Frontline Nurses

by Holly Green

  ‘Hi,’ he said, ‘looks like you and I are sharing the accommodation. Hope that’s OK with you.’

  It took Tom a few seconds to recognise the accent as American. His first instinct was to say that it was definitely not ‘OK’ with him but he suppressed the urge and murmured, ‘Yes, yes, of course. Come in.’

  ‘Thanks.’ The American threw his hat and his dressing case onto the rack and turned to Tom. ‘By the way, I’m Maximilian Seinfeld. Call me Max.’

  ‘Thomas Devenish,’ Tom responded. ‘How do you do?’

  ‘I’m very well, Tom, thanks. Mind if I take a seat?’

  ‘Of course not. Please make yourself at home.’

  Max settled himself and produced a cigar case from an inside pocket. ‘Smoke?’

  ‘No, thanks. I don’t.’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do?’

  ‘Not at all. Go ahead.’

  ‘You going all the way to Constantinople?’

  ‘No, I’m getting off in Belgrade.’

  ‘No kidding? Me too. You got business there?’

  It was the sort of inquisition Tom had been dreading. ‘No,’ he said shortly, and in the hope of discouraging further conversation he took out his sketch pad and began to draw the scenery he saw passing outside the window.

  The American seemed to take the hint, because he took out a German language newspaper and unfolded it and soon the variety and strangeness of the changing scene absorbed Tom and he covered page after page with sketches, intending to work them up into finished pictures when he had time. After a while he became aware that his work was being studied.

  ‘Hey!’ Max exclaimed. ‘That’s real good. You an artist?’

  ‘I dabble a bit.’

  ‘Professionally?’

  ‘No. I’m just an amateur.’

  ‘A pretty damned good amateur, I should say. Mind if I have a look?’

  Half resentful of the intrusion and half flattered by the compliment, Tom handed over the pad. Max turned the pages with whistles and exclamations of approval. Finally he handed the pad back.

  ‘You’ve got a real talent there. You must have a good eye to capture so much when it passes by so fast.’

  ‘I have a good memory, that’s all,’ Tom said, ‘for places and scenery, at least.’

  ‘That why you’re headed for Serbia? Hoping to capture some scenes from the front, perhaps?’

  Tom stirred uncomfortably. He was becoming aware that beneath all the bonhomie there was a sharp intellect at work. He decided to take refuge in the fiction that Ralph had suggested to him. ‘Yes, maybe. I’m a journalist, you see.’

  ‘No kidding? Well, there’s a coincidence! So am I.’ Max reached into his inner pocket and produced a visiting card which announced him as a reporter for the Baltimore Herald. ‘Which rag do you work for?’

  ‘Rag? Oh, no, I’m … I’m a freelance.’ Tom could feel himself blushing. ‘Fact is, I’m new to all this. Just trying to get a start, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ Max beamed at him. ‘We’ve all been there. Everyone’s got to start somewhere. Well, you’re in luck, son. You stick to your Uncle Max. He knows the ropes and he’ll see you OK.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ Tom murmured, his heart sinking.

  ‘Where’re you from, Tom?’

  Tom had been brought up to believe that you did not interrogate casual acquaintances about their personal affairs but Max had no such inhibitions. By the time they had had dinner Tom knew all about his grandfather, who had emigrated from Germany to America and opened a delicatessen and his father who now owned twenty similar shops in a dozen different cities. In return, Max had ascertained that Tom was the only son of a baronet and had been to Harrow School.

  ‘Guess that makes you what they call landed gentry. A pretty privileged upbringing, huh?’ There was just a hint of a sneer in the voice.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Tom murmured, adding, ‘Actually, I hated most of it.’

  ‘How so?’

  Tom turned his head away and looked out of the window. ‘I suppose if you regard it as a privilege to be put on a pony almost before you can walk and made to get back on again no matter how often you fall off, and to be given a gun and called a sissy when you cry over the beautiful birds you have been made to shoot, and to be sent away from home at the age of six to a school where you are beaten for the slightest infringement of rules, even if you don’t understand what you have done wrong – if that is a privilege then, yes, I had a privileged upbringing.’

  He took out his pad and started to draw and for once Max had the tact to keep quiet.

  Chapter 5

  In the late afternoon, two weeks after leaving England, Leo stood beside Victoria as the ship sailed into the Thermatic Gulf and they saw the minarets and domes of Salonika appearing out of the haze. The drive through France had taken them four days, two punctures and three uncomfortable nights in run-down roadside inns; and when they had finally reached Marseilles it was to discover that there were no ships scheduled to leave for Salonika. It was only because Leo had overheard a conversation between a Greek ship-owner and one of his captains and begged his assistance that they had found themselves, with Sparky as deck cargo, first on a ship for Athens and then finally on a rusty tramp steamer heading up the coast to the Macedonian port.

  ‘It looks more Eastern than European,’ Victoria commented.

  ‘Well, it’s been Turkish for centuries,’ Leo pointed out, ‘but it’s a great mixture, architecturally speaking. There’s Greek, Roman, Byzantine, as well as Turkish influences.’

  ‘You sound as if you’ve been here before!’

  ‘I have. My father and I passed through on our way from Troy to the excavations at Mycenae.’

  Victoria looked at her. ‘My word, you’re full of surprises. I didn’t know I’d brought my own walking guide book with me!’

  As the ship docked they saw that the harbour was seething with vessels, many of them warships, and the streets were crowded with men in uniform. Every building, it seemed, was draped with the blue and white colours of the Greek flag. Platoons of armed soldiers marched to and fro and when the ship’s engines fell silent they heard a low rumble that seemed to come from the ground itself.

  ‘Thunder?’ Victoria queried.

  Leo shook her head. ‘It’s too continuous for that. I think it might be gunfire, a long way off.’ She shivered. For the first time war had become a present reality instead of a distant dream. She looked at Victoria and saw from her expression that the same thoughts were going through her mind.

  ‘Oh well,’ Victoria said, ‘I suppose we knew what we were letting ourselves in for. I shall just be glad to get off this beastly ship. I’m sick and tired of being leered at by that first mate with the horrible teeth.’

  ‘What makes you think we shall be any better off on shore?’ Leo asked. ‘Soldiers can be just as bad as sailors, I imagine. We’re two women travelling alone. What did we expect?’

  ‘A bit of common respect, I hope!’ Victoria answered crisply.

  Leo sighed inwardly. She was beginning to realise that sophisticated as Victoria appeared in her own setting she was dangerously naïve about the rest of the world.

  When they disembarked they had to join a long line of other passengers in the Customs House. The desk was manned by soldiers in Greek uniform and it rapidly became clear that none of them spoke any language but their own, which resulted in long wrangles while the passengers ahead of them, who seemed to come from all round the Mediterranean and beyond, tried to explain their reasons for entering the city. When Leo addressed them in fluent demotic Greek they looked both relieved and bemused. What, they wanted to know, could two young English ladies be doing in war-torn Salonika?

  ‘We are nurses,’ Leo explained, stretching a point, ‘and we are going to join some other English ladies to care for the wounded. We need accommodation for tonight and transport tomorrow. Are the trains still running?’

  The expression of disbelief on th
e soldier’s face changed to amusement and then to blank obstinacy. Women, he informed them, were not allowed anywhere near the front line.

  ‘But someone has to take care of the wounded Bulgarian soldiers,’ Leo persisted.

  ‘Bulgarians? Spff!’ he spat derisively.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Leo said. ‘The Bulgarians are your allies, aren’t they? We’re all on the same side.’

  The response was a shrug.

  ‘Tell him we want to speak to his superior officer,’ Victoria suggested.

  Leo repeated the request and after some delay a captain arrived. He was heavy-eyed and clearly furious at having his afternoon nap disturbed. When Leo’s request was relayed to him he stared at her in disbelief.

  ‘What you suggest is quite impossible. Perhaps you do not realise it, madame, but we are in the middle of a war here. I cannot arrange for you to travel any further.’

  ‘Very well,’ Leo said. ‘Can you find us somewhere to sleep tonight? We will make our own arrangements in the morning.’

  The officer spread his hands. ‘I am sorry, but the city is already overcrowded. All the good hotels have been taken over by the military. I suggest you return to your ship and book your passage back to England.’

  Leo stood her ground obstinately. Her brother, or her grandma, would have told the captain that to inform her that what she wanted was impossible was the best way to strengthen her determination. ‘We don’t require a good hotel. We just need a roof over our heads for one night.’

  The captain conferred with someone in an inner office. It was clear to Leo that he just wanted to be rid of these troublesome women. In the end, two men were ordered to escort them to an inn.

  ‘It is not grand, you understand,’ the captain said, ‘but it is the best we can do.’

  By this time Sparky had been unloaded from the deck of the ship and was the cause of much excited comment when it became apparent that the driver was a woman. After some discussion, one of the soldiers got up on the running board and they set off through streets crowded with men in various uniforms, Greek, Serb and Bulgarian, together with the regular occupants of this most cosmopolitan of cities. Leo recognised Muslim women in their chadors, Jewish men wearing the yarmulke, Greek orthodox priests in beards and robes and tall black hats, and everywhere scrawny children of different complexions. She saw a group of Greek and Serbian soldiers, obviously off-duty and slightly drunk, slapping each other on the back and exchanging hats. The Bulgarians, however, kept together in tight bunches with their weapons at the ready. Allies they might be in name, she concluded, but there seemed to be no love lost in reality.

  The soldiers led them through the narrow, rubbish-strewn streets of the Jewish quarter, where the daylight was almost blocked out by the tall houses, and then into the wider thoroughfares of the upper town, lined by the larger houses of the Turkish community with their red-painted facades. Eventually they came to a low, rambling building set round a series of courtyards. It had been a Turkish caravanserai but, as their guides explained, since the capture of the city it had been used first as a hospital and then, briefly, as a prison for captured Turkish soldiers. The owner, an extremely fat man, greeted them with anxious sideways looks at their escort and showed them into a large, draughty room, containing six beds. The floors were filthy, the window panes cracked and smeared with dirt and cockroaches lurked in the corners.

  Leo and Victoria looked at each other and Leo read on her friend’s face the same disgust she knew must be plain on her own. Suddenly they both laughed.

  ‘Well, we’d better get busy and clean the place up,’ Victoria said. ‘We need brooms and scrubbing brushes. Do you think he speaks Greek?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Leo said, ‘but I speak Turkish.’ She turned to the man, who was lurking by the door rubbing his hands nervously. Brooms? Yes, he had brooms but no one to use them. All his staff had fled in the fighting. ‘Just give them to us,’ Leo said. ‘We will use them ourselves.’

  ‘Golly!’ Victoria exclaimed. ‘I’m terribly impressed by your command of languages. I can get by in French but the only one I’m reasonably fluent in is German.’

  ‘Well, that will probably be the most useful one to have when we get to Bulgaria,’ Leo said. ‘I suppose we shall have to try to learn Bulgarian but until then I expect we’ll get by somehow.’

  For an hour they swept and scrubbed and by the time they had finished the rooms were, if not spotless, tolerably clean, and the worst of the draughts had been stopped up with rags. It was only then that their thoughts turned towards food. Here their host was no help at all. He had no kitchen staff and barely enough food to feed himself and his family. Most of the restaurants had closed down during the fighting and those that had not had been commandeered by the soldiers. Most shops were shut and there was a shortage of supplies. ‘They are like locusts, these soldiers,’ he protested. ‘They eat everything.’

  Victoria turned to Leo. ‘Now what? I’m famished.’

  ‘Well, we shall just have to go and forage, I suppose.’ Leo’s spirits sank. She was exhausted and filthy and her clothes, which were sticking to her after her exertions, were becoming clammy now that she had stopped. She was beginning to shiver and to long for a hot bath, a good meal and a soft bed – none of which were likely to be forthcoming in the foreseeable future. ‘Come on. I don’t know what we will find, but we’ll do our best.’

  As they crossed the courtyard where the car was parked Victoria said, ‘Just a minute,’ and lifted the bonnet.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Leo asked.

  ‘Removing the rotor arm,’ her friend replied. ‘I saw a few men giving Sparky some greedy looks. I don’t want to come back and find him gone.’

  ‘Are you sure it was the car they were looking at?’ Leo asked, and then regretted the words.

  It was getting dark and the narrow streets of the old town were badly lit. Leo began to wonder if they would ever find their way back to the inn. The shops were either boarded up or their windows had been shattered and the contents looted. She slipped her hand into the pocket of her uniform skirt and her fingers closed round the butt of a small revolver. It had been a gift from her father, a few months before he had sent her back to England. There had been an encounter with some local brigands and for a moment it had seemed that Leo might be abducted. On that occasion their own guides, who acted as bodyguards, had seen the aggressors off, but her father had made her take the pistol in case of future trouble and taught her how to use it. She realised now that it had been that incident that had decided him to send her away, and she had never used the weapon, but it was a comfort now to feel its weight in her pocket. She had never shown it to Victoria, unsure how she would react, and she hoped that it would never be necessary to produce it.

  Light spilled onto the street ahead of them and they heard a clamour of voices. Both were coming from a restaurant whose windows were clouded with condensation. Peering in, they saw that every table was crowded with men in uniform.

  ‘It’s no good. The place is packed,’ Victoria said.

  ‘It’s worth a try, though,’ Leo insisted. ‘It may be the only chance we get.’

  She pushed open the door and stepped inside, to be greeted with a roar of catcalls and whistles. A waiter hurried over.

  ‘Go, go! No women in here!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘We just want something to eat,’ Leo pleaded. ‘We’re …’

  ‘No. You go – now! Before there is trouble.’ He almost pushed them towards the door.

  Victoria plucked at Leo’s sleeve. ‘Come on! This is no good.’

  Out in the street, they plodded onwards and very soon Leo became aware of footsteps behind them. Looking round, she saw three soldiers had left the restaurant and were following them.

  ‘Let’s hurry on a bit,’ she said. ‘I don’t like these dark streets.’

  They walked faster but the men behind them drew closer and began to call out to them. The words were in a language Leo did not unde
rstand but she had recognised the uniforms as Bulgarian. From the voices it was obvious that they were drunk. Victoria grabbed her hand and they began to run, and the men gave chase, laughing gleefully. They raced round a corner and found themselves in a small square at the junction of three roads. There, Leo came to a stop, dragging Victoria to a standstill, and turned to face their pursuers.

  ‘Well?’ she demanded, in Greek. ‘What do you want? Are you men, to behave like this, or animals?’

  The three faced them, panting, exchanging looks and she knew instinctively that they were daring each other to be the first to attack. She closed her hand round the butt of the revolver. There was a sudden clatter of boots from one of the side streets and four Greek soldiers appeared. Leo turned to them and shouted, ‘Help us, please! These men are harassing us.’

  She had gambled on the hostility she had sensed between the two occupying armies and it paid off. The newcomers exchanged looks and then plunged forwards and within seconds the little square was a melee of flying fists. Leo grabbed Victoria’s hand. ‘Now, run for it!’

  They ran until they reached the wider and better lit streets in the city centre, but here, too, all the restaurants were packed with soldiers and they did not dare repeat their experience with the first one. Finally, they found themselves standing in front of the Makedonia Palace Hotel, the grandest in the city.

  ‘Let’s try in here,’ Victoria suggested.

  In the foyer they were met by a flustered porter. ‘No, no!’ he cried in Greek. ‘You cannot come in here. Do you not see the notice?’ He pointed to a placard set prominently in the middle of the entrance.