The Year It All Ended (22 page)

Martin smiled. ‘Unbreakable, are you?’

‘No, but I’m hardier than I look. I’m on my way to France, to visit the grave of my brother.’

Martin’s expression changed and he stopped in his tracks. ‘Civilians aren’t allowed on the battlefields.’

‘We’re not ordinary civilians, not tourists. We’re more like pilgrims.’

‘And where exactly are you headed to on this pilgrimage?’

‘Villers-Bretonneux and then a place called the Buire British Cemetery. Though I’m still not exactly sure where that is. I believe it’s somewhere between Tincourt and Péronne.’

Martin glanced out to sea and then back at Tiney. ‘The cemeteries aren’t ready for mourners, not yet.’

Tiney looked up into his dark brown eyes and measured her words before she spoke.

‘I may be small and not very old, but I’m not naive. I have no illusions that I may witness terrible things. But my brother saw far worse and I will not spare myself his pain. I want to honour his death.’

‘You can only honour the dead by living.’

Tiney heard Ida’s voice, carried on the sea breeze. She turned and saw her companions had already packed up the picnic rug and Ida was waving for her to join them.

‘I must go,’ said Tiney. ‘I’m glad you weren’t in need of rescue.’

Martin offered her his arm and together they walked back, awkwardly silent, to the Alstons’ car. Martin Woolf introduced himself politely to everyone and helped load the picnic basket into the boot. As Tiney leaned out the car window to say goodbye, Martin spoke first.

‘I believe I may be able to help you, Miss Flynn. I was stationed at Villers-Bretonneux and briefly at Bois de Buire near Tincourt. I could draw you a sketch of how to find Buire-Courcelles, which is where the British Cemetery is located, and some details of people who may be able to help you at Villers-Bretonneux.’

Ida leaned across the front seat. ‘Too kind of you, Mr Woolf,’ she said. ‘We’ll be at Mrs Bloomfield’s, on the Lewes road from Seaford. If you could pop something in the post, that would be spiffing.’

Martin stepped away from the car and waved goodbye. Tiney watched his figure disappear as the car turned onto the country road and the hedgerows blocked him from view.

‘Mr Woolf!’ said Ida. She nudged Tiney and winked. ‘Did you ask him for the time?’

‘Don’t tease, Ida,’ said Tiney. ‘We could have at least invited him to call on us. He could have been really helpful. You were awful telling him to “pop it in the post”.’

‘Well, he has the choice of posting something or coming to call, now he knows where we are. But I’m your chaperone,
darling Little Red Riding Hood. It’s my job to save you from tall, dark and handsome strangers.’

She revved the engine and the car sped up over a rise. In the back seat, Mrs Bloomfield and Mrs Alston gasped. Tiney held onto her seat and smiled to herself.

Love’s memory

They took the ferry from Folkestone on a windy spring morning. Mrs Alston was sick much of the way and by the time they reached Calais she was exhausted. Tiney and Ida helped her off the ferry and found a car to take them to the nearest hotel. Luckily, Ida had been persuaded to leave most of her luggage with Mrs Bloomfield.

The next morning, they took the train to Amiens and from there went direct to Villers-Bretonneux. The ticket-seller tried to discourage them from travelling further, but they hadn’t crossed the world to be turned back so close to their goal. Tiney was glad to have Martin Woolf’s letter detailing exactly what to say and do and who might help them when they reached the Somme. He had sent her five pages of advice, including two of intricate maps.

The railway lines across the north of France had been repaired since the Armistice, but outside the carriage windows, they saw the fields were ravaged. Even though this was the second spring since the war had ended, the fields were wastelands pockmarked by pools of stagnant water. Flowers and grass struggled to take hold in the poisoned ground. Miles and miles of rusty barbed wire had been rolled into huge mounds, as if all the land could
yield was the ugly fruit of conflict. Scars of war lay in every direction; blackened stumps and trees stripped of all foliage pointing skywards like accusing fingers.

At Villers-Bretonneux, they were the only passengers to disembark. There was no one to meet them at the station, though Martin had said he would send a note to friends who lived there. As they gathered up their baggage, the sound of an explosion made Mrs Alston jump in alarm. She put her hand to her chest.

‘What do you think that was?’ she asked.

‘Don’t worry, Mummy, the war really is over,’ said Ida. She hooked her arm through her mother’s and set about finding a path through the rubble of the old railway station.

They walked through the town in silence. It was as if the war had only ended the day before they’d arrived. Villers-Bretonneux was like a vision of the world after the Apocalypse. No house remained completely intact. The old church was a shell with one wall remaining. Nearly every roof of every building had been blown away. They could see straight inside some of the ruins, and there was nothing left of most of the houses but dust and rubble. Tiney had read that the citizens had returned last July, but if so, few of them were about. Three little boys in ragged clothes wearing French soldiers’ caps stood silently watching them from atop a pile of rubble.

Up ahead they saw a large tent with the sign of the Red Cross outside. A tall, broad-shouldered woman with dark hair cropped short was standing outside the tent opening, talking to a group of soldiers. She was dressed in a greatcoat, but beneath it she wore a white nurse’s apron. When she saw the three strangers approaching she strode over to meet them. The woman’s eyes were like
pale beacons in her face and her mouth was drawn down with tiredness but Tiney could see that under other circumstances she could have been described as beautiful.

‘Miss Flynn, Miss and Mrs Alston? I’m Ettie Rout. Martin Woolf wrote that I might expect you,’ she said, kissing each of them on both cheeks, as a Frenchwoman might in greeting. ‘Rather busy here this morning. An unexploded shell caught one of the Chinese labourers. Luckily, only a nick this time. I’ve just finished bandaging him. You must make sure you keep to the roads and well-trodden paths around Villers-Bretonneux. You can’t know whether the ground is safe. There are unexploded munitions everywhere. The spring wildflowers can cover the most deceptive ground.’

Mrs Alston looked confused for a moment, then stepped back and fiddled with the clasp of her handbag. ‘Can you please direct us to the Imperial Graves Commission?’ she said stiffly. ‘We have directions to my son’s grave – Sheet 32 C J. 27. C. 32,’ Mrs Alston recited as she took a neatly folded letter from her handbag and stared down at the details. ‘But we can’t decipher exactly what that means.’

‘Mother,’ said Ida, ‘Nurse Rout isn’t a tour guide. She’s in charge of the Red Cross depot.’

‘Call me Ettie, please,’ said Nurse Rout. ‘The Imperial Graves Commission has set up at the Red Chateau outside town and they might be able to help you. But I’m afraid there’s no accommodation here. Best to take the evening train back to Amiens.’ She looked at Mrs Alston with a particularly dubious expression.

‘A friend suggested it might be possible to pay for a billet with a local family,’ said Ida. ‘We’re happy to pitch in. We’re used to
hard work. Tiney and I worked in the kitchens of the Cheer-Up Hut in Adelaide, and Mother’s a trouper. We could make ourselves useful cheering up the volunteers with the Australian Graves Detachment.’

Ettie Rout sighed, obviously not impressed. ‘I don’t think that would be possible. There aren’t many buildings with roofs on them yet – most families have only one or two usable rooms. They’re still using tarpaulins to cover the broken roofs and oiled paper in place of windows, and they burn bits of the house to keep themselves warm. However, if you’re game, I could offer you camp beds for the night in the cellar of the school. There’s little to eat here but if you’ll give us a hand with serving lunch to the children you’re welcome to join us.’

Inside the ruins of the old schoolhouse, dozens of raggedy children gathered around a long table. The room echoed with their shouts and the noisy clatter of spoons hitting against tin bowls. Mrs Alston was shown where the camp beds in the cellar were, while Ida and Tiney took off their coats and rolled up their sleeves. A soldier carrying two buckets of water from the town pump emptied them into metal tubs. Tiney and Ida set to work washing tin mugs, plates and spoons to serve the next round of children that arrived to be fed.

A small, dark-eyed boy came and stood beside Tiney, watching her with curiosity. She asked him in her schoolgirl French if he wanted something.

‘I would like some black coffee and a cigarette,’ he replied, in broken English.

Tiney laughed at first but when she looked into his face, she realised he was serious. Then she noticed he was using a crutch to support himself. The lower half of his left leg was missing.

When the children’s lunch was finished, Ettie invited Tiney, Ida and Mrs Alston to join the workers for a bowl of stew and a cup of tea. The stew appeared to be mostly made of tinned vegetables and the tea was both weak and oddly bitter but the bread that was served with it was still warm from the oven.

Ettie introduced them to her fiancé, a man called Fred Hornibrook, and a young Frenchwoman who was apparently the teacher of the raggedy children. As they ate, a ragbag assortment of soldiers in various uniforms came in and out of the building.

Mrs Alston stiffened when a group of German soldiers appeared in the doorway and then left again. Moments later, several Chinese men arrived carrying supplies that they piled up in a corner at Ettie’s direction.

‘There are about four thousand German prisoners and a Chinese labour battalion in the area,’ explained Ettie. ‘They’re working on the clean-up. The Chinese did most of the work rebuilding the railway line. The Australians here are volunteers who’ve chosen to stay behind and work with the Graves Detachments. They wanted to make sure that Australian soldiers buried their own rather than leave it to the British. But there are English and French soldiers too, still waiting to be called home – forgotten contingents. They keep body and soul together by selling army supplies to the villagers.’

‘And the Graves Commission is working out of this place called the Red Chateau?’ asked Ida.

‘They’re not very excited about civilians coming to the Front,’ said Fred Hornibrook.

‘Even if they aren’t welcoming, we have to ask,’ said Tiney. ‘We think Charlie may be in the Adelaide Cemetery.’

‘I’d take you there but I’ve injured my shoulder, worse luck.
Let’s go outside and see if there’s a vehicle available or a man who could take you out in my little trap.’

In the ruins of the town square, they saw a line of elderly women struggling under the weight of buckets of water taken from the town pump. Tiney helped one silver-haired old woman and Ida another, while Fred tried to organise transport for them.

Suddenly, a motorbike came roaring around the corner and pulled up outside the depot, sending a spray of mud into the air. When the rider pulled off his leather cap and goggles, Tiney knew him instantly.

‘Martin Woolf, well, I’ll be blowed!’ called Fred Hornibrook, striding across the road to shake his hand and clap him on the shoulder.

‘Isn’t that your big bad wolf from Beachy Head?’ asked Ida.

‘Don’t, Ida,’ said Tiney. It was the strangest feeling to see Martin in this place, as if they were meeting again on another planet rather than in another country.

‘Hello again,’ said Martin, smiling directly at Tiney.

‘Hello,’ she replied, annoyed that her voice sounded squeaky and childish. ‘I wanted to write a note to thank you for your letter but you didn’t provide a return address.’

‘I was about to leave England for some months,’ he said. ‘I could have given you an address in Paris or Geneva but I thought that would require a rather long explanation.’

At that moment, Ettie came outside. When she saw Martin she let out a shout of pleasure and ran over to embrace him. Tiney looked at the ground and felt strangely deflated as Ettie and Martin chatted like old friends.

‘I wonder if you could hitch up Fred’s trap and take these ladies out to the Red Chateau,’ said Ettie.

‘For you, anything,’ he said. Ettie laughed.

Tiney set her lips firm, determined not to mind how they spoke to each other. ‘I’m sure if you could just take us to the Adelaide Cemetery, we’d be able to find Charlie’s grave ourselves,’ she said.

‘If you have a letter from the Imperial Graves commission, I could spare you the unhappiness of a long search,’ said Martin. ‘I know the Adelaide Cemetery well.’

He was looking at Ida and Mrs Alston as he spoke and Tiney felt moved by his compassion for them.

In the end, Martin and Fred went to collect the trap together. A truck drove past and a terrible odour caught Tiney unawares, making her feel a little dizzy. It was of earth and mud and mould and something else she couldn’t quite identify. She saw Ettie’s gaze flick towards the truck and away again.