In Falling Snow (36 page)

“No.”

“You'd be shivering and shaking, saying you weren't cold. Finally I just stopped nagging and after a while you put it on. I wonder if that's how to get you to go home too.”

“Iris, I'm not going home. Is that what this is about?”

“It's not,” I said. “Of course it's not. I just had a bad dream.”

He looked at Violet. “My lieutenant says I'm a good shot, by the way,” he said. “And a good runner. They need riflemen and messengers up at the front. He's going to see what he can do about getting me transferred.”

“When?” I said, worried suddenly. Was this what the dream was about?

“Dunno,” Tom said. “Soon I hope. We had a shooting competition among the blokes. I won hands down.” He took his arm from around my shoulders. “The old man isn't right about everything, Iris. This matters, what they're doing. I want to help.”

“You are helping, Tom.”

What could I do? If I tried to push, Tom would only pull away harder. If I did nothing, he might be transferred to a fighting unit. I would have to see his commanding officer, I decided. I would have to tell them the truth. He's too young to be in the thick of the fighting, I'd say. You need to understand he came here as a child. That would fix it. Surely they'd send him home if they knew he was so young. Tom would be furious with me for telling them the truth, that he was not of age, but it might be the only thing I could do.

“Doing the mail isn't enough,” he said, looking at Violet. “It will never be enough.”

“Oh for goodness' sake,” Violet said, “you think if you fight you'll be a man? That is just the living end, Tom.”

Later that week, Miss Ivens had a meeting in Chantilly and I went with her. Violet was back in Paris picking up the new part for her car which hadn't come last time and so Marjorie Starr drove us. While Miss Ivens was at her meeting I went to see Tom's commanding officer as I'd planned. Marjorie offered to come with me. I said I'd be all right but thanked her for offering. She was such a good old stick, Marjorie, always offering to help.

I found Captain Driscoll in the tiny office at the rear of the mailroom, his oak desk immaculate but for one folder. “I'm sorry to disturb you,” I said. “My brother Tom is one of your postal workers.”

Captain Driscoll was approaching middle age, with a moustache fashionable in those times, a crisp uniform, greying thinning hair. “Tom Crane?” he said. I nodded. “I can tell from the hair. And the accent. Yes, I know Crane. Doesn't like doing what he's told.” I frowned. “Personally, I like an independent thinker but they're not much good to us here. We want sheep.”

“Yes,” I said, “and he's been very happy working in your unit, sheep or goat. I just wanted to make sure he stays with you. He's not as mature as he looks.”

Captain Driscoll nodded. “He's not, eh?”

“And the thing is, he's very keen to be more involved in the fighting, and I'm not sure he's . . . mature enough to make that decision.”

“Hmph,” Captain Driscoll said. “How old is your brother?” I looked at him. “I'm not going to discharge him, woman. Just tell me how old he is.”

“He's just turned eighteen.”

“I knew he was lying. I knew it the first time I laid eyes on him. He's not the only one, you know. The army's full of them.”

“I was thinking that if I told the authorities his age they'd send him home. He really doesn't want to go and I've been so happy he's here in the postal unit.”

Captain Driscoll smiled. “The recruiting sergeants couldn't care how old the boys are. They just want soldiers. But I care about it. I have a son your brother's age. One of those sergeants tried to accost him in the street at home, followed him and when he said he was seventeen, told him he was lying and he must be nineteen. When the boy reached our front door, my wife told the sergeant what she thought of him in no uncertain terms. My son's not over here and he won't be over here until he's of age. Then he can decide for himself, but for now, he stays home and looks after his mother and sisters.” Tom had told me Captain Driscoll had six children at home, five girls and this one boy. “I won't be sending your brother anywhere,” he said. “You have my word.”

I could have kissed his neatly clipped moustache.

In the closing months of 1917, we set up our new hospital at Villers-Cotterêts. While I was involved during the construction phase, Miss Ivens said I wouldn't go with her and the first contingent. Violet would go with two other doctors and a team of orderlies and nurses. I would remain at Royaumont. I am mostly an even sort of a person, with a calm disposition, but I felt hurt not to be included in the Villers-Cotterêts group. For some reason, Violet's going bothered me more than the rest. She'd always been on an equal footing with Miss Ivens in a way I never could be, calling her Frances and joking in a comradely way. They shared a background I didn't. Now I was being left out and I couldn't help but wonder if this was the reason.

I said nothing, but Miss Ivens must have guessed, for she said, the day after making the announcement, when we were doing our ward rounds, “I couldn't go to Villers unless I knew I had you here, Iris.” We were on our way between Blanche and Canada. I did my best to smile. “Oh, the hospital would keep going without us. I know that. But I wouldn't manage. It's as if Royaumont is my child and while there are many here competent to care for her, you're the only one I trust. Does that make sense?” I nodded, for I couldn't be sure my voice would remain steady. Miss Ivens wasn't taking me to Villers because she was entrusting me with Royaumont, her precious Royaumont. It was the greatest compliment she could ever have paid me, and even if I felt her faith was misguided—I was never so competent as she imagined I was—I was greatly honoured that someone of her stature would consider me worthy.

Still, I felt lonely in those weeks that Miss Ivens was gone and I missed Violet terribly. There was no one else I could confide in, laugh with, sit up late talking to, and I remained a little jealous that she was in the new place with Miss Ivens. How exciting it must be. I wanted to be there too, back at the chief's side, helping her in whatever way she needed. At Royaumont I kept expecting Miss Ivens to walk through the door. I had come to rely on her in the ebb and flow of my days. The two of us would often walk through the hospital—sometimes with no destination in mind—while she talked. She walked quickly, even when we didn't have to be somewhere. I missed those walks. I missed her marvellous brain with its grand ideas. I missed the notion of my day changing suddenly because she was there.

Villers-Cotterêts was nearer the front and the guns were closer. When girls came back, they said it was awfully thrilling sometimes to hear the shells and not know what would happen next. The local commandant at Soissons had assured us Villers was safe, but the shells sounded so near, one girl said, that she felt certain her doom had been coming. Miss Ivens had sent this particular girl back to Royaumont. Unsuitable, Mrs. Berry told me. We can't have overexcitement. I put the girl to work in the kitchen and she seemed much happier.

A month after we took patients at Villers, Miss Ivens returned to Royaumont, along with Violet and Quoyle, leaving Mrs. Berry in charge at Villers. It had been much easier than Royaumont to establish, Miss Ivens said, at least in part because there was more help from the French military to see the hospital operational and a local commandant keen to care for his wounded. So now we were running two hospitals, and more besides.

General Pétain had taken command of the French army in 1917 and for the first time since the beginning of the war, the conditions French troops were expected to fight in came under scrutiny. We found out that the reason we'd taken so few wounded at Royaumont through the first half of 1917 was that the French were refusing to attack, and now many were deserting altogether. Pétain visited every unit in the field. The conditions for troops were dreadful, and now we were heading into the coldest winter in fifty years. French soldiers not only lived in frozen mud. They weren't rested from the front like their British or even German counterparts, so their ordeal just went on and on. They didn't have enough food or even water. They stayed there day after day, hungry, thirsty, frightened, and cold to their bones. One boy at Royaumont told me he would have twenty or thirty rats crawling over him every night. The rats ate whatever food he had in his pockets and then started on his clothes. He couldn't sleep for fear they'd start on him next.

When they were returning from leave, French soldiers were not entitled to rations until they rejoined their units, which meant they were at the mercy of people in towns and villages who themselves had too little food. More than once at Royaumont, we took in hungry soldiers, gave them straw to sleep on and a good meal. While Miss Ivens was at Villers, we had a request from our local commandant to set up a canteen in Soissons. The town had only recently been retaken by the Allies and there were few houses that hadn't been bombed. But large numbers of soldiers passed through Soissons on their way back to the front from leave, so we set up kitchens in an abandoned schoolhouse and served two thousand meals in just over a month until more permanent arrangements were made.

I spent that last Christmas at Royaumont. I remember it as if it was yesterday. We'd had sleet, snow, and more besides. And yet I was happier than I'd ever been in my life. Here was I, Iris Crane, at the centre of something of such great goodness in the midst of horror. Michelet killed our favourite pig, Louisa, for dinner. Father Rousselle came to say mass in Canada on Christmas Eve. The ward was full, the men quietly in their beds, candles at the altar at one end as Father gave up the offertory. And then the choir sang an Ave. I knew then that what we had created at Royaumont was the very opposite of the war. It was beauty itself.

In March 1918 the Germans were bombing Paris again and some of the shells fell close to Royaumont. It was louder than anything we'd ever heard, but I tried to stay calm as the new volunteers, who'd never heard bombs before, were terrified. We had a rush of casualties as a result of the renewed fighting and so had to keep our wits about us. One shell was close enough to shatter windows in the refectory, thankfully recently emptied to be used to extend the receiving area. The rush of patients lasted through April and most of May, many seriously wounded cases, with infections so bad we were unable to save many. We had sixty beds in the cloisters, even though it was quite cold, and the staff went back to dining outside, sometimes in the snow that hung on with that long cold winter. By mid-May the rush had abated, but we were told it was a calm before a storm. We needed more doctors and orderlies but Edinburgh couldn't help. We sent some of the Royaumont doctors up to Villers for a rest—Villers hadn't experienced the rush that Royaumont had because their sector wasn't seeing the fighting we were—and brought some Villers doctors back to Royaumont. Miss Ivens asked me to go to Villers too in order to “sort out their administrative problems.” Violet drove me and as we left Royaumont, I saw the shell holes from the bombs frighteningly close to the abbey itself.

“Goodness me, Violet, we might have been hit.”

“Put on your helmet,” she said. “We might be hit yet.” Her face was grim. We passed many soldiers and guns along the road.

Villers was so different from Royaumont, the six wooden shacks, each named for an ally, joined by duckboards over the dirt. They'd had a steady stream of wounded rather than a rush, but the staff were on edge for different reasons. So much closer to the front, the guns were much louder there and more frequent. On my first night, we had pretty constant alarms and we had to black out the lights even in the theatre. On one occasion, Dr. Henry was in the middle of an operation and had to finish by candlelight. We even extinguished the candle for some tense minutes while Dr. Henry leaned over her patient and waited, hoping he would survive.