Read Somewhere in France: A Novel of the Great War Online
Authors: Jennifer Robson
L
illy woke at dawn, her mind awhirl with all that had happened, tragic and good, in the past twenty-four hours. Her first thought was of Edward. If only she could believe that he was awake,
alive,
able to see the pale glow of dawn as it softened the sky. Her heart yearned for it, ached for the certainty of knowledge, but war had a way of strangling such hopes.
She turned to face Robbie, who lay on his back, sound asleep, one hand flung over his brow. His face was so dear, so familiar, as if he’d been hers forever and not a matter of hours. It would be so marvelous to have more time with him, time to explore the truce they’d established and the promises they’d made. But she was expected back in camp before the end of the day and, given how irregularly the trains had been running, she had to leave before midday in order to ensure she wouldn’t be late.
Rather than wake him right away, she tiptoed to the bathroom and ran herself a scalding-hot bath, immersing herself up to her neck until the water was tepid and her fingers were as wrinkled as a walnut. Unwilling to put on her uniform right away, she dressed in her nightgown and the same hotel dressing gown she’d borrowed the night before, then returned to the bedroom and drew wide the draperies to let in the thin winter sun. Robbie stirred, stretched, and came awake almost instantly. No doubt it was a skill he had perfected while at the CCS.
“Good morning, Lilly. Have you been awake for long?”
“About an hour. I took a shockingly long bath. Now we need to order breakfast, and then I need to be on my way.”
“I’ll come with you to the station.”
“I’m glad of it. Shall I ring downstairs now? What do you want?”
“Coffee. Can’t think what else.”
Their coffee, in the form of huge bowls of café au lait, was delivered in minutes, and was accompanied by a basket of croissants and
pains aux amandes.
And then, the hour growing late, Lilly retreated to the bedroom to dress and pack. Less than a day earlier, her uniform had felt like a second skin to her; now it lay heavily on her shoulders, its chafing wool and unflattering cut unwelcome burdens. But at least it was clean.
When she returned to the sitting room, Robbie was dressed, too, and as ever he looked impossibly handsome in his uniform and greatcoat.
“Do you want me to come back with you?” he asked. “If anyone should notice we’ve returned together, I can simply say I ran into you on the train. It wouldn’t be an out-and-out lie.”
“No,” she insisted. “You’ve earned every minute of your leave. I want you to stay here and enjoy the best of everything the Ritz can supply. And you must go to bed early tonight and catch up on your sleep. Promise?”
“I promise. I’ll miss you, though.”
“And I you. Shall we go?”
Rather than call for a taxi, they retraced the path Lilly had taken the day before, arm in arm, hardly speaking, preparing themselves for the moment of parting. The streets were quiet, empty, but had they been teeming with crowds she wouldn’t have noticed. She saw only him.
She bought her ticket, asked about and was informed of the platform she required. They had abandoned all attempts at propriety now, Robbie’s arm about her shoulders, his head bent to kiss the top of her head. A whistle blew, a swath of soldiers moved toward the platform, and it was time to go.
Lilly lifted her face to his, closing her eyes only when she felt his hands in her hair, smoothing it back lightly, then the welcome weight of his mouth on hers. She wrapped her arms around him, hugging him fiercely, and then she picked up her bag and took a step back.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yes. Lilly, I—”
“No time. We’ll talk when you return. We’ll find a way.”
T
HE JOURNEY HOME
took nearly ten hours, for she missed her first connection in Amiens and then had to wait in Saint-Omer while repairs to a shelled-out stretch of rail line took place. Constance and the others were already in bed when she returned, but no sooner had she poked her nose through the front flap of their quarters than the lantern was lighted, the kettle was set to boil, and her friends began their interrogation.
“Where did you stay?” Constance asked.
“In a hotel, not far from the station.” It wasn’t a complete lie; the Ritz was a hotel, and it was within walking distance of the Gare du Nord.
“What happened when he saw you? What did he say?”
“He was upset, quite upset with me. But then I explained what had happened to Edward and he was lovely after that. Very civil.”
“So you told him and left?” Constance pressed.
“Not precisely. I told him, we talked at length, and we agreed—I suppose he agreed—that we ought not to remain at odds. Then we went to dinner.”
“I like the sound of that!” said Bridget.
Lilly didn’t dare look at her, for the truth of what had happened after dinner was likely written all over her face. Instead, she unfastened her uniform jacket and folded it neatly over the end of her cot. “We talked about Edward, mostly. And that’s really all there is to tell.”
With difficulty she stifled a yawn. “Would you all mind if we finished talking tomorrow? It took so long to get back—”
“Of course,” said Constance soothingly. “Besides, Sergeant Barnes said the next few days are going to be bad. Says he can feel it in his bones, like an old lady with rheumatism. So we’d best sleep while we can.”
T
HEY WERE AWAKE
again less than five hours later. It was the sound of the guns that roused them: no longer a distant rhythm as familiar as a heartbeat, but a wildly discordant clamor only marginally more frightening than the ominous silences with which it alternated.
Robbie was late in returning, only landing back in camp well after midnight the following day; apparently the rail lines to Saint-Omer had all been shelled, as had most of the roads, and he’d been forced to catch one lift after another until he was within walking distance of Merville. This information she gleaned from Nurse Ferguson, as they stood in line in the mess tent early one morning, for Robbie himself had disappeared into the operating hut within minutes of his return and had barely emerged since.
In the month that followed, Lilly caught only fleeting glimpses of him, usually as he crouched next to stretchers while performing triage in the reception marquee. Paris was soon a distant memory, a half-remembered interval of light and delight from another life, another world.
She knew Robbie was spending twenty hours or more at a stretch in surgery. When he slept, it was only for an hour or two, on a cot that Matron had dragged next to the surgeons’ desk in the ward tent, before rousing himself and returning to work. For her part, Lilly spent every waking moment on the road to the ADS. When the bombardment worsened, at the end of March, they began to evacuate patients to the 33rd CCS in Saint-Venant.
The following fortnight passed by in a nightmarish, arduous blur. With the nearby rail lines shelled into oblivion, the wounded had to be evacuated by ambulance. If Lilly had ever thought herself exhausted before, she knew now that she had been wrong.
This
was exhaustion. Up at dawn’s first light, back and forth and back again to Saint-Venant, a five- or ten-minute break for dinner, then on and on and on until she could hardly prop herself upright behind Henrietta’s steering wheel.
One day, when this was all over, when the enemy had been beaten back and the Front was secure and she’d had the chance to sleep for more than an hour or two at a stretch, she would let herself think of Paris, of Robbie, of all that waited for them once the war was done.
Until then, her eyes burning, her brain begging for sleep, she allowed herself but a single thought.
Drive.
Merville, France
April 11, 1918
A
thousand miles. In less than a fortnight she had driven more than a thousand miles, endlessly circling the tangled skein of craters and mud that had once been the five-mile stretch of road between Saint-Venant and Merville.
Laid out in a straight line, how far could those miles have taken her? Far enough to silence the guns? To dry the mud that caked her boots and skirts? A thousand miles away, would she still hear the cries of the wounded men she drove to safety, or the piteous stillness of those who could not be saved?
This morning she had begun work at half-past five. It was now—she checked her watch by the light of the moon—nearly three in the morning. And she had one final journey to make, tonight, before she could rest.
She was hurrying back to Henrietta, ready to top up the radiator with the can of water she’d just filled, when the night was fractured by the whistle and whine of yet another approaching shell. It struck the ground no more than two hundred yards away, its impact close enough to force the can of water out of her suddenly nerveless fingers, but it didn’t knock her down. It would take a direct hit to do that.
She wiped the dust off her face with her sleeve, picked up the water can, which by some miracle had landed more or less upright, and filled the radiator. Then she hurried back to the ward tent to help her final two passengers of the night into the front cab of her ambulance. Stretcher-bearers, they’d been gassed the night before in no-man’s-land, where they’d been sent to retrieve the fallen.
Three men already lay on stretchers in the back, their skin and eyes horribly blistered by mustard gas, their lungs flayed. Their eyes might heal, and their skin, but they would never draw an easy breath again. If they lived. If she could bring them to safety.
Turning, she caught sight of Robbie for the first time that day. He’d just come out of the operating hut, his surgeon’s gown sodden with blood. Seeing her, he faltered, but only for a moment; time was too precious now.
Their eyes met. She steeled herself to hold his gaze, though she feared she might collapse under the weight of his regard. She had hoped she would see him before she left; had prayed for this moment. But no armor could ever have shielded her from its torment, so raw and fierce that she thought she might faint from the agony of it.
Lilly had been in France for more than a year, and in all that time she had never been afraid. Anxious, yes. Worried, sad, even despairing, but never afraid.
She was afraid now. It wasn’t the shelling, or the dread and certain knowledge that the enemy had broken through the lines mere miles away. It was the fact that nearly a dozen men still lay, waiting for their turn in an ambulance, in the ward tent.
And her ambulance was the last one to leave that night.
And Robbie would refuse to go until every last one of the wounded men under his care had been evacuated. Would be taken prisoner rather than abandon them.
She longed to say something to him, some words of comfort or affection. Longed to tell him again how she loved him.
Instead she ran across the yard, her heart racing, and was enveloped in the shelter of his arms. For one beautiful instant she let him hold her, then she tipped back her head for his fierce, desperate kiss.
She stepped away, gently pulling her hands from his grasp. He nodded, his eyes grave. He knew, as well as she did, what this moment meant.
And then it was over. She ran back to her ambulance, cranked the engine to life, dragged herself up behind the steering wheel, and drove away into the night. Into the dark.
She urged the ambulance forward, hardly daring to switch out of first gear. The miles inched past, marked only by the groans of her passengers and the distancing roar of the guns.
It had been many months since she had prayed, truly prayed. But she prayed now, the words tumbling mutely from her lips.
He has done his duty, has never once failed in his duty. Please, God, please let Robbie survive, though others perish. Please let him survive. Please oh please oh please—
She heard the whistle first. High-pitched, sharp, insistent. A dull thud as the shell tore apart the road. The heart-stopping knowledge of what was to come. And then a wave of heat and dirt and screaming metal swept over Lilly and the five men she’d hoped to save.
The ambulance careened across the road, reached the mud-filled ditch at the side, trembled at its precipice, and toppled over.
S
HE WOKE TO
pain. Pain so knife-sharp it made her long for the darkness again. She was on the ground; at least it felt like the ground, all cold and wet and shingled with pebbles. Rain beat down on her face. She turned her head and saw that someone was kneeling, in the mud, next to her.
“Lilly, it’s Constance. I’m here.”
Constance. Relief flooded over her. “What happened?”
“You were late arriving. Really quite late. So we drove out to search for you. It’s a miracle you weren’t killed by that shell.”
“Men in my ambulance . . .” Whose voice was that, so reedy, pale, insubstantial?
“They’re out. We got them out. But, Lilly, your leg is pinned. Under the ambulance. They’re working to free you now. It will only be a minute or two.”
Lilly peered into the darkness, trying to see her friend’s face. “Constance? Where are you?”
“I’m here, Lilly. I’m holding your hand.”
“So cold.”
“I know. I’m so sorry. I promise we’ll have you in a warm bed in no time.”
“Robbie . . .” Lilly licked her lips, which felt parched despite the rain. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know, Lilly. I haven’t seen him.”
“Tell him . . .”
“Yes, Lilly?” Constance was leaning over her now, straining to hear.
“Forgive . . . forgive . . .”
And then, the words dying in her throat, she was swept backward, gently backward, into a tide of ink-dark, tender, blessed unknowing.
I
t was a near thing, in the end. He and Matron had been huddled in the ward tent with the few patients who had been left behind; eleven in total, all postoperative. All were stable enough for evacuation, but since there were no more ambulances, they’d nothing to do but wait for the Germans to arrive. At least Lilly was gone, safely away to Saint-Venant, and finally out of danger.
The crunch of tires on the graveled yard outside the ward tent came sooner than he’d expected. He didn’t bother to get up; best to stay where he was and wait for the inevitable. His service pistol was still in his locker; any kind of resistance would be madness, especially with the lives of Matron and the patients at stake.
Robbie had certainly not expected to see Private Gillespie’s face appear at the tent’s entrance. So it was not the Germans, come to bayonet them where they sat, after all.
“What are you doing here?” Matron asked.
“Colonel Lewis let me take one of the Dennis lorries. I thought I might be able to fetch the lot of you. But we haven’t much time. Come on with you, now.”
Robbie needed no further encouragement. While Matron helped the few men who could stand, he and Gillespie ferried stretcher after stretcher to the lorry, which was at least double the size of a typical ambulance. It was a tight squeeze, in the end, but they fit everyone inside, as tightly and uncomfortably as sardines in a tin.
The journey to Saint-Venant took something like forever, for Private Gillespie had to slow the lorry almost to a halt whenever they encountered shell craters, else risk a shattered axle. And the rain hammered down on them so relentlessly that it was impossible to see more than a few feet ahead.
At one point they passed the wreckage of an ambulance, not unlike the reliable little Ford that Lilly drove, but its driver and passengers had vanished. He hoped they’d found shelter from the rain and the bombs.
The 33rd CCS, which had evacuated to Saint-Venant a few weeks before, had set up shop in an old convent. No sooner had Gillespie pulled the lorry to a halt than the wounded men in its rear were being carried inside. Robbie stood in the rain, not sure of what to do next. He really had been so certain that he would be taken prisoner. Perhaps he would see if he could find Lilly, discretion be damned.
“So you made it after all.”
Robbie turned and saw that Colonel Lewis was approaching him.
“Thank you, sir, for sending the lorry. They’d have had us otherwise.”
“Thank Gillespie. He was the one who insisted. Damn near ordered me. Said he could do it, and he was right.”
“Well, I’m grateful all the same. To you and to Private Gillespie.”
“I do have some bad news.”
Robbie was instantly alert. It must be someone he knew; one of his colleagues, perhaps.
“It’s Miss Ashford, I’m afraid. No, don’t say anything. I don’t need to know.”
“What is it? What has happened to her?”
Robbie felt the ground tipping and tilting under his feet. Not now, not now. He had to keep his wits about him. Had to know the truth of it, no matter how unbearable.
“Good God, man, are you all right?”
“Yes, yes. I’m fine. Just tell me what happened.”
“There was a crash. A shell fell directly in her path as she was driving here, not two hours ago. Compound fracture to her left leg, but the artery wasn’t compromised. And a lacerated spleen.”
“So she’s alive?”
“Of course she’s alive. Didn’t I say so already? No?”
“Where is she now? I must see her—”
“She’s still in surgery. Harrison is handling it. He’s set her leg already and is taking out her spleen now. But she’s stable, she’s tolerating the anesthetic well, and she’s been transfused. So you’ve nothing to worry about.”
“I . . .”
“Get some rest, now. I’ll send someone to let you know as soon as she’s awake.”
With that, Colonel Lewis slapped Robbie on the back, shook his hand, and marched away, leaving him alone on the convent’s muddy cobbled courtyard. Get some rest, the OC had said. As if that were possible now.
A hand touched his elbow. “Captain Fraser? It’s me, Constance. You look terrible. Let me get you a cup of tea.”
He allowed her to lead him inside, to a small chapel attached to the main sanctuary, and sat down when she indicated he should.
“I’ll be back in a moment. Don’t even think of getting up,” she warned.
The cup of tea she brought him was hot and black and he wasn’t sure he would be able to drink it. But he forced it down and was relieved when it stayed put.
“Please tell me what happened, Miss Evans,” he said, his voice hardly more than a whisper.
“She’d almost made it. Was less than a mile away. But a shell fell in the road, directly in front of her. When she swerved to avoid it, the ambulance tipped into the ditch at the side of the road. She was pinned beneath it; her leg was pinned. I’m not sure for how long. Perhaps half an hour.”
Constance took a sip of her own tea, and Robbie saw that her hands were trembling. “She regained consciousness for a minute or two. I was at her side. She wanted me to tell you—”
Her voice broke, her shoulders shaking, and Robbie was moved to take her hand in his. “She wanted you to forgive her,” Constance said. “She didn’t say why. Just asked you to forgive her.”
An icy fist of shame and regret tightened itself around Robbie’s heart. She had thought she was dying, and in that moment she had asked him to forgive her for the very things that had made him love her.
It was her courage, her tenacity, her conviction that she must do her duty, no matter the consequences to herself. That was why he loved her.
He fished in his tunic pocket, searching for the little box he had carried with him, day and night, since his return from Paris. Without opening it, he pressed the box into Constance’s hand.
“What do you think of this? Do you think she’ll like it?”
Constance opened it, gasping as she saw the ring inside. He didn’t have to look at it again to know its every detail. Instead of a diamond, the ring’s central stone was a sapphire, a quarter-inch square, the same ink-dark, fathomless blue of the lochs in which he had swum and fished as a boy. A delicate row of seed pearls, set in gold, framed the gem. The gold was an unusual color, rich and coppery, and he’d thought it would look lovely against Lilly’s ivory skin.
“When I was in Paris with Lilly, I had almost a day to myself after she left. I saw this in a jeweler’s window. It seemed perfect for her. Although it’s not very grand, as engagement rings go . . .”
Constance shook her head. “It
is
perfect for her. She’ll adore it.”
“I’d meant to give it to her straightaway, but the shelling had already begun when I returned. For a month now I’ve been trying to find a time to be alone with her, but we never had a chance.”
“You’ll have a chance very soon. Do you want another cup of tea?”
“I’m fine. Thank you for your help.”
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?”
“Once I’ve seen Lilly. Only then.”