by Charles Todd
I couldn’t imagine my mother and father having a change of heart.
And what was I to tell them, when these orders hadn’t been any of my doing?
I went to Matron, to speak to her about my concerns, but when I broached the subject, she smiled warmly. “Ah. I see they’ve come through. I didn’t wish to say anything until we could be sure. We shall be very sorry to lose you, my dear, but Dr. Gaines spoke to me, and I must say, I agreed with him. You should be in France, not here. And so he wrote to the proper people, expressing his feelings in the matter, and I am glad to learn that they decided in your favor.”
I could only sit there, stunned.
It was as if a godmother in a fairy tale had granted a fervent wish, but left the recipient to deal with the aftermath of that wish being granted.
“You seem surprised, Sister Crawford. I should have thought you would be delighted by such news.”
“I am,” I told her truthfully. “I-it’s just that I’m not sure how to break it to my father.”
“He’s been a serving officer all his life. He’ll understand the importance of duty, if anyone does,” she said bracingly. “Now to particulars. You’ll finish the week with us, take three days of leave to visit your family and prepare for this posting, and then report to France.”
It occurred to me that I had promised Julia Carson that I would come to see her again, and now there would be no opportunity.
“I’m very grateful, Matron. It’s such a surprise, it will take some time to get used to.”
The smile returned. “Of course. And I needn’t ask you not to tell your patients until the last day. We find that staff leaving often unsettles them.”
“I’ll say nothing,” I promised.
But where was Simon, and what would he think when he came here to see me after finishing whatever it was that had taken him to London, only to find me out of reach? And how would I learn whatever it was he might have discovered, given the censorship of the post to and from France?
There was another worry. Would I be in danger? But no one knew what I suspected. At least I hoped no one knew except for Simon and Private Wilson’s widow.
Changing the subject, Matron was now discussing a patient, and I forced my thoughts back to the present.
When I was dismissed, I knew I should seek out Dr. Gaines at once and thank him for his intercession. Instead I went outside to the park where Simon and I had spoken privately, and as I walked I tried to think.
I couldn’t turn down my orders. They had been cut, and even the Colonel Sahib, as my mother and I called him, would find it difficult to cancel them now. I should have to make the best of it, go to France and do what I did so well: help save lives.
I met Dr. Gaines as I was walking back to the house. He’d come in search of me, and he said as I approached, “There you are. Matron tells me your orders have been cut.”
“Yes, thank you, Dr. Gaines, it was very kind of you.”
“Nonsense. You’re a good nurse. Now come inside and we’ll unwrap that leg and have a look. Tell me what you think.”
He was being polite, of course. But I went with him and the Lieutenant’s leg was looking much better. We cleansed it again and put on fresh bandages. Dr. Gaines nodded to the owner of the leg, who had been watching us with such anxiety that my heart went out to him. A Yorkshireman, he said little, but his eyes spoke for him. “You’ll keep it, Lieutenant, and live to fight another day. If you follow instructions for the next few weeks.”
We made rounds, looking at Captain Scott’s damaged shoulder, Lieutenant Fraser’s badly fractured hand, Major Donovan’s shrapnel-shattered hip, and a dozen more cases the doctors were watching closely. When we’d finished, I was released from duty and allowed to go up to my room.
Halfway to the stairs, I encountered the American. He said without preamble, “You’re leaving.”
“You shouldn’t be listening at doors,” I informed him. “You seldom hear the truth.”
“It’s something in your face,” he said. “Never mind, I’ll be back in France before you know it. Keep watch for me.”
“Captain. Don’t be silly. You’ll lose that leg if you aren’t more careful. How many times does Dr. Gaines have to warn you?”
“I know. I have an incentive now to take my exercises seriously. And,” he added with a gleam in his eye, “Simon Brandon will still be in England.”
Without waiting for me to reply, he hobbled away.
Dr. Gaines himself drove me home when the time came. I was rather surprised by that, but then I remembered what I had told him about going back to France. I expect he felt that his presence would in some fashion soften the blow for my parents.
I hadn’t called to warn my parents that I was coming. I saw my mother’s face as she opened the door and found us standing there. The succession of emotions touched my heart. Surprise. Fear. Anger. Resignation. They were all there. I presented Dr. Gaines, and she took us to the drawing room, rather than to her sitting room, a measure of her feelings. But she was politeness itself, apologizing for the fact that the Colonel Sahib was away at the moment, asking the doctor about the clinic, and carefully channeling the conversation away from the reason for my being there.
Finally, when there was nothing else to be said, Dr. Gaines cleared his throat and told my mother precisely what had happened and why.
She didn’t argue with him. Instead she thanked him with apparent sincerity and asked if he’d care to stay for dinner.
“Alas, no, I have my evening rounds, and I shall be late for them as it is. But thank you for your kindness.” He turned to me and wished me well. “Write to us if you will. I know that Matron, the staff, and the patients who know you will be delighted to hear how you are faring. And one patient in particular who asked me only this morning to find a reason to keep you at Longleigh House.”
I smiled in return. “I shall,” I promised. And with that, and a last glance at my mother, he was gone.
She closed the door behind him and said, “Well. As I have always said, things have a way of working out.”
“I didn’t ask Dr. Gaines to intercede,” I assured her.
“Darling, I know. And he made that quite clear, so that there would be no doubt in our minds.” She put her arm around my shoulders and pulled me close for a moment. “Love sometimes sees the future crookedly. It tries to convince us we know what’s best. When the call came from France-it was that Australian of yours. Sergeant Larimore. I don’t quite know how he learned that you might be dying, but he felt someone would wish to be with you at the end-I couldn’t quite think what to do. Your father was in London, he wouldn’t be home for another four-and-twenty hours, and I didn’t have the proper papers to allow me to go to France on my own. Simon had just landed in Dover, and so we sent him to you. I don’t know what mountains he and your father moved to make it possible for him to go at once. When he got word to us that you would live, it was a miracle. As if God had granted us a reprieve at the last possible moment when all hope had gone. It took some time to recover from that shock. Perhaps we were wrong to want to keep you safe in England, but we too had to heal.”
I hadn’t known all this. I had assumed that ill as I was, and being the Colonel’s only child, I’d been sent back to England to recover properly.
I had attended Sergeant Larimore in the winter, when he was wounded, and because of him I had learned firsthand how swiftly word could travel at the Front. I felt a rush of gratitude for what he’d done.
It was a measure of my parents’ fear that no one had told me until now. As if it would bring back for them what must have been long, terrifying hours of not knowing.
If I had been in France and was told that one of my parents was dying, I would have felt much the same helplessness. And so I could understand. Indeed, there had been a fortnight when I had had no news and feared the worst.
“We must consider what to have for dinner,” she said bracingly, changing the subject before we were both brought t
o tears. “I was planning to dine alone, and now here you are. Let’s talk to Cook and see what’s possible.”
I left Somerset before my father came back from whatever mission had taken him away this time. My mother made the best of what she must have considered to be a bad bargain and sent me off with freshly ironed uniforms, a packet of sandwiches, and her love, as she’d always done.
When I reached Portsmouth after a long and wearing journey on the train, shunted from siding to siding as troop trains hurtled through, given precedence, I was walking through the dark and crowded port to find my own transport when I saw a tall figure in uniform making his way toward me.
It was my father, calling to me as he recognized me, enveloping me in an embrace that expressed, more than anything, his belief that he wouldn’t be in time.
“There you are!” he said. “I’ve moved heaven and earth-and more to the point, the War Office-to get here before you sailed, and I thought I’d missed you in spite of everything.”
“How did you know?” I asked. “Did Mother reach you?”
“Someone from the Canadian Army reached me. He told me where to find you.”
That ridiculous American, I thought, hoping to stop me from leaving by summoning my father to meet me here.
But I was wrong about his motives.
My father was saying, “God knows how he found out where I was. I am most grateful he did. Of course I shall most likely be sent to the Tower for leaving London so precipitously. He must know people in very high places. Perhaps he will also arrange my pardon.”
I laughed, as I was intended to do. “I never told him that you were away. I wasn’t aware of it myself until Mother told me.”
“You know him, then, do you? This Canadian?”
“It’s a long story. And he’s an American serving with the Canadian forces. I can’t think why he should even guess where or how to find you.”
Somewhere down the quay a blast of a ship’s horn, muffled but still loud in the damp night air, reminded me that I hadn’t yet located my transport.
“Look, there isn’t much time. Simon told me about Vincent Carson. I don’t want you involved with this business, Bess. Leave it to us. I have ways of finding out what we need to know about this Colonel of his. And if I can track down his grave, I can ask to have the body exhumed in the hope of discovering the cause of death. Are you quite certain that his journal wasn’t there when you found him?”
“He’d been stripped of his uniform, and there was no way to know even what rank he held or in what regiment. The burial detail would have no choice but to put him in a grave marked UNKNOWN. What’s more, there were no possessions to be sent to his family. If I hadn’t recognized him when Private Wilson showed me the body, no one would have known the truth. We’d have believed he’d died in the trenches, just as it was reported.”
The Colonel winced at that. “And as far as Simon could discover, Private Wilson never officially reported finding the Major’s body. Which means if he did speak to someone else, it cost him his life. Listen to me. If anyone approaches you, trying in any way to discover what you know-even someone you believe you can trust-send word at once but let them believe your high fever erased any memory of what happened the evening you fell ill. Ignorance will keep you safe, my dear. Remember that.”
“Yes, I understand,” I told him, and only a few minutes later, he was waving to me from the quay while I stood by the rail, watching until the crowded docks blocked him from view.
Why had Simon chosen to tell the Colonel Sahib about Vincent Carson’s death?
There hadn’t been time to ask, but I could think of two reasons-Simon needed my father’s authority to open doors shut to him.
Or he was going into danger and felt that the time had come to protect me by bringing my father into the picture. Pray God this was not the reason. But it had been too long since last I heard from him, and in ordinary circumstances he would have found a way to get in touch.
And it worried me as well that Captain Barclay had reached my father. Even my mother had had no idea where he was.
Although I was offered a cabin, I had too much on my mind to rest. And so I remained at the rail of The Mermaid, a former ferry turned transport ship, and watched the long, dark shape of the Isle of Wight slip by in the night. The wind was unseasonably cold, coming off the water, and I looked up at the bridge to see the watch scanning the seas for German raiders. All lights were out, and the only sounds beside the wind were the engines, a deep and reassuring throb.
I was not the only recovered invalid on board. A good few officers and other ranks I saw on deck were in my opinion still too pale and too thin to return to active duty. But there was that other driving force a soldier understood only too well: the need to be there with those he’d had to leave behind for the duration of his recovery. I read it there later in the intensity of their gaze watching for the first faint blue haze that was France looming on the horizon. The determination not to let the side down, even if it meant dying with them.
Someone found a chair for me, and I sat there, waiting patiently for the journey to end. I was not going back to the hospital where the body of Vincent Carson had been discovered by Private Wilson. Still it was possible for me to get there if I looked for the opportunity. Patient transfers, picking up supplies-there was always traffic of some sort between forward aid stations and those behind the lines.
And then the buffeting of the Channel ceased, and we were moving up the Seine, our destination Rouen. I stood at the rail, picking out landmarks. Gripping my valise, I watched men on the quay bringing The Mermaid in close and tying her up. Then we were ordered to prepare for disembarkation, troops to report in companies. One of the officers nodded to me, indicating I should be among the first to land. But the way had no more than been cleared when the tall, fair Australian who’d contacted my mother appeared out of nowhere, coming up the gangway in long, swift strides to enclose me in a huge embrace, swinging me off my feet.
“You’re alive. I had to see it for myself,” he said. “Your mother, bless her, is a rare lady.”
Laughing, I commanded him to put me down.
Behind me, an English officer said angrily, “I’ll have you on report for that, Sergeant.”
Sergeant Larimore set me down, turned to him, and said blandly, lying through his teeth, “She’s my English cousin, sir.” And then leaning closer to whisper in my ear, he said, “I’m that glad you’re alive, my lass. I couldn’t contemplate a world without your shining face. Now I know you’re safe, I must report to my unit. I’ve been on leave without permission for the past two days, watching for you.”
And he was gone, disappearing into the crowded quayside before I could say a word or ask him who had told him I was even sailing to France.
It must have been my mother. The American didn’t know about Sergeant Larimore.
“Cousin, indeed,” snorted the officer behind me.
“Alas, sir, the black sheep,” I replied. With that I nodded to the ship’s officer and walked sedately off The Mermaid and into Rouen.
I was back in France at last. As I made my way toward the American Base Hospital, where I was to meet my convoy, I could hear the guns in the distance. Someone jostled my shoulder, apologized in rough French, and another man, appearing to be in a great hurry, brushed past me, nearly causing me to drop my valise. I realized all at once how vulnerable I was, alone in a city of this size. I hadn’t really taken thought to the danger I might be in until now, where I was surrounded by people on their way to market or the port or the waiting trains. I didn’t know the face of my enemy, if he was that. But it occurred to me that I could disappear here, and even my father, with all his authority, couldn’t find me in the muddy bottom of the river.
I was glad to see my next transport waiting just beyond the port-an ambulance packed with supplies to replace the depleted stocks of aid units closer to the Front. The driver was someone I didn’t know, a taciturn man who told me his name was Sam
and we were late already, Sister, so don’t dawdle, please, Miss.
I took the seat beside the driver, my valise tucked into a tiny space in the back, and we set out, steadily moving north as the roads, the traffic, and the terrain allowed. I asked what news he had of the war, and he said, “The Germans are winning all along the line. That’s what it feels like, Sister, when I drive the dying here.”
It was a bleak assessment, and I hoped that it was wrong. The Americans were supposed to be turning the balance toward the Allies. We fell silent and I watched the trains of mules and guns and columns of troops making their way toward the shooting, and the line of wounded being transported to the rear in Rouen. There had been heavy rain the day before, according to Sam, and the roads were a morass. We bumped and jerked and skidded over them until my head was beginning to ache from all the jolting. There was nothing for it but to endure.
At length we were close enough to the trenches that in the darkness I could actually see the muzzle flashes. The noise was deafening. When we reached the aid station, I could pick out the long line of wounded standing or lying on stretchers outside the nearest tent, and a doctor with a haggard face looked up anxiously as he heard the rumble of the ambulance coming in, and then shouted to me, “Hurry!”
There was no time to find my tent or change my clothes. I left my coat and valise in a corner, borrowed an apron from someone, and began to sort the cases as they arrived. The driver was offloading supplies, and hands were reaching for bandages and septic powder almost as quickly as they were unpacked.
Hours later, when I was finally replaced, I walked out into the pale light of another dawn.
Working those long hours had cost me dearly, for my parents were right, I wasn’t at full strength yet. The clinic had been almost too easy, with its regular hours and quiet evenings. And now, too tired to sleep, I nursed a cup of tea in the cool of sunrise and considered the problem of finding the elusive Colonel Prescott.
I could hardly go about asking officers who came to the aid station if they had served under him. I knew too well how quickly word got around.