Flora's War (19 page)

Gwen and I looked at each other. We knew where we were now – the ward for mental cases.

‘Should we stay?’ Gwen whispered. ‘I don’t think we ought to be in this ward.’

‘I don’t know. I think the orderly got it wrong,’ I agreed. ‘But we’ve made the tea. We may as well hand it around and then check with the nurse.’

We started our rounds.

Not one of the patients responded when I asked how they’d like their tea, so it was milk and two sugars for all. And when there was no response when I held out the mug, I took the hand and curled the fingers around the mug. Some drank, others just stared blankly into their mugs.

The patient with the bandaged head suddenly screamed. I jumped, almost dropping the mug I was handing to one of the talkers. I whipped around, but there was nothing wrong that I could see. He was just screaming. No one else reacted. Maybe he does it all the time, I thought, unnerved.

The nurse glanced over to see how Gwen and I were doing. ‘I’ll take Edward his tea,’ she said.

‘Does he do that often?’ asked Gwen shakily.

‘Constantly,’ the nurse said. She picked up the tea and turned towards him. Then she stopped. The mug dropped from her hand and she spun around to Gwen and me. ‘Get a doctor, right now!’ she said.

Behind her, the screaming soldier was ripping the bandages from his head. Underneath, I could see an open wound. He screamed again, tore the last of the bandages off and began to claw at the wound. He was frenzied, grabbing at – something – and flinging it to the floor. Gwen and I stared, horrified, transfixed.

The nurse flew towards the screaming man. ‘The doctor, I said. Go!’ she shouted at us.

We ran to the ward next door but there was no doctor there. We raced into another ward – no doctor. Then, in the corridor, thank heaven, we found a doctor. I grabbed at him. ‘The ward – the nurse said – he’s pulling his bandages off and he’s – oh, please!’ Gwen was silent, clutching at my shoulder. ‘That ward!’ I pointed. The doctor sped away.

Gwen and I stood totally still in the corridor. Down the hall, the screaming abruptly stopped. I felt as if my knees weren’t going to hold me up any longer. They were just giving up. I leaned my back against the wall and pulled Gwen to lean beside me.

‘You know – you know what that was?’ I said.

‘Oh God, yes, yes.’ Gwen slid slowly down the wall, her face white. She sat on the floor, bending her head to her knees. She looked up at me.

‘It’s no good. I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore. I just – can’t.’

…

Gwen didn’t feel able to drive so we left her car at the hospital and I dropped her at Shepheard’s, giving her a big hug before she walked in.

Gwen visited the House of the Butcher and Blacksmith the next day. ‘Mama insisted to Lady Bellamy that I’m not to work on the wards anymore,’ she said. ‘Truthfully, I’m rather relieved.’

‘I’ll bet that orderly who sent us up there got a good talking to,’ I said.

Gwen nodded. ‘I’m afraid so. Mama suggested I should volunteer where she does, doing clerical work and running a library for the soldiers.’ She shook her head emphatically. ‘But I said no. I can still drive; it was just the wards I can’t cope with. Mama’s never been happy about me driving, but she finally agreed I still can.’ She looked at me. ‘And I’ll still visit convalescent hospitals, but I won’t be assisting on the wards again.’ She looked down into her glass of chilled lime juice. ‘Thank heaven.’

I was surprised at the way I felt – rather scornful. Huh. Gwen can’t take it, I thought. It was just the way, I realised, Florence had felt about Edith and her nervous breakdown.

‘Are
you
still going to work on the wards?’ Gwen asked.

‘Of course,’ I said shortly.

Gwen lifted her head sharply. ‘I’m doing a lot!’ she said defensively. ‘I’m doing all I can!’

‘Did I say you weren’t?’ I replied.

We stared at each other in surprise. We had never disagreed before.

‘I – I think I’ll go now,’ Gwen said. She looked at me as if she hoped I’d say something to stop her. But I didn’t. Gwen put her glass down on the table with a sharp crack and walked off.

Mrs Travers came to see Fa, and I think she advised him that I, also, should be pulled out.

‘It’s up to you,’ he said to me. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘What do I want? I want to work on the excavation, I want to sit on the roof and drink mint tea, I want to sleep for weeks,’ I said. ‘But I can’t, can I? Not when I’m needed.’ I shuddered. ‘I don’t want to go near a mental ward again, but I think Lady Bellamy’s seen to that.’

Fa nodded. ‘Right then. If that’s what you need to do.’

…

I was so busy every day, and so tired when I finally got home, that all I wanted was food and bed. The mysterious door in the alley, and the room behind it, had been pushed well to the back of my mind. I thought of it sometimes, and intended to go and look into it again, but I never got there. When I’m not so busy I’ll do something about it, I told myself. When I’m not so tired.

But I was always tired.

Another postcard came from Lydia on Lemnos. It had a picture of a pretty harbour on it. I knew that harbour wasn’t pretty now, it was full of warships. The postcard was hastily scrawled and had no news, but that didn’t surprise me. If we were busy in Cairo, Lemnos must be as well. Lemnos was usually the first place wounded were taken when they were evacuated from Gallipoli.

Dear Flora
, she wrote.
I am desperate for new boots. Mine have worn out and there is no way to get new ones here. The other girls are in the same boat, so if you could manage to find a few pairs? Very sturdy boots! Love, Lydia.
Then, at the bottom in very tiny writing, she’d added,
Petticoats too. And if you could manage some of that French chocolate we shared on the terrace at Shepheard’s …

I laughed. It wasn’t chocolate she wanted, but she obviously couldn’t write cigarettes on an open postcard, she’d be in trouble. The ‘French chocolate’ was easy. But where would I find very sturdy boots in women’s sizes?

I consulted Mr Khalid.

‘I don’t understand why they all need boots,’ I said. ‘But would you know where to get them?’

‘Leave it with me,’ said Mr Khalid. ‘What sizes?’

That stumped me for a moment. ‘I know Lydia takes the same size I do, a five,’ I said. ‘So perhaps two fives, then two sizes down and two sizes up?’

‘That should be possible,’ Mr Khalid assured me.

For the petticoats I went to the dressmaker near Shepheard’s and ordered a dozen. Good, strong cotton petticoats, I emphasised, nothing fancy. I was glad to give the dressmaker some custom; I hadn’t had much need for pretty new dresses in the past few months.

In a few days, Mr Khalid brought a dozen pairs of stout, serviceable women’s boots. The dressmaker delivered a dozen petticoats, in good, strong cotton as I’d asked for, but each trimmed with pretty ribbon. I added some packs of Lydia’s ‘French chocolate’, carefully concealing them in the middle of the parcel, and sent it all off. I hoped Lydia would be able to write soon and tell me why she needed these things.

In a few weeks I had a letter from Lydia.

I haven’t had time to write before
, she wrote,
but I have been off sick for a couple of days with dysentery. We call it Lemnositis because everybody gets it here. I’m feeling better and will go back on duty tomorrow.

You’ll be wondering about the boots and petticoats. (You won’t, I’m sure, be wondering about the French chocolate!) Remember how, before I left, I said things would be better on Lemnos? I’ve never been more wrong in my life, I think.

When we arrived at West Mudros harbour it was packed with ships because Lemnos is only five hours’ sailing time from Gallipoli. We were met – I couldn’t believe this – by a sergeant with
bagpipes
to play us into our camp. We had to line up in rows of four and we were expected to march. We marched for well over a mile with men cheering us and dogs barking. We must have looked a regular circus even though we were doing our best, but becoming more and more hysterical all the way to our hospital site. (There are other hospitals on the island, two Canadian, one British and ours was to be the fourth.) Well, our hospital site stopped us laughing, quick smart.

My dear, there was
nothing.
The patients were lying on stretchers on bare, rocky ground. There was no equipment. We nurses had tents, but they weren’t up and there were no beds or stretchers. There was no water to drink or to wash in. I’ve never seen Matron so angry; she was incandescent, but there was nothing we could do.

More wounded arrived the next day and at least we managed to get some tents put over them; the only other thing we could do was give them a drink (we’d located some springs by then). Nearly all were badly wounded stretcher cases. We tore up our clothes for dressings (that’s where our petticoats went) and used our own cakes of soap.

It was three days before our equipment arrived, then we could do more for the boys, but water is still short. We can’t get a bath. If we have some time we go to the harbour and have a dip in the sea, but the water is rather dirty so it’s not pleasant.

Our boots have simply worn out. The ground here is very rough and rocky and there’s nowhere to get boots mended. We’re also having trouble with the wildlife. There are snakes, scorpions, centipedes and lots of insects that bite, and even, my dear,
moles.
They don’t bite, but they burrow under our tents. My bed actually collapsed one night because a mole burrowed under one of its legs. And so many flies! We have to keep our left hands over the cup all the time we’re not drinking our tea, to keep the flies out.

We could do with the services of a dentist here too. We are living largely on tinned meat, bully beef, tinned carrots and biscuits; what the men call hard tack. The biscuits are so hard we have to gnaw bits off the corners and there have been several broken teeth.

Well, I feel better for having got all that off my chest! Don’t think I’m complaining, Flora, we are all doing the best we can and we didn’t expect it to be a picnic, but it is so difficult not to have the things we need to make the boys comfortable. There have been so many terrible wounds, so many deaths. It is awful to say, but I’m almost glad of my Matthew’s wound, it means he is out of it and gone home to Australia. It makes me wish that anyone I know, rather than be wounded, should be killed outright.

I folded Lydia’s letter. Scented soap, I thought, more petticoats, packets of nice biscuits, bars of chocolate. I’d arrange another parcel for Lydia just as soon as I could.

Lydia’s last words, wishing that anyone she knew should be killed outright rather than badly wounded, hit me hard and made me think of Jay.

His letters had, until recently, been arriving regularly. I’d been disturbed by their content: intense, driven, increasingly desperate. How he must look after his men, how he must set an example. Then, a few weeks ago, they’d just stopped. I’d written several times, but had no reply. I’d been waiting, telling myself that the mail wasn’t regular, it never was, and certainly some was lost along the way and surely a letter would come soon. But other boys had suddenly stopped writing, and I knew why. Now, it seemed, the same thing had happened to Jay.

I took out the bundle of letters I’d received from Jay, and the photograph of the laughing young men on the stones of the pyramid. Gently, I touched Jay’s face. I put the photograph with his letters, and took down the special box of letters from the boys who’d stopped writing. The box, I saw with a lurch of my heart, was almost full. I placed Jay’s letters in it and closed the lid.

Chapter 16

The huge numbers of wounded flooding into Cairo from Lone Pine had slowed, but trains still arrived all through September, October and November. The weather was cooling, which made things rather easier for the boys in hospital. The terrible heat of summer had affected them badly and the flies it brought had spread typhoid, cholera and dysentery. Many of the wounded died from the illnesses they contracted in the hospital, rather than from the wounds that had brought them there.

One day when no trains came in, I took a group of soldiers on an outing to the pyramids. A trooper called Gerald slipped as he was getting into the motorcar, cutting his hand. I frantically searched the motorcar but could find nothing to staunch the bleeding.

‘Hold tight, I’ll be right back!’ I said, and raced off to find a guide, or anyone with some kind of bandage.

I returned a few minutes later with some rags to find Gerald and his mates calmly sitting in the car and on the running board. Gerald’s hand was neatly bandaged up with a triangular bandage, the kind I’d practised first aid with at the rest and recreation centre.

‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Who did this?’

‘An American girl drove up with a bunch of walking wounded like us,’ a boy with a broken ankle, Sam, said from the running board. ‘She had a whole first aid kit in her motorcar.’

‘She just wrapped me up and off they went,’ Gerald said. ‘Very impressive.’

‘And very pretty,’ another soldier said. And they all laughed.

As I drove the soldiers back to the convalescent hospital I realised I’d been unfair to Gwen. She
was
doing all that she could. And today, more than I could.

When I tried to approach her later at the hospital, she saw me coming and turned her back. All right, I thought, I can be unreasonable too! I walked away.

In early December Lydia returned to Cairo for a few days’ leave to recover from another bout of Lemnositis. When she came to visit we went straight up to the roof terrace. Mr Bilal hurried downstairs, murmuring about ‘nourishing food’.

‘What’s happened to your
hair
?’ was my first question. I could have asked, ‘How did you lose so much more weight?’ or ‘Why is your uniform so ragged?’ but I knew the answers to those questions.

Lydia ran a hand through her short bob. ‘I cut it off. A lot of us did. I kept getting burrs in it, and all the boys had lice when they arrived, so of course they leapt onto us. It was just too hard to keep long hair clean, so off it went.’ She grinned, like the old Lydia. ‘To get a proper hot bath and wash our hair thoroughly we have to go to some natural hot springs on the island, but they’re five miles away so we don’t get there too often.’ She struck a dramatic pose. ‘It’s very up-to-date, isn’t it? Makes me feel like a totally modern girl, like you and Gwen. It’s so easy to look after I don’t think I’ll grow it again.’