Angel’s mouth was as dry as dust, her stomach a hollow emptiness as she was given her instructions. So far she had no real knowledge of the Front. Only what she had heard from the men and boys reliving their own nightmares, and she and Margot had both thanked God that their hospital wasn’t in sight of the Front Line fighting. And now she had to drive right into it.
‘Oh God, Angel, don’t go!’ Margot said in a fright when she heard. She gripped Angel’s arms, her once-elegant fingernails chipped and digging into Angel’s flesh. ‘Say you’ve got the runs, say anything, but for God’s sake, don’t go! You’ll be killed –’
Angel slapped her hard, thankful they were in their own room where no one else could hear. Lately Margot had been going rapidly downhill, succumbing to the trench nerve that affected men and nurses alike. Strong-willed or weak, trench nerve took no account of personality. When it struck, it reduced a person to a shivering wreck, until they could finally shake it off. But strangely, Margot’s snivelling strengthened Angel’s own reserves.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Angel snapped. ‘Of course I shall go. I didn’t come to France to whimper like a baby. And of course I shan’t be killed. I have to bring the wounded back here, so a fat lot of good I shall be, stopping a Jerry’s bullet. Besides – I’ve promised myself that I shall survive – at least until I know for certain what’s happened to Jacques. No bloody Kaiser’s going to wipe the two of us off the earth without giving us the chance to find each other again.’
Margot hugged her without speaking, her tears damp against Angel’s face, her voice husky with emotion.
‘You’re so damn brave, Angel. You look as though a strong wind would blow you away, but although you may bend a little, you’ll never break. I envy you so much. And I’ll pray for you, every minute until you get back.’
‘All right. But save most of your prayers for the poor devils I’ll be carting back here. It won’t be much fun for them to have me jolting them about.’
She tried to make light of it, because she wasn’t feeling brave at all. She was more scared than she had ever been in her life before, but so was everyone. It didn’t need putting into words. She got ready as calmly as possible, reporting to the ambulance shed at dusk and being allocated her vehicle. From then on, it was a case of following the one in front, a long snaking convoy of rescue trucks winding through the French countryside, the only lifeline for an army of wounded soldiers…
Afterwards, Angel could only think of that night in a series of vivid, nightmarish impressions, like some garish modernist painting. Brilliant orange glows in the blue-black night that burned the eyes; explosions that rocked the eardrums with a pain more intense than anything she had known; gunfire, incessant and deafening; screams and shouting, hoarse and desperate; no longer merely classed ‘the wounded’, but young men, mere boys, crying for their mothers, entreating God to let them die.
She lost count of the number of times she drove the ambulance to and from the Front Line. Stretchers were bundled into the rear and she was given the shout to go. She tried not to listen to the moaning, tried to block out every sound but the drone of the engine, praying that it wouldn’t let her down, that there wouldn’t be a puncture, or some other horror to stop her being relieved of each new cargo…
‘Angel. Is that you, Angel?’
She heard the croaking voice as if from another world. It reminded her instantly of poor Hobbs, returning to Temple Meads station, coming home to die. But this wasn’t their chauffeur. She leaned over the stretcher case being put none too gently into her ambulance, his legs and feet wrapped in some evil-smelling bandages, his anguished mouth coughing blood, still more seeping from a gaping wound in his chest.
‘My God!’
She couldn’t say the words out loud. It was as though they were snatched from her throat as she recognised the cheery young face. It wasn’t cheery now as she had last seen it. It was drawn with agony, old before its time, the smell of death emanating from it. She caught at his hand, still so young, with all of life ahead … tears almost blinded her for a moment.
‘Edward! Oh, God, Edward!’ She was a shivering mass of nerves as she recognised Margot’s young brother. He was here, at the Somme, and being sent to Piersville hospital to die. She knew it as surely as she breathed. She looked up desperately as the orderly told her curtly to make room for a few more, and was forced to move out of Edward’s hearing.
‘I know that one,’she stuttered. ‘He’s my friend’s brother. What are his chances?’
The orderly looked briefly sympathetic.
‘I’m no doctor, Miss, but I know the smell of death when I sniff it. He’ll be a gonner before the night’s out if I’m any judge. Best get on the road quickly if you don’t want a stiff on your hands.’
He spoke as he did, knowing there was no point in dressing up what was so obvious to them both. In an odd way, the clumsy words helped stem the appalling reality of what was happening. She climbed past the other casualties to cling to Edward’s hand a moment longer before driving back to Piersville.
‘Just hold on tight, Eddie. Margot’s working with me at the hospital, and she’ll be so thrilled to see you.’
‘Margot? Didn’t think she’d know how to tie a bandage!’ He tried to be pleased, but the pain made the smile a grimace, and Angel knew there was no time to spare. She started the engine, spun the wheels in a fury at the bloody outrage of war, the sheer waste of so many young lives, and drove as if possessed on the road back to Piersville hospital.
Other hands took over as soon as she arrived. It was her last run of the night. She was near to dropping with sleep, but there was no way she could sleep. She wanted to prepare Margot…
The moment Margot heard the news, she rushed past Angel and into the ward where Doctor Lancing was bending over Edward Lacey’s bedside. The girls heard him speak sharply to a nurse to give him some morphine, and then he moved on to the next patient. As Margot knelt down beside her brother, tears blinding her eyes, Angel caught at the doctor’s arm.
‘Can anything be done for him, Doctor?’ she stuttered. ‘He’s her brother –’
‘They’re all somebody’s brother, Miss,’ the doctor said tersely. ‘The boy’s got trench foot. His feet are rotting. There’d be no point taking them off, gangrene would have galloped up his legs before I began. Besides, the hole in his chest is going to kill him in a matter of minutes or hours. His lungs are full of blood. He’s breathing it. We don’t have the staff or the ether or the time. I’m sorry.’
He moved along the line of beds, while Angel stared after him, tears stinging her own eyes. Damn him! He didn’t mean to be callous, just practical. What was the use in trying to keep one boy alive for a few hours longer, when there were others more likely to live, who needed all his skill and attention? She turned back to Margot and Edward, fighting back the emotion.
‘We’ll soon have you well, Eddie. Just be brave, old thing,’ Margot was saying shakily. ‘The nurse will give you something for the pain –’
A swish of starched skirts, and a nurse leaned over with a hypodermic, injecting the precious morphine into Edward’s vein.
‘That hurt more than the bloody bullet,’ the boy muttered, a shine of tears on his lashes as she moved away.
‘Language, Eddie!’ Margot reproved him, in the same way her mother and Angel’s mother used to speak, a lifetime ago.
Edward began a paroxysm of coughing, and when it was over, he lay back, his face ashen and waxy.
‘Do – something for me – old girl,’ his breathing was harsh and laboured, the words a mere whisper.
‘Of course.’ Margot leaned forward to catch them.
‘My train set – for Stinky Hughes – always wanted it – see to it, Margot –’
‘You’ll see to it yourself, you ninny –’
‘Promise me –’
Angel pressed Margot’s arm. Humour him, for God’s sake, she entreated her silently. Margot nodded, her throat nearly too full to speak.
‘I promise, Eddie, darling. Get some sleep now.’
His eyes closed obediently, and she kissed the cold cheek and smoothed back the unruly dark hair from his forehead. She gave a sudden gasp, and Angel reached for the boy’s hand, feeling frantically for a pulse in his wrist. There was nothing.
Margot’s nerve went completely after Edward’s death. She spent the rest of the night weeping torrential tears, unable to be comforted, blaspheming at war, at God, at creation. Angel was so afraid for her, but in the morning, after neither of them had got more than the occasional cat nap, Margot emerged, strangely calm, insisting that she see Sister Yard at once.
‘I want to take my brother home for burial,’ she said imperiously. ‘There’s no question of him being buried in France. The Laceys have a family plot in Norfolk, where generations of Laceys have been buried. My mother would insist on it, and I shall take full responsibility for escorting my brother back to England. Money is not a problem, naturally, for the very best coffin to be found. You’ll see that his body is released as soon as possible, I trust?’
But for the circumstances, Sister Yard would have put this young miss severely in her place. But the other girl, Bannister, had already alerted her of Lacey’s wishes, and was hovering in the corridor outside the cramped office. She was beckoned inside and Sister spoke briskly.
‘Bannister, you will escort Lacey and her brother to England. There will be five other deceased to go, and you’ll leave the ambulance at the depot at Calais. You’ll merely need to sign over the coffins on arrival, making your own arrangements for Private Lacey as you wish. Lacey will take compassionate leave. You will take whatever time is necessary before reporting back here, considering Lacey’s emotional state. I know I can rely on you. You’ll cope, of course.’
Angel gulped. Driving an ambulance, even with badly wounded men was one thing. Nobody liked driving the ‘dead wagon’, but one look at Margot’s agonised face, and she nodded at once. She would cope.
They left in the early afternoon. Coffins were always taken out of the back door of the hospital in consideration of other patients, and loaded into the ‘dead wagon’. Margot sat in the passenger seat, so grim and silent, she might well have been a corpse herself. She refused to speak one word for the entire journey to the ship.
The silence unnerved Angel more than anything. Despite herself, she couldn’t help remembering conversations among the less sensitive V.A.D.s, regarding similar journeys.
‘They douse the stiffs with preservative, o’ course, otherwise they’d stink out the whole ship when they putrify. They have to plug ’em too – every orifice, to put it politely – so that nothing starts to leak out when rigor mortis ends and they go limp again.’
‘Poor devils. Limp when they’re born and limp when they die,’ another one sniggered. ‘I don’t fancy the thought of being plugged, do you, Mabel?’
‘Thank God they are! Imagine what would happen if you were driving the “dead wagon” and you heard an involuntary fart from one of the coffins. It ‘ould scare the living daylights out of you, wouldn’t it?’
‘If it was an arse-tearer, it ’ould blow the plug out anyway!’ The two of them had doubled up with laughter, imagining it, and Angel had felt sick to her stomach, not knowing how they could joke over something that so diminished human dignity. She had been green on the wards then. Now she knew that sometimes you only got through the days and nights by making a joke out of something terrible.
She began to breathe a little easier once they had crossed the English Channel and reached Dover. Army personnel had been there to receive the coffins, and Margot suddenly rallied, found a telephone and ordered a large car to take her and Angel and Edward to Norfolk. The cost never entered her head. Edward was to have the best transport available for his last journey. Margot was acting very strangely in Angel’s opinion, but she was in no mood to listen to suggestions.
Margot’s next phone call was to her mother, where she broke the news about Edward’s death with gentle efficiency. She put her hand over the receiver while she murmured to Angel, ‘Mother’s being very stoical. She has just gone to find a handkerchief, then I must talk to her about arrangements.’
It was all like a bad dream. Margot organising and planning, almost as though she were taking charge of a garden party. Margot suddenly remembering something, and speaking rapidly to her mother, as though someone had wound her up.
‘Oh, and you must get in touch with Stinky Hughes, Mother. Edward was most insistent about that. He’ll want to see Stinky especially. And you’re to wrap his train set in some nice paper, and we’ll have a sort of presentation of it to the boy, once the preliminaries are over. We must feed everyone afterwards, of course. What will you get in? Is there still cold ham and tongue to be found in the shops? Something nice, for Edward. He’ll want everyone to have a good time. You must see the Vicar at once, and the undertaker, and arrange it all for the day after tomorrow, Mother. We shall be there as soon as we can. Oh – and you’d better get someone to dust Edward’s room. It’s always such a tip, and it will do him good to see how spick and span it can be. Good-bye, Mother.’
She hung up and turned to Angel with an elated look in her eyes.
‘Isn’t that splendid? It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you put your mind to it. Now, let’s see if Edward’s all right, and then find somewhere where we can all have a nice cup of tea.’
‘Margot!’ Angel gripped her arm.
‘What is it?’ She looked at her friend in surprise.
‘Edward’s dead. He doesn’t want tea, or a tidy room, or care whether everyone has a good time or not –’
‘Well, I know that! Good gracious me, do you think I’m going out of my mind or something?’
She smiled pleasantly, as though she hadn’t really understood a word that Angel was saying. It was only when they were in the car on the long drive to Norfolk, that she suddenly looked pinched and afraid, and hugged Angel’s arm.
‘You will stay, won’t you? I hate funerals. All those long faces and everyone trying not to cry, and having to be brave. I’m not brave, Angel –’
Angel leaned sideways and kissed her. ‘Yes you are, darling. You’re very brave. Eddie would be proud of you.’
‘Would he?’ Margot said in a pleased voice. ‘Oh well, that’s all right then.’
Angel found her own nerves jumping. The entire time in Norfolk was like a continuation of the bad dream. Margot still acting so oddly; her mother alternately weeping and being so conventionally polite it was almost ludicrous; the schoolboys, scared at witnessing the trappings of death for the first time; the guilty delight with which Stinky Hughes, in reality John Henry Hughes, received his posthumous gift from his old dorm-mate. It was a weird occasion, more tragic than Stanley’s funeral, because of Edward’s youth; less traumatic than might have been expected, because of Margot’s determination to see that everyone enjoyed themselves and had a jolly good time, just as if darling Eddie was still here…
Angel had hugged her close when she decided she must leave, and said she looked forward to seeing her again as soon as she felt able to leave her mother and return to Piersville. Margot smiled vaguely and said good-bye, the gracious hostess.
Since she could do nothing about the situation, Angel decided it was best to try and stop worrying over Margot, and hope that time would heal whatever ailed her. The five days away from Piersville had exhausted Angel. She didn’t realise what a strain it had all been until it was behind her. It was almost a relief to be boarding the first available leave ship, and hear the cheery baiting of the soldiers.
They were healthy and normal and alive. No matter what tomorrow might bring, here on this ship there was still time to indulge in a little harmless flirtation; to enjoy the wink of a man whose eyes told her he found her attractive; to feel like a woman, instead of a nameless driver with a tragic cargo in a silent ambulance; there was still hope.
If she didn’t believe that, Angel though
t desperately, she might as well lay down at the Front and wait for the next German bullet to claim her.
And there was still Jacques. Through all the harrowing days with Margot, Angel had been conscious of a growing feeling inside her, stronger than hope, as certain as a premonition. If people felt such things when a loved one died, then why wasn’t it possible to feel it in reverse? To will someone to live? She had seen enough of death. Had seen it too closely, too many times in her young life.
Jacques wasn’t dead. If he was, she would feel it, know it instinctively. Love didn’t die, and hers for him would act like a talisman to keep him safe. She had to believe that too. And however much she might dread the horrors of the battlefield, she had to go back, because somewhere out there, was Jacques.
Chapter 16
The coifed nuns moved quietly between the long rows of beds in the old Abbey of St Helene, leaning towards one wounded man and then another, giving comfort and sanctuary to those who would survive, and to the dying the assurance of a better life in the hereafter, promised and reaffirmed in the glint of sunlight on the heavy crosses dangling from their necks.
Sister Therese paused at the foot of the mystery patient they had named Papillon, because of the way he had flapped his arms in his delirium, and because of the crude, grotesque sketches he made, some like gigantic butterflies, some resembling great winged birds with blackened faces and blank eye sockets, or drawings of hideously grotesque bats.
Always flying creatures … they wondered if perhaps he had been attacked by something. That the man was tortured, the nuns had no doubt. That his memory had been lost to him, through whatever suffering he had endured, was also a certainty. That he would one day recover, they could only hope and pray, and had bestowed the gentle name of Papillon on him, meaning butterfly, to aid that eventual return to health, because for all his ravings, they sensed that here there had once been a gentle man.
‘How are you today, Papillon?’ Sister Therese spoke softly. The nuns spoke only French in the converted Abbey, and since the man understood them perfectly and responded when he felt so inclined in a natural accent, they had no reason to believe he was anything but a Frenchman.
The Bannister Girls Page 21
