The Lost Soldier (16 page)

“What’s that?” Molly whispered to Sarah. “Are those guns?”

“Artillery further up the line,” the soldier said. “Not too close tonight, miss.”

He led them to the hotel where the manager offered them a small room on the top floor, and with their thanks in his ears the soldier smiled and said it was quite all right, before he and Charlie, his mate, disappeared into the darkness.

The hotel was able to supply them with soup and bread and cheese and this they devoured greedily before repairing to their garret on the top floor. The guns continued to boom intermittently in the background, and the night sky flickered with light, like distant sheet lightning, but after a moment of staring out over the strange town below them, resolutely they closed the wooden shutters on these reminders that the war was suddenly closer and went to bed. Exhausted from their hours of travelling and despite the uncomfortably narrow bed that they had to share, both of them slept like the dead.

Next morning, much refreshed from their sleep and a breakfast of hot chocolate and bread with ham and cheese, they held a council of war to decide what to do next.

“We must find some sort of transport to St Croix,” Sarah said. “I will ask at the desk. Perhaps they can find someone to take us, or at least set us on the right road. If we have to walk, we’ll leave our luggage here and send for it later.”

“There must be somewhere we can hire a wagon, or a dog cart,” Molly said and then added hopefully, “or may be there is a train.”

“No train.” Sarah said consulting her instructions from Aunt Anne. “Anyway, I’ve had quite enough of trains for the time being, haven’t you?”

Molly agreed that she had, and then Sarah looked again at the directions she’d received.

“My aunt says, there are usually people coming and going between the village and Albert, and if we send her a message when we get here, she’ll try and send someone for us. That seems a waste of time to me. If we can find someone to take a message, we can travel with that someone. I’ll go and see what I can find out.”

The manager of the hotel was desolated that he had no transport of his own in which he could send mademoiselle to St Croix, but his horses had been taken by the military, and even his donkey would have been if it had not been too old for active service. However, he said he would make some enquiries if mademoiselle would care to wait in the salon.

Mademoiselle treated him to her most dazzling smile and said she would be enchanted to wait, and that she had the utmost trust in him.

This trust turned out not to have been misplaced, for within the hour, Sarah and Molly found themselves ensconced with their luggage on the back of a wagon that had brought vegetables into the town at dawn that morning and was now returning to St Croix.

A steady drizzle fell from the leaden sky above them, but it did little to dampen their spirits. They were nearly there, the worst was over, and what was a little rain compared with what the men in the trenches must be suffering? As they looked back towards the town, they saw the towering steeple of the church in its centre, the golden Madonna which topped it leaning perilously at an angle of ninety degrees, testament to the closeness of the front line and the artillery fire which had been poured, from time to time, into the town.

An hour in the creaking cart brought them at last to the village of St Croix. The wagoner drove through the village square or
place
and along a twisting lane leading to the tall grey convent building that dominated the whole village. Its stone walls towered to four stories, and there was a stubby turret on one corner. The wagon trundled up to the main entrance, a huge oak door bound with iron hinges, above which was a large statue of the Virgin Mary, reaching with outstretched arms to the world at her feet. Molly and Sarah clambered stiffly off the back of the cart and dragged their luggage to the ground. Sarah handed the wagoner the agreed money and with a wave of his hand he drove off, leaving the two women standing outside the great door. They stared round.

“It’s a pretty grim-looking place,” said Sarah, looking up at the grey walls towering above them. “Still, I expect it’s better inside than it looks from out.”

Molly could only hope she was right. She was horrified by the formidable building, and the thought that they were going to live there for the foreseeable future made her shiver.

Sarah was at once concerned. “Poor Molly, you’re cold. We’ll go in at once.” But even as she turned towards the door her eye stayed on the view spread out before them. Below, between the convent and the village, was a field covered with what looked like huge marquees.

“Do you think that is part of the hospital too,” Sarah asked Molly, “or perhaps a camp of some sort?”

Shivering again, this time truly from cold, Molly spoke. “Sarah,” Molly used the unadorned Christian name for the first time unprompted, “it’s pouring with rain. Let’s get inside.”

The stab of surprise at being addressed in such firm tones by her maid, passed immediately, and Sarah grinned at her. “You’re right. We’ve made it. Ready?”

Molly nodded, and together they approached the front door and Sarah pulled hard on the iron bell pull. At once a grill in the door opened and a small face looked out at them.

“Can I help you?” asked the face in French.

“Our names are Sarah Hurst and Molly Day,” Sarah announced clearly, in her best French. “Reverend Mother is expecting us.”

There was the sound of bolts being drawn and the door swung open to reveal a diminutive nun standing inside, her hands folded tidily into the long sleeves of her grey habit, her head encased in a starched, white fly-away headdress.

“Welcome to the convent of Our Lady of Mercy,” she said. “My name is Sister Marie-Bernard. Please come in.”

She led them into a small room furnished with a table, two upright chairs and a prie-dieu in the corner. The floor was stone and the walls were without adornment except for a large crucifix over the prie-dieu. She asked them to wait and then disappeared, closing the door softly behind her. Molly looked round apprehensively. The inside of the building seemed to be living up to its grim exterior.

It was almost ten minutes before the door opened again and a tall, handsome nun, dressed as the other had been, came in.

“Sarah?” she looked uncertainly from one to the other and Sarah stepped forward, her hands held out and said, “Aunt Anne!”

They embraced awkwardly and then Sarah introduced Molly. Aunt Anne shook her hand and said, “I am delighted to meet you, Molly. I am Sister St Bruno, Miss Sarah’s aunt. You are most welcome here.”

“We’ve dispensed with the ‘miss’, Aunt Anne,” Sarah said quickly. “We are here as friends, both ready to work in whatever way you need us.”

“That’s splendid,” cried her aunt. “Now first I will show you where you will be, and then I’ll leave you to unpack and get yourselves sorted out. Later, when you’ve changed, I will come and find you and introduce you to Reverend Mother. I’m afraid the midday meal was at twelve, but we’ll find something in the kitchen for you, don’t worry.”

She led them out into the main part of the convent and then up a winding staircase to a stone corridor that seemed to stretch the length of the building. Stopping at the first door, she opened it and ushered them into a cell-like room. Two single beds had been crammed in side by side, in a space meant only for one. A chest of drawers, topped with a large water jug and bowl, took up almost the rest of the space, but the inevitable prie-dieu was tucked in a corner behind the door, its crucifix on the wall above it. Aunt Anne pointed to some hooks on the door and said, “You can hang your coats there. I’m afraid it’s a bit cramped, but I doubt you’ll be in here much except to go to bed.”

Sarah looked at the tiny room and smiled at her aunt. “Don’t worry, Aunt, we shall be fine in here.”

Aunt Anne looked relieved and said, “Well, you get unpacked and settled and I’ll come back for you in half an hour. I expect you’ll want to wash and change. There’s water in the jug today, but from now on you’ll have to fetch your own from the tap at the end of the passage.”

Left alone the two girls looked at each other and began to laugh. “It’s a good thing neither of us is very big,” Sarah said, dumping her case on one of the beds. These beds are so close together I can’t get between them!” She edged round to the other side, squeezing past the chest of drawers.

Molly looked round the room doubtfully. “Are you sure you don’t mind me being in here with you, Miss Sarah?”

“Sarah,” Sarah corrected her. “No, of course not, Molly. We’re in this together.” She looked round and said, “Nowhere much to put our things, just these drawers. I’ll take the top two, you have the bottom two.” She pulled off her coat and put it on the bed ready to hang on the door as she went out. Molly picked it up and put it on one of the hooks, and then hung her own beside it. She opened her case and took out the dark grey skirt and the white blouse Sarah had bought her in England and laid them on the bed. Sarah was looking out of the tiny window on her side of the bed.

“Come and look here, Molly,” she said craning her neck to peer down at the ground below. “There are some huts out here below us. Do you think they’re part of the hospital, or some other camp?”

Molly joined her at the window and Sarah moved aside so that the other girl could see. Molly stared down at the scene below. There were several wooden huts crammed into a sort of courtyard. They looked ramshackle affairs, each with a tin roof and a bent chimney threading smoke into the cold autumn air. The windows, symmetrically set into the wooden walls, seemed to be closed, but the door at the end of each hut stood open. Even as she looked a nun hurried out through one of these and disappeared from view, presumably into the main convent building.

A high, stone wall, apparently the boundary wall of the convent garden, encircled the huts, and set in this Molly could see an old wooden door. Beyond the wall, and some way off, the tops of the big tents they’d seen earlier were visible.

“There’s that camp we saw, set up beyond the wall,” she said to Sarah, and in her turn moved aside so that Sarah could look out again.

“So there is. Well, I suppose it is all part of the hospital,” Sarah said. “It must be too big to fit into the convent grounds. We’ll ask Aunt Anne.” She turned back to the case on her bed and flinging it open, pulled everything out on to the bed.

“Oh Lord,” she said ruefully, looking at her belongings. “I’m never going to get all that into two drawers!”

Molly, who was carefully folding her own few clothes ready to put into her own two drawers, laughed. “Most of them will fit if you fold them properly,” she said. “The rest will have to stay in your case and go under the bed.”

The beds were metal framed on high legs, and apart from one chamber pot tucked underneath, there was nothing using the space.

“Oh, Molly, of course,” Sarah said, and began to fold her clothes. She made a poor fist of it and with another laugh Molly reached over and took a blouse from her.

“Here, like this.” She laid the blouse on the bed and showed Sarah how to tuck its sleeves in neatly before folding it on itself and tweaking the collar into position. Sarah had another go, and though her folding was nothing like as quick and as careful as Molly’s, she managed to fold her clothes tidily enough to fit most of them into the drawers.

“You see,” she remarked as she struggled with a particularly recalcitrant jacket, “I told you you’d be far better at this sort of thing than I am. You’ve been trained up to be useful, whereas I have no training for anything!” She stowed the last few bits and pieces, her bible, a book of poetry into the case and pushed it under her bed. A framed picture of Freddie and her father, taken when Freddie came home on leave, she stood on the top of the chest.

Molly, her own unpacking finished quickly and efficiently was pouring water from the jug into the bowl. She sponged her face and hands, and ran the cooling flannel round the back of her neck. Then she looked in horror at Sarah.

“Oh, Miss Sarah, I’m sorry. There’s nowhere to tip this dirty water so you can have clean.” Colour had flooded her face, and she stared down at the cold soapy water in the single bowl. “You should have gone first, and then I could have used the same water.”

“Oh.” Sarah looked at the uninviting water for a moment too, and then giggled. “We could put it in the chamber,” she suggested, nodding at that receptacle, still showing from beneath the bed.

“But we don’t know where to empty that either,” pointed out Molly, still flushed with embarrassment.

“We’ll ask my aunt when she comes back,” Sarah said airily. “Now, just pour that into this,” she proffered the chamber pot from under the bed, “and we can get on.”

By the time Sister St Bruno came back to fetch them, both women were neatly attired in their dark grey skirts and white blouses. Each had a large white apron tied over her clothes, and her hair confined under a white cap.

Sister St Bruno looked at them critically. “You’ll do for now,” she said, “if you make sure those last wisps of hair are tucked securely under your cap, Sarah.” Her eyes took in their black boots and she said, “I hope those are comfortable. You’ll be on your feet for sixteen hours a day.”

“We’ll be fine, Aunt Anne,” Sarah assured her, and then added, “Do I still call you Aunt Anne, or would Sister be better?”

“Sister, I think, when you’re working, anyway,” replied her aunt. “Ready?”

“Just one thing, Aunt… I mean, Sister,” Sarah said in response to urgent hand signals from Molly, “could you tell us, I mean…?” Molly’s embarrassment resurrected itself in Sarah and she too turned red.

“Well?” Sister St Bruno said encouragingly.

“Where do we empty that?” She pointed to the chamber pot now back under the bed, but full of dirty water.

“I’ll show you on the way past,” said the nun with a faint smile. “There’s a lavatory at the end of the corridor.”

They followed Sister St Bruno along the stone passage. She pointed to a door at the end and said, “There is a lavatory and a basin in there, where you can collect water for yourselves and empty your chamber. In the daytime it can be used in the normal way, but at night no one leaves her cell except to go to chapel to say office, or to go on duty on the wards.” She waited patiently for a moment or two while the girls made use of the facilities and then continued on along the passage and down another set of stairs, not the ones they had mounted to reach their room, to a different hallway.