by Peggy Savage
‘Are you sure it’s not just a wartime fling?’
‘I’m not sure of anything,’ Helen said. ‘But what’s the point in holding back? There isn’t time for all the usual things.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘What about Dan?’ Helen said. ‘How do you feel about him?’
Amy was surprised. ‘He’s just a friend.’
‘That’s not what he thinks,’ Helen said.
‘I’m sure he does. He told me before; he misses his sisters and the girls at home. He just wants a bit of female company.’
Helen got into bed. ‘I think you’re wrong about that.’
They put out the lights. It’s all too complicated, Amy thought. My life is too complicated to be thinking about any kind of relationship. She could only see the immediate future, not beyond.
The next day the young German was still refusing to speak to anyone. Then, over the next few days the rumour started coming in that some of the soldiers, British and German, had met in no-man’s land on Christmas day, and had talked, had a drink, played football together. And then, two days later, they were killing each other again. The whole world, Amy thought, has gone stark, staring mad.
CHAPTER NINE
1915
IN January a letter arrived for Amy from her father.
Dear Amy
I do hope you had a pleasant Christmas and that you got the money I sent you. I didn’t know what to buy and thought you could probably get something in Paris.
I haven’t been too well – a chest infection, the doctor says. I have been in bed for a while. Our Mrs Jones is still coming in every day to look after the house and she has been very good, getting my meals. Don’t worry, I shall probably be better soon. Let’s hope that 1915 sees the end of this dreadful conflict and you are able to come home.
Happy New Year.
Your loving father
She was immediately very worried indeed. Her father had never been one to complain. The fact that he had written at all was a cause for concern. She hardly remembered him being ill at all, apart from an occasional cold. I must go home, she thought, and find out what is really going on. It certainly wasn’t like him to stay in bed and to miss school.
Matron was sympathetic. ‘Of course you must go, Amy,’ she said. ‘But I hope very much that you will come back to us. You do a good job, dear. We’ll miss you.’
Dr Hanfield stopped her in the hall. ‘Come into my office for a moment, Amy.’ Amy followed her in. ‘I hear you are going home,’ she said.
‘Not permanently,’ Amy said. ‘I’m sure my father will be all right. He’s never been really ill before. I’m probably worrying about nothing. I shall come back.’
‘Sit down, Amy.’ Dr Hanfield perched on the edge of her desk. ‘I was wondering,’ she said, ‘whether you had ever thought of doing nursing training. You seem to have a real bent for this kind of work. You are very efficient and you seem to be really interested. I’m sure you would do very well.’
Amy was so startled that for a moment she didn’t know what to say. ‘I – I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t thought about it. I don’t think I can plan further than the end of the war, whenever that may be.’
‘We need good people in medicine and nursing,’ Dr Hanfield said. ‘It’s not an easy life though, Amy. You would have to be aware of that. You would have to deal with a lot of problems, other people’s difficulties and pain….’
‘It can’t be worse than this,’ Amy said. ‘Nothing could be worse than this.’ She looked at Dr Hanfield’s face, full of strain and fatigue. She was so tempted to tell her, so tempted to say, simply, I know. I am Amy Richmond. I am a doctor. Let me help you.
Dr Hanfield got up and looked out of the window, choosing her words. ‘It can be just as hard. There may not be the wounds of war but there are other equally dreadful things, even in England, that just seem to get swept under the carpet – squalor, hunger, bad housing, horrible poverty. Not even clean water in some cases. The children are undernourished; they get almost no milk or meat, little fresh fruit, hardly any sunshine. It’s hardly surprising that they have anaemia, rickets….’
Amy heard the echo of her own thoughts. She knew Dr Hanfield only as a surgeon, a good surgeon, but she obviously had the same feelings, the same anxieties. There were many men at home, doctors and politicians, who voiced these concerns, but perhaps women doctors in particular had sympathy with these desperate families. After all, many of them were wives and mothers. Charity was not enough. These men, fighting and dying, deserved the right to a decent life for their families.
Dr Hanfield came back to her desk. ‘And then there is disease,’ she went on. ‘Diphtheria, pneumonia, scarlet fever, meningitis, TB; I could go on and on.’ She rubbed her forehead with her hand, as if to remove a headache. ‘We have no tools, Amy. We have nothing that will kill the bacteria that kill and maim.’
‘There is research,’ Amy began. ‘There’s a typhoid vaccine….’
‘I know.’ Dr Hanfield said. ‘But we need something that will kill the bacteria without killing the patient. Almroth Wright and young Alexander Fleming are doing great work at St Mary’s and they are running some laboratories in France. But oh, how I wish we had something now. We could save so many young lives.’
‘It’ll come,’ Amy said. ‘I’m sure it will come one day. Things are advancing all the time. We’ve got some vaccines. I believe the Americans are doing blood transfusions and they have a method of grouping the blood. My father says,’ she added hurriedly.
Dr Hanfield smiled. ‘I like your positive thinking, Amy. Perhaps you will live to see it, the great breakthrough. Perhaps even I will.’
‘One of the sisters tells us that Madame Curie is going to take her X-Ray machine around the forward hospitals,’ Amy said.
Dr Hanfield nodded. ‘Yes, isn’t it wonderful? Being able to see exactly what has happened to the bones and where the bullets and shrapnel are. What a wonderful help that would be.’ She smiled again and visibly relaxed. ‘What a lecture,’ she said. ‘But I do think you should stay in medicine, Amy. You seem right for it.’
Amy had difficulty in hiding her feelings, holding back angry, frustrated tears. If only you knew, she thought. If only I could tell you. Even if she did tell her, she wouldn’t be allowed to practise. Dr Hanfield couldn’t risk her own career.
‘I hope you find your father well and that you come back to us.’
Amy wrote a note to her father to tell him that she was coming home. With any luck it should get there before she did.
‘I’m really going to miss you,’ Helen said. ‘You do really mean to come back, don’t you?’
Amy nodded. ‘Unless my father is really ill.’
She packed a small case. She deliberately left most of her possessions behind. She was coming back. She took the train to Boulogne. The train was crowded; worse than crowded, but she managed to get a seat in a corner next to a very large woman, with a baby who cried most of the way. Most of the passengers were military, and many of those seemed to have wounds of some kind; bandages and crutches and sticks were everywhere. She supposed that they were on their way to the hospitals in Boulogne, and from there, perhaps, to England and home. At Boulogne she boarded the boat alongside streams of men who were being repatriated. Eventually, as darkness fell, they steamed slowly out of the harbour. She stood for a while on the deck in the dark, watching the dimmed lights of France fade into the distance.
She had a strange feeling, as if she herself was on the way to a foreign country. She had no way of knowing what had happened to England in the past months. She felt lost, as if she might not even know her way about any more. It was a foolish thought, she knew. All the familiar streets and buildings would still be there, but what had happened to the people? Did they know, could they even imagine what was happening in France? Yes, they saw the wounded coming home in their thousands, but they didn’t see what they had left behind. They didn’t see the piles of dead, or worse,
the scattered, shattered pieces of the dead. They didn’t have to hear the cries of suffering and deadly pain. They didn’t see the ever growing rows and rows of crosses in the graveyards.
She went below. The ship moved steadily through the night. The passengers were quiet and subdued; the thought of German submarines was never far away.
Dawn was breaking by the time they arrived in England. She took the train to London, and by the time she got there it was light. She made her way to Ludgate to take the train for home. It was very cold, colder than Paris. The people looked much the same, but there were black armbands everywhere. Still, the wheels seemed to be turning, the omnibuses and trains running, the usual bustle of London.
She walked down the familiar street, with the same feeling of strangeness, of unfamiliarity. She let herself into the house, into the hall. Nothing here seemed to have changed; the same rugs on the floor, the same pictures on the walls. It’s me who’s changed, she thought. Nothing will ever seem the same again. Nothing will ever be the same again. She could hear Mrs Jones, busy in the kitchen.
Her father was sitting in his chair in the sitting-room, a blanket over his knees, reading The Times. He gave a cry when he saw her, ‘Amy, my dear,’ and his newspaper dropped to the floor as he held out his arms.
She put her arms around him and kissed his cheek. ‘Here I am,’ she said. ‘Safe and sound. How are you, Father?’
He had tears in his eyes. ‘I’m much better,’ he said, ‘And very much better now that you’re here.’
She took off her hat and coat and sat down beside him and took his hand. ‘Are you really better?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, I shall be back at school in a week or two, the doctor says. It took a little while. It turned into pneumonia, for which there seems to be no cure, just time and hope.’
‘And the fact that you are a very healthy man,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you cured yourself.’ He looked better than she had expected, to her relief. Chest infections could so easily become purulent and killing. Dr Hanfield’s words came back into her head; ‘We have no tools, Amy.’
She spent the day at his side, answering his questions about France as well as she could without telling him about her sorties with the ambulance. The less he knew about that the better.
‘Dr Hanfield, our senior surgeon, called me into her office before I left,’ she said.
He looked alarmed. ‘Why?’
‘She wanted to ask me whether I had considered doing nursing,’ she said drily. ‘She said she thought I had a gift for medicine.’
‘So you do,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be all right, Amy.’
‘One day.’
His relief that she was there was palpable. ‘I was so worried,’ he said. ‘After Mons the Germans were said to be within twenty miles of Paris, or even nearer. The newspapers were very frightening.’
She could imagine him, sitting here, terrified for her safety, unable to help her. ‘It’s all right now, dear,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to worry any more. Paris is safe.’
‘Nothing is safe,’ he said. ‘All those boys at Ypres, thousands of dead. You know that German ships shelled Hartlepool and Scarborough? What is happening, Amy? It’s almost impossible to believe it.’ There was nothing she could say, no comfort that she could give him.
He went to bed early. She knew that feeling; the exhaustion of relief. At the door he turned. ‘Oh, Amy. I quite forgot in the pleasure of seeing you. There is a letter for you. It came a couple of weeks ago, addressed to Miss Amy Osborne. You’ll find it over there in my desk.’
After he had gone she took out the letter. ‘To await return to England’ was written across the top. She knew immediately who it was from.
Dear Amy
I have sent this letter to your home to be sure that it reaches you if you are coming to England. I have sent another letter to France but Heaven knows when it will get there, or if. I shall be here in England until the end of January. I am on leave until I get a squadron. Please let me know if you are coming home before then. I want to see you. Telephone or telegram.
Johnny
She took the letter up to her room. She was undecided what to do about it. At least, her rational brain was undecided but, underneath all that, the rest of her had no doubts at all. She lay in bed, the letter on the table beside her. She read it again. What am I afraid of, she thought? I’m being childish. She wasn’t afraid of taking her ambulance close to danger, but she seemed to be afraid of getting too close to some person – some man. Her past history was another deep concern. Johnny didn’t really know anything about her, nothing about her history. He probably thought she had been an ordinary girl, living at home with her father until the war had changed all that. What does he see in me, she wondered? He didn’t seem to be the kind of man who would be attracted to a quiet little home body, but who knew, with families like these? Perhaps that was what they did want, a capable wife in the home, a healthy mother for their children, while the men went off to do whatever they wanted. Or did he actually see in her some mysterious quality that he didn’t quite understand and that intrigued him? Did he sense that she was holding something back? She couldn’t work out her own feelings, let alone his. It’s all chaos, she thought. The whole world and my brain alike. How could anyone make decisions on such shifting ground? How could one trust mere feelings? I’ll sleep on it, she thought.
She slept on it for a week. She spent the week with her father, talking, playing chess, taking him for little walks around the garden. He seemed to get better every day, comforted by her presence. At the end of the week she was satisfied that he was well on the way to recovery and she began to think about going back to Paris. She felt as if she were living in a fairy tale, that this world, the peace and safety of home, was unreal. Reality was the brutality of what was going on in France.
She didn’t telephone Johnny’s home; she didn’t want to talk to anyone else in the household. It seemed too close, too intimate. She sent a telegram: I am at home in England. Amy. She received a reply at once: Splendid. Have tea with me on Thursday. I’ll be at the Ritz at four. Come if you can. Johnny.
Over dinner she said, ‘I thought I would go to Town on Thursday, Father, if you don’t mind. There are a few things I need.’
‘Of course, my dear,’ he said. ‘You must have a lot of shopping to do.’
She debated what to wear. Her uniform? No, not that. Even her best one that she had worn home was looking rather weary. She rifled through the clothes that she had left behind. She decided on a grey coat and skirt and a pink high-necked blouse and a waterproof overcoat. Her hat was small, neat and unadorned. She had come home in winter boots.
She travelled up to London on Thursday morning and spent some time looking in the shop windows in Oxford Street and Regent Street. They were all decked with flags of the allied nations and streamers in red, white and blue. She went into Selfridges and looked around the store. There were still many very prosperous looking women strolling the streets and the shops, dressed in the latest fashions, muffled in furs against the cold and with large, extravagant hats. Some people, she thought, seemed to be untouched by the war. She bought a few necessities, toilet soap and cologne, handkerchiefs and writing paper, enough for herself and Helen. She had a simple lunch in the restaurant in Selfridges. The other customers were mostly women, loaded with bags of shopping, chatting to each other, gesticulating and laughing. It’s another world, she thought, another planet. France might not exist.
At almost four o’clock she walked down Piccadilly towards the Ritz. This would be only the second time she had ever been there. Her father had brought her to tea to celebrate when she qualified. She stopped outside the Royal Academy, wondering again what she was walking into. Nothing, probably. Johnny’s last letter had been friendly, that was all. It had been filled with his enthusiasm about flying: It is wonderful, he wrote. It’s the most terrific thing I’ve ever done. I’ve finished my basic training and got my wings so I’ll be getting a p
osting to a squadron soon.
A posting? Doing what? Shooting down German observation balloons? Being shot at over the German trenches? Air battles with German airmen? Danger, all the time.
Now that she was about to see him again she knew precisely what she was going to do and what she was going to say. ‘It’s so nice to see you, Johnny, looking so well. I’m so glad you’re enjoying the flying. I do hope your father is well. No, I don’t think we should meet again.’ She half thought of turning away, of telephoning a message to him at the Ritz to say she wasn’t able to come after all. But that would be extremely ill-mannered and wouldn’t achieve what she wanted.
She crossed the road and walked on and went into the hotel. She paused just inside the door. The foyer was busy, beautifully dressed women and a scattering of male uniforms. She was glad that she hadn’t worn her own uniform; she would have stood out like a sore thumb. She walked on inside, but she couldn’t see him. Perhaps, she thought with some relief, he hasn’t been able to come.
‘Hello, Amy.’
He was standing beside her, looking down at her, smiling. She felt a momentary shock. In all her memories and imaginings of him she was standing over him; he was lying down in the filthy straw, or his bed in the hospital or sitting in a wheelchair. She drew in her breath. She realized that she had never seen him standing upright before. He was as tall as his father, at least, and broad in the shoulder. She had almost forgotten how blue his eyes were, how bright. He was wearing his new uniform, the close-fitting jacket, jodhpurs and boots of the Royal Flying Corps, and the wings gleamed on his breast. As he looked down at her she felt that same moving, disturbing, pleasurable contraction of her body, that same urge to touch him. Did he know, she wondered? Did anything show on her face?
‘Johnny,’ she said. Her mouth seemed to have gone suddenly dry and her brain bereft of words.
He held out his hand. ‘It’s good to see you, Amy. Thank you so much for coming. You look very well.’