Amy (20 page)

‘No, it isn’t. Perhaps he can get leave at the same time as you. ‘Amy thought immediately of Johnny. ‘Why don’t you get him to send you the date, and then we’ll have a go at persuading Matron.’

‘Perhaps,’ Helen said. ‘But it’s never enough, a few days now and again. I want to be with him all the time.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘We’re going to get engaged, Amy.’

‘Oh, Helen, how lovely!’ Amy moved over and sat beside her and took her hand. ‘Congratulations. I should say that to Peter really,
shouldn’t I, and wish you every happiness? Have you told your family?’

‘Not exactly.’ Helen smiled and dried her tears. ‘Peter wants to speak to my father first. He’s a bit old-fashioned – Peter, I mean. I do hope they like him, and I hope his parents like me, but I’d marry him anyway.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with being a bit old-fashioned,’ Amy said. ‘Keeping up the standards. I’m sure your parents will love him, and his will adore you. It’ll be wonderful.’

‘What about you and Johnny?’ Helen said eagerly. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I really don’t know.’ Amy looked away from Helen’s eager face. ‘We haven’t got that far. We’re just friends.’

‘No you’re not,’ Helen said. ‘Or he wouldn’t have come to see you.’

Amy sighed. It was all so easy in Helen’s eyes. You fell in love and you got married. There was no problem. ‘I just don’t know, Helen,’ she said. ‘I hardly know him really. I don’t really know how he feels.’

Helen smiled. ‘I think you do. You just won’t let yourself admit it.’

Amy sighed. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ But there are problems, she thought. So many problems.

Amy started her work in theatre. She helped the surgeons and the sisters into their gowns and gloves, she sterilized instruments, she held bowls to take the shattered parts of the human frame that had to be discarded, she carried away severed limbs and soaked, stinking swabs. All the time she watched and remembered, and she obtained
permission
to read the medical journals. She began to feel alive again.

February came, and the battle for Verdun. They watched and worked in horror as the new batches of wounded arrived, many of them burned, sometimes beyond recognition. ‘The Germans are using flame-throwers,’ Dr Hanfield said. ‘They’ve got these ghastly machines that burn them where they stand.’ Amy spent day after day in theatre, watching the surgeons clean up the burns as well as they could,
removing
dead tissue, sometimes down to the bone. Infection raged through the burns and many of the men died of toxic shock.

Alongside the others Amy laboured through the days. Now and again when staff shortages were at their worst she was allowed to assist Dr Hanfield. To scrub up, to handle the instruments again, was a
satisfaction that went deeper than even she had anticipated. Coming back into theatre after the months away was like coming home. She had that feeling of utter contentment, knowing that she was in her rightful place. She had missed medicine as one might miss a lover and the reconciliation was deep and true. She lay awake in bed at night, the old resolution rising more surely. She would get it back. She would.

But she had another love. She wanted Johnny with the same
yearning
. She wanted his arms around her. She wanted to rest her head on his broad shoulder, on the shining wings on his breast. She wanted his smile and his fearless optimism and his boundless energy. She couldn’t answer the question as she tried to get to sleep. Could she have them both, or would she have to make a dreadful, painful choice?

A letter arrived from Johnny. ‘I’ve got three days in England,’ he wrote, ‘starting on 20 June. Promise me that you’ll be there. Tell your matron that if she doesn’t give you leave I’ll come after her in my BE2.’

Amy bearded Matron in her office. Matron sighed and shuffled her papers and consulted her roster but in the end she said yes. ‘I hear that Helen wants to go too,’ she said. ‘We can’t spare you both at the same time. Helen will have to go when you come back.’ After a flurry of letters they both managed to organize their dates.

‘I’m a bit disappointed,’ Helen said. ‘I wanted you to be there when I got engaged.’

‘I’d rather be there when you get married,’ Amy said, ‘If leave is going to be rationed like this.’

Helen hung a calendar up in their room and crossed off each day when they went to bed. ‘I’ll have to get some clothes,’ she said
dreamily
. ‘I can’t turn up to Peter’s parents in a shabby uniform. I shall go to Woolands in Knightsbridge and get something really nice.’

‘Good idea.’ Amy was reminded of her own lack of wardrobe. The clothes she had left behind were so utilitarian. Johnny had never seen her in really nice clothes. If she were going to see him, certainly lunch and perhaps dine with him, she would need something to wear. Her own battered uniform still wouldn’t go down very well in London restaurants. The very thought was cheering – something feminine and pretty and something with colour. How she missed colour, after the endless khaki and dark blue and grey. Just to see pastel pink and green and pale blue and lilac would be a tonic. She had been given a week’s leave, so she would have a day or two before Johnny arrived. She could
shop, have her hair done, have a manicure….

Helen interrupted her daydreams. ‘What are you going to do about these letters from Dan?’ she said. ‘They still keep coming.’

‘I don’t know.’ They had brought the post up with them and a letter from Dan was lying on Amy’s bed. ‘There isn’t any harm in writing to him, is there?’ she said. ‘Lots of women at home are writing to soldiers, even ones they don’t know. It’s a link with home.’

‘I think you’ll have to tell him about Johnny,’ Helen said. ‘Peter said he talks about you. Quite fondly, apparently.’

‘There isn’t anything to tell yet, Helen. Anyway, Dan told me very carefully that he didn’t want to get involved with anyone until the war is over. He’s not interested in that way.’ Helen merely smiled and shrugged.

Amy arrived home in England on a warm, sunny day. Her father hugged her with delight. ‘You look well, Amy. Tired, but well.’

‘I think I could sleep for a week,’ she said.

‘You can do that if you want to. Your room’s all ready.’

‘Johnny’s coming in a few days,’ she said. ‘I want to do some
shopping
.’

He smiled. ‘I thought he might be.’

After dinner they walked to the top of St Martin’s Hill. ‘Look,’ her father said, ‘you can see the grounds of the Crystal Palace from here and it’s all of three miles away.’

I’ve flown over that, she thought. I’ve seen it from the air. Johnny will soon be here.

That night she looked at herself in the mirror in her bedroom. She was thinner than she used to be. Her old clothes wouldn’t fit her now. Her hair needed the attentions of a good hairdresser – she would leave it long so that she could put it up, but have it trimmed a little, and a really good wash and a rinse with camomile. Her hands needed a manicure and lots of soothing hand cream. All that washing had roughened them. I need everything, she thought, from the skin outwards, new underclothes, a coat and skirt and a hat, an afternoon dress, a dress for dining, new shoes. She was going to enjoy herself.

She went to town the next day and toured the shops, D.H. Evans and Selfridges and Woolands, revelling in the colours and the fine fabrics. In D.H. Evans she held a silk petticoat up to her face. The softness
and smoothness were an almost forgotten and sensuous delight after two years of cotton and rough linen and worsted. She bought a fine cream linen summer coat and skirt and a brown felt hat, a lilac silk afternoon dress and a black taffeta dinner dress. Then she went to Dunlops and bought a pipe for her father. She went to Savory and Moore’s to buy some scented toilet soap. She had almost managed to forget the war until she heard an army officer buying some morphine. I’m not going to think about it she thought. Just for a few days, I’m not going to think about it.

The next day a telegram arrived from Johnny:
Can you meet me
tomorrow
for lunch? The Ritz. One p.m. Johnny
.

The Ritz again, she thought. Thank goodness she’d been shopping. She telegraphed back:
Yes
.

‘Johnny?’ her father asked and she nodded.

‘He wants to meet me in Town tomorrow. You don’t mind, do you, Father? He’s only got a couple of days.’

‘Of course not, my dear. I’ll have your company for a day or two after that.’

She walked down Piccadilly the next day, remembering the last time she had met him here, when she almost turned back. Now she had been drawn into a relationship that she was almost afraid of, but she knew now she couldn’t resist. The thought that she was going to see him now, in a few moments, made her almost tremble.

He was waiting for her in the hotel, looking splendid in his uniform. No gun this time, she noticed. He came to her at once and stood very close, holding her hand and looking down at her. ‘Hello, Amy.’

‘Hello, Johnny.’ For a few seconds they looked at each other, not speaking, until she became aware again of the other people moving around them and moved away a little.

‘It’s so lovely to see you,’ she said. Such a trite remark, she thought. She had longed to see him and all she could do was to say that. She should be able to throw her arms around him. Chaperons may have been dispensed with, but the restraints were still there. He took her hand, though, as they walked into the restaurant. The waiter settled them at a table.

‘You look wonderful,’ he said. ‘You’ve done something to your hair.’

‘A little,’ she said. ‘It’s nice to do a few frivolous things again.’

He ordered champagne. ‘Not quite
de rigueur
for lunch,’ he said, ‘but
I feel in a champagne mood.’

Over lunch he talked about flying, as if he were just doing it for fun. She almost told him about Helen’s engagement; he had met Helen at the hospital, but then she didn’t want to talk about engagements.

‘I will have to leave you after lunch,’ he said. ‘My mother has arranged a dinner party for the family and half the county.’

‘I expect she wants to show you off,’ Amy said. ‘She must be very proud of you.’

‘She’s glad to see me home,’ he said. He took a small box out of his pocket. ‘I thought you might like to have this.’

She opened the box. Inside, on a silk cushion, was a brooch, a small replica of his wings in gold, with a diamond at the centre. ‘It’s
beautiful
,’ she said. ‘I love it. Thank you so much, Johnny.’

‘I thought you might like it.’

‘I shall treasure it.’

After lunch he took her to the station in a cab. ‘I’m sorry to leave you so soon,’ he said, ‘but I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll pick you up from home in the car. About ten.’

He arrived promptly the next day. She brought him into the house to see her father.

‘Hello, sir,’ Johnny said. ‘I hope you are keeping well.’

‘Very well, thank you. All the better for having Amy at home.’

Johnny smiled. ‘I quite agree, sir.’

‘Let’s hope you will all be home for good soon.’

‘Yes, sir. We all hope that.’

Her father came to the door to see them off. ‘Enjoy your day,’ he said.

Johnny started the car and they drew away. ‘Where are we going?’ she said.

He touched her hand briefly. ‘I’m taking you home to meet my mother.’

T
HE
house came into view at the end of the drive, much as she had imagined it. It was large and rambling and settled among the lawns and trees with the serenity of old age. She thought she could recognize the additions that had been made through the years – a bit of Jacobean, Queen Anne and certainly mid-Victorian – but melded by the years into a charming mellow whole. She smiled to herself. It could only be an English country house. She could understand why his family would cling to it, why they kept to their traditional ways, why they didn’t want anything to change.

‘It’s a lovely house,’ she said.

‘Been in the family for a few hundred years.’ Johnny drew up in a crunch of gravel.

The door opened and the butler came out on to the porch.

‘Hello, Barnes,’ Johnny said. ‘All well?’

‘Yes, sir.’ He held the door open for them. ‘Good afternoon, miss. Her ladyship is waiting in the drawing-room, sir.’

He took Amy’s coat and she glanced around her. The beamed entrance hall, perhaps the original part of the house, would have been warm and welcoming if she hadn’t been slightly apprehensive. Johnny’s ancestors, she supposed they were, looked down at her from the walls; unchanging, unbroken continuity. She was not, she thought, apprehensive about the woman she was about to meet; she wasn’t afraid of anyone. If she could face the thought of meeting the Germans, she could face Johnny’s mother. She was apprehensive about the
situation
,
about the influence his mother would undoubtedly have, one way or the other. She was also worried that the coming social exchange might prove difficult. She was not used to this any more. Some of the old social rules had begun to seem more and more foolish and
exaggerated
. She was used now to the very lowest, most primitive
situations
that anyone could be in, to nerves stripped raw, grunted exchanges and strangled cries. That she could be judged now by some casual word or minor action seemed unreal. She hoped that her
impatience
with traditional social niceties would not show. Lady Maddox knew nothing about her – thankfully.

The butler showed them in. Lady Maddox was standing by her chair, her hands clasped in the long skirt of a grey silk afternoon dress. She was small, smaller than Amy, but she held herself so ramrod straight that she was still imposing. Amy determined not to be
intimidated
. This little woman lived in a different world, one where Amy was no longer at home, where perhaps she had never been at home. She met Lady Maddox’s direct gaze.

‘Mother,’ Johnny said, ‘may I introduce Miss Osborne. Amy, this is my mother, Lady Maddox.’

Lady Maddox did not offer to shake hands. She indicated an upright chair. ‘Please sit down, Miss Osborne. Johnny, would you ring for tea?’

Amy sat. Lady Maddox looked at her from guarded grey eyes. ‘I believe that I have to thank you for saving my son’s life.’

‘Twice,’ Johnny said.

She inclined her head. ‘Twice.’

Amy smiled. ‘I was very glad to be able to do it.’

Lady Maddox sat down and regarded her carefully. ‘It must be very difficult for you young women.’ Her lips compressed in an expression perhaps of puzzlement, or perhaps of distaste. ‘The things you have to do now. Things you have certainly not been brought up to do.’

Oh dear, Amy thought. There isn’t much doubt about her opinions. ‘We live in difficult times,’ she said.

The butler brought in the tea. Lady Maddox poured it out into
delicate
china cups, a far cry, Amy thought, from the tin mugs and thick cups and plates she was now used to. The butler handed it round. ‘Thank you, Barnes,’ Lady Maddox said, and he left the room. ‘Yes,’ she went on, ‘we have all had to make sacrifices. Several of our servants have enlisted and two of them, sadly, have already lost their lives. So
we are very short-handed. My elder son tells me that he has had to employ two women on the home farm. They belong to the Women’s Defence Relief Corps, apparently.’ She pronounced the words in
capital
letters. ‘Whatever that may be. Two young women from the East End of London.’ She made it sound like the end of the earth.

‘He tells me they are doing very good work,’ Johnny said. ‘Women are doing amazing things now, Mother. I think they’re splendid.’

His mother glanced at him and then back at Amy, a look of quick suspicion, of interrogation, and thinly disguised disapproval. ‘One hopes,’ she said, ‘that the young women will go back to their normal lives and duties at home when the war is over. I’m sure they will be very glad to do so. Such things can surely not be tolerated for ever.’

Amy glanced at Johnny, but he just smiled. She would not pretend to agree. ‘I think perhaps some things have changed for ever,’ she said.

Lady Maddox sat up even straighter. ‘I trust not, Miss Osborne. I think that well-brought-up girls will be thankful not to have to see – not to have to do these things. One hopes it will all be forgotten.’

It isn’t any good opposing her, Amy thought. She could not, or would not, understand what was happening. She glanced around the room, at the marble fireplace, the heavy hangings, the furniture of such varied periods that it must have been passed down in the family for generations. This woman was fixed here, part of the house, part of the past. She would regard it as her sacred duty to keep things as they were. She would not change.

Lady Maddox smiled at her, a wintry smile. ‘I don’t think I know your father, Miss Osborne? What does he do?’

‘He is a schoolmaster,’ Amy said. ‘He teaches science at a boy’s school in Bromley, where we live.’

Lady Maddox raised her eyebrows. ‘Science? Not the classics, then? I would have thought that he would teach the classics.’

Amy smiled. She could, she thought, have predicted this attitude, that Greek and Latin were more fitting for a gentleman’s education. What would a gentleman have to do with science?

‘He thinks that science is the way of the future,’ she said. ‘That it is something that people should think about and understand.’

Lady Maddox shrugged. ‘I should think that those things could safely be left to the tradesmen.’ She picked up her cup and looked at Amy over the rim.

Amy could see Johnny raising his eyebrows at her from across the room. He shook his head briefly, but she couldn’t let this go by. ‘Science has given us so many wonderful things, Lady Maddox,’ she said. ‘Steam trains and electric light and motor cars and aeroplanes.’

‘Especially aeroplanes,’ Johnny said.

Amy continued, ‘And all the advances in medicine and surgery.’

Lady Maddox frowned, and carefully put down her cup. ‘That is something I prefer not to think about.’

‘It saved Johnny’s life,’ Amy said.

Lady Maddox looked across at her son and for the first time Amy saw a real emotion in her eyes – a deep and horrified fear. She is human after all, Amy thought. She might be set in this aspic of out-moded habits and values but underneath that she is just like everyone else; she is a loving and frightened mother. She felt a deep connection with her. Deep down, suppressed and unacknowledged, they both had the same raw fear.

Lady Maddox looked back at her, that fleeting look now gone, controlled. ‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’

‘No,’ Amy said. ‘I am an only child.’

‘And your mother?’

‘My mother died a long time ago, when I was a child.’

‘I am sorry.’

For a few moments there was silence. I am being interrogated, Amy thought. Johnny’s mother would surely not be like this with girls that she knew, girls who fitted into the pattern. She would be smiling and relaxed, knowing how these girls lived, what they thought and felt and expected. Johnny had brought a possible cuckoo into the nest and she was worried and suspicious. A schoolmaster who taught science? What kind of a man was that? After all, he could well be a
revolutionary
.

The thought of her father being a revolutionary made her smile and she hurriedly changed the subject. ‘You have a beautiful garden,’ she said. ‘A perfect English garden.’

Lady Maddox relaxed visibly. ‘Yes, it is one of my greatest interests. Perhaps Johnny will show you around it before you go.’

The door opened and Johnny’s father came in. He came directly to Amy and took her hand. ‘Miss Osborne,’ he said. ‘How very nice to see you again.’ His presence changed the atmosphere, made it lighter,
more positive. He took a cup of tea and sat down next to her. ‘How are you? Are you still working in Paris? Still saving lives?’

‘Yes,’ Amy said. ‘It’s all much the same.’ There was a guarded look in his eyes and he glanced briefly at his wife and then back at Amy. She understood at once. He didn’t want any real, factual discussion or description of the war or of the horror, or of the wounded. ‘Paris is a lovely city,’ she said. ‘Very well planned with the wide boulevards and pretty gardens. And the people are very’ – she almost said brave – ‘pleasant.’

‘I have never wanted to go to France,’ Lady Maddox said. ‘A very dirty country, I believe. No proper sanitation.’

‘The hotel we live in is excellent,’ Amy said. ‘Very modern. We are very fortunate in that respect.’

There was another silence. ‘I was just saying to Lady Maddox,’ Amy said, ‘that the garden is lovely.’

Sir Henry put down his cup. ‘Perhaps you would like to see it,’ he said. ‘I would be delighted to show you.’

She glanced at Johnny and he raised his eyebrows again and gave her a quick smile. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I should like that very much.’

He led her into the garden. She wondered what kind of conversation Johnny and his mother were having behind her.

‘Let’s go to the rose garden.’ Sir Henry led her across a trim lawn and past well-stocked herbaceous borders. An ageing gardener was piling weeds and clippings into a wheelbarrow and he touched his hat as they went by.

They went through a wrought-iron gate in a mellow brick wall. ‘This is my wife’s special interest,’ Sir Henry said.

The roses were a mass of colour and perfume. Amy breathed it in, trying to capture the scent, to remember it so that she could bring it back to the wards and the operating theatre. She took a deep breath. ‘It’s beautiful.’

‘My wife has done it all,’ he said. ‘She likes to develop new roses. Look at this one.’ The rose was flame red, exotic, springing free in a mass of blooms. ‘She has called this one “Johnny”.’

She met his eyes and he smiled. ‘It’s like him,’ she said. ‘A free spirit.’

He nodded. ‘She is very fond of him. His elder brother, James, is very different, very solid, very reliable, married to the daughter of a
local landowner. Johnny was always a bit of a worry, climbing the highest tree, falling in the lake, riding slightly risky horses.’

Amy laughed. ‘I can imagine it.’

‘She still feels that she has to protect him,’ he said. ‘I think she
sometimes
forgets that he is a grown man now, and must make his own
decisions
.’ He looked back at the roses. ‘I don’t think she quite realizes as yet how much the world is changing.’

He is saying something to me, she thought. She remembered the intense look that Johnny had given her that day in the hospital when his father was there, the look that his father had intercepted, the look that must have told him something of Johnny’s feelings.

Amy gently touched one of the flaming roses. ‘I imagine one never grows out of being a mother.’

They walked on, through the massed colour and fragrance. The old house stood behind them, solid and secure. She could understand why Lady Maddox didn’t want anything to change.

‘She just wants him to be happy,’ he said.

Looking into his kind, understanding face she felt a stab of conscience. She wanted so much to confide in this man, to ask his
opinion
and advice, but what could he tell her? The decision, if any were to be made, was hers, and Johnny’s.

They strolled back to the house. He stopped before they went in. ‘Don’t forget, Amy,’ he said. ‘If I can ever be of service to you, you only have to ask. You have given us the greatest gift. I don’t know how my wife….’

Impulsively she put her hand on his arm. ‘No!’ she said, more loudly than she meant. He seemed to understand. He smiled at her and patted her hand. As they went into the house she was thinking how much he loved and cared for his family, his sons and his wife. He also just wanted them to be happy.

Johnny drove her home through the countryside in the soft, warm evening. They drove past fields of buttercups and daisies where
lazy-eyed
cows stood immobile in the late sunshine. They drove down narrow country lanes where meadow-sweet and purple vetch and red campion flowered in the hedgerows and the last petals of may blossom drifted from the trees.

Amy watched it all go by with a painful nostalgic sadness. It seemed
to her that a new kind of change, like a giant dark cloud, was
gathering
in the distance. Her country, and the world, had weathered storms and threats for a thousand years but were threatened again now by a war that was different from all others, and would change everything. The world was being ravaged in a new and terrifying way. New horrors blackened the future, new brutalities, new attitudes of cruelty and perverted power. How could they be defeated? This war could only fight horror with horror. There was no escape, no place for compassion or humanity. She looked out on the tranquil, beautiful English countryside and felt as if she were watching a dying old friend.

They stopped at Maidenhead to have a drink at Skindles Hotel on the river by Boulter’s Lock – lemonade for Amy and half a pint of bitter for Johnny. They sat in the garden, watching the Thames idle by. The evening held that particular kind of opalescent light that seemed to be so special to late spring in England. A mother duck with six ducklings paddled out from the bank. A few punts, still out, came through the lock and were poled away down river, the girls in their summer frocks lying drowsily against the cushions. The moment seemed to Amy to distil everything that was beauty and peace, everything that was being so hideously destroyed.