In Falling Snow (29 page)

To be honest, despite my terrible nerves about making a mistake, there wasn't much to it, cutting and scraping tissue to remove little pieces of metal and infection while retaining as much good tissue as possible, using an X-ray to guide the knife. The trick, I learned, was to proceed slowly, rather like one does skinning a rabbit so as not to waste good meat. Miss Ivens, busy on a facial reconstruction, left me to my own devices until she'd finished, which eased my nerves considerably and gave me confidence. Surely she'd be watching if there had been a need to do so. When she finished what she was doing, she looked carefully at the man's thigh where I'd been working, compared my work against the X-ray, in the same way she'd do with a junior surgeon. “This is splendid,” she said. “Where did you train?” and smiled. I remembered that smile. It was like a bath of warm light in a darkness you didn't even know was darkness, but once you'd been in that light you knew what it was to be back in the dark.

By the time Dr. McCourt joined, Miss Ivens was using me to assist from time to time. I never felt I was asked to do anything I couldn't manage and Miss Ivens said that my hands were as nimble as a surgeon's.

So on this day Miss Ivens asked me to change a dressing, it was nothing out of the ordinary and she did so confident that I would cause her patient less pain than the assisting doctor for the day, who, while well meaning and competent in diagnosis, was ham-fisted and so nervous about her ham-fistedness that she'd inevitably cause more pain than ease. None of the other doctors took much notice of me or seemed to mind me doing more than my role would strictly permit. I don't know if they discussed it among themselves, but no one ever said anything to me until Dr. McCourt arrived on the ward that day and exclaimed, in a voice too loud for the space, “Whatever are you doing, nurse? Let me take over.” Miss Ivens had been called away and I had no choice but to stand aside. I hoped and prayed Miss Ivens wouldn't return before the procedure was finished.

I watched Dr. McCourt change the dressing, causing far more pain than I would have, and while it may be conceitful for me to say so, the poor patient's groans were enough evidence that I was right. As she was leaving, Dr. McCourt, who looked impervious to the pain she'd caused, looked at me. She must have seen something in my eyes, something of disrespect, for she said, “I will be talking to Matron about your behaviour, nurse. There is nothing in the world worse than an upstart.” She said it loudly enough that the men around us and the nurses and orderlies heard her. My ears burned with rage and embarrassment but I said nothing. “Yes, Doctor,” she said. I looked at her, unsure what she meant. “Say ‘Yes, Doctor,'” she repeated.

“Yes, Doctor,” I said, wishing the stone floors of the abbey would rise up and swallow her whole.

The next week, Miss Ivens told me Dr. McCourt had left. I hadn't told Miss Ivens about that day and the dressing, but for Miss Ivens, anything but total loyalty was unthinkable. Dr. McCourt had questioned Miss Ivens's clinical decision making. She had to go. Dr. McCourt left, and while it wasn't the last we heard from her, she never again served with the Scottish Women's Hospitals.

What happened with Dr. McCourt started me thinking along a path, I feel sure now. Dr. McCourt might or might not have been right in her criticism of Miss Ivens. I will never know the truth of that. But she hadn't shown anything of the skill even someone like me had been able to learn at Royaumont, which would have enabled her to change that complicated dressing without doing further harm to an already traumatised patient. For the first time, I started to think that perhaps Miss Ivens's faith in me wasn't misguided kindness. Perhaps I did have some gifts to offer.

Every year, the Croix-Rouge sent an officer to inspect the hospital and renew our accreditation. The first year they sent an accountant from Paris, a large round fellow who gave us an equivocal report, not failing us but not really lauding us either. But at the end of 1916, they were sending a new auditor, Miss Ivens said, and I was to help.

The rushes of earlier in the year had finally abated and we'd been able to catch up with the maintenance work on the abbey, emptying the cesspits, working out where we might further expand the wards, finalising the plans for a new staff dining room.

I went to a Halloween party in Blanche dressed as a kangaroo, using Collum's fur coat and mittens and a scrunched-up hat as a joey for my pouch. The patients loved the parties we had, playing games like musical chairs or find the slipper as if they were carefree children rather than men who'd seen such horror. At the end, Violet sang for us and I found tears in my eyes listening to her again. The soft autumn sunlight streamed through the big windows and the men were listening intently, their red jackets and blankets against the stone walls, surrounded by staff in all manner of get-up, Berry as a rabbit, Miss Ivens as Father Christmas (“It was all I could find in the costume box, dear”), Dr. Courthald as an Argyll and Sutherland Highlander, Cicely Hamilton as a tank, crawling in under her canvas bath.

Violet's voice had come into its own at Royaumont. On All Saints' we commemorated the dead in the cemetery at Asnières. It was awful to see the graves of the young men and to know they were now gone forever. When Violet stood and sang the “Marseillaise” that day, she herself cried, tears streaming down her face, her voice never faltering.

I had all but forgotten about the Croix-Rouge officer who had accompanied the accreditation inspection team, the one I'd worked out was Jean-Michel Poulin. In fact, I'd seen his name on a report from a hospital in Reims and assumed he'd transferred north. But the new auditor was one of his colleagues from that inspection team, Dugald McTaggart. I went into the room where the inspector was sitting at the little table we'd set up. I could only see his back, as he was bent over the desk writing something. “Hello. I'm Miss Ivens's assistant. I'm to help you,” I said in French.

“Dugald McTaggart. Spy on me you mean?” he said in English and turned around. It was him. He'd only spoken French when I'd met him before and I'd assumed, wrongly, I realised now, that he was French. But he was Dugald McTaggart and not Jean-Michel Poulin. His accent was Scottish-French.

I'm sure I was blushing. “I imagine so,” I managed to say, switching to English, “if that's what it takes.”

“You have given me a beautiful room,” he said.

“This is the Chapel of Saint Louis,” I said, doing my best to recover my composure.

“Perfect place for confession?” he said, and smiled. I remembered his smile, the way his face would change from severe to soft in a moment.

“Or an Inquisition,” I replied.

“Which do you think we have here?”

“Both?” I said.

I gave him the schedule of interviews for the morning. “Before we start, I'll show you around.” Miss Ivens had told me not to let the inspector wander the abbey unaccompanied and to sit in on his meetings. While I had no intention of spending the day shadowing him if he wanted to work on his own, I also didn't want to let him loose unaccompanied among the orderlies or drivers.

As he picked up his bag from the table, I noticed his long fingers with well-groomed nails. “So, Iris, you're still working for Miss Ivens?” I was surprised he remembered me.

“Yes, but I'm also a nurse,” I said.

“Ah, I could have picked that. You have a nurse's eyes.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nurses can communicate everything they need to communicate with their eyes, which is why they are invaluable in the operating theatre.”

The reference made me think suddenly of Al. We had first met in theatre. I felt guilty for no reason I could explain. “And how do you come to know so much about theatre sisters?” I asked.

“I'm a surgeon. Did they not tell you that?”

I didn't say I'd assumed he was an accountant. “No, I didn't realise they'd send a surgeon this time.”

As I led him through the abbey, he talked about his work. He'd been a psychiatrist, he said. He'd signed up at the outbreak of war and they'd put him through basic surgical training. “We do what we can for their bodies but no one is caring for their minds. We'll pay for this.”

It was something Mrs. Berry had talked to me about. Many of the men who came through Royaumont, especially the ones who'd been wounded once already, woke in the night from terrible dreams, at once shaking as if cold and sweating as if hot, or didn't sleep at all, smoking constantly through the hours. Some developed facial tics. Many were convinced they would die and could talk about nothing else. Others spoke incessantly with false cheer, or talked of revenge on the Germans. “We see it here too,” I said. “Our priest talks with them. I don't know what he does but he calms them.”

“Religion can help,” he said, “but these men's minds are broken. They can't stop remembering what happened to them. And it's no wonder, because what happened to them should happen to no one.” He looked at me and smiled. “But this is gloomy talk. Here is your Canada ward, I see. This is the new one?” The refectory—which had been the staff dining room—was our latest ward, set up during the rushes of 1916 and named for the country that had raised so much money for us. The Canadian girls among us were thrilled to have a little of their own country here at Royaumont. “It's beautiful,” he said. “Being here must help the men to heal. It's such a wonderful place.”

“It is,” I said. I didn't tell him that we were still dining in the cloister, albeit in our warm coats now. We'd shifted the tables and chairs for his benefit. Although Miss Ivens and I had worked out where we could put a staff dining room, we could never be sure workmen would be available—most were off fighting. The project was dragging out. “In the summer, the morning sun comes through the stained glass and you can imagine what it must have been like to be one of the monks here. It's a . . . a holy place.” I reminded myself he hadn't come to hear me talk about the abbey. “How did you come to work with the Croix-Rouge?” I asked him.

“My mother is French,” he said. He stopped to light a cigarette.

“Ah, that's how you fooled me. I assumed you were French.”

“I am,” he said.

I took him out into the cloister, where a dozen or so cots were lined up along one side, soldiers sitting reading or writing, or lying down sleeping, wrapped up against the cold with their wounds exposed to whatever sun was working hard to make its way through the clouds. “We've found that sun exposure aids healing and helps prevent infection,” I explained. “Our Dr. Dalyell in pathology trained in Vienna.” As I spoke, the sun came out suddenly as if commenting positively on Dr. Dalyell's theory, and Dr. McTaggart nodded appreciatively.

I saw Violet sitting on the little bench in the middle of the cloister smoking and chatting with one of the patients. Her hair fell in soft curls to her shoulders. “The sun, Iris. Finally, we have some sun,” she called over. She looked at me and smiled. Violet had been better since the rushes had abated. Miss Ivens had sent her on leave to Paris and she seemed much happier. “Who are you?” she said to Dr. McTaggart, not unkindly, holding her hand over her eyes to shield them. He introduced himself. “Ah, the auditor. I'm Violet Heron, ambulance driver. What do you think so far?”

“I think Iris is an excellent guide,” he said, looking at me. “I've hardly noticed the hospital.”

Violet laughed. “You, my friend, can stay.” The patient beside her cleared his throat noisily. “How rude of me. This is Henri Michelet. He can tell you about the care here, can't you, darling? You've been here forever.”

Henri Michelet was all but healed from a shrapnel wound in his left leg that had become infected, but he'd taken to spending his days in the abbey kitchens, and since Miss Ivens had taken a liking to him he'd been allowed to stay. Before the war he had been a chef in Paris and so Miss Ivens had let him cook a few meals for the patients, thinking perhaps this could solve the problem we'd had. Miss Quoyle remained our cook, but the Croix-Rouge had continued to press us to find a French cook for the French soldiers. When Michelet cooked, the patients loved the food compared with what we were able to prepare for them, and while none of us said it in Quoyle's hearing, the staff loved the food Michelet prepared too. Miss Ivens had told me she wanted Michelet to stay but the French were going to send him back to the battlefield. We'd already kept him for longer than strictly needed. “The nurses are beautiful angels from God,” he said now. “The doctors we worship.” He put his hand on Violet's leg. “And the drivers? The drivers have hearts of lions and wits of hyenas.”

“I'm not sure I like that last bit,” Violet said. “Anyway, Dugald, you can ask me anything you like.”

“The front has moved,” he said. “I believe there is shelling on the road to Creil these days.”