Soldier On

by Erica Nyden

  William careened toward the library. Olivia followed silently as he scrabbled toward the desk, then patted every item until he found the telephone.

  “Captain Dinham, please. Yes, Captain, this is Major William Morgan. I believe we may have intruders at Steren Cove … Yes, I saw a flash—two of them … No, not even halfway there. We came back straightaway to ring you.” Shoulders squared, he appeared ready to fight, yet his jittery hands and colorless face said otherwise. “How long have they been there? And you’re in current contact with them? If the flash didn’t come from the cove, based on where we were standing, I’m sure it came from the south … Well, no”—he chuckled uneasily—“my sight hasn’t returned, but I know something sinister is going on here. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Nazis were behind it.”

  Nazis?

  “We’re between major holidays, and those bastards are taking advantage of the peace we’re struggling to enjoy, no matter how temporary … Yes, I understand. Very well.”

  He clumsily dropped the phone into its cradle.

  “Well?” she asked.

  His chiseled jaw jutted forward and his eyes fluttered in time with his rapid words. “I realize we aren’t anywhere near sunset, but I need you to cover the windows, upstairs and down, and secure all doors to the outside. If there are intruders, I don’t want them knowing we’re here.”

  “Intruders. You mean Nazis?”

  “Yes.”

  Captain Dinham’s warning from weeks ago grew legs. Remarks like “if the unlikely should happen” scrambled her thoughts. If bombing big cities wasn’t giving the Nazis the results they were looking for, why wouldn’t they invade Cornwall the same as they’d invaded Jersey and Guernsey, a mere hundred miles away?

  She dashed to the window. “We don’t want them to think the place is abandoned, do we? And—and what about our footsteps in the snow?”

  He pinched his nose. “I forgot about the snow. Damn. Well, whether they think we’re here or not, we need to hide completely out of sight. We’ll go to the wine cellar.”

  Olivia approached the desk, hands on her hips. “William, what exactly did Captain Dinham say? Are there signs we’re being invaded?”

  “No evidence whatsoever. His men were at Steren Cove earlier this morning. They’ve seen nothing.”

  Thank heavens. If there’d been a flash big enough for a blind man to see—an explosion, as he put it—she would’ve seen it too. And wouldn’t they have heard something as well?

  William’s pallid face had become speckled with drops of moisture below his hairline and along his upper lip. She’d seen this look before. “I’ve a strong premonition we may be in danger—and I’m a bit uneasy, to be honest.”

  He looked more than a bit uneasy.

  She moved with calm authority toward the windows. “I’ll cover all the windows, but we’ll stay in the library. From here, we can survey the outside and listen for anything untoward. If we need to relocate in a hurry, we’ll have plenty of time.”

  He jerked his head up and down, swallowing in between.

  “Can you manage here on your own whilst I go? I’m sure you’ll want to stay close to the telephone. I’ll be quite quick.”

  “Thank you, Olivia.”

  She charged through the mansion draping the windows with black, condensing a thirty-minute task into fifteen. At each window, she scanned outside. Clouds were moving in, and the air was warming. The crystalline carpet of snow was losing ground. In its place were a growing collection of roundish yellow patches—and absolutely no sign of Nazis.

  As her eyes adjusted to the light in the library, a movement on the floor between the sofa and hearth caught her eye.

  “William?”

  Drawing closer, she recognized the sheen of his black shoes. Above them, he hugged his knees tightly to his chest. Most of his face lay buried, and only his forehead and crop of dark hair were visible. He rocked back and forth, making no acknowledgment of her presence.

  “William.” She knelt beside him, placing her hand on his shoulder. He stilled. “The house is secure and I’ve locked all the doors. The windows are covered, and I’ve had a look at the nearby grounds. We’re alone. No visitors, no intruders.”

  He lifted his head. Across his knees, his hands locked as if to keep the other from shaking.

  It wasn’t working.

  “If I had my sight, Olivia, I could fight them. I’d kill them. With my bare hands, I could do it.”

  “William—”

  His arm flew at her. “These are dangerous men. I should never have taken Dr. Butler’s advice in hiring a private nurse. And now you’re involved, when all along I knew they’d be coming for me.”

  “When you knew who would be coming for you?”

  “Wirth’s men.” His voice was so low she hardly heard it.

  “Who’s Wirth?”

  “Wirth?” His voice softened, and he smiled as though he had fond memories of the man. “Wirth was my captor, Olivia.”

  “In North Africa?”

  In fidgety jerks, he scratched his bent head, scattering his hair in all directions. “The medication! It fooled me into thinking we were safe. It put me off my guard.”

  “But surely these men wouldn’t come all the way here after you?”

  Hate soiled his face. “Yes, they would, because I did something awful.” He held up his hands. “With these.”

  “What? What did you do?”

  “I killed him. With joy. With his own knife. I cradled his head in my arms, and I slit his throat.”

  She couldn’t picture it. All she could do was stare, captivated by William’s culpable smile.

  The telephone’s peal broke the spell.

  She sat in the desk’s creaky wooden chair. “Keldor.”

  “Nurse Talbot, this is Dr. Butler.”

  Finally! She pressed the handset into her face. “Yes, yes, Dr. Butler, hello!”

  “I’ve just received your message. Please tell me you’ve only phoned today?”

  Her heart sank. “No, the first time I phoned was Christmas Eve.”

  “Nurse Talbot, you haven’t stopped the medication, have you?”

  She bit the tip of her thumbnail, her jaw clenched. “Oh, dear.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “Since Christmas Eve. Dr. Butler, his headaches were unbearable—today’s the first day he’s got out of bed.”

  “I understand that.” She could picture his thinning gray head shaking in disappointment. “Tell me what else you’ve noticed, aside from his headaches.”

  “Actually, Doctor, the major is here with me.” William’s hair, a black crown of chaos, hovered above the shaking hands that hid his face. “May I ring you right back?”

  “I’ll await your call.”

  She settled William on the sofa and made him promise to stay put while she was gone.

  He nodded, face void of its former arrogance. “Do you think badly of me? This wasn’t a detail of my life I had planned on sharing with you.”

  If she hadn’t been in such a hurry to speak with the doctor—or so afraid of her own feelings—she would’ve wrapped her arms around him. “Not at all. We’ll talk more when I return. But don’t leave this room.”

  “Nurse Talbot,” Dr. Butler began without preamble when she rang back. “The medication the major’s been taking is not the kind you can abruptly stop. We’re learning—the hard way, I might add—that patients need to be weaned off this medicine slowly. We’ve had boys become extremely paranoid. Have you noticed this with the major? You’re not leaving him alone, are you? Under no circumstances should he be left alone.”

  “He’s not far from me, no, but he’s out of earshot. If I’d known about this, Dr. Butler, I never would’ve taken him off the pills. But I didn’t know what else to do, and—” She gripped the telephone with both hands and lowered her voice. “He thinks Nazis have landed in Cornwall and are coming for him, though Captain Dinham said there’s no evidence of it. What sho
uld I do?”

  “If he hasn’t taken them for three days, then it’s been too long to start the pills up again and wean him off gradually. Since he’s out of bed today, I assume his headaches have become less severe?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Well, that’s something. Just a matter of time, before it’s completely out of his system.” He stifled a yawn—exhausted, hopefully, from working long hours and not from placating his muck-up of a nurse. “But please, make sure you, Mrs. Pollard, or any of the staff stay with him at all times. We’ve had men jumping from windows around here.”

  “It’s only me right now. The major gave the staff the week off.”

  “Well then, you’ve got your hands full unless you can convince Mrs. Pollard to come home early.”

  “Yes, Doctor. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I’m sure you’ll manage. I’ll call you tomorrow to check in. And I’m terribly sorry I didn’t get your message any sooner. I hate to use the war as a crutch for the lack of communication around here.”

  “I understand, Dr. Butler. Thank you for your call.”

  Chapter 13

  Olivia rang Dr. Butler daily. He was eager to know the major’s every move, so even when the doctor wasn’t available, she left detailed updates. For days, the reports were the same. The major’s outlook remained tainted with terror. No matter what room they were in, William’s spine remained straight, his ears attentive, his shoulders thrown back, and his eyes, though out of order, appeared alert. He had no desire to listen to the wireless—apparently, news updates from the Continent meant nothing when someone was hunting you on your own property—so the house remained quiet. Sometimes after long periods of silence, Olivia would speak and he’d start as if he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. Once, she dropped a metal spoon on the tiled kitchen floor, causing him to leap to his feet with a yelp. Too often, she looked up from her reading or cooking to see him quaking so badly that the grip on his chair was the only thing keeping him upright. If a storm blew in, his panic attacks could eat up entire hours. When he fixated on a sound like the scraping of a branch against a window, his pleas sometimes had her believing him. Maybe someone was lurking outside.

  But as long as she supported him, he did whatever she asked, so calling the staff home early was unnecessary. He didn’t dare leave her side. He stayed with her in the kitchen whilst she prepared their meals, and he followed her outside to the garden behind the kitchen when she took Jasper out. The poor dog, used to more exercise, whined over the lack of it. He would rest his head on William’s lap, hoping to penetrate the heart of his master with his wistful gaze.

  William couldn’t see him, but he sensed his presence. “Sorry, old boy,” he would mutter whilst petting him mechanically, “we’ve all got sacrifices to make, haven’t we?”

  Olivia’s sacrifice was living without natural light, and it irked her in unexpected ways. After two days of near darkness (for it was wasteful to use too many electric lights), she found herself not so much irritable as depressed. As an experiment, she removed a blackout panel in the library. William noticed it right away. Evidently, his eyes actually could sense brightness. Rather than argue, she replaced it and apologized for not attending to the fallen curtain quickly enough. Thank heavens the air raids had dwindled since November. Daytime blackout was bad enough, but spending more hours than necessary in the dank wine cellar (for certainly the all clear wouldn’t satisfy William that it was safe enough to emerge) was unthinkable.

  Imagined scenes of William throwing himself down the stairs forced her to get creative with sleeping arrangements. After her first conversation with Dr. Butler, she made a bed for herself on the chaise longue in his bedroom. With her own linens piled on top, she dragged it toward the bedroom door.

  “What the devil is that noise?” he’d asked, emerging from his bathroom. In striped pajamas, with a freshly washed face and a line of white toothpaste outlining his bottom lip, he didn’t appear fearful for once, just annoyed.

  Slightly out of breath, she knelt on her new bed and appreciated the view. He’d slicked his hair back with water, which still dripped from his left ear. Even with a frown, he looked quite captivating. Despite all that had happened since Christmas Eve, she still had a hard time forgetting the feel of his lips on hers.

  “I’m sleeping in here with you, on the chaise. I’ve pulled the linens off my bed and will stay here by the door. I thought this would be the safest place for us during the night.”

  He raised his eyebrows. A ghost of a smile appeared on his lips, as though something crossed his mind he’d rather not say. “Good idea.”

  It had been a very good idea. His night terrors were more severe than ever. When his screams woke her that first night, she abandoned her promise to leave him be. It took an eternity for him to wake, and once he did, he crumbled all over again. She was out of her grandmother’s tea and at this point it likely wouldn’t help.

  Her hands held his in his lap as they sat on his bed.

  “Damn this blindness! I can do nothing to protect either of us when they come. You should go. It’s me they want, anyway, not you.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, and you’re not to worry. I can protect us both.” Surprised at her own composure, Olivia hoped to heaven he drew comfort from it.

  “I don’t understand why God let me live. There’s no purpose for me on this earth anymore.”

  Unable to hold back any longer, she gave in and let the week’s trauma rush down her cheeks. As much as she wanted to yell and criticize him for his cowardice and selfishness, she also wanted to take him in her arms.

  “William,” she said, trying to mask the stuffiness in her nose, “there’s a reason you’re here. It hasn’t been shown to you yet.” She smiled in the darkness. “And if I remember correctly, I thought you’d stopped believing in God.”

  On New Year’s Day, Keldor’s small staff of three returned. Olivia had arranged for James’s brother to bring him back, and he in turn took the Morgan motorcar to retrieve Mrs. Pollard and Annie at the station later that afternoon.

  “This is highly unusual, isn’t it?” Mrs. Pollard said, making herself at home again in her kitchen. “And you’re positive Nazis haven’t landed nearby? My sister said—”

  “Don’t you start in on this, too. No matter what you’ve heard, they’re rumors and not to be spread. We don’t want to heighten the major’s fears; we want to soothe them. Also, we can’t leave him alone for reasons I’ve already explained. How nice to have more working eyes around here. I may actually get a bath in.”

  Mrs. Pollard looked her up and down. “You haven’t been bathing?”

  “Certainly not the way I’d like. How else could I keep an eye on the major? His moods change in a flash, from anxious and fearful to hopeless and possibly suicidal. Nights have been the worst. I’ve partially moved into his bedroom—”

  “You’ve what?”

  “You’ll see what I’ve fixed when you go upstairs. At least by being in the same room, I can gauge if he tries to leave in the middle of the night.”

  “And has he?”

  “No. No, he hasn’t.”

  In another week, William finally began to sit more comfortably and stopped jumping like a skittish pussycat at every noise. His nightmares, though still horrendous, occurred less frequently. He even asked to listen to the wireless again.

  It was time to contact their local home front security expert.

  “Dinham here.”

  As soon as Olivia spoke, the man gushed as if he’d been awaiting her call. She evaded small talk by diving headfirst into recent developments at Keldor: Due to severe side effects from his medication, Major Morgan still believed Nazis tiptoed on Cornwall’s doorstep. If apprised of recent enemy whereabouts and the local military’s defense plan, perhaps the major would feel less alone in his fears. What were the captain’s thoughts? Would he be willing to help?

  Authoritative as usual, Dinham praised Olivia for phoning; s
he’d done the right thing. He’d heard about the adverse effects different medications could have on certain soldiers—pity the major was one of them—and he’d be happy to give an official update on the local threat of intrusions and air strikes, and the Home Guard’s plan to keep the area safe. Staging his visit as a drop-in house call was a brilliant idea, as he had an important document to deliver to the major anyway.

  The man’s self-importance was nauseating. “Any reassurance from a top local official would be much appreciated, sir.”

  That same afternoon, the windblown captain brought salutations to his hosts as he handed Mrs. Pollard his dripping greatcoat. Olivia led him and the major to the dark library, which was still shrouded in blackout yet warmed by a steady fire. Annie rushed in with tea, and once the men were settled, the women left together. Olivia lingered outside, hoping to catch any snippet of conversation. This proved a useless endeavor, as the thick doors muted even the captain’s blaring voice.

  After twenty minutes, the two military men emerged. Olivia’s eyes flew to William, who stood calmly. This, of course, told her nothing.

  “Nice to see you, Nurse Talbot,” Captain Dinham said. “And my apologies for dropping in on you like this today.” He winked.

  Grateful for his visit even if it hadn’t worked, she smiled back, acknowledging their little secret.

  He huffed and puffed his way back into his damp greatcoat. “Don’t hesitate to call me, either one of you, if you’re in need of anything.”

  Once the front door had closed behind him, William turned to Olivia with a dour expression. “I suppose we can remove the blackout. At least until sunset.”

  Mrs. Pollard scampered down the corridor toward them. “Oh, Mr. William, that sounds like wonderful news, it does!”

  The smile in Olivia’s voice was as big as the one on her face. “We can? Why? What did the captain say?”

  “The coast is clear. Funny, I suspected as much these past few days. Glad Dinham could confirm it.” But unease produced rows of thick lines across his forehead. He pressed on the skin between his eyes. “Olivia, would you mind terribly if I spent the afternoon alone? I’ve much to sort out.”