In Falling Snow (12 page)

The girl looked at Grace. “Sometimes. He's just tired, I think.” The girl was all of seventeen. What would she know about paediatrics?

Grace went over to Henry and gathered him up. “You tired, honey?” He nodded, half asleep. He was wearing the Superman suit over his clothes. “Well, come on, Superman, let's get you home.”

Grace put him in the back with his sisters. Mia recognised immediately that he wasn't quite awake. She put her arm around him. “There there, Henry,” Mia, all of eight, said. “We'll get Granna to fix you up with some nice biscuits and a drink of milk and you'll feel like new.” Henry smiled. Thank God for Iris, Grace thought, not for the first time. Where would we be without her?

The children came up the stairs, the middle one in front, what was her name, the eldest, Mia, behind, helping the little one, Henry. I called out to Mia to let Henry come up by himself and held out my arms. “Come and hug your granna.”

“Where's the sugar glider?” the middle one said after a perfunctory hug, her eyes wide. Phil, that was it. Phil was the easy one, Mia already much too serious, just like Grace, bursting with opinions, argumentative. Phil was full of joy, just like my brother Tom at six, wanting to experience everything now.

“Come quick,” I said at the top of the stairs. “It's time to wake him up.” Phil was there first. “Ooh,” she said. “Can I hold him?”

Mia wasn't far behind. “No, Philomena, they're dangerous.” Phil looked at me and rolled her eyes as if she'd learned to expect this from her big sister.

“Who told you they're dangerous?” I said. “They're not dangerous, Mia. They're just creatures like you and your sister.”

Mia looked at me as if I were a slightly naughty child. “Granna, you shouldn't touch wild animals. I would have thought you'd know that. Of all people.” When she'd been little, I'd been to the school to talk to Mia's class about life on a farm. The children, all around six years old I suppose, couldn't believe you might only need to go to a shop every couple of weeks to buy rope or oil, that everything else you'd be able to find or make on your own land. They stared. I think they saw me as something akin to a dinosaur exhibit at the museum. It was all they could do not to poke or prod me to see if I roared. When she thanked me afterwards their teacher told me it was really important that children knew where food came from. I suggested she might start a vegetable garden and she looked at me as if I wasn't all there.

Henry was at the top of the stairs finally. “See, Mia, he can make it on his own. He just needs encouragement.” But the poor boy looked exhausted. What was it Grace had said about him? “Young Henry, shall we go and find the sugar glider?” He nodded enthusiastically, catching his breath. “Do you feel all right?”

“Yes please,” he said. He smiled. Henry has the red curly hair and blue eyes from my mother's family but his smile belongs to my brother Tom and I had a moment where I couldn't quite place him, where instead of Paddington and Grace's children, I was at Risdon and Henry was Tom.

“Are you all right, Granna?” It was Mia's voice. “You look scared.”

I came back to myself and looked at the boy, momentarily still not quite sure who he was. And then his name came back. “I'm fine.”

Grace had dropped the children off and backed straight out of the driveway. “Just going home to make a call,” she'd said. I tried to tell her I had a perfectly good telephone but she'd already wound up the window and didn't hear me. I looked up the street. No sign of her yet. I took the children into the front hall.

I lifted the cloth over the umbrella box. The sugar glider was staring right up at us with those big dark eyes, blinking in the sudden light. “I think he's hungry. Let's feed him.” They fought over who'd go first. I said we'd do it by age, youngest to oldest. We warmed some milk and put plenty of sugar in. Henry concentrated carefully as he held the dropper. The glider knew by now what it meant. He slurped hungrily. “He's a little piggy, Henry,” I said. “No wonder he's called a
sugar
glider. Now give Phil a turn.”

“Does he fly like Superman?” Henry said.

“What do you mean?”

“A glider. Is he a glider? Can he fly?”

“Sort of,” I said. I picked up the tiny creature and carefully, I laid him flat on my palm on his belly, legs outstretched. “When he grows up, he'll use his body and glide from tree to tree,” I said. “He'll be as light as a bird.” I pointed to the webbing between front and back legs. “He'll use this to stay in the air,” I said, “a bit like a parachute.”

“Then that's his cape,” Henry said. “Let's draw an S on it.”

“Perhaps later, Henry. Right now we need to let him sleep. Let's go out the back. We'll make some biscuits and have some apples and milk.” I watched Henry get up. He stood slowly, with considerable effort. “Are you all right, son?” I said.

“I'm super-duper,” he said. “Can I get some chocolate?”

I smiled. “There's nothing wrong with you, Tom Crane.”

“Who's Tom Crane?” Mia said.

“What?” I said. “Tom Crane's my brother. Why?”

“Oh Granna,” Mia said. “What would you do without us to look after you?”

“I'd be lost in the long grass,” I said. “But let's not think about that. Let's think of pleasant things.”

At first, when I heard the porter's horn, I thought it was just another rehearsal. We'd been ready for almost a week. But when I saw the cars making their way up the icy drive and then the inspector-general from the health service in Paris and the other two emerging and coming towards the doors, I realised it was the inspection at last. I rushed downstairs, joined by Miss Ivens and Mrs. Berry coming out of our operating theatre on the first floor. This was it, we knew, the inspection that would make us a working hospital, or not. “Once more unto the breach,” Miss Ivens said. We went together to the entry hall.

It had been such a busy time and the cold had been awful. I'd never felt anything like it. We rose from our beds and it wasn't until we'd worked for two or three hours that we'd have feeling back in our fingers and toes. I got to where I couldn't stand to wash my hands and face on waking, cracking the ice in the bowl. It seemed better to feel grubby. We had no warm water for a bath. We had running water in the kitchen but nowhere else, which meant we carried bucket after bucket up the three flights of stairs for cleaning, and for the first week, we continued to work by candlelight or used one of the makeshift lamps we'd created with rags. Then one dark afternoon, Quoyle and I were looking for something in the kitchen, too lazy to light the lamps but realising we'd need to soon, and suddenly, there was Mr. Edison's electrical light. A great cheer went up through the abbey. A few days later, we had running water and the abbey cesspits were back in business. Still no bath for the staff though.

We were so proud of how much we'd achieved in such a short time, but as the inspectors walked towards the door, three of them, I had a sinking feeling. The general, knowable by the plume on his hat and the fact that he emerged from his own car, a Mercedes, was short, a foot shorter than Miss Ivens and me, shorter even than Mrs. Berry. He came through the door before the others and Miss Ivens took his hand, leaning down in that way she had, and I knew we were in for trouble. Miss Ivens and I towered over him, and no matter how I tried to make myself smaller, I could not remove a foot or more to make him feel taller. Later I wondered had Drs. Savill and Courthald, of much more reasonable female stature, shown him around, would it have been different. The general was accompanied by a young Croix-Rouge doctor, tall and willowy, who said little, other than that the wards were large and the operating theatres appeared well appointed, and an architect, who took copious notes. None of the three spoke English, so I translated. As Miss Ivens took them through room by room, I could see the general was looking for problems. Some of the X-ray equipment was still to arrive and so we were making do. An old fish kettle had been commandeered as a cistern for developing films. The general picked it up, made a dismissive
hmph
,
and placed it back down. Wires hung out of the ceiling in the operating theatre—we were waiting for a lamp from Paris. At one stage the general turned to me and asked, “Where are the WCs?” I assumed he needed to use one so I took him upstairs to the doctors' quarters. “How will you expect the wounded to climb these stairs?” he said.

I apologised. “I made a mistake. The patients' WCs are downstairs.” He thought I was an idiot.

The day after the inspection, Miss Ivens received the news by wire from Paris, the full report to be delivered later in the day. She read the telegram in silence, looked up and to the left, narrowed her eyes, read it again, and folded it and placed it neatly on the desk. I wanted to ask her what it said but thought it best to wait. Finally she said, “It seems you were right about the wards, Iris.” She had the softest facial features, Miss Ivens, and while she was as strong as an ox, any upset would write itself all over her face. I hated to see her like this. She handed me the telegram. Our second-floor ward was deemed unsuitable, too far from the entrance to the abbey, too dark and with inadequate ventilation. The general had intimated as much following his inspection tour but this confirmed our worst fears. The report, when it came, was more of the same, highly critical not just of the rooms but of those who'd chosen them. “It would be obvious to any competent surgeon that the layout of the hospital is totally impractical.” The report listed other problems, unfinished work, a requirement that we prove our doctors were appropriately qualified. It must have stung Miss Ivens to be so criticised, although she didn't show it. They'd failed the hospital. They'd failed us and the only option was to make the changes they were proposing—changes that made much of our earlier work completely wasted—and undergo a second inspection.

Miss Ivens sat behind her desk and looked at me as I read. When I looked up, I saw all the desperate feelings in the world written on her strong face. “It's not the end of the world,” I said. “They haven't said no. They just don't like our choices.”

Miss Ivens laughed then, back to her old self suddenly. “Exactly, Iris. They don't like our choices, damn them to hell. You'd better call the troops together. We'll meet in Blanche at four. I think I need a little walk first. Get Cicely to spread the word.”

Before the meeting, all the other women knew the outcome and we'd privately or in groups of two and three inspected the rooms we'd now have to clear and clean. One was simply dusty and dirty and full of furniture, but the other you couldn't even get into because of the leftover building materials. It was no surprise we'd avoided them.

Miss Ivens came in to Blanche smiling broadly. “You'll all have heard by now that the Croix-Rouge is not ready to accredit our hospital. The major concern is the second-floor ward, which is in the wrong place, it seems.

“I would like to be able to say they are wrong but they are not. The first floor will be far more practical for wards, closer to the reception area and the theatre. The good news is that once we establish the new wards, Royaumont will surely be accredited and we will have wounded. I know many of you are disappointed. I was myself at first. But if we take a longer view, our work upstairs will never be wasted. I think some of you are wondering if we'll ever have our patients, but I assure you we will work day and night to that end. We must forget about the Croix-Rouge and its complex machinations. We must forget about our own beliefs that brought us here.” There had been unrest among the women—some had joined in the protests for the vote before the war and others were anti those who'd protested—and Miss Ivens was worried it would erupt into more open conflict. “The only thing any of us should have to exercise in our minds in the next few days is the thought of those wounded soldiers who currently die and lose limbs for want of Royaumont Hospital.”

Of course, we worked hard once more and in a relatively short time managed to clear and clean the new rooms. The chapter room in the eastern wing, which opened on to the cloisters, became our Millicent Fawcett ward, named after the president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies from where the idea for our hospital originated. And the two wards running north and south became Jeanne d'Arc and Marguerite d'Écosse.

I had news from home after Christmas, a letter from Daddy. He said the twins were into mischief now, just like Tom as a boy, and Claire could hardly keep up with them. Daddy was off to Toowoomba the next week for the show and Mrs. Carson had offered to come and stay with Claire but Claire had said she'd be all right. I bet she'd said that, I thought. Claire couldn't stand Mrs. Carson, who snooped around for any shred of gossip she could take away with her and gossiped about our other neighbours. Daddy asked me to write soon, to give him news of Tom. I realised I'd hardly given Tom a thought since I'd sent my note. I felt guilty, wondered what I'd write to Daddy in reply, put the feelings away.