Barbara Cleverly (19 page)

‘I can’t tell. When I was a child — when I was a baby — my parents were busy most of the time and I spoke more to the servants than I did to them. I spoke more Hindustani than I did English for the first five years of my life. When I was in England at school and even more when I was in France in the war I found myself dreaming in Hindustani. And I think I could say that for the first seven years of my life I was entirely happy all the time and when I was cut off from it I had only one thought in my head — “When can I get back to India?” I used to whisper “India” to myself when things got bad. I swore an infantile vow that it was only a matter of time before I’d be home again.’

‘And they snatched you away from all that and sent you back to school in England? That’s terrible!’

‘Well, I certainly thought it was terrible. It happened to everybody. It never crossed anybody’s mind to complain. And it still goes on. I was lucky though. I was sent home eventually to school in Cheltenham. To a school that specialised in Anglo-Indian exiles like myself. I travelled with two friends in exactly the same situation. Minnie da Souza and Kate Bromhead. I don’t know where I’d have been in an English boarding school if it hadn’t been for them. We must have been a pain in the neck! We were all in our different ways exiled and bereft. We got over it by making a little enclave. We spoke Hindustani to each other and, to the limited extent that we could, we wrote notes to each other in Hindustani. Sometimes one of us would pretend we couldn’t understand what the teacher was saying and then another would translate it. It’s a wonder we had any friends at all!’

‘I should think they thought you were very exotic,’ said Joe. In his mind a picture had formed of three sallow little girls, spindly legs and big eyes, doing their best in alien surroundings to set themselves apart under an Indian flag.

Nancy resumed, as coffee was put on the table beside them, ‘I even made myself a tick-off calendar counting the months, weeks and days until I might be able to come home. But as the number of days to tick off diminished to manageable proportions a terrible blow struck us. The war. Everything suddenly was thrown into the melting pot. My parents were in England at the time on a year’s long leave. My father scuttled back to India where his regiment awaited him. We — the three witches as we called ourselves — had a serious conference, I remember it so well, in the box room at school. We decided to train as nurses. You can’t imagine the complications of that decision! But we persisted and we got our way and finally we became the three most innocent Red Cross nurses in the world.

‘We had heard that there were Indian troops in France. We thought if we were clever we could get to where they were so we could nurse them. We wrote a letter to the War Office saying nurses who could speak Hindustani must be in short supply — what about it? Some old India hand at the War Office picked up our letter, apparently, because — the wheels ground slowly — there came a day when we found ourselves on a troop ship en route for St Omer. The British Forward Hospital. We thought we’d died and gone to heaven! We loved our uniforms, loved the respect the chaps paid us and we didn’t mind the admiration of our fellow schoolgirls left behind. I had a letter from my father which said, “Jolly good show, old girl! Mummy and I are proud of you!” Poor old poppet! He didn’t have long to be proud. There was cholera in Srinagar where he was and before he could write again, he and Mum were dead.

‘I had never liked England, except when my parents were there. People had been very kind — to all three of us — and we were never short of invitations for the holidays but we welcomed France. It was the first station on the road back to India, you see. I thought of India as being white and gold. I thought of school as being red and brown and I came to see France as grey and grey and almost always raining. I suppose it wasn’t; there must have been hot days but I don’t remember them.

‘I remember when we arrived at the hospital in St Omer, lying in bed on the first night. I heard somebody muttering and wondered who it was and then I realised that it wasn’t a person at all — it was guns. Guns, always guns muttering. From then on for three more years.

‘You really can’t believe that anyone could be as ignorant or as innocent as we were. The training had been pretty perfunctory, you know — a few months in the Indian troops’ convalescent hospital in the Brighton Pavilion, if you can believe! And that was all. We didn’t really learn much more than how to tie a clean bandage out of a packet, how to carry a breakfast tray and how to stop the men getting too fresh! How to keep them at arm’s length. Arm’s length! How do you keep a man at arm’s length when half his stomach has been blown away? They were desperately shorthanded so we were thrown in, virtually untrained, at the deep end. In my first week I saw five men die. Little Cheltenham schoolgirls don’t often see men die but there we were in the middle of it. I doubt if any of us schoolgirls had ever seen a naked man before — our only knowledge of male anatomy was derived from the statuary in the Louvre museum. But by the end of our first week we were conducting bed pan parade without turning a hair!’

Joe took advantage of the lightening of her mood to ask a question he had long wanted to ask. ‘Were there ever affairs between nurses and patients? I can tell you, amongst the common soldiery it was the subject of much speculation!’

‘Rarely. And very discreetly.’ She paused, wondering whether to confide secrets and, after a calculating glance, went on, ‘Yes, it happened. Life is intense — concentrated and very ephemeral under those conditions. Men were often declared fit and sent off back into action again too soon. We girls knew — we just knew — when a boy wasn’t going to come back from the front. And, you know, Joe, some of them, especially the ones who’d got close to a particular nurse, would know it too and their regret, their main regret, would not be the complete waste of their lives but that they were going to die before they’d ever loved someone. And nurses are there to give comfort. It’s what they believe in and I’m not going to criticise the ones who chose to follow their instincts.’

She looked at him directly and defiantly. Was she trying to tell him something about herself? Why did she feel that was necessary? There was some mystery here. The possible reason made his heart thump with excitement.

‘Wasn’t it, I mean, couldn’t it have been dangerous

um

of uncertain outcome?’

‘Of course. If we’d been discovered we could have been dismissed and sent home. But no one was going to get rid of a competent and experienced nurse. We were in short supply. But I don’t think that’s what you were hinting at?’

Nancy’s eyes crinkled in amusement as she remembered. ‘Our matron was not the kind of matron you might envisage — all bosom, starched and rustling! She was slim, twenty-four years old and her mother, the Countess, was a director of the VAD! No, the only starchy thing about Madeleine was her apron. We all knew she wore eau de nil silk cami-knickers underneath her uniform. She used to say they reminded her of who she really was. She gave us a piece of advice on relationships with the men — “Girls, don’t!!! But if you must, be sensible!! You’ll find what you’re looking for in the bottom drawer of my desk!” ’

They fell silent as a side table, glasses and decanters, each with a silver label around its neck, were placed beside them. Joe selected a balloon glass and swirled a little brandy around quietly, anxious not to interrupt Nancy who was almost lost to him in the memories.

‘I remember,’ she said, ‘in the spring of 1918 there were some American troops. They’d had a bloody awful time. They were so brave it broke your heart! There was one boy — he was dying. You soon get to know and I knew that he was dying. I’d gone to bed but couldn’t sleep so I went down to see him in the ward. I didn’t bother to put on my uniform, I just pulled my dress on over my head and went and sat beside him. Oh, God, Joe! Can you imagine this — he suddenly said, in a sort of little boy’s voice, “Is that you, Mommy?” What could I say? I said, “Yes, it’s all right, darling.” And then he said, “Is John there?” And I said, “Yes, he’s here — somewhere about.” And he rambled on. I wanted to do something for him, something special. So I peeled off my dress and lay down on the bed beside him, put my arms round him. He stopped muttering, sighed and snuggled close. About two o’clock in the morning — it always happened at two in the morning — he died. It really was my darkest hour. I saw no hope for anyone and I had to be on duty again in four hours.

‘I had seen others die and was to see more but, somehow, this really entered my heart. He had, in a way

’ She paused for a long time and then resumed, ‘Maybe you’ll find this ridiculous but he had, in a way, become my baby. And his passing left a gap in my heart that the years have not filled. Dammit! I don’t even remember his name!

‘In tears I called for stretcher bearers and while I was waiting for them my attention was called to another man lying nearby. His service dress cap was on the bed beside him. Idly I picked it up. He was an officer — rather unusual on that ward. He was in the 23rd Rajputana Rifles, the Raj. Rif. as we used to call them. I thought he was dead or at the very least, dying. He looked up, reached out for my hand and said, “Well done!” Just that — “Well done.”

‘He was in pretty bad shape. He was my first Indian army casualty and as best I could, I made a tremendous fuss of him. His wound was terrible.’ Nancy hesitated for a moment, her thoughts slowed by the weight of memory. ‘His leg was practically shot to pieces. Multiple fractures and the flesh was cut to ribbons. We all thought it would have to be amputated but the young doctor who dealt with him had only just arrived and hadn’t yet begun to bargain limbs against speed and efficiency. He made a heroic effort and the Raj. Rif. officer began to mend. Eventually — after about a month, I suppose — there was talk of moving him back to the base hospital in Rouen. I tried to keep him — very selfish of me. We used to talk about India and I told him the only thing in the world I wanted was to go home. He understood and we talked about it a lot.

‘One day he had an official-looking sort of letter. He asked me to read it to him. He’d been in the ICS before the war and this was an offer. The Collectorship of Panikhat, can you believe it! He was quite upset. “This would have been just what I wanted,” he said, “if I weren’t a cripple.” And I went for him! “Just what you wanted? Then take it! I haven’t wasted six months patching you up to have you at the end of the day turning down an offer like this! You’ll walk again. You’ll ride a horse again. Take it!”

‘He was very amused and then he said something so extraordinary, something that actually transformed my life. “Do you really want to go back to India?” and I said, “Yes, more than life.” And he said, “Give you a first class, one-way ticket if you like.” And I said, “What on earth do you mean?” He said, “Marry me. It’s not much of an offer

you know the state I’m in

but marry me and be the Collector’s lady.”

‘I couldn’t believe it! Still can’t sometimes.

‘Shortly after that Raj. Rif. wounded began to come in and we found ourselves talking to them, writing letters for them, listening to them and all the time telling them they were going to be all right. And the Collector-Elect of Panikhat persuaded the authorities to allow him to stay in the forward hospital (quite irregular, of course). He said, “I can do more good here talking to the chaps than I would sitting on my bum in base hospital in Rouen playing bridge all day long.”

‘I really loved him, you know. And I still do.’

She fell silent, her eyes in the candlelight shimmering with tears, and Joe waited, finding no words to speak, sensing that she had almost got to the end of her story.

‘The war was on its last legs by then, though we didn’t know it. There were miles of red tape to unwind so it was two months before we could get married. As soon as we could we said our goodbyes and suddenly everybody was going home — all the Yankee boys, the British singing “Auld Lang Syne” and the Raj. Rif. just smiling. Quite a lot of us were crying including me and then we were off in a train to Paris for a honeymoon. From there to Marseilles, on to a P&O steamer to Bombay and all my dreams came true.’

‘All your dreams?’ asked Joe quietly.

Ť ^ ť

‘All my dreams?’

Nancy repeated his question slowly and her eyes slid away from his to focus on the single orchid which stood in a slender silver vase between them. She was silent for a long while, gently stroking its silken petals and, from her silence, he understood that she was considering his deeper meaning.

‘No. Not all my dreams. But most of them. Such as they were at the time. India was still white and gold and all that I had hoped for. The people smiled and the sun shone. The blood and the pus and the misery, the noise and the squalor, they were all far behind in France. I remember saying to myself, “I’ll have clean clothes every day!” And, of course, in India you do have clean clothes every day. I was coming alive again. But then

’

Her face suddenly grew bleak as memory returned. ‘Peggy Somersham, my best friend. There was I in India surrounded by the peace and comfort that I’d longed for and suddenly here was my friend lying dead in her bath. I knew that somebody had come into my paradise and murdered someone close to me for no reason I could think of. And why Peggy? Why not me? I was back with death. I was back with blood. And more than I have ever hated anybody or anything I have hated the man who was responsible for this!

‘I imagined how he’d done it and tried to reconstruct it. I didn’t get a scrap of co-operation from Bulstrode, condescending bastard that he is! If I tried to interest him or suggest he ought to look a bit further, he would just give me that irritating laugh, the laugh that said, “There, there! Don’t you dirty your pretty little hands. This is man’s talk. You wouldn’t understand.” So I rang Uncle George and we talked about you and about the forensic techniques and criminal character analyses we’d heard you lecturing on and we agreed — “That’s the man for us!” And Uncle George — he’s very good at that — pulled a few strings and here we are. He’d take it as a personal triumph I think if you could pull this off!’