Softly Grow the Poppies Page 18

  Rose stayed in a small private boarding house quite near to the hospital, going every day and staying as long as she was allowed with Harry. The doctors had sewn together the dreadful gaping wound in his thigh which had come close to his genitals, delicately reuniting the muscles, the flesh, the bone that had been shattered, and he was slowly recovering though the doctors told her he would always have a limp. It was not the wound that had crippled him but the festering filth that had been allowed to remain in the leg during the two days it had taken him to get to the dressing station. ‘Another day and he would have lost the leg, his . . . his manhood, you understand,’ – delicately – ‘and possibly his life, Miss Beechworth; it is not the wounds but the muck that these men pick up on the battlefields before they can be tended to. French farmers were very liberal with the manure they spread on their fields. But –’ he passed a weary hand across his forehead, then smiled at her.

  ‘You say there are two hospitals nearby.’

  ‘Yes, one of them my own home,’ she answered eagerly. ‘There are nurses and doctors to continue his care but . . .’

  ‘Yes, Miss Beechworth?’ the doctor enquired.

  ‘He seems to be . . . he keeps talking, rambling, really, about a man in his regiment who fell with him – died, I should imagine. It preys on his mind and—’

  ‘There are many who have such things on their minds, Miss Beechworth, and who can blame them. He knows you, does he not?’

  She hesitated. ‘I think so, though this one particular soldier, in his regiment, seems to be uppermost. He stepped on him; he, the soldier, had taken shrapnel in his stomach and must have died almost at once but Harry put his boot in . . . in the injury and cannot seem to forgive himself.’

  The doctor stood up. There was nothing more he could tell her and after taking note of her address and telephone number, the name of the doctor in charge at Summer Place, he told her she could take Harry home.

  ‘I have arranged for a private ambulance to drive us to Liverpool.’

  ‘Good, good. Please keep in touch.’ For though Captain Harry Summers was only one of the thousands who had passed through his hands the doctor was concerned with all of them and it broke his heart, he told his wife a dozen times a day, to send those he put together again back to the trenches.

  She and Harry arrived back in Liverpool on a warm, sunny day at the end of August when the garden looked full of colour, though sadly neglected since Tom could only do so much with only Jossy to help, especially with that young scamp, Will, constantly by his side and the dogs barking and dashing all over his beds. The lanes they drove through on the way to Summer Place were ablaze with guelder rose, elderberry and wild angelica in a tangle of blossom. The birds were singing, chiefly linnets and warblers, and as they passed between the slowly rusting wrought-iron gates and up the drive they saw men, lying in long chairs, some able to hobble about on sticks, others just standing and staring at nothing, or at the glory of the wallflowers that would soon be over.

  They were all there to greet him, since she had telephoned Alice to expect them. Dolly, her face that had once been round and rosy drawn with weariness and sorrow, for she loved Rose and Alice, and Captain Summers, though she had not really got to know the captain’s brother Charlie. Tom came across the grass with Will at his heels and the dogs, as usual, ‘mekkin a damn nuisance o’ theirselves’ as Dolly said, getting under everyone’s feet. If she had her way she’d get rid of the whole boiling lot of them, but she realised that the animals, sensing the frailty of the wounded men, especially that Tommy, certainly did them a power of good.

  Without a word Alice put her arms about Rose and they held one another for several long moments, then Rose stepped away from her, tears on her cheeks and on Alice’s. Then it was Dolly’s turn before they turned to Harry who lay patiently on the stretcher carried by the ambulance driver and one of the orderlies.

  Alice moved to his side, bending down to kiss his cheek. ‘Welcome home, Harry,’ tears falling on to his pale face.

  ‘Alice . . . Alice,’ he murmured, ‘how lovely . . .’ then his voice tapered off.

  ‘And this is your nephew, Will, Charlie’s boy.’ The boy stared down at his uncle. ‘Did you fa-de-down?’ he asked curiously in that quaint speech of babyhood. All the men in the hospitals had ‘fa-de-down’ or fallen down.’

  Harry looked bewildered and Rose realised that this was as much as Harry could take, until with a bound that nearly knocked the ambulance driver off his feet, Bess, Harry’s own dog, leaped up and licked his face in ecstasy. It was many months since Bess had seen him and had at first fretted for him but now she could not be persuaded to leave him alone, even though she was aware with that instinct animals possess he was not the same man who had left her. She backed off, sat down and gently placed her muzzle on his chest. She did not lark about with the other dogs, she was too old, spending most of her time in her basket in Harry’s study. She was well used to the constant coming and going of ambulances and their cargo of wounded and did not greet them but somehow she had sensed that her beloved master was home and she had become young again, racing out to meet him.

  Harry put out a wavering hand and managed to lift his head and look down at her. He put the hand on Bess’s silky head and smiled.

  ‘Bess, Bess,’ he murmured. ‘I am come home, Bess.’

  Rose’s heart lifted with joy for surely this was a sign that he was improving, would improve further in his own surroundings. There were doctors on hand, nurses, women experienced by now in the needs of badly wounded men, and with the love she would wrap him in he would surely recover and become again the man who had left her two and a half years ago.

  They carried him up the stairs and laid him on the bed in the room where she herself slept when she stayed the night at Summer Place as she had instructed them to do, for she needed him near her. The dog followed, padding stiff-legged up the stairs, then lay down as close to the bed as she could with an almost human expression on her face that told them she was not moving. She would find her way out into the gardens when a call of nature demanded it but this was her place now.

  Out in the paddock, Tom was amazed when Corey, Sir Harry Summers’s black stallion, began to race up and down the fence, neighing fiercely, so loudly he could be heard in the house. In his bed Harry smiled, then fell into a deep, healing, untroubled sleep.

  The wound on his thigh healed slowly and with the help of the man who exercised other soldiers with similar injuries, working their muscles and encouraging them to help themselves, Harry left his bed and began to build up his strength. Rose begged him to take it easy for she was terrified he might recover enough for the army to send him back to the trenches.

  ‘Hold my arm and walk slowly, my love. Use your stick to balance yourself and I’ll help you.’ They were walking, or rather wobbling along the path that led to the paddock since Harry had asked to see Corey who had been making a fuss ever since Harry had been brought home. The stallion was normally quiet, cropping the grass beside Sparky. Sparky was Rose’s gig pony but had been brought over from Beechworth to see if he could calm Harry’s animal as he had once calmed Lady, Charlie’s mare when Charlie had left for the front. His presence had done the trick and though nobody rode the handsome stallion since Harry had gone and Tom was of the opinion he was getting fat he was peaceful enough.

  He whickered his delight when Harry appeared at the fence, nuzzling against Harry’s shoulder, slobbering over the riding jacket Harry had put on for the first time that day. It positively hung on him for he had lost weight but it was a step in the right direction, Dolly told Rose hopefully.

  Rose was drooping over the kitchen table with the inevitable cup of tea in her hand, Dolly’s answer to all problems. When Harry was sleeping and she had a spare moment in her busy day she would go to Beechworth and spend half an hour with Dolly and Nessie. She and Alice split their time between Beechworth and Summer Place, for the wounded still continued to pour in, from Passchendaele and Cambra
i, battles that became household names all over Britain. And though physically Harry continued to improve his wounded mind did not. He seemed disconnected from Rose and everyone in the two households. He was, or had been a strong man with a strong man’s will and resilience but something had gone from him and though he did not mention it again Rose knew with the instinct of a woman for a beloved man that Joe Turner still haunted him. He had seen his men die, many of them, some of them in the most horrible circumstances and though it had saddened him, it had not unbalanced his mind as had the incident with Joe. Though he and Rose had been lovers before he went back to the war he made no attempt to make love to her now, treating her politely, courteously as he did the others. She might have been a neighbour, or friend. She was aware that the shrapnel that had come so close to emasculating him had not done so. She had, hesitantly, consulted with Dr Roberts, embarrassing them both, but the doctor told her that his genitals had not been damaged in any way and that he must be given time for his male senses, his male desires, to return to life.

  ‘The act of love begins in the brain, Miss Beechworth, and Sir Harry’s brain is . . . no, not hurt in any way but something in there has gone to sleep, hidden itself away in self-defence, and until it revives he is still . . .’ He paused, fiddling with a pen on his desk, unable to meet her eye.

  ‘Unmanned? Is that what you’re trying to tell me, Doctor?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’ He looked up. ‘You are to marry him, I believe, Miss Beechworth.’

  She cleared her throat. ‘We talked about it before he went back to France but since then he has not mentioned it. It’s as though he has forgotten.’

  ‘And if I were you I wouldn’t mention it. Let him recover in his own time.’

  ‘You won’t recommend he goes back there, will you, Doctor?’ she asked fearfully. ‘Now that his wound has almost healed?’

  ‘No, Miss Beechworth, I can promise you that. He is not fit to fight again. It might damage him further.’

  ‘Thank God.’ She folded her arms on the desk and rested her face on them, ready to weep with relief. She had not got her Harry back again but the man who had come back to her was safe and with time and patience, which was what all these wounded souls needed, she would return him to himself again. And to her! She no longer slept beside his bed but had moved back to Beechworth. Bess was there with him and when Rose had a little time to spare she persuaded him to walk in the overgrown gardens or into the woodland at the back of the house. Down to the paddock with an apple for Corey and Sparky and though he was still distant, vague in his speech, impassive, never again mentioning Joe Turner, she thought – or was it just hope? – that he was coming back from the far place he had been to since the Battle of Ypres. It was rumoured that he was to receive a medal for the part he had played in bringing back from the dead, so to speak, so many of his men but he was not concerned with the news, treating it as inconsequential and nothing much to do with him.

  Alice had received a stilted letter from Charlie which did little to comfort her for it was evident he had no idea who he was writing to and so life – and death – went on, the only positive occurrence being Will’s growing attachment to his Uncle Harry and Harry’s interest in him.

  15

  Rose watched as Harry, his hand held firmly by Will’s and surrounded by a swirl of dogs, was dragged down the slope of the overgrown lawn towards the small lake on which swam two swans and numerous ducks. Tall weeds grew round the lake since one man, Tom, and one young lad, Jossy, had had no time to clear them out. Once upon a time Tom had been in charge of half a dozen gardeners three of them now dead on the Western Front; one of them brought home to his appalled family with no legs; and the other two still slogging it out in the trenches. Her heart was heavy, for though Harry was home and beyond the reach of snipers, bullets, whizz-bangs, gas attacks and all the obscene weapons that the Germans threw at the British lines, he was, it seemed to her, still there. With Joe Turner, Lieutenant Jack Sullivan who had been his second-in-command and all the other lads he had left behind. With Sid, Arty, Fred, Davy and all the men in his platoon. He had never returned to her, to the woman he had loved and who had loved him with every beat of her heart.

  They were feeding the ducks with bits of stale bread from the paper bag Nessie had provided. Rose could hear him laugh and grab the boy who was ready to fall into the water as his enthusiasm and his poor aim got the better of him. Her eyes filled with tears because it seemed the man who had loved her was never to come back to her and unless she did something drastic, something to remind him what they had once been to each other, against the doctor’s advice, she was well aware of that, he was to remain like this for ever. While his strength was so fragile, as the doctor told her, meaning the strength of his mind, not his body, she was to let him recover in his own time. But it was breaking her heart.

  She was sitting on the old wrought-iron seat on the terrace in one of her rare moments away from her work, the sun warm on her face, the scent of roses lapping round her and when Alice sat down beside her she was startled. She and Alice had never resumed that warm friendship they had known three years ago and she had often wondered why. They had been close when Alice had been found on the doorstep, thrown out by her own father because she carried Charlie’s child. They had formed a great attachment to one another up to the day Will was born and Alice simply disappeared from their lives. She had returned, Charlie had proved to be alive but Alice, like Harry, had not been the same person who had left them so abruptly. This hellish war, Rose thought bitterly, seemed to have torn apart friends, family, lovers, even husbands and wives though they had survived in the flesh.

  She waited for Alice to speak, for these days they seemed only to communicate with one another on medical matters and Alice, even with Dolly, who loved her, was vague, reticent though always polite, causing Dolly immense distress.

  ‘Your son is enjoying himself,’ Rose said at last as Alice seemed reluctant to say anything.

  ‘Yes, he has taken to Harry who has been like a father to him.’ Her reply was curt.

  Rose jumped in before she had time to consider her words. ‘And what will Charlie think when he comes home?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Nor care, it seems.’

  Alice turned to her and with a gentle motion put her hand on Rose’s arm. Her face was anguished. ‘Oh, Rose, what is happening to us all? I seem to have distanced myself from everybody, even my child. I weep at night in my bed for the hopes I had before this terrible war started. That girl, the one who saw Charlie off at the station, has been destroyed and I don’t think she will ever return. Charlie will come home to a wife and a child he does not know so what is to become of us? You and Harry are . . . not as you were, or so Dolly tells me. You love one another and yet cannot resume that . . . that closeness; what you had seems to have gone too. I have been obsessed with finding Charlie and now that I know he is alive and will, one day I presume, come home to us, how are we to get on with our destroyed lives? We have become strangers to one another. The only time I can find some sort of order is when I’m on the ward, caring for other women’s men. I know what I’m doing is helping some woman, wife or mother towards a happy ending. Or am I? Is this happening all over the country? Are there men and women desperately trying to get back the normality they once knew or are we all to be forced to live some sort of charade? It tears me to pieces, Rose. It has been four years nearly and I am still living in this nightmare. All I wanted was to find Charlie, when I went to France, I mean. It was all I was. Alice who was searching for Charlie. Now that has gone and to tell you the honest truth, Rose, I don’t even know if I still love him.’

  ‘Alice! After all you have done—’

  ‘No, please don’t try to . . .’

  ‘What, Alice?’ Rose put her hand over Alice’s, leaning closer so that their shoulders touched. They had been devoted to one another while Alice was pregnant. Alice had been like a child, a hurt child who needed protectio
n, someone to love her, to keep her safe but it seemed Alice had grown up, grown away from them and this conversation was the first they had shared in years. She knew exactly what Alice meant but she did not want to lose this fragile link they appeared to have formed in the last five minutes by voicing her own concerns. She knew she still loved Harry, always would. But Harry seemed no longer to return it. Alice had opened up, if you could call it that, doing her best to explain her actions, her feelings, or lack of them towards her adopted family, Rose, Dolly, Nessie, all those who had sheltered her, loved her in her hour of need, which sounded a bit pompous. They appeared to mean nothing to her now and it seemed to Rose she was telling her she had nothing to live for – which was ridiculous – except her devotion to her patients. What was to become of her when it was all over, for one day, please God, it would be? What was to become of Rose who wanted nothing more than to marry Harry and start a family? She was twenty-eight and by the conventions of the day was well past the age of child-bearing. Not physically, she was aware of that, but it was the custom for women to marry young, as young as Alice, and have three or four children clinging to their skirts or in the nursery before they reached twenty-five.

  They had read about the Third Battle of the Aisne in May where the first Americans fought in France. In the fierce fighting the German advance had been halted. There had been nearly 130,000 Allied casualties and losses, some of them already dispatched to Summer Place and Beechworth House. The worst of these were men who had been massed in the front trenches and gassed after the initial artillery attack. Rose had done her best to keep the news from Harry, hiding newspapers that reported the outcome of the battles, but he could not fail to have noticed the state of the wounded as they came to the two hospitals.