there,” he had said.

“There?” Frederick echoed. He couldn't understand.

The officer had waved his hand towards the British front line. “Go and find them,” he said. “Tell me where they are.”

“But they are just here, sir. They are forty yards away. We have seen them yesterday.”

“And are they still there?” the officer demanded, with a horrible grin on his face. “How do you know that? Are you telling me lies?”

“No, sir. They must be there.”

“But you don't know, do you? You can't see them. Go out and find them for me.”

“Out there?” Frederick had repeated, fear prickling through every nerve in his body. “But what shall I do, sir? How can I go?”

“You go because you are ordered,” the man replied. “As we are all ordered.”

“But it is impossible, is it not?”

“That's right,” the officer confirmed. And still the horrible grin remained. “Entertain me. Do the impossible.”

And when Frederick hesitated still, a gun was brought to his forehead. “Do you disobey a direct order?”

“No, sir.” He had taken a handful of the filthy soil and rubbed it over his face for some sort of camouflage. “No, sir.”

The British line was very quiet, but he could feel their eyes on him. He got over the trench, walking up the short wooden steps. At first he crouched and crawled. And then he heard a dreadful thing—the sound of the gun being cocked at his back. He was not moving fast enough, it said. He started to run, doubled over almost, slipping and sliding. In truth, he was looking for a shell hole. Anything that would hide him from the imminent death that both faced him and was at his back. And all the time he was guessing where the British were exactly. It was hard to run in the dark, tripping over the remains of dead men. He prayed for a shell hole. God in heaven, there ought to be enough. But he found himself on a slight ridge and was suddenly sure that he was visible. He heard voices ahead of him. And he froze.