The Orange Lilies Read online

  ‘I swear to God, Farrier—if you don’t get me out of here right now!’ Stoneham yelled through the pain searing into his leg.

  Charles looked from Stoneham’s pitiable attempts to scramble out of the crater down to Len’s cold face and at last, something made sense. Kissing Leonard on the forehead, he carefully laid him down in the mud and then took a deep breath. ‘Forgive me, Len,’ he mumbled, as he removed the identity tag from around Leonard’s neck. Delving into his breast pocket, Charles retrieved Leonard’s pay book and swapped it with his own. Charles placed his own identity tag on Leonard’s chest then turned towards the two men, so desperately helpless in the crater. With his help, one of them could survive.

  Trudging on his hands and knees, with mud reaching up to his elbows, Charles reached the side of the crater.

  ‘At long bloody last, Farrier,’ Stoneham shouted. ‘It’s my leg. It’s pretty bad—I can’t walk. You’ll have to drag me back.’

  Charles ignored his pleas and continued around the crater towards the German soldier, who sat slumped in the water, having accepted his fate. ‘Here,’ he said, wiping a hand on his greatcoat and pulling out the photograph of Gustav with his daughter.

  ‘Danke,’ he replied quietly.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Stoneham yelled.

  Charles offered his hand to the German.

  ‘Was machst du?’ the soldier asked.

  ‘Let me help you, Gustav,’ Charles said, nodding towards his hand. ‘Take my hand—I’ll get you out.’

  ‘Ich kann nicht…’ he replied, shaking his head.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Stoneham repeated. ‘Leave him, get me out!’

  Charles drew closer to Gustav and foisted his hands under his armpits and began to drag.

  A rush of realisation prompted a wave of adrenalin to pump through Stoneham’s veins. He dived across the crater and began to claw at the German soldier, pulling him back into the water.

  Gustav cried out in pain, as limbs and torso were wrenched and tugged in opposing directions.

  Charles kept pulling, using all of his remaining strength to defy the enveloping mire and Stoneham’s desperate pulls, but it was no use. The German’s dead weight, combined with Stoneham’s heaving was too much for Charles, who had little strength left in his arms. Reluctantly, he let Gustav go, allowing him to slide backwards, the water rising up to his chin.

  With frantic fear rising in his eyes, Stoneham knew that the only way to save himself was to kill the German. He knew it would take little effort and pulled him under the surface.

  All Charles could see of Gustav was a flapping and flailing of his arms above the water, as his body began to yield to the inevitable.

  ‘Let him go,’ Charles ordered, lifting his Lee-Enfield rifle, preparing to shoot.

  ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Stoneham countered, continuing his hold on the German. ‘You’ll be shot for this, Farrier.’

  Charles carefully took aimed with his rifle and shot, the bullet whizzing past Stoneham’s face, embedding itself in the bank of the crater.

  It was enough.

  Stoneham released his grip on Gustav.

  Charles tossed down his rifle and hauled the German out of the water. He coughed and gasped; he was alive.

  Stoneham sank back and watched numbly as Charles began to lug Gustav from the crater. Moments later he was free, and Charles could see the extent of Gustav’s injuries: his left leg was almost separated at the knee; only a strip of cloth acting as a tourniquet tied across his thigh had stopped him from bleeding to death, though he was close to it.

  Charles took a fleeting glance at Len, then began to drag the soldier across No Man’s Land, inch by painful inch. Behind him, he could hear Stoneham clawing at the mud, desperately trying to reach Charles’s abandoned rifle.

  As Charles stepped over what appeared to be a human hand, he tried not to think of the consequences of his actions, or the likelihood of his even surviving his reckless plan. He knew, though, that if he could just survive the next few minutes, he could survive the war and be reunited with Nellie and baby Alfred, just like Gustav would be reunited with his daughter.

  A single crack of rifle fire resounded across No Man’s Land.

  Charles flung himself down onto Gustav, unsure of the direction the bullet was headed. It landed nearby and Charles realised then that Stoneham must have achieved the crawl over to his rifle.

  Another crack and Charles flinched and cried out as a bullet impacted into his thigh.

  If he wanted to live, he needed to move, despite the acute burning in his leg and a severe lack of energy.

  A sudden flash and bang, louder and brighter than Charles had ever experienced before, ripped open the ground behind him. Charles collapsed back down onto Gustav as they both turned to see the spectacle behind them. A massive shell had landed exactly on the crater where they had been just a few minutes ago.

  Stoneham’s threats ceased.

  Charles propped himself up and began to drag Gustav onward. Breathless and sweating, Charles came within a few feet of the German trenches, the sinuous lines of chalk mounds glistening in the moonlight. From the animated babble emanating in front of him, he knew that he had been spotted and was being carefully observed. His movements now were slow and deliberate; his energy was almost gone.

  With nothing left inside him, Charles raised both hands in the air and slumped down beside Gustav.

  ‘Danke mein Freund, wir werden um Sie kümmern,’ Gustav whispered. He offered Charles his hand. ‘Schmidt, Gustav.’

  ‘Farrier, Charlie,’ he mimicked, shaking the man’s hand, before falling back into the mud and staring up at the moonlit sky. Behind him, he could hear the advance of a group of German soldiers.

  In his head, Sussex by the Sea began to play. At first he hummed, then he sang aloud. ‘Far o'er the seas we wander, wide thro’ the world we roam; Far from the kind hearts yonder, far from our dear old home; But ne'er shall we forget, my boys, and true we'll ever be, to the girls so kind that we left behind, in Sussex by the Sea.

  Chapter Eighteen

  25th September 1974, Westbere, Kent, England

  Nellie paced the length of the lounge floor, back and forth, trying to subdue her nerves. Beads of sweat rose on her forehead, partly due to her anxieties and partly due to the roaring fire, so incongruous to the warm day outside. She strode towards the front window, stopped and flung it wide open. She breathed deeply and tried to steady her mind. Maybe I’m too old for one last adventure like this, Nellie fretted. She looked out at the three-wheeled bicycle propped up against the cottage wall. She was sure that it was exactly the same bicycle that Mrs Blake had used since her arrival in the village in the early 1950s. Since then, in her own formidable way, Mrs Blake had delivered most children from the surrounding villages. But now her services as the district midwife were quickly diminishing, as expectant mothers were being encouraged to choose the specialist maternity unit at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital. When Nellie had raised the question of delivery to Alfred, he had unequivocally insisted that Margaret deliver at home. Nellie could only surmise that the decision was entirely driven by a desire to minimise public scandal, with little consideration for Margaret’s wellbeing.

  Nellie looked at the grandfather clock. Mrs Blake had been upstairs with Margaret now for over two hours. The last communication—an order for hot water and an igniting of the fire ready to burn the placenta—had been more than half an hour ago. It must almost be over, she reasoned. Time to phone Alfred.

  She slowly walked into the hallway and reluctantly picked up the receiver and dialled her son’s number.

  ‘Hello?’ he snapped.

  ‘Alfie, it’s me,’ Nellie breathed quietly. ‘It’s happening. Mrs Blake is with her now.’

  ‘Is it born?’ Alfred demanded.

  ‘Not yet—any moment I should think.’

  ‘I’m in the middle of important business; I told you to telephone me when it was over—no
t during.’

  ‘Why are you being so harsh towards her?’ Nellie responded, beginning to lose patience with her son’s reprehensible attitude. She heard an exasperated sigh at the other end.

  ‘Look, what would you have me do? Place a birth announcement in the Folkestone Herald for all the world to see? Celebrate my daughter’s disgusting promiscuity?’

  ‘That’s enough, Alfred,’ Nellie chided. Yet again, she wondered how the genes from Alfred’s placid father and her had resulted in such an intolerant, irascible man, although she knew deep down that his change in attitude had occurred in the dark days following his wife’s death in childbirth. She guessed that Margaret’s being in labour brought back memories he would rather forget. Nellie took a deep breath. I need to show him patience, she thought.

  ‘You wouldn’t be so easy-going if you knew what she’d been up to…’ Alfred muttered heatedly.

  Nellie turned her head so that she was facing away from the stairs and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘If you’re referring to the fact that she consented to this chap from America, then I know full well what she’s been up to.’ Nellie exhaled, instantly regretting having divulged her knowledge to him.

  A pause from the other end was followed by Alfred’s angry voice. ‘And in America he can bloody well stay. I’ve written and told him so, too. Sending letters to my daughter. I’ve intercepted, read and destroyed every single one. Disgusting, at her age.’

  A short familiar squeak from upstairs told Nellie that Margaret’s bedroom door had just been opened. Without another word, she placed the receiver back down and looked expectantly upstairs.

  Mrs Blake, her blue uniformed sleeves rolled to her elbows, began to cautiously descend the stairs, cradling to her chest what looked like a small bundle of fresh white blankets. With an unusual smile, Mrs Blake handed the bundle to Nellie. ‘A boy.’

  Warm tears of joy filled Nellie’s eyes, as she cradled her great grandson. What will become of you, my boy? she wondered. Hopefully you will never learn of the many Farrier family secrets that you’ve been born into.

  Epilogue

  29th December 2014, Rye, East Sussex, England

  It was early in the morning and still dark outside. The closing of the front door jolted Morton awake, as Juliette left for work. As had happened the previous two days, he had been unable to stay asleep, wondering if an email had yet arrived back from Andrew Sageman. Morton was becoming so desperate to hear from him that last night he had composed an email, politely checking if he had sent anything, which might have gone missing. Juliette had told him to stop being so impatient and he had saved it into his drafts folder.

  Morton picked up his phone from the bedside table and checked his emails. ‘Yes!’ he yelled, leaping from his bed. He could easily have opened the attachments on his phone but he wanted to be able to appreciate them fully and clearly, so he dashed up to his study and switched on his laptop.

  Moments later, the email from Andrew Sageman was open in front of him. Dear Morton, I have located the relevant bits and pieces from the millions of box files and folders scattered around my house and have scanned them in high resolution—hopefully it won’t unduly clog up your inbox! Please let me know if there are any problems. It would be good to meet up sometime, if you would like. Perhaps it’s time our two families became a bit closer? I look forward to hearing from you. Regards, Andrew.

  Morton looked at the screen, considering the email. He would dearly love to meet up with Andrew and bring the two sides of the family together again, especially given that they were more closely related than anyone had previously realised. He had decided that he needed to break the news about Charles’s having taken Leonard Sageman’s identity face to face. It was too much of a bombshell, which required too much evidence for an email. He would contact him again and arrange a get-together. For now, though, he had the email attachments to delve into. The first, Charles Farrier’s will, Morton skimmed through quickly, being as it was an exact copy of the one he had already downloaded. The next attachment was a photograph of Charles’s war medals. The three medals, appearing to be bronze, silver and gold dangling from their attached ribbons, were the standard three affectionately known to veterans as Pip, Squeak and Wilfred. That Charles was issued the 1914 Star rather than the 1914-15 Star was a nod towards his having been in service as a part of the pre-war British army.

  After clicking on the next attachment, Morton was taken aback. It was a small and simple rust-coloured book with black type. Army Book 64. Soldier’s pay book for use on active service. The photograph of the book had been taken on a white background and the book tilted to show the sides of the yellowing pages within. Despite the long passage of time which had since elapsed, the book was unequivocally stained with dried blood. To whom did the blood belong? Morton wondered. Was it Charlie’s, Leonard’s or someone else’s? He hoped that the final document, the letter from Charles’s friend, Edward Partington, might shed some light.

  With a slight trepidation, although he couldn’t quite fathom why, Morton read the handwritten letter to Nellie, with what the British military had taken to be the official account of Charles Ernest Farrier’s last moments. January 1915. Dear Mrs Farrier, I hope you do not find it misplaced that I write you a line about your husband and my friend, Charlie. He was such a good man, soldier and companion that I felt I should write to explain, as fully as I can, the circumstances surrounding his untimely death. On the 26th December, Charlie, Len and another chap, Stoneham, were sent out to check the wire perimeter. I was with him when he went over the top, one of the last to see him alive. They had been out only a few minutes when sniper shots were heard—two or possibly more. It is the sergeant’s thinking that Charlie and Stoneham were mortally wounded. I’m dreadfully sorry to say that a mortar was fired from the enemy trenches, landing close by to where the men fell, before we had a chance to recover the bodies. Len Sageman is still missing. We are hopeful that he is alive, somehow having survived the attack. I hope that the knowledge that Charlie was well-liked and respected among the Battalion and that he died honouring his country will bring some ease to your suffering. Your friend, Edward Partington.

  Morton sat back, having read the account of Charles’s—or Leonard’s, as it had turned out to be—final moments. He wondered at the timing of the letter—January 1915—and whether she had already made the discovery that her husband was in fact still alive, or whether this letter from Edward Partington had added to her grief, with its likely ineffective attempts at easing her pain.

  Morton looked up to the wall above his desk, where he had placed a picture of his great grandfather in his First World War uniform. From the research that he had conducted into Charles Farrier, Morton believed that his motives for taking on his best friend’s identity had been motivated by money—an attempt to lift his family finally out of the poverty that had blighted it for generations in London. In doing that much, he had succeeded. And, unlike so many millions of men, he had returned home at the end of the war to his wife and son.

  Below the picture of Charles Farrier, was a hand-drawn Farrier family tree. Although he had wanted the neatness of a computer-generated GEDCOM file, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how to input all the peculiarities of his odd family. His eyes fell upon his great grandfather, Charles Ernest Farrier, and his great grandmother, Nellie Ellingham, and he momentarily considered all that he had learned about them in the last few days before moving down the tree to his grandfather, Alfred Farrier, and his grandmother, Anna. During his recent visit to Cornwall, his Aunty Margaret had told him that her mother, Anna, had been the daughter of a long-standing family friend, Gustav Schmidt, whom Charles—posing as Len—had got to know during the war. From Alfred and Anna, a vertical line descended and split to his adoptive father and Aunty Margaret. Finally, his eyes rested on his own name at the bottom of the tree.

  ‘My weird and wonderful family,’ he said with a smile, pencilling in the words Juliette Meade beside his.

&n
bsp; Historical Information

  The movements and locations of the Second Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment have been recorded as faithfully and accurately as possible. The unit diaries used are exactly as written, with the exception of the final lines from 26th December 1914; to my knowledge no soldiers were sent out to check the wire that night, and none were killed.

  All characters in the book are entirely fictional, although approximate numbers of soldiers (on both sides) killed, injured and wounded are mirrored in the book. The Second Battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment had lost 257 men by Christmas 1914 and more than 1,700 by the time of the Armistice in 1918.

  For a detailed account of The Royal Sussex Regiment’s movements on the Western Front 1914-1918, see We Won’t Be Druv by Hugh Miller.

  Biography

  Nathan Dylan Goodwin was born and raised in Hastings, East Sussex. Schooled in the town, he then completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in Radio, Film and Television, followed by a Master of Arts Degree in Creative Writing at Canterbury Christ Church University. He has completed a number of successful local history books about Hastings; other interests include skiing, reading, writing, photography, genealogy and travelling.

  Books by Nathan Dylan Goodwin:

  Non-fiction:

  Hastings at War 1939-1945 (2005)

  Hastings Wartime Memories and Photographs (2008)

  Hastings & St Leonards Through Time (2010)

  Around Battle Through Time (2012)

  Fiction (The Forensic Genealogist series):

  Hiding the Past (2013)

  The Lost Ancestor (2014)

  The Orange Lilies (2014) – A Morton Farrier novella

  Further information:

  www.nathandylangoodwin.com