The Passing Bells (43 page)

A tall, sharp-faced English nurse eyed her coldly. “VAD? What on earth are you doing up here?”

“I . . . I wish to see Major Mackendric. He is stationed here, isn't he, Sister?”

The middle-aged nurse studied the forlorn-looking girl standing in front of her desk and her expression softened. She stood up, her starched uniform making a crisp, rustling sound.

“He's in surgery at the moment. Have you had your breakfast?”

“No, Sister.”

“Well, come along and I'll take you to the mess tent. Did you drive up from Saint-Omer or come by train?”

“I drove, Sister.”

“You must be quite at the end of your tether then. We shall soon fix that with a good cup of tea. You're a friend of the major's I take it?”

“Yes. I . . . I nursed his brother.”

A tiny smile tugged at the woman's firm mouth. “Oh, you nursed him, did you? Well, I never.”

A thin, fair-haired officer wearing a white jacket over his uniform almost collided with them in the narrow passage outside the nurse's office.

“Hello!” the doctor said cheerfully, leering at Alexandra. “What have we got here?”

“A friend of the major's,” the nurse said.

“Oh, I say! A friend of Mac's? How absolutely topping! Have you been assigned to us?”

“She's a VAD,” the nurse said. “We never get that sort, as well you know, Captain.”

“Yes, worse luck. Nothing but you old curmudgeons.” He kissed the woman on the cheek. “Look after her, Sister, and tell her that Captain Ronald David Vale is by far the nicest chap in the army.”

She sipped her tea, holding the mug tightly with both hands to keep from spilling any. A battery of heavy British guns a mile away were firing, and the salt and pepper shakers on the mess table bounced and slid at every sound. The noise was nerve jarring, but none of the dozen or so nurses, orderlies, and doctors in the long tent seemed to be paying any attention to it.

And suddenly he was seated across from her, his uniform jacket hastily buttoned, his tie askew. He folded his arms on the table and looked at her with a slightly bemused expression.

“What on earth am I going to do with you, Alex?”

She stared into the murky depths of her tea, not trusting herself to look at him. She felt close to tears.

“I shan't go back.”

“But you can't stay here. Surely you can see that.”

She shook her head like an obdurate child. “I'll be useful.”

“All of the nurses here are QA's, some with fifteen and twenty years of service. Even the probationers have had at least a year's training at a teaching hospital. There are no VAD girls beyond Saint-Omer and none are needed. You don't have the slightest conception of what we do here.”

She set her tea down and looked at him for the first time, her longing for him so evident in her eyes that his firmness wilted.

“Oh, Alex . . . Alex . . .” He reached across the table and touched her hand. “You're making this so difficult for me.”

“I don't mean to, Robbie. Really I don't. But it's partially your fault. I'm not very . . .
experienced
at this sort of thing. Perhaps there are some girls who can have a . . . a love affair with a man and then forget all about it. I can't. I tried very hard. Believe me, Robbie, I did. Perhaps if . . . you had been less kind . . . less gentle and loving with me, I could have done so. But the fact is . . . the fact is . . .”

He squeezed her wrist and glanced away. Two X-ray technicians at a nearby table were casting sidelong looks at them. A casualty clearing station was like a village. Everyone knew everything about everybody, and anything not known for certain was grist for endless speculation. The sudden arrival of a beautiful young nurse's aide so soon after the major's leave would have the whole place buzzing, and her bursting into tears in the mess would provide enough material for months of gossip.

“Don't cry,” he said firmly. “Please don't cry.”

“I won't. It's just that I'm so happy to see you . . . and I want so badly to stay. I know I can be useful . . . I just know it . . . and I won't be an embarrassment to you in any way.”

He signaled one of the mess orderlies to bring him tea and then took out his pipe and filled it, being very slow and deliberate with his movements so as to give himself time to think.

“I was quite wrong in making love to you, Alex, and I regret having done so. Making love . . . falling in love . . . those are such gentle acts . . . such fragile emotions. There's no room for them now. I'm sorry that you've been unhappy. I've had a few rough moments myself. I guess I'm like you. I can't have a love affair and then walk away and forget about it. I wish I could. It would make saying goodbye so much easier.”

“I can't say goodbye, Robbie.”

“But you must. We shared a speck of time together, and it can't be enlarged or expanded into anything more than that. A moment. No more. You'll have many moments, Alex. You have a lifetime ahead of you.”

“I can't think about that, Robbie. Can't think ahead. I'm with you and that's all that seems to matter. My heart's out of my throat for the first time in days and days.”

“Look, Alexandra . . . be sensible. You say you wish to be useful—”

“To you, Robbie . . . yes . . . yes, I do.”

“And you have some sort of romantic notion of playing nurse to my doctor. Your ingenuousness captivated me . . . in Chartres. But it's an entirely different matter here. There are no pillows to fluff . . . no lemonade to make. If you're serious about wanting to become a nurse, then join the QA's and in ten months or so you might be qualified to be sent here as a probationer. It takes time, like becoming a doctor . . . a day-to-day process of learning . . . a slow building of experience . . . a . . . Oh, Lord, here comes Vale.”

Captain Ronald David Vale walked toward their table, smoothing his mustache with one finger. He drew up a wood chair without waiting to be invited to sit down.

“Ta-ta, Major . . . Parsons needs your touch in number six right away. It's the Gurkha sergeant . . . gas gangrene for sure in the right leg.”

“Damn.”

“Jenny's talking to him in Nepali, but not making much headway, I'm afraid. Oh, well, can't be helped, can it? Have to chop-chop quick-quick or the poor fella's done for.”

Robin stood up with obvious reluctance. “I suppose you want a formal introduction, Vale?”

“Yes,” he said, grinning at Alexandra. “If you don't mind, old chap.”

“Miss Greville, Captain Vale. Captain Vale, Miss Greville.” He tapped out his pipe in a shell-case ashtray. “I'll be an hour. Show Miss Greville around the place, will you, Vale?”

“Be delighted, dear man . . . positively delighted.” He took a sip of the major's tea and then lit a cigarette. “Curious chaps, these Gurkhas. Damn good fighters. Give Fritz cold sweats, but we have no end of trouble with them. Rather die than have an amputation. Believe in reincarnation, you see. Won't tolerate the idea of going into the next life missing a limb. I say, you're a smashing-looking girl. Don't mind my saying so, do you?”

“No.” He reminded her of Carveth Saunders, Bart., only she assumed his Mayfair tone to be nothing but a pose.

“Care to see our little carnival?”

“Yes, I would, thank you.”

“A bit on the empy side at the moment. We cleared shop by six this morning . . . ready for the next batch. Rather like old Waterloo Station. Chappies come and go.”

“Go where?”

“Oh, by hospital train to Saint-Omer . . . Calais . . . Rouen . . . or down the road to the graveyard. We do more than our best, but we lose quite a few.”

Her nagging sense of trepidation returned when Captain Vale showed her through the wards. They were coldly functional. No white-sheeted beds—simply row upon row of canvas cots with brown army blankets folded neatly at the foot of each. Rolling carts piled high with dressings, bottles of antitetanus serum, hypodermic needles, and morphine capsules were next to every fifth bed. The sisters and RAMC orderlies looked at her with frank curiosity.

“It's your uniform,” Captain Vale said. “Obviously not a regulation issue. Leave it to the sisters to note
that.
As for the orderlies, it's what's
in
the uniform that they're gaping at.” He opened a door and led the way across a duckboard past a fieldstone structure that might once have been a stable. “That's where we operate . . . move the chappies in, move 'em out . . . cut cut cut. Tommy calls this place Mendinghem. . . . Number fifteen CCS over at Neuve-Eglise they call Bandagehem. The French hospital at Hazebrouck is Endinghem. Tommy has a droll sense of humor.”

“Is Major Mackendric in charge here?”

“Oh, my, yes, the top doctor wallah. It's a colonel's job actually, but surgeons are spread thin these days. Even have some Yank chaps coming over to us from Harvard medical school. Should be here any day now, God bless their Colonial socks.”

A bell rang: four loud clangs . . . pause . . . four more.

“What's that?”

Captain Vale's expression hardened slightly, a tense thinning of the lips.

“Staff call. Get the news of what we're in for today. Nasty bit of firing since dawn. Won't be a pleasant afternoon, I'm afraid. Oh, well, can't have sunshine and flowers every day, can we?”

Alexandra stood at the far end of the mess tent, out of everyone's way. Doctors, surgical and ward nurses, orderlies, and the various technicians stood about in silent groups. Finally, Mackendric, a surgical gown over his uniform, came into the tent.

“All right,” he said. “Brigade just rang through. The Bedfords and Suffolks were in it this morning up at White Sheet and got scuppered. Half their wounded are on the way down to us now, three to four hundred of them . . . sitters and stretchers. . . . Stretchers predominate, I gather. They were badly shelled, so prepare for extreme multiples. The bearers found thirty or so Cameronians who had been lying out in the wire since Wednesday. We know what to expect there, so be sure to have chloroform handy.” He glanced at his watch. “Should be arriving by sixteen hundred hours, so get your suppers out of the way and prepare for a long night. I want as many as possible on the train by dawn.”

She had hoped he would find time to talk to her again, perhaps even have supper with her, but although she wandered about the hospital she never caught so much as a glimpse of him. Then the elderly sister she had met that morning came up to her as she sat dejectedly in the mess tent.

“Feel a bit lost, do you?”

“Yes, a bit.”

“Well, can't have that, can we? Have you been taught anything useful?”

“Yes,” she said bridling, “of course.”

“Can you insert a catheter?”

“No . . .” she said hesitantly.

“If I told you to inject a man with five hundred units of ATS, would you know how to go about it? Or how much morphine to give without killing him? Or how to set up a Carrel drip?”

“No . . . I . . .” She could feel her face burning. The woman's gray eyes seemed to bore right through her.

“I'm Matron here,” she went on, not unkindly. “Major Mackendric asked me if there was any possibility of my using you. I'm afraid there isn't. You'll have to go back to Saint-Omer tomorrow. But you look like a strong, healthy girl, and I can certainly find something useful for you to do this afternoon. We'll be receiving casualties shortly and you can give the orderlies a hand. Find a smock to put over your uniform, so you don't get it messy. You can report to Corporal Hyde in number five admitting . . . that's the building over there with the
green
cross on the tenting. We had a very nice soldier do a bit of painting for us and he turned out to be quite color-blind.”

The orderlies were tense but friendly, offering her sweet, milky tea and some practical advice.

“Speed's the ticket,” Corporal Hyde said, a cigarette pasted to his lower lip. “It's like a ruddy factory when we get movin'.”

“What exactly do we do?”

“Turn the lads over to the sisters as unmucky as possible, so's they can get to work on 'em. They'll have all kinds of rags and tatters about their wounds. Cut the old dressin's off and toss 'em in a bucket. If there's lots of mud, we wash it off with green soap and antiseptic solution. There'll be three sisters with us givin' ATS shots and morphine, an' they don't take kindly to holdups. Fast but thorough is the bloomin' motto around here.”

At three forty-five the first ambulances and army lorries came rocking and swaying up the deeply rutted road that led to Wytschaete and the front. Gears ground and the vehicles lumbered into the compound and drew up in front of the admitting tent. Orderlies and stretcher bearers ran to open the ambulance doors and to get the wounded from the back of the lorries even as more ambulances, some of them horse drawn, came up the road.

There was a sound that Alexandra could not associate with anything she had ever heard before—a muttering, moaning, muted howl of a noise coming from the mud-encrusted conveyances parked in front. She glanced at the sisters standing by two dressing carts. Their faces were impassive, their eyes devoid of any expression at all. “Stretchers” and “sitters.” The words were self-explanatory. Stretchers were the men who had to be carried in by the bearers. Sitters were men capable of stumbling into the tent with minimal aid. All brought the sound with them: a continuous groaning . . . a stifled shriek . . . deep, body-convulsing sobs. All had been hastily bandaged at their regimental aid posts, given morphine pellets, but the effects of the drugs were wearing off. Pain beyond comprehension gripped many of them, and they threshed about on their stretchers or clung kneeling to the wooden benches along one wall of the tent.