Rest Not These Dead

By Robert J. Fanshawe

‘Rest Not These Dead’, this final part of the Cellist Soldier trilogy, lays bare terrible guilt over the injustice of war, overlaid by a new era of love.



The end of World War One brings no peace for Ben and his Jamaican lover Pearl in post-war London. A horrific racial attack sends her, grief-stricken, back to Jamaica. Ben is desperate to win Pearl back and, nursing a deeper guilt over his failure to prevent the unjustified execution of his cello-playing soldier friend, takes up the horrific job of body exhumation. But will a dramatic collaboration with a journalist in Arras, France, bring Ben and Pearl back together and reconcile the injustice done to his friend?

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Conrad Press
• Release date: Oct 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781839785399

Robert J. Fanshawe

Robert J. Fanshawe is an historical fiction writer living and working in the UK. This is his second novel, and follows A Cellist's Friend.

Book preview

1

The end

War whimpered away. No lions roared in victory. No celebrations happened at the front. No parties were held.

Well that’s it then mate, back to Old Blighty, was the attitude. Men sat down and without thinking, laid weapons aside and almost at once forgot them. Suddenly without the constant tumult of war in their ears, noses and mouths; they sat immobile and flat. Some said afterwards it was the flattest day of their lives.

Uniforms were lice and grime encrusted. Greatcoats, some leather jerkins, some trench waders or merely the mud-caked puttees, days, even weeks worn, above boots whose cheap leather was made into wet cardboard by weather; were overlaid by fraying straps and webbing belts and lanyards and pouches of each man’s particular duty or equipment; gunners, bomb throwers with their rucksacks of grenades, riflemen. Greasy haversacks with each man’s gas mask, neck-looped with a tangled canvas strap, still sat on chests.

Faces wore deep trenches of weariness, days of facial hair and some vast moustaches. Helmets like grey upside-down soup bowls were welded to heads. Eyes were sink-holes from which a reflection of some stagnant light paled out, without focus. Inside men there was a terrible ache and a sour taste of yesterday’s rum.

Even the getting back to Old Blighty seemed a task of mighty effort. They knew there would be bullshit aplenty before getting there. Something about – ‘there’ – made them afraid. A threat of death hung over home. The ‘Spanish flu,’ as it had come to be called, was claiming lives in soldiers’ home countries, even counties, where they lived. It was the cruellest twist to the end of a war. Soldiers expressed an attitude of bravado towards it. In private they feared it. Some had seen lives taken on the battlefield, which was very cruel for those who might otherwise have survived the horror around them and then be killed by an invisible virus.

Pals formed themselves into tiny bubbles of hope as they survived, even perhaps with only one cautious friend each. Two pals against so many others lost. The thought that the bubble may be burst by a different horror on returning ‘home’ was for some perhaps too much to bear.

Battalion diaries for the eleventh of November noted the event in words such as; ‘cessation of hostilities was finally concluded at 11.00 am.’ Then next day there was some sort of note about a general clean up, as if the war could be swept away in a general tidy and everything set back to… normal.

Private Ralph Bradshaw wrote to Corporal Ben Routledge, in neat handwriting which never changed despite what he had faced in battle, telling of his survival. Many of the platoon Ben had trained survived, because they had been shown how to stay alive. They had been taught well.

What good was that teaching now?

There was frantic letter-writing to home, or lovers. to announce the good news that men had reached the end alive. This would bring rejoicing. But immediately following the news of the armistice there was an agonising wait at home, to hear who had finally made it to the end or whether they had been taken in the final week, day or even hour. Letters took their normal toll of time in their journey; increased with the post-armistice overload. But often homes were already beyond rejoicing and many people looked at their neighbour thinking; why should their son be coming home and ours not, after hearing the joyful news? The multiplication of losses – sons who were also fathers, brothers, comrades and friends – broke hearts. Like falling plates on a fair ground rifle range; once the aim is right for one, others can fall more easily. They did, often from the same family or circle of friends.

Hope gradually drops with the plates and those left turn to ghosts, searching the missed.

Just as the bells were pealing out across England and celebrations of drunkenness taking place, many blinds of front rooms were being drawn down, without the thought that they might be raised again with hope.

2

The blackout is lifted

Ben Routledge, on an extended weekend pass from his Worcester Barracks, walked with Pearl, his Jamaican lover, on the night of the armistice. They considered him going in uniform with his Corporal’s stripes and his oak leaf ‘mentioned in despatches’ decoration. They considered going into a pub, many of which drew them noisily.

They did neither.

They did walk arm in arm, needing each other’s support. Ben had a trim corporal’s type of moustache, which was dark. He always slicked it with something, which made it shine darker than the hair on his head. He was smart in uniform, but in his present, slightly frayed suit – not so. His pale cheeks were a little hollow. His dark eyes were generally directed downwards, but sometimes flashed a look of pain.

‘What, missed your banana boat ‘ome?’ was the first jibe that caught them from a group who were in uniform, on noticing Pearl’s colour.

‘Nobody ‘ad no bananas the whole war. Forgot what a banana is,’ said his companion.

‘Well go anyway. It’s our country now.’

Ben had a sudden idea then. He didn’t mention it to Pearl.

She had come, not on a banana boat but a passenger ship; safely across the ocean, without being threatened by U-boats, or flu; paid package, steamer class from Jamaica. They had met in a moment of almost impossible fulfilment after falling in love through exchanged letters. But moments with a promise of fulfilment of expectations, have an afterlife where the thread can be stretched to almost breaking point.

Ben surreptitiously patted her belly with the hand that held hers, under her flowing scarf. He liked to do that since discovering that something he had a hand in, resided there. It was his way of showing a romantic attitude.

Pearl’s London writer and artist friend, Pamela Colman Smith, had encouraged the romance when they had met, straight from Pearl’s incoming boat. She had swept them up and given them a start. Pearl had been widowed by the war, then fallen for the man whose life her husband had saved. It was a deliciously romantic ideal. For Ben it was also a cause of guilt. A woman widowed at twenty-three years old from the man with whom he had joked about having a black lover. Who what’s more, had saved Ben’s life. After that he had… stolen her.

Pamela had given them a room and fed them.

The story of Pearl, her husband Damien and Ben who had become her new love; was not an unusual one, except for the mixture of races. Men often chased other soldiers’ widows because they knew they would be vulnerable. Often battalions were found from men who lived in the same streets and neighbourhoods, so it wasn’t difficult. It was also a cause of derision against men who did that. ‘Can’t get your own, just step in and take yur pal’s missus, when ‘es gone eh?’

Ben had a deeper story which caused him more direct guilt. A soldier who was a cello-player had joined the section and after a mundane incident had been charged, court martialled and shot for throwing away his rifle and ‘deserting’. The man who they nick-named ‘Cello,’ had asked Ben to be his ‘friend’ at the court martial. Ben had failed to tell the true story behind the charge.

That story was not done yet, not nearly done.

Pamela had used her artistic skills to create a pastel drawing of Cello playing his instrument, which Ben and Pearl presented to Cello’s parents as a partial reconciliation. Though Ben suspected it may only have increased their pain, as they had not been informed by the War Office about the incident or had his cello returned to them.

Ben and Pearl had broken free of Pamela’s loving hold. Pearl would never accept dependence. She wanted them to have their own life. Yes, she wanted children. But she hadn’t written to her family back home in Jamaica about her ‘interesting’ condition. Nobody used the word ‘baby,’ let alone the concept of a baby born to mixed-race parents. Babies of black people excited some sympathy, even admiration. They were tiny and had a hard life, usually without any shoes.

But poverty took away the shoes of white children in England as well and food and clothes. They ran the streets in tatters; their parents struggling to put even bread and milk on the table. That would get harder.

As black people became more evident in London, there was some simmering resentment against them. They had bought the virus some said, or they had taken away the jobs of returning soldiers. However, the sheer flood of soldiers eventually returning made employers turn from them. Some soldiers had shaking hands and even an inability to concentrate, which sent them looking for a new generation and some black men benefitted from this.

Ben and Pearl had stayed in London. For him it was only at the weekend. He was still a soldier, based at the barracks where he had trained men to go to the front after picking up a stomach wound himself. He had not yet been demobbed. They thought that soon he would be released. He was set to carry an ostomy bag for the rest of his life. The Army would be anxious to move him into civvy street quickly. Men, who they had wanted so desperately to fight, would rapidly become a burden.

They went to Trafalgar Square where revellers might be more cosmopolitan.

It wasn’t so. People were in the fountains dancing, getting soaking wet and drinking straight from bottles to get drunk more quickly and not feel the November weather. Lights were everywhere.

‘Hey, the blackout’s been lifted now,’ someone shouted at them, seeing her black face. Someone else tried to spray water from the fountain.

‘Ha ha ha, no Germans ‘ere.’

Ben wanted to react to that.

Pearl held him close. ‘Benjamin, don’t…’

‘Let’s go home,’ he said bitterly.

‘Just a little walk by the river. The lights are lovely.’

‘It’s the people I hate,’ Ben responded.

‘You got to get used to them my dear,’ said Pearl in her slightly rolling Jamaican accent.

He loved hearing it. He loved seeing her body lying next to his, with its dark unblemished mystery. A white body, like his, has blemishes; pink spotty bits, hairy parts, dark red patches and the like.

Of course, for him he also carried his bag of excreta, around his waist, from the injury he had received. A twisted intestine had not been properly treated at the front and had become gangrenous, needing it to be removed once he got to England. The bag made him all the more ugly.

Apart from her light-coloured palms and the soles of her feet, pearl was the same pure colour all over, her hair was a little darker but in certain light, it was also the same colour as her body; a deep lustrous brown. She hated her hair and told him that all black women did. ‘I love its messiness,’ he had said.

‘Oh, thank you, it’s messy then.’

‘Not to me.’

‘You just said it was.’

‘Well not like that, not a real mess.’

‘Benjamin stop. I don’t like it, but I have to put up with it.’

She had wanted creams for it that could not be purchased in London. So she worked at it with some substances that Pamela Colman Smith had given her from when she had been in Jamaica.

They walked along the river and were silent. He wanted to give her a celebratory kiss, but that would never happen in public. He wanted to be happy, but the future loomed in his mind and particularly one aspect which plagued him since they had managed to find a small lodgings with no questions asked, after moving away from Pamela Smith’s small but luxurious apartment… Rent!

3

Planning a memorial

Cities outside London celebrated in a similar manner. Gangs roamed the streets from pub to pub, shouting at the lights, enjoying the freedom to see at night and not hide – just the freedom. Men were released from barracks, their training interrupted, forgotten. Money in pockets and uniforms sometimes hanging open, revealing vests and braces; beer-stained before the night was over.

Girls succumbed merely to an outstretched arm and a leery grin. There was something which needed to be drowned in alcohol. A shaking head madness had been stopped. That deserved a scream of celebration and a cutting of previous norms of behaviour.

Further out into the suburbs of towns; the mood was different. Losses and grief punctured joy and relief, embittering it.

In a suburb of Reading, out of the city centre and away from celebrations; the substantial houses built for people with a good standing in the community, did not shield occupants from the blast of war. But members of the community still stood firm. Women who had supported with great fortitude their men and worked in unfamiliar jobs, which now they might lose, were often the first to emerge from closed doors.

One such woman was determined to start the act of remembrance without delay. She walked purposefully down Coley Avenue in the early evening and stopped outside a house she had known before the war. But the black door had remained firmly closed for many months, as far as she could ascertain.

The Harrises had suffered the previous loss of a son, a son too young for military service. But they had an older boy who was musical. His cello playing had earned him an apprenticeship with a London orchestra. But the war had overtaken concert music. Nothing had been important except the war.

Then something… something very normal had happened. Normal for the war – a death in the family. It had been heard about in the community, but not in detail.

So before the knock on the door happened, there was nervousness in the hand and heart.

The door of the house named Hartwell opened slowly to a grey figure. ‘Mrs Harris?’ enquired the visitor.

‘Mrs Wainwright, to what… ?’

‘Well… its wonderful isn’t it… the Armistice! Such a relief.’

‘Yes… wonderful.’ But Mrs Harris did not return the smile or show in any way that the event was a cause for happiness.

‘I… was really sorry to hear about your son…’ Began Mrs Wainwright

‘What… what did you hear?’ asked Mrs Harris with a sudden spark of suspicion in her eyes.

‘Just that he had been… become a casualty. And of course my Joseph was also…’ It had started to rain a heavy November drizzle and a chill breeze stirred a swirl of long dead leaves around the porch where they stood. ‘Could we perhaps…’ She looked past Mrs Harris into a dark and silent house.

Mrs Harris moved slightly and they entered like cautious soldiers. The front room into which they stepped – was cold. A low lamp was brought to life and they sat facing each other in shadow. Mrs Harris sat in the chair where she had received the news from Corporal Ben Routledge that her son Marcus, nick-named by the men ‘Cello,’ had been shot by a firing squad. Since then her heart had not been still for a moment. It moved and slumped into different wells of grief, bitterness and shame. Not one mouthful of food had been enjoyed since that day. Not one waking moment had bought a smile or a good thought.

But she needed company. She needed another human soul, apart from her equally embittered husband who never ceased roving and searching for a focus for his grief and shame and never paid the slightest attention to trying to ease hers.

So she waited, her heart not daring to hold a tiny seed of hope, but needing some kindred being. She showed nothing externally. Before the war this meeting would have been a cause for at least a cup of tea. The Armistice should have been an excuse for something different to be taken from a cupboard and a cork perhaps popped, from a long-anticipated bottle of sherry. But Mrs Harris, the unwitting host, was immobile.

‘Yes he died,’ she said finally.

‘How I wonder… ? Joseph died in an assault, as they moved forward. He had been one of those at the front, his commanding officer said… He wrote me a nice letter.’ She hadn’t brought the letter but reached and smoothed down her coat which she still had on, as well as her wide-brimmed hat; above a long skirt, as if checking the place it would have been, had it still been on her person. ‘I think we must have a memorial to all these boys… brave boys, a local one. I came to ask for your support on this. I think there will be memorials all over England.’

Felicity Harris, who had been a proud and talented woman when young and whose heart was now broken and excessively painful in its pieces, still felt a flash of jealousy and a desire to support her son in the belief that a mistake had been made and that he was innocent of any wrong-doing and still the brave and talented boy who she had known.

She paused and looked at her former friend. ‘They shot him Muriel.’ Her eyes pleaded for a fair hearing. ‘They shot him for throwing away his rifle and desertion… But he didn’t desert.’ Her eyes stayed steady, on the face of the other woman.

Muriel, a perceptive woman and one used to things being in order and all correct, just stared with eyes so wide the whites made islands of the pupils. They didn’t enable her to see better though. They didn’t see the anguish or the pleading. ‘Who… who shot him? Do you mean he was shot by a… ?’

‘British… firing squad…’ Mrs Harris added by way of explanation.

Mrs Wainwright’s eyes had moved from the face of pain. She was blinking to try to bring an understanding of the situation. The words ‘deserter’ and ‘coward’ formed in her mind but not in her mouth. The thought followed – that such men were not to be thought of in the same way that real soldiers would be. They therefore could not be part of any memorial. In fact, they should not really be remembered at all, but swept away as part of some very unseemly aspects to the war; unseemly but necessary to complete what was now the victory that had been achieved.

The visitor needed to consult her husband, but she knew what the answer would be. She stood up in a formal manner, with the air of someone who would never think of removing her hat or coat in this house, perhaps ever again, which accentuated her sudden exterior coldness. ‘I… I’m sorry,’ she managed to say.

She left the room and the house, closing the door with a solid hard-wood thump.

4

Looking for new lodgings

Knowing that they needed to find new, cheaper lodgings, Ben and Pearl set out with some adverts from newspapers. Suddenly there seemed an increased demand and that meant higher rent.

Pearl’s pregnancy did not show yet but landlords and particularly landladies, had a knowing look about them, a suspicious look.

One landlord though did seem to look with a little sympathy and showed them up to a room. It was made small by a large metal bed, without bed clothes, though a heavy brown bedspread covered the mattress, with a folded blanket on top. ‘Shilling and sixpence a week,’ said the landlord, standing at the door. ‘Can’t be too careful,’ he said looking sideways at Pearl. ‘What with the flu epidemic and that.’

That was one of the headaches. Of more immediate concern was a lack of jobs. Ben’s uniform was stuffed to the bottom of a suitcase and a single-breasted suit with a non-matching waistcoat donned, which had a few holes and on which the smell of the ineffective moth balls, persisted. In London nothing stayed pristine. Soot, sweat and the grind of activity saw to that. Faceless men, coated with grey, looked for a life after the war, even before the troops had returned and been demobilised, stood down,