by Peggy Savage
From across the ward there came a gasp, and then a terrified wailing.
An older man stopped by the boy’s bed. ‘That’s enough, son,’ he said. ‘We all know what it was like. We don’t need tellin’.’
The boy’s left arm ended in a large bulbous dressing. As they came to him he held it up. ‘Lost me ’and,’ he said.
Amy glanced at Helen. She looked stricken. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.
He grinned at her, a smile full of pain, but still the smile of an innocent boy. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I’m right-handed.’ Helen made a little sound, a little gasp of mixed sympathy and despair. Panic spread across the boy’s face. He began to breathe quickly and the pupils of his eyes dilated. ‘It is a Blighty one, isn’t it? They won’t make me go back? I can’t fire a rifle with one ’and, can I?’
Amy shook her head. ‘No, of course you can’t. Don’t worry. They won’t make you go back.’
Tears of relief began to run down his cheeks. ‘I can’t go back, miss. I can’t go back.’
Helen took his hand. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Bert. Bert Fizackerly.’
‘And where do you come from, Bert?’ She helped him off with his jacket and began to wash his back.
‘Manchester,’ he said. ‘Best place in the world.’
Amy smiled. ‘I bet your mam will be glad to have you back.’
‘That she will,’ he said. ‘When she’s finished telling me off for going in the first place. I thought she might have been glad to get rid of me for a bit; she’s got four others to feed and my dad was out of work.’
‘She’d never be glad to get rid of you,’ Helen said. ‘You wait and see.’
‘I want to see her,’ he said. ‘I want my mam.’
Amy could see tears in Helen’s eyes.
He was silent for a moment and then he said, ‘It wasn’t like they said when we joined up. It wasn’t saving the country, having an adventure like they said.’ Amy glanced at Helen. Was it she who had mentioned adventure when they first met? That was before they knew. ‘It was terrible,’ he was shaking now. ‘I was at Mons, in the retreat. It was terrible. But something happened. Do you know what?’ They shook their heads. ‘I saw the angel.’
‘The angel?’ Amy asked.
He nodded, his young face eager. ‘We was pinned down.’ He gulped, the memory almost too much to bear. ‘We was being slaughtered. There was men fallin’ everywhere, men screamin’. And then….’ He gulped again. ‘And then this angel came in the sky, shining like, all lit up. Great big angel, wings and everything.’ His face filled with a child-like wonder. ‘The Germans ran off and we was able to get away.’
Amy and Helen glanced at each other. ‘How wonderful,’ Helen said.
‘Aye, it was. We’re going to win all right.’ Amy and Helen finished his bed bath and then moved on, Bert still chattering behind them.
‘What do you think?’ Helen said. It wasn’t the first time they had heard about the angel of Mons.
‘I think it was just a silly rumour, or they all imagined it.’ Amy said. ‘A kind of mass hysteria. Things were so awful that they imagined that some kind of out of this world being would come along to protect them.’ She remembered very well that feeling of unreality; that feeling that things were so dreadful that it must all be a dream from which she would wake, or that someone, somehow, must surely come to help and change it. No one had come, that awful day when she had lost everything. ‘Perhaps it helped them at the time. Perhaps it gave them some kind of strength. Nobody really saw an angel.’
‘But it would be nice to think that the angels were on our side, wouldn’t it?’ Helen said.
She sounded wistful, Amy thought. She shrugged. ‘I should think the angels have all fled.’ They moved on. ‘I think the next man is French.’
The man was lying on his bed, eyes on the ceiling.
‘Bonjour,’ Amy said, but he was silent, not turning his head until she touched his arm. He began to tremble.
Helen bent down to him. ‘It’s all right,’ she said but he didn’t respond. She straightened up, frustrated. ‘I wish I could speak better French.’
‘It wouldn’t help.’ Amy stroked his arm, trying to relax him. ‘He can’t hear what you say and he couldn’t answer you. He’s dumb too.’ His trembling increased so much that the bed began to rattle.
‘He obviously can’t stand,’ Helen took off his jacket.
One of the other men came up to the bed. ‘We all talk to him,’ he said. ‘Shout to him really. He hasn’t stopped a bullet or anything; it’s shell shock. We’ll get him right. We’re all going to get together and shout to him, all together. He ought to hear that.’
‘It’s dreadful.’ Helen’s eyes were wet. ‘Sister told me where he comes from. His village is behind the enemy lines. He can’t know whether his family is alive or dead.’
These French soldiers, Amy thought. He had come in filthy and desperately hungry, no socks, his feet blistered and bleeding. As if his own suffering wasn’t enough, he suffered for his family as well. Anything could have happened to them. At least the British men knew that their families were safe at home.
They finished the morning’s work. ‘What shall we do this afternoon?’ Helen said. ‘In our few precious hours off. Or do you just want to sleep?’
‘Oh no,’ Amy said at once. ‘I’m getting claustrophobic. I need some air. We’ll go for a walk, shall we? See what’s going on in Paris. We can get about on the Metro.’
‘We could go to see where the Germans dropped that bomb,’ Helen said. ‘Apparently there’s a great big hole in the ground. I didn’t think they’d ever bomb civilian places. Those Germans will do anything.’
Anything to win, Amy thought. She sighed. ‘Let’s not. I’ve seen enough of the war for today.’
Sister stopped them as they were leaving the ward. She gave Amy a sharp look. ‘Miss Osborne, apparently there is a young man in the officers’ ward who has asked to see you,’ she said.
‘Oh?’ Amy tried to look puzzled, but she knew at once who it was. ‘Who is it?’
‘A Lieutenant Maddox, I believe,’ Sister said. ‘You’d better go now. You won’t have time later on.’ She swept away down the ward, her shoulders stiff with disapproval.
‘And who is Lieutenant Maddox?’ Helen widened her eyes, her eyebrows raised in amused enquiry.
‘He’s that officer I brought in the other day,’ Amy said. ‘The one who was so rude about women surgeons and then changed his mind.’
‘Now, now, Miss Osborne,’ Helen said in a mock schoolmarm voice. ‘We seem to be hearing a lot about him. You know you’re not supposed to get involved with the patients. No wonder Sister had a poker up her back.’
‘I’m not getting involved.’ Amy said. ‘What an idea. I’ve only seen the man a couple of times. Anyway, you know how I feel about that. I expect he just wants to thank me again; he fell asleep last time.’
‘I was only joking,’ Helen said. ‘Honestly.’
Amy smiled. ‘I know. I’ll only be a minute. Wait for me at lunch.’ She walked into the officers’ ward and spoke to the sister in charge. Sister also looked disapproving.
‘He’s over there,’ she said. ‘He’s been asking to speak to you. Please make it quick, we’re very busy this morning.’
Amy walked across the ward to his bed with an odd, inexplicable feeling of apprehension, though she couldn’t explain to herself why that might be. ‘Hello, Lieutenant,’ she said.
He was propped up on his pillows, his book on his knees. He looked thin, she thought, and drawn. He looked up from his book and a smile lit up his face. ‘Miss Osborne! I’m so glad you’ve come. I’ve found out your name, you see.’
She sat down on the chair beside the bed. ‘What can I do for you, Lieutenant?’ He looked paler than ever, she thought, and tired.
He looked surprised and then amused. ‘I think you’ve done enough for me already. I just wanted to see you again, to thank you pro
perly and apologize for some of the things I said. Obviously I was completely wrong. Very ungentlemanly.’
Amy smiled. ‘It doesn’t matter, Lieutenant. It wasn’t exactly an easy time for any of us, was it? I’m sure you had the best intentions. You were only trying to look after your men. That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it?’
‘And you had to do what you were supposed to do,’ he said. ‘I was very rude to you, especially under the circumstances.’ He became unsmiling and serious. He grimaced and moved a little under the sheet. ‘I really meant it the other day, you know. You did save my life and I shan’t ever forget it. So I apologize.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It really doesn’t matter now.’ She put her hand on the cage over his legs. ‘I’m very pleased about your leg. That is really good news.’
He nodded. ‘I had a good surgeon.’ He noticed her knowing smile and grinned. ‘All right, I was wrong about that too. A good woman surgeon. Frightening lady. Frightens me more than the Huns. She says I’ll be as good as new soon, if I do what I’m told. Might not even have a limp.’
Amy thought of the boy who had lost his hand. ‘A Blighty one’ he had called it. It didn’t sound as if Mr Maddox’s injury was a Blighty one. Not a permanent one anyway. ‘Will you be going home to convalesce?’ she asked. ‘Will you go home to your family?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, I expect so, for a while. My mother is already barracking about that. She’s even threatened to come over here and get me. That should frighten everybody. Then I shall be coming back – back to my regiment. I shall have to go through a Board, of course. They decide whether you’re fit enough to come back, but I should have no trouble with them.’ He said it casually, as if it didn’t matter.
Amy bit her lip and looked away. The thought was almost unbearable, that he would have to go through all that again, the horror and the danger. It was unbearable to her but not, apparently, to him. She looked back at him; his face drawn with weakness and pain, but his eyes were clear and untroubled. He didn’t appear to have any fears about it at all. Was that true? Was he really fearless, or did he just expertly hide it. He wouldn’t want to look like a coward; none of them did. He wouldn’t want to let his men down. He looked back at her so steadily that she flushed a little.
‘Miss Osborne,’ he said, ‘might I know your Christian name?’
‘Amy.’
‘Will you come to see me again, Amy?’
Incomprehensibly, the feeling of apprehension came back and she hesitated.
‘If there is time….’ she began.
He saw her hesitation. ‘Please,’ he said. He looked like a little boy trying to wheedle some treat or other. His nanny must have been putty in his hands. She had no doubt that he came from a family where he would have had a nanny. She laughed and said, ‘I’ll try, Lieutenant.’
‘Johnny.’
Sister walked by and gave her a disapproving stare.
‘I’d better go. I’m holding up the work.’ She got up to leave and then on an impulse she said, ‘Were you at Mons?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘One of the soldiers,’ she said, ‘says they saw an angel in the sky, and then the Germans let them get away.’
He didn’t smile. ‘You’re the only angel I’ve seen,’ he said.
She flushed again. She wasn’t used to compliments from men. There had never been time for such things in her life. Some of the soldiers teased the girls, asking them about their boyfriends and pretending to be bowled over by their charms. They all got used to it; these jokes were part of keeping the men cheerful and they were innocent enough. But this compliment seemed to be real – he seemed to mean it.
‘All the orderlies go out with the ambulance,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Not only me.’
‘But you were the one who rescued me.’ Pain flickered suddenly across his face and his hand clutched at the sheet. ‘I think it’s nearly time for my next dose of whatever it is they give you.’
Amy looked around her. The nurse with the drugs trolley was starting at the end of the ward. ‘The nurse is coming,’ she said.
‘Good. You will come again, won’t you?’ His face was strained now, the pain returning.
‘Yes, I’ll come.’
‘I’ll look forward to that.’
She smiled and turned away and made her way out of the ward. Sister didn’t look up as she walked past her but Amy could read disapproval in her hunched shoulders.
She walked slowly back to join Helen. Something seemed to have happened again, some unspoken communication. Something that stirred and worried her. It’ll be all right, she thought. He’s going home soon and I won’t be seeing him again. I won’t know whether he has gone back to his unit. She didn’t allow herself to think of the ultimate question: would he come through? Would he live?
She joined Helen for lunch in the dining-room – roast beef, cabbage and potatoes, followed by rice pudding.
‘Cabbage again,’ Helen said. ‘Maybe we’ll get some French food when we go out with your captain.’
‘He isn’t my captain,’ Amy began and Helen laughed. ‘And how’s your lieutenant? You seem to be collecting quite a harem, or whatever the male equivalent is.’
‘Now you’re getting silly.’ Amy finished her rice pudding, carefully avoiding the skin. ‘I’ve never liked the skin.’
‘I’ll have it.’ Helen helped herself. ‘It’s the best bit. So what about your lieutenant?’
‘He seems to be recovering well. He thinks he’ll be well enough to go back when he’s better.’ She didn’t go on to voice her thoughts, her horror at the thought of him going back to that hell.
‘Oh? So what did he want to see you about?’
‘He just wanted to thank me, as I said.’
Helen looked at her seriously for a moment, then she smiled. ‘Come on, let’s go out. Time is a-wasting.’
They went back to their room to put on their jackets and hats and walked down the staircase and out into the street. As they walked away from the hotel many of the passers-by stopped them with smiles and murmured thanks. Some of them pressed coins into their hands, ‘pour l’hôpital.’ Their uniform was well known now in the streets around the hospital.
‘Let’s go somewhere else,’ Helen said, ‘or we’ll be stopped every minute.’
They took the Metro. All the ticket collectors were women, everywhere women. They walked down the boulevards in the afternoon sunshine. ‘There are a lot more soldiers about,’ Helen said, ‘but not so many refugees.’ Two young men passed them, one on crutches and the other with his arm bent up in a splint. They grinned at them as they walked by.
Amy nodded. ‘More wounded.’
Some of the street cafés were open again. Most of the shops were closed and shuttered, but here and there one or two were opening, the windows being cleaned and the pavements swept.
‘I think some of the people must be coming back since the Marne,’ Amy said. ‘It all seems to be waking up. They must think the Germans aren’t going to get here after all.’
‘Do you think they will? Ever?’
Amy shrugged. ‘We’ll just have to hope they won’t. At least they’re further away now.’
‘Well, we’ll soon find out,’ Helen said, ‘if they start shelling us. The French Government’s still away in Bordeaux and the Louvre is still closed. Maybe they know more than we do.’
Amy was silent. The whole of Paris lived with this fear but she was filled with admiration for them – the ordinary people who passed them by in the street, especially those who had stayed, who hadn’t run away. There had never been any panic, just a stoic acceptance of what they had to do. They went about their daily lives, knowing that Paris could be shelled or bombed at any time.
She tried to push the images from her mind. She tried not to think of the consequences – getting the men out, cramming them into ambulances, moving south, perhaps having to leave some of them behind to the mercies of the invading Germans.
Leaving them behind, as she had to do before, so many times.
‘I wish I could have seen it before the war,’ Helen said. ‘I saw a cinematograph of Paris once and it looked wonderful. All those elegant women in beautiful clothes and gorgeous hats and the men in morning dress, all strolling along, enjoying themselves and the beautiful shops and the gardens. It must have been absolutely fantastic. A magic place. It seems like a hundred years ago.’
A woman passed them, and then another and another, all dressed in black with widow’s veils. They hurried by with their eyes down, their shoulders bent and drooping. So many thousands dead, but for these women one special man was dead; one loved, appallingly missed, special man. Helen shivered.
They walked past a pavement café. The waiters with their big white aprons tied under their armpits were carrying trays among the tables, but the tables were half empty, and the waiters were old men. The people in the café seemed to Amy to have an unsettled, temporary look about them, as if they were ready to fly off at any moment. They sat on the edges of their chairs, looking out over the rims of their cups and wine glasses, their eyes shifting and wary. As they walked by a motor car backfired in the street – a sharp, loud bang. There was a flurry of movement and sharp cries as the people started up, and then settled back again, for all the world, Amy thought, like the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. Here and there an old man drank his wine or pastis in a single gulp. There was a young soldier, who didn’t stir. He sat at his table, rigid and staring, his hands shaking and tears running down his face. Amy couldn’t pass him by. She walked over to him and patted his shoulder.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s all right. It was only a car. Seulement un automobile.’
He didn’t move, didn’t seem to have heard her.
‘Come on, Amy,’ Helen whispered. ‘There’s nothing we can do.’
Amy closed her eyes for a moment, filled with rage and pity. ‘Will it never end?’