The Lost Soldier (34 page)

“It’s different here,” Sarah said. “We have to live by the rules of the convent, we agreed to do that when we first came.”

“Well I didn’t have a fiancé when we first came,” said Molly obstinately. “Sarah,” she pleaded, “I have to meet him one way or another. We’ll have so little time together.”

Sarah sat down beside Molly and gave her a hug. “Don’t worry,” she said, “we’ll think of something. Perhaps I could explain to Aunt Anne that you are going to be married and she could speak to Mother.”

“I don’t want Mother knowing anything about it,” Molly said firmly. “She as good as told me that she’d send me away if I saw him again. If he turns up now she’ll know I disobeyed her and she may well send me away anyway.”

When the light was out, each girl lay in her cocoon of darkness considering what to do. Molly was planning ways she could slip away from the convent to meet Tom in the precious few hours they would have. She thought about the gate in the convent wall, leading to the camp outside. As far as she knew it was never locked as the padre and the doctors used it whenever they came over to visit the wards. When she came off duty, it would be easy enough to slip through the gate instead of going up to their room. If she chose her moment no one would see her, and no one, except perhaps Sarah, would miss her, and there Tom would be, waiting for her. She only had to persuade Sarah to cover for her if necessary.

Sarah was wondering what she ought to do in the situation. Should she allow herself to be drawn into this deceit? To be used as an illicit chaperone by Molly and encourage her to flout the convent rules, or should she stand back and let Molly get on with this on her own? If she did that there was almost no doubt that Molly and Tom would be caught out, yet if she connived at their meeting, she might be making everything worse for Molly in the long run. She was seriously concerned with how things stood between Molly and her Tom. The letters had come thick and fast, and Sarah knew that there was a new dimension to their relationship since Tom had left. She felt in her heart she shouldn’t be doing anything to encourage Molly in her infatuation with this man, but she could see how happy it made Molly and she couldn’t bring herself to destroy that happiness either.

“When does he arrive?” she asked Molly as they were getting dressed the next morning.

“He says the 26th,” answered Molly casually. “That’s Sunday.”

“And will you be going to the service at the camp as usual?” Sarah asked innocently.

“I always go to the service when I can be spared,” replied Molly with equal innocence.

“Let’s hope Sister Eloise can spare you then,” teased Sarah.

Molly stared at her dumbstruck. “ Oh Sarah, you don’t think that this Sunday, of all Sundays…”

“No, Of course I don’t, silly! I was only teasing you.” Sarah had decided that Molly going to church in the camp was the very best way of her meeting with Tom. The Reverend Kingston would be there, and so would a host of other people; it would be perfectly proper, and, more to the point, she, Sarah, would not be compromised in any way.

Molly waltzed through the next few days, her eyes shining. She wrote to Tom saying she would be at the evening service and would see him there. No other letter came from him and occasionally she was attacked by doubts. Perhaps something had gone wrong. Perhaps the leave had been cancelled. Perhaps they hadn’t been relieved at the front. Perhaps he’d been…. She forced aside such thoughts and imagined him, waiting at the gate to meet her when she crossed through, perfectly properly, for Sunday evening service.

Sunday finally arrived and for Molly every minute was an hour. She woke early; the day had finally come. She had been terrified that they would have an unexpected arrival of wounded so that she couldn’t be spared from the ward, but as the hours crawled by, this became less and less likely, and eventually Sister Eloise said, “You may go to your church now, Molly,” and with demure thanks, Molly slipped out of the ward to take off her apron and fetch her coat and hat.

The day had been a fine one, and as Molly crossed the courtyard, the sun was beginning to paint evening into the sky above the high, grey walls. She paused with her hand on the gate and looked behind her. There was no one in the courtyard, the ward doors were now closed against the creeping chill of the March evening, and the windows that overlooked the yard were dark and empty. There was no one to see her leave, or to see who was waiting as she closed the gate behind her.

He was there, looking as handsome in his uniform as she had ever seen him. For a moment they simply looked at each other. Each had been afraid that this magical thing that had grown and flowered between them might have mysteriously perished; that things would not be the same when they saw each other again. Would they find the person they thought they knew, or someone different; someone whom they had known once and remembered only hazily, or worse still had never known at all?

Would Tom still be the brave yet sensitive man Molly had nursed and comforted, or would he have changed, over the intervening months back in the trenches, become a stranger hardened by war? Would Molly still be the same beautiful young woman, that Tom remembered, her face eager and bright, her eyes lit with inner determination and strength?

Each searched the face of the other. Tom spoke first, his face breaking into a smile; he held out both hands to grasp hers. “Molly! Is it really you, my darling girl?”

His smile, lighting his face, drew an answering one and Molly gripped his hands tightly for a moment before she whispered, “Tom! It’s really you.” She slipped into his arms like a bird coming home to roost, and he folded them round her in an embrace that crushed the breath out of her.

She looked up at him as she had before. “I can’t breathe,” she murmured, and as he relaxed his hold a fraction, she slid her arms up round his neck and held up her face to be kissed. Some men passed them on their way to the chapel tent, but glanced away from a couple clearly lost in each other. Each man could imagine his own sweetheart in his arms, and walked on to the service his heart filled with envy at the lucky bloke who seemed to have his girl right here in France.

“We must go to the chapel,” Molly said at last, straightening her hat. “We can talk afterwards.” They walked through the camp, Tom tall and straight beside her, Molly’s hand on his arm. Molly knew an exhilaration she had never known before. Gone were all her doubts about how she would feel about this man once she saw him again. She looked up at him with pride in her eyes, a pride that was reflected in his, as he looked down.

At the service they sang the familiar hymns, joined in the Lord’s prayer and listened to the padre’s sermon, but neither had thought for anything or anyone but the other. They sat on opposite sides of the tent, as they always had, Tom among the men and Molly with the officers and nurses from the camp, but each felt as close to the other as if they were hand in hand, arm in arm. At the end of the service when the congregation mingled, Robert Kingston came over and said to Molly, “Well, Miss Day, I see you have your beau back from the front.”

“Yes, padre,” Molly replied.

“Good to see you looking so well, Carter,” he said, nodding to Tom before moving on.

As people stayed chatting, Tom and Molly withdrew to a corner. At first things seemed stiff between them, their conversation stilted and awkward, there was so much to say it was hard to begin, but when Tom said, “Oh Molly, it is so good to see you. I can’t believe I’m really here,” Molly felt tears in her eyes.

“I can’t believe it either,” she whispered. “I was so afraid that something awful would stop you coming, that you be wounded or killed in those days after you wrote. I couldn’t have borne that, Tom.”

“Well I wasn’t, see, so don’t you waste tears on what hasn’t happened.”

They talked for a while, but the tent began to empty and they couldn’t stay there any longer. Robert Kingston was watching them, and so they went up to him before they left.

“Goodnight, Mr Kingston,” Molly said. “I’m going back now. I’ll see you next Sunday.”

“Goodnight, Miss Day,” replied the padre. He nodded to Tom. “Carter.” Then he asked, “Where are you staying, Carter? In the village?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Tom. “I got a room down there.”

“Well, goodnight to you.” Then he added with a wry smile, “I’ve no doubt you’ll escort Miss Day through the camp to the convent gate.”

“Yes, sir. Certainly, sir.”

They spent their last few moments together planning how to meet again next day, Tom’s only full day.

“I’ll come out as soon as I get off duty tomorrow,” Molly promised. “Sarah and I sometimes get a couple of hours off in the afternoon so that we’re in the wards when the sisters want to go to chapel later in the day. Any time after noon. I’ll meet you on the track leading to the camp.”

“Will they let you out alone?” asked Tom, surprised.

Molly shook her head. “No, but Sarah will come, I know she will, and if she doesn’t, well, I’ll slip out through the side gate anyway.”

She carried away all his arguments and objections, saying at last, “Tom, we only have tomorrow. If we don’t see each other then, it won’t be for months.” He allowed himself to be persuaded and they held each other close as they kissed with a passion neither had experienced before.

“Now I’m definitely coming,” Molly said a little shakily.

Next day things did not go as Molly had hoped. Sister Eloise announced that there was a hospital inspection in the next few days, so she would need Molly all day to prepare. Molly stared at her dumbfounded for a moment and then just nodded and said, “Yes, Sister.” She started her work in the ward kitchen, but her mind wasn’t on what she was doing, it was racing furiously, hatching and discarding schemes that would allow her to meet Tom as they had planned. She had no way of getting a message to him, to warn him of a change of plan, but she was determined to see him once more before he had to go back.

Eventually she fell back on the simplest of her ideas. She would tell Sister Eloise that she was ill and have herself sent to her room. From there she would slip downstairs and away. Sarah would be the only person who would know she was not in her room, unwell, and surely Sarah wouldn’t say anything? All morning she worked with a distracted air, causing comment from Sister Marie-Paul, and eventually Sister Eloise said, “Molly, is something wrong?”

Molly produced a brave smile and said, “No, not really Sister, I…” she hesitated as if not liking to mention such things and then said softly, “I have my monthly, and this time the pain is bad.”

Sister Eloise was surprised at this confession, but as she had no reason to doubt what Molly told her, she asked, “Can you still work?”

Molly managed another brave smile, “Of course, Sister, but I will lie down for a while at midday.”

“You will not come for your meal?” asked Sister Eloise.

“No, I couldn’t eat, Sister, I would be sick. If I lie down for a little I will be better.” Molly surprised herself with how easily the lies came.

“Go now,” said the nun, “it is almost midday and I will send Sarah to you with a little food.” She handed Molly some aspirin. “These will help,” she said. “Tomorrow you will be quite recovered, hein? Stay in your bed. I will see you tomorrow.”

After that it had been remarkably easy. Molly went up to her room and got her hat and coat. She scribbled a note for Sarah, hoping that it would indeed be Sarah who came to see how she was. That’s a risk I’ve got to take, she thought as she left it propped on Sarah’s pillow.

Dear Sarah

I have to see Tom once again. I told Sister E. that I wasn’t well with my monthly. Not due back in the ward until tomorrow. Please cover for me. I will be back before it gets dark. This is the only time we have.

Molly

The Angelus was ringing as she crept down the stairs, after which the nuns would be eating. With all the sisters in the refectory, Molly risked using the front door. It was safer, she decided than crossing the courtyard where she might be seen from one of the wards. She closed the heavy door behind her and cut round outside the convent walls. Tom sitting patiently on a fallen tree beside the track and he leapt to his feet as he saw her.

“Molly!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t expect you yet.”

“Quickly, Tom. Let’s get out of sight.” She took his hand and hurried him down the hill and into a copse of trees that would hide them from any watching eyes at the convent windows. Once safely screened, they paused and Tom gathered her into his arms. “How did you get out?” he asked when he had kissed her. “Where’s Sarah?”

“No off duty today,” Molly explained. “I pleaded sick and am supposed to be in our room, lying down.”

“But you’ll be missed.”

“Only by Sarah, with any luck,” replied Molly. Going on bravely, she added, “and if I am, I am. It’ll be too late. We shouldn’t go to the village though.”

“We can’t stay here either,” Tom said. “Blokes from the camp often walk down through here on their way to the village.”

Molly thought for a moment and then said, “We’ll go along the river. There probably won’t be anyone down there.”

She led the way across the fields, skirting the village and ending up on the path that she and Sarah had walked so often in their early days at the convent.

The sun had been shining all morning, but now clouds were building in the sky, and a rising breeze fluttered and whipped the strands of the leaning willows and drew darting cats’ paws on the smooth-flowing water of the river. Tom and Molly noticed none of it. They sat in the shelter of one of the trees and shared the bread and cheese Tom had bought in the village, and talked. Not of the war at first, but of themselves and the future they planned together; the home they would make, the children they would have, their life as a real family. The perfect world, after the war, when the pain was over and the killing had stopped. The thought of this time, somewhere beyond their lives in the hospital and the trenches, brought them inevitably back to the present.

“There’s a big push coming,” Tom told her. “Everyone’s talking about it, there’s definitely something in the wind. They say it’s the push that’s going to end the war. Sweep the Germans out of the trenches and right back into Germany.”