by Lizzie Page
‘They call you “The Madonnas of Pervyse”?’ he asked.
‘You heard. Isn’t it ridiculous?’
‘No. It’s entirely appropriate, Mairi.’
I flushed as red as the Queen of Hearts.
‘I told my family about you,’ he said, leaving me wondering which ‘you’ he meant. He continued. ‘They send thanks and prayers.’
I felt tearful. Prayers? None of the others would indulge me any more. Lady D sang hymns loudly with her eyes to the sky but she wouldn’t recite prayers. Dr Munro kept hinting that it was belief that was the crucial thing, not belief in God – a view I struggled to understand. Helen and Arthur certainly didn’t have faith in Jesus. Arthur was a self-proclaimed atheist and a communist and blamed religion for the war. I told him that was ridiculous – surely nationalism, greed and ignorance deserved a greater portion of blame? But he would only reply, ‘Young Mairi, you’ll learn.’ This was especially infuriating considering our respective positions: he still went to bed every night anticipating his newspaper and egg in the morning, whereas I slept in straw, half-expecting to be overrun by the Hun and strangled in my sleep.
As for Elsie – well, God was the biggest thing we disagreed on. We had to mutinously ‘agree to disagree’.
‘It’s been a long time since I’ve heard prayers,’ I whispered.
Harold’s voice was gentle. ‘I’m a Roman Catholic, Mairi. Would you like to pray with me now?’
I would have loved to have talked to the chaplains who visited the boys in the trenches – but it would have been wrong to divert their attention away from boys in need. But now Harold was offering me his prayers and I couldn’t help but be moved to tears.
‘I would like nothing more.’
Harold began. His voice was tremulous and deep.
You will not fear the terror of night,
Nor the arrow that flied by day,
Nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness
Nor the plague that destroys at midday.
He stopped. It seemed that he too had a lump in his throat.
‘Would you prefer it if I—’ I whispered.
‘No, let me go on.’ Harold coughed dust, violently.
I closed my eyes again.
A thousand may fall at your side,
Ten thousand at your right hand,
But it will not come near you.
You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked.
I felt cleansed, I felt safe. I had believed in God since before I could remember. He was always there. Jesus suffered. Our men suffer. But we will rise again. We will prove our love. We will not shy away from our burdens. If this was what God wanted, then I would do it without complaint.
To share prayers with Harold was like being part of a congregation again. It was like being in my bedroom at home. It was like being in school assembly. Together, we could move mountains. I imagined him leading prayers at my church in Dorset. How I would sit in the front row, gazing upon him admiringly. I would know how that leg had looked once and how he endured pain as though it was a mere splinter. He would sit next to me, take my hand, rest it on his uniformed thigh.
I felt a euphoria I hadn’t experienced in a long time. Sublime, as his voice caressed the words…
I will be with him in trouble,
I will deliver him and honour him.
With long life, I will satisfy him and show him my salvation—
‘Well, well. It’s like a chapel in here.’ Daylight suddenly shafted through the cellar, then disappeared just as quickly as Elsie pulled the trapdoor behind her.
Harold raised himself to his feet. He clutched Elsie’s hand and then they cheek-kissed like great friends. One, two, three, four times! I wondered if they would ever stop.
‘Better a temple than a morgue,’ Harold said smartly.
I couldn’t help but be surprised at the speed at which Harold was able to change gear. When I’ve been praying, it feels like I’m in a different place, a higher place. It takes me a while to adjust from the spiritual plane to the physical. Now I was coming down to earth with a bump.
Elsie undid her belt, unbuttoned her greatcoat, took off her nursing hat and washed her hands in the bucket: she took far longer than she usually did. I had a strange feeling that, for once, even she didn’t know how to act. She grabbed Shot and stroked his back firmly.
‘Poor little doggy,’ she said. I wasn’t sure why.
* * *
‘You won’t have the pleasure of nursing me again, ladies,’ Harold said later. Ladies – but he was speaking principally to Elsie now. ‘Can you contain your disappointment?’
‘We’ll find a way to deal with the heartache, won’t we, Mairi?’
Elsie noticed Harold was still having some problems standing. She hastily offered him our lone chair.
‘You saved my life.’
‘We know.’ Elsie never did self-effacing. I had grown used to it by now, but Harold looked mildly surprised before a grin took over his face.
‘I have a little something for you. A thank-you gift.’
‘It was thanks enough that you removed that ferret from your chin!’
He ignored Elsie’s jibe, and instead held out a box. ‘These are for you, the English nurses… From me, but also from all of us in Belgium.’
I smiled at him: ‘There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.’
Harold looked at me gently. ‘Please—’
‘Mairi, your favourites!’ interrupted Elsie. ‘Don’t eat them all at once.’
It was a tray of sweets, exquisitely wrapped.
‘Oh, you remembered! Thank you.’
‘You won’t try one, Elsie?’
‘May I be so rude… for whom is the rabbit?’ Elsie noticed everything.
‘Oh? This?’ Harold looked doubtfully at his supplies. ‘You can have this.’
‘Thank you.’
There was a pause before Harold asked. ‘Can you skin a rabbit, Elsie?’
‘Of course.’
I could tell Harold was impressed even if he didn’t say anything. I wanted to tell him that I had shot five sparrows once and helped prepare them. They were disgusting to eat but I had done it. Elsie wasn’t the only one.
Elsie flopped down in the straw, looking exhausted. It wasn’t like her.
‘Bad out there?’ Harold asked gently.
‘Every day is bad out there. It wasn’t terrible though – so that’s good.’
She so rarely talked to me like this. I suddenly saw that there was a vulnerable side to her that I barely knew. I felt like I had when Uilleam had explained to me that the moon didn’t disappear on those nights we couldn’t see it: it was still there, always there, but without the light from the sun it was hidden. Elsie had concealed her distress from me, perhaps to protect me, I wasn’t sure.
‘The soldiers have started shooting themselves. Quite thoughtless really. Some are more accurate than others.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Harold said quietly.
‘One chap…’ Elsie started, then changed her mind – ‘well, let’s say I was glad I was there.’
Harold offered Elsie his handkerchief. A white silk square. I hadn’t seen anything so refined as this in some time. ‘I’m sure he was glad you were there.’
Elsie blew her nose loudly. She didn’t care to disguise it at all.
‘He would have preferred his girlfriend or his mother.’
‘He would have preferred not to be here at all.’
Harold didn’t brush the agony away; he didn’t offer platitudes. He faced sadness as you would hope to face anything. Head-on.
Elsie offered him back his handkerchief complete with the contents of her nose. He didn’t look disgusted, but shook his head. ‘Keep it.’
Elsie smiled helplessly at me.
Harold rose awkwardly, then started. ‘Um, I have a ticket for a party in the Officers’
Mess. Would one of you lovely ladies…?’ His voice trailed away.
Neither Elsie nor I responded.
‘… care to accompany me?’ he asked finally.
‘Mairi?’ Elsie said in a softer voice than usual.
‘The officers have managed to acquire some fine wines.’
‘No Elsie, you go.’ There, I had said it. ‘I’m no good at parties.’ I looked apologetically at Harold. ‘Elsie says that I’m too quiet.’
‘No one can ever be too quiet,’ he said cordially.
‘You go, Mairi… please,’ Elsie said weakly.
‘There will be cake,’ Harold added, as though either of us needed enticing.
I remembered what she had said about her bad day. Every day is bad out there.
‘You’ve had a tough time,’ I said lightly. ‘It would be good to let your hair down.’
‘What hair?’ she said, ruffling hers up adorably.
Harold beamed at her.
‘Alors.’ She grinned. ‘I hope you are not too disappointed, Harold. C’est moi!’
* * *
Elsie had wanted me to go. She had wanted me to go more than she usually did. Perhaps she understood that it was as if we were on a collision course at that moment, and everything depended on the decisions we would make in those next few seconds? At the time though, I thought we were only talking about a party. Only talking about cake. It was only later that I realised I had declined a lot more.
As I lay in the straw next to her that night, I tried to work out why I had given up so easily. I was so used to deferring to Elsie, I suppose. It was always Elsie Knocker and what’s-her-name her friend. Arthur said I was like the get-away driver and she was the cat-thief. Docility versus glamour. Not much of a choice there. Or, as my mother might have said, I was the crust, she was the whole sandwich. All I had needed to say was, I’d like that invitation please, but I was afraid. Living with death every day made me love less. It only made her love more.
* * *
I hoped Elsie had forgotten about Harold’s party but of course she hadn’t. A few days later, she asked if I would be able to manage on my own that evening, and I said over-brightly, ‘Oh, you’re going out tonight!’
And she said, as though I had forgotten, ‘With the Baron, yes.’
I was struggling to fix a flat tyre that morning; they happened more when Elsie had been driving the Fiat, although she wouldn’t hear of it, and I was so annoyed that I kicked it, hurting my foot. Paul saw and laughed. We did our trench-runs as normal, Elsie commenting that if there was a badly injured boy she would stay in that evening. I was a hateful person, because all I wanted was a boy to suffer terrible injuries – or rather injuries that appeared terrible but actually weren’t – to keep Elsie home. I pictured a shell landing in a ditch right next to some innocent boy, and only Elsie having the skills to bring him back to life. She would simply have to stay! But luck was on her side – on every boy’s side – that evening.
We dispensed Martin’s meat broth (a ‘meat broth untainted by meat’ as Elsie called it) and reassured men who were growing increasingly frantic at the prospective push over the top.
‘My mum is alone now – my dad is dead, my brother is dead… I mustn’t die, Missus.’
‘No, you mustn’t.’
Elsie swore that the more confident the soldiers were, the more chance they had of surviving. I didn’t quite see how that worked. Nevertheless, she insisted it was our duty to instill self-belief.
‘And you won’t.’ I patted the young soldier’s hand and whereas once I might have recoiled at its filthy clamminess, now I just held tighter. ‘You will be fine.’
‘If I’m not—’
‘You will be.’
‘You’ll tell my mum?’
‘Yes.’
Two lads needed new dressings but that was no problem. No one needed to be urgently escorted to our Poste de Secours.
What was there for Elsie to wear to a party? I wanted to give her something – a brooch or some rouge – to share the occasion, or perhaps remind her of my existence back in the cellar. I didn’t have anything to share though. After some consideration, I offered her Madeleine’s red ribbon – my lucky ribbon – but she said, ‘I don’t think so,’ then, looking closely at me, she added, ‘You’re sweet to think of it.’
She looked marvellous anyway, despite the absence of dressing-up clothes: she was so strong and fine, trembling with excitement. She bit her lips to make them redder and she rubbed her cheeks to get some colour into them, and when I tersely pointed out what she was doing, she shrugged. ‘I’m not going to lie, I want to look nice for once.’
‘You always look nice,’ I said meekly and she cackled. ‘Oh, I wish everyone thought the same way as you.’
I thought to myself, there is something different about this date, but I hoped that was just in my mind.
We shared a cigarette, then promptly at six she mounted the stairs, leaving me behind. Paul grunted that there was poker at the engineers’ house but I declined. After they left, I stared at the jigsaw pieces for a while, but could make no progress. I didn’t know what I wanted to do – I didn’t feel like doing anything – so I went to lie down on the straw. Shot was heavy on my legs. He alone seemed indifferent to Elsie’s absence.
Of course, I couldn’t sleep. My mind was inundated with thoughts of Elsie, with boys with pleading eyes who cried out for their mothers. I tried to conquer my runaway thoughts with imaginings of Madeleine, or memories of Uilleam, or motorcycles… but it didn’t work. Even prayers couldn’t hold my heart back from its fearful panic.
I imagined Elsie and Harold dancing in a field, him pressing a flower to her breast, telling her he loved her. I saw her singing to him and him telling her she was an angel. I imagined them riding a horse together, galloping through the cornfields. I imagined the horse lifting them up and down, sprouting massive white wings, deliriously flying them away from here.
What if the Germans broke though tonight while she was out? I would be trapped here. Would I submit or fight? What if they tried to violate me? I would endure, I would pray, and then, with any luck, they would kill me straight after. Perhaps, I decided, it would be better if they came tonight, because then at least Elsie would have escaped.
* * *
I was still wrestling with my dark thoughts after midnight, when Elsie bounded down the stairs. It sounded as though she was falling from the sky.
‘Good time?’
‘Oh yes. Have you plumped up the pillows, Mairi?’
I laughed despite myself.
‘Anchoise d’Ecosse, asperges Irlandasies, haricots verts, poulet, petits pois, saucisson and the wine!’ she added deliriously, although most of the menu meant nothing to me. ‘Chateau Grand Puech and Haut Medoc and champagne!’
While Elsie obsessed over the food, she didn’t say anything about Harold, neither that night nor the following day. She didn’t mention dancing or cake, never mind cornfields or winged horses. When eventually I asked if Harold was good company, which seemed a reasonable request for information, she smiled and said, ‘You know he is, Mairi.’ I don’t think she referred to him once after that, so it suited me to hope he had disappeared off the face of the earth like all her other Gilberts.
I was so anxious over the following days that Elsie asked what I was fretting about. I couldn’t say that I feared that she and Harold would fall in love and abandon me, and she was fed up with hearing my worries about money running out (even with the bike-sale and donations we were short of what we needed). So I told her my fears of being murdered in the cellar.
‘That’s not going to happen, Mairi,’ she said, but she wasn’t mocking for once. ‘Our cellar house is perfectly safe. Please don’t give it a second thought.’
But then, exactly one week after the party, while we were driving back from a Furnes-run, the cellar house was hit by a shell. Downstairs – Elsie was right – the cellar was virtually untouched, although the blankets around the WC coll
apsed and my half-done Eiffel Tower jigsaw parted by itself. The two men recuperating in cot beds upstairs were miraculously safe too, though one poor man with an arm injury – who could run, so took shelter by the wall – was killed.
15
Dr Munro said it was a sign that we needed a break. For someone who didn’t believe in signs, he could sound quite superstitious. He insisted we would be no good to anyone unless we took care of ourselves. This was an important rule of nursing (albeit one he had neglected to tell me before).
‘Just a week or two away,’ he said. ‘You owe it to your patients to be strong.’
‘We are strong!’ I argued. We had lifted the bricks from the fallen walls in a matter of hours: hard, hot, back-breaking work. No one could say we weren’t strong.
‘Not just in physical health,’ he responded somewhat incomprehensibly.
‘Isn’t it pointless going now?’ I argued. ‘It’s only a few months ’til Christmas and surely it’ll all be done by then.’
‘This Christmas?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Who told you that? Christmas 1916, more like!’
I resisted until Dr Munro said, ‘Mairi, think of King Solomon, and the baby.’ I didn’t see how the cellar was our baby or which of us was King Solomon, but I understood we had to go otherwise Dr Munro might do something drastic, so I too suggested to Elsie, ‘Maybe it’s time.’
We were exhausted. We hadn’t had a proper rest since we’d arrived at the cellar – nine months ago now. The hum of shells was so pervasive that I almost missed it when, for a short time, it stopped. Sometimes the dust was unbearable in your eyes and throat, and every word came out with a cough. Sometimes it felt like we had been caged. And our cage was clearly not the safe place we had imagined it was.
It would be good to get out.
