Kitty’s War

‘Haven’t you seen that postcard? The one with the pig?’ I shook my head. ‘Well anyway, Boxy said the ambulance snorted like a pig, and we should paint her pink.’

‘She sounds fun,’ I ventured.

‘Oh, she is. We got on terribly well right from the off. As shall we, I’m sure,’ she assured me, giving my already frozen hand a squeeze. ‘Now, let’s get you settled in, and I can tell you a little bit about what we do.’ She gave me an encouraging smile, but her eyes seemed distant, as if her thoughts were anywhere but here. I remembered what I’d been told about her husband, and wondered if he was back with his unit, or if he’d even regained his memory…but she would surely not be here if he hadn’t. I couldn’t imagine how she felt, knowing he was back in the lines. Archie spent a lot of time in the field with his men, but it was so much easier to think of him sitting at HQ with the other officers, discussing tactics, than out there facing the kind of explosions that had just driven me to my knees.

I followed Evie into the cottage, a tiny two-roomed affair. ‘We’ll share the bedroom,’ she said. ‘There are two beds, but luckily they’re very narrow so there’s room to get between them to dress. You’ll sleep in your clothes most nights anyway, especially during winter. Have you got a flea bag?’

‘A…a what?’

‘For sleeping in.’

‘Oh, no, I haven’t.’

‘We’ll see what we can find for you,’ she said. ‘It’ll probably leave a lot to be desired in the hygiene department, but extra layers are not to be sneezed at.’ She grinned, looking like a grubby child for a moment. ‘And speaking of sneezing, you’ll be doing plenty of that, too.’

It seemed as if having me to show around, to explain things to and put at my ease, was helping her too. She made us both a very welcome cup of cocoa, and as she talked about the work, and what we were and were not permitted to do, she gradually lost the slightly dazed and distant look and I began to see the real Evie beneath—resilient, determined and with a sense of adventure that could barely be suppressed, even here. Even as she spoke, the guns were continuing their raucous shout, and I flinched more than once, but she didn’t seem to notice them.

‘Don’t they ever stop?’ I asked, wondering how on earth we were supposed to sleep.

‘Occasionally.’ She sobered a little then. ‘It’s not always a good thing when they do though; it means the bombardment’s stopped and our boys are ready to go out and try to regain some ground.’

‘And do they?’

‘The Front has barely moved in two and a half years. A few miles, that’s all.’

I considered that for a moment, and looked around me, trying to imagine having lived here all that time. How much longer could it go on?

But I was starting to learn already, that Evie would not be solemn or reflective for long. ‘Come on then,’ she said briskly, standing up. She put her mug by the tiny sink. ‘I’ll show you the cellar.’

I jumped up too, eager to show my enthusiasm, but as I reached out to pick up my own half-finished cocoa I knocked the cup over, and sent brown muck spreading across the table.

‘Oh! I’m so sorry,’ I said, looking around for a cloth. She tossed me the greasy rag from her belt and I mopped up the drink, blushing furiously at my clumsiness. She didn’t even blink as I tried again, and this time knocked the rolling cup to the floor. Luckily it was tin, and bounced instead of breaking.

Within a day I had earned the nickname that would stay with me for as long as Evie and I knew each other. We’d had word that a convoy was expected at the station and I was to stay behind and ready the cellar, while Evie took Gertie and fetched out those men whose wounds might be treated easily here instead of weighing down the clearing stations and hospitals. We’d just had a hastily thrown-together shepherd’s pie for dinner and I was clearing the plates, my heart thundering with renewed fear at the loudness of the guns now night had fallen. I turned from the table towards the sink, and, failing to notice Evie standing behind me buttoning her greatcoat, I cannoned into her. She staggered sideways, barely keeping her feet, and the plates crashed to the floor. They were the last of the crockery that had been left in the cottage before it had been evacuated, and Evie looked at the sharp-edged and useless pieces with a little sigh of disappointment.

Then she looked back at me, and to my enormous relief her mouth stretched into a grin. ‘Everything’s going down like ninepins since you’ve arrived. Going to have to start calling you Skittles.’

I closed my mouth, which had been hanging open in a kind of wordless and disbelieving dismay, and Evie kicked the pieces of china out of sight under the table and wiped the gravy off her coat with her sleeve. She flashed me a bright smile, jerked her head towards the cellar, and went out into the night alone. I knew then that, no matter how awful the job I’d be doing, Evie Davies was exactly the kind of person I’d want to be doing it with.

In February the Clearing Station just up the road from our ambulance base was badly hit by shellfire. Even after everything I’d seen and been horrified by in the past two months, that had a profound effect on me, that somewhere so clearly marked with the red cross of a recognised medical facility might be deliberately targeted; was there a line that must not be crossed? And if so, where was it?

In the meantime Oliver had still been trying to arrange his transfer to Dixmude, and it was only this that had persuaded our furious Father to abandon his intention of travelling out here to pull me back to Blighty by my hair. He’d managed it just a couple of days ago, and on the day after the Clearing Station was hit, he arrived in a general staff car with a friendly lieutenant colonel named Drewe, and, to my breathless delight, Archie.

We chatted for a while, although my nerves had resurfaced at the sight of a ‘brass hat’ in our little cottage, but Archie and Evie seemed to notice this and, between them, put me at my ease again. I watched Archie across the table as he chatted, and noticed new lines on his face I hadn’t seen before, but he looked completely at ease here, and I gathered he’d been a regular visitor in the past—I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, and saw his eyes linger on Evie a little more than I liked.

But she was deeply in love with her husband; I knew that. They talked about him today, and I was able to piece together what I hadn’t felt able to ask Evie since I’d arrived: Private Will Davies had become detached from his battalion last summer, during the battle of High Wood, and reported missing, and Archie had been the one to bring him home. Evidently he’d been risking his life to do so, and although the pride I took in his courage felt wrong, I enjoyed it anyway.

Sadly Will’s return to physical health was apparently not reflected in his emotional healing, and I gathered he and Evie were struggling. Oli, the great clot, ventured to say he was glad to hear that Will was back in active service, but Evie’s uncharacteristically cool reply ended that conversation, and we sat in uncomfortable silence for a minute before I turned the subject around to why Evie did not wear a wedding ring. It seemed important to remind myself that she was married, and, although I disliked myself for thinking it, to remind Archie of that, too. Conversation moved on to my driving, and I felt bad for those unformed but suspicious thoughts, as Evie praised me with real warmth.

‘You’re more than ready to make the night run yourself now, Kitty.’

Gratified that Archie was there to hear her praise, I smiled, not knowing quite what to say.

Colonel Drewe patted my hand. ‘Excellent! I’m sure you’ll do a splendid job.’

‘Thank you,’ I said shyly. ‘I’ll be awfully pleased to be of some real help at last.’

‘Watch out for shell holes,’ Oliver put in. ‘Those roads are abysmal.’

Soon after, Archie declared it time to leave, and Oli gave me a hug. For the first time, I felt he really cared for me as his sister and not some annoying little oik that kept hanging around, so I hugged him back, and I think we both felt a little bit tearful at that moment. I know I did.

‘Look after yourself,’ Archie said, and squeezed Evie’s hand.

‘And my sister,’ Oli said to her. ‘I’m relying on you.’

I tried to dismiss the pang of jealousy at the closeness that clearly existed between Evie and Archie; the time they had known each other had been short, but strange and emotional, and it was bound to have had an effect on them. This obsession was dangerous; I had to put him out of my mind and concentrate on learning the job, so I could do the night runs alone as soon as we received our new ambulance. There was no room for distraction or mistakes.

But as Archie snugged his hat down over his dark hair, and gave me one of his warm smiles, I felt my stomach turn over with longing, and knew that if I slept tonight it would be filled with dreams that would leave me feeling empty and hopeless in the morning.

It would only be a week before my dreams would become so intense, so terrifying and so filled with horror, that empty and hopeless would have been almost like a breath of joy.

Chapter Four

Dover, Kent, April 1917

Passengers were starting to board. Frances Adams and I stood on the dock looking up at the huge ferry, at the faces turned back towards loved ones for a last glimpse, and at the hands raised in tearful goodbye…and I was suddenly unsure how to make my own farewell. Ever since I’d come back to Dark River Farm Mrs Adams had tried to be a mother to me, and it had touched me deeply every time I saw it, but I’d never been able to show my feelings towards her in the way others seemed to find so natural. If I suddenly tried to hug her it would feel awkward for us both.

‘Well, maid,’ she said, turning me to face her. ‘It’s time. Are you sure you’re going to be all right?’

‘Quite sure,’ I said, trying to stop my voice from shaking, because how could I be? I was not only going back into the very heart of the war, but also facing the destruction of my future, the disgrace of my family, and worst of all, the likely death of my brother. But the pretence went on, and we both knew it for what it was. The loneliness that washed over me as I contemplated this journey made me feel hollow and cold. Mrs Adams saw it, and pulled me into a rough hug, ending my dilemma with one quick, welcome movement. Although spare-framed, her height was comforting, and the kiss she pressed to my temple even more so.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ she reminded me.

‘I do. Oli’s life might depend on it.’

She held me tighter. ‘Oh, love, I do hope you can make the difference.’

‘Thank you for coming this far with me,’ I mumbled into her shoulder.

‘I wish I could come all the way,’ she said, and I knew she meant it. ‘If I wasn’t needed back at Dark River, I’d be—’

‘I know.’ I drew back. ‘You’ve been unbelievably kind to me.’

‘Well—’ she cleared her throat ‘—I seen something in you, young Kitty. You’re a kind, decent girl, and you’ve had a terrible time. I know you’ve shown everyone you’re a tough little thing, but you deserve someone to lean on. We can’t always be tough, can we?’ Her eyes shone for a moment, then she blinked and sniffed. She put one roughened hand either side of my face, and studied me carefully as if she was worried it might be the last time she saw me—I fought down a swell of fear at the thought. My mother had never looked at me with this intensity, not even when I’d left for Belgium last Christmas, and when Mrs Adams’s long, tired face broke into a gentle smile I felt a twist of unexpectedly strong emotion in my churning stomach. I smiled back, and she blinked again. This time the tears would not so easily be banished, and while our smiles felt less forced now, both were accompanied by snatched, hiccupping breaths.

A honking sound made us both jump, and I reluctantly let go of her and bent to pick up my case. ‘I’ll write, as soon as I have any news.’

‘See that you do.’ Mrs Adams touched my cheek again, and there was a look of real sorrow in her eyes now. ‘I’ll be thinking of you, maid. We all will. Take care, and don’t do nothin’ dangerous.’

‘I won’t be going back to the ambulance station,’ I assured her. ‘Evie says I’ll be billeted in one of the hotels near HQ. Jack Carlisle will meet me off the ferry and take me there.’

Her words were jerky and unsteady as we were both bumped by the fresh surge of people moving towards the ferry to board. ‘Just see you come back safe.’

‘I will. I promise.’

Walking away and leaving her standing there, it was almost as if I were the older woman, and she the one who was little more than a child. Somehow that helped, and I lifted my free hand to wave, and even blew her a kiss. She nodded, and then she was gone from view, only the top of her hat visible; if she’d been of average height I would not even have been able to see that, and I kept glancing back for that small comfort as the waves of soldiers and nurses lifted me closer to the ferry, and to the horrors I would have given anything to be able to forget.

The water churned, choppy and grey beneath us, as we made our laborious, zigzagging way across the channel. Even knowing Jack waited for me at the other end, I felt that chilly loneliness again, and wished I could simply stay on the ferry for ever.

A couple of VADs tried to engage me in conversation, but they were fresh from training, and excited to be going overseas to help our boys. I knew if I began talking I would dampen their chatter, and turn them into what I myself had become. It wouldn’t be fair. So, ignoring the look that passed between them, ‘Well, we tried,’ I went to the front of the boat instead, and stared out at the nothingness ahead.

I had been just like them. Most of us had, and even once reality set in, and that happy anticipation had been crushed from us, we found strength in the minute-by-minute dealings with people whose lives depended on the pressing of a wound, the spotting of an incipient heart failure, the speed of transport to hospital. I hoped those two girls would find the same, but, for me, all Belgium held now was the shocking, painful memory of one brutal night.

Lieutenant Colonel Drewe, the friendliest, cheeriest of men—grandfatherly, kind, patient. A veteran of the Africa campaign, and a man known for his bravery. How could someone like that…

I turned away from the rail, my chest tight, and a phantom pain at the juncture of my thighs, as if the bruises he had given me were still there, his Webley revolver still rammed into my side. The decrepit ambulance parked haphazardly at the side of the road had been just one of any number of broken-down and abandoned vehicles. Evie said later that he’d known I would have sole charge of Gertie that night, and I shivered at the cold knowledge that I’d been exactly where he’d wanted me to be when I’d seen him stumbling up the centre of the road; if someone else had stopped, and had not been alone, it would have been nothing to him to wave them on and claim to be perfectly well.

But of course it was me who’d stopped. And I was alone, and he’d looked at me with those strangely skittering eyes and accepted my help to climb into the back. I’d spoken gently to him, settled him onto the stretcher and turned to pick up the first-aid box, before asking him where he was hurt. When I’d turned back to him the gun had been out of its leather holster. My breath stopped, and my numbed fingers fell open, and the box crashed to the floor. The only words he’d spoken had been a warning that Oliver would be the one to suffer if I spoke of this night, and then he had stood up, seized my arm with his free hand, and pushed me onto the stretcher-bed in his place.

The time that followed alternately flew by in seconds, and stretched into interminable hours; my horrified mind could still not place which. He had left me shaking, but not crying, too stunned and sick-feeling for tears, with my trousers wrapped around one ankle and trailing across the filthy floor. Fresh blood smeared the stretcher, mixing with the half-dried blood of the countless wounded Tommies I’d transported that night.

Archie found out what had happened, of course. Evie had promised not to tell him, and then told him anyway. I’d been beyond fury, screaming at her, and knowing I was wrong to do it. But I couldn’t help it. The anger I couldn’t hurl at Colonel Drewe was eating me alive, and I had to free it or go mad. Poor Evie bore the brunt of it, and she bore it with patience and with grief, but her sorrow, and her guilt at letting me go out on the road alone, only inflamed my anger—it was the most vicious of circles.

I hadn’t seen Archie since he and Evie had driven away from Dark River Farm together, leaving me in the care of Frances, Lizzy and the others. His face, as he’d turned his attention to the long track up to the main road, was the last glimpse I’d had of him, and I treasured it even through the anger and betrayal I’d felt towards Evie. I’d lain in bed, once the pregnancy was made real, hating myself, and hating the baby. I never hated Evie, but my anger towards her didn’t fade until Lizzy had lost her temper and pointed out a few home truths: I had wanted to drive alone; it was all I’d ever begged for; Evie had been doing it from the start; she had cared for me and taught me everything I needed to know; I had given her my blessing to go and talk to Will… It had taken that tiny, fierce girl, with her dark curly hair sticking up in all directions, her hands on her hips and her eyes flashing blue fire, to break the awful cycle of self-recrimination and despair. It wasn’t hard to see why Jack Carlisle’s heart had been captured by her, despite the rumours about Evie’s mother. She had made me realise those truths, but by then Oliver had deserted, and faced death if he was found, and death if he was not, and it was all my fault. Now, when I raged, I raged against my own cowardice, my own weakness, and only in the privacy of my little room at Dark River Farm. I wept, and cursed the hand fate had dealt me. And I cursed the child I carried. The next night Colonel Drewe’s unwanted yet innocent gift died in a wash of pain and blood, in the back of another ambulance.

What remained of my youth died with it.

Archie might have left, but the image of his calm grey eyes had stayed with me, behind the closed lids of my own, during that terrible time. The memories of our younger, carefree days had been more immediate to me than the shock of what had happened, his image more real than the rasp of the sheets against my skin and the cool water I drank to assuage a raging thirst. There was also a bitter irony in knowing it was helping our sheep deliver themselves of their young, that had killed my own. I knew it, yet the guilt lay heavy in my heart for those dark and desperate prayers that the child had never existed.

Frances had told me afterwards that I’d called out for Archie more than once, in my more feverish moments, but all I could remember was being certain it was now that was the dream—a bleak and terrifying nightmare—and that reality still encompassed those sweet, uncomplicated days when we would go out riding, and he would tell me all about Scotland. My overwrought mind became my dearest friend, giving me vivid and detailed remembrances I hadn’t known I possessed until now; I could smell the horses’ sweat; hear the thump of hooves on short, scrubby grass; feel sleek, powerful muscles beneath me; and I recalled, with a new and perfect clarity, the sound of Archie’s voice as he described Fort Augustus and the Great Glen in which he lived.

Waking to find the fever once and for all broken I had wept again, but now it was for the loss of that escape route into the past. For no longer being completely absorbed in the simple joy of Archie’s company, still believing it to be the innocent love of a child for a brother. It was knowing I had lost him for ever.

As we neared France the sky was changing colour from pale blue to an overcast grey. Evening was creeping inexorably closer, and my insides twisted tighter and tighter as I accepted that there was no going back now; if we were lucky my testimony might possibly save Oliver’s life, but the truth would come leaking out, like a rancid green sludge, to poison my own.

People around me were gathering up their belongings, calling to new friends to say a new set of goodbyes, and collecting together in groups in readiness for disembarking. Some, the quieter ones, would be returning to what they knew all too well already, others embarking on a new life for which no amount of warnings and descriptions could prepare them.

I craned my neck for sight of Jack Carlisle, but not knowing if he would be in uniform or not it was hard to pick him out of the crowd waiting on the dock. Then, as the crowd thinned, I saw him, with his back to me. For a second my heart was jolted into a helplessly excited rhythm; his hatless head was turned away and he looked, from this side view, so much like his nephew; they shared a height and broadness of shoulder, both had very dark hair, and both held themselves with the same alert readiness, as if they might be called into action at any second. From this distance, and to my untrained eye, the uniform might have been that of any officer, as likely a captain as Jack’s own rank of major. I lost sight of him as I started forward, pushing through the crowd until I came up to stand behind him, and raised my voice to be heard over the hubbub of conversation, and of vehicles rumbling to life.

‘Major Carlisle?’

Then he turned, and my knees faltered.

‘Young Kittlington.’

‘Archie!’ That thundering in my chest again, my fingers losing their grip on the handle of my suitcase, dropping it to the ground at my feet, the treacherous way my arms rose, without my bidding, to encircle his waist…the feel of his own arms wrapped about my shoulders. Buttons, hard beneath my cheek, the crowd disappearing from around us, melting away to leave us alone in a suddenly peaceful world. There was nothing else. There simply was nothing else.

Long after my heartbeat had returned to normal, and my short breaths had deepened once again, he released me. I stood back and looked up at him, his familiar face tired, but still so strong, so beautiful. I reached up to touch his jaw with trembling fingers, and only just stopped myself from tracing his lower lip with my thumb. I ached for him to lower that mouth to mine, and to put all my doubts to flight, but his expression was one of concern, nothing more.

‘Sweetheart, how are you feeling? Is the fever gone? We must get you a hot drink.’

He stepped back, leaving me swaying slightly with the loss of his touch, and bent to pick up my bag. He held out his free hand to me but I shook my head; to hold his hand as he wished, as a child, would be worse than not touching him at all, and my heart cracked a little. After all I’d been through, I was still Oli’s little sister.

I followed him to the car. ‘Why are you here, instead of Jack?’ I wanted him to say it was his idea, that he’d asked to come particularly, but deep down I knew he hadn’t.

‘He thought it’d be easier for you, at least when you arrived,’ Archie said. ‘Someone you know a little better, after…’ he cleared his throat ‘…well…he thought maybe since—’

‘He thought I’d be scared to be alone with him?’ I couldn’t keep the incredulousness out of my voice, and Archie smiled. It lifted my spirits to see it, despite everything.

‘Aye, well the same thing occurred to Lizzy when you went missing. People care for you, Kitty,’ he added softly. We’d reached the car, and his face turned solemn. ‘We understand what this is going to do to you. To…your reputation. How people will see you. And how it’s going to bring back an awful thing you’d want to forget if you could. It’s an amazing thing you’re doing, and we’ll do everything we can to—’

‘Thank you,’ I said, my tone inadvertently short. He was only trying to say the right thing, but the thought of whoever ‘we’ might be, sitting around discussing what a brave little soul I was for speaking out against Colonel Drewe, made me shrivel inside with mortification. I saw the miserable realisation on his face, and touched his arm. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m just tired. I am grateful though. And it’s so lovely to see you, Arch.’