‘You, madam, will go straight to Lady Neville as soon as she returns,’ promised Nurse Payne with relish, and Miss Letitia, who had no wish to take part in a ‘scene’, disappeared upstairs again.
Old Mr Standish, awakened from his doze by ‘the sound of revelry,’ as he called it, appeared at the open casement door and gaped at the suddenly curtailed entertainment. However would he explain this to her ladyship, who had entrusted him with the care of the manor?
Lady Neville was late returning from the grief-stricken family, and told Nurse Payne firmly that any breach of discipline would be dealt with in the morning, which meant that Grace had the night hours to speculate on her fate, which did not make for peaceful sleep.
Lady Neville spoke with her daughter over their shared breakfast about the events of the previous evening, and at ten o’clock she sat at her desk in the improvised office she used to conduct all matters relating to Hassett Manor as a convalescent home for war wounded. She sent first for Nurse Payne and heard her story, then dismissed her and sent for Flossie, then Mr Standish and the patient who had played the piano. Finally she sent for Grace Munday.
‘I’m very surprised indeed to hear what happened last night, Grace, and it is your parents I’m most sorry for,’ she said gravely. ‘You’ve already been warned once about foolish and undignified conduct, yet as soon as my back was turned, you’ve let yourself down again. It’s such a pity, because you have many good qualities, but I cannot allow a valuable trained nurse like Miss Payne to be offended a second time, and she would be if I allowed you to stay. You will therefore pack your belongings and tidy your room, and leave by midday on Friday.’
‘But Lady Neville, I only wanted to cheer up the patients, and they really did enjoy themselves, and they’ll tell you so!’ protested Grace, close to tears. Whatever would she say to her father?
‘I understand that your motives were good, but my dear girl, your behaviour was foolish in the extreme,’ said her ladyship, not unkindly. ‘If you were a few years older, I could imagine you entertaining servicemen at bona fide concerts, for you certainly have talent. I have no choice but to dismiss you from Hassett Manor, but…no, don’t cry, Grace, but listen carefully to some good advice. I think you should train as a nurse, but as you’re only seventeen, I suggest you apply to the matron of Everham General Hospital to work as a nursing cadet for a year. I happen to know her, and will put in a good word for you – I won’t send you away without a reference. I shall be very sorry to part with you, but oh! Grace Munday, you’ll have to learn to control that wayward, wilful streak in your nature, or it will land you in real trouble one day, and it won’t only be yourself that will be shamed, it will be your whole family. I will write to your parents about my recommendations. You may go now.’
‘But Lady Neville—’ Grace began, but the lady held up her hand.
‘This interview is ended. You may go.’
And out Grace went, smarting with anger against Nurse Payne and what she saw as injustice on the part of Lady Neville.
The post arrived while the vicar and his wife were at breakfast in the kitchen, and Isabel eagerly went to pick up the three envelopes on the doormat.
‘One from Mum,’ she said, setting it down beside her bowl of porridge. ‘And one from your dad, there – and one from – let me see…’ She sliced open the envelope. ‘Oh, it’s from my old friend Mary Cooper! There must be a good reason for her to write.’ She sat down and read the letter between spoonfuls of porridge.
‘Poor Mary! She and Dick Yeomans are engaged, but he’s been conscripted and sent off to France. What a dreadful shame – and so has Philip Saville the vicar’s son – I wouldn’t have thought him old enough, but he’s just eighteen, she says, and goes on to say there are hardly any young men left in North Camp, only Sidney Goddard because of his short sight. She says she wishes Dick had short sight, too – oh, Mark, she sounds heartbroken. I must write to her today.’ She glanced at the clock. ‘Another cup of tea, dear, before we go?’
‘Er…no, thank you, Isabel.’ He too looked at the clock. ‘I’d better be off, the Board of Guardians meets this morning, and I need to have my ammunition ready.’ He rose from the table.
‘But aren’t you going to read your letter from your dad?’
‘Not just now, dear, later, when I’ve got a chance to look at it properly. Goodbye, my love – don’t let them work you too hard at that school –’bye!’
And with a brief farewell kiss he was gone, the letter from the Rev. Richard Storey tucked away in an inside pocket. Isabel thought he seemed preoccupied, but reminded herself that he always had a lot on his mind, things he shared with her and things he didn’t, like the confidential circumstances of his parishioners, by reason of his office as a priest in holy orders. She looked forward to the evening when they could sit down and share the news in their letters. Meanwhile she perused the one from her mother, and learnt of the latest events in Grace’s life; Isabel frowned as she read it. It was too bad of her thoughtless younger sister to get herself dismissed from Hassett Manor, subjecting her parents to yet more gossip. It seemed that she had now started working as a cadet nurse at Everham General Hospital, thanks to the kindness of Lady Neville. And that wasn’t all, for Mrs Munday worried constantly about Ernest, now sufficiently recovered to assist both his father and Eddie Cooper in their respective trades as the need arose. Work was getting scarcer as people postponed the jobs that needed doing until after the war.
‘You can imagine my mixed feelings, Isabel, when I see your brother looking healthier and feeling stronger every day. Your dad and I can’t speak of our deepest fears for him, and this is yet another burden to bear. We’ve never had secrets from each other before, yet I’m afraid to ask him what he really thinks. Oh, for an end to this wicked, wasteful war!’
Isabel folded the two depressing letters into their envelopes and placed them in the rack on the parlour table. They would hardly make for happy reading when shared with Mark.
‘And what was in your dad’s letter, Mark?’ she asked that evening as they sat down to supper.
‘Oh, nothing much, dear – ecclesiastical stuff, mainly.’
‘Well, come on, then, let’s hear it!’
‘I’ve gone and left it in the vestry or somewhere, would you believe – not that there was much in it, as I said. My father likes to argue over issues of the day, relating them to his faith, questions of right and wrong, that sort of thing – cerebral rather than practical!’
Her eyes were fixed on his face as he tucked into his supper of bacon ribs with cabbage and boiled potatoes, avoiding her eyes.
‘What about your mother?’ he asked. ‘What did she say in her letter?’
Isabel put down her knife and fork, and fixed her eyes steadily on her husband until he had to look up and repeat his question: ‘What did she say in her letter?’
‘We’ve always told each other the truth, Mark,’ Isabel answered solemnly. ‘My mother’s worried about Ernest, in case he has to go back to the fighting, and my sister Grace has been dismissed from Hassett Manor for bad behaviour, though she’s now a nursing cadet at Everham General. Now, tell me what your father wrote.’
He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes, silently praying for a few moments while she waited for him to speak.
‘My father and I have been thinking about this latest Military Service Act,’ he said at last. ‘And whether it can be right for a man to leave his family and go to fight in a war he doesn’t properly understand, to kill other men like himself for some political ideology – or for whatever reason. Is it ever justifiable, and what should a man do? Your brother Ernest thought this over for a long time, and came down on the side of king and country, as he has proved in that Gallipoli fiasco. But what should I do, Isabel? Tell me what you think I should do.’
She replied without hesitation. ‘Oh, Mark, my dear, good, foolish husband, why haven’t you told me this before? I’ve known that you had something on your mind, and why co
uldn’t you tell me? You’re like my father, unable to confide in my mother about his fears for Ernest. Now, listen! A man like you, a clergyman whose life is dedicated to God, can never go out and kill his fellow men – and besides, it’s against your nature. You couldn’t do it.’
‘Ah, but dearest Isabel, I wouldn’t go with the intention of killing, though I’d wear a soldier’s uniform. I’d be an army chaplain.’
Isabel went pale; a suffocating sensation of fear seized her, but she resisted it; she had learnt from her experiences at St Barnabas’ to be strong; she had toughened, and was no longer a shy young bride, though she trembled as she spoke.
‘Then you’ll have to do what you believe God wants you to do, Mark,’ she said. ‘I mustn’t kneel to you, begging you not to go. W-what does your father say?’
‘He’d already advised me to write to the bishop of the diocese,’ he answered bleakly.
‘And have you?’
‘Yes. It seems that I have a choice, to stay here or join the army as a chaplain. He says he can only give me guidance, and the final decision must be mine.’
‘And who’d do your work here, in an underprivileged parish in desperate need of a wise spiritual leader?’ asked Isabel, chalk-white.
‘It’s been suggested that my father could come here and take over.’
‘But that’s ridiculous – impossible! Your father’s old and retired, and your mother’s much too frail!’ cried Isabel, feeling as if she was in the grip of a nightmare, and must wake up at any minute.
‘My father is willing to come out of retirement – he won’t be the only one to do so – and my mother would go and stay with Sylvia and her family.’
‘Good God! You’ve thought all this out between yourselves, but without a word to me. Oh, Mark, how could you leave me out?’ There was deep reproach in her voice, and he got up from his chair and went to her side, putting his arms around her shoulders and kissing her cheek.
‘I didn’t want you to be worried until I’d come to a decision, Isabel. There was no point in upsetting you until there was something definite to tell you, either way.’
‘And can you tell me now?’ she demanded in a voice made strange and unfamiliar by fear.
‘Up until this day – this minute, Isabel, I hadn’t anything to tell you for certain, either way,’ he replied. ‘But now I have.’
‘And?’
‘And I must go, dearest.’
She gave a long, drawn-out moan, and he gathered her up in his arms and carried her into the parlour where they sat together on the settee, her head on his shoulder. There seemed to be nothing more to say; words were hollow and empty.
CHAPTER TEN
July, 1916
The all-out Allied attack on the German trenches in the Somme valley on July 1st was at first reported as a success, with heavy enemy casualties. It was only when the long lists of Allied casualties began to take up whole pages in national newspapers that the truth began to filter through to a horrified nation; The Times had to print additional pages to record the numbers of men killed, missing and wounded, and they ran into tens of thousands.
Looking back later on that sunny summer, Tom Munday always shuddered. His mind reeled away from the daily news of young lives lost, and terrible as it was to contemplate such a national disaster, it was when the dreaded telegrams brought news of deaths of local boys that the shock truly hit home. Among those killed on that first day of the Battle of the Somme were Dick Yeomans and Ted Bird, the younger of the two brothers who had been among the first to enlist. Dick had been conscripted for less than two months when his parents received the news that they would never see him again, and they had to break the news to Mary Cooper. The devastation at the farm was only equalled by the grief at Birds’ Outfitters; the shop was closed for a week while Ted’s parents mourned for him, and Phyllis’s grief for her brother was compounded by her fears for William Hickory. Miss Daniells advised her to take some time off work until things were more settled at home, but Phyllis felt that she needed to get away from the grief-stricken house of mourning, so continued her teaching of the youngest pupils, hiding her sadness as she unfolded to them the mysteries of the alphabet and names of numbers.
On Sundays St Peter’s usual congregation was augmented by a few who now turned to the church for a word of spiritual comfort in their deep distress. The Reverend Mr Saville found it difficult to offer consolation, for he and his wife lived in daily fear for their son Philip, but this very fact brought him closer to his sorrowing flock, and they forgave him for talking about a Christian’s duty to trust in the Lord at all times, when any day might bring him the news that would test his faith to the uttermost.
While there was unity among the bereaved and those fearing they would become so, there was little tolerance for those with no son at the front, and sometimes active hostility towards families who still had a son at home and not in uniform. Sidney Goddard was a case in point, saved by his short sight – his good luck, as some said, in failing his medical examination for the army. He became an object of scorn by patrons of Goddard’s haberdashery shop, and some women refused to enter while he was there. Children on their way home from school would shout, ‘Old Specky Four-Eyes!’ if they met him in the street, and his mother found herself shunned by Mrs Bird and Mrs Munday. Tom thought this unfair, but did not take his wife to task over it as he might have done in other circumstances, for the day was fast approaching when they would have to part with Ernest again. He had quite recovered from the enteritis which had struck him down in Gallipoli, and had put on weight; the army doctor at Everham had therefore passed him as fit to recommence active service, and a date in mid August was confirmed by a terse communication from the War Office, which also noted his request to be sent if possible to the same battalion as Lieutenant Pascoe, both men being now warrant officers.
Violet Munday broke down and wept, and Tom suggested that Ernest had better take himself off for an hour or two, until she was calmer.
‘I can deal with her better than you can, son,’ he said, having grown used to hiding his own fears, and not wanting Ernest to be upset by his mother’s tears. ‘Er…could you cycle into Everham and get me a couple o’ sheets o’ sandpaper from the hardware store? And some linseed oil while you’re there?’
‘’Course I can, Dad.’ Ernest gave a little smile to himself, for he knew that his father was giving him an opportunity to visit the Pascoes at Everham, to see Aaron’s mother and his two young sisters. Their mutual love for Aaron had drawn Ernest close to them, especially to Devora who most reminded him of her brother. They greeted him warmly, and made him sit in the Schellings’ garden to tell them of his coming departure and his chances of being in the same company as Aaron; Mrs Schelling brought out lemonade in a large glass jug, and handed round home-baked biscuits.
As he lounged in a garden chair Devora laid her innocent head upon his shoulder and confided that she would pray every day for him and Aaron fighting in this war together. He whispered his thanks, closing his eyes and knowing that this would be a golden memory to take back with him to Aaron at the front and whatever horrors awaited them in that valley of death.
‘Haven’t you finished the bedpan round yet, Munday?’ asked the staff nurse. ‘The doctors will be here soon.’
‘Sorry, but Miss Clandon’s been sat there for ages, and can’t go,’ replied Grace. ‘The rest o’ them have finished, and had wash bowls.’
The staff nurse frowned. ‘Well, take Miss Clandon’s bedpan away, and let her try later – and be quick about it, I’ve just seen Dr Lupton arriving.’
Grace rolled up her eyes and went to the red-faced old lady who was sitting astride an enamel bedpan and straining hard.
‘Nearly there, Nurse,’ she panted.
‘But the doctors are coming in, Miss Clandon, and I’ll have to take it away and let you try later,’ said Grace, knowing that there would be a fuss. And there was.
‘You can’t take it away now, Nurse, I’ve nea
rly done!’ Miss Clandon’s loud protest echoed round the now quiet ward. ‘Another couple of minutes’ll do the trick!’
The other women in Princess Alexandra Ward looked at each other, some smiling, others muttering about the cruelty of bullying an old lady. Grace was inclined to agree with them, and went to fetch two wooden-framed screens from a corner, pulling them along on their casters. She arranged them round Miss Clandon’s bed just as the ward sister came in with Dr Lupton, junior partner to Dr Stringer. All the patients in Everham General Hospital were under the care of their own general practitioners who sometimes called in a specialist. Grace fervently hoped that this doctor had not come to see Miss Clandon, and watched as he and Sister stopped at another patient’s bed and studied her temperature chart.
‘Nurse Munday, fetch the screens,’ ordered Sister, and Grace pulled forward another pair of screens. Dr Lupton spent a few minutes with his patient, and then moved on to another.
‘Screens, Nurse!’ hissed the sister, and Grace hurried to transfer the screens from the first patient’s bed. At that moment Miss Clandon called out triumphantly.
‘I’ve done it, Nurse! You can take it away now, and bring me some paper,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘Sorry about the horrid smell.’
Grace went to remove the bedpan and take it to the sluice room, where she emptied it and returned with a roll of coarse paper. She left the screens round while the old lady wiped herself, and Sister raised furious eyebrows and gave her a look that plainly said, I’ll speak to you later. The other women in the ward watched the little drama with amusement, and one of them winked at Grace who grinned back at her, then hastily composed her face to total blankness.
It was very different here at Everham General after the easy informality of Hassett Manor with its twelve convalescent servicemen. The hospital was a solid Victorian building with forty beds divided into fifteen on Prince Edward Ward for men, and twenty-five for women on Princess Alexandra; children were put into Alexandra, including boys up to the age of twelve. As a cadet nurse, Grace did the daily sweeping of the floor, damp-dusting the bedside lockers and scraping the casters of beds and screens. She emptied bedpans down the sluice, rinsed them and replaced them on wooden shelves. Her only nursing duties were bedpan rounds followed by washing bowls. She helped make empty beds, turning the horsehair mattresses and arranging the three pillows allotted to each patient. If a woman asked her for anything other than a bedpan, such as pain relief or a change of dressing, she had to call a staff nurse or one of the probationers in training to deal with it.
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