Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis (20 page)

Emily helped too, and sometimes Ada left her baby, and spent an afternoon at the station. Harry had also volunteered for service and was now busy putting the shop into order, before he was called up, so that Ada could run it easily in his absence. Arnold, and the others who had jolted to Caxley in the waggon, awaited their call-up impatiently, carrying on with their jobs in a fever of suspense. Suppose it should all be over before they arrived?

They did not have long to wait. As news of the retreat from Mons came through at the end of August, Arnold and his friends were sent to a training camp in Dorset.

'It won't be for long,' Arnold promised her as they said good bye. 'You look out for a nice little house for us to go to after Christmas. We'll have the Kaiser squashed by then.'

He echoed the general feeling of optimism. Despite the ugly sound of the retreat from Mons, it was only a set-back, people told each other, and a chance to prepare for a resounding blow at the enemy. Britain was the greatest country in the world, supported by the mightiest Empire ever known—it was unthinkable that such power could be beaten. Francis and Mary, and many like them, remembering the display of might at Queen Victoria's jubilee, could see no possibility of defeat at the hands of mere foreigners. Dolly had private doubts, but was glad of the robust spirit around her.

At the end of November Arnold had a short leave before going to the Western Front. He was thinner than before, but his face glowed with health and high spirits. He was more gentle and loving than Dolly had ever known him, refused to let her show any hint of sadness, and forbade her to accompany him to Caxley Station on the evening of his return.

She walked slowly with him, in the early twilight, along the road to Caxley, and they stopped beneath a sycamore tree to make their farewells. The bare branches seemed to stretch kindly arms above them, as if in blessing, and at their feet the winged seeds lay on the wet road, a sign of hope and life ahead.

He put a little packet into her hand before taking her in his arms. It was only then, and for a brief moment, that Dolly caught a glimpse of something more than resolute gaiety in his mien. For that one telling second, darkness came into his eyes, a weary hopelessness shadowed his face, as though he knew that he was powerless in the grip of the fates.

Their faces were cold as they kissed, and Dolly's throat ached with the effort of controlling her tears. But when they finally parted Arnold's smile was as warm as ever. He took his cap from his head at the bend of the lane and waved it cheerfully. His fiery head shone with the same bronze glow as the winter sun's slipping below the shoulder of the downs behind him.

When he disappeared from view, Dolly sank on to the damp bank among the writhing roots of the old tree, and let the hot tears fall. She made no sound, but sat hunched silently, tasting the salt drops as they ran over her mouth.

When at last it was dark, she rose to her feet, patting the comforting rough bark of the tree which had witnessed her grief. She never passed it again without remembering that evening.

In the quietness of her bedroom she undid the packet. It contained an oval locket made of gold threaded on a long gold chain. Inside was a photograph of Arnold, and facing it, a lock of his blazing hair.

She slipped the chain over her throbbing head, and by the wavering light of the candle, surveyed her blotched swollen face and the beauty of the locket which lay cold upon her breast. She was to wear it every day of her long life.

One February day of biting cold, Dolly returned home from school to find an incoherent letter from Arnold's parents, written on a flimsy half sheet of paper, with the ink blurred by tears. He had been killed by a hand grenade lobbed into his water-logged trench near the Ypres Canal. Three other men had been killed instantly with him.

Dolly's first reaction was of stubborn disbelief. A flame as vital as Arnold's could not be snuffed out so easily. It was all a dreadful mistake. Why, she had had a letter from him only yesterday! She pushed the paper, almost impatiently, towards her mother.

It was Mary's anguished face which really convinced Dolly that the news was true, and later still the rare embrace of her sympathetic father. But for many days she was too numbed to cry. It was as though this tragedy had happened to someone else. She went, pale and dazed, about her daily life. She set work for the children, read them stories, bound up their broken knees and listened to their tales. Francis and Mary, Mr Hope, and all who knew her in Beech Green and Fairacre feared for her reason. There was an icy remoteness about her which frightened them into silence when she approached.

Even Emily had no power to thaw her. During those dark weeks she came daily to the Clares' cottage to do her best to comfort her friend.

'There's nothing you can do for me,' Dolly told her gently. 'Don't be sorry for me. I don't feel anything at all.' She was touched by Emily's staunch devotion and felt almost guilty that she should be so calm.

'Sometimes I think,' she told Emily one day, 'that my heart was killed at the same time as Arnold. Only my poor dull head works now.'

It was a small incident a week or two later that snapped Dolly's chains and released her grief. Every morning she fed the birds which came to the doorstep of the cottage. Among them was a robin, bolder than the rest, who came so frequently that the Clares' cat ignored it. But on this particular morning the cat, who had been watching the proceedings from a window-sill, leapt suddenly upon the robin, killing it at a blow, and returned immediately to the window-sill where it yawned indolently.

Dolly was shaken with fury at this wanton attack. This robin had been hatched in the damson tree in the garden. She had watched its parents, day after day, feeding their young. Their efforts had brought up the little family, all of whom had gone, except for this one. The Clares had thrown him crumbs daily, and Francis looked for his company when he dug in the garden. His clear piping and bright eye had cheered the wretched winter.

That such abundant vitality should turn to half an ounce of dead feathers, with the stroke of a paw, was horrifying to Dolly. Tears of pity and rage shook her as she lifted the victim. Its breast was the same colour as the hair within her locket, and it was this that made her tears fall faster. Now the full realisation of her loss gripped her. A blow as cruel and as senseless as the cat's had robbed Arnold of life and her of joy. The paroxysms of grief continued unabated all that day, to be succeeded by a week of such black and hopeless despair that Dolly longed to die.

Only then did she understand the pitiful state of those who could find no comfort. She could understand now the depths of Mr Hope's despair, his rejection of a world which could offer him no solace. Never again, in her young arrogance, would she despise those who failed to interest themselves in the bright world about them. There was no bright world for those in the pit.

It was a long time before Dolly herself could clamber slowly from it and seek the light again.

T
HE
war ground on mercilessly. Now there was a grimmer spirit everywhere, for it was obvious that victory would not be easily won. Fighting was going on in all quarters of the globe, but it was the losses on the western front that meant most to the people of Fairacre and Beech Green, for it was there that almost all their men were fighting.

In April 1915, while Dolly still groped her way to normality, the new weapon of gas was used at Ypres, where Arnold's broken body shared a grave with ten others.

Dolly never forgot the horror with which she heard this news. It was followed almost immediately by a message from Emily's Edgar, who was out there.

Dolly was with her when his postcard arrived. It said starkly: 'For God's sake send me a gas mask.' Bewildered and shocked, the two girls looked dumbly at each other. What was a gas mask? Where could you buy one? How could you make one?

With no time to lose they fashioned a thick pad of cotton wool which they bound with tape, adding more tapes to tie it round the head. They tried it on each other, and in normal times would have laughed at the ludicrous sight. But it was too gruesome an affair this time for laughter.

They packed it up, with a hasty loving note from Emily, and Dolly and she cycled to Caxley to catch the last post. The lanes and fields were brushed with tender green, and the downs, ineffably peaceful, brooded over all. It seemed unbelievable to Dolly that, within hours, the parcel they carried so carefully would be in another world where there were no trees left, no birds to sing, but only grey mud, guns, and suffering men.

It was gas which ended Edgar's war service. At the end of May he returned to England, a gasping, coughing shadow, and was sent to a hospital on the south coast. For months Emily made the long anxious journey each week while the young man struggled back to life. It was now Dolly's turn to be of comfort, and she marvelled at the endurance of Emily's slight frame and the light of courage that shone in her clear grey eyes. Although she taught all the week at Springboume, where she was now headmistress, and worked increasingly hard at home, she still undertook the week-end journeys with unfailing hope.

Dolly, at Fairacre school, thought how little the war had changed it. Unlike Springboume, its headmaster had not gone to war. Mr Hope's repeated attempts to join up met with failure through ill-health. He could best serve his country by staying at his post, he was told. He grew shakier and more morose as time went on, and the morning visits to 'The Beetle and Wedge' were resumed. Dolly could not help hearing the gossip that flew about the village, though she herself preserved silence, steadfastly refusing to be drawn into discussions about her headmaster.

Two evenings a week she stayed late at the school with a party of local Red Cross workers. They sewed, knitted and packed parcels under the lamps swinging from the lofty roof, while the news of husbands and brothers and sons far away was exchanged. The women were extra kind to Dolly at this time. Her tragedy touched them, and they felt great admiration for her increasing care of the children.

'Carries that school along alone these days,' commented one.

'She's the one that should be head there.'

'They don't learn much after they've left Miss Clare,' agreed another.

Certainly Dolly had enough to do. The school was growing. A family of Belgian refugees contributed five more children, and there were several Londoners who had been sent to stay with local relatives to escape the bombing attacks on the capital. Dolly enjoyed their fresh outlook, and, remembering her own apprehension as a newcomer to Fairacre school, tried to make them particularly welcome.

Now that so many men were away, far more women went out to work. A munitions factory on the outskirts of Caxley employed a number of Fairacre mothers, and Dolly passed them each morning as they cycled into work. To her mind, they looked happier and healthier cycling along together in all weathers, than they had when they were cooped up in their cottages. Many of them were tasting independence, and the pleasure of earning, for the first time in their lives. This emancipation would not be lightly thrown away when the war was over.

The food shortage, which so seriously affected the towns, was not apparent at Beech Green and Fairacre. Dolly was made aware of their good fortune one day when she was throwing maize to the chickens in Mr Hope's garden. A boy from London watched in amazement.

'We 'ad that for dinner up London,' he told her disapprovingly. 'My mum'd give you what for if she saw you doin' that.'

Dolly realised that the rebuke was a just one. Certainly they were short of such things as sugar and sweets, but corn, vegetables, fruit, and even butter, were plentiful in the quiet little world of Fairacre. They had much to be thankful for, thought Dolly, beginning once more to find comfort in the work she loved, and die ever changing natural beauty about her.

Life could never be quite as sweet again. A vital part of her had died, it seemed, with Arnold's going; a part which beauty, work or the love of friends could not replace. But from these sources came a measure of comfort for which she was humbly grateful. She learnt, at tins time, the invaluable lesson of finding happiness in little things, and by picking up small crumbs of comfort as she went about her daily work nursed her damaged spirit back to health.

In the summer of 1916 Dolly was looking forward to Emily's wedding. Edgar was still an invalid, at a convalescent home not far from his first hospital. Emily made her weekend journeys regularly, and the plans for the long-awaited marriage were all ready. One of the farm cottages was waiting for them, and Edgar was expected to return to light duties on the farm at Michaelmas time.

The two young women spent many evenings together making curtains and covers for the new house. Dolly's pleasure in the preparations was occasionally clouded by her own sense of loss, but she was careful never to let Emily know her feelings. She was sincerely glad for her friend, she was fond of Edgar, and looked forward to being a frequent visitor to the little home when they had settled in.