by Mary Hooper
‘We have every right. We knew Mr Jasper. Why shouldn’t we raise a glass to his memory?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Molly said doubtfully. She looked across the chapel. ‘Hardly any of the women are going in.’
Poppy stepped down into the aisle and tucked her arm into Molly’s. ‘We’re not like them,’ she said. Then she added in a whisper, ‘We are modern young women, Molly. We’re even going to have the vote when the war is over!’
‘Blimey,’ said Molly.
Poppy saw Miss Philippa Cardew, with her glossy hair and her deep purple velvet coat, as soon as she entered the vestry. So she was still around! Was she here as Freddie’s intended, or just as a friend of the family? And where was Freddie, anyway? Wasn’t he going to look for her? Had he seen her smiling so inappropriately and was cross with her?
Poppy and Molly took a glass of sherry each and made raised-?eyebrow faces at each other at their sophistication. After a few moments, Molly became engaged in conversation with a good-looking young officer in full Highland uniform, and Poppy decided she should leave them to it. She made her way towards Mrs de Vere to pay her condolences. As she did so, she was struck with how much more self-assured, how much more womanly she felt dressed as a nurse. She might not be qualified yet, but anyone seeing her wouldn’t know it.
She swallowed the last of the sherry and put the empty glass on a passing tray.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs de Vere,’ she began, reaching her former employer and managing to resist dropping a curtsey to her.
‘Poppy? Is it really you?’ Mrs de Vere asked in a low voice, peering through her veil.
‘It is, madam.’
‘How are you, dear? You’re a nurse, I see. That’s a wonderful vocation . . . There’s nothing more important than the welfare of our boys.’
‘That’s very true,’ Poppy said, nodding.
‘And I understand that you saw my own dear boy on his way home?’
‘I did.’ He must have told his family about their meeting, Poppy realised. ‘And please do accept my . . . my sincere . . .’ And then her voice caught in her throat and she had to stop.
‘But do tell me about how he was looking and what he said to you.’
Poppy swallowed. ‘Well, he said he’d only had a few weeks at the front, but he hoped he’d be returning there soon because his men were first rate. He seemed in good spirits. I don’t believe he had any idea how . . . how poorly he really was, madam.’
‘He would have been hiding it, you see,’ said Mrs de Vere. ‘He was always the bravest of boys as a child. If he fell over and skinned his knee, he’d never cry.’
‘He said he was very much looking forward to seeing his family.’
‘Did he?’ Mrs de Vere was now looking at her with expectant, hopeful eyes.
‘And especially to seeing you, ma’am,’ Poppy continued, somehow knowing that this was what the other woman wanted to hear. ‘He said he couldn’t wait to see his dear mother again.’
Mrs de Vere’s eyes filled with tears, and she smiled and pressed Poppy’s hand wordlessly, gratefully, before she moved on to speak to the next person in line.
Freddie was still nowhere to be seen and Poppy, not wanting to leave, spoke for some time to an elderly gentleman by shouting through his ear trumpet. Ten minutes later, with many of the congregation having left, Molly came up and whispered that her new friend was going to walk her back into town, and she hoped she’d see Poppy soon.
To occupy herself, Poppy moved slowly around the chapel, reading the marble plaques embedded in the wall which commemorated the brave, the industrious and the charitable de Vere dead. By the time she’d gone through them all twice, though, the vestry held no more than a handful of people – and none of them was Freddie de Vere. She would have to leave or it would look very odd indeed. Anyway, she had two trains to catch and had to be back in the hostel by nine o’clock at the latest.
She sighed. Apart from the look when he’d entered the chapel, she hadn’t had the smallest amount of contact with Freddie. Was that, then, the end of it all? Surely she’d meant something to him? Surely his feelings had gone a little deeper? She left the chapel, walked down the path towards the road and was just going through the lychgate when she heard footsteps hurrying down the gravel path after her.
‘Poppy!’ a voice called. ‘Please wait!’
Poppy turned. It was him.
He reached her, took her fingers and pressed them between his hands, regarding her with such tenderness that she was struck dumb and could only stare back at him.
‘I’m so sorry, Poppy. I nearly missed you,’ he said. ‘I was at my brother’s graveside saying my own goodbyes.’ On her not replying, he added, ‘He’s buried in the crocus lawn at the back of the chapel, you see.’
‘You . . . your family must be heartbroken,’ Poppy said.
He nodded. ‘Mother is especially cut up. Her first-born son and all that.’
Poppy took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry if I looked as if . . .’ she began, and was about to continue with an expression of regret for smiling in the church. However, Freddie squeezed her fingers and this tiny gesture effectively stopped her speaking again. So much for the competent and sensible nurse, she thought later; the sophisticated modern miss about to get the vote.
He kept hold of her hand, stood back and gave her an appraising look. ‘You make a splendid nurse, Poppy.’
‘I feel a little bit of a fraud,’ she confessed. ‘I haven’t done any real nursing yet.’
‘Well, you certainly look the part.’ He hesitated. ‘I must apologise,’ he said then. ‘I said I’d write to you, but I haven’t. The thing is, I find it quite difficult to write a decent letter. At school we were taught how to write essays and do translations and so on, but not how to write letters. At least, not that sort of letter.’
‘Which sort?’
‘Well, you know . . .’
‘Do I?’ Poppy said, blushing a little.
‘We don’t get taught how to write letters to young ladies.’
‘Oh. I see,’ Poppy said, her heart beating fast.
He shook his head. ‘I’ve often thought of our meeting in London and cursed my stupidity. I should have helped Aunt Maud in with her trunk and then come to find you. What a chump you must have thought me!’
‘I did not at all!’
‘And then later at the house I tried to speak to you, but you always seemed to be with Cook or Molly or someone, and I didn’t know what to say anyway.’ He gazed at her. ‘No more than I do now. Believe me, this sort of thing is all very new to me.’
‘I need to get to the station,’ she said, her heart thudding at her own forwardness. ‘Perhaps we could walk down and talk on the way.’
But Freddie was shaking his head. ‘I’m so sorry, Poppy,’ he said. ‘The cars are taking all the family back to London and Mother has a meal booked at a hotel somewhere. But I will write to you. Next week, I promise.’
‘That would be lovely.’ A letter from Freddie, she thought, would be almost as good as speaking to him. In a letter, he must surely talk about his feelings.
She gave him her YWCA address and he wrote it down carefully in a small leather notebook.
‘If my regiment gets deployed abroad we’ll be going through Southampton,’ he said, putting the book away. ‘If there’s time, we can meet and do something nice – go dancing, perhaps?’
‘Oh, how lovely!’ Poppy felt breathless at the very thought of it. One moment she’d been tragically unloved, the next she was being whirled around a ballroom in Freddie’s arms.
‘I must go,’ Freddie said ruefully, and he glanced back towards the chapel, where the lone figure of Mrs de Vere could be seen, outlined against the late sun. ‘Mother’s looking for me. Goodbye . . . Farewell . . . I’m sure we’ll see each other soon.’
There was a tiny moment when they both stared at each other, unsure of what to do next, then his lips came down upon hers in a butterfly’s touch of a kiss, quick and tender.
‘Goodbye,’ he said. ‘Take very good care of yourself.’
‘And he told me that his regiment hoped to be going to France soon and on their way to the ship he would see me and take me dancing!’ Poppy said the next morning, finishing telling the tale to Matthews and Jameson but leaving out the kiss until she and Matthews were on their own. She helped herself to another portion of cornflakes; she’d be working from eight in the morning until eight at night and knew she’d never last otherwise.
‘You won’t be allowed to go dancing,’ Jameson said immediately. ‘It’s in the agreement we signed when we joined. No consorting with members of the opposite sex, and certainly no dancing.’
‘Oh, that’ll be all right,’ Matthews said. ‘You’ll just have to say he’s your brother and you’re seeing him before he goes to France. My sister has had quite a few different brothers pass through Dover at various times! You still won’t be given permission to go dancing – even with a brother – but no one will know. After all, they can’t expect us to live like nuns.’
‘Actually, I think they do,’ said Jameson. ‘But you say this is a de Vere boy?’
Poppy nodded. ‘The de Vere boy. There’s only one now.’
Jameson looked at her doubtfully. ‘And does his mother know about you?’
Poppy shrugged. She really didn’t want to think about that. She wanted to think about the two of them being most romantically, wonderfully in love – for they were, surely? She wanted to think about Freddie going off to fight and distinguishing himself in some way, and of herself working alongside him, a talented and dedicated nurse.
Just let him come to Southampton soon!
The letter was delivered the following morning. It was in a parchment envelope that proved to be tissue-lined. Addressed in dark blue ink, it had neat writing and bore the de Vere insignia on the back.
Poppy knew instinctively that it wasn’t from Freddie. She also knew before she opened it that she wasn’t going to like its contents.
The embossed address at the top, Airey House, Mayfield, had been crossed through.
Somerset
September 1915
Miss Pearson,
I write to say how shocked I was by your behaviour at my elder son’s memorial service. I clearly saw what was going on and believe you must have come with the express intention of making a play for Frederick, acting as you did in the most brazen manner.
Frederick is now our only son and, of course, the de Vere heir, so one expects to come across young women fortune-hunters, but to attempt to ensnare him at such a time, when he is attempting to deal with the sudden and cruel death of his brother, seems very low behaviour indeed.
I will have no hesitation about informing both Devonshire House and your family of your conduct unless you cease all communication with my son forthwith.
Mrs V. de Vere
Poppy, furious and indignant, showed the letter to Matthews, who gave her a reassuring hug.
‘There’s absolutely nothing she can do. All right, she says she’ll inform your family, but really – so what? Anyway, your mother’s gone away, hasn’t she?’
Poppy nodded. ‘She’s staying in Wales.’
‘So . . . Mrs High and Mighty: what on earth did you do to make her so angry?’
Poppy sighed. ‘We kissed . . .’
‘You didn’t tell me that before!’ Matthews said, pretending shock but unable to prevent a smile showing through.
‘Just the smallest kiss . . . oh! We were standing at the bottom of the slope and she was standing at the top. She must have seen us.’
‘She had no business looking!’
‘No, I know . . . but I shouldn’t like her to tell the matrons at Devonshire House about it.’
‘What could she possibly say?’ Matthews said, spreading margarine across her toast. ‘It’s a free country. Anyone is allowed to fall in love with anyone else.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, and it’s going to happen more and more,’ said Matthews airily. ‘A few years back a boy might have given a girl the glad eye but never bothered to take it further. Now, with everyone being separated and a generation of men going off to war and getting killed, there’s an urgency about falling in love. Everyone wants to live life to the full.’
‘So what should I do? Write back to her?’
‘Certainly not,’ Matthews said. ‘Just wait until Freddie comes to Southampton and then go dancing with him and have the most splendid time.’
‘Yes . . .’ said Poppy doubtfully.
‘And sometime during the evening you could mention that his mother doesn’t seem too happy about you seeing each other. I bet he’ll say that it’s none of her rotten business and that’ll be the end of it. Being forbidden to see you will only make him keener.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘I really do,’ Matthews assured her.
Chapter Twelve
The following morning, Sister Malcolm arrived at the hostel at first light with a wad of paperwork under her arm, ready to tell the new VADs which hospital they’d be assigned to. They had all gained their certificates in first aid and home nursing, so knew how to pack and bandage wounds (at least, simulated ones), to bed-bath a patient as modestly as possible, to sterilise bandages, apply poultices, take temperatures and to be discreet in the giving out and collection of bed pans. Which of these duties they would be permitted to do, however, would be entirely down to the ward sister they would be working under.
There were just ten of them now. Two of their number, having come from homes where a multitude of servants had seen to their every need, had found the long hours and sometimes tedious tasks too much for them. Poppy, by contrast, hadn’t found the hours as long or the tasks as tiring as when she was working for the de Veres. Experience in service, she thought, was an ideal starting point for a girl who wanted to be a VAD.
The girls gathered in the YWCA common room, all nervous but rather excited at the thought of getting their hands on real patients.
‘There are scores of hospitals within the Southampton area,’ Sister Malcolm began, ‘but the Royal Victoria Military Hospital at Netley is, without doubt, the largest of these, and its capacity has recently been vastly increased by the addition of a hut hospital in the surrounding grounds. Each of these huts contains at least two fully trained nurses, but they also rely very much on Red Cross VADs to carry out the day-to-day work. As the war continues and the number of injured men increases, they will be in need of more of you. You will therefore all be going to Netley.’
Poppy and Matthews exchanged glances. They’d both been hoping that they would be taken on by a small hospital, thinking it would be easier to get to know the patients that way and to gain a position of responsibility. A very large establishment was not what they’d wanted.
‘How big is it, Sister?’ someone asked.
‘Nearly two hundred new huts have been built,’ Sister Malcolm replied.
‘But . . . huts,’ said Jameson in a rather disparaging tone.
Sister Malcolm looked at her. ‘Did you think you’d be working in the Ritz Hotel, Jameson?’
‘Well, no, but –’
‘The huts are wards. They are bang up to date, they have their own kitchens, bathrooms and nursing stations and all the equipment you’d expect to find in a brand new hospital.’
Jameson nodded, contrite, but Sister hadn’t finished with her.
‘I’m sorry we can’t put you in a brick-built place, Jameson, but there hasn’t been time to construct one – not when more and more men with the most dreadful injuries are coming in every day. Every single day!’
Jameson looked uncomfortable. ‘No. I see that. Sorry, Sister,’ she murmured.
‘Excuse me, Sister,’ Poppy asked, trying to help out Jameson. ‘How many beds are there in the hospital altogether?’
Sister Malcolm consulted her paperwork. ‘Before the new wards were built, Netley could hold a thousand men. Now it can house nearly t
wo and a half thousand. They deal with surgical cases, medical cases, men with dysentery, TB and nerve trouble. In fact, they take on every type of war-related illness and surgery.’
Poppy gasped. There had been perhaps three or four hundred soldiers on the train going to Manchester, and it had been shocking to see so many and with such critical injuries. But to realise that there was a hospital in this local area with a total of two and a half thousand beds just for war injuries! It was a figure almost beyond her imagination.
‘Are you shocked by that number of casualties?’ Sister Malcolm asked quietly.
Poppy nodded, as did some of the others.
‘I’m afraid every encounter, every battle, now produces hundreds, sometimes thousands, of casualties.’
The girls were silent, trying to take in the magnitude of what faced them.
Sister Malcolm shook her head slowly. ‘It’s enough to break one’s heart. Many of the young lads whom Kitchener recruited at the start of the war didn’t survive their first battle. We’re losing a whole generation of young men.’
‘But the Germans are losing young men, too, aren’t they?’ said one of the girls.
Sister Malcolm looked at her. ‘Do you think that makes it any better? Any fairer?’ she asked, and the girl reddened. ‘A whole generation wiped out in Germany, in France, Belgium and England. Where’s the sense in that?’ Finishing the sentence with a catch in her voice, Sister Malcolm then stared out of the window for a full two minutes. When she turned back to the girls, she said, ‘I realise I have a rather unorthodox view of war, one that the majors and generals might not agree with. I’m just relieved not to be a man, for then I’d be forced to fight and I don’t know if I could.’ She hesitated, as if she was trying to keep her feelings under control, then added, ‘I just want to emphasise that at Netley you will have an enormous number of young men to care for, all of them grievously wounded.’
Poppy closed her eyes for a moment and visualised a long, long line of hospital beds, each bearing an injured soldier, stretching off into the hazy distance.
