The Storms of War (42 page)

Burlington stared at her, his face frozen in horror. ‘I … I am sorry,’ he said.

Tears were pouring down Celia’s face. ‘Sir, I really must insist,’ said the manager.

‘Come now, we’re going, Celia. We have to go. I promise on everything I have, on my life, that I will tell you outside.’

‘He will,’ said Burlington. ‘I’m sorry.’

She loosened herself and let Jonathan lead her away. The tears were blurring her eyes. She could not see any of them, not the beautiful girls, the waiters with champagne, the musicians in the band. They were probably all laughing at her.

Outside, the cold hit her like a slap. Her boots crunched in the snow.

‘Tell me,’ she said, seizing his collar. ‘Tell me now.’

‘Celia …’

‘You promised! You promised!’ She knew the tears were dripping off her chin, didn’t care. A couple passed them, laughing, arm in arm.

‘You don’t want to hear it.’

‘I do! Don’t treat me like a child.’ She let go of him, stood staring up at him.

He stared at the frozen ground. ‘I shouldn’t know it. One of the chaps from college was a friend of an officer in the next platoon. Michael was ill, Celia. He was ill from the bombs, from the misery of it all. You must have seen the men with shell shock.’

‘Michael didn’t have shell shock. He wrote to say how well he was.’ She could have almost smiled at how wrong he was.

‘Of course he did. That’s what they all did.’

‘He wouldn’t have been fighting if he had been ill.’

He looked up briefly, then dropped his gaze again. ‘You know that’s not true. They fix up the bodies, send them back. Who cares about the minds? Celia, you were out there. You know that all sorts of men fall prey to it. It is an illness. He wasn’t weak. It’s like the flu.’

‘What did Burlington mean,
doing the same to their own men
?’ She stared at him, willing him to look at her.

‘That’s what I am trying to tell you. Michael was ill. I think that the sound of bombs echoed in his mind until he wasn’t sure what was real and what was not. He was desperate. And when he had the order to go out over the top, to lead the men, he couldn’t. He couldn’t go.’

Two women came out and pushed past them, talking loudly about the cold. ‘What do you mean, he couldn’t go?’

Jonathan looked up, and she saw tears in his eyes. ‘He tried to get up over the trench but his legs wouldn’t carry him. He collapsed to the ground. The men had to advance without him.’

‘So the Germans shot him when he was down like that?’

‘No. Listen, Celia, you know it is a hard world out there. Sometimes they send the military police to shoot anyone who tries to hide behind in the trenches.’

‘He was shot by the
police
?’

‘No.’

‘Thank God. That would be terrible.’

‘I am sorry, Celia, but what happened was worse.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘I can’t do it. Tell me that’s enough, you don’t want to hear any more.’

‘What?’ The darkness was creeping up on her. ‘I want to know.’ She stared at the gold ring on his finger.

He dropped his hands. His face was clotted with tears. ‘They make the officer stand in front of his men. Each of his men has a gun. Then they are told to shoot.’

Celia was captured by it. She could not hear. The buildings around her were turning and she could not hear. The guns, a row of them.
Tom!
‘I am sorry,’ Jonathan was saying. ‘We were supposed to be keeping it secret. But Burlington always forgot things like that. I knew it! Why did I let him near you?’

Celia straightened up, wiping her mouth with her hand. Her mind ran red with blood. ‘The men shot him? But Tom was one of his men. That can’t be true.’

‘You should have been told. If you were the family of a private, they would tell you, I think. But one of the officers in charge of it all was a chap called Ardle, who was a few years above us at Cambridge. I never liked him much, but we have him to thank: he said that Michael was a good man and did not deserve the stigma of cowardice, and that the family would be told something else. He put it about among the college lot that Michael died saving another man. He wrote to Professor Punter too.’

‘Professor Punter told us that,’ said Celia, dully.

He held out his hand. ‘I hoped you would never know. Come, Celia, please. I will take you home.’

‘So your friend from Cambridge told you?’
Killed in the course of his duties.

‘He told another man, who told me.’

‘Everyone knows, apart from us?’

‘No. Only a few. Let us go now. You should rest.’

She walked a few steps with him, like a wind-up toy. Then she snatched back her hand. ‘I hate you!’ she cried. ‘How could you not have told me? You
knew
and you never said.’ She shook her head. ‘I will never see you again!’ She turned and ran. And then pain stabbed through her head. ‘Help me!’ she cried. And the world went black.

She woke up to Emmeline splashing water on her face. ‘Celia!’ She was lying on the sofa in the flat. ‘Oh, thank goodness. I thought you would never wake up. No, don’t sit up. You’ll only be sick again.’

Nausea rose up. ‘Actually, I am going to be sick.’

‘Oh God!’ Emmeline seized a bucket from behind her and pushed it under Celia. ‘Have you been
drinking
?’

‘Where is Jonathan?’

‘Gone. You were almost completely collapsed. But when he laid you down, you opened your eyes and told him you would never see him again. Then you fainted. What on earth has happened? Are you
drunk
?’ Emmeline was wearing her dressing gown and one of Samuel’s pullovers over her nightdress. ‘In public? You could have been arrested.’

The blood was in her head. Michael was crying out.
They forced him to his death.
He had to walk tall, upright. Pale. He said to the men,
I don’t blame you.
Or perhaps he was crying out, screaming, begging not to be taken.
Oh God.
She bent and was sick again.

‘Celia, what were you doing? Jonathan said you met him in town by chance. And then you started drinking with him?’

‘Emmeline, please stop.’ Celia lay back, nausea in her mouth. She was freezing. ‘Can I have another blanket?’

Emmeline bustled off and returned, tucking it around her.

‘It must be late. I’m sorry.’

‘It is three in the morning. Lucky Samuel sleeps through everything. I hope downstairs do too, otherwise I will have some complaints tomorrow.’ She stroked Celia’s hair. ‘Dear me, Celia, you know you shouldn’t drink with men.’

‘We were talking of Michael.’

‘Yes. It was strange to see Jonathan. He was very fond of Michael. But even though he was Michael’s friend, you have to be careful on your own! He said he found your address in your pocket. Why did you say you would never see him again? Did he try something with you?’

‘No, no. We just had an argument.’ Celia struggled to pull herself up, blushing at the thought of Jonathan rummaging through her pockets. ‘Listen, Emmeline, you should go back to bed. Jonathan treated me properly, I promise. You are right, I shouldn’t have drunk.’

‘Well, I shouldn’t think it took very much. Look at you.’

‘I had some champagne at your wedding. And some stuff out in France.’

‘The stuff at my wedding was more like lemonade, frankly. You have learned your lesson now, though, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Anyway, what was Jonathan saying that kept you so interested all night? I always thought him rather dull.’

Celia blushed. She couldn’t answer. If she talked about him asking her to marry him, then she would have to talk about Michael, what Burlington had said. Her heart lurched at the thought of it. She could not tell Emmeline, she would never tell any of them.
I will die first,
she said to herself, knowing it was melodramatic but thinking there was no other way to put it.

‘Yes. Honestly, Emmeline, I will be fine now. You go back to bed. If you could just get me some water, I’d be grateful. I need to sleep it off.’

‘You don’t want me to sleep beside you? Are you sure you feel well enough?’

‘I promise.’ Emmeline walked off to get water. As she did so, Celia tried to formulate her thoughts. ‘Emmy,’ she said, ‘I have changed my mind on something important.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘I am going to go to Stoneythorpe. Mama needs me. I was wrong to leave her alone for so long. I wish you would come too.’

‘You won’t stay to help us?’

‘No.’

‘How can you desert us? How
can
you?’

‘Mama needs me more.’

Emmeline threw herself to her knees. ‘Please, Celia. Please. Just once more. We need you.’

Celia gazed at her sister, her blonde hair glowing as she knelt, like some kind of picture of a saint, devout in a book of Italian art. Her mind flashed back to the time on the roof.
That’s my heart tearing,
she wanted to say, did not.

Stoneythorpe, September 1918

The ivy across Stoneythorpe was wild and unkempt. It had grown around the front, up to the chimneys, even over the windows. It was like some strange sea monster’s hair, Celia thought, curling its tendrils into the bricks. Rudolf would say it would pull the house down. All his painstaking work in cutting it back lost, as if it had never been done. It was so grown in that Thompson told her it couldn’t be pulled out or else the mortar would crumble.

Celia stared up at the house, the autumn sun burning the roof from behind, backlighting it with sharp white, as if God had taken a great pale pencil and drawn around it. Rudolf might not even care, she reminded herself, when he came, since he would finally be free. But she knew that they had let the house fall into a sad state, that he would be disappointed in them.

Celia had set off on the train five days after telling Emmeline her decision. She did her duty, took one last delivery, a man in the boot, shook as she drove, terrified when he knocked in Knightsbridge that everyone would hear. She delivered him to Paddington, where a man in a pulled-down black hat took him from her boot and told her to turn around.

‘That’s it,’ she told Emmeline that night. ‘I can’t do it again. I should go to help Mama now. And I’m too afraid.’

She gave in her notice to Captain Russell, who said he would take her back any time, a good, efficient worker like her. Her sister cried at Waterloo.

Thompson collected her from the station and told her Verena was much changed: up and receiving Lady Redroad and the
Dowager Lady Redroad at that precise moment, engaged in final discussions.

The four of them took tea together. ‘The government will take care of everything,’ Lady Redroad said.

Celia saw her mother bloom under Lady Redroad’s attention, nod and smile as the other woman made proposals for the hospital. Celia pushed down her resentment that Lady Redroad was only friendly to them when it suited her, for her mother was better than she had seen her since before Michael left.

In the ensuing days, the Dowager Lady Redroad and a matron sent from Winchester did most of the planning, wrote the lists and hired the staff. Thompson put the furniture in the attic, and he and Jennie moved the sculptures and the rest to a storeroom. The next months were a bustle of activity: nurses and doctors arriving, beds being delivered, people making plans. Celia plunged herself into moving stores of bandages and measuring the distances between beds. It saved her from thinking about Michael, shot by his own men, Tom, his lungs full of gas, never wanting to see her again, Emmeline carrying boxes through dark streets, Rudolf alone in a cell. Instead, she thought of her mother, watched her change, grow taller, bolder, become what she had been before the war. She felt grateful to Lady Redroad, a sensation she wouldn’t have thought possible.

The day after she arrived, Celia helped Jennie to pack all the sculptures and paintings from the storerooms in cloths and paper. They laid them in Verena’s old trunks and carried them out to where Thompson had dug a great hole in the frozen garden. Matron had said they needed the space. Thompson stood in the hole as they passed him the wooden boxes full of the artwork Rudolf and Verena had bought in Rome, the treasured landscapes of the English countryside, the bronzes that Lord Deerhurst had left Verena. Only a few of the family portraits remained in the house: Rudolf and Verena in Rudolf’s study, with little ones of all of them around; the big portrait of Michael before he went to Cambridge in what had been the sitting room. ‘We’ll have to
remember where they all are,’ said Jennie. ‘What if we forget? We can’t dig up the whole garden.’

‘We won’t forget,’ Thompson replied. ‘Not all three of us. They’re in between the rose gardens.’

‘I won’t forget,’ said Celia. It was where Tom had kissed her. ‘I’ll find it.’ Every time she walked over the area, she tried to tiptoe a little, so that the ground would not press down on the trunks, squash the Roman nymphs and flatten the paintings. She walked lightly, greeted them as she passed.

Celia wrote to her sister, describing the difference in their mother, asked her to come to Stoneythorpe. Each time Emmeline refused, said she was engaged in work that was more important.

Then, in July, she replied in a different tone. Two men had attacked Samuel in the street when he was out delivering and told him they would do much worse if he didn’t stop. On the next night, Rufus had been attacked so severely that he’d decided to return to his parents for a spell. Samuel decided it wasn’t safe for Emmeline to remain and so she came, grudgingly, to Stoneythorpe.

‘I won’t stay a day longer than you, Celia,’ she said. ‘When you go back to driving, I come too.’

‘I won’t go back to driving.’

Celia meant it. London, everything about it, seemed a million miles away already. She moved boxes and beds, scrubbed stairs with Jennie, and every day the girl who had driven Captain Russell around London was left further behind. Jonathan had written twice to Stoneythorpe, once apologising for getting carried away, asking her to write back. The second time, he said that he hoped he hadn’t upset her, that they still remained friends, and could she just write back to set his mind at rest? But every time she picked up her pen, she thought of him telling her in the snow of how Michael had been shot, and she found that she couldn’t write a word. She’d tried to tell her mother that Professor Punter got it wrong and Michael didn’t die saving Tom, but she wouldn’t listen.

Stoneythorpe wasn’t theirs any more. Thanks to Lady Redroad, the Dowager and Matron Reed, the stables were full of hospital
supplies and spare beds were propped around their furniture in the attic. Thompson kept the grass short so that the men could walk on it, and the only flowers surviving were the ones that could pretty much take care of themselves. Soldiers flowed around the front hall or sat on the hard marble benches that had only been ornamental before. Rudolf’s study was now the operations room, occupied by the doctor in charge, Verena and Lady Redroad, the Dowager, the matron and any of the other neighbourhood ladies who came to help. The dining room, the sitting room, the ballroom and the parlour were all wards.

Upstairs, the soldiers occupied all the bedrooms except for Verena’s and Celia’s – she and Emmeline were sharing, Emmeline’s bed crammed against the wall. Michael’s room, too, had been left untouched. Verena had locked the door and forbidden it even to be used as a store. Celia supposed the aeroplanes still flew from the ceiling, unmoving in the airless room. The nurses slept on the floor above, in the guest rooms, and the ones above that which had been occupied by the servants. The downstairs offices next to the kitchen were filled with bandages and supplies. Thompson sat there, for he was the supplies man, as well as fetching, carrying and tending the lawn. Only the kitchen was the same, except Mrs Rolls and Sarah had two other girls to help them full time. It was the only way to get thirty-nine lunches out on time, Mrs Rolls said.

Jennie was a volunteer nurse, like Celia, with some other girls from nearby families. She and Celia poured over Smithson’s whereabouts with the Westerns on a map of Mesopotamia, tracing out Baghdad and Jabal Hamrin. ‘He’ll come back,’ said Celia, knowing how hollow her words sounded. But men did survive, of course they did. Marks was still alive somewhere or other, Jennie said, had come back to the village on leave and thrown his money about.

Three or so years ago, Celia had wandered the corridors, prowled alone, trying the doors and gazing from the windows. Now every spot was occupied: soldiers, nurses, women trying to visit. Janey from the village mopped the footprints off the floors all day long.
They would never really go, Celia thought; they would always be there, however much Janey scrubbed.

And yet, although Stoneythorpe was different on the surface, it was the same. The garden where the children had not come, and Michael’s room unchanged, his umbrella in the stand by the door. Every day, Celia worked to keep her remembrance of him at the forefront of her mind, determined not to allow the portrait of him in the parlour to become the truth. She forced herself to hold on to the memories, replaying pictures of him at Cambridge, before the party, even outside the pub on the green, gazing at the recruitment station. The two of them as children running in the garden. She rehearsed them over and over in her mind, knowing even as she did so that the very act would make them even more false, repeating the same actions like wind-up dolls so that soon, whatever she did, he would become indistinct, his edges dropping away from her mind, and she could reach out her hand for him but see only her own palm. Sometimes she stood outside his room, clutching the doorknob, wishing she dared ask Verena for the key.

Standing looking at the house, Celia could just see her sister, her arm linked through that of one of the soldiers. He was shuffling forwards, stumbling. Celia knew from watching that he wished to fall to the floor and never get up again. She hadn’t thought how difficult it would be to accompany men into the garden. Her vision had been of them gently leaning on her as she led them forward, asking about their sweethearts or their wives and children, just like the white-clad women at Number One War Hospital, wandering over the grass. Instead they were angry, begged her not to take them out, and then when she did, shuffled and struggled, clutching at her arm.

Only yesterday a young soldier, shot in the leg, fell against her when they were walking, almost pulling her down as well. He sat on the ground, crumpled, staring up at her. ‘I don’t know why you’re always telling me to walk,’ he said, in a low voice, Norfolk accent. ‘What difference does it make? You just want to make it heal so you can send me out there again.’

She stood there, staring at the sun glittering on his scarred face. ‘That’s not true, Roberts. We want you to get well.’

‘To be shot at again.’

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I will help you up. Let’s go back.’

‘And there might be a music group or some kind of craft that I could do? Something to keep me
busy
?’

‘Why not?’ she said, losing patience. ‘Wouldn’t you rather be here than there?’

He gave her a furious stare.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I was out in France for a while. I saw some of it.’

Celia held out her hand and knew he wanted to brush it off, but he had no choice but to take it. He gripped hard. ‘It’s all very well for you ladies,’ he hissed. ‘You get to stroke our brows, take us for walks in your fine country home, tell us how brave we are. It’s easy for you. Sending us back out so that we can fight and die for one square inch of French land.’

She pulled him up as he hoisted himself.

‘When the explosion hit me, I fell against another man. He let out a groan. I saw he was still alive. He had a hole between his eyes where the brain was coming out. I saw it, grey stuff, curved like something you’d get out of a tube. I should have shot him. But I couldn’t. I left him there for the bearers.’

‘I’m sorry. Come, let’s go back.’

She linked her arm through his and they made their way back to his ward. She helped him into bed. ‘Women will be the next to fight,’ he said, as she took off his dressing gown and settled him in. ‘You wait.’

I nearly did,
Celia wanted to say.
They wanted to send me out spying, and that would be a sort of fighting, would it not?
The general flared up in her head, smiling at her, handing over the paperwork.
Well,
she wanted to say to him,
you didn’t get anywhere, did you? So I’m free of you.

‘You probably think fighting is rather jolly. Like giving over your grand house to sick soldiers.’

Celia nodded. She knew, she had been told by the doctors, to
ignore such talk, that it was really just the pain speaking, nothing else.
It’s not that grand any more,
she wanted to say. The hospital had proved to be more expensive than they had imagined. In fact, Celia thought, when they had been discussing it, they had not really thought about money at all. She’d thought the King and the government would pay for it all. Certainly Lady Redroad and the Dowager had been confident, waved their hands, said Mr Asquith would provide. Now, the solicitor, Mr Pemberton, couldn’t balance the accounts. They were taking the men that the health authority sent them, but the grants they received were not enough. Already, he had told them in a financial meeting yesterday, the hospital was eating up thousands of pounds. It was September now, he said. They had until December to improve matters.

‘Well, I cannot think of anything to cut,’ said Verena. ‘The men will protest if the food is worse. There is nothing we can do, do you not agree, Matron?’

Mrs Reed nodded. ‘There is nothing extravagant in what we give the men.’

Lady Redroad waved a hand. ‘We shall write letters. And apply to the authority for more funds.’

Mr Pemberton gazed at her. ‘Might there be funds from another location, Lady Redroad?’

She blanched and drew herself up. ‘All of Lord Redroad’s funds are entirely tied up. We shall ask the government.’

Mr Pemberton snapped his book shut. ‘Well I suggest that you do, Lady Redroad. Otherwise Mrs de Witt and whoever wishes to help her will have to take on debt.’

Celia was so lost in her thoughts that she did not see Jennie.

‘Hello,’ she said, touching Celia’s arm. Jennie somehow managed to get her uniform whiter than anyone else’s. Celia’s hands and apron were dirty almost the minute she walked into the ward. Jennie was above all the grime. She smiled at Celia, her face perfectly clean, her hair shiny under the pristine hat, the map of Mesopotamia stowed in her pocket. ‘We have a new patient
transferred over. He has been recuperating from head injuries. I think you would like to see him.’

Celia shook her head. ‘I can’t do anything with them, Jennie. I’ve tried. They don’t cheer up.’ The sad soldier yesterday had been just another one of the same. Emmeline tossed her hair and talked of her husband, and the men liked her, teased that they would take her dancing when they were recovered. Jennie was cool, brooked no nonsense. Verena largely hid in the study. Their favourite was Nurse Lloyd, a dark-haired girl from London with huge eyes who reminded Celia of Nurse Rouse. Some of the men said Lloyd had a French look about her. But Celia wasn’t like her sister or Nurse Lloyd, she couldn’t find the touch to make the soldiers think well of her. She always seemed to say the wrong thing, words that made them silent or angry when they had just been laughing with Emmeline. She cleaned their wounds, helped them to eat and drink, tidied their hair, changed their beds, encouraged them to walk, bend their fingers, wriggle their toes or whatever else the doctor had told them to do. But they did not like her. She worked better in an ambulance, she thought, sitting behind a curtain, reciting Shakespeare.