‘Robert took the case forward,’ Peter said grimly, ‘but they didn’t want to pursue it without better evidence.’
For a moment she was dizzy with dismay. The man was still free to molest nurses – why were they incapable of bringing him to justice? ‘Do you think they heard about me being in jail?’ she asked miserably.
‘I don’t know – possibly. Anyway, just before I came on leave I urged them to consider your complaint again.’ He spread his hands, impotently. ‘They’ll go through the allegation afresh, but I’m not optimistic.’
‘I was afraid they wouldn’t do anything,’ she said, ‘but I had to make a stand.’ A tear rolled down her face at their refusal to believe her.
‘Fairlawn has a good record of leading his men,’ Peter said. ‘They’re anxious not to disrupt his military career.’ He fixed his candid blue eyes on hers. ‘I’m trying to persuade them that appalling conduct off the battlefield shouldn’t be overlooked.’
‘Thank you for supporting me.’ She shrugged as she made an effort to accept the situation. She would hate Peter to jeopardise his own career by making himself unpopular.
‘Whatever the outcome, I’m determined the allegation must be left on his record,’ he said.
‘What’s it like out there now?’ she asked. ‘When I look in the newspapers it sounds as though there’s no let-up in the fighting.’
He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray on the glass-topped wicker table. His expression grew still bleaker. ‘No, I’m afraid they’re still pouring more troops into the salient.’
* * *
‘I don’t know why they’ve given me a hospital appointment in London,’ Amy said as the date approached to have her plaster cast removed. ‘Why can’t they deal with it at a local hospital?’
‘It might be as well, dear,’ her mother said. ‘They’ve got the leading hospitals in London.’
The appointment was for St Luke’s, the hospital in west London where she had once worked. She had occasionally exchanged letters with Katherine, her friend there, and now she wrote to her in the hope that they might have the chance to meet.
Peter had returned to France now. ‘If only I didn’t have to ask Mr Derwent to drive me to London,’ Amy said. ‘He’s kind to me but I don’t want to keep inconveniencing him.’
Recently, he had driven her to Sebastopol Terrace to be with her parents and uncle and aunt as they remembered Bertie on the anniversary of his death. Florence had been there to mourn him too.
‘Suppose we went with you to London on the train?’ Mother suggested now. ‘We could take you from there to the hospital in a cab. It’s a while since we’ve been on a trip, and we could call on Louisa while you keep your appointment at the hospital. She lives not far away.’ Her aunt had moved house after becoming widowed and now lived in west London.
‘Do you think Father would be able to get the day off?’
‘I think Mr Leadbetter will cover for him if it’s just for one day.’
‘Then that would be lovely.’
On the morning of her appointment, Mr Derwent drove her to the station for an early train, before the one on which most businessmen travelled. Her parents, smartly dressed for their outing, were waiting at the station and helped her into a carriage.
‘I shouldn’t need any help when we come back!’ she told them as the train steamed off.
When they reached Wealdham, the carriage door opened and a familiar figure in a dark blue dress got inside.
‘Mrs Rousseau! How are you?’ Amy said, pleased to see the Belgian lady again. Father raised his hat as she introduced her parents. He offered to put Mrs Rousseau’s basket in the luggage rack but she explained she was getting out at the next station.
‘Florence has been telling me most of the refugees have dispersed now,’ Amy said.
‘We’ll always be grateful for the way we were welcomed here, of course.’ Her accent was less obvious now. ‘We make ourselves busy here but most of us are longing for war to end so we can go home – please God, the fighting can’t go on much longer. Florence tells me you have visited Belgium.’
‘I only went there once, to Ypres, when my husband was in hospital there.’ She was unwilling to talk of that time.
‘Ah! Yes, I heard he was badly injured. Is he recovering now?’
Amy reassured her.
‘Yolande and I are from Liège, the other side of Brussels, so you will not have seen our home town. So much of our country is in the hands of the Boches… As for Ypres, I understand it has sustained a good deal of damage.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Amy said, with restraint.
Her father was interested. ‘Didn’t you have a battle at Liège at the start of the war?’ he asked Madame Rousseau.
‘We had big fortifications along the Meuse, where we fought back against the Boches. I often wonder about my relatives. My father was too old to fight, of course, but he lives in a house with a view of the railway. I sometimes imagine him watching movements of troops and supplies along the line and trying to find some way of sending a message to your army.’
The train was slowing down as it approached the next station.
‘I get out here,’ Madame Rousseau said, rising to her feet and picking up her basket. ‘I’ve started to give lessons in lacemaking, in Wealdham, and once a week here. Local women have shown quite a lot of interest.’
‘Lacemaking! How lovely,’ Amy said. ‘I saw some beautiful examples in the hotel we stayed at once in Béthune.’
The train pulled into the station and they said goodbye.
‘How I should like to take lessons in lacemaking,’ Amy said. ‘Perhaps I could go on the train to one of her lessons.’
‘You might, if your ankle is completely better,’ Mother said.
‘I didn’t want to tell Mrs Rousseau about Ypres,’ Amy said. ‘It’s suffered from repeated bombardments. I hope the rest of her country isn’t smashed up so badly.’
The London terminus was crowded as usual with troops. Her parents looked strained. The young men in uniform would always remind them of Bertie.
‘A cab to the hospital will be expensive,’ Amy said. ‘Let’s take an omnibus. You’ll only need to help me on and off.’ She hoped they need not go up the winding staircase to the top.
Once on the bright red bus, she found a seat easily. The cheerful woman clippie with light brown hair who sold them tickets somehow looked familiar to Amy. As they crawled along the streets, teeming with carts and motor vehicles, she wondered where she had seen the woman before.
‘Look at those damaged houses!’ Father was shocked at the gaping façades.
‘They must have been hit in a Zeppelin raid,’ Amy said. The destruction in Ypres had been much more widespread.
At last, they reached the nearest stop to her hospital.
She pulled herself to her feet and limped towards the platform, using her crutches. As she passed the clippie, they stared at each other.
‘Polly!’ she cried.
‘Blimey, it is you. What you done to your leg?’
Amy gave her a brief account while the bus was halted. It could not start again until Polly rang the bell.
‘Have you been doing this job for long?’ Amy asked.
‘Over a year now. They need women to do it. It’s a lot better than what I did before.’
‘Good luck,’ Amy said, pleased for her.
‘And you. And the kid.’
Father helped her off the bus.
‘Who was that?’ Mother asked.
She waited until there were few passers-by.
‘Someone I met in prison.’
Mother gave her one of the dubious glances she bestowed when she compared Amy’s recent life with her own sedate days in her early twenties.
At least she didn’t ask what her crime was, Amy thought, relieved.
They went into the main entrance of the busy hospital and down a tiled corridor towards the fracture clinic.
‘How soon do you thi
nk you’ll be ready to go home?’ Father asked her.
‘I don’t know. But Katherine’s asked for some hours off, so she’ll meet me here and take me to the dining room.’ That was what they called the small, unwelcoming room where nurses could get lunch. ‘I can wait there till you come back for me. Give Aunt Louisa my love.’
A woman at the desk told her where to wait for her appointment. Father left her a newspaper and she began to read a report about fighting round the village near Ypres called Passchendaele.
‘Mrs Derwent?’ She got up and walked with her crutches to the consulting room where they would remove her plaster.
At last it’s nearly over, she thought. Just let it have healed properly.
The medical staff soon cut her plaster off and she examined her leg and ankle. They had swollen within the plaster cast as expected, but she could tell the shape was not quite right. The orthopaedic surgeon looked a little concerned.
‘Put your foot to the ground,’ he told her, while a nurse held her arm.
She did as he said. It felt strange. Even allowing for it having been in plaster for weeks, the ankle seemed distorted.
‘Now take off your shoe and walk towards me.’
She removed the shoe from her good right foot and began to walk, still relying on the nurse for support. She could not put her left foot flat on the floor and there was a slight sensation of one bone grinding against another.
‘I don’t think they’ve set it right,’ she said, unwilling to acknowledge the problem. She had seen cases like it before.
The doctor felt around where the fracture had been. ‘I think it’s less than perfect,’ he admitted. ‘I gather you had it done when you were serving in Flanders?’
‘Yes.’
‘See how you get on. If it’s still bad in a few months, when you’ve had your baby, you might consider having it reset.’
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ she said, sniffing hard in an attempt not to cry.
‘Can you walk with just the one crutch?’
She attempted to do so. It was not elegant but she could walk a little way.
She went behind a screen to put a stocking on her left leg. She put on her right shoe, then crammed her left foot into the other one, which she had brought in a bag. They were her loosest shoes and she needed the right one tightly laced. The left one would barely do up at all. She went awkwardly from the consulting room to the corridor where she saw the plump figure of Katherine waiting for her.
‘Well done!’ said the doctor, who had followed her out. The nurse handed her the second crutch. ‘That shoe’s very tight,’ the doctor said. ‘Take it off as soon as you reach home.’
Katherine embraced her and helped her to the nearest chair. ‘It’s wonderful to see you again! Are you keeping well in your pregnancy?’
‘Yes, everything’s fine.’ Doctor Stanhope back in Larchbury had checked her progress. He was elderly but had been brought out of retirement when younger doctors were sent to Flanders.
‘Your walking doesn’t look too good,’ Katherine said. ‘Did they mess up setting your ankle?’
‘I think so. It wasn’t done under ideal conditions.’
‘I’m so sorry. Would you like to go to the dining room for lunch? I can’t promise it’ll be especially tasty.’
Amy limped along the corridor, her erratic progress confirming her view that her operation had failed. Katherine gave her an arm.
Soon they were sitting eating a watery stew. ‘Anyway, how are you?’ Amy asked her friend.
‘Fine.’ Katherine told her a little of her life at the hospital. It sounded as though she had developed from an anxious novice into an efficient member of the nursing staff.
‘What about your young man?’
‘He’s suspended his university course and joined up,’ Katherine said, fiddling with her dark hair. ‘He’s finished his officer training and he’s in Flanders now, the Belgian part.’
‘I supposed he’s in the Ypres area,’ Amy said.
‘Yes. I worry about him so. I’ve put my name down for service abroad if I get the chance.’
Amy had mentioned Edmond’s injuries in one of her letters to Katherine, and she found herself making light of them and exaggerating his progress now Katherine had a sweetheart at the Front.
‘Do you think you’ll have your leg reset?’ Katherine asked presently. ‘You could wait till after you’ve had your baby.’
‘They’d need to operate again – I know that much,’ Amy said, shuddering.
‘Yes. You’d need to be brave. But they’ve got those modern X-ray machines now so they can get a picture of the bones in your leg before they operate.’
‘That’s true.’ She had not had her leg X-rayed in the Ypres hospital, or even in the mobile X-ray unit driven around by the scientist called Madame Curie. ‘If this war ever ends I might have my ankle reset then. I don’t want to be on the operating list again when wounded are streaming in and there’s a shortage of surgeons.’
While they were waiting for her parents to arrive, she practised walking up and down with one crutch. She began to adapt to the feel of her joint and to develop an ungainly but steady way of progressing.
‘You’re doing better,’ Katherine encouraged her.
She sat down to recover from her exertions. Her friend brought her up to date with the gossip from the hospital where she had once worked. Katherine mentioned that she might visit her aunt and uncle who lived some ten miles from Larchbury. ‘Perhaps you can come to see me at The Beeches,’ Amy said. ‘It’s not far. Do try to come.’
When her parents arrived she embraced Katherine again, passed Father one of her crutches and set off towards the door with the other.
‘Your leg doesn’t look much better than before,’ Mother cried.
‘It is. And I’ll get more used to it in a day or two,’ she said, trying to sound confident.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Larchbury and Lymington, October 1917
When she reached Larchbury there was fresh news: she was thrilled to hear that Edmond was returning to Blighty at last.
Two days later he was brought back by train to a London hospital. Mr Derwent drove Amy there the following day to visit him, and Mrs Derwent and Beatrice accompanied them, anxious to see him.
‘Are you sure you should be travelling again?’ her mother-in-law had asked Amy. Her poor walking was hampered by her increasing size. She had put on a loose coat which partly concealed her condition.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she replied. ‘The baby’s not due for another three months.’ She had longed for this day: she simply could not wait any longer to see Edmond.
‘He’s out of danger now, or they wouldn’t have let him travel back,’ she told the others, ‘but he’s probably still weak.’
The hospital was not the one where Amy had worked. Once more she was among bustling nurses and the smell of antiseptic, but the atmosphere was less frantic than at the Front. The sister was stern and only allowed two visitors at a time, so Amy went into the ward with Mrs Derwent. It was a small ward for officers, with only three beds, and there Edmond was, in the middle bed, sitting up. He caught sight of her and his weary expression was transformed. ‘Darling!’ he cried.
She almost stumbled in her rush to be beside him. She stooped awkwardly to kiss him. ‘How are you feeling now?’ she asked. His complexion was a better colour, no longer pale, and not flushed with fever either. If only she could take off his pyjama top and examine his chest to see how it was healing.
‘Much better. Hello, Ma, how are you?’
She was staring at him, probably alarmed by his hollow cheeks and the circles below his eyes which suggested he was still not sleeping well. ‘Edmond, dear…’ She was at a loss for words. ‘How you must have suffered!’ she managed, as Amy found her a chair.
A young nurse brought another chair and Amy sat down, feeling sorry for her mother-in-law. ‘He’s improved greatly since he was first wounded,’ she told her.
‘From Beatrice?’ his mother asked.
‘She’s been writing to him regularly, apparently. He says he longs for her letters.’
His mother stared ahead, smiling for a moment, clearly enjoying the idea of a match between the pair, then appeared concerned again when she looked back to Edmond.
Before long, he was telling them about the choppy crossing he had endured, and asking for news of Larchbury. His mother became more collected, reassured by his normal conversation. The only other patient in the ward was asleep and barely stirred as they talked. Probably he was dosed heavily to suppress pain.
Next, Edmond wanted assurance that Amy was keeping well and she was able to tell him that everything was fine with the baby.
‘What about your ankle?’ he asked, having noticed how she was walking.
‘It didn’t mend quite right,’ she told him.
‘You told me it was just sprained!’
She had to admit that one of the bones had been broken. ‘I didn’t want to worry you when you were so ill,’ she said.
He seized her hand and looked at her seriously. ‘Promise you won’t keep things from me like that. I’m your husband.’
‘I can get around better without the cast,’ she said. ‘I can walk to my parents’ house, or to call on Florence.’ These visits were more of a struggle than she chose to admit.
He became more relaxed. ‘What about my moustache?’ he asked her suddenly. ‘Should I shave it off, do you think?’
‘It’s your decision,’ she told him, secretly wishing he would get rid of it. ‘I love you either way.’
Soon it was time for them to leave the ward so that his father and sister could see him. Amy and her mother-in-law sat down on chairs outside.
Mrs Derwent took a little bottle out of her bag and the pungent aroma of smelling salts wafted along the corridor.
Until We Meet Again Page 25