In Love and War Read online

  This book is dedicated to the memory of Lt. Geoffrey Foveaux Trenow of the London Rifle Brigade, who received the Military Cross for bravery and died in Flanders in September 1917. His body has never been found.

  A note on the historical inspirations for In Love and War

  In Love and War is entirely fictional, but was inspired by real people, places and events.

  The battles of Flanders left hundreds of thousands dead, swathes of land devastated, villages and towns reduced to heaps of rubble. Yet within months of the Armistice in November 1918 thousands of visitors travelled to the area to take ‘Tours to the Battlefields’ organised by church groups and companies such as Thomas Cook. Hotels in nearby towns were swiftly reopened and guidebooks were rushed off the presses.

  These tours were controversial: some thought them distasteful and disrespectful to the dead, but it is easy to understand the desperate desire of bereaved families to discover where their loved ones died and where their bodies lay. Even today, a hundred years later, the remains of those listed as ‘missing, presumed dead’ are being unearthed, to be given proper burials. My husband’s uncle, to whom this book is dedicated, is still missing and the only record of his bravery and sacrifice is the inscription we discovered on the Menin Gate at Ypres.

  Just a few kilometres from Ypres is the small town of Poperinghe, which remained just behind the battle lines and was the divisional headquarters of the Allied command for the area. It was here that the army chaplain, the Rev. Philip (Tubby) Clayton set up his ‘Everyman’s Club’ to provide rest, recuperation and recreation for all soldiers, regardless of rank. Thanks to the work of the Talbot House Association this building has been reopened for visitors, and its exhibits shine a remarkable light on the lives of soldiers caught up in this most terrible war. More at www.talbothouse.be.

  The work of Tubby Clayton continues with the international charity Toc H, which seeks to promote reconciliation through group and individual acts of service bringing disparate sections of society together. See more at www.toch-uk.org.uk.

  Outside a cafe in the square at Poperinghe is a statue commemorating ‘Ginger’, the youngest daughter of its owners, who became something of a celebrity among the troops for her extraordinary resilience and cheerfulness. Both she and Tubby Clayton appear in the novel, as does Talbot House, but the events in the novel, the town of Hoppestadt, the hotel and the rest of its visitors and inhabitants are entirely my own invention and bear no relation to any people living or dead.

  When you are standing at your hero’s grave,

  Or near some homeless village where he died,

  Remember, through your heart’s rekindling pride,

  The German soldiers who were loyal and brave.

  Men fought like brutes; and hideous things were done;

  And you have nourished hatred, harsh and blind.

  But in that Golgotha perhaps you’ll find

  The mothers of the men who killed your son.

  ‘Reconciliation’, Siegfried Sassoon, 1918

  LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

  The Times, June 1919

  Sirs,

  I wish to express my shock and disgust upon reading in your newspaper a large advertisement for a highly reputable travel company promoting ‘Tours to the Battlefields’, five-day visits to the Ypres and the Somme areas of northern France and Belgium.

  The very next day you carried a report on the same topic in which it was stated that several thousands of visitors have already undertaken tours provided by this company and other groups. It was accompanied by an illustration showing a group of ladies taking a picnic beside a battlefield that was identified with a signboard.

  Am I alone in finding it utterly distasteful that these sacred places where so many of our brave men lie, having given their lives for King and Country, are now being desecrated by the spectre of commercial tourism?

  Yours, &c.

  Sirs,

  Your correspondent claims to be shocked by the thought of the battlefields of the Somme and the Salient ‘being desecrated by the spectre of commercial tourism’.

  Having just returned from such a tour, I must protest that our visit was the very opposite of such a thing. My wife and I undertook this pilgrimage with the greatest of humility and with the sole purpose of honouring the sacred memory of our two sons, both lost to war, and it brought us great solace to visit the places where they died.

  In addition, visitors like ourselves are bringing vital income to these areas which will help support the almost unimaginable task they face in rebuilding the towns and villages devastated by war.

  The sacrifice of our brave men must never be forgotten. We believe that tours to the battlefields are one way of continuing to offer a vital reminder of the importance of striving for world peace, in decades and centuries to come.

  Yours, &c.

  CONTENTS

  1 RUBY

  2 ALICE

  3 MARTHA

  4 RUBY

  5 ALICE

  6 RUBY

  7 MARTHA

  8 ALICE

  9 RUBY

  10 MARTHA

  11 ALICE

  12 MARTHA

  13 RUBY

  14 ALICE

  15 MARTHA

  16 RUBY

  17 MARTHA

  18 ALICE

  19 RUBY

  20 MARTHA

  21 ALICE

  22 RUBY

  23 ALICE

  24 MARTHA

  25 RUBY

  26 MARTHA

  27 RUBY

  28 ALICE

  29 MARTHA

  30 RUBY

  31 ALICE

  32 MARTHA, ALICE & RUBY

  1

  RUBY

  July 1919

  It was like the strangest of dreams, standing here on the deck of the steamship, with the blue sky above, the sun glittering off the sea like a million diamonds. To her right, the grey slate roofs of the little town huddled almost apologetically beneath those magnificent cliffs, so much higher and more brilliantly white than she’d ever imagined.

  She could scarcely believe that she was about to leave the shores of England for the first time in her life. It was not an adventure she had sought, much less desired. Why would she want to cross that treacherous stretch of water, the English Channel, to visit a country so recently torn apart by four years of terrifying, tragic events? She was still only twenty-one and she considered that her short life had been tragic enough, thank you very much, without inviting further danger and heartache.

  What she most wanted, now that peace was here, was to live a quiet, ordered life, honouring his memory by working hard and trying to be kind to others who grieved like her. There were plenty of them, for heaven’s sake. No family had been left untouched by the tragedy. She would keep herself to herself, would never allow anyone else to break her heart. It’s the best I can do, she wrote in her diary, the only thing I can do, when he’s given his future to make ours safe from the Hun. How else can we make sense of it all?

  So when, after serving tea that early June afternoon, his parents solemnly sat her down in one of their overstuffed armchairs and presented her with the Thomas Cook brochure, she’d thought at first it was some kind of a joke.

  ‘Tours to the battlefields of Belgium and France,’ she read out loud. ‘Why on earth would anyone want to go and gawp at the place . . . ?’

  She saw Ivy wince, and the words faded in her mouth. Her mother-in-law was as fragile as cut glass, unable to accept that her only child was dead. Never an outgoing person, her health had been frail for as long as Ruby had known the family, which seemed like forever.

  When they’d first started courting, she thought it odd that he rarely invited her back to his house. ‘Mam’s a bit poorly,’
he’d say, or, ‘She complains that I make a mess.’ Now, Ivy was a feeble whisper of a woman, barely of this world, with a ghost-like pallor from lack of fresh air. She spent much of her time in bed, or at least in her bedroom.

  *

  Ruby and Bertie met at school and stayed friends until one day, when they were walking home together, his hand crept out and took hers. They did not pause, and neither said a word; they walked on in silence. But the warmth of his touch surged like electricity up her arm and she knew, then, that she would be with this boy forever. I love Bertie Barton!! she wrote in her diary that night, framing the words with a wonky circle of red-crayon hearts. She wrote it again and again, on her pencil case, her school notebook, the shopping list, the inside of her wrist. No one ever doubted that Ruby loved Bertie, and vice versa.

  And then, shortly after this, tragedy. Her father, foreman at a boat-building company in their small Suffolk town, was crushed by a marine engine falling from a crane. He died instantly. She couldn’t remember much of the following days – only that her mother seemed to be barely there, so hollowed out, so wrapped up in her grief that she had nothing left with which to comfort Ruby.

  All she can recall, now, is that Bertie was always by her side, holding her as she wept, making endless cups of tea with plenty of sugar and taking her for walks to distract her with his stories of nature: which bird sang which song, what flowers liked to grow in certain places and how their flowering was so carefully orchestrated with the arrival of certain insects; which set of holes in the ground were badger, fox or rabbit. In her memory he grew, almost overnight, from a schoolboy into a man.

  Hugs and hand-holding soon turned into shy kisses, furtive explorations behind the garden shed and, before long, his declaration of love. One evening when they were alone in the house he went down onto his knee and presented her with a diamond engagement ring for which, he admitted rather shamefacedly, his father had loaned him the money.

  Bertie became her entire world. She never looked at another boy and knew she never would. He claimed she was the only girl for him, forever. Bertie and Ruby, forever! she wrote in enormous letters on a fresh page in her diary, encircling the words with yet more hearts.

  They were the perfect fit in every respect: physically quite alike with curly dark blond hair and freckly complexions – neither overly good-looking nor too plain but just ‘normal’, as he loved to say. A matching pair of normal. He said her brown eyes were like ginger wine; she said his reminded her of hazelnuts. They both loved dancing, walking and sharing silly stories or games of cards in the pub of an evening with their close-knit group of friends. And of course, they were going to live happily ever after. She could not imagine that things could possibly turn out otherwise.

  When the recruitment notices were posted on the town hall noticeboard she pleaded with him not to join up. But then the pressure became too much, all the lads were enlisting, so she made him promise to return safe and sound. True to his word, he did return twice on leave from training. He was changed: he seemed to have grown several inches and was certainly stronger, physically, with muscles she had never noticed before. Bertie the joker had disappeared; he was more serious and thoughtful, and struggled to make conversation in larger groups. Indoors, he was fidgety and uncomfortable.

  Only when walking in the woods and fields with Ruby did he appear to relax. And yet, however gently she posed her questions, he still refused to talk much about what they had been going through. Only at the very last moment did he let slip that this would be his final leave for a while: they were being posted. He would not say where.

  They married on the Monday before he left, a hastily convened affair at a registry office. Her mother had been saving for years for this moment and when she saw Ruby in her wedding dress she burst into tears. ‘War or no war, you’ll have a day to remember for the rest of your lives,’ she said.

  And what a day it had been: bright sunshine, puffy white clouds in the sky, the smiles of many good friends and such joy that she felt she might burst. Those two nights at the Mill Hotel afterwards – their honeymoon – were the happiest of her life. Although at first shy with each other, she discovered in herself a new world of passion, of intense bliss, that seemed to have been waiting in the wings for all her girlhood years. She felt complete.

  They spent the daytime walking the water meadows, stopping to watch the mysterious brown fish languidly swimming against the flow of the river, listening to the larks calling overhead and, once, spying the brilliant blue flash of a kingfisher.

  ‘I never want this to end,’ she’d sighed, giddy with gladness. ‘Please don’t go, Bertie. I can’t bear to be without you.’

  ‘I’ll be back soon, I promise,’ he said, and she believed him.

  Even when he left Ruby refused to worry, determined to remain strong and cheerful. That’s what he had asked of her, after all. He was doing his duty for King and Country and he’d promised, hand on heart, that he would stay out of danger. Of course she would miss him, of course she cried herself to sleep. But he would come home before long, she knew that for certain. Bertie never broke his promises.

  So when, five months later, she received a telegram, followed by army form B104-83, dated September 1917 – We regret to inform you that your husband, Albert Barton, is notified as being missing in action at Passchendaele – she refused to consider that he was anything other than just temporarily out of contact. She built a hasty wall around her heart, not allowing herself to contemplate any other outcome. He’s promised to come home safe and he always keeps his promises, she wrote. He’ll turn up, soon enough. She could even hear him: ‘Just popped out for a fag, officer. Didn’t miss me, did you?’ At school he’d always been in trouble for his cheek.

  She would keep calm and carry on, just as the posters exhorted, forcing herself to get dressed each day, to eat the meals which her mother so solicitously cooked for her but which, to her jaded senses, tasted like cardboard. On her way to work she nodded to the regulars on the bus and exchanged the usual pleasantries about the weather. Once there, she applied herself as efficiently as ever, pasting a smile on her face for her colleagues and customers, hoping none of them would ask her about him.

  Word got out, of course it did. He was the boss’s son, after all, at Hopegoods, the men’s and women’s outfitters in the High Street where she worked in haberdashery. After the first round of sympathetic comments her colleagues learned not to mention his name. This sort of news had become almost commonplace.

  But as the months went by and they heard nothing further, Ruby’s protective wall began to disintegrate. She sank into a chasm of grief and guilt that she experienced as real, physical agony, from which she could see no escape. She seemed to be in the bottom of a well, hemmed in on all sides by darkness, with only a glimmer of light too impossibly high to reach and too exhausting to climb towards. There were days when she felt she simply could not carry on and sometimes, walking by the river, she imagined wading through the deep mud and giving herself up to the cold, heartless current. But she never found the courage. Her mother, still struggling with her own bereavement just a few scant years before, did what she could to comfort her daughter, but nothing eased the pain.

  In the face of Ruby’s persistent refusals to go out with them, their once close group of friends drifted away one by one, and gave up inviting her, or even calling round. She stopped writing in her diary because she could think of nothing to say. She felt like an empty shell, the kind you find on the beach, bleached and whitened in the salt and the sun, hard to imagine that it had once held a living creature inside. She could not remember the last time she had laughed.

  But how could she go on living otherwise? Without Bertie she felt like half a person, not really alive at all. She could gain no enjoyment from any of the things they’d had fun doing together: going to the pub, to the cinema, to dances, for walks in the woods. She wore only black, or occasionally charcoal grey. He had made the ultimate sacrifice, she reasoned, so ho
w else could she honour him? It felt insulting to his memory, somehow, to wear anything cheerful. This is how my life will be from now until I die. It’s only right.

  Her dutifully regular visits to his parents only served to underline their mutual loss. It twisted the knife in her heart to see his mother so devastated, his father so grimly stoic. Afterwards she would emerge exhausted, as though carrying the boulder of their grief, as well as her own. Leaving the overheated fug of their house, she would look up at the sky and inhale deeply, trying to draw strength from the fresh air. One step at a time, she’d say to herself, one day at a time. This misery will soon ease.

  Of course it didn’t, not really. The grief was still so intense it sometimes took her breath away, and at work she would have to hide in the ladies’ toilet until she could compose herself. She discovered, by trial and error, how to present a brave face to the world. At first it was an unreliable mask, so brittle that it threatened to shatter at the slightest unguarded word or prompted memory but, as the days passed, and then weeks and months, the disguise became more durable until now, two years later, it had almost become a natural extension of her real self. In fact, she was no longer sure who her real self was.

  What she did know, however, was that she would never betray his memory. Not again. It had been a moment of madness with a man she’d never met before and had never seen since, but the guilt of it burned her heart with a pain she felt would never ease.

  *

  She viewed these twice-weekly visits to her in-laws as her duty to Bertie, a duty she would bear for the rest of her life. She was still his wife, after all, always would be. Mr and Mrs Barton frequently referred to her as ‘our daughter’. Who else did they have, now that he was gone?

  But conversation was always sticky. Ivy seemed as insubstantial as thistledown, liable to blow away at the slightest wrong word. Albert senior was unchanging, gruff and uncommunicative, but at least he was usually solid and predictable. But she could never have foreseen this moment, this little Thomas Cook brochure, their faces so solemn and expectant.