by Lizzie Page
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, stroking his arm.
‘Don’t be,’ he said. ‘I’ll be away from this horror soon, I got away alive.’
Not all patients were this equanimous, by any means. I held his smooth hand, noticing how it was perfectly unblemished. I felt the bones of his fingers; the nails were bitten down to the quick. He wore a handsome, expensive watch. The face had cracked but it showed the right time. Eleven fifteen a.m. Once I heard his breathing change and knew he was asleep, I could concentrate on my letter. Within the first few words, I was smiling with loathing. I had already known for a long time that George was an insufferable old git but this letter would have won prizes for pomposity.
May, he wrote (no dear or darling for me!),
I told the church group how you let the girls down this summer. They agreed that you are an abject failure as a mother and wife. A dereliction of duty so grave that were you in the Army, you would be court-martialled…
I nearly laughed. As if George knew what it was like in the Army!
I am devastated that I could have been associated with, let alone married to, someone so selfish as you. Your mother warned me long ago that you were incapable of love, but I would never have expected you to neglect our children.
Well, what are you going to do about it, George? I thought contemptuously. I’m still their mother, and you’re still a useless father.
To this end, I have been advised to employ a governess for the next school holidays. I can’t think why I didn’t do it sooner. I will ensure the governess will have excellent qualifications and skills and will be sufficient to supply the girls with everything they need.
A governess for the holidays, instead of me? Was this some kind of joke? I felt my blood run cold.
Bonnie was standing over me, wringing her hands. Again.
‘May, I’ve got a patient causing trouble: he’s got the shock—’
‘Wait a moment, Bonnie,’ I said impatiently. I had asked her not to interrupt me several times – why did she always think her patients were more important than mine? – but she still did this constantly. I was going to have to get firmer about it.
‘I’m scared…’
There is no need for you ever to return from France, May. Stay there. You belong in the mud.
Bonnie’s patient jumped out of his bed. Gosh, he had a lot of spring in him – couldn’t be that badly hurt! He ran down the ward like he was competing in the steeplechase. Like he was running for his life. Bonnie was no slacker; she set off at a sprint after him. I joined them at the tent entrance. Racing outside, he nearly tripped over the ropes, righted himself, nearly smacked into the stretcher-bearers carrying in a new patient. ‘Steady now. Steady on!’ one of them called out in a broad Lancashire accent.
By the time Bonnie reached him, it was too late. He blew his brains out just as she was approaching. I was slower and was behind her, but I still saw the whole thing: the gun he produced from his jacket pocket, the triangle his arm made, the way he dropped to the floor like a jug smashing. A bloody jug in bits all over the mud.
You’ll never see my daughters again, George had written. It serves you right, you’re an unfit mother and an American whore.
Things in Private Simon Lancaster’s bag
(deceased by injuries associated with shooting)
Photograph of Polly (Polly has golden hair. She is wearing a white blouse, a string of pearls and a self-conscious smile).
An empty Princess Mary box.
Letter to his mother. (I couldn’t read it. I couldn’t. I would make sure it was returned to her.)
A mascot.
A stamp. First class.
Cookie crumbs.
34
All leave was cancelled. As long as battle raged in the Somme, I was going nowhere.
‘Wait until things are clearer,’ Gordon advised over the operating table. ‘Here and there.’
I made a plan that I would go home at October half-term. Eight weeks. I would pick up the girls from school, I would ignore everything George had written – for what did he know about anything? His letter that day was the last I heard from him for some time. I sent letters to him, both long and short. I sent a card with a sweet picture of a toy bear on the front for his stupid forty-eighth birthday. I sent telegrams. I tried various approaches, from the cajoling: ‘I know you’re angry, George, but please give me a chance to explain,’ to the firm: ‘The girls need their mother, and I feel confident you always have their best interests at heart.’
I sent him kisses, even though I loathed writing them. I even borrowed the last dregs of Bonnie’s perfume to spritz on the back of an envelope. I sent him some pressed flowers that I had saved for the girls and said: ‘These remind me of when the children were young,’ even though they didn’t. The main things I remembered from when they were young were the fug of alcohol, the doors slamming, the dishes on the floor, trying – and failing – to protect them from the drunken ogre who ruled our house.
As summer heat gave way to autumn cool, I remembered the flowers on Battersea Common. I remembered watching the new recruits from Percy’s window. I remembered Percy’s flustered cleaning. But still the war was unrelenting and the Battle of the Somme continued.
I did get a letter from back home, but it wasn’t from George, it was from Mrs Crawford. I hoped there’d be news of the house: the girls, the new governess, even George’s gout, but there was nothing about any of them. She asked if I remembered her son, James. (Of course I did.) James was a good boy, she continued. He wrote regular as clockwork, but she hadn’t heard from him for a couple of weeks now. Could I look out for him once again? She had heard he was in the same area as I was.
In the same area? I thought wearily. I hoped he wasn’t. Nevertheless, I wrote back with as much confidence as I could muster, for I understood her fears. Also because I saw this as a way to try to get a message to my girls. PS. Mrs Crawford, if you see Joy or Leona, please tell them Mummy loves them and will see them soon.
I wrote my apologies to Elizabeth, but she didn’t reply. It wasn’t like her not to write, I supposed she was very angry with me. Perhaps I should have been more contrite in my apologies, but this intransigence now made me irritable with her – she had no idea what it was like out here.
When I wasn’t writing letters, I lay on my bed and wrote poetry. It was small squirm-inducing stuff at first, but gradually, one midnight, after a fourteen-hour shift trying to mend the broken, I found my writing voice. More and more, I looked forward to being alone with my notebook so I could pour out some of the terrible things I had seen in safety and without hurting anyone.
* * *
As October half-term approached, I booked a lodging at Leamington Spa. A room for three. I sent letters every day or so.
One time, I got a postcard back.
Why haven’t you written, Mumma? Xxx
PS: we love you, we are sorry if we upset you.
It was only then I realised they hadn’t been getting my letters. Someone was blocking them. The school, under George’s orders probably. I wept. How could they think I would abandon them? I had to outwit him, I had to. Work kept me going, being part of the team; writing poetry kept me going, but when I wasn’t occupied, I feared I was losing my mind again. Was the melancholia coming back? It mustn’t. What I had didn’t feel like darkness though, it felt like rage. It felt like fury.
By hook or by crook, I would see my girls soon.
* * *
After fourteen days in a row, I had one afternoon off, and Louis finally took me on that belated date to Paris. He didn’t say anything stupid like he was trying to cheer me up, he did say that a change of scene would do me good though.
Only eight days until I would be home.
Louis told me to wait outside a jewellery shop; he wanted to surprise me. I stood obediently in the street, shielding my eyes from the bright sunshine. How I loved being with Louis! He reminded me it was good to be alive. He came out smiling, with three beautiful brooches.
One each, ‘For you and your girls.’ As he pinned mine onto my collar, his eyes were filled with compassion. ‘You’ll be by their sides soon, May, I promise.’
Somehow this moved me more than anything else he had done. I knew that he was the little boy who had endured an enforced separation from his mother. I knew he, more than anyone else, was capable of putting himself in my girls’ shoes.
I had such a sense of dark foreboding about the trip to England though. I thought of the medium and her prophecy and I hated her too. I couldn’t bear the prospect of fighting with George, but I knew, if there was going to be a fight, I would have to see it through. I would have to. This was more than my life, this was my daughters.
35
The morning I was due to take the ship back I woke up feeling distinctly odd. Not odd in the melancholic way I used to feel in London, but in a new paralysed kind of way. Aches and pains. Hot and cold. Shivers. No matter, I told myself, I was on my way to my daughters.
About ten, I heard Kitty’s voice outside my tent – I still hadn’t been able to get up. She was calling, ‘May, the car is here,’ and then, in her gentle, authoritative tone, ‘Please come and say goodbye before you go.’
I called back that I was on my way. What an effort that took.
Anyway, I wasn’t.
I looked at my watch, but I couldn’t read it any more: I had lost the ability to tell the time. No matter, I told myself again, I just have to get dressed. That’s all.
Sweating profusely, delirious, I tried to dress. I had put my shirt on the wrong way round. Taking it off, I tried to start again. The effort of buttons exhausted me. This simple task was beyond me.
This was worse than wading through mud with the stretcher-bearers. This must be what swimming the Channel feels like, I told myself. I thought of Elizabeth and felt hot again. It had been so long since I had written to her. Perhaps I should write now. But I had forgotten how to write. How does one know which way round these things go on? And why had it never troubled me before? I put on one skirt, tried to pull on a second. This wasn’t going to work.
* * *
Matron found me collapsed on the floor. She was probably furious that I had crossed the invisible line.
I knew someone was talking to me, but I didn’t know who. Kitty, was it? I was doing my best to reply but I couldn’t get a word out. She was explaining to me that I must have caught an illness. Jaundice, exhaustion, pneumonia, flu, a catatonic tiredness at the worst possible time? It must have been Kitty because Kitty never did anything without explaining it first. It was a tic she had; Bonnie and I had often laughed about it. Now, I was grateful to her, as she laid me down: ‘I’m putting you on your bed now, May,’ and ‘What a beautiful brooch, May, I’m unpinning it. I’m just putting it here, now, on your table here… Oh, you have two more, May! They are so beautiful, they must be for the…’
* * *
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Boo.
Boo who?
Don’t cry!
I spy Leona lying in bed reading aloud, sucking her thumb. Mummy, why didn’t you come?
I spy Joy: You never come, do you, Mummy? Daddy says you’re useless.
That’s not true, I said loudly. I am doing my best.
Leona holding a buttercup to my chin. You really like butter, Mummy. Do you not like me?
Joy in her tennis whites. Mummy, I’ll teach you how to serve.
I know how to serve, darling.
I heard voices – ‘Wake up!’ – trying to reach me but not quite.
The silver birch in front of the door at home. Hang onto that.
Images of boys drowning in mud, images of mud, waves of it, seas of it. Young men calling out for their mothers. Joy calling out for me.
Elizabeth diving into the lake but she remains upside down. It is her feet talking. ‘May, you should have stuck to cats. Girlfriends first, Louis last. Drowning in between.’
Her cats, staring at me, wandering off.
I imagined the telegram man being woken up again. I saw in my mind’s eye Louis walking into the tent, telling him to send a message to England: May Turner is dead. Long live George.
I felt my arm raised, Gordon’s voice, clear as mud: ‘Out of danger.’
Are we ever out of danger?
All I want is my girls. I saw the Channel red between us. I saw the sea, the sea, and everything was red.
Favourite memories of my girls
Coming down the stairs at school and flinging themselves onto me.
The way Joy shyly puts her hand in mine when no one is looking or says, ‘Mummy, I’m not really angry with you, it’s just I get so annoyed sometimes.’
Brushing Leona’s lovely frizz, looking into the mirror, seeing our faces next to each other.
Reading or chatting together in bed, a warm and cuddly daughter on each side.
36
When I woke, Louis was dozing in a chair next to me, an open book stretched across his chest. I was in my bed, in my tent, but I didn’t recognise that chair. A bunch of wilting flowers were in an unfamiliar vase on the old bedside table. I vaguely remembered being frightened by the petals in the middle of the night. But they were just silly petals. I tried to speak, but his name didn’t come out as Louis, but as ‘Ooh’.
‘Thank God, you’re all right!’
Jumping down from his chair, Louis knelt by my side. He held me tight; he was sobbing.
I’m not all right, I thought. I have ice in my heart. The girls… The girls…
‘How long have I been sick?’
He rubbed his bloodshot eyes. ‘Nine, no, ten days.’
‘What day is it today?’
‘It is…’ He paused as though he too had lost count of the days. ‘November second.’
I sobbed.
I hadn’t realised Matron was there. Louis spoke, and she responded in soft tones that she’d never used with me before.
‘Has she had a drink?’
‘Not yet…’
Matron poured water into my tin cup, the very one I had brought with me from Battersea, and they both watched me drink it with satisfaction.
‘Nurse Louis,’ I said tenderly. Even Matron gave a whisker of a smile.
‘He’s barely left your side, May. You’re a lucky woman.’
‘I know that,’ I said. But as I thought of my darling girls – what must they think of me now? – I didn’t feel lucky.
37
I didn’t ask him to, but Louis told Winston about my troubles with George. Winston was no longer First Lord of the Admiralty – ‘Long story,’ Louis said wryly – but he was still a man of influence. Winston immediately said he’d get the Home Office to put in a word. I liked that about Winston: it was never ‘that’s not my department’ with him, he always went out of his way to listen to a problem and then try to do something to fix it.
A few days later, a note came from George. I ripped it open eagerly. It was just a few scrawny lines long.
I have never said you can’t see the girls, he said. (He lied.) On the contrary, if you are back in London at Christmas, you are welcome to spend the holidays with them.
I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t lost my daughters, of course I hadn’t.
Winston, I thought, you’re a bloody genius.
* * *
Louis visited me whenever he could and he would take me for short walks. I wasn’t well enough to go very far. Sometimes he came with his new driver, a fella who was sweet on Kitty. We talked of a double date, but nothing ever came of it.
‘Why not, Kitty?’ I asked, remembering her not believing in love.
‘Does everyone have to be lined up in twos like the animals in Noah’s ark?’ she said with uncharacteristic vehemence.
‘No, I don’t suppose they do,’ I said, surprised. ‘And I’m not sure how the ark worked anyway…’
Kitty gave me her slow smile. I was forgiven. ‘Can you imagine the noise?’
‘Can you imagi
ne the honk?’
‘Can you imagine the excrement?’ joined in Bonnie.
I thought to myself, not unlike a field hospital in the Somme, but I didn’t say it.
* * *
Louis was my constant. One time, while we were taking one of our short walks, my notebook fell out my bag.
‘Anything important?’ he said, looking at it.
‘My lists,’ I said shyly. ‘And some silly stuff…’
‘Some of it reads like poetry,’ he said, eyeing me closely, so I admitted it was. I told him about my love for Walt Whitman’s poems, and how, during the worst days of the battle, to sit at that blank unsullied page, to work out my thoughts there, was just marvellous relief.
Louis listened carefully as usual. Then he said:
‘There are many who write incredibly about the war: Owen, Sassoon, Brooke, important, profound stuff, but…’
‘But there aren’t any women?’ I finished for him.
‘Exactly,’ he said with his magnificent smile.
‘Who’d want to hear my point of view though?’ I asked nervously, but my heart was pumping fast.
‘I would,’ he said. ‘Many people would.’
‘I love you,’ I said, and it was as though the words had escaped from my mouth without my consent. I slapped my hand over my lips. ‘Sorry.’
Louis pulled my hand away from my mouth, kissed me and said it, the first time of many: ‘May, I love you too.’
* * *
While I was recovering from my illness and growing stronger, Gordon was suffering. A telegram had come from the Brighton Pavilion. Karim had now contracted pneumonia. Things were touch and go.