Park Lane

by Frances Osborne

  The calls from the rear of her truck are going on, ‘He’s on top of one of us. Get him off!’ They’re all at it now, and what, what if they’re right? There are hellish turns ahead. No matter what’s been drilled into her, she can’t carry on knowing that her driving is killing a man behind her.

  She’s passed the turning to Six and Seven and there’s a flat patch on the side of the road. The commandant can’t see Bea here. She won’t be going this far for she always gets the nearest hospitals, and expects you to be just as quick even if you’ve been three times the distance. Bea pulls over, she takes a deep breath, climbs down, goes to the back and opens up. She hates this, looking in. Remember to keep your eyes away from the faces, Beatrice, for there’s always that fear – that you’ve danced with one.

  A stretcher in the middle row is empty. The man has rolled off it and is lying against one of the bottom stretchers, which is only just far enough off the floor to avoid the blood and urine. It is not far enough to stop the fallen man’s torso covering the face of the man lying on this bottom rung. The latter’s legs are flailing as though he’s gasping for air. Bea’s mind, slowly it seems, is taking it in. Then she leaps up inside and grabs an arm of the fallen man to pull him away. The arm comes off in her hands. She retches as she drops it, adding her own vomit to the cesspool around her feet.

  The legs have stopped flailing. The man on the bottom stretcher is quite still. Bea can’t look up at where she thinks the voice came from. Whichever he is, he’s fallen silent, too. There’s just one still groaning ‘Help me, Mother’ up there.

  Bea turns and jumps out, jarring her knees, and rushes back to the cab. She left the engine running, thank God, she’s not going to be a damn fool who finds it can’t start again. For hell’s sake, Beatrice, get moving.

  It’s fallen quiet as she leaves Nine. But empty she can drive faster, as fast as she dares, keep that fear going, keep her awake. After all she’s Beatrice Masters, proving that she’s not just some little rich girl by being the fastest on the road. She knows every bump, she could do it blindfold, and she might as well be blindfold when there’s no moon and she’s driving in the dark without her lamps on. She shuts her eyes for an instant, just to see what it is like. There is, she concludes, little difference, even if there is a flicker of a moon tonight. Cigarette, yes, she’ll have a cigarette. She slows down to light it and as she draws breath she feels a rush and exhales as though she is a dragon breathing fire. The cigarette sits in her right hand, which is only barely resting on the wheel. Now put your foot down, Beatrice, to make up the time. There’s that pit she detests coming up. Dammit, she thinks, I’ll have the better of you and she ups the throttle. But she’s fumbling almost, what is wrong with her? Blast, that’s too much. The ambulance bucks and skids forward on its rear wheels. One catches in the pit. At least she thinks that is what is happening as the truck turns on to its side and off the track.

  Blackness.

  1917

  22

  BEA IS PACING THE BALLROOM OF DARTMOUTH HOUSE brandishing a mop which so reeks of disinfectant that it makes the back of her nose feel like a well-scrubbed bath. Little wonder, she thinks, that the men are coughing in their rows of iron beds. It’s not just the gas over there that’s got to them.

  Mopping is at least physically active, even if she’s not the best at it. She thought it would take only a couple of months for her arm to heal, and she’d be back over the Channel. But not a chance that she could take the weight of the steering if she’s still one-handed with a mop after a year. At least the arm’s there, though, and thank God it’s her left. Jolly close shave, old girl, they said when she woke in Number Nine. That’s funny, she thought when they told her where she was, I left here. I’m sure I was driving away. Maybe they’ve called me back for an evacuation. Once they’ve loaded my truck they’ll put me back in the cab. Then she lost consciousness again.

  Sometimes she tries to persuade herself that it was damned bad luck. After all, it was just one of those dents in the road. Oh, the excuses were there. The engine wasn’t up to it … But serves her right for not owning up to the fact it wasn’t in perfect nick. That was just it, Beatrice Masters, you thought nothing could touch you, and now you are paying the price. Cripple, that’s what you’ve made yourself, and you might as well be a funk and a coward.

  The only way to make sure that she hasn’t been a funk is going back. In a couple of months some of these chaps will be bandages off and on the boat over, having been cleaned for, washed-up for, even fed by Bea, former woman of action and now ever-patient member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment. She misses each one. Not least because they’re too grateful for the forkfuls she slips into their mouths to care if she’s now holding the fork like a spoon.

  Bea starts to sweep the mop across the floor in grandiose gestures. She’s almost humming. Today is a good day: Edward is coming home on leave. Only on leave, but still home. And he always makes her feel a dazzler, whatever form she’s on. Just the afternoon to get through first.

  It’s the limbs that simply aren’t there any more that are the worst here. Don’t look or you’ll see the saw marks, Ada Milton rattled out on Bea’s first day. Ada, who’d learnt the social niceties with Bea and Edie at Miss Wolffe’s, and who had once fainted there when Edie cut herself on the flower scissors, now doesn’t flinch at a thing.

  Bea flinches, not just with the gruesomeness, but the terrible, terrible sadness, especially each time she’s asked to see what she can do about an itch on a leg that is no longer there. At first Bea lifted the sheets and scratched away at where a foot should have been. They couldn’t feel her hands; well, of course they couldn’t, what was she thinking of? They’d ask her to move her fingers this way and that, and scratch harder until either they realised, or Bea’s eyes gave it away. Then they’d fall still, looking so deep inwards that Bea thought their eyes would suck her in too. Now, when she’s asked to scratch, she just squeezes a hand and promises that it will go away.

  The holes come in every part of the body. She’s seen a man who has lost his behind; the other VADs joked about being asked to scratch it, though nobody laughed aloud. No point in their conversation giving the nurses something else to complain about. They seem to delight as it is in sending the VADs after the bedpans. Bea tries not to think about what she’s cleared up, but there’s no time for prudery, it’s all matter-of-fact. Bea sees parts of men she hasn’t seen before, inside and out, and many in a state that she hopes she’ll not see again.

  As she manoeuvres the mop she taps a bedframe and the occupant reaches forward with his hand. Nurse, nurse. Bea walks around, taking mop and bucket – Sister would murder her if she left it at the end of the bed. She gives the man her hand, her good hand, and he grips it.

  ‘I’m not a nurse, Captain Peters, just a VAD.’ Need to put that in quick. She doesn’t want to be done for masquerading.

  ‘Oh, yes, I know your voice. It’s Masters, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Bea, ‘yes, it is.’

  Nothing wrong with his eyes, the doctor says, yet he can’t open them. Sister Adams suggested packing him off to one of those hospitals where none of them are quite right in the head any more, but Lady L. came straight down on her. If he goes home, he can be looked after perfectly well, blind or not. But the letter sent to that home was returned, No longer at this address scrawled across it. He can’t stay for ever, can he, said Sister Adams. It’s my house, replied Lady L. So he has stayed. He’s a handsome man, Captain Peters, if only he would open his eyes.

  ‘Miss Masters and the pianist’s hands. Will you play for me one day?’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ lies Bea, thinking that he would have to be deaf, rather than blind, for her to pass muster on any instrument.

  ‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The smell …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Cut grass. Dampened by the morning dew. Is there anyone on the lawn? They’ll have to wait until
it dries before they rake it up.’

  Bea hesitates, but gentle lying seems to be a part of nursing.

  ‘Yes, they will.’ She gives his hand a squeeze.

  ‘But the sun’s out, isn’t it? It’s on my face. It’ll dry quickly this morning. Mind you don’t let your pretty skin burn. You’re fair, aren’t you? Your skin feels like that. Tell me what birds you can see. I hear them, but I’m no expert.’

  ‘Nor am I, and they are hidden.’

  ‘Hidden?’

  ‘In the bushes.’

  ‘Rhododendron?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answers.

  ‘They must be in flower, now that it’s late May. What colours? White is my favourite. Rather unoriginal, I know. And a little funereal.’

  But Bea can’t reply to this. Not even to tell him that it is September.

  When Bea walks back into the hallway of Park Lane at six, Edward is already there. At least the shadow standing in the middle of the wide hall has the name of Edward, the same height, and resembles him as much as a shadow can resemble anyone. The circles under his eyes and his complexion match the black and white of the marble he is standing on bolt upright, looking brittle enough to fall with the touch of a forefinger. His voice, when it comes, is surprisingly full. A little too full, as though he is used to shouting to be heard.

  ‘Lit-tle sis!’

  The old joke, from when he passed her in height as they grew.

  She doesn’t rush up to him, fearing that she might crush him. So he walks towards her, puts his arms under her shoulders, lifts her up and, his neck taut, swings her round, her feet skimming the kit bag on the floor beside him.

  ‘We shall make merry, dear sis.’

  Then he pulls her up to him and squeezes his cheek into hers. The stubble grates on her skin, but it is him, not her, who pulls away.

  ‘Sorry, forgot to shave this morning, damned rush for the boat, and a trench habit. They seem to have us down there more than on our horses, well, what horses are left. What do you think of the tash?’ He puts her down, takes a couple of paces back and poses on each side. ‘Pretty fine, eh?’

  It must be that which is making him look so much older. But then he is hardly a boy any more. Sir Edward, even, since their father keeled over somewhere between roulette and vingt-et-un in the South of France.

  ‘Yes, pretty fine.’

  ‘A man needs a moustache at twenty-two, my dear, and in charge of his own merry crew.’

  ‘How long have they given you?’

  ‘Two joyous weeks. I shall dance until the early hours, and see every show in town. And you shall come with me.’ He takes her hands in his and starts to sway her round the room. ‘Will they spare you, all your patients?’

  ‘I don’t think … no, it’s not the moment. Edward, you need a bath.’

  ‘I’ll take that as it was meant. What are we up to tonight?’

  ‘Tonight? I thought—’

  ‘Fourteen days, Bea. Can’t afford to waste even one.’

  ‘There’s dinner with Mother, she’s coming up to town to see you. Clemmie will be up tomorrow.’

  ‘Mother’s here, I’ve seen her, and good it was. Near squeezed me to suffocation and I must have been dreaming it but I thought she was going to cry. Mother’s never cried in her life, I don’t think. Half expected her to appear with straw in her hair in her new farmer life but I suppose she’s holding sway over the hospital in the house too, and she looked as though she’d never left a drawing room. What about after dinner? Come on, sis, you can’t put a soldier early to bed.’

  He looks half dead but there’s a desperate energy to her brother that is infectious. An hour ago, when she was still cleaning up at the nursing home, the last thing she felt like doing was dancing. Now the look on Edward’s face makes her feel a jittery need to go out for the evening.

  ‘There’s one of George Moore’s—’

  ‘Dances of Death?’

  ‘If you must call it that.’

  ‘It’ll be the last show for some – and it’s not what it used to be.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Death.’

  Bea calls for a maid to help her dress. She misses Grace. Blast her for having vanished overnight last year. Bea needs help until her arm is better, at least with all the evening’s hooks and laces. The dress she’s had airing is far too plain for a dance, even in wartime; perhaps the emerald tunic instead. It is autumn after all, though everyone’s behaving as though the news of the latest surge forward means they’re skipping winter altogether this year. Oh, Beatrice, jolly well fix on what to wear so you can show your brother a good time. Bea settles on a dark peacock tunic but hesitates over her pantaloons. In fact, she always hesitates over her pantaloons. Bought with a flourish, and brought out almost every time she is deciding what to wear, they have all but once been put back. She bought them as soon as she was up and about after the accident; a statement that, even though she was out of the action, she could still do what the men were doing, in her own way. However, they don’t want that, the men, when they come home: they want women to be as pretty and feminine as possible. Moreover, Bea needs to make up for having a bad arm. She settles on a long chiffon skirt to wear underneath the tunic. Sarah hooks her in, and Bea goes downstairs to join Edward and Mother.

  The Ritz dining room is full of young people. The three of them squeeze on to a table for two between the windows, as if emphasising the awkwardness of having Mother with them in a place so full of youth. Edward pushes out jollities in between visits from other diners. It’s ripping, he says. Just you think, what an adventure I’m having. Never know what’s up from one day to the next. Just when you reckon you might be bored – though when we’re not in the Line we keep ourselves damn busy with all sorts of matches – we’re all turned around again to go back in. Tests every bit of my wits, keeps my head ticking over.

  ‘Well, it’s terrific,’ says Mother, ‘that you are out …’ Bea thinks she hears Mother’s voice falter, but surely she is imagining it for Mother is steaming on, ‘there. If I didn’t have a farm to run to feed the country, I’d be up to my knees in dirt, helping pull wounds together.’

  They work their way through dinner and step back out on to Piccadilly, scarcely lit by the dim, blue-painted streetlamps. A couple of cars pass, looking lost in the width of the road. Then it is quiet again.

  Summers is waiting patiently in the Rolls. Mother hesitates on the pavement. Where are you going, she asks? George Moore’s. Oh. For a moment Bea thinks Mother is going to declare that she would like to accompany them, and a dread of being thrust in front of single men by her rises in Bea.

  ‘Coming too?’ asks Edward.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Mother replies, ‘I, I …’

  ‘Where are you off to, Mother dearest?’ asks Edward. ‘Perhaps it is more exciting than where we are going.’

  ‘No,’ replies Mother, almost too quickly and firmly, then brusquely, ‘I’m just going home, Edward.’ She moves towards the Rolls, and Summers is out and holding the door open for her. She climbs in and Bea sees her tapping the rear of the passenger seat with her umbrella, and Summers steadily, but immediately, drives off.

  ‘She could have offered us a lift,’ says Edward. ‘She was awfully short just then, don’t you think?’

  ‘Perhaps she was late.’

  ‘To go home?’

  Bea is silent. She doesn’t know whether to be amused or irritated by her brother’s naivety.

  ‘Not a taxi in sight,’ he continues.

  ‘Never is. Gold dust.’

  As they turn off Piccadilly into the side streets, the streetlamps thin and it darkens further. The two of them fall into a contented silence as they walk, Bea keeping her eyes on the kerb. How long will it be, she wonders, before this all brightens up again?

  ‘By God.’ Edward suddenly breaks the quiet. ‘Isn’t this Celeste’s?’

  Bea stops and looks up. Her mind must have been miles away. They are, indeed, opposite Celeste’s fron
t door, and Bea’s by here almost once a fortnight, if only to see whether Mr Campbell has written to her. Slivers of light are peeking through the black-out curtains.

  ‘Haven’t seen the old girl in an age. Wonder what she’s up to?’ And before Bea can make any other suggestion, Edward is across the road and ringing the bell. Bea follows him, hoping to God that her aunt is not in. She wants Edward to herself until they reach the dance.

  Celeste’s front door is answered not by a maid but by a clearly drunk young woman, cigarette holder in her hand. She looks them up and down, her eyes resting upon Edward. ‘Come in, darlings,’ she says. ‘Haven’t a clue who you are, but you are most invited to join the fun.’ And from upstairs, Celeste’s drawing room, comes the sound of dance music and guffaws. Bea’s heart sinks. Edward will want to go up there, and then they will be stuck. At least you can move around George Moore’s dances. And then it occurs to her that, quite possibly, Celeste might not be at home.