Prelude

CW: Mentions of death, war descriptions, mental health.

“–I wish you were here Hector, I wish it more and more every day.’

The letter had come first. An unassuming yellow telegram grasped in the hands of a young post runner. The child was small, barely out of his whelping years – snot dried yellow and white on his nose and across his sleeves. Hands tinged black and blue by ink, and sickness, and the cold bitter wind.

I dug around in my own pocket, sorting through thimbles and dried rosemary as I pushed aside idle matchsticks and copper coins. I finally grasped onto the lolly and placed it in his grasp. “Thank you.” He ran off, childlike glee filling his steps as he leapt over a feeble body etherized by alcohol from the pub across the road. Sudden loud gasps of an approaching fight fell on deaf ears, as the obnoxious pumps of black smog from the brick factory, filtered through the air. I pulled my scarf further across my face, as I walked into the emerging crowd, my figure flickering between bodies touched by the light piercing through fog-drawn clouds. 

I’d settled within myself when the War had begun, that such thoughts of timidity and indecisiveness would have to be thrown away. My brother had left, human dignity still intact, alongside a perpetual innocence most young men never fully shed. The type that weathered with age and flowered broody individuals unable to conceptualise anything past the self. 

I loved him dearly still, even when that muddy green uniform and soft green cap arrived.  Even when he declared what a hero he would be.

“Worry not sister. It’s just war. Think of it like chess, one side moves and the other must retaliate. It’s just a game of wills, and we’re England, and England never loses.”

We’d been eating dinner at that point, a fine meal of roasted chicken and potatoes layered with duck fat. It had been early then, the war not so bad, the food still available. Maybe I should have told him that the cook had left and that most of the chickens had been rounded up and counted, for the eventual day where they would be taken abroad to feed the soldiers. Maybe, even then, I should have told him of the rumours that swirled in grubby bars only to be passed onto the quiet women sitting idle at home. Rumours of soldiers cowering in trenches, filled with wet mud and empty bodies, crying out for gods they thought might listen. But I didn’t.

“You never were very good at chess,” I said instead. He laughed then, a soft sound, not yet filled by coldness or made hazy by rum.

“No, I guess not, lucky I’m not the one leading it then.”

‘No, I thought, you’re just the pawn they sacrifice to protect the King, you're nothing in their eyes. None of you are.’

I wanted to stop time at that very moment, but I couldn’t, so I ate my food and tried to hold onto the minutes.

…

The day he left, I sheltered in his room and surrounded myself with his diluted scent of coffee beans, and odd bits of sediment he’d collected over the years. When dreams of archaeological dig sites and finding old, weathered bones, had filled his thoughts. He’d still be doing it in a way I thought, only the bodies would be fresh and just touched by death. If I really thought about it, empty skulls of the purest silver with open maws housing giant rats were all I could see. All I could feel. That and his cold hand clasped in mine. I tried not to think these days. 

But he’d warned me - in his letters from the frontlines, still young and impressionable, a fleeting amusement in each word– of the trials he’d have faced if he’d stayed, when I begged him each time I wrote, to return back to me. Not that he could.

“A white feather sister, gooseling, chicken, dove, it matters not. That one blasted thing and my life becomes a shell of what it was. I talk to the boys you see, and they all say the same; it’s better to die in the hands of glory, armed by courage and steel, than end up a resolute solider of the devil himself.” I’d sooner rip up his letter than continue but each word spoke to my beating heart as if to say, ‘he is well and breathing with hands that can still write, his mind is whole and his soul ever bright.’

I’d feared the day when his letters became memorabilia only to be brought out during Christmas dinner to soothe the masses. ‘Yes, see, he was in fact in the war, wrote to me all the time. Till a shell tore him apart. Oh well, no, they didn’t tell me that, but they never did find all of him.’ 

I’d written back formally as one should, but it didn’t stop me from adding those little endearments I knew he always appreciated. “Margo, can you take this to the post office please, I would like it to be sent as soon as possible.” 

“Of course, my Lady.” She’d shuffled off down the hall, eyes hard and mouth askew. 

I’d thought that was the end of it, but much like most opinions, the thing festered and spread like mould stuck too long inside a damp cellar. I’d caught her tittering away by the kitchen stove top, a swarm of gullible ears surrounding her.

“There’s a war going on, and all she does is sit in her brother’s room. My cousin wrote to me, you know? She’s just joined up down at one of the barracks in Abbeville. She says it's horror. True and utter depravity. The men come afflicted with wounds so grievous they scream for days and weep through the nights. Others she says are simply mad, as if the body continues to live while the soul has left. Horrible stuff and yet all she can do is sit in her comfort and dwell on the past.”

I fired her accordingly. Quickly. Part of me did it for the simple fact that I was embarrassed that her words had hit a fundamental truth in me. I wasn’t a coward, no. but I did fear the war and the taint it would leave on me. The other part silently fumbled in panic over the mention of my past.

We had been young, naught but simple children my brother and I when we’d been witness to our parents’ death. Hands clasped with poxy marks of ash over our body, we’d seen the devastating flames lick over the wood beams and shatter glass. I don’t remember much after that, just the smell of smoke and damp hands over small young eyes. “What are you doing Hector?”

“Covering your eyes, of course, sister.”

“But why?” He turned me around then, his eyes rimmed red, his mouth twittering. 

“I’ve got to protect you somehow Elli, I’m your big brother after all.” He’d scooped me up in his arms and pulled me to rest under our pear tree, where he held me close and softly sang to me. They never found out what happened, never bothered to search I don’t think. All I know is that the touch of death never truly left me, even when our wealthy aunty came to collect us and we were shipped off to boarding school, I clung to my brother with every fibre in me desperately trying to outrun the cancerous spot of fear slowly eating at my soul. This war felt like that, like the end of a lineage. If my brother died, I too would cease to exist.

…

05/08/1914

My dearest brother,

I hope this letter finds you well. I miss you dearly, but I bring fortuitous news!

I thought that I must let you know forthrightly of something I have recently come across. A truly wonderful thing. You remember that old garden Aunty Kathy had? Well, I found hidden in the mess of her greenhouse a packet of sweet corn seeds! Oh, brother, I was happy, even Edgar – You remember Edgar? The old fishmonger? Well, due to recent upheavals in his workplace–they converted it into a hospital of all places– he has taken residence at our home, upkeeping with the cleaning and lighter duties around the house and garden. You will be proud to know I’ve taken a liking to the field work and as Edgar puts it ‘taken to it like a champ!’ It’s not much, but it does bring me some peace of mind. 

I await your reply.

Your sister Elodie

20/09/1914

Elodie,

I cannot explain much; they check the letters you see. David told me they wipe out words, lines of bloody ink. We’ve finished training and have been drafted for Ypres, I’m not sure when we will get there but they mentioned it could be a week or more travel time. I am glad though sister, that you have found some sort of comfort during this time. I know you worry about how I am faring, so news of your recent discovery makes my heart feel light. Just remember sister I’m always there standing alongside you, even if miles apart, know these letters I send carry my deepest love for you. 

Your brother always, Hector 

…

“Ah, so you must be one of the Maude children? Elodie, wasn’t it? Yes, I can see the likeness now to your parents, such a pretty thing you are!”

I knew she was lying through her teeth; my skin held a sickly complexion one could compare to that of spoiled milk­­-splotchy in places where patches of yellow continued to spread. But I was sure that the words were meant to be kind regardless, the situation called for it I suppose what with the war and all. By this point, kindness seemed so little a thing to give.

“Thank you,” I mumbled, stuffing my hands in the small pockets I had taken to filling with all sorts of worthless goods: flowers and thimbles, feathers and shiny plastic buttons. It helped to have something in my hands collecting and then sorting them like fossils from a dig site. If I breathed in deep enough I could just about taste the rough texture of the black Egyptian soil. 

“–part of the war, what a brave man he is. It's God testing us I say. So, we must stay strong, for them at least.” I scoffed quietly as my skin grew taunt and suddenly became too small for my body. I wanted to rip it off, I wanted to rip her skin off. A test of God she says, while sheltering behind pretty gowns and an engorged stomach laden with food. The shudders began anew as I excused myself from the room.

I once blamed this feeling of anger on the notion of hysterics, on the swell of anguish that absorbed me whenever I walked past his room or held his letters. It started slowly at first; in my fingers, now filled with a sudden tingle before becoming a full tremble. From there it reached further, hiding in the crevices of my eyes where phantom lines glowed softly. I’d called the doctor over in the past, but he’d declared me of sound health, I’d tried to explain it to him, I really had. 

“And when do the shivers start ma’am?”

“When I walk past his room or hear people talk about the war. It’s terrible then, but it's most lethal when I sit for morning tea and the newspaper comes.” I didn’t need to explain to him much more, I’d seen the black and white photo of the young man hidden in his coat pocket, and the deep-set lines wrapped around his eyes. We were not at the front lines battling the enemy, but instead, were sat behind walls of brick and mortar waiting for the telegram to which we would decide our fate. 

‘I wonder what is better, knowing how you’re going to die, or the wait one has before greeting death?’  

“Yes, those can be quite panic-inducing.” He moved away and back out the door as I shouted verbatim. “Exactly, panic-inducing! So, what do I do, how do I fix it?” 

I sucked in a breath, my eyes coming back into focus, as my body lurched forward, and my hands grasped for some sort of stability.

I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think.

I muttered an apology before fleeing the room, the noise from the party continuing to rage behind me, a boisterous affair, of lavish silks attached to hands carrying priceless cups. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.

I entered my bathroom and grabbed the scissors, hands moving before I could stop them as I ran them through the length of my brown hair.

…

16/03/1915

Brother,

I have not heard from you in weeks, the streets are filled with idle gossip of a bloody battle, I haven’t dared to look at the newspaper for fear of what I will see, so please I beg of you, reply.

Your sister, Elodie 

…

A week had passed, since I’d been forced to my room, my auntie intent on keeping me contained. I heard her whispering, the staff too, as they passed along the corridor outside my door.

“–strong-willed, that’s what the doctors say. A woman without a husband.”

“You jest! Surely not! I heard the death of her parents is what turned her, made her…well you know, insane.” 

The other laughed as her voice grew softer, but was still manageable enough to hear her reply.

“No Stacie, that was just the start of it, now that her brothers are not here things have just become worse.” 

It grew too much for me then, the neglect as my heart broke awaiting his reply. The pain of no one understanding. I escaped my window that evening, feeling the wind flick between my legs and over my face, the scarf a poor shelter but comforting nonetheless. My feet were bare, but I walked on. A boy came and left, leaving behind a scar of yellow, it reminded me of pus. I kept walking between crowds of people, their eyes flitting over me, through me. Suddenly the breeze chilled, as my breath sent forth hot bursts of air. My eyes cleared and took in the cobbled street, now filled with soft light from the one streetlight reflecting the afternoon sun, as it flickered through patches of fog. A vexing silence perpetuated the air, my own feet now much too loud when I walked. Maybe that was how I noticed him perched on the bench seemingly unaware of my presence. A phantom figure of the one person who I so longed to see. 

“Hector? Is that really you?”

 The shadow moved and I realised it wasn’t him. I wasn’t outside. 

The walls around me were white, with the malignant smell of aseptic and washed-out blood resting under my nose. I stared past the unknown man and down to the table beside me where Hectors’ letters were spread out across it, the open yellow telegram resting on top. 

“Ah, Miss Elodie you're finally up, ready to take your medication?”

That’s right, I thought, the letter had come first. The insanity second. I was never going to see him again.

…

10/05/1915

Dear Elodie,

We regret to inform you that your brother Pte H.E Maude, No. 87543 of this Company was killed in action on the night of 21.04.1915. Death was instantaneous and without any suffering. We express our sympathies in this trying time. 

His effects will reach you in due course.

Captain J. Culbur, "B" Company, 5th Machine Gun Battalion