In Falling Snow (15 page)

“At first my father was angry. But when I returned to my village in my uniform to say good-bye, he told me he forgave me and that it didn't matter anymore because now I was in the hands of Allah. I didn't know then how mad this war of yours is. The bombs that explode and send pieces into our bodies. My two brothers have died here. I failed to protect them.” He looked confused suddenly. “We are not warriors here, just pieces of meat to put before guns.”

“In my country, no one is forced,” I said.

The soldier smiled then. “You are very white,” he said and put his warm hand up to touch my cheek. I took his hand from my cheek and held it for a moment.

“You should go back to bed,” I said, and smiled. “Thank you for helping. I'll sit with the boy.”

After the soldier hobbled off, I looked at the boy's face. He couldn't be more than fifteen, Tom's age. Tomorrow, I thought, I would get a message up to Amiens. I would find out where Tom was and decide from there what needed to be done. I felt better to have a plan.

Whenever the boy opened his eyes, I tried to communicate peace, but I know I failed. I was good at some things—the business of nursing, the practical part—but never one for compassionate care, a nurse's truest virtue. I knew he didn't understand me but I sat with him, the rest of the ward silent around us, and spoke softly in French. At midnight I fed him a little egg yolk mixed with milk. Most of it slipped out of his mouth and onto the pillow. He moaned softly and came in and out of consciousness. I said the rosary, which achieved about as much as you might expect for an African Muslim. Neither French nor English would soothe him. I sang; I sang “Nearer My God to Thee” and “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” funeral songs, I realised when another patient asked me to hush lest he too die in the night.

And then, at about 4 a.m., Miss Ivens came. She'd only just finished in the theatre again—we'd had more wounded come in. She leaned over to him and spoke so softly I couldn't hear what she said. But his eyes closed and the moaning stopped.

“I'll sit with him,” Miss Ivens said to me. “You go off now and get some rest.”

When I came into the ward later in the morning on my way to reception, another was in the boy's bed. I saw Miss Ivens on her way back to the theatre. I asked her what had happened and she said the end had been peaceful. “Sometimes that's all you can do,” she said. She must have read the sadness in my face. “It's enough,” she said. “Sometimes you can't even give them that. And that's the hardest of all.”

The reception area was much like the day before, if not worse: stinking infected wounds, men in ragged clothes, most of them in shock, unable even to say their own names when we spoke to them. While we worked, a dozen more came in with Violet and another driver, all wounded, most septic. I noticed a man on the other side of the room, moaning low. I went to him first.

He was dying, I knew, as soon as I saw him, shrapnel filling his belly on the X-ray, his fingers blue. If he'd been moved from the field sooner perhaps he'd have had a chance, but the wounds were septic. We didn't need laboratory results to know that. The smell told you immediately. I thought of how he'd spent his last days, lying somewhere in mud by the look of him, cold and alone. “
Maman
,” he said quietly. I looked at his face for the first time. I saw that he wasn't a man at all. He was just a boy, another boy, with dark red curly hair like Tom's. I confess I looked at the boy again to assure myself that he wasn't my brother.

I took his hand. “My beautiful boy,” I said. “Are you cold? Would you like something warm to drink?” He tried to smile. His eyes were closing and opening slowly. I called for blankets. An orderly came over. I'm sure she wondered why I'd stopped. I was supposed to be assessing the patients.

“Get Sister Jackson to finish the other patients,” I said. “I need to stay with this man. I need some warm tea and a straw.” The orderly looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. “Hurry now. He's cold.”

I sat with him and looked over his poor torn body. Tom. I couldn't stop the thoughts now of Tom. I was tired, I knew I was tired. Tom. Was he out in the cold, lying wounded, or in some British hospital holding the hand of a stranger while he breathed his last? This boy was rounder in the face than Tom and with a smaller frame. But he had that same dark red hair that would shine in sunlight, a rare enough colour that it made you turn your head when you saw it. And his eyes, oh his eyes that beseeched me. They were darker, brown, not green, but now everything about him reminded me of Tom. I felt helpless as he struggled to breathe. I wanted to stay with him and give what comfort I could even as I wanted to run from him and go and find my brother. I knew there was no point calling a doctor. They were all too busy and there was nothing to be done for this boy other than what I was doing, helping him breathe his last. It took perhaps fifteen minutes. He didn't speak again in that time but he held my hand, tightly at first, and then relaxed his grip until he closed his eyes for the last time, drew a breath in and held it there forever. I breathed out myself, as if it might start him breathing again. I sat for a few moments more, unable to move. Tom.

I put down the boy's hand and rushed up the stairs, two at a time, my heart thumping, my view clouded by tears, sadness and fear vying for dominance and both threatening to overwhelm me. For it had hit me, finally and fully, that this boy, this boy who had just died with a stranger as his only comfort, could have been my brother Tom. Oh Iris, you young fool, I thought. Your father was right. When will you learn? I found Miss Ivens outside the theatre. Before I had a chance to speak, she told me that the electric lights were out again so they'd been using candles in the wards. “We'll have to get the workmen back. We can't be working in the dark . . .” I knew Miss Ivens had been operating through the night and that now she'd want me to come to morning rounds with her and then see to the office work. I took in her tired eyes, her slumped shoulders, but I knew also that I must speak. “Miss Ivens, I need to go to Amiens. I need to find my brother and make sure he's all right.”

“What? What's happened, Iris?”

“Please, Miss Ivens. My brother Tom. He's just a boy. I don't know how I've missed . . . how I've gone so wrong. I had no idea. There's a lad downstairs with red hair.”

Just then Violet came along the corridor. She was wearing her goatskin coat and held her gloves in her hand. I don't think I've ever been as relieved to see someone. “Violet, would you drive me to Amiens? It's Tom. We must find him.”

“Iris, has something happened? You're white as a sheet, darling.” Violet put her gloves down on the table and took my cold hands in hers and rubbed them.

“I was down in the hall. There was a boy. He looked just like Tom. Violet, it's terrible. I didn't know. We have to go and get him and bring him back here.”

Violet looked at me and narrowed her eyes and then she looked at Miss Ivens. “It's all right, Frances. You have things to do. I'm going to take Iris to the refectory for a hot drink.” She smiled warmly at both of us. “And then, with your permission, Frances, I do need to go to Creil and pick up some trays for Agnes. We could go on to Senlis, where there's a command post.”

“Go,” Miss Ivens said. She was about to say something more when our newest recruit, Dr. Henry, came out of the theatre behind her.

“He's bleeding from the suture,” Dr. Henry said. “Come quick, Frances, I need help,” and she was gone.

Violet's version of a hot drink was something resembling tea that tasted foul and smelled of rum. She put more sugar in it when I complained and made me drink deeply. “Breathe,” she said after I'd taken a few swallows. “And then we'll talk.”

I felt the warm liquid pulse through me but it didn't dull my fear. “We must go, Violet,” I said. “We must find Tom.”

“First you need to try to calm down just a little, Iris. You have more colour now. So tell me what happened.”

I recounted the soldier's death as quickly as I could. “Don't you see, Violet? He could have been Tom.”

“Well, no, he couldn't. For a start, he's an infantryman in the French Army. Tom is with the British Engineers. They build things and then blow them up, I think. That's all we know. And to speak plainly, Iris, if Tom were dead, your father would know and he would have made sure you knew too. Are you sure Tom's in Amiens?”

“No, but that's where we heard he was going and I've heard no more. I wrote him and I haven't heard back.” I looked at Violet. What she said didn't make sense. Why would I know if something had happened to Tom? No one seemed to know anything. He could be wounded, or worse. “Why does everyone keep looking at me as if I've got two heads?”

“Because right at this moment, you're acting a bit that way.” She looked at me, took my hands in hers, and rubbed them again. “I understand you're worried about your brother. I understand it's been hard these last days, seeing what we've had to see. But you need to realise that what we can do is very small and we must go on doing that. Understand?” I didn't but I nodded yes, willing to do or say anything if it meant Violet would take me to find Tom.

1s she backed out of the driveway, she wound down the window and held up her pager and told Iris a lie. “Just got to run home and call the hospital.”

She was already winding up the window when Iris said, “I have a telephone, dear.”

She waved and continued backing out.

At home, she realised they'd forgotten to hang the morning's washing. It would be stinking in the machine. And the kitchen. You'd think a bunch of gorillas had got ready, not three children and their father. David was a good cook but the messiest person Grace had ever met. She started rinsing plates and stacking the dishwasher while she dialled his number, the phone nursed on her shoulder. Henry's blocks were strewn all over the living room. “I'll just put you through,” David's new secretary—Naomi? Nerrida?—said.

“I dropped the kids with Iris,” Grace said when he came on the line. “She found a baby animal this morning, a little marsupial. Don't ask me why she took it in. When will you be home?”

“Late,” David said. “I've got a case review at the Mater that's sure to run on. I was just heading there now.”

“Well, we won't get a chance to talk again then. David, I don't want to see Ian Gibson yet. I want to wait.”

“Why?”

“Beyond the fact Ian will think we're overreacting if nothing's wrong, we'll have unsettled Henry for no reason. He's a sensitive child. You know that. They'll run bloods and other tests he won't like. And if there is something wrong . . .”

“If there is something wrong, we might be able to correct it. I just can't understand you on this, Grace. We have to know.”

Grace couldn't quite understand herself either. “I want to wait a bit longer.”

“No,” David said. “I won't.”

“Let's talk about it tonight, then,” she said. Grace couldn't remember a time he'd done this, gone against her wishes about the children. “Is there something you're not telling me?”

“No. No, of course not. But I want to find out what's going on. And I'm pretty sure something is. We'll talk tonight.”

By the time Grace joined them at Iris's, the two girls were out in the backyard, climbing the jacaranda tree. Iris was sitting at the table, peeling an apple, Henry sitting almost on top of her, watching the long curl of apple peel form itself. When Grace was little, Iris had sent her to school every day with pre-peeled apples or oranges. All Grace had to do was lift the long curl of peel and voila, there was the fruit ready to eat. And cakes, Iris always made cakes for Grace's lunchbox, lemon meringue, chocolate-coconut, napoleon. Grace couldn't remember the last time she'd made the kids' lunches, let alone including homemade cakes. She'd never made a cake in her life.

Grace leaned over and kissed Iris. “I know I said I'd take the sugar glider out to uni. But the vets there don't care for wildlife so I'm going to take it up to the Red Hill vets once I've called them.” She rubbed her forehead.

“He's fine, Grace. He just needs a rest and something to eat. He can stay here. Are you all right?”

Iris was so stubborn. “I've been thinking. If you want to go to this Royaumont place, I could go with you.”

“I've been thinking too, dear, about what I need to do,” Iris said. “I will see the doctor and make sure she doesn't think there's any problem. That's a good idea you had, to see the doctor. And then I'll get one of those shopping bags on wheels. You know the ones you can pull along? But I won't need you to come. So long as I don't take too much—”

Grace interrupted. “You can't go by yourself. Let me come. We can go to Paris on the way.”

“Take café au lait at Les Deux Magots?” Iris smiled and ruffled Henry's hair and gave him a little squeeze.

Grace wondered how on earth Iris knew Les Deux Magots. Must be from a novel. “Something like that.”

“I think I really am too old for Les Deux Magots,” Iris said. “But I would love to see Royaumont once more before I die.”

“What's Royaumont?” Henry said.

“It was a place Granna worked during the war,” Grace said.

“Did you kill anyone?”

“No,” Iris said. “We saved lives. I worked in a hospital, Henry, like where Mummy and Daddy work, but a hospital for wounded soldiers.”

“Did they kill anyone?”

“Henry,” Grace said. “Let's not talk about killing. Granna was a nurse.” Henry looked puzzled then, as if he didn't know what to ask next now that killing was off the agenda.

“I saw Jennifer Bennetts today,” Grace said.

“Who's that, dear?”

“You remember. She was at All Hallows' with me.” Iris shook her head. “Yes, you do. She and two others were mean to me. I changed schools because of it.” Iris was still shaking her head. “Anyway, she said you wrote her mother. I never knew you did that. You told her mother all the things they did to me.” Iris nodded but didn't say anything. “But you didn't tell me you did that. You told me I had to toughen up, that I shouldn't let three nasty girls get the better of me. And then you told her mother what they'd done to me. You took my side.” Grace felt tears in her eyes. She blinked them away.

Iris didn't answer immediately. She took Grace in, narrowed her eyes, and Grace wasn't sure if her grandmother didn't remember or didn't want to say she remembered. “We all have to atone, Grace,” Iris said finally. “No matter how long it takes, we all have to atone.” It was an unsatisfying answer but it seemed Iris wasn't willing to say more.

Now she was making a mess of the apple after all. The peel had broken and she was hacking into the side of the fruit without realising. Grace resisted the urge to take the knife from her and finish peeling the apple. The knife was an ancient thing. Iris had owned it as long as Grace could remember. It only had two attachments, a blade and a can opener. It was battered metal, silver in colour, not red enamel like the knife Grace bought when she went to Europe after she finished medicine. It didn't cut like Grace's knife either. The blade was so blunt you could run your finger along it.

On a camping trip when Grace was a teenager, she'd asked Iris how long she'd had the knife. “Since I was a girl,” Iris had said. “It's been everywhere with me.”

“Where did you get it?”

“A friend gave it to me.”

“Who was that?” Grace had said, surprised she didn't know the story already. She thought she knew all Iris and Al's stories.

“Her name was Violet Heron. We were very great friends for a time. We were the flower bird girls.” Grace had looked a question. “Our names, Iris Crane and Violet Heron. The flower birds.”

“But where did she get the knife, Iris? I've never seen one like that.”

“A fellow gave it to her,” Iris had said, “during the Great War.”

“So where is she now?”

“Dead,” Iris had said. “She was thinking of immigrating but she went back to England instead.”

“How did you meet her?” Grace had asked, still curious.

Iris had looked vague and said she couldn't remember. Then she said, “Oh yes, through Al. We were still in Stanthorpe but he'd started back at the Mater ahead of moving to Brisbane. Violet worked at the hospital. Rose was just a baby.”

It hadn't made sense to Grace, even at the time. Iris had said she'd got the knife as a girl and then she'd said she'd got it when Rose was a baby. But Grace couldn't get more information from Iris, no matter how hard she tried. Iris just changed the subject. Whenever she saw the knife now, Grace remembered the way Iris answered questions. It was as if she wasn't telling the truth.

Grace went back into the house now and picked up the invitation. Violet Heron. That was the name inside, Dame Violet Heron. This friend, Violet Heron, whom Iris said she'd met in Brisbane and who was supposedly dead, had not only been at a place called Royaumont during the First World War with Iris but was alive enough to speak at a reunion Iris was hell-bent on attending.

Grace went back outside with the invitation. “That's the knife your friend Violet gave you,” she said, feeling triumphant finally.

Iris looked at the knife as if she'd only just learned this. “So it is,” she said.

“You also said you knew Violet Heron here in Australia.”

“Did I?”

“You did. And you told me she'd died. But she's the person on this invitation. Was she at Royaumont?”

“She was,” Iris said. “I'm so muddle-headed.” She squeezed Henry again and smiled. Grace knew there was more to it. “I'm like that muddle-headed wombat in your book, Henry. Come on, let's see if our biscuits are ready.”