Winter Roses, page 27
‘What did it say?’ Luke interrupted.
She repeated it. ‘Why?’
‘Nothing.’
He was lying. On the Sunday he asked her to come for a walk, and she accepted gratefully, for the weekends were the hardest to bear now Yves had gone for ever. It was a blow therefore when he began:
‘I have some bad news for you, Caroline. For you. No one else, save perhaps your father, but certainly not the Dibbles. Is that understood?’
‘Yes.’ The afternoon looked ordinary enough, the Leas swarming with people out for a walk, soldiers, civilians, toddlers. How could there be yet more bad news?
‘I’m afraid your poor Fred wasn’t killed in action, Caroline,’
Luke was unusually gentle.
‘In a brawl?’
‘No. You’ve heard of what the soldiers call shell-shock?’
‘Of course.’
‘Those words you mentioned from the letter your housekeeper received sounded ominous to me. There’s been some talk in Whitehall about their callousness. That’s why they rang a bell. So I made it my business to find out more, and I did. Fred was in the front-line trenches at the time of the big Messines bombardment last month. You showed me Lissy’s letter, and that from what I gather was understating the case as regards the effect it had on our soldiers, let alone on Fred. They were wandering around out of their wits, and many haven’t recovered. So Fred did the sensible thing as he saw it. He turned round and began to walk home.’
Tears stung her eyes, and the sea breeze whipped at her cheeks. She began to shiver.
‘The Army saw it as desertion in the face of the enemy. Caroline dear, I’m afraid Fred was found, court-martialled and shot.’
‘Shot?’ she cried incredulously. ‘By his own side?’
‘Like quite a few other cases of desertion or apparent cowardice, and done, as with Admiral Byng, pour encourager les autres.’
‘Shot,’ she repeated disbelievingly. How could such a thing be? He sat beside her on the grass, talking to her, but her disbelief remained. ‘Imprisoned, yes, but shot?’
‘Many in the Army share your views, Caroline. I do myself. One soldier refused to carry out the sentence against Fred.’
‘And was he court-martialled for disobedience to orders?’ she asked bitterly.
‘No.’
That evening Caroline summoned up enough strength to telephone her father. She had, she said, some information to give him, and would return home tomorrow. There had been a pause. ‘Is this about Fred?’
‘Yes.’
‘I know what you have to tell me, Caroline. Don’t distress yourself. I telephoned Sir John.’
‘The tree, Father. What if the Dibbles discover what really happened to Fred? Mrs Dibble was doubtful about it anyway, so what would you say to her then?’
‘I shall tell them the truth. That Sir John gave me the news five hours before we added Fred’s initials to the tree, and that I carved them because I believed they should be there.’
Chapter Sixteen
Luke had told her he was going to Paris again. With those few words, Caroline saw her path forward. She needed time to think it through, however, and her lodgings were not the right place for meditation. His casual statement had brought to a head her concerns over the work she was doing – or, rather, not doing, for agents’ reports now made little sense in terms of an overall pattern; they were far fewer in number and, it seemed to her, of little relevance. Of what use was it to know that the Germans had increased the number of civilian trains leaving Brussels from the handful they had graciously permitted after they first occupied the city to thirty-four, compared with the pre-war figure of 292? And yet again the information that ten additional divisions were moving through Ghent had correctly pointed to a German attack on the bridgehead by the Yser, but why had the enemy not followed it up if their strength was now as indicated in their agents’ reports? And were the divisions noted passing through on the Menin line really because the Germans were also about to attack at Ypres?
Caroline strolled down towards the harbour after work, choosing a seat where on this mid July evening she could see not only the military transport ships, but the open sea, the other side of which was the rest of the world. Much of it war-torn, but one day it would revert to individual cultures, ideologies and heritages. Much of it was ruled by Britain. It was a world of which she knew nothing save from books, newspapers and magazines, written by those brought up, as she had been, to take pride in Britain’s achievements in her empire; they reflected the native cultures with maternalistic indulgence. She began to see why Daniel was so set on travel; one could see for oneself, not be told by others.
Luke had told her he was going to Paris again. Next Tuesday, for a meeting on Wednesday. On Wednesday 25th July Caroline Lilley would be twenty-five. She would have been in this world for a quarter of a century, and she had only just begun to understand what she wanted from it and to give to it. All around her walked people with a purpose in life. Soldiers marching to France, office workers and housewives hurrying to the shops, mothers with children. What had she achieved and where was she going? Behind her lay the Rectory, her parents, her brother and sisters, and her love for Ashden. Only two years ago she had assumed she would stay in Ashden for ever, even though she had also acknowledged a restlessness in her that made her impatient to know what lay outside. After she had realised she was in love with Reggie, she had discounted that. Reggie meant Ashden, but tenderly, she must lay them both aside. How could she take up the reins of her former life, sitting on village committees, editing the parish magazine (if she were cruel enough to wrest it away from Beatrice Ryde) and helping her mother run the house?
How could she now marry someone from Ashden or Tunbridge Wells and begin her own family? Even if she could do it, she did not want to.
Isabel of course would remain in Ashden, have children and lead the life she’d always wanted. Admired by everyone. Of all of them, there was no need to worry about Isabel. What would Felicia do? Marry Daniel and live near Ashden, marry Luke and travel far away, or not marry at all and find a vocation somewhere that was unlikely to be Sussex? Phoebe? After what her sister had told her, there seemed little chance of her returning to the Rectory. George? It was painful even to think of him, knowing the terrifying low survival rate among pilots. He would survive, she told herself. And he would go to Oxford, or remain in the Royal Flying Corps, or even take up journalism with his now famous cartoons.
And lastly came Miss Caroline Lilley, spinster of Ashden parish, and twenty-five next Wednesday. Ashden’s door was now closed behind her; in front of her was another closed door, slammed by the man she loved; as if that wasn’t enough, the only other exit from her no man’s land was a tiny door marked ‘work’, and it too appeared to be closing. She was trapped, and she had precious little ammunition to fight her way out. She had only one tiny bullet with which to blast her way through to the future and she must act immediately before any chance of doing so was whisked away for good. Tomorrow morning she would shoot that bullet – at Luke. Luke was going to Paris.
‘Good morning, Luke.’
He glanced up from his morning post, surprised out of his usual working mask of detached offhandedness, perhaps by the cheerfulness of Caroline’s voice.
‘May I have a private word with you?’ she asked brightly.
‘You can come with me as bodyguard while I take some stuff down to the harbour for GHQ, but it had better be important.’
It was raining, but she didn’t care a jot. In fact she was pleased, for under an umbrella there would be little escape for Captain Luke Dequessy.
‘What is it then?’ he asked, as he set off at a fast pace – deliberately, she suspected.
‘I want to know why you are going to Paris.’
He stopped abruptly. ‘I told you it had to be important. Why the blazes do you think I’m going? To have a slap-up meal at the Ritz? It’s for a meeting of course.’
‘That’s what I thought. And that’s exactly how you blackmailed Felicia into coming down to Paris in May, isn’t it? You told her that GHQ wanted to hear her first-hand report on conditions round Ypres at a joint Allied meeting.’ She waited, it seemed interminably, for his reply. It was a wild guess on her part, and she crossed her mental fingers that the fact wasn’t obvious.
At last he replied, ‘Perhaps,’ and strode quickly on again.
‘I thought it a little strange that Felicia should suddenly have left her post, even if it were a quiet time, just to cavort around Paris. It isn’t like her.’ She was almost running to keep up with him.
‘She enjoyed it,’ he said more amicably.
‘As I shall.’
That took the wind out of his sails. He stopped again. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said as I shall, when you take me with you next week.’
‘What for?’ He managed a fair impression of his cheerful banter. ‘I hadn’t realised you felt so affectionate towards me.’
She was on safer ground now and laughed. ‘I’m not planning to seduce you. Your honour is quite safe. I want to come because I’m assuming – guessing – Yves will be there.’
‘Ah. Would Yves want to see you?’
‘No.’
‘Then you can’t.’
‘Would you accept that for an answer if it were you asking Felicia?’
‘No.’
‘Would you want Felicia to know how you inveigled her down to Paris on false pretences? After all, you might wish to play the same trick again.’
‘Drat you, little rector’s daughter,’ he replied crossly. ‘She’s coming next week.’
It was all working out splendidly, and even better she’d see Felicia, which seemed to place the crown of approval on her plan. ‘That’s wonderful. We can share a room to save Mr Lloyd George money.’ A thought struck her uneasily. ‘Is that all right?’
A heavy sigh. ‘Yes, Miss Elder Sister, it is all right. I may not have been brought up in a rectory, but I do love Lissy and that means thinking of her best interests. Mind you,’ he added more cheerfully, ‘I don’t give much for her chances the minute war ends and she says she’ll marry me.’
That weekend she remained in Folkestone, for Luke meanly made her work two extra days to make up for those she would spend in France, and part of them, he told her, could be spent thinking up a damned good story to cover her presence in Paris. She regretted not being at home because on the Saturday she received a letter from her mother with distressing news. The Dibbles had discovered the truth about how Fred had died. Her mother thought that they heard from Joe who had assumed they knew. The Rectory was full of renewed sadness and, what was worse, the whole village now knew the truth about how he died, because Muriel had made the first telephone call of her life in order to speak to her parents-in-law and did not realise that the postmistress who ran the exchange might be listening. However it happened, trouble had followed. Len Thorn had been home on leave, and eager to take revenge on the Rectory for its disapproval of him, had stirred up trouble over the tree.
‘It looked as though the village feud would erupt with a vengeance as Mutters suddenly decided that Fred was worthy of inclusion. Your father soon put an end to the brawling. He listed all the good things Fred had done in his life, and suggested they compare that with what they had achieved. Then he flourished the knife he uses to carve with and asked who would be stepping forward first to obliterate Fred’s initials. No one did, so he thrust it at Len Thorn. He refused to take it, because his fellow Thorns had been beginning to nod their heads as Father talked; Len growled something about a war wound in that hand. Caroline, you would have laughed. Beth Ryde stepped forward most solicitously to say she would cure this wound free of charge. He shouted at her that he’d soldier on, thank you very much, and even his relations sniggered.
‘Mrs Dibble remains very quiet, however, and wanted to give up her classes. I explained this would be giving in as though she – and Fred – had something to be ashamed of, so she decided to continue. “Life don’t stop, does it?” she said. I think it has for her, however. We haven’t heard a hymn since Fred’s death, and even your father misses it. How cruel life can be, Caroline.’
Squashed between Tommies, of whose language she could hardly decipher a word, Caroline hung over the ship’s rail watching the khaki uniforms streaming on board, and every sort of supplies from food to armaments being loaded. She’d seen them before from the harbourside; now she was travelling in the same ship, surrounded by singing, shouting and cheering troops, though they had little enough to rejoice about, and they must by now be well aware of the fact.
‘Lifebelt, Caroline.’ Luke struggled through to her just as the steamer funnel let off a great hoot behind her, and she saw that everyone was wrestling with them. She tried to put it on herself, but Luke had to help her in the end. To him it was routine; to her it was an unpleasant reminder that though they were heading for Paris and not the front, they still had to cross the Channel safely. A destroyer was to escort them on either side, as a deterrent to German submarines to whom they were a tempting target. Aeroplanes were circling above them watching for any sign that a submarine was creeping up on them. It would be a short trip, but a hazardous one.
An hour and a half later, however, they docked safely at Boulogne, passing a hospital ship on its way back to England. Despite the red cross painted on it, it needed just as much guarding nowadays as the transports, for submarines were blind to any distinction in these terrible times.
Boulogne, to her disappointment, looked much like Folkestone, chalk cliffs, harbour, khaki, and stores everywhere ready to be distributed to their different destinations. Motor transport lined up for the officers and trains awaited the men. Half an hour later their train slowly steamed out, and as the smoke billowed outside the window, excitement began to replace her sense of anticlimax. She was travelling to Paris. Towards Yves.
The reason this meeting was so important, Luke had explained, was because General Pershing, in command of the American troops, had set up his HQ in the rue de Constantine in Paris, to organise the training of his troops before involving them in action. It was a difficult situation for the entente powers not only needed their early participation, but were aware of the resentment at all service levels that American troops would not be fighting until next year.
‘But I thought GHQ were planning an offensive to finish the war this year.’ Caroline was dismayed.
‘Quite. Thanks, General Pershing, is the general reaction. Our officers will tell our troops we can win the war with the coming offensive, yet their superior officers are planning for fighting on into 1918.’ Luke had explained that the Paris meeting would in practice be several meetings. General Pershing would not be interested in the views of Captain Dequessy, nor, he delicately implied, those of Miss Lilley. ‘He’s at GHQ with Field Marshal Haig for four days, anyway, so these are joint intelligence meetings. Pershing’s intelligence chief Major Noland will be there, and John Charteris, who is Haig’s, and the French and Belgian chiefs too, plus Yves as personal liaison officer to King Albert.’ At a lower level, Noland’s representative (there were only two of them in the section at present), would be listening to the Allied Bureau intelligence appraisals, which is where Luke came in.
‘And Felicia?’ Caroline asked meekly.
‘Lissy will deliver a special report on morale,’ he replied promptly. ‘German and British.’
‘Why do you call her Lissy?’ she asked. ‘You know me well enough to tell me now.’
‘My mother’s name is Alicia. When I was a toddler, I decided that was a much prettier name than “mother” so I practised calling her that but couldn’t get it right. Mr Freud would like this story, wouldn’t he? Lying half-conscious when Felicia and Tilly hauled me in, I called out for my mother – you see why I didn’t want to tell you – and Felicia naturally thought I was calling for her. Don’t disillusion her, will you?’
‘I think you underrate her,’ Caroline said. ‘She wouldn’t mind a scrap. Does Felicia know I’m coming?’ she asked him now, as the train approached what was obviously Paris.
‘Yes.’
‘Does Yves?’
‘No. I’m too fond of my scalp to tell him.’
‘Thank you, Luke.’
There on the right, in the distance, was a white dome which she immediately knew must be the Basilica of Sacre Coeur on the hill of Montmartre. She was here at last, and aware that happiness lay within her reach. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach, but there was no going back now.
As they walked out of the station to find their transport, she could smell food from the surrounding cafes and restaurants. Foreign food. How Mrs Dibble would sniff in disapproval. To Caroline it smelt excitingly different, and she tucked the Rectory back in her heart, where it would be kept secure.
Motor transport had been laid on to meet them and they rattled over the paved roadways out to Versailles where the meetings were to take place. How nice it would be if God could provide one further coincidence and make the driver Phoebe. He didn’t; it was a woman though, a sign that all able-bodied men were at the front here too. Her excitement, tinged with nervousness, mounted as they drove, at Luke’s special request, along the Champs-Élysées, before weaving their way through the Paris suburbs to Versailles. Now she knew she was in France. The familiar sight of an English high street, each shop proudly displaying its owner’s name was replaced by boulangerie, charcuterie, chevaline – horsemeat? she wondered, startled. Wait till she told Mrs Dibble about that.
‘This is the Boulevard de la Reine,’ Luke told her as they drove through Versailles. ‘You’re going in like Queen Marie-Antoinette.’
‘Let’s hope I don’t end up like her,’ Caroline retorted, catching her breath at the first sight of the chateau. ‘It’s enormous. And beautiful. We’re not staying in it, are we?’
