Solomon's Song (62 page)

One young lad comes on board just as Sarah has completed bandaging the head of a soldier. He seems unharmed, though he has his hand cupped over his left eye. Seeing her, he comes over, stumbling against some of the wounded, apologising. ‘Sister, it’s me eye!’ he cries and removes his cupped hand slowly and Sarah sees that he holds his eye in the palm of his hand, though it’s still attached to a membrane that stretches some four inches from where it disappears within the bloody socket. ‘Can you save me eye?’ the young soldier cries again. ‘Please, Sister, can you save it, I’m a sniper and they won’t want me now!’

A doctor, one of the six on board, passes at that moment. ‘Cut it!’ he yells. Sarah looks at him, momentarily stunned. ‘With your bloody scissors, woman! Cut the membrane, dammit!’

She takes the scissors from her pocket and snips the membrane so that the lad now holds the eye unattached in his palm. Blood from the empty socket starts to run slowly down his dirt-streaked cheek. ‘What do I do with it?’ he cries in a panic.

‘Here, give it to me,’ she says, stretching out her hand. Taking the eye from him she can’t think where to put it and so she drops it into the pinny pocket of her uniform. ‘Have you still got your field-dressing pack?’ she asks and when the young soldier nods she instructs him to take it out and use the swab on his eye. Then, in an impatient voice she will forever afterwards regret, she says, ‘I haven’t the time to do it myself, there are others worse off, I must go, you’ll just have to manage somehow.’

The boy looks down at her, the blood from his eye running into his mouth and over his chin. ‘Thank you, Sister, I’m sorry to be a nuisance,’ he apologises.

Sarah recalls how she worked all night with the surgeons while the remaining doctors tried to cope with the wounded who didn’t require immediate surgery and who could be sutured and bandaged and whose shrapnel pieces could be removed from more superficial wounds. However, the doctors found themselves often enough removing fingers and toes, and on one occasion an ear, on the spot while the soldier’s mates held the patient down, with part of his tunic stuffed into his mouth so he could bite on it.

By dawn the pile of arms and legs in the operating theatre was stacked to a height of four feet, leaving just enough space for staff to move around the operating tables. The orderlies were unable to keep up with the removal of severed limbs or find a place to store them. Soon it became apparent that what room there was on board was needed for the living, and the ship’s small mortuary was packed with the dead. But the severed arms and legs could not be allowed to decay in the heat, so, together with other bits and pieces, they were thrown, unweighted, overboard. For weeks afterwards they washed up on the beach at Lemnos ten miles away and as far as Alexandria, more than a hundred miles from the beachhead at Gallipoli.

By morning the unventilated ship’s hold and the decks carried eight hundred casualties with every nook and cranny packed with wounded men, most of them still unattended to. The rest of the medical staff worked to save the lives of the more critically wounded except for a single orderly who handed out water and cigarettes and occasionally lit a fag or held a tepid mug of water to the lips of a soldier too sick or unable to use his hands.

For the most part, the normal nursing duties were left to those soldiers more lightly wounded who procured the few blankets available, less than fifty, changed dressings, made tea and prepared what food there was for their mates, often going short themselves.

These same men, without complaining, performed a further duty they would never have contemplated in civilian life. The ship’s toilets were inadequate and soon clogged hopelessly. With no bedpans available, piles of newspapers were handed out so that the men could defecate on a sheet of newsprint, which was then wrapped into a parcel and thrown overboard. As one wag was heard to remark, ‘Most of what’s in the newspapers is a load of shit anyway.’

Yet, once on board, those in pain were stoic to the extreme, barely wincing when shrapnel was cut out or lesions stitched. Others waited patiently for surgery, often slipping in and out of consciousness. The ship sailed at morning light, its hold crammed with wounded men, not an inch of deck space available to fit another casualty.

Sarah was transferred to the No. 1 Australian Hospital at Heliopolis where she nursed in a constant state of organised chaos and where the relationships between the Australian soldiers and the nurses more resembled the feelings between brothers and sisters than those of medical staff and patients. In the five months she stayed before being sent to Britain, Sarah lost thirty pounds in weight. She had regained half this amount by the time she met Ben again, yet he thought her nothing but skin and bone and talked constantly of fattening her up.

Now, as she stood listening to the platitudinous nonsense from the old, tired warrior whom all England so loved and worshipped and watched Ben’s terrible discomfort, tears began to roll down Sarah’s cheeks. She knew it was wrong to love Ben, that he would soon be gone, back to the horrors of France where his chances of returning to her were even slimmer than they’d been at Gallipoli. ‘Ben Teekleman, I love you,’ she whispered through her tears, ‘please don’t die.’

When it became Ben’s turn to receive his medal she watched as Lord Kitchener bent to pin it to his chest. Then she saw the old man suddenly jerk his head back in surprise and drop the medal into Ben’s lap and immediately move on to the next man. She saw that Ben was weeping softly.

Later he told her what had happened. Lord Kitchener, noting Ben’s two mentions-in-dispatches and the Military Medal he was about to pin to his chest, remarked, ‘Well done, you’ve had a good war, Sergeant-Major.’

To which Ben replied, ‘Your Lordship, there is nothing good about this war, except that good men are dying because of the arrogance and stupidity of the old men who lead them.’

It is to Lord Kitchener’s credit that nothing was done about Ben’s remark. Those hearing about it from Kitchener’s aide-de-camp, who held the medal cushion at the time, simply think it typical of the uncouth Australian soldier who refuses to salute his superiors and deserves the contempt with which the English military regard the rancorously undisciplined antipodeans.

Sarah Atkins, though having to maintain her distance while Ben is in the hospital, spends a few minutes with him each day after she has completed her shift. She will pull a screen around his bed and allow him to kiss her, though only briefly. Soon they both long for the time Ben will be well enough to be allowed an eight-hour leave pass from the hospital so that she can accompany him to London where they will be on their own. But his wound proves stubborn and his recovery is painfully slow.

The day of their first freedom, when it finally arrives in early April, though still cold, is filled with spring sunshine. Sparrows chirp cheekily on the pavement outside the hospital where Ben and Sarah wait for their trolley bus and people smile at them as they pass.

Sarah is dressed in civilian clothes just as if she is a soldier’s sweetheart, which indeed she is. She’s borrowed a pale blue winter coat from one of the English nurses so that she doesn’t have to wear her army coat which will give away her officer’s rank. Ben can hardly believe how pretty she looks and when she puts her arm in his he can feel his heart thumping madly.

Sarah has packed a picnic lunch and, after getting off at the Embankment, they walk along the Thames, stopping to admire Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and visit Westminster Abbey, after which they cross Horse Guards Parade and enter St James’s Park. The ground is still too cold to sit on, but Ben removes his army greatcoat, spreading it on the grass and Sarah lays out the lunch. ‘It’s only hospital sandwiches and a raisin bun,’ she apologises, ‘but I managed to scrounge an orange and I’ve brought a thermos of tea.’

‘As long as there’s no tinned meat?’

Sarah laughs. ‘Cheese, lettuce and onions or apricot jam, take your pick, either way you’re in trouble?’

‘Trouble? Why’s that?’

‘The apricot jam will make you too sticky to kiss and the onion too smelly,’ she teases him.

Ben smiles happily. ‘No kiss, no afternoon tea.’

‘Afternoon tea? There’s only three cups in the thermos.’

‘At the Ritz, my dear.’

‘Whatever can you mean?’

‘Victoria, my sister. It’s all arranged. We’re to have afternoon tea at the Ritz.’

‘Your sister is at the Ritz? The Ritz Hotel? Isn’t that very posh?’

‘No, she’s simply arranged it. Sent them a telegram, I suppose. Victoria can arrange anything, anywhere at the drop of a hat, for all I know she probably did it through the High Commissioner’s office who would have sent a flunkey round.’

Instead of looking as pleased as he’d expected, Ben now sees that Sarah has an unmistakeable look of panic on her face. ‘But, Ben, places like that are only for the nobs, the very rich. How will we know how to behave? What fork or spoon to use?’

‘It’s only afternoon tea, Sarah. Sandwiches and cakes, a pot of tea and a glass of champagne. We can pretend to be nobs for an afternoon, can’t we?’

‘You can’t pretend to be a nob. You either are or you’re not, the very rich are different, you can always tell, they’re not like you and me. The people in those posh hotels can see a couple of country bumpkins coming for miles.’

‘Is that so?’ Ben laughs. ‘Do you know something, Captain Sarah Atkins?’

‘No? What?’

‘You’re a horrid little snob.’

‘Me? No I’m not! If you’d ever been in a place like that you’d know what I mean.’

‘Oh? Have you?’

‘No, of course not. But I’ve seen them at the pictures. There are at least four different glasses on the table and more knives and forks in one place-setting than we’ve got in the kitchen drawer at home.’

‘Not for afternoon tea, surely? A cup and saucer, a tea pot, a plate for the sandwiches or cake and a glass for the champagne, maybe a cake fork, oh … and a teaspoon.’

‘A cake fork? There you go. Now there’s a fork made especially for cake?’

‘Yeah, on one side the tines are joined, to create an edge for cutting through the cake, or a tart or flan.’

‘How do you know all this, Ben Teekleman?’ Sarah asks suspiciously.

‘I saw it in the pictures,’ Ben fibs.

‘It’s not funny, Ben. You’re not a woman. You don’t feel these things. When you grow up having to make your new dress by unpicking someone else’s old one, when you see a pretty pair of shoes in a shop window and know you have to buy the plain pair with the sensible heels that will last you all summer because you can only have one pair, when as a young nurse there are holes in your spencer and your stockings have darns on the darns, you soon learn your place in life and it isn’t with the nobs.’ She pauses and looks at him with her big hazel eyes. ‘And it isn’t having tea at the Ritz. I’m not ashamed of being who I am, I don’t want to be anyone or anything else, I’m very happy being me. It’s only that I’m sensible enough to know I can’t have everything or that having everything is even good for me.’

‘You could always marry a rich man, you’re way, way pretty enough and quite the nicest person I know?’

‘I don’t want to marry a rich man, I want to marry a man who loves me and me him. I could’ve if I’d wanted, there’s been two or three officers who have proposed to me, from nice families, quite well-to-do, too.’

Ben shakes his head. ‘I wouldn’t marry an officer if I were you, my dear. Never know where they’ve been. In my experience they’re a very shallow type of person.’

‘What do you mean? I’m an officer, Ben Teekleman!’

‘Well, nobody’s perfect,’ Ben answers. ‘It’s afternoon tea at the Ritz for the likes of us, my girl. Fatten you up. Two country bumpkins from New Norfolk and Toowoomba, to hell with the nobs, what do you say, eh?’

‘Are you sure, Ben?’ Sarah says, still looking doubtful and suddenly feeling dowdy in her borrowed blue coat, sensible brown lace-up shoes and heavy lisle stockings.

‘Come here, Sarah Atkins,’ Ben commands and takes her in his arms and kisses her, oblivious of who might be looking. ‘I’ve never been surer of anything, I’m only a sergeant-major, but will you marry me?’

‘Oh, Ben. I love you so very much.’

‘When? Next week?’

Sarah pulls away from him and is silent for a while, staring at her hands which are folded in her lap. Then she looks up. ‘No, Ben, after it’s all over. After the war. I’ll marry you and have your children and love you forever, but no one has the right to marry while this is going on.’

Ben too is silent, then he takes her by the hands and looks into her eyes. ‘Sarah Atkins, will you marry me the day after armistice is declared?’

Sarah smiles. ‘On the very hour, Ben Teekleman, while they’re still ringing the church bells.’

‘We need a glass of champagne to celebrate and I know just where to get one.’

‘The Ritz? Are you quite sure, darling?’

‘Don’t you know sergeants-major are never in any doubt about anything, my dearest?’

BEN AND JOSHUA 1916

‘If any question why we died,

Tell them, because our fathers lied.’

- Rudyard Kipling

In May 1916, after spending a month at the Monte Video Convalescent Camp near Weymouth, Ben is sent back up to London to A.I.F. Headquarters where the medical officers at Horseferry Road pronounce him, though not without a fair amount of persuasion, fit for France. (’Sergeant-Major Teekleman, you’ve done enough, there’s plenty to do here in England to see you out.’) He is finally issued with his travel documents and a forty-eight-hour leave pass to commence at five that afternoon. It has only just gone noon which means Ben has five hours to kill and the chief medical officer at the depot kindly signs him out, ‘Go on, hop it, lad, enjoy yourself,’ thus adding the extra time gratuitously to his leave.

Ben calls the hospital at Wandsworth from a telephone box on Horseferry Road and asks to speak to Sister Atkins, hoping Sarah may be able to spend the extra time away with him. He asks to be put through to surgery and when a man’s voice answers, presumably a hospital orderly, he asks again for Sister Atkins. ‘She’s been called into surgery on an emergency,’ the voice says.

‘Damn!’ Ben exclaims.

‘You wouldn’t be Sergeant-Major Ben Teekleman by any chance, would you?’ the voice on the other end enquires.

‘The same,’ Ben replies.

‘Righto then. She’s left a message to say if you’ve been given your medical clearance for France and have a leave pass she’ll meet you at the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus at four o’clock this afternoon. Don’t worry, Sergeant-Major, she’s a grand lass even if she is an officer, good luck to you. There’ll not be a word spoken about this.’

‘Good onya, thanks mate, tell her I’ll be there with knobs on,’ Ben says this cheerfully so that the voice on the other end won’t sense his disappointment. It would have been the icing on the cake to have the extra time to spend with Sarah.

He smiles to himself, remembering how he’d practised the way he would ask her about sharing his forty-eight-hour leave with him. He’d worked up and rejected a hundred different approaches in his head, though shortlisting some of them first and expressing them aloud to himself, trying to imagine what her reaction would be. At the same time, he’d invented cover-up sentences if she refused. One of these emerged as a favourite: ‘It was in poor taste, my dearest, I am so very sorry, Sarah,’ which seemed to Ben to have a touch of dignity and even sophistication to it and was a damn sight better than simply mumbling, ‘Sorry, it’s just that I was hoping…’ which was probably what he’d end up saying because he’d be so nervous and shamefaced he’d forget the rehearsed apology.

When the time came Ben approached the subject carefully. ‘Sarah, my dearest, when I go to France I’ll have forty-eight hours’ leave, do you think you could get the time off?’ Then before she could reply he chickened out and quickly added, ‘The… er, I mean, the daylight hours and some of the evening, you could take a taxi back to the nurses’ hostel?’

He was afraid to look at her, afraid of the rejection and of the disappointment he’d see in her eyes. Instead, she took him by both hands so that he was forced to look at her. ‘Ben, I’m not a virgin, there was someone when I was sixteen, a boy my parents were keen on, whose father had the general store.’ She paused, her lovely eyes fixed on his own. ‘Are you very angry?’

‘Angry?’ he replied. ‘No, just very relieved. Seeing we’re confessing to each other, nor am I a virgin, though it wasn’t the storekeeper’s daughter, it was the wife of the farmer next door and I was fifteen at the time.’

‘Does that mean it’s all right for me to stay the night with you?’ she asked a little tremulously.

‘Only if you insist,’ he laughed, then added, ‘I’ll try to find the name of a nice hotel.’

Whereupon she opened her handbag, took out a small piece of folded paper and handed it to Ben. ‘One of the English sisters at the hospital gave it to me. She says it’s nice and clean and not expensive, a boarding house in Paddington. She says the lady who runs it understands about soldiers going to the front and calls it “Doing my little bit for the war effort”.’

Ben took the note and wrote to the woman, enclosing a pound note which was the tariff for two nights including a breakfast of soft-boiled eggs, toast and marmalade and a cup of tea.

With four hours to spare Ben has a sudden inspiration, or, rather, he received a letter from Victoria the previous day in which she asked him when he intended getting engaged. His letters over the last two and a half months to her have been filled with Sarah of whom Victoria obviously approves as she demanded to have a snapshot. They’d found a small photographic studio in Penny Lane and he’d sent off a nice photo of them both. In her latest letter she’d written to say how thin he looked and urged him to eat more and then continued: You both look so happy and your Sarah is quite the prettiest woman, probably much too good for you. My urgent advice is to become betrothed as soon as possible so she can’t get away. Victoria, as usual, had it all planned out.

There’s a rather nice shop in Albermarle Street named Garrard’s which you may care to visit. They will, I feel sure, have a good assortment of engagement rings. I am enclosing a cheque from Grandfather Hawk on Coutts Bank for one thousand pounds, with it is a letter to the bank authorising you, on proof of your identity, to cash it. You should be able to get a simply splendid diamond ring for about three hundred pounds, three or four carats at the very least, and I urge you to spoil her rotten with the remaining money. Take her shopping to Simpson’s or Harrods of Piccadilly in Knightsbridge, a pretty dress, nice shoes, she will choose her own underwear and you won’t like the hat she chooses (men never do). Dare I suggest a glamorous nightdress as well? After all, my dearest brother, you are in London and in love and should make the most of it.

Oh dear, I do so worry about you going to France. I know it’s not fair to say so, but I cannot help myself, I pray you fail your medical, though just sufficiently to be sent home to fully recover your health or, at the very least, so that you are given a tour of duty away from the front.

News recently to hand from Sir Abraham is that Joshua has been transferred to a fighting unit and is no longer in an ordnance battalion. He didn’t say which one, but he seemed pleased. Men are so stupid. Though, on the other hand, you already know how I felt about him escaping the fighting, thinking some special arrangement had been made. I’m glad I was wrong and Joshua goes up considerably in my estimation.

With several hours to spare before he is to meet Sarah, Ben visits Coutts Bank, identifies himself and cashes Hawk’s cheque. He immediately opens an account in the name of Sarah Atkins for four hundred pounds and hails a taxi to take him to Albermarle Street where he is deposited at the entrance of Garrard’s the jewellers. The top-hatted, brass-buttoned and overcoated doorman looks him over suspiciously as he steps up to the doorway and blocks Ben’s path. ‘Do you have an appointment, sir?’ he asks somewhat imperiously.

‘No, do I need one?’

‘It is not unusual, sir. Are you quite sure it is Garrard’s the jewellers you are looking for?’

‘That’s two questions in a row and we haven’t even been introduced. A bit of a nosy parker, ain’t ya?’ Ben says, leaning on his Australian drawl. ‘What is it? That I’m not an officer?’

‘Orstralian are you then, sir?’

‘That’s right, mate, and bloody proud of it. Are you going to let me in or is this conversation going to go on ’til dinner time?’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I only wished to avoid embarrassing you.’

‘I’m an Australian, I can’t be embarrassed.’

The doorman grins at this and opens the door. ‘Beg pardon, sir, I ‘ope you find what you’re looking for.’

‘So do I, mate,’ Ben says, entering the shop where he is approached by a stout man who has every appearance of having just stepped out of a very hot bathtub. He is an even-coloured bright pink from his shining pate to his clean-shaven chin and has the palest blue eyes Ben has ever seen. His baldness is fringed on three sides with a neatly clipped curtain of snowy hair. Dressed in striped pants and morning coat, his starched white shirt set off with an electric blue silk cravat, the man appears to be in his mid-fifties or perhaps a little older.

He, too, now approaches Ben with one eyebrow slightly arched and then Ben sees that his eyes go to the colour patch on his shoulder with the bronze ‘A’ for Anzac and immediately the man’s expression changes. ‘Good afternoon, sir, may I be of service?’ he asks, bringing a pair of folded pink hands up to his chest.

‘Thank you, yes, I’d like to see a ring.’

‘A ring? And what sort of ring might that be, sir? A signet ring for your good self? A wedding ring, do I hear wedding bells? Or is it, yes, I have an instinct for these things, an engagement ring?’

‘Engagement. For my fiancee,’ Ben says, then corrects himself, ‘to be, that is.’

‘Our congratulations, sir. A diamond, is it?’

Ben nods. ‘Yes, please, not too big, I don’t want to, you know, embarrass her.’

The floor manager, or whoever he is, for he is plainly senior to the other staff who seem to be standing around trying to look busy with only one other person in the shop, smiles despite himself. ‘Sir, it is my experience that a young lady is seldom embarrassed by the size of the diamond on her finger.’ He seems to hesitate a moment then says in a not unkindly manner, ‘I do hope we can accommodate you, sir, but I must tell you that there has been rather a rush on our diamond rings of late and we have no stones left under thirty pounds. Perhaps you could try Hatton Gardens, I am told that there you may obtain what is called a “soldier’s stone”, a very nice little ring for under five pounds.’

Ben smiles to himself. Unlike the doorman, at least this old bloke is trying to let him down lightly. ‘I’d like to see a two or three carat, round brilliant cut, a “D” flawless, forty-six-facet diamond set in twenty-two-carat gold, nothing too fancy, mind. Like I said, I shouldn’t want her to think I was trying to show off, but if I cop it in France, my girl will have a bit of a legacy.’ All this information comes from Victoria’s letter to him and Ben is quietly proud of the authoritative manner in which he delivers her instructions.

The shop assistant, despite an attempt to retain his composure, is obviously taken aback. ‘A “D” flawless? Yes, of course. Certainly, sir.’ He gives Ben a small bow. ‘My name is Johnson, Jack Johnson, I am the manager here at Garrard’s.’

‘Jack Johnson, same as the heavyweight champ, eh? Nice to meet you, Mr Johnson.’ Ben stretches out his hand. ‘Ben… Ben Teekleman.’ Johnson accepts Ben’s hand in a surprisingly firm grip.

‘Teekleman? Teekleman? Name rings a bell.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Ben says doubtfully. ‘Not too many of us Teeklemans about.’

‘May I suggest a private office, Mr Teekleman? Perhaps a cup of tea, not quite the sherry hour, but perhaps we can send the boy out for a beer?’

‘Cuppa tea be nice,’ Ben says, suddenly enjoying himself.

He is shown into a small oak-panelled office which is obviously set up for no other purpose than to show important clients the shop’s premium merchandise. It has two heavily studded, uncomfortable-looking club chairs upholstered in green Spanish leather with a small display table between them. A second, slightly larger table is placed to the left of his chair and Ben correctly supposes this is for the tea service. There is a picture of the King on the wall as well as the Garrard’s Letters Patent Royal framed beside it. The carpet is of a slightly lighter shade of green than the chairs.

‘Please, do sit down,’ Johnson says, indicating one of the leather chairs, then, ‘If you’ll excuse me just a moment, Mr Teekleman?’ Jack Johnson bows slightly again and leaves, to return several minutes later waving a sheet of paper triumphantly. Walking behind him is a pale, sickly-looking, pimply-faced young assistant, also in morning dress, carrying a tray draped in black velvet.

‘Ah, here it is, I thought so, I have a letter from Miss Victoria Teekleman of Hobart, Tasmania, received… let me see,’ Johnson glances down at the letter, ‘two weeks ago. In it she suggests we may have the pleasure of a visit from you.’ Johnson looks up, plainly pleased with himself. Whatever Victoria has said in the letter has given him all the confirmation he needs to provide Ben with the full Garrard’s favoured-client treatment.

The young assistant sets down the tray upon which are placed several tiny envelopes. Jack Johnson, sitting in the remaining chair, opens the tiny flap of one of them and rolls a diamond onto the velvet tray. ‘A lovely Kimberley blue-white of two and a half carats, Mr Teekleman.’

‘No, no, you misunderstand me, Mr Johnson. I wish to see a ring. You see, I need it this afternoon. I only have forty-eight hours’ leave before I go to France.’

‘It is most unusual to make up jewellery with a stone of this quality without first ascertaining the customer’s exact requirements,’ Johnson says a little primly.

‘My exact requirements are a ring with a diamond,’ Ben points to the beautiful gem sparkling on the velvet cloth, ‘bigger than that one and in about an hour.’

Johnson appears to be thinking, then comes to a decision, ‘I have an order made up for a client,’ he pauses and then, unable to resist the temptation to name-drop, adds, ‘well, actually it’s the Duchess of…’ He pauses again. ‘Well, never mind, it is not required until late next week when she comes up to stay at Claridges’.’ Then he adds gratuitously, ‘She has given over her London residence to the military, I believe.’ Johnson frowns suddenly. ‘Oh dear, a complication occurs to me.’ Ben remains silent. ‘If I recall correctly, it has two baguette diamonds to the side of the main stone?’

‘May I see it, please?’ Ben asks.

‘Why certainly, sir, though on the hush-hush, we shouldn’t like it to get out, I believe it’s a surprise for her daughter.’

‘Tight as a chook’s bum,’ Ben says.

‘I beg your pardon, what was that, sir?’

‘I promise not to mention it to the duchess or her daughter,’ Ben grins.

‘Well then,’ Johnson says, ‘if you are prepared to accept this little rearrangement, we can remove the canary diamond at present in it and replace it with the one of your choosing. The transfer will take no more than half an hour, sir.’