by Kate Hewitt
“I can’t care,” Letitia said quietly. “I can’t care about any of them, Ellen, and certainly not Lieutenant Allard. It’s simply too dangerous.”
Ellen continued to reflect on her friend’s words as they packed up their picnic and headed back to the abbey. She understood Letitia’s sentiment, of course; she’d felt it herself. Losing Jed to Louisa and then far worse, losing Henry when the Titanic had sunk, had certainly made her wary of caring about anyone ever again.
But to keep your heart safe, she thought, as she brought their picnic basket back to the kitchen with thanks to Michelet, was a lonely way of living. She hoped Letitia would dare one day. Perhaps she would too.
The fighting continued at Ypres through the summer, although the trains of wounded soldiers tapered off, for a decision had been taken that Royaumont was now too far from the Front to take the wounded to.
Miss Ivens wrote letter after letter to the British authorities, asking for permission for her to staff a field hospital closer to the Front, and even suggesting that Royaumont itself could move as a body, if not the abbey stones. She received no reply, and so the hospital entered a strange interlude of quiet and peace despite the massive casualties they heard about to the north, at the third battle of Ypres.
“We are worse than helpless,” Letitia said, shaking her head, as she walked among the wards of convalescing soldiers. The worst of the injured, the cases of gas gangrene and flying shrapnel and bullet wounds, no longer came to the abbey’s operating theatres and surgical wards. All that remained were soldiers who had minor wounds or were sent there for convalescence; the summer saw the lawns of the abbey graced with men lounging about, their faces tilted towards the sun.
Lieutenant Lucien Allard was one of the remaining soldiers, although his private Henri Sahnoun had returned to the Front, along with most of his regiment. Ellen had observed Letitia’s gently unfolding friendship with the charming lieutenant; she’d seen them chatting as Letitia did her rounds, and her friend’s tight-lipped expression had softened into a smile on more than one occasion as Lucien teased her out of her seriousness.
Ellen did not mention Lucien Allard to Letitia again, and even the orderlies who had teased her before were silent. Some things, she supposed, were too precious and fragile for joking. But she watched as Letitia spared a moment for the charming lieutenant, and she smiled when she saw him touch her hand as she perched on the edge of his bed. In times like these, she thought, you had to grab what happiness you could.
In late July, as the battle at Ypres raged on, an infection developed in Lucien’s wound and he began to run a high fever that left him restless and tossing in his bed, close to unconscious. Ellen didn’t dare say anything of it to Letitia, who remained grim-faced as she checked his dressings before calling Miss Ivens for a consultation.
“I’m afraid it doesn’t look at all well, Miss Portman,” Miss Ivens said while Ellen stood by the door, her hands folded in front of her as she waited to be called for assistance. “Look at the angry redness all along his leg,” she continued. Lucien was still out of his head with fever, muttering under his breath, his hair sweat-soaked and his face pale. “I do fear the infection has entered his blood. If his fever does not come down by the end of the night, and those red streaks do not reduce, then we are looking at an amputation.”
Letitia’s face went as pale as the lieutenant’s but she nodded grimly, her mouth set.
“Better an amputation than a death,” Miss Ivens said gently, and moved on.
Dawn broke and Lucien’s fever did not. Miss Ivens returned to check his dressings, and with a sad shake of her head she indicated that the operating theatre should be prepared. Thanks to the faraway fighting, it had not been used in weeks.
Letitia said nothing as two orderlies moved Lucien, now unconscious, onto a stretcher.
Miss Ivens nodded towards Ellen. “You may assist, Sister,” she said, and with her heart seeming to beat its way up her throat, Ellen followed them into the operating theatre.
Just a few minutes later the thing was done, and Lucien’s leg was amputated above the knee, the blood staunched, the wound bandaged.
“Poor man,” Miss Ivens said as she washed her arms up to the elbow in a big stone sink. “Pray that the infection went no farther, and he survives.”
Letitia said nothing as she saw to Lucien’s dressings and then two orderlies wheeled him on a stretcher into a separate room for recovery.
After Ellen finished her shift she went to look for Letitia. She was tired and dirty and longed only for bed, but she knew her friend must be grieving.
She found her in one of the empty rooms on the top floor, where some of the abbey’s heavy, old furniture was shrouded in sheets, and the windows overlooked the meadows now bathed in lambent silver.
“Letitia…”
“If he survives,” Letitia said bleakly, “what sort of life can he have? An amputation above the knee, Ellen. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
Ellen came to sit next to Letitia by the arched window. “We’ve seen plenty of men with similar amputations,” she said quietly. “They will all have to find a way forward, after this war is over.”
“After this war is over,” Letitia repeated, and rested her forehead on her knees. “Sometimes I wonder if that is ever going to happen.”
“The tide is turning,” Ellen answered with more conviction than she felt. “With America entering the War…”
“And Russia about to make peace terms with Germany,” Letitia answered. “The players may shift, but the terror will never end. And when it does…” She lifted her head to gaze bleakly out at the fields. “What will happen to men like Lucien? Do you think his country will provide for him? There will be so many wounded, blinded, maimed… and I fear by that time everyone will just want to forget. What will they do, all these poor boys of ours?”
Ellen thought of Jed and Lucas, as safe as far as she knew, but who really knew anything? She had not seen them in all the time she’d been in France, and what news she had gleaned came from Aunt Rose far away on Amherst Island.
Amherst Island… it felt a more distant memory than it ever had, with its maple trees and the blue-green water of Lake Ontario, the happiness and the simplicity of the place that now felt like no more than a children’s story Ellen had once read.
“I don’t know,” she admitted to Letitia. “I don’t know what will happen when the war ends, Letitia, as much as I long for it.” She laid a hand on her friend’s arm. “But do you… do you love Lieutenant Allard?”
Letitia didn’t answer for a long moment; her face remained bleak, her expression shuttered. “Does it matter?” she finally asked, and rose from where she’d been sitting. After a pause Ellen followed her.
She went to her room and tried to sleep, but her troubled dozing was plagued by dreams of blood and gore and the cries of the wounded, even though the hospital was now all peace and quiet. By mid-morning it had become too hot to sleep, and she rose and washed and dressed in her plain skirt and blouse; today was her day off, and she thought perhaps she would travel into the nearby village of Asnieres-Sur-Oise, simply for a change of scene. She felt heavy in both spirit and body, weighed down by fatigue and the endless grief of the war, and the parade of wounded men who had come through the abbey.
She was just tidying her hair when Edith came up to see her, breathless, her face red from both exertion and heat.
“Ellen! There’s a soldier here to see you!”
“A soldier…?” Ellen repeated blankly, and Edith nodded.
“Yes, he cuts quite a dashing figure in his uniform. He speaks English too, like a Yank.”
“What…” Ellen’s breath came out in a rush as she hurried down the abbey’s twisting stairs. Hope was a dangerous thing, she reminded herself, and yet she could not keep it from ballooning inside her as she rushed to the abbey’s magnificent entrance hall, where a soldier in the uniform of the Canadian Expeditionary Force waited, his cap in his hand, his smile
wry as his warm gaze met Ellen’s startled one.
Her mouth dried as she came to a halt in front of him, shaking her head slowly. “Lucas,” she said wonderingly, and then she rushed into his arms.
RETURN TO THE ISLAND: PART ONE
By Katharine Swartz
(6,000 words)
Amherst Island, June 1919
1.) Ellen talking with Rose about the farm, wanting to stay. Recap arrival back on island. Reunions, etc.
2.) Walk over to Jed’s farm and talk with him and James Lyman; tidy up, outside with Jed. Life is hard. Back at home, Caro warns her about friendship with Jed. Ellen tells her nothing is going on.
3.) Outside next day talk to Peter, he reminds her of drawing, ‘who wouldn’t want to draw all this?’
4.) Goes to Kingston to talk to bank about loan; Lucas meets her and suggests art holidays.
Ellen blinked up at the vaulted stone ceiling high above her as someone raised a glass towards her lips. She choked on the single sip, the water dribbling down her chin.
“There, now. You’re all right. Nothing broken, thank goodness.”
Ellen tried to raise her head but she felt utterly exhausted, as if her body was weighed down by stones. Memories came trickling in: the madness of the last days at Villers-Cotterêts, the hurried evacuation from the hospital as the bombs fell over Paris, the sky lit up like a giant firework, Jed…
At the memory of Jed, she struggled to sit up again but fell back against the pillow with a groan.
“Where…” Her voice came out hoarse and scratchy. “Where am I?”
“At Royaumont, of course.” The woman who was speaking to her leaned closer, and Ellen saw it was her roommate and fellow auxiliary nurse, Marjorie. “You did get struck on the head, Ellen, but surely not that badly?”
“I don’t know.” Ellen lifted one trembling hand to her head; she could feel a large lump by her ear. Of course she was at Royaumont. She should have known simply by her view of the arched stonework above her. But everything was so muddled in her mind, and she didn’t know how long she’d been abed. She took a few even breaths and tried to order her thoughts.
“How did they find us, Marjorie?” she asked at last. Her voice came out in a scratchy whisper.
“Thank goodness you remember me at least,” Marjorie answered with a little laugh. “The cars were travelling in convoy behind you. The Americans had come back for the staff, after all. They stopped when they saw the lorry had been hit.” Marjorie fell silent and Ellen closed her eyes, everything in her straining in denial even as she remembered the thud of the shell, the debris raining down as she’d been hurled from the truck as if by a giant hand.
“And… the soldiers?” she asked. “The Canadians? Are they all right?”
“Some of them,” Marjorie allowed. “Some were badly injured, and a few… a few died. The shell hit the front of the lorry, Ellen. The driver and the man next to him didn’t have a chance.”
Ellen thought of the driver who had stopped for her and Letitia, the soldier in the passenger’s seat who had helped them in the back. She couldn’t recall their faces, but she knew they’d been kind. They had given their lives for her and Letitia.
“Letitia,” she said with a sudden gasp. “Is she…”
“She’s in the bed next to you,” Marjorie said, and Ellen turned her head and thankfully caught a glimpse of her friend. “She’s sleeping,” Marjorie continued. “She broke her arm. Miss Ivens set it herself, and said it should mend nicely.”
“What about the soldiers?” Ellen asked. “The Canadians? Did you bring them to Royaumont as well?”
“Yes, I think so. Why are you so concerned about them, Ellen? Surely you hadn’t known any of them?”
“Yes, I did. One.” It seemed a terribly cruel twist of fate for her to be reunited with Jed only to have it all blasted apart seconds later.
But then, Ellen reminded herself, she hadn’t really been reunited with Jed, not in the way it had felt when he’d taken her in his arms and she’d pressed her cheek against the rough wool of his jacket. He was a married man still, and always would be. But it had been so very wonderful to see him again.
“Marjorie… could you discover if one of the Canadians, Jed Lyman, is here at Royaumont, and how he fares? He was a friend of mine, from back home. I’d… I’d like to know how he is.”
“I’ll try,” Marjorie said. “But it’s not as it once was, Ellen… the abbey is filled to the rafters, not just with patients although we’ve hundreds of those, but with refugees of all sorts. The entire nursing staff from another hospital has come here, and they weren’t even fully dressed when they came! Ran out in their pyjamas and dressing gowns. They won’t lift a finger to help,” she added with a sniff. “The cook is quite put out, and she makes sure their porridge is cold.”
“How long have I been here?” Ellen asked, and Marjorie grimaced.
“You’ve been in and out for sleep for two days. I would have thought the shelling would have woken you, Ellen, but you didn’t do much more than moan, even when the window—the last one with glass that we have, I think—blew in.”
“Goodness.” Ellen closed her eyes, overwhelmed by how much had happened and changed. Her head pounded.
“You should rest,” Marjorie said. “I’ll look for this Canadian of yours. Jed Lyman, you said? Someone might know if he’s here.” She gave Ellen’s arm a squeeze before rising from the chair by her bed. Ellen lay there for a few minutes, gazing up at the ceiling, her mind spinning both from the bump on her head as well as the realization that Jed could be close or at hand—or he could be lost to her forever.
“Please God,” she whispered. “Please have him be safe.”
It was another two days before Ellen felt well enough to rise from her bed, and even then Miss Ivens insisted that she rest and recuperate rather than report for duty.
“Heaven knows we need all the willing hands we can muster,” she told her severely, “but you won’t do me or anyone else any good at all, Sister, if you fall into a faint when I need you to hold the candle steady!”
Royaumont was indeed, as Marjorie had said, filled to the rafters. Beds and stretchers lined every room, even those that had not been put into use before, because of their draughtiness or inconvenience. Shells rained steadily down all around them, and refugees camped in the meadows outside the abbey. It felt like a cross between a circus and a battlefield.
Ellen had just risen from her hospital bed and was putting her things away in the room she now shared with two other auxiliary nurses as well as Marjorie when her friend came into the room, breathless from the climb up the stairs.
“I’ve found your Jed Lyman,” she said.
“He’s not mine,” Ellen said, flushing. “I told you, he’s a friend from a childhood, nothing more.”
“Well, he’s not mine,” Marjorie answered with a teasing smile. “He’s in the Blanche de Castille ward. He was insensible for a while, which was why I couldn’t find him. But he’s sitting up and talking now.”
“Is he well?” Ellen asked, anxiety sharpening her voice. “He wasn’t—he wasn’t too badly hurt?”
Marjorie hesitated and terror surged through Ellen. “But of course he’s hurt,” she murmured. “If he was insensible…”
“It’s not that,” Marjorie said quickly. “He was hit on the head, but it wasn’t too serious.”
“But something,” Ellen clarified as she searched her friend’s face. “I can tell by the way you’re looking at me—oh Marjorie, just say it, please.”
“What is he to you?” Marjorie asked bluntly and the flush Ellen had been battling returned in a full force.
“A friend, nothing more. He’s married to one of my school friends—Marjorie, you don’t mean to tell me that he’s… that his life is in danger?”
“No, nothing like that,” Marjorie answered. “But when he was thrown clear of the lorry he shattered his elbow. It would have been all right, I think, if it had been dealt with right a
way. But that’s the trouble with a time like this—it wasn’t. Nothing was. So many soldiers had to wait. We had them lining the hallways, bleeding to death while Miss Ivens operated as quickly as she could…”
Ellen blanched at the image. “I wish this war would just end,” she burst out.
“I’m sorry, Ellen.”
“So he’ll lose his arm?” Ellen stated flatly, for she knew Marjorie could mean nothing else, and her friend nodded.
“Miss Ivens is going to amputate this afternoon. She’s afraid of blood poisoning otherwise. It looks infected.”
Ellen nodded mutely. She’d heard such a story a hundred, a thousand times before. It was the same as Lucien with his leg; it was the same as dozens and dozens of other soldiers who had come through Royaumont. The fact that it was Jed made no difference… except to her.
She sank onto the bed, her head pounding worse than ever. “Poor Jed,” she murmured. “An amputation above the elbow… he’s a farmer,” she explained, as she looked up at Marjorie and blinked back tears. “A little farm on the prettiest island in Ontario you’d ever hope to see…” The tears thickened in her throat and she dropped her face into her hands, not wanting Marjorie to see her sob. For she felt like sobbing, crying until she had no tears left for all the tragedy and devastation, all the pointless loss and endless grief. And most of all for Jed, who would lose an arm and perhaps his livelihood.
“Oh Ellen, I’m sorry,” Marjorie said, and came to sit next to her on the narrow bed. She put her arms around her and Ellen leaned against her friend’s shoulder, willing the sobs back.
“It’s the same everywhere, I know,” she said. “So many men… so many shattered limbs and dreams, so many lost lives…”