Home for Christmas (39 page)

Lydia sat very still. The two people sitting across from her looked tense as they waited for her response.

The war will be over and won by Christmas.

What a stupid prediction that was; Christmas was only a few weeks away and the war was not over. Casualties were mounting; there were many who would never get home to see another Christmas.

The countess and the priest exchanged looks that seemed to say they had agreed a decision.

The soft brown eyes resettled on Lydia.

‘Will you help us, Lydia? Will you help Englishmen and others to escape back to their lines?’

Lydia nodded vehemently. ‘I think this will be a way of declaring my disgust with this war. So, yes, I will do it.’

The countess heaved her bosom in a deep sigh.

‘You know the Cafe Dijon in the corner of the square in town?’

A vision of a small shop front peeking out from behind an orange and yellow awning sprang into her mind.

‘Yes. I know it. I sometimes take morning coffee there with a friend.’

The countess stiffened as a fleeting look of alarm flashed in her eyes.

‘Who is this friend?’

‘Jan. I think he’s the mayor’s brother,’ said Lydia.

She recalled their first meeting, the feeling that somebody on the other side of the cafe was looking at her. He’d had such a piercing look, such an amiable confidence. He had left his table and smiled down at her before purchasing a glass of wine for each of them.

She had tried to brush him off, but it hadn’t worked. He’d been so amenable, like a lighthouse in a storm.

The two people who wished to recruit her smiled. ‘Ah yes, of course. You are quite right. He is the mayor’s brother and a very good friend of ours.’

It came to her in a flash that the reason Jan had sought her out was not entirely because he was attracted to her. She was, to all intents and purposes, a German nurse. As a citizen of a conquered country, he would consider it his patriotic duty to pay court to her in the hope of obtaining useful information, though what secrets were hidden in winding bandages and dealing with bedpans, she couldn’t begin to guess.

‘Soldiers sometimes betray details of their battalion movements to a sympathetic woman,’ said the priest as if reading her mind.

A faint smile parted the countess’s lips almost frivolously, as though she were contemplating kisses long forgotten. Lydia decided the thought of an illicit relationship amused her.

‘You will continue taking coffee at the cafe three times per week,’ she said, her voice naturally melodious, naturally seductive. ‘We will get a message to you telling you when you are needed.’

Alarmed at the prospect of being asked for by name, Lydia sat bolt upright. ‘Surely not? What if it is noticed?’

The countess smiled mischievously. ‘Jan will continue to pay court to you. He will play the enamoured lover – though …’ she paused, ‘I do not think he is exactly acting the part.’

Lydia blushed. ‘I have given him no encouragement.’

‘He will pursue you hotly with gifts of chocolates, flowers and suchlike. On receipt of each item, you know you must present yourself at the cafe as soon as possible after receipt. Don’t immediately drop everything; that will only arouse suspicion. Get away when you can, though casually, without fuss. Do you understand, my dear?’

Lydia nodded. She understood very well. An idea suddenly occurred to her.

‘Is it possible that I can pass my letters for my family in England to one of the escapees perhaps?’

The countess shook her head emphatically, her lips pursed with disapproval.

‘No. That is too dangerous. Capture can mean torture and the contents of your letters could put us all in danger. I’m sorry,’ she said, on seeing the downturned corners of Lydia’s mouth, ‘I must ask you to promise me you will never do that. Never. Is that clear?’

Lydia voiced that promise, but in her mind, she contemplated what opportunities might come along. Your heart is ruling your head, she told herself and pushed the thought aside – at least for now.

A consignment of injured soldiers arrived from the front line in an assortment of vehicles; mostly horse drawn, the animals as bloody and mud spattered as the men lying groaning in the wagons.

A young man from Hamburg told her how much he liked horses and felt sorry for them. He died in her arms. Outside, almost as though saluting his passing, a series of gunshots rang out.

Knowing the truth, Lydia shuddered. Some of the horses, their strength gone, their legs broken, were being put out of their misery.

The men brought in continued to suffer.

‘What for?’ asked a man blinded by shrapnel, unknowing that a surgeon was already sorting out a saw suitable for cutting off what remained of his right leg.

The surgeon winced. He had been barking out orders to the entourage of nurses around him. Now he was still, his expression drained and despairing. ‘What for? You are questioning why we are fighting this war. I’m damned if I know,’ he muttered.

The smell of men who hadn’t washed for weeks was bad enough; added to that were the lice, the fleas, the boils and, for the most unfortunate, the foul stench of gangrenous flesh.

One amputation after another; the refilling of a gut torn open by shrapnel, the intestines pushed back in like so many pounds of sausages.

Sweat from her forehead dripped into her eyes, swiped off on the back of her hand.

Her arms ached. Her legs ached and her back ached. Hours went by until she was finally relieved.

‘Rest, Nurse Lydia.’

Lydia looked at Franz’s red-rimmed eyes, the tired paleness of his face.

‘Go rest,’ he said to her on reading her expression. ‘Go rest. This will be a long war, Nurse Lydia. We have many miles to go until this is over. And anyway, you need your rest more than most of us.’

The effect of his words cooled her heated brain. She shivered, nodded and handed over to another nurse. Time for rest, though not a proper rest. Her next job was to assist in the cleaning and bandaging of lesser injuries.

It was three o’clock in the morning before she finally left the ward, feeling she would suffocate if she didn’t get outside, away from the smell of injured men, their moans, their screams and their shouting for their mothers.

Outside she threw her head back, closed her eyes and took great gulps of air. Not that it did much good. The sight of wounded and dying men seemed ingrained on her eyelids. On reopening them, she watched her breath rise frosted from her mouth to a star-filled sky. Her fingers closed over the note in her pocket. It was from Jan Janssens.

‘I can’t wait to see you. Meet me tomorrow I beg you. My love. My precious.’

Such romantic words amid all this carnage brought a smile to her lips though tears squeezed from the corners of her tired eyes.

‘Take tomorrow off, Nurse. You have done enough for one day. More than enough.’

She had not heard Sister Drexel come up behind her and the sound of her voice made her jump.

‘Thank you. But if you should need me …’

‘I do not need overtired nurses. There will be a short lull in the fighting now. Everyone needs some rest, though God knows it is never enough. Go meet your lover. Live a little whilst you can. Escape from this carnage.’

My lover! Lydia almost laughed aloud; Jan looked the part of a lover, but so far had not played the part except in public when he took her hand or kissed her cheeks. Whatever would Sister Drexel say if she knew their relationship had more to do with escape than love? True escape, though not for her but for the soldiers trapped behind enemy lines. For three weeks this persisted, until the unforeseen occurred.

It was market day, so the cafe was crowded. There was something awe inspiring about the farmers and other country folk, setting out their wares despite the sound of the guns and rowdy soldiers, drinking themselves into oblivion so they might forget where they were.

Jan made the usual fuss of her, kissing her hands, then her cheeks whilst whispering sweet words into her ears – English words for the most part, plus some German.

Anyone overhearing would presume he was murmuring words of love. If they’d listened more closely they might ascertain that he was telling her how many men he was hiding and the schedule for getting them out.

She followed Jan out of the cafe on Vermeer Square to his house on Timmermann Street. She asked him where the street had got its name. He had murmured something about brotherly love. ‘Like me and my brother,’ he’d added.

The comment had made her laugh. The best way to describe the relationship between Jan and his brother the mayor were that they rubbed along.

Jan was the rebellious younger brother; Guido was more sedate and set in his ways. He did not exactly like the Germans but he made the best of the situation, hence the small cafe he owned on the left side of the square being full of disorderly soldiers and the more upmarket restaurant at the other end being full of equally disorderly officers.

Jan had explained. ‘My brother caters for one and all – whatever suits his pocket.’

Jan’s mother was fast asleep in a deep chair next to a roaring fire.

‘I gave her a little something and made up the fire so she would give us no trouble. Here is her shawl. And her apron.’

Lydia did as ordered, tying the apron around her middle and covering her head with Madame Cecily’s big black shawl.

Jan held his head to one side as he studied her appearance. ‘Are you ready to confess your sins?’ Wrinkles of amusement appeared at the corners of his eyes.

‘As ready as I can be.’

The church was empty, though it was not always so. Those people who knew Jan’s mother by sight came to mass or confession very early in the morning or just after lunch. Like her, they were of the older generation. Afternoons were the time for dozing and evenings were the time for supper before thinking about going to bed. The old are good at early mornings, thought Lydia.

The crypt where the men were hidden was down a steep set of stairs that wound ever downwards like a stone corkscrew.

Although they trod softly, their footsteps echoed against the cold stone of the ancient walls.

Three figures were huddled between two stone sarcophagi. Three heads jerked up when the heavy oak door separating the stairs from the tomb creaked open.

One figure seemed to unwind as though he’d been folded up like a deckchair. His head perked up higher than all the others did.

‘Miss Lydia?’

Lydia held high the lantern with which she’d found her way. She instantly recognised the tousled red hair and pale face of the young lad who had been Robert’s driver and tried to remember his name.

‘Freddie?’

‘It’s me, Miss! Blimey … excuse the language, Miss … But it’s bloody … sorry again, Miss. Lovely to see you, Miss. Really, lovely! Got lost, Miss. Got well and truly lost, I did.’

Lydia was genuinely pleased. There was a chance that Freddie might know Robert’s whereabouts. First, she explained procedure as dictated to her by Jan.

‘Freddie, it’s wonderful to see you and we will do our best to get you to the coast and a fishing boat back to England. I would like to say we can get you home for Christmas, but this is a slow process. A few difficult events have held things up.’

‘That will suit me, Miss.’

Her bright smile hid the sombre truth; a farm they regularly used had been destroyed, with the family and two escapees inside. Jan Janssens had impressed on her not to dwell on the setbacks but celebrate the successes.

They went through the usual routine of supplying the men with peasant-style clothing, though they did warn them that they were in danger of being shot as spies if they were caught.

Nothing they said could dampen the men’s spirits. The thought of getting back to England in time for Christmas saw to that.

‘We’ll get sent back over again, but might get a bit of leave for our troubles, if nothing else,’ said Freddie, his black button eyes alight with excitement before turning troubled. ‘Sorry I can’t tell you where the captain is, Miss. We came down together, but we scarpered in different directions when the bloody plane exploded. I saw a patrol and got me head down. When I popped back up he was nowhere in sight.’ He shrugged. ‘Sorry, Miss.’

Lydia bit her lip. ‘What a shame you and he were up here and I didn’t know. I thought he was serving in France not Flanders.’

‘Flanders?’ exclaimed Freddie. ‘I thought that weren’t a Frenchie accent I was hearing.’

‘Yes. Not far from Ypres.’

‘Ypres?’ Freddie’s eyebrows shot up so high, they seemed to be aiming at his hairline. ‘Wipers!’ he exclaimed, using the English version of the Belgian place name. ‘Blimey. I didn’t realise we’d strayed that far north. Still, the barrage was heavy.’

He glanced at her before turning swiftly away.

Lydia felt something move in her stomach; something like a bucket of cold water sloshing around inside. She knew he presumed that Robert was dead.

He saw her look and immediately tried to make amends. ‘But ’e got out. I’m sure of it. He’s one of the best in the Royal Flying Corps.’

It was small consolation, but helped. She had to believe that Robert was alive …

Despite the warnings, she had brought the letters she had written to Robert. Freddie will escape. He will get back to England and get the letters to Robert and to her father. If Robert got back that is. She hoped fervently that he had.

‘This bottle is empty,’ said Jan. He picked up a wine bottle. ‘I will get more. And some bread and cheese. Father Anton has it prepared as though it is for him. The man eats too much.’

Whilst he was off fetching the food, and the three soldiers were enjoying what was left of the wine in another bottle, Lydia took Freddie to one side.

‘Freddie, I’m going to ask you to do something very dangerous.’

‘Can’t be any more dangerous than fighting in this war, Miss Lydia,’ he said, shaking his head, his merry eyes dancing.

Lydia fingered the bundle of paper in her pocket.

‘I’ve written some letters to Robert. I would be very grateful if you took them back to England with you, though I must warn you how dangerous it is for both you and me.’