The news I had for so long dreaded came the next day: Robbie had been in the ‘quiet sector’ where the Germans had launched their third onslaught and had been seriously wounded. He was already back in London and Papa wrote that a shell had exploded in front of him: the shrapnel had caught him full in the chest and also broken his right arm. The surgeons at the CCS had managed to remove the jagged fragments from his lungs, but as usual, infection had set in and now everything depended on Robbie’s natural powers of resistance. My father said he would write again as soon as there was any more news. I folded up his letter and walked back to the ward. Robbie, oh my Robbie.
For two days I waited, praying to a God I did not believe in, and on the next morning three letters were waiting for me. I opened Papa’s with hands that shook – Robbie was still alive, and Papa said he was holding his own; now it was just a question of time. So that first dangerous week was over – surely I could begin to hope a little?
Alice had written as well; she had visited Robbie the previous afternoon and he was talking again now, though rather wheezily – and he sent his love. She said Letty had run away from school and had badgered Mother to let her serve in a soldiers’ canteen at Victoria Station. I looked down at the letter and thought, but she’s only a child! Then I realized my younger sister was nearly eighteen – I had not seen her since Eddie’s funeral. In the last paragraph Alice said she was marrying again: an industrialist called Clayton. ‘He’s quite a bit older than I am, but he’s very well-heeled, and he’s made a lot more money because of the war.’ There was an added note scribbled in the margin, ‘He’s not a profiteer, I haven’t sunk that low!’ She explained that Hugh had not left her and the boys in very good circumstances – ‘and I don’t want to sponge off Papa all my life, so when Fred asked me I said “Yes”. The wedding will be very quiet.’ There was no word of love or even affection in her account. I shrugged. For all her faults Alice was not a hypocrite – and nobody could say that Hugh was barely cold in his grave, since he had no grave. But I wished she had waited a little longer; because Hugh had loved her.
The third letter was in a hand I did not recognize. I opened it and looked at the signature – it was from Ben Holden. It was quite short and almost painfully respectful. He had heard of the bombings at Étaples and that sisters had been injured and killed – was I safe? He asked would I send him a line? ‘Just a postcard with your name on it, Sister, that’s all, just so that I know.’ I was touched that a man who was in the midst of the hell of the front line should have the time and energy to think of my safety, so when I had written to Robbie and Alice that evening I picked up my pen again and wrote him a letter, thanking him for his concern and telling him the latest news of my brother. Then I forgot about him again until a straggly pencilled note from Robbie himself lightened my heart – and told me that Ben Holden had been awarded the DCM. ‘It was a good show, and from what I’ve heard he earned it several times over.’
The news from the front became less black: the Germans had been held back from Paris and the Americans had fought their first battle, counter-attacking fiercely at Chateau Thierry – their troops were fresh and vigorous. There were stories too, that the advancing Germans had stopped to loot the cellars of Champagne, and that drunken soldiers were no longer obeying their officers – we hoped that they were true.
One day Sister came to fetch me from the end of the ward. ‘Nurse, your brother is here to see you.’ I swung round and there was Guy. I ran to him, but as I came near I slowed my pace, and hung back, remembering him as I had last seen him when I had been home on leave in the summer of ’17. But his smile was the smile of the old Guy, though his face was leaner and older, and I threw myself into his arms and hugged him very tightly.
Sister said I could be spared from the ward for a couple of hours, so we walked down towards the estuary together. Guy told me he had been sent down to Montreuil to give a report, so he had seized the chance to come on by train to Étaples to see me. We talked of Robbie – Papa had written that he was still very weak and in some pain, but that he was eating solid food again now. Then Guy spoke of his three small sons, so I nerved myself to ask, ‘How is Pansy, Guy?’
He answered quite naturally, ‘She’s tired, of course – but otherwise reasonably well.’ Then he looked away from me, out over the sand dunes to the coast, and said at last, ‘She’s been a brick, Hellie – and I’ve been a swine to her – you’ve no idea. When I think of what she’s had to put up with over these last years – I usually didn’t bother to write when I was in France, and then, when I was home those months – I don’t know how she stood it. The way I spoke to her and the things I said. I wanted to hurt someone, and she was there, and – she’s easy to hurt.’ He turned and looked at me for a moment, then braced himself as he went on, ‘One day she was out, in Bond Street, and she saw me – I was with a whore I’d just picked up. I don’t think she realized at first, and she came towards me, smiling – so I called a cab and bundled the woman into it and jumped in myself and drove off. I saw her as she stood there looking after me – she looked like a child that’s been hit – and, God forgive me, Hellie, I was glad. She never said anything when I got home, she never reproached me, she just opened her arms to me that night and let me’ – his voice broke – ‘let me use her like a whore too.’ There were tears on Guy’s face as he stared out over the dunes. ‘And it wasn’t until the morning that I realized what I might have done. I’d taken that girl straight off the streets, and not used anything – Papa always warned us. I lay in my dressing room sweating – I could have given my wife a dose of the clap, and she was carrying my child. Even then, it was only the child I cared about – I kept remembering old Foster’s youngest,’ he shuddered. ‘But I was luckier than I deserved. So after that I only used the reputable establishments – and thought I was being a considerate husband!’ His voice was tormented with self-disgust.
I waited and at last he said, ‘When I’d decided to go back up the line it was like a weight dropping off my back. I wangled forty-eight hours’ leave – you can pull any strings at HQ – and I went home. I arrived at teatime and she was there in the drawing room with the children around her. She looked dreadful: her ankles were puffed up, her body all shapeless, and her hair was a mess – the baby had tugged it down. I stood in the doorway, looking at her – she didn’t see me at first, the boys were making such a racket – and I thought, I love this woman, I love her.’
He fell silent, until I whispered, ‘And was she pleased?’
Guy’s face as he looked at me was suddenly very young and bashful. ‘I don’t know, Hellie – I was too embarrassed to tell her.’
I cried, ‘Guy!’ I wanted to hit him.
He fended me off, laughing, ‘It’s all right, Hellie, I wrote – all the way back on the steamer I just wrote and wrote. I told her everything: that I knew what a vicious brute I’d been – how wonderfully patient she was – and how I felt now. I’ve never written so much in my life before.’ He looked out towards the sea, towards England, and said softly, ‘I think she was pleased.’
I reached up and kissed him, then I slipped my arm in his and we walked back to the camp together.
Several days later, Alice wrote to tell me that Guy had been awarded the MC for the part he had played in the March retreat. I wrote to my brother to congratulate him, and then I wrote to Pansy. Her reply overflowed with love for Guy. In thoughtless anger Guy had rushed into a hasty marriage; had done everything to turn Pansy’s love to bitterness – and incredibly he had failed. My brother had been very lucky.
The impetus of the German offensive was slowing down: we had lost ground but we were no longer being pushed back; we could breathe more easily now. But still the casualties flooded in, and the men I was nursing could scarcely breathe at all – I had been moved to the gas marquees. There were four of them, pitched side by side, with a VAD in each and one sister and one MO in the dressing tent that stood at right angles to the four. They were there if I needed them, but most of the time I was alone with my forty gassed men: men who were burned, who were blind, and who were gasping for breath.
The gas had seeped into the cloth of their uniforms as they had stumbled to the aid post, and now they were all on fire, with festering sores on their bodies where the gas had eaten away their flesh. Their eyes had been scorched as though by a flame, and hid behind eyelids gummed together with sticky pus. And they panted and choked on their pillows as the gas destroyed their lungs.
Each day, after the routine ward cleaning was done, I injected the strychnine that forced their weary hearts to keep beating. Then I lugged the oxygen cylinder to each bed in turn to give relief to labouring chests, before I cleansed the dried pus from their eyelids and dropped lotion on to staring eyeballs. And finally there were the dressings; the MO did some, I did the rest – and learned to soak the lint in castor oil as well as picric so that next day it could be more easily peeled off the scorched raw flesh.
The effort of drawing air into their gas-filled lungs took all their strength and they were frightened and alone in their dark worlds, so all day they lay and listened to me. They needed my voice; as long as they could hear me they knew I was there and that they had not been abandoned. They could tell when I came towards them, and be ready for my touch. At first I talked of the weather, but there was not enough to say, so I told them stories from the nursery, of days outside in the park at Hatton, of long-gone rides to hounds – and then I began to sing. I sang all the childhood favourites, I sang all the familiar hymns, I sang arias from the Italian operas and catchy tunes from pre-war musicals – but I did not sing Lieder, and I could not sing the message of hope from the Messiah, for I would not sing a lie. All through that long hot summer the foetid smell of burns and sweat invaded my nostrils and seeped into my pores and forced its way down my throat, but still I sang my song of war.
Dimly I realized that the balance of the fighting was changing: Étaples was bombed again in August, but at the front we were the attackers now – slowly, very slowly, the enemy were retreating, and slowly, very slowly, the numbers of gassed men dwindled, until by September three of the marquees had been transferred; and then my leave came through.
As soon as I arrived in London I went straight to the hospital to see Robbie. He was very thin and pale, but his face lit up as I came into the room. I sat with his hand in mine and we talked together in disjointed murmurs; he wheezed and spoke slowly, but he could speak. As I was sitting there I just fell asleep. I woke much later, stiff and cramped, still holding Robbie’s hand. He managed a short gasping laugh at the expression on my face as I woke up, and I laughed too and stood up and kissed him goodbye. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Robbie,’ and I stumbled out and down the stairs and asked the porter to call a cab. Pansy was at Cadogan Place; she was enormous but she hugged me as best she could, and then Nanny appeared and clasped me to her swelling bosom and said, ‘Bed, my lady.’
I staggered out every day to see Robbie, but otherwise I slept. I even slept when I was with him. It was a luxurious hospital for officers and he ordered an armchair to be put in his room for me, so that I could curl up in it, and sometimes I dropped off in the middle of a sentence. Once I woke up and Ralph Dutton was there, talking softly to Robbie. I was embarrassed for a moment, but he jumped to his feet and came forward with his hand outstretched and his pleasant open smile lighting up his fair face, so I relaxed and smiled warmly back. We chatted easily together for a little while, and then Robbie sent me home to bed.
Pansy’s baby was born while I was in London; it was another boy. It was strange to think of Guy as the father of four sons – at least he had something good to show for the years of war. I gently touched the small crumpled red face and felt a great sadness.
Papa came to Town for a couple of days to see his new grandson. My father’s hair was sprinkled with grey now, but he was still very upright. He said Mother was busy running the Red Cross Hospital at Hatton, and she hoped I was not ruining my hands. I looked down at them, red and roughened by years of disinfectants and winter chilblains, and I laughed, because there was no point in crying. Then I went upstairs and lay down on my bed and slept, until Nanny roused me with a tray. She sat over me while I ate and then she helped me undress, tucked me up between the fine linen sheets and kissed me goodnight. I slept again.
Ralph Dutton invited me to the theatre one evening during his leave. I sat down beside him in the warm stalls and woke up in the interval with my head on his shoulder. He smiled my apologies away and went to fetch me some coffee, then as the next act started he pulled my head down against his neck in the darkness and I slept until it was time to go home. He joked about it to Robbie next day, calling me a dormouse, and I said lightly, ‘Next time you’d better just invite me out to bed, Ralph,’ and watched in dawning horror as his face crimsoned. But my brother burst out into wheezing laughter, and managed to gasp, ‘You don’t change, do you Hellie? Mouth open and foot straight in it!’ And then Ralph and I began to laugh too.
I met Alice’s new husband. He was tall, but very thin, with sparse grey hair and ever-flickering eyes. I did not like him much, and Alice obviously felt the same way. Letty was living with them – she at least had not changed – going her own way as always, impervious to those around her. She told me she was going to go up to Cambridge to read Natural Sciences and I protested. ‘But Mother will never say “yes”!’
Letty shrugged. ‘Then she can say “no”, can’t she? It won’t make any difference to me, I shall go in any case.’
When I arrived in Boulogne I was sent back to No. 23 again. Aylmer welcomed me warmly to our hut and I chatted to her and Mac and Tilney at supper and felt as if I had never been away. Next morning I was sent to a light surgical ward. The work was easy; few of the men would be permanently disabled and we had all begun to realize that the war was finally drawing to a close, so my patients knew they would probably never have to go back.
At eleven a.m. on the eleventh day of November the bugles sounded and we knew it was over at last. I was with Sister in the bunk, and we turned and looked at each other, then she said flatly, ‘So it’s finished, then,’ and bent down again to her forms. I went back to laying out a fresh dressing tray. Even the men seemed scarcely to realize what had happened; they were as stunned as we were by the ending of the long years of war.
Tilney bought a couple of bottles of wine in Étaples that afternoon, and half a dozen of us crammed into her hut and shared it in the evening. The alcohol made me feel giddy, and when I tried to stand up to leave I swayed and fell back on to the bed. The others all laughed and then Mac said, ‘You’d better stick to cocoa next time, like Aylmer.’ She and Aylmer helped me back to our hut and next morning I felt rather shaky when I woke up.
I felt even more shaky a week later when I read Papa’s letter – he said the Grenadiers had been in action in the first week of November and their casualties had been high. Guy had fought to the bitter end. He had come through unharmed, but I mourned for those other women who had had their loved ones snatched from them even at the moment of victory.
But victory scarcely seemed an appropriate word for us now, because we were in the midst of a camp of dying men. The light surgicals had all been sent home and our ward had become a medical one – Spanish flu had invaded Étaples. More and more men went down with pneumonia, and Sister herself collapsed with the symptoms and had to be warded. There was no replacement – too many other nurses and orderlies were sick – so I soldiered on alone among men who were delirious and incontinent, watching their faces turn the dreaded dusky blue before they died. As I laid out corpse after corpse I thought bitterly that we must have won the war too soon – we had cheated the God of Vengeance, so now He had played His ace.
For the first weeks, while I changed soiled beds and sponged fevered bodies in a desperate attempt to lower their temperatures, I worried about Robbie. As I carried the oxygen to one gasping man, and tried to erect a steam tent round another before going to mix a poultice to slap on a third heaving chest I thought of my brother’s shattered lungs and felt sick with fear.
But then I got a letter from one of the gamekeepers’ cottages in the middle of the woods at Hatton and found I had underestimated my mother. As soon as the number of flu victims had begun to rise she had ordered the chauffeur to disinfect the Delaunay-Belleville, and driven straight down to London. In the teeth of all War Office regulations she had extracted Robbie from his hospital and taken him straight back to Hatton. Robbie said it was the funniest thing, to be lying across the back seat watching Mother’s ramrod back in the front, actually sitting next to the chauffeur. They had driven directly to the cottage and he was installed there with the stern-visaged Fisher to care for him, in a state of total isolation. I was not even allowed to write a reply to him. But he sounded perfectly content, although I could not imagine what he and Fisher said to each other in the long evenings. I put his letter away and went back to my blue-faced men who were drowning in their own sputum.
Very slowly the epidemic began to wane, but it was the middle of March before my papers came through; Tilney and Mac had already left. I laid out my last corpse, washed my hands carefully, then walked over to the mess. For the last night I slept on my low camp bed under coarse army blankets. In the morning I dressed in my uniform for the last time, said goodbye to Aylmer, threw my kit into the back of the waiting ambulance and left the hillside of wooden crosses behind me.
My war had finally ended.