Suffragette Girl by Margaret Dickinson

Author:Margaret Dickinson [Dickinson, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780330505024
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Twenty-Nine

‘So, tomorrow we begin,’ Ernst said as they walked back through the twilight, holding hands until they came within sight of the encampment. ‘No one must know about us, Florence. You do understand that, don’t you?’

‘Of course,’ she said swiftly. ‘Sister Blackstock would send me packing immediately. And I don’t want to go – especially now.’

He chuckled. ‘I don’t think they would do that to me, but my reputation would not be so – how do you say – wholesome?’

She laughed softly. ‘Oh, I don’t know. You’d be forgiven. You’re a man.’ There was a tinge of irony in her tone. In Florrie’s mind, it was another example of the inequality that existed between men and women. Whilst she would be sent home in disgrace, he would merely cause a nudge and a wink and be thought a bit of a ‘jack the lad’. Even so, she didn’t want to be parted from him.

‘But how are we going to meet? Have some time alone together?’

‘I’ll think of something,’ he murmured. He gave her hand a quick squeeze before releasing his hold. They walked back into the camp with a demure three feet between them.

The following morning, Ernst, Sister Blackstock and Florrie set off to begin work in the ruined house. Rosemary Blackstock was full of praise for the work Florrie had done with the help of the soldiers. ‘Dr Hartmann was right, wasn’t he? We’ll be able to do so much more, the nearer we are. And these cellars are comparatively safe.’

As if on cue they heard the thump of the guns begin again and it wasn’t long before their first patients began to arrive.

Ernst insisted on seeing every one of them, though not all required his surgeon’s knife. He picked out one here, another there that needed his skill and instructed Sister Blackstock to assist him in the small room set up as a crude operating theatre. Florrie was left to attend to all the other casualties carried down the steps and into the cellars. She felt a moment’s pang of disappointment that it was Rosemary Blackstock at Ernst’s side and not her. But her head, if not her heart, told her that the older woman was by far the more experienced at assisting him. And besides, Florrie told herself, they’ve trusted me enough to leave me in charge in the wards.

She bent over a man who’d been injured in the face. Gently Florrie syringed and washed the wound with peroxide to clean the blood and mud away. Carefully, she shaved his face and placed a dressing on the wound. It would need such treatment repeated frequently over the next three or four days. As she turned to leave him and go to her next patient, the man gripped her arm. He couldn’t speak, but in the dim light of the cellar, lit only by lanterns and candles, the look in his eyes spoke his thanks.

She smiled and moved on. The next casualty had a badly smashed leg and was awaiting his turn in the operating room.

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