The War Nurses

by Lizzie Page

  Over tea, with Shot contentedly curled in her lap, Lady D explained that she was finishing at Furnes at the end of the month. Elsie and I both misunderstood at first. We thought she was going back to England.

  ‘Oh no!’ She seemed shocked that we would have considered her capable of such a thing, ‘I’m not going ’til this damn thing is over. We’re seeing the war through, right, girls?’

  ‘Right!’ we chorused, chinking our cups.

  ‘Careful!’ Lady D laughed, as usual.

  I was glad Lady D was staying in Belgium. The soldiers loved her unrelenting cheerfulness. She was like the hearty matron of a boarding school. She could mend anything she put her mind to as well. Elsie teased her, saying that the posh boys – the officers – wanted her to thrash them. Even that didn’t make her frown.

  She was going to a hospital further down the line near Passchendaele. Had I heard of it? I didn’t say that I had heard the British soldiers called it ‘Hell’ for short.

  Later that evening, after the door had been bolted and the candles blown out, and Elsie had decided it was too late to visit the engineers, I asked ‘Why is Lady D leaving Furnes?’ I couldn’t understand it. Furnes was as good a place to work as any. Better than most probably. They had four ambulances now and their organisation was infamously impeccable. Everyone said that hospital ran as smoothly as anything the Germans could run and Lady D had never seemed anything but happy working there.

  Elsie, already in the hay, rolled onto her side. Although it was dark, I could still make out her expression. Chewing straw like some cowboy in the National Geographic, she was looking at me incredulously.

  I stared back at her. ‘What?’

  ‘Mairi, I thought you were good at puzzles.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Work it out, dear girl.’

  But I couldn’t.

  * * *

  Next morning, I asked again. ‘So why is Lady D going?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Elsie was pulling on her boots. She wore three layers of military socks and still the boots were too big for her. Our calves had shrunk.

  ‘Clearly not.’

  Elsie enunciated her words very slowly. ‘Munro wouldn’t marry her.’

  ‘Dr Munro and Lady D?!’

  ‘Oh Mairi, Mairi, Mairi,’ Elsie said, pulling her laces ever tighter. ‘You really are the most oblivious thing.’

  It wasn’t until the end of July that I heard from Jack again. The post-boy enquired, ‘Love letter?’ as he held out the envelope.

  I gave him an irritated half-smile back. ‘Not telling!’

  This amused him. I heard him muttering, ‘Not telling, not telling!’ as he wobbled away, ringing his bell.

  How I had missed Jack’s dull letter-writing! It had been two months! How sweet it was to hold his letter in my hands. I raced through the sentences. First, he apologised for the delay. He explained he had been thinking hard about what to write and he dearly hoped I didn’t get the wrong idea. I must remember that he was not good with words:

  You’re the only one whose permission I want. Not your father, you. You have been living on the Western Front for a long time, Mairi. Surely you know your own mind by now?

  I couldn’t decide if this was an insult or not. I knew my father wouldn’t like it. I felt a thrill at Jack’s bravado though.

  We will be good together. I know you mightn’t love me yet – not the way I love you.

  At that, my hand flew to my heart. It was like Jack was inside my head, knowing my doubts and confusions.

  But, Mairi, I am going to be a better person. I am going to improve myself and I WILL make you happy, if you will only let me! I want nothing more than for the war to be over and for us to set up a happy life together. Is that too much to ask?

  * * *

  I await your decision.

  * * *

  Yours fondly, Jack.

  But even though I was relieved to hear from Jack, in fact I was delighted, I couldn’t decide on the question of marriage. I still didn’t know my own mind. How do you get to know your own mind? I wasn’t sure my mind and I had ever been properly introduced.

  I could have asked for a long engagement, but Jack deserved better than that.

  ‘I need to be sure,’ I wrote back. ‘I’m sorry.’ And then I finished with a postscript of my own:

  I understand this probably isn’t what you want to hear, Jack. If that is the case, please don’t wait for me.

  I was going to add that there were plenty of lovely young women who would be delighted to be with him but I left it there. There was no point in spelling it out.

  We weren’t exactly Victoria and Albert, were we? Or even Charlotte Brontë and Mr Héger.

  I was nervous of my father’s reaction to Jack. But that wasn’t all. I suppose I still needed to be convinced that I had no better alternatives available to me. I still had hope.

  29

  Our work in the cellar continued throughout the summer of 1917. Some men were saved, others weren’t. Our hopes that the war would one day end had left us. We stopped talking about the things we would do ‘when all this is over’. It was beginning to look like this was our forever.

  Things were tough. The men’s pleading eyes dominated my dreams. Elsie’s nightmares affected me as well. In the past I had ignored them or at least distanced myself from them. Now she called out what I was thinking too. There was no respite from horror even when we were bedded down in the straw. Certain words disturbed me. Some innocuous words made me feel nauseous or even faint: Masks. Bristol. Even the word ‘Mother’ could sometimes give me palpitations.

  Elsie and my relationship was taut as a game of cat’s cradle. An outsider probably wouldn’t see it but I knew it and I didn’t doubt that she knew it too. A tension among all our other tensions. We still managed occasional jokes, we still played pontoon and snap, we still fussed over Shot, but Elsie was increasingly quick-tempered with me.

  One time, we were carrying some poor soul on a stretcher when I tripped over some rubble. I squealed – I couldn’t help it, I could barely see through the dust clouds from the explosions. However, I was relieved I hadn’t fallen all the way down.

  ‘What do you think you are doing, Mairi?’ Elsie snapped. She knew – she knew – I hadn’t done it on purpose so why did she ask?

  ‘Nothing!’

  ‘You nearly dropped him.’

  She had never spoken to me like that before.

  ‘I’m trying, Elsie.’

  ‘Oh, you’re very good at trying.’

  ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Oh, forget it.’

  Another time, she said my singing gave her a headache.

  ‘You’ve never said that before,’ I responded mutinously.

  ‘Well, I’m saying it now,’ she said.

  She still went over to see the engineers, but only once every two or three weeks. That she went socialising less should have given me some cheer, but it didn’t. Perhaps I was uneasy with yet another change.

  If the war did ever end, what would happen to Pervyse, Ypres and Dixmude, I wondered? Belgium’s houses and churches, cathedrals and cloth halls, museums, libraries and schools had been razed to the ground. Would they ever be rebuilt or should this devastation be left as a reminder of what happened here?

  I imagined workers rebuilding the old cellar house exactly as it was. Madeleine and Felix hauling their suitcases home. In my thoughts, the war is a distant memory. The family sit around the breakfast table eating toast with marmalade. It’s the weekend but Felix and Madeleine are learning tennis and have to get out quite early. Their mother is telling them a story she heard from a neighbour about a fairground. Their father walks in cheerily, having collected the letters that thumped on the mat.

  ‘Darlings, we have news from Mairi. She is planning on visiting us this Christmas!’

  The sound of a distant whistle. ‘Let’s go.’ Elsie was shaking me awake.

  Jack didn�
�t reply again for what felt like ages. I wondered if he was eking out his responses on purpose, rationing his letters so that I would miss them more. If so, it was working.

  I considered a life with Jack. Maybe we would have children: perhaps a boy and a girl? Jack would be a good father, I was sure of it, and I mightn’t be such a bad mother. I would learn from my own parents’ mistakes. Jack might get work with horses, I might find a place at the local hospital or school. Perhaps I might join the women’s movement – smash a few windows! We women rarely committed acts of violence. Perhaps it was something to consider. I wondered what my mother and Mrs Godfrey would say if I were arrested!

  Jack would support me in whatever I did, I knew he would. There weren’t many men you could say that for.

  Elsie probably wouldn’t think much of him. In the cold, his ears went so transparent that you could almost see right through them. He wasn’t a looker. He wasn’t a talker. But he did think – he thought and felt things deeply.

  If we were to have two children then we would have to make love at least twice. Obviously. Uilleam had made sure I had some education in ‘the birds and the bees’. We were both incredulous about the whole thing, but it was all there in some magazine his friends had got him.

  ‘Our parents did that?’ I remember asking suspiciously.

  ‘I can’t believe anyone does that!’ he had shrieked.

  It occurred to me now that Uilleam’s distaste about sexual intercourse may have stemmed from somewhere different than mine.

  We wouldn’t have to have sex, I thought, if Jack had suffered an injury to his penis. Jack had never mentioned that he had (how would one mention it?). I had only seen such a disability a few times, but still, with war veterans, one needed to prepare for every eventuality, which meant one needed to prepare for the worst.

  I had seen a few real-life penises over the years – how else does a man with no arms pee? – and I understood that when engaged in congress they might look different from the way they looked in their floppy state. So although the thought wasn’t exactly appealing, I was confident there was nothing to be too perturbed about. If it was God’s will…

  Just when I was about to give up on ever hearing from Jack again, in the middle of August, the post-boy cycled up with several letters for Elsie and a parcel for me with Jack’s laboured handwriting on the front. For once, the post-boy’s bell didn’t seem inappropriately jolly. For once, giving a tip of silver pennies felt entirely justified. I belted down to the cellar, dropping the rest of the post on to the table. Elsie was clearing out the stove. She smiled at me but said nothing and I was glad she stayed silent. I had been hurt by her melodramatic imitation of me at Furnes. I was no sillier about Jack’s letters than any other correspondence I received.

  Pulling at the strings of the package, I tried to imagine what could be inside. Food? Underpants? Soap? Was Jack returning some item I had left at the Southend hotel? I peeled off the brown wrapping.

  No.

  This was something home-made and scrappy, not manufactured in a factory or sold in a shop. I realised quickly it was a cardboard jigsaw puzzle – at a guess, there were over a hundred pieces but I couldn’t work out why Jack would have sent it. I scanned the note for clues. I hardly dared breathe.

  And there it was:

  To Mairi,

  * * *

  I know you love jigsaw puzzles. So here, pick up a piece of this puzzle. I am in pieces but I will put us back together. Pick up a piece, let me lock into you. Let us be like a puzzle to the outside world, or rather, I’ll puzzle, and you, Mairi, will continue to dazzle…

  * * *

  Your flying Jigsaw Jack xxx

  * * *

  PS How about here for a wedding?

  Elsie took a letter from her pile, read it, then screwed up the paper and threw it into the stove.

  ‘Stupid, stupid war.’

  Putting down Jack’s strange love note, I turned to her.

  ‘Oh, what’s happened, Elsie?’ I had seen her letters were postmarked England, so I knew it couldn’t be Harold. ‘It’s not Kenneth?’

  ‘It’s my brother.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My brother Sam. He’s dead.’

  ‘Oh no, Elsie!’ There were so many things I wanted to say. About faith. About heaven. But I knew Elsie would want nothing of that. So I simply added, ‘These are terrible times.’

  ‘He went like a hero.’ Her mouth curved into a sneer. ‘Don’t they say that every single time?’

  We always said hot black tea was good for shock. I made some and we drank it slowly. We were out of sugar. Elsie was always so good at cheering me up, yet it felt unfamiliar or forced the other way around. I wished she could lean on me the way I leaned on her. I didn’t know how she could stand it. I couldn’t bear it if Uilleam were killed.

  ‘I didn’t even know you had a brother, Elsie. I talk so often of mine but…’

  Elsie blinked her tears away. ‘I’m being foolish.’

  ‘Not foolish. Won’t you tell me about him?’

  ‘There were five of us. Now there are only three.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘After our parents died, we were separated. No one could take on all of us. I was the only one to stay in Dorset while he was sent to London. We saw each other once or twice a year at first, and then less often.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘Sam was a real boy’s boy, he loved charging around the garden. He studied physics at Cambridge. He wanted to work in industry.’

  I bet he was wonderful. Elsie’s brother would be. He was probably the kind of person our country most needed.

  ‘I hardly knew him,’ she continued, ‘but… I always felt something was missing, and now there is.’

  Somehow everything about Elsie suddenly made marvellous sense to me.

  ‘Oh Elsie.’ I pressed her hand to my cheek. I tried to think how Dr Munro might put it – or his favourite, Dr Freud. ‘This explains why you married so young and want to marry again. You are trying to recreate the family life you had never had.’

  Elsie shot up. She looked horrified.

  ‘Make your own family, that’s what you once told me,’ I continued. I realised I had overstepped one of her lines straight away but it was too late.

  ‘Enough, Mairi!’ she said furiously, pulling on her coat. ‘Sometimes, I think you’re obsessed with my past.’

  * * *

  Elsie didn’t come back for supper. I didn’t know where she had gone. There was gunfire and every so often the earth would tremble like it was in the throes of death. I visited the trenches, dealing with an injury in the thigh and a case of the shakes. I delivered some tasteless soup. I had a few refusals, which wasn’t good. Sometimes the men were too wound up to eat.

  What if Elsie were killed? There would be nothing left for me here without her. There would be nothing left for me anywhere without Elsie. It seemed too peculiar to contemplate her death. Not Elsie, she was far too alive for that.

  The sky was streaked pink, the colour of the water coming off your hands after a busy afternoon in the cellar hospital. Then it was royal purple, then dark navy (the colour of my school uniform, only we had gold piping around the collar).

  Elsie still hadn’t returned by ten. The bombardments still hadn’t stopped. She hated being alone at night yet she’d left me to that very fate.

  What if the Germans broke through tonight and I had to run for it? What if they captured me? How would Elsie find me?

  Putting on my helmet, I crept outside. I didn’t take my gas mask because the gas attacks hadn’t happened for a while now.

  Apart from the occasional flashes of distant shells, the dark was pretty much all-consuming. I was used to it now. I walked quickly down the road to the ruin where the engineers lived. That too was in darkness. I let myself in, pulled off my helmet so I could hear better and whispered a ‘Hello?’ It echoed back at me. Pushing through to the area they’d made ‘home’, I glimpsed
a tin roof and sandbags, a room like the one we had before, our ‘upstairs’ before it was bombed.

  They didn’t need a fire – it was a warm summer’s night but there was one in the middle of the room anyway. Some men were on chairs, some were lying on the floor. There was no glass in any of the windows and usually they were boarded up, but they’d taken the boards down – because of the smoke, I supposed. The smoke was overwhelming. It reminded me of mustard gas.

  I saw open first-aid boxes, laudanum packets, pain-relief and pills: our supplies. Robin – mild-mannered engineer Robin – was prostrate on the floor with his mouth hung wide open; he was babbling like a baby.

  ‘Look who’s here! All the colours!’ he said to me, opening his arms like he was greeting a long-lost friend. I stared at him, not quite believing my eyes. What was going on?

  One of the men got up, murmuring, ‘Her hair is like flames.’ He walked towards me like a ghost in amateur dramatics, arms outstretched. He reached to touch the top of my head, I pushed him away and he half collapsed.

  ‘Wow, she burns—’

  ‘Don’t touch me!’

  ‘Can I call you Ginger?’

  ‘NO!’ I said furiously. How dare they?

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Just asking!’ He laughed. His pupils were huge.

  And there was Elsie on an old sack, waving at me as if she were waving from the edge of a distant world. She felt like a stranger.

  ‘What are you doing, Elsie?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she began feebly.

  ‘What is going on?’ I realised, unfortunately, how like my mother I sounded.