Home for Christmas (35 page)

Monsieur Dandier, the superintendent, assured everyone that as the Red Cross was a neutral organisation dedicated to saving lives no matter the nationality, there would be no interruption to their good works.

Most of the staff, with the exception of a few French and Belgians who found it impossible to maintain their neutrality, seeing as the Germans had marched through neutral Belgium, left. The Germans gave them safe conduct to the few areas still controlled by the Belgian army.

The noise from enemy guns still seemed a long way off, and although they were treating some injured soldiers, they had not been overwhelmed.

There was even time to relax. During a lull in her work, Lydia wandered through the extensive gardens, glad of the fresh air away from the smells of disinfectant and carbolic soap.

Like everyone else, she was becoming restless, dreading the sight of the injuries to come, but wanting to do something more worthwhile than winding bandages or checking and rechecking surgical tools and medicines.

The smell of summer roses filled the air. In those areas where tents had not been set up to take the overflow of casualties, vegetables grew and the boughs of fruit trees hung heavy with ripe apples, pears and cherries.

Lydia made for the orchard where the grass was long and made a comforting swishing sound against her skirts.

The chateau reminded her of Heathlands, and thinking of Heathlands reminded her of Robert. If it hadn’t been for this war, they would have been married by now. The sad thought brought tears to her eyes, but she blinked them away. Robert must never know. If they ever did meet again, she would not mention the pregnancy. The pain to both of them would be too great.

Lost in thought, she did not hear the soft footfall in the loamy earth or hear the whispering of disturbed grass.

‘It’s started. Did you hear the guns? They are nearer now.’

The voice took her unawares. She jerked upright from the tree trunk she’d been leaning against. A few apples fell to the ground.

She recognised the doctor who’d commented on injured men not caring where they were treated. He was Franz Berger, a Red Cross doctor from Switzerland, who believed fervently in world peace and a permanent end to war.

Lydia brushed the leaves from her skirt. Just for once, she wasn’t wearing uniform. Her dress was grey and her blouse a deep shade of purple. It felt good to be out of uniform. She was aware that such times would be rare. She had to make the most of it.

‘No. I didn’t hear it. I’m afraid I was deep in thought,’ she said to him.

He bent down, picked a dark red poppy and handed it to her. ‘I could see that.’

‘This poppy isn’t as bright as most of them around here,’ she said to him as she stroked the petal from its outer edge down to the black stamen at its centre.

‘Like blood,’ he said to her.

She saw he was chewing something, his jaw moving from side to side. He spat out a cherry stone into the long grass.

‘This is a lovely place, this orchard. It’s unlikely to survive the carnage to come of course. Sad but true,’ he added on seeing the disbelief on her face.

He turned his head as though expecting a shell or bullet to come shooting over his shoulder.

‘Why do you think that? It’s so quiet here.’

‘This, my dear, is the calm before the storm. We must make the most of it. Explore while we can. Would you care to stroll with me down to the end of the drive? One last look at the outside world before we’ve no more time to do so?’

As they strolled towards the main gates, she thought she heard the sound of thunder.

She looked at Franz. His curt nod was enough to confirm she was wrong. It was not thunder. The guns had opened up on the Western Front – not far from where they were.

‘We are between the guns and the town of Ypres,’ he said to her. ‘It’s quite an ancient town. One might say of historical significance. Not for long, though. Not for long.’

They walked in silence, each closeted with their own thoughts, their footsteps raising dust from the dry gravel.

A sudden sound caused Lydia to raise her head. Franz did the same.

Wrought-iron gates set between pillars topped with mythical creatures bearing shields lay open at the end of the drive. She presumed the coat of arms was that of the family who owned the chateau.

A column of Belgian refugees was passing; everything they possessed in the world piled in unwieldy heaps on carts, some pulled by plodding farm horses with docked tails and bony rumps, some pushed by men and women with tired faces and the look of defeat in their eyes.

Children sat or slept on top of their meagre belongings along with a crate containing chickens, and even a goat or two. Dogs, their tongues hanging out, loped along between the wheels, glad of the shade and after many miles fleeing the onslaught to come, too tired to run yapping in and out of the long procession.

The people’s faces, young and old alike, had strangely resigned looks, as though they were both grateful and surprised to find themselves alive and heading away from the fighting.

Lydia stood silently, watching them pass.

‘So,’ Franz said solemnly, ‘it begins.’

‘Line up, ladies! Straight if you please.’

The nurses dutifully shuffled their feet to achieve the required straightness.

‘You’ve all done an excellent job. You may congratulate yourselves. Shake hands with your neighbours.’

The nurses smiled and did as requested. They’d worked hard. Everything was ready. Beds stood white, crisp and clean; glass, metal and wood sparkled. All they were waiting for were the patients.

‘I can’t wait to get started,’ said Esther, Lydia’s American roommate. ‘I mean really started. Those poor boys. They’re going to need all the help they get. So how do you feel?’

Lydia took a deep breath. ‘I’m dreading it.’

That night she slept only fitfully. In her dream, she was at Heathlands, hand in hand with Robert, strolling around the lake. Somebody was calling her away. She tried to shout back that she would not leave Robert’s side. They were to be married and nothing …

‘Lydie, Lydie! Wake up! Wake up! The first casualties have arrived.’ Belgian-French Fleur was shaking her.

Lydia Miller jerked herself from sleep and, stupidly, her first thought was of altering her diary.

‘Tomorrow; that’s when they’re expected. Tomorrow,’ she said tiredly. ‘It’s still night.’

Lights flashed outside, skimming the darkness, and the sound of motor-driven ambulances barely overcame the frenzied shouting to open doors, assemble stretchers and turn the bloody lights on.

Her dream faded. Fleur was shaking her shoulder.

‘They are here! They are here! Did you not hear them?’

There was no chance to answer. Lydia dressed quickly without washing.

‘I must have gone deaf,’ she muttered to herself. The noise from outside was deafening.

Men were shouting, horses neighing, engines rumbling and men, the injured men, screaming in pain and crying for their mothers.

Lifting their skirts above their ankles, the nurses ran down the stairs. The doctors, both the German military doctors and the neutral Red Cross, inspected men on stretchers and barked orders. The very air, which smelled of earth and blood, trembled with the screams of injured men.

Franz Berger was in the thick of it. He called for a nurse. Lydia, having just finished dressing a head wound, ran to help.

‘Put your fingers on the carotid artery whilst I suture.’

Lydia pressed as hard as she could. Even so, blood pumping from the artery supplying the man’s head spurted on to her starched white cuff.

‘Press harder. It’s not entirely severed. I can save him. I’m sure I can.’

He sounded anxious that he could be wrong, and angry that modern warfare could so easily sever arteries, rip out intestines and blow limbs from living flesh.

Lydia pressed as hard as she could, the tips of her fingers grazed by the needle and sutures. Thanks to both shock and ether, the man remained unconscious, his face smeared with sweat, blood and dirt.

‘He was German,’ said Franz. ‘Now he is a dead German.’

There was no time to admit that she had not noticed his uniform. A broken man was a broken man, marred flesh torn to shreds in a war he most likely did not understand.

One after another they came, men wearing the uniform of the Kaiser’s Germany, bleeding, unconscious or screaming with pain.

Doctor Berger made swift decisions: ‘This one can be saved. This one might last until morning, this one … fetch the padre.’

There was little time to look around, but Lydia’s instinct alone told her that the chateau they had thought so big, was being overwhelmed. More and more injured men were arriving. There was soon a man lying in every bed. Soon, only floor space remained and even that filled up quickly. Gone was any sign of white starched sheets; there was only blood, mud and the cries of men in distress.

There were shouts for more bandages, more medicine, more nurses, doctors and ‘clear a little space there. Enough for a body.’

The injured men kept coming, one after another. Some of them stared at her, unsure whether she was merely a woman or they had finally arrived in heaven. Some, she realised, would welcome death, anything rather than the hell they had just been through.

They were all German. What did that mean, she asked herself? When she voiced her question aloud, the answer came swift and sure. The chateau was now behind enemy lines. Military law ordained that injured Allied prisoners would journey to a prisoner-of-war camp. The war for them would be over; Lydia wished it had never begun.

Endless injured men: endless running to get more bandages, more ether, and more morphine.

Darkness fused into day, day bled into twilight … or was it merely that somebody had put out the lights then lit them again?

A firm hand landed on her shoulder. A firm voice sounded in her ear. ‘Your turn to rest, Miller. And please do something about your cuffs. They’re a disgrace.’

Lydia wanted to bark back at the matron that she’d had precious little time to attend to blood-spattered cuffs. Men were dying and in pain.

As it was, she couldn’t find her voice. Her throat was too dry. Not a word would come out.

Just as well, she thought to herself as she went outside.

Disorientated from the hours she had spent on her feet, she tried to work out what the time could be. It was still dark, yet surely, it should be daylight by now?

Her legs, her eyes, her whole body ached, but the urge to get as far away as possible from the hospital overcame her weariness. The garden beckoned. The orchard with its autumn smells beckoned her most of all.

Stretcher-bearers wound their way between the olive-green tents, the latter filling up much more quickly than anticipated.

Lydia averted her eyes, glad of the full moon to light her way beyond the tents and the vegetable garden, to the walled orchard, where she might find peace for a while.

The orchard at night shone with silver amongst patches of velvet blackness. An owl hooted and a wild creature – possibly a fox – scurried through the grass.

The smell of fruit ripening was such a relief after the smell of blood and entrails, that Lydia found herself crying. It was so ordinary and yet so wonderful.

Suddenly she smelled tobacco. She saw the red cigarette tip shining amongst a patch of black velvet.

Franz moved into the light. He was in his mid-thirties, had a congenial face and a flippant, sometimes quite offensive way of speaking. After the hours of sewing up wounds and declaring which men could be saved and which could not, he seemed to have aged by another thirty years. Eyes reddened by extreme fatigue were sunken; his skin had acquired a greyish pallor as though all the blood had drained away, recoiling from the sights he had seen.

‘There is no glory in war. Do you know that?’ he said to her, his voice a despairing monotone.

‘Did someone famous say it?’ she asked, hoping he hadn’t heard her crying.

‘No. Just me. You’ll cry a lot more tears before this war is over; such is the nature of war. I detest it.’

‘If you detest it so much, why are you here?’

He made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a growl.

‘It was expected of me.’

‘Your family?’

‘My wife’s family are Prussians. They are proud of their military history. I think they were quite disappointed when Gerda married me. A humble Swiss doctor. They thought she could have done better.’

Lydia noticed the bitterness in his voice. ‘My father is German, but lives in England.’

‘I hope he is happy there.’

Lydia didn’t confirm whether he was or was not. ‘You have children?’

‘Yes. Three girls. That too was a disappointment. The family insisted we produce at least one son to continue the family tradition.
Their
family tradition – certainly not mine.’

Lydia folded her arms and looked down at the ground. Her eyes stung. Tiredness was catching up with her.

She felt his eyes studying her. ‘Your cuffs. They are bloodied.’

Lydia placed four fingers under her right cuff. ‘I will have to soak them.’ She looked up at the moon. ‘I didn’t notice the moon earlier when I went to bed.’

Franz laughed. It was the first time she had heard him laugh outright.

‘My dear girl. A whole day has passed and another night. We have been on duty for forty-eight hours!’

Agnes. France, September, 1914

Agnes Stacey stood in front of the Right Honourable Hortense Corbett with an air that her superior could only interpret as insolence. Agnes kept her gaze fixed on the painting of the King and Queen on the wall behind and slightly above Hortense’s head.

Hortense’s brown eyes were round as buttons. Her jowls quivered. Her small mouth opened and closed like a goldfish drowning in fresh air. The officer in charge, Major Darius Emerson was sound asleep, worn out from over-long hours. Hortense was making the most of it, laying down the law to Agnes without him interfering.

‘Regulation uniform is a skirt. Not trousers. Not jodhpurs. A skirt! I want to see you in a skirt like all the other ambulance drivers plus the regulation hat. Not that …’ the Right Honourable Hortense paused, her large chest heaving as she took a deep breath before delivering the final facet of her criticism, ‘… that leather thing!’