Maisie Dobbs (20 page)

“’Allo, Nurse. Going to make me all better, are you?” said the man as the stretcher bearers quickly but carefully placed him on the table.

Maisie looked straight into the man’s eyes and saw intense pain masked by the attempt at humor. Taking up scissors and swabs, along with the pungent garlic juice used to disinfect wounds, she breathed deeply and smiled.

“Yes. I’m going to make you all better, young man. Now then, hold still.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

M
aisie awoke in the tent she shared with Iris. Snuggling under her blankets, she looked over at her friend and, in the half sleep of early morning, thought for a moment that it was Enid, but realized that it was the bump of Iris’s behind forming a mound in the bed as she, too, curled herself against the early morning chill.

She took a deep breath. The chill air notwithstanding, Maisie suddenly sat up, pulling the blanket around her shoulders as she did so. She must do everything in her power to keep a calm head, to brace herself for the day, and to prepare herself for the elements. Rain had started to fall again. Rain that soaked into the ground to form a stew of mud and filthy water that seeped up into the cloth of her long woolen dress, making it hang heavily against her ankles as she worked again and again to clean and bandage wounds. By the end of each day the mud had worked its way up to her knees, and time and time again she told herself that she was warm, really, that her feet felt dry, really. Then at night, she and Iris would hang up their dresses to allow the moisture to evaporate, and check each other’s bodies for the battlefield lice that seemed to know no defeat.

“You first, Maisie,” said Iris, still clutching the bedcovers around her body.

“You just don’t want to be the one to crack the ice.”

“What ice?”

“I told you, Iris, there was a layer of ice on the top of that water yesterday.”

“No!”

Iris turned over in her cot to look at Maisie, who sat cross-legged on her bed.

“I don’t know how you can sit like that, Dobbs. Now then, are you telling me there was ice on the water? It’s not even proper winter yet.”

“Yes. Even though it’s not proper winter.”

Maisie took another deep breath, which, when exhaled, turned to steamy fog in front of her face. She cast the blanket aside and nimbly ran over to the water pitcher and bowl that stood on top of a wooden chest.

“And the sitting in the morning—it’s what helps to keep me from freezing solid all day, Iris. It clears my head. You should try it!”

“Hmmmph!”

Iris turned over in bed and tried to ignore her cold feet.

Maisie poked her finger into the water pitcher. She cracked the thin layer of ice as if tentatively testing a piecrust, then gripped the handle of the pitcher with both hands and poured freezing cold water into the bowl. Reaching over to the side of the chest, Maisie unhooked a flannel cloth, which she steeped in the water. After wringing it out, Maisie unbuttoned the front of her nightgown and washed first her face, then under her arms and up to her neck. Oh, what she would give for a bath! To sit in a deep bathtub filled with piping hot water and soap bubbles coming up to her ears.

Again she plunged the cloth into the cold water, squeezed the excess water back into the bowl, and this time lifted her nightgown and washed between her legs and down to her knees. A nice hot bath. For hours. She wouldn’t come out for hours. She’d keep twiddling that hot tap with her big toe, and she wouldn’t come out until every last molecule of mud, blood, sweat, and tears had been washed away.

Taking down her still-damp dress, which had been hanging from a wire she and Iris had rigged up inside the tent, Maisie checked every seam and in the hem for lice. It was the morning drill: Check for lice everywhere, and when you’ve finished checking, check some more, because lice are crafty little beggars. She dressed quickly, finally slipping a white armband with a red cross just above the elbow of her right sleeve, and taking out a fresh apron and attaching a silver watch pin to the left side of the bib. Along with the black leather document case, which now held her writing paper and letters received, the nurse’s watch was her talisman from home, a gift from Lady Rowan.

Finally Maisie placed a towel on her cot and leaned over it to brush her hair, looking carefully for lice falling out. She and Iris checked each other’s hair every night or, if they were on duty at night, whenever they were both in the tent and awake at the same time. But Maisie always checked again in the morning, brushing her hair over a towel until her head spun. Then she quickly pinned her hair up into a bun, and placed her cap on her head.

“I’m all finished, Iris.”

“Right you are, Dobbsie.” Iris shivered under her bedclothes.“Lord knows what this will be like in the real winter.”

“At least we’re not up to our waists in mud in the trenches, Iris. Least we’re not piling up bodies to make a wall to protect us. Not like the boys.”

“You’re right there, as always,” said Iris as she leaped from bed and began the morning ritual that Maisie had just finished. “Brrrr . . . I ‘spect you’re going over to see if there’s a letter from your young man.”

Maisie rolled her eyes. “I’ve told you, Iris. He’s not—”

“Yes, I know, I know. He’s not your young man. Well then, go and get your letter from your special friend of a friend then, and leave me to my delousing, if you don’t mind!”

The young women laughed, as Maisie pulled back the tent flap, leaving Iris to her morning ablutions. Picking her way across wooden boards covering mud and puddles, Maisie made her way to the cooks’ tent to get tea and bread for breakfast.

“There you are, Sister, get this down you.” The orderly on duty held out a large enamel mug along with a slice of bread and dripping for Maisie, addressing her as “sister” in the way that soldiers called all nurses, regardless of rank, “sister.”

“And a little something else for you, passed on to me this morning.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a simple brown envelope that clearly contained a long letter, such was the thickness of the packet. The envelope was crumpled and bore stains of the four sets of dirty hands it had passed through before reaching its destination.

The letters from Simon Lynch to Maisie Dobbs would never travel through the censor’s office, passed as they were from orderly to ambulance driver to stretcher bearer to cook. Her letters in return were passed in the same way, from person to person. And each time a letter changed hands, there would be a comment exchanged, a remark about young love, or that it was all very well for him, Captain Romantic over there.

The writers said nothing of love when the first letter, from Simon to Maisie, was sent and received. But in the way that two people who are of one mind on any subject move closer, as if their heads were drawn together by thoughts that ran parallel toward a future destination, so the letters of Simon and Maisie became more frequent, one hardly waiting for the other to reply before setting pen to paper again. Bearing up under exhaustion that weighed on their backs and pushed like a fist between their shoulder blades, Simon and Maisie, each in a tent several miles apart, and each by the strained light of an oil lamp, would write quickly and urgently of days amid the detritus of war. And though both knew that war, and the ever-present breath of despair might have added urgency to their need to be together again, they began unashamedly to declare their feelings in the letters that were passed from hand to hand. Feelings that, with each shared experience and story, grew deeper. Then Simon wrote:

My Dearest Maisie of the Blue Silk Dress,

I have been on duty for 30 hours without so much as sitting down for five minutes. Wounded started coming in again at eleven yesterday morning. I have bent over so many bodies, so many wounds that I fear I have lost count. I seem to remember only the eyes, and I remember the eyes because in them I see the same shock, the same disbelief, and the same resignation. Today I saw, in quick succession, a man and his son. They had joined up together, I suspect one or both lying about their age. And they had the same eyes. The very same. Perhaps what I see in each man is that no matter what their age (and by golly, some of them shouldn’t be out of school), they seem so very old.

I am due for a short leave in three weeks. I will receive orders soon. I plan to go back to Rouen for two days. I remember you said that you would be due for leave soon, too. Would it be too presumptuous for me to ask if we might possibly meet in Rouen? I so long to see you, Maisie, and to be taken from this misery by your wonderful smile and inspiring good sense. Do write to let me know.

Iris had leave at the same time as Maisie, providing Maisie with a female companion. The journey to Rouen seemed long and drawn out, until finally they reached the Hotel St. Georges.

“I swear I cannot wait to get into that bath, Maisie Dobbs.”

“Me too, Iris. I wonder if we can get our dresses cleaned. I’ve another day dress with me that I haven’t worn. How about you?”

“Yes, me too. Not supposed to be out of uniform, but for goodness sake, this dress will walk to the laundry if I don’t take it.”

Maisie and Iris hurried immediately to their assigned room. The ceilings seemed extraordinarily high and there was chipped paint on the walls and doorframe. The room itself was small and simple, containing two single beds and a washstand, but after several months of living with the roof of a leaking tent barely six inches above their heads, they saw only grandeur. Two bathrooms were situated along the red-carpeted corridor, and the ever vigilant Iris immediately checked to see whether either was already occupied.

“One already gone, I’m afraid, and he’s singing at the top of his voice.”

“Golly, I am just aching for a nice hot bath,” said Maisie.

“Tell you what. I’ll put on my day dress and see if I can get our laundry done, while you draw a bath. We can top and tail it—check for the dreaded lice at the same time. It’ll save waiting. Did you see the officers coming in after us? Bet they’ll be bagging the bathrooms a bit sharpish.”

“Don’t some officers get rooms with bathrooms?”

“Oh, yes. Forgot that. Privilege and all that.”

Iris and Maisie had discarded their uniform dresses quickly, and Iris gathered the laundry and walked toward the door.

“Never know, Maisie, p’raps your Captain Lynch will let you use
his
bathroom.”

“Iris!”

“Only joking, Dobbsie. Now then, go bag us a bathroom.”

The bathtub easily accommodated the two women, who lay back in the steaming water and audibly allowed the tension of the past few months to drain away.

“Bit more hot water, Maisie. Another five minutes and we’ll swap ends.”

“And about time!”

Maisie turned on the hot tap and pulled the plug to allow some of the cooler water out at the same time. After wallowing for another five minutes, they swapped ends, giggling as they moved, and continued to linger in the soothing steamy heat.

“Maisie,” said Iris, as she leaned back, trying to comfortably position her head between the heavy taps,“Maisie, do you think your Captain Lynch will ask you to marry him, then?”

“Iris—”

“No, I’m not kidding you on now. I’m serious. What with the war and all. Makes you a bit more serious, doesn’t it? Look at Bess White—gets a letter from her sweetheart, says he’s going home on leave, she goes on leave, and boom! There they are—married, and him back at the front.”

Maisie leaned forward, dipped her head in the water and sat up, sweeping back the long dark tresses.

“Here’s what I do know, Iris. I know that when this is over, when the war is done with, I’m going back to university. That’s what I know. Besides, when the war’s over, I don’t know if I’ll be . . . well, Simon comes from a good family.”

Iris looked at Maisie, then sat up and took hold of her hand.

“I know exactly what you are just about to say, Maisie, and let me tell you this, in case you haven’t noticed. We are living in different times now. This war has made everything different. I’ve seen the letters from your dad, and from that Carter and Mrs. Whatsername with the pies. Those people, Maisie, are your family, and they are every bit as good as Simon’s. And you are every bit as good as anyone Captain Simon Lynch will ever meet.”

Maisie held on to Iris’s hand, bit her bottom lip, and nodded. “It’s just that—I can’t explain it, but I have a feeling here,” she held her hand to her chest,“that things will change. I know, I know, Iris, what you’re going to say, ‘It’s the war. . . .’ But I know this feeling. I know it to be true. And I know that everything will change.”

“Come on. This water’s going to your head, Maisie Dobbs. You are a grand nurse, Dobbsie, but I tell you, sometimes I wonder about all your wondering.”

Iris put her hands on either side of the bath and levered herself up. She stepped out onto the tiled floor, grabbed one of the sturdy white towels, and began to dry herself. Maisie continued to sit in the rapidly cooling water while Iris dressed.

“Come on, dreamer. We’d better get a move on. That’s if you want to see young Captain Lynch for dinner this evening. What time did he say to meet him?”

“The note said seven o’clock. By the desk in the main corridor as you come into the hotel.”