A Rose in No-Man's Land (24 page)

“All right, Captain, you’ve persuaded me. If she comes, I’ll try to get an address.”

“Thank you.” He pulled out his wallet and took out some money.

“Now, Captain, really,” Matron protested.

“It’s for Harry, to buy him a few treats. I’ll get my lawyer to contact you. He can arrange for funds to be paid to you on a regular basis. Harry is to have anything he wants. Bill me for it. I imagine the Government would only pay for the bare necessities.”

“You’re right. The relatives provide any extras.”

“I’ve got a distant cousin who is a member of parliament. I’ll see if he can help facilitate Harry’s repatriation.”

“Thank you. His brother leaves some money here when he comes, but he’s only a private.”

“Who’s the brother? I might be able to catch up with him in France. Maybe he would know where Amy might go.”

The matron pulled out a leather-bound book from a filing cupboard and flicked through the pages. “Here we are. Private Jake Peters.” She showed him the entry, and Mark made a mental note of his regimental number and unit.

“Thank you, Matron.” Jake Peters? The name sounded vaguely familiar. Ah, yes, the cheeky young orderly Amy introduced him to in Paris.

He strode out of the hospital. Where on earth would she go? Right into central London, no doubt, but it was like searching for a needle in a haystack.
I’ll try Australian HQ. She might go there.
He took several deep breaths to get his emotions under control.

Oh, Amy! What have I done to you?
He had destroyed her nursing career, caused her to be sent away from France in disgrace. Society would judge her as a fallen woman because they had slept together without marriage.

You’re a selfish bastard,
he castigated himself. He had taken everything she held dear, then tossed her out into the street in a fit of temper. How would she be feeling now? Rejected, frightened, all alone in a strange city. He felt physically ill just thinking about the dangers she faced.

Dammit, he had to return to France tomorrow. HQ was planning an important battle to take place within the next few days, a concentrated effort to consolidate the allied positions before the winter rains came. He could not desert his men at such a time. Hundreds of lives depended on him.

Once more Amy had to be sacrificed.

He would see his lawyer about organizing a search for her, and to set something up for the comfort of Harry Peters. So many things to do, so little time in which to do them.

His visit to Australian HQ proved fruitless. He checked Nelson’s Column, which he knew had become an unofficial meeting place for lonely soldiers on leave, in case she came here seeking comfort from her countrymen. He drew a blank. Never in all his life had he felt so helpless. His heart filled with dread as he hailed a taxi to take him to his lawyer’s chambers.

****

Amy had gone straight to Australian HQ. How much easier it would be to obtain a nursing position if she could produce proof of her qualifications. As always, the staff made sympathetic noises but could not help. No documents, no reference, nowhere to live, and hardly any money.

She fought the hysteria threatening to overwhelm her. What a perilous situation to be in.
I’d wear rags and beg in the streets before asking Mark for help, knowing how he feels about me now. Pride is the only thing between me and total degradation
.

She bought a newspaper and skimmed through it. Numerous jobs were listed, but the only ones sounding any way decent required references.

Jobs in a shell factory in the East End paid twelve shillings a week. Not the type of work she wanted, but munitions were a growing industry. Who would know better than her about bombs and bullets?

She had once read about girls working in these places being called canaries because their faces turned yellow. Dangerous, dirty, and heavy work, despised by many girls, would surely increase her chances of success. She would only stay for a short time. Would she be paid weekly? If not, she would have to ask for some money in advance. By being frugal and staying somewhere cheap, her money might just about hold out for a week, even if it meant skipping a few meals. Dear God, what a mess she had made of everything.

She squared her shoulders and, with determination dredged from God alone knew where, boarded a bus.

“Would you let me off at the nearest stop to the shell factory, please,” she asked the conductress. The East End was the poor part of London, but the tall, grimy tenements and dark, narrow streets still shocked her when she alighted from the bus.

Two heavily made-up girls sauntered past, cigarettes dangling from their painted lips. Prostitutes plying their trade in broad daylight?

“Looking for work?” one of them asked.

Not your kind of work
. “Yes, I’m going to try for a job in the shell factory.”

“There’s a new foreman there. Little bastard won’t put anyone on unless they sleep with him first,” the other girl said.

“That’s illegal.”

“It ain’t around here.”

Close up, underneath the layers of make-up, the girls couldn’t be more than sixteen or so; young in years but not in experience, judging by their hard, streetwise eyes.

“Don’t take your case,” the taller one instructed. “They’ll know you’re homeless and desperate.”

“Thank you, you’re right, but what can I do with it? I’m carrying all I possess in the world.”

“Charlie, at the pub, would mind it for you. He’s a friend of ours.”

“Is he?” Amy didn’t want to ask what kind of friend but could guess. “Why are you helping me?”

“Because we know what it’s like to be homeless and desperate, don’t we, Dorry?”

“Yeah, we’ve spent time in the workhouse. You don’t want to go there, no matter what.”

A sick nausea built up in her stomach. Would it come to that?
Surely not. But I’d starve to death before I’d sell myself in the street.
Would she? Hunger gnawed at her stomach because she hadn’t eaten since breakfast with Mark. How would she feel if it was days rather than hours since she had last tasted food? Weak? Sick? Cramping pains as her stomach contracted? If she was starving, really starving, like these two had obviously been. Would she sell herself in the street? Please God, she prayed desperately, don’t let things get that bad for me.

She followed the girls to a side entrance of a rundown pub. Paint peeled off the door and window surrounds. Soot discolored the brickwork. The name Doyle was printed in faded letters on an archway above the main entrance.

“Hey, Charlie,” one of the girls yelled. “Come here.”

A short, potbellied man appeared in the doorway. “What you want, Dorry?”

“She…”

“My name is Amy.”

“She, Amy, wants somewhere to put her case while she tries for a job at the shell factory.”

“I’d be obliged if I could leave it here, um, Charlie.”

“What’s an Australian doing wandering around these parts searching for work?”

“It’s a long and complicated story. I don’t suppose I’ll be gone very long.”

On closer inspection, Charlie appeared to be in his fifties. His gray, oily hair was slicked back, and his face had the ravaged look of a man who lived and played hard.

Charlie scrutinized her carefully. “Yeah, leave it here, luv.” He took the case from her. “Just bang on the door and yell out when you get back. Got customers.” He winked at Dorry and Vera.

“Good luck at the shell factory,” the girls chorused.

“Thanks for your help. I might see you when I get back.”

“Doubt it,” Charlie said with a chuckle, as the girls ducked inside. “They’ll be flat out, if you know what I mean.”

“I can guess.”

“They’re not bad girls, safer working here than doing the streets. I can keep an eye on things, make sure the customers don’t treat them too rough and they get paid when they’re finished. Off you go, lass. Watch the foreman. He’s a slimy little bastard.”

“Yes, thank you. The girls warned me about him. I wouldn’t go there except I’m desperate for work. I need something in a hurry.”

“What can you do?”

“I’m an army nurse.”

He rolled his eyes in disbelief. “A nurse!”

“Yes, I’ve recently come over from France. My papers have been lost, so I’ve as good as been kicked out of the nursing corps.”

“Over a man?”

“More or less.” She brushed a tear away. “How did you guess?”

“I can see it in your face. You look like you’ve been betrayed.”

“I suppose I have,” she agreed sadly, swallowing on a sob. “I loved him.”

“Yeah. Rich and married?”

Charlie was astute, a rough diamond, but he obviously had a kind heart. “Yes.” Let him think Mark was married. Saved her trying to explain the position.

“I’ve seen it happen dozens of times. You’re not the first. Sure as hell won’t be the last. My wife ran off with some silver-tongued rich man who dumped her within a couple of months. The strumpet came crawling back to me.”

“What did you do?”

“I took her back. What else could I do?” Bitterness twisted his mouth. “She’d left me with six-year-old twin boys to bring up. Never the same between us afterwards, though. A couple of years later she took off again. Haven’t heard from her in more than fifteen years.”

“I’m sorry. Where are your sons now?”

“One was killed at Mons, the other’s been missing for months.” His eyes darkened with the pain of his loss. “I don’t hold out much hope for him.”

“Don’t give up, Charlie.” Impulsively she took his hand. “Things are so chaotic in France. Thousands of casualties a day are pouring into the hospitals. Men who have lost their memories. Men whose clothes have been blown off. There’s no identification on many of them. He could be badly wounded and not able to tell anyone who he is.”

“Do you think so?” Hope flared in his eyes.

“Don’t build your hopes up too much. There are bodies lying out there in no-man’s land that will never be brought in.” She closed her eyes but hurriedly opened them, trying to blot out the picture of the human pyramid. “What I mean is, don’t give up completely.”

“Here, you better sit down. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Hundreds of ghosts, Charlie.” She ran a shaking hand across her forehead. “I’ll be all right in a moment.” She took several deep breaths to calm herself. “I have to get a job and somewhere to live, and I haven’t got much money. That case holds my worldly possessions.”

She gave a bitter, self-deprecating laugh. “I came twelve thousand miles to help the war effort, only to end up like this. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“Don’t go to the shell factory. The work there will kill you, inhaling poison into your lungs all day. Can you cook?”

“Yes, if it’s plain food.”

“My cousin runs a lodging house and café near here, couldn’t afford to pay much, but you’d have a roof over your head, food in your belly. There’s a whole family she looks out for, that’s why she’s got no money, always feeding someone else’s brats. She’s a goodhearted soul, is Olive. Never done anyone a bad turn in her life.”

He barely paused for breath. “Her husband’s in Egypt. Merv, the bloody fool, enlisted to be near their boy, but the kid gets himself wounded on Gallipoli. He’s sent back here, and his poor bloody father is left there.”

“Was he at Cape Helles?”

“Yeah, how do you know? Most people haven’t heard of the cursed place.”

“I nursed on a hospital ship for months doing the Gallipoli run.”

“No wonder you’ve seen lots of ghosts. I’ll just let them know at the bar what I’m doing before we go over to Olive’s. If she can’t help you, she’ll know someone who can.”

Amy’s head ached, her stomach grumbled, and she could nearly kill for a nice hot cup of tea, but renewed energy and hope surged through her. Charlie carried her case as they pushed their way through East Enders scurrying about their daily business.

A woman yelled out about “luverly pork pies,” and a paperboy shouted out the latest headlines from the front. They passed a man pushing a wheelbarrow full of coal, and he gave them a friendly nod.

“We’ll take a short cut.”

Charlie led the way from the main thoroughfare through a long, dingy alleyway running between high, grimy tenements. Gray ragged washing hung on poles jutting out from several windows. A couple of mangy cats spat and fought. At mid-afternoon, admittedly on an overcast day, it was almost dark in the smelly, dirty laneways. A damp, depressing coldness prevailed everywhere, and Amy snuggled deeper into her warm coat. She heard the fretful crying of a baby and the drunken argument between a man and woman from somewhere close by.

“Don’t ever come here on your own. They’d murder you quick as look at you.”

“I know.” She tried to dampen down her fear. “I’ve read about slums but never thought they would be this bad.”

“There are even worse places. These tenements are in good condition compared to some.”

No wonder people died of tuberculosis and the infant mortality rate was so high. How many babies would be born and die here without anyone knowing or caring? She edged closer to Charlie.

Finally they came into the light again, and Amy expelled a breath without even knowing she had been holding it. Olive’s place turned out to be a rundown, three-storied, red brick building. The café had a wall of small timber windows out front and a large, heavily carved wooden door. The brass fittings shone like new pennies.

Charlie led the way inside, with Amy at his heels. Three long tables were laid out in an H configuration, with high-backed wooden chairs. Homely, serviceable, and clean was her first impression.

“You there, Olive?” Charlie called out.

“Coming,” a voice boomed back.

Amy’s eyes nearly popped out of her head when she saw Olive, an enormous woman, all of six feet tall and so fat she waddled rather than walked. Her faded, gingery gray hair must once have been red. Laughter lines fanned out from her eyes.

“What brings you here, Charlie?”

“This is Amy. Could you give her a job?”