Après la Guerre

This fictional short story appeared in a booklet called 'The Goodbye Book of the Quai D'Escale' which was published to mark the closure of No.2 General Hospital, Havre, in March 1919. This piece is simply signed 'E. S. Duffin' and a check of the British Red Cross Register of Overseas Volunteers shows her to be Emma Sylvia Duffin. A subsequent web search found that she was born in Belfast in 1893, the daughter of Adam Duffin, a prominent businessman, and his wife Maria Drennan. Emma Duffin was educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College, Churchill's School, Shrewsbury and Belfast Art College. She worked for more than three years as a VAD during the Great War, in Egypt and at No.2 General Hospital, Le Havre, and during the Second World War she acted as a VAD Commandant to hospitals in Belfast. She died in 1979.
I hazard a guess that the ship (though fictional of course!) is based on the RMS Aquitania, though at the time that she wrote this she could have had little idea of how the ship would fare during the following decades.


It was a cold day in late October and dusk was beginning to fall when, with much blowing of whistles from her satellites, the tugs, and to the accompaniment of shouts from the porters on the quay-side waiting to unload her, the big transatlantic liner swung into her place in Havre harbour. An hour or two later the big restaurants and customs rooms were seething with a cosmopolitan crowd of people, jostling each other in their eagerness to get their luggage through the customs in the quickest possible time, or to obtain something to eat and drink before continuing their journey. People of whatever nationality seldom show themselves at their best when travelling. They almost invariably regard themselves as the only travellers of importance, and the fact that they should have to share a cabin, or even a railway carriage, with fellow travellers, or take their place in a queue to await their turn while a much harried Customs Official examines their baggage, makes them secretly indignant and causes them to regard their fellow passengers, especially if they happen to be of another nationality, as enemies, only travelling in order to retard their progress.

John Maxwell, a journalist by profession, and too accomplished a traveller to allow himself to be worried by the small discomforts encountered on such journeys, amused himself as was his wont, but studying the crowd and surmising what might be their various occupations and destinations, and what had brought them from America to Sunny France. He had had a touch of fever on his way over and had been confined to his cabin during most of the voyage, so he had not made the acquaintance of any of his fellow passengers, nor had an opportunity of hearing the usual gossip and tittle-tattle indulged in on board ship.
The majority of the First Class passengers were naturally Americans come to ‘do the Continent’ with a good sprinkling of business men. Close to one of the glass doors opening on to the wide balcony overlooking the harbour, stood a slight fair girl with well dressed hair and piquant little face, and that curious colourless complexion which distinguishes an American girl from her English cousin. She was talking eagerly to a handsome square-jawed young man who was regarding her with adoring eyes, and as some of her conversation in a high, rather nasal voice, drifted to John Maxwell, he dismissed the pair with a smile as a honeymoon couple and turned his attention to the tall man with the fur collar on his coat whose air of unmistakable prosperity led to the conjecture that he must be one of the multi-millionaires from the States. From there his eyes wandered to a dapper little Frenchman who was talking rapidly in his own language to a fellow-countryman, discussing the business he had been transacting in New York. He had been standing there for some time thus, idly letting his imagination weave the supposed destinies of the various groups, when his eyes rested on a girl standing alone. She was quietly but smartly dressed and her rather vivid little face stood out against the background of moving figures, but what arrested his attention was her expression. She seemed to be in the crowd but not of it, her eyes were alert and she was glancing from one side to the other of the big waiting-room, yet, curiously enough, she gave the impression of not seeing the people in front of her, and of not knowing quite what she sought. Once a man jostled her and lifting his hat apologised profoundly in broken English, yet she neither seemed to see nor hear him.

John Maxwell felt suddenly compelled to make her acquaintance and he slowly began to make his way towards her. It was with a distinct feeling of disappointment that he saw her suddenly turn, and rather to his surprise, pass through the glass doors on to the balcony and make for the Third Class waiting rom. After a moment’s hesitation he followed her, and found her standing at the door with the same wide-eyed interested expression, yet again he had the impression that she was not seeing what was before her. Finally he plucked up courage to address her, and raising his hat asked her if she was looking for anyone or if he could be of any service to her. She turned on him a slightly puzzled expression like someone awaking from a dream, then smiled a delightful, bright smile, and with a delicious little laugh she said,
“Of course you think I am quite mad. I know I’ve been wandering about looking like a lunatic, but you know, this was a Hospital in the big war and I was a V.A.D. here; and while I am waiting for my husband to get our luggage through the customs I have been amusing myself trying to see it all again as it was.”
Maxwell was interested. He remembered now having heard that this had been a big surgical hospital, and he too turned and looked at the room trying to picture it as it must have been.
“How very strange it must seem to you,” he said.
“Strange isn’t a strong enough word. It is quite, quite an eerie feeling. I feel rather as I imagine mortals must feel who have been in fairyland, and come back to visit earth again, - a little homesick and full of regrets for many things and yet not wishing to come back to it all. Oh, the lockers I have scrubbed there, and there isn’t a ledge in this room I haven’t dusted.” As she spoke she ran a finger in a beautifully fitting suede glove along one of the ledges in question. She laughed a little rippling laugh as she held it up for his inspection with a thick coating of dust on the point. “How shocked our Matron would be if she could see them now. And I was just thinking in the other room, when that very beautiful and elegant young woman was serving out drinks, how Sister would have ‘strafed’ me if I hadn’t polished the counter better than that.” Her eyelids crinkled up and her eyes twinkled at the remembrance, then suddenly took on the dreamy look they had worn when John Maxwell first encountered them, and a sad note crept into her voice as she continued, “And the men I have seen die here, and suffer; and the hundreds who spent sleepless nights gazing at the rafters in the ceiling. I can hear them now, the Jocks, ‘Sister, can ye sorrt my pillows again? I canna bide still.’ The old Paddies, ‘Sister dear, could ye get me something wud let me slape? Oi’m desthroyed wid the pain in me leg.’ The Yankees and the Canadians, ‘Gee, I guess that hurts some.’ And the Ozzies, ‘That’s bonza Sister.’” One by one she imitated the different accents.
“And the Englishmen, don’t forget them” said Maxwell as she paused. “I’m one of them and I’m beginning to resent being left out.” She turned a reproachful look on him.
“As if I would forget them. Nobody ever would who had nursed them. I didn’t forget any of them, not even the poor old Boches with their ‘Wasser, Schwester, Wasser bitte.’ It made you so sorry for them that you forgot to hate them.”
“Why Molly,” a man’s voice made them both turn and Maxwell saw a tall, broad-shouldered, clean shaven Englishman regarding them with surprise. “What are you doing in the third class room? I told you to stay where I left you till I came back; I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“I’m so sorry Don, I’ve been reminiscing and I forgot.”
The tall man smiled down indulgently at her. “Well, I’ve got our luggage through and I find we can get through to Paris tonight, so I think we’d better go and secure seats in the train.”
She assented, and with a bright nod to Maxwell she passed through the open doors, and he watched the couple go down the broad shallow stairway and disappear from his view.