In Falling Snow (3 page)

Seated at the table was Dr. Agnes Savill, who seemed not much older than me, tiny with curly hair, dark eyes, and high rosy cheeks. Agnes was going to be responsible for the hospital's radiological equipment, Miss Ivens said. “Responsible's going just a tad far,” Dr. Savill said to Miss Ivens, and screwed up her nose and smiled at me. I loved her immediately.

And then there was Mrs. Berry, whom Miss Ivens had mentioned on the train. She'd studied with Miss Ivens, although she looked older, long greying hair parted in the middle in two plaits to the side, big brown eyes, beatific smile. She looked like someone you could trust.

I remember the orderlies too, sitting in a group at the other end of the table, Vera Collum from Liverpool, who grinned and bade me welcome, and Marjorie Starr, a Canadian, who started singing a song about bears she thought I might know but didn't, the others whose names have gone now. They were like excited schoolgirls at a play, giggling and hooting and talking among themselves. They'd come to do whatever was needed, Collum told me. She was a journalist and photographer before the war. “But here I'm happy to be a mere orderly,” she said.

Dr. Savill and Mrs. Berry made room for Miss Ivens and me at one end of the table. I realised I hadn't eaten since early morning when I'd set out for the station. I was hungry and the soup tasted heavenly. The bread, my first taste of a fresh baguette, was a marvel.

Miss Ivens talked as she ate. She seemed to have boundless energy. “Ruth, tell Iris about the drains. Iris knows about drains.”

At Risdon we had a bore whose water tasted of the earth and showed its red-soil pedigree. I had no experience of drains and hadn't given any indication that I did.

“I think the cesspits need to be emptied,” Mrs. Berry said, leaning forward to meet my eyes. She had a gentle quiet voice. “Either that or the grease trap's not working. We've a plumber coming in the morning.”

“Good, well, have Iris with you when you meet him. She can tell him what to do. It's not the trap. It's a blockage in the pipe. I'm sure of it.” Mrs. Berry smiled at Miss Ivens and then at me.

“And then perhaps you and Iris should go into town, find out who we should see about letting the locals know we're here. I'll warrant they'll be glad to have a hospital nearby. Make sure you tell them we're Scottish doctors.”

I must have looked puzzled. “The Auld Alliance. Scotland and France against the English. The French have long memories. I'm perfectly willing to be Scottish if it makes them happy.”

Dr. Savill turned to me, those dark curls framing her pretty face. She asked how long I'd been in France. “Three days,” I said. “I'm actually going to Soissons but Miss Ivens asked if I might come here on the way.”

“She's going to be my assistant, Agnes,” Miss Ivens said. “The new hospital administrator. She speaks French like she grew up here.”

“Isn't that my job?” Cicely said. She was standing over at the door and I was surprised she could even hear what we were saying.

“Cicely,” Miss Ivens said, and smiled, “you're our bookkeeper. You can't be running round after me all day as well.” Cicely turned and walked out of the room without saying anything more.

“Poor you,” Dr. Savill said to me. “Can you work twenty-three hours a day and keep four million things going at once?”

“Stop it, you'll terrify the poor girl and we can't have that,” Miss Ivens said. “Tell me what's happened about the X-ray machines?” She reached across and tore a piece of bread from the loaf and spread it thickly with butter she'd put on her plate.

“Cicely wired Edinburgh again today,” Dr. Savill said. “No one will freight for us. As soon as they know who we are, they tell us there's no room.”

“Well, let's just tell them we're someone else,” Miss Ivens said. “Is it the Scottish or the Women they object to? I assume Hospitals are all right.” She bit into the bread.

“Either? Both? Elsie's got a bit of a reputation, you know. She wouldn't come out against the hunger strikes.”

“Elsie Inglis runs our organisation,” Miss Ivens said to me after she'd swallowed the bread. “The Scottish Women's Hospitals. You'll meet her soon.” And then, to Dr. Savill, “Let me see what I can do tomorrow. My father's company uses a Greek shipping group. They might be able to carry the heavier equipment. We're not fools, just women. If I get a chance . . .”

“Did you want me, Frances?” A new face had appeared at the door. It was another woman, tiny and slight, younger even than Dr. Savill by the look of her. She smiled over to me, pursed lips, raised eyebrows, like a little pixie.

“Ah, Violet my love. Mattresses,” Miss Ivens said. “We left them at the station. Can you go up in the car?”

“For a mattress, I'll drive to Paris,” she said. Her voice was surprisingly deep for such a little thing. She looked at me. She had green eyes like a cat, with blonde hair that fell to her shoulders in soft curls. “You must be Iris.” She read the surprise on my face. “Word travels fast in a house full of women. Cicely Hamilton's got your name in her book. Want to come back into town?”

I didn't. I was exhausted. “Of course. I'll get my coat.”

I used my bread to mop up the rest of my soup—when in Rome—then got up, pulled on my coat, and followed the woman out into the cold abbey.

“I'm Violet Heron,” she said just outside the kitchen door.

“Iris Crane,” I said, taking the warm dry hand she offered.

“Flower bird,” she said. I must have looked puzzled. “Our names—we're both flower birds.”

I laughed. “Yes, I suppose we are.”

“Well, come on, Miss Flower Bird. Let's flit.”

We walked back through the abbey, taking a different route from the one I'd taken with Miss Ivens. Violet carried a lantern. “What did you mean, Cicely Hamilton has my name in her book?” I said.

“She keeps a book on troublemakers,” Violet said. “She thinks you're a troublemaker. But don't worry. My name's the first entry. Yours won't be the last. Eventually we'll all be in there and then she'll be alone, won't she?”

“Why?”

“Who knows? Cicely's an
actress
.” Violet said this with considerable emphasis, as if it would explain everything. “She thinks she's in charge. Frances and the rest go along with her because she's a good bookkeeper. But she doesn't like anyone getting between her and Frances. If Frances likes you, and she does, apparently, you're doomed.”

“I think I went to school with girls like Cicely. You can never please them. You're better off ignoring them.”

“You got that right, my dear.” Violet's voice had started to echo. We'd moved into a large space.

“I can smell horses,” I said.

“We're in the refectory. The Uhlan used it as a stable, dear hearts.”

“The Uhlan? I thought Miss Ivens said they were Cistercians.”

“You're out by five centuries and a mile of vocations. The Uhlan are the German cavalry. The Cistercians are the monks who built the abbey.”

“The Germans were here?”

“My word. Two months ago, Royaumont was between them and Paris, more or less. The mayor of Asnières fled and left the local priest to meet the Germans. Even the government of Paris evacuated. And then, some French general commandeered all the Paris taxicabs to take more soldiers to the front. The Germans retreated. I'd retreat too if I were up against a Paris taxicab. They're even more daring than the ones in London.”

The smell of horses, which had always seemed to me sweet and honest, was suddenly associated with the thing I most dreaded, the Germans who'd started the war. I dared not breathe lest I took some of their evil into my lungs. I thought of Tom again suddenly. I had a picture of him in my mind as clear as day, younger than he really was, a boy of twelve, out there on his own in the snow, cold and alone, and I felt a pull at my heart.

Violet said she'd been in Paris in the summer but now it was like a different city. “Miss Ivens says they've only just got over the last war with Germany. Life's just dismal. You can't even get absinthe these days.”

“Absinthe?”

“Marvellous stuff, better than champagne,” Violet said. “But it's been banned because it makes you feel so good. We're not supposed to feel good.”

We emerged into the cloister and I was relieved to breathe the clean air. It was colder than within the abbey now and the stars were out, the snow a white so bright it was nearer blue. I wrapped the two lengths of my scarf around my neck.

Violet turned to me and smiled. “Who taught you to wind a scarf?” She pulled at the scarf gently and repositioned it, making a long side and wrapping it twice. “There,” she said. “Snug as a bug.” It was something Daddy would say as he tucked Tom and me into bed at night, and I felt a twinge of homesickness.

We were walking down one side of the cloister. Violet pulled a pack of cigarettes from her coat pocket and offered me one. I took it. She pulled one out for herself and stopped and struck a match and held it. I put my face forward and sucked on the cigarette as I'd seen others do. I leaned back and breathed it in and coughed violently and pulled my face away. Violet extinguished the match. “Do you smoke?” she asked.

“No,” I said, through my cough, holding the foul thing away from me.

“Oh for goodness' sake, you don't have to,” she said, taking the cigarette from me and putting her own back into the pack as she nursed mine between her lips. “Aren't you a trick?” She led me out of the cloister, around the back of the abbey. “These are our garages,” Violet said. “Mine's this one.”

“You can drive a truck?” It was an enormous contraption, two seats in front and a canvas-covered tray behind.

I'd driven a car just the once, the Carsons', over their top paddock, which was big enough so I wouldn't hit anything, or at least that's what Tom had said. The steering wheel rattled under my hands. The engine was louder than anything I'd ever heard. It was nothing like a fast horse, which was the way Tom had described it. I screamed at him to tell me where the brake was, slammed on it as soon as he did, stalled the car, and never asked for a drive again. Tom was the opposite, of course, loved anything with a machine in it, drove the car whenever he could, much to Daddy's consternation. They would have fought about cars, Daddy and Tom, if they'd ever got to it. But they had plenty of other things to get through first.

“This isn't a truck,” Violet said. “It's an ambulance, or it will be.” She pulled herself up into the cabin, holding her cigarette between her lips again to free up her hands.

“I might be a trick,” I said, “but you're amazing. Did you study with Miss Ivens?”

“Study? Oh God, no. I'm not a doctor. Whatever gave you that idea?”

“I don't know. You called Miss Ivens Frances.”

“Frances is her name, darling. No, I'm a driver. I'm going to drive this ambulance.”

“So, did you know Miss Ivens from before?”

“No. They advertised for drivers so I thought I'd come along. You had to bring your own car.”

“So how old are you?” She seemed so young to have so much experience.

“Twenty-four. You?”

“Twenty-one. You own a car?” I said.

“It was a friend's, but yes, it's mine now. I don't think he'll want it back when he sees what they've done to it.”

“Are all the drivers women?” I asked.

“We've brought two men because the Croix-Rouge said women can't drive in a war zone. Frances says we'll see about that and they'll just need to get used to us. But as for the rest of us, we're women, yes, last time I checked.”

“How on earth are they going to make that abbey into a hospital? It's a wreck.”

“You're not supposed to say that. We all have to pretend the abbey ‘just needs a little work.'” It was a perfect imitation of Miss Ivens, complete with the little shake of the head. I laughed.

“So, tell me about Australia.” Violet had her right arm over the back of my seat as she reversed. She smelled like flowers and spoke like my English teacher had implored us to speak. I wondered how you could muster up the energy for such perfect diction all the time, but I suppose it was what she was used to. “My brother had a book about Australia and I've always wanted to go there.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Is it true the men are giants?”

“Well, I've nothing to compare them with except the few little Frenchmen I met at the railway station. But based on Miss Ivens, I'd say women from Warwickshire are giants.”

“Amazons. She is truly wonderful, isn't she?” Violet said.

“Is she a bit mad?”

“Oh yes, completely, but don't you find mad people interesting? They go out in the deep where something's happening. The rest of us just bathe in the shallows. I'd like to be mad. Wouldn't you?”

“Not at all,” I said. “No, thank you.”

“Well, I don't think you're too much at risk, at any rate,” Violet said. “Nor me, more's the pity.”

“So, what made you decide to come here?” I said. Violet was so charming and sophisticated. I couldn't imagine her working for a hospital.

“What else would I do? Sit at home? We're at war. I don't know. Why did you come?”

“It's complicated,” I said. “My young brother ran away and signed up. Our father told him he wasn't to go but he went anyway. He's very headstrong. So I'm to find him and bring him home.”

“Is your father a pacifist? How exotic.”

“I don't know. What's a pacifist?”

“You know, peace at any cost. Lay down your weapons. I wouldn't tell anyone else if I were you. We're all pretty patriotic at the moment. God save and all that.”

“I wouldn't say my father's a pacifist,” I said. “Actually, he has a pretty bad temper if it comes to it and doesn't mind taking anyone on. But he doesn't believe we should go to war.” Daddy's older brother had been killed in the Boer War and it broke their mother's heart. He said Australia wasn't Britain and shouldn't be in a British war.