The Friendship of Mortals

by Audrey Driscoll

  ***

  Etaples

  Mar. 28, 1917

  My Dear Charles,

  Profound apologies for being such a poor correspondent, but I have been, as you must know if you have been reading your newspapers, somewhat preoccupied. In addition to witnessing the decimation of a generation of young men and trying to reduce it, I have managed to make something of some of them. I leave the details to your imagination.

  I’ve also had my hands full with Sir Eric. He is growing tedious. He has plans for a career after the war (in which case he must know something I do not, for it shows every sign of lasting forever – or at least until every man capable of soldiering, English, French, German and Canadian, is dead. But of course, America now trembles on the brink of entering the fray, a reluctant bride who nevertheless must bloody the sheet eventually. So who can tell?)

  But Sir Eric – he asks me constantly for Results, for Facts, for Details. And I dispense a few crumbs and try to divert him. In our conversations – many of which take place on the wards at dawn, surrounded by men asleep or dying and the silent, watchful nurses – I have learned that what he desires is to offer to the well-heeled public a means to alter their facial features. Not merely to reconstruct the maimed (which we have both done, I better than he), but to improve or merely change, for reasons of vanity or expedience. He thinks there will be a great demand for this among the wealthy, and if there is only one surgeon who can accomplish it, that person will exercise the power of the monopolist and command large fees. So much for science and the good of all mankind! (There is only one person, as yet, who can do this, and it is not Clapham-Lee!)

  I have ended our collaboration, although he does not know that. Unfortunately, I revealed enough to him at the beginning of our association that he is inflamed by the potential. I am running out of diversions. Ironically, the best means to put him off are furnished not by me but by the fortunes of war. When we are more than fully occupied with our legitimate business, he is perforce less tiresome.

  Disengage? Counter-attack? Negotiate? Steal a march? Surrender? You see, Charles, how I strategize. And all around me, death in life and life in death, so that I grow weary of it all – even, sometimes, of myself.

  Cheerfully,

  Herbert.

  P.S. I nearly forgot – I’ve been promoted. It’s Major West now. Grand, eh?