Poppy by Mary Hooper Read Free Book Online Page B

rap from the carriage window.
    ‘Sorry. I’ll have to . . .’ Freddie leaped up the two steps into the firs t- class coach.
    Poppy, as calmly as possible, continued walking down the platform towards the third class. She took a seat and, when the train pulled out, opened the magazine she’d bought – and didn’t realise for half the journey that she was holding it upside down.
    She put her head against the cool glass and wished she hadn’t gone out to see the Zeppelin in the first place, wished he’d never looked at her so or spoken as he had, wished there was no such person as Miss Philippa Cardew. It didn’t help, either, that a two-page spread in the magazine was given over to the changes there had been in society since the beginning of the war. Heiresses were now sweeping chimneys, housekeepers were mixing in high society, and lords were marrying laundry maids. Apparently anything was possible; the social barriers were crashing down all over Britain.
    But, Poppy thought to herself, a certain rich young man could not forgo his aunt and his first-class seat to sit with a parlourmaid.

Chapter Six
    As soon as the furniture and personal belongings of the de Vere family had been moved out of Airey House, the equipment needed to change it into a hospital and convalescent home for wounded officers had been moved in. Brand new hospitals were springing up all over the country and were urgently needed. Empty town halls, reclaimed asylums, schools, little used university buildings and many large private houses were being turned into temporary infirmaries. Some – like Airey House – were expressly for officers, while injured Tommies were being cared for in the largest buildings, in purpose-built ‘hut hospitals’ or in huge marquees specially erected in the grounds of existing infirmaries.
    On a scorching day in June, one of the final deliveries of equipment, two van loads of hospital beds, had been delivered to Airey House and were now awaiting erection. Following this, the house would officially be taken over by the War Office. The few remaining members of the de Veres’ staff, including Poppy and Molly, were due to leave the following morning and, as Poppy had not yet heard the result of her interview from Devonshire House, she’d arranged to go home and stay with her mother. If she was thought unsuitable to be a VAD, she would, she’d already decided, join Molly at one of the munitions factories. It would not be as thrilling or as useful as being a nurse, and she had heard that the chemicals turned your hair ginger, but at least she would be doing war work.
    ‘Can you imagine it?’ Molly said, as the two girls stood in what had once been the blue drawing room but was  now empty of carpet, curtains, paintings and furniture. ‘All down each side of this room will be beds: fourteen of them in a line! And there’ll be as many beds again in the green drawing room and the dining room, and Cook’s pantry will be a restroom for the nurses.’
    ‘How long will they have the house for?’ Poppy asked.
    Molly shrugged. ‘For the rest of the war, I suppose. The de Veres are just going to keep a few pieces of furniture and some suitcases of stuff in one of the cellar rooms.’
    ‘What about upstairs?’ Poppy asked. ‘What will happen to the bedrooms?’
    ‘Some of them will become treatment rooms,’ said Molly, for she’d been chatting to one of the Tommies and knew all the latest, ‘and Mrs de Vere’s room is to become an operating theatre. They’ll be setting broken bones and trying to put people back together in there.’ She shivered dramatically. ‘Bet that’s not an easy task. I’ve heard that some of the men come back to Blighty near blown to bits or with no limbs at all.’
    ‘I’ve heard that too,’ Poppy said, and could not stop a picture forming in her mind of Freddie in a hospital bed with some superficial hurt which did not mar his handsome profile – while she, immaculate in her nurse’s