In Falling Snow (13 page)

By New Year we were ready once again. This time they sent a team of four, the same architect, a different chief inspector, from the Zone Nord de Paris rather than the general from the Service de Santé, and two Croix-Rouge officers—different from last time—who might also have been doctors. I wasn't sure as I missed the introductions—held up trying to get the stove in the new Jeanne d'Arc ward alight—only catching the rear of the group as they headed up the stairs to the wards. The inspector, who spoke English, and the architect walked with Miss Ivens and Mrs. Berry while one of the Croix-Rouge officers went off with Cicely Hamilton to check that our doctors' qualifications were in order—a request after the first inspection. We'd had to send to the British Medical Society for qualification bona fides.

The second Croix-Rouge officer remained with me. He was a tall slim man with dark hair combed back from a high forehead so that it stood up slightly. He had piercing blue eyes, quite close together, which, combined with the hair, gave him the look of an eagle. His face was pink where he'd shaven that morning and he smelled fresh like soap.

“Is there anything in particular you want to see?” I said in French.

“I'll just wander around with you quite happily,” he said.

His body moved as he spoke with nothing like the grace of an eagle.
Gangly
was the word that came to mind, perhaps an eagle going for a walk. It was as if his limbs had only recently grown and he was still getting used to them. “I understand General Foveau gave you troubles,” he said.

“We've addressed all the concerns he raised in his report,” I said carefully.

“So you have,” the officer said. “So you have.” He smiled suddenly and his face softened. “And tell me, what is your name?” I told him. “And what exactly do you do here?” I said I was assistant to the chief. We were crossing the cloister on the way to the kitchen, following Miss Ivens and the others.

“Weren't you just a little annoyed after our last report?” he said to me quietly. I said no, I wasn't, that the report made some good points and that we should have addressed them. He nodded. “Good answer,” he said. “Well, I would have been annoyed at a report like that. I thought it was arrogant of us to assume we might know more than your doctors.”

I was taken aback by his frankness. “We want to be the best hospital we can be,” I said. “I would assume the health service has much more experience than us with these matters. We would be fools not to heed their advice.”

He stopped to light a cigarette, after first offering me one, which I declined. “I suppose you would,” he said, “but it's you, not us, who have created all this. I want you to know I for one didn't like the report we gave you. It won't happen this time.”

He remained with me for the rest of the visit. He was oddly familiar to me. Not that I thought I'd met him before. I knew I hadn't. But I felt at home with him. I kept having to remind myself that he was a member of an inspection team, that I needed to be careful what I said lest I ruin something for Miss Ivens.

At the end of the tour, the Croix-Rouge officer and I joined the rest of the team with Miss Ivens in the foyer while we waited for the second Croix-Rouge officer who soon came with Cicely Hamilton, smiling and chatting. The inspectors discussed the abbey's history then, and I translated the architect's French for Miss Ivens. The officer who'd accompanied me continued to speak in French and I translated for him too. They seemed less interested in whether or not the abbey was now suitable as a hospital and more interested in passing the time of day. I didn't know what to make of it. When we came to the front door to say good-bye, the officer and I were behind the rest again. He gestured for me to go in front of him and put his hand on the small of my back to usher me through. I felt a strange warmth up my spine, like a static shock. I turned to look at him but his expression betrayed nothing.

The inspectors thanked Miss Ivens for her patience and said they'd have their report to her that same afternoon. The wire came, as promised, granting us full accreditation. “Just like that,” I told Violet an hour later. “It was as if they didn't even need to carry out a second inspection.” I told her about the young officer I'd met. “I wonder why he stayed with me instead of talking to Miss Ivens and Mrs. Berry.”

“Knows where the real power is. Or maybe he just liked you.” I found myself blushing. “Oh Iris. Iris has a sweetheart! Are you going to see him again?”

“Violet,” I said, “he's not a sweetheart. I just thought it was nice of him to stay with me, that's all.” I hadn't told Violet about Al. I hadn't told anyone at Royaumont. If I'd thought about why I hadn't, it was that my old life, my life in Australia, already seemed far away.

I realised I didn't even know the young officer's name. I went down to Miss Ivens's office and asked to see the report. The chief inspector's name, Jacques Pireau, was at the bottom along with his signature. I already knew the architect, Monsieur Pichon, whose name was listed along with the Croix-Rouge officers Jean-Michel Poulin and Dugald McTaggart. The officer who went to check qualifications spoke English. The officer I was with only spoke French. He must be Jean-Michel Poulin, I thought. When I asked Miss Ivens, she said she couldn't remember which one was which but weren't they a marvellous trio.

Although we'd been awarded full accreditation, there was one caveat in the written report that reached us the next day. The inspectors were recommending “in the strongest possible terms” that we engage a French chef as the French soldiers couldn't be expected to eat English food. Miss Ivens said they were the living end and they hadn't even tasted Quoyle's shepherd's pie so how would they know about our food. The next day she and I went to Paris to try to work out how we could meet their request and still open the hospital on schedule. We took the train in the morning but we were held up because one of the other lines had been blown up. When we finally arrived, it was late afternoon so we stayed for a night in a hotel near the Croix-Rouge offices. We ate together in a little café on the Left Bank. Miss Ivens said we must get an ice cream after dinner, but it being midwinter and there being a war on, the ice cream place was closed.

Although I didn't say it to anyone else, I'd hoped I might see Jean-Michel Poulin again the next morning, but when we arrived at the offices it was another Croix-Rouge officer who met with us. And it seemed there was no room to negotiate the matter of a cook.

“Oh for God's sake, man,” Miss Ivens was saying to him. “We're opening a hospital, not a hotel.”

“Miss Ivens wonders whether we really need a chef,” I translated, “since the patients will be injured and will not eat much.”

“My dear madame,” the officer said. “We must have French food for our French wounded.”

I turned to Miss Ivens. “Perhaps we can find someone suitable among the villagers left in Asnières,” I said. “I don't think they can bend on this one.”

“On this one?” she said. “Which ones
do
these officious fools bend on?”

“You may call me officious if you like, madame,” the man said in accented English. “I am not a fool. The French don't make those distinctions you English make between the officers and the men. All Frenchmen eat well.”

“I am Scottish and not English,” Miss Ivens lied, without a blink of embarrassment at being caught out calling the fellow a fool. “And I am trying to help your soldiers as I'm sure you are. Please do not get in my way. I implore you.”

The man sighed. “Very well,” he said, nodding and closing the file in front of him. “You keep your English cook for now.” He stood up for us to go.

In just a few more days our first patients would arrive and we would be a war hospital. Another pageant, more champagne, and then hospital mode, shifts in the wards, theatre at the ready, X-ray, pharmacy, waiting for wounded.

After Grace left with the children, I felt too exhausted to heat the dinner the Meals on Wheels had left me. I put it in the freezer with the others and ate two wheat biscuits. I was tired but knew I wouldn't sleep so early. I went out to the verandah to clear up the plates from afternoon tea. My knife was there on the table where I'd peeled an apple for Henry. Once the knife had saved my life, I thought to myself. Don't be dramatic, Iris, I heard Violet saying, so clearly I turned around to see if she was there. We were never in danger, she said. Oh but we were, Violet, of course we were. We were always in danger. We just didn't know what the danger was.

I took the knife and wiped it on a cloth and closed it. What had I told Grace about Violet? I couldn't remember. There was a saying about lying, something about lies only making more lies. I couldn't remember that either.

After I cleared the things, I went and sat out on the front verandah to watch the evening fall. It might fog later, I thought, but for now the air was warm and dry.

Before long I saw them, the mother sugar glider with her remaining baby. She leapt from the tree in Suzanne's front yard, landing gracefully on a branch of the mango. “Aren't you upset?” I called out. “You've lost one of your babies.” She turned and looked my way before moving farther along the branch.

Suddenly, a boy was there at the bottom of the stairs. “Who is it?” I said, fear in my voice, for I was sure it was Tom.

“It's Matthew,” he said, “from next door.” The boy I'd seen that morning.

“Ah,” I said. “Did your mother let you come over?”

“I said I was going out to play.”

“Well, come up now and see what I found.” I stood up slowly. My legs were so tired they could hardly carry me. I took Matthew inside and showed him the baby sugar glider. “He's sleeping so we won't worry him for now. I just saw his mother out in the tree.”

“Why didn't you tell her to come and get him?”

“I'm afraid she might not remember him.” Matthew nodded as if he understood that from personal experience. “Tell me something, do you like chocolate?”

“I'm not allowed.”

“Not allowed chocolate. Your mother?” I asked. He nodded. “Well, I like chocolate. How about you keep to your mother's rules in her house and my rules in my house?” He nodded again, carefully this time. “Want some chocolate?”

“Yes, please.”

“What beautiful manners.” I took him out to the kitchen and showed him the chocolate jar. “Take your pick,” I said. “And any time you visit, you can have whatever you want.”

His eyes were big as saucers. “Thank you!” he said.

After he'd eaten more chocolate than was probably wise, I took him out to the hallway again. The glider was awake now, blinking in the light. I let Matthew feed it some milk. “Not too much,” I said, “or he'll be feeling like you do.”

Matthew smiled. “You're old.”

“I am.”

“My mum says you might die.”

“I might.”

He nodded. “Will you die soon?”

“Probably,” I said.

“Are you ready?”

“For what?”

“The Saviour's voice in your ear.”

“I think so,” I said, “although my hearing's not what it used to be.”

“I'm scared.”

“What are you scared of?”

“God.”

“God's nothing to be scared of. He's not like your mother, you know.”

“How do you know?”

It was a good question. “Well, I suppose I don't. But he made this beautiful little sugar glider. And he made the sky tonight. So I just don't think he's the angry kind. Jesus said the Kingdom of God belongs to children. He saw children as the main thing. And I think he was right there. I think children might be the main thing.” I ruffled his hair. “But it took me an awfully long time to know that. When I was young, I thought other things mattered.”

“Like what?”

“I wanted to be a doctor actually.”

“Why didn't you?”

“Well, that's a good question. You ask lots of good questions, Matthew. I like that.” He smiled again and then we heard his mother's voice, yelling for him to get in here now. “Off you go,” I said. “Thanks for coming over,” and he was gone.

I sat out on the verandah a while more to watch the evening. Soon the birds were silent, night was fallen, and I heard a hound baying in the far distance.

This afternoon, after the girls had run off to climb the tree, Henry stayed with me on the verandah. He sat on the bench beside me and put his hand, his hot little hand, on my arm. Jesus had been right about children. Grace was the true blessing, she and Rose before her, although it took me some time to know it. For so long with Rose, I thought my life had come to nothing. I spent my days running after this bright child and helping in the surgery. It seemed meagre, deadening, compared with what I could have been doing.

Rose was a difficult child, there's no doubt about that, but perhaps it was because I was a difficult mother. My days were filled with despair or dread, depending whether I looked back or forward. Nowadays I'd be medicated, but back then there were no remedies, just the implacable face of one of Al's colleagues who said it was only to be expected, those bloody women filling my head with nonsense. He must have had a word with Al, who started working fewer hours and hung about the house casting furtive glances my way every now and then, which only brought on tears. Finally I said to him that I was feeling much better, just to get him out of the house.

“It should have been me, not Tom,” Al said once. “I should have been in France.” I didn't have the good grace to disagree.