The Promise (25 page)

One of the older drivers, whom they had both considered to be totally prejudiced against women ambulance drivers, roared with laughter one day on overhearing her and Miranda impersonating two nursing sisters who were real battleaxes. A day later when the fan belt broke on Belle’s ambulance, he came to her rescue and showed her how to put a new one on. He said as she thanked him that it was nothing, that she and Miranda were rays of sunshine and he was glad they’d joined the team. Belle was elated to have his approval, and in that moment she felt that however hard the work was, or how primitive the living conditions, they had made the right decision in signing up to come here.

Even Captain Taylor nodded approval at them from time to time. David said he’d overheard him telling another RAMC officer that ‘Those two new girls are made of the right stuff.’

It kept on raining remorselessly. By the end of each day they were often soaked through and chilled to the bone. The hut looked more like a laundry room at night, with clothes hung up to dry and soggy boots stuffed with newspaper all around the stove. Yet despite this, Belle seemed to have more energy than she’d ever had at home. Instead of going back to the hut straight after supper to play cards or read and write letters, she liked to go into the wards for an hour or so and check on the progress of the men she’d brought in.

She often offered a little help to the nurses, writing letters for men who couldn’t hold a pen, reading to someone who was blinded, or just feeding those who couldn’t manage it themselves. Miranda teased her about it; she said she saw enough gore during the day without looking for more.

Because Belle was kept so busy, her letters to Jimmy were now often as brief as his to her. She tried to write to Mog and Garth every week too, but it proved difficult to respond to Mog’s gossip about people in the village, the shortages of food, and who had been at the weekly sewing circle meeting. It all seemed so trivial in the face of what she saw here daily.

She understood now why Jimmy had always said so little about his day-to-day life. There was the censor looking over his shoulder of course, but it was more likely he felt that what he saw daily could not be understood by people who hadn’t experienced it. She felt the same: she couldn’t explain the black humour they all used as a way of dealing with the horror they saw, or why she had become so attached to everyone she worked with. She knew now that a soldier’s life wasn’t anything like the way the newspapers at home portrayed it.

Until she got here, Belle had imagined Jimmy cowering in a trench being fired on constantly. Now, thanks to David who had been at the front, she knew that soldiers only spent four days at a time in the front line before being sent back behind the lines.

Jimmy had gone back to the front after his wound healed, but to a different regiment, and up until his last letter they were still in reserve. Yet David had told her that even if he was in the front line that didn’t mean he was in constant danger of being shot. Apparently the men endured long periods of utter boredom, when all they did was keep watch for enemy activity. Furthermore, some places on the line saw very little action; David said there was often a ‘live and let live’ attitude on both sides. Of course, even in these quiet spots, men could get killed by a sniper or a thrown grenade, and the real danger periods came when the generals ordered an assault, or when the men were sent out into No Man’s Land on patrols to see what the enemy were doing.

Belle had also imagined that being ‘in reserve’ meant resting up, but according to David that wasn’t so. They were kept very busy, training, moving supplies around, improving trenches, burying the dead, repairing the barbed wire, taking ammunition to where it was needed, along with washing and mending their uniforms.

Jimmy had touched lightly on things like lice, mud, soaking uniforms, rats and the state of the latrines ever since he finished his training back in 1915, but it had always been in a casual way, as if these things didn’t bother him that much. But the drivers here who had all done a stint at some time collecting the wounded from dressing stations were more graphic about these horrors. One described to Belle how the men were almost driven mad by lice and would run a lighted candle down the seams of their uniforms to burn them off. He said their bodies were covered in bites which often became infected. She heard how the thick mud the soldiers had to wade through was often mixed with excrement from the latrines and even body parts from men who had died there. Rats were said to be as big as cats and overran the trenches, and so even a fairly minor injury could easily become gangrenous and result in amputation.

On Easter Monday, 9 April, when the battle at Arras had begun, there had been the further trials of sleet and snow to contend with. The wounded who were coming in daily spoke of tanks being bogged down in the thick mud, of pack mules falling over and drowning in it, and many of the wounded often couldn’t drag themselves out of the mud so they died there too.

Jimmy was billeted in a barn and wrote more about having a drink or a plate of egg and chips in an
estaminet
than about the conditions out there in low-lying marshy ground, but it was clearly only a matter of time before his regiment would be sent into the battle. Knowing now what that would entail, Belle found it hard to pen bright, cheerful letters to him, as day after day she was seeing what could well happen to him.

Vera was excited by the imminent arrival of her two brothers who had joined the Anzacs and were on their way here from New Zealand. They were called Tony and ‘Spud’ and she just laughed when Belle asked her about the nickname. But along with the excitement that she might get a chance to see them, even if only briefly, she was also afraid they would be sent directly to the front as Canadians and Australians had been.

Sally, Maud and Honor all had brothers or cousins here, and Belle had noticed that although they said little about them, they discreetly checked the casualty lists every day. There appeared to be an unspoken agreement amongst everyone that you controlled your anxiety about relatives at the front. Henry, one of the drivers, saw his nephew posted as missing, presumed dead soon after she and Miranda arrived here. Belle had seen Henry standing behind the hut, head bowed and shoulders heaving, yet he jumped into his ambulance when the bell rang and continued to work all day as normal. Sally said in her usual practical manner that remaining busy was the best way to deal with grief.

But even if all the nurses, drivers, orderlies, doctors and other personnel at the hospital managed to hold themselves in check, the relatives who arrived from England to see sons or husbands who weren’t expected to live could not control their grief. Day after day the girls saw these people arrive at the hospital. They stood out from the work force not only by their civilian clothes, but by their strained and bewildered expressions. Most of them had never been out of England before, they couldn’t speak any French, and they knew too that their son or husband was going to die. Often they arrived too late and he was already dead. The nursing staff were always sympathetic and did their best to offer some comfort, but it seemed even more tragic that those poor people had come so far yet had no chance to say a proper goodbye. Almost every day there were burials; Belle’s blood ran cold each time she heard the haunting sound of the bugle playing the Last Post.

David was very philosophical about the grieving relatives. He said that at least they knew where their loved one’s body lay, and had heard the prayers, unlike the relatives of thousands of other men who had been committed to a communal grave near the battlefields. And some bodies were never found; they were blown to pieces and scattered in the mud. For the families of those men it had to be torture, hoping against hope that they’d been taken prisoner, or that they were lying in a hospital bed somewhere and would one day return home.

At the end of May, when the girls had been in France for over a month, they were told they could have the following day off. Up until then they had only had the odd half day, usually on a Sunday when fewer trains came in. But as the nearest village had nothing much to offer, and it was a long walk too, they always just stayed in the hut or did their laundry.

Not having to get up early was a real treat in itself, and when they eventually woke to find the sun shining, Miranda suggested they got a lift into Calais that afternoon to look around.

Trucks went to and from Calais daily to pick up supplies from the docks, and they knew it would be easy enough to persuade one of the drivers to let them go with him. They had a bath, washed their hair, and put on their best dresses. They had been told before they left England to bring only sensible, everyday wear as space would be limited in their accommodation. But neither had been able to resist packing something slightly fancier in case a special occasion should arise. Miranda’s dress was blue crêpe-de-chine, and Belle’s was a mauve floral print.

‘I wish I had a prettier hat,’ Miranda said as she put on the navy-blue felt one she’d worn to come here.

‘If we left here looking like we were off to a garden party that would arouse too much attention,’ Belle said, skewering on her own light brown hat which she’d made to go with her winter coat. She wasn’t sure if going into Calais was even allowed. One of the nurses had told Belle that neither the nurses nor the VADs were allowed to fraternize with soldiers, and they could be sent home if they were suspected of doing so. The same nurse said that one of her colleagues was refused permission to go out of the hospital grounds with her father, who was a serving officer. That seemed utterly ridiculous, but then, Matron at the Herbert had been equally tough on her nurses.

‘Maybe we could buy another hat each in Calais,’ Belle said. ‘We can’t wear these all summer.’

‘Don’t you just ache to have a long soak in a bath and then dress up in something frilly and go somewhere elegant?’ Miranda asked, pinching her cheeks to make them pink.

‘I ache for lots of things,’ Belle admitted. ‘Mog’s cooking, a comfy bed, and Jimmy cuddling me at night. The only time I’ve ever been to elegant places was in Paris, and I don’t like to think about why I was in them.’

‘Maybe we could go to Paris one day?’ Miranda said hopefully. ‘You could look up that friend you had there that owned restaurants. I bet he’d show us a good time.’

‘That part of my life is dead and buried. I never think about it,’ Belle said a little sharply. This wasn’t strictly true; she had thought about Etienne and Philippe, the restaurateur Miranda had mentioned, far more since she’d been here. Each time she heard a French accent she was jolted back to the past. But admitting that to Miranda would open a floodgate of memories she’d have to share with her.

‘Sorry I spoke,’ Miranda said, pulling a face. ‘All I want is a bit of fun.’

The truck driver they picked to ask for a lift was a Frenchman in his fifties. He didn’t know much English, but he managed to tell them he was returning at six, and if they weren’t there to meet him he’d have to come back without them.

‘Calais not a good place for
jolies filles
,’ he added reprovingly. ‘Many soldiers!’

The driver was right about there being many soldiers. They were everywhere, in the cafés, bars, in trucks, and milling around the streets. There were French, English, Australians and even a few Scots Guards in kilts. The girls were gawped at, whistled at, and one young soldier began singing ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World’ very loudly, and his friends with him all joined in.

Both girls put their noses in the air and kept on walking, even though they wanted to laugh, for they were mindful that someone from the hospital might see them here and if they appeared to be encouraging the men they’d be on the carpet the next day.

It was intoxicating to be out in the sunshine, to see shops, cafés and ordinary people going about their business, and to be free of the sights, sounds and smells of the hospital. They found a dusty little hat shop in a back street and bought a straw boater each, putting them on immediately and relegating their old hats to the shopping bag. They bought some new stockings, had a cup of chocolate in a café, and then went for a walk along the beach.

The English Channel was bristling with ships, a reminder that the war wasn’t only being fought on land. The Germans held Zeebrugge and Ostend just up the coast, and their U-boats were constantly targeting British ships.

Miranda looked up at an aeroplane flying overhead. ‘It’s odd how we just accept them now,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Papa showed me a picture of one a few years back, he was so excited about flight. But I couldn’t understand how they could stay up in the air and I thought it was just a fad that would die out.’

‘I still don’t really understand how they fly,’ Belle said. ‘And motor cars! I was about thirteen when I saw my first one in the Strand, and I ran along beside it. People said they would never catch on. But they did, and now even people like us can drive them. Imagine when we’ve got children and we tell them things like that! They won’t be able to imagine life before these things were invented.’

‘I can’t even imagine what life will be like when the war ends,’ Miranda said. ‘I mean, how can I go back to how it was before?’

Belle was surprised at the bleakness in that remark. ‘It won’t be the same,’ she assured her. ‘How can it be when the war has changed everything?’

‘So many thousands of men have died already, even more will be left crippled,’ Miranda said. ‘There will be even less chance of me falling in love and getting married than there was before it started. You’ll have Jimmy, and I’ll be the spinster growing old still living with my parents.’

‘That’s such a defeatist attitude,’ Belle said indignantly. ‘You will meet someone and fall in love, I’m sure of that. Besides, you said you were never going home, that this was the start of your independent life. You’ve managed so well in this job, so when the war’s over you’ll be able to do anything you put your mind to.’

‘Then why can’t I ever imagine it?’ Miranda asked, picking up a pebble and skimming it into the sea. ‘I bet you can.’