Easterleigh Hall at War (7 page)

Jack stuck to the verge as the ammunition carts rumbled onwards, to the station probably, or towards Ypres perhaps? The Front was so extended that every conceivable form of transport was used. The lorries with red crosses were as busy as ever, heading either to the Front or away towards Rouen and the base hospital, or Le Touquet, or even to the ships, if someone was lucky enough to have a wound that would get them back to Blighty. Taxis and buses had been called into service too and all around, carried on the wind, was the crump and muted roar of artillery, the stutter of machine guns. Often there was the crack of a solitary sniper. With every step nearer the Front the noise would increase, and added to it would be the sound of the men, and the blast of hand bombs.

He was striding on mud-splattered cobbles as he entered the village, splashing through swathes of surface water, even though it had stopped raining by nine hundred hours or thereabouts. Bloody hell, what about some warmth, and sun? But it was only March. Nuns were scurrying children along the edge of the road towards the church spire. Were they off for Mass? He didn't know and didn't care because God was a lot of baloney, but if it kept the poor buggers happy, so be it. It was their country being wrecked and how did one cope with that? He didn't dwell. Why would he when it dragged him down?

Cars and lorries revved. A horse neighed as its driver sat astride and urged it forward with its cartload of shells. Now he could see the church ahead, and the long line of children entering through its massive doors, being shepherded by the nuns. There was a market set up in the square, with people buying, talking, bartering. It was comforting, in a way, that life went on within the sound of warfare. It meant that one day sanity could prevail because some people would remember the sense of normal life. He couldn't, not any more.

He headed straight for the turning Aub had mentioned. It was shaded here and the cold penetrated deeper. He slowed, looking left and right, and there it was. Le Petit Chat. He stopped, feeling in his pocket for the package. Damn Evie. He squared his shoulders and took a deep breath, and then another. Damn Grace. Damn her to hell for what she had done.

Inside Grace Manton sat at the back of the café, near the swing doors leading to the kitchen. An elderly waiter in a long white apron glided past, his tray held high on the tips of his fingers and thumb. How on earth had he retained such elegance? Didn't his back ache, his feet throb, or was he a better man than her? Never had her feet been as swollen, her back as sore, her knees so agonising. She sat back, enjoying this moment of rest. The
estaminets
were the lifesavers of the nurses and VADs, away from the noise and smell of the hospitals, and the coffee was just heaven, usually. Le Petit Chat didn't disappoint and she'd already ordered one, and a beer for Jack. Both would be served on his arrival.

The waiter had told her when she arrived two weeks ago that the proprietor had bought many barrels from the cellar Rogiers' for les Anglais before Christmas, as the war would not end for many months. She had replied, ‘If there is money to be made and throats to slake, then one must.' As she had spoken in French she was now his best friend.

Grace pulled her coat belt tight. There was no need to make her VAD status obvious, though there were usually no bearers of tales here. Usually being the operative word, for some of the new officers could be stuffy about enlisted men breaching their sanctum. At the front of the café officers cluttered up the tables, but today they all had that unmistakable look and pallor of old hands. At the back were several enlisted men, some with VADs, some with officer friends they had known at home.

The doorbell tinkled. She looked up but it wasn't Jack, only Major Sylvester, an American surgeon who had come across the Atlantic on his own initiative to work at the camp hospital. He was introducing them to the wonders of blood transfusions, which would save many lives, God bless his good heart. He saw her, and waved, weaving his way between the tables towards her. ‘Gracie, all alone?'

Behind him the door opened again. It was him, Jack. She half rose. Major Sylvester hesitated, turned. ‘I see you're not. Later, perhaps?'

Jack had stopped, and was closing the door carefully, searching the room. He saw her immediately, and Major Sylvester. The colour rushed to his drawn face, his poor tired, thin, drawn face, and he swung round on his heel, reaching out for the door. ‘Jack Forbes, don't you dare.' Her shout silenced the clatter and murmur of the room. Major Sylvester laughed quietly. ‘I'll leave you to your prey. Be gentle with him, he looks in need of tender care.' He tipped his cap and sauntered in that long-legged way of the Americans over to a distant table.

Grace saw Jack hesitating, his hand gripping the door handle, then it was as though he gave up. He strode towards her, weaving through the tables, his head down, his weight forward as though he was approaching the enemy. Surely that's not how he thought of her? Had she been wrong all this time? She stood tall, refusing to doubt.

He reached her, and half bowed. She sat. He looked anywhere but at her. ‘Oh do sit down,' she snapped, as disappointment drained courtesy from her.

He did. She said, drawing off her gloves, ‘I have ordered a beer for you, and a coffee for me.'

‘Thank you, Miss Manton.' He laid his cap on the table and groped in his pocket. Miss Manton? Had he really forgotten those last looks they had exchanged before he embarked? Yet again, as she did every evening before she gave in to exhaustion, she berated herself for all her mistakes.

He stopped fiddling in his pocket at last, and drew out the package that Evie had spoken of in her letter. A letter which arrived in the new year, when she was at the base hospital in Rouen. Dearest Evie, she knew how much she loved Jack, she had always known and was determined that somehow the situation must be resolved. ‘God, I was such a fool.'

She didn't realise she had spoken aloud until Jack looked up, startled and said, ‘You've never been a fool.'

He looked down again immediately, studying the package as though it was something curious he had never seen before. It was two inches by three, and battered. The ribbon had once been silver from the look of it, and now it was dirty, but stained and precious because it had been with this young man since Christmas. At that, Grace paused. Yes, young man. He was twenty-four, she thirty-two, no wonder he had forgotten. The waiter glided to their table with coffee and a beer.

He placed the coffee before her, reverentially, and the beer before Jack. ‘
Il n'y a pas de frais
,' he said. Jack replied, in French. ‘Oh no, of course we must pay.'

Grace said at the same time, ‘You must make a living.' The waiter nodded, smiling. ‘For those who speak our language, and protect our families, we insist, especially for those who speak as one. War is a time for lovers, you must never forget this, for time is short,' he told them.

He swept away. Grace and Jack stared at the package, neither speaking. At last Jack pushed it across the table. ‘From Evie, Miss Manton, and I need to tell you . . .'

‘Yes?' She knew she was too eager.

‘That the French you taught her to help her career as a cook and hotelier has been of value to me here, because of course she passed on the lessons.' He took a deep draught of beer, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth.

‘Of course,' she said. ‘That's our Evie.' How formal they both were, she thought, her heart breaking. She untied the ribbon of the battered package. Inside was a squashed white cardboard box. She removed the dried and cracked greaseproof-paper package within it. The waiter had moved nearer to their table, watching, a benign smile on his face. She removed one layer, then another, and another until she reached a light grease-stained package tied again with ribbon. It was shapeless, it felt like – beads? Sand? What on earth was it? Evie had refused to say. She undid the knot, opened it and there was yet more greaseproof paper. This she opened, and there lay a piece of Christmas cake, or rather, a mass of crumbs.

Jack flung himself back in his chair. The waiter, who had perhaps expected to see a ring, just shook his head and muttered, ‘
Les Anglais?
' He shrugged, and banged back the swing doors as he escaped to the kitchen.

Jack spluttered, ‘Bloody Evie, all this way for crumbs? What d'you think of that then, Grace?' He laughed, reached forward, pinched up some crumbs and held them towards her mouth, she opened her lips, his fingers touched her tongue. It was as though electricity passed through her. At that moment he snatched his hand away. ‘God. Sorry.'

He shook his fingers free of the crumbs and seized his beer, finishing it, reaching for his cap, but Grace clutched his hand, holding it vice-like to the table. ‘Oh no you don't, Jack Forbes. You damn well don't.'

He tried to pull away. She held on. ‘Do you think I'm about to let you go? I've worked with men out of their minds and wrestled them back on to their stretcher, I've removed crawling, bloated, greedy maggots from wounds, bleached my hands a million times a day so I carry no infection from one to another. I've cut off clothes until I have corns on my hands from the scissors. You, Jack Forbes, are a lightweight. I have muscles where I didn't know I had places, my hands are so rough, tough and gnarled I have the grip of a prizefighter. So you will listen.'

The touch of his fingers on her tongue had told her that her love for him was all-consuming. It always had been, but she had made a mistake and had withdrawn. She had been at the Froggett house, comforting his family on the day of Timmie's death, and told him she would be there whenever she was needed, and she had failed him. Today could be the last day, for one of them. Even here in the
estaminet
she could hear the guns.

She said, ‘I might have been Evie's first employer but we all became friends after you saved Edward from the Lea End mob, you and Timmie. Is that right?'

She still gripped his hand but he was no longer fighting her. Instead he was staring at his empty glass. Well, he could damn well wait if he was after another. She'd spent too many weeks rehearsing what she would say when he arrived with the package to waste time ordering another beer.

Jack nodded. ‘Aye, lass.' He still looked at the glass.

‘Do you remember that cart ride out to Froggett's farm to secure the three houses, two for Edward and me to use as emergency and retirement homes for the miners, and one for you? You almost had the money, but not quite. We were able to thank you for Edward's life by loaning your family the balance. It meant you could pursue your union work without fear of eviction from your miner's house. Do you remember? Do you? What about when I tied the gate behind us to stop Auberon getting there first?'

Jack nodded, and this time he looked full into her face. ‘Aye, of course I remember, Miss Manton. You were good to us when our lad died, too.'

‘You've just called me lass, and now it's Miss Manton, but it was Grace then. We were friends.'

Jack's face was bitter now. ‘Aye, and I helped you repair your houses once we had them, as well as our own, and dug your garden, and planted your bloody potatoes with you, and you held me when I cried for Timmie. I loved you, lass. I loved you and I thought you felt something for me, and then the next day when I came to get me hands grubby for you, you said you could manage “perfectly well, thank you”, in a real posh voice, and that you didn't need me. I was to go about my business and get on with my life. So I got on with it. I married, I have Roger's son who is a little belter and who I must protect, as I couldn't Timmie.'

The waiter brought another beer, removing the empty froth-smeared glass, tutting at the untouched coffee in Grace's cup. ‘For you, madame, I will produce a further coffee.'

‘This time, we pay,' they said together, their eyes fixed on one another, not on the waiter. Grace loved Jack's eyes, so brown and dark, so like Evie's, and his almost black hair, so like his da's and Timmie's. Evie's hair was a riot of chestnut curls like that of her mam.

‘Perhaps,' the waiter murmured before removing the cup and backing through the swing doors.

Major Sylvester rose from his window table. Grace saw him looking at her clutching Jack's hand. Fraternisation with enlisted men was forbidden. Well, let him do his worst. He tapped his cap and smiled but said nothing. She knew his worst would not happen.

Grace remembered all too well holding Jack at the front gate of his parents' house, soothing him as he sobbed for his brother, knowing finally what she had suspected for weeks, which was that she had met the love of her life. But she was older, she was boring, she was the parson's sister and Evie's first employer. He was adored by women, a rising union leader, a strong and respected hewer, a glorious young man who would have been appalled had he known the riot of her emotions. She had ridden her bicycle away feeling that she must put distance between them or she would do untold damage to everyone, and take advantage of the vulnerability of his grief.

It was only when the North Tyne Fusiliers were embarking from Newcastle Central station, and she had gone in Edward's place to wave them farewell, that they had, for the first time, really looked at one another again, and that was when she saw that his love matched her own. But it had all been too late because on his arm was Millie, his wife. It was still too late, but he must be told how very much he was loved. He must take that back to the trenches.

It was this that Grace told Jack now, and she felt him turn his hand beneath hers and grip, tightly. At last he smiled, at last his shoulders slumped with a release of tension, at last he met her eyes and allowed her to see that indeed she had been right. There was love between them, a huge bloody sea of it, a bloody great seam of high-grade love between her and this precious man. There really was.

‘I was wrong,' he said. ‘You have been a bloody fool to think you would be taking advantage, bonny lass, for you're all I've wanted for too many years.'