Suddenly I realized Millie was gazing at me.
“How old are you really?” she said.
“I told you.”
She looked at me, dropped her head to one side.
“How old are you?” she said, gently.
“Seventeen.”
“And you’re not a nurse, are you? Not really.”
For a second I tried to act offended, surprised, but there was no point. She knew.
“No,” I said. “Not really.”
“Who are you, Miriam?” she asked, “What are you doing here?”
“My name’s Alexandra,” I said, slowly. “I’ve come—”
“No!” she said, suddenly. “I don’t want to know.”
I must have looked hurt, because she softened then.
“I mean, it’s probably better if I don’t. I can guess anyway. You’ve come here to look for your sweetheart, you want to get married before he . . . before . . . well, something like that.”
“Yes,” I said. “Something like that.”
Neither of us spoke then. A minute passed.
I looked at Millie and smiled.
“How did you know?”
“Just a feeling. You’re too young, though I don’t think anyone’s too worried about that. And your nursing. Have you had any training at all?”
I shook my head. “I was a VAD for a while. I’ve spent some time in hospitals. My father—”
She held up her hand again.
“Don’t tell me,” she said, but she was smiling. “In that case, you’re doing really well, but to a trained eye it’s obvious once you stop to look.”
There was no point denying it, but her words cut me. I thought I’d been doing well, but if it was that obvious I was an impostor, my chance of saving Tom could be snatched away at any time.
“I’ll help you, if I can,” Millie said.
She put her hand on my shoulder, and without thinking I turned into her arms. I cried, quietly. Then I pulled away.
“I’m ruining your uniform,” I said, and we laughed, though it was a short, bitter laugh. Her uniform was already a mess from the day’s work, the gray flannel stained with red blood, bright and fresh.
“Millie,” I said, “you won’t say anything . . . ?”
“No,” she said. “I won’t. Miriam. I believe you’re here for a good reason, and anyway, you’re helping the wounded. Don’t be too hard on yourself, you’re doing a good job. But I’ve noticed, and it’s only a matter of time before someone else does. I have to tell you, I think McAndrew’s got her eye on you. Be careful.”
I nodded, and tried to smile, but I couldn’t. I physically couldn’t.
“We’d better get back to work,” she said.
We turned to walk back to the hustle and bustle of the rest station.
A train was rolling in.
37
Seven ravens fly about my head.
Whirling, whirling, their gun black feathers beat the air, making a drumming in my ears that doesn’t stop, but is transformed into the sound of cannon fire.
Their beating becomes more frantic, until, as I gaze upward, a single black feather falls down to me, spinning like a sycamore seed on its way to earth.
The feather falls straight toward my face, and I try to lift my hand to catch it, but my arms will not move from my sides. The feather strikes me and brushes gently across my eyes.
Everything goes black.
I am sitting down. I can move my hands now and I feel a desk in front of me, like a school desk, but I am drowned in blackness.
From somewhere in the darkness, someone is suddenly shouting at me. It’s hard to recognize the voice because the words are Greek. I think it must be Miss Garrett, but then I realize who it is.
It’s me.
The other me wails the words, as if she is a demon, shrieking each line with barely a breath between.
She screams the last word at me.
The Iliad, I think. That was from The Iliad.
“Iliad,” I say.
Yes, I know that answer. Please don’t ask me another.
But she is shouting and screaming at me again.
“Who wrote it?”
“Homer.”
Don’t ask me another.
“Why is it dark?”
“Because of the war,” I splutter out, hurriedly.
I got that one, but please don’t ask me another. Please. Because I don’t know that I can get another question right.
And then?
And then—
She is screaming at me again.
“Why is there war?”
I have no answer.
“What does it mean?”
I have no answer.
“And the raven?”
“What?” I cry out, tears streaming down my face.
“The raven! What does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” I sob.
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.
There is a flash of light through the darkness, and a moment later a terrible bang, and I burst from my nightmare, sweating, crying, panting.
But alive.
36
Hoodoo Jack.
I don’t know what I was expecting, what I was hoping for, but it wasn’t this.
I asked around, as innocently as I could, though to be honest no one suspected my interest in Jack was anything other than food for gossip.
He had turned down a commission as an officer, but had become a corporal. Something happened to him and he ended up as a dispatch rider. Dispatch riders get away with a certain degree of freedom, even though they have messages to ferry around. Maybe that suits him better, being on his own much of the time. I understand that.
Every evening, I’ve lingered after my shift, hoping he would come by again. This evening, as I was leaving, barely able to keep my eyes open, I saw him walking down the platform, straight toward me.
I stopped in my tracks, and stared at him until he was close enough to touch. Then I realized I was being rude and looked away, embarrassed. He must have seen me, but he took no notice and walked past.
I turned.
“Jack?” I called, quietly. “Excuse me.”
He didn’t even turn his head, but walked on into the rest station.
I felt a fool, and then I felt angry, and then I decided not to let the chance go.
I waited for him to come back, and I didn’t have to wait long.
I went straight up to him.
“You’re Jack, aren’t you,” I said, firmly.
He still ignored me and kept walking. I ran after him.
“Hoodoo Jack,” I said.
He whirled round, and for a moment I thought he was going to hit me. He didn’t have to; his eyes did enough damage.
I don’t know what I’d been expecting. He isn’t middle-aged yet, but he isn’t as young as lots of the men I’ve seen here. There’s something about him that doesn’t fit. Something that says leave me alone. And whoever’s in charge of him hasn’t pulled him up on his stubbly chin, or filthy boots. His face is round, his eyebrows are thick, and his skin is dirty.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just—”
“Don’t call me that,” he snapped.
“I’m sorry,” I said, again.
He didn’t reply, but brushed past me.
I followed.
“I’m sorry,” I said, yet again. “I just want to talk to you.”
“Very funny,” he said, not slackening his pace.
I scampered along beside him. We’d reached the end of the station. I guessed he was heading for the gate, where I could see a motorcycle leaning against the railings.
“Wait,” I said. “I want to talk to you. Really.”
“That’s what they all say,” he spat out. “Then, when I’ve told them a few stories, they have a good laugh.”
“No, I—”
“You’re all the same. Stupid, ignorant little bitch of a nurse.”
“No!�
�� I shouted.
He stopped, and for the first time, looked at me.
“I’m not a little . . . bitch,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”
He was a few strides from his motorbike.
“Wait! Please!” I was getting desperate.
He reached the motorcycle and swung his leg over it.
“I see things!” I shouted, not caring if anyone else heard.
He hesitated, briefly, looking at me for a second time.
“Please believe me,” I cried. “I see things. I need to—”
But my voice was drowned by the roar from his engine as he spun it to life. He twisted his wrist and whirled away from me, dragging the back wheel around in the dust, and then speeding from the station.
“Please,” I said, though by then he was long gone.
35
It’s Thursday evening. It’s been raining all day, and I am exhausted. The business with Hoodoo Jack was the final straw. I know he’ll be back soon, he’s an RAMC rider and is around Boulogne all the time, going from hospital to hospital. I’ll try to speak to him again. He can only tell me to go away.
Millie’s sneaked off into town with a couple of other nurses, though if they’re caught they’ll be sent home.
I don’t want to take the risk. Millie didn’t protest when I said I didn’t want to come. She could see I’m dead beat.
“Get some sleep,” she said. “You need it.”
Then she gave me a kiss on the forehead, as though I was her little sister, and left.
I’m lying on my bunk in our billets in Wimereux, but I don’t want to sleep. Sleep only brings dreams.
I think about the day.
The men. The pathetic men.
There is nothing noble in a suppurating, festering wound, and I wish Father were here to see that.
Then there are the cases of hand and foot wounds. They say lots of these cases are probably self-inflicted. Sometimes soldiers shoot themselves in the foot during a raid, hoping it will give them a nice safe ride back home. Some of the nurses treat any men with these injuries contemptuously. But no one knows how they came by their wound; whether they’re lying or not.
In the stationary hospitals they say men put dirty coins into their wounds to stop them from healing, so they won’t have to go back to the fight. I don’t know if that’s true.
Today I treated a man who had two fingers missing from his left hand. I don’t know what happened to him; I saw nothing. But if things were so bad he was prepared to shoot a couple of fingers off to get out of it all, then I can only feel pity for him, and shame. The shame of it all.
As the men arrive from the front, we have to sort the wounded and to try to keep them from dying before they get their treatment. We are so overstretched here that there are not enough doctors to go around. Things were so bad at one point that Millie and I were sorting the dying from the nearly dead. Those who had a chance from those who had none. Life was leaking away from many of them, I could feel that, but we had no way of knowing which man needed treatment immediately, which could wait. We had to decide for ourselves, there was no one to tell us.
Sometimes I got a vision from the man I was treating, and that made me wonder if there was any point in helping them at all. What is the point in saving someone now, for them to be killed in a month’s time? But then I realized. If I decide to pass by a man because I know he’s going to die soon anyway, what does that say about what I’m trying to do for Tom?
We are playing God, but we are weaker gods. Imperfect, unknowing gods. Gods that get things wrong.
But at the time we thought nothing of the sort. We did our best, I suppose, judging from their coldness which soldier was too far gone and which might have a chance.
Day after day we cut off bandages to reveal stinking wounds that have rearranged the whole idea of a man’s body. A picture comes to me as I lie here in bed.
I see myself gazing mesmerized at the chaos, the men on stretchers on the floor, the heaps of discarded boots and mud-caked clothing, the cheap blankets, the smashed bodies and filthy bloodstained bandages. An unbearable stench rises from the appalling horror that waits underneath the cotton wool, and at one point the only equipment that I had for dealing with it was a pair of forceps standing in a glass jar half full of meths.
I’m just a girl in a nurse’s uniform, but that doesn’t mean I know how to save these men, and they—they are men in uniforms, but that doesn’t mean they know how to die.
34
Time is running out.
That’s true for me, it’s true for so many out here. I hope it will not be for Tom, but I don’t feel like praying. Although I wouldn’t say it aloud, I don’t think God is listening anymore.
My time is running out. My money is running out.
The V in VAD stands for voluntary, with good reason. We don’t get paid. That’s why VAD nurses are from wealthy backgrounds, or have private means of some sort.
I looked at how little money I have. Fortunately I don’t need much here, but McAndrew made me buy an outdoor uniform. Of course we are fed, we have our uniforms and a roof over our heads, but that’s it. If I leave here to find Tom, I’ll have very little to live on.
Nor do I really have a plan for finding him. I’ve been here nearly two weeks, and haven’t found a single soldier from his regiment. That was as far as my plan went.
And Sister McAndrew is on to me.
Thank heaven for Millie.
I don’t know how she does it. She has boundless energy. I heard her come in late last night from the trip to town. She told me this morning that they found a café where there was music playing, and dancing. There were some Tommies there, who asked her to dance, but she refused. Instead, she danced with the young French waitress, and they laughed and laughed until her father, who owns the café, told the girl to start waiting on the tables again.
Despite that, she was up for duty on time, whereas I could hardly drag my aching limbs from bed after another night of wretched dreaming. And she was ready for McAndrew.
We were seeing to another batch of men.
Sister McAndrew was with Millie, me, and a couple of other VADs.
She took one look at the men, and then barked at me.
“Nurse! Nurse Hibbert. Fetch the Harrison’s.”
I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
She rounded on me.
“Did you hear me, nurse? The Harrison’s pomade. Now.”
I dithered.
“You do know what it’s for?” she asked, her voice slowing. I could sense her suspicion.
Millie cut in, saving me. She was playing innocent, I could see.
“It’s for the lice,” she said. “Isn’t it? Sister?”
McAndrew glared at her, then at me. Before she could open her mouth I decided to speak.
“I just don’t know where we keep it,” I said.
“I do,” said Millie. “I’ll go.”
Millie, bless her, left for the store cupboard.
McAndrew gave me another hostile glare.
“Where did you do your training?” she asked.
“I . . . the Dyke Road in Brighton,” I said. I had to go along with what I knew about Miriam Hibbert. I had no choice.
“For how long?”
I saw my chance.
“I had the three months minimum,” I said.
“It shows,” McAndrew said, eager to take the easy jibe that I had offered her.
“I just wanted to come and help,” I said, trying to sound as pathetic as possible. It wasn’t hard.
And then Millie was back with us, and started chatting to McAndrew about her days in London as if they were old acquaintances.
She saved me.
This time.
33
After my narrow escape with Sister McAndrew, I saw Hoodoo Jack passing the window of the dressing suite. I looked at Millie.
“Cover for me? Please?”
I begged her with my eyes not to
question me.
“Don’t be long!” she called, but I hardly heard her.
Jack slipped into a room farther down the platform, and I followed him.
He was on his own, waiting to deliver a packet. He turned as I came in.
“You,” he said, without obvious meaning.
“You remember me?” I asked.
He grunted. “I’m mad, not stupid.”
There was silence.
Then I broke it.
“I see things, too,” I said. “I see when men are going to die.”
He looked at me with such disgust and hatred that I felt I might wither on the spot.
The door flew open.
It was a captain; beyond him I saw other officers sitting around a desk.
The captain glanced at me, but didn’t bother to ask why there was a nurse in his quarters. The place is a hospital of sorts, after all.
“That all?” he said to Hoodoo Jack.
“Sir.” He nodded, and handed over the packet.
The captain tried to take it from Jack, but he wouldn’t let go. His fingers had frozen around it. I saw Jack staring at the captain for a second, maybe two, no more.
“What are you doing, man?” snapped the captain, and Jack shook himself.
He muttered something under his breath, then, pulling himself together, saluted messily, turned, and left the room.
Without knowing what I was doing, I grabbed the captain by the arm.
“What on—?”
It was enough. I let my fingers slip from his tunic.
“Thank you,” I said, quietly, for I had seen all I needed.
I ran after Jack. I don’t want to think of him as Hoodoo Jack, though. Not now.
I caught up with him.
“You saw that?” I said.
The Foreshadowing Page 11
