by Phillip Rock
“If you kept taking your top off in my ward, I’d have the sisters tie your hands to the frame.” He nodded curtly at Alexandra. “Not blaming you, of course. Probationer or VAD?”
“VAD,” she said, a quiver of rage in her voice. “And we happen to have the best—”
“I know,” he interrupted. “The best nurses in France. Your loyalty to this hospital is admirable. Where will I find Dr. Jary?”
“In his office . . . down the corridor to your left and then up the garret stairs.”
“What do you want to see him for?” Dennis asked. “Don’t go leapin’ on the poor man because of my bluidy flannel!”
“I want to study the X-ray plates.”
“He did a bluidy fine job of it, man.”
“I’m sure he did.”
“And if he didn’t, you’d bust my bluidy legs again, I suppose!”
“Exactly right. And go easy on the word ‘bluidy.’ Makes you sound like a Clydeside riveter.”
Dennis flopped back on his pillow with a groan of exasperation.
“Christ! Wasn’t there enough to keep you busy up at Ypres?”
“Yes,” the major said with a quiet intensity. “More than enough.”
The younger Mackendric sucked in his breath and looked quickly at his brother.
“I didn’t mean to say that, Robbie. You know I didn’t.”
“I know.”
“And I’m really awfully . . . damn glad to see your ugly mug.”
“And I yours. Put your pajama top on, that’s the lad. I’ll be back shortly.” He strode off, boots clicking briskly down the marble corridor.
“Well!” Alexandra said, letting her pent-up sense of outrage underline the word. “Well! What an exasperating man!”
“That he is,” Dennis said with a grin. “He’d drive a saint to drink. The annoying thing about Robbie, though, is that he’s always right.” He sat up and held out his arms. “Slip the smelly old flannel on. There’s no point in sendin’ him into a bluidy blitherin’ rage.”
She saw Major Robin Mackendric later in the day as he toured F Ward with Dr. Jary and Dr. Lavantier. He smiled at her, but she made a point of ignoring him.
“There are two or three cases you could help us out with,” Dr. Jary said. “Abdominals . . . fecal abscesses . . .”
“I only have a few days’ leave.”
“I can have them prepped right now . . . cut after lunch. You were Sir Osbert’s pupil, after all . . . your cup of tea. . . . Cela est dans vos cordes. Shall we say yes?”
“Busman’s holiday . . . what the hell.”
They wheeled the last patient from the operating room at one o’clock in the morning, Matron told them during breakfast.
“He was marvelous to watch. Very sure of himself. Took nine feet of intestines from number eighty-seven and snipped more than that from the Turko and Papa Celine. ‘Better a short bowel than a rotten one,’ he said!”
“I had to laugh,” an Irish surgical nurse said. “Dr. Jary was leaning over his shoulder and ashes fell from his fag into the cavity. I’m used to that, of course, but I thought, ‘Oh-oh, the Englishman is going to spin like a top,’ but he kept on cutting cool as you please and said, ‘Well, at least there’s somethin’ sterile in the poor man’s gut!’ ”
“He must have been very tired by the time it was over,” Alexandra said.
The Irishwoman nodded. “He was that. Quite the color of paste. Dr. Jary pressed a bottle of whiskey on him and sent him into town in an ambulance.”
“He could have slept here.”
“That he could, but he said he’d be damned if he’d spend one night of his leave on a canvas cot.” She winked broadly at Alexandra. “The English are a grand race. I wonder why I hate them so!”
She felt a compulsion to see him again and volunteered for double duty in order not to miss him. He arrived late in the afternoon, looking pale and drawn.
“Your brother’s sleeping,” she said, meeting him at the top of the stairs.
“Good. Best thing for him.”
“In a pajama top,” she added pointedly.
“Sorry I made such a strafe about it.”
“You were quite right to do so. It’s just that your brother has a talent for getting his own way.”
He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead. “Do you have such a thing as a cool drink, Miss—I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Alexandra Greville.”
“Robin Mackendric . . . now formally introduced.” He shifted the handkerchief to his left hand and held out his right. The palm was damp, the fingers icy.
“Do you feel all right, Major?”
“A bit under the weather. I could use that drink . . . and a couple of aspirin tablets.”
“Of course. I’ll fetch you a glass of lemonade.”
He was seated in his brother’s room, talking quietly to the wounded French captain, when she brought the glass to him. He took the aspirins from her hand and drank the lemonade almost without pause.
“Thank you. Very refreshing.”
“The service here is as good as at the Crillon,” the Frenchman said.
“And cheaper,” the major added. He handed the glass back to Alexandra and stood up. “I shan’t wake Dennis. He’s sleeping too peacefully. Tell him I’ll drop by in the morning before I go.”
“Is your leave over?” she asked.
“No. I can take a few more days if I want it, but I’m feeling a bit guilty staying away.”
“Where is your hospital, Commandant?” Captain Morizet asked.
“Number twenty CCS, near Kemmel.”
The captain nodded, his expression grim. “Hellish up there. Yes. I know what it is like. My battalion was in reserve at Messines in April. A bad place for soldiers, that salient, I can tell you. Très pouilleux!”
She walked beside him down the hall to the stairwell.
“In case I don’t see you again, Major Mackendric—”
“Tell me,” he said, interrupting her, “what time do you get off duty?”
She looked at him blankly. “Get off?”
“They don’t chain you to your post, do they? Aren’t you permitted free time?”
“Yes . . . of course. My shift is over at six-thirty.”
“Will you have supper with me in town? Say . . . seven o’clock?”
She could only stare at him. The invitation was totally unexpected. The man was at least ten years her senior. What on earth did they have in common? What could they talk about? Her instinct was to murmur a polite but firm no, but there was a look in his eyes that made her hesitant. She saw pain there—an almost desperate appeal.
“All right. Will you pick me up or shall I meet you somewhere?” Her voice sounded alien to her.
“It’s a pleasant walk. I could meet you by the river.”
She nodded gravely. “Yes. That would be better than coming here.”
They walked slowly along the towpath in the orange light of early evening, the sun turning the poplars to slim columns of brass. Barges moved up the river, pulled by plodding horses, while the bargemen sat cross-legged on the narrow decks, munching bread and onions and drinking wine from dark green bottles.
“France is such a beautiful country, don’t you agree, Major Mackendric?”
“Yes . . . quite lovely.”
“And so historic. Chartres . . . such an unspoiled old town. The cathedral is certainly one of the finest examples of Gothic architecture to be found anywhere. I developed a passion for Gothic architecture when I was about eleven. It didn’t last, of course, one of those stages that one always outgrows, but I can remember looking at stereoscopic views of Chartres. We had thousands of stereoscopic views . . . every country on earth . . . all in color. . . . I think the views of Chartres and the cathedral were my favorites among all the sets . . . those and the ones on Japan . . . the cherry trees and the geisha girls. . . . But I did love Chartres so, and here I am
, practically living in its shadow. Curious, isn’t it?”
She was talking too much and too rapidly. Lydia had once told her that rapid, garrulous speech was a form of hysteria. She took a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself. She found the taciturn doctor disconcerting. She sensed complexities in him beyond her ability to unravel and depths to his moodiness that she didn’t feel capable of probing. He paused for a moment to light a short briar pipe. She noticed that his hand as he held the match trembled slightly. That only disconcerted her more and loosened her tongue again.
“I do love your brother. He’s such a—bonnie Scot!”
“He’s really more English than Scotch, but he can turn on the burr when he feels like it. Dennis is a bit of an actor.”
“And, oh, the pranks he pulls! One day he stuck his thermometer in his tea and nearly scared one of the girls out of her wits when she read it.”
“Yes,” he remarked dryly, “he’s quite the cutup.”
“You . . . you’re a bit older than he is, I take it.”
“I’m thirty-two. Dennis is twenty.”
“I’m . . . nineteen.”
“A very good age to be.”
“But I feel a good deal older. I suppose it must be the war. Have you been out here long, Major Mackendric?”
“Since last October . . . first Ypres.”
“What a dreadful battle that must have been. And you’re assigned to a casualty clearing station?”
“Yes.”
“It must be quite dangerous being so close to the front.”
“Only the longer-range guns bother us once in a while.” He stopped and faced her. “Let’s not talk about it.” He turned his head slightly to one side. “No matter how still it is . . . no matter how hard you listen, you can’t hear the guns. So let’s forget the war.”
“What would you like to talk about?”
“You . . . good food . . . barges and barge horses. In roughly that order.”
“Food then,” she said a little too brightly. “All I’ve eaten for weeks is lentil soup and something gray and stringy boiled with turnips. Matron said there are some fine restaurants in Chartres.”
“So they say. Did you tell Matron that I was taking you to supper?”
“No, of course not.”
“Why ‘of course not’? Would she have disapproved?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” she said, flustered. “I just didn’t think it was anyone’s business.”
That was a lie. Had Major Mackendric been one of those merry-eyed dashing young Royal Flying Corps officers who came to visit his brother, she would probably have told quite a few people that she was being taken out to supper. Her socializing with such a man would have been understandable—and enviable. Major Mackendric was not so easily explained.
There were several elegant restaurants in the town, all of them with staff cars and limousines parked in front. He took her to an inn that had a garden in back which sloped down to the river. There were tables in the garden under the trees, Japanese lanterns suspended from the lower branches, their soft lights glowing yellow on the placid waters of the Eure. He ordered roast duckling, a bottle of Montrachet, and fresh fruit. He ate little, toying with his food as he watched her eat. He drank some wine, then picked absently at a dish of strawberries.
“You don’t eat very much, do you, Major Mackendric?”
“Sometimes. Right now I prefer looking at you to staring down at roast duck. It’s a matter of momentary preference. You’re a remarkably beautiful young woman, Miss Greville. So vibrantly alive. Are you always so buoyant?”
“I’m usually accused of being too talkative . . . too . . . ‘bubbly.’ I’m not sure if those are desirable qualities in a woman.”
“It reveals an enthusiasm for life that I find captivating.”
He had an interesting face, she decided—certainly far from handsome, or at least far from her concept of what constituted male beauty. It was the face of a man who had seen much and had suffered a good deal.
“Have you always been an army surgeon, Major Mackendric?”
“No. I had a practice in Liverpool and was a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. Still am, I suppose.”
“Do you come from a medical family?”
“My uncle’s a professor of anatomy at Edinburgh. That’s as far as it goes. My father was a shipbuilder. Dennis shows no inclination to medicine, or anything that takes studying, if it comes to that.”
“I’m sure he’s a fine aviator, though.”
“I hardly think a fine aviator would fly into a tree. Dennis’s problem is that he has no patience with minor details—like petrol gauges.”
They walked back toward the hospital along the river, where the barges were still moving, their cabin lights twinkling in the darkness.
“Thank you so much, Major Mackendric,” she said when they reached the lane that led up to the château. “I enjoyed the meal thoroughly.”
“And I enjoyed your company . . . thoroughly.”
“Perhaps we can do it again, sometime.”
He stepped closer to her and placed a hand on her upper arm, his fingers firm and sure.
“Miss Greville . . . Alexandra . . . I believe in being candid with people. I know no other way of behaving. I’ve become rather obsessed by you . . . from the moment I saw you rolling bandages in that sepulchral entrance hall. I lost an entire night’s sleep just thinking about you . . . conjuring up your face.”
“Major Mackendric . . .” she said haltingly. “I’m sure I—”
God knows she had been kissed before, any number of times, the last occasion a hearty peck on the cheek by Carveth Saunders, Bart., on the platform of Victoria Station the morning she left London for France. Altogether too brotherly a kiss, she had thought at the time, when one considered the fact that she had practically promised to be engaged to the man. There was nothing brotherly about the way she was being kissed now. Major Robin Mackendric’s lips were firm against her own, and the hand that had been on her arm was now centered in the small of her back and pressing her body against his. She was acutely aware of her breasts against his chest, but made no move to pull away. A warmth she had never felt before swept through her veins and her legs felt waxen. Her lips, which had been rigid and unresponsive, parted slightly and remained parted for some seconds after his lips had withdrawn from them.
“I’m leaving for Paris in the morning. Will you come with me?”
“Impossible,” she said weakly. “You must be mad, Major Mackendric.”
He bent his head slightly and kissed her throat. “Mad as a March hare . . . as a hatter. All right, not tomorrow morning, then. Wait a day. Come up on the Friday train . . . the one that leaves at noon. I’ll meet you at the Gare Montparnasse. You can take the evening train back on Sunday.”
She tried to laugh, but only an odd husky sound emerged.
“Really . . . quite impossible, Major . . . really . . .”
“Dr. Jary encourages leaves now and then. He told me. All work and no play. I agreed with him wholeheartedly.” He took hold of her arm again—a brief taut-fingered squeeze. “I ask only that you think about it. Will you do that much?”
“His eyes burned with lust.” She had read that line in a novel, and it ran crazily through her head as she stared at Major Mackendric. But she saw no lustful burning in his eyes—only the pain she had noticed before.
“I . . . I’ll think about it.”
He let go of her arm reluctantly. “Thank you, Alexandra. The noon train Friday. I shall be at the Gare Montparnasse when it arrives. I hope very much that you’ll be on it.”
The train was an express, covering the eighty kilometers to Paris in less than three hours, but it seemed like an endless journey to Alexandra. She felt feverish and light-headed. The train made an unscheduled stop at Rambouillet for a few minutes and she thought of rushing from the compartment, but was so hemmed in by poilus returning from leave, jamming the corridor, standing and sitting everywh
ere, loaded down with packs, rifles, and greatcoats, that getting past them in a hurry would have been impossible. So she remained, feeling sicker, her heart pounding and her throat constricted. Clickety-click . . . clickety-click. The wheels rattled over the rails, drawing the train closer to Paris, closer to Major Robin Mackendric, who loomed in her thoughts in a mosaic of conflicting emotions.
She had tried as discreetly as possible to find out all she could about him, asking his brother oblique questions and receiving answers that had only left her in a deeper quandary and confusion.
“Robbie and I were never very close . . . too much difference in our ages for that. He was at university when I was in prep school . . . more like an uncle than a brother. . . . But after he got married—”
“Married?”
“Oh, yes,” Dennis Mackendric had said, not noticing the note of dismay in her voice. “The poor sod . . . a bluidy laird’s daughter. Doesn’t take kindly to Robbie’s view on medicine . . . didn’t like him workin’ down in Liverpool in a charity hospital, not a bit she didn’t. I was in Liverpool, too, then . . . got expelled from St. Andrew’s and was thinking of running off to sea. Old Robbie took me under his wing and tried to knock some sense in my skull . . . wanted me to go back to school . . . try for university. Got sick to death of his naggin’ at me, so I crammed for Glasgow and managed to get in. They had an aero club there which I joined, so it wasn’t a total waste. No . . . I’ll never have Robbie’s brains, but I’ve got more raw sense. I’ll never marry some blue-nosed, thin-lipped Aberdeen woman, and I’ll never let this bluidy war get the best of me.”
“Meaning?”
“Why, the man’s half round the bend. Coiled up like a steel spring about to snap. I was at Ypres in May . . . with number sixteen squadron. . . . Dropped by to see Robbie one day and he looked like death warmed up. Told him to chuck it in and go back for a month. But no, wouldn’t think of it. Figured it might be the thought of spendin’ time with Catherine. . . .”
“Is that her name? His wife’s name?”
“Yes. Catherine the bluidy great. But, no, it wasn’t that, it was the idea of leavin’ the wards. I said, Man, you’re not the only sawbones in Flanders, you know, but he said . . . Oh, what’s the bluidy use! Robbie is Robbie. It took breaking my legs for him to act human . . . an’ then he only stays for a day and a night. Any normal person would try to grab as much time as possible. Only common sense. He won’t do anybody any bluidy good if he goes stark raving bonkers!”