by Dilly Court
‘No, thank you, Daisy; I need a proper drink. Beatrice, my dear, run to the kitchen and fetch the cooking brandy. Ask Ruby to join us too.’
‘What on earth for, Victor?’ Gwendoline demanded suspiciously. ‘Ruby’s place is in the kitchen.’
He shook his head. ‘That young woman looks after us well. She should hear the good news.’
Gwendoline choked on her sherry. ‘Victor, do you have to be so egalitarian? Ruby is a servant. We must draw the line somewhere.’
‘The old order is changing, my dear,’ he said solemnly. ‘Things will never be quite the same again when this dreadful war ends, and I for one am glad. Ruby has been through a hard time and we let her down in her hour of need. What’s more we’ll probably have to depend upon her to look after us in our old age.’
Beatrice had been about to leave the room but she hesitated, frowning. ‘Don’t say that, Father. You’ve still got Daisy and me.’
‘I know, my dear. But you’ll be married before long and then it will be Daisy’s turn.’
She stared at him in disbelief. ‘You don’t object to Jimmy and me getting married?’
‘I bow to the inevitable,’ he said, smiling. ‘Now where’s my brandy?’
‘You’re the best father in the whole word,’ Beatrice cried delightedly. ‘I’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’ She ran from the room, leaving the door to swing on its hinges.
‘Have you gone mad?’ Gwendoline said angrily. ‘Are you really going to allow her to marry a farmer?’
‘They’re very well-to-do farmers,’ Daisy said gently. ‘And Jimmy’s a good man.’
Victor nodded his head. ‘I agree, Daisy. And then it will be your turn.’
‘Unless Rupert gets himself killed in this dreadful war,’ Gwendoline said darkly. She glanced at Daisy beneath her lashes. ‘I’m sorry, but you know how many young men have already gone to their deaths. It’s a great pity that you didn’t get a wedding ring on your finger while you had the chance.’
‘Gwendoline,’ Victor said severely. ‘That’s enough of defeatist talk.’ He turned to Daisy with a tender smile. ‘You’re a brave young woman, my dear. I doubt if I’ve ever told you this, but I’m very proud of you, and I hope and pray that Rupert will be spared and that you will marry and have a long and happy life together.’
Daisy grasped his hand and gave it an affectionate squeeze. ‘Thank you, Father. I do love you both, even if it’s not the done thing to say so in this family.’
Victor returned the pressure on her fingers and his eyes were moist. ‘Perhaps that’s the one good thing to come out of the horrors of war. Maybe we appreciate each other a little more and are not afraid to show our true feelings.’
‘You’re getting maudlin, Victor,’ Gwendoline said crossly. ‘Sit down and stop embarrassing me.’
Daisy was to remember her mother’s acerbic response as she endured a rough Channel crossing in a troopship, but it brought a smile to her lips. The family were accustomed to Gwendoline’s adverse reaction to any outward display of affection or emotion. Mother, Daisy thought, had been born with a stiff upper lip, and perhaps she herself had inherited a small part of that stoicism. Maybe that had been the real reason why Rupert had been unable to share his deepest thoughts and fears with her. Perhaps if she had shown more sympathy for his obvious distress he might have behaved in a different manner. The bleak expression in his eyes haunted her and she was finding it increasingly difficult to forgive herself for allowing him to suffer his private demons alone. It was in a sombre mood that she arrived in Calais and made her way to Lamarck through streets pockmarked with bomb sites, and buildings reduced to skeletons of charred brick and stone.
It was midday and quiet in the old convent. The motorised vehicles were all out, leaving the courtyard empty. The cobblestones gleamed with patches of oil and puddles of soapy water were evaporating in the feeble rays of the September sun. Daisy checked in with her superior and was greeted warmly but wearily and almost immediately put to work. Very soon her brief sojourn in England was a faded sepia tint of a memory and she was pitched once again into the shocking reality of war. The daily hardships, the constant battle to save lives and the terrible suffering of the sick and wounded were eased only by the companionship and mutual support that the women gave unstintingly to each other.
Once again, Daisy and Clarice worked as a team, driving the old Ford ambulance. Each morning their first task was to clean and disinfect the inside of their vehicle. Their eyes stung from the fumes of strong disinfectant and the smell of carbolic clung to their hair and clothes. It was a relief afterwards to be out in the fresh air while completing the routine maintenance checks on the engine before setting off for their first pick-up that day. Daisy sometimes joked that she could always get a job in a garage when the war was over, and she tried to ignore her broken fingernails and oil-ingrained, calloused hands.
The days shortened as winter approached and at Christmas there was a festive atmosphere at Lamarck. Food parcels from home were shared around and the Belgian doctors brought wine to add to the jollity of the occasion. Thus far in the war the FANYs had been working only with the Belgians, but after the disastrous offensive at Aubers Ridge earlier in the year the British authorities had had second thoughts about making use of their skills. Grace Ashley-Smith, who was now Mrs Ronald McDougall, having married an officer in the King’s Own, had worked tirelessly to persuade the authorities to recognise the FANY and allow them to work with the British army. There remained many in the establishment who disapproved of women in a men’s world, but in December, after a long, hard battle with the powers that be, Grace announced that at last their work was being recognised. They would be allowed to provide transport for sick and wounded British soldiers, and in January 1916 Unit Three was formed.
Daisy and Clarice were amongst the first to be sent to the new camp where tents had been pitched on the sand dunes overlooking the Channel. They endured the winter living in the draughty tents, which had been intended for the Indian army and were not well suited to the chilly northern climate. They slept in army-issue sleeping bags on flimsy camp beds, but some of the more fortunate women commandeered bathing machines and converted these into sleeping quarters. All through the long winter more permanent accommodation was being built, and when it was completed they had the luxury of a cook house and a bath house. Living in a camp also meant sharing the day to day duties of gathering and chopping wood to feed the furnace, and cooking. Then there was the general maintenance of the site, which included keeping the latrines as sanitary as possible, which was not the most popular task, but everyone pitched in without too much grumbling.
When winter melted into spring Clarice discovered a liking for gardening. She dug a small plot in which, as the seasons progressed, she grew vegetables to supplement their diet. In their lighter moments they decided that when the war finally ended Daisy was to become a mechanic and maintain Lord Pendleton’s motor cars, and Clarice would become head gardener at Pendleton Park. She declared herself eager and willing to take orders from the future Lady Pendleton, but Daisy said nothing to this. She had not told anyone except Bea that Rupert had ended their engagement. It was a secret she hugged to herself, buried deep with the feelings she had once had for Bowman. She wrote letters to Rupert, receiving the occasional brief note in reply, telling her very little other than that he was still alive.
As to Bowman, she had no idea what had happened to him. He might be dead for all she knew, or clapped in irons in a military prison, awaiting his sentence for desertion. She tried not to think about things that might have been. Life was much simpler now. It was merely a question of getting through each day as it came, and she knew that worse was to come.
It started in July when the casualties came pouring in from the battlefields of the Somme, and life became even more dangerous with Zeppelin raids on Calais. The sounds of gunfire and exploding shells reverberated in the clear summer skies with shrapnel falling like deadly rain.
There was little respite for anyone and Daisy worked shifts covering the night hours as well as daytime. Sometimes she went for several days with little or no sleep as the injured men arrived in their thousands.
She enjoyed a brief home leave in September but was back in France within a week. Her one regret was the fact that she had not been able to go home for her sister’s wedding, but she was at least able to attend the christening of Beatrice and Jimmy’s daughter, and was godmother to little Joyce Daisy Gurney. This time her memories of home had been happy ones. Her father’s business was doing well and he could not speak highly enough of Arley Meadows. At least, Daisy thought, she could take some credit for that turn of events, even though it had been Beatrice who had found the discrepancies in the books.
On a different level she was pleased to see that her mother had fully accepted Ruby as a key member of the household, if not one of the family. Young Martin, now a playful toddler, was thriving and to Daisy’s surprise he was quite a favourite with her mother. But then Teddy had always been their mother’s pet, and perhaps having a small boy in the house was a small consolation to Gwendoline after the loss of her beloved son. Whatever the reason, she doted on Martin and he responded with uninhibited displays of affection. He was an attractive little fellow with thick, dark curls and huge brown eyes, and was a miniature version of his father. Daisy had felt a tug at her heartstrings when she saw him on her first night at home, but he was a genuinely lovable child and it was impossible to hold his parentage against him.
Ruby was every inch the proud mother. She had put on weight and was patently thriving on the fresh country air and the security of living and working at Rainbow’s End. Daisy couldn’t have been happier for all of them, but in some ways she was beginning to feel excluded. Her wartime experiences were so different from the placid life in rural Essex, and so horrific, that she could not even begin to make them understand the suffering she had witnessed daily.
Perhaps the only person with whom she felt quite comfortable now was Lady Pendleton, and her most relaxing moments during her brief sojourn in Nutley Green had been spent at Pendleton Park. There was a bond between herself and Lady Pendleton and a mutual understanding that was hard to explain, but Daisy had felt inexplicably a part of the lovely old house and its peaceful grounds, even though it would never be her home. It saddened her to think that she had allowed her infatuation for Bowman to influence her to such an extent that she had rebuffed the man who had genuinely loved her. She knew that she had lost Rupert forever, and it hurt more than she could have imagined. She had thrown away her chance of real happiness, and she would have to live with the knowledge for the rest of her life. It was no more than she deserved and it was the price she must pay for her folly.
She set to work back at Unit Three, making a huge effort to put everything out of her mind apart from the day to day duties that were put upon her, and there were many and all of them distressing and painful. She comforted the dying and endeavoured to keep up the spirits of the seriously wounded men she transported to hospital or to the docks for repatriation. Some of them were mere boys and many of them reminded her painfully of Teddy. She could only hope that someone kind had eased his last moments as he left this world on his journey into the unknown. She had seen so much suffering that she was beginning to think that miracles never happened.
As the year drew towards its end the fighting intensified and there were more and more casualties. The weather closed in and everyone agreed that it was the coldest winter in living memory. Daisy drove her ambulance wearing the fur coat that Lady Pendleton had given her before the war. Driving at night was even more hazardous than in daytime. The use of headlights had been banned as they increased the danger of being picked off by enemy snipers, and windscreens were taken out in order to prevent injuries from flying glass. Adding to the perils of night driving, the roads were rutted with shell holes and covered in freezing snow.
One bitterly cold night just before Christmas Daisy was huddled round the Primus stove in the cookhouse waiting for the inevitable call for an ambulance. There had been intense fighting that day and all the other vehicles were already out. It was unlikely that she would be able to spend the night in the comparative warmth of the hut, and sure enough the call came at midnight. She donned her fur coat and went out into a snowstorm. It took several attempts to crank the engine into life and she leapt into the cab, clenching her teeth in an attempt to stop them chattering.
She had been given instructions to pick up the wounded soldiers from one of the canal barges and take them to the hospital in Calais. The casualties who travelled this way were always the most seriously wounded who could not stand being jolted about for long hours in the field ambulances, and she knew that it was going to be a difficult task. She set off muffled in her coat, squinting as the driving snow half blinded her and stung her face.
She arrived at the landing stage in time to see the last ambulance drive slowly into the darkness, and she climbed down onto the hard-packed snow. Already she was stiff with cold and her hands and feet were numb despite her fur-lined gloves and boots. The feather-like flakes swirled around her, thick as fog, as she tied back the canvas flaps at the back of the vehicle. The stretcher bearers made their way carefully over the frozen ground and Daisy stood aside as they lifted their charges gently into the ambulance. It was just a matter of handing over the paperwork and Daisy was about to climb into the driver’s seat when a shout from the barge made her stop and look over her shoulder.
‘Got another passenger for you, love. Walking wounded so he don’t need no special treatment.’ The private who had been supervising the disembarkation of the injured soldiers came towards her, half dragging a man in a ragged uniform who was limping badly. He thrust him unceremoniously into the back of the ambulance. ‘He’s one of them Belgians, miss. Don’t speak much English, but he won’t give you no trouble. I think he got separated from his unit, or else he could be on the run. Anyway, that’s not our problem. Just deliver him to the hospital and let them work it out.’ He saluted with a cheery grin and walked away, swallowed up almost immediately by the blizzard.
Daisy shrugged her shoulders. Her job was simply to obey orders, and the sooner she delivered her charges and returned to camp the better. This was not the sort of night when anyone ought to be out and about. She started the engine with even more difficulty this time and climbed into the driver’s seat. She wished that Clarice was with her but she had been called out earlier and, at this moment, was probably drinking hot cocoa in the hospital canteen. She drove off slowly, not wanting to skid and cause more pain than necessary to the wounded men, but after a while she began to realise that she must have missed the road into town. She could see only a few yards ahead and the countryside was blanketed in snow which obliterated any landmarks that she might have recognised. Driving in total darkness it was difficult to keep to the road and she dared not stop for fear that the engine would cut out and they would be stuck here until morning. With a sinking heart she realised that she had lost all sense of direction. She was totally disorientated. It was eerily quiet as though the guns had been silenced by the snowfall, and there was no sign of habitation.
There was little that she could do other than keep going straight ahead. There must be a village or a farmhouse along the way soon. She was chilled to the bone and exhausted. She could not see the petrol gauge but she knew that it must be getting low. She was beginning to panic when she thought she saw a glimmer of light ahead, and she headed for it in the hope that she might find shelter for herself and the injured men until morning.
As she drew closer she could see that it was a rather grand house, its outline emphasised by the snow clinging to the stonework giving it the appearance of a huge, glistening iced cake. She braked and came to a halt at the foot of the stone steps leading up to the front door. She slid to the ground, flexing her cramped muscles. She had one foot on the bottom step when the door opened and a ghostlike figure stood on the threshold brandishi
ng a gun.
For a terrifying moment Daisy thought it something other-worldly, but then she realised that the woman was a nun. She raised her hands above her head. ‘Don’t shoot.’ She pointed to the red cross on the ambulance although it was only partially visible through the dancing snowflakes. ‘I have wounded men in the ambulance,’ she said, hoping the woman understood her schoolgirl French.
The nun stood there, motionless as if frozen with fear, and when Daisy attempted to approach her she backed into the building, waving the weapon. Daisy came to a halt, realising that she needed help. The wounded soldiers inside the ambulance depended upon her and they would all freeze to death if they could not find shelter. It was then that she remembered the walking wounded. He was probably a Belgian deserter, but he would almost certainly understand French even if he spoke Flemish. He would be able to interpret for her. She ran down the steps and pulled back the flap.
The ragged man toppled out, knocking her to the ground. She scrambled to her feet and helped him to stand. His face was partially covered with a filthy woollen scarf and his eyebrows and lashes were frosted with snowflakes, but she would have known him anywhere.
Chapter Twenty
‘IS IT YOU?’ Daisy said slowly. ‘It can’t be.’
Bowman pulled the scarf from his face, twisting his lips into a semblance of a grin. ‘By God, it’s Daisy. I hardly recognised you.’
Standing in the snow outside what appeared to be a French convent with a nun pointing a rifle at them, Daisy felt as though she was in the middle of a bizarre nightmare, and at any moment she would wake up in her sleeping bag back at camp. ‘They said you were a Belgian,’ she said slowly. ‘I thought you were dead.’
Bowman’s crack of laughter echoed off the cold stones. ‘I will be if I have to stand in the bloody snow for a moment longer.’ He shuffled towards the steps holding his hands above his head. ‘We need sanctuary, sister,’ he said in fluent French that Daisy was able to interpret because of his English pronunciation.
