Lorimers at War

by Anne Melville

  7

  For four days after the removal of his plaster Robert would not allow his nurse, Jennifer, or any members of his family to visit him when he was out of bed. He was appalled by his own weakness. His left leg seemed as useless as if it had been shot away. Even his arms, after such a long period of inactivity, were hardly strong enough to control the heavy crutches which had been brought him. Every day he practised walking up and down his room, brushing aside the help of the orderly who came to make sure that there was no accident. But after only a short spell he was forced to fall back on the bed, exhausted by even such a small effort.

  On the fifth day, however, he waited until he heard Jennifer’s knock on the door and then stood up, steadying himself on the crutches before he called her to come in. She clapped her hands with pleasure as she paused in the doorway, her pale face flushed with happiness.

  ‘That’s no way to congratulate a fellow on being vertical again,’ said Robert. ‘I hoped you’d fling yourself into my arms and smother me with kisses.’

  ‘I was afraid of knocking you off balance,’ Jennifer answered in a whisper. Her shyness revealed itself in her face as well, but she came towards him in spite of it.

  ‘Knocked off balance is what I want to be.’ He could only spare one arm to hold her as she kissed him, but when his head began to swim again it was with excitement, not weakness.

  ‘Darling Jennifer!’ he exclaimed. ‘But perhaps, having made my little gesture, I’d better sit down again. And you can give me a demonstration of your bedside manner.’

  ‘I’m so glad for you, Robert. It’s marvellous to see you up after such a long time.’

  ‘I’d begun to think it would never happen. But now I really do feel that it’s only a matter of time before I’m trotting round normally again.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ she agreed. ‘And not very much time, either.’

  ‘So there’s no reason any longer why I shouldn’t ask the most beautiful girl in the world whether she’d consider marrying me.’

  There was a moment’s silence, but it was not a pause which caused him any anxiety, for he could feel the pressure of Jennifer’s hand on his own. She was savouring a few seconds of joy, that was all.

  ‘There never was any reason, Robert,’ she said softly.

  ‘Oh yes there was. That standard plot about the beautiful nurse who devotes her life to her crippled patient is fine and romantic in stories, but highly unsatisfactory in real life.’

  ‘That would have been for the nurse to decide. But I’m delighted for your sake that it will never be necessary.’

  ‘You haven’t actually answered me yet.’

  ‘You haven’t actually asked me yet,’ she replied. But her head was on his shoulder and her arm round his waist. ‘Will it be all right with your mother, do you think?’

  ‘Mother will be delighted.’ Robert spoke with certainty, knowing that whatever his mother’s reservations might have been at first, she would welcome Jennifer into the family whole-heartedly once the engagement was a firm one. ‘I’ve dropped a hint to her already, as a matter of fact. Made it clear, of course, that it all depended on you and I was only telling her what I wanted. But any mother thinks that her son must be irresistible, doesn’t she, so I don’t believe the announcement will come as much of a surprise. What about your father?’

  ‘Daddy’s sixty-four,’ said Jennifer. She flushed slightly. ‘Ever since my brother was killed, he’s only got one ambition left in life: to have a grandson. Each time I go home I’m put through a great inquisition to find out whether I’m – what’s his phrase? – “interested in anyone”. He’s desperate for me to be married. I can promise that he’ll welcome you with open arms.’

  ‘Mother would love a grandchild as well,’ said Robert. ‘Well, I’ve no objection to making the old folks happy, have you?’ He laughed affectionately to see how Jennifer flushed again. It made her look prettier than ever. ‘So the sooner we get on with the wedding, the better. All the same, I need to get a few more muscles back into use. January, d’you think? Let’s tell everyone the middle of January.’

  He kissed her again, his happiness so complete that he could think of nothing but the present moment. It was impossible to plan for the future, disagreeable to wonder whether he would have to return to the front, unreal to visualize a peacetime job and a married life in a home of his own. Too many things were beyond his control. The only certainty was that he loved Jennifer and she loved him. His mind clung to those two facts as tightly as his arms gripped her body – a body which looked so slim and fragile but felt surprisingly solid and reassuring.

  When the time came for her to go on duty he felt a need to share his happiness with someone to whom he need not explain it.

  ‘Could you find young Grant on your way out and tell him I need company?’ he asked. As he expected, it was some time before the boy appeared. He was still dragging himself along the ground, Robert noticed with a frown.

  ‘Where’s your crutch?’ he demanded.

  ‘I can’t manage it. It’s too heavy and it won’t go where I want it to go.’

  ‘I know the feeling,’ Robert sympathized. ‘All the same, it’s a battle which has to be won. Let’s declare war together on old Kaiser Crutch. I’m just getting the hang of mine. It comes suddenly, if you practise. From now on you and I are going to have a session together every day until we’ve got it licked.’

  He was as good as his word. At first, because he himself tired so easily, all they could do was to walk in turn up and down his room, but as Robert’s strength returned, so did his adventurousness. By the time Christmas came, the two of them were climbing the stairs every day to the Long Gallery in which the Glanville ancestral portraits hung and playing complicated games of football and crutchball with a soft woolly ball stolen from little Pirry’s nursery.

  ‘It’s not fair really,’ Grant complained as Robert scored his third goal one morning. ‘You’ve got two crutches and I’ve only got one.’

  ‘But you’ve got one perfectly good leg. You can stand steady even without a crutch. I’ve only got two weak and feeble legs. If you take my crutches away, I shall simply collapse on to the floor.’

  ‘You’ll be all right soon, though,’ said Grant. ‘I’m going to be like this always.’

  ‘All the more reason to make the best of it.’ But Robert looked consideringly at his young cousin even as he spoke, and later that day he brought up the subject with his mother.

  ‘Can anything be done about Grant?’ he asked. ‘This chap who’s pummelling me about every morning, for example. Could he do any good?’

  Margaret shook her head. ‘No. He can help to strengthen muscles. But he can’t alter the shape of a bone.’

  ‘Suppose Grant had been standing next to me when the shell burst,’ Robert suggested. ‘Suppose his hip had been smashed up like mine. The doctors could have set it into the position in which it ought to be, couldn’t they, instead of back where it was before?’

  ‘Sending a boy of eleven out to a battlefield in order that he shall be blown up is rather a drastic solution.’

  ‘Of course. But I mean – I can only put it crudely. Wouldn’t it be possible for someone to hit Grant with a hammer – scientifically, of course, and under anaesthetic – and break whichever bit of bone is causing the trouble? And then put him in plaster, like me, until it mends, but in a better position. Or wouldn’t his leg be long enough to reach the ground even if it were straight?’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t,’ said Margaret. ‘But that could probably be remedied. He could wear a surgical boot. You’re quite right to prod me, Robert. These past few months, with such a never-ending stream of casualties to cope with, it’s been difficult to think of anything but the hospital. But it’s wrong of me to neglect the family. Before the war there wouldn’t have been anything to be done in a case like Grant’s, but doctors who’ve been treating a wide range of casualties are working miracles nowadays. There are all sorts of new operations
and techniques. I’ll make it my New Year Resolution: to find someone who can help Grant.’

  1917

  1

  Margaret stared at the sulky face in front of her and sighed. She had gone to a good deal of trouble to have Grant examined by a specialist. The verdict was a hopeful one. The boy’s body could never be perfect, but a considerable degree of improvement was possible. An operation which might have been thought chancy in 1913 had become routine by the beginning of 1917. Margaret had felt pleased and enthusiastic as she explained to her nephew what would be involved, but his reaction was all too familiar.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ he said.

  ‘Is it because you’re frightened of being hurt?’ Margaret asked. ‘You don’t feel anything at all in an operation, you know. The doctor puts a mask over your face, with ether on it. Before you know what’s happening you’re in a deep sleep, and when you wake up it’s all over.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ said Grant again.

  ‘Come with me,’ said Margaret. She found it continually necessary to fight against irritation in her dealings with her uninvited guest. Grant was no longer quite as unattractive in appearance as on the day of his arrival. Piers had taken him to a tailor to be equipped with clothes which were not only warm enough for an English winter but were also cut to accommodate his distorted limb without looking too ungainly. His hair had been neatly cut and the exercise of moving about on his crutch had helped him to lose a little of the podginess developed in a childhood spent mainly sitting on the ground. But although Robert seemed to have the knack of cheering up his young cousin, Margaret herself was offered nothing but sulkiness in response to her efforts to be helpful.

  She led the way now to a large room which had once been the main dining room at Blaize. Half a dozen empty Bath chairs stood against the walls. The men who had arrived there in them were standing in the middle of the room, each helped by an orderly to come to terms with a pair of crutches, just as Robert had been forced to do once. But Robert was now as fit as he had ever been, able to ride or walk as well as any other member of the family. Each of these men, in their suits of bright hospital blue, had one empty trouser leg.

  ‘Take a good look,’ Margaret said. She did not intend to discuss her plans for Grant in front of the disabled men – but the boy had no such inhibitions.

  ‘Is that what you’re going to do to me?’ he demanded. ‘Are you going to cut my leg off?’

  ‘Of course not.’ More roughly than usual, Margaret pulled him out of the room and into what had once been a serving pantry. It was time, she decided, to stop trying to be kind and to see whether a little bullying would have a better effect. ‘I brought you here to show you that it’s time you stopped being sorry for yourself. You’ve got a bit of trouble in one leg; just a little bit, and you think that entitles you to spend the rest of your life sulking. All the men you’ve seen in that room have had to get used to the idea that they’ve got to live the rest of their lives with only one leg. They’ll never be able to run anywhere again, never be able to ride a bicycle; some of them will never be able to work. And it’s painful, having only the stump of a leg – did you know that? The part that isn’t there seems to go on aching, and there’s nothing any doctor can do about it. They’ve got to get used to that as well. If I offered any one of these men the chance to have a simple operation which would leave him with two good legs, he’d jump at it. He wouldn’t be frightened.’

  ‘I’m not frightened,’ said Grant.

  ‘Yes, you are. I don’t know whether you’re frightened of the operation or whether you’re frightened of suddenly finding yourself the same as any other boy, with no more excuses for all these sulks, but you’re certainly frightened of something. Well, it’s time you stopped. Do you think your brother Brinsley was frightened when he led that attack?’

  ‘It’s easy being killed,’ said Grant.

  Margaret stared at her nephew, horrified to hear such a remark on the lips of an eleven-year-old. ‘Listen to me, Grant,’ she said. ‘When you were born, I was the doctor who looked after you and your mother. Quite often a new baby needs a little help before it can take its first breath. No one would ever have known if I’d allowed you to die before you’d even begun to live. But you wouldn’t have wanted me to do that, would you?’

  ‘Yes, of course I would!’ exclaimed Grant without a moment’s hesitation. ‘I’d never have known, anyway. But nobody wanted me to be born. My parents didn’t. It was all a mistake. My father told me that.’

  ‘Oh, Grant!’ Overcome by compassion for the unhappy boy, Margaret opened her arms to him. And suddenly he was crying – not with the tears of petulance and frustration to which she had become accustomed, but from a deep misery of spirit. Margaret found that she was crying as well. Her grip tightened, and she was conscious of the boy’s stiff body relaxing as he came close to her for comfort instead of holding himself aloof.

  After a little while she found her handkerchief and dabbed dry both her own eyes and Grant’s. ‘I wanted you,’ she said. ‘I wanted you to be alive then, and I want you to be alive – and happy – now. And your mother loved you: you know that. As for your father, I realize that you and he have found it hard to be friends, but you must make allowances for his unhappiness at your mother’s death, and then Brinsley’s. I remember him saying, when you were born, that God must have some special purpose for you. When you grow up, you must make him as proud of you as he was of Brinsley. And the first thing is to get you strong and fit. You came to Blaize at an awkward time, Grant. We were all unhappy, and too busy to welcome you properly. I’m sorry about that. Everything’s going to be different from now on. You’re part of the Lorimer family and we all love you. Now that Robert’s married, I need to have someone else to care for specially. I want you to trust me to arrange what is best for you. Will you do that?’

  He nodded. Margaret was relieved – but anxious at the same time. She had already recognized in Grant the all-or-nothing emotions of the fanatic. Until now, it seemed, he had found more people to hate than love. But if he attached himself to her, she would have a responsibility to accept his devotion without disappointing him. To send him back to Jamaica, for example, unless he asked to go, would surely be a rejection too great for him to bear.

  It was difficult for Margaret not to feel a little weary at the prospect of adding to her family responsibilities at a time when she was within a few days of her sixtieth birthday. But she had never been able to resist the appeal of a child in need, and Grant’s need was greater than most. It was necessary to look on the bright side. 1916 had been a terrible year. There were no indications that 1917 would be any better as far as the war was concerned, but she could make it her business to see that the family at least was kept as happy as possible.

  It was a resolution which came under strain. Robert and Jennifer had been married early in January and Margaret had watched her son’s firm stride down the aisle with a proud happiness. When she remembered the shattered body which had been returned to England it seemed miraculous that he should have made such a complete recovery. Foolishly, it did not occur to her that his state of health would be of interest to the army too. She did not expect him actually to be discharged, but had imagined that rather than being returned to active service at the front he would be found some convalescent post such as that of an instructor at a training camp. So it came as a bolt from the blue when one day in February Jennifer burst into her office in a state of hysteria.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Margaret’s first thought, as she jumped to her feet, was that Robert must have had some kind of accident.

  ‘He’s got to go back. They say he’s fit enough. They’re going to send him over to France again. You’ve got to stop it. Please don’t let them.’

  Margaret sank back into her chair, just as upset as her daughter-in-law, but corseted against shock by her age. Until that moment she had not fully realized how great a relief it had been to have Robert in England. Even at the beginning, w
hen his condition was still a grave one, he had at least been surrounded by people who were trying to save his life, not take it. There was little she could say to comfort Jennifer.

  ‘I hoped, like you –’ she began; but to finish the sentence was unnecessary. ‘There’s nothing we can do, I’m afraid. He’s a soldier. He has to do what he’s told.’

  ‘You’re a doctor. You could say that he isn’t fit. All they did was look at him and make him walk about and take deep breaths. That’s not a proper medical examination. You could tell them that he isn’t ready yet.’

  ‘I can’t say that if it isn’t true. In any case, they’d hardly believe his mother, doctor or not. And think how humiliating it would be for Robert. What does he say about it?’

  ‘He takes it for granted that there’s no choice. But it would be true that he isn’t ready yet. He has nightmares, terrible nightmares, every night. About walking over dead bodies –’ Jennifer was weeping again by now – ‘and arms and legs falling off when he touches them. And when he wakes up, he’s shivering. He trembles for hours sometimes. He’d never admit it, but he’s frightened. Deeply, deeply frightened,’

  ‘If no one were ever frightened, there’d be no such thing as courage,’ said Margaret. ‘He’s already proved that he’s a hero, trying to save his cousin’s life. You should be proud that he’s prepared to go back in spite of his experiences.’

  ‘I don’t want to be proud. I want to be married. He’s never told you how terrible it is out there. The mud and the smells and the noise and the danger. He never wanted you to be worried. But he wrote to me. He told me all about it.’