The Silver Locket (30 page)

December came, then January. All leave was cancelled, nurses who were sick or couldn’t cope went home to England, and although the hospital was ready to pack up and leave, the order never came. Rose hoped it never would. It would be a nightmare, trying to evacuate a thousand wounded men through the January mud and slime.

‘You mustn’t worry, Sister,’ said a burly sergeant, as Rose changed the dressing on his leg one freezing day. ‘If the Jerries come, me and the lads will make it quick for you. We’ll shoot you nurses dead.’

‘Letters for you, Sister Courtenay.’ The ward orderly handed Rose a bundle, and when she saw Alex’s handwriting her heart began to sing, because if he could write, he was alive.

She slit the envelope. The letter was very short and to the point.
‘We have to meet,’
he said.
‘We need to talk.’

After begging, pleading and finally inventing a sick brother in hospital in Boulogne, Rose managed to get leave. Alex said he’d be in Steenvoorde the next Saturday.

She found him waiting at the railhead. Their eyes met briefly and he nodded. Then he looked away.

She tried to smile, but her face was frozen. She longed to hug him, kiss him, but she didn’t dare – he might push her away. ‘H-how are things?’ she faltered.

‘Looking bad for us,’ he said.

‘You mean we’re going to lose the war?’

‘I don’t see how we’re going to win.’

‘I thought the Americans were coming?’

‘Where are they, then?’ said Alex. ‘We haven’t seen any in our sector, and it’s the busiest part of the whole line.’

Rose didn’t want to talk about the war or the Americans. ‘You look tired,’ she told him.

‘So do you.’ He looked at her and scowled. ‘You’re far too thin. I wish you hadn’t cut your hair.’

‘I do, too. My neck’s been cold all winter. But I’m letting it grow again, and I–’

‘You’re dangerously close to the front line,’ said Alex, suddenly interrupting. ‘Why don’t you go home?’

‘You mean go back to England?’ Rose felt hollow and afraid. She looked at him, but now Alex wouldn’t meet her gaze. ‘I d-don’t think I could. We’re so short of nurses.’

‘But if the Germans come–’

‘I’d be a match for any German.’ Rose tried to meet his eyes again, but failed. ‘In any case, they couldn’t do anything terrible to me. I’m a British nurse, and I’m protected.’

‘Rose, all prisoners are protected, too. But they get shot – and worse.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ insisted Rose. ‘I’m miles and miles behind the line. Alex, it’s so nice to see you. Let’s go and find a café and have something to eat.’

She led him down a narrow street of bombed-out Flemish houses. As they walked, she tucked her arm though his and laid her hand upon his sleeve. There was nobody about, and he could have kissed her if he’d wished.

But he didn’t seem to wish, so when she let him go to stoop and tie her bootlace, she didn’t take his arm again.

They failed to find a café, and soon they were walking back towards the railhead. ‘I have to go,’ said Alex. ‘Rose, listen to me. I want you to go home.’

‘I can’t, I’m needed here.’

‘You won’t be any use to anybody if you’re dead.’

‘They won’t get me,’ said Rose.

‘You never listen to reason, do you?’ Alex glared at her, his dark eyes burning. ‘Rose, your trouble is you’re spoiled, and much too fond of your own way. You never think anyone else might have a point – much less be right.’

‘If we’re told to leave, of course I’ll go.’ Rose looked at him and screwed her courage to the sticking point. ‘Alex, I must ask you–’

‘I came here to tell you to go home, not be asked a lot of questions!’ Alex glowered at Rose. ‘I don’t know why I bothered. This afternoon has been a waste of time.’

As the train came puffing down the line, he turned and walked away, leaving Rose to stare in disbelief.

She wouldn’t cry. There was no point in crying for Alex Denham. She’d known all along it was hopeless, that he would break her heart.

‘They’ve broken through!’ cried Elsie, running into the tent they shared and shaking Rose awake.

It was a cold March morning. Rose had done a twenty-four hour shift and was exhausted. ‘What’s happened?’ she demanded, as she grabbed her clothes and started scrambling into them.

‘The Germans have come through near Albert, thousands of them, our boys couldn’t stop them. They’ve retaken Passchendaele, they’ll recapture all the Ypres salient–’

‘But Elsie, how–’

‘Rose, get your flipping boots on! It doesn’t matter about your cap. The Germans are less than fifteen miles from here, and we have to get the men away.’

The lorries – not enough of them – drew up outside the huts. Orderlies carried stretcher cases into them. Nurses helped the walking wounded climb into the wagons commandeered from neighbouring towns and villages.

When all the men were loaded, there was no room for nurses, so they started walking west. Columns of marching soldiers overtook them, and sometimes they got lifts in cars or lorries. Then they would be dumped beside the road.

‘I’m sorry, Sisters,’ a harassed-looking officer would say. ‘We have to dig in here and wait for Jerry. You keep going west. If any of our convoys come this way, I’ll ask them to watch out for you.’

No convoys came, so Rose and Elsie and a couple of dozen other nurses walked for three whole days, begging food from villagers who had hardly anything themselves, sleeping in barns and stables, and washing and drinking from the troughs and wells in stableyards.

All along the route they heard the same appalling stories. The British army was retreating. Millions of prisoners had been taken, and nothing could stop the Germans winning now.

The attack had been a sudden storm, a typhoon of terror that had scattered Alex’s company and left small huddles of survivors sheltering in ditches, ruined barns or up against brick walls.

Some of his men were wounded and some been taken prisoner, but most of them were dead. The whole division was falling back in disarray, leaving behind it ammunition dumps and tanks that would soon be turned against the British, whom he could see were beaten anyway.

He was so afraid for Rose that he had no fear to spare for anybody else, even himself. Finding he was the senior officer in a raggle-taggle of men from half a dozen regiments, he realised they could run, surrender – or dig in and fight.

‘We’ll dig in here,’ he told the men. He had regrouped them in a battered village square, ten miles or more behind last week’s original British line. The houses had been flattened by the hurricane bombardment, and dead men and horses lay in grotesque attitudes everywhere. The village stood on a low rise from which they could survey the Ypres salient. They could see the enemy approaching, a grey mass of infantry and lumbering German tanks, following in the wake of the most deafening and terrifying bombardment Alex had ever known.

‘They’ll have to bring their lorries and heavy armoured cars along this road,’ he said to the men, who looked at him like sheep, or dogs expecting to be fed. ‘If we get the cobbles up and dig a row of trenches, we can hold them up for hours, or maybe even days.’

Stripping off his jacket, he picked up an entrenching tool someone had left lying in the road, and started hacking at the cobbles.

A sergeant found a spade and began hacking at the pavement next to him, and two minutes later the men had all found tools of some sort and begun to dig.

‘I reckon we could mount an ambush,’ said a sergeant-major, who was digging hard by Alex’s side. ‘If we booby-trap these holes–’

‘With what?’ demanded Alex, testily. ‘We don’t have any shells, trench mortars–’

‘But we’ve got grenades. The lads have their Lee Enfields, and you have your revolver. We can’t blow their convoy up, but we could make it hot for them.’

‘We’ll all be killed,’ said Alex, who was himself resigned to dying, but always hated losing men.

‘I dare say we will,’ agreed the sergeant-major calmly. ‘But if they take us prisoner, they’ll probably bayonet us anyway. Sir, there are hospitals five miles from here. If we can make things difficult for Jerry, the nurses might have time to get some wounded blokes away – and to escape themselves.’

‘We’ll do it,’ said Alex grimly, and dug on.

Rose’s boots disintegrated on the cobbled roads of Flanders, and she walked the last few miles to freedom wearing wooden pattens given her by a farmer’s wife. By the time she reached Boulogne, she had weeping sores the size of florins on her insteps. But these were nothing compared with the soreness in her heart.

As she and her friends had walked, they’d heard appalling, frightening stories. Hospitals had been shelled and nurses killed. Lorry loads of wounded had been bombed, and the survivors shot or bayoneted in cold blood.

In Boulogne, the nurses who had walked from Rose’s hospital had two days to recuperate, then were needed on the wards again. Rose and Elsie found themselves in a converted chateau, doing dressings underneath enormous chandeliers and the disapproving gaze of nymphs who stared down outraged from elaborate painted ceilings.

As Rose was doing a ward round one May morning, Elsie came in grinning. ‘We’ve beaten off the Hun!’ she cried.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Rose, who was concentrating on a very awkward dressing.

‘We’ve turned the tide!’ Elsie was beaming like a summer beacon. ‘The Jerries have overreached themselves, our boys have got them on the run. Rose, we’re going to win this war!’

‘Good,’ said Rose, without expression.

‘Rose, what’s the matter with you today? Don’t you realise it’s a blooming miracle?’

‘Elsie, could you move out of my light?’ Rose frowned down at her work. ‘I’m sorry, Captain Russell. This next bit’s going to be a bit uncomfortable for you.’

Where was Alex, wondered Rose, as she picked some bits of shrapnel from the wound in Captain Russell’s shoulder. Somewhere east of Ypres? Somewhere in the valley of the Somme? A prisoner, wounded, dead?

She wrote to him to wish him well, hoping the letter would catch up with him, wherever he might be. Then she wrote a letter to Maria, saying she was safe.

She didn’t hear from Alex, but she did get a letter from Maria.
‘I was so relieved to hear from you,
’ Maria said
. ‘I was very anxious. But, my dear Rose, I have great faith in your resourcefulness, and I was almost sure you’d be all right.

‘I have a favour to ask you – yes, another one. I’ve been saving up my leave, and hope to get a chance to go to England. I want to look for Phoebe. I was wondering if you’d come?’

‘Of course I’ll come, if I can get some leave,’
wrote Rose that evening. She was curious about Phoebe, who had disappeared into the aether – and she owed Maria so much.

After swapping shifts and begging favours, she managed to get three days – not much, but just enough to make it worth her while going to England, if she could get a passage.

She had arranged to meet Maria at the station in Boulogne, but as she was about to leave she was summoned to the matron’s office. There was a stack of letters on her desk.

‘Please sit down, Miss Courtenay,’ said the matron. ‘I’m sorry to say I have bad news for you.’

Chapter Nineteen

The pile of letters told Rose everything. ‘W-what happened to him?’ she asked, determined not to cry.

‘I beg your pardon?’ The matron frowned, not understanding. ‘My dear, are you engaged? I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’

‘I’m not engaged, but who–’

‘A lady. She has made you her executor. Miss Courtenay, I’m so sorry,’ said the matron. ‘The Germans bombed a train three days ago. Your friend Miss Gower was killed.’

‘Maria?’ Rose stared, incredulous. ‘I don’t believe you. Maria can’t be dead!’

‘Go and have half an hour by yourself,’ the matron added kindly, as she took the brandy glass from Rose’s shaking hand. ‘Walk in the gardens, if you wish. The air will do you good.’

Rose went to her room to weep. Sitting by the window, she gazed through a mist of tears at the summer flowers growing wild and straggling in untended beds.

She wondered if she was going to lose the only other person whom she loved. Or maybe she’d lost him already. She hadn’t heard from him for weeks. She knew he wouldn’t have time to write long letters, but he could have sent a Forces postcard, scribbled a line or two to tell her he was still alive.

‘Rose, try not to worry,’ said Elsie, who had come off shift and made Rose tell her everything. ‘I’m really sorry about your friend. But Captain Denham’s going to be all right.’

‘How do
you
know?’ Rose demanded fretfully. ‘Elsie, you don’t have a crystal ball, you’re not a seer.’

‘I’m willing it, like I will my George to live. We have to live in hope, or we would all die in despair.’

‘You sound just like that ghastly woman in the
Daily Mail.
’

‘Sorry. Rose, where are you going now?’

‘Back on the ward.’ Rose tied her apron. ‘There’s no point in sitting wailing, is there? It won’t bring poor Maria back, and I expect you want to go to bed.’