by Kate Hewitt
“Don’t think on it,” Marjorie implored. “You’ll lose your soul if you do. The only way to keep going is to put your head down and work. You can’t think about all of it. You just can’t.”
“I know,” Ellen answered with a shuddery sigh. “But it’s so hard sometimes, Marjorie.”
“I know it is.” Marjorie was silent for a moment. “They say the end might be in sight.”
“You think we’ll push the Germans back, when the bombs are falling all around us?”
“One hopes,” Marjorie answered wearily. They exchanged sad smiles, needing no more words.
The next day Ellen reported to duty, and was amazed at the orderly chaos that life at Royaumont had become. Staff were sleeping in barns and on chairs; night and day staff shared the same beds. And the patients were everywhere… every bench or board and blanket had been used to create makeshift beds for the more able patients, and stretchers lined the hallways as men, groaning and bleeding, waited for surgery.
Ellen worked for eighteen hours straight, assisting Miss Ivens in the operating theatre, before she finally stumbled off duty, filthy and exhausted. It was past midnight, and she could hear the shelling; sometimes the impact shook the rafters, and once that evening they’d had to go down to the abbey cellars. When they emerged again, a huge crater had appeared in the field behind the abbey, bathed in moonlight.
After tidying herself as best as she could and bolting down a cup of tea and a piece of bread and butter, Ellen went in search of Jed. She found him, as Marjorie had said, in the Blanche de Castille ward, lying in bed with a bulky bandage covering his right shoulder and what was left of his arm. His arm, Ellen saw, had been amputated several inches above the elbow.
He was sleeping, and she watched him for a moment, noting the grey streaks in his dark hair, the shadows on his face, the new lines from nose to mouth. She felt near tears again and she willed them back. Then Jed opened his eyes.
His mouth twitched in a tiny, wry smile before remembrance flickered across his features and he closed his eyes again.
“Hello, Jed,” Ellen whispered. “How are you feeling?”
“I don’t know.” His voice was scratchy and he cleared his throat. “They’ve given me something for the pain.”
“That’s good.”
He opened his eyes and glanced down at his shoulder. “I suppose.”
“At least you’re alive.”
“There’s that,” Jed agreed. “Although what use I’ll be to anyone, I don’t know. You can’t pitch hay with one arm.”
“Oh, Jed.” Quickly Ellen dashed the tears from her eyes before he could see them. She sat on the stool by his bed. “You might be surprised by what you find you’re able to do. We’ve had quite a few convalescents through her, and they soon get the hang of things. A man with no arms at all can actually hold a pen between his toes!”
A blaze of anger lit up Jed’s eyes and he glared at her. “Do you think I want that? To be some kind of circus freak?”
“Oh, Jed, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”
“No.” He closed his eyes again. “I didn’t mean it, Ellen, I’m sorry. I’m sure that man is admirable indeed.” He took a deep breath that shuddered through him. “But I don’t want to talk about me or what you think I’ll be able to do with one arm. Not yet. I just… can’t.”
“I understand,” she whispered.
He opened his eyes and studied her for a few quiet moments. “It’s been a long time, Ellen.”
“Six years.”
“A lot has happened to both of us, I reckon.”
“Yes. I’m… I’m sorry about your son, Jed. Aunt Rose wrote me when it happened…”
Pain flickered across his face and he nodded. “Thank you.” Ellen felt that anything she said would be inadequate to the moment, and so she remained silent. “When I was in the trenches,” Jed said after a long silence, “I used to picture the island. I’d walk down the lanes in my mind, and I’d be able to imagine every tree, every leaf. I could see how the sun fell on the fields, turning them to gold, and how the frost tipped the grass, turning them silver. I could hear the waves lapping the shore, see how blue-green they looked in the summer sunshine. I saw it all, Ellen.” His voice choked and he turned his face away.
Ellen reached for his hand. “It’s still there, Jed. It’s still there just as it was. You can go back. We can all go back.”
“And what would I go back for?” Jed looked at her, his face full of misery and despair. “For my own father, my own wife to take care of me, an invalid and as good as a cripple? To be a drain on the community I meant to serve?”
“You have served,” Ellen protested. “And you can continue to do so. This isn’t the end of everything, Jed.”
He didn’t answer and she decided not to press. Jed’s injury was still new, and she knew from experience that a man had to grieve the loss of the limb, the loss of the life he’d expected to have, before he was able to think of the future.
“What about you, Ellen?” Jed asked eventually. “Will you go back to the island?”
“I… I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s anything for me there anymore.”
“Rose would welcome you. You’ve been like a daughter to her. And times are hard for her.”
“You mean with Dyle’s heart trouble—“ Ellen stopped abruptly at the look on Jed’s face. “You know something,” she stated. “Don’t you? Lucas hasn’t written me for months, and I haven’t heard anything from Rose. What do you know?”
“Dyle died in January,” Jed told her quietly. “My father wrote to me about it. He had a heart attack. But he died in his own bed, as any man would want to.”
“Oh, no.” Ellen pressed a hand to her cheek, reeling from this news even though it wasn’t entirely unexpected. “Poor Rose. She’ll have to manage the farm alone, until Peter comes back.” If he came back. If she’d learned one thing in these last four years, it was that nothing was certain.
“Yes,” Jed agreed. “When he comes back.”
The next few weeks and months blurred by in an endless round of snatched sleep and long hours in the operating theatre or on the wards, which grew stifling in the summer heat.
Miss Ivens had requested more staff, and Ellen and the other nurses were subjected to a parade of new orderlies and auxiliary nurses, some of whom left after only a few weeks or even days, complaining of the crowded conditions, the lack of private beds or baths, and the endless work.
“Did they think they were coming on holiday?” Marjorie asked grimly when an orderly, Doris Stevenson, left in high dudgeon. “There’s a war on. What did she think it would be like?”
“Apparently the place isn’t fit for a gentlewoman,” Ellen answered cheerfully. “Imagine that! We’re actually getting our hands dirty.”
By the beginning of July the steady stream of wounded into Royaumont had begun to lessen, although the air raids continued nightly. Miss Ivens relayed the orders that the hospital was to be emptied as far as was possible, to make ready for the next wave of wounded when the French launched their counter-attack.
Ellen said goodbye to Jed on one stiflingly hot morning; he was returning to England to convalesce, and then back to Canada.
“Shall I see you again?” he asked as he embraced her lightly with his one good arm. His empty sleeve was pinned neatly back.
“Yes, of course you will,” Ellen cried. In that moment she could not imagine not seeing Jed or Lucas or Aunt Rose or the island ever again. “I shall come back,” she promised. “When the war is over.” Jed just smiled.
“Until then,” he said, and kissed her on the cheek. Ellen stayed outside the abbey doors, watching the dust settle on the road long after the lorry that was taking him to Creil had gone.
In August the overworked staff began to feel the strain of their twenty-hour days and the constant shelling at night. Several doctors were sent home due to nervous collapse, and Miss Ivens wrote frantic letters for more staff.
Then
in September, both staff and patients began to come down with la grippe—the dreaded Influenza. Ellen was soon nursing her own compatriots along with the wounded who continue to fill the wards. Marjorie and Norah both succumbed to the ‘flu but were back at their posts by October, while Ellen, perhaps because she’d endured a similar illness during her days at Kingston General Hospital, remained immune.
The days and night blurred together and she sometimes fell asleep standing up, a cup of tea still in her hand. She had learned to sleep through the screaming of the air raid siren or the thudding booms of the bombs, through the shuddering of the whole abbey, as if the ancient cloisters might collapse on top of them, and the endless groaning of the poor soldiers who suffered from such grievous wounds.
She’d jolt awake after a few minutes or perhaps an hour, and hurry back to her duties. And so the months both slid by and stretched on, as everyone waited for word that there would be an end to all the madness and misery.
And then it happened, and Ellen could hardly believe it was true. General Descoings came to the hospital at eight o’clock one November morning, his face solemn. “La guerre est finie.”
A stunned silence followed his pronouncement, and then raggedy cheers went up as the nurses and orderlies went through the wards, announcing the long-awaited news.
Tears pricked Ellen’s eyes as she saw the looks of incredulous joy and hope on the soldiers’ faces, and then cries went up from every ward: “Vive la France! Vive l’Angleterre! Vive Les Alliés!”
She found Marjorie and Letitia, and they hugged each other, tears of relief and incredulity streaming down their faces. It was over. It was actually over.
A spirit of jollity swept through the hospital; someone found the old bell rope, and pulled and pulled so the bell high above the abbey rang for at least five minutes. Impromptu concerts were had all over the wards as men and staff alike sought to celebrate; Letitia and Ellen were in the Canada ward with Norah, enjoying listening to a troupe of singers, when a man suddenly burst through the doors, hobbling with the help of a single crutch, his expression rather fierce.
Letitia turned, her face filled with apprehension. “Lucien—“
Lucien did not answer as he hobbled up to Letitia, and bracing himself with the help of his crutch, took her in his arms and kissed her thoroughly.
The cheers from all the patients who watched this spectacle with delight were deafening. Laughing, Ellen and Norah put their hands over their ears, exchanging grins.
Letitia pulled back from Lucien. “Does this mean you’ll marry me?” she asked pertly, and the soldiers in their beds roared in approval.
“Non,” Lucien declared grandly. “You will marry me.”
Later that night as Ellen sat in a corner of a ward and let the celebrations wash over her, Norah came to find her. The last few months at Royaumont had been so busy that Ellen had barely exchanged a word with her old mentor and landlady. Four years on, they sat in peaceful quiet as colleagues and watched as three soldiers who were well enough to leave their beds did the cancan, accompanied by cheers, jests, and lively music.
“I wasn’t sure we could experience such happiness again,” Norah said quietly.
“Nor was I,” Ellen agreed. “I hope it lasts.”
“I hope you haven’t become cynical.”
“Haven’t we all?”
“Perhaps,” Norah allowed. “Will you return to Glasgow, Ellen? To the art school? Your position will still be there for you, I am sure.”
“I don’t know.” Ellen leaned her head back against a stone pillar. “I don’t know what I shall do, Norah. I want to go back to Canada, but I’m afraid there’s nothing to go back to anymore.”
“Perhaps you need to see if that is true,” Norah responded. “But I hope wherever your travels take you, you will return to Glasgow one day.”
Ellen nodded, still unsure as to what she would do—or where her home truly was.
Ellen did not return to Glasgow until March of 1919. She’d stayed behind with a handful of other doctors, nurses, and orderlies, to care for the hundred or so patients who could not yet be moved. At Christmas they’d opened the abbey doors to all the locals for a tremendous pantomime; two of the orderlies had trained as opera singer and Ellen was enthralled by the production of Cinderella; for once everyone was able to celebrate without restraint, without the pall of war hanging over them like a shroud.
By March there was nothing left to do, and yet Ellen was still strangely reluctant to leave what had been her home for over four years. Miss Ivens seemed to understand her feeling, for she gave her a surprising hug and told her to “find your way, wherever it leads you.”
And so Ellen traveled to Boulogne on a raw March day and then across the Channel, before taking the train up to Glasgow.
She stepped off the train with a sense of unreality; she had not been back since August 1914. She still wore her nursing uniform, and several passersby gave her warm smiles of approval for her service.
She walked from the station to the little house she’d shared with Ruby and Douglas; she knew from their letters that they had kept safe during the war, although Douglas had been further weakened by a bout of Influenza.
Now she stood in front of the little house and shook her head, still amazed and almost disbelieving that she was actually there. She realized she didn’t have a key, and so she stepped up to the door and knocked.
Ruby answered the door, looking as cheerful and pretty as ever, if a little more careworn. Her mouth dropped open as she took in the sight of Ellen and then she threw her arms around her.
“Oh, Ellen! You never even said you were coming back!”
“I’m sorry,” Ellen said as her arms closed around Ruby. “I should have sent a telegram.”
“Oh it doesn’t matter, of course it doesn’t!” Ruby exclaimed. “Come in, come in. You look ready to drop.”
“I’m all right,” Ellen said, and she followed Ruby into the little kitchen where they’d shared so many companionable cups of tea.
Ruby made a pot of tea and she and Douglas regaled Ellen with all the news they’d stored up over the last four years. Ellen knew some of it from their letters but she was glad to hear it all again, to feel normal. Almost.
As the days passed she found herself still looking at the city as a stranger would. She went to the art school where she’d had so many lectures and lessons and the house on Blythewood Square where she’d held her exhibition and felt as if it had all happened to someone else.
She visited her old friend Amy who was now married with two young children, a cheerful matron who had grown just a little stout.
“We must have you over for supper when you are settled,” she said, and Ellen just nodded. She did not know when that would be.
She met with Fra Newbery, who officially offered her the position she’d been set to take up in 1914. She walked by Henry’s house, recalling how she’d mounted the steps in Amy’s emerald gown, full of nerves and hope. She thought of when she’d heard the news of his death, outside the offices of The Glasgow Herald. And she remembered his funeral, when she’d stood apart from his family, having been loved by him and yet not accepted by those he loved.
She felt like a ghost visiting a past life, or a spectator watching a play; none of it seemed to matter anymore, or at least not nearly as much as it once did.
“You’re not happy here,” Ruby stated a month after Ellen had returned to Glasgow. Spring had arrived and the city was ablaze with blooms.
“It’s not a question of happiness,” Ellen protested. “I just don’t know where I belong anymore, Ruby. Maybe nowhere.”
“We want you here,” Ruby insisted and Ellen smiled and sighed.
“I know. You and Douglas have both been so understanding, so dear. This is about me.” She hesitated and then said, “I think I need to go back to Canada. To return to Amherst Island.”
“To go so far…”
“I always said I’d go back,” Ellen said with
a whimsical smile. “I promised Aunt Rose…” She blinked back tears. “I know it won’t be the same as it was. Dyle’s gone and Jed’s wounded and Peter…” Her breath hitched as she recalled Rose’s last letter, that had hinted Peter was struggling to return to normal life. “I need to go back,” she said firmly.
The next day she booked her passage to New York, and within a week she was sailing across the Atlantic, just as she had back in 1904, when she’d been a girl of twelve with her Da by her side.
Fifteen long years had passed since then, and yet even so Ellen could remember exactly how it had felt to sail past the Statue of Liberty with her blank face and raised torch. Ellen had been so determined to be happy, to finally find her dreams. She’d had no idea that in just a few short weeks her father would have abandoned her for the rail yards of New Mexico, and her Aunt Ruth and Uncle Hamish would have shipped her off to Ontario, to another relative she didn’t even remember, now-beloved Aunt Rose.
She remembered too how she’d been herded into the Hall of Tears on Ellis Island, and how she’d been separated from her father and examined on her own by a surly inspector; her eyelids had been lifted with a buttonhook to check for trachoma, and a chalk x made on her coat because the inspector had decided she was too thin and small. She’d hastily turned her coat inside out before joining her father. She’d been a survivor even then.
Now, as a second class passenger, Ellen bypassed Ellis Island and stepped out onto the streets of Manhattan a free woman, the world spread before her.
She didn’t stay in New York, but took a train up to Seaton in order to visit her uncle Hamish before making her way on to Amherst Island.
Hamish had retired from working for the Sears Roebuck store in Seaton some years ago, and now he lived in a set of small rooms above the drugstore where Ellen had first tasted soda pop. He looked far older than Ellen remembered, with a few strands of flyaway hair combed over his head, his cheeks sunken in and his eyes a faded blue, but his smile was ready and warm when she embraced him, and he slipped her a few mint humbugs just as he’d done when she’d been twelve.