by M J Lee
'But I wasn't even your child.'
'Of course you were. Just because you weren't my biological daughter doesn't make our relationship any weaker. I always thought of you as my daughter.'
Jayne put her arms around him, feeling the bristle of his chin against her face and the thinness of his body. He pretended to push her away. 'Don't go all soft on me now, lass. Not what I raised you to do.'
She leant away from him. He picked up the Guardian from the table; she could see the crossword was half-finished.
'How's the investigation going?' he asked.
She sighed. 'Not so good. I've found out a lot about my client's great grandmother but nothing about any supposed marriage to a David Russell. She was a suffragette.'
'Brave woman. Did she go to jail?'
Jayne showed her father the surveillance picture.
'What they did to those women was terrible, lass. Force-feeding them… and then there was the poor woman who threw herself under the King's horse.'
'Emily Davison.'
'That's her. Horrible way to die.' Her father looked down at his liver-spotted hands.
Jayne decided to change the subject quickly. 'I need to find out if a marriage took place nearly 100 years ago, but there are no records of it ever happening.'
His head lifted up and the old spark appeared in his eyes. 'Where?'
'Gretna Green.'
'Oh, one of those sort of marriages,' he said with an arch look.
'The bride was over 21 so there can't have been any objection from her family, and the groom was a soldier.'
'Perhaps they just didn't want to wait. Stranger things have happened in wartime.'
'True. But, I get the feeling there's more to it.'
'You've checked all the Scottish records?'
She nodded. 'Nothing.'
'You know, it was wartime. Records get lost or they get misfiled. A lot of the regular clerks had joined up by 1916, so they were using young boys and old men as registrars - mistakes were made.'
'But how would I know?'
'Only one way, lass.'
'I know, it's something you always tell me.'
'Nothing beats going there,' they both said at the same time.
'The computer's great, lass, but there's always human error. The only way is to go through the files yourself.'
'Looks like I'm going to Scotland.'
'Have a glass of whisky for me. Nothing beats a drop of Scotch in Scotland. Can't stand the stuff anywhere else.'
Jayne took out the drawing of Rose Clarke. 'This is the client's great grandmother. I'm beginning to find out she was a hell of a woman.'
‘So this is the woman you’re chasing?'
Jayne nodded.
'She was a nurse?'
'A what?'
'A nurse. She's wearing the uniform of one of the VAD.'
'VAD?'
'Volunteer Aid Detachment. They were nurses, orderlies, drivers and such things during the First World War, I recognise the uniform. My auntie on my mother's side was one. She drove a General all over France. Kept getting lost, she told me, signs were all in French and she didn't speak a word.'
Jayne leant forward and kissed her father on the top of his head. 'You're a godsend, Dad. I don't know what I'd do without you.'
'See, us old codgers can be of use sometimes. You can bring me back a bottle of Scotch from Gretna Green if you like. I might take up drinking again, just to annoy that bloody Matron.'
Chapter Twenty-Five
Royal Herbert Hospital, London. May 28, 1915.
Her feet were aching, aching, aching. She slipped off the sensible shoes and wiggled her toes, flexing her arches. She noticed a small gravy stain on her starched apron and quickly took a cloth to sponge it off before she had to return to duty at six. Officially, this was her dining break, but she rarely ate. A quick wash and a quiet nap were infinitely preferable to eating.
The stain was still faintly there. Maybe Sister wouldn't notice. Perhaps she would be too taken up by the impending arrival of a new intake of men from France to worry about such a small thing as a gravy stain.
She wondered even during her training why they dressed in white. It was a nonsensical colour for a nurse, let alone a VAD: a starched white bib with a small red cross in the centre covered a white cotton ankle-length dress, all topped by a stiff white collar and an even stiffer white cap. She supposed it was supposed to represent purity and cleanliness, but for her it made them look like preternaturally thriving schoolgirls.
She had gone along to the headquarters in Piccadilly at the end of the year. Her father had died soon after the outbreak of war and living with a maiden aunt in Worthing had been trying. Her aunt was a good person but so set in her ways; the tobacconist opened at 8 a.m., luncheon was at 12.30, afternoon tea at 3.30, the evening meal was at 6 p.m., and bedtime was at 9.00. In between, stultifying attempts at conversation were the only method of breaking up her boredom.
Inevitably, her thoughts turned to David. Had she been right to reject him? Where was he now? Why hadn't he written to her? As she read the news from France, with its increasingly long lists of dead and wounded, she realised she couldn't sit with her aunt any more and drink tea.
'Auntie May,' she announced one afternoon, 'I'm going to London to join the Voluntary Aid Detachment.'
Her aunt put down her china cup in its saucer and stared at her. 'You must do what you think is right, dear.' Then she had picked up the cup and began talking about the weather.
Rose realised her aunt was as sick of her presence as Rose was of being present. The next day she had taken the train up to London and presented herself at the headquarters of the Voluntary Aid Detachment in Piccadilly.
The interview, undertaken by a neatly coiffeured spinster with a strong Home Counties accent, was perfunctory. 'You were studying Art?'
'That's correct.'
'Any experience of nursing?'
'None. Other than nursing a sick mother when I was 13.'
'It doesn't really count. Can you drive?'
'I'm afraid not.'
'Not to worry. You'll receive some basic training in first aid and home nursing, then we'll let you loose in one of the hospitals. Under the supervision of a trained sister, of course.'
'Of course.'
'I see from your birth date you'll be eligible for service in France next year.'
Rose lifted her eyebrow.
'You need to be over 23 to serve overseas. We have to make sure our girls have a certain level of maturity before we let them anywhere near the front.'
Girls was pronounced 'Gels' as if they were members of some horribly athletic hockey team. The woman, Rose never heard her name, stamped the form in triplicate, obviously enjoying the process. 'Go down the corridor on the left and we'll measure you for the uniform.'
'That's it?'
'All done. Welcome to the VAD, Miss Clarke.'
After training for two weeks, which consisted of attending a series of lectures from medical officers, listening to aging matrons, and spending hours working out how to wear the uniform, she was posted to the Royal Herbert Hospital in Woolwich.
A sharp-faced, thin-lipped sister greeted her on her first day. 'You the new VAD?'
Rose nodded.
'In my experience, there are three types of VAD: the enthusiastic but hopeless, the hopeless but enthusiastic, and the bloody hopeless. Which are you Miss Clarke?'
'Enthusiastic and useful, I hope, Sister.'
The sister snorted. 'We'll see. And rid yourself now of any dreams of tenderly caring for beloved wounded heroes, wiping their brows, reading letters from home, comforting them in their hour of need. You'll be emptying bedpans, cleaning bandages, mopping floors and shovelling shit. Do I make myself clear?'
The sister sniffed and, with a swirl of her cape, turned to go. The greeting was finished.
Rose ran after her. 'Where do I go, Sister?'
'Ward 12 needs the bedpans emptied. I would go there if I wer
e you.'
Rose shuffled down the long, dim corridor looking for Ward 12. On the walls, the gas lighting was turned down so low it threw shadows rather than light. And all the corridors were painted the same colour; a peculiar shade of sickly green which inhabited every government office and hospital.
Eventually she found the ward after asking three different nurses and VADs, all of whom had pointed vaguely down the corridor before saying 'Over there' and rushing off to do something far more important than waste time with one of the new 'gels'.
The ward itself was two long rows of beds on either side of a central aisle. The opening of each pillow case faced the door. Eighteen fern plants sat in identical pots on tables next to the beds. A larger fern sat on a table at the entrance, greeting visitors. The lighting was almost as dim as in the corridor; small lamps between the beds gave off a subdued glow.
Each bed had a man in it, and each man turned to look at her as she entered, before returning to whatever it was they were doing. She took two steps inside.
'Are you the new VAD?' a voice asked from behind her.
A sister stepped out from a room hidden to one side. Rose could see a couple of bunks, a small table and a desk light but nothing else. To describe it as sparsely furnished would be an understatement.
'Rose Clarke.' She held out her hand.
The sister smiled and shook it. 'Good, I've been waiting for you, lots to do. You can start by emptying all the bedpans.'
And so life began for Rose. She didn't mind the hard work; the first two weeks she seemed solely involved with cleaning; toilets, floors, walls, ferns, windows, tables, more bedpans. If it didn't move, it was to be wiped down with disinfectant twice a day. The first sister she worked for was a lovely person, always willing to teach and help her become better, showing her how to perform her cleaning duties quickly and efficiently.
After this baptism of cleanliness, she graduated to making beds. All the sheets had to be folded in the prescribed fashion; openings of pillowcases were to be facing the door; covers turned down one-fifth to two-fifths; sheets tucked under and folded back at a 60-degree angle; blanket lines centred exactly. Woe betide her if she made a mistake; the sting of the nursing sister's disappointment was not something she wanted to invoke.
Making the beds gave her more opportunity to talk to the men. They were all officers, in this section of the hospital. Most weren't regulars but volunteers in the first mad days of August 1914. She met goldsmiths, haberdashers, bank clerks, sales reps, public school boys, engineers, jewellers, actors, watch makers and even one MP. They didn't say much to her, too shy or too embarrassed to hold a real conversation. Most turned away from her as they spoke, hiding their wounds or their scars as if ashamed by them.
She didn't get to know them well, calling them by bed numbers rather than names. The hospital concentrated on surgery and post-operative care. Except for a few cases, they weren't in the ward for long, before they were sent out to nursing homes around the country.
Her ward was for the least serious cases, the men whose injuries were certain to be cured with time, and who would then be sent back to rejoin their regiment on the front lines. This knowledge seemed to hang over them like a shroud; quietening conversation, discouraging intimacy.
After three months, she was put in charge of trays for four wards. There was a wonderful mind-numbing structure in her work now; 64 trays each with 12 different components, from knives and forks to salt cellars and napkins, had to be assembled for four meals a day. Each time she did it she counted out the 768 different pieces for the trays, making sure knives were in the correct position facing 12 o'clock, salt cellars were on the left, water glasses on the right. She pushed her loaded trays to the kitchen where one of the cooks placed plates of food in the centres and covered them with thin aluminium cloches.
And she was off down the dimly lit corridor, the hushed roll of rubber wheels and the rattle of plates the only accompaniments to her journey. The men were generally happy to see her. As one of them said one day: 'Nurse, I either sit in bed all day doing nothing, or I get up and do nothing.' Even the hospital food was a break from the monotony.
She grew to love her trips down the endless corridors; the whisper of secrets in the walls, the shuffle of men as they sat up in bed when she arrived, the rattle of the trolley, the way the dim gas light centred in the gleam of the trays; metal salt-cellars, yellow butters, cylinders of fluted glass. She loved the institutionalism of every minute, of every hour, of every day. A regularity that wasn't to be changed even by death.
And she did see death. The placing of screens around a bed. The arrival of a stretcher, the same stretcher they had been brought in on. The covering of the body with a flag. And the way all the men stood, or at least those who were able to, as the stretcher was carried quietly out of the ward to be buried on the hill behind the hospital.
She had seen death and wasn't afraid of it any more. It was a part of life.
After Sister Thomas in her first ward, she never bothered to get to know any of the other sisters. They were a race above, gods in their own kingdom on earth, looking down on the lesser beings such as the VADs. Some were friendly, but most were standoffish, almost cold; as if allowing the smallest sense of human companionship into their lives would make them vulnerable. Vulnerable to what she had asked herself at the beginning. After a while, she realised it was vulnerable to feelings, to sympathy, to empathy with some of these men who would die. Or never walk properly again. Or see. Or speak. Or hear.
She vowed she would never become like them.
She stoked the fire in her room, finished the last of her hot, sweet tea and smoothed the uniform down with her hands. The gravy stain was still on her apron, but hopefully this sister wouldn't notice. She took one last look at the room before closing the door.
The quiet of the ward and the soft snores of the men greeted her. Votes for women seemed so far away now, another life.
Nothing mattered any more except looking after herself and looking after the men in her care.
But often, in the middle of preparing her trays, she would stop and wonder. Where was David? What was he doing now?
Chapter Twenty-Six
Didsbury, Manchester. March 30, 2016.
She couldn't postpone it much longer.
Paul was bustling about the kitchen getting himself ready before they went out for dinner. She had arrived home from Buxton to find him sitting in the kitchen with a big smile on his face, their argument forgotten.
'The meeting was great. Looks like my portfolio is expanding and I’m being promoted; let's go out to celebrate.'
Jayne was tired and had to prepare for the trip to Scotland, but she agreed to go out.
Now, it was close to 7 o'clock, she couldn't leave it any longer before telling him. 'Paul, I need to go to Scotland tomorrow,' she blurted out.
He stopped what he was doing and turned slowly towards her. 'But I thought we were going to London this weekend, just me and you. I booked the train tickets and a hotel for us. Even managed to get tickets to see Les Mis, you know you've always wanted to see it.'
'I'm sorry, it's just the client. We need to go to Gretna Green to check the registers.'
'We?'
Jayne knew she was digging herself deeper into a hole but she had to carry on. 'His name is Mark Russell. He's commissioned me to search for the marriage of his great grandmother.'
'You're going to Scotland with another man and you didn't think to tell me?'
'I'm telling you now. And it isn't “another man”, it's a client.'
Paul ran his hand through what remained of his hair. Jayne knew what was coming next and she wished he wouldn't do it.
'Jayne, we haven't seen each other for two months. I'm only back for a weekend and I've arranged for us to enjoy a short time in London together, just me and you. And now you tell me you don't want to go.'
There it was again, the little-boy-lost voice, the hard done victim. God, she hated it when h
e spoke like this. All it showed was weakness and she hated weakness in men. He wasn't like this before. When Dave Gilmour had been shot, he was her rock, a tower of strength. Looking at him now, all she could see was a weak, flabby man with a receding hairline and a belly hanging over his trousers. Is this where all love ends? In disdain and disappointment and disillusion?
'Well?'
He was waiting for an answer.
'There's nothing I can do. I need to go to Scotland tomorrow.'
She could have explained more. Told him how they only had four more days to solve the case. She could have told him the story of the woman locked up in an asylum for 50 years. Or how a brave man had died in a pointless battle in the middle of a pointless war.
But she didn't.
'That's it then. Jayne Sinclair has decided her career is more important than her marriage. A choice she's made over and over again. Well, I won't put up with it any more, Jayne, I've had enough.'
He pushed past her and ran upstairs. She heard his feet stomp across the ceiling and the slamming of wardrobe and cupboard doors. Five minutes later, he was standing in front of her carrying an overnight bag.
'If you change your mind, I'll be staying at the Britannia.' With those last words, he left the house, closing the door behind himself quietly.
Jayne was left alone in the kitchen with only the cat to comfort her.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
No.11 General Hospital, Boulogne, France.
September 19, 1915.
Rose was carrying the soiled bandages to the laundry room. They were so short of equipment they were having to wash old bandages made from sheets and re-use them.
'Clarke.' The Matron's voice echoed down the hallway. A beckoning finger ordered her to come. 'What's this?'
At Matron's feet was a short piece of bandage covered in dried blood and greenish pus. Its ugliness a stark contrast to the beauty of the marble floor.