The Dust That Falls from Dreams (16 page)

The pilot looks round at his observer, and nods, and the observer puts his hands up. Daniel fires a brief burst to signify that he demands cooperation, and then points in the rough direction of his aerodrome. The pilot nods and they fly side by side at eighty miles an hour. The observer is dejected and sits with his face in his hands. Daniel reflects that the day hasn’t been spoiled after all, and for some reason he begins to think about the lovely house in Eltham where he used to live, before his father was killed. There were four girls living next door, Ottilie, Christabel, Sophie and Rosie. Rosie with the startling blue eyes and chestnut hair. She had been his ideal girl when he was a boy. He thinks, ‘I wonder if they’re still there? If I get through this, I’m going to call on those girls.’ He gets a warm feeling in his guts thinking about them. A house with four girls!

Back at the aerodrome the squadron leader, Major Maurice Beckenham-Gilbert, known as ‘Fluke’, emerges from his hut, and all the ack emmas, pilots and ground staff come out to admire
the captive machine, which has landed first. Daniel comes in second, blipping his engine and side-slipping to reduce speed. He volplanes into a perfect three-pointer, which is just as well in front of so many people. Everybody shakes hands with the German crew and has their photographs taken with them and Daniel in front of the Walfisch.

The crew are taken into the mess and offered tea or cognac. They choose cognac. Daniel says, ‘
Sprechen Sie Englisch?
’ and the two men shake their heads. ‘
Français?
’ and they both say, ‘
Oui, un peu
.’ The pilot supplements this with ‘
Un très petit peu
.’

‘
Je suis content de n
’
avoir pas eu le devoir de vous abattre.’

‘
Abattre?
’ questions the observer.

‘
Tuer
,’ says Daniel.

‘Ah,’ says the observer.
‘Nous aussi. Mais vous avez eu beaucoup de chance, n’est-ce pas? Que la mitrailleuse n’a pas marché?’

Major Beckenham-Gilbert interrupts. ‘Daniel, be a good fellow and translate, unless you can get them to talk in ancient Greek. Latin would do.’

‘I said I was glad that I didn’t have to kill them, and they said I was lucky that their guns were jammed.’ He turns back to the two Germans.

‘Oui, j’ai eu de la chance. Je trouve que votre machine est très beau, j’ai toujours aimé le Walfisch. Je n’aimerais pas détruire le dernier. Ça serait triste. Plus tard je veux bien l’essayer.’

‘Oui,’
answers the pilot.
‘Elle est belle mais elle est vachement vieille. J’espère qu’elle est la dernière. Je n’ai pas offert de me suicider.’

‘I said yes I was lucky, and I think the Walfisch is a lovely bus, one of my favourites. I said I was glad not to have shot it down, and I’m going to give it a spin later.’

‘Me too,’ says Beckenham-Gilbert. ‘Might be a good idea to paint out the crosses, though, and splash on some roundels. The last person to take a captured machine up for a spin got shot up the arse by a French farmer with an antique rifle.’

‘And the pilot said,’ continues Daniel, ‘that it’s too old, and he’d never volunteered to commit suicide, and I am going to reply that we all offer ourselves up for suicide every day.
On s’offre à la suicide chaque jour.’

‘C’est vrai,’
said the pilot.
‘Mais quand même…’

‘Elle est la dernière?’

‘Peut-être.’

‘Alors, elle est un trésor. Il faut la preserver
. We said it might be the last one left, and ought to be preserved.’

‘Wouldn’t mind it as a run-about,’ says the Major.

One of the prisoners gestures towards Daniel’s Camel
. ‘Cet avion…le Camel…il est absolument incroyable…il est là, il n’est pas là…qu’est-ce qu’on peut faire contre un avion comme ça?’

‘En anglais on dit “split-arse”,’
says Daniel.

Major Beckenham-Gilbert understands that they are talking about the Camel, and interjects, ‘Damned bloody split-arse.’

‘Damt blutti split-haus,’ repeats the German pilot.

‘Qu’est-ce qui se passe maintenant?’
asks the observer. His face is pale and worried.

‘Vous êtes tous les deux prisonniers, naturellement. Demain vous partez, mais ce soir vous dînez au mess avec nous. Je dois vous avertir qu’à la fin du repas, nous nous levons pour porter un toast au roi. Vous ne devez pas porter le toast, mais vous devez vous mettre debout. Compris?’

They nod, and their faces light up at the thought of a meal. They have heard that the British have plenty of meat. Daniel offers them cigarettes. Camels, courtesy of the Americans. The two Germans look at the packet and smile. Daniel gives them the entire packet. He says to the Major, ‘I told them they could dine with us tonight, and they’d have to stand up for the loyal toast, but wouldn’t have to drink.’

‘Seems a shame not to drink. Mind you, I wouldn’t toast the Kaiser. Well, I might do so, but I’d take the opportunity to wish him a stiff case of haemorrhoids.’

‘Pour vous la guerre est finie
,’ says Daniel to the two captives. ‘
Finie
,’ they nod, wondering what emotion to feel. They have a sense of let-down, anticlimax, relief, fear of the future, extreme weariness permitted at last. They feel a bond of affection and gratitude for this British airman who has changed their lives by making the future possible, and who seems simultaneously to be French.

‘Si vous avez besoin de quelque chose, avertissez-moi dès que possible, d’accord? Je vous donnerai le numéro de téléphone ici, et j’écrirai une
lettre comme espèce de renseignement. Je vous donnerai aussi l’addresse de ma mère. Après la guerre, si je suis toujours vivant, on va se rencontrer et dîner ensemble. Je vous invite.’

The pilot is touched. He says sincerely,
‘J’espère que vous survivrez. Dieu vous prête la vie. Je vous remercie de nous avoir épargnés. Je vous souhaite le bonheur et prospérité et des jolis enfants.’

‘
Et moi aussi
,’ adds the observer.
‘Nous vous devons la vie.’

‘I told them to keep in touch,’ says Daniel. ‘They thanked me for sparing them, and wished me lots of pretty children.’

‘Seem like a decent pair of fellows,’ says Major Maurice Beckenham-Gilbert. ‘Now I come to think of it, I think that they might be the two blighters who nearly shot my rudder off, over Arras.’

M
illicent was standing on a chair dusting the frame of the portrait of Mr McCosh’s grandfather with a feather duster, when the telephone rang. ‘Oh bother!’ she exclaimed, and hopped down. She ran to the apparatus and lifted the earpiece off the hook. She put on the most aristocratic voice she could manage, and recited the words that Mrs McCosh had once made her repeat fifty times, until she had got it quite right: ‘Eltham 292. The Grampians. Millicent speaking. To whom would you like to speak?’

‘Ah, Millicent,’ said a warm voice from east London. ‘You don’t ’alf sound posh. It’s you I’m after, as a matter of fact.’

‘Who is it? Is that you, Hutch?’

‘What if it wasn’t? How many boyfriends have you got, my girl?’

‘About fifteen, but only four is serious. Where are you? Are you home?’

‘I’m home. I’ve got two weeks. When are you off?’

‘After church. On Sunday.’

‘Can I come and see you? I want to ask you to marry me.’

‘What?’

‘You heard.’

‘Hutch! You can’t just ask me on the phone! All casual!’

‘I haven’t. I’m going to ask you on Sunday. We’ll go down to the Tarn.’

‘You won’t find a dry place to kneel.’

‘Stuff that, sweetheart. I’ve been sodden for years. But I’m not going to ask if you’re not going to be accepting.’

‘Oh, Hutch! Well, what do you think?!’

‘Is that yes, then?’

‘Oh, Hutch!’

The telephone began to bleep, and in the few seconds left, Hutch said, ‘Got no more pennies. See you Sunday, sweetheart.’

Millicent sat down on the chair beneath the portrait that she had been dusting, and blew out her cheeks. She felt the most wonderful sense of jubilation, and began to laugh. Rosie came out of the drawing room and found her there, apparently idling, and Millicent sprang to her feet in embarrassment. ‘Oh, Miss Rosie, I wasn’t slacking. I wasn’t, I promise!’ Rosie looked a little sceptical. ‘I wasn’t, miss! I was recovering! I just had news!’

‘Happy news, by the looks of it.’

‘I’m going to get married, miss! Hutch is coming on Sunday, and he’s going to ask me. Down by the Tarn.’

Rosie stood silent for a second or two, absorbing the news.

‘Why are you crying, miss?’

‘Oh Millicent, I’m so happy for you. I’m sorry. I can’t help it. It’s such wonderful news.’

Millicent realised at that moment that Rosie was perhaps also crying for herself. She reached up her hands helplessly, as if to embrace Rosie, but knowing that it could not possibly be done. Rosie saw the gesture and reacted naturally to it. She reached out her own hands and the two women found themselves in each other’s arms, both in tears.

Eventually Rosie detached herself, wiped her eyes with the exiguous handkerchief that she kept up her sleeve, and said, ‘I bet that’s never happened in this house before.’

‘Nor never will again, most like.’

‘Millicent?’

‘Yes, miss?’

‘Can I be your bridesmaid? For Ash’s sake? Because Hutchinson was his best friend?’

Millicent was horrified, and flushed hotly. ‘But, miss, no gentlewoman has ever been no servant’s bridesmaid. What’ll Mrs McCosh say?’

‘Everything’s changed, Millicent. Before the war Ash and Hutchinson wouldn’t have got to be friends, would they? And there’s absolutely no need for my mother to know. I’ll go as the family representative. If you accept, of course.’

‘But, miss, I got four sisters.’

At last Rosie perceived Millicent’s agitation, and felt ashamed of herself.

‘Oh, Millicent, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. It was thoughtless of me. It’s just that I’m fond of you. And I’m really not a snob any more. But I can quite see that it would seem awfully strange for your family if I were there. I am sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.’

‘It was nice of you to ask,’ said Millicent. ‘I don’t honestly think we’ll have any bridesmaids at all, though.’

‘May I come to the service? I’ll sit at the back, if that’s all right.’

‘Course it is, miss.’

‘Thank you.’

O
ne of the nurses in Rosie’s tent had bought an autograph book and was filling it with inscriptions by the wounded soldiers in her care. The fashion had caught on because the men loved having something to do, and for many it was a chance to show how grateful they were to the nurses, to make up rhymes that lurched to scan, often didn’t rhyme very well either, and even to make oblique declarations of affection. Rosie went into Southampton and bought a very nice one at the stationer’s. It was bound in soft black leather, and the paper was thick and watermarked. Rosie had wanted a book of high quality in order to demonstrate to the men how much she valued them.

The first man to write in it was Able Seaman Devonshire, who turned straight to the last page and wrote: ‘By hook or by crook I’ll be the last in this book.’ G. Grimble of the Machine Gun Corps wrote: ‘When on this book you look, when on this book you frown, think of the one who spoiled your book by writing upside down.’ Private Shaw 12367 of the 1st Battalion Scots Guards left his address in the hope that Rosie would get in touch with him at a later date. Private Humphrey 2021, 3rd Battalion the Queen’s Regiment, stuck a small photograph of himself into the book. He decorated a whole page with writing that looked as if it were done in relief. He did it with his left hand.

Lieutenant Collier of the Yorks and Lancs drew an elaborate cartoon of some German soldiers being frightened by tanks. A. Hilberry of the Inniskilling Dragoons drew a cartoon of a sailor and a bulldog, and Private Francis Love in hut 19 drew some brooms and a carpet sweeper, subtitled ‘Some Mine Sweeping Equipment’. Bombardier Hood drew an ivy tendril in flower, very beautifully. Master Sergeant Montgomery of the 4th CMR wrote:

Think of me when you are lonely,

Cast on me one little thought,

In the depths of thine affection,

Plant one sweet forget-me-not.

You are my friend, my friend forever,

You may change but I will never.

Though separation is our lot,

Dear Old Pal forget me not.

12767 Joseph Webber of the 2nd Suffolks stuck in a photograph of himself straddling a chair backwards, with his arms resting on the back. He drew an immaculate picture of his cap badge, and wrote:

The best of luck I wish for thee,

The best of all good things,

The best of happiness and joy

That fortune ever brings.

Private Edwards of the 14th Battalion Durham Light Infantry, wounded at Ypres.

‘May your life be free from sorrow and care, may fortune always attend you, and may your days be filled with happiness is the sincere wish of Wm. J. Allen, 2nd CMR BC Canada.’

V. Buxton wished VAD Nurse McCosh the best of good luck from her little Aussie, and wrote a strange rhyme about a kangaroo that she couldn’t decipher.

Another little Aussie, Pte ME Obrien of the AIF, wrote:

The Netley Red Cross Hospital is the first that I’ve been in,

And the way that we’ve been treated, I’ll long to be back again.

Though you may be wounded badly, there is no cause to fear,

For you’re sure to recover quickly with the nurses they have here.

Although Australia’s far away across the briny sea,

I’ll not forget the hospital where the nurses were so kind to me.

Impressed by his own talent, he wrote ‘Some poem!’ obliquely across the bottom of the page.

The waggish HM of hut 19 wrote:

Mary had a little lamp,

It was well trained no doubt,

For every time her sweetheart called,

That little lamp when out.

At Christmas 1916 Sergeant J. J. Hennessey of the Rifle Brigade (Prince Consort’s Own) reflected that: ‘As the stormiest days frequently end in the most gloriest sunset, so we hope and pray that out of this time of sorrow and strife may issue a nobler and better world than has been yet.’

148928 MTASC, EAEF wrote:

Little dabs of powder, little daubs of paint,

Make a girl’s complexion look just what it ain’t.

Rifleman Frank Neale of the Post Office Rifles wrote out all of Portia’s speech about mercy, from memory.

On and on they went for three volumes, the rhymes, cartoons, reflections, words of gratitude, some beautifully done, some semiliterate, all sincere. As her life went by Rosie spent many hours alone with her autograph books, remembering the cheerful young men in the photographs, trying to picture those whose images had been slowly fading, admiring the immense talent of common soldiers from all over the Empire who could paint immaculate pictures of flowers or dogs, or bottles of whisky. To her they remained as young and cheerful as they had been back then, frozen in time by fond memory as old lovers are. These wounded young men who had left traces of their spirit in ink and pencil, verse and adage, were signals of the time in her life when she had been doing the most important things it would ever befall her to do,
when experience was most intense, when the immensity of her grief and exhaustion made the plasticity of the world shimmer before her eyes like the heat haze on a summer road, when the whole universe seemed to smell of carbolic and Lysol and surgical spirit.

The contribution to which she unfailingly returned was the entry by Private J. C. Grundie of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, who had taken a particular shine to her because she was half Scottish. On 9 April 1918 he drew a picture of a young woman wearing a sun hat, with a trug basket in the crook of her arm, and a rake over her shoulder. Behind her was a picture of a steamer and a submarine, and from each corner of the page grew tufts of what looked like tropical fern. In the middle of these surreal juxtapositions he had written, in tiny italic script:

When the war is done we’ll recall the fun –

The fun that conquered the pain –

For we’ll owe a debt (and we’ll not forget)

To the jokes that kept us sane:

How the wounded could laugh and bandy their chaff

And kick up a deuce of a row!

It may be in peace, when the sufferings cease,

We’ll be sadder, aye sadder, than now.

Rosie learned these prophetic words by heart, and hoped that for Private J. C. Grundie she too would remain forever young, with chestnut hair on her head, freckles on her face, and so much grief to cope with that she smothered it in work, and kindliness, and jokes.