Jed opened his eyes. His mouth twitched in a tiny, wry smile before remembrance flickered across his features and he closed his eyes again

The next day Ellen reported to duty, and was amazed at the orderly chaos that life at Royaumont had become. Staff were sleeping in barns and on chairs; night and day staff shared beds. Patients were everywhere – every bench and board had been used to create makeshift beds for the more able patients, and stretchers lined the hallways as men, groaning and bleeding, waited for surgery.

Ellen worked for 18 hours straight, assisting Miss Ivens in the theatre, before she finally stumbled off duty, filthy and exhausted. It was past midnight, and she could hear the shelling.

Sometimes the impact shook the rafters, and once that evening they’d had to go down to the cellars. When they emerged again, a huge crater had appeared in the field behind the abbey, which was bathed in moonlight.

After tidying herself as best she could and bolting down a cup of tea and a piece of bread and butter, Ellen went in search of Jed.

She found him in the Blanche de Castille ward, lying in bed with a bulky bandage covering his right shoulder and what was left of his arm.

Remembrance

He was sleeping, and she watched him for a moment, noting the grey streaks in his dark hair, the shadows on his face, the new lines from nose to mouth.

She felt near tears again and she willed them back. Then Jed opened his eyes. His mouth twitched in a tiny, wry smile before remembrance flickered across his features and he closed his eyes again.

“Hello, Jed,” Ellen whispered. “How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know,” He replied. His voice was scratchy and he cleared his throat. “They’ve given me something for the pain.”

“That’s good.” He opened his eyes and glanced down at his arm. “I suppose.”

“At least you’re alive.”

“There’s that,” Jed agreed. “Although what use I’ll be to anyone, I don’t know. You can’t pitch hay with one arm.”

“Oh, Jed.” Quickly Ellen dashed the tears from her eyes before he could see them. She sat on the stool by his bed. “You might be surprised by what you can do. We’ve had a few convalescents through here, and they soon get the hang of things. A man with no arms at all can hold a pen between his toes!”

Anger lit up Jed’s eyes and he glared at her. “Do you think I want that? To be some kind of circus freak?” “Oh, Jed, I didn’t mean –”

“No.” He closed his eyes again. “I didn’t mean it, Ellen, I’m sorry.” He took a deep breath that shuddered through him.

“But I don’t want to talk about me or what you think I’ll be able to do with one arm. I can’t.”

“I understand,” she said. He opened his eyes and studied her. “It’s been a long time, Ellen.”

“Six years.”

“A lot has happened to both of us, I reckon.” “Yes. I’m sorry about your son, Jed. Aunt Rose wrote to me when it happened.”

Despair

Pain flickered across his face and he nodded. “Thank you.” Ellen felt that anything she said would be inadequate to the moment, and so she remained silent.

“When I was in the trenches,” Jed said after a long silence, “I used to picture the island. I’d walk down the lanes in my mind and imagine every tree, every leaf. I could see the sun on the fields, turning them to gold, and how the frost tipped the grass, turning it silver.

“I could hear the waves lapping the shore, see how blue-green they looked in the summer sunshine. I saw it all, Ellen.” His voice choked and he turned his face away.

Ellen reached for his hand. “It’s still there, Jed. You can go back.”

“What would I go back for?” Jed looked at her, his face full of misery and despair. “For my own wife to take care of me? To be a drain on the community I meant to serve?”

“You have served,” Ellen protested. “And you can continue to do so. This isn’t the end of everything.”

He didn’t answer and she decided not to press. Jed’s injury was still new, and she knew from experience that a man had to grieve the loss of the limb, the loss of the life he’d expected to have, before he was able to think of the future.

“What about you, Ellen?” Jed asked eventually. “Will you go back to the island?”

“I don’t know if there’s anything there for me now.” “Rose would welcome you. You’ve been like a daughter to her. And times are hard for her.”

“You mean with Dyle’s heart trouble –” Ellen stopped abruptly at the look on Jed’s face. “You know something,” she stated.

“Lucas hasn’t written to me for months, and I haven’t heard anything from Rose. What do you know?”

“Dyle died in January,” Jed told her quietly. “My father wrote to me about it. He had a heart attack.”

“Oh, no.” Ellen pressed a hand to her cheek, reeling from this news even though it wasn’t unexpected. “Poor Rose. She’ll have to manage the farm alone until Peter comes back.”

Stifling

If he came back. If she’d learned one thing in these last four years, it was that nothing was certain. “Yes,” Jed agreed. “When he comes back.”

The next few months blurred by in an endless round of snatched sleep and long hours in the operating theatre or on the wards, which grew stifling in the summer heat.

Miss Ivens had requested more staff, and Ellen and the other nurses were subjected to a parade of new orderlies and auxiliary nurses, some of whom left after only a few weeks, complaining of the crowded conditions, the lack of private beds or baths, and the endless work.

“Did they think they were coming on holiday?” Marjorie asked when an orderly left in high dudgeon. “There’s a war on. What did she think it would be like?”

“Apparently the place isn’t fit for a gentlewoman,” Ellen answered cheerfully.

“Imagine that! We’re actually getting our hands dirty.”

More tomorrow.

On Renfrew Street was previously a serial in The People’s Friend. For more great fiction, get The People’s Friend every week, £1.30 from newsagents and supermarkets.

Artwork: Dave Young.