The Darkness and the Thunder

by Stewart Binns

  She turns and looks out through the window of the Esperides, out across the picturesque Greek bay, which is glowing blood red in the setting sun. How different it is from the grey waters of Cardiff Docks and the industrial squalor of its grime-covered buildings. And how different is her life since those harrowing weeks spent alone in a nasty world of cheap drugs, squalid sex and pervasive menace.

  She reads from the notebook every day. It is full of messages of love and longing from a lonely soldier. There are poetic passages, some humour, some sadness and not a little description of the horrors he saw and faced. There are amusing little sketches and drawings and sometimes sexual innuendos that arouse her and make her think of erotic episodes with the two men and one woman in her life.

  She looks across at the woman, her saviour. She wants to kiss her and caress her, but she cannot. It would cause an outcry, not only among their highly conservative Greek hosts but also among her fellow nurses, for whom love between two women is taboo.

  When the bearded man walks up to her she does not recognize him. He looks like most other bearded sailors in uniform. Then he speaks.

  ‘Bron?’

  His Shropshire Borders accent is unmistakable. Then she sees the bright-blue eyes and realizes who is standing before her. It is a ghost from the past she does not want to see. She is so mortified she cannot speak. Margaret Killingbeck, her friend and lover, who is sitting next to her, realizes something is wrong; so do the others at the table. The conversation stops.

  ‘Bron, it’s me, Tom.’

  Bronwyn jumps up and pushes past the man who was once her fiancé, lover and childhood sweetheart. She bolts for the door, her starched uniform crackling as she runs. Margaret chases after her. She finally catches her but only after more than 50 yards. Bronwyn would have carried on running, but she has reached the end of the harbour wall; there is no dry land left. She tries to pull herself up the high wall, as if to throw herself over it and into the water.

  ‘Bron! Stop! Please!’

  ‘No, Margaret! Let me go! I can’t face it.’

  Margaret has worked out who Tom is. ‘It’s Tom from Presteigne, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, yes! The one I cheated on. We were happy; then … well, you know what happened.’

  Bronwyn is hysterical, screaming. ‘Oh God! Why has this happened now? You’re better; we were about to go back to work. Now this! Why?’

  Margaret puts her arms around her and tries to stop her frenzied shaking. ‘Bron, so much has changed. Tom will understand, I’m sure.’

  Bronwyn begins to take deep breaths and calms down a little. ‘If you mean we’re going to talk to him, then forget it. I can’t!’ She begins to look around for an escape route. ‘I need to get away from here, Mags.’

  ‘You can’t run away. He’s here. He must be on one of the Royal Navy ships. This is a tiny island.’

  ‘I know, but we sail for the beaches tomorrow, and they’re a long way away.’

  ‘But is it fair to Tom?’

  ‘I don’t care. I can’t hurt him any more than I already have. Come on, Mags; please get me on board the Essequibo. I’ll feel better there.’

  Tom Crisp stares out of the window of the Esperides as Margaret shepherds Bronwyn on to a small rowing boat and watches as one of the Essequibo’s crew rows them into the bay to where the ship is at anchor.

  His head swirls with so many questions about what has happened to Bronwyn since that fateful day in August last year. He comes up with so many possible answers. He begins to cry.

  One of the nurses who had been with Margaret and Bronwyn taps him on the shoulder. ‘You obviously know Bronwyn.’

  Tom wipes his eyes on his sleeves. ‘Yes, Bronwyn Thomas. We’re from the same village. Presteigne in Radnorshire.’

  The nurse knows there is some tittle-tattle to be had, so probes further. ‘She seemed shocked to see you.’

  Tom realizes what the nurse’s motives are, so is evasive. ‘Well, it’s been a while. What’s the name of her ship?’

  ‘The Essequibo.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Friday 19 November

  Convalescent Hospital No. 6, Alexandria, Egypt

  The plan by Margherita, Lady Howard de Walden, for a convalescent hospital in Alexandria did not start well. When her husband, Tommy Scott-Ellis, 8th Lord Howard de Walden, Second-in-Command, Westminster Dragoons, was posted to Alexandria, she decided to respond to the desperate shortage of hospitals and nurses. Thanks to Tommy, one of Britain’s richest men, she was able to rent Maison Karam, a very large and luxurious house outside the city owned by a Syrian merchant. She then sailed to London to hire a matron and eleven nurses and to buy all the supplies and resources they would need.

  However, before she returned to Egypt she was summoned to see General Sir Alfred Keogh, Director General of Army Medical Services at the War Office. With Keogh was the formidable matron-in-chief of Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service, Emma McCarthy. Keogh refused Margherita permission to start a hospital, telling her that all necessary medical services were in hand and that he did not ‘require or wish for any private enterprise in Egypt’.

  Margherita ignored Keogh and set sail the next day.

  Keogh then cabled ahead to General Sir John Maxwell, Commander of British forces in Egypt, insisting that Margherita and her nurses be denied access to the country, which Maxwell duly did.

  However, Sir Ronald Graham, a British diplomat in Cairo, sent a launch to take off Margherita and her nurses. He had arranged for Maison Karam not to be a hospital, for this was what Keogh had prescribed, but a convalescent home for those who had been operated on or were recovering from wounds.

  When Kitty Stewart-Murray arrived in Alexandria at the beginning of November, she heard about Lady de Walden’s venture and sought her out.

  Now she is trying to make her contribution and being given her tasks for the coming weekend by Margherita at her daily staff briefing.

  ‘Kitty, I’m afraid I have a rather unpleasant job for you. The dysentery lavatories and washrooms need disinfecting. There is a hose in there, and overalls and gumboots in the laundry. Good luck.’

  ‘Thank you, Margherita. I’ve mucked out many a stable. I don’t suppose it’s all that different.’

  Margherita then talks to the group. ‘We’ve worked out the procedure for uniforms and pyjamas. We’ve got new blue-striped pyjamas, so when the men arrive their previous hospital clothes or uniforms will be removed, labelled and stored in the cellars. Then they put on our bright blue stripes, which everyone locally will recognize. This will stop them going off into the village for a drink, or for girls. If anyone serves or services them, the police have promised to fine them heavily.

  ‘Last week, we had a big Irishman fall down the grand staircase. He was dead drunk, but we couldn’t understand where he got the alcohol from. Then we found some red ink in a ginger-beer bottle that he’d been drinking. God only knows how, but it seemed to have worked – not that I would recommend it! So, be vigilant, ladies. And I want to hear immediately of any lurid advances, gestures or comments. This is a hospital, not a brothel!

  ‘Our list at the moment includes New Zealand Maoris, white New Zealanders, Australians, all four British races, men from the Zionist Mule Corps and several sailors, and, as I’m sure you know, some of the Antipodeans and our own provincials can be a little too explicit with their vocabulary and a little too amorous with their intentions. Which reminds me: Nurse Phipps, a little less lipstick and cologne might help stop that brute of a Maori from putting his hand up your dress.

  ‘The Mayor of Alexandria is coming this afternoon to talk about our absentee servants, so let’s make a good impression.’

  When the mayor arrives later that day, a huge man well over 30 stone in weight, he brings two dozen servants with him to add to the Maison’s staff who have not run away. He then climbs halfway up Karam’s grand staircase and proceeds to lecture them in Arabic for fifteen minutes. When he finishes he joi
ns Margherita and Kitty for tea. Margherita fusses around him like a mother hen. ‘Lemon in your tea, Mr Mayor?’

  ‘Yes, please. But please call me Mustafa, Lady de Walden.’

  ‘Only if you call me Margherita.’

  A handsome woman of central European descent, small, dainty, with long auburn locks tied neatly in a bun, Margherita charms her Egyptian host, who revels in being waited on by a western aristocrat.

  ‘What did you say to the servants?’ she asks.

  ‘I told them that if any more of them went absent they would be given a severe beating, man, woman or child.’

  The women are shocked. The mayor looks surprised. ‘Surely you beat your servants if they are disobedient?’

  ‘Not any more, Mustafa.’

  He smiles. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t need to do it, but they are like children: the warning will suffice.’

  ‘Thank you, Mustafa. But if you do have to do any beatings, please do it elsewhere.’

  ‘Of course. I would do it in the village square, so that everyone can see.’

  Kitty and Margherita look at one another, not altogether certain how serious the mayor is being.

  ‘By the way, I trained as a doctor as a young man,’ he goes on, ‘so I will come two afternoons a week to help. Which two would you like?’

  ‘Oh, that’s very kind. Monday and Thursday, please.’

  ‘Very well. I shall be here at 2 p.m. every Monday and Thursday.’

  Two days later Jack Churchill arrives at Maison Karam when the Royal Naval Division comes through Alexandria. He invites all of the nurses not on duty to join him in Cairo for a huge banquet given by Prince Hussein, Sultan of Egypt. Plucked by the British from the quiet life of an intellectual in Paris, the sultan has replaced the Ottoman sympathizer Khedive Abbas Hilmi, who has been banished to Constantinople.

  With the sultana looking on, hidden from view but able to see the guests, the Egyptians, in evening dress, with a fez and tassel, mingle with the British elite, military and civilian. Four different European wines are served, with over a dozen food courses.

  After the dinner, which, to the Europeans’ dismay, includes smoked salmon, certain to induce the Cairo Quick-step, Kitty and Margherita are standing together when Professor Marc Ruffer, who is in charge of the Red Cross in Egypt, comes over to them.

  ‘Lady de Walden, Lady Stewart-Murray, lovely to see you. May I congratulate you on the wonderful work you’re doing.’

  Margherita beams. ‘Thank you, Professor Ruffer.’

  ‘This is a bit overindulgent, is it not? Who are we trying to impress? Aren’t we all on the same side?’

  Kitty rushes to the defence of the extravagance. ‘I rather think it’s a show of unity.’

  ‘Perhaps, but I’d prefer to pack up whatever’s in the kitchens and on the tables – except the smoked fish, of course – and distribute it around the military hospitals in Egypt.’

  Margherita is more sympathetic to the professor’s point. ‘What a good idea. Kitty, when we leave, let’s get the nurses together and, like locusts, we’ll strip the place bare.’

  Margherita, a trained opera singer, is then asked to sing by the sultan. Taken by surprise, she is not sure what to sing, so chooses ‘Un bel di vedremo’ from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. She sings it so beautifully, producing so much power from her small frame, that when she is finished there are several people in the room in tears.

  Later, Margherita, Kitty and the nurses enlist Jack Churchill to help them collect food. They travel back to their hotel, Shepheard’s, the most famous and luxurious in Egypt and British Headquarters Near East, by donkey, and have several nightcaps. It is a beautiful night and, from the hotel’s top-floor terrace, they can see in the distance the desert glowing in the moonlight like a becalmed sea.

  As they relax, Kitty cannot resist quizzing Jack about his brother. ‘How is Winston taking his fall from grace?’

  ‘With typical stoicism and optimism.’ Jack knows that his answer is a little economical with the truth but does not want to feed any gossip.

  ‘What will he do?’

  ‘Go to the Front and fight; that’s what he’s good at. What about Bardie? Have you heard anything?’

  ‘He says it’s very testing. He wasn’t allowed to take his horses, so it’s an infantry war for him. You haven’t bumped into him?’

  ‘No, Kitty, sorry. But I will try to.’

  ‘Oh, please do, Jack. He’ll be so delighted to see you.’

  ‘I’ll make it a priority when I go back.’

  ‘Which is when?’

  ‘Tomorrow evening.’

  ‘What’s going to happen? I’m worried for Bardie.’

  ‘I think the game’s up. Everyone knows it. The Turks have us in a bind: there’s no way forward, and we can’t hold our ground over a Gallipoli winter. Believe it or not, it snows and the temperature plummets. It will be unbearable … Well, what I mean is it’s unbearable now, but it will get worse.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Kitchener is there now, which is why I’m here, to look at where we might put 100,000 men. The old warrior could not believe what he saw when he arrived. He said the ground was far more difficult than he imagined, and that the taking of it, and particularly holding it, was remarkable. He got an amazing reception from the men, like Achilles, the bravest of the brave. If only they knew.’

  ‘I thought he was a hero?’

  ‘He was, but not a general and certainly not from a desk at the War Office.’

  ‘It sounds like we should never have gone in the first place.’

  ‘Correct, which is why Winston was right. We should have forced the Straits first then sent in the army, but more of them. We underestimated the Turks – perhaps our biggest mistake – and we had not the admirals nor the generals to grasp a victory when it was there before us, within touching distance.’

  ‘Will we lose many men if we evacuate?’

  ‘I pray not, Kitty. But we will have to do it by stealth, like a fox slinking away in the night.’

  ‘What an embarrassment, running away with our tail between our legs.’

  ‘Indeed, Kitty. I doubt we British will ever be the same again.’

  ‘I think that’s true. Perhaps Winston can give us back our pride?’

  ‘I think he can, but not yet. Not until this war is over.’

  Jack stares across at Margherita, who is drinking with the nurses. ‘Didn’t she sing beautifully tonight?’

  ‘She did, she’s a wonderful person.’

  ‘Talking of wonders, that Nurse Phipps is a pretty little creature.’

  ‘She is. On that note, off to your bed, Jack Churchill. You’ve got to get back to Gallipoli and get my Bardie off safely. Give him my love when you see him.’

  ‘I will. I don’t suppose Phipps is available to tuck me in?’

  ‘Go on, off with you! You’ve been away from Goonie for too long.’

  Kitty watches Jack go up to his room before turning to stare at Nurse Phipps, the raven-haired beauty who is the talk of every officers’ mess in Alexandria. What will become of the young woman, who only three months ago was sitting in a vicarage in Worcestershire thinking of marriage to a local farmer, with its attendant children, cakes, tea and the Women’s Institute. Now she can pick from any man in England – or a Middle Eastern potentate. Kitty’s mind drifts off to thoughts of George Grey, the lover she may never see again. This war is changing everything and everyone.

  Jack leaves for Gallipoli the next day. The following week a committee is formed in Alexandria to discuss what to do about nurses’ recreation time. It has been noticed that the several dozen nurses in the area have nothing to do when they are off duty and have been seen in bars which are ‘less than salubrious’, and even on street corners, talking to their soldier friends.

  Margherita has asked Kitty to come up with a solution. She is in the midst of presenting her idea to the impromptu gathering of generals, diplomats and female British residents
. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she says, ‘a nurses’ club is the answer. We have found premises. It is an old bank with a very nice balcony for the evenings. There is room for both a cafeteria and a bar, and even a place for a small band and a little dancing.’

  A rather portly figure, Miss Daphne Hope-Cullingham, QAIMNS Matron-in-Chief for Egypt, whose rounded form sits rather tightly in her gull-grey uniform, makes a comment, with no small amount of displeasure. ‘Are you suggesting, Lady Stewart-Murray, that these “activities” – drinking, dancing and tête-à-têtes with young officers – take place in the evenings? Surely, like young ladies’ institutions in England, it should not be open after 6 p.m. and not at all on Sundays.’

  Kitty rises to the challenge. ‘Well, Matron, as most of the girls are working during the day, it is the evenings when they need to relax. But is it your experience that the male of the species is at its most predatory after dark, and particularly on the Sabbath?’

  The matron, very indignant and a little embarrassed, responds immediately. ‘Of course. Is it not your experience?’

  ‘Yes, it is. Nevertheless, I do think it best for our girls to meet the beasts on their own ground as equals. After all, the female of the species can be quite ferocious, either in the glare of daylight or in the shadows of the night.’

  All the men in the room smile knowingly, as do several of the women. Ten minutes later Kitty’s proposal for the Alexandria Nurses’ Club is agreed, and Mayor Mustafa offers to pay for the building’s refurbishment and its fitting out. In the months that follow it becomes the city’s most popular watering hole.

  Sunday 21 November

  Guards Division HQ, La Gorgue, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France