Valentine Joe (12 page)

R
ose woke with a jerk. For a second she didn't know where she was. Her shoulder hurt and she was so hot her pyjamas were sticking to her skin underneath her coat. As her eyes adjusted to the light she realised she was still in the back of the truck. It was empty now and Rose was alone in the dim green light of the interior with the sun beating down on the canvas roof, the smell reminding her of camping holidays. She wondered where everyone else had gone and missed the comforting feel of the girl's small sticky hand in hers and the weight of her head on her shoulder.

Someone slammed the driver's door at the front, making the vehicle shake, and a male voice shouted, ‘This is it, chum. Essex Farm.'

Essex Farm?

Another voice replied to the first, but Rose had stopped listening. She was back at Essex Farm? The cemetery?

Had she come back? Back to Grandad and the trip to
Ypres to see Uncle George's grave and the old Rose who was avoiding a Valentine's Day party and sending texts to her dead dad?

The realisation hit Rose with a thud. She hadn't thought about Dad for ages, not since all this had started, whatever it was. She couldn't have
texted
him if she'd wanted to, of course. Her phone was back beside her bed in the hotel in Ypres. In 2014.

But the thing was, she hadn't
wanted
to text him. She hadn't thought about it. What had happened then, had happened then, she realised. A year ago, when Dad died. What was happening now, was happening now. And for the first time,
now
seemed more important than
then
.

But was it still happening now, Rose wondered. Was she still in Joe's world? There was only one way to find out.

She got up. Her shoulder still hurt from when the shell had hit the hotel in Ypres, and she ached all over from lying on the floor of the truck. She half crawled, half staggered to the back and looked through the opening in the canvas.

It was a beautiful day. The sun shone hot on her face, and high in the sky was a single bird, singing its heart out. Rose slid down from the truck and turned her face to the sky. The bird was only just visible, a tiny speck against the blue, and its song soared above another noise, a backdrop of sound that Rose knew she would never forget.

She couldn't work out what it was at first, this relentless grinding roar, a constant thudding and rumbling, like the workings of a giant angry machine. And then she realised: it was the guns, the heavy artillery. And it sounded close. She must be very near the front line.

There were a few other vehicles parked nearby: another military truck, a motorbike and an ambulance. And a truck
like the one she'd seen in Ypres when she was trying to talk to Fred and Tonk. Perhaps it was the same one, with its load of wooden crosses.

She could tell that this was the same place, the cemetery she'd visited with Grandad, where she'd put her little bunch of celandines on Joe's grave and where this, this –
thing
, whatever it was, had all started. It was Essex Farm. But it was different.

There were no trees, that was the first thing. The cemetery she'd visited with Grandad had been bounded on three sides by massive trees. This space had no edges. It was just part of the battle-scarred landscape of churned-up earth that stretched out around it. And there were no tidy rows of tombstones standing up from velvet lawns like nicely cleaned teeth. There were just a few tatty wooden crosses, stuck crookedly among the ragged grass, and mounds of earth marking fresh graves.

But there were poppies. Just like everybody always said. Everywhere, there were poppies. Nodding in the long grass between the crosses, papery and delicate and beautiful.

Rose picked one and put her nose in it, recoiling from its bitter smell. Its petals were like silk. She dropped it on the path, where it lay like a clot of blood.

A short distance away some soldiers in shirtsleeves were digging a new grave. They worked silently, throwing the earth into a pile and wiping the sweat off their foreheads with their sleeves. High in the sky the bird, invisible now, was still singing and Rose could still hear the distant grinding rhythm of the guns but, like the remote roar of traffic from a motorway when you're on a country walk, it didn't seem as real as the bird and the sun and the poppies and the men sweating as they dug their comrade's grave.

Rose hated the poppies. They had no right to look so lovely in such an awful place.

The sound of wheels on gravel announced the arrival of another vehicle. Another ambulance. Rose watched, a ghost in the sunshine, as the driver got out, slamming his door, and went round the back where he pulled aside the canvas and – Tommy jumped out.

Her Tommy. Joe's Tommy.

And if Tommy was here . . .?

‘What've we got, Corporal?'

The voice wasn't English or Scots. It sounded American – Canadian maybe, Rose couldn't tell the difference – and it belonged to an older soldier with a kind, tired face and a Red Cross armband over his shirt. He reminded Rose of Mr Lee, her favourite teacher at school.

‘More gas casualties, sir,' the man replied. ‘This is the last of them.'

Gas? Rose's heart clenched with fear. Had Joe been gassed? What did that mean?

She felt something nudge against her leg. It was Tommy. She crouched down with him and watched as the driver and the medical officer helped the injured men out of the back of the ambulance. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. The men's eyes were streaming and they staggered against each other, coughing and retching and fighting for breath. Rose saw that the brass buttons of their uniforms had turned bright green.

She searched each face that passed as the men made their painful way towards the bunkers of the dressing station. The first three were black soldiers, North African troops in the blue-grey uniforms of the French army. The next was a Scotsman in his khaki kilt. And then . . .

‘Joe!'

He looked terribly small next to the others, and quite different from the funny, fearless boy Rose had last seen in Ypres. How long ago was that? It felt like centuries. He was hunched and shrunken with pain. She didn't think she could bear it. But she had to.

‘JOE!'

He looked around vaguely at the sound of Rose's voice, unable to see much through his poor streaming eyes. Then Tommy gave a little bark and Joe's face softened into a smile as his eyes rested on them crouched together in the sun.

‘Rose . . .' Her name came out in a croak and ended in a fit of terrible wrenching coughs.

The driver took his arm and led him after the others. ‘Come on, chum. This way. You're safe now.'

Rose had seen the row of small, cave-like rooms of the dressing station when she'd visited this place with Grandad, but then they were made of concrete. Now they were built of wood which made them look insecure and temporary. On the step of the first bunker a couple of medical orderlies with their Red Cross armbands were sitting smoking in the sunshine. Behind them, Rose could just make out another man asleep on a bunk. Outside the second bunker, Tommy stopped, looking up at her.

‘This one?' she said. ‘You'd better wait outside.'

Tommy sat down and watched as Rose stepped in, slipping into the gloom like a shadow. The officer, the one with the accent, shot a quick puzzled look in her direction before turning back to the hunched figure on the bench.

‘What's your name, son?'

‘Joe. Sir.'

Each word was wrung out with a terrible effort. Rose could hear Joe struggling to breathe, the air rattling horribly in his chest.

‘Rifleman. Valentine. Joe. Strud—' The word was swallowed in a fit of coughing.

‘It's all right, son. Don't talk any more. We'll do what we can to make you more comfortable.'

Rose slipped over and knelt down beside Joe's bench, brushing past the officer as she went. He drew his breath and gave another sharp look in her direction, before turning away. Joe's head was thrown back, tears streaming from his tightly closed eyes. She took his hand. It felt dry and rough and cold. He opened his bloodshot eyes and looked at her with a trace of his old grin. He took a juddering breath as he prepared to speak. Then:

‘Sorry. Rose. Got to be. Sick.'

He turned his face and threw up in a well-placed bucket on the floor. Rose kept hold of his hand until it was over. He took a deep breath and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. His breath didn't sound so painful now.

‘Feel a bit better after that, Joe?' said the officer.

‘Yes. Sir. Thank. You. Sir.'

‘How old are you, son?'

‘Nineteen. Sir.'

There was a trace of defiance in his voice. He was feeling better, Rose thought.

The officer sighed. ‘I'm not a fool, son.'

Joe said nothing. Rose squeezed his hand as the officer lifted Joe's other one and took his pulse, nodding his head as if pleased.

‘Listen, Private Strudwick,' he said. ‘Joe. This is what's going to happen. I'm sending you back to Blighty.'

Rose's heart leapt.

‘Thank you. Sir.'

‘You're going to be poorly for a long time,' the officer continued. ‘But I've seen worse. With the right care, you should pull through. You're lucky to be alive, you know.'

‘Yes. Sir.'

‘So let's keep it that way, shall we? When you get better, which I think you will, and they send you home from hospital, I want you to go to your father and tell him to write to the War Office. Tell them you lied about your age when you joined up. If he sends them your birth certificate they'll have no choice but to discharge you from the army.'

Rose thought the medical officer had the kindest face in the world. She squeezed Joe's hand again. Was it possible? Was he really going to be all right?

‘I can't. Do that. Sir.'

What?

‘Come on, son. You're not the only boy who lied about his age to join up.'

‘Sorry, sir. No. Sir. I must. Come back.'

What?!

‘How old are you, son? Really?'

‘Old enough. To fight.'

Rose felt herself getting angry. She was glad the officer was so calm.

‘Tell me the truth now, Private,' he said. ‘What are you? Seventeen? Sixteen?'

Rose glared at Joe:
Tell him the truth.

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye and grinned faintly. ‘Fifteen. Sir.'

The officer closed his eyes for a second and drew a long
shuddering breath. ‘Someone should be shot for this,' he said, almost to himself. ‘And it's not those poor bastards across the canal.'

‘It's not for. Me. Sir. It's my two. Best. Pals. They've—' The officer looked at him sharply as he fought for breath. ‘Gone. Sir.'

Not both of them? Fred and Tonk? Tonk and Fred? Oh, Joe. Not
both
of them . . .

‘I'm sorry to hear that, Private.'

Rose thought of the last time she saw them back at the barracks, kicking a ball about in the sunshine, like boys from her school. What was it Joe had said?

Tonk, he's the stupid one. And that one with the big ears and the daft face is Fred . . .

‘Got to fight. On. Sir. For. Their sake. Else—' Joe doubled up in a fit of coughing, then managed to get out his last words. ‘—What's. The. Point?'

The officer shook his head and turned away so Rose couldn't see his face.

There was a voice from the sunlit doorway: ‘More casualties coming in, sir.'

The officer sighed. ‘Thank you, Corporal.' He turned back to Joe. ‘I can't make you do anything, Joe,' he said, ‘but I hope you'll reconsider. This war is terrible enough. We don't need to sacrifice boys.'

He moved to the doorway, suddenly seeming very old and weary. Joe looked at Rose and grinned, then coughed and called after the officer as well as he could:

‘Who. Are you calling. A boy. Sir?'

But the officer had gone. Rose drew a deep breath. Beneath the sharp hospital smell of disinfectant in the bunker was a darker stench of damp and despair.

‘I'm sorry about your friends, Joe.'

Joe looked at her, his eyes streaming. Was it the effect of the gas or tears for his friends?

‘You. Understand. Don't you, Rose? Why—' He doubled up with coughs again.

‘I think so.' He squeezed her hand. ‘But it won't bring them back, Joe. It won't help them if you die too.'

‘I won't. Die. Rose.' He stopped and fought for breath, then continued. ‘I've got me lucky. Sixpence. And Tommy. And. You.'

Rose thought for a minute. A lot depended on what she was going to say next, and she wanted to get it right.

‘My dad died last year, Joe.' The words came out quickly now. ‘And ever since then I've done nothing. Not really. I've done nothing except think about him and dream about him and wish I was back in the past with him. It's like I've been in a sort of bubble, avoiding people, avoiding the real world.'