The Lost Soldier

by Costeloe Diney

  Molly looked extremely doubtful. “Oh, Miss Sarah, I don’t know. What will your auntie think of such a thing?”

  Sarah laughed. “I’m sure she’ll approve. After all there are no servants and mistresses in a convent. All the nuns have their own jobs to do, but they are all equal under the Reverend Mother.”

  “That’s another thing, Miss Sarah…”

  “Sarah.”

  Molly flushed, “Sarah. I don’t know nothing about convents and nuns and the like. What do I call them? Do I have to cross myself and that? I don’t do that in church.”

  “Molly, you don’t have to do anything like that. All the nuns you call ‘Sister’, except the Reverend Mother and you call her ‘Mother’. If it turns out to be any different they’ll tell us when we get there.” She smiled reassuringly, and then exclaimed, “Oh, look I can see the coast of France.” Both girls ran to the rail and peered into the distance where, eerily floating on the horizon the low hills of the French coast drifted into view.

  They made the journey to St Croix by train. Crammed into a compartment in a small civilian train, with their luggage at their feet, Sarah and Molly spent several hours in uncomfortable confinement. Their travelling companions were a succession of local French country people, who climbed in and out of the train at the small stations along the way. Most of them chatted volubly in French to each other, ignoring the two English girls once they had subjected them to short but intense scrutiny. The train was cold, but the crush of bodies produced enough heat to warm them although the rank odour was almost overpowering. Sarah listened to their talk, and was dismayed to find that, while she had thought she spoke reasonable French, she found their harsh accents and their speed of speech made them almost impossible to understand. She could only pick out occasional words and phrases, but had no hope of following the conversations.

  Oh dear, she sighed inwardly, at least I thought I would be able get along in French.

  At the station in Dieppe she had successfully bought them two tickets for Albert, the nearest large town to the village of St Croix, where the convent of the order of Our Lady of Mercy was situated. She had discovered which platform they should find and at what time the train was supposed to leave. There were no porters to be had, but the two of them had managed to manhandle their cases on to the train themselves, and Sarah was quite proud of the way she had made herself understood and of the way they had coped without the assistance to which she, at least, was used. However, now as they were pressed about with local French peasantry carrying everything with them from a basket of apples to a small crate containing a vociferous cockerel, she knew a gnawing anxiety. Were they on the right train? This train seemed to stop everywhere and perhaps it was just a local train and not going to Albert at all.

  As they drew into yet another tiny station she said to Molly, “I’m just going to get out and check we are on the right train.”

  Molly grabbed her by the hand. “Oh, no, Miss Sarah, don’t get off. The train might go without you and then what should I do?”

  “You’d stay on it and go to Albert,” Sarah replied briskly, not correcting her for using ‘miss’ again. This was a time to be in charge, even if she was apprehensive herself. “You have the name and address of the convent written down, just in case we get split up, and I gave you some money, so you’d be perfectly all right.” However, Molly had added to her anxiety. Sarah didn’t want them to get separated either, so she contented herself with leaning out of the window, and calling out to some sort of official, he was wearing a uniform anyway, on the platform. “Monsieur, Monsieur. C’est le train pour Albert?” The man glanced up. “Quoi?”

  Sarah tried again: “C’est le train pour Albert? Ce train vient a Albert?”

  He still seemed puzzled, but on recognising the word Albert he nodded vigorously and answered in a torrent of words, none of which Sarah understood. However, her mind eased a little by the nod she smiled at him and said, “Merci, monsieur,” Drawing her head back inside, she regained her seat, about to be invaded by a huge countrywoman with a large wicker basket containing something live.

  “We’re all right, Molly,” she said. “It is the right train. I suppose most of the express trains are used for the troops.” Even as she spoke another train chugged passed them as they waited in the station, its carriages packed with men in khaki and two covered wagons on the end carrying horses.

  Time and again their little train stopped, sometimes for an hour or more, without apparent reason, but often shunted into a siding as another train rumbled its way back from the front. These were often hospital trains with huge red crosses painted on their sides and roofs. From what the two women could see as these trains trundled slowly by was that they were crammed to capacity with men.

  Sarah stared in horror as one of these trains stopped for a few moments alongside them. “My God,” she whispered. “Do you think all those men are wounded?”

  Molly followed her gaze, taking in the sight of the crushed humanity heaped into the train before it jerked suddenly and then chuffed slowly away. Even as it did so, she caught the eye of a soldier with a bandaged head whose face was pressed against the dirty window. For a moment their eyes met and held. There was such patient sadness in his eyes, that Molly instinctively raised her hand, and as he slid away from view, she saw the flutter of his hand in a return salute.

  “There were hundreds of them,” was all she said, before leaning back into her seat and closing her eyes to cut out the sight of the still passing hospital train.

  There were trains going the other way as well; trains filled with men in khaki, far more important than the little local train which civilians might use. Their train would wait in its siding until the line was clear again and then jolt on once more, slowly crossing the dull flat countryside towards Albert. Both girls were very hungry and thirsty. They had had no idea that the journey would take so long and had not thought to buy more food at Dieppe. It hadn’t looked far on the map, and they had hoped to arrive in Albert in time to reach the convent that evening. The small packet of sandwiches they had brought with them did little to assuage their hunger, and the bar of chocolate that Sarah produced from her bag and shared with Molly, was fixed upon by eight other pairs of eyes. It made uncomfortable eating. Night came on and still the train rumbled slowly along, stopping, starting, stopping again, until at last they reached the outskirts of a town.

  “I think we might be there,” breathed Sarah, peering out of the window. “It certainly looks more like a big town.” Molly too, pressed her nose to the window. There was not much to see, but occasional pinpricks of light suggested houses, and darker shapes, presumably large buildings, loomed in the darkness beside the track. Once again the train wheezed to a halt, and this time they realised with tremendous relief that they had arrived as they heard the strident cry of a porter, “Albert, Albert. Terminé. Albert.” It was indeed Albert at last. It was also, apparently, the end of the line, and the train disgorged its passengers on to the platform, where all was noise and confusion in the semi-darkness.

  Sarah and Molly got their luggage out on to the platform, and Sarah said, “Stay here with the luggage. I will go and find out how we get to St Croix.” She had instructions from Aunt Anne in her pocket, but she hadn’t bargained for arriving in the middle of the night to a blacked out town. As she headed for the entrance she was hustled and bumped in the bustling crowd, but at last she found a ticket office and in her careful, schoolroom French made the man understand that she had to get to St Croix. He shrugged energetically and regretted that mademoiselle would not be able to continue her journey this evening. She must go to an hotel and wait until the morning when one might perhaps engage a horse and cart to take her to St Croix. He, himself, was unable to assist mademoiselle further as he could not leave his position, but he suggested that she went to the Hotel de la Reine which was just two hundred metres from the station, where she could be accommodated very moderately.

  Sarah understood at least two
-thirds of this, when he had said it all twice, and thanking him she went back to Molly, whom she found standing exactly where she had left her, but surrounded by a group of soldiers offering their assistance. Flushed and determined, Molly was guarding the cases and facing them down with short sharp answers. But at least they spoke English, and at least she could understand them. Naïve though Molly was, she had held her own against footmen and stable boys before, and these were, after all, only footmen and stable boys in uniform. However, she looked extremely relieved when she saw Sarah pushing her way back through the crowds.

  “We can’t go any further tonight,” Sarah told her. “We have to go to an hotel.”

  “Where you trying to get to, miss?” asked one of the soldiers.

  Sarah turned, and in him she saw an answer to their immediate problems. “We are going to St Croix in the morning, but for tonight we have to get to the Hotel de la Reine. I believe it’s not far.”

  “No, miss, just across the square. ’Ere, Charlie, grab them bags and we’ll show the ladies the way.”

  “How kind of you,” Sarah beamed, at her most gracious. “Would you really? Thank you so much.”

  To her delight, Charlie and his friend hefted the cases under their arms and forged a way through the undiminished crowds on the platform and out of the station into the night. Sarah and Molly followed and as they emerged they heard dull thuds and thumps in the distance.

  “What’s that?” Molly whispered to Sarah. “Are those guns?”

  “Artillery further up the line,” the soldier said. “Not too close tonight, miss.”

  He led them to the hotel where the manager offered them a small room on the top floor, and with their thanks in his ears the soldier smiled and said it was quite all right, before he and Charlie, his mate, disappeared into the darkness.

  The hotel was able to supply them with soup and bread and cheese and this they devoured greedily before repairing to their garret on the top floor. The guns continued to boom intermittently in the background, and the night sky flickered with light, like distant sheet lightning, but after a moment of staring out over the strange town below them, resolutely they closed the wooden shutters on these reminders that the war was suddenly closer and went to bed. Exhausted from their hours of travelling and despite the uncomfortably narrow bed that they had to share, both of them slept like the dead.

  Next morning, much refreshed from their sleep and a breakfast of hot chocolate and bread with ham and cheese, they held a council of war to decide what to do next.

  “We must find some sort of transport to St Croix,” Sarah said. “I will ask at the desk. Perhaps they can find someone to take us, or at least set us on the right road. If we have to walk, we’ll leave our luggage here and send for it later.”

  “There must be somewhere we can hire a wagon, or a dog cart,” Molly said and then added hopefully, “or may be there is a train.”

  “No train.” Sarah said consulting her instructions from Aunt Anne. “Anyway, I’ve had quite enough of trains for the time being, haven’t you?”

  Molly agreed that she had, and then Sarah looked again at the directions she’d received.

  “My aunt says, there are usually people coming and going between the village and Albert, and if we send her a message when we get here, she’ll try and send someone for us. That seems a waste of time to me. If we can find someone to take a message, we can travel with that someone. I’ll go and see what I can find out.”

  The manager of the hotel was desolated that he had no transport of his own in which he could send mademoiselle to St Croix, but his horses had been taken by the military, and even his donkey would have been if it had not been too old for active service. However, he said he would make some enquiries if mademoiselle would care to wait in the salon.

  Mademoiselle treated him to her most dazzling smile and said she would be enchanted to wait, and that she had the utmost trust in him.

  This trust turned out not to have been misplaced, for within the hour, Sarah and Molly found themselves ensconced with their luggage on the back of a wagon that had brought vegetables into the town at dawn that morning and was now returning to St Croix.

  A steady drizzle fell from the leaden sky above them, but it did little to dampen their spirits. They were nearly there, the worst was over, and what was a little rain compared with what the men in the trenches must be suffering? As they looked back towards the town, they saw the towering steeple of the church in its centre, the golden Madonna which topped it leaning perilously at an angle of ninety degrees, testament to the closeness of the front line and the artillery fire which had been poured, from time to time, into the town.

  An hour in the creaking cart brought them at last to the village of St Croix. The wagoner drove through the village square or place and along a twisting lane leading to the tall grey convent building that dominated the whole village. Its stone walls towered to four stories, and there was a stubby turret on one corner. The wagon trundled up to the main entrance, a huge oak door bound with iron hinges, above which was a large statue of the Virgin Mary, reaching with outstretched arms to the world at her feet. Molly and Sarah clambered stiffly off the back of the cart and dragged their luggage to the ground. Sarah handed the wagoner the agreed money and with a wave of his hand he drove off, leaving the two women standing outside the great door. They stared round.

  “It’s a pretty grim-looking place,” said Sarah, looking up at the grey walls towering above them. “Still, I expect it’s better inside than it looks from out.”

  Molly could only hope she was right. She was horrified by the formidable building, and the thought that they were going to live there for the foreseeable future made her shiver.

  Sarah was at once concerned. “Poor Molly, you’re cold. We’ll go in at once.” But even as she turned towards the door her eye stayed on the view spread out before them. Below, between the convent and the village, was a field covered with what looked like huge marquees.

  “Do you think that is part of the hospital too,” Sarah asked Molly, “or perhaps a camp of some sort?”

  Shivering again, this time truly from cold, Molly spoke. “Sarah,” Molly used the unadorned Christian name for the first time unprompted, “it’s pouring with rain. Let’s get inside.”

  The stab of surprise at being addressed in such firm tones by her maid, passed immediately, and Sarah grinned at her. “You’re right. We’ve made it. Ready?”

  Molly nodded, and together they approached the front door and Sarah pulled hard on the iron bell pull. At once a grill in the door opened and a small face looked out at them.

  “Can I help you?” asked the face in French.

  “Our names are Sarah Hurst and Molly Day,” Sarah announced clearly, in her best French. “Reverend Mother is expecting us.”

  There was the sound of bolts being drawn and the door swung open to reveal a diminutive nun standing inside, her hands folded tidily into the long sleeves of her grey habit, her head encased in a starched, white fly-away headdress.

  “Welcome to the convent of Our Lady of Mercy,” she said. “My name is Sister Marie-Bernard. Please come in.”

  She led them into a small room furnished with a table, two upright chairs and a prie-dieu in the corner. The floor was stone and the walls were without adornment except for a large crucifix over the prie-dieu. She asked them to wait and then disappeared, closing the door softly behind her. Molly looked round apprehensively. The inside of the building seemed to be living up to its grim exterior.

  It was almost ten minutes before the door opened again and a tall, handsome nun, dressed as the other had been, came in.

  “Sarah?” she looked uncertainly from one to the other and Sarah stepped forward, her hands held out and said, “Aunt Anne!”

  They embraced awkwardly and then Sarah introduced Molly. Aunt Anne shook her hand and said, “I am delighted to meet you, Molly. I am Sister St Bruno, Miss Sarah’s aunt. You are most welcome here.”

  “We�
��ve dispensed with the ‘miss’, Aunt Anne,” Sarah said quickly. “We are here as friends, both ready to work in whatever way you need us.”

  “That’s splendid,” cried her aunt. “Now first I will show you where you will be, and then I’ll leave you to unpack and get yourselves sorted out. Later, when you’ve changed, I will come and find you and introduce you to Reverend Mother. I’m afraid the midday meal was at twelve, but we’ll find something in the kitchen for you, don’t worry.”

  She led them out into the main part of the convent and then up a winding staircase to a stone corridor that seemed to stretch the length of the building. Stopping at the first door, she opened it and ushered them into a cell-like room. Two single beds had been crammed in side by side, in a space meant only for one. A chest of drawers, topped with a large water jug and bowl, took up almost the rest of the space, but the inevitable prie-dieu was tucked in a corner behind the door, its crucifix on the wall above it. Aunt Anne pointed to some hooks on the door and said, “You can hang your coats there. I’m afraid it’s a bit cramped, but I doubt you’ll be in here much except to go to bed.”

  Sarah looked at the tiny room and smiled at her aunt. “Don’t worry, Aunt, we shall be fine in here.”

  Aunt Anne looked relieved and said, “Well, you get unpacked and settled and I’ll come back for you in half an hour. I expect you’ll want to wash and change. There’s water in the jug today, but from now on you’ll have to fetch your own from the tap at the end of the passage.”

  Left alone the two girls looked at each other and began to laugh. “It’s a good thing neither of us is very big,” Sarah said, dumping her case on one of the beds. These beds are so close together I can’t get between them!” She edged round to the other side, squeezing past the chest of drawers.

  Molly looked round the room doubtfully. “Are you sure you don’t mind me being in here with you, Miss Sarah?”