Lorimers at War (11 page)

‘Whatever you command shall be done,' Alexa conceded. ‘And now I can see that you'd like to be left to your paperwork.' She smiled at her sister as she went out, but before the door closed behind her she saw that Margaret was about to be interrupted again and stepped back into the office to give warning. ‘There's someone else waiting to see you. One of the VADs. And by the look of her, you're going to need a spare handkerchief.'

The young women who joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment as their contribution to the war effort were conscientious and willingly hard-working. But most of them were girls of good family, brought up in homes run entirely by servants, so that even the simplest chores had to be explained to them. It was easy for Matron and the charge-sisters to become impatient when, out of anxiety to please, the VADs spent longer on some routine duty than a professional nurse would have done. It was tempting, as well, to allocate all the most unpleasant tasks to them on the grounds that they were still only semi-skilled.

Margaret sympathized with both sides in the frequent disputes which arose. But she regarded herself mainly as the protector of the girls who were young, inexperienced and overworked, and who in most cases had never lived away from home before. Matron was well able to look after herself.

For this reason she was careful not to show any sign of impatience as Nurse Jennifer Blakeney came in, although the weekly roll of patients required by the War Office still lay uncompleted on the desk.

‘Good morning, Nurse,' she said. She kept her voice cheerful, although Jennifer's unhappiness was plain enough. ‘What's the problem?'

‘Matron told me to report to you,' said Jennifer, and was then apparently unable to go on.

‘Yes?'

‘She said I ought to consider with you whether I was suited to my work.'

‘That's a fairly large matter to consider,' Margaret said. ‘Sit down, Nurse. Have I had a chitty from Matron about you?' She began to search through the papers on her desk to see whether there was some complaint that she had overlooked.

‘No, Dr Scott. It's only just happened.'

‘What has just happened?'

As carefully as though Matron herself were presenting the case for the prosecution, Jennifer recited a list of her offences, culminating in Sister's discovery that she had poured out twenty mugs of tea, left them standing on a tray for half an hour, and had then poured the tea away and washed up the mugs.

‘So you're not concentrating properly on your work,' said Margaret. ‘But I've had good reports of you before. I take it that something has happened.' She recognized the silence which followed as that of someone who knows that if she tries to speak she will burst into tears. Alexa's quick summing-up of the situation had been correct. ‘Have you had some bad news?' she enquired.

It was not a question which required very much intuition on her part. There was hardly a family in England which had not by now been given cause for grief. Margaret herself, with her son and her nephew still unhurt, knew that she was luckier than most people.

Jennifer nodded and the tears began to run down her cheeks. ‘My brother,' she said.

‘Killed?'

Jennifer nodded again, doing her best to stem the flow with much rubbing of her handkerchief.

‘I'm very sorry, my dear.'

‘But it's not just that,' said Jennifer. Now that the main fact was established, the words came tumbling out. ‘It was my father who wrote to tell me. He's quite old. My mother died six years ago and now that Geoffrey's dead – well, he's upset, of course, as I am, but more than that.' She looked up, red-eyed. ‘He wants me to go home.'

‘To give up your work, you mean?'

‘Yes. To look after him. Or just to live with him. He's lonely. He didn't mind too much while he could think that Geoffrey and I would both come back in the end, but now he's frightened.'

‘You're only a volunteer, of course,' Margaret said carefully. ‘Not an enlisted soldier. You have the right to resign if you wish.'

‘But I don't want – Dr Scott, I don't know what I ought to do. I've done my training, I think I'm some use here – I know I've been careless this last week, but I could stop that. I'm sure it's my duty to go on nursing, and yet there's my duty to my father as well, and no one else can do that for me.' The tears welled into her eyes again and she buried her head in her hands.

Margaret allowed her a moment to bring herself under control. She was a slight girl, probably not more than twenty, with fair hair and a pale, pretty face spoiled only by anxious eyes. It was tempting to be purely sympathetic, and certainly the child needed comfort. But Margaret had spent many years acting as the supervisor and friend-in-need of young women who were training to be doctors, and knew that there were times when firmness was more helpful than kindness.

‘So you're doing one of your duties badly because you can't choose which of the two you ought to accept,' she said as Jennifer's sniffs came to an end at last. ‘I know how tempting it is for parents of my generation to believe that they have a right to their daughters' company and I can see that your love for your father makes this a very difficult choice for you. It's not for me to say what you should decide. There's no right or wrong about it. What is certain is that you must make a decision and when you've made it you must hold to it without regrets. Sometimes, I think, it's better to be definite than to be right.' She paused for a moment to consider. ‘Did you tell Matron about your brother's death?'

‘No, Doctor.'

‘I'll have a word with her. As far as this past week is concerned, I'm sure we can all forget about it and you'll make sure that there's no further cause for complaint. But with regard to the future – I'll give you a week's compassionate leave. A visit to your father will be a comfort to you both, and while you're at home you will take your decision.' She opened the leave book which Matron had brought for her approval that morning. All the VADs hoped that they might be allowed home for Christmas, but Jennifer's case seemed stronger than most. ‘I'll present you with another choice at once. If you think it will mean more to your father, I'll change the rota so that you may have Christmas leave. Or else you may go home at once and come back before Christmas Eve.'

It seemed that Jennifer had learned her lesson, for she made her choice without hesitation.

‘I wouldn't want to spoil anyone else's hopes for Christmas,' she said. ‘I very much appreciate your offer of leave now, and I'd like to accept it.'

Even after Jennifer had left, Margaret was not allowed long without interruption. But the arrival of the post was always welcome and she smiled to see a letter from her brother.

Her smile was quick to fade. Ralph's letter was long and rambling, incoherent almost to the point of incomprehensibility. But although he did not state in so many words that Lydia was dead, there could be no other possible interpretation of the grief and anger and loneliness which he had poured out on paper.

For a long time Margaret stared blankly at the wall in front of her. Lydia had been her friend for fifty years. They were playmates as children in Bristol, and as medical students in London had lived and worked together for the hardest and happiest years of their lives. It was as a direct result of Margaret's match-making that her brother had married Lydia and taken her off to Jamaica. And now her dear friend was dead. It was to be expected at her age, she supposed, that she must lose one by one everyone whom she had loved when she was young, until now only Ralph himself remained, but this particular bereavement made her feel that her youth itself had disappeared. There would be no one now with whom she could exchange memories of bicycle rides and theatres and examinations and all the struggles that had been necessary before the two of them were accepted in a profession dominated by men. Lydia, dear ugly Lydia, had always been so merry, laughing away the tiredness of nights on duty and the drudgery of each new subject which had to be studied.

How merry had Lydia been in the last years of her life, Margaret wondered. She had never complained at the need for her two elder children to spend so much time away from home for the sake of their education, but it must have come as a bitter blow when the war prevented their return just as hopes of a reunion were highest. Brinsley and Kate were such handsome children, sturdy both in body and in the independence of their character. Grant could hardly have provided a satisfactory compensation for their absence. If Ralph's letter were to be believed it was Grant – crippled and clinging – who had been responsible for the final strain on his mother's heart.

Margaret was not a woman who succumbed easily to grief, but the months of war had taken their toll of her nerves. It added an extra dimension to her sadness that a chapter of the past should so finally close at a time when the present was grey and uncertain and when it was not possible to look into the future at all without terror. If a woman surrounded by love on a peaceful tropical island could die, what hope was there for a young man on a battlefield designed for killing? The sense of desolation which overcame her embraced everyone she loved and clouded the future, as well as the past. She mourned for Lydia. And at the same time she feared for Robert.

The gales of late December had whipped the Channel into a fury almost as spiteful as that of the Western Front, and the troop trains in both France and England were slow as well as over-crowded. By the time Robert arrived at Paddington Station on his first home leave he was exhausted by forty hours of travel. The train which was already pulling away from the barrier was the last of the day, his only hope of sleeping in a comfortable bed at Blaize and waking up to Christmas Day amongst his family. He forced himself to make one last effort and began to sprint as though the widening gap between himself and the end of the train were exposed to machine gun fire. Still running, he fumbled with the handle of the last carriage and fell rather than stepped inside.

As his panting subsided and he looked around, he saw that the only other occupant of the compartment was a fair-haired young woman wearing the uniform of a VAD. She looked startled, even a little apprehensive. Robert glanced at the window and saw the diamond-shaped label which reserved the compartment for Ladies Only.

‘Sorry,' he said. ‘I'll move at the next stop.'

‘It doesn't matter.' Her voice was shy and attractively soft. She hesitated as though she were either wondering whether it would be proper for her to continue the conversation or else was doubtful about the particular question she wanted to ask. In the end, however, she was unable to restrain it. ‘Where have you come from?'

Robert was reluctant to answer. He had promised himself that for the next ten days he would forget the canal and the bridge, pretend that Loos had never existed and that he would never return to Hédauville. In any case he had been warned by friends who had been on leave before him that civilians were not genuinely interested in the details of battles. They made polite enquiries but rapely listened to the answers. Perhaps they lacked the imagination necessary to envisage the horror of life in the trenches; or perhaps, imagining it too well, they were embarrassed to discuss it amidst the comforts of England with someone who was enduring it on their behalf.

‘What sector of the front, I mean?' She hesitated again. ‘My brother was killed –'

Now Robert saw what she wanted – the description of some landscape which would furnish her attempts to reconstruct the scene; and, most of all, some kind of reassurance that the death had been necessary, a means of understanding why it had happened.

It was not a reassurance which he could give. There was nothing deliberate about his evasion of her question. It was more than three weeks since he had last enjoyed an undisturbed night and he had not slept at all for the past forty-eight hours. As though the catching of the train represented the last positive effort of which he was capable, he gave one deep sigh and felt himself toppling sideways. From what seemed to be a deep sleep he was conscious of the girl shaking him by the shoulders. She was worried, perhaps, about his sudden collapse, because
her finger was pressing his wrist to feel the pulse. He managed to grunt as an indication that he was still alive and the focus of her anxiety changed.

‘What station do you want? Where are you going?'

‘Blaize,' he murmured, and fell weightlessly through the darkness into sleep again.

He awoke in a mid-morning light to find Frisca sitting beside his bed, staring intently at him. He had just time to consider that this must be the first occasion on which his young cousin had ever managed to keep still for more than two seconds at a time when she flung her arms round his neck.

‘Steady, steady!' he protested, laughing. ‘I'm still asleep.'

‘No, you're not.' She hugged him again. ‘You're scratchy, though.'

‘Let that be a lesson to you. You should never come into a gentleman's bedroom until he's had time to shave.'

‘Aunt Margaret said I could sit here. She said no one was to wake you until you were ready, but she wanted to know when you did wake.'

‘Off you go and tell her, then.'

Frisca must have had difficulty in finding his mother, for he had time to bathe before he heard her footsteps hurrying along the corridor. He opened the door so that she could run straight into his arms and for a moment they stood close together without speaking. They would both have been embarrassed, though, to say what they were feeling. Margaret's voice was light and smiling as she sat down on his bedroom chair.

‘You're just in time to help with the carving of all the turkeys.'

‘What an exhausting business it is, coming on leave,' Robert laughed. ‘But I can hardly believe that I'm here at all, so a little strenuous carving may help to persuade me that it isn't a dream.'