Anne Severn and the Fieldings Part 26

"Go it, Col-Col!" Out on the terrace Queenie laughed her harsh, cruel laugh.

"'For I'm sick to my heart and I fain would lie down.'"

"'I'm sick to my heart and I fain would lie down,'" Queenie echoed, with clipped words, mocking him.

He hated Queenie.

And he loved her. At night, at night, she would unbend, she would be tender and pa.s.sionate, she would touch him with quick, hurrying caresses, she would put her arms round him and draw him to her, kissing and kissing. And with her young, beautiful body pressed tight to him, with her mouth on his and her eyes s.h.i.+ning close and big in the darkness, Colin would forget.

iii

Dr. Cutler's Field Ambulance, British Hospital, Antwerp.

_September 20th, 1914._

Dearest Auntie Adeline,--I haven't been able to write before.

There's been a lot of fighting all round here and we're frightfully busy getting in wounded. And when you've done you're too tired to sit up and write letters. You simply roll into bed and drop off to sleep. Sometimes we're out with the ambulances half the night.

You needn't worry about me. I'm keeping awfully fit. I _am_ glad now I've always lived in the open air and played games and ploughed my own land. My muscles are as hard as any Tommie's. So are Queenie's. You see, we have to act as stretcher bearers as well as chauffeurs. You're not much good if you can't carry your own wounded.

Queenie is simply splendid. She really _doesn't_ know what fear is, and she's at her very best under fire. It sort of excites her and bucks her up. I can't help seeing how fine she is, though she was so beastly to poor old Col-Col before he joined up. But talk of the War bringing out the best in people, you should simply see her out here with the wounded. Dr. Cutler (the Commandant) thinks no end of her. She drives for him and I drive for a little doctor man called d.i.c.ky Cartwright. He's awfully good at his job and decent. Queenie doesn't like him. I can't think why.

Good-bye, darling. Take care of yourself.

Your loving

Anne.

Antwerp. _October 3rd._

... You ask me what I really think of Queenie at close quarters.

Well, the quarters are very close and I know she simply hates me. She was fearfully sick when she found we were both in the same Corps. She's always trying to get up a row about something.

She'd like to have me fired out of Belgium if she could, but I mean to stay as long as I can, so I won't quarrel with her. She can't do it all by herself. And when I feel like going back on her I tell myself how magnificent she is, so plucky and so clever at her job. I don't wonder that half the men in our Corps are gone on her. And there's a Belgian Colonel, the one Cutler gets his orders from, who'd make a frantic fool of himself if she'd let him. But good old Queenie sticks to her job and behaves as if they weren't there. That makes them madder. You'd have thought they'd never have had the time to be such a.s.ses in, but it's wonderful what a state you can get into in your few odd moments. d.i.c.ky says it's the War whips you up and makes it all the easier. I don't know....

FURNES.

_November._

That's where we are now. I simply can't describe the retreat. It was too awful, and I don't want to think about it. We've "settled" down in a house we've commandeered and I suppose we shall stick here till we're sh.e.l.led out of it.

Talking of sh.e.l.ling, Queenie is funny. She's quite annoyed if anybody besides herself gets anywhere near a sh.e.l.l. We picked up two more stretcher-bearers in Ostend and a queer little middle-aged lady out for a job at the front. Cutler took her on as a sort of secretary. At first Queenie was so frantic that she wouldn't speak to her, and swore she'd make the Corps too hot to hold her. But when she found that the little lady wasn't for the danger zone and only proposed to cook and keep our accounts for us, she calmed down and was quite decent. Then the other day Miss Mullins came and told us that a bit of sh.e.l.l had chipped off the corner of her kitchen. The poor old thing was ever so proud and pleased about it, and Queenie snubbed her frightfully, and said she wasn't in any danger at all, and asked her how she'd enjoy it if she was out all day under fire, like us.

And she was furious with me because I had the luck to get into the bombardment at Dixmude and she hadn't. She talked as if I'd done her out of her sh.e.l.ling on purpose, whereas it only meant that I happened to be on the spot when the ambulances were sent out and she was away somewhere with her own car. She really is rather vulgar about sh.e.l.ls. d.i.c.ky says it's a form of war sn.o.bbishness (he hasn't got a sc.r.a.p of it), but I think it really is because all the time she's afraid of one of us being killed. It must be that. Even d.i.c.ky owns that she's splendid, though he doesn't like her....

iv

Five months later.

The Manor, Wyck-on-the-Hill, Gloucesters.h.i.+re.

_May 30th, 1915._

My darling Anne,--Queenie will have told you about Colin. He was through all that frightful sh.e.l.ling at Ypres in April. He's been three weeks in the hospital at Boulogne with sh.e.l.l-shock--had it twice--and now he's back and in that Officers' Hospital in Kensington, not a bit better. I really think Queenie ought to get leave and come over and see him.

Eliot was perfectly right. He ought never to have gone out. Of course he was as plucky as they make them--went back into the trenches after his first sh.e.l.l-shock--but his nerves couldn't stand it. Whether they're treating him right or not, they don't seem to be able to do anything for him.

I'm writing to Queenie. But tell her she must come and see him.

Your loving

Adeline Fielding.

Three months later.

The Manor, Wyck-on-the-Hill, Gloucesters.h.i.+re.

_August 30th._

Darling Anne,--Colin has been discharged at last as incurable.

He is with me here. I'm so glad to have him, the darling. But oh, his nerves are in an awful state--all to bits. He's an utter wreck, my beautiful Colin; it would make your heart bleed to see him. He can't sleep at night; he keeps on hearing sh.e.l.ls; and if he does sleep he dreams about them and wakes up screaming. It's awful to hear a man scream. Anne, Queenie must come home and look after him. My nerves are going. I can't sleep any more than Colin. I lie awake waiting for the scream. I can't take the responsibility of him alone, I can't really. After all, she's his wife, and she made him go out and fight, though she knew what Eliot said it would do to him. It's too cruel that it should have happened to Col-Col of all people. _Make_ that woman come.

Your loving

Adeline Fielding.

Nieuport. _September 5th, 1915._

Darling Auntie,--I'm so sorry about dear Col-Col. And I quite agree that Queenie ought to go back and look after him. But she won't. She says her work here is much more important and that she can't give up hundreds of wounded soldiers for just one man.

Of course she is doing splendidly, and Cutler says he can't spare her and she'd be simply thrown away on one case. They think Colin's people ought to look after him. It doesn't seem to matter to either of them that he's her husband. They've got into the way of looking at everybody as a case. They say it's not even as if Colin could be got better so as to be sent out to fight again. It would be sheer waste of Queenie.

But Cutler has given me leave to go over and see him. I shall get to Wyck as soon as this letter.

Dear Col-Col, I wish I could do something for him. I feel as if we could never, never do too much after all he's been through.

Fancy Eliot knowing exactly what would happen.

Your loving

Anne.

Nieuport. _September 7th._

Dear Anne,--Now that you _have_ gone I think I ought to tell you that it would be just as well if you didn't come back. I've got a man to take your place; Queenie picked him up at Dunkirk the day you sailed, and he's doing very well.

The fact is we're getting on much better since you left. There's perfect peace now. You and Queenie didn't hit it off, you know, and for a job like ours it's absolutely essential that everybody should pull together like one. It doesn't do to have two in a Corps always at loggerheads.