The Poppy Factory (22 page)

‘It was
him
, Rose, I know it,’ she said. ‘Just the little turns of phrase he used, and the way he called me Ma. Oh, it’s such a relief to hear that he is not suffering any more.’

She went home so excited that she found herself blurting it all out to Pa, who lost his temper and shouted a lot, saying it was a load of old cobblers and that Arthur Newsom was just some charlatan out to take her money. But she says it’s already brought her peace of mind and that’s worth more than a dozen sixpences, any time.

Like Pa, I have a more sceptical nature, but reckoned that no harm was done if it had left Ma reassured rather than upset. But then, just as she was leaving, she let slip that she was planning to attend another of Mr Newsom’s sessions, being held in a hall near Waterloo Station, in six weeks’ time.

‘Now I’ve heard from Johnnie I want to know that Ray is all right,’ she said. ‘You’d’ve thought Johnnie might have mentioned his brother, but he didn’t. What if Ray’s spirit is still unsettled and wandering? What if he is still suffering? I have to know, Rose, whatever your father says.’

On the spur of the moment, perhaps because I was concerned that the next time might not have such a happy result, I found myself offering to go with her. I am already regretting it.

Sunday 22nd August

This diary has been very neglected, what with work and holidays. I’ve finished my training at Mitchell’s and am officially now a fully qualified machinist, with a nice pay rise to go with it. Alfie is now working almost full time for his father, delivering second-hand furniture and suchlike in his cart. Rather to his surprise he’s enjoying working with the pony, in spite of its stubborn ways, and is earning quite well. Business seems to be booming now that more of the damaged homes have been repaired, and new ones being built. It’s all cash in hand and unofficial, which has always been Mr Barker’s way.

With two wages coming in, we’ve finally been able to indulge in a few luxuries. Last week we went to Brighton again and the lovely guest house we discovered last time. The landlady immediately recognised us and welcomed us with open arms. It’s been a miserable cold summer and trade had been slow, she said, but we managed a couple of days warm enough to sit on the Promenade, and went to the funfair again.

Alfie may not been keen on dancing but he loves the flicks, so every other Saturday we treat ourselves to an evening out at the Electric Cinema. Last night it was
Way Down East
, where Lilian Gish played an innocent young girl seduced by a sophisticated rich man and ends up pregnant and destitute. The blizzard scene was so realistic and the pianist accompanied it so cleverly that I found myself actually shivering in sympathy with poor Lilian.

On the way home Alfie joked that he reckoned the lead actor had Claude in mind when he played the man-about-town character, and he’s right: he has precisely the same arrogance, the smooth chat-up lines, the way he splashes the cash around. We laughed, but it’s a worrying reminder. Freda seems to have lost her way with this man, blinded by his flashy ways. I only hope she’s sensible enough to avoid the same fate.

Sunday 12th September

On Tuesday I went with Ma to see Arthur Newsom, the psychic. Pa and Alfie were out with the darts team for an away match, so we could slip out without either of them knowing.

I was certain it would just be a room full of gullible people prepared to believe anything and that nothing would happen but, as we arrived, the butterflies began in my stomach. What if it were really possible to ‘channel’ the voices of the dead, as his advertisements claimed? And how would I react if there was a ‘message’ from Ray? The very thought made me a little wobbly.

Inside, the hall was packed, but if you closed your eyes you would never have known it; there was such a sombre hush over the place with just the occasional whispers of people moving into their seats. No chatter, no excited greetings, people just sitting and waiting in silence, with their hands folded and heads bowed.

At last Arthur Newsom arrived on stage, an impressive figure of a man – at least six feet and broad with it, a full head of wiry black hair, a finely tailored grey flannel suit and the shiniest shoes I’ve ever seen. But his voice failed to match: high and hoarse, quite quiet, which made you strain your ears to hear him. The hall was silent as a tomb, the audience hanging on his every word. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.

In his quiet, calm way he told us that although he understood we had all come with hope in our hearts, he was not going to be able to help everyone, but that at least ten people in the hall would hear news of their lost loved ones tonight. At this there was a collective intake of breath – and I couldn’t decide which I feared most: a ‘message’ from Ray, or no message, which would leave Ma desolate all over again.

Then he closed his eyes and there was a moment’s silence before he started to whisper, tentatively at first, something like: ‘I’ve got someone named Frederick with me, a young man killed in battle. He’s coming over loud and clear. Hello, Frederick. Do you have a message for someone with us in the hall tonight? Perhaps they know you as Fred, or Freddie?’

There was an anguished yelp from a few rows behind us, and a woman shouted, ‘It’s me, Freddie. Your ma, Elsie. Can you hear me?’ Mr Newsom quickly established that Freddie was her son, killed in action nearly three years ago. The message for his mother was reassuring, very similar to that he’d given Ma about Johnnie. ‘He is well and not in any pain, Elsie, and wants you to know that he is with you every day, with love in his heart.’ When it ended, the woman began to weep loudly, falling into the arms of her companion, shouting ‘My darling Freddie, dearest boy, thank you my son. May God bless you and keep you safe.’

Mr Newsom closed his eyes again and one or two began to urge him, crying out: ‘Sam, can you hear me’, and suchlike, sending shivers down my spine, and he was soon talking to Albert, then Jimmy and David, always with a similar pattern: the question, establishing the links, giving the message. My butterflies had gone, and by now I was feeling very uneasy about the whole affair, the way he seemed able to manipulate these grieving women. I could feel Ma beside me, straining every muscle in her body, desperate for him to mention the name Ray or Raymond. But the evening drew to a close, and it never came. As we walked home I tried to comfort her, but what could I say? She’d been drawn into the spell, and was so convinced that because she’d actually had a message from Johnnie the previous time, Ray’s ‘silence’ meant he was unhappy or in pain. I didn’t tell her what I think, which is that Mr Newsom bases his success rate on sticking to the more common names, which is why he would not risk a more unusual one like Raymond.

Monday 11 October

This evening Alfie came home all made up because his pa has bought a second-hand motorised van, and they’d been out for a spin.

‘By God, you should have seen us flying along, it was the best fun I’ve had in ages. The speed of the thing: it gets up to a full forty miles an hour! You’re supposed to stick to twenty, but no-one takes any notice. Why would you, when you can reach double that on a straight road?’

I love to see his eyes sparkling once more – it’s been so long.

The idea is that Alfie will drive the van for deliveries, and this means saying farewell to the pony, which saddens him because he’d grown fond of the old thing, but nothing can dampen his joy at the idea of learning to drive a motorised van.

I know nothing about driving but from watching bus drivers using both feet to press down the pedals in the floor, I wondered how Alfie would manage with his one leg. It seems Mr B has already thought of this. He’d seen another man using what he calls a ‘hand-throttle’ which Alfie explained is a lever on the gearstick that you push to make the car go faster or slower, while your foot is busy braking or pushing down the clutch to change gear. Even though he explained it to me twice, it’s still gobbledegook. But he’s happy as Larry and that’s all that matters.

Ma went to another of what she calls her ‘meetings’ last week, but still no sign of Ray. ‘Even if I can’t have a message, if I only had a place where I could go and talk to him,’ she said, when she came round afterwards, ‘at least that would allow me some peace.’ It’s getting quite the thing these days for people to travel to France to visit the places where their loved ones died, I told her, perhaps we could save up? But she says that would probably make her feel even worse and I tend to agree. Imagining Ray’s broken body lost somewhere beneath those muddy trenches and shell-pocked fields we’ve seen so much of in the
London Illustrated
certainly fills me with horror.

It’s little comfort, but we are not alone – hundreds of thousands of bodies have never been recovered, and their families will never have a grave to visit. The war may be over but the pain doesn’t seem to get any easier with the passing months.

Friday 8th October

Alfie received a letter today from his old regiment, inviting him to take part in this year’s events to mark Armistice Day. Apparently there are places for four thousand injured veterans to witness the ceremony at the Cenotaph, and his name is among those who have been chosen. At first he said he couldn’t afford to lose a day’s money, but Mr B obviously prevailed.

Ma and me are going anyway, like we said we would last year. This time they will unveil a permanent stone version of the old wooden Cenotaph, which will be quite an event to see.

Monday 25th October

Terrible accident in the Old Kent Road today, and nearly on our doorstep. It was such a foggy morning you could barely see your hand in front of your face, and two trams crashed into each other just as they were going into New Cross. Dozens of people were hurt, some of them not likely to live.

Pa saw the ambulances going past the shop and then a customer came in who’d been there just a few minutes after the accident happened – he tried to help but was moved away by the police. He said the screams of the wounded were something terrible.

When Alfie came home he said they’d only been using the pony cart today. ‘Too foggy for the van,’ he said, which reassured me a little.

Monday 1st November

I simply have to write about this, it is such a wonderful, bold idea: to create a ‘tomb of the unknown soldier’, as the newspapers are putting it. They say it was suggested by an army chaplain who saw a rough wooden cross in a Frenchman’s garden with the words ‘An Unknown British Soldier’ pencilled onto it. The Prime Minister has agreed: so they are going to bring the remains of just one anonymous body back to England and give it a proper burial ceremony and a permanent gravestone in Westminster Abbey. And because no-one will ever know who the soldier was, we can all live with the thought that it represents our own lost ones.

Alfie is going to be with fellow soldiers who will line the route of the coffin and salute as it goes past. What an honour.

I have asked Mr Mitchell if I can have the day off so’s I can go with Ma to the Cenotaph. He knows my two brothers were killed so I’m hoping he’ll look kindly on my request.

Wednesday 10th November

Today the talk at the factory was about nothing else: the ‘unknown soldier’ is on his way, and everyone is very stirred up about it – that’s the only phrase I can find to describe the mixture of emotion and excitement we all seem to feel.

Apparently four bodies were dug up and one was chosen at random by an army bigwig so no-one will ever be able to trace the real identity. When it arrived at Dover this morning on a destroyer, they gave a nineteen-gun salute (which Alfie tells me is the highest possible army honour) from Dover Castle high up on the white cliffs, before it was put onto a train to Victoria Station.

The newspapers reported that every station it passed, even the smallest village, was thronged with people in black, paying their respects. How dramatic that must have been, the train thundering through the night, past crowds of silent mourning people?

Alfie went off to Westminster this afternoon with a pack of sandwiches. They are being given tea and will sleep in tents in St James’s Park so they’re ready to move into position early tomorrow morning. Ma and me discussed whether we might go tonight too, so’s to secure a good spot for seeing the coffin, but we wouldn’t get a tent to sleep in and she didn’t feel up to a night on the pavement, so we’ve decided to set off very early in the morning, instead.

It’s an odd thing: even when we should be sad, I find myself almost elated. As if my brothers are actually coming home, at last. Which is stupid, because of course it is not them at all. The two-minute silence last year was something special, but this year is going to be even more of an occasion to remember.

Friday 12th November

Well, it certainly was a day I’ll never forget, nor Alfie neither. When we finally got home around eleven o’clock last night we both agreed we were so pleased to have ‘been there’, even though it was completely exhausting, and he has a new sore on his stump from walking and standing so much. But we were both too excited to sleep, and talked in bed until the small hours about our different experiences of the day.

Ma and me managed to get there earlier this time and found a spot where we could see the Cenotaph monument, still draped with the largest Union Jack flags I’ve ever seen. It looked so tall and impressive, reaching up to the third floor of the office buildings on either side of the road, we could hardly wait for it to be unveiled.

There were even more people in Whitehall than last year, but there was no jostling or pushing, everyone was polite and mostly silent, as we moved into our places and waited for eleven o’clock to arrive. There was a buzz among the crowd as the procession approached, and by standing on tiptoe we could just about get a glimpse.

It wasn’t so much the pomp and ceremony, the fancy gun carriage with its six black horses, nor the men marching in perfect unison with their eyes turned to the coffin, nor even the King, whose head we could just catch sight of through the crowds as he saluted the coffin and laid a wreath on the top of it. What really brought it home was the steel helmet, just a soldier’s old ‘tin hat’ they had placed on top of the Union Jack draped over the coffin. It made me realise that, in spite of all the grandness of the occasion, whoever was inside (and his identity didn’t matter any more), was just an ordinary soldier, like Johnnie, or Ray, or countless others, who’d died in the mud and blood of the trenches.