ROUEN, SEPTEMBER 1917
Her hopes of meeting William or Arthur had been dashed on her first week at Folkstone, when she discovered that, as a telegraphist, she would be assigned to one of the Royal Engineers’ signal units in British Expeditionary Force army bases, or one of the three echelons of its General Headquarters. Neither of her brothers were with the Engineers or based at headquarters.
Even though she had decoded the Morse Papa transcribed from their letters home into his and Mama’s letters to her, and so knew roughly where her brothers were, the chance of her being posted anywhere near one of them was remote.
If she had been a man, she might possibly have met her brothers on leave in Paris. Men got days of leave, sometimes even weeks. The women did not. Another impediment to meeting either brother was more serious.
Both her brothers had been promoted to captain by now — William two weeks before his brother. He complained he’d never got a chance to have his brother salute him. ‘But wait till I’m a major, old chap. You’ll have to call me sir then.’
As Jean had learned early on, women weren’t officers. Even the senior women were ‘supervisors’ or ‘forewomen’. The others were simply ‘workers’. Officers were not allowed to socialise with the lower ranks, even their own family, and all women were definitely ‘lower ranks’.
‘There’s ways around it, of course,’ said Hattie, a week after Jean had arrived, as they sat doing the essential darning of stockings for a brief period after dinner in the basic ‘parlour’ hut that the telegraphists had been given for recreation, a real hut this time, near the mess hall. The table might be battered and the wooden chairs without cushions or armrests, but it did have bottles of ink, pens and blotting paper. The ink was almost solid with shreds of blotting paper carried by the nibs dipped into it. The nibs were so rusty they left blots every third letter, which meant the blotting paper was more blot than paper.
The hut also had enough lantern light to write a letter, or darn a stocking, if you had been on afternoon shift and your only free time was in darkness.
‘Do you want to socialise with an officer?’ asked Jean, squinting as she threaded a needle. Thankfully here at Rouen she no longer had to march for hours each day, wearing out the heels in her stockings several times a week.
‘Me? I’d rather sleep,’ said Hattie frankly. ‘When the war is over, I’m going to visit my granny in Scotland — very peaceful woman, my gran. She breeds guinea pigs because they hardly make any noise. I’m going to sleep till lunchtime every day and eat Gran’s scones with damson jam and cream for tea, then have a nap till supper. Kipper, though, is engaged to a major in the Engineers.’
Barbara Kipper was on a different shift. Jean hadn’t met her. ‘Is she the pretty girl with the overbite?’
‘That’s her.’ Hattie grinned. ‘Kipper’s a good egg. And if one of the girls looks extra tall one night, and has a five o’clock shadow and hairy legs, pretend not to notice. It’s just Kipper’s major come to spend an hour holding hands behind the mess hut.’
‘He dresses like a woman!’
‘Anything for love,’ said Hattie lightly. ‘You learn to take what you can when you can get it in this war.’
Hattie knew everything, and everyone. She was one of those women who seemed to sniff out information from the air: where you could buy soap or apples, which of the kitchen women could be persuaded to make corned beef sandwiches for their double shifts.
It was Hattie who woke Jean in the predawn light one morning just after she’d finished her shift. Jean bolted upright. ‘Air raid?’ she said automatically, ready to run to the shelter trenches at the back of the camp, then realised there’d been no siren.
‘No. Shh.’ Hattie held out an armful of clothes. ‘Put these on and meet me outside. Bring your uniform with you.’
She vanished down the row of beds.
Jean slipped off her nightdress and pulled on a grey tunic, black stockings and nurse’s white veil. Hattie was no fool. She must have a good reason to want Jean dressed as a nurse.
Jean left off her shoes till she reached the end of the hut, in case she woke one of the sleeping signallers and they asked questions. Hattie was a darker shadow in the dimness. ‘Come on. Quickly,’ she said. ‘The sentry changes in ten minutes.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Jean followed, carrying her bundle.
‘Your brother is Captain William McLain? He’s been injured. Don’t panic, love — he’s just got a touch of gas. Myrtle, she’s my VAD friend, said he’ll be back with his regiment in a month, but he’s earned himself a convalescence in England. He’s on the docks now. You might get an hour with him if you’re lucky. Henry?’ she called softly. ‘Here’s Nurse Travers.’
‘Of course it is.’ Henry looked at Jean with sympathy. ‘Good luck, old girl. Hope you find your brother all right. Don’t worry — the sentry will let you back in once you’re in your proper uniform, and I’ll put the word out not to ask to see your pass, either.’
‘Thank you,’ she breathed.
She managed to keep to a walk till she was out of sight of the camp, then broke into a run.
The sun had just risen when she reached the dock, a war sun, reddened by dust and smudged by smoke, already breathing heat. Flies buzzed among the stretchers laid in neat rows where the orderlies had carried them from the train. Here were men groaning, or stoically silent; men asleep or maybe dead; men drinking pannikins of cocoa brought by the women who ran the canteen. A few were even sitting up, eating bully beef sandwiches.
Hundreds of men, maybe thousands. She looked across the plain of injured, desperately seeking a form that might be her brother’s.
‘Your name Jean?’ A VAD smiled at her briefly. ‘Ermintrude said you’d try to see your brother.’
‘Ermintrude?’
‘Sorry, I forgot. Hattie. We were at school together — she was Ermintrude then. Don’t blame her for changing her name. Your brother is over on the other side, three rows from the end nearest the docks. Don’t worry — Matron is arguing with the stationmaster so we ladies can use the pissoir for ten minutes every hour. She says we can learn to use it standing up if we have to. What a country! Pissoirs for men on every street, and nothing for women. Toodle-pip, old thing, I must run. Hope your brother’s all right.’
‘Thank you,’ said Jean, but the VAD had already gone, kneeling to redo a dressing that must have come loose, speaking to the wounded soldier quietly and reassuringly. The man’s face seemed to relax just at the comfort of a woman’s voice.
It was hard to ignore the men on either side of her, men pleading for water, men with faces white with pain, pressing pads against their wounds. But she only had an hour . . .
Then there he was! She recognised his back. ‘William!’ she called.
He turned. She realised he couldn’t see her, for his eyes were bandaged, and most of his face and neck. But he was holding a pannikin of cocoa. She gave a silent prayer of gratitude that he had not inhaled enough gas to blister his throat and lungs, not if he could drink cocoa.
‘Pea?’ he asked incredulously.
She smiled at the childhood name, from when she hadn’t been able to pronounce ‘Jean’. Only William still called her that.
‘Shh. I’m here disguised as Sister . . .’ she tried to think of a name ‘. . . Sister Susan Blisters.’
He broke into a laugh. ‘Blisters? Is that the best you can come up with?’
She gave another quiet prayer of thanks that he could laugh. ‘I got a blister running to get to you.’
‘I think you should be Sister Pea. That way I can use your name.’ He held out his hand. Not blistered or ulcerated, Jean noticed in relief, and someone had evidently washed it. She took it in hers, wondering if she dared risk kissing his cheek. But that might get them both in trouble.
‘What happened?’ she asked quietly.
‘I was too slow putting my mask on. The rum thing is that I got this from our own gas — some idiot ordered it released just as the wind changed and blew it back on us. Jerry didn’t even get a sniff of it.’
‘Will you . . .?’ She didn’t want to say the words.
‘Be able to see? Yes. I can see pretty well now, but they want my eyes protected till the swelling goes down. I’ll have a few scars to mar my manly beauty.’
‘Manly beauty? Ha!’ scoffed Jean, with sisterly tact. ‘If you’re lucky a princess will think you are a toad and kiss you, hoping you’ll become her prince.’
‘Nonsense. The girls will come flocking when they hear how I got these scars. I was saving a poor little pigeon and dashed out of the trench when I saw its tiny body flutter to the ground. I picked it up and —’
‘Was there really a pigeon by your trench?’ she interrupted.
His face sobered suddenly. ‘Yes, though I didn’t get gassed for trying to save one. We use pigeons to carry messages sometimes, where no cable has been laid. But I did try to rescue one once. They should have given a medal to that bird.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘His name was Pigeon twenty-seven-oh-nine. He was despatched from the front line to fly back to headquarters, about twenty minutes’ flying time away. But he was hit, and the bullet broke his leg and pushed the message cylinder he was carrying into his side. But Pigeon twenty-seven-oh-nine kept going. It took him twenty-one hours to reach us.’
William tilted his head to one side, as if seeing the tiny bird again through his bandages. ‘We extracted the cylinder as carefully as possible and poured rum onto his wound to disinfect it, then bandage him up. He was so weak he didn’t even object. I spent half the night trying to spoon water into his beak, and one of the other chaps took over, but Pigeon twenty-seven-oh-nine died the next morning. We gave him a funeral,’ William added lightly.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jean, not just for the pigeon but for William’s wounds and the men who cared enough about a pigeon to try to save it and for the whole insane mess of the war. But like Pigeon 2709 she and William were caught in it and had to keep flying till the end.
But I’m not even a pigeon, she thought. I’m safe behind the lines, sending out sparrow chatter, hoping that somehow, somewhere, it would make a difference.
‘How are you, old thing? Got over your ducking in the Channel?’
‘Mama or Papa tell you that?’
‘Papa said he had a telegram. He’s proud of you.’
‘He’s incredibly proud of you and Arthur, too.’ And desperately worried about us all, she thought, but didn’t say, for William knew that as well as she did. ‘I’m well, and as safe as anyone can be.’
‘I feel guilty,’ he admitted. ‘If Arthur and I hadn’t taught you Morse you wouldn’t be here.’
‘I’d have learned it eavesdropping and pinching your codebook. At least we had fun doing it.’
‘We did, didn’t we?’
The first row of stretchers was already being carried to the ship. He must have heard the noise of them being lifted.
‘You’d better go, Pea old thing, before some Bigwig gives you an order and you find yourself on the ship to England.’
The roses would still be blooming in England, she thought. The roses bloomed at Rouen too, but they seemed gaudier and fell to petals sooner than the roses of home. ‘Give Mama and Papa my love.’
‘I’ll tell them you’ve developed pimples and a squint and are walking out with a French sheep farmer.’
‘And they’ll take one look at your bandages and know exactly what to think.’
His hand tightened on hers. She risked a quick kiss on a small portion of reddened cheek left exposed, hoping it didn’t hurt, or that a kiss from home was worth the pain.
‘Take care of yourself,’ she whispered. ‘You’re not bad for a big brother. I don’t want to lose you.’
‘I’m going to be a brigadier, and you will all have to stand to attention when I enter the room. Stay safe, Pea darling.’
‘I don’t have any choice,’ she said ruefully. ‘I’m stuck behind a table counting dots and dashes, night and day.’
She squeezed his hand again, then left hurriedly, in case someone really did think she was a nurse. She waited in the shadows beyond the dock till she saw his stretcher being carried up the gangplank, his arm raised in farewell because he was her brother and knew she’d be watching, and even though his eyes were bandaged he’d know she’d waved back.
She began to walk back to camp, trying to calculate whether she had time for a nap before her next shift. Eat, sleep, tap or write the message down to be decoded, eat and tap again.
It was Adventure, in a foreign country, playing a vital part in the workings of the war just as she had longed to do when she was back in England. It was also the same, hour after hour, day after day.
It was, in fact, simultaneously extraordinarily exciting, and the most boring time she’d ever known.