“I see they didn’t find him,” said a voice. “You obviously have him well hidden.” Harriet gasped. “Who is this?” “Did you really think you could hide a deserter? How naïve you are, Miss Baker.” For Harriet Baker, looking after her ailing father is a distressing burden, but after his death she is faced with more problems.

 It is 1918, and when her brother, Alex, goes missing while on compassionate leave, she fears he will be shot for desertion. For anyone studying the First World War, this is not only a gripping read but also a slightly shocking introduction to the casual sexism that permeates everyday life. Talking of her father, of whom she is very fond, Harriet says: ‘He neither understood nor held with the emancipation of women… she knew that he respected women greatly, it was just that he believed they had an important place in the world but not an equal one.’ This seems very strange to us today, particularly as the war had enabled women to take over many of the roles previously assigned to men, such as driving a taxi. Even Harriet’s brother finds short hair and trousers difficult to take: ‘“Thank you Gwen,” said Alex, rather tersely, Harriet thought. He continued to look at her. “You may be doing a man’s job moderately well but surely there’s no need to look like one too.”’

As Alex’s shellshock becomes more apparent, with his erratic behaviour and nightmares, Harriet finds herself in an unenviable position. Her brother goes missing for three days, when he is meant to return to France, and is therefore absent without leave. This doesn’t go unnoticed, and a neighbour who was wounded in action and has become addicted to morphine blackmails Harriet, first to obtain more drugs by his silence, and then for sexual favours. This is not graphically described, is never consummated, and ends dramatically.

There are a few harrowing descriptions of events during the war, and the execution of a fifteen-year-old boy is pivotal to Alex’s distress. This book would be a good background read for anyone dealing with the war from either an historical perspective, or through the poetry of Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.

2009-11-20