The Fog of War

by A. L. Lester

  The idea that Anna was stuck somewhere was different. That didn’t bring more grief. Well…it did. But it was an exhausted sort of grief. And the weight of an obligation.

  To deal with it, she’d need help, one way or another, and the first thing she would have to do was to talk to Lucy and Walter.

  Chapter 18

  Coming back to Bradfield after Christmas was like coming home. Lucy had a very pleasant time at Magenford for the week she was there. She was incredibly lucky to get on with her parents as well as she did—so many of her friends had trouble with theirs these days. The older generation had no idea how bad it had been in France. Lucy’s though…they hadn’t tried to make her talk about it; but they’d listened when she did. And heard her.

  They were pleased to see her and pleased she was happy and whole. That had made for a very nice few days holiday.

  Sylvia had met her train at the station two days ago and Lucy’s heart had leaped like a frog in her chest when she’d seen her. She couldn’t help the enormous smile that plastered itself onto her face the moment she had stepped down onto the platform.

  Sylvia had stood there as if she owned the railway, tall and poised and solemn, her face breaking into a returning smile when she made out Lucy through the smoke wisping down the platform from the engine. She still refused to bob her hair, keeping it coiled in great thick loops up under a slightly worse-for-wear hat. She was gradually becoming everything to Lucy.

  Lucy had realised it with a stab of shock, right there on Platform Two.

  She’d always thought the other woman impressive. But at ten years her senior, a fearsomely efficient doctor who had been known to verbally eviscerate orderlies who had forgotten tasks or done them improperly, Lucy’s admiration had initially been from rather far away, despite their growing friendship. Of course, no-one really talked about Dr Marks’ closeness with ambulance driver Miss Masters. Such things weren’t anyone’s business but the women’s own. Lucy had watched them sometimes, though, and envied their easy, close relationship. Her parents would have been shocked; but Lucy could see exactly what they saw in each other.

  She had been devastated both on her own behalf when Anna Masters had been killed—they had been on the way to becoming friends by then—and on Sylvia’s. The woman had clearly been dealt an almost mortal blow. She’d stopped smiling for a while and didn’t talk about anything except hospital matters. That was when their friendship had really begun to deepen. Lucy’s heart had ached for her and she’d done her best to be there for her as she quietly grieved.

  Seeing her there, wreathed in the smoke from the engine, smiling back at Lucy as the cloud cleared, had made her heart ache in a completely different way.

  Which was why she had persuaded Sylvia to come to the cinema with her.

  “Sylvia! Are you coming?” she called up the stairs.

  “Nearly ready, just a moment,” Sylvia’s voice was muffled. “My hair isn’t behaving.”

  Lucy trotted up the stairs to her rooms. They were going to be late for the beginning of the film at this rate.

  “Let me help,” she said.

  Sylvia sat in front of her mirror, mouth full of hairpins and arms cocked up behind her head, shoving them into her coiled hair.

  “It’s got to look halfway neat if I’m going to take my hat off,” she said.

  “You can keep your hat on,” Lucy said.

  “It always seems rude to the people behind me,” Sylvia said. “The seats aren’t very well laid out.”

  “Hang on, then,” Lucy said.

  She stood behind Sylvia and wrested her hands away from her head. “Give me the brush,” she said.

  Sylvia’s hair fell in a curtain to below her waist and was thick and wavy. It was brown, a delightful range of shades from light to dark. Some of the women at Royaumont had cut their hair—bathing facilities had been rudimentary—but Sylvia had kept hers long, wound up in a chignon every day.

  She handed the brush from the dressing table back to Lucy and Lucy began to run it through from crown to ends. It didn’t really need much brushing, Sylvia had already done that, but she used the brush to gather in all up into one hand, a heavy tail of soft, raw silk in her palm. The faint scent of rosemary that she always associated with Sylvia was from her hair, Lucy realised.

  Sylvia removed the hairpins from her mouth and watched Lucy in the mirror. Her eyes were soft. “No-one’s brushed my hair for years,” she said quietly.

  “It’s beautiful,” Lucy said.

  She began to wind it into a rope around her hand, twisting it up onto Sylvia’s head as she went. She pinned as she twisted, making a flattish coil that would sit easily under Sylvia’s beret. She focused on what she was doing, getting it right. The hair was fine and thick against her palms and she could hear Sylvia’s breathing slow and soften.

  As she tucked the last pin in, securing the ends, she said, “All right?” and dropped her hands to Sylvia’s shoulders.

  Sylvia met her eyes in the mirror and nodded. She was relaxed and pliant under Lucy’s palms.

  The moment hung in time.

  Lucy dropped her eyes. Sylvia’s nape had little curls along the hairline. Lucy ran a single finger up her neck and smoothed them up into the main chignon with a gentle touch and watched them spring back down. Sylvia shivered and dropped her head forward. Lucy watched her face in the mirror. Her eyes had fallen closed as she bent her head, and her expression was slack.

  It was very strange to see. Sylvia awake was usually Sylvia in motion. Lady doctors didn’t have the option to project anything other than complete confidence and competence every single moment. Lucy’s memories of France were largely informed by a calmly controlled Sylvia, even in the worst crisis. This Sylvia though…she liked very much.

  She stroked her finger again, from the soft skin just above Sylvia’s collar to the hairline just behind her ear. Sylvia let her head relax forward a tiny bit more, and her breathing hitched again. Her skin was so soft under Lucy’s fingertips. Lucy was becoming hypnotised by the repetitive motion of her own hand. Start at the collar. Explore the warm, fine skin of Sylvia’s neck, the thin skin behind her ear, reach her hairline. Lift her finger off and move it down to the collar to begin the journey again.

  Sylvia’s breathing became slower and slower, her face calmer and calmer. Lucy felt that she was seeing a completely new person emerge under her motions. That Sylvia was allowing this was no small thing.

  “Sylvia?” she said, hesitantly.

  Sylvia shook her head very slightly, and Lucy saw in the mirror that she was biting her lip. Her face was almost agonised now. Lucy dropped her hands to Sylvia’s shoulders, and they stayed like that for a moment, a frozen tableau.

  Then Sylvia raised her head, her face herself again. “Thank you,” she said, obviously struggling for her usual bright tone. “That’s got it under control!”

  Lucy dropped her hands and stepped back as Sylvia stood.

  “Let’s get going then,” Sylvia said. “If you’re going to make me watch Harold Lloyd, the least you can do is make sure we get there to see the start of the flick.”

  Lucy schooled her face and smiled back at her as Sylvia turned. “Exactly,” she said. “Come along, then!”

  * * * *

  Later that night, lying in her bed, she replayed the scene in her mind. What had happened there? She’d long resigned herself to her pash on the older woman, right back when it began in France.

  It didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t unusual. Lots of girls at her school had pashes on older pupils. Sometimes the older girls reciprocated. Sometimes they never found out. Lucy had very much thought this was the kind that would never be found out, particularly when Sylvia was still so sad about Anna.

  She’d put it out of her mind a long time ago and hadn’t entertained any hopes of that sort at all when she’d come to stay at Bradfield. It would have felt dishonest, somehow. As if she was getting to spend time with Sylvia under false pretences.

&nbs
p; But if she was honest with herself…she bit her lip and turned onto her other side, looking out of the open curtains at the half-moon in the cloudless winter sky…if she was honest with herself, those feelings were still there. Growing a bit, even, as they spent more time together, although she was doing her best to ignore them.

  And then this afternoon…Sylvia had allowed her touch. Welcomed it, even. What was happening there? The way she had allowed Lucy to touch her neck. Run her fingers up from her collar over and over. Calmed, relaxed, and just…stopped. For Lucy.

  Lucy had done that for her. It made her think of the evening Marcus Wright had knocked on the door. How Sylvia had dozed on Lucy’s shoulder in the kitchen, after they’d patched the boy up and put him to bed.

  Lucy had forgotten that. It had given her the same feeling though. Lucy had liked it very much. Being able to untangle Sylvia like a knotted ribbon and give her a few moments peace…that was a gift worth giving.

  She drifted to sleep watching the moon move across the sky, with the feeling of Sylvia’s soft nape ghosting on her fingertips and surrounded by the drifting scent of rosemary.

  Chapter 19

  Sylvia hated Harold Lloyd. She hated slapstick comedy in general. She could see how clever it was, placing the actors just-so, so things didn’t fall on them when the scenery collapsed. And other people seemed to find it all hilarious. But she just didn’t have time for it.

  However, Lucy loved all that sort of thing, and Sylvia wanted to make Lucy happy, ergo, Harold Lloyd it had been. Perhaps next time they could see something less…trivial. Sylvia hoped Lucy would be as tolerant in return when she dragged her to see The First Men in the Moon when it finally came to the cinema in Taunton.

  She lay on her back with her arm thrown over her face. She’d given herself away this evening, she knew. Putting herself in the hands of someone she trusted wasn’t something she allowed herself very often. A long time ago, at medical school, she had a friend who would brush her hair like that. Sylvia would shut her eyes and focus on the rhythmic swish, swish, swish of the brush through her hair and all the busyness of the day would fall away and her mind would still.

  Or they would sit in front of the fire, Sylvia at Roberta’s feet, both reading. Sylvia would lean her cheek against Roberta’s knee and Roberta would stroke her nape as Lucy had earlier this evening and Sylvia would just…let her. By the time the end of the evening came around, she would be relaxed and loose and floating, ready to be taken by the hand and led to bed.

  It was a very tempting prospect, to have that with Lucy.

  She allowed herself to imagine it. There was no harm in opening the door and looking through. It didn’t mean that she had to let things go anywhere. But it gave her a warm feeling, thinking about it. Lucy, looking at Sylvia when Sylvia came into a room and her face lighting up with pleasure. Lucy scowling ferociously as she pulled dust-covered books off the shelves in Papa’s library, hair tied up in a scarf, duster in hand and a smudge on her cheek. Lucy reduced to gales of helpless giggles as Sylvia retrieved a much-vaunted sponge cake out of the range and it having a huge crater in the centre rather than a nicely risen curve.

  Then she allowed herself to drop further into the fantasy. Let herself remember this evening. Lucy’s touch on her skin. Somehow that had always made her become quiescent. Soft fingers on her neck, scritch-scritch-scritching in the hair at her nape was like a switch that calmed her mind. Someone else doing something for her. Looking after her. Caring for her. She spent so damned much of her time looking after other people. Having a tiny space of her own to allow herself to be looked after was…necessary.

  Or she thought it was. She’d been managing without it for a long time now. Roberta had gone home to Durham to join her father’s medical practice. They wrote regularly. But she had another friend now, someone she lived with. At the time they had been very much in love, a first relationship with another woman for both of them. But the intensity and depth had been formed by the pressures and stresses of medical school and they had been wise enough to know that. A good friendship had come of it.

  Could she have some of that intimacy again with Lucy? Did Sylvia want that?

  Lucy had been noticeably young when she came to the hospital in France. Sylvia had been angry with the committee for allowing her to come over. But she had stepped up admirably and had matured quickly, growing into her role as an orderly. She’d balked at nothing…scrubbing floors, emptying bedpans, helping dress wounds, hauling firewood and coal, helping in the kitchen, carrying stretchers up the interminable cold stone steps. And gossip—which Sylvia never listened to, obviously—had said that she’d had sharp words with the ghost that sometimes hammered on people’s doors, and sent it packing from her own.

  Not that Sylvia believed in ghosts, of course. The bangs and knocks she’d heard herself were the building settling or echoes from outside or something similar.

  She shivered.

  Anyway. Lucy had done all that. And now she was in her mid-twenties and confident and cheerful and clearly cared for Sylvia. Walter had pointed it out before she’d even arrived.

  Sylvia wasn’t sure whether she should thank or curse Walter for bringing it to her attention. She looked at Lucy sometimes and found herself wondering how soft her lips would be if Lucy chose to kiss her. What it would feel like to kneel in front of her, undoing the buttons of her pyjama top one by one and pressing her cheek to the warm skin of her stomach underneath…

  She stopped herself with a sharp breath.

  Sylvia was starting to think of her as more than a platonic friend. It was obvious Lucy had some sort of feelings for Sylvia. Perhaps she could let her in a little bit. And they could see what happened.

  But then…what about Anna? Anna was the love of Sylvia’s life. No-one would ever measure up to her. Sylvia had been certain since the moment they met in 1915. She’d resigned herself to an Anna-less life after she’d gone. It had been easy in France, because there was so much to do, so little time to think. And when she’d first arrived home, there was all the business of sorting out the house and the surgery.

  She’d been moving on. Putting it behind her.

  Now though…now she had been given hope that it might be possible to get Anna back. And alongside that hope, her growing feelings for Lucy were making her head swirl.

  She needed to sleep.

  She turned over. Moonlight from the half-moon was sliding in through the gap where the curtains didn’t quite meet and across the carpet in a line.

  She finally fell asleep watching it crawl across the floor inch by inch.

  Chapter 20

  It wasn’t until after supper a week or two later, when they were all three of them settled in the comfortable chairs of the sitting room with cups of tea and the gramophone playing Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins that Sylvia began to think of Webber’s again. She’d successfully managed to push it all down again after her long night of post-cinema introspection.

  The three of them had settled into a comfortable rhythm of work and companionship. They had a housekeeper now! Mrs Baker from the village came in every day to cook a midday meal and generally keep things in order. She had taken charge of the other girls who had been cleaning the house and dealing with the laundry. It was a large house…too big for two women and a man who slept in the coach-house…but it seemed sinful to Sylvia not to look after it, particularly given that her ancestor had built it and her family had always lived here. It felt like it was only hers in trust.

  Accordingly, she took herself in hand and sorted out gardeners, now spring was on its way. It wasn’t like people didn’t need the work. She interviewed a capable young woman who had been working on one of the local farms and had been turned off when the men came home to their jobs; she seemed to know what she was doing, so Sylvia put her in charge. She set herself up in the head gardener’s cottage and went about hiring another couple of people to help get things in order. There was the big walled garden and the hot houses to tak
e over…they’d lapsed these last few years since Papa died and it would be good to get them going again. They could even sell the fresh fruit and vegetables if they had any to spare.

  Not that Sylvia had any need of the money, she thought to herself, staring at the carpet over her cup of tea. But fresh food was always useful, and it pleased her to see things done well.

  She sighed as her thoughts turned to Webber’s again. That was something that hadn’t been done well, at all.

  “What’s on your mind?” asked Walter, breaking into her thoughts. She looked up at him. He was watching her, face kind and open.

  Lucy’s head was bent over some knitting she had produced a few days ago with some embarrassment. She looked up too, first at Walter, then over at Sylvia.

  Sylvia wanted to talk to them both about it. But…what if they didn’t believe her? She’d decided she was going to talk to them in the aftermath of Christmas, but the opportunity had never seemed to come up. And things had gone on so beautifully with Lucy since they’d both come home from their respective visits. Sylvia hadn’t wanted to disturb that. She’d wanted to wrap herself in their growing closeness and not think about impossible things and violence…or Anna.

  She sighed again. She owed it to Anna, though.

  She took a deep breath. “Just thinking about Christmas,” she said.

  “That’s a long time off. It’s only February,” Walter said, frowning.

  “No, you fool. Last Christmas,” she said, smiling.

  “Oh? What about it?” asked Lucy.

  Walter was still watching her. She’d still been pretty shaken up when he’d come back from those few days with his family. He knew something had happened, he just wasn’t sure what. Lucy hadn’t seemed to notice anything was off.

  “While you were away…” She trailed off.

  He cocked his head and Lucy put her knitting down into her lap, watching her.