Easterleigh Hall at War by Margaret Graham Read Free Book Online Page B

safe, be lucky.’ The dogs rushed at him, barking. He stroked them. They tore back to Evie.
    He took a moment, and when he could be sure his voice would be steady he called, ‘Thank you, Evie. I will bring your Simon safely home, and Jack, if I possibly can.’
    She waved. ‘And you, you come back too, bonny lad.’ Then Mrs Moore shouted, ‘You’ll catch your death, lass. Come in here this minute.’ Evie waved again and disappeared.
    He and Veronica laughed, and then he left. Yes, he must bring Simon back, because Evie’s happiness was everything to him, and at last she’d given him the marras’ farewell.
    As Ted drove down the drive Auberon wondered if his father would ever accept that he employed a Forbes as his cook. Probably not, so Evie must continue to be known on the books as Evie Anston. How absurd it all was.

Chapter 3
Northern France, early March 1915
    THE NORTH TYNE Fusiliers were in deep reserve, well to the west of Rouen, after a winter that was supposed to have been quiet as far as the war was concerned. Some bloody hope. Jack and Simon took a last puff on their roll-up stubs before tossing them away, each pulling the strands of tobacco from their lips. The strands clung, as though reluctant to follow their brethren on to the damp ground where the stubs hissed, then died. The men leaned back against the door to the barn, out of the wind, shoving their numb hands into their pockets, watching the reinforcements right wheel, left wheel and everything in between. They’d been recruited after Kitchener’s
Your Country Needs You.
    â€˜Well the bugger isn’t far wrong there,’ Jack muttered to himself, eyeing the tumbling dark clouds barrelling over the old oaks, and the village a kilometre distant, hearing the distant sound of shells. The road running between here and there and onwards was busy with lorries that churned through the mud, men marching in single file, carts carrying shells, and ambulances.
    â€˜What’s that you say?’ Simon tipped back his cap, and shook his head at the training troops.
    At least the rain had stopped, for now. Winter had been a bugger, not just because of the noise, the crash and groan of shells, the snipers, the forays, but it was the day-in day-out sheer bloody misery of the the snow-drenched trenches, worse if you slid off the duckboards, so you pretty soon learned not to. Even when they were in the second line it had been little better, huddled in disintegrating billets with shells plummeting down just to keep them alert. Here, in deep reserve, none of them had rid themselves yet of the sense of chill, though they’d been here for almost a month. At least the Auld Maud pit had been bloody hot.
    Jack jerked his head towards the men who were kicking up mud and spray on the field Captain Bridges had commandeered along with the billets. Bloody luxurious they were too, as they all had roofs and walls without holes. ‘I was just thinking we need this lot of buggers, bonny lad, good, bad and indifferent though they are. But they’ll not be up to proper fighting scratch for a while, and likely be dead before they have a bloody chance to be. Look at the roads, crawling they are, like a bloody ant run. There’s something brewing.’
    Captain Brampton appeared around the corner and called, ‘You’ve your sunshine face on again this morning then, Sergeant?’
    â€˜Just telling it as it is, sir.’ Jack shuffled upright, saluting. Auberon had just been made up from Lieutenant and for a moment he and Si had wondered if it would go to his head. It hadn’t. ‘Stand easy for God’s sake, Jack,’ Auberon told him. ‘Well, let’s do our best to look after this lot when we move up to the front, if we move up, especially the Lea End crowd. You’ve done well, Jack, put them through hell and back again, which I feel you enjoyed to the full?’
    They all laughed. Auberon