White Feathers (14 page)

Thomas says quite a few of his fellow students have received white feathers and nasty, anonymous notes as well, so he doesn’t think he’s been singled out, but obviously his personal beliefs will have generated at least some of this animosity. Thank God he has Catherine now to give him support.

Joseph finished the letter and put it away. He couldn’t be bothered thinking about shirkers and their persecutors. Both parties were puerile as far as he could see — the first didn’t have the guts to stand up and say publicly that they opposed the war and would not fight in it; and the second hid behind feathers and unsigned letters instead of honestly expressing their feelings. He thought it was a peculiarly Pakeha thing, and didn’t even pretend to understand it. He was concerned for Thomas, but credited his brother with enough brains and fortitude to manage his affairs with honour.

Tamar’s proposition about him working at Kenmore, though — that was worthy of very serious consideration. Providing he could still get on a horse, it would be the ideal solution when Erin came home and they were married.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

T
he news that No. 1 New Zealand Stationary Hospital was on the move became public knowledge within days. The exact date of departure was unknown but the already busy pace increased as equipment was sorted and packed and patients prepared for transfer to other hospitals.

Lofty Curtis, his shattered leg now out of traction, and Noah Jackson were both informed that they were to be sent to No. 2 Hospital in Cairo, while Joseph, Sonny, Eru and Henry, whose wounds had healed sufficiently for them to travel some distance, would be transferred to the New Zealand War Contingent Hospital at Walton-on-Thames on the outskirts of London.

Erin felt ambivalent about the impending move. Although she had resigned herself to being separated from Joseph, she was very loath to see him go. She didn’t mind where she was stationed, as long as she could continue to nurse New Zealanders, but she would have liked a little more time with Joseph. He, too, viewed their separation with a wistful but resigned acceptance. In the days before the hospital’s departure they found time only for some snatched, private moments together.

When word came that the hospital would be embarking from Alexandria in a week’s time for a destination still unspecified,
the ambulances began to arrive to collect the recuperating men. When Joseph’s turn came to be loaded into one of the motorised transports, solid trucks with a red cross and NZEF stencilled onto their canvas sides, Erin almost missed him. She had been on duty in another ward that afternoon, busy changing the dressings on a man whose right arm and torso had been badly burnt in an explosion, when Sister Griffin appeared at her side.

‘I’ll finish this, Nurse McRae,’ she said. Then, under her breath, she’d added, ‘Your young man’s getting ready to go. He’s out the front. You’d better hurry.’

Erin hesitated long enough to give the sister a quick, grateful smile, then ran swiftly through the echoing corridor, down the stairs and outside to where the ambulances were parked in a line outside the front door. She scanned the small crowd standing on the steps, then, unable to see any sign of Joseph, grabbed an orderly she knew and asked breathlessly, ‘Bob, Sergeant Deane. Which truck is he in?’

‘End one, I think, love. Better hurry, though — they’re moving out any minute now.’

Erin hurried over to the last ambulance in the line and stuck her head through the opening in the back. ‘Joseph?’ she said, and then she saw Sonny, his dark face even darker in the dim interior, and knew she was in the right place.

Joseph, propped on his elbows on a precariously narrow bunk, looked profoundly relieved. ‘Erin, thank Christ, I thought I might miss you!’

She hitched up her skirt, climbed into the back of the truck and made her way along to him. It was sweltering inside the ambulance already, the atmosphere made even more oppressive by that fact that everyone seemed to be smoking, and she didn’t envy them their long and uncomfortable trip. ‘Sister Griffin told me. I thought you weren’t going until tomorrow morning.’

‘So did we,’ said Joseph, turning on his side to face her. He leant forward so their faces were only inches apart. ‘I love you, Erin McRae,’ he said quietly.

But obviously not quietly enough because there was a muted scuffling as the occupants of the other bunks did their best to turn away and give them a few private moments together. Erin felt absurdly grateful. She would miss these men — their solid stoicism, their cheek and their fiercely disguised love for one another.

‘I know.’ She rested her forehead against his for a moment.

‘I’ll go home and wait for you,’ he said.

She raised her hand and brushed his hair back from his temples. ‘I don’t want anything more than that,’ she replied, tears stinging her eyes.

In the gloomy light he saw them. ‘Please take care,’ he said, then roughly cleared his own throat. ‘Everything will be all right if I know I have you.’

‘You do have me, Joseph. You always did.’

There was a rasping clank as someone began to lower the canvas flap at the rear of the ambulance. ‘Oh, oops, sorry,’ said an orderly as he spotted Erin. ‘Time to go now,’ he added apologetically.

Erin took Joseph’s face in her hands and kissed him on the lips. His hand came up to briefly clasp her wrist, then moved to touch the dampness on her cheek, and they broke apart.

‘Safe journey,’ she said, smiling softly at him.

‘You too.’

As she left she touched each of the others in turn as a gesture of farewell.

‘You look after yourself, eh, missy?’ ordered Sonny.

‘Oh, I will,’ said Erin as she climbed down over the tailgate.

She and a handful of the staff stood on the steps and watched as the ambulances pulled out and set off towards the sun, low
in the sky now, their tyres raising plumes of dust as they slowly picked up speed.

It took another two days to completely pack up the hospital, and then a train journey through the night took everything and everyone to Alexandria. They arrived at 3 a.m. on the 20th of October and embarked immediately on the SS
Marquette
, a good-sized steamship with a huge central funnel and only just enough room for her seven-hundred-odd human passengers, the men of the British 29th Divisional Ammunition Column and the New Zealanders, plus five hundred mules. The animals did not appreciate being squashed into stalls in the bowels of the ship, and brayed dismally and without respite.

Erin, tired and scratchy from being unable to sleep on the train, located the cabin she was to share with three other nurses, drank a cup of pale, tepid tea, then lay down on her cramped bunk and fell asleep only minutes later, lulled by the gentle roll of the transport as it moved slowly out of the harbour and into deeper water.

When she awoke some hours later, feeling stiff and grubby, the sun was up and Egypt well behind them. She had a rudimentary wash and went in search of food. During breakfast she learnt that their destination was Salonika, a small town on the Greek coast where the hospital would care for wounded soldiers from the British and French expeditionary forces. Like most of her colleagues she was deeply disappointed that they would not be looking after New Zealanders.

Because of the persistent rumours of German submarines in the area, they practised lifeboat drill exhaustively over the next two days. In a way it was fun, but the exercise lost some of its lightheartedness after the French destroyer
Tirailleur
joined the
convoy on the 22nd, although many on board the
Marquette
insisted on viewing the French vessel as a precautionary measure only, especially when it left the convoy the same evening.

The following morning the
Marquette
’s passengers were informed that they would be in port by midday, and a good number went up on deck to make the most of the sea breezes before they reached land. After breakfast Erin and two friends, Nancy Metcalfe and Louise Ryan, went up themselves and strolled the upper deck for several pleasant minutes before they stopped to lean on the starboard rail.

‘What’s that?’ said Louise suddenly.

‘What?’ Erin squinted in the direction Louise was pointing.

‘That thin green line coming towards us.’

‘I don’t really …’ Erin began, but she was interrupted by a muffled thud and a protracted shudder beneath their feet.

‘Oh my God, I think it was a torpedo!’ exclaimed Nancy, her hand over her mouth. ‘We’ve been torpedoed!’

They looked at each other in horror, then staggered as the
Marquette
suddenly listed violently to port.

‘Oh my God,’ Nancy said again.

‘Come on, we have to get to the lifeboats,’ urged Louise.

She turned and hurried up the now-sloping deck towards the stern of the ship, heading for the port-side stations they had been allocated during their drills.

By the time they had circumnavigated the upper deck it was crowded with people hurrying towards the lifeboats in a grim but controlled procession. There was no noise — not even a single scream or raised voice. A large crowd milled about the boats, struggling to tie on the life jackets being rapidly passed out. The first boat winched down contained mainly nurses, huddled in the centre of the craft as it swung out beyond the ship’s lower rails on rapidly unreeling chains and hit the water with a bone-shaking
jolt. But all did not go well with the next boat. The soldiers could not free it from its davits. As the ship rose the heavily laden boat swung forward and fell. Erin cried out in horror as it smashed down onto the boat below, throwing most of its occupants into the water and killing several outright.

Erin turned to Nancy and Louise and shouted, ‘The other side! The lifeboats on the other side!’

As they fought their way starboard again, Erin’s knee connected so forcefully with some solid object that she thought she might be sick with the stabbing agony of it. ‘Take your coats off,’ she said to the others as she staggered to her feet again, amazed at how calm her voice sounded. ‘They’ll drag us under!’

They clambered into the forward lifeboat and crouched together holding on to whatever they could as it descended quickly towards the water. Then all five nurses on board shrieked as it swung wildly and crashed against the side of the ship. Suddenly one of the suspension chains tore away and the boat’s bow plummeted and emptied them all into the sea. Erin had a second’s glimpse of flailing bodies tumbling to her left and right before she hit the water and went under immediately.

She was suspended briefly in the muffled and almost serene greyness of the shockingly cold sea water, and she wondered if she had drowned already. Then her lungs began to ache and it occurred to her that if she was still holding her breath she couldn’t be dead yet. She righted herself, kicked and broke the surface several seconds later, gasping and choking.

Around her bobbed people and a few bits and pieces from the dying ship, almost fully submerged now, only the stern above the water, so she struck out to put as much distance as she could between herself and the
Marquette
before it went under completely and dragged her down with it.

She’d only managed a few yards before a mighty enfolding
sensation tugged her backwards and she felt rather than heard a low hissing as the stern slid beneath the water a short distance behind her. Filling her lungs with as much air as possible she let herself relax as she was sucked under, and drifted bonelessly as she waited for the downward pull to ease off. When it did she kicked madly towards the surface and bobbed up again like a champagne cork, noting with something close to almost hysterical amusement that her boots had been sucked right off her feet and her knickers were down around her knees.

Nancy floated several feet away, floundering slowly and apparently blindly. Erin swam over, cursing the long skirt and heavy undergarments tangling around her legs and constricting her movements, and rolled Nancy onto her back. There was a deep gash across the side of her skull and her uncoordinated movements suggested a serious head injury. Erin glanced around and, fixing her sight on the hull of an overturned lifeboat, set out for it, towing Nancy’s limp body along behind her.

There were already over a dozen people hanging on to loops of rope attached to the boat’s sides, including Louise who, to Erin’s relief, appeared uninjured. Hands reached out to pull Nancy in closer as Erin gasped, ‘Can we turn it back over again?’

A man with a flattened and bleeding nose said through chattering teeth, ‘No, bloody great hole in it. We’ve had it.’

‘We have
not
,’ Erin snapped as she gripped the side of the boat. Shock had filled her with adrenaline and she felt outraged at what had happened to them. ‘We’ll be spotted soon. We’ll be rescued. We just have to hang on.’ She had no idea whether this was true, but she was damned if she was going to give up as meekly as this man seemed to have done.

Around her there were several intact boats, the right way up, crammed with people. Even more held on to the looped ropes encircling the keels, although most of the survivors seemed to
be in the water, grimly clutching anything that might keep them afloat. She could also see bodies, floating face down, and wondered how many had died already. There were mules every where too, paddling about frantically with their noses and ears sticking up out of the water; other animals were dead. Erin felt desperately sorry for them — they wouldn’t understand what was happening and wouldn’t have the sense to keep still and conserve their energy. The only sounds were the slap of the sea against the wreckage, some people moaning and crying and a woman singing a hymn in a reedy, cracked voice.

Louise let go of her section of rope and paddled carefully around to Erin. Her lips were blue and she was very pale. ‘Are there sharks?’ she whispered in Erin’s ear.

Oh God, thought Erin. ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered back, ‘but don’t say anything, all right?’