Poppy

by Mary Hooper

  ‘Why is everyone so hushed?’ she asked Moffat when she stopped for a breather in between delivering the breakfast trays.

  Moffat looked rueful. ‘It’s so sad. Private Taylor has heard that his twin brother has been killed in Flanders. He was gassed and then shot.’

  Poppy gave a gasp of horror.

  Moffat nodded. ‘Both sides are using poisonous gas now. The Allies released the gas, but the wind was blowing the wrong way and it drifted back on to them.’

  ‘What about their gas masks?’

  ‘They say they’re no good – they fog up and you can’t breathe properly in them. Taylor’s brother became blinded by gas, stumbled on to barbed wire and got tangled up. There he was for Fritz, a sitting target.’

  Moffat moved off to start changing beds and left on her own in the kitchen waiting for the porridge to arrive, Poppy sipped water until the lump in her throat had gone. Imagine losing a brother; imagine losing your twin.

  After breakfast she asked about having the afternoon off and Sister Kay, distracted by the imminent arrival of Private Taylor’s family, agreed without questioning her about what she was going to do.

  Moffat, who’d overheard, later said, ‘If you’re meeting a man – fine, go ahead. Just don’t let anyone from the hospital see you.’

  ‘I am meeting a man,’ said Poppy, unable to resist the joy of telling someone else.

  ‘A Tommy?’

  ‘No,’ Poppy said, trying not to sound too proud. ‘An officer. Duke of Greystock’s Regiment.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Moffat said.

  ‘Why “oh dear”? Do you know something about that regiment?’

  ‘No, it’s just that you sound as if you might be a bit soppy about him.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Take a tip from me, old girl: don’t fall for any nonsense he might give you about needing to seize the moment in case “something happens” and you never see each other again.’

  Poppy thought back to Freddie’s letter, which she knew by heart. Could it be that his intentions weren’t honourable? She felt rather thrillingly alarmed, then realised that he’d have very little opportunity to behave immorally during afternoon tea at the Criterion.

  ‘I don’t mean to play the maiden aunt,’ Moffat went on, ‘but I just want to warn you to be careful. Some men will play on a girl’s emotions to get her between the sheets. Other men might be perfectly sincere but might go off to war and never return. Either way you stand a good chance of getting your heart broken.’

  ‘Have you had . . . ?’

  Moffat nodded, pressed her lips together and said no more.

  There was precious little space to get away from everyone in Hut 59, but Sister had Private Taylor moved to a reclining chair near the nursing station at the top of the ward and had screens put around it. When his mother and father arrived, pale and worn-looking, he broke down completely and Sister asked Moffat and Poppy to go to the opposite end of the ward and get as many of the boys as possible involved in piecing together one of the huge jigsaws that had been donated.

  Visiting time came and went, but Private Taylor’s family stayed on, and only left when it was time to catch their train back to Leicester.

  Before Poppy left that day, the ‘Thames by Tower Bridge’ jigsaw not yet completed, Sister Kay beckoned her over.

  ‘I’m slightly worried about our Thomas,’ she said. ‘He’s been so upset by Private Taylor’s loss.’

  Poppy nodded. Thomas’s bed was next to that of Private Taylor, who’d been acting as a kind of temporary uncle to the boy. Since he’d heard the news of his twin, however, Taylor had hardly spoken to anyone.

  ‘Thomas goes for surgery next week and, well, he’s a sad little chap. It would make all the difference if his mother could come in and see him.’

  ‘She’s in Newcastle, isn’t she?’

  Sister nodded. ‘I’ve written to her, but she’s not replied. I’ve managed to get her a free travel pass now, though. I thought Thomas could write asking her to visit and send the pass at the same time.’

  ‘Do you want me to help him write it?’

  ‘I want you to write it for him,’ Sister said drily. ‘The lad can’t pen much more than his name – and he’s nowhere near recruitment age, either. God alone knows what he’s doing in the army.’

  When Poppy went over to Thomas with a pad and pencil, he was half-hidden under a pile of blankets. She tidied his bed and changed his pillowslip, then told him she had a travel warrant ready to send to his mother. ‘So, Sister wants us to write her a nice letter to go with it, Thomas. What shall we say?’

  The boy looked at her with dull eyes. ‘She won’t come. She’s got three babbies at home.’

  ‘Your little brothers and sister?’ Poppy asked. ‘How old are they?’

  ‘The babby is six months, Georgie is two and Flora is five.’

  ‘Perhaps your da can look after them for a day?’

  ‘My own da is dead,’ said Thomas. ‘The three bairns are from her new man an’ he’s in the factory working nights.’ His eyes filled with sudden tears and he turned his head so that Poppy wouldn’t see them. ‘He wouldna let her come and see me anyhow. He doesna like me.’

  Poppy took his hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m sure he does! He’s probably just a very busy man, earning money to feed all those babbies.’ She brandished the notebook. ‘Now, what do you want to say to her?’

  Thomas pushed his face into the pillow. ‘Nothin’. She won’t come.’

  ‘Thomas . . .’ Poppy said wheedlingly. Dear Ma, she wrote, and waited. ‘Come on, Thomas, I’ve got to say something.’

  Thomas gave a great sigh. ‘Dear Ma, I hope this finds you as well as it leaves me,’ he said in a monotone. ‘I am in hospital at the moment, but will soon be back fighting for our country. Goodbye. From your son, Thomas.’

  ‘But that’s not true, is it?’ Poppy said. ‘You know you won’t be sent back to France, not with one leg. Does she know about your leg, Thomas?’

  The boy gave a nod. ‘Doesn’t matter – she won’t come,’ he said. ‘Put what I said.’

  Poppy, beginning to write, said aloud, ‘Dear Ma, I hope this finds you as well as it leaves me. I am in hospital at the moment, but will soon be back fighting for our country.’

  What she actually wrote, however, her pen scudding along the lined pad, was:

  Dear Mrs Stilgoe,

  Please forgive my writing to you, but I am a VAD at Netley Hut Hospital, where Thomas is an especial favourite amongst both the nurses and the other boys in Hut 59. He is rather low at the moment and as he has a surgical procedure to face soon, we believe he would dearly love to see you. We are sending a travel warrant in the hope that you will be able to use it.

  Kind regards,

  Poppy Pearson, VAD,

  On behalf of Sister Kay, Hut 59

  Chapter Sixteen

  YWCA Hostel,

  Southampton

  10th October 1915

  Dear Freddie,

  Thank you for your letter. I do hope you and your family are well and perhaps slowly coming to terms with the terrible loss of your brother.

  I am so sorry I didn’t reply immediately to your invitation. I wasn’t sure what the hospital rules were about going out with the opposite sex (we are highly protected hothouse flowers here!), but in the end Sister gave me the afternoon off and didn’t enquire what I was doing, which saved me having to tell her a fib. I’d love to meet you for afternoon tea.

  Freddie, can I be really bold? I think about you a great deal and, since you kissed me outside the church, feel that our relationship is more than just a friendship. If this is so, then there is something I dearly want to speak to you about when we meet. It concerns Miss Cardew. There! I have been very bold and will leave you to guess exactly what my question is.

  I am very excited about seeing you and will meet you at the Criterion on the 27th at three o’clock. In the meantime, I think about you every day and hope with all my heart that you come through the war u
nscathed.

  With love,

  Poppy

  ‘Do you think “with love” is the right sign-off for a letter to Freddie?’ Poppy asked Matthews over breakfast.

  Matthews nodded. ‘“With love” is fine. “All my love” would be too much and “Yours sincerely” not enough.’

  ‘Oh good,’ Poppy said. ‘That was about my tenth try. I was sitting up for hours trying to work out what I wanted to say.’ She sealed down the envelope. ‘There – I can’t change it now, and anyway, I’ve run out of notepaper.’

  ‘The Criterion it is, then,’ Matthews said. ‘How terribly posh! What are you going to wear?’

  Going into the ward that morning, Poppy saw immediately that changes had been made by the night staff. A dining table had been removed and four more injured men had been admitted overnight, so four more beds and lockers had been squeezed into what was already a crowded ward.

  ‘It’ll be bed rest for our new chaps,’ Nurse Gallagher said, sliding screens around where they lay. ‘We’ll monitor them and change their bandages if we have to, but let them sleep for as long as they like.’

  ‘Is this the most patients you’ve ever had in here?’ Poppy asked.

  Nurse Gallagher shook her head. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘After Ypres last October we had so many men coming in they had to lie on mattresses between the beds. We even had some patients balanced on stretchers along the dining table. Sixty-eight men, at one count.’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘All the surgical wards were the same.’

  Poppy, trying to imagine how she’d ever get the trays out if she had sixty-eight men to look after, was about to go into the kitchen to begin breakfast duties, when a young man in a white coat came into the ward with some paperwork in his hand. Recognising him as the doctor she’d met on her second day, Poppy felt her cheeks turning pink.

  ‘I believe you have four new chaps here,’ he said, then looked at Poppy more closely and smiled. ‘It’s Pearson, isn’t it?’

  Poppy drew herself to attention, as VADs were meant to do when greeted by an officer of a higher rank. ‘Yes, sir. VAD Pearson.’

  ‘Well, Pearson, I believe you have four new casualties here under Doctor Armstrong’s care?’ On Poppy confirming this, he added, ‘Or perhaps you’ve found an orderly who could operate on them?’

  Poppy hid a smile. How beastly of him to make reference to her blunder! But he was smiling, too, so how could she take offence?

  ‘Sorry, that was rather tactless,’ he said. ‘Let’s start again. There are four new patients here under Doctor Armstrong’s care. Have they had their initial assessment yet?’

  Poppy shook her head. ‘No. They’re being monitored, but Sister Kay wants them to sleep as long as they like before they get messed about with.’

  ‘“Messed about with”’ he repeated, raising his eyebrows. ‘That’s what you think of our leading war injury consultant’s care, is it?’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean . . .’ But she saw that he was joking.

  He looked over at the boys in the nearby beds who were watching the two of them with considerable interest. ‘I believe your patients are trying to overhear our conversation, Pearson.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Poppy replied. ‘The morning newspapers aren’t in yet – they’re looking for some diversion.’

  ‘I get the feeling that they’re taking notes.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Poppy said. ‘They do all love a bit of gossip. They’re always wanting to hear if someone’s got an assignation, if there’s been a tiff between two orderlies or if Sister Kay has fallen out with one of the Good Eggs – the visitors, I mean,’ she amended quickly.

  ‘Well, I feel rather sorry we can’t give them anything more interesting to watch,’ he said.

  Poppy, uncertain of his meaning, didn’t reply.

  ‘Well,’ he continued after a moment, looking down at his top sheet and making a series of ticks, ‘will you please tell Sister Kay that Doctor Armstrong’s team will visit at two o’clock this afternoon?’

  ‘Certainly, sir,’ Poppy said.

  ‘And my name’s Michael. Michael Archer,’ he said. Slightly shocked (imagine what Sister would say if she called a doctor by his first name!), Poppy didn’t say anything further, but was unable to prevent herself smiling. He grinned back at her and went out.

  The moment the swing door shut behind him there was a chorus of wolf whistles from the boys in the beds and a hail of questions.

  ‘Is he your new sweetheart, Nurse?’

  ‘Kept him quiet, didn’t you?’

  ‘Does your mother know you’re out?’

  ‘For goodness sake!’ Poppy said. ‘You’re all being very silly. I’ve only ever seen him once before in my life!’

  ‘Once in your life, but always in your dreams!’ someone called, and there were hoots of laughter.

  ‘Look, will you please stop . . . I hardly know his name!’ Poppy protested.

  ‘I expect you just call him ‘‘darling’’!’ shouted Private Mackay, and the gale of guffaws which accompanied this made Nurse Gallagher stop her round and come to see what was going on.

  ‘Sorry,’ Poppy murmured. ‘They all seem to be in very high spirits today.’

  ‘Really, Pearson?’ Nurse Gallagher looked at her with raised eyebrows. ‘And it’s nothing to do with you, I suppose?’

  Just before dinner time, one hundred pairs of red-striped pyjamas arrived as a gift from a factory in Winchester that Sister Kay had been corresponding with. She wanted the boys to put them on straight away and be smart for visiting time, so a pair was allotted to each injured soldier. The old, over-washed and ill-matched pyjamas were then parcelled up ready to be sent to one of the new private convalescent hospitals which were springing up all over the place.

  When Doctor Armstrong and his team came in briefly at two o’clock, all the men were looking smart in the new pyjamas, but Poppy was in the kitchen doing the washing-up and therefore missed seeing her new friend again.

  Going back to the hostel that night, she found a letter in her pigeon-hole.

  hole in back of beyond.

  Dear Sis,

  This is a shit hole you will have to excuse the expression but that is the only way i can discribe it. I never new it would be like this or i wouldn’t of come. I cant tell you were we are they dont tell us nothing, all I can tell you is we got on the ship and i was as sick as a pig all the way across to france. From the port we were herded in cattle trucks all day and night to somewhere they havent told us the name of.

  It has rained ever since we got here and I have not changed my clothes or slept for five nights because of the guns going off everywhere enough to drive a chap mad. Yesterday we were moved nearer to the fighting and they say that tomorrow it will be our turn to support the front line and we will be climbing out of the trenches and running towards the jerries and trying to bayonet anyone we meet. They tell you to run and thats it, you have to do it or they shoot you. Of the men who went yesterday half of the troop were shot down by jerries straight away and those who did get further were torn to bits by the barbed wire (what they were told would be already cut for them), or had their arms and legs shot off. The boys say that there is a surgery back behind the Line where they cut your mangled limbs off you and they have to work so quickly theres no time to dispose of them and they are just left in piles in the corridor. I probly shouldnt be writing this but i dont care if the censer catches me, they might lock me up and i will be out of it.

  I tell you, this place is worse than hell. Sometimes if you die out there in the mud they cant get you back. Anyway its not worth getting you back because your in so many parts. They put a cross up for you it says RIP which the boys say means Ripped In Pieces.

  There are officers looking at you all the time to make sure you fight. If you fall over into the mud and lay there pretending your injured they no and you get shot by firing squad the next day.

  Why is it everyone says they want to come here and fight? I h
ave to get out of it or i will go mad. I do not think i will see the month out. i am thinking of running off it is all to much for anyone to take.

  Billy

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘Now, have you decided what you’re going to wear to meet this officer of yours?’ Matthews asked.

  She, Poppy and Jameson – all starving after a full day on the wards – were in the YWCA canteen having a cup of soup and a sandwich. The sandwich was a cheese one, though it contained such a small amount of cheese that it was barely worthy of its name, for they were cutting back on food almost everywhere.

  ‘What to wear? Not yet,’ Poppy said.

  Since she’d had the letter from Billy she hadn’t thought of anything much except her brother and what would become of him. She’d told Matthews a little about the contents of his letter, but was too bitterly ashamed to tell anyone else. Imagine if any of the boys of Hut 59, with all their bravely borne war wounds, discovered that their VAD’s brother was about to abandon his pals and run off in the middle of battle! It was lucky indeed that the censor hadn’t read the letter or Billy would surely be under arrest already.

  She should have known that something like this would happen, she thought – that the brave, strutting Billy she’d seen marching off to engage with the enemy wasn’t the real Billy, but a sham got up to charm the girls. She pictured him as she’d last seen him, swaggering down the high street, tossing his head this way and that and winking at anyone who took his fancy. How quickly things had changed.

  ‘I think that a quite formal day dress would be appropriate for afternoon tea at the Criterion,’ Jameson said. ‘Maybe a small, close-fitting hat . . .’

  ‘I thought I’d just wear my uniform.’

  Two cries of protest rang out.

  ‘For a start,’ Jameson said, ‘you don’t want to be seen as a VAD by anyone else there. Remember, that we aren’t supposed to date, as the Americans put it.’