Echoes of Yesterday Read online

‘Out of britches, are you, girls? Well, good on yer legs.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Polly.

  ‘Who’s talkin’ out of turn?’ barked a sharp-eared corporal.

  ‘Old bleedin’ Nick,’ said the culprit, and he was gone too, with his platoon. On came others, marching by, giving the ambulance women an eyes left. A sergeant brushed Polly’s arm as she let her gaze travel over the length of the column. Had she looked at him, she might have thought, here’s a man a little different from the others, here’s a man I’d like to know. As it was, she did not look. Alice did, however, and the sergeant returned her glance. He saw a young woman kitted out in khaki, a cigarette between her fingers, and an immediate little smile on her face. Alice saw the lean face of a man of the trenches, a man matured more by the war than his years. How many years? Twenty-one? Twenty-five? Thirty even? Who could tell with some of them? But such a fine face, and such fine grey eyes, with amusement lurking about in his expression as if the stupidity of men was something to laugh at, not cry over.

  All this in the brief seconds of passing. Alice experienced a quickening.

  ‘Good luck, Sarge,’ she said.

  Over his shoulder, Boots, who had been twice wounded, smiled and said, ‘I’m a customer of yours.’ Then on he went, alongside his platoon, leaving Alice curious about him.

  She stood there with Polly, watching the West Kents come and go. They watched until the battalion and its transport disappeared.

  ‘They’re West Kents, Alice,’ said Polly. ‘They were at Mons, you know.’

  ‘Polly lovey,’ said Alice, ‘you know too much, and it’s all storin’ up inside you. You’ll get to be like a filin’ cabinet, like we had in our fact’ry office.’

  ‘There’s going to be another offensive,’ said Polly, ‘and they’re going to be part of it, the West Kents. It’s in my bones, ducky, not my filing cabinet.’

  ‘Could be rheumatics,’ said Alice. ‘Oh, blimey, rheumatics at our age, Polly.’

  ‘Our age?’ said Polly. ‘What age is that? I’ve forgotten mine.’

  ‘I don’t want to know about mine,’ said Alice, ‘I keep feelin’ I’m fifty at least. Polly, one of those sergeants was a lovely man.’

  ‘Lovely?’ said Polly caustically.

  ‘Oh, you know,’ said Alice.

  ‘Bless you, old sport,’ said Polly, ‘there’s none of them lovely. They’re all grey wolves, they’re all men in a way no others have ever been. They’re all due for death and the devil, and they all know it, and they spend what time they can spare spitting in his eye. It doesn’t make any of ’em lovely, old dear, but do you care, and do I? Not on your life. When they’ve gone, when our High Command boneheads have managed to see them all off, what’ll be left? Shadows and ghosts, Alice, and you and me.’

  ‘That’s it, cheer me up,’ said Alice. ‘You’re a laugh a minute, you are.’

  ‘No charge, ducky,’ said Polly.

  Lady Banks, Area Commandant, came out of headquarters at that moment.

  ‘There you are, you two,’ she said. She was a handsome woman of forty-five, smartly uniformed in blue. Polly noted, abstractedly, that her stockings were silk. ‘You’ve arrived on schedule. Excellent. Any problems?’

  ‘Ten minutes of shellfire from Thiepval,’ said Polly, her features just a little drawn.

  ‘I wondered about that,’ said Lady Banks. ‘We heard it, of course. Was it unpleasant?’

  ‘A bit lively, ma’am,’ said Alice.

  ‘Well, I’m very glad you got through safe and sound,’ smiled Lady Banks. She took a look at the ambulance, its newness somewhat spoiled by a layer of dust pock-marked with specks of dried mud. She ignored that. ‘Not a scratch,’ she said. ‘Splendid.’

  ‘Oh, it’ll grow into a good old biddy, another good old bone-shaker,’ said Polly, slightly tart. Like other drivers, she could swear her heart out about what the bone-shakers could do to a cargo of badly wounded men.

  ‘Still, I suppose they’re all a bit better than a dustman’s cart,’ said Alice.

  Lady Banks gazed sympathetically at the two young women who had been in the thick of things since 1914. They both looked a little drawn. That kind of look was all too common among ambulance drivers.

  ‘I think you can both do with some leave,’ she said. ‘Well, you’re on next month’s roster.’

  Blighty leave for Polly meant a giddy round of theatres, restaurants and parties, and a quiet time at home for Alice. Yet for both it soon became unreal because it had so little to do with the carnage of the Western Front. They couldn’t help their feelings, their whole beings belonged to their missions of mercy.

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Alice, ‘’ome leave.’

  ‘I’ll face up to it,’ said Polly with her brittle smile. Departing for their billets a few minutes later, she murmured, ‘Listen, dearie, how many pairs d’you think she’s got?’

  ‘Pairs of what and who?’ asked Alice.

  ‘Silk stockings. Lady Banks. I fancy pouring myself into some slinky glad rags and silk stockings one evening.’

  ‘You Polly, you just can’t get silk stockings except in Paris,’ said Alice.

  ‘I know that,’ said Polly, ‘I’m thinking of you sneaking into Lady Banks’s quarters and pinching some of her regulation issue. Say two pairs, one for you and one for me. New, of course. I’ll keep watch.’

  ‘Well, blow that,’ said Alice, ‘me doin’ the nickin’ and you safe outside smokin’ a fag?’

  ‘All right, Alice old love, I’ll nick, and you blow the whistle if you have to. One evening, when she’s out. Game?’

  ‘Crikey, what a palaver,’ said Alice, as they entered their billet. ‘Still.’

  ‘Still what?’ said Polly.

  ‘Silk stockings,’ said Alice, and thought of herself in an estaminet in slinky glad rags, and that West Kents sergeant inviting her to sit on his lap. ‘Yes, I’m game.’

  ‘Good on yer, sport,’ said Polly in the lingo of the hour.

  Chapter Four

  ‘What?’ said sixteen-year-old Tommy Adams over the Sunday dinner of stew made of scrag ends of mutton, vegetables and plump suet dumplings.

  ‘Yes, did we ’ear you right, Sammy?’ asked his sister Lizzy, nearly eighteen and quite lovely with her rich chestnut hair and her large brown eyes. She was eleven weeks pregnant, and enduring the sad fact that her husband Ned was in a military hospital recovering from the amputation of his left leg. ‘Did we ’ear you say you actu’lly met a girl?’

  ‘He must’ve meant accident’lly,’ said Tommy. ‘Walked into ’er, I suppose, when ’e was on ’is way ’ome and countin’ ’is money.’

  ‘If yer don’t mind,’ said Sammy, ‘I never count me money out in the street. It ain’t safe to. What was that you was askin’, Lizzy?’

  ‘She was askin’ if it’s true you’ve met a girl,’ said Chinese Lady.

  ‘I dunno what came over me, mentionin’ it,’ said Sammy. ‘Me brains must be gettin’ some kind of complaint. I might’ve known you’d all give me looks. Anyway, it ain’t a crime, yer know, to meet a girl.’

  ‘It’s a sensation for you to,’ said Tommy, a young stalwart with an engineering job. ‘Don’t you usually run a fast mile when you see one comin’?’

  ‘Only to protect me savings,’ said Sammy, ‘they’re me future. Anyway, I couldn’t leave the stall, and, besides, she was a customer.’

  ‘Was she nice, Sammy?’ asked Chinese Lady, who believed in growing boys and girls being sociable together, as long as there were no larks of the forbidden kind.

  ‘Well, she bought a set of nice china figures,’ said Sammy. ‘Look, all I said was that I’d met a girl. That’s all. I met a girl, that’s all I said.’

  ‘Yes, you came out with it sort of sudden, as if she was on your mind,’ said Lizzy. ‘Crikey, and you only fourteen, Sammy, and a woman-hater up till now.’

  ‘A what? I never ’eard the like,’ breathed Chinese Lady. ‘My own youngest son a woman-hater?
It’s like a viper in my – well, never mind that, I just don’t know where I went wrong with you, Sammy. It’ll have to be put right, even if it means boxin’ your ears twice a day. D’you hear me?’

  ‘Mum, course I’m not a woman-’ater,’ said Sammy, ‘it’s not natural. It’s just that I ain’t old enough to ’ave one of me own yet. Nor could I afford it.’

  ‘Sammy Adams, are you speakin’ of holy matrimony?’ asked Chinese Lady.

  ‘Not yet I ain’t,’ said Sammy, ‘I ain’t made me fortune yet.’

  ‘Well, you’d better understand, me lad, that I didn’t bring any of me sons up to be woman-haters,’ said Chinese Lady. ‘Mind you,’ she went on, as she ladled out seconds of the nourishing stew, ‘I wouldn’t want Boots gettin’ too fond of them fast Frenchwomen. I ’ear there’s a lot of them about in France. Sammy, did you mention if this girl you met is nice?’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Sammy, chasing his extra dumpling around on his plate. His fork caught up with it, and pinned it. ‘What girl?’ he asked.

  ‘The girl you met,’ said Tommy, grinning.

  ‘I can’t remember exactly,’ said Sammy.

  ‘Oh, is it all over, Sammy, before it’s ’ardly begun?’ asked Lizzy.

  ‘I couldn’t afford to let anything like that begin,’ said Sammy, ‘I’ve got me savings to protect, like I already told you. One day,’ he said darkly, ‘you’ll all thank me for what me savings’ll do for the fam’ly.’

  Lizzy laughed, then thought about her visit to the hospital this afternoon. The war had crashed into her life like a thunderbolt when the news came that Ned had lost a leg. They’d been married only a month when he was recalled to his unit and to a battle that resulted in the amputation. How thankful she was about his gradual recovery. It was a comfort, living with Mum and the boys for the time being, but she could hardly wait to have Ned home in the house in Sunrise Avenue, off Denmark Hill. It actually had a bathroom and a garden. She and Chinese Lady went there regularly to let in the fresh air, to do one or two household jobs, and generally to keep the place nice for when Ned came home.

  ‘Now, who wants rice puddin’ for afters?’ asked Chinese Lady, at which point the front door opened to a pull on the latchcord, and a girl’s voice called.

  ‘Coo-ee, Mrs Adams, can I come in?’

  ‘Yes, come through, Em’ly,’ called Chinese Lady.

  Emily Castle from next door darted energetically through the passage to the cosy kitchen. A thin young lady the same age as Lizzy, she had a peaky nose and a pointed chin. But she also had magnificent dark auburn hair and huge swimming green eyes. An only child, she had attached herself to the Adams family as if such attachment was the best thing in her life. Her beery but kind old dad had recently died of cancer, and her good-natured but blowsy mother was hoping to move and to live with a sister in Camberwell. Emily was fighting that tooth and nail.

  ‘’Ello, ev’ryone,’ she said in her eager and lively way. ‘Oh, yer still ’avin’ yer dinner.’

  ‘Rice pudding afters, Em,’ said Tommy.

  Emily, nicely dressed in an apple green Sunday frock, said, ‘Oh, you do bake a lovely rice puddin’, Mrs Adams.’

  ‘Well, sit down and ’ave some,’ invited Sammy. They all knew Mrs Castle wasn’t much of a cook, and that wartime rationing hadn’t helped her to improve.

  ‘Yes, get yourself a plate from the dresser, Em’ly love,’ said Chinese Lady, ‘and sit down with us.’

  ‘Bless yer, Mrs Adams, I don’t mind if I do,’ said Emily. She fetched a plate and sat down at the table, looking happy at being one with them, and even happier when Chinese Lady served her a large helping. She tucked in with the relish of a young lady whose own Sunday dinner hadn’t done a great deal for her healthy appetite. ‘Oh, ain’t it lovely?’ she said. ‘Lizzy, I actu’lly only popped in to see if you’d like me to go with you to the ’ospital this afternoon, just for company, like. I won’t come in, of course, I’ll wait while you ’ave yer visitin’ time with Ned.’

  ‘Love you to come with me, Em’ly,’ said Lizzy, ‘and you can say hello to Ned, I’m sure he’d like to see you for a bit. Then on our way back, we can go to the house and see ’ow the garden’s lookin’.’

  ‘Oh, I’d be pleasured to see yer house again,’ said Emily.

  ‘We’ll take something with us so we can ’ave a late tea there,’ said Lizzy. ‘And do some gardenin’, shall we?’

  ‘Crikey, I never done gardenin’ in all me life,’ said Emily. ‘Don’t you ’ave to learn a bit about it first?’

  ‘You can help me just to dig weeds up,’ said Lizzy, ‘you don’t need any learnin’ about weeds.’

  ‘Tell yer what, Lizzy,’ said Sammy through a mouthful of rice pudding, ‘I’ll do some gardenin’ for yer next Sunday, I’ll sacrifice me whole afternoon.’

  ‘Well, that boy’s got some good in him, after all,’ said Chinese Lady.

  ‘Yes, that’s really nice of you, Sammy,’ said Lizzy.

  ‘Wait for the catch,’ said Tommy.

  ‘There ain’t no catch,’ said Sammy. ‘I’d only charge a tanner for the whole afternoon. Lizzy’s me one and only sister, and I wouldn’t charge ’er more, not if you broke me arm.’

  ‘Sammy, I don’t know ’ow you can be so graspin’,’ said Emily.

  ‘Well, you ought to know,’ said Tommy, ‘you’ve been livin’ next door to ’im nearly all ’is life.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Sammy in a burst of generosity, ‘fourpence-’a’penny, then. That’s twenty-five per cent discount. Could I say fairer?’

  ‘I’ll give you fairer,’ said Chinese Lady, ‘I’ll get Boots to give you a tannin’ when he’s next home on leave.’

  ‘Oh, ’ave you heard from Boots recent, Mrs Adams?’ asked Emily in an impulsive little fit of eager enquiry. The family looked at her. She coloured up. Not that it would have made any difference if she hadn’t. They all knew how she felt about Boots. She’d followed him about like his own shadow from her schooldays, craving his attention to the point of being a terror.

  ‘I’m expectin’ a letter any moment now,’ said Chinese Lady, ‘and if I don’t get one by Tuesday, I’ll want to know the reason why. The war’s bad enough, but ’avin’ it goin’ on in France is even worse. Like I said before you came in, Em’ly, there’s a lot too many of them fast Frenchwomen about, and if any of them get their hands on Boots, we’ll all have to pray for him.’

  ‘Oh, lor’,’ breathed Emily, and in a silent panic said a hasty but heartfelt prayer for Chinese Lady’s only oldest son.

  Private George Watts of the West Kents came running from the large yard that lay between a French farmhouse and its dairy. In his cap, braces, shirt, trousers, puttees and boots, he was moving at speed. He needed to, for on his heels was a furious young Frenchwoman, wielding a very unfriendly pitchfork. Boots, arriving with an innocuous jug in his hand, sidestepped as Watts accelerated and rushed by him. The young woman shouted.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’ asked Boots. She stopped, her sun-browned face expressive of temper, her blue eyes fierce. Carmen in a fury, thought Boots. No, not Carmen. Carmen’s Spanish. I’ll settle for Fifi in a paddy.

  ‘Ah, you,’ she said in fierce, spitting English, ‘you ’ave come to steal our chickens too? It is disgusting. ’Ow would you like for me to stick you with this fork, eh?’ She gave him a prod. Boots retreated a step. She lunged, the prongs looking wicked. He back-pedalled, tripped and fell, his peaked cap falling off. She leapt and stood over him, booted feet astride his hips, the hem of her long skirt brushing his trousers. She dug the fork into his jacket. Mother O’Reilly, thought Boots, what’s she after, blood? ‘’Ow would you like some ’oles in you, you English thief?’

  ‘I wouldn’t, it’ll let out my dinner,’ said Boots. It was four in the afternoon, and his midday meal, eaten a bit late because of the time taken for the company to settle into their billet, was still being digested. ‘Who’s that behind you, by the way?’

  Falli
ng for it, the young woman turned her head. Boots knocked the fork aside, drew his hips and legs free, and came quickly to his feet. She hissed a fierce imprecation, drew a breath and looked him over as he picked up his cap and put it on. She saw a tall British soldier with three stripes on each sleeve of his jacket and the air of a man who could take care of himself. She knew that his company, billeted in her father’s largest barn, hadn’t long been out of the line, but already the hot sun was healing his trench greyness. His face wasn’t in the least unpleasant, although it should have been – the thief – and his deep grey eyes, slightly rimmed from his time in the trenches, weren’t at all furtive or shifty. But they were a little wary. So they should be. She was quite ready to use the pitchfork. She thought him in his mid-twenties, an Englishman inured to the war. She frowned, much as if she would have preferred him to have a hangdog look.

  ‘That man came to steal chickens,’ she said. ‘Now you ’ave come too. You are a sergeant. It is most disgusting.’

  ‘Well, it would be if—’

  ‘Do not speak to me.’

  ‘I haven’t come to steal chickens,’ said Boots, and smiled placatingly.

  ‘That is what you say. ’Ow would you like my father to set ’is dogs on you?’

  ‘Now, ma’m’selle, have I stolen anything or tried to?’

  ‘’Ow do I know what you ’ave come to take? Perhaps even my honour.’

  ‘Well, that’s rich,’ said Boots, and laughed. Most Frenchwomen, as far as he could make out, were more concerned with what the Boche were doing to their beloved France than with their honour. But this one looked as offended as a virgin who’d caught a saucy market pickpocket with his hand in her blouse. He spoke in French then, for his time in France had helped him perfect what he had learned at school. ‘Ma’m’selle, believe me, I haven’t come to relieve you of anything that’s precious to you, your honour or your livestock.’

  She frowned again, as if she disliked the fact that he could speak her language. Using it herself, she said, ‘I am not a single woman, I am a widow. My husband, a brave soldier of France, fell to the Boche a year ago.’