Home for Christmas (37 page)

‘It’s quite simple, Hortense. Men are wounded on the battlefield. Ambulance drivers are needed to collect them and bring them back here so I can put them back together again – as well as I can when they have bits missing and …’ He stopped, the rest of what he had intended saying sticking in his throat. ‘What I mean to say is,’ he said, taking up a pencil and tapping it impatiently on his paperwork, ‘that ambulance drivers are getting killed too. Agnes Stacey does her job well. She collects the wounded and brings them here. Added to that,’ he said, a sarcastic note entering his voice, ‘she is alive. We need her.’

Realising she had alienated the doctor instead of gaining his approval, Hortense made another effort to repair the damage.

Although it was hard to admit it – even to herself – she could see by Darius’s expression – despite his weariness – that he was as susceptible to Agnes Stacey’s looks as any man. Her face was a little too freckled to suit the accepted idea of beauty – that which is pale and protected from the sun by a lace-trimmed parasol – but all the same, she had seen the way men’s eyes followed her. Albeit begrudgingly, she conceded that they were likely to be the best judge of female beauty after all.

Darius pulled his thoughts away from Agnes’s vibrant good looks and tried his best to focus on the situation as he saw it.

‘I think we have to tolerate Agnes’s dress sense. I think we also have to fear for her in the present circumstances.’

Hortense frowned. ‘Is there something I should know?’

He nodded wearily whilst pushing his hair back from his face. ‘It was reported a week ago that someone close to her, an aviator, is missing in action. One has to expect her behaviour to be erratic.’

‘Erratic? She’s very headstrong. Full of energy and high spirits,’ Hortense said, as though that were something of a drawback.

Barely controlling some less than gentlemanly comments, Darius frowned at her. ‘What a pity we couldn’t bottle those high spirits and hand them out in big spoonsful. Should do the injured no end of good and make our job a damn sight easier!’

Doctor Darius Emerson fingered the bottles of morphine, the ether and other painkillers, salves and ointments ranged on shelf after shelf of the medicine cabinet. He was tired, totally worn out with work – and the war, in his opinion, was hardly even started.

It was usual to keep such medicines under lock and key along with all the other lesser pain-relieving medicines he kept in the cupboard. How long would it last, he asked himself. Nothing could persuade him that this war would be over by Christmas. A great dread haunted both his waking hours and sleepless nights that the casualties would be overwhelming, that nothing would be decided in a few short months. If his instinct served him correctly, then the dressings and painkillers would quickly run out.

Anticipating opposition from senior officers, he had decided, off his own bat, to requisition greatly increased supplies from London. Hopefully, the supplies would come through before anyone noticed he hadn’t gone through normal channels. If anyone did notice, he was for the high jump – unless his judgement proved correct, in which case his foresight would be rewarded.

A cold sweat broke out on his brow as he rubbed his eyes, then rested his head against the medicine cupboard, relishing the coldness of the glass doors against his temples. He headed outside.

‘Major. Are you all right?’

His face turned towards her, the lightest point in the darkness, except for the blush of sky behind her, residual light and heat from the artillery barrage.

He recognised the lithe form, the confident way she approached him, the way the little light that there was made her hair look as though it were on fire.

‘Agnes. What are you doing out here? Leave me alone. Get back inside.’

‘I’m not in the army. I won’t snap to attention.’

Agnes had had a bad day. She was burning with anger, sick and tired of seeing injured young men, their eyes glazed, their mouths open, crying for their mothers.

‘This war is stupid,’ she said angrily.

She stood close to him, her hand on his shoulder. She saw him look at it as though wondering what it was.

‘Do you know what I think?’ she said when he stayed silent. ‘I think it is far better to make love, not war. Do you agree?’

It happened quickly, neither of them giving themselves time to think again.

She didn’t protest at his rough handling of her breasts or the speed with which he unbuttoned her trousers. On the contrary, she needed him to be doing this, to feel the heat of him, smell the mildewed dampness of his uniform. If this grunting, grinding, grabbing of flesh was sin, then it certainly didn’t feel like sin, more like a need to prove physically that they were still alive. They were indulging in raw, physical, emotional sex, without frills or the pretence of committing to each other. Just simple lust to blank out all the horrors they had seen and all the horrors to come.

November, 1914

Lydia had been apprehensive about writing in her mother’s journal, but now it seemed the right thing to do. At least someone would know what her life was like if anything should happen to her. Someone would read it. Someone would know.

She had intended recording just incidents in the war, but the journal was filling up with memories, bits and pieces that came to her while bandaging wounds, assisting at an amputation, changing dressings smeared repugnantly with the yellow, greenish tinge of infection. Writing down memories of the past helped shield her against the horror-laden present.

Daylight hours passed in a blur of activity. Sleep was restless and came with dreams – nightmares – more grotesque than the days.

Like all the other Red Cross nurses, she was wearing more layers of clothes in order to keep warm. The fine summer had turned into a fair September, but it was now late November and the weather had turned bitterly cold.

The chateau might have retained more heat, but a few stray shells had left holes. The holes let in the cold despite the tarpaulin sheets fastened over them.

‘I feel so fat in all these clothes,’ Lydia said to Fleur, her Belgian roommate.

‘We all are,’ said Fleur. ‘I’m wearing three petticoats and two dresses, I look twice as fat as I am, and I’m still cold.’

‘One day all this will be over and we’ll both be slim again,’ Lydia said. ‘The first thing I shall do is have a new dress made. Something extravagant and luxurious – and preferably made of silk!’

Fleur sighed. ‘My family thought I was mad to become a nurse. I told them I was doing it so that the right side might win. Now I’m not sure whether that has anything at all to do with it. What’s right? What’s wrong?’

Lydia turned her face to a sudden commotion just outside the ward. Four soldiers were chasing a pig. The pig was screaming in alarm and heading directly for the nurses’ refectory.

On seeing this, Fleur opened the door, the pig scuttled through and the door slammed shut.

Lydia stood beside Fleur, their backs against the door.

The four soldiers exchanged furtive glances.

‘Can we have our pig back?’ one of them said.

Folding her arms across her chest, Lydia glared at them defiantly.

‘Is it really your pig?’ she asked.

‘We found it.’

‘So it’s not really yours,’ said Fleur.

‘It was requisitioned,’ said one of the soldiers.

‘It’s for dinner on Christmas Day,’ said another. ‘For the men. Injured as well as uninjured. It has to be hung first. Meat is better after it has been hung.’

There was something wrong about letting them in to take their pig, but there was also something very right about it. The two nurses, Lydia and her friend Fleur, stepped to either side of the door.

‘Poor pig,’ said Fleur. ‘It will soon be dead.’

Lydia nodded disconsolately. ‘It will have plenty of company.’

The armies that had manoeuvred across France and Flanders during August and September, by the middle of October had become entrenched. Both sides had dug trenches, battened their walls with strips of wood, placed duckboards over the solid ground, the trenches growing in ever-lengthening tentacles.

Everyone prayed for respite between barrages, enough time to transport the injured from the lines to the hospital. Although damaged, the hospital had become a small oasis amidst the bloodiest warfare men had ever contrived. Ypres, the lovely old town just a few miles away, was at the heart of a horror to end all horrors.

Thousands of men on both sides had been killed or maimed, their crushed bodies hardly recognisable as men at all; like slabs of bloodied mud dug straight from the ground, the first task was to dig beneath their clothes, to wash and disinfect the flesh before wounds could be treated.

Days and nights went by when Lydia hardly had time to sit down let alone sleep, but Robert was always in her mind. She’d heard nothing from him. Had he read her letter? Did he know where she was? There was little time to dwell on what might have been or come to the worst conclusion possible, but it did happen. In her darkest moments, she believed he’d obeyed his family’s wishes and would not be in contact ever again. Nobody had minded her father being German before the war. How quickly things change.

Letters from home were slow getting through, and stopped altogether once the chateau was surrounded by the enemy. Hopefully, the German hospital and those brave staff, including her father, who had remained despite the hostility of some, were safe. She sincerely hoped they were.

Most of all she hoped Robert was safe.

‘Please God, he’s safe,’ she prayed whilst cleaning the eyes of a German soldier injured by shrapnel.

The soldier overheard her.

‘You speak English?’

Reluctantly, because one could never judge the reaction, she told him her father was German, her mother English.

‘I went to Oxford before the war.’ Black fluid ran from the corner of his mouth as he spoke, a mixture of blood and cordite coming from his lungs.

‘Lay back. Rest,’ said Lydia. ‘Just rest.’

‘I went to university in Oxford. My father bid me come home. I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay. I had made many friends.’ He paused, seemingly thinking it over. Finally, he said, ‘Now my friends are my enemies.’

Lydia watched him die feeling both sorry for him and for herself. The war had only just started, yet had destroyed so much already. It had to stop. Somehow or another, it had to stop.

‘Pray God it will,’ she whispered.

One day, in a brief moment of catching a breath of fresh air away from the smell of dying men and gangrene, Lydia saw three aeroplanes flying overhead. The moment the German guns opened fire from the ground, she knew they were British and her blood turned cold.

The fragile flying machines banked in low in order to assess the enemy positions and did not return fire. She wasn’t even sure they had guns and even if they did, the flying machines were tiny compared to the heavy artillery blasting shells up at them. Like bees flying through clouds of pollen, she thought, and her throat tightened.

Suddenly, she saw one burst into flames and fall to earth. It was hard to breathe. Her heart palpitated as she imagined the worst. She hoped the pilot got out safely, no matter whether he was British or German. Always she thought it might be Robert. If only there was news from the other side, but there was not.

Head bowed, she rushed back inside away from the horror happening before her eyes and the fear in her mind. Keeping busy would help. Yes. Keeping busy would help.

She brushed past Esther, her hands shaking as she sorted out instruments in need of sterilising.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Esther.

Lydia wiped her hands and brushed her apron flat. ‘Yes. Yes. Of course I am.’

There was no time for more conversation. When there was time to sit and talk, nobody did. They were too tired, too affected by the sights they had seen and the effort of trying to put right what the war had made so wrong.

In those quiet, precious moments, she closed her eyes, leaned her head on the chair back and thought of times past. It was close to midnight when she again ventured outside. The sky lit up with the firing of guns, the sound reverberating through the air like the mightiest thunderstorm that ever was. No lightning could ever be so bright or so frightening. Each flash meant the death of hundreds of men, perhaps thousands.

‘Are you all right, Lydia?’

She knew it was Franz. His voice sounded tired as though he were dragging it along behind him. Without looking round she knew his face had altered, his expression sadder than ever. They all looked like that, the medical staff, all trying hard to do their job and already bone tired.

The one thing they held on to was their complete impartiality; an injured man’s nationality counted for nothing. No matter that they were in German hands, they did what they could for everyone.

‘The weather is turning colder,’ he said to her. ‘It will soon be Christmas.’

‘It will.’

‘The snow will already have fallen on the town where I used to live. It snows earlier in the Alps than in the valleys, usually around October. October is the beginning of winter.’

She saw his breath streaming into the air along with the smoke from his cigarette.

‘Would you like one?’ He held them out to her. She noticed they were Woodbines. British cigarettes.

‘I got them from a dying Tommy. He gave them to me. Said he would have no use for them where he was going,’ he continued.

Lydia regarded his features, turned angular by the small lantern hanging from a pole outside the tented extension of the hospital. He was staring into the distance, not focusing on anything more than the thoughts in his mind.

‘How many men do you think have died so far?’ she asked, surprising herself that she found the courage to ask. Not knowing helped her to cope and believe she had helped many survive.

‘Too many.’ He fell silent. She could feel his eyes on her and knew he cared for her more than he should.

‘I have a bottle of brandy in my quarters. When we have the time, that is. It might do you good. It might do both of us good.’ He sounded melancholy, overwhelmed by tiredness.