by Lizzie Page
‘Well, they don’t think he’s dead.’
‘Thank goodness.’
‘But…’ – he paused, then without lowering his voice said – ‘he is a homosexual.’
Looking around the room, I decided neither the bandaged boy nor poor Edward would likely care too much about my brother’s predilections.
‘That is one explanation,’ I replied neutrally.
Dr Munro looked sympathetically at me. ‘They are even less enlightened on the subject in the Caribbean than they are here. Which is saying something. And of course, he seems to have got involved with the wrong people out there, which has ruffled a few feathers.’
Dr Munro continued, ‘If he’s got any sense, he will have gone to America.’
‘America?’ I was shocked.
‘He could have taken a boat, wouldn’t take long, even with little money.’
I imagined my brother jumping onto boats and trains, sneaking rides, living like an outlaw. Was America where he was? Was that where he wanted to be?
‘He might be freer there.’
‘I suppose.’
‘I’m sorry I don’t have any more encouraging news to tell you,’ said Dr Munro.
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I understand.’ Although I didn’t. I just wanted to see my brother again.
He would always be sixteen years old to my fourteen. In my mind we would always be racing our bikes, sailing down the open road, stretching ahead, like our bright futures. I could beat him in an arm-wrestle. He could beat me at draughts. He once made me a tiny chain of daisies. Even after the flowers themselves died, their stems clung together for days on my wrist.
Elsie came back exactly one week after her first visit. It was October 1917. I imagined her fitting me into her busy schedule.
‘You’re looking better!’
‘You said that last time,’ I pointed out.
‘Well, it must have been true then, too,’ she said.
I laughed bitterly.
She had brought me an apple that had come all the way from Hampshire: fat and round, shaped like a pair of buttocks and with shiny glowing skin. It was far too beautiful to eat.
‘Special delivery for the bravest girl in town,’ she said.
She expected me to be grateful. And I was. But I hated being grateful to her because I didn’t like her any more. She wasn’t who I thought she was. She had inveigled her way into my heart with untruths. I might have forgiven her for her divorce if she hadn’t lied to me about it over and over again.
Edward was jumping about being his usual nuisance. His latest thing was to leap across between our beds, making the entire room shake. Clara was nearby, reading to the bandaged boy:
‘And it is I, Raksha [The Demon], who answers. The man’s cub is mine, Lungri – mine to me! He shall not be killed. He shall live to run with the Pack and to hunt with the Pack; and in the end, look you, hunter of little naked cubs – frog-eater – fish-killer – he shall hunt thee!’
Elsie asked if she could open a window. Like all enclosed spaces, the room was too hot for her.
‘The boys like it warm,’ I said disgruntled. Just like Elsie to think she could come in here and change everything. I could tell there was something on her mind, and wished she’d just get on with it, forget the blasted temperature. You could only open the windows a little since one of the nurses, suffering ‘temporary insanity’, had thrown herself out head-first.
Eventually Elsie worked around to telling me what she had come here to say.
‘The cellar had to go, Mairi. I mean, permanently go. We can’t go back there.’
I felt sick.
‘It served us well though,’ she said. ‘We helped hundreds, maybe thousands of men, Mairi.’
All those bandaged boys. All those dead boys. She looked at me as though I should join in the self-congratulations. But I couldn’t. Something had been on my mind since I had arrived in hospital but it was now more important than ever before.
‘What will happen when they come back?’
Elsie looked at me uncomprehendingly. ‘The… soldiers?’
‘No. The family who used to live there.’
They could send canaries down, I had heard. Or, if they didn’t have any birds – for they were in high demand – you could lower a goldfish in a bowl full of water: if it comes up dead, it’s gassed. If not, it’s all right. We could at least make the cellar gas-free for them to return to. Madeleine, we aren’t going to let you down.
‘The family are not coming back.’
‘Clitter-clatter!’ cried Edward, jamming his hands over his ears.
‘They might.’
Elsie didn’t say anything else. She rummaged in her bag, pulled out a cigarette. ‘Ed-ward!’ She called to him in the same way she had called Shot. She smiled conspiratorially at me. ‘I’ll light it for him this time.’
‘They might, Elsie, they might,’ I said hotly. She wasn’t going to distract me. ‘A lot of people went to England or Holland; they will come back.’
She nodded but it wasn’t a proper nod.
‘Some went to France.’
She knew something and she wasn’t saying it.
‘Or… Germany. Maybe they were taken there?’
The bandaged boy had fallen asleep at last. Clara quietly closed the book and tiptoed away, fluttering a wave at me and Elsie. She still had the elaborate delicacy of a newborn nurse.
‘Please,’ I begged. ‘Please, Elsie, no more secrets.’
So Elsie told me.
The father had been away working. Not a doctor – good guess, Mairi – but another engineer. He ran his own business, successful by all accounts, in Ghent. It must have been a pleasant life before the war. At first the search party didn’t think Madeleine or her brother were there – there was no sign of them – but a day later, once it was safe to go in, they found the body of the mother, and then, eventually, when they managed to lift her up, they found them, the boy and the girl, buried underneath her, her arms still wrapped around them both.
‘No, no,’ I whispered to Edward. ‘Not my little girl.’ I poured out all the obscenities I knew, and there were more than a few. You don’t live a few yards from the Western Front without picking up some filthy phrases. There was something cathartic about it.
Edward didn’t mind. In fact, he relished it. He responded ‘Clitter-clatter!’ back into my face excitedly. His grins, his gibberish and his sudden movements frightened Clara and the other nurses, but he didn’t worry me any more. This handsome man who was in such agony. Maybe it was a good thing he was so far from home. Who could bear to see him like this?
I clutched him close as Elsie looked on impassively. He held me as I wept. I don’t know how long we stayed like that, but when I next glanced up, Elsie had gone.
All the time I had been at the cellar house in Pervysye, dreams of that hard-working, loving, normal Belgian family had kept me going. I had never known that my sweet Madeleine – my not-so-good-at-English, bear-collecting, red-ribbon-wearing girl – was gone.
It was another thing Elsie had kept from me. She knew how it had sustained me, and yet she had me go on believing like a child. More lies. What a fool I was to have expected better from her.
They found Edward a place at a new psychiatric hospital in the south of England. ‘Some big names have gone there,’ Dr Munro said meaninglessly, or perhaps he was trying to reassure me. ‘It’s a centre of modern medicine,’ he added. Dr Munro would never lose his enthusiasm for technological advancement. ‘They might even give him electric shocks!’
He also said that there was no point in long-drawn-out goodbyes, so for Edward’s sake – and for mine – I left the room when it was his time to go.
Through force of habit, I went through Edward’s overcoat before he left. In his pocket I found a sepia photo – cut into an oval shape – of a little girl. She was maybe two or three years old, with white-blond curly hair. A beauty. Poor Edward’s sister, or even his daughter? Perhaps he was older than he lo
oked. The child had those tiny milk teeth that are so fresh to the world. Maybe this was how a young Madeleine had looked once.
Poor Edward. Poor everyone.
They had to strait-jacket him out, and he clitter-clattered and did his bitey thing all the way down the stairs. He struggled and railed all the way from the building to the car.
Clara decided to call the bandaged boy Mowgli: ‘Because, he no longer lives with humans…’ She looked embarrassed when she said it, like she thought I would think it was a stupid idea.
I said it was fine.
‘You look far less purple now,’ Elsie said when she came to visit the following week. She was trying to be agreeable.
‘Thank you.’
‘Healing up nicely then?’
‘Yes.’
She looked over to the next bed. Edward had been swiftly replaced by another poor boy, Georgie, who had no legs. They were getting him home soon but he had some infection that was holding everything up. I’d heard the whisper of sepsis. He was awake all night and slept all day. He liked poetry and often read aloud from a notebook – violent lines about what he’d seen or would like to do, I was never quite sure. By his bedside, he had a large selection of Raphael Kirchner prints. I looked through them when he was asleep. They weren’t all as saucy as I’d expected, but some were.
‘The— Edward has gone?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’ll take care of him, Mairi.’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s not the only one suffering in that way.’
I didn’t know how that could possibly cheer anyone up. How much better it would have been if Edward was just an anomaly, instead of one of thousands of traumatised humans locked out of society and into the terrible world of their own despair.
Elsie didn’t sit this time, but swayed self-consciously at the end of my bed. I wondered if she had been drinking, or even been at the opium again, but it was unlikely. There were some things she was disciplined about. You had to give her that.
She had let her hair grow longer, or perhaps she couldn’t find anyone who would cut it for her. Somehow, by hazard, it had turned into a short yet supremely fashionable bob.
‘You heard that Harold and I will marry tomorrow?’
I gulped. I hadn’t heard. I hadn’t seen Dr Munro for a few days and he was the only one who would have told me. Perhaps he had been avoiding me?
I shook my head. ‘You risk so much.’
‘You think this is a risk? It’s the least risky thing I have done in years!’
I couldn’t help myself. ‘It’s a ridiculous idea.’
Elsie didn’t rise to it at first. She stared at her hands, twisting her fingers around each other. I wondered if in some strange way she was waiting for my permission. Well, I wouldn’t give it to her. ‘You shouldn’t do it, Elsie. It’s not fair.’
Elsie would never let anyone get away with speaking to her like that. She raised her lip contemptuously.
‘I’m sorry about Jack, my dear, but don’t let what happened make you bitter.’ She paused, her camouflage eyes locked on to mine. ‘Bitter women make very poor company.’
Clara came in with my lunch on a plate on a tray. It was rabbit and mash. I had eaten better as a hospital patient than I had done in the last three years, but I couldn’t eat with Elsie hovering at the end of my bed. Suddenly, I remembered the sparrows I’d caught, the sparrows I never told Harold about. Perhaps if I had, he might have looked at me differently.
When I had finished moving the food around, Elsie took the tray away and then tucked herself on to the bed, waiting for me to say something.
‘So, tell me the plans?’ I asked finally. It felt like she wasn’t going anywhere until we had this out.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Everything.’
‘I have the most beautiful dress. Made by the Women’s Institute in Dorset. It arrived in a lovely box in crepe paper. I feel as though the wings of excitement will fly me away!’
I didn’t know what she meant. ‘Harold found a church, then?’
‘There are still a few that haven’t been destroyed. Unbelievable, isn’t it?’
I nodded.
‘Hal is delighted.’
I knew she used the nickname to annoy me. She must have. He was Harold, not Hal.
‘His family are sending a priest. They have their own priest, imagine!’
‘They must be very religious people, Elsie.’
‘Oh, they are. There are none so religious as the Belgian aristocracy.’
‘You need to understand the implications of that,’ I advised with some urgency. How could I get across how important this was?
Elsie got up. ‘I do. Do you know, much as I hate this place, all of the… suffering… at least it is an exciting life. And when all of this is over, with Hal by my side, I will still have an exciting life. I am not going back to normality, Mairi. The humdrum English existence is not for me.’
I knew I must speak up for him. I must stand up for Harold. There was only me to do it after all. Everything we build, everything we have, is so, so precarious. Couldn’t she see that? Only by keeping to the rules can we maintain the standards that we hold dear.
‘What about love?’
Elsie tossed a look backwards. She paused. ‘What exactly are you insinuating, Mairi?’
I wasn’t even sure myself. ‘Do you really love Harold?’
‘Mairi! I am marrying the poor fellow! What on earth do you think?’
‘Then you should tell him you’re divorced. To him it will mean you are still married to someone else!’
‘No!’
She walked away, slamming the door behind her. The bandaged boy groaned. Georgie let out a troubled snore. I heard Elsie’s steps echo down the corridor. I felt sick so I drank some water and tried to get more sleep.
34
Some nights later, I dreamed Uilleam and I were running: we were at our beloved Saunton and he was chasing me along the cliffs, only I think someone was chasing him too but I couldn’t see them. I kept telling him to stop. I was shouting, I was near the edge, it was dangerous, but it was like we didn’t speak the same language any more. And then he fell and he grabbed me but I jumped to the side, and he went over the cliff. I watched him fall all the way. He was flailing and flailing, his great overcoat flapping behind him, his pockets emptying into the wind, and there was nothing I could do.
When I woke up, I realised someone was standing over me. Opening one cautious eye, I saw who it was. Harold was here. Finally, he had come. He was in his uniform with its nipped-in waist, which somehow always seemed slightly girlish, and his trousers puffed up around his thighs. His eyes were bright and his chin was smooth – he always made sure it was now. I couldn’t savour the moment for long – I was already scared he would leave.
‘Harold?’ I whispered.
‘Mairi,’ he said tenderly. ‘Forgive me. I didn’t mean to disturb your sleep.’
‘You haven’t,’ I lied. ‘I was just… thinking.’ I pulled myself up and tried to look bright.
‘No, the patient must not rise.’
‘I’m not the patient,’ I said, even though it must have been clear to both of us that I was.
I sat up as straight as I could. When I last looked in the mirror two days earlier, I wasn’t half so frightful as I had been. But still. ‘I look terrible—’
‘Not at all.’
‘But I’ve nearly recovered. I’ll be out of here in no time.’
‘Of course,’ he agreed politely. ‘And may I reassure you, they won’t have to amputate.’
I smiled.
‘See how our roles are reversed, Mairi!’ he said. ‘You remember the time we first met in the cellar house?
How could he ever think otherwise?
‘You reassured me that my leg would heal. And it did.’
I gave him a crooked smile. ‘I remember. You won’t try to sing to me though?’
It seems I learne
d something from Elsie after all.
‘The Tipperary song? I cannot get the words right. And where is this Tipperary anyway? I will add it to the list of things about the English that I will never understand.’
Rummaging in his bag, Harold produced a bag of sweets. ‘Your favourites.’
Marrons glacés. My mouth watered stupidly at the sight of them. Harold seemed pleased with himself. He wandered, restless, around the ward. He winced at the sight of sleeping Georgie – his leg-nubs on the sheets – and the bandaged boy.
‘Are these sweets from the wedding breakfast?’
‘Indeed. From the wedding breakfast, which we had at supper time. You see, the English are strange.’
‘So… you did it? Congratulations.’
‘Thank you!’
I had to ask more. ‘How was it?’
‘Magical. Truly the happiest day of my life. So many people came. Officers, engineers, old friends and new.’
All the survivors, I thought, the lucky ones.
I was about to ask if his old friend Ginger had showed up when he said: ‘We were honoured that the queen was our witness.’
‘The Queen of Belgium?’
This threw me. I thought of how we had narrowly missed her visit (if the rumour was true). And now Elsie had made her marriage vows in her presence!
Harold’s skin was tinged with pink. ‘She is a distant member of my family.’ I vaguely remembered Elsie saying so, but I had thought it was for effect. He shook his head, embarrassed. ‘Even Munro sent a telegram. I always told Elsie he was a marvellous fellow. Such a shame you couldn’t be there, my friend.’
I wasn’t sure if I’d been invited. I thought, imagine if these fine people knew about my runaway homosexual brother. That would have given them something to talk about.
* * *
The nurses were still clearing away the breakfast trays when Harold and I went for a walk. I leaned against him as he put his arm around me. It was almost perfect. It was only along the hospital corridor, yet we could have been walking down the Champs-Élysées in springtime. We could have been on our way to one of the many destinations we had sworn to visit ‘after all of this is over’. Brussels, Bruges, the Tower of London. Harold staggered once, just slightly, and I remembered his leg. I don't think anyone would have been able to tell.