The Gates of Rutherford (23 page)

“They've all gone off to the mills, the fools,” Mary murmured. “Even Cynthia.”

“She was plain lazy,” Mrs. Carlisle retorted. “I don't want no more like that.”

“When is Mrs. Nicholson coming, Mr. Bradfield?” Miss Dodd asked.

“On Monday.”

“Oh Lord above,” Mrs. Carlisle muttered.

Bradfield got up, took up the newspapers, and, after casting another glance around the room that warned them that they soon must be about their business, he went out. They listened to his footsteps along the stone corridor, and then on the steps that led up to the green baize door that admitted him to the main house.

They waited until they heard the door close.

“Well!” Miss Dodd exclaimed. “Husband's died and Lady Kent doesn't want her.”

“There must be something about her to recommend her,” Mrs. Carlisle mused.

“I could have done the job, given half a chance,” Miss Dodd complained. “I've been more or less doing it so far.”

“‘More or less' isn't in charge though, is it?” Mrs. Carlisle replied. “You're very good, dear, but this woman will have . . . well, something else to recommend her. Education or experience. And we don't know what kind of tenant we're talking about. Her husband might have farmed one of the big affairs they've got over at York. One of
those rambling ones that the Kents own. When your husband does that, you become quite adept at helping him. Accounts and staff, all that.”

“I hope she's not a horrible old dragon like Mrs. Jocelyn,” Jenny muttered. “Thumping her Bible and warning us we'll all be damned.”

Mrs. Carlisle raised an eyebrow. “We won't have bad talk about staff, whatever or whoever.” She looked at Mary. “Letter from David?”

“Yes.” Mary was turning it over and over in her hands, unopened.

“Well, then. Tell us what he says.”

Mary ran her finger along the gummed edge of the envelope with trepidation. David had always used to write such nice things, but he rarely said much at all now. Hello and good-bye, and “I am well.” And “are you well.” Nothing with any heart in it. “Hoping this finds you as it leaves me,” he would write. Just like everyone else. The poet in him seemed to have been lost somewhere. She'd given him a book of poems to take with him when he had left at the beginning of December last year, and he'd received it without a word. A week's leave he'd had because of an infected foot. A week's leave, and three days of it spent getting here and going back.

She thought of this as she opened the letter, and laid her hand on her stomach as the baby moved. At least he'd given her the child: a miracle, considering how very little time they had ever spent together. Married almost two years, and with barely a fortnight spent together in all that time.

They all waited while she read. They all knew from what he had told them in December that he had been at a place called Albert. It was a little town, he had said. Or at least, it had once been a town and now it was. . . He had stopped in his description. “Something else,” he had ended.

They'd all seen Albert mentioned in the obituaries that appeared
in the local newspapers. They were starting to recognize the names: Albert, Bapaume, and Ypres.

“Master Harry is at a place near Arras,” Miss Dodd murmured. She'd heard the master say so.

“Mrs. Armitage said that Jack was near there,” Mrs. Carlisle added. “There's a big push on.”

They all sat in silence a few moments more. None of them really knew what a “big push” meant. It sounded like jostling in a queue.

“I don't think David is there anymore,” Mary murmured. She was frowning as she read. “That's funny.”

“What's funny?” Jenny asked.

Mary read a portion of the letter out loud. “Moving about a bit,” she said slowly. “Like we talked about the day after we got married.”

“It's the censors,” Mrs. Carlisle told her. “You're not allowed to write down where you are.”

“I know that,” Mary said. “But I don't know what he means.”

“Well, what did you talk about the day after you got married?”

“I can't remember that!” Mary exclaimed. “How am I supposed to?”

“Holidays,” Mrs. Carlisle suggested. “The future. A family. A place to live. Plans. That's what you'll have talked about.”

“Plans . . .” Mary mused. “I remember saying it was a pity we couldn't have a proper honeymoon, if that's what you mean by a holiday.” She sighed. “I'd have liked to go to the seaside. I've never been.”

“Well, that's what it is then!” Mrs. Carlisle said, beaming triumphantly. “He's been posted somewhere by the sea.”

“But . . .” Mary put the letter down in exasperation. “They're not anywhere near the sea, are they? He said it was miles and miles in a train to get to Albert.”

“The trenches don't go to the sea,” Jenny agreed.

Mrs. Carlisle got to her feet. “Well, I've got no time to sit here
figuring it out,” she told them. “His lordship has several people coming to lunch, and it won't make itself. Besides,” she added darkly, “I've got orders to make fodder for them Germans.”

“What Germans?” Mary demanded.

“Them that's helping take in the grass on the meadows.”

“What, up here, near the house?”

“So I'm told.” She paused. “You might have to help Alfred take it out to them, if he can't manage.”

Mary knew that the hall boy wouldn't manage, of course. He'd be more likely to drop everything. Still her face was set. “I shan't take them a single thing,” she said. “Not a bite. I'm not a maid to
them.”

Mrs. Carlisle and Miss Dodd looked at each other significantly.

“I'll take it, if I have to,” Jenny offered. “Mary doesn't need to . . . I'll do it. It don't matter to me.”

•   •   •

I
t was a pure pleasure to work in the meadows.

And Frederick had been astounded by the estate as the work party had approached the large house. They entered through a lodge gate. On the gateposts were little statues—birds perched on what looked like sugarcane. Ahead of them—they were sitting in an open-backed wagon—they saw a long line of beech trees. Enormous trees, probably more than a hundred years old, making a lovely arched cover over the road. In the distance he could glimpse barley-twist chimneys and a terracotta-colored wall, hidden by a rise in the land. His eyes scanned it; he guessed that it must be an enormous place. But they were not allowed to see it now; the wagon turned abruptly left, and the track skirted a slow-flowing river. Beyond the river, a woodland. And above the woodland, a stretch of moorland, glowing pale yellow in the morning sun.

They passed a bridge, and a small shingle-and-sand beach at a
curve in the river. And then more gates were opened—big five-bar gates each with the same insignia of sugarcane topped by a little bird. It looked like a bluebird to him, so frail and delicate. Bluebirds and sugar . . . what did that mean? Sugar barons, from long ago?

The track began to rise a little, skirted a hill, and then they saw the meadows. They were small fields, one after the other, each separated by a gate. In them, the grass was knee-high and full of wild flowers. The wagon stopped, and they got off; they were walked up the rise, and as they ascended, suddenly the west wing of the house came into view. It stopped Frederick dead. So lovely, so huge. Roof upon roof with windows set between; a large, mellow-colored kitchen garden wall. To the side, the roofs of smaller cottages.

“It must be paradise to work here,” he murmured to the man alongside him.

“Heaven to live here, more like,” the man replied.

Yes indeed, he thought. Very like heaven.

They set to work, each holding the long-handled blade with the separate grip that stuck out at right angles to the stave. Frederick did the best he could. Some days he could hold a spade or a hammer quite well; on others, the ability was sporadic. Today was one such day; he started off at the bottom of the field, working in a line with ten others, gripping the handle of the scythe, but occasionally finding it slithering through his fingers. Although they knew the reason, the other men still found him frustrating to work alongside.

A bull-necked man from Dortmund began ridiculing him. “Getting very fancy, want to be English. They run about like that. Don't you know? Like that.” And he mimed a limp-wristed boy. The others laughed, watching to see what Frederick would do.

“I don't want to be English.”

“Don't you, though? All you ever talk about is being peaceable.”

“I don't want to fight.”

The Dortmund man gave a snarl-like smile. “Don't want to kill an Englishman. Got no guts at all.” And he prodded Frederick in the back.

Frederick looked up, past the man. The guard was at the far end of the field. “Don't touch me,” he muttered.

Another prod. “Don't touch you? Why would I want to touch you, bloody traitor?”

Frederick stopped, and straightened up. “I'm no traitor.”

“Like it here, you do. Paradise. You just said that. I call the Fatherland paradise.”

“I'm a good German.”

“You're bullshit.” And the man pushed him on the shoulder, making him stumble. “Hear me? Delicate flower, aren't you?”

He couldn't have that. His brother had tried that with him more than once, and, if he wouldn't stand it from his brother, he wouldn't stand it from this dirty idiot. He let himself be pushed just once or twice more and then he balled his better fist and struck out. It wasn't a good shot, but it took the other man by surprise. He reeled back, holding his face, and tripped over his feet, landing in the dirt.

“You don't call me names,” Frederick said. “You, nor nobody else.” And he glared balefully around the group. One or two of them were smiling; others looked at him deadpan.

The sergeant came striding up. By that time, the Dortmund man was on his feet. “What's going on here?” the sergeant demanded.

“He is not working,” the prisoner said.

The sergeant stared at Frederick. “Feeling pretty handy with your fists now, are you?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

“I saw different. Able to punch a man but not to work. Offense, mate. You'll get a work detail tougher than this, all right?” And he looked at the others. “Don't stand there,” he said loudly. “This isn't
a music hall. It ain't a show. Rake it up, what you've done,” he told them.

He motioned for Frederick to step away from the others. They stood together in the hot sunlight, almost overpowered by the sweet smell of the cut grass. The guard pointed at Frederick's hands. “All right, tell me the story, and make it good.”

“Story?”

“Your hands. You took an injury?”

“No, sir.”

The guard appraised him. He lost his temper as others had done. “What, then? You can't hold the scythe properly.”

“I will do my best.”

“I can see that,” the older man replied. He thought a moment. “Where did you serve?”

“Serve?”

“Fight.”

Frederick wondered where this was leading: if something he said would make the guard angry. “I was with Kriegsfreiwillige. Kinder corps.”

“Boy soldiers,” the guard said.

“Ah . . . yes. What you call ‘children army.'”

“How come?”

“I don't understand.”

“Why was it you were in the division, the kinder corps?”

“I volunteer.”

“What age?”

“Sixteen.”

The guard nodded. “For mud and glory.”

“It was said. Yes. For glory.”

The older man smiled slowly at him. He took a cigarette out of his jacket and lit it, drawing in the smoke and looking over the field.
“You know what a scythe is, even if you claim you can't hold it,” he observed.

“Yes, sir. We have farm at home.”

“Like this?”

“Not big like this.”

The sergeant nodded. “And what battles was you at, in France?”

Frederick didn't want to name them, but he did. “Houthulst forest. Langemarck. Yser canal.”

The man's head suddenly turned sharply towards him. “Ypres.”

“Yes, we try to take Ypres.” There was a silence. “When the war started, the army move into Ypres. We march in. Ten thousand men. And then we march out again, and. . .”

“
We
marched in.”

“Yes.”

“Strange, eh? Stupid.”

Frederick's eyes narrowed. Was he being asked to agree that the Germans were stupid, or the British? “Yes,” he murmured.

“And this . . .” The guard indicated Frederick's hands. “From when?”

“I am captured. From then.”

“Someone did it to you?”

“No, sir. They . . .” He knew the exact moment when his hands began to fail him, become objects that seemed hardly attached to him. But he was not going to tell this British man. “I do not know why.”

The guard nodded. He tapped the side of his neck. “The hill at Zillebeke. April 1915. Hill sixty. We exploded five mines, and blew the top off the hill. And a piece of metal from the German entrenchment on the top of the hill . . .” He gave a twisted, disarming grin. “I saw a horse go up in the air. A flying horse and flying men. I never forgot that.”

The sun beat down on them. High above they could hear the larks soaring up into the sky, just as they had in France.

“Ah well,” the guard said, grinding out his cigarette under his heel. “No mines here and no shells. You just try and hold that scythe, all right? Looks like you're not working. Even your mates think so.”

“I try, sir.”

“My name's Vickers. Like the planes. Like the flying school.”

“Sergeant Vickers.”

“That's right, mate.”