The Fog of War

by A. L. Lester

  “Up at Webber’s,” she looked over at Lucy. “It’s one of the local farms. I was looking after the brother, Arthur, or trying to. He died in the summer, just after his brother came back from France. He was supposed to have cancer, but it wasn’t.”

  She paused and frowned, head bent, fingering the book in her lap. Around them the strains of violins rose and fell like a blanket. The gramophone was beginning to need winding.

  “I went up there one day and he was making lights appear and disappear. With his fingers.”

  She looked at them both.

  They were staring at her.

  She swallowed and looked down at her hands.

  “Honestly,” she said, speaking to her fingers. “I saw him do it more than once. He said it was something he’d taught himself. He was quite unhinged, of course.”

  She gave a huffing little laugh and forced herself to look up at them, from one to the other. The disbelief in their faces was as she’d feared. “Stop looking at me like that, both of you,” she said. “I’m not making this up.”

  Lucy shook her head, pulled a face, and bit her lip. “It’s not very believable, you must admit, Sylvia. It sounds like a story. Go on? What happened?”

  She went back to biting her lip. She looked alarmed.

  After a moment, Sylvia made herself continue.

  “He said he was going to make a weapon that would be so big and terrible that no-one would ever go to war again for fear of it.”

  Walter made a stifled sound and she looked over at him. “I know, Walt. It’s ridiculous. He said that using the energy, or whatever it was that made the lights and things, that was what was killing him. Draining him.”

  She looked back down at her lap, not waiting to see his reaction. The binding on her book was gold-leaf on brown. It was Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities.

  She looked up again and over at Walter in apology, pursing her mouth. “Sorry.”

  He shook his head. “It’s fairly unbelievable, Sylvia.”

  “I’ve been trying not to think about it much, if I’m honest,” she went on. Because none of it made any sense. I didn’t say anything because it seemed so unreal. Then he died, so I let it rest. There didn’t seem any point in talking about it. I know it sounds barmy.”

  “What changed your mind?” Lucy asked quietly.

  She sighed. “Something else happened,” she continued haltingly. In for a penny, in for a pound. “While you were away…a couple of days before Christmas…Curland turned up on the doorstep, covered in blood…he’s one of the labourers up at Webber’s…”

  She talked them through it all, the strains of Bach finally falling silent as the gramophone ran down.

  By the end of the story, they were both looking at her slightly open-mouthed.

  “That is…bloody hell…” Walter said.

  Lucy looked over at him. “I’ll say.” Her voice was firm. “But if it happened, then it happened.” She turned to Sylvia. “Are they all well now? Is Mr Marchant still up at the farm?”

  Sylvia shook her head. “No. He stayed for a few weeks to recuperate and then went back to London, I think. I suppose there were all sorts of things to sort out. Paperwork. He’d probably been declared dead. Although I think that takes seven years, if there’s no body, doesn’t it?”

  She stopped dead, a sharp stab of loss hitting her under her ribs as her words brought Anna to mind again. That had been three years ago. She hadn’t been declared dead yet.

  She’d not been in touch with Anna’s parents after the one letter of condolence she’d sent them in that dreadful April of ‘seventeen. She hadn’t wanted to bother them, moping around like the Ghost of Christmas past when they were trying to deal with their own dreadful loss. And of course, they didn’t know what Anna had been to her. What she and Anna had been to each other.

  Anna had been startlingly blasé about how her parents might receive a relationship between the two of them. Sylvia had been terrified by her attitude. But then, one of the things that kept her with Anna was Anna’s conviction that absolutely anything could happen at any time if you wanted it hard enough.

  She sighed. It was done and past nearly three years ago and she needed to pull herself together. But…perhaps Anna’s attitude was what she needed here. What if Anna truly was still alive somewhere, trapped like Marchant had been? Declared dead or assumed dead wasn’t the same as actually dead.

  She blinked furiously. She was not going to cry about it. Not again.

  She looked up. The others were both watching her.

  Softly Lucy said, “Are you all right, Sylvia, dear? It must have been very upsetting.”

  Sylvia swallowed again, pulled a face, and mentally shook herself. “No more upsetting than a lot of the things that happened in France,” she said. “And Marchant survived, thanks to Matthew Webber’s quick thinking.” She paused and then continued, “So no harm done there, really.”

  She glanced over at Walter. His face was blank. He was probably remembering his own friend who had died on her operating table.

  Would that raw pain of loss never end, for any of them? she wondered. She supposed it would fade with time, like any scar.

  It ached though. She was not going to cry.

  “It did make me wonder about Anna,” she said finally, quietly, forcing speech out to get to the nub of it. “No-one ever found her body.”

  She swallowed further words down hard and there was a little silence. Despite her best efforts, tears began to spill down her face.

  Chapter 21

  Sylvia couldn’t stop the tears. Blast. They tumbled down her cheeks and she finally abandoned her fierce hold on the Dickens and put her palms over her face to hide from the others. She heard herself give a little hiccoughing sob and Walter say “Oh, Sylvia!” and then stop himself.

  At the same time, she heard Lucy say, “Sylvia.”

  She was aware of Lucy coming over to her chair and kneeling on the floor beside her. Bloody damnation, the tears just wouldn’t stop. She scrubbed her hands over her face frantically. She couldn’t afford this. It was too much.

  Lucy put a hand on her knee and another on her shoulder. Oh God. She felt all her walls were crumbling inside. Kindness…comforting touch. Someone else taking the load for just a little bit. She missed it so much. But Lucy…it wasn’t fair to Lucy because Anna might still be alive and if that was the case, Sylvia was duty-bound to look for her…and Lucy was…it was…oh God.

  She finally gave in to it and put her head on Lucy’s shoulder, allowed Lucy to gather her up in her arms. She let it all go. All the worries, all the frustrations, all the uncertainty released in a flurry of sobs.

  She was aware of Lucy making comforting noises and having some sort of conversation with Walter over her head, tucked under Lucy’s chin.

  * * * *

  When she finally got herself under control and drew back a bit Lucy let her go, hands falling back to their previous position on Sylvia’s shoulder and knee.

  Sylvia couldn’t look at her face. She focused on her hand instead. She had nice hands. Sylvia remembered thinking that before, watching Lucy drive home from taking the Wrights to Wellington. They were slim and fine-fingered. But capable. Oh, so capable. She’d scrubbed and washed and lifted and folded for three whole years as an orderly. And she’d held hands with men who were half out of their minds with pain or dying.

  She gulped another breath. She wasn’t going to cry again. But she felt very peculiar. Sort of floaty. How odd.

  She was aware of them speaking over her again, and Walter moving around the room. Then he pressed one of the heavy crystal glasses into her hands and wrapped her fingers around it, his own warm hands encouraging her to grip it herself.

  “Here,” he said. “Drink.”

  His voice was rumbly and comforting and she smelled the sharp smell of brandy. She lifted it and took a big gulp. It burned like acid going down her throat and she coughed, surprised. It did the trick though and brought her back to herself.<
br />
  Lucy was still crouched at the floor at her feet and Walter stood behind her, frowning worriedly at Sylvia over her head. When she looked up and met his eyes, he gave a little nod to the brandy glass and asked, “More?”

  She shook her head. “I wouldn’t mind a gasper though,” she said.

  He reached for her cigarette case on the low table and lit a Sobranie for her, pulling a face as he inhaled. “Disgusting things,” he said, passing it over to her and taking the empty glass.

  “No more than your Gold Flake,” she said. It was an automatic exchange running on well-worn tracks and she took comfort in it.

  Walter returned to his chair, but Lucy stayed sat at her feet, holding the hand that didn’t have the cigarette. It was a comfort. She missed the touch of another person so much. She’d had that with Anna of course. Those nights curled up together in the narrow bed at Royaumont, and just three times on a wide, soft feather mattress on leave from the hospital, in a Paris hotel.

  That made her breathing wobble again and she took another drag of the cigarette in an attempt to steady it.

  “I’m being ridiculous,” she managed, in an approximate facsimile of her usual non-nonsense tone. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologise,” Lucy said from her position at Sylvia’s feet. “Please, don’t apologise. She was a good friend to you, and we miss her too.”

  Sylvia blinked tears away again.

  “I didn’t know her all that well, only a little bit. But anyone could see how close you were and what you meant to each other.”

  Sylvia saw Walter stop moving at the periphery of her vision, interrupting the stuffing of his pipe.

  She still couldn’t meet Lucy’s eyes. “It was a long time ago,” she said. “And we were all different people then.” She lifted her head, talking to Walter as well as Lucy. “I know I should put it behind me and move on. But how can I? It wasn’t easy before. And it’s a damned sight less easy if I think there might be a chance she’s still out there somewhere, lost like Marchant was.”

  She took another drag of Sobranie, filling her lungs, the rich taste reassuring in her mouth, the smoke calming her down.

  “They never found her body. There were no bomb craters. The ambulance was fine once it had been hauled out of the mud. Sheila was fine. And she talked about a peculiar cloud of gas that wasn’t gas, didn’t she?”

  Walter nodded. “She did.”

  Lucy said, “I spoke to her about it. We became quite good friends later on. She told me there were lights in the cloud and peculiar voices howling or singing. She didn’t speak about it much, though. She didn’t want to get dragged into piffle like those stories about angels and visions and what-not.”

  Sylvia nodded. “Yes, she said that to me. We only spoke about it the once. I didn’t even know she told anyone else. She definitely didn’t put it in her official report. She just wrote that it must have been a cloud of dilute gas or smoke or some sort of freak weather condition that made mist rise up.”

  She sighed. “I just can’t help thinking…what if she’s like Marchant? What if she’s out there somewhere, in another world? A prisoner of those people. Or even worse, on her own with no way to get home?”

  There was a pungent silence, filled with the aromatic scent of Sobranie.

  Finally, Walter said, “Well, there’s nothing you can do about it, my dear. Even if she is.”

  Lucy made a sharp movement that she stifled almost at the same time Sylvia noticed it, her hand tightening and then relaxing on Sylvia’s own, then bringing her other hand up to rub Sylvia’s between them, comfortingly.

  Even for Walter, that was blunt. But it was what she needed. She was too emotional. Sylvia took another drag of the cig. It was helping. So was Lucy’s touch.

  She pulled herself out of her funk with an effort, squeezing Lucy’s hand before withdrawing her own.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m fine. Honestly.” She managed a watery grin. “Surprised myself there. I didn’t think I was still so upset.”

  Lucy patted her hand and stood. “I think there are some things we carry inside us until it’s a safe time to let them out,” she said, shaking her skirts back into place.

  “When did you become so wise?” Sylvia asked, looking up at her. She’d filled out in the months since they’d been home. She didn’t have that thin, grey look about her that she had when they’d parted in London at the end of their journey from France.

  “I grew up, my dear,” Lucy said. She poured herself some brandy into Sylvia’s empty glass on the table and drank it in one smooth motion. “I just grew up.”

  Chapter 22

  Lucy went to bed feeling like a wrung-out dishrag. Poor Sylvia, to feel so strongly about Anna after three years. Lucy hadn’t seen her cry since the very first time they’d met…and she now realised that had been connected to Anna Masters as well. Lucy was angry on Sylvia’s behalf.

  But she was also a tiny bit angry on her own account. Clearly Sylvia didn’t see her as anything more than a child. Or she hadn’t done until this evening.

  She knew she was younger than Sylvia. Everyone had made sure she knew they saw her as little more than a girl in those first months at the hospital. That she’d had to get Mama and Papa’s permission for her war work still rankled a little. And after it all, after giving her best for all that time, the truly horrible things she’d seen and dealt with…people still treated her as young and incapable.

  She made a cross, huffing noise as she buttoned her pyjama top. And she still wasn’t allowed to vote, either. It was ridiculous. Old enough to hold the hands of dying men turned to mince by the war machine, not old enough to decide who was most suited to lead the country.

  She pulled on her bed-socks and slid between the sheets, pushing the big stone hot water bottle down the bed with her feet and sliding her toes against it. That was better. The big house was beautiful, but it was very bracing on these winter nights. It wasn’t like home, with a bevy of live-in staff to light the fires early in the morning and keep them going all day.

  She lay there, bundled under the blankets and eiderdown, and thought it through.

  Anna had disappeared in the April of 1917. So just under three years ago. Sylvia’s story this evening was ridiculous. Magicians—at a local farm no less!—and magical people from another world. A world you could get to by going through a wall or cloud of magic. It was unbelievable and if anyone but Sylvia Marks had told her about it, she’d have told them off in no uncertain terms, certain they were playing her for a fool. But seeing Sylvia this evening…the famously stoic Sylvia Marks brought low by her emotions…Lucy had no difficulty believing her story.

  Under torture to anyone but herself would she confess her tendresse for Sylvia. It had begun almost from the day they had first met at the hospital. Dr Marks had been a figure of legend. The best surgeon they had, no nonsense about her, practical in the extreme. Saw people as cogs in the machine of the hospital, classified by their ability to do the job they’d been assigned. Fearsome.

  But then, there had been these occasional glimpses Lucy had been privy to. The only other time she’d seen Sylvia crying, she’d been coming out of the door of the kitchen to put things in the rubbish bins. Dr Marks had been leaning against the old stone wall of the abbey, smoking furiously, tears running down her face as they had done this evening. She’d been staring into space, completely oblivious to Lucy’s presence. When Lucy let the door bang behind her, she’d jumped, roughly brushed at her face, and smiled a grim smile at Lucy.

  “Tired,” she’d said, apropos of nothing, dropping the cigarette and grinding it out under her boot. “Just tired.”

  Lucy had nodded. They were all tired. They had been getting the wounded from the Nivelle Offensive for days and all their beds were full, with some wounded even on cots in the corridors.

  “I can get you a cup of tea,” she’d offered, timidly. There was still hot water on the enormous stove.

  Dr Marks looked at the toes of
her boots absently and then up at Lucy again, before bending down to pick up the remains of the cigarette and flick it into the dustbin.

  “That would be lovely, thank you,” she said. “Is it still busy in there?”

  Lucy nodded. The kitchen staff were just starting the washing up. “I’ll bring it out here, shall I?” she said.

  Dr Marks had nodded again and said “Would that be all right? I’m not…” she’d hesitated, “…not much in the mood for company.”

  Lucy had gone and poured a fresh cup for her with a teaspoon of sugar and brought it out. Dr Marks had been leaning against the wall again, with another cigarette almost finished. She wasn’t crying any longer. Lucy was pleased.

  “Here,” she said. “I put sugar in it.”

  Dr Marks took it. Her hands were shaking a tiny bit, Lucy noticed. Not good for a surgeon. She must be exhausted.

  “Thank you,” she said, and took a mouthful.

  “Can I do anything to help?” Lucy asked, doubtfully. “Are you feeling quite well?”

  Dr Marks shook her head, giving Lucy a ghost of a smile. “Thank you, but no. I’m only tired, truly. It’s been a very long few days.”

  Lucy nodded. “Yes, it certainly has. It seems to be slowing down now though, doesn’t it?”

  Dr Marks shrugged, a long way from her usual insouciance. “I hope so. I certainly hope so.” She sighed, a deep, from-her-boots sort of sigh, and Lucy could see her visibly wrapping the trappings of Fearsome Dr Marks back around herself. She handed Lucy back the empty tea-mug with a small smile. “Thank you so much for bringing that out to me. I’m sorry to make more work for you.”

  “It’s quite all right,” Lucy had said. “Honestly. You looked like you needed it.” And she had taken the mug and gone back to help with the washing up.

  Later on that day, Lucy had learned from hospital gossip that Anna Masters had been killed. She hadn’t known her well, but she had liked what she had seen of her. She’d been one of the women who’d come out early on and stayed for the duration—some people simply couldn’t cope with the stresses and strains for too long, but other seemed to fit right in. She’d officially been one of the chauffeurs who brought out their own ambulances to collect and deliver wounded, but she had turned her hand to whatever had been necessary, assembling beds, moving mattresses and patients, helping in the mortuary. She’d been killed driving down to Creil to pick up wounded men.