The Storms of War (44 page)

‘We still could hold a ball.’

‘Of course we could.’ It hurt her that she could see him saying things to please her.

‘Now we have you back, we can do anything.’ They were halfway along the house. Only four and a half laps to go, thought Celia, then chastised herself. She was disgusted that she could want to hurry up time with her father, escape him, when she had yearned for him for so long.

‘I wanted to add a lot to the house. I hoped to give it a whole front entrance.’

‘We could start planning it. Easily.’

‘I am so tired now, Celia. I feel tired almost as soon as I get up. I am not a young man any more.’

‘I can be young for you. Come, Papa. We should go in for the service.’ Since the hospital had started up, they had asked the vicar to give a service at twelve and again at eight, after his duties in the church. ‘You’ll like it, Papa. It is beautiful to hear the men singing.’

She turned back and he was weeping. She threw her arms around him. ‘Papa, what is it? Was it the service? I’m sorry. Don’t be upset.’

His face was buried in his hands. ‘No, no, my dear, really. I just remembered the other men I have left behind.’

‘What was it like there, Papa? Was it very hard?’

‘We tried to sing to keep our spirits up, but sometimes the guards would not let us even do that. There was so little food. Sometimes I could hardly sleep, I felt so hungry. And other things, little things really. We had to hand in our mattresses and blankets every morning, receive them back at night, you had nothing that was your own, not even that. But I should not complain. It is nothing to what our soldiers have gone through every day, nothing to what Michael had to endure on those battlefields before he died. And you, my dear, things were not easy for you with the ambulances.’

‘No, but I could go where I pleased. I could have come home if I wanted to.’ She was glad, so far, that he had asked her little about the ambulances. No one ever really had, she thought, apart from Miss Webb. And she always disappointed anyone who did ask because she had no easy way of summing it up. Warterton would, she supposed, say something like
terribly cold but jolly good fun. Formed friendships for life with the other girls.
She had written again recently, saying that Cooper had been dismissed and sent home, although she hadn’t seemed to care much. Celia could hardly believe, really, that Warterton was still there.

‘There are many men still there. My friend Mr Jozef, the tailor from Hackney, and Mr Wehrer, the music teacher – we always called each other Mr, not Herr – I cannot see how they can get out. I am so happy and they are still locked away.’

‘Maybe they’ll set them free too, Papa.’

He clutched her arm. ‘I do not think so. I know I have been fortunate. Someone pulled strings to let me out.’

‘Yes.’ She stared at the house, the glass in the windows shimmering back at her. The men would be seating themselves, ready to sing now.

‘Someone had influence. Someone succeeded.’

‘Papa—’

‘I know it was Lord Smith. He – well, his man – wrote to me
not long after I arrived and asked if I would sell my factories to him. I knew what he meant. He meant that if I sold to him for a good price, he would get me out. I was wilful, Celia, I resisted. I was wrong. And then last year, I relented.’

‘Oh Papa, you didn’t!’

‘I told Mr Lewis and Mr Pemberton to sell him all but two of them. Those I kept, my favourites. He has the others.’

‘Mr Pemberton didn’t tell us.’ The lights at the back of the house gleamed into her eyes, all, she knew, using dozens of candles and jugs of oil. They didn’t have the money for it, not really.

‘He kept it secret, as he should. But see, Celia, it has worked. Lord Smith has got me out. I am here now. And yes, I am less without them. But I shall build up again.’

‘It wasn’t Lord Smith, Papa.’

‘Of course it was, my dear. I shall write to him soon; I will leave it just long enough for it to be discreet.’

‘What if it was someone else and you sold the factories for no reason?’

‘Who else could it be? Come now, Celia, let us go inside.’

Celia followed him in. Perhaps it
was
Lord Smith, she thought, briefly, then dismissed the notion. What power could he ever have had? It was the general, and he would be coming for her soon.

They joined the service at the back of the room. The men were singing: ‘Dear Lord and father of mankind, Forgive our foolish ways.’ Captain Campbell from B Ward played the old piano that Celia and Emmeline had thumped on as children. Celia tried to sing, but the tears were hot behind her eyes.
How were we foolish?
she wanted to cry.
What else could we have done?

Celia did not always have time to read the newspapers. The men asked her to buy them from the village, along with cigarettes, sweets, books, and they would occasionally squeeze her fingers when she handed them over. Most days she passed the papers to them as untouched and unopened as the boxes of cigarettes and bags of sweets.

After six weeks Tom’s eyes had improved enough that the doctor allowed him to read, and he began to ask for the newspaper. Sometimes, when she delivered it to his bed in what was the dining room, he asked her to read aloud to him. ‘We are moving forward on the Western Front,’ she read. ‘The German army are exhausted. The British have victory within their sights. Belgium awaits our advances – and will thank us for our long efforts in freeing it from tyranny.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘They’ll be in the trenches for ever. Tell me something else.’ He often broke into a dreadful cough, retching, tears coming to his eyes. He sent her to burrow into the social columns, give him anything but war. But the royal family had little to report – Ascot and the balls were still suspended until peace arrived, and the King was talking to Lloyd George while the Queen visited hospitals.

After a while, she began to make up stories to tell him, describing balls at Buckingham Palace and the marvellous gowns worn for the latest presentation to the Queen. He lay back with his eyes closed. She sometimes thought he was not listening, imagined that if she read out recipes and bridge reports, he would not notice. She wanted to touch his face.

When Verena and Emmeline had realised Tom was in the
hospital, they were furious. ‘He wasn’t there!’ Celia told them. ‘Honestly. Professor Punter got it all wrong. I promise you!’

Emmeline shrugged, said it was true that no one had officially said it, and Professor Punter had always struck her as rather wavering. Verena shook her head and refused to listen. But she had to treat him as a patient. Generally, she tried to avoid him.

So far, Tom’s family had not been to see him. Most of the men didn’t want visitors, it was true, but their families were further away. Tom had told them not to tell his mother, said he would go to her when he was recovered. Celia sometimes felt a stab of guilt about Mary, the gentleness in her face as she offered Celia Tom’s letter to read, all those years ago. It would be easy enough to call at their house next time she was in the village. She didn’t; walked twice past the end of their road on an errand for Matron and did not turn down.

So far, the girl hadn’t visited him either. At night, she danced through Celia’s mind, laughing and throwing back her hair. She dared not ask Tom about her, expected, one day, to walk past the room and see her there.

When she read out the news from the Western Front to the other men, they asked her to repeat it, shouting it out. ‘The German army are exhausted!’ they called to each other. The idea of peace was spreading fast. They talked intensely but quietened as she entered the room. ‘You just need to hang on until it’s over,’ she heard one telling another. ‘That’s it, just pick a hole in it so it won’t heal. Who wants to be sent out to clean up after them all?’

‘First in, last out,’ replied the other, his voice thick with the exertion of tearing at his scar. Celia supposed she should report them. In France, one of the nurses had told her that they practically had to glue the dressings to the men, to stop them from tearing them off and trying to pick the wound open.

Emmeline had become caught up by the news. She sang around the ward, talked of shopping in London, told Celia to smile. She was getting plumper, too, even though there was less food than ever. She had been up to London twice to stay for the weekend
in Bloomsbury, but Mr Janus said it was more unsafe than ever and she had to return to Stoneythorpe.

Celia didn’t know if she could believe that the war was going to end. Too many times before, everyone had said it was nearly over, or that it would go on for ever. Rudolf had been with them for a month, and she still hadn’t heard from the general. Every day, she dreaded a letter being handed to her by Thompson. ‘Something from the War Office, miss.’ Perhaps, she thought late at night, when the general’s pale eyes were in her mind and would not let her sleep, perhaps she would be terrible at the job and he would let her go. She was painfully aware that she hadn’t asked him how long he would need her for.

‘Do you think we could run away?’ she said to Tom, in the middle of reading him an invented court report. The room was quiet. Three of the soldiers had gone out to take the air, and the others were asleep. ‘Could we go to France or something? After it’s all over. We could find Arthur in Paris.’

His eyes opened. ‘What are you talking about, Celia? Run away? How can I go anywhere? And why would you want to leave? You are happy here.’

‘Wouldn’t you like to go to Paris?’ She had last sat here properly as a family on that night with Sir Hugh, when Michael had fought him and Verena had tried to give them all French sauce on the food, to make Sir Hugh like them better.

‘Probably not any more. I suppose it’s as bombed out as everywhere else.’

Then she remembered. ‘You have a girl.’

He flushed. ‘Celia, you know there was never a girl. Yes, of course I met girls. But there was never one I loved. I lied to you.’ He looked quickly around him. The men were still asleep. ‘Sorry.’

‘Why did you lie to me?’

He shrugged. ‘I am sorry. I couldn’t think of another way. I couldn’t tell you about your brother. And there was another thing. When we were younger, we talked of running away together, of living in Paris. I thought we could. But we can’t, you know.’

‘We are grown up now, yes. But I don’t know. Paris is always
there.’ She gazed at the bandage on his arm. Sir Hugh had sat just where Tom was now, talking about the Callerton game.

‘We can’t do that sort of thing. Or not in the way we thought it. We could go as brother and sister.’

‘I’m too plain for you, is that it?’

‘No, Celia.’ He looked around the room. ‘You’re beautiful. But … listen. Have you never thought about my father?’

‘He left your mother when you were small. You have not seen him since. Your mother remarried, had the other children, he left too.’

‘She was never married. Never.’

‘Lots of women don’t marry,’ she said, stoutly, the new knowledge she had gained from the war. ‘It’s no crime.’ She was whispering, afraid of waking the other men. She had to hold on to the conversation, she knew. Matron might come in, commanding, or Nurse Lloyd looking pretty, and Tom would go quiet.

‘She couldn’t marry. My father was already married.’

‘Oh. How do you know?’ She leant forwards towards him. She could smell the thick ointment they still had to plaster on his face and chest.

‘She told me. And I know him. I have always known him.’

‘So you see him? He acknowledges you?’ The man in the next bed stirred.
Don’t move,
she wanted to say.
Don’t wake up.

‘Yes. Very much so. Although not as his son. As a … friend.’

‘As a friend?’ She heard the words, but the meaning behind them was blurred. ‘Does your mother mind?’ She felt a stab of guilt thinking about Mrs Cotton.

‘Not really. She has never talked about it. I just know.’

‘I think he must be very wrong to love your mother when he was already married. And leave her alone with you. He is a man of little moral fibre, I think. I said this to you before, I remember. No man who deserts a woman thus can be a true man.’ She enjoyed the standpoint that came from being right. It made her speak clearly.

‘Celia—’

‘Men should be answerable for that sort of thing. I think things
will change after the war. I really do. I mean, if he had acknowledged you properly, your life would have been different.’ She was warming to her theme even more. It was so much easier to talk about this than her own feelings, a little as if she was winning a debate at school. It was so exciting, hearing about Tom’s father. If she spoke well, she told herself, the conversation would continue.

‘That’s true.’

‘Don’t you ever want to challenge him and say … You should stand up in front of the world and say, “I’m yours”.’ Her voice was louder now, but she didn’t care. She was right!

‘How can he? It would hurt his family.’ Tom turned his head and looked square in her face. His direct gaze made her feel shy, but she kept her eyes on his.

‘They should know what kind of a person he really is.’

‘Sometimes things aren’t made better by telling the truth.’

‘The truth is always the most important thing.’ She was almost floating on the excellence of her argument. This must be what it was like in Parliament, when you knew you were winning the point. Tom would agree with her and the two of them would be bound together in this new endeavour – and the whole world would know about his father.

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’ She smiled, almost shouted the word.

‘You really think that I should tell everyone who my father is?’

‘I do.’

He coughed, dreadfully, turned to the side as it ended with a retch. It was the gas cough, she knew. He gathered his breath. ‘Even though it would hurt people.’

‘The truth is more important.’

‘Even though it would hurt you?’ He averted his eyes from her gaze, began fidgeting with his hands.

She shook her head. ‘Why would it hurt me?’ But something was creeping up on her, a slow, cold feeling, like water rising around her feet in a bath that was filling. She looked at his face, turned away from her, and her heart dropped.

‘Why do you think?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what you mean.’
Come back!
she wanted to say. But all her clarity was gone and she was lost in a mist again, couldn’t see through.

‘Well, if you don’t know, can’t even guess, I shouldn’t say.’ One of the men turned over and yawned loudly. Tom lowered his voice to a tiny whisper. ‘Listen, Celia, you must have other duties.’

‘I want to hear,’ she hissed. ‘I want to know. You have to tell me now.’

‘I don’t think I do.’

‘You must. Why can’t you? Please.’ She put her hand out to his. He pulled it away.

‘I can’t.’

‘Please.’

He looked away and sighed. She watched him. The moment stilled between them. This was her chance to say
Stop!
She didn’t. ‘Go on.’

‘Celia, have you never guessed? It’s your father.’

She stared at him. ‘What are you talking about? You’re joking.’ She wanted to throw back her head and laugh, the idea was so ridiculous. ‘It is not true! You’re mistaken. It is lies. Your mother told you lies.’ The man in the next bed raised his head, looked confused.

‘It is true, Celia. Think about it. I promise on my life.’ Rudolf coming to greet him first.
My boy,
he had said.

She dropped her voice. ‘I’ve never heard anything like it. Why tell these lies?’

‘It’s true. The night before I left for France, I told my mother what I was going to do. I tried to tell you too, do you remember? Well, anyway, she was so angry. She started telling me all these things. She told me about your father. She told me everything. I’d talked of you, you see, and she laughed at me and said that even if I wasn’t a servant, I couldn’t ever think of you.’

She stared at him, her eyes dropping and head rushing.

‘Everything. And it all made sense. That’s why your father has done so much for me. He’s mine, too. So you see, we can’t go to Paris together. We’re brother and sister.’

She stood up. ‘It’s not true. You’re telling me lies!’ She leapt towards the door, the chair clattering to the floor behind her. The man in the next bed was sitting up now. She ran from the room, not looking back.

‘What is it?’ said Emmeline. ‘Celia, it’s two o’clock in the morning. Why are you looking out of the window? I have to get up at six.’

‘I can’t sleep.’ Three days since Tom had spoken, and she was looking at the rose garden in the gloom. The place where Tom had kissed her, four years ago. It was their fault. They had dug up the ground to put in the sculptures, disturbed it. Now it was coming for them, spreading its curse around.

‘Well, try. I’m so tired. This is the third night you’ve been padding about here. It is too much. Samuel is coming to visit soon. Thanks to you, I’ll be too tired to talk to him.’

‘You’re always sleeping. And you’re sick in the mornings. You should go to the doctor.’

‘I am quite well, thank you. Well, I would be if you would settle down. I could sleep in the middle of one of the wards and get more rest than this.’

‘I can’t sleep. I really can’t.’

The days since Tom had spoken had been dreadful. She could not sleep or eat. Every time Rudolf came near her, she ran away, refused to be in the same room as him. She demanded Jennie’s cleaning duties so that she would not have to go into Tom’s ward. Her mind went wild with remembering and inventing. Rudolf and Mrs Cotton falling in love while she was a maid in Hampstead house. She felt sick with panic all day long. The voice in her head drummed insistently.
You have brought this terrible thing on us all.

‘I’m afraid, Emmeline,’ she said. ‘Awful things are happening.’

Emmeline sighed. ‘The war’s nearly over. The Germans are losing. Haven’t you heard?’

‘Yes. If they do! Anyway, it’s not that.’ She’d calculated. Tom was almost a year older than she. ‘Do you remember much of the summer of 1897?’

‘What, when I was two? Of course not.’

‘Do you remember Father then?’

‘Not a thing. Celia, what’s this about?’

‘Nothing. Sorry.’ Celia got into bed and pulled the covers to her chin. She lay there staring at the ceiling, her heart crashing in her chest.

The next day, Celia was hurrying through the corridor when she saw Rudolf ahead of her. She turned off into a side room. ‘Celia,’ he cried. ‘Celia. My dear.’ It was a small room, once used by the servants for items from guests. Now it was just full of things moved out of the main house that weren’t precious enough to be buried outside. She backed against the shelves full of ornaments and a pile of lampshades.

‘My dear, what is it? Are you ill? I have not seen you for three days.’