Park Lane

by Frances Osborne

  It’s not their first kiss, but as a footman he couldn’t have a moustache. The hair tickles her lips. Soft hair it is; some men look as though they’ve a scrubbing brush and their sweethearts must have faces raw as tomatoes. The kiss makes her feel warm and lightheaded and she lets her shoulders go. Then he stops.

  ‘Come on, Grace.’ And he takes her hand and rushes forward, pulling her along behind. ‘Let’s cut through here.’

  They’re in a bush, and Grace isn’t sure about this. The Joseph she knows wouldn’t have taken her in here, it’s not where proper people go, and Grace finds proper reassuring for it’s set in its ways, so that you know where you are. He’s kissing her again but this time she’s not enjoying it for he’s squeezing her shoulders as though there should be only an inch in between, and he’s ramrod against her. Grace is feeling more of him than she should and his tongue is at the back of her throat. It’ll have hers out with it in a moment. He pulls his face off hers and Grace feels a wave of relief but his body’s still pushing, his head just over her shoulder, whispering in Grace’s ear. ‘Please, Grace, please. You can’t imagine what it’s like out there.’ As he speaks she feels as though it’s a stranger with her. This isn’t Joseph, it’s just some man come back from the war wanting what they all want, not wanting Grace in particular. Why she could be anybody, and Joseph, the Joseph that has kept her hoping isn’t here any more. He goes on whispering, ‘Please, please, Grace, for me, let me, just this once. Next time we’ll marry, promise you that.’

  Grace doesn’t know that she wants to marry him, for the man in front of her isn’t the strong one she’d hoped to spend her life with; he’s a shell of a man who needs her more than she needs him. Now Grace is thinking of him as a poor soldier, and they’re told to comfort them, the women here at home. And that’s the only purpose Grace seems to have as she stands there, that’s all she can give this man, she realises, not her hand, not her life, just the instant that he is breaking for. And this could be his, their, only moment, she thinks, tears beginning to come out of her again as she reasons how, how can I refuse him this?

  20

  IT’S SEVEN IN THE MORNING AND IT LOOKS TO GRACE like a riot’s been in the billiard room. Good Lord, there’s bottles on the edge of the table. What of the baize, if one of them fell? Better not knock one, Grace Campbell, and pick them off quick. She darts to the side of the billiard table but as she reaches it, she trips on a cue and catches the edge of the table with her hand, steadying herself. It’s an accident waiting to happen, balls and the like left on the floor. What a state they must have been in. Still, it was Master Edward’s last night, and a mess is better than a rain of gloom. She can whip through anything so long as there’s no misery to it. They’re all working hard now, to keep sadness away.

  Joseph wrote to her soon as he was back over. A long letter it was, talking about their life together, and the farm and how wonderful it will be and how she, Grace, makes up for everything else. He doesn’t make up for everything else for her. She wanted a rock, not sinking sand. War has taken Joseph from her, even without putting a piece of shrapnel in his head. Park Lane, with all its fireplaces and china and silver, is all she has to cling to. Grace has become one of those servants now, like Mrs Wainwright, their whole life turning round their employers.

  The coals are not just hot, they’re red still, and where’s the shovel to sort things? There are waves of black dust on the hearth, and on the carpet, too. That’ll need the Ewbank and some. Good Lord, the dust is halfway across the floor, maybe the shovel’s at the end of it, thrown under the table.

  The trail disappears under the valance hanging along the edge of the billiard table. Grace kneels on the floor and reaches under the velvet.

  Somebody grabs her arm.

  She screams, not a loud scream, more of a gasp. The grip is tight on her forearm. Grace doesn’t move, hoping that if she’s still as a mouse he – for it’s a he for certain, with that strength – will let her go. Instead he pulls her arm further in under the valance.

  She keeps her eyes shut as though it will shut out what is happening. Don’t move, Grace, she says to herself, perhaps he’ll think you’ve fainted. And what can a man do with a woman who’s dead to the world? So she’s still, and waits what seems like an age.

  ‘Grace.’

  It’s Master Edward, and a part of her relaxes a little for she knows him. She opens her eyes.

  ‘It is Grace, isn’t it? Help me. Help me, Grace.’ His voice is shaking as though he’s weeping and then she hears the sobbing itself, for he is crying like a baby. His grip loosens. She could in fact break free from this man now, yet she doesn’t. Some days it takes all Grace has got to stop herself sobbing like this too. Master Edward goes on shaking the words out, ‘There’s no one, there’s no one who will understand!’ Grace is suddenly frightened, not frightened as though she will be hurt, but frightened.

  ‘Stop it!’ she shouts, then bites her tongue. You’ll make him angry, Grace, and what will he do to you then?

  Instead what comes are words so plaintive and desperate that they near make her cry with him.

  ‘I can’t do it any more. I can’t go back.’

  Grace doesn’t want him to go back, she doesn’t want a single one of them to go back, and not this person who is as alone as her. But he has to go back or he’ll be shot. Why that should be suddenly makes her angry. This is a senseless, senseless world in which even children hundreds of miles away from the guns, on trains somewhere between Carlisle and Glasgow, die.

  ‘Please help me,’ he goes on. ‘Help me to find the, the …’

  ‘Courage,’ she says. And now Grace is crying too.

  ‘Hold me, Grace. Please.’ He lets go of her arm and she finds herself reaching back out for his. She wants him to hold her almost as much, she thinks, as he does. His arm is limp and Grace feels a flutter of panic. She rolls on to her stomach and crawls, on her elbows, under the table. The curtain tassels knock against her as she crosses their boundary. She can feel his arms, his chest, but it is still, and panic flutters again in her. She runs her fingers up his breastbone, up his throat, curving over his Adam’s apple and turning the corner of his chin.

  Then she reaches up to his head, wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him towards her.

  His cheek rests on hers and she feels the warmth of his tears. Then she turns her lips on to his skin and moves them gently across his face. It’s comfort he wants. And it’s what she wants too. She finds his lips and kisses them hard.

  21

  IT IS HOT IN BEA’S FLEABAG AND HOWEVER PROUD SHE is of her strength at the steering wheel, her arms and shoulders ache as though they’ve been pummelled. Her underclothes are soaked through. They’ll just have to dry off during the day – it gets damn hot enough for them to, even here, on the northern coast of France. The heat makes everything smell worse, including herself. Ladies didn’t sweat at the start of this war, but then they didn’t dash around in thick wool uniforms at the height of summer. Now, well, she won’t say what it’s like, but you can hardly simply whisper ‘perspiration’ any more. It’s the fear as much as the exertion that brings it on, though it’s not always easy to distinguish between the two. Some jaunt this is.

  Ladies’ pretty bodies weren’t livid with flea bites before the war either, especially ones where they have to sit on their hands to prevent themselves scratching the tops off. You can hardly sleep in that position, not unless you’re on your stomach, fingers trapped under your hipbones, which is hellish hard to achieve given the sag on the canvas bed under her. She might as well be sleeping in a hammock. Bea examines her fingernails for traces of blood from scratched bites. There is a brownish gunk under her fingernails, and some smeared around the side; it could be from her, or … she doesn’t want to think about that.

  And there’s no time to dawdle; she was woken by the whistle. She’s had a full three hours’ sleep and now she has five minutes until roll-call at seven thirty. Sharp. One slip and sh
e’ll be scrubbing the lavatory again. At first they all tried pulling their uniforms on over their nightdresses and pyjamas, but the commandant saw right through that. You could see your face on the lavatory floor for weeks afterwards, so many of them had been ordered to scrub it. Now they just fall asleep in their combinations so they’re ready to go in the morning. They often fall asleep in everything they’ve got on. Too damn tired to do anything else.

  Four minutes to go. Teeth. Bitter, bitter taste. Three minutes. Uniform, cold water again, get that red-brown mark out of the front of her skirt, if it hasn’t set in there. Two minutes, hair and just enough time for the end of last night’s cigarette as she finishes off. Smoking, that’s one thing she’s come to enjoy more out here. It kills appetite which, given what is on offer, is no bad thing. Now she has a cigarette between her lips as often as she can. In fact, she’s downright irritable, they all are, when they’re short of them. One minute left, make her bed. God, she longs to get back into it, and fat chance of that. How can it be this hard to straighten a fleabag? She shouldn’t be in the warmth of a fleabag in summer anyway, but she needs it, she needs, for whatever small part of the day she can, to draw up a barrier between her and the outside world.

  Bea glances across at the bed next door. The blankets are crooked, a hairbrush and pins strewn on them. She moves across to whisk them off before they are seen by the commandant. Watching somebody else being given some heart-grinding task is almost, but not quite, as bad as it happening to you. Bea hesitates. But it’s not going to happen to Peggy, is it? That’s what her real name was, though, snub-nosed and bright-eyed, she was known out here as Bunny. They all have nicknames, preserving their real ones for the life they will, hopefully, return to. Bunny, a decent sort, from Bromley, still eighteen.

  Her truck turned over on the mudslide that passes for a road up to Hospital Number Eight. Just as good as being hit by a shell turfed out of the cockpit of a Hun plane, having to pelt lampless down that road in the dark to pick up the next lot. Plucky girl, they’re all saying, as though it wasn’t every one of them being damn plucky. Every damn night.

  As Bea stands to attention, she can feel the bites on her thighs itch but she can hardly lean over and have a go at them now. Death is just about the only way out. That and septicaemia, dysentery or measles. Even spotted fever has its appeal. The next time Bea has somebody infected with it in the back of her truck, she’ll climb in and embrace him good and long. And when she and the truck are disinfected, she’ll simply pray the disinfectant doesn’t do its trick.

  Bea laughs to herself. So this, this is the big adventure she’d been longing for, the one that she had envied Edward, Tom, Edie’s Tony and the rest of all those chaps who’d been khaki-ed and brown-belted and sailed over here. Even poor Mr Campbell, who had eventually written to her to explain why he had suddenly signed up. Poor man. Bea would be in pieces even if just Edward went. Now Mr Campbell is fetching and carrying on stretchers, and Bea doesn’t envy him one bit; she sees quite enough of the mash of men who are ferried into the back of the truck. How had she thought that ambulance-driving would be glamorous? She’d had a vision of herself careering between shell-holes and swaggering back to the cosiness and camaraderie of barracks. At least that’s the picture she’d put together from her love of driving and Edward’s letters, all football and polo and jolly dinners in the mess.

  The only faint resemblance this bears to what Bea expected is the driving at top speed along rutted tracks, and Bea has made sure that she is the fastest at this. Where the others slow down to take a pothole, Bea just goes hard at it, and flies her truck over the top. Her truck, Mildred she’s called it, they’re one and the same creature when they’re on the road, Bea tries to let herself think of nothing else, not of the men in the back, who have names and families. That one of them might be somebody she knows. Might be Edward.

  The loss of Bunny makes her feel hollow. Not any more wobbly than she is already, rather that a piece of the gang has been cut away and it could be anyone next. No matter that she’s only ferrying the parts of men that are still breathing from the convoy trains up to the camp hospitals – the Hun’ll get you if he can, even if it’s only by willing a flat tyre at the wrong moment in the road.

  For the men, death is the only way out. The men volunteer and are then sent back and back again until they are too ruined to fight any more. No funking for them or they’ll be shot as deserters and cowards. When she hears the words ‘This one’s gone’ as she reaches the hospital, she wonders whether she has done them the kindest favour she could.

  She could be a funk, have herself written off as a spectator and say goodbye to all that baking heat and hunger and dirt. There is something demoralising about being dirty; you can’t for one second imagine anyone, let alone any man, would want to come near you. It makes her feel she has lost the power she once had. She could be warm, dry, clean and being admired as she thwacks a tennis ball over a net, but that would be giving in. And not just on her own part. Every woman who gives in is another not making the grade, showing that women aren’t up to it. However irritating it is that Mrs Pankhurst isn’t campaigning for the vote any more, there’s something in what she says, that we should all be mucking in, showing that women can do what men can do. It’s more than just ‘a fantastic job’ they’re doing out here, they could be killed at any moment. That, Celeste wrote to her, is what makes it worthwhile. When Bea first read this, she laughed, thinking, Damn you, Celeste. But Bea’s found it again, that rush from doing something that has some effect on the world outside her old, petty life. Curiously, Bea driving ambulances is the one thing that Celeste and Mother have, unknowingly, agreed upon, even down to the same words. Bea has been bouncing between ‘I’m so proud’ coming from both directions, and Mother has sent over a surprising onslaught of letters.

  Breakfast is reassuringly not good. This means that Bea is not dreaming. She can’t work out whether she’s strengthening her teeth on the bread or grinding them down. Whichever it is, she’s too damn thin, she knows her breasts are shrinking. But out here they’re not really women, are they, rather staging posts on the way between the two sexes. And always so damn hungry, unless what they’ve just seen is still making them feel green. Actually, breakfast itself can be enough to make you feel green. No matter, they’ll be at the parcel contents afterwards, though food parcels have been thinnish recently, but not, however, parcels of carbolic belts sent by relatives to ward off body lice and other evils. Celeste provides enough to Bea for her to supply two of her room-mates. This is not entirely altruistic, for the fewer lice in their room the better. They say it’s hellish difficult getting rid of the buggers, and that they’re doing the rounds of London as well, among those who are being ‘foolish’, as Clemmie calls it. Though Bea suspects that this is rumour fabricated to try and deter the increasing loss of what Mother’s generation call ‘virtue’.

  So Bea has carbolic belts a-plenty, but all too few bottles of Bovril and ginger biscuits. Not that any of them ‘has’ anything once it arrives. Everything is thrown into the ring and divided up, apart from the cigarettes. Bunny had two packets of cigarettes. They all know that and none of them are mentioning it. By the time somebody does, they will have been pilfered.

  It is Mrs Wainwright who sends Bea food. Bea wonders if she realises that she is supplying almost all of Bea’s diet. There are no army rations for volunteers. Although Bea is not sure that volunteer is an accurate description of young women who have to pay for the privilege of being out here. They just have Mrs Bell, whom Bea is sure scratches the flea bites on her arms over the mixing bowl, into whatever food she is pounding beyond recognition.

  When Mrs Wainwright’s parcels reach Bea they come up trumps every time, with the Bovril-to-drink standard fare, the biscuits Huntley and Palmers Best Assorted, together with roof tiles of chocolate. The top-notch stuff is the potted meat, which is served out among them ‘like caviar’, Razor cut in when Bea’s first package arrived. Razor, her one-li
ners as sharp as her nose and chin. Bea was sure the caviar allusion was a dig at her and her family.

  Masters is hardly a triple-barrelled rarity. But Blister – one complaint was all it had taken for the girl to be given that name, Bea learnt – had asked it straight out, in that reflex, cocktail-party-chat way. Bea, off-guard, must have reddened for there was a chorus of ‘Ohs’ and ‘Are you?’ and ‘Hardly Park Lane here’. Razor was on to her straight away, ‘Rails’. And it stuck.

  Bea is first out into the yard. The ambulances still have last night’s muck and a putrid stink inside them and when Bea opens the rear of her truck the smell of urine hits her first, and she draws away. Then she steels herself and climbs in, chucking buckets into the corners and trying to step out of the way of the stream running back out. It brings the vomit from the floor with it, the rest she will have to scrub off the sides. If it is vomit, it is bile, for by the time the poor souls reach Bea, bile is all they have left inside them. Lumps are something altogether different and there is a pile on the floor this morning that will not wash off as she sluices it. The water nudges it a little, unsticking the edges, but the centre does not move. Bea cannot tell its colour in the gloom inside the truck. She has little wish to tell its colour. Some poor bugger coughed his gas-ridden lungs up, or tore off his bandages on the way, letting the bits fall out. Bea is amazed at how much a human body contains: it’s so densely packed that when the skin opens, all bursts forth.

  Really this job should be done before breakfast. Bea wouldn’t have anything in her to vomit then.