Poppy (10 page)

He turned in surprise, but didn’t seem to recognise her.

‘It’s Poppy. From Airey House,’ she said, but he just continued looking at her and frowning. ‘I was the parlourmaid, sir,’ she said in a whisper.

‘Oh, my dear girl, of course,’ he said. ‘Do excuse me.’ He nodded at her approvingly. ‘You make a jolly fine-looking nurse, if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘Thank you, sir. But you’ve been injured!’ she said, and immediately thought to herself what a stupid thing to say.

‘Yes, rotten bad luck. Only my third week at the front, too. Still, I shall rest up and be able to see my family whilst my wounds mend.’

There was a
toot
from the train and those who’d got off for a walkabout prepared to climb back on.

‘I hope it’s not a bad wound, sir,’ Poppy said, wanting to make a memorable impression on him but not sure how to go about it.

‘Well, I’m mashed up a bit, as they say. But apparently there’s a wonderful bone-setter in Manchester and I should return to Flanders before too long. I need to get back to my boys. Top notch, they are!’

‘Well, I wish you all the best, sir,’ Poppy said. Then, before she lost her nerve, she blurted out, ‘And do please remember me to your brother!’

Jasper de Vere looked at her, rather surprised, but Poppy just smiled brightly and indicated the nearest carriage. ‘Can I help you back on to the train, sir?’

‘No, that’s quite all right,’ he said, hailing a soldier standing by the door. ‘My batman will help me. I’m in the officers’ carriage.’

Unsure of the etiquette of saying goodbye – was she servant, acquaintance or army nurse? – she finished in a muddle. ‘Do kindly excuse me. All the best to you and your family . . . Good wishes and cheerio, sir,’ she said and turned to go back on the train.

Unfortunately, one of the injured boys who’d been travelling behind closed blinds had chosen to take a stroll, too, and as Poppy arrived at the train door and reached up to pull herself on board, so did he. Although he had been holding up a cardboard mask to his face, Poppy was close enough to see behind it – and did so before she could stop herself. What she found herself staring at was only a semblance of features: puckered and raw, no hair and hardly a nose, with shrivelled and burned skin around eyes that may have been permanently open. A skull shape, but formed with scorched flesh. A travesty, a ghastly imitation of a face . . .

Poppy recoiled, horrified, gasped for breath. Hauling herself on to the train, she couldn’t speak as she pushed past Matthews, gained the safety of the little back kitchen and was violently sick out of the window.

‘That’s why we keep all new girls out of the way for a little while,’ Rees said, after Poppy had apologised profusely, cleaned up after herself and apologised all over again.

‘I feel dreadful,’ Poppy murmured. ‘Poor chap. To have suffered all that and then to have me vomiting at the sight of him.’ Tears came into her eyes. ‘Do you think I should go and apologise to him? I mean, it’s not as if I haven’t seen injured people before.’ But not quite like that, she thought.

‘Apologise? I think not.’ Colebrook shook her head. ‘Least said and all that. It won’t be the first time it happens to him, or the last. I’m afraid the poor lamb will have to learn to live with it.’

‘At least you didn’t scream,’ Matthews said.

‘Let’s hope he ends up in one of the specialist hospitals,’ said Rees. ‘They can do wonderful things there.’

Poppy leaned against the wall of the carriage, feeling depressed beyond words. Fancy her behaving like that! Ma would be really ashamed of her – and Miss Luttrell would be shocked to bits. Did she have no self-control? Did it mean she would never make a proper nurse?

‘May I ask you . . . Is it possible for you not to say anything to Sister Malcolm?’ she asked the two older VADs in a wobbly voice. ‘I think it was because I was feeling a bit funny – I’d just seen an injured soldier who I knew. I’ll really try hard never to react like that again.’

‘Your secret’s safe with us, Pearson,’ Rees said.

‘We’ve all done things we were rather ashamed of during our training,’ said Colebrook. ‘Once I fell asleep during a first-aid lecture – and snored. I almost got chucked out of my unit for that.’

‘I’ll never forget the time I committed the terrible sin of putting an officer into a ward with twenty Tommies,’ said Rees. ‘Quite high up he was – a lieutenant colonel, I think. But he was unconscious when he came in and most of his uniform had been blown off, so how was I to know?’

The train continued its steady journey towards Manchester, and Poppy was allowed a ten-minute sit-down to recover herself. She felt strange and unsettled as a result of the encounter with Jasper de Vere, mostly because seeing him had brought his brother to mind so strongly, and of course she was also desperately ashamed of her reaction to the maimed soldier.

It was a long, long day. When the train reached Manchester the men were taken by bus, cart or private motor car to the various military hospitals, while Poppy and Matthews cleared away litter, swept through the carriages and left everything as tidy as possible. The train was then loaded up with supplies, clean linens, drugs and other medical requirements for its journey back to Southampton; nothing being allowed on board which might be construed as of a military nature. When she was given a break, Poppy sat down with her notepad.

From a hospital train in Manchester

Dearest Ma,

I have just completed my first assignment as a VAD: a very traumatic train journey from Southampton to Manchester. I should really cross out that word
traumatic
,
for if there was any trauma involved in slicing and buttering hundreds of rolls it was far surpassed by seeing at first-hand what these soldiers have endured. It was the most humbling thing to be allowed to do something as simple as butter bread rolls for these brave boys, who all bore wounds of one sort or another. There were also those whose wounds were not visible, but of the inner sort, and one of the senior VADs said to me that these were perhaps the most badly wounded of all.

These are serious sentiments, yet the men were not all serious, but fun and amusing. You should have heard them, Ma, there was such an amount of comradeship and larks! Lots of dark humour when they were talking about each other’s injuries, but each anxious to see that whoever he was with should get served before him. It struck me, listening to them, that war is a very terrible thing, but can bring out the best in people.

And what do you think? On the journey up to Manchester I came across the older de Vere boy, who looks to have a bad leg injury but is ‘walking wounded’. He told me that he had only been at the front for three weeks before he was brought down. I expect his mother will be happy to have him back in England again, even if it is only temporary.

This is a selfish thing to say, but I am rather hoping that Billy’s regiment doesn’t get sent abroad.

Do look after yourself, Ma, and best love to you, Mary and Jane.

From your loving daughter,

Poppy

Chapter Ten

Pte William Pearson,

8903 D Company

Dear Sis,

Well this is a turn-up for the books we are both doing war work. It is different for you of course as i am going to be actually facing the enemy and believe me i have been practising with my bayonet like no ones buisness. When our sergent major says Run Run! and let Fritz have it i make sure that that sack of straw doesnot get up again! When we are not doing bayonet practice we are running across fields with our packs on and doing press-ups and the like. It is important to be fit our sergent major says.

My mates are a solid good crew there are ten of us in the squad and we have promised to lookout for each other and if one of us gets it then whoever has seen what happened will write to that matey’s family and tell them about it.

We have more or less finished our training now and are waiting to see where we are going to be posted. I saw Ronny Bassett from home last week he is a gunner in the artillery and his regiment have already seen active service in France – lucky blighter! We lads were talking the other night about the war and how ratted off we would be if we dont get a chance to fight. Some units just stay in Blighty the whole time and the nearest they get to fighting is beating up each other. I tell you i will be gutted if i don’t get a chance to fight. i want to kill every Fritz I can and earn myself at least one medal and i don’t want it for cleaning the majors shoes neither.

Can you write to me Poppy and i will reply as there is not much to do here in the evening all the lads do is write to there sweethearts. I would like to have a girl by the time i go off to fight the war but the trouble is trying to meet someone in a town full of soldiers!!!

i will write to Ma now.

with love from your brother (Private) William Pearson.

Poppy folded up the letter from Billy, smiling and thinking that he must really be bored if he was writing letters. Nonetheless he sounded as if he was actually enjoying himself – fancy him talking about winning medals! She had wondered if he’d be able to submit to army discipline, but she’d obviously underestimated him.

Although nearly a month had gone by since she’d been on the Manchester train, the face of the badly injured soldier was still etched on Poppy’s brain. She’d talked to Matthews about it and between them they’d come up with a technique they thought might help. On coming face to face with someone badly injured, they planned to squint their eyes a very small, unnoticeable amount, so that the other, injured features were seen as slightly fuzzy and out of focus. They would then bring it into focus gradually, so that the shock of seeing something awful wasn’t too great.

They’d practised on each other and found that it worked quite well – although, of course, they hadn’t yet tried it out on a real injured man. Poppy had told Jameson what they were going to do, thinking such a technique might help her, too, but Jameson had just looked at her as though she was mad. ‘Everyone will think that VADs are cross-eyed!’ she’d said.

That evening, Poppy took Billy’s letter into the YWCA canteen, intending to stay there after she’d had supper and reply to him. She usually took her off-duty meals with Matthews – sometimes they even went out for a bite to eat – but that day happened to be Matthews’ day off and she’d gone home to see her family.

Poppy fetched some soup and bread, sat down at a table and was joined almost immediately by Jameson carrying her supper tray. Putting the tray down, she pulled a newspaper from her bag.

‘I know it’s a frightful thing to do, but I feel this compulsion to look through the list of officer casualties to make sure that no one I know is on it,’ she said, opening the paper. ‘Do you know, so many are being killed that some weeks they have to print a special supplement.’

She began running her finger down the names, murmuring under her breath. Reaching
O
she gave a little gasp of horror. ‘Oh my! I danced with Henry Orlap at my coming-out ball!’ she said. ‘Such a nice chap, tall and dark with eyes like boot buttons. He made some joke about my ball gown being pink.’

‘Why, what’s wrong with pink?’ Poppy asked.

‘Nothing, but my dress wasn’t pink,’ Jameson said. She frowned slightly, as if surprised by Poppy’s ignorance. ‘You
must
wear white at Queen Charlotte’s Ball. No one would dream of wearing another colour.’

‘Oh,’ Poppy said. ‘Does it say what happened to him?’

‘It just says he was killed in enemy action.’ She looked behind them to see who was around. ‘My father says that more of our boys are dying than the newspapers are reporting,’ she whispered to Poppy. ‘Probably twice as many.’

‘But –’

‘It’s because it would be bad for morale,’ said Jameson. ‘Everything’s got to be positive – it’s always got to look as if we’re winning.’

Poppy looked at her, shaking her head and wondering if that could possibly be true. She wondered if Freddie or her brother had yet been posted overseas. A whole regiment could be moved overnight, or so she’d heard. Were these two boys even now in France or Belgium? If either was seriously wounded, how would she know? Sighing, she added salt and pepper and stirred her soup, which unfortunately tasted of its main ingredient, vegetable peelings. All the most nutritious foodstuffs were going to feed the troops.

The war now dominated everything; it was all anyone ever talked about. People speculated how long it would last, how many would be dead by the end of it and what it was costing the nation. They told each other exactly what Kitchener and Asquith were doing wrong, talked about how good things had been before the war, asked where the street entertainers had gone, complained that they couldn’t buy half the things on their shopping lists and said that the bread wasn’t of the same quality. The war was always to blame.

‘
Died in Action
. . .’ Jameson murmured, then, finishing this section, moved on to the
Died of Injuries Received
section and went through the
A
s,
B
s and
C
s while Poppy was still stirring her soup. Reaching the
D
s, she began, ‘
Davidson, Dawson, Derekshaw, de Vere, Dillon
 . . .’