In Falling Snow (21 page)

“We've made the news, girls,” Miss Ivens said.

“Minute precautions and delicacy. That's you they're talking about, Frances,” Mrs. Berry said. She sipped her tea thoughtfully.

“I think it's your feminine hands they mean, Ruth. I'm more likely the ‘rowdy.' But what this article means is that people are noticing. We are the women of Royaumont. There are nurses and orderlies and drivers, but it is this team of doctors that has made the greatest difference to our success.”

After the meeting broke up I went back to find Tom still underneath Violet's car.

“Oh Iris, your brother's a whiz,” Violet said. “He's cleaned the engine, fixed something in the wheels I don't quite understand but that might have killed me if he hadn't come along, and he's tightened up my brakes. Not that I use the brakes much, I must admit.”

I laughed. “I can vouch for that.”

Tom came out from under the car. “All done,” he said. He stood up and wiped his hands on a cloth hanging out of his pocket. He looked grown suddenly, like the mechanics who came to work on the tractors at home. “I'll just take her for a test run.”

“Tom, you don't have a driving licence,” I said.

“So? Neither does Violet.”

“Did I say, don't tell Iris?” Violet said to him, mock-angry. “Did I say she'll just worry? And what do you do? Tell her straightaway.”

“Violet, you don't have a licence?” I said.

“I have a kind of licence,” she said slyly.

“What does that mean?”

“I know how to drive. Oh Iris, don't tell. Please don't. As soon as you do, they'll send me home to miserable old Cornwall and Mummy staring into space. Don't. Please.”

I sighed. “Violet, you are the living end.”

“Well, let's just focus on the living part and not the end. Come, Tom, take us for a spin around the neighbourhood.” We climbed into the car, Tom behind the wheel, and went for a quick run to pick up some more mail for Miss Ivens from the post office in Viarmes. We farewelled Tom at the station and Violet and I drove back to Royaumont.

“Thank you for being so kind to Tom today,” I said. “He had a lovely time. I could tell.”

“So did I, my dear. My God, Iris, I didn't get a good look at him that first time with all our coats and scarves. I thought him handsome. But he is absolutely beautiful.”

“What?” I said.

“I know beauty is always more than physical and he has a way with him as well. But frankly he could have said not a word and I'd still be swooning. In fact, he should have kept his mouth shut. He looked better before he spoke. He even smells good.”

“Violet,” I said, becoming uncomfortable. “He's fifteen years old.”

“So how long do I have to wait?”

“Violet!”

“Sorry, sorry. To you, he's the little brother. To me, he's a man, or near enough that I could care less. Those eyes. They pierce a soul. Oh, oh.” She mocked a swoon. “And he's nothing like the baby he was when he first came. He's growing up so fast.”

“Violet, he's a boy.”

“Believe me, honey, I know the look. He is most definitely a man.”

“You won't be the first to be all ogle-eyed over my brother. He has no interest in girls.”

“We'll see about that,” Violet said.

“Violet, you cannot talk about my young brother as if he's one of your stupid lovers.”

“I'm not. And they're not stupid. I'm just saying . . . Oh, come on, Iris. I'm not the only one. Every orderly in the place came over to the garages this afternoon, to drop off milk or pick up fuel or see one of the drivers. Half the nurses too. That boy's a man waiting to happen. Who knows who the lucky girl will be?” I looked at Violet. She was right. The other women at Royaumont looked at Tom too. I'd not really thought of him as a man. He'd always been just my little brother. Once he'd needed nappies and bottles, then milk and biscuits, then a good talking to about his school results.

Something about Violet's attitude to Tom made me queasy. We had become great friends now but the way she talked about men—her lovers, she called them—they were like chocolates she'd eaten and enjoyed. I wouldn't want Tom to be one of her sweeties.

“Violet, you mustn't talk about Tom that way. You're a woman. He really is just a boy. I mean it, Violet.”

“Very well,” she said. “I'll leave off. We're almost home now. Let's see if we can't steal a bit of that custard from the kitchen.”

Over the next few months, Tom established himself as an honorary woman of Royaumont although none of us told him that's what we'd decided. “You want to watch that one,” Quoyle said to me after his first spring visit. “He's a cheeky young fellow.” But the next time he came he fixed the kitchen table with the wonky leg Quoyle had been complaining about and he put in another light for the kitchen. Then he helped the orderlies clear blocks of stone from a downstairs room we planned to use as an extended reception area. Before he left, he showed Miss Ivens how to tie a reef knot.

“He's a lovely boy, your brother,” Miss Ivens said afterwards, practising the knot without success.

“He's always been a handful, to be honest,” I said. “But that's what brothers are for.” I took the rope and fixed Miss Ivens's knot.

“Of course they are,” Miss Ivens said, looking at the rope with a puzzled expression. “He's going to make something of his life. You mark my words. He's got the same good heart as you, Iris. Your father must be very proud.”

I hadn't told Miss Ivens much about myself at all. Not that she hadn't asked. But we'd been so busy that I'd kept our conversations to the work mostly, and now we knew each other so well that it would seem silly to tell her about my background. She'd told me her mother had died when she was twenty and so I'd told her about my own mother's death. Miss Ivens's father had remarried too, but unlike Daddy he'd moved his old family, as he termed Miss Ivens and her older sisters, into another house and his new wife into his old house. “We were eating bread and butter pudding at the time he told me,” Miss Ivens said. “I've never been able to stand it since.”

Not long after Tom's spring visit, I received a letter from Daddy, the first I'd had since I'd written to tell him the good news that Tom was not only safe but gainfully employed in the postal service, that I had found a position in a hospital, and that with this in mind, I thought it best for Tom and me to remain in France.

Daddy's reply started innocuously enough, talking about Risdon and the long dry summer.
The twins are into all sorts of mischief
, he wrote.
Claire says they're good boys, but they remind me too much of Tom when he was a tyke, built for trouble
. And then it started.
I had a letter from him, Iris. This business of being in a safe job. I can't see there can be safe jobs when blokes are running around shooting each other. Every week the list of dead and wounded gets longer.

When I wrote back, I told Daddy more about Royaumont, the soil, the weather, the people I'd met. When I mentioned Tom it was only to say that he was safe and that I was keeping an eye on him as we'd agreed. In his next letter, Daddy responded that there's no such thing as safety when men have guns for shooting and Tom was a boy who should come home.
All I've got in the world that matters is my family, and the thought I might lose either of you I can't abide
. So I continued to write, telling Daddy about the things I discovered, the bird that sang in the evening rather than the morning at Royaumont, the light so soft in the middle of the day with nothing I'd seen in Australia to compare it to. Daddy wrote back, pleading with me to see sense. I didn't give him any more thought than the flowers I started finding in the fields around Royaumont as spring found the fullness of summer. And of course, the longer I stayed and ignored Daddy's pleas, the more convinced I became that Tom and I had been right all along and Daddy had been wrong.

Late in the summer of 1915 the weather unexpectedly turned cold. The drivers were in their wool coats, there was sleet on the roads, and there was even a suggestion we'd have snow. Violet returned from Creil about two one morning. I'd come off the ward at eleven and was sound asleep. She was noisy coming into the room, bumping into things, not like Violet at all.

“I'm sorry, did I wake you?” she said when she saw my eyes open.

“No. Are you all right?” She was still in her boots, still wearing her wool coat and gloves, which she'd normally have left downstairs.

“Tonight, I was driving a chap, died on the way. The others did their best. It never stops.” We'd had a busy few weeks and Violet had been under considerable strain as we'd lost one of our drivers who'd had to go home to nurse her sick mother.

I got out of bed. Violet's skin was pale and sheeny. I'd left the window open a crack when I went to sleep but there was quite a chill up now. I put my palm to Violet's forehead. “You've got a fever,” I said.

She was standing in the middle of the room and she started to sway. I went to grab her as she fainted. I half-caught her, forced to let her down onto the floor.

“Someone, come quickly!” I called and in a moment Marjorie Starr was at the door in her nightdress. “Violet's taken ill.”

Together, we lifted her onto her bed and took off her coat and boots. She was sweating underneath all the layers. There had been an outbreak of typhoid around Creil and I feared the worst. Marjorie went to find a doctor. It was Mrs. Berry who came and I was relieved—she was our best physician. She examined Violet, who'd woken by this stage and was feeling much better, she said. Just a little faint, she said. She might get up and go back to Creil, she thought. I told her to stay where she was.

“You need to rest,” Mrs. Berry agreed.

Violet tried to get up and fell back on the bed. “But I have to go back,” she said.

“No, you don't. Violet, you're sick,” I said. “You have to stay here with me.”

When Violet had settled down again, Mrs. Berry took me outside. “Her throat's inflamed, glands are up, and her chest doesn't sound good. Iris, you need to stay with her. I don't like the look of it.”

“It's not typhoid?” I said, terrified suddenly.

“No, but it's a nasty infection. And Violet's not strong.”

Mrs. Berry put her hand on my shoulder and this more than anything worried me. Everyone knew Violet and I were inseparable. We spent every spare minute in each other's company. If Mrs. Berry was trying to offer me comfort she must think Violet gravely ill. Matron Todd came in then. She took one look at Violet and said to Mrs. Berry, “I rather think we ought to send up to Paris for a man, don't you?” Mrs. Berry stared at her and didn't reply.

To me, Mrs. Berry said, “At least we know she'll have good care here. Iris, you need to stay with her. The fever's sure to go up again.” She shook her head. “It's little wonder frankly,” talking to herself now. “We're not eating properly, not sleeping. And the drivers are out there night after night. Even in the summer, it can be cold. It's no wonder poor Violet is ill. I'll go and find Frances and get Quoyle to make up a broth. Tomorrow, I'll tell Edinburgh this must stop. They must send us the resources we need.”

Miss Ivens came up later that night, the front of her gown covered in blood. She'd forgotten to take it off on her way out of theatre. Violet's fever had gone up again and come down, I told Miss Ivens. “I sponged her when she was hot and resisted the urge to cover her too much when cold.”

“Poor little flower,” Miss Ivens said, putting her hand on Violet's forehead. “Iris darling, I'm still operating,” she said without looking at me. “We'll be going through the night again, I should think. Will you stay with her?”

“Of course.”

“And will you . . . will you come to see me if there's any change?”

“Yes, Miss Ivens.”

“She's young,” Miss Ivens said. “That's in her favour. But she's not strong. She's never been strong.”

To me, Violet was so strong. I said, “Do you think not? Oh Miss Ivens, Violet's a champion. She'll be all right.”

Miss Ivens didn't reply, instead putting her hand on my head and leaving it there for a moment. She looked kindly at me and I realised that Mrs. Berry must have communicated something to Miss Ivens she hadn't communicated to me. They really did believe Violet was gravely ill.

After Miss Ivens left, I sat by Violet's bed and cried silently. “No, Violet,” I whispered. “You mustn't leave me, do you hear? We're the flower bird girls.” I realised how much she'd come to mean to me. She stirred in her sleep, grabbed for my hand. I took both of hers in mine.

I sat on the wooden crate we had as a bedside table in our little room and waited for morning to come. I said decade after decade of the rosary. I added extra Our Fathers and Glory Bes. And then, just before dawn, the priest from Asnières appeared at the bedroom door. Father Rousselle had become a key part of our life at Royaumont. He often sat and prayed with the soldiers, or said a mass. He was particularly helpful to those who suffered mental problems following their ordeal. It was kind of him to come out in the cold, I said, and he could come and bless Violet but she was not to be anointed. She didn't believe in it anyway, I knew, and for my part I would not accept that she was near the end and requiring anointing. Father Rousselle was such a sweet man; he came and did as I asked and no more.