The Lost Soldier (47 page)

Rachel handed the picture to Nick. “It’s him,” she said. “That’s Tom Carter. He’s got Gran’s eyes, well, or the other way around.”

Nick took the picture and turned it over. On the back there was a French photographer’s stamp and written in faded ink “February 1916”.

“So it is,” he said. “Has your grandmother ever seen one of him?”

Rachel shrugged still studying the picture. “I doubt it,” she said. “I’ll take it round tomorrow when I take her the letter.”

She picked up the crumpled tissue paper and carefully unwrapped it. Into her hand fell a bracelet, its clasp in the shape of a heart. It was tarnished and black, but Rachel knew if she polished it up it would be silver. She held it up on her finger. “Tom gave her this for Christmas, when they got engaged,” she said softly. “It was in the diary.” She laid it gently back into its tissue. Everything in this last envelope belonged to Gran, and Gran had never known it was there.

Rachel sat for several moments in deep silence, her mind back in 1916, her heart aching for those who inhabited that time. In her researches they had become very real to her, and she ached for their pain and loss.

Nick watched her face and realised in that instant, just how much he loved this woman. She was unlike any woman he had ever known, some quality within her reaching out to him. She was beautiful, but it wasn’t that. He’d known other beautiful women, and never had a shred of the feeling which engulfed him now. Rachel. He longed to hold her again, to make love to her, to share all that he was with her, and he longed from the inner depth of his being to protect her from the cares and dangers of the world. He thought about Tom Carter and realised he must have had just such feelings for Molly, enough to risk everything to protect her from the stigma of having a child out of wedlock. He had died because he tried to protect Molly, Nick thought. Would I do the same for Rachel? In that moment, he thought he would. Very dramatic! he told himself as he watched the firelight play on her face, but probably true.

He reached out for her hand and raised it to his lips. Rachel returned to the present and smiled at him.

“Sorry,” she said, “miles away.”

“Rachel,” Nick said quietly, and his tone of voice caught her attention. “Rachel, have you any appendages I should know about?”

She looked at him quizzically for a moment, her expression unconsciously echoing the one in the photo. “No,” she said. “Have you?”

Nick shook his head. “No,” he said.

“Thank God for that,” she said, and with a whoop of laughter Nick gathered her into his arms and kissed her fiercely.

Eventually she pulled away and said, a little breathlessly, “It doesn’t mean I want any, though.”

“Doesn’t it?” smiled Nick. “I think I do.”

Rachel wrinkled her nose at him. “Only think?”

“No,” he said softly. “I know I do.” His eyes held hers and it was she who lowered her gaze and looked away.

“I have to see an estate agent tomorrow,” Nick said with an abrupt change of subject. “Shall we take your grandmother out for a pub lunch afterwards?”

Rachel smiled at him and said, “She’d love that.”

“I expect you’ll be going to see her in the morning,” he said. “I’ll pick you both up at lunch time.”

Nick got to his feet and Rachel said, “Are you going?” she was surprised. She had asked him to come because she needed company, his company, and he had apparently dropped everything and driven straight over. He had kissed her to breathlessness and she had kissed him back and she had rather expected him to stay the night. She looked up at him, her face a little flushed, her eyes bright, but no longer with tears.

“Unless you ask me to stay,” he replied.

Rachel suddenly knew that this was a pivotal point in her life Independence was important to her, but now, amazingly so was this man, Nick. He knew how she valued her independence, he was giving her the choice, no, more than that, he was making her choose. It was too soon to choose, but she didn’t want him to go.

“Will you stay?” she asked. “Please.”

Nick’s face broke into a delighted grin. “Since you ask me so nicely,” he said, “I couldn’t possibly refuse.”

Nick picked Rachel and Rose up from Cotswold Court at twelve-thirty. When the old lady was settled beside him in the front, the wheelchair in the boot and Rachel in the back, Nick said, “Well, where shall we go?”

“If you don’t mind, Nick,” Rose said, “I think I need to go to the King Arthur in Charlton Ambrose. After all that Rachel has told me this morning, I think I’d like to go back and see the place again.”

Rachel had gone round to see Gran that morning, taking the biscuit tin and its contents with her.

“Hallo, darling, this is a nice surprise,” said Gran. She busied herself in her little kitchen and made them coffee, while Rachel lit the gas fire to warm the room up.

“We’re going out to lunch,” Rachel called to her.

“Are we? How lovely. You’d better ring through to Mrs Drake and tell her I won’t be in for lunch then.”

By the time Rachel had spoken to the warden, the coffee was made and ready for her to carry into the sitting room.

“Who are we going to lunch with?” Gran asked as they settled themselves in front of the fire.

“Nick Potter.”

“The one that sent his love?”

“That’s the one.”

“Good. I should like to have a look at him.”

“Gran!” Rachel said warningly, but her grandmother just laughed.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll be very discreet. Now then, tell me what brings you here.”

Rachel pulled the biscuit tin from her bag and said, “This, Gran. I’ve been looking at the things that are in it, and one envelope is for you.”

“For me?” Gran looked startled.

“There was one big brown envelope at the bottom,” Rachel explained. “It was sealed, but it wasn’t addressed to anyone, so I opened it. Inside were a few things which I’ll show you in a minute, and a letter, addressed to you.”

Rose Carson looked pale. “Who was it from? What did it say?”

“I haven’t opened it,” Rachel said, “but I think it must be from your mother. The writing on the envelope looks very like the writing in the diary.” She held out the small white envelope and her grandmother took it, her hand shaking. She looked at the writing on the front, then she said, “I can’t read it without my glasses, what does it say?”

“It’s addressed to Rosemary Day. That’s you, isn’t it, Gran?”

“I haven’t been Rosemary since she died,” Gran said wonderingly.

“I didn’t know it was your name,” Rachel said.

“Rosemary for remembrance,” her grandmother replied. “Open it for me, will you?”

Rachel slit the envelope open carefully and extracting the letter handed it to her. “I’ll find your glasses,” she said.

“No, you read it to me.”

“Wouldn’t you rather read to yourself first, Gran? I think you should.” Rachel handed her her glasses.

“Do you know what it says?” asked Gran, taking the spectacles but not putting them on.

“Not for certain,” Rachel replied, “but I think I can guess.”

“Then you read it to me.”

Rachel took the letter back and unfolded it. It was dated 3rd March 1924.

My dearest Rosemary,
she read,

If you are reading this then I am dead. I have no real reason to think that I am going to die, but we never know the future and I want to be sure you know the past. Your past. You know your father was killed in the war. His name was Tom Carter and he was a brave man. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, but because he tried to come to me he was shot for desertion. He was not a deserter, he was not a coward. He fought in the first day of the Somme, which you will know by now was one of the most dreadful battles of the war. He did not run away, he rescued a wounded man from no man’s land and took him to a dressing station. Then he came to look for me. He was court-martialled and shot. The padre who was there was our rector, Mr Smalley. He wasn’t our rector then of course, he came here after the war. He knew Mr Freddie up at the manor, he had been at the front with him, so Squire gave him the living. He knew about me too because he had spent the last night with your father. When the troops came home at the end of the war, my cousin Tony Cook came with them. His brother Harry had been killed, he was a great friend of your father’s. Tony told me he had been at Tom’s shooting. He didn’t know then that Tom was your father, he worked that out later from things he heard.

When the squire planted the trees for the memorial I asked Mr Smalley about planting a tree for Tom. He said no, it couldn’t be done, especially as Tony knew what had happened to him and it would bring it all out into the open and everyone would know. I decided to do it anyway, and so I dug up an ash sapling from the copse above the village and we planted it with the others. You were with me, but I don’t expect you remember. I put a paper in a photo frame with For the Unknown Soldier on it. When it was discovered squire wanted it dug up, but Mr Smalley knew why it was there and somehow persuaded him to leave it. Maybe he told him it was your father, I don’t know, but he was allowed to dedicate it to the unknown soldier so that it became part of the memorial. So though Tom’s name is not on the memorial in the church, he is not forgotten.

We left the village soon afterwards and came here to work. I couldn’t stay with my parents any longer. Tony had told them what had happened and so we had to go.

If you are reading this letter I will not have had the chance to tell you all this myself. I have to wait until you are old enough to understand. The only things I have left of your father are his letters, the bracelet he gave me for Christmas 1915, his pay book, and the picture he had taken for me. Not much, but enough to remind me that he loved me. He was a dear brave man who’d had a hard life, and I loved him dearly. When he knew I was expecting you, he was pleased, even though we weren’t married, because the one thing he wanted above all was a real family. Never doubt that he would have loved you as much as I do.

Your loving Mam

They sat in silence when Rachel stopped reading, Rachel watching her grandmother’s expression, Rose Carson in a private globe of silence, pale, but dry-eyed.

“He was shot,” she said at last.

“Yes,” said Rachel.

“You knew?”

“Yes,” said Rachel. “It was in the letters. His last letter, the one he wrote on the night before he was shot is with them. Also a letter from Sarah Hurst, breaking the news to Molly.”

“How did Sarah find out?”

“She was still at the convent when it happened,” explained Rachel. “The padre, this Henry Smalley, rode over to tell Molly himself, but she had already gone home.”

“All these years,” said Rose quietly. “All these years that letter has been sitting there and I never knew.” Silence enclosed them again for a while and then Rose said, “Do you know any more than what is in this letter?”

“I think so,” Rachel said and began to tell her grandmother the story of Molly and Tom that she had pieced together from the diary and the letters.

Their coffee grew cold, untouched in the cups as Rachel spoke, and when she had finished, both of them had tears on their cheeks. Rachel had read her grandmother Tom’s last letter and the letter from Sarah, and the anguish in them had hit them both. Rose took the photograph of her father and stared at it, as if trying to commit it to memory. He stared back at her over more than eighty years, the faint smile lurking at the corner of his eyes his cap set at a jaunty angle on his short dark hair.

“You have his eyes, Gran,” Rachel said softly.

“Do I?” Rose smiled sadly up at her. “I was always told I looked like my mother.”

“You probably do, but he’s there as well.”

Rachel held out the tarnished bracelet and Rose took it, holding it to the light.

“We must clean that,” Rachel said, “then you could wear it.”

“No, I shan’t wear it,” Rose said handing it back. “I’d like you to have it.”

“Are you sure?” asked Rachel. She held the bracelet against her cheek for a moment. “I’d love it, Gran, thank you.”

They talked about the letters and the diary for a little while, and then Rachel said, “Would you rather not go out to lunch, Gran. I can easily put Nick off, you know.”

“No, don’t do that,” replied Rose. “I’d like to go. I don’t want to sit here brooding. Does he know about all this?”

Rachel nodded. “I phoned him last night when I had read the letters. I needed someone to talk to. Do you mind?”

Rose shook her head. “No, I don’t mind,” she said, adding with a faint smile, “I’m glad you’ve found someone at last that you want to talk to.”

Rachel felt herself blushing and said, “It’s not like that, Gran.”

“Isn’t it?” said Gran innocently. “My mistake.”

“Are you going to write about this?” Gran said after a moment. “In your Ashgrove story? You realise you have a vested interest in one of the trees now.”

This thought had already occurred to Rachel, but she had set it aside as she came to terms with the events that made it so. The ninth tree belonged to Gran, and they had documentary evidence to prove it. They would have a say in whether the Ashgrove should be cut down.

“I don’t know,” Rachel said honestly. “It’s an amazing story, the whole thing, but you may not want it to become a nine-days wonder, and I’m not sure I do either, even though it might help the campaign to save the Ashgrove.”

“We don’t have to decide now,” Rose said. “We can take time to think about it.”

Nick Potter had had a very successful morning and he was happy and excited when he arrived to pick up Rachel and her grandmother. Rachel had introduced them inside Rose’s flat and each had immediately liked what they saw of the other. Rachel found herself beaming at both of them.

As they packed the wheelchair into the boot of his car he asked Rachel softly, “How did it go? Was she very shocked?”

“She was amazing,” Rachel said. “She took it very well. I think it may come back to hit her later, but it doesn’t matter if the subject comes up again, she knows you know, and she doesn’t mind.”