The War Nurses

by Lizzie Page

  I made sure I didn’t complain either. That gnawing space in my belly – I didn’t complain. The terrible noise of shells like a constant earwig – I didn’t complain. The dust sticking in your throat – I didn’t complain.

  Actually, there was one thing I did occasionally grumble about: the lack of toilet facilities. The ablution-run from cellar to woods with a spade was precarious, at night it was horrible and when menstruating it was even worse.

  Despite never changing her clothes, rarely washing and her boyish cropped hair, Elsie’s company was still sought after, especially among the engineers who occupied an abandoned house nearby. And Elsie still loved socialising. She was excellent at poker. Reputedly, she had the best po-face in Belgium. She always had cigarettes to share. There were even the occasional Gilberts – yes, even here in Pervyse there were admirers, there were dates, perhaps there was even canoodling.

  I didn’t know how Elsie, or indeed anyone, had the energy for it. Elsie always asked if I wanted to come out with her. I never did. I tried not to let her gallivanting hurt me, but I was jealous. Wasn’t I enough?

  But then, I was consoled, for she always came back.

  * * *

  One night, after we had been in the cellar for about three weeks, Elsie clattered down the stairs late, red-cheeked and full of rum. Usually, I pretended I was asleep, but that night we started chatting and I couldn’t stop laughing. She kept repeating ‘Plump up the pillows, Mairi!’ like we were in a fancy hotel.

  Pillows? I had almost forgotten what they were.

  She was in talkative mood. ‘Did you ever read Villette?’ she asked.

  I hadn’t, and I was surprised Elsie was a fan of Charlotte Brontë. I would have thought she was more in the Emily Brontë camp.

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘The main character – it’s Charlotte Brontë really – falls in love with a Belgian, Monsieur Héger.’

  My heart beat faster. Why was she asking this, why now?

  ‘Have you fallen in love with a Belgian, Elsie?’

  ‘In love? No, never,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t mind a little magic though.’

  I wasn’t sure what she meant. I cursed the fact that I wasn’t as well read as I should have been.

  ‘Do you ever wish you had gone to the Caribbean with your brother – for the quiet life?’

  I laughed. ‘Only every hour of every day.’

  ‘Really?’

  I paused.

  It was dreadful here, cold and brutal, but at least I was doing something. I wasn’t sitting on some sugar plantation, growing fat off the land. That winter, for the first time in my life, I felt wanted, I felt important, I felt needed. Elsie was a big part of that.

  I would have told her, but she had fallen fast asleep.

  One of the better times of the day was after the morning trench visit but before the afternoon visit, when the post-boy wobbled towards us, fearless (or foolish!) on his pushbike. He was a handsome, curly-haired lad who liked to playfully read the front of our letters before slowly handing them over:

  ‘Mrs Knockers?’

  ‘It’s Mrs Knocker, thank you, cheeky.’ Elsie grabbed at the envelopes.

  ‘Miss… Mmm… Cheese-ham?’

  ‘Thank you!’ I snipped the mail from his outstretched hands.

  Neither of us did badly letters-wise. Though for no particular reason, I decided that where I did well in volume, I probably did less well than Elsie on content.

  We had been in the cellar house for about a month when I was tested in a new way. I was coming back from Furnes late one afternoon. I don’t know if ‘enjoy’ was the right word, but I was not unhappy riding the Chater-Lea on the country roads adjacent to the Western Front. The sidecar was so laden down with much-needed supplies picked up from Furnes that the bike was slower than usual, but still it managed a pace. I felt that empowerment – oneness – that I sometimes got when I rode, like a small clenched fist of freedom.

  Then, in the approaching dusk, I saw something in a nearby ditch. I thought it was an injured horse or fox, until I had nearly gone past, when I realised it was a man. I parked up and ran over. He was in a uniform, too dark to make out the colour, and he was soaking wet, covered in water or blood. I hauled him out of the ditch and hoisted him back onto the road. How strong I had grown! My arm muscles stuck out like cricket balls. Uilleam would have laughed at my manliness.

  I tried to lift him up but he slumped back onto me. I couldn’t work out where the blood was coming from but there was so much, it was like he had been bathing in it. He was barely conscious. I told him to wait, rummaged through the supplies, then gave him a shot of morphine as quick as I could.

  This was my first emergency without Elsie by my side, talking me through it, but I knew what I had to do.

  One of his arms was nearly falling off. He was trying in vain to keep it in place. As I examined him, I could see that he had already attempted a tourniquet to stem the flow of blood. It wasn’t tight enough. There was a similar attempt at his knee. I re-did it. And there were wounds in his chest too.

  ‘I’ve heard about you, Mrs Elsie Knocker!’ His breath came fast.

  ‘I’m not Elsie,’ I told him. I couldn’t tell if this brought him disappointment or not.

  ‘You’re the other one then?’

  ‘Mairi Chisholm, at your service.’

  ‘Why! You’re just as good as Elsie,’ he muttered.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. In different circumstances, that would have made me chuckle. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I was… sheltering in a shell hole,’ he said. ‘Some shelter!’

  I got him in front of me, told him to hang on to the handlebars. I don’t know why I thought that would work. Elsie would have known better. He wobbled straight off the bike and it took all my might to stop him smacking onto the ground. I realised with some horror that I might have caused him further injury, but he managed to half-grin, half-grimace up at me. My heart went out to him.

  ‘Just leave me,’ he panted.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ I started emptying the sidecar as fast as I could. It took a while because it had been so densely loaded. I had to tug at things that had been jammed right in. I stood all the supplies on the slope down to the ditch, trying not to think of Dr Munro’s exasperated comments: ‘This is the last lot, Mairi. We’re running low as well. Tell Elsie she has to order her own stuff and pay for it directly.’ And of what Elsie would say if I lost it all.

  Somehow, I managed to flop him in. There were still stray items rattling around by his feet. He whispered that his name was Sandy. By a wonderful coincidence, he was half-Scottish, on his father’s side, and had spent two summers in the Highlands. ‘I love the wild,’ he said. I don’t know why, but I was powerfully reminded of Uilleam. ‘Shh, conserve your energy,’ I told him.

  ‘Yes, Miss Chisholm,’ he said. No one ever called me that and it gave me a warm feeling.

  When we arrived at the cellar house, I tooted the horn urgently and Elsie came out, prompt as a cuckoo in a cuckoo clock. I felt proud of her and proud of me – for hadn’t I just managed this brilliantly all by myself? Together we hauled Sandy in and gave him more pain relief. He was shaking violently. The morphine wasn’t even touching the sides. His eyes were already glazing over and the last thing he said to me was how cold his feet were. I covered them with a second blanket and told him to rest.

  I said, ‘I’ll drive him up to Furnes first thing.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Elsie replied.

  She was in no rush to treat his falling-off arm either.

  ‘He’s really not well,’ Elsie said.

  ‘He’s a trooper,’ I pointed out. I exaggerated: ‘He was joking all the way here.’ She nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘I’ll just pop back for the supplies, shall I?’

  ‘Good idea.’

  I went over to Sandy, touched his pale freckly cheek as he slept. ‘Won’t be long.’

  * * *

  I was only o
ut twenty minutes at most. It was even darker now, but I recognised the bend of the branches and the curve in the road and I found the supplies all right. Everything was in the ditch, just as I’d left it. Damp, battered, but nothing that wouldn’t dry out.

  By the time I got back, he was gone. I cried in Elsie’s arms most of the night. I didn’t know if he had a sister, a mother or a father. I didn’t know anything. Elsie had known Sandy’s next destination was the morgue. But I hadn’t even considered the possibility.

  The next morning, I apologised. I had let myself down. Elsie said, ‘It’s the nature of this place, the nature of this job.’ It helped to hear it but she never reacted as I did. I supposed it had something to do with being widowed young. Except for the young German lad, Elsie kept her emotions packed tightly away. I had a lot to learn.

  Later that day, I decided to ride to the spot where I had found him. Elsie argued, ‘Look, not only is it dangerous, it’s pointless.’ For once, I didn’t listen. I was determined to see if Sandy had left anything behind that we could send to his family. We often went through the men’s overcoats, looking for memorabilia, photos, letters, pictures, anything to make it easier for those left behind. If, God forbid, it was Uilleam, that’s what I would have wanted. Perhaps I had missed something in the darkness of the ditch that I would find now? Anyway, when I went back I couldn’t find anything of Sandy, but what I did find, on my return, was a notebook deep in a bush right outside the cellar house. I pulled at it gently, remembering that everything could be a trap or set off a trap. Opening the notebook, I saw there was writing on the front page: Anglaise Devoirs’ Madeleine – ‘Madeleine’s English Schoolwork’. I waited until I was back in the cellar before reading further, but I was so intrigued that even those thirty extra seconds felt long.

  Young Madeleine was learning the verbs and adverbs: have, do, make, run. She had neat curly writing, the way you’d imagine a young girl would write. Quietly, Quickly. She also made spelling mistakes, some of which had not been marked wrong, probably not to discourage her too much. Madeleine was not a natural English scholar. Maybe she was better at Maths?

  I slipped her homework book inside my Bible. Madeleine was derived from the name Magdalene; it seemed appropriate for the little girl who once lived here. Her bookish failings only made me love her more. I put her next to John 20:18. ‘I have seen the Lord.’

  * * *

  Over the next few days I found more clues to the cellar house’s previous inhabitants: a small wooden car with no wheels that must have belonged to Madeleine’s brother. A cracked half-saucer. That was a find because it had English engraving on the back. This, combined with the notebook, made me feel that the family must have escaped to England. They may have gone to Holland, or to France, but I put the notebook, the saucer and the car together and made London.

  So. We were in the cellar belonging to Madeleine and her Britain-bound family. Somehow, this cheered me immensely. I connected it with Sandy too. If half-Scottish Sandy hadn’t gone, I might never have found it. Everything happened for a reason.

  After all this was over – surely it wouldn’t be long now? – we would thank Madeleine and her family for letting us stay, and they would be grateful to us for keeping their home nice.

  Not long after the Sandy incident, Lady D suggested that if the mountain wasn’t going to Muhammad, then Muhammad should go to the mountain, which meant we were invited to Furnes for a party. Dr Munro apparently ‘didn’t mind if we came.’ This was as good an olive branch as we could expect to get. I was delighted, and Elsie, because she hated to stay alone anywhere, said she might as well come too.

  We drove over on the evening of 25 December.

  Christmas.

  The war was supposed to be over, and we were meant to be home by now.

  We hadn’t brought anything with us. The prospect of arriving empty-handed made me anxious, but Elsie laughed. ‘We’re not miracle workers,’ she said. ‘There are no shops within twenty miles, they won’t have any presents for us either!’

  Their quarters looked cosy and inviting. We sat in the kitchen around the table amid the candles and lanterns: there was a pot of stew on the go that smelled wonderful.

  But they did have presents! Not only had Lady D knitted us both long, winding scarves the shade of raspberries, but she’d made pots of plum jam too.

  Dr Munro had somehow got a book of picture postcards for Elsie (to send to Kenneth, maybe) and a copy of Through the Looking Glass for me. I had no idea he had noticed my reading tastes. ‘Keep it here if there’s no room in the cellar,’ he said gruffly. It was the first time he’d acknowledged our cellar life and it was a gracious thing to do.

  His card read, ‘God bless, Mairi.’ As Elsie read her card, she wiped her eyes with her sleeve, but she didn’t show me what it said.

  When we had quietened down, Helen stood, pressing the frame of her glasses into the bridge of her nose, awkward as ever. ‘I wrote a limerick for you, Mairi,’ she said, clearing her throat.

  There was a young lady from the Highland

  Who was very, very kind and

  She loved to sing songs

  That went on and on

  To her friends she was a real diamond.

  I flushed. I had never heard such nice things. School reports dwelled on shortcomings – Would it hurt Mairi to contribute to a class discussion? Mairi’s performance has been little more than average this year. As for my parents, saying nice things was not something they did, certainly not to my face (although I doubted they did it behind my back either).

  Everyone clapped, then Arthur said, ‘Helen, are you seriously rhyming “Highland” with “diamond”?’

  Sitting down, Helen grinned at him. ‘It’s called artistic licence. You may not have heard of it.’

  Peacemaker Lady D said, ‘It’s a perfectly legitimate rhyme!’

  Arthur added, ‘Well, I don’t think Jessie Pope need worry yet.’

  ‘I don’t want to be anything like Jessie Pope,’ said Helen loftily. ‘That woman is a propagandist.’

  ‘Her poems are highly acclaimed—’

  ‘What did you think, Mairi?’ Helen turned to me with her searching eyes.

  ‘It’s just… far too lovely!’ I said.

  ‘But it’s all true, my dear!’ she exclaimed.

  I was unsure how to handle this. ‘Does Elsie have one?’ I muttered. I wanted to know if Elsie was a diamond too.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ cried Helen, rising again. She shuffled her papers, then curtseyed. She was more confident now. ‘For Elsie…’

  There was a young lady from Devon

  Who liked to smoke cigarettes, seven,

  She smoked and she smoked,

  Until everybody choked,

  But they all said mm, she smells like heaven.

  Everyone clapped and Lady D cheered. ‘Another triumph!’

  I couldn’t help thinking my poem was more complimentary than Elsie’s was. ‘To her friends she was a real diamond’ was superior to choking everyone with your cigarettes – impossible to interpret otherwise. I hoped Elsie had not been hurt. She was laughing as though she had not a care in the world.

  ‘I may once have smelled like heaven, but those days are long gone!’

  ‘Cigarettes seven?’ said Arthur. ‘I’ve seen Elsie smoke more than that of an evening!’

  ‘But not at once,’ said Elsie drily. ‘I‘ve only managed three at any one time.’

  ‘I think the poems capture both their spirits very well,’ said Lady D with finality. Dr Munro jokingly asked where his limerick was and Helen, looking flustered, promised she would work on it. I secretly wondered if she was struggling to find something that rhymed with naked yoga or breathing exercises!

  Arthur said, ‘I have something special for you as well!’ I thought, No more, this is overwhelming but, smirking, he produced a turnip from his jacket. ‘I know how you love these, young Mairi!’ So that was a relief.

  Lady D and I drank English tea, whil
e the rest drank whatever alcohol Dr Munro had managed to get his mitts on. Helen read some more poetry – not her own, nor Jessie Pope’s, but Keats. She had a lovely reading voice, and her American accent made it sound exotic. I closed my eyes to listen, and felt myself transported to somewhere peaceful and sane. Once she had stopped, we were quickly brought back to earth by Arthur, keen to talk politics. He was particularly interested in the Russian front. ‘The cold will wipe them out!’ he kept saying.

  Helen looked at him sternly. ‘Not tonight, Arthur, please.’

  I was wondering when we would say prayers – it was Christmas after all – but no one mentioned them. However, towards the end of the evening, Lady D said, ‘I suppose we should sing a carol or two!’ so we lustily sang, ‘Silent Night’, ‘Away in a Manger’ and ‘O Come All Ye Faithful,’ and I thought this is just as good a Christmas as any I’ve had before.

  I noticed Elsie didn’t join in the songs. How many Christmases had it been since her husband died now? How painful it must be to be without him. I looked over at her and she caught my eye. I mouthed ‘Merry Christmas,’ and she did the same back.

  Dr Munro and Arthur insisted we took their beds for the night – they would sleep in the kitchen. I acted grateful, but I was suddenly so exhausted that it made little difference to me what I slept on. Still, it was nice to be shown such kindness even if it served as another reminder that we should have done something for them.

  When we drove back bleary-eyed at five o’clock on Boxing Day morning – so our boys hadn’t had to miss a single trench visit – it felt like we had been on holiday. ‘That was wonderful,’ I said to Elsie. She didn’t reply, but later I heard her tell Paul about the exceptional time we had had.