by Kate Hewitt
With a little smile, Ellen kicked the ball back to the men, and then laughed as they all cheered.
“Merci, mademoiselle, merci!”
She watched as they continued their impromptu match, some of them hobbling a bit, and she hoped none of them had stitches that would be pulled out by their antics.
She saw that Lucien Allard was one of the men playing, although he limped quite a bit. Letitia would not approve, Ellen thought with a smile. Over the last few weeks, Letitia had thawed slightly towards the charming lieutenant, which was all the more meaningful now that Ellen knew of her deeper, hidden feelings.
As she watched the game, smiling at the men’s enthusiasm, Lieutenant Allard suddenly stumbled and then sprawled across the grass. A cry went up from the men as they clustered around him. Before Ellen could rise from her seat on the bench, Letitia was striding across the lawn, her face a mask of anxiety.
“Prenez un peu de recul,” she cried, and obediently the men shuffled back. Letitia crouched by Lieutenant Allard as Ellen hurried forward, blanching at the sight of his graying face.
“He was smiling and laughing but a moment ago…”
“Because he’s an idiot, and always puts a brave face on things,” Letitia answered bitterly. “He’s reopened his wound, the fool, and it looks infected. He should have known better. We should have known better. He was always saying he felt perfectly fine…” He voice caught and Ellen put a hand on her arm that Letitia shook her mind. “Call some orderlies. He’ll need to be carried back to his bed.”
an infection developed in Lucien’s wound and he began to run a high fever that left him restless and tossing in his bed, close to unconscious. Ellen didn’t dare say anything of it to Letitia, who remained grim-faced as she checked his dressings before calling Miss Ivens for a consultation.
“I’m afraid it doesn’t look at all well, Miss Portman,” Miss Ivens said while Ellen stood by the door, her hands folded in front of her as she waited to be called for assistance. “Look at the angry redness all along his leg,” she continued. Lucien was still out of his head with fever, muttering under his breath, his hair sweat-soaked and his face pale. “I do fear the infection has entered his blood. If his fever does not come down by the end of the night, and those red streaks do not reduce, then we are looking at an amputation.”
Letitia’s face went as pale as the lieutenant’s but she nodded grimly, her mouth set.
“Better an amputation than a death,” Miss Ivens said gently, and moved on.
Dawn broke and Lucien’s fever did not. Miss Ivens returned to check his dressings, and with a sad shake of her head she indicated that the operating theatre should be prepared. Thanks to the faraway fighting, it had not been used in weeks.
Letitia said nothing as two orderlies moved Lucien, now unconscious, onto a stretcher.
Miss Ivens nodded towards Ellen. “You may assist, Sister,” she said, and with her heart seeming to beat its way up her throat, Ellen followed them into the operating theatre.
Just a few minutes later the thing was done, and Lucien’s leg was amputated above the knee, the blood staunched, the wound bandaged.
“Poor man,” Miss Ivens said as she washed her arms up to the elbow in a big stone sink. “Pray that the infection went no farther, and he survives.”
Letitia said nothing as she saw to Lucien’s dressings and then two orderlies wheeled him on a stretcher into a separate room for recovery.
After Ellen finished her shift she went to look for Letitia. She was tired and dirty and longed only for bed, but she knew her friend must be grieving.
She found her in one of the empty rooms on the top floor, where some of the abbey’s heavy, old furniture was shrouded in sheets, and the windows overlooked the meadows now bathed in lambent silver.
“Letitia…”
“If he survives,” Letitia said bleakly, “what sort of life can he have? An amputation above the knee, Ellen. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
Ellen came to sit next to Letitia by the arched window. “We’ve seen plenty of men with similar amputations,” she said quietly. “They will all have to find a way forward, after this war is over.”
“After this war is over,” Letitia repeated, and rested her forehead on her knees. “Sometimes I wonder if that is ever going to happen.”
“The tide is turning,” Ellen answered with more conviction than she felt. “With America entering the War…”
“And Russia about to make peace terms with Germany,” Letitia answered. “The players may shift, but the terror will never end. And when it does…” She lifted her head to gaze bleakly out at the fields. “What will happen to men like Lucien? Do you think his country will provide for him? There will be so many wounded, blinded, maimed… and I fear by that time everyone will just want to forget. What will they do, all these poor boys of ours?”
Ellen thought of Jed and Lucas, as safe as far as she knew, but who really knew anything? She had not seen them in all the time she’d been in France, and what news she had gleaned came from Aunt Rose far away on Amherst Island.
Amherst Island… it felt a more distant memory than it ever had, with its maple trees and the blue-green water of Lake Ontario, the happiness and the simplicity of the place that now felt like no more than a children’s story Ellen had once read.
“I don’t know,” she admitted to Letitia. “I don’t know what will happen when the war ends, Letitia, as much as I long for it.” She laid a hand on her friend’s arm. “But do you… do you love Lieutenant Allard?”
Letitia didn’t answer for a long moment; her face remained bleak, her expression shuttered. “Does it matter?” she finally asked, and rose from where she’d been sitting. After a pause Ellen followed her.
She went to her room and tried to sleep, but her troubled dozing was plagued by dreams of blood and gore and the cries of the wounded, even though the hospital was now all peace and quiet. By mid-morning it had become too hot to sleep, and she rose and washed and dressed in her plain skirt and blouse; today was her day off, and she thought perhaps she would travel into the nearby village of Asnieres-Sur-Oise, simply for a change of scene. She felt heavy in both spirit and body, weighed down by fatigue and the endless grief of the war, and the parade of wounded men who had come through the abbey.
She was just tidying her hair when Edith came up to see her, breathless, her face red from both exertion and heat.
“Ellen! There’s a soldier here to see you!”
“A soldier…?” Ellen repeated blankly, and Edith nodded.
“Yes, he cuts quite a dashing figure in his uniform. He speaks English too, like a Yank.”
“What…” Ellen’s breath came out in a rush as she hurried down the abbey’s twisting stairs. Hope was a dangerous thing, she reminded herself, and yet she could not keep it from ballooning inside her as she rushed to the abbey’s magnificent entrance hall, where a soldier in the uniform of the Canadian Expeditionary Force waited, his cap in his hand, his smile wry as his warm gaze met Ellen’s startled one.
Her mouth dried as she came to a halt in front of him, shaking her head slowly. “Lucas,” she said wonderingly, and then she rushed into his arms.
Royaumont, France, July 1917
Lucas’s arms closed around Ellen and she pressed her cheek against his chest, the buttons of his coat digging into her skin. She didn’t care. She was so glad to see him, she could barely speak.
Finally, with a self-conscious laugh, she eased away from him. “How long has it been?” she asked and Lucas smiled wryly.
“Six years.”
Six years. She shook her head slowly, the events of the last six years—her time in Glasgow, and these last hard years of war—tumbling through her mind. “It’s so very good to see you, Lucas.”
“And you, Ellen. I wasn’t even sure I’d find you here. Your Aunt Rose had told me you were nursing at Royaumont Abbey the last time I was on the island, but that was in 1915.”
“Do you have news?
” Ellen asked. “You must tell me everything. Letters from Aunt Rose only get through rarely.”
“I’ll tell you all I know,” Lucas said, and glanced around as if looking for chairs.
“I was just going out,” Ellen told him. “To the nearby village, Asnieres-Sur-Oise. Why don’t you come with me? If you have time…”
“I’m not due back to London until the day after tomorrow.”
“There’s a little café in the village. It’s nothing much, just a few tables and chairs in someone’s front room. But Madame Loisel makes some lovely cakes, and there’s usually coffee.” Even if it was made with old grounds or even acorns.
“All right,” Lucas said, and Ellen fetched her hat and cloak before they set off into a warm summer’s afternoon.
It felt so strange and yet also weirdly right to walk with Lucas along the dirt road that led to the small village a few kilometers from the abbey. Bumblebeese flew lazily through the air, landing on the poppies and wildflowers that grew by the side of the road, and the only sound was their drone and the rustling of the wind through the trees.
“If I close my eyes,” Ellen said, “I can almost believe we’re back on the island, walking by the pond between the farmhouses.”
“I don’t even have to close my eyes,” Lucas answered as he smiled and looked down at her. “You haven’t changed a bit, Ellen.”
“Oh, I have,” Ellen protested. She lifted a hand to her cheek, conscious of how tired and worn out she must look. She’d lost weight since she’d begun nursing; although the food at the Abbey was more plentiful than in other places, the hours and exertion and the hasty meals she managed had left her a little gaunt. “I’m not a young girl anymore, Lucas.” She’d turned twenty-six that spring. Most women her age, back on Amherst Island at least, were married with several children already.
“And I’m not a young man,” Lucas agreed. “But you still don’t look any different to me.”
They waited until they were settled in the front room of Madame Loisel’s house, with cups of weak coffee and pastries.
“So tell me all the news from the island,” Ellen said as she took a sip of coffee. She studied Lucas over the rim of her cup; he looked dashing in his uniform, but older too. There were new lines around his eyes and mouth, and his light brown hair had streaks of grey by the temples, even though he was only twenty-seven.
“I don’t know how up to date my news is,” Lucas answered. “Many of the island boys joined up with the First Expeditionary Force in 1915—me and Jed, of course, and the Tyler twins, Andrew Parton…”
“But you’re not with them now, are you?” Ellen asked. “Aunt Rose told me you’d been doing something in London.”
“I was commandeered to join a specialist operation in 1916,” Lucas told her. “And I’m afraid, at this point, I can’t tell you more than that.”
Ellen eyed him mischievously. “It sounds quite intriguing.”
“I like the work,” Lucas admitted. “As for the island boys… Jed’s made it through all right so far, thank God. He took a bullet in the shoulder at Loos, but it was only a flesh wound and he was back on the Front in a couple of weeks. Some of the other boys didn’t do so well.”
“They didn’t?” Ellen’s heart sank as she thought of the young boys she’d gone to school with, so many years ago.
“Andrew Parton died at Ypres. One of the Tyler twins at Vimy Ridge. I don’t know about the others.” He paused and said, “Have you heard from Rose about Peter?”
“Peter?” Ellen gazed at Lucas in alarm. Touselhaired, impish Peter… why did she still think of him as seven years old even though she knew he had to be nearly twenty now? He’d been thirteen when she’d seen him last.
“Peter joined up a few months ago,” Lucas said quietly. “I don’t know more than that. My father wrote and told me.”
Ellen sat back in her seat, her coffee and pastry forgotten. “I hate to think of little Peter out in the trenches, even though I know he’s not little anymore. I’ve frozen the island and everyone there in my mind, but they’ve all moved on, of course. It’s just been so long.”
“It has,” Lucas agreed. “We’ve missed you, Ellen.” A faint blush touched his cheeks and he took another sip of coffee.
“Have you been back often, Lucas? Before the war? I don’t even know what your news is. You wrote me back in 1914 that you’d met someone…”
Lucas stared at her in surprise. “Met someone?”
“A girl, I mean,” Ellen said, and now she was blushing. “In Toronto. I remember…”
Lucas shook her head. “There never was anyone in Toronto, Ellen.”
“But I remember,” Ellen insisted. “You said there was a young lady of interest…”
Lucas gazed at her, frowning, for a moment before his expression cleared and he laughed. “Oh, Ellen, that was a joke. I was talking about the dog my landlady had. She’d been delivered of puppies, and I took one.”
Dimly Ellen remembered some reference to a dog, and she laughed in embarrassment. “I must have misread it completely. I just wanted you to be happy, I suppose.”
“Buttons was a good dog,” Lucas said. “I brought her back to the island when I enlisted. Dad still has her.”
“And Jed?” Ellen asked after a moment. She’d tried to keep her voice light, casual, but she had a feeling Lucas not fooled. “How is he? And Louisa?”
“I haven’t seen much of him since the war started, to be honest. After I left the battalion we met up in London a couple of times. And you know Jed. He’s not much of one for letters.”
“No.”
“And Louisa? Have you heard anything about her?”
“She went back to Seaton when Jed enlisted. She took the death of their son very hard.” Lucas shook his head sadly. “I never even met the poor little lad. He died only a few hours after he was born. Something with his heart, the doctor said.”
“Yes, Aunt Rose wrote me. But I’d hoped they might have had more children…”
“No. And truth be told, I don’t know if Louisa will even come back from Seaton. They grew apart after their boy’s death. It was a hard, hard thing.”
Ellen nodded slowly. She’d gathered as much from Aunt Rose’s letters, but she’d still hoped in the intervening years that things might have changed.
“And what about you, Ellen?” Lucas asked. “You’ve been nursing here in France since the war started, I know, and your Aunt Rose told me you were set to take a professorship at the School of Art back in Glasgow. Will you do that when the war is finished?”
“I don’t know,” Ellen admitted. Glasgow seemed so very far away; it had been too far to go back on her leaves. “I can’t imagine what life is going to be like after the war. What any of us are going to do.”
“Celebrate, I hope, as best as we can.”
shook his head, his smiling turning sad. “even though she hadn’t known Artie all that well; he’d pulled her plaits the first day of
Ellen stood by the arched window of the abbey at Royaumont and gazed out at the meadows now cloaked in moonlight. Standing there in the peaceful solitude of a summer’s evening, it was hard to believe that a terrible battle raged north near Ypres. For the last week the women and patients at the Abbey of Royaumont had heard the constant booming the artillery and then the terrible explosion of mines the British army had planted underneath German trenches; the force of it had shaken the building and brought clouds of dust into the air, even from hundreds of kilometres away. Soon the wounded would come off the hospital trains at Creil, and then Ellen knew there would be no peace at all.
It had been two and a half years since she and Norah had joined the Scottish Women’s Hospital and come to Royaumont. It had not been an easy journey; along with her friend Letitia Portman, who had only just completed her medical studies at Edinburgh, they had joined the indomitable Francis Ivens and crossed the Channel on a stormy night in December. Just remembering that difficult journey made Ellen’s stomach churn; the
commanding officer at Folkestone had insisted they wait, but Miss Ivens had been adamant. They would cross that night and begin their work at Royaumont as soon as possible.
It had not, Ellen reflected, been an easy work, but in the last few years she had made many friends and found, somewhat to her surprise, much joy. When they’d arrived at the abbey in December 1914, leased to them by a Monsieur Goulin, they had expected, according to Miss Ivens, ‘a fine house with ample accommodation, good drainage and water supply, and electric lighting.’
What they had found was a decrepit, mammoth building that was in sore need of repair. “The only thing the abbey possesses,” Miss Ivens had said with her unique combination of humour and asperity, “is space. Too much space, I fear.”
Many of the medieval rooms with their vaulted ceilings and arched windows and doorways were filled with masonry rubble, as well as straw and rubbish from when the Uhlans had bivouacked there during the Battle of the Marne. There was no running water, no electricity, and the enormous stove in the ancient kitchen had not been lit in over a decade.
Their hospital equipment and even the mattresses they were meant to sleep on had not arrived, and so for the first few weeks they slept huddled on blankets and straw on the stone-flagged floor, dressed in every piece of clothing they possessed in a desperate attempt to ward off the bone-deep chill.
Despite the cold and dirt, it had almost become jolly as if they were on some sort of strange holiday. For meals they’d had to make to do with a handful of dishes and cutlery borrowed from the local ironmonger, and a single knife they passed around, as the clerk administrator, Cicely Hamilton, had said, “so everyone can have a chop with it.”
There had been something invigorating about scrubbing stone floors by candle light, and singing as they washed the dishes with buckets of icy water brought from the spring, knowing in just a few months, God willing, the hospital’s one hundred beds would be filled with men needing their care.
