«letters to the somme»

prelude.

Rose is alone in the kitchen. Her sleeves are rolled up, and she washes clothes in a large copper basin. Her hands are chapped, her hair pinned up untidily. Pieces fall apart, signifying her life at that moment. She wipes her forehead with the back of her right hand, and stares out of the window. The road is unoccupied. Of course, it is full of people, but empty of hope.

Her house is silent, save for the quiet splashes of water in the basin, the occasional sniffs and sighs Rose makes. An old, rusty mangle sits to the side, and she carefully squeezes the water off the clothes, winding it sullenly.
It is Sunday, ‘the day of rest’.
Of course, her thoughts never get any rest. No one in England has thoughts get any rest in this terrible war. Even on the continent, Rose muses darkly, there are women in faraway Russia in their furs, washing clothes in near-frozen streams, crying for their loved ones.

The day’s newspaper lies crumpled on the kitchen floor. The dense, tiny words spell out stories of despair and statistics of death. Rose does not know or want to know how many have died today, how many have died tomorrow, or by the end of the war. In her head, every time she closes her eyes, she imagines heaps of soldiers piled up on some war-torn battlefield, their khaki uniform hardly unrecognisable under blood and mud.
Their eyes open with fear and horror.
Their hearts wishing for their loved ones.
Their pockets full of letters and tokens from these loved ones, and their hands halfway across their bodies, craving for a last thought of home.

Rose shakes herself out of her stupor when the doorbell rings. She wipes her hands on a cloth, and calls for her little sister to open the door first, as she picks up a stack of clothing. It is probably the postman, or perhaps Mrs Gill, the widowed woman next door, whose only remaining son of four is away at war. She comes over a lot on Sundays, as she cannot bear sitting by herself in her home where she surrounded by memories of her dead sons.
“Vicky, open the door!” She shouts, and finally Vicky’s footsteps are heard clattering down the stairs.
“Comin’!”
Rose busies herself with the stack and makes her way around the basin of water and the mangle.
“Who is it, Vicks? I’m busy!”
“Not too busy for me, I hope.”
The voice that Rose hears through the wall, slightly muffled, is not Vicky, or Mrs Gill, rather.
Is it him? Maybe it’s the postman, maybe it’s a new postman who sounds like him.
But he did say his leave was soon. Slowly, she places the stack of towels on a chair and steps into the hall, not daring to hope, peeping round the corner.

And there’s James, standing in the doorway. The sun is shining behind him, and Vicky stands there gawping, hand still on the doorknob. His brown hair is unbrushed and tangled, his eyes lined with darkness, and his skin is tanned, but pale with fatigue simultaneously. He is dressed in his uniform, which is obviously dirty and crumpled, as if he has slept in them for weeks, but his form seems taller, stronger, yet weaker. He holds his matching hat in his hands, looking so unbearably shy and boyish, and Rose starts crying as she rushes into his arms because he is not a mere boy any longer.