A Small Country Read online

  ‘I must go in. Thank you for coming. I do understand.’

  Mrs Thomas said nothing when Miriam came in. Only took the baby while she took off her shawl and got ready to feed her. Afterwards she poked the fire and made her a cup of tea.

  ‘I’m Mr Evans’s son,’ Tom had told her when he’d asked for Miriam. He had seemed quiet and well-spoken. It had made her wonder, and it was only a lifetime’s reserve that prevented her asking Miriam what he had wanted with her.

  Miriam felt Mrs Thomas’s eyes on her and imagined her disapproval. Perhaps she would now think she was involved with two men. Luckily, she was beyond caring what anyone thought. How beautiful the setting sun had looked.... I just wanted you to understand.

  Of course she understood. She didn’t blame anyone.

  The baby, still only five months old, sucked so vigorously that she seemed to be taking away her whole substance. She imagined herself being sucked away until only her skeleton remained. She could hear the sea outside.

  The evening passed somehow. Another day almost finished. Almost finished. Like Josi’s poor wife. And his son. Going to France, to kill or be killed. ‘The minstrel boy to the war has gone.’ She had taught that song to many classes of children, always moved by its pathos, never till tonight so moved.

  She lay back in her chair, desire wounding her. Josi would never be the same with her again. She knew that. ‘The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.’ The way of a man with a maid. Beautiful words. Like flowers. Like burrs.

  Not that he would desert her. After a decent interval he would come for her, but it would be his duty to her and the baby which would bring him. The headlong love she wanted was dead. How could it be otherwise? What love was proof against righteousness and guilt? Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust and guilt and righteousness doth corrupt. The urgent unquestioning love she wanted was dead. The wages of sin is death. They had disregarded everyone and everything in their passion, but the God of Israel neither slumbered nor slept.

  She roused herself angrily. She wouldn’t sink into that self indulgence; God keeping watch over her.

  Life was without any plan, totally chaotic. God was the wheel in the sky, nothing more, in its drive she had been insignificantly torn aside like the skylark’s nest by the harrow. I am poured out like water.

  There was a sharp death taste in her mouth.

  After Mrs Thomas had gone to bed, Miriam crept out of the house and walked towards the sea.

  SEVENTEEN

  Edward’s marriage had an inauspicious beginning.

  Rose was anything but a serene bride. A few hours before the wedding, she seemed to recover all her old spirit, feeling that her parents had taken advantage of her humiliating loss of nerve under arrest in order to get her safely off their hands, despising herself that she had allowed them to manipulate her into a marriage she wasn’t ready for. She all but refused to go through with the ceremony, but once more she was not quite brave enough to act according to her conscience.

  During their honeymoon in Devon, she confessed to Edward that she had married him largely out of weakness and fear, and was unable to accept his repeated assurances of sympathy or his insistence that marriage should not limit her opportunities in any way: she should continue to work for the Women’s Movement in Oxford, where he, too, would throw himself into the struggle. He was unfailingly loving and undemanding, but couldn’t help the occasional feeling that he had, perhaps, lost even more than she. Ten or eleven days passed bleakly by.

  It was the imminence of war which brought them together.

  Rose’s cousin, Claire, had been studying in Europe for some months, and having missed their wedding, travelled to Devon to see them.

  ‘We’ll be at war in a few days,’ she told them. ‘The French are already mobilizing and we can’t let them fight alone, the Germans are breaking treaty after treaty. When I was in Berlin it was already obvious that nothing was going to stop them. I’ll never forget the mood of the crowd in the Unter den Linden, cheering and singing whenever a company of infantry or a squadron of horse went by. They’re a people so full of aggressive energy that they’re ready to surge through Europe. And it’s up to us to stop them. England must unite with France to defend the freedom of the little nations. To remain neutral would be treachery.’

  Edward and Rose were fired by her patriotism. They read all the newspapers they had neglected and decided to cut short their honeymoon – they were to have spent a month in the West Country – in order to be back in London at the centre of things.

  When they got off the train at Paddington, they realized that Claire’s prediction had been proved right; the station was thronged with troops going to join their regiments, and the newspaper boys outside the station with their placards – ‘War Official’ – were being besieged by normally placid and sober citizens wrestling for copies of the evening paper. The King had already proclaimed that the Army Reserve should be called out on permanent service.

  The next day, the Prime Minister, Mr Asquith, asked Parliament for power to increase the number of men in the army by half a million and Edward immediately decided to apply for a commission instead of returning to Oxford.

  London seemed transformed. There was wholesale panic buying of food – even perishable goods – as though people expected an immediate invasion. German shops and businesses were boarded up, their owners gone. There were long queues of men standing for hours outside every recruiting office. Even the noises of London; the cries of street traffic, the hooting of horns, the screams of trains, seemed to have become more strident and aggressive.

  Rose accompanied Edward as he went from one military garrison to another, waiting patiently and eagerly while he was interviewed, optimistic of the result even when he was despondent. At the end of the following week, when he succeeded in obtaining a commission in the Royal Artillery, she was immensely proud and happy. That afternoon, in the taxi-cab that took them back to her parents’ home, she cried in his arms that she loved him.

  A few days later, Rose managed to get work as a helper at the local hospital, and after passing a preliminary examination was accepted as a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment.

  She continued to live at home – the house her father had taken for her and Edward in Oxford had been re-let – and when he was free, Edward came from Woolwich to join her.

  He looked older in his uniform, his hair was close-cropped and he had grown a thin moustache. They had much to talk about, the progress of the war engrossed them both; they were far happier than they had been on their honeymoon.

  Life was hectic for each of them. As a full-time VAD, Rose had to get up at six-thirty every morning to get to the hospital by eight, and did not return until seven or seven-thirty in the evening.

  Though her body was often exhausted, she felt happy and liberated again. Only three months after suffering her traumatic breakdown, feeling her life empty and wasted, she had been given a second chance. She wasn’t going to be a drawing-room wife after all, she was a person in her own right, involved, as Mr Asquith had said in Parliament, in the classless struggle to defend the civilisation of the world.

  Her parents, naturally enough, were very anxious about her, resenting the fact that she seemed to be working as hard as any servant girl. However, she was now a married woman, so that their sense of responsibility was blunted. All in all, her father was rather proud of her, and even her mother talked about her at her tea parties, when the other women boasted about their soldier sons.

  It was a warm, bright September that year. The British and French armies won victories on the Marne and the Aisne. Allies advancing, announced the newspaper headlines triumphantly. Huge enemy losses. Throughout the month, Edward was able to be with Rose several evenings a week and once or twice they managed to get a day off together. Rose hadn’t begun to feel apprehensive on Edward’s behalf; she w
as conscious only of the glory of his position as a leader of men.

  At the beginning of October, Rose encountered wounded soldiers for the first time. They were classified as non-serious cases, and as she had no part in dressing their wounds, she soon got used to their weakness and pallor. It was the element of profound pessimism amongst them which disturbed and shocked her.

  They called out to her and to the other nurses cheerfully enough, but left to themselves, they fell silent and morose, and when she had asked one of them about conditions at the Front, what it had been really like, he had flinched as though from a blow. ‘It was hell,’ he had said. ‘Hell on earth. Don’t ask about it.’

  ‘Hell on earth.’ The words echoed in her mind whatever she did that day. Her ideas of warfare had been so remote; men on horseback looking rather fine. Casualties of course, they were inevitable. Pain and suffering, of course, nobly borne. But not fear. Stark, unhidden fear was something she hadn’t considered.

  That evening when she went off duty, Rose didn’t run for the train with the other girls, but fell behind, letting them all go without her. She was feeling badly shaken and thought a solitary walk might help to steady her.

  It was further to her home than she had thought. She had rarely been out on her own and was more nervous than she would have cared to admit.

  Reaching familiar ground at last, she saw that there was a light on at the parish church and decided to go in.

  The organ was playing and there were several people in the nave, listening to the music or praying. She sat at the back, not certain why she was there; she went to church on Sundays but didn’t consider herself religious. Clergymen, being dyed-in-the-wool enemies of women’s suffrage, had turned her against religion. It was churchmen, beginning with the insufferable Paul, ‘therefore as the church is subject unto Christ so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing’, that she objected to, not the church. Certainly the atmosphere and the music were wonderful and there were words which stirred the soul. She tried to think of words to replace the ‘Let me help. Let me work. Let me,’ which were the ones always in her heart.

  Looking up from her meditation, she noticed an officer sitting a few rows in front of her and as he turned his head, she saw that it was Edward. Filled with pleasure at the coincidence, she got up to join him. But before she had arrived at his side, he had got to his knees and was praying. She felt embarrassed, almost as though she were spying on him, and even considered moving away and leaving the church without disturbing him. He was praying so intently. She wondered if he was frightened like the soldiers at the hospital.

  When he got up from his knees and saw her, he took her hand and smiled as though her being there was the most natural thing in the world. They sat for a while longer, listening to the organ music, thinking their own thoughts.

  ‘You’re not worried about anything?’ Rose asked, as they walked the last quarter of a mile to her home. Edward was still strangely silent.

  ‘Yes, a little. Everyone said we’d be in Germany by October. Something seems to be going wrong.’

  He didn’t tell her of the accounts of trench warfare he had been given that morning by an officer newly returned from the Front: two sides facing each other, battering each other’s defences in close combat, huge losses on both sides, continual conditions of checkmate, a rumour that Kitchener had said it could last three or four years.

  ‘How could it?’ he had asked. ‘If there are such huge losses, both armies will be finished in no time. How could it go on?’

  ‘By throwing in more and more replacements. There’s no shortage of men. The government is already embarrassed by the number of recruits, it can’t even equip them all. At the moment there are over a hundred thousand volunteers every month. All over the country they’re still living under canvas and drilling in civilian clothes, walking sticks instead of rifles. There’ll be no shortage of men, however many are killed.’

  ‘It’s not going to be as easy as we thought,’ Edward said at last.

  And Rose, the words of the wounded soldier she had questioned earlier, still in her mind, was unable to dispel his despondency.

  ‘I’m going to join the Military Nursing Service,’ was all she said. ‘I must go to the Front.’ As she spoke, her face was lit up by an overhead street lamp; to Edward, it seemed to glow with the fervour of her resolve. ‘I’m so lucky to be able to help. I never, never thought to be so lucky.’

  ‘We’re both lucky,’ Edward said, infected by her courage. ‘We’re the fortunate generation.’

  They reached the house and ran up the front steps hand in hand.

  When Edward, a week later, got Tom’s letter telling him he was being posted abroad and asking him to meet him at Victoria that night, his instinct was to stay away.

  He was immediately aware how much he longed for news of Catrin, how little, in spite of his wholehearted effort, he had succeeded in forgetting her.

  He should keep away from the shadow of her influence: he knew it.

  At the same time, he couldn’t easily bring himself to disappoint Tom; dear old Tom, as always completely unaware of any possible complexities of any situation.

  He was free and, of course, decided to go to Victoria. How could he have stayed away?

  Tom was low in spirits. Though he knew Edward envied him his luck in going out to France, he could feel no joy or excitement at the prospect. He hoped not to disgrace himself, but expected no exhilaration or glory.

  They sat in a pub near the station, departing soldiers all around them.

  Edward asked after his family, but Tom could hardly bear to burden his friend with the sadness he had left behind him. ‘Mother’s no better,’ was all he could bring himself to say. ‘Father’s losing himself in work. Miss Rees, well, she endures like a rock.’

  ‘And Catrin?’ Catrin’s lovely face was suddenly so vividly before Edward that he held his breath.

  ‘Oh, nursing in Cardiff as I told you. No, it wasn’t really to do with the war. All she wanted was to be an art student, well, you know that. Then one morning she woke up with a serious vocation for nursing; it was as sudden as that. And Doctor Andrews begged me to let her go away because of Mother’s illness. Perhaps it’s better for her. I saw her this morning. Yes, she came to the railway station at Cardiff to see me off. She looked very tired, I thought. All the joy knocked out of her, I thought. Well of course, it’s hard work, nursing. And she’s young to be away from home.’

  Edward had fallen silent.

  ‘And Rose?’ Tom asked, conscious of having talked only of his own family.

  ‘Very well. Very happy. She’s nursing too. She’s applied to join the Military Service; she’s determined to go out to France. She’s given up her work for the Women’s Movement; they all have. Mrs Pankhurst begged all her followers to switch their energies to the war effort. They’re a hundred per cent behind the country now.’

  Tom nodded his approval.

  ‘I wonder if we’ll meet in France?’ he asked then.

  ‘Of course we will. I’ll get there somehow, don’t you worry.’

  Tom had to board the boat-train by eleven-thirty. Edward went on to the platform with him, standing there surrounded by mothers, wives and sweethearts. Morale was high.

  Afterwards, Edward walked through the dark narrow streets near the station, feeling as miserably lonely as he had ever felt in his life.

  When at last he hailed a passing taxi-cab, he returned to his barracks. ‘Rose will be fast asleep,’ he told himself. ‘It would be irresponsible to wake her.’

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘I suppose you blame me,’ Lily Thomas said.

  Josi walked about the small, bright room as though he hadn’t heard her. The last man on the earth he seemed, as he walked about the room, the whole universe dead around him.

  Until then it was only Miriam she had pitied.

  ‘Do you think I can spare you any part of the blame?’ Josi said at last, his voice rough and tired.
/>   ‘I’m not a friendly person, Mr Evans, I’ve dried up, that’s the truth of it. But I wasn’t unkind to her.’

  ‘I never thought so.’

  ‘I was unwilling to take her in at the beginning, I admit that. That was only natural, wasn’t it. Anyone would have been the same, wouldn’t they?’

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I liked her, Mr Evans. She was...’

  There was a sudden flash of anger in his eyes; menace, as though he was forbidding her to touch Miriam with her charity.

  Silence again.

  ‘Do you want me to keep the baby here for a while?’

  He seemed almost to have forgotten the baby. He looked at Mrs Thomas with a different expression; gratitude, a rare humility. ‘I wasn’t sure she’d still be here,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes, I kept her here. She knows me, doesn’t she. I knew she’d be all right with me. Would you like to see her? I could wake her and bring her down.’

  ‘No, not tonight. Don’t wake her tonight. I’ll make arrangements for her very soon. I’ll be in touch with you again very soon.’

  Mrs Thomas could see him looking about for signs of Miriam,

  ‘I’d like her things,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll fetch them.’

  She went upstairs and opened the drawer where Miriam kept her clothes, all neatly folded. She carried them downstairs. ‘Her box is in the shed,’ she said, ‘I’ll go and fetch her box.’

  She lit the hurricane lamp and went out.

  While she was out, Josi picked up one garment after another, laying them to his face. They gave him nothing of her.

  Mrs Thomas brought in the square green trunk, dusted it inside and out and laid the pile of clothes in it.

  ‘I don’t want them,’ Josi said. ‘No, I don’t want them.’

  ‘There’s her books in the parlour.’