by Maureen Lee
‘No, my maiden name was Bailey, but Magda Starr looked better on posters than Madge Bailey.’
‘How did you become a midwife?’
‘I’m not a proper midwife, am I, dearie? I worked in a hospital for a while after my husband died and saw how it was done. I helped deliver a couple of babies and word got round, that’s all.’
The house was comfortable, as her father had promised. Madge’s exotic taste in clothes was reflected in the furnishings. Instead of a conventional runner, a garish shawl covered the sideboard on which stood a vase of enormous paper flowers. A bead curtain separated the kitchen from the living room, and there were numerous satin cushions embroidered with silver and gold thread scattered around. The covers had come from India, said Madge, as had the big tapestry over the mantelpiece in the parlour and the black and gold tea service with fluted rims that was brought out for best.
A fire crackled in the living room from early morning till late at night. On Sundays, a fire was also lit in the parlour for Madge’s visitors; women about her own age, who came in the afternoon to play whist and drink milk stout.
Olivia stayed in the other room on these occasions reading one of Madge’s collection of well-thumbed romantic novels. Sometimes she went upstairs for a nap in her room at the back with its lovely springy double bed.
She was as happy as anyone could be in her position. It would have been nice to have gone for a walk in the bright winter sunshine, or even the winter fog, wearing the new, warm coat, bought by Madge with money provided by her father but Madge, usually very easygoing, was strict about her staying indoors while it remained light outside.
‘I promised your father you wouldn’t go out until it was dark. It’s what he’s paying me for. I can’t force you to stay in, but I’d feel obliged to let him know if you didn’t.’
‘I’m not likely to meet anyone I know round here,’ Olivia said sulkily.
‘The world is made up of coincidences,’ Madge said. ‘You could walk out and come face to face with the sister of your mother’s best friend.’
‘My mother doesn’t have friends.’
‘Well, her next-door neighbour, then.’
‘Has my father given you his address?’
‘’Course. I’m to send him a telegram when the baby’s born, aren’t I? “Package Delivered” I’ve to put, case anyone reads it. Unless you decide to keep the baby, that is, in which case he doesn’t want to know.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of keeping it.’ Olivia shuddered. Once it arrived, she intended putting the whole episode behind her and finishing her training, to become a State Registered Nurse.
Madge looked at her thoughtfully. ‘You might feel different when it’s born.’
‘If I do,’ Olivia said harshly. ‘I want you to tear it out of my arms and let my father have it.’
‘Your father can do the tearing, dearie. Not me.’
The baby seemed even less real than Tom. It might well be in her womb, but it had nothing to do with her. She didn’t care what happened to it as long as it didn’t come to any harm.
Christmas came and went, and soon it was 1919, the first New Year in half a decade with Europe at peace with itself, celebrated with a joy and enthusiasm that was infectious. Madge and Olivia watched fireworks on the River Avon and sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at midnight in Victoria Park.
January became February, and February turned into March. The baby was due at the beginning of April.
Desmond Starr, Madge’s ventriloquist son, came home for Easter, a cheerful, outgoing young man, just like his mother. He was booked to appear all summer at a theatre in Felixstowe and invited Madge and her guest. He could get free tickets.
‘Well, I’ll try,’ Olivia lied. By summer, she would have started afresh. She was fond of Madge, but never wanted to see her or her son again.
She knew she had become very hard, very selfish. In days gone by, she’d been regarded as a soft old thing, too sympathetic for her own good. But now, there seemed to be a barrier in her brain, stopping all thoughts from entering that weren’t concerned solely with herself.
The baby signalled it was on its way one lovely sunny Sunday afternoon in April, dead on time. Olivia was reading one of Madge’s torrid romances when she had the first contraction, a strong one. It wasn’t long before she had another, stronger and more painful. She’d spent time on a maternity ward during her training and recognised it was going to be a quick birth.
Madge was playing whist with her friends in the parlour. Olivia calmly made a cup of tea and waited for the friends to leave. She boiled two large pans of water and laid a rubber sheet on the bed. The worn sheets Madge had boiled to use as rags she put ready on a chair.
She gritted her teeth when another contraction came, worse than the others, but was reluctant to disturb Madge while her friends were there. Not that Madge could do anything, but she wouldn’t have minded the company. The contractions were coming every ten minutes by the time the visitors were shown out.
‘By, God! You’re a cool customer,’ Madge gasped when Olivia called her upstairs where she was lying on the bed, already in her nightdress.
‘I’ve got a couple of hours to go yet.’
‘You’re too cool, d’you know that?’ She sat on the bed and took Olivia’s hand. ‘My other young ladies have cried themselves silly during the entire confinement, but there hasn’t been a peep out of you.’
‘I haven’t felt much like crying,’ Olivia confessed, wincing when another contraction gripped her stomach like a wrench.
‘It’s time you did. Didn’t you cry when your young man was killed? What was his name? Tom! You hardly ever talk about him.’
Olivia permitted herself a wry smile. ‘I slept in a dormitory with the other nurses. There was no place where I could cry in private. And I don’t talk about Tom because he doesn’t seem real. I can’t even remember what he looked like.’
Madge sniggered. ‘Well, the baby’s real enough. You can have a good old yell, you know,’ she said when Olivia winced again. ‘Let yourself go. Next door’s deaf as a post and the street won’t mind.’
‘I’d sooner not. And I don’t feel all that bad. Most of the births that I remember were much worse than this.’
The time passed slowly. Children could be heard playing in the street outside. Someone knocked on the door but Madge ignored it. A woman in a house behind was singing, her voice carrying clearly in the still, evening air. ‘Keep the home fires burning...’
It was the song the men used to sing in France, Olivia remembered. It could be heard late at night, from miles away across the fields, when the fighting had finished for the day. Some nights, the nurses and the patients joined in. They’d been singing it the night when she and Tom had made love...
... the sky had been spectacular, she recalled; deep, sapphire blue, as lustrous as the jewel, and powdered with a myriad glittering stars. The waning moon was a delicate lemon curve.
Although not yet completely dark, it was dark enough to disguise the fact that the French landscape was a battlefield on which more than a million men had died. In daylight, the flat ground was a sea of dried mud, a jigsaw of trenches, empty now that the fighting had moved on.
Spurts of white smoke could be seen on the horizon, where the battle now was, where shells were landing, killing yet more men. The smoke occasionally turned to flames, indicating a building had been hit. On such a night, the flames even added something to the splendour of the view, flickering as they did like giant candles at the furthest edge of the world. A few broken trees were silhouetted like crazy dancing figures against the lucid blueness of the sky.
People had come outside the hospital to marvel at the magnificent sight amidst so much mayhem; staff, a few of the walking wounded. There was the faint murmur of voices, the occasional glimmer of a cigarette.
‘Olivia! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’
‘Tom!’ Olivia turned and instinctively lifted her arms to embrace the man limpin
g towards her. She dropped them as he came nearer and hoped he hadn’t noticed. He was her patient. He mustn’t know how she felt, though she sensed he had already guessed. After all, she had a strong suspicion he felt the same, something of a miracle when he was so attractive and she so plain.
‘Great night,’ he said, panting slightly. The walk had been an effort.
‘Beautiful,’ she breathed. She nodded towards the smoke and the flames in the distance. ‘That spoils it rather. And there’s something sinister about not being able to hear the explosions.’
‘Or the screams,’ Tom said drily. He took her hand, his fingers curling warmly inside her own. She made no attempt to pull away. ‘So, this is it! Our last night together.’ He gave the glimmer of a smile. ‘Or should I say, our last night in the near vicinity of each other. I’m sorry my leg is better. I feel tempted to take off my clothes, wander into the darkness, and pray I catch pneumonia again.’
‘Not if I have anything to do with it!’ She pretended to be outraged. He was joking. He was American, and the Americans joked all the time. They seemed exceptionally good-humoured. ‘I’m a nurse. I want my patients to get better, not worse.’
‘Don’t be so practical.’
‘Nurses are always practical, they have to be.’ She didn’t feel practical, not now, with her hand held so tightly in his.
He gave another tiny smile. ‘Couldn’t you be impractical just for tonight?’
‘Not if it means you catching pneumonia, no. Anyway, it’s exceptionally warm. You’re not likely to catch anything except a few insect bites. Mind you, they can be nasty.’
‘In that case,’ he said lightly, ‘Maybe we could forget about war, explosions in the distance, illnesses, hospitals, doctors and nurses, and just talk about each other?’
She should really say no, that’s impractical too. Instead, she murmured, ‘There’s nothing much to say.’ She already knew quite a lot about him. He came from Boston. His parents – he called them ‘folks’ – were Irish. He was twenty-three, worked in a bookshop owned by his father, and had volunteered to fight when America joined the war in 1917. His full name was Thomas Gerald O’Hagan and he had two sisters and five brothers of which he was the youngest. She also knew she wasn’t the only nurse attracted to the tall, thin Irish–American with the laughing face, black curly hair, and peat-brown eyes. She was, however, the only one in love. He occupied her mind every waking minute of every day.
He had come into the hospital three weeks ago with a badly gashed leg and a dose of double pneumonia. Tomorrow, he was being sent to convalesce in a hospital in Calais. As soon as he was fit, he would return to an American Army unit to fight again. As a reminder of his imminent departure, there was a clanking sound as the ambulance train was shunted into place on the railway sidings behind them, ready for morning.
By comparison, he knew little about her, just that her name was Olivia Jones and she was the same age as himself. She had been born and bred in Wales and had never left its borders until she’d come to France two years ago as a nurse. He also knew, because he could see, that she wasn’t even faintly pretty, almost insipid with her pale face and pale blue eyes.
‘What will you do when the war is over?’ Tom asked casually.
‘Finish my training. I hadn’t taken my final exams when I left Cardiff.’
‘Would it be possible to finish training in the States?’
She caught her breath. ‘Why should I do that?’
‘Because it’s where I’ll be.’ His voice was very low, intense. ‘It’s where my job is. And it’s where I’d like you to be. Will you marry me, Olivia?’
‘But we hardly know each other,’ she gasped, though it was silly to sound so surprised when it was a question she’d hoped and prayed he’d ask.
He gestured impatiently. ‘My darling girl, there’s a war on, a hideous war, the worst the world has ever known. There isn’t time for people to get to know each other as they would in normal times. I fell in love the first time I set eyes on you.’ Pressing her hand to his lips, he said huskily, ‘You are the loveliest woman I’ve ever known.’
He must be in love if he thought that! It was time she answered, said something positive, told him how she felt. He was kissing her now, her neck, her cheeks. He took her face in both hands and kissed her lips.
She was a timid person, withdrawn, and this was the first time she had been properly kissed. She pressed herself against him and felt her body come alive. ‘I love you,’ she whispered.
He held her so tightly she could hardly breathe. ‘The minute this damn war is over we’ll get married,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I’ll write you every day and let you know where I’m posted so you can write me. Have you a photograph I can have?’
‘I’ve one taken with the other nurses a few months ago,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I’ll let you have it before you go.’
‘I’ll let you have something of mine.’ He held out his hand. A circle of gold glinted dully on the third finger – she had noticed the ring before, and had thought he was married until she realised it was on his right hand. ‘It’s my grandpop’s wedding ring,’ he explained as he removed it, dark eyes shining. ‘He gave us all something before he died. I got his ring. It’ll be too big, but might fit your middle finger. Or you can wear it around your neck on a chain.’
The ring was too big for any of her fingers. She put it in the breast pocket of her long white apron. As soon as she could, she’d buy a chain.
‘I feel as if we’re already married.’ Her voice was thick in her throat. It was almost too much to bear. She wanted Tom to kiss her again, do the things that, until now, she’d thought wrong. She slid her arms around his neck and began to pull him along the side of the hospital building. He put his hands on her waist and they moved as if they were doing some strange sort of dance. In the distance, the troops began to sing, a desolate, haunting sound.
Tom said, ‘Where are we going, honey?’
‘Round here.’
They reached the corner of the building. About a hundred feet away, a tangle of railway lines shone silver in the light of the moon. Beyond the lines stood a small, single-storey building without a door.
‘This used to be a station,’ she said. ‘That building was the waiting room.’
‘And is that where we’re going?’ There was incredulity in his voice.
By now, she felt utterly shameless. Every vestige of the respectability and conformity that she’d been fed over her entire life had fled. In just an instant, the world had turned 180 degrees. ‘If you want,’ she said.
‘If I want! Gee, I can’t think of anything I want more. But you, Olivia, is it what you want?’
Her answer was a laugh. She grabbed his hand, and they began to step over the silver lines. The stars continued to shine in their hundreds and thousands, the troops continued to sing, but Olivia and Tom were aware of none of these things as they entered the small, unused building into an intoxicating world of their own.
The war would be over in a few months’ time, so everybody said: the experts, the newspapers, the pundits, the tired, hopeful men on the ground. But people had been saying the same thing for the last four years, ever since the fighting had begun.
It was something they wanted to believe, Olivia Jones included. But now she had her own pressing reason for wanting the fighting to end, to be over before Tom returned to battle.
Next morning, she saw him off, slipping him the promised photograph when no one was looking – she would get into serious trouble if Matron discovered the magical thing that had happened the night before. A few nurses in their shoulder-length voile caps, dark-blue gowns, and full-length aprons, came out of the hospital to wave goodbye to the men they had tenderly nursed back to health. Tears were shed on both sides as the train puffed away in the brilliant sunshine towards Calais.
Olivia hadn’t thought it possible to feel both unbearably sad and blissfully happy at the same time; sad that Tom had gone, happy thinking about th
eir future together. She fingered the ring in her pocket as she watched the train disappear round a bend. She’d examined it the night before. Inside was engraved, the words worn away until they were barely legible: RUBY TO EAMON 1857.
‘If – no, when me and Tom have children, we’ll call them Ruby and Eamon,’ she decided, rubbing her hands together in anticipation.
The vacated beds weren’t empty long. Later that morning, a horse-drawn ambulance arrived full of casualties who’d already been cursorily seen to in a dressing station on the front line. The rest of the day was spent re-bandaging wounds, comforting those for whom there seemed no hope because their injuries were too severe. Some were taken to the operating theatre to have limbs removed, returning, dopey from the anaesthetic, waking later, shattered and terrified.
As she walked from bed to bed, smiling at the stricken men, fetching water, making them as comfortable as possible, Olivia cursed the politicians who were responsible for the slaughter, who’d allowed it to continue for so long. A generation of young men had been sacrificed for no real reason, and a generation of women had lost husbands, fathers, sons.
The injured men would never have guessed the little nurse with the sweet smile – Olivia wasn’t quite as plain as she thought – was so preoccupied with thoughts of the previous night, a night when she’d taken a lover, become a woman, and had promised to become a wife.
‘Mrs Thomas O’Hagan!’
She practised saying the words underneath her breath.
‘What was that, darlin’?’ a little Cockney with a broken arm enquired.
‘Sorry, I was talking to myself.’
He grinned. ‘Well, that way you won’t get no arguments.’
She grinned back, tucked the sheet tightly around his waist, and told him to rest.
It was after tea by the time the men had been seen to and those able to eat had been given a meal – the inevitable bully beef accompanied by mashed potatoes. While they ate, a dozen weary nurses collected in a windowless recess outside the ward which they regarded as their staffroom, for a hot drink, the first since morning.