«letters to the somme»

bad beginning.

It has been announced. Every man aged eighteen to forty will be drafted into the army. They  call it conscription. She calls it cruelty.

Past all the picturesque buildings of the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace lie the real, tucked-away parts of London. Over the Thames, you come over to what is called Southwark. A mixture of poor and rich, embassies and groceries. One of the streets there is called Waterloo Road. It is lined with houses that aren’t dilapidated, rather well-kept, but there is still a corner of paint peeling here, a scratched door there. Not the poorest, but not middle-class anyway.  

One of the houses is the 17th. It is one of the tidy ones, but one look at it and you can tell-the people who live here are not well-off. And if you look in the upstairs window, you might spot a beautiful girl who is on the brink of becoming a woman.

Her name is Rose. A few months shy of eighteen, she is exceptionally beautiful, envied. Her hair is a soft, platinum blonde, and her eyes are a bright sea-green. Although her skin is smooth and pale, her hands are chapped with work and washing. She is not the poorest, but her mother and father are factory workers, and they are working class.

But now her eyes are rimmed with red, her blonde hair tucked viciously behind her ears and tangled, full of knots. She has just heard it from her mother. Tears drip down her face, skirting around the slightly opened pink lips that are shaking, hard and angrily. Suddenly, she runs down the stairs, not stopping for a coat, although it is chilly weather and all she wears is a worn, faded blue dress. She strides down the street, which is eerily not full of laughing, playing children, but silent, purposeful, grave adults rushing round, telling each other the news. And abruptly, she stops in front of Waters’ Grocery, and before she knocks on the door, it opens, and out comes a boy. He looks about eighteen, tall with light brown hair and serious brown eyes.

“James. Have you…” Rose speaks for the first time, gripping his arm. They are lovers, these two. James, a glum expression on his face, lifts a letter up. A conscription letter.

“Oh…oh God.” She falls into his arms, crying. He strokes her hair, muttering comfort, although they both know what’s going to happen. And all around London, all around the country, people are playing out the exact same scene.

This is not going to end well.