‘Watch it,’ Ben said at once, frowning and stepping towards the other man. ‘Miss Florrie’s a lady, an’ don’t you forget it.’
‘Whoa there, mate,’ George said at once, his hands outstretched, palms outwards as if to fend Ben off. ‘I was only having a larf. No offence meant, miss. Honest.’
Florrie laughed and put her hand on Ben’s arm to calm him down. ‘And none taken, George. Now, how about I make us all a nice cup of tea before you leave?’
They all sat down at the freshly scrubbed kitchen table on a motley selection of chairs that had been found in various parts of the house. Florrie set out cups and poured boiling water from the kettle on the hob into a cracked teapot. The lid was missing, but she improvised with a cracked saucer to cover the tea whilst it brewed.
They sat around drinking tea and swapping stories of their lives and loved ones back home. Florrie was able to reassure Ben that his family had been fit and well when she’d last seen them, and she promised that she’d write that very night to her grandmother with messages for the Atkinson family.
‘So this is what you all get up to when my back’s turned.’ Sergeant Granger was standing in the doorway. At once the four soldiers scrambled to their feet and stood to attention, looking suddenly fearful.
‘My fault entirely, Sergeant,’ Florrie said cheerfully. ‘They’ve all worked so hard they deserved a cuppa.’ She lifted up the teapot. ‘How about you? I think there’s still enough in the pot.’
Sergeant Granger smiled, nodded to his men to relax and joined them at the table.
‘Everything’s done,’ Florrie said as she fetched another cup for him. ‘Thanks to you and your men. Just the medical supplies to come and we’ll be ready.’
A little later the men left and Florrie was alone. It was growing dusk as she banked down the fire in the range and prepared to walk the mile and a half back to the camp. She eyed the tin bath sitting innocently on the hearth. There was plenty of hot water in the boiler. It was such a pity to waste it, she thought, and there was no one about now.
She found a tin jug, filled it from the tap at the side of the range and poured it into the bath. Six more jugfuls gave her a few inches to sit in. She rummaged through some clutter that the soldiers had heaped into one corner of the kitchen during their cleaning. They’d brought everything they could find from other parts of the house too. Anything and everything that might be useful: sheets, blankets, pillows, towels and even some clothing that had been left. They’d brought it all to the kitchen.
‘So you don’t go looking round the house, miss,’ Ben had said. ‘T’ain’t safe in some parts.’
At last she found what she sought – a piece of soap. It was cracked and dried, but it was better than nothing. She lit two candles and, moments later, she was stepping naked into the bath and luxuriating in the warmth of the hot water. Every limb was aching with the fatigue of the last two days, but she’d completed the task. The cellars were ready and even the kitchen was usable. She couldn’t wait to get back to the camp and tell Dr Hartmann. She chuckled as she soaped herself. She might even get a smile of thanks from him.
Florrie froze as she heard a scuffling noise outside. She glanced towards her clothes, strewn over a chair. Her gun was beneath them and she couldn’t reach it from where she was sitting. She waited, holding her breath and hoping that whoever it was might go away. The footsteps came nearer, right to the kitchen door. It swung open, creaking on its hinges.
‘Oh, thank goodness,’ Florrie breathed as she saw Ernst standing in the doorway.
‘Nurse Maltby – whatever are you doing?’
‘What does it look like?’ she replied with asperity, forgetting for a moment his senior position. ‘I’ve done my bit these last two days – with a lot of help, mind you. But I’m hot and filthy and I deserve a bath, so, Dr Hartmann, if you wouldn’t mind leaving whilst I get dried and dressed . . .’
But Ernst didn’t leave. He came into the room and moved towards her, picking up the towel and stretching it out so that she could step out of the bath and allow him to wrap it around her. She looked up at him, her heart beating a little faster.
He was even more handsome in the soft glow from the candlelight. His black hair shone and his blue eyes were dark with a sudden passion. Her body responded of its own volition. She was powerless against the huge tide of emotion and longing that swept through her. It was wrong – all so wrong – yet she wanted to be in his arms more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life . . .
He was still holding the towel stretched out for her. Slowly, she stood up. The candlelight glistened on her body. She stepped out of the water onto the flagged stone floor. He wrapped the towel around her and pulled her gently into his arms.
‘Florence – my darling girl. From the moment I first saw you, I knew this was meant to be. It is Fate that has brought us together. Come . . .’ He drew back and took her hand. Picking up one of the lighted candles, he led her towards the steps leading down to the cellar. They lay on one of the beds made ready for their first patients and there Florrie believed she’d found the love and passion she sought. She’d found a man she truly could love and be loved by. Willingly, she gave herself to him, body and soul.
Locked in their own private little world, they could have been a thousand miles away from the war.
Twenty-Nine
‘So, tomorrow we begin,’ Ernst said as they walked back through the twilight, holding hands until they came within sight of the encampment. ‘No one must know about us, Florence. You do understand that, don’t you?’
‘Of course,’ she said swiftly. ‘Sister Blackstock would send me packing immediately. And I don’t want to go – especially now.’
He chuckled. ‘I don’t think they would do that to me, but my reputation would not be so – how do you say – wholesome?’
She laughed softly. ‘Oh, I don’t know. You’d be forgiven. You’re a man.’ There was a tinge of irony in her tone. In Florrie’s mind, it was another example of the inequality that existed between men and women. Whilst she would be sent home in disgrace, he would merely cause a nudge and a wink and be thought a bit of a ‘jack the lad’. Even so, she didn’t want to be parted from him.
‘But how are we going to meet? Have some time alone together?’
‘I’ll think of something,’ he murmured. He gave her hand a quick squeeze before releasing his hold. They walked back into the camp with a demure three feet between them.
The following morning, Ernst, Sister Blackstock and Florrie set off to begin work in the ruined house. Rosemary Blackstock was full of praise for the work Florrie had done with the help of the soldiers. ‘Dr Hartmann was right, wasn’t he? We’ll be able to do so much more, the nearer we are. And these cellars are comparatively safe.’
As if on cue they heard the thump of the guns begin again and it wasn’t long before their first patients began to arrive.
Ernst insisted on seeing every one of them, though not all required his surgeon’s knife. He picked out one here, another there that needed his skill and instructed Sister Blackstock to assist him in the small room set up as a crude operating theatre. Florrie was left to attend to all the other casualties carried down the steps and into the cellars. She felt a moment’s pang of disappointment that it was Rosemary Blackstock at Ernst’s side and not her. But her head, if not her heart, told her that the older woman was by far the more experienced at assisting him. And besides, Florrie told herself, they’ve trusted me enough to leave me in charge in the wards.
She bent over a man who’d been injured in the face. Gently Florrie syringed and washed the wound with peroxide to clean the blood and mud away. Carefully, she shaved his face and placed a dressing on the wound. It would need such treatment repeated frequently over the next three or four days. As she turned to leave him and go to her next patient, the man gripped her arm. He couldn’t speak, but in the dim light of the cellar, lit only by lanterns and candles, the look in his eyes spoke his thanks.
>
She smiled and moved on. The next casualty had a badly smashed leg and was awaiting his turn in the operating room. He was in dreadful pain, but he was smiling through it all. ‘This is a Blighty one, ain’t it, Sister?’
Florrie grinned. ‘Could be, soldier, but that’s for the doctors to say. And by the way, I’m not a sister, I’m only a VAD – not even a proper nurse.’
The man winked at her. ‘Well, you’ll do for me, luv. Just get me patched up an’ on that ship home.’
The three of them worked all day until at last the flow of casualties stopped, but already it seemed as if the cellars were full.
‘First thing in the morning, Nurse Maltby,’ Ernst said, ‘you must ferry as many of these patients as can be moved back to our base camp.’ He seemed to be avoiding looking directly at her and spoke now to the sister. ‘We need more people here. Another doctor and more nurses.’
‘We do, Dr Hartmann.’ Rosemary spoke softly as she glanced around at the sleeping patients. ‘You were right. Several – if not most – of these men would have been in a far worse state if they’d had to travel further before receiving attention.’
Ernst gave a grunt of satisfaction at hearing her admit it.
He moved away, towards the tiny room where he slept, without bidding them goodnight and – to Florrie’s intense disappointment – without even glancing at her.
The days passed in a blur and there was no time for Florrie and Ernst to snatch a few precious moments together. The wounded poured into their field ambulance in the cellars, now nicknamed, with tongue-in-cheek wry humour, the Chateau. They were treated or operated on, nursed and moved back to what was referred to as Base Camp.
‘Would you like to come with me, Grace?’ Florrie asked. Grace had come to the Chateau to help out for a few days. ‘There’s a poor boy who’s been gassed. He can hardly breathe, poor dear. If you could sit in the back of the lorry and—’
‘Oh, Florrie, I’d love to – I know the one you mean. He’s a lamb and so young! But I’ve got all these sheets to wash.’ She leaned closer and lowered her voice. ‘He’s a fanatic about everything being washed.’
Florrie nodded, remembering the argument between Ernst and Sister Blackstock. Arms akimbo, Rosemary had faced him fearlessly. ‘Doctor, if you want this amount of laundry doing – clean sheets for every new arrival – you must send for another VAD to do that and nothing else. I’d put Maltby on it, but she’s too valuable driving the lorry, and besides, her nursing skills are—’
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ Ernst had put up his hands as if in surrender, but he was not about to give in. ‘You must understand, Sister, how cleanliness is so important to prevent the spread of infection. We’re getting all sorts of diseases coming in, not just gunshot and shrapnel wounds. Bronchitis, pneumonia and,’ he paused deliberately for dramatic effect, ‘tuberculosis.’
Rosemary Blackstock gaped at him. ‘I’m sorry – I had no idea,’ she said at once.
‘I saw two cases at Camiers. We’re almost bound to encounter it here sooner or later. Anyone who has a susceptibility to it is bound to develop it in the terrible conditions they’re living in.’ He shrugged. ‘Besides, it’s not pleasant for the wounded to be put into a bed to lie on another man’s blood and pus – and worse.’
‘No – no, you’re right. I see you are. But how are we to cope?’
Florrie had seen Ernst’s winning smile, his irresistible charm, turned fully on Rosemary. ‘Ah, Sister, you will find a way, I’m sure.’
And so the laundry was done by anyone who could be spared – even the ‘walking wounded’ were coerced into standing at the white sink with their arms deep in soapsuds.
‘Beats goin’ over the top’ was the opinion of men who’d likely never had to do any ‘women’s work’ in the whole of their lives.
Dr Johnson greeted her as Florrie drew the ambulance to a halt outside the line of tents at Base Camp two weeks after their arrival here. She’d been driving the patients from the Chateau each morning, sometimes needing two or three journeys, but today there was something different about the original camp site.
‘Oh,’ she exclaimed as she jumped down from behind the wheel and shaded her eyes against the sun. ‘You’ve got more tents. Lots more.’
‘And more nurses and two doctors have arrived,’ the big man beamed at her. ‘They’ve begun to realize that the army medical officers in the field can’t cope with the volume of casualties, not since this hellish battle began, and Hartmann’s theories are proving effective. So we’ve been sent more help and, I think and hope, there’s more to come. So, my dear girl,’ he put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it warmly, ‘today you can take back Sister Carey and two nurses to help at the Chateau. And even,’ he puffed out his chest, ‘another doctor.’
‘Oh, Dr Johnson . . .’ Quite forgetting her place, Florrie flung her arms around him, stood on tiptoe and kissed him soundly on the cheek. Then, appalled at her temerity, she stood back. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
But Dr Johnson’s booming laugh echoed through the camp. ‘Don’t mention it, my dear.’ He winked at her. ‘But I shall expect that greeting every morning from now on.’
‘Nurse Maltby,’ Ernst Hartmann said when the last patient was carried away at the end of another gruelling day and there were just the two of them left in the operating room. ‘You and I – we deserve a little holiday.’
Already it was the beginning of June and the worst of the fighting around the town of Ypres seemed to be over. Though the gunfire and shelling would never quite cease, they were less frequent. There would always be casualties, though thankfully not so many now. That dreadful, overwhelming tide of wounded and dying had ebbed a little.
Busy with the instruments, Florrie glanced up at him in surprise. ‘A holiday?’ Then she chuckled. ‘I’ve almost forgotten what that is.’
‘Then tomorrow we shall revive your memory. We shall take a little trip away from here to where it is safe. Just for a day we will have no more death and disease and the shedding of blood.’
Florrie bit her lip as her heart raced a little faster. ‘But how?’
He smiled. ‘I have it all worked out. When you drive your patients back to Base Camp tomorrow morning, I will come with you. There is an extremely sick patient who needs an operation that we cannot perform here. They have better equipment at the camp now, and Dr Johnson will be able to do a much better job. The soldier has a severe wound in his stomach and intestines and he will need care on the journey. It is the perfect excuse for me to come with you. And we need more equipment and supplies here. We can bring them back.’
Florrie laughed. ‘It doesn’t sound much of a holiday.’
He grimaced. ‘Well, maybe only half a day and part of the evening. But we shall make a little detour. I have heard of a nice little cafe not too far away beyond Base Camp. It’s in a small village that has not yet been affected by the shelling. And don’t forget your identity certificate. We’ll be going across the border.’
‘But – but won’t anyone guess? Sister Blackstock? And the others?’
‘No, no, they will suspect nothing – if we are careful.’
Despite her excitement at the thought of the outing, and even more at the thought of being alone with him for a few precious hours, Florrie slept soundly, waking automatically at five thirty. By six o’clock, she was washed and dressed.
As they carefully loaded the injured man into the back of the ambulance, Florrie marvelled that he was still alive. She doubted he would withstand even the short journey or the operation ahead. The other three were ‘walking wounded’. One climbed into the passenger’s seat beside Florrie, whilst the other two sat in the back with the stretcher case and Dr Hartmann.
‘Aren’t you the lucky one?’ Sister Blackstock teased as they were about to leave. ‘Having the handsome Dr Hartmann all to yourself on the journey back. But just you be careful, my girl. He’s a devil with the women, you know.’
‘Really?’ Florrie
laughed.
‘Yes, really.’ Now Rosemary Blackstock’s tone was more serious. ‘And being out with him alone – well, you’ve your reputation to think of.’
‘My reputation? That was shot to pieces in Holloway – at least according to my father.’
Sister Blackstock pulled a face. ‘Oh, don’t tell me about fathers.’
‘Strict, is he?’
Sister Blackstock smiled. ‘Aren’t they all?’ She sighed. ‘He was dead set against my making a career for myself in nursing. Said it would be a waste. I’d only get married. But, as you can see, I’m no beauty.’ The statement was made in a matter-of-fact manner. She was not seeking compliments. She smiled impishly. ‘Unlike you.’
Florrie opened her mouth to protest. In the cold and the mud and the horror she felt anything but ‘beautiful’, but Rosemary held up her hand. ‘Don’t deny it, my girl. I don’t like false modesty.’
Quite truthfully Florrie said, ‘Well, I don’t feel it out here.’
‘No,’ Rosemary said soberly. ‘I don’t suppose you do, but your loveliness brings great comfort to the dying, my dear.’
Florrie stared at her and her lip trembled. ‘But I don’t want to be an ornament. I want to be useful.’
‘Oh, you are, Florrie, you are. Never doubt that.’ She chuckled. ‘Believe me, pretty face or not, you wouldn’t still be here alongside Dr Hartmann if you weren’t useful and very capable. He always puts his work first. But he’s a very charming man when he wants to be and that’s why—’
What more the sister might have said, Florrie was never to know, for at that moment Ernst Hartmann came striding towards them.
‘Ah, there you are. Everyone ready? Then let’s be off.’ Without even a glance at Florrie, the doctor climbed into the back of the canvas-covered lorry to sit beside his patient.
Rosemary Blackstock watched them go, her eyes clouded with anxiety. She sincerely hoped the young girl’s head would not be turned by the attentions of the handsome, dark-eyed doctor.
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