Poppy

by Mary Hooper

  At this Mrs de Vere raised her eyebrows at her husband. Everyone fell silent and the servants finally left the room.

  A group of guests had been invited for afternoon tea on New Year’s Day. There had been much discussion between Cook and Mrs de Vere on what, exactly, this tea should consist of. The latter wanted to strike the right note: mindful of the war, but not too frugal with the iced fancies in case she was deemed as lacking in hospitality.

  At four o’clock, going into the drawing room bearing the best silver teapot, Poppy was all-over anxious to see one particular person, for a Miss Philippa Cardew and her family were amongst the guests. This Miss Cardew – so rumours below stairs had it – was in line to marry Master Freddie. (‘Money marrying money,’ Mrs Elkins told Poppy. ‘No love involved – you mark my words – just land and country houses.’)

  Setting down the tea tray on the polished table, Poppy took in the visitors at a glance and knew immediately which one was Miss Cardew, for she was the only female of the right age and, besides, was terribly attractive and stylish, with bobbed hair which fell straight and shiny to her jaw in the new fashion. She was wearing a bias-cut dress in bright emerald silk with a full pink rose pinned at the neckline, and had matching pink satin boots with a row of buttons running up the sides.

  Poppy was somewhat taken aback. Just an alliance of land and country houses, Mrs Elkins had said, and Poppy had somehow imagined Miss Cardew as a solid, frumpy country girl, with bird’s-nest hair and thick knitted stockings. She hadn’t prepared herself for the possibility of beauty.

  The likelihood of Freddie and Miss Cardew becoming engaged was discussed over the servants’ tea break, but Poppy, despite being full of thoughts on the matter, did not volunteer any opinion either way.

  At five o’clock she was delighted to have her mood lifted when Cook remembered that a letter for her had been delivered by second post. It was from Miss Luttrell, her old English teacher.

  The Pantiles,

  Mayfield, Herts

  31st December 1914

  My dear Poppy,

  Thank you for your Christmas card. I was pleased to hear of your doings and know that you and your family are all well. I still occasionally see your mother when I am popping in and out of the village shops and we always exchange the latest news. News about you, I mean!

  Poppy, as you know, I was very disappointed that you could not go on to take a higher qualification at college, but I have recently heard of an exciting and fulfilling opportunity that I think would be perfect for you – and would also offer training of practical use after the war. I know you are content at the de Veres’, but I long to see you doing something which would use your intelligence and really stretch you. I am also of the opinion that as many of us as possible should be helping the war effort. There! Have I aroused your curiosity?

  I know you have very little spare time but wondered if you would be able to meet me on your next day off. I am about to leave Mayfield for some weeks to stay with my sister in Kensington, and thought that a meal in London would be a treat for both of us. There is a Lyons Corner House in the Strand, opposite Charing Cross station – perhaps you could meet me there?

  If you are interested in hearing what I have to say to you, please do drop me a line with a suggested date. In the meantime, allow me to wish you the compliments of the season.

  Yours truly,

  Enid Luttrell

  ‘Ooh, you’ve got a letter!’ Molly said, trying to look over her shoulder. ‘Who’s it from? Is it a love letter?’

  ‘No, of course not! It’s actually from my old English teacher,’ Poppy explained. ‘She’s retired now, but we still keep in touch – she’s a dear old stick.’

  ‘But what does she want?’

  Poppy smiled. ‘To stand me dinner! Lyons Corner House in the Strand.’

  Molly’s eyes widened. ‘Grand!’

  ‘She’s probably going to give me a lecture on women’s suffrage.’ On Molly looking at her blankly, she added, ‘You know, women getting the vote. She was very keen on that before the war started.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Molly. ‘It’ll be worth it for the lunch!’

  Poppy smiled and nodded, then folded the letter and her new gloves and tucked them both carefully into her apron pocket. She wouldn’t think about Miss Cardew and she wouldn’t think of Freddie. She would think of Miss Luttrell’s letter and the possibility of an exciting and fulfilling opportunity . . .

  Chapter Three

  It was well into January when Poppy could get time off to meet Miss Luttrell in London. She went from the local station by steam train to Euston, and from there was only a little terrified to find herself travelling on the Underground to Trafalgar Square.

  The Strand was full of khaki-clad soldiers and thrillingly busy. There were many indications that there was a war on: advertisements on billboards urged Send a jar of Bovril to your Tommy at the front or emphasised that Bread gives us the strength to win the fight, and hoardings and omnibuses alike bore a variety of posters persuading all able-bodied men to enlist in the army and serve their country. Poppy sighed when she saw these, almost wishing that she had someone marching off to fight the good fight; someone to worry about, to knit a scarf for and send parcels to. A sweetheart would be best, but – failing that – even a brother would do.

  For the first time, Poppy saw men wearing the blue cotton suits which signified that they were soldiers on day release from the hospitals. Some of these men were missing a limb or limping badly. One who passed her had only one eye and a ghastly, livid scar which ran from his temple, across his cheek and right down his neck, so that Poppy had to brace herself not to turn away from him in horror. People greeted these men warmly, clapping them on the shoulder and shaking their hands, for they were war heroes and had the wounds to prove it.

  Miss Luttrell had not yet arrived at the Corner House, so Poppy, enjoying being addressed as ‘madam’ and the novelty of being deferred to, asked the waitress for a window table for two. From here she could look on to the vast station concourse at Charing Cross and watch the minor dramas being enacted outside: people meeting and kissing, parting and crying, soldiers weighed down with mighty loads of equipment, businessmen in top hats or bowlers, children with nursemaids, and a lady at the wheel of a shiny open car that was bellowing out yards of smoke (her chauffeur must have gone into the army, Poppy decided). One surprising thing was that many well-to-do ladies appeared to be unchaperoned. She had read features in the family’s discarded news­papers about this. It seemed that ladies whose husbands were at war felt that they no longer needed a man to escort them to film matinees or a maid to scurry behind them carrying their parcels – they could manage perfectly well by themselves. Indeed, wealthy lady shoppers whose chauffeurs had joined the army were driving themselves to eat in restaurants with their female companions. They were wearing bloomers, too: on pedal cycles, to attend exercise classes – or just because they wanted to.

  When Miss Luttrell advanced across the restaurant floor – wearing a dark tweed suit, brown woolly hat and eager expression – Poppy’s first thought was that she hadn’t changed a bit in all the time that she’d known her. Did elderly ladies, she wondered, reach a certain standard of oldness and then stay the same? Unsure of how to greet her, Poppy stood at her approach just as she’d done when Miss Luttrell had come into the school room, but was waved at to sit down again.

  ‘My dear child, we don’t stand on ceremony these days,’ said Miss Luttrell, pecking Poppy on the cheek.

  Poppy sat down. ‘It’s really very nice to see you,’ she said, smiling and a little shy at the strangeness of the occasion. ‘It’s been about a year, I think.’

  ‘How time flies!’ Miss Luttrell reached for the printed tariff and ran a finger down the choices. ‘I expect you’re hungry, dear. Shall we order straight away?’

  Poppy nodded, starving because she’d been too excited at the thought of the outing to eat breakfast that morning.

  Miss
Luttrell held the tariff at arm’s length and got the words into focus. ‘The steak and tomato pie is always good here, or the braised tongue is a very substantial meal. They both come with mashed potato and vegetable marrow.’

  The idea of ox tongue didn’t appeal to Poppy and she and Miss Luttrell both decided to order a pie. When the waitress left them, they stared outside for a moment, where an army truck filled with soldiers had pulled up. A small crowd gathered to watch them and cheer as they fell into ranks and marched in formation under the vast arch of the station.

  ‘Another legion of our brave boys marching to death or glory!’ Miss Luttrell said, and then, rather embarrassingly, stood up and applauded them (though no one outside the shop could have heard her) so that Poppy felt she had to stand and clap too.

  When the soldiers had all disappeared, Miss Luttrell sat down again. ‘Now, do tell me what you’re doing.’

  Poppy started on a list of her regular duties at the de Vere house, but was stopped almost immediately.

  ‘I meant, what are you doing for the war?’ Miss Luttrell asked.

  Poppy thought. ‘On my own, I suppose not very much, but Cook makes what she calls economy puddings and the household is saving on fuel – we’re never allowed a fire in our bedrooms.’

  ‘I expect the family still have fires in their rooms, though,’ said Miss Luttrell drily. She knew the de Vere family: they gave an annual allowance to the local school in Mayfield where she used to teach, and she and Mrs de Vere occasionally found themselves serving on the same charity board.

  Poppy didn’t reply to this little barbed comment, for the family did indeed still have fires in their rooms. ‘Mrs de Vere has a knitting circle making comforts for the men at the front,’ she suddenly remembered. ‘I go to that once a week.’

  ‘Ah, comforts,’ Miss Luttrell said rather disparagingly. ‘I believe the men are weighed down by so-called comforts. I’ve heard that they have so many they clean their rifles with them.’ She adjusted her hat. ‘But has Mrs de Vere encouraged her sons to go and fight for the cause?’

  Poppy nodded. ‘Jasper de Vere has enlisted. He’s just started his training with the Royal Engineers.’

  ‘Not before time! And the other boy?’

  Poppy was torn. She wanted to denounce Freddie as a war refuser, but it seemed rather disloyal to the de Vere family, who paid her wages and, on the whole, were good to her. And besides, there were those rather perplexing looks Freddie had been giving her lately.

  ‘At the moment he’s working on the estate,’ she said lamely.

  Miss Luttrell raised her eyebrows. ‘While other boys of his age are deep in mud and dodging bullets in the trenches!’

  Poppy hesitated. ‘I know it doesn’t sound right –’

  ‘He’s a coward! Someone should present him with a white feather. I’d do it myself if I wasn’t living in London.’

  Poppy’s eyes widened. She knew that for a man to be presented with a white feather was the greatest shame – so much so that the government had issued exemption certificates and badges to be given to men in certain trades to show if anyone asked them why they weren’t in uniform.

  ‘Perhaps you could give him one,’ said Miss Luttrell briskly. ‘After all, why shouldn’t he fight? The privileged rich have even more reason than the rest of us to make sure this country isn’t overrun by Fritz.’

  ‘I couldn’t . . .’

  ‘My dear, it’s your duty. Haven’t you seen the posters?’

  ‘The recruitment posters?’ Poppy nodded.

  ‘Especially the one showing women standing at an open window watching their nearest and dearest marching off to fight.’ Miss Luttrell raised her voice and cried, ‘Women of Britain say – “GO!” ’

  Several people in the restaurant turned to look at her.

  ‘No, I haven’t seen that one yet,’ Poppy said hastily.

  ‘No one need know the feather has come from you,’ Miss Luttrell resumed. ‘You could leave it at his place at the dinner table perhaps. Or even put it in the post.’

  ‘But I couldn’t do that to F– I mean, Mr de Vere.’ Poppy was quiet for a moment, then she said with a sigh, ‘My brother’s the same, though, Miss Luttrell. He hasn’t even got the excuse of having an estate to look after.’

  ‘Then he must also have a white feather!’ When Poppy didn’t reply to this, she added, ‘Our country needs every one of our boys to be ready to fight. We women should be hardening our hearts and playing our part in getting them there.’ She looked searchingly at Poppy. ‘As for you, my dear, you have a brain. You could be playing a far more useful part in the war instead of plumping madam’s cushions and making sure her card table is dusted.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Poppy said. ‘Some of the staff at the house have already moved on. Our housekeeper has gone to be a bus conductor, Cook’s girl is working as a clerk in an office and some of the others have gone to take the men’s places in factories.’

  ‘As a matter of fact I wasn’t thinking of factory work for you.’ Miss Luttrell paused, then said earnestly, ‘I was going to suggest that you become a nurse, a member of the army’s Voluntary Aid Detachment.’

  ‘Oh!’ Poppy said, surprised. She had never considered nursing, much less considered it in wartime. She’d seen pictures on the newsreels of field hospitals near the front line, with rows of camp beds and nurses, as silent and compassionate as angels, flitting up and down the rows tending to their patients. Her only thought on seeing them had been that they must be awfully decent girls.

  Their meal arrived and during the first few mouthfuls neither of them spoke, for Poppy was thinking about things, wondering if she could . . . if she should . . .

  It was Miss Luttrell who resumed the conversation. ‘I saw how well you nursed your mother when she was so poorly after her last child.’

  Poppy nodded, remembering the dark times just after Barney had been born. Her mother had been very ser­iously ill then – hysterical and sweating with childbed fever – and Poppy had nursed her day and night. Tragically, little Barney, always weak, had died when he was a few weeks old. With her father not long dead and her two sisters still very young, it had been a terrible period for her family. She’d coped – just about – but she’d been caring for a close relative then, she thought; someone she loved, not some anonymous stranger. On the other hand, perhaps it would be easier to nurse someone she wasn’t emotionally attached to – and it would be rather wonderful to become one of those nurses with a starched white uniform bearing a red cross, so highly thought of, so revered.

  ‘At present I’m doing some Red Cross work,’ Miss Luttrell said. In response to Poppy’s look of surprise she added, ‘Oh, I don’t mean actual nursing. I haven’t the energy for that – it’s terrifically hard work. What I do is serve in army canteens, handing out cigarettes and cocoa to our chaps, and I roll bandages and cut gauze into wads for the dressing of wounds.’

  She stopped speaking for a moment and they both looked out of the window at a man, with a bandage which went round his head and completely covered both eyes, walking with uncertain steps. Another man was holding his arm and guiding him between obstacles. Poppy silently prayed that Miss Luttrell wouldn’t stand up and applaud again and, luckily, she was too involved in saying her piece to do so.

  ‘You’re just the sort of girl they’re looking for to be a VAD,’ Miss Luttrell went on. ‘Young, enterprising, healthy, intelligent. You could make a real difference.’

  Poppy’s brow furrowed, trying to see herself in that role. ‘But I’ve never thought about nursing. I don’t know if I . . .’

  ‘Volunteers get two or three months’ training before they’re allowed on a ward,’ Miss Luttrell said, ‘and they always work under a sister’s guidance.’

  ‘Yes, but you just called them volunteers,’ Poppy said. ‘So they don’t get paid.’

  ‘They get their board and lodging, just as you do at the de Veres’. You’d live in a hostel with other trainee nurses.’
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br />   ‘But I send half my wages home to Mother,’ Poppy said. ‘I wouldn’t be able to do that if I were a nurse, would I? She really needs what I send.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t have wages as such.’ She smiled. ‘But, my dear, I have a proposition for you.’

  Poppy, intrigued, waited while Miss Luttrell finished her pie and gathered her thoughts.

  ‘I’ve been left a small annuity by an ancient relative,’ she said eventually. ‘I don’t need it all, and I’d like to share it with you – if you’d let me.’

  Poppy’s jaw dropped. ‘But I couldn’t possibly!’ she said automatically.

  Miss Luttrell went on as if she hadn’t heard, ‘The pity of it is, if I’d been left the money a few years ago I could have helped pay for your college education.’

  ‘That really is too kind,’ Poppy protested.

  ‘If you wanted to join as a VAD I’d be able to provide you with an allowance – one that would be about the same as the wages you earn now,’ Miss Luttrell continued.

  ‘That’s terribly generous, but –’

  ‘I think you might find that, when the war is over, you want to stay in nursing and obtain some proper qualifications. It’s a fine career for a woman. Maybe you could even study to be a doctor. I think you’d be capable of it.’

  ‘Never!’ Poppy exclaimed. It was true, she was becoming a little bored at the de Vere house, but she hadn’t given much thought to what she could do instead of being a parlourmaid. Could she really become a nurse?

  ‘I don’t see why not!’ said Miss Luttrell.

  An amount of time elapsed before Poppy, chewing her lip, asked, ‘Can I let you know? It’s most awfully good of you, but I must think about it.’

  ‘My dear, of course you must give it proper consider­ation!’ Miss Luttrell pushed her empty plate away and rummaged in her handbag. ‘In the meantime, do please take these two white feathers and give them out as you see fit. Remember: every young man should enlist and fight for his country. And you know, in your heart, who deserves to be given one . . .’