Lorimers at War (6 page)

‘God knows. Do you think the Germans are as convinced that God is on their side as we are that he's on ours?'

She tried to make the question sound light-hearted, almost a joke, but in her heart she too was frightened. Everyone in the family – everyone in England – was having to make plans for an emergency which stretched into an indefinite and unpredictable future. Only one thing must be reckoned as certain. The war would not, after all, be over by Christmas.

Two days after her interview in Beatrice's office, Kate learned that her offer to serve as one of the two doctors in the next women's medical unit had been accepted. Perhaps her cousin, knowing her to be hard-working and conscientious, had recommended her, or perhaps she owed her success to her youth and strength and energy. Certainly Kate herself was as well aware as anyone else that although she was fully qualified she had not had a great deal of unsupervised experience of dealing with
emergencies – and in work of this kind, most of the casualties brought to her were likely to be emergencies.

Since it would be ten weeks before the unit was ready to leave, she took steps to improve her usefulness by volunteering for temporary hospital work. Doctors and surgeons were working round the clock to accept the flood of wounded soldiers sent back from France, and Kate was welcomed as a member of a team which inspected each man as he arrived, supervised the cleaning of wounds, made a detailed observation of the damage, performed the more straightforward operations or those which were necessary to prepare for major surgery, and kept a close watch for a few days afterwards to guard against complications. She worked four twelve-hour duties each week, and this allowed her the opportunity also to play her part in the upheaval which was taking place at Blaize.

On her first visit she found Margaret already installed there. Lord Glanville had wasted no time in making his property available and pressing both the hospital governors and the army to accept his sister-in-law as its commandant. Alexa had cleared a corner room in the east wing to act as an office, and by the time Kate arrived, it had already taken on the appearance of an operations room at the front line. Plans of the various buildings on the estate were pinned to the wall and every piece of furniture was covered with papers listing equipment required or actions to be taken. Kate had already learned from Lord Glanville that Robert had had to report for training within two days of volunteering. The leisurely process which had carried Brinsley to the front was a thing of the past, and it did not require very much sensitivity to recognize the worry behind Margaret's frown of concentration.

Kate found it curious to walk through the house which she knew so well from holiday visits and to consider its amenities now in such a different light.

‘The family will keep the whole of the west wing.' Margaret told her. ‘That's where the nursery suite is, and we don't want to disturb Frisca and little Pirry. Most of the east wing will be made available for the medical staff. That means Alexa loses her drawing room and morning room, I'm afraid. They're going to use the library as a drawing room instead. As for the Tudor part of the house, there are problems in converting it. We've had a surveyor in to look at the long gallery up at the top. It's the perfect shape and size for a ward, but apparently the floor wouldn't take the weight. There would be trouble with stretchers on the stairs as well. The ballroom is more promising, and reasonably straightforward because it's empty. The decisions still to be made are about the opera house.'

They walked together through the wood. The path down towards the river was not too steep, but rain the previous night had left it muddy and slippery. Lifting her skirt to keep the hem clean, Kate paused to look back.

‘Do you expect to transfer any of the patients from the theatre to the house?' she asked. ‘It may not be an easy journey. And if doctors are coming and going all day, the mud will get much worse.'

Margaret nodded and made a note in the notebook which was tied by string to her belt.

‘So we shall need a path with a firm surface and a gentler slope,' she agreed. ‘Gradual enough to push a wheelchair up, in fact. Now then, give me your ideas on this.'

They had arrived at a very long brick building, older even than the house. Once upon a time it had been a tithe barn, built right on the bank of the Thames so that tenants of the Glanville estate could bring that part of their harvest which they owed to the church to a convenient place of storage – especially convenient in view of the fact that the Glanvilles had the patronage of the living, and could usually find a member of the family to
accept it. During the last century, though, the tithe barn had been allowed to fall into disuse and decay, and only in the past few years, since Lord Glanville's marriage to Alexa, had it been repaired and converted to an opera house.

Even Kate, who was so strongly aware of the need, felt a moment's sadness to see the building which had been Alexa's pride stripped so unceremoniously of its trappings. Already the seats had been taken out, and at this very moment workmen were taking up the raked floor. There would be no need for any of the hospital beds to have a better view of the stage than the rest.

At this moment, however, the stage proved to be in use. A little girl in a white dress was dancing to music which issued from the huge horn of a gramophone. So intently was she concentrating on her energetic but graceful movements, that she did not notice the two new arrivals. This was Frisca, Alexa's daughter, made fatherless even before she was born by an earthquake in San Francisco and adopted by Lord Glanville when he married her mother.

The record came to an end and Frisca curtsied to the workmen before running to wind the machine up again.

‘You ought not to be here, Frisca,' said Margaret, stepping on to the stage. ‘You're distracting the men.'

‘They like it.' Frisca pirouetted as she spoke. Her dimpled smile was infectious. It was impossible to feel gloomy in Frisca's presence – and equally impossible to be strict. Everyone knew that the seven-year-old, angelically blonde, was spoiled, but no one could bring himself to be the brute who would dim the radiance in those wide blue eyes. Kate watched with amusement as Margaret did her best to be severe.

‘Yes, I'm sure they like it, but they should be getting on with their work instead of watching you. Off you go.'

Frisca's pretty face clouded. ‘Everywhere I go today people tell me to go somewhere else. All the rooms are
different and everyone's busy and I can't do anything I want to.'

‘You should be in the schoolroom, surely,' suggested Kate.

‘Miss Brampton's saying goodbye to her cousin. He's going to be a soldier like Robert, and she's been crying all morning. She gave me some sweets to keep out of the way for half an hour.'

‘By the time you get back to the house, the half-hour will be up. Run along.'

Pouting, the little girl made her way off the stage and out of the theatre, dawdling at first but unable to restrain herself from skipping happily before she was out of sight. Kate continued to smile.

‘I've never seen such a child for dancing,' she said. ‘One of these days I'm sure she's going to become as famous as her mother – but as a prima ballerina, not a prima donna. Now then, tell me what you're going to do with all this.'

There were so many details to be discussed and so many decisions to be made that Kate was filled with admiration for her aunt's appreciation of each problem and the firmness with which she made up her mind. They discussed catering, and accommodation for nurses. They considered how the actors' dressing rooms could best be used, and whether there was a need for an operating theatre.

On this last point the two women held different views.

‘We can hardly hope to equip Blaize as a complete hospital,' Margaret pointed out. ‘I see it only as a place for recuperation and convalescence. Surely it would be a mistake to attempt anything more ambitious. We've set ourselves a limited objective: to free other beds and services for the men in most urgent need by accepting those who need only time and care for their recovery.'

‘I know that was what Uncle Piers suggested,' Kate agreed. ‘But when I came off duty this morning the
corridors of the hospital were lined with beds. These were the men who had been moved out of the acute wards, and these are the cases who will be sent to a place like Blaize if the present rate of casualties continues. They've had their main operations, certainly. But there's gas gangrene in almost every wound. At a guess, I would think that one in ten may need further surgery. I agree that those cases ought not to be sent here. But I suspect very strongly that in fact they will arrive.'

Margaret's face paled, and Kate guessed that she was thinking about Robert. She continued to talk quickly, forcing her aunt to concentrate on the matter in hand. more notes were taken, more measurements made. It was a relief, back at the house, to see the calmness with which Lord Glanville accepted the day's new sheets of requirements. He had made himself responsible for obtaining everything Margaret wanted, whether it was equipment such as beds and blankets or labour for the necessary tasks of conversion. His authority, and his many friends in the world of affairs, cut through the red tape of War Office inefficiency and smoothed away difficulties which would have been daunting to a mere doctor. Kate watched and admired.

For eight weeks she lived a double life. Her work in London would once have been considered full time, but she travelled regularly to the country to undertake what was in effect a second week's work. At first it was only administrative: but even before Blaize could be considered ready to receive its first patients, the ambulances began to arrive, and Kate took turns with Margaret in assisting the hard-pressed admissions doctor. There were times when she could have wept with tiredness, times when she would have paid any price for a full night's sleep. But the survivors of the Battle of Ypres lay in such stoical silence as they waited their turn for attention that Kate found it impossible to turn away as long as there was still work to be done. She had never
been a frivolous young woman, but these first months of her working life matured her with remarkable speed. She never ceased to be appalled by the injuries she saw, but with every day that passed she was able to deal with them more competently.

When Christmas came she allowed herself a single day of rest. By now Margaret had closed her London home and it was tacitly accepted that Blaize would be the family centre for as long as the war lasted.

Already, though, the family was scattering. Brinsley was still in France and Robert too had left for the front. Even to Kate it seemed that his period of training had been very short, and she could see the same anxiety in Margaret's unhappy eyes. But he had assured his mother that his role would be to lay the tracks of light railways for the movement of supplies, and this would be done behind the line. Kate could feel no such consolation when she thought about Brinsley.

So it was a small and not very merry group of people who assembled in the library at Blaize to celebrate Christmas – the Christmas which had once been expected to mark a return to peace. Nor were Kate's spirits raised by a piece of news which came from Beatrice. A date had been fixed – two weeks ahead – on which the second women's unit would leave England. But it was not going to France.

Kate knew that there had been great difficulties in getting women doctors admitted to the war zones. The British War Office had remained adamant in its refusal to accept the offer of skilled workers and modern equipment, while the French had proved unable to use the first unit to good advantage. All the same, it was a specific desire to help British soldiers on the Western Front which had prompted Kate to volunteer. It was with dismay that she learned that her unit would be going to Serbia.

Six months earlier she would not even have known where Serbia was. Even now she found it difficult to care
greatly about the fervent nationalists whose hatred of Austria had started the war. She sat in silence for a little while, wondering whether to withdraw her application. No one could say that the work she was doing in England was not a valuable contribution to the war effort.

Lord Glanville noticed her silence and guessed at its cause, although Kate was ashamed to admit that her own form of nationalism was making her reluctant to care for anyone but her own fellow-countrymen. It had always been a joke in the family that the Glanville library contained every book, on however unexpected a subject, that anyone could need. Now its owner not only produced a map, but proved himself to be the unlikely owner of a Serbo-Croat dictionary, brought back to England by an ancestor whose Grand Tour had once taken in Diocletian's palace. Kate accepted the gift without enthusiasm and continued to consider her future.

But there was no real choice. It would be disgraceful to withdraw from her commitment so late in the day, leaving Beatrice less than a fortnight to find a substitute. And certainly if she did withdraw, she would never be offered a place in any other unit and so would lose her only chance of working in a front-line hospital. It was not so long since she had been convinced that it was there, in the places where men were actually being wounded, that she could be most useful, and that conviction had not changed. Perhaps after a little while she would be allowed to transfer to a different theatre of war. But soldiers could not choose where they would serve. Why should she expect different treatment for herself?

Kate allowed herself one long sigh of disappointment and resignation. Then, as the others looked at her in curious sympathy, she forced herself to smile. After only a few seconds the smile ceased to be a pretence as the warmth of her feelings for her family made themselves felt. When she had so little time left in England, she must
fill every moment with happiness. Who could tell, after all, when she would be able to spend Christmas at Blaize again?