SamuelâDr. Rosenblum, as I still thought of himâwas hurrying towards me, waving a black umbrella. He had just come from working on Donald Bullman's ears.
Donald was one of our few civilians, an accountant who'd been trapped in a burning office, trying to save the ledgers. We had had several conversations about homing pigeons, which in peacetime he bred and raced. I asked how the operation had gone, and Dr. Rosenblum held up crossed fingers. “Ears are tricky,” he said. “If only men could wear their hair long.” Past the pub and the row of shops, he talked about the difficulties of shaping cartilage. Daphne made fun of Samuel's habit of lecturing, but I found it endearing. Most doctors behaved as if we nurses weren't capable of understanding anything more complicated than a tonsillectomy. Crossing the street to the hostel, Samuel checked himself. “Aren't you due a day off soon?” he said.
“This coming Wednesday.”
“I'm off then too. Perhaps we could go to the cinema, have supper?”
From the moment I first caught sight of Samuel standing beside Philip's bed, I had watched him, but no more than everyone else did, patients and nurses alike; he was lord of the unit. Both rank and ageâI guessed him, wrongly, to be in his late rather than his early thirtiesâhad made him seem beyond daydreams. Now, under the shelter of the umbrella, he turned to me and I did not turn away. I had grown up among blue-eyed people, but gazing into Samuel's brown eyes, I seemed to glimpse something I had been searching for for a long time. “I'm going to visit my family,” I said. “Would you like to come?”
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In the days that followed, I regretted my invitation twenty times over. When I tried to imagine Ballintyre through Samuel's eyes, everything seemed shabby and old. And of course I worried about Lily's and David's reactions. I wrote saying I was bringing a guest, Dr. Rosenblum, I underlined, both glad and sorry that there was no time for a reply. On Wednesday when I came into the bus station and saw him standing beside the ticket office, I would gladly have fled. But he was already walking towards me, looking surprisingly dapper in a dark hat and navy suit, the waistcoat buttoned snugly over his girth. Ian and Royâeven Bernardâhad shared a boyish quality; you could still picture them kicking a football in the playground, but Samuel was a man, solidly planted in his life and his work.
While we waited, he told me that the Russians had entered Romania, and by the time we boarded the bus I was remembering
again how much I liked him. Halfway down the aisle he slid into a seat and I followed. A bell sounded. The driver, a young woman not much older than myself and no taller than the unit sister, started up the engine. As we bumped through the suburbs of Glasgow and into the open countryside, Samuel told me about his family. He had grown up in Edinburgh, where his father was a jeweller; his two brothers were both doctors and his sister taught at the university.
“They sound awfully clever,” I said.
“That is the one thing everyone agrees on about Jews.”
“Are you a Jew?”
He burst out laughing, and I caught the flash of his fillings. “With a name like Samuel Rosenblum?” Then he saw my face. “I'm sorry, Eva. Most people guess.”
He began to talk about how his grandfather had come to Edinburgh from Vienna. I nodded, trying to recall what I knew. Disraeli was a Jew, so was Dreyfus. At Sunday school we read stories about the chosen people. Moses had led them to safety across the Red Sea. And they had different customs, like not eating pork. What if Lily served ham for lunch?
At the next village the bus slowed; a number of passengers rose to their feet. Suddenly a voice said, “I wish I had a white feather for you, my lad.”
An elderly woman in a threadbare coat shuffled past. It must be she who had spoken, but what on earth did she mean? Then I recalled David's describing the gangs of women who had roamed the streets during the last war, handing out white feathers to young men not in uniform.
I reached the front of the bus just as she was negotiating the first step. “Excuse me,” I said. “He's a doctor at the infirmary, a surgeon.”
The woman turned and I saw skin the colour of plaster, eyes swimming behind thick spectacles. “What use is a doctor to me? I lost three sons in the Great War.” With painful slowness, she clambered down the remaining steps into the village street.
I returned to my seat, cheeks burning, not daring to meet Samuel's gaze. What a fool he must think me. But for the second time since we boarded the bus, he was apologising to me. “I should have warned you,” he said. “All of us younger doctors get comments.”
I teased the fingers of my gloves and told him about her sons. “It must be as if they died in vain.”
“Poor woman,” said Samuel. “I don't know about the last war, the casualties were appalling, but I do know that nothing is more important than stopping Hitler.” It was exactly what everyone said, but something in his voice made me understand that he meant it quite literally.
For the rest of the journey he asked about my family. I told the familiar stories about Barbara's saving Keith Hanscombe and meeting David at the optician's, her death, and Lily coming to take care of me. Soon we were in Troon, passing the grammar school and Saint Cuthbert's. Lily was waiting outside the Co-op, wearing her best blue felt hat.
She greeted Samuel warmly and he shook her hand and said she mustn't dare call him doctor. As we walked back to Ballintyre he asked about the convalescents' home, and she waxed eloquent on the subject of diet and bandages. At the forge I glimpsed a figure bent over the glowing furnace. Ian, I thought. Then I remembered he had died the previous spring, of dysentery, in North Africa; his mother's hair had turned white overnight.
David was in the garden, planting potatoes. He put aside his
spade to welcome Samuel. While I helped Lily with lunch, thankfully no ham in sight, the two of them discussed the Second Front. They shared similar views about American involvement: Pearl Harbor was a tragedy; still, it had got us what we needed.
That evening on the bus back to Glasgow, Samuel said how much he liked Lily and David. Oh, good, I said vaguely. All I could think about was whether he liked me. Then, at last, he put his arm around my shoulders. I glanced anxiously up and down the aisle. The bus was darker than any cinema; the couple in the seat behind us were snoring softly. At first I could not help looking around every few minutes, but as the miles slid by and Samuel held me close and I felt nothing other than his embrace, the intervals between my searching grew longer and longer.
A fortnight after our trip to Troon, Samuel took me to his favourite restaurant, the Trattoria. He ordered us spaghetti with sardines. “And a bottle of chianti.”
“Chianti?” jeered the waiter. “Not a chance, guv. We've been dry as a Sunday school since last year.”
Samuel watched him limp off towards the kitchen with a frown. “I must have fallen from grace,” he said. “I had a nice bottle here just a couple of months ago.”
“I don't mind. Wine makes me dizzy.” I fingered a small ochre stain on the tablecloth. “I didn't mean to offend you the other day, on the bus. I really didn't know you were a Jew.”
“Eva, I'm the one who should apologise for being so touchy. The world is full of people who don't like us.”
“But you're the most popular doctor at the hospital.”
His face changed in a way I hadn't seen before, not the tightening of the lips when he discovered a failed graft nor the widened eyes that greeted good news, but a sharp twist, as if all the muscles under the skin were tugging in different directions. “Up to a point,” he said. “Last Christmas I went out to dinner with some friends. I was working late, and I hadn't had a chance to go to the bank. When the bill came I asked Hugh Bailey, the cardiologist, for a loan. âOh,' he said, âthe pound of flesh.' Even with people I've known for years, I only have to do the smallest thing and I'm a kike, a Yid, a person they despise.”
The waiter placed large bowls before us and filled our water glasses, ostentatiously, to the brim. I found the long thin strands of spaghetti hard to manage, but Samuel seemed to have no trouble twirling them into neat mouthfuls. He told me about celebrating the Sabbath at home, about Passover and Hanukkah. “I was always out of step with the other boys. While everyone else was listening to stories of Robin Hood and Ivanhoe, my mother was reading me Jewish folk tales. My favourite was about a boy who goes hunting for treasure and, after many adventures, meets a wise man instead.” He smiled. “Then there was the tale of the dybbuk. You've probably never heard of that. A dybbuk is a spirit who takes possession of a person.”
I felt as if my skin had suddenly expanded, as if every nerve in my body were reaching towards him, like that Indian goddess with so many hands, trying to grasp his meaning. I asked Samuel to explain.
“A young woman is possessed by the spirit of a dead man. She looks the same but she acts like him, and when she speaks, his words come out of her mouth. My mother loves charades, and she always read the dybbuk's part in a hoarse, deep voice. After she finished, I
would lie in bed terrified. Every sound was a spirit trying to climb in the window.”
I remembered the giant of David's stories and how I had had similar imaginings. “What happens?” I asked.
“Eventually the spirit is exorcised, by a rabbi.”
“And the girl?” I managed.
“Oh.” He gave a small nod. “She dies.”
While he organised another mouthful of spaghetti, I stared unseeing at my plate. I had grown so used to dividing myself into the spoken and the unspoken that I seldom considered the alternative. Now the pleasure of sharing my secret shimmered before me. I saw my life become a simple room, the floor polished, the walls white as wood anemones.
Samuel was talking again, about his father. Someone had scrawled FIFTH COLUMNIST across his shop window because he'd written a letter to the newspaper about the
Struma
. “He's been on George Street for thirty years, and suddenly he's a spy and seven hundred Jews are allowed to drown.” Samuel's indignant gesture sent a strand of spaghetti flying across the room, but he was too busy to notice. Mr. Rosenblum was on the board of several charities and had personally taught a dozen boys to read. “He's never turned away a soul,” Samuel said, “on the basis of creed, class, or money.”
Dimly I recalled the
Struma
, the boat filled with Jewish refugees moored for months outside Istanbul, but before I could question him further a bearded man stood over our table, flourishing a bottle of red wine. Samuel had fixed his daughter's cleft palate last springâhis brother-in-law owned the Trattoriaâand so our evening ended as a jolly threesome.
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During the weeks that followed, Samuel and I fell into a kind of routine. His hours were even longer than my own but usually we managed to go to the cinema on Friday or Saturday and sometimes during the week we would go to Tommy's Café to eat shepherd's pie and chat about our days. On the unit he treated me just as he did everyone else: kindly, straightforwardly. No one would ever guess, Daphne assured me. She herself was in love with a radiologist, a tall, witty man with slightly crossed eyes who seemed to dote on her.
Early in January a pilot named Neal Cunningham was transferred to the unit from Aberdeen. I was off duty the day he arrived, but the following morning, as I made the beds with Mollie, the ward probationer, the men could talk of little else. Patient after patient described how the newcomer had kept them awake with his screams. Bloodcurdling, claimed Archie. Like a wolf, said Brian.
Neal, when at last we reached his bed in the far corner, lay with the covers drawn up to his chin. His face was dark as a Negro's, not from the burns themselves but from the tannic acid they still used as a coagulant at the first-aid stations. His wavy brown hairâhe must have worn a helmetâwas the only clue to his colouring. “Och, Neal,” Mollie said, “I hear you behaved like a football hooligan in the night.”
From behind the black mask came a murmured apology. His skin was so badly burned that even to whisper seemed an effort, but that did not dull his nocturnal screams.
The same scenario was repeated the next night, and the next. Sedatives had no effect and soon Neal was moved to one of the private rooms, whichâsince Samuel's decision that officers and ordinary ranks would share the wardsâwere usually empty. Almost
everyone, from the matron to the maids, had complained about this lack of segregation, but Samuel stood firm. “If you're waiting for a new jaw you don't need solitude,” he had insisted. “You need someone to beat you at dominoes and make bad jokes about your dentist.”
That evening as I left the unit, I decided to look in on Neal. Something about his helplessness engaged my sympathy. When I stepped into his room, he was sitting up in bed, staring at the door as if Göring himself might appear.
“I just came to say good night,” I said, drawing my cloak closer. I was abashed to have caused such fear.
“Thank you, nurse. Good night.”
Outside it was that time of day when, before the war, the street lamps would have begun to glow. Now the twilight faded without interruption. I walked along, thinking what it must be like to be a fugitive from one's own dreams; I had had my share of troubles but, until recently, I had been lucky in sleep. I didn't notice Samuel coming out of the newsagents until he called my name. Although he was due at the unit, he turned around to accompany me to the hostel. We spoke of Tiny Rossiter the anaesthetist's birthdayâthe patients had given him a boisterous party, with skits and a cakeâthen I mentioned Neal.
“God damn the dressing station for using tannic acid on him,” Samuel said. “He told me a bizarre story.”
As he spoke, I caught sight of the unit sister walking ahead of us and tried to make sure that several clear feet separated me from Samuel. Even now that I was fully qualified, my life was controlled by a multitude of rules.
“He wakes up screaming,” Samuel continued, “because the dead men in his troop appear in his dreams and tell him he's to blame for
their deaths, that he gave the wrong orders. I reminded him that all orders come from HQâif he'd given the wrong ones he'd be court-martialedâbut it made no difference. He kept talking about how the men scream and swear at him, make him look at their injuries and lie down in the mud. I pointed out that these are just figments of his imagination, and he said that didn't matter. The dead men were still speaking the truth.”
Samuel gave a little snort, not unlike the sound Lily used to make when confronted with some far-fetched tale. The sister had outstripped us and was lost in the crowd.
“I've asked the chaplain to talk to him,” he went on. “Sometimes this kind of nonsense disappears if the right person offers absolution. If that doesn't work, I'll have to get the hospital psychiatrist in for a chat. I can't risk operating while he's in this state.” He drew me out of the flow of pedestrians to stand beside a greengrocer's, already closed for the night. In the gloom his brown eyes, normally flecked with gold and topaz, were almost black. “Should I have humoured him, Eva? Pretended to believe in his dreams?”
I pressed my palm to the cold glass of the shop window. “When you told me about the dybbuk,” I said, “you seemed to think there might be things some people could see but not others.”
“What does the dybbuk have to do with Neal's nightmares?” Samuel's voice was sharp and his dark eyebrows rose.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. He had been in the theatre since dawn, I reminded myself, and still had work to do; now was not the moment to discuss dreams and apparitions. “I must go,” I added, “or I'll miss dinner.” In the dining room Daphne launched into an account of her latest run-in with the night porter, then broke off to ask if I was all right. I pleaded a headache and retreated upstairs. In my room a chair
lay on the floor. The maid, I thought; she must have knocked it with her broom and been interrupted before she could pick it up.
The next day as soon as rounds were over I hurried to see Neal. He seemed less startled this time, perhaps because it was broad daylight. “Spring cleaning,” I announced, waving my alibi, a yellow duster. “How was breakfast?”
“Dreadful. You wouldn't think,” he whispered through his blistered lips, “the cooks could burn porridge every day.”
“Are you sleeping better?”
His head gave a little jerk. “No.”
I bent over the bed, willing him to confide in me. “Neal, does something trouble you?”
He shrank back, pulling the bedclothes higher. “Nothing troubles me,” he said, “nurse.”
Against the white of the linen his skin looked even blacker. I stood there, trying to catch his downcast eyes. I had thought I would offer sympathy, tell him I understood about his dreams, perhaps even hint at my own situation, but in the face of his stubborn silence, I did not know how to begin. And what if Neal were to betray me? Some loony nurse, I could hear him saying, some nutter.
Then I took in his ruined features, his hands puffed to twice their normal size; he would be in the unit for months, possibly years. There was plenty of time to win his trust. “Well,” I said, wiping the top of his locker, “I'd better get going or Sister will be down on me like a ton of bricks.”
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Later I would try to tell Samuel about the events of the following afternoon, and it would only lead to more confusion between us. Just
before teatime, I was passing Neal's room on my way to the saline baths when the door opened and he appeared in a wheelchair. Over infirmary pyjamas he wore an expensive-looking tartan dressing gown. An older man, dressed in an unfamiliar uniform, was pushing the chair. “Neal,” I said, “where are you going?”
The uniformed manâhe had a plump, jovial faceâanswered. “He's off to Loch Lomond to convalesce. Peace and quiet, that's what Neal needs. Time enough for this medical nonsense when he has his strength back.”
Neal's face moved in what might have been a smile.
“How long will you be away?” I stepped closer, hoping he might speak for himself. His fine brown hair stirred, as if a breeze were passing. It touched me too. I breathed in a fragrance I recognised, not of medicine or disinfectant but of heather and the sea. As the older man wheeled the chair swiftly forward, I seemed to hear the words, “A long time.”
An hour later I was in the linen room, stocking the dressing trolley, when Mollie and another probationer came in, talking in excited voices. The nurse who was serving tea had been unable to rouse Neal Cunningham. Quite unexpectedly, his heart had failed.
“He was a strange fish,” said Mollie.
A bandage tangled between my fingers and slipped to the floor. Mollie, laughing, bent to retrieve it. “Back to the sterilizer with this one.
Only the iron routine carried me through the next couple of hours. At the hostel I went directly to my room. The thought that I had seen someone else's companion was overwhelming. I remembered how brisk the older man had been, how good-humoured. What would have happened if I had tried to intervene? Then I remembered
Neal's tiny smile and my stupid caution of the day before. I felt sick with disappointment.
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Because of Barbara's death we had never celebrated my birthday in April; instead, I shared a cake with Lily in May. Now, somehow, Samuel discovered the actual date and announced that he was taking me to the Royal Hotel, a place I'd heard other nurses talk about but never been to. Later, after I moved to Glenaird and became friends with Anne, it turned out that she and her husband had dined at the Royal that spring on their first visit to Scotland. She couldn't remember the exact date, but it pleased us both to think we might have been there together.