The Walnut Tree Read online

  It was amazing, and the most rewarding experience of my life. I could concentrate in the most appalling situations, I could remember what I had seen done and apply that knowledge myself when it was necessary. Do we all feel this way? I don’t know. I shall have to wait and ask Mary and Diana if this was true for them as well.

  Well, I could tell her that it was true in my case. And I didn’t want to lose those skills, that sharpness.

  But three days later I was heading south, meeting a convoy just north of Calais, and relieving one of the Sisters who had brought it that far.

  We had a train, and the wounded could be made more comfortable, the Sisters could watch over them far better than in an ambulance hurtling across the bleak and devastated countryside. I moved through the two carriages that I’d been assigned to cover, watching over my patients, seeing that they were kept hydrated and that any bleeding was discovered before it became dangerous.

  And all the while I thought about Dr. Philips and the others in that forward aid station. Wishing I stood beside them, or was sorting the stretchers as they came in, or was looking in on our surgical cases to be certain they were stable.

  I tried not to remember that Peter was fighting nearby.

  The crossing was stormy, and the patients we’d transferred to the ship were often seasick. I cleaned up vomit and urine and never had time to ask myself if I felt queasy.

  In Dover, the first person I saw as we were moving our stretchers to the waiting train was Diana. She hailed me from one of the carriages, came running, and enclosed me in a fierce embrace.

  I hugged her in return with the same sense of relief. I’d grown quite fond of my flatmates, and I couldn’t imagine now having gone off to Cornwall and never meeting them.

  “You’re all right, then. Mrs. Hennessey had had no news. We were worried.”

  “We were on the move, as often as not. The Front is shifting almost daily.”

  “I must see to my charges. Shall we have dinner in London?”

  “I’d like that,” I told her.

  And off she went as I returned to my own duties.

  We’d lost seven patients on the ship and another three on the way to London. Infection, fast moving, unstoppable. I had held four of them as they died and had wept for them, so close to home, so close to those they’d left behind.

  It was almost a relief in London to turn my own charges over to the next contingent of Sisters and watch the train pull out for Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Sussex, where there were now hospitals in what had once been stately homes. Even manor houses had taken in their share of ambulatory wounded, for the London hospitals couldn’t possibly have accommodated so many.

  Diana and I walked to Mrs. Hennessey’s house from the omnibus stop closest to her street. The late autumn air was surprisingly cold, and the London damp was penetrating. I’d forgot that, in northern France.

  Diana, shivering beside me, said, “I’ve heard from Mary and Bess. Barely a letter, but enough to tell me they’re well.”

  “I’ve heard very little. From anyone.”

  We opened the outer door to Mrs. Hennessey’s house and stepped into the hall out of the wind. Mrs. Hennessey herself came hurrying from her flat to greet us, and I felt I’d come home.

  “I’ve a bit of chicken,” she said, after we’d exchanged news. “I’ll put it on and we’ll have dinner. Food is getting more and more scarce. You’ll be glad of a good meal tonight, without having to go out again.”

  When, an hour later, Diana and I came down again, Mrs. Hennessey had set the table, cooked the chicken in an herb broth, and baked potatoes, carrots, and parsnips in the oven. Bustling about her kitchen humming to herself, she was glad to have company for the evening.

  Pausing while the tea was steeping in the pot, she went to the desk in her sitting room and brought back a letter.

  “This was well traveled,” she said, handing it to me. “I didn’t want to risk sending it on.”

  The envelope was stained, torn in places, my name and my direction in Cornwall nearly illegible. It was a miracle that it had reached there, much less survived to find me at Mrs. Hennessey’s in London.

  I recognized Alain’s handwriting at once. And my heart was in my throat as I opened the envelope.

  “Take it into the sitting room to read it, love,” Mrs. Hennessey said gently. “In private.”

  And so I did.

  It was written on the eve of battle, although not the one where he’d been captured, I thought. An earlier one.

  My dearest Elspeth, I hope you are safely in England and out of danger. We’ve saved Paris, somehow, but it was a near-run thing, let me tell you. The Germans got much too far down the Marne, well past Villard. I hesitate to think what the house must have suffered at their hands. Henri will be devastated. The Germans are very determined, and we shall find it very difficult convincing them to return to their own country. The war that was to end by Christmas will be lucky to end in the new year. The worst of it is that I have no expectation of speaking to your cousin before the Spring. Now I must close and see this into the pouch. You are my anchor in this nightmare, and I consider myself a very lucky man. I think of you in Cornwall, well out of this, and it gives me peace.

  But I wasn’t in Cornwall.

  “Good news?” Diana asked, coming into the sitting room.

  I took a deep breath. “A dear friend, writing to say he’s all right. Only it’s been a long time since this was written. Latest word is that he could be a prisoner.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, putting her arm around my shoulders. “Come to dinner and think about it later. There’s nothing you can do tonight.”

  True.

  I said as we went into the small dining room and took our places at Mrs. Hennessey’s table, “Did you find it hard to convince people that you were right to become a nursing Sister?”

  Diana rolled her eyes. “My parents. My brother. My friends. But I think they’re slowly coming to realize that I’m doing my part in this war. My great-aunt told me that no decent man would want to marry me now. Mrs. Hennessey can tell her that that’s not true.”

  As she passed the roasted vegetables, Mrs. Hennessey nodded. “Someone proposes at least once a week. Cheeky, if you ask me!”

  We laughed. Such proposals were a part of our days, most of them made as the sedative took effect and their pain subsided or as a frightened soldier, hardly more than a boy, dealt with severe wounds.

  “Is there no one you care for particularly?” I asked Diana.

  “Well, there’s Simon Brandon. He’s a family connection of Bess’s, and the most attractive man I’ve ever met.”

  Mrs. Hennessey tut-tutted. “Pay no attention to her. He’s the nicest young man, and he would never flirt with the likes of our Diana. She’s broken more hearts than the Army can mend.” But it was clear to me that Diana was one of Mrs. Hennessey’s favorites, for there was no censure in her tone of voice.

  “I wonder sometimes if I’ll ever truly fall in love. I like this person for his sense of humor, that one for his kindness, or another one for his cleverness,” Diana said pensively. “Finding every quality that matters to me in one man? Is it possible?”

  Mrs. Hennessey said, “I had no doubts when Mr. Hennessey came along. I can tell you that. And he made me very happy. I wasn’t to know then, was I, how few years we’d have together. But I’ll never regret marrying him.”

  Diana turned to me. “Have you found anyone in particular that you care about?”

  I could feel myself flushing.

  “Oh, do tell!” Diana said at once. “Is he anyone we know?”

  I tried to adopt the same light tone. “He’s the brother of a school friend. I was madly in love with him when I was thirteen. Sadly, he’s much older and he hardly knew I existed. He told me so himself.”

  They laughed, as I’d meant
for them to, and commiserated with me on my misfortune in love. I couldn’t tell them that he was the one who was missing, possibly a prisoner. I hadn’t quite learned to show my feelings as easily as Diana could, or even Mary. Lady Elspeth was always expected To Set a Good Example. Sister Elspeth had yet to lose that aspect of her upbringing in an Earl’s household.

  Still it was a cheerful meal, and I found myself enjoying it. The very ordinariness of it drew me into this circle of friendship. All of my flatmates were of good breeding, and I was very glad I could appear to be one of them, rather than set apart by an accident of birth. I’d grown up with a personal maid to dress me and a footman to run my errands, a coachman to take me wherever I wished to go, before my father replaced him with a motorcar and a chauffeur. My meals were served to me, rather than dishes passed around the table for each person to help him- or herself. I was accustomed to dressing for dinner and having wine with each course.

  Did I miss all that? I was beginning to think that it belonged to another world, one I had shared with my father. Without him, I wasn’t sure I wished to return to it.

  I was glad to go up to our flat and prepare for bed. Diana and I were very tired, and we didn’t linger over our tea. Mrs. Hennessey wished us a good night, and as Diana and I climbed the stairs, Diana said, “I wonder sometimes if I’ll look back on this war as one of the happiest—and the saddest—periods of my life.”

  I knew what she meant. In spite of the fatigue, the heartbreaks, the nightmares, doing something that mattered had become more important to me with every passing day.

  I was grateful after all for this respite in England. But I longed to be back in France.

  And soon enough, I was.

  Growing up I had known the names of all the proper regiments—the Scots Greys, the Guards, the Argyle and Sutherland, the Household Cavalry, the Buffs, and so on. But the lines were becoming blurred as they were depleted and new recruits were brought in to replace officers and men who had been wounded or killed. In place of old family names were those from small towns across England, Scotland, and Wales. A very different Army, but one none the less that fought bravely and did its best to hold the line against the Germans. But as the line wavered, so did our casualties increase.

  Day after day we worked to keep as many alive as possible. For two weeks, Bess Crawford was posted to my sector, and we worked together as a team, side by side almost without talking, each of us instinctively knowing what the other required.

  And then she was transferred to a new station, where her skills were badly needed. Not twenty-four hours later, we were moved back, before the morning’s assault across No Man’s Land.

  I’d never traveled with so little before this, except when I left France in such a hurry. My kit consisted of essentials, pared down to uniforms and washing powder for them, a comb and brush, face powder, a toothbrush and tooth powder, and a second pair of sturdy shoes, a rain cape, and my nail case, to keep them short and clean. My one luxury was my letter box.

  Even as a young girl, my trunks were packed for me by my maid, and included dinner dresses, riding clothes, suitable daytime dresses for making calls, gowns for evening parties or going to the opera, country walking clothes, and a proper dark dress for Sunday services or sudden deaths. With them went slips and camisoles, stockings and other undergarments. Added to that were hats and gloves, shoes and jewelry, the latter carried by my maid. My father generally took me everywhere he went, and I was expected to be turned out in style. The trunks and hatboxes and valises were sent to the railway station an hour before our own departure, and they arrived wherever we were going shortly after we crossed the threshold.

  I had, I thought, learned to do without so many things, not just trunks of clothing. I wondered what my cousin Kenneth would have made of that. I wondered too how I was to return to that old life once the war was over.

  Half an hour later, we’d reached our next destination only to be told that there was fierce fighting in the sector to our left, and we were held up, waiting for further news.

  A trickle of wounded appeared out of the darkness, and we began to treat them, with orders to keep as quiet as possible. And then a stretcher party arrived at the run, and Sister Blake went forward to assess the severity of the wound. She called over her shoulder, “Sister Douglas—come quickly.”

  I did, to find a Highlander lying on the makeshift stretcher, a third man keeping pressure on a leg wound. It didn’t take me long to see that an artery had been nicked by a piece of shrapnel, and I went to work quickly, speaking to the man in Gaelic, telling him that he would be all right. But I couldn’t be sure. We put on a tourniquet, and after the worst of the bleeding stopped, I called for the doctor to decide whether we could operate to sew up the tear. My fear was the man had lost too much blood already, but even with the tourniquet I couldn’t be certain there was no internal seepage that would kill him before we could do any more.

  As the doctor walked over to us, one of the men with the wounded soldier said, “Ye must save him, he’s the laird’s foster brother.”

  I saw that the speaker was a piper—they often served as medical orderlies or stretcher bearers, brave men that they were.

  “We’ll do our best,” I promised, and then the doctor was there, shaking his head as he examined the leg.

  “It doesn’t look good,” he said to me under his breath. “Bind the wound tightly and pray that it clots sufficiently to save him.”

  I worked on, even when the order came to move at once, saying to the three Highlanders who had brought him in, “Keep watch. We dare not move him yet. The jolting could reopen that artery.”

  The others were calling to me to come at once, but I refused, staying with the wounded man and his attendants.

  I understood what he represented. He was the laird’s foster brother, the clansman that the laird’s parents chose to bring up with him, servant and companion and kinsman all in one. He was often the son of the wet nurse called in to care for the newborn heir, and the bond between these two was as strong if not stronger than a bond of blood. The clansmen who had brought him to us had been ordered by the laird, obviously an officer in their company, to take the foster brother to the nearest aid station, and although they were clearly worried about the rest of their comrades, their duty was never questioned.

  We waited for over half an hour, the sounds of fighting coming closer all the time, and I could see the muzzle flashes of a machine gunner across the expanse of shell pits, blasted trees, barbed wire, and mud that lay between him and our own lines. And then the machine gun nest was knocked out, the assault turned in our favor, and the next thing we knew, the front line was surging forward, leaving us in a quiet eddy in its wake.

  I examined the wound for the hundredth time, it seemed, and found that the bleeding had stopped. It was important to release the tourniquet at intervals, or the leg would be lost whether the bleeding stopped or not. And I had watched each time for signs that the tear in the artery was widening.

  Finally I stood up, my legs aching from kneeling beside the stretcher on the rough earth, my apron and uniform covered in blood and mud and whatever else had been trampled into the soil as armies surged back and forth across it.

  The Highlanders were on their feet as well. They had kept guard, rifles at the ready, during our long, anxious vigil, and they spoke to the wounded man now, their voices husky with relief.

  We carried him back to where the aid station had been set up. After he had been seen to, his bandages changed and something given to him for the pain, his companions hurried back to the lines and their sector. I was summoned and dressed down for insubordination.

  I listened meekly, letting the doctor’s fear and anger wash over me. He’d have had a great deal of explaining to do if I’d been taken prisoner, even as lowly Sister Douglas, and yet he had had the safety of his entire station to think of. I had put him in a very difficult posi
tion, and I was aware of that.

  Finally out of words, his anger draining away, he said, “And what do you have to say for yourself?”

  “I have no excuse, sir. I thought only of the needs of the wounded man, and no one else. It was not well done on my part. But he’s alive, and I can’t help but feel that if I’d moved him—or left him to the ministrations of his companions—he wouldn’t have been. They meant well, but they had no training.”

  “You have to remember, Sister, that we are here to save as many lives as possible, but that means on occasion we must make decisions about who will live and who will die. We cannot devote time needed by others to a hopeless case, however much we might wish to look for a miracle.”

  “I understand. I should not have put the entire aid station in jeopardy.”

  He made a frustrated noise, half a grunt, half a curse. “In truth, I should send you back to England to be disciplined. But you’re a damned good nurse, young woman, and we need you. Do I have your word you will obey orders in future? Without question or delay?”

  “I promise I will keep in mind that putting others at risk is wrong.”

  It was hardly my word given, but how could I promise when I didn’t know what could happen in future?

  Still, he was satisfied, and after a moment, considering me as if trying to read my mind, he nodded and walked back to the line of wounded.

  Several hours later, I looked in on the foster brother, and I found him resting comfortably, very little seepage from the wound showing up on his bandages.

  He was to be taken back to hospital with the next group, and I thought it was very likely now that he would live. I told him so in Gaelic, and he said, “Bless you, Sister.”

  Four days later, when there was a lull in the fighting, an officer came into the aid station searching for me.

  I was just finishing bandaging a stomach wound. When that was done to my satisfaction, I walked out to find Rory Douglas standing there.

  Throwing my arms around him, I held him close. I could still see the raw scar where his head wound had been, the way his hair had not yet grown back across the long groove that could just as easily have killed him.