Russell’s amputee kept on yelling, even as the poor surgeon picked up the saw; only as he laid it onto the skin did the chloroform take effect and the howling man fall silent. Eva had to control herself not to break down at the thought of the agony he must have been in.
Many more died on the table that day. Some survived. Either way, they kept on coming. By half past one the next morning, Eva was feeling lightheaded and slightly giddy; apart from quick breaks for cake and cold tea, she had not eaten a full meal since 6 a.m. the day before. Now, when a dying man laboured his last breath, she no longer troubled to tell him his mother was coming for him. Instead, she called a priest of whatever denomination was appropriate. Even the rabbi got called into service when Doyle noticed a Star of David around one dying officer’s neck.
And those lives lost were the ones that had made it to the operating table. As dawn spread, more lorries came to Étaples, with a sadder load. The dead, whose comrades had picked them up in no-man’s-land and had given them to the stretcher-bearers, were buried en masse with wooden crosses or cheap stones to mark their graves. A number of men had been recruited into the Chinese Labour Corps and were being trained in China for the work of war; some of them would dig graves in the fields surrounding the camp. They were not due for another few months. Nobody had guessed they would be needed so soon, so the job was done by infantrymen.
Eva knew about the dead because Doyle told her. She had not been able to leave the operating room to see for herself – he had given her enough work to keep her busy there. Surgical work did not alarm Eva; she had been watching Doyle all evening and saw how it was done. Besides, she could sew, if only serviceably. The clumsiness and unevenness that had so vexed Miss Dunn – Good God, it seems like another life – did not matter now when it was thick flesh rather than fine cambric through which she was pushing her needle.
When he told her about the graves, Doyle leaned back against the wall, a cigarette dangling from his lips. ‘There’s no way they could have got all of them. No way. Most of them are still out there. Hung out on the wire. Stuck in a shell hole turning green.’
‘Mr Doyle, please.’
He closed his eyes. ‘You know, I’m as bad as that Canadian chap we sent off earlier. “Give me a drink, nurse, give me a drink”,’ he mimicked.
‘He wanted water, Mr Doyle, not the kind of drink you’re referring to.’
His smile was thin and did not reach his eyes. ‘True, Downey, very true. Tell me, have you someone out there?’
The question still hurt. She would never forget the look in Christopher’s eyes, the way his face drained as he wrenched himself away from her and walked down the street without a backward glance.
‘Oh, damn, look at you. I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right, Mr Doyle,’ Eva said. ‘There was somebody once, but we parted company, and … there’s a lot of water under the bridge. I don’t know where he is now.’
‘And you still care for this fellow, I presume?’ Doyle said.
‘Yes, I do. Very much.’ Eva hoped he wouldn’t ask more.
‘I had someone too,’ Doyle said. ‘She got fed up of my old ways and went off. In one sense, I’m doing all this for her. Trouble is, sometimes I can’t face it. I mean, look at this. Look at it.’ He gestured around. ‘This is hell. And I’m nothing more than hell’s butcher, apron and all.’ He was near tears.
‘Mr Doyle,’ Eva said, ‘you’ve saved many lives tonight. You should be proud.’ Doyle’s head was bent. Eva saw that he was crying and trying not to let her see it.
The sister came into the operating theatre. ‘You look done in, Mr Doyle. You too, Downey. Get some rest, both of you, and come back in after reveille.’
Eva stumbled back to her hut, barely able to find it, she was that tired, even though she knew the route well. The light of a paraffin lamp danced through the canvas; Breedagh must be up. Eva was past caring, almost asleep in her clothes. She took off her uniform and left it in a heap on the floor. Just this once, the hell with standards.
23
There was little let-up for the next month. As many soldiers came in from Dover as left Boulogne in hospital trains. The rattle of the night trains passing near the loose boards of the hut lulled Eva into a deeper slumber whenever she could get it, which wasn’t often, partly because she was so busy and partly because of the heat, which lasted all July, hitting well over eighty degrees at its height, with rarely a day below seventy.
Sometimes she wondered whether Doyle wasn’t right to compare himself to a butcher. Men were really only so much meat, and not even fresh meat at that. In the wards, the fetor of gangrenous flesh and sodden dressings was sweet, heavy and rotten in the wards. Eva had resorted to holding a handkerchief over her mouth at times, though she hated to hurt the men’s feelings. She could not imagine how it must have felt to be glued to a bed by one’s own sweat in such pain and fever as the sun kept up wave after wave of punishing heat. Finally, someone had the bright idea of rigging up an electric fan to one of the generators, which gave intermittent relief.
Some benign god had assigned Breedagh Stewart back-to-back night shifts. Having delivered the worst of her arsenal on the night they met, she now seemed plain out of weaponry and even occasionally tried to engage Eva in friendly conversation. Since her idea of friendly conversation was long monologues about the family farm near Kilkeen and the condition of its livestock, Eva was quite happy to pick up her book and resume wherever she had left off.
She had probably learnt more about sex from D. H. Lawrence’s novels than she had from being married. Mr Lawrence had been so informative that the government had gone to the trouble of burning all copies of The Rainbow – or so they thought. A second-hand bookseller on the Strand had sold her an unmarked author proof, which she had now read about four times. When she read of Ursula Brangwen’s attachment to Miss Inger, certain aspects of Sybil’s behaviour with regard to Roma made much more sense.
Her other book, the Rupert Brooke, she would open sometimes, but only when she had the hut to herself, and not, primarily, to read the poems, for she suspected she had grown out of most of them. It was more to remember who had given them to her. That book had never left her side, not during her long journey to Ireland nor the year since. Once, in a drunken rage, Joseph had tried to throw it in the fire. Eva had slapped him so hard that her own palm stung from the blow. That was when he’d declared he would enlist the following day, and she remembered answering, ‘If you do, don’t blame me, I never made you.’ Even now, it hurt to see that book, but it was a sweet hurt as well as a hard one, and she would not let go of it.
Breedagh was as ignorant of Eva’s literary interests as she was uninterested in them, though Eva knew full well that all she had to say was that she had a dirty book and the cow would change her attitude. She would be up right behind Eva, panting down her neck in righteous indignation, in haste to read the dirty, dirty passages, to properly ascertain what a filthy dirty book it truly was. Then she would start on about the dirt and filth, not to mention the smut and dirt, and her breathing would become rapid and shallow. Eva had learnt to be circumspect about her reading material.
All through July, wave after wave of young lads were carried off on trains to the front, then waves of broken, mangled, howling beings returned to Étaples by cortèges of ambulances. Eva and Sybil did not manage to get a full day off until early August. When they did, they wasted no time heading down to the beach for a long walk. Eva wore the loose, high-collared tunic and trousers all the girls seemed to wear on their days off, which were comfortable, if slatternly by peacetime standards. Sybil preferred a more conventional dress. Whenever the breeze failed she would take her large straw boater off her head and fan her cheeks with it.
The tide was midway out, the sea rolling back and forth unconcernedly in the background, the faint sounds of artillery bombardment carrying from the north-east. Wooden depth markers stretched out along the shore. Wearing sandals, Eva f
elt the burning sand against her toes with pleasurable shock. She had forgotten her hat, and the sun began to burn her scalp where her hair parted. She rubbed it absent-mindedly.
Sybil broke the silence. ‘I told you I was off to the front soon, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, you mentioned it.’
Sybil had been angling to see Roma since her arrival in France, and finally she had got her chance. The Friends’ Ambulance Unit needed more drivers to collect wounded men from the front line, and Sybil had both experience and a driving licence. Roma wrote to her as often as was allowed during the restrictions of battle. To every letter she added detailed sketches, but some of the pages were taken out by the Censor. ‘The injuries are too realistic,’ Sybil explained when she showed the letters to Eva. She never mentioned whether Clive ever wrote, and Eva thought it better not to enquire. If he didn’t, she thought, it was a poor show, when his wife was out here doing her bit for the war effort. And then, when she found herself thinking in phrases like that, Eva would shake herself. For pity’s sake, she sounded like Grace.
‘I’m going the day after tomorrow,’ Sybil said. ‘Sorry for the short notice.’
‘That’s all right, Syb,’ Eva said, adding, on a sudden impulse, ‘Sybil, whatever it is you feel about Roma, don’t be afraid of it. Life is too short not to be honest with yourself. And be joyous.’
Sybil didn’t speak for a moment, then said, with emotion, ‘You are a brick, Evie. Thank you.’
They walked for a while in companionable silence. Then Sybil stopped. ‘I say, listen.’ Up ahead, where the holiday houses and the fishing boats petered out, beyond the dunes, lay a small woodland. From there, clear and undimmed by the slight breeze that moved the children’s toy windmills on the fence’s edge, came a voice pure and high, a voice Eva recognised instantly, with a double pain at the beauty of the song and the identity of the singer.
Here of a Sunday morning
My love and I would lie,
And see the coloured counties,
And hear the larks so high
About us in the sky.
‘Why,’ Sybil breathed, ‘it’s “In Summertime on Bredon”. I’ve not heard that one in a while. What, Evie, what is it?’
‘It’s Lucia.’ Eva looked straight ahead. ‘The singer.’
For a moment Sybil looked questioning, then her face cleared. ‘Oh. The girl who—’
‘The first time I saw her,’ Eva said, ‘she was singing “Confutatis Maledictis” at the top of her voice.’
Sybil grimaced. She also remembered who sang that song. ‘Ouch.’
Then, ‘Let’s face it, she probably sang it a good deal better than he did.’
Eva smiled sadly. ‘Oh, yes.’
Sybil put her arm around Eva’s shoulders. Her hair had grown, and it fell in magnificent folds of auburn, like something out of a Titian painting. Her skin smelt of Pears soap and fresh sweat. ‘You shouldn’t listen to sad songs. And you shouldn’t dwell on the past. Let’s go back.’
‘I should like to say hello to her.’
Sybil pulled away, frowning. ‘Whatever for?’
‘Because she was kind to me,’ Eva said. ‘She seemed like a nice person.’
‘Eva,’ Sybil pulled roughly at her dress, ‘show some nous. You can’t go round socialising with that girl as if the whole dreadful business never happened. You and she broke the law, in case you forgot. And what would you have in common anyway? What could you talk about?’
‘Why, Sybil, the same things anybody talks about. The war. The weather. Why are you being so obstructive?’
‘Because your little caper cost me a lot of money, that’s why!’ The singing abruptly stopped. Sybil, red-faced with sun and anger, dropped her voice only slightly to add, ‘What do you think my squabble with Clive was about? Flower arrangements?’ Eva felt a slow mortification spread through her. Sybil must have seen it, because the anger went out of her eyes as if someone had snuffed out a candle. ‘Eva, I’m bloody mean, I’m sorry. Go talk to … whatsername. This war has bitched me completely. I can’t even hear someone singing a song like that but I think of Bo, and the waste and mess of it all. I’m fit for nothing.’
A group of VADs were paddling in the shallows. Their hair down and skirts held up, they splashed noisily, their laughter suddenly loud as the breeze petered out and the air stilled. Sybil kept her hat on, pulling the brow down over her face. The sun was behind her.
‘It’s all right, Syb,’ Eva said gently. ‘I’ll talk to her another time, perhaps.’
They walked back to camp in silence. Eva could not think of anything else to say; she had upset Sybil enough. And that reminder of the cost of her abortion … that had been a slap in the face. The problem was, it was true. She had been a burden on Sybil and had given precious little back, but what does one do when one must survive?
By now they had reached the camp gates and shown the sentries their papers. They walked through the camp, passing one of the medical wards on the way. Something in the corner of her eye captured Eva’s attention. ‘Sybil, can you hang on a tick? I need to check something.’
‘Sorry, chum,’ Sybil said, her nonchalance still a little false, ‘I can’t wait. Have to talk to the sister about tomorrow. See you later, though.’
‘See you.’
As Sybil cantered off, Eva realised what, or rather who, had claimed her attention. It was a man on a stretcher in the long queue waiting outside the medical ward. His eyes were bandaged, blinded by gas. On his chest was a dressing with a small circle of recent blood. A neat wound, neater than most, not deadly, either, for he was conscious, his neck craning around as he tried to work out where he was by listening. Some familiar twist to his mouth struck her – and then Eva recognised him. It was Gabriel Hunter.
24
Within minutes, Eva was bending the ear of the duty nurse in the medical ward, pretending Hunter was an old sweetheart and swearing her to secrecy. She soon learnt that after a recent promotion to captain, he had been sent out with an advance company to organise the clearance of Trônes Wood. This effort had been successful – in the new definition of ‘success’ allowed by their military masters – in that they had secured their small objective, albeit with the loss of almost the entire platoon. Hunter had been fortunate to sustain wounds early in the engagement and escaped slaughter by playing dead throughout the second advance and the gas attack from the Germans, the cause of his temporary blindness. It was only when two privates attempted to move him and encountered protests from the corpse that it was ascertained he had survived the battle. And so he was dispatched, without his men, since they were all dead, to the advanced clearing station, where he was patched up pretty well before being sent back down behind the line to Étaples.
Eva, with some impatience, listened to all this breathlessly delivered information, smiling and nodding as the nurse rattled on. It was evident that Staff Nurse Yardley had taken a bit of a shine to Captain Gabriel Hunter.
It was entirely possible he hadn’t changed since Eva had met him last. But he was alive and conscious, and he might know what had become of his great friend Christopher Shandlin.
She was uncharacteristically inattentive during the afternoon and evening work. ‘Come on, Downey, are you with the team or are you with the team?’ It was Doyle’s catchphrase question, accompanied by an impatient finger-click in her face.
‘I’m with the team,’ she replied mechanically.
‘Well, start behaving like it then. I need you to find a vein for me here. This man has terrible veins. I can’t see them at all.’ The man on the gurney, on the verge of death, weakly protested that there was nothing wrong with ’is veins, and he’d be thanking the good doctor not to make such personal remarks, begging her pardon, miss.
Eva made some soothing noises, but she was distracted. Her mind was riffling through the possibilities. It was possible that Hunter had no idea whether Christopher was dead or alive. If that were the case, she would be no better off. If he knew
that he was dead, she would find it out in the middle of a busy ward, and there would be nothing she could do about it but pretend everything was normal. That would be the worst possible outcome.
Or he might be alive.
She had to know.
A day later, when she finally got a moment to visit the ward, she realised that it was not like a civilian medical ward at all. The men’s talk was loud and friendly, especially among the group of Australians near the entrance, who were playing cards around the bed of a soldier whose leg was in traction. It was no more than a long hut, and the shade meant the light was poor, but Eva made Hunter out in one of the middle beds, his long, tapering fingers resting on the sheet. The narrow space between the beds meant that she had to move carefully not to draw too much attention to herself. It helped that she had been listening for a while as Hunter had asked the duty VAD for a glass of water; she’d crumpled pinkly as if he’d given her a proposal of marriage and said, yes, of course, right away. When she reached the entrance, Eva had gently pressed a box of cigarettes into her hand and whispered in her ear; in spite of the VAD’s infatuation for Hunter, it appeared to have done the trick. Eva fetched the glass of water herself.
Hunter was still entrancingly beautiful, even with his eyes bandaged, his limbs cast in all directions; the exposed knees alabaster as a Greek statue’s, the dark locks of hair clinging to his forehead. But that same forehead glistened with sweat, his cheeks were jaundiced, and his lips formed a wet moue of distaste, probably at the fetid smell of the place. For a moment Eva felt pity for this man who lay there vulnerable, unaware of her presence. But the pity was mixed with fear. If he recognised her voice …
‘Captain Hunter?’ she began timidly, but he showed no sign of having heard her. Had she remembered his rank correctly? She tried again: ‘Lieutenant …?’
Hunter sat up as straight as if he were demonstrating Pythagoras’ theorem. ‘It’s “Captain”.’
White Feathers Page 23
