Kitty’s War

‘I won’t be going back to the ambulance station,’ I assured her. ‘Evie says I’ll be billeted in one of the hotels near HQ. Jack Carlisle will meet me off the ferry and take me there.’

Her words were jerky and unsteady as we were both bumped by the fresh surge of people moving towards the ferry to board. ‘Just see you come back safe.’

‘I will. I promise.’

Walking away and leaving her standing there, it was almost as if I were the older woman, and she the one who was little more than a child. Somehow that helped, and I lifted my free hand to wave, and even blew her a kiss. She nodded, and then she was gone from view, only the top of her hat visible; if she’d been of average height I would not even have been able to see that, and I kept glancing back for that small comfort as the waves of soldiers and nurses lifted me closer to the ferry, and to the horrors I would have given anything to be able to forget.

The water churned, choppy and grey beneath us, as we made our laborious, zigzagging way across the channel. Even knowing Jack waited for me at the other end, I felt that chilly loneliness again, and wished I could simply stay on the ferry for ever.

A couple of VADs tried to engage me in conversation, but they were fresh from training, and excited to be going overseas to help our boys. I knew if I began talking I would dampen their chatter, and turn them into what I myself had become. It wouldn’t be fair. So, ignoring the look that passed between them, ‘Well, we tried,’ I went to the front of the boat instead, and stared out at the nothingness ahead.

I had been just like them. Most of us had, and even once reality set in, and that happy anticipation had been crushed from us, we found strength in the minute-by-minute dealings with people whose lives depended on the pressing of a wound, the spotting of an incipient heart failure, the speed of transport to hospital. I hoped those two girls would find the same, but, for me, all Belgium held now was the shocking, painful memory of one brutal night.

Lieutenant Colonel Drewe, the friendliest, cheeriest of men—grandfatherly, kind, patient. A veteran of the Africa campaign, and a man known for his bravery. How could someone like that…

I turned away from the rail, my chest tight, and a phantom pain at the juncture of my thighs, as if the bruises he had given me were still there, his Webley revolver still rammed into my side. The decrepit ambulance parked haphazardly at the side of the road had been just one of any number of broken-down and abandoned vehicles. Evie said later that he’d known I would have sole charge of Gertie that night, and I shivered at the cold knowledge that I’d been exactly where he’d wanted me to be when I’d seen him stumbling up the centre of the road; if someone else had stopped, and had not been alone, it would have been nothing to him to wave them on and claim to be perfectly well.

But of course it was me who’d stopped. And I was alone, and he’d looked at me with those strangely skittering eyes and accepted my help to climb into the back. I’d spoken gently to him, settled him onto the stretcher and turned to pick up the first-aid box, before asking him where he was hurt. When I’d turned back to him the gun had been out of its leather holster. My breath stopped, and my numbed fingers fell open, and the box crashed to the floor. The only words he’d spoken had been a warning that Oliver would be the one to suffer if I spoke of this night, and then he had stood up, seized my arm with his free hand, and pushed me onto the stretcher-bed in his place.

The time that followed alternately flew by in seconds, and stretched into interminable hours; my horrified mind could still not place which. He had left me shaking, but not crying, too stunned and sick-feeling for tears, with my trousers wrapped around one ankle and trailing across the filthy floor. Fresh blood smeared the stretcher, mixing with the half-dried blood of the countless wounded Tommies I’d transported that night.

Archie found out what had happened, of course. Evie had promised not to tell him, and then told him anyway. I’d been beyond fury, screaming at her, and knowing I was wrong to do it. But I couldn’t help it. The anger I couldn’t hurl at Colonel Drewe was eating me alive, and I had to free it or go mad. Poor Evie bore the brunt of it, and she bore it with patience and with grief, but her sorrow, and her guilt at letting me go out on the road alone, only inflamed my anger—it was the most vicious of circles.

I hadn’t seen Archie since he and Evie had driven away from Dark River Farm together, leaving me in the care of Frances, Lizzy and the others. His face, as he’d turned his attention to the long track up to the main road, was the last glimpse I’d had of him, and I treasured it even through the anger and betrayal I’d felt towards Evie. I’d lain in bed, once the pregnancy was made real, hating myself, and hating the baby. I never hated Evie, but my anger towards her didn’t fade until Lizzy had lost her temper and pointed out a few home truths: I had wanted to drive alone; it was all I’d ever begged for; Evie had been doing it from the start; she had cared for me and taught me everything I needed to know; I had given her my blessing to go and talk to Will… It had taken that tiny, fierce girl, with her dark curly hair sticking up in all directions, her hands on her hips and her eyes flashing blue fire, to break the awful cycle of self-recrimination and despair. It wasn’t hard to see why Jack Carlisle’s heart had been captured by her, despite the rumours about Evie’s mother. She had made me realise those truths, but by then Oliver had deserted, and faced death if he was found, and death if he was not, and it was all my fault. Now, when I raged, I raged against my own cowardice, my own weakness, and only in the privacy of my little room at Dark River Farm. I wept, and cursed the hand fate had dealt me. And I cursed the child I carried. The next night Colonel Drewe’s unwanted yet innocent gift died in a wash of pain and blood, in the back of another ambulance.

What remained of my youth died with it.

Archie might have left, but the image of his calm grey eyes had stayed with me, behind the closed lids of my own, during that terrible time. The memories of our younger, carefree days had been more immediate to me than the shock of what had happened, his image more real than the rasp of the sheets against my skin and the cool water I drank to assuage a raging thirst. There was also a bitter irony in knowing it was helping our sheep deliver themselves of their young, that had killed my own. I knew it, yet the guilt lay heavy in my heart for those dark and desperate prayers that the child had never existed.

Frances had told me afterwards that I’d called out for Archie more than once, in my more feverish moments, but all I could remember was being certain it was now that was the dream—a bleak and terrifying nightmare—and that reality still encompassed those sweet, uncomplicated days when we would go out riding, and he would tell me all about Scotland. My overwrought mind became my dearest friend, giving me vivid and detailed remembrances I hadn’t known I possessed until now; I could smell the horses’ sweat; hear the thump of hooves on short, scrubby grass; feel sleek, powerful muscles beneath me; and I recalled, with a new and perfect clarity, the sound of Archie’s voice as he described Fort Augustus and the Great Glen in which he lived.

Waking to find the fever once and for all broken I had wept again, but now it was for the loss of that escape route into the past. For no longer being completely absorbed in the simple joy of Archie’s company, still believing it to be the innocent love of a child for a brother. It was knowing I had lost him for ever.

As we neared France the sky was changing colour from pale blue to an overcast grey. Evening was creeping inexorably closer, and my insides twisted tighter and tighter as I accepted that there was no going back now; if we were lucky my testimony might possibly save Oliver’s life, but the truth would come leaking out, like a rancid green sludge, to poison my own.

People around me were gathering up their belongings, calling to new friends to say a new set of goodbyes, and collecting together in groups in readiness for disembarking. Some, the quieter ones, would be returning to what they knew all too well already, others embarking on a new life for which no amount of warnings and descriptions could prepare them.

I craned my neck for sight of Jack Carlisle, but not knowing if he would be in uniform or not it was hard to pick him out of the crowd waiting on the dock. Then, as the crowd thinned, I saw him, with his back to me. For a second my heart was jolted into a helplessly excited rhythm; his hatless head was turned away and he looked, from this side view, so much like his nephew; they shared a height and broadness of shoulder, both had very dark hair, and both held themselves with the same alert readiness, as if they might be called into action at any second. From this distance, and to my untrained eye, the uniform might have been that of any officer, as likely a captain as Jack’s own rank of major. I lost sight of him as I started forward, pushing through the crowd until I came up to stand behind him, and raised my voice to be heard over the hubbub of conversation, and of vehicles rumbling to life.

‘Major Carlisle?’

Then he turned, and my knees faltered.

‘Young Kittlington.’

‘Archie!’ That thundering in my chest again, my fingers losing their grip on the handle of my suitcase, dropping it to the ground at my feet, the treacherous way my arms rose, without my bidding, to encircle his waist…the feel of his own arms wrapped about my shoulders. Buttons, hard beneath my cheek, the crowd disappearing from around us, melting away to leave us alone in a suddenly peaceful world. There was nothing else. There simply was nothing else.

Long after my heartbeat had returned to normal, and my short breaths had deepened once again, he released me. I stood back and looked up at him, his familiar face tired, but still so strong, so beautiful. I reached up to touch his jaw with trembling fingers, and only just stopped myself from tracing his lower lip with my thumb. I ached for him to lower that mouth to mine, and to put all my doubts to flight, but his expression was one of concern, nothing more.

‘Sweetheart, how are you feeling? Is the fever gone? We must get you a hot drink.’

He stepped back, leaving me swaying slightly with the loss of his touch, and bent to pick up my bag. He held out his free hand to me but I shook my head; to hold his hand as he wished, as a child, would be worse than not touching him at all, and my heart cracked a little. After all I’d been through, I was still Oli’s little sister.

I followed him to the car. ‘Why are you here, instead of Jack?’ I wanted him to say it was his idea, that he’d asked to come particularly, but deep down I knew he hadn’t.

‘He thought it’d be easier for you, at least when you arrived,’ Archie said. ‘Someone you know a little better, after…’ he cleared his throat ‘…well…he thought maybe since—’

‘He thought I’d be scared to be alone with him?’ I couldn’t keep the incredulousness out of my voice, and Archie smiled. It lifted my spirits to see it, despite everything.

‘Aye, well the same thing occurred to Lizzy when you went missing. People care for you, Kitty,’ he added softly. We’d reached the car, and his face turned solemn. ‘We understand what this is going to do to you. To…your reputation. How people will see you. And how it’s going to bring back an awful thing you’d want to forget if you could. It’s an amazing thing you’re doing, and we’ll do everything we can to—’

‘Thank you,’ I said, my tone inadvertently short. He was only trying to say the right thing, but the thought of whoever ‘we’ might be, sitting around discussing what a brave little soul I was for speaking out against Colonel Drewe, made me shrivel inside with mortification. I saw the miserable realisation on his face, and touched his arm. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m just tired. I am grateful though. And it’s so lovely to see you, Arch.’

‘And you,’ he said, relaxing a little, and opened the car door for me. ‘Hold on tight, the roads haven’t improved since you were here last.’

He was right; I remembered feeling queasy on my way to the ferry, and that had been worsened by the way the car had constantly swerved to avoid the bigger shell holes, but in the past month the roads must have taken quite a pounding, and the going was jolting and slow. We arrived in full dark, and I was taken to a small hotel just up the road from where Oli was being held.

‘Can I see him?’ I asked, when Archie pointed out the building, a large, dark blob against the night.

‘Not tonight, darling.’ The casual word, one he had used ever since I’d known him, now had the power to slice through me. But even if he’d meant it in the way I longed for, his earlier reminder that my reputation was about to be ruined told me once and for all that it was too late now. When he left me to return to HQ I accepted the light, brotherly kiss on my cheek, and told myself it was just as well he still thought of me as a child after all. I eventually fell asleep to the hollow boom of distant guns, and only realised when I was awoken by a lull, that I hadn’t even noticed them.

The following morning Jack greeted me in the lobby. He rose from his seat, and automatically started to pull his uniform jacket straight, then his dark blue eyes met mine and he stopped fussing, came over and, without a moment’s hesitation, put his arms around me. I almost sagged in relief, but held myself firm, accepting his comfort, and then smiled up at him.

‘Evie’s right about you,’ I said, and he looked both pleased and slightly embarrassed.

‘In that case I hope she’s said something flattering.’ Then his own smile faded, and his expression held echoes of Archie’s solemn look from the night before. ‘Kitty, I want to sit down and talk to you for a while, somewhere private. Would that be all right?’

‘Of course. Where should we go?’

‘There’s an office at HQ we can use. It’s just a few minutes away.’ He glanced down at my footwear, as if he half expected me to be wearing kitten heels and stockings. But although I’d wanted to look smart, Frances and Lizzy had both said variations of the same thing: you were working when it happened, and you weren’t dressed to catch a man’s eye then. Best not look like some flighty girl now, when it matters most.

I tightened the belt on my coat, and knocked the flat heel of my boot on the floor. ‘I can walk for miles,’ I assured him, and his smile returned.

‘Well then, shall we?’ He held out his arm, and I took it, and together we walked out into the rubble-strewn street.

HQ was, in fact, another hotel, but much larger. However, the room Jack showed me into had clearly been a smallish storeroom of some kind in its past existence, and a tiny desk was pushed into the corner, with a typewriter parked precariously on the edge and a single upturned chair taking up the remaining room on it.

I looked at it doubtfully, but as I turned back to Jack, mouth open to ask where I should sit, I saw the reason for the squashed up arrangement of furniture: someone had jammed two tattered armchairs into the space behind the door. They sat arm-to-arm, but even that cramped space looked comfortable and, most important of all, friendly.

I felt a little tearful as I realised this had been Jack’s doing, I could tell from his anxious expression, and from his relief when I nodded. He looked so much like Archie that I had to swallow a new lump in my throat as I sat down.

‘If you’d rather not speak to me, you only have to say,’ he said quietly. ‘And if you feel like crying, don’t hold back on my account. I can stay, or go, as you like.’

His voice was low, like Archie’s, but his accent was firmly north-western. No hint of Scotland anywhere in it. It was close to my own accent, in fact, and that familiarity helped as he started to talk, to explain all he knew of Oliver’s circumstances, and, finally, gently, to coax out of me the story of what had happened on the road that freezing February night.

It was hard at first. Every word felt like a tug on an un-anaesthetised tooth, but as I talked they began to come more easily. I told him how I’d been so excited about driving alone for the first time, how Evie had patiently gone over and over everything I would need to know… I felt the constant ache of guilt over the fury I had unleashed on her blameless head, and tried to say as much to Jack, but he shook his head.

‘She understood. But don’t give her a thought just now. I want you to get the worst part of the story out of your head and into mine, here, where it doesn’t matter. Once you’ve spoken it out loud it’ll be easier next time.’