She went on to say that the transition from war to civilian life is always a difficult one, but that it would be especially difficult for us because we were women. Not only that, but we had lived close to the battlefields, close to the fighting men themselves, not in hospitals miles away, where the guns could not even be heard. We had heard guns. Some of us had even felt their sting. We had been bombed, sniped at, shelled, shipwrecked, and worse. Many of us had also suffered great physical and mental privations in the camps or under life-threatening conditions in the wild. In order to survive, Matron told us, we had had to exist, and to act, in ways that were not always ladylike, and some of us may have been stigmatised by our experiences.
Then Matron urged us to think of our families, present or future. Their world was not our world, she said, but it was a world we had fought for; there was not one point of contact between those at home and those who had done what we had done, but we had done it for them. There was nothing they could understand about what we had been through and how it had affected us. If she was about to tell us not to talk about our experiences, I thought, then she had no need to bother. I think most of us would rather not. But it was more than that.
Whatever our war experiences, Matron concluded, it was now our God-given duty to be young ladies, housewives, sweethearts and mothers again, not unrecognisable figures slithering around in the mud and blood of a casualty clearing station, or lying in the filth and squalor of a Japanese POW camp. Our loved ones did not want to hear or know about these things. If they did, they would never look at us in the same way again; we would become pariahs.
We had a role and a duty to perform in society, and in order to do so, we had to put the last five years behind us and mould ourselves into the image of the feminine again: the wife, the mother. That was what our world needed now, and that was our role in it. The men would get all the glory, as usual, Matron said, to knowing smiles all around, and this time we should let them have it. I glanced at Dorothy beside me, and she rolled her eyes. I smiled.
It was all a bit too much, I supposed, but at bottom, Matron was right.
Later, after the farewells and the promises to write, clutching my small suitcase in one hand and my travel pass in the other, I walked through the park in the rain towards the railway station. Raindrops dripped from the bare branches. What a very English November day it was, I thought, and I felt a great surge of love for my country, for the future. Perhaps Matron was right. We needed to lock the memories away and get on with our lives. We needed to rebuild, to look forward, not behind.
The train stood waiting at the platform, puffing steam into the drizzle. I settled back in my seat to watch the landscape go by and opened my journal. In a few hours I will arrive at Darlington. Ernest will be waiting for me at the station. We will get into the car and drive back to Kilnsgate, to home. There, my future will begin.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Of the numerous books I read while researching the background for this novel, I would first like to single out Nicola Tyrer’s invaluable Sisters in Arms: British Army Nurses Tell Their Story. This was my starting point, and it set me on my course to Brenda McBryde’s Quiet Heroines and A Nurse’s War, Angela Bolton’s The Maturing Sun: An Army Nurse in India 1942-45, and to Grey and Scarlet: Letters from the War Areas by Army Sisters on Active Service, edited by Ada Harrison. From these books I gained whatever insight I have into the lives of the Queen Alexandra’s nurses during the Second World War, and I have incorporated the details of many of their experiences into Grace’s journal. I am also grateful to White Coolies, by Betty Jeffrey, and All this Hell: U.S. Nurses Imprisoned by the Japanese, by Evelyn M. Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee, and to Singapore Burning, by Colin Smith.
As regards local history, I owe thanks to The History of Richmond, in the County of York; Including a Description of Other Remains of Antiquity in the Neighbourhood by Christopher Clarkson, A New and Complete History of the County of York by Thomas Allen, Robinson’s Guide to Richmond by W.R. Robinson, Richmond at the Start of the 21st Century: An Architectural History, by Mark Whyman, Richmond North Yorkshire From Low Up in the Air, by Audrey Carr, and The History of Richmond, North Yorkshire: From Earliest Times to 2000, by Jane Hatcher.
I would like to thank Sheila Halladay for reading the manuscript in such a short time and coming up with so many useful comments and suggestions. At Hodder & Stoughton, my thanks go to Carolyn Mays, Francesca Best, Kerry Hood, Jaime Frost, Lucy Hale, Auriol Bishop and Jamie Hodder-Williams; at William Morrow, to Carolyn Marino, Wendy Lee, Michael Macmillan and Sharyn Rosenblum; and at McClelland and Stewart, to Dinah Forbes, Doug Pepper, Ellen Seligman and Ashley Dunn. I would also like to thank my agents Dominick Abel and David Grossman for their continued support.
I must also thank Carlton Boyce for arranging for me to talk to the prisoners and for giving me the grand tour of HMP Leeds. And many thanks to Chris Wade for the loan of the cottage in Staithes. These acknowledgements wouldn’t be complete without also thanking Anika Ibrahim and Jonathan Ball for their wonderful hospitality in South Africa, Anne Michel and the team from Albin Michel in Paris, and the ladies at Dymocks, in Melbourne, for answering my questions.
About the Author
Peter Robinson grew up in Yorkshire, and now divides his time between Richmond and Canada.
Before the Poison is his third standalone novel. He has also written two collections of short stories, and nineteen books in his bestselling Inspector Banks series. The critically acclaimed crime novels have won numerous awards in Britain, the United States, Canada and Europe, and are published in translation all over the world.
Visit Peter Robinson’s website at www.inspectorbanks.com.
Before the Poison Page 40