My Father's War, page 14
So that’s what I’ve been doing all this afternoon and a good part of the evening. Writing down reams of stuff. Paul helped too, reminding me of all the things Owl had told him about the battle his own father had died in, and about other things too, things that he had noticed that I hadn’t. Even Cat helped, because she sat up on Jimbo’s bed and purred and purred while he absent-mindedly stroked her with his free hand and listened to what we read back of what he’d said and what we remembered ourselves.
I was so busy that I hardly had time for anything else. Now Jimbo’s asleep and I’ve been sitting next to Dad telling him about it. He doesn’t react of course, but I’ve got to tell him anyway—because otherwise the tears start when I think of Blue and Owl and how I will never ever see them again.
April 28
I feel so discouraged. So hopeless. The deaths of poor Blue and Owl still hang heavy in my mind. I can’t help remembering how kind they were, how full of life. And that makes me think of the other people I know who’ve died. Madame Baudin. The Clermonts. Everything seems so dark and sad. And what is worse, Jimbo has unexpectedly developed a fever as a result of his wounds. I hope so much that he won’t die too.
Will has been moved to another hospital. Paul is hardly talking. Nurse Millard is in a bad mood. Cat spends a lot of time away. There is no change in Dad. There is no news from Mum. The Germans have attacked V-B again. They have shelled more towns. It’s never-ending. More casualties come in every day.
Nurse Millard said to me this morning that I was growing up fast. Once upon a time I would have been pleased about that. Now I can hardly bear the thought that growing up means this numbness and sadness. I wish I was a little kid now. A very little kid who doesn’t understand anything, who just amuses themselves with silly little things. Or even an animal, like Cat. It would be so much better, not to know anything. Not even try to understand. Oh, I can’t bear to write any more. There’s no point.
April 30
It is a strange thing, but very often when I have felt really bad, like just giving up, something happens which changes things. Today was one of those days. Because at last I know where Mum is. At least I have some notion.
It was May Pryce who told me, through Fraser, who told her we were here after she’d tried to send a message to us through the depot in Amiens. This is what she said in the note Fraser handed to me:
Dear Annie, I’m enclosing a letter that recently came to me after going astray in the mail and getting quite delayed. But I thought you would like to see it. Regards, May Pryce.
When I looked at the letter I got such a jolt, because there was Mum’s familiar handwriting, and her signature at the bottom. Like May said, it had obviously been delayed, because it was dated April 10, nearly three weeks ago. But what also made me stare was the place written next to the date. London!
This is what it said:
Dear May,
You will be wondering what has happened to me. Well, when I left Amiens I had a wild idea of going to the front, in the guise of an old newspaper-woman—but changed my mind at the last minute and decided instead to head for England and that man Ned Middleton who knew Harry. I don’t suppose I was thinking very straight by this time, and unfortunately not long after leaving the boat at Dover I became very ill. I do not know whether it was some sickness I picked up in France, or dire food poisoning, or simply complete nervous collapse (as the doctor assures me)—but anyway I was very sick for quite a while. When I finally recovered many days later, I had already wasted a good deal of time. I knew my daughter would be worried, so I sent her a note in Amiens. I had learned by then of the renewed German offensive but also that it was being pushed back, and I remembered Madame Baudin being so very firm about never leaving her house so I hoped she would get it in time.
I finally made it to London where I found Ned and at last struck it lucky, for he—thank God!—confirmed what we’d suspected about Harry’s work. He also told me he’d heard Harry was safe and would be returning to normal duties, but that we would not be able to see him for some time, in view of renewed hostilities. He suggested that I might remain in England and help with war work there, in one of the convalescent hospitals, which I believe to be a good idea. So I’ve sent a letter to Madame Baudin, asking her to make arrangements for my daughter to come on to England. Perhaps in a day or two after you get this letter you could call round there and make sure all is in hand? Thank you so much.
I hope all is well with you and that you have (good) news from your dear Solly.
Your friend,
Marie-Claude Cliff.
It should make me feel happy. And it does. Except that—well, Paul says it explains so much, and it does, but there are still things I don’t understand. For instance, Mum writes about sending letters to Amiens. We never got them—either they never arrived or were destroyed when the house was. We certainly didn’t see them in the ruins of the house—but then there were so many sodden papers, rubbish, scraps of things there, how could you possibly spot a letter even if it had arrived? But she must have wondered, when she got no reply to any of her letters. She must have begun to worry over what might have happened. And she wouldn’t just stay in England then, would she? It’s just not like her to sit on her hands. And if she has left England to go looking for me, then why haven’t I heard from her? It makes me feel worried all over again.
Paul says I shouldn’t worry. He says that even if Mum found out what happened and managed to track us down to the hospital at Neufchatel, then she’d hit a dead end because we ran away and no-one there knows where to. It makes sense. But I don’t feel sensible right now.
Anyway, Nurse Millard has arranged for a wire to be sent to the hospital authorities in England to see if they can track Mum down.
May 1
A wire came back from England. Mum had been working in a hospital outside of London, until a week ago when she left suddenly. Nobody knows where she is now.
May 2
Still no news.
Jimbo has recovered from his fever. He is looking much better and is being sent off to convalesce in ‘Blighty’ as he calls England, in a couple of days’ time. He says he will miss us, and tells us that we must not worry. That Mum will be found, and Dad will wake. He’s a nice man, trying to make me feel better, and so I smile even though inside I fear there is little hope.
Dad does not wake. I try to keep cheerful and continue to tell him stories when I have time off from work, but it is hard to keep it up. I overheard the doctor saying that if he doesn’t wake soon, the damage may be permanent. Paul says I mustn’t worry. Paul is always telling me that, just like Jimbo. He means well, I know he does, and without him I would have given up long ago. But sometimes I think he just doesn’t understand how I feel. Being in limbo like this is starting to make me feel like I am going to go mad!
May 3
Oh my God, it actually happened! And can you believe I wasn’t even there, but bashing dixies in the kitchen. Paul came running to fetch me. His face was all lit up.
He began, ‘Annie, your father—’
He didn’t even get a chance to finish because just one look at his face told me what had happened and I gave a yell and tore out of there, with Paul at my heels.
I raced to Dad’s bedside. Nurse Millard was there, and Jimbo, hanging behind. But I hardly noticed. I only had eyes for Dad.
They’d taken the bandage off his eyes and propped him up on some pillows. In some ways he looked the same. His skin was just as chalky, his big frame still wasting away. But his eyes were open. They were bloodshot, and there was a puzzled expression in them, but they were that clear, clear blue I know so well. He turned his head towards me.
I took a step towards him. ‘Dad?’
His eyes widened. His lips moved. Just a whisper, but quite clear. ‘Annie. My little Annie.’
‘Oh Dad, Dad, Dad!’ I rushed forward to kneel by his side, and suddenly I was blubbing like a little kid, with snotty tears running down my face—stupid, stupid, stupid when I feel so happy I think I might burst!
Dad groped for my hand and whispered, ‘It’s all right, sweetheart, it’s all right.’ His hand was so light, so bony and dry, so unlike the strong clasp of the past, but to hear him, to hear his voice again after so many years of longing—oh, it was so wonderful, so good I just can’t describe it. I can’t explain how it made me feel. I just know a huge feeling flooded in me like a wave, drowning bitterness, anxiety and worry and everything that had happened, all the hard times we had. And I saw in Dad’s eyes that he felt the same. We clung to each other. Then I saw Paul hanging back, looking a little forlorn, and I called him over.
‘Dad,’ I said, ‘this is my best friend Paul, who never let me give up.’ Paul went a little red, but looked pleased, especially when Dad shook his hand, man to man, and said that he was glad, very glad to meet him …
It was only later, when Dad was asleep again—but a good, decent sleep, this time—that I learned from Nurse Millard just what happened. It was something Jimbo did—dear, dear Jimbo, who refuses to take any credit, who looked embarrassed when I tried to hug him, who muttered that it was ‘just a blanky coincidence, your dad was going to wake up anyway, you ask the Doc. I just happened to be there.’ But though Nurse Millard is not normally one for ‘miracles’ she won’t accept that, and she told us that in her opinion Jimbo had made all the difference.
‘You see,’ she said, smiling, ‘he felt he owed you one for writing those letters to Blue’s and Owl’s families. He’d watched you trying to wake your dad. He’d watched Paul trying to cheer you up. He’d heard the doctor saying it would soon be too late. It just all got on his goat, I reckon. And so he marched over to your dad and said, “Your Annie’s come a long blanky way to find you, mate, and she’s breaking her heart, so you blanky wake up, you hear?” And for some reason that did the trick. Maybe,’ she added, with a twinkle in her eye, ‘Your dad was just shocked by the swearing.’
Jimbo shuffled in an embarrassed sort of way and said it wasn’t down to him really, it was most likely just sheer coincidence. After he said that to Dad he felt ashamed of telling off a sick man, and he was just turning away when he heard a noise behind him. He swung around to see Dad’s hand groping up towards the bandage on his eyes. And that’s when Jimbo called Nurse Millard over and then she called the doctor and—well, the rest I know!
The doc says that Dad can be moved just as soon as there’s room in the transports. He warns us that there’s still a way to go before Dad recovers fully—his strength will have to be built up slowly, and once he is better physically the nightmares may begin. But he also says it’s surprising how well Dad has responded so far to things, how his speech seems almost normal, and his eyesight as well. He says that it shows that, despite appearances, Dad must have been improving day by day. Nurse Millard says that’s down to me. I don’t know about that. But the truth of it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Dad is back.
May 6
We are in the hospital train with Dad, bound for Rouen. It’s rattling along at quite a rate, bouncing my pencil as I write this. There are lots of people here, some on stretchers, like Dad, others sitting up, some on crutches, some looking just about normal. We’ll be in Normandy in just a few hours. It is a long way from the frontline there and very quiet apparently. Everyone is looking forward to that.
Dad’s asleep right now, but before that we were talking. Dad told us a bit about what had happened to him—well, not what he was doing behind German lines, that is a secret and he is bound not to tell—but about what happened once he went back over the lines with his report. He was sent straight back into the fighting, into hard skirmishes and ambushes in the fields and woods around the town, before he was caught in that gas attack.
‘It was nothing like the trenches,’ he said. ‘No more digging in like rabbits, no more stupid ideas of throwing away men on hopeless sorties against big guns. All that changed. At last we were relying on speed and cunning and surprise. One night, for instance, we surprised this large party of Germans sleeping under their sheets and tarpaulins and managed to round up all their rifles before they even had a chance to draw breath! We took dozens of prisoners in a few minutes.’
We saw some German prisoners today. It was when we were stopped at a siding somewhere. I looked out of the window and saw a collection of the most dejected-looking people assembled on the platform. They looked grey, exhausted, unshaven, their uniforms stained and dirty. I stared at them curiously, because they were the first actual Germans I’d seen in all the time I’ve been here. They didn’t look like demons. They didn’t look like mighty conquerors. They didn’t even look all that foreign. The really peculiar thing was that, apart from their uniforms, they didn’t look all that different from our men.
Dad laughed when I said that. ‘What did you expect, lovey, horns and a tail?’
‘Of course I didn’t expect that!’ I said. ‘But I suppose—I suppose I expected them to look mean. Or something like that.’
Dad said, ‘It’s hard to look mean when you haven’t slept for days and you’ve been fighting hard and then you get captured. Suddenly it hits you that your war’s over, really over. And that can feel good. And it can feel bad. You can feel glad. And ashamed. Angry. And happy. You want to be out of it, but you also can’t bear that you’re out of it. All at the same time.’
Paul and I looked at him in surprise, and he smiled and said, a little bitterly, ‘Don’t look so worried, kids, I’m not falling to pieces. I just want you to understand.’
May 12
Only a couple of pages left in my book. I haven’t written anything for a few days, and it’s not because I feel disheartened, like before, but quite the opposite.
Dad is steadily improving. He got out of bed the day after we arrived in Rouen, and Paul and I helped to support him as he walked around the ward. He did one small turn before he got tired, but every day since then he’s walked a little more, and now the three of us—well, four, if you include Cat too!—take turns around the garden together.
We heard the other day from Nurse Millard, who had finally managed to contact Neufchatel hospital. Mum had been there, but left again when she was told we were no longer there. A message had been sent to the Red Cross depot in Amiens in case she turned up there. Also to Mum’s Aunt Irma (Dad knew her address). But so far we’ve heard nothing. And we don’t know when or if we will.
So we don’t talk about the future yet, though Dad has been told he is definitely out of active duty now. When he is quite better he may be sent to London and eventually back to Australia, when this war finally ends. Wherever it is, I will be with him, and Paul too, for there is no way we are leaving him behind and there is nothing for him here anymore.
I’m sitting in the sunny garden writing this, watching Dad trying to teach Paul some Aussie slang. They are laughing their heads off! It’s good to see Dad laughing, and good to see Paul coming out of his shell.
Someone’s coming into the garden. One of the nurses calling us back in, I suppose—
May 26
I never finished that entry, for the very best reason in the whole wide world! So I’ll finish it now.
That someone who came into the garden wasn’t a nurse. It was a small, slim woman in a shabby travelling coat and a hat with a veil. A small, dark, pretty woman who stopped stock-still when she saw us, and who did not seem to be able to move. I didn’t seem to be able to, either. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dad getting up, dislodging Cat from his lap. I saw him take a step towards her, and then stagger. And then she flew across to him. She threw her arms around him, helped him up. She was crying, calling his name. He was holding on to her silently, apparently struck dumb. I had a huge lump in my throat, and my heart was pounding so much I thought it would burst out of my ears.
Then she looked up and said, very gently, ‘My darling, darling girl.’ She held out an arm to me and I rushed into it, and the three of us hugged each other tightly. There were tears in Dad’s eyes and tears rolling down Mum’s cheeks, but I wasn’t crying. Not at all, not one little bit—until I looked up and saw Paul standing there by himself. He was smiling, because he was happy for us, but I could still see a sadness in his eyes that suddenly squeezed my heart and opened the floodgates.
But Dad had seen too, and he called Paul over. He came and stood with us, a bit stiffly at first, but suddenly everything was all right—even my tears didn’t seem painful anymore, but washing everything away, all the fear and bitterness of the last few months. Then Cat, sick of the fact nobody was paying any attention to her, came over, tail held high, miaowing loudly in an offended sort of way and staring at us out of her great golden eyes, and we all burst out laughing!
I’m sitting writing this on the banks of the Seine, Aunt Irma’s picnic basket at my feet. Not that there’s anything in it anymore, we pretty much demolished that at lunchtime. It’s a golden afternoon and the sun sparkles on the river, just like Dad said it would. Paul’s skimming stones on the water and Mum and Dad and Aunt Irma (who met us in Paris a few days ago—she seems like a dry sort of stick at first but has begun to warm up; I think I might even grow to like her!) have gone for a little walk, with Cat stalking grandly after them. We’ll be in Paris for a few more days, then on to England, where we’re going to catch up with Jimbo, who’s just come out of hospital. Then in a few weeks, we’ll sail for Australia, together.
Two weeks now since Mum came back, and Dad’s war ended, and it already feels like a different world. Not the peacetime world, not yet, though we are all so happy to be together, and so grateful to God for preserving us. For there are shadows in Dad’s eyes, and Paul sometimes goes quiet, and there are times when the memories grow in my own mind, and I think of the people who will never come back. I think of how much they’d have loved a picnic here with us, and how we’d have joked and laughed together. And it feels right to end this with their names, because we will never forget them. Never, for as long as we live.
