She suppressed a shudder. She noticed how the other staff at the table busied themselves in talking to each other in a frenzy, turning their faces away from Dr Winter, leaving Posie quite alone.
‘This your first Christmas at the front, Parker?’
She nodded glumly.
‘Chin up, then. It’s likely to be your one and only, and my last. You’ll be back home this time next year, having Christmas in the normal way. We’ll have won this bally war by then, just you see, and we’ll all be back doing what we were doing before.’
‘You’ll be back in Cambridge then, sir?’
Dr Winter nodded, spooning tinned mushroom soup into his mouth as quickly as he could. His brilliant career as a surgeon at Addenbrooke’s Hospital on Trumpington Street in Cambridge and on Harley Street in London was legendary. It had been cut short when he had volunteered to come out to serve on the front line.
‘Do you know Cambridge at all, Parker?’
Posie shrugged. ‘Just a little. My brother Richard is a Fellow at Trinity College. Well, he was; before the war. He’s an Officer out here just now. I suppose he’ll go back afterwards. I used to visit him there sometimes.’
‘Trinity, eh?’ Dr Winter was eating his meal at breakneck speed, checking his wristwatch constantly, needing to get back to his patients. ‘I was a Queens’ man myself. But you know Trinity is Dr Rolly’s college, too, don’t you? He’s a Fellow there as well. Perhaps they know each other?’
Just at that moment Sister Fyne came into the hut and sat down wordlessly at Dr Winter’s right-hand side, marking her territory. Dr Winter turned and smiled quickly at Sister Fyne, a quick sparkling smile filled with absolute happiness which made words quite unnecessary. Sister Fyne picked up her cutlery impatiently and indicated to the cook to come and serve her with a brisk wave of the hand. She stared at Posie angrily with her great navy eyes and Posie looked back down at her almost empty plate, feeling like a third-rate gooseberry, feeling guilty for having even spoken to Dr Winter.
How different Sister Fyne was from Helena Llewellyn, Posie reflected. In fact, Dr Winter couldn’t have chosen two more different women if he had tried; they were like chalk and cheese. There was no accounting for it: perhaps working here under such dreadful conditions had turned him slightly loopy, and he should be pitied, not hated.
It was then that Posie noticed that everyone else at the table was staring at Sister Fyne as if hypnotised, and suddenly it was hard not to see why: a white, flashing stone was glittering fabulously around Sister Fyne’s neck.
Jewellery was not permitted in the Casualty Clearing Station, and any wedding or engagement rings were only allowed if they were worn on a necklace, hidden from view, in line with Red Cross rules. But although this solitaire diamond engagement ring was hung, regulation-like, on a chain, it was certainly not hidden. It was anything but. It was being deliberately flaunted. It was a statement of possession. Of achievement.
The diamond seemed to catch all the weak yellow afternoon light in the hut and reflect it back outwards. Posie gasped. Where on earth had Dr Winter got that rock of a ring from? Surely such a beauty couldn’t be found in the poor depleted little shops of Arras?
Into Posie’s mind came back a sudden remembrance. Helena Llewellyn, just a month before, laughing over a glass of what passed for wine at her so-called ‘engagement party’, her eyes twinkling, her ring finger with its small round pearl set in a thin band of silver extended out to Posie and Dulcie for their inspection:
‘It’s only a poor little thing, but it does the job, doesn’t it? William got it in town. At any rate, I’m not fussed about jewels, and just as well, eh? Where would William get a proper engagement ring from now, anyhow? There’s a war on and no mistake!’
Posie was brought back to the present by Benny Jones’ sing-song voice.
‘My! What a lovely necklace you have on there, Sister Fyne! Must signify something special, does it? Do tell us. We’re dying to know. A whopper like that, an’ all…’
Everyone at the table went deathly quiet. Posie watched Sister Fyne turn scarlet, then grow white. Dr Winter had the good grace to flush red with embarrassment beside her, averting his eyes from the rest of the table, making a show of grabbing up his black leather medical bag and his white coat behind him, as if to leave.
It was unthinkable! Benny had behaved entirely inappropriately. He was out of order, and in a military hospital such as theirs order and seniority were everything. He had just broken every rule in the book. Why, Benny could face imprisonment for speaking out like that! But just as Sister Fyne was about to open her mouth and respond, a military post-boy entered the hut, looking around nervously.
‘Hallo! Merry Christmas to you all! I say, is Dr Winter here?’
Dr Winter waved him over, keen for the distraction.
‘The other doctor told me to come in here. It’s a telegram for you, sir. Here you go! It’s marked “urgent”.’
Dr Winter ripped open the telegram and read the contents. All of a sudden there was a kind of groan and the telegram fluttered to the floor.
Everyone at the table stared as Sister Fyne, galvanised into action, simply flew at him, panicking, flapping in a thoroughly uncharacteristic manner like an angry dark crow.
‘William! William! What is it? What’s happened? Someone you know in London? A Zeppelin raid?’
But Dr Winter just turned to her with an odd blazing gleam in his pale blue eyes. He retrieved the telegram from the floor with shaking hands and rose from the Christmas dinner table uncertainly, like a man caught out unexpectedly in a harsh snowstorm. Ignoring Sister Fyne’s protestations, and ignoring her in general, he pushed his way on out of the hut.
Everyone watched, mesmerised, as he loped past the windows of the little staff hut, on his way back to relieve Dr Rolly of his duties, leaving his current fiancée standing alone, looking foolish and uncertain.
There was one question on everyone’s lips.
What on earth had been in that telegram?
****
They learnt later on that day what had happened. Or rather, unsurprisingly, Dulcie Deane did.
The telegram was from Helena Llewellyn’s mother in Wales. She had written to inform Dr Winter that her only daughter, his fiancée, had been killed the day before, on Christmas Eve.
Helena had apparently decided to return to work early, to surprise Dr Winter by returning in time for Christmas, and the War Office had managed to find her a last-minute passage back to France on a cargo vessel, the SS Victoria.
It had been sunk by a German U-boat in the English Channel, with all hands lost.
Mrs Llewellyn had been informed by the War Office as Helena’s next-of-kin, but she had immediately telegrammed to Dr Winter, a man she had never met, but whom she felt had an equal right to know.
Posie’s crew were on the night-shift, and just before they left for duty, the evening post brought ‘official’ confirmation of the news; a pink letter from the War Office informing Casualty Clearing Station Number 8 of the death of Sister Llewellyn, and of the permanent appointment of Sister Fyne in her place. Dr Rolly pinned it up on the staff noticeboard, his mouth set in a grim line, before heading back to his patients.
Benny Jones, smoking one cigarette after another, was more upset than he liked to admit.
‘Small mercy, but at least she went to her grave still feeling loved,’ he said gloomily, checking his torch and fiddling with the Red Cross flag he carried when he went out into no-man’s land.
‘At least she hadn’t had a chance to receive that scoundrel’s telegram in which he dumped her!’
‘That’s very true.’ Posie nodded, buttoning up her thick oilskin coat against the freezing night air. ‘But my gosh, imagine how Helena’s mother must be feeling now, eh? Sure as bread is bread she received that telegram from Dr Winter only a few hours after the one from the War Office. I’m sure she would have read it, even if it had been marked for Helena. She’ll be wanting Dr Winter’s guts for
garters now! And frankly, who can blame her? I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes if ever she gets hold of him!’
‘Fate will catch up with them both, that’s all I can say,’ Benny said darkly. ‘That telegram about Helena’s death will change Dr Winter’s life for ever. Not a great start to a marriage, is it? If they decide to go ahead with it, I mean.’
And as they headed out into the stormy night, they were blissfully unaware that their lives, too, were about to change for ever.
****
Posie was woken the next day by someone calling out her name.
At first she thought she was still dreaming and she hunkered down further inside her sleeping bag. But the voice was insistent, and somehow, somewhere in the back of her mind she recognised it as being important.
‘I’m coming!’ she yelped blearily. She guessed it was lunchtime. Her tent was freezing, but then it always was, and a low yellow winter sun was shining through the white canvas. She had slept in her oilcloth coat, and underneath it she wore almost all the clothes she had brought with her to France. She pushed her feet into her brown regulation boots and grabbed her wristwatch, and broke the ice on the small tin of water she kept in the corner for washing her face.
‘Just coming!’
She emerged from her tent into dazzling bright sunshine, shielding her eyes. The other staff tents seemed totally empty, their entrances flapping loosely in the cold air like a row of white flags. A brilliant blue winter sky blazed overhead.
‘Miss Parker?’
A military post-boy stood silhouetted to one side, his foot scrabbling in embarrassment at the scrubby, icy earth.
‘Telegram for you, Miss.’
He shrugged apologetically, and passed over the card. ‘Sorry to wake you. I was told you had been on night-duty, but it says “urgent” and instructions are to deliver it to the recipient in person, or not at all.’
A strange calm descended on Posie as the post-boy headed off again. The instructions given to the post-boy meant it was news of the very worst sort. Her heart was in her mouth and the hospital huts and the wretched little camping tents all formed a hazy blur around her.
She had been here before: she had received the official ‘Deeply regret to inform you…’ telegram before, when Harry had died in June. This was somehow similar, and at once Posie knew that she would never forget this Christmas, and for all the wrong reasons.
She ripped the paper open and sank numbly back down into the open mouth of her tent. The telegram read:
MISS PARKER,
NORBERT CARPENTER HERE – YOUR FATHER’S CHAPLAIN. IT IS WITH REAL SORROW THAT I SEND THIS TELEGRAM, FOR IT BRINGS BAD NEWS.
YOUR BROTHER RICHARD DIED AT THE BATTLE OF CAMBRAI IN NOVEMBER. IT SEEMS YOUR FATHER RECEIVED WORD AT THE TIME THAT RICHARD WAS MISSING IN ACTION AND HOPED AGAINST HOPE THAT HE WOULD TURN UP AS A PRISONER OF WAR, OR AS A CASUALTY.
BUT HE HEARD YESTERDAY (CHRISTMAS EVE) FROM AN ARMY CHAPLAIN WHO SERVED ALONGSIDE YOUR BROTHER. HE CONFIRMED RICHARD’S DEATH. THE ARMY CHAPLAIN HAS BEEN UNCONSCIOUS THIS LAST MONTH IN HOSPITAL AND REMAINS VERY ILL, AND ONLY JUST MANAGED TO WRITE A FEW BRIEF WORDS TO YOUR POOR FATHER.
PLEASE ACCEPT MY CONDOLENCES. I MET RICHARD ONCE OR TWICE AND HE ALWAYS IMPRESSED ME WITH HIS CHEERY COUNTENANCE AND SENSE OF HUMOUR.
THE POINT IS – AND IT IS RATHER AWKWARD – YOUR FATHER HAS NOT GOT OUT OF BED SINCE HEARING THE NEWS. I CANNOT BRING HIM ANY COMFORT AND I AM DEEPLY FEARFUL FOR HIS HEALTH, BOTH BODY AND SOUL.
AS THE ONLY FAMILY HE NOW HAS, I WONDER, CAN YOU ARRANGE IT SO YOU CAN COME HOME AND TEND TO YOUR FATHER AS A MATTER OF SOME URGENCY?
AGAIN WITH DEEPEST SYMPATHIES.
I REMAIN, YOUR HUMBLE SERVANT,
THE REV. N. CARPENTER
And without thinking, Posie found herself automatically packing her knapsack, tidying her little tent and taking off her Red Cross armband and the Red Cross pin which she had worn with such pride for five months.
She would go and report to Dr Rolly as the head of the Casualty Clearing Station, tell him she was leaving, and then inform the Red Cross who officially employed her. But it was a mere formality. She couldn’t stay on here: she would leave today.
She was going back home. But Richard, her lovely brother, would not be there. He would never be there again. The smarting realisation of what the telegram really meant was beginning to hit home: tears were pricking at her eyes.
Random memories of her elder brother suddenly and inconveniently crammed themselves into her mind, all out of order and higgledy-piggledy: Richard as a boy, climbing trees in the Rectory gardens; Richard whizzing down the stair-bannisters of the house at breakneck speed in the school holidays, daring Posie to join him, and then, one summer not so long gone, when he had already been appointed a Fellow at Cambridge and was back home for a few weeks on leave, Richard mooning around the house for days on end. Uncharacteristically sad.
Oh, Richard, Posie wanted to scream aloud. Couldn’t you have managed to stay alive? For me?
But all she was really left with was a nagging emptiness.
Anger at her father bubbled up, too. Why on earth hadn’t her father told her about the telegram which must have arrived in November, telling him that Richard was missing in action? Was it really a sort of naivety which she could well imagine her father capable of? Or had he wanted to shield Posie from what could have been an awful truth for as long as possible?
Her heart fluttering with a sadness and a heaviness she hadn’t felt in a long time, she crossed over to the staff hut to say goodbye forever to her crew. She fought back the tears which she knew would come, but which she would save for later, when she could grieve in private.
****
Posie had spent the rest of the war cocooned in the Norfolk Vicarage, where, apart from a couple of mad weeks around the time of the Armistice when she had helped the Red Cross out as an ambulance driver yet again, she had calmly and efficiently taken over the running of the Rectory and nursed her father out of his collapse, although it was fair to say he was never the same man again.
And within days of returning home to Norfolk those crazy, gut-wrenchingly tiring days she had spent working on the front line seemed like years ago. Another lifetime ago.
She was forced to grieve in private for her brother Richard, and for Harry Briskow, and for other friends who had fallen. She didn’t dare mention her brother in general conversation in case it brought on another attack of her father’s nerves.
Posie had been at home for about a month when she heard from Dulcie Deane, whom she hadn’t had time to keep in touch with, with some news out of the blue.
A few short lines in a distinctive hand arrived on the back of an army regulation postcard:
Posie,
Thought you might want to know, your old ambulance crew were all killed last week. Blown up by a mine. Including the dog.
Seems that you had a lucky escape.
Here at Clearing Station Number 8 all else remains the same.
Best regards,
DULCIE
P.S. Look me up in London when this is all over at my hostel, W1 D. Would be nice to keep in touch.
And so it was that Posie had learnt that they were all dead; Benny Jones and Merlin, and Harry and Bill. And all she could do was to add them to the list of those she grieved for. She tried not to dwell on whether or not she had had a lucky escape, and focused instead on just living.
And her life had proven busy, but underneath it all a sadness lingered.
Like a bad cut which would not heal.
****
Three
(Cambridge, 1922)
‘So Clearing Station Number 8 took a direct hit, did it? When was that exactly, Sister Fyne?’
Posie was trying to be business-like, trying to forget her personal connection with the place. But it was hard. Her thoughts were still in Arras, back in 1917…
‘February, 1918. And call me Felicity, please. We don’t need to be so formal now, do we?’
Posie shrugged as if the familiarity meant little to her. ‘You’d better call me Posie then.’
Posie chewed her lip half-guiltily and uncapped her pen, arranging her notebook in front of her. She hadn’t been informed of the loss of the Clearing Station before, not having stayed in touch with anyone left there after her crew had died, and it felt both sad and odd to hear about it now. She felt a twinge of remorse for poor dead Dulcie Deane whom she hadn’t written back to; remorse for all those tireless Red Cross workers and medical staff, and pity too for the poor soldiers who had been brought to a place of supposed safety and healing. She surprised herself by even feeling a stab of sadness at the death of fickle, aloof Dr Winter.
‘Forgive me for asking, Felicity, but how come you survived to tell the tale?’
‘I was the only one. I’d been working solid shifts for two weeks running and I was due an afternoon’s leave.’
Felicity Fyne paused and held the edges of her handbag tightly, as if keeping herself moored to one place. Even in the frenzied jumping of the blue and green fairy lights, she was still so beautiful that it quite took your breath away. Her harsh, well-cut black clothes and old-fashioned hairstyle only served to display her remarkable looks all the more. She looked like a glamorous nun. Felicity took a deep shuddering breath and went on:
‘It was Valentine’s Day. Ridiculous, I know. But I had decided to walk to Arras and buy some lace for myself, and some bits and pieces for William – Dr Winter – as well. It was unseasonably good weather, almost warm in fact, and I lingered on the walk back. I remember I even picked some early daffodils on the way – they seemed so cheerful and at odds with all the bloodshed – and when I got back, there was nothing left. The Clearing Station had been bombed.’
The Vanishing of Dr Winter: A Posie Parker Mystery (The Posie Parker Mystery Series Book 4) Page 3