The Longest Winter

by Mary Jane Staples

  James got to his feet as she came up. He looked lanky in his hospital blues.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said, ‘I can’t stop.’

  ‘Try and change your mind,’ said James.

  ‘Well, for a little while,’ she said.

  ‘Good,’ said James and they sat down on the bench together. It meant a brief but pleasant few moments for both. They were friends. She was twenty-seven, her dark auburn hair tucked up, cap neatly perched, her features smooth and clear, grey eyes placid but perceptive. She had, after eight years of nursing, a capacity for absorbing the stresses of life in a military hospital. She was a woman of attractive, receptive wisdom, who could bring order to systems and reassurance to patients without either fuss or fret. Those who sensed the warm bosom that beat under the starched front confided in her, and she in her experience knew when to supply sound, practical advice that came straight from the head. When they wanted to be serious the wounded men talked to her. It was the young nurses they flirted with. Since the hospital was for officers there was an unavoidable amount of this kind of inconsequential skirmishing, despite the discipline enforceable on both sides. She did not mind that no one made inconsequential advances in her direction. It saved her having to discourage them. And at twenty-seven she had settled for the fact that she was on the shelf, in common with many women. The longer the war went on the more crowded that shelf became.

  ‘Well?’ said James.

  ‘Well?’ she countered.

  ‘You needn’t talk. It’s not compulsory. Just put your feet up.’

  ‘I can’t stay—’

  ‘There’s no hurry for a while.’

  ‘James, I simply—’

  ‘The place won’t fall down without you.’

  ‘If someone should want me—’

  ‘They can come and get you.’

  ‘A hospital isn’t run like a shop.’

  ‘I’m glad of that, otherwise we’d simply be weighed and wrapped,’ said James. ‘But it won’t hurt you to let it run without you for five minutes. Sit back, close your eyes and I’ll watch out for Matron.’ His smile was affectionate, and she felt the little weakness of any woman having a man trying gently to spoil her.

  ‘You’re very considerate,’ she said. She knew he felt grateful to her, to the hospital. Most of them did, most of those whom skilful medication and conscientious nursing brought out of pain and into convalescence. He had known pain from a badly neglected and badly burned arm. He expressed his gratitude in his own way, slightly teasing. Other patients were like that. But Captain Fraser to her was not quite like the others. He was a man of pre-war attitudes, fashioned by customs and trends already considered dated. To her such men were always recognizable, not necessarily by their age. They had their own way with women, for they had been brought up to regard woman as a civilizing influence and that the least of her dues were courtesies. Captain Fraser almost always stood up for her, as if he moved in a world that was still gracious. He was one of the men who had been men before the war. The young men, the boys made adult by the war, were already a different breed. Flippant, reckless, casual. So were the girls who had suddenly found themselves doing men’s jobs at eighteen and nineteen. They lived as if life was eating them up. It was to be expected. Captain Fraser belonged to the war now. It had to be fought, it had to be finished. But he also belonged to the generation which had been so buoyant, so hopeful, the generation which had seen a turn in the tide of social justice and a change in the intransigence of diehard government.

  The boys, the young soldiers, were incredibly courageous, but so tragic as casualties, so bewildered. The men were as resilient as Job. When evening came and the hospital was at its quietest one could almost read their thoughts. She read them as reflections on how to get the war out of the way so that they could, perhaps, go and find the women they might have married but hadn’t, or resume life with those they had. Captain Fraser rested very quietly sometimes, on his back, his eyes on the ceiling and as far away as a man could be. She never intruded, never asked him what it was that so possessed his mind.

  No wife came to visit him. He was unmarried. His parents came from time to time, his mother came often by herself. She had grown up in the era that was gracious for the privileged, and looked it. She was tall, fair and still fine-looking. She had no airs, however, and it was some time before anyone realized she was not Mrs Fraser but Lady Fraser.

  They came and went, the visitors. So did the wounded men. Some returned to the front, others went home to stay home because they were crippled or blind. A military hospital was a lodgement for the cruel consequences of war, a place for the pursuit of healing, for patching up, for the acceptance on the part of some patients for compromise and for the application of skill and compassion on the part of the staff. One remembered the patients, or some of them, for a short while after they had gone, but one’s mind was almost wholly occupied by the needs of fresh admissions. New nurses had been known to periodically weep during their first weeks of duty, but after that one’s emotions gradually became armoured by professionalism.

  Captain Fraser was luckier than some. His arm, burnt from wrist to shoulder, had been in a critical state when he arrived from France. It had required such delicate treatment, such careful nursing. It still hung a little stiffly, but the seared flesh and scorched sinews had responded bravely after months of medical care. They were pleased with him and with themselves. With luck they would have him back in France and flying again in a month or so. The sinews were becoming flexible again. Prolonged physical therapy was his lot twice a day. He could now bend his elbow a little and stretch the furrowed limb and healing muscle. The scars were savage but even they would look less fierce in time, and he could always keep his shirt sleeve buttoned. There were other patients in far worse straits. All the same he was a favourite with the nurses, even if with his dark bandit-like looks he was no Owen Nares. The nurses had their favourites. It could not be helped. Professional impartiality could not always withstand the undermining effects of one’s more whimsical reactions. The way a man endured pain or the loss of a leg or an eye counted for much, but it was often the indefinable which softened the professional front.

  They had kept Captain Fraser in bed for quite a time, the arm a painful mess and torture at the slightest knock or touch. He was not conspicuously heroic, he swore about it as much as any man, and whenever the massive dressing was changed he rarely failed to advise the nurse he’d just as soon have her put his arm back in the oven.

  ‘How are we today. Captain Fraser?’ Sister Kernan asked him once.

  He stared at her as if she was touched in the head.

  ‘I don’t know how you are,’ he said, ‘but I feel frankly overdone.’

  Other men made quips, jokes. It was part of the attitude, the atmosphere. No one could say, and she herself could not, why that remark of Captain Fraser’s brought a more personalized touch to her professionalism.

  They had become friends. There were traps available from Hobbs’s Stables in the village, which could be hired by patients physically able and genuinely capable of handling the ponies, and Captain Fraser had taken her for rides into the dales on evenings when she was off duty. The outings could not be kept secret and she knew the nurses talked about her. Was Sister Kernan being courted? She was not. The excursions were companionable and pleasantly conversational. Captain Fraser did not flirt with her or make any advances at all. Nurses were understandable targets for men temporarily removed from normal life, and many of the officers were naturally amorous. They considered a crisp uniform added a touch of piquancy to a young woman’s vulnerability. But Sister Kernan and Captain Fraser simply enjoyed each other’s company, or so it seemed.

  She wanted to relax now, to sit back on the bench with him, to be able to watch the comings and goings without feeling she was in neglect of her duties. He had this effect on her, inducing in her a wish that she had more time to spare.

  ‘That’s better,’ said James, ‘and it’s n
ot hurting, is it?’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘Letting a little time slip by.’

  ‘You do so much of it,’ she said, ‘you sit out here and I watch you and you do nothing except let whole days slip by.’

  ‘Not quite nothing. There are always pictures to look at.’

  ‘Pictures?’ she said.

  ‘Moving pictures,’ said James. ‘I’ve discovered nurses never stand still, sisters never take time to stop and look, and doctors always hurry.’

  Margaret laughed.

  ‘It’s like pictures of ants scurrying about, is it?’

  ‘No. It’s mainly pictures of young women with a very special appeal to the bedridden.’

  ‘Oh, very fanciful. Not all of you are bedridden and not all of us are young,’ she said.

  ‘I’m drawing a general picture. You all look young. Only in Matron is there undisguisable maturity. Am I getting old?’

  ‘I think you’ve a few years yet,’ she said. ‘Nurses, you know, are not really romantic creatures. We do have tender ideas about suffering humanity when we first enter the service, but we become very practical out of sheer necessity.’

  ‘You may consider yourself the most practical person here,’ said James, ‘but most of the men in D Ward would fight lions and tigers for you.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Margaret. She sat up. She laughed. She sat back again. ‘Well, I’m glad I know.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll bring on the lions to prove it if you like.’

  ‘Please don’t. War wounds are bad enough. Lion bites would be too much. By the way, you didn’t say if you were included.’

  ‘Among those fighting off the lions?’

  ‘And the tigers.’

  ‘My dear Maggie—’

  ‘Sister Kernan when I’m on duty, please.’

  ‘Naturally. In my case—’

  ‘Concerning the lions and so on?’

  ‘And the stand I’d make for you. I like to think I’d earn a mention in the newspapers.’

  ‘Oh, lions eat man, you mean?’ said Margaret.

  ‘I rather thought in terms of man eats lions.’

  She gave that some serious thought, then said, ‘You’d be sick. But I’m very touched at being so well thought of.’

  ‘You’re sweet,’ said James, ‘despite your will of iron.’

  She coloured a little and hoped it was not too obvious. She looked away, at the apple tree, and said, ‘A will of iron stiffens my weaknesses. It’s going to be a good year for apples, Captain Fraser.’

  ‘I’m not on duty myself,’ said James.

  ‘I am, and I must go,’ she said.

  ‘I know. But tell me first, would you care to trot around with me for an hour or two this evening? I’ve booked one of Hobbs’s traps.’

  She was pleased but kept herself studiously reserved as she said, ‘I’m not off duty until seven.’

  ‘Seven till nine are the best hours on a summer evening,’ said James. ‘Would you like to come? I always enjoy it more with you.’

  Smiling, she said, ‘Shall I need my will of iron?’

  ‘Why, did I try to kiss you last time?’

  ‘No, you’re always very well behaved with me. What you attempt with the nurses I don’t know.’ She got to her feet. James rose too. ‘Your afternoon therapy, I think, Captain Fraser.’

  Officially his rank was now Pilot Officer. In April the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Force had been merged to become the Royal Air Force, with its own ranks. But at the hospital they still called him Captain. In April too Richthofen, the Red Baron, had at last been shot down, dying in his crashed plane. When Margaret gave the news to James he did not look elated. He looked disbelieving. ‘Richthofen?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Here, it’s in the paper.’

  He read the news item. The British had buried the German flying ace with full military honours. Richthofen deserved that, thought James, but he also deserved to survive. He was the greatest of them. They would be mourning him in Germany. And in Austria too.

  He walked now with Sister Kernan across the lawn and up the wide stone steps to the huge paved terrace of Hattersleigh Hall. Here were the beds which had been wheeled out into the open air and tucked into the shade. As Margaret and James crossed the terrace one patient ventured a question.

  ‘I say, Sister, who are you out with tonight?’

  ‘Me,’ said James. As they entered the Hall he said to her, ‘I’ll wait at the gates for you at seven.’

  ‘Give me a little more time,’ she said, ‘say quarter past.’

  ‘Done,’ said James, ‘quarter past.’

  They walked along a wide oak-panelled corridor. The converted mansion was nineteenth century. During the winter the draughts dallied, frolicked and blew, but in the summer a welcome coolness invaded the place.

  ‘Shall I take those things back to the ward for you?’ asked Margaret.

  ‘What a good sort you are,’ said James, handing her his sketchbook and case of drawing implements.

  ‘A kind of best chum?’ she suggested.

  ‘Well, that’s a safe status, with a protective ring to it, isn’t it?’

  ‘I need to protect myself?’ she smiled.

  ‘Try to bear in mind,’ said James, ‘that there are a lot of us and only a few of you.’

  He continued on to the therapy room while she turned into the corridor leading to D Ward. She took his things to his locker. For the first time he had used words which might mean he had a light-hearted flirtation in mind or something a little more serious. Or nothing at all. She hoped the evening would be as fine as the day had been, that it wouldn’t rain.

  She rather suspected she was ready to fall in love and it made her feel strangely unsure of herself.

  It was a very fine evening indeed, as clear and as still as nature could devise. James was at the gates with the pony and trap at ten past seven. He sat in relaxed patience, waiting for her. The years were going. He was almost thirty-one. He looked his age, his dark features leaner, his frame fined down by the ravaging exigencies of war. But remembering that even Richthofen had fallen he knew himself lucky. For two and a half years he had served with the Royal Engineers in France. Then his request for a transfer to the Flying Corps was approved. He had his wings up four months later and was brought down after five months of combat flying. The German gunners pulled him out of his blazing plane and he spent a little while being courteously received by a Colonel Huebner, and the smallness of the world closed in on him when he found that the colonel knew his friend Major Moeller, back on active service and a colonel himself.

  Colonel Huebner sent him under escort to the nearest casualty station. There they did their best for his arm and arranged for him to be ambulanced with some of their own wounded to a clearing centre, from where he would land up in a base hospital to receive more skilled treatment. But he elected, because of opportunity, to take a different course. He sat waiting, a blanket over his shoulders, his arm giving him the devil, Sophie at the back of his wandering thoughts as she so often was. There were comings and goings, the orderlies busy as the November afternoon turned quickly into dark, damp evening. They stopped looking at him and he felt himself becoming as unobtrusive as the anonymous wounded waiting for the ambulance to arrive. He got up and walked about. No one said watch that man, he’s a prisoner. He moved out of the place in an idle, casual way. He took from a hook a German cap and greatcoat belonging to one of the orderlies and a few minutes later walked off wearing them. In the darkness no one challenged him, but he heard some German ambulances converging on the casualty station from the north. He knew he could not get back to the British lines without negotiating the massed German trench system, so he headed in the direction of the oncoming ambulances. They lurchingly passed him. He kept on and not long after found a churned-up road leading west. He took it.

  A French family found him the next morning, sitting on the edge of a muddy ditch behind their house on the edge of a vill
age. He had walked through the night and was now waiting for a miracle to happen or for modest manna to drop from the grey skies, or at least for someone who might know how to ease a burned arm that felt fiery. The French family took him across some fields to a farm. The farmer hid him for a day and a night, and then someone came and took him away in a deep vegetable cart. Close to the Belgian border he was handed over to people who specialized in helping escaped Allied prisoners. They took him across the border into Belgium, going north of Westroosebeke in Flanders and then heading south-west towards the coast. His arm made him grit his teeth and at the end of several days of endurance and close calls his Belgian friends managed to bring a doctor to him. The lifting of the original dressing was a fearsome work of medical art and the doctor, almost reluctantly applying a new, treated dressing, advised him to give himself up and allow the Germans to hospitalize him. If not, he was to be got back to the British immediately.

  A young Belgian offered to get him through to the coast north of Nieuwpoort. Here, by manipulation of Nieuwpoort’s drainage locks, the area had been flooded in 1914 to halt Germany’s advance. If they could reach this area at a point a mile inland, a specific point, a boat could be used to get him across the flooded canal region to the British side. It was a dangerous manoeuvre, one the Belgians would not normally undertake except when it had been carefully plotted and planned, as it had been several times. It was an impromptu operation this time, but the damp misty weather helped and so did the young Belgian Pimpernel’s knowledge of the route and its hazards. They moved through the night, through the German lines two hours before dawn, launched the hidden boat while it was still dark and were on the grey, swirling waters as dawn mistily broke. Germans manning lookout posts spotted them then and for a minute or so, as the young Belgian pulled hard on the oars, bullets peppered the water uncomfortably close behind them. They reached the British lines in the first real light of day.

  He had a brief stay in a base hospital and was then dispatched to England, into the care of specialists at the military hospital of Hattersleigh Hall. They informed him that from his own point of view he’d have been wiser to accept German hospitalization. His arm was a mess.