Home for Christmas (43 page)

‘I’ll be fine. Fine,’ she repeated softly. For now at least she had no wish to face the truth.

She felt him eyeing her intensely, but did not meet his searching gaze. She needed time to think this through. What to do next? That was the question.

They sighed at the sound of vehicles approaching. More ambulances. More casualties.

‘Back to work by the sound of it,’ said Franz.

They both threw their half-smoked cigarettes to the ground, grinding them underfoot.

A staff car pulled into the area in front of them and two officers got out. The vehicle immediately behind the car carried a team of armed soldiers.

‘Fraulein Muller?’

The senior officer clicked his heels and saluted.

Lydia looked from one officer to the other, a feeling of dread lying like a lump of iron in her stomach.

She nodded and responded softly. One soft yes because all the strength had gone from her voice and her body. She knew immediately what had happened.

Franz stepped in. ‘Is there some problem?’

The officer jerked his chin in acknowledgement. ‘Fraulein Muller is under arrest.’

Again, he used the German version of her name.

Franz stepped forward, his tiredness absent and a new hardness to his tall, lithe body.

‘There must be some mistake.’ His voice was loudly defensive.

Lydia touched his arm. ‘Franz, it is all right.’

‘No it is not. I cannot see one of my nurses marched off on some stupid pretence. Tell me what she has done,’ he demanded.

The officer was polite but firm.

‘She is accused of helping Allied soldiers escape back to their lines. We already have her accomplices under arrest.’

Franz held his ground. ‘If they say she was in with them, they must be liars.’

Even before the officer fetched the bundle of letters out from his pocket, Lydia knew that the worst had happened.

Lydia fainted.

Her cell was a small room in the west wing of a chateau to the south of Ypres in northern France and far from the sea. The room was comfortable, having a table and chair, a bed and a writing desk set before the window. The window looked out over acres of rolling parkland and starkly naked trees. The war was a long way from this place.

She had been allowed to bring all her personal effects with her; her clothes, her books and her journal, a lovely item that she’d had very little time to write her name in until she’d been incarcerated.

A number of people were kind to her. The pastor provided to attend to her spiritual needs, and Brigid, wife of an officer who brought her food and did her laundry.

‘I am being paid for this,’ Brigid explained in an accent Lydia found difficult to follow. ‘I would not do it otherwise. You are a traitor to Germany.’

‘I’m only half German,’ Lydia explained. ‘My mother was English.’

‘That is no excuse for helping the enemy escape,’ said Brigid.

‘Yes it is. Neither the English nor the Germans are my enemies. They would all prefer to be with their families. Do you have children?’

‘Three. They are with my mother back in Cologne.’

‘Wouldn’t you prefer you and your husband were home with them?’

Lydia could see that Brigid was not that bright a girl. There was something innocent in the look of her, like a spaniel trained to do only the most basic of tricks for her master.

There was to be no formal trial. The information was imparted by the colonel in charge, a brusque, heavy man by the name of Blucher.

She’d stood in front of him, her hands behind her back, her eyes looking above his shaved head to a picture of the Kaiser. He had presented his evidence and asked her for any comment she would like to make before he passed sentence.

‘I only ask for clemency,’ she said. ‘I wanted the war to end. I thought helping soldiers to escape might help me achieve that end.’

‘Pah! This is what happens when women are allowed so close to the front line,’ he said to one of the other officers present. ‘If women ruled the world there would be no wars. Do you know that, Ender? What would men do then?’

The young officer, Ender, a fair-haired man with uncommonly pale eyes, looked at her then at his superior.

‘We would be forced to stay at home.’

‘We would indeed,’ proclaimed the colonel, clasping his meaty fingers together before him. ‘It is in a man’s nature to make war. It is not in a man’s nature to cook or wash dishes. That is women’s work. It always has been and always will be!’

Lydia smiled. Whatever would Agnes think of that? Sir Avis Ravening had told Agnes that she could be whatever she liked in the world of the future. It all depended on intelligence and diligence.

The colonel saw her smile.

‘The fraulein thinks this is funny?’

Lydia calmly met the gaze of the middle-aged man with his tight-fitting collar and starkly shorn head.

‘I was just thinking that the world can surprise us at times. Who knows what the future will bring?’

There followed a meeting of three shorn heads, the colonel and the other officers charged with the task of passing sentence.

The moment she saw the grave expressions, the unrelenting coldness in their eyes, she knew what her sentence would be. Death by firing squad.

‘Might I have writing paper?’ she asked. ‘I would like to write to my family and friends.’

The head of the panel that had condemned her, eyed her as though she had asked for the crown jewels or a troupe of acrobats; nothing so mundane as paper.

‘You may write to your parents.’

‘My mother is dead.’

‘You may write to your father. One sheet of writing paper,’ he said to his clerk. ‘Enough for bequests. That is all.’

They brought her things from her room. Putting her clothes away gave her something to do. Hidden amongst her underwear she found the picture of her mother and, to her great joy, her mother’s journal.

Once she was alone, she placed the portrait on the small pine table, the journal next to it.

She eyed each in turn. Even though the photograph was sepia coloured and not terribly clear, her mother’s look seemed so forthright, as though she were trying to tell her she was close by, that she had never left her.

She stroked each item in turn and wondered at the strange calm that had come over her.

Before picking up her pen, she read again in the journal the few words her mother had written; such sad words, and yet she felt as though her mother was telling her something. Write about how you feel. Write in a direct manner to those you love and to those who love you.

Tingling with inner warmth and the feeling that there is no such thing as an ending to life, she picked up her pen and opened the journal. The unblemished paper glared at her, as though inviting her to open up her heart and say whatever she had need to say.
Almost as if my mother knew I would have need of this … First, the date …

26
^th
December 1914

My dearest Robert,

I can hear a choir of wounded soldiers singing carols close by. I would like to think that you too are listening to carol singing where you are, safe back home for Christmas.

It was my 23rd birthday two days ago and was probably the last birthday I shall ever have and these are the last Christmas carols I shall ever hear.

I am writing these words in my mother’s journal, something I have avoided doing up until now; it seemed such a sacrilege.

You know I wish you well, and that I would love to be with you. Things have not turned out that way and it is almost certain that I will never see you or Agnes ever again. I love you both. Do take care of each other, and if you should marry and have children, please do me the honour of naming one after me. I will soon hear the guns for the very last time. In the mean time I reside in a small room which is comfortably furnished. I am allowed books. I am also allowed a Bible and have been provided with one in English even though they know I speak fluent German. It is as if they are attempting to diminish my German side by their bigotry, refusing to accept me as one of their own because of what I did. The irony makes me smile; in England I was regarded with suspicion because of my German inheritance; in Germany the situation is reversed. Neither saw me as patriotic and could not understand that all I care about is treating injured men no matter what side they fight on.

The pastor has informed me that a firing squad is being selected. It will not be long now, though I am told a physician will first examine me to ensure I am healthy enough to stand in front of a firing squad! Funny, if it wasn’t so tragic.

I regret my life will soon be over, but please do not weep for me. Carry on living. Carry on loving, and if Agnes can fill the void I may have left in your life, then please marry her and be happy.

27
^th
December 1914, 11 a.m.

Dear Robert,

I cannot possibly sleep at present, so yet again I write another note for you in my journal. I think the glorious summer of 1914 will be remembered as the last vestige of the old order, the class system, the wide gap between rich and poor before our world ended.

Up until the call to arms, life in England carried on as if it and the sunshine would go on forever. Remember you coming down to the cottage in the middle of the night. Never forget it. I certainly will not.

In those last Sundays of peace in that wonderful summer, people still went to church in the morning and walked off the excesses of a large lunch in the park or the countryside. God was in his heaven and everyone knew their place.

It was June in that heady period before the assassination of the Austrian archduke and his wife; that terrible event which set Europe alight. But something much more dramatic happened between us. I hope you will always remember it.

Lydia put down her pen and closed the journal. The pastor had promised to get it sent to Robert via friends who were travelling to Switzerland.

‘Have you said all you wish to say?’ the pastor asked her.

She nodded, her arm held protectively across her stomach. She and the life growing within her would die together. She could not let Robert know about the child. He had to go on living. Receiving news about her death would be bad enough. She couldn’t bear for him to grieve for years and years as her father had done for her mother.

He would have been devastated to know there had also been a child so the secret would die with her.

October, 1918

Sitting across from Doctor Eric Miller at his Kensington house, Robert Ravening was struck how war and the loss of his daughter had aged him. His face was more drawn, his hair no longer abundant as it had once been, and there was sadness in his eyes.

Doctor Miller was staring blindly into the fireplace where smoke wreathed sluggishly from dusty-looking coal. The fire was in need of a poker being plunged into its depths even if it only resulted in a small flame. At least it would cheer things up a little. Robert leaned forward, picked up the brass-handled poker and stirred a tongue of flame from the heart of the fire.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said once the poker was resting next to the coal scuttle. He looked down at his clenched fingers. Relating the details of how he had come to receive the journal had been strangely soothing, as though it would somehow soften the blow. It did not of course. He’d also made the mistake of not noticing that the first few words were written by Lydia’s mother. This was bad enough in itself, though nothing compared to his mistake with regard to the portrait that had arrived with it. He’d thought it was Lydia; it certainly looked like her. Doctor Miller had only glanced at the portrait before telling him otherwise.

‘My wife. Emily. She died when Lydia was born.’

‘And now you’ve lost your daughter.’ Even to his own ears, Robert thought the comment clumsy and inconsequential. But what else was there to say. ‘Look. Would you like me to leave the journal with you?’

‘She wrote the journal for you, not for me. You must keep it. You may keep the portrait too. It’s all in the past and I feel that as one gets older, the past becomes another country. All things fade away.’

To Robert’s ears, it sounded as though Eric Miller had turned to stone. On reflection he realised that Doctor Miller was keeping everything bottled up. He wanted to reach across and tell him to air his grief. He knew from wartime experience that keeping it bottled up inside was not good. But still, one couldn’t blame him, he thought to himself. He’s lost so much.

Kate Mallory, who was sitting next to the doctor, seemed to read Robert’s thoughts. She reached out and placed a hand on her husband’s shoulder.

‘My poor dear.’

They had been married in February. The journal had not arrived until late July having travelled first to Switzerland in a diplomatic bag thanks to kind friends. Even though Switzerland was neutral, it too was affected by the wartime postal service

‘Will you be going back soon?’ asked Doctor Miller, still looking into the grate.

‘Yes. I was lucky not to be injured when we crashed. I was also lucky that I met Lydia’s friends. They helped me escape.’ He chewed on his bottom lip as he mulled over their present circumstances; were the people who helped him escape still alive? There was no way of knowing.

Kate Mallory, who was now of course Mrs Kate Miller, sighed heavily. ‘When will this terrible war end?’

Robert spread his hands. He was as nonplussed as everyone else. No one knew.

‘Let’s hope it will be over by next Christmas,’ Kate added, though she didn’t sound convinced.

Robert left the house feeling greatly saddened. The war kept old friends apart, though it certainly threw enemies together. But at least it’s drawing to a close, he told himself.

There had been a lifting of spirits ever since the Americans had entered the war, not that things had changed right away. The war had dragged on, but the fresh troops and fresh ideas gradually made a difference. He could feel in his bones that it would soon all be over.

He hadn’t just come to London with regard to the journal and visiting Doctor Miller. He also had legal business to attend to.