The Longest Winter (31 page)

‘Shall I take those things back to the ward for you?’ asked Margaret.

‘What a good sort you are,’ said James, handing her his sketchbook and case of drawing implements.

‘A kind of best chum?’ she suggested.

‘Well, that’s a safe status, with a protective ring to it, isn’t it?’

‘I need to protect myself?’ she smiled.

‘Try to bear in mind,’ said James, ‘that there are a lot of us and only a few of you.’

He continued on to the therapy room while she turned into the corridor leading to D Ward. She took his things to his locker. For the first time he had used words which might mean he had a light-hearted flirtation in mind or something a little more serious. Or nothing at all. She hoped the evening would be as fine as the day had been, that it wouldn’t rain.

She rather suspected she was ready to fall in love and it made her feel strangely unsure of herself.

It was a very fine evening indeed, as clear and as still as nature could devise. James was at the gates with the pony and trap at ten past seven. He sat in relaxed patience, waiting for her. The years were going. He was almost thirty-one. He looked his age, his dark features leaner, his frame fined down by the ravaging exigencies of war. But remembering that even Richthofen had fallen he knew himself lucky. For two and a half years he had served with the Royal Engineers
in France. Then his request for a transfer to the Flying Corps was approved. He had his wings up four months later and was brought down after five months of combat flying. The German gunners pulled him out of his blazing plane and he spent a little while being courteously received by a Colonel Huebner, and the smallness of the world closed in on him when he found that the colonel knew his friend Major Moeller, back on active service and a colonel himself.

Colonel Huebner sent him under escort to the nearest casualty station. There they did their best for his arm and arranged for him to be ambulanced with some of their own wounded to a clearing centre, from where he would land up in a base hospital to receive more skilled treatment. But he elected, because of opportunity, to take a different course. He sat waiting, a blanket over his shoulders, his arm giving him the devil, Sophie at the back of his wandering thoughts as she so often was. There were comings and goings, the orderlies busy as the November afternoon turned quickly into dark, damp evening. They stopped looking at him and he felt himself becoming as unobtrusive as the anonymous wounded waiting for the ambulance to arrive. He got up and walked about. No one said watch that man, he’s a prisoner. He moved out of the place in an idle, casual way. He took from a hook a German cap and greatcoat belonging to one of the orderlies and a few minutes later walked off wearing them. In the darkness no one challenged him, but he heard some German ambulances converging on
the casualty station from the north. He knew he could not get back to the British lines without negotiating the massed German trench system, so he headed in the direction of the oncoming ambulances. They lurchingly passed him. He kept on and not long after found a churned-up road leading west. He took it.

A French family found him the next morning, sitting on the edge of a muddy ditch behind their house on the edge of a village. He had walked through the night and was now waiting for a miracle to happen or for modest manna to drop from the grey skies, or at least for someone who might know how to ease a burned arm that felt fiery. The French family took him across some fields to a farm. The farmer hid him for a day and a night, and then someone came and took him away in a deep vegetable cart. Close to the Belgian border he was handed over to people who specialized in helping escaped Allied prisoners. They took him across the border into Belgium, going north of Westroosebeke in Flanders and then heading south-west towards the coast. His arm made him grit his teeth and at the end of several days of endurance and close calls his Belgian friends managed to bring a doctor to him. The lifting of the original dressing was a fearsome work of medical art and the doctor, almost reluctantly applying a new, treated dressing, advised him to give himself up and allow the Germans to hospitalize him. If not, he was to be got back to the British immediately.

A young Belgian offered to get him through
to the coast north of Nieuwpoort. Here, by manipulation of Nieuwpoort’s drainage locks, the area had been flooded in 1914 to halt Germany’s advance. If they could reach this area at a point a mile inland, a specific point, a boat could be used to get him across the flooded canal region to the British side. It was a dangerous manoeuvre, one the Belgians would not normally undertake except when it had been carefully plotted and planned, as it had been several times. It was an impromptu operation this time, but the damp misty weather helped and so did the young Belgian Pimpernel’s knowledge of the route and its hazards. They moved through the night, through the German lines two hours before dawn, launched the hidden boat while it was still dark and were on the grey, swirling waters as dawn mistily broke. Germans manning lookout posts spotted them then and for a minute or so, as the young Belgian pulled hard on the oars, bullets peppered the water uncomfortably close behind them. They reached the British lines in the first real light of day.

He had a brief stay in a base hospital and was then dispatched to England, into the care of specialists at the military hospital of Hattersleigh Hall. They informed him that from his own point of view he’d have been wiser to accept German hospitalization. His arm was a mess.

‘What’s the extent of my own point of view?’

‘You’ve been carrying an arm about with you that’s been in need of intensive treatment. We’ll do what we can.’

They had done all of that. He was lucky. And in France the Americans had joined the Allies. That had to mean the end for Germany. He hoped it would be soon. He had had enough himself. Austria, he was sure, had had more than enough.

Austria.

He stopped his thoughts as Margaret arrived. He got down and handed her up into the trap, then climbed up beside her.

‘Just a ramble, shall we?’ he said.

‘Let Poppy lead, we’ll follow,’ she said. Poppy was the pony. ‘It’s that kind of evening, isn’t it?’ She was still in her uniform but had freshened herself up and wore her blue cape. She looked crisp and colourful.

‘It’s perfect,’ said James and headed for the winding lanes of the dales. He halted the pony before they had gone very far and they sat in the trap and looked at what the evening vista had to offer them. The colours glowed under the flushed blue sky, the sun in descent, little white cotton-wool clouds hanging in its path. In the west the horizon was like a rim of spreading gold, tipping the distant Pennines where they rose in uneven configuration. The Romans had crossed the Pennines, marching north to claim all they could of Britain in its lushest and wildest age. The Picts halted them and harassed them and made them think again about conquering the most northerly regions, and in the end Hadrian built his Wall to mark and hold the furthermost boundary of the Roman occupation. They had
left their marks on and around the Pennines. James thought that if one sat long enough and remained quiet enough the echoes of their legions could be drawn out of two thousand years of time. That is, if one’s concentration was not broken by memories as strong and compulsive as his were. Memories that went back only a few years. He could not remember any reasonable period of time when his mind had been free of her. She would not go away, she was a vivid, obsessive recurrence.

Half a mile away the roofs and chimneys of a small village were shot with soft light. Smoke from one of the chimneys hung like fine transparent blue-black fabric in the still air.

‘It’s almost heartbreaking,’ said Margaret.

‘So much peace set against so much war?’

‘Yes, and it doesn’t make me forget the war, as it could, it makes me more conscious of it.’

‘It won’t go away for nurses, will it?’

‘It won’t go away for you,’ she said, and looked ruefully sad. ‘Dr Posford wanted to see you. I said I’d give you the message. You’re going home tomorrow. You’ll have to continue with therapy for a few more weeks, you’ll be given a letter to take to your local hospital in respect of that.’

‘I can’t say I’m overjoyed,’ said James, ‘I’m rather settled in here. You need the bed?’

‘Yes, and you don’t, do you? Not now.’

‘No, I don’t, not now.’ He sat there by her side, pensive. He had been expecting this but was not altogether ready for it. He had a decision to make and would have liked a few more days
to think about it. In almost four years Margaret Kernan was the first woman since Sophie whom he had looked at with interest. Not that there had been many women, even on leave. And on leave they could only be remembered as pairs of eyes hinting at a desire to please. There was no coquettish flutter about Margaret Kernan. On duty she was calm, assured and unruffled. Off duty she was a pleasure to be with, a charmer. Physically she was as attractive as any woman, if one could forget Sophie’s electric quality. Margaret, unlike so many restless wartime women, did not demand to be entertained, spoiled, flattered or made love to. In her company he felt pleasantly relaxed. And what was Sophie now but an impossible dream? Given the chance, how could he go back to her and ask for the years of bitter war to be discounted? She would hardly be sitting in Vienna waiting for him. Nor could he believe that other men, Austrians, would let her do that. One of them would have seen all he had seen himself in her, her irresistible sense of humour, her rich vitality, her love of life, her aptitude for engaging in all its diversions and her own striking loveliness. Such a man would have persevered, would have married her by now.

That conclusion, as always, made him inwardly wince. He could not forever live on thoughts of what might have been, punctuated by moments of painful resignation. That way led to a monastic future. To shut out all women because one had been lost to him was to deny
life’s purpose. Margaret, if she were willing to consider it, might give him the chance of a post-war future.

‘No, I don’t need the bed, not now,’ he said again.

‘They’ll want you back, the Flying Corps,’ said Margaret.

‘It’s the Air Force now.’

‘Oh, yes. I keep forgetting.’ She felt sorrow, and the peace and beauty of the evening didn’t help. It imbued the sorrow with a touch of melancholy. She knew she would miss him. One did miss some patients for a while. She would miss him a little more than that. He would say goodbye, he would perhaps kiss her, as some of them did, and he would go and not be heard of again. Unless he was mentioned by a member of the staff who might spot his name in a casualty list. That sort of thing happened. Someone would say, ‘We patched up Lieutenant So-and-so to no purpose, he’s just been killed on the Somme.’

James flicked the reins and the pony ambled on. He was silent. But then, she thought, he often was, for all the talk they enjoyed in between. And he never mentioned what was on his mind. He did not use her, as other patients did, as a recipient for confidences. He had to have problems. They all did, those who had been to the front and had to return there. But whatever his problems were he kept them to himself. He never spoke of women, not in a personal way, but she did not think him a man who had passed all women by.

A farm cart approached, the shire horse plodding and pulling, the driver nodding under his shapeless hat. He woke up at the sound of the trap and drew over to let them by, touching his hat and smiling sleepily out of his ruddy, grey-whiskered face. The smile was for Margaret in her white cap and blue cape. She smiled back. They rounded a bend in the lane and stopped again. It was that kind of evening. They had no need to go anywhere. The world was before them, the sky limitless, the sun edging the Pennines with those streams of golden light, the world itself whispering with the sounds of verdant summer life. The wheatfields were high massed carpets of yellow and green, and the dales glided, curved and dipped, the colours a profusion of browns, greys and emeralds.

She had seen the view before, many times. But it was always different, always new, because the moment and the light were never the same, shadows never consistent. The greens were so changeable, sometimes deep, sometimes brilliant, sometimes sombre, and they embraced the stone outcrops in a variety of moods. She thought of the abundant generosity of nature and the inexplicable acquisitiveness of man. For all that nature gave him, man always wanted so much more. To get it he sometimes turned nature upside down.

She glanced at James. He sat in relaxed immobility, drooping a little, elbows on his knees, reins inert in his hands, his eyes quite far away. Because they were good friends and because he
was to leave tomorrow she thought she might, at last, be a little intrusive.

‘Is it a girl, James?’

‘It’s summer,’ he said.

‘This summer?’ she asked.

‘Well, there was a special one once. I thought it would never end at the time, but when I look back I wonder if any other could have been as brief. It should have lingered. It didn’t.’

He did not say why it had been so special, so she said, ‘All the summers were like that when I was a girl.’ James set the pony meandering again. The lazy wheels drew up a little indolent dust. The falling sun touched her face with warmth and gilded the brass of the trap. ‘That’s how they seem in retrospect, anyway. I can never remember rainy days, only the warm ones and my father taking us on daily walking tours during the holidays. We could never afford hotels by the sea or even boarding houses. We lived in Hereford and with my parents there were seven of us. As schoolchildren we did see the sea once, on the Cardigan coast. We had a day trip by train. We thought the sand and the waves were wonders of wonders. My father said many places were like that until people invaded them. He said that once you could go to a place like Aberystwyth and walk along the shore for miles without meeting more than half a dozen other visitors. I remember saying that one shouldn’t keep any wonders to oneself, it wasn’t fair, they should be for everybody. My father laughed and said what
sort of wonder would it be if everybody visited Stonehenge at the same time on August Bank Holiday?’