Chapter Eight
Eight
We met at the YMCA hut and Matron handed Iso, then me, a basket.
‘I hate aimless outings,’ she said. ‘So I thought we’d collect lavender.’
‘Lavender?’ I said, holding the basket at arms-length as if it were a soiled towel.
‘Lavender, Nurse Taylor. What could be your objection?’
‘No objection, Matron. I’m just wondering what we will do with the lavender once it is collected.’
‘You will do nothing. Lavender is my distraction, as drawing is Miss Rae’s. And I’m hoping you will give up your harvest when our day is done.’
‘What will you do with it?’
‘I’ll dry some, steep some, I might even sew some into pouches and give them as gifts.’
‘How domestic,’ I said, with mock disdain. But domesticity was my fear, not hers, and now she knew it.
‘If you like,’ she said, her voice light, her brows all-knowing. ‘For me, it’s a kind of meditation.’
Iso understood and tucked her basket into the crook of her arm. I was less compliant.
‘Will there at least be a sandwich at the end of this harvest?’
‘At least,’ Matron replied. Then she gave us each a pair of surgical scissors, the kind we used to cut up gauze, and instructed us to prune lightly and not denude any one shrub. ‘It’s the end of their season, leave something for the bees,’ she said.
‘Is there a chance we’ll be stung?’ I asked. I’d never collected flowers in my life.
She raised her brows, disappointed. ‘I did not think you were so easily scared, Nurse Taylor.’ And before I could protest, ‘They are like any other creature. If you show fear they will sting. I find talking to them helps.’
‘You talk to the bees?’
‘I do.’
‘What do you talk about?’
‘That is between me and the bees,’ she said. ‘Now, shall we go?’
We walked along the road that led to Camiers – long hospital huts on our right, smaller staff huts on our left.
Lavender grew on both sides but we kept to the hospital gardens.
We went from shrub to shrub, snipping stems. The flowers around St John’s were regularly pruned and the most plentiful.
Our baskets filled but you’d never have known we’d been there.
The Canadian hospital was a different story, the lavender grew leggy and its flower heads were long and sparse and mostly dead.
‘I’m sure the staff are putting all their energy into their patients,’ Matron said, and she began to prune.
She instructed us to ‘go hard’ and to dead-head the roses while we were at it.
I remember a yellow rose with a thick and satiny scent.
I bent to a bloom that was dying. Half its petals had fallen but the rest were still perfumed.
I breathed it in, a long indulgent breath. Then I cut off its head.
We all came away with scratches. Mine were prolific.
‘Why did you not pull your sleeves down?’ Matron scolded when she saw the filigree of irritation.
I knew why but didn’t say. I’d seen the first thorn bite but I barely felt it.
There was the familiar panic, the fear that if I could not feel I could not exist, and I encouraged the second and the third.
It was only when I reached deep into the tangle of thorny branches that my flesh responded as it should.
The pain was sharp where the rosebush grabbed then scraped as I pulled my arm away.
I felt it as pleasure (like a fingernail down the spine), then exquisite relief.
I watched my skin inflame. I traced the welts and welcomed the itch.
When our baskets were almost full, we moved beyond the hospitals, past the cemetery and into the woods.
Iso led the way. She was confident in these natural spaces; she’d been living with them and painting them for a quarter of a century, but it was something I rarely appreciated.
When we walked around the camp it was easy to forget that étaples had once been a place of peace and beauty, that it had welcomed artists with its river and its sunsets, its pine and beech woods and dunes.
Before the camp, Iso once said, you would know the tide had turned, that it was coming into the estuary from the sea, by the gentle scent of brine on the air.
The river would swell, she’d said, and it would be a good time to paint.
I have no memory of smelling the sea in that place, but the woods I want never to forget.
The temperature dropped and there was a gentling of sound and light.
We all felt it, I think, because we all slowed and our conversation stopped.
Iso meandered through the trunks of beech and Matron and I were happy to follow.
She stopped to collect more flowers, but now it was asters, vervain, a spike of foxglove; her basket was a palette of purples.
They would become a still life, she said, though I have no memory of ever seeing it painted.
And now that I think about it, I don’t remember her ever drawing the flowers that grew around the camp, though they bloomed in spring and summer, and they softened that place and made living there easier.
Eventually Iso steered us to a small clearing, dappled with sunlight and various shades of green.
Matron looked around, assessing, then said, ‘This will do beautifully,’ as if the final decision was hers.
My mouth was forming around a sarcastic quip but Iso noticed and shook her head.
She was smiling; she didn’t care for acknowledgement, though I might have that wrong.
All these years later I wonder if it was simply something she was willing to forgo for a greater reward.
She watched the matron for a few moments as she surveyed the clearing for the best spot to sit.
Matron Livingstone bore herself with authority, even among the indifference of the trees, and Iso would later capture this confidence in a drawing – my quip would have only got in the way of her observation.
Matron found her spot and produced a cloth parcel from the bottom of her basket. She placed it on the ground and untied its corners. It was a neat trick and in an instant we had a picnic: a colourful shawl laid with sandwiches and three glass specimen jars filled with an amber liquid.
‘That doesn’t look healthy,’ I said, sitting on one edge of the shawl.
She smiled. ‘I like to keep my promises, nurse.’
‘Brandy?’
‘Quite a good one, in fact.’
She looked up to Iso, still standing. ‘Join us, Miss Rae, please.’
But Iso didn’t, immediately. She waited for our conversation to resume then took her own things from beneath the flowers in her basket. A small sketchpad, a pencil. We were a tableau and she drew it, so quickly I’m not sure Matron even noticed.
When Iso finally sat, Matron handed around the jars, then removed the lid of her own and raised it.
‘To a good harvest,’ she said.
We echoed and all took a sip. She was right, the brandy was good, and before Iso could replace her lid and put her jar aside, I made another toast. ‘And friendship.’ This time we clinked our jars.
‘Santé,’ I said, meeting Iso’s gaze as she had taught me.
‘If you insist,’ Matron replied and she drank without ceremony.
I filled my mouth and held the brandy long enough to feel its heat in my cheeks and on my tongue. I swallowed and felt its warmth slide into me.
‘Quite the tonic,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Matron.’
‘Alison, I think, when we are out of sight and beyond hearing.’
I smiled. ‘Thank you, Alison.’
‘You are welcome, Tilda.’
The thing I liked about Alison was the thing the debutantes feared and her peers disapproved of.
She was a force unto herself, guided by principles that resembled those of the army she represented, but were not quite the same.
I found the ambiguity irresistible. She reminded me of Emmeline Pankhurst and I was drawn to her as I’d been drawn to the leader of the WSPU, but I was wary.
Like Mrs Pankhurst, Alison was convinced of her licence to break the rules, yet I suspected she would be unforgiving of those who broke hers.
But now we had an understanding, of sorts, and we sealed it with another sip.
I turned to Iso. She had put down her specimen jar, still half full, and was sketching again.
She frowned when she looked up and found me peering.
I saw the quickly drawn exchange, two women in profile, face to face, nothing to indicate rank.
It looked friendly, though I wonder if that was because I felt the moment in that way.
Iso might have observed something else, a moment of measure, perhaps.