In Falling Snow (37 page)

The administrative problems I was called in for were quickly sorted out. They'd been running out of basic supplies, Mrs. Berry told me, and I realised it was only for want of knowing when to order. Within a week, things were running more smoothly, but Mrs. Berry asked me to remain with her at Villers and I was happy to feel useful once again although I missed Royaumont.

Violet brought some new staff over late in May when both hospitals were relatively quiet. We went together to the staff canteen, not nearly as nice as the cloister at Royaumont, or the refectory which for so long had been our staff dining room. But the tea was more like what I was used to at home than the heavy stewed stuff served up at Royaumont under Quoyle's instructions. Violet said Royaumont was like it was in the early days, new staff with no idea what they were doing, and Miss Ivens was going mad without me there to calm her down.

I hadn't seen Tom since I'd left Royaumont, and Violet told me she'd seen him up at Chantilly when she'd gone up with Miss Ivens and that he was well. “The good news is that he's given up the notion that he has to fight,” she said. “I think he's finally happy with what he's doing.” She took out a cigarette, offered me one, and lit both.

I thought of my treachery, going to Captain Driscoll behind Tom's back, and felt just a twinge of guilt. I hoped Captain Driscoll had managed to make Tom feel useful at what he was doing and that's what had changed his mind.

“Thank goodness he's happy again,” I said to Violet, blowing smoke above her head. “And you, Violet. How are you?” She looked tired, dark circles under her eyes, and I worried she was in the doldrums again.

“Oh you know me,” Violet said, forcing a smile. “Ever one for bouncing back. I can't imagine being anywhere other than Royaumont.”

I knew what she meant. The war intensified everything, as if we knew, for the only time in our lives, how precious a moment is, a stone, a flower, a person. Not that we thought we'd die. I don't truly believe any of us thought we would. I certainly didn't. But death was all around us, death and severed limbs and broken men. You couldn't see that, I mean really see it, and not contemplate your own place in it all, not see you only had this moment to live in.

I smiled at her. “I think about home, about Daddy and Claire and the twins, and I think I should miss them. But some mornings when I've worked all night and I'm walking in the snow or writing a letter for Miss Ivens or helping with ward rounds, I feel I could die right then and it would be all right.”

“I don't ever feel like that,” Violet said. “I didn't mean that. And I don't agree at all, Iris. I've so much to do. I'd feel cheated.” She looked at me with a new intensity in her eyes.

“What have you to do?”

“All my life, I haven't cared a fig for anything. I've grown like a chestnut in an orchard, been fed and watered and nurtured, but I don't really do anything. I just stand there for people to admire. The war has made me realise I can't go on being a chestnut. I need to do more.”

“What about chestnuts? Where would we be without chestnuts?”

She ignored my joke. “Coming over here's been the opportunity I needed. It's been like waking up after a long sleep. I've seen people who need help. More, I can help them.”

“So, what will you do when all this is gone?”

“I don't know. I'm going to talk to Frances.”

“You could come home with me and do your training and we could work together in Al's practice.” Al's practice, I said it automatically, even as I knew that now there was Dugald, Al's practice and the life we might make together were as far away from my heart as he himself was.

For Violet, it was as if I'd slapped her. “I don't mean nursing,” she said. “What a waste of time. I'll be a doctor.”

Now I was the offended one. “Well, I guess you've the money to do what you like.”

“It's not a matter of money, Iris.” Violet never noticed my hurt feelings. I don't know if I disguised them well or she had a blindness. “It's ability, aptitude. And I'm terrified I don't have it, if you want to know the truth. I mean, there's a reason you're Frances's pet. She thinks you're a wonder. Even if we had the money, my mother would never pay for me to do anything like study. She'd see that as beneath a Heron. So without Frances to provide support, I'm helpless.”

Now I realised what she was talking about. The Scottish Women's Hospitals Association had started up a scholarship fund for one woman from each of its hospitals in France and Serbia to study medicine after the war. At Royaumont, everyone thought it would go to one of the orderlies—Collum or Starr—who helped out in patient care or in the X-ray room, not a driver or nurse.

“Violet, you're twice as clever as most of the doctors at Royaumont and they are the cleverest people I ever met. You'd be a grand doctor. Do talk to Miss Ivens. She thinks you're wonderful too.”

Why not medicine for Violet, I thought. To hear Miss Ivens talk, it was something she herself had never even considered, not until a friend suggested it. She'd spent her early twenties living a life of relative comfort and leisure, tennis, parties, riding. “My family went into something of a conniption fit when I told them,” Miss Ivens had told Dr. Henry, in my hearing. “I'm the youngest, so I had all my sisters to convince. My father was easier. He liked the idea of a doctor in the family. He had children by his second wife and two were poorly. But he worried the medical studies would tax me. I'd be away from home cutting up dead bodies. He wasn't sure it was natural.” She laughed. “And now, look at me.”

The next day, Violet went back to Royaumont. A few days later, I received a message from Miss Ivens asking me to please come back to help her clear the great stack of correspondence that was “threatening to knock over my desk, dear” and I had to respond. I promised Mrs. Berry I'd be back at Villers as soon as I could and headed back to Royaumont with one of the drivers.

“Sit down, Iris,” Miss Ivens said before we'd even started on the pile of mail. I was looking for a telegram she said she'd received from Edinburgh the day before. I moved the stack of letters from the chair at the side of the desk and sat down, nursing the pile on my lap lest it get mixed up with the piles on the desk. “How are you going with all this?” She gestured around the office.

“I'm sure it's here somewhere,” I said, putting the pile in my arms on the floor so I could poke through the tray on the desk again. “They only sent it yesterday.”

“I meant more generally.”

“Oh, fine,” I said. “I just wish I didn't feel so behind all the time.”

“I think that's from working with me,” Miss Ivens said. “Have you thought about what you'll do after?” I looked a question. “After the war. With the Americans involved, it can only be a matter of time. Mr. Wilson is keen on peace, and he seems to be a man accustomed to getting what he wants. You've put Villers back together, you keep Royaumont running. What next?” She smiled at me.

After the war. After the war, I was supposed to go home and marry Al and run his practice and have his children. But now there was Dugald, whom I'd continued to see in spite of everything. I still hadn't told him about Al and now when Al wrote, I didn't reply. And there was Royaumont. It was as if I had taken a final step into my new world and when I looked back I could no longer understand the world I'd come from. “I'll take my brother home,” I said. The words rang untrue even to me.

“And then?”

“I haven't thought too much about it. There's a fellow in Brisbane.”

“So you'll marry?”

I wasn't used to talking to Miss Ivens about myself. We always had so much else to get through. “We're engaged. I didn't want to, not until after I'd been over here. But he didn't mind. Doesn't mind. I haven't thought about the future much lately, to be honest.” This wasn't quite right. “Or I haven't thought about home much.”

“What's the situation with Dugald McTaggart?”

I could feel myself blushing. I had no idea Miss Ivens knew about Dugald. “We . . .”

“Never mind,” she said. “It hardly matters. Have you considered medicine?” I smiled. “It's not a joke, Iris. You've gifts. A good brain, hands. It's much worse to have and squander. The scholarship. They'll take a recommendation from me.”

“I'm sorry, Miss Ivens,” I said. “You caught me on the hop. You and the other doctors, well, you're another species altogether. I could never be confident I was up to your standard.” Suddenly I thought of Dr. McCourt, who'd made such a bad job of the dressing that day and then humiliated me. I could do better than her. I knew that much.

“Of course you are. Confidence is like anything else. The more you do it, the more you believe it. Think about it. After the war, there will be no stopping women doctors. We've shown we can do whatever the men can do, that our biology isn't as they say.” She paused. “I've already sounded out the Croix-Rouge about providing support for you. And the scholarship would cover your living expenses.”

When she said scholarship again, I remembered what Violet had said, that she was going to talk to Miss Ivens. “I think Violet might be planning to have a word with you about that scholarship,” I said.

“Never mind Violet,” Miss Ivens said. “I'm talking about you. I look at you and see . . . I fear you'll look back and feel your life's been a waste. You're too bright to do nothing. What does this fellow of yours do? The one in Australia,” she added, as if I had fellows on every continent.

“He's a doctor,” I said.

She smiled. “And what does he think about women doctors?”

‘I don't know that he's ever met one.” Al didn't have to tell me what he thought of women doctors. It was in every line of his letters by its absence. He never mentioned the doctors at Royaumont. He never asked what we were doing or commented on the treatments we used. He wrote about Stanthorpe—he visited Daddy and Claire when he could—and about the Mater. The only things he noted in my letters were things about the place itself, the abbey, the weather, the food, and Tom. How was Tom going, when was I bringing him home. The distance between us now was suddenly as wide as it could ever be.

I thought of Dugald too. I had a feeling he would have a different view from Al. He had no problem with Miss Ivens or with any of the other Royaumont doctors. I imagined he would encourage me. I even entertained thoughts of a life where we were both doctors, working on in France.

“Would I have to choose?”

“The right choice is yourself. I want to offer you the place because, of all our staff, I think you will make the best doctor. That's all that should matter.” Miss Ivens patted my leg and stood up, ending our conversation.

After Miss Ivens left the office, I found myself feeling strangely light. Had she really meant what she'd said, that I would have a scholarship to go to Edinburgh and study medicine? She would be in Edinburgh too, I imagined, and we'd continue to work together as we did now, except that I would truly be her protégée. I would be training to become just like her.

Suddenly I thought of Violet again. Had Violet already spoken to Miss Ivens? Was this what had prompted Miss Ivens to speak to me? I wondered too if it had been Violet who told Miss Ivens about Dugald. Violet didn't mention it the next time I saw her and I didn't either and there the matter settled itself, except that now Miss Ivens had planted a seed in me and it wanted to grow. I watched the doctors with new eyes. Berry, whom we all called Mammy—not to her face—because she was so kind, Courthald, who'd been a doctor forever, Dalyell, who'd studied in Sydney where Al had studied—surely he'd met her—and Henry, of course, the youngest, twenty-eight, with a blaze in her eyes such as I've never seen in a woman.

In our world of Royaumont the doctors were gods, venerated above all the rest. They were courageous and nimble and had strode into the world of men without once looking back. And they would surely change medicine. Even our treatments—new techniques to avoid amputating limbs, fresh air and sunlight for wounds, even mending and laundering uniforms—were exactly the treatments you'd administer to weary soldiers if you were able to get under their skin and feel what they felt. We healed from within, I think, as only women could. Surely Royaumont would pave the way for women to take their place beside men as doctors. To be included among those women would be the greatest honour possible.

I'd been working solidly all afternoon and had managed to clear most of the backlog on Miss Ivens's desk when Quoyle came in and said I had a visitor. “I didn't know you had a sister, Iris,” she said.

“I don't.”

I went out to the reception area where there was a well-dressed woman in her forties, tall and slim, with long red hair. She held her hands to her cheeks. “Well, look at you,” she said. “You've grown just like your mother.” She shook her head slowly and then held her arms out and we embraced.