But after I saw him this morning, I’ve thought of Tom and they’ve been pleasant thoughts, a whole wasted day we had along the creek at Risdon. He would have been that six-year-old boy I saw. We caught tadpoles in a jar, I recall, and fought over whether we could take them home. They always died, I knew, but Tom refused to accept the fact. We happened upon a group of ducks that were sure we’d brought their lunch. They wouldn’t leave us alone. Claire had made corned beef and pickle sandwiches, Tom’s favourite, and fruitcake for after. It was winter—do you remember, Tom?—and you were wearing that blue coat you wouldn’t give up. You’d pulled the hood up over your head and you looked up and I thought of that picture of the monk, the one who died, and it sent a shiver down my spine. But the day was sweet and when I told you to take off the hood you did and the image was soon gone.
Having told Grace I’m going back to Royaumont, I can hardly not go, and in truth it’s not the journey that unnerves me. It’s what I might find there. Life reaches a point where you no longer wish to dig about in the earth of the past to find what might have made you grow the way you have. Or how you might have been different. There’s no going back at my age.
After he’d shifted the rug, Geoffrey told me I was looking tired. You’d be tired too if you had this little creature to care for, Geoffrey, I said to him. Yes, he supposed he would, he said. He said if I was travelling in November, I should make sure I bought some long underwear. He said a brand called Antagonia was the best—at least I think that’s what he said—and I could buy them at a store he knew in the Valley. I’d never discussed underwear before, let alone with the postman, and I wasn’t sure it was quite the right thing to do, even if Geoffrey was a friend. “Have you travelled a lot, Geoffrey?” I said, thinking to change the subject. He was standing in the dining room, his little satchel over his shoulder, his hand resting on it, keeping the mail safe I liked to think.
“My nephews and nieces have travelled,” he said. “But the long underwear’s the ticket, Iris,” he persisted. He’d taken off his cap to move the rug and he looked quite different. Geoffrey has dark brown hair in the style of Adolf Hitler if he’d let it grow out a little, the same pasted-down, parted-at-the-side cut. He has a moustache too but kind eyes and shoulders that slope so severely they’re nearly nonexistent. He’s not overweight but he’s more or less pear-shaped, as if the base of him was always meant to be heavier than the apex. Geoffrey is young, no more than fifty, I’d think. He’s never married and while I wouldn’t say he lives for work, I’m not sure quite what he does live for. I asked him once was there anyone special and he said there had been once but it hadn’t worked out. I waited in the hope he might say more but he stood there silently, hand on his mail satchel.
“Now that the glider’s feeling better, he’ll probably move out of the box,” I said, hoping to move away from the subject of underwear. I started walking towards the front door, intending Geoffrey to follow. “I think it will be time for him to survive on his own soon.”
“You’ll miss him, Iris,” Geoffrey said. I nodded. “But it will be cold over there come November,” he said. “Might even snow.”
Certain he was planning to start on underwear again, I opened the door. “Lovely of you to pop by, Geoffrey, but I really must get on with the day.”
“All right, Iris, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I’d been out early to see the doctor. She’s a lovely young woman, Dr. McKellar, and I was late for the appointment, having muddled the time before I called the taxi. The girl at the desk was rude, said since I was late I’d just have to wait for them to fit me in, but Dr. McKellar called me as soon as she was free again. She always comes out with a big smile on her face, as if your visit is the highlight of her day. She does it for all her patients and she can’t feel that happy about seeing everyone.
When we sat down, I told Dr. McKellar about the trip. I didn’t mention Grace’s concerns. “And what did you do there, Iris?” she said, still smiling. I must have looked confused. “At the hospital in France, I mean,” she said, genuinely interested.
“I was assistant to the hospital’s medical chief,” I said. “I trained as a nurse.”
“I never knew that. Aren’t you a marvel?” One of the other things I like about Dr. McKellar is that she doesn’t patronise me, and although her comment might sound patronising, I can imagine her saying aren’t you a marvel to any number of her patients, not just the octogenarians.
She picked up her stethoscope and began to fiddle with it. “Iris, I’m not sure a long flight is a good idea,” she said. “Your blood pressure’s not great. And it’s a long time to be in a depressurised environment.”
“What effect does that have?”
“That’s a good question. We don’t know exactly. But it’s a change and we don’t much like change. And your body’s old. It’s up to you. I’m just saying it’s a lot of stress to put on your heart.”
As I was leaving, I asked Dr. McKellar had Grace been in contact with her. She smiled sheepishly. “As a matter of fact, she did call to let me know you’d be coming. I told her I’d need to be sure you wanted me to discuss your health with her before I could do that.”
“Did she tell you to say I shouldn’t go?”
“Yes, she did. But that’s not why I’m saying it, Iris. I’m saying it because I think a trip like that would be an enormous load on your already tired body.” She stopped and smiled and looked at me. “But it’s up to you and if I were in your shoes, I’d probably want to go too.”
I had intended to tell Grace that the doctor hadn’t been concerned at all about my travelling, but now it would be difficult as Grace would probably check with Dr. McKellar. I could imagine the pair of them talking about me, saying what a crackpot I was becoming, and difficult to manage. All the same, Dr. McKellar’s words had shaken me. I started to wonder if Grace was right after all, that the flight would be a risk. I phoned David at the hospital. The girl on the switch didn’t know who I meant at first. I couldn’t remember his last name but eventually we sorted it out. He’s the only David in perinatology, fortunately. Ravenswood, the girl said, I think you must mean Dr. Ravenswood. Very well then, I’d said, still not sure. When I told him, David said it was funny I could remember the name of his discipline but not his surname.
I asked him if he knew what I’d need to do in order to travel. He said he’d be coming over to mow at the weekend and he’d find out before then. He asked me if I had a passport. I did, I said, but it would have expired in 1920, I thought. He laughed and said he’d phone someone in the government and find out what I needed to do but I should find my old passport if I still had it as that would be a good place to start. He didn’t ask me why I hadn’t asked Grace about all this but he and I both knew why and that neither of us would breathe a word to her.
“David, the GP said she thought it might be unwise to travel,” I said.
“Why?”
“My blood pressure, I think, although I’m not sure.”
“Well, Iris, it’s probably unwise to walk up to the shop every day too. And it’s probably unwise to get excited about anything, so maybe the kids shouldn’t come over anymore. But you won’t live forever even if you do all the things that don’t raise blood pressure. It’s up to you but I think it would be very difficult to live safely at your age. Life’s the hazard.”
I laughed. “You make me feel marvellous, David.” I gave him the details from the invitation and asked him if he could wire for me and find out who else might be coming. “And tell them I’ll be there. Tell them I’ll be there for certain.”
“I’ll call them today,” he said.
After I rang off, I went into the bedroom and sat down on the floor and reached under the bed and pulled out the box I kept there. It had come from my mother’s family originally. It was made of a dark wood inlaid with ivory and when I was a girl Daddy would bring it out to show Tom and me, tell
ing us he’d killed an elephant to make the box. Even Tom didn’t believe him. I used to try to feel with my eyes closed where the wood stopped and the ivory started but found I couldn’t. I closed my eyes and ran my fingers over the box now, and found, to my surprise, that the two materials were quite different to the touch. In places there was a faint line where inlay met wood, and the ivory was cooler and smoother. It gave nothing back to my hand, as if it still felt the insult of its making.
I brushed off a layer of dust and opened up the lid of the box. It smelled musty. On top was the little piece of damask I’d cut and hemmed from a serviette with a gravy stain that wouldn’t scrub out. Under the damask was the stack of letters, the first envelope tattered in the corners, worn from its long journey across the world and since. My address, my old address, written in that elegant hand: Iris Hogan (née Crane), Risdon, Warwick Road, outside Stanthorpe, Queensland, Australia. I don’t know how she got the address. I certainly didn’t give it to her.
I remember when that first letter arrived. It went to Risdon and Claire kept it until she saw me alone, handed it across the next time I was over with Rose to look after René and André, her wild toddlers who’d now grown into wild boys. When I saw the handwriting on the envelope and knew the letter was from Violet, I felt a sharp stab. I waited to open it until I was home that night, Rose asleep, Al called out to a childbed.
I took the envelope from the box and carefully slid out the two sheets of paper now.
My dearest Iris,
It seems an age and I thought I’d write with news from this end, and hope to hear from you. I’ve settled on digs with two others. One is in her final year. Her name is Iris too, which is a funny coincidence, isn’t it? The other one, Patsy, has been ill with a fever for a few weeks. It’s just like having a live specimen the other two of us can work on, trying this and that cure, seeing how she responds. Perhaps if we manage not to kill her, we’ll make good enough doctors after all.
I miss the girls at Royaumont. I miss the freedom most, I think. Now every day is filled with lectures and tutorials and study for the examinations which, although some way off, are going to be hard work, or so the teachers keep telling us with glee. I’d give my eye teeth for half a day of the boredom I used to complain about in the quiet times at R. Remember the afternoon we had cocktails at Asnières, and Cissy Hamilton’s face when she saw us stumbling in for dinner? She was furious. I’ve never told you this but we were nearly sent home. It was only that they couldn’t very well send you all the way back to Australia that they let us both off. You wouldn’t think we were grown-up women at all in some ways. I suppose we hardly acted grown up.
Frances has a fellow who calls on her, or so I’ve heard. She has a house in the country in France now, and spends a good part of the year there. That’s where she met him. He’s French. We don’t see as much of her as you would have if you were here. When she’s in Edinburgh, she has plenty of calls on her time. She has a group of doctors who she’s training to take over her practice. Not me, though. She never comes to see me. I think she’ll marry this fellow and move to France. What a lark, Ivey loose in France without you as an interpreter. Ha ha.
We had a lovely holiday near Cannes with Agnes Savill. You remember Agnes? She and Elsie Dalyell stayed on after the war and did some research in Vienna. Do you see Elsie at all? I hope you do. I hope you’re happy, Iris, and wish you’d tell me.
I remain, yours sincerely, Miss Flower Bird,
Miss Flower Bird
I sat there beside the wooden box and stared at the letter. Dr. McKellar had told me I shouldn’t go back to Royaumont because of my heart. I didn’t say to her that my heart was the very reason I had to go.
I’d been twenty minutes coaxing the stove in Blanche to life, only to walk away for half a minute and have the thing go out again. It was a special anthracite stove, the newest thing, hopeless compared to the old Kooka at home but supposedly good for warming our large wards. I couldn’t get the correct amount of air inside to sustain the fire. It kept going out like this and as I’d let myself become the resident fire expert, they’d call me back to relight it.
I had been to the Croix-Rouge offices in Paris often with Miss Ivens since the hospital opened but I hadn’t seen the officer I’d met when the inspection team visited the abbey to accredit us at the beginning. I saw the name Jean-Michel Poulin on reports occasionally but I didn’t see Jean-Michel Poulin himself and found myself disappointed each time I returned from Paris on the train.
I didn’t mention this to anyone, least of all Violet, who had teased me for weeks after the inspection, even implying to Miss Ivens that the officer had been sweet on me and that’s what led to such a positive report.
By the end of February, the Croix-Rouge were so impressed with Royaumont that they were asking us to open more wards. This we did, using not only the rooms we’d originally intended on the second floor—our Elsie Inglis ward—but also the monks’ guest hall down on the first floor’s west wing. During the winter we had used it as a general storeroom, but now, as our Queen Mary ward, it would provide an extra fifty beds.
“You’ve a visitor, Iris,” Quoyle said, and at first I confess I wondered if it might be him, Jean-Michel Poulin, although I knew that would be ridiculous. “An Australian,” she said. “A handsome one.”
I threw the lump of anthracite I was holding into the little stove and ran to Miss Quoyle and kissed her. Then I rushed from the ward, took the stairs two at a time, and heard her yelling behind me, “In the cloisters, dear.” I’m sure she thought me fresh. I couldn’t have cared less. I went outside without coat or hat. There was no one in sight. I looked left and right. No one. And then he emerged from behind the pillar right in front of me. A sound came from me and my heart thumped against my ribs.
It was Tom, all right, as large as life. Taller, thinner about the face perhaps, looking more man than boy in the greatcoat, but with Tom’s grin and eyes. “Jesus, Iris, you’ll crush me.” I had my arms around him without even realising I’d put them there. The smell was his smell, his oily sweet apple smell, but he was a good two inches taller than me now. He’d started shaving; I could see the shadow on his face and I felt the roughness when we embraced. He’d stretched into manhood and I’d missed it.
“Oh Tom,” I sighed, wiping tears from my cheeks.
“Hell, Iris, what’s the matter with you?” he said, holding me at arm’s length, smiling, which only set me off again.
I couldn’t tell him what I’d feared, could only look into his face and cry. He hugged me close then, held on as I sobbed.
Violet and I had sent the wire to Chantilly when we returned from Senlis. A sergeant at the new Allied Command Headquarters had wired back that they’d do their best to locate Tom. And then I’d waited. I’d told myself I mustn’t worry, but my dreams were full of fear. Many of the women had brothers or cousins who were fighting, though none as young as Tom. I looked at the way they went on regardless of the danger their own relatives were in, and I wanted to be as brave as they were.
Tom took my arms from around his neck and looked at me and smiled but when I tried to smile back, I just cried again. Orderlies walked past, each carrying a lump of anthracite for the stoves, and Mrs. Berry, who looked as if she wanted to speak to me, but smiled and kept going instead. News of my visitor would be all around Royaumont within the hour.
“I hadn’t heard,” I sniffed. “I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought. Are you all right?”
“’Course I’m all right,” Tom said, noticing the glances and smiles from my colleagues. “I got your letter, Iris. I was going to write and then my captain said a mad young woman had gone to Senlis when they were under attack, looking for me, and that sounded pretty familiar—the mad young woman bit. I think you saw a corporal there. He was pretty worried about you apparently. Anyway, he asked if the captain knew me. The captain asked had I upset a young redhead. So
I thought I’d better come and find you.” It was Tom’s slow drawl, though his voice was nearly as deep as Daddy’s now. “You know what happens? The letters go to England and then come back here. It’s still pretty quick, considering. What about this place, Iris? It’s a palace. God, it’s good to see you.”
Eventually I stopped crying. “Are you well, Tom?” I said, holding on to both his hands.
“I’m grand,” he said. “I’m a proper soldier.” He grabbed at his hat to show me. “A British soldier, can you believe it?”
“But where are you stationed?”
“I’m just at Chantilly. I’m with the post office, believe it or not.”
“The post office?”
“Officially the Royal Engineers—Special Reserve, Postal Section. We do the mail for all the soldiers.”
“You’re safe.”
“Safest job in the war,” he said. “I work out from the lists where the soldiers are, then sort the mail into bags. And soon I might even get to deliver it. You’re the most popular bloke around if you’re bringing letters from home.”
“When we didn’t hear, I thought . . .” I didn’t go on for fear I’d start crying again. “Come in and we’ll have a drink.”
Tom followed me inside and we went into the staff dining room—the monks’ refectory—where we kept a pot of hot tea. I made his tea, half milk and three sugars, and black for myself. We sat down at one of the long tables. Tom had taken off his hat when we went inside and with that mess of dark red curly hair he looked more like the boy he’d been when I last saw him. He told me about his boat trip to England, and signing up with the Engineers. “When I got here to France, I was supposed to be going up to Amiens, with an infantry company. At that time I didn’t know the battles from the bush. But one of the officers asked me what work I’d done back home. I said I’d been a postie, not knowing that’s what I’d end up doing.”
In Falling Snow Page 15