Victoria peered out of the door of the latrine block. No one was about yet in the compound, where the ambulances stood in line. Opposite her, a long building housed the individual cabins that had replaced the bell tents, where the members of the Convoy had originally slept. She thought grimly that when the new huts had arrived she had never imagined how grateful she would be for the privacy they conferred. At that moment the doors were closed, but soon the reveille would sound and the occupants would come tumbling out for roll call. She had just enough time to get back to her own room without having to explain why she was up so early. She took a deep breath and prayed that she was not going to be sick again. As she crossed the compound, the morning breeze wafted the smell of cooking from the cookhouse at one corner, triggering another wave of nausea. She fought it down and hurried into her room.
Scrambling into her uniform, she cursed herself for the hundredth time. What a fool, to let herself fall pregnant after all this – and to Ralph, of all people! She had been lucky with Luke, and since then she had made sure that her relationship with the various officers passing through Calais had never gone beyond a chaste kiss on the cheek. She had been so sure that she was safe with Ralph. She was drunk, of course. They both were. But that was no comfort now.
Buttoning her tunic, she forced herself to assess the situation. There were three options, for a woman in her situation. One was to confront the man and ask him to ‘do the decent thing’. And she was fairly sure that Ralph would feel obliged to comply. It would be a matter of honour. But what a prospect, for both of them! She remembered how he had torn himself away, almost before the act was completed, and rushed out of the flat. She was certain, now, that he was homosexual, even if he did not admit it to himself, and their brief coupling had sickened him. To be locked into marriage would be torture for both of them, to say nothing of the unwanted child. It was not to be contemplated.
Option two was to confess to her superiors, suffer the opprobrium visited on single mothers, let the pregnancy go to full term and have the child adopted. She had no doubt that it would be the end of her career with the FANY. Neither Mac nor Franklin would be prepared to tolerate such a scandal. What she would do with herself after the birth she could not imagine, but she knew that she was not prepared to bring up a child on her own.
There remained one further resort. When she had returned to London after her brief affair with Luke, she had contacted the woman who had spoken of doctors in London who could arrange an abortion, for a fee. She had given Victoria a card with the name of one such. That time she had not needed it but she had tucked the information away … ‘just in case’. Now the time had come to use it.
But to do that meant going to London, and she had only just come back from leave. There was no possibility of another spell for months. And she could not pretend that there was a close relative who needed her presence at the bedside, because she had often told people, proudly, that she had no close family and therefore no ties. The only other possibility was to feign illness, but that required a sickness that was serious enough to get her sent back to England and she was doubtful that she could convince the doctors at the local hospital that it was genuine. She seemed to have hit a dead end.
Outside, the whistle summoning her to roll call sounded. She dragged a comb through her hair, grimacing at the pallor of her face, and hurried out of her cabin. All along the corridor doors were banging open and women were appearing, buttoning tunics, pushing hair under caps. One or two were wearing top coats and boots, and Victoria suspected that underneath they were still in their pyjamas. It was not surprising. An ambulance train had been scheduled for eight o’clock the previous night but had been delayed until ten. After each ambulance had made three round trips lasting about an hour, none of them had got back to camp until after 1am, exhausted from driving their casualties over roads full of potholes by the light of one dimmed headlight. In addition to her other ills, Victoria felt light-headed from lack of sleep.
After roll call they had a hasty breakfast, which she was unable to stomach, and then it was time to get the ambulances started. They were all Napiers now, and Victoria had named hers Nancy. As she cranked the starting wheel, the three possible solutions to her dilemma went round and round in her head. She was checking the oil pressure and the fuel gauge when the cry went up – ‘Barges!’ – and all around her colleagues scrambled into the driving seats. Victoria followed the rest down the long road from the camp and on to the wharf beside the canal. She had just backed her vehicle up to the edge of the water when the first barge came slipping gently under the bridge. The stretchers came up on lifts and were placed in the back of the waiting ambulances and for the next hour her mind was fully occupied as she eased the Napier over bumps and culverts on the way to the hospital. But on the return drive to camp, her predicament came back to her in full force.
She managed to keep some lunch down, but as she left the mess tent, Beryl Hutchinson stopped her.
‘I say, old thing, you look a bit green about the gills. Are you all right?’
‘No, actually. I’m feeling a bit under the weather,’ Victoria admitted. ‘I think I may have picked up some kind of tummy bug.’
‘Why don’t you go and ask Boss to give you the rest of the day off?’ Hutchinson asked. ‘There’s no shame in going sick, if you’re really not up to the job, you know.’
‘I know,’ Victoria agreed. ‘But I’ll keep going for the time being. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.’ If she was going to go for the sickness option, it had to be something more serious than an attack of diarrhoea.
As she crossed the compound Lilian Franklin called her over.
‘Colonel Martin needs someone to drive him to Pont du Beurre this afternoon. I thought it would be a good job for you and Sparky.’
Victoria’s heart sank. She had been looking forward to an hour’s rest in her cabin but she could only nod and respond cheerfully, ‘Right oh, Boss. What time does he want me?’
‘Right away. He’s waiting at HQ for you to pick him up.’
Victoria made her way to where Sparky was parked and pulled out the starting handle. The little car was usually very co-operative and started on the second or third turn, but on this occasion he refused to oblige. Victoria cranked and cranked, swearing under her breath. Suddenly, there was an explosion and she felt a violent, wrenching pain in her arm and was thrown bodily sideways to land on the bonnet. Her cry of pain and the subsequent extremely unparliamentary language brought Hutchinson out of her office.
‘What happened?’
‘Sparky backfired.’
‘I heard. Are you all right? Let’s have a look at that arm.’
She ran expert hands over Victoria’s right arm and grimaced. ‘If you ask me, that’s broken. I’ll get someone to run you to the hospital.’
‘But what about the Colonel?’ Victoria protested. ‘I’m supposed to pick him up.’
‘Someone else can do that. Come on, let’s get you settled.’
Victoria reached into the front seat with her good arm and grabbed the haversack that held her First Aid kit and a few personal possessions. She patted the steering wheel and whispered, ‘Good old Sparky! You never let me down!’
After that, events took on a momentum that left little time for reflection. The doctor at the hospital confirmed that the arm was indeed broken, but it was a clean break that could be set without surgery, and by dinner time Victoria was back in camp, standing in front of the COs desk with her arm in a sling.
‘Boss’ Franklin looked her up and down and remarked, ‘Well, you’re not going to be much use to us here, in that condition. You’d better go home until the arm is usable again. I’m sure the London office can find plenty for you to do. There’s a hospital ship leaving tomorrow morning. I’ll see if I can get you on board.’
By the following afternoon Victoria was letting herself into her flat in Mayfair. Next day, she reported to the London HQ in the Earls Court Road. Janette Lean, the Secretary of the Corps, regarded her sympathetically.
‘Oh, poor you! What rotten luck! Well, we can certainly use some extra help. There’s a flood of new recruits coming through, and great loads of comforts for the troops to be dealt with, apart from the general effort to raise funds. But you look really done up. Why don’t you take a few days off and have a good rest? Then you can come back and really make yourself useful.’
By mid-afternoon, Victoria was sitting in the comfortably appointed consulting room of the doctor whose name she had been given all those years ago. She had changed out of her FANY uniform and put on a dove-grey coat and skirt, the soberest items in her wardrobe. She had decided that she was likely to get a more sympathetic hearing if the doctor did not know how she had spent the last two years, and she had her story ready.
After a cursory examination and a few routine questions he said, ‘So, you are quite sure that you really don’t want this baby?’
‘Quite sure,’ she replied.
‘And the child’s father? Have you consulted him?’
‘I can’t. He was killed by a sniper’s bullet a month ago. He’d just been home on leave. That’s when …’
‘When the child was conceived. And you are not married to this man?’
‘No. We were engaged. We wanted to wait until the war was over before we got married, but then … it seemed cruel to let him go back without … you know.’
‘It’s a story I am hearing far too often these days,’ the doctor said. ‘And your family? What do they think?’
‘I have no family, really. My parents are both dead and I’m an only child.’ That part, at least, was true.
He put his elbows on the desk and steepled his fingers. ‘There are only two grounds upon which a pregnancy can be legally terminated. One, that the physical health of the woman would be in danger if it was allowed to continue. The second is that her mental health would suffer irreparable damage. You seem to me to be in good physical health. Tell me, if I were to refer you to a colleague of mine who is a psychiatrist, do you think he might conclude that your mental health was at risk?’
‘Oh, yes!’ Victoria said earnestly. ‘I really think I might have a nervous breakdown.’
He nodded. ‘There is one further point. I have a nursing home, quite small but well equipped and very discreet. I am sure we could find a room for you there, but it is not cheap.’
‘That won’t be a problem,’ she assured him. ‘My father left me quite well off.’
He smiled. ‘Then I will get my secretary to make an appointment for you with my colleague.’
The psychiatrist had consulting rooms a few doors away in Harley Street. His manner was less unctuous than the first doctor’s but it was clear to Victoria that the interview was purely a matter of form. After a few questions he said, ‘What happened to your arm?’
‘I fell down some stairs.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, I … I suppose I wasn’t looking where I was going.’ If he thought that she had throw herself down the stairs in an attempt to produce a miscarriage, so much the better.
‘Dr Congreve is of the opinion that to be forced to continue this unwanted pregnancy would severely damage your mental health. Is he right?’
Victoria stretched her eyes wide until she felt tears pricking them and when she spoke the tremor in her voice was only partly assumed. ‘Oh, yes! I’m sure I couldn’t go through with it. I think I should go mad.’
The next morning she checked into the nursing home in a quiet street in St John’s Wood. Three days later she presented herself again at the Corps HQ.
‘Oh, you look better,’ Janette said. ‘Do you feel it?’
‘Oh yes,’ Victoria replied. ‘Much better.