Primrose Square (21 page)

‘I've always been in service,' Ada sighed. ‘I'm no' keen on factory work.'

‘Nor me,' said Sal. ‘I'm going to stick to cooking.'

‘Ha!' Mrs Petrie exclaimed. ‘And where are you going to pass yourself as a cook, may I ask?'

‘Miss Ainslie, how long will the conversion take?' Elinor asked quietly. ‘I'd like to try for an assistant nursing post.'

‘I'm told by the owners that it should be finished by next February. All our furnishings will have to go into store, of course, and temporary fitments will be going up for the wards, but there'll be no need for operating theatres or anything of that sort. The patients here will either be convalescing, or, as I say, shell-shock sufferers.'

Miss Ainslie, clearing her throat, looked from watching face to watching face.

‘I'd just like to say, I know it's hard, to lose your jobs, and this has been, I hope, a happy place to work, but perhaps we should think – you know – of the club's new role.'

‘How d'you mean?' asked Mrs Pierce. ‘It's no' our role, eh? We're leaving.'

‘That's true, and we're all upset about it, but at least we can take some comfort knowing that the club's not going to be left empty. It will be providing a place where some of the war casualties can come after treatment, to rest and build up their strength, get used to injuries that can't be healed. That's why I say we should be glad of our club's new purpose. To help those who've fought for us. So many have been killed already, it's good that something's being done for those still alive.'

There was a short silence, during which the maids lowered their eyes, and Mrs Pierce blew her nose.

‘Aye, that's true,' she admitted, after a moment. ‘You put it very well, Miss Ainslie. I wish there was something I could do, but I think I'll just be taking a wee rest. How about you?'

‘Me?' Miss Ainslie smiled. ‘I'm following Miss Denny's example – I'm joining the VAD – that's short for Voluntary Aid Detachment.'

‘Sort of nursing?' asked Mattie.

‘Well, nursing and anything and everything. Serving where you're needed, I suppose.'

‘Make a change from working at the Primrose Club,' Mrs Petrie remarked, but Elinor smiled.

‘Serving where you're needed? Sounds pretty much like working at the Primrose Club to me.'

Thirty-Nine

It was early March before the transformation of the Primrose Club into a small military hospital was completed. By then, of course, the staff had made their tearful farewells and taken their last tours of the building they knew so well. Exchanged last hugs and promises to keep in touch – and scattered: Miss Ainslie to her VAD training, Mattie to a munitions factory, Sal to the kitchens of one of the hotels still functioning, Mrs Petrie, in spite of her talk of ‘resting', to cook for a titled family in the New Town who welcomed her with open arms, they having had no one to cook for them for months.

As for Elinor, as she'd planned, she'd applied for a post as nursing aide at the new hospital and, after an interview with a stern-faced QA nursing sister, had been accepted, while Ada had surprised everybody by announcing that she was finally going to get married. Aye, it was about time, eh? But after her Bob, against all her protests, had put himself in the army and was now due to go to France very soon, they were determined to marry first. A registry office wedding, no fuss, but would everybody come?

Of course they would, and on a cold bright day in February, with Gerda and Vera joining in, the old friends from the Primrose met at the registry office together with the families of the young couple, and threw their confetti and shed a few tears. Afterwards, there was a meal at a nearby café, and then the ‘going away', which was only as far as a boarding house off Lothian Road, while the guests thanked Ada's parents and separated.

Not before sighing and exchanging bleak looks, for wartime weddings were not like other weddings. You couldn't necessarily hope for a long and happy married life for the couple, could you? Not with the casualty lists from France and Belgium as long as they were, not with the dreaded telegrams being delivered to relatives every day of the week.

‘Bob might be all right,' Mattie said with a brave attempt at optimism. ‘I mean, there has to be some who come back.'

‘Very true,' Mrs Petrie agreed, but even her sharp eyes were shadowed, and no one else had the heart to say anything. Certainly, there were no looks or questions directed at ‘poor' Elinor, whose young man had gone to war but had seemingly made it plain she needn't wait for him. She wouldn't even know what had happened to him, would she, whether he was alive or dead?

No, she didn't know, and tried not to think about it. These days, after all, she was thankful she had other things to occupy her mind, such as the new job she must soon take up at the converted club, which she was already worrying over. That nursing sister had been pretty stiff in the interview, hadn't she? Emphasizing all the difficulties that Elinor, as an unqualified nursing aide, would face, how she must be prepared for any job that came her way – cleaning the sluice, emptying bedpans, helping handicapped soldiers with dressing, shaving, walking, et cetera. And, above all, not minding what she saw.

‘The effects of modern warfare are not pretty, Miss Rae, as you will have already discovered with your Red Cross training, but in a hospital such as the Primrose Military, you may find some sights even more distressing. Convalescent the patients might be, but all that means is that they're over their operations. It does not mean that they will be truly recovered and looking as they used to do.'

‘I understand,' Elinor had replied. ‘And I hope I know what to expect.'

Still unsmiling, the sister accepted her reply, rose, shook her hand and told her she had been successful in her application.

‘I think you will do well,' she added grudgingly. ‘You're a strong-looking girl and strength is another thing we are looking for. I believe I forgot to mention that.'

What a relief it would be, Elinor thought, after Ada's wedding, to begin her new job and be free of anxiety about it. Since the closure of the club, she'd been living at home and working as a temporary sales assistant at Logie's Department Store, where her mother was still employed as a cleaning lady. There were now plenty of vacancies at the rather grand store, where at one time it had been difficult to get even a foot in the door, and Hessie said she couldn't understand why Elinor didn't just stay there, instead of wanting to work in a hospital where goodness knows what sights she'd have to face. After all, she'd wanted to better herself and working at Logie's was better than being in service, eh? What did she want now, then? What was driving her?'

‘I just want to do something to help, Ma. I want to try to repay what the soldiers are doing for the country.'

‘That's what Corrie wants to do,' Hessie said worriedly. ‘You know he's had one or two of those white feathers pushed in his hand? For no' being in uniform?'

‘What, from awful women?' Elinor's face was red with anger. ‘They make me so cross! Staying at home in perfect safety and going around accusing young fellows of cowardice.'

‘But Corrie thinks they're right, you see. One of these days he's going to run off and join up and your dad'll have a fit. I'm no' joking. I worry about him, the way he goes on over Corrie.'

‘We're all worried.' Elinor sighed.

Forty

Working at the new Primrose, though, turned out to be, for Elinor, no worry at all. Wearing a grey uniform dress similar to the QAs but without, of course, their badges of rank or their outdoor scarlet cape, she slid with amazing smoothness into the routine of the converted hospital, able to use what she had learned and quick to learn more. Though it was true there were things to get used to – more upsetting even than she'd imagined – well, she did get used to them and accepted them, knowing it was, after all, worse for the young damaged soldiers than for her. It was their suffering she had to think of, as well as the torment of those without obvious injury at all – the shell-shock cases, the most difficult of any to treat, it was said.

It had helped Elinor that the people she worked with – the doctors, the other nursing aides and the QAs – were pleasant and friendly, with even the matron in charge being welcoming, and Sister Penny, the senior nursing sister who'd interviewed her, quite relaxed in manner, once she'd seen Elinor's willingness to learn. All were intrigued to discover that she had worked at the Primrose when it was a ladies' club, and asked her how she found it now.

‘Very different,' she told them with a smile, though in fact it was possible for her to recognize the old Primrose beneath all the partitions and new functions of the rooms she used to know. In a way, it had been a little creepy at first, as though ghosts of her old self and the rest of the staff were still there, moving through the places where they'd once worked, mixing with the shadowy club members long departed to their new activities.

Now, the wide reception hall had been chopped up for doctors' surgeries, the Quiet Room was reserved for treatment by the nurses, the elegant drawing room had become a common room for the men, complete with easy chairs and games tables, and the dining room, where the maids had hurried around, serving Mrs Petrie's delicious meals, now offered very different fare. Mounds of boiled potatoes, great vats of stew, huge solid rice puddings and spotted dick to follow, all prepared by army cooks in a cheerful, easy-going fashion that would have had Mrs P herself hitting the roof. How lucky that she was no longer there!

Upstairs, small wards seemed to have been magically created, although a number of single rooms remained, one of which Elinor recognized as the one she had shared with Gerda and Mattie, where she had spent many a sleepless hour. Except when on night duty, all staff at the new Primrose lived ‘out', the QAs in a nurses' home, Elinor and other aides with their families, which suited Elinor well enough.

Though the atmosphere at home could still occasionally be uneasy, Walter Rae had certainly rather mellowed, though Corrie had to tread carefully whenever the progress of the war was mentioned. Casualty lists were just as high, especially as a new front in the Dardanelles had been opened in April, with the British, Australian and New Zealand forces trying to capture Constantinople in an effort to gain a sea route to Russia. They were not to succeed, many men were to die or be injured, and as one QA remarked to Elinor, some would probably end up in places like the Primrose, trying to get their heads back together and face life again, eh?

Elinor was silent, thinking of the closed faces of the shell-shocked, their blank eyes fixed on sights others couldn't see and wouldn't want to have seen; horrors no young fellows should have had to see and forever remember.

It was said that these patients would eventually be moved on to specialist hospitals, but at present there was a shortage of such places, and the doctors at the Primrose had to do what they could. There were some senior army men, it seemed, who didn't believe there even was such a thing as shell shock, and that those who claimed to be suffering from it were just trying it on, but Elinor couldn't imagine how anyone looking into the patients' eyes could believe that. Such desolation could not be faked.

Often, seeing the results of war on men, she thought of her brother and his passionate desire to enlist and do his bit. And end up like the patients she helped to nurse? She couldn't bear to think about it. Or that Barry might meet the same fate. Not that she often thought of Barry. More often than not, it was Stephen she found herself thinking about, not even knowing if he had joined up. She thought he probably had – it would be like him to want to help his country – but she had no way of finding out where he was and had no right to know, anyway, after what she'd done.

Still, his fine face came often into her mind and, one strange day in April, she thought she saw him. He was in the entrance hall of the Primrose, his tall, straight figure in khaki uniform standing before a nurse at the small table that had replaced Miss Denny's handsome reception desk. Passing through, on her way to attend to a patient, at the sight of Stephen, Elinor stopped in her tracks, her heart jumping.

‘Stephen!' she almost called, but then remembered she had no right to expect him to speak to her. Perhaps he had sensed her presence anyway, for he turned his fair head and looked at her. And – oh, God – it wasn't him, it wasn't Stephen.

So much like him, with the same height and slim build, the same set to the shoulders and the fair hair she'd always said women would envy. But the face wasn't his. A nice face, a pleasant face, but not his, and though she half-smiled and he smiled back, before turning to the nurse who was asking him some question, she felt such a pang of disappointment, she longed just to turn aside, go into the gardens and try to be alone for a moment.

She couldn't, of course, do that, though these days she did have access to keys, for the patients had been given permission to sit in the gardens and it was one of her duties to give them any help needed. To sneak in on her own, off duty, was something she liked to do, hoping no one would notice, but now she must continue on her way, her heart still thumping and crazy questions beginning to form in her mind.

What had she done? Thrown away what had been hers? Which would never be hers again? What madness had come over her? Why had she done it?

Because Barry was exciting, that was why, as she suddenly began to see. He was exciting and he had excited her. Drawn her to him because of the new and strange passion he had caused her to feel, made her forget all that she'd felt for Stephen. But Barry had never intended their relationship to be permanent. He lived and loved for the moment and moved on, while Stephen's love would have been for a lifetime. A lifetime she knew now she would never share.