In Falling Snow

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  Advance Praise for In Falling Snow

  “In her sweeping American debut, Mary-Rose MacColl creates a beautifully rendered portrait of a woman whose life is irrevocably altered by the choice to follow her brother across continents into France. An epic tale of love, heartache, and a sisterhood created by nursing in a time of war, In Falling Snow is one of those novels you will want to read again. If you liked The Aviator’s Wife, you will love this book!”

  —Michelle Moran, bestselling author of Cleopatra’s Daughter

  “This is a story of love, ultimately, and a woman whose life has sought to atone for a mistake she hardly knew she made. Caught between the past and her impending mortality, Iris relives her life as a nurse in WWI, when she was too young to understand what her choices would mean not only for her, but for the family she cobbled together out of the rubble. At once perceptive and sympathetic, In Falling Snow beguiles, a tale of selflessness and youthful indiscretion as singular and seductive as one could hope for.”

  —Robin Oliveira, New York Times bestselling author of My Name Is Mary Sutter

  “A thoroughly absorbing time-switching tale that gives a fascinating insight into one of the little-known stories of the Great War, that of the Scottish Women’s Hospital at Royaumont Abbey on the Western Front. Mary-Rose MacColl brings the courageous women of Royaumont to vivid life as we follow their joys and sorrows, and discover secrets that will affect their families for generations to come.”

  —Lucinda Riley, author of internationally bestselling The Orchid House

  “In Falling Snow is expertly researched and written with a keen eye to the complexities of wartime and the mighty role of women therein. From past to present, Australia to France, MacColl guides readers through unknown lands abroad and territories of the heart. For readers, like me, who love to see history’s forgotten heroes given powerful voice, you will delight in this novel.”

  —Sarah McCoy, author of the international bestseller The Baker’s Daughter

  “At once chilling yet strangely beautiful. The book touches on the contributions made by a group of pioneering women who succeed despite society’s bias toward their gender; the strong friendships that develop, particularly between Iris and ambulance driver Violet Heron; Iris’s increasing love for medicine and her involvement with a man she meets during the war; the men and boys whose lives are sacrificed for a cause many of them don’t identify with or understand; and the far-reaching effects of the war on the generations that follow . . . MacColl’s narrative is fortified by impeccable research and her innate ability to create a powerful bond between readers and characters. Well done.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

  “In Falling Snow is a moving story about women’s roles and the challenging decisions they face as mothers, nurses, doctors, and leaders. MacColl brings to light the forgotten histories of the women of Royaumont hospital with engaging prose. The lives of Iris and Grace are divided by several decades, but their career ambitions and the sacrifices they face are universal.”

  —Suzanne Desrochers, author of Bride of New France

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  In Falling Snow

  Mary-Rose MacColl’s first novel, No Safe Place, was a runner-up for the Australian/Vogel Literary Award. Her first nonfiction book, The Birth Wars, was a finalist for the Walkley Awards. She lives in Brisbane, Australia, and Banff, Canada, with her husband and young son. In Falling Snow is her American debut.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com

  First published in Australia by Allen & Unwin 2012

  Published in Penguin Books 2013

  Copyright © Mary-Rose MacColl, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this product may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  MacColl, Mary-Rose, 1961–

  In falling snow : a novel / Mary-Rose MacColl.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-101-62501-9

  I. Title.

  PR9619.3.M23I54 2013

  823'.914—dc23 2013006666

  Designed by Elke Sigal

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  CONTENTS

  Praise

  About Mary-Rose McColl

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Paris 1917

  Chapter 2: Iris

  Chapter 3: Grace

  Chapter 4: Iris

  Chapter 5: Grace

  Chapter 6: Iris

  Chapter 7: Grace

  Chapter 8: Iris

  Chapter 9: Grace

  Chapter 10: Iris

  Chapter 11: Grace

  Chapter 12: Iris

  Chapter 13: Paris 1918

  Chapter 14: Iris

  Chapter 15: Grace

  Chapter 16: Iris

  Chapter 17: Paris 1918

  Chapter 18: Iris

  Chapter 19: Grace

  Chapter 20: Iris

  Chapter 21: Soissons 1918

  Chapter 22: Grace

  Chapter 23: Iris

  Chapter 24: Grace

  Chapter 25: Iris

  Chapter 26: Grace

  Chapter 27: Creil 1917

  Author's Note

  In memory of Elizabeth J. Cooley, 1927–2011

  Paris 1917

  Afterwards, she would find herself unable to describe the old man with whom they shared the elevator, other than a lascivious smile, as if he knew. She would forget the hotel lobby, the desk clerk, the room, even the view out the window which she knew must be the Luxembourg Gardens. I want . . . he said, but she stopped him with a kiss and pulled him into the room. She worked her hand through the front of his coat, shirt, and undershirt to the warm smooth skin of his stomach. She felt the kick all the way up her arm.

  Still locked in the kiss, he undid the buttons of her blouse, pulled up the camisole, and ran his arms around her waist. This time the feeling started deep in her chest, spreading heat from there. They squirmed out of their clothes and stood there in boots, pants puddled around their ankles. He started walking forward towards the bed, she backwards, baby steps, still joined in the kiss. She tripped and he caught her in his strong arms before she fell. Together they collapsed onto the floor, laughing as they pulled off their boots. Naked now, they embraced again. He lay on his side and drew a line with his fingers from her toes up one leg over her hips belly breast and face and down the other side. He moaned when she touched him. They made love there on the floor. Later she got up and surveyed the room, their clothes leading from the door, his boots, the last thing to come off, at the bottom of the bed. She would remember none of those details but would never forget the long lateral muscles of his back, where angel wings would start. And the shame. She would never forget the shame.

  He looked up at her and smiled and she saw momentar
ily in his face the face of her brother. What? he said.

  Nothing, she said. You’re beautiful.

  Iris

  The envelope was at the bottom of the small pile of mail, as if it planned the surprise. I’d already been to the shop for the newspaper and the girl, the new one, had counted my change incorrectly and I’d said so and she’d said aren’t you the sharp one, which she’d never have said to a twenty-year-old. I felt like saying and aren’t you the stupid one but didn’t. On the way home, I’d stopped under the tree outside Suzanne’s place. I was about to keep going when I noticed, on the ground under the tree, a tiny sugar glider, no bigger than a toddler’s fist, curled up on its side sleeping. I had to take my time bending down. I looked back at Suzanne’s house; definitely no one home.

  The sugar glider was breathing but its breaths were fast and shallow, as if it might not be long for the world. I dropped my satchel and walking stick, sat down on the ground, and picked the little creature up. I could find no obvious injuries, but ants were making their way over the underside of the glider’s face and neck, no doubt anticipating their attack once the elements had done their work. It blinked slowly, its dark eyes looking awfully sad. I brushed off as many ants as I could and took my cardigan from my satchel and wrapped the glider up. It didn’t resist me, had no fight at all.

  “You should be with your mother,” I said, “not sleeping on the footpath.” I held the glider against my chest. The sun was already high in the sky, and although there was a freshening northeasterly breeze I felt it was going to be a warm day. We sat for a while, the sugar glider and I, both of us too weak to do much else.

  I was just contemplating how I might manage to stand up when I saw the young man from the grocery store on his way to work. “Hallo!” he called out as he charged down the hill towards me. “Are you all right, Mrs. Hogan?”

  “Well, clearly not, Patrick,” I said. “I’ve gone and sat down and now I need to stand up. I have a sugar glider.”

  “So you do,” he said, moving closer to give me his arm. “That’s the one was there last night.”

  “You saw it last night?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “on my way home from work.”

  “Why didn’t you pick it up?”

  “They’re pests, Mrs. Hogan. Least that’s what my dad says.” I gave him my free hand and he pulled me up.

  “No, they’re not, they’re bush animals,” I said. I took the sugar glider back and sent him on his way. “I’m glad I’m not a little creature or you might have left me here. Anyway, thank you, Patrick,” I said and then noticed his name badge said Mark. So nice of him not to correct me. I smiled and patted his shoulder.

  “See ya, Mrs. H. Have a good one.”

  Most mornings I see Geoffrey, the postman, who always has something interesting to say about the world, but today he must have come early. The children next door on the uphill side were standing at the gate in their uniforms, their mother at the top of the stairs yelling at them; nothing unusual in that household, frankly. I smiled as I passed the children and said, out of their mother’s hearing, “Is that a dragon I can hear?” They didn’t respond but the older one, a boy of about ten, smiled back and craned his neck to look at what I carried. “I’ll show you later,” I said.

  I put the mail down to open the door and took the sugar glider, still in my cardigan, and set it down in the umbrella box. It was breathing more easily, although it was incurious about its new surroundings. Exhaustion, I decided, and exposure. Somehow it had been separated from its mother. I picked up the mail and left it on the hall table while I went to warm some milk and sugar and put on the coffee. I found an eyedropper in the bathroom and washed it out. I took the saucepan of sweet milk to the front hall and filled the dropper. At first the glider showed no interest but I persisted, pushing the dropper towards its tiny mouth until it took a first little lick and then guzzled. “Hungry too,” I said. It looked up at me and I could have sworn it smiled. I filled a hot water bottle and put it in the box, unwrapping the glider from my cardigan and wrapping it in an old piece of flannel.

  I made my coffee and went to get the mail from the hallway table. It was the usual nonsense—a bill from the electric company, a rather lovely booklet from the SPCA, a David Jones catalogue—and the envelope.

  I knew where it was from, the blood-red logo in the corner, the R with its long tail, but even though I knew, it took a moment to recall the word, as if I had it tucked away in the very darkest corner of my mind and it took time to find the light switch. Miss Ivens came first, her name, and then her face, smiling, saying, as she so often did, “After all, Iris, we’re women. We do things.” And then Royaumont, I thought finally, dear Royaumont, as I sat down on the floor in the hall, fell down really and found myself seated. I haven’t heard for years, not a single word, not from any of them.

  Lately, I’ve got to wondering whether when you get to heaven you’ll be the age you die or some other age, a favourite perhaps. If I’m the age I die, I’ll be old and most of those I lost will be young. If I’m given a choice, indeed if heaven’s where I’m going, I’ll pick five so I can remember my mother, or twenty so my life is yet to be decided. And then I’ll do it all differently. Ah, regrets. Where do they take us? Not here, not to happiness.

  I didn’t open the envelope straightaway. I’d felt a little flutter and decided it was best not to upset the apple cart. I got up from the floor slowly, using the hallway table for support. After breakfast I sat down on the front porch and looked at the envelope again. It’s from the Fondation Royaumont that runs the abbey these days. Inside is a folded card, the edge glinting in the sun. I open it up. It’s an invitation. They’ve asked me back. They’ve asked us all back because come December they’re laying a plaque to commemorate our service, to recognise us, les dames écossaises de Royaumont, the Scottish Women of Royaumont. It’s sixty years since the war ended, if you can believe it, and they know if they wait for a hundred none of us will be left.

  Whenever I contemplate my coming death, which I can still do without anxiety—it remains theoretical even now I suppose—I know there is one task left undone. I have found myself wondering what became of Violet, whether she’s living, whether she’s happy. And the older I get, the more I wonder. Water under the bridge, I told her once, it’s all just water under the bridge. Well, it seems Violet’s not only alive but able to speak on behalf of the women of Royaumont, to speak, can you believe, about what women can do. It says so on the invitation.

  At twenty-one years of age and alighting from the train in Paris, I felt as certain as I do now of my coming death that my life was truly beginning. The other life I’d lived, at Risdon with Daddy and Tom and at the Mater in Brisbane, even Al, was like a rather pleasant interval, a practice for the real life that was now mine. I remember it was a grey day and the light refracted through the grimy roof windows of the station and gave everything a singular shining beauty. I thought I would never again see people so illuminated by the stark purpose of their lives.

  At first it was the summers I remembered, long warm days under the palest blue skies, the cornflowers and irises and forget-me-nots lining the road through the Lys forest, the buzz of insects going about their work, Violet telling me lies. He loves you, he loves you not, she’d recite, skipping along the road until all the petals were gone. She’d finish with “he loves you” no matter what the flower told her. I’d seen her cheat like that. Violet showed me an iris and told me what it was. Beautiful like you, she said. She couldn’t believe I’d never seen one. They’re common as weeds, she said. No offence. None taken.

  But now in my mind’s eye, it’s winter, that first winter we arrived, Miss Ivens and me alighting from the train in Viarmes, the darkness descending, no one to meet us. And there’s Miss Ivens herself, charging ahead to walk, not a thought for our luggage, abandoned on the station platform when we’d failed to rouse the porter. “Where’s Monsieur
Bousier?” Miss Ivens said, as if I might know. I shrugged but she’d already moved off down the hill at a cracking pace—even with my long stride I could barely match her—turning back to me every now and then, those large straight teeth somehow adding to my trepidation, all the better to eat you with going through my head. What was I doing? I’d boarded a train with a perfect stranger. I’d listened to her story for an hour from Paris and now I was following her to a place called Royaumont. “Better to walk at any rate,” Miss Ivens said. “Nothing like seeing it on foot,” turning back to smile, “the world, I mean,” and then she was off again.

  “You should know that you and I and the rest are at the beginning of something momentous,” she’d said on the train, a curl of her dark hair slipped from its moorings and dangling between her eyes. “It’s going to be grand,” she insisted, reading something in my face that suggested I disagreed. I’d been assigned to the British Casualty Clearing Station in Soissons, close to Amiens where we thought Tom had gone. A Sergeant Fleming would be there to meet my train unless Matron had sent word, and no one sent word of anything in these strange days, not as far as I could tell. I’d signed up in London with the Red Cross and already, I’d had orders changed, waiting those three days in Paris, I assumed because of a change in the fighting. And then I’d happened upon Miss Ivens and everything changed again.

  I was just what she needed, Miss Ivens said. She smiled so quickly I almost missed it. Her French wasn’t the best, she said, book-learned, she could write but no one understood her spoken word, and no one else at Royaumont had time. “You’ll be my shadow,” she said, “my voice. Just what I need. I can’t believe our good fortune. There’s a little work to be done at the abbey, of course,” dismissing it like a fly with a flick of her wrist. “The building’s not quite ready. It’s rather old,” making shapes with her hands, collapsing them into her lap. “I need someone who understands the language and can liaise with the tradesmen, someone with common sense. I believe that’s you.” If I was silent, she never noticed, just kept on talking, more to herself really, setting out on her fingers the work she wanted to do that night, the supplies they’d need to order before Christmas, the long list of people to meet the next day. I listened.