The Foreshadowing

  I carried my coat over my arm; hidden underneath it I had a canvas bag, neatly folded.

  Though my heart was racing, I knew that my best chance of success would be to act as relaxed as possible, to project an air of confidence. So as I walked through the doors I simply nodded at the lady on the reception desk. I knew her by sight, and she knew who I was.

  I half smiled.

  “An errand for Father,” I said, by way of explanation, trying for all the world to sound bored and exasperated in equal measure.

  I made my way up the central staircase, pretending to head for Father’s office.

  I did need something from his office, but I passed by its door. There was no light inside, as I knew there would not be. Father was out on the rounds with the other special constables, telling people to put their lights out.

  I made my way to the end of the corridor, then came down by the back staircase to the end of one of the wards, and there lay my goal. The laundry room.

  The hospital was quiet that evening, which was my good fortune, but even so, I checked up and down the corridor before I slipped inside.

  For a moment I began to panic. The laundry room was full of sheets being washed, and blankets, and pillowcases. I could see uniforms, too, but they were the wrong sort. There were plenty of regular nurses’ uniforms, but I needed a VAD one. In fact, I needed both an indoor uniform and the heavy brown outdoor uniform.

  Frantically I began to hunt through the piles of clean uniforms, but couldn’t find what I needed. In desperation I looked around and saw the basket for uniforms waiting to be washed. I rummaged through it and at last pulled out a couple of long gray VAD uniforms. Then I found various aprons, each emblazoned with a red cross.

  A thought occurred to me. I held up one of the dresses, but I couldn’t be sure.

  I looked at the door; there was no lock on the inside. Instead, I wheeled a huge laundry basket over to the door and jammed it up against the handle.

  Quickly I stripped and tried the first dress on, and was glad I had; it had been made for someone larger than me and I looked silly. I would be spotted in a moment. Fumbling, I pulled it off and stuck my arms into the second dress. It was fine. I pulled it off again, and put my own back on. I stuffed the uniform into the canvas bag, along with the cleanest apron I could find, and a couple of caps.

  I couldn’t see an outdoor uniform, and decided I would have to just wear my coat and risk it.

  I pulled the laundry basket back into place, put my ear to the frosted window and slipped out again.

  Still I saw no one as I walked back to Father’s office.

  I tried the door, and to my relief it wasn’t locked. This was a hospital, not a prison, after all.

  I hurried inside.

  I stood there undecided, and then started to hunt.

  I knew Father was responsible for passing and processing the volunteer nurses selected to go to France. On my last visit to his office, when we’d tried and failed to have tea, I’d seen a big box file on his desk that contained, I hoped, my ticket to France.

  It was still there, labeled: JOINT WAR COMMITTEE, SERVICE ABROAD.

  Inside were several bundles of papers, each one concerning a nurse. I began to leaf through them. The first few only had the preliminary applications in them—documentation that the nurse had put her name on the register to serve abroad. That she’d been notified of selection, that she’d applied for her passport, and so on. These were of no use to me. I riffled through to the end of the box. They were all the same. I tried to stay calm as I searched the desk, and then, in Father’s Out tray, I saw another bundle, just like the ones I had been looking at. He must have been working on it on Friday night; it was a completed set of papers.

  I grabbed it and checked it through.

  The nurse selected was called Miriam Hibbert. I didn’t know her, and I didn’t want to, in a way. I was about to severely impede her means of going abroad.

  Everything I needed was there. Her completed contract of service. The brassard arm band with its red cross. An identity disc. An identity certificate. A red permit that allows travel abroad.

  And then the passport.

  My heart sank. I hadn’t seen a passport before then. Until the war started we didn’t need them. I didn’t know they had photographs. I looked at the small black-and-white image of Miriam Hibbert. She looked nothing like me. There was no getting around it. How could I pass myself off as her, with that tiny picture to prove it was all a lie?

  Not wanting to give up, I looked at the identity certificate.

  The Anglo-French Hospitals Identity Certificate was a small paper document. And it had no photograph.

  On it I read that it could stand in place of a passport where none was present. I didn’t know quite what that would mean in practice, but my heart soared. The certificate had the most basic information on it. Name, address, age, height. Again my luck held. Miriam was just an inch or two shorter than me, at five foot six, and she was twenty-three. I could pass for twenty-three. Then there was a brief, rather blunt description of her.

  Tall; round face; brown eyes. Medium build. Straight, dark brown hair to just above shoulder length.

  It fitted me, apart from the round face and medium build. Well, I could tell them I’d lost weight. And my hair I could cut easily enough.

  It was time to go, but just as I was sliding the papers on top of the uniform in my canvas bag, I saw a book I recognized on Father’s desk.

  On impulse I picked it up and slid it into the bag along with everything else.

  The blood was still chasing round my veins twice as fast as it should, even when I was halfway home. All the way I expected to hear running footsteps coming after me, or cries of “Stop! Thief!” but none came, and eventually I began to realize that I had done what I set out to do. I had my passport for France tucked up in a canvas bag under my arm.

  As I reached the Seven Dials I stopped in a doorway and took out the book.

  Miss Garrett’s copy of Greek Myths.

  There was no doubt. There, on the flyleaf, was her juvenile signature.

  The book had made its way back into my possession. Mother had pushed it into Miss Garrett’s hands as she’d left on that awful night over six months before. Had she sent it to Father? She must have done, but why?

  There was a piece of paper folded inside the book, and I wondered if it was a letter from Miss Garrett, explaining her reasons for sending it, but it was not. It was some official letter of Father’s that he was using as a bookmark. And if he was using it as a bookmark, that meant he was reading the book. I put the letter back between the pages where it had been.

  For the first time since I had decided to leave, I began to doubt myself.

  48

  I have the book with me now, as I sit in the canteen on this Saturday morning. It was a hazy start to the day, but it’s clearing up now. In front of me is a bowl of porridge, and tea in an enamel mug. All around me are the smells of war and the smells of medicine. I’ve kept the book in the large pocket of my uniform since it came back to me. At first I saw it as an omen about home, telling me to stay. Then, more worryingly, I saw it as a link from me to Cassandra herself, and I was scared by that. But in the end I decided that it could only mean good luck, that maybe Father was trying to understand me at last. So I brought it with me to France.

  With a shock I suddenly realize that today is Tom’s birthday. I look up and around me. No one is looking at me, no one knows who I am. No one here knows Tom. I have no idea where he is. For a moment I feel very lonely, but it passes.

  I raise my tea to my lips and whisper.

  “Happy birthday, Thomas.”

  Sitting here, feeling the weight of the book in my pocket, I allow myself to dwell on my last few hours at home.

  When I got home with the uniform I went straight to my room. Father was still out, and Mother was sewing in the drawing room.

  Going downstairs again, I forced a yawn, and muttered something
about an early night.

  Mother looked up at me.

  “Fine, dear,” she said, smiling weakly. “You need plenty of rest.”

  I didn’t agree, but that’s what I had been hoping she’d say.

  “I’ll take a drink up with me,” I said, and turned to go.

  Mother didn’t answer, but dropped her head back to her sewing, straining her eyes by the light from the standard lamp behind her.

  I was struck by the sight of her. She looked like a painting, a woman at her sewing in the half-light, her husband out in the evening somewhere, one son dead, the other away at the war. For the first time in my life I realized my mother was an old woman, and I felt like crying.

  I stood gazing at her for a long time, but she was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t even notice. The feeling of sadness inside me welled up so powerfully that I thought I would crumble. I looked at her one last time, and closed my eyes, trying to fight the feeling that I would never see her again.

  I closed the door.

  I slept, and I slept surprisingly well, until, at four in the morning, my alarm clock went off right beneath the pillow under my head.

  It was time to leave.

  47

  It may be summer, but it is still dark at four in the morning, and since Daylight Saving Time started back in May, it’s darker for an hour longer in the mornings.

  The darkness would help me later, but in my bedroom I fumbled for the things I’d prepared the night before. I had my case that I used for holidays, small but strong. Everything I needed fitted into it, including the uniform, wash things and Miss Garrett’s book. I took all the money I had, as well as everything from Cook’s housekeeping jar in the kitchen. I felt bad about that, but I knew Father would replace it.

  It was a fresh morning. There was a train for Folkestone at five, so I had plenty of time, though there was something I had to do first. I hurried down to the station, praying that I would see no one I knew, but I needn’t have worried. It was still dark, and besides, no one of my acquaintance, or that of my family’s, would be out at that time of the morning, a time only for thieves and tradesmen, or for people like me, with a long journey ahead.

  At the station I headed straight for the public conveniences. There, I pulled off my clothes, and changed into the VAD uniform. I put the clothes I had been wearing and Miriam Hibbert’s passport into the bag, and shoved it up on top of the cistern, where it was out of sight.

  I pulled out a little mirror and the scissors I had brought, and considered my hair. It was straight, and easy enough to cut, though when I’d finished I saw what a mess the back was.

  I tied my hair in a bun and hid the whole thing under my nurse’s cap. I took my case in my hand, and left.

  I waited at the far end of the platform for the train, and by five past five, Brighton was left far behind me. My journey had begun.

  I thought of my parents, still asleep in their bed, unaware that with every passing minute I was a mile farther from them.

  46

  I thought I had planned my journey in detail, but on the train that morning I began to think of all sorts of new things.

  I knew that the hospital ships sailed from Folkestone to Boulogne, but had I fully understood what I was walking into, I might not have been so brave.

  Then there was the question of passports. I hoped the identity certificate would be good enough.

  As the train rattled into Kent I remember thinking I might have to give the whole thing up, or I would be stopped and sent home, in disgrace. Maybe they’d even think I was a spy trying to get back to Germany. The papers had been full of stories of people being arrested as spies, although most of them were probably totally innocent.

  I got off the train at Folkestone with little clue where to go or what to do, but then I saw another girl in a VAD uniform smiling at me. She came over. I began to panic. I should give the whole thing up, and go home to face the shame and anger of my parents.

  “Are you lost, too?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “I was, but I’ve got it all sorted now. I’m off to Boulogne. Are you?”

  Without thinking, I told her I was, and then, of course, she wanted to talk to me.

  “What’s your name?”

  I hesitated for a moment.

  “Miriam,” I said. “Miriam Hibbert.”

  “Where are you from?” she asked, after she had introduced herself. Her name was Amelia, but she told me to call her Millie.

  “Brighton,” I said. I didn’t want to be rude, but I couldn’t afford to give too much away.

  We made our way down to the docks, and soon we were in a queue of people, mostly soldiers returning to the front, all waiting at the gate in the docks. It was about midmorning by then, and the boat was due to sail at noon. It was a hot, bright day, and the queue was long. Millie smiled as the seagulls cawed and screeched above our heads. The boats in the harbor sounded their horns from time to time, and we could smell the salt in the air.

  In spite of everything, in spite of my fear, it was thrilling.

  Millie chatted as we shuffled slowly forward.

  “How old are you?” she asked. “I’m twenty-three.”

  “I’m twenty-three, too,” I lied, but she just laughed and I smiled. After that she chatted away merrily, and asked fewer questions. I learned a lot about her, without having to tell her much about myself.

  She’d been working in London and decided she wanted “a bit of adventure,” as she put it, so she had put herself forward for service overseas.

  I realized from what she said about her home that she was from a very wealthy family, but found life rather boring. This was her way of having an “adventure” in a manner that her parents could not object to.

  I watched Millie closely as we chatted. She was quite pretty, I thought, though some of her prettiness was down to having money to spend. I felt mean for thinking that, and tried to listen more attentively. She had a small round mouth with lips that flew as she nattered about this and that, and deep brown eyes, like mine. I decided I liked her, and I thought I could trust her. Not with the whole truth, but with some of it, at least.

  “Millie,” I said, when she stopped for a moment.

  “Yes,” she said. “What is it?”

  “I have a problem, but I wonder if I can ask you to help me?”

  “What is it?”

  “It was so early when I left this morning, I forgot things. I forgot my passport.”

  “Oh!” she said. “Oh, no. And what about your letter?”

  “Letter?” I asked.

  “From your hospital? You need a letter of authorization for transfer from the commandant of your detachment at home. Don’t tell me you don’t . . . ?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said, quickly. “Yes, I’ve got that. And my identity certificate.”

  She looked at me, exasperated, but then smiled.

  “Don’t worry!” she declared. “I’ll get you through. As for your passport, well, either they need nurses out there or they don’t!”

  And she was right.

  We got to the front of the queue to find a woman in civilian clothes but wearing a red cross on an armband. There was a sailor there too.

  Millie had such an air about her as she explained my predicament and flourished my identity certificate that in no time at all we were making our way up the gangplank onto the deck. It seems that passport controls are much more about stopping people from coming into the country than letting them leave.

  The ship was a vast thing, almost a liner, which had been converted into a Red Cross hospital ship. It was painted white with a large red cross on each side, and we learned that it spent its time crossing the channel, bringing the wounded home and returning with supplies of all kinds, as well as new nurses like us.

  We set sail.

  45

  The crossing seemed to take a lifetime. Millie assumed that we were going to stick together, and I have to admit I was glad of her companionsh
ip.

  Besides, without her I would probably have been on my weary way home.

  It was a smooth crossing, but even so, I felt a little queasy.

  “You’ll feel better if we get some air,” Millie said, and since it was a warm day, I agreed.

  We found a sheltered spot on one of the foredecks, and settled down, using our cases as seats.

  “I wonder if I can get us a drink,” she said, and before I could answer, she was up and away. She is so bright and full of life.

  “Watch my things, Miriam, please?”

  I started, not yet used to my new name. But I smiled. She made everything seem easy, and I wondered if maybe it was. Maybe life was easier than I made it.

  She was gone a long time, and I took the copy of Greek Myths from my case and began to read.

  Out of curiosity I opened it at the place Father had been reading, and felt a stab of regret shoot through me again.

  Cassandra. He had reached a page that talked about Cassandra.

  I read for a while, but the motion of the ship, the warmth, the fresh air and my tiredness all caught up with me. I must have fallen asleep.

  At least, that is what I imagine, for only that can explain what happened next.

  I was no longer Alexandra, in 1916, but another girl, long, long ago. I was on a ship still, making a fateful journey, but it was a warmer sea that my boat was crossing, and the boat was moving under sail and oar, not coal and steam. A ship that left the waters of the Hellespont, with the battered walls of Troy far behind, to head out across the Aegean.

  As the ship reeled across the heaven blue sea, I suffered as that other girl suffered. Abducted from my home by the violence of a foreign king, I prophesied not only his death, but my own as well, and despite the heat I shivered at the pain of a storm of things foreshadowed and foreseen.