Amy (21 page)

‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You could only get this in England.’

‘Nowhere like it,’ Johnny said. ‘Wherever I get to after the war I shall always want to come back.’

Amy hesitated. She found that she needed courage to ask. ‘What will you do,’ she said, ‘after the war?’

His face was eager, his eyes bright. ‘I don’t know exactly, but I’d like to see a bit more of the world. There’s so much out there. We’ve got an Australian pilot in the squadron and he has amazing stories. Do you know how big Australia is, Amy? How vast? They’ll need aeroplanes. There’s so much of the Empire, apart from anywhere else, Africa and India and Australia and New Zealand and Canada. Wild places, Amy. Just imagine it.’

Wild, she thought. That would attract him, of course. Wild and dangerous. She said nothing, and looked away across the river where shadows were gathering beneath the trees and low screening branches trailed in the water.

‘I’m glad you met my mother,’ he said. ‘She’s quite a character, isn’t she?’

The change of subject took her by surprise. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was glad to meet her too. She is rather – formal, I suppose.’

He smiled. ‘Old-fashioned, perhaps. Set in her ways.’

Amy paused, and then she said, ‘Do you think she knows? Do you think she really realizes what is happening in France?’

‘Not entirely,’ he said. ‘She thinks of war as battles, cavalry charges with sabres. Or brave regiments taking a stand at Rorke’s Drift.’ He took a swallow of his beer. ‘She doesn’t really understand what I’m doing in an aeroplane.’

‘Can anyone know?’ she said. ‘Anyone who hasn’t been there?’

‘Perhaps my father knows,’ he said. ‘He’s a thinking man, and he’s doing something at the War Office. He doesn’t say what.’

The mother duck sailed calmly back again, the little ones almost running after her across the water.

‘Your mother seems to think that everything will go back to the way it was before,’ Amy said. ‘I don’t think it will. People are changing.’ She stopped, wondering whether to go on, but he was relaxed, watching the river. ‘Women are changing. They are doing so many new things. Many of them are not going to be satisfied to go back into domestic service, or even just to stay at home and be wives and mothers.’ She watched him, wondering how he would take that remark, wondering whether he would say how he felt about it.

He didn’t seem to notice it. ‘My mother won’t change. She doesn’t think women should have the vote.’

‘What about you?’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t mind women having the vote. After all, they’ll be bringing up the next generation.’

‘What about women working, having careers? What do you think about that?’

He frowned. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We’d better get on. I’ll take you home and then I’ll go to Town and stay at my club tonight.’ He smiled at her. ‘It’ll be easier to get to you tomorrow.’

He led her to the car and helped her in. He hadn’t answered her question. She could quite believe that he had never thought about it. Women of his class didn’t work, didn’t have careers; certainly not careers like medicine, a life that was so contained, so absorbing. Women like Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell and Mrs Garrett
Anderson were few and far between.

He left her at the door of her house. He took her hand. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. He put her hand to his lips and sighed. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said again. ‘It’s my last day. Ten o’clock?’

She nodded. ‘Yes.’ He got into the car, waved his hand, and drove away.

She took off her hat and coat in the hall. Her father was in the
sitting-room
, reading. He put his book down as she came in. ‘Hello, my dear.’

She went over to him and kissed his cheek. ‘Hello, Father.’

‘Come and sit down,’ he said. ‘What have you been doing today?’

She sat opposite to him by the fireplace. The evening had cooled and a little fire was burning, her mother’s screen moved to one side. ‘Johnny took me to have tea with his mother. They have a house in Berkshire.’

‘Meeting his mother? That sounds rather serious.’ He paused
expectantly
. ‘Is it serious, Amy?’

She bit her lips. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you love him, Amy?’

She nodded, her eyes filling. ‘Yes, I think I do, but his background is so different. If I try to ask him what he feels about women working he doesn’t really answer. I don’t think he’s ever considered it except as a kind of philosophical question. It’s not something that happens in that kind of family. Charity work, yes, but not a career. They would think that being a wife and mother was enough of a career.’ She sighed. ‘I know what his mother would think. She’d have a fit. She would want his wife to be there to support him, in every way, just as they always have been.’

He smiled, and then the smile faded. ‘What are you going to do?’

She stared into the fire, her hands clasped and her shoulders
drooping
. ‘Nothing. Wait.’

‘Put it off, you mean?’

She sighed. ‘I suppose so. I really don’t want to bother him now. God knows, he has enough to think about – his flying, the war. I don’t want him to be disturbed by anything. We just have to get through this war day by day. I don’t want to distract him in the slightest way.’

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘But you can’t have a successful relationship unless it’s based on honesty. Tell me, dear, has he mentioned marriage?’

‘No,’ she said. She thought suddenly of Dan, of his careful
explanation
of his attitudes. ‘I don’t think he would, under the circumstances.’

‘But he must feel something for you, or he wouldn’t want to see you.’

‘He does feel something for me, Father, I know that, but I don’t know whether his feeling for me is enough to overcome any prejudices or objections he might have.’ Her head drooped. ‘And I don’t know whether I could give up medicine. It would be like giving up most of my life.’

‘Be careful, Amy,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to find out now, before it goes any further? I just want you to be happy.’

She went to bed early, wanting to be alone, to think. She didn’t really know what Johnny’s intentions were. Perhaps he didn’t know himself. How could anyone think clearly in this war? Could she give up
medicine
? The very thought made her feel strange, panicky and breathless. It would be like losing a limb, losing her heart. Could she give up Johnny? Could he give her up? Her thoughts went round and round without any resolution. Johnny’s mother was obviously concerned, suspecting that they had more than a friendship. His father had told her in a very diplomatic use of words that Johnny must make his own decisions and live his own life. It was just possible, though unlikely, that Johnny might be perfectly happy for his wife to have a job.

Wait, she thought. Wait. It was Johnny’s last day tomorrow. She wasn’t going to spoil it by worrying. She probably wouldn’t see him again for months. There was no need to try to make decisions now.

Johnny collected her at ten the next morning and they drove to London.

‘What would you like to do?’ he said. ‘I think the Herbert Tree production is still on at His Majesty’s, if you’d like to go to a matinee.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s a lovely day. Could we walk? Could we go to see some of the Wren churches in the City? I’ve always wanted to do that.’

‘Of course,’ he said.

He parked the car near the Monument and they walked around the City, to one or two of the lovely old churches, to St Mary Le Bow of the Bow Bells, and then to St Paul’s. Amy gazed up at the great cupola. These churches held for her a deeply comforting atmosphere of
holding
fast, of endurance. ‘It’s so magnificent,’ Amy said. ‘You don’t think the Germans would ever—’

‘No,’ he said at once. ‘I don’t think even they would do that. Things like this belong to the world.’ They came out into the sunshine. ‘Let’s have lunch and then I’ll take you for a walk in the park.’

They had lunch at the Cheshire Cheese and then drove to Hyde Park Corner. Johnny parked in Park Lane. The park was busy with people enjoying the sunshine, women in bright summer clothes, young men in uniform, nannies in uniform pushing large baby carriages or sitting in chatting groups on the park benches. There were children everywhere, running about, throwing balls or bowling hoops.

Johnny took her hand. ‘I want to be alone with you,’ he said.

She laughed up at him. ‘We are alone.’

He looked around him. ‘Alone in Hyde Park? That isn’t what I mean.’ He stopped and turned her towards him. ‘I want to be really alone with you.’

‘I don’t know, Johnny,’ she began, but then stopped, silenced by his intensity, the physical tension in his body, his serious face.

‘I want to kiss you,’ he said. ‘If you don’t want to be kissed in front of all these people, I think you had better come with me.’

‘Where?’ she said.

He placed her hand under his arm and began to walk her away. ‘We have an apartment here,’ he said. ‘Just off Park Lane.’

‘We?’ she said.

‘The family. We used to have a house a generation ago, but I think it got a bit expensive, even for us. The apartment’s shut up when no one’s in London. There’s no one there at the moment.’

She stopped and looked up at him, her heart beating so loudly that she thought he might hear it. ‘Is that wise, Johnny?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Probably not. Is anything wise these days? We don’t have time, do we, to be wise?’

She couldn’t speak, her longing for him overwhelming her. She felt her body melt and dissolve until she seemed to be nothing but feeling. She knew that he sensed it. He looked at her intently; the muscles of his face suddenly relaxed. He took her hand.

He led her to a block of mansion flats and they walked up the stairs to the first floor. She noticed everything with a strange clarity, the
spotless
stairs, the brown carpet, the bowl of flowers on a side table. It was as if she were storing it all in her memory, like a series of photographs to be taken out later and looked at and cherished.

He took a key from his pocket and opened the door. He led her inside and closed the door behind her. ‘Amy,’ he said, his voice
breathless
, urgent.

He took off her hat and threw it behind him. He reached behind her and took the pins out of her hair so that it fell about her shoulders. He took her face in his hands and then he kissed her. It was so different from his last kiss. That had been gentle and tentative. This kiss was a new discovery, a new world. She felt her body leap towards him. He put his arms around her and his face against her hair. ‘I want you, Amy,’ he said, ‘more than I have ever wanted anything.’

She felt helpless. She had lost all memory of reason or intelligence or control. She wanted him with a passion that she couldn’t resist, that she didn’t want to resist. ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘Yes, Johnny. I’ve never….’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Are you sure, Amy?’

‘Yes,’ she said again.

He picked her up in his arms and carried her to a bedroom. He undressed her slowly and kissed her breasts and she shuddered under his touch. He laid her, naked, on the bed and undressed himself. She knew his body. She had nursed and washed and fed it, but she was overcome again by his physical beauty.

He lay beside her and touched her hair as it spread out on the pillow. ‘You’re so beautiful, Amy,’ he whispered. He ran his hands over her body and she melted into his touch. This is right, she thought. There is nothing wrong about it, nothing immoral or foolish. It is right. She cried out as he entered her, and then, at last, she cried out again.

They lay together, her head on his shoulder. He was so still. She moved away a little and looked at him. He seemed to be asleep, his face utterly relaxed, his fair eyelashes brushing his cheeks.

‘I’m not asleep,’ he said. He opened his eyes and smiled at her. ‘Are you all right?’

She bent over him and kissed his lips. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course.’

‘Are you my girl now?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

He hung over her, touching her face and her hair, kissing her with small kisses as if he were gently devouring her. ‘You’re so beautiful.’

She lay down again on his shoulder and drifted into sleep. She woke again to find his lips on hers and his body pressed against her once more.

Afterwards she dressed and put up her hair and retrieved her hat. She looked at herself in the mirror. It’s different now, she thought. She almost said the words aloud. Her father was right. She must tell him now. She must give them both the chance to decide on the future.

He drove her home in the late afternoon. All the way she was
thinking
, I must tell him; I must tell him now. He stopped the car outside her door.

‘I won’t come in,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go early in the morning and I’ve got to pack. Give my regards to your father.’

She summoned up her courage. ‘Johnny,’ she began.

He put his finger over her mouth to silence her. ‘You’re frowning,’ he said, ‘so I don’t want you to say anything. No frowns. Just kiss me.’ He kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘Don’t forget you’re my girl.’ He got out of the car and opened the door for her. He got back into the car and drove away.

H
ELEN
had left for England when Amy got back to Paris; gone home to arrange her engagement. Amy felt, not envy exactly, but a longing to find things so easy – fall in love, get married, no problems. She felt different now; everything had changed. She had given herself to Johnny. At least, she had given her heart and her body, but what about her mind? She so wished that she could talk it over with
someone
, with Helen, perhaps, one day.

The war seemed to escalate in horror; her own problems seemed puny and unimportant. The talk around the hospital was dire. One of the men, shot in both legs, told her that two battalions of soldiers had been buried alive in their trenches by German artillery. When they got to them all they could see were rows of bayonets sticking up out of the ground. All the men were dead, suffocated as they stood. The picture was horrifying.

The wounded poured in. There were men with infections, not just surgical cases, men with typhoid, infective jaundice, pneumonia and dysentery. They had been put in the upstairs bedrooms to be nursed, isolated from the others.

Amy went back into theatre.

‘I’m glad to see you back, Amy.’ Dr Hanfield looked even more tired and drawn. ‘I hope you had a good rest. I’m afraid you’re going to be very busy. All the staff are tired out and are due for a rest but we’re hoping for some new recruits.’

‘I see we’re taking medical cases now,’ Amy said. ‘They’ll need a lot of nursing.’

Dr Hanfield nodded. ‘We’re getting a new doctor, thank goodness, a physician who can look after them, and some new nurses. The typhoid is getting worse, and now there’s infective jaundice everywhere. Apparently the trenches are overrun with rats, spreading it about.’

Amy shuddered. The rats would have plenty to eat.

‘There’s no excuse for typhoid,’ Sister said briskly. ‘The British Army should have made inoculation compulsory, like the French did. I don’t know why the men would refuse it. They go into all this but they’re frightened of needles!’

On 1 July they knew that something dreadful had happened; the hospital was rife with rumour and filled with shocked, worried faces. A few days later M. Le Blanc came into the hospital, his face white and hands shaking and was closeted with Dr Hanfield for half an hour. After he’d gone, Theatre Sister asked Amy to go to the office to ask for more morphine. She knocked at the door. There was a long pause and then Dr Hanfield called, ‘Come in.’ She was standing by her desk and had a look on her face of utter despair. She’d obviously been crying. She looked at Amy with swollen eyes, for a moment unable to speak.

‘What is it?’ Amy said. ‘What’s happened?’ For a dreadful moment she thought that the bad news was for her alone, that something had happened to Johnny. Then with a flood of relief she realized that was foolish. Whatever it was that was causing this despair, it could not be something so personal, so individual. The whole world seemed to be dying.

‘They’ve started fighting on the Somme.’ The doctor’s voice was breaking. ‘There were nearly sixty thousand British casualties on the first day. Sixty thousand, Amy, in one day. Nineteen thousand of those are dead.’ She sat down at her desk and put her head in her hands. ‘The aid posts and hospitals are overwhelmed. We’ll be overwhelmed. I don’t know how we can possibly cope.’

‘What can I do?’ Amy said. ‘I’ll do anything.’

Dr Hanfield wiped her hands over her face. ‘We’ll just have to do our best and carry on as normal. At least we’ve got some new staff coming. Ask Sister to come to me, please.’

Amy closed the door quietly. She gave the message to Sister and then went up to her room and sat down on her bed. Sixty thousand
men. What on earth could it have been like, that hell? No horror that mankind had ever brought about could have been like that. Even the American Civil War couldn’t have been like that. What was
happening
? Was it the end of the world? I have to do more, she thought. I have to do more.

After a week Helen came back, white-faced and appalled. She had brought with her some English newspapers. ‘Do you know, Amy?’ she said. ‘Have you seen these?’ The papers were filled with the horror and with endless lists of the wounded and dead. ‘Look.’ Helen was almost crying. ‘They thought the British guns had wiped out the German trenches, but they hadn’t. They still had their machine-gun posts. Our men were mown down like animals. And it was all for nothing.’

Amy put her arms around her. ‘Oh, Helen.’

‘Peter had to go back early,’ Helen said. ‘There are dead and dying everywhere, Amy. There are shell holes full of dead, trenches full of dead. Piles and piles of dead. And Peter’s there now, in the middle of it all.’

‘He’s in a Clearing Station, Helen,’ Amy said gently. ‘He’ll be all right. The Clearing Stations aren’t that close to the trenches. It’s not as if he’s in an Aid Post at the front.’

‘No, he’s not in a Clearing Station any more.’ Helen’s face was grim. ‘He and Dan have been posted to the hospitals at Étaples. That camp is right next to a railway line and there are hundreds of troops there. I’m frightened the Germans might bomb it.’

‘They won’t bomb hospitals, Helen.’ Amy tried to sound positive and confident. ‘They’ll be all right.’ She took Helen’s hands in hers. ‘Tell me about your engagement, Helen. Think about that instead. Did it all go well? What did your parents say?’

‘It was wonderful.’ Helen dried her eyes with the heel of her hand. ‘His parents are dears and mine were so pleased. They loved Peter.’

‘I knew they would.’ Amy smiled, happy for Helen, but she wondered whether her father really approved of her relationship with Johnny. He had never really said anything against it, but she knew that he worried about it, about whether they were really suited to one another. She tried to concentrate on Helen. ‘Aren’t you going to show me the ring?’

‘Oh yes!’ Helen took her engagement ring out of her bodice, where it was hanging from a chain.

‘It’s lovely,’ Amy said. ‘Sapphire and diamonds.’

Helen held it in her hand. ‘I want to be with him, Amy. I just want to be with him, all the time, wherever he is.’

‘Oh, Helen,’ Amy sighed. ‘What can you do? We just have to keep going. What can anyone do?’

‘I don’t know yet.’ Helen put her ring back in her bodice. ‘Tell me about you. Did you see Johnny?’

‘Yes, I did. He took me to see his mother.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Stiff,’ Amy said. ‘Very stiff. I don’t think she really approved of me.’

‘Oh dear. Why ever not?’

Amy shrugged. ‘Not in the county set, I think. I saw his father too. He was very nice.’ She took the little box out of a drawer and held out her brooch. ‘Johnny gave me this.’

Helen took it in her hands. ‘Oh, a sweetheart brooch.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That’s what they call them,’ Helen said. ‘Sweetheart wings. They are copies of the wings on the Flying Corps uniforms. The pilots give them to their sweethearts.’

Amy put the brooch carefully back in the box. ‘I didn’t know that,’ she said.

Helen laughed. ‘He’s much more than a friend. Now do you believe me?’

Amy could almost feel his naked arms around her and his lips on hers. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I believe you.’

The news from the Somme came every day and chilled the blood. Amy worked long hours in theatre, but she found it hard to sleep and her restlessness increased. She lay in bed at night, worrying. She was well aware that her restlessness and fearfulness were because she might possibly be pregnant. In retrospect she wondered how she could
possibly
have been so reckless. What would she do? Would Johnny do the honourable thing? Even if he did, what would her life be like then? She thought she knew. All decisions would be made for her. She was torn. One part of her longed to have Johnny’s children, but not now and not until she had told him what she wanted to do. When she had a child, if she ever did, she wanted it to be longed and planned for, conceived in a love that was held in the permanence and commitment of
marriage. She waited, counting off the days, terrified that they would go by and her fears would be confirmed. She woke on the expected day and found that she was bleeding. Her period had come on time. She was not pregnant.

But the restlessness stayed. She began to feel more and more that the relatively luxury of Paris was not what she wanted, when the world around her was a sink of suffering and death. She wanted to be with the men, to share their privations, to put herself to the test. She didn’t want to come out of this war knowing that she had taken the easy way. New staff was coming to the hospital. They could manage very well without her.

Helen continued to look bereft. ‘Amy,’ she said one night when they were going to bed, ‘I’ve been thinking.’

‘What about?’

‘About being with Peter. I can’t think about anything else.’ Helen stopped in the middle of brushing her hair. ‘I’ve been thinking that perhaps I might apply to go to Étaples. They’d probably take me as a VAD.’

‘How strange,’ Amy said. ‘I’ve been thinking more or less the same thing. Things are getting so much worse. They must be desperate for people with experience. I just have this feeling that I’ve done all I can here. Someone else can take my place. I want to do something more.’

Helen said, excitedly, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s go together.’

They talked it over for several days. Amy could see nothing against it. Her father would not be happy about it, but he would have to accept, as they all did now, that the war was going on, there was no end in sight. He would know that she had to do everything she could, everything that she was allowed to do.

They went together to see Matron. She didn’t try to dissuade them, but she tried to make sure that they knew what they were doing. ‘Do you know what Étaples is like?’ she said. ‘It’s a huge camp. Hundreds of troops are training there and coming and going all the time, and the hospitals there are overwhelmed. You won’t have a nice room to stay in; a hut will be more likely. Are you quite sure you want to leave Paris?’

‘Yes,’ they said together.

‘Very well then. I’m sorry to see you go, but best of luck.’ She gave them both a reference to say that they were already experienced in hospital duties.

Dr Hanfield added a note for Amy to recommend that she should work in theatre. ‘I’m sorry to lose you, Amy,’ she said. ‘But I
understand
how you feel. Best of luck.’

They sent in their applications, and they waited. Helen was
impatient
. ‘Why don’t we hear? I’ve told Peter that we’re coming.’ At last, at the end of August, the letters came. They had both been accepted. Amy wrote to her father and to Johnny.

They packed their meagre belongings. They spent an afternoon saying goodbye to Paris. They went to Nôtre Dame, the Place de la Concorde, the Place de l’Opera. The statues and monuments were surrounded by even more layers of sandbags.

‘I’m going to come back after the war,’ Helen said. ‘I shall get Peter to bring me. We’ll stay at our hotel and be proper tourists.’

Amy laughed. ‘I’ll come with you.’

They bought more toilet soap and some perfume. ‘I think we might need this,’ Helen said, ‘if what we’re told about Étaples is anything to go by.’ They went to Printemps and bought sturdy boots and
mackintoshes
and several sets of warm underwear. Winter in a hut was a
chilling
prospect.

They said their goodbyes in Paris and took the train, crowded as usual, and arrived in Étaples in the late afternoon. The station was packed with wounded men waiting for trains to take them to Paris or to Boulogne and then a boat back to England and home.

They made their way out of the station. It was raining and the roads were thick with mud.

‘God,’ Helen said, ‘if it’s like this in August what is November going to be like?’

They left their bags at the station to be collected and walked to the camp. Long rows of huts came into view with sand hills and sparse grass here and there between them. The railway line ran alongside the huge camp between the huts and the sea and the road to Camiers ran close by.

As they drew nearer they heard a constant rumbling sound, the sound of traffic on the road. They watched in growing horror. The road was packed with troops and lorries and ambulances. Many of the wounded were on foot, men who looked half alive, eyes empty and faces drained of everything but the supreme effort of making it to the camp. Wounded men helped others more injured than themselves.
Many were on makeshift crutches. Many were without boots, their feet wrapped in ragged bits of cloth.

Helen clutched Amy’s arm. ‘Oh, Amy,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘I knew it was bad, but I never imagined anything like this.’

They walked through the endless rows of huts, looking for the hospital they were to join. Here and there a few flowers bloomed, a few daisies or a brave rose. They found their hospital and reported to the matron, a small, round woman with a steely eye. ‘Settle yourselves in,’ she said, ‘and report to me in the morning.’

They were led to the small hut that was to be their home. They looked around.

‘Goodness,’ Helen said. ‘Matron in Paris didn’t exaggerate, did she?’

The hut had two beds, a table and two hard chairs, a cupboard for each of them and a few nails hammered into the wall appeared to be all there was of a wardrobe.

‘Real home from home,’ Helen said.

Amy hung her dripping raincoat on one of the nails. ‘A bit closer to reality,’ she said grimly.

Helen grinned. ‘A bit closer to Peter, anyway.’

They felt, rather than heard, a distant deep, vibrating rumbling, and the hut gave an almost imperceptible shake.

Helen paused from her unpacking, a pair of boots in her hand. ‘What on earth’s that?’

The rumbling came again. ‘It’s guns,’ Amy said. ‘Heavy guns, a long way away.’

Helen said nothing, just pressed her lips together and put her boots in the cupboard.

The next morning they reported to Matron. ‘I see that you both have some experience,’ she said. ‘That’s good. I’ve assigned you to the theatre, Miss Osborne. Report to Theatre Sister.’