Softly Grow the Poppies Read online

  It took all her strength to climb back into her ambulance and follow the one in front, which was driven by O’Neill. She knew that when she reached her destination she and the others were faced with the task of cleaning their ambulances and the thought demoralised her. Her hand, her whole arm hurt and if she didn’t get some sleep soon she would not be able to get over to the enemy prisoner-of-war camp where she meant to find a way in to see if . . . if . . .

  The ambulance behind her nearly ran into her as the vehicle she drove began to swerve from side to side, finally finishing up against the stump of a tree. Ewing, who was now in Alice’s detachment cursed like a trooper, for they had all learned the language with which the men addressed everybody and everything in this bloody war: lice, rats as big as cats, mud and each other.

  Opening Alice’s ambulance door she found the driver slumped over the steering wheel. There were shouts and much honking of horns as impatient drivers piled up behind Ewing’s ambulance, from soldiers doing their best to get to the front lines, or from them, all in a hurry but Ewing took no notice. From ahead O’Neill ran from her vehicle to see what the hold-up was, leaving her engine running as it was hard to crank it up again.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she gasped. ‘We are causing an awful hold-up here, Ewing. What’s wrong with Barnes?’

  ‘I don’t know. She’s passed out. You’ll have to get a couple of blokes to run her ambulance out of the way and I’ll take Barnes in my ambulance. Can you get some help?’

  Two soldiers on their way to the trenches were only too pleased to help and within minutes they had the semi-conscious young woman into Ewing’s ambulance, then shouldered Alice’s off the road. The soldiers who were on their way to the line cheered; the incident had been a welcome break in their weary, fear-filled lives.

  The little convoy was soon on its way and when they arrived two stretcher-bearers, seeing the two ambulance drivers struggling to get another from her ambulance, ran to help.

  ‘What’s wrong with Barnes?’ Nurse Paget asked abruptly, bustling up in what Dolly would have called a ‘paddy’. She had wounded men pouring into the hospital and an ambulance driver who was fainting was very annoying. Only a few days ago she had taken a splinter from the girl’s finger, which was nothing compared to the terrible wounds of the men under her care.

  ‘Don’t know, Nurse, but she’ll have to be—’

  ‘What? She’ll have to be what?’

  ‘I don’t know but . . .’

  The nurse tutted irritably then her mind dwelled on the fact that this girl, Barnes, for she was no more than a girl, was the hardest working of the lot of them, and they all worked until they were nearly dead on their feet.

  ‘Very well, leave her there for the moment and I’ll see to her as soon as I’ve got a minute. Sit her on that box there and get back to your quarters. See if you can get some sleep.’

  Two hours later a wounded man who lay on the ground at the feet of the young woman heard her moaning. No one took any notice for moaning was a common sound round here but she was a funny colour, he thought, who was himself the colour of putty.

  ‘Nurse . . . Nurse . . .’ He tried to shout but his energy was expended on trying to breathe, never mind shout. When, in a lull, which was very rare, a VAD found her she was beginning to ramble and then, with a gasp that he thought might be her last, she fell off the box and on to another injured man who screamed since she was heavy on the wound he had sustained only an hour ago.

  The VAD put her hand on Alice’s forehead and drew it back as though the ambulance driver’s flesh was burning hers. She ran to fetch another VAD and together they lifted the driver they all thought of as Barnes and took her to another room, one where the exhausted nursing staff could rest for a moment. The doctor was called. When the bandage was unwrapped those who were present gasped in dismay, for the driver had what the wounded themselves feared. What was picked up on the battlefields. The battlefields that had once been the French farmers’ pride and joy and which they had carefully spread with manure and under which now lay the rotting dead of two years of war. The tiny splinter when removed had left an open sore that had festered and was pretty close to becoming gangrenous.

  ‘This woman may lose her hand, or even her arm,’ the doctor said sadly. ‘We all know what this is, don’t we? Sepsis, which could turn gangrenous. Treat her with hypochlorous acid. You know the amount, Nurse. I can do nothing for her here. She must be sent home. Put her on a hospital ship as soon as you can.’ He looked down at the moaning, restless woman stretched out before him. In his mind was the horrific war that was wounding and killing men in their thousands, hundreds of thousands, and he did his job in a kind of numbness, for it was the only way he could manage to keep his sanity, but to see a woman suffering the same fate as the soldiers was almost too much for him. His own wife and children were safe at home, thank God. This brave woman, it was said, spent all her spare time, which wasn’t much, searching for her husband who was missing and must surely be dead.

  Shaking his head he turned away, going back to the nightmare world that was his, leaving Alice Summers to the care of the nurses.

  ‘There’s a woman ter see yer, Miss Rose. A lady, I should say. She ses it’s important. Shall I send ’er in? She’s come in a chauffeur-driven motor car!’ Obviously impressed since motor cars were not often to be seen out of Liverpool, for the petrol to run them was scarce as the war drew on.

  Tom Gibson, who would have gone to do his bit at the beginning had his age not been against him, stood in the doorway of the tiny room, once a butler’s pantry, where Miss Rose did the administration work that had fallen on her shoulders though she would much rather be on the wards at Summer Place or with Will and the dogs as they romped about the garden. Taking a walk through the wooded area at the back of the gardens on this lovely autumn day with the boy tumbling about in the fallen leaves, the dogs, four of them now, counting Harry’s retriever, hopefully bringing the toddler a stick to throw, which he did but not very far for he was barely eighteen months old. Ginger and Spice raced round and round and a little rough-haired dog who had shown up at the back door about six months ago did the same. They called the stray Tommy and he seemed particularly attached to the men on the wards as though he sensed they needed him and the nurses had given up chasing him away. No one knew where he came from but he would lie with his nose on his paws, his eyes flickering from bed to bed and when an arm dropped he would sneak over and lick the hand devotedly and the hand would weakly caress his fur. He was bathed regularly which he accepted and everybody loved him, especially Will. He slept beside the boy’s bed and seemed to have the gift of knowing exactly where and when he was needed most.

  Rose sighed and looked up at Tom. Tom and Nessie had moved back to Beechworth and their own little cottage beside the vegetable garden when the place had been taken over and Mrs Philips, cook to the Summers family, had her kitchen to herself again with Mary to help her in feeding the wounded men and the staff, the doctors and nurses and everybody connected with the hospital.

  ‘Did she give a name, Tom?’

  ‘Mrs Bentley, Miss Rose.’

  Bentley! Bentley! Now why did that name ring a bell?

  ‘You’d best show her in then, Tom.’

  The lady who entered Rose’s small domain was in her thirties, small, pretty and very elegant. She doesn’t buy her clothes in Old Swan, Rose thought as she rose to her feet.

  ‘Good morning, I believe your name is Mrs Bentley. I am Rose Beechworth and this is my home which has been turned into a sort of convalescent home for officers. May I ask . . . oh, please do sit down and may I offer you some refreshments.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Beechworth. A cup of tea would be nice though I hate to bother you when you are so busy, but I think I might have some news – good news, I hasten to add, that might interest you. My husband, Major James Bentley, is in the 19th Battalion, King’s Liverpool Regiment and he said in his letter that you . . . that your friend, Alice Summers,
is married to one of the Summers brothers.’

  There was a knock at the door and a tray, carried by Dolly who was eager to know what this lady had to say to Miss Rose, was set on Rose’s desk. Silver, since the motor car at the door was evidently owned by a person of importance. A teapot, sugar basin and milk jug set on a lace tray cloth with the best porcelain cups and saucers. A small silver tea strainer, and a plate on which lemon slices were delicately arranged.

  Rose’s heart was beginning to leap about in her chest and she wished Dolly would leave but she was bobbing and smiling in the evident belief that Mrs Bentley was about to say something that Dolly felt she was entitled hear.

  ‘Thank you, Dolly, that will be all,’ Rose said firmly and as Dolly sidled out, highly offended, she turned to Mrs Bentley, asking her politely whether she took milk and sugar, or lemon but suddenly she could take it no longer.

  ‘Please, Mrs Bentley, what is it? Is it Harry? He is in the same regiment and I cannot bear the—’

  ‘No, no, my dear.’ Mrs Bentley smiled kindly. ‘As far as I know Harry is . . . well, how can any of us know? It is his brother, Charlie.’

  Rose sat down heavily and her heart – how foolish the heart was, leaping and plunging and yet really the organ never moved; she was going mad . . . was she going mad? She could hear a blackbird singing and when she turned to the window it hopped across the lawn, then flew over the wall, ready to land on the other side with its raised and fanned tail. A thrush answered in its musical notes, three times as though to outdo the blackbird. One of the dogs was barking in the back, longing to be let out of the stable, and from upstairs came the baby voice of Will demanding to see ‘Wose’. Jossy, aged fifteen and who had replaced the gardeners was in the garden, doing what he hoped would be the last of the lawn mowing while Mrs Bentley’s chauffeur leaned on the bonnet of the motor car watching him. He was an elderly man and, she supposed, like all the men who were too old for the trenches, he had taken over from a younger man.

  ‘Please, Mrs Bentley, please . . .’ Rose croaked.

  ‘I have had a letter from Jimmy, my husband.’

  ‘Oh, dear sweet Lord . . .’

  ‘He is a prisoner of war in a camp. A camp for officers somewhere in the north-east of France. Six months now . . .’ A spasm of pain crossed her face and Rose wanted to get up and stroke her hand but she didn’t think it would be welcome. ‘He met Charlie.’

  Rose’s face lit up like the first evening star on a winter night: ‘Charlie, thank God, oh thank the dear God,’ then it fell again.

  Mrs Bentley stood up as though she would put a comforting arm about her but she sat down again and continued. ‘But there is more, my dear. Charlie has been seriously injured – his head. Oh, he is well now but he has lost his past, his memory. Jimmy told me he has informed the authorities so Mrs Summers should hear very soon that her husband is alive but a prisoner of war. When you tell her she will be overjoyed, as I was when . . . I’m sorry . . .’

  For Rose’s face had fallen into lines of despair. What an irony, was the thought uppermost in Rose’s mind, going round like a mouse on a wheel. Charlie is alive and has been found and we don’t know where Alice is to tell her. Somewhere in France which was a heaving mass of struggling humanity where it seemed to her no one was in charge. Some of the soldiers who were recovering in this very hospital and who had been in the thick of it had told her. At the beginning of the year the Germans had been at the zenith of their fortune and the Allies almost on their knees. They, with the French, had done their best to defend Verdun, a citadel town surrounded by impregnable forces, a bulwark, a bastion that the French were determined to defend. The dreaded flamethrowers had been used to incinerate them, the massive Minenwerfers that could toss huge bombs the size of oil-drums, and 1,200 guns ranged across the narrow front from where the attack came. The casualties were horrendous, the roads almost impassable with troops marching towards the battle and others marching in the other direction. Refugees, ambulances, lost children and mothers frantically searching for them. It had been ‘bloody hell on wheels’ the soldier had told her and though he had lost both his legs he felt himself lucky to be out of it. And, he muttered in disbelief to Rose, who sat by his bed and held his hand, much to Staff Nurse Long’s annoyance, men were still volunteering.

  ‘They don’t know what the bloody ’ell they’re lettin’ themselves in for, poor sods. They should stay at ’ome with their family. Bugger me if I don’t think them conchies were right after all. Never mind puttin’ them in prison, they should pin a bloody medal on them.’

  When Rose had seen Mrs Bentley out she scurried to the kitchen where Dolly and the others were waiting with barely concealed impatience to hear from her who the lady had been and what she had to say.

  Rose swept Dolly into her arms and, laying her forehead on Dolly’s shoulder, began to weep.

  ‘Not . . . not Captain Harry, my lass, tell me it’s not Captain Harry.’

  ‘No, Dolly, not Captain Harry. They’d hardly send a lady in an expensive motor car to tell me Harry was . . . was . . .’ She couldn’t even bring herself to speak the word. ‘It’s Captain Charlie. He’s alive, Dolly. He’s in a prisoner-of-war camp in France and that lady’s husband, a major, who’s also a prisoner, recognised him. But Charlie has been wounded in the head and he has no memory. Didn’t even know who he was until Major Bentley came across him. The major told him all he knew about himself, Charlie, I mean; he told him about the day at Lime Street station where Lady wouldn’t go on the train and Sparky and everything he knew . . .’

  ‘Dear sweet God. Oh, Lord above, thanks be to God. Now Miss Alice – Mrs Summers – can come home and see her babby and the little lad can meet—Why, what’s ter do, Miss Rose, are you not glad that . . .’

  Dolly reached out and took Rose’s hands between hers, doing her best to peer into Rose’s face, for her young mistress had hung her head in despair.

  ‘Can you not see, Dolly? We have found Captain Charlie but we have lost Alice. We don’t know where she is over there. You know that friend of Harry’s tried to discover her, and Harry even saw her once but she will not have joined under her own name and from what the soldiers here say, it is total chaos on the battlefields. She might even be . . . be . . .’

  ‘Nay, I’ll not have it, never.’ Dolly reared up and her face was fierce with her fury. ‘The good God wouldn’t let a lovely, good-hearted girl like our Alice be taken, not when her husband’s just been found. I’ll not have it, d’you hear, so if you won’t do it, I will.’

  ‘What, Dolly?’ Rose sniffed disconsolately; though she was a strong and determined young woman – what she had done these last months proved that – for once she was at a loss.

  ‘Telephone that there friend of Captain Harry’s an’ ask him to make some enquiries. He must know folk in high places who can go through records an’ find out where Captain Charlie is. Ask about this ’ere Major Bentley. They must know what camp he’s in and if they can tell you Captain Charlie will be there. You could write to the lad, when they’ve found him an’ tell him all about his life, his wife, his own little lad and it might bring the poor young man to find himself again. Now stop that worritin’ and write that letter.’

  11

  She lay on the narrow cot that was her bed. It was covered with a thin, lumpy mattress and a worn sheet. Spread over her and the strange hospital nightdress she unaccountably wore, was a flimsy blanket. On top of that someone had laid her long overcoat. In the next cot O’Neill breathed the deep exhausted sleep into which they all tumbled every chance they had, but Alice’s brain was straining to make sense of what had happened to her and how she had come to be lying here in a hospital gown, like the ones the wounded men wore.

  Her hand gave a vicious twinge and when she attempted to alleviate the pain by moving it she found it was bound in a dressing. Suddenly she remembered the splinter Staff Nurse had removed and marvelled that it could hurt so much. It had only been a splinter after all. Why was
she dressed like a patient, for God’s sake, tucked up in her bed with O’Neill snoring her head off beside her when she knew there had been a huge battle and every ambulance driver had been needed to bring the wounded to the hospital? Was it over, the ‘big push’ everyone had waited for? And why . . . where . . . Dear Lord, was she going mad or . . .

  Her mind travelled back over the months since she had landed in this pit of hell. How many men had she witnessed, dragged from the mud, the slime, the putrid shell-holes, the blood-soaked trenches, most of them by their own mates, for these men had formed a bond with one another that only they could understand. No-man’s-land, and that was what it was, a land on which man could not survive without the comradeship of those who floundered in it with them. Rusty barbed wire, machine-gun fire, ‘whizz-bangs’ and the terrible crescendo of the shelling that went on for hours and drove men mad. The soldiers were thrown against these fiendish challenges repeatedly and repeatedly she and the other ambulance drivers carried their mutilated bodies back to the hospitals or the hospital trains, the hospitals completely inadequate though they did their best to put the poor battered bodies back together. Through the summer of 1915 she had carried the wounded, at first so horrified by what she saw she felt she could not carry on, but she had.

  At the outset she had known that she could not maintain the engine of the overworked ambulance, for despite her protestations to the sergeant at the Red Cross station in London, she really knew very little about them. She just could not understand the intricacies of the tangle under the bonnet, but she had learned and had managed it. She, who had never washed a cup and saucer in her life, had forced herself to scrub the inside of her ambulance of the muck, the blood and other nasty substances left by the wounded men and her hands were a testament to it. The first time the whistle had shrilled out telling them they were needed she had trembled so violently she could not button her overcoat and was forced to accept the cheerful help of the stretcher-bearer to crank the starting handle of the vehicle. Her terror had surely been visible to all the others until she realised they were all afraid and the knowledge had strengthened her. The smell of the wounded men, the sounds, the screams, the whimpers of pain, the whispers begging ‘Mam’ to fetch them home, the moans, haunted her. They cursed her when she almost dropped her end of the stretcher, jarring their poor tortured bodies. They cursed her in the dialects from the places they had left, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cornwall, Scotland, London Cockney, Liverpool, reducing her to scalding tears but she carried on, turning her eyes from the white of bones glinting through the red of torn flesh, from blood, vomit, faeces, she dealt with them all. She had learned to let the clutch out gently on her overworked vehicle so that it would not jump forward and jostle them. She had carried cigarettes which she lit and placed tenderly between lips bitten and bloody and she survived and lived only for the hours she could snatch to search for Charlie, or his body; for some exhausted soldier who might have known him among the tens of thousands who had fought where he had.