Secrets of the Frontline Nurses

by Holly Green

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Leo said. ‘I can take the train to Athens. I’m bound to find something suitable there.’

  Next day Leo went to call on her old friend General Bojovic but was informed that he was no longer in Salonika. He had resigned after a disagreement with the High Command over the expansion of the Salonika front. Command was now in the hands of the Vovodja – the Serbian equivalent of Field Marshal – Duke Zivojin Miscic, a veteran of both Balkan Wars and the victor of several famous battles in the time before the Serbs were finally driven out of their homeland. Indeed, there were those who said if he had been allowed to stand and fight, as he had wished, the terrible retreat through the mountains might never have happened. There had been changes at the head of the French army, too, which was now commanded by General Franchet D’Esperey – known to the English as Desperate Frankie. Leo sensed that there was a new sense of purpose in the air. On the way into the city they had passed gangs of workmen improving the roads that led to the mountains, or making new ones, and railway lines were being laid. At last, it seemed, there was a real intention to sustain a new campaign until it resulted in victory.

  Her next call was at the British consulate, to let them know she was back and to pick up any mail that had arrived in her absence. She had had dealings with the consul on various occasions and had the impression that he thoroughly disapproved of her, though he was always meticulously courteous. It was an attitude she was familiar with among men of his class and it did not bother her. There were not many letters, since very few of her acquaintances knew where she was. There was one from James Bartlett, her estate manager at Bramwell, to say that all was well and in spite of the difficulties occasioned by lack of manpower and of horses the harvest looked promising. There was another from her solicitors regarding minor repairs to the house in Sussex Gardens; and there were three from Tom. She kept those to read when she had dealt with the others.

  He seemed cheerful. The move to London had suited him very well and he found Sussex Gardens a congenial place to work; Sim and Beavis seemed to get on all right and made sure that he was well looked after; he was painting every day and the gallery owner who had been going to show his earlier work until it went up in smoke was interested in a new exhibition. He added that he missed Leo very much and hoped that she would come home in time to see it. ‘I hope every day to hear that you have found your daughter and are on your way back to London. Until that happens I shall not be able to fully enjoy all the other advantages that you have so generously provided for me. With all my love, Tom.’

  Back at the hotel, Leo tried to compose a response; but she was so undecided about her future plans that she gave it up. She would write when Victoria and Luke had gone. She would have to make up her mind then.

  She passed the rest of the day wandering the streets with her friends. Victoria was intent on finding the places she remembered from their first visit in 1912 but very little remained that was recognisable and, while it was a disappointment to her, it was a relief to Leo. She had no wish to be reminded of that more recent summer when she had returned with Sasha. All in all it was an unsatisfactory day for all of them. The awareness of their impending separation weighed on their spirits. Luke and Victoria were torn between anticipation of the new life ahead of them and their anxiety about leaving Leo and she was struggling with the effort of remaining cheerful and positive in face of the prospect of being left alone.

  As they ate their last dinner, a thought suddenly came to Leo.

  ‘You’re going to get married. But you are not, yet. Won’t that be a problem?’

  ‘We’ve talked about it,’ Luke said. ‘I was all for waiting till we got back home. I reckoned turning up with a ready-made bride for the second time might be a bit much for my mother. But now I realise that it could cause all sorts of trouble. We’re going to ask the ship’s captain to marry us.’

  Leo felt a lump rise in her throat. ‘I wish I could be there. I should love to see you married.’

  Victoria caught her hand. ‘So do I, darling! Of all the people in the world I would want you at my wedding. We did think about tying the knot sooner, when you first came out here. But then we thought it would be better to wait until you had your little girl with you. But now …’ Her words trailed off into silence.

  Luke got up abruptly. ‘I’ve had an idea. You two stay here and finish your meal. I’ll see you back at the hotel in about an hour.’

  He was gone before they could ask questions and was back sooner than he had promised, his eyes gleaming triumphantly. ‘I’ve had a word with the chaplain at the British HQ. He’ll marry us at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning on board that British destroyer in the harbour. Technically that’s British soil, so he reckons it will be legal, but we can sort out any complications when we get to Wellington. Our ship doesn’t sail till the afternoon tide, so we’ll have plenty of time. How does that sound?’

  Leo jumped up and kissed him. ‘Luke, you’re a genius! I’m so grateful.’ She turned to her friend. ‘Vita, this is all right with you, isn’t it?’

  Victoria put an arm round each of them. ‘Of course it is. It’s the best solution possible. Well done, Luke.’

  ‘I’m afraid it won’t be the sort of wedding you probably imagined for yourself,’ he said ruefully. ‘But then, it was never going to be.’

  Victoria cocked an eyebrow ironically. ‘My dear man, I never imagined any sort of wedding for myself. I was going to be fiercely independent all my life. You have completely shattered a young girl’s dream!’

  He hugged her. ‘Well, all I can say is, I’ve managed to prevent a terrible waste of talent and beauty.’

  It certainly was far from a conventional wedding. Victoria and Leo wore their travelling clothes, the only smart ones they had with them, and Luke was in tweeds. Victoria’s bouquet was a branch of orange blossom, which Luke snipped off a tree overhanging a garden wall on their way to the harbour. Leo acted as one witness and the ship’s captain offered himself as the second. Leo had to keep a tight rein on her emotions. She sensed that if she once let go she would break down completely. She told herself over and over again that this was the ideal conclusion for both her friends, after six turbulent years, and she must be happy for them.

  The captain entertained them to lunch after the ceremony and Leo was grateful for company to fill the time before the final parting. She sensed that the other two felt the same. In the end, they had to rush back to the hotel for their bags and then down to the harbour again where the newly-weds were just in time to board their ship before it sailed. At the foot of the gangway they exchanged long hugs. Victoria was in tears.

  ‘I wish we weren’t going! We should have stayed. I can’t bear the thought of leaving you all alone.’

  ‘I’ll be all right. You know me. I can cope with pretty well anything.’

  ‘But you will go back to England now, won’t you? Promise me you will. There’s no point in hanging round here waiting for the war to finish.’

  ‘No, you’re right.’

  ‘So you will go home? And write as soon as you get there.’

  ‘And you must write as soon as you get to Wellington.’

  ‘I will. I’ll write to the London address.’

  ‘Yes, do that.’

  Luke intervened. ‘Sorry, girls. We have to get on board now. The skipper’s making threatening gestures.’ He took Leo’s hands. ‘Now, we expect to see you in New Zealand just as soon as you can make it – you and Tom, and little Alexandra. That’s what we can all look forward to.’

  Leo nodded, wordlessly. She wanted them to go, before she finally lost control. He kissed her on the cheek and took Victoria by the hand to lead her up the gangway. Mercifully, the ship was ready to cast off, so Leo did not have to wait on the quayside very long. Her friends stood at the rail and waved and she waved back, until she lost sight of the ship among the other vessels crowding the harbour. Then she turned away and walked back towards the centre of town. She no longer wanted to
weep. Instead she was filled with a terrible emptiness and a sudden sense of exhaustion.

  She told herself she would feel better after a good night’s sleep, but she woke the next morning possessed by the same weariness. She knew that she should make arrangements for going home, but she could not summon up the resolve to go to the station and enquire about trains to Athens. Instead, she wandered out of the town and eventually found herself sitting on a flat rock at a point along the shore where she could watch the coming and going of ships in the harbour. She wrestled with the decision facing her. Common sense told her that she should go back to England. After all, there was nothing to be gained from hanging around in Salonika, waiting for a new campaign which, on previous form, might never materialise. Even if it did, it could be months before the armies moved forward enough for her to begin her search. It would be far more sensible to go home and wait until the war was over and conditions had returned to something like normal. But how long might that take? She had promised Victoria that she would go. Or had she, actually? And Tom was waiting for her – but then, Tom seemed to be coping perfectly well without her. The thoughts went round and round in her head, without coming to any resolution. The point she came back to over and over again was the feeling that if she gave up now and went home she might never return. After all, she had never even seen her child, never held her in her arms. It would be easy to decide that it would be best all round to leave her with the family she had learned to regard as her own; easy to conclude that the chance of finding her was so slim that it was not worth taking. That temptation, that sense that she might betray her daughter, betray the one legacy Sasha had left her, was what kept her immobile on her rock until the sun was low on the horizon.

  Next morning she was no nearer coming to a decision. She needed some kind of sign, some event that would prompt her in one direction or the other. All day she sat watching the ships, her mind almost blank, waiting. Then, late in the afternoon, she saw a ship flying the British flag sailing into the harbour. It was a cargo ship, probably bringing supplies for the garrison, and when it had unloaded it would, presumably, be heading back to England. Here was her sign! With any luck she would be able to buy a passage. It would be easier than travelling over land to Athens and then hoping to find a vessel to take her onwards. Leo got up and headed back into town, to the consulate, to make enquiries.

  She had walked further than she realised and it took her almost an hour to get there. The consul greeted her with his usual formal politeness.

  ‘Ah, Miss Malham Brown! You saw the ship coming in, no doubt, and are here to collect your mail. There was no need for you to trouble yourself. I was about to have it brought up to your hotel.’ He took a small package from his desk and held it out to her. ‘Not many letters this time, I’m afraid.’

  Leo explained the principal reason for her visit and the consul agreed to make enquiries about getting a passage for her on the ship’s return journey.

  ‘Very wise of you, if I may say so!’

  She took the packet of letters to a nearby café, ordered a citron pressé and unsealed the outer envelope. As the consul had said, the contents were sparse. There was a letter from a firm of solicitors whose name seemed vaguely familiar and another addressed in a handwriting she did not recognise. She opened this one first and withdrew a sheet of paper with a black border.

  Dear Miss Leonora,

  I hope you will forgive my presumption in writing to you, but I did not want you to receive this news from strangers. Sir Thomas died yesterday, June 2nd, at about four o’clock in the morning. He caught this new kind of flu that is going round and went downhill very quickly. The doctors said his experiences in the trenches had sapped his strength and being confined to a wheelchair had weakened his lungs. They did everything they could for him and I don’t think he suffered too much. I know his solicitors will be writing to you but I am hoping that you may read this letter first.

  He was conscious and quite clear in his mind until the very last and he wanted me to give you a message. He said to tell you that he loved you as the best friend a man could ever have and if things had been different he would have loved you as a husband and he was sorry that that could never have been. He said you would understand what he meant.

  He also made a new will and asked me to witness it, along with the doctor. First, I should tell you that he had a very successful exhibition at the Albermarle gallery and sold almost all his paintings, except for six which he would not part with because they meant too much to him. Five of these he has left to you, along with some other keepsakes. The sixth, kind and generous employer that he was, he gave to me. It’s not one of the wartime ones. We’d both seen enough of the trenches. It’s the one he painted last autumn of the Hall, with all the trees in their brilliant colours. I shall always treasure it as a reminder of these last few happy months. It isn’t his only generous gift. He has left me a little nest egg, enough to set myself up in a country pub, which is what I have always fancied.

  I know this will be a terrible shock to you and I wish I didn’t have to give you such bad news. You and Sir Thomas were very good to me and made me feel like part of the family and not just a servant. I shall always be grateful. I hope you have found your little girl and will be home soon. If you want to contact me, you know my mother’s address. I shall be there for the time being and shall hope to hear from you.

  Respectfully yours,

  Arnold Simkins (Sim)

  The solicitors’ letter repeated the same information in more legalistic terms. Leo folded both letters carefully and replaced them in their envelopes. She did not weep. Tears were pointless now. She had the sign she was waiting for. She got up and set off for the Red Cross hospital, where she volunteered her services on the condition that she be sent back to Bitola, to work with Pierre Leseaux.

  Chapter 18

  In a prisoner-of-war camp close to the Bulgarian border four Serbian soldiers crouched in the shade of a hut. One of them was older than the others, a grizzled veteran with sunken eyes. Next to him was a younger man but both, from their emaciated faces and ragged clothes, had obviously been prisoners for a long time. The third man was younger still, hardly more than a boy, and in better shape, lacking the air of dull resignation that the others wore. The fourth man sat a little apart, his arms clasped round his knees, his face almost completely hidden by a tangled mass of hair and beard, from among which dark eyes watched his companions without expression.

  ‘So how long have you two been here?’ the boy asked.

  The oldest man spat into the dust. ‘Too bloody long! Since the beginning of’seventeen.’

  The newcomer grimaced. ‘Eighteen months in this hellhole!’ He looked at the second man. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Not much less. They picked me up when we had to retreat from Lavci.’

  ‘Lavci? That name rings a bell. Wasn’t that where Colonel Malkovic bought it?’

  ‘That’s how they got me,’ the veteran said. ‘I was one of the ones who went out to try to bring back his body. No hope! The Bulgars were all over us. The other three with me were all killed.’

  The boy hunched his shoulders. ‘Three dead and you captured. Was it worth it to bring back a dead body?’

  The older man looked at him with something approaching contempt. ‘You obviously never served under the colonel, or you wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘No. I only joined up three months ago. My family evacuated to Athens when the war started. I wanted to volunteer then but they said I was too young. I went to Salonika and joined up as soon as I was seventeen.’

  ‘In that case I suppose you can be forgiven. If you’d known the colonel you’d understand.’

  ‘He was a good officer, then?’

  ‘The best. Any one of us would have gladly died for him. Isn’t that so, Milan?’

  ‘Absolutely. He brought us through the Albanian mountains in’fifteen and stayed with us in Corfu, made sure we were looked after. Always made sure we had a share of
whatever food was going before he touched a mouthful himself. That’s the sort of officer he was.’

  ‘Not many like him,’ the boy said.

  ‘You can say that again!’

  ‘Funny, though,’ the boy went on. ‘There were some weird stories going round the barracks about him.’

  ‘What do you mean, weird?’

  ‘Something about some English tart claiming he’d fathered a child on her. Not the sort of thing …’

  A feral howl cut him short. The fourth man launched himself at the boy, his fingers clutching for his throat. The other two grabbed him and pulled him off.

  ‘All right, Slobo, all right!’ The old man spoke soothingly, as if to a child. ‘Calm down. The boy doesn’t understand, that’s all.’

  The man addressed as Slobo withdrew unwillingly to his former position and sat, glowering.

  Milan said, ‘You’d better be careful how you speak about the Lady Leonora, or Slobo won’t be the only one you offend. She was the bravest, kindest lady I’ve ever come across. She came out in’fifteen to nurse our men and she was with us all through that terrible retreat through the mountains. When I copped a bullet in the shoulder from some bastard of an Albanian bandit she dressed it for me. And she stayed with us all the time in Corfu. We reckoned it was her, even more than the colonel, that organised food supplies and firewood when we first arrived. We all knew what was going on between them. It was a bit irregular but we didn’t care. She and the colonel were made for each other. So don’t ever call her a tart again.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ the old man said. ‘She was there in 1912, when we kicked out the Turks. I remember her at Adrianople, nursing typhus patients. There’s a lot of men alive today who’d be underground if it wasn’t for her.’

  The boy squirmed and ducked his head. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any disrespect. I was only repeating what I heard from some of the old hands.’

  ‘Not anyone who’s ever known her, or the colonel,’ Milan said. ‘That’s for certain.’