Nell pondered, then waking from her reverie plunged once more into the conversation.
Sebastian was speaking.
‘We’re going to look Jane up when we get back to town. I’ve not so much as heard of her for ages. Have you, Vernon?’
Vernon shook his head.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I haven’t.’
He tried to speak naturally but didn’t quite succeed.
‘She’s very nice,’ said Nell. ‘But – well – rather difficult, isn’t she? I mean you never quite know what she’s thinking about.’
‘She might be occasionally disconcerting,’ Sebastian allowed.
‘She’s an angel,’ said Joe with vehemence.
Nell was watching Vernon. She thought, ‘I wish he’d say something … anything … I’m afraid of Jane. I always have been. She’s a devil …’
‘Probably,’ said Sebastian, ‘she’s gone to Russia or Timbuctoo or Mozambique. One would never be surprised with Jane.’
‘How long is it since you’ve seen her?’ asked Joe.
‘Exactly? Oh! about three weeks.’
‘Is that all? I thought you meant really ages.’
‘It seems like it,’ said Sebastian.
They began to talk of Joe’s hospital in Paris. Then they talked of Myra and Uncle Sydney. Myra was very well and making an incredible quantity of swabs and also did duty twice a week at a canteen. Uncle Sydney was well on the way to making a second fortune having started the manufacture of explosives.
‘He’s got off the mark early,’ said Sebastian appreciatively. ‘This war’s not going to be over for three years at least.’
They argued the point. The days of an ‘optimistic six months’ were over, but three years were regarded as too gloomy a view. Sebastian talked about explosives, the state of Russia, the food question, and submarines. He was a little dictatorial, since he was perfectly sure that he was right.
At five o’clock Sebastian and Joe got into the car and drove back to London. Vernon and Nell stood in the road waving.
‘Well,’ said Nell, ‘that’s that.’ She slipped her arm through Vernon’s. ‘I’m glad you were able to get off today. Joe would have been awfully disappointed not to see you.’
‘Do you think she’s changed?’
‘A little. Don’t you?’
They were strolling along the road and they turned off where a track led over the downs.
‘Yes,’ said Vernon, with a sigh, ‘I suppose it was inevitable.’
‘I’m glad she’s married. I think it’s very fine of her. Don’t you?’
‘Oh, yes. Joe was always warm-hearted, bless her.’
He spoke abstractedly. Nell glanced up at him. She realized now that he had been rather silent all day. The others had done most of the talking.
‘I’m glad they came,’ she said again.
Vernon didn’t answer. She pressed her arm against his and felt him press it against his side. But his silence persisted.
It was getting dark and the air came sharp and cold, but they did not turn back, walked on and on without speaking. So they had often walked before – silent and happy. But this silence was different. There was weight in it and menace.
Suddenly Nell knew …
‘Vernon! It’s come! You’ve got to go …’
He pressed her hand closer still but did not speak.
‘Vernon … when?’
‘Next Thursday.’
‘Oh!’ She stood still. Agony shot through her. It had come. She had known it was bound to come, but she hadn’t known – quite – what it was going to feel like.
‘Nell. Nell … Don’t mind so much. Please don’t mind so much.’ The words came tumbling out now. ‘It’ll be all right. I know it’ll be all right. I’m not going to get killed. I couldn’t now that you love me – now that we’re so happy. Some fellows feel their number’s up when they go out – but I don’t. I’ve a kind of certainty that I’m going to come through. I want you to feel that too.’
She stood there frozen. This was what war was really. It took the heart out of your body, the blood out of your veins. She clung to him with a sob. He held her to him.
‘It’s all right, Nell. We knew it was coming soon. And I’m really frightfully keen to go – at least I would be if it wasn’t for leaving you. You wouldn’t like me to have spent the whole war guarding a bridge in England, would you? And there will be the leaves to look forward to – we’ll have the most frightfully jolly leaves. There will be lots of money, and we’ll simply blue it. Oh, Nell darling, I just know that nothing can happen to me now that you care for me.’
She agreed with him.
‘It can’t – it can’t – God couldn’t be so cruel …’
But the thought came to her that God was letting a lot of cruel things happen.
She said valiantly, forcing back her tears:
‘It’ll be all right, darling. I know it too.’
‘And even – even if it isn’t – you must remember – how perfect this has been … Darling, you have been happy, haven’t you?’
She lifted her lips to his. They clung together, dumb, agonizing … the shadow of their first parting hanging over them.
How long they stood there they hardly knew.
3
When they went back to the antimacassars, they talked cheerfully of ordinary things. Vernon only touched once on the future.
‘Nell, when I’m gone, will you go to your mother or what?’
‘No. I’d rather stay down here. There are lots of things to do in Wiltsbury – hospital, canteen.’
‘Yes, but I don’t want you to do anything. I think you’d be better distracted in London, there will still be theatres and things like that.’
‘No, Vernon, I must do something – work, I mean.’
‘Well, if you want to work, you can knit me socks. I hate all this nursing business. I suppose it’s necessary but I don’t like it. You wouldn’t care to go to Birmingham?’
Nell said very decidedly that she would not like to go to Birmingham.
The actual parting when it came was less strenuous. Vernon kissed her almost off-handedly.
‘Well, so long. Cheer up. Everything’s going to be all right. I’ll write as much as I can, though I expect we’re not allowed to say much that’s interesting. Take care of yourself, Nell darling.’
One almost involuntary tightening of his arms round her, and then he almost pushed her from him.
He was gone.
She thought, ‘I shall never sleep tonight – never …’
But she did. A deep heavy sleep. She went down into it as into an abyss. A haunted sleep – full of terror and apprehension that gradually faded into the unconsciousness of exhaustion.
She woke with a keen sword of pain piercing her heart.
She thought, ‘Vernon’s gone to the war. I must get something to do.’
Chapter Two
1
Nell went to see Mrs Curtis, the Red Cross Commandant. Mrs Curtis was benign and affable. She was enjoying her importance and was convinced that she was a born organizer. Actually, she was a very bad one. But everyone said she had a wonderful manner. She condescended graciously to Nell.
‘Let me see, Mrs – ah! Deyre. You’ve got your VAD and Nursing Certificates?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you don’t belong to any of the local detachments?’
Nell’s exact standing was discussed at some length.
‘Well, we must see what we can do for you,’ said Mrs Curtis. ‘The hospital is fully staffed at present, but of course they are always falling out. Two days after the first convoy came in, we had seventeen resignations. All women of a certain age. They didn’t like the way the sisters spoke to them. I myself think the sisters were perhaps a little unnecessarily brutal, but of course there’s a great deal of jealousy of the Red Cross. And these were all well-to-do women who didn’t like being “spoken to”. You are not sensitive in that way, Mrs Deyre?’
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Nell said that she didn’t mind anything.
‘That is the spirit,’ said Mrs Curtis approvingly. ‘I myself,’ she continued, ‘consider it in the light of good discipline. And where should we all be without discipline?’
It shot through Nell’s mind that Mrs Curtis had not had to endure any discipline, which robbed her pronouncement of some of its impressiveness. But she continued to stand there looking attentive and impressed.
‘I have a list of girls on the reserve,’ continued Mrs Curtis. ‘I will add your name. Two days a week you will attend at the Out Patient ward at the Town Hospital, and thereby gain a little experience. They are short-handed there and are willing to accept our help. Then you and Miss –’ she consulted a list – ‘I think Miss Cardner – yes, Miss Cardner – will go with the District Nurse on her rounds on Tuesdays and Fridays. You’ve got your uniform, of course. Then that is all right.’
Mary Cardner was a pleasant plump girl whose father was a retired butcher. She was very friendly to Nell, explained that the days were Wednesday and Saturday and not Tuesday and Friday – ‘But old Curtis always gets something wrong’ – that the District Nurse was a dear, and never jumped on you and that Sister Margaret at the hospital was a holy terror.
On the following Wednesday, Nell did her first round with the District Nurse, a little bustling woman very much overworked. At the end of the day, she patted Nell kindly on the shoulder.
‘I’m glad to see you have a head on your shoulders, my dear. Really some of the girls who come seem to me half-witted – they do indeed. And such fine ladies – you wouldn’t believe! Not by birth – I don’t mean that. But half-educated girls who think nursing is all smoothing a pillow and feeding the patient with grapes. You’ll know your way about in no time.’
Heartened by this, Nell presented herself at the Out Patient Department at the given time without too much trepidation. She was received by a tall gaunt Sister with a malevolent eye.
‘Another raw beginner,’ she grumbled. ‘Mrs Curtis sent you, I suppose? I’m sick of that woman. Takes me more time and trouble teaching silly girls who think they know everything than it would to do everything myself.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Nell meekly.
‘Get a couple of certificates, attend a dozen lectures and think you know everything,’ said Sister Margaret bitterly. ‘Here they come. Don’t get in my way more than you can help.’
A typical batch of patients were assembled. A young boy with legs riddled with ulcers, a child with scalded legs from an overturned kettle, a girl with a needle in her finger, various sufferers with ‘bad ears’, ‘bad legs’, ‘bad arms’.
Sister Margaret said sharply to Nell:
‘Know how to syringe an ear? I thought not. Watch me.’
Nell watched.
‘You can do it next time,’ said Sister Margaret. ‘Get the bandage off that boy’s finger, and let him soak it in hot boracic and water till I’m ready for him.’
Nell felt nervous and clumsy. Sister Margaret was paralysing her. Almost immediately, it seemed, Sister was by her side.
‘We haven’t got all day here to do things in,’ she remarked. ‘There, leave it to me. You seem to be all thumbs. Soak the bandages off that kid’s legs. Tepid water.’
Nell got a basin of tepid water and knelt down before the child, a mere mite of three. She was badly burnt, and the bandages had stuck to the tiny legs. Nell sponged and soaked very gently, but the baby screamed. It was a loud long-drawn yell of terror and agony, and it defeated Nell utterly.
She felt suddenly sick and faint. She couldn’t do this work – she simply couldn’t do it. She drew back, and as she did so she glanced up to find Sister Margaret watching her, a gleam of malicious pleasure showing in her eye.
‘I thought you couldn’t stick it,’ that eye said.
It rallied Nell as nothing else would have done. She bent her head, and setting her teeth, went on with her job, trying to avert her mind from the child’s shrieks. It was done at last, and Nell stood up, white and trembling and feeling deathly sick.
Sister Margaret came along. She seemed disappointed.
‘Oh, you’ve done it,’ she said. She spoke to the child’s mother. ‘I’d be a bit more careful how you let the child get at the kettle in future, Mrs Somers,’ she said.
Mrs Somers complained that you couldn’t be everywhere at once.
Nell was ordered off to foment a poisoned finger. Next, she assisted Sister to syringe the ulcerated leg, and after that stood by while a young doctor extracted the needle from the girl’s finger. As he probed and cut, the girl winced and shrank and he spoke to her sharply.
‘Keep quiet, can’t you?’
Nell thought: ‘One never sees this side of things. One is only used to a doctor with a bedside manner. “I’m afraid this will hurt a little. Be as still as you can.”’
The young doctor proceeded to extract a couple of teeth, flinging them carelessly on the floor, then he treated a smashed hand that had just come in from an accident.
It was not, Nell reflected, that he was unskilful. It was the absence of manner that was so disturbing to one’s preconceived ideas. Whatever he did, Sister Margaret accompanied him, tittering in a sycophantic manner at any jokes he was pleased to make. Of Nell he took no notice.
At last the hour was over. Nell was thankful. She said goodbye timidly to Sister Margaret.
‘Like it?’ asked Sister with a demoniac grin.
‘I’m afraid I’m very stupid,’ said Nell.
‘How can you be anything else?’ said Sister Margaret. ‘A lot of amateurs like you Red Cross people. And thinking you know everything on earth. Well, perhaps, you’ll be a little less clumsy next time!’
Such was Nell’s encouraging début at the hospital.
It grew less terrible as time went on, however. Sister Margaret softened, and relaxed her attitude of fierce defensiveness. She even permitted herself to answer questions.
‘You’re not so stuck up as most,’ she allowed graciously.
Nell, in her turn, was impressed by the enormous amount of competent work Sister Margaret managed to put in in a very short time. And she understood a little her soreness on the subject of amateurs.
What struck Nell most was the enormous number of ‘bad legs’ and their prototypes, most of them evidently old friends. She asked Sister Margaret timidly about them.
‘Nothing much to be done about it,’ Sister Margaret replied. ‘Hereditary, most of them. Bad blood. You can’t cure it.’
Another thing that impressed Nell was the uncomplaining heroism of the poor. They came and were treated, suffered great pain, and went off to walk several miles home without a thought.
She saw it too in their homes. She and Mary Cardner had taken over a certain amount of the District Nurse’s round. They washed bedridden old women, tended ‘bad legs’, occasionally washed and tended babies whose mothers were too ill to do anything. The cottages were small, the windows usually hermetically sealed, and the place littered with treasures dear to the hearts of the owners. The stuffiness was often unbearable.
The worst shock was about two weeks after beginning work, when they found a bedridden old man dead in his bed and had to lay him out. But for Mary Cardner’s matter-of-fact cheerfulness, Nell felt she could not have done it.
The District Nurse praised them.
‘You’re good girls. And you’re being a real help.’ They went home glowing with satisfaction. Never in her life had Nell so appreciated a hot bath and a lavish allowance of bath salts.
She had had two postcards from Vernon. Mere scrawls saying he was all right and everything was splendid. She wrote to him every day describing her adventures, trying to make them sound as amusing as possible. He wrote back:
‘Somewhere in France.
‘Darling Nell,
‘I’m all right. Feeling splendidly fit. It’s all a great adventure, but I do long to see you. I do wish you wouldn’t go into these beastly cottage
s and places and mess about with diseased people. I’m sure you’ll catch something. Why you want to, I can’t think. I’m sure it isn’t necessary. Do give it up.
‘We think mostly about our food out here, and the Tommies think of nothing but their tea. They’ll risk being blown to bits any time for a cup of hot tea. I have to censor their letters. One man always ends “Yours till Hell freezes,” so I’ll say the same. ‘Yours Vernon.’
One morning Nell received a telephone call from Mrs Curtis.
‘There is a vacancy for a ward maid, Mrs Deyre. Afternoon duty. Be at the hospital at two-thirty.’
The Town Hall of Wiltsbury had been turned into a hospital. It was a big new building standing in the cathedral square and overshadowed by the tall spire of the cathedral. A handsome being in uniform with a game leg and medals received her kindly at the front entrance.
‘You’ve come to the wrong door, Missie. Staff through the quartermaster’s stores. Here, the scout will show you the way.’
A diminutive scout conducted her down steps, through a kind of gloomy crypt where an elderly lady in Red Cross uniform sat surrounded with bales of hospital shirts, wearing several shawls and shivering a good deal, then along stoneflagged passages, and finally into a gloomy underground chamber where she was received by Miss Curtain, the chief of the ward maids, a tall thin lady with a face like a dreaming duchess and charming gentle manners.
Nell was instructed in her duties which were simple enough to understand. They entailed hard work, but no difficulty. A certain area of stone passages and steps to scrub. Then the nurses’ tea to lay, wait on, and finally clear away. Then the ward maids had their own tea. Then the same routine for supper.
Nell soon got the hang of things. The salient points of the new life were, one, war with the kitchen, two, the difficulty of providing the sisters with the right kind of tea.
There was a long table where the VAD nurses sat, pouring down in a stream, frantically hungry, and always the food seemed to fail before the last three were seated. You then applied to the kitchen through a tube and got a biting rejoinder. The right amount of bread and butter had been sent up, three pieces for each. Somebody must have eaten more than their share. Loud disclaimers from the VADs. They chatted to each other amiably and freely, addressing each other by their surnames.
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