Amy

by Peggy Savage

  They reached the great boulevards and stopped in shock at the most dismaying sight of all, the steady streams of people moving south. The streets were filled with slowly moving lines of traffic, refugees from the north in their carts pulled by farm horses or donkeys, taking whatever they could from their abandoned houses and farms, pots and pans, bottles of wine, a flitch of ham, a fat yellow cheese – and children; so many children, gazing about them at the sights of the city. Here and there were carriages or motor cars carrying the more prosperous French from their fine homes in the 16th Arrondissement or Neuilly-sur-Seine, all going south or west, away from Paris.

  ‘Look, Amy.’ Helen plucked at her sleeve and they watched, astonished, as a farmer drove his flock of sheep down the Bois de Boulogne. ‘I didn’t realize,’ Helen said, her voice shaking. ‘Shut up in the hospital all the time, I didn’t know this was going on. They must really believe that Paris is going to be invaded. They must think it is lost.’

  Amy put her hands in her pockets to hide their trembling. The rumours were rife, and worse than rumours. They had all heard about the German atrocities in Belgium. They had burned Louvain and its precious medieval library. There was a dreadful report in the papers that they had shot hundreds of civilian men and women and children at Dinant. Did the country that had given the world Goethe and Beethoven really do such things? There were worse rumours for women. There had been a horrible cartoon in one of the French newspapers of a fat German soldier with a woman at his feet, a woman, half stripped, bound and gagged. The caption read ‘The Seduction’. Its meaning was obvious: the fear of rape was yet another horror for women. It brought into her mind another hideous memory, hurriedly suppressed, of Sir William Bulford.

  ‘No, not Paris,’ she said firmly. ‘The Germans will never get Paris.’

  Helen looked doubtful. ‘I hope you’re right.’

  ‘Lots of people are staying,’ Amy said. ‘We’re staying.’

  ‘Let’s go back to the hotel,’ Helen said, ‘I think I’ve seen enough. We don’t know how lucky we are in England half the time, do we? Never been invaded since 1066. Thank God we’re an island and we have the sea and the Royal Navy.’

  ‘This Sceptred Isle.’ Amy said. ‘Thank God indeed.’

  They made their way back to the hotel. ‘I wish we hadn’t gone out at all,’ Helen said. ‘I’m more worried now.’

  Later in the day Dr Hanfield called a meeting of all the staff. ‘We must make plans,’ she said, ‘for a possible evacuation. I think the American hospital would help us with an ambulance or two and I would have to find whatever transport I could. I want you all to be ready – a small suitcase only. Just essentials.’

  ‘It’s getting bad, Amy,’ Helen whispered.

  ‘Meanwhile,’ Dr Hanfield went on, ‘you are to continue your duties. And under no circumstances upset the men. No nasty rumours, no panicking. Remember who you are. British women. And these men are in your care.’

  A letter arrived for Amy from her father.

  My dearest Amy

  It isn’t any use you telling me not to worry. I worry about you all the time. The news is so bad. I fear every day that you will be trapped in Paris at the mercy of the Germans, and it seems that they have no mercy.

  Several of our boys from school are already dead. Young Frensham is dead. He was either in an accident or shot down with rifle fire, I don’t know which. He had only been in the Flying Corps for three weeks. Other boys from the school have died in the trenches. They were so young, so full of life. I can hardly bear to think about it. I know that you will want to stay and do your duty, but is it really necessary for you to be there, in Paris? Couldn’t you do your work at home in England? The hospitals here are overwhelmed. You know that you are all I have in the world. Of course, you must decide, and I must accept that. But I worry about you all the time.

  Write to me soon

  Your loving Father.

  Amy sighed and put the letter in her pocket, to be answered as soon as she could. She couldn’t go back. Perhaps she could work as an orderly in an English hospital but it wouldn’t be the same. At least here she felt that she was at the heart of things, that she was doing her utmost, the utmost that she was allowed. She couldn’t go back.

  There were times, though, when she had to use all her self-control to repel fear. It was not, she thought, exactly fear that she felt now. The situation had to be accepted, overcome. It was more a heightening of awareness, a slight but constant tensing of the muscles, a sharpening of the senses. She was aware that her body seemed to be holding itself alert in readiness for whatever was going to happen. She must control her mind to control her body. Were the Germans as bad as everyone said, or was this just propaganda to fire the British populace into anger and fighting spirit? She tried to imagine what it must be like to be a man, to face something more real, something that was actually happening now, to go over the top of the trenches into an inevitable and expected hail of shells and machine-gun fire. What must it be like to face death or mutilation on such a scale? Her own fears seemed minor in comparison.

  She felt also the responsibility of her profession. Giving way to fear was something that doctors must not do. She remembered how, newly qualified and in her first house job, she had lain awake at night, listening as the ambulances drew into the hospital yard, knowing that she would have to go down to the ward, make life or death decisions for other people, to take decisive action. That responsibility was so great that for a time she had found it terrifying. That fear went away with time and experience. There was, of course, no comparison with the present source of fear, but it had to be conquered just the same. She would not leave. Doctors did not, should not, run away, leaving their patients to face whatever was coming.

  The world was full of fear even without the war. She thought of the women in the slums at home, living in damp, vermin-ridden rooms, struggling and fighting to feed their children, watching them day after wretched hungry day, willing them to survive. That was something that must be dealt with after the war – those barefoot, half starved children, children with scurvy, rickets, conditions that were not due to infection or disease, but to poverty and simple neglect and lack of nourishment. How many children to a family? Five? Six? Even more? Women who had a child year after year, who spent most of their lives pregnant, who went without food themselves to feed their ever growing families. There was a woman in America who had written articles about contraception and the need for impoverished women to have access to it. She had been pilloried by state and church groups, denounced as immoral and flying in the face of God. Had these people ever seen how these women lived? How they struggled and starved? It was that situation that was immoral. Her determination rose in her again, to do her job here, to get her licence back, to help these people when the war was over.

  The wounded poured in. They continued their endless work, washing and delousing men, making beds, feeding, trying to ignore the threat that hung over them. Every day they expected the dreadful news that Paris had fallen. The strain of the work was enough, but none of them could sleep properly at night, except when they were too exhausted to think. Even then, often, Amy would wake in the early hours, her heart pounding, wondering what it was that had wakened her, listening for any noise that was unusual, that could signal disaster. Rain rattling at the windows would sound like machine-gun fire; a shout in the night would sound like a battle cry.

  Then one day Helen rushed into the ward, laughing, beaming, doing a little dance. ‘Amy, Amy, M. Le Blanc is here with such news! There’s been a battle at the Marne and the Germans have been beaten back. They’re retreating. They’ve gone back miles. They won’t be coming to Paris.’ The men in the beds were cheering, those who were on their feet slapping each other on the back.

  The relief was overwhelming. Amy found that her first reaction was one of enormous fatigue, as if all her muscles had released their tension and left her limp and helpless. She slept that night in a deep, dreamless sleep. As long as
it lasts, was her last thought. As long as it lasts.

  The atmosphere in the hospital lightened. Hope was in the air.

  ‘Perhaps this is the beginning of the end,’ Helen said. ‘Perhaps it will all be over soon.’

  Amy could not begin to believe it, not while the men continued to pour into the hospital. The two armies seemed like two wild beasts, head to head, jaws locked in a kind of stationary combat, neither giving ground, blood pouring from their wounds.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1914

  AMY dressed in her uniform, putting on the shirt over her bodice. For a moment her fingers shook so badly that she couldn’t do up the buttons. She stopped and made a little sound, puffing out her breath in exasperation. They had been here for nearly a month now, surely she should be used to it. As if anyone ever got used to it.

  Helen looked up. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, buttoning up her shoes. ‘Are you all right, Amy? Is anything wrong?’

  Amy shook her head. There was no point in saying what she was thinking. What could she say? I’m going to see some terrible things today? How could such things happen? The words would give body to the thought. There was no point in saying this to Helen anyway. Helen knew. There were times when they had both stumbled into this room and clung to each other and burst into tears; times when the carnage and the suffering they had to witness was too much for anyone to bear. They had to stay strong; otherwise they would be useless to anyone. Helen was the only person who had ever seen her cry.

  She shook her head again. ‘Just these dratted little buttons.’ She could see from Helen’s strained face that she understood, that she understood not to say anything, not to pursue it. Helen gave a tight little smile. The skirt was loose, Amy noticed. She had lost weight since she came to France. She picked up her boots and turned them upside down and shook them.

  Helen grinned. ‘Find any spiders?’

  Amy sat down on her bed and pulled on her boots. ‘No. Horrible things. They’re even bigger here than they are in England.’

  ‘Autumn coming,’ Helen said. ‘They get everywhere.’

  Amy got up. ‘Worse things than spiders.’ she said. ‘Got to go.’

  ‘You look very nice,’ Helen said. ‘Very crisp and efficient.’

  Amy forced a smile. ‘Not for long. It’ll look very different by the time I get back.’

  ‘I know,’ Helen said. ‘I’ll see you tonight. Be careful, Amy.’

  Amy left the room and walked down the corridor to the staircase. She stood at the top of the stairs, looking down. The big crystal chandeliers still hung from the ceiling. They caught the gleams of sunlight from the tall windows and cast all the colours of the rainbow on to the marble floor. She couldn’t see into the other rooms, but she knew what was there; she saw it every day, the constant fight against infection, pain and death. She paused for a moment, gathering herself into a calm, controllable whole. She felt, not exactly fear, but a mounting tension that froze her muscles. She was aware of her shoulders rising up and her jaw clenching. She forced herself to relax, taking a few deep breaths. She felt slightly sick, as she always did when she had to go out with the ambulance; a nausea of apprehension.

  The hall below was filled with uniforms. The crisp white aprons of the nurses and orderlies moved among the khaki and the plain blue uniforms of the wounded men, a strange contrast to the luxurious surroundings. It hardly seemed real. Only a few weeks ago she had been at home. Nothing much would have changed there. Her father would be getting ready to go to his school and Mrs Jones, the daily woman, would be starting on the housework. Normality. Did it really still exist, anywhere? A faint smell, a mixture of ether and carbolic and suppressed nastier things, reached up the stairs.

  Dr Hanfield walked into the hall below, talking to a British officer in khaki – not a patient then. He looked quite young, Amy thought. Young enough to fight. She felt calmer now, and ready. She walked down the stairs into the hall. She stopped to let three wheelchairs go by. One of the men had no legs below the knee. She hurried towards the street door.

  ‘Oh, Amy,’ Dr Hanfield called. She was smiling and beckoning. ‘Could I speak to you for a moment?’

  Amy walked over to her, across one of the glowing Persian carpets, criss-crossed now with the wheel marks of the chairs.

  ‘I’m on the ambulance today, Doctor,’ she said. ‘I think it’s waiting.’

  ‘I won’t be a moment, Amy. ‘Dr Hanfield turned to the officer. ‘This is Miss Osborne, one of our orderlies. She has been with us from the beginning.’

  Amy looked up at him. He was tall, in his thirties perhaps, broad-shouldered. He looked down at her, brown eyes under brown hair that curled a little. His eyes smiled, but they held the look that she had come to recognize. They were darkened with that particular horror-filled experience that all the men seemed to have – all the men who had been to the trenches.

  ‘This is Captain Fielding, Amy,’ Dr Hanfield said. ‘He is a surgeon with the Royal Army Medical Corps. He’s come to see what we do. The British Army apparently wants to know.’ Her voice held an ironical note. Amy smiled but said nothing.

  Dr Hanfield turned back to the Captain. ‘We were all rather disappointed,’ she said. ‘We had hoped that the British Army might have been more open-minded. We hoped they might be glad of the services of women surgeons and physicians during the war, but it seems not. However, the French Red Cross seems to be quite pleased with our work here in Paris.’

  He nodded. ‘So I understand.’

  ‘And not only the surgeons.’ She turned to Amy. ‘Miss Osborne is on her way out with the ambulance today.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Out? Where?’

  ‘One of the villages,’ Amy said. ‘To pick up the wounded.’

  ‘Which village?’ he said, frowning.

  He looked surprised, she thought. Perhaps he didn’t expect that women would be doing such things. Perhaps he thought that she should be at home knitting socks. She was prepared to be irritated.

  She looked him in the eye. ‘I’m not quite sure. The driver knows. One of the villages. They get word to us somehow about where the men are – the wounded.’

  ‘Will you be near the Front?’

  ‘Possibly,’ she said shortly. ‘That’s where the wounded usually are, isn’t it? Usually we don’t know. They get the men back any way and anywhere they can.’

  He looked at her in silence for a moment. She wondered if she had been too sharp, too outspoken. Maybe he didn’t have the usual prejudices. Who knew? After all, it wasn’t his fault that the British Army took the attitude that they did to women doctors. Most of the male population was the same, and many of the women too.

  ‘May I ask what you will be doing, exactly?’

  Amy looked at him and opened her mouth to reply, but the words wouldn’t come. Her mind seemed to contract, trying to shut out the frightful images of what she would be doing. She couldn’t hold them back, the severed limbs, exposed intestines, the moans and cries – ‘Water; God; Mother; help me’. She stared at him for a moment, unable to speak. Dr Hanfield put her hand on her arm and gripped her. The firm pressure shook her, brought her back to the present. She took a deep breath. ‘We will be bringing in the men,’ she said. ‘Bringing them back here to the hospital.’

  He said nothing, but he smiled at her, a grim, complicit sort of smile. He seemed to understand. She could see compassion, even admiration, in his face, in the sudden warmth in his eyes.

  ‘You are very brave,’ he said at last.

  ‘It’s not only me,’ Amy said. ‘We all do it.’

  ‘Then you are all very brave.’ He smiled. ‘Until the war, I didn’t think ladies did that kind of thing.’

  Amy looked at him calmly. ‘We were underestimated.’

  Dr Hanfield laughed softly and he looked a little sheepish. ‘So I see.’

  ‘Thank you, Amy.’ Dr Hanfield put her hand briefly on Amy’s shoulder. ‘Take care.’

  Amy nodded and
walked on. At the door she turned and looked back. Captain Fielding was looking at her intently. Then he raised his hand and gave her a slow salute.

  The ambulance was waiting outside the door. Bill, the driver, opened the door for her.

  ‘Morning, Miss Amy. Nice day.’

  ‘I hope so, Bill.’

  She climbed aboard. Bill went to the front of the ambulance and put in the starting handle. He swung it several times before the engine caught. Then he climbed in beside her. They set off through the streets of Paris, going north.

  The streets were busy, a few carriages and motor cars, but mostly carts and barrows going south. The carts were laden with whatever the people could rescue from their houses – trunks and boxes and pots and pans, bedding and small bits of furniture. Children or old men and women perched and clutched and swayed on the loads, the children with puzzled, frightened faces and the old people with faces that seemed already dead, frozen in fear and pain. Babies cried, or quietly suckled in their mother’s arms as the carts went past. Often the traffic slowed and pulled to one side to let the ambulance through, and then closed in again in an endless stream.

  The broad Parisian streets narrowed and diminished and then they were driving through the suburbs, and then through scattered groups of houses. The houses were shuttered and silent as if they had been abandoned, but here and there smoke rose from a chimney, thin poor-looking wisps rising up into the still air. Then they were out in the countryside.

  She began to feel the tension rising again. She drew in her breath, and clasped her hands together. Bill turned to her briefly.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing, I’m fine.’

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said, but she noticed that his jaw was clenched and his lips were curled in and pressed tight. He took a battered cigarette out of his top pocket and put it in the corner of his mouth. After a few seconds he lit it with a Lucifer, bending over the wheel, his eyes still carefully on the road.