Softly Grow the Poppies Read online

  Dolly was sitting by the fire, a cup of tea in her hand, black, strong, with two teaspoons of sugar, just as she liked it, sipping slowly, a calm look on her face which vanished as Sir Harry strode in. Nessie was doing something at the stove, stirring a saucepan and Polly was busy in the scullery scrubbing vigorously as Nessie insisted upon.

  ‘Sir, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were expected.’ Nessie bobbed a curtsey and Polly would have done the same if she had seen him. She was singing the song popular with the soldiers.

  If you were the only girl in the world,

  And I was the only . . .

  ‘I beg your pardon, Miss Davenport. I left Corey in the yard so I came in this way. I’m sorry I didn’t knock but I just wanted a word with Miss Beechworth. Is she in?’

  Miss Beechworth! When last Dolly had been in the company of Rose and Sir Harry it had been Rose and Harry! Well, who was she to question the new squire? After all he was gentry and she was not and the gentry were known for their peculiar – to the working classes – habits.

  ‘She’s in the breakfast room, sir. She was late up and—’

  ‘The breakfast room is where?’ His voice was cool.

  ‘I’ll show you, sir,’ struggling to get up from her comfortable chair.

  ‘No, don’t bother.’ And without further ado he passed through the swing door that led to the hallway and she heard him looking in one room after another until he apparently found Rose.

  ‘Oh, there you are,’ she heard him say, then the door closed and there was silence.

  Rose was daydreaming by the fire that had been lit in the breakfast room, a cup of coffee on the small table beside her, Ginger dozing on her knee, gazing into the glowing coals. She was dressed in a pair of beige breeches that had been especially made for her and a warm woollen jumper in a soft heather blue. At the neck could be seen a shirt collar, the sort gentlemen wore. Thrown carelessly over a chair was a tweed jacket, again like those young men wore.

  She turned, startled by the sudden opening and closing of the door. At once she smiled, for it was of him that she had been dreaming. Then the smile dropped from her face. ‘Is it Alice? I was with her only yesterday and she was blooming.’

  ‘Ah, good morning, Miss Beechworth,’ he said. ‘No, it’s not Alice. She is, as you say, blooming and she has settled in nicely. The servants are . . . well . . . it is not Alice but something else entirely. I hoped to catch you before I left since there is much to discuss.’

  Her smile showed signs of returning but his tone frightened her and once again it slid slowly from her face and Harry Summers’s heart turned over in his breast at what he was doing to her but it must be done. After what had happened to Alice he was not prepared to leave this woman to the same frightening fate. He loved her, that he admitted to himself and he thought she reciprocated the feeling and he knew if he allowed it to bloom even for the short time he was to be at home it might develop into more than . . . than . . . Well, they could not become as Alice and Charlie; he was probably putting it a bit strongly and anyway he was to be off very soon and the temptation . . . oh, for God’s sake, Harry Summers, pull yourself together. You are only imagining that she feels . . . Pull yourself together . . .

  ‘Harry . . .’ she stammered. ‘I’m not sure I understand. What has happened to Harry and Rose? I thought we were past all that.’ She stood up and her face grew rosy with resentment.

  ‘Please, Miss Beechworth, I know you wanted to do something for the war effort, you said so yourself, so I thought I would ride over and put my proposition to you. You are resourceful, strong and efficient, I believe—’

  ‘What the hell is this all about, Harry Summers? You come bursting into my home and act as though we barely know one another but if that’s what you want then I shall do my best from . . . So, Sir Harry, what is it that you wish me to be efficient about – is that the word?’

  ‘I’ve not much time to waste, Miss Beechworth, so I’ll get right to the point. I have been in touch with the authorities who are in charge of the wounded and they have been to check on Summer Place. They say it’s just what they need to become a hospital and it is all now in hand.’

  His voice was cool and his face quite rigid in his effort not to let her see his emotion. It was a hard thing to speak to the woman you love as though she were just an acquaintance who was to be asked to help in the war effort. But he must. He wanted to sweep her into his arms and cradle her there. To beg her to wait for him to come home to her but what if he should be killed which, from the figures of the casualties on the other side of the Channel, was more than likely. On the night before Alice and Charlie married Charlie had spoken to him in a voice of despair. He was an officer but he was not one of those who stood behind the trenches and let his men ‘go over the top’ as it was called. He had gone with them, encouraging them, sharing their danger, seen them mown down by vicious machine-gun fire. He had seen them hanging helplessly on the barbed wire and had even shot one himself to put him out of his misery and terror. Men with horrendous wounds who would die a slow, agonising death. He had recited the horrors of it all in a quiet, monotonous voice, his eyes focused on the sights he had witnessed. And the war was only six months old! How many more months, perhaps years would this go on?

  Charlie had predicted years and the longer you were over there the chances of your surviving grew smaller and smaller. He had fought at the Battle of the Aisne, being part of the cavalry charge that had regained a strip of France about fifty miles wide. He had been part of the race to the sea that had ended at Ypres and when the Germans finally gave up, the British were literally on their last gasp. They were reduced by huge casualties, outgunned and outnumbered by more than ten to one but the Germans did not know it and gave up. Ypres was reduced to a pile of rubble but they had held out. Charlie had seen it, suffered it and was no longer the irrepressible boy he once had been.

  ‘I’m going too, old man,’ Harry told him. ‘I leave as soon as the authorities have set up Summer Place as a hospital. Alice will be given a suite of rooms for her and the baby, or she might prefer to go and stay with Miss Beechworth when the wounded start to . . .’

  Charlie had come out of his tranced state, turning to stare at his brother. They were sitting in Harry’s study, which was a man’s room. A room where a husband might go and sit to smoke his cigar or read The Times, leaving the drawing room to the women. It was shabby, as were all the rooms in Summer Place, but the old clock that had been in there for over a century still ticked the minutes away and was the only sound except for the bark of a fox somewhere on the estate. Between them lay Bess, unconcerned that her puppies had gone, dozing with her muzzle on her paws, her eyes darting from one man to the other.

  Charlie had sighed. ‘I suppose you would be called up anyway,’ he said quietly. ‘But tell me why is it Miss Beechworth all of a sudden when you have referred to her as Rose in the past? I got the feeling you liked one another. That it was more than friendship.’

  ‘It is, Charlie, but I will not fall into the trap of—’ He stopped abruptly.

  ‘Like I did, you mean? When Alice and I became . . . more than friends we did not know there was to be a war or . . . but I loved her. HER. Not just her body. Of course I wanted her as a man wants a special woman but I swear I meant to marry her if only her bloody father had not been so intransigent.’

  ‘I know, old lad. You are an honourable man and I mean to be the same. I will not marry Rose until this damn war is over so I must treat her . . . well, we have been, I think, both of us, more than . . . I know her and she knows me in some way that is nothing to do with the flesh. I will marry her when the war is over but I must allow her the choice of . . . waiting for me or falling for someone else.’

  ‘Oh, Harry,’ Charlie said sadly.

  And now here he was, hurting her, he knew, by the cold way he spoke and she was bewildered. Nothing had been spoken between them that might be construed as an understanding but their hearts had told them, their ve
ry souls had answered and her bewilderment was turning to anger. She would not say so, of course, but her very manner was icing over as she got to her feet. She held Ginger, and Spice had gone with Alice. She bent down and put the puppy on the rug in front of the fire then straightened up and on her face was the exact same expression as was on his.

  ‘Just tell me what I am to do, Sir Harry. I do want to help in this war and have been toying with the idea of offering my services as a nurse, or VAD or even to drive an ambulance in France but—’

  ‘Oh no, you must not do that,’ he cried before he could stop himself. The thought of this beloved woman being in the same danger as the soldiers, as he himself along with Charlie would be, was unbearable. He did his best to cover up what he had almost revealed. ‘You will be needed in the hospital that is being set up very soon at Summer Place. Doctors, nurses, stretcher-bearers: they will all need some sort of supervision and since you live so close by I thought—’

  ‘You thought Miss Beechworth, a spinster with nothing else to do is just right for the job. Well, let me tell you, Sir Harry Summers, I will decide what Miss Beechworth will do to help in this war. I am twenty-four years old, strong, tough and unafraid. I can make decisions and I will soon learn to drive an ambulance since I am a determined woman who likes a challenge and will not be beaten, or ordered about by any man, so set up your hospital and look around you. There are plenty of women, especially if they have a man at the front, to help staff the place. And I think it would be better for Alice to come here. She and the baby don’t want to be surrounded by wounded men. It would only remind her of what Charlie is suffering. So, good day to you, Sir Harry.’

  She bent again and picked up the pup who immediately started to lick her face in an ecstasy of love. She held it firmly as she brushed past the man she loved and who was off to war with cruel words between them. They both wore fixed expressions, not looking at one another as she opened the door and strode through it. She made for the kitchen where she dropped the pup into Dolly’s startled lap.

  ‘I’m going for a ride,’ she snapped.

  ‘What about him?’ Dolly asked, nodding in the direction from which Rose had just come.

  ‘What about him? Sir Harry is quite capable of finding his way out.’

  ‘Now what’s happened?’ Dolly was exasperated, for she had hoped that these two, who she was certain were just right for one another, might make a match.

  ‘Ask him.’

  ‘Rosie, love, tell me what’s up with—’

  But Rose had gone, slamming the kitchen door so hard Polly dropped the frying pan she was scrubbing, making such a clatter that Ginger, who had dropped into the sleep that young animals and children can do so easily, woke up and began to bark.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Dolly complained, putting the little creature on the rug where it cowered in fright. The door into the hallway opened abruptly and Sir Harry burst through, striding as wildly as Rose had done moments ago.

  ‘Can’t you shut that bloody dog up?’ he complained as he made for the back door.

  Dolly almost gave him the rounds of the kitchen, she told Nessie later. After all, he was the one who had fetched the damn thing here in the first place. She picked up the puppy and soothed it and, comforted, it fell asleep again.

  ‘I dunno,’ she sighed unhappily. ‘What a to-do-ment. Men! Why the dickens do they go to war, tell me that? It causes nowt but heartache.’

  ‘Aye, yer right there, Dolly. My Tom’d be off termorrow an’ ’im nearly fifty! Silly old bugger!’

  6

  In the spring of 1915 during the Battle of Neuve Chapelle and the Second Battle of Ypres in April the list of the dead and wounded added up to 180,000, but nevertheless the British Army attacked the Germans with great strength and success. Among those who took part were Captain Charlie Summers and his older brother who was also a captain, Harry Summers. Sir Harry Summers had gone into Liverpool to enlist and because he had spent time in the Officer Training Corps when at school nearly ten years ago it now entitled him automatically to a commission. While in town he had visited his tailor to order his officer’s uniform. He looked well in khaki, gleaming riding boots, polished shoulder strap and belt, the leather holster holding a revolver, a peaked cap with the badge of his regiment, the same as Charlie’s. All that remained for him to do was get to the 19th Battalion, the King’s Liverpool Regiment, which was already fighting on the Western Front.

  During the battles it all ended for one of the brothers in the horror of the poison gas the Germans directed at them with malevolent cruelty and a favourable wind. At first it was the French who took the full force. The strange green vapour, which, though the soldiers were not yet aware of it, was called chlorine, was stared at uncomprehendingly by the troops in the fighting. They exchanged anxious glances, wondering what the hell it was. Some quirk of nature perhaps but when the men began to fall, doing their best to breathe, ripping at their own throats because they felt they were drowning, they no longer wondered but fell in screaming agony. Their heads exploded in pain and they were filled with a raging thirst and those who were able reached for their water bottles and began to pour the contents down their throats.

  Captain Harry Summers ran along the trenches, seriously risking his own life since he too was breathing in the poison besides being bombarded by the barrage of ‘whizz-bangs’ that came over the trench. He tried desperately to knock the bottles from his men’s hands, shouting as far as he was able, telling them not to drink or they would die, but some did not hear him and some did not care, for the agony of their lungs and throats needed a soothing drink to quench it. Those who drank started to cough and a froth of green liquid erupted from their mouths and most of them fell back and began to die. Shells were bursting around them and their officer kept shouting at them to spit and though he could hardly see with the matter that filled his eyes, he did his best to get the men who were under his command, most of them the 3rd Liverpool Pals, to do as he ordered. All hell had been let loose but he knew it was up to him to make them lie down in the bottom of the trench until the gas drifted off and the effects of it dissipated, if it ever would. The ground quivered and heaved so that the din penetrated the deepest recesses of his brain but he did his best to watch over his men, slithering along in the mud and imploring them not to move. His senses were numbed by shock as were all the men’s but they did as they were ordered and it was thanks to him that many of them were saved.

  In another part of the trench his brother was facing up to the same horror but there was luckily no gas aimed at them. The thunderous noise made thinking almost impossible and Captain Charlie Summers, through the noise and lack of sleep, made a mistake. What happened came without pain, without even the realisation that he had been hit. He was aware of a soundless explosion like the red-hot wink of distant shellfire. A young soldier in his company, just come from England and whose first action this was, suddenly stood up shouting, ‘Mam, Mam, fetch me ’ome, Mam. I don’t like it out ’ere.’ Charlie rose to his feet and grappled with the boy, doing his best to bring him down but the boy fought with him, tearing at Charlie’s chest, dragging at his jacket from which fell his papers. He continued in his maddened terror to tear at Charlie’s throat with his slowly whitening fingers, taking with them his officer’s identity disc which was quickly buried in the muck of the trench. A shell burst close to them and a splinter of shrapnel tore right through the boy’s helmet, taking his brains with it. For some unaccountable reason it ricocheted into Charlie’s temple where it lodged. They fell together in what seemed a bizarre embrace and the rest of his men, thinking him dead, stood up and ran away, anywhere, they didn’t care as long as they escaped this hell. But they ran the wrong way, chasing one another straight into the machine-gun fire of the enemy and of them all, only Captain Charlie Summers had a flicker of life in him. The trench wall, hastily erected, just as hastily collapsed on to the two muddied soldiers, buried as so many were in the graveyard of France.

 
; Alice’s son was born on the very day Charlie Summers was pronounced missing, believed killed, and it was Rose who brought her the news. And as if she hadn’t enough to deal with, on the same day a telephone call to Summer Place, to where Rose and Dolly had moved, told them that the ambulances were on their way. Dolly was helping with Alice’s labour. Rose was there should she be needed and it was a good job she was, for none of the servants would have answered the telephone’s shrill ring.

  It seemed that the wounded from the battle were pouring back across the Channel and beds were needed at once. All the hospitals in the south were filled to overflowing and though they themselves had nothing but a willingness to open Summer Place to the wounded, as Sir Harry had promised, they could hardly do so without somewhere to lay them. They needed a doctor, she told the disembodied voice on the other end of the line, and nurses for though she and her staff would do all they could they knew nothing about nursing wounded men. They needed beds to fill the rooms that were to be prepared for the soldiers and so many other things because they were not yet set up to care for wounded men. They would do everything that was necessary but . . .

  It was all taken care of, the harried voice at the other end of the telephone told her. With the ambulances and the soldiers would come iron cots, mattresses, blankets, bed linen, two doctors, two nurses and three VADs. All they needed was space to put them in and would Mrs Summers please have . . . Rose tried to tell her that she was not Mrs Summers but the voice at the other end of the line was not listening. She was up to her eyes in it, she told Rose, and very grateful and when Dr Roberts arrived would Mrs Summers ask him to ring her. He would know who she was and with that she rang off.

  Dolly, who had gently broken the news to Alice about Charlie, had been brought over in the gig by Fred when Mrs Summers started in labour. She was upstairs with Alice, wanting Alice to cry, to cling to her, to show some sign that she had taken in the dreadful news about her husband but she just lay rigidly in her bed, the baby beside her, and stared into God knows what hell the death of her young husband, whose son she had just borne, had flung her. Dolly wanted to comfort her, to hold her in her arms, rock her as one did with the bereaved, but Alice was as stiff as a board and refused to be comforted and Dolly was sadly aware that it was she herself who needed comfort. In giving it to others one helped oneself. Nessie and the three housemaids had made their way to Summer Place so that they would be on hand for the arrival of the wounded. They knew nothing about injuries, they whispered to one another, but any woman would do her utmost to ease the suffering of their brave boys. Both Elsie Smith from Ashtree Farm and Jenny Dunbar from Top Bank had sons ‘out there’ and dreaded the telegram, those that would be sent to so many homes in the next months.