Amy (5 page)

‘It’s getting bad, Amy,’ Helen whispered.

‘Meanwhile,’ Dr Hanfield went on, ‘you are to continue your duties. And under no circumstances upset the men. No nasty rumours, no panicking. Remember who you are. British women. And these men are in your care.’

A letter arrived for Amy from her father.

Amy sighed and put the letter in her pocket, to be answered as soon as she could. She couldn’t go back. Perhaps she could work as an orderly in an English hospital but it wouldn’t be the same. At least here she felt that she was at the heart of things, that she was doing her utmost, the utmost that she was allowed. She couldn’t go back.

There were times, though, when she had to use all her self-control to repel fear. It was not, she thought, exactly fear that she felt now. The situation had to be accepted, overcome. It was more a heightening of awareness, a slight but constant tensing of the muscles, a sharpening of the senses. She was aware that her body seemed to be holding itself alert in readiness for whatever was going to happen. She must control her mind to control her body. Were the Germans as bad as everyone said, or was this just propaganda to fire the British populace into anger and fighting spirit? She tried to imagine what it must be like to be a man, to face something more real, something that was actually
happening
now, to go over the top of the trenches into an inevitable and expected hail of shells and machine-gun fire. What must it be like to face death or mutilation on such a scale? Her own fears seemed minor in comparison.

She felt also the responsibility of her profession. Giving way to fear was something that doctors must not do. She remembered how, newly qualified and in her first house job, she had lain awake at night,
listening
as the ambulances drew into the hospital yard, knowing that she would have to go down to the ward, make life or death decisions for other people, to take decisive action. That responsibility was so great that for a time she had found it terrifying. That fear went away with time and experience. There was, of course, no comparison with the present source of fear, but it had to be conquered just the same. She would not leave. Doctors did not, should not, run away, leaving their patients to face whatever was coming.

The world was full of fear even without the war. She thought of the women in the slums at home, living in damp, vermin-ridden rooms, struggling and fighting to feed their children, watching them day after wretched hungry day, willing them to survive. That was something that must be dealt with after the war – those barefoot, half starved
children
, children with scurvy, rickets, conditions that were not due to infection or disease, but to poverty and simple neglect and lack of
nourishment. How many children to a family? Five? Six? Even more? Women who had a child year after year, who spent most of their lives pregnant, who went without food themselves to feed their ever
growing
families. There was a woman in America who had written articles about contraception and the need for impoverished women to have access to it. She had been pilloried by state and church groups, denounced as immoral and flying in the face of God. Had these people ever seen how these women lived? How they struggled and starved? It was that situation that was immoral. Her determination rose in her again, to do her job here, to get her licence back, to help these people when the war was over.

The wounded poured in. They continued their endless work,
washing
and delousing men, making beds, feeding, trying to ignore the threat that hung over them. Every day they expected the dreadful news that Paris had fallen. The strain of the work was enough, but none of them could sleep properly at night, except when they were too exhausted to think. Even then, often, Amy would wake in the early hours, her heart pounding, wondering what it was that had wakened her, listening for any noise that was unusual, that could signal disaster. Rain rattling at the windows would sound like machine-gun fire; a shout in the night would sound like a battle cry.

Then one day Helen rushed into the ward, laughing, beaming, doing a little dance. ‘Amy, Amy, M. Le Blanc is here with such news! There’s been a battle at the Marne and the Germans have been beaten back. They’re retreating. They’ve gone back miles. They won’t be coming to Paris.’ The men in the beds were cheering, those who were on their feet slapping each other on the back.

The relief was overwhelming. Amy found that her first reaction was one of enormous fatigue, as if all her muscles had released their tension and left her limp and helpless. She slept that night in a deep, dreamless sleep. As long as it lasts, was her last thought. As long as it lasts.

The atmosphere in the hospital lightened. Hope was in the air.

‘Perhaps this is the beginning of the end,’ Helen said. ‘Perhaps it will all be over soon.’

Amy could not begin to believe it, not while the men continued to pour into the hospital. The two armies seemed like two wild beasts, head to head, jaws locked in a kind of stationary combat, neither giving ground, blood pouring from their wounds.

A
MY
dressed in her uniform, putting on the shirt over her bodice. For a moment her fingers shook so badly that she couldn’t do up the buttons. She stopped and made a little sound, puffing out her breath in exasperation. They had been here for nearly a month now, surely she should be used to it. As if anyone ever got used to it.

Helen looked up. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, buttoning up her shoes. ‘Are you all right, Amy? Is anything wrong?’

Amy shook her head. There was no point in saying what she was thinking. What could she say? I’m going to see some terrible things today? How could such things happen? The words would give body to the thought. There was no point in saying this to Helen anyway. Helen knew. There were times when they had both stumbled into this room and clung to each other and burst into tears; times when the carnage and the suffering they had to witness was too much for anyone to bear. They had to stay strong; otherwise they would be useless to anyone. Helen was the only person who had ever seen her cry.

She shook her head again. ‘Just these dratted little buttons.’ She could see from Helen’s strained face that she understood, that she understood not to say anything, not to pursue it. Helen gave a tight little smile. The skirt was loose, Amy noticed. She had lost weight since she came to France. She picked up her boots and turned them upside down and shook them.

Helen grinned. ‘Find any spiders?’

Amy sat down on her bed and pulled on her boots. ‘No. Horrible
things. They’re even bigger here than they are in England.’

‘Autumn coming,’ Helen said. ‘They get everywhere.’

Amy got up. ‘Worse things than spiders.’ she said. ‘Got to go.’

‘You look very nice,’ Helen said. ‘Very crisp and efficient.’

Amy forced a smile. ‘Not for long. It’ll look very different by the time I get back.’

‘I know,’ Helen said. ‘I’ll see you tonight. Be careful, Amy.’

Amy left the room and walked down the corridor to the staircase. She stood at the top of the stairs, looking down. The big crystal
chandeliers
still hung from the ceiling. They caught the gleams of sunlight from the tall windows and cast all the colours of the rainbow on to the marble floor. She couldn’t see into the other rooms, but she knew what was there; she saw it every day, the constant fight against infection, pain and death. She paused for a moment, gathering herself into a calm, controllable whole. She felt, not exactly fear, but a mounting tension that froze her muscles. She was aware of her shoulders rising up and her jaw clenching. She forced herself to relax, taking a few deep breaths. She felt slightly sick, as she always did when she had to go out with the ambulance; a nausea of apprehension.

The hall below was filled with uniforms. The crisp white aprons of the nurses and orderlies moved among the khaki and the plain blue uniforms of the wounded men, a strange contrast to the luxurious surroundings. It hardly seemed real. Only a few weeks ago she had been at home. Nothing much would have changed there. Her father would be getting ready to go to his school and Mrs Jones, the daily woman, would be starting on the housework. Normality. Did it really still exist, anywhere? A faint smell, a mixture of ether and carbolic and suppressed nastier things, reached up the stairs.

Dr Hanfield walked into the hall below, talking to a British officer in khaki – not a patient then. He looked quite young, Amy thought. Young enough to fight. She felt calmer now, and ready. She walked down the stairs into the hall. She stopped to let three wheelchairs go by. One of the men had no legs below the knee. She hurried towards the street door.

‘Oh, Amy,’ Dr Hanfield called. She was smiling and beckoning. ‘Could I speak to you for a moment?’

Amy walked over to her, across one of the glowing Persian carpets, criss-crossed now with the wheel marks of the chairs.

‘I’m on the ambulance today, Doctor,’ she said. ‘I think it’s waiting.’

‘I won’t be a moment, Amy. ‘Dr Hanfield turned to the officer. ‘This is Miss Osborne, one of our orderlies. She has been with us from the beginning.’

Amy looked up at him. He was tall, in his thirties perhaps,
broad-shouldered
. He looked down at her, brown eyes under brown hair that curled a little. His eyes smiled, but they held the look that she had come to recognize. They were darkened with that particular
horror-filled
experience that all the men seemed to have – all the men who had been to the trenches.

‘This is Captain Fielding, Amy,’ Dr Hanfield said. ‘He is a surgeon with the Royal Army Medical Corps. He’s come to see what we do. The British Army apparently wants to know.’ Her voice held an ironical note. Amy smiled but said nothing.

Dr Hanfield turned back to the Captain. ‘We were all rather
disappointed
,’ she said. ‘We had hoped that the British Army might have been more open-minded. We hoped they might be glad of the services of women surgeons and physicians during the war, but it seems not. However, the French Red Cross seems to be quite pleased with our work here in Paris.’

He nodded. ‘So I understand.’

‘And not only the surgeons.’ She turned to Amy. ‘Miss Osborne is on her way out with the ambulance today.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Out? Where?’

‘One of the villages,’ Amy said. ‘To pick up the wounded.’

‘Which village?’ he said, frowning.

He looked surprised, she thought. Perhaps he didn’t expect that women would be doing such things. Perhaps he thought that she should be at home knitting socks. She was prepared to be irritated.

She looked him in the eye. ‘I’m not quite sure. The driver knows. One of the villages. They get word to us somehow about where the men are – the wounded.’

‘Will you be near the Front?’

‘Possibly,’ she said shortly. ‘That’s where the wounded usually are, isn’t it? Usually we don’t know. They get the men back any way and anywhere they can.’

He looked at her in silence for a moment. She wondered if she had been too sharp, too outspoken. Maybe he didn’t have the usual
prejudices
.
Who knew? After all, it wasn’t his fault that the British Army took the attitude that they did to women doctors. Most of the male population was the same, and many of the women too.

‘May I ask what you will be doing, exactly?’

Amy looked at him and opened her mouth to reply, but the words wouldn’t come. Her mind seemed to contract, trying to shut out the frightful images of what she would be doing. She couldn’t hold them back, the severed limbs, exposed intestines, the moans and cries – ‘Water; God; Mother; help me’. She stared at him for a moment, unable to speak. Dr Hanfield put her hand on her arm and gripped her. The firm pressure shook her, brought her back to the present. She took a deep breath. ‘We will be bringing in the men,’ she said. ‘Bringing them back here to the hospital.’

He said nothing, but he smiled at her, a grim, complicit sort of smile. He seemed to understand. She could see compassion, even admiration, in his face, in the sudden warmth in his eyes.

‘You are very brave,’ he said at last.

‘It’s not only me,’ Amy said. ‘We all do it.’

‘Then you are all very brave.’ He smiled. ‘Until the war, I didn’t think ladies did that kind of thing.’

Amy looked at him calmly. ‘We were underestimated.’

Dr Hanfield laughed softly and he looked a little sheepish. ‘So I see.’

‘Thank you, Amy.’ Dr Hanfield put her hand briefly on Amy’s shoulder. ‘Take care.’

Amy nodded and walked on. At the door she turned and looked back. Captain Fielding was looking at her intently. Then he raised his hand and gave her a slow salute.

The ambulance was waiting outside the door. Bill, the driver, opened the door for her.

‘Morning, Miss Amy. Nice day.’

‘I hope so, Bill.’

She climbed aboard. Bill went to the front of the ambulance and put in the starting handle. He swung it several times before the engine caught. Then he climbed in beside her. They set off through the streets of Paris, going north.

The streets were busy, a few carriages and motor cars, but mostly carts and barrows going south. The carts were laden with whatever the people could rescue from their houses – trunks and boxes and pots and
pans, bedding and small bits of furniture. Children or old men and women perched and clutched and swayed on the loads, the children with puzzled, frightened faces and the old people with faces that seemed already dead, frozen in fear and pain. Babies cried, or quietly suckled in their mother’s arms as the carts went past. Often the traffic slowed and pulled to one side to let the ambulance through, and then closed in again in an endless stream.

The broad Parisian streets narrowed and diminished and then they were driving through the suburbs, and then through scattered groups of houses. The houses were shuttered and silent as if they had been abandoned, but here and there smoke rose from a chimney, thin
poor-looking
wisps rising up into the still air. Then they were out in the countryside.

She began to feel the tension rising again. She drew in her breath, and clasped her hands together. Bill turned to her briefly.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing, I’m fine.’

‘It’ll be all right,’ he said, but she noticed that his jaw was clenched and his lips were curled in and pressed tight. He took a battered
cigarette
out of his top pocket and put it in the corner of his mouth. After a few seconds he lit it with a Lucifer, bending over the wheel, his eyes still carefully on the road.

It was late September and still warm and dry. The countryside looked peaceful enough as they drove along the long straight roads of northern France. The lines of tall, straight poplars filtered the bright sunlight and it flickered on their faces as they drove by. It seemed almost normal, a normal day in a normal country, until they came across the trenches dug by the roadside. They passed a lorry that had been burned out and abandoned, and a dead horse that had been pulled into a ditch, one leg sticking up in a grotesque salute. The sweet, nauseating smell of death thickened the air and she tried not to breathe as they went by. They passed through villages that seemed lost and deserted but once or twice, as they approached, they saw a woman clutch her child and run into the nearest house. How dreadful it must be, Amy thought, to have such fear for your children.

She watched the countryside going by, trying not to feel anything. Beside her Bill was silent, but she could see beads of sweat standing on his brow. He drove steadily, but his eyes constantly swept each side of
the road, constantly watchful. Amy thought that they were well away from the enemy lines, but you could never be quite sure. Sometimes even the troops they met didn’t know. Sometimes they saw an aircraft above them, a swooping biplane, never knowing whether it was friend or foe.

Amy looked about her. The fields and pastures looked so lush, so beautiful, but further on, she knew, the land itself was as shattered and wounded as the men. She had often wondered what France would be like, in those days that were so far away now. Holidays with her father had always been in England. She remembered how excited she had been as a child, taking the overnight train from Paddington to Cornwall, or the train up from Euston to the Lakes. Then when she was older, she had so wanted to travel, especially to France, but they never really had enough money, and she could never spare the time; her studies were all consuming. She had thought then to see a beautiful country, contented farms, prosperous towns and a Paris that led the world in fashion, sophistication and chic. She had never expected to see France like this, battered, exhausted, running with blood.

‘Barricade,’ Bill said. Amy jerked back to the present.

Every few miles they were stopped at a barricade and the
ambulance
searched by French or English soldiers, and they were able to ask directions. Some of the English soldiers they met were cheerful enough; they were wearing fresh, clean uniforms, joking and laughing. They’ve just come, Amy thought. They haven’t been to the trenches yet. They were very grateful for the Woodbines and the books she brought with her.

One of them, a cheery, rosy-cheeked boy, came up to the ambulance window. ‘Thanks a lot, miss,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the fags.’

Amy leant out. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Cheshire. Worked on a farm.’ He glanced about him. ‘Nice land here. I never knew France was so like England. I’d like to come back after the war – have a look round.’

Come back? Amy looked at his open, innocent face, her heart contracting. What were his chances of coming back? ‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘Best of luck.’

‘Won’t be long,’ he grinned. ‘We’ll soon get rid of them Huns. They can’t beat us Tommies.’

He saluted and went back to his friends. They gave her the thumbs
up sign, broad grins, and letters to be posted to England when she got back to Paris.

Amy watched them as they drove on, battling with her feelings of horror and despair. She knew, perhaps better than they did, what was in store for them. She had seen the results, the remnants. How did they do it? How did they make themselves do it? They must know the facts about what was happening. They had to shut their minds to it; they had no choice. They had to shut their minds to the likelihood of being killed or maimed among the trenches, the barbed wire, the shells, the machine-guns. She turned to Bill to say as much but the words stuck in her throat. Bill had been there and had lost half his left hand. He wouldn’t want to hear her thoughts.

How do I do it, she thought, and Helen and all the others? There wasn’t a single thing in her life that had prepared her for this. Her contacts with suffering humanity had taken place in the best
conditions
. She had no experience of raw, bestial, pain and death. She felt a wave of homesickness for the solid, comfortable house in Bromley, the sweet smell of her father’s pipe tobacco. It had been so peaceful, so serene. They had thought it would go on for ever.