Home for Christmas (38 page)

Lydia held her breath. Franz was a kind man and she respected him. It wasn’t easy to decline his offer, but it was something she had to do. Being alone with him would be dangerous.

Without saying another word or even looking at her, he flicked his unfinished cigarette to the ground, turned and went back inside the tent.

Lydia took one last look at the exploding sky before doing the same. By midday tomorrow, the hospital would once again be overwhelmed.

As expected, by ten in the morning, the hospital was overflowing with casualties. A call for help had gone out to the nearby village as more and more casualties poured in. The hospital was staffed by the Red Cross and did not differentiate between armies and because of this a larger number of civilians obliged in the hope of seeing their own soldiers, their own relatives.

Lydia had been on duty for five hours after refusing breakfast. She was ladling food into the mouth of a soldier with bandaged hands, his fingers almost burned to the bone.

The sight of his injuries and the smell of the food made her feel nauseous.

Somebody leaned into her line of vision.

‘I have more bandages. I tore up my best linens to make bandages.’

The woman had an aristocratic bearing. One of the Belgian nurses told her that the woman was Countess Vianelle. ‘She’s very rich and knows just about everyone.’

Lydia grimaced. ‘She’s also a member of the class of person who started this war,’ she muttered grimly. ‘Over there,’ Lydia barked at her without any deference to either her rank or her wealth. ‘Take them over there to the dispensary.’

The woman continued to pester her, saying she had already tried there and been redirected here where bandages were sorely needed.

‘Find somewhere,’ Lydia snapped, feeling hot, flustered and more tired than usual. ‘Anywhere there’s a suitable space.’

The woman muttered to herself in English. ‘No need to be so rude.’

Lydia being so busy was unguarded and answered in English. ‘I’m not being rude. I’m just too busy to bother with you.’

Lydia turned cold. Since the arrival of the Germans, she had purposely avoided speaking in English, using German wherever she could.

‘No point in igniting a fire under the enemy,’ Esther had whispered.

Lydia agreed with Esther. Suspicion was aroused unnecessarily if certain German doctors or officers heard them talking to each other in English.

Esther Cohen’s father had been a Jewish émigré into the USA. He’d fallen in love with a Swedish girl on the ship crammed with third-class passengers, all on their way to the New World.

Heartbeat increasing until it sounded like thunder in her ears, Lydia looked nervously into the face of the aristocratic woman.

‘You speak English?’ said the woman.

A little more composed, Lydia nodded. ‘My mother was English.’

The woman’s eyes narrowed as though she were digesting the information.

‘I see.’

‘Over here, Nurse Miller!’ Franz was shouting to her from further along the line of metal beds. She responded immediately. By the time she got back to the part of the ward she regarded as her station, the woman was gone.

After the early start, working without a break, by mid-afternoon Lydia was worn out.

Franz noticed this, his eyes heavy with disappointment.

‘Go for a walk. Go anywhere, but get away from this charnel house, at least for a little while.’ He paused as though about to ask if he could go with her. He couldn’t of course. He was too busy, and besides she had already rejected an offer to drink brandy with him.

The late afternoon was melting into twilight and a crisp frost threatened. The cold air was welcome, like a cold compress against her throbbing forehead. Headaches had become a frequent occurrence, a result of too little sleep and the tension of concentrating on the job in hand for hours on end.

The buildings in the nearby hamlet, a small place on the very edge of Ypres, had a dusty look, the windows never sparkling, the frames trembling every so often in response to the artillery still battling it out over Ypres.

At present, the shelling was sporadic, almost as though the town was holding its breath, waiting for the final push when one side or the other would capture it.

There was laughter coming from the few bars and cafes that were open, comrades in arms staggering along the main street, arms around each other in brotherly affection.

They looked at her, acknowledging her as a pretty woman. One stopped and asked what she was doing there. Pulling her cloak around herself, she flashed him a sight of her uniform.

He touched two fingers to his helmet in acknowledgement and said, ‘Thank you, Sister.’

She did not respond but fixed her gaze on the woman crossing the road behind him and disappearing into the church. She recognised her as the woman who had heard her speaking English.

It was on a whim that she decided to speak to her. Turning away from the street and the soldiers, she passed beneath a stone arch separating the medieval church from the street.

Shattered trees hung like wilted flowers at the far end of the churchyard. There was scaffolding around the ancient tower, which had suffered because of the intensive shelling of Ypres.

The carved door opened into the cool nave of St Pieters. Her footsteps echoed over the cool flagstones. The wooden pews, carved in the Flemish style, lent their ancient smell to the cold interior where even the dusty cobwebs shivered.

She’d expected to find the woman here, but there was nobody and no sound besides the scurrying of a mouse and the muffled sound of firing in the distance.

A thin veil of dust fell from the arched nave diffusing the light coming in through the windows.

It occurred to Lydia that she should go back outside, but the carved statues looking down on her from their arched niches, the feeling of centuries of continuity, made her feel safe.

There was a door to one side of the altar, as intricately carved as the door at the entrance, but smaller, more intimate and hinting at the room where the priest prepared himself for the service.

As she approached the door, she heard what sounded like excitable whispers. A priest and a woman? Alone in that room?

She wasn’t especially religious, but the possibility of the priest breaking his holy vows angered her. The church had felt so safe up until now.

The door creaked as she pushed it open.

The woman with the aristocratic features was there with the priest. She’d surprised them. She could tell that by the looks on their faces, but there was also something else. They looked frightened, their expressions strained as they considered what to do.

Lydia took in the scene. It was not what she’d been expecting. The priest was not breaking any vow. Between him and the woman, a countess if Lydia remembered rightly, lay an injured man. He was wearing the uniform of a French soldier.

The countess got to her feet. The look of fear was gone. She looked quite formidable, her head held high, her back straight, like somebody used to being in command.

‘He’s a French soldier and is injured. Will you help him?’

Lydia nodded.

Though their previous meeting had been brief, the countess obviously recognised her.

The man was sitting up, his back against the carved coffer where vestments were kept. His upper arm was badly damaged, shrapnel having sliced off a strip of flesh from it.

Lydia examined the wound, tentatively peeling a piece of shirtsleeve from out of the wound.

‘Do you have bandages?’ she asked.

She felt the man’s eyes on her as she cleaned the wound, but also she was aware of the priest and the countess watching her too. She guessed what they were thinking. Enemy soldiers had to be handed to the local German military. The penalty for assisting in escape was death.

‘Yes, I have bandages,’ said the countess. She exchanged a look with the priest before opening a locked cupboard. Sliding a book to one side, she brought out a bundle of clean bandages.

‘We are prepared for injured soldiers,’ she said, though Lydia had not spoken.

‘You will not betray us?’ asked the countess in a faintly accented voice as she accompanied Lydia to the door.

‘I’m a nurse. I cannot show favour to either side. I am obliged to treat everyone. The wound is clean. He can go home.’

Their eyes met in mute understanding. The man would indeed be going home and not into the hands of the Germans.

‘We know the risks,’ the countess said suddenly.

Lydia nodded. ‘Of course you do.’

Lydia thought she would never see them again, but it turned out not to be so.

‘You have an invitation,’ somebody said to her during a lull in the next round of fighting. ‘Lucky you.’

She had to ask for time off and because of that, she showed the invitation to Franz. He studied the name at the top of the card. ‘Countess Vianelle.’

‘I quite understand if you can’t spare me,’ she said.

Franz fingered the card thoughtfully before handing it back to her.

‘Just be careful.’ His eyes locked with hers. ‘Just be careful.’

It was the strangest sensation, sitting there drinking liquid chocolate with the Countess Vianelle and Father Anton with his button-black eyes, his angular features seeming almost demonic when added together with his slick black hair and long black garb. If it hadn’t been for the fact that they were speaking French, Lydia could almost believe they were at a vicar’s tea party in an English village. She had expected them to speak Flemish. The priest said Flemish was his native tongue, but the countess spoke Italian, English and French.

Today was a little warmer than of late. The smells of late autumn lent sweetness to the air: the scent of apples, pears and the tang of wood smoke from a gardener’s bonfire further enhanced by brittle sunshine and a crisp blue sky.

Lydia was wearing a woollen suit of a dark plum colour. Her favourite suit was navy blue, but the jacket had a peplum waist that stubbornly resisted fastening at present. This suit had a jacket that floated around her like a cape.

Both the countess and the parish priest frequently visited the injured men, bringing small things to make their stay more comfortable; soap, fruit from the orchard, as well as Father Anton’s homemade wine.

Presented in bone china cups, the chocolate was delicious, though Lydia’s pleasure was somewhat diminished by the fear that she might break one.

‘Are you English by birth?’ asked the countess in a slow, melodious voice.

‘I am,’ replied Lydia, carefully replacing the chocolate cup into its equally fragile saucer. ‘As I mentioned when we last met, my mother was English.’

‘Then we will speak in English. If that is all right with you?’

Though slim and small, with the most velvet brown eyes Lydia had ever seen, there was strength in that slight body; even sitting in her gold brocade sofa sipping chocolate, the woman sizzled with energy.

She wore an elegant flame-coloured dress with a cream lace bolero. Her small feet barely touched the ground. When she spoke, her voice was melodic yet strong.

They sat, the priest and the countess, on the brocade sofa, Lydia in a matching chair with a cream frame decorated in gold ormolu.

‘I should not pry, but it seems strange that you are nursing so far from the Allied lines. There is a story behind that? Yes?’

Lydia became uncomfortably aware that the two pairs of eyes watching her did not blink once. She picked up her cup again, and nursed it.

The priest spoke. ‘The fact is you helped the wounded man in our care and, so far as we know, have not betrayed us. The fact is we were afraid that you would …’ He paused whilst exchanging a secretive look with the countess. ‘But then the countess heard you speak English at the hospital. I understand the military distrust people who speak English. They are, as you might say, paranoid. Yet you go out and about as you please.’

‘Yes. I suppose I do,’ Lydia responded.

The countess cleared her throat whilst returning her cup to the tray. Lydia noticed the chocolate was barely touched.

Eyes as brown as the chocolate they had been drinking looked directly at hers. She noticed the thickness of the woman’s lashes, the way they brushed her face, almost reaching her cheekbones.

The countess leaned forward, placing the silver spoon she had used to stir her chocolate into the saucer.

‘The fact is, my dear, we need your help.’

‘You help Allied soldiers escape; that’s it, isn’t it? That’s what you do.’

The priest and the countess, who had had the good fortune to marry an Italian count, exchanged conspiratorial looks.

Father Anton nodded. ‘We may as well confess that indeed we do help Allied prisoners escape.’

‘You could get into very serious trouble,’ stated Lydia, aware that she was gripping her teacup as though about to strangle it. ‘You could get shot!’

There was a rasping sound as Father Anton rubbed his chin; he was one of those men for whom shaving once a day never really worked. His hair was dark, his chin a shade of blue and permanently needing a shave.

He nodded. ‘Yes. You are right. We walk a tightrope doing what we are doing, but we believe in our cause. Belgium, a neutral country, has been invaded. Yes, I am a man of peace, but I have to do something. The countess feels the same.’

The countess, as though applauding his sentiments, slapped her lap with both hands.

‘Well, my dear, you have heard enough. You could betray us if you so wished, though I do not think you will. You have no real loyalty to the German cause. You ran away from a complicated love affair. That is what I think. You have no real allegiance to either side. Am I right?’

Lydia met the forthright look in the countess’s eyes. Nobody had yet put her predicament so succinctly.

‘If being patriotic means I have to choose between the good people I have met in both England and Germany, then I cannot do that. I am a nurse. All I can do is take care of those who are in pain and dying.’

‘Would it be too much to ask for you to help us get wounded men home?’