I managed to reply, ‘Thank you, Sister,’ before going out on to the quay to look for my transport. There were fewer Tommies about than I remembered from last September – the men unloading the stores from the steamer were wearing khaki, but their tunics and trousers were made of baggy cotton, and their faces were brown. As I watched them a girl’s voice behind me said, ‘It’s the Egyptian Labour Corps – and we’ve got Chinese coolies back at the camp. Isn’t it exciting – the whole world has come to help us.’ I turned round and saw two girls in blue tunics and skirts, wearing sturdy boots; I could not place them for a moment, then I saw the VAD badges and the oil stain on one sleeve and realised they were my ambulance drivers. Yes, all the available men were needed at the front these days.
My drivers were jolly, friendly girls, but I did not feel either jolly or friendly today. They insisted I must sit between them on the front seat, ‘Safest place, Snaps is a terrible driver!’
Snaps brayed with laughter; she did not look at all put out. ‘It wasn’t me who reversed into the general’s staff car last week, was it Bim?’
Bim giggled happily, ‘But it didn’t matter, he was simply ripping about it – such a good sport! And Jack said the more staff officers I ram the better.’
She turned to me to explain. ‘Jack’s my brother, he’s a first lieutenant now. He’s just come out to France for the second time – after sick leave – he brought a draft over and spent a fortnight with them at Étaples – they had to train in the Bull Ring, although they’d mostly been out before.’
I said, ‘How nice for you to see your brother.’
Bim’s freckled face was serious for a moment. ‘Yes, it was – I miss him awfully, you know. We used to have such topping times together when we were young.’ She did not look much over twenty now, but I knew exactly what she meant.
Snaps steered the clumsy vehicle skilfully through the crowded streets of Boulogne, and as we began to climb she changed gear as smoothly and efficiently as our chauffeur always had in the Delaunay-Belleville at home. I realized Bim had been chaffing her friend.
As we came up out of the town, beside the downland rising to our left, the two girls continued to chatter. Bim said to me kindly, ‘How sickening for you, coming back from leave like that and finding you’ve been pushed off somewhere else.’
‘Yes, it is rather.’ I did not want to talk about it, and Bim turned the conversation to the vagaries of the ambulance; I was grateful to her.
We drove past the twin chimneys of the cement works at Dannes and through the big camp at Camiers, where the incessant rattle of the machine guns at the training school temporarily drowned out the noise of our engine. We ran out into open country again and Bim said, ‘Not long now to Étaples – Eatapples, that’s what the Tommies call it. It is simply the most enormous place – we kept getting lost there at first, didn’t we, Snaps? And it’s crawling with redcaps – Jack says it’s no wonder they need so many policemen, the way the men are treated – Jack was so angry. That wretched Bull Ring! I feel so sorry for the men, pounding around with all their packs weighing them down, and being bullied by permanent base NCOs who wouldn’t recognize the front line if they fell over it, Jack says.’
Snaps broke in, ‘We can see the Bull Ring from here – look, over by the estuary.’
I stared at the enormous sandy parade ground where company after company of men were moving in formation, like so many well-drilled ants. Bim jabbed her elbow into my ribs. ‘And do you see that stockade over there?’ I looked at the high wooden stakes and the sentries standing to attention outside. ‘That’s where they put the deserters before they shoot them.’ I shivered.
‘And that,’ said Snaps’ ironic voice as she took her hand from the wheel and gestured in the other direction, ‘that is where they put the deserters after they’ve shot them.’ The cemetery at Étaples had grown since I had passed by it on the train the previous autumn; it sprawled over the hillside in row after row of wooden crosses. And my anger boiled up at their flippancy and I said, speaking very distinctly, ‘I think there are very many men buried there who did not desert, men who did their duty and paid for it with their lives.’
In the silence that followed I realized that I had spoken to the two girls in the tone of voice my mother would have used to rebuke a careless housemaid.
Then Snaps replied, sounding very embarrassed, ‘I’m sorry, one shouldn’t joke, I know – especially not to a nurse. It must be very upsetting for you, seeing them carried out under their Union Jacks. It upset us, too – while the Arras push was on the buglers seemed to be sounding the Last Post all day on that wretched hillside. Look, Nurse, that’s No. 23 over there. The Sisters’ compound is on the right-hand side of the road, tucked in beside the railway, the ward huts and marquees are on the left.’
‘Thank you so much.’ I was sorry now for the way I had spoken to them – they were young girls doing a difficult job; cracking jokes was probably their way of coping with it. I should have let them be.
The Home Sister was harassed but kindly. She escorted me to the hut I was to share with another VAD. ‘Your kit’s already arrived from Rouen, Nurse. At least I won’t have to watch you throw your hands up in horror at the lack of a wardrobe, like the girls fresh from England.’
I looked round the small wood and canvas hut and said politely, ‘This looks very spacious, Sister – we were still quartered in bell tents at No. 15 – although there were rumours that we were going to be hutted sooner or later.’
‘Later rather than sooner, if I know the army.’ Sister smiled. ‘Tea will be served in the mess in ten minutes. Oh, by the way, it’s Nurse Aylmer that you’re sharing with, I’m sure you’ll both get on.’
Aylmer had been scrupulously fair about keeping her gear to one half of the hut, and it had a neat, almost homely, appearance. She had curtained the window with a pair of yellow cotton dusters and there was a straw mat on the floor. A shelf had been put up over the camp bed and there were several books standing on it, but my eyes dropped in surprise to the space below where two framed texts were hanging side by side: ‘God is Love’, and ‘The Lord Will Provide’. Sister followed my eyes and said, ‘Nurse Aylmer is a Strict Baptist – a most reliable girl.’ She sounded very approving. As she rustled away I wondered if Sister would consider me to be ‘a most reliable girl’; I remembered Conan and the hotel at Rouen and decided that she would not. I began to feel rather apprehensive about the unknown Aylmer.
As soon as I started to unpack I found my dozen silk petticoats; I decided I must have been mad to think of bringing them to this grim place. I thrust them back and went in search of a cup of strong tea.
I slipped into a seat at the end of the trestle table. The girl opposite smiled at me briefly then turned back to her companion. ‘Where’s Tilney?’
‘Gone Paris-Plaging with MacLeod. I’m reliably informed that two personable young officers from the Machine Gun School at Camiers would just happen to overtake the pair of them as they just happened to be strolling down by the estuary.’
‘Lucky devils – I could just murder one of those scrumptious chocolate cakes the Blue Cat serves up.’ She looked disconsolately down at her thick slice of bread and butter.
The first girl laughed. ‘Never mind – at least you can eat that with a clear conscience. I’ve told Mac she’ll be in hot water one day. Matron will march in and catch her and Tilney in flagrante delicto – with the chocolate not dry on their lips – but she doesn’t seem to care!’ The other girl sighed as she reached for her bread. ‘She doesn’t need to worry, as long as she sticks with Tilney – Tilney will talk her way out of it – that girl could argue her way out of hell itself!’ They both laughed, then the girl opposite looked over at me and asked, ‘Who are you sharing with?’
‘Nurse Aylmer.’
She pulled a face. ‘Now Aylmer never Paris-Plages, not ever.’
‘Don’t be bitchy, Sears – she is engaged, remember?’
‘Don’t I just! – a
fter all, haven’t I often admired the socks she knits for her dear Tom?’ They both began to giggle and I felt homesick for Rouen. Then I looked down at my chipped enamel plate and felt even more homesick for Hatton.
I was quite nervous by the time Aylmer appeared in the hut, but she turned out to be no older than I was, with a pretty face and fair curly hair; she asked me about Rouen, and as we compared notes on our experiences I began to relax a little.
I went to bed early but did not sleep well. I tossed and turned and crept out to the latrines in the middle of the night – they were over by the railway line, and a train came trundling along as I came out. A huge shape loomed up against the sky – and one after another the menacing barrels of the big guns rolled slowly past. I went back to the unfamiliar hut and lay awake there for a long time, feeling very alone.
I reported to Matron the next morning. She was big and broad and red-faced, and she looked me up and down with small, sharp eyes. ‘Your cap is crooked, Nurse Girvan.’
I raised my hand to adjust it. ‘I’m sorry, Matron.’
‘Report to L.3, Sister Oates.’
‘Thank you, Matron.’
L.3 was a large hut, but only half a dozen beds were in use. Sister Oates was grey-haired and very tall. ‘We’re evacuating every day at present – there must be another big push due. Matron said we’d better take our half-days off now, while we’re not busy, so I’ll send you off today and go myself tomorrow, when you’ve had a chance to find your way around.’
Even the thought of such a rapid off-duty failed to cheer me up. I carried out Sister’s instructions automatically, and tried not to think about where I was.
After lunch I wandered out on to the main road; there was a lot of traffic – ambulances, lorries, cars, horse-drawn limbers – the entire army seemed to be on the move in Étaples today. In Rouen I would have gone into the forest, but here there was not even a blade of grass to be seen – apart from the tired-looking square in the Sisters’ compound. The sense of the huge crowded camp all around me was very oppressive – I began to walk along the road to escape.
At last I did see the bright colours of flowers – they were growing on the lower graves of the great cemetery. But behind the wooden crosses at the top of the hill I saw the dark green of pine woods, so I turned in and began to walk towards them, keeping my eyes fixed on the trees above.
But just as I was about to slip between the scaly brown trunks a voice hailed me. I looked around and it was a military policeman. He came panting up to me. ‘Miss, you can’t go wandering in there.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because it’s not safe, that’s why. There’s deserters ’ang out in them woods, all round Eetapps they do.’
I protested disbelievingly, ‘But I always walked in the forest at Rouen – it was perfectly safe.’
‘I dessay Rouen’s different – it’s inland, see – they comes ’ere ’cause it’s on the coast – they ’ang around in the sand dunes or chalk caves up ’ere – trying to get ’ome like though ’ow they think they’ll ever get theirselves on to a leave boat’s beyond me.’
I turned back to the shade of the trees. ‘I’m not afraid of a few wretched deserters.’
His eyes began to bulge. ‘Them’s thieves and robbers – they break into officers’ quarters and steal, they do – besides, deserters are cowards.’
I remembered the men I had nursed, who had told me of their fear; I remembered Robbie’s letters, and I remembered Guy’s eyes that could no longer meet mine. I looked at the man in front of me, safe in his base camp, chasing cowards, and I asked, ‘How long is it since you were in the firing line, Sergeant?’
‘That’s none o’ your business!’ He was very angry now. ‘But I’m telling you, you keep out o’ them woods, or I’ll report you to yer Matron, and then you’ll be in trouble, young leddy.’
Without replying I turned and walked back to the top row of graves, and along to the rough wooden bench that had been built beside it. I sat down and stared ahead of me. I heard the policeman clump away, still muttering angrily to himself. I felt the breeze on my burning cheeks, cool and comforting.
I looked down over the road and the railway line towards the estuary, and saw between the sand dunes the wide bare expanse of the Bull Ring and the khaki-clad ants scurrying there; companies of ants, battalions of ants, regiments of ants – all marching and wheeling and drilling at the word of command, all bowed down by the weight of their heavy packs. And as I watched, I wondered how many of that multitude would survive the next few months; and of those who survived, how many would have lost an arm or a leg or a jaw or a face. How many would be irreparably damaged, just like the men I had seen in the streets of Rouen – one with a lone leg, balancing on crutches, another with an empty sleeve neatly pinned to his jacket? The French had a name for them: they called them ‘les mutiles’: ‘un mutile de la Marne’, ‘un mutile de Verdun’, ‘un mutile de guerre’.
And as I watched I knew that I too would become like them; that if I stayed in this terrible place some part of me would be damaged beyond repair. Not my body – my body was strong, even as their bodies were now – no, my mutilation would be of the soul, of the spirit. For I had seen too much already – too much suffering, too much death, too much despair; but as yet I was only wounded, I could still recover, the scars would fade and turn silver with time and do me no harm. But I must leave now – there was no time to lose.
I looked down in compassion at the men below me. They had no choice – for them the only way out was the hand-to-mouth existence of the outlaw; the flight, the capture – and the judicial execution. So they were trapped, there on that bleak sandy plain. But I had a choice, for I was a woman, a temporary volunteer, so I was free, free to break my contract and go today back to the greenness, the safety, the sanity of Hatton.
I was about to rise, when I remembered Robbie – I would be deserting Robbie. But Robbie would forgive me. No, not forgive – that word implied limits, the awarding of blame – and there were no limits, no blame between my brother and me. Whatever I did Robbie would always love me, whole-heartedly, unquestioningly. Just as I would him, if, by some unbelievable chance he deserted his post and became a hunted man in these woods behind me. Then I would lie for him, cheat for him, steal for him – and know no limits. No, I did not have to answer to Robbie – and there was no one else alive now to whom I owed such an answer.
I was free, free to go now before that irreparable damage had been done. And I closed my eyes and felt a great weight fall from my shoulders, and sat at peace. But when I opened my eyes again, still I saw those men marching and drilling below, so I spoke aloud in my pity: ‘You, you were born at the wrong time – you and I.’ And I. And even as I spoke I felt the breeze fan my cheeks again, but there was no comfort in it now, for it blew away my illusion of choice, and I knew there was no choice for me either. I too had been born at the wrong time. And I felt the weight of their packs on my shoulders, and bowed beneath the burden. But as it was for them now let it be with me. I too would become ‘un mutile’ – ‘une mutilee de guerre’. So be it. And I stood up and began to walk down, down into the dead forest of crosses.
Chapter Six
I went back to the Sisters’ compound, unpacked the rest of my kit and arranged my belongings in meticulous order in my half of the hut; then it was time for tea. I walked rather nervously into the mess, aware I was still a stranger in this place, but as soon as she saw me Aylmer smiled and patted the seat next to her and I slipped into it gratefully. She introduced me to the others at the table and as I caught the names ‘Tilney’ and ‘MacLeod’ I looked at their owners with interest. Tilney was small and slight with a narrow inquisitive face, MacLeod tall and freckled with shining auburn hair escaping from under her white cap. They talked quickly, in the shorthand of two people who know each other very well, then Tilney began mimicking Matron’s portentous manner – despite her small size she managed to give an impression of pompous gentility which
was clearly recognizable. ‘…a very serious matter indeed, Nurse Tilney. Information has reached my ears, that you and Nurse MacLeod were in the process of actively encouraging certain’ – Tilney paused, then delivered with maximum effect – ‘certain officers…’ ‘Harrumph, harrumph,’ MacLeod began to play the Colonel. ‘Steady on now, Matron – girls will be girls, you know, and boys – harrumph – boys!’ The whole table burst out laughing.
It became clear that their ‘Paris-Plaging’ of the previous afternoon had ended in near-disaster, but there had apparently been a sufficient element of doubt for them to have escaped with a strong reprimand. ‘Such a wigging, my dears.’ Tilney’s eyes rolled. ‘Poor Mac and I just slunk away, heads bowed in shame. Not a dry pillow all night, eh, Mac? Hey, Pargeter, leave some tea in that pot, you greedy hound!’ They did not seem at all cast down by their experience. I glanced under my lashes at Aylmer; she was steadily munching her bread and jam.
As soon as we had finished Aylmer turned to me and said, ‘I’m off for the evening now, so I’m going to walk down to the sea – would you like to come, if you’re free?’
‘Thank you, I should like that.’ We went to put on our hats.
Aylmer set a good pace and I strode out beside her over the bridge and down through the muddy square of Étaples village. As we crossed the second bridge, over the river Canche, Aylmer began to tell me about her fiancé. Her Tom was a Baptist minister, but he had a club foot and could not walk far, so he had had to find work with the YMCA instead of enlisting as an army chaplain. Aylmer said, in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘I used to feel so sorry for Tom – we grew up together and he couldn’t join in most of the games my elder brothers played because of his foot – but now, I thank God for it. Only I wonder sometimes if I’m being selfish, because Tom feels he should do more.’