In Falling Snow

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  “But that’s a lie, Tom.”

  “Not completely. Remember last Christmas I delivered the post?”

  “For two weeks, and you only carried the extra for Garth.”

  “Well, I had to say something. He asked me how old I was anyway, the bugger. I said I was nineteen and he asked me was I sure. No one else had doubted me, not in Sydney, not on the ship. I told him I was and he sat there a while just looking at me.

  “There was another bloke with him, Captain Driscoll, who was recruiting for his own unit, the postal unit that is, and he said to the first bloke, just put him in with me. Turns out there’s quite a few of us in Captain Driscoll’s unit who aren’t nineteen. He has a thing about it. I don’t mind, other than I feel a bit useless. The unit’s mostly made up of retired posties and some of the old blokes look at me and I know what they’re thinking. The blokes I came across with, they’re in the thick of things. And I’m sorting bloody mail,” he said.

  I wasn’t listening to Tom. I was elated. Tom was safe. If I could have met right then that wise Captain Driscoll who gave my little brother a safe job, I’d have thanked him with all my heart.

  When we’d finished our tea I grabbed my coat and scarf and we went back outside. We walked across the abbey grounds. It was a fine clear afternoon. I showed Tom the remaining stones that marked the outline of where the church had been. I’d read the abbey’s history now. Royaumont was completed in the thirteenth century for Louis IX as his summer palace. During construction, the sixteen-year-old king visited each day to work with the stonemasons and monks. He’d kneel down with them and pray so that God would reside in the very walls they were building. “King Louis was about your age when he built this,” I told Tom. The abbey’s church, more ambitious in design than any that had been built before, was demolished during the French Revolution. The abbey was sold to a cotton miller who installed the paddlewheel for the mill. After the miller moved out, the Sisters of the Holy Family of Bordeaux planned to establish a novitiate, but the nuns too gave up and sold the abbey to Monsieur Gouin’s family. “And Monsieur Gouin donated the abbey to us.”

  I told Tom all about Miss Ivens and the other women. “At first I thought we couldn’t do it. You should have seen the place, Tom. And some of them don’t have a lick of sense. But we have done it,” I said. “Miss Ivens is the most marvellous person. She has a way of believing in you that makes you think you can do anything. The British Red Cross didn’t want anything to do with us but the French jumped at the chance. I can hardly believe it.”

  We had walked across into the forest. The leafless trees made lovely forms against the blue of the sky. It was late already, the light fading into evening. “It’s great you came over,” Tom said. “We’ll never forget it, you know. It will make us.” It was strange to hear Tom talking so seriously. I was always the more serious when we were younger.

  I didn’t tell Tom I’d come to France to take him home. I didn’t want to scare him off. Not yet, I told myself. We’d been asked to extend the hospital, which would mean creating new wards and recruiting more staff. Miss Ivens would need me there. At any rate, I thought, the war would be over soon. Tom was safe in the postal service so we might as well stay.

  “How’s the old man?” Tom said then, looking me in the eye, not with defiance, as I might have expected, but with fear.

  “Has he written you?” I asked softly.

  “Only about ten times, telling me to come home.”

  I chose my words carefully. “He’s frightened. I’ll write and tell him I’ve seen you and you’re in a safe job. He’ll come round.” But even as I said it, I doubted its truth. You’ve no idea what you’ve done, Iris.

  We’d walked for two hours and hardly noticed the time, but soon darkness would be upon us. “We should get back,” I said. “I’m on nights.”

  We came out of the forest and onto the road that would take us back to the abbey. Before long I heard a motor. It was Violet in her ambulance. She tooted and blew me a gloved kiss and pulled up a few yards down the road. “Who’s he?” Tom said, looking put out by the familiarity.

  “She,” I said. “Violet Heron. I told you about her. She’s my friend. Come on, we’ll grab a lift.”

  Violet was dressed in a wool coat and her long pants and boots. She wore a leather cap and goggles and gloves against the cold. “Hullo,” she called as she jumped down from the ambulance. “Want a ride, honey?” She pulled off a glove and offered her hand to Tom. “I’m Violet,” she said. “You must be Tom.” She turned to me and smiled. “You found him, darling!” I nodded, grinning.

  “I am Tom,” he said. “But how did you know?”

  “Iris doesn’t have time for a suitor. She’s mentioned her handsome brother.” Violet pulled up her goggles. “She wasn’t kidding. You can sit by me, sweetie.”

  Tom blushed. “She’s mentioned you too,” he managed to say.

  “Want a lift?”

  “Rather walk,” he said, clearly annoyed at himself for being embarrassed.

  “Forget it, Tom,” I said. “It will be freezing in about half an hour. Violet’s saved our bacon.”

  “Can you take me to the station then?” Tom said. “There’s a train back at six.”

  “Of course,” Violet said. “Iris, I’ve just been to Creil. They say we’ll have another rush. The word ‘imminent’ was used.” After the first busy time when the hospital opened, we’d had a lull. Now, it seemed, we’d be back to double shifts. But even the prospect of days and days without rest couldn’t take the shine off my day right then.

  We climbed into the car, me in front, Tom on one of the benches in back. Violet started up and set off along the track. “Iris tells me she’s going to send you home,” she called back to Tom.

  I turned around to see him glaring at me. “Is that true?” he said with fierceness in his eyes.

  “I told you Daddy was worried,” I said. “And so was I until I saw you.”

  “But is it true?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I’m supposed to take you home.” Oh Violet, I thought, I wish you hadn’t said anything.

  “I don’t want to go. I won’t,” he said, sounding like he had as a child of six, refusing to go to school if I didn’t sit in his classroom.

  “Oh pet,” Violet said. “Aren’t you a baby boy? I told Iris she should let you stay. But now I think she ought to take you home and put you into bed. You might need a little nap.” She glanced over my way, a little smile on her face. I shook my head slightly to try to get her to stop but I don’t think she noticed.

  Tom was embarrassed again and it made him angry. “This is none of your business,” he said to Violet.

  “Tom, that’s enough,” I said.

  “No, he’s right, it’s not my business,” Violet said. “But, Tom, you had your sister worried as heck a week ago. And it’s jolly rude to be angry at her when she’s only trying to look after you.” Violet turned around and looked at Tom. “You’re just a boy, that’s the truth of it. She’s right. You should be home and in school.”

  We arrived at the station and Tom jumped out. Violet wished him well. He didn’t respond and I got out and gave him a hug. “Don’t mind Violet,” I said. “I’ve been very worried about you, and she’s just upset for me. She really is very nice.”

  “She doesn’t act it,” he said. “I’m not a baby.”

  “Course not. You’re taller than me now!” He smiled then and we hugged again. “Stay safe, Tom.”

  “You too, sis.”

  I thought I might cry so I turned and got back into the car without watching him walk into the station.

  On the way back to Royaumont, I told Violet about Tom being with the postal service. “But I really wish you hadn’t teased him,” I said.

  “Why?” Violet said. “I thought he was a bit rude to you to be honest.”

  “He�
�s already said he doesn’t feel he’s doing enough. He wants to go and fight.”

  “And you think that because I teased him a little he might actually do that?” Violet looked at me, incredulous.

  “No . . . Yes, I do think that. He’s always been a bit sensitive and you treated him like a baby.”

  “He acted like a baby.” She smiled. “He was furious with me though, wasn’t he? He’s actually rather sweet when he’s angry.”

  “I think you were thoughtless and callow if you want to know,” I said. My voice faltered as I said it. Daddy had been so worried about Tom and now today I had found out he was as safe as he could be. I didn’t want him getting in harm’s way just to prove himself.

  Violet pulled over to the side of the road. She turned to me, looking contrite now. “I’m so sorry, Iris, dear. I didn’t realise you were so worried. He’s in the postal service. He’s ended up with the only officer in the British army who seems to understand it’s a mistake to make children fight in a war. That’s great news, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “I just want to keep it that way.”

  “So do I. I’ll be a good Violet from now on. And to celebrate our finding Tom safe and snug, I am going to buy you a drink.”

  Violet turned off the road back to the abbey and took us to Asnières. She jumped down from the car and marched into the bar with me in tow. She greeted the woman behind the counter as if they were old friends and ordered champagne with cognac, sugar, and lemon. After we got our drinks—in beautiful long-stemmed glasses—we sat at a little table in the window. “To the war,” Violet said, clinking hers against mine, and then, leaning in, more quietly, “may it never end.”

  “Violet,” I said. I was still angry with her.

  “Ah,” she said. “I’m just having fun. I don’t mean the war’s fun. I mean, all of this, you and Frances and Royaumont. We’ll look back on this and wonder if it was all true.” I could see she’d forgotten completely about what she’d done with Tom.

  I took a sip of my drink and it was delicious, going down my throat smoothly and making my middle feel it had a flame under it. The woman behind the bar looked at us as if we were naughty children. “Good stuff,” Violet said to her, and ordered a second round. Before too long, I was feeling quite light-headed and merry, relieved to have found Tom safe, happy in truth that I could stay at Royaumont.

  “So, Iris, tell me about the men in your life.” Violet looked at me, a wicked smile on her face. “Not counting the baby brother.”

  Violet was never afraid to ask embarrassing questions. She’d taken a lover too, she’d told me. More than one, in fact. It wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, she’d said, a lot of fuss and noise. Afterwards is nice, she said, when you’re all soft and gooey-eyed. I’d smiled and nodded, as if I too knew the feeling, relieved when we were interrupted in our conversation by Cicely wanting me to find a letter Miss Ivens had mislaid. But as Violet had spoken, I’d had the same feeling I had when she talked so offhandedly about her family, as if it were all so unimportant, when somehow it mattered a great deal. Still, I was fascinated by how much she knew about men.

  “Violet, why is it that whenever you talk about your men, you look sort of sad?” I said now, without answering her question about the men in my life. Al. Al was the men in my life. He seemed uninteresting compared with Violet’s stories.

  “I do not,” she said casually. “My eyes may glisten with the fond memory of love. That’s all.” I could see she was forcing the smile.

  “But what’s it like to have a lover?” I said.

  “Don’t you know, Iris? Haven’t you ever?”

  “I’m engaged to be married,” I stammered.

  “Don’t tell me. He’s a boy you grew up with from the farm next door. A great big farmer and you’ll have twenty-five children and call them all after dead people.”

  “As a matter of fact, he’s a doctor at the hospital in Brisbane.”

  “Even better,” Violet said. “You’re a nurse. He’s a doctor.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “You can spend your whole life doing what you’re told.”

  “Well, at least I’ll be happy.” I felt hurt by what Violet had said.

  “Will you?” Violet said. “Will you really? I don’t know, Iris. I can’t say I know what makes people happy.” She looked wistful.

  “Finding out Tom’s safe. That makes me happy,” I said. “I’m sorry I snapped at you before. It’s just that Tom’s so young and I’ve always looked out for him.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Let’s forget about silly old Tom. We’re the flower bird girls. Let’s flit.” She downed the rest of her drink in one go and got up. I remained sitting there looking out on the country night. “Seriously, Iris, we’d better get back. You’re on duty and I bet Creil is beckoning. Cicely will have our heads as it is.” She took my arm and pulled me up out of my chair. “You’re a good friend, Iris. I’m glad you came to Royaumont. It would be awfully dull without you.”

  “I love you, Violet,” I said, and hugged her clumsily. The words had come out before I’d thought about them. When I’d first met Violet, I’d seen her as so sophisticated, so experienced in the world. But right then, I wanted to take her in my arms and tell her we would all be all right. There was something wounded about Violet, I realised, something she was at pains to hide.

  We drove back to Royaumont in falling snow, singing our hearts out. I laughed so much my stomach hurt. Tom was safe. I could stay and help Miss Ivens and the women of Royaumont. I couldn’t think of a thing that would make life better.

  I was still sitting on the floor of my room, the letter from Violet in my hand. What was I doing here? David, I’d been on the telephone to David and then I’d come to find my passport. I looked at Violet’s letter. Do you see Elsie at all? she’d written. Violet really had no idea. Elsie Dalyell had been our bacteriologist at Royaumont and the only Australian other than me, although Dr. Lilian Cooper, who trained in England before moving to Australia, served in one of our Serbian units. Dr. Dalyell and I weren’t particularly close at Royaumont. Like most of the doctors, she didn’t socialise with nurses. After Vienna though, she came home to Australia and worked in Sydney in the public service. She wrote me a couple of times, but I didn’t respond. When Al and I went to Sydney I’d thought of looking Elsie up but I never did. I never looked any of them up. I couldn’t stand the thought of looking back like that. I could only look forward.

  Underneath that first letter were all the others. I hadn’t looked at them in over fifty years. I’d thought I might go through them now but found that after all I couldn’t bring myself to go any further.

  Years after the war, I remembered, Vera Collum wrote me. She’d been an orderly at Royaumont who trained as a radiographer and later studied medicine. She wanted my advice, about Violet of all people. Collum was worried; she wrote.

  She’s not like the girl we knew anymore. I can’t put my finger on the difference and say, there, that’s what’s wrong, but do you remember how Violet was friends with everyone? She had that special skill of making you feel right at home. When any of us gets to see her now—and it’s rare that we do—it’s as if she’s not there, Iris, as if that strong girl has fled her and left nothing but a shell. I sat in on a consultation with her. She’d asked me to give an opinion. There was a growth and the woman won’t see another summer. Violet knew this, I am sure. But she was inexplicably cold to the woman, cruel in the circumstances, and when I tried to talk to her about it she looked away from me and I could see tears come into her eyes. It was a puzzle and I thought that if any of us could help Violet, it would be you.

  If any of us could help, it would be you. These people had no idea. Rose was fourteen when I received Collum’s letter. Violet could be tough, I thought. Collum just didn’t understand that.

  I too
k out the bundle of letters and papers and found my passport and put it aside. As I was putting the sheaf of papers back a photograph fell out onto the floor. I picked it up. A group of women standing in front of a truck in the snow, thick overcoats, gloves, boots, all smiling. One of them is me, I realised, but I don’t remember the photograph being taken. I don’t remember her either, the girl I was at Royaumont. There she is, all the same, at Miss Ivens’s side, standing in front of the lorry she’s just managed to buy, legs slightly apart, head held high, as if someone has just told her to stand up straight. They needn’t have bothered. Miss Ivens and the girl tower over their colleagues, Marjorie Starr, when I look closely, and Cicely Hamilton. There they are, the chief and her assistant, pleased with their latest acquisition.

  Until the end of our first winter at Royaumont, the drivers had to drive to Creil in their ambulances to collect loads of coal for the stoves. The journey was only twelve miles, but the road deteriorated as time went on and they couldn’t drive quickly. They return with as much as they could carry, enough for a day for just one of the five stoves. I suggested we needed a lorry to carry things back and forth and Miss Ivens agreed, so I drafted a request for her to the committee in Edinburgh for funds. A week later, I found a lorry for sale in Chantilly. I asked Tom to look it over for me. He sent a message back: Buy it. It’s a beauty. I sent the request for funds, which was referred to the equipment committee in Edinburgh, but they responded by wire that it was too expensive and we probably didn’t need a lorry anyway.

  Around this time, we were also in trouble with Edinburgh about uniforms for the doctors. The uniform committee was chaired by a Miss McIntosh, an elderly woman who had donated more money to the cause than anyone else so far. Her committee had designed uniforms for the doctors in a dark grey flannel with tartan facings and then sent material and patterns to a seamstress in Paris. Miss Ivens had taken one look at the design and material and instructed the seamstress to make blankets for the staff from the grey flannel, telling Miss McIntosh by wire that we needed blankets more than we needed baggy suits. She’d already engaged Nicol of Paris, she said, who wasn’t charging as much, incidentally, to design more suitable uniforms. “If they think my doctors and I are going down to Paris in that hideous flannel, they can jolly well forget it,” she said to me. “And I’ll be damned if we will wear tartan.” Miss Ivens was given to swearing when she was annoyed.