The Storms of War (19 page)

That day, a young boy called Stembridge fell into the water. Michael, Baker and Bilks had a job pulling him out; he was stuck fast in the mud and kept going under, his arms flopping from their grasp, his mouth filling with water. Michael thought he could have tried harder to scrabble up. ‘You have given up, Private!’ he shouted. ‘Get out.’

Bilks eventually hauled him out and on to his shoulder. ‘He needs to rest,’ said Michael. ‘Take him to the first aid station.’
Before he tries to drown himself again,
he did not say. Stembridge had not yet come back. He’d probably tried to kill himself there too.

‘We’ve been cleaning out the trenches,’ he said to Tom.

‘That all?’

‘I killed a man last night,’ he said. ‘I did it with my hands.’

It had been sometime past midnight. The CO had sent him and Bilks to check the wire at one of the trenches. ‘Watch out,’ he said. ‘The Germans have it covered.’ They sloshed their way through the mud, trying to grip the sandbags without pulling them out. Then they hauled themselves out, lay flat on the soaked ground. To get to the bit they had to check, they would have to cross ground that was quite perfectly lit by the moon. ‘Crawl – and go fast,’ said the CO. ‘Otherwise you will be sitting ducks.’

Bilks went first, dragging himself through the white bath of moonlight. In any other life, you would have thought it was beautiful, a fairy dousing of moon-magic. ‘Come on, sir!’ he hissed. ‘It’s safe. Come quickly!’ The shelling started again, somewhere over to the left.

Michael’s feet felt as if they were mired in mud. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘They’ll spot me.’

‘You have to, sir.’ Bilks put his hand out. ‘You must.’

Michael looked up. The shells were exploding, coming for him. ‘Let’s go back.’

‘No, sir, we need to look at it. Men’s safety depends on us.’

Michael nodded and began to pull himself forward. The light bathed his hands. Then they turned dark as he reached Bilks’ patch. ‘Good,’ said Bilks. ‘Good, sir. Now come on.’

Michael was pulling his hands through the mud when he heard Bilks cry out. He looked up. A huge German was looming above them. Bilks was on his feet, trying to wrestle the man to the ground. Michael gazed dizzily. The man had a great beard, dark eyes. He looked like an ogre from a children’s story. Bilks was trying to pull him down, but the man was too strong for him. ‘Help me, sir,’ he panted. Bilks had the man’s arms, but he was trying to get them free – and to his gun. ‘Help me.’

Michael thought he would be sick. He kept on staring. And then a voice in his head said,
You must! If you do not, he will kill you both.
He hauled himself to his feet, kicked the man’s legs, first left, then right, so that they fell under him, pushed the man into Bilks’s arms. The German was struggling, pulling against Bilks. ‘I can’t hold him,’ he gasped. ‘Help me.’

Michael stared.

‘Help me.’

The man said something in German. It sounded like ‘God is with me.’ Michael gazed at him. ‘Don’t look into his eyes,’ panted Bilks. ‘Don’t.’ But Michael could not help it. He gazed into the whites, the pools of the pupils.
Who are you?
he wanted to say. And at that moment, the man broke free of Bilks’s arms, brought his hand to his rifle. In that brief second, Michael knew.
He is coming to kill me. And I am here to kill him.
He seized his own bayonet and drove it into the man’s chest.

The German gazed at Michael, eyes wide. ‘God,’ he was saying. ‘God.’ He dropped to the floor, writhing, hand clutched to his chest.

‘Do it again,’ said Bilks.

‘We don’t need to.’

‘You can’t leave him like this. It is kinder to kill him. Come on, sir.’

Michael reached down and thrust again. The man’s eyes blurred, and blood came from his mouth.

‘Oh God,’ he said, over and over. ‘Oh God.’

‘That’s why we need grenades with us, sir,’ said Bilks on the way back. ‘They make things cleaner.’

‘I killed a man,’ he said to Tom. ‘I looked into his eyes and I killed him all the same.’

‘I need to know all of this,’ said Tom. ‘Let’s go for that drink.’

Michael looked at Tom’s face, furious with excitement, and then he pulled away. ‘I should return. You know, things to do. Watching the other side build a trench in plain sight while we stand in the dark and hold our fire. Standing about all day. Reading the field. Listening to the BEF laughing at us. Waiting to see when we might be sent to kill someone.’

‘Let me walk back with you.’

‘No – no. I want to think. Sorry.’ He could bear Tom’s eager face no longer. He walked away from him, shouting goodbye over his shoulder as he hurried off.

When he got back to the dugout, he threw himself on to his bed, lay there, heart beating hard. The men were still singing outside. One of the Germans on the other side had somehow managed to bring his French horn with him, and he sometimes took requests. Michael could hear Baker shouting for ‘Daisy, Daisy’. He knew he should go and stop it, but he could not. He lay there, frozen. He could not say it to Tom.
What have we done?

An hour or so later, the shelling began. He put his pillow over his head, but they still burst through.

Stoneythorpe, May 1915

‘Why can’t we
do
something?’ Celia knew it came out sounding weak, but she could not help herself. ‘Other people are doing things. We could offer the use of the house as a hospital, don’t you think?’

Verena turned her head on her pillow. ‘Don’t
talk
so, Celia.’

‘But don’t you think we could help? Other people are making convalescent homes, that sort of thing, to help the men.’

‘We can’t. Not Stoneythorpe. Your father would not have it.’

‘He’s not here to care.’

He was, though. He was everywhere around them. His portrait hung in the dining room and the parlour. The study was just as he had left it, his papers strewn over the table, his boots neatly at the side. His umbrella still sat in the stand by the door.

In fact, Celia thought, all of them were still there. Four months after her father had left to sign on as an alien and never come back. Nine after Michael and Tom had gone, seven after Emmeline, and she could still convince herself, if she just closed her eyes, that they were about to return, that Michael would run in shouting that he was back from Magdalene for a visit, her sister would stamp down the corridor, cross because the washing house had sent her dress back without the belt. Then Tom would come, saying that he had been away for a while in France on a trip to buy horses. And her father would walk through the door. ‘Back from Germany,’ he would call. ‘And the factories are up to excellent standards.’

She stood in the hall and listened to their voices, and happiness flooded her heart. Then she opened her eyes and saw nothing but the walls and the floor. ‘Emmeline!’ she shouted. ‘Michael!’ Her
voice echoed. No one heard. ‘What was all that shouting?’ Verena said, occasionally, when Celia came up with her tray. ‘It gives me such a headache. Were you practising poetry?’

‘Yes, Mother,’ she said. ‘Of course.’

The War Office had sent Verena a letter saying that Rudolf had been interned as a suspected spy. He would be taken to the coast. If his interrogation proceeded well, he would be allowed to write to them. They might also expect a visit from intelligence officers themselves.

Secretly, Celia longed for a visit from the interrogators, so that she could tell them they were wrong. But they never came. Instead, Verena received a letter from Rudolf saying he was living by the coast, was being well treated and the food was not bad, he was fortunate to be in a hut rather than a tent. When he was taken away, they had told him it was for his own good and he would be safer in the place they had for him – that might be true after all, he said. He had made friends with two German men also from the Black Forest. Onto those small details they had to hold tight.

Mr Lewis wrote occasionally. He had taken over the running of the factories and said he would look after them faithfully until Rudolf came home. Any money that Verena desired, she simply had to ask. But Verena had given up opening his letters – along with those from the Dowager Lady Redroad and all the rest, inviting her to lectures, sewing committees and Refugee Aid. Invitations were piling up for her now that Rudolf had gone. Celia told herself that they pitied Verena for being alone. She saw them stacked up by her mother’s bed, gathered them up and took them away.

‘I don’t think Papa would mind if we made the house into a hospital,’ she said. ‘Not now.’ She tried to smile. ‘They could walk around the gardens.’
What else are we doing with the gardens?
she did not say.
Ever since you shot the horses.
Even four months later, Celia still woke with nightmares, sitting bolt upright, the noise of the shooting in her head, the sound of the screaming, the telephone call from Mr Lewis, Verena’s tears. She wanted to cry
out, but she knew there was no point, for there was no one to hear or comfort her. She would lie back down, attempt to quiet her racing her heart, find sleep again.

Only a year ago, at Winterbourne, Celia was following the school timetable, the day filled with lessons and study. Her classmates, she supposed, were still working hard at French or history, longing for the half-hour free after lunch. Now, she watched the day slip through her fingers, rising late and then waiting around by the door for the postman, not giving up until past eleven, when it was far too late for him to call. She stared at their letter box.
I am waiting for you, Papa,
she willed to wherever he was.

There had been one more letter from Michael, short, saying that he liked France and the people had been pleased to see them. Jonathan Corrigan had sent three letters for Michael. The first one came in October, Celia had seen it and torn it open, hurried her eye down the page, hating all the questions Jonathan asked, his big flourishing handwriting. He was back at Cambridge, he said, missing Michael greatly. Professor Punter sent his regards and said that tutorials were thin stuff without him. Jonathan said he was taking proper notes in lectures, so that when Michael returned, he could read them and be just at the right standard to go straight into the third year.

Celia ripped it in half, hating Jonathan for being in Cambridge, detesting everything about him. How dare he, she thought, come to their house, then leave after one night, casting Verena and Michael down? She blushed with embarrassment when she thought of him seizing her hand, calling her a fräulein. She picked up the pieces of the letter and crumpled them in her hand. Then she felt guilty, for Michael liked him, she knew that, and perhaps he would want a letter from him.

Thompson found the next two letters from Jonathan first and sent them on. Celia felt relief when he told her, free of the choice of whether to tear them up or not. She wondered if Michael wrote back to Jonathan – for he did not write back to them.

‘No letters is a good thing,’ said Thompson. ‘Means they are all still – er – well.’

‘Not dead, that’s what you mean.’

‘Sorry, miss.’

Only Thompson, Mrs Rolls and Jennie were left. Most mornings Celia helped Jennie or Thompson with something in the house. She felt she had become rather good at dusting and polishing. But what she did was just touching the surface. The house was failing. The dust and dirt was mounting up, there were damp patches in the parlour and grime beneath the floorboards. Even with Thompson’s best efforts in the garden, the grass had grown long and filled with daisies, the weeds were wild in the flower beds, the hedges jagged and untidy. For a long time after the day with the horses, Celia couldn’t go to her dell; now, when she did, it made her sadder. The place had once been her refuge, cut off from the garden, hidden, but now it was as if all of Verena’s beautifully laid-out Versailles arrangements were turning into it, unkempt, full of secrets.

By now, Celia knew, they should have torn down the ivy on the outside of the house. It was growing thickly into the cracks of the walls, in between the bricks. They should have called in the men, as Rudolf did every spring, to pull it down. She told herself that it was because there were not enough men left to work, but that was not true. They had not even tried to look.

At lunchtime, she ate soup in the kitchen. She had begged Mrs Rolls to allow her to sit there rather than in the dining room, and finally she had given in. ‘I suppose there is no one to see,’ she said. After two weeks, Celia had begun asking if she could help with the cooking. ‘I think I should learn how to chop things,’ she said, watching Mrs Rolls demolish a carrot in a second. ‘It would be a very useful skill for if I have to go out in the world.’

‘What nonsense! Dear me. You will never cook for yourself, miss.’

‘I could
try
.’

‘The Kaiser would have to kill me first, young lady.’

Sometimes, after lunch, they would read over Smithson’s letters.

They had two from training and one he had written in the boat on his way to the Ottoman Empire with the 13ths. ‘Such a long way away,’ Mrs Rolls sighed. Then, in the afternoon, Celia walked slowly up the stairs to her mother.

Not long after Rudolf left, Verena took to her bed. She said she was ill with exhaustion and could not get up. In the mornings she slept, and in the afternoons Celia came to read to her. At first Verena had been unsure of what she wanted, and then decided on Jane Austen. So far, Celia had read
Pride and Prejudice
and
Sense and Sensibility,
and they were halfway through
Mansfield Park.
She stared at the pages, hating every minute of reading about Fanny and Miss Crawford and Edmund, for they had each other as a family when she did not. ‘Such a
happy
time,’ Verena said.

She refused to hear a single word of news, and once, when Celia tried to tell her about what
The Times
had said about the Battle of Champagne, she put her hands over her ears. She didn’t want any of the news that, on Christmas Eve, a German plane had dropped a bomb on a Dover man’s cabbage patch. Thompson said it was the first attack on Britain since the Spanish Armada but they never even got
close.
Then there was the first Zeppelin in January, a silver looming thing throwing bombs on Great Yarmouth. ‘They won’t come here,’ Thompson said. ‘They’re only attacking the ports.’ But still Celia made him unscrew her shelves of ornaments over her bed. If the house was bombed, they might fall on her head and kill her. She arranged her glass animals over the floor by the door instead, her favourite three coloured swans at the back.

In January and February, Verena would correct her reading, tell her to go faster or slower or add more emphasis. By April, she had stopped trying, and simply lay back against her cushions, eyes closed. Celia opened letters from Mr Lewis saying that the factories were doing well and to alert him if they desired money. She wanted to write back:
But people
do
things with money. We never do anything.

‘Please come for a walk, Mama,’ she said, nearly every afternoon. ‘Just into the gardens. A little air.’ Verena refused, shut her eyes, sent her away and said she would wait for Jennie with her
dinner tray. And yet Celia knew that she did walk. At night, when everybody was asleep, she heard Verena pacing up and down the corridor outside her room, her footsteps the only sound in the silent house.

That afternoon in mid May, everything was different. When Celia arrived, Verena was holding a letter. She waved it across the mountain of bedclothes. ‘It is from your father,’ she said.

Celia jumped at it. ‘Show me!’

Verena shook her head. ‘He says they have decided he is no longer so dangerous. He has been transferred to Crystal Palace, where visitors are allowed. He says that we might go and visit him this weekend.’ She dropped the letter on the eiderdown. Celia itched to pick it up. ‘I don’t know, Celia. It would be very exhausting to go to London.’

‘You have to! Mama, you must!’ Celia stamped her foot, knowing it was childish. ‘I will go if you do not.’ She rushed to the bed and seized her mother’s arm. ‘Get up now! We have to go!’

Three days later, they were on the train to London, after hiring a cab from the next village to take them to the station. Verena blushed under her hat, told Celia she felt humiliated by travelling so. On the train, she said she was nervous, and conjured
Mansfield Park
from her bag. Celia began reading about Fanny’s choice of chains on which to wear her cross, and her dilemma lasted all the way to London, and then in the cab south to Crystal Palace. Celia stared at the page, unable to bear looking at her mother’s eyes, for they were full of fear. Verena had stared at the lady ticket collectors and clerks at Waterloo station, baffled.

They clambered down at the gates and waited in the queue of ladies in shabbier coats and hats than theirs. The sun flashed off the glass front. Sixty-four years ago, Celia thought, ladies had lined up here to see things from all over the Empire. Miss Lowen said her mother had been as a schoolgirl and saw Nelson’s ship
Victory
made out of butter. Celia thought of herself, seeing the English village play with Rudolf and Tom. Now, inside one of
those windows, Rudolf was waiting for them. ‘So many people.’ For almost half a year, Celia realised, Verena had seen no one but her and the servants.

Eventually they were ushered into a huge hall. Celia felt her mother clutching her hand. Men were sitting at tables in rows, as if they were waiting for a lesson. ‘There he is!’ said Celia. She hurried forward. Rudolf was looking up at the swell of people, wearing a black suit she did not recognise. ‘Papa!’ she cried, throwing herself in front of him.

He stood up slowly and reached over to her. She felt his arms around her. Verena came up behind her. ‘Husband,’ she said, moving jerkily. ‘We’ve missed you.’

He stared at them both, tears brimming in his eyes. ‘Me too.’ He embraced Verena. ‘But you are here now.’

‘Has it been very terrible?’ Celia asked. His eyes were sunken, with what seemed like hundreds more wrinkles criss-crossing his face. He was much thinner, older.

He smiled, shook his head. ‘Not so very bad. The first place was a little like school. And this is much better.’ He gestured around. ‘Look at how many there are here.’

‘Every waiter in London, I imagine,’ Verena sniffed. ‘Surely there is no one of your class here. I
told
you. If you had listened to me, you would still be at Stoneythorpe.’

‘Did they treat you well at that other place?’ Celia asked.

Rudolf shook his head, signalling not to speak of it. ‘Of course. But tell me. How is Stoneythorpe? How is my garden?’

‘Very well, Papa,’ said Celia, guiltily. ‘We are looking after it. Thompson is. We don’t have any gardeners now.’ At the table next to them, the woman – surely the wife – was crying. The husband reached his hand across, trying to console her, but she shook her head, thrust her handkerchief to her face.

‘Any word from Emmeline?’

‘Not much, Papa.’

Verena shrugged. ‘She says she is happy.’

‘And Michael?’

‘He says he is content too. Doing a lot of digging.’

‘And how is Tom?’

Verena stiffened. ‘I hardly know, husband.’