"That's not an answer, Ruth." Dad was smiling.
"OK. He was advancing from Albert in today's letter."
Dad looked serious.
"Oh. That area is dangerous."
"I know it is. I've dealt with many casualties from around there."
"What is? No. How serious are you and Alfred? You haven't said yet but Alfred did ask my permission three months ago."
"He did? He didn't tell me. What a sly Alfred? OK, Dad. We hope to get engaged when he is next back in England."
"And married?"
"Soon after the engagement, Dad."
"You're not waiting until after the War ends, Ruth?"
"Will it ever end? You should know better than I do."
"I have no idea. We are just killing each other by thousands every day. Will either side win before there are no soldiers left?"
"When Alfred asked your permission did you enquire about his prospects?"
"Of course. It was enough then but better now. If he survives the war he is the only remaining son. His older brother James was killed recently. Alfred will inherit his family estate eventually but already has a personal estate in Suffolk. When you marry him you will be the wife of the local squire."
I hugged my father and kissed him on the cheek. I know he loves my mother and the two of them were far more demonstrative of their love for each other than Alfred had ever been - so far, except in my dreams. Maybe he'll change when we are married. My father's arm came up to touch mine. I know he misses his hands for expressing his love for my mother, and me. But I can hug him, knowing he loves his daughter, and his daughter loves him.
+++
A week later I was back in France working hard to patch up wounded soldiers. I am the charge nurse at this field hospital, the post that would be a Matron in a hospital in England. I had twenty nurses working for me. My father was back with his artillery but he had been told to expect a posting to Lydd ranges in Kent to be commander of an artillery training depot. I hope he survives until that happens. I'm seeing too many badly injured men of all ranks and I know my father will be close to the guns, and under counter-battery fire.
Every night, except when I was just too tired to do anything except collapse on my cot and fall instantly asleep, I was making mad passionate love to Alfred. Even when we are married I think Alfred would be shocked by what I wanted to do to him, and what I wanted him to do to me. But perhaps I was underestimating him. There was a hint in one of his letters that he was 'dreaming' as he put it, about me.
One night Alfred seemed more there than before. I seemed to feel the real weight of a man's body covering mine as he thrust away passionately. But as the dream ended, the impression of Alfred said. "I'm sorry, Ruth."
Those few words worried me and he didn't return in my dreams for the next few nights. Was that because I was too tired or was there another reason?
On Sunday I was resting with a cup of tea waiting for the next arrival of wounded troops. The hospital commandant walked over to me, clutching a letter. His face told me what I didn't want to know. It was bad news.
"I had to open this, as I do for all mail, Ruth. It would have been given to you tomorrow when the recent mail has been censored but..."
"Thank you, Sir," I said.
He handed me the letter. It was addressed in a hand I didn't know.
"I'm sorry," the commandant said.
The letter was from Alfred's father Gerald Simons. Alfred had been killed last week leading his men over the top. They hadn't got more than fifty yards from the British lines before being cut down by shrapnel and raked by machine guns. Out of one hundred troops only thirty had returned to the starting trench with five unwounded. Alfred had been closest to the German trench when he had detonated a large mine. He had been badly injured but survived long enough to be taken to the field hospital where he had died within minutes of arrival. Alfred's father asked me to visit him when I was next in England.
Alfred had been killed on the day that in my dream he had said 'I'm sorry'. I should have had a premonition that that was the end but I was just too exhausted to read anything into those words - then. Now? I knew that Alfred had come to say goodbye.
It broke my heart to write a letter of condolence to Alfred's father. He has lost both his sons to this war. His family home and estates will descend to one of Alfred's cousins, if that cousin survives. Alfred's mother had died in childbirth when Alfred was five years old. An elderly aunt had done her best for Alfred and James, but now Alfred's father would be alone with only his memories. I will visit him when I can but that won't be for months.
I had written the letter and put it in the box to be censored about a quarter of an hour before the next ambulance train arrived. I didn't have time to grieve for my dead almost-fiancé until after midnight when I collapsed on my cot, weeping from tiredness and pity for the shattered men I had tended. It took me nearly a week of unremitting work before I could think of what I had lost in Alfred. I had loved him. I had wanted to marry him, have our children, and become the squire's wife of a quiet village.
Quiet? Will I ever have quiet again? All through the night I can hear the distant thunder of the guns on the Western Front. Sometimes they are closer and I can tell the difference between British and German artillery. My father is still in the midst of that maelstrom of shelling. I can't lose him too, God, not him too...
Each day more injured men arrive. Each day we succeed with some who are sent back to England and a few who are patched up to go back to the trenches again. Each day we lose a few. Most of the dying don't get as far back as our hospital. They die at the first aid posts closer to the front. But we still bury dozens a week. Their faces are a blur. Did I tend that one last week? Or was it a week ago? I see so many wrecks of men that I lose track of individuals.
Each night I try to dream of Alfred but the personality has gone. I am dreaming about an encounter with what is gradually becoming an anonymous male body, not the Alfred I had loved who has gone and was disappearing from my dreams. Perhaps if I had had a base of more reality of sexual encounters between us the vision of Alfred would have lasted longer. I couldn't build much on a hand in mine and a couple of hugs that had shocked him.
Two months later I receive the letter I have been praying for. My father has left France for the last time. He is at Lydd for the duration of the war. He tells me that what decided the powers-that-be was when his right leg was hit by some shrapnel. The authorities decided that his knowledge and experience were too valuable to waste needlessly. As a commandant of a training depot his services would be more use to the war effort.
I could read between the lines. My father always minimises his injuries. If he wrote 'some shrapnel' that probably meant he had nearly lost a leg. With his hands already gone, the Army wouldn't have much left of him if he stayed close to the front. He and my mother will be living at the official residence in Lydd.
+++
Another month went by before I was ordered to accompany an ambulance train back to England. Once the train had arrived in London I would have fourteen days leave. That wasn't long because I wanted to visit Alfred's father and my parents in Lydd.
When I arrived at our London house Jessica and Marie were the only servants still there. They made me welcome. I congratulated Marie who had become engaged to Sergeant Abram. I had a pile of letters to read. There were several from Alfred that hadn't been posted when he was killed. I cried over those. There was also a letter from Alfred's family solicitors. Alfred had left me a bequest in his will. Could I call at their London office at my convenience, please?
I felt that was awkward timing. I suppose I could visit the solicitors tomorrow morning before catching a train to go to Alfred's father. Had Alfred left me a sentimental keepsake? Never mind. I would find out tomorrow morning.
+++
At the solicitors I was startled to be told that Alfred had left me his personal estate in Suffolk. There was a covering note. If he was killed in the war the family estate would have to be sold, or most of it, to pay the death duties for himself and his brother, James. His personal estate might be more than the whole of the remaining part. If I accepted the bequest, please could I ensure that his father had somewhere to live, because if Alfred was dead his father would have no surviving close relations?
The solicitors told me that Alfred had been overly pessimistic about death duties. Since their father was still living, neither brother had inherited the family estates. Death duties would only be payable on their personal estates which were sufficiently large to absorb that without having to sell any land. When their father died, yes, there would be death duties to pay but again it shouldn't affect the majority of the family estate.
What Alfred had left me was a farm with a large farmhouse built within the remains of a Roman fort that had become the farmyard. The farm itself, of several thousand acres, was let to a tenant farmer who had been paying a substantial rent for decades that had accumulated because Alfred had spent very little. Even after his estate had paid death duties I would have a capital of fifty thousand pounds and an income of several thousand a year after income taxes.
