The Emerald Affair

by Trotter, Janet MacLeod

  ‘Tommy has negative symptoms of psychosis,’ Isobel had told Esmie when the wounded soldier had arrived the previous year. ‘He’s withdrawn, makes little eye contact and has lost the ability to speak.’

  Esmie would push him around the grounds in his wheelchair and chat to him. Tommy never spoke back but he liked being out in the open air and would cock his head to listen to the birds and sometimes hummed snatches of pipe tunes. Then one spring afternoon, she’d detoured back via the hospital farm to see the first lambs of the year.

  ‘Aren’t they just the sweetest creatures?’ she’d said, pausing by a gate to peer into the field.

  ‘Aye, lambs. Spring’s here.’

  Esmie had looked round, wondering who had spoken. Tommy had looked her in the eye for a second and nodded, before dropping his gaze.

  Esmie had hidden her astonishment and smiled. ‘Yes, Tommy; spring is here at last.’

  He’d said nothing more but Esmie’s throat had tightened as she’d pushed him back, hardly able to contain her excitement at his attempt to speak again. After that, at Isobel’s suggestion, the trips to the farm had become more regular and Tommy would sit in the barn and fix broken implements and sharpen tools for the farmer. Before Esmie left for her holiday to Ebbsmouth, Tommy had begun to talk about the recurring nightmares that disturbed his sleep: the enemy were breaching the trench and piling in on top of him until he suffocated.

  Esmie had lent him Isobel’s gramophone and each evening would play him soothing classical music or traditional Scottish songs when getting him ready for bed. By the time she went south, he was no longer waking every night.

  Tommy Grey was one of the patients that Isobel thought could be cured.

  ‘The problem is,’ she had sighed, ‘that even if he recovers completely from his melancholia, there’s no home for him except here.’

  After a long day’s travel, Esmie stepped onto the platform of the tiny station at Vaullay and breathed in the sweet air, scented with heather and myrtle.

  Aunt Isobel was there to greet her. ‘You look exhausted, dearie,’ said her guardian in concern. ‘Too much high living in Ebbsmouth, no doubt. You can tell me all about it over supper.’

  Soon they were driving through the gateway of the asylum and up its tree-lined drive. She waved in greeting to a patient she recognised who was pushing a wheelbarrow. His face broke into a smile of recognition and he raised his cap as the car passed.

  ‘They’ve missed you,’ said her aunt.

  Esmie felt suddenly good to be back. ‘How is Tommy?’

  ‘Teaching Willie pipe tunes on his chanter,’ Isobel answered with a smile.

  ‘That’s wonderful!’ Esmie said in delight, thinking of the delusional Willie who thought himself the Kaiser.

  They pulled up outside a cottage beyond the main buildings. Isobel had spurned the large villa that went with the job of chief medical officer in favour of the modest one-storey dwelling with its small garden of wild flowers and apple trees. She was given a cheery welcome from Isobel’s maid, Jeanie, and a sticky kiss from Jeanie’s two-year-old son, Norrie, who’d been hampering his mother’s attempt to bottle raspberry jam.

  That night, when Jeanie and Norrie had gone to their attic bedroom, Esmie and Isobel sat up late talking.

  ‘So Lydia is getting wed,’ said Isobel. ‘A reason for rejoicing. But you seem sad. You’re not the type to be jealous of others’ happiness, so what is preying on your mind?’

  Esmie knew her guardian would probe with questions until she got to the root of her sorrow. Yet she hesitated. Isobel had been fond of David and – like everyone else – had expected Esmie to marry him. Esmie had kept from her aunt that David had proposed and that she had turned him down. Now she couldn’t bear to keep the truth from her mentor and guardian any longer, even if it meant Isobel thinking less of her.

  So Esmie confided in the older woman about her guilt over the fateful letter and the confrontation with Maud. The only secret she held on to was her growing feelings for Tom and that she had returned hastily to Vaullay because she feared them getting out of control.

  Isobel listened and said little. Finally, when Esmie fell silent, she spoke.

  ‘Every day I deal with patients who are eaten up with guilt that they survived the War while their friends didn’t. You feel this about David but you also have the extra burden of Mrs Drummond’s bitter accusations.’ The doctor’s brown eyes were full of compassion. ‘But as a nurse, you know that she is lashing out at you in her grief. We can’t possibly know what state of mind David was in before he died. You have to accept that. Allowing yourself to be plagued with guilt helps no one. At least you were truthful to him.’

  ‘I don’t deserve your kindness,’ Esmie said, a lump forming in her throat. ‘But thank you.’

  The clock on the mantelpiece struck eleven and Isobel rose. She leaned over and kissed Esmie on the top of her head. ‘Tomorrow I have taken the day off and we’re going to Loch Vaullay for a picnic and a swim – whatever the weather. What do you say?’

  Esmie gave a tearful smile. ‘I say yes of course. Thank you, Aunt Isobel.’

  That night, Esmie sank into the soft folds of her old bed and fell asleep to the sounds of an owl hooting and the distant bleat of sheep.

  Over the next few days, Isobel refused to let Esmie work in the hospital and chased her out for long walks in the hills and swims in the fresh water of Loch Vaullay. Esmie began to regain her zest for life and tried to put thoughts of the grieving Drummonds and her feelings for Tom behind her. But by the end of the week she had had enough of solitude and introspection.

  ‘I need to work,’ she told her aunt. ‘Let me go back on the wards.’

  ‘Good,’ said Isobel. ‘I was hoping you would say that. But it had to be your choice not mine.’

  Esmie threw herself into nursing with renewed vigour and was assigned to one of the locked male wards. Some of the men had syphilitic insanity while others were diagnosed with dementia praecox – premature madness – another degenerative psychosis from which there was no cure. The ward was often noisy with patients shouting and singing in states of manic euphoria, or irritable and arguing with themselves. Some, like Willie, had delusions, while others hid under their beds in fear that the nurses were going to poison them.

  Esmie and Isobel had long conversations over supper about the latest theories in the treatment of the psychotically ill. They discussed the use of electric sparks to slow the degenerative nerve condition of those with syphilis, and music therapy to calm sufferers of hysteria and lift the mood of depressives.

  ‘The most progressive ideas are coming from Switzerland and Germany,’ said Isobel. ‘There’s a new term, “schizophrenia”, which is being used to describe a narrow range of dementias that might not be terminal. I’m optimistic that some of these patients can be cured. I’ve noticed one or two whose condition has improved rather than deteriorated since being admitted.’

  ‘That’s so encouraging to hear,’ Esmie enthused. ‘It’s exciting to think you can make a difference at Vaullay with these new breakthroughs in diagnosis.’

  ‘When I first came here thirty years ago,’ Isobel said, ‘there were patients sleeping in iron cages and others strapped into chairs with hoods over their heads. Can you believe it?’

  She was contemptuous of long-held attitudes that insanity and a defective character could be inherited from a wayward mother, and disapproved of unmarried mothers being separated from their babies.

  ‘Drives the young lassies into melancholia and hysteric anorexia,’ said Isobel, ‘and the bairns grow up in institutions without knowing the love of a family.’

  Since returning to the asylum after Serbia, Isobel had rescued one such hapless young woman from this fate. Jeanie, heavily pregnant, had been abandoned at the gates of the asylum by her irate father. Now she was Isobel’s housemaid.

  That July, Esmie resumed her walks with the men who took it in turns to push Tommy down to the farm. Boisterous in
the summer sunshine, they sped him down the hill laughing and shouting and ignoring Esmie’s orders to slow down. These spontaneous moments of camaraderie reminded Esmie of the soldiers she had nursed in Serbia and Romania, bonded together in adversity. Much as she enjoyed being back working at Vaullay with her aunt, surrounded by the beauty of the heather-clad mountains, Esmie began to hanker for something more challenging.

  She knew how easy it would be to drift along, working indefinitely at the asylum and making life more bearable for the inmates. More and more she began to think about going abroad again. The idea of going to the North-West Frontier excited her interest. She’d been following the news about the conflict with Afghanistan and from the scant newspaper reports it appeared that order was being restored and the Afghans were suing for peace. She talked it over with her aunt.

  ‘Harold Guthrie’s mission work at Taha interests me,’ said Esmie. ‘Not the religious side of it but working among the Pathans. It sounds more like the nursing I was used to doing with the Women’s Hospitals – dealing with the battle-wounded, saving lives.’

  ‘Have you talked to Dr Guthrie about you joining the mission?’ asked Isobel.

  ‘Not as such,’ said Esmie, ‘though he knows I’m interested in his work and they are always short of trained nurses. He said the mission weren’t keen on sending women out to such a remote and dangerous posting, so they had to rely on male orderlies from among the local tribesmen.’

  ‘What about female patients?’ Isobel asked. ‘I can’t imagine Mohammedan women being happy with male nurses. Aren’t they strict on purdah in the North-West Frontier?’

  Esmie nodded. ‘Harold says the women get very little treatment – most of the men won’t bring their womenfolk to the clinic – and the nearest purdah ward is sixty miles away in Kohat.’

  ‘Why don’t you write to him?’ suggested Isobel.

  ‘You don’t mind me going?’ Esmie asked.

  ‘Of course I mind. I’d worry about you in such a place – and I’d hate to lose you from the hospital – but I won’t stand in your way if that’s what you feel called to do.’ Her guardian’s face softened in a smile. ‘Dear lassie, I can tell when you get that determined look in your eyes that there’s little will stop you. And it would be selfish of me to try. You remind me so much of your dear mother.’

  ‘Do I?’ Esmie’s heart squeezed.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Isobel. ‘She had the same inner strength – and the same bonny eyes.’

  ‘You’re the one who taught me to be brave,’ Esmie said affectionately. ‘Especially in Serbia.’

  Isobel gave a short laugh. ‘I spent most of the time frightened out of my wits. I was glad to give up working in theatre.’

  ‘But you were an excellent surgeon,’ said Esmie. ‘You saved the lives of countless men.’

  ‘That’s generous of you to say so,’ Isobel said, ‘but more and more I’m finding satisfaction in trying to heal the mind. Thirty years ago, lunatic asylums were some of the few places where women doctors could find work. That’s why I came to Vaullay. Now I think it’s an area of medicine that’s at the forefront of new ideas and possible treatments. That’s why I came back here.’

  ‘I can see that,’ said Esmie. ‘But I want to see more of the world. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to return to Vaullay at some stage in the future.’

  ‘You’re quite right to do so while you’re young and fit,’ Isobel encouraged. ‘And there will always be a home for you here whenever you want it.’

  Esmie smiled. ‘Thank you, Auntie.’

  ‘So will you write to Harold Guthrie?’

  Esmie nodded. ‘Though I’m not sure if he’s in Ebbsmouth at the moment. He took off to Wales after Lydia’s engagement. He always had a bit of a soft spot for her.’

  ‘Talking of Lydia,’ said Isobel, ‘how are the wedding plans coming along?’

  ‘The last I heard was that postcard from Paris,’ said Esmie.

  ‘I must say,’ said Isobel, ‘I was surprised to hear Captain Lomax had gone with her. Sounds like a honeymoon before the marriage.’

  Esmie felt herself reddening. ‘I’m sure the Templeton parents made sure it was all above board,’ she said with an embarrassed laugh.

  ‘Wouldn’t have happened before the War,’ Isobel retorted. ‘But then Lydia is a modern young woman and the world is no doubt a more colourful place because of her.’

  Esmie grinned. ‘That’s certainly true.’

  Chapter 7

  Ebbsmouth, July

  It was spitting with rain and blustery but Tom persuaded Harold to go for a swim in the cove below The Anchorage. The sea was choppy as they dived among the white-crested waves.

  ‘Make the most of it,’ Tom called to his friend. ‘We’ll miss it when we’re back in the Indian heat.’

  Afterwards, towelling himself down, Tom felt a resurgence of optimism that always came with a bracing swim. He had enjoyed his trip to Paris with the Templetons more than he’d expected. He wasn’t one for big cities but there had been an air of celebration about the French capital as people strolled in the sunshine and drank coffee and cognac at pavement cafés.

  Jumbo and Minnie had been good company; warm and generous, insisting on paying for his accommodation and meals. Jumbo had taken him off to see the artists around Montmartre rather than trailing round dressmakers and department stores with the women.

  ‘I dabble in a bit of painting myself,’ Tom had admitted. ‘Landscapes mostly.’

  ‘You must show me,’ Jumbo had said. ‘If they’re any good I might buy one as an investment.’

  Tom had laughed. ‘My father thinks they’re only good for hiding damp stains on the wallpaper. But I’d be delighted to give you one as a thank you for this trip. As ever, you’ve been wonderful and generous hosts.’

  ‘Don’t need to thank me,’ Jumbo had replied. ‘Anyone who makes my darling daughter this happy is worth their weight in gold. Even if you are taking her so far away.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that.’

  Jumbo clapped him on the back. ‘Lydia’s excited to be going to Pindi and we’re greatly looking forward to travelling out with you for a holiday. It’ll be reassuring for Minnie to be able to see where Lydia will be living. You’ll probably have a hard job getting rid of us!’

  ‘It’ll be an honour and pleasure to have you, sir.’

  Jumbo beamed. ‘Once you’re married, Tom, you can call me Pa.’

  As the rain increased, Tom hastily stripped off his swimming costume and pulled on his clothes. He liked the idea of the Templetons coming to stay at the hotel; they would be jolly company and it would make Lydia happy. Tom grinned at the thought of Lydia. They had managed to sneak away and be alone on several occasions – or perhaps her parents had engineered it – and enjoyed some moments of intimacy. In the romantic surroundings of Paris, they had walked hand in hand through the Tuileries Gardens and kissed in the moonlight on the Pont Alexandre III.

  Each time he had embraced her, Tom had felt a kick of desire at the taste of her moist lips and the feel of her shapely body pressed against his. He had thought about making an assignation to go to her room in the night but thought better of it. Lydia wanted to be a virginal bride, though he’d been left in no doubt how much she was looking forward to the marriage bed. She had shocked him by producing a copy of that racy new relationship manual, Married Love, by some woman called Stopes, which was full of frank advice on sex and how to plan a family.

  ‘It’s about a husband and wife being equal in marriage,’ Lydia had told him. ‘And it’s not just about having children. I don’t want us to go straight into all that – we should enjoy just being married for a bit, don’t you think?’

  Tom had been speechless and nodded in agreement. He was becoming used to her questions as being rhetorical; if Lydia wanted something to happen it would happen. He had stopped reading the book in bed – it made him too aroused to think of him and Lydia together – but his impatience to be married was
growing daily.

  He’d been further thunderstruck when his fiancée had asked him if he’d ever slept with prostitutes and to reassure her he had no sexual disease.

  ‘I know what soldiers are like,’ Lydia had said, ‘and Esmie tells me they have heaps of ex-soldiers in the asylum with syphilitic madness from the War. I just want to be sure I’m not getting faulty goods.’

  Tom had tried not to show how offended he was by her blunt questioning. For years after Mary had died, he hadn’t wanted to make love to another woman. Since meeting Lydia, his appetite for sex was returning and so he had assured her he was in rude good health.

  The rain was now heavy. Tom pointed to the boathouse above the beach and said to Harold, ‘Let’s shelter in there till it eases off.’

  The two friends sat on old fish boxes just inside the open doors and Tom lit up a cigarette. He was pleased that Harold had returned from Wales in better humour than when he went – he had missed his company and conversation – but this morning his friend had come over in a state of agitation. So far he hadn’t said why. Tibby had been pestering Harold with medical questions about her father’s health; Tom had suggested a swim to get Harold away from the castle and allow the doctor to confide in him.

  ‘So what’s bothering you, Guthrie?’

  ‘Nothing really . . . Well, not exactly bothering me . . . just puzzling.’

  ‘Spit it out,’ Tom encouraged.

  ‘I’ve had a letter from Esmie,’ said Harold.

  Tom felt punched in the chest at the unexpected mention of the nurse. His eyes widened in surprise.

  ‘Esmie? What does she say?’

  Harold paused. ‘Well, it’s quite forthright. She wants to know if she can join the mission clinic at Taha.’

  ‘With you?’ Tom asked, astonished.

  ‘Not exactly with me.’ Harold’s fair face reddened. ‘She wants to nurse among the Pathans and wonders if I can put in a word for her with the mission society.’