Page 37

‘And next month I begin my tour escort training.’

‘Ah, yes, most befitting. You’ll enjoy seeing all the corners of the factory,’ Peggy admitted. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Frobisher. It’s been our pleasure.’

Alex shook the woman’s hand politely and had to work hard not to let her gaze move to the stack of tins, one of which carried her personalised message. Already she was regretting her spontaneity. What if it were discovered before it left British shores? Worse, what if it was given to a brigadier or someone senior?

‘Penny for your thoughts, Miss?’ Nel murmured.

‘Shouldn’t we blow a kiss to them?’ It was the first excuse that leapt to her mind.

‘Pardon, Miss, really?’

‘Yes, why not?’ Alex chuckled and lifted her fingertips to her lips and kissed them before flinging her hand towards the crates. ‘We’re sending them all of our love, aren’t we?’

Nel laughed with delight and followed suit, encouraging the others to do the same.

As she slipped out of her spotless apron, she was still burning with internal guilt at the note. She would tell no one about this . . . not even Matthew, although she was sure he’d applaud such wantonness.

Maybe a winter wedding, if she couldn’t convince her mother to let her remain engaged for a full year. It would create predictable despair, but what if Matthew were conscripted? At worst, if it had to be this year, then a winter wedding would bring joy to the interminable months of freeze ahead and enliven a Christmas and New Year that was shaping up to be a maudlin, colourless affair. Nevertheless, a war wedding meant Minerva couldn’t go over the top with her wedding breakfast because it was not appropriate. A small country wedding at the local church, if the Minster was not available, and a quiet wedding breakfast at Tilsden Hall. Perfect. It suddenly sounded right. Now, to convince Matthew, as to be fair to Minerva, it seemed that he was the one in a rush to call themselves husband and wife.

7

NEUVE CHAPELLE, ARTOIS, FRANCE – 18 NOVEMBER 1915

Sergeant Tom Fletcher looked up from where he leaned and fancied the sky to be the grey silk of an enormous parachute billowing above him. He’d seen one of those new safety devices for pilots being tested, although he couldn’t imagine ever trusting one to save his life. Even so, in that heartbeat of whimsy he felt a moment of weightlessness, as though life was suspended and mankind hadn’t been consumed by the madness of war.

Tom and his men were members of the West Yorkshire Regiment, and proud to call themselves soldiers of the 2nd Battalion Prince of Wales’s Own. Today, as afternoon gave way to evening, Tom and his companions were in the Aubers Ridge trench on Mine Avenue, as it was known on the maps, near the Western Convent Wall. The frontline and wide sprawl of German trenches over this low sloping ground that was, to Tom’s gaze, near enough flat, were mere yards away. His battalion had relieved the Scottish Rifles three days previously for those boys to fall back to the reserve line. For Tom and his men a relatively quiet forty-eight hours by their standards had followed and they’d given them up mainly to repairing the flooring of this section of the trench.

Being part of one of the forward posts meant that nothing about their accommodation was especially trustworthy. Neither floors nor walls of their trench were stable; they were hastily dug and hastily prepared so the sappers could get access to the frontline. Looking down, he realised the muddy waters were now just sloshing at his knees. Who needs bullets, he thought, for this grey stream they lived in was sucking the energy out of them as effectively as any mortal wound.

Tom blinked at the sound of Don Turpin’s phlegm-riddled throat being noisily cleared with a spit, accepting in that second, surrounded by the sounds of men – their coughs, sneezes, groans, snoring and, often, their cries – that his whole world had become various hues of impolite grey, just like this sky over northern France. From the near-charcoal of the endless earth they tunnelled through and lived in to the pallor of his fellow soldiers’ complexions, grey was the overarching colour, he decided. Plumes of smoke, gun barrels, the dirty colour of hessian sandbags, his cap, even the bandages they wore and the sheet rain they endured and Don Turpin’s spittle; grey ultimately dominated.

Tom’s days were squandered by inactivity in the daylight hours where these weeks nothing moved . . . perhaps only Satan’s gaze that watched for the telltale glimpse of a head. That was the nickname they’d given the German sniper in the trench opposite. War had become a bitterly frozen stalemate in Fromelles, where boredom itself was one of the greatest threats.

‘I’m hoping for a gallantry medal, Sarge, when I clip that sod with one of my bullets,’ a fellow drawled from the trench parapet and stamped his boot at an inquisitive rat emboldened by the silence.

They gathered they were up against the 16 Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, or so Tom gathered from the exchange of information across trenches. It was revolting to share a broken English discussion with men you needed to kill. Tom refused to enter these conversations out of self-protection; he never wanted to lose sight that this was the enemy and it wanted to destroy him and his men. He had to keep a measure of hate keen in his mind.

Tom hated the rats even more than the Germans. The Germans at least could sing. The rats – grey, of course – got busy in the dark, scurrying in numbers to chew on the dead, hunt out whatever crumbs of food had been haplessly spilled, to nibble on exposed flesh . . . chilblains, gangrenous limbs . . . anything vaguely meaty.

The only way to escape was into memory, and he let those memories crowd as a painful itch snagged in his feet and he recognised that it was likely frostbite. Tomorrow he would check for the telltale discolouration of the skin on his toes, not that there was much he could do about it except resign himself to the numbness. Maybe that was a good thing, he thought, wishing in that moment that he could catch frostbite of the mind and not have to think.

Memory, as comforting as it could be, was dangerous nonetheless; he silently berated himself that he should simply aim to survive minute to minute and if enough minutes were lived, he might one day get back to York and see its beauty again in full colour. He might get to hug his mother, Rose, who now only had him to worry about. Her recent letter had again been dulled by her dip into memories at losing his brother Robert at Ladysmith during the Boer War. He had stopped trying to soften her loss by saying Robert had helped to win that battle in February 1900 because it was obvious his mother didn’t want heroes or medals. She wanted her sons.

Inwardly he smiled now to recall his small mother, with wavy hair that reminded him of burnished walnut and her favourite charcoal-coloured hat, grabbing him by his sleeve and dragging him back down the street on the day he’d sneaked out to follow his brother into the army.

He’d earned his education but by 1904 he’d followed through on his early determination to chase adventures and see the world. He joined the army. The world was a quieter place by then and his mother hadn’t seemed so frightened by his decision and had been impressed by his rise over the next decade to the rank of sergeant and by his portion of wages, dutifully sent to her each month, most recently from Malta.

The suntan was long faded and his body that had previously been neatly sculpted by well-used muscles now looked hollow, his complexion sallow. He itched the back of his head where lice presumably played, wincing a sad sneer at how besieged they all were . . . by other men, rats, insects, bullets, artillery, infection and the new murderer that was poison gas – the silent assassin: by the time you smelled him, it was too late. Tom had taken to imagining this novelty of pungent poison drifting across no-man’s-land in a chartreuse vapour. At least it would add some colour, he thought.

‘Sir!’

Tom sighed, folded up the letter on his lap and slipped it into his pocket. He looked towards Bert Forest’s slanting grin in query. ‘We’ve got gifts.’

‘Gifts?’

Bert tipped his chin down the trench and Tom saw men’s hands reaching out to accept what appeared to be tins being handed out.

‘Blimey, it’s a box of treats,’ someone called down the line.