But there is one I haven't posted yet. It was written for the British Libraries' Pathfinder Projects to commemorate World War I. The Leeds project included an in-depth look at the Gledhow Scrapbook, a compilation made by Edith Cliff, Matron of the Hall when it was a convalescent hospital for the injured ranking soldiers. We had a trip out to the hall...
In the scrapbook is a poem. 'Lady Maude', which tells the story of a typical, fictitious VAD - a body of volunteer nurses who looked after the soldiers. That, combined with the fact that the soldiers had a mascot doll dressed up in uniform and bandaged as if injured, formed the backbone of the story.
Looking for Lady Maude
‘She weary toils from morn ‘til night
With heavy eyes and cheeks so white,
She suffers from a “Housemaid’s
Knee”,
The Lady Maude – a VAD…’
Where
was Lady Maude? He kept looking for her.
Ever since he had heard one of the VADs reading out the poem a few days
ago, he had tried to find her. It was important to keep occupied while he was
like this, and as all he could do was stare, he stared into the face of every
VAD who came near him, just to check if it were Lady Maude.
They
had put him with two others who seemed to share the same affliction; he thought
of them as Tommy and Jock. Tommy was a
strong looking fellow with strange, blond hair that was definitely not
regulation. He, too, had sergeant stripes, but there was an odd, feminine cast
to his mouth. A sergeant shouldn’t look
like that, flowing hair and strange rosebud lips. It wasn’t natural. Jock was a little chap, small and dark with
intense eyes that had seen too much. He
wore his Highland Regiment cap at a jaunty angle, but he was in regular
fatigues like the rest of them, no kilt, no socks with clocks.
He
didn’t know what regiment Jock was from, or Tommy, for that matter. He wanted to ask, but Jock and Tommy didn’t
say much. Didn’t say anything, not even
when the VADs came to check on them.
None of them said anything. Like
Jock and Tommy, he had no voice, either, so he couldn’t even ask if he’d got
their names right.
Maybe
they didn’t know their names; he hadn’t known his, until one of the VADs, after
settling him more comfortably in his chair one day, turned to her colleague.
‘Who’s
this, then? Doesn’t he have a name?’
‘Of
course he has a name! This is Sergeant Michael Cassidy. You’re a terribly brave soldier, aren’t you,
Sergeant?’ the second VAD had said.
She
stroked his hair, but he couldn’t feel it.
He
couldn’t feel anything.
***
One
day, Michael realised he had dark hair.
This
morning’s VADs – neither of whom had been Lady Maude – had sat him near the
window with a kind word, and once they had gone, he realised he could see his
own reflection there. He had dark hair
that curled in a boyish fashion, and dark, staring eyes with long eyelashes.
The
VADs had taken Tommy and Jock away, and he wondered why. They hadn’t said.
Sometimes
he wondered what was wrong with him, other than not being able to talk. Other
than being confused as to who he was and why he was here.
He
stared, unblinking, at his reflection in the window, at the window…
Through
the window, at grass, and trees, and gravel paths. He wondered if it was crunchy underfoot,
noisy and rough, and how hard it was to get along it in a bath chair. He could see one now, the soldier in it was
smiling, delighted to be in a bath chair with a VAD struggling to push him
along. Rough. The gravel must be rough since it seemed very
difficult to push the soldier. He
wondered if the VAD was Lady Maude, but she was too far away to be sure. He knew he would recognise her, though, when
he saw her.
He
noticed two familiar figures with the soldier; Tommy and Jock. He was startled to see that Jock’s right arm
was in a sling, and Tommy had a bandage around his left knee.
On
a table beside Michael’s seat was a book, the scrapbook from which the VADs had
read the poem about Lady Maude. Today,
though, he saw a group photograph of many soldiers, gathered outside the house
– an impressive building, very beautiful with huge windows. Perhaps he was looking out of the very same
window now? It was a comforting thought, even though he was sure it was wrong.
At
the side of the photograph was a handwritten list detailing the names of the
soldiers and their injuries. As he
looked it over, he wondered whether Tommy was Pte Green (sprained knee). And Jock? Was he perhaps Pte Baker (gunshot
wound, right arm)?
He
wished he could ask them.
He
wished they could tell him.
He
wondered if they even knew; after all, he hadn’t known his own name before the
VAD had said it.
‘Oh,
Sergeant, are you left inside on your own?’
The
voice was gently brisk, if there was such a thing; another of the VADs. She
bent over him and he looked into her face.
Kindness, gentleness, exhaustion… he saw them all there. Could this be
Lady Maude?
But
no.
‘Corporal
Millar’s looking a little glum. Why
don’t you sit with him for a while, cheer him up?’
Carefully
she lifted him from his chair. Was he
paralysed as well as mute? Certainly, he couldn’t feel anything, any touch of
her arms around him as she bore him away.
‘We
just need to sort out a dressing for you first; can’t have you appearing amongst
the men without your wound dressed, can we, Sergeant?’ she said, carefully
settling him down while she deftly bandaged his foot. ‘There. Is that better?’
She
bore him off again without waiting for an answer, which was perhaps a good
thing, as he couldn’t feel the dressing, or the injury.
He
couldn’t feel anything.
***
Corporal
Millar shared a hut in the gardens with someone – the second bed was made
tidily, and a neat little stack of kit at its foot proclaimed an occupant. The hut was small, decorated, had a wooden
roof and walls, and lots of fresh air.
Millar
had a sorry look to him. His left foot
was swathed in bandages, just like Sergeant Cassidy’s, and for a moment while they
stared at each other, Millar was as still and expressionless as a porcelain
doll.
‘I’ve
brought Sergeant Cassidy to visit you, Corporal,’ the VAD said in a cheery
voice. ‘He doesn’t say much – quiet sort
of a chap – but he’s an excellent listener.
I’ll come back for him later – he mustn’t be out too long, this is his first
day up.’
It
was nice to be out in the fresh air, to have company who would talk to him. Oh,
the VADs tried, but they were so efficient, so stiff in their starched uniforms
and regimented smiles. And when he
didn’t answer, they tended not to try to start a conversation again, not beyond
the niceties.
But
Millar was different. He looked at Michael
for a few minutes and lit a cigarette.
‘Where
did you serve, then? What regiment? We
were at Vimy, so they told us… Can you trust them, though? I mean, really? I don’t like to say it, but…’
he lowered his voice. ‘Saw so many good
men lost, you have to wonder why… No, no
don’t listen to me; it’s just tiredness talking. Wounded in the foot, like me? Gun go off when you were cleaning it?
Happens. You can’t be too careful with
guns.’
Later,
another VAD – still not Lady Maude – carried Michael off to the house and sat
him down beside Tommy and Jock.
He
wondered about their soldier, in the bathchair, if he’d fought at Vimy, maybe,
if you could trust them.
The
days rolled on. One morning, he
discovered his foot had healed, but that he couldn’t wear his smart peaked cap
because his head was swathed in bandages.
But the VADs (Angels, they looked like angels, beautiful, tired,
stiff-starched angels), they took him to a hut where a chap had a gunshot wound
to the head, and Michael thought himself lucky; this fellow had a dressing over
his eye, too, and talked about how he’d never again be able to tell when he’d
had enough beer to drink – he wouldn’t be seeing double in future.
Michael’s
head got better, he wore his peaked cap once more, but then his left arm had
something unfortunate happen to it, and he went to a hut where Private Saunders
(gunshot wound, left forearm) was wearing a black sling, and he sat down with
him and waited to hear the story of how it had happened.
And
it rained and the sun shone and he spent time indoors and time outside, and
then he somehow lost track and everything went dark…
***
And
time passed.
The
darkness lifted, just a little and he heard a voice.
‘Oh,
here you are!’ The VAD smiled at him and
reached out to touch his dark curls, stroke his face. He lay staring, broken. An angel. That’s what she looked like, an
angel. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had spoken to him, couldn’t
remember anything since the darkness.
There had been something about a VAD,
a lady who left everything refined behind her to volunteer with the
soldiers, to nurse them and mop up after them and restrain them while they
screamed and raged… and recovered and went away to be shot at again…
Lady
Maude. How could he have forgotten? He had never really stopped looking for her.
Tender,
gentle hands. Hands with rough, reddened
skin and short, broken nails. Hands that
smelled of carbolic.
‘Oh,
my dear friend, oh, Sergeant, what happened to you?’
He
didn’t know. He didn’t remember. All those years, the soldiers, the VADs, the
different injuries… The bandages, the
cigarettes. Guest of honour at the
Christmas Entertainment, watching Tommy and Jock ride in a staff car… his
friend Corporal Millar (gunshot wound, left foot, self-inflicted he had
confessed to Michael one long day of rain when nobody else could hear). Accidental discharge of weapon, it said on
the report; the Captain had been kind that day.
So
they had sat, Millar and Cassidy, and Millar had looked into Michael’s dark
eyes and whispered, ‘I bet it was like that for you, too, wasn’t it, old chum?’
and Michael had said nothing, which was as good as a yes to Millar, who leaned
forward, full of emotion in the eyes, and shook his hand.
‘You’re
a good fellow, Cassidy. I’ll be all
right now. You’ll see.’
And
that was how it had been; Michael bore their injuries – left foot, gunshot to
the head, compound fracture, right femur – and they saw his bandages echo their
own, and they got better. And he – he
suffered. Without feeling their pain,
still he carried it, carried it into the long darkness of the post-war peace,
the strangeness of later, the attic where something fell and crushed him,
really broke him, shattering his limbs...
And
then the forever night…
‘Don’t
you know me, Michael?’ The soft voice brought him back. She reached out to take his hand, and
suddenly he was flooded with warmth and heat, and colour flew around him, and
he felt the frisson of her hand, the pressure of her touch and he realised who
she was, and he was, and he felt his face smile, he blinked his dark, still,
unblinking eyes.
‘Lady
Maude,’ he said, finding a voice at last, words, at last. ‘You’re my Lady Maude.’
Her
smile widened and she nodded and he understood, finally, why he had never found
her before; he had been looking in the wrong place, in the face of each
VAD. But, just as he was not only
Sergeant Michael Cassidy, porcelain doll and hospital mascot, but was every
injured soldier whose bandages he had ever mimicked, so he saw that Lady Maude
wasn’t just any VAD; she was every VAD ever, and she had come back for him.
‘Come
along. It’s time to go home, young man.’
She
took his hands and she tugged him up out of his broken body, out of his
darkness and he stood tall and renewed and strong at her side, and he slipped
his arm around her shoulders, smiling down as she smiled up, and together they
left the darkness and the ghosts of all the VADs and the broken body of a
porcelain mascot doll in sergeant’s uniform, and together they went into the
light.
Disclaimer: This is a work of
fiction. Any names or places used are
either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely accidental
and .
Quote from ‘The VAD’ taken from the
Gledhow Hall Scrapbook.
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