The Foreshadowing Read Free Page A

had been to a good school. The army was eager to have him. He spent a couple of months at the regimental depot, learning to drill and be drilled, and whatever else officers need to know.
    For a while he wrote to us, complaining that the war would be done before he had even started, but he need not have worried. The news from France was bad. There was a miserable article in the Sunday Times about heavy British losses, and the general invincibility of the German army. Even though the war had really only just begun, it had become a dreadful stalemate, and wounded were arriving in Folkestone and Harwich every day.
    They had said it would all be over by Christmas, but Christmas came and went, and the war stayed. In the new year Edgar got the posting he had been waiting for, and went to France. Since then most of another year has come and gone, and still there is nothing but the war.

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    On many occasions I’ve asked Father if I might help in the hospital, but he says nursing is no occupation for a girl from a respectable family. If the truth be told, he thinks I shouldn’t have any occupation at all, but just wait for someone of the right sort to marry me. The right sort means rich, and from a good family. But I want to do something. I think I really do want to be a nurse. It goes way back to when I was tiny; I always wanted to be useful, but when you’re a little girl no one takes you seriously. You’re not allowed to help people.
    People like Clare.
    I was only trying to help, but somehow that day put a wall between me and my family, a wall of guilt and fear.
    I’ve grown up now, and I still want to nurse. Edgar is mean to me about it. Ever since I was little he teased me, saying I would be scared, and that I would faint as soon as I saw blood. Then Tom would tell him to shut up and they’d start to fight instead, until I would cry and that stopped them both.
    But I think things may have changed, because I heard Mother and Father talking this evening after they’d gone to bed. I can often hear them from my room. I don’t think they realize how thin the ceiling and floor is between their bedroom and mine.
    I stopped brushing my hair and bent down to the floor, pressing my ear against the boards.
    “She’s quite a young woman now,” I heard Mother say. “She’s pretty, but she’s even more intelligent. And she’s seventeen. You know she wants to do something.”
    “It’s still not the sort of thing she should be engaged in,” Father replied. “You don’t know what they’re like, Dorothy. They’re a rough bunch of girls.”
    He meant the nurses in his hospital.
    “Perhaps,” Mother said, “but they do the job that needs doing. And the war is changing things.”
    “Don’t preach to me about my own profession,” Father said, curtly. “If Alexandra becomes a nurse, you know the sort of people she’ll have to deal with.”
    “She could join the Women’s Emergency Corps. That’s only for decent women. The uniform alone costs two pounds.”
    Father snorted.
    “If by ‘decent women’ you mean suffragettes . . .”
    “Well, she’ll have to do something. Sending her to Miss Garrett’s for private tuition is all very well for now, but what then? You know what she’s like. All that sitting, watching. She should have something to occupy her.”
    “Are you talking about Alexandra now? Or do you mean to bring up your own complaints again?”
    “No, Henry, no,” Mother said, quickly. “You know I’m content. Really. But Alexandra . . .”
    “Maybe,” Father said. “We’ll see.”
    “And she’s always wanted to be a nurse.”
    “And you know why!” Father said, suddenly raising his voice. “You know when it started!”
    Mother hushed him and their voices fell quiet, so that I couldn’t hear any more.
    So there was hope after all! I couldn’t sleep for a long time, but when I did I dreamt of playing with Clare in that summer garden, where she was alive once again.

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    Last Easter, about six