Really this job should be done before breakfast. Bea wouldn’t have anything in her to vomit then.
Her engine is still playing up. She’s cleaned everything, put her arms right down inside and felt the satisfaction of reaching the nuts with long fingers that are nonetheless strong enough to turn them. But it still splutters, just when you need the oomph to push out of a hole. There’s no point in saying anything; she’d be told to fix it, which she can’t. She doubts anybody can, engines don’t always work to rules. Instead she has become used to taking the dips a little faster. If you keep on going it’s not too bad. It’s the braking afterwards that throws it back.
The commandant is here. She climbs right into the back of Bea’s ambulance, poking her nose where Bea barely dares to venture. Then she goes around to inspect the front. Bea’s grille is, luckily, like a looking-glass this morning. The commandant pauses, as if she’s caught sight of herself in it, and moves on. Pass. Bea goes back to her dormitory. There’s a pause now, though they’ve not a clue how long it’s for as more trains than ever have been coming in for the past month. The worst was at the beginning of July. It’s almost the only way they know what’s going on in the war. That, and out-of-date copies of the papers whose descriptions bear so little resemblance to what passes beneath their own eyes that, sometimes, they simply laugh.
One of the beds has a pair of scissors on it. Next to them sits a brown-haired girl who looks as if she’d pout given half the chance and is, as ever, pulling and pushing her locks about her ears. They laugh at her for this. She does this every day and more than once a day. She is therefore known as Hairnet. It’s one thing if you’re going into the town for the evening, but another altogether when you’re driving the near-dead in the dark. What a waste, thinks Bea watching her, what a waste of time, and Bea checks herself. A year ago, she, too, would have done hers more than once a day. She gets the knots out some days, though mostly when she finally crawls into her bed she hasn’t the energy to wield a hairbrush, and in the morning she just stuffs it up under her cap for roll-call.
She runs her fingers through her hair. Four inches out, they
jam. She picks away with a comb but her hair, dried out by summer and dust, starts to break. Hairnet’s scissors gleam at her. Bea wouldn’t be the first, it’s almost a badge of honour, provided that you don’t think about the main reason for doing so. Nobody back home would put head lice and young ladies together in a sentence. No, they take short hair as
le dernier cri
for a devil-may-care gal who’s game. Bea still hesitates; the shorter her hair, the harder she’d have to work at making herself feel feminine, and femininity is not a concept she feels close to at the moment. When she runs her hands over her face and body at night, she finds not the idolised softness of female flesh but a dry tautness, and those flea bites. Her hair is perhaps all she has left. She digs the comb in deeper, hoping that she doesn’t scalp herself in the process. Christ, Beatrice, what the hell are you doing out here?
The evening’s business starts early, straight after lunch, with an evacuation down to the harbour at Boulogne. The tide is kind today and it’s not a four thirty in the morning start to catch it high. Bea’s given Hospital Number Four as she leaves the yard; that’s not too bad. Four isn’t far, though there are a couple of hairy bits along the way. There’s something to look forward to, the satisfaction of driving and the back-to-frontness of evacuations lightens the journeys. At least these men are going home – you just have to keep your mind off the wives and mothers who will be welcoming back their mauled bodies.
Bea drives up to the hospital empty, her behind settled into its familiar dips in the leather, evidence of all the hours she’s spent on this seat. It’s not quite rock, unlike the steering wheel, which is as hard as nails and thin as a rail. If it weren’t for the cushioning of her driving gloves, there’d be little to hold on to. But she’s off, and when she’s on the road she can lose herself completely in the mere action of driving. She almost feels as though she’s riding a mare with a perfect gait as she bounds up and down, steering hard to keep the truck on the track. Driving empty, and light, is pure
pleasure, not as though she’s doing any work at all. She wills her ambulance forward, and feels a surge of elation when it makes it over a particularly vicious hillock or rut in the road.
The voices are almost sing-song as they are loaded in, even if they are missing a limb or two. They’re well enough to make the journey, and they’re on their way back to Blighty. Anything is less bleak than being here. A growing number of craters pockmark the browning fields, like an unpleasant skin condition breaking out across them. Bea has grown used to the smell of fireworks. It lingers for days, it seems, after a raid. And the men bring it with them, explosive embedded into their wounds and uniform.
When they reach the ship, Bea walks to the rear of the truck, and is whistled at. Kisses are blown in her direction. She waves back, laughing with them at their gallows humour. Evacuations are definitely the best of the lot.
By the time she’s back in the yard, a convoy is coming in and it’s down to the station. When she arrives there, the train has ground to a halt half a mile along the line. Bea starts to mill around among the ambulances lined up, rears open to where the carriages will draw in. The stretcher-bearers are talking about being moved further forward. ‘Could be our last evening with you,’ says a weather-beaten man, a crescent grin spreading the width of his face as he grabs Bea by the arm and waist and pulls her into a mock waltz. Playing up to the scene, Bea tilts her head back and closes her eyes. The voice that comes, she thinks, is perhaps all the louder for the fact that she cannot see the speaker and it bites into her ears. ‘Masters! Let go of that man. This isn’t some dance hall’ – she pauses – ‘or a debutante ball. As you seem to have so much spare time on your hands, you can clean out my ambulance for a week.’
Bea manages a half-smile at her dancing partner as she backs away. Goodbyes are best not said. See you soon is perhaps the worst: even in good times it can mean that you’ll not see each other again. She clambers back up into her cab. New stretcher-bearers.
Who will replace them? The image of Mr Campbell comes into her mind. But what’s the chance of that? And would she have heard, if he knew? He doesn’t write often – even less than he did before she came out, when he was still sending letters to Celeste’s. Then why should he write, it’s not as though they are sweethearts. Maybe he has one, someone younger than Bea, fresh out, her face not yet ravaged by lack of sleep and the wind blowing through the front of a windscreen-less truck. With this thought Bea’s elation subsides and she starts to look forward to the grim but distracting business of the train’s arrival.
Even at the snail’s pace with which the train crawls into the station, the screech of the brakes hammers in her ears. It’s barely stopped when her ambulance begins to rock with the stretchers being loaded in. From what she sees it’s hard to believe that many of them were ever alive in the first place, butcher’s shop that they have become, served up on stretchers slotted into the sides of the truck. Bea’s stomach turns. It turns with every convoy. When she arrived, a girl called Ginger – raven-haired, but ate a pack of the biscuits in one go – told her it would wear off after a couple of weeks. It will never wear off. For as long as Bea lives she will, she is sure, wake at night to memories of bloodied parts of men. She is sick at the whole damn war – and she can’t let on; at twenty-three she’s one of the older ones and the others look up to her. So she has to bottle it up, but it festers. Other things fester in her mind, too. Explosions have lost their glamour. She never wants to hear one again and she feels, well, downright shameful to think that she ever enjoyed it.
She’s loaded, she’s away. Number Six she’s given at the gate, and it’s down the track, the weight of the stretcher cases in the back adding swing to the bumps. She’s already growing tired today, and she can feel each jolt hitting the base of her spine, or is it just the screaming from the back that is sharpening her senses? Even the wool pressed against her is grating her bites as the truck lolls forward and back and from side to side in jerky fits and starts.
She’s trying not to listen – she must get the man now sitting beside her to talk to distract her. Body lice, thinks Bea, then tells herself off. But that’s how we catch them, isn’t it, wedged up against someone straight out of the trenches.
She glances beside her and the wind presses a loose strand of hair into the side of her eye as a splatter of grit stings her jaw. Bea is beyond wincing; at least, she thinks, it wasn’t in my mouth. From what she can see of his uniform he is a corporal. He has one arm in a sling, the end of it looks thin for a hand, and his head is hanging down, chin practically on his chest. Screaming again from the back. They’re a noisy bunch, this lot, except this man who looks as though he may never talk. But this trip she needs to crack him, and she is well provisioned to do so.
‘Cigarette?’ she asks. ‘I’ve a packet.’
She glances to her side again. He nods, or rather she thinks it’s a nod, it could just be a jolt in the road.
‘They’re wedged into the back of the seat. Behind you. Matches, too.’ Thank God, she thinks, that his good arm is on this side, for he’s fumbling for them as it is. He lifts the packet to his lips and taps a cigarette out into his mouth. Bea slows down so that he has a chance of lighting it. She shouldn’t, she should be doing everything she can to reach the hospital as soon as possible, but if they’d damn well give her a windscreen she wouldn’t have to. With impressive dexterity, the man manages to hold the matchbox between two fingers and the match between two others. He gets the cigarette alight and then offers it to Bea. Strictly forbidden, and Bea hesitates, then the noises racket up again, that last bump no doubt. She takes the cigarette, and he lights another.
He exhales, and with the smoke come words.
She doesn’t mind any more how terrible his story will be, she’s heard it all. She knows how a body can disintegrate in dozens of ways. Just keep on talking, she wills him, as the noises rise again. Makes her long for a funeral transport. A noiseless run, then five minutes’ calm standing there, head bowed, as the service runs its
short course and Bea wishes the poor man well in the peace he has found.
The sitter falls silent and she is listening to the screams again. Listening to them makes her want to slash the Hun. After all, that’s what she came out here for, to do her bit in one of the few ways she could. Only she’s not slashing the Hun, is she? She’s as good as feeding it with the men she takes to be repaired so that they can be sent back to be fired at. Don’t think like that, Beatrice, she tells herself. It’s war, it’s about being brave and taking risks, being as daring as you can, it always has been, hasn’t it? She half laughs. Right now, being as daring as you can consists of smoking while she’s driving, but the track ahead is smoother for a while and she puts her foot down. Sooner she can get this lot into hospital beds the better.
Number Six; she’s arrived. Stretchers off, groans fading as the men are carried inside, and then she’s back to the station as fast as she can, there’ll be another load off this convoy.
It’s about half past five in the afternoon when they filter back into the dorm. Blister is heating up Bovril on the gas burner. Bea lies down on her bed; every drop of strength has been shaken out of her limbs. Christ, is her fleabag still damp with last night’s sweat? She closes her eyes.
That voice cuts in again. Sharp and shrill.
‘Masters.’ Oh God, the commandant’s ambulance. So soon? But it hasn’t been ambulance-cleaning time. Perhaps she’s done something else wrong? It’ll be another week now, and no doubt a week after that. She’ll still be cleaning it at Christmas at this rate. Bea pulls herself upright, sitting, then standing. Her nose is almost touching the top of the commandant’s cap.
‘Masters.’
Bea nods.
‘Out here.’
Bea follows her outside.
‘It seems that you do have your debutante ball after all. You’ve been invited to dinner. His Highness the Prince of Wales needs some company to help him do his good works, visiting his subjects at war. Someone, unsurprisingly, picked your name off the list. You will be fetched at seven.’
The commandant turns to leave but comes back.
‘You’ll be on duty afterwards.’
Bea nods again. She is too tired to speak, let alone be company at dinner.
The others are still on their beds, nursing Bovril, and Bea hopes that none of them overheard. No potted meat will cure that envy, as misguided as it may be.
Bea is going to have dinner with the Prince of Wales in her uniform and boots big enough to break a wall. She starts to beat the dust from her jacket.
‘Not in here!’ Ginger yells.
Bea takes her dust clouds outside. She is not sure about dinners in the officers’ mess. Last one, an older officer she knew from London – he’d been at Park Lane more than once – drove her back himself. As they passed what remained of the farm on the road between the town and here, he pulled off to the side, lights out, and without so much as a May I, leant over and kissed her. His mouth tasted of whisky and ash and she pushed away, but he pulled her tighter with one arm and started unbuttoning her jacket before clamping his mouth on hers. She screamed but that only opened her mouth wider. So she hit him, with the one arm not pinned to her side. Hit him harder and harder, on the chest, then the shoulder, the neck. At last she winded him and he drew back, gasping for air. When he pulled himself upright he looked at her as though she were the Hun.
‘Well, not quite like mother, like daughter.’
Bea didn’t reply.
He started up the engine again and drove her home, not looking at her once.
Bea sat smarting, as much at the slight of Mother as at his attempt to kiss her.
When they reached Bea’s hut, he climbed out and walked round to open the door for Bea. She gave him a curt nod as she slipped by.