Somewhere in France: A Novel of the Great War (5 page)

Chapter 8

A
nger fueled Lilly’s retreat upstairs, along the corridor, and into her bedroom, a room that would, in a matter of minutes, be hers no longer. After turning the key in the lock, she collapsed in the slipper chair that had sat by the hearth for as long as she could remember.

Precious minutes evaporated as she fought against a rising tide of panic. Calm down, she told herself. You are not entirely without means. You
can
manage. You
can
do this.

A soft knock sounded at her bedroom door. “Lady Elizabeth?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Mr. Maxwell, Lady Elizabeth. Her ladyship has, ah, explained that you will be, well, leaving us. May I offer any assistance? Shall I ring for a taxi?”

Unlocking the door, she took one look at Mr. Maxwell’s kindly face and found herself blinking back tears. “Yes, a taxi would be very helpful. I’ll need a few minutes; I have to pack my belongings.”

“Of course, Lady Elizabeth. And if there is anything else I can do, or the rest of the staff . . .”

“Please don’t worry about me. I shall be quite all right. I promise you that.”

A half hour was all it took for Lilly to parcel her life into one large carpetbag and two small valises. Her plainest skirts and blouses went in the carpetbag, together with an extra pair of boots and two nightgowns. In the first valise she packed two day gowns, the simplest she had, and enough undergarments to see her settled. The second valise held nothing but books; she had restrained herself to ten, but the case was still as heavy as an anvil. And that was all, apart from the contents of her jewelry box, which she secreted at the bottom of the carpetbag, together with a bundle of letters from Edward, Robbie, and Charlotte, and a framed photograph of her brother in his uniform.

It was time to go. Gathering up her bags, she left her room for the last time, not allowing herself the luxury of a backward glance.

Seeing her struggling with her luggage on the stairs, Mr. Maxwell rushed forward. “Pray allow me, Lady Elizabeth—”

“Thank you, Mr. Maxwell, but I must learn to manage on my own.”

The taxi was waiting outside. As the cabbie loaded her bags into the motorcar’s boot, she prepared to say farewell to Mr. Maxwell.

“Do you know where you’re going, Lady Elizabeth?”

“I shall go to Miss Brown. I know she’ll take me in. And, Mr. Maxwell?”

“Yes, Lady Elizabeth?

“Thank you for everything. You’ve always been so kind to me. Please say farewell to Flossie and Cook and . . . and everyone else.”

He nodded solemnly. “Good-bye, Lady Elizabeth.”

T
HE JOURNEY TO
Charlotte’s lodgings took much longer than Lilly had expected. Just as she was beginning to fear the driver had lost his way, they turned a corner and pulled up in front of a row of neat Georgian town houses.

“Here we are, miss. Was it number twenty-one you were wanting?”

“Yes, thank you. Would you mind waiting for a moment, just until I see that my friend is home?”

Lilly crossed the street and knocked on the door. There was no answer at first, so she knocked again, this time more forcefully.

“Hold on, hold on!” She heard a voice from somewhere near the back of the house. “Give us a minute, won’t you?” At last came the sound of a key being turned, rather laboriously, and of bolts being drawn back.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” The door, open little more than an inch, revealed nothing of the speaker.

“I beg your pardon, but may I speak to Miss Brown? Is she home?”

“Of course she’s home. Who wants to know?”

Best not to use her title, she decided, else risk making an awkward moment even more uncomfortable. “My name is Lilly, ah, Ashford. I’m a friend of Miss Brown’s. I do apologize for the lateness of the hour—”

“You might as well come on in, then. No point having the entire street know our business.”

Charlotte’s landlady opened the door and beckoned Lilly in. With a frantic look back at the waiting taxi, she took a step inside. She’d thought to bring her reticule with her, but all her other belongings were in its boot. If the cabbie were to tire of waiting and drive off—

“Lilly? Is that you?”

Her friend appeared at the top of the stairs, saw the look on Lilly’s face, and immediately took the situation in hand. “But you’re not late at all! Come in, come in. Is your taxi still waiting?”

“Yes—”

“I’ll just run out and pay him. I won’t be a moment.”

It was one of the longest moments of Lilly’s life, made even more excruciating when Charlotte’s landlady realized that three pieces of luggage had been removed from the taxi and were being carried in the direction of her front door. Before the landlady could object, the cabbie had deposited the bags in the front hall and was walking away.

“What’s with all this?” the woman asked, her round little figure puffing up like a startled pigeon.

Charlotte stepped in front of Lilly, as if to protect her from the onslaught to come. “I’m so dreadfully sorry, Mrs. Collins. I
had
meant to ask you. And then, I must confess, I quite forgot.”

“Forgot what?”

“To ask if my friend might stay with me. Only for a few days. She’s a lovely girl, Mrs. Collins. Just your sort of person. And so quiet.”

“Is she now?”

“Of course I insist on covering any additional costs you may incur.”

“How long’s she staying?”

“Oh, not long. Isn’t that correct, Lilly?”

“Yes, not long at all. Just until . . .”

“You see, Mrs. Collins? And I swear she won’t be any trouble at all.”

The landlady’s expression brightened fractionally. “Stay if you must, then, but keep the noise down. Your friend can sleep on the settee in your room. I’ll fetch sheets and a blanket now.” She grumped off down the hall, her retreating figure the very picture of indignation.

“Charlotte, I—”

“Hush, now. Wait until we’re upstairs.”

Charlotte’s room, which faced the street, was much larger than Lilly had expected. At one time it must have been the sitting room for the house, and was graced with tall windows and a prettily tiled fireplace. It was sparsely furnished with a single bed against one wall, a narrow settee on the opposite wall, and a sturdy table and two wooden chairs in the center of the room. A Morris chair, its tapestry upholstery faded and slightly threadbare, had been drawn up to the hearth.

Charlotte shut the door decisively, hung up Lilly’s coat and hat, and guided her to the seat by the fire. “Perch here while I get the kettle going. I think we’re both going to need a cup of tea.”

She lit the flame of the spirit kettle that sat on the table, measured a spoonful of tea leaves into a waiting teapot, then carried one of the chairs across the room so she could sit next to Lilly.

Lilly took one look at her beloved friend, who was regarding her owlishly through the gold-rimmed spectacles she hardly ever took off, and had to blink hard to hold back a rush of tears.

“There, there,” Charlotte murmured. “You’ll have time for that in a bit. First tell me what happened.”

“Mama has been intercepting my post for weeks now. Possibly longer. She admitted to taking Captain Fraser’s letters, and I suspect yours as well.”

“I was wondering why I hadn’t heard from you. Did you only just return from Cumbria?”

“Yes, today. And that’s the worst part. You know how John Pringle had been teaching me to drive?”

“Yes, and I couldn’t be more pleased. It’s exactly the sort of thing you should be doing.”

“I’d been making such progress. But then, the other day, our vicar saw me driving the estate lorry.”

“Not good. If it’s the same vicar I remember.”

“Yes, still Mr. Burgess. He wrote to my parents. Mama was so incensed, you’d have thought they’d caught me planning an elopement with the gamekeeper’s son.”

“Or a dustman’s son—”

“Charlotte! This is serious. They’re going to sack John Pringle. Turn him and his parents out of their cottage.”

“My God.”

“We argued. I said the restrictions she and Papa were placing on me were unfair, and unbearable. And that blaming John Pringle was terribly wrong. They disagreed, of course.”

“And so?”

“I left. I went upstairs and packed my bags. And then I came here.”

“Oh, Lilly.”

“I’m so sorry to be inconveniencing you like this.”

Charlotte waved off her apology. “Nonsense. I’d have been very hurt if you’d gone to anyone else.”

“But your landlady—”

“Isn’t bad at all, once you get to know her. You’ll have her wrapped around your little finger before you know it.”

The kettle was singing, so Charlotte hurried to turn down the flame and fill the teapot. “I shall sort things out with Mrs. Collins. The room down the hall has been empty since her other boarder moved to Brighton a fortnight ago. She charges ten-and-six a week. Will you be able to manage?”

“I think so, though I don’t have much money at all. Just a few pounds, perhaps a little more.” Lilly went to her carpetbag, unlatched it, and delved deep inside. “But I do have
these
.”

A tangle of necklaces, bracelets, earrings, rings, and combs spilled out of the scarf she’d wrapped them in, nearly covering the table, an entrancing array of gold and platinum filigree, glittering gemstones, and luminous pearls.

“Birthday gifts, some pieces I inherited when my grandmother died, one or two things from Edward . . .”

“Do you have any idea how valuable these are, Lilly? I’m no expert, but they must be worth hundreds of pounds, even thousands.”

“I know. But I can’t keep any of it for myself. It must all go to the Pringles. I am the author of their misfortune, after all.”

“Not you, Lilly. Your parents. Remember that.”

At that point Charlotte declared a halt to serious discussion, at least until they’d had their supper. Lilly had never eaten so informally: her plate of cheese on toast propped on her knees, a mug of tea at her elbow, her fingers shiny with butter. Even in the nursery she and her siblings had been expected to sit perfectly still at their little table, linen napkins across their laps, sterling silver cutlery clutched in their hands.

“Do you want any more?” Charlotte asked after Lilly had finished her third slice of toast.

“No, thank you. That was lovely. My first meal as a free and independent woman.”

“That’s the spirit. Now, tell me: What are your plans? What sort of work do you want to do?”

“I was thinking I might find a position with the VAD, or the FANY. Assuming Mama doesn’t have me blacklisted.”

“You could work as a driver,” Charlotte suggested.

“That’s my hope. But I’ll do anything if it helps Edward. I don’t mind how difficult the work is. I’ll clean privies if I have to.”

“What are you going to tell him?”

Lilly had heard Charlotte speak with that tone of steady and utterly serious purpose many times before. “The truth, I suppose. Although I can’t bear the idea of upsetting him further, not when he’s so far from home. He has enough to worry about without my adding to his woes.”

“For heaven’s sake! Why do you persist in wrapping him up in cotton wool?” Charlotte’s words felt like a dash of cold water against Lilly’s face.

“Wrapping him . . . ?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean. ‘Oh, poor Edward, we mustn’t upset him. How will he manage? How on earth will he survive?’ He’s a grown man, and stronger than any of you give him credit for.”

Lilly couldn’t think of a thing to say. And Charlotte did have a point. Edward had always been the golden child, adored by all, pampered and coddled and indulged by those who professed to love him the most, herself included. It was a miracle that such treatment hadn’t turned him into a first-class oaf.

“Lilly?”

“Yes, Charlotte?”

“Please forgive me. I spoke quite out of turn.”

“You were right. Are right. And I will tell him the truth. I’ll write to him tomorrow.”

“And what about Captain Fraser? Will you write to him?”

“Of course. Though he may have given up on me, after writing so often and never receiving anything in return.”

“I’m sure he will understand. And I very much doubt he’ll have lost interest.”

“What do you mean by ‘interest’? We’re friends, nothing more.”

“Are you certain of that? You no longer have your mother standing between you. Why can’t there be more?”

“He thinks of me as a sister, that’s all. I’m sure of it.”

“Well, then. Write as many sisterly letters as you wish. But don’t be alarmed if he decides he’d rather have you as his sweetheart than his sister.”

“Charlotte!”

“Just you wait. When this war ends, I wager he’ll be beating a path to your door.”

“I honestly don’t think—”

“Shush, now. I have decided to propose a toast.” Charlotte raised her mug of tea and tapped it against Lilly’s. “To your newfound freedom.”

“To my freedom. And to the end of the war. May it come sooner than any of us dare hope.”

PART TWO

It had to be got through somehow.

Action, doing one’s best, rightly or wrongly,

mistakes or no mistakes, precluded all thought of self,

and drove out fear and anxiety.

—Captain John A. Hayward, Royal Army Medical Corps

Chapter 9

51st Casualty Clearing Station

Aire-sur-la-Lys, France

October 1916

R
obbie stood just outside the operating hut, swaying a little, trying to find his bearings in the thin half-light of dawn. He longed for sleep; was desperate for it. Could almost taste the respite it offered from blood and gore and the agony of others. But the ambulances would be back soon, he needed to see how his patients were faring, particularly the ones just out of surgery, and he had a mountain of case notes and official correspondence to conquer.

So he dragged his weary carcass over to the ward tent, greeted Matron and her nurses, and somehow managed to focus on their reports of his patients’ progress. Only one man had died during the night, a stretcher-bearer shot in the neck while helping to retrieve the wounded from no-man’s-land. Another letter for him to write to a grieving wife or mother. Another life lost, and to what end?

He’d been quick to volunteer when the first casualty clearing stations had been established, last year, to cover the gap between the frontline aid stations and the base hospitals. He’d worked in the receiving room at the London, after all, attending to victims of motorcar crashes, gas explosions, knife attacks, collapsing buildings, dockside accidents, and nearly every imaginable infectious disease or ailment. There, he imagined, he’d seen the worst.

He had been wrong.

He’d arrived at the 51st CCS one sunny afternoon in June 1915, in the aftermath of someone’s asinine decision to send a platoon of Canadians over the top on a bright, clear, moonlit night. Every last man had been felled in a matter of minutes.

After introducing himself to Colonel Lewis and Matron, both of whom appeared exceptionally composed despite the frenzy of activity around them, he was ushered into the operating hut, shown where to gown himself and scrub up, and was presented with his first patient.

It was the Canadians’ second lieutenant, hit by grenade fragments, and it had taken Robbie what felt like forever to pick through the wreck of the man’s bowels to find the scraps of jagged metal that had torn him apart, and then to repair his viscera and abdominal cavity. It was a miracle the man hadn’t died on the table.

As soon as the Canadian had been taken to post-op, another man had been placed on the table in front of Robbie. And then a third, a fourth, a fifth. He’d operated on eighteen men in twenty hours, more surgeries than he would have done in a week at the London, and when the ambulances finally stopped coming, he’d had less than a day to recover before the reception marquee was again filled with stretchers.

He’d never worked so hard, had never been so tired. It was worth it, he knew it was. This was where he belonged, where he could do the most good. So why did he end each day feeling as if he could teach Sisyphus a thing or two about frustration?

Tonight was no different. An hour passed, then another, and still he lingered on in the ward tent, laboring to reduce the pile of military paperwork that threatened to collapse his portion of the surgeons’ shared desk.

“Captain Fraser?”

It was Colonel Lewis, likely come to chivvy him to bed, though the OC had been on his feet for every bit as long as Robbie.

“Yes, sir?”

“When was the last time you had leave?”

“I can’t recall. Sometime last year.”

“Right. Which means you’re long overdue for some time off. I can give you ten days, starting on the twentieth.”

“But we’re shorthanded, sir—”

“Captain Mitchell will be back from leave.”

Well, then. He could trust Tom to keep on top of things. “Thank you, sir. I’ll just finish off this paperwork.”

“Bugger the paperwork. Get to bed, get a decent night’s sleep, then send a telegraph to your mother and tell her you’re coming home.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ten days. The most leave he’d had since signing up more than two years ago had been three days. Not long enough to do anything more than take the train to Paris. But ten days was enough for a trip to Scotland, and then . . .

Perhaps a visit with Lilly? Only lunch, or tea, or whatever was considered proper with the youngest sister of one’s dearest friend. Certainly not dinner at a restaurant or dancing or an evening at the theater.

Telegraph forms were kept in a pigeonhole above Matron’s desk, and ordinarily were reserved for official use. But the OC had told him he might send one to his mother. He took one and then, hesitating a moment, pulled out a second. The post to England could be unreliable, and he knew there’d been times when Lilly received a bundle of his letters all at once, some of them weeks old. If his letter went astray, and she weren’t able to secure a few hours off work, it didn’t bear thinking about.

He glanced at the calendar above his desk. If he left on the morning of the twentieth, he’d be back in London by late the following day, in time to take the night train to Glasgow. That would give him six days with his mother and, allowing at least twenty-four hours to return to Aire from London, a slender window on the morning of the twenty-eighth for him to see Lilly.

He couldn’t, in good conscience, allow any more than that; not only for his mam’s sake, but also for Lilly’s. Though she would, he prayed, be happy to meet him for a cup of tea, he had no illusions that she wanted anything other than friendship from him. And there was the matter of that fiancé, God rot his soul, though she’d never once mentioned him in her letters, and he’d never been bold enough to ask. Was it too much to hope that Quentin Whatsit had cried off when Lilly had broken with her parents?

He took up his pencil, schooling his doctor’s scrawl to the neatest block letters he could manage, and began to write.

DEAR LILLY. HAVE BEEN GIVEN LEAVE. HOME TO SCOTLAND FIRST. THEN BACK TO FRANCE VIA LONDON VICTORIA MORNING OF OCT 28. LET ME KNOW IF ABLE TO MEET. SEND REPLY TO MRS GORDON FRASER, LANGMUIRHEAD RD, AUCHINLOCH, NORTH LANARKSHIRE, SCOTLAND. WARMEST REGARDS. ROBBIE