Amy (3 page)

‘That’s all, Miss Richmond,’ he said. ‘That is quite enough.’

As she left the ward she passed Sister. She thought she saw a look of sympathy in Sister’s eyes, before she lowered them hurriedly and looked away.

She worked through the morning outpatient clinic and then she
walked across the hospital grounds to the nurses’ home. She had been given a room there where she could stay when she was on duty at night. It was raining, and she pulled up the collar of her coat and bent her head, the rain dripping off her hat.

The nurses’ home was bleak – long corridors with the wall below the dado painted a dark yellowy green. It was nearly lunchtime and the smell of boiled cabbage hung about everywhere.

Her room was in the section reserved for the senior sisters. It was hardly comfortable. It was sparsely furnished – linoleum on the floor, a bed, a chest of drawers, a small wardrobe and a washbasin in the corner.

She took off her hat and coat and hung up her coat to dry. She sat down on the bed, staring at the opposite wall. What was she to do? She could leave the hospital and try to get a post somewhere else. That would mean asking Bulford for a reference, and what would he say? With a feeling of sick despair she knew what he would say, or she could guess. His approaches to her were becoming bolder, more frequent. At first she thought it was accidental, an unavoidable aspect of their work – the standing close to her, the innocent seeming touches that no one else would notice. Now his behaviour was unmistakable. On the
occasions
when they were alone, perhaps in Sister’s office or the theatre office, he would stare at her, looking her up and down, his eyes bulging and lustful, like an animal. Once he had put his hand on her shoulder, his thumb straying to the top of her breast, and she had shrugged him off and backed away. Oh yes, she knew what he would say.

She got up and took a glass of water and stared out of the window. She could see the nurses walking across the quadrangle, their cloaks huddled round them. Carriages and occasional motor cars arrived at the hospital doors. Ambulances brought patients on stretchers, the porters hurrying out to meet them. This was her life.

She rested her forehead against the window. She could leave the hospital without a reference, but where would that get her? She could go to some other town, put up her plate outside the door and hope for the best. The thought filled her with despair. That wasn’t what she wanted, what she had trained for.

She drew back a little, and saw her reflection in the glass, her drawn, slender face, hair in the severe chignon. That was it, wasn’t it? In the eyes of some men, that was her original sin. She was a woman. And
that made her incapable of rational thought, fit only to run a house and bear children. Even some women were against women doctors. Even female voices were raised against them. So much for the sisterhood.

Shockingly, horribly, she did not have to decide what to do. Bulford had arranged her life for her. Someone had knocked on her door and told her that Sir William wished to see her in his office. He began at once.

‘I can no longer tolerate your behaviour, Miss Richmond.’

She tried to speak calmly. ‘What do you mean? I have done nothing wrong. It is your behaviour that is intolerable.’

‘Really?’ He smiled at her – a frightening smile. ‘And how many people do you think would support you in that? The students? The nursing staff? I think not.’

She stared at him, wordless, knowing that he had the better of her.

‘I am putting you on suspension,’ he said. ‘And I am going to make a report to the General Medical Council. I shall make it clear that I do not think that you are fit to practise medicine.’

‘You can’t do that,’ she said, appalled. ‘You can’t do that to me.’

He smiled again. ‘Oh, yes, I can.’

The rest was a blur. Days and weeks of waiting, of fear, of almost unbearable rage, of tears, of her father’s distress. And now this – this nothingness, these endless days and sleepless nights.

She lay in her bed and stared into the dark. Her own problems were nothing now. Out there, outside her horrors and troubles there was a war, so savage that the world was already reeling in shock and horror. ‘I’m coming,’ she said to herself, aloud, in the dark. ‘I’m coming. I’ll do what I can – whatever it is.’ Knowing that she could have done so much more was a pain that was hardly bearable.

T
WO
weeks later she and her father were standing on a platform at Victoria Station. The platform was crowded and the noise frightful – shouting voices, pounding feet, slamming doors. Even the pigeons had retreated up into the roof. She could see them flying, agitated, up above.

Streams of men in khaki, kitbags on their shoulders, struggled up and down the platform. Corporals with lists shouted orders and the men threw their kitbags into the carriages and followed them, leaning out of the doors and windows, cigarettes hanging out of the corners of their mouths. Many of them stared at the group of women in uniform and one rosy-cheeked boy gave Amy a cheeky wink. A packed troop train left the station in a clanking of wheels and a cloud of steam, the men shouting and cheering. The station smelt of burning coal and oil and the sharp, acrid smell of new uniforms and new boots.

Amy’s father stood straight and calm, but his face was as white as the newspaper under his arm. He gave a strained smile.

‘You all look splendid, Amy. Very smart and efficient.’

Amy smiled back, trying to hide her own apprehension and keep up the sense of excitement and purpose. The news was too dreadful for words, so many casualties already, so many dead. The men on the trains didn’t seem to be worried, laughing and larking about, but here and there she saw a strained white face and anxious, haunted eyes. Many of them looked little more than schoolboys.

The group of women stood loosely together, friends and relations
gathered about them. They were all wearing the uniform of the group that the doctors had called The Women’s Surgical Group. The station master had made a special concession for them and allowed their friends on to the platform to see them off.

‘I’m so glad you’re here, Father.’ Amy squeezed his arm. Quite apart from the comfort of his being there, it meant that she didn’t have to circulate or talk much to anyone else. And thank God for the uniform, she thought. It was a sensible colour, mid-grey. The skirt was short, just above the ankle, not like the fashionable hobble skirts that she thought were so ridiculous. The jacket buttoned up over a blue shirt and tie and the small hat had a little veil at the back to cover the hair.

She glanced across at the group of doctors. They wore the same uniform; they had designed it themselves. The same dress, but that was where it ended. They would be doing the surgery, while she? She felt bereft, as if the whole purpose of her life had been taken away from her, and sick that she had to hide her identity, pretending that she knew nothing. She didn’t know what she would be doing; washing the wounded, probably, feeding, changing beds. If she was lucky she might be promoted to changing dressings.

She looked away. She felt reasonably safe in the uniform, especially as an orderly. She could become totally anonymous – disappear.

She had one or two nasty moments. One of the well-wishers with the group of doctors had a face that she knew – a woman doctor who had been a year or two ahead of her at the Royal Free where she trained. She felt a moment’s shock and turned hurriedly away, but she hadn’t been recognized. She was safe, invisible among the orderlies. Then a photographer pointed his camera in her direction. She turned her face to her father, hiding it against his coat and he understood and put his arm around her and waved the man away.

Beyond the platform barrier she could see a mass of colour, the
fluttering
shapes of women’s hats and dresses, moving and jostling as the wives and mothers, sisters and daughters, said goodbye to the men who surged through. This side of the barrier there was no colour at all, just khaki and grey. It was, she thought, as if someone had drawn a line across the world. On that side, England and home; on this side, the unknown horror of what was to come. She felt as if all the colour and joy of life were back there on the shore, and that she was drifting out into an unknown sea on a mud-coloured tide.

‘Are you all right, Amy?’ Beside her Helen put her hand on her arm.

Amy shook her head briefly, clearing her thoughts away. ‘Yes, it’s nothing.’ She turned to her father. ‘This is Helen, Father. We met when we joined up. Helen, I would like you to meet my father.’

Helen’s freckled face smiled up into his. ‘How do you do, Mr Osborne.’

He gave a slight start at the name, and then smiled and shook her hand. She looks sensible, he thought. He noticed the purple, white and green badge on her lapel. A suffragist, though. Impetuous, perhaps.

‘I hope you two young women will look after each other,’ he said.

Helen gave a broad grin. ‘Oh we will.’ A porter came down the
platform
with a loaded barrow. ‘Oh look,’ she said, ‘there’s my luggage. I’d better go and look after it.’ She bounded away, her bright red hair glowing under her veil.

‘She’s a nice girl,’ Amy said, ‘and fun, I should think. And she’s very sensible.’

‘And a suffragist,’ her father said. He smiled. ‘I don’t suppose she’ll be chaining herself to anything in Paris.’

‘We’re all suffragists, aren’t we?’ she said. ‘Even if we don’t wear the badge.’

‘Of course,’ he said. He was frightened again. These girls seemed so strong these days, so confident. Too confident perhaps.

There was a sudden movement among the women. The rest of the luggage was piled into their reserved carriages and the women began to climb aboard.

‘I’ve got to go, Father.’

‘Oh, Amy.’

‘It’s all right, dear, don’t look so tragic. I won’t be in any danger. We’re only going to Paris.’

‘Promise me, Amy,’ he said, ‘promise me that if the Germans get anywhere near Paris you’ll leave. They are not far away now.’

‘I’ll have to do what the unit does,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to do my duty.’

He sighed. ‘Write to me. Regularly.’

‘Of course.’

She kissed his cheek and climbed aboard. The train gave a great gout of steam. There were shouts and a clattering of doors. The guard blew his whistle and waved his flag and the train gave a lurch and began to move. From the window she watched his tall, thin figure retreat from
her view, and behind him the colour and movement of the world she once knew.

They arrived in France in the late afternoon. The boat steamed into the harbour at Dieppe, Amy and Helen standing by the rail on deck with the others. The long quay was lined with people, strangely still and silent, watching the boat come in.

Amy looked along the line of silent figures. It was unnerving, this stillness. It was, Amy thought, as if these people themselves were the strangers, cast up in an unknown foreign place, not knowing where to go or what to do. She shivered a little, though the day was still warm.

‘Strange, isn’t it?’ Helen said beside her. ‘What are they waiting for, do you think?’

‘I don’t know.’ Amy’s throat was dry. Perhaps these stunned,
overwhelmed
people were waiting for someone to give them an
explanation
– why is this happening to us? Why France? They were standing on the very edge of their country, as if they wanted to leave, to flee. They looked, she thought, like the rows of birds in autumn, waiting on wires and trees for the signal to go, to get away. And these were the French, so proud of their nation and their heritage. The sight chilled her.

An agent met them on the boat, to help them with their luggage through Customs. They walked in a line off the boat and into the Douane, watched by groups of sailors and porters. In their own grey uniforms they were, Amy thought, as colourless as the watchers. Was this the first effect of war, the draining of all colour, the first
bloodletting
?

‘Why are they staring at us?’ Helen said. ‘They look as if they think we’re some strange undiscovered tribe.’

‘I expect it’s the uniform,’ Amy said. ‘I suppose we are an
undiscovered
tribe, in a way. They’re not used to women in uniform. Nobody is. Not yet.’

They went into the Customs building.

‘Good Lord,’ Helen said. ‘They look like a flock of crows.’

The Douane was manned by women, old women, in thick black dresses decently down to their black boots. The few porters were old men – too old to fight.

‘Get ready for some arguments,’ Helen whispered. The French
Customs were notorious for their thorough inspections. But the women merely stared at them and chalked on their hand luggage and waved them through.

They walked in a group to the station and boarded the train. Amy watched as the doctors and senior nurses got into a carriage of their own and then climbed aboard with the other orderlies. They waited for half an hour while their heavy luggage and boxes of equipment were loaded, with much noise and the raising of French voices. Then they slowly chugged away.

After Pontoise the train stopped at every little halt and station, and often in between for no apparent reason. The stations were mostly deserted, apart from women selling water and wine and fruit, and who gazed at them in puzzled surprise. No one, it seemed, was eager to go to Paris. The French countryside, lush and green, drifted by. It slowly grew dark.

‘I’ve never been to France before,’ one of the girls said. ‘Isn’t it
exciting
?’

They ate sandwiches and cake that they had brought from England. The simple food seemed to Amy to be oddly exotic, a piece of an England that now seemed so far away, so different, so safe. France was a different world now, a world that had become strange, fierce and dangerous. But it was an England that she wanted to leave. Whatever she had to do in France, it was better than sitting at home doing
nothing
, or doing something meaningless to her – rolling bandages or
knitting
socks. Those activities were useful, of course, and the women at home would feel that they were contributing in any way that they could. She would have gone mad.

At every small station a group of young men was waiting, surrounded by haggard, tearful women. At every station the young men kissed their goodbyes to mothers and sisters and wives and climbed aboard.

‘They’ve all been conscripted,’ one of the young orderlies said. ‘Our men have all volunteered. I think that’s much braver.’

Young men, Amy thought; many of them just boys. It must take courage, conscripted or not.

‘They’ll all be fighting the same battles,’ Helen said sharply, ‘however they got there. They’ll all be taking the same risks.’

The girl blushed and looked shamefaced and Amy smiled at her,
trying to comfort her, and the girl smiled back. She was young,
nineteen
or twenty, Amy guessed. She wondered if the girl would survive here and stay, or hurry back to England, frightened and appalled. She would certainly never have seen real injury or suffering.

‘I wonder what it’ll be like,’ Helen said, ‘the hotel that’s going to be our hospital. Some little building tucked away somewhere in a back street I expect. God knows how we’ll manage.’

‘We’ll manage.’ Amy said. ‘Dr Louisa Garrett Anderson is forming a group as well, and she won’t put up with any nonsense.’

‘Who is she?’ one of the young girls asked.

Amy looked at her in amazement. ‘Her mother, Elizabeth, was the first woman doctor in England.’

‘My grandmother doesn’t approve of women doctors,’ the girl said. ‘She’s very old-fashioned. She says it’s indecent.’

Amy looked out of the window. What do we have to do? she thought. What on earth do we have to do to make our way, to be even heard? British women surgeons rejected by the army! How crass, how stupid, how wasteful of their expertise. The French countryside slipped by.

It was nearly midnight when they arrived in Paris. They climbed stiffly out of the train into the dimly lit Gare du Nord. Amy breathed in the atmosphere, a mixture of garlic and anise and Turkish tobacco. So this was Paris, the smart, ultra-fashionable, self-confident and self-satisfied Paris. Surely such a wonderful city couldn’t have lost its beauty and its charm. Why was this happening? There seemed to be no logical reason for this dreadful war. There seemed to be no logical reason for half the things that human beings did to each other.

‘I’m dying for a cup of tea,’ Helen said. ‘And then bed. Bed for days and days.’

Amy laughed. ‘You might just get the tea, but I have a feeling that we’re going to be rather busy tomorrow.’

There was more delay while carriages were found to take them to the hotel. They were put down, at last, on the pavement outside the hotel, cold with tiredness. They all stood for a moment in a group, looking at the big, impressive glass doors.

‘Goodness,’ Helen said. ‘It’s not what I imagined. It’s certainly not in any back street, is it?’

‘Come along then.’ Dr Hanfield opened the door and they trooped inside. Waiting for them was a small plump man with glistening
moustaches
, an elegant black suit, black boots gleaming. Beside him stood a woman, taller than himself, wearing a well-cut brown dress and coat and a large, impressive hat. Despite their elegant clothes there was a very un-English air of rather too much fashion about them. They couldn’t be anything but French. Helen dug Amy gently in the ribs and glanced at her impishly out of the corner of her eye.

He stepped forward, smiling. ‘I am M. Le Blanc,’ he said in heavily accented English. ‘And this is my wife. I come to welcome you on behalf of the French Red Cross. Welcome to Paris.’

Dr Hanfield stepped forward and shook his hand. ‘We are very pleased to be here.’

‘We are very pleased that you are here,’ he said. ‘We urgently need more hospitals, more surgeons, more nurses. We never expected—’ He stopped suddenly and cleared his throat.

Dr Hanfield looked grim. ‘We will do our best, M. Le Blanc,’ she said. ‘You can be sure of that.’

They stood in a group inside the door, silenced by the sight of this magnificent hotel. The floor of the foyer was tiled in white marble, covered here and there with Persian rugs in rich colours, blue and red. There were soft settees in tan leather and glass-topped tables. From the ceiling hung opulent crystal chandeliers, glittering in the modern
electric
light. A wide staircase swept up to the first floor – white marble treads with a deep red carpet in the centre, held in place with shining brass rods. The public rooms opening out of the foyer were in
darkness
.