Flora's War

by Pamela Rushby

  The meeting broke up, with Lady Bellamy promising to organise the rosters. ‘I assume Gwen and yourself prefer to work together?’ she said to me.

  ‘Please,’ Gwen and I said in unison.

  ‘That will make it easier to ensure you are suitably chaperoned,’ she said. ‘I would not be at all happy to have two young girls walking to and from their hotel through the gardens without appropriate escorts.’ She wrote on her roster.

  ‘Through the gardens?’ I said. ‘Is that a problem?’

  Lady Bellamy looked at me severely. ‘Many soldiers use the gardens,’ she said. ‘Some frequent the public tavern. I have been unable to arrange its closure. Yet.’ She looked as if that was the next item on her agenda.

  Gwen and I arranged to meet Mrs Travers at Shepheard’s later and left the pavilion, leaving Mrs Travers lingering for a few words with another of the ladies. Taking care to avoid Lady Bellamy’s eagle-eyed observation, we circled the pavilion and walked slowly towards the lake. We had time, we decided, to visit Gwen’s dressmaker near Shepheard’s Hotel.

  Suddenly, a small group of soldiers stopped right in front of us. They were wearing the emu-plumed hats of the Australian Light Horse.

  ‘Well, now, aren’t you two just a sight for sore eyes!’ one of them said.

  Gwen and I stopped, uncertain.

  ‘Are you ladies all right?’ another said courteously. ‘Do you need escorting somewhere?’

  Gwen and I relaxed; they were only being friendly. ‘No thank you,’ I said. ‘We’re just going back to our hotel.’

  ‘You’re Australian, aren’t you?’ another asked. He was a nice looking boy with sandy hair and bright blue eyes. ‘What are you doing here in Cairo?’

  ‘We come here every year with our families for the excavation season,’ I explained.

  ‘This year we’ll be volunteering at Lady Bellamy’s rest and recreation centre,’ Gwen said, pointing to the pavilion. ‘It’ll be opening soon.’ She gave them a dimpled smile. ‘You’ll all surely be welcome.’

  ‘You young ladies will be working there? Then we’ll certainly come!’

  I looked at them seriously. ‘I must warn you,’ I said, ‘that Lady Bellamy serves only tea and lemonade.’

  The men laughed. ‘Even that won’t put us off!’ the sandy-haired boy promised. They touched their hats to us and went off. I noticed they headed towards the public tavern that so offended Lady Bellamy.

  Gwen and I looked at each other and smiled. Maybe volunteering at Lady Bellamy’s rest and recreation centre mightn’t be as staid and boring as we’d thought.

  Chapter 5

  Gwen and I spent a very happy hour at the dressmaker’s. The tiny shop opened onto the street, with just enough room for the dressmaker, a sewing machine and two chairs for clients. An assistant kept disappearing through a door at the back of the shop and returning with armfuls of fabrics in glowing colours.

  ‘Pastels are correct for Miss Gwen,’ the dressmaker said. ‘You, Miss Flora, can wear deeper colours.’ He laid out deep, dusty pinks, sky blues, glowing orange and sea green

  ‘He’s right,’ Gwen agreed. ‘You should wear more intense shades.’

  I had never been offered such variety in colour for dresses before. Aunt Helen had thought pale pink, baby blue, lemon and – rather daringly – insipid green were more suitable shades for young ladies. That I looked washed-out wearing them was of little concern to her.

  ‘Gwen, look at this!’ I held some rose pink cloth out towards her. ‘It’s got tiny mirrors embroidered around the edge.’

  Gwen reached out to take it.

  ‘Oh no you don’t! It’s mine!’ I crushed the fabric to my chest. ‘All mine!’

  ‘I think she might take that one,’ Gwen said to the dressmaker, her face expressionless. He grinned and held out another tempting array of fabrics to me.

  I chose several pieces of the beautiful fabrics and the dressmaker’s wife was called to take my measurements. When we stepped through the door at the back of the shop for privacy, I gasped at the rolls of fabrics. It was like Aladdin’s cave; roll upon roll of glorious colour stacked to the ceiling, with completed garments hanging on racks waiting to be collected. I lightly passed my hand over filmy, floating evening dresses in a rainbow of colour, but what caught my eye were the tailored riding clothes.

  ‘Jodhpurs,’ I sighed. ‘They’d be just right to wear when I’m working at the excavation. So practical.’

  ‘Have some made,’ advised Gwen.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘It’d be acceptable to wear them if I was riding, but I’m not riding, am I? Aunt Helen would have a fit.’

  ‘Aunt Helen’s not here,’ said Gwen. ‘And you are a modern girl.’

  ‘Would your mother be happy?’ I asked. ‘If you wore them?’

  Gwen bit her lip, considering. ‘For riding, yes. For just wearing, no. You’re right.’

  ‘If I could suggest?’ the dressmaker’s wife quietly interrupted. She’d been following the conversation, looking amused. Now she turned and took a tailored skirt from a rack and held it up.

  ‘It looks like a skirt, yes?’ she said. ‘But it is divided.’ She spread the skirt out to reveal it was actually wide trousers. ‘Both comfortable and practical. And very modest!’

  ‘It’s quite short, though, isn’t it?’ I said. Just below knee length, I judged.

  ‘Worn with knee boots,’ she said.

  ‘Gwen, this is perfect!’ I said. ‘No one could object! Not even Aunt Helen.’

  ‘Or Lady Bellamy?’ suggested Gwen.

  I ordered three.

  I also ordered four evening gowns. As the dressmaker’s wife measured me, I realised that the corset I’d buried in the bottom of my trunk would have to be taken out and squeezed into if these gowns were to fit perfectly. I sighed. Sometimes a girl just had to make sacrifices.

  …

  Later, while Gwen and I took tea at Shepheard’s, I remembered I had an appointment with Mr Hussein the next day.

  ‘I’m starting driving lessons tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Do you want to come?’

  ‘I certainly do!’ Gwen clasped her hands. ‘Frank said he’d be delighted to teach me, but every time I ask Mama if I can have our car it always seems to be busy.’ She screwed up her nose. ‘Odd, that, don’t you think?’

  ‘Well, Mr Hussein is happy to teach us. Can you be at our hotel about ten?’

  ‘Try and keep me away,’ said Gwen. ‘I’ll ask Papa and Frank to make it right with Mama.’

  Mr Hussein and I were waiting on the spotless white stairs when Frank and Professor Travers dropped Gwen at the Nile Palace the next morning. Frank looked a little apprehensive, I thought.

  ‘You’re sure they’ll be all right?’ he said to Mr Hussein. ‘They’ll be able to control the motorcar?’

  Mr Hussein was definitely on our side. ‘There is no physical reason why a female should not drive a motorcar safely,’ he said. ‘The only issue is –’

  ‘Yes?’ asked Frank, rather hopefully, I thought.

  ‘Starting,’ said Mr Hussein. ‘It needs some strength to start a motorcar. Miss Flora and Miss Gwen are not –’ he paused. Gwen and I stared at him. Hard.

  ‘Not large ladies,’ said Mr Hussein tactfully. ‘But wiry. They are definitely wiry.’

  ‘Frank,’ said Professor Travers impatiently, from his seat in the car. ‘The girls are in good hands, I’m sure. Do you think we might get to the excavation sometime before lunch?’

  Frank gave in, got into the car, and drove off.

  ‘Huh!’ snorted Gwen, glaring after him. ‘Frank’s just worried we’ll be able to go off and have a good time without him.’ She turned to me and smiled widely. ‘And we will, won’t we? Let’s get started!’

  But getting started, as Mr Hussein had feared, was the problem. First, he showed us how to check the oil level and the water. It was news to us that motorcars needed either, but Mr Hussein assured us they were indispensable. Then, before we at
tempted to start the engine, he made us check that the motorcar was out of gear. ‘If it is not,’ he said severely, ‘when you start the engine the motorcar will move forward and you will be run over by your own vehicle.’

  ‘Well, that would be highly embarrassing,’ Gwen said. I nodded seriously and Mr Hussein shook his head at us.

  ‘Now we will push this lever in,’ said Mr Hussein, at the front of the car. ‘And turn this handle several times. The left hand is safest. Do not grip the crank handle hard, hold it in the palm of your hand and keep your thumb on the same side. If you do not, and the motorcar is not in the retard position, the engine will kick back and your arm could be broken.’

  Gwen and I looked at each other. Driving was obviously more dangerous than it appeared.

  It took us each several attempts before we could swing the crank handle and get the engine started. But we managed it. We each received a round of applause from people sitting on the verandah of the hotel, who had been watching our lesson with great interest.

  ‘That is excellent,’ said Mr Hussein. ‘If you had not been able to start the motorcar, what would you do if it stopped in an isolated place?’

  I thought about that. ‘Ask someone to start it for me?’ I suggested. ‘There’s always someone around. Just a few piastres …’

  Mr Hussein shook his head. ‘A driver must be self-sufficient,’ he said. ‘You do not want to have to depend on others.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Gwen said.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Modern girls must be independent.’

  Mr Hussein decided that we should go to a quieter road for our first attempts at driving, and he drove us out onto the Giza plateau. Among the hillocks of tombs and the holes of excavations, Gwen and I learned how to make the motorcar move forward, how to stop, how to steer in different directions and how to go backwards.

  ‘It’s harder than it seems,’ I said to Mr Hussein. ‘You make it look so easy! My hands and my feet are doing different things all the time and my head can’t keep up.’

  ‘It is just practice,’ said Mr Hussein. ‘With a few more lessons and some practice in your own motorcar in a quiet place like this, it will be easy.’

  I thought of the camels and donkeys and horses and carriages in Cairo – as well as a few other motorcars. ‘Yes, practising in a quiet spot will be essential!’

  ‘Miss Flora, you can drive us back to the hotel,’ said Mr Hussein.

  ‘Me?’ I squeaked. ‘Now? Do you think I can?’

  ‘It is a quiet road,’ said Mr Hussein. ‘Drive along steadily.’

  So I did. We bowled past the pyramids and the Sphinx. Soldiers on leave stared, waved and called out cheerfully to us: ‘Give us a lift, love!’ and ‘Going my way?’

  Gwen waved back but I kept my hands in their tight grip on the steering wheel.

  I’d worried about the turn into the hotel driveway, but Mr Hussein talked me through it and we pulled up at the hotel’s front entrance – with rather a jerk and a scatter of sand and gravel. We were greeted by another round of applause from guests on the verandah.

  ‘Oh, that was wonderful!’ I said to Mr Hussein. ‘Thank you! You’re such a good teacher!’

  ‘It has been a pleasure,’ Mr Hussein said. ‘I will tell Mr Khalid that arrangements can be made for the purchase of a motorcar.’

  …

  ‘What on earth are we supposed to talk to the soldiers about?’ I groaned to Gwen and Frank as we walked across the Ezbekieh Gardens towards the rest and recreation centre. Frank had decided to be our chaperone to our first rostered morning on duty. ‘Lady Bellamy says we’re supposed to be a good influence. I don’t know how to be a good influence! What are we supposed to do, read them sermons? Sing hymns?’

  ‘That’d clear the centre in no time,’ said Gwen. ‘I don’t know, I guess we just talk to them. We could ask them where they come from? Ask about their families? Ask what they’ve been doing on leave?’

  ‘Better be careful about that,’ I said.

  Gwen linked her arm through her brother’s. ‘So, Frank, exactly what unwholesome activities are the soldiers getting up to on their leave?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. What specifically does Lady Bellamy want to save them from?’ I hooked my arm to his free one.

  He looked at us seriously. ‘Don’t for goodness sake let Ma know that I told you,’ he said. ‘But I think girls need to know what’s what.’

  ‘So just what is what?’ Gwen asked.

  Frank thought for a moment. ‘There are parts of Cairo that you two, hopefully, will never see. There’s a section called Haret el Wassa. The men call it the Wozzer. There are lots of bars and lots of houses where men pay to be with women.’ He gave us each a steady look. ‘You know what I mean, Gwen. I told you years ago. I don’t blame the soldiers for going there, they’re a long way from home, they’re young, and they don’t know any better.’

  ‘I see,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you,’ Gwen said quietly.

  We exchanged a look behind Frank’s back. This was far more information than we’d expected.

  ‘You can see why Lady Bellamy wants to offer the soldiers alternative activities and I wish her the best of luck,’ said Frank. ‘Whether the soldiers will take her up on tea and crumpets and table tennis instead of the Wozzer is a different matter.’

  ‘It rather changes my view of Lady Bellamy,’ Gwen said. ‘I know she’s a stuffy, straight-laced, bossy old trout –’

  ‘Gwen!’ Frank said. ‘What a way to speak of your elders. I’m truly shocked.’

  I grinned. Frank winked at me.

  ‘But I suppose she’s trying to do the right thing,’ Gwen finished.

  Frank left us at the entrance to the pavilion and we joined the other volunteers being given their orders by Lady Bellamy. She was handing out large, all-enveloping overalls with Lady Bellamy’s Rest and Recreation Centre for Soldiers embroidered on the bibs. Gwen and I eyed them. We’d chosen pretty dresses to wear today. The overalls would cover them completely.

  ‘Attractive shade of green, too,’ I whispered.

  ‘Guaranteed to make any complexion look like mud,’ Gwen agreed in an undertone. ‘Well, I suppose that’s what they were designed for.’

  ‘Offer the boys tea and ask what they’d like to do. If they don’t know, suggest newspapers, magazines, writing a letter home, table tennis or a board game,’ Lady Bellamy instructed. ‘Keep moving, don’t spend too long with any one soldier; there will be others wanting your attention. I need hardly add: chatting, but no socialising, ladies!’

  Did she look at Gwen and me as she said that? I wondered. Huh! What was she expecting? And just how did one distinguish between chatting and socialising? Oh well, I was sure Lady Bellamy would soon tell me, if an innocent chat somehow evolved into dangerous socialising.

  The first soldiers through the door were Australians and as soon as they heard my accent, they gravitated to me. I sent some off for tea, directed one to the table tennis and suggested the latest newspapers to another. One remained.

  ‘And what would you like to do?’ I said brightly.

  ‘Well, I really wanted to write a letter home,’ he said. ‘But you see …’ He held up his right arm, it was in a sling.

  ‘What did you do to yourself?’ I asked. ‘Is it bad?’

  ‘I broke it when a horse threw me,’ he said. ‘It’ll mend. The thing is, I can’t write. Would you – would it be too much to ask you to write a letter for me?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘Come on, we can do it now.’

  I led him to the desks, set out stationery and ink and we sat down. ‘Now, what’s the address?’ I asked.

  He gave me an address in Victoria, and I started to write to his dictation. We’d been there for perhaps fifteen minutes when Lady Bellamy loomed over me.

  ‘Is everything all right, Miss Wentworth?’ she asked. She glanced significantly at the watch pinned to her ample bosom.

  ‘Yes, perfectly, Lady Bellamy,’ I re
plied. ‘I’m just helping –’ I glanced at the soldier.

  ‘Trooper Hendy,’ supplied the soldier. He indicated his arm. ‘The young lady’s very kindly writing a letter for me. To my fiancée,’ he added.

  That stumped Lady Bellamy. She nodded and sailed off.

  ‘Bit of a battleaxe, eh?’ Trooper Hendy whispered to me.

  ‘She could run an army on her own,’ I agreed. ‘But she means well.’

  After we finished the letter Trooper Hendy slipped a photograph of himself and some mates posing beside the Sphinx inside the envelope and I promised to see it was posted. As he went, he looked back at me and grinned.

  ‘I’ll tell you a secret,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The letter’s to my sister, not my fiancée.’ He grinned again. ‘And I’m left-handed.’

  My face must have been a picture, but I couldn’t help laughing. ‘Cheek!’ I said. ‘All the same, any time you want a letter written just ask for me. My name’s Flora.’

  He went away laughing.

  Well, that was fine, I thought. I felt – useful. I’d made Trooper Hendy happy, and his sister would be pleased to hear from him. I looked around for someone else to help.

  The morning went by quickly. British and New Zealand soldiers also came in. It wasn’t hard to find something to talk about; mention their homes and families and they were away. Some of them seemed so young. I was sure they couldn’t be eighteen. I said so, quietly, to Mrs Daunt, one of the older volunteers.

  ‘I’m quite certain they’re not,’ she agreed. ‘I’ve heard that a lot of young men lied about their age to join the army.’ She shook her head. ‘Their poor mothers …’

  At the end of our shift Lady Bellamy called us all together. ‘Some of the boys,’ she said, ‘have told me of friends in hospital who would greatly appreciate a visit from our ladies. I am certain they would also appreciate some newspapers and magazines, and perhaps someone to write a letter for them. Flora –’ She looked at me. ‘You wrote a letter for a young soldier today. Would you be willing to visit some of our boys in hospital?’