The Lost Soldier

by Costeloe Diney

  Please ensure that she returns here as soon as can be arranged. I enclose a money order to pay for her fare. In my opinion you should both come home. You have been there long enough to have done your duty, and it now lies here. Your brother may be home again on leave soon and you should be here to look after him after his time in the trenches.

  Your affectionate Father

  Sarah stared at the letter. Had Molly really left home without telling them where she was going? Sarah could hardly believe it. She thrust the letter into the pocket of her skirt and went back to her ward. She would not see Molly until they fell exhausted into their beds that night, but then she would have to tackle her about it. It was strange, but she had got so used to Molly as a friend that she seldom thought of her in the capacity of housemaid as she had been for so long. She knew almost nothing about Molly’s family life, and certainly Molly never referred to her parents. Thinking about that now, Sarah realised that it was odd that Molly never even mentioned them in passing.

  When they were both safely back in the sanctuary of their room, Sarah handed Molly the letter.

  “This came in the post, today,” she said matter-of-factly. “You’d better read it.”

  “But it’s from your father,” said Molly, recognising Sir George’s hand. “Why should I read it?”

  “Just do,” Sarah said, and something in her tone made Molly unfold the letter and scan its contents. Her expression changed and she read the letter again, more carefully this time. Then, she re-folded it and handed back.

  “Well?” said Sarah.

  “Well what?”

  “Why didn’t you tell them you were coming to France? Why didn’t you tell me that they didn’t know?”

  “None of their business,” growled Molly, and climbed into bed.

  “Molly! Be reasonable. They’re your parents. They’re worried about you.”

  “Worried about my wages, more like.”

  “Your wages?”

  “They take half what I earn. That’s all right, but they ain’t going to tell me where and how to earn them.”

  Sarah said nothing for a moment, she didn’t know what to say, and even as she was listening to Molly’s words one part of her brain registered that, in her anger, Molly’s carefully learned language had slipped back to her more natural country speech. Molly went on, “He wanted me to leave you and squire and go an’ work in the munitions in Belmouth. Well I ain’t going to, not then, not now.”

  “But why didn’t you tell him you were coming with me?”

  “Cos if I had, he’d have told your dad I couldn’t go, and your dad would’ve stopped me. That’s why!” Molly spoke vehemently adding even more vehemently, “And I ain’t going back whatever either of them say. Even if they come and get me, I won’t go.”

  Sarah looked at her thoughtfully. “You know what he’ll do, my father I mean? He’ll write to Reverend Mother and ask her to send you back.”

  “Let him. If he does that I shall speak to Reverend Mother. She won’t send me home.” Molly spoke with such certainty that Sarah stared at her.

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “She won’t,” was all Molly would say.

  “So what do you want me to say to my father?” asked Sarah. “I have to answer his letter.”

  “Send back the money. Thank him for thinking of me and say that I will be staying here where I am needed. Tell him the sisters have been training me to nurse and that I’m going to work here until the war is over.”

  Sarah was shocked. “I’m not sure I can write that to him,” she admitted. “He will be furious.”

  “Then I will write,” Molly said simply. And that is what she did.

  Sarah would not let her return the money. “We might need that for some reason,” she said. “I will write as well and explain that I am keeping the money for emergencies.” Despite her determination not to be beholden to anyone, Molly couldn’t help but feel that a contingency fund might prove useful, so she made no objection to this idea.

  When the expected letter to Reverend Mother came from Sir George, Molly was immediately sent for. She was called straight into Mother’s office and as soon as she closed the door behind her, Mother said, “I have received a letter from Sarah’s father. He is very angry and says I must send you home at once.” She spoke her careful English with its strong accent, but Molly had no trouble in understanding her. She made no reply, however, simply stood in front of the little nun and looked back steadily at her.

  “What do you say to me, Molly? You should not be here. Your father has not permitted it. You must go home.”

  “I’m not going home, Mother,” Molly said then. “If you insist I leave here then I will, of course. But I will not go home. I will offer my services to some other hospital in France. No one will know where I am then, so no one will send me home.”

  “Sister Eloise tells me that you have become a good nurse. She says you have a natural flare. You have a steady hand and good common sense. She will not want to lose you. So give me the reason why I will not send you home.”

  Molly had expected this summons and she had rehearsed in her mind exactly what she would say, but, faced with the sharp blue eyes of Reverend Mother across the desk, her words deserted her. She could feel the hot colour creep up her neck and cheeks, and found it impossible tell this woman she hardly knew and a nun no less, why she would not return home.

  Seeing her embarrassment, Reverend Mother waved to the only other chair in the room and said, “Sit down, Molly.”

  Molly sat on the edge of the chair, her back rigid, her hands clasped in her lap, still tongue tied as she tried to find the words she needed.

  “You are very determined not to go,” Reverend Mother remarked, giving her time to collect herself. “I am sure your reasons must be good, but unless you explain them to me, I can do nothing to help you.” She smiled suddenly. “Is it a young man? I have not always been a nun, hein? I shall not be shocked.”

  When Molly still remained silent she added, “So, an affair of the heart, hein?”

  “No.” Molly’s voice was scarcely above a whisper.

  “Then tell me what it is. Give me the reason.” Her voice was soft but insistent, and so, at last, Molly gave it to her. Mother heard her in attentive silence and when she had finished speaking Reverend Mother simply nodded her head. She steepled her fingers and looked at Molly across the top of them.

  “I see,” she said. “And all this is true?”

  “Yes, but you don’t believe me?”

  Mother looked her straight in the eye and Molly held her gaze levelly. “Yes, I believe you. These things happen, malheureusement.”

  Mother thought for a moment, gazing into the middle-distance and drumming her fingers absentmindedly on her desk. Then she looked back at Molly.

  “Have you told Sarah all this?”

  Molly shook her head. “No.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “No. This is family.”

  “But she is your friend.”

  “She is not really my friend,” Molly said slowly. “Circumstances have made her so, but though she may find the friendship easy, it does not come as easily to me. She is… was my employer. We come from different worlds when we are at home. She is my mistress and I am her maid. That is still the case even out here. She would not have brought me with her if her father had allowed her to come alone. It would not have crossed her mind.”

  “Do you resent that?” Mother asked.

  “No, it is how things are, that’s all.”

  Reverend Mother appeared to accept this, for she nodded and then said, “As far as I am concerned you may stay. I will not send a girl back to such a father. I will say that you are needed here, and that at least is true; you are a conscientious worker and have the makings of an excellent nurse. There is no need to explain any other reason to Sir George. He is not your guardian, hein?” She paused again and then added, “However, I think you should write to you parents, to y
our mother perhaps, and tell her where you are and explain the important work you are doing. You owe her that, I think. If you will write this letter, I will write to Sir George. You agree?”

  Molly agreed.

  Sarah was amazed at the outcome of Molly’s interview with Reverend Mother.

  “How did you persuade her to let you stay?” she marvelled.

  “I told her what I told you,” Molly said, “that I would not go home. I would just leave here and work somewhere else in France. She didn’t want to waste the training Sister Eloise had given me, so she said if I wrote to my parents she would write to Sir George.”

  Years later, when going through her father’s papers, Sarah found both the letter from Molly and the later letter from Reverend Mother.

  Molly had written simply to Sir George.

  Dear Sir George

  I am sorry I am not able to come home at present as I am needed here in the hospital. The wounded come all the time and we are hard pressed to keep up with them. I will write to my parents and I am sure they will understand.

  Thank you for sending money for my fare. I have given that back to Miss Sarah.

  Yours respectfully, Molly Day

  Reverend Mother’s letter was equally simple though perhaps more straightforward.

  Dear Sir George,

  Thank you for your letter. I am afraid I am not in a position to send Molly Day home if she does not wish to go. I understand your concern for her, especially if her parents do not approve of her being here. However, she a great asset to our work here with the wounded, and if she wishes to remain, I am more than happy for her to do so.

  I have instructed her to write to her parents explaining the situation, which she has promised to do, but more than that is not within my power. If I sent her away from here she still would not return home, but would move on to some other hospital where she is unknown and we should lose her in the confusion that is now France. I am sure you will agree it is better she remains here under our watchful eye.

  Yours sincerely

  Marie-Georges

  Reverend Mother—Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy

  Molly had stayed.

  Sarah’s other letter had come from Freddie. She recognised his untidy writing, so like his father’s and she opened the letter eagerly as he had promised to come and visit her on his next local leave, and she was longing to know when this would be. On this matter, however, his letter was a disappointment. His plans had changed.

  Dear Sarah, he wrote,

  As you know, I had hoped to come and visit you in your convent, but instead of the three days leave I had expected, I have been given ten days, and best of all it is over Christmas and New Year. This gives me time to go home, so I will be off to London first and then down to see the governor. Any chance of you coming too so we could all spend Christmas together? I will be going with John Driver, a brother officer who I’ve mentioned before I am sure, to stay with his family in London for two days on each end of the leave. If you came too we could all go out on the town… we need to have a few days’ fun before we come back to this hell-hole. Write to me what you think, after all you are not a VAD or one of the official army nurses that have to apply for leave as we do. I am sure if you wanted to come you could.

  If you can make it we could all cross together. Let me know.

  Love from Freddie.

  Sarah read and re-read the letter. Part of her wanted to go home and spend Christmas back in the manor at Charlton Ambrose; to spend the festive season as they always did, the house swathed in holly and ivy, a Christmas tree decked and shining in the entrance hall. She longed for the encompassing warmth from the huge log fire in the drawing room and the wonderful smells of baking and roasting that emanated from the big kitchen, but she knew that if she once went home she would not come back to France. She was certain her father would find some way of persuading her to stay in England, and she was equally certain that here at the convent was where she should be.

  Sarah had slipped with ease into the life she lived, and though it was strenuous work in the wards and most nights she fell into bed asleep almost before she undressed, she never went up to the room she shared so amicably with Molly without spending half an hour in the quiet of the chapel. Gradually she had become convinced that this was where God wanted her to be, and she was afraid if she once went back home, the green shoots of this conviction, so new as they were, might not survive the cold blast of common sense to which her father would subject them. She did not reply to Freddie’s letter for several days as her decision wavered, swinging from determination to stay, to the possibility of going… it was just for Christmas after all, but at last she took the plunge and wrote saying that she could not be spared.

  You know how bad the situation is here in France, she wrote, the dreadful state of the wounded when they reach us is indescribable. The sisters are more than overstretched and though most of my tasks are fairly menial, I know I am useful and if I left everyone here would have to work that little bit harder. We had a convoy in last night, and there was no room for half the men. We have cleared the refectory and some of the men were lying on the tables, but others were left on the floor. It took all night just to log who everyone was. That is usually my job, and at least that is something I can do, leaving the more experienced to do the nursing. You know the filth that comes with them from the trenches, the untreated wounds, and those which have had rough first aid at the casualty posts. You will understand why I cannot just come home for Christmas, and I hope you will be able to convince my father, as he certainly doesn’t believe me. Dearest Freddie, I am relying on you.

  Come and see me on your next local leave.

  With much love from your menial sister

  Sarah

  Wednesday 3rd November 1915

  Today they brought in Harry, my cousin, Harry Cook. I could hardly believe my eyes when I looked up from helping Sister Eloise and recognised him waiting on a stretcher. It was Harry. He was plastered in so much mud and filth, that at first I wasn’t sure that it was really him. I haven’t seen him since well before the war began, but once I had stared through the dirt to his poor pale face, there was no mistaking him.

  Sister Eloise ticked me off for not paying attention, but when I told her who it was she was kind.

  I spoke to Harry, but he was beyond recognising me. Though I don’t think he was unconscious, his eyes were closed and he was unaware of his surroundings.

  There was another man with him who said he was his friend. He was not so badly wounded as Harry, whose leg was shattered, surely beyond repair. The other man was wounded in the arm, and clearly in pain, but I don’t think he will lose it. He was more concerned about Harry than himself, so they must be very good friends, though we’ve all noticed how much these wounded Tommies look out for each other. Is there anything good coming from this dreadful war, I wonder? Maybe the unselfishness we see among the men who come here to us…

  11

  The days merged into each other. Gradually both girls were given a little more to do than simply scrubbing the wards clean, taking trolleys round and emptying bedpans. Sister Eloise had long since spotted Molly’s natural ability to nurse. An able and dedicated nurse herself, she recognised the same concern for her patients in Molly, the simple efficiency with which she treated them; the easy way she talked to the men and the response she drew from them. She was always calm in a crisis, and there were enough of those, both when more wounded arrived and in the routine caring. Though Molly had not even had the basic Red Cross training that Sarah had, she seemed instinctively to know what to do or say. Because Sister Eloise had very little English, when Sister Marie-Paul was not there she had to rely on Molly to talk to the English patients for her. Molly’s French had been non-existent, but she was picking up the words and phrases she needed with increasing rapidity, and though she could not hold a conversation in French, nor even follow one between the nuns, she could now make herself understood about matters in the ward.


  Gradually, and under careful supervision at first, Sister Eloise taught her to change some of the dressings on the minor wounds, letting her gain experience in how it should be done, the careful cleansing and packing of wounds, the neat, firm bandaging afterwards. Molly was quick to learn and deft in her movements, and all the time she was able to keep up a cheerful flow of chatter with her patient, trying to keep his attention off the painful task she was performing. This was something that the other nursing sisters, most of them French, were not able to do with the English patients, and Molly worked more and more with them, leaving the few French wounded who arrived to their compatriots.

  It was while helping with a new influx of men that Molly saw Harry. At first she thought she must be seeing things. She was helping Sister Eloise, who was swathed as always in a huge white apron over her habit, clean the wound of a man newly arrived from the front. Molly was holding the bowl of warm water, when her eyes slipped down to a new stretcher case that lay just inside the door of the ward. On it, lying motionless, she saw her cousin, Harry Cook, from Charlton Ambrose. She stared down at him, peering in the gloom of the late afternoon to be sure that it was indeed Harry who lay there, his familiar face gaunt under several days’ growth of beard overlaid with dust and dirt. Sister Eloise had to call her attention sharply back to the job in hand as the bowl she held began to tip.

  “I’m sorry, Sister,” Molly stammered in her halting French, “but this man is—” she hesitated not knowing the word for cousin and finished, “—from my home.”

  Sister Eloise understood enough of her fractured French and said, nodding at the patient whom they had been washing, “We have nearly finished with this man. Ask Pierre to lift your friend on to the table, next.”