It was heavier than it had ever been, and with the hugely increased numbers of casualties, the doctors and few trained nurses and orderlies were unable to do everything that had to be done. And so Evelyn found herself allocated tasks infinitely beyond the menial things that she had done so far. Not only did she have to stand by watching the cleaning and dressing of serious wounds, ready to finish the exterior bandaging and clear up the mess; now she had to do the actual dressing herself, and she was terrified of making a mistake, hurting the men beyond bearing, doing something that might stop their dreadful wounds from healing. And she still had to take them their bedpans and wash them and stop herself from showing by word or look how horrible she found all that. There was no time to stop for luncheon, or even to sit down for a few moments, and by the evening she was tired to a pitch she had never yet experienced.
The sound of the guns had come closer as the day dragged on, and by five o’clock, just as Evelyn started to think she could not go on, the sharpness of the bangs and the cries of wounded told her that the enemy shelling had reached the town. She had her hands full of bandages and she was supposed to go to a boy whose right arm had been blown off when the realisation of what might be happening hit her with all the force of high explosive. Now it was not only unknown soldiers who were in danger of mutilation and death – Sasha even was at risk.
Her hands tightening on the bandages until it seemed as though the knuckles might burst through the reddened, rough skin, she worked to control her desperate, over-mastering impulse to run back to Nikolai’s to help protect them all – or at least be with them when the shells ripped into the house.
‘Nurse! Nurse!’ The exasperated voice of one of the medical officers eventually reached her. She turned, the sterile bandages slipping disastrously on to the dirty floor. Tears spurted into her eyes at her clumsiness, but they would do no good and she went to him at once, saying:
‘I beg your pardon, Sir.’
‘Nurse, there is no time to stand and dream.’
‘I know that, Sir. Tell me what you want me to do.’
‘There’s a man – a civilian – just been brought in with both legs broken. He was hit by some madman’s sleigh and driven over. The legs are in a mess and he needs sedation before we can deal with them. Fetch the morphine.’
Evelyn hurried to do as she had been told, her mind mercifully empty of everything but the list of things she would need: syringe, swabs, alcohol, the morphine itself, and perhaps a tourniquet. She collected the equipment, found one of the hospital’s few trays, loaded everything on to it and went as quickly as she dared to the doctor’s side.
He was bending over the patient and did not hear her arrive.
‘Doctor, the morphine’s here.’
‘Excellent, Nurse. I’ll put it in the right arm.’ Evelyn moved round the bed to clean the inside of the man’s right elbow, and as she heard the doctor say, ‘We’ll soon have you more comfortable,’ she saw that the man was Robert.
It took superhuman control not to drop the bottle of alcohol; only his obvious anguish and what she could see of the multiple injuries to his legs held her firm. It wasn’t until the drug had been injected into his vein and had reached his brain that he looked at her with recognition. Just before unconsciousness released him from the pain, his lips relaxed into an infinitesimal smile and he said:
‘Thank God you’re here, Eve.’
The medical officer was working too quickly to talk; the supplies of morphine were limited now, and he had little enough time to clean the deep cuts in which were embedded gravel and detritus of all sorts before he could begin to splint the broken bones. But when it was all done, and the legs were weighted to stop them from mending short, he stood upright at last and said quietly:
‘I hadn’t realised he was a friend of yours, Miss Markham. I would have got someone else if I’d known.’
He went away before she could say anything, and in any case, she herself had to go to fetch more sterile bandages and join the other doctor at the bedside of the armless soldier.
It was not until well after eleven that the wards and theatre had become quiet enough for the doctors to allow her to go off duty and by then she felt as though she might have to crawl home. Even so, she told herself that she had to speak to poor Robert before she left.
He was awake and greeted her with a difficult, painful smile. She put both hands inside the bib of her apron and said:
‘Robert, I have to go now. I won’t ask how you are, because I know. But they are good doctors here, and they will get you right. If the pain gets more than you can cope with, call one of them. Do you promise me that you won’t try to ride it out on your own? You need all your strength to heal, not to fight that sort of thing. Do you promise?’
Her face was almost severe, and bleached by tiredness. He said:
‘I promise, Eve.’ She nodded stiffly, wished him goodnight, and left him.
Nikolai was waiting for her, almost as though he had known the state she would be in, and as she leaned against the front door, trying to find the strength to turn the big, heavy iron handle, he opened it from the inside, and caught her as she almost fell in towards the warm, lighted room.
He picked her up in his strong arms, kicking the door to behind him, and carried her upstairs to her bed. As he put her down and she felt the softness, she thought with relief that she could sleep at last, and just as her eyes were closing, she said:
‘You’re all right, Nick; how are the others? My Sasha, they haven’t hurt him?’
‘No, child, they haven’t,’ he answered as he untied the laces of her stiff, black boots and pulled them off. Then he came to the head of the bed and gently untied the veil, whose strings seemed to have caught in the short hairs at the back of her neck. She winced as he untangled them, and said:
‘’S’all right, Uncle Nikki. I can sleep in my clothes. Save time in the morning.’
But he paid no attention; and methodically undressed her. She was asleep before he started to take off the ugly uniform dress, and she did not wake even when he levered her into the nightdress he found under the pillow. Before he left her, he stood looking down at her and hoping passionately for her survival in the days and weeks to come. He had never had a daughter and until he had met Evelyn had never felt the lack. He was very proud of her; and he was terrified for her.
They had two more days before the colonel took the inevitable decision to retreat. By then the town appeared to be surrounded and it was only when some Russian scouts discovered that there was one rough, hardly-used logging trail through the forest that the Bolshevik pickets seemed to have overlooked that he knew how he could get his people out.
Evelyn heard the news when the youngest of the medical officers called to her just after she had wheeled a patient back to his bed after a short operation. She wondered why he had called her by her name instead of the impersonal and formal ‘Nurse’.
‘Yes, Doctor?’
‘We’re off tonight. It’s to be done in absolute silence and with no warning to the enemy. They are all round the town and it is vital that they do not discover that we’ve gone. You have half an hour now to go and pack your essential belongings. Bring them back here, and then you will start to prepare the patients.’
The little colour left in her face drained away and the harassed doctor was mentally cursing her if she were to faint. But she said:
‘You can’t mean that we are going to leave them here for the Bolos.’
‘Of course not, Nurse. Don’t be silly and don’t waste time. There’s too much to be done for that. They’ll all have to be carried on sleighs and so we’ve got to find some way to protect them from frostbite. Get back here as quickly as you can.’
She nodded and tried to run all the way back to Nikolai’s house; but with a stitch in her side, and her lungs and heart pounding, she had to drop to a walk before she had even passed the convent. When she pushed her way through the door she could hardly speak. But the sight of b
ags and clothes and equipment strewn around the hall floor put everything out of her mind except deep, triumphant joy. Her face was transfigured as she ran to Nikolai.
‘You’re coming then. Thank God, Nick. Thank God.’
As gently as possible, he put one arm across her shoulders and said:
‘No, child. I stay. And my brother and Natalia Petrovna. But we’re sending the children.’ He looked down at her head, drooping now to try to hide her rebellious feelings. ‘They’ll travel with Madame Avinkova, but they’d be much happier if they knew you would follow. Will you look after them when you get to Archangel, Evie, and help them get to your father in the end? It will be months before the sea ice breaks up and you’ll be able to get away to England. Can I leave them to your care?’
‘Of course, Nick. How can you ask?’
‘I was sure of you, Evelyn.’
‘I’ve only half an hour to pack, and then I’ve got to get back. And I’d better do Robert’s stuff as well.’
‘Off you go, child.’
Evelyn went as swiftly as she could up the branching wooden staircase to fling her few possessions into the canvas bag she had brought from Petrograd. The sable coat seemed a ludicrous possession for a refugee nurse; but at least it would be warm, and with the temperature falling every hour, she would need all the warmth she could get.
She took one last glance around the room where she had discovered how to be happy and knew that she would never forget it. Then she wasted no more time in sentiment, but walked into Robert Adamson’s room to collect his clothes and the notebooks she knew would matter far more to him.
It gave her a curious sensation to be feeling among his clothes and possessions, but she had no time to worry about it. As soon as she had stuffed the last shirt into his bag and wrestled with its zip, she put on the fur coat and struggled downstairs, one bag in each hand.
The whole family was in the hall as she came down and she knew a moment’s sharp misery that she would have to say goodbye to Nikolai in front of them all. But as he saw her coming down the stairs, he came to meet her, took the bags out of her hands and said:
‘Come in here a moment, Evie.’
She followed him into the study and stood, waiting for him to take her in his arms. As he pulled her gently to him, she said:
‘Nikolasha, I don’t know how I can bear it.’
‘Hush, child, hush.’ She leant against him, feeling all the warmth and love he had to give her. At last the knowledge that she ought already to have been back at work pulled her away from him.
‘I have to go. I’ll look after the children, I promise you. And when we get back to England, they will be part of the family. If… when… I mean, they will be looked after as though they were my own and when you send for them or come to us, they will be ready.’
She looked up at him then and saw that there were tears in his eyes too.
‘Evelyn, I shall never forget you.’ His voice changed a little. ‘Now, I want you to have this. It was my mother’s and she gave it to me as she was dying. It’s right it should go back to England.’ He handed her a small scuffed leather box, bent his head and kissed her forehead. She ignored the box, put up her hands and held his face to her own for a long, sad moment. Then, without speaking again, she took his gift, turned and went back into the hall to say farewell to Andrei Alexandrovitch and Natalia Petrovna.
They kissed her too, and then Andrei handed her a heavy money-belt.
‘There’s gold here, Evelyn, as much as I could realise in time, and letters to my manager in Archangel and your consul. When you get there go straight to Baines’s house and he will find somewhere for you to lodge. Dindin and the others will make their way to Baines’s as soon as they get to Archangel, and meet you there.’
‘Thank you, Andrei Alexandrovitch. I’ll do everything I can to take care of them all. God bless you both.’ With the tears streaming down her face, her heart twisting as she thought of what they might have to face, she walked out of the house and back to her work.
Chapter Thirteen
Evelyn was almost grateful for the amount of work involved in preparing her patients for the evacuation, for it made it impossible even to think about the Suvarovs. As she drove herself to renew dressings and bandages, gave injections, handed out drugs and began the almost impossible task of wrapping up the badly wounded men so that there should be no danger of frostbite, her mind was mercifully blank. But at about half-past ten, as she was taking her syringe and a phial of the precious morphine to an eighteen-year-old amputee, who cried for his mother as his mind wandered painfully away from the unbearable present, she looked across the ward to Robert Adamson’s bed and all the thoughts she wanted to avoid rushed back into the front of her mind.
Leaning over him was Nikolai, come to the hospital to say goodbye. Evelyn stood by the boy’s bed, a white enamel kidney bowl in her hands, looking across the long rows of beds at the two men. Nikolai, as though aware of her gaze, turned for a moment from Bob.
Evelyn and Nikolai had said what could be said; they knew that they were unlikely ever to meet again; one or both might be killed in the coming battles. There was no point in trying to put the inexpressible into words. They looked at each other for a full minute, and then each turned away.
Bob watched Evelyn standing there, her hair quite hidden by the white linen veil, her eyes huge in her tense face; the cross on her breast was the colour of blood, and in her dark eyes was such pain that he winced. As Nikolai turned back to him, Bob said:
‘I’ll look after her, Nick. You can depend on that.’
‘I know you will, my boy.’
‘Nick, God knows what’s going to happen, but if there is ever a chance that I can help at all, go to the nearest US consulate or embassy and send for me.’
He put his hand out of the bedclothes and gripped the Russian’s.
‘Russia will survive, my friend, find its way out of this mess in the end, and so will all of us.’
‘I know. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye, Nikolai Alexandrovitch.’
By 1.30 am enough transport had been commandeered for the patients, but the doctors and orderlies would have to march. Evelyn was the only nurse going to Archangel and it was clear that even if they kitted her out with the heavy felt Shackleton boots the men wore, she could not possibly last the march. It was fixed, then, that she should share a sleigh with Adamson, and once she had checked that all her patients were settled under their rugs and blankets, scarves around their faces, she slid in beside him, as careful as she could be not to touch him.
The soldiers who were to guard the hospital column formed up beside the ninety sleighs, the cloudy moonlight glinting sometimes on the bayonets each man had fixed to his unloaded rifle. The sleigh ponies’bits and harness had all been silenced with pieces of rag tied round the joints, and the three unconscious, delirious men who might groan aloud had been gagged as humanely as possible. The column would have to pass within less than a mile of Bolshevik outposts and the command were determined that no noise of any kind should alert their enemy. If anyone challenged them, he was to be killed silently and efficiently with a bayonet.
A signal gestured to the first of the drivers to move off, and, sliding on their iron runners, the sleighs began to move. It seemed an eerie sight to Evelyn as she watched the familiar buildings of Shenkursk drift silently away behind her in the inadequate moonlight. The Avinkovs’house, the convent, the shop where she had so often gone to buy tiny amounts of sugar, the jetty from which she and Sergei had gone skating on the Vaga, the place where she had stopped and faced him on the day he threatened her and she saw how she had misjudged him. She knew that in a few seconds they would be passing Nikolai’s house and she resisted the temptation to look once more at it. But as they passed, she could almost feel its presence, and it brought stupid, irrational, dangerous tears into her eyes. She turned her head away from the man at her side, and surreptitiously tried to wipe them away. For some reason, it seemed ve
ry important not to let him know that she was crying, but as she wiped her face with her gloved hand, terrified at some level of her mind that the tears would freeze and start the insidious action of frostbite on her skin, she felt him move.
He pulled his right arm out from under the rugs that covered them both and pulled her head down on to his shoulder. She resisted the pressure of his hand until she remembered that they must make no sound, and muffled her tears in the fur collar of a big coat Nikolai had given him.
Bob wished that he could speak to her. Some of her deep reserve seemed to have been broken by what had happened and for the first time he felt that if he could have used words he might have been able to reach her. But he could not. He could only hold her as cramp latched its teeth in his shoulder, and hope that something of what he felt got through to her.
She drew back at last, and in the poor light he looked into her eyes. For an instant he thought he saw anger there – or hate. He painfully withdrew his arm and pushed his hands back under the rugs.
They were being driven down a narrow trail between wedges of impenetrable pine forest. The soldiers plodding either side of the sleighs kept slipping in their clumsy felt boots and falling into the rutted snow. Evelyn was ashamed that she should be riding in the warmth, but knew that she was neither strong enough properly equipped to march.
The moonlight picked out odd features in the weird landscape, and made the fallen branches that poked up out of the snow look like dead limbs pushing up out of their dirty shrouds. Everything she looked at reminded her of death and decay. She ached for Nikolai and once more for John. Only the thought that there might be letters for her at Archangel, letters that might have news of him, kept her fading courage from disappearing altogether.
So they travelled for five hours until the head of the hospital column reached a junction with a real road at the village of Kitsa, well ahead of even the most advanced of the Bolshevik outposts. The need for silence was gone now, and they listened to shouted orders and watched the brave Canadian artillery wheel their great guns round and position them at the junction, ready to blast any Bolshevik pursuit to pieces.
The Longest Winter Page 20
