France, 15 October, 1914 – Morning
He couldn't move. He couldn't see. Blood filled his mouth as soon as he could cough it up, threatening to choke him. One moment he had realised that the grandiose sweep of cavalry was driving Joey toward the arachnid eyes of innumerable machine guns, the next a fiery wind had swept him from the saddle. He had closed his eyes, raised his sword, pleaded for the strength to die, tried to remember Jane's face, tried to imagine the laughter of his unborn children. He endeavoured to compress all he had ever desired into that one second, like a little boy called to bed who must run one more lap around the garden before assenting to the call. But after the fire the seconds inexplicably continued, the garden burned around him, and horror grew with each hard-drawn breath.
Everything on his right side felt as if it were being crushed, shredded by a mountain of glass shards. The taste of blood and bile mixed in his throat. His eyesight was a red haze. Perhaps worse than the sound of his own choking gasps was the silence around him, punctuated only by the cries of dying men and suffering horses. Was that Joey's body holding his feet to the ground? A horse next to him gave a bone-chilling shriek. His own slow death, trickling away over a field in France, he could perhaps endure. But the sound of a dying horse is the sound of hell. His hand instinctively felt for his revolver – he had to give the ruined animal one last mercy. For Joey's sake. For Albert's sake.
"I promise you man to man I'll look after him as closely as you have done." He heard his own voice in his ears as if a phonograph were playing it. The promise made – could it have been only a few months before? – had to be kept. But his right hand wouldn't move, and when his left hand fumbled at his holster it was empty. He screamed in frustration, joining his own agony with that of the horses around him.
"GOD. OH, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE, WON'T SOMEONE SHOOT THEM. END THIS. SHOOT THEM, BITTE. SHEIßEN DIE PFERDE! UM GOTTES WILLEN. BITTE. PLEASE . . . GOD!"
He screamed, tears washing the blood from his eyes, until his voice was a broken whisper. Then he heard them – the merciful crack of rifles. Second by second, the field grew quiet. A shadow came between him and the blue-gold sky. He prayed it had come to shoot him too, but instead it knelt, and lifted his head, and poured something horrible from a flask between his lips.
Schnell, Hans! Gib mir deinen Gürtel! Jetzt! Beeilen Sie sich! Binden es hier! Ja, so. Jetzt, Informieren Sie den Arzt gibt es einen Offizier noch am Leben . . . Nicholls could feel his breath grow weaker. His Eton blood was finally giving out. He closed his eyes, and prayed that Albert would forgive him.
The sun had burned the midday sky white-hot before the mangled body of Captain James Nicholls was carried from the stricken field to the hospital wagons. His right hand was buried in a pit with the bodies of the horses who had died beside him.
Narracott Farm, 30 November, 1918 – Late Evening
Capt. Nicholls had greedily sucked down four cups of tea and consumed half a plate of biscuits before he realized what a horrific barbarian he must seem to his hostess. He put his fifth cup back down on the table, but not without a plaintive look at its contents.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Narracott. You must think me a beastly yob. Forgive my carelessness – I know things are rationed these days. Truth is I haven't had a proper British set of tea and biscuits since 1914."
She pushed the plate of biscuits closer to him. "Well, then, I'm glad that Albert was the only one around here to who really cared for these things. What exactly brings you to our doorstep, Captain?"
Nicholls took another biscuit but didn't eat it, absentmindedly turning it over his fingers like a coin. "I came about Joey. My . . . well, Albert's horse."
"You haven't – you haven't brought him back, have you?" The hope in her voice felt like a bayonet in his chest.
"No. I'm sorry, Mrs. Narracott, but . . . Joey died . . . died next to me at the Battle of Quievrechain in 1914. I'm not sure why I thought coming to apologise in person would make anything better. Now the knowledge that Albert rode off to war searching for Joey . . . has made it all the worse, I'm afraid. Do pardon me, but . . ." His voiced dropped to a whisper, "Damn this war."
He looked down, realising he had crushed the biscuit into crumbs. He flushed, deposited the crumbs onto the plate and pushed himself painfully to his feet. "I'm so sorry to have disturbed you, Mrs. Narracott. Thank you for the tea. I do hope you hear from Albert soon."
Rose Narracott moved from the stove and deposited herself firmly between Nicholls and the door. "You can't seriously think I'd let a slip of a veteran like you out into a Devonshire night like this to make his own way who-knows-where? You're staying for supper, and then we'll put you in Albert's room, and if this wind's died down by 'morrow morning, then, perhaps, I'll set you on your merry way but not before!"
"I don't want to be a –"
"Not another word, Captain. You've a kind heart, to come all this way over a horse, and I'll insist on your letting us offer this kindness in return. Now come back over here and finish this tea."
Nicholls let her guide him back to the table. "Is your husband at home? I don't want . . . er . . . I wouldn't want the neighbors . . ."
Rose laughed. "Mr. Narracott's been taking his supper at the pub more often than not these past few evenings. Says he gets better news there. He'll be along in time to eat your left-overs." She tasted the stew bubbling on the stove and threw-in a few of the herbs hung to dry above the kitchen window. "Now, you say you've been in France since 1914? Not one holiday back home?"
Nicholls smiled grimly. "Well, some might consider a relaxing four-year stay in a German prison-camp a holiday, but I must say I was never more glad for good, hard, English work than during my walk through Devonshire this afternoon."
"Four years?! But surely they would have exchanged an officer like yourself years before that! And you wounded and all!"
"Ehehe – you would think." He took a steadying sip from his half-cooled cup of tea. "The problem, Mrs. Narracott, with the War Office is that it runs very efficiently, but never more-so than when it makes a mistake. Then events must be very efficiently covered over and explained away and forgotten altogether so that next-year's promotions can be made! Some men do manage to . . . fall through the cracks."
"What a shame! But surely your family must have made some kind of fuss!"
"Yes, indeed . . . if I had one. But my father was killed in a lorry accident a month after I left home . . . and my wife . . ." The tea-cup trembled against the saucer as he put it back down. "My wife was sent a telegram informing her of my death in battle. My letters were not forwarded. And I received word just one month ago that she has . . . since remarried."
"But why on earth wouldn't your letters be –"
The door opened, revealing a wind-blown farmer in a heavy leather overcoat. Ted Narracott turned ale-reddened eyes to his wife, not seeming to notice her visitor.
"Well, Wilf says no more stout for me 'til me bar tabs paid, so looks like you're stuck feedin' me gob 'til –"
He stopped when he noticed Nicholls, his eyes widening in near-instant recognition. "You!" He rushed at the soldier, face purple with sudden rage.
"You and your highborn knight-and-armor ways, think you can come and take food from my Rose's mouth after what ye've done to me an' mine!?" He grabbed an un-resisting Nicholls by the collar and shook him. The captain's tea-cup crashed to the floor. "30 guineas fer as fine an 'orse as tha' t'were? An' me only son run off to die in the trenches after 'im like 'e were chasin' rainbows.! Ye dare show yer face 'ere?!"
Rose Narracott grabbed her husband by the shoulder. "Ted Narracott you take your hands off him this instant! I'm ashamed of you."
Ted dropped Nicholls' collar, pushing him back against the table as he did so. "I won't 'ave 'im in the 'ouse, Rose! 'E's 'ighborn an' don't need our charity and after what 'e's caused . . . I won't 'ave it!"
Captain Nicholls bent to retrieve his hat from the floor and placed it squarely on his head. "Do forgive me," he said softly, with a bow towards Mrs. Narracott, "I seem to have overstayed my welcome – I won't trouble you any longer. I'm so very, very sorry to have caused this family pain – and I hope you may permit me to pay for the teacup."
"Oh, no you don't, Captain, don't you move an inch towards that door. Ted Narracott, how could you be such a mean, heartless . . ." Her teeth ground around all the words she wouldn't permit herself to say. She stamped her boot on the stone floor, "This is MY kitchen and this house was my dowry, and I'll do as I please in it and have to supper whoever I care to, and woe to anyone who'll say me nay."
She stood nose-to-nose with her husband, and Nicholls couldn't help but smile privately at the way her tall, farmwife frame seemed to dwarf him. "Here he's walked all this way on a bad knee in a Devon November to tell us about Joey, to apologise to Albert like a right and proper gentleman, and all you have fer him is hard words? How can you call yerself a right and Christian man, Narracott, how can ye?"
Ted Narracott put his hat back on his head and stalked out the front door, slamming it behind him.
Mentz Prison Camp, 4 June, 1915 – Midday
7 months. 7 months and 19 days since he'd been captured and not a word from home, official or otherwise. It had been 4 months since he'd been released from the Critical Ward in the Prison Hospital. 4 months and 32 letters home, which the Goethe-loving camp commander always took with a jolly wink, promising to post them with the Red Cross at every opportunity. Still nothing. In his condition he was no good for work-details, so his days were reduced to letter-writing and hobbling around the prison yard, trying to put strength back into his ruined knee.
Nicholls' best guess for how he managed to survive Quievrechain was nothing more miraculous than the machine gun using up its clip or jamming just as it swept across his body from right to left. The bullets had shredded his right arm up to the elbow, necessitating its amputation. Others had lodged in his knee, shoulder and lung, and one had ripped through his cheek and broken his jaw. For months he had lingered, perfectly balanced between the white-walled, German-accented world and a golden dream where he rode Joey across the Downs towards an endless sunset. He still wasn't sure if he was glad that German ingenuity had prevailed over his English body's determination to take him to Arthur's Bosom. All his dreams of renewing his father's dwindling estate with the sweat of his own brow, of pursuing his art, of holding both his twins in his arms after their birth, of teaching them to hunt and ride and draw – it was all dust in the mustard-tinged wind. Even when he could get home to Jane, it would be as a cripple to be cared for instead of as a husband to provide.
Still, the very thought of her momentarily chased away his disappointment and his fear. How could he be sad when such a woman breathed on earth, woke every morning in his house, called herself by his name? Her perfect eyes, heart-shaped face, sensible mouth . . . neck and shoulders and breasts as white and smooth as swans' down. The memory of her voice was balm to his aching leg and laboring chest. What had she said, so many months before, on their last day together?
" . . . She will have your blue eyes. And her brother will have your fair hair. You have seven months to come back to us."
7 months and 19 days. He was a father by now. And still no words came from England to sooth his aching soul.
