Poppy in the Field Read online

  We had a man in last week who’d thrown back a grenade a little too late and lost most of his left arm because of it. He was tidied up at a clearing station (his arm was amputated) then he came to us and slept for a couple of days. When he woke, he realised that his wedding ring had gone along with his left arm, and asked if we could enquire for it at the clearing station! I had to explain that the ring had probably got lost when the grenade exploded, but that anyway the surgeons and theatre nurses were much too busy to search through amputated limbs in search of a ring. ‘My missus will be that cross!’ he said, and was worried about the loss of it, poor chap, but I assured him that she’d be so happy to see him that she wouldn’t even notice.

  Do write soon, Ma, and let me know how you all are.

  Much love,

  Poppy

  Chapter Sixteen

  The young soldier had been brought into Ward 5 of the Casino Hospital because he had no label tied to him with any other destination, and the ambulance men didn’t know what else to do with him. Somehow, during the process of being brought from battlefield to hospital, he’d also lost his jacket and trousers and now, wearing no more than a vest, long pants and a gold cross and chain, he was covered all over in dirt and grit. It coated his eyelids, stuck to his hair, filled his nostrils and ears, and had even got inside his mouth.

  He didn’t seem to have any life-threatening injuries, however, so Sister told Poppy to get the worst of the debris off him, and then let him sleep. He did sleep, but panted rather than breathed and woke every hour or so to scream that he was being buried alive. When he did this, he would kick off the coverlet and tear at the sheets and make great clawing movements with his hands.

  Sister asked him what had happened, but he just looked at her, agitated and wild-eyed, and shook his head.

  ‘I don’t believe it’ll help him to talk about it yet,’ Sister said to Poppy as they stood beside his bed. ‘He’s still in shock. He should go in a quiet room where he can’t disturb the others, really. But then again, being here in the midst of things may help him to realise he’s with us now and quite safe.’ She sighed. ‘The medical textbooks I read when I was training didn’t cover this type of thing.’

  Their patient gave a sudden, very loud shriek, startling the rest of the ward. ‘Help me!’ he cried. ‘I can’t see! Can’t hear!’

  ‘You’re all right now,’ Sister began.

  ‘I can’t breathe!’ he screamed, then, seemingly exhausted, slumped and closed his eyes.

  Every so often the whole performance was repeated – so much so that some of the other Ward 5 patients who also suffered with their nerves began to get agitated and jumpy, and Sister decided that he should be moved to the small single room usually kept for men with bad facial injuries. This, however, seemed to make him worse, and Poppy, who had a half-day off and was going out with Tilly and Dot, was worried in case Sister asked her to forgo this and stay to keep an eye on him. Happily, one of the orderlies volunteered instead.

  At noon Poppy gave out the dinner trays as usual, then said goodbye to the boys in the ward (‘Who’re you going off to meet, then?’ and ‘Have you got a date, nurse?’ came the cries). She went to her basement cubicle to put on her outdoor uniform. She had a choice between straw hat and felt hat, and deliberated for some minutes as to which she should wear, but eventually decided that although the straw was more flattering, it wasn’t yet summery enough for it to be worn.

  ‘Tilly and I have got the car again,’ Dot announced, coming into Poppy’s cubicle and perching on her bed, ‘and today we’re going on a picnic!’

  ‘How lovely,’ Poppy said. ‘But I don’t know what I can contribute.’

  ‘Oh, we’ve been collecting bits and pieces,’ said Tilly, for the two American girls got frequent food parcels from home. ‘I’m sure none of us will go hungry.’

  Poppy thought about it for a while, then, deciding that the chocolate chickens she’d bought for Jane and Mary would have to be sacrificed to the day’s enjoyment, put them into her canvas bag.

  The car was parked in the square outside the hospital, a different car from last time and not quite so large.

  ‘We’ve already had a gallon of gas delivered to Mairi,’ Dot said, ‘and we’ve got a spare can in the boot. Just in case.’

  As Poppy was about to get in the back of the car, there was a shout of ‘Hello, Pearson!’.

  All three girls turned to see Doctor Michael Archer coming across the square, waving and smiling.

  ‘Well, who’s this?’ Tilly murmured, but Poppy didn’t have time to answer before he reached them.

  ‘You three young ladies aren’t neglecting your duties, I hope!’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Poppy said. ‘We’ve done our duties today. We’ve got an afternoon off.’

  Dot, standing next to her, gave a little false cough.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ Poppy said. ‘These are my friends, Nurse Dorothy Manning and Nurse Matilda Butt. This is Doctor Michael Archer.’

  ‘Do call me Michael, please.’

  ‘Certainly,’ Dot said immediately. ‘And you must call us by our first names, Dot and Tilly.’

  Michael raised his eyebrows at Poppy. ‘What, even call Pearson here by her first name?’

  ‘Of course!’ Dot said. ‘We never call her anything but Poppy.’

  ‘Ah!’ Michael said. ‘When we were at Netley, the first names of VADs and nurses were kept a deadly secret. So it’s Poppy, is it?’

  Poppy, embarrassed, didn’t reply.

  Looking from one to the other, Tilly laughed. ‘You Brits are so terribly formal. You need to loosen up a little!’

  Michael seemed amused. ‘Then I’m sure you’re the very pair to teach us. And where are you off to on this lovely day?’

  ‘A picnic,’ Dot said. ‘Would you like to come?’

  Poppy gave a little gasp of surprise, partly at Dot’s forwardness and partly because everyone knew that doctors and nurses weren’t supposed to fraternise.

  ‘Well,’ came his answer, ‘it just so happens that a doctor friend and I had planned to go on a little excursion this afternoon.’

  ‘But we’re not allowed to –’ Poppy began.

  ‘But we are!’ Tilly said.

  ‘And if it also just so happened that three hard-working nurses were, on their time off, picnicking in the same place at the same time as two equally hard-working doctors, who could be blamed? No one!’ said Michael. ‘Now, where are you going, exactly?’

  Dot, who had a rough map with her, showed him and pointed out the bluebell woods. ‘We might be slightly late in the year for them,’ she said, ‘but apparently it’s always very pleasant in that area, and there’s a lake and so on.’

  ‘I hope to see you there, then,’ Michael said. He looked at Poppy, gave her something which was suspiciously like a wink and went on his way.

  ‘What a lovely boy!’ Dot said, looking after him admiringly. ‘How come you never told us about him?’

  ‘Because there’s nothing to tell,’ Poppy said. She thought about it. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Hmm . . . Not really, the girl says,’ Tilly remarked. ‘There’s a wealth of meaning in those two words.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean!’

  ‘Well,’ said Tilly, ‘if you’re really sure there’s nothing to tell, kindly point him in my direction.’

  *

  It turned out that the bluebells were almost over, but under the pine trees they still showed as a rolling carpet of hazy blue. Dot, searching for the perfect picnic spot, led them on and on around the lake and Poppy, breathing in the subtle fragrance of woodland flowers, felt almost relaxed for the first time in ages. She’d been so busy, so caught up in the patients’ lives, that there had hardly been time to consider her own.

  So, she thought, she’d loved Freddie and it hadn’t worked out, but listening to other girls’ talk, how many first loves ever did? There would be other romances, surely? She’d work as hard as she could, see out the war (ho
wever long that took), become a proper, trained nurse – and, after that, there would be plenty of time to think about romance and love and all those sorts of things. A wisp of a thought about Michael Archer crept into her mind and was quickly dismissed. No, she didn’t want to fall in love now – it was too dangerous. She could remember her friend Jameson saying back in Netley that a girl only had to get a diamond ring on her finger for her fiancé to be announced as Missing. Besides, Michael was such a joker – how could a girl ever believe anything he said?

  ‘Hello!’ Michael Archer’s voice echoed across the lake, and the nurses turned to wave to the two figures who’d appeared a couple of hundred yards behind them. ‘Are you nurses ready to be accidentally bumped into by two doctors?’

  ‘Well, sure!’ Dot called back.

  Michael Archer and his colleague, James Turner, had both qualified as doctors at the same time. Whereas Michael was of average height, James was very tall with a shock of fair hair and a broad Scottish accent which Dot seemed to find very appealing. In a kitbag James carried a small primus stove in a fireproof box, a tin kettle and a brown glazed teapot, and the tea he brewed was served in condensed-milk tin mugs. Once the tea was made and drunk, Michael, using the same kettle, soft-boiled five eggs he’d found under a farmyard hedge, and buttered slices of fresh white bread, which he cut into soldiers.

  Dot and Tilly were enchanted – and Poppy was quite enchanted, too, for of all the boys she knew (admittedly not many) she didn’t know any who could so much as butter a slice of bread for themselves, let alone boil an egg.

  When the eggs and soldiers had been eaten, Tilly and Dot brought out their contribution to the picnic – ham and pickles, a Swiss roll and a jar of honey – and Poppy put her two chocolate chickens into the mix.

  The conversation naturally turned to things medical, and Poppy struggled to keep up, for she was the only one who had no proper qualifications. She was deeply interested, however, in hearing the others discuss the latest findings on such things as gas blindness, trauma and gangrene, and to learn that medics had even begun doing blood transfusions person-to-person on the field.

  They spoke about some of the boys they’d looked after who’d pulled through despite having terrible injuries, and Poppy mentioned the boy who’d come in only that morning, who was rather disrupting the whole ward.

  ‘He arrived in the back of an ambulance with no visible wounds,’ she said. ‘We don’t even know where he’s from.’

  ‘What did he look like?’ James asked.

  ‘It’s hard to say,’ Poppy replied. ‘He’d lost his jacket and trousers along the way and he was a kind of dusty mud colour all over. His skin was the same colour as his hair. He even had mud in his mouth, poor chap. Oh, and he was wearing a gold cross and chain.’

  ‘I saw him. He came through our clearing station!’ Michael exclaimed. He thought for a moment, then he said, ‘I remember now – he was in a mining accident. I examined him, prescribed a sedative and tied a label to his toe giving my recommendation. Private O’Toole, his name was. I remembered that because my CO has the same name.’

  ‘The label must have come off somewhere down the line,’ Poppy said. ‘But do you know what actually happened to him? I’m sure Sister would be really interested.’

  ‘I was told that O’Toole was working with a dozen other lads tunnelling under the German lines in order to blow them to Kingdom Come. Something went drastically wrong, there was a huge explosion and the whole lot – boys, spades, shells and kit – went right up in the air and crashed down again. Most of the lads working there were killed instantly. Two crawled out, but they died of their injuries shortly after. An absolutely tragic story.’ Michael shook his head sadly. ‘But then this whole foul thing is one big tragedy.’

  ‘How horrendous. So it was all for nothing?’ Dot asked.

  Michael nodded. ‘The tunnel they were digging turned out to be a mass grave.’

  ‘So how on earth did this O’Toole chap get out?’ Poppy asked.

  ‘Apparently he was six feet under and two sandbags had fallen across him, pinning him down. His arm was sticking up, though, and they just saw the tips of his fingers showing above the ground. He had the sense to wriggle them so they knew he was still alive.’

  Tilly gasped. ‘How did he breathe?’

  ‘Another sandbag had fallen just in front of him, leaving a pocket of air around his face. He was buried for four or five hours before anyone could reach him, so I’m not surprised he’s got the jitters now.’

  ‘I’d better tell Sister that the little back room without windows isn’t the right place for him then . . .’

  ‘No! He’d be much better off on the balcony, out in the fresh air,’ Michael said.

  There was a pause in the general conversation, and James began showing Dot and Tilly how the primus stove worked.

  ‘So, Pearson. Your name’s Poppy, then, is it?’ Michael said.

  ‘Have you really only just found out?’

  He smiled his wide smile. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘I asked your brother as soon as I met him.’ He paused. ‘I think I shall still call you Pearson, however. It reminds me of Netley and how we met.’

  Poppy smiled, for some reason absurdly pleased with this answer.

  ‘How is your brother, by the way? Is he behaving himself?’

  ‘He seems all right,’ Poppy said. ‘He’s put his name down to be a stretcher-bearer. As long as he doesn’t have to fight again, I think he’ll be all right. He’s just not cut out to be a soldier, to kill people.’

  ‘When it comes to it, not many lads are. But unfortunately most of them don’t find that out until they reach the front.’

  The two doctors had only four hours off duty so went back to their hospital shortly after the picnic. Michael bid a friendly goodbye to all three girls, and said he hoped he’d see them soon, but it was Poppy he was looking at and Poppy’s hand he pressed as he said his farewells. Dot and Tilly didn’t see, either, the kiss which he blew her from the other side of the lake, which she was too flustered to return.

  When Poppy got back to the hospital, there was a letter from Billy waiting for her.

  8903 D Company

  Hi Sis

  How are you doing? All quiet here, which means that at the moment i don’t have to go out picking up bodies. We have some blokes from the Australian army billeted next to us: big lads, they are twice the size of us so it’s good that they are on are side. They call us Poms or Pommies (dunno why) and are allways making jokes and larking about. When it comes to a ten mile trek tho, or digging out an eight foot deep trench, they are the boys.

  I have heard from ma now. It was a funny letter with prayers in it she wants me to say evry night. She said two women she knows have lost there sons and she goes to church twice a day lighting candles and so on so that i don’t die. What good this will do i don’t no.

  Do you ever get any ciggies donated for your patients? I was wondering if you could send me one or two packets, if you have any spare. They are good currency here you can swop a couple for a bar of chocolate or whatever. I could also do with a few thick pares of socks not for me but to sell on, the Australians don’t seem to have stuff like that and there is money to be made if you keep your wits about you. Make sure they are big sizes.

  The guns are booming again, they never bloody stop do they. Let me know what you are up to (don’t forget the ciggies).

  Love, Billy.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Private O’Toole was on the balcony in a basket chair, his hands gripping the railing in front of him, his eyes fixed on the watery sun in the sky. Since he’d arrived at the Casino Hospital he’d improved a great deal. His paperwork had been located, his family written to, and though he still woke at least once in the night, yelling, believing he was still under the ground, during the day he was cheerful enough.

  Poppy, after taking round the dinner trays, went on to the balcony to find him before the food arrived. ‘Are you coming i
n for your dinner?’ she asked. ‘Steak and kidney pie today.’

  He shook his head. ‘Can my dinner come out here to me?’

  ‘I’ll ask Sister . . .’

  The same scenario happened every day, unless it was raining. The minute Private O’Toole was up, he’d ask to go on the balcony. He loved being outside so much that Sister had his bed moved to the far end of the ward and, if he couldn’t sleep at night, he’d stand by the open window, throw his arms back and breathe deeply. Sister realised it was something to do with the trauma he’d been through, but he wouldn’t talk about it and said he’d always liked being out in the fresh air.

  He’d palled up with Private Booker, who was the only other patient in Ward 5 who didn’t have a visible injury. Booker had been bayoneted in the stomach and the exterior wound had healed well. His injury apparently superficial, he was being kept under observation until the doctors were sure he didn’t have any internal injuries. He was quite happy to be observed in this way and was hoping that it might continue for the rest of the war. To this end, he’d taken to getting into bed and uttering faint moans whenever there was a doctor around.

  Sister already had her suspicions about him and was all for packing him back to his unit for light duties, but the doctors weren’t certain yet. His case was helped, too, by the fact that the hospital wasn’t terribly busy at that time and he could be spared a bed. A rumour had begun, however, about masses of weapons being stockpiled for a Big Push, and everyone knew when that started it would be a case of freeing up as many beds as quickly as possible for the casualties that would come in day and night. In the meantime, Privates Booker and O’Toole, both seemingly quiet and inoffensive chaps, would sit on the balcony and do jigsaws together, or – as they were both ‘up patients’ – put on their ‘hospital blues’ and go out for a walk.