He is back, my boy is back. I know his step, the drop and drag of his crutch. I know my love by his way of walking, Minnie used to sing that, but he’s not my love, he’s not even my boy, doesn’t look like him even, though his hair’s the same dark ginger. My boy was better-looking, this one has a nice face, but there’s a weakness in it, he’s no coward, not he, but his courage is set wrong, he’d spare the wicked who hate him, kill the good who’ve only ever loved him and think it was a glorious high deed he’d done. His poor mother, if he has a mother. Bonny boys are few, and if my love leave me―a silly heathenish song, anyway. But few, right enough, meaning one, and when he’s away having his leg broken and mended again―it’s a miracle what they can do, the doctors nowadays, in the last war it would have been off in a jiffy, and perhaps he'd be the better for it, who knows―none come at all. They used to come. I told the buck-toothed officer they could, more fruit than I can eat or pick to bottle now dear Minnie’s with the Lord. I saw how they looked at me. No wonder the Huns chased them out of France if they couldn’t face a little old woman asking them if they knew they had a friend in Jesus. But he greets me gentleman-like, and always thanks me for the literature, though when he thinks I can’t see he turns an ugly vinegar look on it. I don’t care. If he leaves it down in the ward and another fellow picks it up and is saved, I’ve done my part. Or even drops it in a hedge. God moves in mysterious ways. Bit of a backbone to him, and the manners he learnt at his mother’s knee, not like the rest. Thank God we have a Navy, all the same! I never let him know I've missed him, he’d maybe feel he had to say something about his leg then, and I know he minds it dreadfully.
I watch from the scullery window to see he doesn’t slip on a windfall, but he’s careful, good boy, and lowers himself into the long grass by the brook. Minnie would have had that mown in a trice, when she had her health, proper picture she was, nearly six foot of her, hair coming unpinned, skirt tucked up around her knees, great hobnailed boots, men’s boots, boots I could have put to sea in, sweeping the scythe and singing, always singing, hymns when she thought I could hear her and music hall when she thought I couldn’t. It was comic to hear her change the tune when she copped me. She is only on the farther bank of the river, though, and please the Lord it’s her hand will help me out onto the other side when I come to cross.
Well, speak of―he has a friend to talk to. That’s nice―except. How queer, for a moment I didn’t notice, except something was off about him, he moves ever so soldierly, even picking his way barefoot. Maybe he’s too young yet, that might be all. Bit of a cheek, though, not as if I said all and sundry might come, I didn’t want them bringing those hussies of maids in here to spoon―but didn’t someone tell me the maids were all gone from up there? Gone to the munitions works for the wages, no doubt. Disgraceful―mercenary baggages to a one. In our day we didn’t fear hard work and lowly, or ask more reward than to serve. I’ll let them be for now, they look happy. Better boys together than mucking about with those minxes. I never did see what all the fuss was about―Bill Chivers courted me proper and respectful, though it was a different story after. Still, I had my boy out of it, had him twenty-five years, and he died honourable, I don’t care what they said, shamefully casting away his rifle, did you ever hear the like, not my Joseph, such lying and wickedness that is in the world, and people doubt that Satan walks among us? And there now, he’s given him my book to look at, even if it is to jeer at first, there’s plenty come to the Lord by that crooked path. Minnie, for one.
Oh, but―no―I shan’t have that. With working men I don’t mind so much, though I still don’t see that it’s fair: if it’s not decent on us it’s not decent on them either, and imagine the to-do if we did it for anything other than nursing a baby, quiet-like in a corner. Minnie used to laugh at me when I said things like that. She said once, before the First War, not long after we met, Annie, you’re the demurest, deepest-dyed true blue I ever saw, until someone dares suggest a woman can’t do everything a man can do, and then you come out shrieking sedition, and I said, well, what are you here for if you don’t believe that too―we were up on Clifton Down after a march, taking a sunbath, but fully dressed, mark you, the banners lying all about us―and she said, I do, except I don’t know I’d care to fight in a war. I don’t think women were made to kill. Nonsense, I said, you’d kill if you had to, to protect someone you loved, and that’s all war is, defending what you love, and she said, yes, for that, yes of course I would, and she leaned over and kissed me. Anyway, she grinned, I wouldn't dare run away from my post or drop my weapon if you were watching. I'd rather all the world saw me do it than you. We didn’t say any more then, because we didn’t have to, and shortly Mrs Butler started one of her readings―bulletins, reports and speeches for the cause, at first, but then she’d turn to reciting poetry, Paradise Lost, I knew a bit of that along with her, because it was set for Sixth Standard Reading in Joe’s school, and then there was something that Minnie said was Shakespeare and went rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat, like a funeral march, which Minnie said it was, a funeral for two birds in love. Poetry never made much sense to me, I said to her, give me a Psalm any day. She ruffled my hair and said, I’ll give you a gingernut.
There, he’s sat up, the fair one, and he’s no schoolboy, not a bit. He must be eighteen or nineteen, his shoulders are filled right out―no doubt but he should be in uniform. I wish Minnie was here, she could give him a proper piece of her mind. I always muddle it. She was fearless, too, like that time Bill came to fetch me back to hearth and home, so he said, and she stood in the doorway, gently swinging a chairleg in one hand. Tell the truth, she looked like the caricatures they drew of us for the picture postcards, a rawboned and high-coloured old maid, but I thought she was the most beautiful creature alive, and Bill never came back here shouting about his so-called rights again.
But for all that they do look happy, eating their apples, my apples, God's apples. The winesaps are perfect now. Summer’s short enough, life’s short enough. A friend is the greatest blessing the Lord can give, I should know that, and we're not put on earth for long. My lonely boy needs a friend. I wonder what they’re talking about? Not worldly vanities, drink and women and gambling―they look so sweetly serious, puts me in mind of the long talks I had with Minnie, bringing her round, slowly, to understanding and salva―oh, in heaven’s name, how could I be such a fool? What weak creatures we are, that we can watch sin and crime―treason―happen in front of our very eyes and not even see it until it’s almost too late. Minnie would never have been so dense―she would have spotted what went on straight away, stalked out there and chucked them out, reported the conchie devil too.
Now, Annie Chivers, calm yourself. Get it straight in your head what you want to say. Put your hat back on. You can’t very well tackle something like this bare-headed. It’ll all gush out higgledy-piggledy. Oh, wicked, wicked, doesn’t he look kindly, giving my boy a hand up, remembering the crutch. I always did forget when Joe was wounded, and he’d have to sit back down with a bump―if only he’d never gone back―no, mustn’t think it, mustn’t. But I know him for what he is now, the Fiend is sly. Give me courage, good Lord, give me Joe’s courage, that the chaplain wrote about in his letter. If it hadn’t been for that, and Minnie, I shouldn’t have pulled through it.
‘Hullo, Mrs. Chivers,’ he says. ‘We're just on our way. Thank you so much. This is my friend, Andrew Raynes.’
I look up at him. Now he is good-looking. Cool grey eyes in a tanned face. Such a straight look, if you didn’t know the truth. The Adversary sends the best he can recruit.
It’s now or never, so I say, as stern as I can make it, ‘Young man, why aren’t you in khaki?’
‘I'm a pacifist, Mrs. Chivers,’ he replies, as if I was a girl his own age and I’d asked him what was his trade, ‘I belong to the Friends.’
That one I know. Friends are Quakers. Mrs Butler was a Quaker. Mrs Butler and her rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat verses. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat―rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat―a rifle―rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat―the safety catch was on, he couldn’t fire in time―rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat―he jammed his rifle across the trench to trip the Germans―rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat―and ran to fetch help for the Lieutenant―rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat―and that was shamefully casting away his―rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat―life―rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat―a dead march―rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat―a life for a rifle―rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat―dawn―rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat―twelve rifles, and no funeral. The poets write about funerals for dead birds, and my Joseph lies in lime.
My eyes fill with tears and I let fly at him.
That night, in bed, it starts to come back to me, as if it was all a dream, but I know it wasn’t. Kitchener. Kitchener. Did I honestly say that? I can’t have. I can’t believe it. I must be going dotty. It was because he drowned just about when I got the news about Joe, I suppose. How Minnie would have hooted, and hugged me, and covered my face with kisses, as she always did when I made an ass of myself trying to be brave. I can hear her now: dear Min, darling Min, my angel, sobbing with holy laughter.