The Lost Soldier (27 page)

“So do you, sis,” he replied. “But I thought you’d be in uniform. You know, apron with big red cross.”

“Not quite,” Sarah explained. “I just wear a cap and apron over a grey skirt and white blouse, but I’ve been allowed to change in your honour.” She twirled round in clothes she hadn’t worn since she had arrived in France, and suddenly felt like her old self again, free from the smell of disinfectant which she felt clung to her all the time these days, or odours even worse.

“Aunt Anne wants to see you before we go out. She’ll be here in a minute. Of Freddie, I’ve so much to tell you, and I can’t wait to hear all your news. Are you still definitely going home for Christmas? Father will be delighted.”

“He’d be even more delighted if you were coming too, sis,” Freddie began, but before he could say more, to her relief, Sarah heard the door open and their Aunt Anne came in.

For the next ten minutes or so they chatted together, during which Freddie listened dutifully as Sister St Bruno told him what sterling work Sarah was doing. All the time Sarah was itching to go, to get right away from the convent so that she and Freddie could really talk.

At last Aunt Anne said, “Well, I must let you two go out for your lunch. It has been a pleasure to meet you again, Frederick. You are always in my prayers. When do you return to the front?”

“Tomorrow,” Freddie replied. “I’ve been on a gunnery course for a couple of weeks, now it’s back to the regiment.”

They climbed into the car and set off down the drive. The car had a hood, but the windows would not shut and the cold air rushed in as they bumped their way down to the village, and Sarah was glad of her winter coat and hat.

“Where on earth did you get this car?” she shouted above the sound of the wind and the engine.

“Lent it for the day,” Freddie called back. “Chap with a posting at HQ in Albert. Shall we go to Albert for lunch?”

“If we don’t, it’ll have to be Madame Juliette’s,” Sarah said.

“Sounds like a house of ill repute,” laughed Freddie.

“No, it isn’t,” said Sarah. “Well, at least I don’t think it is. I go there with Molly when we have any free time. We walk down to St Croix and have gateaux and tea there. It’s perfectly respectable.” She laughed and added as an afterthought, “But we don’t mention it to the nuns!”

“I should think not indeed.”

Half an hour later, when they were sitting in a snug little restaurant in the centre of Albert, he asked, “How is little Molly, anyway? How did you persuade her to come with you on this mad escapade?”

Sarah looked at him sharply. “It’s not an escapade any more than you being in the army is. We’re here because we’re needed, and that’s the end of it. You’re as bad as Father, Freddie. You think girls should sit at home and sew a fine seam. Well I tell you this, that is not for me. I can’t fight in the trenches, but I can look after those who do.”

“Hey, hey, whoa there,” Freddie cried, putting up his hands as if to fend her off. “Keep you hair on, old girl. I only asked how Molly was doing.”

“Better than I am, if the truth were known,” Sarah admitted as she studied the menu. “She is far more use than I am. Sister Eloise says she is a born nurse, and though she has to do most of the things that I have to, cleaning bedpans…”

“Hey, steady on, old girl, I’m about to have my lunch,” protested Freddie.

“She is far more involved with the actual nursing of the men. Sister Bernadette hardly lets me near a patient, specially since I kissed one of them!”

“Kissed one! Sarah, I don’t believe you.”

As they ate their meal, the best Sarah had had since she left London, Sarah told Freddie all about Private Iain Macdonald, and then other stories and incidents which had occurred over the time they had been there.

“Another sad thing, especially for Molly was when Harry Cook from home was brought in. Do you remember Harry, lived at High Meadow Farm?”

Freddie nodded. “Of course I do, he’s in my company, or was before he was wounded. Is he here?”

“No, I’m afraid he died. They had to amputate his leg, but it was too late. Poor Molly, she was with him when he died. He was her cousin you know and it sounds as if they were fairly close as children. It was very difficult for her.” Sarah looked across at him in surprise. “Didn’t they tell you he had died?”

“Hasn’t come through to me yet,” Freddie said, “but I haven’t been there for a while, off on this course.”

“If he was in your company, then we’ve got another of your men here,” Sarah said, the glimmer of an idea coming into her head. “Harry was brought in by his friend, Tom Carter, who was wounded as well.”

“Yes, I know Carter,” Freddie said. “He and Cook were always good mates. You say he’s here at St Croix?”

“He’s probably been moved to the convalescent camp,” Sarah said and she explained about the arrival of more wounded the previous night. “I expect they had to move him across to make room.” She looked across at Freddie and said, “Perhaps you should go and see him while you’re here. He was pretty cut up when Harry Cook died.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea. I will when we get back. I can pass on news of him to the other men. They will have heard about Cook by now, I’m sure. His brother’s in my company too. He’ll have been notified, I expect.”

“What’s it like?” Sarah asked him as they sat over their coffee. The rain was beating on the windows of the restaurant, but they were sitting cocooned in its warmth, safe from the elements outside and Sarah felt suddenly very close to her brother. She hadn’t asked him very much when he was in England, but now where they were both so much closer, more involved in what was going on, she felt she needed to know.

“What’s it like in the trenches? You’d never say much when you came home last time, but you looked awful.”

“I felt awful,” Freddie said. “Exhausted.” He stared out at the rain falling steadily from a leaden sky, his eyes distant for a moment before he turned them back on his sister. “It’s the futility of it all, Sarah, more than the physical miseries, the damp, and the cold and the mud and the lice and all that. I can put up with that if I have to, if it is serving some purpose.”

“And isn’t it?” Sarah prompted as he lapsed into silence.

“We sit in our trenches and Jerry sits in his. We bombard them with heavy artillery, they bombard us. We raid their lines to take prisoners and destroy their trenches, they raid ours. We send miners down to burrow their way under no-man’s-land, they do the same. And all the time men are dying and neither side gains an inch of ground.”

“But surely there are big battles,” said Sarah.

“Yes, sometimes we are thrown in to attack, and we lose yet more lives, thousands of men to move forward a few hundred yards. We take over enemy trenches, only to be thrown out of them in our turn.” Freddie’s earlier cheerfulness had vanished and he seemed to Sarah to have aged several years in the time it took to tell her these things. “Of course, I can’t say any of this to anyone else,” he went on. “Be bad for morale among the men, though the Lord knows most of them realise it for themselves. They’re not stupid, but many of them think the officers are. You can’t blame them. Seasoned soldiers find themselves being led by boys straight out of school with no experience beyond minimal basic training. They must wonder if this bloody war will ever end; if they’ll ever get out of the stinking muddy holes they have to live in and get back to living like human beings again.”

“Does Father know how you feel?” Sarah wondered.

“Hope not,” Freddie replied. “He wouldn’t understand and think it the most cowardly, defeatist talk. No one who hasn’t lived in the conditions most of the men have to cope with day in and day out, and that includes some of the top brass, have any idea of how soul-destroying it is. Don’t get me wrong, Sarah, I know this war has got to be fought, but the cost in lives and human misery… unimaginable. I couldn’t say this to anyone else, sis, only to you, and you mustn’t repeat it. I’m not being defeatist, just realistic. People like Harry Cook, dying of wounds, blasted to death, or machine gunned down, they have no future, they’ve given it up. We can only pray the one we have fought for is worth the cost of their lives.”

Their happy outing together had taken on such a sombre mood, that Sarah shivered. Freddie put his hand over hers.

“Come on,” he said, “don’t let’s spoil our day. We’re going shopping so that I can buy you a Christmas present, and then,” he added as he helped her back into her coat, “we’ll go to that camp of yours and see how Carter is doing.”

They spent the afternoon in the shops where Freddie bought Sarah a pendant on a silver chain, and Sarah bought a fountain pen for her father, which Freddie would take home with him and a propelling pencil for Freddie, which he chose himself.

“Better than a pen up at the front,” he said, “so don’t be surprised if my letters are written in pencil from now on.”

They drove back to St Croix as the evening was drawing in. The rain had eased somewhat, but the sky was an unrelentingly grey. Sarah pointed out the lane that led round the exterior wall of the convent to the main entrance of the camp.

“We could go through from the convent garden,” she said, “but I think it would be better for you to arrive at the front gate.”

There was a sentry on the gate, but he was one of her ex-patients, and recognising Sarah, waved them through. “We’d better find Mr Kingston, the padre,” she said to Freddie. “He’ll know if Tom Carter has been sent across, and if so where he is.”

They found the padre just finishing a confirmation class for a small group of men, and as they waited at the back of church tent, Freddie watched him speaking to each man as he left. When he saw Sarah and Freddie, Robert Kingston came over. Sarah, who had only met him once or twice, reminded him who she was and introduced her brother. The two men shook hands.

“I was wondering if one of my men has come across to the camp today, from the convent,” Freddie said. “Private Thomas Carter, 1st Belshires.”

“Yes, he did. Last night actually. He was moved out to make way for more men coming in, I believe.”

“Well, when Sarah told me he was here, I thought I should visit him and see how he is. I understand his mate, Harry Cook died recently.” For a moment his eyes flicked to the graveyard beyond the fence.

“Yes, I’m sorry to say he did,” Kingston said. “Did you want to see Carter? I’ll send someone to fetch him. You can meet him in here if you like, I’ve finished for the moment.” He sent the last man, just leaving, to find Tom Carter, and then left them himself, saying, “I’m sure he won’t be long.”

Tom Carter was lying on a cot staring up at the roof of the tent when he got the message. He was feeling very down. Being moved into the camp brought the prospect of being sent back to the front very much closer. He wanted to talk to Molly, but he didn’t even know if she knew he had been moved. Their moments together the evening before had filled him with a joy he had never before felt. Molly had not said she loved him, but her response to his kisses assured him that she did. In all his rather disjointed life, Tom had never had anyone to love, and the discovery of it filled him with wonder.

“Waiting for you in the chapel, an officer and a lady,” the man said, “I’d look sharp if I was you.”

Tom walked across to the church wondering who could want him. An officer and… surely not Molly. He quickened his step and was astonished to find his company commander waiting for him, with the other English nurse, the one who Molly was maid to.

“Captain Hurst, sir,” he said coming awkwardly to attention.

“At ease, Carter,” Freddie said. “Just come in to see how you’re getting on. Hope the arm’s better. We need you back, you know.” He tried to sound jovial and bracing, but he could see the resignation in the man’s eyes. “My sister,” Freddie indicated Sarah standing behind him, “my sister tells me that Cook died of his wounds. She says he wouldn’t have made it this far if it hadn’t been for you. Well done, Carter. I shan’t forget.”

“No sir, thank you, sir,” Tom mumbled.

“Seen the MO, have you?” Freddie asked. “How’s the arm?”

“Getting better sir, most of the movement back, though it still hurts if I move quickly, like. Saw the doc this morning, sir. Said it’ll be another couple of weeks and then I should be ready for light duties, sir.”

“Well done, Carter, that’s good news. We’ll look forward to having you back after Christmas.” Freddie nodded again and began to turn away when Sarah spoke.

“Good to see you making such progress, Tom,” she said. “You were in Molly’s ward, weren’t you? I’ll be sure to tell her how well you’re doing. She’s always interested in how her patients are getting on.”

Tom stared at her for a moment dumbstruck. Though he knew who Sarah was, he’d never spoken to her. Then he gathered his wits about him and said, “Yes, miss, thank you, miss.” There was no message he could send to Molly with Captain Hurst standing there, and he wasn’t even sure if Sarah’s remark meant she knew about him and Molly or if she had spoken out of simple kindness. He thought hard about that after they’d gone. It seemed unlikely Molly would have told Sarah about him, but they were friends after all, so maybe she had. At least Sarah would tell Molly where he was, and for how long. There was little chance they would meet before, so they would just have to wait for Sunday.

Freddie and Sarah returned to the convent, where Freddie hugged his sister and left her at the door.

“Look after yourself, sis,” he said. “I’ll give your love to the governor and pass on your present.” He held her away from him for a moment, looking at her with pride and then said, “And I’ll tell him what you’re up to here. He ought to be as proud of you as I am.”

Sarah’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s been wonderful to see you, Freddie,” she said. “Thank you for today, it was lovely.” She smiled up at him through her tears and said, “I’ll pray for you, Freddie, every day.”

Freddie looked faintly embarrassed by this. He didn’t mind the thought of her praying for him, he even did a bit of praying himself from time to time, but he wasn’t sure it was the sort of thing a girl said to her brother. “Thanks,” he said awkwardly. “Thanks, old girl. Yes, well, I must go. Got to get this old banger back to Horton before he thinks I’ve bent it round a tree.” He swung the handle on the car and as its engine coughed into life, scrambled aboard.