by Lizzie Page
‘Tomorrow morning?’ (So much for playing it cool.)
‘What time?’
‘Ten?’
‘I’ll be here.’
* * *
Louis was there at nine. Bonnie heard the car crawl up the road and rushed in to tell me. She was almost as excited as I was. ‘May is going out with a gentleman!’ I heard her tell one of the patients. The poor soul had slipped a disc and couldn’t have been less interested.
I kept Louis waiting until gone ten though: this was my deal with myself to prove that I was no pushover. The sun was still shining, it was freakishly good weather. When the sun shone like this it was hard not to be optimistic. I asked where we were going, but he said it was a surprise. The way he said it sent a thrill through me.
‘Just tell me, is it in another country this time?’
His mouth twitched. ‘No, it’s only one hour away…’
‘Paris?’ I suggested hopefully.
‘We’ll go there together one day,’ he said, which was music to my ears. I wanted to kiss his face. Control yourself! I admonished myself.
‘But not today?’
‘Not today,’ he said, staring straight ahead. ‘Today I have other plans for you.’
As we drove away from the front line, the mud tracks turned into roads and the scenery grew more ordinary. By ordinary, I mean it looked less like a mud wasteland and more like French countryside. We put the brown, the grey and the barren behind us and headed towards the green. There was a good population of trees here. At one road, I was surprised to find several bushy trees lined up in a row and, in the breeze, it looked rather as though they were bowing down to us. Silly, I thought, because it should have been us bowing down to them.
Louis asked me about my childhood in Chicago. As I was talking, I surprised myself with some of the things that seemed to burst out of me. I really was an exile from not one but two places, an outsider everywhere I went. Louis was nodding to himself. He said, ‘I know that feeling well.’
He had polio as a boy and the hard recovery had left him feeling slow among his peers in some ways, older in other ways. He told me he had adored his mother, but when he was ill, he was sent away to a hospital in Switzerland. His voice cracked as he told me how he had not been allowed to see her. Soon after he was brought home, maybe only one or two months, it was hard to remember, she had died. A brain haemorrhage. The family friends who brought him up were fine people, but they didn’t like to speak of her, and he had missed her terribly.
‘So that’s my sorry tale,’ he said gruffly. ‘What’s yours?’
I always preferred to talk of my late Grandma Leonora and her achievements, but I also gave Louis a brief summary of my parents and told him about the route out I had mistakenly chosen at sixteen. How I had thought George was my port in a storm, only it transpired the port was run-down and dangerous, and that storms blow over anyway.
When Louis asked me about the hospital, I told him about my work and my friends. I also told him that a medium had come to visit us.
‘A medium? What’s wrong with a large?’
I groaned and slapped his thigh. Honestly, Louis!
‘She mentioned you,’ I added coyly. ‘She said you’re complex.’
‘Well, I can’t imagine you going for a simpleton.’ I didn’t need to look at his face to know he was grinning again.
I should have said, what makes you think I’ve gone for you? but I was too caught up in the moment. Everything felt so right with Louis. I hadn’t known things could feel this right, it was a revelation.
* * *
The river was surrounded by thick sprays of reeds and brushes. Louis looked up at me, rubbing his cheek cautiously. ‘You did say you loved water… I thought it would remind you of… where was it… Tooting Bathing Lake?’
Did he remember everything I said?
Louis undressed down to his undershirt and long johns. He stacked his clothes in an orderly bundle before, without hesitation, walking towards the water. Oh, dear God, I thought, what was wrong with me? I felt like my heart was doing cartwheels and somersaults.
‘Louis!’ I called after him. ‘I may need some help.’ I didn’t normally need assistance, but I didn’t want him to disappear. He apologised, unbuttoned my skirt and helped me off with my blouse. His fingers were cool on my back. My skirt fell to the floor, leaving me in my bloomers, and I struggled out of the blouse so that I was wearing only my soft corset. Louis kept his eyes on the water ahead. The water was sparkling in the sunlight. I waded after him. It was warmer than I had expected.
Louis was as strong a swimmer as he was a dancer. I watched the rise and fall of those beautiful arms over his narrow, yet muscular, shoulders. The way he punctuated the water. Did he have to do everything so well? The ripples spread out from where he swam, concentric circles getting bigger and bigger. I thought, maybe Elizabeth would approve of him after all.
I swam out to him, holding my neck high to protect my hair. That was a waste of time since as soon as I was close enough, he splashed me, and I splashed him back. We splashed up a storm. A little voice inside me was saying, you can relax now. He caught me by the waist and, for a moment, I thought he was going to twirl me around as he had done at La Poupée, but instead he pulled me closer and closer until there was nowhere to go. His skin was cold and wet, his chest was broad and strong. I put my hands on his shoulders, looking at him admiringly and without shame.
This was here. This was now.
* * *
The sun was setting when Louis drove me back to base. It was hard to believe we could have an afternoon as magical as this, during this terrible war, but we had. Perhaps because the war was so ugly, beautiful things seemed all the more magical.
In the car, Louis asked about my girls again. ‘Do they like cricket?’
‘Not really.’
‘Bridge? Dominos?’
‘Not really, no…’
‘Soccer?’
‘They play tennis.’
‘Ah well,’ he said. He took one hand off the steering wheel and put my hand in his. His hand was so big that mine fitted right inside it. ‘I’ve always wanted to learn tennis.’
* * *
I went looking for Kitty to report my safe return but was told that she was with Gordon in the operating tent. Later, I found Gordon washing his hands.
‘Is Kitty your assistant now?’
‘She’s talented. The boy was riddled with shrapnel, she managed to get most of it out.’
‘I don’t know if that’s orthodox,’ I said.
He ignored that. ‘Do you want to learn to do it too?’
‘Not really.’ I wrinkled up my nose. ‘I’m happy just being a nurse.’
Gordon paused. He dried his hands, then squeezed my shoulder. ‘No just about it. However, it might be a good skill to learn – you might need it in the future.’
I frowned. I understood what he was getting at, I just didn’t believe it.
* * *
There is this idea that nothing changes out here. That we are static, that we are all, quite literally, stuck in the mud. Sometimes, I think it too. That everything is the same, everything is waiting, everything is routine – but then other times, I realise that we are at the heart of an enormous shift, cultural, technological. We are at the forefront of a revolution: our equipment advances, our skills develop, our compassion grows, our morals change, our responsibilities and our passions increase. We are different from how we were yesterday.
28
Matron had done over one year’s service without leave however she didn’t want a break. She was worried about a decline in morals while she was away. I overheard Gordon speaking to her soothingly.
‘Bonnie’s fiancé is in England. Kitty is wedded to her work. And May is a respectable mother of young daughters. I can’t think of a more reliable team.’
She sighed deeply. ‘We’ll see.’
I helped her carry out her trunk to the waiting car. I was looking forward
to having the tent to myself for a few days. Take that, invisible line! I had to conceal my delight at her departure and I was proud of how well I managed it.
‘Stay well, Matron,’ I said earnestly. ‘We’ll be fine.’
‘You can’t wait for me to go, Nurse Turner!’ she snapped, slamming the passenger door.
Clearly, I hadn’t hidden it as well as I had thought.
* * *
Meanwhile, I had received permission for two weeks’ leave in July and I couldn’t wait. I was going to fetch the girls from school and we would take the train straight to Dorset. I had studied the train timetables and planned our packed lunches with military precision: Scotch egg for Leona, cheese sandwich for Joy. The girls didn’t like the same foods (deliberately, I suspected).
Elsie Knocker had written to me with the address of some friends who had a charming cottage on the coast that we could stay in. Five days there: walking on the beach, hunting fossils and eating as much ice cream as we could manage. After that, five days in London. How I looked forward to showing them the sights! We would visit the Tower of London. I had taken the girls there once before, when they were tiny: Joy had wet herself in the Bloody Tower and Leona could remember nothing about it, not even the sparkling Crown Jewels and the suits of armour that had so enthralled her at the time. I had also pencilled in the Natural History Museum and was looking forward to seeing the great diplodocus as much as the girls were. The arguments over how to pronounce it had been going on for years. Apparently, my way was wrong and ‘American’. Any gaps in the schedule would be spent at the tennis club – the girls always wanted me to watch them play. And then, the pièce de résistance, timed to perfection: Elizabeth’s Channel swim. We’d all go to cheer her on! I couldn’t wait, this was an event for the record books.
I ticked the days off the calendar in my diary. I dreamt about my girls running down the school steps, past the artificial Greek columns gleaming white in the sunshine, shouting, ‘Mummy, Mummy!’ I dreamt about sniffing their hair.
* * *
Throughout May 1916, I was mostly in dressings or convalescence. Field Hospital 19 expanded once again. We opened an isolation unit, a depressing place where young men coughed up blood and stared at the ceiling. Everyone was waiting for something, to get better or to get worse. One time after a twelve-hour shift, I went back to my tent and, I have no idea how it got there, who had been bribed or won over or what, but there on my flat pillow lay a bright daffodil and a note in the most beautiful handwriting:
I hereby promise to always make your life more complicated. Yours sincerely, a very complex man.
I held it to my heart. I didn’t want to put it down. I even permitted myself a love-sick sigh. Major Louis Spears. He was worth it. I would never let him go, never.
29
Early June, Kitty received word from home that her mother had died. She wasn’t told much more about it, other than that her mother had gone to bed as usual but didn’t wake up. It seemed incredible that someone would just die, peacefully, in their sleep. No shelling, no bombing, no bullets, nothing enormous, just slipping undramatically, quietly, away. We had grown unused to that. It was Kitty’s time to go back.
I missed her terribly: I loved having Kitty to bounce ideas off. Bonnie was not sensible enough, Matron was too judgemental, Gordon spent most of his time typing long, coded letters to the Brighton Pavilion… Kitty was the closest thing I had to a special right-hand girl out here. Although our experiences and expectations of life were vastly different, we shared so much.
Louis was doing an inspection of the area and asked if I had an hour or two to spare. Gordon gave permission for me to go; Matron would have certainly said no. She had returned from a wet week in Weston-super-Mare no more invigorated than she ever was. Gordon was still desperately worried about Karim – who was not finding Brighton Pavilion a home from home at all – so he may have indulged Matron less than he usually did. Consequently, those two were brewing up a big storm. I suspected it was also the stress of being without Nurse Kitty, the safest pair of hands on our team.
Louis and I drove towards the front line. The air was even grimier here and the explosions were so much louder. Despite the recent sunshine, the ground was far muddier than near the hospital; I slipped a couple of times and he had to grab my arm. I was too hot in my borrowed helmet and Louis’ coat. We walked through the communication trenches and closer to the front line. Men saluted him. He talked to some officers. They had a fabulous dugout with soft chairs, radios and telephones. They’d really made themselves at home. It reminded me of Gordon’s tent but this was less exotic, more English somehow.
Further along we went, along these winding passageways. Duckboards with signs for places I had heard of, but never been to.
‘You take me to the nicest places,’ I whispered. Louis pretended he hadn’t heard. He knew I didn’t care where he took me though. Just being with him was enough for me.
We came upon a massive piece of machinery. Men were gathered around it, polishing it, posing on it as though it were an enormous plaything. Louis went over to one of them and I joined him a little sheepishly. I was out of place here and everyone knew it. I wanted to keep quiet too. I had heard some of the boys going on about Americans this and Americans that. I knew it was just soldiers’ talk, but still.
‘Ten men?’ Louis was saying.
‘Ten men ain’t enough, sir. We’re looking at fourteen at least.’
Louis looked shocked and impressed, so I tried to look shocked and impressed too.
It had to be held down otherwise it would shake itself free. It was a monster of a machine with a great snout for a nose, paws at the front. I imagined it breathing fire into the German trenches.
Louis told me it was called a howitzer, which I thought but didn’t like to say sounded quite German to me.
Along its long cylindrical trunk, someone – I don’t know if it was here or where it was manufactured – had painted the word ‘Mother’.
‘Why does it say “mother”?’ I asked Louis.
‘Because it can inflict a lot of damage.’
I laughed. ‘Maybe they met my mother!’
* * *
The trucks were bringing in munitions. The men stood in lines unloading boxes and boxes of them and passing them on. And there were tanks too, giant vehicles from the future. I had never seen anything so modern or so chilling.
‘They’ll be safe in there,’ said Louis. ‘It’s meant to intimidate –’ He gestured – ‘like the way a goalie spreads out his arms to scare the opposition.’
I didn’t know that goalies spread out their arms. I looked at him. It was like he was talking a different language and this, 1,000 yards from our base, was a different country. A makeshift terrible country.
‘So, we’ve got plenty of good weaponry,’ I repeated. I tried to make myself sound intellectual, but I couldn’t. My heart was in my boots.
‘The best,’ he said. ‘To think, when the war started we thought it would be…’ He shivered, ‘…knives and shields. And now, it’s about planes, tanks, the stuff of H.G. Wells.’
* * *
Back in the car, when it was just the two of us, Louis swore me to secrecy. I wasn’t to tell anyone anything about what we’d seen.
‘Cross my heart,’ I said lightly. I was going to joke about the likelihood of Matron or Gordon being foreign spies, conveying information perhaps to Rasputin or the Tsar, but I noticed he was scowling – I wasn’t taking this seriously enough. ‘The war will be won by engineers,’ Louis said.
‘And the handsome liaison officers.’ I patted his hand proudly but he went on as though I hadn’t spoken. Since November last year, he explained, our men had been burrowing, tunnelling beneath us. Like moles, I thought, like in The Wind in the Willows. They were going to blow the Germans into the air. Down below, there were mines, and explosions, and glorious work. I glanced down at our boots, at the earth beneath our car: ‘Under here? Right now?’ How could this be?
‘Not quite here, May, but not far.’ He looked anxious. ‘Hopefully, it’ll be a success.’
‘I’m sure it will.’ I squinted, trying to work out his feelings on it. ‘When will it start?’
‘Whenever they’re ready,’ he said cryptically. He paused. ‘Winston thinks it’s going to be a disaster.’
‘Why?’
‘He thinks the powers-that-be are obsessed with the Western Front.’
‘What do you think?’
Louis had a tendency towards fence-sitting. I had no doubt he would be one of the world’s best diplomats, but it sometimes meant he could be difficult to disagree with. ‘On one hand, we need to break the deadlock.’
‘And on the other?’
He stared right ahead of him. ‘We might not win.’
* * *
It wasn’t until after my shift, back in the tent that evening with Matron snoring obliviously alongside me, when I had more time to think about it, that I realised exactly how unsettling the day had been. I had seen our weapons of destruction. More ways to kill. Better ways to murder. More effective ways to wipe out the opposition. I needed to talk to Louis again, I decided. I needed to be with him. It felt as though time was running out.
It was a warm June night, but for me, there was a chill in the air. I prayed my girls were safe and I quietly got up to put on a cardigan.
Things I miss in England (apart from the girls)
Baths. Hot, bubbly, wonderful baths.
The sapphire blue of Tooting Bathing Lake.
The way Elizabeth hesitates just for a second before she laughs, loudly.
Her pale eyelashes. Her marmalade hair.