Back in Hallsands during hot weather, she had never worn all the undergarments young ladies were expected to; the most she wore was a cotton chemise or petticoat, with bare legs. Today she had left off her stays, but she still had drawers, a long chemise of thin cotton, a heavy linen petticoat and thick stockings.
Carsten was already pulling off his boots, shirt and trousers, till he was left in just his grey underpants.
‘Come on, off with your clothes,’ he said and jumped into the river.
The sheer delight on his face as he came to the surface, rubbing the dirt off his face, was enough to galvanize Mabel into turning the other way to remove her stockings. But when she turned back, he wasn’t watching her, just bobbing up and down in the water like a seal.
She was down to her chemise in a trice. She heaped her clothes together, with her straw boater on top, then followed his lead by jumping in.
Nothing had ever felt so good as the cool, almost silky river water on her hot skin. She lay back in the water and floated, laughing as Carsten climbed up on the bank to jump in again. Her chemise ballooned up around her and she had to push it down vigorously, but suddenly she really didn’t care if she was exposing more of herself than she ought to.
She and Martin had often swum in the sea at night, naked; sometimes they made love on the beach too. Today was the first time since leaving Hallsands that she’d recalled that. All at once, she felt a quickening of desire, and when she looked at Carsten the feeling grew stronger.
His chest, face and arms were tanned the colour of honey, and the sunlight was making the wet hairs on his arms and chest glisten like gold. He swam over to her, put his hands on her waist and lifted her. For a second, as she looked down into his laughing face, she thought he intended to kiss her, but instead he threw her back into the water.
Mabel dived under the water, swam towards him and grabbed his legs to pull him under too.
Again and again, they found ways of pulling or pushing each other under the water, both laughing so much they swallowed a great deal of water.
A little later they heard a couple of men approaching. Quickly they swam back, close to the riverbank where they’d got in, and stayed there while the men passed. One was talking about his sheep. The other was smoking a pipe; they could smell the tobacco.
As they stayed there, close together in the water, Carsten smoothed Mabel’s hair back from her face. ‘You look so pretty all wet,’ he whispered.
She lifted her face up to be kissed, her heart thumping, but he just drew her closer to him and held her.
Her thin chemise was no protection from his muscular body, pressed against hers. She lifted her face again, and this time his lips met hers, but not with the passion she’d expected.
‘I cannot be what you want me to be,’ he whispered.
She leaned her head back to look at him and saw pain in his eyes. ‘Why Carsten? Because you are German? I don’t care about that.’
‘I will have to go home soon. I wish I could have you in my life forever, but I can’t.’
8
In the days that followed swimming in the river with Carsten, Mabel felt very confused and sad.
It was clear he felt something for her; but maybe, like her, he was afraid of his feelings. A love affair between them was bound to end in sadness, whether because of him having to return to Germany, or her having to admit she was married already. There was also the fear of becoming pregnant, and hostility from other people.
But she was prepared to risk all that. Why wasn’t he?
As they walked back into the town, Carsten had twice tried to tell her something. But each time he said, ‘I need to explain,’ he suddenly clammed up again.
They had laughed when they had to get dressed without a towel to dry themselves. Mabel rolled up her wet chemise and put it in the bag with her new sandals. She thought Carsten had pulled on his clothes over his wet pants. They talked about how lovely it was to swim, and how shocked people would be if they saw Mabel’s wet hair and guessed what they’d been doing.
They parted near the camp, and Mabel went home along the footpath by the river. When she got back, her hair was quite dry, so no explanations were needed for Clara.
That was Friday. Carsten never came to Willow Cottage at the weekend, and Clara had a friend and her husband come to stay for a few days, so Mabel was kept busier than usual, cooking and generally looking after them.
The hot weather ended suddenly with a thunderstorm on Sunday, at five in the afternoon. All that evening Mabel sat by the window of her cottage, looking out at the rain battering the garden, wondering what she could do to resolve matters. She wished she had someone to confide in, but she knew that even if she did, they would only say that a romance between her and a German POW was never going to have a happy ending.
It was Tuesday before Clara’s friends left. Carsten hadn’t come to work that day, or the one before. Mabel busied herself tidying the garden on both afternoons, as the heavy rain had made the weeds spring up again in defiance.
She was just laying the table for supper when a man came to the door. He was elderly but tall and slender, with military bearing, wearing a tweed jacket and cap. He asked to speak to Miss May, and Mabel invited him in to wait in the sitting room while she got Clara.
‘Oh no!’ she heard Clara exclaim. But even though she made an excuse to go into the hall, she couldn’t hear what was being said.
When the man left, Clara came into the kitchen. Her face was ashen. ‘There are fourteen diagnosed cases of Spanish flu at the camp,’ she said. ‘Everyone has to stay in the camp now. That’s why Carsten hasn’t been here for the last two days.’
‘You mean he’s got it?’ Mabel didn’t even try to modify her voice, she was so alarmed.
‘No, he’s okay so far,’ Clara said. ‘But some of the new cases are from his hut. But even worse, Mabel, there are twenty-four cases in Dorchester. That was General Morecombe who called here. He said Southampton has over three hundred new cases, and there have been many deaths there.’
‘What can we do?’ Mabel asked.
‘Nothing, just hope for the best.’
‘But who will nurse the men at the camp?’
Clara looked at Mabel disapprovingly. ‘You don’t need to worry about that. They are saying this is a pandemic now, extremely serious. I’m more concerned about friends in Dorchester than POWs.’
Mabel understood that was a reproof, and she got on with doing the supper. Hearing about people becoming ill and dying miles away hadn’t really registered. But now it was here, just a mile away, and that was so different.
Each day seemed longer now that she couldn’t expect Carsten to appear. With no news of whether he was sick or well, she was in agony. The newspapers only spread further anxiety, because although they were confidently reporting the war was almost won, thanks to the Americans coming in to help, they weren’t holding back on the severity of the Spanish flu that was now spreading worldwide.
Two weeks after Carsten stopped coming, Clara went into town. When she returned, she said the streets were almost empty of people. At the grocer’s she’d been told it was because they were afraid of catching the disease.
She sat down at the kitchen table, looking very worried. ‘Mr Bunday, the grocer, said that he’d had some folk telephoning him with an order and demanding he deliver it and leave it inside the gate. They even said they’d leave the money under a stone for him! He said they weren’t concerned at all about him, just about getting their food. Can you believe people could be like that?’
‘They’d be the rich folk who care only for themselves,’ Mabel pointed out.
‘It seems the vicar suggested it might be advisable for his parishioners to miss church until the pandemic ends too. Though apparently he did add that he would still hold services, as usual, for those who weren’t afraid.’
‘I suppose it is sensible for people to stay away from crowded places,’ Mabel said thoughtfully. ‘But it’s a bi
t extreme not getting your own shopping.’
‘I went down South Street afterwards and I saw Humphrey Higgins, the undertaker, taking in a large order of coffins. When he saw me, he looked embarrassed and he said it was just a precaution and he hoped there would be no call for them.’ Clara sighed. ‘I suppose it is sensible to be prepared, but it seems rather nasty to be making money out of a disaster.’
From the moment Mabel learned of the Spanish flu in the camp, she’d thought of little else but whether Carsten had become sick. She so much wanted to go to the camp and offer to help with the nursing, so she could at least discover if he was still healthy.
‘Would you mind if I helped at the camp in the afternoons?’ she blurted out now.
Clara looked stunned at such a request. ‘That’s a mad thing to do,’ she said.
‘I don’t think so,’ Mabel said. ‘They must be needing help. And if folk around here are staying in their homes for fear of getting it, who is going to see that those poor devils up in the camp get fed and are looked after properly?’
‘They are soldiers,’ Clara argued. ‘They can look after their own.’
‘I expect my husband, and his friends who died with him, thought they’d be looked after if anything happened to them,’ Mabel retorted. She instantly felt bad at saying that, as she knew the doctors and nurses worked tirelessly at the front in Flanders to save lives.
‘But what if you catch it?’ Clara said.
‘It sounds as if this flu can strike anywhere, so I could just be here with you and get it. Or you could.’ She shrugged. ‘But by helping up there, keeping the sick clean, feeding them, bringing them drinks, that might save them, and others they might infect. And I’ll wear a mask!’
Clara made a helpless gesture with her arms. ‘Alright, go and volunteer. I’ll dig out some old clothes for you to wear, but when you get back home you must wash and change before coming in here.’
The following afternoon, Mabel rode her bicycle up to the camp. It was a sunny day and a group of men were lounging on the grass just inside the high fence, topped with barbed wire. Someone whistled at her, but she ignored him and rode on to the gates.
She explained to the sergeant manning the gate why she had come.
‘What on earth makes a pretty woman like you want to nurse sick Germans?’ he said with a sneer.
‘Maybe my husband would still be alive if there had been more nurses at the Somme,’ she sniped back at him. ‘English or German, the death of a soldier is always a tragedy to those who love them.’
He looked as if he wanted to say something further, but thought better of it. ‘Wait there,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if someone can come and talk to you.’
He disappeared into the small hut and she assumed he was using the telephone.
‘Come in,’ he said as he returned to her and opened the tall metal gate. ‘Go straight ahead until you see the Red Cross sign outside the doctor’s office. Someone will see you there.’
Mabel kept her eyes peeled for Carsten. She saw many tall, blond muscular young men; some were sitting on the steps outside the huts, some were reading on the grass, others playing cards. Carsten wasn’t among them. But then there were over four thousand men in the camp, and their huts went on into the distance.
A deep voice commanded her to come in when she knocked on the door. Inside, a burly man, almost completely bald, smiled at her.
‘So, you are Dorchester’s Miss Nightingale. I didn’t expect you to be so young,’ he said.
‘I’m not even a trained nurse, let alone a Florence Nightingale. I’m just a widow who understands nurses are in short supply for soldiers, and I can spare a few hours every afternoon to help out.’
He took details of her name and where she lived. She explained she was a housekeeper.
‘I know Miss May because of her art class,’ he said. ‘And you had one of the prisoners working in the garden at Willow Cottage,’ he said.
‘Yes, Carsten Frasch,’ she said. ‘I hope he hasn’t caught the flu?’
‘No, he’s fine. He’s been helping with the sick, as he often does. He is an excellent nurse, along with being a first-class interpreter. If only we had a few more with his talents.’
The next day, Mabel made her way back to the camp in the afternoon to do her first few hours. She wore an old, pale blue dress of Clara’s. Despite being only light cotton and rather worn, it had a stylish look, fitted into the waist, with pin-tucks down the bodice. She had fixed her hair up in a bun, run up a couple of big coverall-all aprons from old sheeting, and made a couple of masks to cover her mouth and nose.
Maybe her prime motive for volunteering was just to see Carsten, yet after a couple of minutes in the sickbay her mind was completely focused on alleviating the suffering.
Despite the warm weather, the men lay hunched on their beds, shivering. Although their symptoms were much like a bad cold, with runny nose, cough and sore throat, the fear that it was going to escalate to an infection of the lungs, and then death, made many of them terrified, and it showed in their staring eyes and hoarse voices begging for help.
Gus Tremane, the man who’d been asked to show her the ropes, was not a doctor but a very experienced orderly. ‘Firstly, don’t take your mask off for any reason. Then just make them more comfortable,’ he said. ‘Get them to drink, wash their faces and hands with cool water, and help them to eat if they are able. But first, I’ll show you the men in the other room who are unlikely to pull through.’
Checking that her mask was in place, he led her through a door to another sickroom. Before Mabel even saw the six patients, she heard their rasping breath, the struggle for their lungs to fill with air. Then she saw Carsten. He was bending over one of the men, trying to get him to drink. The man’s skin had a blue tinge, and as Carsten lowered him back to the pillow and took up a wet cloth to cool him, he saw Mabel.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said quietly. ‘This is no place for you.’
‘We need all the help we can get,’ Gus said. ‘And I think she’ll be invaluable.’
Gus took her back into the main room, showed her where there were clean sheets and cloths to wash the men, then indicated an adjoining sluice room with bedpans and bottles.
‘Just do what you can in here for now – the other room is grim,’ he said. ‘It’s hard, with the language barrier. But kindness works, wherever you come from.’
Mabel did find it hard. Not just because she couldn’t speak German, and none of the sick men had more than a smattering of English. It was just embarrassing, assisting a man to use a bottle to urinate in. Cooling fevered brows, holding a cup for them to drink, that was the easy part. But when they coughed up disgusting phlegm, it turned her stomach. It was also hot and stuffy in the sickbay, making the various bodily smells stronger. She wasn’t sure she could do a second day of it.
It was sweet relief at six, when she stepped out of the sickbay to go home. Gus had praised her efforts, but he clearly knew how hard it had been for her.
As she walked to the gate, she heard footsteps behind her, and turned to see Carsten.
‘Gus told me you did fine,’ he said. ‘But just the way you walk now, your shoulders drooping, I think you not like.’
‘I suppose I thought it would be less ugly,’ she said shamefacedly. ‘But someone must help, just as you are doing. Aren’t you afraid of catching it too?’
‘I dodged English bullets, I can dodge Spanish flu.’ He gave one of his joyful guffaws that made her laugh too.
‘I couldn’t bear it if you did get it,’ she said, looking into his lovely eyes and wishing she could kiss him. ‘I miss you being in the garden at Willow Cottage.’
‘I miss it too. But I will come back soon. I’d like to swim in the river again with you also.’
‘I don’t think I’d better do that again,’ she laughed. ‘But it was nice. Now I must go home and make supper. Are you going back into the sickbay?’
‘Yes, I stay till midnight, and sl
eep and eat in the hut with other men who help. Men in my old hut are afraid I bring back the infection to them.’
‘You are doing a very good thing,’ she said softly. She wanted to say it was brave and noble, but she knew he would dismiss that. ‘Goodnight, Carsten.’
‘It was good to see you,’ he said. ‘I have missed you.’
For just a second the words ‘I love you’ formed in her head. But she bit them back, then turned and walked towards the gate where she had left her bicycle. She knew she would be back tomorrow, and the next day. Every man who was sick in that room was as precious to someone as Carsten was to her. She had to try and get them well.
The days that followed were not as tough as the first one. It was good to see faint smiles from the sick men when she came in. She grew used to dealing with bodily functions and clearing up messes. Two men died in the room where Carsten worked, and their places were taken by another three from her ward. She washed the men, helped them eat a little, propped them up to ease the coughing, sometimes even helped them out of the hut to sit in the sun as they started to recover.
So far, only one man had fully recovered and left the sickbay, and there were five new cases. She knew now that there was no set pattern to recovery, or death. Some people became ill and died within twenty-four hours; others appeared to be getting better, and more than a week later they died. Some could even come back from the brink of death and survive. But Gus said he thought that was rare.
Mabel tried to believe all the men in her ward would recover if she could just keep their temperature down, so they didn’t get pneumonia. But almost every day, when she arrived to help, she found another man had succumbed and had been moved into the ward next door.
She didn’t see Carsten every day, as he worked a rota with the other orderlies. Mostly she was alone in the afternoons on her ward, and she was run ragged, going from one bed to another seeing to the men’s needs.
They were all such young men too. The eldest so far was just twenty-four, the youngest seventeen; she guessed he’d lied about his age to join up, just as English boys had. She wished she could understand German too, as sometimes she felt they were really trying to tell her something important. Their eyes pleaded with her, they reached out for her hands, sometimes kissing them, and all she could do to comfort them was to stroke their brow and make soothing noises.
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