The Bannister Girls (32 page)

Angel laughed at the artless compliment, and turned to face Sister Yard's enquiring eyes. She spoke quickly, before she could be reprimanded for wasting time.

‘This is my sister, Sister.' She stopped, unable to resist a short laugh at hearing Ellen's stifled giggle.

Angel tried again. ‘Sorry, Sister Yard. This is Ellen Bannister, and she very much wants to do any office work
that's available. She's an excellent book-keeper and kept records for a branch of the suffragette movement in London –'

‘There's no place here for young women on soapboxes,' Sister Yard said sharply, at which Ellen's face sobered.

‘I've no intention of doing any such thing!' she said indignantly. ‘I want to help in the hospital in any way I can, and I thought I would be most useful at some paperwork, since I have experience in it.'

Sister Yard looked her up and down. ‘I see. Fresh from college, are you?'

‘Certainly not. I'm Angel's older sister,' Ellen was even more indignant at being thought the younger of the two, although she had to admit that Angel's whole mien showed more maturity than when she had last seen her.

Sister Yard allowed herself to smile.

‘And I think you'll do,' she said thoughtfully. ‘You're not attached to any organisation, I presume? You're not a V.A.D.?'

Ellen shook her head, her heart sinking.

‘No. I didn't know it was necessary. It was all decided in rather a hurry. I took the first available train to Dover and waited for hours until I could get a passage on a boat, and then cadged a lift in an army truck to get here.'

It sounded awful, as though she was too impetuous to have given any thought to the consequences. As though she were still playing the butterfly, and had thought the whim of going to France and penning a few documents would be such fun…

‘Right,' Sister Yard said. ‘You're obviously a girl with spirit, like your sister. I'll speak to the doctor in charge about you, Bannister. I daresay you'll be a useful addition in the office. Lord knows it's difficult enough to keep proper records of all the patients here.'

‘Oh, that's topping –' Ellen began, eyes shining, when Sister Yard cut her short.

‘You'll be useful because two of the office girls are away with 'flu. When they return, I shall ask for you on the wards. I can guess that you're not a nurse,' she said, as Ellen's mouth dropped open. ‘But you're big and strong, and I need girls of your stature to help lift the patients. You'll be more use to me as a ward helper.'

She turned to Angel.

‘Take half an hour off, Bannister, to show your sister around. She can share your room, and you can make up the time at the end of your shift.'

She swished away down the corridor, and both girls let out a long sigh of relief.

‘Phew. Is she always such a dragon?' Ellen muttered.

Angel laughed, too thrilled at seeing Ellen again to let anything spoil the moment.

‘She's better when you get to know her, and she's wonderful with the patients, which is all that matters. Come on. Let's go to the room, and you can tell me everything.'

‘In half an hour? Oh well, I'll try!'

They linked arms in the old familiar way. Angel had never imagined how good it would feel to have someone of her own at Piersville. Until this moment, she never realised how much she missed Margot. And it was Margot's name that cropped up almost at once, as she sprawled on her own narrow bed, and Ellen grimaced at the hardness of the other one.

‘You'll get used to it. So what happened in London? Mother said in one of her letters that you'd gone back to live with Rose and were doing munitions work.'

‘It was a disaster,' Ellen said flatly. ‘Rose and I have got different ideas now, and this time we've parted for good. But I saw a friend of yours while I was in London –'

Jacques
… his name leapt to Angel's mind, and just as quickly left it. Of course it wasn't Jacques. Ellen didn't even know him…

‘I met Margot outside the picture palace, and we had tea together. Dear God, Angel, what's wrong with her? Is she losing her mind? She spoke about going to see Eddie as if they were going to the theatre or something.'

‘Still? I thought she'd be over all that by now,' Angel said, aghast. ‘I wonder if she's seen a doctor.'

‘A head doctor is what she needs,' Ellen said, blunt as ever. ‘I tell you, it unnerved me, and my stomach's pretty strong.'

She hoped it was. The smells that had assaulted her ever since arriving at Piersville had begun to make her queasy. She hadn't eaten for hours, she realised in some surprise. But right now, food was the last thing she wanted.

‘How's Mother? Is she well? And what about Louise? Still happy with her Dougal?'

‘Blissful, apparently. Mother's washed her hands of her, of course, but good luck to her, I say. I can't think that Stanley ever did very much for her. Mother's all right. Grumbling as usual, and complaining that Father hardly ever comes home nowadays. He's terribly involved with the factory, of course, but you can't get Mother to understand such things. She doesn't really want to. It's all too too commercial. He came down for a week while I was there though, and it was good to see him again. I thought he looked harassed. Overworked, I daresay.'

She prattled on, hardly noticing the strained look on Angel's face at the mention of her father. She hadn't asked about him, but Ellen hadn't noticed. And Angel was perfectly sure that it wasn't just overwork that kept Sir Fred up in Yorkshire. The bitter feeling of betrayal swept over her again, and she forced herself to look at Ellen as her sister paused for breath.

‘And what about you, darling? You haven't said anything about yourself. Did you see Peter while you were in Somerset?'

Ellen felt her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth. Angel
didn't know of her humiliation. Nobody knew. Angel thought that she and Peter still had a fondness for one another … she blinked quickly, before the wretched tears made a fool of her.

‘I'm all right. Still looking for something to do to be useful, which is why I'm here. The munitions factory was a dreary place, with nobody allowed to talk for fear of inhaling the fumes, and then Rose got TNT poisoning, which made her look so ghastly, Angel. I thought she'd never get over it, but she did, and has a new beau hanging around.'

She looked at the small clock on Angel's bedside table.

‘I say, hadn't you better get back to the ward? The old dragon will be looking for you, and I shall get the blame for keeping you, which won't start me off too well. I'm dropping with sleep, so I'll just have a nap until you get back. She won't expect me to report for duty just yet, will she?'

‘Of course not,' Angel laughed. Ellen lay flat out on the bed, fully dressed, and Angel pulled the coverlet over her, leaning down to kiss her square cheek with real affection.

‘Oh, Ellen, I'm so glad you're here. I can't tell you how good it is to see you.'

‘Me too,' Ellen mumbled, already drifting into sleep. ‘Just as long as I don't get all the dogsbody jobs because I'm big and strong. That's some recommendation! Is this how a railway navvy feels?'

Angel tiptoed out as the voice dwindled away. She felt better than she had in weeks, she realised, even hummed a little tune as she sped down the stairs to the wards. It was only later that she realised that Ellen had avoided any mention of Peter Chard, as neatly as Angel had avoided asking about their father.

By the time she came off duty exhaustedly that night, Ellen was sound asleep. At some time she must have roused herself enough to undress, and her clothes were scattered at the foot of the bed. Angel hung them up mechanically, knowing they
would be a mass of creases otherwise, and there was always a race for the flat iron among the girls.

She awoke to a clear, crisp morning, the kind of morning that somehow filled you with anticipation with no definite reason for it. It was the joy of having Ellen here, Angel decided. She looked across the tiny room to smile at her sister's sleeping face, so cherubic in sleep, so often waspish when she had every intention of getting her own way.

It was a good thing that Sister Yard was genuinely in need of office help, Angel mused. If Ellen had got up on her high horse last night when she had travelled all this way, then things might have got off to a very different start. As it was, Sister had told Angel to pass on the message that Ellen could report to the office for duty that morning.

‘I'm not doing you a favour, Bannister,' Sister had added keenly. ‘If I didn't think your sister could be useful, then she'd be sent back. There's no room for young women who think that playing at being a heroine is fun.'

‘Ellen would never think that –'

‘If she's half the girl her sister is, then that should prove to be so,' Sister paid her the obscure compliment, and left Angel wondering how anyone could call her a heroine. Florence Nightingale and her nurses were heroines. What Angel and the others did was sheer bloody hard work … but perhaps that was the stuff of which heroines were made. It was something you never had time to think about.

‘Good morning,' she said now, as Ellen opened her eyes and groaned at the daylight.

‘Is it good?' Ellen said cautiously. ‘I was dreaming I was in France. Tell me I'm still dreaming. Stick a pin in me or something. I didn't actually volunteer, did I?'

‘You did and you are,' Angel said cheerfully. ‘Get up and wash and dress, and we'll go and get some breakfast, then I'll show you where to report. You'll meet Doctor Lancing –'

‘Doctor
who
–?' Ellen spluttered.

‘You'll get used to it,' Angel said briefly. ‘Come on. We're
late. You know what Mother used to say. Never be late anywhere on your first day. It's bad form.'

She grinned as she spoke. Clemence had always tried so hard to instil good form into her girls. Had they really turned out so badly? But this was no time for introspection. There was a small washbasin in their room and they washed quickly in the cold water, brushing their teeth in the minimum of time, and walked sedately down the corridors until Ellen was shown into the office. A beefy man rose to greet her. Doctor Lancing, she presumed, resisting the urge to smile at such an impossible name for an army surgeon…

They saw little of one another that day, except for the briefest of meal times. But the mere knowledge of Ellen's presence had the power to lift Angel's spirits. Or perhaps it also had something to do with the strange feeling of elation she had felt early that day.

‘Goin' out wiv yer bloke or summat, are yer, Miss?' one of the patients winked knowingly at her as the day's shift neared its end. Angel laughed, tucking the bedding around him more securely. It was hard for men with no arms to keep their balance in the beds. It constantly amazed and humbled her to see how cheerful they kept.

‘What bloke?' She teased him back. ‘I'm too tired from dealing with all my blokes here to be going out at night.'

‘Garn! A good-looker like you! I bet there's a bloke somewhere who can't wait for yer to go on to ‘is special night shift!'

‘Stop trying to shock me, Les Higgins,' she said in mock severity. ‘Don't you know that nurses are unshockable?'

The man chuckled. They had to be, poor little devils, he thought sympathetically, with all the rotten jobs they had to do. Even to holding a man's privates for him to have a pee. When there were no hands to do it, it became a job for somebody else. Some blokes thought it a bonus to have a pretty little nurse doing the necessary, but for Les, the
prospect of the future became too mucky to contemplate.

‘Come on, Nursie,' he coaxed. ‘Tell us yer bloke's name.'

Angel bent down to remove the man's glasses before he settled down for a sleep. He squinted at her short-sightedly.

‘Well, just between you and me, it's Jacques,' she said.

‘A Froggie, is he? Might have known you'd have summat a bit special, a girl like you –'

‘Bannister, please come to my office when you've finished there,' Sister Yard's voice cut through the conspiratorial chat, to Angel's relief. Even though it gave her sweet comfort to speak Jacques' name, she didn't intend getting into conversation about him with Private Higgins or anybody else.

She went into Sister's cubbyhole of an office. Beyond it was the larger room where Ellen was working now with another girl, both heads bent busily over some ledgers. Recording names and addresses of the dead and wounded to be sent to commanding officers must be a grim and mountainous task, Angel thought.

And then she dismissed it from her mind as Sister told her to sit down and made the statement that proved to Angel that her feelings of optimism in the day were not unfounded after all.

‘Bannister, we're to get a new intake of V.A.D.s in two weeks' time. You have the option of staying here, or of being transferred to the Abbey of St Helene as you requested. I realise that you may wish to change your mind now that your sister's here –'

‘No! Oh no, Sister! I still want the transfer!'

She clasped her slim hands together, her eyes glowing like jewels, and even Sister Yard could see the delicate luminous beauty of the girl. She cleared her throat.

‘I hope you find what you're looking for, Bannister.'

‘I know that I will, Sister. And thank-you!'

Sister Yard shrugged. ‘Don't thank me. I think I must be a fool to lose one of my best nurses, but I know that this means
a lot to you. You do realise that the young man may not be who you think he is? The enquiries we made for you were all far from satisfactory, and the nuns could tell us nothing.'

‘And they refused to allow him visitors, while the balance of his mind was so disturbed.'

Angel repeated the words somewhat bitterly. She had desperately wanted to go to the Abbey to see for herself, but the nuns had been adamant. The mystery patient was their responsibility, and until he had recovered some of his memory, they had ordered no visitors. Nothing to disturb that fragile hold on sanity…