The War Nurses

by Lizzie Page

  She held up her hands. ‘It takes away the hard edges, Mairi.’

  ‘Come home with me,’ I ordered. I knew then with an absolute certainty that if anything were ever to be the same between us again, I had to get her out of here.

  ‘Everything is blurry and warm,’ she continued, a soppy smile on her face. I thought she was staring at me but she wasn’t – she was just staring at anything. I had never seen her like this.

  I felt sick. Robin was at the window, peering out in awe at the night sky: ‘Look at the stars, quick!’ I went over, convinced something was happening outside. It looked like any other brutally oblivious night sky to me. I felt then that I couldn’t trust Robin. I certainly couldn’t trust Elsie.

  ‘I thought you said she was a God-botherer?’ said Robin, apropos of nothing.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’ Elsie turned her bleary eyes guiltily on me. ‘I never said that, Mairi.’ I thought she was about to cry.

  Suddenly there were sounds of a scuffle outside. Robin excitedly grabbed his gun. It was like he’d been waiting for the chance. I got the idea this was something he did often because the others didn’t even bother to look up. ‘Fox for supper, anyone?’

  He aimed, then fired outside.

  I recognised that yelp and ran to the empty window. It was Shot. Shot must have been so worried about our absence that he had followed me here.

  ‘That’s my dog!’ I shrieked. I ran outside, nearly tumbling over the rubble as I went.

  Elsie was right behind me and Robin was behind her, breathing fast and moaning frantically.

  ‘I would never hurt that dog. Tell her, Elsie!’

  I found Shot almost immediately. He was cowering behind some scrawny bushes: a poor shelter to choose. He was trembling as much as I was. Trembling more than I’d known he was capable of. I picked him up, petrified of what I’d find. I checked his little ears, his shaky legs. There was no blood, no sign of a wound. Thank God. Robin had missed.

  ‘Is he okay?’ Elsie, Robin and a couple of the other men crowded around me. They were panting. Their relief at the sight of Shot made me even angrier. If he was unharmed it was no thanks to them, the disgusting lot of them.

  ‘Mairi?’ Elsie’s voice was high and far away. ‘My sister.’

  ‘Go away!’ I said and when she didn’t move, I shouted. ‘Go back to your… friends. Stay away from me!’

  Running back to the cellar with Shot struggling in my arms, I hated her, I hated everyone and everything. Except for Shot. The Germans might as well come and savage me now for all I cared.

  Pulling at the trapdoor like Alice or the white rabbit, I slipped down cradling Shot.

  * * *

  The next day, I got up as usual for the trench-run. Elsie was already there. She must have come straight from the engineers’ place. Her eyes were red and there was something slightly off about her, but she greeted me as if nothing had happened. She floated about in her great leather coat, moving from soldier to soldier, handing out drinks. After that was finished, she still managed to sew up a boy’s leg in a trench full of water. When a fat rat ran over the both of them, she didn’t even tense.

  By the time Harold came over that afternoon, Elsie was flat out in the straw with Shot protectively nestling at her feet. I had called Shot away, but he wouldn’t come. He still loved her.

  ‘Let her rest,’ Harold said indulgently. He had heard about her brother’s death and he must have thought she was sleeping off her grief or something. ‘Do you want a ride out, Mairi?’

  It felt too much for me. I thought of Robin’s aborted aim, the way Elsie had been sitting, dizzily waving like she was sunbathing on a cruise liner, for goodness’ sake. I burst into hot tears.

  ‘Oh Mairi,’ Harold said gently, ‘what times are these?’ Since that was another thing Elsie said it didn’t make me feel much better.

  We mounted Doris and rode to the copse of trees where we had rested the time before. I tried to breathe in fresh air, but the smell of acrid shells and gunpowder lingered even this far from the line.

  ‘You’re young to have seen the terrible things you have.’

  ‘You think it is better to be older?’

  ‘Not better,’ Harold considered, ‘but unlike you, I had more time to acquire some good memories to look back on fondly.’

  I wondered which good memories Harold was most fond of looking back on. I knew that one of mine was his arrival at the cellar house. I could admit it now – the time he told me he loved me in his sleep was deeply precious. I knew another of my happiest moments was coming out here. This was ‘our place’ and being here made everything else disappear.

  Harold pulled some condensed milk from his bag. He stabbed open the tin with his penknife and we drank from the tiny gap, like we were sucking nectar from a flower. I wanted to tell him about what had happened last night, the wasted laudanum and poor Shot, but I couldn’t even do that.

  We stayed there silently observing dragonflies, peonies, stalks, ants, blades of grass, flies. All the living things doing their living things, while we humans were battering ourselves to death two miles away.

  Harold said, ‘When all this is over, will anyone remember?’

  ‘We’ll make sure we tell everyone.’

  Madeleine will know. Madeleine and Felix are the last beautiful hopes for the future, I thought.

  ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever talk about it again,’ he said.

  My head was a confused knot on his shoulder. Let’s not talk then. I suddenly wished he would just kiss me. Get it over with!

  I wondered if maybe things had just gone too far with Elsie and he couldn’t find a way back from his vows to her, but he said, ‘We are so lucky to have Elsie in our lives, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered. My longing for him just wouldn’t go away, however much I wanted it to.

  ‘She is the most incredible woman I’ve ever met.’

  ‘She is.’

  ‘I can’t believe she has agreed to be my wife.’

  I listened with an aching heart. What is this ugliness lodged inside of me that means I can’t countenance Harold being in love with my best friend?

  ‘You are getting married then?’

  ‘Yes!’ he said like it was obvious. ‘As soon as we can organise something. I want all my family there. And I have a large family!’

  He smiled at me, yet his eyes were far away. And that was the moment I understood that all my hopes were nothing but childish silliness. Harold was not mine. He really was Elsie’s. She had won again. Effortlessly. And there were no prizes for second place.

  ‘You won’t wait for her to convert?’ I asked, trying to pretend I hadn’t given this any thought.

  ‘Oh,’ he said breezily, like it was nothing, the big obstacle had just been overcome. ‘In her own time perhaps.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘If I hadn’t been injured and come to the cellar that day, who knows how life might have turned out? Every time my wound aches I feel blessed to have Elsie, and you, in my life. The pain reminds me not of what I have lost but of the people I have gained. I can’t wait to meet Kenneth.’ He looked at me, almost shyly, like that first time in the cellar when anything could have happened. I should have walked him out to the car, not Elsie. ‘I want to introduce him to the Church and bring him up as a Catholic. Elsie doesn’t mind. The funny thing is I’ve always wanted a son.’

  I could see them, when all this was over, walking around their European cities, swinging hands, dark-eyed Kenneth in the middle, Harold beaming. Everyone speaking a different language; everyone united together. Harold loved her. He would never love me in that way. But even as I torturously admitted that to myself, I knew that there was someone who might.

  I just had to wait it out, accept these feelings and one day they would disappear and we would all be best friends again.

  ‘I am happy for you, Harold,’ I managed to say, meaning I will be happy for you, I just need some time. ‘And Elsie.’

/>   I imagined him rising up, calling out to her, ‘Love you forever.’

  ‘Thank you, Mairi,’ he said. ‘That means so much.’

  The birds were still singing. Doris was still beautiful. The sky was still blue.

  ‘Thank you for bringing me here, Harold.’

  ‘Oh, isn’t it wonderful? Elsie loves it here too.’

  I nodded, painfully, but with a resignation that was somehow sweet too. I had my answer. I had my clarity. For the first time, I said it before he did: ‘We’d better head off.’

  * * *

  When we got back, Elsie was making tea, the stove was lit and Shot was curled up happily on a blanket. All was normal. We could have been anywhere.

  30

  ‘I have the best news!’ Elsie burst in, delightedly flapping a newspaper at me. It was a few days after my ride out with Harold. Elsie and I had been working hard and there was a semblance of peace between us.

  ‘Shackleton is alive!’

  For months, Shackleton and his crew had been missing in Antarctica, surviving on lumps of sugar, dog food and the English stiff upper lip.

  ‘Most of his crew made it too. What a man!’

  His unexpected survival represented something magical to Elsie. Perhaps she saw us all as lost explorers and this was a sign of hope. Anyway, we so rarely had good news, we would take any there was. We danced around in excitement. Elsie broke into song, then pulled away from me. ‘I am so pleased!’ Darting about the cellar, she reminded me of the old Elsie, the Elsie before the engagement, when she was mine.

  ‘When all this is over, shall we go to the South Pole, Mairi?’

  What about Harold? I wondered.

  I didn’t say that, of course. I remembered Ecclesiastes suddenly.

  A time to kill and a time to heal;

  A time to tear down and a time to build up.

  A time to weep and a time to laugh.

  This was a time to laugh.

  ‘Hmm, can you promise me penguins?’

  ‘Yes, little piggy,’ she said, hugging me again. ‘Whatever your heart desires.’ She read the article once more, looking closely at the perilous route Shackleton and his men had charted, going over their suffering and their deprivations. I swear, there were tears in her eyes.

  * * *

  It may have only been September, but I was already working on my Christmas presents. For Shot, I was threading a pretty collar. It was time we let the world know that this was no commonplace stray, but a dog who belonged: a dog with not one but two mistresses. And for Elsie, two gifts: firstly I was secretly training Shot to lift a paw for thank you. Elsie had seen a dog do it once. I thought Shot could be taught it, but Elsie didn’t believe me. I was right though – Shot was picking it up, if slowly. He would surely master it by Christmas and I had no doubts that Elsie – with her love of all entertainment – would adore it.

  Her second gift was a new pocket watch. Elsie did not usually crave material things but I had seen her admire the watch of a staff nurse at Furnes. I hoped to get her an engraved one. Unfortunately you had to pay by the letter (I’d already enquired), so I was looking for something with brevity but gravitas. Sisters, maybe? Seven letters was affordable. For Harold, I was considering a lighter. It seemed appropriate for the man who had brightened our time out here.

  Elsie and I didn’t talk about what had happened at the engineers’ house but she hadn’t gone back. I decided to put the memory of that night in the box of ‘grief makes you behave in crazy ways’. When I had seen Robin, he was subdued with me yet overly affectionate with Shot. Shot didn’t hold a grudge, and I remembered how Dr Munro had treated us with compassion even when he disagreed with us – especially when he disagreed with us.

  I prayed a lot. I knew God would probably be too occupied to hear my humble prayers but I felt my heart lighten when I thought of the grand plan he had for us all.

  I cleaned the cellar and the ambulance. Elsie went picking turnips in a newly discovered field. She promised to watch out for unexploded shells. We had turnip salad for lunch. She drove two cases of VD and one of shell shock to Furnes. A man was brought in from the trenches and I bandaged his arm and accompanied him back. Shot practised his raised paw trick and was rewarded with some spam for his efforts.

  We had turnip salad for dinner.

  * * *

  That evening, while Elsie slept fitfully on the straw, I finally replied to Jack. I wrote my longest letter to him yet, signing it ‘from the future Mrs Petrie’. Mairi Petrie, I thought to myself. Mrs. For the first time, I told Jack that I loved him. It was my first time telling anyone that, although once done, I realised it was not as difficult as I had anticipated. I found myself thanking the Lord that Jack was in England. I couldn’t bear it if he were out here. In my prayers, I even dared call him my Jack.

  And I wrote that although we must one day go to Saunton Sands – the picture on the jigsaw – I had always dreamed of marrying in the Highlands, if that wasn’t too much to ask, and, if he’d still have me, of course?

  My father would be in his kilt, my mother would cry into his handkerchief and Uilleam would tease us. The thought made me smile. I had an inkling Jack and Uilleam might get on. They both had something of the outsider about them.

  Our children might not inherit my freckles or Jack’s ears. These things often skip a generation. You never know, they might actually look like my mother (I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad). I wrote that things between Elsie and me had been strained these past few months, but all was resolved now. I paused, played with my pen, then wrote honestly.

  I have accepted some things, and maybe so has she.

  It was surprisingly easy to be honest with Jack. My flaws felt safe with him and I knew I had to be honest, otherwise what chance did we have?

  As I thought of what else I could tell him, I realised that I hadn’t thought about Harold for an entire three days. I smiled; I had only gone and spoiled it by thinking about him then, but still. This was progress. Elsie and Harold deserved to be happy. I wondered how Elsie’s first husband had proposed and I felt, once again, what a huge thing it was for Elsie to have lost him overseas, with a young child. I should remember that, be more compassionate. After all, I had been blessed and hadn’t lost anyone close to me.

  It was a time to mourn and a time to dance.

  I wrote that it was a time to embrace.

  I wondered if Jack might get the wrong idea. I doubted he had read Ecclesiastes; he was only a quarter-way through Das Kapital. He was no Arthur. Even so, I was too tired to write the letter over again, or even to explain the reference, so I kept it in. Besides, when we married Jack and I would have to embrace. In the dark, I was confident, his ears mightn’t look so red.

  Jack with his strong arms and grainy hard-working hands. I remembered the way he’d stayed to volunteer to stack chairs too high. The way he spoke to ignorant old ladies with that quiver in his voice. The way he was passionate about his men. The way he could talk about aeroplanes how I could talk about motorcycles. The way he dared to dream again.

  Jack knew me. He knew what I saw. He understood how you could grow to hate Maconochie and corned beef. I would never need to be anything but my authentic self with him. Jack, my Jack.

  We would be good together.

  31

  The following morning, before I had time to tell my news to Elsie, the post-boy came shooting over. He was wearing flowers in his hair. I hoped he was not being bullied by the boys in the trenches, but he seemed perky enough. He had brought a package. At first I thought it was another jigsaw from Jack but he hopped excitedly, unaware of how ludicrous he looked, saying, ‘America, America! Not telling!’

  I hesitantly took the parcel. As I opened the note, I was racking my brains over who might have sent me something from America. It said:

  Dearest Mairi,

  * * *

  I hope this finds you and Elsie well.

  * * *

  Arthur is living back home with hi
s parents; I am in New York with mine. Things have been difficult between us, but I am optimistic that in the future, we may be able to put the past behind us.

  * * *

  So here is the book – you and Elsie were, as you will see, such a special inspiration.

  * * *

  From your ever-loving American friend,

  Helen

  (Please excuse the pseudonym – I couldn’t risk the notoriety!)

  Helen had only gone and written it! Hastily, I pulled at the strings and unwrapped the paper. The book was called Young Elizabeth at the Wars! by Eleanora Mountford, which was unexpected. Helen had never told me a title but I didn’t think it would be that. I thought Eleanora Mountford sounded glamorous and quite unlike Helen, which was probably the point.

  Down in the cellar, I devoured her book. Shot was snuggled under one of my arms, pressed to my chin; he didn’t mind when I turned the pages. Helen wrote how she spoke. It was like listening to her tell a story back at Furnes at Christmas. I could imagine her owl eyes flickering over the pages, picture her pushing back her glasses, glancing at Arthur. How much will be exaggerated? I wondered as I hared through the first chapter. How much will be true? Shot’s breathing slowed and he fell asleep.

  I got up to page 54 before I had to set the book down in shock. No. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t have.

  And then I picked it up again. It was irresistible. I was shaking like a leaf; it was as though the book was too dangerous to hold but I had to read on. My hands were trembling like I had shell shock. Page 55, page 56… The day disappeared as I lost myself in Helen’s words. I couldn’t believe it.