Not Just a Soldier’s War

by Betty Burton

  She jumped down and stamped her feet, trying to get her circulation going. No matter how well she tried to insulate her boots, her feet were always cold and covered in chilblains.

  Her dream of bliss at this moment was a footbath of warm salt water. The load she was carrying was medical supplies. A small load for such a large truck – if only it could have been stacked to the roof.

  She stopped a man wearing glasses; he might have been anyone, for glasses were his only feature in the huddle of mixed scarves he wore. ‘Do you know who I see about this load of medical stuff?’ These days she always tried English first; it was surprising how many other nationalities understood at least some English.

  For half an hour she trudged back and forth between her truck and the first-aid station. ‘Eve? That you under that gorgeous hat?’

  ‘Kea! You’re only jealous.’ The two young women hugged. ‘Things sound pretty rough out there.’

  ‘For certain it’s not a Labor Day parade. Hope you’ve brought in some sort of anaesthetic, we’re getting low.’

  ‘And some spirit for your sterilizer. Novac said you’d be down to sterilizing with candle-flames if I wasn’t nippy.’

  ‘Candles? We should be so lucky. Have you got a bit of turn-around time?’

  ‘I can find a bit. You want me to do something?’

  ‘Would you, hon? Just for ten minutes, then we should be over this flush, and there might be a mug of Oxo and maybe we can steal ten minutes just to say hello.’

  Salaria Kea was one of the many nurses Eve met briefly but constantly on her supply trips. Trained in the Harlem School of Nursing, she was a devout Christian who had come straight to Spain from Ethiopia. Eve had met her soon after she had returned from her honeymoon with her white International Brigader husband. Many nurses were a bit sniffy and protective of their position, but Eve had found that most Americans, although very professional, did not put up barriers against an amateur like herself when help was needed. She had held up many a bottle of blood in an emergency transfusion, and finished off the dressing of a wound so that the nurse could go on to a patient more in need of medical expertise.

  ‘A guy along there,’ Salaria pointed, ‘he’s waiting to be taken into Madrid. He’s lost some fingers and a lot of blood and he’s in shock. Just keep an eye on him, talk to him, don’t let him talk back. He’s English.’

  Eve pushed her fur cap back off her face, but didn’t remove anything, for even inside, her breath steamed in the cold. She halted a few steps away from the man, lying rigid, a field-dressing like a huge white fist already stained with fresh blood held to his chest. Her stomach clenched with distress, and she went cold with shock.

  Moving to where she could see him better, she said gently, ‘David?’ There was no response. ‘David. Wake up. I’ve come to sit with you till the ambulance arrives.’ She wanted to weep. His handsome face was drawn and thin, a smear of blood was wiped across one cheek and there was a line where tears had dried. She wanted to hold him in her arms, he looked very ill indeed, but there was no mistaking his beautifully-shaped nose and lips. It seemed impossible that those lips had once pressed hard on her own, or that that nose had been buried in her neck as they lay on the grassy downs, both breathless with passion.

  Taking off her gloves and kneeling beside him, she gently smoothed his brow. ‘David, you shouldn’t sleep just now. You can sleep when you’ve had your hand seen to. David.’

  His eyes flickered, opened, focused and then closed again. A faint smile parted his lips. He had lost one tooth and another was chipped. He was still smiling when he opened his eyes again and spoke, his voice heavy with exhaustion. ‘Odds of fifty to one that your name is Louise.’ Confusion. Her hand was stilled on his brow. The voice was not David Hatton’s, she had never seen this man before, yet he had called her by her old name. He looked at her a long time, searching it seemed every inch of her face. ‘Take off your hat, please.’ She did so, and shook out her short curls still streaked gold from the summer sun. ‘He said it was over your shoulders. He’s a bugger for nice hair, is Davey.’

  ‘Davey?’

  ‘You called me David. He’s the other half of the Hatton twinship. Now people will be able to tell us apart. Richard, the twin with only seven fingers and one thumb. Did your hair get lousy?’

  Eve nodded. ‘But I now have a secret weapon, so that when I can do without a hat again, I’ll let it grow.’

  ‘Davey lost you.’ His voice had grown fainter, so she sat on the floor close beside him, her back against the chilly wall. ‘Awfully cut up about that. Going about like Cinderella’s prince looking for his lost Louise, ’cept that Davey has no glass slipper, not a single clue. Pity. Don’t you want him to find you? OK with me. Shame for Davey.’

  It would be so easy to ask about David, to make contact again. A word. A message. An address. Did she really want to know? What sense was there in opening up all that again? Her mind raced around like a rat in a cage.

  He seemed to be drifting off again. Salaria had said, keep him aware, try not to let him sink into unconsciousness. ‘You called me Louise.’

  He responded with a faint smile. ‘Davey’s a good chap. Better than me. Younger, got more up top.’ His speech had become slurred.

  If Richard Hatton chose to tell his brother of this encounter, then it wouldn’t be difficult for David to seek her out. Maybe that was what she would like. Duke’s mother believed that people made their own destiny when they made a choice, and she had chosen to follow up on his mention of Louise. God knows, she thought about David, he still came into her best dreams. She even welcomed him to them. But God knew, too, how much she liked being Eve Anders, an independent, uncommitted young woman. Even the people she used to be so close to, so loving towards, even they had receded. It was hard to credit, but it was a fact that she was no longer a Wilmott. Indeed, she was no longer working-class. It seemed fanciful, but a kind of power had come to her: she wanted sex, but not love; she wanted men, but not a man.

  Louise Wilmott, who had been as ambitious as hell, and had wanted the keys to the whole world, had found – in the guise of Eve Anders, and as E. V. Anders – a niche, a place where she belonged. She was alone yet part of something she could not yet understand fully. For the present she had found fulfilment in her driving and writing. If and when that was not enough, then she would look for something else. For the present she did not want any complications, not an affair, a romance, a permanent lover. She wanted her truck, to know that her reporting was effective in making people aware of the plight of Spain, the country she was beginning to love and feel that she had a stake in. She didn’t care if that seemed smug – there was only Eve and Louise to know.

  A big sigh from Richard Hatton brought Eve back. ‘Are you all right?’ He didn’t look all right. She felt the pulse at his neck and watched his chest rising and falling hardly at all. She found Salaria disposing of a pile of soiled dressings on a little bonfire. ‘You’d better come.’

  Kea moved fast. She felt his pulse and looked under his eyelids. ‘He needs a transfusion.’

  ‘Can you do it here?’

  ‘No, we aren’t equipped.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘The main hospital, but we’re fresh out of ambulance space. There’s an amputation and a bullet in the lung which should get priority.’

  ‘Couldn’t I take him? The road’s too iced up to drive at speed, but I’d try to see he didn’t get a rough ride. We should be there well before dark.’

  ‘I’ll see what Doc says.’

  ‘I’ll warm up the engine. Find someone to travel in the back with him.’

  Bearers slid Richard Hatton on to the bed of the truck, tied the stretcher to rope rings and covered him with a pile of coats and blankets, and requested that the coats be put on any ambulance coming back. Eve tucked her knitted knee-blanket around his head. ‘You’ll be OK, Richard. Do you hear?’ He grunted a reply. ‘You’ll soon be tucked up in a warm bed.’ She hoped that was true. She
checked the petroleum carriers. There was enough.

  Salaria Kea came back as Eve was revving up the engine. It sounded fine. ‘I’ve got just the guy to travel with you.’

  ‘Tell him to put a move on.’

  ‘He’s doing his best on his frost-bite. OK, Captain?’ He confirmed that he was, in English.

  For which, thought Eve, many thanks.

  Kea, her head ducked against the shrieking flurries of snow, banged on the side of the truck and waved Eve out of the compound.

  Once out on the road, Eve leaned her head against the little window at the back of the cab and yelled, ‘All right back there?’

  ‘OK, love.’

  ‘Just try to see that the stretcher doesn’t move. The roads are bad, but I’m used to them. Just hold on to your hat.’

  She drove for half an hour, hardly aware of anything except the hundred yards or so in front. From time to time she asked if everything was all right back there and was told ‘Yep!’ Was the patient all right? ‘Yep!’ She caught a whiff of smoke and was suddenly hungry for the lift and a few moments of relaxation that a cigarette gave. ‘I say, Captain,’ she called, ‘I’ve left my back-pack on your side, it’s got my cigarettes in it. Can you see it? Hanging on the…’

  ‘I see it.’

  ‘Take them out, will you, and hand them through. Have one yourself.’

  He did so and she lit up expertly, keeping one hand and her knee on the steering wheel. It was difficult to hold any sort of conversation over the roar of the engine and the noise of the wind, but nobody ever missed the chance of talking to another person in their own language. ‘You got frost-bite?’ she shouted.

  ‘Just two toes, maybe three.’

  ‘At Teruel?’

  ‘A building fell on me, my feet got left in the cold.’ His voice was strong and deep, and although he was having to shout above the noise of the labouring engine, she detected a Wessex broadness in his nice voice that reminded her of her brothers. Their mother had never let any of them get away with the city whine. When they reached the hospital, she would ask him what other Hampshires he knew.

  * * *

  As soon as Ken Wilmott had heard her say, ‘Tell him to get a move on,’ he knew that the truck-driver was his sister. Until now, he had not imagined that she would be involved in this kind of front-line work, for supplies trucks were popular targets for the pilots who liked to dive and strafe. His heart thumped at the thought of it. Maybe they had been this close before and not known it. If he hadn’t said that he would travel down to the hospital, leaving the first-aid men on duty, how would they ever have found out later that they had both been involved in the fate of the man who, as the black nurse had said, was missing coagulants in his blood and could bleed to death?

  There was no point in disturbing her while she was driving. In any case, he hugged to himself the enjoyable anticipation of surprising her. How did she do it? This wasn’t the first time that he had admired the skilful way the drivers handled their big ambulances and mobile hospitals, but he had never seen a woman behind the wheel of one of the huge supplies trucks. She had swung up into it as though it was a light van. He was proud and thrilled at the way she handled herself. And her voice… She had been a bossy kid, but her grown-up voice had authority.

  She had never exactly been a shrinking violet, and she could pack a good punch, but this was something else entirely. Such confidence. You could tell that she knew that she was good at what she did; she oozed certainty in her own ability.

  He would have loved to have watched her, but as soon as he moved away from the stretcher it slewed slightly. The soldier wouldn’t stand much buffeting. So he sat and savoured the moment when they would reach the hospital, answering her questions briefly. He wondered whether she had received any letters from him since he had taken on the rank of captain. Not that it meant as much in this army as it would have in the Coldstream Guards. Even so, she would be pleased when he said that he was an officer.

  * * *

  Mile after mile of rutted roads, but it was easier in the ruts than it had been earlier in the freshly fallen snow. She drove on silently. What could the soldier answer but ‘Yep’ to her enquiry about their sick charge? He could hardly say, ‘It looks as though he’s had it’ – even if he had. She felt no more responsible than she would have for the life of any other man in his situation, but the thought of how the death of his twin would affect David certainly made her aware that she wanted to hand him over as soon as she could.

  ‘About five miles now,’ she called back. There was no reply. She knew how easy it was for most soldiers to fall asleep on a knife edge if there was five minutes to spare.

  It was almost dark when they drove through the hospital gates but the blizzard had blown itself out. She knew this hospital, having delivered medical supplies many times before. When she tooted her horn outside the Emergency doors, a male orderly came out.

  ‘Eve! Hi to you. I know is you under big fur hat? You been making winks with Soviet comrades? I do a good deal with lipstick and notepad for such a hat. What you do here at front door? You go trade people door.’

  She jumped down and gave the Italian a friendly thump on the shoulder as she moved quickly round to the back and let down the tailboard. ‘Milio. Move fast. Big emergency.’

  Already he had hauled himself up over the tailboard and into the truck. ‘I know. Blood transfusion. All ready.’ He had released the ropes and in less than a minute he and another porter had transferred Richard Hatton to a wheeled trolley and were hurrying down a corridor, calling back, ‘Lipstick, Eve. Good deal because I like you.’

  Laughing both because she liked the tall Italian who was never out of humour, and because she wasn’t sorry to be here, she leaned against the tailboard. ‘Phew! I’m glad to hand him over. Thanks for your help, Captain. Hand me down my bag. Come on, I know this place and it knows me. I’ll bet I can rustle up a Marmite sandwich and some English tea. Hand down the bags and I’ll get somebody to keep an eye.’ He passed the bags and she piled them inside the Emergency doors. ‘How about your toes, do you want to get them seen to first?’

  Pulling down his balaclava helmet and winding a scarf round and round his neck, Ken said, ‘Tea and Marmite sounds good.’

  ‘Come on, let me help you down, even if you can’t feel your feet you can still do a lot of damage to them if you jump.’

  He let her help him down, holding on to the moment when she would realize who the captain with frost-bitten toes was.

  ‘Not in there, round the back where the kitchens are.’ She led the way along a wall where warm steam was melting the snow which the frost at once turned to ice. Pushing open a door they received a wonderful blast of warm air. ‘Mind you don’t skid, there’s a slope here, it’s treacherous underfoot.’

  Inside, she stamped her feet and whipped off the big fur hat, banging it to remove drops of water. She was smiling at him in such a warm and friendly way. When he removed his peaked cap and woollen helmet, her smile froze. She put a hand to her mouth and bit her lips. She hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. ‘Kenny?’

  He nodded, unable to speak as he took her into his arms and hugged her for a long time against his damp greatcoat. ‘Well then, kid, how’s tricks?’

  ‘Kenny, I can’t believe it.’ She brushed flakes of snow from his beard and laughed excitedly. ‘You’re terrible. You knew I was the driver, didn’t you?’

  He grinned. ‘Not until we were under way. I thought it best to wait.’

  She grabbed him round the neck with great affection and kissed him. ‘I can just imagine you savouring the moment when you would whip off your disguise, just like you used to like jumping on us girls to make us scream.’

  ‘Did I ever do that?’

  ‘You know you did.’

  ‘I’ve always imagined my suave young self as being much too aloof and grown-up to play such tricks on my little sister. Now, come on, I’ve got my mouth all ready for a Marmite hunk. You’d better come up
with the goods.’

  She was concerned at the way he limped and hobbled as they made their way to the kitchens where she was greeted by the Spanish cooks and helpers.

  ‘Any Marmite, Pet?’

  The grey-haired Spanish woman turned up her nose and held her head away from the smell as she cut large chunks of bread and smeared them black with the salty, yeasty spread that so many of the English aid-workers rhapsodized over. They would do any kind of a deal to get hold of a jar. ‘How you eat this stuff?’

  ‘It’s good for you, Petronella, you should know that with all your experience of cooking. Full of good vitamins.’

  ‘You need vitamin, eat tomatoes, eat pimentos, eat onion. This your chap?’

  Eve laughed. ‘You know I don’t have chaps, Pet.’

  ‘Not because chaps don’t try. That Emilio, he love you to bits.’

  ‘It’s my hat he loves. If I ever let him have it, he’d forsake me. Any tea? This is my brother, he’s dying for some tea.’

  ‘Tea, tea, tea.’ The cook put the plate of bread and Marmite in front of them, then stood back with her hand on one hip looking as though she couldn’t decide whether this was just a bit more banter. She had taken to this tall English girl. Not that she was anything like her own Carmen who had gone with the militia, but she loved her almost as a daughter. She looked closely at the IB captain who hadn’t shaved for days. ‘Brother?’

  ‘Yes, Pet,’ Eve said, her mouth full of the dry but delicious sandwiches. ‘La hermana… Captain Kenneth Wilmott.’

  Petronella gave him a kiss and ruffled his hair. ‘Is very hairy chin, this sister, need shave.’

  ‘OK, OK, el hermano…’ Eve grinned at her brother. ‘I still don’t know my els from my las. My God, Ken, I can hardly take my eyes off you.’

  ‘So how’d you think I feel?’ He took her hand and held it tight. ‘You were just a kid when I left. What happened to the dancing, are you still the Queen of the Tango?’

  She took a glimpse into the past. ‘What flirty butterflies we were – especially you.’