Daughters of War

by Lizzie Page

  Survivors were landed by an American destroyer.

  That would be my Elizabeth.

  Eight boats are still adrift.

  Or maybe that.

  I’m not sure how much time had elapsed before New Matron cleared her throat and asked, ‘Nurse Turner? Are you going to drive?’

  ‘Wait!’ I snapped.

  164 persons are missing.

  Not my Elizabeth though, I decided with utter conviction. People like her didn’t, couldn’t, just disappear. I remembered her flexing her muscles, doing cartwheels, the time she smacked into the bookshelves.

  Elizabeth lived for the water. She, more than anyone, understood its potency. Twenty-foot waves? If anyone could survive that, she could. In a way, it made sense: all those handstands, all those laps, all that training had been to save her from this. A purpose unforeseen! I smiled to myself. Not my Elizabeth. Had these reporters never seen her slice through Tooting Bathing Lake, fifty, sixty times? The size of her shoulders!

  We drove back to the field hospital in silence. New Matron clutched her newspaper against her and eyed me nervously, but I wasn’t distressed anymore; I was certain: Elizabeth would be fine.

  * * *

  It wasn’t until the next day, when I read the newspaper with her name in it, that I saw how stupid I had been. Ninth down, in a sea of names, it read: Elizabeth Kay Martin. London. Born 1890. Missing presumed dead.

  Even after that, even after seeing it in that cold, cold print, I still occasionally dreamt that Elizabeth wasn’t drifting somewhere in the sea but had determinedly picked up some passing boat and was telling them about her record-breaking plans there.

  Elizabeth.

  It didn’t take long for me to see what I had been missing: I had done this, I should have let her come here with me. This was where she had wanted to be. I could have looked after her. Instead, I had forbidden her to join me here; I had sent her out there instead. I can picture you doing that! And for what? Just so that I could feel like special May here? I might as well have killed her.

  * * *

  Into the darkness I went, wave after wave after wave, drowning in grief, Elizabeth’s ghostly feet now lost in the sea.

  My darling friend was dead, her Channel record attempt undone. There was nothing I could do. Doctor Grange was right about reading the newspapers – I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t read it. Bed. Pillow. Silence. Nothing but the ticking of the clock. Cups of tea were left by the bed. Cookies on a plate. A sandwich. Could I not be tempted by a rock-cake? I felt as though I was dying of sorrow.

  * * *

  Gordon was sitting by my bed, in the place where Louis once sat. Louis.

  ‘Where’s the new matron? I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s fine. I told her you’ve got –’ he winced guiltily – ‘a migraine.’

  Not even Gordon would tell the truth about illnesses of the mind.

  He had a nervy smile on his face, though, and was flapping a magazine.

  ‘I know you’re not meant to read, but I thought I’d let you have a quick peek at this anyway.’

  He placed his magazine on the end of my bed.

  ‘You’re a published poet, Nurse Turner.’

  ‘What?’ I said flatly. ‘It isn’t me.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘It can’t be me, Gordon. They would have contacted me first.’

  But it was me, or rather, it was my poems, there in beautiful typed print, and there was a sweet introduction by a Professor Edward Morgate from New York University. I raced through his piece and saw he liked them. Even better than that, he understood them, he really did.

  And then there were my words, my ideas, suddenly made serious by this amazing black typed font. I had sent it in my handwritten scrawl, dark pen on Morley’s unlined paper, and here it had been transformed into something so respectable and professional that it was hard to recognise it as the verses I had laboured over late at night in my tent. I touched the white space on the page that surrounded my poem. My poem was an island and the rest of the page was the sea. My words had been held and nourished. It looked exactly how I would have wanted it to look (if I had ever dared to dream of this.) What would my girls say if they saw this?

  Why did I get to achieve my dreams, and Elizabeth didn’t? Why was it all so unfair?

  * * *

  The next time I woke, Bonnie and Kitty were in the room, playing gin rummy. I could hear them talking earnestly, but I couldn’t make out the exact words.

  ‘Is the war over?’ I pulled myself up onto my elbows.

  ‘May!’ cried out Kitty, happily.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Gordon. I hadn’t noticed him; he was sitting at New Matron’s desk, sketching a barn owl.

  ‘But… soon?’

  ‘Hope so.’

  Elizabeth never was still, she never hung around doing nothing. She never wasted time; she understood how precious this existence was. She was determined to make her mark. And she had; she had made her mark on me, so much so that she had turned my life around. ‘I’m just a normal twentieth-century girl,’ she used to say, but, oh, she was so much more than that. She was my darling friend. A thousand thoughts criss-crossing through me. A thousand tasks to fulfil. I was still here, I was still alive, and so were my girls. I had to grab hold of whatever life was left in me, whether it was just the next ten minutes or the next forty years. I would grab hold of it and squeeze the pips out of it.

  The magazine was where Gordon had left it, on the end of my bed. I wondered if Louis would one day see it. I hoped so. And that poem, I promised myself, that poem would be the first of many. I wasn’t going to stop fighting.

  ‘Do you mind getting out my tent, Gordon?’

  Gordon could not have looked more apologetic. He jumped up, grabbed his notebook and his pencils.

  ‘So sorry, May. Forgive my intrusion.’

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ I said. ‘It’s just… I need to get dressed if I’m going back to work.’

  52

  We were making plans for the autumn and winter ahead. We would have football, book recitals – and perhaps we could do another variety show.

  ‘And you could do the can-can again,’ I suggested to Bonnie.

  ‘It won’t be half so much fun without the look of horror on Matron’s face,’ Kitty added.

  Although New Matron had been with us for over six months now, she would always be New Matron to me. She was easier to share a tent with, never talked about my failings and was always kind and calm, but I missed our Old Matron. I hadn’t expected to, but I had grown to love that cold, obstinate woman very much.

  * * *

  I was struggling with a poem I was writing. I couldn’t seem to feel anything, it felt like I had a blank where all my feelings should be. I had seen this in wearier soldiers: an indifference to life or death; but it wasn’t a great attribute in a poet. But I ploughed on, forcing out words, because I knew the difference between a finished poem and an unfinished poem was perseverance. Ostensibly this poem was about churned-up clay, but I suppose it was a meditation on how life doesn’t always go according to plan, and if we can grow after we have been destroyed.

  Kitty appeared at the tent opening. Her expression was so serious that I had already got up before she said a word. And then she took my arm.

  ‘It’s Louis…’

  It was as though my whole body was turned to icy liquid.

  ‘How bad?’

  Kitty squeezed me, and I knew it was very bad.

  ‘We’ll do our best.’

  I started to pull off my nightgown. ‘I’m coming now.’

  ‘No.’ Kitty was as careful with her words as ever. ‘We can’t have you there, May. I promise, though, as soon as I know anything, I’ll get you.’

  * * *

  Of course I couldn’t sleep. At first I paced, then I read and after that I tried to write a poem. Matron came in. She’d heard ‘someone important’ to me was in but not what the prognosis was. I knew she needed her
sleep, so I pulled on my coat and crept out to my favourite rock so I didn’t disturb her.

  The stars held memories out there. I thought about driving a car through the night to Leamington to see my daughters, I thought of Elizabeth in the freezing sea, waiting for her lift. I tried not to think of Louis, I tried not to think of our short time together, but I couldn’t help it. It had been magical, it had been blessed, even if its ending had been so abrupt and ugly. I had given him my heart. I thought about what Elsie once said to me: If you get too attached, they die. Why hadn’t I listened to her?

  It wasn’t until about 3 a.m. – a full five hours later – that Kitty crept up in the darkness, whispering my name.

  ‘Kitty!’ I called. ‘Over here.’

  She stood tall in front of me. In the dark I could just make out the blood spots all over her apron. She had come out immediately, as promised. Kitty was always a woman of her word and I knew whatever she said next would be the un-sugar-coated truth.

  ‘He made it, May.’

  I sank into her arms.

  ‘Oh, thank God, thank you, Kitty and… Gordon and everyone.’

  The relief on her face told me that it had been a very close thing.

  ‘He’s still got some way to go – but I think, we think, he’ll recover well.’

  I knew it wasn’t my place to care. I knew Louis didn’t love me any more – if he ever had – but I couldn’t stop myself from caring. The world without Louis in it, even if he were not by my side, was unthinkable.

  * * *

  I saw him the next morning. He was propped, pale-faced, against his pillow, a bandage around his abdomen where he had taken the shots. I wanted to run over, but I took my time and saw to my other patients first. When I finally made my way over to him, it seemed to me that he had to force a smile onto his wan face. I wanted to look closely at him but instead, I merely asked if he wanted a shave. Louis refused. His teacup bobbled in his hand.

  ‘May,’ he said quietly. I nodded. I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to speak. ‘I can ask to be transferred somewhere else.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  He looked at me steadily. ‘Then you wouldn’t have to see this pathetic man ever again.’

  His hands weren’t as steady as his gaze and he spilled tea all over himself. I marched off to get a cloth. When I came back, New Matron was already dabbing him down and trying to manoeuvre him away from the wet patch. She said firmly, ‘I’ll see to him, thank you, Nurse Turner. You’ve had a long night, we’re quiet, why not take the rest of the morning off?’

  I walked out of the ward with my head held high. I went to my tent, unfastened my veil, took off my apron, lay on my bed, and it was only once I was there that I let the tears come.

  * * *

  Early evening, Matron said I could go to his ward again, but I was not to ‘show favouritism’. I scowled at her, but I knew Old Matron wouldn’t have let me anywhere near him.

  He was sitting upright with his cup safely on his bedside table. I took in the thin cheeks, the protruding cheekbones, the shadows under his lowered eyes. When he saw me, though, his expression seemed to become some strange combination of hopeful and hopeless.

  ‘How are your daughters?’ he asked. I didn’t reply.

  ‘I saw your poems,’ he continued. I remembered how I had really wanted him to see them, but now that he had, I thought, it didn’t matter. What was the point? And I wondered how he had seen them. Gordon? Winston, maybe? But I didn’t want to ask. ‘They were unmistakably yours.’

  ‘They’re just small pebbles in a big ocean,’ I said. I didn’t want him to know how proud I was of myself. He would probably find it amusing. May thinks she’s a poet but actually, she’s just a silly, useless girl.

  ‘Small pebbles create big ripples,’ he replied. ‘It’s a nice legacy.’

  I nodded. Louis was not George after all. And Louis understood my self-indulgent desire to leave something tangible behind.

  This is going to be all right, I told myself. I would treat him like any other patient. Louis was any other patient. In the canteen, Kitty was gazing at me so anxiously, she almost put me off my plate of Maconochie stew. Between mouthfuls, I recited: I am fine. It is fine. It will be fine.

  * * *

  After dressings were changed, water distributed, bedpans emptied, beards shaved, letters written, I went and checked on Louis again.

  ‘You didn’t ask to be transferred then?’

  ‘I did ask,’ he responded with lowered eyes. ‘They’re too busy now.’

  It felt like another kick in the teeth.

  I asked if he was ready to try some more tea, and he flushed, then I flushed, because it sounded like I was making a dig. He must have been hating this. Nevertheless, he nodded. I got him his tea and he held onto it. Patrick requested a wash, and I was about to go over to him when Louis called out to me.

  ‘You didn’t tell me, May, how are your girls? Has Leona won Wimbledon yet?’

  I searched his face to see if he was joking. Patients sometimes got silly, with the fever or the medicines, but this wasn’t silly, it was cruel. Was he trying to get me back for my dig about the tea?

  ‘Does Joy still love art?’ he continued.

  I frowned at him, but he wouldn’t stop.

  ‘Or is she more of a poet,’ he asked shyly, ‘like her talented mother?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘What?’

  I set down the towels I was holding. I hoped he couldn’t see how much I was trembling.

  ‘Louis, I haven’t been able to see the girls…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I tried, and I tried, and I managed, very briefly, last summer… But George won’t let me anywhere near them. He won’t even let me know where they are.’

  ‘That can’t be.’ Louis blanched. I stood by his side, my arms crossed, my eyes filling with those damned tears again. He started coughing, a hacking, horrible sound that alerted Matron. She strode over furiously. ‘How many times have I TOLD you not to upset him, Nurse Turner? Out!’

  Louis raised his hand. The coughing subsided. ‘Please, Matron, it’s all right. Nurse Turner and I need to talk.’

  Squinting at him, New Matron relented. ‘Just for a moment, mind.’ She tapped my arm. ‘But if you upset him again…’

  * * *

  Louis reached for my hand, but I wouldn’t let him take it. I didn’t know why he felt we needed to talk: the time for talking was long past.

  ‘May, I had no idea.’

  I shrugged. ‘Why would you know, Louis?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘I-I-Because… George promised me you would see the girls.’

  My legs buckled under me. I dropped onto the end of the bed, then scrambled up again as I saw Matron gesturing angrily at me.

  ‘What do you mean, “promised you”?’

  ‘He wrote to me when we got back from the Dordogne. He said, if I gave you up, if I split up from you, you would be reunited with your girls. He said he wouldn’t stand in your way ever again.’

  George had destroyed everything I ever had. I had hated him for a long time, but even so, I hadn’t realised how duplicitous he was. He had crawled into every sphere of my life and sought to blacken it.

  Louis was staring at me, his craggy face wreathed in sympathy.

  ‘So, you… you wrote back to him?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ He looked at me again, his face reddening as he admitted, ‘I went to meet him, May. He assured me it was a deal. As long as we were not lovers or partners or… he would accept you seeing the girls. We shook hands on it.’ Louis stared up at the tent ceiling. The cloth billowed low over his bed. ‘I thought I was doing the right thing,’ he continued. ‘For you and the girls.’

  ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked, uncomprehending.

  ‘Because then you wouldn’t have to choose.’

  It was about then I became angry at Louis as well. Furious at Louis. If last night I had been missing
the emotions for a poem, I had found them all now.

  I remembered him explaining what he did at work.

  ‘But… but I was not some project, Louis. I was supposed to be your… your sweetheart.’

  ‘I chose what was best for you all.’

  ‘But you shouldn’t have chosen on my behalf. You shouldn’t have taken that away from me. And I could have told you, anyone could have told you, George would never keep to that promise.’

  ‘It seems I was wrong,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Very wrong.’ His voice quavered. He was as close to tears as I was. ‘I… I genuinely thought we had a gentleman’s agreement.’

  ‘George is not a gentleman,’ I yelped. For a moment, I wanted to shake him, I wanted to slap him around the face. That was the last straw for Matron. She stalked over, put a hand on each of my shoulders and pushed me away.

  * * *

  I walked into town the next afternoon. Bonnie was supposed to come but we were expecting in two young men poorly with trench fever and Matron asked if she would stay back. I had a quiet time. In Chez Tartine the waitress must have sensed my mood for she didn’t ask me for the latest news as she usually did, but only brought me over a croissant without asking. ‘Sshhh!’ she whispered, ‘for our regulars.’ My eyes swam with tears at her kindness. My rage at Louis was subsiding but I wasn’t yet sure what it had been replaced with. I seemed to vacillate between pity – for him and for myself – and sorrow, but then all those emotions were overtaken by my fury at George, then my fury with the whole goddamn world.

  As I was walking back I heard a sudden crashing noise ahead of me, then around the bend in the road came two horses. I saw there was a man with them, desperately holding onto one of them, but it seemed the other had worked its way free. It bolted, pulling ahead of the man and the other horse. It went the other direction to me, thankfully. As I grew closer, I could see what was wrong. They must have been hit, maybe by a vehicle. In front of my eyes, the remaining horse, dark, with a smooth cared-for coat, sank on wobbly legs to the ground.