Amy (10 page)

‘All the orderlies go out with the ambulance,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Not only me.’

‘But you were the one who rescued me.’ Pain flickered suddenly across his face and his hand clutched at the sheet. ‘I think it’s nearly time for my next dose of whatever it is they give you.’

Amy looked around her. The nurse with the drugs trolley was
starting
at the end of the ward. ‘The nurse is coming,’ she said.

‘Good. You will come again, won’t you?’ His face was strained now, the pain returning.

‘Yes, I’ll come.’

‘I’ll look forward to that.’

She smiled and turned away and made her way out of the ward. Sister didn’t look up as she walked past her but Amy could read
disapproval
in her hunched shoulders.

She walked slowly back to join Helen. Something seemed to have happened again, some unspoken communication. Something that stirred and worried her. It’ll be all right, she thought. He’s going home soon and I won’t be seeing him again. I won’t know whether he has gone back to his unit. She didn’t allow herself to think of the ultimate question: would he come through? Would he live?

She joined Helen for lunch in the dining-room – roast beef, cabbage and potatoes, followed by rice pudding.

‘Cabbage again,’ Helen said. ‘Maybe we’ll get some French food when we go out with your captain.’

‘He isn’t my captain,’ Amy began and Helen laughed. ‘And how’s your lieutenant? You seem to be collecting quite a harem, or whatever the male equivalent is.’

‘Now you’re getting silly.’ Amy finished her rice pudding, carefully avoiding the skin. ‘I’ve never liked the skin.’

‘I’ll have it.’ Helen helped herself. ‘It’s the best bit. So what about your lieutenant?’

‘He seems to be recovering well. He thinks he’ll be well enough to go back when he’s better.’ She didn’t go on to voice her thoughts, her horror at the thought of him going back to that hell.

‘Oh? So what did he want to see you about?’

‘He just wanted to thank me, as I said.’

Helen looked at her seriously for a moment, then she smiled. ‘Come on, let’s go out. Time is a-wasting.’

They went back to their room to put on their jackets and hats and walked down the staircase and out into the street. As they walked away from the hotel many of the passers-by stopped them with smiles and murmured thanks. Some of them pressed coins into their hands, ‘
pour l’hôpital.
’ Their uniform was well known now in the streets around the hospital.

‘Let’s go somewhere else,’ Helen said, ‘or we’ll be stopped every minute.’

They took the Metro. All the ticket collectors were women,
everywhere
women. They walked down the boulevards in the afternoon sunshine. ‘There are a lot more soldiers about,’ Helen said, ‘but not so many refugees.’ Two young men passed them, one on crutches and the other with his arm bent up in a splint. They grinned at them as they walked by.

Amy nodded. ‘More wounded.’

Some of the street cafés were open again. Most of the shops were closed and shuttered, but here and there one or two were opening, the windows being cleaned and the pavements swept.

‘I think some of the people must be coming back since the Marne,’ Amy said. ‘It all seems to be waking up. They must think the Germans aren’t going to get here after all.’

‘Do you think they will? Ever?’

Amy shrugged. ‘We’ll just have to hope they won’t. At least they’re further away now.’

‘Well, we’ll soon find out,’ Helen said, ‘if they start shelling us. The French Government’s still away in Bordeaux and the Louvre is still closed. Maybe they know more than we do.’

Amy was silent. The whole of Paris lived with this fear but she was filled with admiration for them – the ordinary people who passed them by in the street, especially those who had stayed, who hadn’t run away. There had never been any panic, just a stoic acceptance of what they had to do. They went about their daily lives, knowing that Paris could be shelled or bombed at any time.

She tried to push the images from her mind. She tried not to think of the consequences – getting the men out, cramming them into
ambulances
, moving south, perhaps having to leave some of them behind to the mercies of the invading Germans. Leaving them behind, as she had to do before, so many times.

‘I wish I could have seen it before the war,’ Helen said. ‘I saw a
cinematograph
of Paris once and it looked wonderful. All those elegant women in beautiful clothes and gorgeous hats and the men in morning dress, all strolling along, enjoying themselves and the beautiful shops and the gardens. It must have been absolutely fantastic. A magic place. It seems like a hundred years ago.’

A woman passed them, and then another and another, all dressed in black with widow’s veils. They hurried by with their eyes down, their shoulders bent and drooping. So many thousands dead, but for these women one special man was dead; one loved, appallingly missed, special man. Helen shivered.

They walked past a pavement café. The waiters with their big white aprons tied under their armpits were carrying trays among the tables, but the tables were half empty, and the waiters were old men. The
people in the café seemed to Amy to have an unsettled, temporary look about them, as if they were ready to fly off at any moment. They sat on the edges of their chairs, looking out over the rims of their cups and wine glasses, their eyes shifting and wary. As they walked by a motor car backfired in the street – a sharp, loud bang. There was a flurry of movement and sharp cries as the people started up, and then settled back again, for all the world, Amy thought, like the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. Here and there an old man drank his wine or pastis in a single gulp. There was a young soldier, who didn’t stir. He sat at his table, rigid and staring, his hands shaking and tears running down his face. Amy couldn’t pass him by. She walked over to him and patted his shoulder.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s all right. It was only a car.
Seulement un automobile
.’

He didn’t move, didn’t seem to have heard her.

‘Come on, Amy,’ Helen whispered. ‘There’s nothing we can do.’

Amy closed her eyes for a moment, filled with rage and pity. ‘Will it never end?’

‘Come on,’ Helen took her arm. ‘Let’s have a drink.’

They sat down at a table and ordered coffee. The evocative smells rose around them, coffee and garlic and Turkish cigarettes. ‘I’m going to come back after the war,’ Helen said, ‘When it’s all back to normal and full of beautiful clothes and sit right here and watch all the
beautiful
people walk by.’ Amy suddenly remembered the young soldier she had met with the ambulance, the young farm worker, so sure that he could come back after the war. Already there were thousands of fine young men who would never leave. The old waiter brought their coffee, shuffling under his white apron.

‘What about this officer,’ Helen said, ‘the one with the leg.’

‘Lieutenant Maddox,’ Amy said. ‘Nothing about him. He’s just a grateful patient.’

‘As long as that’s all.’

Amy laughed. ‘Of course that’s all. What else would there be?’ Is that all, she thought again? Of all the dozens of men she had cared for, why was this one in her mind so much? There was something about him, something so alive, so vital, so hard to ignore. She sipped her coffee. The soldier, still crying, got up and limped away down the street. ‘I’m not interested in men or marriage or anything to do with it.
And now certainly isn’t the time.’

Helen smiled. ‘I don’t think it works quite like that, Amy.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think that sometimes it overtakes you, unless you nip it in the bud. I wouldn’t want you to be hurt.’

‘Overtakes you? The bolt from the blue? Love at first sight?’

Helen nodded. ‘So they tell me.’

Amy laughed. ‘Has it happened to you then? Are you harbouring a secret infatuation?’

‘No. What about you? Have you ever been in love?’

Amy shook her head. All those years of work and study. She’d never had the time or the inclination to even think about getting involved. The horrible memory of Bulford came back to her again, of his gross intrusive body, his thick fingers. He was enough to put anyone off men for ever. She laughed. ‘I think you’ve been reading too many novels, Helen. Too much of the Bröntes perhaps. I can’t say that I fancy a Heathcliffe in my life.’

‘What about your captain? When is he coming back?’

Amy laughed again. ‘I have no idea, Amy. Come on, finish your coffee and let’s walk.’

Sister caught them as they came back. ‘Would you do the officers’ ward this evening, Amy? We’ve now got two nurses off sick with colds. I’ll be the only nurse on duty but there’s another orderly and it’s fairly quiet. We’ll manage.’

Amy had dinner and then made her way to the ward. Some of the officers who were up and about were out in the main hall, smoking cigarettes. Sister wouldn’t allow smoking on her ward. Some of the officers had had words with her about it, but she was adamant. She maintained that smoking was bad for you.

She glanced around but she couldn’t see Johnny Maddox. He was obviously one of the figures asleep, hunched under the bedclothes. Sister was standing beside her desk. ‘I have to go out for a moment, Amy,’ she said. She took off her white working cuffs and rolled down her sleeves, buttoning them up at the wrist. ‘Can you manage, just for ten minutes or so?’

Amy nodded, ‘Of course.’

‘Good. I’ll just be in the office if you want me. We desperately need some more sheets and pillow cases. I’ll have to go down on my bended
knees.’ She bustled out.

Amy sat down at the desk. The patients’ reports were stacked tidily in a box. She slid out Johnny’s notes. Lieutenant John B. Maddox, she read. Age twenty-eight. Home address Faring Hall, Winchley, Berkshire. Next of kin Sir Henry Maddox, father. She read quickly through his operation notes – it was much as Miss Hanfield had said. She turned the page. His temperature was registered in red ink. He had a fever. No! She almost spoke it aloud. He must have had a fever when she saw him earlier in the day; he had not looked well then, tired and in pain. He had come through so well, surely now he wasn’t going to suffer the pain and horror of infection, the infection that they all dreaded. If it took hold it was relentless, first the wound, then perhaps septicaemia, certain death.

She put the notes back in the box and walked down the ward to Johnny’s bed. As she came towards him she could see that he was motionless, lying on his back. Then she was standing beside him,
looking
down at his face, as white as paper against the pillow. ‘Johnny,’ she said. ‘Johnny.’ He didn’t respond, didn’t move, his breathing rapid and shallow. She pulled back the blanket and caught her breath. Blood was seeping steadily from his wound, soaking through the dressing,
staining
the sheets. She knew at once what was happening, a deadly
haemorrhage
, the infection eroding through a blood vessel. He was bleeding to death. ‘Help,’ she shouted. ‘Help me.’ She pulled up his jacket and with both thumbs pressed as hard as she could into his groin, closing off the femoral artery. The other orderlies and an officer ran towards her. ‘Get Sister,’ she shouted. ‘Get Dr Hanfield. Tell her it’s a secondary haemorrhage.’ In a few moments Sister was beside her, putting on a tourniquet. ‘Dr Hanfield is in theatre now,’ she said. ‘Come on.’ They lifted him on to a trolley and ran with him to the theatre. He was
moaning
now, his hands clutching and scrabbling at his jacket.

Dr Hanfield was waiting. ‘You’ll have to assist us, Amy,’ she said, ‘He needs an anaesthetic. He mustn’t struggle about like this.’ The anaesthetist stationed herself at his head, put a gauze-covered mask over his face and slowly dripped chloroform on to the mask. ‘We haven’t time to scrub up.’ Dr Hanfield took off the soaked dressing, cut through the stitches. ‘Release the tourniquet, Amy,’ she said. ‘Very slowly.’ The blood welled up again. ‘There it is.’ Amy heard the
familiar
crunch of the clamp as Dr Hanfield closed off the bleeding artery,
exposed a little of its length and tied it off. ‘Release a bit more, Amy.’ Slowly Amy took off the tourniquet. There was no more bleeding. Dr Hanfield stood up, sweat standing on her forehead. ‘I think we got it,’ she said. Amy watched as she put in a drain and closed the wound.

For a moment tears stood in Amy’s eyes. Emotions overwhelmed her. She realized that it wasn’t just the relief that Johnny was, for the moment at least, saved; to be back in theatre, to be doing what she longed for, what she had struggled and trained for, was like waking from a bad dream. Now she had to go back to reality.

They took him back to the ward and Sister put screens around him. Amy looked down at his white face. He was desperately ill. She suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired, swept with a feeling of utter
futility
. What were they achieving here? The beds emptied and filled, emptied and filled. They got men better, only for them to go back, to risk it all again. What was it for, this life? Had he been born, loved and cared for and nurtured, for this – Johnny and all these men, these boys, who had found in themselves a heroism and stoicism that they never knew existed? Not just the British and French boys, she thought, Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians and Indians and the whole world and, no matter how much they were hated, ordinary German boys were horribly dying. And what was her life for, deprived as she had been of her reason for living?

Johnny was struggling for his life. She could see it in the blanched face, the shallow, laboured breathing, the beads of sweat on his white forehead. She tried to blink the tears away.

‘You did well, Amy.’ Dr Hanfield was smiling at her, looking faintly puzzled. ‘You seemed to know what to do.’

Sister interrupted, saving Amy from replying. ‘When I was in
training
a secondary haemorrhage was the only time we were ever allowed to run in the corridors.’

‘I wish to God we had something to use against infection.’ Dr Hanfield looked exhausted. ‘We could save so many more young lives. Sometimes I feel so helpless.’ She rested her hand on Johnny’s
shoulder
for a moment, and then left the ward.