Amy (9 page)

‘That’s all right, Lieutenant,’ she began, ‘I was glad to help,’ but his eyes were already closed.

She slipped out of the screens. Dr Hanfield had already gone. Sister was standing at her desk, still looking disapproving. ‘You can go now, Amy,’ she said.

‘Thank you, Sister.’

She walked wearily up the great staircase, tired out; she had to pull herself up the last few steps by the banister rail, then walked slowly along the corridor.

He hadn’t lost his leg. She stopped and looked at herself in one of the big mirrors, looking into her eyes as if she were someone she didn’t know. Why him? In the river of men that flowed through this hospital, why had he become so important? Her reflection gave nothing away. I’m just tired, she thought, just very tired.

She opened the door quietly so as not to disturb Helen, but she was still awake, sitting up in bed with a book on her knees.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Helen said.

‘I think I could sleep on a clothes line.’ Amy undressed, almost too tired to bother. She washed and cleaned her teeth and got into bed. For a few moments she stared at the ceiling.

‘I brought an officer in today,’ she said. ‘Leg injury. He was very rude about women doctors.’

‘Oh nice,’ Helen said. ‘You should have left him behind.’

‘I think he’s changed his mind,’ Amy said. ‘He actually thanked me this evening.’

‘That’s all right then.’ Helen turned off the light. ‘We’ll let him stay.’

Amy laughed and was instantly asleep.

‘W
E’RE
on the general ward this morning.’ Helen wound up her glowing hair. ‘Sponge baths and changing beds.’

‘Nothing new then.’ Amy buttoned up her shirt and bent around to do up the side placket on her skirt. ‘I wish they’d invent something easier than buttons to do up these things. It’s always a struggle.’

‘We’ve got a few hours off this afternoon,’ Helen said. ‘Had you forgotten?’

‘Of course I haven’t. We’ll do something – that’s if I can stay awake.’

The ward was bustling with the usual early morning activity. Sister looked harassed. ‘We have ten more coming in today,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where we’re going to put them. I really don’t want to put the beds any closer together; it all makes cross infection more likely. And I really do wish we could stop all and sundry visiting the men. They seem to think that they can wander in whenever they feel like it.’ Visitors to the ward were frequent, often just the local people bringing gifts, fruit and cigarettes and sometimes books in English. The men seemed to enjoy it.

‘I expect it cheers them up,’ Helen said. ‘It makes a break from the usual routine.’

‘It won’t cheer them up if they get colds or flu,’ Sister said tartly. ‘And it tires them out sometimes. Get on with the beds, please.’

Amy glanced around the room. It was completely full, as always. The lingering smell of infection would not go away, no matter how much they scrubbed everything with carbolic soap. As soon as a bed
was freed because the man had gone home, or died, it was instantly filled again. She felt as if that smell had lodged in her senses for ever, become a constant part of existence. She wondered, often, if it would fade away after the war was over. Would it be overcome by the scents of flowers, new-mown grass, the salty smell of the sea, all the clear, lovely scents of nature? Or would it never, never, go away, fixed in her brain like all the other ineradicable memories?

She and Helen moved from bed to bed, changing stained and soiled sheets, making the beds and washing the men who couldn’t look after themselves, and that, Amy thought, was most of them. There had been new admissions overnight.

‘The next one looks about twelve years old,’ Helen whispered. ‘He certainly can’t be more than sixteen.’

Amy nodded. ‘Lied about his age, I expect. You’d think the
recruitment
officers would notice, wouldn’t you? He looks like a child.’

He was sitting up in bed, talking continuously, whether anyone was listening or not. His young voice was tense, high pitched. ‘And then the officer blew his whistle and we all had to go over the top and the Huns started firing at us, shells and machine-guns, and everybody was falling down and I was shouting and then I got mine….’

From across the ward there came a gasp, and then a terrified
wailing
.

An older man stopped by the boy’s bed. ‘That’s enough, son,’ he said. ‘We all know what it was like. We don’t need tellin’.’

The boy’s left arm ended in a large bulbous dressing. As they came to him he held it up. ‘Lost me ’and,’ he said.

Amy glanced at Helen. She looked stricken. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

He grinned at her, a smile full of pain, but still the smile of an
innocent
boy. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I’m right-handed.’ Helen made a little sound, a little gasp of mixed sympathy and despair. Panic spread across the boy’s face. He began to breathe quickly and the pupils of his eyes dilated. ‘It is a Blighty one, isn’t it? They won’t make me go back? I can’t fire a rifle with one ’and, can I?’

Amy shook her head. ‘No, of course you can’t. Don’t worry. They won’t make you go back.’

Tears of relief began to run down his cheeks. ‘I can’t go back, miss. I can’t go back.’

Helen took his hand. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Bert. Bert Fizackerly.’

‘And where do you come from, Bert?’ She helped him off with his jacket and began to wash his back.

‘Manchester,’ he said. ‘Best place in the world.’

Amy smiled. ‘I bet your mam will be glad to have you back.’

‘That she will,’ he said. ‘When she’s finished telling me off for going in the first place. I thought she might have been glad to get rid of me for a bit; she’s got four others to feed and my dad was out of work.’

‘She’d never be glad to get rid of you,’ Helen said. ‘You wait and see.’

‘I want to see her,’ he said. ‘I want my mam.’

Amy could see tears in Helen’s eyes.

He was silent for a moment and then he said, ‘It wasn’t like they said when we joined up. It wasn’t saving the country, having an adventure like they said.’ Amy glanced at Helen. Was it she who had mentioned adventure when they first met? That was before they knew. ‘It was terrible,’ he was shaking now. ‘I was at Mons, in the retreat. It was
terrible
. But something happened. Do you know what?’ They shook their heads. ‘I saw the angel.’

‘The angel?’ Amy asked.

He nodded, his young face eager. ‘We was pinned down.’ He gulped, the memory almost too much to bear. ‘We was being
slaughtered
. There was men fallin’ everywhere, men screamin’. And then….’ He gulped again. ‘And then this angel came in the sky, shining like, all lit up. Great big angel, wings and everything.’ His face filled with a child-like wonder. ‘The Germans ran off and we was able to get away.’

Amy and Helen glanced at each other. ‘How wonderful,’ Helen said.

‘Aye, it was. We’re going to win all right.’ Amy and Helen finished his bed bath and then moved on, Bert still chattering behind them.

‘What do you think?’ Helen said. It wasn’t the first time they had heard about the angel of Mons.

‘I think it was just a silly rumour, or they all imagined it.’ Amy said. ‘A kind of mass hysteria. Things were so awful that they imagined that some kind of out of this world being would come along to protect them.’ She remembered very well that feeling of unreality; that feeling that things were so dreadful that it must all be a dream from which she would wake, or that someone, somehow, must surely come to help and change it. No one had come, that awful day when she had lost everything.
‘Perhaps it helped them at the time. Perhaps it gave them some kind of strength. Nobody really saw an angel.’

‘But it would be nice to think that the angels were on our side, wouldn’t it?’ Helen said.

She sounded wistful, Amy thought. She shrugged. ‘I should think the angels have all fled.’ They moved on. ‘I think the next man is French.’

The man was lying on his bed, eyes on the ceiling.

‘
Bonjour
,’ Amy said, but he was silent, not turning his head until she touched his arm. He began to tremble.

Helen bent down to him. ‘It’s all right,’ she said but he didn’t respond. She straightened up, frustrated. ‘I wish I could speak better French.’

‘It wouldn’t help.’ Amy stroked his arm, trying to relax him. ‘He can’t hear what you say and he couldn’t answer you. He’s dumb too.’ His trembling increased so much that the bed began to rattle.

‘He obviously can’t stand,’ Helen took off his jacket.

One of the other men came up to the bed. ‘We all talk to him,’ he said. ‘Shout to him really. He hasn’t stopped a bullet or anything; it’s shell shock. We’ll get him right. We’re all going to get together and shout to him, all together. He ought to hear that.’

‘It’s dreadful.’ Helen’s eyes were wet. ‘Sister told me where he comes from. His village is behind the enemy lines. He can’t know whether his family is alive or dead.’

These French soldiers, Amy thought. He had come in filthy and desperately hungry, no socks, his feet blistered and bleeding. As if his own suffering wasn’t enough, he suffered for his family as well. Anything could have happened to them. At least the British men knew that their families were safe at home.

They finished the morning’s work. ‘What shall we do this
afternoon
?’ Helen said. ‘In our few precious hours off. Or do you just want to sleep?’

‘Oh no,’ Amy said at once. ‘I’m getting claustrophobic. I need some air. We’ll go for a walk, shall we? See what’s going on in Paris. We can get about on the Metro.’

‘We could go to see where the Germans dropped that bomb,’ Helen said. ‘Apparently there’s a great big hole in the ground. I didn’t think they’d ever bomb civilian places. Those Germans will do anything.’

Anything to win, Amy thought. She sighed. ‘Let’s not. I’ve seen enough of the war for today.’

Sister stopped them as they were leaving the ward. She gave Amy a sharp look. ‘Miss Osborne, apparently there is a young man in the
officers
’ ward who has asked to see you,’ she said.

‘Oh?’ Amy tried to look puzzled, but she knew at once who it was. ‘Who is it?’

‘A Lieutenant Maddox, I believe,’ Sister said. ‘You’d better go now. You won’t have time later on.’ She swept away down the ward, her shoulders stiff with disapproval.

‘And who is Lieutenant Maddox?’ Helen widened her eyes, her eyebrows raised in amused enquiry.

‘He’s that officer I brought in the other day,’ Amy said. ‘The one who was so rude about women surgeons and then changed his mind.’

‘Now, now, Miss Osborne,’ Helen said in a mock schoolmarm voice. ‘We seem to be hearing a lot about him. You know you’re not supposed to get involved with the patients. No wonder Sister had a poker up her back.’

‘I’m not getting involved.’ Amy said. ‘What an idea. I’ve only seen the man a couple of times. Anyway, you know how I feel about that. I expect he just wants to thank me again; he fell asleep last time.’

‘I was only joking,’ Helen said. ‘Honestly.’

Amy smiled. ‘I know. I’ll only be a minute. Wait for me at lunch.’ She walked into the officers’ ward and spoke to the sister in charge. Sister also looked disapproving.

‘He’s over there,’ she said. ‘He’s been asking to speak to you. Please make it quick, we’re very busy this morning.’

Amy walked across the ward to his bed with an odd, inexplicable feeling of apprehension, though she couldn’t explain to herself why that might be. ‘Hello, Lieutenant,’ she said.

He was propped up on his pillows, his book on his knees. He looked thin, she thought, and drawn. He looked up from his book and a smile lit up his face. ‘Miss Osborne! I’m so glad you’ve come. I’ve found out your name, you see.’

She sat down on the chair beside the bed. ‘What can I do for you, Lieutenant?’ He looked paler than ever, she thought, and tired.

He looked surprised and then amused. ‘I think you’ve done enough for me already. I just wanted to see you again, to thank you properly
and apologize for some of the things I said. Obviously I was completely wrong. Very ungentlemanly.’

Amy smiled. ‘It doesn’t matter, Lieutenant. It wasn’t exactly an easy time for any of us, was it? I’m sure you had the best intentions. You were only trying to look after your men. That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it?’

‘And you had to do what you were supposed to do,’ he said. ‘I was very rude to you, especially under the circumstances.’ He became unsmiling and serious. He grimaced and moved a little under the sheet. ‘I really meant it the other day, you know. You did save my life and I shan’t ever forget it. So I apologize.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It really doesn’t matter now.’ She put her hand on the cage over his legs. ‘I’m very pleased about your leg. That is really good news.’

He nodded. ‘I had a good surgeon.’ He noticed her knowing smile and grinned. ‘All right, I was wrong about that too. A good woman surgeon. Frightening lady. Frightens me more than the Huns. She says I’ll be as good as new soon, if I do what I’m told. Might not even have a limp.’

Amy thought of the boy who had lost his hand. ‘A Blighty one’ he had called it. It didn’t sound as if Mr Maddox’s injury was a Blighty one. Not a permanent one anyway. ‘Will you be going home to
convalesce
?’ she asked. ‘Will you go home to your family?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, I expect so, for a while. My mother is already barracking about that. She’s even threatened to come over here and get me. That should frighten everybody. Then I shall be coming back – back to my regiment. I shall have to go through a Board, of course. They decide whether you’re fit enough to come back, but I should have no trouble with them.’ He said it casually, as if it didn’t matter.

Amy bit her lip and looked away. The thought was almost
unbearable
, that he would have to go through all that again, the horror and the danger. It was unbearable to her but not, apparently, to him. She looked back at him; his face drawn with weakness and pain, but his eyes were clear and untroubled. He didn’t appear to have any fears about it at all. Was that true? Was he really fearless, or did he just expertly hide it. He wouldn’t want to look like a coward; none of them did. He wouldn’t want to let his men down. He looked back at her so steadily that she flushed a little.

‘Miss Osborne,’ he said, ‘might I know your Christian name?’

‘Amy.’

‘Will you come to see me again, Amy?’

Incomprehensibly, the feeling of apprehension came back and she hesitated.

‘If there is time….’ she began.

He saw her hesitation. ‘Please,’ he said. He looked like a little boy trying to wheedle some treat or other. His nanny must have been putty in his hands. She had no doubt that he came from a family where he would have had a nanny. She laughed and said, ‘I’ll try, Lieutenant.’

‘Johnny.’

Sister walked by and gave her a disapproving stare.

‘I’d better go. I’m holding up the work.’ She got up to leave and then on an impulse she said, ‘Were you at Mons?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘One of the soldiers,’ she said, ‘says they saw an angel in the sky, and then the Germans let them get away.’

He didn’t smile. ‘You’re the only angel I’ve seen,’ he said.

She flushed again. She wasn’t used to compliments from men. There had never been time for such things in her life. Some of the soldiers teased the girls, asking them about their boyfriends and pretending to be bowled over by their charms. They all got used to it; these jokes were part of keeping the men cheerful and they were innocent enough. But this compliment seemed to be real – he seemed to mean it.