III.

Instead of returning to the farm where she was working, Alice drove directly home, to the house on Blackheath. No one ever understood why she happened to arrive home only an hour before the telegram about Noel arrived, but her father and uncle were so grateful to have her there that they never asked, and the Land Army matron felt so sorry for her that Alice never got into trouble for returning to her base two days late, with her eyes red and swollen. Alice herself, feeling like she’d lost part of herself when her twin died, never knew how she got back to base without running the car through a hedge or over a pedestrian.

As the war wore on and the sad news came in from Ypres, from the Somme, from Gallipoli, Alice and the other Land Girls leaned over each other to read each story in the newspaper and with trembling fingers traced through the sad lists of the dead and injured. Alice worked herself to exhaustion each day so that she could fall into a dreamless sleep each night; as she worked on the land each day she repeated over to herself the words of the Psammead: "They’ll come home to you, hale and sound".

As the tide of the war turned and victory began to seem possible after all, Alice clung more feverishly to the words of the Psammead. After all, soldiers die when winning battles as well as when losing them.

Finally, just when it seemed as if the war had always gone on and always would, it ended, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. People all over the world were frantic with joy and it was decided to keep the day on which the war ended as a sacred holiday forever, in memory of those who had served and died in the trenches and on the seas.

Once the delirious celebrations had ended, people settled grimly back to put back together a world that had been torn apart. One of the many unpleasant facets of wars is that once they are over, everything does not go back to normal immediately. Everybody is n the wrong place, and everything has been changed. There are thousands of soldiers to be sent home, and it is not always easy for them to take up the reins of their regular work. Fields normally used for farming have been torn up for battlefields.

Worst of all, people have to put their lives back together around the gaping holes left by those who will never return home, and those who do return sometimes have to learn to do their work without hand or a leg or an eye, or when they can't sleep for the horrible memories of things they have seen.

Through the hard days of the rebuilding, Alice muttered "hale and sound" over and over to herself. In some ways those days were easier than the war, knowing that shells were no longer falling. In some ways they were harder, when the empty waiting seemed endless.

Finally the day came when they were all at home together once again in the big red house on Blackheath, all hale and whole as the Psammead had promised, but not unchanged. Alice felt released, as if she had been hunched over for years, protecting something precious from harm, and it was finally safe to stand up straight again and take a deep breath.

They talked about their plans to return to work and studies, but it was so pleasant to be together again – all but one – that they were in no hurry to begin.

Dora said once, "Sometimes – in the evenings – I feel quite young again, as if the war had never happened. I keep expecting Noel to come around the corner any moment with a new poem to read to us."

"Yes," said Dicky, soberly, "But then there’s always the horrid realizing moment when you remember."

Alice and Dora hid their faces. In those days, they were always feeling the tears come at unexpected moments. Their father and the Indian uncle found it necessary to clear their throats behind a handkerchief all too frequently, and even Oswald, Dicky and H.O. would stop, sometimes in the very middle of a sentence, and look down, with their mouths held very stiff.

Oswald was the last one of all to come home, because he had been a Captain and he had to see his men home first. After he had been at home for three days, and had begun to sort out his things and to feel finally that he was really home, he caught Alice gently by the arm when they met in a hallway.

"Come for a walk," he said. "I want to talk with you."

When they had walked by the fields a little way from the house, he began talking, in a low voice. "You know Dick knew Noel’s Captain at Oxford – he was his tutor. And he wrote to Dick about Noel – said there was no braver soldier in his regiment. They were in a bad place – well, there were enough of those. But they were ordered to make an attack and it – it didn’t come off well. The Captain wrote to Dick that Noel pulled three other men to safety before the Jerries got him."

Alice looked up. "I know," she said, as softly. "In his letters to me he complained about the damp and the mud and the food, but he never wrote a single word about the danger. None of you did."

"It's not a bit like I used to think it was – war, I mean. It was dirty and ugly. We saw heroes every day over there, but they weren’t in fine red uniforms leading glorious charges – just mud and brown and cold and uncomfortableness. When you wrote home, you didn't want to talk of it – you only wanted to think of the green and clean of England, and hope that you were doing something to keep it that way."

Oswald went on, "We had a bit of a break and I saw him, Noel, I mean, a few weeks before he – went over the top. We all knew we might not come back, but I think he was somehow sure of it. The poet in him, I expect. He gave me this to give to you – in case I saw you before he did, he said, but I knew he meant in case he never saw you again."

They leaned over the battered paper together and read,

In Flanders Field the poppies grow

And bend down when the wind doth blow

To sing sweet lullabies of woe

To soldiers resting down below.

Alice looked up at Oswald, her mouth smiling and her eyes full of tears. "He was a good brother, but he never was a very good poet, was he?"

"No," he answered. “But I hope he never knew it."