Later that night William walked amongst what was left of his division. The day had cost the British Army nineteen thousand dead and fifty-seven thousand casualties - all William knew was that they were going to have to do it all again tomorrow.
They did do it again, and again, and again. They did it all through July and August, and by September William and Josiah, like thousands of other men, had become numb and accepting.
But now it was the first week of September, and the morning was dry after days of heavy rain which had turned the trenches to mud. William’s lieutenant was counting down before they went over the top, and as he listened one of his hands was on his gun and the other on a letter in his pocket which he had received from Daisy a few days before. It was a little bit of sanity amid all the madness.
‘Three, two, one. Over, lads! Over!’
William knew Kirby would be following behind him as he climbed out of the trench. He had given up telling the valet to stay put and keep his head down because the man always appeared at his shoulder a few seconds later. By rights Kirby should be serving some doddery old master he had grown old with while enjoying the mellow fruits of his years of service, not existing minute to minute in this hell-hole. But as far as Kirby was concerned a valet’s rightful place was beside his master at all times, be it in the land of plenty or the land of want.
A shell exploded to the left of William, blowing him right off his feet, but he knew when he got up again he still had two arms and two legs, which was more than could be said for some of the poor blighters who had been nearer to the deafening blast.
The screams and cries and pounding noise of the artillery always produced a kind of whirling vacuum in his head; he could usually remember very little of the action afterwards. Anything specific, that was.
The nights were different. The men composed songs once darkness fell, their tunes usually adapted from music-hall hits to relieve the tedium of life in the trenches. The words were usually self-deprecatory and often obscene, but William thought no other army had ever gone to war proclaiming its own incompetence and reluctance to fight like this one, and no army had ever fought better.
There were rolls of barbed wire in front of him. It caught at his clothes with cruel barbs, tearing at his skin. There were men to either side of him and behind, Germans in front, and the barrage indiscriminately blasted away with no respect for friend or foe. Once free from the wire he continued to move, and when another shell burst just behind him, the force of the explosion blasting William and several other men into a trench, he didn’t realise for a moment or two that he was injured. It was only when he tried to get up that he realised one of his legs was shattered, bone sticking out at all angles, and that his arm on the same side was hanging useless. He lay panting for a second before turning to the other men, intending to tell them to carry on, but they had done all the fighting they were ever going to do.
How long he sat there surrounded by dead bodies he didn’t know. He made no effort to staunch the blood from his wounds but remembered wondering why he felt no pain, and then, at the same moment it hit with white-hot savagery, Kirby flung himself down into the trench beside him.
‘You’re hurt, sir.’
It wasn’t like Kirby to make unnecessary remarks, William thought dazedly, managing to grind out, ‘So it would seem,’ through teeth clenched in agony.
‘If you will allow me, sir.’ Josiah had unceremoniously stripped the shirt off one of the dead men which he now tore into several strips before getting to work on William’s leg. The rough bandaging did the trick and stopped the worst of the flow of blood, but William’s clothes were already soaked a deep red and there was a pool beneath his injured leg.
‘We have to get you back to the medics, sir.’
William watched as Josiah cautiously raised his head above the parapet only to duck down swiftly as machine-gun fire whizzed by. ‘L . . . later.’ Every little bit of William was concentrated on holding on to consciousness. ‘Let our men advance first. We . . . we’re too close to the . . . enemy line. They’ll pick . . . pick us off like rabbits.’
‘You haven’t got time for later, sir.’
‘Be that as it may, there . . . is no point in both of us . . . dying.’ The pain was unbearable now, excruciating. It brought back memories of von Spee’s thugs and he found himself thinking, as he glanced through pain-dazed eyes at his leg, All that work the surgeons did and this is how I reward them. Monsieur Richer would have my guts for garters if he could see how I’d treated his artistry. He turned his head to look at his arm which was now hurting every bit as much as his leg.
‘Dislocated, I think, sir, badly.’ Josiah had noticed the direction of his master’s gaze. ‘Or it could be broken. It isn’t bleeding too much anyway.’ He didn’t mention the wound towards the back of the younger man’s head where it looked as though he had been all but scalped in part. ‘And I’m sorry, sir, but I really am going to have to get you back to base.’
The valet’s tone was such that he could have been an adult addressing a recalcitrant child who was insisting on remaining at a party too long. William would have smiled if he had been able. Daisy would have appreciated the humour. He glanced at his shattered leg. Or maybe she wouldn’t.
‘We can get back to where there’s assistance if we crawl, sir. All you have to do is to get over the top and I can pull you.’
‘Not . . . not with the snipers. You’ll be a sitting duck.’
‘Snipers or no snipers we have to try, Master William.’
This was the Kirby of his childhood, the stern but caring disciplinarian who in many ways had been more of a father to him than his own. It came to William with a real shock of surprise that Kirby had been an anchor to the small confused boy he had been, and furthermore that he felt some affection for the dour individual. William knew he wouldn’t make it if they waited but it seemed crazy two lives being lost in what he saw as a suicide mission. ‘We’ll wait, Kirby. I’ll tell you when--’
And then Kirby took the decision out of his hands, grabbing him by the collar as he said, ‘Forgive me for the liberty, sir,’ and hoisting him upwards with a strength William would not have believed him capable of.
He must have passed out with the pain because the next thing he was aware of was being dragged through mud on his back, and then an English voice yelling through the din, ‘Get down, you fool! What do you think you’re doing - providing target practice for Jerry?’
‘I’ve a badly injured officer here, I need help.’
‘We all need help, mate. Another dozen or so divisions’d be nice.’
Again William fainted but help must have been forthcoming because when he next surfaced he was on a canvas stretcher which two soldiers were dragging as they crawled along, and Kirby’s voice was behind him, saying, ‘Not long now, Master William.’ There was something very comforting about becoming Master William again. It spoke of toasted muffins thick with raspberry jam in the nursery, of walks with his nurse and one of the footmen when the worst that could happen was that he fell over and got his clothes dirty, of playing war with his lead soldiers in front of the nursery fire . . . Oh, Daisy, Daisy. This was no game.
He felt a weight on his chest as the shell hit but no surprise. He had been expecting it.
It had been a strange sort of day. Daisy had awoken early in the morning after a nightmare which had left her sweating and shaking, and long before dawn had broken she had been downstairs in the kitchen, drinking tea and telling herself the feeling of foreboding she couldn’t shake off was nothing more than the residue of the dream.
She had got to work very early, and when by nine o’clock Mr Newton still hadn’t arrived she was beginning to get worried. Then she’d received a message to say his widowed sister had collapsed the night before and he had had to go to Hartlepool. He expected to return the next day and could she hold the fort until then? Due to his absence the day had been even more hectic than usual, and by the time she got home that evening all she wanted was a hot bath, a couple of aspirin for the headache which had been with her since the nightmare had woken her, and an early night.
Daisy stoked up the kitchen range and put the kettle on, flopping down on one of the hard-backed chairs while she waited for it to boil. She normally scurried about doing this and that in the evenings, having found it was the best defence against brooding about how quiet the house was with Tommy gone, but tonight she felt too tired. And then there was a knock at the front door. She opened it to find Kitty on the doorstep, beside herself with worry. Alf had had his call-up papers and had already left for the front.
‘His mam’s going up the wall an’ all.’ Once Daisy had got Kitty established at the kitchen table, a strong cup of tea at her elbow and a plate of biscuits in front of her, the other girl calmed down a little. ‘But she can always take her mind off things with the bairns, that’s why I left them with her.’
Daisy nodded. Kitty was a good mother and loved her children, but not the way she loved Alf. He was her reason for living.
‘He’ll be all right, lass.’ Worthless words of comfort and they both knew it, but there was nothing else to say. You had to believe and pray for the best, it was the only way to cope. ‘And this war can’t go on for ever.’
Kitty inclined her head, settling back in her chair as she said, ‘I don’t mind the shortages of this and that, and the petrol rationing and meatless days don’t affect us being as we don’t go nowhere and never ate much meat anyway, but the men and the lads that’ve been called up . . . I don’t know a family that hasn’t lost someone, Daisy, and with this bright idea of the powers-that-be of keeping brothers and whole groups from one place in the same regiments, some folk are losing all their family in one go. You can’t wonder some women are going doo-lally.’
Kitty munched a biscuit and they both sipped their tea, Daisy reflecting that Tommy and the rest of the lads were in that very position. Of course it was good for soldiers’ morale to have friends and family with them, but it did prove devastating when the worst happened. She felt she’d played a part in bringing Phil, Jimmy and Joe up, she’d seen so much of them - especially poor little Joe - and she had to admit Tommy’s three pals meant more to her than George, Art, Ron and Peter’s bairns, although she’d never have said so to her family.
Kitty must have realised her words were less than tactful because now she said, ‘I’m sorry, lass, I do go on, don’t I? Take no notice of me. You didn’t mind me coming, did you?’
‘Mind? Don’t be daft. Our shoulders have always been available for each other to cry on, haven’t they?’ It was true too. Although they didn’t meet often these days, when they did they were as firm friends as ever. Daisy had been the first person Kitty had come to when she’d heard her mam and da had passed away in the Newcastle workhouse a few years ago. Kitty hadn’t known Gladys and Harold had ended up there, but nevertheless had been consumed with guilt at the manner of her parents’ passing, insisting she should have prevented it somehow, even if it had meant their coming to live with her.
Daisy had privately thought it was just as well her friend had not known in that case, because ten to one Gladys would have found some way to put a spoke in Kitty’s marriage. But she had kept that reflection to herself, instead spending hours talking Kitty through her guilt and remorse until the other woman had finally come to see her sense of guilt was completely unfounded.
Kitty spent another half-an-hour with Daisy before rising, drawing her coat from the back of the chair as she said, ‘I’d better be making tracks, lass. The bairns’ll be running Alf’s mam ragged. She can’t say no to any of them and the little monkeys know it.’
‘I’ll walk with you to the tram stop.’
Daisy actually had her hand on the door when the knock came from outside, making both women jump. She raised her eyebrows at Kitty as she opened it, and then she was staring at the young lad holding out the black-rimmed telegram. ‘Miss Appleby?’
She couldn’t answer him. It was Kitty who said, ‘Yes, she’s Miss Appleby,’ and reached out and took the telegram.
Fear assailed Daisy then such as she had never felt before. It caused her to open her mouth and pull in a great draught of air to combat the feeling she was drowning, but she turned and walked with Kitty back to the kitchen, sitting down at the table and then holding out her hand for the telegram. Kitty, her face drained of colour, handed it to her without a word.
‘Lass?’ Kitty’s voice was tentative as she watched Daisy’s eyes scan the paper.