After the War Is Over (25 page)

                
I ask you to go forth this winter and spread warmth among your fellows. Offer a kind
word, extend a helping hand, or offer a shilling or two to those in need. No matter
how you act, treat the recipient of your kindness as your fellow. For we are all of
us equal in the sight of God, and so should we be in the laws of man, and the conventions
of our land.


—
the
Liverpool Herald,
9 December 1919


W
here is Meg?” Miss Margaret asked as they were sitting down to supper. “Friday is
her favorite. She loves fish cakes. Norma, go and tell her that we’re waiting for
her.”

When Norma didn’t return after five minutes, Charlotte got to her feet and went after
her. Fish cakes might be Meg’s favorite, but they didn’t taste especially nice when
they were stone cold.

Norma was in the hall outside Meg’s room, her ear pressed against the door.

“What on earth are you doing?” Charlotte asked.

“I knocked, but she told me to go away. I think I can hear her crying.”

“Let me talk to her. Meg, it’s Charlotte. Is anything the matter?”

“I’m f-fine. Please leave me be.”

“It doesn’t sound as if you’re fine at all. May I come in? Please?” She went to open
the door, but it had been locked.

“Tried that already,” Norma said.

“You don’t have to come out. Just unlock the door and let me
in. I don’t think you should be alone, not if you’re upset. You don’t have to say
a thing. Only let me sit with you.”

A key turned in the door.

“Norma, you go back downstairs. Meg and I will be down in a bit. Perhaps Janie could
keep our supper warm?”

Charlotte hadn’t been inside Meg’s room before. It reflected its occupant perfectly,
or at least the cipher she knew: neat as a pin, and almost entirely bare of personal
touches. The only exception was a single photograph, of a man in uniform, on the bedside
table.

After unlocking the door, Meg had retreated to sit on her bed. She had evidently been
crying for a long while, for her eyes were swollen and she was shivering, though the
room was warm enough. Charlotte took off her cardigan and set it around her friend’s
shoulders, then sat next to her on the bed.

Meg seemed unable to stanch her tears, so Charlotte let her cry, rubbing her back
from time to time, until the worst seemed over and only hiccuping, shuddering sighs
broke the silence of the room.

“Do you wish to tell me what has upset you?” she asked in her softest, most gentle
voice. “You don’t have to, of course, and I won’t judge you for it. But if you wish
to tell me I will—”

“It’s Bill.”

“What about him?”

“My husband. He’s dead.”

“I know, my dear. He died at Passchendaele, didn’t he?”

But Meg was frantically shaking her head, the tears pouring from her eyes once more,
and her next words were so garbled that Charlotte couldn’t make out their meaning
at all.

“I don’t understand . . . are you saying he’s not dead? That they made a mistake?”
Stranger things had happened, after
all. Edward had been missing for almost a year before Robbie had tracked him down
in that Belgian hospital.

“No, no . . . he
is
dead.”

“I’m sorry, Meg. I don’t quite follow.”

Meg took a great steadying breath. “He didn’t die at Passchendaele. He’s . . . he’s
been here all this time. At the Mill Road Hospital, up Everton way. That’s where I
go every Sunday. I mean, where I
went
.
”

“He was at the hospital there?” Charlotte’s nurse’s mind paged through the possibilities.
Paralysis, neurasthenia, multiple loss of limbs . . .

“He was burned. It was at Passchendaele—that much was true. The Germans had some sort
of horrible weapon that sprayed fire. Bill and his whole platoon were burned. They
all died, all except for him. I don’t know how it is they kept him alive, his burns
were that bad.”

“Oh, my dear. I am so,
so
sorry.”

“I was living in Basildon when it happened—that’s where we’re from—and when he was
brought back to London I came up on the train as often as I could. Then they moved
him up here, so I moved, too. I couldn’t stand the thought of him being all alone.”

“How badly burned was he?” Charlotte asked quietly.

“All over, more or less. Most of his face. His arms and hands were very bad. He lost
all but two of his fingers. He couldn’t move much because of the scarring. They did
some operations, to make his skin less tight, they said, but it never helped. Nothing
ever helped with the pain.”

“Did he have any other family?”

“His parents came to visit him once, when he was still in London, but as soon as she
saw him his mum started screaming,
so they hustled her away. That’s the last I ever heard of them. I wrote but they never
wrote back.”

“So all this time it was just you?”

Meg nodded. “Just me. On Sundays I’d go and spend the day at his bedside. In the beginning
he could sit in a wheelchair, so I’d take him into the courtyard and we’d sit in the
sun. The other patients stared at him, though. After a while he said he didn’t want
to go outside anymore, so we stayed on the ward. I’d read to him, tell him about my
week. When the shop was closed in the summer, when Mr. Timmins was rebuilding, I went
more often, of course.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know for sure. When Matron called me at work, this afternoon, she only said
that he’d taken a turn for the worse last night, and died in the wee hours. But I
think it was the infection that got him.”

“The infection? To his burns?”

“No, it was a bedsore. The past while, since the summer, I’d say, he’d been staying
in bed. He barely said a word to me for months, just lay there with his eyes closed.
Slept most of the time. The nurses said he was depressed.”

“I’m not surprised. It must have been very hard for him.”

“After staying in bed for a month or two he started to get bedsores. One of them got
infected the other week. The first week of December, it was. I think . . . I think
that must have been it,” she said, and began to cry again.

Charlotte held her hand, and gave her a fresh handkerchief, and waited once more for
the tears to subside.

“I know I should have told everyone, but I just couldn’t bear to talk about it, to
talk about him, so when I came here I told the misses I was a widow. It was wrong
of me, I know it was,
but once the lie was out of my mouth I didn’t know how to take it back.”

“All water under the bridge. You didn’t do it to deceive anyone, only to protect yourself.”

“What will I do, Charlotte? Now that’s he’s gone, what will I do?”

“I think that’s a question best saved for another day. First things first,” she said
firmly. “I think we should go downstairs and tell the others—no, don’t fret. I’m sure
they will react exactly as I have done. Then you and I are going to eat our supper.
It will be much easier to think, and plan, once we’ve eaten.”

They sat on the bed until Meg felt a little steadier, and then they went downstairs
and sat at the big kitchen table. There, surrounded by her friends, Meg told everyone
about Bill and what had happened to him. Though the others were surprised, they assured
Meg that they weren’t at all angry and quite understood her reasons for the deception,
and one by one they embraced her and offered their condolences.

“It’s not as if we don’t all have our secrets,” Norma observed a little later as they
drank their tea and nibbled at a plate of shortbread that Janie had set out.

Rosie snorted in disbelief. “You? You’re an open book if ever I’ve seen one.”

“I’m not,” she insisted. “I have my secrets.”

“Name one,” Rosie demanded.

Charlotte braced herself for another unpleasant surprise. What was Rosie thinking?
Hadn’t the evening taken a dramatic enough turn already?

Norma hesitated, her face reddening, and then she spoke. “Norma isn’t my real name.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. It’s Nell.”

“That’s it? That’s your deep, dark secret?” Rosie asked, laughing, and then they were
all laughing, even Meg, even Norma.

“I always hated ‘Nell,’ so when I left home I changed it.”

“It does suit you,” Charlotte said, and reached over to pat her hand, relieved beyond
measure. “It sounds very . . . well, very American.”

Then she turned to Meg, who was dabbing discreetly at her eyes. “What can we do to
help? Have you thought about his funeral at all?”

“Matron offered to have it on Sunday, so I don’t have to take a day off work. There’s
a chapel at the hospital, and then they’ll drive me up to the cemetery.” She paused,
twisting her handkerchief in her hands. “Would you come with me? It won’t be a long
service, I don’t think.”

“Of course I will.” Charlotte looked around the table and took the temperature of
the room. “We’ll all come.”

“It will be our very great honor,” said Miss Mary. “We shall all of us be there.”

T
HE
M
ISSES
M
ACLEOD
had insisted on hiring a pair of taxis to convey the household up to the hospital,
so Sunday morning saw them setting off in some style for the hospital. It had once
been a workhouse, according to Rosie, and its architecture was correspondingly severe.
A central building of turreted red brick was surrounded, or rather hemmed in, by huge,
nearly windowless blocks that had likely once been dormitories. It was every bit as
cheerless and lowering as its architects had intended it to be.

They followed Meg inside and up to the first floor, which
took a while as nearly everyone they passed had a word or two of comfort for her,
orderlies and nurses and even a few patients. Although Meg seemed perfectly at ease,
and the hospital was clean and tidy and none of the patients appeared to be neglected
in any way, Charlotte found it unutterably depressing.

It was too quiet. Even her hospital in London, though it had been filled with men
whose mental state might charitably be classified as despairing on a good day, had
felt cheerier than this place. Where were the normal sounds of patients talking to
their nurses and one another? Where were the visitors?

“Is it always this quiet?” she asked Meg, and though she pitched her voice to a whisper
it still echoed down the corridor.

Meg nodded. “Most of the men on this ward are bedridden. And there aren’t many visitors,
besides. Most Sundays it was only me.”

Only Meg had persevered. The families of the other patients, one could only assume,
had given up. It might be the case that some lived so far away that frequent visits
weren’t practicable. More likely, though, they had left their loved ones here, in
this cold and clean and soulless place, abandoned like so much detritus after a parade.

Matron was waiting for them, and it was a relief to see how warmly she greeted Meg,
and how candidly she answered Rosie’s questions about Bill’s final illness. It had,
after all, been an infected bedsore that had killed him. At first he had seemed to
be rallying, but then, overnight, he had taken a turn for the worse and had died just
before dawn on Friday.

“I thought you’d like to know that Sister Yeovil was with him,” Matron told Meg. “She’ll
be coming with us to the service.”

“I’m glad,” Meg said softly. “She was one of his favorites.”

“Shall we walk down to the chapel now?” Matron suggested. “Reverend Walsh will be
waiting for us, and there will be a guard of honor from St. John’s Barracks.”

Bill’s coffin was at the front of the chapel, neatly covered by a Union flag. Seeing
it, Meg began to cry. The service was short, with only their party, Matron and two
nurses, and Reverend Walsh in attendance. As it finished, the chapel doors opened
and the guard of honor entered. They shouldered the coffin with practiced ease; likely
they had performed this ritual many times before.

Accompanied only by the minister and the honor guard, for the nurses were required
to remain at the hospital, they continued on to the cemetery. It seemed to go on for
miles in every direction, though soldiers’ burials took place in one section that
had been set aside at the beginning of the war. There were many fresh graves and many
white headstones as yet untouched by moss or lichen.

The soldiers unloaded Bill’s casket from the horse-drawn hearse and gently placed
it on the ground next to the prepared grave. Two of them removed the Union flag, folded
it into a tight rectangle, and then one of the men approached Meg, knelt before her,
and placed it in her hands.

The minister said his prayers of committal, Bill’s coffin was lowered into the grave,
and a bugler, who until then had stood quietly by the hearse, stepped forward and
played the plaintive, elegiac notes of “The Last Post.” All the women, even Charlotte,
began to weep.

Remember this moment, she told herself. When you think you must surely die from the
pain of losing the man you love, remember what it was like to stand here beneath an
empty sky,
next to your friend, and weep with her for a husband who took two years to die.

This was what war did to men, she thought, her heart seized anew by the agony of it
all.
This
was heartbreak,
this
was loss, and she, who had arrogantly thought herself one of the wounded—she was
nothing more than an insignificant bystander.

“Come, now,” she said, wiping away her tears, and she took Meg’s hand and led her
back to the waiting cars.

London, England

March 1918

N
urse Brown?”

“Yes, Sister Barrett?”

“When were we expecting the new lot of patients?”

Charlotte had been closest to the telephone when the call had come in that morning.
“Anytime now, Sister. Two ambulances direct from the station, though they didn’t say
how many men.”

“Typical. How on earth do they expect us to be properly prepared? They might be sending
two men or a dozen.”

“Yes, Sister.”

“Very well. Finish off Captain McGrath’s dressing change, and then you can make up
beds for the new men. Start in Wards H and J. Such a shame that we can’t give them
private rooms anymore.”

“Yes, Sister.”

Sister Barrett was a pleasant enough woman and not given to an overemphasis on rules
and regulations. All the same, Charlotte knew better than to offer up a lazy “yes”
or “no” in
response. Sister had earned her title and expected underlings to use it.

The burn on Captain McGrath’s forearm, inflicted by a piece of white-hot shell casing,
had healed quite nicely, and only required twice-daily dressing changes. He never
flinched, never complained, but then he had been rendered mute by the aftermath of
his injury, when he had been buried alive in his dugout for nearly a day, along with
the bodies of his commanding officer and two signalers. He was able to answer simple
questions with a nod or shake of his head, but speech eluded him, even after several
sessions of hypnosis.

When she had finished, she settled the captain in the patients’ sitting room on the
first floor. Leaving him by the window, which had a pretty view of Kensington Palace
Gardens, she began to circle around the room, checking that everyone was calm and
comfortable, fetching tea and adjusting blankets on laps and generally ensuring none
of the patients felt neglected.

Lieutenant Stephens, alone at a table in the corner, his book forgotten, was humming
to himself. It sounded like “There’s a Long, Long Trail,” a welcome change from “I
Don’t Want to Join the Army,” which had been his sole musical selection for the two
days preceding. She approached him quietly, and, crouching at his side, began to sing
the words to the song.

           
“There’s a long, long trail a-winding

           
Into the land of my dreams,

           
Where the nightingales are singing

           
And a white moon beams.

           
There’s a long, long night of waiting

           
Until my dreams all come true,

           
Till the day when I’ll be going

           
Down that long, long trail with you.”

He rewarded her with a little smile, the first she’d seen since his arrival a fortnight
before, so she continued to sing.

           
“There’s a long, long—”

“What on earth is that dreadful racket?”

Of all the times for Major Pitt-Venables to embark on his fortnightly tour of the
hospital. She’d heard one of the patients refer to the officer as Major Piss-and-Vinegar,
and secretly she thought the name suited him perfectly. Before the war he’d been some
species of physician in Brighton, but by some miracle of military efficiency had since
been raised to a position that far exceeded his talents, if not his ambition. He was
attached to the Queen Alexandra Hospital at Millbank, a larger facility some miles
away, and undertook his inspections with the help of a junior officer.

Charlotte stood, straightening her apron, and stepped away from Lieutenant Stephens.

“I beg your pardon, sir. I was singing to one of the officers.”

“Whatever for? He’s not an infant. Surely you have better things to do.”

“Yes, sir.”

She waited until old Piss-and-Vinegar was well out of earshot before crouching next
to Lieutenant Stephens and whispering in his ear. “Don’t you mind the major. I’m happy
to sing with you anytime.”

Just then, in the distance, a mechanical trill sounded. It was the bell at the back
door, and was only ever rung when new
patients had arrived. Patting the lieutenant’s arm in farewell, she set off down the
rear stairs and waited for Sister Barrett and the orderlies to arrive.

The ambulances, made distinctive by their plain gray exteriors, had already parked.
Both she and Sister breathed a sigh of relief when only four patients emerged, three
from one ambulance and one from the other. The lone passenger in the second ambulance
was very poorly indeed: his skin was ashen, he was perspiring profusely, and his limbs
were shaking so much he had difficulty standing without assistance.

A wheelchair was brought out for the man, and the orderlies, small men who regularly
astonished Charlotte with their feats of strength, nimbly carried it and its trembling
passenger upstairs to J Ward. Sister Barrett, having consulted with Matron, ordered
that he be bathed, changed into pajamas, fed some lunch, and put to bed for a nap.

All this Charlotte accomplished more or less on her own, and even managed to glance
through the man’s chart. He was Captain Soames, an infantry officer with the Welsh
Guards, and had most recently been in command of a company at Cambrai. He was twenty-three
years old.

There was no explanation of his condition, beyond the maddeningly cryptic NYDN designation:
“not yet diagnosed; nervous.” And she knew better than to ask him directly.

He ate his lunch without protest, his trembling having abated almost entirely, and
when he murmured that he was done Charlotte tucked him back into bed and left him
to his nap.

Sister Barrett was at her desk, likely busy with the paperwork the new patients had
generated. “How is Captain Soames?”

“He’s sleeping now. Was perfectly cooperative.”

“Very good. Rounds are in half an hour, but you should still have time to give Major
Stafford his sponge bath. Mind you don’t get his sutures wet.”

“Yes, Sister. I’ll—”

“Nurse Brown, what is Captain Soames doing out of bed?”

Charlotte whirled around to see the captain stagger down the corridor. He had been
so placid, earlier. He had even smiled at her when she had arranged the pillow beneath
his head.

She and Sister Barrett rushed into the corridor and along to the sitting room at its
far end. Captain Soames stood in the center of the room, swaying on his feet, and
he held something in his right hand. A knife.

“Oh, God. It’s the knife from his luncheon tray. I didn’t . . . he must have taken
it.”

“It isn’t sharp enough to do much damage, but we need to get it from him all the same.”

Sister took a step toward the captain, then another, but before she could say anything
he lunged at her, the knife a metallic blur.

Charlotte rushed forward and held out her hands in supplication. “I won’t hurt you,”
she said. “I promise. But I need for—”

“What the devil is going on here? Why does that man have a knife?”

Major Pitt-Venables certainly had an impeccable sense of timing. Charlotte half turned
to him, frantically shaking her head, but he blundered forward without even acknowledging
her presence.

“Put that weapon down at once. Do you hear me?”

“Oh, I hear you all right. Major. Have you been to war?”

“Of course I have. We’re all at war, you fool.”

Captain Soames narrowed his eyes and extended his arm until the knife was pointed
straight at the senior officer’s heart.

“I’m no fool, and you know it. What I want to know is this: Have you sent men to their
death? No? Of course you haven’t. I have, though. I wish I could remember all their
names. So many names. I tried at first . . .”

Charlotte took a tiny step forward. “Please put the knife down. You’re frightening
the other men. You’ve a perfect right to be upset, but it’s not fair to let it affect
the others.”

“I told Colonel Watson that I needed a rest. Only a week or two behind the lines to
clear my head. Do know you what he said? He said I’d let myself fall into a funk.
That I lacked
grit
.”

“No one here is suggesting anything of the—”

“He hadn’t seen what I’ve seen. He hadn’t done what I had to do. What does a man like
that
know of grit? Or a man like you, for that matter?”

The knife was perilously close to the major’s chest. To his credit, the medical officer
stood his ground, though a fine sheen of sweat had broken out on his upper lip and
brow.

“He didn’t know what happens when you bayonet a man, but I do. Oh, God, I do. It goes
in so easily, like a hot knife through butter, but it doesn’t want to come out. So
you have to wrench it out, but the man you’re killing, he’s still alive. His hands
are covered with blood, for he’s grasping at the blade in his guts, and he won’t let
go, so you have to kick at him and scream at him . . .”

Captain Soames dropped to his knees and hugged the knife close to his chest. “I could
smell his breath, his sweat, smell where he’d pissed himself . . . you’ve no idea.
None of you have
any
idea.”

Still keeping her distance, Charlotte knelt on the floor. “May I ask your Christian
name, Captain Soames?”

“It’s Patrick.”

“Patrick, if you will put down the knife, I will listen to you. I’ll sit with you
and listen until you decide you have nothing more to say. But you must put down the
knife.”

“Do you promise?” he said, as weary as an old man at the end of his life, and Charlotte
nodded eagerly.

He let the knife fall from his grasp. She opened her mouth to thank him, but before
she could speak the orderlies were upon him, dragging him away, his screams echoing
down the corridor.

“You promised!” he cried. “You said you would listen!”

Charlotte stood up and dusted off her skirts. Matron might allow her to speak with
the captain later, and she might be able to regain his trust. But first she would
have to help calm the others, some of whom were visibly unnerved by the scene they
had witnessed. Lieutenant Stephens was already humming “I Don’t Want to Join the Army”
again.

“Nurse Brown? Are you all right?” Matron had emerged from her office; she would help
calm the men. She always knew how to restore order.

“I—I think so.”

Matron gave her a handkerchief. “Perhaps you might wish to wipe your face,” she suggested
kindly, and when Charlotte raised a hand to her cheek she realized that tears were
streaming from her eyes.

“I beg your pardon, Matron.”

“Not at all. It was a very distressing incident, and you handled it ably.”

“I’m afraid it was all my fault. I was the one who left the knife within his reach.”

“That is unfortunate, but it was a dinner knife, not a scalpel. And you ought never
to have been left alone with a man whose thoughts were so disordered. So it is I who
ought to apologize. Would you like a few minutes, just to gather your thoughts?”

“Only if it won’t—”

“We shall be quite all right. Take half an hour for yourself before reporting back
to Sister Barrett. I shall speak to her about the knife.”

“Yes, Matron. Thank you.”

The nurses’ cloakroom was on the top floor of the hospital at the very end of a corridor,
and though spacious enough, it was sparsely furnished and nearly always freezing cold.
Charlotte brought up a discarded copy of
The Times
from the day before, together with a cup of tea from the kitchen, and curled up in
one of the two easy chairs that some kind soul had donated.

She paged through the newspaper, her mind on her promise to Captain Soames, as well
as the very real possibility that one or more of the other patients would have a setback
in his treatment as a result.

She skimmed past the classified advertisements, law reports, announcements of military
medals—an entire page of names, so many her eyes watered just looking at it—and several
pages of unremarkable news. The Roll of Honor, blessedly short for a change; she would
look at it later and see if she recognized any names.

She was about to turn the page, but some nameless impulse stopped her hand. The list
was a short one; it would take her no time to read. Killed, died of wounds, wounded—she
scanned
the names; all strangers. And then, at the end, a single name under the banner of
MISSING, FEARED KILLED
:

NEVILLE-ASHFORD, Maj. E.A.G., Border Rt.

She blinked, then looked again. His name. There, in
The Times,
in the Roll of Honor. It was his name she saw; there was no doubting it.

Charlotte ran to the sink in the corner and was noisily, violently sick. She sank
to the floor, on her knees for the second time that day, quite sure that she’d never
be able to get up.

If there’d been any uncertainty as to his fate, he’d have been listed as “missing.”
She would never see him again, never, and no amount of wishing or praying, or bargains
made with the Almighty, would ever erase Edward’s name from that page.

“G
OOD EVENING
,
MY
dear. Did you have a nice day?”

“No, Mrs. Collins. It was . . . it was a hard day.”

The afternoon had passed in a blur. Jean, one of the other nurse probationers, had
found Charlotte in the cloakroom when she didn’t return after the promised half hour,
and rather than listen to Charlotte and wait while she washed her face and brushed
her hair, the woman had gone running to Sister Barrett, who in turn had fetched Matron.

They had both been concerned, assuming that Charlotte was still upset about the incident
with Captain Soames, and it was an age before she was able to escape their well-meaning
clutches and return to the numbing oblivion of work. By some mercy the men were in
good spirits, Matron having once again worked her brand of magic, so Charlotte had
an uneventful afternoon of sponge baths and washing up and fetching of countless cups
of tea.