The Storms of War (37 page)

The girl’s voice softened. ‘Which battle?’

‘The Somme, that’s what they said. He was near the Somme.’

‘Mine too. He was only sixteen. Told them he was nineteen and they believed him, even though he looked like the skinniest thing alive. My mother half tried to murder him when he came back from the recruiting, but it was done. He only had two leaves, four days each. The second one, madam here wouldn’t let me go, so I never saw him.’

‘I’m sorry.’

The girl shrugged, rubbing her eyes. ‘No point crying over spilt milk, though, is there? He wanted adventure, that’s what he said. Well, he got that all right.’

‘My brother ran away too. He knew we would try to stop him, I suppose.’ Celia was still holding the door. ‘I’m sorry your mistress didn’t let you go.’

‘Your work here is more important, that’s what she said. She goes out and helps at the canteens. It’s all for show – she’d do better to send me and dust her own vases. I’d like to be in the factories. Good money.’

‘Those girls get bright yellow faces, you know, from all the chemicals around. And their hair. I don’t think they can ever get it out. Haven’t you seen them?’

She pulled open the door. ‘I’d like blonde hair. Still, but they’re doing something, aren’t they? And it’s better pay than sitting around here cutting the ends off flowers to try and make them last that bit longer.’

Celia followed her inside. The hall looked woefully dusty, and
cobwebs were hanging from the doors. She almost tripped over a trunk in the hallway.

‘So what do you want to see? Dining room? Parlour? Those are the doors. Although I suppose you know that.’ The girl gestured around.

‘I will put my head quickly in the sitting room,’ said Celia.

The girl pulled open the door and Celia peered around. The chairs were covered with sheets and the low table was lopsided. She could not bear to look further at the place that Verena had so loved. ‘May we go upstairs?’ The girl nodded and the two of them trotted up to the cold first landing. But Celia had only one place she wished to see. ‘Up again,’ she said. ‘Please.’

On the top floor, she pointed at her door. ‘This used to be my room.’

‘Oh yes?’ said the girl, bored. ‘It’s just a room for old boxes now. You had better hurry up, you know.’

Celia pulled open the door. The girl was right. The place was piled high with boxes. She pressed some more notes into her hand. The maid nodded and shut the door. Celia stood there in the light of the windows. There was nothing to look at. Her old room was gone. She put her hand on the wall where her bed had been, where she’d once leant her head before going to sleep, whispering to the fairies hiding in the crevices behind the wallpaper. The new owners had stripped it off, painted it over with white. She fought down the tears.
After all this,
she wanted to say
, you cry over
wallpaper? She looked at the floorboards. She had once known every inch of them, every crack, mapping out the world she saw there. She thought about all those knights of the Round Table that you never read about because they never found
anything.
There was nothing here to see.

She heard sounds on the stairs. The maid burst through the door. ‘What are you doing in here? I heard moving about.’

‘I wanted to stand where my bed used to be.’

The girl reached forward and patted her pockets. Celia jumped at her touch. The girl shrugged. ‘Don’t think you have anything.
Although what there would be to steal, I don’t know. You should go now.’

Celia followed her out of the room and down the stairs. She thanked her as she left. ‘You should sign up to the factories, you know. If you want to.’

‘Maybe I will. Put madam here in a spin.’

‘Imagine,’ said Celia, knowing she sounded like Emmeline. ‘Why not?’ She hurried out of the door and down the drive.

Russell was waiting for her by the car, tapping his fingers.

‘Ah, sorry, sir.’ She ran to him. ‘I thought I saw … er … I … a runaway dog.’

‘You weren’t feeding it?’

She shook her head.

‘The city is full of stray dogs. You know you should not leave the car under any circumstances.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, sir. But this one looked particularly fine. I thought he must be cherished.’ She was aware that Russell could have her sacked. ‘And he reminded me of the pet dog I had as a child.’

‘Well,’ he said, shrugging, a smile she could not read on his face. ‘You’re here now. Come along, Miss Witt, let us depart.’

Her heart filled with relief, she climbed into the cab and started the engine.

‘So you’re not going to report me?’ she said, as they turned on to Queensway.

‘No. You are a good driver. Quiet. The girls before you were always trying to talk.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Sir,’ she added as an afterthought. Her heart swelled with gratitude. She stopped to let a group of VADS troop by, holding tight to their headdresses to stop them from flapping in the breeze.

‘I suppose you went to look at your old house,’ he said.

The VADS passed and she geared up. ‘I haven’t seen it since I was a child. I thought I might – well, remember things there.’

‘And did you?’

‘No. It was just a house.’

‘A lot of things have been lost in the war.’ He dropped his papers on his lap and stared out of the window. ‘You said you had no sweetheart?’

She blushed furiously. ‘No, sir. As I said, I don’t have one.’ She wondered if the previous girls had really been quite as talkative as he’d suggested. He seemed eager to ask questions. ‘I have a friend, though.’ The words were out before she could stop them.

‘Is he out in France?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know where he is. He was in hospital at Christmas, I suppose he might still be there. I don’t think he wants to see me.’

‘Has he said so?’

‘Not in so many words. But he ran from me at … an event.’

‘Men like that are often afraid, in my experience. They have suffered such injuries that they cannot bear for anyone to see them. Don’t be put off.’

She slowed to turn the corner, looked out of the side window. A passing soldier gave her a wink.

‘You know that as soon as he is recovered, he will have to return to the front, Miss Witt. You should visit him now, while you have the chance.’

Celia nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right. But I don’t know where he is. He may have been sent back already.’ She swerved into a line of traffic heading into town.

‘Well,’ he began, then paused and thought. ‘I suppose I could look him up for you. Let me know his name and battalion, and I’ll see what I can do. But you are not to mention this to anyone. Let it be our secret.’

‘Thank you, sir. That is very kind of you, really—’

‘Let us say no more. Now, drive on.’

That night, she meant to write to Tom in her mind, but Rudolf came to her every time she tried. The image of him was painful, for it was the one from the party that had failed. She saw him
standing there, encouraging Missy to the lucky dip. The rest of them were all sitting around him. They had changed. Emmeline was wider, paler, did not fuss so with her hair. Verena looked tired. Tom wore a scar across his face. Rudolf, though, was still the same, the great owner of Stoneythorpe, hosting a party. But surely, she thought, surely he had been altered more than any of them. She could not see him, could not imagine him. And did that mean she would never see him again? No, she told herself, they would be reunited, all of them, at Stoneythorpe.

She clung to the picture, ignoring the voice that said it was as hopeless as wishing for a fairy when she was a child, that everything had been so taken apart that it could not be put back together again. Tomorrow, she vowed, she would write a letter to Rudolf and send it to the government, and she did not care if he received it or not.

Number One War Hospital was a building that fitted the word ‘utilitarian’. Over the days since Captain Russell had told her that Tom was there and found her the address, Celia had fingered the paper, touching the scribbled words, trying to imagine what kind of place lay behind them. She had imagined – in the way she had once dreamed of Stoneythorpe – a Victorian fantasy, pale stonework around the tops of the walls, large bay windows looking out on to the garden, a heavy door with a porch. Instead, Number One was huge and flat and bulging, sitting at the top of a hill, simmering under the early April sun like a giant red-brick saucepan. It had once been a workhouse, someone told her on the train.

Celia walked through the quiet gardens, trying to picture Stoneythorpe as a hospital, men being escorted by nurses around the rose garden, in rows of beds in the dining room. She approached the doors, wiping dirt from her eyes. The train to Reading had been full of soldiers, and she had stood all the way next to a window that billowed dust into her face. She had borrowed one of Emmeline’s gowns and put her hair up, but after the train, she was covered in grime and her hair was blown out of place.

She found the reception area and a nurse who directed her along some corridors to Tom’s ward. An extraordinarily pretty dark-haired nurse, barely older than Celia, was at the desk. Celia felt her heart swell with envy.

‘Mr Cotton?’ she said. ‘Sorry, miss, no. He’s told us before: no visitors.’

Celia gazed at the sprinkling of freckles on the girl’s neat little nose. ‘I’ve come such a long way. Couldn’t you just ask him?’ The
hallway smelled of disinfectant. She felt grimy, as if she could never be clean enough to come into such a place.

The nurse shrugged. ‘We have to respect the wishes of the men.’ Her voice was hard to place, Celia thought. Midlands, perhaps, but not much of it. She supposed she had joined from school too. She had precisely the kind of beauty Emmeline had envied in the old days, thick dark hair and creamy pale skin; looked like the kind of girl who should be in evening dress, not working in a hospital in Reading. Her hands were those of a nurse, though, scrubbed raw, the nails bright red around the rims where she had scoured them with disinfectant.

‘Please.’

The nurse nodded and whisked off to a door. She returned shrugging again. ‘He’s awake, miss. But he still says no visitors.’

‘Did you tell him it was me?’

‘I gave him your name, yes.’ Celia hated her suddenly then, this girl, smaller than her, younger, who got to touch Tom’s hand, speak to him, ask him if he wanted visitors. She could imagine her tone:
There is some
person
here to see you.
Celia knew she hardly looked impressive in her old gown and boots.

‘Tell him I have to see him.’

The girl put on her best look of weariness. ‘We have patients coming in all the time. I can’t run messages all day.’

‘I know that. I was in France too. I delivered men in pain to the hospitals. Please let me in.’ She could feel tears filling her eyes and hated herself for the weakness.

The girl shook her head. ‘He’s in good hands here. You of all people should know that. After the operation, he will be on his way.’

‘What does he need an operation for?’

‘Oh, you know. A minor wound. Recovery won’t take long.’

Celia turned away. The door just ahead of her surely contained Tom’s ward. She was so close. She took a breath. ‘Tom!’ she shouted, as loudly as she could. ‘I am here!’ Then she turned and ran, barrelling past the girl.

She had got ten or so paces down the corridor before another
nurse seized her arm. ‘It’s all right,’ said the dark-haired nurse. She put her arm around Celia, and carbolic soap and linen filled Celia’s nose. ‘Come along, miss. You know we can’t have this.’

A burly orderly folded his arms at the massive wooden door. Celia knew without having to ask that beyond him was the room where Tom lay. ‘Come on now,’ said the other nurse. ‘Let’s go back. There are unwell men here.’

Celia looked at the orderly and let the nurse take her arm. They walked back to the front door and the desk. She flushed with shame at having made such a fuss.

‘This is a hospital,’ said the second nurse. ‘We can’t have this. I could ban you, Miss …?’

‘Witt,’ said the dark-haired girl. ‘She was in France.’

‘All the more reason she should know. She has seen men with shell shock. They need peace and calm.’

Celia felt a stab of remorse. ‘I know.’

‘Mind I don’t see you again.’ The other nurse swept away.

Celia looked back at the dark-haired girl. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Rouse. Nurse Rouse.’

‘Thank you for looking after him.’ She fought for composure, found herself imitating Verena. But she could not hold it. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please let me see him. It would mean so much to me. Michael, my brother, died, and Tom came back. I’ve been waiting for him. All I want to do is see him.’ She felt herself weeping again.

The nurse raised an eyebrow. Celia could not read her expression. Perhaps, she thought, miserably, she did not think her pretty enough for Tom. It was true, France had made her skin duller, her hair more stringy and her lips so dry that no amount of Emmeline’s creams could make soften them.
He kissed me!
she wanted to cry out.
He kissed me in the garden.
But here, she knew, being Miss de Witt of Stoneythorpe Hall did not mean anything, and perhaps in this new world Tom could find a million girls like her and she would be alone.

‘Why do you think he won’t see me?’ Celia put her hand on the wall. Freshly painted, she guessed. So many houses in the country
must be newly painted to be hospitals, or newly built. It was good for the men. She wondered how many of the soldiers she had driven had ended up in places like this. A door opened some way behind them and a smell of custard wafted through the air.

‘Lots of them don’t want to see anyone. What they have experienced out there – you know better than me, Miss Witt – it is too much, I think. They can’t make conversation any more.’

‘But I have seen it too. I could help.’

Nurse Rouse turned away, smoothing her apron. The custard smell filled the air again. ‘I’ve work to do.’

‘Well I have nothing else to do and the day free. So perhaps I will sit here and wait.’

‘You can’t,’ said the girl, flatly. ‘This isn’t a café, you know. I’m sorry. You will have to go.’

Celia suddenly could not bear any more discussion. ‘I will go,’ she said. ‘I will be outside.’ She turned and walked hurriedly out of the door. Perhaps Tom might come out for a walk, escorted by a VAD.

The door closed behind her and she stood against the brick wall, feeling the sun move over her face. On the far side of the building was a larger spread of garden, with steps leading down to what looked like an ornamental fountain. It reminded her of Stoneythorpe. A stab of guilt ran through her. Rather than driving Captain Russell around London, she should be at Stoneythorpe, encouraging Verena to offer it as a hospital. She gazed at the path, and her thoughts began to spiral. Really, she told herself, they were no better than the mistress of their old house who went off to do war work she was no good at, leaving her servants to arrange her flowers.

She leant against the wall, wished she had a cigarette. Across from her, a VAD came into view supporting an older man. His entire face was bandaged, two gaps left for the eyes. He walked slowly, deliberately. Celia could see the nurse talking to him, but he did not respond. She felt her hand twitch, the legacy of the shaking ground in Étaples. She slid to the floor and sat on the grass, and no one came to move her on. A family walked past
clutching flowers. They returned minutes later, the mother trying not to cry. Two girls arrived separately. One came back quickly, the other stayed an hour. See, Celia wanted to cry,
some of the soldiers can take visitors. Why not you?

Three hours or so later, when the sun was burning high in the sky, Nurse Rouse emerged. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You are still here.’

Celia nodded. ‘I took the day off. I thought he might come out.’

‘We’ve told him to. But he hasn’t yet. They have to understand that they are not ill, they can walk around. If I was in their state, I wouldn’t want to stay in bed.’

Celia felt pressed to defend him. ‘I suppose they don’t have the strength.

I saw so much death in France.’ The ambulances full of screaming men, the terror, the pain, the crosses on their foreheads, the moment when the morphine wore off in her cab and they cried out, begging, shouting, ‘Nurse!’

‘But that’s war, isn’t it?’ Nurse Rouse patted her hair. ‘I have to go over to the store block for some gauze. You can walk with me if you like.’

They set off across the parched ground. ‘Tell me about him, please.’

‘Not much to say. He has been here four weeks, transferred from somewhere else. He doesn’t say much. He will have an operation soon. As I said, only a minor wound.’

‘I’m glad it is only minor.’

‘Yes.’ The girl paused and brushed non-existent dirt off her apron. ‘Fortunate.’

‘But why an operation if it is only minor?’

‘The doctors here are thorough. This is the store, Miss Witt. I must leave you here. You should go before the sister finds you.’

‘When should I come back?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Next week?’

‘You could try, I suppose. Now please go before Sister comes back. If Nurse Priddle tells her, we’ll both be done for.’ The door of the store block closed behind her.

Celia turned to gaze at the hospital. No sign of anyone. She set off on the long walk back to the station.

Next day, she told Captain Russell that she had decided against seeing Tom. ‘He will contact me when he desires to do so,’ she said.

Celia came back to Reading three Fridays in a row, telling Russell that Verena was unwell and needed her help. Each time Nurse Rouse met her and told her that Tom would not see her. She learned that after the second week he had been in for his operation and it had proceeded well.

The fourth week, Russell was called to an urgent meeting on Friday, so she had to come on the following Monday instead.

‘I was wondering where you had got to,’ said Nurse Rouse.

‘I didn’t think anyone would miss me,’ Celia said, surprised.

‘Not
miss,
exactly. I have got used to you coming. We have a lot of visitors here, not many of them as polite as you.’ Rouse had violet smudges around her eyes and her nails were red raw around the edges.

‘You should have a rest from this,’ Celia said.

She shrugged. ‘You sound like my mother. There is no one else to do the work if I do not. We are short staffed as it is. Anyway, wait here. I will go and ask Mr Cotton if he will see you.’

Celia stood by the desk, brushing at her hair. Her appearance had been too long lost to really improve, but if Warterton was here, she would tell her to pinch her cheeks and look sharp.
The war won’t last for ever!
Celia could hear her saying.

Some time elapsed. Nurse Rouse came back. ‘He’s still refusing to see you.’ There was something about her face, though, that prompted Celia. She felt she saw a small smile – and that made her want to leap at her. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said.
I can’t go on like this
was in her head. She pushed away from the desk and ran – and this time there was no orderly. Nurse Rouse did not shout after her, and so she burst through the wooden doors into the ward. Two nurses looked up from cleaning a wound on a man’s
arm. For a moment, she stood there, confused by a room full of bandaged men.

‘Celia,’ said a voice to her right, tone resigned. ‘I am here.’ She spun around, and there was a man in a bed, his leg suspended on a wire, his head bandaged.

‘Tom?’

Rouse and an orderly charged in and caught Celia’s arms roughly. The same smell of disinfectant, soap and linen.

‘Don’t,’ he said tiredly, from the bed. ‘There is no need to pull her around. She can stay.’

The matron bustled through the door, Nurse Priddle behind her. ‘What exactly is going on here? Young lady, what do you think you are doing?’

‘It’s all right,’ Tom said, quietly. ‘She was upset. Let me talk to her. She won’t stay long.’

The matron turned to Celia. ‘What selfish behaviour. When men are trying to get well here.’

‘She didn’t mean it,’ said Tom. ‘She doesn’t understand. I will talk to her.’

‘Very well,’ said the matron. ‘But no more than ten minutes. And Nurse Rouse – I will see you in my office.’

They swept off and the door banged behind them. The other two nurses got back to work. Celia hesitated, then pulled up a chair next to Tom. It was hot in the ward, even more so by his bed.

‘Hello, Tom,’ she said, the words catching in her throat. ‘How are you?’ He was wearing hospital pyjamas. His bedside table was empty except for two books, turned spine side away so she could not see what they were. She realised that the whole of his neck and chest was bandaged. She blushed at the intimacy of sitting so close to him.

‘What happened to you?’ she said. ‘You were well when I saw you at the funeral.’

‘There was a gas attack after I went back. I lost a lot of skin and my lungs are a bit damaged.’ He opened his eyes. Then he closed them again.

‘But …’ Celia’s mind flashed with bloody jaws, bombs, the
screams of the men. ‘I thought it was just a minor injury. That’s what Nurse Rouse said.’

‘Well of course she did.’ His voice had changed. The burr of his accent had gone. He sounded more like an officer. Celia could see his hand, almost as raw as the nurse’s, resting on the coverlet. Easy to reach out, touch him. He coughed again. ‘We ran out of masks and they told us that if we wet our handkerchiefs then the gas wouldn’t come near. It wasn’t true. How did you find out where I was?’

‘A friend is … er … a nurse.’ She thought of gas billowing up. The men in her ambulance who had taken the gas were the worst off, coughing up green stuff. She knew what Tom meant by ‘wet’ but was too polite to say: some men in the ambulances had told her how they urinated on cloth and tied it around their faces. One of the orderlies had told her that the gas formed foamy stuff in the lungs and then it drowned you. He said he’d seen men tearing at their own throats in fear. Celia remembered when she had gone underwater in the sea for the first time, the panic as the water closed over her. She gazed at Tom’s face. She could not imagine being drowned in herself.