Poppy (7 page)
Authors: Mary Hooper
Molly pushed the letter at her. ‘Quickly, then. Open it and see!’
The Recruitment Office,
Devonshire House,
London SW1
13th June 1915
Dear Miss Pearson,
Following your interview at this office, we are pleased to inform you that the Voluntary Aid Detachment of the Red Cross will be able to offer you training in general war work, including first aid and nursing.
Please attend this office on 15th June at two o’clock, when you will be assigned lodgings. Training will commence the following day.
Yours truly,
For Voluntary Aid Detachment
That evening, Poppy walked over to see her mother and tell her the good news, then, having received a note from Miss Luttrell to say she would be spending several nights that week back at Mayfield, called in there to show her the letter too.
‘My congratulations, dear,’ Miss Luttrell said, kissing her on each cheek. ‘I knew they’d want you. Now you’re
really
going to help our boys!’
Poppy nodded excitedly, still hardly believing that she’d been accepted.
Miss Luttrell made a pot of tea. ‘You’re going to find yourself living and working amongst all sorts of people,’ she said, pouring it out, ‘and most of them will be well-to-do. I want to warn you against making up stories about your background – you might come unstuck. Just stay true to yourself.’
Poppy listened and nodded, waiting for an opportunity to speak to Miss Luttrell about something in particular. When there was a lull in the conversation, she seized the moment. ‘The younger de Vere boy, Freddie, has also signed up now,’ she said.
Miss Luttrell raised her eyebrows. ‘Excellent. I should think so!’
‘I sent him the feather,’ Poppy said. ‘But I don’t know if that was the reason he enlisted.’
‘Not the feather on its own perhaps, but he’ll have been getting a certain amount of pushing from those around him. Anyway, it’s not before time – it’s rumoured that the War Office will begin conscription early next year, so all those cowardly so-and-sos who’ve refused to fight for their country will be made to!’
Poppy hesitated. The something which she wanted to speak to Miss Luttrell about was the same something she’d tried to bring up with Molly. She made several false starts and then began again rather timidly, ‘Miss Luttrell, I keep reading that a woman’s role in the world is changing. They say that because we’re managing to hold down men’s jobs – important jobs – we’ll probably get the vote when the war ends and . . .’ her voice trailed away and Miss Luttrell looked at her expectantly, ‘. . . and you did say that the war will
level
people.’
‘Yes, dear, I did. So?’
‘So does that mean . . . Do you also think it’s possible that young men from good families will now keep company with girls who might once have been thought of as below them?’
Miss Luttrell looked at her keenly. ‘Possibly,’ she said, ‘but you must remember that these young officers want to . . .’ she gave a delicate cough, ‘. . .
keep company
for one specific reason. And that reason is not marriage.’
Poppy felt her cheeks begin to turn warm.
‘There is a certain desperation in young men who are going to war – oh, I know how it was for my generation during the Boer War! Men and women can get together for the wrong reasons.’ She grasped Poppy’s hand. ‘Be sensible. Don’t listen to a plea from a young man that you should consummate your relationship in case he dies at the front. If you do, you could find yourself with more than you bargained for at the end of the war.’
On Poppy falling silent, Miss Luttrell added, ‘You do know what I mean, don’t you, dear?’
Poppy nodded. She knew what Miss Luttrell was alluding to, but she and Freddie hadn’t even kissed! It sowed a little seed of doubt in her mind, however.
A certain desperation in young men who are going to war . . .
was
that
why Freddie was paying her so much attention?
Poppy was greeted at the door of Devonshire House by a girl in army uniform, who scrutinised the letter Poppy handed her and directed her to a waiting area just off a large, tiled hall. Here she sat on a bench with perhaps twenty other girls, all with suitcases and bags at their feet, all anxiously waiting to hear what they were going to be doing and where they’d be sleeping that night. Several of them were already speaking in low voices, comparing notes, talking about their homes or saying how much they missed their sweethearts who’d gone to fight. There was a kind of status battle going on, Poppy realised, with those who had brothers or fiancés at the front scoring the most points. She could not help noticing, either, that most of the young women had expensive leather luggage, were very well dressed and spoke in what her mother called ‘cut-glass accents’. She would be working alongside the type of girl she’d been calling ‘madam’ and curtseying to just a few weeks before – how odd that would be.
After a few moments of staring at the floor, Poppy found a little confidence and began to look around her, wondering whether she would be billeted with any of these girls, hoping that they would be friendly, wondering what they would be like to work with. Those who’d removed their gloves were showing awfully pale and un-workaday hands!
Four names were called out and four girls picked up their luggage and went into the next room, never to be seen by Poppy again. More time went by. Young women in different uniforms went backwards and forwards carrying paperwork, tea was served to the waiting girls from a trolley, further names were called and more new girls arrived to take the places of those who’d disappeared into other rooms. Another bench was brought in so that by the time someone called ‘Miss Pearson, please’ there were new recruits seated right around the four walls of the waiting area.
Poppy got up, tapped at the door and went in, no longer nervous, just grateful that they had called her.
‘You are Poppy Pearson?’ the matron asked.
Poppy nodded. ‘Yes, madam.’
‘Well, Pearson, as a VAD you will always be known by your surname,’ came the response. She scanned the form she had before her, then peered over her glasses at Poppy. ‘You have no formal first-aid knowledge?’
‘No, madam.’
‘But I see here that nursing is the area in which you want to work, rather than office work or driving?’
‘It is, madam.’
‘I want to emphasise straight away that you may not get the opportunity of work in France or Belgium. Only the crème de la crème of our nursing VADs will have the great honour of working alongside our fighting men.’
‘Thank you, madam, but I wasn’t considering asking to work abroad,’ Poppy said, thinking that nursing in this country was going to be quite difficult enough.
‘Very well. As to your duties: you may be asked to scrub the floor of a ward, to roll bandages, to clean equipment, to wash windows or clear up after someone who has lost control of their bodily functions.’
Poppy nodded. So far, so much what she was used to.
‘You must be ever willing to help and never complain at any task you might be given. The army rule of obey first and complain afterwards should always be uppermost in your mind, and as we
are
a military detachment you will be subject to discipline similar to that in the British Army. You will wear your nurse’s uniform at all times and make sure it’s immaculate, address all your superiors as sir or madam, stand to attention when spoken to by an officer and keep your temper whatever the provocation. You will undertake the smallest detail ordered by a superior and draw yourself to attention whenever the national anthem is played.’
‘Of course, madam,’ Poppy said, trying not to look too overwhelmed by all these demands. ‘I’ve been a parlourmaid in a big house for four years and that’s been good training. I’m used to hard work and obeying orders.’
‘Then you’re halfway there, Pearson,’ said the matron. ‘VADs are part nurse and part kitchen maid. From what you’ve told me, I take it that you won’t need training in how to scrub a floor or serve tea, like some of our new young lady volunteers.’
Poppy shook her head, hiding a smile.
‘You’ll be learning all sorts of tasks whilst you’re training, but it’ll be up to each individual nursing sister as to which you’ll be allowed to practise on the wards. You may be called upon to live in a tent, a hostel or in lodgings, and after eight weeks’ training in a variety of things you may be sent anywhere in the country.’
‘Very good, madam,’ Poppy said.
‘Now, Pearson, where shall we put you?’ Several moments went by whilst the matron consulted her paperwork. ‘Southampton again, I think,’ she said eventually. ‘It’s the first port of call for injured soldiers coming back from the front line, and at the moment they need as many girls down there as they can get. You’ll be staying at what was the Young Women’s Christian Association Hostel. How does that sound?’
‘That sounds very good, thank you, madam,’ said Poppy. At least it wasn’t a tent.
‘So, if you’re ready to go now, ask at the travel office through the door . . .’ she gestured to the right, ‘. . . and they’ll supply you with a warrant to catch the afternoon train.’
VAD Unit No. 1765
c /o YWCA Hostel, Southampton
16th June 1915
Hello Billy,
I expect Ma has told you: I have enrolled as a VAD and I am on my way to Southampton on the train as I write this. My unit number is written above. If you want to write to me then please address letters to me c/o the YWCA Hostel.
I’m terrifically proud to be helping the war effort and I expect you are, too. You must have nearly finished your training. I wonder if you will be posted abroad? Ma said that you are with a group of pals – I expect that will make all the difference and stop you feeling homesick. Billy, please make sure you write to Ma regularly and let her know (as far as you are allowed to by the censor) where you are and that you are well, for she will be worrying about you very much. Let’s hope that before too long we win the war and are back living peacefully in Mayfield.
I said I’m proud to be doing what I’m doing, but I’m also very nervous. I know my life won’t be in danger like yours, but I’ll be away from everyone I know and doing a difficult job whilst trying to keep a smile on my face no matter what. Southampton could be South America as far as I’m concerned – I won’t know anyone and everyone says the VADs are mostly very posh. Think of me speaking in my best voice all the time – it will be such a strain!
Writing of Mayfield, Ma told me that because of the anti-German feeling, Mrs Schmit had to close her sweet shop. Such a shame – she was a nice lady and had never even lived in Germany! People shouted at her in the street, though, and twice her front window was kicked in.
Do let me know how things are going.
With best love,
your sister Poppy
She wrote a few lines to her mother and sent postcards to both Molly and Cook, telling them where she was going and asking that any letters be sent on to the YWCA in Southampton. And then she just stared out of the window while the train belched steam and the English countryside passed by. Both she and Billy in uniform, she marvelled. How quickly things had changed!
Southampton. First port of call for injured soldiers. She didn’t want to see Freddie injured – couldn’t bear to think of it – but if he was, she would be there waiting for him . . .
By the time Poppy arrived at what had once been the YWCA Hostel in the back streets of Southampton, it was late in the afternoon. The big house was shabby and had an interior which was quite cheerless, but it was placed very conveniently for the VADs at local military hospitals.
The new girls were allocated a bed space as they arrived at the hostel, and Poppy found herself in a largish room which had been partitioned off by faded curtains into three separate areas. One of these areas was already occupied, to judge by the overflowing locker and the clothes hanging behind the bed, so she took one of the other two cubicles, which had its own small window. She sat down on the narrow bed and, before unpacking, closed her eyes and took several deep breaths to compose herself.
She was here. She had arrived. She was going to be a nurse . . .
On the third breath there was a sudden noise outside her curtain, the thump and clatter of cases being thrown down and the stamp of a foot.
‘Oh, how perfectly hateful!’ Poppy heard a girl’s voice say. ‘I can’t bear to be confined in such an awful dank little space!’
The curtain which surrounded Poppy was tugged open a little and a face looked in.
‘I say,
you’ve
got a window!’ said the girl. She pulled the curtain aside and Poppy saw a tall, slim young woman of about eighteen, in a dark linen coat and velvet hat, her fair hair flowing in ripples down her back.
‘I just got here and took . . .’ Poppy began.