Chapter Twenty-Six
She listened, but the brook did not talk to her, she looked but her vision was blurred.
The street was quiet and there was a solemnity in the air.
It was the day before Palm Sunday and on a Saturday afternoon the children would usually be celebrating their freedom, playing leapfrog in the field, throwing balls against the wall of the Queens Head, being chased off by the landlord. The quietness unsettled Kate.
As she passed Addison Farm, where she used to work lifting and bagging potatoes, she paused, trying to recapture what that younger Kate thought about then, her nails clogged with earth.
Her hands were busy but where would her mind have been?
Certainly not preoccupied with the thoughts that tormented her now.
Her heart was divided. Her loyalties strong.
The comfort she could give to her family would be short-lived.
She would only be here for a short time and then she would be going back to her new life in Forest Hill.
She couldn’t stay with them. A wave of uncertainty swept over her.
How could she help them? The pain of the loss of their dear Fred was raw, it cut through to the bone and, as much as she ached with it, her mother and father’s suffering would be so much worse.
And what of Dot and little Henry? He was too young to fully grasp the meaning of it all but once she had gone back to London, Dot would be left to cope with the emptiness of their grieving parents alone.
She looked past the farmhouse to the fields beyond. In the scoured patterns of the ploughed land, patches of green were emerging. New beginnings. Which crop were they growing in the fields this year, she wondered? How many young men of the village would be here to eat it come harvest time?
She stopped at the five-bar gate and looked for the horses that were usually grazing there.
She needed a few minutes to prepare herself for what, she knew, would be such a painfully sad greeting.
There should have been such joy in her homecoming.
She hadn’t been back for many months and now there would be no laughter, only tears.
She noticed a mare in the far corner of the field and, beside her, the wobbly form of a newborn foal.
A smile crept across Kate’s lips as she watched the rubbery stilts fold and reform under the foal’s chestnut body.
He staggered about around his mother, her gentle nuzzling encouraging him, as he tried to find his feet.
She was reminded of Fred teaching her to ride a bicycle.
How he ran along behind her and held onto the saddle.
How she had shouted, ‘Don’t let go, Fred.
’ And he’d not replied. So, she’d looked over her shoulder and promptly fell off.
As he ran and picked her and the bike up, he’d said, ‘See what happens when you doubt yourself, Kate? You were doing it before you thought I wasn’t there to catch you.
So, you can do it without me then, can’t you? ’
‘I can do it, Fred. I can do it,’ she said to herself now.
The backyard was quiet. No Ma hanging out the washing.
No sign of Dot or Henry. Pa’s bicycle leaned against the back wall of the house, waiting.
Kate opened the kitchen door. Her parents sat either side of the kitchen range, staring into blankness.
As Kate entered the room, her mother looked up, her eyes red and her mouth trembling.
She opened her lips to speak but what came out sounded more like an animal caught by the jaws of a trap.
Her mother tried several times to find words that would not form, the sobs of a child struggling for breath, distraught and inconsolable.
Her strong, capable mother crushed and bleeding inside with a flow of grief so powerful it overwhelmed her.
Kate went to her and knelt in front of her, resting her head on her mother’s knees and holding onto her skirts like she used to do as a child.
They both let their grief engulf them. Kate felt her mother’s hand touch her hair and her back in slow, even strokes until their sobs subsided.
Kate eventually pulled away and turned to her father who stood and wrapped Kate in his arms, his hold so tight she thought her back would break and her lungs be emptied.
She felt his huge shoulders heave with the weight of what he carried.
They stood together wrapped in a shroud of sorrow until the strength seemed to go out of him and evaporate into the air.
He wiped his face on his sleeve and sat back down in his chair, his broken body limp and his broad chest heaving.
They did not need to speak. Kate’s mother pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and held it to her chest. She grasped the printed message that every mother fears, as if it could bring her dear son back.
Fred was gone. Her sweet brother would never hold her hand or run with her through fields of buttercups again, would never weave a daisy chain in her hair or tease her about her admirers at the May Fair.
He would not be there when the other boys came home.
A hole opened up in her chest that ached.
She sat down and joined her parents in a silent prayer that faded on her lips.
After what seemed like an age, her mother handed her the telegram.
The typed words swam through her tears. Deeply regret to inform you .
. . Fred Truscott died in action. There was a date and a place, his regiment, rank and number, but none of this was significant to Kate.
She’d seen the wounds that men received from battle, she’d listened while men suffered in body and mind, she’d tried to make sense of it all.
But all she could see now was Fred’s face and then Philip’s and Archie’s and Carnforth’s, until they all mingled into one.
Is that all they were in the end, a number amongst hundreds and thousands of others?
Fred was gone and he would never return. How could that be?
* * *
After sitting in silence for quite some time, Kate asked where Dot and Henry were.
‘At the church,’ Kate’s father said. ‘She’s taken him to help decorate the church for Palm Sunday. They’ll be a while because they’re calling at the farm, for eggs, on their way back.’
Kate suggested that her mother went to lie down for a while and that she would get on with preparing the dinner. Once she had gone out of the room, Kate asked her father, ‘How’s Dot taken the news? Have you told Henry?’
He shook his head and then slumped over with his head bowed, his arms lifeless in his lap. ‘We’ve told Dot but how can you tell a small boy that his brother’s never coming home?’
He clenched and unclenched his fists, and then rose from his chair.
He walked out into the back yard, closing the door behind him.
Kate stood at the window and watched as he took his axe from the shed and placed a huge log on the chopping block.
With one swift movement he swung the axe above his head and brought it down, splitting the log in half.
He threw the two pieces to one side and took another from the pile.
In fifteen minutes, he had worked his way through what was there and the sweat dripped from him.
He sat down on the block and put his head in his hands.
He came into the kitchen and grabbed his shotgun from the cabinet.
‘Where are you going, Dad?’ Kate asked.
‘Where does it look like?’ he snapped.
His bitter anger hung in the air between them.
He stopped with his hand on the latch. He turned and gave one brief nod of his head, his eyes empty and his skin pallid.
For the first time Kate saw him as an old man, the folds of skin around his mouth and jaw, his scarred and pock-marked hands, his thinning hair and grey stubbled chin.
It was as if the years had been compressed into one day, his youth and vigour gone, his strength sucked from him and bones and gristle spat out.
The sparse remains of the man she knew as her father had disappeared from view, the shadows had taken him.
Kate knew what she must do but how to do it? Dot was now twelve and perfectly able to understand, but Henry, at just five years old, would not. She had barely time to think of how to explain when the back door opened and Dot ushered Henry into the kitchen.
She put the eggs down and immediately ran to her sister.
‘Kate, you’re here,’ she said hugging her tight.
The two sisters held onto each other and Kate whispered into her sister’s ear, ‘I love you, Dot.’ They pulled away and looked at each other with deep sorrow. Kate cast her eyes down at Henry who was hiding behind Dot’s skirts. Dot pulled him out and lifted him up.
‘Say hello to your sister, Kate,’ she told him.
‘Do you remember me?’ said Kate gently.
‘Of course he remembers you,’ Dot said. ‘Come on, silly. Say hello.’
Henry mumbled hello and then announced he was hungry.
‘Dinner won’t be long,’ Kate said. ‘It’s cottage pie.’
Henry looked at Kate expectantly. She knew what he was waiting for.
‘I’m sorry, little man, but I came in a hurry. I didn’t have time to bring you anything but I’ll make up for that by making the best dinner ever. A little bird told me cottage pie is your favourite.’
‘Fred likes cottage pie too. Is he coming?’
The two sisters exchanged glances. Dot sat down and lifted Henry onto her knee.
Kate sat opposite them, ran her fingers over her face and lips and breathed deeply.
Should she tell him the truth? Would her parents be angry that she told him?
The moment was now, Kate thought. She didn’t let the moment pass.
‘Henry, Fred went away to fight. You know that, don’t you?’ Henry nodded. Dot looked at her, wide eyed. Kate was about to say what her parents and her sister had been unable to say.
‘Sometimes in a really bad fight, people get badly hurt. So badly hurt that they can’t come home.’
‘Is Fred hurt?’ Henry asked.
‘Yes,’ Kate whispered, her voice cracking.
‘Do you remember the baby rabbit that the cat caught, Henry?’ Dot asked, her eyes filling with tears.
‘It died,’ Henry said.
The two sisters waited.
‘Did Fred die?’
‘Yes,’ they both replied, their hearts heavy with the knowledge that they would never see their brother again.
‘We’ll all miss him so much, won’t we, Henry?’ Kate said. ‘We’re all so sad. It’s all right to be sad.’
Henry looked from one sister to another, then he hugged Dot, wriggled down from her knee and went to Kate. She lifted him up and he placed his arms around her neck. She held him close, his warm breath on her neck.
‘We’ll pray for Fred when we go to church on Sunday,’ Kate said. She let Henry rest his head on her breast for a while and breathed in the warmth and the closeness of him until she sensed his desire to get down. She let him go and turned to her sister.
‘Let’s leave Ma a little while longer yet. She needs the rest,’ she said. ‘Shall we go and see if the chickens have laid any more eggs, Henry?’
The three of them went to the bottom of the garden and Henry carried the only two eggs carefully back to the house.
They collected potatoes and onions from the sacks in the outhouse, counting them out with Henry as he placed them in a bowl.
The two sisters then began the dinner while Henry played with his old wooden car with the wobbly wheels that Pa had made for him.
As they settled to food preparation, they fell into the old ways of dividing the tasks between them and chatting as they worked.
‘You peel the potatoes,’ Dot said, ‘and I’ll chop the onions. If Ma comes down, she’ll complain about the thickness of my peelings.’
‘Leave us some potato. We don’t want marbles,’ Kate said, mimicking Mrs B, and exchanged a smile with Dot.
The potatoes were set to boil on the range and Dot retrieved the mincer from the cupboard and screwed it to the edge of the old wooden table.
‘Me help,’ Henry said, jumping up.
‘All right,’ Dot replied. She brought the chunks of leftover cooked meat from the pantry and let Henry turn the handle of the mincer while she fed the meat through.
Once the potatoes were mashed and the pie assembled, it was placed in the oven. Their mother came downstairs, bleary eyed from her sleep and complaining that they should have woken her, but when she’d drunk a cup of tea her good-humoured nature returned.
‘You are good girls,’ she said. ‘Smells good,’ she continued, inhaling the rich meaty smell. ‘Where’s your father? I hope he’s back soon. It will soon be time to eat.’
‘Sounds like him now,’ said Kate. ‘I hope he’s brought some cabbage from the allotment.’
Jim Truscott came into the kitchen and placed a cabbage, a bunch of carrots and a brace of pigeons on the table.
Kate knew that he took pride in being able to put food on the table for his family and, although he still wore a deep furrow between his brows, the physical labour and time alone to gather his thoughts had clearly helped him to calm himself.
Kate was aware that his silent contribution to the evening meal was his own way of saying that grief may be gnawing away at his insides but he had a responsibility to the living.