Remembrance Day (19 page)

As she trudged uphill, under the night sky, she paused to look at its dark beauty. A dog fox barked, sheep were bleating out on the moor.

Martha had sensed her anguish, pouring her a glass of something gingery and soothing to ease her churning stomach.

‘Where is my lad?’ she had whispered.

‘He’s close by, Essie, very close. You’ll feel his spirit with you always. He loved you very much. His last thoughts were of you.’

‘But is he at peace?’

‘He will be when things are made right.’

‘What things?’

‘When what is right and just comes to pass. Hold these words to your heart. One day all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.’

‘You’re not making sense to me,’ Essie had sobbed.

‘Be patient. Frank is close by. He will comfort you.’

As she ironed these words over and over her mind, trying to flatten them into some shape for future comfort, she felt such sadness. ‘All my sons gone and my daughter exiled…how do we live with this?’ she had cried out.

‘One day at a time, Essie. Put one foot in front of the other. You will survive this just one day at a time,’ Martha had comforted her.

As she took the steep path towards West Sharland now,
she sensed she wasn’t alone. For a second she felt fear and she turned round. ‘I know you’re there!’ she shouted. ‘Stop mucking about!’

There was nobody there, but in the gloom she thought she saw a figure walking ahead. A solitary shape, trudging in front of her, shoulders stooped.

‘No moon tonight, but such stars,’ she called out.

The figure didn’t stop. It kept on walking, lost in its own thoughts.

Just somebody else who thought a Bartley were a bad lot she thought. When she came to the first crossroads in the village, she’d soon see who it was ignoring her. The figure marched ahead and she followed behind, out of puff, trying to keep up with him. Then she stopped for breath, looking up, blinking, and the figure had vanished into thin air. There was no gate or lane end, there was no one there. At least he hadn’t turned round and cursed her. She was getting used to that when drunks came out of the pub to pee up the back lane outside their entrance, making it reek.

How were they going to manage if their trade entirely dried up? Sell up, get jobs in a factory? Perhaps she could go back into service? In the darkness the future looked so bleak and uncertain, but she must try to keep Martha’s sayings in her heart.

All shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. How could that be? Their lives were broken, the family lost.

Selma peered out of her bedroom window over a dusty privet hedge and a line of washing down below. Above her, slate roofs and blackened chimneys, dark stone houses glowered, but in the distance, a mystic outline of hills cheered her soul. Would she ever get used to the blackened stone
and the clutter of houses, the rattle of the trams up and down the Main Road? She felt she was drowning in a torrent of misery, utterly wretched at being forced into this strange city.

It wasn’t as if Sam and Ruth weren’t kindness itself. Her bedroom was small but cosy, with a rag rug to warm her toes, a fireplace, a little bookshelf and chest of drawers, even a tiny writing bureau to write from, but who was there to write to now?

Marigold had made it plain that her absence would not be missed: ‘I’m not surprised you’re going away. I wouldn’t be in a hurry to get back.’

‘But why? What have I done?’ Selma had asked, determined to get some answers.

‘It’s not my place to tell you what I’m sure you already know. We don’t want traitors in this village.’

‘Traitor? Who’s a traitor,’ she had asked but Marigold had just sniffed and walked away.

Selma had run home to ask her mother. ‘Why are we traitors?’

‘Take no notice, love. No one’s a traitor. The villagers make the usual two and two into five. Bartleys have every reason to hold their heads up. We stand for what is right.’

Mother hadn’t made sense, but something had made her parents want her out of the way. It was the first thing she’d asked Aunty Ruth after she’d arrived: ‘Why am I here?’

‘Because it’s time you sampled a bit of city life after all that hard work. We want to make a lady of you, open your eyes, widen your horizons.’ Ruth had bustled round her, not pausing for breath. ‘First, though, I’m going to take you into town to buy some dresses for church, and show you how to catch a tram. Show you all our grand buildings.
Then we’ll go to the market in Kirkgate and Swan Arcade, and for walks in Lister Park to hear the brass bands. You will love it all.’

They were living in one of the outlying suburbs. Not quite as grand as Heaton Park, where the rich wool merchants had their mansions, those great stone palaces with turrets and iron gates, but in a neat avenue of semidetached villas with snug rooms and gas mantles that flickered a warm light. They had a large marble fireplace that Alice, the maid, who slept in the attic bedroom, kept banked up night and day.

Ruth was one for tidiness and housework, everything having its place, or covered from the coal dust with crocheted doilies and antimacassars. She was so proud of all her ornaments in the china cabinet: shepherdesses and pretty cups and saucers. Her wedding china was for display only. The windows of the parlour were draped with lace and then surrounded with velvet curtains the colour of treacle, fringed with gold braid.

They were attenders at the Wesleyan Chapel, a barn of a bricked church with a gallery above and the mighty organ in the middle. It was a much freer congregation than Selma was used to, who wore bright hats and cheerful smiles despite so many of them being in mourning. There was a tennis court within the grounds, a room that doubled up for concert parties, Sunday school and public meetings. It was all very different from Sharland chapel.

Some Sundays they entertained visiting preachers with vast high teas on the dining table, white tablecloths laden with home baking and pots of tea. Aunty Ruth worked them all hard when company was expected.

Uncle Sam spent his week in the wool sorter’s office,
grading wool, and promised to give Selma a tour of the mill. He sang in the chapel choir in a deep baritone. They were trying so hard to make her welcome but she was missing the intimacy of the village, her tiny room, the horses in the field, even her old life in the forge. There was too much time to brood. She needed to make herself useful. But no one would want a female blacksmith’s apprentice round here. There were plenty of jobs in the woollen mills or shops, but the idea of them scared her. Aunty Ruth could see she was pining.

‘I know it’s hard, but it is for the best. Your mam wants to give you a fresh start.’

‘Why?’ Selma saw the flustered look on Ruth’s face.

‘That business with the officer chappie…It hurt your mother to see you pulled down, but we mustn’t speak ill of the dead, I suppose.’

‘What do you mean?’ Selma said, feeling her heart beat fast.

‘I thought you knew? It was in the
Yorkshire Post.
The captain was killed. Your mother wrote to tell me…I’m sorry, didn’t they tell you?’

Selma was stunned, shaking her head, trying not to cry. ‘Nobody tells me anything,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t believe it. Guy dead?’

‘I’m afraid so, after Passchendaele. There’s been a lot round here made widows. Oh, love, she knew you were that fond of him. Happen this was one way she could soften the blow. It’s a good job you’re down here. It’ll give you a chance to meet other young people like yourself and put it behind you.’

‘So they’ve sent me here to find a husband?’ Selma was shaking. ‘Why must I have to be kept in the dark since
Frank died? There’s been something going on. Have we done something wrong?’

‘I’ll fetch you a cup of tea. It’s the shock. I’m sorry to break such bad news. I know you were very pally. I can’t believe your mother didn’t tell you anything.’

‘I thought we were more than pen pals, but then he turned up one day and it was like he was a different person, looking down his nose at us from a great height. It just wasn’t like him and now he’s dead and I never got to say goodbye. Jemima will miss him so.’ Selma was choking with emotion.

‘Who’s Jemima?’ asked Ruth

‘His favourite horse, the one the army didn’t take because we hid her. We used to ride out over the Ridge. She once threw me in the field and Guy raced after her to rein her in. Are you sure it’s him? He has a twin brother, the one that Frank and Newt saved from the Foss.’

‘Oh, yes, we know all about that. It seems everyone has forgotten about
that
fact. Poor Frank, it didn’t help him, did it?’

‘What do you mean?’ Selma asked.

Ruth blanched. ‘Take no notice of me wittering on…Sit down and have a drink and some shortcake with real butter in it.’

‘I’m not hungry, thank you.’ All she wanted to do was to be alone.

‘Please yourself, but don’t go mithering. Sounds as if that young man weren’t worth much.’

How could she say that? She didn’t know the real Guy; the kind and loving Guy. How could they brush his death off as if it were nothing? All her secret hopes had gone; those silly fantasies of coming here to better herself, to go
back home and woo him back to her side, dashed with one terrible sentence.

She sobbed on her bed.

Oh, Guy, we had so little time and you had such a short life, no more cantering on Jemima, no late nights under the stars or falling in love. Your life’s been mown down like grass in the field.

She felt such a wave of sadness gripping at her throat. Life would never be the same again.

December 1917

Guy was woken in the bunkhouse by the fleabites itching on his legs. He was living on the south side of Halifax, Nova Scotia, where they had volunteered to escort the horses from out of town back to the ship. It had been a restless night, and he was hung over from a night in the bars along the harbour. The crew of SS
Santa Philomena
were celebrating crossing the Atlantic safely, zigzagging away from the threat of submarines and travelling in a convoy. Their escort had brought them safely into Bedford Basin, an ideal anchorage to assemble the return convoy back to France.

They’d been given leave to lower themselves down and head for the darkness of Halifax. The place was packed with sailors and crews and cargo waiting to be loaded, and ladies willing to take every penny off them for their favours.

Guy lay back, thinking what a different world he had discovered when he’d signed on in Liverpool dock in the merchant navy. It had been a terrible year for the merchant ships. Back in October on the Scandinavian run, their escort was destroyed and the
Mary Rose
and
Strongbow
were sunk in the North Sea. It was whispered that London was now
down to six weeks’ supply of food if the Atlantic convoys didn’t get through.

When he’d left Holt Park he’d taken a train straight to Liverpool Lime Street, determined to carry on in His Majesty’s service. He spun some tale of having been ill and robbed of all his baggage, his papers stolen, signing himself on as Charles Arthur West, and took the first job offered as a humble deckhand.

‘You don’t look like a deckhand to me.’ The officer had eyed him with suspicion.

‘I’ve been ill; the fresh air will do me good,’ Guy said, trying to flatten his vowels and disguise his pukka accent. The man looked at him with surprise. It took an officer to know one but he shrugged his shoulders. ‘Here are your papers then.’

It was simple. They were desperate.
He
was desperate, and now he trawled up and down the Atlantic crossing, earning his sea legs the hard way, no longer a first tripper but a hardened sea dog. When they found he was good with horses he was relieved of some of his chores and sent below to help calm the poor beasts being enlisted for France. It was a smelly stable, and the horses were nervous, kicking out, but, packed together, their own herd mentality seemed to bring a measure of calm. But sometimes he could have done with Frank Bartley’s gentling hand on the poor beasts.

The crew were a tough no-nonsense lot of scousers, men like the rank and file of his own soldiers, salt-of-the-earth types. They were curious why he was putting himself in danger, with only rough seas and fog as their friends.

He tried to make out he was a Yorkshireman craving adventure, wounded in the chest and discharged on medical grounds.

He knew most of them thought he was on the run: ‘Did you get a girl into trouble?’ ‘Is her father after you with a shot gun?’ He laughed and let them think what they liked. He was happy to be as far away as he could from all the terrible mess in Europe. He was no deserter. This was as dangerous a job as any he had done over there but the change of tactics to herding ships together in a convoy seemed to be keeping the wolves at bay.

It was rumoured that their next cargo would be troops from the eastern seaboard of the States: soldiers bound for France, instead of horses, and that America was on the move now, mobilising for war. In that were the seeds of hope. More fresh soldiers to the slaughter, he sighed, but Allied forces would outnumber the opposition soon, and then this war might just end.

Suddenly the whole earth shook, the bunk rocked as an explosion like nothing Guy had ever heard since the one at Messines Ridge in 1916 blasted him onto the floor. What the hell was that? He’d ducked instinctively, holding his ears as a series of explosions like huge guns ripped through the air.

‘It’s coming from the harbour. The Germans are shelling Halifax! Bloody hell, run for cover!’ one of the mates ordered.

‘Get the horses back. Cover their heads…They’ll be terrified!’ Guy issued orders in the old way as a pall of black billowing smoke suddenly darkened the morning sky. This was no ordinary shellfire, the huge cloud of smoke and dust rose high and then a terrible rain of shrapnel began to fall. Those who had helmets covered themselves from the deluge. Others were not so lucky and screamed as the hot metal pierced them.

‘The horses…we must stop them stampeding!’

No one was listening to Guy, too busy trying to find cover. The smell was choking and Guy felt the tension closing his chest. He must find air. They were south of the city, out of range of the first explosions. What had happened to the
Philomena
and to the poor sods in the harbour or those still on board? ‘We must see to the horses, and then go and give a hand. It looks as if the whole town is on fire. They’ll need our help,’ he shouted, trying to round up the fleeing crew.

He might not understand what was happening up there but it was serious, and many must have been killed in the blast. ‘Come on, chaps…we must help,’ he yelled. ‘There’s women and children trapped out there.’

No one was prepared for what they saw through the smoke and flames. A whole side of the harbour was flattened. Not a building standing. It was like a scene from Dante’s
Inferno
: charred corpses everywhere, children wandering in what was left of their streets, wide-eyed with terror, horses gutted. Such a terrible vision of innocent slaughter Guy never wanted to see in his life again. Sickened but determined, he forced the rest of his crewmates further down town to see the damage, to gather up all the children they could.

Then, as they got nearer, they saw all the wooden buildings were on fire and high on Citadel Hill, crowds were gathering, screaming at the furnace creeping ever towards them.

‘What’s happened?’ Guy kept asking, but no one knew for certain: two ships had collided in the Narrows and blown up, was one version; a submarine torpedoed the harbour, another. Someone said it was a Zeppelin bombing
Halifax, and there was a great wave of shock that had rocked every ship to the north in terror.

Guy felt helpless. Damn and blast this war. These were civilians, innocent women and children going about their daily business. Now, even on the outskirts, there was not a home standing. Fires were smouldering and there was nothing much the survivors could do but organise themselves into rescue parties to dig out those still trapped and find water to put out the fires.

The town was full of men in uniform; those still ablebodied enough to help did their bit. But when rumour came that the naval magazine might blow at the barracks, it fired up more terror as crowds rushed for cover.

Guy stood firm against this tide of panic. ‘We must move in, chaps,’ he ordered, thinking on his feet, giving instructions, assessing the danger. He had to move forward and help in any way possible. Their own ship would be blasted out the water by now, stricken and unfit to use. They were stranded with their terrified cargo until help came. ‘Shift your arses, make yourselves useful! We can’t stand here and watch Halifax burn!’ he yelled.

The magazine didn’t blow because hundreds of volunteers like him slowly dismantled the ammunition dump, lifting, loading, unloading and throwing anything that might explode into the harbour.

To make matters much worse, that night it snowed incessantly, covering all the broken homes and streets with huge drifts. People took makeshift shelter where they could, in any building still standing, churches, barns, even in tents, frozen to the bone in the terrible blizzard. This was the final deathblow on the stricken town, but the fires were doused.

Guy was exhausted. Every sinew in his body ached as the crew spent the night comforting the horses. It was going to be a long night. At least they were warm, but his eyes were stinging with the smoke and heat, and his body sickened by all the terrible sights he had seen. This destruction was worse than in the trenches. How strange that, once again, he had survived when by rights he should be at the bottom of the sea. He didn’t understand why he was being allowed to live on when so many innocents had died. Had they not been punished enough without the blizzard’s cruel blow?

For as long as he lived he would never forget 6 December 1917. When was all this suffering going to end? For the first time in months, he thought of his mother alone for Christmas and felt a pang of sorrow for her. Just for a second, he also thought about Selma and Angus and West Sharland. But all he wanted to do was sleep.

Hester watched the village muster its venom against the Bartley family, some cool and distant, others downright vicious. It was common knowledge now that the boy had been shot at dawn. But Angus’s part in the tragedy would never be known. She would have to live with her own role in bringing this about for the rest of her life. This shameful knowledge gnawed away at her stomach alongside Guy’s desertion, breaking her heart. Was there no way to put things right? She didn’t know if Guy was alive or dead, and it was as much as she could do to face each day alone in the family house. There were no more officers to nurse. Only the garden was her solace as she began to take back the vegetables into rose beds and shrubbery once more. The horses had gone, just old Jemima left as a reminder of Guy, and she was looking old and weary, like herself.

She had a servant or two but little company. The Hunts had taken up a new parish, and there was now a young curate in charge, a puny weakling with flat feet who had dodged conscription, she surmised.

Martha Holbeck’s words kept worrying at her: an injustice to be righted. She kept both the boys’ rooms just as they had left them. She couldn’t bear to see them cleaned out and emptied,unable to face the desolation of cold lifeless bedrooms. She felt as if she was halfliving.What was there left for hernow?

Beaven knocked on the scullery door to say Jemima was limping and needed a shoe again and should he take her to the blacksmith in Sowerthwaite.

‘What’s wrong with Bartley? He’s my tenant.’

‘I just wondered, ma’am, if you wanted me to go there,’ came the cautious reply.

‘How can my rent be paid for if he has no custom? Take her down and leave her there.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he replied.

‘And you can take the firearms from the dining room. The clasp has gone. Tell him there is no rush.’

If her horse was seen in the paddock it would be noticed and word would get around that the lady of the manor was in no mood to abandon a good workman, whatever the circumstances.This silliness had gone on for too long. They may be on the other side of the social fence but the Bartleys were honest people. They were not responsible for their son’s behaviour, not like herself. Perhaps this gesture might help them over a difficult time and ensure they didn’t fall behind with their rent. What if they did? Would she have the heart to throw them out of their cottage? How she prayed it would never come to that.

Ruth had persuaded Selma’s parents to come to see them over the New Year, but only Essie turned up, looking harassed in her black coat and a felt hat. She wore no other colour and Selma felt a flicker of shame at the sight of her rough boots and her shabby three-quarter coat. The broken veins in her cheeks were like red ink marks on white paper. Mam wore a weary look of resignation. She was here out of duty, not desire.

Since she had settled with Ruth Selma was getting used to Bradford life and all the attractions a bustling city had to offer. They had gone to a real pantomime and to the moving pictures, to a musical concert at St George’s Hall and to the Wesleyan Amateur Operatic Society’s production of
The Arcadians.

There was so much to tell her mother about her new position as companion nursemaid to a young girl down the Avenue, Lisa Greenwood. Lisa had started at the High School for Girls as a day pupil, while her father was at work in Leeds University. It was Selma’s job to meet her from school, cook her a simple meal and see that she did her studies until he returned home.

It was a bit of a shock at first to realise they were German born. The first Germans she’d ever met. But Mr Greenwood didn’t have horns coming out of his ears. In fact, he was quite old with grey hair and a moustache; a professor of textile technology in Leeds, a learned man with a kindly twinkle in his eye. Lisa’s name was really Elise Grunwald, but they’d changed it by deed poll to sound more English. She was a remarkable girl, old for her age. Her mother had died when she was small. Lisa was clever and played the piano and violin. She and her father spoke German to each other in private but always chattered away in her schoolgirl
English to Selma. The house was full of books and Selma was free to take anything off the shelves. She fancied the picture books full of paintings and sculptures the best.

Rose Villa was just like Aunty Ruth’s house from the outside but inside it was cluttered, with dark heavy furniture, framed pictures on the walls, a jumble of papers, instruments and books and the smell of rich cigar smoke.

Professor Greenwood had been sent into a camp for German nationals at the beginning of the war and Lisa was farmed out amongst the neighbours until Uncle Sam and some important people spoke up for him and they were all reunited.

Parent and child were very close in a way she’d never seen before. They laughed and discussed, argued on points of order, nit-picking until her ears were aching. The professor talked to Lisa as if she were an adult, not a child, but also realised there were some things in the home that needed a more female influence.

‘Make sure she doesn’t become too blue a stocking,’ he would joke. Selma wasn’t sure what he meant.

They went to the theatre at the weekends and kept themselves busy on Sundays entertaining other German friends. They didn’t go to church. ‘I have not found one church that can answer all my questions,’ Lisa’s father explained.

They never talked about the war’s progress or about their family. He had chosen to stay on in England and was cut off from his own kin.

There was a picture of Lisa’s mother in a silver frame. She had a strong face, like Lisa, fair, blue-eyed with strong cheekbones and a long nose. Not pretty but striking in a different way.