But then came a letter from Augusta telling her the news she’d most feared to hear.
My dear girl, How dreadful for you to be with Ben when he died but, though the news has devastated the Atkinson family, the fact that you were at his side and were able to reassure Mrs Atkinson that he did not suffer, has been of great comfort to them. Though I wonder, privately of course, if you have not told us the whole truth. The number of telegrams that relatives are receiving saying ‘He died instantly and did not suffer’ seems incredible. I expect, for once, it is the War Office trying to be kind.
Florrie smiled sadly. Her grandmother was as shrewd as ever. But, as she read the next words, her smile faded.
I’m sorry to have to tell you, my dear, that James has been posted abroad. Where, we don’t know, but if the action is where you are, then I fear that is where he might well be also. We have not heard from him since he went, so if you do have news, please, Florrie dear, let us know. Gervase has written – he sends his love. He says he’s still moving about a lot. Your father is well, and your mother, poor dear, stays in bed most of the day now . . .
Florrie glanced at the top of the letter. The date in Augusta’s scrawling handwriting was already a month old. She folded the letter slowly and tucked it away amongst her belongings. So, she thought, James had already been out here in France or Belgium for over a month. Perhaps Ben had been right after all. Maybe James was here somewhere quite close. And Gervase and Tim? Where were they?
As she lay down to sleep, she prayed fervently that she would not see any of them, for the only way that might come about was if they were wounded.
No one seemed to guess about the love affair between Florrie and the doctor. Their snatched moments of privacy were few, but their lovemaking was passionate, heightened by the danger all around them. Ernst couldn’t even come to where she slept, for it was one of the rooms in the cellar, with the patients sleeping on the other side of the wall, and the room was shared with any other nurse or sister not on night duty.
Late at night, when the orderlies had carried away the last patient and the other nurses had stumbled wearily to their beds, they made love in the operating room, where earlier men had screamed in agony and even died.
There was no time for sentiment or squeamishness, no time for guilt or remorse. There was only this moment of passion – for there might never be another. Every day they lived with death: the death of those all around them and the knowledge of their own fleeting mortality. There was no thought for family or friends or loved ones.
Marooned in a world of carnage and horror, they hungered only for each other. They gave of themselves to others for many hours every day, so when they could snatch a few minutes, they were completely selfish and self-centred. For those few precious moments, nothing and no one else mattered. Not Tim. Not Gervase. Not even James.
By day they worked side by side the same as always, professional and efficient. Only when they’d done all they could for the wounded and dying did they fall into each other’s arms and, for a brief moment of bliss, blot out the world around them.
They were blithely unaware that Sister Blackstock had her suspicions, but wisely she kept her counsel, though she worried for Florrie, for she’d become fond of the girl and admired her spirit.
‘What’s going to happen when this is all over?’ Florrie asked Ernst.
They were in the dimly lit operating room, sharing a brief moment alone. They were both exhausted after a particularly harrowing day. But each drew comfort from the other’s nearness. Ernst stroked her hand.
‘Over?’ There was incredulity in his tone as if he’d never even thought that one day it would be over – that it would ever be over. Now she was forcing him to think about it. He wrinkled his brow. ‘It depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On who wins, for a start.’
‘Oh, we’ll win,’ Florrie said promptly.
Ernst smiled, a little sadly. ‘So much confidence,’ he murmured and pressed her hand against his lips.
‘What will you do? Go back to Switzerland?’
His eyes clouded and took on a far-away look. His home was in another world, another time.
When he didn’t answer she pressed him. ‘What d’you want to do with your life? What were you doing before the war started?’
Slowly, almost reluctantly, he murmured, ‘I worked in a sanatorium in my home town. It was – is – what I always wanted to do. It’s why I became a doctor.’ He glanced at her and then looked away again quickly. ‘Davos has become well known for the treatment of tuberculosis patients. There are many sanatoriums there and I wanted to make the study of the disease my life’s work.’
‘And you’ll go back there when the war’s over? Is there still a position for you at the sanatorium where you worked before?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said. There was a strange bitterness in his tone. ‘There’s a place waiting for me there.’
‘I could come with you. I could help you.’
‘We’ll see, we’ll see,’ he said softly and kissed her hand again. Then he reached for her and pulled her down, holding her close and burying his face against her breast.
She said no more, asked no more, understanding that he could not envisage what the future would be. It seemed he did not have her faith.
Thirty-Two
Florrie had become adept at improvisation and soon everyone was calling on her for help.
‘Maltby, there are no cradles left and I’ve got this casualty with a badly smashed leg.’
Florrie, just back from another run to Base Camp, went out into the yard. Looking about her, she saw a woodpile. She selected two pieces of plank roughly the same length and tied them tightly together at one end with a piece of string from the kitchen drawer. The other end she eased open just enough so that it stood up. She carried it inside. ‘There you are, Grace, that should just hold the covers up enough.’
‘Oh, ta, Florrie,’ Grace said and hurried away with the makeshift ‘cradle’.
At other times, she raided the kitchen cupboards for pie dishes to use to sterilize instruments and for saucepans to act as wash bowls.
‘Ask Maltby’ became the cry when they couldn’t find something they needed. ‘She’ll know what to do.’
And through it all, she nursed the sick, the wounded and held the hands of the dying.
Then, at the very end of July, came a new horror for Ernst and his gallant band to cope with. Fierce fighting broke out near Hooge, only a mile or so from Ypres, and the enemy used a new weapon – liquid fire, spurting burning petrol from steel-nozzled hoses. The casualties were horribly burned, with blackened faces and scorched limbs. The Chateau was overwhelmed. Ernst and the nurses patched them up as best they could and Florrie drove them the agonizing mile or so to Base Camp. They were soon sent on by train to Camiers, where those that survived the trauma were treated in a special ward.
Florrie worked until she was exhausted and still she carried on, her pity for the scarred and screaming men driving her to the point of collapse. Grimly determined, she refused to give in. Work was the only thing that kept her from the dreadful fear that one day her patient might be Tim – or James.
Of Gervase, there was still no news.
In August, Florrie received a letter from Isobel telling her the wonderful news that she’d had a baby boy in July and that he was to be called Charles Timothy Smythe.
‘And we so want you to be his godmother, darling Florrie. Gervase, of course, will be one of the godfathers
Florrie smiled. Was Isobel trying to do a sly bit of matchmaking? She wrote back straight away saying she’d be thrilled and honoured to be the child’s godmother. ‘But don’t you dare have him christened until we’re all home,’ she added. ‘I so long to hold him for myself – not have someone stand proxy for me.’
She chewed the end of her pen, not daring to ask the question uppermost in her mind. Had Tim got leave to go home to see his son? And what about Gervase? Where was he, a
nd did he know he was now an uncle?
Instead she put, ‘Do write again when you can and tell me all the news.’
Florrie was weary and cross. She hadn’t had a moment alone with Ernst for weeks. Her days and nights had become a blur and even Sister Blackstock was urging her to rest, but stubborn defiance drove her on.
The great surge of casualties they’d experienced during the first two weeks of August had lessened a little to a steady flow.
‘We should be moving on now,’ Ernst said one evening at the end of another long and tiring day in the operating room. ‘It’s quietening down here now and we should be where the battles are taking place. Nothing’s happening here.’
‘Really? You could have fooled me,’ Florrie snapped tartly, for the moment forgetting that they were not alone. She was punished by a severe glare from Sister Blackstock, who snapped, ‘Nurse, finish that dressing, then I’d like a word with you.’
She glanced up, but the sister was walking away. Ernst, too, was bent over another patient and ignoring her.
Florrie sighed.
‘I hope you’re not going to leave us, Nurse,’ her patient, who’d been caught by a sniper’s bullet in his left shoulder, whispered. ‘All the lads say you’re doing a marvellous job. Don’t go, miss. Don’t leave us.’
‘I have to do as I’m ordered, soldier. Just like you. There,’ she said, as she finished the dressing on his wound. ‘You’ll do, and I’ll be taking you through to Base Camp tomorrow. You’re fit enough to travel.’
The man grinned. ‘ ’Spect I won’t get a Blighty ticket, but a bit o’ rest away from the trenches’ll be welcome. By, what a summer we’re having. Never know from one day to the next what the weather’s going to be doing. Not like last year, eh? Blue skies all summer long.’ His expression sobered. ‘It’d’ve been a wonderful year if this bloody war hadn’t started.’
Florrie chuckled. ‘I had a letter from home yesterday and my grandmother tells me that people are saying it’s the guns in France causing the changeable weather.’ She found the idea amusing, but the soldier nodded seriously. ‘Could be, miss. You never know. Them bombardments are the very devil.’ His eyes took on the haunted look that Florrie had seen so often.
She patted his hand, ‘Well, you’re going to get away from them for a while now. See you in the morning. And now, I’d better go and find Sister. I think I could be in trouble.’
‘Oh, I hope not, miss. You’re too pretty for anyone to be angry with for long.’ He grinned and she was pleased to see the agony fade from his eyes, even if only for a brief moment. ‘But then, mebbe she’s jealous. Not much of a looker, is she?’
‘Now, now.’ Florrie wagged her finger at him as she walked away.
‘Really, Maltby, I expected better from you.’
Florrie knew Rosemary Blackstock was angry with her; it was the only time that she dropped the ‘Nurse’ title when addressing her.
‘I know we’ve been thrown together in rather – intimate circumstances, but there’s no need for standards to fall. You showed a distinct lack of respect to Dr Hartmann just now. I won’t have it. Anyone would think—’ She stopped abruptly and altered whatever she had been about to say. ‘Well, it just won’t do.’
‘I’m very sorry, Sister,’ Florrie said, anxious that the woman should not suspect the closer relationship that now existed between the doctor and the VAD. If she had the slightest inkling, Florrie thought, she’d send me packing back to Base Camp at least, if not back to Camiers, well out of harm’s way, as she would see it.
Rosemary was watching her, trying to decide whether to express her fears openly. She had more than the ‘inkling’ that Florrie feared, but so far she had chosen to ignore it. But perhaps if Dr Hartmann were anxious to move on, their separation would come about naturally. The sister decided to hold her tongue a little while longer.
‘Dr Hartmann.’ Sister Blackstock faced him squarely with a determined expression. ‘We’re all exhausted. Nurse Newton has a dreadful cold. Nurse Featherstone is feeling constantly nauseous and Maltby – well, she’s dead on her feet, though she’d never admit it. How that girl’s kept going, I don’t know. She’ll fall asleep at the wheel one of these nights.’
Ernst regarded her thoughtfully. ‘And what about you, Sister? Are you ready to go home?’
‘We’re not asking to go home, Doctor. None of us. We just need a break. Even the troops on the front line get rest periods – even if it’s only a day or two.’
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said slowly. ‘Mm. I’ll go back with Nurse Maltby to Base Camp tonight and arrange with Dr Johnson to send replacements for – let’s see – shall we say four days?’
The sister nodded.
‘And then we can all have a little holiday.’
Two days later, Sister Blackstock left for the coast, well away from the battlefields. Grace and Hetty set out together, seeking, they said, ‘Bright lights, music and dancing and soldiers who don’t need nursing!’
Ernst and Florrie took advantage of Rosemary’s absence. They were able to arrange to spend three whole nights together away from the Chateau and Base Camp. Eyebrows might have been raised behind their backs, but no one dared to voice any questions. They went to stay in the little cafe in one of the attic bedrooms.
The host waited on them himself, bringing them breakfast in bed. Each day they rose late and wandered through the village and out into the countryside, watching the soldiers at rest helping the farmers with their harvest. Sitting at the edge of a field, their arms around each other, they saw a young, dark-haired girl in the distance carrying a basket. She approached the soldiers, who threw down their pitchforks and took the food she handed out. Across the stubble they heard the sound of merry laughter as the soldiers flirted and joked with the pretty girl.
‘You’d never think there was a war only a few miles away,’ Ernst mused.
‘No,’ Florrie said, her gaze still on the youngsters. How many of these fine young men, she was thinking, would be wounded or dead this time next week?
Even in the warm sunlight, with Ernst’s arms around her and the sound of youthful gaiety, Florrie still could not forget the horror of it all.
At night, they lay together in the lumpy, old-fashioned bed, whispering loving words and sharing silly jokes.
‘I adore you,’ Ernst murmured as he made love to her. ‘You are the love of my life.’
When they all returned to the Chateau four days later, Rosemary Blackstock brought someone with her.
‘I believe you know this young man, Nurse. He was making enquiries about you at Base Camp.’
Florrie flung her arms wide to envelop him. ‘James! Oh, James.’ Then she stood back, holding him at arm’s length. ‘Let me look at you. Oh, how you’ve grown. And filled out. Goodness me – and all on army rations too. How’ve you managed that?’
James smiled, taking all her fussing over him with great good nature.
‘Now, you can have a little time off, Nurse, but I can’t allow you to go out anywhere – even though he is your brother. I’m sorry.’ As ever, Rosemary was a stickler for the rules.
Florrie pulled a face at James and then grinned. At least they could spend a few hours together. They sat outside in the back yard behind the house, where freshly washed bed linen fluttered on the clothes lines.
‘We have to do all this by hand in the sink in the kitchen,’ Florrie laughed. ‘Whatever would they say at home to see me up to my elbows in soapsuds?’
James laughed, but Florrie could see that same haunted look in his eyes that all the soldiers seemed to have.
‘How long have you been out here?’ she asked softly.
‘We got here about the middle of May, just before things started to quieten down a bit. So, we saw a bit of action, but it’s not been too bad since. We take our turn in the trenches and then go to billets in the country – just across the border into France. We help with the hay-making and the harvest.’ He smiled wistfully. ‘I could almos
t imagine I’m back home on the estate helping Mr Atkinson in the school holidays.’
She wondered if he’d been one of the young soldiers they’d seen working in the sunlit fields, laughing and flirting with the farmer’s daughter.
‘The – the local people have been very kind to us.’ He glanced away and bit his lip. Florrie had the feeling that he would like to have said more. He suddenly had a dreamy, far-away look in his eyes. She touched his arm.
‘What is it, James?’
‘What?’ She’d startled him out of his reverie. ‘Oh – oh, nothing. Nothing at all.’ But Florrie, who knew her little brother so well, was not convinced. However, she pressed him no further. No doubt it was what many a soldier was experiencing – a disillusionment with the war and a longing for home.
As he got up to go, he clung to her and buried his face against her shoulder. ‘Take care of yourself, Florrie,’ he said huskily.
‘And you too. Keep out of trouble.’
James laughed wryly. ‘That’s a little difficult out here, but I’ll try.’
They parted reluctantly, and as he walked away, Florrie called after him, ‘Have you heard anything of Gervase? Do you know where he is?’
James shrugged and shook his head. ‘Sorry, no, I haven’t.’ Then suddenly he grinned. ‘But no doubt you’ll see him on New Year’s Eve.’
Florrie laughed too and, as she watched her brother walk away, she remembered Gervase’s words to her. ‘Wherever you are, I’ll find you.’
Towards the end of September, whilst the French armies attacked the German lines in Champagne, the British launched an offensive near Loos.
‘That’s less than twenty miles from here,’ Ernst said excitedly. ‘We must go there. We can still use the Base Camp. Nurse Maltby will just have a little further to drive, that’s all.’
‘Whatever for?’ Sister Blackstock argued. ‘There’s still fighting going on here in the Ypres salient. We’ve got casualties coming in here every day.’
Ernst waved his arms dismissively. ‘That’s just the British High Command trying to draw the enemy away from Loos. But that’s where the action is—’ He smacked his fist into the palm of his hand. ‘Dr Johnson will send one of his doctors and two nurses here to keep this going, but Loos is where I should be.’
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