“Religion can help,” he said, “but these men’s minds are broken. They can’t stop remembering what happened to them. And it’s no wonder, because what happened to them should happen to no one.” He looked at me and smiled. “But this is gloomy talk. Here is your Canada ward, I see. This is the new one?” The refectory—which had been the staff dining room—was our latest ward, set up during the rushes of 1916 and named for the country that had raised so much money for us. The Canadian girls among us were thrilled to have a little of their own country here at Royaumont. “It’s beautiful,” he said. “Being here must help the men to heal. It’s such a wonderful place.”
“It is,” I said. I didn’t tell him that we were still dining in the cloister, albeit in our warm coats now. We’d shifted the tables and chairs for his benefit. Although Miss Ivens and I had worked out where we could put a staff dining room, we could never be sure workmen would be available—most were off fighting. The project was dragging out. “In the summer, the morning sun comes through the stained glass and you can imagine what it must have been like to be one of the monks here. It’s a . . . a holy place.” I reminded myself he hadn’t come to hear me talk about the abbey. “How did you come to work with the Croix-Rouge?” I asked him.
“My mother is French,” he said. He stopped to light a cigarette.
“Ah, that’s how you fooled me. I assumed you were French.”
“I am,” he said.
I took him out into the cloister, where a dozen or so cots were lined up along one side, soldiers sitting reading or writing, or lying down sleeping, wrapped up against the cold with their wounds exposed to whatever sun was working hard to make its way through the clouds. “We’ve found that sun exposure aids healing and helps prevent infection,” I explained. “Our Dr. Dalyell in pathology trained in Vienna.” As I spoke, the sun came out suddenly as if commenting positively on Dr. Dalyell’s theory, and Dr. McTaggart nodded appreciatively.
I saw Violet sitting on the little bench in the middle of the cloister smoking and chatting with one of the patients. Her hair fell in soft curls to her shoulders. “The sun, Iris. Finally, we have some sun,” she called over. She looked at me and smiled. Violet had been better since the rushes had abated. Miss Ivens had sent her on leave to Paris and she seemed much happier. “Who are you?” she said to Dr. McTaggart, not unkindly, holding her hand over her eyes to shield them. He introduced himself. “Ah, the auditor. I’m Violet Heron, ambulance driver. What do you think so far?”
“I think Iris is an excellent guide,” he said, looking at me. “I’ve hardly noticed the hospital.”
Violet laughed. “You, my friend, can stay.” The patient beside her cleared his throat noisily. “How rude of me. This is Henri Michelet. He can tell you about the care here, can’t you, darling? You’ve been here forever.”
Henri Michelet was all but healed from a shrapnel wound in his left leg that had become infected, but he’d taken to spending his days in the abbey kitchens, and since Miss Ivens had taken a liking to him he’d been allowed to stay. Before the war he had been a chef in Paris and so Miss Ivens had let him cook a few meals for the patients, thinking perhaps this could solve the problem we’d had. Miss Quoyle remained our cook, but the Croix-Rouge had continued to press us to find a French cook for the French soldiers. When Michelet cooked, the patients loved the food compared with what we were able to prepare for them, and while none of us said it in Quoyle’s hearing, the staff loved the food Michelet prepared too. Miss Ivens had told me she wanted Michelet to stay but the French were going to send him back to the battlefield. We’d already kept him for longer than strictly needed. “The nurses are beautiful angels from God,” he said now. “The doctors we worship.” He put his hand on Violet’s leg. “And the drivers? The drivers have hearts of lions and wits of hyenas.”
“I’m not sure I like that last bit,” Violet said. “Anyway, Dugald, you can ask me anything you like.”
“The front has moved,” he said. “I believe there is shelling on the road to Creil these days.”
“Occasionally,” Violet said. “I can’t wear my cap any more. I have to wear a helmet, which is heavy and ugly and ruins my hair. The noise gets to one sometimes. I wear earplugs. That way, if doom is coming, I’ll not know.” She laughed but it rang untrue to my mind.
“The women are not scared?”
“I’m sure they are,” Violet said, “as are the men.” I tried to give Violet a look but she couldn’t see me.
She and Michelet were seated and she still had her hand over her eyes to look at Dr. McTaggart. He smiled. “I am sorry, Miss Heron,” he said. “I didn’t mean to imply you would be more frightened than a man. I don’t know you at all but feel I know you entirely. I am sure you are more courageous than a hundred men.”
Violet didn’t respond. Michelet said, “I need to tell you a thing that is wrong with the hospital.”
“What’s that?” Dr. McTaggart said, moving effortlessly back to French.
“They feed us English food. It is glug day in, day out. They need a French cook.” Michelet grinned.
“I see,” Dr. McTaggart said. “I’ll ask the patients about this. It’s something we’ve talked to your chief about in the past.”
“Make sure you do,” Michelet said. “The patients will tell you.”
We completed our tour and I told Dr. McTaggart I would leave him to organise himself. “I won’t sit in on your interviews unless you want me to,” I said. “Although Miss Ivens has asked me to attend with her.”
“You can sit in on all of them if you like,” he said. “There’s nothing secret about what I’m doing.” He frowned slightly. “But on the other hand, perhaps the staff will find your presence intimidating.”
I laughed. “I don’t think so. I’m not anyone important here.” I corrected myself. “I mean, powerful. I’m not powerful. But I am important enough to show you around.” I was blushing, not wanting him to think we didn’t see his visit as significant.
“I find you intimidating,” he said, “or perhaps powerful. Miss Ivens clearly thinks the world of you. She’s written us about you.”
I wondered what on earth Miss Ivens would have written about me and why I hadn’t seen a draft. But I quickly moved on to the arrangements for the interviews and forgot what he’d said. The day went smoothly with everyone turning up on time. Miss Ivens got rather worried when Dr. McTaggart asked her about whether we’d had any doctors resign and why. “It’s that bloody McCourt,” Miss Ivens said to me later. “She wants to do us in.”
I told her not to worry, that even if he had some information about Dr. McCourt, Miss Ivens had done the right thing and Dr. McTaggart would see that. He met with a group of doctors without Miss Ivens and his questions were about relationships with the chief and how clinical care decisions were arrived at. Mrs. Berry told me later that she was fairly sure his questions were because they must have heard something about Dr. McCourt but, Mrs. Berry said, she saw no reason to worry Frances with the details. I agreed. Miss Ivens would only fret and if Dr. McTaggart was going to write something in his report, our bothering Miss Ivens now wouldn’t stop him. He also met with a group of nurses and with the orderlies and drivers. He asked to interview the cook and I thought back to Michelet’s comments. I explained to Dr. McTaggart that Quoyle had been with us since the start and was proud of what she’d achieved. “I’ll be fine, Iris,” he said. “But thank you for the warning. I won’t be unkind.” He visited the wards and sat on beds with patients. I went with him but remained at a respectful distance. I watched as he listened to them, nodding from time to time, extending his hand to a brow or arm, smiling, occasionally laughing. By the end of the day he’d collected several letters to post home and various messages he needed to convey for the men. “Inspecting the hospital is one thing,” he said, “but this is what’s important about what we do.”
“Those soldiers saw you a
s one of them,” I said.
“Vive la France,” he said, holding his hand on his heart. He sang the first two lines of the “Marseillaise.” He had a lovely tenor voice and I couldn’t help but smile. I didn’t sing “God Save the King” in response.
I saw him out to the car that waited for him in the drive. As he was getting in, he took my hand in his and I felt the same feeling, almost as if we were electrified, that I’d felt the first time we met. His face showed nothing.
“Thank you, Dr. McTaggart,” I said.
“It’s Dugald,” he said. “Thank you, Iris. It has been a . . . an educational day.” And that was all he said about the visit. He got into the car and spoke to the driver, who pulled away. I turned to go back inside when I heard the car stop in the gravel drive. He got out and ran back to where I stood. Running, he looked young, more like a boy than a man, certainly not an auditor who could pass or fail our hospital. When he reached me, he said, a little breathlessly, “Can I . . . visit you? Can I call on you?”
“Of course,” I said, confused. “You need more information?”
He shook his head and smiled. “I want to see you,” he said. “Iris. I want to see you again.” He grabbed both my hands in his and nodded as if to encourage me to say yes. I couldn’t speak, only nodded my head yes. “Good then. I’ll come for you.” I nodded again. He smiled and was gone, turning around once to wave as if to check I was really there. On my hands, I could still feel the warmth of his fingers.
I walked back through the cloister. I found Violet in the garages, getting ready to set off for Creil. “What a dashing young man that inspector was,” she said. “I’d like to do a bit of inspecting with him.”
“Violet.”
“What?”
“You mustn’t talk like that.”
“You can’t tell me you weren’t taken with him. The eyes said it all.” She looked at me, saw something in my face. “Iris, don’t tell me he’s the one.” I blushed. “He is. He’s the one, Iris. Oooooooh, he’s beautiful.”
I smiled. “He asked to call on me.” I frowned. “After his report’s finished of course.”
“Ooh,” Violet sang. “Iris has a lover. Iris has a lover.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “We simply got on well.”
“We simply . . . got on well,” Violet said, “and what do you think Major Simply Got On Well is planning for his next visit? A more detailed inspection?”
Now I felt the blush right to my ears, and the more I blushed, the worse it got. “Oh Violet, you go too far.”
“And you, my dear, don’t go far enough. If you’re not careful I’ll snatch him out from under you.”
“Iris, you need a break.” Miss Ivens had invited me to sit down in her office and had offered me tea. This was the second time she’d ever done so and I knew she had something on her mind. It was, it seemed, my mental health.
“I’m fine,” I said, offended at the suggestion I wasn’t coping. “I’m just tired.” Dr. Courthald, our anaesthetist, was off bird-watching. She’d dragged me along with her the evening before and we’d spent over an hour discussing the difference between the common nighthawk and the rednecked nightjar. “They’re so alike, Iris,” she’d said, identifying their calls one by one. “But the nightjar’s more of a kyok-kyok, wouldn’t you say?” I’d been unable to tell which was which and I didn’t much care and told her so. I wondered now if she’d told Miss Ivens I’d been short with her and Miss Ivens was worried about me.
It was early in 1917 and so far we’d seen none of the rushes we’d experienced the year before. Miss Ivens and I had continued to be busy, but we were dealing now with a different order of problem, to do with staff and the committee in Edinburgh. Cicely had always made life difficult for the drivers—she had a terrible temper and didn’t like that the drivers worked so independently. Miss Ivens did her best to patch things up. Finally, Cicely decided to leave us. She came to say good-bye to me. “Thank you for your kindness, Iris,” she said, awfully formally. I was about to respond that she’d been kind too—which we both knew would have been a lie—when she nodded her head once, looking for all the world as if she might break down and cry—and turned and walked away. But the damage Cicely had done with the drivers was irreparable, it seemed, and they had their finances to think of. Like the orderlies, the drivers were all volunteers and while they’d been able to get through a year, stretched to two, without income, no one expected the war to continue so long. They simply had to go home. Even Violet was having trouble staying.
Miss Ivens pleaded with the committee to put the drivers on salary to no avail. She even paid some of their expenses herself, but still the committee refused to pay them and told us we must find new volunteers. This wasn’t easy. The conditions the drivers worked in were appalling, the roads rutted and sometimes dangerous, shells falling, and the patients they collected often in a terrible state. They had to get back to Royaumont in quick order and they worked day and night as needed just like the surgeons. Miss Ivens didn’t want new, inexperienced drivers coming and having to learn what our drivers already knew.
Eventually we found new girls, but they weren’t as dependable as those we’d lost, which put more pressure on Violet. I worried about her again.
Now Miss Ivens was focused on my well-being. “You’ve been working under terrible pressure for months,” she said. “I forget you’re only twenty-two. It’s not fair.”
“I’m twenty-four,” I said.
“Whatever. You used to be twenty-two. I’m speaking as a doctor now, not as your employer, and I prescribe three days in Paris. Violet can chaperone you, or perhaps you’d better chaperone her. She needs a break too, poor girl. She’s never really recovered from her illness. So, chaperone each other. At any rate, stay out of trouble.”
“Oh Miss Ivens, are you sure you can manage without me?”
“Of course we’ll manage. After all, we’re women. You go off and take a break and come back full of beans.”
I thanked her and went immediately to tell Violet, who was as excited as I was. “Why don’t you ask Whatsisname to meet us, your inspector friend? And your little brother Tom? He’s good for a laugh.”
“Dugald McTaggart? Do you think I should?” I hadn’t seen Dugald since the audit visit, although he’d been in touch by telephone and message to ask for information. He’d been friendly, said he was looking forward to seeing me again once his report was finished. Secretly I’d been pleased. I thought often of his face, how it changed so much when he smiled.
“Of course you should. Let’s have some fun for a change.”
That evening, I sent a note off to Tom—the telephone was out of order again—to tell him I’d be in Paris. He sent a note back that he would meet me at ten at Les Deux Magots, a café on the left bank of the river.
“Quite the poet, is he, your brother?” Violet said when I told her.
“What do you mean?”
“Les Deux Magots is where Rimbaud met his lover,” she said. “Maybe your major inspector should meet us there too.” I had told Violet that Dugald confided he wrote poetry about the war. He’d promised to send me some. I’d make sure Violet never saw any of it; she’d only have fun at his expense.
“Les Deux Magots is not quite what I would have expected from the mechanic.” Violet had taken to calling Tom the mechanic. She would take the car to him in Chantilly or he would come to Royaumont. It was a wreck, he’d confided in me, that had been driven badly. He didn’t know how long he could keep the thing going the way Violet drove. Although Violet and Tom had never become close, Violet was doing her best to be kind to Tom, and working on the Royaumont cars made him feel useful. I appreciated her help with him. And since two of the cars had been replaced by purpose-built ambulances, Violet’s was one of the only vehicles Tom could work on.
In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to write a note to
Dugald but I gathered up some statistical reports he’d requested. I’d planned to post them but I thought I could take them to his office while in Paris. If he was there, he was there, I told myself. If not, not. Violet had picked daisies all through the summer. She’d pull their petals off. He loves me, he loves me not. “Who?” I’d ask. “Anyone,” she’d say. “All of them.” After I met Dugald, she’d do it for me. “He loves you. Iris, he loves you. It came up he loves you. Ooh ooh ooh my dear.”
On the train the following Thursday, we met a group of soldiers on their way back to their units. When we told them where we were from, one of them said he’d been cared for at Royaumont and that any soldier who knew that’s where he was going breathed a sigh of relief. He’d keep his legs and arms, the soldier said, and I thought how different his attitude was from that of the soldiers who came to us on our first night in 1915. We really had done well. The soldier on the train sang us a song he’d made up, “Les dames écossaises,” in front of the whole carriage. It was lovely.
Another of them tried to give Violet the ring he wore on his finger. “No,” she said, taking his hand and smiling. “This is yours.” He pleaded with her but she wouldn’t be moved. He was a handsome young soldier with black hair and brown eyes. Violet refused him again.
Afterwards, I asked her why she didn’t take the ring. “It would have made him happy,” I said.
“Oh Iris, you idiot. It’s his wedding ring. He’s giving it to me because he thinks he’s going to die. By refusing it, I’m telling him to stay alive.”
We came out of the station into a bright spring day. As soon as I saw the city again, I realised Miss Ivens had been right, as she so often was. I was exhausted, not just from work, but to my soul, and Violet, while better than she had been a year before, wasn’t fully healed. We’d seen so much at Royaumont, so much human suffering. You couldn’t keep looking it in the face and not start to sink. Paris, beautiful Paris, refreshed us.
In Falling Snow Page 24