Amy

by Peggy Savage

  She was taken by surprise and for a moment didn’t know what to say. ‘I don’t know,’ she said eventually. ‘How can anyone know? I’m just getting through every day.’

  ‘Don’t you have any dreams? Anything you really want to do?’

  He seemed so calm, so reliable and sensible that she was almost tempted to tell him, but that wouldn’t do any good. He couldn’t help her. ‘I’m not going to think about it,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what the world will be like then.’ She didn’t want to talk about herself. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Back to peacetime medicine,’ he said. His voice was filled with enthusiasm. ‘It’s going to get better and better, Amy. We’ve learnt so much already in this dreadful war – so much about surgery and infection and hygiene and nutrition. Science is moving on.’

  She smiled. ‘You sound like my father,’ she said. ‘He’s mad about science.’

  ‘I’d like to meet him,’ he said. ‘He sounds like a man after my own heart.’

  She smiled briefly and looked down, away from him, saying nothing.

  ‘And, of course,’ he said, ‘I’d like to marry and have a family one day.’

  She glanced at him, but he was looking at his cup, stirring his coffee again. When he looked up his expression was bland and casual. ‘How is Helen? Peter will certainly ask me.’

  ‘She’s very well.’ She was relieved that he had changed the subject. ‘She’s a great girl, a good friend. Still very much a suffragist, though that’s been shelved for the time being.’

  ‘I think,’ he said, ‘Peter is in love with her.’

  ‘Is he?’ she said, warily. Apparently he hadn’t changed the subject after all.

  ‘Has Helen said anything?’ he said. ‘Is she in love with him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why? Has he asked you to find out?’

  He looked embarrassed. ‘No, of course not. I just wondered.’ He was silent for a moment, and then he said, ‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea, in a war like this one, to say too much, to get too involved.’ He paused again. ‘I’d hate to think that I might leave a wife, perhaps a child on the way, and not be there to look after them. I couldn’t do that.’ He looked at her, into her eyes. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do. I quite agree with you.’

  He nodded slowly. His expression seemed to her to be a strange mixture of relief and disappointment. What had he expected her to say? ‘Helen will do what she thinks best,’ she said. ‘She is sensible and independent. I would trust her decisions.’

  ‘Of course.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s time I got you back to the hospital or Matron will be after my blood.’

  The cab was waiting outside. He helped her in and followed her. They clopped back to the hospital. ‘I hope you won’t tell Helen about that conversation,’ he said. ‘Peter must make his own decisions, too.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I understand. I won’t say anything.’

  He handed her out at the door. ‘I won’t come in,’ he said. ‘I must be on my way back. Thank you so much for the evening, Amy. I’ll keep in touch.’ She held out her hand. He took it and held it in both of his. He smiled down at her, then turned abruptly and got back into the cab. ‘Gare du Nord,’ he said to the driver, and the cab clopped away down the street.

  She went into the hotel and stood for a moment inside the door. She imagined him reaching the station, taking the train packed with men, getting off the train into an army lorry, bumping along those ravaged roads, reaching the field hospital. She saw him, masked and gowned, operating while shells and bullets screamed around them.

  She walked wearily up the great staircase, tired out by the evening, by the strain of Dan’s conversation, by unspoken emotions, so many things not said. Were all those remarks about marriage and relationships directed at Helen and Peter? She didn’t think so. Dan seemed to be giving her some kind of message. She had to admit now that Helen was probably right and Dan did have feelings for her. But he was also a man in control, who would say nothing until he thought the time was right. He wasn’t facing her with decisions or declarations. He was content, for the moment, to be a friend. He had not attempted to kiss her. He was not Johnny.

  Helen was asleep. Amy was glad about that. She wasn’t ready to give the expected account of the evening. She could be flippant tomorrow.

  Amy knew that she would never forget that April as long as she lived. The English newspapers were late, but got to them eventually. Her father’s letters reported the same things – Zeppelin raids on Newcastle, German aircraft bombing the East Anglian towns, civilians dead, women and children. Nowhere was safe any more. Then, on 22 April, the Germans unleashed chlorine gas on the totally unprepared Allied troops in the trenches. The reports came in. The foul cloud had rolled over the trenches, the men had screamed and clutched their throats, coughed up blood and tissue and died in agony.

  ‘Those Germans signed the Hague Commission in 1907,’ Helen shouted in rage. ‘They agreed never to use poisonous weapons.’

  Amy blanched, unable to reply.

  Soon the men began to come in, blinded, coughing up their lungs, dying. Amy had thought that she had seen everything, but she had never seen anything like this.

  Then the men came in from the battle for Hill 60 and for some reason there were more abdominal wounds than they had seen before. Amy ached to get into the theatre, to anastomose the shattered intestines, remove tattered organs, make the necessary colostomies to save their lives. The surgeons worked hour after hour, day and night. Often Amy was asked to help in theatre, to count swabs, carry away dishes of amputated tissue, apply dressings to dreadful wounds. She watched the surgeons, missing nothing.

  Then, at the end of April, came the disastrous news from Gallipoli, where the ANZACS were dying in their thousands, in a hell of heat, flies, dysentery, skin sores and, of course, the relentless Turkish bullets.

  May, then, and Helen running into their room with a French newspaper. ‘Look Amy. Oh look!’ The Lusitania, a civilian liner on its way to America, had been sunk by German submarines. Over a thousand innocent people were drowned, including more than a hundred Americans who weren’t in the war at all.

  The months ground by, one wearied day after another. The wounded poured in, shot, shelled, gassed; with typhoid, typhus, shell-shocked, exhausted. Time seemed to stand still, unchanging, and yet it flew by; summer, autumn again and the trees turning gold in the boulevards. Neuve Chapelle, Ypres, Loos. One useless battle after another, and thousands dead for nothing, Nurse Edith Cavell, put up against a wall and shot as a spy by the Germans, a woman, a nurse. Christmas again, and New Year’s Day, 1916; the effort to be cheerful for the men, knowing that there was no end in sight.

  Amy dressed, ready for the day, for the endless chores and forced cheerfulness. For a moment she sat back on her bed, her eyes closed. She felt suddenly chilled, as if her blood had turned to ice. She did not want to feel anything, ever again, no pity, no compassion. Feeling was too painful. She could not. They had to go on, day after day, wading through one horror after another, hoping in a kind of foolish fantasy that one day it would end.

  ‘Are you all right, Amy?’ Helen sat on the bed beside her.

  ‘No,’ Amy said. ‘I’m not. I feel as if my heart has been taken out of my body. I don’t think I will ever feel anything again.’

  Helen took her hand. ‘You need someone to put it back,’ she said. ‘You need someone to love you and care for you and put back all the feeling that you’ve lost. I don’t think I could go on if it wasn’t for Peter. Even though I don’t see him very often I know he’s there, thinking about me.’

  ‘I don’t know how you do it, Helen,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how you can risk it – loving someone like that.’

  ‘It’s worth the risk,’ Helen said. ‘It keeps me alive. Let it go, Amy. Take the risk.’

  There was a knock at the door and Helen went to answer it.

  ‘There’s
someone downstairs for Miss Osborne,’ the maid said. ‘It’s an officer.’

  ‘An officer,’ Helen said, smiling. ‘I wonder which one it is. I wonder which one you want it to be.’

  Amy shook her head at her. She went to the dressing-table and checked the neatness of her hair and straightened her cuffs.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  1916

  WHICH one was it? Both of them wrote to her from time to time. Dan’s letters were the same as ever, warm but non-committal. Johnny’s were full of flying, of new aircraft, of sorties over enemy lines and being shot at from the trenches. Sometimes she could hardly bear to read them. He didn’t mention the kiss. She wondered if he even remembered it.

  She walked down the staircase. Johnny, tall and in his Flying Corps uniform, stood out among the uniforms below. He was standing with his back to her, looking out of the window. She felt a glow that rose through her body and flushed her cheeks. It’s been a year, she thought. I haven’t seen him for a year. For a year she had wondered every day whether he was alive. She had waited every day for a letter, telling her that he was well. His letters had arrived at irregular intervals, sometimes two or three together. They were always full of life. He even sounded as if he were enjoying himself. She had wondered often whether she would ever see him again, not because he was dead, God forbid, but because he may not want to see her, because the kiss might have been one of those passing things that happen in wartime, impulsive and meaningless. The memory of the day he took her flying had, for some time, seemed unreal, like a dream, but unlike a dream, retaining clearly every detail. She paused for a moment on the stairs. She just wanted to look at him, to reassure herself that he was really there, and to compose herself. He had not seen her yet.

  She went on down the stairs and walked to him across the hall. ‘Hello Johnny.’

  He turned to her, a smile lighting his face. ‘Amy!’ She held out her hand and he took it in both of his and held it, enclosed in his own. He looked down at her, laughter in his eyes. ‘You do remember me, don’t you?’

  She laughed back up at him. ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘I’m very glad to hear it.’ He looked at her in silence for a moment. ‘It’s been a long time. Too long.’

  She nodded. After a few moments she gently took her hand away, conscious of the many pairs of eyes around them. The hall was thronged, nurses and men and visitors and a man from the post bringing in letters and parcels.

  He grinned at her. ‘A bit like Piccadilly Circus.’

  She nodded and smiled. ‘Even more crowded than that. It’s lovely to see you, Johnny.’

  ‘I’m sorry to just appear like this,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t let you know I was coming. All a bit of a rush. I’m just glad you were here.’ He grinned. ‘Not out with your ambulance rescuing some other admirer.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘It’s so lovely to see you.’ She led him to one of the sofas. ‘How long have you got? How long will you be in Paris?’

  He made a rueful face. ‘About half an hour. I’ve got a new posting. I’m between trains.’ He was looking at her intently as if trying to remember the details of her face. ‘I wanted to see you, even if it’s only for a few minutes. Do you realize I haven’t seen you for nearly a year?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know.’ She glanced around at the busy hall. It was impossible to have more than a casual conversation, or one that appeared to be casual. She looked into his eyes, looking for any sign of strain, of that slow, gradual breaking down that so many of the men carried in their eyes, the wearing down of constant danger and stress. It did not seem to be there. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Enjoying myself, actually. Flying’s still the greatest thing in the world. I’m flying a BE2. It’s a nice machine and the observer has a machine-gun, but I think there is something better in the pipeline – single seaters with guns for the pilots.’

  Amy chose to ignore the guns. She didn’t want to think about it. She nodded. ‘It was wonderful wasn’t it, that day? I never thought I’d be going up in an aeroplane.’

  ‘So you remember?’ His look settled briefly on her mouth. ‘All of it?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘All of it.’

  He looked around him and laughed, a short, humourless laugh. ‘It’s like a bear garden here. I can’t even touch you.’

  She blushed and glanced around her. ‘No.’ One of the sisters walked by, starched apron rustling. One of the patients, balanced on crutches, winked at her.

  ‘How have you been?’ he said. ‘What have you been doing?’

  She gestured with her hand around the hall. ‘Just the same, day after day. It never stops, does it? It never shows any sign of coming to any kind of end. I don’t know how long the men can go on taking this – this carnage.’

  ‘What about you?’ He touched her hand again briefly. ‘Can you go on taking it?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll go on till the end, as long as I’m needed. We all will.’

  He took out his cigarette case. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Nearly all the men smoke.’ A year, she thought, and we can’t say anything that we really want to say.

  He lit his cigarette and leant back against the sofa. ‘I think about that day a lot,’ he said. ‘When I’m up there on my way home over our territory and there’s nothing interesting going on. It’s a favourite memory.’

  ‘All anybody has now is memories,’ she said. ‘Normal living has gone. When will it end? How long…?’

  ‘God knows.’ He drew deeply on his cigarette. ‘You can see it all from up there. You can see the shells exploding, men running and men falling and bodies hurled into the air. The noise is incredible, even over the engine. Sometimes you can even feel it, the plane shaking and vibrating. Sometimes you think that everybody down there must be dead. You wonder how anyone could survive it. I can fly away from it when I’ve done my job. Those men have got to stay there.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re flying, then,’ she said. ‘At least you can sleep in a bed at night.’

  He said nothing and for the first time she saw a fleeting glimpse of that look in the eye, that horror, that wasteland. He looked around for an ashtray and stubbed out his cigarette. He wouldn’t fear death, she knew that. For him and probably all of them, there could be worse things than death. A month ago they had admitted a pilot, rescued from his crashed, exploding aircraft and horribly burned. She dragged her mind away from it. Johnny seemed to be looking into some kind of empty distance. He lit another cigarette.

  She smiled brightly. ‘Look at us,’ she said. ‘We’ve only got a few minutes and we’re talking about the war.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and smiled the smile that so touched her. ‘No more war. I’m due some leave, probably in June. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of you getting leave then too? I want to see you in England again. We could go out, have some fun. We might even be able to go out in the evening on our own. I believe the insistence on chaperons has gone by the board.’

  ‘That would be wonderful,’ she said. ‘I’ve almost forgotten what fun is. Send me some dates, and I’ll try.’

  He glanced at his watch and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. ‘I’ll have to go, Amy. Write to me.’ He looked down into her eyes. ‘And promise me you’ll be in England in June.’ They stood up together and he solemnly shook her hand and laughed. ‘Very formal,’ he said. ‘I’m guarding your reputation, you see.’

  She had a sudden image of the aircraft she and Helen had seen, no one knowing whether they were friend or enemy.

  She put her hand on his arm. ‘Johnny, have you got something on your aircraft now, some sign, so that everybody knows you’re British? We’ve heard of our aircraft being shot at from our own lines.’

  He grinned. ‘We’ve got a big bright circle of red, white and blue. We’ve had it for some time. The Germans have got a big black cross. Appropriate, don’t yo
u think?’

  ‘That’s one worry less then. But I see you’re carrying a pistol.’

  He nodded. ‘A Webley. Just in case.’

  In case of what, she wondered. She didn’t have to voice the question, it was written on her face.

  ‘Don’t worry so much,’ he said. ‘I’ll be fine. And if I’m downed, the Germans are being very decent to pilots.’ He glanced at his watch again. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Look after yourself,’ she said.

  He put on his cap and looked down at her, and then, very briefly, touched her face. He left then, striding out into the street, and away.

  She hurried back into the ward to help with the dressings. Dr Hanfield was in the ward talking to Sister.

  ‘Amy,’ she said, ‘could you come to my office this evening after dinner? There’s something I want to talk to you about.’

  Amy’s heart missed a beat. Now what? Surely Dr Hanfield couldn’t have found out. If she had, what would she do about it? Make her leave? Amy tried to read her face. She didn’t look disturbed or annoyed, but she wouldn’t show her feelings. Maybe it was something else.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there.’

  She met Helen for lunch in the dining-room, worried now about Dr Hanfield; thinking and worrying about Johnny. It was busy, as usual, the maids bustling about with trays and plates.

  ‘Meat and potato pie today,’ Helen said. ‘And carrots and swede. It’s very good.’

  The good smell of the food was underlined by that inescapable odour of the hospital. The staff seemed to carry it about with them, no matter how much they bathed or washed their clothes. Amy sat down and Helen looked at her, bright enquiry on her face.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  Amy couldn’t control her broad smile. ‘It was Johnny.’

  ‘I know that.’ Helen laughed. ‘Everybody knows that. He caused quite a stir. Apparently Dr H. and Sister spotted him before you went down and said hello. He’s one of their great successes.’