Lorimers at War

by Anne Melville

  Kate was already sufficiently dismayed by the enormity of the medical task which she faced. This was no time for her to consider how a ruined social order should rebuild itself. She repeated her promise to do her best before turning away more decisively to make the necessary new arrangements.

  ‘May I give you help?’ Sergei was at her side as she crossed the field. He made a gesture towards the empty sleeve of his shabby military coat. ‘I’m no use to any army now, praise be to God. But I can work as a nurse or a messenger. As your orderly, I could help with any problem of language, between French and Serbo-Croat or German. If you will teach me a little English as well, you will find I learn quickly.’

  Kate had been too greatly concerned with the children to pay much attention to their escort. Now she looked at him more closely. His tangled beard had given the impression of an older man, but he might not be more than thirty. His eyes, unnaturally bright, glittered out of a face which was too pale, almost grey. His clothes were ragged and he himself was dirty. Nevertheless it was immediately clear that he was not a peasant, but an intelligent and perhaps even an educated man.

  His offer was tempting. Kate had known even before she arrived that she would not be able to communicate in Serbo-Croat, but she had not realized what a disadvantage her lack of German would be. So many of the Serbs had lived under Austrian rule that this was their second or even their first language. Without Muriel, problems of interpretation could arise with an irritating frequency. Kate’s knowledge of the political situation in the Balkans was too vague to explain why a Russian should be here. Perhaps he had deserted and now saw the hospital as a kind of shelter. But it was true that his amputated arm must have turned him into a non-combatant, and he had shown compassion by accepting responsibility for so many sick children. It was time to make another quick decision.

  ‘You may stay as long as the children you have brought are patients here,’ she said. ‘First you must move your wagon from the road. Then present yourself at the admission tent. Your beard must be shaved. You will have to be stripped and bathed and rubbed with paraffin and given new clothes before you may go near the other tents and if you leave the compound at any time after that, you may not come back.’

  Had she spoken in such a way to an Englishman he would not have been able to believe his ears, but Sergei saluted her now in a manner which was not a correct military gesture but was clearly intended to be admiring rather than mocking. The small incident was reassuring, re-emphasizing her discovery that if she was decisive enough about giving orders, even men would obey promptly.

  Sergei made himself so useful that there was no further mention of the suggestion that he should leave with the children. During the next four months at least a hundred thousand Serbs died in the typhus epidemic, and in the whole of the country fewer than a hundred doctors remained alive. Some deaths took place in Kate’s hospital, for many patients arrived too ill to be saved. But her sanitary barriers proved effective and there were no cases of cross-infection. Even dysentery was kept at bay in spite of the lack of plumbing. She also found time to organize dispensary teams to go out to the villages so that when a second epidemic began – this time of diphtheria – its victims could be treated with serum in their own homes.

  Kate had been taught that typhus was a cold-weather disease and as the summer sun grew hotter it did indeed seem that the plague was coming to an end. Fewer new patients were brought to the hospital and, now that the sides of the tents could be tied up to let the breeze blow through, those who remained made a faster recovery. For the first time since her arrival there were moments – even half-hours – when Kate could feel herself off-duty. Sergei, quick to pick up a little English, insisted on teaching her Russian in return. Kate protested laughingly that of all the languages in the world Russian was the one least likely ever to be of use to her, but was disarmed by his sweeping assertion that to acquire useless knowledge was the mark of the civilized person. Her good ear for both languages and music enabled her quickly to acquire a conversational vocabulary. Learning to read and write was more difficult, but there was an attraction in finding a use for her previous study of the Cyrillic alphabet, and the unavailability of any other books gave her an incentive to master those which formed Sergei’s only luggage. Welcoming the necessity to clear her mind of medical problems for an hour or so, she enjoyed her lessons and made good progress. Like a dutiful schoolgirl she studied grammar and was rewarded by poetry.

  Sergei still acted as her orderly but by September had become a friend. So when a message arrived to say that Muriel was ill, Kate took him with her as she hurried to the town. Muriel had already diagnosed her own symptoms.

  ‘It’s typhoid, not typhus,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t understand it. We’ve been boiling everything. All the milk, all the water, everything. And I was inoculated in England.’

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ said Kate, although she was alarmed by her colleague’s appearance.

  ‘Yes,’ said Muriel. ‘That’s only a matter of nursing. I didn’t send for you for that. It’s the hospital.’

  ‘Leave that to me,’ Kate said. The organization of the tented camp was running so smoothly that the rest of her team could continue without her for a while. Putting Muriel in the care of a Scottish nurse, she set out to inspect her new territory.

  The building horrified her. She could see that efforts had been made to clean it and keep it clean, but the size and rough condition of the converted barracks made sterile conditions impossible. Typhus, which was dying out elsewhere, still lingered here, fastening on soldiers who at the time of their arrival had been wounded but not infected. She set to work with all the energy she had shown on her first arrival in the country, but as the days passed she found herself more and more tired. Then she could hardly drag herself out of bed in the morning, and merely to move about the hospital became an unbearable effort. Yet in spite of the tiredness her head ached so much that she was unable to sleep. Even before the night when she found herself sweating in bed, her body glowing and almost bubbling with heat, even before that she recognized the symptoms. Typhus! She took her own temperature and was just able to read that it was 105° before she collapsed.

  Returning to consciousness, she found Sergei’s forearm pressing down on her chest. Her lungs were bursting and there was an almost unbearable pain in her heart. She seemed to have forgotten how to breathe, but Sergei’s pressure continued until the pain became too great to endure. She screamed, and at once the tensions in her chest snapped and relaxed. Her lungs emptied and filled again, emptied and filled. Sergei slid down to the floor and sat there for a moment, apparently as exhausted as herself.

  When he stood up again he was smiling. He began to sponge her – not only her face but her whole body. She ought to have felt shocked, but somewhere in her memory was the realization that this had happened before when she was almost but not quite unconscious. Like an expert nurse he rolled her first to one side of the bed and then to the other so that he could change the sheets. She was clean, she was cool and – although still too weak to move – she was better.

  ‘In these three weeks you have died twice,’ Sergei said. ‘No heartbeat, no breathing. Even Christ was content with one resurrection. You have always been a most demanding mistress. Keep still and I will find you a proper nurse.’

  Nurse Cameron arrived within a few moments. She took Kate’s temperature and gave an unprofessional sigh of relief.

  ‘Crisis over?’ asked Kate. Her body was so weak that she could only whisper, but her mind was as clear as though she had never been ill.

  ‘We’ll be needing to feed you up, Doctor. But it should be plain sailing from now on.’

  ‘And Dr Forbes?’

  ‘I hoped you wouldn’t ask that so soon.’

  ‘You mean – she died of the typhoid?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Kate was silent for a few moments, but her responsibility for the hospital overcame her sadness.

  ‘W
ho’s in charge now?’

  ‘The army sent us an officer. Major Dragovitch. He’s seen to the general administration while I’ve done my best to look after the medical side.’

  ‘So who’s been caring for me?’

  ‘The Russki,’ said Nurse Cameron. ‘He’s spent three weeks in this room with you. Nursing and talking. Whenever you were at your lowest he’d talk non-stop, almost as though he thought you’d be too polite to die in the middle of a conversation. How he expected you to understand his foreign lingo I can’t imagine. I’m not saying a word against him, though. The reason you didn’t die is because he wouldn’t let you.’

  He came back an hour later and looked critically at his patient.

  ‘You’re not to think that you’re better,’ he said. ‘There must be at least three weeks of convalescence. As much of it as possible in the sunshine. I shall arrange for you to go back to the tented hospital so that you can lie in a bed outside all day.’

  ‘Yes, Doctor,’ said Kate. ‘And Sergei – thank you.’

  They smiled at each other. In this unexpected life, Kate realized that Sergei had become her closest friend. It was an unlikely enough fate which had brought Kate herself to Kragujevatz. She had often wondered what equally surprising story might explain Sergei’s exile from his own country, but had never before liked to enquire. But now weakness and gratitude combined to make her feel that there were no questions she could not ask.

  ‘Why did you leave Russia, Sergei?’ she asked.

  Sergei sat down on the wooden chair beside her bed. ‘Do you know what happened in St Petersburg in 1905?’ he asked.

  Kate shook her head and he tutted sadly. ‘The British are interested in nothing but the problems of their own empire,’ he said.

  ‘If that were true, we should hardly be fighting a war on behalf of Belgium. In any case, in 1905 I was a child living in Jamaica.’

  ‘So you’ve never heard of Bloody Sunday? That’s where I lost my arm. You may have thought I was fighting valiantly against the Germans when I was wounded. It’s an impression I don’t trouble to correct. But I was just a student, marching peacefully with thousands of others to deliver a petition to the Tsar, when the Cossacks charged into us. The Cossacks have a very special kind of whip. Long and strong, and at the end dividing into two thongs with a thin strip of lead between them. It’s not intended for use on their horses, you understand. I was one of the lucky ones. At least I was alive when at last the horses galloped away. But while I was lying there in the snow I realized that it would be useless ever again to appeal to the Tsar against the incompetence and cruelty of his own agents. The people must take power into their own hands.’

  ‘So you became a revolutionary?’

  ‘All I did was to travel round the docks and factories, suggesting to the workers that they should form committees and consider the possibility of strikes. In October of that year there was a general strike and it was successful. The Tsar granted us a constitution. But within a week everyone who had been concerned with the strike was either under arrest or in hiding. Once again I was fortunate. I was able to escape. But I can never go back to Russia. There have been sad years.’ He paused for a little while as though to remember them. ‘Now the roads of Europe are filled with refugees, owning only what they can carry on their backs. I have become merely one of millions. You remember the children I brought to the hospital? The orphans?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I arrange for those who recovered to go to a monastery in the north. There’s someone there who will never turn away anyone in need, as I found for myself. This morning I received a letter from him to say that a new offensive has started. The Germans and Austrians have launched a combined attack along the whole length of the northern front. The monastery is under shellfire and he has had to send the children south for their own safety. So they’re on the road again with nowhere to go – no homes, no families. What hope have they for the future, these little ones? Who will feed them? Who will care for them?’ He sighed. ‘Well, we must give thanks for each extra day of existence that is granted to us. If we can survive to the end of this trouble, perhaps it will be possible to build up a new life somewhere. As for you, you must build up your strength as fast as possible, before we have to go.’

  ‘Go where?’ asked Kate.

  ‘You’ve seen the Serbian Army. Brave men, but peasants. They have good discipline but no equipment, and there are too few of them. How long do you think they can hold back the armies of two military nations? For a little while, perhaps, because they know the terrain and they have the support of the people. But unless the Allies can spare men from the Western Front to strengthen them, this hospital will be in the hands of the invaders before November. The Germans and the Austrians are civilized enough. At least they obey their officers. But as soon as they win their first victory, the Bulgars will take the opportunity to invade from the south, picking the bones of Serbia like vultures. And I can tell you, the Bulgars are animals. They violate children, they cut off women’s breasts. I haven’t kept you alive for the enjoyment of devils like these. Before the town is captured, you will have to take your hospital away.’

  2

  In the village where Kate Lorimer had spent her childhood, her father lay ill in bed. The secret of Jamaica’s luxuriant vegetation lay in the generous proportion of tropical rain to tropical heat, but the same combination produced a humidity oppressive to a sick man. Soaked in his own sweat, Ralph Lorimer listened to the pounding of the rain as it hurled itself against the roof. He shivered with cold even while his body burned with fever. A dozen times an hour he flung off his bed coverings, but on each occasion was forced to grope for them again almost immediately. This was the most severe attack he could remember since the first bout of malaria had taken him by surprise nearly thirty years before.

  Lydia would come as soon as she could. It would be humiliating to send a messenger for her merely in order that he might be made more comfortable. As a general rule Ralph was proud of the dedication with which his wife devoted herself to the medical care of his congregation. He knew how childish it was to wish that for once she would neglect her surgery in the interest of her husband. He knew, too, that his illness was not dangerous. It would burn itself out, as it always had before – and any of the village women would have been proud to come to the pastor’s house and nurse the head of their community. It was Ralph’s own choice that only Lydia should care for him, and the price he paid for it was her absence whenever anyone else was ill.

  As abruptly as it had begun three hours earlier, the drumming of the rain stopped, although for some time longer he could hear the splash of water dripping from the roof on to the edge of the verandah. The wet season was coming to an end. Soon the December days of unbroken sunshine would be here and Ralph, fit and strong once again, would be able to stride as usual across the land of the Bristow plantation which had been reclaimed from jungle under his inspiration. Violent changes of weather were part of the Jamaican pattern. It was normal that November should bring rain and just as normal that the rain would stop. The only difference between the routines of 1915 and those of previous years was the fear which nagged perpetually at Ralph’s mind: the fear that some harm would come to Kate or Brinsley. To Lydia he never spoke of the dangers – there was no need to, for she knew them well enough and shared his anxiety. And sometimes he was able to persuade himself that they were groundless. Kate was not in Flanders; whilst Brinsley, who had spent more than a year at the battlefront, appeared to bear a charmed life. So many of his fellow-volunteers had been killed that he had already been promoted to captain, but so far he had not been even slightly wounded.

  In the comparative silence which followed the rainstorm, Ralph could hear Lydia approaching. She came very slowly, her progress tracked by the cheerful shouts of the villagers she passed and her own quieter, breathless responses. The village was built on a double slope: the land fell from the mountains of the interior towards the flat coastal pl
ains and was also cut almost into a gorge by the stream which crashed down in a waterfall before tumbling towards the sea. That might have been enough to explain Lydia’s frequent need to pause and rest – but Ralph knew that there was another reason. His resentment of it rose even before she came into the room.

  She carried his medicine in one hand and, although everything about her face and body proclaimed her tiredness, she smiled at him with an attempt at her old liveliness. Her other hand supported her ten-year-old child as he straddled her hip. Grant was reluctant to release his clutch of her neck as she set him gently down in a corner of the room and Ralph found himself grinding his teeth in a vain attempt to control his anger.

  ‘Lydia, it will have to stop!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re not strong enough to carry Grant around like this.’

  ‘I can manage for a little longer,’ she said. She gave him the medicine and with cool water and clean sheets applied herself to making him comfortable. But although Ralph was tempted to relax in the ease she provided, he could not control the irritation caused by his son’s presence.

  ‘Could you carry me?’ he demanded. ‘If I asked you to lift me out of bed, could you do it? Of course you couldn’t. And no more will be be able to carry Grant as he grows. The moment must come when he’ll no longer be able to depend on you in such a way, and you’re doing him no service to prolong the dependence.’

  ‘It’s very difficult for him when the paths are so wet and slippery. I don’t think you realize. His lameness –’

  ‘I know all about his lameness,’ Ralph interrupted. ‘But I also know that he is ten years old. He’s not a baby to be pampered and petted, and you’re not strong enough to treat him as though he were. He must find some way to move about by himself. I had a crutch made for him, and he ought to use it. Otherwise his other muscles will waste away as well for lack of exercise.’

  ‘You ought not to talk like this in front of him,’ said Lydia uneasily.