I don’t know how I feel about my letter being read by Germans, she confessed. Oh yes, it means he will get his burial—if the woman in London’s right. And I have to say she seems to be an honest woman. But there were tender feelings in there. I hope no bugger of a German intelligence officer laughs when he reads them. If he’s lucky, he’s had some poor German woman write similar stuff to him…
Still, at other times her idea was the letter would be read not by some German, or once Lionel Dankworth had been respectfully buried, but rather when he lay stunned in a German general hospital and recovering from oblivion an atom at a time.
Spring and All Its Follies
And now, along with the leafing of the trees, the day sky over the clearing station seemed to break out in aeroplanes. They saw German biplanes flying high and tentatively westwards and grinding at the firmament. Antiaircraft guns people called “Archies”—now moved in at the crossroads outside the village—fired at them from sandbagged redoubts either side of the large crucifix which stood there with its back to the battle. Smaller aircraft called fighters came low over the slight rise. They broke on the view like birds harried out of a copse. They coerced everyone’s attention and tore away with it.
One morning a German Taube—or whatever species it was—appeared so low that those who were then in the open swore they could see the pilot and observer looking down. Sally was walking the path between her tent and the gas ward to which she had now been rotated and saw a pilot lean out of his socket in the air and wave at her. He wore a young man’s larrikin grin. The observer in the other cockpit took no notice of her. But there were lethal reasons the pilot flew low. He was hunting for a target and hoping to find an installation that was not blessed with a red cross—as was the roof of the main admissions hut. Flying on, the young pilot saw the Archies, heard their first thunder, scudded by them and pushed a lever to drop two bombs—for reasons hard to explain—on Deux Églises. This was surely an error of war. There were no military columns in the streets. Deux Églises might as well have been Bungendore or Enoggera—offering nought that endangered the German Empire. While Sally flinched at the explosion, over her shoulder three aircraft wearing British insignia and with mysterious letters painted on their wings came at a predatory rate and raced low down the road to intercept the German who was still foolishly circling for evidence of his bombing success. They went at him—one higher, one level, and one lower.
They were all so close to the earth as to give Sally a sense of their impossible speed. The German aircraft now headed northeast. But it took a little time for its pilot to achieve his full, desperate pace. She heard the British machine guns prattling away loud and harsh. The German turned and dived—trying to lose himself in terrain or the trees along a canal—and the three British planes clamored on his tail. And then came a detonation that vibrated the rural air and was distinct from the artillery background. Beyond the village a cumulus of black smoke arose. The grin of the young fellow who’d waved at her was consumed by fire. Some orderlies grabbed an ambulance and raced away to bring in the two Germans, but they were both dead. And just as well—for their faces would have been smashed to fragments on impact by the coping of their cockpits and the butts of their machine guns, and the rest of them burned.
The meeting of eagles above Deux Églises—the fact the man had waved, gallant and amusing while seconds from death—showed her yet again that Charlie Condon, who possessed grace and style of a much higher order, must surely be in someone’s sights. It was possible to deny it during hectic duty. But she could become immobilized for an instant on the pathways and distracted by anxiety even when entering the wards.
I have been deluding myself, Honora all at once confessed to her companions that evening at their dinner of army stew and beans and good bread. Would they search the body of a putrefying man?
Her use of the word “putrefying” shocked them. They would not have believed Honora would admit putrefaction to the catalogue of her possibilities for Lionel Dankworth. It is very likely, she said, he is buried with my letter still on him. There’s something of me, of my hand. It means that he has a little monument in his pocket.
The nurses looked at each other.
Yes, said Leo, whose beloved Fellowes was working at a clearing station thirty miles off. And he’ll have more monuments in the end.
At this time Germans were being brought in. Some walked. One of them—Sally would remember amidst the flux of cases—had a pitiable bayonet wound to the sternum. It crossed Sally’s mind to wonder if Honora might be vengeful with them. But from what anyone saw she was businesslike and attentive in a normal sense. Why would you expect otherwise? Sally asked herself. But then she noticed that with the German walking wounded Honora sometimes briskly removed their jackets and exhaustively searched their pockets—almost as if there might be something sewn in the seams. She did not ask their permission, and they submitted to her search with a frown. She would obviously search the entire German army—all without hatred—to find the one who had her letter and thus knew Captain Lionel Dankworth’s place on or beneath earth.
Naomi had not expected or wanted a reply from Robbie. But one arrived, in a Comforts Fund envelope from which she could tell it had come through the army postal services in France. Her impulse was to leave the thing unopened, but there was a sense in which she was too busy to develop any habit of delay.
Miss Durance,
Your letter followed me from Australia from where I was finally despatched to France to be an RTO—Railway Transport Officer—and where I hoped to visit you at your posting. To say that I am disappointed is to put it very light. What I am most disappointed in is your delay in telling me to give up hope of your affection. I can only believe you when you say that my damaged gait has nothing to do with it. It is that you put off so long letting me know where I stand that I can’t respect. You always seemed to me to be made of more forthright material. You did warn me that when I saw something in you I was fooling myself. So I can’t say that you missed out on telling me to use caution.
But I must say once more—so many months! On the transport I daydreamed how we would meet up in France. Well, I was a fool. And you were not genuine with me. Since there is nothing more to be said,
There was first a rush of shame when Naomi read this. It was followed by anger at Lieutenant Shaw’s moral haughtiness. He wrote as if she had as good as been engaged to him. That was his delusion. She walked the wards directing the work of the English Roses but rage would take her in the midst of sentences and she would forget their purpose.
What dosage did you say? an English Rose would ask, and Naomi would need to begin again.
But within a mere handful of hours, she was overtaken by a sense of reprieve. She had sidestepped the obvious but most lethal marriage. Kiernan had helped her do it.
As Naomi savored freedom from poor Robbie and anticipated a letter from Kiernan, Matron Mitchie had caught a cold which developed very swiftly into pneumonia. She gasped and became distressed about some jangled, fearful terror of childhood or girlhood. Or even of the Archimedes. The Archimedes must be there, Naomi was sure, in Matron Mitchie’s delirium, since Naomi hadn’t been able to eradicate it from her own dreams.