Celandine (2 page)

And from here onwards she was travelling illegally. There was no turnstile at Withney Halt where she intended to get off, and once there she would be safe from ticket collectors, but could she last that far without being caught? She simply had to trust to luck that the inspector didn’t make his rounds before then.

When she had finished her sandwich, she washed her hands and looked at her reflection in the mottled oblong mirror above the sink. Her hair always came as a surprise to her. The frizzy mane didn’t match her dark solemn eyes somehow – didn’t even match her eyebrows. It was like some frightful wig that had been put on her head for a joke. She hated it. She hated brushing it and brushing it, because it never did the slightest good. It wouldn’t plait properly, wouldn’t go up into a bun, wouldn’t do
anything
but remain as it was, all springy and horrid. Well, she thought darkly, she had plans – though they would have to wait a little longer.

The door handle was rattled again and a loud female voice outside said, ‘Come along! Come along!’

Celandine flushed the lavatory, briefly turned the tap on and off, and unlocked the door. A large woman in a nurse’s uniform was waiting in the corridor, and it was a struggle to get past the bulky figure. Celandine caught the odour of hospitals and antiseptic on the woman’s rustling blue cape as she squeezed by. There was something comforting about the smell of
antiseptic.
It reminded her of the time she had spent in the school sanatorium, finding there a haven of tranquillity, a delicious respite from the misery of school life.

Celandine struggled along the corridor towards the rear of the train, glancing into each compartment as she passed, praying that she wouldn’t meet the ticket inspector. Her stomach felt tight now and she wished she had not eaten the bread and jam.

She slid back the door of the last compartment, and nearly turned and walked straight back out again. A man in khaki uniform was huddled, alone, in the far corner, next to the window. He had an army blanket slung loosely round his shoulders, and a stick resting across his knees. But the stick was a white stick and, most terribly, the entire top of the man’s head was bandaged – covering his eyes so that he couldn’t see. He could still hear, that was apparent, for the swaddled head turned in her direction as she stood at the doorway.

It seemed rude, somehow, to leave. But it also seemed rude to stay. Celandine felt as though she were intruding. The man turned away. Celandine sat down on the opposite carriage seat, as near as possible to the door, and tried not to stare. The soldier’s bandaged head was leaning against the window. He casually drew a packet of cigarettes from his tunic pocket and tapped one out.

Celandine hated the smell of cigarette smoke, but would not say so of course. The soldier calmly searched his pockets, for matches presumably, and
once
again Celandine had to force herself not to stare. It was ill-mannered, surely, to stare at someone who couldn’t stare back. Strange, though, how the man turned his bandaged eyes in the direction of his hands as they moved from pocket to pocket, as if he was still able to see what he was doing. Eventually he found what he was searching for – a box of lucifers, as she had guessed – and settled back, apparently relaxed, as he tried to strike a light on the side of the box.

‘Would you like me to do that for you?’ she said. The soldier was struggling with his box of matches, having succeeded so far only in burning his fingertips and singeing the cigarette halfway along its length. Celandine moved along the seat a little, wondering if he would think it impertinent of her to offer help. To address a strange man, alone in a railway compartment, and to offer to light his cigarette! What would Miss Craven say if she ever got to hear of it? Well, it didn’t matter what Miss Craven would say, any more – or what anyone else would say, or think. It just didn’t matter. The man was injured, horribly wounded by the look of it, and in need of help. She moved still closer, reaching out towards him, but then stopped herself. The soldier’s hands were shaking. He had lowered the matchbox into his lap and his hands were shaking like anything. His poor bandaged head dropped forward and he sat, desolate, the ruined cigarette hanging from his lips. The coarse army blanket rose and fell as the man’s shoulders began to quake. He was crying. Underneath the bandages he was crying, though no tears were visible – either because the bandages would
soak
them all up, or because there were no eyes beneath those bandages for tears to flow from.

‘Jesus!’ His voice was a cracked whisper, bubbling with spit. He flung the little box of lucifers across the compartment and brought his shaking hands up to his face, dashing the blackened cigarette away in order to wipe his mouth and nose on his fingertips. His white stick fell to the floor. Celandine could see, suddenly, that he was just a boy. He was a wounded soldier, foreign to her, unshaven, blasphemous and frightening, but just a boy. Not much older than Freddie.

She quietly collected up the lucifers that had spilled over the opposite seat and put them back into their cheap matchwood box, saying nothing, whilst the soldier gradually gulped back his emotion to become calmer once more. Then she leaned over and took a cigarette from the pack beside him. She had never touched a cigarette before, and it felt strange – a smooth and delicate thing. How ever did they make them? Celandine looked at it for a moment, curious, then put it in her mouth – an act that made her hands shake almost as badly as the soldier’s had. She struck a lucifer on the rough side of the box, as she had seen the man do, and clumsily lit the end of the cigarette. It tasted foul, absolutely foul, and she gagged slightly as she blew out the match. But she managed to say ‘Here you are’, without coughing, and gently put the cigarette between the soldier’s fingers. He flinched at her touch, not realizing at first what she was doing. His shoulders heaved and it seemed that he would cry
again,
but then he relaxed, gave a long sigh and brought the cigarette up to his lips. He took a deep draw on it and let out a thin stream of smoke. Celandine wrinkled her nose and turned her head away.

‘What’s your name?’ The soldier’s words were so faint that she could hardly hear them.

‘Celandine.’ She paused for a moment. ‘What’s yours?’

‘Tommy.’ Again the word was barely a whisper, as though the effort of speaking was almost too much for him. Then the door slid open and the big woman in the nurse’s uniform came in. She looked at Celandine in surprise and said loudly, ‘How are you feeling now?’

‘Very well, thank—’ Celandine began to say, and then realized that of course the nurse was talking to the soldier.

Tommy said nothing, but merely blew out another stream of smoke and nodded his head. The nurse seemed to accept this as a reply. ‘Good man!’ she shouted, still looking at Celandine, and she sat down heavily next to the soldier, causing the upholstery springs to squeak in alarm. ‘Soon be there now! Shouldn’t be smoking though – you know that, don’t you? I’ve told you about that, haven’t I?’ The nurse leaned forward, bringing the faint smell of antiseptic with her, and her large shiny face seemed to loom across the carriage like a huge piece of waxed fruit. She reached over, took the white stick from Celandine’s grasp and sank back comfortably in her seat without another word. Celandine felt awkward
and
tried to avoid the nurse’s gaze. She sat in silence, regarding her sore feet and thinking about Tommy, and Freddie. She wondered why any Women of Britain would ever say ‘Go’ if this was what their sons were going to.

The compartment door rumbled back with a bang, and there was the ticket inspector. Celandine felt her stomach jump, and she momentarily clutched at the material of her skirt, just for something to hold on to.

The grey-haired inspector, horribly official-looking in his blue serge uniform and peaked cap, glanced at her briefly, but then noticed the soldier huddled in the far corner. ‘Dear, oh dear,’ he said. ‘Copped a packet then, lad? You look as though you’ve been in the wars
good
and proper. Talk about the walking wounded.’ The soldier huddled deeper into his blanket and didn’t answer. Celandine offered her useless ticket. Her hand shook as though she were holding it out for a beating.

‘He’s in my charge, Inspector,’ bellowed the big nurse. ‘I’m escorting him to Staplegrove Hospital. I have his ticket here, with mine.’ She reached into the large leather bag on her lap and drew out her tickets. The inspector took them, and punched them with his machine, but it was clear that he was more interested in the soldier than in tickets. ‘Where’d you get that little lot then, son?’ he persisted.

‘He’s not well enough to talk, I’m afraid,’ said the nurse.

‘Blimey,’ said the inspector, taking Celandine’s
ticket,
but barely glancing at it before punching it. ‘Got your tongue as well, did they? Well, good luck to you.’ He nodded to the nurse and stepped back into the corridor, closing the sliding door behind him with a smart click. The train gave a sideways lurch and Celandine swallowed. She thought for a dreadful moment that she might be sick.

But the crisis had passed. The nurse sat staring at Celandine and absently tapped her fingernails on the white stick . . .
tap-tap . . . tap-tap
 . . . an irritating echo to the rhythm of the wheels.

The Somerset countryside, cheerful now on this sunny spring evening, passed by the grimy window until the train eventually began to slow down on its approach to Withney Halt. Celandine got up. She opened the compartment door and turned to pick up her bag. The soldier raised his head at the sound of the sliding door, listening to the movement in the compartment.

‘You going?’ he whispered.

‘Yes,’ said Celandine. ‘I get off here. Goodbye, Tommy. And good luck.’ As she pulled the door closed behind her, she heard the nurse say, ‘Well! You’re a dark horse, I must say. Do you
know
that extraordinary-looking girl?’

The steam-engine smell of oil and cinders hung upon the still country air long after the train had gone. Celandine stood on the little greystone platform of Withney Halt and looked out over the Somerset Levels – the lush patchwork of flat fields and withy beds that
stretched
to the far wooded hills. The marshy land was criss-crossed with rhynes and irrigation ditches, and the familiar figures of pollarded willow trees stood, dipping their heads towards the still waters.

Celandine squinted into the last rays of the sun, and plotted an imaginary course across the darkening wetlands. She could just see part of the roofline of Mill Farm, her home, nestling beneath the shadow of Howard’s Hill.

The rapidly darkening countryside felt lonely and deserted, and so quiet that, when a heron suddenly rose from a nearby ditch with a horrible
kraaark
and a loud splashing of wings, Celandine thought her heart would stop. But she doggedly followed the muddy paths trodden by the labourers and withy-cutters, dragging her monstrously heavy bag, and told herself that this was Somerset and not France, and that at least she wasn’t being shot at. Better, too, than going by the road, where she was sure to meet someone who knew her, or her father.

The air had grown cold by the time she finally reached the scrubby paddock that stood behind the farm stables, and yet her journey had been such hard going that her muslin blouse was sticking to her back and shoulders. She cautiously leaned against the corner post of the paddock fence and looked at the dark huddle of buildings that made up Mill Farm. Faint chinks of light escaped from beneath the eaves of the stables. There would be harnesses yet to clean, and tack to mend, water to be drawn, feed and bedding to be provided for the teams, and a host of
other
things to be done before the stable hands could safely leave their charges for the night and go to their own rest.

The lower windows of the farmhouse itself were by now ablaze with light, and one upper window also – her mother’s room. Downstairs her father would be sitting at the kitchen table, discussing the day’s business over a knuckle of ham with her elder brother, Thos, and coughing his dry persistent cough – explaining why this must be done and why that must not. And Thos would be listening, impatient, scratching the back of his neck, trying to keep his temper and then, when he got the chance, explaining why this must
not
be done and why that must. The two lurchers, Cribb and Jude, would be lying at the foot of the stairs, sullenly waiting upon the hour when they would be put out for the night to shelter beneath the open barn and do their duty with regard to rats and foxes and other intruders. Cook would be in her room, with her half glass of milk stout, getting ready to turn in. How familiar it all was.

And there would be a bed for her there, thought Celandine, and food on the table if she chose to enter, but there would be no welcome. There would be only angry words from her father, bitter tears from her mother, and no gesture of comfort from Thos. A bed for the night, a meal, and then back they would send her – back to school, where they were paying good money for all her nonsense to be knocked out of her.

Celandine felt chilly now, conscious too of the open ground she had yet to cross and how her
light-coloured
blouse might easily be visible to anyone who happened to step outside and look about them. She undid the buckle of her canvas bag and hauled out her dark mackintosh. She also took out the envelope that she had been carrying.

It didn’t take long to find a suitable stone. Celandine placed the envelope on the top of the paddock corner post and weighed it down with the stone. Now the wind wouldn’t blow it away. It wouldn’t be long before someone found the letter and delivered it to the farmhouse. Turning her collar against the cool night air, and her back against the lights of Mill Farm, Celandine picked up her bag once more and began the long slow climb that took her up Howard’s Hill.

There had been a lot of rain recently, and so the stream that trickled down the gully on the hillside was quite lively. The stillness of the night air made the bubbling sound of the water seem unnaturally loud, and Celandine became worried that her signal might not be heard – or even recognized. Months it had been, since she was last here. Would they even remember her? She crept along the rising bank of the gully until she was as close as she could get to the thick mass of brambles that bounded the edge of the high woodland. Resting her bag on the grass she cupped her hands, put her thumbs together, and blew into the gap between her bent knuckles. She was breathless from the climb, and also out of practice, so it took two or three attempts to get it right – but eventually she managed to produce a sound that was supposed to be
that
of a hooting owl. Was it loud enough? Could anyone hear her? She tried again a few times and looked towards the dark jumble of briars expectantly, but nothing happened. Celandine began to panic. What would she do? To go back was quite impossible.