Chapter 8 Language of Love
Charlie gazed at the snow-capped mountains piercing the clear sky. Lush pine forests rippled like a blanket over the hills, reflecting in the lake below. There was a little dot in the sky, an eagle maybe?
The spiral lettering at the bottom of the card read “Canadian Rockies”. Charlie had spent hours looking at this card, and the dozens of other scenes like it he held in his hand.
He had built his postcard collection over the past two years, trading cigarettes and chocolate with soldiers from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and even some Indians.
Other Tommies hadn’t wanted to mix with the colonials, but Charlie never turned down a chance to chat with men who had travelled whole oceans.
They told stories of waterfalls you could hear miles away, forests with trees as wide as a man was tall, and deserts with sand that came in different colours.
He kept the postcards of their faraway wonders wrapped up in his rucksack in special waterproof paper.
Not that he would ever get to see any of these places.
He wasn’t likely to even get to see his own home ever again.
“Look awake, Villiers!” Charlie was brought back to reality by a sergeant’s shout. He carefully tucked away the postcard, as the men around him began to load the field guns for yet another round of shelling.
Today the higher-ups decided as part of their rest they were ‘practising’ firing shells into the fields. Right waste of time in Charlie’s opinion.
He was about to see if the gunners needed more shells when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to find Matthews soberly waving a folded piece of paper in front of his face.
“That bad?” Charlie yelled over the steady beat of shellfire.
Matthews nodded and yelled back, careful to articulate each word. “I never thought the man was a poet, but we can’t let Henderson send this.”
Charlie flipped open the note.
“Dearest Betty,
Thank you for your latest letter and package. I’m the envy of all the men in the division with your socks to keep my feet warm and dry.
I have been given leave to go back to London next month, and look forward to seeing you. I thought we could get married.
Thanks also for visiting my mother. She does like a chicken and leek pie, and I know your recipe is one of the best…
“Jesus, Henderson. Less about the pie,” Charlie muttered.
Mud and dirt splattered around them from overhead, and Charlie and Matthews ducked. There was a moment of relative quiet as the men around them re-arranged the field gun.
“She does knit excellent socks.” Matthews was cleaning off his glasses.
“Our supply of comfortable footwear might reach an end if we let Henderson send this.” Charlie finally found the stub of a pencil he had stashed away in his uniform jacket. “Let me see what I can do.”
Matthews patted Charlie on the back and moved back down to whatever task he was supposed to be doing rather than saving their friend’s love life.
Charlie turned to the paper and found his hand hesitating. What did he know about writing a marriage proposal? Charlie’s area of expertise was getting women to go to bed with him and leaving on good terms the next morning. Marriage was an entirely different business.
He tried to remember how Mary’s fiancé had asked her to marry him.
His mother had put something in a letter about a nervous conversation with his father, but neither Ellie nor Kitty had sent details.
What he did remember was how the girls would giggle over books of romantic heroes, sighing of grand romance. He missed his sisters.
He brought his pencil up and crossed out the bit about the socks. But what to replace it with?
Henderson talked about Betty endlessly, sometimes even in his sleep.
How she worked the night shift six days a week in the munitions factory.
That she went straight from work to wait in line at the butcher’s to try to scrounge up some meat for her family.
How she used her one precious day off to visit Henderson’s widowed mother.
That she never forgot that Henderson didn’t like parsnips in his stew.
So Charlie knew quite a bit about what Betty did, but it didn’t tell him much about who she was.
What were her hopes and dreams? When Betty was waiting in that endless butcher’s line, what did she think about?
Why did she go visit Henderson’s mother instead of being with her own family?
Did she pretend to be someone else when everyone else was around?
Did she moan when Henderson kissed her and lose the ability to stand?
When Henderson spoke of Betty, the rest of the men nodded as if easy companionship was all one could want in a partner. Charlie personally thought that Betty sounded like a nice wife, not a lover.
This was all taking Charlie down a rabbit hole that he had no desire to look at too closely.
There was one story of Henderson’s that stuck with Charlie.
That he had met Betty at a dance. He had been too shy to speak to any of the girls, but Betty had walked right up to him, shook his hand, and invited him to go for a walk with her in Regent’s Park the next Saturday.
It wasn’t a lot, but there was something in the sparkle of Henderson’s eyes that Charlie thought he could work with.
He could imagine Ellen and Kitty sighing over that story, finding the romance in this confident woman coaxing out the awkward bricklayer.
He put pencil to paper.
I miss you every day, but most of all, I miss our walks in the park…
Charlie had got a few lines down when one of the gunners he was supposed to be helping kicked his boot. Charlie looked up. “Out of shells again?”
“NOPE!” Hours behind the gun had left the poor bloke with only the ability to shout at the top of his lungs. “WHAT ARE YOU WRITING?”
Charlie moved so that his face was directly in front of the gunner. There was no point in trying to match them for volume, but it helped if they could see your mouth. “A letter for Henderson’s girl!”
The young gunner, a red-headed lad that Charlie knew by sight if not by name, looked delighted, and made a writing gesture with a questioning look.
Charlie nodded. Why not get more help? He needed to go do soldier things in any case, so he left the lad leaning against the gun, scribbling intensely in the margins.
???
The gunner passed the letter to the engineers, who shared it with the cavalry. Then somehow Charlie was getting back notes and edits from the Australians, who he would swear were several miles away. But gossip and news always found a way to travel quickly through the BEF.
Charlie was standing against the trench line he was supposed to be guarding, trying to find something interesting to look out at, when a private walked by and passed him a stack of folded paper. “It’s not half bad now.”
Charlie opened the papers, filled with scrawls, cross-outs, and retorts in the margins.
“I believe we will have a safe and steady life together that our families can be proud of.”
“Where’s the romance?”
“The colour of your eyes, your hair, are what fuels me through this hell.”
“I’m bored reading this already, get to the point.”
His eyes stopped on an entirely new paragraph that had been added in precise handwriting.
You and I are a melding of spirits and souls.
Two trees growing together, intertwined from roots to branches, such that without one there cannot be the other.
More than the sum of its parts, but something richer, more profound, more complex and more contradictory. I am no longer me if I do not have you.
It was beautiful.
“Did I pass muster, Corporal?” Charlie looked up to Ned watching him read. “You’ve developed a reputation this afternoon as a notoriously difficult editor.”
Of course, it had to be this posh bastard. Who else would actually succeed in being poetic? “Someone clearly has an education, I’ll say that. Would a woman who fell in love with Henderson want something like this, though?”
Ned laughed. “A fair critique.” He stepped closer to Charlie, such that they were standing side by side, facing out towards the latest shelling practice.
“Not the first love letter I’ve written, but it is the first I’ve written to a woman.
” Ned paused. “It might be the first letter I’ve written to any woman who wasn’t my mother, actually. ”
Charlie shook his head in disbelief. “No?”
Ned shrugged. “No sisters, and an all-boys boarding school. By the time I got to university, I realised I had no inclination in that direction, and it didn’t seem worth the effort. What would I even say?”
“You talk about family, the weather, what’s in the newspaper, whatever you would talk to anyone else about.”
What would it be like to go through life without women? Women had surrounded Charlie’s whole childhood. Not only his sisters and mother, but the clients at the stores, the other shopkeepers on the street, cousins, aunts.
“Women are fun, the same way blokes are fun. They know how to have a good laugh. Make interesting observations. Smell nice too. It’s not all about attraction, you know. You’re friends with plenty of men you don’t want to fuck, aren’t you?”
“I honestly never really thought about it before.” Charlie let himself have a moment to enjoy the way the light breeze ruffled Ned’s black hair. “Maybe that’s something I can do after the war. Make a friend with a woman.”
Charlie laughed before he could help himself.
???
Charlie tried not to hold his breath as Henderson read through the draft letter copied out in perfect bookkeeper’s handwriting by Matthews.
Henderson looked up at Charlie like he had saved his life. “This… this might work.”
Relief. Charlie had no idea when he had started to care so much about the damn letter. “You’ll still need to put some of your own Henderson shine on it, but I think this draft is the best of what everyone has to say.”