The Dust That Falls from Dreams (14 page)

Millicent came in bearing a cake of soap wrapped in brown paper. She presented it to Hutchinson and let her fingers rest briefly in the palm of his hand. She held his gaze for just a moment, looked down coyly, and then offered to fetch more tea.

After she had gone out there was a long silence, and then Rosie asked, ‘Do you happen to know the Reverend Captain Fairhead?’

‘Yes, of course, miss. He was good when Yank died. He’s good when anyone dies. There’s two types of padre. There’s the kind that comes forward into the lines, and there’s the kind that don’t. Captain Fairhead’s up with us quite a lot, miss. Have you ever heard of Woodbine Willy, miss? Well, Captain Fairhead’s that kind of padre. He’s little but he’s tough. He’ll take over from a stretcher-bearer when one gets knocked down, and he don’t give up.’

Mrs McCosh came in, and stopped abruptly when she saw her daughter alone with a strange man. His uniform reassured her slightly. Corporal Hutchinson stood up, and Rosie introduced them. ‘Mama, this is Corporal Hutchinson. Corporal Hutchinson, this is my mother, Mrs Hamilton McCosh.’

Mrs McCosh held out her hand in a somewhat regal fashion, and the corporal was slightly baffled as to what to do with it. He took it lightly in his own and gave it a small shake. ‘Delighted, I’m sure,’ he said. Sensing Mrs McCosh’s
froideur
, he turned to Rosie and said, ‘Well, miss, I’ve told you everything I came to say, and a little bit more besides. I’d better be on my way.’

‘Please don’t let me keep you,’ said Mrs McCosh.

At the threshold, Rosie asked, ‘When do you go back?’

‘On Monday, miss.’

Rosie took his right hand between hers and looked into his face. ‘Do come and see us again when you’re home next. And thank you for coming and telling me about Ash. I’ll pray for you.’

He was visibly touched, and hardly knew what to say. ‘No one’s
ever said that to me before,’ he said finally. ‘That’s a first, that is. By the way, miss, I wanted to thank
you
.’

‘Thank me? What for?’

‘Bein’ a VAD. You girls, all the men love you. We couldn’t manage without. I thought you’d like someone to say it.’

As he was making his farewells, Millicent took the opportunity to emerge from the top of the stairs that led down to the kitchen, bearing a dustpan and brush, in case any crumbs had been left on the floor. He said, ‘Goodbye, Miss Millicent, and thank you for looking after us so well. I’m very pleased to have made your acquaintance.’

Their eyes met and she said, ‘Good luck. Out there.’

Hutchinson felt his feet carrying him through the door without his consent, and Millicent suppressed the urge to go out after him.

He strode towards Mottingham Station, repeating ‘Damn, damn, damn!’ to himself, and Millicent went back down to the larder and rested her forehead against the cool white wall. It was the first time that she had ever met a man who had affected her in quite this way. She felt something like hunger, and the weakness that accompanies it.

After Hutchinson had gone, Mrs McCosh, who, despite her husband’s strictures, had not found any real war work, nor even looked for any, but had had many Belgian ladies to tea, said reprovingly, ‘My dear, you should not let such men into the house. I will not have it. I hope you didn’t let him use the sit-upon.’

‘Such men? Mama, whatever do you mean?’

‘He is very obviously common. His speech is uneducated, he has an accent, he is probably from some ghastly place like Sheffield, and he carries himself in an ungentlemanly fashion, and he’s probably something perfectly frightful like a Primitive Methodist. I will not have such people coming to this house and bringing down the tone of it, and I will not have you associating with them. We – you – have a certain reputation to conserve, a certain position in the world.’

Rosie raised her eyebrows in a manner that her mother rightly construed as insubordinate. ‘That was Ash’s best friend, and he came here to talk to me about Ash.’

‘Best friend? He isn’t even an officer!’

‘Mama! Ash wasn’t an officer! The HAC is a regiment of gentlemen rankers. None of his friends would have been officers. They must have thought he was a natural gentleman or they wouldn’t have taken him on. And Corporal Hutchinson’s not from Sheffield, he’s from Walthamstow.’

‘Gracious me!’ exclaimed Mrs McCosh. ‘This all just too bad for words. He’s not even from a place I’ve heard of!’

Rosie went to fetch her bonnet, and as she put it on she said, ‘Honestly, Mama, you’re enough to turn anyone into a raging socialist.’

‘How dare you? What a perfectly dreadful thing to say! And where are you going?’

‘To the church, Mama. Corporal Hutchinson returns to the front on Monday, so I am going to pray for him.’

‘I don’t like you wandering off on your own like this. It is quite uncalled for. A young lady doesn’t go out on her own. You should take one of your sisters. Who knows what might befall you? God listens just as well in your own bedroom, you know.’

‘I’ll be back in time for tea,’ said Rosie, ignoring her mother’s strictures. There would be other women in the church, and she liked to be with them, all of them either heartbroken or anxious. Praying together was better than praying alone, whether God listens or not. Mrs Ottway had lost one of her sons in Mesopotamia, killed when a horse had panicked and bolted with a limber. She might say the Lord’s Prayer with Mrs Ottway.

She had a choice. In the end she walked across the golf course to Holy Trinity, even though it was a bit further than St John’s. There was always the chance that her father might be playing a surreptitious round instead of attending to his work in London, and it would have amused them both if she had caught him out. Sometimes, too, one came across a lost ball in the rough, and he was always delighted to be presented with it. Once she had been walking past a rabbit hole when a ball had been suddenly ejected from it, an amusing little miracle, whose recollection had always made her smile.

I
waited ’til Miss Rosie stopped praying before I knocked. I always knew when she was praying because she made these muttering sounds and you could just hear it if you put your ear to the door, and then you heard her wrapping that Virgin and putting it back under the bed.

I went in and said, ‘Pot of tea, Miss Rosie,’ and she said, ‘I didn’t ask for one, Millie,’ and I said, ‘No, nor you did, but I thought you might like one,’ and she said, ‘You’re turning into a mind-reader.’

I didn’t know how to bring it up and so I didn’t say nothing but I just sort of lingered there, and then Miss Rosie said, ‘What are you waiting for, Millie?’ and then she said, ‘Why are you blushing?’ and I said, ‘I’m all sort of confused, miss. I’m all of a doodah.’

‘Confused, Millie? All of a doodah? Whatever about?’

I didn’t know what to say, and I was right embarrassed, and then she said, ‘I did notice, you know. I’ve never seen anything so obvious. His name is Corporal Leonard Hutchinson, and he was my fiancé’s best friend at the front.’

I said, ‘Oh no, he’s not at the front. Oh cripes.’

Miss Rosie said, ‘They don’t all get killed.’

‘Sometimes it’s worse,’ I said. ‘I seen ’em, all blind and burned and things. It’s horrible, miss.’

‘I know,’ she said, ‘I look after them every day at Netley.’

‘Excuse me askin’, miss, but will Mr Hutchinson be comin’ back here?’

‘I’ll try to make sure that he does, Millie.’

I said, ‘Thank you, Miss Rosie,’ and she said, ‘You know you can’t carry on working here if you get married?’ and I said, ‘Who’s talkin’ about getting wed? And anyway, this war’s changed everything round, hasn’t it? Nothing’s normal any more, is it, miss? I
mean, a lady like you workin’ in a hospital and lookin’ after young men like that, that didn’t used to be usual, did it? And now it is,’ and she said, ‘We can’t look ahead any more, Millie. Thank you for bringing the tea. It was very thoughtful of you.’

‘That’s what I like about you, miss,’ I said. ‘You’re always thanking me and there’s many that don’t, not naming any names,’ and Miss Rosie laughed ’cause she knew who I was meaning. In them days Miss Rosie and the master were the only two what treated me like I had feelings like a human.

‘We all get taken for granted sometimes,’ said Miss Rosie.

1

Dear Miss McCosh
,

You will I am sure excuse a hurried note but I did want you to know that I shall be thinking of you at Eastertime and praying that the Resurrection joy may be yours in all its fullness. Your dear one will be very near to you, and the certainty of it at Eastertide is beyond all description. I am sure that all our stricken hearts will be really comforted. May God’s Blessing and Comfort be yours through Jesus Christ Our Saviour and Risen God
.

With very kind regards, yours very sincerely
,

H. V. Fairhead, CF

Passed by no. 1900 censor

2

The Grampians

10 April 1915

Dear Reverend Captain Fairhead
,

Thank you so much for your recent letter at Eastertide. I must say I am astonished that you are able to keep up such a rate of correspondence when by now you must have attended hundreds of deaths. If you are writing to every bereaved family at the same rate as you are writing to ours, then yours must be a life entirely without sleep. I would beg you not to deplete yourself with overwork
.

You may know Corporal Leonard Hutchinson, who was my fiancé’s best friend. I met him recently, and he spoke very highly of you
.

I do know how busy you must be, because I am now working at the Victoria Military Hospital at Netley, in Southampton, as a VAD. Everybody calls it Spike Island, or ‘Spikey’ for short. The work is gruelling and relentless. One sees and hears such truly ghastly things that it is sometimes hard to keep control of one’s own sanity, a whole universe is too small to contain the tears that one could shed, and I know that if our chaplains wrote as frequently and conscientiously as you do, they would very quickly be exhausted. I cannot but think that your friendship and bond of brotherly love with Asbhridge must have been unusually intense for you to be so preoccupied by his death in particular, when you have to deal with so many, and when you have been so grievously wounded by the loss of your own dear sister
.

I would be most honoured and grateful if you could find the time, when next on leave, to call in and see us. I would wish to meet with you and converse in person. There is much that I would like to discuss with you. There are soldiers in the hospital who tell me the most extraordinary things. I have, you may rest assured, clung most tenaciously to my faith – how else could I have survived? I would otherwise have died of heartbreak and loneliness – and despite the hideousness of what is being done to the lives and bodies of our beautiful young men, I cling also to the faith that Ashbridge died in a worthy cause. The death of your poor sister in an attack from the air, explicitly directed at civilians, proves that we are confronting a terrible evil, and have no choice but to do so. I know that Ash would never have thought that it was vain to lay down one’s life at a time like this
.

I have read the Bishop of Stepney’s book, as you recommended, and I did find great comfort in it
.

I look forward to meeting you in person one of these days
.

Yours most sincerely
,

Rosemary McCosh (Miss)

S
ophie came into the drawing room and flopped down on the sofa next to Christabel. ‘Look!’ she said. ‘My fiftieth hospital bag!’

‘Fifty!’ exclaimed Christabel. ‘Why, Sophickles, you’ve turned into a positive factory. I don’t know how you do it. And every one with a cheerful little elephant embroidered on it.’

‘It’s my last one,’ said Sophie. ‘I really can’t face making any more.’

‘What are you going to do now?’

‘I’ve hatched a plot, a very ingenuous plot.’

‘Ingenious?’

‘Ingenuous and ingenious. I’ve joined the Women’s Legion Auxiliary! I’m going to be a driver for the Royal Flying Corps, I hope. And I’ll learn how to mend engines and things. It’ll be topping. Ain’t I a kink?’

‘Sophie, you’re priceless! What will Daddy say?’

‘Oh, I spoke to Daddy, and he said, “Gracious me, Sophie bairn, what will your mother say?” ’

‘Is that all?’

‘Daddy likes spunky girls,’ said Sophie happily. ‘He said, “What if they send you to France?” and I said, “I’m starting at Suttons Farm,” and he said, “But you have no idea how to drive tenders and mend engines,” and I said, “Daddy, you didn’t know anything about gas masks and artificial limbs until you started manufacturing them.” ’

‘Well, you know what Mama will say. She’ll say, “Oh, you can’t possibly! I absolutely forbid it!’

‘I won’t tell her until after I’ve gone. I shall write and tell her that I am living in a compound with high walls, and any man attempting to enter will be shot dead by one of our fearsome lady guards. Mama doesn’t really care about anything but telling us to keep our legs crossed.’

‘Sophie!’

‘Well, it’s true, you know it is. She wouldn’t mind at all if we were footpads and murderers. Anyway, I’ve no intention of having babies until I’m married, and then I’m going to have dozens and dozens. Positive plenitudes of them.’

‘Where are you actually going to live?’

‘In a nice little farmhouse. They’re going to build us some special huts later on, I think. Won’t it be fun? I’m terribly braced. No more balaclavas and hospital bags. Hooray! And if I get sent to France I shan’t mind at all.’

‘You’ll have to cut off your fingernails.’

Sophie held up her hands. ‘Already have! I have been most prescient and not at all nescient, if not omniscient. And I was frightfully good at French at school. I got the prize for dictée and conversation. I could be an interrupter. I shall wax Molièresque.’

‘Interrupter?’

‘You know, French into English and English into French, that kind of thing.’

‘Oh, you mean an interpreter!’

‘Do I? Silly me.’

‘With your love for messing about with words, and scrambling them up, I think you’d better stick to driving. Just think, you might fall in love with a pilot! Wouldn’t that be romantic!’

‘Frantically. But they do get killed an awful lot. Better not, really.’

‘The trouble with love,’ observed Christabel, ‘is that one really has no choice as to who one falls in love with.’