by Maggie Humm
“It’s all claret now, Mama,” Eliza said wistfully. “No more lager bier!”
Lily wasn’t sure how to reply because out beyond this little glamorous island was an arduous, wartime London existence. The crimson banquettes under the mirrors, and the gilt and caryatids on the painted ceiling, made the evening unreal, like a stage set with the customers as actors; she felt a tremor of guilt at delighting in the spectacle and Marie’s largesse.
“I’ve read in the Times about riots, at the high price of food,” Lily murmured to Eliza in a low voice, looking down at the table covered in dishes.
“Keeping this lovely place secure in an increasingly distressed city is an art in itself,” Marie said, as if overhearing the whisper. “We need to support any kind of creative work, including chefs.”
It was an odd way of thinking about art, but the splendour couldn’t displace Lily’s decision, and she wouldn’t be deterred from her plans. Life was speeding up. The deaths and catastrophes in France wouldn’t stop, at least not for some time, and she needed to be part of the real world. Wanting to tell Marie about her plan to become a nurse, she stared at Eliza. Was this the moment? Eliza nodded, clearing her throat, and looked directly at her mother.
“We are courageous, Mama, you and I,” Eliza said, glancing at Lily. “We travelled together through Europe, seeking out artistic groups wherever they were to be found. You gave us the freedom to paint.” Pausing, she quickly sipped some wine. “Lily and I need to be free now in a different way—to help injured soldiers. To give our sympathy and care, not merely to artists, but to poor wounded souls back from the front.” She sipped again. “We’ve decided to become nurses.”
Coffee had arrived while Eliza was delivering her little speech, and Marie was silent, moving a sugar bowl back and forth in front of her as the waiter poured.
“I do understand, girls,” she replied at last, looking up. “Experience is like light in water. It’s always moving, shimmering as the wind changes. I hope the wind comes from the balmy west for you both, not the cold north.”
Lily could see a surge of relief crossing Eliza’s face.
“We’ll share museum visits and painting, Mama, when we can,” she said.
Lily felt the warmth of Marie’s eloquent support sweep over her. She was touched by the way Marie was prepared to hear Eliza out and even seemed to agree with their decision. With a broad smile, she clutched Marie’s hand to say goodbye when they left the restaurant. Buttoning up her coat, she thought how it would be if she had a mother at home when Marie, with a concerned look, asked if she’d be safe.
“I take the Hampstead line south, until it joins my Piccadilly line,” she said. “I’ll soon be back with Father. And I have my trusty torch.”
The three women walked side by side into Tottenham Court Road so Marie could give a blast from her whistle for a hansom, and, embracing them both, Lily turned purposefully towards the tube station.
1915
THE MILITARY SISTERS NURSING HOME HAD AN IMPRESSIVE façade, and Lily scanned right up to the roof, jingling in her hand the correct fare for the hansom cab driver. She was early as usual. Why was she always too prompt for every appointment, any arrangements with friends and all meetings with strangers? It was a form of nervous disorder, Father had joked, and she stood anxious, checking her bags.
“Shall I help you, Miss, to carry the bags indoors?” the driver asked.
“No, thank you,” she replied. “I can manage.”
That morning she’d sat silently in her bedroom, Father keeping himself busy in his study and the house completely calm. She was glad he hadn’t questioned her decision to live in the nurses’ hostel instead of at home.
“The hostel is so convenient, Father,” she’d told him, “around the corner from Queen Alexandra’s Hospital, and I’ll earn £20 a year to pay for board and lodging with free laundry and a uniform allowance.”
He’d been less pleased about paying for her nurse’s training, probably hoping the probationer work would deter her, but she’d survived the aches and endless carbolic washing.
“I assume you’ve chosen this particular hospital because it’s alongside the National Gallery of British Art?” he’d asked.
“I think the War Office has already commandeered much of the gallery, Father,” she’d replied, “and I’ll have little free time from nursing to see much art.”
Before leaving she’d peeked into her small studio. The easel stood empty next to the window, and her unfinished canvases were carefully turned away from any sunlight, with their backs to the room. The chair where sitters posed was forlorn, the sunny morning revealing its lumps and hollows, exhausted by holding upright whomever she placed between its wide arms. Feeling a wave of nostalgia, she wondered if perhaps she should examine Mrs. Ramsay’s unfinished portrait, but it would unsettle her. The possibility of never completing the painting was too upsetting.
As Lily tucked the bags under her arms, she noticed a newspaper boy near the hostel rolling papers to hand to customers. The news had announced the war would end by Christmas, but Christmas had passed, the year had turned too fast into the next. How many years of war would there be now?
She’d told the maid that morning not to bother to light the fire. “We must economize with coal now,” she’d said, but Ethel had refused.
“Your last day in the house must be cheerful, Miss. You mightn’t have your own fire in the hostel,” she’d said, expertly laying small coals above the folded newspaper firelighters.
“Thank goodness the Times is useful for something,” Father always used to say as she helped the maid plait the paper strands, tucking in the final points. This morning Lily had sat with empty hands, staring at the maid’s broad back and neck as she worked at the grate, a shape she’d painted again and again, when Father entered, handing her an envelope. She’d embraced him, and he’d stood uncomfortably, moving his weight from one foot to the other.
“This is a small amount of money,” he’d said, “but it will enable you to acquire necessities in the hostel.”
“You’re too kind, Father,” she’d said. “You’ve been more than generous to me already.”
Murmuring, “Not at all,” he’d told her he’d be in his study and to call him when the hansom arrived. The sight of a letter in Father’s hands had made her hope for a reply at last from Mrs. Ramsay or Louis and Hilary.
Lily turned now from the newspaper boy towards the hostel, struggling with her bags, puzzled about Louis. Last year she’d excitedly posted to his studio a catalogue of the Society of Lady Artists Summer Exhibition. The number of artists was rather too many, and it was a group, not a solo show, but the alphabet listings always favoured her name. When Lily had told Eliza, she’d smiled.
“The exhibition is too parochial to attract Louis,” she’d said, “and far too modern. Lily, we’re the future, and Louis is the past.”
In St Ives, everything she’d seen, everything she’d felt, seemed to be filtered through her impressions of Louis, what he said, how he behaved, and when he’d come close to kissing her, as if he’d painted a faint wash over her perceptions of the world. Lily hadn’t slept well the night before she left Brompton Road. Hoping Louis hadn’t enlisted, she held on tight to the bags and looked up at the hostel, imagining the wide bow window at the top of the building, under the gables, might be in her room—but it was probably far too grand for a lowly probationer nurse to occupy. Above the white porch, the resplendent coat of arms with its cross and motto “sub cruce candida” (her Latin was so rusty now—under the cross, perhaps?) was a different pattern from her uniform badge with its anchor and golden circle. Neither emblem was at all military looking.
“We are to remain civilians, Miss Briscoe,” the friendly nursing officer had said reassuringly at her interview.
Glad nurses weren’t meant to be surrogate army personnel as in some other London hospitals, although embarrassed when Father paid for the uniform because her allowance wasn’t due until t
he end of the month, she prized the tight black belt and ornate clasp. “It’s almost art nouveau,” she’d boasted to Marie.
Each side of the porch’s pink-and-white striped bricks shone a welcome in the winter sunlight, and she entered the long hall, proudly clutching two bags under each arm. Today at least, she was glad to be alone, feeling all coloured in, even if her outline was a little blurred.
A tall uniformed woman strode towards her. “Miss Briscoe, I believe?” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Welcome to Queen Alexandra’s. I’m Chief Matron.”
Lily wasn’t sure if she should salute but thought perhaps a brief nod would suffice given she’d several things to carry. “Thank you. I’m so glad to be working here,” she replied, “helping the war effort.” In her own ears her voice sounded strained.
“You’re based in Ward C,” Matron continued.
“And Miss Stillman?” Lily asked, mentally crossing her fingers.
“Miss Stillman is attached to Barry Ward,” Matron said, scanning a list, “and also sleeping on a different floor of the hostel.”
A pity, but there’d be little time anyway for socializing. Shifts began at 7:00 a.m. through until the night nurses came to relieve them at 8:00 p.m., she’d been told, and they had barely an hour for lunch. If they could both avoid the Sunday service, they might find time to sketch together or enjoy walking from Millbank along the Thames to St James Park. Looking as attentive as possible while Matron showed her to her dormitory, Lily dropped her bags next to her allotted bed.
“Once unpacked, you’ll need to ask a member of your family to come and collect your bags, Miss Briscoe,” Matron continued. “As you can see, each nurse has one low cabinet beside her bed in the dormitory. We reserve as much room as possible for supplies for the wounded, and we expect many more patients to arrive.”
Listening carefully to every word, Lily made a gesture of agreement, nodding her head, detecting a foreign accent. Queen Alexandra favoured nurses from her homeland of Denmark, the Morning Post had said, and, absurdly, an image from Hans Christian Andersen slid into her mind, the fairy tale she’d always been too scared to read without her mother holding her, about the terrifying little house with chicken legs running fast everywhere. Matron appeared too serious for fairy stories. Looming over Lily, slim with strands of blonde hair tucked carefully into her cap, she could be a life model in a studio if it weren’t for the uniform and the tired, bloodshot eyes.
“The wards are named after men who won the Victoria Cross,” Matron continued, “except Barry Ward is named after James Barry, who was discovered to be a woman after death, hence the first female to have qualified in medicine in Britain.” She beamed at Lily.
Lily tried to look appropriately impressed but was a little put out to be in a nameless ward. Matron shook her hand and briskly left the dormitory.
The next morning the wind was blowing chill moist air straight up the river. It was still dark when Lily joined the group of nurses rushing from the hostel to the hospital.
“How long have you been working here?” Lily asked the nearest nurse. “I’ve just finished my training.”
“It must be almost five months now,” she replied with a grimace. “Seems much longer.”
“Well, I’m happy to help out with anything,” Lily said, wanting to make friends quickly—but would her scant nursing tuition last year cover all the problems the day might throw at her?
Climbing up the main staircase, at last she found Ward C. It was spacious, with large regular timber-framed sash windows running from floor to ceiling. The top windows were pushed open, but the air was warmed by the numbers of men lying on their beds and sitting around little tables playing cards, and she remembered Mrs. Ramsay always saying windows in bedrooms should be open and doors firmly shut for the children’s health. Carefully closing the ward doors behind her, she stepped lightly down the length of the room.
Told by Matron to join the nurses cleaning the floor, Lily watched the patients whistling and encouraging a slim blue-eyed young nurse to bend over to reach areas inaccessible to their short brooms. Lily glanced at Matron, but she didn’t seem to notice. Perhaps she turned a blind eye, not reprimanding the men since they’d need to feel manly, especially those with amputated limbs. Lily pulled down her skirt as low as possible and winked at the young woman, guessing the men with pale, rigid faces who seemed not to hear anything must be the shell-shocked patients. They ignored her, twitching and murmuring, staring intently at the ceiling, or hiding their faces away in their pillows.
“We specialize in gas gangrene, shell shock, and trench fever,” Matron said as they swept. “The more severely injured go elsewhere, to the First London General Hospital.”
She’d have stepped up to the task of nursing horrifically damaged men, but thank goodness she didn’t have to. The card-playing patients seemed remarkably fit, especially with their neatly trimmed moustaches and clean-shaven chins. Wearing their uniforms, not sleeping suits, the breeches and tight-fitting tunics made them look taller, healthier than they probably felt. Medals glistened on one man’s jacket, and two or three others with wristwatches like bright turnips constantly checked them, as if afraid if they neglected to notice the movement of time, they’d let death creep in.
One man lay uncovered on his bed, being washed down by an older nurse, and Lily flushed. She mustn’t be embarrassed seeing naked patients. The anatomy classes at Heatherley’s had been a good preparation, and all the sketching in Paris and the British Museum had given her a fine understanding of male bodies, even if of idealized Greeks. Surely they’d accept her clumsy efforts to body wash and collect their bedpans. They’d been nursed at the front and in triage at Charing Cross when their trains arrived from the docks.
During the week Ward C began discharging some of its patients. The men in their own uniforms had already left the hospital before she arrived for her shift the next day.
“Nurse Briscoe, please thoroughly wipe down their bedsteads, scrub out bedside lockers, and fumigate the mattresses,” Matron said, lifting an already cleaned mattress to inspect the underside and tut-tutting at the nearest nurse. At least Matron didn’t shout, and Lily scrubbed as hard as she could. With fewer patients, the ward’s temperature seemed to fall, and the bitter air sweeping through the open windows made her hands numb and white in the buckets of cold water. There was little time in the nurses’ station to drink the mug of cocoa that she clutched gratefully, although for a moment she couldn’t feel anything at all with such frozen fingers, deep in one of those powerless states when she forgot she existed, or at least forgot Lily had ever existed before Nurse Briscoe.
When she returned to the ward, Matron summoned them all to her desk.
“Nurses,” she said, “the Highlanders arrive within the hour.”
A vision of bright tartan skirts above hairy knees and men blowing bagpipes with gusto danced before her.
“Many of the men have severe lacerations to the backs of their legs,” Matron continued, “from their frozen mud-caked kilt pleats after days in sodden freezing trenches.”
Lily watched the younger nurses restraining giggles, but luckily Matron was already walking over to a group of doctors beginning the ward rounds. She led five doctors in identical pristine white coats from bed to bed, and Lily joined the other nurses, who imitated Matron, holding their hands gripped behind their backs and standing deferentially. They rushed to take a pulse or straighten bedclothes as soon as Matron or the doctors ordered, and then stood motionless again.
With Father and her governess, she’d appreciated the easy conversations, and in Paris no one had demanded anything. In St Ives it had been more a taking of instruction rather than acting on command, although she’d never felt brave enough to disagree with Olsson. Now she was being taught to hide her identity, to secrete away any personality traits, to become indistinguishable from any other nurse except on the odd Sunday when she might be free to meet Eliza. Yesterday she’d discovered she couldn’t even paint
in the dormitory away from the wards because someone would interrupt—ask to see her work or, even worse, to be sketched. In any case, she was always too tired.
Lily glanced through a window at the Thames. She needed to feel a boundary between her and the ward before she melted entirely into a nurse. The shoreline, which before the war visibly edged the river, was now obscured by wooden huts built all along the embankment by the War Office in identical brown shapes with no markings to attract a Zeppelin attack, like a collection of children’s building blocks. The sky was overcast. A year ago, she’d have tried to paint the reflection of clouds in the river, without imitating Monet and Whistler, but now, lacking street lighting, the view could hardly be said to be a nocturne anyway. Claustrophobic, enclosed indoors for such long hours without rest, she longingly eyed a recently cleaned empty bed, but Matron was pointing to discarded dressings lying in a succession of kidney-shaped bowls.
“I need these removed immediately,” Matron ordered, and Lily swiftly collected as many as possible. Matron approved of nurses who could carry several on each arm. The lingering stench of dried blood and mud from the trenches on the dirty bandages was overwhelming. Trying hard not to gag, taking rapid shallow breaths, she managed to carry eight bowls into the nurses’ station and threw the dressings into bags marked with warning triangles, filling the sink. The carbolic solution made her hands dry and cracked. Examining the marks, she imagined sketching the outlines of fingers when they were allowed to sit down, but this wouldn’t be for another hour or two at least.
Watching any new arrivals being stretchered into the ward, their name labels swaying in rhythm with the stride of the bearers, she pictured Louis as one of the injured and dreamed of taking his hand, holding it to her cheek, his eyes instantly opening. Sighing, she finished cleaning the last of the stained bowls.
“Nurse Briscoe, stop daydreaming.” Matron stood at the door. “You must finish your tasks. The Highlanders are about to arrive.”