The Bannister Girls (41 page)

The billeted soldiers had helped Ellen and Clemence and Fred make the Jack-o'-Lanterns to string up in the marquee. They were made from hollowed out mangel-wurzels with faces carved on them and with candles placed inside. There was plenty of Somerset cider as well as Meadowcroft wine. The raffles for some of Clemence's good pieces of china and the lowlier fruit cakes contributed by farmers' wives, were conducted with good nature and produced outrageously rewarding amounts of money for the Soldiers' Comfort Fund.

‘I say, we've been sent to the wrong farm, haven't we?' Charlotte nudged Ellen in the ribs as the two of them finished their fish paste sandwiches that disguised the fact that there was only a smear of butter on the bread.

Ellen followed her glance. Peter had arrived late, and she had thought he wasn't coming. She didn't know whether to be glad or sorry to see him. He nodded at her briefly and then turned his back on her as the music for dancing began.

‘Excuse me, old thing,' Charlotte said enthusiastically. ‘If I don't manage a dance with that handsome chap, then I'm not half the girl I think I am!'

Ellen watched her weave her way through the crowds. Charlotte was as outgoing as she, and together they made a good pair. But not today. Ellen was tongue-tied at the sight of Peter, and spent the next half hour rehearsing what to say when he asked her to dance.

She watched him cavorting clumsily around on the patch of grass left free for dancing. First with Charlotte, then with his own Land Girls who had arrived before him. He danced with May and Lucy, and several of the older ladies. He asked Clemence to dance, and was graciously accepted.

By the end of the party, everyone said what a splendid time they had had, and how generous it was of Lady Bannister to arrange it. Everyone was far too excited at this pleasant interlude in the middle of a war to notice that the main instigator of the party had a hard job not to cry as the Bannister family finally waved their guests good-bye.

It was just too ridiculous to be so upset, Ellen thought furiously, as she went to her bedroom to kick off her shoes and change out of her finery into something less constricting. For a moment she caught sight of herself in the mirror, and couldn't miss the misery in her eyes before she looked quickly away.

He had danced with everyone else but her, she raged. As if to show the world, and Ellen Bannister in particular, that he cared nothing about her at all.

‘Angel, can you hear me?' Jacques swore silently at the inefficient phone. As well as the poor service, the air around Brighton Belle seemed to rock with aircraft noise, and there was an impatient jostling behind him for others waiting to use the one available telephone.

‘Not very well!' Her voice was faint and edgy. They had been waiting hours to get a call through to each other, but with Christmas looming in a few weeks, everyone else was trying to do the same thing.

‘I said I can't get leave until the New Year. Can you get over here at all, even for a couple of hours?'

‘Oh, Jacques!' Frustration made her even edgier. She had so hoped that they could spend part of Christmas together. ‘I'll see what I can do, but supposing I get there and you're on duty?'

‘If you come in the afternoon, I'll be damned sure I'm free. Just let me know which day and I'll meet you. Look, I'm sorry, Angel, but I'll have to go. There's a stream of chaps behind me wanting to use the phone. Let me know, all right?'

‘All right. Jacques, I love you –'

Her voice dwindled as she realised she was talking to thin air. He had either hung up or they had been cut off as usual. Angel slammed the receiver down in a fury, tears smarting her eyes. It seemed an eternity ago that they had left the chateau in Bordeaux so gloriously happy, newly-engaged, and with the feeling that they had the world at their feet.

Now, Angel sometimes felt that the whole world was conspiring to keep them apart. The Germans, the entire Allied forces, the nursing system, all made outrageous demands on their time and their energies. Like everyone else, she was war-weary, and wondering, like all those who dared to put it into words, if it was ever going to end. And if it did, what it was going to solve.

The only certainty was that there would be thousands of broken homes, wives without husbands, mothers without sons, girls without sweethearts … she shivered. There would also be families without daughters, she thought fearfully, knowing that she was in the grip of the first real attack of nerves she had experienced for some time.

‘Are you going to cling on to that phone all day, Bannister?' a voice said crossly, as another nurse pushed past her.

‘I'm sorry, Moss.' She answered like an automaton, moving away without being aware of her feet touching the ground. For a moment she was lost, living among people with no real identities. She felt like shouting it to the world. This is
me
. I'm alive. I have a given name. I'm
Angel
, with the special, beautiful name chosen for me by my father…

Her own choking tears were suddenly the only sound in her head. She felt a great wave of nostalgia for her father, for things to be the way they had always been, before the holocaust of the war, before she had discovered that her father had feet of clay like everyone else, when there was still time for gentleness and beauty and love…

‘I say, Bannister, are you all right?' Moss had abandoned her attempts to make her phone call, and was holding onto Angel's arm. Angel felt the tightening of the capable fingers as though they were pincers. She tried to focus on the girl, and the face became a mist, all eyes, rounded and angular shapes, gaping mouths that swirled and then merged into nothing.

She awoke in her own bed, with Sister Therese holding her pulse and tut-tutting severely.

‘You're a foolish girl for not eating properly,' the nun said in the
patois
of her native southern France. ‘What use are you to the patients or the Abbey if you don't have the strength to carry on, Bannister?'

She spoke the name with a grand flourish at the end. Bannis
terre
…

‘My name is Angel. Angelique,' she mumbled ineptly. The nun smiled.

‘Then in private, I shall call you Angelique. Such a pretty name. But why do you not eat properly?' Sister Therese persisted in the stupid questioning. Didn't she know why Angel couldn't eat! It was perfectly logical.

‘The patients need nourishment. I leave some of my food, and they can have more. I don't need it.'

Perhaps an old-fashioned novel would call her lovesick. Unable to eat because she was pining over her lover … such sentiments were enough to make Angel cringe, and anyway they were untrue. She had always had a hearty appetite. It wasn't only the meagre rations that made her refuse the food. It was the appalling feeling of nausea whenever she was faced with it. She couldn't rid herself of the thought that while she was eating, men were dying, unable to swallow one mouthful.

‘My dear, you do need it. You are helping no one, least of all yourself. There are various names for your condition –'

‘I know the nurses' favourite one. Sitophobia!'

‘So you have suspected it for yourself –'

‘Sister Therese, I do not have a fear of food,' Angel said carefully. ‘I'm not mad in the head –'

‘Of course not,' the nun spoke soothingly, as if to a child. ‘You've merely been neglecting yourself in your wish to help others. It's admirable, Angelique, but it cannot go on.'

Angel stared at her. ‘What do you mean?'

The nun looked at her thoughtfully. Angel was more
slender than when she had arrived at the Abbey, seemingly as fragile as though a strong breeze would snap her in two.

‘Nurses who succumb to your condition are usually sent home.' Sister Therese's calm voice was suddenly crisp and unrelenting, reminding Angel of Mother Superior's stern manner on her arrival. Reminding her of Sister Yard at Piersville. Strong women all, when they needed to be.

Angel gasped, struggling to sit up, her voice jerky. ‘You can't send me home! I'm useful here. I must stay!'

‘A nurse who collapses through her own stupidity is not useful. Make an effort within the next week, Bannister, and your situation will be reviewed. Otherwise –'

She shrugged expressively, her eyes showing no emotion. Even nuns, Angel thought angrily, were bound by the rigid needs of wartime. There was no place for sentiment or for people who didn't pull their weight. No place for Angel Bannister if she didn't do something about it. She spoke sarcastically.

‘Perhaps I should begin now. I'll have smoked salmon and caviar, followed by fresh Cheddar strawberries and clotted cream, all washed down with a bottle of vintage champagne, naturally.'

If the thought of it curdled her stomach, she gritted her teeth and didn't show it.

Sister Therese laughed gently.

‘I'll see what I can do. Though don't be surprised if it's cold meat and bread, washed down with cocoa. A tray will be sent up immediately, and you will stay here for one week.'

‘Oh, but –'

‘One week to decide your future, Nurse Bannister.'

She went out of the room silently, and Angel was left in no doubt that it was now up to her. She closed her eyes. Sitophobia. It was a long-winded name for a condition that had unexpectedly affected many nurses who were caring for the wounded. She knew several who had been sent home because of it, but it was the very last thing she wanted.

And now she was stuck here in bed, not even able to arrange to meet Jacques. Perhaps she could turn this to her advantage, she thought hopefully. She would surely be allowed one extra day, and she could use it to go to Brighton Belle … to her absolute chagrin, her request was left in the balance until she had proved herself. Of course, she thought bitterly, they would need her back on duty as soon as she was well.

A new and fierce battle at Cambrai had been in progress for nearly two weeks, and with the new influx of casualties everywhere, the hospitals were operating a kind of shuttle system between them. It was just like the trains pulling into Temple Meads station, Angel thought. Walking wounded to the front, middling to the middle, stretcher cases to the rear. Only in this case, those who had desperate need of medical attention were sent to hospitals nearest the Front, the lesser wounded went to hospitals like the Abbey, walking and convalescents went to the clearing hospitals or onto the ships for short leaves in Blighty before returning to be shot up all over again.

And if she didn't want to be joining them, to return home ignominiously, then she had to jolly well eat something and ignore the threat of disgorging in her stomach. She forced down the cold meat and bread and swallowed the cocoa as quickly as she could, remembering the words of another sufferer when Angel had been curious to know the symptoms and the remedy.

‘The best way is to pretend you're not actually eating anything. Tell yourself there's nothing being pushed past your teeth and into your growling stomach. Keep your mind fixed on other things and fool your body into thinking it's not being bombarded with nourishment it doesn't want, and you gradually overcome the food phobia and begin to enjoy the taste again. That's the theory, anyway. It doesn't work for everyone.'

To Angel's enormous relief, it worked for her. As she ate a
reasonably good breakfast on the last day of her enforced confinement to her room, she knew that it wasn't only the other girl's advice that had helped her. It was mostly due to her dogged determination to remain in France where she could make contact with Jacques.

Mother Superior was to see her that morning, to decide whether she could return to duties or not. Angel was filled with impatience as she waited. Days began very early at the Abbey, and it was still barely light on the cold December morning when the door of Angel's room opened.

‘So, Bannister, you've decided it's not worth while starving yourself, after all,' the nun greeted her.

‘Mother, I'm quite well now. I must have put on pounds in weight in the past week! And you were going to tell me if I may have today free.' She held her breath.

‘So you think you are ready to resume work?'

Angel's heart gave a jolt.

‘Of course! I was stupid, that's all, and I shan't do such a silly thing again.'

‘I hope you will not. There are enough deprivations nowadays without self-inflicted ones.'

‘And – about today, Mother?'

The nun smiled slightly.

‘Yes, you may have today free. I would not wish for a repeat performance to alarm our patients. They must always be our first concern, Bannister. A nurse who cannot fulfil her duties is best occupied elsewhere.'

‘I understand –'

‘Please do.' After the warning, her expression softened. ‘My dear, the man we knew as Papillon – Monsieur de Ville – was under our care for a long time, and I appreciate your wish to be near him. But there are other ways if the work here becomes too testing for you. Munition factories, packaging food supplies for the soldiers –'

‘No!' Angel shook her head violently. ‘I'm proud to be a nurse, and it's what I shall continue to be.'

The nun nodded as if satisfied, and suggested that if Angel wanted to spend the day away from the hospital, she must see about her own transport.

It was all the incentive Angel needed. Once alone, she washed and dressed, and despite being in her room for a week, felt considerably stronger than before. She rushed downstairs to the phone and left a message with the batman who answered, letting Jacques know that she hoped to be there that afternoon.

There was a bus service of sorts that went part of the distance. Once before, she had been able to hire a bicycle for the rest of the way. It was all very haphazard, but she was unable to ask Jacques to meet her at the bus-stop with his car, and determination gave her an extra charge of adrenalin. She would reach Brighton Belle if it took all day…