Chapter 27
It had been a long, tiresome journey, but Max thought he had weathered it well.
He had mastered the art of keeping himself together over the last couple of years.
He hadn’t allowed himself to become emotional during the train journey into the mountains—not even when writing a letter home to his mother to say that he was one of the lucky ones who was being transferred from a German camp to be interned in Switzerland.
Thoughts of home were always dangerous—something that could unravel you.
He wrote to his aunt too, although she’d stopped writing back after her two sons had both been killed.
Max wrote anyway, in the hopes that the letters might bring her some small comfort.
And perhaps, one day, when she was more herself, she might write to him again too.
I’m doing really rather well, he thought.
His chest ached, obviously, thanks to that little piece of shrapnel that had buried itself into his body.
It had become infected in the German camp and the throbbing ache of it kept him up at night, made it hard to breathe sometimes.
But, after all, the trenches had been the hard part.
The German POW camp had been a different type of hell.
Sitting in safety on a train that was taking him to a place of rest in Switzerland was easy.
Anyone could do that. You didn’t get to complain about that, not when so many of your comrades were still back there on the battlefield, never to return.
I’m very glad to be leaving Germany.
I have been unwell but hope to be fully recovered soon.
All my love…
His hand barely shook as he signed his name.
Your loving son, Max.
As he slipped the letter into the envelope, it was impossible not to think of all those hundreds of letters written by his men that he had had to read and censor—part of his duties as a junior officer in the trenches.
Dearest Mother…
Please send my love to Bertie….
I was always proud to be your son….
A candle made all the difference….
Time is topsy-turvy here….
There was no band at Waterloo, not like they had for Sammy….
Charlie was forever mentioning that lack of a band in his letters home.
I wasn’t surprised or the least upset, he’d always write.
Yet the absence of a band—let alone the cheering crowds that had been there when his older brother, Sammy, left for war a year earlier—was something that came up in his letters again and again.
Max could still see the hyacinths and peonies of Charlie’s trench garden, growing out of their German howitzer shells.
He recalled how the boy had written to his mother, asking her to send packets of nasturtium seeds.
And don’t worry, he’d assured her. I made sure to leave plenty of flowers in the village in case anyone ever comes back, after the war is over. It has to end sometime. It can’t go on forever.
Charlie had turned a petrol tin into a watering can by punching holes in the side and would whistle as he watered the plants.
He was an expert whistler. And Max liked hearing favourite tunes like “Auld Lang Syne” again.
Music was perhaps the thing he missed the most from his old life.
It hadn’t been so bad when Thomas was there with his gramophone and the sound of ragtime records had floated from their dugout, through the trenches, and out over no-man’s-land.
Max’s days at the Royal College of Music felt more like a dream than reality now.
He could not imagine himself going back to it.
In fact, he couldn’t really imagine going back to his old life at all.
He wondered if his mother would be there to greet him when he finally arrived home—whether she would even recognise him, or walk right past him on the platform, searching for some other man, one who no longer existed.
“We’re here!” someone cried.
Max looked up and saw a small station up ahead.
With a jolt, he realised it was crowded with people and he quickly struggled to his feet, dreading the reception that lay ahead.
When the POWs had arrived by train into a German town en route to the camp, the platform had been full of furious citizens who hated them.
Just hated them with all their might. There had been yelling and screaming, palpable bitterness ripping through the air.
Some of the civilians had thrown stale, mouldy bread at them too.
Max had been so hungry that he had snatched the mildewed pieces up from the ground and eaten them.
He was glad of the bread, but a few people had brought bricks to throw as well.
Switzerland was neutral, though. Max hadn’t expected a similar situation here.
Yet the platform ahead was so crowded with people that he feared something must be wrong.
Perhaps the Swiss didn’t want them either.
Perhaps they were going to be boarded and sent back to the camp in Germany.
Then he heard the singing. There were children on the platform, an entire choir.
And the adults weren’t shouting, they were cheering.
Some were even waving flags. There were so many flowers, everywhere he looked.
And the children’s voices raised in song was the loveliest sound Max had heard in the last year.
The train doors opened, and the civilians came forwards to press gifts of chocolate and cigarettes and oranges into their hands.
As Max stepped down onto the platform, he thought of Charlie and how miffed he had been about the lack of a band to see them off at Waterloo.
He wished Charlie could see the children singing for them now, but Charlie was back in France, lying alone in the mud with a bullet through his guts.
Please send packets of nasturtium seeds as soon as you can….
Max recalled how he had stood with the packets of requested seeds in his hands, looking down at the trench garden that would now go untended.
You would be proud, Mother, my peonies are topping….
Charlie had died the day before the seeds arrived. As he stared down at the garden, Max still had some of Charlie’s blood on his boots. And there were hundreds of Charlies he’d left back there, thousands of them.
It will be your duty to set an example of discipline and perfect steadiness under fire….
Lord Kitchener’s words to the troops rang around Max’s head. Yet there was no longer anyone from his company to set that example for. They were gone, all gone.
It had seemed possible to bear it in the trenches because there was no alternative, but here, now, surrounded by all these normal people who were still a part of the normal world, it was suddenly impossible, intolerable, insane.
The children sang and Max felt something inside him break.
There was a young man about his own age on the platform beside him, dressed in a hotel uniform with a name badge that read Harry.
He was smiling as he asked Max for his luggage ticket, looking at him with a fascinated, wondrous sort of expression, as though Max were a rare bird he’d never spotted before, never thought to see at all in the wild.
Max didn’t know where the ticket was, couldn’t remember what he’d done with it, and nor did he care.
For a moment he thought he saw Charlie in the crowd, grinning widely.
“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t.”
There was something wrong with his legs; they wouldn’t hold him up.
He crumpled to the floor in the middle of the platform, and everything unravelled; he was sobbing.
Even now, part of him—the part that could still forget—was shouting, My men mustn’t see me like this!
But the men were gone, and it didn’t matter now if he cried.
Nothing much mattered anymore. The tears burned, along with the shame, and Max wished he were back there with the rest of them, back where he should have been.
For a moment it felt like he was there, lost and dying alone in the dirt.
Then there was a woman crouched on the ground beside him.
She wore a nurse’s starched white uniform, and reached for his hand and squeezed it in her own.
Max wondered how long it had been since someone had held his hand.
He didn’t think he’d ever been so glad to feel the touch of another person or so grateful for the fact that she didn’t say a word.
She just quietly sat beside him, her fingers wrapped tightly around his.