The War Nurses Read online

  13

  The summer of 1915 dragged on. After the bitter winter, now the intolerable heat. The upstairs part of the cellar house was a great success, although like many great successes it brought with it an increased workload. We now had four army cots, two up, two down, and the men enjoyed being up top where they could feel the sun on their wounds and watch the clouds pass in the sky. Our lives took on a new rhythm. We were quiet for a few days, and then we were overwhelmed. Before an advance it was mostly calm… and then there were the storms.

  We were invited up to Furnes for a party to celebrate Dr Munro’s birthday in July. He wouldn’t tell us his age although Elsie and I guessed it was somewhere between fifty-six and sixty-three.

  Lady D had cobbled together a fruit cake. We made jokes about how if we fired it over the enemy lines, we could take down the Bosch, which she took in her usual good spirits.

  Arthur and Helen had given our last set of playing cards to a young soldier.

  ‘What could I do?’ Arthur asked, raising his palms upwards. ‘His friend had exploded in front of him. I wanted to keep his mind off it.’

  Arthur had started making his own pack but said he got stuck on the picture cards. He shyly showed us his efforts. Elsie laughed, saying, ‘What is this pornography?’ about his queen. Arthur, who was in an unusually fine mood, grinned.

  ‘I’ll be looking for a new career after the war…’

  ‘Well, there you are!’

  Lady D entered the room with more tea.

  ‘What think you of this?’ Arthur showed her a wizened fella he had drawn, with a clumsy crown and sceptre.

  Lady D examined it. ‘It’s a good likeness of Dr Munro.’ She looked up at us helplessly. ‘No?’

  We fell about laughing.

  I asked Helen how the limerick for Dr Munro was going. She wrinkled up her nose. ‘I’m concentrating on my novel, so I haven’t had a moment to spare.’ I was going to ask more questions about the novel, mainly: was I still in it? but right then Lady D clapped her hands and proposed a game of ‘Truth or Consequence’. It was a childish game we had played after lights-out at school, so I was surprised and a little alarmed when everyone agreed.

  ‘Right-ho, so we need a question.’

  ‘Nothing too…’ Dr Munro advised.

  ‘Too what?’

  Dr Munro sighed. ‘Too controversial, Lady D.’

  ‘Scaredy-cat!’ she said, but with affection, I think.

  My heart started beating faster.

  ‘All right, what was the best day of your life?’ Lady D said.

  Helen went first. She blinked at Arthur through her owl-glasses. ‘The day I married you, stupid.’ She looked at him, waiting for something. We all waited. I felt so awkward for her. Elsie was staring at the whiskey in her glass.

  Arthur eventually responded. ‘Let’s set the scene. New York City Hall. This lady in a long pink dress—’

  ‘I went through a salmon-pink phase,’ said Helen, apologetically.

  ‘Me in my only suit. Then to the party. The best in town. Your mother, my father… dancing in the ballroom at the Hotel Astor.’

  ‘Kissing in the rooftop garden—’

  ‘Arguing about your parents in the gallery—’

  ‘Yes but—’

  ‘And making up in the themed buffet room.’

  Helen looked delighted, and I felt relieved. Arthur did love her after all. He just didn’t show it.

  Lady D began. ‘Shall I? I have many great memories.’

  ‘Let me guess, yours involves afternoon tea?’ Dr Munro said, laughing.

  ‘How dare you!’ she retorted. ‘’So… last summer, I went on a march for the suffrage movement—’

  ‘We should have guessed,’ interrupted Arthur. Lady D carried on.

  ‘The police arrested us, and I spent three nights in jail.’

  We stared at her.

  ‘But it was wonderful!’ she said. ‘I was so proud. And then after we got out, we met Mrs Pankhurst, who served us the most wonderful strawberries and cream. Oh, dear, I always mention food, don’t I?!’

  ‘I knew it.’ Dr Munro chuckled. ‘That’s a shilling you owe me, Arthur.’

  The best moment of my life? Was it when Harold lifted himself up and called out that he loved me forever? I flushed. My God, how easily swayed was I? He was delirious and besides, he hardly knew me! I couldn’t imagine what everyone would say about this non-event. I garbled something about Uilleam teaching me to drive.

  ‘I cranked up, held on to the wheel and off we stuttered. We went at high speed, around the town… I was only seven!’ I added, delighted at their shocked faces. ‘He did the foot pedals, I couldn’t reach.’

  ‘Well, that explains why you’re such a good driver, you’ve been driving for longer than all of us!’ cried out Lady D. I blushed. I didn’t realise that anyone had noticed my competence on the road. But Arthur was still eyeing me closely. ‘Really? I would have thought yours would have been a love story, Mairi.’

  ‘Elsie?’

  Elsie was playing with her glass, not paying attention to us. She wiped her mouth and looked up, startled.

  ‘What was one of your best days?’ I had secretly pictured her wedding day many times. Elsie would have been magnificent in a white gown to the floor, some ancient country church, some handsome groom. A vicar with a twinkle in his eyes. Timid flower girls with posy baskets. What a shame I hadn’t known her back then!

  ‘A best day? Huh! How about the day I beat you at the Dorset?!’ Elsie laughed. The liquid in her glass swirled.

  ‘What?’ I was flabbergasted. ‘You don’t remember that!’

  ‘Don’t I?’ Elsie laughed coquettishly.

  ‘You said you didn’t.’

  ‘Did I? But no, it was a very special day.’

  Everyone was looking mystified.

  ‘How about another good time you’ve had?’ Arthur cut in rather insistently. Maybe he too was aching to hear about Elsie’s wedding day. Or surely she’d tell us about the day Kenneth was born? But Elsie shrugged.

  ‘I haven’t had so many best days… someone else have a go.’

  If anyone else had said this I would have found it sad, but the smile on her face was so broad, so Elsie, that I still couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not.

  The next question was ‘What has been your worst experience?’

  Lady D immediately clarified, ‘Absolutely nothing to do with this stinking war is allowed.’

  Arthur began. ‘Ah, easy. I arrived in New York in 1908. It was a hot summer. You know summers in New York!’

  ‘We don’t!’ interjected Lady D.

  ‘Well, humid, muggy, sultry, whatever you like. And I had got this job – so excited, you can’t imagine. Then I got there, this office in one of the new skyscrapers, only to find there was no job. They denied ever having heard of me.’

  ‘What had happened?’ I asked.

  Arthur shrugged. ‘Maybe some junior thought it would be funny. Maybe they saw me and changed their minds. Who knows? I left there like a… like the small-town boy I was.’

  I gave him a sympathetic look. It was unusual for Arthur to be candid, especially concerning himself.

  ‘A few weeks later, I got a job at the New York Times.’

  ‘Brilliant!’

  ‘Post-boy!’ he explained. ‘I had thought I was going to be this big-shot writer, but my role was passing on messages.’

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘Three years,’ he said, ‘then I met Helen, married her, and my luck turned around.’

  ‘Dad works for the NYT,’ Helen explained. ‘He’s their lawyer.’

  Arthur stared into his drink.

  ‘I see,’ I said, my mouth slightly open. I stared at them both. I see.

  Lady D’s tale of woe was about having her horse put down after he fell in a race. ‘I was only a young thing,’ she said. ‘They had to fight to keep me away from him. First love can be very powerful.’

 
; We were all silent for a moment.

  I was dreading Helen’s story. I imagined that she was going to say she was bullied at school. They would have made mincemeat of her at mine! But she said ‘Pass’, and instead of us pressing her, she was made to take the consequence, which was drinking a foul-tasting drink.

  ‘It can’t taste worse than Macanochie, can it?’ she asked helplessly. Then after she sipped it, she spluttered, ‘Oh, it does. It’s terrible!’

  When it was my turn, I said, ‘Compared to yours, mine are far too trivial even to say out loud.’

  New Year’s Day, skipping into the library. Behind the bookshelves, Uilleam was bent over Father’s knee and Father was spanking something rotten out of him. Uilleam was too old to be spanked. I didn’t know what to do so I just backed away, went for a ride probably.

  I didn’t want to tell anyone this, so I too asked for a consequence.

  I gulped the drink down dutifully.

  ‘What is this revolting stuff?’

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ said Helen wryly.

  I coughed and suddenly the drink came up, landing neatly in my cup.

  ‘Disgusting!’

  ‘The next person who bows out can drink that,’ said Arthur cruelly, but no one took him seriously.

  I wanted to know how it came about that Elsie had been adopted. It struck me again that I didn’t know much about her family; but Elsie wouldn’t say what her worst experience was.

  She would have to take a consequence too.

  ‘Drink that,’ Arthur said.

  ‘No!’ I said protectively.

  ‘You can’t bend the rules for her!’ said Arthur.

  I thought, My, things have changed if I’m regarded as the rule-breaker!

  ‘Was it perhaps when Mr Knocker died, Elsie?’ I persisted.

  ‘Yes, I didn’t accept it for a long time. I denied it until I no longer could.’ Elsie was struggling to speak. ‘Can’t we play something else?’

  Lady D triumphantly produced some jigsaws she had found in the old school cupboards but no one wanted to do those either. There were three: a wooden map of the world, a bucolic countryside scene and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Lady D insisted we take them back to the cellar when we went back the next morning. Elsie resisted – ‘There’s no room to swing a cat.’

  Lady D laughed. ‘That’s not what Shot told me.’

  * * *

  A few days earlier, we had carried a lovely boy, Vincent, in from the trench. He was bent in two, rigid as an old man. I doubted if his body would ever unfurl. His muscles seemed locked. Yet he had nothing wrong with him that we could see. It was shock, we decided.

  When we returned from Furnes, Vincent and I sat together, working on the map of the world. There were five hundred pieces and between us, it took us about two hours. For much of the last hour, I found myself praying Please don’t let there be any missing pieces and then apologising: Sorry God, for such a trivial request, but it would be helpful for this lad to achieve something.

  As he placed in the last piece, I whooped but deep sobs racked Vincent’s broken body. He told me it reminded him of home.

  Once he was able, we sent him back to the front line. I admitted to Elsie that I doubted he would last long. Somehow, I managed to say it without weeping. I was growing a hard shell around me: there was no escaping that.

  Madeleine would love the jigsaws, I was sure. While her brother remained vague to me (although I had given him the temporary name of Felix), I was growing to understand more about my beautiful Belgian girl. Madeleine liked plain white socks pulled up to her knees. She wore her hair up in one long plait, in defiance of her mother preferring two. I imagined her playing dot-to-dot or noughts-and-crosses.

  There would have been a piano here, I decided, and one day, there would be a piano upstairs again. Madeleine was already able to play ‘Twinkle Twinkle’, and one day, I would teach her to play ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’.

  So what if she struggled with English? We would get there in the end. Adverbs: Quickly. Quietly. Slowly. Verbs: Do. Make. Run. Hide. Kill. Nurse.

  * * *

  I had my puzzles and Elsie had her own entertainment: new Gilberts, the engineers whose place she loved to skip off to. I was more sympathetic to her ‘hobby’ as time went on. Now that Harold had failed to return, I understood the fear of getting too attached. It was rational to protect oneself. To lose someone you love, as Elsie had, yet still to be able to put one foot in front of the other, was remarkable.

  Very occasionally, Elsie would take out her motorbike for a longer stretch. Sometimes, she rode into France to see friends there. Of course, she shouldn’t have. There was the worry of shelling and snipers and we agreed it was ‘profligate’ but Elsie said, ‘Sometimes, you just need to ride and be free again.’ I knew that feeling.

  One time, that summer, she went out for over six hours. I prayed that she would return safe. She came back with her pockets and bag stuffed with fat, squidgy tomatoes.

  ‘Ready to have the finest tomato salad in the land, Mairi?’

  We gorged ourselves on them. We had two poorly men in cots and Paul and Martin were there, so they ate with us too. We didn’t bother with cutlery, we just used our fingers and before long those little pips had got into everything. And then Elsie and I were both sick. Groaning, clutching our bellies, we had to take turns using the bucket and the loo. But most of the time we were laughing.

  Elsie was the most wonderful friend. I didn’t think we’d ever see each other in a corner without giving everything we could to help.

  ‘Thank goodness for short hair!’ Elsie moaned, leaning over the pot. She looked up at me deliriously, sweat dripping down her forehead, sick speckles around her mouth.

  ‘Wasn’t it worth it though, Mairi? Those tomatoes were delicious!’

  14

  I was outside reattaching the Chater-Lea’s sidecar when a visitor arrived on horseback. He dismounted gravely, tied his horse, a white mare, then removed his helmet. His boots crunched rhythmically on the gravel. He had the air of an official or someone ‘on important business’. I walked over nervously to see who had come to evict us. It was only as I drew closer that I realised with a racing heart: it was my brown bear, Harold the Baron.

  I hardly recognised him without a beard. Shaving had taken years off him. I saw now that he was somewhere in the hinterland between my age and Elsie’s. He had a smooth, square jaw, and you could see the shape of his lips.

  Although upstairs was brighter and cooler, the noise was horrendous, so I led Harold self-consciously to the trapdoor. Harold swung his bag as he walked, and I realised, with a start, that it contained a bloodied rabbit.

  I looked a mess as usual – I probably smelled of iodine, petrol or worse. Elsie had gone on an emergency visit to the trenches with Dr Gus Van Hint and I couldn’t help feeling pleased. Elsie tended to dominate any conversation – it wasn’t her fault, she was more interesting than me.

  As Harold awkwardly descended, I complimented him on the recovery of his leg.

  He said, ‘I’ll never be a long jumper but the three-legged race might yet be mine.’

  I laughed, then out popped the words, ‘You would need a strong partner!’

  ‘Hmm, do I know any strong women?’ he said mockingly, his finger resting on his smooth cheek. Who was talking about women? I thought. My heart had never beaten so fast. I swallowed, searching for the right answer.

  ‘Elsie?’ I said, my voice sounding thick and furry. ‘Or me?’

  I hurriedly lit the lanterns and candles so we could see. Even underground, there were judders where shells were landing not far from us. Our poor boys…

  Harold told me that he was working with a colonel only twenty miles from here, it was his first day off in weeks and, as soon as he had the go-ahead, he had jumped on Doris, his horse, and set off at a gallop.

  ‘And here I am!’

  And here you are! I thought delightedly.

  Harold noticed o
ne of the jigsaws on the table. I hadn’t made much progress since Vincent had left, but you could just make out a windmill.

  ‘You have a long way to go,’ Harold said earnestly. ‘You must be patient.’

  ‘I’m more patient than I used to be.’ I smiled. His eyes locked on to mine. Somehow, I couldn’t bear it so I looked away. Shot was there too, oblivious, lying on the straw.

  ‘And who’s this little fellow?’ he asked tenderly.

  Harold’s an animal-lover, I thought approvingly.

  ‘That’s our Shot.’ I explained how we came about him and Harold stroked his head and played with his ears.

  ‘Quite the home from home,’ he said approvingly. ‘So where is Elsie?’

  Well, at least he didn’t ask straight away, I thought. He must be patient too.

  I told him and he said, ‘Ah, yes, I hear she is always in the trenches.’

  I felt like saying, I am too but I didn’t want to show him how petty I could be.

  I had found a red ribbon out in the bricks some days earlier and knotted it around my wrist. I was certain it was Madeleine’s or at least one of her dolls’.

  Harold smiled at it. ‘That’s pretty.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  There was something romantic, something sensitive, in Harold that made me feel that he would have understood my yearning for the family who used to live here. I didn’t think he would laugh if I said that thoughts of Madeleine helped keep me both grounded and strong. But I didn’t tell Harold the story behind the ribbon, because he was unceremoniously pulling off his coat, sitting himself by the stove and, with a happy sigh, loosening his boots. I didn’t want to spoil the moment.