Custard Tarts and Broken Hearts (52 page)

‘Thank God for the horse,’ Nellie gasped. ‘I love him too now!’

‘We went to the hospital together. I got strapped up and he had a couple of days’ peace in a field far away from the shelling. I fed him up with warm bran mash, the way he liked it. Looked after him like a baby, I did. Dandy thought he was back on the prairie. It was lovely to see him kicking out in that field. But peace didn’t last very long in that place.’

Just then Nellie heard the front door; it was Matty back from the Star. She opened the kitchen door, but Sam didn’t even look up. He was oblivious, lost in the memories that had begun to pour out. Nell simply nodded at Matty, who crossed quietly to the scullery. Nellie heard her making tea. Sam carried on.

‘After a few days we had to hitch up our team and get back up the line. But that wasn’t the last scrape old Dandy got me out of. A whole year I didn’t get a scratch, it seemed like nothing could touch us. Then we got to Ypres.’ Sam took in a great heaving breath and shook his head. ‘We should never have pushed on. The rain, you never saw nothing like it, solid from July to November, turned the place to a swamp. It wasn’t the right time to push forward, but the bloody generals had to stick to their plan, didn’t they? It was all for a ridge. Passchendaele; I don’t know what it means, but I know what it felt like. It felt like hell, rain and thunder, shells pounding and mud churning. We had to ride our horses into that, moving the guns further up the line. Our own bloody shells had broken up all the drainage, the rain had nowhere to go, just turned the earth into yellow soup. It was awful, stank of blood and guts and sulphur and gas. We put down duckboards, but either side the mud was treacherous. The standing order was that if the horses went into the mud, they had to be left or shot, on no account was we to stop for the horses, we had to push on... for the ridge, for Passchendaele.’

Matty crept in, put two cups of tea on the table, and silently took her own tea up to bed. Nellie heard the creak of the stairs, and when all was quiet, she asked Sam to carry on. She felt spellbound, carried back to the thick of that battle she had so long tried to imagine. Only now was she realizing how far away Sam had really been from her during all those years of fighting.

‘Our team was nipping along when two wheels of the gun carriage edged off the duckboards and started to sink. We whipped our poor old beasts on till they couldn’t pull them through that sludge any longer. First the back driver, Tom, got hit and he fell off, with his head half blown off, and then the shrapnel hit Jock behind me, he hung on for a bit, then he fell off.’ Here his voice broke. ‘I couldn’t stop for him! Me and Dandy pressed on, we had to, Nell. If we’d stopped, the gun would’ve sunk, we had to get them to the line. I heard Jock, yelling at me to push on and get the gun out. And we did! Those brave beasts broke their hearts, pulling that gun, and when we got to the new line the bodies were lying two deep. It was carnage, what was mixed into that mud, I can’t tell you. All sorts, arms, legs, bits of flesh…’

Sam started shaking, the cigarette fell to the hearthrug, and Nellie threw it on the fire. She handed him the cup of hot, sweet tea, cupping it for him with her hands; as he drank it down, the shaking subsided, but Nellie was frightened she might have pushed Sam too far.

‘Oh, my poor love, you don’t have to go on, not if it’s too hard.’

‘It’s getting late, duck. I wanted to tell you, but it’s getting late and…’

Nellie knew that, for now, she would have to be patient. Sam’s silence had cracked, but she had to have faith that eventually the truth would pour out, and she would have her Sam back. He still hadn’t told her he loved her, but for that, too, she would have to wait.

Two days passed, and though Sam didn’t move out into lodgings, neither did he open his heart to her again. It was early in the morning and they were all rushing to get ready for work. Sam had already left for London Bridge; he was going to hand in his greatcoat and collect his de-mob suit. It was to have been his wedding suit. A knock on the door came shortly after he’d left and, thinking he’d forgotten something, Nellie dashed to open the door. She was instead met by a round-faced young man, with curly fair hair and an eye patch, still dressed in khaki. Nellie started back in shock. Expecting Sam, she had instead come face to face with a ghost.

‘Jock!’ He caught her as she stumbled forward into his arms.

‘Sorry to give you such a shock, Nell. I only got back last night. Lily told me to get round here first thing and tell you and Sam before any one else!’

Alice came running in when she heard Nellie’s cry, then the boys careered down the stairs, till the little kitchen was full to bursting. Tears of joy were followed by a barrage of questions. Alice plied him with tea and toast, while the family gathered round to hear Jock’s story. That day at Ypres, when Sam had had to leave him, the shrapnel wound hadn’t killed him. Instead, he’d been left half-blinded and insensible. Somehow, he had crawled to a shell hole. When he’d regained consciousness, the battle had moved on and the shell hole had filled up with water.

‘I kept slipping down, couldn’t see, couldn’t climb out. I thought that was me lot, I’d drown there, for sure. Then I see this head peering over the shell hole. Sodding Bosch! They had me out of there in a jiff, decent enough fellers, bandaged me eye and makes me join a line of prisoners. Put me on a train to a prison camp in Munster and that’s where I’ve been ever since! Couldn’t believe it when they tipped us all out. The Jerries told us the war was over, just downed their rifles and walked out the camp. Left us to our own devices, so I started walking home!’

By now, Nellie and Alice were late for work, so Jock offered to walk down to Duff’s with them.

‘I really wanted to see Sam, where is he?’ Jock asked as they turned into Spa Road.

‘He’s gone to hand his greatcoat in.’

Jock nodded and said, anxiously, ‘Lily told me the wedding’s off. She says he’s a different bloke and I’ve got to talk some sense into him.’

‘Well, I wish you would, Jock. I’ve tried, God knows,’ Nellie said, shaking her head.

‘I don’t know what’s happened to him, Nell, but it was only the thought of marrying you kept him going out there!’

‘Well, he’s told me it was his horse kept him going! He started to talk about what happened out there, then he clammed up again.’

‘It changes you, Nell. We’ve all come back different. It’s not you he’s shutting out, it’s himself. Some of us just shut ourselves down out there… had to. I reckon, right now, he’s scared stiff of losing you, but he wouldn’t say.’

Alice put a comforting arm round Nellie’s shoulder and smiled gratefully at Jock.

‘Jock, do you know what happened with that horse of his?’ Nellie asked. ‘Something bad enough to get him locked up?’

Jock shook his head. ‘Locked up? I didn’t know nothing about that! Probably already in the prison camp by then. Listen, I’ll see if I can catch him on the way back from London Bridge, try and get it out of him.’

They had just reached Pearce Duff’s and stood on the corner opposite St James’s railway arch. Jock gave them both a hug and was about to leave them when Nellie noticed something, almost a bundle, halfway through the arch. She put her hand on Jock’s arm and pointed. The arch, one of hundreds in the viaduct, was more a deep tunnel – cavernous, echoing, dripping with moisture, encrusted with soot and thick grime. It boomed with the noise of steam trains thundering overhead every few minutes. Sam had always laughed at her when she’d hurried him through one of these arches. He hardly even registered he was walking beneath twelve railway tracks and could never understand why they made her so jumpy.

‘You go and clock in, Alice,’ she said, ushering her sister towards the factory gates. ‘You’re late enough already. I just need a word with Jock.’

Alice dashed off as Nellie steered a puzzled Jock towards the arch entrance.

‘What is it, Nellie? What’s in there?’

‘Sam would have gone through this arch on his way to London Bridge,’ she said, her throat like sandpaper. She and Jock walked cautiously about three feet into the tunnel, when the first train passed overhead. It was like being locked inside a vast drum, with a giant pounding on it over and over again. Then she saw the bundle move, a huddled figure swamped in an army greatcoat, his hands clamped to his ears to shut out the reverberating memories, and she knew it was Sam. As the second and the third trains clattered over in quick succession, she could see his whole body trembling: he was back at Ypres. She could imagine him, holding the horses steady as the guns fired and fired for hours on end, till his poor ears became instruments of torture.

Now Sam was on all fours, crawling back towards them and the light of day. His progress was agonizing, as though he were crawling through sucking mud; he strained every muscle to move forward an inch. Nellie went to run to him, but suddenly there were twelve trains overhead and then the clattering, shuddering, hissing and thudding were magnified to an ear-splitting level. Billowing, choking drifts of dirty smoke filled the arch and, to Sam, it must have felt as if he had entered the mouth of hell once more.

Jock held her back. ‘No, let me go, Nellie. I know what to do.’

Jock walked quickly forward into the darkness of the tunnel, wreathed in smoke and silhouetted against the filtering sunlight of the entrance. As she followed, more slowly, she could see Sam looking up, his face, through the clearing smoke, ghastly white and bathed in sweat.

‘Jock?’ he croaked, and shook his head. ‘No, you never got up! Jock, is that you? Get your head down, man!’

Then Sam screwed himself up into a ball, until Jock bent down and put a firm hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s over, Sam, it’s over. You’re home, we’re both home. Come on, I’ll take you through.’ And, raising his friend up gently, Jock led Sam to the other side and into Nellie’s arms.

Nellie allowed Jock to take him home. It seemed that only someone who’d been in the same hell as Sam could get through to him. She wasn’t in the same world as those two, couldn’t hope to be. She joined Alice on the factory floor and though she’d been docked an hour’s pay, she didn’t care. She worked in a dream, praying that, somehow, Jock would now be able to reach Sam through the crumbling shell he’d built around himself.

When she clocked off that afternoon, it was already getting dark. The lamps weren’t yet lit so she didn’t notice the figure waiting for her outside the gates. It was only when he called out to her that she realized it was Sam.

She spun round. His voice sounded so youthful, she could almost believe it was the young Sam who’d once hung about for her outside the factory gates. Perhaps it was a trick of the twilight, but in the gentle blue shadows his face seemed younger, too, the lines softer.

‘Jock got you home,’ she said quietly.

He nodded, tears in his eyes. ‘He got me home.’

Silently, she linked her arm through his and they began walking back to Vauban Street.

That evening, at Alice’s urging, the family made themselves scarce. They all trooped off to see Matty at the Star, leaving Nellie and Sam sitting alone by the fire. They talked, first about Jock’s miraculous return and then, as the night drew in around them, Sam was finally able to tell her how a horse had got him imprisoned.

‘You deserve to know the rest, Nell,’ he said, as she rose to light the gas lamps. ‘Where did I get to?’

She sat down opposite him again and saw his brow furrow. ‘That day at Ypres.’

‘That’s right. I’d got the gun to the new line and the gunners helped pull it out of the mud. That’s when I saw Dandy, struggling. His forelegs was sunk in yellow slime. His wind was like a bellows and his eyes rolling, poor devil. He couldn’t get to his feet. I was begging him, he didn’t have no strength left in him. Pretty soon his back legs got stuck too. His lovely grey coat was all crusted with blood and yellow ooze. I laid down in the mud and looked him in the eyes and I swear, Nell, I was crying like a baby. I didn’t cry for Tom, or Jock, or any of the other lads, not even for me bloody self. I was crying for a horse. I says, “Come on, Dandy, my old son, don’t let me down now, get up, old mate.”

That’s when Captain Carstairs comes up, starts pulling at me. “Get up, man, we’ve got to push on,” he says. “We’ll have to shoot the horse, he’s done for. Here!” And he hands me his revolver to shoot the dear old lad who’d saved my life, and that’s when I did it, Nell, that bad thing they locked me up for. I said, “No” to an officer on the battlefield. He could have shot me on the spot, but he wasn’t a bad man. I told you good and bad got all mixed up. There we were blowing up men and calling it a good thing, and I wouldn’t shoot my old friend, Dandy, and that was a bad thing. But old Dandy was the only thing kept me believing I was still human. The only thing that kept any warmth or kindness alive in me. He was all I cared about. And the terrible thing is, if I could have traded Dandy for one of my pals, I would have.’

Nell tried to protest, but Sam just shook his head.

‘It
was
a bad thing – to disobey that order. I put all my mates in danger, holding up the line, for a horse. So in the end I was clinging to Dandy’s neck when Captain Carstairs pulls me off and he puts a bullet in Dandy’s head. He was decent enough to let me say goodbye. I kissed my old friend and thanked him for my life; then we moved on to take the ridge.’

He paused, taking a deep breath, then went on. ‘I don’t want you to know the terrible sights, Nell, thousands dead, screams, hell, it was. And after the battle, when they put me in the army lock-up to do my week’s sentence, all I could think about was my dear old pal, Dandy Grey Russet. I got it all wrong, didn’t I? How can you care for a horse more than for thousands of men? After I’d served me time, I didn’t care whether I come home or not. They sent me back, with a different horse, and we got blown up near enough straight away, ended up in that Belgian hospital, out of it for a month.

‘The war did something to me, Nell, and that’s why I couldn’t talk. I came back not knowing who I was, or what was good or bad any more. And there’s the guilt I can’t shake. Whenever I try to sleep at night, I see Dandy struggling to get out of that mud, looking at me as if I could save him, the way he’d saved me. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t save him and I couldn’t save Jock, or any of them. I couldn’t even save myself. Nellie, Sam Gilbie died in the mud, with his horse. So I understand why you’d want to call off the wedding. Why would you marry a stranger?’