Gifts of War (42 page)
Authors: Mackenzie Ford
Shortly afterward, the railway line broke out of the valley and skirted a lake. I opened the window of the carriage and hurled the sketchbook as far as I could. I never saw whether it reached the water.
My reentry back into Penrith Mansions was low-key. Sam, I think, was a bit upset that I had not been in touch more often but was content to see what I had to say now that the censor wasn’t there to intervene. Will was quiet, too. He had missed me and he liked well enough the train set that I gave him on my return, but he was not going to rush back into my arms until he could be sure there was no risk of me disappearing all over again.
The sugar went down well, though.
The flat itself hadn’t changed much. Lottie was still there but very worried. She hadn’t heard from Reg for weeks and was living in dread that, any day now, a telegram would arrive with the news we all feared.
In truth, after the excitements of Zurich, life in London was a little dull, or would have been but for one bright spot. On my return, and in view of the success of the operation in connection with Hood-Frankel, the brigadier had seen to it that I had been promoted—to lieutenant colonel, the same rank as Romford.
On my first day back at Northumberland Avenue, a Thursday, the brigadier had another surprise up his sleeve.
“I’ve got a big job for you, Hal, but I’m not going to tell you what it is just yet. Can you drive?”
“Yes, of course.” I was mystified. Was I about to become a driver to some very important person?
“Good. Now I want you to take a long weekend off. Today’s Thursday; don’t come back till Tuesday. I’ve managed to borrow a car for you for the weekend. Get out of London, take your woman and boy. Get to know them again. Understand?”
Of course I understood. Sam was a bit tricky about leaving her charges in school “in the lurch,” as she put it, but Will was excited about going on a car journey, and I piqued Sam’s curiosity by saying, “I’ve got the perfect place for a weekend away.”
“Oh yes? Where?”
“Stratford-upon-Avon.”
Stratford hadn’t changed, or not much. We stayed at the Crown, where Sam’s friend Maude was still a waitress. The food was still hardly better than it had been at the Ag. There were more military types around, now that the airfield had opened just outside the town, and so prices— for food especially—were markedly higher than they had been before.
It was all very different from Zurich—so rural, so unsophisticated, so much less stylish. We walked along the bank of the Avon. Cows still munched the dandelions and buttercups, but I made certain that we turned back well before we came in sight of the kissing gate where Wilhelm had asked Sam to marry him. She didn’t seem to notice.
On the Saturday, we drove to Middle Hill. We passed the air force base, which was now up-and-running. We took a drink in the Lamb but it was not really a success. There was a new landlord who I didn’t know, and of course he didn’t know me. One or two of the regulars showed the glimmerings of recognition and smiled, but that was all. We walked down to the cottage Sam had lived in to find three children playing outside in the front garden, which was now a complete mess. Sam shuddered and whispered, “Let’s go.”
We hurried away, the smell of the pig farm strong in our nostrils.
It being Saturday, the school was closed and we walked on past, into the churchyard and across the stream with its moorhens. We passed through the kissing gate that separated the churchyard from the cricket field, where there was a game in progress—it must have been one of the last of the season. We sat on the grass and Will took a keen interest in the proceedings, which I tried to explain to him. I
think it was this, as much as the prolonged proximity in the car on the drive up from London, that started to bring our relationship back to where it had been before I left.
Sam and I talked a lot, of course, during the Stratford trip. On the cricket field, I gave her a blow-by-blow account of the whole Romford operation. Will was out of earshot, sitting by the boundary, hoping the ball would be hit his way.
Sam was aghast at what Rebecca had been through. “I couldn’t sleep with someone just because a superior officer told me to. I couldn’t. It’s beastly!
I just couldn’t!”
“I don’t think you’ll have to, so don’t worry.”
She shook her head, hard, so that her hair twisted violently in the wind, as if she was trying to get clean on Rebecca’s behalf.
“I think it was harder for her than for other women—”
“How do you know that? How can you possibly—?”
“She was a lesbian.”
Sam stared at me. “Oh
dear
!”
Will was suddenly up and running. The ball had been hit for four, in his direction, and now was his chance to handle it. He reached the ball first, picked it up, dropped it, picked it up again, and ran toward the cricketer who was nearest.
“Thank you, young man,” said the fielder, doffing his cap and grinning.
Will came back toward us looking pleased with himself and puffing, as if he’d been out at work all day. I’d have to buy him a bat and a ball. He looked more and more like Wilhelm but Sam never said anything to me.
I went over the killing of Romford again with Sam, describing in detail those few horrible moments in the stairwell of the Bar au Lac. I did it as much for my own benefit as for hers. Only by facing those moments would I eventually be able to expunge the horror.
Sam listened, keeping her gaze on the cricket, so she could also keep an eye on Will. When I had finished she said nothing for a while. But then, softly, she murmured, “What if you hadn’t shot him first?”
“But I did.”
“This war… God, how it’s played with our lives. When will it ever stop? If you’d been killed, what would have happened to Will and me?”
That evening, Sam put Will to bed and then took a rest herself before dinner. I went down to the residents’ lounge of the hotel, ordered a whisky, and made myself comfortable in an easy chair to read Izzy’s letters. Four had arrived during my absence and I was eager to see how she was getting on. A fire had been lit in the lounge (September was almost over and the weather kept pace). No one else was there. I lit a cigar, one of Wilhelm’s, put water in my whisky, and sat close to the fire so I could feel its warmth on my legs.
Dear Hal
,
Good news and bad news. Finally, Alan and I were given some leave. We had four days off, or that was the plan anyway. Originally, we were going to Paris but then we thought we would spend most of our time traveling there and back, so we decided instead to go to Reims, where I am writing this. We are staying in a hotel and, can you believe it,
have two baths every day
!!!
The French still manage to cook up a storm, despite everything that has happened and is happening, and we drank some great wines too. (We didn’t stint on the G&Ts either!) However, in the middle of all this food, wine, cleanliness, and G&Ts came the killer—literally. A telegram to Alan that his wife has tried to commit suicide!! Slit her wrists in a bath of warm water
.
Now here’s the thing. This woman has two children, two young children. Why would she commit suicide—assuming she meant to do
it and not get discovered at the last minute—and leave two lovely creatures to be brought up by God knows who? Does this mean that she loves her husband more than she loves her children? Does it mean that “love” for one’s husband—mate, spouse—is a different “love” from that for a child? Were I in the same situation, which way would I jump?
To my mind it all goes to show that I was right to begin with: given the danger we work in, there was no need for Alan to tell his wife about us, not for a while certainly
.
Anyway, Alan was granted compassionate leave to rush home and be with his wife. She may have had an ulterior motive, of course. If she really did intend to kill herself, that’s one thing. On the other hand, if it was a gesture, to bring him home and get him away from me, then that’s another thing entirely and they need to talk it through. But he can’t really tell until he’s face-to-face with her
.
Oh dear, Hal. What a state we are all in. There is no chance we will have a replacement for Alan in our unit, so I am going to have to run the show till he gets back. This was supposed to have been a relaxing break, but it has turned into a nightmare
.
Much love xxx000
Izzy
Dear Hal
,
I’m back now amid the mud and blood, the bodily fluids and broken bones, the screams in the night and the shivering bodies as they slip away to God knows where
.
No word from Alan. In his absence, I have discovered something about myself. I have become bossy. I feel it. In a war, a great big messy war like this one, the army runs everything and you would think, therefore, that life is regimented, everyone knows their place, their rank, who is above them and who is below. That’s how it should be. But the chief fact of life, even this far into the war, the main characteristic, the
dominant element of our existence, is confusion. No one has the
faintest idea
of what is going to happen. Most of the time we don’t even know what is happening right now
.
And so, in these terrible times, in this awful, godforsaken place, I have found that what the people around me want is certainty, any kind of certainty. That’s why I have become bossy. I tell people what to do. I don’t necessarily know what’s best for anyone in any particular situation, but people seem to prefer my style to anyone else’s. No doubt being a nurse gives me some authority, but it’s more than that. I settle minor disputes. They come to me and they accept what I say. As I move about the trenches, I tell the men to tidy up this, clean up that, rearrange something else. They do it. Why do all these men obey a woman so easily? It’s weird
.
Some out-of-date British papers came our way. I see you are getting zeppelin raids over London—thank God Ma and Pa are where they are. I read that Max Bremner was killed. The name may not mean much to you but he was one of the war correspondents I mentioned who visited our unit. A funny man and a good writer. He was forty-two and was gassed. What a waste
.
I haven’t heard from you for a while. Are you all right? Let me know. That’s an order!
xxxooo
Bossy Izzy
Dear Hal
,
You haven’t written, you beast. What kind of pig are you? Are you so grand now that you can’t be bothered with your little sister, now not so little? I suppose it’s just possible that you are off on some mission you can’t tell me about, and if so, I forgive you. But if that’s not the reason, you are now, officially, in the doghouse. Way below Einstein in the pecking order
Alan’s back and he’s not the same. He says that his wife’s suicide attempt was not a real attempt. Oh, she slit her wrists all right, but he says she made sure there were people around who were more or less certain to find her. But the way he behaves, the way he is toward me, the little tendernesses that we used to exchange, the intimate sillinesses that people share when they are in love… all those have gone, certainly for the time being. He’s also lost a lot of the forcefulness that I liked about him; it’s as if his intellect has been dulled by going home. His idealism is dulled too. Maybe, perhaps, just being back in Britain got to him; maybe it was too depressing but he won’t talk about it, and I don’t like that
.
(Several hours later.) He just talked about it. He saw me writing this letter, leaned over me, and read what I was writing. And it’s cleared the air a bit
.
Alan says it’s true, that being back in Britain depressed him. The view of the war is so different there from the way it is here at the Front. In Britain, he says, people are bullish, aggressive, very anti-German in a simplistic kind of way. He says it’s not so much London, which is very involved in the war, obviously, but in the countryside, where people are able to lead their lives as if the war is miles away, which of course it is. He says people still play cricket, visit the pub, fish in rivers and canals. He knows that normal life has to go on—otherwise all is lost, people need an escape from war. Even so, the gulf between the Front and the British countryside is
enormous
. He says that, after this war is over, the big difference between people will be between those who have been at the Front and those who haven’t. It will be a big divide in our society, and it will disfigure us
.
I have no way of knowing if this is true, but I trust Alan. He’s not here right now and can’t see me writing this, so let me add something: I don’t think this is a complete explanation for how he has been a different
man since he has been back. There’s something more personal too, though I don’t know (yet) what it is
.
Write, you brute
.
Izzy
Dear Brute
,
This will be short. You deserve only short letters until you respond
.
Alan is back in Britain, in Scotland actually, for his wife’s funeral
.
Yes, that’s right. She tried to commit suicide a second time, and succeeded. He received a telegram two days ago. Before he went, he told me that he realized he’d been awkward with me and the reason was guilt. On his first trip home, it was clear that his wife really loved him, more than she loved her children, and that, contrary to what he told me, her first attempt was not a “cry for help” at all but a warning to him, that if he didn’t come back to her she would keep trying until she really did do away with herself. The children were devastated, he said, but… and this was the real dilemma facing him: he, too, loved me more than he loved his children. Hal, what a terrible thing. Is it an unnatural thing for both parents to love someone else more than they love their children?
I’m back in charge, being bossy all over again. But inside I’m churned up
.
All love
.
xxx (still only three at the moment)
.
Izzy