by Mary Hooper
‘Really?’ Poppy asked in disbelief. ‘Was it that terrible?’
‘That first day,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘it was like the whole world had gone mad. I never want to be part of anything like . . .’ He suddenly gave a shout of pain and doubled up, and it was some time before he could speak.
He leaned against the wall for several moments, his face white. When they set off again, it was very slowly.
‘I had an easy time of it compared to some,’ he said. ‘Just think – one hit and that’s the end of my army career. I’ll get an injury stripe on my uniform and see out the rest of the war at home. How’s that for good fortune?’
‘Not everyone would agree with you . . .’
‘Yeah, but the way I look at it, it could have taken me head off instead of me foot, couldn’t it?’
‘It could,’ Poppy agreed.
‘And me missus’ll be right pleased to have me home.’
‘Of course,’ Poppy said, biting her lip. Since her aunt’s letter, any mention of home evoked feelings of guilt in her. She’d decided, however, that she’d get through the Push, then tell Sister about the letter from Aunt Ruby and ask her advice.
She hadn’t been able to see much of Dot and Tilly lately, for their hospital was also taking in scores of new casualties and, as qualified nurses, they were allowed to do a much greater variety of work than Poppy was, including assisting with operations. Both had now applied to work at a casualty clearing station, telling Poppy that it was the most vital, exciting and terrifying work a girl could possibly imagine.
As they passed each other in the canteen that evening, Dot asked Poppy if she’d heard about the mysterious disappearing man. Poppy, not knowing what she was about to hear, said she hadn’t.
‘Well, he just came out of nowhere into a ward one night,’ Dot continued. ‘He told the nurse he’d come to collect someone who was dying.’
‘He was an old, old man with a long beard and a grey cloak,’ added Tilly.
‘Like the Grim Reaper?’ Poppy asked, now realising where the story was going. ‘Did he have a scythe?’
‘Probably,’ Dot said.
‘Let’s say yes,’ said Tilly.
‘Anyway, he appeared out of nowhere and said these incredibly wise words about life and death and so on,’ Dot went on. ‘He told the nurse she should allow her patient to let go of life, so she did and he died. And when she looked for the old man to thank him for his advice, he’d disappeared.’
‘No one in the whole hospital ever saw him again!’ Tilly added dramatically.
‘Really?’ Poppy bit her lip to stop herself laughing.
‘They’re saying that in ancient times a hospital stood here, and the wise old man is a ghost doctor from those times,’ Dot said.
‘Do you think it’s really true?’ Tilly asked.
Poppy was unable to stop herself laughing any longer.
‘What?’ both girls said.
‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ said Poppy. ‘I hope you’re not going to be too disappointed . . .’
That evening Poppy wrote to Matthews.
Casino Hospital,
Nr Boulogne-sur-Mer
3rd July 1916
Dearest Matthews,
Thank you for looking after me so well and thanks also to your Stanley for sending me the photographs. I am so grateful to you for making such a horrid task a little easier to bear and I’m sorry not to have written and thanked you before. Stanley sounds like a lovely chap and I know you will be blissfully happy together, even if you decide to leave the wedding until the war is over.
I have not sent the photographs to my ma yet. I wrote twice to tell her about Billy, but have only had back a letter from my aunt, who says Ma has some sort of nervous trouble and hardly ever speaks. And my sisters seem to be running wild.
I really don’t know what to do. Aunt wants me home because she says she can’t cope any longer, so I think I’ll have to go – but how awful it will be to leave. I know it’s quite dreadful of me, but I don’t want to go, and I can’t tell Dot and Tilly or anyone. Only you! Matthews, what on earth can I do?
I must cut this short, as Sister has just sent a message asking me to go to Matron’s office as a matter of urgency. I am already feeling quite ill with terror wondering what it is that I’ve done wrong.
Fondest love,
Pearson x x x
Chapter Twenty-Three
Poppy had no idea what Sister could want – let alone Matron. She’d only glimpsed that esteemed person a few times and had certainly never spoken to her.
With Matron, or any other high-up War Office being, she knew that you only spoke when spoken to, but other than that had no idea of the etiquette that might be involved in such a meeting.
What could this possibly be about? Waiting in the anteroom to Matron’s office, Poppy scoured her mind for possible violations of the many regulations.
Had someone seen her enjoying herself with Dot and Tilly? Had she misbehaved, laughed too immodestly, at the concert hall the other night? Had the picnic in the woods been reported to someone in authority?
Suddenly she thought of something far worse: suppose Aunt Ruby had written to Devonshire House demanding that Poppy return to England immediately?
Poppy was called into an inner room, a spartan little office, where Matron sat with Sister Gradley. Sister introduced Poppy to Matron, who shook her hand and asked her to take a seat.
The two of them seemed very serious, Poppy thought, but not especially grim. It did not appear that she was about to be told off for breaking some rule or other.
‘Pearson, you’ve been recommended for a special task,’ Matron said. ‘At another time we would have called on a qualified nurse, but with the multitude of casualties expected over the next few days now that the offensive has started, we can’t afford to let one go.’
Poppy waited. Now was the time, she thought, to confess that she was needed at home, say she was terribly sorry but she couldn’t do whatever it was they wanted her to do.
On the other hand, surely she ought to hear Matron out? Perhaps it was something she could do quickly, one last special task that would go down on her record and make it easier to find a job in a hospital when she got home.
‘We can ill afford to lose any of our VADs, either, but I know you to be sensible and able to use your initiative,’ Sister said with a slight smile.
‘As you will have deduced,’ Matron went on, ‘we are at the beginning of what could prove a long and difficult battle, centred around the area known as the Somme.’
Poppy nodded.
‘A situation has occurred in this area.’ Matron and Sister exchanged glances. ‘A young man – we’re calling him Patient X – has been badly injured and also has respiratory trouble because of poisonous gas, so we need to get him out of the clearing station he’s in as quickly as possible. The War Office has asked us to provide a nursing assistant who will accompany a doctor to that area and help bring him out.’
‘You won’t be responsible for the patient’s safety or involved in any decisions about his well-being,’ Sister said. ‘It’s just a case of bedpans, bandages and doing whatever you can to aid whoever will be looking after him on the journey.’
‘This is not a particularly dangerous mission as you should be well away from the fighting,’ said Matron. ‘But it is a confidential and important one. If the enemy knew there was someone we badly wanted to bring out, then they’d do everything they could to thwart us.’
Poppy nodded, rather excited.
‘Have you any questions?’ Matron finished.
Poppy hesitated, then asked, ‘Why him? Why is he so important?’
‘Well, firstly, X-rays show that he’s got a piece of shrapnel lodged near his brain, so he needs a very delicate operation that only a specialist surgeon in England would be able to tackle,’ Matron said. ‘The other reason is that he’s the son of a military man – one of our most important and well-known generals – who’s alre
ady lost two boys in this war. Patient X is his final, youngest son, and if anything can be done to get him out and save his life then we’ve pledged to do it.’ She went on to say that Poppy would depart Boulogne on the 6.00 a.m. train the following morning and should be back before nightfall. The doctor she’d be accompanying had all the official papers and would be at the ticket office at a quarter to the hour.
Sister said that she hoped Poppy realised the honour of being given such a task. ‘You will, of course, act with decorum at all times,’ she said. ‘Remember you are a representative of the British Army. If you let your standards slip, even for a moment, then you risk bringing the whole nursing profession into disrepute.’
‘There are still some men who seem to think that we shouldn’t even be over here,’ Matron added.
‘Yes, Matron, Sister.’
‘You’ll be under the command of the doctor you’ll be accompanying at all times, of course,’ Sister said. ‘You already know that VADs are not normally allowed on clearing stations or anywhere near the front line, so you must be self-effacing to the point of fading into the background.’
Poppy nodded and promised to work to the best of her ability.
*
Later, still wondering if she should have taken the job, she concluded that she couldn’t have done anything else. To be given the honour of undertaking such a task and then to turn round and say that she couldn’t do it . . . Well, it would have been most dreadfully disrespectful.
She asked one of the orderlies to wake her early, then went to her room and packed a clean apron and a few other things in a canvas bag.
She considered adding a PS to the letter to Matthews telling her why she’d been summoned to Matron, then decided she ought not, in case she got into trouble with the censor.
It was nearly midnight. She laid out her uniform on the back of her chair and tried to sleep.
Sleep, however, didn’t arrive. She thought about her mother and her sisters, about the job she’d been given to do, and about how pleasing it was that she could think about Freddie de Vere on his wedding day without bursting into tears. She also thought a little about Michael Archer, wondering if their relationship was leading anywhere. He was such a joker – how was a girl supposed to tell if he was serious? She’d already been fooled by Freddie . . .
Two hours later, still unable to sleep because of the uncomfortable, miserable feeling that she’d abandoned her mother and sisters, she decided what she must do. She relit her candle and found a notepaper and envelope.
Casino Hospital,
Nr Boulogne-sur-Mer,
France
8th July 1916
Dear Aunt Ruby,
I am so sorry I haven’t replied to your letter before. To tell you the absolute truth, I’ve been rather dreading having to write, because I knew that when I did it would set everything in motion and I’d be obliged to come home. That makes me sound callous, but I really hope you don’t think I am. It’s just that a VAD’s work here is so valuable and engrossing it will be hard to leave it.
Ma comes first, of course, and I’m very concerned about her, so when I return tonight from an errand I intend to tell Sister that I’m needed at home and will ask to be released from my contract. I shall stress that it’s urgent and hope to be with you as soon as possible.
Aunt Ruby, kindly tell my sisters that they’ll have me to reckon with if they misbehave, and do please reassure Ma that I will soon – very soon – be home.
Much love,
Poppy x
Having done this, she was finally able to sleep.
When the orderly came to wake Poppy at five o’clock the next morning, it was light outside. Quickly getting dressed, she left a note in Dot’s pigeonhole saying she was probably going to be out all day, and posted the letters to Matthews and her aunt. The hospital canteen was not yet open, so the hot drink and roll that Poppy had been looking forward to didn’t materialise. Perhaps she’d be able to get something on the train, she thought, remembering the day she and Matthews, as trainee VADs, had buttered hundreds of rolls on a troop train going up-country from Southampton.
At Boulogne station Poppy found herself in an absolute sea of khaki. Hundreds – thousands – of soldiers were milling about, in their platoons or in smaller groups, coming and going to and from the front line, carrying kitbags almost as big as themselves. There were nurses to be seen in all-shades-of-blue dresses, a brass band was playing, and it looked very much as if a hospital train was expected in, because a whole team of orderlies carrying rolled-up stretchers was moving towards one of the platforms.
Poppy could see the main ticket office ahead of her but, being early, decided she’d try and get to the café to buy a cup of tea and something to eat. The Red Cross snack bar at Boulogne station was rough and ready, made out of two old railway trucks and a pile of wooden pallets, but hugely popular with not only Tommies but the French and Belgian soldiers who passed through the station day and night and always wanted cocoa and buns. There was a baker in Boulogne who turned out hundreds of these sugared confections every day of the week, the ingredients (currants, raisins, cherries) depending on what was available.
Poppy hesitated, rather unwilling to push herself into the scrum of boys.
However, someone noticed her and called, ‘VAD coming!’ and, ‘Let the little lady through!’
The sea of khaki parted for her as if by magic. Rather pink in the face, Poppy found herself at the front of the café queue, ordered what she wanted and managed to find a quiet corner away from everyone, where she ate her bun as tidily as possible.
Ten minutes later, she was ready and waiting at the ticket office. She hoped very much that the doctor she’d be helping would be reasonably pleasant. She knew that some of the older doctors were very important army men – that is, they were army generals before they were doctors, and might think themselves a bit above travelling with a VAD.
‘Pearson!’
She wheeled around. ‘Oh! Doctor Archer – Michael,’ she said, surprised and rather pleased to see him. ‘What are you doing here?’
He smiled. ‘The same as you.’
‘What?’
‘We’re going together to a casualty clearing station to collect Patient X.’
‘No!’
‘I rather think yes.’ He brushed the tip of her nose with his finger. ‘Excuse me, but you have sugar on your nose. Did you leave it there in order to look endearing?’
Poppy tried not to smile – and failed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Poppy and Michael Archer waited, yawning, on the platform for the train which was going to take them to the casualty clearing station.
‘But how did you . . . I mean, why are you going?’ Poppy asked. ‘Why you and not anyone else?’ What she really wanted to know was if Michael had had any choice in his travelling companion. Whether he had, in fact, asked for her.
‘Why me?’ He shrugged. ‘Probably the same reason as “Why you?”. Because we’re both newly qualified and good enough to be sent, but not so good that they’ll miss us too much when we’re not at our hospitals.’
‘So it was just the luck of the draw?’
‘Exactly. Did I know about you beforehand? No. Did I give three cheers when I looked at the paperwork last night and found out? Yes.’
Poppy smiled, thinking that there was something about him that was fair and uncomplicated and honest. She didn’t have to put on airs with him or pretend to be any different than the way she really was. And, best of all, he made her laugh.
‘Do you believe in fate, Pearson?’
Poppy frowned. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes . . . perhaps . . .’
‘Well, I don’t know, either, but it is a bit funny the way we keep bumping into each other in wards and markets and on picnics, isn’t it?’
‘Mmmm,’ Poppy murmured, not wanting to commit herself one way or the other.
‘Just think, they could have settled on any VAD to accompany any doc on thi
s trip, but they picked me, and then they picked you, and here we both are.’ He grinned. ‘What d’you think? Isn’t that fate?’
‘I don’t know,’ Poppy said after a moment’s thought, ‘but I do know that I still don’t believe in ghosts.’ And she told him how Dot and Tilly had related the tale of the Mysterious Bedside Visitor, who had become considerably more mysterious with each telling and now had a cloak, beard and possibly also a scythe.
Michael admitted that no one had actually come back to him with the story, so they declared Poppy the winner and Michael said that he would treat her to tea and a bun when they reached Boulogne station on the way home.
They waited while an extremely long train puffed into the station and disgorged walking-wounded casualties, equipment, stores, newspapers and even horses on to their platform. Once it had emptied, it took them ten minutes or so to find their seats and more than half an hour before the train was ready to move off again. Their carriage held eight people, and Poppy, as the only female, enjoyed being deferred to regarding whether or not the window should be open or closed and if she wanted to sit in direct sunlight. The boys in the carriage also modulated their language around her and were careful that cigarette smoke did not waft in her direction.
When the train started, no one seemed to know which route it was taking or which towns or villages it would pass through.
‘Security, I suppose,’ Michael said. ‘The fewer people that know where a valuable commodity like a train is going, the better.’
‘Half the time even the driver doesn’t know the route,’ someone in the carriage said. ‘He gets his instructions on the way.’
They stopped several times, including at a siding to pick up some lightly injured casualties who were going back to join their regiment. Close by here, Poppy saw four newly dug graves by the side of the track.
Whispering, she pointed them out to Michael, and he said they were probably casualties who’d died on one of the hospital trains coming back from the front line. ‘Yesterday or perhaps the day before,’ he added.
‘But couldn’t the authorities have waited until they got to Boulogne and buried them there in a proper cemetery?’