The War Nurses

by Lizzie Page

  * * *

  ‘What are you doing there?’ Elsie surprised me later that afternoon. I was hidden in the straw and blankets. This wasn’t a time for relaxing, but the book had pulled me away from chores. ‘What are you hiding?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Not chocolate, surely, you wouldn’t keep that from me?’

  ‘I’m not—’

  ‘Penguins?’ Elsie made a teasing grab for me but I tucked the book beneath me so she couldn’t get to it. Shot woke up and looked around, befuddled.

  ‘Oh, I know!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s more love letters!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Why are you such a cold fish?’ That was rich! Coming from her!

  ‘I’m not!’

  Suddenly, Elsie lunged on top of me – she had the advantage of surprise, and other advantages beside – and we struggled. The full weight of her was on me. I felt buried by her. I kicked out with my untrapped leg, sure that it must hurt, but she carried on pinning me down. I was strong but she was taller and more powerful than I was and I didn’t stand a chance. She undid my fingers, grinning at me, her white teeth flashing. I felt weaker than I’d ever been. Shot began whining piteously. He didn’t know what to make of us. When Elsie finally had the book in her hands, she examined it incredulously.

  ‘It’s a book?’

  ‘It’s Helen’s book,’ I said, defeated.

  ‘Helen’s?’ she repeated slowly. I could almost see the information sink in. ‘Helen from America? Eleanora Mountford?’

  ‘She used a pretend name,’ I added. I felt hot and damp. Adrenaline released, then retreated. Elsie looked at her prize. I don’t know what she had been expecting. Her face fell.

  ‘What a ghastly title.’

  ‘It’s not so bad.’ I picked the straw out of my hair.

  ‘Who would have thought Helen to be so… lowbrow?’

  I felt hurt on Helen’s behalf – and mine – for I had been more than captivated by it. Anyway, it wasn’t dear Helen who was lowbrow, that was clear. I pulled myself upright, trying to think how to phrase what I wanted to say.

  ‘The review says it’s a triumph. A “tour de force”.’

  ‘Whose review?’

  ‘Um…’ I looked at the blurb. ‘The New York Times.’

  Elsie looked at me as if to say, ‘You idiot’. I flushed. Arthur’s paper.

  ‘Oh. Yes. Anyway, I thought it was… fun.’

  ‘It looks utterly unbelievable. Still, romantic fantasy is opium.’ She said the word lightly, as though she had never come across the stuff, ‘for the people. Keeps them quiet.’

  Elsie picked up her coat and started up the stairs.

  I could contain myself no longer. I got to my feet angrily. ‘It seems Helen based one of her characters on you!’

  Elsie laughed hollowly.

  I opened the book and read, my voice shaking:

  ‘The group stared into the night sky. ‘I see the Plough, and the Square of Pegasus.’

  She swooned. ‘What could it all mean?’

  Mrs Elizabeth Blackall was the first of the group to come down with “khaki fever”.’

  ‘Elizabeth Blackall?’ Elsie whispered.

  ‘That’s your maiden name.’

  Elsie stood stock-still. I had got her.

  ‘Elizabeth Blackall was an experienced woman, who, despite having a young son, paid only scant attention to the moral codes of the time.’

  ‘Helen always displayed a rather pitiful lack of imagination.’

  I fought to get my voice steady.

  ‘However, Mrs Elizabeth Blackall had a terrible secret—’

  Elsie’s foot was still frozen on the fourth step. Not fleeing, not fighting now.

  ‘And her terrible secret was this. Elizabeth Blackall pretended she was a widow, when in fact she was a divorcee! How would the young soldier, a man of impeccable and distinguished background, who had fallen passionately in love with her, feel about that?'

  ‘Helen actually wrote that?’ Elsie paused. ‘Balderdash, like the whole book. Like her war effort, in fact. She didn’t even cut her hair.’

  ‘Your husband didn’t have a funeral, did he, Elsie, or should I say, Elizabeth?’ I continued doggedly.

  ‘I have called myself Elsie since I was six years old,’ she snapped.

  ‘What about your husband?’

  ‘I have no idea what he called himself—’

  She was infuriating. ‘There never was a funeral, was there?’

  ‘And?’ Elsie was half-sneering, half-smiling.

  Everything I had ever been angry about was right here, right now. ‘There was no funeral because he is not dead!’

  ‘Mairi, just… why are you so interested in this?’

  ‘Because.… you deceived me. About something significant.’

  ‘It’s not significant.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘After all we’ve done… to dwell on trivialities such as this is madness.’

  ‘Trivialities?’ I echoed, my voice raised. ‘You’ve been lying about yourself all along.’

  ‘I have never lied, not directly.’ Elsie was enraged. She huffed and puffed. My goodness, you are not a piggy, you’re actually a lying, greedy wolf, I thought wildly.

  She was an excellent actress though, one of the best. She deserved awards.

  ‘You lied to me!’ I persisted. ‘When I have been nothing but honest.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you are so.… affected by this.’

  ‘If we don’t hold on to ourselves and be true to each other, what do we have? It is more important than ever to be decent and good human beings. Otherwise, this rotten war wins.’

  ‘I have been decent. I have been good.’

  Elsie’s indignation was absolute. But mine was equal to hers. I was not her silly little sister any more. I was not the sidekick, not the crust. And I still had principles.

  ‘You are a divorced woman. Not widowed. Divorced. It’s all been a performance.’

  Elsie stood close to me, staring me angrily in the face. I remembered the time she shouted and even punched me, when Shot had run off. I remembered her demanding I left a dying boy.

  ‘Believing our press would be a mistake, Mairi. I’m not an angel. I’m not a Madonna.’

  ‘I never thought you were—’

  She continued as though she hadn’t heard. ‘I’m not a hero. I’m one of the hardest-working nurses on the Western Front. Doing my best in this place where God has forsaken us.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ I covered my ears. Shot started barking at my distress. I grabbed him and cuddled him. I couldn’t bear for him to hear this.

  ‘Godforsaken place. Godforsaken place! Yes it is. Oh Mairi, I’m only human. Simple. Hot-blooded.’ She spat the words out. ‘I have ego, I like money AND hanky-panky.’

  Elsie didn’t get it and she never would.

  Defeatedly, I asked her, ‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth?’

  ‘Do you think it is easy to go against the grain? Do you think I wanted to split from the father of my child?’

  ‘Best friends don’t lie. Sisters don’t lie. Good people don’t lie. His death was “slow, slow, quick” – you said that to my face. You said, “He waited until I was out of the room to die.”’

  ‘Because, I knew you’d react like this—’

  ‘Because you weren’t honest. After I was so honest with you… You know all my secrets. Every one of them. There is nothing about me that you do not know. Yet, you didn’t trust me. I was your sister.’

  ‘You are my sister.’

  ‘You were my sister. But you would not let me be yours.’

  The whistles were blowing again. We put aside our argument and ran with our stretcher, ran as bullets ricocheted around us. We had to crouch down low for this one. He was a gunner and he’d been shelled. He was over forty, I reckon. It wasn’t only the young fellas who lied about their age to fight. It looked worse than it was
for once. We bandaged him up. Gave him pain relief, got him on the stretcher as though he was as light as a feather.

  ‘Let me die,’ he said. ‘Don’t want to frighten my kids.’

  ‘How many little ’uns do you have?’ Elsie asked.

  ‘Four.’

  ‘Four?!’ Elsie teased him, ‘No wireless, eh!’ Then more seriously, ‘Picture their little faces.’

  Tears ran down his cheeks. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You can.’

  We began to tear back.

  ‘We’ll have you cuddled up by the stove in less than two minutes,’ Elsie told him. ‘Blankets, morphine… Hang on. They’ll be wanting their daddy.’

  She gazed over the length of his bloodied uniform.

  ‘I know why you’re so het up, Mairi. It’s because you want Harold.’

  ‘It is not.’

  ‘It is.’

  I felt exasperated. Anger at how she lied to me was one thing. This was something else. ‘Elsie, you need to tell Harold. As a Catholic, as a believer, in his eyes, you will still be married.’

  ‘He has to see it for it to be in his eyes.’

  I almost dropped the stretcher and the poor man on it in my horror. ‘Elsie! For goodness’ sake, you must tell Harold the truth!’

  We had reached the cellar. I opened up the trapdoor, and down the steps we slid. We were efficient – hadn’t we done this hundreds of times?

  ‘Do you know how many women divorced in 1910, Mairi? Fewer than twenty. Do you know how scandalous it was and still is? The shame we are made to feel? No one understands.’

  ‘He might.’

  ‘He won’t. I know Hal’ – she meant, I know him better than you – ‘and he won’t.’

  The gunner looked between us incredulously. He was less frightened now. He coughed and muttered, ‘Don’t mind me, ladies.’

  * * *

  Elsie was a fraud. Worse than a fraud. All those stories – that night in the hotel, on the SS Princess Clementine, to the English doctors, even at the bloody Glasgow Assembly Rooms – weren’t true. She had been divorced. Not widowed. Elsie had deliberately lied to me, over and over again. Without any shame.

  She mustn’t do it to Harold.

  Late the next morning there was a loud knock at the cellar door. Shot yelped in surprise. Elsie and I were both napping in the straw. At sunrise, Elsie had silently driven the gunner to Furnes while I sat with him in the back. Then we’d done a trench-run. Although we saw the soldiers together, we hadn’t exchanged a word. I didn’t want to. I couldn’t imagine confiding in her ever again.

  I wasn’t expecting any callers and nor, from her expression, was Elsie.

  I thought, Don’t let it be Harold. I didn’t see how I could ever face him.

  Elsie got up, threw on her coat and swung open the door.

  ‘Beautiful door, ladies. Harrods, is it?’

  This wasn’t Harold.

  ‘Who are you?’ Elsie snapped.

  ‘Here for the story. Evening Standard. London.’

  Elsie looked weary, but she wouldn’t say no to a reporter. Newspapers were fame. Fame meant money, money meant we could look after the sick.

  She looked at me as though asking, Did you know about this? I shrugged back. I couldn’t remember if this one was in the logbook or not. Frankly, I didn’t care.

  The journalist looked well fed. I hadn’t seen someone as plump as him for a while. I had a sudden understanding of those tribal peoples who eat their visitors. And we call them the savages!

  He pulled at his woollen waistcoat. A waistcoat! What sort of man wears a waistcoat to visit the trenches? Then rummaged through his bag for a pencil.

  ‘This is where inquisitions take place, right, Mairi? The Belgian inquisition!’ Elsie laughed to herself.

  I wished Elsie could see it from my point of view, just once. I wished she could have been the friend, the sister, she had promised she would be. What had Dr Munro said about mothers disappointing? Did he mean it about sisters too?

  We told him to wait and we gathered ourselves quickly in the gloom. I splashed my face with water, took a comb to my short useless hair, then called him back in. Elsie lit a cigarette.

  ‘Ready, now, ladies. Do you get lonely out here?’

  It was going to be that kind of interview.

  ‘Fifty yards away, you can see the might of the Western industrial complex. Belgians, British, French and even some of the German boys are perfectly friendly when you take them a hot chocolate.’

  The journalist wasn’t sure if Elsie was telling the truth or not. He stared at her, his flabby mouth open, drool on his lips. His pencil did not touch the paper.

  ‘Only two days ago, I held a nineteen-year-old in my arms as he cried about the cricket runs he will never score and the girls he will never get to kiss. So, you see, this place is the opposite of lonely.’

  At that, the journalist started writing fast. You wouldn’t believe this slug-like fellow could do anything fast and yet he did it. Strange squiggles like hieroglyphics appeared on the paper. Finally, he looked up again. I counted three, no four, chins.

  ‘Fantastic. Everyone wants to know about your love lives, ladies, so can I ask, is there any romance in Pervyse?’

  Neither of us spoke.

  Finally, Elsie said in her huskiest voice, ‘We may as well let people back home know. I am engaged. To a Belgian. A baron actually. From a wonderful family.’

  Sometimes, Elsie could sound like a frightful snob. I couldn’t tell if she was teasing or not.

  ‘A baron?’ Of course, this slug of a journalist would be impressed.

  ‘Related to the Queen. Of Belgium,’ Elsie added.

  ‘Was he a patient of yours, Elsie?’ he asked gleefully, scribbling like a man possessed.

  ‘Yes, he was.’ She looked at me coldly, then added needlessly, ‘Leg wound.’

  The journalist scrawled his strange stick figures, then finally fixed his privileged piggy eyes on me.

  ‘How about you, Mairi? No one caught your fancy?’

  I hesitated. Elsie looked away, a sneer on her lips.

  ‘I too am engaged.’

  ‘Was he a patient as well?’

  ‘No.’ I felt I had to say something more. ‘He is a pilot… in England.’

  Elsie looked at me incredulously. ‘Congratulations, Mairi. It seems you are capable of surprises too.’

  ‘Surprises and secrets are a very different species,’ I retorted.

  I knew Elsie thought my anger was disproportionate, but the idea that she would continue in her own sweet way, making a mockery of all around her, made me furious.

  The journalist gazed at us, pencil poised for further information, then when he realised none was forthcoming, he put it back in his bag. He thanked us and left.

  ‘You never even went to Java, did you?’

  The journalist was still eavesdropping from the top of the stairs. Elsie dismissed him, calling: ‘Don’t you have everything you need?’

  Then she stood up, scratched her head vigorously and followed him out.

  After years of working and living together, our peace was broken. I hadn’t known it was so fragile and I didn’t see it coming.

  The Evening Standard ran a fantastic spread on us: Handbags for Sandbags! was on the front page, followed by ‘EXCLUSIVE! Read all about the engagements of the Madonnas! Pages 4 and 5.’ There was a close-up of Elsie looking marvellous wearing a helmet and a photo of me looking, well, like I always look. Page six was devoted to ‘Shot, Probably the Bravest Mutt in Belgium’. There was a charming photo of him sat upright, waiting for attention.

  I didn’t have the heart to read it all because not long after the newspapers arrived that morning, a telegram came. Jack had been killed in a tragic aeroplane incident. Heroically (of course) and doing what he loved best.

  I told myself maybe they’d got the wrong man. Yes, that was it. Wasn’t it possible that someone else might be wearing Jack’s uniform, Jack’s boots? Wasn�
��t it possible that Jack had lent his clothes – or worse, had them stolen? And the real Jack, my Jack, was desperately trying to let me know he was safe. Or maybe my Jack hadn’t even heard about the dead clothes-thief… and was carrying on as normal, inventing tired jokes about the Kaiser and the Tsar, making scant progress reading the Communist Manifesto and swooning over new plane designs? I couldn’t contact his family in Ingatestone to clarify – would they want to hear from me anyway? Did they even know anything about his sweetheart in a cellar house in Belgium? Did they know that he had asked for my hand in marriage and that eventually, I had agreed?

  The truth was, I was utterly shocked. I had seen so many men in their prime taken down, obliterated, yet I hadn’t seen this coming. I thought that so long as he was in England, Jack would be safe. I should have known ‘safe’ had been wiped out like the rest of the good words in the world: honesty, truth, respect.

  On my knees in the straw, I prayed all evening. When Elsie came back, she gave me tea and attempted to hug me but I shrugged her off. She wanted to talk but I had nothing to say. I would take nothing from her ever again. She had not given me the one thing I deserved: the truth. I carried on praying throughout the night. Eventually, Elsie stopped trying and climbed into the straw and fell into a typically disturbed sleep.

  * * *

  By morning, as the guns and the shelling started up again on the Western Front, I surrendered once again to my faith. I knew with a great and unfamiliar certainty that Jack had been spared from suffering, and that his suffering – my suffering – was nothing to the suffering of our Lord. Maybe Jack and I would meet again? Our bond of suffering was deep, I knew that.

  God was the one thing I had left. The one thing that had never gone away. And I knew beyond all doubt or reason that He was good and He loved me. And this was why I bothered.

  God grant me the serenity

  To accept the things I cannot change;

  Courage to change the things I can;

  And wisdom to know the difference.

  One week after, almost three years to the day since we arrived in Belgium, there was a bombing raid that left the cellar with more holes than a colander. The Harrods door that we were so proud of remained beautifully intact, but almost everything else came down: half the ceiling, the banister, even the commode.