‘He’s not “my captain”. He’s…’ What was he, wondered Midge. Her friend?
Anne’s grin grew wider. She put on a cockney accent. ‘He’s the bloke you’re walkin’ out with, that’s what.’
‘We haven’t done any walking yet!’
‘True. But you’ve written to him every second day for the last month. And you let him call you by your first name.’
‘How do you—’
‘I saw one of his letters. No, I didn’t read it. You left it on your bed and I only saw the beginning. Darling, I’m not your aunt. Or your chaperone. What does he look like? A nice warrior Achilles? I always loved Achilles at school. Even Miss Torrens couldn’t spoil him.’
Midge hesitated. ‘He’s…he’s nice, Anne. He makes me think of…oh, things other than the war.’
‘And undoubtedly you do the same for him,’ said Anne drily. ‘My dear, you grab it with both hands. Now, hadn’t you better get dressed? His train will be here soon.’
‘What shall I wear?’
‘As though one had a choice—unless you’ve sent a wire to your aunt for more clothes in the last two days? Blue serge, grey serge, blue wool…’
Midge put down her grey serge and picked up the green one, the colour like the willow trees of home. ‘Anne…do you think one day that you’ll—’
‘Fall in love? I’m immune,’ Anne said lightly. ‘When one knows one’s marriage arrangements have been planned since the day one was born…well, it puts a crimp in any dreams of love. Every day we’re here I bless the war. I’m probably the only person in the world who does. No debutante season till the war is over. No one to count one’s spots. No feathers in one’s hair and damned court dress. No smiling at every eligible in the stud book for little Anne. Not till my spots are gone and I can do Mummy proud at any rate. Now, darling, you go and enjoy yourself. Make hay while the sun shines and all the rest of it.’
Midge peered out through the limp curtains. ‘It’s raining. Drizzling, anyhow.’
‘What does one make in drizzle then?’ Anne sighed. ‘Cocoa. Another thousand gallons of bloody cocoa.’
‘Anne!’
Anne giggled. ‘Wouldn’t Mummy be shocked. Maybe I should try it when I go home. Give one another bloody sherry, Wilkins. It’d do you good to swear a bit.’
‘I’ll swear when you say “weekend”.’
‘Darling, that middle-class word! Mummy would have pink kittens.’ Anne looked down at the small gold watch on her wrist. It had been a present from Lady George before they left. ‘Darling, I don’t want to hurry you, but what time did you say his train arrived?’
‘Ten past eight. Oh…’ Midge hesitated.
‘Say it, darling. Damn. Bloody hell.’ Anne sighed theatrically. ‘You colonials. Always so proper.’
Midge grinned. ‘Bloody hell then, I’m late. That satisfy you?’ She slid the dress over her petticoat and reached behind to do up the buttons. Anne helped her.
‘What do you plan to do with him?’ she asked.
‘You make it sound like I’m holding up a post office. I don’t know really. Walk to the hotel with him, wait while he leaves his bag. He’s only got the two days’ leave. Maybe a walk along the river if this rain stops. I asked Madame if she could make us some sandwiches for a picnic.’
‘L’amour parmi les meules de foin.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Love among the haystacks, darling.’ Anne stretched. ‘To think we could be back in school now. You could be brushing up on your irregular verbs instead of thinking about irregular behaviour.’
Midge was blushing. ‘Anne, I’m not—’
Anne laughed. ‘Don’t mind me. You know, for the first time in my life I feel free. In all the months we’ve been here, no one has known who I am…well, cared, anyhow. You’ve no idea what it’s like to always be the Honourable Anne, to always have people’s eyes on one. To know one has to behave impeccably, not let the side down, don’t you know.’ Her face grew serious. ‘It’s going to be terribly hard to go back to normal life after this.’
‘Maybe the war will go on for ages—another year even,’ Midge said and shivered. ‘Horrible to think it might. Oh, bloody hell, it’s nearly eight o’clock. I am late!’
The drizzle had cleared to dappled clouds as she left the hotel. It felt strange to go to the train station and not be working. For once the tiny platform was peaceful. The red geraniums glowed in the sunlight. The station master was feeding his pig behind his cottage. Even the seat outside the storeroom was empty, of soldiers and the few ordinary travellers. A small boy in ragged shorts wandered down the train track, looking for fallen lumps of coal.
Midge sat, and stretched out her legs.
The train must be late again, she thought. She shut her eyes for a moment. It was so good to sit down, to let the pain seep out of her feet for a while, to feel the sun on her face. For a moment even the distant thunder of the guns faded.
‘Midge?’
She opened her eyes. It was Ethel.
‘Sorry to disturb you, old thing. I just had a note from the brigadier’s office. He says all hell’s going to break loose here later.’
‘He didn’t!’
‘Well, no, he sent his compliments to Miss Carryman and said he thought she might like to know that things could be busy today.’
‘Another push,’ said Midge slowly. ‘I thought there was more noise than usual last night. I counted five dispatch riders’ motorbikes before I went to sleep.’
‘Look, I know you and your captain have only two days, and it’s your birthday too, but do you think you could lend a hand tonight, just for a few hours?’
Midge smiled. ‘If he wants to spend time with me, he can help serve cocoa. It’ll be a good test of his mettle.’
‘Thank you, old thing. Oh, here’s the passenger train now.’
Midge peered down the track at the smoke in the distance, puffing grey and white above the trees. In a few seconds they could hear it, feel the tiny vibrations in the platform, and suddenly there it was: brakes screaming, the windows of its carriages looking blankly out at the station.
Midge frowned. Only two carriages. The ten past eight usually had six or eight, all crammed with men on leave going back home or to Paris.
One of the doors opened. She ran forward. But it was only an elderly woman in a black dress and black shawl. Midge helped her down to the platform. The woman patted her on the arm and thanked her in rapid French, too fast for Midge to understand.
She nodded quickly and said, ‘Merci, madame,’ then looked at the other carriage. Its door was still shut, the platform empty. She ran down the train, peering in at the windows. Where was Gordon? Perhaps he had fallen asleep. He must have left really early to get the train…An old man with a newspaper looked at her curiously. Two children argued in a corner while their mother dozed, her basket on her lap. There were no other passengers.
Midge stepped back as the guard blew his whistle. The train grunted, then began to roll away.
‘Midge.’ It was Ethel again. ‘Don’t worry yourself, lass. He must have missed it. He’ll be on the ten o’clock instead.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Midge flatly. She shrugged. ‘No point going back to the hotel. I couldn’t sleep. I may as well give you a hand till then.’
‘Better put an apron on your good dress then.’ Ethel eyed her leaf green dress, with the white fur tipped on her shoulders.
They walked up the platform together. Suddenly Ethel said, ‘Can you hear something?’
Midge listened. ‘An engine. A truck or something.’
Ethel shook her head. ‘Not just one truck…’
They ran to the courtyard as the first of an endless line of ambulances arrived.
There was no time to think. Stretcher after stretcher lined the platform, crammed side by side. Men slumped against the walls outside, their faces bandaged, their uniforms bloodstained. And still the trucks and ambulances kept coming.
N
o lining up for cocoa now. Once more the girls worked in strict order, Anne and Beryl handing cocoa and sandwiches to those who could walk, who had hands to hold the cup or bread, while the others knelt beside the stretchers, offering what they could.
The morning passed. No ten o’clock passenger train arrived, but another hospital train, with so many carriages that it was impossible to see the end. Red Cross nurses, army orderlies and ambulance drivers lifted stretcher after stretcher onto the train; the walking wounded helped one another hobble into the carriages.
And then the train was gone. The platform was empty. But not for long. More ambulances arrived, and trucks too, their trays lined with bloodstained hay. More men, with the blank faces of those whose world had narrowed into pain and waiting. Waiting for help. For home. For whatever tomorrow might bring…
The platform was full again. Even the courtyard was crammed, stretchers lying on the muddy gravel as the trucks unloaded their grim cargo and rumbled off again. And still they came…
Another train. The stretchers were loaded on. A lull.
Ethel was grim-faced. ‘We’re out of milk. Nearly out of cocoa too.’
Midge stared at her. ‘We can’t stop now.’
‘And we won’t if I have anything to do with it. These men deserve better than a pannikin of slop.’ Ethel pulled off her apron. ‘Here, take this. I’ll be back in an hour, maybe more.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to knock on every door of the village till I’ve got enough to feed our men properly.’
Midge watched her stride off down the station. Then she lost sight of her as another surge of ambulances arrived. Tired horses showed the whites of their eyes, terrified at the smell of blood. Stretchers were stacked four deep, tied together in a desperate effort to keep them stable, the blood from one man dripping onto those below.
Mix watery cocoa in the coppers, stir and serve. No more bread, or beef. Anne, next to her, ladling out the cocoa, tears running down her face. No time to ask why, or comfort her. When next she looked, Anne was smiling again, the endless practised smile of reassurance.
‘Miss? That’s the last tin of cocoa.’ It was Anne’s maid, Beryl.
‘Just keep adding water,’ Midge said. ‘Any hot drink is better than none.’
‘Yes, miss.’
A year ago, she would have thought that men in agony wouldn’t want to drink. Now she knew that blood loss called for fluid; that shock needed warmth; that just a smile or a hand in theirs could help hold back the terror of pain in a strange country.
War, she thought, was the strangest land of all.
‘Midge! Look!’
Midge followed Anne’s gaze down the platform. A strange procession made its way towards them: Ethel in front, and behind her a line of women carrying pots, or saucepans, or bread or cake wrapped in cloths.
‘Tell this lot where to put the stuff,’ said Ethel shortly. ‘I’m off to send telegrams to my da and anyone else who’ll listen.’
More ambulances, more stretchers, but the food held out now, miraculously renewed as it grew low. A cart arrived with women from the next village, all carrying pots of soup.
‘Miss, a drink, please. Miss…’
‘Miss, my mate. He’s hurt bad, miss.’
Nothing you could do but offer them a drink and some comfort, moving down the line of stretchers.
‘No use giving Snowy none, miss. He died an hour ago.’
Midge looked down at the man’s head she was cradling. His eyes were open, but his friend was right. She put his head back gently on the stretcher, and found something shoved into her hand. A mug of soup. She stared at it, dazed.
‘Drink,’ said Anne. She held out a sandwich too.
‘I can’t.’
‘How long do you think we can go without food? Eat.’
Midge took the sandwich. Ate. Drank.
And more trucks came.
Ethel issued orders, her red hair moving amongst the other women. She had kept one of the coppers for soup and poured them all in together. The soups were all mostly some sort of vegetable, so it seemed to work all right.
Midge worked her way along the stretchers. Smile, she told herself. Smile. ‘Would you like some soup? Let me help you…’
One man looked at her apologetically. ‘I’m getting blood on your nice dress, miss.’
As though that mattered.
‘Do you think you could manage some hot soup?’
All the while, she looked for his face on the stretchers, among the men struggling from the trucks or being carried by their friends. And with every man whose head she held as he sipped at the warm soup, she felt a moment’s lifting of her heart that it was nobody she knew. But Gordon couldn’t be there. He was on leave. And the trains were for the wounded. That was why he hadn’t come. He was on leave so he was safe, and he would come when he could. There would be a letter, or a telegram, already waiting at the hotel. Yes, that was why she hadn’t heard. He had sent a message to the hotel. She would get it as soon as there was time to stop, to breathe, to think…
‘Miss Macpherson?’
A pair of boots, covered in mud, came to a stop by the side of the stretcher where she knelt. There was blood in the mud.
‘Miss Macpherson, they said you were down here.’
She forced herself to smile at the man on the stretcher, a smile of apology and, perhaps, comfort for a second in a time of hell, before she stood up.
It was the private from the café, with hair like golden grass. The man who’d introduced her to Gordon. Harry Harrison. One arm was in a sling.
She knew what he was going to say before he spoke. She shook her head. But he spoke anyway.
‘I…I’m sorry, miss.’
The world began to spin. She put out her hand, to find something to steady herself, and he took her arm with his good hand. He looked around for somewhere she could sit. But there was nowhere; the platform was crammed with the wounded.
‘Can I help you back to your hotel, miss?’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘What happened?’
He hesitated. ‘All leave was cancelled. He wasn’t able to send you a telegram even. You should have heard him swearing—begging your pardon, miss. But he was that cut up. Said it was your birthday and everything. Then the colonel called for volunteers to cut the wire last night before the push at dawn.’
‘But there was a moon last night.’
Even I know an enemy can see you cut barbed wire by moonlight, she thought. She remembered Tim and Dougie shooting rabbits by moonlight back home. A hunter’s moon.
Harry’s face was expressionless. ‘Don’t make any difference to the high-ups, I reckon. Moon or not.’
‘How…’ She found her voice didn’t work.
He said very gently, ‘It was sudden, miss. I reckon it got a big vein in his leg. He wouldn’t have felt a thing, miss, he was out of it.’
‘I…see.’
It was silly to feel like this, she thought. She had known Gordon for two months. Had met him only once. They’d exchanged sixteen letters…twenty…Perhaps, she thought vaguely, she was grieving for what might have been. The days they’d never have; the man she’d never really know. The man he might have been in years to come.
‘Thank you,’ she said to Harry. Suddenly she saw him for the first time. ‘Your arm! And that’s blood on your chest?’
‘Not my blood, miss. Well, not much of it. Just some shrapnel. I’ve had worse in a scrap as a kiddie.’ He bit his lip. ‘I was with him, you see, miss. I carried him back. I thought he might make it. But there was so much blood. That’s how I know he didn’t suffer much,’ he said again, as though anxious to make the point. ‘He didn’t know what hit him, miss. Didn’t know a thing.’
The horror of what this man must have seen, have done, washed over her. But she said nothing. There were no words.
‘I’m sorry about the mess on my uniform, miss,’ he said a bit helplessly. ‘I should have changed
. But I was that worried about you just waiting here, not knowing. I didn’t think. And it’s your birthday…’
The words trailed away, as though he realised what ‘Happy Birthday’ would sound like on this platform of blood and moaning.
It was as though reality pushed away the horror. Midge said gently, ‘You must be hungry. They serve meals at our hotel.’
He shook his head. ‘I hitched a ride on one of the trucks, miss. I’d better get back or I’ll be charged.’
‘Soup then.’ She led him through the avenues of stretchers to the canteen. ‘Beryl, soup for Mr Harr…I mean Private Harrison, please.’
She handed him a slice of apple cake. It was still warm from a village oven. He took it awkwardly, as though not sure whether to eat it. Finally he stuffed it in a pocket.
It seemed such a small, mean thing to give him. He mustn’t even have slept, Midge realised. He had seen Gordon die, and worse, but he had still hurried here to give what comfort he could. And she had nothing for him but a cup of soup and a slice of someone’s apple cake.
‘How do you stand it?’ she asked suddenly. She shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. A silly thing to say.’
He looked at her. His eyes were very clear despite the weariness and the mud. ‘Not silly at all.’ He glanced around the crowded platform. ‘I go back home, miss.’
She frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Sorry. I’m not one for expressing myself well. I just…well, I keep home in my mind. The hills. The trees. Even the blessed sheep. Sometimes if I can’t sleep, I imagine I’m fencing. You know, digging the holes, seeing the colour of the dirt—the good rich dirt we’ve got on the creek flats.’ He gave her a faint grin. ‘By the time I get the first two posts straight I’m snoring fit to blow the roof off.’ He shrugged. ‘Don’t say it’s not hard, sometimes. Wish I had a photo. I’ve got one of Mum and Dad, but not one of the old place. Never thought of having one taken, I suppose.’
A Rose for the Anzac Boys Page 7