Both William and Nora were busy with various activities. William was on several hospital committees and Nora had joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment organized by Lady Nunburnholme. The headquarters were in Peel Street on Spring Bank, within easy walking distance for Nora. She didn’t train as a VAD nurse but was involved in fundraising, clerical work and dispatching parcels and gifts to the troops of East Yorkshire units.
‘At last I feel as if I’m helping to make a difference and bringing some small comfort to our soldiers,’ she told Lucy. ‘We’ve raised money for thousands of parcels.’
‘How wonderful!’ Lucy said. ‘They’ll know that they haven’t been forgotten when they open a parcel sent from their own county; their own people.’
‘That’s what everyone is hoping,’ Nora agreed. ‘There are hundreds of little cottage industries all over Hull, women knitting socks and scarves or sewing handkerchiefs or making up something they call a housewife; it’s a kind of fabric package that contains needles and thread, darning wool and scissors, and goes into the parcels with sweets and chocolate and biscuits for the soldiers.’
Everyone is trying to do something, Lucy thought. Doing their bit, as we all say. But the news constantly filtering through wasn’t good. The enemy had committed further atrocities in Ypres and thousands of men had been killed or injured, including many of the Hull Pals. Everyone had heard about the sinking of the Lusitania when she had been packed with American and British passengers, but not everyone knew that she was also carrying a secret cargo of munitions for the British war effort. The hope had been that America might now come in to the war, but so far no commitment had been agreed.
Oswald returned to London the next day, relieved to think that he and Lucy had got back to something like their normal relationship. He’d asked her if she’d try persuading William and Nora to move to Pearson Park; she’d said that she would but didn’t think they’d agree to it.
‘Perhaps Eleanor could stay there, though,’ Lucy had suggested. ‘Sally might stay with her so she wouldn’t be alone.’
‘Good idea,’ he enthused, ‘and maybe Ma and Pa would go at the weekends; that would be a compromise, at least. I think Pa’s worried about leaving the Baker Street house empty.’
‘Perhaps he is,’ Lucy said thoughtfully. ‘But the Zeppelins have dropped bombs all over the city, not just the centre.’
‘This is just a taste of what’s to come,’ he said. ‘Those in the know are saying that this is the war to end all wars.’
Which sounds very ominous, she considered as she travelled back to London a few days later. She hadn’t been successful in persuading her uncle and aunt to move to the Pearson Park house; Eleanor had wanted to and had asked Sally if she would join her, but that hadn’t been allowed either. ‘Certainly not,’ Nora had said. ‘Two young women on their own! I’d never have a minute’s peace.’
Before Lucy left, she’d told her uncle and aunt that she doubted she would get home again for some time. Nora had put her arms round her and held her close. ‘Take great care, Lucy,’ she’d whispered. ‘You know, don’t you, that you are very precious to us? Our much loved eldest daughter?’
Lucy gave her a hug, and then, with an unsteady voice and a quavering smile that embraced them both, murmured, ‘And you have both cared for me as well as any parent would have.’ She kissed William on his whiskery cheek. ‘Take care, Pa,’ she said, using Oswald’s chosen name for his adoptive father, which seemed so fitting for her too; he had been her father in practically every sense of the term. ‘Of yourself, as much as everyone else,’ she added, and with tears in his eyes, and too choked with worry for words, he’d simply nodded.
When she arrived back at the Endell Street hospital she found that everyone was in a sombre mood. News had been released of the execution for treason of Nurse Edith Cavell by a German firing squad, despite appeals by international voices, including Americans, for a reprieve. They had also had a huge influx of injured personnel, and this, along with the news of Cavell’s death, made her feel guilty for having been away.
‘Nonsense,’ Rose said when she told her this. ‘You need respite as much as anyone else; no point in having a sick doctor.’
She too had taken a few days off and had been to see Olive Spence. ‘It seemed odd calling her Olive instead of Olga,’ she said, ‘but she said she’d got used to it now.’
‘How was she?’ Lucy asked.
‘Very well. She seemed quite happy, and said the work was less stressful than at Endell Street. The men they are treating, those who will be going home at least, are pleased to be out of the war, but of course there are many who will be going back to join their units once their injuries have healed.’
Then she shook her head and lowered her voice. ‘But some have injuries that can’t be seen. They’ve been affected mentally by what they’ve gone through, and if the authorities think that a few weeks’ convalescence is going to make them fit to be sent back to the front again, then I’m afraid they are very much mistaken!’
Lucy wondered how she would cope in France nearer the battlefields. She voiced her fears to Rose.
‘We’ll cope, Lucy,’ the older woman said. ‘But if you have any real fears, then you don’t have to go.’
‘It’s not that I don’t want to,’ Lucy explained. ‘It’s whether or not I’ll be found wanting, whether or not I’ll be good enough.’ Rose smiled. ‘You will be good enough. Do not doubt yourself, Dr Thornbury. We all have great faith in you.’
It was March 1916 before they were given orders to prepare to leave in three days’ time. They were given a day off to go back to their lodging house to pack what they needed, write home and give notice to their landlady.
Neither had much to take: a valise with changes of clothing, a spare jacket and two extra plain skirts, two white coats, and their medical bags. They had been told there would be facilities for washing laundry within the unit.
Lucy wrote a quick postcard to Oswald as soon as she heard to advise him that their orders had come, and then wrote a letter to William and Nora to say that she would write once she was in France and give them her address. She sent her love to all of them, especially Eleanor. Please try not to worry about me, she wrote. I will not be near the front line and the casualty clearing station – it’s called a CCS – is a well-equipped medical facility. I am so pleased to be going at last.
I love you all very much. Lucy.
She looked round the room that had been only a temporary home, a mere resting place. She was leaving nothing behind. She heard someone banging on the front door, and then raised voices and someone running up the stairs.
It was Oswald. ‘Thank God you haven’t left.’ He was breathless. ‘I thought I might be too late!’
She opened her door wider to let him in. She realized that her landlady must have been shouting at him for coming upstairs.
He put his arms on her shoulders and held her away from him. ‘That dragon downstairs said I couldn’t come up and I’m afraid I was rather rude to her.’
She gave a little chuckle. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. I asked her if she knew there was a war on and that people were fighting for the likes of her and she wasn’t going to stop me from coming up when I might never see you again. That shut her up.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘I didn’t mean that, of course; it was a small white lie.’ He looked down at her. ‘In fact, Lucy, there’s a chance that we might meet again sooner than you expect.’
‘What do you mean? We’re leaving now. I don’t know when I’ll be home again.’
‘You’ll be mad at me when I tell you!’ He gave her a bashful grin. ‘I’ve enlisted. I’m joining the RAMC.’
‘What! But you’re needed here – your research!’
‘My research will be just as important over there. I’ll see at first hand what’s required and can report back. I’ve done it, Lucy: there’s no going back, and no arguing.’ He gave her a wry grin. ‘Because I’ll probably have the rank of an officer.’
‘And I won’t, of course, being a female doctor! But I don’t understand why, Oswald.’
‘I’ve said for long enough that I was unsure about whether to enlist, but by joining the RAMC I don’t have to carry a weapon, or at least if I do I’ll only be expected to use it in self-defence. You know that I’m a pacifist. I could never kill anyone.’
He gazed at her so pleadingly, clearly desperate for her to understand his reasoning, that she was relieved in a way, because she had had the fleeting thought that perhaps he was doing it in order to be near her, to protect her.
‘But what will you do? You haven’t had any medical training.’
‘I’ve had some,’ he admitted. ‘I did a quick course in first aid, but what I am able to do, Lucy, is use the X-ray machines. I’ve had extensive experience and these machines are invaluable for checking injuries. And I’ll be a stretcher bearer too if necessary!’
Rose knocked and looked in through the open door. ‘We ought to be off, Lucy.’
‘Yes, of course. This is my cousin, Oswald Thornbury,’ Lucy said. ‘He’s come to tell me that we might meet in France.’
‘It’s a big country,’ Rose commented wryly as they shook hands. ‘We don’t know yet where in France we’ll be.’
‘Wherever there’s fighting there’ll be a CCS,’ Oswald said, looking at Lucy. ‘I’ll find you.’
The journey to Boulogne was a rough one, with high seas that lashed over the deck. Lucy and Rose kept to their shared cabin, both aware not only of the danger of the heavy seas but also of the fact that beneath them there might be mines lying in wait.
‘I’ve always wanted to ask, but there has never been much time for conversation,’ Lucy said as they sat on their bunks. ‘What do you remember about my mother? What was she like? I don’t have a proper picture of her or my father in my head.’
‘No photographs?’
‘N-no, at least I don’t remember seeing any.’ Did she? A distant hazy memory came sidling back of someone packing boxes; were there photographs? ‘Mama was dark-haired like me, and Papa was too, so my uncle told me.’
‘You only need to look in the mirror to see your mother,’ Rose smiled. ‘You are the very image of her. She was much younger than you are now when she left the medical school. She was extremely clever, destined for great things if they hadn’t—’ She stopped and shrugged. ‘There’s no knowing what love can do,’ she said softly. ‘Or how it can change lives.’
‘No,’ Lucy murmured, lost in thoughts of her own.
‘Your cousin, Mr Thornbury,’ Rose said. ‘Which side of the family is he from? He’s not dark-haired like you.’
‘No, he isn’t. It’s rather complicated. My aunt had been married before, to Oswald’s father, and after his death she and my uncle met and married; a few years later Uncle William adopted Oswald and he became a Thornbury. So even though we were brought up together and have the same name, we’re not actually related.’
‘Ah,’ her companion murmured perceptively. ‘I see.’
Lucy glanced at her. Should she read something into those few words, or was she only imagining that something more was implied?
It was an early dawn, cold, wet and cloudy when the passengers disembarked and were rushed to horse-drawn wagons which took them along an unlit main road until they reached some railway sidings. There they showed their travel documents, and Lucy and Rose and several nurses and other personnel were hurried on to a railway train on a single track where the engine was already huffing out short bursts of steam. Once they were aboard the wheels started to turn and with a great gush of steam and smoke but with no whistles or shouts the train moved off.
I hate trains when it’s dark, Lucy thought. I hate the sound of the wheels clattering as they turn on the track and the smell from the engine, and the smoke; they bring back such uneasy memories. She and Rose sat close together and turned their faces to each other; they didn’t speak, but Rose took Lucy’s hands and clasped them within hers, which was very comforting. This is it, Lucy thought. We’re on our way. There’s no turning back.