Gifts of War

by Mackenzie Ford

  “Are you having a honeymoon?” asked Sam.

  “No. Neither of us can get away. Plenty of time for that sort of thing later.”

  “Family?”

  “I hope so. You have a son, right?”

  “Yes,” Sam said, squeezing my arm.

  “Does he want to be a soldier?”

  “He’s barely three and a half. By the time he’s grown up, this war will be long over.”

  “I hope so,” breathed Greville. “God, I hate Germans, don’t you?”

  Toward the end of the month we went to the Battersea summer fair again. Will was now nearly three and a half (as he would say seriously whenever anyone asked him) and the fair was probably the first thing he remembered from one year to the next, so vivid was the experience for him, and so different from anything else in the rest of his short life. He was still a bonny boy—he had not yet thinned out—and guns were now his favorite toys. Three mornings a week he attended Miss Allardyce’s infant school—kindergarten was too German a word in those days—and he was making friends with other boys. While both Sam and I were pleased about this (he seemed to be popular), I know that Sam was less pleased by the jingoistic atmosphere at Miss Allardyce’s. War games were by far the most popular form of entertainment at the school—the lessons, at that age, were not very arduous. Everyone wanted to be British soldiers, and no one, naturally, wanted to be German. Sam, I could tell, though we never talked about it openly, was apprehensive as to how this might rebound on Will in later years.

  Her predicament was made more poignant for me by the fact that Will more and more resembled his biological father. Save for the different colored hair, Will had Wilhelm’s eyes and nose, his lips, and the general thrust of his chin. From time to time, when I was alone in my office at work, I would take out Wilhelm’s photograph to double-check that this really was true. And true it was. Will had some of my mannerisms, but there was no doubting whose son he was. Not if you had met the father.

  Will was a bright child and curious too—curious to a fault, in fact, as I think I have said before. He would stand too close to the bank of a river or canal, or approach too close to a railway engine, too close to horses, studying their muscles. Sam and I were always pulling him back. He climbed furniture without fear and was fascinated by fire. Perhaps all children are.

  At Battersea that year there was a new attraction. It was a sort of horizontal wheel in which the chairs, as well as circling at the circumference, as the wheel turned, also spun on their own axes. Will was much too young to be taken on this contraption—I don’t remember what it was called—but he would have jumped at the chance if Sam or I had said yes.

  As it was, while we were watching, he somehow slipped his mother’s notice, and mine, and got closer to the wheel than he should have. There was a crowd gathered, and for a moment I lost sight of him. A whirring sound started up, music began to play, the wheel slowly got going, and the chairs began to rotate. Women strapped into the chairs held on to their hats or tied their scarves more tightly about their heads, as the momentum increased. The wheel turned once, twice, three times, until it was going quite fast and the chairs were spinning at a dizzying speed. I saw Will at the front of the crowd and pushed through the people toward him.

  Suddenly, there was a loud crack!—and a shout went up. From where I was, easing my way through a multitude of bodies, I saw a cable under the wheel snap, snake free of its moorings, unfurl in a kind of lazy whiplash—and slice across Will’s tiny body. I gasped as I saw blood spurt from his little arm as his frame fell to the muddy grass. I shouted—and was with him in no time. Sam screamed behind me but I had my tie off and was pulling it tight around Will’s upper arm, above the cut. The cable had severed an artery and I had to stop any more loss of blood. I knew about severed arteries, ever since the murder in our village when I was a boy.

  There was blood everywhere—on Will himself, on my clothes and face, sprayed across the grass around us. Women were screaming as the wheel ground to a halt and the music faded.

  But I knew what I had to do. I lifted Will and began to run.

  “Where are you going?” screamed Sam.

  “Follow me!” I yelled over my shoulder, saving my breath. I ran between the new wheel and the great slide, and hurried to the edge of the park. I could hear Sam running behind me. My leg was hurting but not badly, not yet.

  At the edge of the park I turned north, across the bridge over the Thames. I didn’t know how much time I had but I knew it wasn’t much. My tourniquet was an amateur affair and wouldn’t hold forever. Will’s face was pale and he looked frightened. So was I but I tried not to show it.

  I reached the north end of the bridge and hurried across the road. I scared a couple of horses in the process and was shouted at by their riders, but I pressed on—I knew what I knew. Diagonally across the road from the park was the Lister Hospital. Sam and I had walked past it countless times on our jaunts through London.

  I rushed in. “Quick!” I shouted at the first nurse I saw. “The boy’s severed an artery at the fair. He needs it cauterized, and then he needs a blood transfusion.”

  The nurse—barely eighteen—stared at me.

  “Get your sister—now!” I bellowed. “She’ll know what to do.”

  Just then an older woman in a dark blue uniform appeared. “What’s going on?”

  I told her. Sam arrived, panting. She just stood there, terrified.

  “There’s no doctor here at the moment,” said the sister. “He’s been called out to an accident.”

  “Then you’ll have to do it.”

  She glared at me. People didn’t speak to sisters like that.

  “There’s no blood.”

  “I’m type O. Take it from me.”

  The sister looked from me to Will, who was pale. Then she looked back to me.

  “You’re right. Follow me.”

  The operating theater was all the way at the far end of the corridor.

  I laid Will gently on the table. His eyes were closed, his face was still pale, and his skin was caked with dried tears and spatters of blood. I was close to tears myself.

  The sister replaced my tie tourniquet with another one, made of rubber tubing. It was neater and more tightly applied—it would hold.

  Calmly, she set up a saline drip, fitting it into one of Will’s veins in his good arm with a needle, and then set about cauterizing the artery. The smell of singeing filled the room. Will began to cry out.

  “I’m here,” I whispered. “The pain won’t last long.”

  The sister finished what she was doing, put a swab of cotton wool on the wound, and tied a bandage over it. Then she loosened the tourniquet and watched for a moment.

  There seemed to be no escape of blood so she straightened up and turned back to me. “Take off your jacket and roll up your shirtsleeve. How much blood do you think he lost?”

  “I don’t know. Take what you need.”

  She selected a needle for her syringe, tapped the vein in my arm quite hard, so that it stood out, and, to judge by the smell, wiped some form of alcohol on it.

  Sam was holding the hand of Will’s good arm.

  The sister inserted the needle and led blood from my vein into a bottle. The red, sticky liquid poured steadily but the bottle still took several minutes to fill.

  Sam looked on anxiously, between Will and me. She had never seen anything like this before. Hardly anyone had. I only knew about it, of course, because my sister was doing this every day at the Front and because of the blood transfusion session we’d had at the ministry. I had received a letter not long afterward informing me that my blood group was O.

  Finally, the sister was done with me. She took the bottle, suspended it upside down next to the saline drip, and led a fresh tube down to Will’s good arm.

  The young nurse gave me a patch of cotton wool, soaked in alcohol, to hold over my wound.

  The sister murmured to Will, “You’re going to feel a pinprick, young man. It
will hurt a tiny bit but not for long. You’ve been very brave so far, so you’re not going to make a fuss now, are you?” She smiled.

  Will, looking serious, shook his young head and half-whispered, half-cried, “My shoes are dirty.”

  Sam and I looked at each other. She was crying and smiling at the same time.

  The nurse inserted the needle and Will whimpered.

  Sam kissed his forehead.

  We watched the level of blood in the bottle fall as the liquid entered Will’s body.

  Suddenly the door to the operating theater burst open and a man in a white coat strode in. He was tall and thin, and his hair drooped over his forehead. In a moment he took in what was happening.

  “Where did the blood come from?”

  “Me,” I replied. “I’m type O.”

  “How do you know?”

  “My sister works in an experimental unit at the Front, giving blood transfusions. She told me about the technology. I work in the War Ministry and gave blood. They told me I am O.”

  “I hope you are,” said the doctor. “Now, will you all wait outside, please. It looks like Sister Wakefield has done an excellent job but, under the law, I am responsible for patients here, and I need to double-check her work.”

  The junior nurse led us back outside as the doctor bent over Will.

  I put my arm around Sam as she sobbed. Then she looked up. “Will he be all right?”

  “I think so.” I was more nervous than I looked.

  “How did you know about—what’s it called?”

  “Transfusion? It’s what Izzy does in her experimental medical unit in France. They are giving transfusions all the time to men at the Front who have just been injured. Apparently it’s very effective.” I told Sam about the session at the War Ministry. It certainly took her mind off Will for a few moments.

  The young nurse brought us some tea. “Not many people know about blood transfusion,” she said. “It’s a new technique.”

  We sat sipping our tea.

  Suddenly a policeman appeared. He took off his hat and came up to me. “Excuse me, sir, are you the man who ran off with the young boy who was injured at the fair?”

  “Yes.” I pointed to the operating theater. “He’s in there with the doctor.”

  The officer nodded. “I won’t bother you much, sir, but we will need a statement from you, in case the fairground company is to be prosecuted for negligence.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Just your name and address, for the moment, then.”

  I told him and he wrote down the details.

  “Was anyone else injured?” asked Sam.

  “I don’t think so, ma’am, not seriously anyway,” he said, putting his notebook in his pocket and making his farewells.

  “More tea?” said the young nurse, but just then the doctor appeared.

  He came up to us. “You are the mother?” he said to Sam.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s the boy’s name?”

  “Will.”

  He softened his tone. “Well, Will’s going to be fine, ma’am. Not immediately, not for a few days. He’s in shock and he’s going to be a bit weak. But you were fortunate that the accident happened where it did, near a hospital. And your quick thinking saved his life. I’ve given him a junior sedative and he’s asleep. Just help the nurse with the paperwork and you can go and sit with him.”

  He looked at me. “Lucky you knew about this new blood transfusion business, sir, and that you are O. And lucky that the Lister is one of those hospitals involved in the initiative you mentioned. You are quite certain that you are O?”

  “That’s what the medics told me.”

  He nodded. “You’re the boy’s father—yes?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Sam at the same time.

  One evening in August I came home from the office and, as I was approaching the flat, I saw a figure rise from the bench in the small patch of green between the buildings and the river. The outline of the figure—small—was familiar and I had no difficulty recognizing who it was.

  “Lottie!”

  “Don’t worry, Hal, I’m not going to scratch your eyes out.”

  I smiled. “This is like a film rerun. The first time I saw you, you were sitting on that very bench, when we first found the flat.”

  She nodded. “I remember. But I’m only here because Sam won’t let me in—don’t worry, I don’t blame her.”

  “Really? So why are you here?”

  “Reg was shot today.”

  “Lottie, I’m sorry—”

  “No, no, Hal, I didn’t come for sympathy. I came to apologize.”

  I looked at her.

  “There was a court martial, as you said there would be. I wasn’t allowed to go because Reg and I weren’t married, but one or two of his friends gave evidence, and through them I found out who shopped him, the bastard who gave him away.”

  I still said nothing.

  “It was Greville.”

  It took me a while to realize that this was Ruth’s man, the secretive security type whom I had last met at their engagement party at Ruth’s factory.

  “Lottie,” I whispered. “How terrible. I am so very sorry.”

  “Just kiss me, Hal. On the cheek, I mean. To show that you forgive me. This war, this bloody war, has divided family against family.”

  I kissed her cheek. “Does this mean you’re coming back to live with us?”

  “No, Hal. I loved it while it lasted. You are a good man, and you helped save me. But I’m back in the theater now, where I truly belong. Make-believe all day, every day. I’ll get by. We are—or were—one family, Hal, four sisters, and look what has happened to us. You have forgiven me, but how much forgiving is there still to do? Will we ever get over it? Good-bye Hal.”

  I turned away.

  “You’re with the wrong Ross, you know.”

  I turned back. “What? What did you say?”

  She stood next to the bench. She hadn’t moved. “You never saw it, did you? You only had eyes for Sam.”

  “I don’t—”

  “She doesn’t love you, Hal. There’ll always be that bloody German in the way. But I… I… remember that day in the bathroom, the day you were ill… I didn’t follow up … I’ve always wanted you.”

  “Lottie!”

  “I never showed it, not after that. No. I was a guest—and I could see how… how far gone you were over Sam. But I know her, Hal, better than you do. Be careful. She likes you, she likes what you can do for her. But does she love you—?”

  “Stop!” I cried. “Stop. Don’t say any more. Please. We had an agreement. Whatever you think you know, keep it to yourself. I’m sorry for what happened to Reg, but don’t spoil our life, Lottie. Please go. Don’t say any more.”

  I held up my hand, my fingers outspread. “Please!”

  She nodded, turned on her heel, and walked away.

  When I reached the flat, Sam was beside herself with rage.

  “I saw you! I saw you! I watched everything. You kissed her! You forgave her, didn’t you?”

  “Yes … yes, I did. Was that wrong?”

  “Forgiveness comes easy, for you, does it? You heard what Lottie had to say about Will’s parentage when she left? It was no better than Faye’s insults all those months ago. How do you think that makes me feel? I can’t forgive her. Nor can I forgive Ruth.”

  “For what?”

  “For letting you take the blame when it was Greville all along who shopped Reg. They just… they just sat back and let you take everything. That’s so … wait till I see Ruth tomorrow. She’ll think Hindenburg’s a marshmallow compared to me.”

  “Sam, listen. Do you think you should take on Ruth? Do you think you should fall out with all your sisters?”

  She came up to me then and took my hand and kissed it. “Sometimes I don’t think you know me at all, Hal. Remember that early morning at Middle Hill station? I gave up everything then,
to go with you to London that very day.” She squeezed my hand. “That wasn’t done without a lot of thinking, and it wasn’t done lightly. I’m a deliberate person, Hal, you must have seen that. And I have never regretted my decision. Never. Do you understand? I have always known what I have to do. Ruth hid. Ruth let Lottie think it was you who betrayed Reg. That is unforgivable.”

  I pointed out of the window. “Down there, Lottie was lamenting how war divided family against family. You don’t have to do this.” I was confused. Did I believe Lottie, the unkind and unpleasant things she said? Was it true, or had her grief made her spiteful, jealous of her sister? Did I believe Sam?

  “What does Lottie know? Yes, I do have to do this, Hal. I’m yours now, yours. We have our family. The three of us and your parents … and the dogs, of course.” She grinned. “That’s our family now. You saved Will’s life, Hal. You’re his father. We can’t go back. He even has your mannerisms. He loves shiny shoes and puts his jaw to one side when he’s irritated—have you noticed?”

  She paused, and then added gently, “I’ve let Wilhelm go, Hal. Seeing you and Will in the bath together, with all that shoe polish as war paint, the blood thing in the Lister Hospital—that’s what childhoods are made of. You know, I actually think Will loves you more than he loves me. Maybe that’s natural—you are a man, after all. And Ruth put all that at risk. I can’t have that.”

  She put her hand on my arm. “I tell you—Ruth won’t know what’s hit her tomorrow Poison gas is too good for her!”

  Darling Hal,

  I know, an extravagant beginning but I’m feeling generous today. The sun is shining, and, of course, we are all anticipating an end to the war soon.

  I heard from Pa that you took your lady down to Edgewater for a visit. Great. What’s her name? Pa didn’t say (he’s hopeless at important details like that).