by Charles Todd
I went on about my duties, which now included tending two cases of pneumonia. Neither man seemed to have the will to fight, although we did what we could medically. We managed to save Sergeant Meadows, but we lost Private Whittle. His parents came from the town of Gloucester to claim his body, and we held a small service for him, which seemed to comfort them.
By the end of the week we’d received another twenty patients from France. We were hard-pressed to find beds for all of them, putting three in the small room that had been a library. We needed more staff, but Matron’s requests seemed to fall on deaf ears. We were working twelve hours a day, and there were several serious infections that required more surgery.
A letter came for Private Meadows from the girl he was to marry, and it lifted his spirits no end when I read it to him.
I don’t care, Priscilla had written, how serious your wound is. You get well and come home to me. I’m the one who will walk down the aisle in St. Mary’s, you need only be waiting for me at the altar. And I shall be very angry with you if you disappoint me. I have waited four long worrying years for this war to end, and I will not be truly happy until you arrive on the train and I can see for myself that you are safe at last. It’s you I fell in love with, not your leg, and don’t you forget it.
From that moment onward, I watched him improve almost by the hour. I wished I could write Priscilla and tell her that she had done more than the doctors in France and in England had managed to do.
Truth was, she’d raised my spirits as well.
Half a dozen new patients were brought up from the railway station, but there were two experienced Sisters with them, and three more orderlies.
Matron, who had had the responsibility for finding enough hours in the day for all that needed to be done, began to look a little more rested. Still, it seemed that as soon as we released a patient—or lost one—two more appeared in his place. New cases of pneumonia, two suicides, patients whose limbs turned gangrenous, infections that wouldn’t heal kept us busy day and night. When I did have a few quiet minutes, I found myself wondering how the Welsh patients had fared. Not that I expected them to write, but we knew how a few other cases had ended, and I was afraid that they were vulnerable to the same choices.
One afternoon I was just finishing a late lunch before going upstairs to see to some ironing when the post arrived, and Sister Anthony, one of the new staff, brought me a letter.
“Not the usual postmark from Somerset or London,” she said, smiling. “This one’s from Wales. Don’t tell you have a beau there?” She hadn’t been posted here until after the Welsh patients had been released.
Taking the letter she was holding out, I looked at it. Captain Williams had written.
“No such luck,” I said, smiling in return. “I should think it’s a note from a former patient, thanking us for our care.” We sometimes did hear from the fortunate ones.
“Oh, better luck next post,” she told me, laughing.
I took the letter upstairs to read, and was very glad I had.
It was brief and to the point.
Captain Williams must have been in dire need of someone to talk to, to write so frankly. It was worrying that I was that person, not someone in his family or his valley.
Sister Crawford,
We have lost Private Morris to suicide. That’s not what the doctor has called it, of course, and I am grateful for the sake of Morris’s family. But he left a message for me that I burned as soon as I read it. In it he asked my forgiveness. I have told no one. What worries me now is that the others were too quiet at the funeral, and I have a feeling that they’re taking his death to heart and finding the thought of ending their own lives more and more palatable. I’m at my wits’ end, and I am writing to ask your help in bringing them to their senses. I have no right to ask this of you, but if someone doesn’t do something, we’ll all be gone by the spring.
It was a shocking message. Their wounds had done what the Germans never could—broken their spirits. I was suddenly very angry. We’d asked so much from these men. And with the war at an end, when we no longer needed soldiers, we tossed them aside like broken chairs.
I went at once to Matron and showed her the letter.
She read it over, then said with sadness, “I am so sorry to hear about Private Morris. But I’d feared for him, you know. He was in a depressed state when he was with us, and nothing seemed to help then. As for the others?” She shook her head. “We can work miracles here, sometimes, Sister Crawford, but we can’t go home with our patients and work more miracles there. Our duty must stop at the door. We do our very best, then we wish them well when they leave, and we pray that they will prosper.”
It was what we had been called on to do all through the war. Heal men as quickly as we could, and send them back to the Front as soon as we could. Some of us had tried to find ways around that, when the need was there.
“But surely there’s something to be done. Some way to give them hope?”
“I can’t very well write to the mine owners and tell them their duty,” she replied, resignation in her voice. “My sister in London tells me that there is little work open to many of the soldiers coming home. She saw three begging on the street just last week. She sent one to hospital with a very bad chest, but there was nothing she could do about the others. She collected money from friends and took it to them, but it’s only a temporary solution. Neither she nor anyone else can take on responsibility for all of them.”
I hadn’t been in London, not to walk about on the streets, since the war ended. I hadn’t known.
“You’re from an Army family, aren’t you?” she asked after a moment. “I can imagine how difficult this must be for you. Sadly, it’s beyond our ability to help.”
It was dismissal.
Captain Williams’s letter had taken over a week to reach me, and I wrote to him that same evening, offering what advice I could, knowing even as I sealed the envelope that it wouldn’t be enough. But no reply came, although I watched each day for our own post to arrive.
It was useless to apply to Matron again. She’d already made it plain enough that she had no way to help a former patient. And so I wrote to my mother, asking if the Colonel Sahib was in London. He could speak to the Army. But he was in Paris again. I was glad I hadn’t told my mother why I was trying to reach him, for it would only have worried her.
I wrote again to Wales, praying that this letter would reach the Captain.
Days later my letter came back marked return to sender.
I told myself it could be explained away. The Captain had taken rooms of his own, rather than continue to live with his sister. But surely the valley’s postmaster would know that? Unless of course the Captain hadn’t thought to inform him. But then why write to me, if he hadn’t hoped for a response?
I didn’t want to consider the only other possibility, that something had happened to him. And what about the others? Were they lost too?
It was clear enough that the only way to know for certain was to travel to Wales myself. But to ask for leave when we were so shorthanded was impossible. And in the back of my mind was the fear that it was already too late, that these men I’d known since the base hospital in France were dead.
Twice in my dreams I heard their voices singing as they had at Christmas, but when I tried to find out which room they were in, I kept getting lost. I’d wake up, and then it was hard to get to sleep again.
Matron stopped me in the passage one morning, looking at me intently. I knew what she must be seeing. My mirror had shown me the dark smudges under my eyes. Worry had put them there, but she interpreted them as fatigue. “Sister Crawford, you haven’t had leave since you arrived. Why don’t you take a few days? Ten, perhaps. At the moment we can manage without you for a bit, and it will do you good to go home to Somerset and rest.”
She meant well. But Somerset wasn’t going to help me or Captain Williams or his men. Now I could finally go to Wales.
I knew those m
en, I’d treated them, and I hated losing them to despair.
“Perhaps a leave is just the thing, Matron,” I said quietly, so as not to arouse any suspicions. “But are you sure that you can do without me?”
“We’re expecting three more Sisters any day now. Their base hospital in France is reducing staff. I’d asked for four the last time, and we only got two. London is about to rectify that. They’re experienced, and I shan’t have to worry about training them. I hear we’ll also be getting in more patients. A small clinic in Kent is about to close its doors and we’ll be taking their amputees. We’ve also been asked to do more training in the use of crutches, and there’s some talk about artificial limbs.” She smiled. “You are so conscientious, Sister Crawford, and I appreciate that. Now go and pack your kit. And come back again restored.”
“Thank you, Matron. I’ll do my best.”
I turned my patients over to Sister MacNeil, and went upstairs to pack.
Chapter 3
One of the kitchen staff was going into the village below the clinic for Evensong that evening, and it was arranged for me to go in with her, to take the 5:20 train to London. I’d explained to Matron that I had taken a flat in the city at the start of my training and I could spend what remained of the night there before taking the next train home. She considered that a very good plan, and wished me well.
I went to the wards to speak to my patients, cheering them up as best I could, and promising to come back before they were discharged. And then I was waiting at the door when Nan came round in the dog cart she kept to do errands for Cook. The horse was fresh and eager for a run, and so we arrived at the station well before time. I sat by the stove in the tiny waiting room, warming my toes and chatting with the stationmaster until the whistle warned us that the train was coming.
I arrived in London in the middle of the night but at the station found a cab to take me to Mrs. Hennessey’s. The stationmaster there escorted me out to the street, telling me about his son and the Sister who had treated him after Ypres, and how grateful he and his wife were that Andrew’s wounds had healed.
I thanked him for his kindness, and gave the cabbie Mrs. Hennessey’s direction. She must have been soundly asleep, for she didn’t come out to greet me when I let myself in with my key, taking the stairs as quietly as I could and crawling in between cold sheets in a colder room.
The next morning I startled her when I tapped at her door to ask for a cup of tea and a pitcher of hot water. She pulled me into her kitchen, fed me, and let me use her own room—warmed by a fire on the hearth—to bathe and change. She took it for granted that I was on my way to Somerset.
By eleven o’clock I was on the next train to Cardiff. From my neighbor in the first-class compartment, I learned that I could hire a driver to take me to my destination. “The mine owners often use them. Very reliable,” he assured me.
And so it was that early the next morning I found myself leaving my hotel in the bustling port city with a driver who had little to say but who knew the roads well enough to make reasonably good time.
We arrived in the valley a little after four o’clock in the afternoon. On the heights as we climbed into the hills, the snow had been pristine white, sparkling in the pale light of the sun as it dodged in and out of clouds. As we’d descended on the track leading to the village, I looked up at the mountaintop across the way. It was oddly shaped, lumpy and unnatural. When I asked, my driver told me that the lumps were where the tip from the mine, the refuse of operations, was piled out of the way.
“It’s ugly, as a rule,” he explained. “The snow does its best to hide that.”
As we made our way down the valley, the snow was already blackened by coal dust. The houses were too, and even the faces of a handful of miners I saw coming down the road toward the pit head. Older men, mostly. The younger ones had gone to war and had never come back.
“The house number again, Sister?” my driver asked, turning down a muddy street to our left.
“Number one hundred ten.”
“It will be just down there.” He pointed toward another narrow street that led up from the river.
I looked at the row of houses ahead. No better nor worse than others on the street we’d just come up. The terraces were plain, and in need of paint or new steps at the door or missing slates from the roof. A church was just beyond, rectangular and plain as well, without even a steeple, just the narrow housing for a small bell at the peak of the roof. A chapel, not a church, I reminded myself. These were Chapel folk.
My driver pulled up in front of a door. It had been a pale green once, but was grimy now, and one of the lace curtains at the front window had a long tear in it. With a sinking heart, I prepared to get down. It didn’t look welcoming.
“Wait for me,” I said. “I shan’t be staying the night with these people. Is there a hotel or an inn—some other place you could take me to?” For the house didn’t look large enough to have a guest room, and I hadn’t seen any other accommodation as we came through the village.
“Not really, Sister.”
It was dusk now in the valley, for the sun had disappeared over the heights above us. Toward the west the sky was still bright, and on the ridgeline the tips were pink, the snow catching reflections from the clouds. Lamps were lit in number 110, and in the other homes along the street. Across the river, houses clung to the shelf of flat land along it or climbed up the lower edges of the hillside, picked out by the glow from their windows.
I went up the three shallow steps to the door and knocked.
A woman came to answer it. Thin, in a dark dress that was faded around the neckline and across the shoulders, and a stained once-white apron, she stared at me with tired eyes. “Sister?”
Behind her I could hear young children quarreling. She glanced over her shoulder as a man’s voice shouted to them to be quiet, then she turned back to me, waiting.
“I’m Sister Crawford,” I said. “I’m here to see Captain Williams.”
“Are you now?” she said, looking behind me to where my driver leaned against the wing of the motorcar, smoking a cigarette. “Well, you’re too late. He isn’t here.”
I could feel my heart turn over. I couldn’t bear to ask if her brother was in the churchyard. But it was what I’d dreaded since his letter had come. And tried to ignore.
“Not here?” I looked at the number painted next to the door, desperately telling myself that I must somehow have got the wrong street. For that matter, even the wrong village. My driver had sworn he knew this valley, but how could I be sure? “I’m sorry,” I said then. “I was sure this was the address given in the Captain’s letter.”
A baby began to cry, and she glanced over her shoulder again. She said to me, “How did you think I could do anything for him here? With that lot to look after as well?”
“I wrote—” I began, and then stopped.
“I burned them. The letters. What else was I to do? He’s not here,” she said again, as if I were hard of hearing. “I told you.”
“Yes, all right,” I answered, falling back on Matron’s voice of authority to conceal my despair at failing the Captain. “I understand that. What about the others? His men?”
“In the churchyard. What did you expect? That’s the only reason he was willing to leave.”
“What do you mean, leave?” I held my breath, waiting for her answer.
“He went to stay with our brother’s widow somewhere below Swansea. On the sea. She’s taken him in.”
The sister-in-law, who had written to him just before Christmas . . .
“Where is that?” I asked. “How can I reach him?”
“There’s your driver. Ask him. I’m needed.”
And she shut the door in my face before I could say anything more.
Angry with her, I debated knocking again, then gave it up. I went back to the motorcar.
“The patient I’d come to see is living somewhere below Swansea. How far away is that?”
“Out on the peninsula? Is that what you mean? That’s a goodly distance, Sister,” he answered me in the pleasant rhythmic speech patterns of the Welsh. “Surely you’ll not be wanting to go there? It’s the back of nowhere.”
“We can talk about that later,” I said, still taking in what the Captain’s sister had said. “But first I must find a tea shop.” It was the best place to ask for the information I needed. She might have been wrong about the other men—but I’d only had the one address. I didn’t know where to find them.
“I don’t know of a tea shop here.”
“I thought I saw a general store just over the river. Where we turned off the main road to cross to here. Surely they’re still open at this hour?”
When we pulled up in front of the dingy building, I got down. “While I’m here, I’ll find something for our dinner. Or would you prefer to find your own?”
Grunting, he got out and followed me inside. “Like as not, they don’t speak English,” he said gloomily.
But to my dismay, the shelves in the store offered little of interest. Staples, but nothing more. And the prices were exorbitant. It dawned on me that the people in this valley couldn’t afford things that I’d have taken for granted in Somerset.
I settled for a loaf of bread, a tin of beans, and a few slices of cheese. My driver shook his head, but I’d served in France where one learned quickly not to be too fussy about one’s food. The woman behind the counter looked at my coins as if surprised to be paid in currency.
I had put it off as long as I could, afraid of what I’d hear. Still, if Captain Williams’s sister wouldn’t speak to me, and this woman couldn’t help, I’d find the local Constable or even the nearest clergyman. I wasn’t going to leave until I’d learned what had become of my other patients.
While she was laboriously counting out my change, I asked about Corporal Jones, using his name instead of his rank.
Her frown deepened. Without looking up, she said, “Llewelyn Jones? He fell down the mine shaft. A week ago, it was, just as the rain was turning to snow. They say his crutches slipped and he lost his balance.”