Frontline Nurses

by Holly Green

  It meant, of course, that he would not see Ralph for a long time. Already they had been apart for a longer period than at any time since they had first met at the age of twelve. At school they had been inseparable, often staying in each other’s homes during the holidays, and later, when Tom was up at Oxford and Ralph in the army, they had still managed to meet regularly. When Ralph had suggested that Tom would be an ideal husband for Leo, the idea had seemed wonderful at first, and for months Tom had allowed himself to entertain a dream in which the three of them all lived together. He knew that what he really wanted was something quite different but he had closed his mind to it as being too shameful to consider. Now, after so many weeks away from Ralph, he was beginning to feel like a recovering alcoholic, aware of a vacancy at the centre of his being but also experiencing an unfamiliar sense of freedom.

  The waiter came out onto the terrace, carrying a newspaper and a letter. His usually bland face was animated and he waved the paper under Tom’s nose.

  ‘See, kirie? It is as I told you. The truce has broken down. Those treacherous Turks are attacking on Gallipoli.’

  Tom waved the paper away. He’d had enough of wars and it was no longer his concern. Besides, he had recognised the handwriting on the envelope and had felt at once the old, familiar tingle of pleasure and excitement. ‘You know I can’t read Greek, Dimitrios. Is that a letter for me?’

  ‘Ne, kirie. For you, from England.’ He presented the letter with a flourish, gathered up Tom’s cup and went back inside.

  Tom slit the envelope. He had telegraphed to Ralph to let him know where he was, but this was the first reply that had reached him. He read:

  My dear Tom,

  I was delighted to get your telegram and to know that you are now on the way to full health. I am sure you will find Athens a very congenial place to convalesce. Sadly, I have two pieces of bad news to impart. First, my grandma died a few days ago. She had a stroke last week and never recovered consciousness. The funeral will take place next Tuesday. It is a great loss, of course, as she was the only close family I have, apart from Leonora.

  Which brings me to my second item, one which concerns you more closely. Leo has not returned as we expected. The Women’s Sick and Wounded Convoy arrived back two days ago and I managed to arrange an interview with Mrs Stobart, their self-styled commandant. She told me that Leo and Victoria did not board the Orient Express with the rest of the group. Instead, they chose to return via Salonika in order to accommodate Victoria’s car. (It seems they took it with them all that way, via Marseilles, so it’s not surprising you found no trace of them on your journey.) They intended to find a ship to take them back to Marseilles, or some other port from whence they could drive home.

  Of course, they may still be at sea but I have not had any word from Leo and I am afraid that she may never have reached Salonika. Two women travelling alone in that lawless country would be a tempting prey for any bandits.

  Dear Tom, I hardly dare ask this of you, after all you have been through, but could you possibly nip back to Salonika and find out if they ever arrived and if so, which ship they boarded?

  Tom lowered the letter and thumped the table in irritation. ‘Nip back’ – typical of Ralph! As if it was as simple as walking round the corner. He read on:

  Now that Grandma has gone, I am, of course, Leo’s legal guardian, so I have a double duty to find out what has happened to her. I have been moving heaven and earth to get myself posted as a military attaché to the Serbs, and it finally seems that my efforts may be about to bear fruit. Of course, if Leo and Victoria are already on their way home I shall be leaving just as they return – but by then perhaps you will be here to keep an eye on Leo. The sooner you two get married the better!

  Whatever happens, I shall not have a moment’s peace of mind until I know where she is, so please, dear friend, try to find out for me.

  I remain, as always,

  Your affectionate friend,

  Ralph

  Tom put the letter back in the envelope and sat gazing unseeingly at the Parthenon, which seemed to float against the pale blue of the sky above him. So, that was the end of his dream of a Grand Tour. He must go back to Salonika, if not for Ralph’s sake then for Leo’s. Even if he had rejected the idea of marriage he still had an obligation towards her. He was not in love with her but he was very fond of her and her safety mattered as much to him as it did to her brother. Ralph would never forgive him if he failed in this duty, but he did not relish the prospect of explaining to him that he no longer intended to marry Leo. With a sigh, he got up and went inside to prepare for his departure.

  It took him the best part of a week to reach his destination and his first act was to call on Reggie Vincent, the British military attaché.

  ‘Good lord,’ Vincent exclaimed, ‘I thought you’d be back in England by now. What are you doing back in this godforsaken hole?’

  Tom cleared his throat. ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely honest with you when we first met. I told you I was out here in order to make sketches for the newspapers. It’s true that I had been drawing battleground scenes and some of them have been published by papers back home. But that wasn’t my principal reason for being here. When I tell you that it touches upon the honour of a lady, you will understand why I was less than frank. The fact is, I am engaged, or about to be engaged, to a young lady called Leonora Malham Brown. She is a very independently minded girl, and she took it into her head to run off without telling anyone to join something called The Women’s Sick and Wounded Convoy in Bulgaria.’

  ‘I’ve heard of them,’ Vincent interrupted. ‘Done sterling work, by all accounts. But I think they’ve gone home now.’

  ‘So I understand,’ Tom said. ‘But Leo isn’t with them. It seems she and a friend are driving and were intending to come here to find a ship to take them and the car home. Have you, by any chance, heard of two young English women looking for passage on a boat heading for France or Italy?’

  ‘Good God! What an amazing coincidence!’ Vincent exclaimed. ‘I had a girl in here a couple of days ago, asking me to help her find exactly that.’

  ‘Oh, thank God!’ Tom felt almost weak with relief. ‘A tall girl with reddish hair?’

  ‘No, ’fraid not. This one was dark.’

  ‘Oh, well that would be Victoria, Leo’s friend. Did you find them a ship?’

  ‘Well, I did. But here’s the thing. According to what the girl said, she was on her own.’

  ‘On her own!’

  ‘That’s what she said.’

  ‘When did her ship sail? Is there any chance she is still here?’

  ‘Wait a minute, I wrote it down somewhere. Yes, here it is. She sails today. Oh God! What’s the time?’ He looked at the clock on the wall and rose, grabbing his cap. ‘Come on. We might just catch her.’

  Tom followed him down to the docks. He would have been completely at a loss in the general hubbub and confusion but Vincent led him through it at a run, brushing aside hawkers and beggars and dodging donkey carts and piles of crates. They reached the right pier just as a Greek-registered cargo ship was casting off, and on the deck Tom saw a battered and mud-covered car. Beside it stood a young woman in what he recognised as FANY uniform.

  ‘Victoria!’ Tom bawled at the top of his lungs.

  He saw her turn, searching the dock for the source of the voice. Then she saw him.

  ‘Tom Devenish! What are you doing here?’

  ‘Where’s Leo?’ he yelled.

  The ship was drawing away from the quay and Victoria’s voice only just carried to him. ‘She’s at Adrianople. At the Red Cross hospital. She’s nursing typhus patients.’

  ‘Why isn’t she with you?’

  If she heard him her reply was drowned by the noise of the ship’s engines. Tom turned to Vincent. ‘Is there any chance of stopping the ship? Or could we get on board somehow?’

  ‘Not a hope,’ Vincent replied. ‘Even if we could persuade the customs chaps that there
was a good reason to detain her, she would be miles away before we got through all the red tape.’

  Tom stood panting for a moment, then he said, ‘Where’s Adrianople?’

  ‘Some distance away, I’m afraid. Over to the east. The Bulgarians have been besieging it for months. I assume your lady friend is working with them.’

  ‘Nursing typhus patients,’ Tom reminded himself. ‘Is she out of her mind?’

  ‘She must be a remarkable young woman,’ Vincent commented.

  ‘How can I get there?’ Tom asked.

  ‘It won’t be easy, I’m afraid. There’s no regular train service but they do send out reinforcements and supplies from time to time. They don’t go as regularly as they might, because the Serbs control this end of the operation and there’s no love lost between them and the Bulgarians. But we could go to the station and see if anything is scheduled.’

  At the station, after being referred from one official to another until Tom’s temper began to fray, they discovered that a train was due to leave in five days’ time. When Tom asked if he could travel on it, however, he was told it was for military personnel only. There was some discussion in broken Serbian between Vincent and the official and at length the Englishman turned to Tom.

  ‘He says he wants to see your passport. Which I take to mean that if he happened to find a few crisp bank notes nestling inside it he might be prepared to stretch a point.’

  Tom remembered how Max had got them into the country, it seemed a long time ago now. He turned his back, took out his wallet and slipped what he thought was a generous amount between the pages of his passport and handed it over. The official grunted, pocketed the money without comment and laboriously filled in some kind of docket, stamped it and handed it to Tom.

  First thing in the morning, five days later, he arrived at the station to find no sign of imminent departure. After hanging around for several hours he was told that there had been an unforeseen hold up but the train would go tomorrow. Eventually, at midday the following day, the engine wheezed and clanked into motion and they were on their way. Tom sat back and gazed bleakly out of the window. He was not sure what he hoped to accomplish. Leo would almost certainly refuse to come back with him, but at least he could tell Ralph he had done his best.

  *

  Luke Pavel stood on the heights overlooking the battle lines on the Gallipoli peninsula and gazed towards the white flecked waters of the Dardanelles. To his right he could just make out the line where the Adriatic met the horizon, and to his left was the Sea of Marmara. Between the two, stretched across the neck of the peninsular, were the trenches, Bulgarian nearer to him, Turkish further away, and in the no man’s land between lay the bodies of hundreds of men. He could see the Turkish ships standing off the coast but not the beaches where the troops had landed. They had come storming out of the trenches, wave after wave of them, screaming ‘Allah! Allah!’ and had been mown down by the Bulgarian guns on the higher ground. It was the first time he had understood the terrible destruction that these new machine guns could inflict.

  An icy wind was blowing from the mountains to the north and sky and sea were slate grey against the white of the snow-covered landscape. It was a monochrome landscape, without colour or life, and without mercy. It reflected precisely the inner landscape of Luke’s heart.

  Chapter 18

  On the morning after Victoria’s departure, Leo presented herself at Malkovic’s tent. He was in the middle of giving orders for the day to his aides-de-camp and his only reaction to her appearance was a quizzically raised eyebrow. When he had finished and dismissed the men, he sat back and looked at her with that steady, inscrutable gaze that she found so unnerving.

  ‘I didn’t send for you.’

  ‘I know. The train took most of the patients from the hospital so I am no longer needed. So I am at your service – if you need me.’

  ‘But you still refuse to accept a commission in the army?’

  ‘Yes. As I said, I may have to leave soon and I must be free to go when the time comes.’

  He continued to look at her broodingly. She had hurt his pride with her initial refusal and now she was afraid he would send her away. Finally he said, ‘As you wish. I don’t know how often I shall require you, but you can stay if you like.’

  ‘Thank you!’ She felt she had been holding her breath.

  Maybe it was her heartfelt tone that touched him. His face relaxed and he said, with an almost mischievous smile, ‘But if you are going to be part of my entourage we really must find you some other clothes. Those English tweeds are very serviceable, no doubt, but they are really appallingly dirty.’

  Leo looked down at herself and realised for the first time how mud-spattered and stained her clothes were. She also recalled, with a jolt, that everything else she possessed apart from a change of underwear was in the trunk in the back of Victoria’s car. Not that that would have been any help to her in the present circumstances.

  She said, ‘It’s all I have.’

  He got up and stretched. ‘I have no doubt that we can find something. Suppose I were to ask the quartermaster to fit you out with a Serbian uniform, but without any badges or insignia. Would that serve?’

  Leo was seized with a wave of panic. If she had to undress to have a uniform fitted she would undoubtedly be discovered. ‘I doubt if he has anything that would fit,’ she said, catching a straws.

  He grinned. ‘What? Do you think you’re the only skinny lad in the army? He’ll find you something.’

  Before she could think of any further objection he strode to the tent entrance and shouted for his orderly. The man appeared at once and was instructed to conduct Leo to the quartermaster’s tent and tell him to fit her out. ‘Officer’s quality!’ Malkovic called after him as they left. All the way, Leo racked her brains for a way of getting out of the dilemma, but short of a sudden attack of vomiting she could think of nothing. It crossed her mind how easy it would have been if she were not masquerading as a man. As a woman a fainting fit would have been easy to simulate, but in her present guise no such stratagem was open to her.

  In the event, she need not have worried. The quartermaster looked her up and down, grunted, and disappeared into his store to return with a bundle of clothes.

  ‘This is as near as I can get. Got your own boots? Good. I’ve got nothing that small. Right, off you go.’

  Leo took the clothes back to her tent and tried them on. The basic uniform was not so different from what she had been wearing, consisting of breeches and a tunic in brown serge. They were at least a size too large and she had to use a belt to hold the breeches up, but that was all to the good, as they concealed what feminine curves remained to her. The serge was rough against her skin, but at least it was clean. The best part of her new outfit was the overcoat, which came down almost to her ankles and was split up the back of the skirt for riding, so that it felt much like her old FANY uniform. At least now she could keep warm. The whole ensemble was topped off by a round cap trimmed with black astrakhan. Thus accoutred, she made her way back to the colonel’s tent.

  Malkovic was on his feet and she had the impression he had been pacing restlessly. He stopped when she entered and looked at her, with a slow grin forming on his lips.

  ‘Well, well. Quite a handsome young fellow. What a pity I can’t persuade you to accept a commission. But at least you look less of a ragamuffin than you did.’

  Popitch looked into the tent. ‘The horses are ready, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ He was moving towards the entrance. ‘You can ride, I take it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then you may as well join us. Tell them to saddle Shadow, Michaelo.’

  He led the way outside. A soldier was holding his big grey, and others, ready mounted, waited in attendance. A moment later another man ran up with a coal black gelding whose delicate legs and pretty head proclaimed his Arab blood.

  ‘Take Shadow,’ Malkovic said. ‘He’s a good horse but he doesn’t take k
indly to too firm a hand on the reins, so have a care.’

  He vaulted on to Cloud and Leo swung herself into the black horse’s saddle. Followed by the escort they trotted through the camp. Malkovic led the way and Shadow jogged and danced in the grey’s wake, his ears flicking backwards and forwards, ready to spook at any sudden sound or movement. Leo sat still, letting her hands move with the horse’s head, and little by little she felt him relax. Once clear of the camp they were out on the open plain. There had been fresh snow the day before, but it had not frozen and the horses paced through a white carpet that was almost fetlock deep. Malkovic glanced round, raised an arm and gestured forward, then touched his heels to his mount’s flanks and Cloud sprang forward in a fast canter. Shadow surged after them and showed an inclination to make it a race. Leo quickly understood the warning Malkovic had give her. As she tightened the reins, the horse put his head down and bucked, almost unseating her. She eased the pressure and he settled into a powerful stride. She found that by gentle touches on the reins she could control him just enough to keep him level with Cloud. Malkovic glanced at her and gave Cloud his head. Side by side they flew over the plain, the snow scattering behind them, the wind whipping their faces, and Leo threw back her head and laughed aloud. It was so long since she had enjoyed a gallop like this and she had missed it more than she realised.

  Eventually the horses slackened speed of their own accord and Malkovic drew Cloud back to a walk. They looked at each other and she saw that his cheeks were flushed and his eyes sparkled like a boy’s.

  He said, ‘Well done. Shadow is not usually so ready to accept a strange rider.’ And she knew that she had been tested and not found wanting.