Poppy Day (41 page)

Isobel Baxter was out of the car in a second and Jess and Polly followed.

‘Stop – for heaven’s sake don’t go any further! STOP!’ The young woman jumped up and down waving her arms frantically above her head. They saw Peter stop and swivel round. For a moment he loosed John with one hand and waved at them.

‘Shan’t be long!’ they heard him shout. ‘It’s not far!’

‘But there’re BOMBS!’ Isobel shrieked. She seemed almost beside herself. ‘Please stop, you could be killed!’ But Peter had turned away and continued to clamber up the slope, a rough rubble of stones, exposed roots, tree-stumps and debris, so that he had to watch every step and it took all his attention.

Isobel wrung her hands. ‘It’s quite, quite wrong to leave the roads and the designated paths. There are unexploded bombs everywhere . . . bodies . . . Oh dear. Perhaps I ought to go after him.’

‘I’ll go,’ Polly said.

‘No.’ Jess laid a hand on her arm to stop her. ‘Don’t. Leave them.’

‘You’re right,’ Isobel said, her eyes never leaving the two men. ‘If we all start going it increases the risk. But oh heavens . . .’ She pressed her clenched fist to her lips.

There was a kind of indistinct path which Peter was following through the rubble. Slowly, ploddingly he climbed. Jess watched, her body so tense she felt she might snap, every fibre of her willing him to reach the top safely, to turn, to come back. She found herself overwhelmed with feeling that she had only dimly known was in her.

Be safe, be safe, Peter, oh Peter, her mind hammered, beyond her willing it. Come back to me . . . She laid a hand over her fast-beating heart. She didn’t really know how big the risk was that Peter was taking with his own life and John’s, but she found herself chill with fright. It was as if all the same kind of longing, the hopes and prayers she had sent out to Ned during the war distilled together in her mind, the intensity of it startling her. Come back to me, Peter my love – please . . . This time the words, the longing, was for someone else, and she was shocked by the extent of feeling towards him that had been growing, deep in her.

The three of them watched every move of the two men as they reached the highest point. Peter turned this way and that, so that they could look back towards Albert, then over to La Boiselle. Jess saw him pointing across the landscape with its scarred fields and clumps of razed woodland, its pimples of hills. For a few moments he put John down and they rested, apparently without talking. Jess watched them, saw the curious camaraderie that had formed between the two men. Soon, Peter hoisted John back on to his shoulders and they began the descent. For a moment, halfway down he slipped and almost fell and they all gasped, but he managed to right himself.

‘Oh Lord!’ Isobel murmured. But soon they were down the hill, safe, and Peter was walking across to the car. Both men were smiling.

‘I ought to give you a thorough ticking off!’ Isobel ran to them, laughing with relief. ‘Please don’t ever,
ever
do anything like that again, will you promise me?’

‘I’m sorry, Miss Baxter,’ Peter backed in through the car door, depositing John on the seat. Jess heard the jubilation in his voice. ‘Didn’t mean to get you so worried. Got a bit of a better picture up there.’

‘You can see our lads’ trenches,’ John said through the open car door.

Jess looked into Peter’s face and he smiled at her.

‘Don’t suppose you were worried?’

Jess felt her cheeks burn. She had known, in those moments, how much she felt for Peter Stevenson, and now she was vulnerable in front of him.

‘I was. Course I was,’ she said testily.

‘I just wanted John to be able to see . . .’

She could see in his face that it was not just John. Carrying him up there had been a test for him: the duty of a man who had not endured the trenches to perform a service for one who had. A different pilgrimage from the one the rest of them were making, but a pilgrimage none the less. There was a relief, a satisfaction about Peter as they got back into the car.

‘Now,’ Isobel said. ‘Time is marching fast onwards. We have to return to Abbeville this evening, so no more delays – please.’

Polly chose a spot just outside the village of La Boiselle to consecrate a little piece of ground, in her own way, for Ernie. La Boiselle had been fought over so heavily that most of it was a ruin. Looking along what must have been the main street was a poignant sight. So little remained of the buildings of the flattened village and what did was mostly rubble.

‘These poor people,’ Polly said, even more moved by the sight than she had been in the towns. ‘All their homes gone. I think I’ll do it somewhere ’ere.’

They walked until she found a little spot at the edge of the field nearest the southern end of the village.

‘I shan’t be able to keep coming back ’ere,’ she said. ‘So it don’t matter to me if it’s only me knows where it is. Look – by that little tree. That’s where I want it.’

Close to what looked like the remains of a barn, a young sapling had been smashed, leaving its trunk a sharp stump not much more than a yard high.

‘Cut off in it’s youth – like Ernie. Like all of ’em.’

Peter helped her, digging a little hole in the ground near the tree with a trowel, which Isobel had had the foresight to carry in the car. John sat in his chair and Isobel and Jess stood nearby watching. Polly had a little wooden box with ‘
Pte Ernest Frederick Carter – Royal Warwickshire Regt
’ carved on the top. Inside, she had told Jess, she’d written a letter to Ernie saying how much she loved him, would always love him, and wishing him goodbye. With it she’d put her wedding ring with a picture of Grace and a lock of the little girl’s hair. She broke down as she laid the box in the ground, and knelt by it sobbing.

‘Oh Ernie,’ they heard her murmur. ‘Oh Ernie . . .’

Jess went forward and knelt beside her, her arms round Polly’s shoulders, while Peter retreated to stand next to John. Peter knew as well as any of them the need to relinquish the dead in order to love the living, but he also understood how hard it must be for John to watch Polly’s grief over another man.

Polly accepted Jess’s embrace for a moment, then turned back to cover over the box with earth.

‘Goodbye, my dear Ernie,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t do no more for yer now. I wish you’d lived and come home, I do with all my heart, but I know you’re gone. Rest in peace, my love. I’ll bring up our Gracie right, and I’ll never forget yer.’

She patted the surface of the little grave and got up to gather some stones, which she laid in the pattern of a cross over the top of it. Peter came close and took some photographs.

‘Grace might want to see when she’s older,’ he said. Jess saw Polly give a smile.

‘Well done,’ Isobel said softly. Jess saw that she too had tears in her eyes. ‘Shall we all just take a bit of time to walk with our own thoughts before we go?’

They all spread out, each of them leaving the others with their private griefs. Peter pushed John’s chair to a place next to the road where he could sit and look. Jess walked back a short distance, and stood with her arms folded looking out across the sombre French fields. The light was fading: it was almost dusk and very quiet, the only sound the gentle breeze which played with the light skirt of her dress. The end of a warm summer’s day. They were days like this in 1916, she thought. And only last year guns were firing across these fields. She felt full to the back of her throat with emotion: grief and anguish for Polly and John, and an immense sorrow for all the dead who still lay round. But mixed with the sadness came also a sense of wonder, a restless longing.

Inevitably she found herself thinking of Ned. He fought near here somewhere, she thought. He had mentioned High Wood, and she wasn’t sure where that was, how far away, but he had undoubtedly been through Albert. Here, so many miles away from her, when in feeling they had seemed so close. And now she had come to this place herself, he was lost to her forever. How long, how faithfully she had devoted herself to him! She had lived for him and for his love, for their future together, and what had happened to all her high ideas of passion and devotion? She saw Polly, in the corner of her eye, walking along the edge of the field with her head down. Polly with her clear grief. For a moment Jess even envied her. If Ned had died on the Somme, how sweetly she could have remembered him! His life cut short, a decorated hero of the war, preserved for her like a tinted photograph, enshrined in all his perfection. If he were gone, she could still remember him as loving her. As it was he had had to go on, carry his wounds, his confusion into the imperfect future. He had left her a more bitter remembrance than Ernie, who had given everything to the French earth and who by not returning, had lit his own life with a glow of glory.

But Ned
is
gone, Jess told herself. Just as much as Ernie is. She too, had to bury him here and look to the future.

She turned to go and join the others, and as she did so, heard her foot tap against something wooden. Looking down she saw a short plank, painted as a rough sign board. Curious, she squatted down and turned it round, rubbing off some of the dried mud. In black paint, above an arrow, it read, ‘Sausage Valley’.

Peter came and stood over her. ‘What’s that you’ve found?’

‘An old sign – look.’ She stood up.

Peter read it and chuckled. ‘Did you know there’s a “Mash Valley” somewhere near it as well?’

‘No!’ she laughed.

There was silence for a moment as they looked out together across the haunted landscape.

‘They’re still here,’ she said. ‘All of ’em. I can feel it. As if they’re begging us not to forget them.’

By the time they arrived in Abbeville the sun had long set. Jess and the others all slept on the journey, while Isobel Baxter drove on steadily, car headlamps pushing on into the darkness. When Jess woke, the engine was switched off and they had pulled up in a dark street. She could make out almost nothing outside except that there were buildings on either side of them.

‘Here we are.’ Isobel opened her door and Jess stepped out feeling muzzy and confused. The air was warmer than she expected. ‘This is our stop for the night. We’re rather late, but Madame Fournier should be waiting for us.’

Peter Stevenson and Polly attended to John, and Jess and Isobel carried the luggage into the dim little vestibule, where Isobel, with obvious affection, greeted an elderly woman with hunched shoulders and steel-grey hair. Even in her only just awake state Jess marvelled at Isobel. She seemed to manage everything: even spoke fluent French!

Madame Fournier showed them to their rooms up a staircase with an intricate wrought-iron bannister, shadows leaping around them in the candlelight. It was a sizeable old house and their footsteps sounded loudly along the wooden floors. There were engravings in heavy dark frames along the upper corridor, which smelt strongly of beeswax polish.

Polly carried a candle into the room she and Jess were to share. There was one, grand-looking bed, the bedstead high at each end, made of carved wooden panels, and a crucifix was nailed to the wall above the head of it.

‘Look at this!’ Jess lay down on the bed. ‘Be a bit like sleeping in a . . . box.’ She’d been about to say ‘coffin’ but in the circumstances, thought the better of it. A hard, well-stuffed bolster lay along the top of the mattress.

‘Ain’t it
nice
?’ Polly said, looking round. There was a marble topped washstand, a wooden chair with curved arms and a tarnished mirror on a chest of drawers near the foot of the bed. She rested the candle on the washstand and sank down beside Jess. ‘This feels like the longest day I’ve ever had in my life. I’m all in.’

Jess rolled over on to her side, closer to her. ‘How d’yer feel, Poll?’

Polly was rubbing her hands over her face. She paused a moment as if trying to assess her feelings. ‘Better. I’m ever so glad we came ’ere. I mean, Ernie’s been dead a good long while, but it’s only now I think I can really put it behind me, now I’ve said goodbye to ’im properly.’

Jess smiled. ‘Good for you. That’s why we came. John’ll be glad too.’

Polly nodded. ‘I’m flaming lucky really, ain’t I? And eh – what would we’ve done without Mr Stevenson?’ Polly could never get used to calling him Peter, however many times he asked her to. ‘I think the man must be an angel.’ She looked closely at Jess. ‘You know ’e’s done all this for you, don’t yer?’

‘Don’t talk daft – it’s for John – and you.’

Polly laughed, head on one side. ‘Oh Jess – how much longer are yer going to keep the poor bloke hanging on?’

‘Has he said anything to yer?’

‘No,’ Polly stood up, stretching. Through a yawn she said, ‘’E don’t need to.’

They ate downstairs at a long table of dark, polished wood lit by candles. As it was late, Madame Fournier did not join them to eat. She greeted them with many nods and ‘
bonsoir
’s, and fed them with omelettes, bread and crisp lettuce leaves on thick white plates, and with it they drank red wine. The meal was served by a solemn-faced girl who looked, Jess thought, about thirteen years old. Since she had been in France she seemed to have seen only the old and the very young.

They were all very hungry and the food was delicious.

‘How does she make an omelette as tasty as this?’ Peter said, wiping his plate with a chunk of the bread. ‘Even the lettuce tastes nicer than anything at home.’

‘Well – it’s straight from the garden,’ Isobel said. ‘At the back of here she has quite a little smallholding – vegetables, fruit trees, chickens. The French do like their food very fresh.’

Jess sipped the wine, feeling the alcohol going almost instantly to her head. ‘You speak French ever so well,’ she said. Isobel was sitting next to her.

‘I was lucky enough to spend a year here, before the war. In fact Madame Fournier is an old friend of mine. One of her daughters is my age – she lives in Paris now and has a family of her own. When I started this work we had to find accommodation for people on these pilgrimages, and I thought of Madame Fournier here in this big house. She did take in other lodgers sometimes, and she said that if I thought the folk I was bringing were suitable, she’d provide a bed and food for them. She lost a son at Verdun. She is very
sympathique
, as the French say.’

‘Very good of ’er,’ John said through a mouthful of bread.

‘And are you glad you came?’ Isobel asked him.

John nodded, wiping the back of his hand over his moustache. ‘Oh ar – very glad. Yes. Thanks very much.’

‘And you, Polly?’

Polly smiled. ‘Yes thank you, Miss Baxter—’

‘Isobel – please.’

‘Isobel. I’m all in now though.’

‘You must be tired yerself,’ Jess said to Isobel. ‘Driving all that way while we slept.’

‘Ah well – that’s all right. I shall sleep tonight.’

Jess understood by the way she said it that sleep did not come easily to her. She was reminded for a moment of Iris: something in Isobel’s stoic acceptance of the suffering and loss in her life. I’ll go and see Iris when I get home, she thought. I’ve been selfish, neglecting her while I was all wrapped up in my own feelings. I must look after her better.

While Isobel was advising them all to get a decent night’s sleep as they needed a good early start to reach Boulogne in time, Jess looked cautiously across at Peter. She had spent so long avoiding his gaze, that she felt very self-conscious and vulnerable doing so. But tonight was special. This would be their one night in France, and it was thanks to him that they were here. Today she had allowed herself to admit how deeply she cared for him, and if she did not find courage to risk showing him, she might never know if he still felt anything for her. After tomorrow they would be home, with everything back to normal, and she might hardly ever see him. The wine made her feel mellow and more relaxed, and she dared herself to look unwaveringly at him. He was listening to Isobel, but after a moment he seemed to sense her watching him and looked back at her. The expression in his eyes was so full of affection and tenderness towards her that she felt her limbs turn weak and had to look away. After a second though, she looked back and smiled.

He came over to her as they left the table, all still talking sleepily, making arrangements for the morning. Sensing him beside her, Jess looked round.

‘I’ll need to help John get to bed.’

Jess clasped her hands tightly together to try and stop them shaking. ‘Yes. Course you will.’ This time she didn’t look away, knowing he wanted to say more.

‘Jess, I was wondering . . .’ He hesitated, watching her face, ready at any second to draw back if she showed signs of rejecting him. ‘Afterwards – I know it’s been a long day, but would you like to come outside – for a walk round? There’s the garden . . .’

‘Are yer coming, Peter?’ John was waiting in the wheelchair near the stairs. ‘Sorry, pal – only my bladder’s fit to bust, I can tell yer!’

‘John!’ Polly ticked him off. ‘The whole world don’t need to know!’

‘Yes,’ Jess said softly. All sleepiness left her in an instant. ‘I’ll meet yer down here.’

‘What’re you two whispering about?’ John demanded.

Peter gave a bashful grin. ‘Give me half an hour,’ he said to her quietly.

Upstairs, while Polly was pulling her clothes off and yawning in great gusts, Jess unlatched the shutters and pulled one of them back. There was a half moon in the sky, silvering the tops of the fruit trees, though she could not see far down the garden. Standing still by the window, she could feel the blood pumping round her body. The muzziness she had felt from drinking wine had left her, and she was wide awake, with a strange, enhanced alertness. She felt as if she could go on without sleep forever.

‘What yer doing?’ Polly had stripped to the waist and was splashing water from the pitcher over her face and shoulders.

‘Looking at the garden.’ She turned round. ‘’E’s asked me to meet him – tonight.’

Polly stared, water dripping from her chin. ‘Who – Peter?’

‘No, Kaiser Bill – who d’yer think?’ Jess retorted.

‘Ooh—’ Polly beamed at her. ‘Well about time.’

Peter helped John Bullivant out of his clothes and into bed. He tried to pay attention to the things John was saying to him, when he was trembling with anticipation and all he could think of was Jess . . . Jess. He had waited long and patiently for her, knowing that she was grieving over Ned as he had also to do over Sylvia. He was not an arrogant man, did not assume himself to be irresistible in her eyes. But he knew that he loved and desired her with great, protective tenderness. Tonight, when she looked at him, fear and love in equal measure in her face, he knew that at last his quiet waiting might be rewarded. His body was so taut with urgency to get outside and see her and talk to her in case she changed her mind, that he thought John must feel it. But John was exhausted. He lay back on the wide bed and closed his eyes immediately.

‘Thanks, pal,’ he murmured.

‘Sleep tight.’

Peter blew out the candle. He stood in the darkness for a few moments trying to compose himself.

Jess closed the heavy door behind her and stepped out into the garden, breathing in the warm, sweet-smelling night air. A tinny church bell was striking somewhere nearby, and as she stood still, letting her eyes get used to the darkness, she heard crickets in the grass and the muffled clucking of chickens from some distance down the garden. Jess knew that chickens were usually quiet once they had been cooped up for the night, but these sounded terrified, as if alarmed by something. Stepping carefully, she followed a rough path of stone slabs along the side of the grass and fruit trees. The garden was a good width, and extended over a hundred feet. The bottom third was screened off from the rest by a row of tall conifers and behind them, Jess found the whole area given over to a cottage garden. She smiled with pleasure, making out in the moonlight the rows of healthy looking plants. Madame Fournier obviously knew a great deal about growing vegetables. The chickens were squawking just as hysterically, and she was afraid the noise would bring someone out of the house to investigate. She could make out the wooden coop up against the end wall, and as she moved closer she saw a moving streak of shadow slink off and melt into the deeper darkness of the bushes at the edge of the garden.

I’ve just saved your bacon, you chickens, she thought, waiting to see if there was any more sign of movement. But there was none. The predator had been scared off. She listened to hear if anyone had been disturbed, but there was no sound of anyone coming.

Able to see much better now, she went back nearer the house and stood under one of the trees, looking up into the branches. The sight of the leaves above her, burnished with moonlight, the fragrance of garden flowers and the fact that she was waiting for him to come to her, brought her emotions fully to the surface. I love him, she said to herself over and over. All that time I had eyes for no one but Ned, and this was here waiting for me. This love, beside me all the time. She knew this with burning certainty now. Knew she felt truly sure with Peter in a way she never had in those years with Ned, always hanging on for him, putting her life off until he came back, forever insecure and worried. She longed for Peter to come, to be able to tell him how much she felt for him. Looking up at the windows she wondered if she might see his shadow moving about in one of the rooms, helping John, but there was no sign of anyone. Their window must face out from the front, overlooking the street.

Eventually she heard the door open, then close again quietly and saw him standing outside, a long, lean shape, letting his eyes adjust in the darkness. She enjoyed watching him, knowing he couldn’t yet see her. He took a few paces back and forth and she heard him quietly clear his throat.

After a moment she walked out from under the cherry tree and he came towards her.

‘Jess?’

She loved the sound of his voice saying her name.

‘Yes – it’s beautiful out ’ere.’ She was very nervous suddenly, looking for something to get them over the awkwardness of meeting. ‘Come and see.’

He followed her as she walked down to the dark screen of trees, and they stood looking back at the house. One of the casement windows was slightly open, but there was no light behind it.

‘I think that’s our window,’ Jess whispered. ‘I must’ve left it like that. I’m surprised Polly ain’t having a good nose out at us!’

‘She wouldn’t be able to see much,’ Peter said.

‘There’re chickens down ’ere – no wonder her eggs tasted so nice.’ She led him to the far end of the garden. They stood listening, but the chickens had calmed down and were quiet now. Jess felt she could sense, rather than hear their breathing and the close cluster of warm feathers.

‘I scared a fox away when I came down before. The hens were making a hell of a racket, poor things. They must’ve been frightened half to death.’

‘How d’you know it was a fox?’