In Falling Snow (19 page)

Tom was embarrassed again and it made him angry. “This is none of your business,” he said to Violet.

“Tom, that's enough,” I said.

“No, he's right, it's not my business,” Violet said. “But, Tom, you had your sister worried as heck a week ago. And it's jolly rude to be angry at her when she's only trying to look after you.” Violet turned around and looked at Tom. “You're just a boy, that's the truth of it. She's right. You should be home and in school.”

We arrived at the station and Tom jumped out. Violet wished him well. He didn't respond and I got out and gave him a hug. “Don't mind Violet,” I said. “I've been very worried about you, and she's just upset for me. She really is very nice.”

“She doesn't act it,” he said. “I'm not a baby.”

“Course not. You're taller than me now!” He smiled then and we hugged again. “Stay safe, Tom.”

“You too, sis.”

I thought I might cry so I turned and got back into the car without watching him walk into the station.

On the way back to Royaumont, I told Violet about Tom being with the postal service. “But I really wish you hadn't teased him,” I said.

“Why?” Violet said. “I thought he was a bit rude to you to be honest.”

“He's already said he doesn't feel he's doing enough. He wants to go and fight.”

“And you think that because I teased him a little he might actually do that?” Violet looked at me, incredulous.

“No . . . Yes, I do think that. He's always been a bit sensitive and you treated him like a baby.”

“He acted like a baby.” She smiled. “He was furious with me though, wasn't he? He's actually rather sweet when he's angry.”

“I think you were thoughtless and callow if you want to know,” I said. My voice faltered as I said it. Daddy had been so worried about Tom and now today I had found out he was as safe as he could be. I didn't want him getting in harm's way just to prove himself.

Violet pulled over to the side of the road. She turned to me, looking contrite now. “I'm so sorry, Iris, dear. I didn't realise you were so worried. He's in the postal service. He's ended up with the only officer in the British army who seems to understand it's a mistake to make children fight in a war. That's great news, wouldn't you say?”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “I just want to keep it that way.”

“So do I. I'll be a good Violet from now on. And to celebrate our finding Tom safe and snug, I am going to buy you a drink.”

Violet turned off the road back to the abbey and took us to Asnières. She jumped down from the car and marched into the bar with me in tow. She greeted the woman behind the counter as if they were old friends and ordered champagne with cognac, sugar, and lemon. After we got our drinks—in beautiful long-stemmed glasses—we sat at a little table in the window. “To the war,” Violet said, clinking hers against mine, and then, leaning in, more quietly, “may it never end.”

“Violet,” I said. I was still angry with her.

“Ah,” she said. “I'm just having fun. I don't mean the war's fun. I mean, all of this, you and Frances and Royaumont. We'll look back on this and wonder if it was all true.” I could see she'd forgotten completely about what she'd done with Tom.

I took a sip of my drink and it was delicious, going down my throat smoothly and making my middle feel it had a flame under it. The woman behind the bar looked at us as if we were naughty children. “Good stuff,” Violet said to her, and ordered a second round. Before too long, I was feeling quite light-headed and merry, relieved to have found Tom safe, happy in truth that I could stay at Royaumont.

“So, Iris, tell me about the men in your life.” Violet looked at me, a wicked smile on her face. “Not counting the baby brother.”

Violet was never afraid to ask embarrassing questions. She'd taken a lover too, she'd told me. More than one, in fact. It wasn't all it was cracked up to be, she'd said, a lot of fuss and noise. Afterwards is nice, she said, when you're all soft and gooey-eyed. I'd smiled and nodded, as if I too knew the feeling, relieved when we were interrupted in our conversation by Cicely wanting me to find a letter Miss Ivens had mislaid. But as Violet had spoken, I'd had the same feeling I had when she talked so offhandedly about her family, as if it were all so unimportant, when somehow it mattered a great deal. Still, I was fascinated by how much she knew about men.

“Violet, why is it that whenever you talk about your men, you look sort of sad?” I said now, without answering her question about the men in my life. Al. Al was the men in my life. He seemed uninteresting compared with Violet's stories.

“I do not,” she said casually. “My eyes may glisten with the fond memory of love. That's all.” I could see she was forcing the smile.

“But what's it like to have a lover?” I said.

“Don't you know, Iris? Haven't you ever?”

“I'm engaged to be married,” I stammered.

“Don't tell me. He's a boy you grew up with from the farm next door. A great big farmer and you'll have twenty-five children and call them all after dead people.”

“As a matter of fact, he's a doctor at the hospital in Brisbane.”

“Even better,” Violet said. “You're a nurse. He's a doctor.”

“What's wrong with that?”

“You can spend your whole life doing what you're told.”

“Well, at least I'll be happy.” I felt hurt by what Violet had said.

“Will you?” Violet said. “Will you really? I don't know, Iris. I can't say I know what makes people happy.” She looked wistful.

“Finding out Tom's safe. That makes me happy,” I said. “I'm sorry I snapped at you before. It's just that Tom's so young and I've always looked out for him.”

“It doesn't matter,” she said. “Let's forget about silly old Tom. We're the flower bird girls. Let's flit.” She downed the rest of her drink in one go and got up. I remained sitting there looking out on the country night. “Seriously, Iris, we'd better get back. You're on duty and I bet Creil is beckoning. Cicely will have our heads as it is.” She took my arm and pulled me up out of my chair. “You're a good friend, Iris. I'm glad you came to Royaumont. It would be awfully dull without you.”

“I love you, Violet,” I said, and hugged her clumsily. The words had come out before I'd thought about them. When I'd first met Violet, I'd seen her as so sophisticated, so experienced in the world. But right then, I wanted to take her in my arms and tell her we would all be all right. There was something wounded about Violet, I realised, something she was at pains to hide.

We drove back to Royaumont in falling snow, singing our hearts out. I laughed so much my stomach hurt. Tom was safe. I could stay and help Miss Ivens and the women of Royaumont. I couldn't think of a thing that would make life better.

I was still sitting on the floor of my room, the letter from Violet in my hand. What was I doing here? David, I'd been on the telephone to David and then I'd come to find my passport. I looked at Violet's letter.
Do you see Elsie at all?
she'd written. Violet really had no idea. Elsie Dalyell had been our bacteriologist at Royaumont and the only Australian other than me, although Dr. Lilian Cooper, who trained in England before moving to Australia, served in one of our Serbian units. Dr. Dalyell and I weren't particularly close at Royaumont. Like most of the doctors, she didn't socialise with nurses. After Vienna though, she came home to Australia and worked in Sydney in the public service. She wrote me a couple of times, but I didn't respond. When Al and I went to Sydney I'd thought of looking Elsie up but I never did. I never looked any of them up. I couldn't stand the thought of looking back like that. I could only look forward.

Underneath that first letter were all the others. I hadn't looked at them in over fifty years. I'd thought I might go through them now but found that after all I couldn't bring myself to go any further.

Years after the war, I remembered, Vera Collum wrote me. She'd been an orderly at Royaumont who trained as a radiographer and later studied medicine. She wanted my advice, about Violet of all people. Collum was worried; she wrote.

She's not like the girl we knew anymore. I can't put my finger on the difference and say, there, that's what's wrong, but do you remember how Violet was friends with everyone? She had that special skill of making you feel right at home. When any of us gets to see her now—and it's rare that we do—it's as if she's not there, Iris, as if that strong girl has fled her and left nothing but a shell. I sat in on a consultation with her. She'd asked me to give an opinion. There was a growth and the woman won't see another summer. Violet knew this, I am sure. But she was inexplicably cold to the woman, cruel in the circumstances, and when I tried to talk to her about it she looked away from me and I could see tears come into her eyes. It was a puzzle and I thought that if any of us could help Violet, it would be you.

If any of us could help, it would be you
. These people had no idea. Rose was fourteen when I received Collum's letter. Violet could be tough, I thought. Collum just didn't understand that.

I took out the bundle of letters and papers and found my passport and put it aside. As I was putting the sheaf of papers back a photograph fell out onto the floor. I picked it up. A group of women standing in front of a truck in the snow, thick overcoats, gloves, boots, all smiling. One of them is me, I realised, but I don't remember the photograph being taken. I don't remember her either, the girl I was at Royaumont. There she is, all the same, at Miss Ivens's side, standing in front of the lorry she's just managed to buy, legs slightly apart, head held high, as if someone has just told her to stand up straight. They needn't have bothered. Miss Ivens and the girl tower over their colleagues, Marjorie Starr, when I look closely, and Cicely Hamilton. There they are, the chief and her assistant, pleased with their latest acquisition.

Until the end of our first winter at Royaumont, the drivers had to drive to Creil in their ambulances to collect loads of coal for the stoves. The journey was only twelve miles, but the road deteriorated as time went on and they couldn't drive quickly. They return with as much as they could carry, enough for a day for just one of the five stoves. I suggested we needed a lorry to carry things back and forth and Miss Ivens agreed, so I drafted a request for her to the committee in Edinburgh for funds. A week later, I found a lorry for sale in Chantilly. I asked Tom to look it over for me. He sent a message back:
Buy it. It's a beauty.
I sent the request for funds, which was referred to the equipment committee in Edinburgh, but they responded by wire that it was too expensive and we probably didn't need a lorry anyway.

Around this time, we were also in trouble with Edinburgh about uniforms for the doctors. The uniform committee was chaired by a Miss McIntosh, an elderly woman who had donated more money to the cause than anyone else so far. Her committee had designed uniforms for the doctors in a dark grey flannel with tartan facings and then sent material and patterns to a seamstress in Paris. Miss Ivens had taken one look at the design and material and instructed the seamstress to make blankets for the staff from the grey flannel, telling Miss McIntosh by wire that we needed blankets more than we needed baggy suits. She'd already engaged Nicol of Paris, she said, who wasn't charging as much, incidentally, to design more suitable uniforms. “If they think my doctors and I are going down to Paris in that hideous flannel, they can jolly well forget it,” she said to me. “And I'll be damned if we will wear tartan.” Miss Ivens was given to swearing when she was annoyed.

While Miss Ivens's Paris tailor ran up the new uniforms—light grey twill with red velvet
caducées
in the lapel and a heavy dark blue for winter—we received a wire. Miss Ivens didn't mention it to me at first but kept picking it up and throwing it down as if this might make it go away while we went through the correspondence. Eventually, realising it wasn't going away, she passed it over to me. “Damn them to hell,” she said. “As if any of this matters. Now that stupid woman has dragged Elsie into it.”