Maisie Dobbs

by Jacqueline Winspear

  Maisie opened her eyes and moved quickly to allow a hospital porter through carrying two large boxes.

  “Can I ’elp you, Miss? Look a bit lost to me.”

  “Yes. Where do I enlist for nursing service?”

  “You bloomin’ angel, you. You’ll be just the medicine some of these poor lads need, and that’s a fact!”

  Positioning his left foot awkwardly against the inside of his opposite shin, the porter held the boxes steady on his knee with one hand, pushed back his flat cap, and used his free hand to direct Maisie.

  “You go through that door there, turn left down the long green-tiled corridor, turn right at the end to the stairs. Up the stairs, to the right, and you’ll see the enlisting office. And don’t mind them in there, love—they pay them extra to wear a face as long as a week, as if a smile would crack ’em open!”

  Maisie thanked the man, who doffed his cap quickly before grabbing the boxes, which were about to fall to the ground, and then went on his way.

  The long corridor was busy with people lost in the huge building, and others pointing fingers and waving arms to show them the way to reach a certain ward. Taking her identification papers and letters of recommendation out of her bag, Maisie walked quickly up the disinfectant-cleaned tile staircase and across the landing to the enlisting office for nurses. The woman who took Maisie’s papers glanced at her over her wire-rimmed spectacles.

  “Age?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  She looked up at Maisie again, and peered over the top of her spectacles.

  “Young-looking twenty-two, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, that’s what they said when I went to university.”

  “Well, if you’re old enough for university, you’re old enough for this. And doing more good while you’re about it.”

  The woman leafed through the papers again, looking quickly at the letter with the Compton crest that attested to Maisie’s competence and age. There would be no questions regarding the authenticity of documents that bore not only an impressive livery but the name of a well-known figure at the War Office, a man quoted in newspapers from the Daily Sketch to The Times, commenting on dispatches from France.

  Maisie had taken the sheets of fine linen paper from the bureau in the library at Chelstone, and written what was needed. Emboldened by Enid’s challenge, she had felt only the shallowest wave of guilt. She was going to do her part for the boys, for those who had given of themselves on the fields of France.

  “You’ve done what? Are you mad, Maisie? What about your university learning? After all that work, all that . . . .”

  Frankie turned his back on Maisie and shook his head. He was silent, staring out of the scullery window of the groom’s cottage, out toward the paddocks where three very healthy horses were grazing. Maisie knew better than to interrupt until he had finished.

  “After all that fuss and bother . . . .”

  “It’s only a postponement, Dad. I can go back. I will go back. As soon as the war is over.”

  Frankie swung around, tears of fear and frustration welling in his eyes.

  “That’s all very well, but what if you get sent over there? To France. Blimey, if you wanted to do something useful, my girl, I’m sure ’is Lordship could’ve got a job for a bright one like you. I’ve a mind to go up to that hospital and shop you for your tales—you must’ve said you were older than you are. I tell you, I never thought I’d see the day when my daughter told a lie.”

  “Dad, please understand—”

  “Oh, I understand all right. Just like your mother, and I’ve lost her. I can’t lose you, Maisie.”

  Maisie walked over to her father and put her hand on his shoulder.“ You won’t lose me Dad. You watch. You’ll be proud of me.”

  Frankie Dobbs dropped his head and leaned into his daughter’s embrace.“I’ve always been proud of you, Maisie. That’s not the point.”

  As a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment, Maisie’s duties seemed to consist of daily round of mopping floors, lining up beds so that not one was out of place, and being at the beck and call of the senior nurses. She had obtained a deferment from Girton, and no sooner had the letter been posted, along with another to Priscilla, than Maisie put her dream behind her and with the same resolve that had taken her to university, she vowed to bring comfort to the men coming home from France.

  Maisie became a VAD nurse at the London Hospital in May, amid the never-ending influx of casualties from the spring offensive of 1915. It was a hot summer, and one in which Maisie saw little rest and spent only a few hours at her lodgings in Whitechapel.

  Sweeping a stray tendril of hair under her white cap, Maisie immersed her hands into a sinkful of scalding hot water, and scrubbed at an assortment of glass bottles, bowls, and measuring jugs with a bristle brush. It was not the first time in her life that her hands were raw or her legs and back ached. But it could be worse, she thought, as she drained the suds and began to rinse the glassware. For a moment she allowed her hands to remain in the water as it began to cool, and looked straight ahead through the window to the dusk-dusted rooftops beyond.

  “Dobbs, I don’t think you’ve got all day to rinse a few bottles, not when there are a dozen other jobs for you to do before you go off duty.”

  Maisie jumped as her name was spoken, quickly rushing to apologize for her tardiness.

  “Don’t waste time, Dobbs. Finish this job quickly. Sister wants to see you now.”

  The nurse who spoke to her was one of the regulars, not a volunteer, and Maisie immediately reverted to the bobbed curtsy of her days in service. The seniority of the regular nurses demanded respect, immediate attention, and complete deference.

  Maisie finished her task, made sure that not a bottle or cloth was out of place, then went quickly to see Sister, checking her hair, cap, and apron as she trotted along the green-and-cream-tiled corridor.

  “Nurses never run, Dobbs. They walk briskly.”

  Maisie stopped, bit her bottom lip, and turned around, hands by her sides and balled into fists. Sister, the most senior nurse on the ward. And the most feared, even by the men who joked that she should be sent out to France—that would send the Hun running.

  “I’m sorry, Sister.”

  “My office, Dobbs.”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  Sister led the way into her office, with its green-tiled walls, dark wood floor, and equally dark wooden furniture, and walked around to the opposite side of her desk, sweeping her long blue dress and bright white apron aside to avoid their catching on the corner. A silver buckle shone at the front of her apron, and her scarflike cap was starched. Not a hair was out of place.

  “I’ll get quickly to the point. As you know we are losing many of our staff to join detachments in France. We therefore need to move our nurses and volunteers up through the ranks—and of course we need to keep many of our regular nurses here to keep up standards and direct care of the wounded. Your promotion today to Special Military Probationer means more responsibility in the ward, Dobbs. Along with Rigson, Dornhill, and White, you must be prepared to serve in military hospitals overseas if needed. That will be in one year, at the end of your training. Let me see . . .”

  The austere woman shuffled papers in a file on the desk in front of her.

  “Yes, you’ll be twenty-three at the end of the year, according to your records. Eligible for duty abroad. Good.”

  Sister looked up at Maisie again, then checked the time on the small watch pinned to her apron.“I have already spoken to the other VADs in question during their duty earlier today. Now then, from tomorrow you will join doctors’ rounds each day to observe and assist, in addition to your other duties. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  “Then you are dismissed, Dobbs.”

  Maisie left the office and walked slowly toward the kitchen.

  Yes, sooner than she had thought, she would be in France. Possibly this time next year. How she longed to see Maurice, how sh
e ached to speak with him. For here was time again, the trickster, changing the circumstances of her life in an instant. Yet she knew that Maurice would ask her if she was not herself the trickster. She had lied about her age unashamedly to do this work, and now she was burdened by doubt. Could she do what was required of her? Could she live up to Enid’s memory?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Maisie pulled herself away from the side rail of the ship. She had never dreamed that seasickness could be this bad. A salty wind blew around her head and nipped at her ears as she struggled to keep the heavy woolen cape drawn across her aching body. Nothing in the world could top this. Nothing could be this unbearable.

  “Here, miss, old merchant navy trick for the indisposition . . .”

  She looked sideways from the place she had claimed, holding on to a handrail that led to a cabin door, then rushed to the side of the boat again. She felt a strong hand between her shoulder blades and pushed against the guard rail bring herself to a standing position. A member of the crew, sensibly wearing foul-weather clothing, with his cap miraculously still on his head, held out a tin mug of hot cocoa and a lump of Madeira cake. Maisie put her hand to her mouth in terror.

  “What you do is, when you think you’re going to lose your insides again, you take a bite o’ this and a quick swig of cocoa. And you do it every time you feel queasy. Then it’ll go away; you’ll see.”

  Maisie looked at the man, shook her head, and leaned over the side rail. Exhausted to the core, she stood up again and held out her hands for the cake and cocoa. It had to be worth a go.

  Iris Rigson, Dottie Dornhill, Bess White, and Maisie Dobbs had set sail with a small contingent of nurses on July 20, 1916, bound for service in France. Iris, Dottie, and Bess had not suffered unduly on the requisitioned freighter, now in the service of king and country, ferrying supplies—and in this case nurses, too—between England and France. But Maisie Dobbs, granddaughter of a lighterman on the Thames, was embarrassingly seasick. Whatever the battlefield had to offer, it could not possibly make her feel worse than this, though she had in her pocket a letter from Priscilla, who had been sent to France in January with the first FANY convoy. The censors might be able to take out words, but they could not delete the emotion poured from inkwell to paper. Priscilla was exhausted, if not in body then in mind. Her words seemed to bite through the edges of Maisie’s thoughts and expectations. For just a moment, as she fingered the letter in her pocket, she felt as if she were a ghostly presence watching over Priscilla as she worked. Priscilla had written:

  My back is killing me, Maisie. Florrie the Lorry did not want to go to work this morning, so I did double duty with the starting handle. I had only two hours rest last night, after a twenty-hour shift. Maisie, I can only barely remember the last time I slept for more than just a few hours. My clothes are becoming one with my body, and I dread to imagine how I must reek! Mind you, one simply cannot go on about one’s aching back and stinging eyes when faced with the good humor of these boys, even as they are suffering the pain of torn limbs and the terror of seeing comrades die. Despite rain that seems to come down in buckets here, there are some days that suddenly get very hot and humid indeed, especially if you are lugging around the added weight of a heavy uniform glued to your body. Many of the boys have taken a knife to their woolen trousers to get some relief from the chafing of army issue cloth. I suppose it’s less for the doctors to cut away, but loaded on to Florrie they look like schoolboys who’ve taken a wrong turning into hell. I had a boy die on me yesterday. Maisie, his eyes were as deep a blue as that dress you wore to Simon’s party, and he could not have been more than seventeen. Poor lad hadn’t even begun to shave, just a bit of fluff on his chin. I wanted to just sit there and weep. But you know, you just have to go on. If I stood around in mourning for them, another poor boy would die for want of an ambulance. I don’t know what the papers are saying, but here’s

  Priscilla’s letter was abruptly halted by heavy black ink of the censor’s pen.

  “Here she is. Maisie o’ the high seas!” Iris announced as Maisie returned to the cabin.

  “Blimey, Maisie, how’re you now, then?” Dottie came over to Maisie and put an arm around her shoulder. “Come and sit down. We’ll soon be there. Le Havre can’t be much longer—can it?” She looked at the other nurses, their heavy capes drawn around them, and settled Maisie into a seat.“You poor little mite, Dobbs. There’s nothing of you to start with. Never you mind, we’ll soon be in Le Havre. Get us a nice cuppa. That’s if the French can make tea.”

  Iris felt Maisie’s forehead and looked at her watch.“You do seem a bit better, though.”

  Maisie looked at the other girls and leaned against Iris.“Cocoa and cake,” she muttered, and promptly fell into a deep sleep.

  From Le Havre the train journey to Rouen passed uneventfully. The young women were tired from the journey but managed to keep awake long enough to watch their first few minutes of foreign soil speed past. Arriving at the port of Rouen, the nurses were met by a medical officer, and taken to the Hotel St. Georges, where they expected to stay for two nights while they waited for orders.

  “Let’s get ourselves a nice wash and have a cup of tea downstairs,” suggested Iris as they settled into the room all four women were to share.

  Iris was a tall, big-boned girl, whose uniform always looked rather too small for her. She considered this a blessing. The unfashionably long and impractical woolen dress of the uniform was shorter on her than on the other nurses. Not only could she move with greater ease, but soon she would avoid having her hemline drag in the never-ending mud, the bane of a nurse’s life in France.

  “How are you feeling, Dobbs?” asked the soft-spoken Bess, maintaining the discipline of hospital address.

  “Much better, thank you. And a cup of tea would be just lovely.”

  The women each unpacked their few belongings, washed faces and hands at the large white enameled stone sink, and brushed hair back into place. As usual Maisie struggled to fasten the stray tendrils of jet black hair that crept out from under her hat. When they left the room, the women looked almost as fresh as they had in the early hours of the morning, when they had joined their train at Charing Cross for the journey to Folkestone, their port of departure for France.

  “Look at those cakes. My word, never seen a pastry like that before; it’s a wonder they can do that in wartime,” said Dottie.

  “No, and you’ve never tasted a cup of tea like this before either.”

  Iris winced at the weak tea and reached out to take one of the delicate pastries from the china plate placed in the center of the table.

  Maisie was quiet, looking around her at the rather aged grandeur of the dining room at the Hotel St. Georges. Large mirrors were positioned on each wall, and ornate archways led into the lounge on one side and the marble-floored lobby on the other. Waiters ran back and forth, elegant in black trousers that shone with too much pressing, white shirts, black ties, and long white aprons. They were all older men, for the younger men had gone to war.

  The clientele was mainly military personnel, and the hotel was packed with officers going on leave or passing through on their way back to join their regiments. Some were with sweethearts or wives, still others with parents, the fortunate ones whose people could make a journey across the Channel to bid them farewell in France.

  Maisie sipped her tea, feeling the warmth, if not the flavor, reach the core of her tired body. She was aware of the conversation at their table, a familiar to-ing and fro-ing of observations and opinions, a giggle here, a raised voice there. But for the most part, as the journey to France ebbed away behind her, Maisie was lost in her own thoughts.

  “Excuse me, it’s Miss Dobbs, isn’t it?”

  Maisie was jolted from her daydream back into the dining room. She jumped up and turned to face the person who had spoken to her.

  “Oh my goodness!” said Maisie, spilling tea onto the white cloth.

  Captain Simon Lynch quickly took
her elbow to steady Maisie, and greeted her with a broad smile, which he then extended to her table companions, who had immediately stopped all conversation, indeed all movement, to look at the man who had come to the table to see Maisie.

  “Captain Lynch. Well, what a surprise this is!”

  Maisie regained her composure and took Simon’s offered hand. A waiter quickly and efficiently replaced the tablecloth and offered to bring a chair for Simon, who declined, commenting to her companions that he had just been leaving when he had seen his friend, Miss Dobbs.

  Simon turned again to Maisie, and as he did so she noticed that he seemed older. Not just in years, for it was just over a year since they had first met. No, he was older in his soul. His eyes were ringed with gray skin, lines had formed on his fresh young man’s face, and already gray hair was showing at his temples. Yet he could be no more than twenty-six.

  “Just here for two days’ leave. Not enough time for Blighty, I’m afraid. I’d heard from Pris that you’d joined up.”

  “How is she? Have you seen her?”

  “Our paths crossed only once. She brought wounded men to my hospital, but, well, we didn’t have time to stand and chat.” Simon looked at his hands, then back at Maisie.“So, do you know where you are going yet?”

  “No, we get our orders tomorrow morning, perhaps even this evening. Seems a bit chaotic, really.”

  Simon laughed.

  “Chaotic? You haven’t seen chaotic until you’ve been out there.”

  “I’m sorry.” Maisie rubbed her hands together. “What I meant was—”

  “No, I’m sorry. That was horrible of me. And, yes, it is chaotic. The right arm of the British army hardly seems to know what the left arm’s doing. Look, I have to dash off now, but, I wonder, is there any chance that you could have dinner with me tomorrow evening? Or do you have to be chaperoned?”