Authors: Mary Hooper
‘And he didn’t ask anything?’
‘Well, he wanted to know where it had come from and I just said it was lost property – it turned up in the laundry basket.’
Jameson pressed her hand. ‘Thanks. Thanks, both of you. You know, I truly never would have . . .’
‘No, of course you wouldn’t,’ Poppy said.
YWCA Hostel,
Southampton
10th December 1915
Dear Miss Luttrell,
I am so sorry I haven’t written for what seems like weeks (but is probably more like months), but I’m still here and frightfully busy. I’ve realised how lucky I am to be working under Sister Kay, as some VADs work for sisters who don’t let them do anything remotely medical. One girl I know spends her whole working day scrubbing out lockers. When she gets to the end of the ward she starts back at the beginning again!
We have had a small scandal here at the hostel: one of the girls got rather too fond of a German prisoner of war she was looking after. He gave her a ring and seemed very keen on her – then asked too many questions about troo
p
ships. My friend Matthews and I were rather horrified and persuaded her to transfer to a different ward, which she did quite willingly. Without telling her, Matthews then wrote an anonymous letter to Matron-in-Charge saying that they should keep an eye on this particular prisoner and that he should not be allowed to form liaisons with any young VADs in future. (We didn’t tell our friend about this because she’s still rather soft on him.)
I must dash now! I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how rushed we always are, so that half the time we have to skip meals to fit everything in. And Netley is so vast that I reckon I walk a couple of marathons in the course of a day. We VADs are always making trips to the cobblers to get our shoes repaired!
Hoping you are very well indeed.
With love,
Poppy
At the end of that week Poppy couldn’t resist counting the days since she’d written to Freddie and calculating when she might expect a reply: if he wrote by the fifteenth of December and she wrote back straight away, then there might be time for one more letter each before Christmas.
She thought about him whenever there was space in her mind. At two o’clock one morning she was shocked to discover that she couldn’t decide which would be more awful: finding out that he’d been killed, or finding out that he didn’t love her. Still sleepless at three, she realised that she was being entirely wicked and it didn’t matter if he loved her or not – what mattered was that he should get through the war alive.
Our time will come
, she thought over and over.
‘Have you written to your wife to ask her for some photographs of you for the FR Unit?’ Poppy asked Private Williams one morning.
He nodded, brandished his notepad and scribbled something.
Not told her what for
, it said.
‘She doesn’t know about your injury?’ Poppy asked.
He shook his head.
Not telling her.
‘Where does she live?’
Cornwall. Too far to come
.
‘It is a long journey,’ Poppy agreed. Not only were fares expensive, but connections were unreliable and trains mostly ran for the convenience of troops and those on war-related work. ‘Maybe, by the time she arrives, you’ll have your new face.’
Private Williams nodded and crinkled his eyes, which was the nearest he could get to a smile, and Poppy smiled back. It got easier.
Two afternoons later, visiting time was over and Poppy was helping Nurse Gallagher on a secondary dressings round, for some of the boys’ injuries were so severe that their dressings had to be renewed two or even three times a day. Poppy was now adept at rolling bandages neatly around a leg and had the lightest of touches with complicated injuries, so she’d gradually been allowed to undertake more duties. She was pinning up the bandage on a badly wounded leg when there came a sudden, blood-curdling shriek from the top of the ward.
‘No!’ a woman’s voice screamed. ‘It’s not him! It can’t be!’ Then there was a clatter as she fell to the floor.
Sister Kay had gone to the linen store, and the only two people out of bed at that end of the room were Greenham and Morris, two ‘up patients’ who were at a table cutting strips of coloured paper to make paper chains. They picked up the woman and sat her, as floppy as a rag doll, in a chair by Sister’s desk. A moment afterwards, Nurse Gallagher and Poppy reached her, swiftly followed by Sister.
‘What on earth happened?’ Sister asked, rubbing the woman’s hands.
‘She came in, shrieked the place down and conked out,’ said Sergeant Greenham in astonishment. ‘Strangest thing I ever saw.’
‘Did anyone approach her? Did anyone else see anything?’ Sister asked the boys in the nearby beds.
They shook their heads – they’d been busy reading, writing home or doing crossword puzzles, and hadn’t seen her come in.
Poppy then became aware that, in the bed just behind her, Private Williams was making noises in the back of his throat. Urgent, animal-like noises of distress – the only sounds he could utter. He beckoned to Poppy, his eyes showing panic, and waved his notepad, on which he’d written
Close screens. Hide.
Poppy looked at him questioningly, trying to understand what had gone on. ‘Of course,’ she said, and she wheeled the curtained screens across the end of his bed so that no one could see him. ‘Is there anything else?’
He scribbled on the pad again.
My wife
.
Poppy looked at him blankly, then realised what he meant and gasped. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ She lowered her voice. ‘Your wife shouldn’t have been allowed to come into the ward without speaking to Sister – she likes to see families in advance to tell them if there are any . . . Because we would have . . .’ But her great pity for Private Williams made her throat ache with the effort of trying not to cry, and she asked him to excuse her.
On the other side of the screens, Nurse Gallagher was holding a bottle of smelling salts under the woman’s nose.
‘My husband . . . My husband . . .’ the woman said faintly.
‘She’s speaking about Private Williams,’ Poppy said.
Sister nodded. ‘I see.’ She addressed the woman. ‘I’m afraid he’s been terribly badly injured, Mrs Williams. He can’t talk. Someone should have informed you before you got here.’
‘His face . . . awful . . . ghastly.’
‘If I’d known you were coming I could have explained. Someone should have written to you.
He
should have written to you.’
‘Ravaged. Destroyed!’ She gave a great sob. ‘He was always such a good-looking man.’
‘Mrs Williams,’ Sister said, ‘there are things that can be done to reconstruct your husband’s face, but it will take time. You will have to be patient.’
‘How can I let the children see him? How can we go out anywhere? People will point at him in the street!’ Mrs Williams’s voice rose hysterically. ‘What shall I say to people? Someone must help me!’
Sister looked at the woman keenly. ‘Mrs Williams, you must remember that Private Williams is the patient in this ward, not you. Everything we do here will be to help
him
.’
The woman made a bleating noise.
‘Perhaps, now you’re here, you could at least have a word with him. We can cover his . . .’
‘I can’t!’ Mrs Williams said abruptly. ‘I don’t want to. I don’t know what to say . . . I can’t bear to see him looking like that!’
‘Very well, it’s up to you,’ Sister said. ‘But I think that when you get back home you might regret not speaking to him.’
By way of an answer, the woman looked desperately at those surrounding her, then jumped up and ran for the door.
Poppy went to go after her, but Sister waved at her to sit down.
‘A rather silly woman, I’m afraid,’ she said in a low voice. ‘But what could one possibly say?’
Poppy knew what she meant: there was no simple answer.
Dottyville
Dear Sis,
This is a funny place and no mistake. Once a day we go into a room and they shout at us and let off fireworks and make other loud noises like slaming doors and so on and they say it is to get us used to what it is like in the trenches so they can get us out there again. Of corse it is NOTHING LIKE the trenches because there is no mud and no danger and no dead bodies but i have learnd to play act and i pretend to be fritened along with the other mateys and shake and crawl under the beds to get away.
They just want to get us all back there – i know they are desperate for recruits because more and more are dying and the truth is coming through about what it is like so that men are not joining up now. Also they have cut down the training time, so i have heard. One day you are a milkman the next you are killing people (or more likly being killed).
But anyway for the time being my headaches have stopped and at least I am up here in Scotland and not stretched out on barbed wire being targit practise for Jerry. i will stay here as long as i can and it strikes me I ought to thank your doctor friend who must have worked a flanker so i could come here.
i have written to Ma and the girls and wonder if you will be going home for Christmas to see them.i suppose not. We make cards here, for therapy they call it, and i am sending you one with this letter.
Your brother Billy x x x
Poppy read the letter on the way to work, shaking her head over Billy’s description of his treatment. As he was no longer on active service, she supposed his letters weren’t checked by the censor, but even so, he’d been taking a huge risk by telling her he was only acting at being frightened. At least, though, he’d remembered to thank Michael Archer.
Her brother’s Christmas postcard (a tree, coloured in carefully, as a child would do it, with a cut-out gold star on the top) gave her the idea of sending a Christmas card to Freddie. A friendly card to wish him Season’s Greetings, which might possibly nudge him into sending a card back. Thinking about it now, she began to wonder if she
had
been too frank, too truthful about her feelings. Boys were different – everyone knew that. If a girl was too keen it scared them off. On the other hand, what was the point of having a relationship with someone if you couldn’t tell them your true feelings?
Christmas cards from anxious relatives had already begun appearing on the boys’ lockers. They tended to be sentimental affairs: angels hovering over soldiers’ heads, soldiers asleep and dreaming of their loved ones, or cosy firesides with pleas to keep the home fires burning. Searching in the shops, none seemed suitable for the sort of relationship she had with Freddie. Finally, on her afternoon off, Poppy found a card with a picture of a girl decorating a Christmas tree and these words below:
It’s only a simple little card,
But it comes from me to say,
I was thinking of you when I posted it.
Are you thinking of me today?
This, she thought, was exactly right, and she just added her name and a line of kisses. As she posted it she couldn’t help hoping that it would get redirected from his unit to his home, and that his mother might see it . . .
A few mornings later, Poppy managed to catch Michael Archer on his way out of the ward. To the amusement of both of them, the boys in the nearby beds suddenly stopped perusing the newspapers and began singing,
If I had someone at home like you,
almost as if they’d rehearsed it. As well as making Poppy laugh, it also had the effect of making her blush, which seemed to please them even more.
‘Nice to see you in the pink!’ called Private Mackay.
She tried to ignore them. ‘May I speak to you a moment, Doctor Archer?’
‘Of course, Pearson. And please do call me Michael.’
‘I couldn’t possibly! Sister would explode.’
‘Would she really?’ he said with interest. ‘Of course, I don’t suppose that
you
have a first name.’
Poppy hid a smile. ‘I have, but I’m not allowed to say what it is.’
‘
I would fall in love every day . . .
’ came from the boys.
Poppy turned to glare at them, trying to look fierce. ‘I do apologise,’ she said to Michael Archer. ‘They’re not being very respectful.’ She lowered her voice so that their conversation couldn’t be overheard. ‘I just wanted to let you know that my brother is doing quite well in Scotland. He asked me to thank you for helping him.’
‘That’s good,’ Michael Archer said, nodding. ‘What do you think he’ll do when his time there is up?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Poppy said. This question had been worrying her. ‘I’m afraid Billy’s just not what you might call patriotic – or even loyal.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘That’s wrong, isn’t it? Everyone should want to fight for their country – for the glory of the motherland, as they say.’