The Silent Christmas Read online

  ‘You know there isn’t. They’ll have us spitting and polishing like it’s gone out of style. Last time, you ended up spending your days painting rocks white.’

  ‘Beats being here, though, don’t it?’

  Bert had a point. Except this morning, this Christmas morning, the sky was a bright, bright blue and the air was as clean and clear as it was on top of the Cloud.

  It would be a lovely day to be alive, thought Tom, if I wasn’t in some bloody trench with half the German army only a couple of hundred yards away, desperate to kill us.

  ‘Merry Christmas, lads.’ It was Harry, running down the trench, ensuring he kept his head below the parapet.

  ‘You’re up early.’

  ‘Found a little nest to sleep in last night, didn’t I? Captain Lawson was on duty last night so I bedded down in his dugout.’

  ‘They’d have you shot if they found out, Harry,’ said Bert.

  ‘They ain’t gonna find out, are they? Had to bung the little batman the fags but it was worth it.’

  Bert shook his head.

  ‘Any chance of a cuppa?’

  ‘It’s stewing.’

  ‘What you done, put beef in it?’

  Bert shook his head. ‘Just tea. Bully beef ain’t come up yet.’

  ‘What’s for breakfast?’

  ’Same as yesterday,’ said Bert.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A plate full of hopes and dreams with a dash of disappointment on the side,’ answered Tom. ‘And when you’ve finished that, I’ll warm up some roast goose with lashings of gravy and roast spuds.’

  ‘They’ve brought up the dinner already?’

  ‘In your dreams, mate.’ Bert handed him a tin cup full of a dark, ochre-coloured liquid. ‘Drink your tea.’

  ‘I could eat this with a knife and fork.’

  ‘Hey, Sergeant,’ one of the soldiers shouted from post three. ‘Summat’s up in the German trenches. One of them is standing on his parapet waving his arms.’

  Bert rushed over to the periscope and peered into it. The German was standing in full view out of his trench beside the Christmas tree, waving his right arm in the air.

  ‘What’s the bugger up to?’

  ‘Shall I kill him, Sergeant?’

  ‘Not yet. Captain Lawson said not to fire on any of them without orders.’

  ‘He’s stepping through his wire towards us, shouting something.’

  Tom strained to hear what the man was saying.

  ’Tommy, are you awake yet? Tommy...’

  ‘I can shoot him easy, Sergeant. Sitting duck, he is.’

  ‘Hold it, Blake. I don’t want any firing without a hofficer here.’ He shouted back over his shoulder: ‘Harry, can you find Captain Lawson?’

  Tom stuck his head over the top of the parapet. The German was still walking slowly towards them, holding a box in his arms and talking at the same time. ‘Let’s talk, Tommy. It’s Christmas, let’s talk.’

  Without thinking, Tom put his foot on one of the retaining boards and pushed himself up above the parapet, scrambling up to the top of the trench on his hands and knees.

  ‘What you doing?’ shouted Bert.

  Tom Wright ignored him and walked out, through the wire, past the dead German draped across it and out into no-man’s-land.

  ‘Come back, Tom!’

  Bert’s voice sounded very far away now.

  Tom looked up. The sun shone weakly, trying to break through the haze. Off to the left, a red-breasted robin perched on a tree stump, trilling its welcome to the world. His boots crunched the frozen ground, sending up flecks of frost into the morning air.

  The German was only thirty yards away now. He was smaller than Tom; about five feet and five inches, dark haired, unshaven, wearing a dull grey overcoat and a soft hat with a round button in the centre.

  They both reached the middle of no-man’s-land at the same time.

  ‘Morning, Tommy.’ It was the same voice as the sniper from two nights ago. That strange accent; a mixture of Manchester and German, with a touch of cockney thrown in for good measure.

  ‘Morning, Fritz.’

  ‘My name is Harald. Harald Kanz from Leipzig.’

  The man stuck his hand out.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Saturday, December 23, 2017

  Macclesfield General Hospital, Cheshire

  Jayne stood in front of Robert’s bed in the hospital. Off to the left, the machines were still beeping regularly. His face was peaceful, as if he was in the deepest sleep he had ever experienced. His breathing was regular; a slight rise and fall of the NHS sheet and blanket revealing he was breathing at all.

  The doctor had been very positive when he saw Jayne and Vera. ‘He’s had a good night’s rest and the antibiotics seem to be clearing up the chest infection.’

  ‘I can vouch for that,' said Vera. ‘He was so quiet all night, I had to get up every five minutes to check.’

  ‘You do know the machines will go off if there is any change in his heart rate or breathing?’

  Vera drew herself up to her full five-foot-one-inch of height. She seemed to tower over the doctor. ‘I used to be a nurse. I’m quite capable of checking vital signs.’

  ‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Cartwright, we rely on the machines to do it for us these days.’

  ‘There’s nothing better than a human touch.’

  ‘So he’s getting better, Doctor?’ Jayne intervened between the two of them.

  ‘It’s still a little bit too early to judge, Mrs Sinclair, but the prognosis is good. We’ll know for certain in a couple of days.’

  ‘I hope he can be better before Christmas,’ said Vera.

  ‘We all do, Mrs Cartwright. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other patients to see.’

  Vera had stayed for five minutes more, briefing Jayne in excruciating detail of what she had to do if there was any change in Robert’s vital signs.

  And then she too was gone, back to the home to have a nap and a shower. She would return later. Luckily, Mr Smith had plenty of food in his bowl so Jayne wouldn’t have to return to Didsbury that night.

  After checking on Robert, which involved simply watching his chest rise in rhythm to the beat from the machine, she sat in the chair opposite his bed and took out her laptop.

  The three other beds in the ward were occupied, but as two of the patients were sleeping and the other was listening to the television through his earphones, she had finally found a quiet place to work.

  The discoveries this morning were interesting. David’s great-grandfather had been a soldier in the British Army fighting in World War One. But why did he have just one German button? She had heard of soldiers bringing back German helmets as souvenirs, but a button? And how did he get hold of it? Surely, a person would take more than one button?

  She shook her head. And why did he have the green label? Did it mean something to him? A label for a Christmas tree? And what was the leather object? Was it from the same time, or something completely different? Perhaps it was something they used in the trenches?

  These objects must have meant something to Tom Wright, otherwise why keep them safe and secure, wrapped up in the bottom of a chest?

  For a second, the hospital ward seemed to blur and slowly dissipate. She found herself looking down on a scar in the ground, where people were stepping up to firing steps, rifles and bayonets pointing forward. A man was walking up and down behind them, shouting.

  She couldn’t hear what he was saying. What was it? The voice was urgent, excited. She tilted her head but the voice seemed garbled, muffled. She wrinkled her nose. A smell drifted up from the scar in the earth below her. The smell of decomposition, of rotting flesh, of death.

  A loud beep from one of her father’s machines brought her back to the ward. She stood up and gazed down on Robert. He was still sleeping peacefully, the oxygen mask snug across his nose and mouth.

  They didn't often come, these 'moments', as she liked to call them. Bu
t ever since she had been a child, they had visited her at the strangest times, usually brought on by a place, a smell or a person. It was like the past had come alive and she was surrounded by it. She was still herself, of course, and still aware, but she was no longer in her own time but transported back to another long-dead one.

  Robert had always teased her about it, saying it was just the product of an overzealous imagination. But the moments had remained, still occurring even when she was in the police.

  She remembered going to the scene of one particularly grizzly killing in Moss Side. One minute she was standing at the entrance to the door, with scene-of-crime officers walking past her dressed in their white coveralls, the next she was watching and hearing the man attack his wife with a butcher's knife. The blood spurting across the wall, her cries for mercy, his snarls, the grating noise as the knife cut through the skull, snagging on some bone, and his breathless grunts as he tried to pull it out.

  It was as if she were with him in the room at the time the crime was committed. Even stranger, when the pathologist produced his report, all the details she had imagined when she had entered the house were written there in black and white, right down to the incisions in the bone of the skull.

  She shook her head again. Must concentrate, can't dwell on the past – not now, not here.

  She sat down again and reopened her laptop. She had to find out the truth for David, Martin and Chris.

  Luckily, they knew the great-grandfather’s name and now, thanks to Herbert, his army number.

  She logged on to Ancestry.com and accessed the British Army’s World War One service records, hoping that Tom Wright was one of the ‘burnt records’.

  Nearly five million men had served in the British Army in World War One, and as with anything the British undertook, the bureaucracy was meticulous. Unfortunately, in a bombing raid in 1940, over 60 per cent of those records had been destroyed. The ones that survived were called the ‘burnt records’.

  She entered his name and crossed her fingers. As she waited for the results to come up, she glanced across at Robert, who was still sleeping peacefully in his bed. She knew he was a fighter and prayed he would be able to come through this.

  She looked down at her laptop. Over 1600 records had come back. Damn, she had forgotten that Wright was a popular name. She entered the army number from the label, hoping to narrow the choices.

  Now it was down to 544 results. They can’t all have the same number, can they? Frowning, Jayne opened the first result in the list. A man born in Essex.

  The second listing came from Pontypridd in Wales. The third from Cardiff.

  Perhaps this was going to be harder than she thought. She clicked on the fourth result and up popped a Territorial Force Enlistment Form, dated 1912.

  She quickly scanned the form. The address was the same as in the census – she had found her man. Handwritten in pencil at the top of the form were his number and his regiment: the Cheshires. Of course, where else would he serve but the force from his own county?

  She clicked either side of this record and more results appeared. His documents were obviously some of those that had survived the bombing.

  After thirty minutes of going back and forth in the records, courtesy of the haphazard filing of the Army bureaucracy, she was finally able to write a series of notes on Tom Wright’s involvement in World War One, with her thoughts in brackets.

  Territorial Army: June 10 1912. Enlisted in the 6th Battalion of Cheshire Regiment for a period of four years.

  Called up: August 5 1914 (the day after the outbreak of war).

  November 10 1914: Arrived in France with the 6th Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment.

  December 17 1914: Attached to 15 Brigade, 5th Division in Flanders.

  March-December 1915: On guard duty in Rouen and Dieppe.

  November 1915: Confined to barracks for ten days for being drunk and disorderly.

  July 30 1916: Shrapnel wound during Battle of the Somme. Southampton General Hospital for twelve days (check hospital records).

  Returned to duty in Chester, October 6.

  Rejoined 6th Battalion to France, December 24, 1916.

  Gunshot wound November 1917. Hospitalised in Manchester. (Which hospital?)

  Returned to France April 1918.

  Discharged from duty March 14 1919.

  The bare bones of a soldier’s life in the First World War. Tom Wright had been in the army virtually from the first day, surviving until the end of the war, wounded at least twice.

  There were three other documents of interest. She was about to take notes on these when a ginger-haired nurse came in to check up on Robert.

  ‘How is he?’ she asked as she looked up his medical sheet at the end of the bed.

  ‘Very quiet. Hasn’t moved in the hour I’ve been here.’

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘Not moving is great?’

  ‘The sedative and the antibiotics are working. During this time, it’s best if he conserves his strength. Sleep is the great healer. Better than any doctor.’

  After checking the other patients in the ward, she bustled out of the door without saying any more.

  Jayne stared at Robert. He was so still it was frightening.

  ‘Please make him well. Please.’

  She thought about taking a break and getting some coffee but she couldn’t bear to leave Robert in case something happened. Instead, she returned to the file on Tom Wright.

  The three documents at the end were the most interesting. A medical examination on his discharge in 1919 described his gunshot wound and its effect:

  Subject complains of constant pain in his left arm following gunshot wound at Passchendaele in November 1917. Can no longer perform work. Examination of arm reveals entrance scar combined with surgical intervention. Scar 3” x 1” across surface, upper third left arm. Healed tissue and puckered. Exit wound at surface on corresponding level. Scar 5” x 1.5” (surgical), puckered and adherent. All movements of elbow, hand, wrist and hand normal. Grip good, no wasting of muscles. Recommend pension gratuity of 5%.

  Jayne clicked forward a few pages. The pension amounted to fifteen pounds, three shillings and sixpence.

  Jayne sighed ‘The man got shot and hospitalised for two months and all he gets is fifteen pounds,’ she said out loud.

  As she spoke, her father’s head moved for the first time. Jayne held her breath.

  His head rested slightly to the left, but he continued to sleep deeply.

  She breathed out.

  She mustn’t speak loudly any more, it obviously disturbed him. It was strange how even in the deepest, drug-fuelled sleep people were still aware of ambient noise.

  She returned to her laptop. The second document was the strangest. In 1921, Tom re-enlisted in the army. This document contained a full description of the man at that time.

  Apparent Age: 34 years and 4 months.

  (To be determined given the instructions given in the

  regulations for Army Medical Services)

  Height: 5 feet 8 inches

  Weight: 140lbs

  Chest: 37 (when fully expanded)

  Range: 2 inches (chest expansion not large)

  Complexion: Sallow

  Eyes: Grey

  Hair: Light

  Religion: Roman Catholic

  She could imagine him standing in front of the medical examiner. A careworn man, not terribly fit or healthy. Why had he rejoined the army?

  The final document was his discharge papers, processed 178 days later. This time the document was short and blunt.

  Discharged as medically unfit. Was unable to perform duties as a soldier due to lack of strength in his arms.

  So they refused to pay him for his injury but were quite willing to criticise him for not being able to carry his kit. The world hasn’t changed much since then, Jayne thought.

  Her eyes wavered out of focus and she pinched the top of her nose. God, she was tired.

  Tomorrow
morning, she would meet up with David even though it was Christmas Eve, and take him through all the documents. At least he would be able to know more about his great-grandfather and his life as a soldier in the First World War. She messaged him to arrange the meeting.

  For now, though, she would just take a little nap. She glanced across at the father, his face at perfect rest.

  She closed her eyes.

  Her mobile phone rattled in her bag.

  No, I’m not answering it.

  Then it began to ring, each call tone rising in volume. She snatched it out of her bag, checked her father quickly and ran out into the corridor.

  ‘Yes?’ she snapped into the speaker.

  ‘Hi there, Mrs Sinclair, it’s Herbert. I’ve got some news.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Friday, December 25, 1914 – Christmas Day

  No-man’s-land, Wulverghem, Belgium

  Tom Wright stared at the German’s outstretched arm for a few seconds, wiped his own against his woollen overcoat and shook the man’s hand. ‘Were you the sniper two nights ago?’

  ‘Should keep your head down, Tommy.’

  ‘And so should you.’

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to, especially with blokes like you around. Want a cigarette?’ The man opened the box to reveal a row of thin white tubes.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said Tom, reaching into the box and lighting the cigarette. ‘Where did you learn to speak English?’ he said, releasing a long draught of smoke into the misty air.

  ‘Manchester. I was a mechanic in Chorlton-on-Medlock. Had an English girlfriend, Rose West. You want to see her picture?’

  He reached deep into his grey overcoat, pulling out a battered leather wallet and opening it to reveal a picture of a young woman, taken in a studio on Oxford Road.

  ‘She’s a bonny lass, right enough.’

  The German stared at the picture for a moment before placing it carefully back in his wallet. ‘Haven’t heard from her since the war started.’

  They looked behind them. Men had come out of the trenches on both sides and were standing along the edge of the parapet.

  ‘We have a truce for today, Tommy, yes? What you say?’