Belonging (15 page)

After Jagjit left for India, I went into a kind of hibernation. That summer was the hottest and driest I can remember in England. Day after day the sun shone, and seemed to mock my misery. There was a weight in my chest formed of grief and dread that threatened to rise into my throat and choke me. I woke with it in the morning and went to bed with it at night.

Each day I took a book from my great-grandfather’s library and went up on the hill behind the house to my old hideout. Books had been my comfort throughout childhood when Father was away; imaginary worlds filled the emptiness of knowing that no one cared for me most, not even Ayah, because Mother’s needs always came first. I had lost myself in stories then, but they could not console me now; I could no longer forget who I was and become poor orphaned Pip or Jane Eyre, alone and friendless, taking comfort in my shared unhappiness. But the story I went back to repeatedly was ‘The House of Eld’, puzzling over the meaning of Jack’s tragic story.

About a fortnight after Jagjit’s departure, Aunt Mina called me into the morning room. She was reading through some papers, and looked up at me.

‘Sit down please, Lilian.’

I pulled up a chair to the desk and sat opposite her, wondering what she wanted. Again there was that feeling of awkwardness between us. I had lived with her for seven years and still we did not know what to say to each other.

She put down the paper she was holding and looked at me. ‘Do you still wish to go to university in London?’

I did not know what to answer. The application date had passed and I had given up the idea. Nothing had seemed to matter very much except the fact that Jagjit might be killed. Although I tried not to believe it, I could not help feeling that everyone I loved was destined to be taken from me.

‘I don’t know, but it’s too late now, isn’t it?’

‘I spoke to Mr. Beauchamp a few weeks ago and he agreed to speak to the Provost for me. Because so many students have joined up they have unfilled places, and if you are still interested you could go up for an interview next week.’ She handed me the letter.

‘But I thought you didn’t want me to go.’

‘It may seem to you, Lilian, as though I make a point of always standing in your way, but I know what it is to live in uncertainty. I have always found it better to keep oneself occupied and not have too much time to think. Studying may be the answer for you.’

So she had noticed my unhappiness. Once again I was lost for words. ‘Thank you, Aunt Mina.’

In the event I never did get to university, because in the next few weeks it became apparent to the authorities that this was a war different from any they had ever known. As the scale of the slaughter became apparent, and the casualty lists grew longer, the recruitment drive intensified. Mr. Kipling was touring the country, making inspiring speeches with his
new anthem, ‘Jerusalem’, set to music by Mr. Elgar. Mrs. Pankhurst suspended the Votes for Women movement till the war was over and transferred her energies into recruiting men to go and fight, handing out white feathers to those who were laggardly, while Mr. Keir Hardie, who was an ardent pacifist, was trying to organise a general strike to protest against the war. Mr. Beauchamp told us he had been jeered in the House of Commons for addressing anti-war demonstrations and defending conscientious objectors. He was no longer invited to the house.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Beauchamp, like the mothers of many young men who joined up, had thrown herself into war work and arranged for me to join the Women’s Voluntary Aid Detachment in Brighton. So, less than two months after Jagjit’s departure, I was working at the new military hospital on Dyke Road.

Being a V.A.D. opened my eyes to many of the things Mrs. Beauchamp and her suffragette friends had talked about. For years I had heard them discuss the lot of working class women, but now I experienced for myself what it was like to do hard physical work all day. Unqualified to nurse, V.A.D.s did all the menial jobs: washing unending piles of greasy dishes, emptying bedpans, serving meals. My hands were raw from eczema and being scrubbed with carbolic; my muscles ached. At night I was so tired that I fell asleep on the tram back to the nurse’s hostel, and barely had the energy to make myself a cup of cocoa before collapsing into bed. For the first time I thought about the life of our maids, who rose at five every morning to scrub the grates and make up the fires and went to bed after we did.

I think the tiredness took some of the edge off the shock of the other sights we saw. For the first few months I worked
mechanically, scrubbing and cleaning, fetching and carrying, following orders. We were treated with impatience by Matron and with contempt by the professional nurses, who regarded us ‘lady nurses’ as spoilt and useless. But to complain was unthinkable. When one saw the state of the young men, little more than boys, who were being brought in, it was impossible to feel sorry for ourselves. We were called upon to help hold limbs steady while they were bandaged, to carry amputated limbs to the sluice room, to help bathe men who were the same age as ourselves, to sit with dying men and to comfort shocked and grieving relatives. Overnight, girls who had led sheltered lives were exposed to a level of suffering that was unimaginable to them. In some ways I adapted better than some of the others because I could understand at least something of what these young men had been through. I knew what it was to see violent death; I knew what the inside of a man’s head looked like. I knew what it was to have one’s world come to an end.

Simon came home from France on short leave that November. I was shocked when I saw him. His face was grey, his hands shook and his occasional stammer had worsened. At lunch he seemed abstracted, hardly speaking and ignoring all Mrs. Beauchamp’s attempts to draw him into the conversation. All through the meal he rested one elbow on the table – something we had never been allowed to do – and crumbled pieces of his bread roll between his fingers, letting the crumbs drop on to the floor. I could see it was irritating Mrs. Beauchamp, who eventually said in a chivvying voice, ‘Lila has come to see you, Simon. You could try to be a little less gloomy.’ He shot her a look of such hatred that I was astonished.

After lunch we walked in silence up to the top of the Dyke. I could feel the tension in his body as he stood beside
me looking north over the Weald. It was a still grey day, and a hush hung over the countryside. It had been a wet, cold autumn following the glorious summer, and I wondered what it was like out in the trenches.

He gave a deep sigh. ‘It’s so peaceful. You’d never think that just across the Channel such carnage was going on.’

‘It’s very bad out there, isn’t it?’

He glanced at me. ‘I wouldn’t know where to begin, Lila. It’s worse than anyone can imagine, but you must know that, working where you do.’

I thought of the neurasthenic patients, shaking and stammering, gripped by amnesia or headaches, or dumb from shock. ‘One sees the state they’re in, of course, but for the most part they put a brave face on things.’

‘Or perhaps they’ve just grasped the truth, which is that no one really wants to know about how beastly it is. Everyone is constantly trying to cheer one up as if one’s the doomsayer at a picnic, or dishing out advice when they don’t know the first thing about it. But I should be used to it by now… Mother never really cared about me… she always wanted a girl: someone she could involve in her bloody Women’s Movement.’

‘I’m sure she does care, Simon. It’s just hard to imagine what it’s like out there, even for me. One doesn’t like to ask. Perhaps if you told them about it you’d find they would understand.’

He snorted. ‘Strange advice from you, Lila. It’s not as if you were a great talker yourself. You’ve never said what happened out in India before you came here.’

I was silent.

He smiled. ‘So you see, we’re not so different. Some things are just too hard to talk about.’ He pushed his pale hair back from his brow. ‘Do you hear from Jagjit?’

Jagjit had written several times. He told me that his brother, Baljit, had signed up too. They were in the same regiment. In his last letter he had said that they would be leaving India at the end of the month.

‘He does write. He doesn’t seem terribly happy now he’s in. He says he realises that it makes the officers uncomfortable when they find out that he was a public schoolboy, because they don’t know how to treat him. It’s easier if he pretends not to speak English too fluently, and he thinks they would disapprove of a sepoy being friendly with an Englishwoman, so he won’t be able to write freely once they’re in the field. Apparently their officers read all their letters.’

‘Yes, we do that to make sure the men don’t give anything away. And of course to ensure they don’t say anything about what it’s really like out there. Have to keep up the morale of folk at home, don’t you know? But I can imagine he might find it difficult. Do you know, Father told me some MPs protested when the use of Indian troops was first proposed? They felt it was all right to use Indians to fight other Indians in their own part of the world, but unacceptable to employ them against our fellow Europeans. I can imagine that Army life is not what he envisaged – in the O.T.C. we were all treated the same. Do you know where they’re sending him?’

‘No. He hopes Europe, so he can visit. But surely he writes to you?’

‘No.’

‘But you were such good friends.’

His mouth twisted.

‘I thought so; obviously he didn’t. When we parted he said he’d write – they were his last words – but he hasn’t. Not once.’

I remembered that atmosphere of awkwardness between them on the boat as they said goodbye. ‘Have you written to him?’

‘The ball was in his court.’ He looked at me suddenly and grimaced. ‘I’m sorry to be such bad company, Lila. It was good of you to come.’

‘It’s all right, Simon. I do understand.’

He looked at me properly for the first time. ‘Do you, Lila? Yes, I think perhaps you do. You know, your quietness used to annoy me when we were younger, but I like it now. It’s restful being with you. I find it hard to talk to most girls… I never know what to say to them. One can’t stop thinking about it, you know, even when one’s away from it. At least I know you understand. You’ve always been different.’

After Simon had gone, I thought about what he’d said about my being different. It was true that even as a child I’d always felt separate, apart; I had thought it was to do with being an only child, but now I wondered if it was more than that. The servants had always teased me about my solemnity, and I knew other V.A.D.s at the nurses’ hostel thought me odd and stand-offish.

I had made only one friend at the hospital, a sister called Barbara Melton, who took a shine to me for some reason I was unable to fathom, because we could not have been more different. In her starched uniform and cap she was all professionalism, and the other V.A.D.s were afraid of her, but out of uniform she was the most unconventional person I’d ever met, with her cropped dark hair, red lipstick and short skirts. She said she liked me because I wasn’t silly or squeamish, and just got on with the job. All of us were naïve and none of us was used to performing menial tasks, but
some of the girls were so incapable that they were more of a hindrance than a help, and others became coy and giggly when having to deal with tasks like administering bedpans or helping with bed baths. Barbara had no patience with them; she herself was an Honourable, the daughter of a baronet, and had become a nurse before the war, despite the opposition of her family, who did not consider it a profession for ladies. Her fiancé, Ronald, was at the front.

Less than a fortnight after Simon’s departure, plans were announced to transform the disused Royal Pavilion in Brighton into a hospital for Indian soldiers. Barbara was one of the sisters picked to work there, and she decided to take me with her. V.A.D.s were not wanted at the Indian hospital because all the manual work was done by Indian orderlies – the nurses were forbidden to touch the men – but Barbara thought my knowledge of Hindustani would come in useful.

The preparations were extraordinary. Every effort was made to respect the different religious observances: there were separate water taps, separate cooking facilities, even separate operating theatres and orderlies for Hindus and Muslims. Hindu and Sikh temples were set up in tents in the grounds and arrangements were made for Muslims to be taken to worship at the mosque in Woking. The floors were covered in linoleum and rows of white-sheeted beds and screens created a hospital environment at ground level, while, above, the painted domes, palm tree pillars and magnificent chandeliers that gave the former royal palace its oriental feel remained. For men recovering consciousness, it was disorientating to find themselves in what seemed like an Eastern paradise, and they sometimes had to be reassured that they were not dead or hallucinating. But, for me, it
was like coming home. Listening to the buzz of Hindustani took me back to my childhood, playing in the compound and listening to the servants gossiping as they worked. And hearing the Sikhs speaking Punjabi reminded me that it was the language Jagjit would speak at home, and made me eager to learn it.

I enjoyed being with the men, helping them with the reading and writing of letters; I was grateful to Father who had taught me to read and write Hindustani. Gurmukhi – the Punjabi script – was beyond me, but I found Punjabi itself quite easy to pick up because of its similarity to Hindustani.

The work I liked best was sitting with the dying. I have never seen a baby born but Barbara tells me that witnessing the presence of a being where no being existed before is nothing less than a miracle. For me the moment of death was no less profound. Father used to tell me the story of how Savitri outwitted Yama, the Lord of Death, to save her young husband, who was fated to die. Savitri, the faithful wife, was the heroine of the story but I liked Lord Yama best, because he was compassionate enough to allow himself to be outwitted, knowing they would both come to him in the end.