Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies

by Jackie French

  As an afterthought, she added: I am safe stop your loving daughter Sophie stop

  Details might be censored. She sent another telegram to Angus, care of French General Staff, saying briefly where she was and why, and then a third to get to Wooten faster than the letter she had already sent. Unbearably tired, she cycled back, lying without sleeping on a blanket on bare scrubbed boards.

  The smell of shit still lingered.

  Two days later the beds still hadn’t arrived. A telegram had, brought by a small boy with black hair and eyes and a startlingly white shirt. Somewhere a mother had boiled that shirt, starched it and ironed it, perhaps bought him the bicycle, for it was smaller than Madame’s, the wheels so small that even his short legs were hunched up around his ears as he rode.

  He waited while she read it, till she realised he wanted to be paid and handed him some francs. He grinned, with teeth as white as his shirt, and wheeled away.

  Am most worried stop insist return England at once stop your father stop

  She called the boy back — he was riding in circles between the houses, as though he had nothing more to do in this war-eroded land than make patterns in the gravel with his wheels. She scribbled a few words on the back of a ticket while he threw a stick for the delighted Charlie.

  Insistence futile stop I stay allowance or not stop love Sophie stop

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Jean-Marie, mademoiselle. What is your dog called?’

  ‘Charlie.’

  He considered. ‘That is a silly name.’

  ‘He’s a silly dog.’

  The boy looked at her, affronted. ‘He is the most beautiful dog!’

  ‘Hfff,’ said Charlie, sitting at the boy’s feet and drooling on his stick. It had been impossible to find meat to feed him, but he was thriving on potato stew.

  Sophie handed Jean-Marie more francs. ‘Please take this to the telegraph office. If you can take more messages for me, I’ll pay you again.’

  ‘May I take Char-lee,’ he stumbled over the name, ‘to the telegraph office too?’

  She managed her first smile in days at that. ‘If he wants to go.’

  She watched Charlie bound off joyously beside the bicycle.

  Another two nights sleeping on the floor, with Charlie for warmth; the sky lit with blooms of red, her dreams filled with red too, and with burning blistered faces. She woke gasping, and didn’t try to sleep again.

  The next day brought a procession.

  A motorcar, red with a canvas roof; behind it Jean-Marie pedalling frantically to keep up, his eyes fixed on the car in ecstasy. Charlie galloped off towards him. Behind Jean-Marie and his bicycle plodded two teams of bullocks dragging wagons, laden with what might be furniture. Possibly hers.

  Sophie tried to push her hair back into its pins, then descended the shattered stairs to meet them.

  The first to arrive was the car. The driver was small, French, all bows and pomaded hair. He was Monsieur Brun, the French agent for Higgs’s Corned Beef; he was at her service. Here was a telegram from her bon Papa.

  Sophie glanced down.

  Hope soon come to senses stop funds available stop telegraph if you need more stop set up and find manager that is how you do business stop with love your father stop

  Find a manager? As likely to find a pastry chef …

  Monsieur Brun, the agent, bowed. He was hers to command, every fourth Thursday. Funds could be transferred through his office. Whatever was needed he could arrange.

  Sophie doubted it. But this was a start.

  Chapter 60

  France

  December 1917

  Dear Duchess,

  It was good to get your letter. I am glad you do not think I am deserting you and Wooten. There is so much to do here. In a strange way I feel more alive than I ever have before, despite the death around me. It is as if I have slipped back into the skin that was so briefly mine as we turned the Abbey into a hospital. I am my father’s daughter, though it has taken a war for us both to see it. I am an indifferent nurse, an adequate organiser, but a magnificent creator of hospitals where none existed before. What I am doing is just beginning, for so much must be done. Does it seem desperately self-centred to say I have at last acknowledged my true self amidst so much horror and tragedy?

  This new hospital is up and running. At first we mostly took victims of the mustard gas, but those who might survive need months or even years to recover, and are usually shipped back to England as soon as they have been stabilised. ‘Stabilised’ here means ‘they probably won’t die before they get across the Channel’.

  It seems the mustard gas was not the weapon that would end the war after all. Mustard gas hasn’t even shortened it by two feet six inches. It floats here and there and no one can predict it, except to know that afterwards men will be screaming, dying or in pain for what is left of their lives. This makes it a far less useful weapon than I feared, and so many hoped. It takes about twelve hours for it to take full effect, which makes it particularly horrible. Or maybe it doesn’t. Is it better to know you have, in effect, been killed, even though you are still standing, or to die at once? At any rate, the death — or life — is so bad that men have to be strapped to their beds screaming, or they tear out their eyes and tongues.

  Should I not be writing to you of such things? I apologise if I should not. But I believe you will both understand, and forgive, and know how much solace it is to share what sometimes cannot be borne, but must be, even if you spare three minutes to hide in the linen cupboard to cry.

  Despite that last sentence, I am well, though I’m writing this under half a ceiling — the house was bombed last night, or rather the café next door was, and we got the aftershocks. One of the shock cases started screaming; the poor man is screaming still every time someone so much as coughs. One of our VADs has taken him down to that so-useful linen cupboard to help her roll bandages. The other men can’t hear him as much down there, and she says he’s calmer when he has something to do with his hands.

  The war circles us. One week our side is closer; the next week it’s the Huns. I wish someone would take both away and teach them how to throw a cricket ball, or whatever they do to get soldiers to hit the targets they’re aiming at, not us. I suspect last night’s bomb was from the Americans, but as it didn’t come labelled ‘A gift from Uncle Sam’ we remain in ignorance of exactly who our benefactor was.

  A ten-year-old boy called Jean-Marie is my liaison officer, aided by what I had thought was my dog, but he has deserted me for a small boy who will throw sticks. Jean-Marie rides his bicycle to the aid stations whenever needed to tell them how many we have to pick up. I try to tell myself the dog is guarding him, though Charlie’s only talent seems to be catching those sticks.

  One day, of course, Jean-Marie will be shot, and that will be my fault. But for now, well, he is saving lives and, better still, he knows it. And perhaps the war will even end with one ten-year-old boy still alive.

  So far here we have the local village doctor, Monsieur le Docteur Armoire, who is too old for the army but manages to give us an hour of help and instruction a day; two English VADs, Sylvia and Sloggers, and dear Dodders and the others who bring the cases in their ambulances and now sleep here too, to help when things get bad; Madame Fuchon who cooks and cleans, with the help of her sister’s cousin’s aunt (no, not really, but a relationship nearly as complex); our small Jean-Marie and Mademoiselle Marie, whom I found one morning changing the bandages of a new patient, a Frenchman judging by his uniform. He died that afternoon — did I tell you they bring the hopeless cases here as well? At least they die surrounded by smiles and clean floors. We are careful about both.

  I thought Mademoiselle would leave then too; I think she knew him, because she sat by his body all afternoon. But when the cart came she didn’t follow it to the funeral. By suppertime she was checking the dressings as though she had always been here.

  We also have Jean-Marie’s mother, who does our wash
ing in a copper fuelled by who knows what. Dried bullock manure, I think, from the smell. Our aprons are stained but boiled, and so are we, from the constant steam of the sterilisers, although we at least use coal, not manure. Or the merchant promised it was coal. It looks more like dust.

  We all share the three staff beds between us — no point in our having a bed each when we have to sleep in shifts, and anyway, we’re hardly in them. I do sleep. Exhaustion is a wonderful drug. There are dreams, of course, but we all have dreams.

  Except Dodders, maybe. Did I tell you she brought her motorbike to Flanders and now here to France? Perfectly useless, as some vital part is broken, but it shares our bedroom, oil and all. I was talking to Sylvia last night, said Dodders was a miracle; she alone never has to force a smile. Sylvia said it was because for her the men don’t matter. She would cry if they were motorbikes. Instead they are simply a cause, like votes for women or the old-age pension. You don’t cry for them, you fight.

  Is she right? I don’t know. Just thank God for Dodders and Sylvia and Mademoiselle Marie, and if anything happens to Jean-Marie …

  Forgive me once again for writing to you like this. It is strange, but you are now my oldest friend — in both senses of the word ‘oldest’. They would be so impressed back home — ‘my friend the dowager duchess’.

  I’d like to tell Miss Lily that I have a definite diagnosis for genuine shell shock now: a man who is not interested in THAT has shell shock. All her training, and none of it useful here. I suppose she is still vanished? I wrote to her via Shillings last week — or maybe it was last month. But of course, no reply.

  Poor Miss Lily. Charm is no weapon against war, not this kind of war. We are all essentially powerless. No, that’s not true. We all have power over small things, and I suppose those who own munitions factories, the Kruppses and the Schneiders, have the power to make more money. My father too, probably, though at least he is feeding people, not killing them.

  May I make one request, Your Grace? I expected a letter from Captain McIntyre, but one hasn’t arrived yet, and I am worried. The mail from here is so uncertain, so he may write to Wooten. If a letter arrives, could you telephone Mr Slithersole? He will make sure it is couriered safely to me. Mr Slithersole assures me that Captain McIntyre’s name has not been on the casualty lists, but I am still most concerned, especially as he may be under French command and so may be missed by both sets of list-makers.

  Thank you for reading about my glooms, Your Grace, and thank you for sending me your love. I return you mine, with my most grateful thanks,

  Sophie

  ‘Mademoiselle?’ Sophie looked up from writing her letter at the kitchen table. There was too much she could not say to the duchess, nor to anyone else: the guilt at the useless deaths caused by Sophie Higgs; the unknown fates of Angus and Dolphie, her fault as well; the knowledge that saving lives — any number of lives — did not lessen the crime of taking others.

  ‘Oui, Jean-Marie?’ The boy danced beside her holding the bucket for the dirty dressings. Charlie peered wistfully from the doorway, banned from the wards. Even a year ago she would have been shocked that a child might see the wounds beneath the bandages; horrified at the thought of sending a ten-year-old bicycling through a war.

  ‘Mademoiselle, why are you beautiful?’

  She stared at him. Her hair had not been washed for a week, and that had been six scrubs with carbolic soap to remove lice; her dress was fouled with substances it was best to forget; her soul stained with the deaths of those she had killed, or caused to be killed; and all that for nothing, except, perhaps, to bring her here, where she could do a little good amidst the horror. ‘I’m glad you think I am beautiful, Jean-Marie,’ she replied at last.

  He looked at her critically. ‘I do not think you are really beautiful,’ he said with a child’s candour. ‘Your hair should not be messy, no? And your hands?’ He shrugged.

  That was fair. ‘Then why do you ask?’

  He shrugged. ‘The men do not watch the other mesdemoiselles as they do you. Sometimes they smile at you. It is the only time the men smile, I think. Sometimes I too have a feeling you are beautiful, mademoiselle, just like the men do.’

  Sophie looked at him helplessly. What could she tell a child? Her sway, her walk, her glances, the set of her shoulders, how she could seem to smile up at a man even if he was lying in pain below her?

  ‘I was taught how to look at people and smile,’ she compromised at last. ‘That can make you look beautiful, even if you aren’t.’

  He accepted that. ‘Mademoiselle, I forgot. I came to give you this.’

  He held out a crumpled envelope. ‘A telegram,’ he said importantly. He watched as she opened the envelope. ‘May I read it, mademoiselle?’

  ‘You do not read private telegrams, Jean-Marie.’

  Saw Captain McIntyre’s name listed missing in action stop thought you should know am so sorry stop thank you for your kindness stop love Emily stop

  Her body had vanished. No. She looked at her hand holding the telegram and saw that it was still there. Her next thought was, How can I bear this? An almost-wish that he were dead, so she could mourn. One by one they disappear, she thought.

  ‘Missing’ could mean so many things. Taken prisoner; injured in some small private hospital less well run than hers, where a man might lie for weeks or even months unaccounted for. It might also mean his body was shattered or under mud, that warm strong body she had loved …

  She who had condemned Emily for sending men to their deaths had done the same, and with the same arrogant self-righteousness.

  ‘Mademoiselle, you are not sick?’

  ‘No. No, I am well, Jean-Marie.’

  ‘Le Docteur, he is waiting for you.’

  ‘I will come now.’ Nothing to be done, she thought. Only to wait, like women across the world now. Easier to wait when there was work to do.

  ‘Mademoiselle, may I see the maggots again today?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Dr Armoire’s maggots,’ he said. ‘I like to see them wriggle, Mademoiselle, and how they get fat …’

  For a moment she felt dizzy. She had seen maggot-infested wounds, of course; any man who had been lying on the field for more than a couple of days risked having his wounds infested. But they worked so hard to keep the wounds here clean …

  Was Angus lying wounded somewhere, crawling with maggots?

  ‘Jean-Marie, I want you to take a message for me. Could you ask your maman if she knows a reliable woman who can do darning? We will pay, of course,’ she added.

  ‘Can I ask her after I have seen the maggots?’

  ‘No,’ said Sophie. ‘No maggots today.’

  Dr Armoire was a small man, his shrunken face sunken in on itself, a moustache hanging above long, yellow teeth.

  His patient was a young English lieutenant. He’d been blown up in a mortar attack and had concussion; all you could do for that was keep the patient quiet and still. Worse were the chunks of flesh blown away all along his left side — face, arms, torso, legs. Miraculously he had no broken limbs, no internal injuries. Weirdly his right side had been almost untouched.

  One eye watched the doctor, then blinked towards Sophie. The right corner of the mouth edged up.

  Jean-Marie is right, she thought with a distant part of her mind. They do smile, even in agony.

  Usually she left the doctor to his work. He did not like the ‘mesdemoiselles’ — women who organised and gave orders, without even the decency to become nuns and wear the veil, with a bishop to oversee them. He was also a man of sense, who saw that the work they were doing was vital. But he made no secret that this was an alliance of necessity.

  ‘Monsieur le Docteur, a million pardons … I heard that perhaps we are having a problem with,’ she lowered her voice, ‘maggots.’

  ‘A problem, mademoiselle? On the contrary, the maggots are most useful.’ The long teeth peered out from under the moustache in what must be a smile. He held out the
box he carried. Small white creatures wriggled on a lump of chicken meat.

  At least, Sophie hoped it was chicken.

  ‘The maggots eat the dead flesh. When flesh rots you get gangrene. Not with maggots, mademoiselle. They eat the dead flesh and leave the wound clean.’

  But maggots are dirty! she wanted to say. Yet he was a doctor, their only doctor. And, she grasped suddenly, this might be the reason why so many of their patients recovered, even from serious wounds.

  ‘They are only for the experienced to use, of course, mademoiselle.’ He watched her carefully in case she or any of the other ‘girls’ might take a fancy to applying them. ‘When a maggot has eaten the dead flesh it starts on the living …’

  Sophie glanced at the man on the bed, thankful he showed no signs of understanding French.

  ‘But I do not permit that, of course. And they must be removed before they grow too big. Which is why I bring my own.’ He nodded again at the small box. He shrugged. ‘Maggots at least we have no shortage of, eh, mademoiselle? No laudanum, no rose water, no leeches … but plenty of maggots.’

  She didn’t want to ask about the leeches.

  ‘But look.’ Monsieur le Docteur pointed to the red flesh of the patient’s arm. The skin that remained was still puffy, but there was no sign of putrefaction, no smell of gangrene. There was even a faint trace of new tissue growing at the edges of the wound.

  ‘This one I think will live.’ Monsieur le Docteur spoke with enormous satisfaction.

  As well he might, thought Sophie. We’ve had no gangrene cases here for weeks. How many wounds became gangrenous at Wooten, despite the English doctor?

  ‘Thank you, monsieur.’ She smiled at the patient, then hesitated. ‘Monsieur le Docteur … would you mind if the boy Jean-Marie sees your maggots before you go? I know you are busy, overburdened. But he is a good boy.’

  Monsieur le Docteur seemed to find nothing odd in regarding a display of maggots as a gift, either because he held them in such high repute or because he remembered his own childhood almost a century before.