The Foreshadowing (24 page)

As I lifted the blind on the carriage window for a second time, my hand was trembling. It was early morning, and a weak dawn light spread across the landscape.

I felt more alone than I have ever done in my life. We had trundled through the night, traveled east, inland, and reached the railhead at Bethune, being used as the casualty clearing station. It’s a squalid little place, a drab provincial town suddenly made important because a war has happened to come by. I was watching the scene at the platform when the door of our carriage opened, and Sister came back in.

“Right, you two. This is it. Look sharp.”

I forced myself to think. I had to decide what to do, and I had to decide quickly, but I was tired, and before I knew what was happening, the first of our men were being carried in on their stretchers.

The smell hit me first. They were fresh from the battlefield and reeked of death and disintegration. But as Nurse Goode had said, there was no time to be scared. And there was no time to make choices. I had to help get the men stowed aboard. As soon as our carriage was full we began to cut their uniforms from the worst wounds where possible.

As I worked I began to talk to the men. After the initial shock I gathered my wits. I had to take this opportunity because if I went back, my time would have run out.

I asked each man I tended about Tom’s regiment, but no one knew anything about it.

I felt desperate. Already the train was taking on new supplies of water and coal; as soon as we had everyone loaded we would be setting off back to Boulogne. I would just have to slip off the train and take my chances.

Then one of the last men aboard heard me talking to another soldier.

“I’m trying to find out where my husband is,” I was saying, thinking that might move someone enough to talk to me.

“You said he’s in the Twentieth Royal Fusiliers?”

I turned and saw a man in the top of the brechot behind me. He was in a mess, but he seemed sensible enough.

“Yes,” I said. “I know they’re around here. I heard they were at the Red Dragon crater. Do you know where that is?”

“The Twentieth?” the man asked again. “They’re in Thirty-third Division, aren’t they?”

I shook my head, desperately. I didn’t know what he meant.

“Thirty-third,” he said. “Look. You see that man there?”

He nodded through the window. There was enough light sweeping across the platform now to see well enough, but there were a lot of men, and I didn’t know who he meant.

“Him, the corporal. The short one. He’s in the Royal Welch. They’re in the Thirty-third, too. Ask him.”

I saw who he meant.

The train gave a powerful lurch as the engine was uncoupled and started to move to the other end for the journey back.

I jumped from the train onto the platform, and ran to the corporal from the Royal Welch.

I grabbed him.

“Do you know where the Twentieth Royal Fusiliers are?”

He turned and his eyes widened when he saw me.

“The Twentieth. Have you seen them?”

He said nothing, still too surprised to speak. I saw him look over my shoulder, but I kept on, begging him to understand, and finally he did.

“The Twentieth,” he said. He voice was just like Evans’. “Yes. They were with us. But the whole division has moved, we were relieved a couple of days ago. I’m the last of the Royal Welch. I got stuck. The rest of the boys have gone, and the Twentieth would have been with them.”

I felt sick, almost too sick to speak.

“Where?” I said, my voice failing. “Do you know where they’ve gone?”

He shook his head, and I thought it meant he didn’t know, but that wasn’t the reason.

“The Somme,” he said. “They’ve all gone to the Somme. It’s all quiet here now. That’s where they need the men. What’s all this about?”

I was in completely the wrong place.

In a daze, I was aware that the corporal glanced over my shoulder again.

“I think someone wants to talk to you.”

I turned and saw in front of me two burly-looking soldiers, wearing the red caps that I knew marked them as military police. A third stood by the steps to the train, talking to the sister who I’d met on board. She was pointing in my direction.

“I’m not a spy,” I said, but it was no good.

They weren’t listening.

24

They’re too busy to know what to do with me. That’s what it seems to come down to.

On the face of it I’m just a crazy girl who got herself dressed up as a nurse, but there’s always the possibility I’m a German spy. I wouldn’t be the first. And if they think that I am and they prove it, then I’ll be shot.

I can’t speak a word of German, but then, I’d pretend not to, if I was a spy. So I might be a spy or I might just be a nurse who’s gone a bit mad, or I might not be a nurse at all. The trouble is they’re too busy to find out which. A young woman does not travel around freely in a war. Even nurses are confined to certain times and places: in hospitals, in billets, on trains. I didn’t know how to be a nurse in a war well enough, and so I was discovered and traced eventually.

I was brought here, to this army base.

I have no idea where I am. I’m being kept in a tent, which doesn’t seem much of a prison, but then I suppose they’re not used to having female prisoners. Anyway, there’s always a guard on the door, so I can’t go anywhere. And even if I could, what would I do?

I was brought here on Monday. I’ve been interrogated by all sorts of people; there have been cables and ’phone calls, I know, but they still don’t know who I am. For the time being I think they’ve given up.

I’ve told them my real name, and that I’m not a spy, and that my father is an important doctor and if they shoot me they’ll be in awful trouble. But that’s all I’ve said. I hope it’s enough.

The worst thing is thinking about Tom.

I have felt nothing of him for days, and I fear that it might be too late.

That it might be over.

23

I’ve had the best part of three days to sit and think.

I’ve been thinking about Tom mostly, but Edgar keeps coming to my mind too. I’ve had a glimpse of what he went through, and it makes me angry and sad to think of it. What it did to him, how it made him and Tom fight. And all of us. It pulled us all apart.

Still I have felt nothing of Tom. No dreams.

At first I was able to talk to the guard on duty outside the tent. He was obviously mystified about having to guard a young woman, and seemed happy to talk, although nervously at first.

When I told him I wasn’t a spy, that was good enough for him, and then he spoke about himself, the war, and anything I put into his head.

He patted his leg, which didn’t move properly, and said he was glad not to be at the front anymore, but that he hated the job he had now. He said he’d guarded more than one man on court martial offenses, and that last week he’d had to watch over a private before he went to the firing squad.

I didn’t believe him at first. I couldn’t believe we were shooting our own men, but he said the boy had run away from the battle when an attack was on. That was desertion, and the punishment was death.

Then someone must have noticed that he was standing inside the door of the tent and not outside, because he was replaced by not one, but two surly soldiers who said nothing to me no matter how hard I tried to get them to talk.

Since then I’ve spoken to no one.

22

Before my friendly guard was replaced, I asked him about the Somme.

He’d heard that talk was spreading about some of the engagements, but his knowledge was scant. He’d been in the trenches himself, last summer.

“Where?” I asked him.

“Place called Neuve Chapelle.”

“Was that where you got wounded?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“No,” he said, and laughed a quick, short laugh. “I was a proper hero in the trenches. Neuve Chapelle turned into a right fiasco, but I was a real hero. I went on five raids. Never got hurt. Not even a scratch.”

He told me about the raids. Four or five men and an officer would creep out through our wire at night, armed to the teeth. They might be just having a look at the enemy lines, they might be going to try to kill Germans.

They’d crawl on their bellies over the mud, around the shell holes, right up to the German wire, sometimes through it, freezing if a flare went up over them, then on again when it went dark.

“The first time I went . . . ,” he said, and then gave me such a look, I knew what he meant. He was scared fit enough to die from it.

“But I went back, and back again, with my stick. . . .”

“Stick?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, cheerfully. “We made a lot of our own weapons. We’re supposed to use bayonets in the trenches, but that’s no good on a night raid. So we make all these things. Like a policeman’s truncheon, say, but with spikes like you don’t want to see. Some lads prefer a good big knife. Easier to use when you get into a trench.”

I didn’t say anything and he changed the subject.

“But that’s not how I got my leg. That was an accident. We was having a demonstration of a new grenade. Up to then, we’d been making our own bombs. We’d get jam tins, and pack them full of nails and the like, and the charge. The explosive charge, yes? Not very reliable.

“So there was a new bomb they was showing us. A metal canister, packed full of shrapnel. There’s this corporal showing us. He’s supposed to throw it over a heap of turnips, but his aim is off and it falls short. We all dive to the ground, like crazy, like we’re going to get it.

“Then there was a bloody great bang, and a load of turnips flying through the air. Everyone bursts out laughing, and gets up. Then I tries to get up, and found I couldn’t. Bit of shrapnel. That was the end of my time at the front.”

He laughed.

Later, I thought about him on his raids, with a weapon in his hand. Presumably he had killed at least one man. Maybe several. He was a friendly man, he seemed very ordinary, kind even, but he didn’t seem to be bothered by what he’d done. And when he got to the German trenches he must have met German soldiers, who would have killed him too, if they could. I wondered if either Englishman or German had the slightest idea what they were killing each other for.