The Somme Stations

Well, on that rather gloomy note, I think I will close, dear. I also think I am about to be ejected by the Matron here, a woman called Oldfield, who looks just as you would expect from that name. Give my love to the children. Oh, and tell Harry that Jim has a very sensational tale touching on the copy of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ that Harry gave him. The telling of it quite bucked him up yesterday. (Although I’m not completely sure I believe him.)

But that’s for later.

With all my love,

Lydia.

‘Ardenlea’,

Queen’s Drive,

Ilkley,

Yorkshire.

October 12th, 1916

Dear Lillian,

Jim was very pale today, also very sleepy, and very hot. According to the sister, a sweet girl who seems to work all hours, he talked constantly in his sleep during the night. I went immediately to see the Matron, Mrs Oldfield, who is rather more grand than is needful and hardly ever seen about the house at all. I don’t care for her, and the feeling is evidently mutual. (I suppose I should never have asked her why she kept all the crippled men upstairs and those with full capacity on the ground floor.) On her desk were two calling cards from undertakers. She saw me looking at them, and made no move to put them away as I said, ‘I would like to ask about Jim Stringer.’

She said, ‘Do you mean James?’

I said, ‘No.’

After an interval of staring at me, she went over to a cabinet to collect a card, and having looked at it, or pretended to, for a while, she said, ‘The bones in his leg are meshing satisfactorily,’ just as though she’d been looking at those bones there and then – and that was the end of the interview. I must believe her, I suppose. At any rate I must until I can speak to the surgeon, Hawks, who comes here from the Ilkley hospital, usually arriving alone in an ambulance carriage, in which he leaves accompanied by those men he proposes operating upon. Not only is Hawks a surgeon and a colonel, but also a professor into the bargain. As a result, he is incredibly pompous, generally speaking through third parties, and always calling Jim’s leg his ‘lower extremity’. He is expected later this afternoon, and I mean to wait for him.

I am certain that Jim is far too morose and silent for a man ‘on the mend’, and he is fearfully distracted. Oh, I know not to ask him questions about the precise goings on, so yesterday I started in on a general discussion of the war, and I asked him when he thought it might end.

‘Never!’

… And he turned away towards the window.

Something happened there to account for his silence. I mean one death that was worse than the others in some way – a matter of treachery among Jim’s own unit of men, the particular gang put to working the trains. The little trains, that is, the ones running at night on tracks laid down in an instant.

Those silly little trains. I have seen photographs of them, and these, together with Jim’s own vague accounts of working on the trains, caused the nightmare that I mentioned to you. The driver can hardly fit into the cab. His head pokes out of it, and I cannot help but picture them as pleasure railways, running at night – because they only ever do run them at night – under a sky filled with fireworks. But the fireworks are bombs falling, and the men cannot dodge the falling bombs since they must stay with the train, and the train must stay on the tracks… and the train itself carries bombs. For Jim, the danger is not passed. He is fighting his own war within the bigger war, and I believe his own is not done yet, just as the bigger one is not… This, I think, is why he has spent so much of his time looking through the window at the grounds and the driveway that approaches the house.

Lillian, I still hope to be back on Friday, but this now depends on what the surgeon says. Give my love to the children, and tell them their father is well, as I pray that he is, or will be.

With all my love,

Lydia.

Moor View Guest House,

The Grove,

Ilkley.

October 13th, 1916

Dearest Lillian,

This has been about the worst day of my life.

Jim has a sepsis, and has been taken directly to the hospital. This is blood poisoning because of the wound to his leg. I was with him this morning; his leg and hip are fearfully swollen; he had a fever, and kept muttering about an owl. I asked him, ‘Was there an owl in the night?’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘In the day.’ When Hawks came, he said this was ‘A very grave matter’ and I saw the horrible Oldfield nodding in the background. No apology for saying the ‘bone was setting satisfactorily’ after I’d told her that Jim was ill. No mention from Hawks that this poisoning comes from his re-setting of the bone. He is going to try ‘excision’, which is scraping out the poison.

When Jim had been taken from the room, and I was alone with Hawks for a moment, I said, ‘What if that doesn’t work? You will amputate the leg won’t you?’ He replied, ‘If the position is not already hopeless.’ So I thought I had said the worst thing, but evidently not. I insisted on accompanying Jim, and, on being refused – and being told that Jim would be returned to Ardenlea after four hours or so – I walked straight to the Ilkley library, where I read up on sepsis in the bone, which I think is osteomyelitis. From my reading, I dare to hope that the infection was caught in time. I am trusting to the pomposity of Hawks: he would say the worst, because then he will look better when he finds the cure.

I went back to Ardenlea after the four hours, to await Jim’s return from the operation. As I walked along the drive, a tall man in a perfectly pressed uniform came towards me. He was making for the gate. He wore riding boots and a red cloth cover over his cap, and carried a valise under his arm. He touched his cap to me as we passed. The Matron, Oldfield, stood in the doorway, watching as he departed and I approached.

‘Is my husband back yet?’ I asked her.

She shook her head. ‘He will not be back until about midnight. I have just told that gentleman the same thing.’

‘Has there been some complication?’

‘I don’t know, I’m sure.’

I contemplated telling her that she was a sadist, plain and simple. Then I thought to ask: ‘Who was that man?’ (We could still hear his brisk retreating footsteps on the gravel of the drive.)

‘He’s in the Military Mounted Police.’

Being in a kind of daze, I said, ‘Well, I didn’t see his horse.’

‘He came by train.’

‘What does he want with Jim?’

And so, Lillian, I gave Oldfield the opportunity of experiencing the most wonderful pleasure, for she said:

‘I see no reason why I shouldn’t tell you. He means to take your husband in charge.’

‘Why? On what charge?’

‘On a charge of murder.’

‘Well then. There has obviously been a mistake.’

‘Sergeant Major Thackeray’, she said, nodding towards the opened gate, which the man in the red-covered hat was now walking through, wheeling to the right, as though giving himself marching orders, ‘has come all the way from France expressly to bring the charge, so I shouldn’t think there’s been a mistake. I am to be responsible for making sure that on returning to these premises, your husband does not quit his room before the gentleman returns in the morning.’

I might have fainted at that moment… only a light snow was beginning to fall in the gardens of Ardenlea. The snowflakes that touched my face had a reviving effect.

‘When Jim returns’, I said to Oldfield, ‘he will be unconscious.’