In Distant Fields Read online

  As I write today, I and Father Joseph from County Mayo (the Catholic priests, by the way, are courageous beyond belief) are sitting side by side in what they call a funk hole, each with a tin mug of lukewarm tea that tastes like champagne, all we can hear, of all unlikely things, is the song of birds sitting in blasted trees. They know it’s spring and while it’s unlike any spring they have so far experienced, they do not know why it is different. We do, which is why we thank God for our life and pray to Him that we will be spared. It is all a very long way away from the warmth and safety of Bauders, yet when I think of it and all my little congregation back home I realise I am only next door.

  Yours truly,

  Edward Bletchworth

  There were letters from Harry to Kitty, which included notes to Partita. There were letters from Tommy Taylor to Tinker, from Tully to Bridie, and notes to Kitty in Peregrine’s letters to Partita. There were letters also to Jossy from Tully, from Harry to his father, and there were letters from Peter Nesbitt, Fred Welton, Nathaniel Thrush, Will Hickox, Jem Panter and Albert Carroll to all their friends and loved ones at Bauders, none of them failing to enquire after their particular interests back at a place that they all knew now was their home, and how the great place and its gardens were looking now that the spring sun was warming the earth and the plants and trees were beginning to come back slowly to life.

  There were more letters too for all the patients, letters for everyone in the house, except for Michael, the man from whom nothing much had been heard after his unforgettable performance of ‘Silent Night’. No one ever wrote to him and no one ever came to see him, however much he watched at the windows or stared down the drive.

  ‘Someone must know him, surely to goodness. He must have family somewhere surely,’ Kitty said to Partita.

  ‘Maybe, or maybe not,’ Partita replied. ‘Perhaps he’s completely unknown. Perhaps he’s an unknown soldier.’

  Kitty decided to make Michael her sole concern. She knew it would be useless to push him too hard, so she concentrated instead on gradually drawing him out, but even she, employing all her charms as well as genuine interest, could get nothing from him. Michael just sat there, listened to what she had to say and attended to the questions she asked, to which he would nod thoughtfully as if giving the matter his full consideration, before turning his head away to stare once more at the sky or the landscape. If she pressed him further he still would not respond, choosing instead merely to close his eyes and rest his head wearily on the back of his chair.

  ‘It’s no good talking to ’im, Miss Kitty,’ young Frank told her one day, wheeling his chair over to where Kitty was sitting apart from Michael, who by this time, by way of variation, had simply opened the French doors in front of him and walked outside as Kitty was in mid-sentence. ‘You might as well squeeze a stone for blood. We’ve tried everything, truly we have. We tried to get him playing whist and pontoon, we offered to read to him, we told him jokes, offered to write his letters but he never says a thing. He smiled once, but we don’t know what at. We wasn’t talking to him, no one was. We were playing a rubber of whist and when we looked up he was sitting there smiling. Like a bloomin’ great Cheshire cat, except he had tears rollin’ down his face and all.’

  So Kitty gave up, deciding instead to leave him in peace, tending to his needs, which, naturally, had to be guessed at.

  Michael’s wounds had been multiple but miraculously only light, shot through both of his hands as if at the point of surrender an enemy had put two bullets through them, and shot once in his side, again a flesh wound, a gash that had now healed perfectly to form a scar. Apart from those three bullets he had suffered only minor abrasions, but Kitty, Partita and the Duchess all knew he had far greater wounds, injuries that no amount of medicines or surgery could remove; only time might effect that cure, but even of that there was no certainty. As Frank said to Kitty one spring day when she was wheeling him around the grounds, they thought he must have seen things no one ever wanted to see.

  Then came the news that Almeric had been injured. No one knew with any certainty at first how bad his injuries were, just that he was wounded. His father, still in London at his desk job, at once set the wheels in motion, learning via the War Office that he had been hit while taking a hill near Ypres that, although an essential gain, had been the subject of very heavy casualties. Examining the lists and seeing how many fatalities there were, John found himself in the Guards Chapel thanking God that his son had at least been spared, even if he had been wounded.

  ‘He’s to be sent home,’ he called down the telephone to Circe, as if he was speaking to her from across a battlefield rather than down a perfectly good connection. ‘Been shot in the wrist, nothing more, thanks be. Apparently you can expect him to be with you by the weekend. I shall come home myself soon as possible.’

  Kitty drove herself to the station to fetch Almeric. Jossy had taught her how to drive Trotty in the trap, a skill Kitty quickly picked up and greatly enjoyed exercising, all too thankful sometimes to be able to escape from her labours at Bauders. If was not that she lacked resolution but simply that, like Partita, she was finding looking after the patients a greater strain than she had at first imagined. It was not just their wounds, their dressings, or their other needs that was exhausting, it was keeping up their morale. Not that, with the single exception of Michael, the men themselves did not do everything in their powers to put on cheery faces, so much so that they were all agreed that a better bunch of men could not be found; it was that their very good nature, their determination to overcome all their pain and suffering, was almost unbearable. And then to watch them grow better, knowing that in making them better, they were bringing them nearer and nearer to having to return to the trenches – that was a thought neither she nor Partita could bear even to talk about. Seven of the first intake who had made quick recoveries had already been sent back to the Front just after New Year, and although everyone was sad to see them go, there had still been a very strong hope that with their departure the war really was coming to an end and so, with the necessary luck, those who returned would survive what people were firmly saying had to be the last two months of the war.

  So as Kitty drove to the station warmed by the spring sunshine and delighted by the pink and white of the apple blossom, she was more than ever pleased to be out of the confines of the castle, and to be going to meet their beloved Al.

  The train was over twenty minutes late, which made Kitty start to wonder if she was really going to see him again, if he was really going to be on the train, and finally if she would recognise him after what now seemed to be an eternity. She need not have worried.

  He stepped off the train looking preposterously handsome in his immaculate uniform, and yet heartbreakingly vulnerable, with one arm up in a sling, his wounded left hand held high against his chest. With his right hand he took off his captain’s cap, managing somehow to tuck it under his slung arm, while he stood and smiled at her, his eyes full of loss – loss of the time they could have been together and loss for the things he had seen. Kitty walked to him, her hand out to him, but he wasn’t interested in hands. He wanted to feel her embrace, and to kiss her, which he did, holding her tightly to him with his good arm, kissing her sweetly on her lips.

  ‘Your arm,’ she murmured in genuine concern. ‘You must mind your arm.’

  ‘I could not care if it fell off, darling Kitty,’ Almeric sighed. ‘If that was a condition of kissing you once more, of holding you in my arms, I couldn’t care if they both fell off.’

  He kissed her again, as the train was drawing out, earning them both whistles and applause from other troops in the carriages, who whooped and waved their hats at them as the train disappeared in a cloud of steam.

  ‘It is so good to see you, Kitty. I truly thought I might never, ever see you again.’

  ‘I thought the same thing too,’ Kitty replied as she took his hand to lead him out into the station yard. ‘Yet here we both are, and guess what y
our fiancée has learned to do?’

  Almeric stared at her and then at Trotty, who was being held by the porter.

  ‘Not drive a trap? This is going to be taking my life in my hands!’ He climbed into it. ‘Sure you want to drive?’

  ‘Positive. I am good, Jossy says. Among the best, he actually said. Hark at me boasting.’

  ‘It really is about time my father bought a motor car,’ Almeric laughed as Kitty shook the reins and Trotty set off out of the station yard. ‘Except if he ever did he’d probably drive it the same way as he hunts, so in that case perhaps it’s best to stick to Trotty – if we’re to stay in one piece.’

  On the journey back to the castle they talked of everything but the war – of how the patients had settled in, how magnificently Circe was running the rest hospital and how Partita had become almost evangelical in her mission to mend the wounded.

  ‘Partita?’ Almeric said in mock astonishment. ‘I would have thought she would have spent her time playing card games and flirting.’

  ‘She does that too,’ Kitty laughed. ‘She wouldn’t be Partita otherwise. But you know, Al, the men love her. She makes them laugh, of course, but the care she takes of them … She never stops. She doesn’t fuss them, or patronise them, she looks after them and – most important of all – she keeps their spirits up sky high.’

  ‘No need for that with me today,’ Almeric declared, looking around him at the beauty of the countryside. ‘Here today, with you, I am in nothing less than heaven.’

  Once everyone had been fed and settled for the evening under the supervision of the two resident nurses, Circe, Partita, Almeric and Kitty took their dinner in the small family dining room, waited on as always by Wavell and one of the older maids, at the servants’ insistence, not that of the Duchess.

  There was more to Wavell’s presence than met the eye, as everyone except Almeric knew. Not that there had been any kind of disagreement between Circe and Wavell, but there had been a difference of policy that had finally culminated in a small exchange.

  ‘Well, Your Grace, if I am not to wait at table, and I am not to knit, and I am not to nurse, and I am not to help out in the stables, I am obviously going to be required to watch as the Lord of Misrule does his worst in the castle, rats run wild in the kitchens, Your Grace never sees or knows a hot meal, and what remain of the servants smoke cigarettes by the wine cellar doors.’

  Circe saw his point at last. If Wavell did not wait on them, they would not be able to do what they did. So Wavell waited on them, and everyone was happy.

  The next person to arrive home was the Duke, catching the late afternoon train from London and arriving at the Halt as darkness fell.

  ‘What I want to hear, if I may, is what it really is like out there,’ Partita demanded when they were at last alone with her oldest brother.

  Almeric glanced first at Kitty, and then at his youngest sister.

  ‘The thing that strikes you first of all, is the noise,’ he replied, speaking slowly. ‘The sheer volume of the din, the sounds of bombardments. Nothing can prepare you for this – nothing they tell you at camp, or in training. And even if they were able to prepare you, no one could give you the scale of the noise. It is quite literally stunning, and by that I do not mean wonderful, I mean it quite literally stuns your senses. I’ve seen troops arriving fresh at the Front and when their first bombardment begins they literally reel. They clasp their heads, they try to bury them in between their knees, they shout just in reaction to this terrible noise of the huge guns firing at them and the shells exploding yards from the trenches. It’s been rightly compared to the noise of Hell – not that anyone knows what that is, but you can guess that’s the sort of thing you would hear if you were unlucky enough to be condemned to eternal damnation, for that is the only comparison. It doesn’t seem to cease either – it seems to be unending, until you wonder exactly how much longer you can stand it, and then it suddenly stops. But even when it stops all you can think of is for how long will it stop? How long before it starts up again? And now, of course, we have gas.’

  ‘What sort of gas?’ Partita wondered. ‘How can they use gas in battle? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Not cooking gas. No, this is chemical gas – poison gas, in other words.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem possible.’

  ‘You are not to tell Mamma. I don’t want her worried. Papa will know already and I expect is keeping quiet about it.’

  Partita and Kitty glanced at each other, knowing as they did that, like all mothers and fathers everywhere in England at that moment, hardly a minute went by that John and Circe did not think about their sons.

  ‘Whatever next?’ Partita wondered, leaning back on her chair. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  ‘The men are taking it very badly, as you can imagine,’ Almeric continued. ‘They caught one of them red-handed – about to launch a canister. Brought him back and presented him to the CO. When he heard what the fellow had been up to he had a quiet word with his sergeant, after which they took him out the back, and that was the end of him.’

  ‘I should think so too,’ Partita retorted. ‘I’d have thrown his wretched canister at him.’

  At which point John and Circe came into the small sitting room to join them.

  ‘Tell me how you got wounded, darling?’ Circe asked as she settled down beside the fire. ‘You haven’t even mentioned it, not in detail anyway. May we know how you did that?’

  ‘I was out mending wire in front of our trench. Some officers don’t bother, as they think it’s a waste of time and too dangerous an occupation, but I don’t see why my men should be exposed to any more danger than necessary – so we mend our wire and I see that it’s done. Anyway, we’d just popped out of our trench at what seemed to be a quiet moment, but they must have been waiting for us, had their sights trained on where they knew the ladders were, possibly, and as soon as we were out and at work they opened fire. I don’t know how I got away so lightly. It was pretty intense fire and two of my men tell to rifle grenades. My brother officer, a junior lieutenant, he got hit in the face and I managed to get him back, and while I was doing that they took some more pots at us and I got hit in the hand that was holding him by the shoulder. They call it a funk’s wound.’

  ‘The last thing you are is a funk,’ Kitty said quickly.

  ‘I hope not – but that’s what a hand wound is called, because some fellows shoot themselves in the hand in order to get sent home.’

  ‘Not you, Al.’

  ‘Is your fellow officer all right?’ Kitty wondered, looking at Almeric. ‘I mean – being hit in the face …’

  ‘He’s fine, Kitty. Remarkably, seeing the bullet passed right through both cheeks. But he’s going to make it. We were in the same place being looked after, and when last seen he was sitting up and writing a letter home. I have the most terrific bunch of men under me. I’m very lucky. They have the foulest of mouths, and the bravest of hearts.’

  Whenever they had the chance Kitty and Almeric went walking in the grounds, going where they always went, as if each walk was a form of ritual designed to keep them safe and bring good luck. If Kitty began accidentally to walk in the wrong direction, Almeric would at once correct her, guiding her back on to the right track before setting off once more, talking of their future as they walked.

  ‘If I come back all right,’ he would often begin, which Kitty would correct.

  ‘When you come back,’ she would say. ‘There are no ifs.’

  And then one day Almeric had an idea. It was just after he had been given the all clear by the doctors and pronounced fit once again.

  ‘I have had the most wonderful idea. I have already spoken to the parents about it.’ As Kitty looked at him, wondering if what she was thinking was what he was going to say, he went on, ‘My idea is for us to be married by special licence – before I have to go back to the party.’

  Kitty stared at him. ‘But, Al … ?’

  ‘Don’t you l
ike the idea?’ He laughed. ‘You should see your face.’

  ‘You just took me by surprise, that’s all,’ Kitty laughed, taking his arm. ‘Nothing like surprising a girl.’

  ‘It can’t be that much of a surprise, darling. You know I want to marry you.’

  ‘Of course, Almeric, of course I do. I just hadn’t thought we could – that we might do this. I think it’s a lovely idea, really lovely.’

  ‘Then do it we shall. I’ll make the necessary preparations.’

  ‘You only have – how long? Three days. Less than three days – two and a half.’

  ‘It can be done – and I shall do it.’

  ‘But with the Reverend Mr Bletchworth gone, isn’t that going to make it difficult?’

  ‘There are other churches. I know how busy you are, darling – so just leave it all to me. It will be wonderful – believe me.’

  Almeric made all the necessary applications on the telephone, assured by those to whom he spoke that there should be no problem, other than the fact that, understandably enough, there were considerably more applications for special licences at the moment, particularly now that spring had arrived.

  ‘Don’t know what it is, sir,’ the clerk said to him on the telephone. ‘Soon as Easter comes all folk seem to think of is getting wed. Leave it all to me, sir. We’ll do the very best we can, sir.’