Valentine Joe (13 page)

Rose hadn't thought about it before, but that was what it had been like. She was glad she'd realised it.

‘What. About. Your mum?'

‘She's been in a bubble too,' said Rose. ‘And I've been no help. She just makes me think how much I miss him. So I can't look at her, or talk to her, not really. I've made it worse.'

‘Poor. Lady.'

‘Yeah.' Rose took a deep breath. Thoughts and feelings were buzzing around in her head, jostling for position. They'd been there for a long time, but it was only now that she was able to sort them out. To listen to them.

‘What I mean,' she said, her thoughts becoming clearer as she spoke, ‘or what I think I mean . . .'

She paused. Joe's eyes were fixed on her face. He gave a tiny nod as if to tell her to carry on.

‘ . . . is that Dad wouldn't want me to be like this.'

He nodded again. She went on, still choosing her words carefully.

‘Whatever I do, however sad I feel, it's not going to bring him back. He'd want me to live. And I think Fred and Tonk would want you to live too.'

Joe took a deep rattling breath. ‘I will. Live. Rose. I—'

He broke down in a fit of coughing. Rose finished the sentence for him.

‘Promise?'

Before he could reply, one of the stretcher-bearers stuck his head through the doorway. ‘Private Strudwick? Time to go, chum.'

Joe looked around as he tried to struggle to his feet. ‘Tom?' he said. ‘Tom-my?'

‘That's right, mate. We're all Tommies here. You're among friends now.'

‘He means his dog, Bert,' said another voice. ‘Little pup that was with him in the trenches.'

‘Oh, yeah. Don't you worry about Tommy, chum. We'll look after him. He's sitting outside in the sun right now watching the dicky birds.'

‘I'll make sure he's all right, Joe,' said Rose.

Joe turned and smiled at her. You could warm your hands on that smile.

‘You all right to walk, mate?' The stretcher-bearer helped Joe to his feet and Rose released his hand.

‘Joe—'

‘Don't. Worry. Rose. I'll be all. Right.'

‘But—'

He said it again: ‘I've got me lucky. Sixpence. Ain't I? And Tommy. And. You.'

For a moment his silhouette was dark against the sunlit doorway. Then he was gone.

R
ose took a deep breath and stepped out of the greenish gloom of the bunker. The sun was still beating down and the poppies were nodding their scarlet heads along to the rhythm of the guns.

Joe's going to be all right
, she thought.
He promised.

Tommy was sitting on the grass, watching the injured men as they struggled into the back of the ambulance. Rose was glad to see that someone had given him a bowl of water.

The mood among the injured men had changed. They were going home, back to Blighty! In spite of their pain and the terrible laboured wheezing in their chests, they were managing to crack jokes, slapping each other on the back. One of them even tried to sing –
‘Take me back to dear old Blighty . . .'
– before he was convulsed by a coughing fit, amidst friendly jeers from the others that ended up with them choking and fighting for breath as well.

Joe was the last in line. Rose's heart lifted as he turned and gave her a tiny wave before the medical orderlies helped him into the vehicle. He was going home, he really was. He was going to be safe after all.

And then a soldier walked past, obstructing her view of the ambulance for a second. He was heading towards the cemetery. He had a spade over his shoulder and his face was pale in spite of the hot day.

The driver slammed the door of his cab and started the engine. And as Rose watched the soldier walking across the cemetery, past the spot where she'd seen Joe's grave, she realised something: the cemetery was only half full.

Not even that, actually. There was only a handful of graves compared to the hundreds she'd seen when she was there with Grandad. The ground with its long grass and its beautiful nodding poppies was just lying there, waiting. Waiting to swallow up more young men.

And one of them was going to be Joe. She'd seen his grave:
V.J. Strudwick
, it said, and the date he'd been killed: 14 January 1916. Exactly one month before his sixteenth birthday.

And that was when the truth hit her. She hadn't convinced him. Joe was still planning to come back. To fight on behalf of his friends. To die in France on a cold January day.

Unless . . . Could she warn him, tell him what was going to happen – that if he came back he would be killed? Tell him he must stay in England, like the officer said, admit he'd lied about his age, get himself discharged from the army, go back to his mum, to school, to whatever he was doing before this all started.

To live.

Was it possible to change the past?

The driver had finally got his engine to fire up and the ambulance was pulling away, out into the lane.

‘Wait!'

Tommy looked up, startled, as Rose tore after the vehicle, hair and coat flying, stumbling over the rutted ground.

‘WAIT!'

No one could hear her, of course. And only Tommy could see her, in her borrowed coat, watching the ambulance disappear down the road. But then she heard something else: a motorbike was being kicked into life.

Tommy barked. Rose whirled round. The rider was astride his bike, goggles over his eyes, cap held on by a strap under his chin. Was he following the ambulance? Rose had no way of knowing – he might be heading for the front line – but she had to take the risk.

As the rider kicked the bike's starter again, Rose jumped. She flung one pyjama-clad leg over the seat and grabbed him around the waist. The rider shuddered as if he'd felt a sudden breath of icy air on his back, but then shook himself, revved the bike's engine and zoomed off in a shower of gravel.

They were off.

Rose hid her face in his jacket and clung on, the engine making her body vibrate and her teeth chatter. She could just hear Tommy barking as the bike swerved out on to the lane and she felt the wind in her hair and the roughness of the rider's jacket beneath her cheek. She could smell oil and petrol and the now familiar scent of the British Tommy: tobacco and sweat, unwashed woollen uniform and the faintest whiff of peppermint.

Rose had never been on a motorbike before, even as a passenger. And she was scared at first, too scared to open her eyes or raise her face from where it was hidden in the back of the rider's jacket. She hung on to him with all her strength, her arms clamped so tightly around his waist that it should've stopped him breathing, her teeth clenched in fear and determination.

I am not afraid, not afraid, not afraid . . .

And after a while she wasn't. She actually started to enjoy the feel of the wind in her hair and the tilt of the bike as the rider manoeuvred it around bends in the road. She opened one eye, just one, keeping her cheek firmly against the rider's jacket, and watched the fields whizz by in a blur of green and gold and red. They were heading away from the front line, and the countryside didn't look very different from the landscape she and Grandad had passed through on the train. There were the same flat fields, lines of trees pointing up at the sky, neat farmhouses with cows and horses outside. Rose even saw a woman hanging out her washing as they shot past. It seemed strange that normal life with washing and cooking and growing vegetables, was going on so close to the battlefields where soldiers were dying.

After a while, Rose felt even braver and raised her head from the rider's back so she could look beyond him to the road ahead. Would she see the ambulance? The wind was making her eyes water, but yes – there it was, easily visible in the flat countryside. So she still had a chance, she told herself. To find Joe, tell him to stay in England. Make sure he didn't come back.

The fields soon started to give way to rows of little brick houses and it became clear they were entering a town,
smaller and less important than Ypres, but still thronged with troops. Everywhere Rose looked there were men in khaki, sitting outside café s, hanging about on corners, chatting and smoking and laughing. Why were they all here? She guessed they must be on leave; they came to this little town when they had a few days off from the Front. But where was Joe being taken? And would her motor-cyclist take her to the same place?

While Rose was thinking, he pulled up and parked the bike next to some other military vehicles. Then he dismounted, slithering free of Rose's ghostly clutches as if she wasn't there, and ran up the steps of a building that looked like a smaller version of the Cloth Hall in Ypres.

Rose sat for a moment, balanced uncomfortably on the back of the bike. Now that the engine had stopped, she realised she could barely hear the thud of the guns from the Front. It was just a dull background heartbeat behind all the normal sounds of humanity. Men laughing and talking, children shrieking and being scolded by their mothers. The clink of glasses and clatter of plates from the café s, hoofbeats on cobbles and trucks driving by. Life seemed ordinary here. Apart from all the troops, it was almost as if the war didn't exist.

But where was Joe?

As Rose clambered off the bike, wondering what to do, an ambulance drove past. It wasn't as big as the one that had been carrying Joe and the other soldiers from Essex Farm, but she guessed it might be going to the same place. She ran after it, slipping through the crowds, away from the square and into a busy side street. The ambulance disappeared around a corner, but she kept on running, running, running. She had to find Joe.

Her chest was burning and she was dripping with sweat inside her heavy borrowed coat when she finally saw a group of military ambulances, parked outside what looked like a small railway station. And, yes, there were wounded men being helped out of them – some on stretchers, some walking – guided by businesslike young women in nurses' uniforms: long skirts with white aprons, red crosses on the linen caps that covered their hair. Most of them looked young, some not much not older than Rose. She squeezed in amongst them, staring into the faces of the wounded men. Each one of them had a home to go to and a story to tell. But none of them was Joe.

Rose hurried on, weaving through the crowd, heading towards the station. The wounded men must be going on a train. A train that would take them to the coast, where a boat would take them back to England. And if Joe was with them she had to find him. Because once he was back in England she might never see him again. And then how would she tell him that he mustn't come back?

By the time Rose pushed her way through the station, sweat was dripping into her eyes, but she wasn't going to stop even for the seconds it would take to remove her coat. There was no time. The platform was even more packed with men in khaki, both fit and wounded. Some looked as if they'd just arrived. Their uniforms were clean and neat and they were hiding their anxiety with jokes and banter. Others were filthy and silent, their faces taut and closed. They were going home on leave, Rose guessed, or at least somewhere away from the fighting, but they didn't look relieved or excited. They just looked blank and exhausted as if they'd never be capable of feeling anything again. The nurses buzzed around the wounded men, supporting the
ones on crutches, tending to the ones on stretchers. Rose noticed that the new arrivals avoided looking at the wounded men with their grey, resigned faces and their bloody bandages.

Again she went in amongst them, slipping through the crowds like a fish, looking at faces, searching for her Joe. An older nurse with a crucifix around her neck crossed herself and muttered a prayer as she passed, but Rose didn't care. She had a job to do.

She was beginning to lose hope when there was a ripple through the waiting crowd and a small cheer went up from some of the men. A train was approaching. The nurses started to busy themselves with their patients, helping those who could walk to the edge of the platform, lifting the stretchers of those who were helpless.

‘Good luck, chum!'

‘See you back in Blighty!'

‘Not if I see you first!'

There were grins and backslaps. But there was no sign of Joe.

The train drew up at the platform with a sigh of steam and a hiss of brakes. Doors were flung open and people surged towards it. Rose could see that the train had been specially adapted to transport the injured men. Some carriages had seats, others were lined with bunks, three deep on either side. It was a sort of hospital on wheels.

The stretcher-bearers delivered their burdens, nurses guided their patients, doors were slammed, the platform was emptying . . .

And still there was no sign of Joe.

Then, as the last door was slammed and the guard raised his whistle to his lips, there was a cry from the far end of
the platform.

‘Wait!'

It was a young nurse with a pale, determined face, leading a small group of men. Men who were staggering and coughing and half blind. They were the gas casualties from Essex Farm.