The Dust That Falls From Dreams Read online

  Still, I can’t help feeling a little relief at the prospect of no more whiz-bangs, no more crumps, no more sausages of the exploding variety. I am looking forward mightily to the other kind. No more lice and Harrison’s Pomade, no more woolly bears and Austrian armour-piercers, no more poisonous niffs, no more shaving with Vaseline to save water, no more falling into disused latrines in the dark, no more hot blasts from shrapnel shells, no more filling sandbags all night, no more rats running over my face as I sleep, no more being drenched for days on end. Hooray!

  I’ll miss Albert and Sidney. Leaving your brothers behind at a time like this is worrying. I won’t be here to keep an eye on them! I’ll miss my friends too. I’ve never known friendship like it. From time to time we hate each other, of course, particularly when exhausted, but there’s something rather wonderful about sitting around a brazier, playing vingt-et-un by the light of star shells, with a bunch of pals that you’d never get to meet in ordinary life. It cuts you to the heart when one of them gets killed, especially because most of the deaths aren’t by any means as clean and quick as you might think if you weren’t familiar with this kind of warfare, but you know that if the Boche get you, your pals will do everything they can to save you. They will go on even when they have not an ounce of strength left. They’ll carry you on their backs through waist-deep mud if they have to, and if you sprain your ankle there’s always a shoulder to put your arm around whilst you hop along. The comradeship is a beautiful thing. I’m sure hoping I will find it again with you, when we are facing life together, and having to be bold in the face of our difficulties. With any luck there won’t be any!

  I’ll miss the star shells too. They come in red, white and green, and they illuminate everything that one has to do at night, so one knows where to put that sandbag, and the Hun also unfortunately knows where to point. The thing about star shells is that they make everbody’s faces look like the faces of ghosts. It’s odd, having that feeling, being a ghost amongst ghosts. I like it, though. I feel at home as a ghost.

  What happened to earn me my blue ticket was that on Valentine’s Day, just when I was thinking of you, one of our officers thought it was a bit too damned quiet and ordered us to let rip with five rounds of rapid fire, even though we couldn’t see anyone to shoot at. We thought we’d ginger up the Hun a little, and entertain ourselves at the same time, so we popped our heads above the parapet and blazed away for a few seconds.

  They got very gingered up indeed, and replied with the first direct shelling I have actually been under, and just about the heaviest one imaginable. It was quite a nasty surprise, and not a very gentlemanly response to such a small and playful salvo. It was my valentine from the Kaiser, I suppose. I got yours, and treasure it. It’s by the bedside. Did you get mine?

  So here I am in hospital with a big scar across my stomach, and a ball or two of shrapnel in a glass jar on the bedside table. They look like old-fashioned musket balls, but smaller. They got twelve of us, but I don’t know how many of the others have pulled through. I am happy to tell you, my sweetest darling, that I seem to have come through relatively intact, all affected organs have been stitched up and tucked back in, and here I am, propped up on pillows, albeit painfully, and able to write you a letter about my poor self and my little woes. I keep dropping off, but if I write a bit every time I wake up, I can get quite a lot down.

  I don’t know when I’ll be sufficiently well to travel back, but I sure will be so pleased to see you that I think I may well swoon with the pleasure. Shall we be married at the very first available moment? Get someone to read the banns, I’m coming home!

  I’m told they’ve stopped censoring our letters, so with any luck this will soon get to you intact, as shall I.

  Your best friend and best husband-to-be,

  Ash

  PS Long live the Pals!

  Passed by no. 1900 censor

  25

  Rosie in St John’s (1)

  Dear Lord, thank you, Lord, for sparing Ash’s life and letting him only be wounded so that he can come home with honour but safe.

  Thank you, Lord, for making our future possible, for sparing us any more the pain of separation, and thank you for taking away the terrible fear that’s been my torment ever since he went, and thank you for this relief.

  And I promise, Lord, that when he comes back I will be as good a Christian wife as it is possible to be, and I promise I shall care for him and tend to him and do all I can to make him happy, and I promise I shall strive to bring him closer to you by my own example and persuasion, and when we have children I promise I’ll bring them up in the light of your countenance so that you will be their guide and comforter, and please let him recover soon and bring him back to me because without him I am nothing, Lord, and you know how desperate I’ve been.

  26

  Naught Broken Save this Body (2)

  It was Ash’s mother at the door, trembling, unable to speak or to control the muscles in her face. Mrs Pendennis had a piece of brown paper in her hand, folded in half. Millicent let her in, sat her down in the drawing room, and went to call Rosie, as if she knew by instinct what to do.

  Rosie came running down the stairs and into the room. She liked to call Ash’s mother ‘Mamma’ because she had spent so much of her childhood at the Pendennis house. Mrs Pendennis was seated by the window, fumbling in her handbag. She looked up, and silently passed the sheet of brown paper to Rosie.

  Rosie took the telegram and read it several times. Her hands began to shake. She let out a small cry of agony and then stood quite still as the tears began to cascade down her cheeks. Then she put her hands to the side of her head and began to wail, her grief filling the far corners of that large, emptied house.

  Ash’s mother drew her down to the sofa and they clutched each other. Millicent came in, left them a tray of tea and biscuits, bobbed and went out. She returned to the kitchen, locked herself in the larder and began to sob. Cookie knocked on the door and demanded to know what was going on. Millicent unlocked it and just managed to relay the news before breaking down again. Cookie put her arms around her and they cried together, just like the women upstairs.

  On the sofa, mother and fiancée embraced so tightly that they resembled a strange many-limbed creature. They locked together, rocking and sobbing, their world shrinking, contracting, distorting.

  ‘It’s all my fault,’ sobbed Rosie at last. ‘It’s all my fault. Oh God, oh God! It was me, oh God, it was me!’

  Mrs Pendennis said, ‘How could it be you?’

  ‘I…I didn’t pray for him…the night before he was wounded…I was so tired…I thought, “Just once it won’t matter”…’

  ‘Oh, Rosie,’ said Mrs Pendennis, ‘don’t, please don’t. Do you think that I wasn’t praying?’

  27

  Rosie in St John’s (2)

  How have we displeased you? What have we done? How can I live?

  What am I supposed to do? What can I possibly do, now that he’s gone?

  Take me too. Let me die too. Please, Lord, take me too.

  You’ve shut me out of the light. I’m in the dark, like one who has no eyes. All the days of my life, darkness and darkness and nothing but night.

  O Lord, I can’t get up, my cheek’s on the freezing stone, and the tears won’t stop, and I’m aching all over from weeping and Mrs Ottway and the priest and the other ladies are trying to raise me.

  28

  Safe Though All Safety’s Lost

  1

  My dear Rosie,

  I really don’t know quite how to write to you about poor Ash’s death, but first of all let me assure you that he died in no pain and that everything was done to save him. It happened just one week ago today during a bombardment, when a shell burst above the parapet and some balls of shrapnel struck him on the soft part of the hip and entered the stomach. I was just behind him and waited with him whilst the stretcher was brought. The details are awful, but as you loved him and he you, it is better that you know
it all. We got him down to the dressing station. He was conscious most of the time and was quite cheerful. He never complained. He was sent at once to Bailleul Hospital where he was taken great care of. He died at 9.20 on Friday the 19th. I would have written before and would have gone with him but we were in the firing line and were not allowed to write or get leave even in such an extreme case. I was too late when I was released on the night of his death and did not get to Bailleul Hospital in any case because I could not walk owing to an ankle injury.

  We buried him yesterday, Saturday the 20th, in Bailleul churchyard and on his wooden cross (which I will replace as soon as I can) is written ‘Private A. Pendennis, died from wounds received in action 14 February 1915’. He was buried with full military honours and was carried by Ronald Heddewick, Leonard Hutchinson, Edward Burman and myself. The Reverend Captain Fairhead held the service.

  Rosie, you can’t imagine how sorry I am for you, but you must understand as he was my brother how I must feel, not only for myself and Sidney, but for my poor mother and father. In all your sorrow spare some sorrow for us. May God give us strength to bear all this. I have many of your letters to him. Shall I destroy them or send them back to you? If there is anything I can do for you out here, do not hesitate to ask me.

  You have my heartfelt sympathy as you must know, and may God protect us so that if we meet again I can tell you every little incident of our life here.

  Yours very sincerely, your old pal,

  Albert P.

  PS I saw Sidney yesterday and he is devastated of course, but he sends his fondest sympathy to you.

  Passed by no. 1900 censor

  2

  No. 8 Clearing Hospital

  British Expeditionary Force

  France

  27 February 1915

  Dear Mr Pendennis,

  Your letter arrived yesterday. No doubt your son’s letter has reached you by now, giving details of Ashbridge’s passing away. I meant to have written to you myself but after we had laid him to rest your other boy seemed anxious to tell you what there was to tell, so I left him to do it. Since, however, you have written, I can only repeat what probably the others have already told you. Ashbridge seemed to be doing really well for some days until the evening before his passing. Then he was restless, but the doctor overcame that and the next morning he seemed to be doing well again. It was only a few hours before he died that his condition caused any alarm, and even then the doctor hoped it was merely one of the bad times through which most of the wounded cases have to pass. But he became worse and I went to him. Though he was unable to talk much he was conscious. You were all very much in his thoughts and he sent you his dearest love and also to his fiancée. He said that he was perfectly happy. I pronounced the absolution over him and said prayers with him while he held my crucifix in his hand. I left him and later went to see him again. He was unconscious, and I commended him to the love and mercy of Our Father and gave him the Blessing. Shortly afterwards he passed with the most peaceful expression on his face. May I say, in all sympathy and love, that of all those who have passed through the veil since I have been here, not one has passed into Paradise leaving behind in our hearts the certainty of that future life more fully and realistically than was the case with your dear boy. With all conviction we can say that he has passed into God’s peace. Your son Albert came to see me in the morning and we arranged for the funeral to take place on Saturday afternoon so that he and some friends and an officer could attend. It was all most touching, and your boy was tremendously brave. In case you would like the particulars, the number of the grave is 331. On his grave there stands a plain wooden cross on which is inscribed his name, regiment and number, and also ‘died from wounds received in action’. Nothing nobler could be said of any soldier, especially a civilian soldier, at a time like this. He has died nobly for God, for Country, for King, and you will bear your loss as I know he would have had you bear it, nobly too. And so we leave him ’til the Great Day. He will often be with you, closer than he has ever been before. I can sympathise with you so fully, dear friend. Only a week before you lost your son I was home on leave, and the evening before I returned to the front, my youngest and favourite sister (twenty-one years) passed away on account of a Zeppelin raid, and so it is with my heart full of sympathy that I ministered to him and have prayed for you and his dearest ones. But, thank God, our Christian Truth is a glorious thing. Your dear ones often come to cheer us and tell us of their present great joy and we are wrong to wish to rob them of that.

  About the other matter of which you wrote. I have seen your son Albert since, and I have given him and his brother my open invitation to come and see me whenever they wish, and I think they may be coming to tea with me shortly. I trust that when you write to them you will say again, what I have already told them, that they must look upon me as a great friend and that I am anxious to be a help to them at any time.

  In regard to the leave, I fear it has been stopped for the present, but I am writing to your son Sidney to ask him to call and see me, and perhaps a line to one of his officers may help to give him a few days with you all.

  Please excuse me if some of the details of my letter hurt you somewhat – that is quite remote from my intention. What your loss is, one dare not say. I know that I have lost a real friend – we had become close even in the short time that we knew each other – and the whole staff realised that here had passed a man whom our country can ill spare. On their behalf I send sincere sympathy. Personally, I go further, and unite myself with you all a little more fully in your loss, if I may.

  Commending you all to the comfort of the Divine Comforter, and in real sympathy, believe me yours very sincerely,

  H. V. Fairhead, CF

  Passed by no. 1900 censor

  3

  For yourself alone please

  No. 8 Clearing Hospital

  British Expeditionary Force

  France

  1 March 1915

  Dear Miss McCosh

  My heart has been with you in your awful yet glorious sacrifice since the evening of 19 February times without number. You have been in my prayers daily. I know, though so little, of the dreadful blank which must have come into your life, and I confess how much I have dreaded having to write this letter. If I did not sympathise so fully, it would not have been hard. Only one who really loves and has lately suffered severe bereavement, and has been face-to-face with the severest loss that this world can hold, can really sympathise, and I have been through it all. My heart aches for you, and I know how much you ‘don’t know how to live’. Oh, how I long to be some comfort to you, but one feels helpless when so far away. If I could only come and speak to you and tell you perhaps it would be easier for us both. You must have heard all the news from letters to Mr and Mrs Pendennis, but I must answer your questions.

  Really and truly, Ashbridge was doing splendidly on the Thursday, and the surgeon was more hopeful on that day than he had been at all. Ashbridge wrote his letters to you and gave them to me, and was most cheerful. On Thursday evening he was rather restless but settled down and had a fairly good night. The next morning he was bright. It was not until the afternoon that he appeared worse, and when I went to him in the early evening he was not so well. The surgeon hoped that it was only one of the little relapses that all the severely wounded have to pass through. However, he got worse, and I went to him again. I was with him also during his last moments of consciousness. It was then that I asked him whether I should give you any message if he did not pull through. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘give her all my love.’ He was perfectly happy, he told me, and I remembered something he had said to me before, perhaps in jest, to the effect that if he should die you would at least always remember him as he was when he was at his best, and would never have the opportunity to grow tired of him! He drifted into unconsciousness at 8.45 on Friday, and he passed away not long afterwards. The exact cause of his death was the shrapnel wound in the abdomen, which pierced the bowel and set
up peritonitis.

  You have heard all about that touching service in the cemetery. I will not repeat it. You were not forgotten, dear Miss McCosh.

  No, your wires did not reach here until the Sunday, I think, and I sent them on to his brother Albert, but somehow or other I seem to think – is it only my imagination? – that he received a letter or two. I wish I had known him better because we had become real friends in those few short sad days, and I admired him greatly.

  Dear Miss McCosh, it is remarkable that by the same post by which your letter reached me, one also came from my mother. My favourite sister, Millie, had passed away in a Zeppelin raid the night before I left from my leave at home. Like you, she wrote to say that in her great grief she had had a dream that our dear one had come and talked to her and said she was very, very happy. It comforted my dear mother so much, and she is a different woman now. Our dear ones are very close to us, to cheer us, to talk to us, to inspire us, always present, always working for, always loving us. May your dream not mean that he wants to tell you that he really is living, happy, the same cheerful, loving soul that he was here on earth? I do believe it with all my heart. The spiritual is very real, and when you realise that he has not truly left you, but that he is with you only you cannot see him so easily now, I know how noble you will be, and how happy you will be too. It is not a long, long goodbye, dear friend, it is a goodbye for the time being. Will you read a book, or one chapter of it, if I ask you to do so? It is the Bishop of Stepney’s new book In the Day of Battle. Read the chapter on Our Father carefully. It has helped me no end.