In Distant Fields Read online

  ‘No I will not, Lady Partita.’

  ‘Will you please stop calling me that? You didn’t call me that when we were at Waterside.’

  ‘So stop calling me Harry Wavell then, like it’s some sort of a joke.’

  ‘It isn’t meant as a joke, stupid. I was just teasing.’

  ‘And I’d rather not be called stupid either, Partita.’

  ‘Fine. Then I won’t call you stupid, or Harry Wavell, if you stop calling me Lady Partita, because I don’t know how you do it but somehow you manage to make my name sound sarcastic.’

  ‘Just the way you make mine sound—’

  ‘Pax?’

  ‘Pax,’ Harry shrugged. ‘I wish it was all pax.’

  ‘You two,’ Kitty sighed. ‘You’re always squabbling.’

  ‘No we’re not!’ Partita said.

  ‘Yes we are.’ Harry grinned. ‘And we always have.’

  Harry left the two young women outside the hall where they were to take their first practical nursing class, which had already started. The hall was filled all but to capacity, instilling in Partita an immediate sense of panic when faced with the noise, the heat and, above all, the smell of so many humans packed into such a badly ventilated place. For a moment she found herself considering slipping out the side door and finding somewhere quiet where she could wait for Kitty. Kitty, after all, could pass on to her everything she had learned at the class.

  Partita began to work her way through the throng in search of a door that could afford her a swift exit, but was stopped when she heard a voice.

  ‘You, please? You, young lady, yes you, making your way to the door. You look a likely sort,’ a middle-aged man in a white coat was saying, indicating with one index finger for her to approach. ‘We’ve gone through two mutton-heads here. Yes, mutton-heads – no other word for it,’ he went on, nodding at the poor dolts whom he was insisting on identifying. ‘Imagine! They think if you’re treating someone with a cut throat you can use a tourniquet on them. Imagine that? About as likely as binding up a broken leg with cotton.’

  This brought renewed laughter from all the women who thought they knew better, even as Partita went to the front of the throng.

  ‘What would happen if one used a tourniquet on such a wound, do you think, young woman?’ the doctor finally demanded as she drew level with him.

  ‘The patient would die from strangulation,’ Partita replied in a calm voice.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be waltzing round some ballroom somewhere?’ a voice called derisively from the back of the room.

  ‘That’s quite enough of that, thank you,’ the doctor called back. ‘We are neither at the hustings nor the music hall. This young woman is quite right – of course strangulation would be the result, so,’ he turned back to Partita, ‘what would you do if faced with a victim with a cut throat?’

  ‘Call for help.’

  ‘You think that sufficient?’

  ‘I think it considerably better than killing the poor fellow with my ignorance.’

  The doctor nodded, but remained straight faced.

  ‘And if help was not forthcoming?’

  ‘I’d use my hands, if at all possible,’ Partita told him, remembering the time she had been out hunting and had had to stem bleeding when a young man in front of her had his ear torn off by a piece of wire.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I’d make sure the patient didn’t move.’

  ‘Good.’ The doctor nodded. ‘And what would you do, say, for a fish hook embedded in the skin?’

  ‘Are we likely to come across that in battle, Doctor?’ Partita wondered in mock innocence, finally earning a shout of laughter from the audience.

  ‘Answer, please.’

  ‘I wouldn’t make any attempt to pull it free, if that’s what you’re after. I’d cut it out with a knife,’ she said, remembering now how, when Gus had been teaching her to fly fish by dry casting on a lawn at Bauders and had caught himself in the upper arm with a hook, she had in fact done that very thing, under Gus’s direction, cutting the deeply embedded fly out of his flesh with his fishing knife.

  ‘Mrs Forester here has broken her forearm in two places. Here.’ He handed Partita a bandage. ‘Let’s see your bandaging skills.’

  Partita looked first at the doctor and then at the mock-patient, who had now begun to groan overloudly, relishing her role to the full. Partita took the rolled-up bandage as well as two splints from a nearby table and proceeded to do a first-rate job of attending to the double fracture. When she finished, she threw the doctor a satisfyingly cool look, while at the same time earning a round of applause from the rest of the room.

  ‘I would say that you have studied nursing at some point,’ the doctor announced, looking vaguely disappointed.

  ‘No, Doctor, I have done no nursing.’

  ‘Your mother was a nurse perhaps?’

  ‘Her mother’s a duchess!’ a voice from the back volunteered.

  ‘And something of a doctor,’ Partita admitted, edging away from the doctor with a smile to soften the blow that his failure to make an ass of her must have engendered.

  Her victory complete, she went to find Kitty and see how she felt about the situation.

  ‘I think you’d better take over this class.’

  ‘I was actually wondering whether or not I could stick it,’ Partita replied. ‘But the good doctor made me see differently. Let’s go and stare at him; try and put him off his stroke. I bet he knows much less about bandaging than I do. Come on.’

  Kitty dutifully followed Partita, whose blood was up. They found two free seats in the front row, seats most of the other women were loath to take in case of being roped in as part of the many demonstrations. Once settled, Partita as promised did her best to disconcert the increasingly discomfited doctor as he lectured the hall on all forms of practical bandaging, and the initial treatment of more superficial wounds, before he brought the class to a close with a promise of a lesson on the means of containing infection and contagion.

  ‘Just can’t wait,’ Partita laughed as they waited outside the hall for Harry. ‘What a treat we have in store.’

  ‘Look,’ Kitty said, indicating a disturbance in an ironmonger’s shop on the opposite side of the street where a burly man, still in his shop apron and shouting at the top of his voice, was being forcibly removed from his premises by two policemen.

  Partita, her curiosity aroused, immediately crossed over the road to investigate, followed a little reluctantly by Kitty.

  ‘He’s speaking German,’ Partita observed as the two of them stood by the Black Maria that was waiting for the miscreant. ‘As I understand it, I think he’s saying something about how he wants the streets to run with English blood. How sweetly kind of you,’ she called back, in German.

  Hearing this the young man turned, but Kitty, sensing what he was about to do, grabbed Partita and pulled her out of the way just in time as he spat contemptuously at Partita, before the police bundled him into the waiting car.

  Despite the spittle missing her, Partita stared in horror.

  ‘What a disgustingly girly thing to do,’ she called after him, still in German.

  ‘I didn’t know you spoke German, Tita?’

  ‘I don’t, not really, only we all used to speak German with Weigel when we were small. Oh, there’s Harry. Good.’

  On the journey home, Partita was understandably quiet, leaving Kitty to do most of the talking to Harry.

  ‘I say, Harry, your driving’s coming on already. You’ve been practising while we were in class.’

  ‘It’s all in the clutch,’ Harry called. ‘I went up the lane and down the lane outside, must be fifty times – and hey presto! I suddenly got it.’

  ‘So you’ll be off soon then, Harry. Now you’ve got it. You’ll be off driving ambulances with the rest of them.’

  ‘I shall, Kitty. Can’t wait to be of use. Faulty heart, indeed! I’ll show them.’

  Harry glanced at Partita but she wa
s lost in thought, staring out of the van window at the passing countryside, so he glanced back at Kitty, only to find her equally lost in thought.

  ‘I’ll write to you both when I’m away. Let you know how many people I’ve run over,’ he joked.

  ‘That would be nice,’ Kitty said, putting a hand lightly on his shoulder. ‘And we will write to you.’

  Circe laid out the new plans for the remodelling of the walled garden that had arrived in that day’s post from Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens. She leaned over them eager to identify each and every plant that had been carefully numbered or lettered on the drawings against the list of plants that had been contained with the plans. Once Circe had identified them she could visualise the colour and shape of each of the flowers the brilliant pair were proposing, plants in whose growth Circe saw the future, their petals and leaves seeming to beckon her forwards, giving her hope in renewal.

  For springtime there would be first the green and half-white of Lenten roses, followed by the brilliance of many types of narcissi, then the pale cream and pink and mauve-hued bells of the fritillaria, before the blossoming of the spring and summer flowers, the delicate china blue of forget-me-nots, the gentle white of her favourite genus of foxglove, the columbines, the London pride, the begonias, the nepeta, and, of course, the roses – masses and masses of roses, all in the pale English colours that were Circe’s favourites.

  ‘I must take these out to the gardeners,’ she said, after showing the designs to Kitty, Partita having excused herself to go up to her room to change her clothes. ‘Will you come with me?’

  ‘Of course,’ Kitty agreed, wondering whether or not to say anything about the incident in town, then deciding against it since Circe had hardly seemed to notice Partita’s abrupt disappearance, nor shown any real interest in how they had got on at their first-aid class.

  There was no one in the walled garden, just several spades and forks abandoned, stuck upright in the earth where the gardeners had left them. Seeing the inactivity, the Duchess assumed they had taken a break for refreshment since their tools were still in the earth and several jackets and waistcoats were hung on the makeshift hooks on the old brick walls. While she waited for their return, Circe walked the plot with Kitty, plans in hand, explaining the intended planting so that Kitty too could imagine the beauty of the finished garden.

  Five minutes or so after they had arrived on the site, two of the more senior gardeners returned, caps on the back of their heads, pipes clenched firmly in their mouths. Seeing the Duchess, the caps were immediately whipped off and the still smoking pipes stuck in back trouser pockets, while Tim Scroggins and Bob Eldridge – known to all as ‘Ole Bob’ – greeted the Duchess.

  ‘No, please, don’t mind me at all,’ Circe told them. ‘I’ve only come down to show you Miss Jekyll and Mr Lutyens’ plans. Yes, Tim, and Ole Bob, the plans have finally arrived. I wonder if there’s somewhere we could spread them out? Don’t you have a rather good table in that workshop of yours, Tim?’

  As Circe was ushered into the big stone shed that served as an office, storeroom and resting place for the garden force, several of the younger men who had been grouped round the wall at one end of the room jumped to attention, nodded politely to their employer and hurried back to work. Then as Circe went over the plans with her two head gardeners, the papers spread before them on the large well-worn table up against a wall, Kitty became curious as to what all the younger men might have been up to when they were disturbed.

  As she walked up to the wall she found the object of their activity. On the wooden panelling of the wall they had been busy carving their names below the previous gardeners’ names, names which seemed to go back to the very date when the garden house had first been built.

  The first name, a Thomas Goode, had written beneath it, ‘Head Plantsman, Bauders Castle 1709–1740’. After him there came an increasing list of names, under which was written ‘Head Gardener’, or ‘Head Plantsman’, or more recently with the advent of John Eden’s grandfather, always known as the Cricketing Duke, ‘Head Groundsman’. Beside these, in a torrent of names, came inscriptions from all the junior gardeners, plantsmen and groundsmen, the latest being the young men who had just returned to work: ‘Peter Nesbitt 1908–’, ‘Fred Welton 1899–’, ‘Nathaniel Thrush 1900–’, ‘Will Hickox 1892–’, ‘Jem Panter 1896–’ and ‘Albert Carroll 1903–’.

  Those were the last names on a long, long list, several years below the names of ‘Tim Scroggins 1875–’ and ‘Bob Eldridge’, Ole Bob’s starting date being given as ‘1874’. Above all the names, on a cream board fixed to the wall, someone had painted the legend:

  We are nearer God’s heart in the garden

  Than anywhere else on earth.

  ‘Do you think we can get this done, Tim?’ Kitty heard the Duchess asking as she stood rolling up her precious plans. ‘I know it’s a lot to ask at this time, but if we could perhaps make a start, it might be a cheerful occupation, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘We shall do our very best, Your Grace,’ Tim replied, pipe back in mouth. ‘It all depends on how many hands we got, if you understand me, Your Grace. Hands is getting fewer by the day, Ole Bob and I is finding.’

  ‘Of course,’ the Duchess said tactfully. ‘There are other things a little more important than this going on, but if you can find a way to make a start, I should be eternally grateful.’

  ‘We’ll get it done one way or another, Your Grace,’ Ole Bob put in. ‘We’ll get ‘im done fer Your Grace, e’en if I ‘ave to dig the blighter meself.’

  That evening before dinner, Circe sat down to pen a letter to her garden designers.

  Edwin Lutyens, Esquire

  17 Queens Gate,

  LONDON 31. viii. 1914

  Dear Ned,

  There is much to which to look forward in your and Miss Jekyll’s plans for the old walled garden; and that I shall be reminding myself of this, over the next weeks and months, is not in doubt. Meanwhile, I shall put the plans on the Duke’s desk, awaiting his return to Bauders. I know that whatever the future may hold for us, whatever comes to us, your garden will contain nothing but hope and beauty.

  Yours truly,

  Circe Eden

  Kitty was sitting in the library, the one room the Duchess and the Duke had ordained should remain as it was, no matter what.

  ‘Something so comforting about a book-lined room in times of peril,’ Circe kept murmuring, as she bustled in and out.

  As she put the finishing touches to a gift she was making for Almeric, Kitty could only agree with the Duchess. It was as if the thousands upon thousands of pages of writing that the books contained were reaching out to reassure Kitty that nothing she was going through now, or might be going through soon, had not been experienced, and written about, before.

  Kitty was alone for once, Partita having taken herself off to practise bandaging and first aid on Tinker, of all people. It was so typical of Partita that, having said nothing to anyone about their experiences in nursing class, she had nevertheless decided that if she was going to be a nurse, she was going to be the best nurse of all time, leaving all the rest of them straggling behind.

  ‘Where’s Tita?’

  Kitty looked up as Allegra came into the library, accompanied by her little dog, who promptly settled at her feet, once she had selected a book from the shelves.

  ‘Tita is off practising bandaging on Tinker.’

  ‘Poor Tinker,’ Allegra murmured as she sat down and began to read.

  ‘Yes, poor Tinker indeed. Tita’s bandaged and rebandaged her so often, I think she’s given her a sore arm.’ As Allegra looked up, laughing, Kitty continued, ‘You know your sister, she’s setting her watch on it. I believe she’s improved her time by fifty seconds already! Next thing, we will be having a bandaging Derby.’

  ‘What on earth is that?’ Allegra wondered distractedly, after a few seconds of watching Kitty.

  ‘It’s a sleeping bag, actually,’ Kitty replied, stuff
ing the last piece of precious insulation into the lining, the wadding made up of a mixture of crumpled-up tissue paper and netting cut from the underskirts of old ball gowns retrieved from an attic by one of the chambermaids. ‘Not a very romantic present, but one I think might be appreciated in the coming months.’

  ‘I wonder what a romantic gift might be?’ Allegra wondered, staring at Kitty with her head tilted to one side. ‘What do you suppose a romantic gift would be under the circumstances?’

  ‘I don’t really have an idea,’ Kitty replied, doing her best to ignore the cutting edge to her future sister-in-law’s voice. ‘I would like to have given your brother something nice to take away, but since he is going off to war and since winter is just around the corner I thought something practical might be more appropriate.’

  ‘Hardly the sort of thing to give to your knight before he goes off to battle,’ Allegra sighed, replacing the book of poetry on its shelf and taking out a book on nursing from a small valise. ‘Still, as you say, under the circumstances … Heard anything from him yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Kitty replied, shaking her head as she stripped the end of the thread with which she had been sewing up the lining. ‘But he’s only been gone for ten days.’

  ‘I should have thought you’d have heard something by now, really I would. Just something, seeing you two are now engaged. But knowing Al he’s got too stuck in to remember to write to you, I dare say.’

  Kitty put down the sleeping bag. ‘I told him not to write to me, not to think of me at all. It would be weakening, I thought, to think of home when you are so far away, and in a battle. But he insisted he would.’

  ‘You know Cecilia is coming to London. She is going to join me nursing,’ Allegra stated, as if Kitty had not spoken. ‘Proper nursing, that is – not Bauders-type nursing such as you and Tita have plumped for,’ she added, with a falsely innocent look.

  ‘I wish I could join you both, but your mother needs all of us to help her here.’

  ‘Mamma loves pretending to be a doctor. She will soon be in her element.’

  Kitty picked up the sleeping bag again.