Poppy

by Mary Hooper

  There were two armed guards on the door and Poppy had to fill in a form to be admitted. Inside the hut it was bleak – there were no cartoons or posters on the walls, no pictures of music-hall singers cut out of newspapers, no sign of card games, of board games, music or pot plants. There were only three men in the hospital beds and there didn’t seem to be any VADs to attend to them, just two burly male orderlies.

  Billy was in bed, turned towards the wall, with a cage holding the weight of the blankets from his leg.

  ‘Billy,’ Poppy whispered.

  The mound of blankets didn’t move and Poppy was reminded of the way young Thomas had been.

  ‘Billy!’ she hissed again. ‘I’ve only got ten minutes.’

  After a moment, Billy turned in the bed, rolled back the blanket and looked at Poppy, misery etched on his face. He looked so pale and desperate that Poppy, who’d had every intention of speaking to him sharply and saying how disappointed she was, burst into tears. He might have behaved badly, but he was family – her little brother.

  ‘Billy!’ She put her head down on the bed and wept. ‘How could you? What will Ma say? It will break her heart.’

  Billy cried too then, oblivious of the cold stares of the orderlies. When they’d both done nothing but sob for a minute, Poppy dried her eyes on the edge of her apron.

  ‘I have to go back to my ward soon,’ she said, ‘but before I do, I want you to tell me how it happened.’

  Billy sniffed, wiped his nose on his pyjama sleeve. ‘I dunno . . .’

  ‘I need to try and understand. I got your letter and I know what you’ve been going through, but to shoot yourself like that . . . How could you do such a thing?’

  It was a full two minutes before Billy could pull himself together enough to speak, and he did so with a tremor to his voice and many stops and starts. ‘It was like I wrote in my letter to you,’ he said. ‘Guns day an’ night, enough to drive you mad, and you couldn’t put your head above the parapet or you’d get shot at. An’ officers shouting at you, and water in the trenches, an’ nowhere to sit or lay your head, an’ . . . an’ . . .’ he paused and gulped, ‘. . . an’ the mates you’d gone out with ending up splayed on the barbed wire like they was target practice for Fritz, or getting a grenade lobbed at them and lying there on the mud with their guts spilling out or their faces half off . . .’

  ‘Billy!’ Poppy cried in horror, putting up her hand to stop him.

  ‘That’s what it was like. My mate Banksey ’ad both feet shot off and left half his stomach out there, and when they dragged him back he took six hours to die.’ Billy closed his eyes. ‘I could tell you more. I could tell you worse stuff about blokes with their heads blown off an’ rats eating their insides, but I don’t want you to have nightmares like I do.’

  Poppy pressed her lips together, trying to control the wave of nausea sweeping through her body. ‘And so you . . . ?’

  ‘So the morning after Banksey died, when I was supposed to climb out of the trench and run towards Fritz with my bayonet, I just couldn’t do it. I got out my gun an’ . . . and shot myself in the foot and said a sniper had got me. And I’m not sorry I did it. At least I didn’t have to face the Jerries.’

  ‘Sshhh,’ Poppy said, glancing towards the orderlies. ‘But how did the officers find out?’

  ‘The officers bloody know everything, don’t they? You’d think amid all the stuff what’s going on they wouldn’t notice a stray shot, but they did. Anyway, the lieutenant was already watching me – I hadn’t exactly been the first up and over the day before. Had the shakes badly, I did, and a blinding headache, and I’d been vomiting.’

  ‘Wasn’t that enough to get you off?’

  He shook his head. ‘They think you’re just swinging the lead.’

  ‘And are the other two men in here . . . ?’

  He shook his head. ‘Dunno. We’re not allowed to talk to each other.’

  ‘And what will happen to you all?’

  ‘There’ll be a court martial first,’ Billy said huskily. ‘Then they reckon . . . well, we’ll be shot, that’s what they reckon. They take you out at dawn and shoot you like a rabbit.’

  ‘No!’

  Billy put out a shaking hand and touched hers briefly, but Poppy’s shout had attracted the attention of one of the orderlies.

  ‘That’s time enough,’ he said. ‘We don’t usually allow visitors in here.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ Billy said. He passed her a postcard. ‘I’ve got this to send to Ma, but I haven’t told her what’s happened.’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know what to say. Write what you like and send it.’

  Poppy took it, gave Billy’s thin, cold body a brief hug, then left him.

  Her eyes were filled with tears when she came out of the hut and, going across the soaking wet grass hardly able to see where she was going, she almost collided with a young man in a white jacket.

  ‘Hey, steady!’ Michael Archer said. Then added in surprise, ‘Ah, it’s my friendly nursing VAD.’

  Poppy, choking back tears, said, ‘I’m awfully sorry, sir. I can’t stop.’

  But he was holding her elbow. ‘Whatever’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘Can I help at all?’

  Poppy shook her head. ‘It’s not me. It’s my brother . . .’

  ‘Injured?’ He looked at her carefully. ‘Worse?’

  ‘Worse. As bad as it could be.’

  He frowned, thoughtful. ‘But not dead?’

  ‘No. He . . . he’s just here.’ Seeing no reason to keep the shameful secret from someone who might be treating Billy, she added, ‘He’s in Hut 600.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I’m afraid he shot himself in the foot.’

  Michael Archer shook his head slowly. ‘I see. A self-inflicted.’

  ‘But in a way I can understand!’ Poppy said quickly. ‘He said he hadn’t slept at all since his regiment got to France because of the continual gunfire – he was almost demented with it.’

  The young doctor nodded sympathetically.

  ‘And he’d seen dreadful sights . . . his mates dying in the most awful circumstances.’

  ‘I can’t begin to imagine,’ he said. ‘I know it’s truly, truly dreadful out there.’

  There was such sympathy in his voice that Poppy almost began weeping again. ‘He’d been suffering terrible headaches and vomiting. I went in there all ready to say how ashamed I was but ended up crying with him.’

  ‘What these boys go through is almost unbearable,’ said Michael Archer with a sigh. ‘God alone knows how they stick with it.’

  ‘Billy didn’t . . .’ Poppy said. She realised that Michael Archer was still holding on to her elbow and managed to smile at him. ‘Thank you so much for your interest, but forty-six portions of meat pie will have arrived at my ward by now and I must go and serve them.’

  ‘Look, if you like, I’ll go and see your brother,’ Michael Archer said. ‘Talk to him, see if I can do anything to help.’

  ‘Would you?’ Poppy’s eyes brimmed with tears again. ‘Thank you! I’d be so grateful.’

  That night, Poppy sat up late, spending some time looking at the field postcard that Billy had given her to send to their mother. It depicted a smiling Tommy giving the thumbs-up sign and was pre-printed so that someone who’d had an injury to their eyes or their hand would still, with a bit of help, be able to tick a box to let their loved ones know they were wounded slightly, wounded seriously or coming home.

  Billy had not filled in anything. After some thought Poppy decided that she wouldn’t send it, but would write a proper letter instead.

  YWCA Hostel,

  Southampton

  28th October 1915

  Dearest Ma,

  You must try not to worry about what I’m going to tell you, but I’m writing to let you know that our Billy has been sent home from France and is here in the hospital with an injury to his foot. I have seen him today and he sends you all his love. The best news is that I know a doctor here who is
taking a personal interest in him.

  I will write to you again after his foot has been sorted out and persuade him to write to you as well. I think he is very relieved to be home and is in no hurry to return to France. It is pretty terrible out there.

  We remain very busy here in Hut 59. As our patients get better and leave to convalesce, new boys join us, and we have been told to expect a big convoy in soon. If you could see me, Ma, racing about behind Sister and Nurse, carrying towering piles of linen, balancing bandages and juggling kidney bowls, you’d be amazed. We are on the go all the time; one of the boys said that when he gets better he’s going to the workshop to make me some shoes with wheels on so that I can go faster!

  Some nice things happen here too. I went for afternoon tea at a very posh restaurant and had a glass of champagne! But I will tell you all about it another time, for I want to post this letter to you straight away.

  I will write again soon, but do try not to worry about Billy. He is in the best place, as we always say.

  Fondest love to you all,

  Poppy

  Chapter Twenty

  YWCA Hostel,

  Southampton

  11th November 1915

  Dear Freddie,

  I know you are somewhere in France and sometimes try to picture you in your dugout, doing your paperwork by the light of a torch with the constant sound of gunfire. I do think about you a lot and hope that you are keeping safe. I know one shouldn’t mention anything about the war for fear of our correspondence being read by the enemy, but I do wish I knew where you were. I would plot your position on a map and try and find out a little about the area, so that I could better picture you in your surroundings.

  I am so sorry that I had to rush off the other evening, and my friend Matthews wants to apologise to you as well. The good news is that my brother does not seem too badly injured. He had a foot injury which has now been set by one of the surgeons here at Netley and I have been able to see him once or twice since then.

  I was very happy to hear that you and Miss Cardew are only friends and I trust you forgive me asking about such a thing. Rumours abound below stairs in a big house and I’m afraid ‘the family’ upstairs is usually the best topic of gossip! The boys in my ward are the same, always on the lookout for rumours and scandal.

  I expect it will be strange for you to go home to Somerset rather than Airey House. I hope your family have settled in well and are quite content there. Freddie, there is another question I wish to ask you and I hope you don’t think it too impertinent. Does your mother have any idea that we are seeing each other?

  Please do tell me if you are short of anything – I would love to send you a parcel.

  Goodnight for now. You are much in my thoughts and I hope to dream of you.

  Love always,

  Poppy

  ‘Jameson? Are you ready for breakfast?’ Poppy called over the curtain early the next morning.

  ‘Almost!’ Jameson tugged her curtain open and stood there buttoning on her starched white cuffs. ‘These cuffs – such a fiddle! Anyway, half the time you have to take them off to do any proper work . . . Now it’s just my collar to go . . .’

  Poppy, glancing at the open neck of the other VAD’s dress, saw, hanging on a chain, a heavy gold ring. A man’s ring with a dark green stone.

  ‘I say, Jameson, that’s a lovely ring!’ Poppy exclaimed.

  To Poppy’s surprise, Jameson’s cheeks flushed red. ‘Yes . . . er, it’s my father’s,’ she said, hurriedly doing up the starched collar and slipping into sturdy shoes. ‘Ready! Shall we go?’

  ‘It was definitely a man’s ring,’ Poppy said to Matthews later, scraping margarine on to thick slices of bread in the hospital canteen. ‘But I bet it’s not her father’s.’

  ‘Gosh,’ said Matthews. ‘D’you think she’s engaged, then? Why wouldn’t she say she’s been seeing someone?’

  Poppy shook her head. ‘I’m positive she didn’t have that ring when we first came here. I’ve seen her in a nightdress often enough and never noticed it before.’ She looked round the hospital canteen. ‘Who do we think gave it to her?’

  Matthews sighed. ‘I’m afraid there’s only one answer.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Poppy said. ‘Her German!’

  ‘She’s going to get in terrible trouble.’

  ‘She is.’

  The girls spread jam on their bread and Matthews continued, ‘Because although he may be the nicest chap in the world and love Jameson to pieces, he’s going to want Germany to win the war.’

  ‘Of course,’ Poppy said.

  They didn’t speak any more about Jameson, and as they were leaving the canteen Matthews asked if Poppy had any more news of her brother.

  She shook her head. ‘They’re not keen on letting me into the ward. Billy’s foot has been set, apparently, and now I’m waiting to hear how he is from my doctor friend. He said he’d keep me up to date.’

  Matthews looked at her mischievously. ‘Oh, your doctor friend . . . ?’

  ‘It’s not like that!’ Poppy said. ‘My heart belongs to Freddie.’

  ‘Then fingers crossed that his heart belongs to you.’

  That day the afternoon post for Hut 59 brought a letter which Sister Kay read to them.

  Downleigh Convalescent Home,

  Purbridge, Newcastle

  18th November 1915

  Dear Sister-in-charge,

  I am writing on behalf of Thomas Stilgoe, who has lately been under your esteemed care in Netley Hospital.

  Thomas is making good progress and his leg is healing well. He is very glad to be back among his people and his mother comes in most days to see him. Thomas will not be going back into the army, of course, being only fifteen. He has received a wound stripe to wear on his demob suit, and is very proud of it.

  I am writing with what might seem a trivial thing but is most important to Thomas. He was keeping safe what he calls his ‘lucky charm’, a shard of shrapnel which the doctors removed from the back of his neck and which, he was told, had it been half an inch closer, would have penetrated his brain. Apparently he kept this in his locker in Hut 59, but in the rush and trouble of leaving, he forgot to take it. He worries me day and night about it, and I wondered if there is a slim chance that it might have dropped on to the floor somewhere?

  I appreciate that being in the principal hospital and caring for the very large numbers of men straight from the front must be difficult in the extreme, and on behalf of the nursing staff in all corners of Britain, thank you for your untiring work.

  I remain, yours respectfully,

  Edna Plumridge

  Matron

  ‘Well,’ Sister said after reading out the letter, ‘I am perfectly sure that it is not on the floor somewhere and I’m rather irritated that she could even suggest such a thing. Does she think we don’t sweep floors in Southampton?’

  ‘But she did thank us very nicely,’ said Nurse Gallagher.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Sister. ‘Pearson, when you’ve taken back the tea things, would you have a look around Thomas’s locker?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Poppy said, and glanced over to what had been Thomas’s bed. Then she noticed something. ‘Private Taylor! Where’s he gone?’

  ‘Ah.’ Sister Kay shook her head sadly. ‘As you know, he’s been very low, and last night a doctor diagnosed pneumonia and had him moved to a medical ward. They’ll let us know how he’s getting on.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m afraid I’m not very hopeful, though. It seems the poor chap just doesn’t want to live without his brother.’

  Poppy, sighing a little at this news, took the tea things into the kitchen, where a new innovation for the hospital, a domestic VAD, was standing by. Spared the washing-up, Poppy went to have a look around and about Thomas’s bed. She knew how superstitious the boys were about the little pieces of shrapnel that had been removed from their bodies, preserving them carefully to send either to their girlfriends as a token of how close they’d been to death, or to
keep for themselves as lucky touchstones. If a precious piece of shrapnel got lost under the bed or happened to be tidied away before visiting time, then there was no rest for whoever was on duty until it was found again.

  The new occupant of Thomas’s bed, a nineteen-year-old named Albert Leeway, seemed to be asleep, for the top sheet had been pulled right up over his face.

  ‘Excuse me, Private Leeway,’ Poppy said, and she twitched at the sheet to alert him to the fact that she was there.

  The sheet slipped back and revealed a bright red balloon with a clown’s face painted on it. Poppy gave a scream – she couldn’t help herself – and from the rest of the ward came guffaws of laughter.

  ‘Sorry, nurse,’ said Private Mackay when he stopped laughing. ‘My wife sent me a packet of balloons to do up the ward for Christmas and the boys have been itching to play a trick on you.’

  Poppy fanned herself. ‘You lot are absolute rotters!’ she said as the real Private Leeway appeared round a screen.

  ‘But, nurse, we’re harmless!’ called Private Mackay. Then there was a strange and rather awful hiatus while everyone realised what he’d said and didn’t know whether to laugh. ‘I suppose I should say armless,’ con­­tinued Private Mackay in a stunned voice.

  Poppy, looking at him, wanted to go and hug him, but knew the hospital authorities wouldn’t think it appropriate.

  To everyone’s satisfaction, she found the missing piece of shrapnel in the back of the locker and this was sent off to Thomas. Sister wrote a covering letter to his matron, while the rest of the ward called out the various messages and good wishes they wanted conveyed to him. It was quite true, Poppy thought as she listened to them: the boys of Hut 59 could be absolute rotters, but she absolutely loved every one of them.

  It was nearly eight o’clock before she left the hospital that evening and, going out through the gates, met Michael Archer coming in.