In Falling Snow (40 page)

Two days after we closed Villers, everyone was safely back at Royaumont. We'd left equipment and supplies behind, much to the consternation of those in Edinburgh, although the X-ray machines and films were saved thanks to Miss Stoney, who risked her life to go back the day after we evacuated and retrieve them. We didn't lose one patient in the evacuation and Royaumont was full again. The town of Villers-Cotterêts was completely destroyed, Miss Stoney told me, but the hospital, on the outskirts of the town, remained eerily untouched by the German advance.

We found out that we were the only hospital that had continued operating in the region—Royaumont was too far from the field to take the wounded—and Miss Ivens said we'd saved lives that surely would have been lost without us. Marjorie Starr was among those who had evacuated to Chantilly. She'd seen Tom, she said, and he was quite safe. The child Marjorie had taken with her turned out to have an aunt in Chantilly and they managed to see him united with family. “Poor little tyke was so brave,” Marjorie said. “If we'd not found his people, I'd have taken him in myself.”

“Thank goodness he has someone, Marjorie,” I said. “Imagine having no family anywhere.”

I left Marjorie in the kitchen and went to the office to find Miss Ivens. When I got there, the telephone was ringing. Quoyle answered it. “Iris, it's for you,” she said. “A Captain Driscoll.”

My heart was banging in my chest when I picked up the receiver.

“Miss Crane, I'm sorry to be calling you like this.”

“What's happened?”

“Nothing, nothing like that. Of course that's what you'd think. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have said my name. Young Crane is fine. But I wanted to let you know that I've been transferred to Le Havre to coordinate postal operations there. Lieutenant Michaels has taken over the postal service and I thought you should know. I understand your brother is still keen to transfer to signals. One of the other boys, Hugh Passmore, has already moved out into an infantry division. Michaels didn't stop him. I'm not sure that he'll stop Crane either. I wanted to let you know.”

I hung up the telephone just as Miss Ivens walked in. “What is it, dear? You've a terrible pallor.”

“I'm not sure,” I said, “and I'm sorry to ask, but can I take the afternoon? I need to go and see my brother.”

“Of course, Iris. Is everything all right?”

“Yes, I'm sure it is. I just need to talk with him.”

None of the cars was available to take me so I had to walk to Chantilly. The fields were in full bloom now as if no one had told the flowers about the days that had just passed.

The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn't want Tom to fight and at all costs I must convince him not to pursue that course.

When I arrived at the mail centre, I had to wait for Tom. The new officer in charge, Lieutenant Michaels, had sent him out with a message. “He's a fast runner, your brother,” Michaels said. He was not much older than me, with a narrow beaky face, eyes too close together. It made him look nervous. “Make a very good messenger, and he's keen, wants to join the signallers.”

“He is fast,” I said. “Comes from running away from me all his life, but he's very young.”

I'd decided not to talk with Lieutenant Michaels about Tom until I'd had a chance to see Tom himself, but Michaels raised it. He got up to walk out with me and I saw he favoured his left leg. He noticed me watching. “Shrapnel,” he said. “Shredded the knee. Now I'm stuck here.” I went to open the door for him but he opened it and stood back and all but pushed me through.

“Crane's been here the longest of any of the men,” he said. “He ought to be more involved.”

“Lieutenant Michaels, please understand, Tom isn't even nineteen,” I replied, as calmly as I could. “He was only fifteen when he came here. He wasn't old enough to decide to fight and I have been thankful that Captain Driscoll has understood that a boy shouldn't be making a man's decision.”

“Driscoll's not in charge anymore.”

“I just meant—” I began, but Michaels spoke over me.

“Crane's old enough to make his own decisions.” Just then Tom walked in. “Ah, the man himself. Your sister's giving me a roasting, Crane.”

“Iris, I wasn't expecting you,” Tom said. He looked as he had when as a child he'd done something he knew he shouldn't have done. But he wasn't a child. He was a grown man now and I realised suddenly I couldn't make him do anything.

We took our leave from Lieutenant Michaels and went over to the canteen. I told Tom what Michaels had said, that Tom should be more involved. “He's just talking, Iris. Don't pay him any mind.”

“So you're not trying to move.”

“Of course not. I'm happy here.”

“Are you lying to me?”

“About what?”

“What did Michaels mean? He said you wanted to join the signallers.”

“He didn't mean anything, Iris. And even if he did, mind your own bloody business for a change. I'm not a baby anymore.” He'd raised his voice and looked around to be sure no one was listening. “I'm a man.”

I was angry suddenly. “No, you listen to me. I've told our father that you are in a safe job, despite the war, that you're making an important contribution without risking your life. He was ready to come over and get both of us. You were a child when we came here and you are still not of age. If you want, I can go and see more senior officers and tell them your true age.”

Tom burst out laughing. “Is that the best you can do, Iris? You think they care? There's more of us enlisted who are underaged than over. I'm an old timer. There's a kid at the front who's fourteen.
His
sister doesn't tell him to come home for supper. Just leave me alone.” He got up and walked out the door without looking back.

I wasn't myself in the week that followed. I worried about Tom, what I'd do if he persisted with this plan of his. And I was still tired to my bones. We all were. Miss Ivens had things on her mind too and they were of the kind that made her angry and short with all of us. We'd had a complaint from an orderly who'd returned to England after being let go by Miss Ivens and now Miss Ivens was livid.

Orderly Johnston had come to us only three months before. From what I could gather, she had trouble adapting to life at Royaumont. She claimed the conditions were appalling, cited an example of an Arab patient who'd relieved himself on the floor. An orderly was made to clean it up—quite usual when the patients had an accident—but Johnston was incensed.
Anyone who has lived in the East knows well that it is not fitting for a white woman to wait on natives.
She also said the staff accommodations were filthy and flea-ridden—we did suffer terribly with fleas, which came in on the soldiers' uniforms—and that there were unsatisfactory bathing arrangements. This too was a fair point. Most of us got by with a wash every second day and a bath when we went to Paris. As for the accommodations, we shared rooms sometimes with two or three others, and during the very busy periods we even shared beds, one resting while the other worked. Violet and I had done this from time to time and while it was nice to have my own bed—Violet never, ever made the bed—it wasn't really much of a hardship as we were rarely off at the same time. Truly Johnston's complaint was a tempest in a teacup, but it came at a bad time and Miss Ivens had always had a weakness when it came to criticism. She said she would go back to Edinburgh and speak with the committee about the complaint. I told her I thought that unnecessary. “I just think she's not worth it,” I said.

“She's put it in writing, Iris,” Miss Ivens said.

“You can't just go flying off the handle every time someone isn't happy here.” I was exasperated with Miss Ivens and sounded so. I hadn't meant to speak harshly and the look on her face was one of surprise. I'd never spoken to her that way before.

“Perhaps you're right, Iris,” she said. “Well, of course you are. We're all under too much strain and people like that just make my blood boil. I'd like to get her back here to tell her what's what at Royaumont.”

“We all would,” I said, more kindly, “but let me write to the committee, correct her errors, and move on to important things.”

“Very wise, Iris,” Miss Ivens said. “As always, very wise.” She looked at my face carefully but said no more.

A few days later, she sent me off on leave, to Nice this time, in the south of France. She could see something was bothering me and she assumed it was the workload. When I argued against going, she said she wouldn't hear of it and that was that. I went with Marjorie Starr. Just before we left, Miss Ivens told me she was going to recommend me and not Violet for the scholarship. I told her I still hadn't made up my mind what I wanted. She'd told me I needed to have a good think. I didn't know if Violet knew any of this. I felt it had come between us. I couldn't bring myself to talk to her about it.

I worried about Tom, wondered what I should do now. I couldn't just up and leave and take him home, and he wouldn't come anyway. If only there were a way to make him see that what he was doing was worthwhile regardless of what Michaels thought. But perhaps I was being selfish. Many families had watched their loved ones go to war. Perhaps I ought to let Tom do as he wished. And now there was the scholarship, a chance to remain with Miss Ivens, a chance to become a doctor.

On the train from Paris to Nice, I watched an elderly couple. The woman tried to make her husband eat—chocolate and flan and sandwiches. Some he took, most he left. When he took something, she had some too. He refused the chocolate. She put it back in her bag without eating any, although she took her time, as if hoping he'd change his mind. I realised she could only allow herself to eat if he ate. If he refused, she refrained. If I went home, would that be me and Al in twenty or thirty or forty years time? I wondered. They got off at Antibes. He tried to help her put her coat on. She shook him off, as though she was paying him back for not eating the chocolate.

On the first day in Nice, Marjorie and I climbed a hill to a park where children played
pétanque
as if there was no war, their mothers sitting on the benches chatting. You would need to look carefully to see that there were also no young men, that many of the women wore black, to know that war was part of these lives too.

Later we walked down to the sea and I was struck suddenly by the futility of it all. The sea was still the sea. Nothing had changed and yet we had been years patching up the bodies of men so they could be torn up all over again. It occurred to me then that the war would go on, it wouldn't matter if a peace was struck, the damage was so great that the war would go on for generations. A little boy I saw on his way to school, his mother and sister trailing behind, would have no father, no way to know anymore how to be a father. And on and on.

I kept thinking of the Senegalese boy who'd died at Royaumont in our first days as a hospital. He was far from his home, no one to comfort him or even to speak a word he understood in his dying moments. Much has been written about war and its bland cruelty and I have nothing to add that would illuminate matters except to say that every one of those boys from France and England and Senegal and Australia and even Germany was someone's son and many were someone's brother or father. They had a preference for melted cheese on toast and a missing tooth. We knew them just a little, but every one of the millions killed in those four years was a life surrounded by others that would never be the same. So that when you took that one life, you took others and the casualties ran on and on until there was nothing left but grief. It ran like a river through every small town and city of Australia and the world. And for what?