In Distant Fields (54 page)

‘I have no idea what you are talking about, darling,' Circe laughed. ‘Not a clue, and I'm quite sure Kitty doesn't either.'

‘Letter substitution is the schoolboy's code really,' Kitty explained. ‘Rot thirteen, for instance, is called that because you rotate the alphabet by thirteen – that is, if you want to write the letter A you write N, thirteen letters into the alphabet. So Partita would be – let's see …'

Kitty took a pencil and began working out the rot thirteen code for ‘Partita' while Partita smoothed the gibberish letter out on the table before her.

‘Kitty's right, Mamma. That's absolutely so about the substitution code, but this is infinitely more subtle and not easy to crack if the sender has done his work properly.'

‘Partita would be CNEGVGN. Cnegvgn. Very Russian.'

‘I've always wanted to be called Cnegvgn. What you do is you write your message by concealed dots, the dots being the full stops. Because it's that complicated it's best to keep the message short or else you have to write pages of rubbish – or something – so then you look for the dots and you join them up so …' She showed them what she was doing, tracing full stop to full stop. ‘Until you get some letters.
Comme ça
.' She stared at the letter in front of her, the expression frozen on her face.

‘What's the matter, Tita?' Kitty asked. ‘What have you got?'

‘P, so far,' Partita said slowly. ‘The letter P absolutely, see? Then S then A, then an F, then over the page – an E.'

‘P – S-A-F-E, P is safe?'

‘Peregrine is safe? It has to be. Perry is safe!'

‘Peregrine is alive?' Circe stood up, her hand to her chest. ‘Perry is safe?'

‘It has to be, Mamma,' Partita answered. ‘What else could “P is safe” possibly mean?'

‘Is that all it says, Tita?'

‘Isn't it enough? Peregrine is safe!'

‘But who sent it, darling?' her mother wondered. ‘Who could possibly know this and who
would know to send it in code, and why?'

Partita thought for a moment, then returned to the letter to examine it for further clues. ‘I'll tell you who sent it,' she said. ‘Someone called V.'

‘V?' her mother said, already there. ‘But—'

‘Who else do we know whose name begins with V?' Partita demanded. ‘Only Valentine!'

‘Valentine? But how could Valentine possibly know that Peregrine is safe? He couldn't possibly know. Isn't he meant to be doing some theatricals for the troops somewhere or other?'

‘Yes,' Partita said slowly. ‘Perhaps that's exactly what he's doing.'

The three women stared at each other, all of them gradually seeing the debonair Valentine in a rather different light.

Peregrine's survival could not be confirmed, although none of them could resist clinging to the idea that he would soon make a miraculous reappearance. Nothing more was heard until out of the blue a postcard arrived for Partita.

Couldn't get in touch before and apologies. Had a good run but luck ran out just as I thought I was home and dry. You wouldn't recognise me now – unshaven and jolly grubby – and you wouldn't have known me then – ba eha nf zvare!

‘On run as miner,' Partita translated. ‘That's the rotation one.'

‘So why does he need to use a code, when the rest of it is written?' Circe wondered. ‘Or is he just playing games?'

‘You'll understand when you hear the rest of it,' Partita assured her.

If you could get round to sending a parcel? Need shaving kit, warm clothes (really warm!) and some provisions if poss. Send to given address below – my new hotel! Miss you all and you most of all, P.

‘Where exactly is he staying then?' Circe wondered with a frown. ‘He's staying at some hotel?'

‘Peregrine's joke, Mamma,' Partita said, handing her the postcard. ‘He's in an officer's prisoner of war camp.' Partita turned away. Perry was alive. It didn't seem possible. She was going to write and explain her so-called engagement to Michael Bradley as soon as she could. She would make a splendid joke of it. Something to amuse him over the next dreary weeks.

‘But he's safe,' Kitty wrote to Harry.

The wonder of it all is not only is he alive, but he is unharmed and safe. We're all sure he's absolutely furious at getting caught and we're all dying to know the details, but of course he can't write to us about it without giving the game away – so we shall have to POSIP, as the Duke has it. Possess our souls in patience!
But you can imagine the relief all round, now that we know bar some sort of accident of the fates, as it were, nothing should befall him before the end of the war. Partita is walking on air, as you can imagine, but of course, being Partita, she says nothing. When she writes to him, which she does almost every day, she shows him no mercy, and he rags her back no end – but then that's how it's always been with those two. It's quite touching, because it's obvious that they are gradually coming to realise that they mean more to each other than just friends. I am sure of it.

Any news about you having some leave? They seem to be working you dreadfully hard – or is it you working you? I suspect the latter, knowing you, Harry, but do try and find a little bit of time off to come and see us all here. I know you have vitally important work to be done and we must come down the list of priorities, but if you came up here, it would give us all a chance to catch up with your news. I do miss you – of course we all do – but I should dearly love to see you, and hear at first hand about what you have done and what you are doing.

You asked me for a recent photograph and although I don't think it's a very good one (Tita is not the very best of photographers!) I mean, it was such a sunny day and I had my hand over my eyes (q.v.) and squinting almost into the sun but Tita thought it was what she calls
‘v. natch', so that's the one you're getting. Sorry! Write soon – I love your letters.

Kitty

Harry read and reread her latest letter, lying on his iron bed back in a tent behind the newest clearing station. The last time he read it through before turning in for the night he stared at the last line and mentally edited it, dropping the ‘r' from ‘your' and cutting the word ‘letters' altogether.

After which he kissed her new photograph, smiled at the beautiful girl laughing back at him, hatless with hand shading her eyes and her dark hair seemingly being blown by a summer breeze, before carefully placing it in the pocket of his shirt, the side nearest his heart.

Allegra had long since won Sister over to her side, much against the senior nurse's better judgement, who up to now had always considered that all girls from Allegra's sort of background, when it came to nursing, were little more than dilettantes. But Allegra had held fast, working hard at both her duties and her studies, and now proved herself to be a valuable member of Sister's dedicated team.

‘Have we heard any more from our young man?' she asked Allegra one night when they were sharing a well-deserved cup of tea. ‘When last heard of he was on the Ypres salient, was he not?'

Allegra looked down at her teacup. She used to hate tea, most particularly this kind of tea, but nowadays, after a long day on the wards, it tasted like nectar.

‘How strange you should mention it. It's a fortnight since I heard anything from him,' she said, after a pause. ‘Until today. Then I got a letter from him, unfortunately it was dated over ten days ago.'

‘That is worrying, but at least you know he was in one piece ten days ago.'

‘At least he was when he wrote. But one does wonder for how long? The losses out there—' She stopped. ‘The officers more than the men even, ten to one, I believe, or something like that.'

‘If we hear nothing we assume the best until we hear otherwise,' Sister said crisply, but she sighed.

‘The only thing I find that works at times like this is – work,' Allegra said. ‘One can't dwell on things when one is busy.'

‘I was the same when Fred was sent to the Dardanelles.'

Allegra stared at Sister. ‘I had no idea.'

‘And why should you?'

Allegra did not dare ask what the outcome for Fred might have been.

Sister shook her head. ‘It was a slaughter. Altogether a slaughter. The boys lost there, doesn't bear thinking about. You have to think the people who organise these shooting matches
– because it seems to me that's how they see them – no offence, Allegra, but they do, you know – it's as if they're planning a few days out on the moors and wondering about what sort of bag they're going to have. It's the same mentality except God didn't bother teaching the wee birds how to shoot. But anyway, you have to wonder about their sanity. How they can go to bed at nights and sleep is way past me – and here we are. Those poor souls have to take the damage and us poor souls have to try and repair it.'

‘Fred was … ?' Allegra wondered.

‘He was my boy. He was my son.'

‘I am so sorry.'

‘I was very young. I hadn't even started nursing – and I fell, the way we girls do, you know. He was a soldier too, the father. A cavalry man, a Dragoon, and he's dead too, killed in the first month of the war in a mêlée somewhere between Mons and Brussels.'

Allegra said nothing, trying to imagine Sister, whom she had never seen out of her uniform, as a young girl
falling
. She struggled with a picture of her as a young woman falling for a Dragoon and having his baby.

‘My mother brought Freddy up,' Sister continued. ‘I went nursing. I had to earn my living, and with my father dead and my brothers all in the army, my mother could bring him up fine. Which she did and he was a very bonny, happy child. But there you are – that's who they send off to war – our bonny, happy boys. So let's just
hope and pray you hear good things about your James. I'm sure you will. I have a feeling about these things.'

Sure enough, three days later Allegra got the good news that James was indeed alive, the bad news being that he was not exactly in one piece, having been badly hit by shrapnel, wounds that resulted in the amputation of his left arm. He had been transferred to a French coastal hospital in Calais and when the doctors considered him fit enough to travel he would be returned home and awarded an honourable discharge from the army.

‘As well you're a nurse, my dear,' Sister said, smiling when she heard the good news. ‘You'll know best how to care for him.'

Harry had been drowning in what he now called the Red Tape Sea, trying to get a bunch of stuffed shirts to understand the need to move the dressing stations, when, in answer to Kitty's invitation, he was able to borrow a car from a generous friend, and drove to Bauders.

Wavell opened the door to him, and for a second, it seemed to Harry that everything was as it had been. His father at the great doors of the castle, the hall beyond him, until he saw how much his father had aged, how crumpled and creased he looked, and a little bent.

‘May I help you, sir?' Wavell asked.

‘Father?'

Wavell stared at his only son, unseeing.

‘Father?'

Harry grew closer. ‘It's me – Harry.'

Wavell put out his hands and took Harry's. He started to pump them up and down, and as he did so Harry realised that his father's hands were no longer those of an upper gentleman servant, but of a groundsman, so much must the nature of his work have changed.

‘The old eyes are going, you know! Or I surely should have known my own son. Her Grace advises some spectacles, but I haven't yet had time to go into Milltown.' Wavell stood back. ‘You are handsomer than ever, Harry, my boy,' he told him. ‘Now give me just a moment to change my jacket and we will go straight home.'

At home, in his father's estate cottage, Wavell prepared a simple dinner for them both.

‘I've had to get good at cooking for want of Cook and Mrs Coggle and I don't know who else going off to the factories,' he told Harry, and the dinner he set before them both was good and tasty, and plenty of it.

He then ran Harry a hot bath, and left him to sleep the sleep of a returned hero before returning to the castle where there were still plenty more duties waiting for him.

‘Harry's home, Harry's home, Harry's home,' he could not help saying, stopping everyone he met.

Finally it seemed that only Kitty was unaware that Harry was home.

‘Who's that, Kitty?' Partita nodded ahead of them the next morning. ‘I'm dashed if I don't think I know that figure rather well.'

They had just finished clearing the patients' breakfast. Kitty turned from her work and stared out of the vast arched window. Partita was right. There was a familiar figure outside. Below them on the lawn, hands in pockets, standing smiling up at them was Harry.

Partita smiled. ‘Out you go, Kitty Rolfe. Go and see Harry, before Harry comes to see us.'

‘You might have said you were coming,' Kitty called as she hurried out to him.

‘Why? Is there someone you don't want me to see?'

‘No, no, of course not.' Kitty stopped, taking off her apron and patting her hair. ‘No, no, it's just that we're all so busy—'

‘Of course you are, that's why I didn't say I was coming. You would say you were too busy.'

‘Of course I wouldn't. Oh, Harry, it is so, so good to see you, and in one piece!'

Kitty stood back from him. If she hadn't known he would hate it, she could have cried with relief.

‘I'm not only in one piece, Kitty, I am better than I was. Even Father was forced to say so. “Better than you were before you left Bauders, Harry,” he said last night.'

‘You certainly look as fit as a general.'

Harry nodded and, taking in the sight he had dreamed of for so long amid the blood and
the horror, amid the terror and the waste, he could have burst into tears, except he knew Kitty would hate it.