Before

1914

British Lines and No Man’s Land

 

They’d said it would be over by Christmas but they were wrong.

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Dawn broke over the Western Front on Christmas Eve and its pale light turned the wintry world into a magical landscape sugared with hoar frost and frozen iron-hard, just as in all the ancient carols. Although the sun climbed bravely into a bright blue sky and sparkled on the pockmarked landscape below, the men hunkered down in their trenches had no time to admire the scene or to remark upon its festive appearance. For them, Christmas was from another time where there were no shells and bombs and screams. It belonged to a lost world that had taken on the semblance of a dream.

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The day dragged itself onwards until the sun began his slow slither back into the mud, and the soldiers burrowed in the mire braced themselves for the next round of shelling to buck the earth and rip the biting air. Blowing on numb fingers and drawing on cigarettes from their Christmas issue gift tins, their hearts were as heavy as the clay clagging their sodden boots, and they ached for home. Some wrote letters to their wives or sweethearts. A few scratched lines of poetry into notebooks. Others snatched fragments of sleep and dreamed of goose and plum pie instead of bully beef and whatever mean scraps they’d managed to beg and barter from local farms and villagers. Their breath rose like plumes of incense at Midnight Mass and mingled with their desperate prayers that this war would soon be over and each man safely home to hold his loved ones close.

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As the night chased the day away and scattered stars across a deep indigo sky, the soldiers realised to their surprise that the enemy guns had ceased grumbling and the world was abruptly still. The men held their breath, unnerved and confused. Was the enemy planning a surprise ambush? Were they even now, on this most holy of nights, priming their weapons and mustering the ranks for an assault? What was happening across the battle-scarred wastes of No Man’s Land and behind enemy lines? What new horrors were creeping closer with the lengthening shadows?

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Braced for an attack, the soldiers abandoned the letters they were writing and tucked cherished photographs inside their jackets. Weapons primed and nerves as tight as violin strings, they sat waiting for the onslaught that must surely come – but when eleven o’clock arrived without incident, they were puzzled. Some men wanted to venture over the parapet to see what the enemy were up to, but others were convinced this odd stillness was a cunning trick to lure them to their end – Christmas or not.

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“Or maybe they don’t want to fight tonight? Christmas is holy to all men,” one soldier suggested. He was carving as he spoke, and shavings drifted into the mud earth like woody snow. “Maybe they don’t want to fight when we should all be in church?”

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“Fritz keeps Christmas too, don’t he?” agreed one, and the others nodded slowly.

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“Silent night,” said the woodcarver quietly. He drew a small carved angel from the breast pocket of his jacket and traced her wooden face with his forefinger. “Holy night. Remember?”

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And it was then, as though the woodcarver’s words had magicked them into existence, that the opening notes of a Christmas carol floated over the iced landscape. The haunting tune was played on a cornet and was soon accompanied by voices. Although the words were sung in a foreign tongue this was a carol so dear and so familiar that it tightened knots in every throat and made eyes prickle with homesick tears.

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“Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,” carolled the voices from across No Man’s Land. “Alles schläft; einsam wacht.”

In the Allied trenches the men listened, unable to believe what they were hearing.

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“It’s Fritz! He’s bloody singing!”

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“He’s singing Christmas carols!”

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One by one the men followed their wary officers out of the trenches and ventured over the parapet. The woodcarver was the last of them, and his index finger caressed his carved angel’s wooden face as tenderly as though touching the cheek of his sweetheart. When he joined his comrades his eyes widened, for although the midnight sky blazed with stars and a bright moon poured light over the shell-bruised earth, brighter still were the candles set on makeshift Christmas trees erected along the tops of the opposite ramparts, and the happiness ringing in the accented voices calling out festive greetings.

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“A very Merry Christmas to you, English soldiers! Merry Christmas, Tommy!”

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The British officers, afraid of treachery and tricks, ordered their men to be silent. Yet as the singing and festive greetings continued to ring out across No Man’s Land the soldiers found it impossible to resist joining in. Before long, answering greetings rang up and down the line, and if nervous hands still rested on rifles laughter and carols from both sides filled the cold air.

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Not a single shot was fired that night and when the clouds drifted over and light snow began to fall, each flake seemed a blessing drifting down from Heaven as a balm for torn earth and tired hearts. It was Christmas! The holiest and the most wondrous time of the year, when the world paused to worship the Christ Child and even men at war with one another could find peace. Eventually the carols and calls of celebration faded away and the men returned to their quarters, but their hearts were lighter and that night their sleep was peaceful. The woodcarver’s hand rested on the smooth face of his angel and for once his dreams were not of blood and bone and death but of the sweetness of his true love’s face and the wonder of her smile.

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When the sun rose the next day the world, with a light dusting of snow, sparkled like a Christmas card. Birds, silenced for so long by artillery, filled the air with swelling song and filled hearts with joy. Soldiers on both sides lay down their weapons and marvelled at this rare bright glimmer of hope during a war already overlong and ugly. From the bleakness of the conflict’s tight grasp of misery dawned a new Christmas story to offer, for a few hours at least, light in a world that had seemed relentlessly dark and joyless.

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Calling to one another, the soldiers clambered out of their bunks and, clutching gifts of cigarettes and food, stepped from their trenches and dugouts into No Man’s Land and legend.

 

 

Chapter 1

 

The Present

London

Ellen Shaw

 

When had Christmas stopped being a time of year she loved, Ellen wondered. Was it possible to pinpoint the moment when the magic of glittering window displays and fairy light festooned trees had faded? When had December, once characterised by an agonising wait to open the advent calendar’s final window, ceased to be the slowest month of the year? And why did the opening bars of ‘Last Christmas’ now make her feel panic rather than a flutter of festive excitement?

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There must be something wrong with her. Everyone loved Christmas.

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Was this lack of festive cheer because she had split up with Steve? Being single was always harder at Christmas, when every advertisement seemed to feature cute couples unwrapping gifts in their tartan pyjamas or strolling hand in hand through some Dickensian high street. The party invites were all for Ellen Shaw plus one, which highlighted his absence neatly, and it was harder to escape the mistletoe-sprig-waving office sleaze when there wasn’t a ring on your finger. But Ellen didn’t think it was being single that had stolen her Christmas spirit. Although she missed Steve it had been a mutual parting of the ways and the right thing to do. Their relationship hadn’t been a grand passion but rather a high school friendship that had stretched a little too far into adult life. Was it wrong to want more? To hold out for a love that lit up the world and made even the greyest day sparkle?

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Her grandmother hadn’t thought so. Clara North had been a huge romantic, loving Grandpa Harry for over half a century, and it was the glimpses she’d caught of their love that made Ellen believe there must be more. Though old, the way the two smiled at one another suggested a whole secret language, and they’d always held hands. When Grandpa Harry became so ill, Clara’s patience and tenderness had been pure love distilled, and when he died Ellen knew Clara missed him dreadfully. But how many people found that kind of love? It belonged to films and novels, not the 21st century. What if true love was consigned to the past alongside steam trains and tea dances – if it had ever existed at all?

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“The right one for you is out there,” Clara had promised whenever Ellen expressed doubts. “You’ll know him when you find him, love, because it feels like coming home. Never settle for less than that.”

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Ellen, trusting Clara’s wisdom, had taken this on board, but sometimes it was hard to keep the faith that true love existed. It was harder than ever since her grandmother had died. Ellen missed Clara terribly and as she worked her way through emptying out her grandmother’s under-stairs cupboard, a cobweb-strewn and musty cave crammed with the treasures of a lifetime that had any meaning for their owner alone, she blinked away tears. No matter how much Ellen reminded herself that Clara had enjoyed a full and happy life, living well into her late nineties and passing away peacefully at home, surrounded by the family who loved her so dearly, her heart refused to be soothed. Her friends were sympathetic and kind, but there was a general assumption that because Clara had been so old there was little reason to be sad, because old people died, didn’t they? It was the way of things. The natural order. Grandparents went first because they’d had their turn. A good innings. Life went on.

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Ellen abandoned her sorting and sat back on her heels to dab her eyes with her sleeve. The familiar ache of loss still gnawed at her heart although she knew logically that her friends had made valid points. She feared she had even uttered them herself in the past as a well-intentioned way of offering comfort, but it was hard to accept them now that they were applied to Clara. Her grandmother might have been old but she had been the linchpin of the family, and Ellen would miss her wise words and calm presence more than she could ever say.

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It was also hard to be sanguine about Clara’s passing when the bulk of preparing the family home for sale had fallen to Ellen and her mother, Maggie. For months they had sifted through the flotsam and jetsam of over nine decades, spending hours agonising over what to keep and what to sell or give away. Clara hadn’t been a huge fan of decluttering or downsizing. She’d watched Marie Kondo with a perplexed expression and, turning to Ellen who’d been visiting at the time, wondered what one did if everything ‘sparked joy’? If everything was a treasure and had a story all of its own, how did you ever choose what to reject and what to keep?

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Judging by the rooms crammed with books and trinkets, the wardrobes full of clothes dating back to the nineteen-fifties and even that small understairs cupboard packed tightly with everything from dustbags for vacuum cleaners not owned for decades to long-widowed gumboots and shoes, Clara’s solution had been to keep everything. It had all meant something to her, Ellen concluded, and every item had been precious. From the battered doll’s pram with one wheel missing to the paint-splattered trench coat Grandpa Harry had always donned when decorating, everything here was a treasure. Consigning most of this hoard to the skip felt like a betrayal.

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“Pick a few things to remember her by,” Maggie had suggested. Maybe you could choose a piece of jewellery, like Daniel did?”

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Ellen’s big brother had asked for Clara’s engagement ring, a request which prompted lots of excited speculation that he was gearing up to propose to his girlfriend, Siân. Ellen quietly picked a brooch which she recalled Clara had loved, but as much as she would cherish this piece she knew it was not in this particular item that her grandmother’s memory lived on within her. Neither was it in photographs or trinkets, but rather it would be at Christmas that she would always think of her grandmother. Granny Clara was Christmas! She had adored the season and always made it special, so being without her this year was going to be very hard. It was because of this rather than her breakup with Steve that Ellen was struggling to find her festive mojo. She felt as though there was little to celebrate this year.

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Clara North had been born Clara Schneider, and she had grown up enjoying her parents’ German festive traditions. Later on, when she had her own daughter, Maggie, she wove these customs into her family’s Christmas celebrations and these had been celebrated ever since. For Ellen and her brother as children and beyond, Christmas Eve was the most magical and exciting time of the whole season, for in Germany this was when gifts were exchanged – which meant no long wait until Christmas morning! The extended family gathered at Clara and Harry’s house, where the air was heavy with the scents of stollen and gingerbread and, with their fingers and faces sticky from sugared almonds, the children would decorate the tree, something keenly anticipated since it was never put up until they had all gathered together. The candles were always lit after carols were sung, and then the presents were exchanged and the cakes enjoyed. Ellen would tumble into a camp bed clutching her new toys to her chest, and with a full tummy. She would drift away to the sweet notes of ‘Silent Night’ and the low laughter and chat of the grownups downstairs. The years passed and Ellen and Dan grew up, but the family still kept Christmas Granny Clara’s way, except for fairy lights on the tree instead of candles. Ellen supposed that without Clara’s steady presence, and the alchemy of her wonderful baking, things were bound to change. It was the way of things.

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But it was very, very unsettling.

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Life had to move on, Ellen reminded herself as she turned her attention back to dragging out the boxes wedged at the back of the cupboard. Granny Clara would have been the first to remind her of that. Danny would propose to Siân and in time they would make their own family and establish their own Christmas traditions. There would be new arrivals and new traditions. This was how things were meant to be, even if it felt hard to bear.

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“You need to have some fun,” Maggie had concluded earlier on when they were driving across Harrow to drop several bags off at the charity shop. “You’ve had a tough year, love. You’ve had a breakup and a new job, and helped me nurse Granny. She wouldn’t want you to hide away and be sad.”

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“I’m not hiding away,” Ellen protested, although this was exactly what she was doing and she was definitely sad. After a hard year helping her mother nurse Granny Clara, twelve months in which she’d in effect put her social life on hold in order to spend nights at Clara’s house to ensure she was able to stay at home right until the very end, Ellen wasn’t in the mood to socialise or look for love. Her heart was far too heavy.

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“You’re young and you should be having fun, Elly. When did you last go on a date?” Maggie pressed. “You need to get out there again. Steve did!”

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Ellen rolled her eyes. Maggie was quoting Anna, a friend of Ellen’s, who had an annoying habit of finding single men who would be just perfect for her and urging her to get ‘out there’ and over her ex.

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“Steve wasn’t nursing his grandmother,” she pointed put. “Steve wasn’t clearing her house either. Or trying to run a freelance editing business. Anyway, I’m glad he’s happy.”

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The point was that Ellen had had no desire to start dating while Clara was so sick and the family were busy working out a rota for who could care for her. And now, heavy-hearted and with a social calendar visited only by tumbleweed, she still hadn’t any energy left for dating. Unless she met somebody whose smile felt like a homecoming and just the mere glimpse of whom was enough to make her heart soar, what was the point? She certainly had no desire to be trawling the wine bars and clubs with Anna. If this was what was meant by being ‘out there’, Ellen was very happy to be sorting through cupboards and up to her neck in dust and junk.

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“I’m fine, Mum. Stop worrying.”

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But Maggie wasn’t prepared to give up. “I’m your mum. It’s my job to worry. Granny was worried too. She was always hoping you would meet somebody nice. That was what she wanted for you more than anything, love. She was so very happy with my dad – they were soulmates, and she would’ve loved nothing more than to know you’d met yours.”

​

Clara Schneider and Harry North’s romance was the stuff of family legend. During her final weeks, Clara had retold their story frequently and with a faraway expression in her eyes. Ellen loved to listen to these tales, and as her grandmother talked she knew that Clara became the girl she’d been all those years ago when Grandpa Harry, the dashing Army medic, brought her to England as his bride. It was the 1950s and, she’d explained, they’d encountered all kinds of prejudice because she was German, but nothing mattered apart from their love for one another. Although Harry had died a decade ago, Ellen knew her grandmother had missed him every moment of every day that had followed. Clara’s last word was her husband’s name, and she had smiled as she’d whispered it, looking far beyond the room to a place Ellen couldn’t see. She hoped Harry had come to meet her, young and handsome once more as he held out his hand to his beautiful young bride. True love like that was rare. Maybe it didn’t even exist any more? Ellen had certainly never found anything to compare to it, and she was starting to think she never would.

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“Not everyone can have what she and Grandpa had.”

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“Why not?” asked her mother sternly. “It wouldn’t hurt not to give up entirely, my girl. Granny always said there’s was somebody special waiting for you. She was quite funny about it towards the end, wasn’t she? Borderline obsessed, I’d even say.”

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Ellen smiled; Clara had said this over and over again. She had also been convinced that crossing over would grant her special powers to ‘sort her family out’. Nobody dared argue with her; Clara was such a force of nature that it had seemed quite possible, and Ellen often felt as though her grandmother wasn’t far away at all, but just in her kitchen baking something delicious as always while listening to the afternoon play on the radio.

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“I know there’s somebody special for you, Ellen love,” Clara would always insist, in the tone of voice none of the family had to dared argue with. “He’ll be your angel, mark my words. I’ll send you a sign. Make sure you look out for it.”

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Ellen always laughed but Clara was serious. “You wait! Once I’m up there with Grandpa Harry, I’ll be on the case. I’ll send your perfect match over. You see if I don’t. Keep your eyes peeled for the sign!”

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But no sign had arrived, and the heaven-sent Prince Charming had failed to materialise. Ellen was starting to lose faith in fairy tales. Her sweet grandparents had been lucky to exist in a more innocent age, before the advent of Tinder and Naked Attraction. The romance they’d enjoyed was well and truly absent nowadays. There was no magic in the swiping which had replaced the tea dances and the stolen moonlit kisses. Ellen thought the world was a sadder place for it too.

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“And I’m happy as I am,” she said staunchly. “Can you please stop going on about it?”

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Maggie Shaw knew when to drop the subject. The determined tone of her daughter’s voice was pure Clara, as were her auburn curls and amber eyes. The serious nature was her grandfather’s, she thought.

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Schoolteacher Heinrich had been an earnest and thoughtful man, and, like the great-granddaughter he had never met, he had felt things deeply.

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“How about we take an hour out to do our Christmas shopping once we’ve dropped this lot off?” Maggie suggested, hoping to lighten the mood. “There’s a festive market in the mall. We could even have some mulled wine and a mince pie if you like?”

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But Ellen couldn’t face the full-on festive onslaught of Christmas. One note of ‘Silent Night’ and she’d crumble.

 

“I’d rather get the clearing finished. Then we can enjoy Christmas properly,” she said.

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And so here Ellen was now, regretting this choice a little as she crawled into the narrowest space in the house, her hands getting covered in grime and cobwebs lacing her hair. Fat spiders scuttled away, disgruntled by such a rude disturbance, and Ellen sympathised. They were probably happy here in the dusty peace. Nobody liked being forced to go out and about!

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Spiders and flickering silverfish aside, the understairs cupboard was almost empty now. Ellen dragged out a heavy toolbox followed by the skeletal remains of an old Silver Cross pram. Tucking loose strands of her coppery hair back beneath her headband, she crawled back into the cupboard, into the pinch point where the stair treads met the hallway, to drag the final box out. Once this was free all she had to do was sweep up the dust and another task would be complete. Soon Granny Clara’s house would be empty, the For Sale board would go up in the garden, and it would be as though none of these items, and the people who’d once treasured them, had ever lived here. Although all the familiar sounds would be heard by a new family, the smell of the Sunday roasts summoning her and Danny in from playing in the garden would be only memories, and even the old apple tree in the garden might make way for a deck. Everything was changing.

One box left. One cardboard box which dammed the flood tide of the future. Ellen wiggled the box in an attempt to dislodge it, but it refused to budge and feeling frustrated, she tugged at the edges. The decades-old cardboard, fragile and a little damp, disintegrated beneath her fingertips and its contents spilled out in a colourful waterfall.

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“Oh!”

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Whatever Ellen had been expecting to find – old electric plugs, perhaps, or more coils of the wire Grandpa Harry had insisted putting away just in case – it wasn’t tinsel, baubles and old-fashioned glass fairy lights. The last box had contained a long-forgotten selection of Christmas decorations, tatty and tired and certainly not up to modern electrical standards.

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Ellen delved into the unexpected treasure trove, and loops of gummed paperchain, creased and fragile with age, whispered against her skin. The contents must have been decades old, for there were no elegant hand-carved pieces or Murano glass here. In fact there were no decorations of the kind Granny Clara had collected over the years to adorn her beautiful tree. Neither was there a glittering star to crown it, but rather a jaunty homemade affair fashioned from coat hanger wire covered with balding silver tinsel. More tinsel in garish shades of peacock blue, gold and pillarbox red spewed like innards from the remains of the box, and plastic baubles rolled across the floor, decades out of fashion and brittle with age. Ellen suspected her grandfather had shoved the box under the stairs long ago, where it had remained ever since, forgotten and unloved. It seemed a shame that the things that must have once created that tingle of Christmas magic were now tatty and only fit for the dustbin. Had her mother made the star as a child? And ought she to keep it?

There’s no point in being sentimental, Ellen told herself firmly as she reached for a black bin liner. Granny Clara couldn’t have seen these decorations for years, so they certainly weren’t heirlooms. She scooped up handfuls of tinsel and paperchains and stuffed them into the bag. The baubles followed and then several strands of fairy lights, clipped together with dark brown twists of wire ending with old style two-pronged plugs. Soon all that remained was a bundle of cloth tied up with a ribbon, green with age and mould-spotted. Intrigued, Ellen unwrapped it and discovered a carved angel nestled inside.

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This was different, for unlike the rest of the box’s contents, this decoration was beautiful and somehow timeless. The angel’s wooden face, with her sweetly curved lips and prayerfully closed eyes, was serene, and as Ellen traced the smooth curve of the angel’s cheek with her forefinger she marvelled at the delicate way the waterfall of wooden hair framing the heart-shaped face almost seemed to move. Whoever made this had been wonderfully talented.

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“Why are you hidden there?” she asked.

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But the angel, of course, said nothing and simply smiled to herself. She was going to keep her secrets.

Keen to examine her find more closely, Ellen crawled backwards into the hall where late afternoon sun buttered the parquet floor. The warm light turned the angel’s face to honey, and the small ornament seemed to glow with a life all of her own. She was only about seven inches tall, but somebody had taken the time to carve her with loving detail and fashion her a robe from what looked like hessian. At some point somebody had made a crude attempt to paint the hair and face, but their handiwork was flaking now and echoes of the original features were re-appearing in patches like the landscape when mist lifts. Ellen turned the angel around and around in her hands, drawn to this simple decoration although she couldn’t articulate why. Something about it made her heart feel lighter than it had for a long time.

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It felt peaceful and familiar.

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“Good Lord! I haven’t seen that for years! It’s the lost angel!” Maggie, halfway down the stairs, had paused in mid-descent. Her face was a study in surprise.

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“You’ve seen it before?”

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“Oh yes! She used to be on the top of the tree at my grandparents’ house. How strange to see her after all this time! It feels like it was only yesterday that Grandpa Heinrich lifted me up to pop her on the top. Where on earth did you find her? She’s been missing for years.”

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“In a box of old decorations under the stairs.”

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“My parents must have put that there after they cleared my grandparents’ place. Goodness, how Mum moaned about the junk they kept! Isn’t it funny how things come around? I’ll do my best not to do that to you and Dan.”

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“I’ll hold you to that,” laughed Ellen.

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Maggie took the angel in her hands, stroking the wooden face wonderingly.

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“I seem to remember Mum was hunting high and low for this at one point. We thought it must have been thrown out in the move, and Mum was so upset. She said the angel had meant a great deal to her father. She felt terrible about losing it.”

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“So it’s old.” Ellen wasn’t surprised, since the lost angel was worn smooth with age and possessed a simple purity that ornate modern pieces, with their sparkle and glitter, lacked. How many Christmases had this angel seen? What would she be able to tell them if she could speak?

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“If she belonged to Grandpa Heinrich she must be at least a hundred years old,” said Maggie. “Don’t get your hopes up that she’s worth anything, though. She’s homemade and very tatty now, poor old thing.”

Ellen felt affronted on the angel’s behalf. “I think she’s beautiful.”

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Her mother smiled wistfully. “You’re right. She is, and I loved her as a child. Funny how we forget. It always felt like Christmas once the angel was up on the tree. Do you know I even tried to give her a makeover once with some enamel paint! Grandad Heinrich went mad.”

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“You did this paint job?”

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“I’m afraid so. I was in big trouble for that. Grandpa said he’d had her since the war and she hadn’t survived the trenches to be ruined by me. He didn’t get cross very often, but he was really angry that day.”

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Ellen scraped the angel’s wooded tresses with her fingernail. Flakes of paint drifted to the parquet.

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“I think the paint will come off fairly easily. I could have a go at cleaning her up if you don’t want her.”

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Something about the angel resonated with Ellen. Maybe it was the purity of her face or the obvious care in every stroke of the blade that had carved her sweet smile. Or even knowing that this simple decoration had witnessed over one hundred Christmases come and go, and been placed on top of the tree by Granny Clara all those years ago when she was a little girl living in Hamburg.

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“You can have her, love, but I don’t think she’s anything special. Her value’s purely sentimental,” her mother said.

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But Ellen disagreed. To her the lost angel was something very special indeed, and she was already looking forward to cleaning her up. Who knew what lay beneath the thick paint and years of dirt?

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“Your grandfather loved her, though,” she pointed out. “She was special to him.”

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“True,’ agreed Maggie. “I wish I could remember why. Sabine – do you remember her? She’s my second cousin, because her grandmother was Grandpa Heinrich’s sister – might know more. I’ll drop her a line when I get a minute.”

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Ellen slipped the angel into her bag. It made no sense, but she couldn’t have been more certain that the angel was meant to go home with her than if Grandma Clara was standing at her side, nodding her approval and talking about signs.

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Ellen had been meant to find the angel.