by Paul Butler
Nurse Flo’s hand began to stroke my forehead, and when I had courage to look her full in the face, she was smiling her gently anxious smile. The expression was one I had seen in Mrs. Baxter’s face, but Nurse Flo no longer looked so much like Mrs. Baxter; she was much thinner, her eyes small and dark while Mrs. Baxter’s were large and pale.
She leaned over me for some time, softly whispering “only a dream.” The cadence of the words soothed me like an ancient prayer, more profound and more comforting than a thousand Our Fathers. “Only a dream” was the grandparent of all prayers, extending beyond circumstance. Pain, anxiety, guilt, retribution—only a dream. Blood, prison, gallows, disgrace— only a dream. Those three words held the wisdom of the ages. In the blue light of the ward, with the coughs and moans of the sick around me, it seemed the one comforting truth to hold onto: everything passes in the end, everything was a dream.
At last Flo went back to her chair and repositioned it so she might sit and whisper to me at the same time. “I know about your story, Simon. I know what you’ve been through.” Small impulses of horror regrouped in my chest, forming a battalion of denial and shame. But then, quite unexpectedly and one by one, rifles dropped onto the earth. My heart became lighter, and everything slid into a kind of acceptance, a kind of relief. It was bound to happen. She knew my story—the real one, it seemed, from her tone and from the worried furrows on her brow as she watched me. She was sympathetic, warm, and kind. She would understand and not judge me, and the guilt that had been hammering inside my chest would escape at last.
My vision blurred and a warm tear spilled, running from the corner of my eye, along my temple, seeping into my bandage. Another rose to take its place and I could feel a torrent about to break. I began shaking; I couldn’t help it. “I know about Lieutenant Charles Baxter, your friend,” she continued, touching my forehead again. “Another soldier saw you…” I had begun to shake harder, but I needed her to go on. I needed her sweet absolution, and I sensed she knew this. “He saw you take your friend in your arms and gently, very gently, lay him down upon the ground.”
Her words had missed something vital for my unburdening. I searched for a way to bring her back, to make her relate the story again, but with the details I most needed to hear.
“No, it’s not right,” I sobbed.
But she ignored me, gently shaking her head, leaning in closer and clasping the hand she had eased from under my bedclothes. “So, despite that brave soldier’s heart of yours,” she continued, “despite that lion-hearted courage, you were as tender as a lamb on the battlefield. Simon, such sensitivity and courage together is so rare in a man. Your girl back home will be proud of you. You mustn’t worry about that.”
I said nothing for a while. My tears subsided, as did my shaking. Nurse Flo gave me one last adoring, motherly look, then took her chair to its previous position and continued to knit. The guilt that had been battering my chest for release was suddenly still, lodged into a new and permanent position. I could almost hear the crunch of a foundation stone being laid.
Who was the witness, I wondered? Was it Smith, with his grin, his pointed finger, and his shattered legs? I had assumed him dead, and he hadn’t turned up here. But I had seen no other. How had Nurse Flo come to misunderstand so badly?
An image rose in my brain of Smith, fevered, dying perhaps, relaying the image of one soldier laying a comrade upon the bomb-encrusted ground carefully, reverentially. He would find a sardonic humour, no doubt, that he would expect his deathbed listener—Nurse Flo, or perhaps another nurse—to appreciate. But in his fever he would fail to pass on that one prescient detail. His words would fade out, or the phrase would be too muddled to make out: the reverential officer had killed the comrade himself.
For the next little while I was sullen rather than agitated. The medics who saw me talked vaguely of “various phases,” and “what was to be expected.” My body was healing against my will. They moved me to a ward where some of the soldiers were up and about and where there was daily talk of who might be shipped back to England to convalesce. Each week a bunch of the healthiest men were taken by van to a train bound for the coast. I recoiled at the idea that one day I would be one of them. This strange purgatory was home to me now. I wanted no other.
But my condition would not cease improving. The bandages around my head became lighter. Finally, they were removed. I was taught to use a wheelchair, then crutches. Like an automaton, I obeyed directives, believing that somehow I could avoid returning to England, that the war, still raging to the east, might engulf us in the night and burn us all to ashes as we slept. Where were the Zeppelins when you needed them?
Then it came, a moment I had been dreading, a premonition of that which was to come. A tight little bundle of letters, bound in yellowed string, landed on my bunk.
CHAPTER 6
Aware of the hush in the ward—the static of envy—I pick up the three-letter bundle. I flip it one way, then the other, taking in the details of the three envelopes: the first violet with looping, blue script, the second pale pink, and the third thick, white, and wedged between the other two. A shiver runs through me. They have each been opened and read, of course.
An apologetic strip of tape re-closes each letter.
As I am one of the few to receive mail today, many sets of yearning eyes remain on me, so I slip the bundle into the pocket of my dressing gown and, with the same hand, draw forth my Woodbine and matches. I strike a flame at the second attempt; my hands are just beginning to tremble.
As the cloud of blue smoke rises from my bunk, a cough from the ward’s opposite corner echoes under the high ceiling. I sense that interest is sliding from me at last, finding refuge in other comforts either vicarious or postdated. Some patients begin flicking through the magazines that litter the beds. Some light up their own pipes and cigarettes. Others reread last week’s, or last month’s, letters. I turn to the wall—mine is thankfully the last bed in the row—and blindly finger the letters in my pocket.
I already know the authors.
The violet envelope is from Charles’s mother. Although her blue reservoir pen has spelled out my regiment, rank, and name in a hand shakier than I recall from her cheerful party invitations, the handwriting is clearly hers. The noose of each l, the curve of each s, plays upon my heart like a fencer’s sword. The more wavering the stroke, the more drawn-out the torture; the less expert the punishment, the greater the suspense. What I crave is the coup de grâce. I’m terrified now of the changes that have come upon Mrs. Baxter since I last saw her. I know it is my own handiwork.
The thick white letter tucked in the middle is from my father. Basildon Bond always makes the shortest of missives seem more substantial, and that’s why he uses it. Some men distrust words, some sentiment. My father distrusts both. I realize the message in my pocket must have been monumentally difficult for him to write. I wonder how few or how many sentences he has trusted to his pen.
The pale pink letter is from Sarah. Quite a number of these kept my candle flickering through the endless nights in the dugout. Something tumultuous moves in my chest as I think of those days. The lantern of her compassion was my guide then, my promise of a future dawn. Now a glimpse of that light would scald my eyes to blindness; a whisper of encouragement would damn me to the pit.
With my hand still in my pocket, I ease the string from the bundle. My heart pounds, but blindly I tug the first letter free. Like picking a scab from an itching wound, I can’t help it. I have to dig it out. I have to see the words whose phantom premonitions already burn in my imagination.
I shift on my left elbow and bring the envelope close to my eyes. The strip of tape falls on the blanket like a piece of dead skin. I take out the letter and snap it open—an action of unexpected vigour, a necessary falsehood to hoodwink my terror:
My dear Simon,
How can I express the mix of emotions, the tumult of loss and gratitude we feel over our beloved Charles, and for you, his dear friend from wh
om he sought, and found, such kindness, such valour, and such wisdom?
How much we have asked from our young men, and how readily, how selflessly, have they given. To lose Charles, our jolly, silly, but oh-so-thoroughly good-natured boy, is a pain almost beyond endurance.
I say “almost,” dear Simon, because there is one lasting image passed down to us by a kind friend of yours and ours, Major Pickard, which goes some way to mitigate the bitter tears Sarah and I have shed since the news.
I turn over the sheet in trembling fingers, heart still pounding like waves upon a beach.
It is a memory of grace and kindness on the battlefield, of one young soldier embracing another, and laying him down gently upon the earth, a tender-hearted last act towards a true brother-in-arms.
What a comfort it is to us that you, his dearest friend, should have been with him in the last moments of his precious life!
I must not go on. We are very concerned for your own recovery, of which, happily, we have every reason to feel assured. This assurance is a blessing indeed, not only to your dear father and Sarah, but to all of us who weep for the fallen, and who pray for those who might be saved.
God bless,
Natasha Baxter
A tear lands upon the signature, bloating the B of Baxter, then scoops up the ink into a pale blue channel. This runs slowly to the side of the page and drops onto my blanket. The tear, I realize with a small jolt, is not shed from guilt; there are moments of late when guilt has become a distant stranger. Just as the smouldering fuel behind the hearth-grate crumbles, losing its original nature, turning, regardless of how it began—wood, coal, paper—to the same grey dust, so has my guilt disintegrated into the dry powder of alienation. Guilt is indistinguishable from fear, shame, nerves, and grief. I cry now, not because Mrs. Baxter’s beliefs are mistaken, but because they might have been true, because the story is so touching, and so charming, much like those I heard and believed in before the war. My tears are for the lost son and for the valiant, yet tender, young man who ministered him in his last moments.
I fold the letter, the sentiment still tugging at my sleeve, slip it into my dressing gown pocket, and draw forth the next. This will be the easiest to read.
Dear Simon,
It was with much concern that I heard about your injuries. But I am encouraged by reports that you will make a full recovery. Sorry to hear about young Baxter.
You have, by all accounts, played a valiant role in the Somme campaign. We are all very proud of you here, and fondly look towards your safe return. I will hurry now to meet the post as I know Mrs. Baxter and Sarah have their best wishes to send along with this.
Your ever-affectionate father
I feel the sizzle of a retreating wave as I refold the letter and replace it in my pocket. My father is the rolling North Sea on a bleak autumn afternoon. The hurrying to meet the post is, of course, an alibi. Had he twelve hours of reflection at his disposal he would have found reasons to cut his message short. Before the war, this quality of his was strangely endearing. But now there are thorns and briars in every silence. Now the idea of living in the house of a man who hardly talks is terrifying, like a return to the featureless nightmares of childhood, with their blackened spaces and muffled quiet.
I bury his letter in my pocket and pincer the last envelope between my fingers and thumb. Slowly my hand re-emerges and makes its way up the bed, skimming the blanket. This final letter rustles loudly as it is re-opened, as though announcing a possible secret. Listening for coughs, rustles of magazines, cues that the life of the ward continues as usual, I slip the folded sheath of writing paper from its envelope and snap it open, dropping the envelope onto the bed.
I hold my breath.
Oh my dear, sweet Simon!
How mixed with grief and joy are the events of which we have heard and how poor the words with which we greet them!
I feel so selfish to be at my core overcome with relief that you have been saved, and that you may soon be coming back to us, while my poor, dear brother Charles has been taken from us all forever. You can well imagine how distraught mother has been—the sheer violence of grief at the dreaded telegram.
I turn this sheet, then let the whole letter drop so that the page I am about to read is face-up on the blanket. The tremor of my hands would otherwise make continuing impossible. I fear that at any time curious eyes may peer over my shoulder, and that I will be quizzed about my wildly trembling hands.
But what a supreme comfort it was to us to hear firstly that you were well, and secondly that you yourself ministered to our Charles in his last moments.
You deserve all the love, and more, I can ever give you. I feel certain that when you are restored to us we will once again find a version of that happiness you and I and Charles shared together with our mother and your father. We will once again run along Dunwich’s clifftop with the wind beating in our ears. We will once again throw stones into the sea.
Charles is on his way home to us and will be buried in the new churchyard, so he will remain part of our little world and part of our community. I hope this isn’t too sad a thought for you.
Before I go on I should let you know what you undoubtedly suspect…
Peeling this sheet from the next, I feel the lick of a breath upon my ear. I turn, enough to see there is no one, just the circling breeze entering through the half-open window above me.
…that I share one horror with all who remain at home—that I am gushing forth words that may seem vain and foolish to those, like you, who have fought and suffered and who suffer still. You must forgive me if this is the case. How unnatural a thing is this experience which rends our lives!
Your father, you will be glad to hear, is as eccentric as ever in worry. He will not admit to his anxieties, yet they slip out anyway in odd little ways. He has not returned to the tannery since hearing of the news, and lets his manager and foreman run the works. He told us vaguely that he is no longer needed, that they can run the place as well themselves. He left his pipe in our sitting room when he came this morning with his own letter. His distracted air, I imagine, is more from relief than from any fear he still entertains.
If I find myself at a loss for words, dear Simon, you know it is not through lack of feeling but because there is too much feeling and too much doubt about the “right” thing to say…isn’t it terrible how this war conspires to make strangers of us all?
But I will never let that happen, dear Simon. I am yours always and wait in devotion for your return.
Your Sarah
Bundling the letter into my pocket with the rest, I turn onto my back and stare at the ceiling fan. A fly bobs around the turning blades. Trapped is the only word my mind can grasp, the only truly meaningful word left in the language, it seems; the rest are variants, florid, embryonic versions of the same. In time all words will lose the poetic lilt, the superfluous letters that dazzle and thrill the ears with hope and possibility. They will be stripped down to that one true syllable—trapped—that final destination to which all life and all meaning tends.
I watch the fly as it ducks and dodges around the fan. Certain knowledge descends upon me of the narrow, sordid tunnel through which the next fifty-odd years must take me.
Suffolk, England
1916
CHAPTER 7
Sarah
The distant chug of a motorcar carries me to the window once more. Auburn and gold leaves scatter along the street carrying faint applause through the pane. Something in my stomach tips off centre then realigns itself. An invisible acrobat is within me, preparing to attempt that which has never been achieved before: to welcome a hero whose feats have astounded the world, to be worthy, somehow, of his love. The approaching moment is one I have hoped for and dreaded in equal measure.
The storyline of the past two years since war’s declaration would have me a figure in Greek mythology, a fearless warrior queen, inspiring armies. Yet here I am in a grey cardigan, a thing of shivers and uncertainties
, hugging herself, biting her lip. The Olympian drama engulfing the world has made Titans of dowdy creatures such as myself, or at least it has given us roles that force us to aspire far beyond our natural abilities. We have been pushed unkindly onto the stage where our eyelids batter at the footlights, and our ears burn at the expectant hush of the audience.
Now that I am upon the precipice, certain to come face to face with Simon within minutes, I feel that the challenge is quite beyond me. I have already fumbled in my first attempts at playing consort to a hero. The letter I agonized over for hours ended as an abject failure, a catalogue of inadequacies. It was only after it had been sent and was beyond my recall that I properly reflected upon conveying such foolish sentiments to the very same man who had charged towards the front lines, the very person who even in the midst of hell had retained compassion enough to usurp the least envied of duties, that of comforting my own brother as he lay dying.
A shiver runs through me; I am an inferior creature indeed. I wrote, not of heroics or self-sacrifice, not of the final triumph of the human spirit, but of my own sterile fear that my words might seem vain to he who read them. How grotesque and self-indulgent of me to plead for special understanding. How narcissistic to draw attention to my silliness, and the smallness of my world. How could such trifles really matter to a man returning from the abyss? In trying to lay a bridge between the heroic and the drab, my letter merely drew attention to the difference. I was—and am—a feather to Simon Jenson’s volcano. He knows everything, and I know nothing.