In Falling Snow (22 page)

As dawn made its way into the room, Violet became delirious. She kept saying the name Peter, and whoever he was, he disturbed her mightily. No, Peter, no, she was saying. Peter might have been the one who'd given her his car and cigarette case, I thought. He'd been older than Violet, she said, “and terribly sophisticated, darling” until “I got bored. I always get bored with them.” Even at the time, I knew she hadn't been telling me the full story. Her confidence was marvellous—it shone from her—but it was also somehow brittle, so that even as she dazzled everyone around her, including me, I knew I was the happier person. I was ever the quiet one, the observer, the dependable plain Iris Crane, but Violet was amazing. And even if her brash confidence masked another Violet, this frightened girl I nursed through that long, long night, strangely, it didn't make me love her less. It made me love her more.

As if the priest's blessing had spoken some stern words to her soul, little Violet returned to us. By lunchtime on the second day, her fevers were less severe. By nightfall, she had improved further. Miss Ivens came again, with Mrs. Berry, and they said it was my dedication that had saved Violet but that now I must rest. I was fine, I said, relieved to my very bones. I stayed by Violet until she was awake and had taken some broth and then I sponged her and changed the bedding. It wasn't until she slept again that I crept in beside her, spooning my body around her as we had that first night, and fell into a deep sleep myself. We remained there, sleeping peacefully, until morning.

Violet spent the rest of the week in bed on Mrs. Berry's orders. I popped in to see her when I could. I was just so relieved to have her back. “Oh Violet, don't you dare get sick again.” I had made much of the priest's visit. “I'm sure you're for heaven now,” I said. “Father Rousselle has blessed you. You're going up not down after all.”

“Stop it,” she said. “I'm going straight to hell and the old curé is coming with me.”

“Don't talk about Father like that. He's wonderful.”

“He is,” Violet said. She grabbed my hand. Her green eyes were shining and her curls fell about her face. “I heard you wouldn't let him anoint me, darling.”

I'd confided in Mrs. Berry my decision about the priest. She must have told Violet.

“Of course not,” I said. “He said he could anoint the sick even if they weren't dying and that if you died without anointment, he couldn't vouch for your soul. But I couldn't let him do it. I decided I'd vouch for your soul if it came to that. I felt it would be like giving up on you.” I swallowed hard. “Oh Violet, just don't get sick again.”

“Of course I won't, darling,” she said. “Perhaps if I never drive to Creil ever again I'll be healthy as a horse.” While I knew she was joking, I could see that the horror she faced was taking its toll on her.

If ever I felt upset or worried about the awful things we witnessed at Royaumont, I walked through one of the wards, and the light coming through those long windows, the red blankets over the beds, neatly made, the soldiers as comfortable as we could make them, it truly was as if Royaumont could protect all under her roof. We were a haven in the forest, in the midst of chaos. But Violet was daily in the chaos itself. Violet, who drove that long rough road to Creil, who saw those poor men who never made it to Royaumont, brought from the trains already dead or so close to death there was no point moving them, the horrors she witnessed were much worse than I could imagine.

We had a concert at the end of 1915 to celebrate our first year and Miss Ivens treated us all to champagne and a wonderful supper of smoked trout. Cicely created a pageant, and if you could have seen the wards lit up for Christmas, the orderlies in their costumes, elves and sprites and fairies, the candles, the men clapping and laughing and singing along, you'd have thought there was no war on at all. Violet, with her beautiful voice, had always played a key role in our performances, but she said she wasn't well enough and despite all our pleadings she didn't join in. I could see her in the audience. She sat, unmoved. It wasn't until they started on Christmas carols—six of the girls had got themselves dressed up in the blue capes the sisters wore and came through the wards with candles singing—that Violet agreed to get up and sing with them. She sang a solo of “They Didn't Believe Me.” As I listened, I let tears run down my cheeks unashamedly. I doubt there was a woman there who wasn't crying and as for the patients, they clapped and clapped when Violet finished and then when she sang the chorus once more, they gave her a standing ovation of sorts, those who could stand standing and the rest sitting up as well as they could.

“You see, Violet,” I said, wiping my eyes as she came past me. “You
are
giving something important.”

Early in 1916, Miss Ivens spent a day and a night in Amiens to visit the British hospital there. I'd taken the opportunity to tidy her desk and now we were back together on her morning rounds. We'd had another problem with provisions for soldiers. The army had decreed that every French soldier was to be provided with a daily ration of wine, the precious
pinard
. The hospital was expected to pay for the wine. The committee in Edinburgh couldn't see the need. I was wondering how I would broach the matter with Miss Ivens without angering her further.

She was unwinding a bandage around a man's calf. She'd been quiet since she'd been back and I missed her usual chatter. I even wondered if she was offended that I'd tidied her office. I watched as she changed the dressing, taking such care it might have been a tricky amputation.

I was about to ask about her visit to Amiens when she said, “When I finished medicine, I wanted to be a surgeon to make people's lives better. I mean, I knew the College wasn't admitting women but I believed they would change. They'd let us sit their examinations and slowly, as we showed them our hands were as nimble as theirs, our minds as deep, they'd capitulate and admit us as Fellows.”

The man had fallen asleep by this time. They often did. Miss Ivens always spoke in low tones around the patients and her voice was so calming. This man was from Algeria, with skin as black as night, and he couldn't understand a word Miss Ivens said, but he'd listened all the same until his eyes were too heavy to remain open. It was as if she hypnotised them. Dr. Henry once joked that if Miss Ivens had been born in another century, she'd have been burned for a witch. Miss Ivens said it was no joke, we'd all have been burned for witches. It's what happened to women healers.

Miss Ivens sat back and surveyed her work and looked up at the sleeping man and smiled. “But do you know, for the first time, I'm not even sure I want to be one of them.” She pinned the bandage and stood up and smoothed her coat and we walked together from the ward, having finished the day's rounds. She nodded towards the ward sister on her way out the door and the sister, a new recruit from Canada, looked as if she might be about to salute, but Miss Ivens raised an arm to stop her. “All's well, Sister Courtney,” she said. Miss Ivens always called the staff by name. Sometimes she was even right. Not this time though. This was Sister Jackson, not Courtney. Sister Courtney had come from Liverpool, not Canada. I never corrected Miss Ivens and most of the staff took her forgetfulness about names in good humour.

“You know I went to Amiens yesterday to meet the surgeon there,” Miss Ivens said on the way down the stairs. “The folk at Creil suggested it, told me the surgeon was a good chap I should get to know.

“His name is Roger Crampton and I'd heard of him. I'm sure Berry knows him. I must ask her. Well, he was pleasant enough and happy to have me there. But as we moved from bed to bed, I saw that between one patient and the next he wouldn't use antiseptic—wouldn't even wash his hands. God knows what he does with his instruments, because when I said, ‘Are you not sterilising?' he said, ‘Don't tell me you've fallen for that Lister nonsense. You'd do better to cut deep around infection than worry about those so-called germs.' I can't believe there could still be a doctor on God's earth who doesn't know or respect bacteria. It puts us back fifty years. He's in charge of the surgical group and he has no idea.”

We'd reached Miss Ivens's office and she unlocked and opened the door and went in, still speaking, assuming I'd follow. She went to the desk and looked wearily at the pile of papers, neater but no less overwhelming, hung her coat on the hook behind the desk, and wound her stethoscope around the same hook.

“We went to the wards then. Sepsis was everywhere. He gets away with it because they're closer to the front. You expect higher mortality, but even the most rudimentary analysis would probably show him up.

“I tried to speak to him again, told him the successes we've had with gas gangrene and Elsie's lab, invited him down to spend some time with us.” She sat down in her chair and shook her head. “He thought I wanted him to come down and teach my surgeons. ‘I would love to, Frances,' he said, ‘and I know you girls are struggling, but I'm needed here.'”

I could see Miss Ivens was tired and needed to talk. “So what did you do?” I said.

“When we'd finished the rounds, I was blunt with him. I told him he must find a matron trained in Nightingale's methods who could manage his theatres properly. I told him he must start washing his hands and make his surgeons do likewise. I told him he must don a mask, boil instruments. Such basic care, Iris. I couldn't believe I was having to say it. For if you don't, I said, you are killing patients of sepsis. Look around you.”

“What did he say?”

“He asked me was I questioning his practice. I wanted to avoid a confrontation but more than that I wanted to see something done. I said, I am pleading with you to consider what you're doing. I will send you some papers. He laughed. ‘Papers,' he said. ‘What on earth do I need with those? Chaps who've never seen the inside of a patient telling me how to operate. Pah. Mr. Lister and his idiot germs. I've got more important things to worry about.' Do you know, the awful thing was that in another context I'd have liked him? He's a jovial man, quick to laugh, more accepting than most of women in the discipline.

“I didn't know what to do then. I should have felt proud of Royaumont, of how different we are, what we've achieved. But I just felt sick, and I've been feeling sick ever since. For surely I'm guilty of just as much arrogance and I'm making similar errors. Not with hygiene, perhaps, but something else. Something I don't know, some ignorance.

“It suddenly occurred to me as we said good-bye outside the hospital—we were curt now and far from friends—that we'll never know all things, that we'll do more harm despite our oath because of ignorance, or arrogance.”

Thinking back later on poor Miss Ivens's worries about the state of medicine, I knew the things I might have said.
You'll never be like him. Your humility shines through all you do. You have no arrogance
. Tens of things I could have said but didn't. I just started going through the day's mail and said, “I'll draft you a letter to the Service de Santé. For you must write now and lodge a formal complaint.”

About half an hour later Mrs. Berry joined us. Miss Ivens had cheered herself up by talking about what happened, first to me and then to her dear Berry, who knew just how to jolly Miss Ivens out of any bad mood. The cesspits had caused problems again. It was repairable, Mrs. Berry had told us, but the terrible stench around the entrance to the abbey would continue for at least another day. “But fear not, dear chief,” Mrs. Berry said. “Your faithful servants Berry and Iris have the matter in hand, so to speak.” We had the plumbers in again, fixing the cesspits, and the electricians, trying to give us more lights. It was never ending, the work to keep the old abbey functional.

Now Miss Ivens was back onto the topic of surgery, completely cheered and ready to expound on why it was the best discipline. “You can do all the treating on the earth, spend weeks and months monitoring your patient, altering a dosage, changing a regimen. But with a single cut, you can transform someone, save a limb, stop a growth. Nothing else does that.” I felt, as I often did among the doctors, that they'd forgotten I was there. It was not an unpleasant feeling, for I learned much and was rarely put on the spot to respond.