Elizabeth Elgin - Where Bluebells Chime

Rifleman Tom Dwerryhouse did not die in that Épernay dawn. He awoke to stumble dazed, in search of the army camp he did not know had been wiped out by the German barrage.

How long he walked he never remembered, but a farmer had taken him in and given him food and shelter and civilian clothes to work in. And Tom acted out the part of a shell-shocked French soldier, and those who came to the farm looked with pity at the poilu who was so shocked he uttered never a word.

The Army sent a letter to his mother, telling her he had been killed in action and his sister wrote to the hospital at Celverte, to tell Alice he was dead.

The night of that letter, Alice was taken in rape. She had not fought, she told him, because she too wanted to die, but instead she was left pregnant with the child who came to be known as Drew Sutton.

Now white-hot anger danced in front of Tom’s eyes. He flung the rifle away as though it would contaminate him and it fell with a clatter to the stone floor.

He hoped with all his heart he had broken it.

Tom stood hidden, unmoving. To a gamekeeper, stealth was second nature. Such a man must move without the snapping of a twig underfoot, learn to sink into night shadows or merge into sunlight dapples. It was, in part, to ensure that young gamebirds were not disturbed nor frightened unduly, but mostly that inborn stealth helped outwit poachers, out to take pheasants or partridge.

The sudden clicking of a rifle bolt was a sound he remembered well. Breath indrawn, he awaited the command he knew would follow.

‘Halt! Who goes there?’

‘Friend,’ Tom called clearly.

‘We’re armed. Step forward!’ A pinpoint of light searched him out, swept him from head to feet. ‘Put down that gun!’

‘It isn’t loaded.’ Slowly, carefully, Tom laid his shotgun at his feet.

‘You’re on army property. What are you doing here?’

‘I know I am. But it’s been Pendenys land for a long time – I’d forgotten you lot.’

‘That’s as maybe, but I want to know why you’re creeping around in the dark, and armed at that.’

‘A gamekeeper usually carries a shotgun.’ Tom had recovered his composure now. ‘And they creep around because that’s the best way to catch poachers. Meat’s on the ration, and a brace of pheasants fetches thirty bob on the black market. And if I’m on Pendenys land it’s because I often meet up with their keeper, doing his own night beat. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.’

‘But how did you get in?’ The soldiers lowered their rifles. ‘This place is supposed to be secure.’

‘It didn’t keep me out. If it’s security you’re bothered about, I’d take a look at Brock Covert. It’s the way I always come in at night. If you’re interested, meet me in the daylight and I’ll show it to you. Name’s Tom Dwerryhouse, by the way. I’m keeper on Rowangarth land, joining this. And I was a soldier myself once; was a marksman when you two were still messing your nappies. Could have put one through your cap badge at a hundred yards!’

‘Ah, well. Got to be sure – and you shouldn’t have been here.’ The man reached into his pocket. ‘We were just going to have a quick fag. Want one?’

‘Don’t smoke, thanks. Never did. Want a sup of tea?’ Tom fished in his game bag for his vacuum flask.

‘Thanks, mate. Name’s Watson – corporal. And this one here’s Johnny.’

‘Which regiment – or shouldn’t I ask?’

‘Green Howards.’

‘Ah.’ Carefully, in the darkness, Tom filled the cap of the flask, passing it over. ‘Yorkshire mob, eh? What’s a regiment like the Greens doing here?’

‘Buggered if I know.’ They settled themselves comfortably, young soldiers and old soldier. ‘They don’t tell us anything.’

‘Nothing changes. They never did.’

‘It’s my guess the CO doesn’t know what’s going on either though he makes out he does.’

Tom refilled the cap and handed it to the soldier called Johnny, knowing that if he didn’t ask questions he would learn more.

‘It isn’t as if we’re doing anything but guard duties. Flamin’ boring, but the both of us were at Dunkirk so we aren’t complaining. This posting would suit me nicely for the duration.’

‘Reckon you both deserve a quiet number,’ Tom commiserated. ‘Dunkirk couldn’t have been a Sunday School outing, exactly.’

‘It weren’t. Ta.’ Johnny gave back the flask top.

‘Still, you’ll be all right, here,’ Tom directed his attention to the corporal, ‘though I wouldn’t fancy Pendenys as a billet. Great barn of a place.’

‘A billet ? We don’t get nowhere near the place. Us lot are quartered in the stable block and the officers have been given the estate houses to kip down in. It’s them that live in the big house.’

‘Civilians.’ Johnny lit another cigarette.

‘You’re guarding civvies ?’

‘We-e-ll, there’s a few military amongst them, but what they are nobody knows. Not even our CO gets inside Pendenys.’

‘There’s women, too.’ Johnny grunted derisively.

‘’S right. Fannies.’

‘There were Fannies in France in my war,’ Tom offered. First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. Brave lasses, they’d been. ‘They drove ambulances. Went right up to the front line.’

‘These lot don’t drive nothin’. They throw a nasty hand grenade, though.’

‘Fannies?’ Tom frowned. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Johnny’s seen ’em,’ nodded the corporal. ‘He’d nipped into the bushes for a Jimmy Riddle and a grenade landed not a hundred yards away. Live, it was. He got the hell out of it pretty sharpish. Could have done him a mischief.’

‘Folk around these parts,’ Tom said, ‘reckon they’re getting Pendenys Place ready for high-ups from London – when the bombing starts.’

‘Nah.’ The corporal said it was nothing like that. The King and Queen, in his opinion, would go to Balmoral if ever they left London.

‘Then it’s a rum do,’ Tom frowned.

‘Rum? It’s bloody peculiar. Some of the civvies are foreigners – leastways one of our lads heard them talking foreign. And the military in the big house don’t have any badges.’

‘No regimental insignia?’

‘Nothing at all to show which lot they belong to. But keep it shut, mate, or it’s me for the glasshouse, and ta-ta to me stripes!’

‘Not a word,’ Tom assured him gravely. ‘And if you’d like to give me a call one day – I live at Keeper’s Cottage on the Rowangarth estate – I’ll show you Brock Covert.’

‘Ar. Thanks.’ It would suit the corporal to be able to point out a breach in security where any old Tom, Dick or German could slip in. ‘Might just do that. An’ keep away from here, eh? Can’t always guarantee that us two’ll be on guard duty.’

‘I will, and thanks. Good night, lads.’

Frowning, Tom made for Brock Covert. The Green Howards, a crack regiment, guarding civilians? And soldiers who wore no regimental badges? Fannies, an’ all, who’d forsaken ambulances for grenade throwing. It was a rum do, all right.

In early August, the Luftwaffe flew over the south of England dropping not bombs, but leaflets. They fell in thick scatters and were eagerly gathered up. They detailed Adolf Hitler’s proposals for peace between Great Britain and the Third Reich and were read with amazement.

Make peace with that one? Surrender – because that’s what it would amount to – to an ex-corporal? Mad as a hatter, that’s what he was and his leaflets a waste of good paper into the bargain.

On that day, too, Telegraphist Sutton was summoned to the Regulating Office and drafted to his first ship, and an envelope bearing the words ‘On His Majesty’s Service’ dropped through the letterbox of Keeper’s Cottage. With it was a pale blue air-mail letter, its American stamp franked clearly with a Washington postmark.