the maltese angel (48 page)

As she kissed him she said, "Let her be the least of your worries. I shall see to her. And perhaps we shall comfort each other for your loss." And when she added, "Oh, my dear, what am I going to do without you?" he replied, "As I've told you before, dear, it's more a case of what am I going to do without you?" to which his mind added, 'and her'.

The first letter he wrote was neither to his mother nor to Janie, but to Jessie. He wrote it that night, before he left the house. It was brief, stating that her niece had found out the facts of her beginning through overhearing one of the men and a recruiting officer talking while she was attending to a sick calf. And authoritatively, he

ended," If she does not mention this to you herself, it would be very unwise of you, at this stage, to make her aware that you know. No

doubt the opportunity will occur some time when she's more able to handle the situation."

He knew that this letter would undoubtedly anger Jessie, but he had little patience with her and condemned her for her treatment in keeping a child segregated for years.

The next letter he wrote was to his mother, and this was from

Birmingham, telling her he was stationed in a camp near a village and undergoing training. The letter was quite cheery. He sent a similar, shorter one, to Janie. And this he ended on a light note, saying that the kind people in charge were thinking of sending him to London on a holiday, but that he wouldn't be given any spending money.

The next letter his mother received from him was from a hospital in Richmond, and in it it was evident that he could not contain his

feelings, for he was angered at the purposeless suffering of the men there.

Gerald had known well from the beginning that he would go through the mill, even though he was under a certain protection, being a member of the Friends' Ambulance Unit. Yet it wasn't the way he was received and treated, nor the menial tasks imposed on him and

the others in the same corps, but the number of mangled bodies filling the wards. He was sickened and horrified by the agony endured by the limbless and mangled remains of men, and rent inside himself by the nameless courage that sustained many of them with the desire to go on living. But there were equally as many who gave up the ghost, and for these he was thankful that their crucifixion was over. Yet, covering all his emotions was an anger at the senseless waste of human life and the feeling of frustration at being unable to do anything about it.

Here he was cleaning latrines, his hands burnt with the use of so much chlorine. And he was sickened further with the habits of men en

masse.

They were camped outside in unheated huts and he had made friends with a couple of like minds in his section. But he had also discovered

there were some weak knees within their company when one day he was warned by a young fellow that it would be well for him if he kept his mouth shut and his opinions to himself, else the lot of them would be landed overseas before they knew where they were.

Gerald had asked in mock enquiry, "Do you happen to be a conscientious objector?" And the answer he got was, "Oh, to hell with you!"

One day, when he was on his way to the theatre to wheel out

blood-stained sheets and parts of human anatomy to be consigned to the incinerator, and seeing a visitor whom he had noticed once or twice before now making her way towards a ward door, he stepped forward and was about to open it for her when the side of her hand came like a chisel across his wrist, and in a deep throaty voice she said, "Your courtesy doesn't hide your cowardice. My son is back there, his body mangled just to protect the likes of you. I know what I would do with the lot of you if I had my way. But this is what I think of you." And then she spat in his face.

He remained still while the door was opened and then closed on her. He felt as if all the blood had

been drained from his body. They called cowards white- livered, and that's what he felt at this moment, white right through. Nothing

seemed to be working inside him. Even when he turned away he found that his legs didn't actually obey him; it was as if he were drunk.

This incident attacked the sensitivity in him. Not only did it

increase his awareness of who he was, and why he thought as he did, but also the knowledge of how the action of one person, that might cover merely a matter of seconds, could affect the life of another, as it was to do in his case for the next three years.

It was towards the end of July 1917 that janie received a letter from Gerald telling her he was in France, and so glad to be there, for now he felt he would be of some real help. And when she next wrote to him to the address he would leave at the bottom of the page, she must tell him how the small holding was going, because his mother didn't give him many details. And was she really all right and not ill? But he had finished on a light note, saying, "Before I make myself of some use I think I'll just pop over to Paris tonight and have dinner, somewhere along the Champs-Elysees; then perhaps go to the opera. Or on the

other hand, I may prefer a lighter entertainment. It all depends upon my mood. Be a good girl, and one day I shall bring you over to France, that is after I've shown you all the beautiful places in London." And he signed himself as always, "The " nice man" Gerald."

Jessie had watched her reading the letter, the while pushing from her thoughts the hope that they might suddenly cease, for terrible things were happening in this war. As McNabb said, the papers were just one big cover-up. He had proof of it, he said: his grandson, minus a leg and half an arm, had recently been sent home from a hospital where they had endeavoured to make him walk; but the mutilations being on both sides of his body, he found himself unable to balance. And now his life would be spent in a wheelchair, and what pension he got would scarcely feed him.

But Jessie resisted the thought that there was still hope. Yet she knew if that man survived nothing she could do would change her child's attitude towards him. It would be only the man himself who could

change it, and he had become her father figure, which he could well have been, having been twenty years old when she was born.

Seeing Janie raise her head from the letter as if about to speak, she put in quickly, "No, you can't miss your lessons this morning, dear.

It's becoming a habit. "

"Oh, it isn't, Auntie Jessie. I don't often ask in the mornings, I go over in the afternoon. You know I do. And I know what's the matter with Lady Lydia; it's because the house is full of soldiers and she hasn't told Mr. Gerald about it. And they are noisy; some of them are quite rude. Although she's had most of the furniture packed away there are some things she can't move, of course, such as the big bookcases in the library. And one of the men in the last lot pulled out illustrated plates from the big books. And when she went for him he was rude to her. The sergeant said he was sorry and had him moved .. Some people are very ignorant."

"And you will be one of them if you continue to miss your lessons."

"I don't miss my lessons. Auntie Jessie. You do exaggerate, you know.

And when I don't have to do the lessons, I still read. "

"Yes, but not the things you should. Poetry won't get you very far in this world."

As Janie looked at the thin, tight-lipped face of her aunt, she thought she knew why her nice man and her aunt didn't like each other.

Yet how could she put it into words? Only that one was light and the other was heavy. Yes, she understood the heaviness that was on her Auntie Jessie's shoulders, and that she herself was a big part of that heaviness.

Of a sudden she sprang up and with an unusual display of tenderness put her arm around Jessie's shoulders and kissed her on the cheek.

Jessie was much taken aback by this unexpected gesture, for what

kissing had to be done she did herself, and then with a peck on the child's brow or cheeks at night.

But as it was now, she had the urge not only to cry but also to hold the child tightly to her, as she used to when she was small and

manageable. The embrace, however, ended as quickly as it had begun, with Janie, laughing and saying, "Let's away to the grindstone, for if the corn is not turned to flour, there'll be no bread and then we'll all be surprised when we find ourselves dead."

Jessie had been about to turn away to go into the other room, but now she swung around and looked at the laughing girl, saying, "Where on earth did you hear that?"

Janie seemed to think for a moment, then said, "I've never heard it. I mean, it just came out."

Jessie sighed. Rhyming. Another result of her association with that man, and so she remarked tartly, "Well, in future I think what you let just come out should have a little more sense to it. Come along."

Janie sighed. There was no fun with her Auntie Jessie, whereas Lady Lydia, although she was very worried about Mr. Gerald, could always laugh and see the funny side of some things. Oh, she wished this

afternoon was here. She seemed to be always wishing these days:

wishing the war was over, wishing her nice man was back again, wishing she wouldn't keep growing so tall, wishing she was older. Oh yes, a lot older, seventeen or eighteen, wishing .. Here, her wishing came to a full stop and she answered herself. No, she didn't wish any more that her grandfather would speak to her. Her grandfather hated her and she hated him. Oh yes, she hated him.

Well before reaching the main gates she could see that- the old lot of soldiers must have gone and a new company had arrived, for behind the line of trees on the right side of the drive, tents had been erected right down to the lodge. But she saw no soldiers until she was about to ascend the steps leading to the balcony and the front door, when she was hailed by a voice behind her, saying, "Ah, now, what 'ave we here?

A spritely young

miss who 'as come to see the lord of the manor and asked to be taken into his service. Eh? "

Janie turned on the bottom step and so her face was almost on a level with those of the two grinning soldiers;

and when one looked at the other and said, "She has lost her tongue,"

she quickly came back at him, saying, "It's a great pity you haven't lost yours, too, if you can't make it say anything sensible."

The smile slid from the man's face whilst the grin on his companion's widened; and in a very changed tone the first man said, "Now, now!

missie! there's no need to be cheeky. "

As she went to turn away from him, he added, "And where d'you think you're off to?"

"That's my business."

"Oh, but it isn't, madam. Let me tell you it isn't. This house has been taken over."

"Yes, and it's a great pity."

"Look' he had quickly placed himself one step above her now 'it's my business to see who goes in and out of here." He pointed to the single stripe on his arm.

"And now I'd advise you to get yourself away. There's a notice on the gate that this is private property.

Weren't you checked there? "

"No; but you will certainly be checked if you don't let me pass."

"What is it?" The voice brought the man round to see Lady Lydia coming across the balcony to the top of the steps, and he was about to say,

"This 'ere girl," when she said, "Is there anything the matter, Janie?"

She was coming down the steps now and the man looked up at her, saying in a tone that could only be called smarmy, "I was just enquiring, m'ladyship, what her business was. We've just come in, as you know, and not used to the run of the place yet."

Lady Lydia stared at the man for a moment, taking in his type; then she held out her hand to Janie as she said to him, "Then the sooner you recognise members of my family, the better. Corporal."

"Yes, ma'am, your ladyship." He stepped aside, then watched the two figures mount the steps, cross the balcony and enter the house through the front door of the hall, before he muttered, "Bloody upstarts! One thing this war'll do will be to put an end to that lot."

"And perhaps your lot an' all." As his companion turned away laughing, the man demanded, "Whose side are you on?"

Still holding Janie by the hand, Lady Lydia crossed the empty hall, passing the uncarpeted stairs, to the broad passage where new notices had been attached to the doors, and so to the far end to a door on which the notice said, "Private. No admittance'; through this and into a further passage that led into a largish room which had been the

servants' hall but was now fitted out as a sitting-room. Next to it, what had been the housekeeper's sitting-room was now Lady Lydia's

bedroom. The butler's pantry, the silver room, the housekeeper's

office and various other small rooms in this quarter, with the

exception of one which held a bed for Nancy Bellways, were filled with silver and china and relics of family history, besides small pieces of antique furniture.

In the sitting-room Lady Lydia said, "Come, warm yourself." Then she pointed, "Look at the big lumps of coal. We've got a coal-house half-full."

"Really? Where did you get it?"

"Well there was a soldier in the last lot, they really were a nice crowd altogether ... well, he and one or two of them went out with a lorry yesterday, apparently, and did some foraging, all in the name of the Army, of course." She bit on her lip now and shrugged her shoulders as a young girl might.

"And just before they left, and it was quite early, quite early in the morning, they handed me a great big key. And they said, " We've left a present for you, ma'am. It's in the coal house And hang on to that key. Anyway, that lock'll take some getting off. " I didn't

know what to say. Having said it was in the coal-house, I thought it must be wood, because, you know, they've been chopping down a lot of trees. Oh, Gerald would have been so angry if he were here. Anyway, after they left . and you know, they waved me goodbye from the lorries it was as if they were going on holiday. And, oh dear, dear' her tone changed now 'they're all for France, all of them, and they know it. And some of them don't want to go, from what they said.