In Distant Fields (46 page)

It was only the briefest of funerals because any gathering attracts the eye of the enemy,
but we did get the chance to read something over them while another of the boys produced his harmonica and played ‘Greensleeves'. I have to say it was all rather moving. It's so very odd – while we hurried through the briefest of services the guns suddenly stopped as if orchestrated to do so. When they did, after only a few moments, the air was filled with a chorus of birdsong. There we were, deafened by the barrage one moment and the next we were all standing in a summer garden at first light (because it wasn't long after dawn) – serenaded by the sweetest sound you could imagine. Poor old Flanders – there really doesn't seem to be very much left of her – and you do have to wonder why.

Anyway, there's talk of a bit of activity soon so I'm not sure when I shall be able to write again. If has been fairly quiet here for the last week, besides the sound of the bombardment, which thankfully is not directed anywhere near our position, although a couple of stray shells dropped about five hundred yards behind us, killing a woman, so they say, who was out walking with her two young children. That is what is so hard to fathom, Kitty – we who wear the uniforms of our country's regiments are legitimate targets, but women and little children being blown to pieces? What sort of world have we made?

As I lie here at night or at day, whenever it is possible to snatch some sleep in my fughole, I
think of you. I think of our times together, I think of your laugh, I think of your gentle smile, I think of your sweet kisses. Most of all I think of your love and I think of you and I expressing our love for each other when this war is at last over and we are reunited properly. It is that thought – the thought of you and how much I love you – that keeps me sane and inspires me to try to lead my men safely through the battles to come and to do my bit to get sanity restored to this mad world of ours. You are not just in my thoughts, darling Kitty – you are my thoughts – entirely, even when sleeping when all I see is your beautiful angelic face. How I long to be in your loving arms once more! Sitting by the fire in the library with the dark night enfolding us while I enfold you in my arms, kiss your hair, your face, your soft cheeks and your sweet, sweet mouth. Love me as I love you, which shall be for –

Always, as ever, yours,

Almeric

Kitty wrote back to Al at once, almost as if she knew she had to catch him before he moved on, before the push to which he had referred began and her letter might not reach him at his new position. She had no idea how the postal services worked as efficiently as they did, under such duress. Every time she sat down to write to Almeric, she wondered how her letters ever
reached him, how letters from home ever reached any of the soldiers to whom they were addressed and yet they did. Somehow those bags of mail containing letters marked to hundreds of thousands of different men serving in different regiments, subdivided into battalions, subdivided yet again and yet again until they were platoons, until they were units, until they were individuals, the very individuals to whom the letters had been written at desks, at kitchen tables, by firesides, under blossoming apple trees, besides lakes, rivers or ponds, on knees, in railway stations, hotels, houses, cottages, flats, hospitals, wherever a loved one could sit and put pen to paper – to write to their lover, their brother, their father, uncle, cousin, lover or just friend, before dropping that small carefully written missive into a post box, trusting it to a mail service that somehow miraculously managed to put that letter – finally – into hands all too eager to tear open the envelope. And having found a quiet place to read, the recipient would sit, smoke a cigarette or light a pipe, shut off the seemingly interminable noise of war and read all the news from home.

But this letter of Kitty's seemed to have a different urgency. It was as if the words that Almeric had so lovingly and carefully written to her had made her even more aware of the necessity of writing the right words. Because of this she found herself hesitant, searching, always searching, for the absolutely right thing
to say to the man she was to marry.

Because of the genuine depth of her feelings for him, finally she was able to write a letter to him that she hoped conveyed adequately everything she felt. She wrote that she thought of him always, that she remembered their walks, their talks and their kisses, and that all she could think of was his safe return and of their being finally united. Then she kissed the envelope and posted it in the box that stood in the castle hall.

The letter that was delivered to Partita several days later had a very different effect indeed on the receiver.

Partita saved it up to read in bed. It was the end of a particularly difficult day, which had been spent tending to a number of patients who had just been sent on up to Bauders to recover from the effects of inhaling chlorine gas, the chlorine deeply affecting their respiratory and digestive systems. Bauders had been forwarded the first few cases in the forlorn hope that recuperation in the fresh summer air of the English countryside would do the trick. But the first of the arrivals were still so dreadfully distressed when they arrived that they had to be sequestered away from the other patients.

It was yet another harrowing experience, and one from which Partita had not had time to recover when she opened the letter and started to read.

‘What on earth do you mean by this, Kitty?' she demanded, bursting into her room, waving the letter dementedly. ‘What on
earth –
can you have been thinking? Are
you
shell shocked now? What did you mean by this?'

Kitty, worn out by the disturbing events of the day, had been fast asleep, so she now sat up startled, trying to make out who was in her room and why, putting her feet to the floor, thinking that it might be a patient, before realising it was Partita.

‘This is a letter from Peregrine! And it appears – it appears that what it contains is all your doing! How could you write to him like that? How could you?'

‘Just calm down, Partita,' Kitty replied, picking up her gown and pulling it on, ‘and tell me what's going on.'

‘Going on? Going on! I'll tell you what's going on, you interfering little fool!' Partita was at her bedside now, flapping the letter at Kitty like a mad woman. ‘I've just had this letter from Peregrine congratulating me on my engagement, that's what's going on! And all thanks to you, apparently! You wrote to him and told him I was getting engaged to Michael! And he's taken it to be the gospel truth! What did you think you were
doing
?'

‘Try to calm yourself, Partita. If you don't calm down you'll do yourself harm, really you will – particularly after everything you and I have been through today.'

‘Today has nothing to do with anything! This is what matters! This letter! Don't you realise what you've done?' She sat down suddenly on the edge of the bed. ‘You have finally managed to put Perry off me completely!'

‘You're not making sense – it's because you're exhausted.'

‘He will never see me as anything but a piece of thistledown now,' Partita continued, brushing away Kitty's conciliatory hand.

‘No – think sensibly, Tita – and do try and calm yourself,' Kitty advised, now managing to get hold of Partita by her shoulders and guiding her back to her own room. ‘Why should I try and do something like that? No – no, don't say anything for a moment, please? Not until you've heard me out. I admit, yes, I did write to Peregrine, but only because he asked me to do so as a friend, that's all – and I admit I mentioned the fact that you were thinking about becoming engaged to Michael – that this was how far you were prepared to go for your patients. It was a joke, in the letter, that's all, a joke.'

‘What sort of humour is there in that, may I ask?'

‘No – listen, please? I only did that for your sake.'

‘For
my
sake?'

‘Yes, for your sake.'

‘How for my sake?'

‘So that Peregrine will see you in a different
way. See you as you are. I was praising you to him. And I also hoped—'

‘Hoped?'

‘Yes, I really hoped that it might make him a little – well, I must be honest –
jealous
.'

For once Partita kept quiet. ‘Jealous?' she asked eventually, frowning. Peregrine had always seemed so far removed from petty matters, she could not even imagine him entertaining such a petty feeling.

‘You should have seen the look in his eyes when he saw the attention you were giving Michael.'

‘Is this true?'

‘Of course it is! Why should I lie to you? I'm engaged to your
brother
so why should I try and spoil things for
you
? I don't think Peregrine quite understands his real feelings himself. Nor does he understand just what a golden girl you really are.'

‘But all he says here is that he must send me his congratulations. He blithely congratulates me on being such an angel and hopes we'll be very happy.'

‘That's Peregrine all over.'

‘Yes, I suppose it is.'

Partita looked pensive, so Kitty continued, ‘if you ask me, half the trouble – no, the whole trouble – with you and Peregrine is that he's always been determined to see you just as a little sister, Almeric's little sister. But you have grown up, you've changed, and maybe when he was here, seeing how sweet you were being with
your patients, maybe he suddenly saw you in a different light.'

‘Maybe so, but – I hardly think so. Oh, why did you have to write to him?'

‘You're tired, Tita,' Kitty said, sitting down on the bed beside Partita and putting an arm around her shoulders. ‘We both are.'

‘Oh God, oh God, Kitty, will this war never be over? It seems that it will never, ever end.' Partita sighed in misery. ‘Oh, for it to be all over and everything to be back just as it was.'

‘I don't think that's going to be possible.'

‘For the war to be over?'

‘No, for everything to be back just as it was.'

If people at home were being told that things on the Front were meant to be improving, at the actual party there were few signs of them doing so, while at the Front there were stories of Zeppelin raids on London, rumours that soon proved to be true with the news of over ninety bombs being dropped on the capital. People began to talk about the chances of a full-scale invasion, but this rumour died an early death due to the realisation that Germany's armed forces were too stretched on all European fronts to be able to spare a powerful enough force for an invasion. Nevertheless, the threat of aerial bombing did not diminish, and British cities were dark and frightened places at night.

Unaffected by either Zeppelin raids or rumours,
the nurses at Bauders worked longer and longer hours, but they also determinedly trained on. Partita and Kitty diligently attended their nursing classes, learning more and more about the newer techniques that had come about simply because of the war. Every bed in the castle was now taken, and there was an ever-growing waiting list of invalids ready to be sent there for recuperation. Yet despite this, Michael Bradley still remained, continuing a more or less untroubled convalescence, his only real anguish now being caused by something over which no one, least of all himself, had any control. He had, as predicted, fallen in love with his beautiful young nurse.

‘Michael has just told me that he has fallen in love with me!'

Partita hardly dared to look at Kitty, who started to laugh, almost hysterically.

‘Stop it, Kitty! Please, stop it. What on earth shall I do?'

Kitty handed Partita a cup of much-needed tea.

‘Humour him, dearest, just humour him, but keep away from any ideas of rings or engagements!'

‘It's going to make looking after him so difficult. Will you take over? Perhaps that would be better.'

‘Of course I will, but it won't do any good, you know it won't. I told you he was besotted weeks ago.'

‘Yes, I know, I know, but I thought it was just you exaggerating.'

‘Just charm him.' Kitty gave Partita a tolerant look. ‘You know more about charm than anyone.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Never mind what I mean, Lady P. I know, that's all.'

Partita tried to do as Kitty advised, making jokes, putting on funny voices, anything to distract her patient from his all too evident emotions.

‘I hope you didn't mind me expressing my feelings,' he said to her a few days later. ‘I hope you didn't feel that I was speaking out of turn, what with you being who you are and everything.'

‘Me being who I am and everything has nothing to do with anything, Michael,' Partita replied. ‘I'm simply me and you are simply you, and that is all there is to it. I've explained my situation to you, and you're never to think that you spoke out of turn. But I have time only for my work, Michael, and that requires all my attention and all my devotion.'

But of course, her devotion to her patients only served to endear Partita to Michael all the more, and he was not alone. Kitty could not help being moved by the change in her friend, who, once she had been reassured of Kitty's innocent intentions towards her, was back to being a positive Catherine wheel of activity. Her latest
idea being to put on a home entertainment such as they had done with
The Pirates of Penzance
. It was to be performed by the fittest and most recovered of the patients, and anyone else working at Bauders who might feel so inclined.

‘I think that is a perfectly splendid idea,' Circe enthused.

‘I thought we might do a pantomime,' Partita replied. ‘We don't have the time at the moment to get it all organised, but if we put aside a few hours each month, by Christmas we will be just the thing.'

‘A very jolly notion,' Circe replied. ‘And I want to play a part in it.'