Blasted Things Read online

  BLASTED

  THINGS

  BLASTED

  THINGS

  Lesley Glaister

  First published in Great Britain by

  Sandstone Press Ltd

  Willow House

  Stoneyfield Business Park

  Inverness

  IV2 7PA

  Scotland

  www.sandstonepress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © Lesley Glaister 2020

  Editor: Moira Forsyth

  The moral right of Lesley Glaister to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  ISBNe: 978-1-913207-13-7

  Cover design by Rose Cooper

  Typeset by Biblichor Ltd, Edinburgh

  To Jill Glaister with much love.

  1920

  DARLING, WE HAVE A SON.

  The voice echoed from somewhere far away. There seemed no connection between this news and she.

  ‘A son, my darling, a beautiful boy.’

  After a period of drifting she registered that it was Dennis’s voice. That it was light. That it was over. The child was born and it was a male.

  She turned her face to the wall, which was pitted, the paint a sickly green to match the smell of ether. A boy. Cannon fodder. Imagine pushing that paint into all those little pits, the sticky brush, the claggy pigment, the chilly smell of it. But perhaps it would be a soothing occupation?

  Later they put the boy, shawl-wrapped, into her arms and he snuffled his face towards her breast. She gazed down at his black-wisped head. It seemed that he had been bathed. His eyelids opened to reveal dark slits of shine. She put the vast tip of her forefinger against his open palm and as the fingers closed around it, her heart was crushed.

  Before

  1

  October 1917

  AT THE END of a shift that had seemed endless, Clem stood yawning and shivering in the grey dawn light. Inhaling the bitter smoke of a Red Cross ciggie, she listened to the cheeping of some poor bird. An officer, a doctor, loomed beside her. He was one of the Canadians, a lanky thing.

  ‘How do?’ He lit one of his own superior cigarettes.

  ‘Perfectly fine,’ she said, rather stiffly. Small talk was the last thing she required.

  ‘Where are you from?’ he asked.

  ‘Suffolk.’

  ‘A Suffolk girl. Bit hazy about British geography.’

  ‘East Anglia,’ she snipped.

  ‘East Anglia,’ he mimicked in a prissy tone.

  ‘Sorry, asleep on my feet.’ She glanced up at him. She’d never met a Canadian, was rather vague about their distinction from Americans.

  ‘Powell Bonneville.’ He clicked his heels ridiculously. ‘At your service, ma’am.’

  ‘No service required, thank you,’ she said, thinking she ought to wash her hair, a dreaded task in the draughty ablutions tent. She realised he was inclining his head, waiting for her name.

  ‘Clementine Armstrong.’

  They each pinched their cigarettes between their lips to perform a perfunctory and rather ridiculous handshake, and resumed smoking in silence until he said, ‘I wonder where are you? In there?’ He tapped his own brow and studied her – rather impertinently – with his cool grey eyes. The lashes were dark and distinct, the hair was fair, greying, but his skin, now she looked closer, was fresh. He had a long, elegant face, perhaps a touch fey.

  ‘Nowhere thrilling. Sorry to disappoint.’ She took a last puff of her gasper, dropping the end into the mud between the slatted duckboards.

  ‘Well, Miss Armstrong,’ he said, ‘you go and get yourself some shut-eye directly. Doctor’s orders.’

  She blinked at him wearily and plodded away, aware of his eyes following her, but too tired to be either flattered or irritated, though she was reminded that she really must write to Dennis. How many weeks? She’d lost track.

  In the ablutions tent she heated water, added it to cold to make a tolerably tepid mixture, and then, shivering behind a skimpy curtain, stripped off her clothes and washed every bit of her body with carbolic soap. There were bites around her waist and at the top of her legs, bedbugs probably, or lice. They got everywhere; the men carried them on their bodies, in their clothes, in their equipment, and there was no getting rid of them despite the bonfires of lousy clothes with their palls of khaki smoke. A mosquito buzzed around her wet body. She smacked at it and dried herself, too tired to wash her hair after all – goodness knows what might be living in it – and hurried back to her hut, head down, avoiding eyes – please, no one speak to me and waste a precious moment of my rest. Back in her hut she kicked off her shoes, dropped her outer clothes, clambered up the ladder into her narrow bunk and plummeted straight into proper, marvellous, profound sleep.

  Something startled her awake – gone by the time she opened her eyes – cat or rat or dream? She blinked at the wooden wall, the wavery slivers of light between the boards. On the wall some wag had pinned a calendar, open at last June: hollyhocks and thatch, a duck pond and a weeping willow on a village green. A wag, or a hopeless nostalgic. Grief regrouped inside her during sleep, and only when she was awake enough to be fully cognisant of where she was did the burden lift. At least here she was busy; there was hardly time to think. Busy, useful and so tired she actually slept – in fact could never get enough of it.

  Now, she allowed herself an extra two minutes of wallowing before she climbed down the ladder and shivered into her clammy clothes. She felt a little triumph for having achieved the first uninterrupted rest for days. Only two bunks in this little hut, and sometimes a mattress on the floor, but not at present, so there was the luxury of floor space. She felt lucky to be in here, and sharing with Iris too, rather than in the great khaki dorm tent with most of the girls. In this small place one could at least have the occasional, enormous luxury of being on one’s tod.

  There was a mirror tacked to the wall, and in its cheap glass her face appeared pale and somewhat warped – and that seemed right. There was a look of Ralph – no, don’t think, don’t – but it was irresistible. Holding her breath, she allowed him into her mind. An experiment. Ralph. Her beautiful, funny, clever little brother. And yes, it hurt, but it didn’t destroy her, didn’t barge her off her feet as it had done at first. She felt closer to him now; helping boys like him was helping her through her grief. But of course it still hurt like hell and it always would. Always should.

  She began to brush her wretched hair – get on, get on, don’t dwell.

  Iris pushed through the door and, without removing her shoes, sank down onto her lower bunk. She took off her specs, rubbed her eyes and lay prone, staring at the underside of the top bunk.

  ‘Take your cap off at least,’ said Clem, pinning her own over the coiled greasiness of her hair.

  ‘Forster’s gone,’ Iris said.

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Iris fiercely. ‘Don’t dare say he’s better off out of it. He was seventeen. Seventeen! Never had a sweetheart, he was telling me at the end. Wasn’t stupid, knew he’d bought it. Never even kissed a girl.’

  Ralph had never kissed a girl either, Clem thought, not as far as she knew. And he’d only just turned eighteen. ‘Actually I wasn’t going to say that,’ she said, ‘I was going to say I’m so very sorry.’

  Iris harrumphed.

  The boys were never in the Clearing Station for long. The task was to patch them up for their journey to the Base Hospital, but this depended on the transport convoys getting through unscathed. Even in a short time, though, it was possible to become attached, and t
here were some with whom it struck home more. Forster had been so young; younger even than seventeen, Clem guessed, or certainly seemed it. His bowel blown out, he’d never stood a chance. Furtively she’d sketched him: a hasty line, the shape of his nose and soft young chin. The sketch was never finished as Sister had come along and she’d had to stuff the sketchbook under her cape.

  ‘I kissed him.’ Iris sounded oddly triumphant. She touched her lips. ‘So he did kiss a girl.’

  Clem gazed at the reflected flame from the Tilley lamp dancing minutely in the burnished leather of Iris’s shoes. Though she was slapdash about her appearance – always a drooping hem, a wrinkled stocking, a wisp escaping her cap – Iris took real pride in her shoes and polished them daily. Clem’s were scuffed. She’d never been in charge of cleaning her own shoes before; someone else had always done it, and till now she’d never even noticed.

  Clem stepped out into the drizzle. She could hardly think what time of day it was, but of course it was late afternoon. Darkness gathering; about this time at home they’d be drawing the curtains, stoking the fire, buttering scones, pouring tea.

  Iris kissing the lips of a dying boy. Imagine! So very kind, so killingly funny! Cross-eyed Iris in her specs, whatever did the poor boy think?

  ‘Hey,’ barked Gwen. ‘You’re needed.’ She was standing at the door of the theatre hut sucking on a cigarette.

  ‘But I’m on dressings.’

  ‘Well, we need another pair of hands. Pronto. Cleared it with Sister, don’t fret.’

  Gwen was tall, angular, with cropped hair and sharp critical eyes; beside her Clem always felt weak, inadequate, a flibbertigibbet. They’d met when Clem joined the Red Cross in Felixstowe in the run-up to the war. It was Gwen who’d encouraged Clem to join the Voluntary Aid Detachment and, once Ralph was killed, to serve in France. Gwen had proved to be a staunch friend, though an abrasive one, always goading, pushing, always testing.

  ‘Do I have a choice?’ Clem asked.

  Gwen shook her head.

  Clem glanced towards the dressings tent where the casualties waited to be assessed by a doctor and for their wounds to be dressed. After all these months she was swift and neat, although there were some shocking injuries where one had to use all one’s ingenuity to work out how on earth to cover the area, how to hold the wound – and one’s expression – together. One must never reveal to the patient the horror one felt.

  The boys were so brave, most of them, as parts that should never have seen the light of day were swabbed with Lysol, dabbed and squeezed, had picked from them morsels of shrapnel, gravel, bone, insects, slivers of uniform and skin; finally to be pressed tight and neat under clean gauze.

  For her first few weeks at the station, Clem had done nothing but wash heaps of blood- and pus-stained bandages and had done it in furious resentment, weeping into the steam, wanting, needing to do something more important, but now she understood how utterly vital it was that the dressings were clean and rolled and ready for a reaching hand.

  She turned her back on the dressings tent and followed Gwen reluctantly to the theatre hut. She had not yet assisted at an operation. There was nothing minor here. All operations were emergencies, wounds that couldn’t wait. Anything that could be safely left for a few days, they cleaned and patched up the best they could and the men were sent off down the line. She’d heard the cries and groans and awful sudden silences that came from here and always scuttled past, dreading being called upon to enter.

  ‘Get a move on,’ Gwen said. ‘Scrub up.’ She pointed to a basin of water, a cake of carbolic soap.

  ‘I won’t be much cop,’ Clem said.

  ‘Fit of the squeams?’ Gwen said. ‘Pull yourself together.’

  The skin round Clem’s nails was cracked and split, and the carbolic stung. The first operation was, as she’d feared, an amputation. The patient was unconscious, the mask on his face delivering a mixture of ether and air. The light over the table was dim and flickering; the leg, white and hairless, extended from beneath a green tarpaulin, the foot an unrecognisable mash of flesh, hanging toes, shreds of knitted sock and delicate broken bones. She swallowed against a surge of nausea, tears standing in her eyes as she steeled herself to look. It was her job to hold the upper limb firm. Despite the ether it was sometimes possible for a patient to wake, or partially wake, and struggle. Behind the group huddled round this operating table there was another and then another two. Four tables, four operations in train.

  Dr Lennox, a big, frowning surgeon, bristly black eyebrows jutting between his mask and cap, conducted the amputation. Just think of the sound of the saw going through the tibia and fibula as if it’s a saw in wood, think of it like that, just one thing cutting another thing, think of something clean, a tree perhaps, but the catch of the saw teeth in the flesh and in the ragged leaking tube of a vein, made it impossible to conjure anything else. The unconscious leg twitched and bucked, and she clung on tight. The air reeked of blood, flesh, sweat, Lysol.

  ‘Catch it,’ Gwen said. She handed Clem a galvanised bucket, and Clem found herself able to let go of the limb and catch, as it fell – hanging for a moment on a thread of skin – the foot, the weight of a kitten, with a soft thud. Lennox sutured the arterial and venous rags, stretched down the skin and fastened it like a sausage casing, and then, without pause, scrubbed up ready for the next case.

  There’d been a recent push at Cambrai and it had taken days for the convoy of ambulances to arrive. One ambulance had been hit and the surviving injured had had to wait it out, allowing gangrene to set in. Not safe to send any of these amputations down the line; there were twenty or thirty operations to be done and no one would sleep till they were finished.

  By the time she was granted a break she’d carried three feet, an arm above the elbow, a mash of genitals, a hand and countless fingers to the crematory, from which leaked endless, meaty smoke.

  ‘You did well,’ Gwen remarked later. They were in the ablutions hut, and Clem was scrubbing her raw and stinging hands. The knuckles and fingers were swollen, nails clipped to the quick. Once so smooth and pretty, now they were ugly hands. She looked at the finger where the sapphire and diamond engagement ring, slipped off before her surreptitious departure, should sit. Would it even fit her thickened finger now?

  Gwen offered Clem a cigarette, lit it from her own. The smoke bit into Clem’s throat, curiously clean, helping to clear the sickly stench of gangrene that seemed to cling to her clothes and hair, even her skin.

  ‘You held your nerve,’ Gwen said. ‘Admit I had my doubts.’

  ‘Why ask me to, then?’

  ‘Needs must.’ Gwen smirked as she blew out smoke. ‘Anyway it was Sister Fitch, not me.’

  ‘But you could have persuaded her not to.’

  Gwen yawned. She looked done in, but so did they all. Clem was spun back to those days in the Scout Hut in Felixstowe, the day she met Gwen, this older, intimidating, rather mannish woman teaching her to tie a sling, making her take it off and put it on, over and over again until she got it right – could probably do it in her sleep. Oh, sleep, yes.

  Ida and Ada, middle-aged twins, came in. ‘I say, do you have to smoke in here?’ they said in unison. They were a thin pair with narrow faces and hooked chins, the two of them together added up to about the bulk of an average-sized woman. Qualified civilian nurses, they barely tolerated the amateurs with whom they were increasingly surrounded.

  Gwen and Clem donned their overcoats and stepped outside. It was the middle of the night now, foggy, no moon or stars. It was as if they were in a chill cloud, stained with the light that leaked from huts and tents. They stood and smoked and added to the smog.

  ‘Any news of anyone?’ Gwen said.

  ‘Haven’t been writing,’ Clem said. ‘Too bally tired.’

  ‘Not even to your fiancé?’ Gwen always gave the word a sarcastic twist. Though she’d never met Dennis, she’d made her disapproval of him clear. And when she’d learned that Dennis had forbidden C
lem to serve overseas, Gwen had encouraged her defiance, facilitated her escape.

  Clem ground out her cigarette, and immediately wished she hadn’t. It had felt like something live she could hold on to. A comfort. She thought of the dead limbs and digits burning. A mushy smear of penis. All that sticky ash.

  ‘Better get some grub before the next lot,’ said Gwen. She held the minute remains of her cigarette between finger and thumb to draw out the very last of it before she threw it down between the duckboards.

  ‘I’ll go back to dressings, I suppose.’

  ‘Now you’ve passed the test, you’re on theatre duty till it calms down. Another convoy due.’

  It was the sound of the disembodied body parts, Clem thought, the independent weight of them. A body should not come apart. How cruel the law of physics was to give a sawn-off limb its own mass. One hand had been perfect, only the arm smashed beyond possible repair. A hand with brown hairs on its back, dirty of course, the fingernails cut neat and square, a sensible hand. One you might like to hold. She never saw its owner’s face.

  2

  November 1917

  SHELLS CRUMPED IN the distance and the darkness tasted of cinders. Relieved of the theatre for a three-hour break, Clem stretched, rotated her neck. The duckboards creaked with the movement, or was it her own joints? Half dead with lack of sleep, she was reluctant to take a single step. To be able to stand idle was enough. Her fingers rolled the tiny pencil she kept in her pocket. The pencil was taken from the spine of a diary – slim enough to be undetectable in a pocket. Though there was rarely time to draw, just feeling it between her fingers was a comfort, the muscle memory reminding her of the soothing immersion of sketching.

  But then came a volley of fire that sounded nearer. Wounds were happening out there, she could hear them: skulls shattering, shrapnel tearing into flesh. In a day or two’s time she’d be seeing them. One never got used to the variety of injuries. There were still some that caused one to reel, but at the same time, gaping flesh, visible bones, intestines, gleams of brain were becoming queerly quotidian. One thanked God for a normal fracture without gangrene, or a wound with fleshy suturable lips.