In Falling Snow

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  I said nothing, but Miss Ivens must have guessed, for she said, the day after making the announcement, when we were doing our ward rounds, “I couldn’t go to Villers unless I knew I had you here, Iris.” We were on our way between Blanche and Canada. I did my best to smile. “Oh, the hospital would keep going without us. I know that. But I wouldn’t manage. It’s as if Royaumont is my child and while there are many here competent to care for her, you’re the only one I trust. Does that make sense?” I nodded, for I couldn’t be sure my voice would remain steady. Miss Ivens wasn’t taking me to Villers because she was entrusting me with Royaumont, her precious Royaumont. It was the greatest compliment she could ever have paid me, and even if I felt her faith was misguided—I was never so competent as she imagined I was—I was greatly honoured that someone of her stature would consider me worthy.

  Still, I felt lonely in those weeks that Miss Ivens was gone and I missed Violet terribly. There was no one else I could confide in, laugh with, sit up late talking to, and I remained a little jealous that she was in the new place with Miss Ivens. How exciting it must be. I wanted to be there too, back at the chief’s side, helping her in whatever way she needed. At Royaumont I kept expecting Miss Ivens to walk through the door. I had come to rely on her in the ebb and flow of my days. The two of us would often walk through the hospital—sometimes with no destination in mind—while she talked. She walked quickly, even when we didn’t have to be somewhere. I missed those walks. I missed her marvellous brain with its grand ideas. I missed the notion of my day changing suddenly because she was there.

  Villers-Cotterêts was nearer the front and the guns were closer. When girls came back, they said it was awfully thrilling sometimes to hear the shells and not know what would happen next. The local commandant at Soissons had assured us Villers was safe, but the shells sounded so near, one girl said, that she felt certain her doom had been coming. Miss Ivens had sent this particular girl back to Royaumont. Unsuitable, Mrs. Berry told me. We can’t have overexcitement. I put the girl to work in the kitchen and she seemed much happier.

  A month after we took patients at Villers, Miss Ivens returned to Royaumont, along with Violet and Quoyle, leaving Mrs. Berry in charge at Villers. It had been much easier than Royaumont to establish, Miss Ivens said, at least in part because there was more help from the French military to see the hospital operational and a local commandant keen to care for his wounded. So now we were running two hospitals, and more besides.

  General Pétain had taken command of the French army in 1917 and for the first time since the beginning of the war, the conditions French troops were expected to fight in came under scrutiny. We found out that the reason we’d taken so few wounded at Royaumont through the first half of 1917 was that the French were refusing to attack, and now many were deserting altogether. Pétain visited every unit in the field. The conditions for troops were dreadful, and now we were heading into the coldest winter in fifty years. French soldiers not only lived in frozen mud. They weren’t rested from the front like their British or even German counterparts, so their ordeal just went on and on. They didn’t have enough food or even water. They stayed there day after day, hungry, thirsty, frightened, and cold to their bones. One boy at Royaumont told me he would have twenty or thirty rats crawling over him every night. The rats ate whatever food he had in his pockets and then started on his clothes. He couldn’t sleep for fear they’d start on him next.

  When they were returning from leave, French soldiers were not entitled to rations until they rejoined their units, which meant they were at the mercy of people in towns and villages who themselves had too little food. More than once at Royaumont, we took in hungry soldiers, gave them straw to sleep on and a good meal. While Miss Ivens was at Villers, we had a request from our local commandant to set up a canteen in Soissons. The town had only recently been retaken by the Allies and there were few houses that hadn’t been bombed. But large numbers of soldiers passed through Soissons on their way back to the front from leave, so we set up kitchens in an abandoned schoolhouse and served two thousand meals in just over a month until more permanent arrangements were made.

  I spent that last Christmas at Royaumont. I remember it as if it was yesterday. We’d had sleet, snow, and more besides. And yet I was happier than I’d ever been in my life. Here was I, Iris Crane, at the centre of something of such great goodness in the midst of horror. Michelet killed our favourite pig, Louisa, for dinner. Father Rousselle came to say mass in Canada on Christmas Eve. The ward was full, the men quietly in their beds, candles at the altar at one end as Father gave up the offertory. And then the choir sang an Ave. I knew then that what we had created at Royaumont was the very opposite of the war. It was beauty itself.

  In March 1918 the Germans were bombing Paris again and some of the shells fell close to Royaumont. It was louder than anything we’d ever heard, but I tried to stay calm as the new volunteers, who’d never heard bombs before, were terrified. We had a rush of casualties as a result of the renewed fighting and so had to keep our wits about us. One shell was close enough to shatter windows in the refectory, thankfully recently emptied to be used to extend the receiving area. The rush of patients lasted through April and most of May, many seriously wounded cases, with infections so bad we were unable to save many. We had sixty beds in the cloisters, even though it was quite cold, and the staff went back to dining outside, sometimes in the snow that hung on with that long cold winter. By mid-May the rush had abated, but we were told it was a calm before a storm. We needed more doctors and orderlies but Edinburgh couldn’t help. We sent some of the Royaumont doctors up to Villers for a rest—Villers hadn’t experienced the rush that Royaumont had because their sector wasn’t seeing the fighting we were—and brought some Villers doctors back to Royaumont. Miss Ivens asked me to go to Villers too in order to “sort out their administrative problems.” Violet drove me and as we left Royaumont, I saw the shell holes from the bombs frighteningly close to the abbey itself.

  “Goodness me, Violet, we might have been hit.”

  “Put on your helmet,” she said. “We might be hit yet.” Her face was grim. We passed many soldiers and guns along the road.

  Villers was so different from Royaumont, the six wooden shacks, each named for an ally, joined by duckboards over the dirt. They’d had a steady stream of wounded rather than a rush, but the staff were on edge for different reasons. So much closer to the front, the guns were much louder there and more frequent. On my first night, we had pretty constant alarms and we had to black out the lights even in the theatre. On one occasion, Dr. Henry was in the middle of an operation and had to finish by candlelight. We even extinguished the candle for some tense minutes while Dr. Henry leaned over her patient and waited, hoping he would survive.

  The administrative problems I was called in for were quickly sorted out. They’d been running out of basic supplies, Mrs. Berry told me, and I realised it was only for want of knowing when to order. Within a week, things were running more smoothly, but Mrs. Berry asked me to remain with her at Villers and I was happy to feel useful once again although I missed Royaumont.

  Violet brought some new staff over late in May when both hospitals were relatively quiet. We went together to the staff canteen, not nearly as nice as the cloister at Royaumont, or the refectory which for so long had been our staff dining room. But the tea was more like what I was used to at home than the heavy stewed stuff served up at Royaumont under Quoyle’s instructions. Violet said Royaumont was like it was in the early days, new staff with no idea what they were doing, and Miss Ivens was going mad without me there to calm her down.

  I hadn’t seen Tom since I’d left Royaumont, and Violet told me she’d seen him up at Chantilly when she’d gone up with Miss Ivens and that he was well. “The good news is that he’s given up the notion that he has to fight,” she said. “I think he’s finally happy with what he’s doing.” She took out a cigarette, offered me one, and lit both.<
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  I thought of my treachery, going to Captain Driscoll behind Tom’s back, and felt just a twinge of guilt. I hoped Captain Driscoll had managed to make Tom feel useful at what he was doing and that’s what had changed his mind.

  “Thank goodness he’s happy again,” I said to Violet, blowing smoke above her head. “And you, Violet. How are you?” She looked tired, dark circles under her eyes, and I worried she was in the doldrums again.

  “Oh you know me,” Violet said, forcing a smile. “Ever one for bouncing back. I can’t imagine being anywhere other than Royaumont.”

  I knew what she meant. The war intensified everything, as if we knew, for the only time in our lives, how precious a moment is, a stone, a flower, a person. Not that we thought we’d die. I don’t truly believe any of us thought we would. I certainly didn’t. But death was all around us, death and severed limbs and broken men. You couldn’t see that, I mean really see it, and not contemplate your own place in it all, not see you only had this moment to live in.

  I smiled at her. “I think about home, about Daddy and Claire and the twins, and I think I should miss them. But some mornings when I’ve worked all night and I’m walking in the snow or writing a letter for Miss Ivens or helping with ward rounds, I feel I could die right then and it would be all right.”

  “I don’t ever feel like that,” Violet said. “I didn’t mean that. And I don’t agree at all, Iris. I’ve so much to do. I’d feel cheated.” She looked at me with a new intensity in her eyes.

  “What have you to do?”

  “All my life, I haven’t cared a fig for anything. I’ve grown like a chestnut in an orchard, been fed and watered and nurtured, but I don’t really do anything. I just stand there for people to admire. The war has made me realise I can’t go on being a chestnut. I need to do more.”

  “What about chestnuts? Where would we be without chestnuts?”

  She ignored my joke. “Coming over here’s been the opportunity I needed. It’s been like waking up after a long sleep. I’ve seen people who need help. More, I can help them.”

  “So, what will you do when all this is gone?”

  “I don’t know. I’m going to talk to Frances.”

  “You could come home with me and do your training and we could work together in Al’s practice.” Al’s practice, I said it automatically, even as I knew that now there was Dugald, Al’s practice and the life we might make together were as far away from my heart as he himself was.

  For Violet, it was as if I’d slapped her. “I don’t mean nursing,” she said. “What a waste of time. I’ll be a doctor.”

  Now I was the offended one. “Well, I guess you’ve the money to do what you like.”

  “It’s not a matter of money, Iris.” Violet never noticed my hurt feelings. I don’t know if I disguised them well or she had a blindness. “It’s ability, aptitude. And I’m terrified I don’t have it, if you want to know the truth. I mean, there’s a reason you’re Frances’s pet. She thinks you’re a wonder. Even if we had the money, my mother would never pay for me to do anything like study. She’d see that as beneath a Heron. So without Frances to provide support, I’m helpless.”

  Now I realised what she was talking about. The Scottish Women’s Hospitals Association had started up a scholarship fund for one woman from each of its hospitals in France and Serbia to study medicine after the war. At Royaumont, everyone thought it would go to one of the orderlies—Collum or Starr—who helped out in patient care or in the X-ray room, not a driver or nurse.

  “Violet, you’re twice as clever as most of the doctors at Royaumont and they are the cleverest people I ever met. You’d be a grand doctor. Do talk to Miss Ivens. She thinks you’re wonderful too.”

  Why not medicine for Violet, I thought. To hear Miss Ivens talk, it was something she herself had never even considered, not until a friend suggested it. She’d spent her early twenties living a life of relative comfort and leisure, tennis, parties, riding. “My family went into something of a conniption fit when I told them,” Miss Ivens had told Dr. Henry, in my hearing. “I’m the youngest, so I had all my sisters to convince. My father was easier. He liked the idea of a doctor in the family. He had children by his second wife and two were poorly. But he worried the medical studies would tax me. I’d be away from home cutting up dead bodies. He wasn’t sure it was natural.” She laughed. “And now, look at me.”

  The next day, Violet went back to Royaumont. A few days later, I received a message from Miss Ivens asking me to please come back to help her clear the great stack of correspondence that was “threatening to knock over my desk, dear” and I had to respond. I promised Mrs. Berry I’d be back at Villers as soon as I could and headed back to Royaumont with one of the drivers.

  “Sit down, Iris,” Miss Ivens said before we’d even started on the pile of mail. I was looking for a telegram she said she’d received from Edinburgh the day before. I moved the stack of letters from the chair at the side of the desk and sat down, nursing the pile on my lap lest it get mixed up with the piles on the desk. “How are you going with all this?” She gestured around the office.

  “I’m sure it’s here somewhere,” I said, putting the pile in my arms on the floor so I could poke through the tray on the desk again. “They only sent it yesterday.”

  “I meant more generally.”

  “Oh, fine,” I said. “I just wish I didn’t feel so behind all the time.”

  “I think that’s from working with me,” Miss Ivens said. “Have you thought about what you’ll do after?” I looked a question. “After the war. With the Americans involved, it can only be a matter of time. Mr. Wilson is keen on peace, and he seems to be a man accustomed to getting what he wants. You’ve put Villers back together, you keep Royaumont running. What next?” She smiled at me.

  After the war. After the war, I was supposed to go home and marry Al and run his practice and have his children. But now there was Dugald, whom I’d continued to see in spite of everything. I still hadn’t told him about Al and now when Al wrote, I didn’t reply. And there was Royaumont. It was as if I had taken a final step into my new world and when I looked back I could no longer understand the world I’d come from. “I’ll take my brother home,” I said. The words rang untrue even to me.

  “And then?”

  “I haven’t thought too much about it. There’s a fellow in Brisbane.”

  “So you’ll marry?”

  I wasn’t used to talking to Miss Ivens about myself. We always had so much else to get through. “We’re engaged. I didn’t want to, not until after I’d been over here. But he didn’t mind. Doesn’t mind. I haven’t thought about the future much lately, to be honest.” This wasn’t quite right. “Or I haven’t thought about home much.”

  “What’s the situation with Dugald McTaggart?”

  I could feel myself blushing. I had no idea Miss Ivens knew about Dugald. “We . . .”

  “Never mind,” she said. “It hardly matters. Have you considered medicine?” I smiled. “It’s not a joke, Iris. You’ve gifts. A good brain, hands. It’s much worse to have and squander. The scholarship. They’ll take a recommendation from me.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Ivens,” I said. “You caught me on the hop. You and the other doctors, well, you’re another species altogether. I could never be confident I was up to your standard.” Suddenly I thought of Dr. McCourt, who’d made such a bad job of the dressing that day and then humiliated me. I could do better than her. I knew that much.

  “Of course you are. Confidence is like anything else. The more you do it, the more you believe it. Think about it. After the war, there will be no stopping women doctors. We’ve shown we can do whatever the men can do, that our biology isn’t as they say.” She paused. “I’ve already sounded out the Croix-Rouge about providing support for you. And the scholarship would cover your living expenses.”

  When she said sc
holarship again, I remembered what Violet had said, that she was going to talk to Miss Ivens. “I think Violet might be planning to have a word with you about that scholarship,” I said.

  “Never mind Violet,” Miss Ivens said. “I’m talking about you. I look at you and see . . . I fear you’ll look back and feel your life’s been a waste. You’re too bright to do nothing. What does this fellow of yours do? The one in Australia,” she added, as if I had fellows on every continent.

  “He’s a doctor,” I said.

  She smiled. “And what does he think about women doctors?”

  ‘I don’t know that he’s ever met one.” Al didn’t have to tell me what he thought of women doctors. It was in every line of his letters by its absence. He never mentioned the doctors at Royaumont. He never asked what we were doing or commented on the treatments we used. He wrote about Stanthorpe—he visited Daddy and Claire when he could—and about the Mater. The only things he noted in my letters were things about the place itself, the abbey, the weather, the food, and Tom. How was Tom going, when was I bringing him home. The distance between us now was suddenly as wide as it could ever be.

  I thought of Dugald too. I had a feeling he would have a different view from Al. He had no problem with Miss Ivens or with any of the other Royaumont doctors. I imagined he would encourage me. I even entertained thoughts of a life where we were both doctors, working on in France.

  “Would I have to choose?”