The Bannister Girls (18 page)

The thought had screamed into Angel's head long before she reached that part of the letter. A chance to find Jacques. To be with him in France. To be part of that bloody war…

The saliva dried in her mouth as the remembered babblings of some of the convalescent soldiers at Meadowcroft surged through her mind. The terrible gas that seeped insidiously into eyes and lungs. The shattered bodies of comrades who had been talking to them seconds before. The horrific trench songs…

‘If you want to find your sweetheart,

I know where he is,

Hanging on the Front Line wire…'

The unforgettable sights she had seen with Clemence of all those coming home at Temple Meads station … poor Hobbs … the despair and the humiliation of those young boys who had gone away so eagerly, and come back as broken heroes, every one…

She was still thinking about Margot's suggestion, and the months had gone on. Margot's mother had had a slight stroke and all thoughts of Margot leaving her had vanished for a while, but she was now quite well in her old family home near King's Lynn.

In October, King George V had paid a second visit to the Western Front and been involved in an accident when his chestnut mare reared up in fright at the cheers of the men of the Royal Flying Corps. The King had fractured his pelvis
and suffered severe bruising.

‘The poor man!' Clemence had exclaimed, reading out the news from the newspaper. ‘But doesn't it just prove that he's human like the rest of us?'

‘Did you suppose that royalty didn't have pelvises and flesh that could bruise, Mother?' Ellen said in amusement, winking at Angel.

Angel didn't hear her. The imagery of the scene was too vivid in her mind. She was sorry for the King, of course, and it must be horribly painful … but the group of RFC men may well have included Jacques among those who were cheering and smiling … and he was suddenly close to her in spirit, as it seemed he hadn't been for months.

‘Mother, I think I'd like to learn First Aid.'

Angel said the words in a tremendous rush before she could stop to think.

Clemence lowered her newspaper a fraction. A year ago she would have been horrified. Now, after looking doubtfully at Angel's determined face for a moment, she gave a small resigned sigh.

‘I suppose it's not a bad thing to do. There's an establishment in Bristol where you could learn to roll bandages and things like that. It would be a useful occupation. Yes, I think it's an admirable suggestion, my dear.'

Angel tried not to look at Ellen. Ellen had a knack of reading her mind. Ellen would know immediately that learning First Aid was not going to be confined to rolling bits of cotton into bandages in a First Aid Depot in Bristol. Ellen would
know
…

Christmas came and went. The soldiers still in the house helped to make it a jolly affair. Dougal's arm had got infected now, and he was receiving daily medical attention in Bristol, and so still remaining at Meadowcroft.

‘My God, I think you may be right,' Ellen whispered to Angel.

‘His eyes do follow Louise around. He's like an adoring sheepdog.'

‘I'd say he's more the handsome wolfhound, if you get my meaning,' Angel said. ‘Stanley definitely comes out second-best in the vitality stakes!'

Stanley was home on leave for Christmas, and oh-so-correct in his dealings with the billetted soldiers. He couldn't relax. He was an officer, and would always be aware of his status. Let the girls play their party games, and his parents-in-law sit back and smile indulgently. Stanley knew his place, and would have a word or two with Louise later. It was hardly seemly to cavort about like this. Christmas or no Christmas, it really wasn't cricket.

Sir Fred Bannister sat dreamily, his mind many miles away from the homely little scene. Big house or small, the traditions were the same. The great Christmas lunch, somewhat depleted by necessity this year, the holly and the ivy, the huge tree in the window adorned with painted fir cones and decorations, the paper chains the girls made every year to drape across the room, the bowls of Christmas roses and greenery from the hedgerows that Clemence arranged so artistically. Christmas was Christmas … and in a snug little cottage in Yorkshire, his Harriet would be spending a lonely day with only an elderly neighbour or two for company. He raised his glass of port wine in silent tribute to his love, and wished with all his heart that he could be there with her now.

Soon, he had promised her. As soon as he could get away from the jollifications at home, they would have a late Christmas of their own. He would take her to the coast, to Scarborough, perhaps, and they'd spend a few nights in a posh hotel as plain Mr and Mrs Anybody. Harriet had kissed him with her soft lips, her arms holding him close, the warm musky scent of her pervading his nostrils and intoxicating his soul.

Ah, Harriet, Harriet … the music of her name drifted
through his mind, an echoing refrain that had been repeated a thousand times. Why didn't I meet you a lifetime ago…?

‘Daddy, you're going to spill port wine all over the carpet if you drop off to sleep!'

It was Angel's amused, melodious voice that penetrated his dreaming, and his eyes opened quickly. She knelt down in front of him, his precious girl, and gently took the glass from his hand. He bent swiftly to kiss her. She was the best reason for having married Clemence. To his shame, Fred acknowledged it yet again.

Angel straightened, strangely moved by the tender, faraway look she had momentarily glimpsed in her father's eyes. How odd. How extremely odd. It had reminded her so much of the yearning in her mirrored face when she was thinking of Jacques.

They were shrieking at her to join in the game of charades with the rest of the young company, and she forgot all about her father's dreaming look. Or rather, it was filed away in her mind, the way interesting bits of unrelated information were.

In January, 1916, conscription came in. Single men were called upon first. There was much confusion. Those of the Quaker faith refused to join, being adamant against killing. Many conscientious objectors were brought before local tribunals, and if the objections were genuine, they were given other important work to do, such as First Aid assistance at the Front, or working on the land. If they totally refused to help the war effort, they were simply sent to prison.

‘Poor things,' Angel said sympathetically. ‘Why should they be penalised for their faith?'

‘People always have been. Religion has caused more trouble in the world than any other factor. Don't you know your history, darling?' Fred said, preparing to leave for Yorkshire, and thankfully so. A whole three weeks at home, and he was straining at the leash, stifled by Clemence's very presence.

‘We've got one at the farm,' Ellen said suddenly. ‘At least, we're being sent one. I'm not at all keen to meet him.'

Angel was offended on the unknown man's behalf. ‘Why not? He's no different from any other man. If he does a good job for your Mr Chard, that's all that matters, isn't it?'

‘He's not
my
Mr Chard,' Ellen replied automatically. ‘Anyway, he's probably very dreary, one of those pompous young men we used to see in London all the time. Thank God Mother can't fill the house with those any more!'

Angel agreed wholeheartedly, watching Ellen as she pedalled away on her bicycle towards Peter Chard's farm, well wrapped up in a heavy coat and boots, for the winter months were not the best farming weather. The new man was arriving that day. He was called Andrew Pender, and he was neither dreary nor pompous. He was a Cornishman, very tall and dashing, with crinkly brown hair and a wide wide smile. Ellen took one look at him and fell head over heels in love.

‘I shall be leaving here soon.' Dougal Mackie made the statement one morning, the day after Fred had gone to Yorkshire, intending to stay for several weeks, ostensibly to supervise the adapting of the old machinery for the new intake of cloth for army uniforms.

‘Surely not!' It was Louise who answered Dougal, her face slightly flushed, her eyes lowered quickly. ‘Your arm still pains you badly, Dougal. I've seen how you wince at times –'

He gave a short laugh. ‘I doubt the army will think it a fitting reason to keep me away from the Front, lassie!'

Clemence had taken offence at the soldier's free use of the term, until informed scathingly by Ellen that it was a perfectly natural Scottish way of speaking.

Clemence added her own thoughts.

‘Dougal, don't be in too much of a hurry. We shall miss you. You've become almost a – a fixture here.' It was going too far for Clemence to say he'd almost become one of the family.

‘I thought the doctors weren't too happy about the torn ligaments,' Angel put in. ‘What use is a soldier whose arm collapses in the midst of firing a rifle?'

Dougal smiled at her. ‘You've become so canny, Miss Angel, with your First Aid training! Aye, mebbe 'twould be a mistake to return too soon. But I've been here too long, taking advantage of your hospitality. I'm thinking of asking for leave to visit my mother. She's unwell, and she's no young any more.'

Angel could see that Louise was dying to say that Dougal hadn't been here too long at all, but such sentiments would clearly be indiscreet from a young married woman. They had become remarkably attached, but she was quite sure that Louise would never betray her husband. Nor go away to an hotel with a man the way Angel had done with Jacques…

She felt a catch in her throat. There had been a long letter from him at last. A letter that terrified Angel. They were now bombing German factories. Flying right over Germany and dropping bombs that destroyed munitions and armaments, and although Jacques' words were restrained, Angel didn't need telling how dangerous these missions were.

She prayed for him every night. There were times when she wondered if anybody was listening to her prayers. Her faith was no longer as intense and all-believing as it had been at school. She was questioning the very basis of her upbringing. But what kind of God could allow these terrible things to happen, such needless slaughter and agony? Her own shaky belief was one more thing to appal her.

Before Dougal Mackie could make any enquiries as to his future, the infection in his arm worsened dramatically and he was admitted to hospital in Bristol with a raging fever. Gangrene was suspected, and for several weeks a very real fear of amputation. They all visited him at various times, and Angel guessed that Louise made many more visits than she told the rest of them. Several times Angel thought she could hear her weeping in her bedroom. She wanted to go to her,
but knew that Louise's pride would forestall any such comfort.

At long last the danger of amputation was past, but Dougal was to be discharged from the army. His right arm was not entirely useless, but would never stand up to the rigours of warfare. He came back to Meadowcroft far more subdued than when he left, with a bitterness in his heart that matured his young face considerably. And as soon as he was fit to travel, he was going home to Scotland.

In February, in Europe, there was news of a terrifying new German bombardment of the historic fortress of Verdun in northeast France. The Bannister girls had visited the city once long ago, and could identify with the horrors more readily than in any other newspaper report. The snow was thick on the ground in France now, and the reporters made much of the ‘mincing machine' of Verdun, where French and Allied men were being cut down by the minute. The once green fields were now a barren wasteland, with only the stumps of trees where lush vegetation had flourished. It was said that the noise of the battles could be heard across the Channel in the southern coastal towns of England as a low rumble resembling an earthquake.

In February, in England, The Honourable Stanley Crabb was blown to bits while inspecting the site for a larger munitions factory on the remnants of an old one, converted from a small cramped button factory. The explanation given for the explosion was that spilled dregs of gunpowder had collected in small pockets when the old building had been pulled down, and some careless newspaper reporter accompanying the military men had inadvertently lit a cigarette and thrown down the match. There were six casualties and one fatality.

Louise wondered what time Clemence and Angel were going to get back for dinner that evening, having gone to meet the
ambulance train at Temple Meads. She sat aimlessly at the pianoforte, trying very hard to sort out her muddled feelings on certain matters, when the housekeeper announced the arrival of two gentlemen in uniform.

She turned almost gladly. More billetted men would be a relief, whatever they were like. Their presence may stop her from thinking what a terrible mistake she had made in marrying Stanley to please her mother, and may help to squash these other wicked longings creeping into her mind every single day – the minute she saw the officers, she knew this was a different visitation.

Louise wasn't normally a hysterical woman. Nevertheless, the village women who came in to help Cook with the kitchen work reported afterwards that it was pitiful to hear that poor Mrs Crabb wailing and carrying on when the officers told her that her husband was dead. Must have thought a lot of him, for all his stuck-up ways. There was no accounting for folk…

Louise wept into her lace-edged handkerchief, sick to her stomach at realising that the feeling she felt most was the most acute, yet appalling sense of relief. The officers cleared their throats and murmured comforting platitudes, one of them daring to put an arm around the grieving young widow and sensing the tautness of her supple body.

Poor young woman, he thought sympathetically. But a handsome one too. Perhaps in time she would find someone to take the place of that pompous Crabb fellow. An officer and a gentleman, Stanley certainly was, but the general opinion of him was that he was the most boring bore in the British army.