run into machine-gun fire so that the upper classes can cling to their position or the capitalists can prosper. That’s not duty, that’s madness.’
‘But what about John?’ Emily asked. ‘He’s a hero, and you will undo that if you bring shame on the family.’
‘I don’t want to hurt the family. If I could leave you out of it, and just pay the price myself, then of course I would. And I will tell you now, just how sorry I am for the trouble I’ll bring to you,’ Cecil replied.
‘Oh Cecil.’ Although it sounded as if she wanted him to go off and risk his life, that wasn’t the case at all. Nobody wanted their loved ones to fight, but for both of them to sit the war out was so unpatriotic. ‘You will let everyone down.’ Mother still hadn’t said a word. ‘Don’t you think our mother has suffered enough?’
Emily pushed her soup away. How would she explain to Theo that her brother was refusing to fight while he risked his life every day in the name of his country?
‘What you’re talking about is dishonourable, you know?’ she said. ‘If every man refused to fight then the war would be lost. Mother, you must tell him.’
‘If every man refused to fight,’ Cecil jumped in, ‘then there would be no war and our differences would have to be resolved peacefully.’
She dropped her head. This was just like Cecil. He would be impossible to convince otherwise, but he would listen to Mother.
‘This war is so unfair,’ she said, thinking of Theo out there, still cheerful and doing his best for his country. ‘But if we don’t fight against the Germans, they might come here and do to us what they did to Belgium. Have you thought of that?’
‘Do you want him to go and fight?’ Mother said.
Her mouth gaped open. Of course that wasn’t what she wanted. Cecil was never meant to be a soldier. He wasn’t much older than a boy. His skin was still soft; his face wasn’t that of a killer. One brother had been missing for months, what could she possibly gain from losing another?
‘That’s a terrible accusation,’ she replied.
‘Cecil, my darling boy.’ Mother carried on. ‘Are you really certain?’
The rasp of Emily’s breathing filled the room.
‘My mind is made up.’
‘Very well,’ Mother replied.
Emily jumped up. Was that it?
‘Your family will stand by you …’
‘Mother …’ Emily began.
Mother raised her hand to silence her. ‘We must respect Cecil’s decision and support him.’
‘And does it matter what I think?’ she said.
But as usual, Mother didn’t answer.
The village would turn against them. The reminders of their patriotic duty were everywhere; Kitchener’s finger pointing at them from his poster on the railway station wall. They would lock Cecil up, subject him to hard labour. Would they even accept her on the farm if Cecil brought this disgrace on them?
She wiped her tears away. It was too much: first John and now this.
‘I will stand by Cecil’s decision.’ Mother blotted her lips and then shuffled out of the room and upstairs to bed.
‘You are making life impossible for me. Mr Tipton is desperate for help on the farm, and yet Mother insists I’m by her side, day and night.’
‘You spoke to me of duty, well Mother is yours.’
‘This might well break her, you know. Do you even care?’
‘Of course,’ he said, his voice breaking. He uncrossed his legs and stood from his seat. Had he even stopped to consider their financial troubles? Did he care that without John at the helm Mother would continue to take handouts and do nothing to resolve the root of the problem?
He was crying now. Huge tears dripping onto the tablecloth. His decision would bring him enough grief – she couldn’t add to it. She comforted him, put her arms around him. He was a pitiful sight stooped over with his nose streaming. He was electric to touch as if he exuded the toxic danger that he brought to the family.
He stepped out onto the lawn, towards the monkey puzzle tree, swung back his arm and punched the trunk. He lifted his face to the heavens and opened his mouth, but from inside the dining room his yell was silent.
February 1916
Mrs L Cotham
HopBine House
New Lane
Chartleigh
Kent
The envelope sat on the mantelpiece for an entire morning, peeking out from behind the photograph of John in a frame painted with forget-me-nots. Finally, the three of them – Emily, Mother and Cecil – gathered in the sitting room. Emily took the opener and slashed open the envelope.
The War Office had completed its investigations and Officer John Cotham was now officially regarded as having died.
Her mother whimpered. Cradled her face with her hands.
‘No wonder Kitchener wanted bachelors.’ Cecil’s bottom lip trembled as he spoke.
Emily tumbled into a long, black tunnel that stretched to eternity; the same tunnel she’d fallen into when her father had died. No matter how far she fell, the dark hole stretched into the shadows. Her legs were filled with a substance as heavy and clogged as the mud Theo described in the trenches. She’d wanted to hide in her bedroom until someone came to tell her it was over, that it wasn’t true. But Mother needed them both. She wept uncontrollably as if there was no room in the house for her or Cecil to grieve as well.
When friends and neighbours called on them, Mother put on a show.
‘I’m but one of thousands of mothers in the same position.’
Privately, Mother fretted, ‘Would I have treated him differently as a baby had I known?’ Her food went untouched. She paced about the house in the dead of the night, wept until her throat was sore and winced as she swallowed her tea. Worst of all, she became fixated with John’s whereabouts. In a husky voice, she speculated that the War Office had got it wrong. Perhaps they’d confused him with another man.
‘It must be difficult to keep track of them all, so many men, scores missing or killed.’
Then one of the sets of John’s identity tags was returned to them in the post, along with the diary full of the names of the men he had lost in battle. The officer uniform that they had paid for arrived wrapped in brown paper.
Emily flicked through the pages, pressing her fingers to the inked names, and then at the very last page, at the end of the list she added one last soldier:
John Cotham.
And then she added his service number after his name.
Emily encouraged Mother to write to an old friend of her family. Lady Heath had been widowed when her husband had been killed on the first day of the Somme in 1914. Lady Heath wrote back suggesting that her friend make a remembrance book. Mother pasted in photographs, letters, press cuttings and John’s identity tags. Lady Heath shared the poetry she had written about her husband, but Mother said she just didn’t have the words.
There was nothing that she could do to reach her.
The letters and bills piled up in the library, but Mother wouldn’t allow her to open them.
‘We